Sermon - 1st Sunday of Advent - Year B

Mark 13:24-37

                                                            Keep Awake 

I do have the capacity to perform a digital search of how many sermons preached in this pandemic have had the same beginning.  To say that this is an Advent like none other we have ever experienced is both redundant and obvious.  As was true of half of our Lenten pilgrimage, our truncated Easter celebrations, and our pitiful attempts at Reformation and All Saints – Advent and Christmas are looking too much like more-of-the-same and not enough like the observances we remember from years and decades past. 

The discussion regarding adjustments to our gathering policy began when it looked as if the daily case count in South Carolina might reach 1,000.  We haven’t been below 1,000 cases a day for weeks.  And even when the numbers are lower across the state, the percentage of those cases occurring in our area has increased. 

This Advent and Christmas will be like none we have ever encountered.  Absent will be many of those activities which year after year have given structure and regularity to our lives.  Jesus’ words to “Keep awake!” ring hallow when the only reason to be awake is to see what I can find on Netflix.  

These are uncertain times.  These are challenging times.  These are the times which try men’s souls.  These are the times when mothers weep for their children. 

In such times, as in all times, there is the promise of God’s Anointed One.  Days such as those we currently endure may be perfect for us to finally hear readings like Mark 13 as the words of hope and promise and assurance which the writers of the Gospel intended them to be.  The promise of God’s Anointed One is that in the midst of a darkened sun and stars falling from the heavens the Son of Man com(es) in the clouds with great power and glory.  The promise of God’s Anointed One is that while many of the pleasures and entertainments enjoyed by those who are of this world will disappear, the angels will arrive to gather those whom God loves. 

Keep awake! is no longer a necessity but the very opportunity to be aware of the thing which God is about to accomplish. 

What is it, that God is about to accomplish?  In our lives and in the days which we now endure? 

As is true for all good questions, solid answers can be difficult to find.  It would be wrong for me or anyone to claim to know what will come of all of this, or what God will do.  This is not a timidity about being incorrect or later being proven a fool (or worse a charlatan.)  To know what God is about to accomplish misses the significance of the Advent season.  To begin to piece together our own vision for the future is as unadvisable as falling into a long and disinterested sleep. 

It is not for us to be able to anticipate where all this is leading us, and it is no badge of honor to be the one who can predict the outcomes.  The Word of the Lord instructs us simply to be awake and be ready and observant.  The words of Jesus tell us to go about our tasks, as slaves left with our chores as the master departs for a journey.  It is not our place to determine what will happen; it is our joy to do the things which were left to our hands to accomplish. 

Living with such uncertainty is very difficult for us.  Humans in general revolt at the suggestion that we can’t determine our own future.  Residents of our culture and country are even less inclined to accept limitations to our right of self-determination.  We have scrapped and scratched our way toward the top of the ladder in order to avoid being caught up in the mire and the muck of uncontrollable circumstances.  It is abhorrent that anyone would even propose limitations and restrictions.  I do think this is one of the reasons why Christian faith is so difficult for us.  Christian faith requires that we accept and acknowledge that the things we MOST want to control are out of our hands. 

Whatever it is that God is doing – it will be God’s doing, and not our own.  It may not even look like something we recognize as God’s doing and it might disrupt or destroy many of aspects of a way of life preferred by us - but not in keeping with the instructions of that homeless, itinerant street-preacher from Nazareth. 

This Advent is like none other we have ever experienced.  I do hope we will never have another Advent like this one.  But this is the Advent we have. 

Maybe, just maybe, this Advent will help us learn what the gospel writers most wanted to communicate:  Keep awake!  Be on alert!  Do not become distracted by the structures and practices which you have considered so important.  Open your eyes and your lives to the thing which God is doing. 

We know, and we sometimes shake our heads in disgust, that many who had the opportunity to see Jesus in the flesh took a pass.  It is a matter of public record, that even after Jesus’ resurrection, his words and his promise were rejected.  More than simply rejected, they were seen as dangerous and in need of being silenced.  

What is the guilt of those whom we look upon with such disgust?  Is their guilt not summed up in an inability or an unwillingness to become woke?  They had the opportunity to hear this thing which God was doing, but they chose to remain in step with the ways of their culture and in keeping with the more popular interpretations of crowd-pleasing teachers and religious leaders.  Jesus isn’t threatening them; he is warning them of “those days” and “that suffering” which inevitably follow the abandonment of the words (which) will not pass away. 

Advent is an invitation to look around us and to ask where the world does not reflect the way of our Lord and Savior.  Advent is the opportunity to shake ourselves from our laziness and be prepared to join in the celebration of how God sees the world.  This Advent, in the year 2020, may be our best chance to open ourselves and our lives to what it is that God wants Christmas to be. 

This is going to mean change.  And it will require the expulsion of many socially desirable sacred cows.  It will take diligence and dedication.  It would be so much easier to curl up on the couch and take a nap. 

“What I say to you I say to all:  Keep awake!” 

Amen.