"Daring To Hope." A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent

"Peaceable Kingdom," by Edward Hicks.

"Daring to Hope"

Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12

Here we are, in the second week of Advent.  For a lot of people, there’s so much to do, at home, at church and everywhere else.  There are gifts to be purchased and wrapped...cards to be addressed...cooking and baking to do...the house to clean... and decorating to do.  

            In the background, we have the news feed of our lives.  Mass shootings. Another child accidentally shooting himself with a gun he found in the house. Thousands of migrant children separated from their families and housed in cages. A migrant teenager dying from the flu. Impeachment hearings. Environmental degradation. Huge economic disparities between the uber-rich and those who struggle to provide food and basic shelter for themselves and their families. The list could go on….

            In the midst of all of this, Advent invites us to turn our thoughts to what it means that God came and lived as one of us in our world to show us God’s way?  Advent invites us to wait… to pay attention… to prepare the way of the Lord… and to live in hope. 

           In the Hebrew scripture lesson, we heard the prophet Isaiah singing a song of hope 700 years before the birth of Jesus, in a time when things seemed hopeless.  His message must have sounded as unrealistic then as it does now.

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie with down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them. . . .
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain…

            The prophet Isaiah was probably writing in the period of the Syro-Ephramite war, when the dynasty of David seemed like a mere dead stump, compared to its enemies.  The nation had been defeated and humiliated by another national power.  Their government was weak and ineffective, and the people were dejected and demoralized.  In the midst of all that, how do you live in hope?   Isaiah’s words must have seemed terribly unrealistic—as unrealistic as Isaiah’s words seem to a lot of people today.

           Enter the Spirit of the Lord; a new shoot is coming out of the dead stump of the monarchy.  That’s what the Spirit of the Lord does—it brings life where things have been dead.  The Spirit brings forth new green shoots of life.

  

          Isaiah sings of a new kind of king—a king upon whom the Spirit of the Lord rests.  God’s Messiah will use his gifts to serve the people with equity and righteousness. What will the reign of the Messiah will be like?  The enmity that dominates the world is transformed into peace. 

   

         A great theologian of the last century, Reinhold Niebuhr, once wrote: “Do you want peace in this world?  Then work for justice.”  Until there is justice for everyone, there will be no peace.  For even a defeated enemy remains an enemy.  The only hope for peace is not the building up of more power to defeat and control—but power to make our enemies our friends. 

  

          Advent invites us-- dares us-- to wait in hope for the coming of a different kind of King, who will use his power to “rule the world with truth and grace” and transform creation into a world in which every creature can live without fear. 

  

          Can you imagine a world without fear?   No fear in Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen…  no fear in Bethlehem or Jerusalem…  no fear in South Sudan.  No fear in homes from an abusive parent or spouse. No fear in our neighborhoods where innocent children have died to gun violence.

           “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”   This is the promise and hope of Advent.

            But hope is a fragile and fleeting thing. 

            Fast forward seven hundred years or so.  Two hundred years had gone by since the people of Israel had had a prophet in their midst.   They’re living under occupation, with the Roman army enforcing the oppression of the Empire.

    

           Suddenly, John shows up in the wilderness, looking and sounding a lot like Elijah, who was expected to return to prepare the way for God’s coming Messiah.  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” he says.  “Prepare the way of the LORD.  Make his paths straight.”  

            John’s call to repentance and preparing the way is a call to turn around and look for and hope in God’s future, which is breaking in on them.  It’s a call to commit to see our world as God’s world    and our future as God’s future, because that’s what repentance is about.  

            And yet, more than 2,000 years later, amid the moral, religious, and political crises our nation and world are facing, we are still waiting and longing.   

            Every Advent John the Baptist shows up, because God loves us enough to hold us accountable to be who and whose we.  We are living in a broken, hurting world.  The people of Palestine still live under occupation in a conflict that looks hopeless to a lot of us.  Children in Flint and their families continue to deal with the long-term effects of lead poisoning.  In our own communities and communities around our nation, a parent can work 40 hours a week and still not be able to afford nutritious food and other basic necessities for their children. In our nation, consumerism and individualism rule. Our political system is broken.  The gap between the very rich and the poor continues to widen.            

            And so, we still long for a time of righteousness and justice and peace. 

            For a long time, I’ve felt drawn to the images painted by Edward Hicks, a Quaker preacher and artist, who was so inspired by the vision in Isaiah 11 that he painted at least 66 “peaceable kingdom” paintings.  

