December 2, 2001
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We Can Expect from God: Difficult Surprises First Sunday in Advent Prayer: Eternal and loving God, help us to find the patience in this time of waiting again for the birth of Jesus into our lives. Slow us down enough in the rush of days that we might listen and hear the prophet’s word, parent’s hope, and the declaration of angels. Help us to wait with eager expectation. We pray in the name of the one who is to come, Amen. Happy New Church Year. Welcome to these days of preparation and expectation. It’s a busy time. There are trees to be bought and trimmed, lights to be untangled and strung, crèches to be placed on mantles and coffee tables, and window sills. Churches have this weekend placed their seasonal greenery in the sanctuary. There is shopping to be done, travel plans to make, menus to plan, and all together much to get ready for in these days, and there is much that makes us anxious. In the middle of all of the preparation, we know that the weeks of Advent can be a difficult time. Anything that is not quite right in our lives seems more intense this time of year, and we long for relief. We hear that this is a time of waiting, but patience is not a virtue in our hurry up, instant gratification culture. We have all been around people who cannot wait two minutes for a stoplight to change. We just do not wait well. We want to hurry up, feel better, have all our questions answered, and get on to the next thing. So it is all the more important that we pay attention to another kind of preparation for those who follow Christ. As we begin this Advent season, I want us to consider for a few minutes how it is we can prepare our spirits for the coming days. We are preparing to celebrate the birth of Christ, the coming of God’s own Son into the world in the most intimate way possible. In that birth, we find the beginning of our hope and the source of our salvation. That is the good news we celebrate, it is the event for which we prepare. In light of that wonderful glorious news, we might anticipate the gospel lesson for this first Sunday in Advent to be one of those in which Jesus announces who he is, or one in which someone proclaims who he will be and then we could all leave here feeling good and happy. But as you can see that is not the case with these words from Matthew. However, every year, the gospel given for the first Sunday of Advent focuses not on the first Advent but on the second Advent, the promised return of Christ for his church. Every year when I look at the passage, I ask, what kind of Advent lesson is this? But then I remember that Advent’s time of anticipation and expectation not only points us back to the incarnation, when the Son of God took on human form in Jesus Christ. This season also points us forward to the awaited final coming of Christ when God’s dominion will break in on us and there will be a time of eternal peace and justice. So it is that the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew deals with concerns about the final coming of Christ into the world. In fact, most of the chapter is the response by Jesus to a question asked by his disciples in verse 3. They wanted to know what we want to know from time to time. “Tell us, Jesus, exactly when will you return, and what will be the sign of your coming?” What can we expect from you and from God at that time? Matthew has put into the mouths of the disciples words that the church was asking. We continue to hear the question. We have always sought and seen signs of the second coming in our world, especially in times of profound change and crisis when it seems like the world as we know it is ending. Profound change has a way of shattering our worldview. Sometimes the change is so profound it makes people of faith wonder, if this is the time for the return of Christ. They asked the question with the transition from the agricultural age to the industrial age, and in the transition from an industrial economy to an information economy, it is here as we move from a time of sustained prosperity to the first recession in a decade. What will be the sign? For some people the signs are in nature. Every frightening earthquake, tornado, and hurricane is for some a sign that the end is coming. They watch the ebb and flow of nature and see in nature’s sometimes destructive power a sign of God’s displeasure and the imminent return of Christ.In the last several weeks people have said, “aha” God has given us a wake up call. The alarm has sounded we say, about immigration, terrorism, foreign policy, the nations immoral ways. Whatever the reason, this is it, it is time to prepare, the end is coming, we will see Jesus soon. Certainly on September 11 and on the days after, people scoured Bible passages looking for signs. They looked in Daniel, and the prophets, they looked in Revelation. Some people probably looked at tea leaves and called Miss Cleo, and looked up the alleged predictions of Nostradamus. They looked at the stars and the moon. They have seen the signs. “Jesus, what can we expect from you and God in these days.?” The response of Jesus to the disciples, is the same response he makes to us when we ask the question. And it helps us to understand why we have this lesson today. It will be a surprise because we will not see it coming. The signs are always present, but listen to what Jesus says: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, only God.” In other words, Jesus says, the angels do not know, I don’t know, only God knows, but I know we will be changed, and this just may be a time of difficult surprises. It will be difficult will lead us in a way we did not see coming. Winning the lottery would represent a difficult surprise, sudden wealth has its reward, but it also has its difficulties, you have money, but are you prepared to use it as a helpful tool in your life? Reaching your life’s goals is a difficult surprise. All that you have dreamed of has been accomplished, now what? The first difficult surprise is that our life’s circumstances can change so quickly that life can and will feel arbitrary. Jesus says, it will be like an uneventful day, except when two are working in a field, or at a grinding mill, or in adjoining offices, or in cars on the highway. It will be like two church members sharing a pew. They will go about their lives