Advent 1 1996 | Luke 4:14-22*

This Advent, Navel-Gazing is Not Enough

A couple of weeks ago, I preached sermon at the nursing home on the parable of the talents. Most of you will recall the story. Jesus tells of a master who gives ten talents to one servant, five to another, and to a third he gives one talent. The first two servants double their money, while the third one decides not to risk anything and buries it in the ground. When the Master returns and finds that the third one had not risked anything, and had not invested or in any way increased his money, he is one very angry master indeed. We might well imagine that if the story were told today, the naughty servant might reply, "Hey, don't get mad at me, I didn't do anything!" Which is precisely the point--he didn't do anything!

Like this man in the parable, most of us are terrible estimators of our own guilt, big and little. Which is one reason why penitential seasons like Advent and Lent are important for us. They are LONG, so we can't just gloss over them; they are also SOLEMN so we can't just laugh it off.

Our tradition teaches us that Advent is a time of expectant preparation, a time to take a personal moral inventory, a time to repent and to renew our commitment to be Christ in the world. But it seems odd that in a time when countless people are starving, when injustice is rampant, when wars rock every corner of our planet and a prosperous slave trade is alive and well in the Sudan, we get the impression from tradition that we should be most concerned with the white lies we've told, the occasional feelings we've hurt, and countless other small transgressions that are part and parcel of our lives.

And while our personal transgressions, small and painful as they are, are important, there seems to be a disparity at work: it's okay to blame yourself and to target personal sins, but - at Advent at least - we must ignore the big stuff that might implicate others. How, we might well ask, did this disparity come about?

I believe it began in the middle ages, when our Western Christian tradition was developing its own liturgical and devotional "style," the King and the Pope were seen as God's representatives on earth. The social and church structures were divinely ordained and to criticize them was tantamount to heresy. This implication extended down the ranks to the local nobles and the local parish. Because of this our tradition has stressed personal, private sin, and has almost completely ignored corporate, or social sins.

In the last five hundred years, our church and civil governments have undergone enormous changes, and for many Christians, the role of prophesy - of speaking out against injustice and other social sins - is integral to what it means to be Christ in the world. And yet these changes have not yet "trickled down" into our traditions of piety. Advent is still about going inside, about personal morality.

This year, navel-gazing for Jesus is not enough. Personal repentance is very important, but it's just part of the picture. So long as a child cries with hunger in our city, we all have reason to repent. So long as federal funding for the helpless and the impoverished is cut without protest, we are culpable. So long as slave-traders break up families in the Sudan without Christians in this country raising a storm of outrage demanding economic sanctions, we are accomplices. The sin that plagues our world is bigger than any of us are capable of alone. Indeed, whether by commission or omission, we do it together.

Advent is not just a time of waiting for Christmas, a sentimental time of waiting for a baby to be born, with its gaze firmly locked on the past - Advent is a sacred time which transcends history. In the present Advent is about waiting for the church to awaken from its slumber, to take the Great Commission seriously, to "make the Word flesh" by truly reaching out and being the presence of Jesus in a troubled world. "Listen!" says Isaiah, "You watchmen raise their voices and shout together in triumph!" That verse is talking about us, friends, and it both charges us with a responsibility to speak out, and provides a promise that if we do so, we shall succeed; we shall "shout together in triumph."

Advent also points us to the future, to the second coming, when, as our reading says, "the whole world from end to end shall see the deliverance of our God." Later in Isaiah we read in more detail about what it will be like when Christ comes again. Second Isaiah says:

"On this mountain God will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. And on this mountain God shall destroy the shadow that is cast over all peoples, the shroud that is spread over all nations. Death will be swallowed up for ever, and God will wipe away tears from all faces, and will take away from all the earth the reproach of the people; for God has spoken." (Isaiah 25)

The Eucharist that we celebrate together every week is a foreshadowing of this great feast, a foretaste, or "appetizer" of the time when all people shall dine at God's table. It is also this fulfillment of history that we wait for in Advent.

In my family we have been waiting for another baby. My sister, pregnant with her fourth boy, has been anxiously waiting for what she swears is the last one to be born. It has seemed like an eternity for her, and for us. Last night I returned home from my Thanksgiving travels to find a message on my machine informing me that I have another Christmas present to buy this year. And for my sisters' sake, I say "thanks be to God" that the waiting is over.

We have lots of waiting to do: waiting for a child, for renewal, for planet-wide redemption. But waiting does not mean being idle or self-obsessed. It certainly doesn't mean "burying our talents" like the naught servant in the parable. "I didn't do anything" is an indictment, not an excuse. In participating in Advent we need to join with Christians of every nation and denomination in this great act of corporate waiting, corporate repentance, and corporate rebirth. For the pain that plagues creation is not the burden of our small and private sins. Navel-gazing is not enough. It is not the eradication of "little white lies" which will bring about Isaiah's great feast, but the eradication of hunger, privilege and injustice. And this is something we have to do together.

When I think of my new nephew--whose name is Terryl, by the way--I am filled with hope--and fear--for the world that this new life must face. For it is not a world of his making, but for any of us who are beyond the age of accountability, it is a world of our making. When on the third Sunday of Advent Episcopalians everywhere pray "Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us," let us do so in the expectant hope that in our striving to be Jesus in our time, we will shake the foundations as much as he did in his own. The second coming will only happen when we start taking this Christianity thing seriously enough to make it happen, and that means working as well as waiting. "Now is the time to wake out of sleep: for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed." Terryl deserves a world worth living in. Your nephews, nieces, and grandchildren deserve the same. In the name of Christ, then, we have some big sins to repent of, to pray for, and to mend. It's Advent folks. Let's get busy. Let us pray.

Holy God, as we wait upon you, so do you also wait upon us. You wait for us to stir from our complacency, to repent of our complicity, to act on behalf of the outcast and the rejected. Walk beside us this week and reveal to us creative ways to be your hands in a world in need of a hand. By the power of your Holy Spirit convict us of our sins of omission as well as commission. Help us to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light, to be watchmen proclaiming your rule of friendship in a hostile world. Inspire us to creative means of being a light where there is no light. Help us to love one another as you have loved us. Help us to love those whom we have not seen and who yet need our help. Wake us from our slumber, for as we wait for you, you wait for us. Amen.