Advent 1 C

The First Sunday of Advent

Sermon given on

November 30, 2009

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

During his 1960’s presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy often closed his speeches with the story of Colonel Davenport.  Colonel Davenport was the Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives.  On May 19^th, 1780, the sky in Hartford, Connecticut blackened ominously, and some of the representatives thought the end was at hand, that this was the end of the world.  So, some of them asked Colonel Davenport to adjourn the meeting because the world was ending. He said to them, “It’s one of two things.  Either the world is not coming to the end and so there’s no reason to adjourn the meeting, or it is coming to an end and I, at the end, want to be found doing my duty. So I’m not going to adjourn the meeting.”  And he ordered candles be brought in.

We’ve all heard predictions of the end time.  You may have read how the world is going to come to an end in 2012 because the Incan calendar only goes up to 2012 and the ancient Incans must have known when the world was going to end, even though Jesus told us even he didn’t know.  And of course, we all remember Y2K, you know, if the computers crash, that’s going to be the end of the world.  People have been talking about the end of the world for a long time.  

In this reading from the Gospel where Jesus talks about the end, what does he say?  He says that that’s good news.  So if someone comes up to you and says, “It’s the end of the world.” Your response, as a Christian, is, “Great!  That’s wonderful news!”  Because Jesus says at that time we are to stand up tall and raise up our heads because we know that our redemption is near.  The end of the world means that Christ is coming near.  It’s not something to be afraid of.  So I suggest if someone tells you the world is about to end, you say, “Fine.  I want to be doing my duty.”  

There’s a Buddhist story about an old monk who was well into his 90s.  He was outside his hut planting an apple tree.  It was just a tiny little apple tree and someone walking by said, “Why are you doing that?  After all, you’re not going to live long enough to see any apples from it.”  And he looked at him, and he said, “If I knew I was going to die tonight, what I would be doing today is planting that apple tree.”  We’re doing what we’re doing no matter what, even if it is going to be the end of the world. 

So the next time someone predicts the end of the world, say, “Great.  Now I’m gonna go about doing my duties because when the end of the world comes, I want to be found doing.”  I have a little refrigerator magnet that someone gave me and on it says, “The world is about to end.  Christ is coming.  Look busy.” 

So, that’s what we’re supposed to do if the world is truly coming to an end, but we don’t know when that’s going to be.  

Like everything in Scripture, talking about the end times also has more subtle meanings for our spiritual journey, for our own growth.  We’ve all had moments in our lives when it felt like our world was coming to an end.  It might have been when you walked into that doctor’s office, and you got the diagnosis of a dreaded disease.  It might be when you got the phone call of someone you love, a spouse, a parent, a child, who is dead.  It might be when someone you cared about hurt you deeply.  It might be when you lost your job.  It might be when you found yourself in the middle of a divorce. It feels like the world is coming to an end because the world, as you know it, is coming to an end.  

When you walk out of that doctor’s office, everything is different. When the one you love has died nothing is the same.  Your world has come tumbling down.  The question is, “How are you going to respond to the things that happen in your life?”  We all have circumstances, things that happen to us because none of us gets through life without struggles.  We all have people we love die.  We all have people we trusted to betray us.  We all have to deal with physical illness.  It’s the way the world is.  

The question for us is, “How do we respond to that?”  Rick Warren says we have a choice.  When things happen, we can either become bitter or we can become better.  We can be bitter or better.  We can take the things that happen to us and feel sorry for ourselves and blame other people or we can see it as an opportunity to grow, as a time to grow closer to Christ.  

It’s like at that “End of the World” time. We can say, “The world is ending,” and cover our heads and moan and groan and scream, or we can stand up tall and raise up our heads and reach out our hands to God because we know that our redemption is near.  When we go through these times of difficulty, we stand up and we reach out to Christ because Christ is with us, is walking with us. They are an opportunity to deepen our faith, to deepen our compassion, to understand ourselves and the world a little better.  

One of the exercises that is sometimes done in personal development workshops is to make a timeline. You have your life journey, and in that life journey, you mark significant events:  births, deaths, illnesses.  Then you take and you make a line showing your spiritual life, how close you felt to God.  When I do that, what I find is that the times that I felt closest to God were the ones where I was dealing with a crisis.  Ones where illness had come upon me and the only way I was going to deal with it was to reach out and grab God’s hand because I knew I wasn’t going to get through it alone.

