The First Sunday of Advent, Year A

Swords into Ploughshares

Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

Wake up! Be on guard! Stay alert! Be prepared! We hear that message every year at the beginning of Advent. It is an important reminder to the Christian that our Saviour will come again and that we need to be ready for that day.

Yet it always strikes me as ominous, as a dire warning about my spiritual state. Perhaps that goes back to my childhood to a time when apocalyptic readings meant hell and damnation sermons. The message of Advent is not intended that way. It is not a message that is intended to fill us with fear and apprehension; rather, it is intended to excite us and to fill us with hopeful expectation, the kind of expectation that comes as we prepare ourselves for a visit from a dear friend.

Consider how you prepare for such a visit. If you are anything like me, it begins with a thorough cleaning of the house. I change the bed linens in the guest bedroom and put out fresh towels. I plan meals and do a special shopping. I think about the people who are coming to visit, about what they might like to do. I think about all the things I want to share with them about what is happening in my life. I think of all the questions I have for them about family, friends and work.
That, it seems to me, is a good way to approach the season of Advent. The readings point out the way in which we can prepare ourselves for God’s coming, for God’s presence amongst us.
You can see it in the passage from the Old Testament. Isaiah urges the people of Israel to prepare themselves to be channels of God’s peace in the world. He has a vision of people coming as pilgrims to worship God. He calls them to put aside what kills society and to affirm what gives life. “Beat swords into ploughshares,” he urges them. What a wonderful metaphor for what needs to happen to bring about a state of peace! Instruments of war are converted into farm implements. People are able to live in contentment in their own places, tending to their own lives. Right and wrong are judged, taking away the sphere of oppression. There is no more conflict.

Do we dare stand mutely by as we read those prophetic words from Isaiah? Such words should radically transform our very lives, each and every day. They should bring us to a state of repentance. What are the swords in our lives that could be reshaped this Advent into tools of growth and peace? How can we contribute to peace in this world by our own reconciliation and peacemaking?

On an episode of CSI one of the detectives had to do an investigation in a church. She was reflecting on how it felt to be in a church, and on how rarely she attended any more. "Every time I go," she said making her excuses, "the sermon is about forgiveness." There is no mystery about that. What a need we have to hear the message that we are forgiven! What a need we have to forgive others!

What action could we take this Advent? Is there a conflict in your life that you could amend? It might be apologizing for an offense, or saying a word of appreciation to someone with whom you have a difficult relationship, or reaching out to someone who has offended you.

That is the kind of action that Paul is envisioning in his letter to the Romans. The whole issue of peace begins at a very personal level. It begins with peace within ourselves. That extends into our relationships. Only when we are at peace within ourselves will we find peace at wider and higher levels. "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me, " one hymn puts it. Paul knew that. And so he issued a wake up call. He invited the Christians in Rome to wake up, to offer to God all of their love, an active peace seeking and peace making which can bring day out of night.

Isn’t that what we need in our church? A spirit of reconciliation and love that pervades our whole community so that we look at one another and see Christ! People should be able to smell Christ on us!

Isn't that what we need in our world? We live in dark times, times of terrorism, of ecological disaster. We have come to know a world where we recognize that we live with the possibility of it all coming crashing to an end. Paul offers Christ as the means of changing our life's direction. What a need we have of conversion! Of really living our lives in the light of Christ!

What can we do to bring ourselves closer to God during this Advent season? Can it be a time of renewal through prayer and worship? Can we find ways to put aside the busyness of the holidays and make them the holy days that they are intended to be? There are so many choices to be made in our world. It can be overwhelming. We have to sift; we have to choose; we have to sort out. We have to determine our direction. The sorting out takes place through our choices. These are times to consider our responsibility as good stewards of God’s creation. They are times to use the world’s abundance with restraint and concern for the needs of others. They are times to be advocates for the poor and for the needy. Advent is one of those times in the church year when we simply need to take stock and consider all the good things that God has provided for us, and then determine where God is leading.

