Richard Davenport

December 1, 2024 – First Sunday in Advent

Luke 21:25-36

                We’re now a couple of weeks past Election Day. It’s interesting to me how Election Day and Christmas are alike.  Laurie was talking to someone or other who explained that Thanksgiving is a day, but Christmas is a season.  That’s why you don’t see much  Thanksgiving oriented paraphernalia in stores except for a week or so ahead, and even then you don’t see all that much.  Whereas Christmas stuff is showing up in stores before Halloween.  That means you have a solid 2-2.5 months of Christmas stuff in stores, on the radio and everywhere else.  Then, without any fanfare, by midnight on December 25, it all vanishes as if it had never been there in the first place. 

                Election Day, most especially when there’s a Presidential election, seems to work much the same way.  By late summer you start getting the trickle of pamphlets and fliers in the mail.  Those start to ramp up as we get closer and closer to November.  You start seeing the ads on TV with more and more frequency. People are putting out lawn signs in support of this candidate or that.  Different candidates have debates on TV and are travelling through the area holding rallies and town halls to drum up support.  It all culminates on Election Day, as the various news outlets provide commentary and reports on how the voting is going across the country and showing how things are shaping up in each state and the effects that voting will have on our government.  With Election Day over, the signs come down.  The pamphlets and ads cease.  There’s still discussion and commentary, but it’s all geared toward looking ahead and what will come when people assume office.

                As Christians, we know much of the world deals with Christmas incorrectly.  It isn’t just an American problem.  Most civilized countries in the world that make a big to-do about Christmas all approach it the wrong way.  There’s the big build up where everyone is decorating, where all of the plans are being made, where Christmasy things are on display everywhere.  Then, on December 26th, it’s all gone.  The music is gone.  The decorations are gone.  The food is gone.  The only evidence that there had even been a Christmas is in the leftovers.  The people who haven’t gotten around to taking down their decorations yet.  The massive piles of colored wrapping paper that sit in bags out at the curb.  The live Christmas trees that are hauled out for disposal, their job now done.

                To some extent it’s no surprise people would be eager to be done with Christmas.  Not only has it been everywhere for a couple of months, but we’ve been living in holiday time since late August, when Halloween stuff has been appearing in stores. Between Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, nearly half the year is covered by these holiday seasons.  I think there’s a little bit of burn out from all of that activity.  There won’t be another major holiday that the country as a whole celebrates until Easter, and even that doesn’t get quite the notice that Christmas or Halloween does.

                As Christians, we know the sinfulness of the world is always looking to co-opt anything God does on behalf of his people. We also know that Satan wants to degrade and tear down anything good in the world, especially when it relates to God. Halloween’s expansion into a whole season isn’t necessarily a good or a bad thing.  Though, anything that locks people into a purely consumer mindset is bound to have problems.  If the season is really just about buying stuff, then all of the potential good things about Halloween, like enjoying time with family and seeing the joy in kids’ faces, being thankful for the goodies, and sharing together in something special all get lost.  Still, Halloween doesn’t have anything to do with the life of Christ, and so whether it lasts a day, a week, or a month or two doesn’t necessarily change what the church does.

                Christmas, however, doesn’t work that way.  Christmas didn’t begin as a pagan holiday, or as some kind of commercial money grab.  Christmas brings us to the beginning of Christ’s life, the beginning of God’s life as a mortal being.  It brings us one huge step closer to the end of death’s power over our lives.  It’s no surprise that Satan would want to distract you from this.  It’s no surprise he would want to rob you of the joy of our savior’s arrival in this world by keeping you so busy with the commercial side of the holiday that you never have time to stop and reflect on the power of the Gospel message, that God came to earth as one of us, to live and die as one of us, that we might be saved from our sins and that we might, like him, rise again to new life.