At the times when someone I loved died, my heart was broken, and it was broken open, and I knew my need for God. When our world falls apart, when it seems like the end of everything, that’s the time we realize we can’t do it ourselves.  That’s the time when we have to reach out to God and ask for help. That’s when we know our need for God and our need to pray.  

The Psalm says to trust, “I put my trust in God and He will teach me,” We are to put our trust in God at the times when the whole foundation of our lives is trembling, because Christ is there.  When it feels like our world is coming to an end, stand up, raise up your head and know that that is when your redemption is near.  Amen.  

Advent 1 B

Imagine your house is up for sale and a stranger comes to the door with an interest in buying your home. What happens if you haven't kept it clean, if there are dishes in the sink and the garbage that hasn't been taken out.
Advent is about staying prepared and being ready.

Advent 1 B

Transcribed from a sermon

By Valerie Ann Hart

On November 27, 2011

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

The little story or tiny parable that Jesus tells at the end of this reading about the servant that is left in charge of the house as the master is away doesn’t really resonate with most of us. I know all of you pretty well, and I don’t think any of you have servants at this point in your lives. And as far as I know none of you have served as a slave or a servant. So we don’t really have a good sense of the meaning of this story.

In Jesus’ time people understood that a rich household would have servants or slaves who would have authority. Whoever was the doorkeeper would have authority over the whole house, to keep it safe and to be sure everything ran smoothly. Sine that doesn’t resonate with us, I thought I’d tell it in a slightly different way. Something that some of us at least have had an experience with ‑ that is selling our houses.

Imagine that you are putting your house up for sale. There is a lot of preparation to get ready for that. You paint the things that you’ve always meant to paint. You get the carpet cleaned. You do all those little things to make it show well. Then during the time when it is up for sale you need to keep it really clean all the time. You never know when somebody is going to come to view it and see it. You hope that the real estate agents will call first so you can do a quick straightening up of the house, but there is no guarantee. Sometimes the amount of time you have isn’t very much. Now, imagine that you are trying to sell your house. It’s been on the market for a while so you’ve gotten a little relaxed about keeping it nice. Suddenly the doorbell rings. There is a man at the door who says that your house is in exactly the neighborhood he wants and is exactly the style house he wants. This is his only chance to see it and he asks to come in. You go through your mind and you realize that there are dirty dishes in the sink, you haven’t dusted in a couple of days and you meant to take the garbage out last night because it was already starting to smell a little bit bad then. Then there is the bedroom, oh my gosh, the stuff, the clothes that are sitting around. Oh, my!

“Could you come back in a little bit?”

“No, this is the only time I have to see the house.”

Needless to say you’ve lost your sale because the house doesn’t look or smell or feel like home to this person. You’ve lost the opportunity because you haven kept awake - you haven’t kept things in order.

Symbolically in literature or in interpreting dreams, or any kind of work like that. the house represents our bodies, ourselves, who we are. So when Jesus talks about keeping the house and keeping awake for the master to return, he is reminding people whose house it is. This body, this body was created by God. We didn’t make it. Whatever it is that says “me” and “I” is really just using this body. The body is on loan.

I’m a servant of the master, or as it is put in the old testament, “He is the potter and we are the pot.” What we do in keeping our house represents ourselves. So, symbolically if we had a messy house, then we might have a messy inner life. If we leave the garbage sitting around till it starts to smell, that could represent those parts of ourselves that we haven’t dealt with. The old angers and resentments that still are sitting there, that we’ve never cleaned out, that we’ve never dealt with. After a while it just starts to putrefy and effect our whole being. Like the places where we haven’t asked for forgiveness, or we haven’t forgiven. It is all those ways in which we are not paying attention, not being awake.

This particular story comes right after Jesus has been talking about the end time. This was a very common theme in prophets in the couple of hundred years before Jesus. The idea that world was unjust, that things were terrible and at some point God was going to come and wipe out things the way they were and bring back the glorious kingdom of God. During that time the Israelites were pretty much under the thumb of some empire, whether it was Asyria, or Rome or some other empire. Things were tough and they wanted things to change. The prophets predicted there would be an end to the world as they knew it and a new life in God.

