Sermon preached by E. Suzanne Wille, Seminarian Intern

St. Paul’s on the Green, Norwalk, Connecticut

The First Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2007

This is my favorite moment in the church season: we are at the beginning of the new year in Church time. The beginning of Advent, waiting for the coming of Jesus. We have four Sundays to prepare. Instead of the red and green of commercialized Christmas, the Church clothes herself in blue to honor Mary and her wait for Christ. Instead of the garish, colored lights already bedecking houses, we light candles, one by one, in the Advent wreath, representing the coming of the light of Christ. Instead of the jarring Christmas music blaring from our radios, beginning the Friday after Thanksgiving, we look forward to singing, in hushed tones, O come, O come, Emmanuel.

We have four Sundays of quiet anticipation to prepare for the arrival of Christ as a newborn baby, in a manger, surrounded by shepherds, and angels, and wise men. So, I love Advent, the emphasis on waiting for Jesus instead of rushing into stores, the beginning of the new church year that lets us start over, the calm anticipation.

And then I read the Gospel for the first day of our new year, and I am jarred out of my pleasant, meditative expectation. As we turn to Matthew in the beginning of this new season, we see that the readings are not about Archangels or trumpets or Magi. No. This Gospel is filled with foreboding, apocalyptic images, the second coming, and the threat of judgment. No one knows the day or hour when the Son of Man will return. No one will know when the judgment will come. We will just be going about our business, eating and drinking, shopping for Christmas presents, picking up the kids from school when -- wham!--the second coming occurs. While at Target picking out a board game for your nephew, suddenly the woman who was considering the Legos is gone. During a business meeting, you might disappear, leaving your colleagues to wonder where you went. Jesus warns us “keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming”. In this passage, Jesus isn’t a cute baby but compared to a thief who is coming in the night. And we had better be ready.

So much for quiet anticipation.

And it turns out, no matter what year of the lectionary we are in, whether we are reading Matthew, Mark, or Luke, this is the kind of reading we get on the first Sunday of Advent. This isn’t so much O come, O come, Emmanuel as it is the guy on the street corner wearing the sandwich board, threatening “The end is coming--REPENT!”

What are we to make of this? Many of us are wary of anything that refers to the Second Coming or The Apocalypse. Some of us don’t believe in such a thing as the rapture. In fact, my favorite bumper sticker makes fun of the guy wearing the sandwich board: “Jesus is coming,”it reads. “Look busy!” I laugh every time I see it because I find the obsession with the final judgment a little hysterical, an example of Christians looking so far into the future, that they miss how we could be building up the kingdom of God here and now.

Still, we can’t ignore that the church year begins with a reference to the end. Or that as we prepare for the child to be born on Christmas day, we must also prepare for the coming of Christ in judgment. And, so, we are placed in a very odd position: we are told we don’t know when Christ will come again on the very day we begin to prepare for His first coming. As we begin to wait for an innocent baby, we are told he will come as a thief.

And that’s when we realize it: We are not in linear time. Not the time that moves smoothly from Monday to Tuesday, June to July, 2007 into 2008. This is not our kind of time. We are on God’s time now. We are entering a season, a day, when the beginning and the ending meet, overlap. When the beginning and the ending are the same thing: the alpha and the omega simultaneously. To welcome Jesus as a baby is, at the same time, to welcome Jesus as our Judge AND as our Redeemer. We must keep awake so that we won’t miss Christ’s coming just as we were meant to keep awake in the garden of Gethsemane, staying with Jesus as he prayed and prepared for his crucifixion.

At this moment, we have the entire Christian calendar, our entire story, present on one day, all at once, as if we are looking through not just one lens, but three, we see the birth, the passion and resurrection, and the final coming of Christ. As we prepare for an event that we know will come 23 days from now, we must also remember Christ’s death and resurrection. And, finally, as we greet these events that are both past and present, we look forward to a time when Christ will come again, in glory, to judge the living and the dead, when his kingdom will have no end.

So, how do we simultaneously prepare for the joyful event of Christ’s birth – God’s incarnation in the world -- which we know will come on December 25 AND for the somewhat frightening prospect of Christ’s coming again to judge the living and the dead, the time of which we know neither the day nor the hour? How do we prepare for the always already and the not yet?

Let’s begin with the easier of the two: preparing for Christ’s coming as a child on Christmas. This is a new year, so it’s the perfect time to take on new spiritual practices. Advent wreaths are a powerful symbol of the light of Christ entering our world. Consider keeping one: light the candles before dinner and incorporate Advent prayers into grace. Or use the Advent wreath as a personal meditation. The order for evening worship in the Book of Common Prayer has prayers for light that are perfect for this season. You may want to keep an Advent calendar; Calendars with chocolate are a particular help to the Advent preparation of children. And, at the risk of sounding like a commercial, I’m sure Don in our bookstore can help you find prayers and meditations, wreaths and calendars to help you prepare during Advent. You may want to come to church services during the week. You certainly want to come to the Service of Lessons and Carols this evening! You may just pay closer attention to the Sunday service, how the colors of the vestments and flowers change, singing the Kyrie rather than the Gloria. These are some traditional ways to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ.

But whatever you do, make sure to notice the days growing shorter, just as we hope for, long for, the light of the world to come to dispel the darkness. Spend some time searching your heart, as Mary did, meditating on what it means that God came down to us, as a baby, vulnerable, and human. How should we accept this gift, this miracle, this year?

And, now, a few words about the other preparation that Matthew warns us about in our Gospel today. How shall we prepare for what has not happened yet, what is still in the unknown future? In the context of Matthew’s gospel, preparing looks a lot like doing deeds of mercy, forgiving one another, and acting for peace. Remember, this is the only Gospel that contains the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, walk the second mile, love our enemies, give alms, and to take the log out of our own eyes. And it is also where Jesus provides the prescription for eternal life: by feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned, we actually care for Christ Himself.

We don’t know when Christ will come again, but we do know that He will come. And we can prepare for Him and for the final judgment in acts of mercy, and forgiveness, and peace. So as we prepare for the infant, let us also await our Judge and our Redeemer, remembering that Christ, who will come one day as a judge, came first as a vulnerable baby, clothed in human flesh, trusting us to care for him.

The one who will judge us already loves us. The one who will judge us has already come to forgive us.

So, stay awake. Prepare. Jesus IS coming, has come, and will come again. Thanks be to God.