            A “peaceable kingdom.” Can you imagine it?  A time when broken creation becomes the completely harmonious creation God intended.  Predators-- wolves, leopards, lions, and bears will live in harmony with the domestic animals like lambs, calves, goats, and cows.  Lions will eat straw like oxen, and a little child will play over the holes of poisonous snakes.  The earth will be filled with the “knowledge of the LORD.”  

            Jesus has come to live among us, full of grace and truth, and called us to follow him, living God’s way of love.    

        

So… how are we to live?  How are we to live as a community of faith?  Do we give in to hopelessness and despair?  

            Do we dare to hope?  Can we trust in God’s promises?  Can we imagine a better world?  Can we believe in the possibility that injustice and oppression can be overcome, with God’s help?

            Jesus came and “proclaimed the reign of God: preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives, teaching by word and deed and blessing the children, healing the sick and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners, and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.”[1] 

            To those living under the oppressive regime of the Roman Empire, Jesus taught and embodied a different way of being in the world that allowed even the marginalized and the poor to reclaim their identity as children of God.  To people whose identities had been shaped by centuries of living under exile and oppression of conquering empires, Jesus demonstrated that the empire doesn’t have the power to define who you are.  

            What Jesus proclaimed as a transforming message of hope has been spiritualized and individualized and distorted.   Jesus didn’t come to be a personal savior for individuals, but to be the way, the truth and the life, to show us all a way to live into God’s dream for all of God’s people. He taught us to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven. 

            When we repent—when we turn away from the ways of the world and the empire-- and turn toward God’s way of righteousness and justice and peace, we find our lives changing.    As our lives are being transformed, we can no longer be content to exist under the old ways of the world.   

            Our faith teaches us that God’s intention is for us to live in Beloved Community together, in righteousness and justice.  But we look around, and we see there is still a gap between the vision and reality.  

            We wait and hope for the time when God will fully bring in the Kingdom… the kin-dom.   In the meantime, we live into the Kingdom of heaven—the kingdom of justice and peace, as we work for a better world that more fully embodies God’s dreams.

            Sometimes it’s hard to see how things can be different… or how the little things we do can make a difference.   But sometimes new life emerges from the most unlikely places, emerging as a tiny green tendril out of a stump that looked dead. 

            We live into hope in big and small ways when we change the life of a family by providing them with a goat or a flock of chickens with a gift to the Heifer Project.   When we shop ethically and buying locally as much as possible and stop using single-use plastics, we make a difference in peoples’ lives and the environment.  Making choices to care for the environment and giving to aid global and domestic causes all make a difference, and they witness to our hope.  

            When we engage the powers and principalities by contacting our elected officials about issues that matter, we are daring to hope that we can make a difference. When we volunteer in our local schools, when we tutor a child or teach an adult how to read, we are living into hope.

            We live into hope because the Christ’s reign is among us now as we live into God’s dream for us, working for justice and peace for all of God’s beloved people.

            In this season of waiting, God comes to us and nudges us: “Look! Look -- there on that dead-looking stump.  Do you see that green shoot growing?”

            Can you see it?

Rev. Fran Hayes

December 8, 2019

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[1] “A Brief Statement of Faith” of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).    https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/oga/pdf/boc2014.pdf

"Prepare the Way." A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on the Second Sunday of Advent

"Prepare the Way"

Luke 3:1-6

The time for John the Baptist to come out of the wilderness came in the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius.  Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was ruling Galilee. Annas and Caiaphas were serving as high priests in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Luke places John in historical context, much like how the Old Testament prophets were introduced, placing him and his call to prepare the way for the Lord in the middle of worldly events and places.

He reminds us that God sends messengers in the center of our earthly life, too. In the second year of the presidency of Donald Trump, when Rick Snyder is Governor of Michigan, when Francis is the Pope in Rome, when J. Herbert Nelson is Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA), we are reminded that no time is forsaken by God. All time is subject to God’s inbreaking. Prepare the way of the Lord!

Luke’s litany of government and religious authorities does more than date John’s ministry to 28 or 29 CE. It also contrasts human kingdoms with God’s reign. The claims to any authority that Tiberius or Herod or the high priest make are not ultimate.  God’s people owe allegiance first and foremost to God. And it is God’s word that sets John’s ministry in motion. John has been commissioned to prepare the way not for Caesar or any earthly authority, but for the one true Lord.

