What Are We Waiting For?
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For November 29, 2020:
What Are We Waiting For?
by Tom Willadsen
Mark 13:24-37, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Isaiah 64:1-9
Happy New Year! Seriously, it’s the first day of Advent, the first season in the church year, so last night in Times Square an enormous wreath with five candles (three purple, one pink and one white) descended into a crowd of physically-distanced, mask-wearing, lectionary Uber-nerds. It was all over social media last night. You missed it? I’m shocked. You should have been waiting for it. Waiting with anticipation, trepidation, sweaty palms, rosy optimism, wide eyes, open ears, eager longing or dread — that next shoe has gotta drop sometime! There are a lot of options on the Waiting Menu. And for Americans in late November 2020, about the best we can do is wait. But what are we waiting for?
In the News
“The waiting is the hardest part,” Tom Petty famously sang. It’s hard to imagine a better summary of life in the United States late in November of 2020. We are waiting for the President to accept defeat. (He is now the only US President who has lost the popular vote twice; bring that up at your Thanksgiving celebration!) We are waiting for the vaccines, whose success rates are over 90%, to be distributed widely and perhaps help us return to something like “normal.” We are waiting for the lame duck Congress to pass some kind of economic relief package. Many people’s unemployment benefits are scheduled to run out the day after Christmas.
Advent is a season of waiting, of anticipation. The church starts its year by looking ahead. Advent means “coming;” but what, exactly is coming, what are we waiting for?
No one can count the number of Facebook posts and wry observations about 2020. In addition to the first pandemic in more than 100 years, we’ve had a record number of hurricanes in the Atlantic, a year of unprecedented wildfires in the American West, a steep recession, stock markets approaching record highs, the use and misuse of “exponential” increasing…dramatically, a President who has played golf five days since the election. (The number of his rounds of golf exceeds the number of reporters’ questions he has answered since the election.) There may be something like comfort in imagining that when we turn the page on 2020 we will hit some kind of cosmic reset button and we’ll go back to a time when we didn’t need terms like “lock down” or “quarantine,” a time when every day wasn’t “Blursday.” Perhaps waiting to mark another trip around the sun is not where we should put our hope; after all, U2 sang “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day,” perhaps we should put our “waitin’, prayin’, wishin’ and hopin’” (Dusty Springfield, a mid-60s theologian) in a different context, look at this moment, and our lives in Christ, through a different lens.
In the Scriptures
The Greek term αποκαλΰψή, apocalypse in English, is often applied to today’s gospel reading from Mark. Jesus says repeatedly that no one knows when he will return. Prior to today’s reading in Mark 13, he says that there will be wars, famines, earthquakes, disagreement in families (cf. Thanksgiving 2020!) and false prophets; times of great suffering, turmoil and hardship for believers prior to the Lord’s “gathering the elect from the four winds.” The clues or signs he gives could frankly describe any time in history.
Christians begin Advent looking ahead not just to the promise we see in “God with us is now residing,” we look farther ahead to Christ’s triumphant return. Apocalypse does not mean “Second Coming,” though we often forget that. A more faithful translation is “unfolding,” a process. Yes, it will begin suddenly and no one knows when, not even Jesus, he says elsewhere in the gospels. This text points beyond the swaddling clothes, shepherds and the manger, to a much larger picture, one too often overlooked as we count down to Christmas.
Isaiah 64:4 reminds the reader that God is beyond our ability to describe or comprehend:
From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.
This text appears to contend that waiting on the Lord is an essential part of faith, perhaps another incomprehensible facet of the Creator.
Today’s reading from Psalm 80 calls for restoration from God’s anger. The Lord has every reason to be angry, but no one wants to have the Lord’s wrath visited on them. So the psalmist calls for the Lord’s salvation. The psalimist’s faith is strong enough to call out to God even when feeling estranged. Her connection to the living God is strong even as her diet is composed mainly of tears — an example that challenges the faith of many in this moment of uncertainty.
Just as Paul reassured the Thessalonians a few weeks ago that they should not grieve as others do because of the hope they know in Christ, Paul reminds the Corinthians that they “are not lacking any spiritual gifts” as they wait.
No one likes to wait (insert DMV joke of your choosing here) but today’s lessons remind Christians that waiting is an essential part of faith, certainly an essential theme in the season of Advent.
In the Sermon
Advent is a little strange this year. Well, let’s be honest, everything is a little strange this year. Your congregations have either obeyed guidance to avoid gathering during the pandemic, or defied it. While I am no epidemiologist, I’m confident we can expect a spike in Covid-19 infections starting about ten days from now. My community is currently in the midst of a spike, cases per 100,000 residents have tripled in the last month and there are currently no empty ICU beds in my county.
We’re struggling with how to light an Advent wreath while physically distanced. We keep the number in the building below ten when we livestream worship, so we are not lining up families and instructing middle schoolers on the proper use of the “candle lighter thingies.”
While society is waiting for the President to accept reality and for Covid-19 vaccines to become widely available, the Church is beginning its season of anticipation. As in every year, Christian waiting runs along three parallel, but distinct tracks.
The first track is the Countdown Track. In my youth this was measured in “Shopping Days.” This year, the web savvy believer can count down to Jesus’ birthday by ordering one of four Lego Advent Calendars.
The purist/Puritan in me is always irritated that Advent calendars start December 1, when most years the season starts on a different day. Think of the Countdown Track as chronological waiting. Whether you assemble your Han Solo minifigure or not, December 25 will arrive. It’s fun to build anticipation and suspense, but Christmas will come regardless of whether or not you are preparing for it. (This reminds me of when Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, promising to “Build a Bridge to the 21st Century.” He needn’t have bothered. First of all, Al Gore had already invented the internet, second, January 1, 2001 was already locked in on the calendar. It was a Monday.)
Chronological waiting is waiting at its most basic. Will we be able to get the lights, decorations and tree up, the cards mailed and the cookies baked? The clock is ticking and we know exactly how long we have: four candles before the big Christ candle. Little ones will be excited when the big day arrives, but no one will be surprised.
Today’s gospel reading points to a different kind of waiting, ultimate waiting, or perhaps waiting for the ultimate. The Little Apocalypse offers some hints about what will happen when Christ returns, how “the unfolding” will take place. It will be sudden and come after a time of terrific struggle and suffering. And it will be more glorious than anyone can imagine. Echoes of Isaiah’s “no eye has seen.” The Second Coming is an essential Christian doctrine, even though old liners avoid it, we still confront it in the Apostles’ Creed and most communion liturgies. “Christ will come again;” Advent points not only to the manger but to the trumpet blast.
Consider a kind of midrange waiting, preacher. Many, many beloved traditions, the kinds of things that make Christmas Christmas will not take place this year. Your congregations may be longing for something, anything, that can lead them to “peace on earth, goodwill to all.” In my community a beloved community Christmas music festival has been cancelled. For me, the joy that radiates from the singers’ faces gets me into the Christmas spirit every bit as strongly as their singing. The events that give us the moments of insight, epiphanies of “the reason for the season,” may be in short supply. Your congregations are waiting in the age of Covid this year, but they are also hungry for the sparks of joy that cause them to feel Christmas, which they need every year. Not just this first Sunday in Advent, but every Sunday, extend hope to them in this moment — hope that does not depend on successfully replicating vaccines or a smooth transition between those who govern, but hope that comes into the world as an infant — hope that grows and spreads and feeds us even in our despair and confusion. The hope of the unfolding of the reign of Christ. Here. Now.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Pay Attention!
by Dean Feldmeyer
Mark 13:24-37
Several years ago, a 20-year-old college student, the son of a friend of mine, was arrested for the crime of “allowing drug abuse.” Yes, that’s a crime in Ohio. Who knew?
