FIRST READING Isaiah 64:1–9
1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence — 2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil — to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4 From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. 5 You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. 6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7 There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.
PSALM Psalm 80:1–7
1 Hear, O Shepherd of Israel, leading Joseph like a flock; shine forth, you that are enthroned upon the cherubim. 2 In the presence of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, stir up your strength and come to help us. 3 Restore us, O God; let your face shine upon us, and we shall be saved. 4 O LORD God of hosts, how long will your anger fume when your people pray? 5 You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have given them bowls of tears to drink. 6 You have made us the derision of our neighbors, and our enemies laugh us to scorn. 7 Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine upon us, and we shall be saved.
SECOND READING 1 Corinthians 1:3–9
3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, 5 for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind — 6 just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you — 7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. 8 He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
GOSPEL Mark 13:24–37
24 But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27 Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. 28 From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 32 But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35 Therefore, keep awake — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36 or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”
The Full Advent
For several years a local church in Sioux City, Iowa had a living nativity scene. On one particular night it was the Pastor’s job to get a pregnant ewe, which was bedded down in the parsonage garage, to the church. The pastor and another man went to get her about a half hour before performance time. Due to her delicate condition, they carefully lifted her into the bed of the truck, and the pastor rode in the back with her. It was a bitterly cold night and the ewe evidently decided she had other plans.
When the truck stopped at a light, she bolted and jumped over the tailgate. She started running down the busy city street away from the church with the pastor in hot pursuit. Passing cars slammed on their brakes to avoid hitting them. People yelled, pointed and laughed; and the ewe and preacher ran on. He finally caught her in a thicket at the local College. They quickly reloaded her into the truck and got her into place with two minutes to spare. The pastor said all the way to the church, the lines from My Fair Lady kept running through his head: “Kick up a rumpus, but don’t forget the compass, and get me to the church on time.”
My hope for you is that your Advent and Christmas season won’t be quite that hectic. But, for most of us, time is at a premium during the Advent season, isn’t it? Our song could be, “Kick up a rumpus, but don’t forget the compass, and get me to Christmas on time.” So I guess it would be good at this time to say, welcome on this first Sunday of Advent. Many of us think of Advent as a time of getting ready for Christmas and on a practical level it’s certainly that. Some of you may get a headache just thinking about all the preparations that must be made over the next few weeks: Lights and trees to put up, parties to attend, meals to plan and prepare and presents to buy and wrap. How can we possibly get it all done?
Today marks a new “season” in the church calendar. The season of Advent, however, is much more than getting ready for Christmas. Advent is the definitive announcement about our future. Advent is the announcement of a time when Christ will return to establish His kingdom. Advent is a time of preparation for that final triumph over death and darkness. That’s why Advent this year begins with this passage from St. Mark, chapter 13: “Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. Then Jesus gives us the following example, “It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch. “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’” It’s a dramatic command: “What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’”
Advent is a season of anticipation and preparation for the “coming” (the adventus) of Jesus. But mostly during Advent, we do strange and ridiculous things. We put up a tree in our living room. Not too long ago people used to light their Christmas trees with burning candles, and as many found out, that wasn’t such a good idea. We decorate our house as though it was a huge present. We drive our electric bills through the roof with outdoor lighting. We start buying stuff, wrapping stuff, baking stuff and preparing stuff. All to what end? So that when Jesus finally arrives, our Christmas celebration will be special and memorable? Advent is the church’s annual adventure in being astounded by something new, not in J. C. Penney but in a manger.
And yet, the first gospel reading for the Season of Advent isn’t “something new.” Instead it recalls a prediction from the Old Testament as recorded by the prophet Daniel. Daniel 7:13 evokes the vision of a “son of man coming with the clouds of heaven.” It describes this heavenly figure as one who will “gather his elect,” a message that suggests that those not “elected” are in fact “rejected.” It’s a grand vision of a heavenly empowered divine “son of man” coming to earth to extend judgment. This “son of man” is a historic figure of heavenly origin, a divine being who becomes human and will change the course of human history. The final word in this week’s gospel text from Mark is to “keep watch,” to “watch out” for the signs that will reveal that the approach of this “son of man” is imminent.
