First Sunday of Advent
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle B
Revised Common
Isaiah 64:1-9
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37
Roman Catholic
Isaiah 63:16b-17; 64:1, 3b-8
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:33-37
Episcopal
Isaiah 64:1-9a
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Mark 13:(24-32) 33-37
Theme For The Day
Jesus calls his people, awaiting his coming, to be watchful.
Old Testament Lesson
Isaiah 64:1-9
The Heavens Torn
"O that you would tear open the heavens and come down...." Many American worshipers will still be savoring pleasant memories of Thanksgiving turkey when they hear these prophetic words burst into their consciousness: a perhaps unwelcome interruption. The coming of Advent, the beginning of a new liturgical year, is meant to be intrusive. For the several prophets trading under the name of Isaiah, preaching to a despairing people in exile, the abrupt intrusion of God into human affairs is a sign of hope. Such is the case for oppressed people in every place and time, who have historically welcomed apocalyptic imagery far more readily than those who are complacent and satisfied. "Our God Is An Awesome God," we sing, with radiant smiles on our faces: yet can we, who are for the most part comfortable and secure, even begin to understand what God's "awesome deeds" (v. 3) are really like?
New Testament Lesson
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
The Unveiling
"Grace and peace," Paul begins his letter. These two words represent the two worlds from which he comes: the Greek world and the Jewish world. Grace (xaris) was a standard greeting in ancient Greek letters. The Hebrew shalom, or peace -- translated here as the Greek eirene -- was the standard greeting in Hebrew. In bringing the two salutations together, Paul is alluding both to his own dual background, and to the competing Greek and Jewish factions within the Corinthian church. More important, he sounds these themes just before launching into some intensely disturbing subject matter: the end of the world. The grace and peace Paul wishes for the Corinthians flow from his supreme confidence in Christ: that, at his coming, "you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ." The word for "revealing," here, is apokalupsis. We know it from the English words, "apocalypse" and "apocalyptic," which have taken on rather sinister meanings in our day. Apocalyptic, to the popular imagination, is wreathed in shadows and seasoned with doom. For Paul, however, it simply means "revealing" or "unveiling." That which is unveiled -- while it may be a threat to evildoers -- is ultimately good and life-giving. "Faith is not knowing what the future holds," a wise and anonymous writer reassures us, "but knowing who holds the future."
The Gospel
Mark 13:24-37
Faith For The Wee Hours
"Keep awake," warns Jesus -- "for you do not know when the master of the house will come...." This is a faith for the wee hours, for those bleak watches of the night. Except for those whose employment is nocturnal, those who wait and watch sleeplessly at such hours generally have deep worries. A loved one is dying, an intractable problem blocks sleep, some dark fear looms large enough to call forth a bleary-eyed vigilance. The sudden return of a long-absent and powerful master would incite fear in most servants' minds: but for these true believers who are keeping vigil, the heavy footfall on the doorstep is a sign of hope.
Preaching Possibilities
Few biblical passages are more difficult to preach, in the dominant culture in North America, than apocalyptic. Many of our people seem inclined to receive such passages in one of two ways: either with fear and loathing, or with a perverse glee at the vanquishing of their enemies. There's something of the truth in both these viewpoints, but each one -- taken on its own -- is dangerously one-sided. Apocalyptic is meant to be a wake-up call: like the buzzer on an alarm clock, it's designed to be jarring. Yet hurling the clock out the window is not the answer. Apocalyptic is also meant to bear witness to the ultimate triumph of God's justice: but claiming to know anything of when that judgment is going to take place, or who will bear the weight of it, is the height of spiritual arrogance (Jesus himself warns, "about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" -- Mark 13:32).
A sermon on any one of these passages could begin by exploring the experience of being startled. "Boo!" cries some practical joker, leaping out from the shadows -- inciting a surge of adrenalin, a suddenly elevated heart rate, and the equivalent of a jangling alarm throughout the entire nervous system. For all but young children (whose supple nerves can take the strain), it's not a pleasant experience.
Yet this, in one way or another, is what all three of our scriptural authors are saying the human race's ultimate encounter with God will be like. The rending of the heavens, the sudden unveiling, the swift and sudden return of the absentee master -- these brush strokes, added to one another, create a painting none of us would eagerly hang on our living room walls.
In making this kind of prediction, Jesus is a man of his times. For the past couple of centuries before Jesus' birth, Judaism had been developing an apocalyptic tradition far more detailed than the sketchy hopes of Isaiah. That emerging tradition was centered around the idea of a "Day of the Lord" that is to come, a day of darkness and tribulation. On that day, the prophets proclaim, God will scatter Israel's enemies and blast them with earthquake, wind, and fire -- while carefully preserving the lives of the faithful.