Early in their sophomore year, he and three of his buddies had decided to go together and rent an apartment near the campus rather than live in the dorms. They had all kinds of reasons for doing this, the big one being that it would be cheaper, so their parents all agreed. To make things simple, Bryan’s name was the one on the lease.
About a year later one of the boys was busted for selling pot out of the apartment and, since Bryan’s name was on the lease, he too was arrested for “allowing drug abuse.” The law was originally intended to be used against landlords who knowingly let their rundown properties be used as crack houses and bar or nightclub owners who knowingly allowed their patrons to buy, sell, and use drugs on the premises.
Bryan pleaded not guilty. He was, he said, not aware that pot was being sold and bought in the apartment. There was, he said, a constant flow of people coming and going in and through the apartment, people who came for all kinds of reasons — to study, to eat, to watch football games, to hang out.
The prosecuting attorney asked how it was possible that Bryan was there for all of this and didn’t realize that drugs were being bought, sold, and used. Bryan’s reply, with tears in his eyes, “I guess I just wasn’t paying attention.”
It took the jury 45 minutes to acquit him.
They later told the defense attorney that they took one look at this 20-year-old kid, his friends, their own kids, or kids they knew who were that age, and they knew that “I wasn’t paying attention” was probably a true statement.
Bryan’s name was on the lease. He was responsible for the apartment, the security deposit, getting the rent in on time, seeing to it that nothing got damaged too badly, and making sure nothing illegal was happening on the premises. But he got distracted — distracted by the fun, by the noise, by the parties, by the girls, by the demands of classes — and he forgot to pay attention.
The Art of Diversion
Distraction is what we call it when our attention is inadvertently diverted from what should be its focus. When the distraction is intentionally caused, we call it a diversion.
Diversion is the art of magicians, pickpockets, petty thieves, and mischief makers of all kinds. The magician makes a big production out of waving his left hand around while the right hand makes the switch. The pickpocket spills her coffee on your coat and apologizes profusely while she deftly reaches into your purse and lifts your billfold. Shoplifters have their friends get into a fake shoving match in aisle 5 and, while everyone is looking there, they fill their pockets with the things in aisle 3.
Military tacticians send a small group of troops in one direction to launch what looks and sounds like an attack so the enemy’s attention and defenses are drawn away from where the main attack will happen. Rhetoricians divert the audience’s attention from the issue at hand with personal (ad hominem) attacks against their opponent or ad persona appeals to the audience’s selfish self-interest.
Parents and babysitters are, perhaps, the greatest diversionary tacticians of all. Any of us who have had to care for small children are fully aware of the diversionary value of a cookie, a squeaky toy, or a television cartoon in soothing the distresses of a fussy toddler.
The Danger of Distraction
Whether our attention is intentionally diverted by another or innocently distracted by the sights and sounds around us, danger lurks there.
We have all read the accounts of lost children whose parents cry, woefully that “I just looked away for a moment and when I turned back, she was gone.”
True story: April was supposed to be Distracted Driving Awareness Month but the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) got distracted by the Coronavirus so they moved it to October. Yes, October was the month we were supposed to be made aware of the dangers of distraction only we were all so distracted we didn’t get the message.
Nevertheless, the NHTSA and the insurance industry continue to remind us that allowing ourselves to be distracted enough to take our eyes off the road for even five seconds at 55 miles-per-hour means that we have just driven the equivalent of a football field, blindfolded.
Their top four dangerous distractions for drivers:
In the gospel lesson for this, the First Sunday of Advent, the evangelist, Mark, warns us that there is a danger of being distracted that is even worse than having our wallet’s lifted, or being in a fender bender with our cars.
There is also a spiritual danger that we could miss the coming of the messiah into our lives, the advent or coming (Latin: adventus = coming) of the kingdom of God into the world.
Early in our Christian history we believed that this would be a single event that would happen at the end of time and was soon to be realized. As the years went by, however, we began to rethink our understanding of the second coming of Jesus Christ and advent of God’s kingdom.
Perhaps, we wondered, it isn’t just coming at the end of time. Maybe it is also coming all the time, in the here and now, in, through and around us. And if we want to see it, to recognize its coming, and have that coming shine in and through our lives we’d better be keeping our eyes open and watching for it.
And as we began to consider that new understanding of Christ’s coming, we began to take another look at those scriptures that describe it, not the least of which is today’s gospel lesson, Mark 13:24-37.
Mark 13 is often referred to as the “Little Apocalypse of Mark.” And like all apocalyptic literature, it begins with a poetic, visual description of the end of time. In today’s lesson that part of the vision is concluded in verses 24-27.
In verses 28-31, Mark offers the reader a somewhat opaque warning that the signs mentioned in the previous verses and the eschaton they will usher in, are going to happen in their lifetime. Then he seems to walk back his prediction of the imminence of these events. But no one knows precisely when they will happen, he says, not even Jesus himself, but only God. “Soon” is about all he’s willing to offer. But soon, we are to learn in the next few verses, is a relative term.
The return of Jesus in glory could happen a millennium from now, a century, a year, a month, a week, a day, or even an hour. In fact, it could be happening right now or it might have already happened and we missed it because we were asleep at the wheel.
This leaves open the possibility that maybe the eschaton — the return of Christ and the inbreaking of God’s kingdom in our lives — is not only a future thing that will happen at the end of time, but a present thing as well. It has happened, is happening, and will happen.
If this is the case, then the closing words of the passage become swollen with meaning, do they not? Jesus uses a simile: It’s like a man going away who leaves his house in the hands of his servants with one chosen to watch for his return. This one at the door must be ever watchful because they don’t know when the master will be coming home. It could be in the morning, afternoon, evening, or dead of night.
Likewise, we must be alert and awake because we don’t know when the advent of God’s kingdom into our lives will come. It could be yesterday, or today, or tomorrow. And if we are not alert, we can miss it. So, Jesus warns us with a single, closing word: “WATCH!”
Advent 2020
Really? God’s kingdom, God’s son could come now? In 2020? You’re kidding, right? Have you been paying attention? You know what this year has been like, don’t you?
Yep.
It not only could happen. It probably has happened and we were distracted. Distracted by our concerns brought on by the Coronavirus. Distracted by the measures we must take to protect ourselves and our neighbors and the inconveniences, indeed, the burdens that those measures place upon us.
Distracted by having our children and grandchildren at home when we thought they’d be in school. Distracted by having to search out toilet paper and disinfectant spray that has suddenly become rare, again. Distracted by an election that seems like it’s never going to end. Distracted by the boredom and anxiety that comes from being quarantined for weeks on end.
Distracted by the suffering of our friends and loved ones and those who are trying to keep them alive in overcrowded, overworked, understaffed hospitals. Distracted by our frustration with the willful ignorance of those who refuse to accept the danger they are in and the danger they put us in by refusing to take the virus seriously. Distracted by the vicissitudes of life that have become commonplace in 2020.
