1 Advent B - 30 November 2008

1 Advent B - 30 November 2008
IIsaiah 64:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; Mark 13:24-37
James V. Stockton

“Change is nature’s delight.” So wrote Marcus Aurelius, 2nd century Emperor of Rome in his book of Meditations. Though the delight of nature, it cannot always be said that change is the delight of human beings. I read a story about married couple. Fred and Harriet have been together for 20 years, now. And Fred is worried that the spark in the relationship may be dimming. “Each day I come home at 5:30,” Fred thinks to himself. “I tumble in through the back door, drop my stuff onto the kitchen table, grab a snack from the refrigerator. On my way to change my clothes I mumble ‘hello’ to Harriet, and then disappear into my ‘cave’ until dinner. And though he knows it won’t be easy, Fred determines that he must make a change.

To embrace the need for change is a hopeful but it is also a dreadful thing. Change involves opening up to something new and therefore unfamiliar, and to the possibility that the change will be harder than the status quo. The recent political season was, as many will recall, full on all sides of promises of change. I think it is important, then, for the Church, for God’s people everywhere, to reclaim for God and the gospel the promise of change. Weaving its way through the intricacies of the universe God’s will is the creating and guiding energy of all that is. Through the ins and outs and ups and downs of people’s lives, change that is lasting and good is change that is begun and ended in God.


It may well be that this is the hope that moves through the prophet Isaiah as he prays for God to come. His is a prayer full of hope that God will come to his people and him, that God will come soon. And his prayer is full also of awareness and confession that the very reason that they have need to plead, is that they have moved away from God in the conduct of their lives. When trust in God has called them in a particular direction, they have chosen instead to place increasing confidence in, perhaps, common sense and common wisdom, in, perhaps, the counsel of specialists and in expert advice. And because of this, the people as a nation have come to base their most important decisions in greed, on the one hand, and in fear, on the other.

Isaiah and the people plead for change. “No one calls on you, anymore,” says Isaiah. And maybe this is because no one remembers how to call upon God call for real, without just going through the motions. Maybe no calls on God anymore because the people are simply too afraid to confront the brokenness in their relationship with the Most High. Collectively and individually, the people have denied God’s reign in their lives. And now Isaiah prays to God, begs God, pleads with God, to come back to the people, the help the people come back to God, because if this were to happen, if this would happen, when this happens, everything will change. Isaiah and the people plead for change.

Fred is contemplating change for his relationship with Harriet. “I need to do something different,” he decides. So this time Fred leaves work, but he doesn’t head home right away, like he usually does. Instead, he stops by a florist and picks up a dozen roses. Next he stops by a candy shop and buys a box of chocolates. And then Fred heads home. And when he gets there, he walks around to the front door, where he rings the bell. Fred wants change, and, today, Fred is going to make change happen.

As you may have noticed, today change happens for the Church. No more counting the Sundays after Pentecost. The season of numbered or ordinary time is over. Today we change to the season of Advent. Today we change from Year A to Year B in the three-year rotation of scripture-readings for Sundays. Today we change from Year Two to Year One in the two-year rotation of scripture-readings for Daily Prayer. Today we change the symbolic color of worship from green to blue; we change the bits of liturgy we say, we may change the way we say the psalms, we change the collective prayers we pray, we change the kind of hymns we sing. Today, change is happening.

And this is because change is a big part of what the season of Advent is all about. Something has changed, and something is going to change; because someone has come, and someone is coming again. Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has written of Advent that it “pulls the imagination in two directions.” It turns “our minds to the universal longing for God...” This is the God who, as the Apostle Paul puts it, has called into communion with one another in Jesus Christ; who enriches us in the Spirit of God who sustains us; and who is faithful to us always. But, Williams points out, Advent also turns our minds to the reluctance to know God too well. This is the God of Woe; the God who, as the prophet Isaiah describes, who tears apart the heavens to come down from on high; whose presence shakes the mightiest mountains; who does things ‘awesome and unexpected.’ We long for God to come, yes; because we know that with the coming of God, comes change. But, because we know that the coming of God means that change comes, too, we also long for God to be long in coming.

As the both Christ of Heaven and Son of Man, Jesus knows well the human tendency to turn from watching for God, to watching or even creating, whatever is necessary to relieve the ambiguity of watching, listening, and waiting for a God who is both terrible and wonderful to behold. Jesus says, “Watch!” And we do so; but what is the change that we anticipate? Do we anticipate the next piece of bad news for the economy? Do we anticipate the act of terror, or the next natural disaster, the next sure sign that the world and we with it are doomed?

Do we anticipate then the coming of an angry vengeful God, whom we must then rush somehow to appease? Do we anticipate the eventual coming of a God who remains perpetually on the sidelines while we invent the change that we have determined is too long in coming, and which must be made our way and must be made now. Or do we anticipate the coming of a God, who brings changes that we need, changes that we fear, changes that we long for, and changes that we can not even imagine?

Fred is ready to make change happen. He tucks the box of chocolates under his arm, holds out the bouquet of roses, and rings the doorbell. Harriet opens the door. Her eyes widen and she looks Fred up and down, and then she bursts into tears. “The dog runs off this morning,” says Harriet; “and comes back smelling like a garbage dump. He never got into the trash before. Then your mother calls and tells me she’s coming to visit for three weeks! She never stayed more than two days before. Next the washing machine quits working and leaks water all over the floor. It never broken down before. Harriet takes the chocolates and flowers and turns away. “All I wanted was a nice normal day. But, ‘No,’” she mutters to herself. “And now, flowers! Chocolates!” she says. “Fred never came home drunk before!”

If change is the delight of nature, yet it may well not be the delight of the human nature, of you and me. Yet, unsettling as change may be, the changes of this season are here to remind us that the change that God brings to us that God brings through us to the world around us are changes created in the very will of God. Not always a delightful experience, but also not always dreadful, every change that is good is of God, and so every change that is of God is good. And so, with God in one another, with God in those around us, with God within each of us, we listen, we watch. Expecting to hear from God a new and eternal word, expecting to see from God a new and holy tomorrow, we listen, we watch, and we wait for the change of God to come. We wait to be changed through that One true constant in the universe; we wait to be changed by the Love of God for all.

Now may Almighty God, by whose Son is conquered sin and death and life made everlasting, grant that by this victory we may be made bold to do the will of God, and strong to await coming of the Kingdom, of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and for ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton