Advent 1B - Are we awake?

Today is the beginning of the Christian New Year. The first Sunday of Advent always begins four Sundays before Christmas day. Surprisingly, the point of Advent is not Christmas. It is expectation, hope and preparation for the coming of Christ. The celebration of Christ’s birth comes during the Christmas season, which begins, as you might expect, on Christmas day.

The Scripture for the first Sunday of each Advent season always looks forward to the return of Christ. The Advent season, celebrating Christ’s incarnation, is always begun with passages to remind us that the reign of God over human affairs is ultimate and for all time. Advent thus does not celebrate only Christmas, Christ’s first coming among us. It also looks ahead to the completion of God’s redemptive acts in the coming again of Christ in judgment. Advent’s first question is quite properly, “Are you ready for Christ?” rather than “Are you ready for Christmas?”

Yet the coming of Jesus in the manger and Christ’s coming again in judgment are not so very different. The world of two thousand years ago was one of business as usual. After all, Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem in the first place because their taxes had been raised. There sure isn’t anything unusual about that!

The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was an act of God’s judgment on the world. No savior would have been born if the world had no need for a savior. When we celebrate Christmas we are celebrating the judgment of God on each of us. To visit the manger is both to be "indicted and invited" - indicted by God for our fallen world but invited by God to be reconciled.

Hence, the passages for first Sunday of Advent always emphasize to some degree the judgment of God, because the coming of a savior into the world is proof that the world needs saving. We who are being rescued from sin and death are under prior judgment as being in danger.

The more violent our world becomes, the more timely the Bible seems. After the Soviet empire fell in the 1990s, historian Francis Fukuyama published a book called, The End of History, in which he announced that liberal, Western-style democracy and free markets constitute the end point of human ideology and therefore is the "final form of human government.''

Doesn’t that now seem like a quaint idea? The Islamist terrorism of today almost makes us nostalgic for the Cold War. At least we could understand the Soviets, who displayed some degree of predictability and reasonableness. There were certain rules to the Cold War game. We never thought that Soviet air force pilots would fly Aeroflot airliners into the World Trade Center.

That we do not live in a peaceful world is self evident. Judging by the recent polling and surveys, most Americans thinks things will get worse before they get better – if they get better. It is today the same sort of world Isaiah lived in, and on behalf of his people he uttered this prayer to God:

Isaiah 64:1-9: O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence – 2as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4From 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. 5You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.

6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.

When Isaiah said this prayer, the ancient Jews had been conquered, killed, enslaved, exiled. Their capital had been destroyed and foreign armies had occupied their land. They cried for deliverance, but in the midst of their prayer what did they ask for? That God burn their enemies with fire? No. They repented of their own sin and confessed that their own righteousness was really like filthy rags in God's sight. So they begged God to remember that they were his people.

There are wars today and rumors of more wars to come. We do not yet know whether the peace and stability will come to Iraq, whether al Qaeda will lash out mass destructive weapons at our homeland, or terrorists have deadly plans for other parts of the world or what Iran is really up to with its defiant nuclear program.

Some Christians believe that the apocalypse is near, some think not. Last summer when I was shopping for a new car, one of the salesmen told during a test drive that he thought the whole world was coming apart and that as a Christian he believed the return of Christ was just around the corner.

Some of you who have been coming to our Wednesday night Bible study may remember that I am personally not terribly concerned with trying to figure out when God will bring about the true end of history and Christ will return to put all things under his feet. God continues to work within the affairs of humanity. In Mark’s Gospel passage for today, Jesus describes the end of the age:

24 ‘But in those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
25and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

26Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. 28 ‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

35Therefore, 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, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’ Mark 13:24-37

The apocalyptic warnings of the New Testament call us not to fear but to confidence. With even with such a grim topic Jesus is encouraging. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” he says, “but my words will not pass away. . . . Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.”

What do we expect from the future, and how do our expectations shape our activities in the present? Mark says that one day the end will come but that the end is one of hope for everyone who follows Christ. Having a hope for the future requires there be a point to the present. The present day is an in-between time, when we are working out our salvation, as Paul put it Philippians. Advent should make us face how we understand the fundamental condition of humankind, that there is something about human existence that makes salvation, however defined, necessary.

Even in the darkest hours of human history, God is mighty to save. The promises of God are true and the word of the Lord stands forever. This is not to say that all will be sweetness and light for Christian people; Jesus never promised that – quite the opposite in fact. It is to say that even violent times and uncertain hours, we are still expected to live according to Christ’s example and commands. We are not to put our ultimate trust in any power or principality of this world – not the government, not the United Nations, not one political party or the other, nor even in the Church itself. Our ultimate trust can only be in the Lord. It is Christ, wrote the apostle Paul, who will strengthen us to the end, so that we may be blameless at the end, whenever that comes.

Thus, to keep awake, as Christ admonishes, is more than simply being alert. It is to stay the course of discipleship, to be bold in our faith rather than cower in uncertainty. Our task is not to try to figure out when God may ring down the curtain, which Jesus says we cannot know anyway. It is to pray, to worship, to act in deeds of love, to do, in fact, what we should be doing all the time whether in peace or war. There is no fear where godly love exists.

Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. The return of Christ is the “God-provided goal . . . toward which all life should be directed.” “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” That day has come in the person of Christ. Prophecies have already found their fulfillment already in the life and work of Jesus Christ, in whose grace we await the culmination of God’s history with the world.