Who could blame us if we, distracted as we are, happened to miss one of the subtle ways by which Christ enters our lives on the everyday plane.
But not to worry. God’s kingdom will come again. That’s the promise of Advent and Christmas. The coming of Jesus Christ into our lives is not a one-time thing. It doesn’t happen just once and if you miss it, forget about it. No, it’s an on-going thing. It’s not an event; it’s a happening.
And it’s about to happen to you.
So, pay attention. Watch for it.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Mary Austin:
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Finding Strength
“He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus,” Paul promises, and Father Greg Boyle tells a story about a young man who found that kind of strength. Father Greg works with young men and women coming out of gang life is Los Angeles, and he tells about Jose, who found strength in surprising places. “I gave a talk, a training, an all-day training to 600 social workers, a training on gangs. I had two homies with me, and one of them was a guy named José. And he got up — he’s in his late 20s, and he now works in a substance abuse part of our team, a man in recovery and been a heroin addict and gang member and tattooed. And he gets up, and he says, very offhandedly, “You know, I guess you could say that my mom and me, we didn’t get along so good. I guess I was six when she looked at me, and she said, ‘Why don’t you just kill yourself? You’re such a burden to me.’” Well, the whole audience did what you just did. They gasped. And then he said — “It’s sounds way worser in Spanish,” he said…And everybody did what you just did. And then he said, “You know, I guess I was nine when my mom drove me down to the deepest part of Baja, California, and she walked me up to an orphanage, and she said, ‘I found this kid.’” And then he said, “I was there 90 days, until my grandmother could get out of her where she had dumped me, and she came and rescued me.” And then he tells the audience, “My mom beat me every single day. In fact, I had to wear three T-shirts to school every day.” And then he kind of loses the battle with his own tears a little bit, and he says, “I wore three T-shirts well into my adult years, because I was ashamed of my wounds. I didn’t want anybody to see them. But now my wounds are my friends. I welcome my wounds. I run my fingers over my wounds.” And then he looks at this crowd, and he says, “How can I help the wounded if I don’t welcome my own wounds?” And awe came upon everyone, because we’re so inclined to judge this kid who went to prison and is tattooed and is a gang member and homeless and a heroin addict, and the list goes on.”
God offers this gift of strength, that we might find grace in our lives, no matter what has gone before.
* * *
Mark 13:24-37, Isaiah 64:1-9
Waiting
The prophet Isaiah is longing for God to make an appearance, waiting with anticipation. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus is giving counsel about waiting for the arrival of God. For both, waiting is a spiritual discipline. Isabella Yosuico says that being able to wait is a spiritual superpower. She tells us, “With many years of intensive training, I’ve learned to wait in many situations. The lines, the traffic jams, and waiting rooms of life don’t faze me. I can sit or stand serenely. I can do this mostly without toe-tapping or grumbling. But the weightier waits . . . they can still churn me up, though I see progress. At the heart of it is the unknown, the uncertain outcome, and the big question mark. Waiting for relief from my pain and fear to subside those first few months after my son Isaac was born with Down syndrome. Waiting to see if we could sell our home to relocate to Florida. Waiting for the results of my lymph node biopsy. Waiting now, with hopeful curiosity, to see what Jesus has planned for my career with so many treasured balls aloft. Hard waits. Yet this is the heart of faith: entrusting unanswered questions and unknown outcomes to a knowing God. There’s no faith in waiting for slow-changing lights or my name being called or a new roll of register tape. Jesus is found in those cliff-hanger moments of waiting. There can be sweet freedom, joy, and peace (Jesus things!) in waiting.”
Drawing on the Psalms, she adds, “In Psalm 27, David isn’t waiting on his pound of turkey breast or an oil change. Concluding with verse 14, David reminds me that if Jesus is the object of my wait, I can wait with thanks and praise on my lips, even with a little mortal toe-tapping on the way to hope-filled rest.” The substance of our waiting shapes how we wait, in Advent and beyond.
* * *
Mark 13:24-37
Patience as a Long Game
Writer Caroline Beaton suggests that waiting, as we’re called to do in Advent, has benefits even beyond attending to God’s arrival in the world again. She recalls the great feat of patience in the movie The Shawshank Redemption. “When Shawshank Redemption’s Andy Dufresne is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to life in prison, he takes the slow way out.
Every night from his cell he digs a little further toward freedom. Each morning he gathers the debris in his two fists and then releases it down his pant legs through holed pockets on the prison grounds. Handful by handful, after 20 years, he escapes. When everything’s going wrong — our jobs, our families, our health, politics — it’s easy to freak out. Like a fly slamming against the window, we hunt the nearest exit and hurt ourselves in the process. Gradual solutions, like a 20-year-long tunnel, feel unbearable. But patience pays off. Patience, according to one study, is the “propensity to wait calmly in the face of frustration or adversity.” It’s correlated with job performance, health and well-being. Patience is both hard and highly possible.”
Our attentive waiting is a spiritual skill, and also pays off in tangible ways. “Patient people work better. People with low levels of impatience and irritability report that job demands increase their satisfaction. Patience makes challenge enjoyable. Impatient people, by contrast, become overwhelmed and ineffective under pressure. They’re also more adversely affected by office politics and bureaucracy. Type A people, marked by their impatience and perfectionistic ambition, have a tendency to take on several tasks simultaneously at inappropriate times. Patient people know multitasking kills their calm and their bottom line…Patient people act at the right time. Patient people don’t act on ego. Instead, they act in the best interests of their highest goals and values. “I make my bread at thy hearth,” said Patience Worth, the probably imaginary writing assistant of early 1900s novelist Pearl Curran. Patience waits for the right time to put something in the oven or take it out or change it. “Patience is not an absence of action; rather it is timing. It waits on the right time to act, for the right principles, and in the right way,” said Fulton J. Sheen.
She adds what we already know is true, from our Advent waiting. “Patient people practice. Our present bias makes us think that this moment is the most significant in our lives. Many of us live every day like it’s the climax. It’s exhausting. In fact, right now is one of many moments and highly unlikely to be life-defining. But it’s still important: Patient people view their lives — especially the frantic, fear-inducing times — as practice.”
* * * * * *
From team member Chris Keating:
Isaiah 64:1-9
Yearning for signs of hope
There is no escaping the realities imposed on this year’s Thanksgiving celebrations. News stories are replete with accounts of the “empty chairs,” left by those who have died from the coronavirus. The CDC has issued advisories against travel, and all sorts of plans, traditions, and gatherings have been upended. We join Isaiah in crying out for signs of hope.
Peter Held, a professor at Bryan College, and father of the late author Rachel Held Evans, expresses similar yearnings. In a recent interview about his daughter’s legacy, Held explored the feelings of grief and emptiness that emerged following his daughter’s death. Rachel unexpectedly died in May 2019 just as her career as a writer was ascending. “Rachel had to write, no matter what,” Peter Held said recently, “because she felt like she had a message to get out there.”
Her tragic death — the result of an allergic response to medicine — devastated Evan’s family, including her husband and two children. More than a year and a half later, Held says he feels hopeful, even as the pain of his daughter’s death continues. He finds hope in the support the family receives from Evans’ readers and friends. The hope sustains him despite feelings of pain. “I don’t think the pain will ever go away. But that’s okay, isn’t it?”