Jesus is referring to, and using the language of those prophets as he talks about the Son of Man coming on a cloud. Right after he was talking about the end time he uses this image of being ready - of being prepared.

It wasn’t too long ago, less then a month ago, I don’t remember the exact date, when there was a pastor somewhere in the south who said that he knew exactly when the end of time was going to come. It didn’t, so he recalculated it and said it is coming at a different time. He must have missed this part of Mark. It is strange for a pastor to not have read that even Jesus and the Angels don’t know when it is going to happen. I don’t know how he thought he could know.

And I don’t know when it is going to happen, or if it is going to happen, or what it is going to be like. But I do know that each and every one of us will have a time when the world darkens, and the sun, moon, lamps will give no light. We will no longer be able to see, we will no longer be able to hear and everything will be different. Each and every one of us at some point is going to die. We don’t know whether we are going to die at the same time everybody on earth dies, which would be the end time as it is described, or whether our death will just be the end of our relationship with this earth. But we all will have a time when we die.

We as Christians believe that at that point we are going to encounter Christ. What is that going to be like? Well, if you haven’t kept your house clean, if you haven’t kept your house in order, what is it going to be like? Now there will be some of us, some people who are graced with knowing they are about to die. They have an opportunity to reconcile with those people they have never reconciled with. They have an opportunity to express their apologies, to receive forgiveness, to forgive others, to put their house in order. It’s like the person coming to the door giving you a call a couple of hours ahead so you can race around the house and clean everything up. Some people are given that grace.

Some of us aren’t. Some of us may die in and automobile accident or a heart attack or a stroke with no knowledge ahead of time. No chance to clean up those lose ends. There will be the knock on the door and we will have whatever it is we have.

Now if the person at the door is a stranger it is going to be pretty tough.

Let’s suppose instead of that being a stranger that wanted to buy your house, suppose in that story it was your mother. Your mother comes and knocks on your door and your house is a mess. Well, my mother is no longer alive, but I would have been embarrassed. I’d feel like I let her down. I wasn’t living up to what she wanted me to live up to.

She probably would give me that look. Every mother has a look. Each mother has her own look which is some combination of “you’ve done it again” and “I love you anyway”. We all know that look, and those of us that are mothers are really good at doing it. So if my house is a mess and my mother is at the door I might be embarrassed - I might feel bad -  I might apologize, but I would know that she would still love me. There would be no question about that, assuming I had kept a good relationship with my mother.

What if you had a really good friend and they drop by. A really good friend is the sort of person who can drop by and you don’t feel bad about the fact that you haven’t pick up the house because they have been there before. They have helped make some of the messes in your house. They know you. They know who you are and how you live, and they appreciate you for who you are. You are comfortable with them no matter what and you trust their love no matter what.

When we die, when we encounter Christ, who will Christ be to you? Will Christ be a stranger that you feel judged by? Will Christ be a loving parent where you will feel sort of embarrassed by the life you have led but they are going to love you anyway? Or is Christ going to be a good friend who has been with you through each day of your life so at this point knows you completely? What will it be like?

Teresese of Lisieux who wrote about the “Little Way” was a very simple and profound nun. In one of her writings she included a little prayer “After earth’s exile I hope to go and enjoy you in the fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for your love alone. In the evening of this life I shall appear before you with empty hands, for I do not ask you Lord to count my works. All our justice is blemished in your eyes. I wish then to be clothed in your own justice and to receive from your love the eternal possession of yourself.”

Keep awake, prepare of the coming of Christ. What is going to matter at that moment is not what we have done or what we have left undone. What is going to matter I our relationship with the one who comes to greet us.

Advent 1 A

WAKE UP! How do we find out way out of the darkness?

Advent 1 A

Transcribed from a sermon given on

December 1, 2013

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36-44

The way I might sum up the readings for today is “WAKE UP!!” Wake up, get out of darkness.

