1st Sunday of Advent

Sermon: 1st Sunday of Advent

Texts: Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:1-5, Matthew 24:36-44

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The readings that lead us towards the season of Advent begins with an apocalyptic spirit. We see images of a great change that is about to take place, the expectation of the imminent arrival of salvation, of the Lord making His appearance amid humanity, and we are prompted to take care and be ready, for it is coming at a time we cannot predict. “Keep awake!” Jesus says. Keep awake in your faithfulness to the Lord, do not let yourself be unfocused or benumbed by the world’s many distractions, for the time will come when the Lord will change everything. Advent is paradoxical in this sense. While we await within the story of Jesus’s birth, we are also announcing the End that is proclaimed because God will dwell among us. Thus, these readings remind us, that in our waiting for the coming of salvation, we should be getting ready. That waiting is not merely

a passive activity. To wait for the Lord’s arrival into our history, we must actively upkeep ourselves in faith to be ready for His arrival. We don’t want to miss the boat, or to be swept away by our unpreparedness for the revolution the Lord will bring. So there are two things I want to highlight in these reading: One being the suddenness that is warned about, the second the preparation to get on with the time of salvation.

Jesus uses a rather striking comparison for the arrival of the Kingdom, it will be like Noah’s Flood. It will be like a storm that will sweep away those who are not on the boat. In the days of Noah, he was ridiculed for constructing the boat of salvation, for worrying and preparing about the storm that God was going to bring. Instead, the people who ridiculed gave themselves with reckless abandon to their passions and pursuits of gratifying themselves. Not that I believe that this comparison applies neatly to our own time, but I often feel like today we are in a similar situation. The world as we understand it is changing

drastically on many levels, but on the spiritual fromt we are no different than the times of Noah. It is still difficult to make society take seriously the collective challenges that are knocking at our doors, to take seriously the storm or the changes. Climate Change is a good example of this. The world moves as if its actions are not having any repercussion on the environment. Just now, we are seeing some very rich companies salivating at the opportunity to extract oil in Venezuela, even though we already know the warnings of the consequences from wars past and the negative effect of the fossil fuel industry upon the health of our planet. I can’t help but see Jesus’ warning apply to them. The fact that humanity is acting in the spirit of “business as usual” to gratify itself when the times clearly signal a radical change, is disconcerting. Then when the storm comes with sudden force, we are unprepared for its arrival and sweeps us away. Jesus’ Kingdom is no different, it is coming and will sweep away the things that do not belong to it.

Beloved, I say these things because I do not want us to think that our generation is any different than what Jesus is showing us in this text. We are very much like Noah’s generation, distracted, unconcerned with the warnings, acting as if the wages of sin are not death, as if our faithlessness to God by rejecting the neighbor, by lacking care of creation, by endorsing the violence of the world, we are in a sense in a state of unpreparedness. The church, in many ways, is meant to be like a small ark in the world by which we can withstand the violent storms of change, to be the boat that will sail into God’s Kingdom of salvation, to take us to the dry land that will bring life again to the world. We go to church, we affirm our baptism, we confess sin, we love neighbor, we forgive and have mercy to ready ourselves daily for the Kingdom, to be the boat that will carry others to God’s Kingdom of Love. But the Kingdom does not bring with it all the callousness of the world. That will be swept away. The prophet Isaiah gives us a glimpse of the change: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.” The Kingdom of God is anti-war, it is when the weapons that humans use against themselves are broken down and repurposed to be instruments of life-giving activity, of growth of land and food. With this knowledge of God’s desire, are we working towards that vision? Are we “throwing off the works of darkness and putting on the armor of light” as Paul says? That our faith reflects the active preparation for a life-giving kingdom rather than one that deals on death and human folly and distraction? These are the initial questions that Advent is hurling towards us, Beloved. As we await with great hope, are we living through our hope? Are we embodying our hope? Are we participating in the work of this hope and expectation we receive from God in Jesus Christ? The warning of the suddenness of the Kingdom reminds us that we must actively wait, so that when the storm hits, we are not caught off guard living as if we had no hope and no expectation in God.

I must confess that these readings provoke in me to reminisce about the actual storm that Puerto Rico confronted in 2017, Hurricane Maria. With hurricanes, you always have the advantage of knowing beforehand that it’s coming, so you have time to prepare. But human beings, we are stubborn, and we don’t like our routines to be upended. Puerto Rico had not gone through a major storm like Maria for about 20 years. There was a whole generation of people that never experienced such a storm, and if they ever came close, they never hit us directly. There was this overblown confidence that Maria was going to be like the rest, so we didn’t need to take it too seriously. Of course, due to climate change and the rising warming of the waters in the Caribbean, people did not expect that the category 3 hurricane hurling towards us in the south would become a category 5 behemoth in a matter of a day. So preparation was done erratically, people scrambling to get stuff the day before the storm, the government itself, having mismanaged the island for the past 50 years, completely leaving

the island vulnerable to a storm of this magnitude, knowing full well that such a thing could happen. The consequences that my people suffered were because in general there is an air of “business as usual” mentality from many sectors of society. We ceased to actively prepare for the day such things could happen to us. Today, many of my compatriots will never forget the lesson we learned during that time, even though our government is still “business as usual”.

This allows me to see the dire need for the active waiting that Jesus demands of us for His Kingdom. To this day, the same mentality persists at the most important levels, and so as the church we are called to contradict such a fatal spirit. We are called to wake up! To take measure of the times and prepare. To put our focus on that great hope we have been given and act accordingly to its realization. Not because we will provoke its arrival, but because we want to be ready to be onboard once it comes.

So if the church is unprepared, then how will we make space on the boat for others? Are we becoming the sign by which others can recognize where salvation comes from? Are they seeing through us the work of God in Jesus Christ and His vision for a world that breaks the spear and instead extends the hand in fellowship? Our faithfulness is being called upon in times such as these, so keep awake! Keep awake for Christ coming in glory. Keep awake for Christ coming to you as a stranger that seeks to be loved and received by you. Keep awake for Christ being born in Creation, seeking to be tended by you. Keep awake for Christ appearing in the animals, and the trees, and the landscapes, and the water, for through them God displays His glory and we cannot live without them. Keep awake for Christ appearing in the heart of our communities, seeking to be served in the hungry, the migrant, the lonely, the disadvantaged, the sick, and the detained. Keep awake for Christ coming to you in Word and Sacrament, ready to challenge, forgive, and uplift you to true life. Prepare yourselves, Beloved, to kindle the light of hope in

the darkness. That is how Advent begins. By lighting the first candle of hope and joyful expectation that God is bringing a new reality to take place among us, a reality were justice reigns forever. God has prepared the most beautiful gift for our lives in the hope that comes through Jesus Christ, are we preparing to receive it? Let us pray: