Happy New Year!
Now, don’t worry, you haven’t somehow missed the entirety of the holiday season and it is now January, but, today, with our first Sunday in Advent, we begin a brand new church year, a new liturgical year.
Beginning today, and in this next year, our preaching focus will be on the gospel of Matthew. Each gospel has its own beauty and its own unique role to play in showing us the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So, who is Jesus in Matthew where we start the year today? Matthew’s Jesus is a teacher, a leader, an evangelist, the fulfillment of God’s promise, and a steadfast reminder of what is to yet to come. Matthew’s Jesus is a descendant of the line of King David, an authoritative figure, the Messiah, the one whose coming will absolutely change everything.
I would be remiss to not note that these specific verses have been some of the biblical passages most often used in a lot of apocalyptic bible narratives. These verses have historically been used as a means for control to warn people of the coming end times or the rapture, and what will happen if the Messiah comes and you have not repented or if you are not “ready.” A lot of people carry a lot of baggage surrounding these texts in particular, and I don’t want to skate over that.
One of my favorite parts of my theological education has been diving into the study and research of the ways that these passages were and are actually intended to convey hope, joy, and a hopeful re orientation to our calling to create God’s kingdom. And that is a kingdom that is filled with goodness, justice, kindness, and deep, abiding love. It is the coming of something new, something kinder and softer, more loving and more joyful.
In his book, Voices of Advent, Luther Seminary professor Matt Skinner writes on this very passage from Matthew, “It’s an outlook full of presumptions that one particular slice of the Christian church has everything right about God and everyone else in the world deserves to be punished. Maybe most concerning, it’s a view that seems eager to ascribe unusual cruelty to God. It certainly imports all kinds of assumptions into this passage, turning it into a prediction of divine terror instead of a reassurance of God’s intention to redeem and heal the world. It’s a perspective that distorts the Bible. Worse, it distorts the love of God.”
So, why are these verses, that so often get used to preach about the so called end times what is chosen for today as we celebrate this new year and new season?
The book of Matthew, focusing on Jesus as Messiah, as the fulfillment of God’s loving and faithful promise, of Jesus as a teacher and authority figure is a directive for us to ready ourselves, to prepare for what is to come and to do the work for what is to come. It is a profound examination of the ways that we all go about our days, our business as usual, and then are met with the awesome, unfathomable awareness that God is showing up. God is coming and we must be ready.
So, what does it mean to be ready? And specifically, what does it mean to be ready for Christmas, for the coming of Christ? If I were to ask you right now, “well, are you ready for Christmas” what are the first things that come to your mind?
If we were so lucky as to be able to celebrate it- Thanksgiving is over. The dishes washed and put away. The football game watched as you slipped in and out of that turkey coma. The turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing leftovers in tupperware in the fridge or maybe already made into soup.
The emails alerting us to constant sales, the reminders to buy, buy, buy and then buy some more are in full swing.
Maybe you are like so many this holiday season who are looking down at holiday lists of people to purchase gifts for while also looking at your banking app on your phone wondering how you’re going to make it all work and stretch far enough this year, wondering how you might possibly be able to feel ready amidst such challenging circumstances.
Perhaps you are looking around your house, wondering where you are going to get the energy to make your home feel ready. When you’re going to find the time or motivation to be ready to dig the tree and decorations out of that back closet.
Maybe you are already feeling behind on your holiday baking or wondering how you are going to manage existing or growing tensions with family members this season. Maybe you are anticipating the first holiday season with a prominent empty chair at your table and you are wondering how you might ever feel ready for that painful first. Maybe the Christmas season is always a challenging time of year for you and you are wondering how you are once again going to ready yourself to just get through these coming weeks.
So often, when we talk about “being ready for Christmas” we feel the pressure that comes with the season to get the perfect presents for our loved ones, to make the best recipes, to check all the things off of our lists, to be cheerful and merry even if that’s not at all how we feel.
There really is so much that we can associate with being “ready” for the Christmas season.
And, that is precisely why it is so important that we, as a church, go through this liturgical season of Advent together. This is my favorite of the liturgical seasons. Advent is, frankly, how I make sense of who God because this is a season where we collectively practice readying our hearts for the coming of Jesus, of God coming to Earth enfleshed as a tiny baby, born to a poor, Palestinian young woman in a backwoods, unheard of hamlet of the vast Roman Empire. God could have chosen any time, any place to come to the world. And yet, God chose a time of tumult and oppression and angst and violence to come to the world in human form. And that remains true today.
