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Advent 1 Year A RCL November 27, 2016

Posted on November 27, 2016 by Beth Crane

Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44

This Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent, is the New Year’s Day of the Church calendar. We change from Lectionary C to Lectionary A. Our liturgical color changes from green to purple, the color of royalty because Christ is our King, and also the color of penitence because Advent is a time of self-examination when we take stock of our spiritual lives and prepare for the coming of Christ to complete the creation.

But Advent is also a kind of in-between time because we are looking forward to the coming of our Lord, but we are also looking backward to his first coming to earth as a little baby born in Bethlehem. In this in-between time, we recognize that his kingdom has already begun but it is not yet complete. There is much work yet to do.

Advent is a time to get ready, to be awake, to prepare the way of the Lord. It is a good time to clean house, to get things in shape, to make or revise wills, to take time to evaluate our spiritual fitness and to make any necessary adjustments to get ourselves fully in line with our Lord’s model of how to live a human life.

In our first reading, from the Book of the prophet Isaiah, the kingdom, the shalom of God is proclaimed. We are called to “beat [our] swords into plowshares, and [our] spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall [we] learn war any more.” God is calling us to turn weapons of war into tools for raising crops and feeding people. God is calling us to turn from violence toward care and compassion. As we look around our world and see what is happening in Aleppo and other places, and see refugees fleeing by the hundreds and thousands, and hear that our Air Guard is going on yet another mission, we are reminded of how much work there is yet to do.

Our psalm speaks powerfully of the beautiful city of Jerusalem, which is a holy place for three major religions of the world. We work and pray for the day when all people may gather as one in that holy city, but the way forward will demand deep thought and more prayer and skilled diplomacy and understanding of centuries of history. Yet this is another step in helping to bring in God’s shalom.

In our reading from his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul strikes another Advent note. God is calling us to be awake. The night of darkness is almost over. The day is near. We are called to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” But this armor is not ordinary armor. It is the fabric of the Being of Christ. We are called to actually dress ourselves in the likeness of Christ. We are called to continue on our journey of becoming more and more like him.

We are called to prepare, to be ready for his coming, and we are told in today’s gospel just how sudden his appearing will be. We need to begin now to achieve total readiness, because there is not going to be much warning. Our Lord calls us to “Keep awake.”

Just as winter comes. clear and fresh and cold, Advent comes to call us to awake to our ongoing process of transformation and our call to help our Lord build his kingdom of peace, wholeness, and harmony for the entire creation.

And today we make our United Thank Offering, a small expression of gratitude for all the gifts he gives us every day. Science is now telling us how powerful gratitude can be. It can improve our physical and mental health. It can actually strengthen us to be stronger and better ministers of Christ.

As we live in this in-between time, we are deeply grateful that our Lord came among us all those centuries ago, not as a rich and powerful king, but as a human being just like us. He was born of Mary in Bethlehem, grew up in the out of the way village of Nazareth in Galilee, helped Joseph in the carpenter shop, learned how to work hard and be honest and care about others as we all do in the small villages of Vermont.

We are grateful that he knows each of us and cares about us and about all people. He loves and cares about every person on this planet. And he loves the entire creation. He calls us to care about each other and about the creation which he called into being.

When he comes to make the creation whole and bring in his kingdom, he wants us to be ready, to be fully awake. When he comes to bring in his shalom, we will each look into his eyes, those eyes full of love for us and for the world he has created. And he is going to want us to be ready to help him in that work of completing his shalom.

The world of his shalom is a far cry from the strife-filled world of today. In that world, because of his abiding love, there will be a place for everyone to live and work and thrive. No one will be left out. No one will be on the sidelines or on the margins. Everyone will be included and valued. Everyone will have enough, not only to survive, but to thrive and grow.

This Advent, let us be fully awake; let us do everything we can to be in top spiritual shape; let us continue to work to help our Lord build his shalom; let us be grateful for his coming among us to live a human life and show us the way to live together. Let us put on his likeness and continue to follow him.  Amen.

