Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

Until I became a pastor, I don't think I ever realized that the scripture readings for the first Sunday in Advent were always about "days to come," about the return of Jesus.  The first Sunday in the waiting and preparing of Advent is about waiting and preparing for the Kingdom.

Growing up I always thought that Advent was about getting ready to celebrate Christmas.  It was simply a way of building excitement prior to the big day, the church's equivalent of the shopping season.  But I have come to realize that Advent calls for a much more profound sort of waiting and preparing.

As much as I enjoy celebrating Christmas, the trouble with an Advent that anticipates nothing more than another Christmas is that it anticipates nothing new.  It anticipates a celebration, but one that only remembers.  It doesn't look forward to much.  When we've finished Advent and Christmas is done, nothing will have changed.  We will put away the decorations and go back to life as usual.

But the promise of Christmas is that God has acted and will act in history.  The coming of Jesus is about a decisive break in human history that heralds a new day, one that the church is called to proclaim, enact, and embody until it arrives.  But we appear to have forgotten this.  We do not seem to think God will do anything on the earthly stage.  We've deferred all that until "after death."  When it comes to human history, many Christians imagine a remarkably impotent God.

But Advent calls us to look at the darkness of the world, the pain and injustice, the suffering and war, and to know that the coming of Christ is but the first act of a two act play.  Advent invites us to remember that God notices the world's pain and darkness, that God does act within human history, and that God will finally bend history to God's hopes and dreams.

In the uncertainty of our age, I think we would all do well to enter into Advent rather than a Christmas prelude.  We would do well to recall that the darkness of human history is the arena where Jesus appears, that the darkness of human history is what God will transform.  For when we can truly do that, we may be able to hope and live for something much more than yet another Christmas.