How to Make Sure You Don’t Get Caught Napping During This Advent Season

Sermon delivered on the third Sunday of Advent, December 11, 2011, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5.16-24; John 1.6-8, 19-28.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, and we have lighted the pink candle on our wreath that represents John the Baptist, whom our Gospel lesson features this morning. Gaudete is a Latin term that means rejoice and it serves to remind us that even in this season of Advent with its somber reflection of the Four Last Things—death, judgment, heaven, and hell—and its mood of expectation and anticipation, we as Christians have good reason to rejoice in the Lord always. Thus the color of the candle changes from purple to pink indicating a shift from penitence to celebration as we get ready to celebrate the great Christmas feast.

Over the past few weeks we have talked about the need for us as Christians to be awake and alert as we anticipate and watch for our Lord’s Second Advent or coming. We saw last week that it will not be a good day for the human race in general but that we as Christians have real hope as we await Christ’s return, not because we are better than others but because we really have Good News. In other words, our faith is rooted in God’s active intervention in his world on our behalf in the person of Jesus and in God’s sovereign control of our history. The Gospel is not a figment of human imagination. It is an account and interpretation of actual historical events and the ongoing dealings of God and his people, and we are to use our minds to learn about and reflect on how God is dealing with the evil and sin that bedevils his world.

But how are we to remain watchful when we are so easily distracted as a people? What can we do to ensure that we are open to the Spirit’s Presence in our lives so that we are ready to meet our Lord should he return in our lifetime? Why should we not fear the judgment that will accompany his Second Coming and what are we to be doing in the meantime? Today’s readings give us plenty of guidance on these subjects and this morning I want to look briefly at what they say so that we really can have a solid basis in which to hope and rejoice.

As we listened to the classic Messianic passage from Isaiah in today’s OT lesson, we can immediately relate to the human condition it addresses, can’t we? Every one of us knows what it is like to mourn or be in despair. We all know what it is like to experience ugliness in its various forms. We’ve all wandered in emotional and spiritual deserts from time to time and we long for the day when all the wrongs of the world will be put to right.

But we wonder how that’s going to come about. We wonder this, in part, because many of us have succumbed, knowingly or not, to the influence of rationalist thinking of the past 200 years or so that argues that God created the world, set it in motion, and then retired to heaven to watch how it all plays out. This thinking is called deism and we even see it reflected in some misguided Christian theology that focuses on a privatized spirituality in which the main prize is going to heaven. The deist god is remote, distant, and frankly inadequate because he either cannot or will not get actively involved in the affairs and lives of his world and its creatures.

We see this kind of thinking reflected in the anxious and existential questions we all ask: Where is God? Why doesn’t God act to fix his broken world? Why does God allow unspeakable evil [name your favorite evil here] to exist? All these questions can betray a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) lack of trust in God and his ability to rescue his world and us from all that confronts us. This is a problem for us as Christians because if this thinking really does reflect who God is, then frankly it is a waste of our time to try and worship this kind of god. After all, who wants to give his or her ultimate love and loyalty to a god who is far removed from our daily lives with our attendant needs, hopes, dreams, and fears? I mean, really. Is this a kind of god that excites and invites you to worship, love, and adore? Me neither.

Thankfully, however, this is not the God of the Bible, in either the OT or NT. But if we do not take the time and use our minds to understand and make for our own the biblical story of God’s rescue plan for his broken and hurting world and people, we will never have a legitimate reason to rejoice in the Lord always as Paul writes in today’s epistle lesson. In other words, we will always likely have a god who disappoints because we have failed to understand how he interacts with his world and plans to deal with sin and evil.

As we saw last week, God has had a plan from all eternity to rescue us from our sin and the evil that has resulted from it. The narrative of the OT tells us that that plan included God calling out his people Israel to help bring God’s light to the nations and redeem sinful humanity so that we would once again bear God’s image in the way he created us to reflect it. But Israel itself became part of the problem because God’s people were every bit as broken as the people they were called to help redeem. So God promised his people Israel that he would come among them in the person of his Messiah, God’s specially anointed king and ruler, to right the wrongs of both the world and of God’s people themselves. We see this hope and anticipation represented clearly in today’s lesson from Isaiah. While the person is never explicitly named as God’s Messiah, the context of the passage surely suggests that he is the same person as God’s servant identified in the four servant songs of Isaiah 42-53.

In the NT, we see in the four Gospels how Jesus fulfilled this role as God’s anointed one, the Messiah (or Christ). We see Jesus freeing folks from their various forms of captivity, healing the sick, raising the dead, and proclaiming the Good News of God’s coming reign on earth as it is in heaven. In fact, Matthew reports that Jesus referred specifically to today’s passage when answering John the Baptist’s inquiries about him (cf. Matthew 11.1-6). And of course Jesus applied today’s passage to himself at Nazareth to indicate that he was indeed God’s chosen Messiah, a declaration that almost got him killed (cf. Luke 4.14-30). Despite this negative reaction from Jesus’ hometown folks, a careful overall reading of the Gospel narratives shows us that here is God at work among his people in the person of Jesus, beginning to put to right all the wrongs that bedevil them, with Jesus’ kingdom work being fulfilled ultimately in his death and resurrection.

