[Propertalk] 1 Advent c

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Well, here's a rough draft to be worked over ...


THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY                          	THE 
FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT (c)
JEREMIAH 33:14-16                         					2nd DECEMBER, 2012
1 THESSALONIANS 3:9-13				                          PSALM 25:1-9
LUKE 21:35-36							

An intriguing cell phone company’s commercial on TV caught my interest 
when an adult mentioned the speed of the service and everything the 
phone could do – in addition to making and receiving straight-forward 
phone calls. The adult talked to some children about their idea of slow 
and what could be done about it.

“Tape a cheetah to her back.” That’s what one ten year-old came up with 
to help his grandmother move a little quicker. 1 He said he thought 
she’d be grateful. He thought she moved a little slowly for his liking.

	Incidentally, at least one cheetah has been clocked to run one hundred 
metres in five-point-nine-five seconds. 2

	I can just picture that lady moving through a grocery store, or a 
parking lot, or the Communion line in Church. I wouldn’t want to get in 
her way, but I’m sure she’d get the job done – whatever the job was.

	We all like to move fast. We have to. This is a speedy world: do it 
now; finish it tomorrow; where’s that report? Get your pledge in!

	Contrast that with this which was on the internet the other day.

	“As the mother of two kids who are still at home, I am grateful for the 
countercultural message of Advent. My kids know very little about 
waiting – they live in a "just in time" culture – and Advent is a good 
reminder that anticipation is a good thing.” 3

	If Ceal and Roger will forgive me for suggesting this, sometimes doing 
things quickly, being in a perpetual rush simply isn’t good for our 
spiritual systems, and if our spiritual systems are out of whack, then 
everything can be affected.

How do we co-relate this, then, with Scripture readings which help us 
define this season of Advent in terms of trying to be a righteous as we 
possibly can be. That and also remembering the need to prepare ourselves 
once again to welcome Jesus into our lives? Even the Bible is caught up 
with the urgency of Advent.

A Japanese opera producer made a remarkable comment last week about our 
current society. Yoshi Oida said that people in general have become lax 
in caring for their spiritual needs. He said that we’re always engaged 
with our bodies, and all that pertains to them, but we do much less with 
what he described as “the invisible spirit”.  “A long time ago a lot of 
people went to church and they ‘washed their spirits’, but today people 
take a shower for their bodies, but not many of them take a shower for 
their spirits.” He suggested that if people didn’t attend church, or 
have regular spiritual cleansing and nourishment, then perhaps such 
experiences as attending an opera could serve that purpose, if the 
spiritual dimension of life was brought out there. 4

There’s a difference between biblical preparation and the sort of 
preparation that’s advocated elsewhere.

They’re NOT unrelated. In cat, they should NEVER be unrelated. But 
biblical preparation should come first if you and I are going to have 
any are going to have any sort of success in dealing with all those who 
tug on our sleeves, seeking our involvement, our attention, our 
financial commitment.

I’m tempted to say “even our pledges should be guided by our spiritual 
preparation”, because it’s true! What we do with our brains, what we do 
with our arms and legs, with our hearts AND with our wallets – what we 
do with everything that defines us is a direct reflection of our 
spiritual health.

Advent – looking forward to the coming Messiah of God – Advent is a time 
for self-examination about our attitudes. What do we think of ourselves? 
Do we value who we are, how God has gifted us and how much Jesus wishes 
to live through us?

Advent asks us, What do we think of other people? Do we value and 
respect them, are we prepared to do whatever we can to help them and to 
celebrate their lives?

But, above all, Advent asks us to come to examine how we think about 
God, how we relate to God and how this makes a difference to our lives.

In other words, Advent ISN’T merely a philosophical concept to occupy 
our free minutes and hours between the
first and twenty-fifth of December. Advent is a time to help us make 
sense of all the rushing, the frustration, the short-temperedness, the 
possible panic that can exist in all our relationships, the impossibly 
phone calls, the work environments, the demands that are placed on us.

Just as, back in March, we celebrated the activity of the Spirit of God 
in bringing about Mary’s pregnancy, so we should look on these final 
four weeks as a quiet time in which we prepare ourselves for the birth 
of Jesus and al that this implies.

We’re called to righteousness, to align ourselves with our best 
perception of God’s will for us. We’re called to make room for the joy 
that Christmas will bring. But I suggest that that joy will not be as 
complete, as fulfilling as it can be, if we don’t slow down a bit so 
that we can watch ourselves as we go through our daily lives, and ask 
ourselves where God is in them

In that sense there IS an urgency, a wonderful urgency, to how we think 
and act as followers who already know a good deal of who Jesus is, and 
how He lived, and what He wants from us. How we behave at home, at work, 
on the road, in the mall – all of this can help us, and everyone else, 
see what it means that the Son of Man is drawing near.

We sedate Episcopalians may not like to think in quite such urgent, 
Jesus-is-coming terms. However, to ignore the implications of passages 
such as the verses from Isaiah and Luke as not having personal 
implications for each of us would be foolish.

