Advent Calendars
Commentary
For all the years that I have been a parent, I have taken pleasure in buying Advent calendars for our family. Most years, I have bought the simple, two-dimensional types, featuring some seasonal picture and twenty-five paper “windows” that can be opened, revealing perhaps other pictures, scripture verses, or song lyrics. I find Advent calendars so irresistible, in fact, that some years I have bought several!
The idea of an Advent calendar, of course, is to provide a tangible — perhaps fun, perhaps educational — means for counting down to Christmas. It’s not technically “Advent,” of course, inasmuch as it begins on December 1st rather than four Sundays before Christmas. But the spirit of countdown and anticipation is there nonetheless.
There are other types of Advent calendars. A few years ago, for example, I purchased a large, wooden one for our family. It features 25 small, wooden doors, each one accessing a small compartment. I fill each compartment with a verse of scripture from the Christmas story, a corresponding verse from a Christmas song, and some candies (making the Advent calendar a cherished tradition for our young children).
Meanwhile, our three assigned passages for this first week of Advent suggest a still different sort of Advent calendar. Rather than just the 25 days of December counting down to the celebration of Christmas, our lections point to an entirely different Advent season. It’s not about remembering Christ’s first coming, but looking forward to his second coming. This may not be the “season” that our people are feeling on this late November Sunday after Thanksgiving, but it is most certainly the season that we are in.
Awaiting the Lord’s return does not come with the sorts of beloved traditions that the weeks leading up to Christmas do. No one is decorating their homes with symbols of the eschaton. Dickensian carolers are not singing, “We wish you a merry parousia!” Indeed, this profound season of waiting goes mostly undetected by many American Christians, and naturally the rest of the culture around us is entirely oblivious to it. But here we are, nonetheless. And this Sunday gives us an opportunity to preach about the forgotten Advent season.
Isaiah 64:1-9
Our rich Old Testament text gives us the opportunity to go in several different directions. The first verses are most suitable to our larger theme for this week — the longing for the Lord to open the heavens, to come down, to make himself known, and to make all things right. The subsequent versus, meanwhile, invite us to consider the uniqueness of God, the sovereignty of God, our own sinfulness, and how he deals with us.
The text prompts us to wrestle with the issue of God’s constancy when the human beings with whom he is in relationship are themselves inconsistent. After all, it is easier for the Lord to be always the same toward us if we are also always the same toward him. Yet Isaiah knows that the latter is not the case.
And so, over the course of several verses, the prophet acknowledges two conditions for humanity. On the one hand, there are those “who wait for him” and “who gladly do right.” On the other hand, there is the reality that “we sinned,” “we transgressed,” we are “unclean,” and even our best is “like a filthy cloth.” Finally, the sinful condition becomes so bad that the prophet may broadly say, “There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you.”
Yet God is not static in the face of all this. It may be that some traditions so emphasize the immutability of God that they fail to acknowledge the biblical witness to a God who is affected by us and what we do. And so, here, the prophet speaks of the Lord meeting and working for those who do right. His response to those who sin, however, is characterized as angry, as hiding himself, and as delivering his people “into the hand of our iniquity.”
This portrait may be a surprise to some of our people. Or, if it is not a surprise, it is recklessly dismissed as some vestige of an unenlightened, Old Testament understanding of God. For the message of God’s love has, in some quarters, reduced the Lord to a sort of doddering victim of his recalcitrant people. He is the ultimate gentle parent, whose children are allowed to be brats because he never disciplines them. His love overlooks sin and forgives sin, if sin is even considered a viable category, at all. The kind of vigorous opposition to sin that is portrayed here, however, feels unfamiliar or unappealing.
Yet this is the testimony of scripture — and not here only. We see evidence in both Old and New Testament alike that the Lord God opposes sin and disciplines the sinful. Yet that is not a departure from his love, nor is it a byproduct of some internal conflict between his love and his holiness. Rather, we may be assured that whatever is done by the one who is love (1 John 4:8) is, therefore, loving.
What is revealed in this text from Isaiah is consistent with a larger pattern. The principle could be illustrated by a dozen or more passages, but let me take the time simply to allude to four. I think of the creation story, the Pharaoh of the exodus, the Prodigal Son, and the teaching about the vine and the branches.
