Dear friends: Grace be to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Sometimes I think that Advent is more confusing a season than it needs to be. Maybe it is because the defining character of the season, John the Baptist is, himself, a confusing character.
Certainly, he is not a lovable character. He scares me. I can’t imagine the impact he has on small children. He has the potential of remaking this season of expectation into a season of fear. I didn’t have a chance to look through my old Advent sermons this week but I am sure they include messages with such titles as “Shape Up,” and “Stay Awake,” and “Prepare!” as in “or else.”
Now, there is “preparing” and there is “preparing.” With John the Baptist, we are called to prepare by separating ourselves from the world, by purifying ourselves, by eliminating anything from our lives that might prevent the coming of the Lord. It is a preparation borne of fear.
The base information I use for sermon preparation each week includes an introduction to the day. It is the same introduction that Nancy includes in your bulletin each week. This is what it says about today: “John called people to repent, to clear the decks, to completely reorder their lives so that nothing would get in the way of the Lord’s coming.”
They have to be kidding! I’m sure it is not the writer’s intention, but those are words that suggest to me that I might be the roadblock to the coming of the Lord. If I don’t “shape up,” then Jesus return be might delayed yet again. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that any of us has that kind of power. I don’t believe that I can — by behaving well or behaving badly — do anything to change the plans and promises of God.
Such an understanding of Advent turns expectation on its head. It is an expectation of dread instead of an expectation of joy. It is an expectation of pain instead of an expectation of healing. It is an expectation of death instead of an expectation of life.
Better than a focus on the confusing message of John the Baptist, is the message we hear this morning from Isaiah. Isaiah has no illusions about the faithfulness of Jerusalem and its residents. Professor Elna Solvang of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota notes how in “chapter after chapter” Isaiah “describes how the people of Jerusalem prospered through wickedness, oppression, lies and injustice, refusing to heed the prophets’ calls to repent, reform and be reconciled to God.”
Yet this is the place that God, through the pen of Isaiah, demands be comforted. Speak “ten-derly,” Isaiah says. It has the sense of speaking from the heart. In contrast to the harsh message of the Baptist, this is a passage that affirms that suffering has gone on long enough, that anxiety has taken too large a toll, that God’s compassion for even a rebellious and a sinful people will overwhelm the wilderness of surviving in the world as it is.
As it was for the so-called “friends” of Job, I guess it is easy, during times of suffering, to claim that the suffering must be deserved. Isaiah speaks in a time when Jerusalem has suffered mightily, Her former glory was laid waste by the armies of the Babylonians. Where is God in their suffering? Has God abandoned them? Is it something that they did? Glory for nations like success in life is fleeting. Sure, there are those times when the flowers bloom and the grass grows and everything is bright and green and colorful.
But the seasons change. Isaiah says “all people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades,” and sometimes it feels like that fading is, somehow, due to the judgment of God.
Those are the times — at the change of seasons — when the grass is withering and when the flower is fading when we are most in need of the presence of God that Isaiah proclaims in his words of comfort and expectation. The day of the coming of the Lord is that day when the low times are lifted-up and when the high times are evened-out. It is that day when worry about the changing of the seasons is no longer a concern in our human experience. Surely, that is a day for which we wait in eager expectation.
Nan speaks of the expectation she experienced as a young girl every year on the occasion of the summer visit of her grandparents. There was a sort of liturgy to their arrival. Once the day of arrival had been set, plans were set in motion to drive from Eau Claire to St. Paul to meet them at the train station.
It is a story of joyful expectation, Nan can tell you about looking at the train tracks along the road in the hope that Grandma’s train might pass them along the way. She can tell about the sounds and sights and smells of the train station as they waited for the announcement that would echo through the station that Grandpa’s train had arrived. She can tell about her anticipation of the gifts that she knew would be brought for her. She can tell you what Grandma would be wearing. She can tell about the conversations she had with Grandma in the back seat of the car on the drive back to Eau Claire.
Just think about your own times of eager expectation. What is it like for you to wait for the coming of someone who is long expected to your own home? When Nan is returning from a weekend back in Eau Claire or when one of our boys is expected for a visit, I will often position myself on the loveseat that is beside our front window. Eager for the expected arrival, I position myself so that I know immediately when my anticipation is fulfilled.
That is Advent expectation! Jesus is coming to restore the Kingdom and rule of God! Jesus is coming into the summer of our lives and, while Advent is a season where we highlight our excitement about his coming, it is really an expectation that carries us through all the days of our lives.
We understand the dual character of expectation during Advent. The expectation of children is for the coming celebration of Christmas. It is through the experience of the years, though, that a new expectation comes to define these days — the expectation of the coming of the Lord.
It is the day of our fondest hopes and most ardent dreams. Just imagine the fulfillment of this promise — expressed first by Isaiah and then adopted by Jesus as his own mission statement.
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’Those are the words of promise that we long to have fulfilled for our lives. We long for him to come:
- in order to heal us from our infirmities;
- in order to bring peace to all human relationships — those in our families, those in our nation, as well as those among the peoples of the world;
- in order to affirm the value of everyone and everything that has been created by God;
- in order to create the kind of joy that can carry us through every day of our lives.
Sure, all of us look forward to the coming of Christmas. It brings us back to a time of fond remembrance when we can relive the liturgy that our parents and grandparents established for us during these days. We love to become enveloped in the innocence of children as they enter into their own liturgical remembrance. We find hope in the “foretaste” that comes from the flickering candlelight and from our hymns of peace.
But Advent is important for us too. Because Advent is the time of eager expectation. It points us to another time — a time yet to come — the time when we will be comforted by the real presence of God in our world.
Today we place ourselves on the loveseat of our faith, near the window of Christian hope, waiting for the coming of the Lord. Within the imitations of life on this earth, we cannot know the moment of his arrival. But that does not prevent us from looking forward with eager anticipation. For the day is coming when he will gather us together with all the saints in the Kingdom that is his eternal promise to each one. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
Copyright © 2011 The Rev. Gary L. Froseth. All rights reserved.
