Sermon Notes for November 27th
November 27, 2005
Mark 13:24-37
“Keep Awake”
1. Whether or not you believe in intelligent design or evolution, or both, there is a great deal of hard evidence to the effect that human life has been on this planet for no more than about two million years and no less than about one hundred thousand years, depending on how one defines human life. And, if you assume that to be fully human, then a person must have a brain sufficiently developed to become both self-conscious and self-aware, something that would include the ability to live in the medium of time. To be conscious of time as we now know it means that we are able to remember the past and to anticipate the future. It also involves the ability to think abstractly so that sounds can be turned into symbols called words, which in turn enables language to develop. If this is your definition, then one would probably have to say that human life has not really existed for very long at all – in the bigger scheme of things. This is because, by this definition, we are talking about recorded history. Recorded history being something that requires a written language.
Now there is a huge emotional price to pay for being what we are as self-conscious, self-aware, time-oriented abstract thinking human. And that price involves living with chronic unabated anxiety, because we necessarily are forced to anticipate our own deaths and thus are forced to wage an unending, but always losing, battle for our own survival. In short, we are born, we live, and unless somebody comes up with some miracle discovery – we die.
In fact, this weekend, a good friend and I were discussing retirement. One of his acquaintances has parents who lived to be ninety. So, figuring that he might live that long or longer, he is planning to go on working into his seventies in order to build up a larger retirement fund. Something he might not do, if he expected to live a shorter life.
But, as my friend lamented, we just don’t know how long we will live so it is hard to know how exactly to plan your retirement. You may smile at this idea … but my friend is one of those people sometimes called control-freaks. He likes to have things under control. But, unfortunately, it just can’t be done!
2. Well, we would all like to have things under control wouldn’t we?. Because, whether we believe in creation science, intelligent design, or just plain hard evolution … the reality is still the same. Life is uncertain … and there is a lot of anxiety which comes along with being a fully conscious self aware human being.
In fact, one of the basic indicators we have of being human in the first place is that we have anxiety. But, its not fun. And people will often try to eliminate that anxiety in many different ways. Drugs, for instance. And alcohol are good ways to temporarily block out that anxiety. Used in relatively small amounts – they can provide an enjoyable experience at a party or a wedding or celebration. But used in large amounts they become addicting both emotionally and physically and they can destroy a person’s ability to function, make decisions, and even love other people. Not good.
Same thing with all other substances and behaviors that become addicting (like workaholism, for instance). They all are ways of temporarily removing anxiety. But, in the long run, they destroy our humanity. Which is why a workaholic doesn’t like to take a vacation … because … with too much time on ones hands to think about things … bang … back comes the anxiety.
Religion and Politics can also be ways of eliminating anxiety. I’m talking, of course, about the more extreme forms of religious and political belief. In these forms of behavior, people strive to forget who they are in their absolute adherence to some form of ideology and are even willing to die for it. Sometimes they are called martyrs and when they are willing to kill others as well as themselves they are called terrorists. In Jesus time there were many who were willing to sacrifice themselves in the Jewish struggle with the Roman Empire … they were called Zealots. Jesus, however, did not wish to kill anyone. He died for a different reason. Jesus was a martyr. But that’s another story for a different time – like Lent and Easter.
3. Of all the world religions, the Hebrew religion is the most historically based of all. The Hebrews were conscious of history from the very start. It all began with a promise from God – to Abraham to make him the father of many people and nations. The God of the Jews dwelt among them and acted within history. Through Moses … he led them out of Egypt. When dark times came … God spoke to the prophets and they spoke to the people. In the Old Testament reading for this Sunday, Isaiah prophesies these words from God:
1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!
For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
4 Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?
6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.
8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look upon us, we pray, for we are all your people.
4. 1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!!
Isaiah’s word were part of the historical and religious background in which Jesus spoke to his followers. In those days it was not doubted for one moment that the Jews were God’s chosen people and that one day they would be lifted up before all people … but they had long since given up the idea (at least most of them) that this would happen through ordinary means. After all, had not God intervened to save them in Egypt – why would not God do it again.
And so, the people waited for the day of the Lord, which would be a time of terror and trouble in which the world would be shaken to its foundations … and the judgment would come to be followed by a new age and new glory – the millennium.
Now, what is the point of believing something like this? What did this do for the Jewish people?
