Finals and the Coming of Christ

As I have been walking around these past few weeks, talking with students and overhearing them as they study in coffee shops, I would say that most, if not all of you are worried about how you are going to do in your classes. Some of what I have heard is anxiety over getting less than the grade that you want or failing a class all together or turning in a paper that your teacher hates and not being able to do anything about your grade or studying for a test and still not being prepared. I remember these feelings and unfortunately, there isn’t much that I can do to help take your anxieties away. So, when I looked at the lessons for today, I kind of laughed to myself. From Zephaniah we hear, “The Lord has taken away the judgment against you, he has turned away your enemies. The Lord is in your midst, you shall fear disaster no more.” From Philippians, we hear, “Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice. Do now worry about anything, but in everything prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds.” So, according to these writers, you have nothing to worry about. God has taken away the judgments against you and you shall fear disaster no more, therefore rejoice and be glad.

Not so simple, I know. But in these words from today, may be a truth that will help you get through the next week and the rest of your life. But before I get into that, I want to share a story with you.

There once was a man who was caught in a terrible storm. It had been raining and raining and the land around him was beginning to flood. People in the houses around him told him that he should leave like they were. He told them that he was a man of faith and that God was going to save him from the storm. They said their goodbyes and his neighbors left one by one until he was the only one left on the block. The waters kept rising – so much so that he had to climb up to his attic. As he sat there looking out this window and praying to God, a boat came by and offered him a ride. He said no, that he was a person of faith and God was going to save him. The waters kept rising and soon, he had to get on the roof of his house. A helicopter came by to rescue him and he refused saying that he was a man of faith and that God was going to save him. The waters kept rising and soon, the man died from drowning. When he reached heaven, he angrily approached God and said, “Lord, I prayed to you for days to save me from the storm and you left me there to drown. Why didn’t you come and save me?” God replied, “I sent your neighbors, a boat and a helicopter – but you sent them all away. I did my part, but you didn’t do yours! You ignored all the help that I sent to you.”

In the Gospel of Luke, we once again hear about repentance. We have all hear this word many times. I preached about it last Sunday, and again on Wednesday. And for John the Baptist, it is more than just saying that you are sorry. I really like what theologian Frederick Buechner says about repentance. He says that it is “to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, “I’m sorry,” than to the future and saying, “Wow!” Repentance means changing your life so that you will be able to let the bad go and let the good in. Repentance is changing your life so that there is hope. John the Baptist is not telling those around him to give up who and what they are – rather, he tells them what they must change about their life style to turn their lives more toward God. He tells the crowd to help those around them by giving them coats or food. He tells the tax collectors, who made their living from overcharging people, to only charge them their proper amount. He tells the soldiers that they are to only do their jobs and that they are not to take money from them. John is telling them to change things that are doable and practical. He is telling them to change the way that they live so they can help others, because in helping others, and changing the pieces of their lives that they have control over, they will begin to prepare themselves for the coming of the Messiah.

So, how are you simultaneously preparing for the coming of Christ and the coming of your finals? You may not see how the two are connected but they are. The man in the boat thinks that God saving him means a lightning bolt or a ray of sunshine from heaven, rather than the practical help of those around him. Our life with God has to be practical. We can’t expect it to be like something from the movies, but we should expect it to be something from everyday life.

Preparing for finals many times means calming down enough to let the information sink in or to let the creativity flow. Preparing for God, and noticing God in our lives is much the same – calming down to let the world around us, the people around us, the beauty around us sink in and letting the creative energy of the Holy Spirit flow through us. We cannot say that God is over here in church, or in my family life and not also know that God is in the tests and papers, in the stress and anxiety. God is in everything that we do and is with us each step of the way. So, repenting means changing ourselves so that we are aware of God and in turn changing ourselves to come to know God in a new way in our lives.

I now want to give something to each of you. It is a small coin with the Episcopal Shield on one side and the beginning of the prayer of St. Francis on the other. “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” The prayer of St. Francis is all about turning ourselves over to God so that we can do God’s work in the world. For you, right now, doing God’s work means learning so that you can then go out and make the world a better place. So, this week, as you are studying, take this into your hand and pray – you can pray the prayer of St. Francis, you can say a simple prayer – God, help me. You can just hold it in your hand and be still, knowing that God is with you, knowing that God is a part of all that you do.

Advent, this time of preparation is about focusing on your relationship with God and that relationship begins with prayer and by bringing God into your future. As you go to study, goof around, sleep, travel home – whatever it is that you will be doing over these next few weeks, remember to bring God with you in all that you do – “and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds.” Amen.