Something rather like this did in fact happen, about seventy years after Jesus' birth -- about the time the gospels were being edited into their final form. The Roman general Titus brutally put down a Jewish revolt, and in doing so destroyed the temple and much of the city of Jerusalem. Those dire events -- while not precisely identical to Jesus' prophecy -- would have been seen by the early church as fulfilling it, at least in part. Maybe 70 A.D. didn't bring global conflagration, but it did bring the destruction of the world as the Jewish people had known it. Apocalyptic texts of the Bible speak most loudly and clearly to those on this earth who have little to lose, because their lives are already in shambles.
Apocalyptic is strong medicine. Like a narcotic, it's best reserved for times of intense suffering. Use it in times of spiritual good health, as it were, and it becomes something like an addictive drug: first it seduces, then it kills. Let us neither hide these apocalyptic remedies away, nor use them indiscriminately.
Prayer For The Day
Lord of all ages, as season succeeds season and year supplants year, we come to you: trusting that your call -- to wait, to watch, to trust -- still has the same note of urgency about it as our forbears of old believed. Give us the courage to do as they have done, and stake our lives on your eternal promise in Jesus Christ. Amen.
To Illustrate
The anonymous African-American spiritual, "My Lord! What A Morning," goes like this:
My Lord! what a morning,
My Lord! what a morning,
Oh, my Lord! what a morning,
When the stars begin to fall.
There's something discordant here: a lovely melody, the comforting thought of welcoming the morning ... and the stars beginning to fall?
But remember who it was who first sang this song, and who cherished it over many generations. The view from the slave quarters was not a hopeful one -- at least not concerning things of this earth. Unless those African-American slaves could find a way to escape to the North -- a risky and possibly deadly proposition -- their lives on this earth would be marked only by backbreaking labor, abuse, and the forced breakup of families. The only white people they knew -- their oppressors -- regarded them as subhuman (which the slaves themselves instinctively knew to be false).
Those slaves did find some measure of hope in singing, "My Lord! what a morning, when the stars begin to fall." For they believed that only when the stars did fall -- or when they themselves died, whichever came first -- would they and their people be at last free from suffering. When worshipers who are not from that tradition sing hymns like this today, they do well to try to see those words and hear that music through the eyes and ears of another people, the oppressed believers who wrote them.
***
Poet and spiritual writer Kathleen Norris says of "eschatology" (literally, "the doctrine of the last things"):
I have come to regard the word as life-affirming in ways far more subtle than any dictionary definition could convey. What I mean is this: an acquaintance of mine, a brilliant young scholar, was stricken with cancer, and over the course of several years came close to dying three times, but after extensive treatment, both radiation and chemotherapy, came a welcome remission. Her prognosis was uncertain at best, but she was again able to teach, and write. "I'd never want to go back," she told her department head, an older woman, "because now I know what each morning means, and I am so grateful just to be alive." When the other woman said to her, "We've been through so much together in the last few years," the younger woman nodded, and smiled. "Yes," she said, emphatically. "Yes! And hasn't it been a blessing!"
"That," concludes Norris, "is eschatology."
-- Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace (New York: Riverhead, 1998), pp. 12-13
***
Fear has been much forgotten -- both by the world and by Christians in general. We rush toward angels unafraid. We approach the blazing furnaces of the seraphim with no more apprehension than children who reach laughingly for fire.
This fearlessness is not a sign of the character of God, as if God has changed through the centuries that divide us from Moses and Isaiah, from Zechariah and Mary and the shepherds. Rather, it is a sign of the character of this present age, of arrogance or of ignorance, whether or not one admits to a living God.
Mindlessly do the bells of secular celebrations jingle for Christmas. Meaninglessly do carols repeat their tinny joys in all the malls in America. No richer than soda pop is every sentimentalized Christmas special on television. Fearless is the world at play with godly things, because godless is its heart.
If God is a laughing Santy, why should we be afraid?
-- Walter Wangerin, Preparing For Jesus (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1999), pp. 59-60
***
He told me that once when he was a little boy, he spent all day Sunday watching at the window, waiting for Jesus to come to Bern. I asked him, "And in the evening, you were disappointed?"
He said, "No, the waiting was wonderful!" I think that attitude remained throughout his life.
-- Eberhard Busch, speaking of his friend and teacher, Karl Barth
***
Sometimes you can observe a lot by watching.
