The senior sermon of Dan Tantimonaco, Class of 2005 from the Diocese of Southeast Florida, given on December 2, 2004, in Christ Chapel

Lectionary from the First Sunday of Advent, Year A, 2004
Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122

The holiday season is a time for remembering. Christmas especially can take us back to our childhood. We remember perhaps gathering at our grandparents' house. The sights and especially the smells -- of cookies baking or of a freshly cut Christmas tree -- are etched into our memory. We may remember that bicycle or wagon or doll or train set under the tree, or that puppy that Santa Claus left for us on a Christmas morning way back when. Or we remember Christmas caroling or meals shared with family.

The gifts given today may be a little different from when we were children, but the tree and the carols are the same and somebody still brings a fruitcake that could just as easily be used as a doorstop.
There are certain traditions in this season that make it a time to remember -- a time to look back. Particularly for those who have lost loved ones, this can be a time of remembering, and a very difficult time.

Our remembering is a good thing. The past gives us a place to stand, to get a sure footing as we head into the future. For just as we have one foot in the past, we also have one foot in the future.

We are now in the season of Advent, which includes the four Sundays before Christmas. The word Advent literally means "coming," and we anticipate the celebration of Christ's coming as a baby born in Bethlehem. But we also anticipate the future fulfillment of God's kingdom…Christ's coming again. We plant one foot in Bethlehem, beside the manger, while we plant the other foot in the future, anticipating the time when the visions of the prophets of peace and righteousness will come to pass.

This is a season of anticipation -- a time of waiting. We all know about waiting. Some of us have advanced degrees in waiting. We wait in line at HEB, or the post office. We wait at the airport. Boy, do we wait at the airport! Some of us still fondly remember waiting for payday. We wait until we are old enough to go to school, and when we get there, we wait until we are old enough to get out of school. We wait for a break; we wait for the check that is supposedly in the mail. We even have waiting rooms. Here it is called Maddux lounge, where we pace…waiting for the arrival of our paper. Have we given birth to an S or to the dreaded C.?

Waiting is never easy. As Christians, our faith involves a kind of expectant waiting. We proclaim both that Christ has come and that Christ is coming. Christ came to us, lived among us, and brought in his kingdom. But God's reign has not yet come about in its fullness. Christ has come, but there is still plenty of injustice and cruelty and oppression in this world. Christ has come, but we are still looking for peace. As Christians…we wait.

The question for us is how do we live while we wait, while we wait in the meantime? We live with one foot in past. Our experiences from the past shape us, but we can't live there. We can anticipate the future -- a time when God will make all things right -- but we can't live there either. We have to live in the present-we have to live in the meantime.

Living in the meantime means that we know the ways things are now… will not always be. The prophet Isaiah, in a wonderfully moving piece of poetry, envisions a coming kingdom of peace, a time when swords will be beat into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. It will be a time when the nations look to Jerusalem and see a land of peace.

In this Advent season of the year 2004, I cannot imagine more timely words than Isaiah's vision. It is stunning and it is powerful, and it sounds so, so…what is the word? It sounds so unrealistic. It sounds so impossible.

Christ has come and God's kingdom is here and now, but it is obviously not fully come. We pray "thy kingdom come, thy will be done" every week, and people have been praying it for a couple thousand years, and we are still praying for it.

Advent is a kind of journey, a journey from the past to the future, a journey from where we are now to where God is leading us. Advent is a reminder that we are living in the meantime.

We have trouble living in the meantime. It begins in our teenage years. The teenage years can be difficult because it involves living in the meantime. Teenagers are something more than a child, on the way to becoming an adult, but not quite there yet. College students who are looking forward to graduating, looking forward to moving on -- where are they? They are living in the meantime. We seniors are living in the meantime. Most of us do not know if we will have a job or where we might be living. Living in the meantime is not easy.

Martin Luther had something interesting to say about all of this living in the meantime business. He was reportedly asked what he would do if he knew the world would end tomorrow. His answer was, "I would plant a tree."

The point is we have to live in the present moment. We stand with a foot in the past and a foot in the future. We yearn for a time when God sets things right, when there is peace in the land and peace in the world. With all that has happened in the years since September 11, we so much long for swords to beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. The New English Bible translation is, "Nation shall not lift sword against nation, nor ever again be trained for war." How we long for that day.
But for now, we are living in the meantime. That phrase can be taken in another way. We live in a mean time. It is a mean world.

