Sermon transcript:
When you think of Christmas preparation, what comes to mind? Shopping, meal planning, scheduling family gatherings and other events, travel arrangements? The Christian tradition has something else in mind. It’s called Advent and Advent always begins with readings like the one Barb reads today, apocalyptic readings. The message is that the current age is ending, God is going to intervene directly in human history and you better pay attention and get ready. It’s as if Advent is about turning us all into Christmas preppers. Are you familiar with the prepper movement? Preppers are people who devote a great deal of resources to preparing for cataclysmic events. Preppers build underground bunkers and stockpile food, medicines, and water so they are prepared for the breakdown of society. Unfortunately, that’s not as far-fetched as it once seemed. Preppers prepare and are always in a high state of vigilance and observation for signs of the end.
Advent as a time to move into Christmas prepper mode seems to fit as you consider the scripture. Matthew’s faith story is full of apocalyptic trauma. It calls for vigilant watching and waiting. It emphasizes the uncertainty, disruption, and disorientation in the story of Noah and the flood, of people going about their daily lives and things changing in a heartbeat, of God as a thief who breaks into your house. Be vigilant, watch and wait Matthew says. Advent invites us to be Christmas preppers, watching, waiting for the end of the world as we know it.
But wait, isn’t this supposed to be good news? Isn’t week one of Advent supposed to be about the promise of hope, given to us in anticipation of Jesus’ birth? For whom is any of this good or hopeful news? Well, to Matthew’s community, it is good news. Scholars believe Matthew’s gospel is written sometime in the early seventies of the Common Era. This is some ten years after the destruction, by the Romans, of the temple in Jerusalem. We cannot possibly underestimate the impact and the reverberations this event has on first-century Palestine. In terms of one-off events, 9/11 and the collapse of the Berlin wall rolled in together would barely begin to give us an idea. To Jews, the destruction of the temple is unthinkable; the inner sanctum of the temple is literally believed to be the dwelling place of God on earth. This historical break in Israel’s identity is considered by many to signal the end of the world. Matthew’s community needs the hope of a God who will intervene decisively in their story to shake things up and set things right. They’ve got nothing to lose. The idea of God coming at any moment to usher in a new era isn’t traumatic: it’s good news. So, you watch and wait with anticipation.
How does this happen for us? How do we put ourselves in such a spiritual state where the coming of a disruptive, de-stabilizing God sounds like good news and feels like hope to us? Where we watch and wait with anticipation, not fear, or dread? That’s the key question for Advent for people of comfort and privilege. For many of us, being a Christmas prepper isn’t about stockpiling and accumulating; it’s about letting go, shedding and emptying. Perhaps we might want to embrace the notion of God as a Holy Thief. As American Lutheran Pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber says, “maybe the idea of God breaking in and jacking our stuff doesn’t need to be heard as bad news. Maybe instead of making Christmas lists, which is stuff we want Santa to bring to our home, maybe we make Advent lists, which is stuff we would really love for God to abscond with in the middle of the night.”1 What do you want God to take from you so that the coming of God and the resulting disruption to the status quo of power might come as good and hopeful news to you?
What do you want God to take from you so that you see and clearly know the need for God’s coming into our midst? That’s the key, isn’t it? To see and feel the need. If you’re living in an encampment, it’s much easier to see the need. If you’re a trans person threatened by laws and daily hate, it’s easier. If you work two or more part-time jobs and have just enough to pay rent and nothing else, it’s easier. If you despair and rage over the normalization of homelessness, the treatment of the undocumented in the United States, the continued casual disregard of Indigenous people as partners in nation building, the idolatry of wealth as the driving force of our economics and politics, then you might feel the need for Holy disruption. You might sense in it hope; you might hear in it good news. You might even be filled with a sense of anticipation for a God who’ll come in and shake things up, wipe the slate clean—what have you got to lose?
Perhaps, we need to ask God to take from us the peace of having settled for the practical and the pragmatic over the vision of the kingdom of God. Perhaps we need to leave the doors of our souls unlocked and ask the Holy Thief to abscond with our willingness to leave others behind when we settle for less than Love’s call in our time and place. Then we might be ready, for the beginning of faith is need. Self-satisfied people have no need of hope, of God. Then we might be ready for Christmas, more available to joy, solidarity, and courage. Ready to see and receive the God who inserts themselves in human history.
Advent is rich with stories of people (Mary, Elizabeth, Joseph, the shepherds and the wise one) whose need for hope, for good news, allowed them to see what others missed—a God who comes to us in the most unconventional of ways. A God who eschews authoritarian power, control, hierarchy, comfort, and security to come to us as the helpless baby of a poor, colonized, oppressed couple who become refugees shortly after the birth. A God whose strength is love. A God who frees those of us with power from the lie that our worth rests on status, wealth, or productivity. May your Christmas preparations bless you with an emptiness, a need, a hope that only the vulnerable God can fill and meet. Our Advent journey begins.
Rev. Joe Gaspar
1 Nadia Bolz-Weber, https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2857323857663993.