In the creation story, we surmise that God gave his human creatures freedom. Theoretically, they could have been as bound by moral law as they are by physical laws. But God gave them free will, and we take that as a function of his emphasis on love. This is the one, after all, whose greatest commandments are to love (Matthew 22:36-40). But love is only possible for creatures who are free.
Meanwhile, we see that the same freedom granted by the father in the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). The father does not compel the boy to stay home. He lets him go his own way, and even effectively subsidizes the rebellion.
But what then is the Lord’s response to his people’s errant use of their freedom? He leaves them to its consequences. And, as a particular mercy, he will sometimes even accelerate or compound the consequences. In the case of Pharaoh, for example, the Pharaoh hardened his own heart on two occasions (Exodus 8:15, 32), and then we read that the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart (Exodus 9:12). It was Pharaoh who chose that direction for himself, and then the Lord pushed him in the direction that he had already chosen to go.
At a metaphorical level, we see the same principle at work in Jesus’ teaching about the vine and the branches. On the one hand, we hear the harsh word that the branches that do not bear fruit are removed and thrown into the fire. But over against that message of judgment is the promise from Christ that “those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5 NRSV). Only the branches that do not bear fruit are the ones who are cut off and thrown away. But the only branches that would not bear fruit, you see, are the ones who have essentially already cut themselves off, by choosing not to abide in Christ. They are given over to the choice they have already made.
This is no doubt what the father knows, too, about what lies ahead for the prodigal son. The father does not make the son stay at home; he lets him go. And in letting him go, he leaves the son to experience the consequences of being outside the father’s provision and care.
So it is that the prophet Isaiah bears witness to a God who loves enough to make us free, and loves enough to let us feel the consequences of our wrong choices. That can be a miserable business. Yet through it all, the prophet knows and affirms that the Lord is still our Father and our potter, and “we are all your people.”
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Every written genre has its conventions: customary elements that are simply a part of the form. Ancient letters, as a genre, are no different. And these first verses from Paul's first letter to the Christians in Corinth are consistent with the formula for that genre.
Yet that does not make these verses boilerplate. Paul never says anything he doesn’t mean. And, as we see in his letter to the Galatians, he is not entirely bound by convention, for he was willing to skip past the customary pleasantries in that case in order to get right to the scolding. And so we do well to be attentive to the content of the opening material as we are to the rest of the body of the letter.
This first segment of a New Testament epistle is sometimes called the thanksgiving section. When I recently composed a kind of thanksgiving note to the congregation I serve, I discovered that my heart was toggling between two prepositions: to and for. I am both thankful to these people and I am thankful for these people. And one senses a similar sort of multi-dimensional gratitude at work in Paul. His gratitude to and for God, to and for Christ, to and for the congregation in Corinth makes this section very warm and effusive.
Paul’s greeting begins with the grace of God. That is quite right, of course, for everything begins with the grace of God. God’s grace is the foundation upon which all else rests. Apart from that grace, Paul would not be who he is at the moment of his writing, the Corinthians would not be a congregation of believers, and so the rest of this letter could not exist.
That grace of God, specifically, is Paul’s reason for giving thanks. One man who is himself a product of God’s grace is writing to a congregation full of folks who are products of God’s grace. And so he is rightly thanking God for that grace.
We would do well to see all of life through that lens: to understand everything in our lives in terms of God’s grace. We have a partial expression of it in our colloquial expression “there but for the grace of God go I.” It is true — no doubt more true than we know! But John Newton gives us a fuller and more positive view when he sings, “'tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”1
So Paul is grateful to God for his gracious work in the lives of the Corinthians. That work is not yet done. Paul’s prayer and expectation is for that good work to continue, and here the apostle points to the future that is the focus of our attention this week.
First, Paul acknowledges that the Corinthians “wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Then, in the next verse, he assures them that the Lord “will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Together, these verses beautifully capture not just the Corinthians’ situation, but also our own. There is the fullness yet to come, to be sure, but we are carried to that future on the grace and goodness that we already enjoy in the here and now.
