sermons — Page 50 — Andy James

Waiting at the Doors

November 29, 2010 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 2:1-5 and Matthew 24:36-44
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on November 28, 2010

Andre Sanchez spent the better part of his Thanksgiving holiday waiting at the doors. He arrived at the Best Buy in Union Square at 1:00 Tuesday afternoon so he could save some $600 on a couple electronics items when the store opened early on Friday morning. He told the Post, “When I finally got in, it felt like the gates of heaven opened up.”

He was surely not alone – based on the sheer volume of advertisements via paper, email, and television these days, a great majority of Americans spent at least some part of the last few days shopping, and more than a few of them surely spent some time waiting at the doors. This Black Friday “holiday” has become so notorious that one of the staff in our denomination’s Office of Theology and Worship even wrote a Christmas carol about it!

Early on a Friday morn, anxious drivers blow their horns.
Swiftly to the mall they race, praying for a parking place.
Humming carols of the season, spending with no rhyme or reason.
Checking, savings overdrawn, all before the light of dawn.
Save a dollar! Save a dime! Happy, happy shopping-time!

Bargain hunters stalk their prey all across the U.S.A.
Checkout lines around the block, just like back at Plymouth Rock.
Stuffed with turkey, pie, and gravy, they maneuver like a navy,
stacking high their shopping carts, maxing out their credit cards.
Save a fortune! Save yourselves! Stuff is flying off the shelves.

Prophets have foretold the day all of this will pass away:
parking places gone to seed, escalators clogged with weeds;
Nordstroms, Saks, and Nieman Marcus empty as a turkey carcass;
heaven’s children at the feast where the greatest serve the least.
Savior, save a place for me, where the best of gifts are free.

– David Gambrell

As Advent begins today, it is tempting, I think, to see these days as a time of waiting at the doors of Christmas Eve, longing for gifts galore, living into the strange reality of consumerism that permeates these days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, looking for heaven as a big-box store opening up with great deals, and celebrating Christmas without getting ready for it – or by getting ready for it! But our children’s bulletin for today suggests that there is more to Advent than all this:

People get ready during Advent by decorating, baking, shopping, wrapping presents, and visiting friends and family. Use Advent to get ready on the inside, too.

– Kids Celebrate, Advent 1A

So how do we get ready on the inside? What can we expect as we wait at the doors of Christmas? And what will we find once we get on the other side? Will the gates of heaven bring us to some great megastore in the sky? Or is there more to this time that that?

Our texts today start to answer that question – not with visions of angels and shepherds and wise men but with a look far forward, well beyond Christmas Eve, into the world that comes into being because of what God is doing in these days. Isaiah starts us out with a hopeful vision of peace and justice that shows us how things will look one day – not just on the other side of the gates of heaven but “in the days to come” here on the earth, too, as we wait at the doors for something new.

In these days to come, God’s life in the world will be more evident and real, for people everywhere will be drawn to God and look for God’s presence, not just in their own way as they feel led but together, as many peoples coming joining as one, to seek instruction in how to live.

But these days to come are not just a time to sit around and enjoy something new – in this time, the word of the Lord will go forth to bring justice and peace to all the world, to “beat… swords into plowshares, and… spears into pruning hooks” so that the whole world will know the fullness of God’s presence and what this means for people each and every day.

Finally, if it weren’t already clear, the prophet invites everyone to join in: “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

If the light of the Lord weren’t clear enough from Isaiah’s words, Jesus offers us another vision of the gates of heaven in our reading from the gospel according to Matthew. Unlike the deals advertised on Thanksgiving Day for Black Friday, Jesus suggests that the things to come as we wait at the doors will be quite a surprise, a sudden, dramatic change that isn’t at all understood or pictured but is coming nonetheless.

Jesus even makes it clear that we won’t know anything about this time to come until it comes, and this “rapture,” as some Christians describe it, demands only that we be ready for it whenever it might come, staying awake and alert for the day when the Lord is coming. One commentator sums it up well:

We are not expected to know everything, but we are expected to do something. The Jesus of the verses before us calls persons to a life of work in a spirit of wakefulness.

