The Three W’s of Advent
Wake up! Watch! Wait! It comes as a surprise each year to
remember just what Advent anticipates. It is not the birth of a Christ child.
It is not the coming of Christmas. It is not even about how to prepare for
Christmas. It is much larger than all of this. It is about the primary Hope of
Faith: Christ will come again! Or, what some call his Second Coming. For many
of us, it feels embarrassing to admit it. But his coming again is to initiate,
support, and stabilize a world of God’s Shalom, true justice and peace for all
people.
Christmas has been so secularized, removed from its rightful
place in God’s Salvation History. It is now mostly about how much can we
purchase in the weeks leading up to Christ’s feast of the Incarnation – God come
down to dwell among us – literally, as the text really says, God came down to tent
among us. Which is important to remember, for tents provide shelter, but it
is impermanent shelter. It is portable shelter. Tents do not rely on owning a
plot of land – a piece of this fragile Earth our island home in an otherwise
hostile universe. We are urged, beginning now way before Black Friday, to set a
new national record of sales – sales that often are necessary to secure the
businesses that sell to us for another year of selling even more stuff.
It is in this world of secularized Christmas that Jesus
urges us to Wake Up! Wake up and Stay Awake! In the 24th chapter of
Matthew, the disciples marvel at the updates, improvements and redecorating
King Herod has done to the Jerusalem Temple. The Temple that had already been destroyed
and rebuilt twice. Jesus can see what’s really going on. The Romans had taken
control of the Temple and those who were in charge of the sacrifices and
collecting the tithes. Despite Herod’s efforts, it is already falling apart,
and will soon be destroyed again. And that’s only symbolic of the
disintegration of society and its institutions. The Temple which represented
the stability of the nation was now surrounded outside the city gates by Roman
crosses with the remains of those who dared to resist the Empire; those who tried
desperately to hold on to the old traditions and institutions of stability.
Don’t be fooled, says Jesus. Wake up and see what’s going
on. Despite the things that are falling apart, the old norms that are being
replaced by deadly, life-taking practices, watch and notice instead where God even
now is doing justice and peace and well-being. Wherever and whenever that
happens, God’s promises are on the move toward newness. This is what the church
in Advent is to Wake Up and Watch for with eagerness and joy, and to pitch in
wherever and whenever we can as we Wait for the Christ to return.
That is the promise, as of old. In the midst of the violence
of the Empire, of military interventions, sweeping the streets for those who do
not comply with the Emperor’s demands, with crucifixions on the side of all
roads that lead to Jerusalem, the Poet-Prophet Isaish declares God’s promises: “He
shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their
spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither
shall they learn war anymore.” [Isaiah 2:1-5] As we wait for Christ’s
return, we are to lean into any and all opportunities and actions which will
lead to such lasting and real peace, not
the so-called Pax Romana, or Pax Americana`, but the Peace of the Lord which passes
and is beyond all human understanding, but nevertheless, is more real than the
machinations of an Empire based on greed and human consumption.
Of course, Jesus’s companions, and let’s face it so do we
today, want to know when the Christ will return? Again, Jesus counsels, Do not
be fooled. Many will come, pseudo-messiahs, pseudo-prophets, and they will try
to lead you astray from the life of my Father’s kingdom, his Shalom for all the
world. Of that day and time, no one knows. Not angels. Not people. Not even the
Son, Only the Father knows for sure. It will be like the days of Noah when
everyone was eating and drinking and marrying, not watching, no longer seeking
God’s justice, God’s peace, Gods’ Shalom, and just like that they were swept
away by the flood. Stay awake, Watch as you Wait, for you do not know in what
hour of what day he will come.
Or, like the oiko-despot, the house despot who, if he
knew when the thief would come would have stayed awake; he would not have
allowed his house to be broken into! Stay awake! Be prepared! Do not presume to
know the day and the hour the Son of Man will arrive. As you wait, participate
in the promise that lies ahead; the promise of justice and peace and forgiveness
and love abounding. It won’t be what we say. It won’t be what we believe. It will
be what we do as active participants in God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness for
all people.
So it was that Paul wrote to the sisters and brothers in
Christ living in the very heart of darkness; living in Rome, home-base for the
Empire: You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake
from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers;
the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of
darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day,
not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in
quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no
provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires [Romans 13:11-14]
Wake up. Stay awake, Watch, and Wait. Watch for where God is
already at work for justice and peace. And actively Wait while leaning into the
Lord’s intention of justice and peace for all people, while respecting the
dignity of every human being. Do not be drawn into the Empire’s works of
darkness, denigrating and dividing people against one another. Put on the armor
of light, the light of Christ, which no darkness has nor can overcome! Christ
is the morning star that knows no setting! May God the Father, his Son Jesus the
Christ, and the Holy Spirit lead us into a Holy Advent looking forward, not
backwards, into a future in which we truly study war no more!
Two footnotes: 1) The fact that even Jesus and the angels
are not privy to the time of the Second Advent provides a sharp warning against
speculation and an overeagerness to read the signs of the times. In fact, any
claim to special insight about the future merely exposes human arrogance and
pretense. And 2) Readers of these texts are reminded that they live not as
speculators
guessing about the future, nor as prospectors hunting for gold
nuggets, but as those to whom a promise has been given. It may (and in
fact the text says that it will) come as a surprise, something one cannot
calculate. Nevertheless, those of us who have received the promise are bound to
the future. We are oriented toward the outstanding fulfillment, and thus we are
to always Wake up, Watch, and Wait for that day to come, knowing that our waiting
is to be actively engaged in God’s intention of Justice and Peace for all
people; not some people, not most people, not just a few people, but all
people, everywhere, now and forever. Amen.
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