Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Advent is timeless, like a dream. It happens never and always. In Advent we travel back to the very beginnings of time, when our Savior Christ, we are told - by some great mystery of faith -- was begotten of the Father's love "…ere the worlds began to be… Alpha and Omega, … the source, the ending, he." No divisions of time here, no minutes and days and years. Christ simply was, and is, and is to be. The Advent themes of hope and expectation, of warning and readiness, are always relevant. They were just as important to the Jews, waiting all those centuries "in lonely exile" for the coming of their Emanuel, as they were to the medieval monks, self-deprived, earnestly praying for Christ's coming and desperately hoping, for their sacrifices, to be found ready. Hope and expectation, warning and readiness: these themes are relevant to us, as we prepare ourselves spiritually for Christmas, and (on a much larger scale) for Christ's coming again, when time will cease. Don't look at your watch. Don't worry about when. Time doesn't count here. Just be ready.

If we look back too much, and emphasize only those things that were (the Bible, the story of Israel, the old hymns, the little brown church in the vale), our faith becomes dry as dust. Looking back is terribly important in our faith, but our faith is not just looking back. Looking forward too much makes us dreamers, visionaries. Some of that's o.k., but not too much. Dumbledore tells Harry, as he sits too long before the mirror that reflects not what is but what we wish were, "It doesn't do to dwell on wishes, Harry, and forget how to live." But Christians are people with their feet on the ground. We're dreamers, but we don't just dream. The kingdom will come when it will come --meanwhile….

Now listen to St. Paul about how we should live in the meanwhile. The things of this earth are important. We pay our taxes and obey the authorities and go to work each day. Do these things, your day by day obligations, do them well -- but don't get so absorbed in them that you forget what time it is on God's watch. Don't doze off. Don't lose track of time. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Wake up. See what God is doing. Don't wait 'till the last minute, when the alarm clock goes off. Don't squander these precious daylight hours in foolish pastimes. Get out of bed….Dress yourselves in Christ and be up and about.

Thomas Guthrie, the famous Scottish preacher, who rescued homeless children from the streets of Edinburgh and founded for their benefit what were called "the ragged schools," so that even poor children could get an education, used to quote his favorite poem, by G. Linnaeus Banks:

I live for those who love me,
For those who know me true,
For the Heaven that smiles above me,
And awaits my spirit too;
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,
And the good that I can do.

Get out of bed….Dress yourselves in Christ and be up and about. Abraham Lincoln used to say that he always plucked a thorn and planted a rose wherever he thought a rose would grow. My friends, when we come to this Holy Communion, which like Advent also is timeless -- which looks backward to the night Jesus was arrested and beaten, and which looks forward to the day when he will come again -- let us remember that our memory of the past and our hope for the future make us what we are today in the present. It is not without consequence that we believe Christ died for us. It is not without consequence that we look forward to his return. If we are serious about these beliefs, we need to pluck thorns and plant roses. And be ready all the time. There's more coming than just the baby.