Sermon Archive

It’s Thanksgiving Weekend, and also the First Sunday of Advent! I’m sure you noticed that last Friday department stores opened up at the unheard of hour of 6:00 a.m., or, at the very latest, 7:00 a.m.—a sure sign that the Christmas Rush is officially upon us!

Yes, like a ton of bruising football linemen, the season is, one might say, “down and set, poised to plow over us with all its demands, distractions, details, dilemmas, delights, and duties.”

For pastors, especially one who has just returned from a sabbatical, the always “full” schedule is even more jam-packed than usual—with vespers and study groups and special services coming on top of the pressure to preach sermons that are “better than ever.”

For the choral director and choir members, there’s a frantic schedule for the extra rehearsals needed to prepare all that special music that’s to be sung and played at the Choral Candlelight Service and the Christmas Eve Service.

For public school teachers, the Christmas—and Chanukkah—Rush poses the special challenge of keeping gaggles of children focused on schoolwork while arranging special programs and projects that will somehow observe the season without becoming noticeably religious!

For merchants, the “X-mas” Rush is it. It’s the “make-or-break” time of each year. You see, the day after Thanksgiving is widely known among merchants as “Black Friday”—not because that day this year happened to be so cloudy and rainy, but because that day and the four weeks following it, with their extended hours and alluring discounts, usually determine whether the ledger for any given year winds up “in the black,” or “in the red.”

As for all of us who are not merchants, these are days when year-end work deadlines fall into the midst of the 1,000 extra pressures put on us by “the holiday season”—you know, writing and mailing those cards and letters; preparing special food dishes; somehow finding enough money to spend on gifts (the national average is $800); choosing whether to buy our niece that Bratz Motorcycle with Girl Doll, a Dance Diva Recording Studio, a Mighty Beanz 6-Pack, The Lion King DVD, or a Barbie Talking Styling Head. Then there’s wrestling with the mobs lined up at cash registers, and, of course, showing up everywhere we’re expected to be, including, dear God, church!

Now, you may be interested to learn that in a scientific Yankelovich poll taken just six years ago, we adult Americans claimed that between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day we spend, on average, 16 hours shopping, and that during this same period we also spend, on average, 16 hours and 25 minutes worshiping—yes, that is a tad more on worshiping! So we adult Americans proudly claim that during this season worshiping does win out over shopping, by at least the length of a Hollywood sit-com!

However, Peter Steinfels, in a New York Times column (11/29/97), dared to suggest that our replies to this particular poll really reflect a great deal of wishful thinking on our part—that we wish we were in church for 3 hours and 17 minutes during each of these five weeks, that we wish we spent more time in church than we do in stores, but that we don’t, really!

Now as a pastor I’m of course willing to doubt Steinfels’s skepticism! I’m willing to accept as true what we Americans claim about ourselves, so I’m looking forward to seeing every one of you here at church for at least 3 hours and 17 minutes during each of these coming weeks! Let’s see. On Sundays, Adult Education and Worship—that equals two hours! And as for the other hour and a quarter, you can fulfill that by attending one or another of our Wednesday Advent series (either noon or evening), or else by helping out regularly in our Thursday night meal program, or else by hosting our shelter for homeless men one Friday evening this Advent! That'll do it!

So now here’s the question! Will we do it? Will we resist allowing the X-mas Rush to plow over us? Will we respond to the spiritual threat posed by the ever-increasing secularization of this season by coming to our senses, by finally recognizing, after entirely too many Advents-past concluded in sheer exhaustion—will we at last recognize that being hurried and harried is not a good Advent attitude? Will we at last see to it that our master list of tasks-to-be-accomplished-this-month focuses on worship and study and social action, on cultivating our hearts and spirits, on observing this season as a time for spiritual growth?

Our scripture lessons for this morning are certainly intended to help give our master list for the season a spiritual shape and form. For each of the lessons points to something we need to be sure to include as we develop within ourselves a proper Advent attitude.

Our First Lesson, from the Book of the prophet Jeremiah, suggests that our Advent attitude should include a “prophet-like hope,” a hope like that possessed by the prophets of ancient Israel.

And our Second Lesson, from I Thessalonians, suggests that our Advent attitude should also include a “Jesus-like love,” a love like that made manifest among us by Jesus himself.

So, a proper Advent attitude—one that is suffused with both prophet-like hope and Jesus-like love.