The late 1800's were a time when classic liberal theology was at its height. There was a strong belief in what was called postmillennialism-people believed that there would be a golden age of 1000 years before Christ's return. Life was getting better; there was new technology, modern medicine, a thriving mission movement, and an increasing standard of living. But then World War I brought home the reality of sin and evil. Just a few years ago we saw the end of the cold war. The winds of freedom were blowing across the world. It was an incredible thing, a movement of God's spirit. But rather than bringing in a golden age, what has happened? Genocide in Rwanda and the Sudan, war in Iraq, a bloodbath in Bosnia and Kosovo, ethnic fighting all over the world and terrorism has struck us at home. This is a mean time. Even more so since September 11, Isaiah's vision seems so far removed from our world.

And so, how do we wait? How do we live in meantime? There are two kinds of waiting. One is a sort of passive waiting. It is more, a matter of letting things happen… waiting for the inevitable. It might be waiting for our ship to come in as my Grandfather liked to say or waiting for Mr. or Mrs. Right -- waiting for something, anything, but not sure exactly what.

But there is the other kind of waiting. We are to live in the meantime through expectant waiting…the waiting found in scripture. The Old Testament prophets waited for the coming messiah, and yet it was not a passive waiting, it was an expectant waiting. In Isaiah's vision of the coming kingdom, there is great passion and expectancy and hope.

It is something like waiting for the birth of a child. Anticipation builds. The child cannot be seen -- oh, there may be indications something is happening, but the child cannot be seen. The waiting can be much longer than we would like for it to be. It can be painful at times. It is not necessarily easy. And yet we are assured that the birth is surely coming.

We live in the meantime through expectant waiting. Christ has come, and even now, Christ is coming into our hearts. We anticipate the fullness of Christ's kingdom.

The danger in living in the meantime can be in putting things off. The fulfillment of God's kingdom can seem so far off that we do not take the vision seriously. There will be time for worrying about peace later.

A fable is told of three apprentice devils who were sent to earth for their final apprenticeship. They were talking to Satan about their plans to tempt and ruin people. The first said, "I will tell them there is no God." Satan said, "You won't delude many -- they know. The second said, "I will tell them there is no hell." Satan said, "You will deceive no one that way, many are living a hell even now." The third said, "I will tell them there is no hurry." Satan smiled and said, "Go, you will ruin people by the thousands."
Living in the meantime means not being so focused on the future that we miss today. I love Luther's answer about planting a tree. We have to live in the present moment. But living in the meantime also means not being so immersed with the time that we miss out on eternity. Even as we plant our trees, even as we attend to the living of these days, we have to keep the vision of God's kingdom before us -- the vision of peace and righteousness and goodness and justice, the vision of all peoples, all nations, all races, living in peace.

Advent invites us, in all our skepticism and cynicism, to join in Isaiah's dream, to dream this dream, to work to see it become a reality. Advent is a journey. And if we are on a journey, the only way to reach the destination is to keep moving, to not stop, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
We are called to stay the course, to plant that tree, to keep hammering away at those swords in our own lives, in our homes, in our relationships, in our jobs, in our community, even in our church, until they look more and more like plowshares:

Until hatred is changed into love;

Until rejection is changed into acceptance;

Until quarreling is changed into listening;

Until apathy is changed into service;

Until selfishness is changed into sacrifice;

Until greed is changed into generosity.

We live in a mean world. We live in a mean time. We also live in the meantime. Christ has come and Christ will come again. But even in the meantime, Christ comes again and again into our hearts.

Somewhere in this season I hope that you will have a chance to reflect on that. It may be in the face of a child, filled with promise and hope. It may be in a light -- perhaps in a candle -- announcing that God has sent to us a great light in Jesus. It maybe in a tree -- an evergreen tree -- that reminds us that even in the dead of winter, God gives life. It may come in the midst of all our remembering -- as we recall the blessings of the past.

We all stand with one foot in the past. Let us remember and take joy in our remembering. We also stand with one foot in the future -- and in this Advent season let us hope…let us anticipate God's working in us and among us. As we celebrate the birth of a child and anticipate the return of a savior, let us open ourselves to Christ's coming into our hearts -- that he might be born anew in us, even now…in the meantime.

Amen.