Frank Logue, a priest from Georgia, put it this way.
	
	“The signs will be there for anyone to see. We need only look around us 
to see that the world is coming to an end. But there have been so many 
signs. Thirty years after Jesus’ death, the Romans crushed the Jews in a 
horrible war that destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. Many Christians at 
that time still worshipped at the Temple. How could that not be the 
beginning of the end? Or what about the fall of the Roman Empire, or the 
rise and fall of the Nazi Empire, or Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia, 
Pol Pot in Cambodia or the many other conquests for power that have 
ended in the deaths of tens of thousands? Were these not the signs of 
the end?  How could we possibly know what truly signals the end of 
times?

	“So if we humans have proven stunningly bad at reading the signs of the 
times, what good are passages like this? Why bother with the Apocalypse 
anyway? We may get an Apocalypse – an end of the world sometime. But the 
Apocalypse is always immanent. Soon and very soon. When will the 
Apocalypse be now?
	
	“Today is the end of the world, right now. This is the day for 
somebody. 	“Thousands of somebodies – maybe a million or more. All over 
the world, today is the day of judgment. Many, many people will die 
today. Many others will reach an important point of decision. For all 
those people, the end is very near.

	Passages like this remind us that we don’t have forever to decide what 
we think about this Jesus of Nazareth. There is a time to decide, and 
that time is always now. We always have now. Jesus reminds us that we 
don’t always have later. Jesus either was who he said he was, the Son of 
God, or not. And if he was who he said he was, we can have a 
relationship with him right now. Then the end of the world is more or 
less irrelevant, as we have already begun eternal life. But if he wasn’t 
who he said he was, then he was just plain crazy and we should drop the 
whole thing. It’s that straightforward.” 5

A young woman wrote last week, “I went to the mall, and a little girl 
called me a terrorist.

	“My name is Ela. I am seventeen years old. I am not Muslim, but my 
friend told me about her friend being discriminated against for wearing 
a hijab. So I decided to see the discrimination firsthand to get a 
better understanding of what Muslim women go through.

	“My friend and I pinned scarves around our heads, and then we went to 
the mall. Normally, vendors try to get us to buy things and ask us to 
sample a snack. Clerks usually ask us if we need help, tell us about 
sales, and smile at us. Not today. People, including vendors, clerks, 
and other shoppers, wouldn't look at us. They didn't talk to us. They 
acted like we didn’t exist. They didn't want to be caught staring at us, 
so they didn't look at all.

	“And then, in one store, a girl (who looked about four years old) asked 
her mom if my friend and I were terrorists. She wasn't trying to be mean 
or anything. I don’t even think she could have grasped the idea of 
prejudice. However, her mother’s response is one I can never forgive or 
forget. The mother hushed her child, glared at me, and then took her 
daughter by the hand and led her out of the store.

	“All that because I put a scarf on my head. Just like that, a mother 
taught her little girl that being Muslim was evil. It didn't matter that 
I was a nice person. All that mattered was that I looked different. That 
little girl may grow up and teach her children the same thing.

	“This experiment gave me a huge wake-up call. It lasted for only a few 
hours, so I can’t even begin to imagine how much prejudice Muslim girls 
go through every day. It reminded me of something that many people know 
but rarely remember: the women in hijabs are people, just like all those 
women out there who aren't Muslim.” 6

How were all these people preparing? What were they doing there? What 
would we have done, had we been there? What does this say about 
righteousness and being ready to meet the “Righteous Branch”, whether 
we’re shopping, or in an office, or at home, or anywhere?

Maybe each one of us DOES need a cheetah taped to our backs to get us 
moving a little quicker, not out of fear, but out of the sheer 
excitement of getting more ready that we are at this instant to welcome 
into our lives, once more, God’s Anointed, the Son of Man, who is eager 
to have us stand not just before Him, but with Him, all the time, 
everywhere. And remember, no animals – not us, not our personal cheetahs 
– none will be harmed as we prepare for the celebration to come. But DO 
get your pledges in!


NOTES:

1 	Commercial for high speed cell phones – Verizon?

2	 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2183092/Cheetah-smashes-speed-record-running-100m-5-95-seconds--40-faster-Usain-Bolt.html

3	Paige Baker, via Facebook

4	Yoshi Oida, interviewed by Martin Handley, BBC Radio 3, regarding the 
production of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by Ralph Vaughan Williams. 
November 2012 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nznsb and 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01nznsb

5	1 Advent (C) – 2012 “The Kingdom of God is as near as a prayer” BY THE 
REV. CANON FRANK LOGUE
http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/2012/11/16/1-advent-c/  The Rev. 
Canon Frank Logue is Canon to the Ordinary for the Diocese of Georgia. 
He blogs on congregational development at 
http://loosecanon.georgiaepiscopal.org.

6	Shared on Facebook. See 
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=515326861825662&set=a.235509529807398.64535.212270682131283&type=1&ref=nf


Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)