– Mark Urs, Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1

This is not just a version of that wonderful old adage, “Jesus is coming – look busy!” – this is a real attentiveness to the time before us, a real turn away from the world’s pull upon us toward greed and consumption, a real turn toward preparation and making things ready, constantly asking that wonderful question posed by our opening hymn this morning: “O Lord, how shall I meet you?” Jesus insists that we be ready for something more to come at any time.

There is something real about waiting at the doors these days. Even if we dismiss the insane excesses of the holiday shoppers around us, even if we are ready to put off the Christmas carols until December 24, even if we have a pretty good answer to how we shall meet our coming Lord, we still wait at the door for something more. We know there is something missing in the life we have. We start by trying to fill it with all the “stuff” of these days only to find that we have just dumped an incredible amount of time, energy, and money into a black hole that cannot be filled with these things.

And so as this Advent begins and we wait at the door of Christmas once again, we also wait at the door of something more. We wait at the door of a world transformed by God’s power and presence. We wait at the door of a dramatic and complete change that can’t be expected or described or contained in human words. And we wait at the door of a new way of life that can only begin by God’s own initiative but that happened once in an entirely unexpected way, not in regal robes in the palace, announced with trumpets to nobility but wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger, announced by angels to the lowly field workers on the night shift.

The little glimpse of things ahead that we get from our texts today is probably not enough to satisfy our longings and fill our spirits, but the door is nonetheless open. We can peer inside and get a glimpse of the glory yet to come in these and other words. We can wait with patience and hope for a new way to come into being. And we can take this invitation seriously to come and walk in the light of the Lord, for when we take even a little step toward this new way, we join in what God is doing in this Advent season and throughout all time to make things new.

And so, this Advent, as we wait at the doors of something new, how will we respond to God’s invitation? How will we meet our Lord? How will we walk in the light of the Lord? Will we wait at the doors with the world, focusing on the busyness of these days, the shopping that must be done by December 24, the errands and cooking that have to be finished, and the gooey sentimentality that marks so much of this season? Or will we wait at the doors of a heaven far greater than any big-box store, stepping back to prepare our minds and hearts and lives for the coming of an incredible and long-expected child, taking a new and fresh look at a well-worn season in hopes of finding something new in these days? As my friend Carol Howard Merritt put it:

We will never know the reign of God that is in and among us until we wake up and become attuned to those promises of peace and justice, until we can become alert to those things that are going on around us that remind us of God’s presence, until we walk away from the cynicism and despair that can sedate us and become busy, working for a world where the downtrodden will be buoyed and the ravaged will be made whole.

So may God open our eyes to the possibilities before us in our individual lives and our life together in this place, give us trust that these days can bring us something more than just temporal pleasures and seasonal highs, and show us how to look for the real joy and hope and renewal that can come only from walking in the light of the Lord. May these Advent days be filled with hope and expectation not just of a happy, idealized Christmas morning but of a world exploding with the glory and promise of a God who comes into our midst to make all things new.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Moving Beyond Words

November 23, 2010 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 65:17-25
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on Sunday, November 14, 2010

I’m always amazed at the power of words to create new worlds, to stimulate the imagination into dreaming of something new. Children of all ages were entranced by the incredible new world created in the words of the Harry Potter books in recent years, and even for someone like me who hasn’t read them, their images of a world defined by wizards and magical powers somehow have carried over into a broader part of our lives. Other books transport us to times and places that seem impossible to access otherwise, and suddenly we are linked with people who have very different experiences or who lived in a different day and age. And still other words imagine what things will be like in a time yet to come – or offer some variation on our current world that nonetheless is somehow different. When I was in junior high, I was a big fan of a series of books known as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that imagined that Earth, from this perspective a small and insignificant planet circling an ordinary star on the outskirts of the Milky Way, had been destroyed to make way for a new intergalactic superhighway even as a few Earthlings took up a role in the strange and wonderful story of things beyond this planet. All of these incredible words invite us to imagine something very different from what we know ourselves, a world where things are somehow different yet that is strangely familiar.

