November 28, 2004 (David Hyers)


Isaiah 2:1-5

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!

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Matthew 24:36-44

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

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WIDE AWAKE and hoping, I lie in my bunk bed, safe and warm, in my own fortress of quilts and pillows. It’s Christmas Eve, and I am ten years old. My favorite clock, an old mechanical digital clock, the kind with numbers that flip over at the changing of the minute, sits whirring on the night stand.

4:00 a.m. rolls over on the dial. My child’s mind asks, “Is it here yet?” Waiting, hoping, I know I must stay in bed.

4:30 a.m. Oh no, it’s still dark.

5:00 a.m. “Mom, Dad, is it time to play Christmas?” Only silence comes from Mom and Dad.

5:01 a.m. “Mom, Dad….” “No, son it’s still dark! Go back to bed.”

5:15 a.m. “Mom…Dad…” “David, if you get out of bed one more time, you will get your Christmas and good. Wait until 7:00!”

What seems to be an unending chasm of time stands before me. And so I wait and wait.

6:00 a.m. It’s still not here. How long? How long?

6:30 a.m. It’s almost here. I must stay awake.

The floor creeks. The smell of coffee drifts into my room.

7:00 a.m. Finally it’s here. Finally Christmas is here.

There is an energy in the morning air. This is my favorite time of the year. It’s better than Thanksgiving, better even than my birthday! I get to see my favorite aunts and uncles, and Jesus is born, and still I get the gifts! What more could I ask for?

There is something special about those early childhood memories. Certainly they are idealized, but that doesn’t really matter. There is for me a healthy desire to recapture that excitement, to reclaim awareness of this special time. There is a longing for the sacredness of such times that are set apart. Soon enough the golden childhood excitement of Christmas morning begins to change. The mysterious importance of Jesus’ arrival fades into a focus on the yearly haul of presents. This importance is overshadowed by questions of adolescents: Will I have a date to the Christmas formal? Did I remember Aunt Alice? Do I have to wear that!!!

While I have many wonderful memories, I must remember that for many, Christmas is not filled with lights and music but hunger and heartache. And for many Christmas never has the potential to be filled with light and music, never to be seen as special time. For all of us, life’s distractions, both joy filled and painful, pull us away from the mysterious new hope in Christ’s coming into the world.

Without trying to sound too baa humbug, it seems to me that even as we are putting away the Halloween pumpkins, the Christmas hype begins. The turkey isn’t even cold, and the stores bring out the Christmas trees and candy canes. The vestments at the temples of mass consumerism change seamlessly from Jack-o-lantern, to cornucopia, to Christmas tree. Earlier and earlier each year the litany of “spend, spend, spend” begins. And being the devout consumer that I am, I make my prompt offerings.

I am not trying to proselytize us into a “reason for the season” talk. Not everything about the consumer Christmas season is all bad. I long for the deeply safe smell of pine needles in the living room, the warm glow of Christmas tree lights on the windowsill, the taste of mulled cider, and the joy of other Christmas comforts. However, I have to say that I’m still not a big fan of egg nog, but I do remain open to new experiences! These are important sensory reminders of the love and care we share with one another, yet they are not an end into themselves.

There has been in my adulthood the potential for a feeling of detachment from this season, a numbness and an irony in response to noise of its hype. With each passing season the less I understand about Christmas, the fullness of God’s coming into our midst. Yet the cadence still comes calling out to me, and again I am drawn into the anticipation and excitement and the mystery of God’s incarnate love.

This week’s texts challenge us to see anew Christ’s coming into our midst and to question our assumptions about Christmas and about the orientation of our lives. As a thief in the night, these texts come to us. Christmas certainty is bobbled, bothered, shocked, and maybe even stolen, for the arrival of Jesus is unlike any other. It is the entrance of a king not of power and prestige but of venerability and humility. It is a kingdom heralded not with armies and parades but with shepherds and angels.

Isaiah paints for us a glimpse of God’s kingdom, God’s emerging reality. God’s kingdom is one based not on power, fear, and death but justice, love and mercy where the tools of death, weapons of mass destruction, are transformed into implements of mass creation, tools for life, not death. It is a vision of justice and mercy, absent of terror and violence. We are untaught the supremacy of our security in things, in redemptive violence, in cars and planes, tanks and treaties, the limited security of more and more of might makes right.

Isaiah’s vision is one of God-centered reality. The image of the God we see here is that of a teacher, sending God’s Word into the world. The image of God is that of a peacemaker, arbitrating between the nations, that of creator, redeemer, transformer, turning the very powers of death into instruments of life and growth. It is easy to forget this vision. For me it is never hard to be lulled by the security and the comfort that our culture and world would have us imagine to be the final word.

There is something satisfyingly concrete about buying and receiving gifts, watching football, eating way too much, and falling comfortably asleep. And perhaps this in and of itself is not so bad, yet this text from Matthew warns us of too much comfort, too much certainty in such things that they become an end in themselves. We are told to be ready, to watch, to wait. The advent of God’s kingdom is nearer than we can imagine, closer that me might realize. And even here, midst the signs Christ gives to us, there is even warning of taking too much comfort in our own predictions of the time and place of this advent. There is a warning about our own understanding of these signs we watch and wait for, for often in our watching and waiting we can begin to have too much faith in our own understanding, our own desires for well-defined answers.

Therefore, some readings of this text may tempt us to fall into the very trap Christ seems to be warning us of. In some readings of this text, we might be tempted to get warning stickers for our cars—“In case of rapture this car will be unmanned.” We might be tempted to read the newspaper looking for the hidden codes telling us the hour and minute of the kingdom’s coming. Jesus points beyond a time table of the apocalypse to a future, to a fullness of reality that is God’s. This is a future so full of God and so beyond our understanding that Christ only speaks of it in analogy, in mystery, in hope.

Yet still Christ urges us to be ready, to be watching, waiting in hope to go into the world fully awake with eyes open to the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, of God’s hope and grace into our lives and into a future that belongs to God. Christ’s words are filled with mystery, with unsettling images that push us and prod us. These words point to a kingdom, a reality that subverts our assumptions about power, a reality not of earthly power and might, but grace and peace,

It is my hope the texts do not serve as a hitchhiker’s guide to the apocalypse but that they redefine, re-orient our expectations of Advent, of Christmas, of our own faith, of our own lives. Christ cries out to us to be ready, to be watchful, to be living our lives as if the kingdom is almost here, to begin each day in the here and now living earthly lives that are oriented towards a future that is in God. For the signs of God’s reign are not to be found in apocalyptic time tables, or in promises of satisfaction in the new Ipods, or in the latest U2 album, or in Kris Kringle, or in Betty Crocker. They are not in planes and bombs, terror or power.

God’s reign is to be found in a small baby in the self- emptying love of God, who in the mystery of Christ and Christmas names us and claims us, calls us to be ready, uses us as we watch, as we wait, as we live lives seeking God’s reality to come and already in our midst. The self-emptying love of God asks us to lie awake, hoping and as a child saying, “Wake up! Wake up! Christmas is coming” and asking, “Is it here yet?” For the kingdom comes to us in unexpected ways.

And to that one who comes in the morning, who brings hope, who brings excitement, who brings new life in God’s fullness, to that one be all grace and glory. Alleluia Amen.

 

 


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