Preparing Your Body, Mind and Soul

The church I just came from always had a Christmas Party on one of the Mondays leading up to Christmas. The week before the party, we had a secret Santa gift exchange where you would draw a name out of a hat and then shower that person with personal, small gifts the week before the party and then the night of, you were supposed to try and guess who was your secret Santa. This was always lots of fun as you were given things throughout the week and you shared with others what you had been given and tried to figure out who had put the small gift on your desk. Now, not everyone participated, it was an optional thing, and, there was one staff person who refused to participate and was quite vocal about how he thought it was wrong to celebrate and share gifts at all before the actual night of Christmas Eve. We loving called him Deputy BaHumBug of Deputy Bah for short. If things went missing around the church, he would blame it on secret Santa, if something went wrong, it was a secret Santa’s fault. This was all done with lots of joking and fun, and at the same time, there was always a serious tone in his voice and actions. He truly savored the time of Advent and preparation.

Each year, as the secret Santa exchange came up at staff meeting, we knew we could count on him for some moaning and groaning and commentary about how we should all wait until Christmas and how commercial everything had gotten. To some extent, he was right. The commercialization of Christmas has gone to an extreme. This year as I was trying to find a Halloween costume for my son, they already had the trees and lights up in the seasonal section of Target. When I saw this, I sighed and walked on. There will probably be a time when you can go to Target and get your back to school supplies and your fake Christmas tree all at the same time. And even through all of this commercialization and even though I often fear that we lose the real sense of Christmas, I love a good Christmas party. I often find that Christmas parties are a form of preparation for me. It is a time to be with others, to reflect on the past and to look to the coming year. It is a time to be with people and get out of my head. It is a time to be surrounded with the music of the season, the story of Christmas, the symbols and the celebration of Christmas. All of these things can help prepare me on my path of Advent as I continue to try to find Christ in my life - as I try to come back and repent and begin anew with my walk of faith and life with God. Christmas parties are a great time to do some of this preparation of the heart and soul, and they are not the only preparation that we have to do in order to be ready to receive the Christ child once again.

The reading for today begins with a long list of people – those people who were in some kind of position of power at that time. Then he tells us that, “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.” God came and spoke to John and sent him into the region around the Jordan to proclaim a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John quoted from the prophet Isaiah saying, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

The reading from Luke begins by telling us where we are and who is ruling in the world only to then point to where we are going and who is coming. It is a way of saying to those around him – we are here – and now we are going somewhere else, somewhere new, somewhere totally different and we get there through repentance and baptism. We get there by making a path to God, knocking down things that are our obstacles (which often times means ourselves) and making way for God to come into our lives.

The beginning of the story of John the Baptist is a reminds us that we have much to do to prepare for Christ coming into our lives. There isn’t a prescription or a set path, for everyone’s path to Christ is different, but one thing is the same. We all have to repent, to turn around and find Christ over and over again in order to live the life that God intends for us to live.

Now, if you are like me, the word sin, doesn’t necessarily translate. Are the little things that we do sins? Or is it just the big things that we know are really bad? Some of my clergy colleagues don’t want to use the word sin because they think that it doesn’t translate. There is some truth to that, especially if you grew up in a tradition where sin was talked about a lot. However, what is sin? To sin is to do something that brings you away from God. Sin does not have to be the big, bad, ugly actions such as murder or stealing. Sin is anything that does not allow us to live out the primary command from Jesus and that is to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. We are all sinful people and John knew that because he, too, was sinful. We all are, because we are human and to be human means to mess up.

John, was sent to preach to people about God in a new way – “to preach a baptism of repentance that led to the forgiveness of sins. John's baptism was symbolic. It represented a reorientation on the part of the sinner toward God. But it did not forgive sins in itself.” [i]

John instructs us to repent of anything and everything that might hinder ultimate faithfulness to Jesus. He invites us to make our crooked ways straight, to flatten all terrain, and to prepare space for the birth of Christ into our lives. John is not lecturing us on how and why we are all going to hell, but rather inviting us to repent and find the way to God again and again.

Advent is a time for us to all focus on what is taking us away from God and what we need to repent of in order that we will be ready for Christ to come again. Russell Pregeant says that, "The function of Advent is to focus on...the always-to-be-expected coming of Christ into our experience, and the specific contribution of repentance-texts is encourage reflection upon all the ways in which our lives do not in fact manifest the love and devotion that are appropriate to relationships with God and our neighbors."

Advent is a time for us to realign ourselves. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, it is a time when we are to prepare of God coming into our lives and make our path to God straight. All the low places in our lives need to be filled and every mountain, or all the road blocks need to be leveled off. We need to make our crooked ways and our rough places straight and smooth in preparation for Christ entering into our hearts and souls once again on Christmas. In doing this preparation work, we are ready to find God again and again. I challenge all of is in the next few moments of silence to lift up to God all those things that are separating us from God. All the worries, all the resentments, all the stress, all the emotions that separate us from people. And then know, that as we say the prayer of confession, that all those things that you just named are given to God – all those things done and left undone, all those things that cause us not to love, all those things that we have thought or said or done that have taken us away from God’s love and from the love of those around us – each and every one of these things is forgiven. Each and every one of these things is gone and you are able to then go forward on your path to God and find forgiveness and wholeness.

Let’s take a few moments of silence to name all of those things that we wish to give to God, knowing that we are forgiven and loved.

---

[i] Larry Broding, word-sunday.com, Advent 2, Yr C, 2006