Advent I

The Rev. Tamara L. Newell

A sermon delivered December 1, 2002, at Christ Church in Mexico City. Newell calls herself a Chicano in reverse -- an American born in Mexico where she has lived most her life. Priested in 1983, she assists at Christ Church where Bible study is her chief ministry.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent -- the beginning of a new Christian year. This is the season in our church calendar when we prepare to remember that 2000 years ago or so God took on human form in order to live among us and to further understand us and to teach us a number of things about what God expects of us. Given that there is a reason for different seasons of the church calendar we sometimes discuss whether this season is penitential or whether it is contemplative. How do we best prepare ourselves to remember? In different historical moments we tend toward the penitential and at other times toward the contemplative. Different people, depending on where they are in life, opt for one pose or the other. Whichever it is, however, Advent stands in stark contrast to the secular holiday of Christmas. Just about the time you couldn't be feeling more stressed or perhaps more lonely or maybe just plain tired, the church calls on us to take stock in what the Lord has done for us.

I remember when I was newly ordained and preparing to celebrate the Eucharist at one of the Christmas masses, I was marking the altar book. As you know, the proper preface changes with the seasons and I hunted with mounting panic for the Christmas preface. I finally had to swallow my embarrassment and ask the priest in charge what preface to use and he answered, "Why the preface for the Incarnation, of course." And I, wanting to use some humor to cover my ignorance said, "Oh, we're using the technical term." Well, the church does that. The church chooses to be technical about it. You see, Palacio de Hierro is celebrating Christmas. Suburbia is celebrating Christmas. You and I are celebrating the Incarnation. We are focusing on the fact the God took on our nature. God came, in the form of Jesus Christ to better know us, to more thoroughly teach us, and to introduce this notion of a redeemed life. A life that cannot go wrong -- not in the sense of God's love for us -- regardless of ourselves. It is a very good starting point.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Is the season penitential or isn't it? I have been struck for years, as I have read the Advent collects, that we certainly are focused on sin. The first Advent collect asks for grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. The second collect asks for grace to heed the warnings of the prophets who preached repentance. It asks for grace to forsake our sins. The third collect asks that God's power might deliver us from ourselves because we are sorely hindered by our sins. In every case we begin our Advent worship asking for strength to overcome our sins. Sounds pretty penitential to me.

Now I don't want to talk to you about your individual sin -- or mine. We talk ad nauseam about our individual selves. We know what we ought to do and what we ought not to do. Even if you didn't come to church often you would know about the Golden Rule which pretty much sums up what our individual behavior ought to be. But I've been thinking about a different sort of sin as we prepare to celebrate our Savior's birth at a time when his birthplace is heavy and dark with violence and the place where he was brought forth into the world is buried under hate and lack of understanding and strife. Why, where reconciliation itself was born is now as far from reconciliation as it can be. And I got to thinking about this as our Bible Study class read about the militaristic nature of the Hebrew slaves as they came into the Promised Land. Something about the history of our forefathers and foremothers brings to mind the need we have of our Lord God. Their arrival to the Promised Land -- the land of milk and honey. The destructive influence of the nations that surrounded that land and the power and might that they had because -- they believed -- those nations were rich in political and economic power. The people pleading with God for a king and God responding that they didn't need a king. They had a king -- why, God was the ruler of these people. But they insisted and they got themselves a king. Three, in fact, Saul and Solomon and David.

And, many more followed.

And what came to pass, of course, is that they went from living in the promised land to living in a kingdom that fell prey to rival nations and was divided into two nations and finally obliterated as the enemies came and ran them out of the Promised Land into captivity. The king they had so wanted deprived them of their true and perfect freedom and their homeland and they found themselves first as exiles and then as wanderers as they spread out over the world looking for the security that had been theirs in the land where no ruler was meant to be. In the Promised Land. After all, God had given his people, en route to their new home, two tablets with rules for life; with rules for behavior. He didn't hand them a Bill of Rights nor did he hand them a Constitution. They began their new life with rules of conduct that were meant to inform them on how to love their God, and their neighbor. How to look after one another. God gave them what they needed most. God gave them each other. But they were not content with that. They needed more. They needed a ruler because for us God would not suffice. We demanded an earthly ruler. And boy, howdy, did we get them and we keep getting them. We keep getting them because anything seems to deserve our faith and obedience before our Lord God.