Our reading from Isaiah this morning stands among these great words that create new worlds. However, unlike these great literary examples of words that create new worlds, Isaiah’s vision, by its very nature, must move beyond words to become real in the world. These beautiful words suggest that things as they are now will not last forever and the world will be transformed by the power of God. They paint an incredible image of new heavens and a new earth, a holy city filled with joy, people living the fullness of life as God intends, a vibrant and verdant land filled with houses and fields and vineyards, blessed by God in ways beyond all imagination.

These words are so beautiful that they bear hearing again, this time in a paraphrase by writer Eugene Peterson:

“Pay close attention now:
I’m creating new heavens and a new earth.

All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain
are things of the past, to be forgotten.

Look ahead with joy.
Anticipate what I’m creating:

I’ll create Jerusalem as sheer joy,
create my people as pure delight.

I’ll take joy in Jerusalem,
take delight in my people:

No more sounds of weeping in the city,
no cries of anguish;

No more babies dying in the cradle,
or old people who don’t enjoy a full lifetime;

One-hundredth birthdays will be considered normal—
anything less will seem like a cheat.

They’ll build houses and move in.

They’ll plant fields and eat what they grow.

No more building a house that some outsider takes over,
No more planting fields that some enemy confiscates,

For my people will be as long-lived as trees,
my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.

They won’t work and have nothing come of it,
they won’t have children snatched out from under them.

For they themselves are plantings blessed by God,
with their children and grandchildren likewise God-blessed.

Before they call out, I’ll answer.
Before they’ve finished speaking, I’ll have heard.

Wolf and lamb will graze the same meadow,
lion and ox eat straw from the same trough,
but snakes—they’ll get a diet of dirt!

Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
anywhere on my Holy Mountain,” says God. (The Message)

The beauty and power of these words is clear to me, but they nonetheless cannot just be enjoyed – they must be lived!

However, some people of faith, past and present, have insisted that these words and others like them are only promises for the future, absolving themselves of responsibility for the things that get in the way of this vision of something new in the present world. The reality is, though, that these words offer just as much of a vision for the immediate future as they promise something new for all eternity. The full hope and vision in these incredible words is something that we will almost certainly not see with our human eyes, but that does not excuse us from being a part of doing what we can to help make them real in some small way in our own day and age. These words demand that we move beyond just enjoying them and the world they create in our minds into trying to make these things real each and every day. As our Presbyterian sisters and brothers put it some thirty years ago,

The people of God have often misused God’s promises
as excuses for doing nothing about present evils.
But in Christ the new world has already broken in
and the old can no longer be tolerated. (A Declaration of Faith 10:5)

And so we must join in what God is doing even now to transform and renew the world, stepping into places where the new creation of Isaiah’s vision needs nourishing and nurturing. We look for places around the world that are in need of God’s transforming justice and peace, places torn apart by war, places in need of clean water and safe housing, places where people suffer because of their gender, ethnicity, cultural background, sexual orientation, religious practice, or any other human classification, places where the world needs a concrete and real reminder that we are all children of God. We look for places in our own nation where people struggle to make ends meet, places where women and men are forced to hide because they are considered “illegal,” places where poverty cripples life and opportunities simply don’t exist as they one did, places where God’s good creation is devalued, pushed away, or abused. And we look for places in our own city and neighborhood where people are forced to hide their pain and suffering in uncertain times, places where children are kept from flourishing as their gifts and lives would allow, places marked by unmet need and indifferent leaders, places overlooked by even the most observant among us. Once we look and we see and we find, we can and must act, moving beyond words to bring our gifts, our talents, our wisdom, our commitment – what the vows church officers take describe as “energy, intelligence, imagination, and love” – to this work of transformation.

But we do not approach this work alone, limited by our humanity and only able to do a little here and there. This is God’s new creation, and God has been at work on this for a long time – so we simply seek to join in what is already going on. And that is truly the wonder of this new creation – we do not have to reinvent the wheel but instead seek how we ourselves can join in to help this new way flourish and grow. We can’t do it all, but we must do something. That same statement of faith continues:

We know our efforts cannot bring in God’s kingdom.
But hope plunges us into the struggle
for victories over evil that are possible now
in the world, the church, and our individual lives.

