First Sunday Of Advent
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle A
Object:
Theme For The Day
Modern secular holiday celebrations are a lot like light pollution.
Old Testament Lesson
Isaiah 2:1-5
Swords Into Plowshares
"They shall beat their swords into plowshares" is a phrase that has become a byword for the global peace movement. It is engraved on a famous memorial at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Yet before "swords into plowshares" achieved secular renown, it was a sign of the Messiah's coming, envisioned by the prophet Isaiah (2:4). Isaiah is not the only place in the Hebrew scriptures where these words appear; the oracle in verses 2-4 is identical with Micah 4:1-3. The emphasis here is not on global peace -- although that does happen to be an important byproduct. The prophet's chief concern is with the restoration of Zion (Jerusalem). In verses 2-3, the prophetic vision takes on not only theological, but even geological form: Mount Zion shall be lifted up, higher than any other mountain. Its rocky heights shall become a magnet for all the peoples of the earth, who shall stream to it in pilgrimage. More than that, the summit of Mount Zion becomes, in the prophet's imagination, the place of divine judgment (v. 4a). It is in the face of that impending judgment that warriors thrust their swords into the white-hot coals of the forge, converting them into agricultural implements. During Advent -- the season of eschatological expectation -- this passage could provide a fruitful basis for a sermon debunking the most extreme forms of Christian Zionism, which seem to gleefully welcome warfare in the Middle East as a means of hastening Christ's return. Clearly, warfare is not God's will for humanity.
New Testament Lesson
Romans 13:11-14
Awake, And Put On Christ!
"Do not be conformed to this world," Paul writes, in the verses leading up to this passage, "but be transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Romans 12:2). He then goes on to lay out various ways that Christians must behave, so as to distinguish themselves from the corrupt Roman culture around them. In 13:8-10, all this finds fulfillment in the commandment to "Love your neighbor as yourself," which is the highest expression of God's law. Now, in this passage, the apostle infuses these ethical instructions with a sense of urgency: Sleepers awake, he tells the Roman Christians, "For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near" (verses 11b12a). The faithful response to this news is to cast off the worn and shabby garments of the former life and put on a fresh garment symbolic of the new life in Christ. This image of "putting on Christ," as one would don a festal garment, has strong associations with baptism and also occurs in many other places in the Pauline letters (see Galatians 3:27; Colossians 3:10-12; Ephesians 4:24, 6:11-17). In the days leading up to Christmas, many of us put on holiday sweaters, ties, or other articles of clothing bearing images of Christmas trees, snowmen, or other icons of the secular holiday. What would a truly Christian festal garment look like?
The Gospel
Matthew 24:36-44
Knowing Neither The Day Nor The Hour
Someone has pointed out that this is the only passage in scripture in which Jesus says, "I don't know." What he admits to not knowing is the day of the eschaton -- no one, he affirms most emphatically, can know "that day and hour" (v. 36). As he does so, Jesus takes his place with other leading rabbis of his own day, who likewise squelched their overeager followers' belief that the Day of Yahweh must surely be so near, they would personally witness its coming. It is ironic that this passage, which begins with a note of caution about the perils of calendarizing God's judgment, has been used by many for precisely the opposite purpose. Teachings like "Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left" (v. 40) have fueled a Christian cottage industry of books, articles, and websites devoted to discerning "signs of the times" indicative of Christ's imminent return, with the admonition not to be one of the hapless ones who are "left behind." Yet if we take our Lord's sayings in their larger context, it becomes clear that his emphasis is on watchfulness without clockwatching. He wants his followers to be appropriately alert, but not so obsessed with trying to know "that day and hour" that they lose the capacity to live as his disciples, engaged with the world in servanthood and love.
Preaching Possibilities
It happens just before sunset on every clear and cloudless night. As the sun dips below the horizon, a technician inside a huge, white dome on the outskirts of San Diego throws a switch. Powerful electric motors rumble and surge into life. Two massive doors -- each of them 100 feet tall and 125 tons in weight -- slowly separate from each other. The opening in the dome grows gradually larger, and one of the world's most powerful telescopes turns its eye to the heavens.
