Sermons from the Pulpit

Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the first Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2001, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14

Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
    -Matthew 24:42

     You do not know. Are you willing to hear that? Are you willing to be told that you do not know and will not know and cannot know? Are you willing, are you even able, to live with not knowing? What kind of life could people live, not knowing?

     It's not easy to be kept in the dark, but you know, it is the flip side of faith. Faith says the future belongs to God and God is good, so we don't have to be afraid of it. But faith also says the future belongs to God, so it doesn't belong to us except insofar as we belong to God; we can't dope it out or see it coming or take charge of it.

     The critics of faith say, well, in other words, faith is blind, faith is a disability, faith is ignorance, shuck it off! Faith is what gave us the Dark Ages. But we say different - don't we? I wonder.

     Wondering is the name of the game for keepers of Advent. Like the children's bookstore on Water Street, Advent is A Time of Wonder. We think of children as more gifted with that state of mind called wonder than us grownups, and why? Because they don't yet know everything as we do.

     If you know everything, as we do, then there is nothing to wonder about. Wondering entails not knowing - or at least it requires us to admit that all our knowledge, everything we know, when you add it all up, it's not enough, it's incomplete, it's full of holes.

     And the biggest and baddest of those holes is the future. That's where we are really and truly in the dark. We are fully persuaded that the dark is a bad place to be. If you doubt that, just look out an airplane window during a night flight at the Eastern Seaboard below you, or try to see stars, planets or meteors from downtown Exeter at four in the morning. We are consuming tons and tons of power and fuel to kill the dark. God help us if we succeed.

     God revealed to the prophet Isaiah, and in identical words to the prophet Micah, a future in which swords are beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, and nations and people do not make war anymore. But through the prophet Joel - and you can look this up if you want, it's Joel 3, verses 9 and 10 - if you can find the Book of Joel before I finish this sermon - through Joel God said, Prepare war! Stir up the warriors! Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears! Let the weakling say, "I am a warrior!"

     The self-styled realists of the world dismiss Isaiah's vision for an impossible dream, but are they ready to settle for Joel's alternative? What Joel saw wasn't a vision, it was the same old same old, business as usual, the way things are. Weaklings who dream of becoming warriors and sometimes actually do, God help us.

     Advent-keepers have doubts about the same old same old. They wonder, they wonder about business as usual, even in a year when business as usual has become a national economic duty. And what the world calls an impossible illusion is for them the real thing, the realest thing there is.

     To watch, to wonder, to wait - to practice sanctified vigilance, as distinct from the standard paranoia, our habitual suspicion and our fear of getting caught. Vigilance that springs from hope, not from terror or despair. Looks to me like we could use a whole lot more of that, especially this year.

     People who are watching see things that other people don't see. People who are waiting slow down - you can't really hurry up and wait. People who are wondering have hope - if you're not wondering, then you've got it all tied down, and these days that's pretty depressing, but wonderment makes hope possible.

     Somebody said that churches use candles at worship to remind themselves that the first Christians worshiped in the dark, because they didn't dare to do it in daylight. In that sense all worship is a vigil. Likewise we gather at Christ's table, foreshadowing in our present darkness the utterly real communion of creatures who walk in the light of God.

     Watch. Wait. Wonder. In other words, Live! Be alive. Keep awake, says Jesus. Wake up, says Paul - both of them knowing that most of the time, most of the world is sleepwalking, out of it, out of touch, clueless. That could include us, but we wouldn't be here if we didn't have some hope that God is here too and will wake us up, and shut our noisy mouths, and still our busy hands, and give us the Advent we so desperately need, and make us Advent people to the world. Let all mortal flesh keep silence.

     Amen