Advent 2
Year B
St. Matthew’s Episcopal
Church
“Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting
for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish;
and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.” In the name of…
Imagine if you will that
you are ten years old, and you are waiting for
Christmas day.
Now, imagine that instead
of Christmas morning being one morning, Christmas could come for
every different family on a different morning
over the course of the month of December.
So, imagine going to school and having your classmates wear their new clothes or
talk about their new bike, but Christmas could be
for you as late as December 31st. Imagine how much harder
that would make the wait!
For Laura and I, this is
what it felt like 15 months ago as we were waiting for
Colin to be born. We had a lot of friends
who were expecting around the same time, and we knew that babies have their own
schedule, but the two weeks before
Colin’s due date really sharpened our
sense of expectation. And we waited, and
watched our friends have their babies, sometimes on time, sometimes early, but each time we saw a birth announcement, it increased our own
sense of impatience. So, for us, we had a
month of acute waiting. We waited the two weeks
before the due date, and then for two weeks
after the due date. Waiting for the really
hard experience of giving birth that neither of us had
gone through. Waiting as we had to live
with the tension of making plans for those
weeks but hold enough flexibility
that we would be able to drop everything at a moment’s notice.
Waiting for how our life
would change in ways we could not yet
comprehend. And the preparations to
be made. Finishing a nursery. Figuring out the carseat.
It was hard to wait. But we didn’t have much
choice.
We were living on a
schedule not under our own power or control.
It is one thing to wait
for something that has an appointed day of arrival, known in advance and easy
to count down to. It is another to wait for
something with more uncertain timing—more surprise, and less in our
control. It’s like walking across
a dark room and wondering when you
might hit the far wall. It is even more so to
wait for something that seems to tarry for
generations. For centuries.
So here we are, in
another season of Advent. Advent is the time that
the church remembers Christ’s promise of a second coming as we
prepare to celebrate the anniversary of his
first coming. As such, Advent is a time of expectation and waiting, but also of repentance and purification.
Recall our collect for the day, in which we pray that God give us the grace to heed
the warnings of the prophets and repent of our sins. Think about
John the Baptist and his proclaiming
a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Think about his heralding of a coming baptism by
fire. While this sounds rather like a bummer of a message, the purpose of such preparation is so that we may
greet Christmas with joy in celebrating Jesus’ birth and earthy work yet remain in hope for the time in which perfect
peace, justice, and mercy will hold sway over all.
Another season of Advent. Another season of waiting in a long
series of seasons and years of waiting. Why bother waiting? Why not just be surprised when or if
Christ comes back? Why do we even bother putting much
stock into such an idea as Christ’s return?
Our generation is not unique in
facing the question of what it means that we are still waiting for Christ’s
second coming.
In the epistle of 2nd Peter which we read from today, we find the author addressing just this issue. What do we make of our wait for Christ? This was no mere theological exercise; the author is challenging a very particular group of people. A few verses earlier than what we read today, the author names his opponents, saying:
3First of all you must understand this, that in the last days
scoffers will come, scoffing and indulging their own lusts 4and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his
coming? (2Peter 3:3-4)
The scoffers ask why Christians so foolishly wait for Jesus’
return. “Why not instead indulge
themselves and live for the day?”[1] For the scoffers, “not only is Jesus’ return in glory
not a legitimate expectation, but such a return would interrupt their worldly lifestyle.”
Still, it is easy to at least see the scoffers’ point and the questions that come up.
The second coming hasn’t happened.
Has God forgotten us?
Does God not care about the suffering in the world?
Is God powerless after all?
Is there even a God?
If not, why bother with being good?[2]
“In the face of these questions, the author objects by pointing out that the scoffers have failed to take
three things into account: The power of God’s word to both create and destroy (vv.5-7), the difference between the reckoning of God’s time and human time (v.
8), and the character of God (v. 9). In other words, there is at once a power, a patience, and a graciousness that
characterize this God.”[3]
Unlike
some images present in our society that see God as
vengeful, as
perfectly willing to condemn billions to eternal torment—unlike
some Christians who write about the end of time
as an
elaborate revenge fantasy with what can only be described as a sense of glee at
the prospect of watching the slaughter of the unfaithful—there
is instead the words from this epistle.
Hear
the words again: “The Lord
is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with
you, not wanting any to perish, but all
(*all*) to come to repentance…
[therefore] regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.”
Instead of a God who shuts down the world in a
fit of exasperation, who destroys the creation in a rage; we serve a God who in love approaches us and the
end of time with patience
and proclaims purification as though through the
refiner’s fire. This is the picture of a
God who remains faithful to us and to all of creation, even when we find our patience tried and at its
end.
The
question remains, then as now: what
disposition will our waiting take?
For
the author of 2nd Peter, the
proper response to God’s gracious patience is a
life turned toward repentance and
growing in greater and greater holiness. And
this holiness goes beyond our relationship to God, but
expands outward to all whom we meet.
The
call to repentance and the admonition to be found blameless is a serious matter even
though God’s patience stretches so far over
humanity’s experience of time. While
the scoffers claim God’s supposed absence or tardiness frees
us from consequence, we
are not at liberty to say that God offers a blind eye or
unqualified affirmation to everything humanity does. The
same loving-kindness that God shows to us is
shown to all of creation. For if God offers an unqualified patience and affirmation to everything we do—even
those things which harm others—then
the Gospel holds no good news for the many who suffer for
the sake of the comfort of a few.
The
prophets’ call to repentance is the reminder that
we are not individually God’s sole project on this earth. The
call to repentance is misunderstood if it is seen only as a project of personal
improvement. That
is too small a glory for the Kingdom of God we
proclaim as “on the way”—a
Kingdom proclaimed by building communities that
practice love in spite of our fears and our lusts for power and control over
others.
As we
work toward this kingdom, we
wait.
And
in this season we are invited to cultivate a patience markedly
different from simply keeping ourselves occupied until the End.
And
Lord knows we
are so very occupied this time of year.
Soon,
very soon,
we
will commemorate a very special birth even
as we await for Christ’s return.
Will
you slow down?
Will
you wait?
Will
you hold yourself to a schedule not under your own power/control, but
one that promises a world better than we can ask or imagine?
Will you watch for new heavens and a new
earth?
Will
you proclaim a Kingdom to come?
[1]
This sentence and the following rely heavily on the work of Lee W. Bowman,
Found in Bartlett, David L., and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Feasting on the
Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Year B, Volume 1). Louisville
(Ky.): Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.
40).
[2]
Disclaimer: I believe that
non-Christians can be ethical people.
[3]
Bowman, 40.
