The Second Sunday of Advent 2009

“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.” — Luke 1:76

Imagine for a moment a world and society in which our worth and wages were not determined by our work but rather by an entirely different standard. Suppose we were not assessed for our adult skills, but for our childlike abilities – our capacity to be vulnerable and spontaneous, to show our feelings, and to live fully in each moment given to us. Suppose further that our annual performance appraisal was done not by our supervisor at work but by our children – or grandchildren – at home, or perhaps even by “children gathered from west to east,” to borrow words found in our readings today.

It opens up all sorts of possibilities. Those who do not have children of our own would not be let off the hook. A child would be assigned to you for the occasion – preferably one not of our own choosing – just to make the evaluation fair and equitable.

Rather than a rating for promptness, we would probably have a scale reflecting the ability to lose all sense of time and place for hours on end. For the ability to lay carpet or hang wallpaper in a straight line, we would substitute skill with Legos or Tonker Toys or the latest video games. And original contributions to high-quality academic publications would be replaced by interesting bed-time stories, peer-reviewed and assessed by panels of children from the neighbourhood. The talent for making tasty pizza, and hamburgers that taste like Big Macs – preferably seven days a week – would merit extra points on our performance assessment scale.

Our world would certainly be a different place. Some of us would be in serious trouble and would have a lot of catching up to do. However, instead of being encouraged to sign up for evening classes, we would probably be required to enroll in the preschool program for a couple of terms. For all of us, priorities would change in a hurry as we came to terms with the new values and norms. After all, our livelihood would depend on it.

Perhaps we could even try this new way of doing things in the world of politics and high finance. There might be a little confusion at first, but it would be worth it. “No hitting” and “plays well with others” would take on new meaning as we appraised global leaders. And the world would be a more sensible place as Matchbox cars were substituted for BMWs as status symbols, Barbie-doll fashions replaced Prada and Armani, and Pokémon cards became the new coin of the realm.

Alas, the world has a long way to go in learning to cherish the child. Child-care workers are still among the lowest paid professionals in the country. According to some experts, they rank just below casual farm labourers and assistant zoo snake-handlers.
We should seek Child-inspired patterns of living during this holy Advent season. It probably does take a child to lead us back to that which is precious and holy – to the kingdom of heaven itself. A child, after all, would understand about the kingdom of heaven – at least until an adult tried to explain it.

Perhaps this is on Zechariah’s mind in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke as he encounters his neighbours gathered in the temple for the circumcision of his child. “What then will this child become?” the neighbours ask, as they reflect on the events surrounding the birth of John, who is to become the Baptist. But they are not so much thinking of “child-inspired patterns of living” as they are the destiny and future of the extraordinary child before them.

For the aged Zechariah the answer to their question comes easily as he is “filled with the Holy Spirit” and speaks. “You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High;” he proclaims, “for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.” His words are an allusion no doubt to the traditional understanding of John’s future role as precursor of the Christ. Yet in some sense it is the child himself who is the prophet of the Most High because every child is an image of the loving and blameless God who sent his Son to be born among us in humble circumstance. Only a child can call us back to the simplicity and fullness of divine love.

If, in our contemporary world, we have learned to dispense with child-inspired patterns of living, we have also all too often learned to dispense with children themselves. Their images haunt us in scenes of famine in faraway lands. We read with horror of their abuse in our own country and elsewhere. In some quarters, children have even become as disposable as holiday wrappings and tinsel, lovely in their festive attire but otherwise nonessentials, neither profit centres nor revenue enhancers.

This Advent season we must learn again to treasure the child, whether it be children of our own families and neighbourhoods or those “gathered from east to west” throughout the world. But we can only do this by first rediscovering and cherishing the child still within each of us – hidden beneath layers of needless complexity and sophistication. Midway through this Advent season of preparation and wonder, we open ourselves to the child who approaches our doorstep in the cold and dark of our winter hearts. Let us welcome that infant visitor and become what John – and we ourselves – are called to be: prophets of the Most High.

Amen.

The First Sunday of Advent 2009

Advent, this season on which we embark today, these few short weeks of repentance, preparation, and expectation, begins with a picture of the end of the world. Jesus, already well aware of the likelihood of his own demise, is preaching prophetically about the destruction of the world people knew. And indeed, just a short 40 years later, in about 70 A.D., the Romans put down the last Jewish uprising, destroyed the temple, and the world for many ended. The Temple was the centre of the world for Jews, who still mourn its loss.

Jesus’ prophetic words give us a chill down the spine as we hear them today. There has been a lot of “distress among nations” for some time now, and people do “faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.” Trying to explain this passage as fixed in time is not a helpful exercise. In our context today it is just as relevant.

Sometimes you have to say things in a prophetic way to get people’s attention. Sometimes you have to tell people the awful truth: that things are a mess and we are all somehow responsible for it. Sometimes you have to say disturbing things to get people agitated enough to change their behaviour.

Not long ago a couple went to a church, a large and prosperous church, for the first time. As they walked into the building they smiled at a number of people, but no one greeted them. Everyone was preoccupied with herding the choir and acolytes, getting business attended to about the coming bazaar, and depositing their children in Sunday school. As they entered the church, an usher in the back handed them a bulletin while engaged in earnest conversation with someone else, his face turned away from them. Afterward, the couple agreed the congregation was too preoccupied to engage in the simple act of hospitality.

And so are we, too preoccupied. Eugene Peterson, in The Message, translates part of this passage from Luke today, “Don’t let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping” (Luke 21:34). A season of preparation and expectation should permeate all that we do, from expecting and welcoming visitors, to focusing on what’s really important: our relationship with God and the Messiah who is to come.

So, are there any tools offered in this Sunday’s readings, any hope we can grasp, any piece of advice we can take home and dwell upon? Let’s start with the collect. “Keep us alert. Make us attentive to your word, ready to look on your Son when he comes with power and great glory. Make us holy and blameless, ready to stand secure when the day of his coming shakes the world with terror. “
This is a gracious prayer in which we ask God to help us. We can’t do it ourselves. A wise bishop one said, “People fix problems, God redeems messes!”

Let’s play that scene from the church again: It’s Sunday morning. A couple arrives for the first time and they are greeted at the door by someone who says, “Welcome. May I sit with you this morning?” After Church, they are taken to coffee and introduced to the clergy, and others. It’s all about them, and suddenly they’re not strangers, but part of a new community of welcome and light instead of the preoccupied one above.

{In Jeremiah, we get a short and pithy message: “God keeps his promises.” Nobody has to wonder about that. Jeremiah had to tell his wealthy friends and others that things weren’t right between them and God. But he also got to say that God was going to do something about that, even if they weren’t. He was going to re-establish righteousness, a right relationship between God and God’s people. In this brief passage one has the feeling it’s a done deal, so you might as well enjoy the show! The passage also proclaims God’s intention of justice and righteousness in the land – a hope that has sustained faithful people through many faithless times, and continues to do so. God redeems messes.}

In the passage from I Thessalonians the writer prays that the people who are the beloved believers will be blameless before God at the coming of the Lord Jesus with all the saints. And it all comes out of the boundless love that they share with one another. They have imitated Christ, and their reward will be Christ’s sustaining love forever.

So, we have the tools of grace, faith (promises kept), and our capacity to imitate Christ to use in our Advent journey. We can still shop, maybe even go to a party or two, but they’re not the main thing. The main thing is that even when the news is bad, and in the world it’s not very good right now, even when terrible things are happening and we get them flashed live into our homes, they are not God’s message. God’s message is a response. “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”