Peter Held’s world was shaken, and much like Isaiah, he waits for signs of God’s presence. He has decided to trust God in this season of life and in the seasons ahead. When asked if he has ever questioned why God took his daughter, Held shakes his head and says, “Even if answered, it would not make sense.”
(The Religious News Service website has posted a YouTube link to Held’s entire interview.)
* * *
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
Bread of tears
The psalmist’s cries echo those cries of families whose lives have been turned upside down by Covid-19. Families separated by hospital doors, or isolated by quarantine orders, have come to understand the pain expressed by Psalm 80. They understand what it means to eat the bread of tears.
In Texas, 15 members of the Aragonez family contracted Covid-19 after a family gathering became a “super spreader” event. Everyone in the family had been careful throughout the pandemic, giving them a false sense of confidence that a casual family gathering would be okay. The family is on the mend, but they have a new understanding of the disease’s spread.
The psalmist’s prayers have become my own prayers as well. Two week’s ago my wife tested positive for Covid-19. My son and I soon joined her in not feeling well. While my son and I both had relatively moderate symptoms, my wife’s were more severe. Leaving her at the doors of the emergency room, unsure of how things might devolve, left me with the emptiness of the psalmist. Restore us, O God, that we may be saved.
* * *
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
The blessed communion
Our Advent waiting is buoyed by the promise of our communion in Jesus Christ. We wait, as Paul understands in 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, in this interregnum moment between the time of Christ’s life and his return. It is a difficult time, but we find strength in our communion with God and each other. It is that same sort of communion that permeates the ministries and healthcare services provided by the staff and volunteers of the St. Mary’s Legacy Clinic in East Tennessee.
The clinic, run by sisters of the Religious Sisters of Mary, operates a mobile health clinic out of a 40-foot truck. Family practice physician and nun, Sister Mary Lisa Renfer, provides doses of medicine and community to the patients in an underserved section of Tennessee. Renfer, 32, calls herself a rebel — a member of the millennial generation notorious for turning away from religion, she remains devoted to using her faith to make the world a better place.
The clinic does not charge for its services, and receives the majority of its funding from individual donors. More than 90 volunteers from various religious backgrounds help provide nursing services and other aspects of care. Such clinics are in great need, and Sister Mary Lisa believes that the faith-based aspect of the clinic brings an additional dimension to the work.
“People look around and there’s a lot of confusion right now,” she told the Religion News Service, “There’s a lot of angst, especially in the midst of the pandemic,” she said. “But we all know in our hearts that we seek communion. And so I see these works continuing.”
* * * * * *
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, who leads Joseph like a flock!
People: You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth
Leader: Stir up your might, and come to save us!
People: Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.
Leader: We will never turn back from you, O God.
People: Give us life, and we will call on your name.
OR
Leader: Open your eyes and your ears to God’s coming.
People: We are anticipating the arrival of our God.
Leader: Remember the babe born in a stable.
People: We recall that God appears in unexpected ways.
Leader: Look for the Christ in the face of the stranger.
People: We will be expecting to see Christ in others this week.
Advent Wreath Lighting:
Reader: Get ready! Our God is coming among us. We are preparing to celebrate Christmas the advent of the Christ among us. We are getting ready for the final coming of our Lord. We are preparing for the coming of the Christ here and now.
Jesus says, “Keep awake!” Let us be alert to Christ’s coming.
We light this first candle to remind us that Christ is coming among us. We need to keep awake.
(Light the first candle.)
Reader: Let us pray:
We welcome you, O Christ, as we prepare to celebrate your coming that night in Bethlehem. Help us to be alert and watchful for your coming among us today. Amen.
Hymns and Songs:
People, Look East
UMH: 202
PH: 12
CH: 142
ELW: 248
W&P: 161
STLT: 226
Toda la Tierra (All Earth Is Waiting)
UMH: 210
NCH: 121
ELW: 266
W&P: 163
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
UMH: 211
H82: 56
PH: 9
AAHH: 188
NNBH: 82
NCH: 116
CH: 119
LBW: 34
ELW: 257
W&P: 154
AMEC: 102
STLT: 225
Take Time to Be Holy
UMH: 395
NNBH: 306
CH: 572
W&P: 483
AMEC: 286
Seek Ye First
UMH: 405
H82: 711
PH: 333
CH: 354
W&P: 349
More Love to Thee, O Christ
UMH: 453
PH: 359
AAHH: 575
NNBH: 214
NCH: 456
CH: 527
AMEC: 460
Holy Spirit, Truth Divine
UMH: 465
PH: 321
NCH: 63
CH: 241
LBW: 257
ELW: 398
Come Down, O Love Divine
UMH: 475
H82: 516
PH: 313
NCH: 289
CH: 582
LBW: 508
ELW: 804
W&P: 330
Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus
UMH: 196
H82: 66
PH: 1/2
NCH: 122
LBW: 30
ELW: 254
W&P: 153
AMEC: 103
Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates
UMH: 213
H82: 436
PH: 8
NCH: 117
CH: 129
LBW: 32
W&P: 176
AMEC: 94
Arise, Shine
CCB: 2
Renew: 123
Create in Me a Clean Heart
CCB: 54
Renew: 181/182
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who is always present and always coming:
Grant us the grace to wait on you with patience
while we continue to do your work;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the one who is always present and yet you are always the one who is to come. Help us to be patient in our waiting but not to be idle as we continue your work here on earth. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our being impatient and distracted while waiting.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We know you are always coming among us and yet we aren’t looking for you. You come as the Christ in so many ways and yet we often miss your coming. There are so many things that we judge to be important and they keep our minds occupied. We forget what is really important and what is eternal. Wake us once more to your presence and teach us to be ready for your coming. Amen.
Leader: God is always coming to us and among us. Now God is coming to offer us forgiveness and grace and another chance to be faithful disciples.
Prayers of the People
Glory to you, O God, because you are the one who does not leave us be is always coming to dwell with us. We praise you because you are, indeed, Emmanuel.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We know you are always coming among us and yet we aren't looking for you. You come as the Christ in so many ways and yet we often miss your coming. There are so many things that we judge to be important and they keep our minds occupied. We forget what is really important and what is eternal. Wake us once more to your presence and teach us to be ready for your coming.
We give you thanks for all the ways you walk with us in this life. We thank you for those who are aware of your presence and help us discover what you are trying to do in our lives.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your people in their need. We pray for those who feel that they are alone and that no one walks with them. We pray for those who feel there is only hatred and violence in their lives. We pray for those who have lost hope. May we be part of your healing presence in this world.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
When we are waiting for something it is easy to get bored and start thinking about other things. If you are playing goalkeeper in soccer and the ball seems to always be at the other end of the pitch, it is easy to let you mind wonder. And that is just when the ball is likely to come your way and you might miss it.
Today Jesus reminds us that we need to always be alert because we don’t know when he might show up. He might show up as a friend who needs us or as an opportunity to do something kind for someone. We need to be ready at all times.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, November 29, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
- What Are We Waiting For? by Tom Willadsen — Extend the hope of the unfolding of the reign of Christ. Here. Now.
- Second Thoughts: Pay Attention! by Dean Feldmeyer — The coming of Jesus into our lives is not a one-time thing. It’s not an event — it’s a happening. So, pay attention and watch for it.
- Sermon illustrations by Mary Austin and Chris Keating.
- Worship resources by George Reed.
