I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, November 21 as we prepare for the season of Advent. The texts are Isaiah 42:1-9 and Luke 2:22-32; read them here.
We’re entering a season that is rich with symbol and fraught with difficulty.
“The holidays,” as we call them, this season of big meals and celebrations, of family reunions and traditions, carry so much weight in our lives.
The Christian season of Advent, which begins next Sunday, is a season of hope, expectation, anticipation, preparation. All these themes are mirrored as we prepare to celebrate in all the ways that we celebrate, and as we prepare for all the emotional weight those celebrations might carry. Oh yes, there is hope, expectation, anticipation, preparation.
The season carries a promise of fulfillment:
The promise of finding some sense of fullness, of wholeness, of harmony or release found through celebrations with family and friends. But some among us find that these promises left painfully unfulfilled, the expectation of fulfillment only heightening our disappointment when fulfillment is not found.
Gathering with family can be a celebration for all who are gathered, all who are there. But the tables we gather around are crowded, crowded with the memory and presence of all who are not there, all who we carry with us.
Our thanksgiving tables are crowded with unfulfilled hope:
crowded with those who were here last year but not this year,
with those who we hoped might be here but are not.
Crowded with memories of things we wished we had done or left undone...
The tables we gather around are laden, not only with the present,
but also with the past.
They’re laden, as well, with the future:
The hopes and expectations of what may come in future years.
Past, present, and future all meet.
A season rich with symbol,
fraught with difficulty.
A friend of mine named Rachel told me a story recently. To celebrate her third birthday, her parents decided to rent a VCR as a special treat. VCR’s had just come out, and the novelty of having one at home was a pretty big deal.
Well, Rachel’s family got the machine all set up, and they all sat down together to watch Dumbo. Now, if you’ll remember, Dumbo is a story about a baby elephant with very big ears. And one of the first things that happens in the movie is that Dumbo’s mother, in an effort to protect Dumbo from all the kids who come to the circus and make fun of him, strikes out and protects her child. Because of this, it’s decided that she’s a “mad elephant” and she’s chained up and put in a separate cage and secluded.
Well, the scene where Dumbo is separated from his mother was so alarming to Rachel at the age of three that that she became a completely hysterical, and couldn’t watch the film at all.
Until someone had the idea to fast forward to the end of the movie and show her that Dumbo and his mom were reunited in the end. She calmed down, and they started the movie again. And secure in the knowledge that everything would be okay, she watched the movie.
This experience struck me as incredibly appropriate for Advent. Rachel’s knowledge of the future changed her experience of the past and changed her experience of the present. Watching the end of the movie, in effect, fulfilled a promise, a promise that all would be well, and her faith in that promise changed everything. Past, present, and future met, and she could experience the story through the lens of that promise.
Simeon spent his life in the temple, waiting for a promise to be fulfilled:
a promise that had been given to him by God.
And when that promise was fulfilled,
it reverberated into the past,
changing everything.
A light to enlighten the nations.
The promise fulfilled,
the words of Isaiah take on new resonance.
The past has taken on new meaning,
the present changed forever,
and the future filled with light.
What it is that we’re waiting for,
preparing for,
As we play out the drama one more time?
As the word becomes flesh,
and God dwells among us?
In Advent, we gather around tables that are heavy laden,
crowded with memory and expectation,
somehow able to bear the past, the present, the future.
They are tables of feast and thanksgiving,
tables of loss and sacrifice,
tables of love and communion.
In Advent, we see the place where the end meets the beginning.
The place where the snake bites its tail.
We wait in hope and expectation
for the birth of a child who’s presence among us
will echo backwards and forwards in time.
In a moment everything changes,
the past is made new,
the future recast.
Glory to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
I intoned as a child as I crossed myself in church on Sunday,
Who was and is and is to come.
Christ’s birth recalls for us a promise,
a promise made that a Messiah would come,
and a promise made that the Messiah would return.
We wait, we wait,
for the new things God’s promised to come to pass,
for a just and whole world,
the fulfillment of all we have hoped for,
and all that has been foretold.
I have taken you by the hand and kept you,
God said, once a long long time ago,
and the words continue to reverberate in every generation.
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to enlighten the nations.
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
We wait for the promise to be fulfilled, and fulfilled, and fulfilled again.
For eyes to see the Savior,
to see and believe.
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