Well, it gave them an unalterable hope. Hope that in spite of all things to the contrary … God had not abandoned them … and that God would come again to save them …
1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!! – the words of Isaiah are really a kind of prayer.
This is the world into which Jesus came preaching the “Good News.” A world in which God acts in history.
And naturally, the disciples wanted to know how Jesus would interpret these prophecies which were well known to all far and wide.
5. Now Jesus faced a difficult problem. He knew that the people were waiting. He understood that the people were desperate. They needed hope. He could not disappoint them.
Yet, at the same time, Jesus understood that were he to become too specific about he details … it would transform this whole business of the last judgment into a waiting game.
Waiting for Jesus.
And it would become a guessing game. And instead of living out their lives as God wishes, people would become totally absorbed in the business of interpreting the sign and events …as harbingers of the future. They would become control freaks … trying to know exactly in advance when and where it would all happen.
And their ultimate sense of hope in the very immediate presence and power of God’s love would be transformed into a formula … for further despair. For to believe in the immanent return of Christ is to despair … of life itself … and to give up … totally.
So, while Jesus does not specifically prophesy the exact nature, time, and place of the end of the world and the last judgment … he doesn’t deny it either. Be alert, he says. Be awake. It could come any time … even without warning. What a disappointment!! Here we thought we would get the definitive answer and know for sure … what a bunch of control freaks we are – aren’t we? But Jesus doesn’t fall for it.
What does he say? But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the son, but only the Father.
It’s right there in the Bible … plain as day … Mark chapter 13 verse 32.
6. To be a Christian then is to live with the expectation of God’s ultimate authority over human life … and to know that no matter what happens … God is with us … and because of this … we can live with hope … and expectancy … no matter what happens.
And this is how we are to live … as human being in the midst of history … in the midst of uncertainty … in the midst of all the anxiety … about what the future … might bring and even about our own death – the greatest mystery of all.
Hope in the midst of uncertainty … that’s the message of Jesus on this first Sunday of Advent in the year 2005.
What’s the alternative? Hopelessness and futility. Back when I was in college, the memory of the devastation of World War II, especially in Europe was still in the air … and the ominous possibility of nuclear war hung over modern civilization … and the existentialist writers like John Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were all the rage … in short, as far as they were concerned there was no hope … as exemplified in Thomas Becket’s famous play … Waiting for Godot … who never shows up …! For civilization seemed, at that time … to be hopeless … like the famous Greek myth of Sisyphus who the gods had condemned to ceaselessly rolling a rock up to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. As a result, the Gods thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
And, if that is all there is … to life … then it is all absurd … it is futile … meaningless …
And, Christian or not … who has not felt that way sometime in our life … when it all seemed for not … and life wasn’t working out … and you wondered “what is the point of it all?”
7. The alternative … then … is that the ultimate meaning … the hope for our lives comes from outside of history … from God …
This is the message of Jesus … this is the Christian message of Advent … a message of hope in the midst of hopelessness.
But, nevertheless, it is a hope that must be lived out in the midst of anxiety … and uncertainty … for it is not a magic wand … which will sweep away all our fears … it is not a magic pill that we take that will suddenly … make us forget our humanity …
No, there is no ultimate remedy from being human in this life …
Let’s face it, being human requires courage … courage in the face of uncertainty …
And the courage to look within ourselves … with honesty …
8. And to look within ourselves … is to go on a journey … a spiritual journey … for all spiritual growth means going somewhere we have never been … or where we have forgotten …
And that is what the season of Advent is all about … a journey …
So, like the famous wise men … the magi … we will journey back in time … following the star … to Bethlehem … to see once more the Christ child born in a stable which is really just a metaphor for Christ being born in our hearts …
And, this is both an inner journey … and an outward journey …
And to go on this journey we will have to let some things go … in order to get there…
What will we let go this Advent season? … Think for a moment … what are the things that you need to let go of if Christ is to be born in your heart …?
What will you let go of ….?
9. Nowadays, Christmas is such a mixed bag … The other day I read about the recent uproar about how Bill O’Reilly believes that the greeting “Happy Holidays” is offensive to Christians who are celebrating the Christmas Season.
Some people are so upset that they plan to sue schools and businesses who attempt to censor the celebration of Christmas.
