BEYOND OUR TIME
Habakkuk 2:1-3; Matthew 24:36-44

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
November 28, 2004 / First Sunday of Advent

If Christmas were all there is to Christianity - Christ is come; God is on Earth; Redemption is yours - then there would be no need for Advent. Advent - which means "a waiting," is something that prophets and people had to do before the coming of a Messiah, but some would say once Jesus came the waiting was over.

But the experience of Christians living since the life of Jesus changes all that. We have come to realize that we are somehow caught in between, in the middle: Christ has come, but is not yet fully come. While we know who the redeemer is, the work is not yet over, there is more to come. So the Church has come to believe in the "second Advent," or the "second coming." Those Christians who recite the creeds say that from heaven "he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead." There is still something we are waiting for. We are caught in the long space between have and do not yet have.

As a matter of fact, I have begun to think that Advent is a more appropriate reality for the world we live in today, than too much of Christmas. Sometimes there is too much easiness about Christmas, a sense that Christ has come, that we have heaven guaranteed, that we have Jesus locked up in a box, and we no longer have to worry about what is in the this world. Rather - I think that the Bible passages that talk about "still waiting" can make more sense to us today than the passages that say "we've got it all."

Let me tell you how I got thinking this way. To tell you how I got thinking this way, I have to tell you a little bit about my politics. Please forgive me if my politics are not like yours. Everyone is entitled to their own best opinion. And actually, if I were to tell you all about my politics you might actually be surprised. I am sure there are a lot of people in this church who believe they know all about my political views. In actual fact in my life at different times I have been registered in both major political parties, and as an independent. I have also voted for presidential candidates in both major political parties, and once I voted for a third party candidate.

But the fact of the matter is, no matter which way I voted, in eight out of the eleven Presidential elections that I have voted in, I have voted for the loser! Follow me, and I will take you into the losers camp. For that matter of the three winners I voted for: twice I voted for candidates I had strongly opposed in the primaries, who proved to be disappointing choices after elected - for the very reasons I had opposed them in the primaries, and the third winner I voted for - at that time - I was switching to the other party because I did not like the candidate my own party chose. So I never was really excited and positive about a candidate and that candidate won. I seem always to be - in some way - on a losing side. Some of you may have had the same experience.

But I am passionate about some issues. I really believe and have believed over these four decades that America needed to move in certain directions, and it seems we never go that way.

Now I don't like dictatorships. One of the reasons I don't like dictatorships is that in them the desires and will of the people never come to pass. But I have come to realize as I have gotten older that even in a democracy the desires and will of some of the people never come to pass. No form of government guarantees progressive policies.

I am getting to be an old man. Some of the things that I have hoped and prayed for: health care for all, peaceful international solutions to our differences, may never happen. I may wait my whole life and never see these things. In my life the world I dream about, hope for, pray for, work for, simply may never come. Have you ever felt that way? Is there something you have hoped for that you now think will not come in your life time?

Now the Advent waiting texts like Habakkuk are more optimistic than this. The prophet says of the vision "If it seems to tarry, wait for it - It will surely come. It will not delay." Well I can say to the prophet I am glad to hear the optimism that it will surely come; and I have been waiting for it. But it will not delay? I am over sixty years old. If it is not delaying, then the Bible is on a different time table than I am!

What are we waiting for? Will it really come?

My own feeling is perhaps closer to the way that the writer of the letter to the Hebrews describes many of the heroines and heroes of the Old Testament. The apostle says "All these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners in the earth. For people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a better country, that is, a heavenly one."

What are you waiting for, what are you looking for this season? I am looking for more than a full stocking and a brightly lit tree on December 25. Oh, those things would be nice. But I am looking through and beyond December 25, as if it is only a transparent glass on the horizon of the future. Beyond December 25 I see an end to racial prejudice, an end to hate crimes, an end to domestic abuse, an end of war. Beyond December 25 I see what I pray for, "thy kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven." And I expect to be waiting for that on the day I die, and so my posture will always be more Advent than it is Christmas.

In the early Church the Christians were so excited about the second coming of Christ, were so overwhelmed about the expected parousia, that they thought it would happen in just a few years. "No one shall taste death until they have seen the Lord's anointed." But it didn't happen that way. Some people died and Jesus had not come. What is perhaps Paul's oldest letter, to the Thessalonians, was written to overcome the fear that those early deaths created. I often read at funerals what Paul wrote to the concerned Thessalonians: "We do not want you to be uniformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died."

Some will die before what they most hoped for is achieved, and Christ will lift them up into life.

I think about Susan B. Anthony. She gave her whole life for women's suffrage, and when she died it was not achieved. I think of slaves. How many slaves prayed for liberation, prayed even while being beaten, and yet died before the Emancipation Proclamation. They were all in this state of Advent, in this condition of waiting, and perhaps this season is more appropriate to their reality than that of Christmas. Truly Christmas does lift up a hope, and announces fulfillment. But for us Christmas may be more of a statement of faith than an experience of fulfillment. And in that we are not alone.

So what are you waiting for? Other than a good meal at noon time, what are you really waiting for? What are you waiting for with such urgency that you pray for it every day? Could what you are asking be so great, so massive, so life changing, that the wait will be beyond our time, after our death, for someone yet to come?

Jesus also talks about the day to come. Jesus says "of that day and hour no one knows, not even the son." It has always interested me that there are so many religions that are sure they know they day, when even Jesus begs ignorance. Nonetheless, says Jesus, "Keep awake. You do not know the day when the son of man is coming. [That one] is coming at an unexpected hour."

For many years I had a motto on my desk that said this: "You succeed without suffering because someone else has suffered before you. You suffer without succeeding so that someone may succeed after you."

I have to say, I don't know when the hour will come. I don't know when every child will be provided proper education, when all shall have needed vaccinations, and none shall go to bed hungry or alone. That would be a Jesus day for me. I don't know when it will come: in my lifetime or beyond my time. But I intend to keep waiting and praying.

And God, I wouldn't mind an occasional surprise now and then.

Amen.