Taken all together, then, the Christian who lives in this long advent season is marked by gratitude for the past, rejoicing and anticipation in the present, and bold hope for the future.
Mark 13:24-37
A biblically literate parishioner will see the address of the Gospel reading printed in this Sunday’s bulletin, and he or she will know that this is not going to be a Christmas message. First, Mark doesn’t even tell the Christmas story. And second, even if he did, it wouldn’t appear in chapter 13! Yet we may be able to leverage our people’s Christmas mindset at this time of year to help them hear the assigned text, and to think about it in a fresh and insightful way.
We might by saying that we want to tell a story that features angels, as well as signs in the heavens. That sounds familiar at this season. And, indeed, it is a story about the coming of Jesus. But this story does not include a stable and a manger. The supporting cast does not consist of shepherds in the field or wise men bringing gifts. And, most tellingly, it’s not a story about an event that happened 2,000 years ago.
So it is that, in this season when all the festivity traces back to the first coming of Christ, we are turning our attention instead to his second coming. And while that theme may seem misplaced, the timing is actually ideal. After all, we inaugurate today the season that focuses on waiting, and we are surrounded with an atmosphere of anticipation. Let us marry those two realities, then, as a means of ushering us into a third: we who belong to Christ are in the season of eagerly awaiting his return.
The aforementioned story of an event, therefore, is not like the Christmas stories found in Matthew and Luke. It is not a record of something that has already occurred. Instead, it is a teaching that foretells what is to come. And we are fortunate to have some of those details from Jesus himself.
In this case, the celestial sign will not be a single star, as it was for Jesus’ birth. Instead, Jesus paints a picture of a total cosmic upheaval. And the angels are not singing over a field outside of Bethlehem, but rather are dispatched to “gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” And rather than the inconspicuous, unnoticed arrival out back of an inn in Bethlehem, it seems that the whole world will see “‘the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”
Jesus’ statement that “about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” is an assurance that he is holding nothing back. He is not being coy or cryptic with his disciples. He is telling them what he knows and, more significantly, what they need to know. And what they need to know above all is the importance of readiness.
The theme that characterizes the end of this passage is a recurring one in Jesus’ teachings. In the imagery employed here, readiness is portrayed as keeping awake. The significance of this need is made emphatic by the proposed hours at which the master might return: “in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn.” In a culture where night travel was far more difficult and dangerous than it is in our day, the natural expectation would have been for a daylight arrival. Yet each of the options mentioned by Jesus suggests an unexpected arrival time. Notice, for example, that Jesus does not say that the master may arrive at noon.
Combine these two facts then — unknown time (v. 32) and unexpected time (v. 35) — and the only reasonable conclusion is to be ready (i.e., to stay awake).
One of the classic songs of the Christmas season paints a lovely picture of Christmas Eve, including this observation: “Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow will find it hard to sleep tonight.”2 Staying awake is not a hardship, you see, when we are excited. And so we must not read Jesus’ exhortation as though it is the painful all-nighter of a college student so much as the happy anticipation of a child who is eager for Christmas morning.
Application
If we want to preach and sing about the Christmas story this Sunday, the surrounding culture is an unwitting ally. Stores, radio stations, and cable TV networks have all been doing their part to help get our people in the Christmas mood. We are hearing the music of the season, seeing decorations all around us, and able to watch all sorts of holiday-themed movies and shows. And so the people in our pews are primed for Christmas songs, Christmas scriptures, and Christmas sermons.
But, alas, that is not our task this Sunday. Instead, while our people are very much growing in the mood of the Christmas season now, we are inviting them to recognize a different season.
The Advent season can seem a little artificial to an outside observer. Why do these Christians spend four weeks talking about waiting for Christ’s coming when he already came? But that is precisely the point of this week’s passages: he is coming again, and so we do live in a season of waiting and anticipating.
The “Advent calendar” in this case, however, is not like the sort that I have purchased for my family through the years. We do not have an identified number of days that we may check off or count down. On the one hand, that is a frustration to the little child that is always within us, asking, “How much longer? Are we there yet?” On the other hand, the excitement is even greater than what a child might experience on this day with respect to Christmas. After all, on this day the impatient child knows that Christmas day is still more than four weeks away. But the return of Christ may be tonight!
