Advent: Ready, Willing and Able

A sermon preached by the Rev. Scott D. Nowack on November 27, 2011

at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

“Ready, Willing and Able”

Psalm 80: 1-7; 17-19

Mark 13: 24-37

Have you ever come to the end of your rope?  Have you ever come to the point in your life when it seemed that all was lost, that everything you hoped would happen is now just out of reach and there is a thick stench of hopelessness is in the air?  That’s where we find ourselves today on this first Sunday of a new church year, on this first Sunday of the Advent season.  Why?  All our schemes and plans for self-improvement have come to nothing.  If we haven’t already realized this yet, we know at a very deep level of our being we cannot save ourselves and without God’s intervention in our lives, we are totally lost and astray.  We are going nowhere fast.  We seek the restoration of our spirit through the grace of God.

Advent serves a dual purpose.  The first is that in spite of the intervention of the Holy Spirit and in spite of our very best intentions as the people of God, the world has yet to be redeemed.  Our prayer is for Christ to come again soon.  The second is we have the chance to travel back in time to the beginning of it all when men and women were longing for the first savior to come.  Advent tries to capture the spirit of hope in the midst of the hopelessness of the world around us.  It is a spirit of hope yearning for something that seems too good to be true; the yearning for a savior.

Over the four Sundays of the Advent season, we will both anticipate the new beginning for all creation in the person of Jesus Christ and at the same time celebrate the promise that this same Jesus will come again to bring all creation unto himself redeemed, made whole and complete.  We anticipate the first coming of Christ in the person of Jesus and the second coming when Christ returns as promised.

We all have some spiritual hunger within each of us.  It is a hunger based on having known a very precious truth that has in some way slipped from our grasp.  Our dilemma is we spend a lot of time groping in the dark, hoping to find a light that will reveal the meaning of life or a light that will light our path.  What light are you groping for in the dark?

At greyhound dog racing tracks, dogs sprint around an oval track much like racing horses do.  The dogs don’t have jockeys on them to make them run.  They are trained to chase after a mechanical rabbit on the inside rail.  A man in the press box electronically controls the speed of the rabbit, keeping the rabbit just out in front of the dogs.  The dogs never catch up to it.

At a Florida track some years back, a big race was about to begin.  The dogs crouched in their cages, ready to go, while betting spectators finished placing their wagers.  At the proper moment, the gun went off.  The man in the press box pushed his lever, starting the rabbit down the first stretch, while the cage doors flew open, releasing the dogs to take off after the little rabbit.  As the rabbit made the first turn, however, an electrical short in the system caused the rabbit to come to a complete stop, to explode, and to go up in flames.  Poof!  All that was left was a bit of black stuff hanging on the end of a wire.

Their rabbit gone, the bewildered dogs didn’t know how to act.  According to news reports, several dogs simply stopped running and laid down on the track, their tongues hanging out.  Sadly two dogs, still frenzied with the chase, ran into a wall, breaking several ribs.  Another dog began chasing his tail, while the rest howled at the people in the stands.

Not one dog finished the race.

Like these racing greyhounds, we seek direction and hope in our chosen “rabbit”.  We find ourselves groping in the dark looking for the light of truth to save us from the darkness all around us.  We need a Savior, the light of the world, to give us direction, purpose and hope for our lives; to reveal to us the truth.  Sadly, so many of us chase an illusion of hope, a mechanical rabbit of sorts that turns out to offer us no hope at all.  Without hope, we drown. But with hope, we have a reason to live. Hope is what keeps us going. It has been said that “as oxygen is to the lungs, so hope is to the human heart.”

Many people today have false hopes. They put their hopes in technology, or in hedonism, or in accumulating material wealth or power. But these hopes are like fool’s gold; ultimately they are worthless and have no power to keep us afloat.

We place hope in our own abilities and skills trying to live life apart from God depending on our own sensibilities.  We seek hope in things that can destroy our lives and of those who love us such as abusing alcohol, drugs, food, sports, Black Friday Doorbuster at Wal-mart or any other thing that we put in place of God in our lives.  We seek hope in the conditional love we receive from others rather than the unconditional love of our everlasting God in Christ Jesus.

That’s why Jesus came. He conquered death and the grave so that we could have hope that tomorrow the sun will rise; hope that we would know the truth and that the truth will set us free.

Only when we, the people of Christ, acknowledge our need for the salvation offered to us in Jesus Christ are we able to claim the message of anticipation and hope that Advent proclaims.  It is only when we pray with complete honesty and integrity the words from today’s psalm, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.” (Psalm 80:3)

            During the Advent season we must be willing to watch and wait, remaining ever vigilant in our hunger for the truth of God.  Watchfulness is necessary because there are those who, intentionally or not, mislead the faithful of God.  What time is it, anyway?  Who knows what time it is?  Many voices, inside and outside the church, claim to know what time Christ will come again and how it will be revealed: as a political crisis, a religious crisis, an economic one.  To which voice are we to listen?  Not all of them if any of them know what time it truly is or what are response should be. 

            We must remain watchful, according to Mark, because only God knows what time Christ will come again.  During Advent, we recall the waiting of Mary for the birth of Jesus.  It reminds us that the birth of Jesus was anticipated by only a few and understood by no one.  Only God knows the time.  As we God’s people wait today, we anticipate only that that time is God’s hands and certainly not our own.  We know that God will not leave us or forsake us.  We know God will not leave us without hope. 

God will not leave us without hope because we know, in the words of Brazilian theologian Rubem Alves, “Hope is having roots in eternity and hearing the melody of the future.  Faith is to dance to it.”

God will not leave us without hope.  Without hope, we drown. But with hope, we have a reason to live. Hope is what keeps us going.  It’s what pushes and prods us forward trusting God to lead us in the right direction; to trust God to place our feet on the right path; to trust that God will not leave us or forsake us.  We need this support, this encouragement, this beacon of light to lead us in the way we are called to live.

For when we reach the end of our rope, we need hope to carry on.  When we find ourselves crawling in the dark desperately looking for answers, we have a hope in Christ that shines a light that overcomes the darkness.  Whenever the world says to us that our dreams are a waste of time and can’t be done, the God of hope says nothing is impossible with me in your life.  When the critics say you’ll never get that promotion.  There are a hundred others ahead of you.  God says keep hope alive.  When the critics say our historic congregation here in Kilgore is getting old and fading away, the God of hope says I will give you the strength and courage you need to dream new dreams and a vision of hope for tomorrow.  There will always be naysayers telling us that we’re nothing, that there is nothing to live for, that there is nothing to hope for.  But my friends this is simply not true; for it is the God of hope who saves us from ourselves and the naysayers all around us. 

Our only true hope is found in Jesus Christ, the one who brings us a spirit of hope in the midst of the hopelessness of the world around us; the one who brings a spirit of hope that yearns for something that seems too good to be true; the yearning for our Savior, Jesus Christ.  God in Christ Jesus is the only one who can give us strength for today and hope for tomorrow.  And as we begin a new Advent, a new time of watching and waiting for the birth of Christ, we long for the day when Christ will return and all humanity and all creation will be restored and made new. 

This is our hope.  My friends, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ, our hope for all time.