Advent — Page 2 — Andy James

Joy for the Journey

December 15, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 1:46-55 for the Third Sunday of Advent
preached on December 15, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

(This sermon begins with a wonderful video from Holy Moly! telling the story of Mary and Elizabeth. Due to copyright restrictions, I cannot show it here, but I nonetheless highly recommend it!)

I simply love this telling of this wonderful story of Mary and Elizabeth. It’s from the series that our children started using this fall in Sunday School called “Holy Moly!” that uses humor and animation—and surprising splashes of color—to tell familiar and formative stories of the Bible. I’ve heard some incredible musical settings of this story over the years, but there was something particularly special to me about this one. Maybe it was Mary’s journey from uncertainty to rejoicing that was so simply yet beautifully depicted. Maybe it was Elizabeth’s reaction to Mary’s arrival, her recognition of the spread of this child’s wonder across the whole earth even before his birth. Maybe it was the babies’ seeming recognition that something special was going on. Maybe it was Mary’s response of confidence amidst the criticism that she received from those she passed along the road. Or maybe it was the incredible color bursting into the land around Mary on her journey back home, echoing so beautifully the prophet’s promise that we heard in our reading from Isaiah this morning:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.

Whatever the reason for my love of this brief movie, ultimately I found it deeply compelling because of how beautifully it lifts up the theme of joy. Today, the third Sunday of Advent, is Gaudete Sunday. This Latin word for “rejoice” is the first word of one of the traditional lectionary readings for this day from Philippians—“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice”—and so this whole Sunday has taken up this theme of rejoicing, from the celebratory music that means that we are getting very close to Christmas to our scripture readings that celebrate joy and even to the pink candle that symbolizes not Mary’s secret wish for a girl for her first child but rather the level of rejoicing that comes for all through the birth of this amazing child. Amidst all the darkness of our world, amidst all the gun violence, all the cold weather and snow and slush and gray days, amidst all the homelessness, all the pain, all the holiday blues, amidst all the brokenness, all the war and conflict, all the things that separate us from God and one another, amidst all the places where God’s presence seems so far away, there is still a light of joy because God is stepping in to make all things new in Jesus Christ.

That’s ultimately the point of this story of Mary and Elizabeth. These two women didn’t understand why—or especially even how!—they were pregnant.Mary was still a virgin, and Elizabeth was well beyond childbearing age. They were the subject of constant scorn and sadness from their friends and family and especially from those who didn’t know them. And in the face of all this external pressure they were enduring the usual pains and struggles of pregnancy in a time when the safety of mother and child were far less certain. Yet they still found reason to rejoice together, to look beyond the uncertainties and pain of their present circumstance to a time when God’s new life would be full and complete in the world. They found reason to share the joy that was promised to them in these children who were growing inside them. They recognized that what they were experiencing would not only be a gift to them and their families but to all people everywhere, so they could do nothing less than celebrate the incredible and transformative presence of God in the midst of this wonder in their lives and their world.

We may not have the kind of gift that Mary and Elizabeth shared that brought them to rejoice in this way, but as we make our way to God’s holy mountain along the journey of Advent, we too are called to look for places to rejoice as they did. People in this day and age aren’t as good at rejoicing as we might think. Most of my friends are as likely to throw a party to forget their troubles as they are to celebrate something good. Many of us are taught from an early age that we must be careful how and when we show off our achievements so that we can demonstrate proper humility and grace, stifling our joy for these good things in our lives. And it is too often the norm that one of us feels the need to hold back good news to avoid offending someone else.

Yet this song of Mary’s joy in our reading from Luke today tells us that our rejoicing is good and proper and right, not just because there is something good happening to her, but because there is good news for all creation that all things will be made new again. In Mary’s song, we see the amazing reality that rejoicing can change the world when God is at work in places near and far, when the hungry are filled with good things, when the powerful are set aside so that God’s power can shine through, when God’s mercy can be the driving force behind all good things, when the world can be turned upside down to make room for God to be at work making all things new.