           The major focus for Luke is salvation, but it’s important for Luke that we understand the messy reality of the day-- to understand the world into which God is bringing salvation.  The word of God came to John in the wilderness, and spoke through John to a wounded and unjust world. 

            John proclaims a baptism of repentance that leads to release from sins.  The word that’s translated as “release” is the same word that Jesus uses twice in Luke 4 to describe his mission: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me…to proclaim release to the captives and…to let the oppressed go free….” 

The release that follows repentance doesn’t un-do past sins, but it does unbind people from them. It opens the way for a life lived in God’s service.  When John proclaims this release, he’s fulfilling his father Zechariah’s prophecy:  “You, child…will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness / release of their sins.”[1]

I agree with Judith Jones when she says that this salvation “looks like a new dawn for those trapped in darkness and death’s shadow. It is light that reveals a new path, the way toward peace.[2]         

The second Sunday of Advent invites us to anticipate the drawing close of the holy in our midst. The scripture texts invite us to listen to the voices of those calling us to be prepared to welcome the Messiah.  John the Baptist comes to us, proclaiming the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

            God chooses a nobody—an itinerant preacher to call people to repent and to prepare the way.  John went into all the region around the Jordan River, proclaiming a baptism of repentance.  Luke quotes the prophet  Isaiah:

            “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

            ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

            make his paths straight.

            Every valley shall be filled,

            And every mountain and hill shall be made low,

            And the crooked shall be made straight,

            And the rough ways made smooth;

            And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”[1]

            “All flesh.”  All people.  All humanity. 

Luke quotes Isaiah’s prophecy detailing what is required if all flesh is to see the salvation of God. Make straight desert highways. Valleys will be lifted up, and mountains made low.  

I like the way Jill Duffield describes this:  “A great leveling will occur. Rough places smoothed. Obstacles obliterated. Nothing will stand in the way, obscure or create a stumbling block for the coming of the Lord, for the gift of salvation. No one will be left behind, sacrificed because they are slow or infirm. All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”[3]

            On this second Sunday of Advent in 2018, John the Baptist calls to us to repent…to prepare the way of the Lord. What do we need to do to get ready?

            Whatever it takes will not be easy or painless. Transformation requires radical change, and change brings discomfort. Heeding John’s call means giving up our self-satisfaction or apathy or ambivalence. It means pushing past our fears and resistances, whatever gets in the way of submitting to the re-formation of God.

            Preparing the Lord’s path toward peace requires overturning the world as we know it. Luke’s gospel is full of images that help us envision what that means. Mary sings of the God who has looked upon her humble state, the One who saves by de-throning the powerful and exalting the humble…sending the rich away empty-handed and filling up the hungry.[4] Jesus blesses the poor and the hungry and those who mourn but announces woe for the rich and well-fed.[5]  On the Day of Pentecost Peter warns the people, “Be saved from this crooked generation.”[6] The word that’s translated as “crooked” is the same word that Isaiah uses for the things that need to be straightened out.

            Preparing for God’s arrival means re-thinking systems and structures that we see as normal—but that God judges as oppressive and crooked.  It means preparing to have God humble everything that is proud and self-satisfied in us, and letting God heal and lift up what is broken and beaten down. The claims that the world’s authorities make often conflict with God’s claims. God’s ways are not our ways. But God’s ways lead to salvation.

            What this re-shaping looks like is different from person to person, from congregation to congregation, from community to community, but it does require repentance…turning.  It can shake things up.

            John’s preaching of repentance will literally turn people away from the powers that be to God and it’s a threat to those invested in the present order. When we read further on in the story, we hear that John’s preaching will ultimately lead to his beheading, and later Jesus will be crucified by the empire. Those who are threatened by repentance and forgiveness and newness will not go without a fight.

            In the season of Advent, Christians prepare to celebrate a deep mystery of our faith, the Incarnation, how God came to live among us, full of grace and truth, in the person of Jesus.  Part of what Incarnation means is that God is with humanity and works in and through us. 

            I believe in a God who works in and with and through us, through the work of those who are learning to love as God loves, those who are learning to love peace as God does, those who love justice and mercy as God does.  Through those who are learning to reject violence in their own lives… and who work in small and large ways to end violence and hunger and injustice in our world…. 

            God isn’t finished with us yet. 

            Preparing the Lord’s path toward peace and justice requires changing the world as we know it.  Preparing for God’s arrival means re-thinking systems and structures that we may see as normal but that God condemns as oppressive and crooked.  It means letting God humble everything that is proud and self-satisfied in us,  and letting God heal and lift up what is broken and beaten down. 