What Are We Waiting For?by Tom Willadsen
Mark 13:24-37, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Isaiah 64:1-9
Happy New Year! Seriously, it’s the first day of Advent, the first season in the church year, so last night in Times Square an enormous wreath with five candles (three purple, one pink and one white) descended into a crowd of physically-distanced, mask-wearing, lectionary Uber-nerds. It was all over social media last night. You missed it? I’m shocked. You should have been waiting for it. Waiting with anticipation, trepidation, sweaty palms, rosy optimism, wide eyes, open ears, eager longing or dread — that next shoe has gotta drop sometime! There are a lot of options on the Waiting Menu. And for Americans in late November 2020, about the best we can do is wait. But what are we waiting for?
In the News
“The waiting is the hardest part,” Tom Petty famously sang. It’s hard to imagine a better summary of life in the United States late in November of 2020. We are waiting for the President to accept defeat. (He is now the only US President who has lost the popular vote twice; bring that up at your Thanksgiving celebration!) We are waiting for the vaccines, whose success rates are over 90%, to be distributed widely and perhaps help us return to something like “normal.” We are waiting for the lame duck Congress to pass some kind of economic relief package. Many people’s unemployment benefits are scheduled to run out the day after Christmas.
Advent is a season of waiting, of anticipation. The church starts its year by looking ahead. Advent means “coming;” but what, exactly is coming, what are we waiting for?
No one can count the number of Facebook posts and wry observations about 2020. In addition to the first pandemic in more than 100 years, we’ve had a record number of hurricanes in the Atlantic, a year of unprecedented wildfires in the American West, a steep recession, stock markets approaching record highs, the use and misuse of “exponential” increasing…dramatically, a President who has played golf five days since the election. (The number of his rounds of golf exceeds the number of reporters’ questions he has answered since the election.) There may be something like comfort in imagining that when we turn the page on 2020 we will hit some kind of cosmic reset button and we’ll go back to a time when we didn’t need terms like “lock down” or “quarantine,” a time when every day wasn’t “Blursday.” Perhaps waiting to mark another trip around the sun is not where we should put our hope; after all, U2 sang “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day,” perhaps we should put our “waitin’, prayin’, wishin’ and hopin’” (Dusty Springfield, a mid-60s theologian) in a different context, look at this moment, and our lives in Christ, through a different lens.
In the Scriptures
The Greek term αποκαλΰψή, apocalypse in English, is often applied to today’s gospel reading from Mark. Jesus says repeatedly that no one knows when he will return. Prior to today’s reading in Mark 13, he says that there will be wars, famines, earthquakes, disagreement in families (cf. Thanksgiving 2020!) and false prophets; times of great suffering, turmoil and hardship for believers prior to the Lord’s “gathering the elect from the four winds.” The clues or signs he gives could frankly describe any time in history.
Christians begin Advent looking ahead not just to the promise we see in “God with us is now residing,” we look farther ahead to Christ’s triumphant return. Apocalypse does not mean “Second Coming,” though we often forget that. A more faithful translation is “unfolding,” a process. Yes, it will begin suddenly and no one knows when, not even Jesus, he says elsewhere in the gospels. This text points beyond the swaddling clothes, shepherds and the manger, to a much larger picture, one too often overlooked as we count down to Christmas.
Isaiah 64:4 reminds the reader that God is beyond our ability to describe or comprehend:
From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.
This text appears to contend that waiting on the Lord is an essential part of faith, perhaps another incomprehensible facet of the Creator.
Today’s reading from Psalm 80 calls for restoration from God’s anger. The Lord has every reason to be angry, but no one wants to have the Lord’s wrath visited on them. So the psalmist calls for the Lord’s salvation. The psalimist’s faith is strong enough to call out to God even when feeling estranged. Her connection to the living God is strong even as her diet is composed mainly of tears — an example that challenges the faith of many in this moment of uncertainty.
Just as Paul reassured the Thessalonians a few weeks ago that they should not grieve as others do because of the hope they know in Christ, Paul reminds the Corinthians that they “are not lacking any spiritual gifts” as they wait.
No one likes to wait (insert DMV joke of your choosing here) but today’s lessons remind Christians that waiting is an essential part of faith, certainly an essential theme in the season of Advent.
In the Sermon
Advent is a little strange this year. Well, let’s be honest, everything is a little strange this year. Your congregations have either obeyed guidance to avoid gathering during the pandemic, or defied it. While I am no epidemiologist, I’m confident we can expect a spike in Covid-19 infections starting about ten days from now. My community is currently in the midst of a spike, cases per 100,000 residents have tripled in the last month and there are currently no empty ICU beds in my county.
We’re struggling with how to light an Advent wreath while physically distanced. We keep the number in the building below ten when we livestream worship, so we are not lining up families and instructing middle schoolers on the proper use of the “candle lighter thingies.”
While society is waiting for the President to accept reality and for Covid-19 vaccines to become widely available, the Church is beginning its season of anticipation. As in every year, Christian waiting runs along three parallel, but distinct tracks.
The first track is the Countdown Track. In my youth this was measured in “Shopping Days.” This year, the web savvy believer can count down to Jesus’ birthday by ordering one of four Lego Advent Calendars.
The purist/Puritan in me is always irritated that Advent calendars start December 1, when most years the season starts on a different day. Think of the Countdown Track as chronological waiting. Whether you assemble your Han Solo minifigure or not, December 25 will arrive. It’s fun to build anticipation and suspense, but Christmas will come regardless of whether or not you are preparing for it. (This reminds me of when Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, promising to “Build a Bridge to the 21st Century.” He needn’t have bothered. First of all, Al Gore had already invented the internet, second, January 1, 2001 was already locked in on the calendar. It was a Monday.)
Chronological waiting is waiting at its most basic. Will we be able to get the lights, decorations and tree up, the cards mailed and the cookies baked? The clock is ticking and we know exactly how long we have: four candles before the big Christ candle. Little ones will be excited when the big day arrives, but no one will be surprised.
Today’s gospel reading points to a different kind of waiting, ultimate waiting, or perhaps waiting for the ultimate. The Little Apocalypse offers some hints about what will happen when Christ returns, how “the unfolding” will take place. It will be sudden and come after a time of terrific struggle and suffering. And it will be more glorious than anyone can imagine. Echoes of Isaiah’s “no eye has seen.” The Second Coming is an essential Christian doctrine, even though old liners avoid it, we still confront it in the Apostles’ Creed and most communion liturgies. “Christ will come again;” Advent points not only to the manger but to the trumpet blast.
Consider a kind of midrange waiting, preacher. Many, many beloved traditions, the kinds of things that make Christmas Christmas will not take place this year. Your congregations may be longing for something, anything, that can lead them to “peace on earth, goodwill to all.” In my community a beloved community Christmas music festival has been cancelled. For me, the joy that radiates from the singers’ faces gets me into the Christmas spirit every bit as strongly as their singing. The events that give us the moments of insight, epiphanies of “the reason for the season,” may be in short supply. Your congregations are waiting in the age of Covid this year, but they are also hungry for the sparks of joy that cause them to feel Christmas, which they need every year. Not just this first Sunday in Advent, but every Sunday, extend hope to them in this moment — hope that does not depend on successfully replicating vaccines or a smooth transition between those who govern, but hope that comes into the world as an infant — hope that grows and spreads and feeds us even in our despair and confusion. The hope of the unfolding of the reign of Christ. Here. Now.
