From the Pulpit:

I guarantee you that in more than one church this morning the preacher is climbing up into the pulpit, shuffling the pages of his or her sermon, and belting out, Happy New Year before unpacking for the congregation the fact that this is the turning of the liturgical year. And, with that task out of the way, with perhaps a little explanation of the fact that this is Luke’s year, and some preliminary comments about Luke’s gospel, the preacher will launch into a tirade against WalMart, Old Navy, Best Buy, you know the players --  for the fact that they began playing Christmas carols before the last of the Hallowe’en masks had disappeared from the shelves. Then she’ll shake her fist at Black Friday and point out how the marketplace has co-opted Christmas and turned shopping into a greed-driven blood-sport that salivates with the T-shirt adage that says He who dies with the most toys wins. There may even be a light dose of guilt offered to anybody who put up their Christmas tree over the Thanksgiving weekend. How do I know this? Well, I’ve heard that sermon and I’ve preached it. But it’s not where I am this year.  

That’s not what our lectionary texts spoke to me this year at the turning of the cycle, and I think it is largely because of you, and because as a parish family we are not in the same place we were last year at this time.  

There is some irony in that the gospel lesson we just read is in a sense the second half of what we read last week. In this time of newness we’re completing a half-spoken sentence. We find Jesus at the very end of his public ministry, telling his disciples to watch for the signs that will indicate the end of the present age. If any of you all read the Left Behind books you will be especially familiar with this focus on the bizarre astronomical signs, the panic and fear and chaos of people’s reactions, but that is far from what Jesus is talking about even as he uses all this apocalyptic language. Last week in Mark’s gospel he spoke of the birth pangs of the kingdom and we know Mark was talking about the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, but that’s not Luke’s focus. As we’ll see as we read this gospel Luke is very much concerned with righteousness and justice. Luke is the gospel of social consciousness, and the kingdom of God that is in the becoming is going to necessitate the reordering of the powers of this world as we know it. That’s not good news for everybody, or maybe it’s better to say that not everybody will receive it as good news, because some of us have got it very good right now. So we pause as we hear these lessons of upheaval and say, hey, isn’t this supposed to be all about the baby? Aren’t we supposed to be making room for him in our hearts? All we have to do is look up at the shepherds and peasants who have begun to make their way to the manger, and if we do, we have to give up our notion that they are anything but the ones this message of hope is for. The hope that guides them around our ceiling is the hope for the difference that little child will make in their world of famine, of oppression, of disease, of injustice.  

There is a story about Mother Theresa that she told about herself. She became terribly ill once, quite early in her life, not that her becoming sick would be much of a surprise considering how and where she lived, and her fever climbed beyond any safe temperature and in her delirium she had a vision that she arrived at the gates of heaven to be taken  into the next life. But St. Peter met her there and turned her away. She considered her life and wondered why she hadn’t earned a place in heaven when St. Peter told her, Because there are no slums in heaven. God needed her in the slums of Calcutta. I have no doubt at all but that she is now rewarded for that work.   

You’ve heard the slogan, Jesus is coming, look busy. Yes, that is the news of Advent. Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming on the night of December 24 when we’ll gather to sing familiar carols and watch our adorable children’s pageant, and when we’ll relish the dark hush of our midnight mass, but the reality is that Jesus is coming every day. This ultimate anticipation is what Advent is about. In these apocalyptic passages C. S. Lewis says we are seeing God without the disguise. One preacher has pointed out that it is hard to stand on tiptoe for two thousand years, to look at the Christian mission from ground level with very little sense of perspective as to where we are and how far we have to go. It can look fruitless and frustrating and we can feel small and incompetent if we consider all that needs to be done before God’s vision is alive among us.  

But that’s exactly why I said that my Advent vision is different this year than it was last year. St. Alban’s has been a healthy and loving parish for twenty nine years now. Christ’s love has always been alive and tangible here, and this is very much a family, with all the quirks of a family. There is great affection, lots of forgiveness, much encouragement and tenderness, but for a lot of our history it has been about building this house that is our  church. There’s nothing wrong with that. But a couple of years ago some of us were at the diocesan stewardship conference when someone asked If your parish closed its doors tomorrow who would notice? And we responded with a collective ouch. Yes, we sent turkey baskets every year to El Buen Samaritano and toys for the angel tree, and some of us delivered meals on wheels and others volunteered at Trinity Center, and here and there we all did good works, but there was no sense that if we closed our doors anybody but us might notice.  

That’s what I sense being different this year. Please don’t for a minute think there is anything self-congratulatory about this. Rather it is a sense of being more aware, more discomforted by the pain and anguish in the world, more aware of the needs that must be met and more grateful for what we have been given that we have, each of us individually and all of us together, to share what we have in time, energy, and resources to offer to those who are in various sorts of pain and need. And I have seen you respond. I have seen you give. I have seen you welcome guests as if each one were the Christ. I have seen you acknowledge that pain and need, close at hand and at a distance, and it has been with a growing faithfulness. You have taken the challenge Jesus is coming, look busy and transformed it to Jesus is coming, be busy, and you have been busy. You have made a difference day by day, bit by bit, person by person.  

And soon this cusp of the year, when our traditions are so precious to us, I have this awareness that we accept the grace they have to give us without clinging to them as our lifeboats. Rather we can cherish them as the source of our abundance. Jesus calls his disciples and he calls us to attention to the details, both the crying needs of the world and the empowerment we have been given by God to be the means of feeding and healing and comfort.  

And so, as we savor this darkest time of the year and anticipate the swing of time into the lengthening of days, we may pray together the words that may or may not be from Sir Francis Drake, the explorer of the sixteenth century who led ships out to wild and stormy seas in faith that their ventures would be fruitful and well worth the risk.

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Amen