The movie Scrooged is an updated version of Charles Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol. The movie stars Bill Murray as the Scrooge figure, a television executive named Frank Cross. Cross is a total cynic who hates Christmas except for one thing: it’s the time of year when his TV network can make a lot of money, and money is the only thing that seems to fill the persistent emptiness in Frank Cross’ life. This year, Cross has produced a flashy Christmas special that will air on Christmas Eve. The special itself isn’t controversial, but the ad he creates to promote it is. The ad features a series of alarming images of nuclear holocaust, a bloody drive-by shooting, terrorists exploding a plane, and drug addicts shooting up heroin. At the end of all this comes the somber voice-over: “In a world as terrifying as this one, now more than ever you need to see the Christmas Eve spectacular here on NBC.”(1)
The ad may have been effective, but everyone who saw it hated it. And they hated it because it was the antithesis of Christmas. At Christmas we expect to see images of serene pregnant women; bright stars piercing dark, cloudless skies; shepherds leading a few white and fluffy sheep; stately wise men bearing luxury gifts; and, of course, a well-swaddled, peaceful baby Jesus. Most of us feel that Christmas is not the time to dwell on the atrocities of our time: economic crisis, wars, natural disasters, terrorism. Christmas is the time when we want a break from all that. No wonder Frank Cross’ ad for the Christmas Eve special was such a flop.
But when we read today’s gospel lesson it looks like Frank Cross might have actually been on the right track. You see, it turns out that each year, on the first Sunday of Advent, the lectionary readings for the day point us to one of the apocalyptic texts in the gospels. “Apocalyptic” is just a fancy word for things that refer to the end-times, what some people call the “Second Coming.” Although it may not be something we talk about much, it is part of our understanding of who Jesus is that he not only came to the world as God in human flesh, but that someday, in the fullness of time, he will return. So the first Sunday of Advent is the day we are called to acknowledge that Advent -- the season during which we prepare for Christ’s coming -- involves our past, present, and future. Advent is not just about getting ready to celebrate what happened in the past -- Christ’s birth -- it’s also about celebrating that in the present Christ is with us in the Holy Spirit, and that at some future time Christ will return.
In today’s passage from Luke, we heard part of Jesus’ answer to the question “when will this happen and what will it look like?” Jesus’ answer sounds a bit like Frank Cross’ commercial for the Christmas special: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”
I don’t know about you, but that’s really not what I was hoping to hear about in church on the first Sunday of Advent. I wanted to hear the beginning of the story of Jesus’ birth and instead this text is all about the end of the story, the end of time, when Jesus will come again to judge the earth and all of its inhabitants.
Jesus isn’t just telling his followers what to expect here, he is warning them to be on alert, to be on guard, to pay attention and make sure they are ready to stand before God when Jesus finally returns. We may have come here today hoping for comfort, but instead we get a frightening glimpse of the future and a stern warning to get ready for it.
*****
The question is: how? How can we possibly get ready for such an event? Well, how about by swinging. My son loves and hates to swing at our local park. He is always drawn to the swings, but he never stays on them for long. It seems he doesn’t actually like the sensation of swinging. Well, a life of faith is like swinging. We swing back and forth from joy to despair, from sincere faith to disorienting unbelief, from feeling the wonder of God’s presence to wondering if God is even there. But when you are on a swing there is a moment at the highest point when you are no longer sure if you are still going up or if you have started to come back down. That moment, that pregnant pause, is Advent. It is a moment between time, out of time, and it is a moment (despite the fact that it scares us half to death) that offers us a great opportunity.In Advent, we have the opportunity to choose how to respond to the gift of God’s presence with us in Jesus, a gift that was given to us when Jesus was born so long ago and a gift that God has promised to return to us in the fullness of time. Advent marks the first day of the Christian year, and as with our secular New Year, this can be a time for us to reflect on our faith and to recommit ourselves again to our relationship with God.
The problem is that the Advent season has been so taken over by secular forces that it’s hard for any of us to find the time, space, and silence we need to reflect and recommit. There are decorations to hang, parties to attend, cards to address, gifts to buy, food to make, a perfect holiday to create for family and friends. No wonder so many of us feel exhausted by the holidays before they have even begun.
