Holy Cross Episcopal Church

Isaiah 61:1-9                                                                       

1 Corinthians 1:3-9                                                            

Mark 13:24-37

 

An English cyclist, out for a spin in the countryside, stops to visit a country church. “Once I am sure there’s nothing going on,” he says, “I step inside, letting the door thud shut.” He looks around, doing the sightseeing thing in the ancient building. “Back at the door/ I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,/ Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.”

 

But then he is led to deeper reflection. What will it be like, some future day, “when churches fall completely out of use/. . . when [even] disbelief has gone?” People will have forgotten what the buildings meant, what they held. And yet, he says, “It pleases me to stand in silence here;/ A serious house on serious earth it is,/ . . . . And that much never can be obsolete,/ Since someone will forever be surprising/ A hunger in himself to be more serious,/ And gravitating with it to this ground,/ Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in . . . .”*

 

“A hunger in [ourselves] to be more serious”: that seems to me the ground for religious faith. “A serious house on serious earth this is”: that to me is the function of a church like this. I wonder if you remember what John Harrington said in his Ministry Minute some weeks ago? He spoke about “the sense of holiness in this room, the silence before Mass starts, the dignity with which people approach the Blessed Sacrament, the respect people show to each other, the attentiveness that people give to the vicar’s challenging homilies, and the general sense that we are here not for a social event or a performance but to participate in that great sacrifice of our Lord’s giving of himself to us.”

 

I say these things because this season of Advent, and particularly this first Sunday, is about what we might call holy seriousness. We are not in the “pre-Christmas season,” as the world is.

 

We are instead, as the banners on the wall behind the Altar remind us, in a time of watching, waiting, hoping, praying. As the darkness of winter closes in around us, we light the Advent candles—first one, then two, three, finally four—their flames kindled in hope, to light the way for his Coming. His Coming, yes, the Baby in the manger in Bethlehem so long ago; but his Coming, even more so, in fulfillment at the End; and what we might call his “little Comings,” every day if we look for them, in small surprises of grace and new possibility.

 

This is a dark time, truly—and I say that not to sensationalize, as the news media do, the latest gyration of the stock market, the latest outburst of terrorism, the latest disaster or setback on this or that front. You know, it’s sick really. The media feed our anxieties with their tickers of events across the bottom of the screen. They treat the world’s crises as just another form of entertainment for us, passive spectators. It’s all about their making money. And it makes things worse.

 

So, no, I don’t call this a dark time to sensationalize it or heighten our anxiety. Because though Advent is a season that plays on the theme of darkness, it is not about anxiety and it does not treat us as passive spectators. As the readings this morning testify, for people of faith like us, times like these are times vibrant with hope. It is precisely when the old systems, the old ways, the old certainties collapse, that people of faith reach out to the Coming of the new thing of God. It is precisely in times like these that Creation is most receptive to the renewed Incarnation of Jesus the Son of God.

 

For so it was in the time of Isaiah, as Israel waited in exile, yearning for the Lord to “tear open the heavens and come down.” Precisely in that darkness a once proud people could confess that they were merely clay, that they were ready to be reshaped and made new by their potter God.

 

So it was in the time of St. Paul, writing to a fragile little faith community like ours, telling it to stand firm, to be strong, to have heart, to hang together, as it waited for the “revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

So it was in the days of which St. Mark speaks in his gospel. Mark’s is the earliest of the four gospels, written shortly after the Romans took over Jerusalem and tore down the temple, scattering believers across the Mediterranean world. Do not be dismayed by these things, Mark wrote to his community—likely a few dozen people, at most a few hundred. Rather, “keep awake. . . . The Son of Man [is] coming.”

 

We know that God restored Israel to Jerusalem. We know that the little faith communities Paul planted became Christianity, a worldwide religion that shaped western civilization. We know that the destruction of the temple by the Romans actually strengthened the Church by scattering believers like seeds in the wind. We know that again and again the collapse of the old has been necessary for the birth of the new. We know that this is not a time for anxiety, but for strength and hope.

 

Watching, waiting, hoping, praying, are not passive activities. They do not suppose that we are powerless spectators of events. I was struck by something said by Rahm Emmanuel, President-elect Obama’s designated chief of staff: “Never fail to take advantage of a crisis.” There are no blueprints for the future in a time like this. That is of the essence of Advent, since the new thing that God is bringing is his thing, not ours. But we can be sure that there are great possibilities in the darkness of today, if we take the promise of Christ seriously.

 

Therefore, my beloved, watch, wait, hope and pray.

 

*Philip Larkin, “Church Going,” from Collected Poems (London: 1988).