Second helpings

Luke 21: 25 – 36
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
November 29, 2015 – First Sunday in Advent 
(An Evening at the Table)

Early one Sunday morning a pastor was getting ready for worship. As she was readying her Bible and her sermon on the pulpit, her young daughter asked her about what different events or objects meant in the course of worship.  She asked, “Mommy, what does it mean when a baby has water poured on its head?”  Her mother replied, “It means we welcome that new life into the body of Christ, promising to be its family, and to teach that little one the faith of the church.”  The young girl asked another question, “Mommy, what does it mean when we eat bread and drink juice in church?”  Her mother answered, “The bread is Jesus’ body and the juice is his blood. This is how we remember Jesus and God’s love for us.” “Oh. Then what does it mean when the head usher points at his watch when you’re preaching?”  Slowly shaking her head back and forth and smiling, the pastor said, “Not a thing, honey, not a thing!”

What if the child asked a question about the confession “Christ will come again”?  Could the minister give the same response as to its meaning: not a thing?  Those of us who are what used to be called mainline Protestants—not many of us stop to think about what it would mean to have Jesus the Christ in our midst once again.  In this post-modern age, a dead person, resurrected, ascended into heaven and then coming back to earth again holds little meaning and even much less promise.  So much time and so much violence and bloodshed have washed under the bridge.  Signs in the sun, moon, and stars sound like astrology.  Climate change has brought with it the roar of the seas and the waves.  And yet we see no Son of Man arriving in cloud with power and great glory.  Christ’s return into human history seems more like a fairytale.

And still it is during this holy meal when many Christians give voice to hope and faith again and again when we say “Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Christ will come again.”  We give voice to our desire for justice.  We give voice to our longing for wholeness and healing.  We give voice to our deep need to know that the future is in God’s hands, somebody’s hands as well as our own.  Because underneath all our hope and desire and longing is also our despair and disbelief and fear.  And there are some days and a few nights when we can be tempted to give in and give up.  “I know Christ died.  I’m not sure if Christ is risen.  What does that mean anyway?  Christ coming again?  How long do we have to wait?”

Advent is not only when we prepare for Christ’s birth but also to prepare for Christ’s coming again.  We’re not just waiting for that tiny baby but for the grown man to show up, eager for him to restore justice and establish peace.  Aren’t there days we could all use some healing, some real truth-talking to power, someone to go with us and lead us on that hard road to Jerusalem that lays ahead for all of us?  But like the One who sent him, Jesus seems to be hiding, waiting for us to seek him out and find him.

You know that saying, “We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for?”  What if this second coming of Christ not a supernatural event but the body of Christ, the Church, becoming aware of who we are?  What if we took seriously the radical notion of the priesthood of all believers?  What if we lived as Jesus lived, that is, lived fully?  What if we loved as Jesus loved, that is, loved wastefully?  What if we were as Jesus was, that is, had the courage to be ourselves?[i]

One of my friends said recently that she doesn’t go to church because she is church.  Even though she heard the Church say that people like her would burn in hell, that they had no place there, that God didn’t love them, she saw church in her grandfather, who gave freely to anyone who had need.  Through that love, she decided to be the church she needed, and each day, as best as she can, she shares with others the church within her. 

What if in our lives, we were the church that people need?  What if the second coming of Christ is us making Jesus visible through our actions, our compassion, the truth that needs speaking coming from our lips?  Advent means birth, arrival, dawn, or emergence.  What if Advent is God waiting for us to realize who we really are?  Not saviors of the world, but church—the hands, lips, mind and heart of Christ—in the world.

God is not only generous but extravagant.  Jesus walked among us, showed us God’s unconditional love, restorative justice, and radical forgiveness.  He lived and died, and rose again, giving birth to the Church.  We are Church, the Body of Christ, the second helping of that love, justice, and forgiveness. 

Lord Jesus Christ,

Take our hands

and work with them.

Take our lips

and speak through them.

Take our minds

and think with them.

Take our hearts

and set them on fire

with love for you and all your people,

for your name’s sake,

Amen.

                            (from The Book of Common Order, Church of Scotland)

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[i] John Shelby Spong, A New Christianity for a New World, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 145.