SECOND THOUGHTSPay Attention!
by Dean Feldmeyer
Mark 13:24-37
Several years ago, a 20-year-old college student, the son of a friend of mine, was arrested for the crime of “allowing drug abuse.” Yes, that’s a crime in Ohio. Who knew?
Early in their sophomore year, he and three of his buddies had decided to go together and rent an apartment near the campus rather than live in the dorms. They had all kinds of reasons for doing this, the big one being that it would be cheaper, so their parents all agreed. To make things simple, Bryan’s name was the one on the lease.
About a year later one of the boys was busted for selling pot out of the apartment and, since Bryan’s name was on the lease, he too was arrested for “allowing drug abuse.” The law was originally intended to be used against landlords who knowingly let their rundown properties be used as crack houses and bar or nightclub owners who knowingly allowed their patrons to buy, sell, and use drugs on the premises.
Bryan pleaded not guilty. He was, he said, not aware that pot was being sold and bought in the apartment. There was, he said, a constant flow of people coming and going in and through the apartment, people who came for all kinds of reasons — to study, to eat, to watch football games, to hang out.
The prosecuting attorney asked how it was possible that Bryan was there for all of this and didn’t realize that drugs were being bought, sold, and used. Bryan’s reply, with tears in his eyes, “I guess I just wasn’t paying attention.”
It took the jury 45 minutes to acquit him.
They later told the defense attorney that they took one look at this 20-year-old kid, his friends, their own kids, or kids they knew who were that age, and they knew that “I wasn’t paying attention” was probably a true statement.
Bryan’s name was on the lease. He was responsible for the apartment, the security deposit, getting the rent in on time, seeing to it that nothing got damaged too badly, and making sure nothing illegal was happening on the premises. But he got distracted — distracted by the fun, by the noise, by the parties, by the girls, by the demands of classes — and he forgot to pay attention.
The Art of Diversion
Distraction is what we call it when our attention is inadvertently diverted from what should be its focus. When the distraction is intentionally caused, we call it a diversion.
Diversion is the art of magicians, pickpockets, petty thieves, and mischief makers of all kinds. The magician makes a big production out of waving his left hand around while the right hand makes the switch. The pickpocket spills her coffee on your coat and apologizes profusely while she deftly reaches into your purse and lifts your billfold. Shoplifters have their friends get into a fake shoving match in aisle 5 and, while everyone is looking there, they fill their pockets with the things in aisle 3.
Military tacticians send a small group of troops in one direction to launch what looks and sounds like an attack so the enemy’s attention and defenses are drawn away from where the main attack will happen. Rhetoricians divert the audience’s attention from the issue at hand with personal (ad hominem) attacks against their opponent or ad persona appeals to the audience’s selfish self-interest.
Parents and babysitters are, perhaps, the greatest diversionary tacticians of all. Any of us who have had to care for small children are fully aware of the diversionary value of a cookie, a squeaky toy, or a television cartoon in soothing the distresses of a fussy toddler.
The Danger of Distraction
Whether our attention is intentionally diverted by another or innocently distracted by the sights and sounds around us, danger lurks there.
We have all read the accounts of lost children whose parents cry, woefully that “I just looked away for a moment and when I turned back, she was gone.”
True story: April was supposed to be Distracted Driving Awareness Month but the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) got distracted by the Coronavirus so they moved it to October. Yes, October was the month we were supposed to be made aware of the dangers of distraction only we were all so distracted we didn’t get the message.
Nevertheless, the NHTSA and the insurance industry continue to remind us that allowing ourselves to be distracted enough to take our eyes off the road for even five seconds at 55 miles-per-hour means that we have just driven the equivalent of a football field, blindfolded.
Their top four dangerous distractions for drivers:
- Children – parents with small children have an 87% chance of taking their eyes off the road for 5 seconds or more.
- Food – A driver is three times more likely to crash when they eat and drive. The same figures apply to beverages.
- Dropped items – Reaching for an object increases the chances of a car crash by about 8 times.
- Cell phones – Texting and driving is 6 times more likely to lead to a car accident than driving drunk. 21% of teen drivers involved in a car accident were distracted by cell phones.
In the gospel lesson for this, the First Sunday of Advent, the evangelist, Mark, warns us that there is a danger of being distracted that is even worse than having our wallet’s lifted, or being in a fender bender with our cars.
There is also a spiritual danger that we could miss the coming of the messiah into our lives, the advent or coming (Latin: adventus = coming) of the kingdom of God into the world.
Early in our Christian history we believed that this would be a single event that would happen at the end of time and was soon to be realized. As the years went by, however, we began to rethink our understanding of the second coming of Jesus Christ and advent of God’s kingdom.
Perhaps, we wondered, it isn’t just coming at the end of time. Maybe it is also coming all the time, in the here and now, in, through and around us. And if we want to see it, to recognize its coming, and have that coming shine in and through our lives we’d better be keeping our eyes open and watching for it.
And as we began to consider that new understanding of Christ’s coming, we began to take another look at those scriptures that describe it, not the least of which is today’s gospel lesson, Mark 13:24-37.
Mark 13 is often referred to as the “Little Apocalypse of Mark.” And like all apocalyptic literature, it begins with a poetic, visual description of the end of time. In today’s lesson that part of the vision is concluded in verses 24-27.
In verses 28-31, Mark offers the reader a somewhat opaque warning that the signs mentioned in the previous verses and the eschaton they will usher in, are going to happen in their lifetime. Then he seems to walk back his prediction of the imminence of these events. But no one knows precisely when they will happen, he says, not even Jesus himself, but only God. “Soon” is about all he’s willing to offer. But soon, we are to learn in the next few verses, is a relative term.
The return of Jesus in glory could happen a millennium from now, a century, a year, a month, a week, a day, or even an hour. In fact, it could be happening right now or it might have already happened and we missed it because we were asleep at the wheel.
This leaves open the possibility that maybe the eschaton — the return of Christ and the inbreaking of God’s kingdom in our lives — is not only a future thing that will happen at the end of time, but a present thing as well. It has happened, is happening, and will happen.
If this is the case, then the closing words of the passage become swollen with meaning, do they not? Jesus uses a simile: It’s like a man going away who leaves his house in the hands of his servants with one chosen to watch for his return. This one at the door must be ever watchful because they don’t know when the master will be coming home. It could be in the morning, afternoon, evening, or dead of night.
Likewise, we must be alert and awake because we don’t know when the advent of God’s kingdom into our lives will come. It could be yesterday, or today, or tomorrow. And if we are not alert, we can miss it. So, Jesus warns us with a single, closing word: “WATCH!”
Advent 2020
Really? God’s kingdom, God’s son could come now? In 2020? You’re kidding, right? Have you been paying attention? You know what this year has been like, don’t you?
Yep.
It not only could happen. It probably has happened and we were distracted. Distracted by our concerns brought on by the Coronavirus. Distracted by the measures we must take to protect ourselves and our neighbors and the inconveniences, indeed, the burdens that those measures place upon us.
Distracted by having our children and grandchildren at home when we thought they’d be in school. Distracted by having to search out toilet paper and disinfectant spray that has suddenly become rare, again. Distracted by an election that seems like it’s never going to end. Distracted by the boredom and anxiety that comes from being quarantined for weeks on end.