Wait a minute? I thought that was what churches were for …? In fact, I have often resented the co-optation of Jesus by the commercial world. Oh, I’m not that upset. I’m not going sue anyone for trying to make money selling Christmas ornaments and Santa Claus decorations. It just seems to me that it’s all about stuff that is on the surface… that’s right … superficial stuff. And, if anything, it seems to me that Jesus was anything but superficial.
I’m all for presents and getting together with friends … and having a nice meal but let’s not let it get out of control.
10. Well, we just got down with Thanksgiving … and all the hoopla about the Pilgrims. But, the truth is those same Pilgrims believed that Christmas had gotten totally out of hand with all the drinking, eating, and partying, so they got rid of Christmas all together. That’s right; there was no celebration of Christmas in the New England colonies from the time the Pilgrims landed until the American Revolution – over 200 years.
It all started with the Puritan Revolution in England. Once account states that:
In 1641, the King, at the request of Parliament of January 8, 1641, had ordered a monthly fast, which would be kept on the last Wednesday of each month. [10] As it happened, Christmas fell on the last Wednesday of December, 1644. Parliament was then faced with a dilemma: the feast or the fast. On December 19, 1644, after some debate, Parliament made up its mind and decreed that December 25th was to be observed as a day of fasting and repentance.
Parliament wrote, in part:
Whereas some doubts have been raised, whether the next fast shall be celebrated, because it falls on the day which heretofore was usually called the feast of the nativity of our Savior; the lords and commons in parliament assembled do order and ordain, that public notice be given, that the fast appointed to be kept the last Wednesday in every month ought to be observed, till it be otherwise ordered by both houses; and that this day in particular is to be kept with the more solemn humiliation, because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this feast, pretending the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights, being contrary to the life which Christ led here on earth, and to the spiritual life of Christ in our souls, for the sanctifying and saving whereof, Christ was pleased both to take a human life, and to lay it down again. [11]
It is said that many contemporaries reported that this pronouncement was met with widespread opposition and disturbances throughout England – even including a few Presbyterian ministers. It turns out that the people did not want their Christmas – however flawed in its observance – to be abolished. [12]
11. Feast or Fast! Talk about mixing politics and religion! No wonder, the founding fathers made it clear that they wanted a distinct separation of church and state.
Well, the whole Christmas business has been a dilemma ever since the Catholic Church made it an official feast day … or celebration … in part to counter the tendency of pagan Rome to worship the sun … on the winter solstice …
In short it is a mixed bag … frankly I am a little tired of it … I’m for common sense … really … for instance when I was in Spain three years ago … they weren’t even putting up decorations until about two weeks beforehand …
My view is for moderation … don’t over do it … after all you can’t enforce religion on someone and have it work … and there is no guarantee that you can make yourself happy just by overeating, spending too much money … or by inviting people to dinner that you normally don’t see the rest of the year …
On the other hand, you can make yourself happy … by spending a little time … being grateful for what is good in life …by appreciating relationships with those you love and who love you … by giving something to those who are needy … (like filling one of the food baskets our church will be putting together) … by donating blood at the blood drive … or serving at the food shelf or the soup kitchen (our UMW will be doing the one between Christmas and New Years) … or, by turning off the TV and the radio … and lighting a few candles and watching the snow come down outside on a winter’s night … or taking time to call a good friend in a far away city who you haven’t talked to for a while …
12. But most of all – you can make the Advent Journey a successful one … by letting God come down into your heart …
And I’m not talking about Jesus returning for the Last Judgment … but about Jesus being born in your heart … right here and now …
And if Jesus does come into your heart … well, the outside world … may not be changed all that much … trouble will still happen, wars will continue … and life will still be uncertain … but, I think you just might see life a little differently … and little more hopefully … a little more lovingly … than you do now.
But, and here is the catch … you might have to travel a little lighter on this Advent Journey … you might even have to let go of some things … Have you been thinking about it? How about it? What could it be? What one thing … could you let go of this Advent … that would make your Journey to Christmas a more joyful and peaceful one …
Would it be to let go of some resentment … some disappointment … some sense of grief and loss … some doubt or fear … What is it?
Well, let’s all think about it … this week. And, in the meantime, let us heed the words of Jesus … who said … “It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his workers in charge, each with his work to be done, he commands them to be on the watch.”
