The Scriptures for this Homily, from our church service on December 1, 2019 come from the Revised Common Lectionary, and are as follows:
Psalm 122
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
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Advent is the season in the Liturgical year that settles into the dark night, and waits for the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. It is comprised of four weeks – Preparation, Returning, Hope, and Fulfillment.
A couple of these passages speak of the final return of Christ, when Jesus himself, tells us that at the culmination of time, He will bring all things to completion in Himself, and return. We do not understand this, nor do we comprehend how this will play itself out, but we know that it is one mysterious aspect of our faith that we take seriously, that we choose to believe, not because we understand it, but because we recognize that we need Jesus to make ALL things new. We need Jesus to wipe away every tear, to fix things. It doesn’t take anyone long in this world to realize that things are very wrong. Just these last few weeks, I’ve been overwhelmed with suicide, cancer, the death of beloved animals, child sickness, poverty beyond quick solutions, war-torn nations, drug addictions, and simple domestic disputes that makes one’s heart ache to tears.
Despite the difficulties, throughout the last two thousand years, Christians have been a people anchored and rooted in Hope. For hundreds of years, We are the ones who have ourselves buried with our feet facing the rising sun, so that when Christ returns to Jerusalem, we shall rise to see Jesus face to face. We are the people who doggedly refuse to forsake hope, who cling to the belief in God, in a God who is present and near, though this God sometimes feels very far away. Christ has come and Christ will come again, and in the inbetween, Christ is with us, in mystery and wonder.
During this season of Advent, we remember that our faith is not a faith all wrapped up snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug. We recognize that there are mysteries, there are words in our Scripture that invite us to trust in God, and acknowledge that we do not understand how all of this will one day be brought to completion. But we do remember that at the time when Jesus was born, the people of God had waited for a new word from God for over four hundred years. That when all seemed lost and dark, God was working, planning, looking for those who might be ready to receive God, who were prepared to let Him come in God’s own way, on God’s own terms.
The thing is, there are several different kinds of preparation. John and I hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year and we spent days organizing silverware, breaking out the china, counting the plates. Our oven range broke and we bought a new one. I also did much with a heart full of love, wanting my company to feel enfolded and warm – as if they belonged. This is planned preparation, thoughtful preparation.
There is also the preparation of speculated catostrophe. How many remember the Y2K pandemonium? The alarm that drove many to prepare – some prepared just in case, and even if nothing happened they were also ready for an earthquake. Others, sold all they had and moved locations. I know of people who sold all they owned, relocated to the country, and went completely off grid.
There was a time when I ran with a Christian crowd that was convinced the return of Christ was immanent, and believed, knew they were the last generation. Jesus would be back by the year 2000 or maybe ten years after. The generation that saw Israel become a nation, was the last generation. Over time, I realized I could not keep up with all the prophesy, all the mayhem, all the legalistic fire and trappings of such unmitigated certainty.
When the Bible calls us to prepare for God, to prepare for Christ to come, what is the kind of preparation Jesus is talking about?
Do we make like fanatics and find a date on the calendar and assure ourselves that we have figured out God? Do we read the numbers inbetween the numbers and count the dates and decide that we know the exact hour and time when the world will end?
Do we give up hope, and forsake our faith because what in the world is going on?
I have walked with God for over twenty-five years and the one thing I can say with certainty is that I cannot outwit God. God moves and works, enfolds, and woos in ways that are more creative and devastating and wonderful than anything I could have forseen.
I can say with some sense of certainty that God is elusive and beautiful and we sure do bless the moments when we feel God near. We have this promise in the book of James that if we draw near to God, God will draw near to us.
A few years ago, I started to feel a yearning, a sense of something coming, an inkling that God wanted my attention in a new way. I sensed God wanted me to prepare for something new. In a kind of risk, mingled with hope I decided to quit drinking wine for a month. I had long realized that my drinking habits had become something akin to idolotrous. This happened over many years and I was at a place when I could hardly imagine my life without an accompanying glass of red wine.
The thing about this invitation from God was that in it there was no condemnation, only invitation. “Will you let me lead you into something new? Will you trust me?”
So slowly, I set my glass, my many glasses of red wine down and learned anew how to stop coping with wine, stop quenching my deep thirst for God with alcohol, and learn again how to thirst for God.
I quit for a month, then another, then I did a Lent sans alcohol, then a hundred days … and finally I gave it up indefinitely.
During that time, I actually knelt down by my bed, and heeded a renewed call to vocational ministry. I applied to Fuller seminary and began to talk to John about how I believed God was asking us to start a service where people could look and search for God in their own unique story, however devastating that story might be.
The thing about this kind of preparation is that it’s not based on a fixed date on the calendar, or on something easily understood or grasped. It’s the kind of preparation that is rooted in faith, grounded in love, and held inside the tender risk of hope.
You see, each generation must look round about them and choose how they will practice the ways of Jesus both collectively and individually. Each generation must to learn to cry, “Come Lord Jesus, Come.” And to trust that though Jesus has not returned physically as He will one day, He will draw near and renew us, simply because we’ve asked.
A little over sixteen years ago, I was hugely pregnant, nesting, preparing, longing for the baby in my womb to make her grand entrance. I prepared like nobody’s business. Emma’s dad and I painted her room. I registered for everything from Baby’s R Us. I am a reader and so I read books – particularly, What to Expect when You’re Expecting.
Truthfully, NOTHING could have prepared me for Emma’s arrival. The labor I had convinced myself I was ready for, undid me in its savage intensity. And her actual presence, once I got her out of the birth canal and into my arms was sweeter and more tender than anything I could ever have pictured. Her tiny fingers alone kept me awake and enraptured. I was not ready for the love. It undid me.
And so it is with God. We wait, we long for, we invite, we prepare, and we are always surprised and undone by the Love of God that has been poured out into our hearts by faith in Jesus Christ. That is the litmus test. How do you know if it’s God?
By the love – For God, for neighbor. For God is LOVE.
Four weeks. Four movements … each leading, each a part of preparation for Jesus.
Longing, Returning, Hope, and Arrival.
How is God asking you to prepare this Advent season?
How is God inviting you to attend to the longings of your own heart during these four weeks?
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Note: If you are in the Seattle area and would like a place to worship during this season of Advent, we’d love to have you.
Church of the Epiphany is a seed congregation committed to helping people find God in their unique story, and learn how to practice the ways of Jesus.
We meet from 5:00-6:45 on Sunday Evenings at:
13646 NE 24th St.,
Bellevue, WA 98005
Please Sign up for Tina’s Hope Notes. These are short, weekly notes meant encourage you. You’ll get my free booklet, called Rekindling: Five Faith Practices for the Burnt Out and Overdone.