The wake up call is there in the gospel too. Jesus speaks with a sense of urgency. He reminds the disciples of the story of Noah and the flood. “That is what the end days will be like,” he tells them. People will be going about the daily routine. “It is up to each of you,” he is saying, “to be ready for God.” It isn’t about being good. We know that we fall short of what God expects. We know too that God is there to reach out in forgiveness. This is not about judgement. This is not a dreadful anxious watching, but a joyful readiness for the signs of the coming of God into our human experience. We can look back at past ages and see what God has done in the world. We can see the signs of God’s presence in the lives of faithful people. The present belongs to God as well. There are signs all around us that God is at work. We experience God in the beauty of nature. We see God reflected in the other people. We meet God in our worship. God is in the future as well. That is why we need to keep awake. That is why we need to be prepared. We need to recognize God in that coming.

I was sitting next to a parishioner when her beeper went off. "Is there a phone I can use?" she asked. I let her into my office and went back to where the women were gathered. Knowing that it possibly meant that a kidney was available, they were already deep in prayer. She came out a few minutes later. "Not this time! False alarm!" And we all went back to our meeting.
It was amazing to me that she could wait as weeks turned into months with such a deep sense of serenity when it meant so much to her. I knew that three mornings a week she went to the hospital for dialysis. I knew the restrictions on her diet. I knew that she carefully measured her intake of fluids. What a trial that is for someone who loves a good cup of tea! I knew that she lived daily with the knowledge that without a transplant she would not survive. Yet she lived each day in hope and expectation. Her deep faith accepted that God would answer her prayer, either with the needed surgery or she would meet face to face with the God she served.

Then came the day when the beeper went off for real. She hurried to the hospital. It was a good match. She had the surgery. Everything went well and day by day she grew stronger. Not that the watching and waiting were over. There were foul smelling anti-rejection drugs to take. (They really do smell like a skunk!) There were still the restrictions on her diet. But day by day the colour came back into her face.
There came the wonderful celebration when she was back at church. At the chancel steps she placed a bouquet of white roses. In the centre of the bouquet standing out from the rest was one beautiful red rose – "for the person who gave me new life," she explained – and one yellow, "for my new life."

As we journey through Advent, let us watch and wait in joyful readiness for the signs of the coming of God into our human experience. It is a time to welcome Christ into our hearts. It is a time to turn the swords in our lives into ploughshares of love, understanding and peace. It is a time for repentance. It is a time for renewed faith and commitment. It is a time to hold fast to the hope that Christ will come again in glory. It is a time to wait in joyful expectation.

Let us keep this promise alive so that we can say at last, "Maranatha! Jesus comes!" What a wake up call that will be!

First Sunday in Advent, Year B

Living In Hope

Readings: Isaiah 63:16-64:8; Psalm 80:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:32-37

The French philosopher, Pascal, wrote, "There is a God-shaped piece of emptiness inside everyone." How true that is! We all live with expectations for our own well being and that of our children. Don’t we all long for fulfillment? That longing is very much reflected in the mood of the Advent season. As Christians, we know there is something incomplete in our lives. We search for meaning. We yearn for inner peace. We hunger for an intimate relationship with a personal God. We seek an end to the hunger in our souls. We keep searching, trusting that God will transform us and fill the emptiness in our lives.

It is a feeling of expectation that transcends time and space. You can hear it in Isaiah’s prayer of lamentation. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence,” he calls out to God. He is filled with a sense of longing, a longing for God to do something so strange, so wonderful, so beyond human expectation, that there will be no reason for him, or for that matter, anyone to doubt God’s power. He sees the destruction around him. He knows the deep sense of discouragement that pervades the lives of the Hebrew people. God seems so far away. He longs for a personal God, a God involved in every aspect of his life, present with him through all the hardships, persecution and difficulty. Then he has an ‘aha’ moment. He recognizes how God is revealed to us. That beautiful, intimate image of the potter and the clay comes to him. He sees those magnificent hands of God working the clay, molding, shaping, and reshaping the people in God's own beautiful image. He sees the deepening and intimate relationship that is possible with a God who is with us and in us.

