12/1/13
Anybody notice anything different in church today? Of course, the big tree over by the side of the chancel here. Flora Quammie and I were talking a month or so ago about what we wanted to do for Advent this year, and we talked about a Jesse tree for the kids, which churches often do, the kids make ornaments that represent various figures in the Christmas story and decorate the tree with them. Then a couple of things happened that started us thinking in a new direction.
One was that our church was offered this wonderful tree by friends who were moving into a new house in which the tree was not really a fit. I was initially hesitant, but my wife Annie really encouraged me to accept it. St. John’s had a little Jesse tree, stored in the Wayfarers’ Chapel, that had seen its full share of use and had earned an honorable retirement; and the thought that we’d soon have this tree started us thinking a bit bigger.
The other was that Flora discovered an internet website that had an interesting idea for Jesse tree ornaments. The site is that of an organization called Mission Together: it was started by the Roman Catholic church in the United Kingdom, and its motto is “Children Helping Children”: it’s basically children who in various ways raise money in schools and churches to fund projects all over the world.
The Jesse Tree ornaments on their website are five different figures: an angel, a star, a heart, a thought bubble, and a speech bubble; and there’s blank space in each of them for kids to write or draw in. In the angel, you write something you will pray for this Advent. In the star, write something you will give. In the heart, write the name of someone you love. In the thought bubble, write something you hope for. In the speech bubble, write a kind thing you want to say to someone.
I forget which one of us had the idea – I will cheerfully attribute it to Flora – but somehow between us we decided that, with this big new tree and these new ornaments, even though they’re conceived for children, we would invite the whole congregation to participate, and make ornaments for the tree. So after the service come get one. You don’t have to put it up today; in fact, it might be a good idea to take it home and give it some thought. This is a matter between you and God. At the end of the Christmas season, when we take the tree down, you can take your ornament home if you want, or you can leave it and we’ll escort it to ornament heaven.
Now, why am I spending so much attention on this?
Today is the first day of Advent. Certainly one way that many of us think of Advent is principally as the time when, with our children, we wait for Baby Jesus. The Jesse Tree is one way to do that. And that’s great to do, that is one way to think of Advent, and it’s great when Baby Jesus comes and that promise is fulfilled and on Christmas we hear again that story that has inspired countless people for two thousand years.
But that story, and the arrival of Baby Jesus, is a representation of a much larger reality, something that affects our real lives; and if we confine our experience of Advent merely to that representation, merely to waiting for Baby Jesus and then being happy when he shows up and that’s the end of the story and we can get back to our normal lives, if that’s all Advent is for us, then we miss the point.
Certainly we are led to the feeling that there’s more to the story by the hard-edged quality of both New Testament readings today. Paul talks to the Christians in Rome about the imminent return of the risen Christ, which the first generation of Christians expected within their lifetime. And in today’s gospel reading from Matthew, from a passage that occurs just before the Last Supper, Jesus responds to a question from the disciples about the day of his coming (meaning his second coming) and the end of the age. All this is the product of Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic thinking, that is, the bedrock idea that God is directing human history toward an eventual resolution, in which God will finally establish God’s kingdom.
Unfortunately, we tend not to take these readings seriously, we deflect them, these and others like them in the New Testament; either because they just seem like pure superstition (“Two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left”), or because they seem like the church’s attempt to keep us in line by scaring us (do what we say or you won’t get into heaven); and that’s completely at odds with the gospel.
So what is the point? Certainly Advent is about more than just waiting for Baby Jesus; how should we understand it? What should we be thinking about?
The next-to-last verse of the Bible – the whole Bible - is the book of Revelation, chapter 22, verse 20. It concludes with the words, “Come, Lord Jesus!”, and the book ends with the benediction, “May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all.” “Come, Lord Jesus.” That’s the last voice we hear. So the whole Bible ends with this great invitation. And all of Christian history, and all of Christian experience, and all of our individual human lives as Christians, is put in that context: the coming of Jesus, the forever coming of Jesus, our waiting for that event. Those words set our agenda. “Come, Lord Jesus.” And by “waiting” I don’t mean simply hanging around: there’s nothing passive about being a Christian. Jesus gives the disciples instructions in the gospel today, he has something for them to do: and that is, to keep awake, to be ready. It’s far from the only time he says this
Ready for what? What is it that we’re waiting for? And how do we wait?