As Paul reminds us in several of his letters, we find healing, peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God in the death of Jesus (cf. Romans 5.10, 8.1-4;  Ephesians 1.7; Colossians 1.20, 22). And as both the Gospels and the other NT writers remind us, in Jesus’ resurrection God has launched the promised New Creation in which God deals decisively with the seemingly intractable problems of evil, sin, and death and gives us a preview of coming attractions of the New Creation when it is fully realized at Jesus’ Second Coming. This is a way too brief survey of the biblical account of God’s rescue plan for his fallen world and creatures. There is much more to it—I’ve left out all mention of the outpouring and working of the Holy Spirit, for example—but I hope you get the main idea. Is that the story you know from the Bible?

Whether it is or not, this is certainly not the story about an absent God who creates his world and then retires from it. No, this is the story about the creator God who is actively involved in his world to put to right all its ancient wrongs that human sin has brought about. We can have real hope and good reason to rejoice because of this. It means God has not abandoned us. Neither is he uncaring or absent. God is present in the person of his Holy Spirit, in Christ’s body, the Church, and most importantly in and through the work of Jesus himself. We have a record of this in the Bible and we are invited to examine that record and use our minds, both individually and collectively as the Church, to decide if it is true and whether we can believe it. Of course we have the help and power of the Spirit living in and among us to help us in this work. But once we have decided that what the Bible says about God’s rescue plan is true, we really do have the basis not only to have hope at Jesus’ Second Coming but to anticipate it eagerly. We have this hope not because we as Christians are “special people” and others are not. We have this hope because we have believed God’s promises to save and redeem both his creation and us, a promise that reached its fulfillment in the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, God become human, and which will be consummated in Jesus’ Second Coming.

So what are we to do in the interim? How can we keep alert and watchful for the return of our Lord in the midst of all our distractions? Paul tells us in the concise little list found in our epistle lesson this morning. Given that we live in such an individualistic society, there is a natural tendency for us to assume Paul is talking about what we are to do as individuals. But if we look at the larger context in which we find Paul’s teaching in today’s lesson, we realize that he is addressing not us as individuals but as Christ’s body, the Church (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4.13-5.15).

When we come together each week, we are to rejoice always in the Lord. Paul does not refer to Jesus but he must clearly have Jesus in mind because happiness is based on our circumstances and is tenuous at best. It offers us no reason to rejoice always. On the other hand, we can always rejoice in Christ because he does not change and we know we have found peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God through Christ’s blood shed for us. We also know that heaven and earth have finally come together in the person and resurrection of Jesus and so we live in its hope, if not yet its full realization. There is good reason to rejoice in that because it means we aren’t dealing with a distant and detached god, and we are to remind each other of these great promises each week in our worship through word and sacrament.

Second, we are to pray continually. Our prayers matter because it is God’s will for us to pray. If we really believe God is God of this universe and actively involved in our lives, it would be rather foolish of us not to pray as God wills for us. Praying allows us to draw close to God, to wrestle with God, and to be reminded God is near us, cares about us, and is actively involved in our lives. This is a distinctly different reason for praying than to do so because we hope God will fulfill our wish list. This is also why we spend time in our intercessions each week. When we pray for each other we demonstrate that we really do love each other in the manner Christ commands us.

Third, we are to give thanks in all circumstances (not for all circumstances, but in all). We give thanks in all circumstances because we know that God has overcome sin, evil, and death for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus and that our suffering produces the kind of Christian character that will equip us to live in the New Creation when it is fully realized at Christ’s Second Coming. God doesn’t send evil our way but God can use evil to help us grow in the Spirit (cf. Romans 5.1-5). That is why we can give thanks together in all circumstances, good and bad.

Fourth, we are to do and avoid things that will quench the Spirit living in us because as Paul tells us, it is through the power of the Spirit that we grow to become like Christ and are equipped with the character that will help us thrive in the New Creation when it is fully realized. Moreover, if we do the things that quench the Spirit, we will not have reason to hope on the day of Christ’s Second Advent. So we avoid all kinds of evil things and spend regular time reading and wrestling with God’s word in Scripture, both individually and together. If we do not do this, we will always be susceptible to the false teaching that God is a distant and remote God, among others. In fact, our faith and hope will be directly proportionate to the amount of time we spend learning and reflecting on Scripture, and if you do not believe this you are fooling yourself (or allowing the Evil One to fool you). The more time we spend with Scripture the less likely we will fall prey to goofy ideas and wrong thinking about God and his dealings with us and plans for us.

Last, since we live in the hope of New Creation that was launched at Jesus’ resurrection, we have work to do right here and now. Jesus’ resurrection reminds us in powerful ways that God does not intend to destroy his creation but to redeem it. That means we had better get busy and start showing our hope in Christ to others by bringing God’s great love in Christ to bear on them. We do this through humble service to others and by taking a cue from John the Baptist in today’s Gospel lesson. We serve in ways that will draw people’s attention away from us and focus it on Jesus because he is our only real hope. We cannot fix people or their problems but we sure can introduce them to the One who can—Jesus the Messiah, Jesus, who heals the sick, raises the dead, frees the prisoners, and brings us peace and reconciliation with God. In doing this, we will be also fulfilling our mission statement. We really will be showing others that we have been changed by God to make a difference for God. And when that happens, not only will we have reason to rejoice always because we have a real and living hope, we will also know what it looks like to live our life with meaning, purpose, and power. And that, folks, is Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.