First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
December 24, 2001
Scripture: Romans 13:8-14
If you remember nothing else from this morning, remember this. Advent is the church’s way of telling time, counting the weeks to Christmas by candles rather than calendars. Yesterday, the paper boy (at least I think he’s a boy although, truth be told, I’ve never seen him) dropped two plastic bags on my driveway sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning. The first bag, light as a feather, contained a few pages of news and sports. The second, which required a forklift to bring it into my study, contained 492 advertising brochures featuring all the stuff I might purchase for my nearest and dearest this Christmas. Those brochures will tell me….day by day….how short the time is for buying gifts. These candles will tell me….week by week….how close I am coming to getting a gift.
But before you count forward four weeks to see when this new Advent will end, I would have you count backward by 52 weeks to see how the old Advent began. We were here, you know…. lighting candle number one, you know….hearing a special Advent cantata, you know….same old, same old, you know….been there, done that, you know….isn’t it nice that some things never change, you know….except, that is, when you and I are the ones who never change, you know.
Advents come. Advents go. Most of us get older. But not necessarily better. So I ask you: “Are you any better than you were at this time last year?” Which is not the way the politicians frame the question. Instead, the politicians say: “Are you any better off than you were at this time last year?” And the only way to answer the politician’s question is with a trip to the counting house. So many stocks. So many bonds. So much money in the bank. So much equity in the house. And I suppose there are some among us….even in a recession….who are able to say, “Well, yes, I probably am better off than I was last year.” Which is nice. But are you any better than you were last year? Which is not so much a counting house question as a conscience one.
Allow me the liberty of assuming that, for many of you, the answer is: “No, not really….at least, not noticeably.” For despite a culture of self esteem that tells us that even the shabbiest of lives (and the crudest of drawings) are worth posting on refrigerator doors for all to see and cheer…. “Oh, isn’t that lovely, Mary”….most of us know that we have been less than roaring successes in the faith and life department and that there is more than a little room for self improvement.
We were talking about this a couple of Wednesdays back in my men’s group that meets at the crack of dawn. There must have been 50 guys in the circle. And there was something in the pages we were reading from C. S. Lewis that prompted me to ask: “How many of you guys think that, at this point in your life, you are about as good as you are ever going to get?” Which prompted a little hemming and hawing over what I meant by “good.” But once we zeroed in on the ethical side of “good” rather than the athletic, economic or physical side of “good,” there wasn’t one guy who was willing to say he had reached his peak. Meaning that all conceded room for improvement….and that they expected to make that improvement. There wasn’t an ounce of smugness or complacency in the bunch. Which there could have been. I mean, we’ve got some age on us. Some of us are in our forties. But some of us are in our eighties. And every last one of us has already made the clubhouse turn and is playing life’s back nine. You’d think self satisfaction would have surfaced in some. But no. Everybody in the room figured they still have a ways to go….that perfection is still out in front of them….or, as Ed Adams put it: “Why else would we drag ourselves down here at 6:30 in the morning?”
Well, one function of Advent is to tell us that we still have time. To be sure, we need to look at all that we have not done and all that we have not been. But we need not beat ourselves up over what we see. Instead, we need to learn from what we see, the better to move beyond what we see. Advent’s primary message is not about failure. Advent’s primary message is about expectation. But when we talk about expectation, we are talking not only about waiting for Jesus, but about tidying up the house so Jesus will have a place to come to that reflects a modicum of prior effort on our part.
Paul uses this marvelous metaphor in his letter to the church at Rome, suggesting that the believers there “wake up.” He didn’t say “and smell the coffee,” although that is exactly what he meant. “Wake up,” said Paul, “for salvation is nearer to you now than when you first believed.” And while you could read this as Paul’s announcement that Jesus was going to return to earth any day now (which, I am certain, is exactly how the Roman Christians read it), 2000 years forces us to admit that it is not so much the Second Coming that is at issue, as the third, fourth, fifth and even sixth coming of a Lord who keeps coming at you….inviting you to be more than you were and do more than you’ve done. “This Advent could be your Advent,” Paul’s “wake up” language screams. “This time could be your time.”
It is interesting that Paul surrounds his wake-up call with a laundry list of ethical expectations, all of them incredibly worldly. You’ll find them in the 13th chapter of Romans. I didn’t read them. But you can. Listen to a few of them. Obey laws. Pay taxes. Be good citizens. Love your neighbors. Keep the commandments. Clean up your rooms. Clean up your acts. Stop quarreling with each other. Stop being jealous of each other. Live like people who have seen a little light, rather than as moral moles who have burrowed deeper and deeper into the darkness. “It’s about time,” Paul says. “And you have time,” the church says.
Christianity is not one of those “one strike and you’re out” religions. In the spelling bees of my childhood, anytime I made a mistake, I had to sit down. Another year with no brand new, cellophane wrapped Webster’s Intercollegiate Dictionary for Billy Ritter.
That’s not Christianity. Christianity is closer to the “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” message of my mother, my violin teacher and my basketball coach. The only thing that requires absolute success on the initial attempt is skydiving. But in most every other area of life, Advent invites you back to the drawing board….rescuing you from resignation, delivering you from despair. The light that illumines the world’s darkness is once again swinging your way. And you can move to meet it, no matter how many times you have shuttered yourself against it. God wants you to get it right. God desires your success, not your failure. God rejoices in your accomplishments, not your frustrations. God envisions time working for you, not against you.
I love reading the sermons of Peter Gomes. Since 1970, Peter (as George Buttrick’s successor) has been preacher to the Memorial Church at Harvard. Publicly describing himself as a short, fat, black man who garbs himself as a High-Church Anglican bishop and who writes the kind of eloquent, reasonable sentences one would expect of an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (England), Peter can’t hide the fact that his roots first germinated in thick, juicy Baptist soil. About which he writes:
In my own over-heated youth in the Baptist church, no service was complete without an invitation (at the close of the service) to come down front. Often, this invitation was understood to be a referendum on the sermon and how much energy the preacher had expended to get people forward. I was a tough customer on those occasions and prided myself on resisting the entreaties of the best evangelists. Once, at a youth rally in Tremont Temple, the invitation came and, during the singing of the hymn, we were all invited to come forward. Nearly a third of the people did, but not I. The preacher wasn’t satisfied. So he told some awful stories about people who had hesitated and, on the way home from the service, had a terrible automobile accident. Then he called for more to come forward. And more did. But not I. Beside me sat a fellow youth along with his mother, who glared at me and then pinched her son’s arm until the flesh turned red. So up he went. But not I. Finally, there was just a handful of us left in the pews….only six wouldn’t go….and the pressure was really on.
That had not been an invitation. That had been an intimidation. And I would not have it. The implication was: “Come, because you are afraid of what will happen if you don’t,” not “Come, because you want to see what will happen if you do.”
I suppose it’s possible that you could leave the sanctuary, shake my hand, sip your coffee, start walking across Maple Road, only to get yourself leveled….flatter than a pancake….by an out-of control tomato truck. But the odds are against it. Which is why, as a preacher, I prefer to refocus my energy. My biggest concern this Advent is not what will happen to you if you die. My biggest concern is what will happen to you if you don’t.
Note: With appreciation to Peter Gomes for inspiration and enlightenment.
