Jeremiah
33:14-16
The days are surely coming, says the
Holy One, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the
house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch
to spring up for David; who shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this
is the name by which it will be called: “God is our righteousness.”
Luke
21:25-36
“There will be signs in the sun, the
moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the
roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of
what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Then they will see ‘the Human One coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.
Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads,
because your redemption is drawing near.”
Then Jesus told them a parable: “Look at
the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for
yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these
things taking place, you know that the realm of God is near. Truly I tell you,
this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven
and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
“Be on guard so that your hearts are not
weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and
that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who
live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you
may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to
stand before the Human One.”
Will you pray with me? Holy One, you
make all things new. You bring about glad surprises and fulfill joyful hopes.
Give us grace to recognise the signs of your presence among us, today, at
Christmas, and always. In all your names, amen.
One of the most common complaints about
Christmas that I hear is that the shopping season starts too early! It is out
of hand, I think, when the stores have Halloween decorations and Christmas
stockings up at the same time! When I go into DollaRama and see the stockings,
even though my thoughts are more on pumpkins and candy corn, I know that
Christmas is right around the corner. Those stockings (and candy, and trees and
wrapping paper and ribbons and cards and…) are a sign of the coming of
Christmas, as surely as the leaves on the fig tree are a sign of the coming of
God’s realm.
There’s a difference, however. We know
exactly when Christmas will come. Christmas Eve is December 24 and Christmas
Day is the 25th. Some people celebrate more on the 24th
and some on the 25th, but those are the two days when we can count
on it being Christmas.
Some things that we wait for are much
less certain, although we know they will eventually arrive, like the next bus
or the server with our dinner. Sometimes we don’t know if the things we are
waiting for will ever show up—but we wait with hope--the partner we will spend
the rest of our lives with, a cure and vaccine for HIV/AIDS.
Waiting. It’s probably the hardest thing
for me to do. I am not really a patient person. I want to do things now, and
have results immediately. I have probably seen too many movies, with their
editing of time so that it seems to take just ten minutes to bake a cake and
two hours for a child to grow up. One of the books I am currently reading is
about patience…how to cultivate it, how to cherish the moment that is, and have
the faith and confidence that events will unfold exactly as they are meant to.
This is the task of Advent—waiting, with
faithfulness, hope, love, and joy for the arrival of Emmanuel—God with us. It’s
harder, in some ways, than the waiting of Lent, even though Advent is shorter.
Advent mostly takes place in growing darkness—the days are getting shorter,
until just before Christmas, so it is gloomy. Lent is in the spring, as the
days grow longer and lighter, trees begin to bud and leaf out, tulips and
daffodils begin to push up from the ground—it’s easy to see the hope and
anticipate the joy.
It’s not as simple in December, is it? Besides
the darkness and gloom, there’s the pressure modern culture has created around
the holidays—Christmas and New Year’s. Everyone is supposed to have parties and
go to parties, to dress nicely, to bake and cook (even if they usually don’t),
to give the perfect gift to everyone, to get along with family they would
prefer not to ever see, to generally live a perfect life for a couple weeks.
I enjoy parties as much as most people,
I love Christmas cooking—as you can tell—I like to give people gifts they can
enjoy and use…but somehow, I remember a difference when I was young, and
certainly the holidays are described differently in the books of one and two
hundred years ago. I don’t mean only
Dickens and his Christmas Carol, when Christmas was a family gathering, a big
dinner, and games after—sort of like our Thanksgiving, with the addition of a
church service. But when you read Jane Austen, for example, or the diaries of Samuel
Pepys, or the laws regulating Christmas—there’s much more about food and drink
and gatherings of family and friends, and very little about gifts or clothing.
It seems people cooked a special meal—but not one beyond their means; and maybe
added a new dress, or spruced up an old one; and rather than two weeks of
parties and feasting, were considered lucky to have Christmas Day itself off.
I’m not saying we should go back to
those days—those were also the days of no unions, of child labour, of no income
support, of poor health for most people. But perhaps the attitude is one we
could regain. Rather than a huge feast of things we aren’t sure we want to eat,
with people we aren’t sure we want to be with, giving them things we aren’t
sure they will like—perhaps we could gather with the ones we love, sharing a
feast of simple good food, and gifts of meaning. And we wouldn’t have to change
a thing, except our attitude.
Patience is a virtue, we are told. Perhaps
if we could be more patient, allow each day to have its own message, we would
find more in those days. If a day simply becomes one more to check off on the
calendar in the rush to Christmas, we lose something—the grace and space of
that day. Take each day on its own terms, including Christmas, knowing it will
come in its time and offer its gifts. Take the time to immerse yourself in that
day, to drink in its message and sense and feeling, before you move on to the
next day.
An Advent calendar works that way. Each
day, one window or door is opened; each day, one chocolate is revealed, or one
small toy, or one picture or one Bible verse. You don’t get all the chocolates
at once; you don’t get the whole story all at once. Bit by bit, over time, it
is revealed.
That is, ideally, how to live this time
of Advent. We know Christmas is coming. We can see the signs, like leaves on a
fig tree. But we will wait for it patiently, knowing it will come in the
fullness of time.
But Advent is also about preparation.
Yes, we prepare our homes, we shop for gifts, we read the stories of John the
Baptist and Mary and Joseph, we bake and cook…but we also prepare our hearts.
When it comes down to it, we are preparing our hearts for that one day, for
Christmas Day—when Christ was born, when our God came to earth and was born as
one of us. As we wait, we prepare. We do not simply sit—we wait actively
through our preparation. And it’s about more than the decorations, lovely as
they are; it’s about more than the food, good as it is; it’s about more than
the gifts, as touching or needed as they may be.
Think of Mary—she waits, and yet she is
preparing, mentally and spiritually and physically, for this birth.
What are we waiting for in our lives, in
the world? Some things are obvious—world peace, an end to hunger. Today, World
AIDS Sunday, we lift up the wait for and the work towards a cure for
HIV/AIDS. We wait, but we do not sit
idly while we wait. We support organisations that are working on vaccines and
cure and treatments; we remember the ones we have lost—too many! We teach
prevention and safer sex practices, we offer resources to prevent and treat
HIV/AIDS. We do not simply wait for the answers to be handed to us on a
platter.
Waiting. It’s difficult—few of us are as
patient as we should be—but wait we must. But we can also act as we
wait—prepare our hearts, our world, as we wait—for peace, for a cure for
HIV/AIDS, for an end to hunger and poverty—for Christmas and the coming of the
Christ child. In all God’s names, amen.
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