Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
December 13, 2009—Third Sunday in Advent
Zephaniah 3:14-20

Zephaniah 3:14-20 Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The LORD has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the LORD.

I. BEGINNING

I hate waiting. I am not a patient person. I was that way long before our instant culture ratcheted up our expectations for instant gratification. I am one of those people who would rather drive 5 miles out of my way to keep moving rather than move slowly through dense traffic. My therapist told me that perhaps the reason I am always running late for things is that to me the embarrassment of being late is less painful than the prospect of getting somewhere and having to wait for it to start. The next appointment I had with her, I was there right on time, a couple of minutes early, even. And she made me sit there and wait for about 5 minutes. That’s why she’s such a great therapist.

I don’t like waiting at all.

And so it’s somewhat odd that Advent is one of my favorite times of year, because Advent is a season of waiting. It is a season of expectant hope, of patience, of keeping watch. It’s a season of waiting, and I don’t like waiting.

I remember how difficult it was as a kid to wait for Christmas. That catalog from JCPenney would show up sometime in October and from then on the long, interminable wait for December 25 would begin. The days crawled along with agonizing slowness. Especially once you got into December. It seemed like Christmas would never get here.

Doing what I do for a living, I don’t mind Christmas taking a while to get here. I never feel ready for it when it does arrive. But I do find myself expectant. I do find myself waiting. But waiting for what?

II. ESCHATOLOGY

For those of you who have ever been in my religion class, or who’ve ever had the patience to sit through me talking about this kind of stuff around the office, you’ll know that Christian faith resides on a continuum of eschatological thought. Eschatology is what a person thinks about the end of the world. In the Christian tradition, it refers to one’s attitude about the Kingdom of God, that reality that breaks into the world setting right all that is wrong. Much like what we read about in tonight’s reading from Zephaniah and Isaiah.

If you believe the Kingdom of God is here already, you have what is called a present or a realized eschatology. If you believe that the Kingdom of God is yet to come, then you have what is called a futurist eschatology.

Those who have a realized eschatology, as a general rule, tend to focus on Christ’s divinity and power, on gifts of the Spirit. They tend to have little church structure, downplay the sacraments, trend toward sectarianism, and tend to have a very high view of Christian nature: the Christian as a morally perfect, perhaps even sinless person.

Those who have a futurist eschatology, on the other hand, tend to focus on Christ’s humanity and suffering, have more church structure, have an ecumenical orientation, and have a more “pragmatic” view of human nature: the Christian is no better a person than anyone else.

The former sees the Kingdom of God primarily as a spiritual reality, usually located within the community of believers, that is present in the here and now. The latter sees the Kingdom of God primarily as a material reality, which given the brokenness of the world, the violence, suffering, injustice and death, is not present in the here and now. In reality, most Christians are both/and: the Kingdom of God is both present and future reality.

But if I were to have to pick which side of that divide I am on, I would definitely have to say I am a futurist in my eschatology. The Kingdom is not yet here.

I am still waiting for the Kingdom.

III. WAITING FOR THE KINGDOM

It’s not an easy wait. And I am no more patient waiting for it than I am for anything else. And all the reasons for my impatience are precisely the reason I am an Advent Christian.

I look around and I see so many things wrong. I see innocents suffer. People around the world–in Burma, Sudan, Palestine, Iran, Somalia–living under oppression. Children who will grow up knowing nothing but lives of fear and brutal repression.

I see the disparity between rich and poor growing. Homeless upon the streets of the world’s wealthiest country. Displaced veterans reduced to asking for handouts. Women with their children living upon the streets. Broken down men sitting beside roadways with handmade cardboard signs begging food or money.

I see young children die of disease or random tragedy. Seemingly meaningless accidents claim lives of promise. Young lives snuffed out through recklessness of self or others.

Violence on the streets of our cities, claiming generations of our youth, killing our children with stray bullets, subjecting neighborhoods to fear and endless cycles of poverty.

So much brokenness. So much pain. So much heartbreak. So much evidence that the Kingdom is not here yet. There is a longing for that Advent of God, a longing so beautifully expressed by that old carol:

O come thou dayspring, come and cheer
thy people by thy justice here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death’s dark shadow put to flight.

There is a deep, deep longing to see the world renewed, restored, and redeemed. A deep longing to set things right, to erase the pain and the sorrow. To vanquish all that breaks our hearts.

I suppose that one could simply give up. Adopt an air of negativity and cynicism. Renounce all hope in the world’s salvation.

But that is not the response of the Christian.

For we believe that the one we await this Christmas, is the one who began the restoration of the world itself. The one who is to usher in the Kingdom in its fullness, has already begun the process in our midst. That he who suffered and died upon the cross, rose again–vanquishing all the death, brokenness and heartbreak that the world had ever known or would ever know. In this child, whom we await at Christmas, The Kingdom is present in small ways, glimpses, foretastes, that convince us that it will come in its fullness.

And so we do not despair. We may rightfully lament the brokenness of the world. But we do not give up. We wait.

IV. END

But the power of our Christian faith is in the manner of our waiting.

Our waiting is not passive. Like sitting in a doctor’s office waiting for an appointment. Or waiting anxiously for the toys to arrive on Christmas. No, we wait actively .

We wait in a manner befitting what we’re waiting for. We live out the Kingdom, while we wait for it. We wait for love, we live out love. We wait for peace. We live out peace. We wait for the vindication of hope, we live out hope. We wait for justice, we live out justice. We wait for joy, we live out joy.

Though not established officially in the liturgy, the third Sunday in Advent is often associated with joy. We follow Sundays of hope and love with a Sunday of Joy. We lighten the penitential purple with the joyful pink (technically it’s called “rose”). But it has long been a tradition in advent and lent to diminish the penitential mood of the season by injecting into it the joy that we are called to feel, as a reminder of the joyful hope and anticipation we are called to bear.

And so, even as we wait, we do so not gloomily or in despair. Not with futility, as if we were waiting for Godot. But we wait with hope, with love, with justice. And we wait with joy. A joy captured so well in the words of the old hymn:

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.