Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44
Last year, I spent Thanksgiving with my family for the first time in many years. The main festivity occurred in the home of my aunt and uncle, the only home in which I remember them living. The cold weather that surrounded their home was kept at a distance by the warmth of the spirits that resided within those walls. As the seventeen of us began to congregate, the world seemed to slow down. We had set a time for dinner, but it was, definitely, approximate. At some point, we found ourselves gathered around two tables. For once, I was not at the kid’s table. My cousins, my parents, my grandmother, and all their progeny ate quite a bit, but as always there was plenty to take home. The food lasted for days. That day of celebration and feasting rekindled many great Thanksgiving memories: from eating turkey, spending time with family, watching television, and telling stories. As always, it was a time to accomplish much by doing little. I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.
You may have similar memories that spark positive emotions. For as long as I have known it, Thanksgiving not only serves as an opportunity to give thanks for our many blessings, celebrate the harvest (which should have occurred some time ago), and rekindle familial relationships, it also begins this month-long sprint known as “the holidays.”
If you split the word holiday into two words, you might see a marked resemblance with the words “Holy Day.” But these post Thanksgiving days are far from being holy. Holy, to me, means sacred. Holy, for me, means worshipful. Holy, for me, means God-like. For some reason, that is not what I feel during this period of time known as the “holidays.” It seems to me that we package these days together in order to make our cursory greetings, easier. As we encounter acquaintances or strangers, clerks or neighbors, we paste a smile on our face and murmur, with as much positive feeling as possible, the “Happy Holiday” salutation. Then we speed off to do something much more important like stuffing hundreds of “holiday” cards, RSVPing to the most important parties, or counting the number of gifts under the tree.
Being that the holidays don’t seem holy-like, I realized that I must be mistaken about what the word “holy” means. It couldn’t mean sacred, pious, or pure of heart because that is not the way it lives out in our lives. Thankfully the dictionary provided a clarification of the word that will hopefully alleviate that confusion. Definition 7 of the word “holy” is “inspiring fear, awe, or grave distress”[1] This definition provides a much clearer interpretation of how we live out the holidays. Even though they provide brief periods of strong emotion, in my conversations with people, it is often a relief when they are over. There is a desire, in late December, to get back to the routine.
You might wonder if there is a reason that the church harbors such a desire to make the holidays so strenuous. You might wonder how this frenetic month plays into the whole spiritual growth piece. Isn’t that important? Putting aside the necessity to inspire fear and distress, shouldn’t there be something in this holy practice that might lead us to a deeper understanding of our purpose in the world. Shouldn’t the act of celebrating a holy day center our lives on something far more important than clothes or ambiance?
My job will be much easier if you are asking those questions right now. You see, today is the beginning of a season, but it is not the “holiday” season. It is actually the beginning of a new church year and the season known as Advent. And the church didn’t have in mind overbooked schedules, crazed gift buying, and quick welcomes. The church titled this season Advent for very good reasons. The title comes from the Latin word adventus meaning “coming.” This is the same base word for adventure. You might say that if we embrace this season, we embark on a true adventure.
There are some who say that this adventure is a preparation for Christmas. Technically, that is true. But really, we are preparing ourselves for what Christmas represents. A well-known personality recently claimed Christmas as her favorite holiday because of family, gifts, and memories. Although those things have become synonymous with Christmas, the true celebration is for incarnation. Incarnation is a complex word (most likely not used by Hallmark). On its surface it means “God made flesh” which is easily, or more easily, seen in the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, a town in present day Palestine. We can get so tied into that warm feeling of a baby born in a stable, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger. It is so much easier to look back in history to celebrate something that none of us saw, firsthand. It is easy to be carried away with that kind of Advent preparation.
But, Advent is more than preparing the fire, setting up the tree, and watching A Charlie Brown Christmas. Advent preparation is much more than looking to the past. If we only look back at the birth of a baby born two millenniums ago, we only touch the surface of incarnation. Incarnation did not end with Jesus’ life, it actually lives on in us and there is a grand expectation of its glorious return. That is the part of the Advent preparation that is often forgotten or, in most cases, is carefully hidden away.
I preached a few weeks ago about the insecurity that we feel, no matter how laid back we are, when we don’t know what is going to happen. We will do almost anything to avoid living in this anxiety. Jesus teaches his disciples, in today’s Gospel lesson, about how one should be prepared for an unexpected end. He said don’t act like Noah’s neighbors by forgetting God, instead stay awake. Don’t be distracted by human desires, but live in the ways that I have taught you. Both of the other passages focus on what happens within that anxiety and what we are expected to do as we wait. They both rely on the metaphor of light.
Our first reading was from the prophecy of Isaiah. In Isaiah’s first chapter (the one preceding today’s reading), he calls out all the evil ways of the people in Judah and Jerusalem. He writes, “I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.”(Isaiah 1.2) Isaiah calls them to be accountable for their actions saying, “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword.” (Isaiah 1.19-20) That seems to be a clear choice. Subsequently, in the reading that we heard today, Isaiah addresses the same audience as he points to a future world that will be peaceful; one that will level the playing field for all nations. Isaiah is telling his people that they are not better than others, that all are created in God’s image and God cares for all people, equally. In these beginning chapters, Isaiah attempts to point out what is wrong, but at the same time, maintain a future hope. Today’s passage concludes with a call to follow in the “light of the Lord.” (Isaiah 2.5) The question that Isaiah leaves with us, is what being obedient or following the light means.
The light theme continues in the letter of Paul to the Romans. Paul wrote nearly 800 years after Isaiah’s prophetic period (First Isaiah was active from c. 735-700 BCE, Paul wrote Romans in c. 56-57 CE). And as was Paul’s custom, he wrote to new communities of believers in response to questions about the essentials of Christianity. In the passage of Romans we heard today, he addressed what one should do in awaiting the unknown. From what Paul writes, we can assume that some felt that living licentiously was an appropriate life choice, being that the end was right around the corner why worry about our morals. But Paul, like Isaiah, calls on God’s people to take on the armor of light. Again, he doesn’t explicitly detail what that armor might look like.
So as we begin this Advent season, an adventure in preparation to celebrate incarnation, we began by lighting the first of four candles in the wreath. I can’t tell you, exactly, what that light of God or the armor of light looks like for you. It takes different forms for each of us. The adventure that lies ahead of us is to determine if we can avoid the darkness of Black Friday, of over scheduling, of being rushed by the world in an attempt to find the light that exists around us. As Advent continues, and more candles around this wreath and the ones in your home become brighter, will you find it more illuminating or will it be pushed aside by busyness. The challenge of this Advent is to realize how much incarnation changes whom you are and what you must do. Find ways to cast away the works of darkness and put on a new, and ever-changing armor of light. Look to the steps you will take tomorrow, not back to the steps you have already walked. That is where you will find the true adventure of Advent.
November 28, 2010
Advent IA
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