Advent 1A

Matthew 24:36-44

With twin warnings, Jesus tells the disciples “Keep awake!” and “Be ready!”

Contrary to the success of the popular fictional “Left Behind” series, these verses are not about God seizing the elect and forgetting the rest of us. And while they may be entertaining, bumper stickers and church signs telling us, “to look busy because Jesus is coming” miss the mark here too. The purpose of apocalyptic literature in Scripture is not to terrorize us into obedience, but to provide revelation about God and to encourage hope.

Instead of being anxious about a capricious God whose promise of eternal life is based on our attitude or behavior, as we begin anew the season of Advent, both Isaiah and Matthew call on God’s people to wait on God and to look to God to do something new again.[i]

Isaiah is addressing the Israelites before the exile, urging them to trust God to fix what is broken and to live in anticipation of a peaceful future, despite the conflict roiling around them.

Matthew is speaking to Jesus’ followers who were likely living in Antioch in Syria where there were both Jewish and Gentile Christians. He’s addressing them after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and in the midst of disagreements with both rabbinical Jewish leaders and Roman authorities.

Their messages to their communities remind us that faith is always communal, nurtured in the space where we gather together and draw near to God.

In this season, here at Grace, we are waiting and preparing for the coming of the Light of the World, God’s own Son Jesus - God’s love incarnate, born into the world for us.

Knowing what we are waiting for shapes how we wait. Instead of being anxious or afraid, we are invited to believe that God’s future will be different because it is a future is based on God’s promises; it is a future

where God will be with us;

where God will mediate or make a way through the division and enmity between nations and peoples,

and where God will bring peace to our lives.

That sounds implausible if not impossible as we witness violence in our communities and world. Is it surprising that we’d rather retreat into the merry comfort and nostalgia of Christmases past and pin our hopes on gift giving and holiday feasting?

But what is faith if not “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”? (Hebrews 11:1 NRS)

The prophet Isaiah begins his speech with a call to return to the house of the Lord, to the centering place where the people experience the rhythms of life together with God. This Advent season we are invited to gather here, to practice our faith together in worship and “to get ready for the new movements of God’s Spirit in our lives.”[ii]

We come together to learn God’s ways and God’s paths. But to be ready to learn we must be tender-hearted, and not let our hearts be hardened toward God. Remembering the mistakes of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, we must have a willingness of Spirit to hear God’s Word and go God’s way. 

It's easier said than done, of course. Submitting ourselves to God’s Word and God’s ways requires a re-orientation, turning away from the world and towards God, as when Saint Paul says, “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light”.

The works of darkness are the sin and self-centeredness that distract us from God and what God is doing in this season. And wearing the armor of light, like being clothed in Christ at baptism, is not about being transfigured into dazzling majesty, but receiving the grace that God has given us freely and finding our strength in Christ. Instead of swords we carry weapons of righteousness, equipped by God to bear the Good News of Jesus coming into the world.

Finally, Isaiah calls to the house of Jacob, the people of Israel, and to us, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

Pastor Nathan Nettleton paraphrases the verse from Isaiah as “let us stick to the tracks that the LORD lights up!”[iii] (Isaiah 2:5)

This time of year, I sometimes wear a headlamp to walk the dogs because it gets dark so early; with a headlamp, you don’t see very far ahead – just enough to take the next step, and the one after that as you move forward. Walking in the light of the Lord isn’t about having a floodlight that illuminates your surroundings so you can see everything at once; instead, it is taking the next faithful step, trusting in the One who is lighting the way. 

“Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” this Advent season. Let us gather here with tender hearts and willing spirits to listen for what God is saying. Let us be ready and alert to how God is working in our lives and those around us. Let us not be distracted by bright lights and tinsel but focus on the Light that is coming into the World.

Let us pray…

Holy God, We give you thanks for giving your Son Jesus to the world that we may all know your love for us.

Help us turn away from the ways of sin that draw us from you,

and teach us to walk in Your light.

Let our light so shine that the world may know You.

We pray in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

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[i] Fairless, John; Chilton, Delmer. The Lectionary Lab Commentary with Stories and Sermons for Year A (p. 3). The Lectionary Lab. Kindle Edition.

[ii]  ibid, p. 4.

[iii] Nathan Nettleton, Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources. https://laughingbird.net/index.php/occasion/a01/2022-11-27/ , accessed 11/25/22.