            John’s call to repent reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways.[7]  John and Isaiah call us to open ourselves to let God work in our minds and hearts   and to let God work through us to re-shape the world’s social systems. 

            The good news is that God’s ways lead to salvation.  God’s glory will be revealed in Jesus, who comes to save us.  This is good news for us and for the whole world:   all flesh will see God’s salvation.  All humanity will see God’s salvation. 

            Thanks be to God!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

December 9, 2018

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[1] Luke 1:77

[2] Luke 1:78-79

[3] Jill Duffield, in “Looking Into the Lectionary, 2^nd Sunday of Advent – December 9, 2018” at Presbyterian Outlook.  https://pres-outlook.org/2018/12/2nd-sunday-of-advent-december-9-2018/

[4] Luke 1:52-53

[5] Luke 6:20-26

[6] Acts 2:40

[7] Isaiah 55:8

"Witnesses to the Light." A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on the Third Sunday of Advent

Edward Hicks, "A Peaceable Kingdom with Quakers Bearing Banners," 1829-30

"Witnesses to the Light"

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; John 1:6-8, 19-28; 1 Thessalonians 3:16-24

            I love the season of Advent-- the invitation to quiet reflection and expectant waiting… the eschatological hope for justice through God’s realm on earth.

            The Third Sunday of Advent has traditionally been known as Joy Sunday.   That’s why we lit the rose-colored candle.  Joy is a theme in most of the scripture lessons we heard today.  In the epistle lesson we heard the apostle Paul urging the church to “Rejoice always and in everything.”

            Yet-- during the past few days, as I've meditated on the scriptures, I've been thinking about how painful a season this can be for many people. Some are lonely.  Some are grieving the loss of a loved one.  Some are depressed.  Some are too poor to be a part of the festival of extravagance the merchants would have us believe is what Christmas is all about.  Some are hungry. Some are homeless.

            In our nation, parents of millions of children are worrying about how they will pay for their children’s health care if the CHIP program isn’t re-funded.

            Every day, someone in our nation dies due to gun violence. Opioid addiction keeps claiming more victims. Forest fires continue to rage in California.

            More and more women have been breaking the silence and accusing those who have sexually assaulted or harassed them--many of them powerful men from the entertainment business, or politicians or journalists, who used their power and privilege to oppress women and to assure their silence. Many of us have our #Me Too stories. Most of us long for it to end so we can live and work together with respect and civility. But how?

            We live in a system in our culture where people have learned to see one another as less than fully human, as less than precious and valued, and we have adapted ourselves to this understanding, with our lives shaped by these values. Sometimes, for those who are privileged, it works to their advantage. Others live with this because they don’t know what else to do… or they haven’t had the power to do so… or they couldn’t survive the cost of losing a job if they spoke out.

            In the midst of so much bad news, we long for some good news.

           

            Today we heard the prophet Isaiah proclaim: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor, and the day of rescue of our God; to comfort all who mourn….”

            This Advent, many of us are longing for God’s justice and peace in the world.  We long for good news for the oppressed, for the brokenhearted, for the fearful, vulnerable and captive. We wonder: when will our ashes be replaced with garland?

            We could use some good news for those who mourn and those who huddle in ruined cities and devastated places. We wish that our elected officials could hear the prophet’s message from God, “For I, God, love justice. I hate robbery and sin.” 

            Surely, this is nothing new. God’s people have been yearning for the fulfillment of God’s promises for thousands of years.

            Some days, the prophet’s vision seems too good to be true, no matter how badly we want to believe that the God who loves justice is on the way. 

            Isaiah saw the injustice of the suffering of his people. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, he tells us.  And so does John, as he points to Jesus, the one yet to come.

            John comes as a witness to testify to the light, proclaiming, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said.

            Perhaps this is the beginning of the freedom Isaiah announced and Jesus brought and will bring in all of its fullness… a time when the brokenhearted are finally bound up and healed… and God’s powerful promises are fulfilled. Do we believe that God’s good news has the power to transform our lives?  I want to believe that.

            The message of Advent is that God in Christ is coming into the world.  In Jesus, God's Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth.   What came into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.[1]

            In Charles Dickens' story, "A Christmas Carol,"  Ebenezer Scrooge is London's most notorious miser.  He's a mere shadow of the joyful person he was created to be, hunched up against the world...  stingy and suspicious.  When the Ghost of Christmas Future shows Scrooge his own grave, the knowledge that he will die breaks through all the defenses he’s used to try to hide his childlike soul for so long.  He's overwhelmed with a piercing sense of remorse for how he has been living. 

