1 Advent Year B 12/3/2023
Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Happy New Year.
We have moved forward on a New Church Year…
It is the first Sunday in Advent, and we enter the High Church Season.
Advent begins in darkness…[1]
In confusion…
In longing and waiting.
Advent is a season between the times…
In limbo…
Waiting for the coming of the Lord.
But in the meantime, …
The church waits.
The church doesn’t always wait well…
The church doesn’t always keep its focus and mission as the priority.
We get it wrong in the waiting.
Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal Priest, writes:
There’s a sense in which the history of the Christian church can be described as a history of thoroughgoing confusion
about who we are and what we are called to do.
It’s not a very edifying spectacle.
We can all make long lists of the various wrong ideas that the church has had about herself –
sometimes the church has been a form of government called a theocracy, sometimes an instrument of war and inquisition,
sometimes a socially restricted club,
sometimes a museum,
sometimes a guardian of public morality,
sometimes – most times – a defender of the status quo.
In America, the church has been from the beginning a partner of the cultural setting.
Going to church has been part of the American way of life.
It still is largely, especially on Christmas Eve and Easter…
But… I’m sure, you are aware…
That’s changing.
The church in America is soon going to be having a major crisis of identity, if it isn’t having it already.[2]
It begs the question:
What is the church?
What sort of life are we called to live?
What about the people that knock on our church doors…
Will we open the doors?
Those who knock are not always “our kind” of people.
Some are thieves…
Some may have just gotten out of prison.
Some are desperately poor.
Some are members of other races…
Other ethnicities.
Some have disabilities…
Some are jobless…
Some are refugees.
Who knocks on the church doors?
Should we open them?
You see in this time of Advent we are in this in-between space.
Advent, for the world, is a time of counting shopping days before Christmas.
Advent, for the church, is a season of shadows, the season of darkness, wondering, and waiting.
Advent is the season where the voices say:
Where is your King?
You thought he was coming back, but he has not returned.
You made a mistake… How can you live without your Lord?
He has abandoned you – for this, you want to risk your lives?[3]
Those are the voices to the church today…
Those were the voices when our Gospel reading from Mark was being put together… some 25 years after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.
And in the midst of this… the early church recorded these words of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark.
Jesus said:
Beware, keep alert;
for you do not know when the time will come.
It is like a man going on a journey,
when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge,
each with his work,
and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.
Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening,
or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn,
or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.
And what I say to you I say to all:
Keep awake.
We need these words…
We need this reminder…
Because in the deep places of Advent we must stay awake.
In the parable the man leaves and puts his people in charge…
As doorkeepers they are to be at watch…
Waiting for the master to come home.
The expectation of his return…
is the moving force behind all the activity that takes place…
The staying awake…
The watching…
Being alert…
And yet, no one knows when the return will be.
It is a crisis.
A tension that keeps things going.
This is also the story of the church, living in a crisis for two thousand years.
You see the New Testament time is different than the world’s time.
St. Paul says:
My friends, the time we live in will not last long….
For the whole frame of this world is passing away.
(1 Corinthians 7.29, 31)
To quote Rev. Fleming Rutledge again:
New Testament time is a million years compressed into a single instant – and the time is now.[4]
Jesus said:
The hour cometh and now is.
(John 4.23)
There is no way to alleviate the overwhelming tension produced by the Advent clock;
The only way to be faithful is to be faithful at each moment.[5]
And this is the time the church lives in…
In Advent.
Between the two Advents – the first and second coming of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ has come.
Jesus Christ will come.
And we do not know when.
But we all… all of the people of God…
Christians…
Are the doorkeepers in the parable.
We can’t lock the doors…
the master may come at any moment.
We can’t ignore who knocks on the doors…
the master may come at any moment.
The master may be the one knocking…
And it was Jesus who said:
Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.
(Matthew 25.40)
You see the church is not supposed to be prosperous and comfortable and established.
It is Advent – it is dark and lonely and cold,
and the master is away from home.
Yet he will come. Keep awake.[6]
When the master came the first time…
He came as a stranger…
Poor and without recognition…
And we put him on a cross.
When he comes among us now…
in the guise of a stranger at the door…
His face may be the wrong color…
Perhaps his manners not the best…
Her clothes may be messy…
Perhaps their lives will be all messy.
He will come in the future…
Not as a stranger…
But as the King of kings and Lord of lords…
And at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow…
(Philippians 2.10)
So, we are to keep awake.
Watching, like the doorkeeper, for signs of his presence in the most unlikely of places…
and in the most unlikely of people.
There are places we meet him now…
Where we feast on his presence…
In prayer…
In the scriptures…
And in the sacrament of communion.
He promises us that in his body and blood is his presence.
All of us, doorkeepers…
Find refreshment for the watch in the bread and the wine.
All of us doorkeepers…
Find the presence of Jesus in his body and blood.
So that even in the midst of our watching and waiting in the dark of Advent…
Jesus says:
Come to me,
all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest.
(Matthew 11.28)
Eat the bread…
Drink the cup…
We need his presence.
Church we are Advent people.
We rest in his presence…
And also keep watch…
Keeping watch…
As doorkeepers…
Opening the door…
Compelling all to come in…
(Luke 14.23)
May we heed the words of our Lord Jesus Christ…
Who today in our Gospel says to us:
Keep awake.
Amen.
[1] This sermon is largely drawn from the work of Fleming Rutledge, Advent (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 263-267.
[2] Fleming Rutledge, Advent (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 263.
[3] Ibid., 265.
[4] Ibid., 266.
[5] Ibid., 266.
[6] Ibid., 266.