That kind of longing, that spiritual hunger, is reflected in our secular world. People may deny the very existence of God. Yet they still seek ways of filling the emptiness that eats away at them. People are hungry for something, for anything, which will bring meaning to their lives. That is why there are so many destructive ways in which people seek fulfillment – alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling. The list could go on. Even when people seek spiritual ways of fulfillment, they do not often turn to the institutional church. So often they are simply alienated by what they see as an archaic and meaningless exercise. Perhaps it is not unlike Isaiah's first reaction, which was to question God about motives. You will hear from people, “If there is a God out there, why don’t you do something about the state of the world?” Why do you let terrorists bomb innocent people? Why do innocent children die of hunger every day?” They don’t want to wait in expectation. They don’t want to listen for God’s direction. They don’t want to be active participants in the coming of God’s kingdom. They want God to do the work. They want God to bring about transformation of their state of being through the miraculous. They want miracles. They want to see awesome deeds. They think they will find fulfillment through material things.

That becomes evident to me when I listen to some television evangelists. “The problem with us,” they will say, “is that we don’t expect enough of God. Don’t just ask for what you need. Ask for everything you want.” They go on to say that if we send them money it will come back to us tenfold. And people buy it, because they are seeking to fill the emptiness in their lives. They are searching for an intimate relationship with the spiritual world. Yet there is something so off base about what is offered. The search can become idolatrous, for what is offered is fulfillment through material things rather than an entry into the presence of God. And yet they will go on to relate how great wealth has come to them simply by asking God to fulfill their needs.

I don't know about you. But that is not how I find spiritual fulfillment. It is wonderful to live in a land of plenty. I don't personally think I could feel any more fulfilled in my life, not even if I had a million dollars. At the point of our deepest longing is not material wealth, but the very presence of God. That longing comes from God. Pascal knew it; I know it. I hope you know it!

Contrast that approach to the way in which the people of Corinth seek inner peace and fulfillment. They face terrible conditions, poverty, slavery, brutality. Yet the Good News of the Gospel gives them a hopeful vision and outlook for the future. They are a people waiting expectantly and with great hope. They are waiting for the fulfillment of the life of grace. They are waiting until the fullness of Christ will be revealed. They are waiting not as those without hope, but with the knowledge that the gift of life in Christ is already theirs. They know that God is faithful.

We too live in a church expectant, watching with hope for Jesus' return. We, like Isaiah, may long for some miraculous and awesome display of God’s power, if even simply to help us keep the faith. But the Christian is not called to wait passively. We are called to active preparation. God has put us in charge of creation.

Jesus tells us that it is like a man travelling abroad, leaving his servants in charge. Each has their own task to accomplish. The doorkeeper is to stay awake so as not to be asleep at the return of the master, a return that might happen at any moment of the day or of the night. It is not only a matter of staying awake, but of being involved in the task set for us in this world. It is a task, which will result in the fulfillment of God's promise, in the establishment of God's kingdom. God expects us to be at work at building the kingdom. That begins with our inner search for the presence of God. It begins with our own study. It begins with our life of prayer. But it calls us to reach out with the message of hope to others.

These are anxious times in the Church. We live in a post-Christian era when our Christian worldview is definitely a minority one. We see the eroding of our faith. We see churches in decline. It is a time to be alert, to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives. It is a time of expectancy, of hopefulness, as we look to God for guidance in our spiritual lives.

These are anxious times for the people of this parish as you face change. It is not easy to open yourselves up to the work that needs to be done both to the structure of the building, but more importantly to discerning what your mission is to be as you move into the future with new leadership. How do you find the right person to help you move forward?

How do we continue to experience Jesus’ coming in the events that are unfolding around us? These are anxious times in the world. They are times of economic turmoil. They are also times when we recognize that terrible, violent things can happen. At a time of real questioning and soul searching, we are called to offer reassurance and hope. We are called to look to God, the potter, who will never forsake us but will continue to shape and mold us until we are all we are meant to be. How do we continue to experience Jesus’ coming in the busyness of the season? We are called to prepare ourselves spiritually through prayer and study of God’s word. We are called to bring others into the presence of God. We are called to be. Let us be alert, always waiting, always watching, always expectant. Amen