An Advent People - December 2, 2007

“You know what time is it?” (Romans 13:11-14) Let’s say:
It is ten minutes before midnight. The lineup has been there since mid-afternoon. Some has brought lawn chairs, some are warming themselves with fresh coffee; others are entertaining themselves with books, i-pods, portable games and connecting with others talking on the cell phones. They know that for ten more minutes and the wait will be over. What anticipation! What excitement! What are they lining up for? The answers in multiple choices are:
a) To be first in line for tickets to a Rolling Stones concert?
b) To be first in line to buy the latest offering from Microsoft, Sony or Apple?
c) To be the first ones to get into the stores for Black Friday sales after the American Thanksgiving?
d) To be the first to get into the Church for mid-night mass on Christmas Eve?

Well, how likely is the answer d)? People in our consumer culture anticipate in excitement for the latest thrills and toys, based on what is new and exciting. The happiness and thrill do not last long, usually until the promotion of the next in-thing comes along. Marketing and advertising determine fashion and wants. We, with the rest of the ordinary people, live our lives according to the whims and devices of the marketing genius and their latest gimmicks. Spiritual hunger, however, needs something more profound than what material satisfaction can supply.

In the middle of the commercial shopping season called Christmas, we in the Church try very hard to observe a forgotten and ignored season called Advent! We swim against the current and oddly wish one another a Happy New Year today! “On the second day of December?” you ask. Yes, indeed, it is odd and out of step with the rest of the world. Is it important to be different? Or, should we try blending in all the time? Today’s scriptural readings provide a few clues about who we are and to whom we truly belong.

In Isaiah 2:1-5, we get a vision similar to the scene I described at the beginning of this sermon. Throngs of peoples are going up the hills to Jerusalem to worship God. As in high festivals, people are in fact lining up and they start singing hymns. These are psalms of ascent, like Psalm 122 we read earlier, that pilgrims and worshippers sing on the way up the hills into the holy city. They pray for peace and prosperity. Similar to the prophet’s vision in Isaiah that: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” -- Those are the famous words often quoted by pacifists who preach peace and peacemaking instead of making war! Instruments of war and violence are being converted into peace-time utility tools. Such is the longing of the people of the world, that peace and prosperity will be possible among the nations. Yet, for centuries, especially in the place they call the Holy Land, peaceful co-existence is still a dream not yet realized. They are not anywhere closer to peace today than a century ago.

If Christians are Easter people as we labeled ourselves, can we be also an Advent people? To re-discover our lost identity in a world that has no room for the Advent season, perhaps, the first thing we know about an Advent people is that we are a peace-making people! After all, we wait for the coming of the Prince of Peace – another Isaiah vision fulfilled at Christmas. The conversion from making war to making peace is a different kind of conversion than the one we usually associate ourselves with, but nonetheless, a practical and important one for us to consider.

Secondly, what time is it? St Paul said that “it is now the moment for us to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.” As Advent people, we are called to be children of the Light, to walk in the light of the Lord! We are to wake up to a new day, a new sense of time, another era or period in God’s history. We are called to be prepared for this new age of Christ, not because we know when, but because we know what it means. For us, it is the fulfillment and culmination of our salvation!

We are called to a transformation from Darkness to Light, just as we change from our pajamas or night cloths into what we wear going out during the day. We are asked to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light. I remember as a child, we had to wear school uniforms in Hong Kong. As we moved from warm season into cold weather, we went through a change of uniforms for the different season. We put away what we don’t wear and store them until the next year. Similarly, we go from green to the color purple in our liturgical decoration today, reflecting the symbolic change in seasons, themes and emphases. St Paul asks us to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, just like putting on our winter coats in the last few days, in order to keep warm and be protected from the elements. This symbolic “putting on Christ” means a change in our behavior, our values and outlook on life. We are part of the new creation in Christ, as Paul said elsewhere: any one in Christ is a new creation! We repent and turn our lives around to reflect the new reality in which we live!

The message of today’s Gospel (Matthew 24:36-44) is simply: “Be Prepared!” Jesus uses 3 dramatic images to describe the suddenness of the coming of the Son of Man: a flood, a kidnapper, and a thief. These sharp and disturbing analogies are meant to call us to be alert and watchful. He clearly states that no one knows when the second coming may occur, only God knows! But repeatedly, people in the world, doomsday prophets and other cult leaders always immerse themselves in the game of predicting and calculating dates and time, waiting for the world to end. Many American Christians subscribe to the Rapture theory of the end of the world, using the image of one taken and one left behind, similar to Jesus’ parable employed here. Unfortunately, they preach dangerously a gospel of fear and hatred.

Former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter in his book Our Endangered Values has this to say about the so-called “Left behind” literature and theology:

“Almost everyone in America has heard of the Left Behind series, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, twelve books that have set all-time records in sales. Their religious premise is based on a careful selection of Bible verses, mostly from the book of Revelation, and describes the scenario for the end of the world. When the Messiah returns, true believers will be lifted in heaven, where, with God, they will observe the torture of most other humans who are left behind. This transcendent event will be instantaneous, and the timing unpredictable. There are literally millions of my fellow Baptists and others who believe every word of this vision, based on self-exaltation of the chosen few along with the condemnation and abandonment, during a period of ‘tribulation’, of family members, friends, and neighbors who have not been chosen for salvation.” (pp. 113- 114)

The frightening aspect of this type of literature and theology rests in the fact that many fundamentalist Christians have come to believe it as sacred truth, one and the same as Scriptures, not as novels and fictions the way they were written. They try to fit these fictional plots into their reality of life. Secondly, this type of thinking have gravely influenced certain American politicians who shape their foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, dangerously promoting wars and confrontations in order to hasten the fulfillment of their articulated prophecies and the coming of this Rapture!

As Advent people, we do not stray away from the whole of Scriptural teaching to narrowly focus on the doctrine of the End Time, especially one that is distorted and misleading when held up against other teachings of Jesus. In my younger days, I have heard many preachers going on endlessly about the Rapture, which is at best misguided and speculative. However, to those who are fascinated by it, they are addicted to the details to the exclusion of everything else. In the season of Advent and the rest of the year, we are called to be prepared, but not to be totally obsessed or preoccupied with the wait. I used to live in a rectory down the road from the Church in Whitby. I tried not to leave the place in a mess, at least not the living room and the study, just in case we had people dropping in. That is being prepared. However, I did not stop doing everything else and waited at the door for the unexpected visitors. I did have a life; I was not constantly worried about intrusion. I carried on living a normal life, doing what I needed to do. We should have the same attitude as an Advent people. We live as children of light, bearing witness to the light of Christ coming into the world. As we gather for worship, we invite God into our daily lives, so that we live a holy, responsible and grounded life, ready to welcome our Lord and King, whenever his kingdom or reign will begin anew.

So, Happy New Year! What is new? We start off another new Christian year, preparing for new life in Christ. Advent is a season pregnant with hope, the same way Mary was carrying the Christ child within her. The blessings of new beginning, albeit small and insignificant ones, will be able to lift us up and allow us to rise above the ordinary, mundane parts of life. In worship, we join millions of other Christians in the world longing for and expecting the salvation of Jesus Christ to be fulfilled, not only in the second coming of Christ, but in the reality of grace established since His first coming. It is in this “here and now” reality that we live joyfully and celebrate God’s presence in our midst!

Thanks be to God. Amen.
Fr Victor +
Church of St John the Divine (www.stjd.ca)