All Saints Sunday

Luke 6:20-31

On All Saints Sunday we remember the saints who have gone before us even as we include ourselves within the community of the saints, a blessed community, bound together, through time, and over and against death.

Just last week Anne Marie and I were talking with the confirmation students about saints. We took a field trip from the youth room to the narthex – the space just beyond the glass doors of the sanctuary – and talked about the saints whose symbols are on shields that hang there. We talked about apostles – people sent into the world with the Good News – and about disciples – people called to follow Jesus.

“The community of the saints is not an "ideal" community consisting of perfect and sinless men and women, where there is no need of further repentance.”[i] If you go and examine those shields, you’ll count twelve of them because even Judas – who betrayed Jesus – is included among the saints.

Learning that God loves us, redeems us and makes us holy or sanctifies us even in our imperfections is a gift of our faith.

We aren’t saints because we are perfect and blameless; we are saints because, in God’s sight, we are wonderfully created, beloved children of God, and even when we are petulant and selfish,

God offers us forgiveness.

We aren’t saints because we can overcome grief or be stoic survivors of trauma; we are saints because God and God’s son Jesus are above every power, victorious over grief and suffering, and victorious over the brokenness of sin.

We aren’t saints because our hearts grew three sizes and now, we can forgive the people who have hurt us; we are saints because God’s mercy is new every morning. We are sinful, and every day, we turn away from God and inward on ourselves, refusing to confess our dependence on Him. But God never refuses his grace and God never gives up on us.

That is Good News. God is steadfast and abounding in love and mercy for you and for me.

With the confirmation students, we also talked about the people in our lives who have helped teach us about Jesus. Often it is a parent or grandparent, but sometimes it’s a neighbor or a family friend.

I tell the story of my college roommate Lori inviting me to go to campus ministry.

I think our children remember Ms. Nancy, a woman whom I worked with who also taught our one room Sunday School in a tiny congregation in Harpers Ferry.

So on this All Saints Sunday, I wonder who are the saints you have met in your life?

We gather as living saints today because others have poured out God’s love in their care for us.

And we gather as the community of saints because together we remember God’s promises for us.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul reminds the people there – people who are facing trouble and persecution – that they have already set their hope on Christ (v 12).

This hope empowers us to imagine the future that God is preparing, to see with not only our eyes but with what one pastor calls, “the eyes of our hearts”.

The hope we have in Christ helps us see beyond the divisiveness of the world now and see each other as God’s beloved children and to see each other as fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image. It is a hope that reaches beyond any one of us and is nourished in community and in relationship.

An old Hasidic tale tells of a disciple who asked his rabbi the meaning of community one evening, when they were all sitting around a fire. The rabbi sat in silence while the fire died down to a pile of glowing coals. Then he got up and took one coal out from the pile and set it apart on the stone hearth. Its fire and warmth soon died out.[ii]

In his letter, Paul encourages the disciples at Ephesus to return to this enduring hope that is grounded in God’s saving power. (v. 18) He reassures them that God is at work in and through all that they are experiencing, having “put all things under his feet” (v. 22)

Jesus embodies this same hope when he delivers his sermon on the plain in Luke’s gospel. Instead of ascending to a mountaintop and making pronouncements from on high, Jesus comes into the crowd and meets the people there. Apostles, disciples and curiosity-seekers alike. He heals people’s illnesses and casts out demons and he talks with them about their lives.  

When Jesus makes the declarations of blessings and woes that we hear in today’s gospel, he isn’t talking abstractly. He has witnessed the hunger, the grief and sorrow and the ways some are ignored or shut out. These are vulnerable people who come to Jesus with hearts laid bare. And Jesus meets them in their need.

His woes aren’t curses against the people who are satisfied with their lives as much as alarm bells to awaken complacent people who have become comfortable and convinced that they don’t need God. Jesus calls on them to be as vulnerable as the rest of the crowd; to recognize their own deep need for God’s love.

Because it is in Christ and in God’s loving action for us that our hope resides.

Let us pray…

Holy God,
We give you thanks for your Son Jesus who shows us Your love for all people.
Thank you for redeeming us from our sin and counting each one of us among our saints.
As we follow Jesus, give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation and help us live in response to your love for the whole world.
Amen.

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[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Cost of Discipleship.

[ii] Heidi B. Neumark. Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 61.