What, then, is to be our posture during this time of waiting, this indefinite Advent season?
First, as we noted in our epistle discussion above, we live with the grateful confidence of knowing that our Lord is at work within us, even as we wait. “He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day.” We are not left to thrash about in uncertainty and anxiety. Rather, we move forward with purpose and confidence, for God’s temporal will may be accomplished in us and through us during every day between now and when his perfect will is accomplished for all of creation.
And, second, our posture is to be one of readiness. There is nothing lost, you see, by living as servants who are always prepared for their master’s return. For if he comes tonight, then we will not have reason to be ashamed. And if he does not come tonight, we will be at peace with the certainty that we are doing the master’s will until he comes again.
Ask me today if I am ready for Christmas, and I will confess that I am not. But then I know that I don’t have to be ready yet, for it is still weeks away. Conversely, let us ask one another if we are ready for Christ’s return. We may discover, to our chagrin, that we are more ready for Christmas!
Cecil Frances Alexander sets the stage for us well. We sing her lovely poem, “Once in Royal David’s City,” at this time of year. And the first coming of Christ is, indeed, her starting place. But she does not stop and stay in Bethlehem, and neither should we. For “our eyes at last shall see him, through his own redeeming love; for that child so dear and gentle is our Lord in heaven above; and he leads his children on to the place where he is gone.”3
Alternative Application(s)
Isaiah 64:1-9 — “Here, Let Me Show You”
As a sort of prelude to the discussion of how the sovereign Lord works with sinful human beings, the Isaiah text makes a dramatic claim about God’s uniqueness. “From ages past,” we read, “no one is heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you.”
Isaiah's statement seems to be out-of-step with both his own time and ours. In his day, there was a commonplace belief in many gods; in our day, there is a prevailing denial of any god. Yet over against those two paradigms, Isaiah insists on no other god besides the Lord God.
The particularly fascinating aspect of Isaiah's claim is that it is so sensual in nature. The verbs he uses to set apart the Lord God are hearing, seeing, and perceiving. We might assume, however, that the only verb he has in his arsenal is believing.
In Isaiah’s context, his verb choices are striking because he lived in a world filled with idols. The gods of the nations around Israel were manifestly more sensual than Israel’s God, who seemed deliberately invisible by comparison. For Isaiah to claim, therefore, that “no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you” sounds contrary to his context.
In our day, meanwhile, our post-Enlightenment, materialistic impulses have driven us to the point where all reality must be subject to reason and the senses. The prevailing demand is precisely for things that can be seen and heard and perceived, with a disdain for truth claims that must be merely “believed” or “taken on faith.” The skeptical, modern mind is repelled by what it reckons as “blind” faith. Seeing and hearing are just what the skeptic ordered.
Accordingly, in both Isaiah’s context and our own, the language of the Old Testament lection seems out-of-step. Or, could it be the other way around? Might it be that Isaiah’s message is perfectly suited to both his audience and ours, and we are merely surprised by how fitting it is? Could it be that, in a world longing for evidence and proof, that this is how Isaiah’s God distinguishes himself from all the rest? That he alone is the one who has shown himself?
This is, in fact, the unapologetic declaration of Old and New Testament alike. From Moses to Elijah to Isaiah to Paul, the other “gods” of the nations are mocked as impotent and dismissed as unreal. It is the Lord God who dwells in the midst of his people, who stretches out his arm to save, and whose word makes things happen. Perhaps you can see a statue of Baal or Dagon or Zeus, while no such image of the Lord can be found. But that’s as far as the “evidence” goes, for what cannot be seen is any sign of anything that the other gods have ever done.
The faith of both the Old Testament and the New is not blind faith, at all. Rather, it is a bold confidence in a God who has revealed himself repeatedly in time and space. He has performed deeds, he has spoken to his servants, and above all he “became flesh and dwelt among us.” His actions are not attributed to “once upon a time” or to imaginary places. Instead, his witnesses speak of actual dates and identifiable locales. He is, indeed, the one who has been seen and heard and perceived, and so we echo Isaiah’s affirmation that there is no other god besides him.
