SERMON
at
Christ Church, Watertown, Connecticut
Advent Sunday
November 29, 2009
by
The Rev. Stanley C. Kemmerer, AHC

See, the days are coming---it is Yahweh who speaks---when I am going to fulfill the promise I made to the House of Israel and to the House of Judah:

“In those days and at that time,
I will make a virtuous Branch grow for David,
who shall practice honesty and integrity in the land.
In those days Judah shall be saved
and Israel shall dwell in confidence.
And this is the name the city will be called:
Yahweh-our-integrity.”
The words of the prophet Jeremiah.

We hear these words echoed in English translation in the beginning aria of Handel’s Messiah….

Comfort ye… comfort ye… my people…saith your God
For your warfare…your warfare…is accomplished
And your iniquity is pardoned

Yet these same words are held in tension by this morning’s passage from St. Luke’s Gospel…

“There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars; on earth
nations in agony, bewildered by the clamor of the ocean and
its waves; men dying of fear as they await what menaces
the world, for the powers of heaven will be shaken. And
then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with
power and great glory.”

They announce well the mood of the Advent Season. It is an “in between” time in the Church’s liturgical calendar, one filled with the hope and joy and anticipation of the coming of the Christ child at Christmas, and the mixed anticipation and apprehension that attend the Second Coming of the Messiah at the end of time, and that Second Coming’s theme of judgment.

I love Advent! It is, perhaps, my favorite season of the entire Church year.

I love its quiet, meditative spirit.
I love its simplicity.
I love the single white candles in the windows of so many homes.
I love its anticipation of a New Order characterized by peace, justice
and integrity.

I dread not the Feast of Christmas but the way we as a society appear to have come to observe the period from when the first Christmas signs appear, which seem to come earlier and earlier each year, until the post-Christmas gift returns and exchanges taper off. I hate many of its characteristics almost as much as I love the Advent season .

I hate its loudness and garishness.
I hate its naked materialism and commercialism.
I hate its exploitation and manipulation.
I hate the relative deprivation it highlights as the have-lesses are
forced to become so very aware of what the have-mores have.
I hate the meanness its pressures bring out in people I encounter.
as I drive the streets and do what shopping I can’t put off until gift
return season is over.
I hate the guilt trips laid on people as gift giving decisions are made.
I hate the exhaustion the season’s expectations inflict on so many and
the lack of consideration shown by so many of the efforts being put
forth by others.
I hate the unkindness and ingratitude demonstrated in so many homes
to relatives and friends, as gifts are opened and someone “didn’t get
what I wanted” or “didn’t get it right!”

And I can’t help but imagine Jesus looking down on this perversion of the celebration of His birth and singing that popular song, “Look what they did to my song, Ma. Look what they did to my song. It was the only thing I could do half right. Look what they did to my song.”

Point/counterpoint. We, you and I, live in that tension during this season every year. We who go to church encounter Advent wreaths, subdued liturgies, ethereal atmospheres in our worship spaces, and we go out from them into the chaos, personal and civic, of the Christmas Season. We live out in our several ways our personal “in between time.”

We celebrate friendships, renew acquaintances, have so many encounters and treats to which we look forward, and our share of dreads. We make and receive our fair share (maybe sometimes more than our fair share!) of Second Coming-like judgment.

How shall we walk this tightrope? We, of course, will make our various choices, our tradeoffs, based on our attitudes and experiences, what backlash we are willing to endure. I don’t suggest the prejudices reflected in my loves and hates stated earlier are congruent with any of yours, necessarily. Nor that you experience this time in the same way I do. But, just in case you do, I want to remind us:

There are choices we can make, the first and most important of which, perhaps, is to remind ourselves, and to internalize the fact, we do have the right to make choices. We don’t have to conform to others’ expectations or demands. May there be consequences of our little acts of political incorrectness? Of course. But they’re likely to be bearable, and short lived. By next season or the one after those with whom we interact will be used to our customs. And, if they work for us, particularly, and others don’t accept us or those choices, perhaps we should be giving some thought to the value of these relationships that don’t let us be ourselves, that don’t let us embrace behaviors that make our religious lives richer.

It is inconsistent with the spirit of Advent to decorate with any more than greens and wreaths until Christmas Eve day afternoon. In my home it’s not permitted and in the homes of many others I know. It’s not Christmas yet; it’s Advent. Single white bulbs in the windows. A family Advent wreath. If we want to decorate the tree, Christmas Eve day and afternoon are the time. And maybe, just maybe, just that is enough, if more will interfere with our Christian observance of the feast.

Perhaps we would find this time more relaxing and we’d be more rested for the feast if we limited our participation in Christmas observances to the period between Christmas and Epiphany. Twelve days.

Hanukkah gift giving is reserved for the children. Maybe our Jewish brothers and sisters have something to teach us.

And Susan Campbell wrote in a recent Hartford Courant column, “For the past few Christmases, we’ve (she and her husband) skipped a gift exchange and either taken one another out to eat, or we go in for a donation to something like Heifer International….It would be so much easier if all the adults who’ve built their funeral pyres to a sufficient height (She figures “I have accumulated more than enough stuff to make a lovely funeral pyre, and so have most of my friends.”) would agree to buy nothing for one another, wouldn’t it?” She continues, “I don’t mean that in a Grinch-y kind of way but there are people out there who actually need things. I’m not one of them and neither are most of my friends. Factor this in, too. A new Harris Interactive poll said that 38 percent of Americans will give to a charity for the holidays---compared with 49 percent last year: That’s in the midst of an economic meltdown, when people most need charity.”

We might remember the gift giving described in Scripture didn’t even take place until Epiphany, with the coming of the Magi and, even then, the only gifts given were to the newborn King.

We might use the quiet, reflective time of Advent to take stock. Advent Sunday is, after all, the Church’s “New Year.” Most of us took a vow to follow the One whose birth we celebrate at Christmas. In our baptisms. In our confirmations. And we’ve renewed that vow at every baptism in the Church we’ve attended. We’ve also vowed at weddings we’ve attended “to support and uphold” the couples. How have we done? How do we intend to do?

Knowing how stressful the outside world is during these weeks, we might try to get more rest, spend more time in quiet, pamper and refuel a little more, so we’re not as cranky as we might otherwise be under the circumstances.

We might consider substituting a plan to contact those on our Christmas card list over the course of the coming year. Individually. Rather than raising our stress level and concentrating the contact cost in a couple month period and being superficial at that, by sending Christmas cards and/or Christmas letters. It might add a new depth to friendship maintenance.

As we make decisions about where and with whom we celebrate the feast we might devote attention to what enables us to enjoy it most, as opposed to what others may “expect.” We don’t “have” to go to anybody’s, especially if to do so is to subject ourselves to dysfunction and pain. When it seems indicated, being with one’s “family of reference,” (friends---which may include certain family members, if they’re also friends…) may be preferred to being with a dysfunctional “family of origin.

A blessed+ “between times” Advent to you and yours, in the peace of God which passes all understanding.