The Church of the Redeemer

The First Sunday in Advent

December 1, 2002

Over the past several weeks our lectionary has focused on the concept of final judgment as the overture to the age to come. It is that time period; Christians often refer to as the second coming when Christ will usher in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.  Throughout the past several weeks the scripture texts have explored this period through the use of the metaphor of the wedding feast, in which the improperly dressed guest is thrown out of the feast, and the bridesmaids are locked out for not being properly prepared, last week we heard Christ refer to the Day of Judgment as a time when the sheep will be separated from the goats.  This morning we have the final installment of these passages in which Christ warns us to “keep alert for we do not know when the time will come.” 

            But what is it that we are to keep alert or be prepared for?  As we look back on the readings of the past weeks the theme has been consistent, there will come a day when evil will be defeated, and life will return to as it was on earth before the fall. It will be a world that will be equal to that found in the Garden of Eden.  It will be a time where God’s peace and love will rule the earth, a time and a place where there will be no human suffering or death and justice and equality will prevail for all.  It will be a time when that utopian society that so many have dreamed of, but have failed to create, will become reality because it will be created by God’s direct assistance and intervention.

            That is the world to come, but between now and then is that time of judgment.  That reality in the Gospels that few of us wish to talk about, and most preachers try to avoid preaching on because it tells us even in the context of Christian faith, a faith that emphasizes God’s undeniable love and grace for us, there is still a component of accountability and expectation. It is this time of reckoning, this time of judgment that our Gospel calls us to be prepared and alert for.  It is the time of Judgment, that St. Paul assures the Church at Corinth they are prepared for when he wrote, [God] “will strengthen [them] to the end, so that [they] will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

            Several weeks ago, when discussing the concept of the judgment we will face, I shared my spiritual director’s understanding of this event will be like.  For him, this event we will face will be as if we are escorted into a large ornate courtroom at which time we will be told to stand before God as judge.  As we stand before God, all those whose lives we have touched will surround us.  And the question we will be asked to answer will be, how have we loved.   However, as I have thought about this vision of Judgment Day, I have realized there is another question that we will be faced to answer first.   How have we, that is you and me as individuals, how have we allowed God to love us? 

            It is only when we internalize God’s love for us that we possess the foundation upon which to love others. In the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Church at Corinth, we have what is perhaps one of the most beautiful passages of St. Paul’s writing.  Better known as the love chapter, we have all heard it read hundreds of times, as it has become a standard passage for weddings and now for funerals as well.  Because of the context in which it has been most widely read, Paul’s discussion has become so confused and distorted that most believe this passage is a discussion on our need to love others.  But if the truth were to be told, the passage is a conversation on our need to have God’s love for us in our lives.  In this passage Paul confirms for us that God’s love is the foundation upon which all our ability to love and give love is based, while providing a description of what the true love of God is like.  St. Paul wrote, “ If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have [God’s] love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have [God’s] love, I am nothing.  If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have [God’s] love, I gain nothing.  [God’s] love is patient; [God’s] love is kind; [God’s] love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.  GOD’S LOVE NEVER ENDS.” (1COR. 13:1-8a)

             God’s love is that perfect, unconditional love for us that we can find nowhere else in this universe but through God. It is also that love that when we come face to face with we become overwhelmed and horrified.  God’s love is horrifying; because when we encounter it we are forced to accept how inadequate and unworthy we are of that love.  God’s love is overwhelming, because despite how unworthy and inadequate we may feel or truly be, God still wants us to accept his loving gifts of grace and acceptance.   This is why I strongly believe that the Day of Judgment has little to do with God determining our individual eligibility to enter the Kingdom, but is more about our own willingness to face ourselves and to truly allow God to love us.  If we look back to last week’s story concerning the sheep and the goats, the sheep are those who were able to humble themselves before the Lord and allow God to embrace them, while the goats are those who could not and have doomed themselves to eternal damnation.

            Writer and poet, Maya Angelou, in her memoir entitled, “ Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now” describes when she first realized the depth of God’s love for her with the following words.  “ One day the teacher, Frederick Wilkerson, asked me to read to him.  I was twenty-four, very erudite, very worldly.  He asked me that I read from Lessons of Truth, a section that ended with these words: ‘God loves me.’  I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, ‘Read it again.’  I pointedly opened the book, and I sarcastically read, “ God loves me.”  He said, ‘again.’  After about the seventh repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love Me, Maya Angelou.  I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything.  For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with God constitutes the majority?

            How many of us are like Maya Angelou, who have heard and read the words “God loves me” over and over again but have never allowed these words to sink into the depths of our hearts and souls.  How many of us need a teacher like Maya Angelou’s who asks us to repeat the words, “God loves me” in order for it to sink in?  Despite the fact we are once again preparing to celebrate God’s greatest gift of love to us, the Christ child, most of us comprehend God’s love on an intellectual level. We will never understand the depths of God’s love for us until we comprehend it with our hearts and souls.  It is only then that we can look forward to Christ’s return with the assurance and anticipation that St. Paul talked about in this morning’s passage from first Corinthians. 

            So, this morning, this First Sunday in Advent, Christ calls us to be alert, to be alert for two things.  First, for the signs of his return when he will usher in the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, this is the event that we as Christians have anxiously anticipated with great hope and excitement for over 2000 years.  Nobody knows when that time will come, and it may not come in our life times but we must remain alert with joyful anticipation.  And second, we are called to be alert and unafraid to open our hearts and souls to the flow of God love grace in our lives as demonstrated to us through God’s most precious gift of the Christ child, this is an event that is available to us each day, and can be just seconds away for you and me, if we are willing to let God in.

 Amen

The Rev. Craig R. Swan

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