                All of that distraction has already begun, of course. By inundating us with Christmas decorations, pictures of Santa, and sappy music that has little to actually do with Christmas, he works at wearing us out.  You might think that immersing us in the season would work against him. After all, you’d think Satan would want us to think about anything but Jesus.  And that’s true, if Christmas were actually about Jesus.  He works very hard to make Christmas about anything but Jesus.  That way, Jesus isn’t on your mind as the holiday passes and you throw it all out before you have a chance to stop and think about what it all means and why we do any of this stuff in the first place.  Jesus takes a back seat to his own birthday and as goes by life goes back to normal almost immediately.

                I’ve said before that Advent and the end of the church year overlap.  It’s not a cycle, as some religions or philosophers think about it.  We walk through the life of Christ each year and at the end of the year we look forward to Christ’s arrival, much like the Israelites of old looked forward to his arrival.  The end looks much like the beginning, but they are not the same.  As we see with nearly everything God does, when God repeats himself, it isn’t to do the same things over and over again. He takes the old things and does them even better. 

                Advent is all about awaiting the arrival of the savior.  It is about reflecting on the need for our savior and how we are all lost and drifting in darkness.  Advent is about waiting for the light to come.  That’s why our Advent wreath glows a little brighter each week as the light of Christ comes closer to us.  We look forward to Christmas in the church, because, as disciples, we take the opportunity once again to give thanks for the great gift God has given us in sending his Son to earth.  Light blooms in our sin-tainted darkness.  The light calls out to where we may find life. 

                If we go back to the Election Day analogy, the way we treat just about everything God does for us is rather strange.  There’s a lot of anticipation around Election Day. There’s all of the build up. There’s tension.  There’s excitement.  There’s anxiety.  What will the future hold?  Will the upheaval that always comes with a transition be mild or will it be tumultuous? Once Election Day is over, now what? If the candidates you were rooting for won, then really the party is just starting.  You’ve got a few years at least to look forward to of the people you supported getting to work and getting the job done.  That’s what Election Day is all about.

                Christmas is no different in that regard.  When the shepherds came down to see the tiny savior in the manger, they knew the wait was over.  The celebration was just beginning.  He had come to work and he would get the job done.  All who waited for him would be eagerly watching for him to make good on his promises and know that he was doing everything for the good of those he came to save.

                Satan gets us all turned around, putting all of the celebration at the beginning and telling us to forget all about what comes after.  While we walk through the life of Christ and consider again what he has done for us, we don’t truly go back to the beginning.  We don’t go back to a time before Jesus entered the world.  We live in a world where God became a man.  We live in a world where God died so that we may live.  We live in a world were God triumph over all of his enemies.  All of these things continue to be true and give us a reason to celebrate. Every Sunday we gather here is a celebration of the resurrection of our Lord. 

                In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus mentions foreboding times, times when people will be afraid, time of uncertainty and distress.  Many will be worried about what is to come.  It looks a bit like Election Day all over again.  But we should know differently, because the world has been in a place like this before.  Two thousand years ago, the world saw the birth of the savior, and everything was turned upside down.  The impossible had been made possible, and he would continue doing impossible things throughout his ministry, even bringing life in the midst of death.

                As Christians, we know what’s coming, because we’ve seen it before.  When we take the time to reflect on what Christ has done, we know that what comes after the big event is much more important than what comes before.  The celebration is only just beginning.  What God did once, in sending his Son all those years ago, he will do again, except it will be even better than before.  Just like before, there will be uncertainty and upheaval before it happens, but then he will arrive and we will see that all of the distress melts away as the Son of God returns and reigns over his creation forever.

                Jesus warns the disciples and the church as a whole not to get weighed down by the cares of this life, not to be weighed down by dissipation, emotional exhaustion, and laziness.  God’s people are the only ones who know that the beginning reflects the end, that Christmas and Christ’s birth teach us about the end and Christ’s return.  God’s people are the only ones who know that the big event is not the end of the celebration, but the beginning.  We fall victim to all of the things Jesus warns us about and Satan knows how to distract us.  We need Christ’s guidance and his forgiveness.  He comes to earth not just to wash us clean but to lead us so that we may lead the rest of the world.  He shows us how he works so that we can see it in action and know what we truly look forward to.  We await the big celebration, a day, the Last Day, not when everything comes to an end, but when everything finally begins.