“Keep Awake,” the master says. “Keep Awake.” Keep Awake during this Advent … for Jesus is certainly coming … but we just don’t know when …”
Mark 13:24-37
“Keep Awake”
1. Whether or not you believe in intelligent design or evolution, or both, there is a great deal of hard evidence to the effect that human life has been on this planet for no more than about two million years and no less than about one hundred thousand years, depending on how one defines human life. And, if you assume that to be fully human, then a person must have a brain sufficiently developed to become both self-conscious and self-aware, something that would include the ability to live in the medium of time. To be conscious of time as we now know it means that we are able to remember the past and to anticipate the future. It also involves the ability to think abstractly so that sounds can be turned into symbols called words, which in turn enables language to develop. If this is your definition, then one would probably have to say that human life has not really existed for very long at all – in the bigger scheme of things. This is because, by this definition, we are talking about recorded history. Recorded history being something that requires a written language.
Now there is a huge emotional price to pay for being what we are as self-conscious, self-aware, time-oriented abstract thinking human. And that price involves living with chronic unabated anxiety, because we necessarily are forced to anticipate our own deaths and thus are forced to wage an unending, but always losing, battle for our own survival. In short, we are born, we live, and unless somebody comes up with some miracle discovery – we die.
In fact, this weekend, a good friend and I were discussing retirement. One of his acquaintances has parents who lived to be ninety. So, figuring that he might live that long or longer, he is planning to go on working into his seventies in order to build up a larger retirement fund. Something he might not do, if he expected to live a shorter life.
But, as my friend lamented, we just don’t know how long we will live so it is hard to know how exactly to plan your retirement. You may smile at this idea … but my friend is one of those people sometimes called control-freaks. He likes to have things under control. But, unfortunately, it just can’t be done!
2. Well, we would all like to have things under control wouldn’t we?. Because, whether we believe in creation science, intelligent design, or just plain hard evolution … the reality is still the same. Life is uncertain … and there is a lot of anxiety which comes along with being a fully conscious self aware human being.
In fact, one of the basic indicators we have of being human in the first place is that we have anxiety. But, its not fun. And people will often try to eliminate that anxiety in many different ways. Drugs, for instance. And alcohol are good ways to temporarily block out that anxiety. Used in relatively small amounts – they can provide an enjoyable experience at a party or a wedding or celebration. But used in large amounts they become addicting both emotionally and physically and they can destroy a person’s ability to function, make decisions, and even love other people. Not good.
Same thing with all other substances and behaviors that become addicting (like workaholism, for instance). They all are ways of temporarily removing anxiety. But, in the long run, they destroy our humanity. Which is why a workaholic doesn’t like to take a vacation … because … with too much time on ones hands to think about things … bang … back comes the anxiety.
Religion and Politics can also be ways of eliminating anxiety. I’m talking, of course, about the more extreme forms of religious and political belief. In these forms of behavior, people strive to forget who they are in their absolute adherence to some form of ideology and are even willing to die for it. Sometimes they are called martyrs and when they are willing to kill others as well as themselves they are called terrorists. In Jesus time there were many who were willing to sacrifice themselves in the Jewish struggle with the Roman Empire … they were called Zealots. Jesus, however, did not wish to kill anyone. He died for a different reason. Jesus was a martyr. But that’s another story for a different time – like Lent and Easter.
3. Of all the world religions, the Hebrew religion is the most historically based of all. The Hebrews were conscious of history from the very start. It all began with a promise from God – to Abraham to make him the father of many people and nations. The God of the Jews dwelt among them and acted within history. Through Moses … he led them out of Egypt. When dark times came … God spoke to the prophets and they spoke to the people. In the Old Testament reading for this Sunday, Isaiah prophesies these words from God:
1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!
For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
4 Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?
6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.
8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look upon us, we pray, for we are all your people.
4. 1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!!
Isaiah’s word were part of the historical and religious background in which Jesus spoke to his followers. In those days it was not doubted for one moment that the Jews were God’s chosen people and that one day they would be lifted up before all people … but they had long since given up the idea (at least most of them) that this would happen through ordinary means. After all, had not God intervened to save them in Egypt – why would not God do it again.
And so, the people waited for the day of the Lord, which would be a time of terror and trouble in which the world would be shaken to its foundations … and the judgment would come to be followed by a new age and new glory – the millennium.
Now, what is the point of believing something like this? What did this do for the Jewish people?
