A Sermon for the First of Advent using the first and last lines of the Lectionary as bookends...
The days are surely coming....
My youngest brother is returning this week from Korea. He has been there for about 14 months, teaching English with his girlfriend. He is bringing me a Buddha statue for my desk.
During a conversation about this he said, “Buddhism is not so much a religion as a way of life, a way of living...”
When I heard this it immediately sounded wrong – Buddhism is not a religion because it is a way of living... is that not what Christianity is, a way of living? There are far too many people out there who think it is all about believing certain things, all about praying a certain way, (all about coming to church on a Sunday.... )and has nothing to do with the way we live our lives.
Curious that almost every story of the Bible is about how we live, not about what we think.
When we are told that God will fulfill the promises made to our ancestors, made to Abraham, and to Isaac, made to David and to us, as their descendants, we are told that God will cause someone to rise up who will execute justice and righteousness in the land...
The Messiah, the messenger of God, is going to come and remind us how we are supposed to live. Not how to pray, not how we can get into heaven, not who God is, but how we can live.
Think about what you know about the stories of Jesus... Nichodemus came and asked how to get into heaven and Jesus said it is simple.... be born again... and Nichodemus said, “What?” and Jesus never does explain it any further.
The disciples kept on asking over and over how to pray and at one point Jesus gets frustrated and tells them the Lord’s prayer... but that is it... just one universal prayer...
In fact, Jesus never really does argue theology or ecclesiology... he never talks about how we should build churches or who can and cannot preach in them...
Instead, Jesus says over and over and over and over... God is love. God is righteousness. God is action.
Forgive each other, take care of the widow, don’t throw the first stone, pick up Samaritans on the side of the road, heal those who are hurt, welcome outsiders into your family, feed the hungry...
Here is why we have a hard time with all of this. Jesus coming means we have to change. It still does.
My favourite social philosopher of all time is Charles Dickens. If you know him for nothing else, you know him for the character he created, called Ebenezer Scrooge.
Dickens was a messiah of sorts.
He came into Victorian England at a time when everyone thought they were good and Christian and following God... but in fact there were terrible things happening in society with orphanage, slavery, workhouses, poverty and the like.
Dickens England was probably the worst possible place to live unless you were the Aristocracy.
Dickens was raised as an Anglican; he eventually converted the Unitarian Church because of its broader message. His first career was as a Law Clerk... think Bob Crachit in a Christmas Carol. In the evenings he taught himself shorthand in order to escape and become a reporter, then one of England’s most successful novelists.
Dickens's religious beliefs were those of most 19th century British Unitarians. In his will he urged his children to adopt a liberal, tolerant, and non-sectarian interpretation of Christianity, "the teaching of the New Testament in its broad spirit." He recommended they "put no faith in any man's narrow construction" of isolated passages. In The Life of Our Lord, written for his children and not published until 1934, Dickens summarized his faith as "to do good always." He believed humanity, created in the image of the divine, retained a seed of good. He preached the gospel of the second chance. The world would be a better place if, with a change of heart, people were to treat others with kindness and generosity.
In 1843, while he was most active at Little Portland Street chapel, Dickens created the first and greatest of his Christmas books, A Christmas Carol. Around this time Christmas Day was again beginning to be celebrated and the holiday transformed. The story and its characters—Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Crachit and Tiny Tim—defined the holiday's meaning for the English-speaking world as the regenerative spirit of generosity, or what Dickens called his "Carol philosophy." The heart of Dickens's social criticism and his religious message is found in A Christmas Carol.
Here is one of the most memorable quotes from a speech that Scrooge’s cousin berates Scrooge with: “But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round ... as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
Dickens’s was following in Jesus’ footsteps, challenging the way church and state had come to define what was good, what was right, what we were ‘supposed’ to be like. For Charles, people were meant to be kind and generous, righteous and good.
He was one of those voices calling from the wilderness and reminding us that things are about to change – the days are surely coming.
And this is the message of Advent, the message of Christmas, the Message of Scrooge and of Santa. This is what Rudolph and his Island of misfit toys are all about; this is what Frosty and the magic hat is all about... The message is that we can find a different way, God’s way, of love and generosity and hope.
We are preparing for Christmas – the beginning of the message that Jesus came to bring into the world to share with us – and that message is all about a way of living...
Ebenezer Scrooge needed three ghosts to come and point out all of his weaknesses and misunderstandings. Perhaps it is easier for us, we merely need to listen to the stories, to be reminded of the reason for the season. We need to be on guard for the spirit of Goodwill that surrounds this holy season and begins each church year.
The world is not what it is meant to be, and the days are surely coming when we will realize this, or, as the Gospels put it:
“...Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
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