Margaret was all ready for her date. She was wearing her best outfit, her hair was fixed, her makeup was perfect. Imagine her disappointment when her date didn’t show up! After an hour of waiting, Margaret decided that he wasn’t going to come. She changed into her pajamas, washed off her makeup, gathered up a bunch of junk food, and parked herself in front of the television for the evening. As soon as she got involved in her favorite show, there was a knock on the door. She opened it to find her handsome date standing on the doorstep. He stared at her in shock, then said in disbelief, “I’m two hours late, and you’re still not ready?” (1)
Welcome on this First Sunday of Advent. This is the Sunday we begin getting ready to celebrate Christ’s birth. [The choir is preparing its music, we’re in the process of decorating the church, special services have been planned . . .]
It’s always amazing to watch our society gear up for the celebration of Christmas. The placement of lights. The playing of carols even before Thanksgiving. The holiday sales. Even the post office is affected. I remember an old David Letterman line. “Here’s some good news out of Washington, D.C.,” said Letterman. “The post office says it is ready for the big holiday Christmas crush of mail. They have already placed an order for 10 million new signs that will read: ‘This Window Closed.’”
Well, our friends at the U. S. Postal Service do their best, but it’s an enormous job to get ready for Christmas. It’s an enormous job getting ready for Christmas for many of us. One poor guy says, “I started my Christmas shopping. I shopped at three banks for a loan.” Some of you can relate to that. We’ve barely finished with Thanksgiving and we’re already getting ready for Christmas.
Of course, our Jewish friends have spent hundreds, even thousands of years waiting to celebrate the coming of the Messiah. In fact, they’re still waiting. They do not believe, as we do, that the Messiah has come in the person of Jesus Christ.
Leo Rosten tells an amusing story that comes out of the Jewish tradition. There was a man in a small Russian village who, because of a disabling condition, could not find employment. The community council wanted to help him but they also wanted to protect his pride. They decided to give him a job. They paid him two rubles a week to sit at the town’s entrance and be the first to greet the Messiah when he arrives. “Just sit on the hill outside our village every day from dawn to sunset,” they tell him. “You will be our watchman for the approach of the Messiah. And when you see him, run back to the village as fast as you can, shouting, ‘The Messiah! The Messiah! He is coming!’”
The man’s face lit up just thinking of the glory of his new position.
Every morning he greeted the dawn from the hill and not until sunset every day, did he leave his treasured post.
A year went by, and a traveler, approaching the village, noticed the figure sitting on a hill. “Sholem,” called the traveler. “What are you doing here?”
“I am waiting for the Messiah!” the man replied. “It’s my job.”
The traveler was somewhat amused. “How do you like this job?” he asked, suppressing a smile.
“Frankly, it doesn’t pay much,” said the poor man, “but it’s steady work.” (2)
That would be steady work if you did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah twenty-five hundred years of waiting and watching for the coming of the Lord.
The prophet Isaiah was waiting on the Messiah. He writes these words as he begins the 64th chapter, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!” (1, 2)
Isaiah lived in a time when the people of Israel were suffering because of their infidelity to God. Isaiah knew that the people could not save themselves. It was too late for that.
He cries out, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins . . .” (6,7)
He paints a rather stark picture of Israel’s current situation. Then, on a gentler note he writes, “Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look on us, we pray, for we are all your people.” (8, 9) Isaiah was waiting for a Savior.
Many people today are waiting for a savior. Did you know that? And some of them are our neighbors.
Rev. Curt Anderson in a sermon on the Internet compares the plight of these people to the two young lovers in the Broadway musical, West Side Story. As you may remember, West Side Story is based on Shakespeare’s classic drama, Romeo and Juliet.
In West Side Story the lovers are Tony, a former member and leader of the street gang, The Jets, and Maria, who has recently arrived in this country from Puerto Rico. Her brother is Bernardo, present leader of the street gang, The Sharks.
Like most recent immigrants to this country, the Puerto Ricans are not accepted by those who already live here; and that animosity is intensified in the conflict between The Jets and The Sharks.
In the midst of that animosity and hatred, Tony and Maria meet and fall in love. Fairly soon after realizing they are in love, they also realize there is no place for their love in the world they live in. And they sing: “There’s a place for us, Somewhere a place for us, Peace and quiet and open air, Wait for us, Somewhere. There’s a time for us, Someday a time for us, Time together with time to spare, Time to learn, time to care, Someday . . . Somewhere. There’s a place for us, A time and place for us. Hold my hand and we’re halfway there. Hold my hand and I’ll take you there. Somehow . . . Someday . . . Somewhere.”
Of course, we all know that in that world, there was not a place for them. Tony is shot by a member of The Sharks as he is running to Maria. He dies in her arms.
And as all this is happening, the music of that song, Somewhere, is playing underneath the action. It gives added poignancy to know that there is no place, no time, no world where their love can exist. Right then, for them, Somewhere is, literally, Nowhere.
But the power of that scene, that movie, is that although that world does not yet exist for them it could someday, and it will, and we know it. (3)
Somehow . . . Someday . . . Somewhere. The world awaits a Savior. In the same way that Isaiah cried out, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down . . .” many in our world still cry out for a Savior.
The Savior came in the babe of Bethlehem, but still the world waits. That is the meaning of Advent. Advent is the celebration of what has been and what is yet to come. The Savior of all the world came to us in the babe of Bethlehem, but this was simply the beginning of God’s redeeming work. A beachhead was established, but the war over evil and darkness still has not been won. That victory will only be complete when the Savior returns and the kingdom of God is established in this world even as it is in heaven.
