Wait and Hope

(Scriptures: Isaiah 64:1-9, I Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:24-37)

Today is the first Sunday in Advent – the first Sunday in the church year. As sometimes happens, the church is out of step with society, and today doubly so. While our society celebrates New Year’s Day on January 1st, we celebrate the beginning of a new church year today. At the same time, most of society is already celebrating Christmas, has been celebrating Christmas since about Columbus Day or thereabouts – but in the church, we wait. We’ll celebrate Christmas in due time, but for now we observe Advent – from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming” – a time of waiting for One we know is coming, but has not yet arrived.

This year, Advent begins at a time when it may feel like things are coming unglued, falling apart. We just went through a Black Friday in which gung-ho shoppers used fists and pepper spray to drive off fellow shoppers - at a mall in North Carolina, the soundtrack of Christmas music was momentarily drowned out by the sound of gunfire. At good old Penn State, wholesome Happy Valley – my alma mater – the university president, Graham Spanier, along with longtime football coach Joe Paterno were dismissed amid accusations of having covered up the sexual abuse of teens and pre-teens. There’s an increasing sense that our national government is dysfunctional, political leaders from both parties bought (or bought off) and paid for by Wall Street – and at Occupy Philadelphia and other Occupy gatherings across the country, people are taking to the streets to demand change. While the protesters have been mostly peaceful, in many cities the police have not, and we’ve been treated to the ugly sight of police officers pepper-spraying and beating nonviolent protesters. International news is no more comforting, amid the threat of financial default in Europe, the threat of war in the Middle East. Amid frightening national and international news, we’ve had our own personal traumas – death of family members or friends, illness, unemployment, domestic violence striking us or those close to us. At our community Thanksgiving service on Wednesday, I heard that the cupboard, with the help of our donations, served over 300 families last week. 300 families who, but for God’s grace and the generosity of Emanuel and other churches, would go hungry. What a witness of the struggles our neighbors are grappling with here in Bridesburg and surrounding neighborhoods. We may be tempted to throw up our hands in despair. For people of faith, we can hardly be faulted for asking, “Why doesn’t God do something? Is God on lunch break, or did God maybe clock out early and go on vacation? Where’s God when we need Him?”

Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah was written at a time when it seemed like things were falling apart, spinning out of control. It comes from one of the last few chapters of Isaiah, written after the Jews had returned from exile and settled back in Jerusalem. They had returned from exile with such high hopes. But the rebuilding of the Temple had been slowed down by threats and interference from surrounding tribes, and also bogged down by community infighting. Similar to some of our current controversies over inclusion within the church, there was disagreement over who could be called a Jew, who could gather to worship the Lord, with some calling for exclusion of all except the super-observant, the purest of the pure, while others called for broad inclusion. The devastation of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem matched the disorganization and conflict among the Jewish people.

And so in his frustration Isaiah cries out to God, “Get down here and do something, will ya! Tear open the heavens and come down! Send fire and earthquake, so that our enemies will know you’re still in charge!” Isaiah recalls God’s works in the past – “When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.” Isaiah confesses the guilt of the people – “We have all become unclean, and even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags….our sin blows us away like the wind….nobody calls on you.” And Isaiah even blames some of the people’s misdeeds on God, “You were angry, and we sinned, because you hid yourself we messed up.” Isaiah reminds God “Yet, O Lord, you are our father, we are the clay and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Now consider, we are all your people.”

In Advent, we remember that God did indeed tear open the heavens, did indeed come down here and do something. He came down here in the child Jesus. Mark’s Gospel tells us that at his baptism, Jesus saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion includes an earthquake. So, in Jesus, Isaiah’s prayers were answered, though likely on a schedule far different – and better – than Isaiah had envisioned.

From our Gospel reading we are reminded that Jesus will come again, not as a baby this time, but in power and glory. Jesus employs apocalyptic language and figures of speech used in his day to express the overwhelming scale and impact of this coming event – there will be signs in the heavens, and the Son of Man will come with great power and glory, to gather the elect from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

Jesus also said that only the Father knows when all this will happen – the angels don’t, even the Son doesn’t. There are lots of folks who want to try to set dates for us – this year marked the failure of not one but two of Harold Camping predictions, that of the Rapture on May 21 and the end of the world on October 21. I’m confident that the predictions of Hal Lindsay and John Hagee and the other screamers and shouters on radio and TV are just as far off-base – for example, Lindsay’s prediction of the Rapture a generation – estimated by Lindsay at 40 years - after the 1948 founding of the state of Israel is well past its sell-by date these 60+ years later.

That said, it’s easy to understand why so many listen to these predictions – because our world, like the world in Isaiah’s time, like the world of Jesus’ day, is threatening, especially to people of faith. Things seem out of control. Our natural environment is under assault on a global scale. There is great spiritual wickedness in high places. It may seem like God has left the building, like God has left the planet, has left us to our fate. When all that seems familiar is coming unglued, it’s a very natural human impulse to want the disruption to end. And it will, someday. But when it will happen, is not for us to know. In the meantime, in our reading from Mark’s Gospel, we have our instructions - to keep awake, to be faithful servants who are at their post whenever the Master returns. We have our instructions, to wait faithfully, and to live in hope.

The point of Jesus’ words is not for preachers on radio and TV to try to commit God to their timelines – the TV and radio preachers simply don’t have that authority over God. Rather, the point of Jesus’ words is for God to commit us to living our lives in a way that’s faithful to the Gospel. God in God’s sovereignty keeps God’s own council on matters of timing. Meanwhile, we are to preach and live out the Gospel. Jesus says, “Therefore, keep awake – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all – Keep awake!”

The day will come when Jesus will return in unimaginable power and glory. Until then, Christ’s body, the church, is here. Until then, Jesus said that wherever two or three gather in His name, he’ll be in the midst. Until then, every day in some congregations – among the Roman Catholics, for example - and at least every week here at Emanuel, the gathered church prays to God, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Until then, we’re praying for the coming of the Kingdom, for Jesus to return, and God will honor those prayers. Until then, through the work and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Christ is present in our words of love and deeds of compassion.

Remember that, as the saying goes, our lives – your lives, my life - may be the only Bible that unbelievers will ever read, the only Gospel they will ever hear. Let us at Emanuel Church not lead them astray by scribbling our own agendas in the margins. Instead, may we at Emanuel Church let God’s word shine forth from our lives, day by day for however many days God grants us on this earth. May those who walk through our doors truly say that “surely the Lord is in this place”, through our words of love and deeds of compassion truly come to know and love Emanuel – God with us. Amen.