As we join in this journey of Advent to this high and holy place on the mountain of God, as we set forth in these final days toward Christmas to remember the wondrous gift of God in Christ that comes to us, as we look for God’s new thing to become real in our world, too, I believe that we are called to open our eyes in new ways to God’s joyous work, to sort out how we can offer our own song proclaiming God’s justice and mercy, and to raise our voices with a joyful shout of thanksgiving and praise for the greatness and mercy of God who comes to us in Jesus at Christmas and who promises to come again to make all things new.

May our lives be songs of rejoicing for this new thing until all things are made new in Christ Jesus our Lord! Lord, come quickly! Amen.

The Holy Mountain

December 8, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19 and Isaiah 11:1-10
preached on December 8, 2013, the Second Sunday of Advent, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but somehow during the fall semester of my senior year of college I managed to get a very coveted ticket to a public address by Nelson Mandela. At the time, I had become active in a student group committed to discussing issues of race on campus, and I was just beginning to understand a bit of the history of apartheid in South Africa and the importance of Mandela in dismantling it. On a cool November morning, a couple friends and I drove an hour or so up to Memphis, Tennessee, to hear Mandela speak in hopes that it would help us understand a bit more of our own history. My home state of Mississippi has a very unpleasant history of its own on matters of race that can fairly be described as a slightly less severe version of the apartheid that marked South Africa, and in those days thirteen years ago it had only recently begun to come to terms with the violence that had marked the Civil Rights Movement in the state 40 years earlier as some of the perpetrators of murder and violence were finally being brought to justice.

Nelson Mandela in Memphis, 2000.

My friends and I arrived well in advance of the publicized start time, but the church that seated 5,000 was so full already that we ended up in the next to last row of the balcony! The room was filled with schoolchildren who had been raising money and collecting books to present to Mandela to support charities in South Africa, and everyone was waiting to hear from this beloved international icon and peacemaker who had come to Memphis to receive the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum there. After a glorious introduction appropriate for such a figure, Mandela offered a brief address—of which I remember nothing in particular—yet it was clear that the 5,000 of us in that church had just experienced something we would never forget simply because we had heard this incredible man speak.

Nelson Mandela has been on many minds over the last few days after his death on Thursday, and I’ve found it difficult not to associate him in some way with the words that we hear in our scripture readings for today. These readings give us another image of life on God’s holy mountain, the grand and glorious destination of our Advent journey this year, the place awaited by generations where the fullness of God’s new creation will be revealed. According to Psalm 72 and Isaiah 11, this place will be filled with justice and peace. Here the poor will be judged with righteousness. Here faithfulness will be the belt that holds everything together. And here creatures will set aside their enmity and dwell together in deep and real and full peace.

The psalmist and Isaiah both describe a special and unique leader—perhaps a man like Mandela—who brings God’s people together into this beloved community. This leader judges the poor with righteousness and decides with equity for the meek of the earth. She defends the cause of the poor of the people, gives deliverance to the needy, and crushes the oppressor through this new and different way of life. He speaks a word that captivates everyone and invites a new way of justice to prevail. And this leader is guided all along the way by the spirit of the Lord that brings wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, and knowledge for the good of all creation. Isaiah identifies this leader as “a shoot… from the stump of Jesse,” and for centuries Christians have identified this one with Jesus, yet there are certainly others like Nelson Mandela who have also embodied large parts of these words over the centuries, ranging from some of the better kings of Israel and Judah to quiet and humble leaders around us who embody God’s way of justice and peace. All these women and men, though, ultimately point us not to themselves but to the way of life that leads us to this holy mountain. They help us to live lives that point others to this place. They give us courage to bring about big or little changes in our midst that will be our part in God’s work of setting aside all hurt and destruction. And they show us the way of faith, hope, and love as we join the journey to this holy mountain.