First, prophet-like hope. To a people in as desperate a plight as one could imagine—to the people of Judah, who had experienced the destruction of their nation and the loss of their political and religious freedom—the Book of the prophet Jeremiah proclaims God’s intention to fulfill their hope for the coming of a descendant of King David who will save them and usher in an era of justice and righteousness, God’s intention to fulfill their hope for the coming of a Messiah. Now, such a hope flew in the face of reason and of all historical indicators, yet it was founded solidly on a trust in the goodness of God.

This Advent, as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the one we profess to have been the Messiah, the hoped-for descendant of David, we, his followers, are asked to identify with the misery and injustices that are being suffered daily by peoples in every part of the world: Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, the United States. And we are asked to pray that all these may be delivered from such misery; we are asked to pray this with a hope founded as certainly on faith in the goodness of God as the prophets’ hope.

And also this Advent, as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, theMessiah for whom people and prophets hoped, we are asked as well to acknowledge our own need for deliverance from sorrow and sin. And what a source of comfort for us it is that we can pray for God’s promised deliverance and forgiveness with a hope every bit as confident in the goodness of God as the prophets’ hope.

Yes, this Advent we are asked to pray with prophet-like hope, to pray that God will fulfill the promise to help all those who stand in need.

And the solid foundation for such a prophet-like hope—for the hope that God will indeed deliver us and others from every injustice, sorrow, and sin, for the hope that God will indeed come yet again and again into our world to save—the solid basis for this prophet-like hope of ours is nothing less than the truth that God has already fulfilled our hope by coming to us in Jesus.

Madeleine L’Engle has captured this Advent truth beautifully in her poem “A First Coming,” which is included in her book A Cry Like a Bell. This poem of hers reads as follows:

God did not wait till the world was ready,
till . . . nations were at peace.
God came when the Heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.
God did not wait for the perfect time.
God came when the need was deep and great.
God dined with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine. God did not wait
till hearts were pure. In joy God came
to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame
God came, and God’s Light would not go out.
God came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.
We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
God came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

L’Engle’s last line—“God came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!”—provides the bridge from the first element of our proper Advent attitude—hope like that of the prophets—to the second element of such an Advent attitude, the element spoken of in I Thessalonians—love like that of Jesus.

We are to journey through Advent with an abounding love, a love not for things, but for one another—like Jesus’s abounding love. God asks that we let our Advent attitude prefigure the Christ-story itself, that we let it embody in advance of Christmas God’s love come down to earth.

So, when we find ourselves this season—as we inevitably will—in a store, in the midst of a surly crowd, I pray that all our actions in response to that situation may somehow flow from an Advent attitude of Jesus-like love, love for that frenzied shopper who knifes us with an elbow while cutting ahead of us in line; and love for that glassy-eyed, tin-eared, sour-faced store clerk who seems neither to see nor to hear us.

And when we find ourselves this season—as we inevitably will—confronted on the street or in the office by a person in need, I pray that we will resist the temptation to offer that person merely an empty platitude of goodwill or some tiny token. I pray that we will instead offer her or him quite a concrete gift of help, an act of Jesus-like love.

I am reminded in this regard of a Charlie Brown comic strip in which Snoopy the dog is shown standing alone in a snowstorm beside an empty food dish, shivering. Lucy, that source of empty platitudes aplenty, comes outside and holds her quite empty hand out toward Snoopy, in the gesture of a blessing. She proclaims to Snoopy in a loud voice, “Go in peace, be warm and filled.” And then she turns and goes back into her house, slamming the door behind her. In the final frame, we see Snoopy once again alone in the snow, still shivering and hungry.

Oh, Lucy talked the talk of love, but she didn’t walk the walk of it. Lucy’s voice was loud, but her heart was hard and her spirit was small. And her words, unaccompanied by action, were of no worth. You see, a Jesus-like love would have prompted her to share her companionship, or her scarf, or her food, or all of the above. For Jesus-like love goes far beyond words, to deeds.

This Advent, I urge us to resist the on-charging X-mas Rush. I urge us to take plenty of time out for the spirit, to take plenty of time out to pray—to pray with hope for God’s redress of injustice, misery, and sorrow, and to pray for this with a hope that is every bit as confident in God’s goodness as was the prophets’ hope.

And I urge us also this Advent to take plenty of time out for expressing love, for expressing a love for those in need that is every bit as concrete as was Jesus’s love.

Yes, this December seems to me a fine time for us to cultivate a proper Advent attitude, an Advent attitude full of prophet-like hope and Jesus-like love.

Let us pray:

O God of promise, You cause the branch of hope to bud and flower, and we offer You the fruit of our love.