1 John Newton, Amazing Grace, UMH #378
2 “The Christmas Song,” Robert Wells and Mel Torme, 1945
3 Cecil Frances Alexander, “Once in Royal David’s City,” UMH #250
The idea of an Advent calendar, of course, is to provide a tangible — perhaps fun, perhaps educational — means for counting down to Christmas. It’s not technically “Advent,” of course, inasmuch as it begins on December 1st rather than four Sundays before Christmas. But the spirit of countdown and anticipation is there nonetheless.
There are other types of Advent calendars. A few years ago, for example, I purchased a large, wooden one for our family. It features 25 small, wooden doors, each one accessing a small compartment. I fill each compartment with a verse of scripture from the Christmas story, a corresponding verse from a Christmas song, and some candies (making the Advent calendar a cherished tradition for our young children).
Meanwhile, our three assigned passages for this first week of Advent suggest a still different sort of Advent calendar. Rather than just the 25 days of December counting down to the celebration of Christmas, our lections point to an entirely different Advent season. It’s not about remembering Christ’s first coming, but looking forward to his second coming. This may not be the “season” that our people are feeling on this late November Sunday after Thanksgiving, but it is most certainly the season that we are in.
Awaiting the Lord’s return does not come with the sorts of beloved traditions that the weeks leading up to Christmas do. No one is decorating their homes with symbols of the eschaton. Dickensian carolers are not singing, “We wish you a merry parousia!” Indeed, this profound season of waiting goes mostly undetected by many American Christians, and naturally the rest of the culture around us is entirely oblivious to it. But here we are, nonetheless. And this Sunday gives us an opportunity to preach about the forgotten Advent season.
Isaiah 64:1-9
Our rich Old Testament text gives us the opportunity to go in several different directions. The first verses are most suitable to our larger theme for this week — the longing for the Lord to open the heavens, to come down, to make himself known, and to make all things right. The subsequent versus, meanwhile, invite us to consider the uniqueness of God, the sovereignty of God, our own sinfulness, and how he deals with us.
The text prompts us to wrestle with the issue of God’s constancy when the human beings with whom he is in relationship are themselves inconsistent. After all, it is easier for the Lord to be always the same toward us if we are also always the same toward him. Yet Isaiah knows that the latter is not the case.
And so, over the course of several verses, the prophet acknowledges two conditions for humanity. On the one hand, there are those “who wait for him” and “who gladly do right.” On the other hand, there is the reality that “we sinned,” “we transgressed,” we are “unclean,” and even our best is “like a filthy cloth.” Finally, the sinful condition becomes so bad that the prophet may broadly say, “There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you.”
Yet God is not static in the face of all this. It may be that some traditions so emphasize the immutability of God that they fail to acknowledge the biblical witness to a God who is affected by us and what we do. And so, here, the prophet speaks of the Lord meeting and working for those who do right. His response to those who sin, however, is characterized as angry, as hiding himself, and as delivering his people “into the hand of our iniquity.”
This portrait may be a surprise to some of our people. Or, if it is not a surprise, it is recklessly dismissed as some vestige of an unenlightened, Old Testament understanding of God. For the message of God’s love has, in some quarters, reduced the Lord to a sort of doddering victim of his recalcitrant people. He is the ultimate gentle parent, whose children are allowed to be brats because he never disciplines them. His love overlooks sin and forgives sin, if sin is even considered a viable category, at all. The kind of vigorous opposition to sin that is portrayed here, however, feels unfamiliar or unappealing.
Yet this is the testimony of scripture — and not here only. We see evidence in both Old and New Testament alike that the Lord God opposes sin and disciplines the sinful. Yet that is not a departure from his love, nor is it a byproduct of some internal conflict between his love and his holiness. Rather, we may be assured that whatever is done by the one who is love (1 John 4:8) is, therefore, loving.
What is revealed in this text from Isaiah is consistent with a larger pattern. The principle could be illustrated by a dozen or more passages, but let me take the time simply to allude to four. I think of the creation story, the Pharaoh of the exodus, the Prodigal Son, and the teaching about the vine and the branches.