Distracted by the suffering of our friends and loved ones and those who are trying to keep them alive in overcrowded, overworked, understaffed hospitals. Distracted by our frustration with the willful ignorance of those who refuse to accept the danger they are in and the danger they put us in by refusing to take the virus seriously. Distracted by the vicissitudes of life that have become commonplace in 2020.
Who could blame us if we, distracted as we are, happened to miss one of the subtle ways by which Christ enters our lives on the everyday plane.
But not to worry. God’s kingdom will come again. That’s the promise of Advent and Christmas. The coming of Jesus Christ into our lives is not a one-time thing. It doesn’t happen just once and if you miss it, forget about it. No, it’s an on-going thing. It’s not an event; it’s a happening.
And it’s about to happen to you.
So, pay attention. Watch for it.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Mary Austin:1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Finding Strength
“He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus,” Paul promises, and Father Greg Boyle tells a story about a young man who found that kind of strength. Father Greg works with young men and women coming out of gang life is Los Angeles, and he tells about Jose, who found strength in surprising places. “I gave a talk, a training, an all-day training to 600 social workers, a training on gangs. I had two homies with me, and one of them was a guy named José. And he got up — he’s in his late 20s, and he now works in a substance abuse part of our team, a man in recovery and been a heroin addict and gang member and tattooed. And he gets up, and he says, very offhandedly, “You know, I guess you could say that my mom and me, we didn’t get along so good. I guess I was six when she looked at me, and she said, ‘Why don’t you just kill yourself? You’re such a burden to me.’” Well, the whole audience did what you just did. They gasped. And then he said — “It’s sounds way worser in Spanish,” he said…And everybody did what you just did. And then he said, “You know, I guess I was nine when my mom drove me down to the deepest part of Baja, California, and she walked me up to an orphanage, and she said, ‘I found this kid.’” And then he said, “I was there 90 days, until my grandmother could get out of her where she had dumped me, and she came and rescued me.” And then he tells the audience, “My mom beat me every single day. In fact, I had to wear three T-shirts to school every day.” And then he kind of loses the battle with his own tears a little bit, and he says, “I wore three T-shirts well into my adult years, because I was ashamed of my wounds. I didn’t want anybody to see them. But now my wounds are my friends. I welcome my wounds. I run my fingers over my wounds.” And then he looks at this crowd, and he says, “How can I help the wounded if I don’t welcome my own wounds?” And awe came upon everyone, because we’re so inclined to judge this kid who went to prison and is tattooed and is a gang member and homeless and a heroin addict, and the list goes on.”
God offers this gift of strength, that we might find grace in our lives, no matter what has gone before.
* * *
Mark 13:24-37, Isaiah 64:1-9
Waiting
The prophet Isaiah is longing for God to make an appearance, waiting with anticipation. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus is giving counsel about waiting for the arrival of God. For both, waiting is a spiritual discipline. Isabella Yosuico says that being able to wait is a spiritual superpower. She tells us, “With many years of intensive training, I’ve learned to wait in many situations. The lines, the traffic jams, and waiting rooms of life don’t faze me. I can sit or stand serenely. I can do this mostly without toe-tapping or grumbling. But the weightier waits . . . they can still churn me up, though I see progress. At the heart of it is the unknown, the uncertain outcome, and the big question mark. Waiting for relief from my pain and fear to subside those first few months after my son Isaac was born with Down syndrome. Waiting to see if we could sell our home to relocate to Florida. Waiting for the results of my lymph node biopsy. Waiting now, with hopeful curiosity, to see what Jesus has planned for my career with so many treasured balls aloft. Hard waits. Yet this is the heart of faith: entrusting unanswered questions and unknown outcomes to a knowing God. There’s no faith in waiting for slow-changing lights or my name being called or a new roll of register tape. Jesus is found in those cliff-hanger moments of waiting. There can be sweet freedom, joy, and peace (Jesus things!) in waiting.”
Drawing on the Psalms, she adds, “In Psalm 27, David isn’t waiting on his pound of turkey breast or an oil change. Concluding with verse 14, David reminds me that if Jesus is the object of my wait, I can wait with thanks and praise on my lips, even with a little mortal toe-tapping on the way to hope-filled rest.” The substance of our waiting shapes how we wait, in Advent and beyond.
* * *
Mark 13:24-37
Patience as a Long Game
Writer Caroline Beaton suggests that waiting, as we’re called to do in Advent, has benefits even beyond attending to God’s arrival in the world again. She recalls the great feat of patience in the movie The Shawshank Redemption. “When Shawshank Redemption’s Andy Dufresne is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to life in prison, he takes the slow way out.
Every night from his cell he digs a little further toward freedom. Each morning he gathers the debris in his two fists and then releases it down his pant legs through holed pockets on the prison grounds. Handful by handful, after 20 years, he escapes. When everything’s going wrong — our jobs, our families, our health, politics — it’s easy to freak out. Like a fly slamming against the window, we hunt the nearest exit and hurt ourselves in the process. Gradual solutions, like a 20-year-long tunnel, feel unbearable. But patience pays off. Patience, according to one study, is the “propensity to wait calmly in the face of frustration or adversity.” It’s correlated with job performance, health and well-being. Patience is both hard and highly possible.”
Our attentive waiting is a spiritual skill, and also pays off in tangible ways. “Patient people work better. People with low levels of impatience and irritability report that job demands increase their satisfaction. Patience makes challenge enjoyable. Impatient people, by contrast, become overwhelmed and ineffective under pressure. They’re also more adversely affected by office politics and bureaucracy. Type A people, marked by their impatience and perfectionistic ambition, have a tendency to take on several tasks simultaneously at inappropriate times. Patient people know multitasking kills their calm and their bottom line…Patient people act at the right time. Patient people don’t act on ego. Instead, they act in the best interests of their highest goals and values. “I make my bread at thy hearth,” said Patience Worth, the probably imaginary writing assistant of early 1900s novelist Pearl Curran. Patience waits for the right time to put something in the oven or take it out or change it. “Patience is not an absence of action; rather it is timing. It waits on the right time to act, for the right principles, and in the right way,” said Fulton J. Sheen.
She adds what we already know is true, from our Advent waiting. “Patient people practice. Our present bias makes us think that this moment is the most significant in our lives. Many of us live every day like it’s the climax. It’s exhausting. In fact, right now is one of many moments and highly unlikely to be life-defining. But it’s still important: Patient people view their lives — especially the frantic, fear-inducing times — as practice.”
* * * * * *
From team member Chris Keating:Isaiah 64:1-9
Yearning for signs of hope
There is no escaping the realities imposed on this year’s Thanksgiving celebrations. News stories are replete with accounts of the “empty chairs,” left by those who have died from the coronavirus. The CDC has issued advisories against travel, and all sorts of plans, traditions, and gatherings have been upended. We join Isaiah in crying out for signs of hope.
Peter Held, a professor at Bryan College, and father of the late author Rachel Held Evans, expresses similar yearnings. In a recent interview about his daughter’s legacy, Held explored the feelings of grief and emptiness that emerged following his daughter’s death. Rachel unexpectedly died in May 2019 just as her career as a writer was ascending. “Rachel had to write, no matter what,” Peter Held said recently, “because she felt like she had a message to get out there.”
