Hope: Where Advent Begins

Matthew 24:36-44

November 27, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

The Thanksgiving dishes are cleaned and put away.  The relatives are on their way home.  The madness of "Black Friday" and 27 shopping days left ‘til Christmas surrounds us.  We sing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and it is if we can take a breath; all is right with the world.

And then we get this scary scripture verse for the first Sunday of Advent?!  

...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. 

When do we get to hear about Mary and Joseph, mangers and Magi? 

If we jumped to the gospel of Luke’s “the heavenly chorus singing to shepherds watching their flocks by night" we'd miss the point of Advent.  It is not Christmas yet…but it is coming.  

The people of Israel waited a thousand years for the Messiah to come who would restore their nation.  They would wait during the darkness of war and slavery.  They would wait in poverty and oppression.  They would watch their leaders, priest and politicians, betray every promise God had made for them.  Each generation had to prepare themselves with wild and bewildering hope against all odds for their faith to survive. 

Remember that while Jesus was on earth those closest to him, and the entire religious institution of his day, could not recognize who he really was as the Son of God.   Most were expecting a warrior Messiah to drive the Roman occupiers out of the Holy Land.  They were expecting a royal Messiah to restore justice and righteousness and care for the widow and the orphan. 

They got a Messiah, alright, born as a baby in a barn, to unwed parents, about to become political refugees.   A Messiah whose power would be unleashed by his death on a cross.

Only a few during his time on earth had eyes to see who Jesus really was beyond the expectations of their day.   Elizabeth and her wild-eyed son John the Baptizer did (Luke 1:39-45) along with Simeon and Anna, two faithful elders in the Temple (Luke 2:33-38).   Blind beggars would call out his true name (Matthew 9:27-31), but most...even his closest friends…wouldn't recognize who Jesus was until he died for them.  

And so, on the first Sunday of Advent the tradition is to hear the scary, puzzling language of apocalyptic; that radical hope in God's promised future for a better world...for a better you and me.   It's poetic and disturbing language calls us to "wake up", to pay attention, to stay awake for the future will unfold on God's terms not ours. 

In her book Through the Advent Door: Entering a Contemplative Christmas (Richardson, 2011) United Methodist minister Jan Richardson writes of these passages: 

Advent beckons us beyond the certainties that may not serve us, those sureties we have relied on that may have no substance to them at all.  Advent is a season to look at what we have fashioned our lives around...beliefs, habits, convictions, prejudices...and to see whether these leave any room for the Christ who is fond of slipping into our lives in guises we may not readily recognize. 

Bonnie and I weren’t expecting to become pregnant while working with the Methodist Church in Kenya, East Africa back in 1977.   We had been married five years.  We were living in a challenging environment.  In spite of our precautions she became pregnant indeed.   We were living on the north side of Mt. Kenya, in a town called Meru, right on the equator about 200 miles north of the capital city Nairobi.  It took 3-4 days of pain and fear, doctors and rural hospitals to figure it all out.  In desperation we traded our long-wheel based Land Rover for a colleague’s VW bug and headed south to Nairobi to a hospital and a miscarriage.   After the crisis and a surgical procedure was over the doctor told us that if we wanted to have a child, now would be a good time to try. 

That wasn’t in the plans.  We were both in graduate school and had lots more to do.  But the experience of the loss and surprise started something in us that yearned to be fulfilled.  And so we “shook hands” and nine months later our son Daniel was born at Loma Linda Hospital in Southern California.  We were on food stamps, Medi-Cal, living in a converted garage in a Christian Commune…a crazy time to have a baby…against all expectations it was the perfect time for us to have a baby.  That baby today is 38 years old, healthy and happy, engaged to a beautiful and successful young woman.  They are building an exciting life together.   

In those scary days back in Meru, Kenya, it was hard to see where God was in the midst of the crisis.   Looking back it could be easy to see God in a successful birth, a dream come true.  Such a blessing when life gives you a happy ending. 

But the point of Advent isn’t whether we get what we want or not, as if God is the dispenser of fate.  Rather, Advent waiting calls us to open our eyes and hearts to the God present and active even when outcomes are cloudy, even when the ending isn’t happy, even when things don’t turn out the way we planned. 

Maybe we are facing health concerns for ourselves or those we love that have significant consequences.  Maybe our finances are in chaos and we are not sure how to pay the bills.   Maybe we remain in the doldrums of an election cycle that has left many of us dazed and confused.     

Sometimes in life all we have to hang on to is a wild and reckless hope. 

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness…

 What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.   If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.  If we remember those times and places, and there are so many, where people behaved magnificently, this gives the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

 And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.   The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

            (Howard Zinn, Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/24/94)

Waiting for a better future during the Dark Ages of chaos and violence, the monastic movement kept the faith alive as they copied the Bible by hand, built libraries of theology and devotionals and served the poor of their communities. 

During World War II, Muslims in North Africa, the Balkans and Europe rescued thousands of Jews from Hitler’s holocaust as an expression of their faith in a better future (Norman H. Gershman, BESA: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II, Syracuse University Press, 2008). 

It might be as simple as bringing clean socks for the homeless men in Salinas, or volunteering to package meals for those in disaster areas with Stop Hunger Now.   Maybe it’s a simple prayer for a stranger.  Maybe it’s turning off the news for a while and letting our hearts and minds calm down as we decorate the Christmas tree. 

Advent begins in the wild, bewildering journey of hope for a better world...hope for a better you and me.  And even in the smallest way, that is something we can act on.   

It isn’t Christmas yet but it is coming.  Amen.