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Advent 1B November 30, 2014

Posted on November 30, 2014 by Beth Crane

Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

 This Sunday, we begin the season of Advent. This is the New Year of the church. We change from lectionary A to lectionary B. We change from the green vestments of the season after Pentecost to purple to denote the coming of our King and also a time of penitential preparation. We begin lighting the candles on the Advent wreath and opening the doors on our Advent calendars to count the days. Advent means “coming,” and we are looking forward to the coming of our Lord to complete the creation. We are also looking back to his first coming among us as a baby, 

When Jesus was here with us on earth, he began to build his kingdom. But that kingdom is not complete. The world is not a place of peace harmony, and wholeness. As our Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jeffers Schori writes, “Shalom is a vision of the city of God on earth, a community where people are at peace with each other because each one has enough to eat, adequate shelter, medical care, and meaningful work. Shalom is a city where justice is the rule of the day, where prejudice has vanished,where the diverse gifts with which we have been so abundantly blessed are equally valued.” (A Wing and a Prayer, p. 33.) 

The prophet Isaiah was one of the people who described God’s vision of shalom. Our reading from the Book of Isaiah dates back to the time of the Exile in Babylon, the time after the temple in Jerusalem was reduced to a pile of rubble, the time before the temple was finally rebuilt. Herbert O’Driscoll imagines that the prophet has returned from Babylon and is gazing on the rubble that was once the great temple, the center of worship.

Isaiah asks God to “tear open the heavens and come down” to be with the people. He looks back to the time when God was close to the people and led them out of slavery into freedom. But the people have not called upon God. They have gone about their own ways. Isaiah confesses the sins of the people and asks God to grant mercy. He gives us that powerful image: God is the potter and we are the clay. We need to ask God’s help often so that we can grow into the persons God calls us to be.

For Isaiah and the rest of God’s people, life had been reduced to a pile of rubble. They felt that they had strayed far away from God, and they believed that this had something to do with the fact that they had been conquered by the Babylonian Empire. I think we all understand those points in life when we have tried our best and worked hard and everything falls apart. Everything is in ruins. That’s where Isaiah and the people were. Especially at times like this, we realize that we can’t do it alone. We need God’s help.

In our epistle this morning, Paul is writing to the congregation in Corinth. He starts out with his typical greeting. “Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind.”

This is a positive thing. But there is an undercurrent. We know that the congregation in Corinth has been blessed with many gifts, but they also have been arguing about which gifts are the greatest. Paul is going to address this in the letter. Also, some of the older members of the community have been telling the newer members that they aren’t quite as good because they are still new at the faith. I would say that they are bullying the newer members. Paul is building the foundation for telling them us that we need to thank God for all the gifts we receive and we need to value all gifts and all people equally. That is the direction in which we need to be moving in order to prepare for Jesus’ coming again.

In our Gospel, Jesus is once again telling us not to spend any time trying to predict when he will come again. He tells us to put our energy into being ready to welcome him with joy when he comes to bring in his kingdom. 

Well, how do we get ready? First, we can take time to be as close to God as possible. Time for prayer. Time for quiet. Time to examine our lives, to take stock. We make wills or update wills. We straighten out our finances and get our lives in shape to be ready when he appears.

As we look ahead to the coming of our Lord, we recall his first advent, when he came among among us as one of us, as a little baby.

In his anguish, Isaiah was asking God to tear the heavens and come and help us, but that was five hundred years before the birth of our Lord. God has already come to be with us, and this sheer, loving fact gives us a way to think about preparing for him this Advent. Through prayer, through taking time to think about how much God must love us, that God would come to be with us, we make room in our hearts and lives for Jesus to be born anew in us. As so many of the mystics have said, we must allow and invite Jesus to be born in our lives over and over again. We must make room in the inns of our hearts so that Jesus can come into our lives and share his love and healing and transform us so that we can transform the world.

God did not tear the heavens to come to be with us. God came to be with us as one of us. If we look back on the life and ministry of Jesus and we model our lives after that life, we will grow more and more like him, and his shalom will be even closer to its completion.

Dear Lord, thank you for your love. Thank you for coming to be one of us. Help us to make room for you in our lives. Help us to become more and more like you, so that, together, we may build you shalom.

Amen.

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