Advent Thoughts

This is the Third Sunday of Advent; the season of the Church when we are reminded to wait and prepare for the coming Messiah – to wait for the coming Christ child.  Advent is a time of longing; a time of anticipation; a time of hope.

But why?  Why is such a big deal made out of waiting for a baby to be born in a manger?  Why the fuss?  What is it that we are hoping for?

This is a time when Christians are reminded that there is a big difference between waiting for Christmas and waiting for Christ.  Christmas – the holiday that most of us celebrate; the holiday that retailers count on to make their profits for the year, has come to have little to do with Christ.   Waiting for Christmas is about getting the decorations up, the shopping done.  It’s about scurrying and over scheduling.  It’s about running to get everything done until we are so tired we can’t enjoy it.  But this busyness; what the world has us believe is Christmas has nothing to do with Christ. 

And so each year, while we simultaneously prepare for the holiday of Christmas, the church teaches us to slow down; to prepare ourselves; to wait and watch for the coming Christ.  But again, I ask you:  why?  What’s the big deal?

Advent is a time when we are filled with new hope and great anticipation for what the coming Christ child means for a hurt and broken world.  Waiting for the Christ child requires us to draw on our collective memories of God’s people as a source of hope for the future – hope we sorely need today.  We anticipate and long for the coming Christ because He is the way of redemption and salvation for all the world.  But why?

We hope and anticipate the coming Christ because He is God hidden in human form, who comes to reveal the power of the powerless in his self-giving act on the cross.  And it is through his self-giving act on the cross that our sins are forgiven and we are reconciled to God.  It is through his self-giving act on the cross that we who believe are saved from death and by grace receive eternal life.  This is good news!

But for too many of us, the story stops here.  I am saved, we say.  That’s it.    That’s all that matters.  Yet if we call ourselves Christians – followers of Christ, we need to ask ourselves what this means.  For what reason; for what purpose am I saved?  You see, our individual salvation is not the end-all. 

The prophet Isaiah tells us God’s purpose for the world.   And when Jesus’ began his ministry, he stood before the synagogue and read these same words from the prophet Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,  ² to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn,” (Isaiah 61:1-2)   And when he finished, he closed the scroll and said, “"Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4:21)  

How many of you are familiar with the story of Alice in Wonderland?  When Alice falls through the rabbit-hole into Wonderland, she is convinced that she has fallen right through the earth and is destined to come out where people will be upside down.

The Third Sunday of Advent invites us into a world of reversals, a world where the captives are freed, where the hungry are filled and where the rich are sent away empty. It is certainly a world where things are turned upside down. From the point of view of social order, such reversals could be considered Antipathies. But from God’s point of view, they are signs of transformation.

In order to appreciate the strength of today’s message from Isaiah, we must remember that he was speaking to people who were dispossessed, people in need of a message of hope, a promise of some kind of economic reversal. This same description of reversal is found throughout Jesus’ teachings in the gospels. There we see that the lowly enjoy the blessings that God promised long ago. 

God offers us the possibility of a new world. The Wonderland to which we are invited is not some mad tea party attended by an array of strange guests. It is a world established in justice and peace, a world in which all will hear the glad tidings of salvation.

In order to enter the mysterious new world that lies before us, like Alice, we have to undergo some kind of change; some kind of transformation. And so once again today, we are reminded that the preaching of John the Baptist is repentance; repentance in preparation for the coming Lord. Make straight the way of the Lord! Get rid of any obstacle that might deter His arrival. Eliminate from our lives the greed that impoverishes others, the arrogance that tries to set us above the rest, the power that makes us abusive, the selfishness that turns us in on our own concerns alone. Today we are all aware of the destructive evil that such attitudes have spawned. We suffer the consequences of their corrosive power. But our faith reminds us that we do not have to remain victims of these forces.

There is a far better way of living in the world, and on this Third Sunday of Advent we stand at its threshold. The question, however, is: Are we willing to step forward? Or are we afraid to have our world turned upside down? Are we the poor who will hear the good news of reversal, or are we the ones responsible for their poverty? Are we the brokenhearted who will be healed, or have we broken their hearts? Are we the captives who will be freed, or are we the captors who have restrained them? On what side of the reversals do we find ourselves?

Advent is a time to search our hearts, to discover where, both individually and as a community, we need to change. It is a time of expectation, for we are told that there is one who has the power to heal our personal brokenness, to heal our fractured families, to heal our troubled church, to heal our bleeding world. Isaiah tells us that he is coming; John tells us that he is already in our midst. His presence among us should make us rejoice; the saving power that he brings should give us confidence. If we open our hearts to this saving power, we can indeed transform our society; we can renew our church, we can work toward peace in the world—we can turn our world upside down.

Isaiah ties God’s salvation of the Israel to the mission of changing the world.  Jesus proclaims this same missional salvation as his reason for being in the world.  If we claim to be followers of Christ, this must be our mission too.  Our salvation is not an end, but a beginning to doing Christ’s work in the world. 

This next week, rejoice in the realization that Christ is in our midst, ready to work through us to heal our world.  But, let’s also spend time praying that God will shine His light to help you recognize what in your life should be turned “upside down” and for the courage to change it.    Amen.