Some Sundays it is particularly glorious, and it feels that way to me, this first Sunday in Advent. Not only here, but Geoff, as I looked in at The Connection, the room was full. And that room, also was decorated in preparation and celebration for the season. I want to add to Nicole’s, and I know Geoff does also, our thanks to all of you who, as an expression of your faith, have worked to help us as a congregation prepare for Advent. I hope you will pick up one of the Advent devotional books. They are in the narthex as you leave the church today. I’ve already looked at one, and I know they will be a guide to you as you move forward into this season.

 

When I was in high school, I played baseball. I played center field, but I wanted to play shortstop. Because shortstop is where the action is. If you’re playing shortstop, and you’re in the infield, then every time a batter comes to bat, there is a possibility that you’re going to get a ball, and that you’re going to be in the action of the play.

 

The problem was that I sometimes got distracted. As my coach said to me once, “Your problem, DeBevoise, is that every time a line drive is hit to you, you have to write a poem before you can catch the ball!”

 

It wasn’t always a poem. That wasn’t true. Sometimes it was a short essay. Sometimes I was working on a philosophical treatise. But it was true that I could be in my head so that I could be delayed in reacting to what was happening in the infield. So he sent me out to center field where there is a little more, just a few seconds more grace to help somebody to get your head back into the game.

 

But about once a week at practice, he would bring the outfield in to the infield, and he would have me, the big lumbering center fielder, play shortstop as a way of helping us to be more attentive to what was happening, as a way of helping us to be more responsive, to be more engaged in the game.

 

Engaged. Waiting, watching. Not distracted.

 

Advent is about waiting. Active waiting. But not about waiting for the holiday of Christmas. You’re seduced into thinking that.

 

Advent is about waiting for God. Advent is a time when Christians practice our active engagement of waiting for God. Waiting for God’s presence. Waiting for God’s action. Waiting for God’s love. Waiting for the nearness of God in Christ. We live as the people who believe that God is doing something in Christ, very near us. And we’re waiting for it to come to us like a line drive off of home plate.

 

Advent is a time when the church practices waiting for God in Christ. Advent is a time when the church comes in from center field and plays shortstop. And we place it right at the beginning of this church year, and the Christian year, so at the very beginning we can practice waiting. We can re-attune ourselves to having our eyes open and our ears open to being engaged with what God might be doing in our midst.

 

Why do we practice this? Because you can get distracted out there playing center field. Because you can be distracted in your Christian lives. You can be distracted by the plethora of images and entertainments that seek to vie for your attention. There are more now than there ever have been before. You can get dulled out there. Overindulgence can be dulling to your spiritual sensibilities.

 

You can get prideful as you hear the encouragements and see the successes that come to you sometimes. You can begin to think, You know, maybe I am doing a good job. Come to think of it, I’m a remarkable player. And right then, the ball is sailing past your head.

 

We practice because we can become overwhelmed. You have a lot to do, don’t you? I know you do. And we can become overwhelmed.

 

But I want to tell you, Advent is a time to remember that your to-do list is not a mirror image of God’s to-do list for you. I like to-do lists. I think they are a good management tool. But your to-do list is not a mirror image of God’s to-do list for you. Advent is a time of trying to discern how God’s to-do list is seeking to organize yours.

 

We practice because we can become discouraged. Discouraged in our faith. Two hundred and sixty-three people in the Philippines die overnight because of a typhoon. We stand at the side of a grave this week with a woman who loses a good father, and a nephew who has lost a loving uncle. And the pain of loss is discouraging. Life can be discouraging because of the challenges that stand in front of us sometimes, and it can dull, this discouragement, it can begin to dull our spiritual sensibility.

 

And so we watch and we wait. Advent is a time when we practice this work of not being overwhelmed with discouragement.

 

We practice Advent in the life of the church because our spiritual sensibilities can become dulled. And so Jesus says, here in the gospel of Luke, “Take heed to yourselves.” Be aware of yourselves. Look. Look for God near you.

 

One must practice waiting for God to avoid the spiritual sensibilities becoming dulled. One must practice discerning God’s presence near us to avoid missing it because we are so distracted with other things. One must practice waiting for God in Christ, on your toes. Hand in your glove. As if you believe what has happened before is going to happen because of God’s presence amongst us again.

 

A large part of what you are doing when you are practicing this act of waiting, a large part of what we are doing is practicing waiting hopefully. Waiting as people who have good hope within us.

