Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Advent 1, 2006
The Rev. Melissa Skelton
Luke 21:25-36
Jesus said, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
I have a little ritual I do before going to sleep each night. It takes place while I’m in bed reading, and I realize that I’m tired enough to go to sleep. I put down my book and check the clock to make sure that the alarm is set for the time I want to get up in the morning; I take off my glasses and put them on my bedside table; and then finally, just for a moment, I pull out the drawer of my bedside table and lean toward the open drawer and listen.
In that drawer are a collection of inexpensive wrist watches like the one I have on today, like the ones I wear everyday. Each is a different color and style: some quite conservative and others wildly colored. The one thing they all have in common, however, is that they all tick, they all tick with the bright, tinny sound of a quartz watch. And so each night before I switch off the light and settle down under the covers, I listen to a chorus of watches ticking, sounding like so many crickets singing away on a late summer night.
This morning we’ve suspended a very large timepiece, a watch of sorts, right over there, to the side of the altar; for today is the first Sunday of Advent, a season that is all about time. The first Sunday of Advent begins the yearly church calendar ticking and begins our ticking off the four Sundays that precede the birth of Jesus: God’s own decision to show up in time, the eternal Holy One to become subject to time itself.
In the Biblical tradition, Jesus’ coming is rooted in the yearning of the Jewish people for a Messiah, the yearning we hear expressed in Jeremiah’s prophesy that a “righteous branch will spring up for David.” But in Luke’s Gospel for today, it isn’t the coming of the newborn Jesus we hear about. No, we hear the adult Jesus talking about another coming. Time as we know it will run out, Jesus tells the people, and with this, great tribulation will come for many. But those who can stand with their heads raised up, trusting that even when the ticking stops something fully human will arrive—they will be able to sense that their redemption is drawing near.
Apocalyptic literature in the Bible, such as this passage from Luke, is all about a revelation or a series of revelations which disclose the supernatural world beyond the ticking away of historical events. The focus of apocalyptic literature, then, is on the end of the world as we know it and the beginning of a new world. Major historical events or cataclysms such as the destruction of Jerusalem triggered apocalyptic thinking for Biblical people. And so while such literature can be perplexing and strange to us, what apocalyptic literature is all about is the conviction and the hope that a new revelation of God is coming to us in the midst of worst angst and suffering we experience in the ticking away of our time.
This last week I had a number of conversations with people about the ticking away of time. It’s something that seems to be on many people’s minds right now.
One man in his twenties talked about the clock ticking in terms of feeling overwhelmed by all the time and the choices still in front of him. How to know which paths are the right paths? How to know which career or vocation to settle into? How to find a partner or decide not to look for one? How to decide about whether to stay in the Northwest or to go somewhere else? So much time and so many choices.
And then a number of women not in their twenties (and I count myself among these) talked with urgency about their awareness of the clock ticking. We are aware that our time is limited. There is only so much time left to be who we are meant to be, to do what we are meant to do in this life.
And then I talked with someone who had a wonderful week, and it reminded me that the ticking of the clock can mean the loss of something precious that’s happening right now. And so at times we want to slow the clock down in order to stay with and savor the present.
And then, of course, during times of pain or loss, we wish that we could speed time up, leaving the present behind and to get to a better future. I hear this a lot not just as people speak about their personal lives but as they speak of the life of the Church, life in our society or in our nation.
Yesterday at our quiet morning, Father Jay Rozendaal, a priest of the church who was sponsored for Holy Orders by this parish, talked about being open to God and the real stuff of our lives in the here and now and also waiting and yearning for a God and what is to come. He spoke about these two things as being part of the spirituality of Advent.
Time and time again Jay returned to the words and images of Bernard of Clairvaux in his writings on the Song of Songs. In this description of experiencing God both in the present and in our longing for the future, Bernard, I believe, gives us a sense of how to receive our lives in the present while continuing to long for the future.
“The psalmist says: ‘Seek (God’s) face always.’ Nor, I think, will a soul cease to seek (God) even when it has found (God). It is not with steps of the feet that God is sought but with the heart’s desire; and when the soul happily finds (God), its desire is not quenched but kindled. Does the consummation of joy bring about the consuming of desire? Rather it is oil upon flames. So it is. Joy will be fulfilled, but there will be no end to desire, and therefore no end to the search.”
“Oil upon flames,” says Bernard as he describes what it’s like to meet God, to meet the fullness our particular lives in the now, only to find that this meeting kindles the longing for the next coming.
Earlier I talked about the Advent wreath as a large timepiece, a kind of watch, suspended here in our worship space. There is, of course, one big difference between this hanging timepiece and the ones in the drawer of my bedside table. The Advent wreath does not tick—it burns, it burns.
And so each week the candles we light are burning both for that unique and precious Sunday, a Sunday that will never come again, and they are burning in anticipation, yearning for the future coming of the Holy and Human One at Christmas.
And so whether you want time to speed up or to slow down, whether you feel overwhelmed by how much time you have out in front of you, or how much you want to do with the time you have left, stand up and raise your head for your redemption is very near. It is the redemption that comes when you look upon the Son of Man in his power and glory, when you receive the splendor burning at the heart of your present moment, a burning that then kindles your heart and propels you forward into a future you are meant to have.
And so this is the gift of Advent, the gift of a life that isn’t about running for cover with our heads down or just letting time, the gift of life that burns in every moment and that asks us to live a life worthy of that burning.
Works Cited or Consulted
Sermon 84 on The Song of Songs by Bernard of Clairvaux
T. S. Eliot’s East Coker in The Four Quartets