I am reminded of the Incarnation today as I speak to you about this holiest of all seasons in our church year. And being reminded of God living among us, I learn something about sin. Not about my personal sin but about our corporate sin. That first-born of all sins, if you will, that keeps us from doing as our Lord asks us to do. The root of all evil on this earth which is thinking that we know better then our creator what is good for us. That fatal flaw that would keep us calling the shots in our corporate lives rather then listening to God. And I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that I'm not talking about my personal ability to sin in those ways. Or your personal ability to do so -- but in our ability -- us, as a group, as a tribe, if you will, to go our separate way -- together but separate from God. I want to suggest to you this Advent that the darkness and sin that we will pray about through Advent is what we are doing as a group of people -- God's people. I'm not asking that as an Advent discipline we light torches and declare complete liberation from government. But as a tribe we need to focus on the kingdom that God wanted us to inhabit. It is almost as though God realized that a geographical location was too vulnerable to worldly powers and so God gave us a spiritual kingdom that we must inhabit -- the kingdom of God. A kingdom far beyond the reach of the politicians and pundits and judges and lawyers. A kingdom in which God is Lord. God is ruler. No other ruler is needed nor accepted. A kingdom that came into being in that manger that night with nothing to draw attention to it but the star and the angels. I think it is worth our time to think about how we have fashioned a life for ourselves that is rooted in this particular sin: depending on something -- anything but God. Basing our choices on all sorts of documents and opinions and feelings that are not at all Biblical. We live that way personally, individually, to be sure, but we live that way as a group as well. We follow the wrong king.

I have no answers for you today, really. Merely a suggestion and it is this: There is a better way than the way we are presently living. There is a better notion than our notion that we know better, that we are in charge and can do a better job. There is a better notion than the misguided notion that we are the important thing happening here. We have been given a common vision. This vision is best described for us by the Prophet Isaiah. Unfortunately that section that should speak to us all so loudly as we prepare not so much to receive our Savior but to make the world fit for our Savior to arrive is found in next weeks Old Testament reading but it is the important reading for Advent. So as I try to set a tone for our Advent season I would like to read it to you. It bears reading many times.

The kingdom of God -- that kingdom that we are supposed to be active members of shall look like this according to Isaiah. "The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain. They will do nothing that will hurt or destroy. We will do nothing that will hurt or destroy. And we won't because the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord. And I have to assume that it will be full of the knowledge of the Lord because we will fill it with the knowledge of the Lord. Those tablets that Moses brought down from the mountain were not simply a beguiling Old Testament story. They are indicative of the fact that our behavior matters a lot. That how we live our lives has a transforming effect on the world we live in.

I saw a TV magazine the other day about teaching disabled children. At one point the young teacher, trying to get the attention of one particularly active child, cupped the child's chin in her hand and drew attention to her by pointing at the child's eyes and leading them toward her eyes, "Look at me, pay attention," she said gently to the child.

I don't know how contemplative or penitential Advent ought to be. However, I choose to imagine that this Advent God has taken my chin in his hand and is saying gently -- lovingly, "Look at me, pay attention."
I think we can get a glimpse of this hope that appeared 2000 years ago in the manger. I think we can see it. I think we can see it. I think we need to give our life over to getting it into focus -- to making it our life. I think we need to pay attention to a kingdom that began in a manger, in the form of a child, in which no hurt or destruction will take place. I think we need to shape our life in response to the Incarnation of God. We need to take on the form of He who took on our form. We must attempt to lead a life that imitates the God who came to live among us. We need to develop a way of loving that seeks to be the way God has loved us.