admin

Advent 1 – Year B

Preached on November 27, 2011

At St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

Isaiah 64:1—9, Psalm 80:1—7, 16—18, Mark 13:24—37

How does the thought of Jesus returning make you feel? When you hear in Mark’s Gospel, that Jesus will come again, descending on the clouds, what emotions does that bring up?

Fear, maybe? Anxiety, perhaps? Despair? Confusion? Disbelief? If any of these feelings are on your list when pondering the apocalypse, it’s no wonder. If Hollywood and Fundamentalist preachers are the only voices we have to listen to when it comes to the end time and the final judgment, these emotions are the only ones imaginable. Jesus’ return, in the hands of Steven Spielberg, is a terrifying notion.

But it wasn’t like that for those listening to the Gospel of Mark in the first century. And it wasn’t a frightful image for the ancient Israelites who wrote Isaiah and Psalm 80. For these groups it wasn’t terrifying, or fearful. It didn’t make them despair or doubt. For those who heard these images, for those who cried out in Isaiah, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down”, for those who called to Yahweh in Psalm 80 to “stir up your strength and come to help us” the idea of God’s return to God’s people was not about fear, or despair, it was about hope.

For Mark’s audience, too, the promise that Jesus would return was not meant to scare them, it was meant to give them hope in a scary time. It wasn’t meant to strike fear in their hearts, it was meant to put peace in their hearts in a time of fear.

Hard to imagine, isn’t it? We’ve be so over-exposed to the wrathful, fearful, vengeful image of Jesus’ return, that we have a hard time imagining it as those who wrote those images intended. But that’s what they meant. And that’s what we are to hear in their writings today. But we’ve got some work to do in order to get there. To get to Hope.

First, we’ve got to let go of the idea that Jesus’ return is about anything but the final, all-encompassing embrace of God. This is difficult for many of us.

What terrifies many of us about the Second Coming is that we will be found, somehow, outside of the chosen. That is what we have been told, isn’t it? Either because of who we are, who we love, how many times we’ve been married, what church we attend or what prayers we say in search of a relationship with God, somehow, we are told, one of these things will be enough for God to pass us by when God draws all of creation back to God’s heart.

But that’s not what Jesus tells us. It’s not what Mark tells us. What we hear from Jesus in today’s Gospel is the invitation to enter the heart of God will be extended to all, “from the four winds and the four corners of the earth and the four corners of heaven.” The choice to accept that invitation? Well that’s another matter…

Jesus promised his followers he would return not to intimidate them into behaving, but to give them something to hold onto when things got really, really bad. He gave them Hope.

If we are to hear the promise of Jesus’ return as a promise of hope and not of fear, we must understand it as an invitation, not intimidation.

But more critically, and much more difficult, if we are to hear the forecast of the second coming of Christ as a promise of hope, we must have something for which are hoping. And I wonder if, in this day and age of excess, do we still hope for God? As we prepare to make out our Christmas lists, is there anything on there that only God can fulfill.

This Christmas, who needs God?

The voices we hear this morning from Isaiah, and the Psalmist and the Gospel of Mark, these are all voices of the people of God who have reached a point in their lives when only a radical intervention by God in the world will do.

The ancient Israelites, whose voice we hear in Isaiah and the in the psalm, they have returned from their time in exile. This long awaited day of glory when they were allowed to return to their homeland and their temple is not what they expect. As they return, they are greeted only with the ruins of what they had known. Everything they were returning to was destroyed. In the midst of this devastation, they call on God to come into the world and, once and for all, make things right.

Those who hear Mark’s gospel are devastated, too.   Though their hearts tell them that they are doing the right thing by following Jesus, the world around them is making life difficult. In the midst of their persecution, they call on Jesus to make good on his promise to return, and to do it quickly, even before the present generation passes.

But that generation did pass. And the one after it, and the one after that. And here we are today, the current generation to hear this promise. But as we hear it, do we really want it? Do we think we really need it, or have we grown tired of waiting and turned to other things to fill our hearts’ desires?

As we think about what we need in our lives, does the radical return of Jesus, descending on the clouds to claim all of creation back into the loving embrace of God make it on our lists, or are we fairly convinced that everything would be right with the world if only we had that new coffee maker, or sweater, or elliptical machine (that’s a hint Paul).

Or do we fill our longings by making ourselves too busy to notice them? Do we try to avoid needing what only God can give by convincing ourselves that our careers hold the promise of ultimate fulfillness? Are we teaching our children the same thing by scheduling them within an inch of their lives?

Do we make room for longing in our lives? In a culture that values independence, is there room for dependence on God? In a world that values getting “enough” so that you need nothing more, is there room to continue to need what only God can give?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t buy one another that which reminds us of the generosity of the God who gave us what we have. Nor do I think it’s a bad thing to excel in what we do, or what our children do. I’m just wondering if the reason the Second Coming of Christ sounds so absurd to us in this part of the world is that we can imagine anything God could offer that we can’t get at the mall, or over the internet, or even the locally owned merchant; or by putting in a few more hours at the office, or joining another committee, or signing up for another activity.

The famous philosopher and mathematician Pascal wrote in the middle of the 17^th century that each of us has a “God shaped hole” in our hearts. A longing in our souls that only God can fill. I believe this is true. And I believe that, because God’s presence in my life can often be intangible, my tendency is to fill that whole with that which is tangible. But the longing persists.

This is our invitation as we begin this Advent season together. That as we go about filling shopping carts, we might reserve a little space in our hearts that holds all our desires and longings that only God can fill. That we claim that space and let it remain there empty, wanting, longing, aching to be filled by the love of the same God who created it.

What can God do for you? What can only God do for you? Can you dare to hope God will do it? This Advent season, can you dare to Hope?

AMEN.

© 2011 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello