Watch and Wait

The First Sunday in Advent
December 2, 2007

The Reverend Gene Kendall Jr.

Good morning…it is always a honor to be asked to fill in for Paul when he is away. I’ve been asked to be the lead off hitter this for the first Sunday in advent as we start a new church year. Next Sunday Loretta Veney will step up to the plate. She is a more recent member of St. Marks who brings an experienced and new voice to this pulpit. Bill Flanders will be the third batter for the third Sunday in Advent. And if all three of us have done an adequate job of getting on base, Paul Abernathy will step up to the plate on the fourth Sunday and hit the grand slam that takes us to Christmas.

The theme that the worship committee has chosen for this Advent is Peace….and lyrics from a Chinese proverb, which have been turned into lyrics of a song by the group Sweet Honey in the Rock. Each of the advent preachers have been invited to highlight one line, and I get the first …where there is light in the soul, there is beauty in the person…Due to the texts in the lectionary being of a very different subject, my apologies in advance to the worship Lions if I only address this theme obliquely.

It is my belief that worship in Advent has a power and momentum all its own…that we bring so much of our own accumulated meaning to this season that the preachers job is to tell the story once again, and then get out of the way. I had a whole sermon within this sermon on the Isaiah text…beating our swords into plowshares is such a relevant text considering the world context in which we are living… but I cut it out so I wouldn’t be accused of going all Presbyterian on you. Perhaps some of you will comment on that subject during sermon seminar.

Last Thursday a week ago, on Thanksgiving morning, while many of you were sleeping late or perhaps putting the finishing touches on your bird, I was preparing to check one more item off on my list of “ things to do before I die”. Along with my travel companion and about three or four million other spectators, I claimed about three square feet of space on the sidewalk, for me it was at the corner of 59th and Broadway, in order to experience in the flesh something I’d only seen before on TV ….the magic and wonder of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.

It was everything I had imagined it would be, and more. There was plenty of New York attitude to go around…people were jostling for the best viewing position, but all in all people were pretty friendly. Perhaps it was because the temperature was 60 degrees. There were kids on either side who were able to explain to us older folks who the new cartoon characters were as they floated by in the sky. I recognized Scooby Doo and Snoopy, that was about it. The kids also identified the youthful celebrities that occupied the floats. The only celebrities I recognized were Dolly Parton and Wynona Judd…the rest were too young or too new for me to recognize. I guess I should watch more TV.

One of the lessons learned from this experience was that if you really want to see the Macy’s parade with an unobstructed view of what goes on in the street, you need to get up at about 4 am and claim a spot near a curb, preferably in the sun but NOT in your face. By the time the parade arrived to where we plopped down, the crowd had swelled and we found ourselves standing about twenty people deep from the curb. I was on tiptoe most of the time in order to see anything on the street other than bobbing heads or oversized band instruments. I envied the guy next to us who brought an empty five gallon paint bucket upon which to stand…he was a native New Yorker and knew a trick or two. Two hours was along time for me to stand on tiptoe.

Advent is here, yet we don’t have to get up early or stand on tiptoe in order to catch a glimpse of the parade that comes down the street once again. Each of us can have a seat at the curb if we want. We return to themes that are quite familiar as they float by over the next four weeks. You and I are invited to unlock our imaginations and look up from the crush of our everyday lives and take in the Advent parade once again.

The biggest challenge we face, however, is that we’ve already been to Bethlehem. We saw that parade last year, and the year before and the year before that. Once you’ve been there, it is harder to get motivated to find a sweet spot on the sidewalk and do it all over again.

We don’t start advent, however, with slurpy sentimentality, or chicken soup for the soul that our culture offers us, or something soft and baby blue, or with people holding hands and singing “ Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me”. We never start Advent with that which is charmingly domestic and sweet and tranquil. Instead we start with an apocalyptic text which is disturbing in its judgment and its appeal for urgency.

Listen again to the Gospel text…

But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.

Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.

Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.

Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

It helps I think to go behind the curtain of this gospel to see what was going on backstage. When we do that, what we find is a church that could be described as somewhat analogous to ours. It was an urban church…it was a pluralistic church, both Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians…It was a fairly wealthy church, with one with its own ambiguous relationship with its culture.

The date was somewhere between 70 and 100 AD. And one of their operating beliefs was that the return of their Lord was imminent. They perhaps had bragged to their neighbors about return any day now, and were perhaps dealing with some embarrassment caused by this delay. They’d been standing on tiptoe a long time now, with their noses pressed to the windowpane, waiting, waiting, waiting, and nothing had happened. Skepticism was setting in. Outsiders were taunting them. Standing on tiptoe waiting for something to happen can be sustained for short while, but not decades. What is the point of urgency when all there is to offer is an endless succession of tomorrows that look just like yesterday?

And so the author of Matthew’s gospel addresses this skepticism by crafting what is known as the Eschatalogical Discourse. And in it he redirects the focus away from a discussion of signs of the end, to a mindset where the green light on ethical behavior was always to be in the ON position. Christians should always act, according to Matthew, as if the coming of the Son of Man were near. The attitude of Advent faith is that if we are faithful in our living, then the future will take care of itself. Consequently, the road to Bethlehem is one we can walk joyfully, regardless of how many times we’ve done it already.

The 24th Chapter of Matthew is so rich that it could command a month of sermons all by itself. The text we have today gives us at least one clue on what is most appropriate for living into the days of Advent…yet again. Jesus points back to the days of Noah. He could have just as easily pointed to the life of many Americans just like you, just like me. It is all about the ordinariness of life. Eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage… add any of your favorite routines here to fill in the blank. How easy we get caught up in the expectation that life is meant to repeat itself. We need our routines, sure, but when we become so preoccupied in preserving them and make no time to get ready for the return of Jesus, what is the consequence?

And so as Advent comes around again, we watch…we wait…what should we be up to in the meantime? The Lectionary texts in the weeks to come will give us some clues. You can read ahead, or up can…wait. I like the words of John Wesley has to offer on the subject. “While you wait, do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, in all the times you can, as long as you can.”

The Son of Man comes like a thief in the night….stand watch, be ready for Jesus…..and when the parade of Advent comes our way, we are invited not just to watch, but get up off the curb and join in.

Amen.