Every Sunday together we say the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer includes six petitions, things we ask God for. The second of those petitions is: “Thy kingdom come.” We ask God for the ever greater onrushing of God’s kingdom.
The basic message of Jesus was the proclamation of the presence of the kingdom of God. Jesus had essentially one sermon, that he just kept coming at from different angles, and it consisted of that proclamation, in one form or another, over and over. And everything he said and did, all the healings, all the miracles, all the little teaching encounters he had with people from the beginning of his ministry to the end of his life and beyond, all were variations on that theme, that the kingdom of heaven is among us. We can think of it as something like the way love is among us, if we allow it, if we live it.
When we say, Come, Lord Jesus, we ask to be brought fully into the kingdom of God.
As Christians, we are called always to live forever in anticipation of the coming of Jesus, in wakefulness, in welcoming, in importuning. We are called to live in that stance. This is the embodiment of Christian hope, and it’s why Paul included hope with faith and love as the three cardinal Christian virtues. In today’s gospel Jesus is telling the disciples they can either live their lives according to the dictates of the broken world around them, or in the hope of a different reality to come – they can’t do both.
And that’s why these little Jesse Tree ornaments aren’t just kid stuff. Because insofar as we act out of love – as we pray for someone, as we give someone a gift of the heart, as we tell someone we care about them – this is how we stick a toe in the kingdom of God. This is how we live out Christian hope. These ornaments are little rehearsals.
In a very real sense, we’re always living in Advent, just as we’re always living in Lent, just as, most of all, we’re always living in Easter. In Advent we plant our feet, we open our eyes and say, Come, Lord Jesus, in the sure and certain faith that the baby will arrive, that God will keep God’s promise.
Anybody notice anything different in church today? Of course, the big tree over by the side of the chancel here. Flora Quammie and I were talking a month or so ago about what we wanted to do for Advent this year, and we talked about a Jesse tree for the kids, which churches often do, the kids make ornaments that represent various figures in the Christmas story and decorate the tree with them. Then a couple of things happened that started us thinking in a new direction.
One was that our church was offered this wonderful tree by friends who were moving into a new house in which the tree was not really a fit. I was initially hesitant, but my wife Annie really encouraged me to accept it. St. John’s had a little Jesse tree, stored in the Wayfarers’ Chapel, that had seen its full share of use and had earned an honorable retirement; and the thought that we’d soon have this tree started us thinking a bit bigger.
The other was that Flora discovered an internet website that had an interesting idea for Jesse tree ornaments. The site is that of an organization called Mission Together: it was started by the Roman Catholic church in the United Kingdom, and its motto is “Children Helping Children”: it’s basically children who in various ways raise money in schools and churches to fund projects all over the world.
The Jesse Tree ornaments on their website are five different figures: an angel, a star, a heart, a thought bubble, and a speech bubble; and there’s blank space in each of them for kids to write or draw in. In the angel, you write something you will pray for this Advent. In the star, write something you will give. In the heart, write the name of someone you love. In the thought bubble, write something you hope for. In the speech bubble, write a kind thing you want to say to someone.
I forget which one of us had the idea – I will cheerfully attribute it to Flora – but somehow between us we decided that, with this big new tree and these new ornaments, even though they’re conceived for children, we would invite the whole congregation to participate, and make ornaments for the tree. So after the service come get one. You don’t have to put it up today; in fact, it might be a good idea to take it home and give it some thought. This is a matter between you and God. At the end of the Christmas season, when we take the tree down, you can take your ornament home if you want, or you can leave it and we’ll escort it to ornament heaven.
Now, why am I spending so much attention on this?