We have Paul talking about letting go of the works of darkness. An interesting way to describe something - the works of darkness. Even though this is not an image that is used often, we immediately know what he is talking about. We know that he is talking about those things that we do in the darkness so that nobody sees. The works of darkness are the thing you don’t want anyone to know about - when you sneak off to do something in the dark. We all remember when we were teenagers and in the darkness there was some way that you could get away with more stuff, cause your parents wouldn’t see. And we know that many of the things that are most harmful to human beings happen in the darkness. When we sneak off and we don’t want to get caught.

Jesus uses the image of the thief coming in the darkness.

What are the works of darkness? Well Paul gives us some examples such as we shouldn’t be involved in reveling and drunkenness. Those are things we do in the darkness. Debauchery and licentiousness, well that is usually done at night. And then there is quarreling and jealousy. Well that happens in the light sometimes, but hopefully back in the shadows. Notice that the works of darkness are not all things that we normally consider terrible sins, which in our culture has become anything that has to do with sexual sins. You don’t find the same emphasis on that in the Bible. When he talks about works of darkness he includes quarreling and jealousy. Anything that we wouldn’t want to have seen.

The way I might think about it these days is that the works of darkness are the things you wouldn’t want to have posted on Facebook. Or if you pasted them on Facebook when you were younger you would want to be able to take them off. Anything you wouldn’t want someone else to know about. Things we are not proud of.

Similarly, Jesus talks about the son of man coming at an unexpected hour so stay awake because you don’t know when the son of man is coming. We don’t know when we are going to encounter Christ again, whether it be at the end of time or the end of our own lives. We don’t know when suddenly we will see Christ face to face. What do you want to be doing when that happens? There are certain things that I know I don’t want to be doing when that happens. But of course it is more complicated than that.

Paul says to put on the armor of light - put on Christ. And of course that is what we need to do but it is not simple. If it were simple, if we could just make an intention and say “I’m not going to do that anymore’” and we won’t have all the struggle and drama in our lives. We would all live very good lives because most of us intend goodness.

But it is not that easy. Paul in another place writes “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Do you ever feel like that? We set up intentions. We get up in the morning and we say I’m going to lose weight, I’m going to exercise regularly and I am going to stop yelling at the kids. Basic, simple, not terribly dramatic things that we all more or less intend. And then we remember while we are eating our doughnut. You see there was a doughnut shop right there and we missed eating at the doughnut shop. Then we drive by the gym, because after all we are late for work now after stopping at that doughnut shop. And then when we come home, all of a sudden we discover that our anger has gotten the best of us and we don’t know how that happened, but all of a sudden our voice has been raised. And we feel helpless. We don’t know what to do.

The whole point is that we can’t do it ourselves. We need help. We need someone to help us. What we need is a savior - to save us from our own weakness. To save us from the ways in which we find ourselves opening up a website that we really know we shouldn’t be looking at. Or from those pain pills, yes the physical pain is a lot better, but I still like taking the pills so I am going to keep taking them. Those things that we sort of sneak into unintentionally and then they own us and we feel helpless. And it is only when we know we need help that we can realize that and look for help. And the only thing that can help us, the only one who can help us, is someone who knows. Who knows us. Is someone that was born as an infant, was a child and struggled to learn to crawl. Someone who fell down multiple times as he learned to walk. Only someone who knows what it is like to have friends that betray him, and abandon him and deny him. Only one who knows what it is like to suffer and to struggle. Someone who understands what it means to be a human being.

That’s the little child that we are looking forward to acknowledging on Christmas. That’s the one, the savior, the one who has come to save us, to save us from our own weakness. To give us the gift of love and walking with us. Someone who has been in the darkness yet never forgot the light. Who can take our hands and leads us out of the darkness. Who can help us to get the strength to go in the direction that we want to go. The one who can save us. That is the gift of Christmas - the gift of the incarnation - the gift of Christ.

But that Christmas gift, that gift can only be opened on our knees. We have to get down on our knees to open it up because until we realize that we can’t do it ourselves, as long as we are trying to use our own will power, as long as we think we’ve got it all together, as long as we don’t realize that we need a savior, we can’t open that gift. It is only when we realize that the only way that we will find the light is by taking the hand of the one who is the light. Then, then we receive the greatest gift of all. Than we receive the gift of love, of strength, of transformation.

That is what we are getting ready for during Advent. That’s what we are preparing for during Advent. To receive the help we need to find the light, to stay awake, and to know God’s love.