Hope | Keeping Watching in the Dark
Referring to his own return, Jesus remarked to the disciples, “nobody knows when that day or hour will come, not the heavenly angels and not the Son. Only the Father knows.” We are beginning the season of Advent not with a prophecy from Isaiah or the story of an angel visiting Mary but instead towards the end of the story with Jesus explaining to the disciples when he will return.
Advent is a season of preparation within the Church. Beginning in the 7th century, the season of Advent was “observed as a penitential season, not unlike Lent, in preparation for Christmas.”[1] Advent is a season of preparation and anticipation. The next four weeks will be full of hope, joy, love, and peace as we anticipate the birth of the Christ child and at the same time, we begin the season recalling Jesus’ promise to come again. The promised return of Christ is something Christians have proclaimed since the beginning of Christ’s church. In the middle of the Apostles’ Creed we remember the life, death, and resurrection of Christ but also Christ’s return when we say:
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and will come again to judge the living and the dead.
“And (he) will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
This morning there is no Isaiah 9:
“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light…
A child is born to us, a son is given to us,
and authority will be on his shoulders.
He will be named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
There will be vast authority and endless peace
for David’s throne and for his kingdom,
establishing and sustaining it
with justice and righteousness
now and forever.”
While you may have decked your halls this weekend in preparation for the Christ child in the manger, we are beginning the season of Advent in what seems to be an odd place. All week I have had an 11’ tall inflatable Olaf and a new shiny tinsel tree on the mind but our reading pushes us towards an apocalyptic day and away from oversized inflatable yard decorations and tacky trees.
Jesus told his disciples to “stay alert,” keep awake because when the day comes no one will see it coming - the “it” being Jesus’ return. Just as the flood back in Genesis, back when they were eating, drinking, and marrying one another - a better reading here would be “going through their daily routine” - Jesus’ return will be sudden and without warning, in the midst of our daily grind. All there is to do is to be on watch as we wait. Regardless of what you have read on the internet, or heard shouted from the street corner, there are no tea leaves to read when it comes to the second coming of Christ. There is no way for us to know when that day will be or what we will be doing when it happens.
What I am about to say may come as a shock to many or even offend some but as we move toward December 24th and 25th, it is easy to overlook the season of preparation we find ourselves beginning and skipping ahead to the bright lights and tinsel of Christmas. Advent is not Christmas.
Rev. Fleming Rutledge often described as the Beyonce of the Episcopal Church, put it like this, “Advent teaches us to delay Christmas in order to experience it truly when it finally comes. Advent is designed to show that the meaning of Christmas is diminished to the vanishing point if we are not willing to take a fearless inventory of the darkness.”[2]
On Christmas, we will recall how Jesus entered into the darkness of this world, the darkness created by sin, as the great Light. Yet, we allow the bright lights of Christmas to overtake the darkness of Advent begins with. Standing in the Light of the Christ child in the manger is more comfortable than waiting in the shadow of what is to come because in waiting we relinquish control of the agenda. In our waiting during Advent we are acknowledging the limitedness with which we can predict and control G-d’s acts of grace.
I understand if this is not what you expected to hear in church on December 1 because as Rev. Rutledge says “The uniqueness of Advent is that it really focuses on us, more than any other season” to look into the shadows of ourselves. “Advent begins in the dark… we would rather build fancy castles around ourselves, decked out with angles and candles.”[3]
This is where our reading this morning becomes less puzzling and I stop scratching my head and begrudgingly admit that our reading from the end of Matthew’s gospel makes sense. Last Sunday we closed out the church year by proclaiming Jesus’ lordship over everything - Jesus is Lord and everything else is bullshit. Today we begin a new church year with the same proclamation - Jesus is king - as we look forward to Christ’s promised return. This is what changes the focus of Advent from shinny lights and guaranteed two-day delivery to the unexpected in-breaking of G-d’s grace into our darkness.
We begin a new year within the church waiting, not for an infant but rather we are waiting for Christ’s return. Rev. Chenda Lee said it like this in a recent Facebook post, “In the Season of Advent, we await the celebration of the incarnation and anticipate the fulfillment of a promise, to come again and restore the broken creation from the bondage of sin and death.
The beginning of the end begins with Jesus and really is not the end.
Like Noah, we find ourselves waiting for G-d to act but rather than waiting for floodwaters to rise we are waiting for the reign of grace and mercy to be fully realized. Jesus is instructing us, his disciples, to as Stanley Hauerwas put it, “be ready and prepared… even if it's not raining.”[4] Jesus has called us to patient endurance while it may appear the world may be coming apart at the seams. And, patience, it is not an easy task. We are living between times and it can seem like G-d has forgotten about the promise to send Jesus again. But our (patient) waiting is “made possible by the hope made real”[5] in Christ.
Stay awake and keep watch.
As we wait to remember Jesus’ entry into the world in the lowly manger and for his coming in final victory it can feel as though preparations must be done. We can feel like Noah and begin feverishly working on an ark, building something to sustain us in the time between. We do not know when Jesus is coming but we think to ourselves we better get to work doing something. Do something, do anything either to prepare the way of the Lord or to distract us from the darkness we find surrounding us. This is where we become bogged down with the busyness of Christmas instead of allowing the season of Advent to be a season of preparation and waiting.
The Good News is while we wait, our ark has already been created. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, the Church was born. This community and the Body we are a part of were created to be a refuge from the inflatable Disney characters and shinny lights, and to be a place where the weary can find rest. We can be a community keeping watch and waiting for Jesus because all that was required has been done, leaving us to be on watch and at the ready because Jesus is coming.
[1] Rutledge, Fleming. “Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ.” Advent: the Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018, pp. 3.
[2] Ibid., 252.
[3] Ibid., 252.
[4] Hauerwas, Stanley. Matthew, Brazos Press, 2018, pp. 206.
[5] Ibid., 207.
