But, they may be on to something. Not Christmas in November, but Advent in November.
Did you know that in the ancient church Advent had six Sundays? According to the ancient church calendar, today would be the first Sunday of Advent. Regardless of when it actually begins, a common theme in Advent, the end of time, is introduced today.
The prophet Malachai warns us: the day is coming, all non-believers will be destroyed: burned, trampled, left without root or branch. Jesus picks up on this happy theme—the temple will topple, plagues famines and wars will spread across the earth. Everything will fall apart and anyone, anyone who is a follower of Jesus will be arrested, persecuted and interrogated. It’s gonna be BAD!
But don’t worry, you’ll be ok. Everything around you will be in ruins but you? Us? The followers of the way? We’ll be great.
As long as we persevere in doing the right thing, living the right way and working hard. As Paul tells us in today’s Epistle: Brothers and sisters DO NOT be weary of doing what’s right.
Even though people will hate us for it, try to kill us for it, imprison us for it.
Why is it that every year, just as we get a little snow and there's a chill in the air, as we’re preparing for Thanksgiving, Christmas lists are being written and holiday parties are being planned, why do we get these violent readings about destruction, death and despair?
Well it’s a little complicated. You see the birth of Jesus—God coming to us in the person of Jesus Christ-- takes the familiar and makes it strange, takes the unfamiliar and makes it comfortable, takes the impossible and makes it possible. It makes the outrageous acceptable and the outcast become "a-listers."
Jesus changes everything.
In other words, the world as we know it and the world as Christ envisions it can’t peaceably co-exist.
The world as we know it has to blow up to make room for the world of Jesus.
This is where the reality of Jesus collides with the fantasy of “Christmas music 24 hours a day 7 days a week beginning in mid-October.”
This is where the reality of a God who loves us so much BUT understood us so little that God needed to come and live among us, as one of us, collides with ho ho ho’s and fa la la las
Advent and all it sets into motion (namely Christmas) blows the fantasy of Christmas right out of the egg nog.
Advent is shocking, disruptive and uncomfortable.
Why? Because Advent gets us ready for Christmas. It prepares us for the arrival of God in the flesh and that, the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ, is the single most chaotic, life changing, limit busting event of all time.
And it’s why I need to start talking about it now, 2 weeks before it begins.
Consider this your Advent preparation sermon!!
Consider this your warning, your clarion call, a voice crying out in the wilderness.
Consider this:
We must be willing to let go of everything in order to make room for Christ.
We must be willing to let go of everything in order to accept Jesus into our lives.
We must be willing to let go of everything to embrace the new way of living that this Jesus of Nazareth ushers in.
Today, on this second to last Sunday of the church year, we must remember one thing:
The arrival of Jesus may be heralded by a silent night humming the hymns of angels heard on high, but living the life Jesus has taught us to live requires guts. It isn’t easy. It isn’t neat and it isn’t always pretty.
Living the life of a Christian, living the way of Jesus requires much and the four weeks of Advent sure don’t afford us much time to get ready.
The majority of our church year is all about getting to know God and God getting to know us. The four weeks of Advent, and these two pre- Advent weeks are all about us getting ready for this encounter--the encounter that God has with us and we have with God-- preparing ourselves for the altogether new.
So...how are we to ready ourselves?
By blowing everything to bits.
And that, my friends is why we have these readings….because everything we know, everything familiar and comfortable will be, if we truly and fully enter into a new life with Christ, turned inside out and upside down.
Think about our readings from this summer and fall:
--the parables of Jesus that take the usual boundaries of society and tear them apart.
This is how we are to live our lives.
--Think about Jesus’ incessant encounters with the outcasts, the unclean, the unwanted and the forgotten.
This is how we are to live our lives.
--Think about Jesus’ intolerance for those who put the so-called rules of religion ahead of the common sense adage to love your neighbor as yourself.
This is how we are to live OUR lives.
-Think about the incorrigible Jesus who, to quote a Jim Croce song lyric of the 1970’s: pulled on superman’s cape and spit into the wind.
This is how we are to live our Lives.
Our lives with Christ, our lives in Christ.
Think about who Jesus really was:
a peasant who most of his contemporaries thought was a lunatic.
An itinerant preacher who was a constant source of annoyance to the Roman Empire.
A failed revolutionary in the eyes of many;
a revolutionary who did not topple the Empire, a revolutionary who did not usher in a Jewish state in the land of Israel, a failed revolutionary who was executed in a brutal and demeaning manner saved for the most hated of criminals.
This is the One we are to follow, this is the One we are to emulate. This is the One we are to invite fully and completely and totally into our hearts.
So yes, getting ready for the Christ event, otherwise known as Christmas, requires some preparation.
It requires some guts.
And it requires a whole lot of faith.
So welcome to the end of the church year. Welcome to Pre-Advent.
And Say good-bye to hearing about Jesus in this world and begin preparations to BE Jesus in this world prepare to be Jesus in this world.
Amen.
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