It is so easy with our comfortable lives to focus on the beauty and the joy of Christmas. It is much more difficult for us to focus on Advent, that season when the world groans with birth pangs as it awaits God’s final victory over sin and suffering.
A couple from the United States spent some time serving as missionaries in one of the former Soviet republics. They were caring for children in an orphanage and, like anyone who has been involved in ministry with such kids, they were simply overwhelmed by the tragedy of so many children who’d been abandoned.
On one occasion this missionary couple was teaching the children about Christmas. They told them all about Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and wise men, and about the baby Jesus. They told them all about the stable, and the manger, and the star in the sky. They told them all about God’s love for the world embodied in the birth of Jesus. And after teaching the children the Christmas story, this couple invited them to draw some pictures of the manger scene.
All of the pictures were wonderful! But one in particular caught their attention. It was drawn by a little boy named Misha. And what made Misha’s drawing distinctive was that there was not one, but two babies lying in the manger.
“Misha, what a wonderful picture!” said the woman missionary. “But who is the other baby in the manger with the baby Jesus?”
Misha looked up with a lovely expression on his face. “The other baby is Misha,” he smiled.
“Oh? How is it that you added yourself to the manger scene?” she asked.
And this is what Misha said. “When I was drawing the picture of the baby Jesus, Jesus looked at me and said, ‘Misha, where is YOUR family?’ I said to Jesus, ‘I have no family.’ Then Jesus said to me, ‘Misha, where is your home?’ And I said to Jesus, ‘I have no home.’ And then Jesus said to me, ‘Misha, you can come and be in my family and live in my home.’” (4)
That’s a lovely story, and we are so thankful that Misha was introduced to Jesus. But do you understand that two thousand years after the coming of Christ, millions of children come from situations like Misha’s? They are still awaiting a Savior. You’ll find them in the former Soviet Union. You’ll find them in Afghanistan. You’ll find them in Africa. You’ll find them in the gang-ridden neighborhoods of our inner cities. You’ll find them right here in our own community.
Of course, it is our responsibility to reach out to these little ones, to show them the love of Jesus, but the truth of the matter is that, for the most part, they are forgotten this Advent season. Their only hope is that Christ will return and usher in the kingdom promised in Scripture, a world where there will be no more suffering, no more pain; where people will live in peace and harmony, where in Isaiah’s beautiful imagery, “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them (Isaiah 11:6-9).” Do you not hear the cry of these little ones? “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down . . .” The Savior has come, but much of the world still awaits a Savior.
Here is the promise of scripture: Christ will return and truly the day will come when no child will be left behind. There will someday be peace and justice in this world. Sin and suffering shall cease. It is the promise of Scripture that one day the nations of the world will beat their “swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4).
Dr. Tom Long tells about the congregation he is a part of in Atlanta, GA. It is a Presbyterian church across the street from the state Capitol. Homeless people mill around outside the doors of the beautiful gothic structure that houses this congregation. Fortunately, this is a caring church and some of the homeless have found a spiritual home in the church. They have become a part of the worshipping community.
But others living on the streets will not come inside. They distrust any institution. They prefer their current circumstances. So, when these homeless would not come to them, the church decided to go to the homeless. One of the associate pastors took her guitar and moved out on the sidewalk to have worship services on the street for the people who would not come inside. And the homeless responded to this unique outdoor ministry.
It was just before Lent when this pastor to the homeless announced that on the upcoming Wednesday in the small chapel of their church they were going to have a very special service. In this service, she explained, the pastor would be taking the ashes of some palm branches and making a cross on the forehead of people in the service and they would, in turn, make the cross on the forehead of their fellow worshippers, until everyone was marked with the cross of Jesus on their face. Remember, she was speaking to people who had resisted coming inside the church, but something about how she explained this Ash Wednesday service evidently struck a positive chord with her homeless congregation. When the Ash Wednesday service came about sixty of them crowded inside the little chapel for the service.
Coincidentally, a member of the Georgia legislature across the street invited his colleagues to participate in the church’s Ash Wednesday service as well, and about forty of them showed up. Can you see the scene? Forty men and women from the State legislature and other members of this prominent church crowded into this small chapel, rubbing shoulders with sixty homeless people. Can you see them taking the palm ashes and placing them on one another’s foreheads in the name of Christ? To Tom Long, this was a preview of how things will be in the Kingdom of God. (5)
This is what Advent is really about. It’s not about lights and carols, and buying presents. True, it is about preparing ourselves to celebrate the birth of the Savior more than two thousand years ago, but it is also about preparing ourselves and our world for the Savior’s return at the end of days when things in this world will be set right. No one knows when that day will be, but I do know this, the cries of God’s children will not forever be unanswered. “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down . . .” Our Savior has come down in the manger of Bethlehem, and he is coming again to answer the cries of his children for peace and justice and the end of all suffering and pain.
1. Steve Barry, “Life in these United States,” Reader’s Digest, Oct. 1992, p. 82. Contributed by Dr. John Bardsley.
2. Leo Rosten, The Joys of Yinglish (New York: McGraw Hill Publishing Company, 1992).
3. http://www.firstcongmadison.org/sites/firstcongmadison.org/files/uploads/sermons/ pdf/srm112810_0.pdf.
4. Martin C. Singley, III, http://www.tellicochurch.org/Year%20B%20Sermons/ 021224.html.
5. I had the privilege of hearing Tom Long tell this story in a worship service.