and their work until that moment when one is gathered into the community and one is not. It doesn’t seem fair, and it will not seem to make any sense. It can feel so arbitrary that it will prompt that question that we ask often, why do bad things happen to good people? The short answer is that good and bad things happen to good and bad people. We ask that question because we think that our goodness is a kind of protection against harm when in fact being good is an ethical choice we make, and even ethical people suffer. Still we are surprised when negative things happen to us. We didn’t see it coming, and we certainly do not deserve it. Why did it happen to me, to someone I love, to someone so good, so innocent, who has never hurt a soul? Why is one taken, received by God, and another one, as the book series says, left behind? The truth is that one rarely lives a full life without knowing some loss, disappointment, and confusion. Someone has broken our heart, someone has died before we were ready for them to leave us, some days we just do not know what was happening. These events happen in the world because we humans are not in control of every aspect of our lives, no matter how hard we try. We cannot protect every aspect of our health, our safety, and sometimes our unplanned proximity to people who do not have our best interests at heart. The question is not why bad things happen to good people, but how do good and faithful people handle the adversity that is part of life? I believe we are strengthened and able to handle all that comes to us when we put our trust in a real relationship with Jesus Christ. We can develop that real relationship when we remember that faith in God and Jesus Christ is not the same as believing in a magic genie who will grant us three wishes, nor are they like eternal bodyguards who exist just to keep us from knowing deep hurt. What our faith will do is help us get ready to live our lives trusting in them when hard times come, and in believing that in God and Jesus Christ there is a source of strength and hope for us. Difficult surprises come, life can seem cruel and arbitrary. But we are not alone, and we need not remain in our near helpless state when they do. The second difficult surprise comes when we realize that we could have been ready, if we had paid attention. I was in a meeting until 3 pm the other day, and I did not have lunch before I went. By the time we were done, I was pretty hungry, and my taste buds were set for a certain fast food value meal. I knew where the restaurant was. But somehow on the way there, I became distracted, or I turned my head at the wrong moment, in any case, I did not find the restaurant. I know it did not move, I think I simply failed to pay close attention, and I missed it. I was ready, but the opportunity passed me by, and delayed my lunch for twenty minutes. It will be like in the days of Noah. Every one was going about their business as usual in the neighborhood where Noah lived. None of the neighbors noticed anything out of the ordinary. Mr. Smith did say to his wife one day that Noah seemed to be gathering a lot of wood. Mrs. Smith agreed and said that she noticed that there was a strange collection of animals in their backyard, and the sound and smell was getting to be bothersome, but they didn’t pay close attention. Noah said something about rain and a flood. But nobody had ever seen rain, and whoever heard of so much water coming from the sky that it could cover the whole earth? But then it started to rain, and rain, and rain. And then the Noah family waved as they floated by on the big boat Noah built. What will it be like? It will be like a homeowner who gets word that a thief is coming and sits up all night to protect the household and all that is in it. Be ready. The point is that the end of the age will come when God wills it to, not when we say it will. We are not in control of the moment, our task is to live faithfully. Watch. Be ready. Stay awake. This is the easy Advent. We love it even with its busyness because there is a visible end to it. It is four weeks of preparation, four weeks to concentrate and obsess on all that we have to get done, four weeks to revel in all the secular and sacred things of Christmas from sending cards and putting up decorations, making travel plans, and planning special worship services. There is the big pay-off on Christmas Day, then we step back, and enjoy the moment, and rest. But this second Advent, when we wait for all that our spirit’s long for to be fulfilled, can last a lifetime. The good news is that in our lifetime, we can find our faith, build our relationships with people, and fall in love. We face loss, engage in acts of compassion, and receive the grace and forgiveness of God, and of each other. In our lifetime, we encounter one more surprise. When we are looking for someone to embody our hope, God gives us the biggest surprise of all. God sends the one who will lead us in justice, in hope, in peace, joy, and love to us in the form of an infant. Robert Raines reminds us that “God speaks to us in [God’s] own special language - a baby. Not much, a small December child. A baby is birth, beginnings, potential without guarantee. A baby is helpless but not hopeless. A baby is someone to watch. A baby is the future appearing now. Are there baby signs from God signaling hope to us watchers on the hillside?” (Imaging the Word, volume 1, p. 85) And that is a wonderful and amazing thing. “Surprise! God will say to us in a few weeks, here is your savior. Isn’t he wonderful? And we will say, yes, he is beautiful. And we will say, yes, we will receive this holy child, and when he grows up, we will trust this great gift of God to us and to the world. I will place in him my hope, my soul, my life. In him I will see the signs that will bring me to righteousness and eternal life. Watch and see how God continues to surprise us by bringing us to places and bringing to us people who make our lives fuller and richer. Even when the surprises are difficult, God is with us. Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know what day your Lord will come. But we are doing all that we can to prepare for that day. The Lord of all hope will be with us as we do. Come Lord Jesus. Amen.
Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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