You see, the holy mountain that stands as the goal of our Advent journey is not a clear and definite place. We won’t find it on any human map. We can’t stop at a gas station and ask for directions to it. And even the best GPS won’t know the way to get there. While we get little glimpses of what life might look like on God’s holy mountain from texts like ours today, we need generous, just, and righteous leaders like Nelson Mandela to help us on the journey to this holy place. Faithfulness and peace are at the core of this community, and so a new and different way of life emerges where there is nothing to fear and the danger and pain and hurt that have divided people for generations can be set aside. Here all people have the things that they need as leaders put their attention on those who are in need, and prosperity comes for all through this attention to justice and righteousness. Ultimately there is no hurt or pain or destruction in this place, for instead the focus is on building up the whole community so that God’s transformation can take hold.

As beautiful and simple as all this seems, this way of life on God’s holy mountain is incredibly difficult for us to pull off. Even the most talented leaders like Nelson Mandela are rarely successful in bringing together the disparate factions of humanity that mark so much of our world. The beloved community that takes these things seriously and seeks to embody God’s preference for the poor and the divine emphasis on peace and justice is a direct threat to those who seem to hold great power and build their livelihood on division and strife. And even the occasional glimpse of the peaceable kingdom described here, with the fears of children and the created order set aside, disappears all too quickly when someone speaks up to give voice to the uncertainty that everyone else has kept silent.

Yet as hard as it is, the journey to God’s holy mountain demands that we set aside our fear and uncertainty and start the journey toward this way of new life as best we can, right here and right now. Some steps on this journey are big and huge and substantial, requiring dramatic change in our hearts and minds or the action of government and leaders to stop marginalizing the poor, dehumanizing those who are different from us, and ignoring the needs of those whom we’d rather not see. Some of the changes that are needed to help us get to God’s holy mountain are certainly beyond our immediate individual or even congregational reach, and the sad reality of our polarized political system of these days makes it unlikely that any of them will take hold anytime soon.

Yet the difficulty of these bigger changes that confound us in these days does not excuse us from changing things in the smaller corners of the world where we can make a difference. We can insist on fair treatment for those closest to us and work to embody a new way of justice and righteousness in those places where we have control or influence. We can let mercy and grace prevail in our judgments of others and especially the poor. We can advocate for those who do not have a voice in the halls of power so that they might enjoy the privilege of life abundant. We can set aside our cries for vengeance and retribution in favor of a new way of peace. And we can refuse to let fear control our actions and keep us from living together with those whom we simply assume are different. And throughout it all, we can pray for the spirit of the Lord to rest on us too, to bring us wisdom and understanding, to offer us counsel, might, and insight, to reshape our priorities and focus our hearts and minds on God as we make our way to God’s holy mountain.

While we can’t make the holy mountain of God happen on our own or overnight, we certainly can look for these and other little ways to be a part of God’s transformation of our world each and every day, and we can join in the legacy of people like Nelson Mandela and so many others who have given us such wonderful examples of this kind of life and living in their witness before us. So as we go on this journey to God’s holy mountain, may God open our eyes to the destination of our journey so that we can join in the work of peace, justice, righteousness, faithfulness, and deliverance and be a part of God’s new creation, walking in the light of the Lord each and every day until all these things take hold in each of us and in all creation through Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

The Path to the Holy Mountain I: The Holy Mountain

December 1, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 122 and Isaiah 2:1-5
preached on the First Sunday of Advent, December 1, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As many of you have figured out by now, I love Advent. This brief four-week season that starts out the church year and bridges that gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas is my favorite time of the church year. Some of that is because I think we too often forget about the importance of preparation in our world. I believe that it is essential to pause and get ready for the major milestones in our lives, to spend time intentionally getting our house in order so that the coming celebration can mean all the more.

But this year, I think there is something different in my thinking about Advent and Christmas. This year, it doesn’t seem like there is the same sort of preparation before us. I don’t see the kinds of substantial and uncertain change ahead in our church or our world that help make Advent more meaningful to me. The anxiety of this year’s Christmas season seems to be much more focused on the immediate stress of these busy days and not on something else. There is still plenty of war and strife and poverty and injustice in our world, but it seems to be touching us less and less, and so our longings for something new seem to be less dramatic and immediate than they have been.