Hope gives us courage and energy
to content against all opposition,
however invincible it may seem,
for the new world and the new humanity
that are surely coming. (A Declaration of Faith 10:5)

And so we are called and challenged to be a part of this new creation even now.

Today, as some of you may know, is stewardship commitment Sunday for us as we consider how we in this congregation can commit to God’s work in this place over the coming year. In these days in our life together, I think Isaiah’s vision of God’s new creation is so very important for us – it invites us to remember that there is something new and different being created for us and yet we must join in making it real in our midst. Isaiah’s vision pushes us to both imagination and action, both vision and work, so that we can join in this incredible thing that God is doing all around us.

We have great and unusual potential in the coming months, an opportunity to continue the new things already happening in our midst, a chance to do not just what we have done before or what must be done now but the new thing that God is preparing for us, a possibility of embodying what God intends for all the world in our life together in this place. Nonetheless, this new thing requires more than my commitment, more than the commitment of a few key leaders, but rather the commitment of the entire congregation. As much as we need financial support, we probably need other things more – participation in our work of outreach and faith-sharing, leadership in new things and new ways, support and encouragement from those beyond our congregation, and most of all your prayerful engagement as we seek to see what is ahead – to dream and vision how God is inviting us to step out together and move beyond words to be a part of this new creation in the world.

As powerful as these words from Isaiah are, as much as they themselves embody and envision a new world, we still must make them our own. We still must use the power of these words to sort out what God is doing in our midst and how God invites us to join in. Then we must respond to this vision with commitment to the journey ahead, with the energy, intelligence, imagination, and love that we have seen in countless women and men over the centuries built on the incredible witness of none other than Jesus Christ, the one who shows us the way of mercy, peace, justice, and love and invites us to join in.

May God guide us in hope and love as we move beyond words to join in God’s work of bringing in the new creation in this place and so in all the world through the power and mercy of Jesus Christ our Lord until he comes again to finish this new creation once and for all. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Selective Hearing

October 24, 2010 By Andy James

a sermon on Joel 2:23-32
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

There’s a relatively common disorder afflicting people everywhere, including me and maybe even you too, that makes living all too difficult sometimes. There are few physical symptoms, but this disease is easily identified if you are looking for it. There are a few home remedies, but sadly no cure. You know it well, I suspect: selective hearing – the tendency to hear what you want to hear and ignore the things that aren’t so pleasant! We do it in our lives constantly, focusing on the “good news” to seemingly encourage and protect others and ourselves, burying difficult words or bad news in lots of positive nonsense, even lifting up things that we like to hear and ignoring those we don’t.

So I think we have a bit of selective hearing if we just read the brief excerpt from the prophet Joel that we heard read a few minutes ago – those wonderful, uplifting words about God’s redemption of the people of Israel, comforting words that emphasize again and again that “my people shall never again be put to shame,” positive words that emphasize the good things to come when God’s spirit is poured out upon all creation.

But that’s not Joel’s main message, and to think it is is a pretty serious case of selectively hearing the Bible. The previous two chapters detail the ruin of the nation of Israel, lamenting its destruction and barrenness: “The fields are devastated, the ground mourns; for the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil fails.” Lamentation, prayer, and fasting are the way of life for these days: “Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.”

But after all this come the words we heard today, words we might select to hear more often. The trouble of these days will soon be past, says the Lord. God will send rain to ease the drought, and the conquering armies will be cast off. The fields will produce a bountiful feast, and the name of God will shine forth again. But this is not just a new day for the fields and the harvests of the land – the people too shall be made new: God’s spirit will be poured out on all flesh, bringing prophecy, dreams, and visions to all people, regardless of age, class, or anything else. And if that isn’t enough, the day of the Lord shall come in glory, ushering in an apocalyptic end to the way things have been and initiating a new way of life for all God’s children.

What a grand and glorious vision! What a way of life Joel imagines for us! What a joyous day that will come when all things are made new!

