Advent 1: Preparing for the Dawn of Christ's Return
cONTENT
Introduction
Good morning friends. It is great to be with you as we begin our liturgical year together with the season of Advent. This season of waiting and longing is formative in making us who God called us to be as we prepare with hope to meet the Lord. I remember watching some of the shows about homesteading in Alaska and watching people prepare for entering the long and dark winter where there wasn’t light for a few months. Even in those seasons of darkness, there is preparation to be done, whether it is fir trapping, or gathering firewood; being proactive in seasons of darkness allow them to not only to flourish in the darkness, but then prepare them better for life in the season of light when the icy world begins to thaw. Preparing well in the seasons of darkness prepares us well to greet the dawn of the new day when Christ comes again.
I realize that people usually make resolutions in January as they look at the the new year, but I wonder if it wouldn’t be more appropriate to use the season of Advent to take stock of our longings, desires, and lives in order to ask the Lord how we might resolve to prepare to become what he’s calling us to become? Today’s collect will be read each Sunday in Advent along with other ones as we are invited to cast off the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. It is a season where we feel the depths of the world’s anticipation of the Lord’s coming, because things did not turn out the way the world had hoped for and all creation longs to be made new. Advent, fittingly, leads us up to the nativity of our Lord, but actually it is predominantly an anticipation of the end of the reign of darkness in the world when Christ comes again to make all things new. We begin the year with a reminder of where all things are heading. Advent invites us to prepare for the coming of God’s kingdom in small ways so that we are ready when he ultimately returns. Our passages this morning frame it in terms of light and preparation.
As we look at our texts, let me pray for us: “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Lord, my the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.”
1) Walk in the light (Isaiah 2:5 and collect)
First let’s think about light. Our Old Testament reading today comes from Isaiah 2 where the prophet Isaiah is inviting people to choose to follow the Lord. There is a beautiful scene painted that also gets used in Micah, though we don’t know if one or the other is older, or if this passage preceded them both. The imagery is of pilgrimage, as all nations stream up the holy mountain to meet God in the temple, the place where heaven and earth are brought together. The nations want to go up to the house of the God of Jacob, which is Isaiah’s invitation to the people: be the people who show the nations the goodness of God. In that poetic passage, God reigns over all justly, instruction goes out from him, and people have no need for weapons any longer. All the swords will be beating into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. There will be true peace, a shalom which reconciles and restores, and doesn’t just provide for just a temporary cessation of hostilities.
In verse 5 Isaiah says, “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!” What follows his call to them is a listing out of all the ways they have walked away from the LORD and disobeyed. The prophet named the crossroads the house of Jacob is at. They could either be the house of Jacob in name only — the result is the irony that by relying on their status and listening only to the voices that told the leaders what they wanted to hear, they would risk losing everything. Or they could live into this vision of the house of Jacob in Isaiah 2 which lives with integrity and puts God’s goodness, mercy, and justice on display in a compelling vision that draws in the nations around it.
The call to walk in the light is the same for you and I. We should seek to live in integrity of heart, not depending on our status or a past experience to feel justified, but in a life of conversion and repentance, grace, and trust. Light comes when we become honest with ourselves. I remember someone decades ago I knew and the only things she could talk about were the frustrations she had with the people in her life. It was every conversation. Eventually, as new people would come into her life, it became somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The poor woman was unaware the damage she was causing herself because she was not aware of how she was showing up with other people. Following Jesus means we need to become aware of the places where we need God’s grace. We cannot rely on our past experiences, the faith of our households of origin, or even ecclesiastical status for our continual assurance that we are becoming who God has made us to be. Instead, we undergo the difficult and daily process of noticing our overreactions to things, our besetting sins, our places of inability to function, the false narratives we’ve held deeply, and we hold them before the light of Christ, fully expectant that his light will scatter the darkness. That healing is the integration we need to draw ourselves and others into the goodness of the light of God.