Apparently, Jesus knew the challenges we would face. “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life,” he said. Eugene Peterson, in his translation The Message, says it like this: “Don’t let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping.”
What Jesus is talking about here is how we over-consume as a way to avoid the real work of getting ready. And we avoid it for good reason: because when we go before God we are likely to come face to face with the loneliness and despair that grips us all from time to time. We drink too much, eat too much, spend too much, and the reason we do this at the holidays is not just because we’re enjoying the season. It’s because our culture -- a culture of over-consumption and over-indulgence -- demands that we use this time to try, for at least a little while, to forget all that’s wrong with the world and with our lives. We too often over-consume and over-indulge in an attempt to forget the very reasons we need God in the first place, in an attempt to fill the empty places inside our souls.
Fortunately, there is another way to fill yourself. And that way is Advent. Advent begins by calling us to keep the end in sight, to remember that this season isn’t just about celebrating Jesus’ birth but getting ready for Jesus’ return. We also remember why that return is so important: because we desperately need what Jesus gives us: redemption from the evil and violence and darkness that so often seem to have the upper hand. The reason God entered the world the first time was not because things were going so smoothly, but because the world was desperately in need of love and guidance and hope. And God will come again not when we finally get it right, but when it looks like all hope is lost. “When these things begin to take place,” Jesus says, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” In other words, as long as you are ready, fear not! For the day of judgment is also the day of grace, the day when God will once and for all make everything right again.
So during Advent, this pregnant pause of the church year, we need to take some time out, remembering that the most important thing about the next few weeks is not checking off every item on our to-do lists but reconnecting with God, making sure that we are ready for Christ’s coming, even if being ready means only that we acknowledge our emptiness and our hunger for God to come into our lives and into our world.
*****
The writer Anne Lamott tells a story of taking a vacation to Lake Tahoe with her two year-old son, Sam. This area near Reno is a hotbed of gambling, which means that all the rooms in hotels or condos have curtains so heavy and thick that the rooms can be dark as night even in the middle of the day. This is supposed to encourage tourists to stay up all night gambling and spending money, and then sleep all day.
One afternoon, she put Sam down for a nap in his crib, closed the curtains, and went into the other room to work, pulling the door shut behind her. A few minutes later, she heard Sam calling to her. Sam had climbed out of his crib and gotten to the door. But when he had grasped the handle, he had depressed the button lock. Try as she might, Anne could not get him to unlock the door. When it became clear that his mother couldn’t open the door, Sam cried and screamed while his mother, in a panic, called the rental agency for the condo and left a message, then called the building manager and left another message. Finally, not knowing what else to do, she lay down next to the door, reached her fingers in the small space underneath it and told Sam to reach down and find her fingers in the dark. He did. And as the reality of his mother’s love and presence sunk in, Sam gradually calmed down. Mother and son stayed like that for a long time, lying on the floor side by side, a locked door between them, taking comfort in the touch of their fingers. (2)
All too often we are like toddlers in a pitch-black room, not sure where to go or what to do, longing to simply throw open the door between us and God. But we can’t. And so we panic, running around the room, screaming and crying and trying to find another way out. Or we try to pretend there isn’t anything wrong, going off in a corner and finding ways to pass the time, no matter how self-destructive those ways might be. But in Advent God calls us to come to the door. It’s still locked, and when don’t know when it will opened. But when it does open, we want to be ready to greet the God who will be revealed on the other side of the door. And so we wait and in Advent we prepare, by lying quietly by the door, grasping the fingers of the God who loves us enough to wait with us, the God who has come and who will come again to unlock the door, shine light into the darkness, fill our emptiness, and redeem this broken world once and for all. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. from an illustration in the sermon “At That Time” by Scott Hoezee; read it here.
2. from an illustration in the sermon, “Belonging”, by the Rev. Mark Ramsey, in Journal for Preachers, Vol. 23, No. 1, p. 23.
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