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   December 11^th, 2011, The 3^rd Sunday of Advent, ll Souls' Episcopal Church

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, …”  John 1:6

            The Season of Advent, as we already have heard in our Sunday sermons, is the start of our new Church Year which we begin by calling attention to things which shall be in the end and which are of ultimate and eternal concern – weighty matters, such as ‘death,’ ‘judgment,’ ‘heaven,’ and ‘hell,’ and the return of our Lord Jesus in what we call his Second Advent, or second coming,  to judge “the quick and the dead” and rule eternally in the Kingdom of Heaven.  From our perspective – from our point of view - it seems as if we are waiting for something which is going to happen in the future, as if heaven has a ‘due-date’ and we’re all just on pins and needles waiting for it to arrive.  Of course, it’s also true that from our perspective the sun rises in the East every morning and sets in the West every evening, when, in reality, it does nothing of the sort, and so it’s not entirely surprising that we imagine Heaven as beginning at some point in the future when in fact eternity by definition does not begin at any point in time.  Advent, though, is a Season of watching and waiting.  How do we do that?  In what sense do we watch and wait for God’s kingdom?  John the Baptist shows us the way.

            John the Baptist shows us how to wait.  The character of John’s waiting is that of faithful attentiveness.  You see, there is good waiting and there is bad waiting.  Let me explain what I mean by ‘bad waiting’ by considering this present Advent Season.  We all know that advertizing for Christmas starts earlier and earlier each year.  Once Christmas actually arrives some of us will insist upon keeping it and celebrating for all of its glorious twelve days.  In any event, Christmas arrives when it arrives.  Our point as Episcopalians is not simply that we shouldn’t rush Christmas, as if all that “Joy and peace on Earth” is forbidden fruit until December 25^th.  Our point is that you shouldn’t rush along trying to make it to Christmas and miss the Season of Advent.  We encourage you to attend to Advent.

            Now, I admit that such topics as ‘death’ and ‘judgment’ may not be pleasant and might even be downright scary but we should not pretend as if they can be ignored.  We cannot ignore these matters forever.  And yet this is exactly what bad waiting amounts to; this is exactly what bad waiting is – an unconscious strategy for avoiding pain.  Bad waiting knows no joy and is never thankful because it always regards the present moment as something to be gotten beyond as soon as possible so that we can get to the future where all the joy and happiness awaits.  People who wait badly are never satisfied with what they have, but instead are always wanting what they don’t have; always waiting for a future which promises to be so much better than now; never enjoying what they’ve been given, but focusing instead on what they hope to get; never thankful but always craving more; ignoring loved ones while waiting for that ‘special someone; always looking and always longing for something to make them happy.

            Good waiting and faithful watching, as Jesus calls us to do, is the opposite of the bad waiting I’ve been describing.  Good waiting is what Jesus was teaching when he admonished us to be as wise members of a wedding party who remain ready and alert with their lamps full of oil for the procession.  This is what Jesus taught us in all his parables of the kingdom when he stressed being attentive and not being caught unawares when the master returns.  Perhaps this is why his birth was announced first to shepherds – those who kept watch and were alert through the night.

            The alertness and awareness of good old Advent-style watching and waiting is necessary if we are going to follow the advice of many saints over many centuries who told us to constantly recollect God’s presence in each and every moment of our lives; in the mundane, in times of tribulation, and in times exultation.  This is what the 17^th Century French monk, Brother Lawrence, famously encouraged us to do in what he called “practicing the presence of God.”  Watching and waiting and being alert and aware of God’s presence is the way in which we move towards obeying the admonition of St. Paul in today’s Epistle lesson where he writes: Rejoice evermore.  Pray without ceasing.  In everything give thanks.

            If St. Paul visits you tomorrow, will he find you rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks for everything, or is he more likely to find you fixated on the past, craving the future, and miserable in the present?  The difference amounts to whether and how we are watching and waiting.  Are we walking with God now or are we putting it off until some imagined better time in the future?  Are we willing to walk with God only when circumstances are of our choosing and not until then, or are we ready now no matter what comes our way?

            We can, in the words of St. Paul, “pray without ceasing,” because prayer is much more than merely something we do; it is an expression of who and what we are.  We love forever and we rejoice forever and we know the peace which lasts forever and surpasses our understanding precisely because ‘love’, ‘joy’, and ‘peace’ express what we are in our deepest nature created by God in his own image.  Prayer is the longing of those souls who know they are pilgrims on this earth.  St. Augustine taught us that the human heart, created for God, can never find rest until it rests in God.  If life is about longing, aspiration, and desire, then God is the goal of all that and the final and complete destination.  Prayer allows us to find strength and comfort in God Himself whose loving presence is the glory we seek and for which we were and are created.  Prayer is the very urge of our existence, the longing for wholeness and completeness which nature herself can express only by inarticulate groaning, the love which moves all desires and all the stars.  In prayer we participate in time with the timeless; we do not wait for Heaven to be made real at some point in history, as if history could contain it, but instead live in faith knowing that eternal heaven is the foundation of all reality.  In prayer we take our stand not on the shifting sands of experience and change, but on the solid rock of eternity.  In prayer we are pilgrims on our way rejoicing to where we truly belong, walking in faith so as to return to a promised home we’ve never seen and yet recognize more and more.  This is what it means to watch and wait in the spirit of John the Baptist.  This is what it means to watch and wait in the spirit of this season of Advent.   So let us attend to it.