It's the Mount Palomar Observatory, a legendary place in the field of astronomy. But Mount Palomar is becoming less legendary as the years go by. Its telescope is far less useful to astronomers than it once was.
It's not the telescope that's the problem. Mount Palomar's is still state-of-the-art, one of the best in the world. The problem is what the astronomers call "light pollution." As greater San Diego has continued to expand, the light from hundreds of thousands of streetlights and spotlights has come to interfere with its famous observatory. No longer can Mount Palomar astronomers gaze through their telescope and pick out bright points of light against a sky of inky black. The stars are not so visible as they once were, so the real action in the field of astronomy has shifted to more remote locations (and to satellites circling the earth, like the Hubble Space Telescope).
Light pollution is a problem in many other urban and suburban areas as well. It's getting harder to discern the bright band of the Milky Way arcing across the sky. When it is visible, it's often on nights when there is no moon -- and even then, it can be hard to pick out.
The writers of the Bible knew nothing of light pollution. What light their technology was able to generate was feeble at best: a campfire, a torch, maybe a small oil lamp. Even in the middle of Rome, the most advanced city in the world, you could step outside any door at night, look up, and lose yourself in the vastness of the stars.
When Paul writes to the Christians of Rome, saying, "Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near," he knows what image will come to the minds of his readers. It's the dark night sky -- black as obsidian -- spangled with a thousand gleaming, pulsating stars. Off to the eastern horizon, a dim glow has just begun to be visible. It's far too early to declare that dawn has come, but the signs are unmistakable for any who know their way around the night sky. That light to the east, now scarcely perceptible, will only grow in intensity over the next hour or so. The night is far gone, the day is near.
Paul knows he is writing in a dark time. The Christians there have begun to undergo persecution for their faith. Just a few years before, under the Emperor Claudius, all Christians of Jewish origin had been expelled from the city for a period of five years. With the death of Claudius, many of these believers have come back: but Jewish and Gentile Christians alike wonder how long it will be before another emperor causes similar trouble -- or worse.
"Stay the course," Paul is saying. "Remain faithful. Hold fast to what you believe -- for God is in the midst of working wonders far greater than anything a mere emperor can do. Look -- on the horizon -- can you see that glow? The dawning of a new day is near."
As far as secular society is concerned, Advent is little more than the shopping season -- a month or so of frantic activity leading up to the biggest holiday blowout of the year. It's a season when -- the nutritionists tell us -- the average American will gain seven to ten pounds. It's a time when, if you venture out to the shopping malls, you're likely to encounter bitter struggles over parking places or over the latest hot toy for the kids, and a general atmosphere of surliness and desperation. The psychologists tell us Advent is the time when the suicide rate spikes to an annual high and psychiatric units are at their busiest, treating cases of depression. With statistics like that, "O Holy Night" emerging from the shopping mall sound system can sound more like "O holy nightmare"!
For the great many people in our culture who live and die by the consumer Christmas, Advent is pretty much a rocky road leading to inevitable disappointment. How could anybody's real Christmas ever live up to the commercial fantasies? Park a new luxury car in your driveway, tie a huge, red bow on the roof, ring the doorbell, and hide in the bushes. When your loved one comes out, surprise that special someone with a diamond-that-is-forever. Film the proceedings on your new digital camcorder, then go inside and enjoy it all again on your wide-screen plasma TV -- while all the family sits around, clad in snowflake sweaters from a department store, sipping hot toddies while they gaze at this year's Hallmark ornaments glittering on the Christmas tree.
Not exactly "the night is far gone, the day is near," is it? No, the consumer Christmas is a lot more like standing in a shopping mall parking lot under the mercury-vapor lights than it is gazing in awe at the Milky Way and tracing the path of shooting stars across the night sky. The consumer Christmas is a lot like light pollution. It fools us into imagining that we human beings can create for ourselves all the light we need -- when, in fact, compared to the sun (and even the moon), our mighty power grid is as nothing compared to the cosmic power that holds planets in their courses and lights the night with myriad stars.
