Preparations

This season can still surprise us. We might think we are ready. We might have been checking the calendar. We might have had plans underway for some months now. And still, when the first Sunday of Advent rolls around, we have to deal with the shock. “It can’t possibly be time for this again,” we think. But let’s be honest with ourselves; it isn’t simply a matter of calendar neglect. It is that this season of anticipation comes in the midst of life in all its fullness and its messiness. We are wrapped up in so many things, getting so many things done, so many things right, that we can be surprised that the very thing we are planning for actually comes.

This First Sunday of Advent – and let’s pay attention to the preposition; it’s “of,” not “in.” Advent is not something we endure; it is something we become, something that we are. We are people who live in anticipation, who live in hope. It is the essence of our being. So, on this First Sunday of Advent, we are heeding the call to pay attention. Our life is a life of fullness and joy, but it is also a preparation for even more fullness. In our Wesleyan tradition, we call that fullness sanctification, or even riskier, we say we are moving on to perfection.

We prepare for eternity, for kin-dom, for perfection by living attentively. We might not really be shocked by the arrival of this season, but we are deeply startled by our continuing need to be reminded that we are called, and we want to live in hope. Worship, then, in this season is an aid to preparation, a reminder to look up, to get ready.

Some years ago, my family was juggling so many things that preparation for Advent and the preparation of Advent got pushed down the list. We were walking with my father-in-law in the last days of his life; we had just moved houses in the appointment where I was serving and navigating some inner church resistance to change, and we were raising teenagers finishing their high school years. It was a lot, and things got missed.

One afternoon, I was in the bathroom, minding my own business, you might say. I heard my name shouted up the stairs. Now, I don’t know about you, but when someone can’t wait for you to get out of the bathroom to call you, it is some sort of crisis—maybe a good thing, but probably not. So, I sighed to myself and debated whether to respond to this summons. I debated, quickly, mind you, since the source of the shout implied that if I knew what was good for me, I would attend to the call.

“Yeah?” I shouted back, echoing in the small room.

“Did you read your email on Wednesday?” In the post-holiday haze of travel and turkey and teen-aged trauma, who remembers clear back to Wednesday? I must have, during the day sometime anyway, since I was on call to be whisked away to my father-in-law’s bedside by supper time. “Yeah” I said somewhat hesitantly. “Well,” came the voice, “did you know your sister is coming for Christmas?”

“No.”

I love my sister. We were glad she was coming. Honestly. OK, she’s a little weird, but then she lives in California, so what do you expect? But still, it is always fun to have her with us. With my brother from New York and my parents from Tennessee. Again. Really good.

It was the surprise that caught us. See, she had just made a trip to Tennessee to spend a week with Mom and Dad because she couldn’t get away from work another Christmas. So, we were planning on missing her that year. But now we wouldn’t, which was a good thing. It just meant rearranging things a bit—finding a bed to sleep in and chairs to sit on and working out a bathroom schedule. And meals, don’t even go there. But it was a good thing.

Even good things bring about changes or adjustments. Even things we long for sometimes don’t fit into the life we’ve made. Because we’ve been living without, making room is not always easy. This is why the First Sunday of Advent readings always sound so scary. We are being reminded that the world as we know it isn’t the last word. And while our hearts long for wholeness, especially for the broken in this life; while our hearts long for peace, especially for those who have only known war; while our hearts long for fullness and healing, especially for those who are hungry and hurting, if those were to come, they would unsettle us for a time.

Here is how Jesus spoke of those days that are coming in our Gospel reading for this week:

I’m not sure how you receive this sort of thing on the First Sunday of Advent. Sometimes, I think that folks are expecting to hear the preliminaries of the Christmas story. Maybe an angel announcement, maybe a song of transformation, maybe a dream or a journey or a royal decree. But certainly not people fainting with fear and foreboding. I’m not sure I’m up to foreboding. We just don’t forebode anymore. Do we?

Heck, we’ve got movies about the end of the world that are impressive in their special effects. And we go to see that for entertainment. So, if Jesus is trying to scare us, he’d better start doing a better job of it.

But then, a second look at those verses implies something different. Maybe it isn’t fear that Jesus is trying to instill. Maybe it is something altogether different. Maybe it is the opposite. And what is the opposite of fear? Hope. “Stand up and raise your heads,” he says to us. Our instinct when things are going badly or when the moment is difficult is to keep our heads down. But Jesus tells us to raise our heads, to look up, to trust, to have confidence, to pay attention.

Oh, that’s a tricky one at any time of the year, but with all the distractions of the holidays, it is even more difficult. “Pay attention,” he says. But I’ve all these things to accomplish. I’ve got my lists to fulfill. Places to go and things to do. “Pay attention,” he says. But to what? To the end times? No thanks, the folks all wrapped up in that kind of thing seem a little bit ... odd. A little bit out of touch. And frankly, they seem to have their priorities all messed up. If the message is taking care of yourself, stay clean so that you come out well in the end, I’m not really that interested.

“Pay attention,” he says. Advent is a multilayered time. There is the remembrance and the desire to recapture the birth of that baby again. We really want to hear that angel song and believe that, if even for a moment, peace on Earth is within the realm of possibility. We look back to what has been done for us. But at the same time, the scriptures remind us that there is still a coming on our horizon. We do look for the coming of the kingdom, when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, when we will beat our swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, when we will study war no more. There is a Someday out there toward which we lean and for which we hope. Advent is looking forward as well as looking back.

“Pay attention,” he says. What if there is one more layer? One more direction, in addition to back and forward? What if there is an around? Look around. Look up, look down, or just look. “Be on guard so that your hearts aren’t weighed down...” So that you don’t miss it; so that you don’t miss him. That’s the amazing thing about this season: there are glimpses of the kingdom that appear when you least expect it. There are sightings of the Savior in the twinkling of the eyes, in the hesitant thank-yous and the gasps of wonder. In the late-night conversations of scattered family members trying to figure out what might be next, there are prayers of hope and love, an embrace of peace that brings tears to our eyes . . . if we pay attention.

Jeremiah says it simply, “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (Jeremiah 33:14 NRSV). In those days, the prophet writes, God will “execute justice and righteousness in the land” (v. 15). That would be a surprise, wouldn’t it? Justice and righteousness. Almost incomprehensible, almost too much to believe, to hold on to, to prepare for. Almost. That’s what Advent asks of us—t believe in what seems unbelievable; to hold on to what seems beyond our grasp; and to live, to prepare to live as though it was the way we were going to encounter every day.

This is why the prophets are a guiding image for this week. They lived preparation. They saw what was, and they heard what could be, what should be, and they lived in that tension. They were Advent people before we were. We live a prophetic existence today. We live as a witness to what could be, what is coming. Surely coming. That’s our hope; that’s our preparation.

The days are surely coming. Like unexpected family. Like unexpected hope. Like justice and righteousness. And it will be to you a joy.

Rev. Dr. Derek Weber, Director of Preaching Ministries, served churches in Indiana and Arkansas and the British Methodist Church. His PhD is from University of Edinburgh in preaching and media. He has taught preaching in seminary and conference settings for more than 20 years.