And yet this season of preparation for radical change, this time called Advent, is still before us. It calls out that there is something new ahead. It insists that our preparations for Christmas be more than simply buying the perfect presents, setting out the perfect decorations, and getting all the other festivities of the season in exact order. It reminds us that Christmas is not a simple and sweet holiday about the birth of a baby but rather a radical intervention by God that changes everything.

This year, in preparing for this season, our readings from the prophet Isaiah stuck out to me. Isaiah has the wonderful ability to speak so meaningfully to so many different contexts. First it speaks to the prophet’s own time, when he was encouraging the people to amend their ways and return to the Lord after they had taken up different paths focused on their own prosperity and righteousness. Then it speaks again in the days of the assembly and editing of the Hebrew Bible, what we often refer to as the Old Testament, when these words offered great comfort and challenge to a people who were struggling to reestablish their relationship with God and one another without the independence that had defined their identity. Isaiah speaks again to a later day and age, the time when Jesus emerged, when these words gave these hearers hope of a Messiah who would make everything different once and for all. And even now, today, these words point us forward to a future time when God’s presence will be all the more real and complete, when all things will be made new and all creation will walk in the light of the Lord each and every day.

Our readings this morning from Isaiah and the Psalms point us to this kind of journey of walking in the light of the Lord and show us a bit of the destination that is before us. The goal of this journey, you see, is certainly a new and deeper celebration of Christmas, but it is also something more, something that is more deeply transformative of us and our world than just another baby being born, something that gives us a glimpse of God’s new thing that was begun but not finished in the birth, life, death, resurrection, and reign of Jesus. These readings point us to the holy mountain of God, to the sacred and holy place that stands at the center of all creation, to the great temple that stands as the highest of mountains, above all the hills. This holy mountain is the abiding place of God, the place where we know the fullness of God’s presence in our lives and our world, the place where instruction and wisdom flow forth each and every day, the place where swords are beat into plowshares, spears turned into pruning hooks, and the knowledge of war becomes the practice of peace. This year, as much as ever, I believe that the path from Advent to Christmas demands that make our way to the holy mountain of God.

But this vision from Isaiah only gives us a partial image of what we should expect to see at the end of this journey. We don’t have the same expectations and understanding of the temple that were prominent in Isaiah’s own time. The holy mountain of God that we need and expect for our own time is quite likely very different from what our parents and grandparents expected. And this holy mountain where we will know the transformation of our world is only now coming into view.

It’s quite like an incredible view of the city that I experienced on one of my several flights in recent weeks. It was a cloudy and foggy night, with low clouds hanging over almost all of the city—except for a small part of lower Manhattan and Battery Park City that was crystal clear all the way down to ground level and of course the spire of the Empire State Building, peeking its tip through the clouds. It was an eerie sight, with very familiar elements that were yet very different from the view that I know quite well. There was so much that was so familiar—and so much more that was still shrouded from view. This is what is before us as we approach the holy mountain of God this Advent—a glorious yet uncertain and incomplete view of something new, an astounding sight of God’s wonder and grace that is yet beyond our understanding until its full unveiling in the days to come.

Even though we don’t know the fullness of this new thing, exactly what this holy mountain will look like, or even when we might get there, we can still prepare ourselves to enter this holy place. Ultimately as much as Advent is about getting ourselves ready for Christmas, it is also about getting ready for this bigger thing, too, for the day that is to come when “the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills.” These preparations involve an honest look at our lives and our world, a careful assessment of the things that distract us from the journey to God’s holy mountain, and a hopeful view of the things ahead that will help open our eyes for a glimpse of God’s new thing that is ahead. And just like that strange night view of the city, we will likely have glimpses all the way to the surface of this new thing, too—little spots where peace suddenly prevails over the ways of war, brief moments when we begin to understand what God is up to in our lives and figure out how to join in, surprising opportunities to do something new and take a couple steps forward on the path to the holy mountain.

