Advent Lutheran Church

Grace and peace to you from God the Creator, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Many years ago I was a singing waitress in New York.  One of my favorite ballads was a song called “The Ballad of the Sad Young Men.”  As I prepared today’s sermon, I kept hearing a line from that song in the back of my head.  Let me sing it for you:

Sing a song of sad young men. Glasses full of rye. All the news is bad again.  Kiss your dreams goodbye.*   I’ll bet there are not just a few of us who are feeling like that today.  All you have to do is turn on the news, boot up your computer or open a newspaper to know that all the news is bad, again.  It even seems that you cannot get away from the bad news.  In your work, if you are lucky enough to still have work, you may be underemployed.  The economy has made unemployment the norm, rather than the exception. Even when you go home at the end of the day you have to worry about whether your house is worth more than you owe on it, or if your property will maintain its value.

So we turn to something “lighter,” the world of sports.  There the news is bad again:  Penn State.  Coach Pinkel.  KU football.  (You knew I would mention that, didn’t you?)  Our community and civil life is filled with political craziness, global violence, terrorism and war.  Why, Nature itself seems to be against us.  Our planet continues to support malaria, HIV/AIDS, earthquakes, floods, tornados, wildfires, and drought.  Our time is full of bad news, and it feels as if our struggles are unique. Yet the people of Isaiah’s time in the Old Testament – freshly returned from their captivity in Babylon and home from their Exile - still found life filled with uncertainty about everything.

And that uncertainly was so bad, that it wasn’t hard for them, or for us, to imagine “The End” coming soon.  It has been said, “You can’t go home again.”  It has been said, “You can’t turn back the clock.”  It has been said, “You can’t bring back the dead and you can’t stop wanting to.”  Especially during the holidays, we sit around tables with friends and family and find ourselves spending our time wishing that life was, “as it used to be.”

But the people of Mark’s Gospel lived in hard times, too.  They knew hardship, being at the mercy of nature for the nourishment of their crops and their herds.  They were occupied by the Roman Empire, and for some, the Pax Romana was an “improvement.”  If you were a tradesman or merchant, the Roman roads made it easier to travel, while a common Roman currency made transactions simpler and more honest.  But for the 99% - it just meant more of the same.

Bishop Allan Bjornsberg, one of the best preachers in the ELCA today, gave a sermon to the Church Council and Conference of Bishops at the Churchwide Assembly in Orlando last August.  In his sermon he referred to a fictitious organization called the “Back to Egypt” Committee.  He suggested that this committee has a rotating membership, and that at one time or another we all find ourselves seated at the “Back to Egypt” Committee’s table.  I agree with that assessment, because I know we’ve all taken our turn at longing for “The Good Old Days.”  It is just so much easier to long for the past than it is to look at a future that is, almost by definition, uncertain.

Jesus was getting at this deepest of human fears when he taught the parable of the homeowner/Master who goes away on a journey and leaves his slaves as the “house-sitters.”

It was very clear:  Job One was to take care of the house!  Now, I have some experience with house-sitters.  When I travelled frequently while living in San Diego, I would often have young men from my church come and house-sit.  I always felt very generous doing this, because they were all in college, and still living at home.  You can imagine their enthusiasm at being asked to temporarily occupy their “own” space.  I always left them with the same instructions:  “Do whatever you want to while I’m gone, but when I return, I want to find everything back the way it was when I left.”  Most often, that worked out very well. 

For the house-sitters in the story Jesus told, however, there was also a “Job 1A,” and that was to be a good steward of the resources for which the homeowner had left them responsible. We often think about that kind of stewardship of resources when we say (in our offertory prayer,) “ourselves, our time and our possessions – signs of your gracious love.” Thinking about this responsibility for resources is especially timely now, as it is Stewardship Month, and I hope that all of you have made your financial pledge to our ministries for the coming year.   And sometimes, good stewardship of possessions means getting rid of them!  If you have ever had to close the family home or move from a full size house to a smaller dwelling, then you know what a burden these many possessions can be.  What was terribly important to someone else suddenly becomes something that needs to be stored, used or trashed.  What can we USE and what do we KEEP?  It is almost the same question we are confronted with today as we sit smack in the middle between Black Friday and Cyber Monday and attempt to delineate between what we need and what the commercial advertising machine has convinced us that we desire.

The Bottom Line is this: 

In other words, either God is the Homeowner or you are! 

Believers in the God who is revealed through Jesus have already bought in to the idea that how we steward, how we care matters.  It matters how we speak to each other.  It matters how we exist in relationships with one another. It matters how we care for those who are ignored or overlooked.  Not because God is watching to see how we’ll do; but because we are watching to see how we’ll do!  And we know that feeling good about our behavior comes not from fear of retribution, but because we honor, respect and love the One who owns our home and still allows us to “house-sit.”  And when that homeowner returns, will he kick us out into the street or pay us our fee and send us on our way?  No!  That Homeowner will show us our place in the household and provide for us as most-honored guests, as we accept the invitation to live with him forever.  Pretty sweet deal, if you ask me.

Today we reflect on the paradox of the First Sunday in Advent:  the Parousia (Greek for the 2nd coming of Christ, represented by the HOPE of the first Advent Candle, and the Incarnation (Christmas,) represented by the promise fulfilled through PROPHESY.  Advent is a strange and wonderful season that stands at the crossroads of Christ the King’s end of the year and a brand new year; a clean slate; a new start.  We look back 2000 years to the First Christmas at the same time as we look forward toward the “who knows when?” of the Close of this Age -  the Return of the Homeowner - the Fulfillment of the Kingdom of God.

At last Monday Night’s Bible Study we did Battle with Advent I.  First, we read the lessons, and responded around the table, “argh!”  Then, the Spirit breathed, and we noticed that the image of the fig tree (in verse 28) is NOT what you might expect Jesus to say!  He could have said, “as soon as a branch loses its leaves you know it is winter…” but he didn’t.  What he did say was, “as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know summer is near.”  This is not an image of Autumn and the death of Winter, but of Spring and New Life!  We don’t have to go “Back to Egypt” or even “Back to Bethlehem” to discover that the Homeowner never really left - but has remained - Emmanuel, God with Us.  Welcome to Advent.  AMEN.   

*Ballad of the Sad Young Men, by Frances Landsman and Thomas J. Wolf, Jr. 1961.

Resource:  The Rev. Dr. Russell J. Levenson, Jr., rector of St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston, TX - Day 1 (online)