Paul says something else in that Romans passage. He says, "It is now the moment for you to wake from sleep." Now those may sound like strange words to try to apply to the hectic season of only-so-many-shopping-days-left-before-Christmas, but in fact his words are true-to-life. As busy as most of us are (or think we are) during Advent, there's a kind of automaton quality to the way we so often journey through these December days. It's as though we were sleepwalking. Just put one foot in front of the other... check off items on the ol' to-do list, one by one... get yourself through these days somehow, whatever it takes. Once Christmas gets here it will all be worth it, won't it?
"Wake up!" says Paul. "You're sleepwalking again! You think the life you're living is the good life, but in fact it's no life at all."
Wherever you go and whatever you do in these four weeks of Advent, keep half an eye on the night sky. Look for signs of that gradual lightening to the east, the signal that the dawning of the day is near. For when the sun does finally break the horizon and begins its slow ascent to high noon, the world itself will be transformed by its energy.
Prayer For The Day
Open our eyes, Lord,
especially if they are half-shut,
because we are tired of looking,
or half-open,
because we fear to see too much,
or bleared with tears,
because yesterday and today and tomorrow
are filled with the same pain,
or contracted,
because we look only at what we want to see.
Open our eyes, Lord,
to gently scan the life we lead,
the home we have,
the world we inhabit,
and so to find,
among the gremlins and the grayness,
signs of hope we can fasten on and encourage.
-- The Iona Community's Wild Goose Worship Group, Cloth for the Cradle (Chicago: GIA, 2000), p. 35
To Illustrate
Remember the story of Rip Van Winkle? Washington Irving told it a long time ago. A certain Dutch gentleman by the name of Rip Van Winkle, who lives in New York's Hudson Valley, obtains a batch of strange moonshine from some mysterious little men. He drinks the brew, then falls asleep for twenty years. When he awakens, his family and friends have all either aged significantly or died. He's a sad and forlorn figure, Rip Van Winkle. He thought he was getting the best of those magical little men. He thought he was living life on his own terms -- when, in fact, he missed life in all its fullness.
Not only does he miss out on family life, Rip Van Winkle sleeps right through the most fascinating events of his day -- or even of his century. When Rip goes to sleep, his favorite tavern has a sign out front honoring King George III. When he wakes up, there's a new sign honoring another George, by the name of Washington. While Rip Van Winkle snores away, oblivious to his surroundings, great and even earth-shaking events are taking place: He misses them. He misses them all!
So, too, the days leading up to the consumer Christmas can be a kind of sleepwalking episode. Great events are taking place, events the prophets foretold, but if we don't leave the mall and head for the church instead, we'll miss them as surely as Rip Van Winkle missed the American Revolution.
***
Why fear the dark?
How can we help but love it
when it is the darkness
that brings the stars to us?
What's more: who does not know
that it is on the darkest nights
that the stars acquire
their greatest splendor?
-- Dom Helder Camara, A Thousand Reasons for Living (Fortress, 1981)
***
It is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming, when every recourse this world offers, moral as well as material, has been drawn on and expended with no effect, when in the shivering cold every log has been thrown on the fire, and in the gathering darkness every glimmer of light has finally flickered out -- it is then that Christ's hand reaches out, sure and firm, that Christ's words bring their inexpressible comfort, that his light shines brightest, abolishing the darkness forever.
-- Malcolm Muggeridge, Seeing Through the Eye: Malcolm Muggeridge on Faith, ed. Cecil Kuhne (Ignatius Press, 2005), p. 88
***
In the old days, on Easter night, the Russian peasants used to carry the blest fire home from church. The light would scatter and travel in all directions through the darkness, and the desolation of the night would be pierced and dispelled as lamps came on in the windows of the farm houses, one by one. Even so the glory of God sleeps everywhere, ready to blaze out unexpectedly in created things. Even so His peace and His order lie hidden in the world, even the world of today, ready to re-establish themselves in His way, in His own good time: but never without the instrumentality of free options made by free men.