In the first century, when Mark’s gospel was put into written form, watchfulness was somewhat different than it is today. In the twenty-first century, like it or not, it seems like we have cameras everywhere. At traffic lights, on our cell phones, in stores, banks, ATMs and in the larger towns, down sidewalks and streets: We’re all “on camera” all the time, it seems. In 2014 there’s no such thing as not being “on watch.” Although, every time it seems like this “surveillance society” is something new, just remember that J. Edgar Hoover had files on nearly half a million suspected subversives, including, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser and John Steinbeck. In the first century “keeping watch” was much more “low tech” than films and files.
“Keeping watch” in Biblical times meant literally keeping your eyes open and staying wide awake in order to respond quickly to sudden changes and threats. In the first century, the “poster child” of “keeping watch” was the shepherd — the most rural and remedial of the population. In the social pecking order, the social status of the shepherd was considered to be somewhere below ground level.
In 1943 the new musical theater team of Rodgers and Hammerstein composed the now iconic American story called “Oklahoma.” How many here this morning either saw or performed in this play when you were in high school? No matter how much you love or hate musical theater, “Oklahoma” has it all. It has dancing. It has music. It has humor. It has drama. The basic tension in “Oklahoma” revisits a basic tension that has been going on for centuries. In nineteenth century America this was called “farmers” vs. “cowboys.” In first century Israel, the very same animosity was felt between shepherds vs. settlers.
In our earliest recorded days of the land that would be known as “Israel,” shepherding, the nomadic lifestyle of those who traveled from place to place finding forage for their flocks, was not just accepted, it was acclaimed. All the patriarchs were from shepherding stock; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, even the greatest king of Israel, king David, were all nomadic shepherds. Keeping watch at night, keeping an eye out during the day, was the “situation normal” for generations. My how things have changed.
Ironically it was the agricultural lifestyle of the Egyptians, those who captured and enslaved the Hebrews, which initially made “shepherding” seem like a second or even third class lifestyle for their captives. After the exodus and the settling of the “promised land,” there’s a distinct distancing between the religious hierarchy and the old time nomadic lifestyle of shepherds. Suddenly tending sheep was shoddy. Being itinerant and “on the move” in the first century became as low-brow and suspicious as not having an email address or cell phone in the twenty-first century.
Mark’s gospel proclaims that the “son of man” will come in “clouds with great power and glory.” This is the gospel writer’s description of the new Messiah. And yet at the beginning of Advent we’re also faced with a gospel message about to whom this great revelation first came. In Luke 2:8 we’re told that the first persons who hear about the coming of this “son of man,” this Messiah from God, are shepherds.
Shepherds! Not priests in the temple. Not the sages of the synagogue. Not learned rabbis or their students: Shepherds. People who camp out all the time, people who bathe none of the time, people whose job it is to “watch out” for the welfare of creatures who are definitely not the sharpest tools in the shed.
By the first century the status of being a “shepherd” had definitely sunk low. Not only was a nomadic lifestyle no longer on the “A” list; being a shepherd had become categorized as in the same class as being a tax collector, or an unclean outcast. Shepherds were considered to be borderline “unclean,” defined as unlawful and untrustworthy. Buying a lamb from a shepherd in the first century was considered to be like “buying” a computer out of the back of an unmarked van in the twenty-first century. Shepherds were either despised or mistrusted by all those who had “risen above” to become city dwellers or at least members of a fixed community.
So how uncanny is it that after the amazing reminder from Mark, in this week’s gospel text, of the power and presence of the coming Messiah, that part of our annual “Christmas story” declares that shepherds were the first to receive the announcement of this heavenly event? The Messiah is at last revealed on earth. And the Messiah is first revealed to . . . the least and the lowest, shepherds.
The revelation of the glorious coming of the Son of Man to shepherds was like giving the first stock options of Facebook to the person sleeping under a box in the middle of Detroit. It wasn’t “common sense.” But then, nothing about Advent is common sense.
Instead of bringing in a mighty and military Messiah to cordon off and clean up the riff-raff of the world, God sent something spectacularly different. Instead of choosing to show off raw power, God chose to engage humanity, to relate with us instead of relegating to us. Against all odds, instead of sending a powerhouse or potentate, God sent a baby. And to make matters even more unusual, God sent the first birth announcement to shepherds, to those who had no social standing or a hope of having a reverberating voice in their own culture. We’re awestruck, or we should be awestruck, by the miracle, mystery and majesty of that first arrival of the Divine during Advent. The question is, are we also astonished by the dazzling presence of the Divine in our lives today?
