Watching & Waiting for What’s Already Here (Advent 1)

Isaiah 64: 1-9 & Mark 13: 24-37

Roger Lynn

November 27, 2016

1st Sunday in Advent

(click here for the audio for this sermon)

Today is the first Sunday in Advent – the season in the Church’s calendar which focuses our attention on watching and waiting and preparing. The theme for the first Sunday in this season is “Hope.” For thousands of years people have been hoping and longing for God to come among them and make a difference in their world. And we know about such desires, for they are our desires as well.

So, when I read today’s text from Isaiah I thought, “Oh my – this is our story – this is the story of our world today.” Maybe not you individually, at least not right here in this moment. But certainly all of us collectively who find ourselves in this tumultuous time in history. The world is a mess in more ways than we can even begin to count, and we want God to “tear open the heavens and come down...” We want God to go face to face with God’s adversaries – certain as we so often are that there is such a thing as “enemies” of God. We want someone to blame. We just get confused about who that might be – sometimes even sounding like children who ever so quickly shout, “I didn’t do it – it’s not my fault!” “You were angry, God, and so we sinned.” OK, yes, we made a mess of things – but it’s only because God left us and we got lost and scared. Where is God anyway? We even know what it is to plead with God as Isaiah did. “Do not be exceedingly angry, O God, and do not remember our iniquity forever. Remember instead that we are your people. Remember that you care for us.” As I read Isaiah’s prayer and reflected also on our own similar prayers, I couldn’t help wondering who he was trying to convince – God or himself?

It all sounds so familiar. Apparently there really is nothing new under the sun. All of these hundreds and thousands of years later we still find ourselves feeling lost and confused and separated from God. And the experience is very, very real. Just ask anyone who has lost a loved one to some senseless, tragic accident or disease. Ask anyone who is agonizing over the futility of war. Ask anyone who faces the fragility of these human bodies of ours. Ask anyone who battles against depression. “Tear open the heavens and come down!” The experience is real. The only problem is – it just isn’t true! At least it doesn’t represent the fullest Truth!

In this season of Advent, and indeed in every season of the world, we long for God to come and be among us. And the truth of the matter is, we are watching and waiting for what’s already here. As the ancient Celts were fond of saying, “Bidden or unbidden – God is present!” It is the truth which 17th-century German poet Angelus Silesius whimsically proclaimed when he wrote:

God, whose love & joy 

are present everywhere, 

can’t come to visit you 

unless you aren’t there

When we experience God’s absence, from our lives and our world, what’s missing is not God! What’s missing is our awareness of God. The suffering we experience in those moments when we believe God to be missing in action is the pain of being out of harmony with the Truth.

The message which Jesus came proclaiming was, in one sense, remarkably simple. It is profound not because it is complex but because it is so fundamentally basic. It is the foundational Truth upon which all of reality is built. We just keep losing touch with it. We keep forgetting. So Jesus’ words keep calling us back. The reign of God is at hand! God is present! Not removed in some far distant heaven. Not waiting for some unspecified future. Here! Now! In the very midst of us! 

The 13th chapter of Mark’s Gospel contains an interesting and often misunderstood message. The language is decidedly apocalyptic – the same symbolic, stylized form of writing which we find in the book of Revelation. It speaks of the sun being darkened, stars falling from heaven, etc. In Matthew’s version of this story we also get things like earthquakes and storms and civil unrest. It is language which speaks to that longing deep within us which cries out for God to “tear open the heavens and come down.” And down through the years, in every age, in every generation, there have been those who have read these words and found in them signs that their time was the moment when that would happen. “Surely this is when God will come with power!” And, in a way, they were right. I believe that the clue to understanding this text from Mark is found in the very fact that people keep thinking the words are about their moment in time. These powerful words point us not to some particular time, but to every time. God is always coming into our world because God is always already here. “Keep awake!” we are told. Keep awake so that we will see what is already true. When we believe that God is absent – when we believe that we are separated from God – when we believe that we are unworthy, filthy rags – when we believe all these things – then we are surely asleep and subject to nightmares of the most frightening and painful sort. Keep awake to the truth. Keep awake to the full reality of what it means to be connected to God because God is already and always connected to you. Keep awake to what it means to be fully alive and fully human.

And so in this season of Advent we will light candles. We will sing songs. We will watch and wait and prepare ourselves, so that we will be open and ready to experience what is already true. There is no need for God to tear open the heavens and come down, because God is already here. Perhaps, instead, our prayer in this Advent season might be  – “tear down our walls and come in!”