-- Thomas Merton
***
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
-- Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, (Fortress Press, 1983), p. 53
Modern secular holiday celebrations are a lot like light pollution.
Old Testament Lesson
Isaiah 2:1-5
Swords Into Plowshares
"They shall beat their swords into plowshares" is a phrase that has become a byword for the global peace movement. It is engraved on a famous memorial at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Yet before "swords into plowshares" achieved secular renown, it was a sign of the Messiah's coming, envisioned by the prophet Isaiah (2:4). Isaiah is not the only place in the Hebrew scriptures where these words appear; the oracle in verses 2-4 is identical with Micah 4:1-3. The emphasis here is not on global peace -- although that does happen to be an important byproduct. The prophet's chief concern is with the restoration of Zion (Jerusalem). In verses 2-3, the prophetic vision takes on not only theological, but even geological form: Mount Zion shall be lifted up, higher than any other mountain. Its rocky heights shall become a magnet for all the peoples of the earth, who shall stream to it in pilgrimage. More than that, the summit of Mount Zion becomes, in the prophet's imagination, the place of divine judgment (v. 4a). It is in the face of that impending judgment that warriors thrust their swords into the white-hot coals of the forge, converting them into agricultural implements. During Advent -- the season of eschatological expectation -- this passage could provide a fruitful basis for a sermon debunking the most extreme forms of Christian Zionism, which seem to gleefully welcome warfare in the Middle East as a means of hastening Christ's return. Clearly, warfare is not God's will for humanity.
New Testament Lesson
Romans 13:11-14
Awake, And Put On Christ!
"Do not be conformed to this world," Paul writes, in the verses leading up to this passage, "but be transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Romans 12:2). He then goes on to lay out various ways that Christians must behave, so as to distinguish themselves from the corrupt Roman culture around them. In 13:8-10, all this finds fulfillment in the commandment to "Love your neighbor as yourself," which is the highest expression of God's law. Now, in this passage, the apostle infuses these ethical instructions with a sense of urgency: Sleepers awake, he tells the Roman Christians, "For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near" (verses 11b12a). The faithful response to this news is to cast off the worn and shabby garments of the former life and put on a fresh garment symbolic of the new life in Christ. This image of "putting on Christ," as one would don a festal garment, has strong associations with baptism and also occurs in many other places in the Pauline letters (see Galatians 3:27; Colossians 3:10-12; Ephesians 4:24, 6:11-17). In the days leading up to Christmas, many of us put on holiday sweaters, ties, or other articles of clothing bearing images of Christmas trees, snowmen, or other icons of the secular holiday. What would a truly Christian festal garment look like?
The Gospel
Matthew 24:36-44
Knowing Neither The Day Nor The Hour
Someone has pointed out that this is the only passage in scripture in which Jesus says, "I don't know." What he admits to not knowing is the day of the eschaton -- no one, he affirms most emphatically, can know "that day and hour" (v. 36). As he does so, Jesus takes his place with other leading rabbis of his own day, who likewise squelched their overeager followers' belief that the Day of Yahweh must surely be so near, they would personally witness its coming. It is ironic that this passage, which begins with a note of caution about the perils of calendarizing God's judgment, has been used by many for precisely the opposite purpose. Teachings like "Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left" (v. 40) have fueled a Christian cottage industry of books, articles, and websites devoted to discerning "signs of the times" indicative of Christ's imminent return, with the admonition not to be one of the hapless ones who are "left behind." Yet if we take our Lord's sayings in their larger context, it becomes clear that his emphasis is on watchfulness without clockwatching. He wants his followers to be appropriately alert, but not so obsessed with trying to know "that day and hour" that they lose the capacity to live as his disciples, engaged with the world in servanthood and love.
Preaching Possibilities
It happens just before sunset on every clear and cloudless night. As the sun dips below the horizon, a technician inside a huge, white dome on the outskirts of San Diego throws a switch. Powerful electric motors rumble and surge into life. Two massive doors -- each of them 100 feet tall and 125 tons in weight -- slowly separate from each other. The opening in the dome grows gradually larger, and one of the world's most powerful telescopes turns its eye to the heavens.
It's the Mount Palomar Observatory, a legendary place in the field of astronomy. But Mount Palomar is becoming less legendary as the years go by. Its telescope is far less useful to astronomers than it once was.
It's not the telescope that's the problem. Mount Palomar's is still state-of-the-art, one of the best in the world. The problem is what the astronomers call "light pollution." As greater San Diego has continued to expand, the light from hundreds of thousands of streetlights and spotlights has come to interfere with its famous observatory. No longer can Mount Palomar astronomers gaze through their telescope and pick out bright points of light against a sky of inky black. The stars are not so visible as they once were, so the real action in the field of astronomy has shifted to more remote locations (and to satellites circling the earth, like the Hubble Space Telescope).
Light pollution is a problem in many other urban and suburban areas as well. It's getting harder to discern the bright band of the Milky Way arcing across the sky. When it is visible, it's often on nights when there is no moon -- and even then, it can be hard to pick out.
The writers of the Bible knew nothing of light pollution. What light their technology was able to generate was feeble at best: a campfire, a torch, maybe a small oil lamp. Even in the middle of Rome, the most advanced city in the world, you could step outside any door at night, look up, and lose yourself in the vastness of the stars.
When Paul writes to the Christians of Rome, saying, "Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near," he knows what image will come to the minds of his readers. It's the dark night sky -- black as obsidian -- spangled with a thousand gleaming, pulsating stars. Off to the eastern horizon, a dim glow has just begun to be visible. It's far too early to declare that dawn has come, but the signs are unmistakable for any who know their way around the night sky. That light to the east, now scarcely perceptible, will only grow in intensity over the next hour or so. The night is far gone, the day is near.
Paul knows he is writing in a dark time. The Christians there have begun to undergo persecution for their faith. Just a few years before, under the Emperor Claudius, all Christians of Jewish origin had been expelled from the city for a period of five years. With the death of Claudius, many of these believers have come back: but Jewish and Gentile Christians alike wonder how long it will be before another emperor causes similar trouble -- or worse.
"Stay the course," Paul is saying. "Remain faithful. Hold fast to what you believe -- for God is in the midst of working wonders far greater than anything a mere emperor can do. Look -- on the horizon -- can you see that glow? The dawning of a new day is near."
As far as secular society is concerned, Advent is little more than the shopping season -- a month or so of frantic activity leading up to the biggest holiday blowout of the year. It's a season when -- the nutritionists tell us -- the average American will gain seven to ten pounds. It's a time when, if you venture out to the shopping malls, you're likely to encounter bitter struggles over parking places or over the latest hot toy for the kids, and a general atmosphere of surliness and desperation. The psychologists tell us Advent is the time when the suicide rate spikes to an annual high and psychiatric units are at their busiest, treating cases of depression. With statistics like that, "O Holy Night" emerging from the shopping mall sound system can sound more like "O holy nightmare"!
For the great many people in our culture who live and die by the consumer Christmas, Advent is pretty much a rocky road leading to inevitable disappointment. How could anybody's real Christmas ever live up to the commercial fantasies? Park a new luxury car in your driveway, tie a huge, red bow on the roof, ring the doorbell, and hide in the bushes. When your loved one comes out, surprise that special someone with a diamond-that-is-forever. Film the proceedings on your new digital camcorder, then go inside and enjoy it all again on your wide-screen plasma TV -- while all the family sits around, clad in snowflake sweaters from a department store, sipping hot toddies while they gaze at this year's Hallmark ornaments glittering on the Christmas tree.
Not exactly "the night is far gone, the day is near," is it? No, the consumer Christmas is a lot more like standing in a shopping mall parking lot under the mercury-vapor lights than it is gazing in awe at the Milky Way and tracing the path of shooting stars across the night sky. The consumer Christmas is a lot like light pollution. It fools us into imagining that we human beings can create for ourselves all the light we need -- when, in fact, compared to the sun (and even the moon), our mighty power grid is as nothing compared to the cosmic power that holds planets in their courses and lights the night with myriad stars.
