Advent 1 Year B

Advent 1 Year B Mark 13:24-37 November 30, 2008 The Rev. Benton Quest

Welcome to advent. Again we enter the season of waiting. Waiting for the next cashier. Waiting for the light to change. Waiting for the snow to stop. Waiting for the waitress to being our food. Waiting for the whole craziness to get over so we can return to life as we know it.

Isn’t that often how Advent feels? We try to pack so much stuff into so little time that we begin to despise the whole season? We try to grab for all we can just end up with a balled fist? Advent has so much promise but so often leaves us feeling a little flat.

In thinking about the season of Advent, I often think about the book and the movie, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. This classic book by C.S. Lewis, tells of a land called Narnia. The interesting thing about Narnia is that it is constantly winter but it is never Christmas. Although it snows incessantly in Narnia, the celebration of Christmas never comes. And if Christmas never comes, then spring, and the new life of spring never come.

I find it interesting the way Lewis gave us a concise view of what the coming of Christ is all about: We were lost in the dark of winter. Then Christmas comes, the Christ child is born, and the Light of God comes into the world. It is through this light, through this child, that darkness is dispelled and the warmth of spring can be felt. It is through this light of Christ that we leave behind the darkness of winter and the light of spring begins to shine.

We light the advent wreath each week with a new candle to represent this light of Christ getting nearer, to represent this spring breaking through the winter. And with each candle we anticipate not only the coming of Christ as a baby at Christmas, but Christ’s return in the end times as final judge.

What is unfortunate is that quite often, this time of waiting gets side-tracked and gets taken-over by the cares of our daily life. Or we get so focused on the coming of spring that we miss the beauty that can be found in the snow. The unfortunate truth is that although we may be in a time of waiting during Advent, with the push of the world, we are often waiting for the wrong thing.

In our gospel reading for today, Jesus talks about waiting and what we are supposed to be doing while we are waiting. Actually, he tells us two things that seem to contradict each other: He tells us that we are to be aware and to prepare but we are also supposed to realize that even with all the preparation we do, we cannot know when the anticipated events will happen. So Jesus gives us a bit of a contradiction; we are to prepare for an event we know will happen, we just don’t know when it will happen.

Why would we be given such advice from Jesus? It sounds kind of silly, doesn’t it? But Jesus was addressing some of the problems he saw in his day and I think some of the problems we still see today.

The first problem Jesus addressed were those people who really didn’t believe the messiah was coming. They didn’t believe that the time when God would send a savior would ever happen so they did not do anything to prepare their lives. These people went about life getting pulled by whatever trend happened to be popular. But since they were never looking for the signs, they missed the signs when they appeared and they missed the Messiah they were looking for. These people Jesus addressed were waiting but they were waiting for the wrong thing.

In our world today we can hear all kinds of stories about people who seem to be waiting for the wrong things. This year there wasn’t really a big, “Have to Have” item, but in the past people have waited days in line just get an electronic game system or a certain cell phone.

But what I have to ask is: What if those days in line were not spent waiting for the “honor” to be the first to buy a toy but were spent for the true honor of giving food and clothing to those who are in need? What if, instead of spending $500 dollars to buy another TV, the $500 dollars was given to those who have to wait out in the cold not as a sign of fanatical commitment but because there is no adequate housing for them?

Are we looking for the signs of Christ in our midst or are we just chasing after whatever catches our attention or whatever we are told is important?

The second problem with waiting addressed by Jesus is the problem of trying to control the wait. There is a feeling that if we know everything that is going to happen, then the wait will not be as long. In some ways, there is even the feeling that if we know what is supposed to happen, then we can MAKE it happen and force the event to happen. But what Jesus is telling us is that even if we know all of the signs, we cannot force God to act.

When I was a kid in second grade, we were growing bean seedling in milk cartons. Each day we would chart the growth of the seedling. I was so excited as I watched the little seedling break through the ground. But I wanted it to grow faster. I knew that it would eventually get bigger but I thought I could help it a little. So I decided to “help” the seedling along by gently pulling on it. Well, as you can probably guess. The growth chart for my seedling went up and then took a sharp drop from which it never recovered. In trying to force the seedling to grow, I actually killed it.

I saw another example of this inability to wait just a few days ago. I saw a person waiting for the traffic light to change from red to green. There was a second person waiting behind the first. The second person got tired of waiting and moved into the oncoming traffic lane, drove past the car waiting at the light and then turned left down the road. As you can probably guess, not more than 10 seconds later, the traffic light changed to green. Now, thankfully, nothing happened to anyone. But the comparison of people waiting three days for a toy while someone couldn’t wait ten seconds for a light just was too much. We will stand for days waiting for something unimportant but cannot wait ten seconds for something like a traffic light.

What Jesus is telling us is in the gospel is that we are to find a middle way. We are not to get so caught up in the things of life that we waste our life on those things that are unimportant. But also we are not to get so tied in trying to make things happen that we kill off the possibly of what God may have planned.

In Narnia, the people looked for signs Christmas coming but also realized that they needed to plan for the winter that was there. They waited and hoped for the coming of spring but remained aware that winter was still there.

We wait for the return of Jesus to our lives but we also know that we must live in the world we have today. We look for the feast to come but live in the knowledge that forgiveness has already come. We look forward to the coming of the Christ child while living in the knowledge that Christ the man is a true presence in our lives, now!

So, what are you waiting for? Are you waiting for the things that will eventually pass or those things that are eternal? Are you waiting for the sales or for the savior? Whatever you are waiting for, Advent is here. The time of waiting is here. We wait in the winter but we know that Christmas will come and with Christmas the birth of new life. We wait but also we know: We know the savior born as a child will grow to become a man. And we know this man will bring us forgiveness. We wait but we don’t wait as ones without hope. We wait as those who know that even in the dark of winter, the warmth of spring is assured.