Sermons

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Garrison Keillor once said something like “in my family of stern, Midwestern Lutherans one was always warned not to act too happy. To do so would be to show off.” I wonder if it’s because of the Puritan history of our culture, but it’s always struck me how embarrassed we can sometimes be about having honest-to-God fun. I doubt we’re just too polite to show off how happy we are. Perhaps it really is that Puritan background which has embedded in our collective subconscious the fool idea that pure, unadulterated happiness has no utility.

Or perhaps it’s because we are an increasingly cynical people. We can’t just enjoy ourselves. Sure, we engage in leisure, but I think there’s a distinct difference between “leisure” and “fun”. For most of us, leisure is always either at the boundary of some form of hedonism or some puritanical, utilitarian ideal. We might sit in front of the television for hours not because we’re having fun, but through some joyless, twisted obligation, like the addict reaching for his next fix. We might, on the other hand, engage in some program of self-improvement (exercising or reading obscure old-Icelandic literature or something), but do it just as joylessly as the couch potato. Self-improvement has its place and even occasional self-indulgence has its place, but where do we really find happiness?

On this Gaudete Sunday, this respite in the midst of the penitential season of Advent, we are reminded that joy is neither the consequence of leisure to be pursued nor a useless extravagance to be avoided. We are reminded that true happiness is a state of being not dependent on circumstance but on a realization- namely the realization of God’s Grace.

Remember this morning’s reading from the prophet Isaiah. The oppressed are given Good News, those who mourn are comforted, prisoners are promised release. But recognize the nature of God’s action, here. It is promised, not yet delivered. The words of Isaiah suggest that God’s bestowal of Grace is a fait accompli, but it’s not yet fully manifest. These words are not merely descriptive. They are properly prophetic. It is not the present reality which anoints us with the “oil of gladness”, which places upon us the “mantle of praise” to use Isaiah’s evocative symbolism; it is the hope of God’s final victory over the powers of sin and death. It is the promise of freedom, the promise of health, the promise of justice which make us glad.

But we ought not be too concrete in our understanding of God’s timeline. While freedom and health and justice are (in their most tangible forms) future realities, they are, in another sense, present realities for the Christian. While there are still prisoners in the literal sense, there is before them an opportunity to taste a much greater freedom- namely, the freedom of the soul from sin. While illness still strikes us and our loved ones in very real and painful ways, there is a greater health—a hale and hearty soul—which we are given when we let Christ in. While injustice and oppression and war tear our world apart, the peace of God can yet be found in something as simple as the love between two people.

There is a great deal to be happy about, and the joy we have in Christ’s promises and in God’s very real presence with us can be our greatest asset with regard to mission. What might it look like to this cynical world in which we live if we were really, genuinely happy because we are Christians? Well, I think we’d have a lot more Christians. Conversely, what does it look like when a Christian is a rigid, cynical sad-sack? I think that sends the message that there isn’t a whole lot to commend our faith. “Lord save us,” prayed St. Teresa of Avilla, “from sour-faced saints.”

Now, I’m fully aware that simply saying “be happy” doesn’t cut it. Even worse would be saying “act happy”. Our joy has to be genuine if it’s to be any good in terms of evangelization. I guess, the best thing to remember is that we have very good reason to rejoice. If we dwell not on the changes and chances of this life but on the promises of Christ, we can’t be lugubrious stink-in-the-muds for long. When we shift our focus away from our selves to Him, when we stop being self-centered and start being Christ-centered, when we recognize the child in the manger in the midst of the filthy barn and the Savior in our hearts in the midst of this sin-sick old world we can finally, truly be happy; and that sort of happiness is contagious.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

I’ve been talking a lot in sermons recently about our expectations regarding Christ’s second coming, and that since the biblical witness gives us not an apocalyptic horror story but a message of hope, that Christ’s return will be a good thing. When we pray “thy Kingdom come,” it’s because we have reasons to want that to happen. No doubt the first generations of Christians recognized this, which is why Christ’s return wasn’t coming soon enough for their liking. This is the context of this morning’s Epiustle.

It is a shame that we so rarely hear from the Second Epistle General of St. Peter. Indeed, after consulting the lectionary I discovered it only appears on two Sundays in our entire three year cycle of readings. So I wanted to focus on our that this morning. Don’t worry; we’ll get more John the Baptist next week.

Like Paul’s First Epistle to the Thessalonians, Peter’s Second Epistle was written in a period of delayed gratification with regard to the Second Coming of Christ. In fact this letter was written at least a decade after Paul’s; Peter actually references Paul’s epistles explicitly in the verses which follow this morning’s lesson, calling them “Scripture,” so not a little time has passed. That being the case, we can imagine the anxiety of Peter’s audience to be even more acute. Why hasn’t Christ returned? Has he forgotten us? Was the second-coming merely a fond idea, vainly invented?