Paul says something else in that Romans passage. He says, "It is now the moment for you to wake from sleep." Now those may sound like strange words to try to apply to the hectic season of only-so-many-shopping-days-left-before-Christmas, but in fact his words are true-to-life. As busy as most of us are (or think we are) during Advent, there's a kind of automaton quality to the way we so often journey through these December days. It's as though we were sleepwalking. Just put one foot in front of the other... check off items on the ol' to-do list, one by one... get yourself through these days somehow, whatever it takes. Once Christmas gets here it will all be worth it, won't it?
"Wake up!" says Paul. "You're sleepwalking again! You think the life you're living is the good life, but in fact it's no life at all."
Wherever you go and whatever you do in these four weeks of Advent, keep half an eye on the night sky. Look for signs of that gradual lightening to the east, the signal that the dawning of the day is near. For when the sun does finally break the horizon and begins its slow ascent to high noon, the world itself will be transformed by its energy.
Prayer For The Day
Open our eyes, Lord,
especially if they are half-shut,
because we are tired of looking,
or half-open,
because we fear to see too much,
or bleared with tears,
because yesterday and today and tomorrow
are filled with the same pain,
or contracted,
because we look only at what we want to see.
Open our eyes, Lord,
to gently scan the life we lead,
the home we have,
the world we inhabit,
and so to find,
among the gremlins and the grayness,
signs of hope we can fasten on and encourage.
-- The Iona Community's Wild Goose Worship Group, Cloth for the Cradle (Chicago: GIA, 2000), p. 35
To Illustrate
Remember the story of Rip Van Winkle? Washington Irving told it a long time ago. A certain Dutch gentleman by the name of Rip Van Winkle, who lives in New York's Hudson Valley, obtains a batch of strange moonshine from some mysterious little men. He drinks the brew, then falls asleep for twenty years. When he awakens, his family and friends have all either aged significantly or died. He's a sad and forlorn figure, Rip Van Winkle. He thought he was getting the best of those magical little men. He thought he was living life on his own terms -- when, in fact, he missed life in all its fullness.
Not only does he miss out on family life, Rip Van Winkle sleeps right through the most fascinating events of his day -- or even of his century. When Rip goes to sleep, his favorite tavern has a sign out front honoring King George III. When he wakes up, there's a new sign honoring another George, by the name of Washington. While Rip Van Winkle snores away, oblivious to his surroundings, great and even earth-shaking events are taking place: He misses them. He misses them all!
So, too, the days leading up to the consumer Christmas can be a kind of sleepwalking episode. Great events are taking place, events the prophets foretold, but if we don't leave the mall and head for the church instead, we'll miss them as surely as Rip Van Winkle missed the American Revolution.
***
Why fear the dark?
How can we help but love it
when it is the darkness
that brings the stars to us?
What's more: who does not know
that it is on the darkest nights
that the stars acquire
their greatest splendor?
-- Dom Helder Camara, A Thousand Reasons for Living (Fortress, 1981)
***
It is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming, when every recourse this world offers, moral as well as material, has been drawn on and expended with no effect, when in the shivering cold every log has been thrown on the fire, and in the gathering darkness every glimmer of light has finally flickered out -- it is then that Christ's hand reaches out, sure and firm, that Christ's words bring their inexpressible comfort, that his light shines brightest, abolishing the darkness forever.
-- Malcolm Muggeridge, Seeing Through the Eye: Malcolm Muggeridge on Faith, ed. Cecil Kuhne (Ignatius Press, 2005), p. 88
***
In the old days, on Easter night, the Russian peasants used to carry the blest fire home from church. The light would scatter and travel in all directions through the darkness, and the desolation of the night would be pierced and dispelled as lamps came on in the windows of the farm houses, one by one. Even so the glory of God sleeps everywhere, ready to blaze out unexpectedly in created things. Even so His peace and His order lie hidden in the world, even the world of today, ready to re-establish themselves in His way, in His own good time: but never without the instrumentality of free options made by free men.
-- Thomas Merton
***
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
-- Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, (Fortress Press, 1983), p. 53
