Thinking the Text by John Fairless
Isaiah is almost always our good friend and companion through Advent. The writer’s language is evocative, whether calling for comfort for the people, or — as today — giving us the heavens ripping open and the mountains crashing down. Leading into this introspective season of watching and waiting, perhaps a quieter verse in today’s passage offers an important clue for what lies ahead. “When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down….” (64:3) The most earth-shattering events are not always the most shattering, are they? Some of them come like the rising of the sun or the shining of God’s face upon us.
Paul tells the Corinthian church that they are, indeed, waiting on something: “the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We pretty much go automatically to the end-of-times, eschatological, second coming of Jesus mentality when we hear that phrase. But I wonder if we ought to consider, while we wait in the here and now, the ways that Jesus is revealed around us. To quote from Godspell,
“Three things I pray:
To see thee more clearly
Love thee more dearly
Follow thee more nearly, Day by day.”Songwriters: John Michael Tebelak / Stephen Lawrence Schwartz
Mark’s record of Jesus’ apocalyptic speech most often inspires a bit of nervousness — nay, terror — in listeners who are afraid that Jesus is trying to “catch” his followers off their guard, perhaps putting them in a really bad version of “time out”. (We did have all that hellish sheep and goats stuff last week, ya know….) :(
But doesn’t it make at least a little sense that what Mark’s Jesus is trying to do here is not to frighten, but to encourage? The master of the simile here (“It is like…”) is quite efficient and effective in giving each of the servants an assignment before he leaves on his journey. Just take care of business as the master has requested, and you’re gonna be fine! If you’re on the morning shift, you won’t be surprised if he comes back shortly after sunrise; same with the late shift. The midnight hour holds no terror for you. This IS a call to accountability; it is NOT a gotcha’ moment on behalf of Jesus.
And Just for Fun
Reader’s Digest labels these as “Clever Jokes”. You be the judge.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
A pun, a play on words, and a limerick walk into a bar.
No joke.
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
To.
To who?
No, to whom.
Sermon by Delmer Chilton
Sometimes the First Sunday in Advent can have a jarring effect on folks. We have just finished the family warmth of Thanksgiving dinner and parades and football. In many churches children are already practicing the Christmas pageant and the choir is working on a cantata and calendars are full of Open Houses and Christmas parties and such. At home we’re getting decorations out and putting up the tree and getting the cards signed and sent out, etc.
And then we come into worship and the lector gets up and the first words we hear during this warm and cozy season are: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” and more about things like mountains quaking and water boiling. We think, “Well, that’s a prophet, that’s the ‘Old Testament.’ What do you expect? Wait for the Gospel.” But the Gospel lesson is worse; “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” Are we in the right place? It’s less than month before Christmas; what is this all about?”
Advent is designed to remind us of why Christ came. The lessons and hymns during Advent were carefully created to help avoid rushing through December to Christmas Day without taking the time to ponder why we needed God to intervene in our lives and what we must do to be ready.
The text from Isaiah, which begins with those frightful words, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” was written in the midst of Israel’s exile in Babylon and the early days of their return to the devastated and destroyed promised land. As they look at the destruction around them, the Children of Israel are truly believe that they brought this on themselves. They think that their behavior, as individuals and as a nation, led to their destruction. And they are sorry. They remember the good things God did for them in the past, they remember how God led them and provided for the.
As verse 4 says, “From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.” They remember the bad they have done which they think led to their current predicament and they remember the good that God did for them in the past. And they repent. They are deeply sorrowful for what they have done – not sorrow as a feeling, as a sentiment, as an emotion – but sorrow as an action, sorrow as a positive move in a new direction, sorrow as repentance, sorrow as the act of turning from going their own way and turning to go in the way of God. And in verse 8, the prophet asks God to not only to forgive the people, but also to restore, renew, remake them. “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
Advent is a time when we look at ourselves and at our world and recognize that we need God. It is also a time for deep and serious reflection upon the way in which we live our lives, the ways in which our actions are either supportive of God’s will and way in the world, or are hindrances to it. It is a time for repentance in the sense of reorientation, of redirecting our lives to be more in line with the way God would have us go.
Advent is a time to wait for God to come. But this is not a hopeless and helpless waiting, alternating wishful-ness with moments of despair. No, Advent waiting is, in the words of Jesus in the Gospel lesson, a matter of being “alert,” and “awake,” watching not the sky, but the world, paying attention to the times and places where opportunities for mission and ministry present themselves.
Advent is a time to open ourselves up to the possibility that the God of all our tomorrows has a new and exciting future in store for us. Rather than looking forward with fear, let us look to the future with faith and hope, spending our days doing the work the master gave us (Mark 13:34), always on the lookout for opportunities to love and serve God’s beloved people.
Amen and amen.