-- Yogi Berra
Isaiah 64:1-9
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37
Roman Catholic
Isaiah 63:16b-17; 64:1, 3b-8
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:33-37
Episcopal
Isaiah 64:1-9a
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Mark 13:(24-32) 33-37
Theme For The Day
Jesus calls his people, awaiting his coming, to be watchful.
Old Testament Lesson
Isaiah 64:1-9
The Heavens Torn
"O that you would tear open the heavens and come down...." Many American worshipers will still be savoring pleasant memories of Thanksgiving turkey when they hear these prophetic words burst into their consciousness: a perhaps unwelcome interruption. The coming of Advent, the beginning of a new liturgical year, is meant to be intrusive. For the several prophets trading under the name of Isaiah, preaching to a despairing people in exile, the abrupt intrusion of God into human affairs is a sign of hope. Such is the case for oppressed people in every place and time, who have historically welcomed apocalyptic imagery far more readily than those who are complacent and satisfied. "Our God Is An Awesome God," we sing, with radiant smiles on our faces: yet can we, who are for the most part comfortable and secure, even begin to understand what God's "awesome deeds" (v. 3) are really like?
New Testament Lesson
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
The Unveiling
"Grace and peace," Paul begins his letter. These two words represent the two worlds from which he comes: the Greek world and the Jewish world. Grace (xaris) was a standard greeting in ancient Greek letters. The Hebrew shalom, or peace -- translated here as the Greek eirene -- was the standard greeting in Hebrew. In bringing the two salutations together, Paul is alluding both to his own dual background, and to the competing Greek and Jewish factions within the Corinthian church. More important, he sounds these themes just before launching into some intensely disturbing subject matter: the end of the world. The grace and peace Paul wishes for the Corinthians flow from his supreme confidence in Christ: that, at his coming, "you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ." The word for "revealing," here, is apokalupsis. We know it from the English words, "apocalypse" and "apocalyptic," which have taken on rather sinister meanings in our day. Apocalyptic, to the popular imagination, is wreathed in shadows and seasoned with doom. For Paul, however, it simply means "revealing" or "unveiling." That which is unveiled -- while it may be a threat to evildoers -- is ultimately good and life-giving. "Faith is not knowing what the future holds," a wise and anonymous writer reassures us, "but knowing who holds the future."
The Gospel
Mark 13:24-37
Faith For The Wee Hours
"Keep awake," warns Jesus -- "for you do not know when the master of the house will come...." This is a faith for the wee hours, for those bleak watches of the night. Except for those whose employment is nocturnal, those who wait and watch sleeplessly at such hours generally have deep worries. A loved one is dying, an intractable problem blocks sleep, some dark fear looms large enough to call forth a bleary-eyed vigilance. The sudden return of a long-absent and powerful master would incite fear in most servants' minds: but for these true believers who are keeping vigil, the heavy footfall on the doorstep is a sign of hope.
Preaching Possibilities
Few biblical passages are more difficult to preach, in the dominant culture in North America, than apocalyptic. Many of our people seem inclined to receive such passages in one of two ways: either with fear and loathing, or with a perverse glee at the vanquishing of their enemies. There's something of the truth in both these viewpoints, but each one -- taken on its own -- is dangerously one-sided. Apocalyptic is meant to be a wake-up call: like the buzzer on an alarm clock, it's designed to be jarring. Yet hurling the clock out the window is not the answer. Apocalyptic is also meant to bear witness to the ultimate triumph of God's justice: but claiming to know anything of when that judgment is going to take place, or who will bear the weight of it, is the height of spiritual arrogance (Jesus himself warns, "about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" -- Mark 13:32).
A sermon on any one of these passages could begin by exploring the experience of being startled. "Boo!" cries some practical joker, leaping out from the shadows -- inciting a surge of adrenalin, a suddenly elevated heart rate, and the equivalent of a jangling alarm throughout the entire nervous system. For all but young children (whose supple nerves can take the strain), it's not a pleasant experience.
Yet this, in one way or another, is what all three of our scriptural authors are saying the human race's ultimate encounter with God will be like. The rending of the heavens, the sudden unveiling, the swift and sudden return of the absentee master -- these brush strokes, added to one another, create a painting none of us would eagerly hang on our living room walls.
In making this kind of prediction, Jesus is a man of his times. For the past couple of centuries before Jesus' birth, Judaism had been developing an apocalyptic tradition far more detailed than the sketchy hopes of Isaiah. That emerging tradition was centered around the idea of a "Day of the Lord" that is to come, a day of darkness and tribulation. On that day, the prophets proclaim, God will scatter Israel's enemies and blast them with earthquake, wind, and fire -- while carefully preserving the lives of the faithful.