            Seeing the light of truth after living in the darkness for so long is painful.  But what follows his rebirth into new life is joy!

            For some time, I’ve felt drawn to the work of Edward Hicks, who was an American sign and stagecoach painter in the early nineteenth century.  He’s known almost exclusively for his many paintings of the Peaceable Kingdom. 

            One of these, entitled The Peaceable Kingdom with Quakers Bearing Banners, was painted during a time when tension and separation had split American Quakers into two groups.  In the background is a cluster of very somber-looking people.  But in the foreground, is a depiction of the peaceable kingdom:  a leopard is lying down with a lamb.  A little child is embracing a lion. 

            Those somber-looking people in the background are connected to the peaceable kingdom by a banner that declares, “Behold I bring you glad tidings of great joy.”  The sinuous ribbon with its beginning in the mists of eternity weaves its way through and among them, braiding them together.

            Our Christian joy and faith aren’t based solely on the evidence we see in the present-- but on the hope of the future.  Our Christian joy comes to us in our experience of God’s presence.

            This Advent, the coming may be a present experience.  God is about to be born in the cradle of believers' hearts and lives, either for the first time or as a renewed birth, as God-with-us reaches new depths within our very souls.  And this, my friends, is reason for joy! 

            Do you remember what Ebenezer Scrooge was like when he was re-born that Christmas?  He couldn't keep his joy to himself!  He was filled with the joy of new life...   and he just had to share his joy with others!

            When we receive the JOY of Jesus Christ, we're called to proclaim the light that outshines all darkness.  Once we've been touched by the light of Christ, we're called to carry the light out into the world    and be witnesses of the light. 

            The God we know and trust because we have seen his love revealed in Jesus Christ calls us out of darkness--  into the Light that overcomes the darkness.  Our job as we wait for Christ to come again in power and glory is to proclaim the good news of Jesus, who is the light of the world and calls us to live lives that reflect Christ's light!  

            Our calling as the church of Jesus Christ is to mediate God’s promises and commands to the world.  We are called to live into hope-- of captives freed...  of sight regained...  the end of greed. 

            No matter how dark things look, we know that darkness does not have the last word.  Jesus, the Light of the world, has come and shines in the darkness.  The darkness does not and will not overcome it.

            So-- let us rejoice always.  Let us pray without ceasing, and give thanks in everything…  for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for us.

May the God of peace make you completely holy and whole.  May your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ![2]

            Come, Lord Jesus!

           

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

December 17, 2017

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[1] John 1

[2] 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

"Waiting in the Dark." A sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on the First Sunday of Advent.

"Waiting in the Dark"

Mark 13:24-37

Today, on this first Sunday of Advent, the scripture readings the lectionary gives us aren’t about angels bringing tidings of great joy.  That will come later. Today, we’re asked to consider the end times, or at least what will happen in the future.

            Over the centuries, there have been many predictions about the end of the world, but they’ve been wrong. We’re still here.

            Some of us may have taken a peek at the last pages of a book, to see how it ends. Over the centuries, many have longed to get a look at the “last page,” to know when and how the end of time will come.
            The followers of Jesus, too, wanted to know about the future. Earlier in Mark 13, the disciples ask Jesus, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?”[1]
            Jesus told them, “Beware that no one leads you astray,” and he says that the future is not ours to know.  In today’s lesson, we hear Jesus say, “About that day or hour no one knows…. only the Father.  Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come…. Therefore, keep awake-- for you don’t know when.  Keep awake.”
            In Mark’s “little apocalypse,” there’s no mention of the end of the world…no indication of final judgment…no call to flee daily realities and responsibilities-- only the promise that the Son of Man is near.

            One of the places I'd like to visit someday is Ireland.  Around 500 A.D., the southwestern coast line of Ireland was the end of the known world--   which someone suggested may be why it's dotted with prehistoric stone circles and the ruins of ancient monasteries. 

            One of these monasteries was built on an impossibly steep rock island eight miles off the coast.  For 700 years, the monks there practiced a strict, ascetic way of life.  They survived the weather and raids by the Vikings.  They hauled stones to build 2700 steps up the mountain's dizzying height-- to the prayer huts on top the mountain.  They'd climb up to the mountaintop to pray...   and to watch for Christ to return in power and glory.

