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United Church of Paducah
4600 Buckner Lane
Paducah, KY 42001
(270) 442-3722
Worship Times
Sunday Service: 10:00a
Refreshments &
Fellowship: 11:15a
Christian Education
For All Ages:
11:20a - Noon
Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible
All Are Welcome!
A Congregation Of The
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie
Allen
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From December 2, 2007
Worth The Wait
Isaiah 2: 1-5; Matthew 24: 36-44
Before I begin, I'm going to ask you
children to stick your fingers in your ears. Your parents
will nudge you when it's time to listen again.
OK grownups, here's what I don't want our kids to know: I
used to be a master Christmas present peeker. I started
young--six, maybe seven. And I kept at it until I was a
senior in high school.
It began innocently enough, the peeking did. I'd stretch out
under the Christmas tree and when no one was looking I would
use my fingernail to see if the tape on a package didn't
need a bit of, um, liberation. Usually it did and that's
when I would carefully unfold the wrapping to read the
printing on the box inside.
A real package peeking prodigy, I was. But somewhere along
the line, I discovered an even better approach--finding the
gifts before they had been wrapped. It was easy at first.
Mom regularly hid presents under her bed or on the top shelf
in her closet. When my mother caught on to my tricks, I had
to get smart. That's when I thought to check the trunk of
the car after everyone had turned in. Bingo! Mom upped the
ante the next year by ever so carefully placing our gifts in
black lawn bags and lowering them into the crawl space under
the house. It was so dark down there I almost didn't see
them. Almost.
Please don't think badly of me now! It's not that I was some
greedy, grabby child making sure I was getting great stuff.
No. I peeked because I wanted to be prepared. I wanted to be
ready when Christmas came. Sure, I missed out on joy borne
of surprise. But feeling prepared? That offered its own
gratifying reward.
As Advent begins, we don't need to peek. We already know
what awaits us. What awaits us is the greatest gift, not a
what at all but a who. Someone who comes wrapped in
swaddling clothes and whose gentle peace gives us everything
we've ever really wanted.
We're waiting for him, aren't we? For the Christ Child.
Emmanuel--God with us. It makes our waiting so deliciously
beautiful, this knowing so well ahead of time who is coming
and where we will find him.
What a gracious thing, too, this foreknowledge. All Advent
long we can relish the thought that we're being given God's
own son, the Prince of Peace, the one God has been promising
us for the longest time. We have four full weeks to dream
about him and to think about what it will be like to welcome
him into our lives. He's more than worth the wait.
Driving home from Evansville Monday night, I happened upon a
Christian radio program in which the host (a minister) was
expressing grief about the recent shift away from saying
"Merry Christmas" to wishing others a generic "Happy
Holiday."
I understand the man's sense of loss. The best thing ever is
about to happen, this guy says to himself, and now, in the
interest of being sensitive to people with other beliefs, he
can't fully rejoice, can't freely share his delight. Not
like before, anyway. He's got to hold back, he's got to rein
it in--his joy. He feels cheated and resentful and I know he
has plenty of company.
Those Monday night comments have gotten me thinking, though.
While I grasp the host's point, it strikes me that he may
not fully enough appreciate what our tradition is asking of
us right now.
What Christians do in Advent is anticipate our gift. Even as
we relish the thought of who's coming and why, he's not here
yet. Not yet come. Advent teaches us that part of waiting
for him involves really getting ready for him, which is more
involved than simply wishing one another a Merry Christmas.
Part of how we get ready to receive our reason for this
season, Christ, means doing what we do in Lent, when we go
the distance with Jesus all the way to his crucifixion and
beyond. As we do each Lent, in Advent you and I take a deep
breath and take a good, long look at the world--the world
inside as well as the world around us. A world that in so
many ways desperately needs what Jesus has to give.
Certainly part of Advent's good gift is to hear again how it
is that Jesus comes to us.
This waiting time shimmers and shines as we listen to the
age-old story of Gabriel coming to maiden Mary to tell her
she's been hand-picked by God to bear the holy child,
humanity's salvation. Once more we recall Joseph and Mary's
homelessness in Bethlehem and their frantic search for a
room and discover all over again that there is a stable in
which the baby can be born, right here in our open,
Advent-readied hearts.
But the story and the gift are both so much bigger than the
nativity, the Bethlehem birth. Because the human story is so
much bigger. Throughout Advent our focus widens out onto the
world as we hear prophets of God crying out, speaking to
difficult issues and harsh realities, reminding us that what
we face, in part at least, we have created. The prophets
remind us that the world as it is right now is not as God
wills it.
Prophets do more than rub our noses in reality, though. As
they speak about the now, they also peel back the tape on
God's package, so that we are given a glimpse of the next:
what God wants us to have.
Isaiah does that very thing today. Listen again for what he
says waits for us on the other side of now. "In days to
come, the mountain of the Lord's house will be established
as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above
the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.
"Many peoples shall come and say, 'Come, let us go up to the
mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that
he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.'
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of
the Lord from Jerusalem.
"He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for
many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift
up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more."
Do you hear it? Do you hear how Isaiah is speaking to the
now and the next? By focusing on the future, he tells us
what we are living with. Right now we have discord and
brokenness. We have national priorities that end up favoring
death, not life. Other things have our allegiance. But here,
here is what is next, the prophet says as he offers us a
peek at the gift God intends to give.
But wait a minute. Don't we already know the gift? Didn't we
unwrap him last year around this time? The gift is the
child, the babe in the manger, the Prince of Peace, the
light to the nations.
Yes, that's true. But that gift, the one who came to us so
meek and mild, he didn't stay a baby long. He grew up to be
a man of passion. He grew up with a passion to bring
Isaiah's vision to life, to teach ways of living together
that render war, injustice, and hunger obsolete. That man
grew up to show us why and how to dispense with swords and
spears, how and why to hammer them into plowshares and
pruning hooks.
That man grew up to show us how to walk in the light of the
Lord. He even died showing us how. But our hope didn't end
there. Christ rose from the dead and until he ascended into
heaven continued to walk among us teaching the ways of the
undefended heart.
So here's the puzzler. If the one who came as our great gift
did all this then how is it that that nearly two thousand
years later we still have nation rising against nation? To
use images from Isaiah, why are we still preoccupied with
playing king of the mountain, vying for power and control
over others, than we are devoted to eliminating suffering
and helping one anther climb the mountain of the Lord?
Clearly we've not fully received the gift Christ came to
give.
You and I may think we know what we're getting for
Christmas, but Advent means to remind us that God's not done
giving. The baby? He's the gift we know about and received
as fully as we could. But there's still that gift God's yet
to give, the one none of us have seen. This one's delivery
date is uncertain, Matthew's gospel says. It's day and hour
only God knows for sure.
That gift? Christ's return in glory. Advent is our time of
waiting for him, for the one whose presence in our midst
will, at last, complete all that God has begun. Complete
what God has begun in us and in all of creation.
In Advent we wait, we ache for Christ's coming, we sing "O
come, o come, Emmanuel." Come be with us, Christ Jesus, in
full and forever. Amen.
© Rev. Karen Winkel
United Church of Paducah (UCC) |
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Promises
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