 

The world has a lot of voices in it today telling people there is no reason to hope. There are a lot of different events and catastrophes and sadness that can quench the hope that is trying to kindle within people.

 

Walter Brueggemann is a professor, now retired, of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. He says, “This death of hope is a kind of atheism in the world around us. And there are really two faces to this atheism in the world today. One is the atheism that believes there is nothing new that could happen in the world. That everything that is going to happen has already happened, and now we have to live with simply the way things are. And there is another kind of atheism that says Nothing good can happen in the world unless we do it.”

 

See, to both of these kinds of disbelief, the Christian faith says, Not so! There is God. Where there is God, there is always going to be a way. Something new. Something helpful. Something redeeming. Look. Watch. God is drawing close in Christ.

 

How do we practice active engagement, waiting for God in Christ? How do we practice discerning hope and living as witnesses to hope?

 

Did anybody else see the article in a major newspaper this last week about a practice in educational circles for children. Did you see this? It’s a program I had not heard of before called the Star Program. It reports, particularly with underperforming students and underperforming schools, that they are having a lot of success by teaching them certain practices. One is sit up straight. The other is, with your head, track the movement of the teacher around the room.  And the third is, nod at the teacher regularly, when the teacher speaks, especially. They are discovering a strong statistical link, a strong link, between teaching those skills to young people and their having success in performing, particularly in underachieving situations. They are practicing behaviors that lead to an awakening within them. Their real learning is going up when they practice certain disciplines of participation.

 

It’s like watching. It’s like putting your hand in your glove. You’re going to be more likely to catch the line drive when it comes.

 

Watch. And wait. The apostle says to the Christian community in Thessalonica, Night and day, we pray earnestly to see you face to face. May God strengthen your hearts in holiness. We are praying earnestly that God will strengthen your hearts. That’s what you do in Advent.

 

Hopeful waiting in Christian practice. The work that you are called to do right now, this hopeful waiting, is accompanied by believing prayer. Earnest prayer.

 

One scholar says, “To keep awake, pray to keep awake to the realities of the unseen world, and to open the channels for God’s strengthening gifts to come to you. Believing prayer. That’s your Advent practice.

 

And I want you to expand your vision of prayer now from simply folding your hands and closing your eyes and thinking internally. That’s a kind of prayer. That’s a good form of prayer. But I want you to expand the boundaries of believing prayer to include all of these other prayerful practices that I see you engaged in.

 

Every time you sing an anthem in this season, I think you’re praying. I think it’s a kind of engaging yourself in this watchful waiting. Carols, too. Singing Christmas carols is particularly, I think, a kind of prayer in this Advent season.

 

Acts of compassion are a form of prayer, particularly at Advent. Supporting and caring for a hurting family member near you. Taking a bear off of the Giving Tree. Filling a Hope Box for Metropolitan Ministries. Bringing a child to gaze at the Living Nativity. Giving up something that you would do as a way of standing with and being present for someone else. These acts of compassion, they are forms of prayer. Forms of watchful waiting in this Advent season.

 

Think about decorating your home as a kind of a prayer this Advent. As you make the preparations for the celebration of Christmas, can you turn them into a kind of prayer of preparing your home and the place where you live in your own heart for the coming presence of God.

 

Every time you go to buy a present for someone in this season, can you make it a kind of a prayer for them? Kind of a lived-out, lifting them up in joyfulness and need before their loving God?

 

I was driving in my car this week, listening to the radio. I was listening to the Catholic radio station. They rolled into the celebration of the Mass. At the beginning of a Mass, they say something that I heard for the first time. I’ve heard it lots, but I heard it for the first time, maybe because I was watching. And the priest said, “The sacrament is the prayer of the church, and the highest form of prayer, because it unites us with the church as the people of God. The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,” said the priest, “is the highest form of prayer in the church.”

 

They are teaching us something about the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, our Catholic brothers and sisters, that when we share together in this meal, it’s a kind of a prayer. The highest form of prayer. Earnest prayer. It’s a kind of preparing ourselves for Advent.

 

This is how we engage in hopeful waiting, by earnestly praying.

 

So become spiritually engaged. Up on your toes. Hand in your glove. Eyes wide open. Ears open, too. Hearts open as well. The room is prepared. The table is set. Earnestly pray. Watch for what God is doing in Christ near you. Make the hopeful witness. Abound in love for one another. Earnestly pray.

 

Jesus said, “Watch. Your redemption is drawing near.”

 

 

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2006