There is no better place to take our first steps on this journey, then, than at this table. This feast is the closest thing we can know in the here and now to God’s holy mountain, for this table sits at the intersection of heaven and earth. It brings together the meal shared by Jesus and his disciples before his death and after his resurrection with the glorious feast that we will share with him and all the faithful on God’s holy mountain. We are right in the middle, right here and right now, ready to experience this foretaste of something new, to welcome this strange feast that will give us sustenance for the journey.

So as we set out on this journey for God’s holy mountain, may you spend your days reflecting on what this strange and wonderful holy place might be in your life and in our world, and may the feast we share today sustain us along the way until we join with the faithful of all nations, of every time and place, to walk in the light of the Lord each and every day. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Speaking Up and Singing Out

December 23, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 1:26-56 for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
preached on December 23, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Music is an integral part of this time of year. We’ve been hearing holiday songs for most of this month already if not longer, and there is incredible variety in style and subject. Nearly every popular music artist makes an album of holiday songs, but the subjects of holiday songs stay pretty much the same. The secular songs talk about winter, cold weather, snow, family, and friends, and the religious ones tell popularized and shortened versions of the various Christmas stories from the Bible along with some material from legends and history.

One of the greatest and most common subjects of these songs is Mary, who is also the main subject of our reading this morning. While we may not hear these songs quite so frequently on the radio, these songs about Mary are some of the best holiday music out there, if you ask me. They take a lot of different forms and focus on many different parts of the story. A lot of these songs are settings of the Magnificat that we just heard read and will sing ourselves in a few minutes, and at our Taizé prayer service the other night, we sang another very simple setting of it that managed to show the spirit of joy in Mary’s song in only a couple lines. Other songs about Mary simply attempt to tell the story of how Jesus came to be born, like a well-known carol from France that tells the story of Mary’s encounter with the angel Gabriel or the song I just sang by John Bell from the Iona Community in Scotland. Still other songs reflect on Mary’s reaction to the news that she would bear God’s son, with one I heard this year even taking a very earthy view of Mary’s encounter with the angel as it depicts in word and song the strangeness of this very intimate encounter between an angel and a young girl.

But as much as I love all this music about Mary, this year I have realized more than ever before how difficult it is for me to identify with Mary. I haven’t been visited by an angel, so I can’t know what it was like for her to experience Gabriel’s presence as she did. I am not a parent, so I can’t go into Christmas drawing connections between the birth of my own children and the birth of Jesus. And since I am not a woman, I can’t imagine what it is like to carry new life of any sort into the world, let alone a son who would be so special and transformative!

With all these limitations, I think it is very easy for me to miss important things about this story—but all of us stand at a disadvantage here because this story has almost always been told through male eyes. The gospel writers were all men, and although Luke tells this story so beautifully, no man could fully capture the feelings and challenges of a story that is so closely connected to a woman’s experience.

We in the church have too often quieted the voice of women over the centuries. While there have been a number of notable women who have contributed their scholarship and spirituality to the life of the church, it has only been in the last one hundred years that women have been given voice in pulpits in many churches, and those who have a closer experience to this key figure of our faith remain locked out of leadership in so many traditions even today. There is something very much missing when half of the human race is not allowed to offer their own perspective on such an important moment in the story of our faith.

And yet amidst such quiet for women, Mary spoke up—even if we have to hear it through the voice of Luke. Mary spoke up when no one seemed to care, when she faced exclusion from society for getting pregnant before she was married, when her story of divine parenthood for her child just wasn’t believable. Mary spoke up not just to claim something for herself, not just to reclaim her personhood, not just to announce that she too had a voice, but Mary spoke up so that others might hear, so that others could understand what she was going through, so that others could join her in praising God for this new thing that was taking shape in her.

