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Sunday December 3, 2006 - Advent 1, Year C

Today is one of those Sundays
when everything
is all muddled up together.
It's the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday of the church's year
and the first of four weeks of anticipation
of the birth of Jesus Christ.
A beginning.
It's also the beginning of something else new,
of the Christian life of little Emily,
as she is baptized into Christ's body,
as she becomes a member
of the church.
Another beginning.
And there is an ending
as after four and a half years,
I come to the conclusion of my time as your priest here at Trinity.

Beginnings and endings, looking backward and looking forward,
all muddled up together in one service.
At first I wondered
how on earth to make sense of all of this,
whether these endings and beginnings
could ever have anything to do with one another.
But then it struck me
that Advent,
this season that we are starting today,
is about exactly that.
It is about looking backwards
and looking forward;
it is about beginnings
and about endings.

In Advent,
we look back to the time
before Jesus was born,
that time of waiting
for a Messiah
who had been promised to the people,
promised by the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah,
promised by the angel
to Mary and Joseph.

In Advent we look back
to a looking forward
to the promised one of God.

Those of you who have waited for a child to be born
know what that looking forward is like. You can look back
and remember
the looking forward.
It's that peculiar mixture of joy and dread and hope,
the uncertainty that even today all our medical expertise
can't quite take away;
birth is a time of tremendous uncertainty,
and it's a huge relief when it's over and the baby is safely in his or her parents' arms.
Advent is like that.
We wait for the coming of the baby,
and even though we know the end of the story,
even though we know
that the angel has it right,
that Mary and Joseph
will get to hold a newborn child safe in their arms,
that the shepherds and angels and wise men
will glorify God together,
still we wait,
wait for this child
who will be Emmanuel,
God
with us.
And like anyone waiting for the birth of a child, we're not quite sure what this birth will mean
not quite sure how God-with-us
will play out in our lives.

But we do know
that there is a promise here, there is hope,
and so we wait.

Advent
is about looking back.
But it's also about looking forward.
Because the other great theme of Advent
is looking forward
to the coming again
of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
It's that coming that is the focus of our gospel reading today,
a reading that is kind of alarming.
Because this side of Advent is about waiting too,
but this time, instead of the anticipation and excitement of waiting for a baby,
we are waiting for the coming, the second coming
of a Messiah who will come
to rule and judge this world of ours.
This waiting
is full of anxiety and uncertainty and dread,
or at least, that's how it feels,
when the waiting is accompanied by a roaring sea and shaking earth.
But in some ways
this waiting
is no different from the other.
Because we're waiting for the same messiah, the same Jesus Christ, the same God-with-us,
and if Jesus is to be believed,
then if we stay alert, if we pay attention,
then we will come face to face with Jesus as ruler and judge
with as much confidence as we come to Jesus the God-with-us.

The beginning, the first Advent, which we look back to,
and the end, the second Advent, which we look forward to
are not so far apart.
Because both are signs
of God's grace.
God reaches out to us, in Christ the baby in Bethlehem,
and in Christ the ruler and judge of all,
God reaches out to us
and invites us to follow.

And in preparing for the first advent
and preparing for the second advent,
we're called to the same thing,
to be people of faith.

That's the reminder
of our second lesson, the words of encouragement
from the apostle Paul, and his co-workers, Timothy and Silvanus,
to the members of the church in Thessalonika.
The letter begins
with a reminder
of how they came to faith,
of the decision they once made
in favor of the gospel,
the decision they once made
to follow Jesus Christ,
and then goes on to encourage them
to stick with their faith,
to stand firm,
to keep making that same decision that they once made
to follow Jesus Christ.
And so Paul and Silvanus and Timothy pray for the people of the church at Thessalonika
that God will enable them
to keep on loving,
that God will strengthen them
so that they can continue to live out their lives of faith.
They live in that time between
the first coming of Jesus Christ
and his second coming,
that time of looking both backwards and forwards
and the call to Christians
is to persist
as people of faith.

It's the same for us today.
We live in the time between that first coming of Jesus in Bethlehem
and his second coming
at the end of time.
Advent reminds us
that we live our whole lives
suspended
between looking backward and looking forward,
between beginning and ending,
and living there, our call is
to be people of faith.

Way back on my first Sunday with you,
four and a half years ago,
I said that our primary task as a church,
our primary task as the people of Christ,
is to walk alongside Christ
in worship
and love.
That's what being is people of faith, followers of Jesus,
is all about.

Other things have changed. But that has not. Our primary task as a church, our primary task as the people of God
continues to be
to walk alongside Christ
in worship and love.
That's the path, the journey, that little Emily will begin today as she is baptized.
That's the path, the journey, that each of us has been called to when we were baptized.
To worship God.
To follow Christ's example, Christ's command
to love God
and to love one another
as we love ourselves.

It's as old as the gospel itself, but begins new for each of us
each time we decide
to walk in step with our Savior
Jesus Christ.
A decision we make at baptism,
and then again and again through our lives,
to be people of faith,
to walk alongside Christ
in worship and love.

Today
is a time of ending
and a time of beginning.
It's a time of looking backwards
and a time of looking forwards.
But the call is the same,
to be people of faith.

And so I pray for you all
with the same confidence as Paul and Silvanus and Timothy had
about the people of Thessalonika,
I pray
that God will make you increase and abound in love, that God's grace will continue in your hearts and minds and souls,
that you will continue
to walk in step with our Savior
Jesus Christ.
And God will be faithful,
as God has been
over the last three hundred and three
years in this place,
God will continue
to be faithful.

 

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2006