2) Be ready for him at all times (24:43-44)
First there is light, second, there is preparation. Our gospel passage is from Matthew 24 is another apocalyptic passage of Jesus. Remember that apocalypse means something like uncovering or revealing, and Jesus is showing his disciples something of what is coming so that they’re prepared when calamity strikes. Jesus is speaking about the destruction of the temple and about when the Son of Man will come to bring an end to foreign rule and the beginning of the new age. The disciples are asking Jesus when this will happen and what will be the signs of Jesus’ reign. The destruction of the temple in Jesus’ prophetic ministry here is not arbitrary, but I think it has to do with the fact that the corruption in the temple was indicative of broader trends. Cleansing began with the most pronounced place of corruption.
It isn’t that the disciples were wrong to want to know when or how, but Jesus isn’t concerned with giving them or us an eschatological road map. I had to look this up because I didn’t believe it existed, but it does. A guy truly wrote a book called “88 reasons Why the Rapture will be in 1988”. Like the disciples, there are strands of theology concerning themselves with the wrong things. Jesus isn’t calling us to speculative timelines and rapture charts. he is giving us enough to stay awake as the forces of wickedness draw people into their grip so that we are not swept away by the deeds of darkness as well. He isn’t giving the disciples or us enough information to preoccupy ourselves with dates and events.
Jesus tells the disciples that no one knows when the son of Man is coming. No one knows this hour, not even the angels. He ends the section by saying “Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
This invites the disciples to ask whether they’re preparing for the Son of Man’s coming and how they are doing so? It is a similar invitation to Isaiah 2, but in light of the New Covenant. How do we prepare for the coming of Christ, his second Advent? Let me suggest that we all take this Advent to consider the monastic concept of a rule of life. Rather than viewing this as something like a set of dos and don’ts, it is more like the trellis you build in order to maximize the growth of the plant you’re growing. The other day I saw a fast motion video of a watermelon vine growing. Over the course of 3-4 months, it had spread like chaos all over the little room it was in. If someone had carefully constructed a trellis, the vine would climb, more green would be exposed to the sunlight for energy, and more melons would grow because more flowers are exposed. This is how a rule of life brings intentionality to rhythms of communal life.
We have a built-in rule through the daily office of morning and evening prayer. The prayer itself helps us engage with scripture, do confession, praise and thanksgiving, intercession, and more. But then we need to do some other things and this will look different depending on our stories and seasons of life. If this is a season where you have small kids at home you may not be able to have time to exercise like you want to or have the kind of relationship with your spouse you used to before you were with kids. That’s okay. Be intentional about the moments you have, name them, and cultivate them. In this season, you may find yourself going through a major life transition: feeling yourself growing older, experiencing you’re parents aging into more dependence, learning how to be a single parent, feeling underemployed, or in a vocational change, or becoming more aware and grieving the loss of the ways things didn’t turn out as you hoped they would. Don’t let the vine grow into chaos all over the floor — give some thought and intentionality to your time and energy. You may not have the hours to spend reading and writing like you used to — or the other activities that brought you rest and joy. What does bring you rest and joy in this season and how can you cultivate that and create small things to look forward to? Are there 5-minute pockets you can use and redeem so that you are prepared to see Jesus when he shows up in the everyday moments? In our rule, can we also cultivate practices that notice the needs of others so that we don’t get stuck in spirals of self-pity? Do we make time for a little silence and solitude, gratitude, exercise, service to others, friendship or hospitality, prayer? How have we constructed our trellis? Building the trellis of seeing Jesus in the everyday ordinary stuff of life and relationships is the work of preparing to meet Jesus when he comes again in power and great glory.
Conclusion:
I’m so grateful for Advent. I hope we make the most of this liturgical new year together. This is the time to walk in the light, becoming aware of where darkness has taken hold, and bringing it before the Lord so that we can discover his grace and bring others into a knowledge of Him. We need to prepare to meet him each day with intentionality so that we are ultimately prepared to meet him when he comes again. As we close, let me once again pray this collect for us from the first week of Advent.
“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”