This wasn’t an easy thing for her to deal with in general, let alone for her to talk about—her acceptance of it wasn’t a given. God didn’t ask Mary to sign up for a special trip, give up an evening to go to a sales presentation, or even to make a big donation to a favorite charity. Instead, through the angel Gabriel, God asked Mary to give up nine months of a relatively normal life for the pain and struggle of pregnancy. God asked Mary to take on the responsibility of raising a son at a very young age when it wasn’t entirely clear if she would have to do so alone. God asked Mary to stake her reputation as a virtuous woman on a visitation from an angel that she alone witnessed and that others had no incentive to believe.

But the reality is that Mary didn’t have much else to give—or much else to lose. She herself points out her own lowliness, and it seems that there is not much else she could do to be a part of what God was doing in the world around her. Yet in spite of all the obstacles, all the pain, all the ridicule it could bring, she somehow welcomed the angel, listened carefully, and responded hopefully, “Let it be with me according to your word.”

But her acceptance was not the only way that she spoke up. As she sorted out what all these things meant and talked to her relative Elizabeth, another woman who faced pregnancy in an unusual circumstance, Mary suddenly figured it all out. In talking with Elizabeth, she moved from a meek moment of submission and acceptance to a joyous offering of praise and thanksgiving. As she recognized more of what this child would mean, she was ready to praise God, not just for the gift she had received but for this child who would change everything for everyone.

What is our Mary moment? What sort of request in our lives would bring us to wonder and reflect as she did? What could God ask of us—male or female, rich or poor, young or old—that would challenge us and bring us to this kind of new life? What would make us confront our fears and our challenges and speak up with a word of hope and praise?

Because as a man I can’t know the full meaning of what it would be to give up as much as Mary did, I suspect any comparison I might offer would fall a bit short of the incredible offering that she made. But the great medieval mystic Julian of Norwich wrote of what she learned through her own visions of Mary:

I was not taught to long to see her bodily presence whilst I am here, but [instead] the virtues of her blessed soul, her truth, her wisdom, her love, through which I am taught to know myself and reverently to fear my God.

Perhaps then our words and actions can live out this truth, wisdom, and love of Mary each and every day. We can join in Mary’s commitment to opening ourselves to God’s work in us just as she did—not just being virtuous but living in faithfulness, truth, peace, justice, and love with one another and modeling these things for our world so that God’s new way might take hold in our world. And we can offer our own words of praise for what God is doing in us and around us, for mercy that transforms lives and hearts, for strength that scatters the proud, brings down the powerful, and lifts up the lowly, for generosity that fills the hearts and minds and stomachs of those who are in need, and for promises kept that show us how God has been, is now, and always will be at work in our world.

So as we bring our preparations and waiting to a close and join in celebrating this Christmas, may we do our best to be like Mary, opening ourselves to whatever God may be asking of us, speaking up to call others to join in God’s transformation of our lives and our world, and singing out in joy for God’s wondrous gift of new life born in a manger some two millennia ago and taking hold in our hearts once again this Christmas.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Signs

December 2, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 21:25-36 for the First Sunday of Advent
preached on December 2, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

“There will be signs,” Jesus said. There are lots of signs around us these days. What signs of Christmas have you seen lately?

(Just as the congregation spoke of the signs they’ve seen, I hope you’ll add some in the comments.)

As wonderful as the signs of Christmas can be, these are not the only signs we hear about in these days. Our reading this morning from Luke’s gospel tells us about some other signs to watch for in these days—not the signs of Jesus’ first coming but rather his second. You see, even as we spend these Advent days preparing to celebrate Jesus’ birth, we also remember that he will come again. So today as Advent begins, we turn to these signs that he offered his disciples that point to his return, reminders of the new creation first glimpsed in the resurrected Christ, new marks of God’s kingdom taking hold in the world and everything being made new and real and whole and complete.