In the creation story, we surmise that God gave his human creatures freedom. Theoretically, they could have been as bound by moral law as they are by physical laws. But God gave them free will, and we take that as a function of his emphasis on love. This is the one, after all, whose greatest commandments are to love (Matthew 22:36-40). But love is only possible for creatures who are free.
Meanwhile, we see that the same freedom granted by the father in the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). The father does not compel the boy to stay home. He lets him go his own way, and even effectively subsidizes the rebellion.
But what then is the Lord’s response to his people’s errant use of their freedom? He leaves them to its consequences. And, as a particular mercy, he will sometimes even accelerate or compound the consequences. In the case of Pharaoh, for example, the Pharaoh hardened his own heart on two occasions (Exodus 8:15, 32), and then we read that the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart (Exodus 9:12). It was Pharaoh who chose that direction for himself, and then the Lord pushed him in the direction that he had already chosen to go.
At a metaphorical level, we see the same principle at work in Jesus’ teaching about the vine and the branches. On the one hand, we hear the harsh word that the branches that do not bear fruit are removed and thrown into the fire. But over against that message of judgment is the promise from Christ that “those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5 NRSV). Only the branches that do not bear fruit are the ones who are cut off and thrown away. But the only branches that would not bear fruit, you see, are the ones who have essentially already cut themselves off, by choosing not to abide in Christ. They are given over to the choice they have already made.
This is no doubt what the father knows, too, about what lies ahead for the prodigal son. The father does not make the son stay at home; he lets him go. And in letting him go, he leaves the son to experience the consequences of being outside the father’s provision and care.
So it is that the prophet Isaiah bears witness to a God who loves enough to make us free, and loves enough to let us feel the consequences of our wrong choices. That can be a miserable business. Yet through it all, the prophet knows and affirms that the Lord is still our Father and our potter, and “we are all your people.”
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Every written genre has its conventions: customary elements that are simply a part of the form. Ancient letters, as a genre, are no different. And these first verses from Paul's first letter to the Christians in Corinth are consistent with the formula for that genre.
Yet that does not make these verses boilerplate. Paul never says anything he doesn’t mean. And, as we see in his letter to the Galatians, he is not entirely bound by convention, for he was willing to skip past the customary pleasantries in that case in order to get right to the scolding. And so we do well to be attentive to the content of the opening material as we are to the rest of the body of the letter.
This first segment of a New Testament epistle is sometimes called the thanksgiving section. When I recently composed a kind of thanksgiving note to the congregation I serve, I discovered that my heart was toggling between two prepositions: to and for. I am both thankful to these people and I am thankful for these people. And one senses a similar sort of multi-dimensional gratitude at work in Paul. His gratitude to and for God, to and for Christ, to and for the congregation in Corinth makes this section very warm and effusive.
Paul’s greeting begins with the grace of God. That is quite right, of course, for everything begins with the grace of God. God’s grace is the foundation upon which all else rests. Apart from that grace, Paul would not be who he is at the moment of his writing, the Corinthians would not be a congregation of believers, and so the rest of this letter could not exist.
That grace of God, specifically, is Paul’s reason for giving thanks. One man who is himself a product of God’s grace is writing to a congregation full of folks who are products of God’s grace. And so he is rightly thanking God for that grace.
We would do well to see all of life through that lens: to understand everything in our lives in terms of God’s grace. We have a partial expression of it in our colloquial expression “there but for the grace of God go I.” It is true — no doubt more true than we know! But John Newton gives us a fuller and more positive view when he sings, “'tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”1
So Paul is grateful to God for his gracious work in the lives of the Corinthians. That work is not yet done. Paul’s prayer and expectation is for that good work to continue, and here the apostle points to the future that is the focus of our attention this week.
First, Paul acknowledges that the Corinthians “wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Then, in the next verse, he assures them that the Lord “will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Together, these verses beautifully capture not just the Corinthians’ situation, but also our own. There is the fullness yet to come, to be sure, but we are carried to that future on the grace and goodness that we already enjoy in the here and now.
Taken all together, then, the Christian who lives in this long advent season is marked by gratitude for the past, rejoicing and anticipation in the present, and bold hope for the future.