But we know all too well that these are promises for the future, not realities for the present. In these days we know the burdens of our world. We see the pain of unemployment and underemployment and a pretty stuck economy in our friends and family if not in ourselves. We know the difficulty of life and living in the incredibly complex world of the twenty-first century. We walk with our sisters and brothers along the ways of death and struggle to find words to offer comfort and hope. We hear the cries of “How long!” and “Will it ever end?” all around us, even in our lectionary readings in recent weeks, lifting up to God our lamentations and cries over and over and over again, to the point that we are ready to say, “Enough already!” And we have wondered what God is up to in this place in these days as we face uncertainty and change in the life of our beloved congregation.

So in the midst of such promises and such realities, some would say we need to do a better job at selective hearing, tuning out the negative vibes around us and lifting up the positive things from our faith to make us feel better and encourage us in difficult days. That’s been the practice for the last fifty-five years at a church out in Orange County, California. The Crystal Cathedral there was founded at a drive-in theater in the 1950s as a monument to the booming suburban culture of those days, and over the years it has embodied many of the excesses of that same culture that have become such a burden in the current financial times. This week, the church filed for bankruptcy, citing declining donations and continued high costs for opulent Christmas pageants and celebrity appearances on its national television program the Hour of Power.

But in my book its message has been the biggest casualty of these days. Over the years, the Crystal Cathedral has focused on a simple gospel of positive thinking, assuming that bigger and newer and shinier is always better, speaking more of self-help to recover from pain than redemption from God, and echoing throughout its life its famous pastor Robert Schuller’s message, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” In these days of economic uncertainty, when everything seems to be going wrong, this message falls flat. The troubles of these times show us that the gospel can’t be summed up with simple platitudes about how God will work everything out if we just believe in Jesus. Pageantry and show that paper over the real challenges of life and living are uncovered as the elaborate ruse that they are. And when things go wrong, bubbles burst, and uncertainty reigns, proclaiming God’s primary presence in positive things that might happen leaves us with a really bad case of selective hearing.

Joel’s words today, heard in their full context, offer us a real, honest place to dwell in the midst of these kinds of days – a comforting place where God’s presence is known no matter what befalls us; a simple place where we stand together in the midst of change and uncertainty to know God’s love, love one another, and extend that love to all the world; and a hopeful place for the days ahead to be full and complete not by our own doings but by God’s power that can make all things new.

As comforting as these words may seem, they are nonetheless still challenging words for challenging times – words that invite us to imagine that there is something more beyond what we know or can see in our past; words that encourage us to dream and vision beyond our turmoil into something new; words that comfort us that renewal and new life does not lie solely on our effort, work, skill, or presence; and words that call us to be confident that the ultimate new way lies beyond our imagination or vision and even our lifetime in the new thing that God will do in the world, shaking the foundations and darkening the skies as the culmination of the new creation comes to break down everything that has oppressed and raise up everything to be made new.

How do we dream when we stand in the midst of turmoil, though? How do we stop predicting trouble and move to predicting possibility? That’s really what Joel is about – not selectively hearing what is going on in the world but calling us to put aside our fears of what faces us in these days because God has been, is now, and always will be with us so that we can trust that God is already doing a new thing and join right in even when it seems darkest and most uncertain.

Yes, we will always have to battle our affliction of selective hearing, but what words do we need to hear so that we can join in God’s work in the world? What will inspire us to be the people who are open to God’s Spirit poured out upon them? And what can encourage us in the midst of uncertainty to be real about where we are even as we live in hope that God will act to redeem and save and make all things new? Such a way is not easy, but it is nonetheless the way before us.

May God’s spirit be poured out upon us as we join in making all things new.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Expectation, or, The End of the World as We Know It (Sermon for Advent 1C, November 29, 2009)

November 28, 2009 By Andy James

It’s been quiet here. However, it may start getting louder soon. I’m intending to start posting my sermons online, so there’s no better time to start than the beginning of the new year (for the church, that is!)