However, these signs don’t feel very Christmasy. These “signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars” seem to be filled with foreboding and doom. “Distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves” sounds a lot more like the destructive power of Superstorm Sandy than the happy coming of Christmas. Fainting and fear at the “powers of the heavens [being shaken]” seems like something that we ought to be afraid of, too!

Even though it might seem to quash the happy mood a bit, we start the Advent season with these kinds of words every year. We begin this season of preparation not with a sweet baby being born or of shepherds seeking a baby in a manger or of wise men journeying from a far land to pay homage to a newborn king but with these words of foreboding, with signs of “‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” The signs of this season point to an uncertain and maybe even unpleasant time of strife and change, to something uncertain and new and challenging and even destructive, to a great and wonderful thing that means that everything is changing and will be forever different because of God’s power and presence becoming all the more real around us.

“There will be signs,” Jesus said—and then what? Every sign points to something, warns us of something, and calls us to prepare, and so too these strange signs tell us that we need to get ready. “Now when these things begin to take place,” Jesus said, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” It’s as our last hymn suggested:

Lift up your heads, eternal gates,
see how the King of glory waits,
The Lord of Hosts is drawing near,
the Savior of the world is here.

But what will this Savior look like? What will our redemption look like as it draws near? Jesus doesn’t tell us that—he only tells us of its signs! But the next verse of our hymn reminds us that Jesus’ own coming didn’t look anything like anyone expected it to. He was no traditional sort of king. Instead, we see that “God comes, a child amidst distress,” with “no mighty armies [to] shield the way” but “only coarse linen, wool, and hay.” (“Lift Up Your Heads,” adapted John Bell)

Our salvation, then, will quite likely look very different from what we expect or what we have seen before. Perhaps we must stand up because we won’t be able to see it from our usual seat, and maybe we must raise our heads because it won’t be in our obvious line of sight. Our redemption—our salvation—will come in glory and in wonder, in strange and powerful visions and in quiet and unadorned splendor. The things ahead are to be incredible and amazing, showing the fullness of God’s power in the most unexpected ways, transforming us and our world into something new as only God can do.

“There will be signs,” Jesus said—but they point to something that is coming, and so we are called to pay attention to them and take action. When we see the signs of Christmas going on all around us, we are reminded that there is so much to be done to get ready for the holiday. In the same way, these signs that Jesus speaks of should remind us that there is work to be done now to get ready for our redemption, for the all things that God is doing to make all things new. Jesus first suggests that we be on guard against anything that distracts us from the hope of what God is doing in us and through us and around us. He then instructs us to wait and watch and prepare for something new and powerful and wonderful coming into being. And finally, he calls us to stay awake and alert at all times so that we will have the strength to know that the mighty and powerful signs matter less than the new creation that they point to.

So like all good signs, these signs demand action on our part. Maybe these signs call us to step back and take a deep breath during these Advent days. Maybe these signs encourage us to turn our efforts of preparation for Christmas away from the gift-buying and commercial frenzy and toward a celebration of God’s amazing entrance into our world in the baby Jesus. And maybe these signs invite us to reassess our broader way of life to see how we can be more faithful as we wait for the fullness of God’s new creation to become real.

And so “there will be signs,” just as Jesus said—signs of a new and different and wonderful way of life breaking through into our world, signs of celebration as we remember the joyous birth of a child whose life among us changes everything, signs of a changing and challenging world that nonetheless gives us hope that God will make all things new. Amidst all these signs, it is our privilege and responsibility to take the time to get ready, to prepare our hearts and our lives for the one who comes at Christmas and who is coming again in power and glory to make all things new, to stand up and raise our heads, for our redemption is drawing near, in power and in quiet, in meekness and majesty, in a little babe and a mighty king, in Christ our Lord who has come and is coming to make all things new.

May we know this matchless and majestic strength, this power shown in weakness, this savior of the world who comes as a lowly baby in a manger and reigns as the mightiest king the world will ever know, as we prepare to welcome him now at Christmas and in the time still to come when all things are made new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.