Well, it gave them an unalterable hope. Hope that in spite of all things to the contrary … God had not abandoned them … and that God would come again to save them …
1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!! – the words of Isaiah are really a kind of prayer.
This is the world into which Jesus came preaching the “Good News.” A world in which God acts in history.
And naturally, the disciples wanted to know how Jesus would interpret these prophecies which were well known to all far and wide.
5. Now Jesus faced a difficult problem. He knew that the people were waiting. He understood that the people were desperate. They needed hope. He could not disappoint them.
Yet, at the same time, Jesus understood that were he to become too specific about he details … it would transform this whole business of the last judgment into a waiting game.
Waiting for Jesus.
And it would become a guessing game. And instead of living out their lives as God wishes, people would become totally absorbed in the business of interpreting the sign and events …as harbingers of the future. They would become control freaks … trying to know exactly in advance when and where it would all happen.
And their ultimate sense of hope in the very immediate presence and power of God’s love would be transformed into a formula … for further despair. For to believe in the immanent return of Christ is to despair … of life itself … and to give up … totally.
So, while Jesus does not specifically prophesy the exact nature, time, and place of the end of the world and the last judgment … he doesn’t deny it either. Be alert, he says. Be awake. It could come any time … even without warning. What a disappointment!! Here we thought we would get the definitive answer and know for sure … what a bunch of control freaks we are – aren’t we? But Jesus doesn’t fall for it.
What does he say? But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the son, but only the Father.
It’s right there in the Bible … plain as day … Mark chapter 13 verse 32.
6. To be a Christian then is to live with the expectation of God’s ultimate authority over human life … and to know that no matter what happens … God is with us … and because of this … we can live with hope … and expectancy … no matter what happens.
And this is how we are to live … as human being in the midst of history … in the midst of uncertainty … in the midst of all the anxiety … about what the future … might bring and even about our own death – the greatest mystery of all.
Hope in the midst of uncertainty … that’s the message of Jesus on this first Sunday of Advent in the year 2005.
What’s the alternative? Hopelessness and futility. Back when I was in college, the memory of the devastation of World War II, especially in Europe was still in the air … and the ominous possibility of nuclear war hung over modern civilization … and the existentialist writers like John Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were all the rage … in short, as far as they were concerned there was no hope … as exemplified in Thomas Becket’s famous play … Waiting for Godot … who never shows up …! For civilization seemed, at that time … to be hopeless … like the famous Greek myth of Sisyphus who the gods had condemned to ceaselessly rolling a rock up to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. As a result, the Gods thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
And, if that is all there is … to life … then it is all absurd … it is futile … meaningless …
And, Christian or not … who has not felt that way sometime in our life … when it all seemed for not … and life wasn’t working out … and you wondered “what is the point of it all?”
7. The alternative … then … is that the ultimate meaning … the hope for our lives comes from outside of history … from God …
This is the message of Jesus … this is the Christian message of Advent … a message of hope in the midst of hopelessness.
But, nevertheless, it is a hope that must be lived out in the midst of anxiety … and uncertainty … for it is not a magic wand … which will sweep away all our fears … it is not a magic pill that we take that will suddenly … make us forget our humanity …
No, there is no ultimate remedy from being human in this life …
Let’s face it, being human requires courage … courage in the face of uncertainty …
And the courage to look within ourselves … with honesty …
8. And to look within ourselves … is to go on a journey … a spiritual journey … for all spiritual growth means going somewhere we have never been … or where we have forgotten …
And that is what the season of Advent is all about … a journey …
So, like the famous wise men … the magi … we will journey back in time … following the star … to Bethlehem … to see once more the Christ child born in a stable which is really just a metaphor for Christ being born in our hearts …
And, this is both an inner journey … and an outward journey …
And to go on this journey we will have to let some things go … in order to get there…
What will we let go this Advent season? … Think for a moment … what are the things that you need to let go of if Christ is to be born in your heart …?
What will you let go of ….?
9. Nowadays, Christmas is such a mixed bag … The other day I read about the recent uproar about how Bill O’Reilly believes that the greeting “Happy Holidays” is offensive to Christians who are celebrating the Christmas Season.
Some people are so upset that they plan to sue schools and businesses who attempt to censor the celebration of Christmas.
