Category: Sermons

The season of Advent is ending.  It is a season of waiting, expecting, hoping, preparing.  But for what?

We’ve been hearing a lot from the prophets during the past four weeks, telling about those who were expecting God to send a Messiah to deliver the Jews from their oppressors.  Even tonight, Christmas Eve, we will hear such a message.

Maybe we have been waiting, expecting, hoping, and preparing for one whose revolutionary activities tend toward the liberation and redemption of folks on a more philosophical, theological, or psychological basis.  If so, we may have come to this day with some anticipation that something is going to change inside us.  Maybe after tonight’s service we will finally “feel” the spirit of Christmas that the soundtracks and displays in the malls haven’t been able to stir up in us.  Maybe our Advent has been about getting to this night so that something can happen on the inside of us, "the peace that passes understanding."

As we reach the end of Advent, expectation turns to fulfillment.  “Jesus is coming” turns to “Jesus has come.”  When that happens, expectation becomes assignment.  And we begin to realize that the new world order, the peace that passes understanding, and all the frenetic activity finally converge in this night and in a babe lying in a manger, who grew up to make some pretty serious demands upon us.  We’ve been living on the verge of something and here it is!

A bishop once spoke of a priest who “spent forty years living on the verge of ministry.”  Forty years “on the verge.”  The bishop said, “He kept waiting for the perfect church.  Of course, the perfect church never came.  At congregation after congregation, he always found something wrong and never quite up to his expectations.  He just never got to the church where he could minister.  Forty years waiting, forty years complaining, forty years on the verge,” lamented the bishop.

How many people do you know who spend years “on the verge” of being a disciple of Jesus the Messiah?  “One day, some day,” they say, “when we get the right church, when we get the right priest, when we get the right feeling, when we get the right answers, when we get everything right, then we’ll finally find fulfillment in our Christianity. 
 
Advent is about being on the verge of something.  It’s about being on he verge of the Christ event.  It’s
about being on the verge of making some real, tangible changes in the way we live out our discipleship. It’s about being on the verge of knowing the peace which passes understanding.  It’s about being on the verge of having the kind of church, the kind of clergy, the kind of resources, the kind of world, the kind of family, and the kind of constellation of emotions to finally DO something about THE thing Advent is all about.  Namely, it is about discovering at the end of the journey what the shepherds and wise men and parents of the Holy Child all discovered that first Christmas. 

Advent is about coming TO the manger.  Christmas is about what we take away FROM the manger.  The shepherds went away rejoicing and telling others what they had seen and heard.  The wise men returned to their country by another way, amazed by the wonder of it all.  Mary and Joseph had to figure out how to raise the Child.  And, for you and me, who have arrived at this point to hear the good news, receive the gift, struggle with the mystery of the Incarnation, Christmas happens when we can’t live on the verge of it all any more.  We finally, once and for all, have to go out and do something about it. 

This is Christmas.  This is the fullness of time.  This is the night when we exchange our expectation for an assignment.  The Incarnation means that God has come to us in the flesh.  The Incarnation also means that when we know that, we stop living on the verge of ministry and roll up our sleeves to make the Word flesh in the living of our lives.  When he is born in us, the political scene changes because he empowers us to become peacemakers.  When he is born in us we find inner peace because we stop trying to be imitators of Christ and become innovations of Christ.  When he is born in us we discover a way to cut through all the frenetic activity of life and focus our greatest hopes and energies on the one thing that makes it all meaningful.

O Holy Child of Bethlehem,
   Descend to us, we pray.
Cast out our sin and enter in.
   Be born in us today.

And may your birth, Holy Jesus, transform the world around us and the world inside us so that your kingdom may come and your will be done, on earth – in and through us – as it is in heaven.