Sermon for Advent 1, Year A (11-30-25)

Well, now that I've weaseled my way into your lives a bit these past fifteen months or so, I feel a little more secure in taking the risk to tell you all this year that Advent...well...how do I say this...

Advent isn't really about Christmas. Not really, at least.

The once and future. The already and not yet. The now and yet present. A season of holy darkness, of hopeful expectation. Of cries yet answered - and somehow - of salvation already gained. Advent is one big season of paradoxes. Its main goal is not to prep us for Christmas (the first coming), but for the Second Advent, the second coming of Christ. For the end of this age, which, despite a lot of effort to convince us otherwise is actually really, really Good News.

How we got from the Four Last Things - which are Advent's traditional themes of Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell - isn't a great mystery to me, especially considering the notable PR issue we've had in the church for about the last two generations. Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love are way better taglines for a season that is being increasingly consumed by, well, consumerism. (Not that these are fruitless themes upon which to meditate. Lord knows we need these reminders too, especially now.)

But, all it takes is a relatively close look at the words that bathe us in quiet - if not fragile - confidence during this most important season. To see that to rush past the Last Things - Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell - is to miss the real point of this season.

Take for example our collect today, which is considered one of the greatest hits of the prayer book: "Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal."

You've gotta admit, it does strike a good balance of hope and that fear-and-trembling bit we're often recommended to take up from time to time. Or consider that old standard Advent hymn:

O come, Immanuel and ransom captive Israel, 
that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.

O come, O Branch of Jesse's stem unto your own and rescue them!
From depths of hell your people save, and give them victory o'er the grave.

O come, O Key of David, come and open wide our heavenly home.
Make safe for us the heavenward road and bar the way to death's abode.

O come, O King of nations, bind in one the hearts of all mankind.
Bid all our sad divisions cease, and be yourself our King of Peace.

Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, oh Israel!

Sorry to break it to you, but we ain't talkin about no baby here! This isn't just a carol. This is a plea; a plea from the deep darkness where Advent begins. And where it will remain until that time when Christ comes in glorious majesty to set things right. To free us once and for all. We're not there, not quite yet. But when we get there this hymn will sound out as much like an Easter anthem as it does a haunting advent tune. Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, oh Israel!

You see, it's Lent and Easter when we remember the important thing that God has already done, and that need not happen again. It's Christmas when we rejoice in the first coming - that precious fragile advent of God's enfleshment to be one with us in the Christ Child. But in this season of Advent we wait for something that hasn't yet come. The Second Advent, the return of the King to finish the saving work he began all those years ago. We wait. We watch, we keep awake and we wait. This is the good, hard work of Advent, and its critical work for those of us who choose year after year, season after season, to pattern our lives around this Gospel business. Around the Good News that God is crazy about us, and that God knows best for us.

We follow a path carved out by Jesus' witness and then sustained by God's Holy Spirit. The Way, as it was called by the earliest followers of Christ. The Way, a journey which will probably require some waiting. Waiting which can make us feel small and a bit scared the way waiting so often does. Waiting in the midst of pain or anxiety over the future. It's never a fun business, only a necessary one in this mortal life. We wait not to look for God's quick fix. Rather, we wait and watch for what it looks like for God to draw near. And in God's arriving - in that cosmic advent - we notice how the divine presence begins to make things new. Often a slow, sometimes painful process of renewal. The birth pangs of the New Creation.

Now, of course, the million dollar question is: When? When will this happen? How long must we wait? I'd like a new creation now, please! This one is feeling a little, well, busted.

No one knows, Jesus tells us today from Matthews perspective. No one but the Creator. No human, no angel. Not even the Son (which is a sermon all its own, so I'm to just leave it sitting right there...you're welcome). No one knows: only the Creator. And that also, my friends, is actually Good News! All of it is in its own amazing way: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and - yes - even Hell and The End of This Age. All Good News. All gracious gifts to set you free. So that you may take with confidence and peace the hand of your God into the next age.

Oh Come, Emmanuel.

Amen.