Expectation, or, the End of the World as We Know It
Luke 21:25-36

I’ve never been a fan of talk about the end of the world – what many refer to as the apocalypse. I’ve never seen the movie Apocalypse Now. I always thought those bumper stickers I saw down South that said, “In case of rapture, this vehicle will be unoccupied” were stupid. I made it through one of the Left Behind books only because I had to read it for a class in seminary on fundamentalism. All those charts that presumably predict what the course of the history of the world looks like – and try to show exactly when the world will end based on the election of some world leader – just make me angry and frustrated. Every time someone asks me about 2012, I don’t think of the new hit movie or the prediction that the world will end when the Mayan calendar runs out of days two years from now, so I have to pause for a minute or two to figure out exactly what they’re talking about! And to top it all off, I’ve never been a big fan of the book of Revelation in the Bible – it is confusing, easy to misinterpret, and difficult to apply to everyday life in the twenty-first century.

But today, as we embark on the journey of Advent and begin a new liturgical year, our gospel reading from Luke puts the idea of the apocalypse before us, like it or not. It’s a strange choice, really – in that time when conventional wisdom would suggest that we should be singing Christmas carols and talking about the birth of a little child, our readings jump to the end of Jesus’ life and insist that we not yet think about the coming of Jesus at Christmas but instead think about “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with glory and power to make all things new in the kingdom of God. When we begin what one of my friends from seminary calls the “month-long baby shower we call Advent,” it would seem that we should start with the baby and his story. Instead, we look today at the end times as the season begins, remembering first and foremost that the coming of Jesus at Christmas was only his first coming – and so we should be expecting another one!

Rather than jumping right into the story of the first coming of Jesus, our readings for this season begin with one of Jesus’ teachings near the end of his life, just before his arrest, a passage often referred to as the “little apocalypse” where Jesus talks about the days beyond his life on earth with his disciples. Expectation seems to be the key word here – Jesus speaks of signs and fears and forebodings that should not be a surprise but rather should be expected along the way. And then at an unexpected time, when the powers of the earth and the heavens are shaken, he promises that “‘the Son of Man [will come] in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” Surprisingly, though, Jesus insists that these things are not to be feared – instead, he suggests, “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Just because these signs are not feared does not mean that they should be ignored – just like it is clear that summer is near when the fig tree sprouts its leaves, so it will be clear that the kingdom of God is near when all these signs and portents and shaking take place. But just keeping our eyes open in expectation is not enough – Jesus insists that there is more for us to do to get ourselves ready for this day ahead. “Be on guard,” he says. Don’t let the worries of the world get you down so that you aren’t ready for the day that is sure to come. Keep your eyes and ears and hearts open for what God is doing, ready to avoid the pitfalls sure to come along the way so that you won’t have to worry when the time for the kingdom of God is upon us.

Jesus’ message here is not quite as harsh as some of the apocalyptic messages in other places in the Bible that tend to bring us fear and uncertainty, but he still gets at the core of them: we need to expect that the world as we know it will come to an end. From Jesus’ perspective, there seems to be little for us to fear – judgment is not the main point of all this that he is describing. The reality is that the apocalypse is not so much to be feared as it is to be welcomed. In it, Jesus insists that our “redemption is drawing near” and things will finally change. These days ahead are not primarily about how the world gets split into “us” and “them” – “us” who are “saved” and “them” who are not – but rather about the coming of salvation for all. These days ahead are not about the destruction of all the world but rather about the end of all the things that distort God’s goodness and disrupt God’s intentions for our world. These days ahead are not about things that matter only when the end comes but rather about the revelation of what God is doing now to make all things new once again.