In the Year of our Lord 2023, I admit I feel a bit more kinship with Peter’s audience than I would have done years ago. Perhaps I am not alone. With all the sad and violent things happening in our world today, I’ve found myself saying, without any sense of irony, “why won’t Jesus just come back and fix it already!?” I went to two ordinations this weekend, and at one of them the bishop, in her sermon, highlighted this theme of Advent expectation, and amusingly said more or less the same thing “won’t Jesus come back” but said it would be nice if he delayed just a few minutes so we could ordain a colleague first.

Peter, such a great pastor, gives us a compelling answer to this seemingly unfulfilled hope. God’s time is not ours, and any delay is surely so that the Good News can spread farther abroad and more can be saved. Our part is to persevere in godliness and “holy conversation,” to be patient and to persevere in living that simple call to prayer and study and works of charity.

“Every year,” the great Fleming Rutledge has said “Advent begins in the dark.”The world indeed seems dark, but we are called to watch and pray until the glory of the Lord is to be revealed, until all flesh shall see it together.

My prayer is that at the last we will be found to have been a people who did just that, who kept hope alive in the darkness, knowing that the great and terrible day of the Lord would come when we least expect it, like a thief in the night, and then we should find that, our consciences being made pure, the Lord has made in us a mansion made ready even for himself.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we mainline Christians have ceded too much of what is essentially Christian belief and action for fear of being identified with fundamentalist Christians, and that in particular we tend to shy away from talking about Jesus’ second coming and the advent of the Kingdom of God. This is precisely what Advent is about (it’s not just about waiting to put the bambino into the crèche), but, due to mainline discomfort with the idea, we’ve been putting conditions on the meaning of the doctrine ever since the nineteenth century. Back then, liberal protestants started speaking in terms of gradually building the Kingdom of God themselves rather than expecting Jesus to actually, literally come back and establish it himself. The view has even gained some traction in American Catholicism with a very popular, but theologically unfortunate hymn whose refrain proclaims “Let us build the city of God.” Little is said in the hymn about Jesus’ role in the matter. It suggests, one assumes unintentionally, that we’re more powerful than God, or at least that God chooses not to act in history.

Conversely, we find people who espouse the view that we’ve really no part in God’s work. The claim is that being responsible stewards of creation, that working to bring about a better state of affairs for the poor and the oppressed is really to no avail, because Jesus is going to come back and fix everything anyway.

Like so many other theological issues, the truth here may be found in the middle way, the via media that our own Anglican tradition talks about so much but seems to overlook so often. The historical Christian view, which we hear in the Gospel appointed for this week, is that Jesus really will come again, there really will be a second advent, more grand and glorious even than Christ’s first Advent on the first Christmas, and, what’s more, we’ve got got something to do about it.

For one, we watch and wait. “Watch therefore — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning — lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Watch.” This is rare for me, but I actually prefer the newer translation of this passage, which is less accurate, but somehow more resonant. Instead of “watch,” Jesus says “Keep awake”.

We not only watch, but we pray. We pray ceaselessly for the establishment of God’s reign. “Thy Kingdom come”–we say it every week in church, and many of us every day, but we probably don’t fathom the full extent of the words when we utter them. They’ve become rote. If we did indeed pay attention, we’d recognize how potentially frightening those three words are. Jesus said in today’s Gospel:

But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

Scary stuff, huh? Actually, our Gospel reading this morning picked up right after the really nasty bits; I love nasty bits, so here they are:

But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains; let him who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter his house, to take anything away; and let him who is in the field not turn back to take his mantle. And alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days! Pray that it may not happen in winter. For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, and never will be. 

It’s no wonder we tend to shy away from this theme in Scripture, why we replace the old themes of Advent—death and judgment and heaven and hell—with sentimentality. I think we’ve made a big mistake in that regard.

The response that the kingdom of God will elicit when it does ultimately come, doesn’t sound too comforting; but two-thousand years have passed since Jesus said these words, which has tended to take away the sense of urgency. But, as I said last week, we don’t need to be frightened or, worse, to cling to strange theories and time-tables regarding Christ’s return, but we should, nonetheless, urgently pray that God’s will might be done, that his Kingdom might come and his reign might begin on earth as it is already in heaven.

And prayer is not the only duty to which we are bound in light of our expectation of Christ’s return. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth with the following words of encouragement:

I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge — even as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you — so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ; who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Paul says that in response to Christ’s return we should “[be] not lacking in any spiritual gift” and “[with God’s sustenance be] guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God is the agent, of course, the one giving the gifts and sustaining us in holiness, but it is ours to open ourselves up to that. It is up to us to permit God in to make us love our neighbors and to make us more holy, more saintly, in preparation for eternity.

You’ve all seen the bumper sticker: “Jesus is coming, look busy”. In fact, what it should say is “Jesus is coming, let God get busy.” Let God get busy making each of us a temple of his presence, a mansion made ready for Christ when he shall come again. Let God get busy, his power working in us infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Let God get busy, restoring whatever is lacking in our faith. This is what Advent is about. Jesus is coming again; let God get busy, making us ready to receive him when he does.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.