The race to Christmas has begun. So much to do – cards to send, gifts to buy,
cookies to bake, trees to decorate, holiday concerts to attend, parties to host
or to go to, the list goes on endlessly it seems. The stores jump right from Halloween to
Christmas, carols start playing before Thanksgiving. The perfect family Christmas is the goal –
like in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation's perfect Griswold Christmas.
And then you come to church, and it’s like someone slammed
on the brakes. We’re not rushing to
Christmas here. No, we’re waiting and
preparing. It’s Advent. And we’re not preparing for Christmas,
although we will decorate the church, and sing carols, and the kids will
practice for the Christmas program.
In Advent, we’re preparing for Jesus’ to come.
Not as a baby – he’s already done that.
We’re preparing for Jesus to come again.
And that’s why we start Advent with this strange story about
the earth in turmoil, and the foundations of heaven shaken and people fainting
from the fear of it all.
In Advent, we begin with the end. We begin with telling the story of how it
will be – how the Son of Man will come in glory on the clouds, how God will
redeem all of creation, making all things new, how death and sin and evil and
pain and suffering will be once and forever defeated.
Knowing how the story ends gives us hope. We trust that in the times of turmoil of
life, when everything seems to be crashing down around us, that God is in
charge, that God is working all things to God’s purpose and to the good of
those who love and trust in God.
So, Jesus paints this frightening picture of a world turning
upside down and then says, “Don’t be weighed down, and bent over and trapped by
the worries of this life. Stand tall,
raise your head and look around for the signs of God’s kingdom breaking in on
this world. God is near, bringing salvation. Pray and watch. Watch and pray. God is faithful.”
And that’s what Advent is really about. Waiting and watching,
praying and looking for the signs of God’s faithfulness in our own time.
As we wait, we tell stories of how it is – where we see the
signs of hope in our own times.
Did you
see this week’s picture of Lawrence DiPrimo, the NYPD officer, who saw a
homeless man in Times Square who had no shoes?
When he saw the man, he went out and bought a brand new pair of boots,
and socks to go with them, and gave them to the man. If that wasn’t enough, he knelt down, and put
the boots on the homeless man’s feet.
We hear
stories like that during the Christmas season all the time. People who drop off food to a hungry family,
or pay someone’s utility bills, or give a coat to a person who has none.
I read
about Lawrence DiPrimo, and I thought of Jesus stooping to wash his disciples’
feet. I hear stories about people working
in soup kitchens or giving a coat to someone who doesn’t have one, and I hear
echoes of Jesus teaching that “when you did this to the least of these, you did
it to me.”
Remember
when we studied the book of James this fall, and James wrote: “Every generous
act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the
Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change[i].” Those stories – those are signs of God
breaking into our world, of the kingdom coming near.
In the
stories we tell of how it is, where we see God’s kingdom coming, God’s will
being done, we hear echoes of how it was.
And
that brings us to the beginning. To the
story of God coming down to us, becoming one of us, being born in human
flesh is when hope was birthed into the world.
To the world, Christmas is an end, and the Christmas season
is an interlude where people dream of how it could be, where they let themselves
hope for peace and love and joy, if just for a moment.
For us, Christmas is just the beginning. In Advent, we watch for the places where God
breaks into our world, as we wait for Jesus to come again and make all things
new.
No comments:
Post a Comment