Today is the first day of Advent. Certainly one way that many of us think of Advent is principally as the time when, with our children, we wait for Baby Jesus. The Jesse Tree is one way to do that. And that’s great to do, that is one way to think of Advent, and it’s great when Baby Jesus comes and that promise is fulfilled and on Christmas we hear again that story that has inspired countless people for two thousand years.
But that story, and the arrival of Baby Jesus, is a representation of a much larger reality, something that affects our real lives; and if we confine our experience of Advent merely to that representation, merely to waiting for Baby Jesus and then being happy when he shows up and that’s the end of the story and we can get back to our normal lives, if that’s all Advent is for us, then we miss the point.
Certainly we are led to the feeling that there’s more to the story by the hard-edged quality of both New Testament readings today. Paul talks to the Christians in Rome about the imminent return of the risen Christ, which the first generation of Christians expected within their lifetime. And in today’s gospel reading from Matthew, from a passage that occurs just before the Last Supper, Jesus responds to a question from the disciples about the day of his coming (meaning his second coming) and the end of the age. All this is the product of Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic thinking, that is, the bedrock idea that God is directing human history toward an eventual resolution, in which God will finally establish God’s kingdom.
Unfortunately, we tend not to take these readings seriously, we deflect them, these and others like them in the New Testament; either because they just seem like pure superstition (“Two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left”), or because they seem like the church’s attempt to keep us in line by scaring us (do what we say or you won’t get into heaven); and that’s completely at odds with the gospel.
So what is the point? Certainly Advent is about more than just waiting for Baby Jesus; how should we understand it? What should we be thinking about?
The next-to-last verse of the Bible – the whole Bible - is the book of Revelation, chapter 22, verse 20. It concludes with the words, “Come, Lord Jesus!”, and the book ends with the benediction, “May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all.” “Come, Lord Jesus.” That’s the last voice we hear. So the whole Bible ends with this great invitation. And all of Christian history, and all of Christian experience, and all of our individual human lives as Christians, is put in that context: the coming of Jesus, the forever coming of Jesus, our waiting for that event. Those words set our agenda. “Come, Lord Jesus.” And by “waiting” I don’t mean simply hanging around: there’s nothing passive about being a Christian. Jesus gives the disciples instructions in the gospel today, he has something for them to do: and that is, to keep awake, to be ready. It’s far from the only time he says this
Ready for what? What is it that we’re waiting for? And how do we wait?
Every Sunday together we say the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer includes six petitions, things we ask God for. The second of those petitions is: “Thy kingdom come.” We ask God for the ever greater onrushing of God’s kingdom.
The basic message of Jesus was the proclamation of the presence of the kingdom of God. Jesus had essentially one sermon, that he just kept coming at from different angles, and it consisted of that proclamation, in one form or another, over and over. And everything he said and did, all the healings, all the miracles, all the little teaching encounters he had with people from the beginning of his ministry to the end of his life and beyond, all were variations on that theme, that the kingdom of heaven is among us. We can think of it as something like the way love is among us, if we allow it, if we live it.
When we say, Come, Lord Jesus, we ask to be brought fully into the kingdom of God.
As Christians, we are called always to live forever in anticipation of the coming of Jesus, in wakefulness, in welcoming, in importuning. We are called to live in that stance. This is the embodiment of Christian hope, and it’s why Paul included hope with faith and love as the three cardinal Christian virtues. In today’s gospel Jesus is telling the disciples they can either live their lives according to the dictates of the broken world around them, or in the hope of a different reality to come – they can’t do both.
And that’s why these little Jesse Tree ornaments aren’t just kid stuff. Because insofar as we act out of love – as we pray for someone, as we give someone a gift of the heart, as we tell someone we care about them – this is how we stick a toe in the kingdom of God. This is how we live out Christian hope. These ornaments are little rehearsals.
In a very real sense, we’re always living in Advent, just as we’re always living in Lent, just as, most of all, we’re always living in Easter. In Advent we plant our feet, we open our eyes and say, Come, Lord Jesus, in the sure and certain faith that the baby will arrive, that God will keep God’s promise.
