We’re an impatient people. We want what we want when we want it. Think about what was once called “mail order.” We pored through the Sears and Roebuck catalog, then we filled out the order form, dropped it in a mailbox, and waited. Now, open a website, point, click, and done, and your order is at your door two days later. Or think about computers. In the late ‘80s, the dark ages, we had little monochrome screens, you could read a novel waiting for programs to load, and polish off another novel waiting for your email messages to come in over a dial-up connection. Now, we’re on instantly, and downloads come in at warp speed. And you just better answer my email or text within twenty-four hours!
We’re an impatient people. Except in Roman Catholic, Episcopal, and a few Protestant churches. Unlike the rest of the world around us, we have not rushed headlong into Christmas. As you see, except for the Advent wreath, there are no decorations or trees here – and we won’t put them up until after the service on Advent 4. We won’t sing any Christmas carols until Christmas tide. And if you came to hear “comfort and joy” in the sermons for next four Sundays, you are in the wrong place. So did the priest-in-charge steal Christmas, like Dr. Seuss’ Grinch? Is she like Mr. Scrooge, stingily dismissing Christmas with, “Bah, humbug?”
Not really. We have begun a new church year, and with it, the holy season of Advent. It’s a quiet, solemn, and serious season. You can see that seriousness reflected in the color of our vestments and paraments – they’re a subdued blue. We’re using our liturgy with the old seventeenth-century language, honoring our history as we pray in more solemn tones. Even the settings of the sung parts of our liturgy are simpler.
While the world outside us may be in the throes of the “Christmas season,” the church gives us a valuable gift in the quieter season of Advent. We can slow down, take a deep breath, and listen for the stirrings of the Holy Spirit. More important, we can take the time for quiet reflection on what God has done, what God is doing among us now, and what God will do in the future.
Advent initially was a forty-day season of fasting, to prepare for the baptisms that would take place on Epiphany, January 6th. In fact Orthodox Christians, who emphasize Epiphany rather than Christmas, still keep a forty-day fast to prepare for Epiphany. Western Christians like us keep Advent for the four Sundays before Christmas. Our lessons for the first Sunday in Advent focus on God’s promises for the future. John the Baptist thunders his message on the second and third Sundays. Only on the fourth Sunday do we look ahead to Christmas, when we hear Mary’s response to the Annunciation. In this season of Advent, the lectionary readings and the special devotions that the church invites us to undertake are meant to awaken us, to make us more aware of the surprising ways God comes to us, and to enable us to wait patiently and attentively for God to continue to act.
All our readings for today remind us of our call to wait patiently and attentively for God. Jeremiah’s prophecies were first written in the midst of the chaos and despair that followed the sack of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon in 586 BC. To remind people of God’s covenant with them, the prophet uses an image familiar to the people of his time, viz., a king who would victoriously lead them out of exile. He exhorts his hearers to remember God’s promises, especially the covenant that God made with the Israelites after the Exodus. In that covenant, God declared that Israel would be God’s people forever. The prophet also reminds his downcast people to remember God’s promises to David, which we heard last week in David’s last words, and especially David’s confidence that God had made an everlasting covenant with him. As a response to the reading from Jeremiah, Psalm 25 also calls us to remember God’s promises and to trust God to deliver on God’s promises.
Paul’s letter to the Christians in Thessalonica was Paul’s first letter, written about 50 AD, to one of the earliest of the new communities of Jesus’ followers. Christians in this community were earnestly waiting for Christ to return, and they believed that they would see his return before they themselves died. We don’t know whether Paul himself believed that Christ’s return was imminent. Even so, Paul clearly exhorts these new believers to wait for Christ, whenever he comes, with gratitude, love, and holiness.
The gospel according to Luke – we will be hearing a lot from Luke in this third year of the Revised Common Lectionary – was written in the ‘80s AD, after the fall of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Romans. Here too the evangelist uses symbols his hearers would appreciate. This part of Luke’s gospel is apocalyptic, like the book of Revelation, i.e., it is symbolic writing that looks ahead to the future. In using apocalyptic symbols, the evangelist reminds his hearers that despite the chaos and destruction that they see all around them God is at work. As faithful followers of Jesus, they are therefore called to “stand up and raise your heads,” i.e., they are to be watchful for further signs of God at work, and they are to trust that God’s reign is near. More important, they are to trust that they are already living in God’s realm, despite what they see around them. As Jesus himself had proclaimed, “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” i.e., it is here already. Even as they trust that God has already inaugurated God’s realm, even as they wait for its final culmination, they are to use God’s gifts to them wisely, not squandering God’s gifts in indulgence, drunkenness, and worldly cares, but watching and waiting patiently and attentively for signs of God at work.
And so, in this first Sunday of the new church year, in this first week of Advent, we wait patiently, with hope and holiness. We look attentively for signs of God’s presence, trusting that God is at work and seeking ways to partner with God in God’s work. In our personal lives, we savor the gift of Advent, the gift of time to reflect on the ways that God was, is, and will be present to us, changing and shaping us into the people God created us to be. Can you use this gift of Advent to find time for more intentional prayer? I invite you to use, for example, the Forward Movement meditations in the booklet we are giving you. I also invite you to light your Advent candles, perhaps at the same time that you use the booklet. Can you take some time for self-reflection? Perhaps at the end of the day? Can you see God at work in your own life?
Can you see God at work in our parish? I recently learned that someone who had once been connected to this parish left us, because it seemed to this person that St. Peter’s had no future, and that the parish was dying. That’s not what I see. Yes, the parish is smaller than it was in twenty-five years ago, but so are many Episcopal parishes, especially in small towns. Even so, this is not a dying parish. God is at work here. I see a parish that has begun to grow again, especially with people deeply committed to prayer, worship, and mission. I see a parish that has kept the red doors open, raised up a deacon, and been given a resident priest-to-be. I see a parish that is even now discerning the new ministries into which God might be leading us. Can we wait patiently and attentively for what God might do next among us?
It’s hard to miss the chaos and destruction in the world outside our parish. Paris, Beirut, Mali, Charleston, Oregon, Colorado, Phoenix. As I wrote this, a gunman had wounded several people and was holed up in a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Meanwhile, global warming is playing havoc with our planet and causing ever more severely destructive weather. Is God at work? Are there signs of hope? There are. On Friday, for example, we learned that all the women kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria have been released. And today, as we turn our hearts to God in this peaceful, sacred space, after only two weeks since the attacks in Paris, 147 world leaders have arrived in the city for a mega-conference on climate change. God willing, the talks will produce solid agreements among all these nations that will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And I see other signs of God at work. I see community gardens, solar panels and other forms of renewable energy, composting and recycling, thirty-mile meals and farmers’ markets, and more fuel-efficient cars. I see a Habitat for Humanity group that built a house in honor of three Muslims who were murdered in North Carolina. I see The National, a Scottish newspaper, welcoming Syrian refugees with the banner headline, “Welcome to Scotland.”
So in this holy season of Advent I wait. We wait. We trust in God’s promises. We wait patiently for God for fulfill God’s promises. We watch for signs and wonders, in our own lives, in the lives of this parish, and in the world around us. And we attentively seek God’s leading in our work to bring God’s realm ever nearer.
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