When we sing the Advent hymn, Oh Come Oh Come Emanuel during this Advent season, do you know what Emanuel means? It means God with Us. And it is my favorite way that we as people of faith use to describe God. Emmanuel. We pray and we long for God to come to a world that is so desperately in need of a savior and a champion to the marginalized. Our cries of Oh Come Oh Come Emanuel come and uplift the lowly, come and right the wrongs and the pain of the world.
When we sing that hymn we both pray for Christ to come, and we re commit ourselves to looking for Christ’s existing presence in the world, that God, is indeed, with us. And that as followers of Christ, we are directed to go to the places that Christ goes. Because God creates us in God’s image, we are called to love and serve those who God loves and comes to serve.
This is a season where we, together, remember that not only is God with the outcasts, but that God comes to the world as an outcast. Emmanuel. God is with us. Not only does Christ come to be with refugees, but Christ comes as a refugee. A baby born to a poor young couple who are forced to flee, without papers, to a new country for fear for their lives. It is only one more chapter to come in the book of Matthew where Jesus offers the prophetic words: “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’
Hopefully you have heard about Faith Lilac Way’s participation in the Path to Palm Sunday which is the convergence of thousands and thousands of people of faith around those very directives of Jesus- to feed the hungry, care for the sick, and welcome the stranger. Because we see far too many policies and actions happening in this country that are so cruelly doing exactly the opposite of those directives. And because we are followers of Christ, we know that we can’t stand by. We know that we have to speak out, to act. We know that we have to go where Christ goes. We are, after all, an Advent people. A people who are ready to pray and ready to act.
One of my favorite Advent books is called, “Keep Watch With Me: An Advent Reader for Peacemakers.” Published in 2019, this is a collection of devotions leading up to Christmas which are written by pastors and chaplains from around the world. Honestly I should get a kick back from how many of these books I have purchased as gifts for people and for all the times I have recommended it to people to buy themselves.
In the very first devotion for December 1st, Reconciliation and Justice facilitator Michael T Ray writes the following:
“When I worked with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank, one of our primary responsibilities was being present for confrontations between Israeli solders and Palestinian civilians. We needed to film and document all acts of aggression, hoping the scrutiny of international eyes might deter violence.
We needed to keep watch.
For those of us in the United States, the last few years have particularly highlighted the deep divisions scarring our country. Many of us yearn for a better world, and we wonder how long we can wait.
Advent is all about waiting
It is about patience, expectation, and longing. We wait in hope for the arrival of something better than what we have now. This is a joyful hope.
But Advent is about ache too, because longing and waiting are also painful experiences. For our exiled friends in prison longing for freedom, for our oppressed brothers and sisters waiting for justice, for our loved ones on the streets dreaming of a warm home, waiting is agony.
Both Advent and peacemaking are experiences of hope, and hope is the stuff of survival. It’s little wonder people who live in the places of suffering are often filled with great hope and joy. As one Palestinian friend said to me, “What choice do we have but to hope? The alternative is death.”
We hope that something more beautiful is coming because we must, because the alternative is unbearable. The work of hope is a muscular work, filled with sorrow, faith, perseverance, and resilience.
In my study, teaching, and practice of peace building, I’ve learned that the work of peace is the work of preparation. We wait, yes, but we have much to do while we wait. My best friend, Jeannie Alexander, is waiting for her beloved to be freed from the cage of prison. Year after year, she waits. But part of her waiting is working to make better laws so he can return home sooner. The waiting of Advent, like the waiting of peacemaking, is an active waiting. As the African proverb says, “When you pray, move your feet.:
We watch, we wait, we work. Part of the truth of our world is that it is broken and breaking more every day. But that is only part of the truth. Our world is also a place of beauty, love, and unfathomable generosity. There is kindness, there is laughter, there is healing.
I want to be part of the movement toward kindness, one where we might begin speaking to and about one another with something like love. I do believe that a kinder world is on the way. I believe that because I must, and I will watch for it, with eyes open and feet moving.
Will you keep watch with me?
Let us pray,” Jesus of the vigil, you told us to keep watch, to stay alert for what is coming. Bless us with the strength to watch, to wait, and to work this Advent season, so that your kingdom which is here and is still to come may be realized in its fullness. Because if we do not keep watch, we may miss it.
Amen.