A Sermon preached Sunday, December 2, 2007
by Pastor Terry Davis
First Presbyterian Church, Hartford, CT
How long, says the Psalmist, how long, before the better day becomes today? Yes, we believe that one day the nations will beat swords into plowshares, or in more modern terms: nations will convert tanks and armored cars into tractors, bombers into passenger planes; how long until we and the other powerful nations convert the weapons of destruction into instruments of production? When the Murtha Federal Building in Oklahoma was destroyed we learned that fertilizer can be converted into powerful explosives. The process works the other way also; high explosives can be reformulated into fertilizer. How long will we go on building bombs to fight wars motivated by poverty and hunger and instead manufacture fertilizer and plant crops and end hunger and poverty. How long will the war and occupation of Iraq continue? How long will world tolerate the genocide that continues in Darfur in the Sudan? How long will our congress delay making reforms in our immigration laws, how long will ICE agents go around detaining productive workers who are contributing to the betterment of this country because they are undocumented immigrants? How long will the gap between the truly wealthy and the rest of us continue to grow? How long will we tolerate tax breaks for the rich and fund our schools and state government on the backs of the impoverished and middle class citizens? How long will we allow the Presbyterian Church to be destroyed by homophobic attitudes that pervade many members and which have become embedded in our Church constitution? How long? How long?
These are mega
issues, but what about the personal issues that we personally deal with. How
long will I have to work here until I get a raise so I will have enough money to
pay my bills and save for a house? How long do I have to work here before I can
transfer to the Day Shift?
How long will I stay sick and my doctor cannot find out what is wrong? How long
will it be before my brother gets his green card and can come and join his
family; how long before my mother gets her visa so she can come and visit with
us and help with the baby? How long will I have to live in this dump before I
can get a better apartment? How long will I have to put up with my co-worker
who gets on my nerves every day? How long will gas and heating oil prices go
up? How long will my mother go on suffering from her illness? How long will my
son continue to act up in school? Lord the Bible promise that those who wait on
the Lord will renew their strength, but how long do I have to wait? I am sick
and tired of being sick and tired. How long? How long?
I wish I could answer these questions. Jesus was faced with the same problem; he kept talking about the coming kingdom, about a new covenant, about a new age breaking into the present world, but he could not answer the question of when. No one knows the day or the hour. Like the prophets before him Jesus was certain that God was bringing in a better day, a day of peace, a day of love, a time of reconciliation, but he didn’t have an answer to the question of how long? If he says that God has hidden the timeline for his action from even the angels in heaven, he has not revealed the time of his action even to his beloved son, but he wants us to be confident that the kingdom is coming, that we are to wait for it, we are to work for it, we are to be ready for it.
Advent is about waiting. The Jewish people waited for generations for the coming messiah, the Christ, the anointed but when he came many would not accept him.
Are you ready for God to act in your life? Are you ready for the new things that God is about to do in the life of this Church? Are you ready for the dawn of a day of peace and prosperity? Advent is about waiting, but not passive waiting, not sitting back and waiting for God to make this world a better place, but active waiting, working, striving to make your life, the life of your community, the life of your Church, the life of the nation and the world better because you are working to bring God’s plan into action.
The Lord’s Supper is about waiting; when ever we share in this bread and this wine we are showing forth the Lord’s death until he comes again. It is an earthly foretaste of the great feast in the kingdom when people will come from north and south, from east and from west to sit down at table in the kingdom of God. We are confessing our faith in God’s goodness and mercy, knowing that God will uphold, strengthen and guide us until the day of his decisive kingdom action when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever, Amen.
Psalms 90:12 - 17
12 So teach us to count our days
that we may gain a wise heart.
13 Turn, O LORD! How long?
Have compassion on your servants!
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us,
and as many years as we have seen evil.
16 Let your work be manifest to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.
17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and prosper for us the work of our hands—
O prosper the work of our hands!
1The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 In days to come
the mountain of the LORD’S house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
3 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.
4 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.
Matthew 24:36 - 44 36“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.