At the core, that’s what all this apocalypse business is about – the Greek word that gives us “apocalypse” is best translated “uncover” or “reveal,” and so the days ahead promise to be the revelation of something new, God’s work of revealing what God is up to. That’s what Advent is all about – waiting for the new things God is revealing even now in the world, watching for reminders of God’s presence every day, expecting that God will reveal Godself once again at Christmas and beyond, and preparing for the fulfillment of all these things in the kingdom of God that is being revealed even now. But in the midst of our waiting, watching, expectation, and preparation for Christmas, we must not forget that there is an even greater revelation ahead, and our eyes, ears, and hearts must be open to perceive it as it is revealed in our world. As Jan Richardson, an artist, blogger, and United Methodist minister, puts it:

“In the rhythm of our daily lives here on earth, Christ bids us to practice the apocalypse. He calls us in each day and moment to do the things that will stir up our courage and keep us grounded in God, not only that we may perceive Christ when he comes, but also that we may recognize him even now. There is a sense, after all, in which we as Christians live the apocalypse on a daily basis. Amid the destruction and devastation that are ever taking place in the world, Christ beckons us to perceive and to participate in the ways that he is already seeking to bring redemption and healing for the whole of creation.”

Practicing the apocalypse is hard anytime, but in the buildup to Christmas in our culture it is nearly impossible. It’s nothing about a shift to saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” – the reality is that Christmas was taken over by our culture a long time ago. In all the trappings of the season – in all the decorations, carols, and the like – there’s almost nothing left of this radical message of revolutionary redemption and healing for the whole of creation. But God’s new thing still beckons us to join in. We must stop just going through the motions of the holiday season and start paying attention to the wildly transformative message of these days. We must stand up to our world’s insistence that Christmas begins the day after Halloween or Thanksgiving and ends on December 24 and instead continue it to Epiphany on January 6 and beyond. We must turn away from the preparations for all those parties and other celebrations and instead prepare the way for the incredible, transformative gift of God coming into our midst in Christmas – and the day of the kingdom of God that is still yet to come but beginning to come about even now.

My friends, it is time to start waiting, watching, expecting, and preparing for the end of the world as we know it – not in 2012 or any other particular date, but when the fullness of time has come, and maybe even in our midst. You see, in these days, if we expect to see only what we have seen before, then we will see exactly that, but if in this Advent season we open our eyes to the possibilities of what God can and will be doing in the days to come, then we might just see God revealing something new before our very eyes.

These are hard things for us to do in these days. Even if we choose to buck the major pressures of the world, there are some obligations it would seem we must still keep. We just can’t skip some of those Christmas parties. We still have to get and give gifts for some people. And so often we feel that we cannot deprive our youngest friends of the joys of this season.

Even when we can’t give up everything about the world’s Christmas we can do a few things to change our own. One online movement known as the Advent Conspiracy suggests four steps that I’ll repeat here. First, worship fully. Don’t miss out on the opportunities in our life together to focus on the real reason for these days. A great way to step into this is to join us on Thursday nights this Advent for our Advent prayer services in the style of the Taizé Community in France, where we spend the better part of an hour in quiet music and prayer, stepping away from the pressures of the busy season to recenter ourselves in the life of the one whose first revelation we celebrate in these days. Then, the Advent Conspiracy suggests that we spend less. Americans spend an average of $450 billion each Christmas. Yes, a little push of spending might help our economy this year, but is that what this season is really about? What if we bought just one less gift this Christmas, or perhaps looking for other ways to give that might be even more meaningful than that high-priced gadget or that beautiful new sweater that will get worn only once? If that wasn’t enough, the Advent Conspiracy points us to give more, to give time to family and friends in the midst of a busy season or talent to an organization in need. A group of my friends on Twitter and Facebook took up this cause on Friday and gave over $2200 to organizations and causes we care about. And in all these things, the Advent Conspiracy suggests that we love all. In worshiping more fully, in spending less, and in giving more, we embody God’s love in Jesus Christ that comes among us at Christmas, reaching out to those who are most in need and living in the way of love that Jesus began in his own life so that that love might be revealed all the more in our midst until the kingdom of God comes.

As we journey together in this Advent season, may we be filled with expectation like the children of God – expecting the things that God is preparing for us in the same way that we once looked forward with great excitement and joy to opening those gifts on Christmas morning so that we might be ready to receive the incredible gift of God in Jesus Christ this Christmas but also be ready to recognize the coming kingdom of God – the end of the world as we know it! – when it comes in our midst so that we might join in what God is doing even now to make all things new.

Lord, come quickly, and make all things new!

Amen.