We all know that Advent is a time of waiting, watching, hoping, and praying.
And this year I am willing to wager that every preacher will somehow say during the course of the season that what we are waiting for this Christmas is not that one special present, a big red or blue GMAC truck, or a diamond, or an expensive watch, or anything else purely personal what we are waiting for is a vaccine. Whether it has to be kept at 90 below zero, or in a common refrigerator, or even in cardboard box in a cupboard what we want is the shot-in the-arm or shot anyplace else for that matter that will help us get our lives back to normal.
We want to have holiday dinners once again with family and friends.
No matter how nicely we set the table, no matter how well the meal was prepared, it got more than a little lonely for most of us last Thursday as we looked at the same one or two faces around the table that we have seen every night since March.
We want to break out of our little safety cacoons and fly and not just metaphorically but really fly, like on an aeroplane. We want to be able to think about going on a vacation without having to worry about the positivity results for the places we’re going.
If you’re like me you have a stack of mailings from cruise lines and travel agencies that are sometimes mindlessly sifted through with the thought, “Someday...someday.”
This year has been a year of waiting, and watching, and hoping, and praying. Are we doing all those things just for a vaccine or are we hoping for something more – not just a normal, or a new normal, but a newer and better normal.
For one of the disciple a sign of normalcy was the temple because of its seemingly stability. The disciple thought it would be something that would last forever.
The temple, however, was essentially a public works project built by Herod a person who exhibited no north star of faith but whose god was only raw political power. Herod’s interest was in rescuing at least part of his otherwise despicable reputation by building great structures and slapping his name on them. The Temple being admired was built not because Herod was faithful to anyone but himself but because he wanted to make Jerusalem the number one tourist destination of its time. He knew that it would draw thousands upon thousands of tourists whose visits would be good for the economy and that he would get, or take, the credit.
When they admiring it was less than twenty-five years old and looking good as it shone in the midday son.
Jesus throws a wet blanket over the moment of architectural appreciation when he says: “You see these great buildings? Not a single stone will be left standing on another; every one will be thrown down!”1 Think of the audacity of such a prediction.
It would have been like someone saying to us last Advent as we decorated this beautiful place; as we brought creches from home; as we hosted friends, neighbours, and a menagerie of animals at our live nativity – “You do realize that next year this place will be empty. You won’t be able to gather. You won’t be singing hymns. On most Sunday there won’t be anybody here.” We wouldn’t have believed them. We would have thought they were, if not crazy, at least they had been smoking something.
But that is where we are and it is like our universe has come crashing down around us. The sun, moon, and stars are still in their places but few other things seem to be as they once were leaving us only to wait, and watch, and hope, and pray for a breakthrough that will bring us a better day, a better tomorrow.
If we look very carefully amid the misplaced devotion to buildings and the mayhem in today’s text we will find what we have been hoping for.
Amid his gloom and doom predictions Jesus wedges in a promise: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”2
Isn’t that exactly what we have been clinging to during this year. Gathered for a few short weeks in church or gathered for more than a few long months at our computers we have longed to hear a word of hope in all this.
We long to hear that the human family is not doomed to destruction and loss. We long to hear that violence and hatred will not have the last word. We pray that we will not always be separated from each other by masks or any other reason. We hope that we will not always be the subjects of the whims and whimsies of the powers that want to rule our world.
We wait, and watch, and hope, and pray for a power that is above all that. We wait, and watch, and hope, and pray for a power that is so powerful that it can reveal itself fully in the birth a baby who became a man and gave us an entirely different idea of what a new world would be like.
Long ago I remember hearing the master preacher and storyteller, Dr. Fred B. Craddock remind us in a sermon:
Before Jesus the people used to tell stories about when the Messiah came and like we would begin our stories with “once upon a time” their’s would begin with the words, “when the messiah comes.”
To the beggar sitting on the side of the road they might pat the poor fellow on the back and say, “When the Messiah comes there will be no more poverty.”
To the battered individual, broken and bruised, they might say, “When the Messiah comes, no more violence.”
To the marginalized and outcast they might say, “When the Messiah comes, you’ll be included.”
In our day they might say to the ones who faced an empty chair at their Thanksgiving table this year because of either sickness, fear of illness, or worse yet, death: “When the Messiah comes, no more misery”
And then, I remember Dr. Croddock saying, the Messiah came and their still was violence, and poverty, and exclusion, and misery.
It was then, he pointed out, that the disciples had to do what he called, “a magnificent flip-flop” where they realized that wherever there was misery of any kind, any kind of misery at all, there was the Messiah.
This Advent let us remember that God’s relentless love is still at work in the world even amid our anxieties and weariness. In these days let us remember that even in the midst of pandemics, and injustice, and division, and violence that God’s power is at work in the here and now and our only task is to see the Messiah at work in all the places we have been waiting, and watching, and hoping and praying.
The Messiah, Jesus Christ our Lord, is here in the midst of all the this with his promise that his word of hope will never pass away and that in him all that we had ever hoped, and watched, and waited, and prayed for will be fulfilled. Jesus Christ our Lord who is present through it all. Amen.
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1. St. Mark 13:2. (PHILLIPS) (PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (New York: Simon Schuster, 1995).
2. St. Mark 13:31. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]
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