Her tragic death — the result of an allergic response to medicine — devastated Evan’s family, including her husband and two children. More than a year and a half later, Held says he feels hopeful, even as the pain of his daughter’s death continues. He finds hope in the support the family receives from Evans’ readers and friends. The hope sustains him despite feelings of pain. “I don’t think the pain will ever go away. But that’s okay, isn’t it?”
Peter Held’s world was shaken, and much like Isaiah, he waits for signs of God’s presence. He has decided to trust God in this season of life and in the seasons ahead. When asked if he has ever questioned why God took his daughter, Held shakes his head and says, “Even if answered, it would not make sense.”
(The Religious News Service website has posted a YouTube link to Held’s entire interview.)
* * *
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
Bread of tears
The psalmist’s cries echo those cries of families whose lives have been turned upside down by Covid-19. Families separated by hospital doors, or isolated by quarantine orders, have come to understand the pain expressed by Psalm 80. They understand what it means to eat the bread of tears.
In Texas, 15 members of the Aragonez family contracted Covid-19 after a family gathering became a “super spreader” event. Everyone in the family had been careful throughout the pandemic, giving them a false sense of confidence that a casual family gathering would be okay. The family is on the mend, but they have a new understanding of the disease’s spread.
The psalmist’s prayers have become my own prayers as well. Two week’s ago my wife tested positive for Covid-19. My son and I soon joined her in not feeling well. While my son and I both had relatively moderate symptoms, my wife’s were more severe. Leaving her at the doors of the emergency room, unsure of how things might devolve, left me with the emptiness of the psalmist. Restore us, O God, that we may be saved.
* * *
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
The blessed communion
Our Advent waiting is buoyed by the promise of our communion in Jesus Christ. We wait, as Paul understands in 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, in this interregnum moment between the time of Christ’s life and his return. It is a difficult time, but we find strength in our communion with God and each other. It is that same sort of communion that permeates the ministries and healthcare services provided by the staff and volunteers of the St. Mary’s Legacy Clinic in East Tennessee.
The clinic, run by sisters of the Religious Sisters of Mary, operates a mobile health clinic out of a 40-foot truck. Family practice physician and nun, Sister Mary Lisa Renfer, provides doses of medicine and community to the patients in an underserved section of Tennessee. Renfer, 32, calls herself a rebel — a member of the millennial generation notorious for turning away from religion, she remains devoted to using her faith to make the world a better place.
The clinic does not charge for its services, and receives the majority of its funding from individual donors. More than 90 volunteers from various religious backgrounds help provide nursing services and other aspects of care. Such clinics are in great need, and Sister Mary Lisa believes that the faith-based aspect of the clinic brings an additional dimension to the work.
“People look around and there’s a lot of confusion right now,” she told the Religion News Service, “There’s a lot of angst, especially in the midst of the pandemic,” she said. “But we all know in our hearts that we seek communion. And so I see these works continuing.”
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WORSHIPby George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, who leads Joseph like a flock!
People: You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth
Leader: Stir up your might, and come to save us!
People: Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.
Leader: We will never turn back from you, O God.
People: Give us life, and we will call on your name.
OR
Leader: Open your eyes and your ears to God’s coming.
People: We are anticipating the arrival of our God.
Leader: Remember the babe born in a stable.
People: We recall that God appears in unexpected ways.
Leader: Look for the Christ in the face of the stranger.
People: We will be expecting to see Christ in others this week.
Advent Wreath Lighting:
Reader: Get ready! Our God is coming among us. We are preparing to celebrate Christmas the advent of the Christ among us. We are getting ready for the final coming of our Lord. We are preparing for the coming of the Christ here and now.
Jesus says, “Keep awake!” Let us be alert to Christ’s coming.
We light this first candle to remind us that Christ is coming among us. We need to keep awake.
(Light the first candle.)
Reader: Let us pray:
We welcome you, O Christ, as we prepare to celebrate your coming that night in Bethlehem. Help us to be alert and watchful for your coming among us today. Amen.
Hymns and Songs:
People, Look East
UMH: 202
PH: 12
CH: 142
ELW: 248
W&P: 161
STLT: 226
Toda la Tierra (All Earth Is Waiting)
UMH: 210
NCH: 121
ELW: 266
W&P: 163
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
UMH: 211
H82: 56
PH: 9
AAHH: 188
NNBH: 82
NCH: 116
CH: 119
LBW: 34
ELW: 257
W&P: 154
AMEC: 102
STLT: 225
Take Time to Be Holy
UMH: 395
NNBH: 306
CH: 572
W&P: 483
AMEC: 286
Seek Ye First
UMH: 405
H82: 711
PH: 333
CH: 354
W&P: 349
More Love to Thee, O Christ
UMH: 453
PH: 359
AAHH: 575
NNBH: 214
NCH: 456
CH: 527
AMEC: 460
Holy Spirit, Truth Divine
UMH: 465
PH: 321
NCH: 63
CH: 241
LBW: 257
ELW: 398
Come Down, O Love Divine
UMH: 475
H82: 516
PH: 313
NCH: 289
CH: 582
LBW: 508
ELW: 804
W&P: 330
Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus
UMH: 196
H82: 66
PH: 1/2
NCH: 122
LBW: 30
ELW: 254
W&P: 153
AMEC: 103
Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates
UMH: 213
H82: 436
PH: 8
NCH: 117
CH: 129
LBW: 32
W&P: 176
AMEC: 94
Arise, Shine
CCB: 2
Renew: 123
Create in Me a Clean Heart
CCB: 54
Renew: 181/182
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who is always present and always coming:
Grant us the grace to wait on you with patience
while we continue to do your work;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the one who is always present and yet you are always the one who is to come. Help us to be patient in our waiting but not to be idle as we continue your work here on earth. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our being impatient and distracted while waiting.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We know you are always coming among us and yet we aren’t looking for you. You come as the Christ in so many ways and yet we often miss your coming. There are so many things that we judge to be important and they keep our minds occupied. We forget what is really important and what is eternal. Wake us once more to your presence and teach us to be ready for your coming. Amen.
Leader: God is always coming to us and among us. Now God is coming to offer us forgiveness and grace and another chance to be faithful disciples.
Prayers of the People
Glory to you, O God, because you are the one who does not leave us be is always coming to dwell with us. We praise you because you are, indeed, Emmanuel.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We know you are always coming among us and yet we aren't looking for you. You come as the Christ in so many ways and yet we often miss your coming. There are so many things that we judge to be important and they keep our minds occupied. We forget what is really important and what is eternal. Wake us once more to your presence and teach us to be ready for your coming.
We give you thanks for all the ways you walk with us in this life. We thank you for those who are aware of your presence and help us discover what you are trying to do in our lives.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your people in their need. We pray for those who feel that they are alone and that no one walks with them. We pray for those who feel there is only hatred and violence in their lives. We pray for those who have lost hope. May we be part of your healing presence in this world.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
When we are waiting for something it is easy to get bored and start thinking about other things. If you are playing goalkeeper in soccer and the ball seems to always be at the other end of the pitch, it is easy to let you mind wonder. And that is just when the ball is likely to come your way and you might miss it.
Today Jesus reminds us that we need to always be alert because we don’t know when he might show up. He might show up as a friend who needs us or as an opportunity to do something kind for someone. We need to be ready at all times.
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The Immediate Word, November 29, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