Mark 13:24-37
A biblically literate parishioner will see the address of the Gospel reading printed in this Sunday’s bulletin, and he or she will know that this is not going to be a Christmas message. First, Mark doesn’t even tell the Christmas story. And second, even if he did, it wouldn’t appear in chapter 13! Yet we may be able to leverage our people’s Christmas mindset at this time of year to help them hear the assigned text, and to think about it in a fresh and insightful way.
We might by saying that we want to tell a story that features angels, as well as signs in the heavens. That sounds familiar at this season. And, indeed, it is a story about the coming of Jesus. But this story does not include a stable and a manger. The supporting cast does not consist of shepherds in the field or wise men bringing gifts. And, most tellingly, it’s not a story about an event that happened 2,000 years ago.
So it is that, in this season when all the festivity traces back to the first coming of Christ, we are turning our attention instead to his second coming. And while that theme may seem misplaced, the timing is actually ideal. After all, we inaugurate today the season that focuses on waiting, and we are surrounded with an atmosphere of anticipation. Let us marry those two realities, then, as a means of ushering us into a third: we who belong to Christ are in the season of eagerly awaiting his return.
The aforementioned story of an event, therefore, is not like the Christmas stories found in Matthew and Luke. It is not a record of something that has already occurred. Instead, it is a teaching that foretells what is to come. And we are fortunate to have some of those details from Jesus himself.
In this case, the celestial sign will not be a single star, as it was for Jesus’ birth. Instead, Jesus paints a picture of a total cosmic upheaval. And the angels are not singing over a field outside of Bethlehem, but rather are dispatched to “gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” And rather than the inconspicuous, unnoticed arrival out back of an inn in Bethlehem, it seems that the whole world will see “‘the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”
Jesus’ statement that “about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” is an assurance that he is holding nothing back. He is not being coy or cryptic with his disciples. He is telling them what he knows and, more significantly, what they need to know. And what they need to know above all is the importance of readiness.
The theme that characterizes the end of this passage is a recurring one in Jesus’ teachings. In the imagery employed here, readiness is portrayed as keeping awake. The significance of this need is made emphatic by the proposed hours at which the master might return: “in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn.” In a culture where night travel was far more difficult and dangerous than it is in our day, the natural expectation would have been for a daylight arrival. Yet each of the options mentioned by Jesus suggests an unexpected arrival time. Notice, for example, that Jesus does not say that the master may arrive at noon.
Combine these two facts then — unknown time (v. 32) and unexpected time (v. 35) — and the only reasonable conclusion is to be ready (i.e., to stay awake).
One of the classic songs of the Christmas season paints a lovely picture of Christmas Eve, including this observation: “Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow will find it hard to sleep tonight.”2 Staying awake is not a hardship, you see, when we are excited. And so we must not read Jesus’ exhortation as though it is the painful all-nighter of a college student so much as the happy anticipation of a child who is eager for Christmas morning.
Application
If we want to preach and sing about the Christmas story this Sunday, the surrounding culture is an unwitting ally. Stores, radio stations, and cable TV networks have all been doing their part to help get our people in the Christmas mood. We are hearing the music of the season, seeing decorations all around us, and able to watch all sorts of holiday-themed movies and shows. And so the people in our pews are primed for Christmas songs, Christmas scriptures, and Christmas sermons.
But, alas, that is not our task this Sunday. Instead, while our people are very much growing in the mood of the Christmas season now, we are inviting them to recognize a different season.
The Advent season can seem a little artificial to an outside observer. Why do these Christians spend four weeks talking about waiting for Christ’s coming when he already came? But that is precisely the point of this week’s passages: he is coming again, and so we do live in a season of waiting and anticipating.
The “Advent calendar” in this case, however, is not like the sort that I have purchased for my family through the years. We do not have an identified number of days that we may check off or count down. On the one hand, that is a frustration to the little child that is always within us, asking, “How much longer? Are we there yet?” On the other hand, the excitement is even greater than what a child might experience on this day with respect to Christmas. After all, on this day the impatient child knows that Christmas day is still more than four weeks away. But the return of Christ may be tonight!
What, then, is to be our posture during this time of waiting, this indefinite Advent season?
