First Sunday in Advent:
November 27, 2011
Mark 13:24-37
Preacher: Pastor Carrie B. Smith
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I can’t wait!
How many more minutes?
I’m bored!
When are we going to get there?
Such were the comments from the backseat of the car when I was a little girl as we drove “over the river and through the woods” to my grandparents’ home in northwest Iowa. It wasn’t a very long drive—two or three hours—but as a child, it seemed like an eternity. It didn’t help that my little brother and the cocker spaniel were also in the backseat, surrounded often by piles of presents and coolers of food. There were always arguments about whose side the dog would sit on, who had more legroom, who got to choose the radio station, and my parents’ favorite: “Mooooom....tell him to stop looking at me!”
Waiting is hard.
Anticipating the arrival at Grandma’s house was agonizing. It seemed we would never get there.
And yet, we always knew we would get there eventually—and we knew the signs that we were getting close.
On the way to my grandma’s house, there were four towns in a row whose names started with the letter “D”, and we became ever more excited as we counted them down: Dow City, Dunlap, Denison, Deloit. And then, after we passed that fourth “D”, we were in the homestretch. Only a little bit of farmland lay between us and our destination! Soon we came to the last three hills: one…two…three…and when we reached the top of the third hill, we could see it lying there below us: Kiron, Iowa, population 300. There was my grandpa’s store, Nelson Hardware! And in the center of town, across from Bethel Lutheran Church, was my grandma’s house. Paradise!
Waiting…is hard.
Today, as we enter the season of Advent, we begin awaiting with joyful anticipation the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, son of God, the Messiah, the one the world had been longing to see. All around us are signs that we’re getting closer: lights on our neighbor’s houses, holiday music on the radio, and of course the Advent wreath here at church with the first candle now lit. At home, you may have an Advent calendar to help you wait. (My favorites are the ones with little chocolates behind each window!) Yes, waiting is hard…but the waiting we do in Advent is made easier and more joyful by these familiar ways of marking time.
And perhaps the more important point is this: The waiting of Advent is joyful because we know, without a doubt, we will get to our destination. We know the baby Jesus will be born, the angels will sing, the shepherds will see the star, and the kings will arrive—and we know exactly when! Christmas is coming exactly four Sundays from now. These four Sundays of Advent remind me of those four towns starting with the letter “D” on the way to my grandmother’s house. Those towns appeared on the map every single time we drove to Grandma’s, and in the same way these four Sundays of Advent are trustworthy landmarks, guiding us on the journey toward Christmas. We wait with joy and confidence for the Christ child to be born again in our hearts! Amen!
But our Gospel text for today speaks of a different kind of waiting. In Mark chapter 13, we experience a vision not of Jesus’ birth, but of his second coming. Jesus describes how everything will be different on that day: the sun and moon will be dark, the stars will be falling from the sky, and the very powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then we will see him: Jesus, the Son of Man, coming in clouds with great power and glory, and his angels gathering the elect from the far reaches of both heaven and earth.
It will be a day of judgment, a day when all things will be set right, a day when everything will finally make sense. It’s a day worth waiting for.
And naturally, the next question is: “When? When will this happen?” The disciples had asked this exact question at the beginning of the chapter. Mark chapter 13 begins like this: “When Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?’”
And Jesus answers by way of painting pictures of wars and rumors of wars; of nations rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom; of famine and persecution, of families torn apart and false messiahs. These are the signs that he is about to come. And then we hear the words we least want to hear: “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
In other words: No one—apart from God—knows when Jesus will come again.
Christmas comes, unfailingly, at the same time every year...but we don't know when Jesus will come again. There’s a reason we hear this particular Gospel text on the first Sunday of Advent—it reminds us that we are also waiting for the second coming of Christ. The disciples were certain it would happen in their lifetime. Countless Christians have watched for signs. TV evangelists comb the newspaper headlines and decode the Bible for a sense of when, exactly, Jesus will come again. But for more than two thousand years, we have been living in Advent. We wait, and we wait, and we wait.
And waiting….is hard.
Indeed, this is a different kind of waiting. There is no wreath with candles to light for the second coming. There is no calendar with little chocolates behind each window (though that would be an impressive amount of chocolate, now wouldn’t it?) Waiting for the second coming…which doesn’t seem to be coming…is a test of faith and endurance and patience.
Jesus doesn’t tell us how to make the wait any easier. But he does tell the disciples to “Keep awake”.
“Beware, keep alert” he said, “for you do not know when the time will come.”
I have a friend who knows what it means to wait—and also what it means to stay awake and alert. She and her husband were married sixteen years ago, the same year I married my husband. But in these sixteen years, while we were having babies and raising our family, Dawn and her husband were waiting. The pregnancies never happened.
And so they chose to adopt, and they threw themselves joyfully and whole-heartedly into the adoption process. Dawn joined an online adoption support community, ministering to others who were waiting. One by one, these families brought their babies home. And still, Dawn and her husband waited.
They waited, and not without a fair amount of discouragement. One country ended their adoption program. A new job forced them to stop the process for awhile. But still, Dawn and her husband stayed awake. They were ready at any moment for their baby to arrive—and kept a room in their home ready for that very purpose. In spite of many discouragements, they waited with hope for the day when that nursery would be filled with life.
And that day came, one month ago. The day before Halloween, they received a phone call that a baby was being born that night, and they had been chosen to be the parents. Sixteen years of waiting, sixteen years of being awake and ready, and it all came down to that one night, when a little baby was born.
His name is Isaac, and this Christmas he will be filling that nursery with sounds of joy for Dawn and her husband.
Waiting...is hard. Keeping alert—and hopeful—in spite of many years of darkness is even harder.
But we have heard the Good News: that even though heaven and earth pass away, the words of Jesus will not pass away. The word of God stands forever! Amen!
The words of Jesus will not pass away, thanks be to God! And so we can stand firm on his word, trusting in the one who said, “Behold, I am coming soon!’ and especially “Lo, I will be with you always, to the end of the age.”
And so we Christians wait in joyful anticipation for Jesus to come again. And while we wait, we keep awake and alert! Like house-sitters, hired to care for the house while the master is away, we go about God’s business in the world until Jesus comes again. We care for God’s children at Head start and the Bethany preschool. We feed God’s family at PADS and at the food pantry. We care for God’s house—not just this house of worship, but all of creation!
Chiefly, we stay awake, waiting in anticipation of the day we know is coming, the day when the master will return and make things right. Like children with noses pressed against icy windows, waiting for the grandparents to arrive, we wait for headlights to round the corner, filling the dark night with light. Like hopeful parents-to-be, we keep a room ready for the day when the long-awaited child will arrive.
This Advent season, may you wait in hope and with joyful anticipation, not only for Christmas, but for Jesus, the light of the world, to come again into our dark world. Amen.
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