Sermon for Advent 1: Rhythms and Patterns

 Luke 21:25-36
Rhythms and Patterns
James Sledge                                                         November 28, 2021, Advent 1

Greek icon of the Second Coming,
ca. 1700

It took its sweet time this fall, but the cooler weather finally arrived, and winter weather
is just around the corner. Even though climate change has moderated winters a bit, there is still a regular rhythm to the changing of the seasons, one that we well know how to prepare for.

At my house, the tubs holding sweaters and other winter clothes have been switched out with the shorts and summer clothes in the dressers. And those summer clothes been taken to the basement to hibernate through the winter.

I assume that similar summer to fall to winter preparations have or are taking place at your home. Furnaces get checked out; fireplaces get cleaned; houseplants that had been on the porch get brought inside. The patterns vary from home to home, but we all know how to get ready for winter. We all know the rhythms of the seasons.

Down in Texas, my daughter and her family are preparing for a different sort of transition, the birth of their second child. They’ve done this once before so there is some familiarity, but there will be differences. A toddler will have to adjust to a new sibling and parents will need to navigate caring for a toddler and a newborn. To some degree, it will be uncharted territory, something quite different from the shifts that happen each year with the change of the seasons.

All of our lives we experience changes, but not all changes are the same. Some are regular and predictable. This winter may be colder or warmer, with lots of snow or a little, but with most winters, it will still follow a pattern that is familiar, one where we know what to expect and prepare for. Other changes don’t have regular rhythms and require us to make adjustments to our lives, to learn new skills, to let go of old patterns and rhythms.

Getting married, having children, choosing a college, or deciding to sell the house and move to a retirement center are all changes that don’t happen with frequency and so they don’t have predictable rhythms that have been learned and rehearsed year after year, season after season. And so they tend to be much more challenging and demand more difficult adjustments than do seasonal changes.

And now, here comes another Advent. It is a season that most of us know well, and we are accustomed to its rhythms. Occasionally it feels like it sneaks up on us, but by and large, we are ready for it. The Advent candles are here, and people have agreed to do the candle lightings. All over the country, choirs are preparing special music, people are starting to decorate churches with greenery, and Chrismon ornaments are being pulled from storage.

There is a regular rhythm to Advent, and most of us have done it many times. The rhythms are also woven into the secular preparations for Christmas. Some have already bought presents while others haven’t yet started. Christmas lights and decorations have been retrieved from attics or basements, and everywhere you look, people are getting ready. It is a season of preparation and anticipation that many of us enjoy immensely.

And we know well how the season will unfold. Another Advent candle will be lit each week. Advent calendars will check off the days. Some Christmas carols will slip into the worship services as we go deeper into the season. Presents will be placed under the tree. Children, and adults, will grow more and more excited as the season moves toward its culmination with Christmas Eve worship followed by Christmas morning.

And then, as with other seasons, Advent will end, and before you know it, Christmas will be over. The ornaments will come off the tree, and the Advent wreathes will be put away until next year. The lights will come down and the Christmas carols will go on hiatus until next December. We know the rhythms well. We know how it goes.

But every year, the scripture readings that begin Advent try to shake us out of our comfortable rhythms. Jesus says, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.  Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near…

Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.”

We know how to get ready for Advent, to get ready for Christmas, to spend time waiting and anticipating, then celebrating as we bathe in the warmth and nostalgia of Christmas. But we don’t really expect anything more. This Advent and Christmas will be like the ones before and the one after and the ones that will repeat, year after year.

Christian faith, however, insists that something was set loose in the world on that first Christmas, something that altered history and continues to alter history. The age to come, God’s new day began to break into the present. Glimmers of a day when the poor are lifted up and the oppressed are set free began to be visible to those who are joined to Christ, creating a deeply felt longing, a hunger and thirst for righteousness, for a world set right. Given a glimpse of God’s new day, those who are in Christ feel more and more out of step with the world around them, and they begin to agitate and work for a world that looks more and more like God’s new day.

But all too often, Advent and Christmas and Christianity itself are domesticated and shrunk into something small and personal, a spiritualized self-help plan or a little pie in the sky when you die. A casual observer could be forgiven for assuming that there is nothing cosmic or earth shattering about Advent and Christmas, that the coming of Jesus makes no difference other than in the internal lives of the faithful or when they die.

All too often, Advent and Christmas have been reduced to nothing more than a seasonal rhythm, something that comes and goes year after year, something to be enjoyed and celebrated, but nothing that asks us to make adjustments to our lives, to learn new skills, to let go of old patterns and rhythms.

But if Jesus is truly the Messiah, truly the Christ, then God’s messianic age has begun to arrive in some way. If Jesus is really the Messiah, then God’s plans to redeem and save humanity have begun. If Jesus is in fact the Messiah, then we are invited to do more than remember and celebrate what has happened. We are called to become part of what is happening, to become agents and instruments of God’s unfolding plan. Only then will we not be weighed down with the worries of this life, and instead live in joyful expectation of a day that we can see only faintly, but that we can see because Christ dwells in us.

Another Advent is here. It will be followed soon enough by another Christmas. Most of us know the rhythms and patterns by heart. But can we see beyond those to what God is doing, and to where we are called to do our part?