First, as we noted in our epistle discussion above, we live with the grateful confidence of knowing that our Lord is at work within us, even as we wait. “He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day.” We are not left to thrash about in uncertainty and anxiety. Rather, we move forward with purpose and confidence, for God’s temporal will may be accomplished in us and through us during every day between now and when his perfect will is accomplished for all of creation.
And, second, our posture is to be one of readiness. There is nothing lost, you see, by living as servants who are always prepared for their master’s return. For if he comes tonight, then we will not have reason to be ashamed. And if he does not come tonight, we will be at peace with the certainty that we are doing the master’s will until he comes again.
Ask me today if I am ready for Christmas, and I will confess that I am not. But then I know that I don’t have to be ready yet, for it is still weeks away. Conversely, let us ask one another if we are ready for Christ’s return. We may discover, to our chagrin, that we are more ready for Christmas!
Cecil Frances Alexander sets the stage for us well. We sing her lovely poem, “Once in Royal David’s City,” at this time of year. And the first coming of Christ is, indeed, her starting place. But she does not stop and stay in Bethlehem, and neither should we. For “our eyes at last shall see him, through his own redeeming love; for that child so dear and gentle is our Lord in heaven above; and he leads his children on to the place where he is gone.”3
Alternative Application(s)
Isaiah 64:1-9 — “Here, Let Me Show You”
As a sort of prelude to the discussion of how the sovereign Lord works with sinful human beings, the Isaiah text makes a dramatic claim about God’s uniqueness. “From ages past,” we read, “no one is heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you.”
Isaiah's statement seems to be out-of-step with both his own time and ours. In his day, there was a commonplace belief in many gods; in our day, there is a prevailing denial of any god. Yet over against those two paradigms, Isaiah insists on no other god besides the Lord God.
The particularly fascinating aspect of Isaiah's claim is that it is so sensual in nature. The verbs he uses to set apart the Lord God are hearing, seeing, and perceiving. We might assume, however, that the only verb he has in his arsenal is believing.
In Isaiah’s context, his verb choices are striking because he lived in a world filled with idols. The gods of the nations around Israel were manifestly more sensual than Israel’s God, who seemed deliberately invisible by comparison. For Isaiah to claim, therefore, that “no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you” sounds contrary to his context.
In our day, meanwhile, our post-Enlightenment, materialistic impulses have driven us to the point where all reality must be subject to reason and the senses. The prevailing demand is precisely for things that can be seen and heard and perceived, with a disdain for truth claims that must be merely “believed” or “taken on faith.” The skeptical, modern mind is repelled by what it reckons as “blind” faith. Seeing and hearing are just what the skeptic ordered.
Accordingly, in both Isaiah’s context and our own, the language of the Old Testament lection seems out-of-step. Or, could it be the other way around? Might it be that Isaiah’s message is perfectly suited to both his audience and ours, and we are merely surprised by how fitting it is? Could it be that, in a world longing for evidence and proof, that this is how Isaiah’s God distinguishes himself from all the rest? That he alone is the one who has shown himself?
This is, in fact, the unapologetic declaration of Old and New Testament alike. From Moses to Elijah to Isaiah to Paul, the other “gods” of the nations are mocked as impotent and dismissed as unreal. It is the Lord God who dwells in the midst of his people, who stretches out his arm to save, and whose word makes things happen. Perhaps you can see a statue of Baal or Dagon or Zeus, while no such image of the Lord can be found. But that’s as far as the “evidence” goes, for what cannot be seen is any sign of anything that the other gods have ever done.
The faith of both the Old Testament and the New is not blind faith, at all. Rather, it is a bold confidence in a God who has revealed himself repeatedly in time and space. He has performed deeds, he has spoken to his servants, and above all he “became flesh and dwelt among us.” His actions are not attributed to “once upon a time” or to imaginary places. Instead, his witnesses speak of actual dates and identifiable locales. He is, indeed, the one who has been seen and heard and perceived, and so we echo Isaiah’s affirmation that there is no other god besides him.
1 John Newton, Amazing Grace, UMH #378
2 “The Christmas Song,” Robert Wells and Mel Torme, 1945
3 Cecil Frances Alexander, “Once in Royal David’s City,” UMH #250