Our first reading about the coming Messiah, in this week’s gospel text, is all about the Divine bearing and power of the one who will bring judgment and justice into this world. Then we pause to remember and we say what a minute, we’re in the Season of Advent. The Messiah, the great and all-powerful one who will determine our life everlasting, is being celebrated this season as a tiny, helpless baby. This seemingly unimpressive infant being is first announced to and observed by those who have no social sauce or political pull whatsoever. They were “shepherds.” They were “nobodies.”
These shepherds receive what we might call “The Full Advent.”
The Full Advent is comprised of three features: ambush, amusement, amazement. Or in other words, “Whoa, what was that!” The ambush. “No Way – you mean me?” The amusement. And “Wow, what a gift!” The amazement. The Full Advent then is Whoa! No Way? Wow!
First, the Advent Ambush: the Whoa! No one was more shocked and surprised to receive the outlandish message of Emmanuel or “God with Us” than these itinerant, homeless nobodies. Shepherds were poorly, if at all, educated. Whether they actually had any deep knowledge of the religious history of the prophesied “Messiah” is questionable. But as keeping-an-eye-out watchers, shepherds knew what it meant to be “ambushed” by animal predators and human robbers. And they were truly “ambushed” by the angelic beings who appeared to them in their fields as they watched over their flocks that night. The first act of Advent is an Ambush: the “Whoa, what was that?”
The second act of The Full Advent is Amusement: the No Way? “You mean me?” The coming of the Messiah in mist and majesty is announced to a few lowly shepherds in ratty old Bethlehem. Really!! This must be a joke! This is the “holy humor” of Advent — the surprise package that no human anticipated and no novelist dared imagine: a miracle in a manger.
Even the shepherds found this message not just an “ambush” but an “amusement.” All things considered, who would send the message of the Messiah’s coming first to “shepherds?” This is how the angels then convince these amused shepherds and proved what they were saying was true and not some joke: “This will be a sign to you — you will find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” In other words, this Messiah isn’t making His first appearance to the rich and famous, but to an oddment of outcasts like the shepherds. Just as you wrap newborn lambs in swaddling clothes and elevate them above the dangers of being trodden underfoot by laying them in mangers, so you will find the Messiah, the Perfect Lamb of God that will take away the sins of the world.
After the ambush and the amusement, came something much more. Next came the amazement which is the third feature of The Full Advent. The first miracle of Christmas has nothing to do with angels and announcements. The first miracle of Christmas is that the shepherds, who thought that the Messiah was to come on a great cloud with power and the ability to judge all of humanity, took the word of midnight angels, trusted the signs, and wandered away from their flocks and found a small stable in Bethlehem. There they were amazed. They didn’t find the divine power of a great judge, but they did step into a field of glory, a Shekinah of shalom in a stable.
Whatever drove those shepherds, those marginalized, skeptical, social outcasts, to trust the angelic messengers and take their directions, the result was transformative. They were ushered into a wholly new place. They didn’t just journey from fields of sheep to a small home in Bethlehem. These first witnesses journeyed from a place where they were outcasts to a place where they were the first cast, in the Advent drama. The lowest became the highest. The lowest enjoyed the highest privilege of being made new by Jesus’ presence. “Wow, what a gift.” We say wow because this story has true meaning for us.
The shepherds are each one of us. As sinners, we’re all outcasts, left out and “out in left field.” We all need to be made new by the Jesus’ presence in our lives. And if we open ourselves to The Full Advent this year, we too will be ambushed, we too will be amused, and we too will be amazed.
Some years ago a theologian was flying into Oklahoma City airport. When informed by his handler that someone was assigned to pick him up at the airport, he asked how he would recognize that person. “Just look for the most dead person in baggage claim.” When did Christians become the “most dead person” in the room? There are three infallible signs of the presence of God — the surprise of being ambushed, the joy of being amused, and the excitation of being amazed.
Are you braced to embrace Advent this year? Anytime we open ourselves to God’s presence, it will be a season of being amazed, amused, and ambushed by the Divine. That’s The Full Advent: Whoa! No Way? Wow! Whoa, what just happened. No Way – Who me? And wow, what a gift! But we must keep vigilant, we must keep watch. We can’t be part of the Full Advent if we don’t keep awake and keep watch.
Amen