Wait a minute? I thought that was what churches were for …? In fact, I have often resented the co-optation of Jesus by the commercial world. Oh, I’m not that upset. I’m not going sue anyone for trying to make money selling Christmas ornaments and Santa Claus decorations. It just seems to me that it’s all about stuff that is on the surface… that’s right … superficial stuff. And, if anything, it seems to me that Jesus was anything but superficial.
I’m all for presents and getting together with friends … and having a nice meal but let’s not let it get out of control.
10. Well, we just got down with Thanksgiving … and all the hoopla about the Pilgrims. But, the truth is those same Pilgrims believed that Christmas had gotten totally out of hand with all the drinking, eating, and partying, so they got rid of Christmas all together. That’s right; there was no celebration of Christmas in the New England colonies from the time the Pilgrims landed until the American Revolution – over 200 years.
It all started with the Puritan Revolution in England. Once account states that:
In 1641, the King, at the request of Parliament of January 8, 1641, had ordered a monthly fast, which would be kept on the last Wednesday of each month. [10] As it happened, Christmas fell on the last Wednesday of December, 1644. Parliament was then faced with a dilemma: the feast or the fast. On December 19, 1644, after some debate, Parliament made up its mind and decreed that December 25th was to be observed as a day of fasting and repentance.
Parliament wrote, in part:
Whereas some doubts have been raised, whether the next fast shall be celebrated, because it falls on the day which heretofore was usually called the feast of the nativity of our Savior; the lords and commons in parliament assembled do order and ordain, that public notice be given, that the fast appointed to be kept the last Wednesday in every month ought to be observed, till it be otherwise ordered by both houses; and that this day in particular is to be kept with the more solemn humiliation, because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this feast, pretending the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights, being contrary to the life which Christ led here on earth, and to the spiritual life of Christ in our souls, for the sanctifying and saving whereof, Christ was pleased both to take a human life, and to lay it down again. [11]
It is said that many contemporaries reported that this pronouncement was met with widespread opposition and disturbances throughout England – even including a few Presbyterian ministers. It turns out that the people did not want their Christmas – however flawed in its observance – to be abolished. [12]
11. Feast or Fast! Talk about mixing politics and religion! No wonder, the founding fathers made it clear that they wanted a distinct separation of church and state.
Well, the whole Christmas business has been a dilemma ever since the Catholic Church made it an official feast day … or celebration … in part to counter the tendency of pagan Rome to worship the sun … on the winter solstice …
In short it is a mixed bag … frankly I am a little tired of it … I’m for common sense … really … for instance when I was in Spain three years ago … they weren’t even putting up decorations until about two weeks beforehand …
My view is for moderation … don’t over do it … after all you can’t enforce religion on someone and have it work … and there is no guarantee that you can make yourself happy just by overeating, spending too much money … or by inviting people to dinner that you normally don’t see the rest of the year …
On the other hand, you can make yourself happy … by spending a little time … being grateful for what is good in life …by appreciating relationships with those you love and who love you … by giving something to those who are needy … (like filling one of the food baskets our church will be putting together) … by donating blood at the blood drive … or serving at the food shelf or the soup kitchen (our UMW will be doing the one between Christmas and New Years) … or, by turning off the TV and the radio … and lighting a few candles and watching the snow come down outside on a winter’s night … or taking time to call a good friend in a far away city who you haven’t talked to for a while …
12. But most of all – you can make the Advent Journey a successful one … by letting God come down into your heart …
And I’m not talking about Jesus returning for the Last Judgment … but about Jesus being born in your heart … right here and now …
And if Jesus does come into your heart … well, the outside world … may not be changed all that much … trouble will still happen, wars will continue … and life will still be uncertain … but, I think you just might see life a little differently … and little more hopefully … a little more lovingly … than you do now.
But, and here is the catch … you might have to travel a little lighter on this Advent Journey … you might even have to let go of some things … Have you been thinking about it? How about it? What could it be? What one thing … could you let go of this Advent … that would make your Journey to Christmas a more joyful and peaceful one …
Would it be to let go of some resentment … some disappointment … some sense of grief and loss … some doubt or fear … What is it?
Well, let’s all think about it … this week. And, in the meantime, let us heed the words of Jesus … who said … “It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his workers in charge, each with his work to be done, he commands them to be on the watch.”
“Keep Awake,” the master says. “Keep Awake.” Keep Awake during this Advent … for Jesus is certainly coming … but we just don’t know when …”
posted by Anonymous at 6:29 PM
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