Something rather like this did in fact happen, about seventy years after Jesus' birth -- about the time the gospels were being edited into their final form. The Roman general Titus brutally put down a Jewish revolt, and in doing so destroyed the temple and much of the city of Jerusalem. Those dire events -- while not precisely identical to Jesus' prophecy -- would have been seen by the early church as fulfilling it, at least in part. Maybe 70 A.D. didn't bring global conflagration, but it did bring the destruction of the world as the Jewish people had known it. Apocalyptic texts of the Bible speak most loudly and clearly to those on this earth who have little to lose, because their lives are already in shambles.
Apocalyptic is strong medicine. Like a narcotic, it's best reserved for times of intense suffering. Use it in times of spiritual good health, as it were, and it becomes something like an addictive drug: first it seduces, then it kills. Let us neither hide these apocalyptic remedies away, nor use them indiscriminately.
Prayer For The Day
Lord of all ages, as season succeeds season and year supplants year, we come to you: trusting that your call -- to wait, to watch, to trust -- still has the same note of urgency about it as our forbears of old believed. Give us the courage to do as they have done, and stake our lives on your eternal promise in Jesus Christ. Amen.
To Illustrate
The anonymous African-American spiritual, "My Lord! What A Morning," goes like this:
My Lord! what a morning,
My Lord! what a morning,
Oh, my Lord! what a morning,
When the stars begin to fall.
There's something discordant here: a lovely melody, the comforting thought of welcoming the morning ... and the stars beginning to fall?
But remember who it was who first sang this song, and who cherished it over many generations. The view from the slave quarters was not a hopeful one -- at least not concerning things of this earth. Unless those African-American slaves could find a way to escape to the North -- a risky and possibly deadly proposition -- their lives on this earth would be marked only by backbreaking labor, abuse, and the forced breakup of families. The only white people they knew -- their oppressors -- regarded them as subhuman (which the slaves themselves instinctively knew to be false).
Those slaves did find some measure of hope in singing, "My Lord! what a morning, when the stars begin to fall." For they believed that only when the stars did fall -- or when they themselves died, whichever came first -- would they and their people be at last free from suffering. When worshipers who are not from that tradition sing hymns like this today, they do well to try to see those words and hear that music through the eyes and ears of another people, the oppressed believers who wrote them.
***
Poet and spiritual writer Kathleen Norris says of "eschatology" (literally, "the doctrine of the last things"):
I have come to regard the word as life-affirming in ways far more subtle than any dictionary definition could convey. What I mean is this: an acquaintance of mine, a brilliant young scholar, was stricken with cancer, and over the course of several years came close to dying three times, but after extensive treatment, both radiation and chemotherapy, came a welcome remission. Her prognosis was uncertain at best, but she was again able to teach, and write. "I'd never want to go back," she told her department head, an older woman, "because now I know what each morning means, and I am so grateful just to be alive." When the other woman said to her, "We've been through so much together in the last few years," the younger woman nodded, and smiled. "Yes," she said, emphatically. "Yes! And hasn't it been a blessing!"
"That," concludes Norris, "is eschatology."
-- Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace (New York: Riverhead, 1998), pp. 12-13
***
Fear has been much forgotten -- both by the world and by Christians in general. We rush toward angels unafraid. We approach the blazing furnaces of the seraphim with no more apprehension than children who reach laughingly for fire.
This fearlessness is not a sign of the character of God, as if God has changed through the centuries that divide us from Moses and Isaiah, from Zechariah and Mary and the shepherds. Rather, it is a sign of the character of this present age, of arrogance or of ignorance, whether or not one admits to a living God.
Mindlessly do the bells of secular celebrations jingle for Christmas. Meaninglessly do carols repeat their tinny joys in all the malls in America. No richer than soda pop is every sentimentalized Christmas special on television. Fearless is the world at play with godly things, because godless is its heart.
If God is a laughing Santy, why should we be afraid?
-- Walter Wangerin, Preparing For Jesus (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1999), pp. 59-60
***
He told me that once when he was a little boy, he spent all day Sunday watching at the window, waiting for Jesus to come to Bern. I asked him, "And in the evening, you were disappointed?"
He said, "No, the waiting was wonderful!" I think that attitude remained throughout his life.
-- Eberhard Busch, speaking of his friend and teacher, Karl Barth
***
Sometimes you can observe a lot by watching.
-- Yogi Berra