            In the eleventh century, a somewhat more relaxed form of monastic rule came into fashion on the mainland.  When the European orders of Benedictines and Augustinians arrived in Ireland, the local tradition of small, independent monasteries began to die out.  In the thirteenth century, the last of the monks got into their boats and rowed away from their rocky outpost.

            Nobody knows for sure why they left, but it's possible that they just got tired of waiting.  As Barbara Brown Taylor suggests, seven hundred years is a long time to watch the horizon for the second coming.   It's a long time to keep your fasts and say your prayers at prescribed times throughout the day and night.              It's a long time to live in strictly disciplined community with one another-- especially when word reaches you that the monks on the mainland have made some changes.  They're eating better and sleeping later than you are.  They've decided they can be in the world a little more without being of it--   especially since it looks like they're in for a longer wait than anyone had expected.^[2]

            Centuries later, we can sympathize.  Few of us spend our days watching the horizon expectantly for Christ's second coming.

            The earliest Christians thought the Second Coming would be immediate, and they lived accordingly. But more than 2,000 years have passed since God came to dwell among us in Jesus of Nazareth, and Jesus hasn't come back.

Waiting is hard.  Waiting has always been hard.  The Bible is full of stories about what faithful people did while they waited.  It’s full of promises not yet fulfilled. 

            Centuries before the birth of Jesus, the Old Testament prophets were writing and talking about waiting for one who would be like a light for the darkness.   Those who heard the prophets were weary with impatience.  They wanted the Messiah now.  They yearned for God to be on their timetable.  For years...  for centuries...  through the events of history, God's answer was, “Wait."  

            In the prologue to John's Gospel, John the Baptist said, “I am not the light, but I come to tell you about the light that is to come."   The crowds were so anxious for a Messiah that they wanted John the Baptist to be the Messiah.  Again, God's message was "Wait"...

           

            The Christian year begins in dark times.  The days keep getting shorter and shorter, and the darkness keeps increasing, and it looks like darkness rules-- until the earth rounds the bend on December 21. That day, the Winter Solstice, can be a sign to us that longer days are coming, that light will be increasing and darkness will be decreasing.

            The disciples were looking for certainty-- a sign.  They needed to know that the world was in God's good hands.  When the cosmos collapsed and every light in the sky was put out, they were to remember what he had told them.  They were to remember that God is Lord over darkness as well as light.   They were to watch-- even in the darkness-- for his coming.

            By the time, Mark wrote his words down years later, it seemed that the end was very near.  The stars were still in the sky, but the headlines were as bad then as they are now.  Jerusalem was in ruins.  The temple had been destroyed.  The emperor Nero was persecuting the Christians in Rome.  False messiahs were setting themselves up on every street corner, each of them claiming to be God's anointed one. 

            It felt like everything was falling apart...  and those who had believed in Jesus must have wondered if they'd been fooled.  Surely this wasn't the way things were supposed to turn out.  Not this chaos!  Not this darkness!

            That's when Mark told them the story again, writing it down so they wouldn't forget:  how Jesus himself had predicted it all...  how he had tried to tell them that they couldn't have a new world without letting go of the old one.

            It was and is the good news of the end of the world:  when the end comes, it won't be because God is absent-- but because God is very present...   because God is coming in great power and glory to make all things new.

            In the meantime, our job is to watch, Jesus says.  Not to watch out.  But to watch-- to stay alert...  pay attention...  so that we aren't snoozing when the time comes.

In the midst of all the pain… suffering… confusion… injustice…and chaos in the world, the people of God are called to proclaim the Light that out-shines all darkness. Once we’ve been touched by the Light, we’re called to be bearers of Christ’s light, to carry the light out into the world.

            The military has developed special goggles that help people see in the dark.  In a place that's totally dark, you can look through the goggles and see.  Something in the goggles picks up and concentrates the light that would be too faint to see otherwise.

            Isn't that a wonderful parable for the church?  There's always some light in all darkness, even if we can’t see it. As a community of faith, we can pick up the beacon of unseen Light and help the world to see it more clearly. 

            The God we know and trust calls us out of darkness-- into the Light that overcomes the darkness.

            The good news is that darkness does not have the last word.  Jesus, the light of the world, has come and shines in the darkness....  and the darkness does not and will not overcome it.  

            So, stay alert.  Stay awake.  When we live as if the Lord might return at any time, we have nothing to fear.

            Come, Lord Jesus!

        

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[1] Mark 13:4

^[2]I'm indebted to Barbara Brown Taylor for the monastery story and this line of thinking, which appear in Journal for Preachers, Advent 1996