“Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.” So begins the Prayer of the Day for the First Sunday in Advent. That prayer sets the theme of the entire Advent season. If you think about it, “stir up your power, O Lord, and come” is also the theme of the Christian faith itself. Our longing, waiting, hoping, praying for, and anticipating the Lord’s advent, i.e., his coming, is what Christian faith, from beginning to end, is all about. The life of faith is structured and oriented around our anticipation and our hope of his coming: as a baby born in Bethlehem, at the end of time, in the Word proclaimed, and in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. That the Lord who once lived among us and endured his cross for us will come again at the final judgment to bring to pass all that the God of Israel has ever promised to his faithful people is the bedrock and foundation of our hope and of our life in faith. Our anticipation of his coming is what makes possible our faithful persistence, our endurance despite hardship and loss, and our perseverance despite our own many weaknesses, doubts and shortcomings. To pick up on one of the images from today’s gospel reading, we are the community of those who stand up and raise our heads because in Christ our redemption is drawing near.

Last week Pat and I took a little vacation in California. We made a point of visiting one of those well-known mega-churches located there (hint: it has lots and lots of glass). We arrived at dusk and hoped to view the large sanctuary complete with its theater-style seating and a large stage, which was in the process of being set up with elaborate stage props and scenery. As this set-decoration was in progress, the sanctuary was closed to visitors, though after some persuasion on my part, one of the workers did allow us a few seconds to go in so that we could a take a peek. A bit puzzled by the scenery on stage, which obivously was being assembled for a huge Christmas production, I asked what I presumed to be a volunteer whom I also gathered was a member of the congregation, “If this is for Christmas already, what happens to Advent? Do you celebrate it?” She looked a little puzzled and taken aback and replied that in this congregation Advent and Christmas are all rolled into one. But of course, that effectively eliminates Advent, a season of waiting and hoping and praying for our Lord’s coming, a season of anticipation and hope; and instead we are plunged directly into Christmas, a season that celebrates our Lord’s arrival, his presence among us.

Here’s the problem: Just as Easter Sunday sort of hangs there, contextless and perhaps even meaningless apart from Good Friday, so also is Christmas a somewhat empty and vague e xperience without Advent. That is why, I think, Christmas often is such a let-down for so many people, because without the proper preparation for it, Christmas almost always fails to live up to its hype as the realization of all that is warm and fuzzy and cozy and intimate and good. Without the all-important emphasis during Advent of our need of preparation so that we can wait for our Lord’s advent with hopeful expectation, Christmas is no different than any other pagan solstice rite and all those celebrations that basically are at the heart of our winter parties.

God’s people, we are reminded today, are always living in expectation. Without that expectation God’s people are in danger of turning in on themselves and thus of losing their faith. Christian communities throughout the ages, especially when the church becomes the dominant force in society, always have been tempted to live as if all is finally said and done, as if the kingdom of God had arrived on earth, and that they had a hand in bringing it about. Then it is that the problems usually begin. Whenever the church gains sufficient power to do so, it often has tried to remake society in its own image, not in the spirit of evangelism but in the spirit of social domination. The 16th century Lutheran reformers took up precisely this issue. They were highly critical of the church’s structures that were so powerful and had gained a dangerous kind of predominance in society. Those Lutheran reformers, to be more precise, focused their critique on the power of bishops, who typically misused their authority and thus were functioning more as princes than as pastors. It was precisely this confusion of the respective rolls of church and society that the Lutheran reformers identified as at the root of the church’s many problems. Bishops, they said, have no coercive power; their authority, rather, is based on the Word of God and is thus an authority of teaching and preaching, administering the sacraments, and persuasion that works best by example.

In this country as the 19th century turned to the 20th, a movement arose that was called the Social Gospel movement. Its proponents hoped by their efforts to bring about God’s kingdom on earth. They focused their attention on many important social problems such as child labor and grinding urban poverty, and their accomplishments were many and good. The movement sputtered, however, in the aftermath of the Great War when Christian nations, indeed among the world’s most cultured Christian societies, inflicted such carnage on each other on a scale the world had never seen before. It shocked and horrified everyone who witnessed it, and effectively discredited, here and abroad, any thoughts of establishing the kingdom of God in this world.

It is both a blessing and a curse when the Christian community becomes the dominant force in society, is in control of its institutions, culture and politics. It is a blessing because Christian values and themes are of definite value to society; but it can also be a curse, because such power inevitably misguides or corrupts. Christian triumphalism, for all of its benefits, often ended up being rather cynical and tyrannical.

Jeremiah, in the midst of a terrible crisis that threatened to undo Israel as a people and as a nation, proclaimed the coming of a deliverer, a righteous king who will be Israel’s savior. Isreal’s efforts to establish God’s kingdom had failed miserably and the nation was on the brink of disasster. But the Lord proclaimed through Jeremiah his prophet that the Lord himself “will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. I those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteouness.’”

We cannot bring about the kingdom of God; only God can do it. In fact God usually frustrates our efforts to do what only he can accomplish, for salvation can be nothing less than resurrection from the dead, and the dead, as we all know, are notoriously unable raise themselves. The church’s view, therefore, like that of Israel’s, must set its sights on what God promises to bring about. His promise is where Israel’s and the church’s faith are focused. What we have now are signs. Jesus talked about these signs of the end when all will be made new in him who is the beginning and the end. God’s kingdom comes when all our efforts to achieve it have failed, when our work is over and our time is spent.

Therefore, we should not lose heart if the kingdom does not come when we want it, expect it, or need it. Faith sees that when things seem to go from bad to worse, that crisis itself is a sign that something new is about to happen, that a righteous Branch is about to spring up, that the Son of Man will be coming in a cloud, that our redemption is drawing near. So even in the face of disaster, you can confidently heed Jesus’ words, to stand up and raise your head, because even in spite of all those appearances to the contrary, your redemption is drawing near.

-Amen-