CELC First Sunday in Advent

The First Sunday in Advent – November 28, 2004

Romans 13:11-14

Do you feel it? It is like a fog, isn’t it, filling every nook and cranny, seeming to be everywhere. Something seems to be amiss these days. The “civility” in our civil arrangements has seemed to vanish. Perhaps exhibits “a” and “b” are the fights by professional basketball and college football players last weekend.

In case you missed it somehow, a fight began on the court toward the end of a pro basketball game and escalated to include fans. Players went into the stands to attack the heckling and beer-throwing fans. This was an unprecedented moment of poor sportsmanship and fan incivility. Boundaries were crossed with blows that broke the boundaries of a civil society.

More and more we experience the crumbling of appropriate boundaries in our world. Violence and war have become epidemic and we watch unable to stop the erosion. Personally, I was appalled this past week to learn that on November 22^nd a new video game was released. Part of the game has President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade traveling through Dallas. The player of the game gets to shoot President Kennedy. Points are awarded on how well you do at the task of presidential assassination. Can you imagine? It makes one want to ask, “What on earth is happening?”

It is too easy, though, to point fingers at others. We know that we could do something; we could write a congressman or senator, or speak out in some other way. We live in this land of grand freedoms, even freedom of speech. But, we are mute. The video game is on the market and will be played by children who are computer savvy and emotionally damaged by the experience. Yet, there is no outcry. We are as guilty as the next.

St. Paul has a particular word for us today: “…let us live honorably as in the day…” It may sound trite, but it is the Word of God for us this morning. Let us live honorably as in the day. God has a different idea than we do. God is calling us to live in the moment with words of grace.

There is a story making the rounds on the internet about the “dash.” The dash is that little mark that appears on a gravestone between the year a person is born and the year they die. I looked at a marker yesterday that read, “1908” dash “1946.” Look at a grave marker and you will see the “dash.”

The story on the internet makes the point that the year of our birth and death is not in our control, but the dash is. The dash represents how we live our lives. Is your “dash” a life lived “honorably as in the day?”

As soon as we hear a question like this we begin to think how we can be better. We begin to do what you might call a “moral” inventory. “Let’s see,” we say to ourselves, “I haven’t sold illegal drugs recently, nor have I stolen anything. Well, there were those bad words I used yesterday with the clerk at the store, but everyone does that. You know, I am really doing well and am not a bad person at all.”

We think that kind of rationalization qualifies as living “honorably as in the day.” Deeper reflection reveals to us that we are no better than the next person, and in fact may be worse. When the Ten Commandments evaluate our daily life they reveal that we fall short. It begins with that first and pesky commandment, “You shall have no other gods.” And we know how we love other things before God.

So, what shall we do? The world seems to be falling apart and we are no help. We cannot even help ourselves.

It is at this point that we lift our eyes to the cross and see there the Word of God speaking to us a word of pardon and forgiveness, a word of mercy and love. We lift our eyes and see that our hope is not in our own feeble inventions and constructions, but our hope is in the cross, and God comes to us in the risen Jesus to heal us and make us whole.

It is this unconditional love of God that makes all the difference. This love is the unconditional love that transforms us and makes it possible for us to live lives that are “honorable, as in the day.” We are made perfect not by our doing but by the grace of God breaking into our lives through Jesus Christ.

Recently someone asked me what the big box was on the power cord to my laptop computer. They were describing the transformer that takes the electricity from the wall outlet and converts it to the proper power that makes my computer work. You can’t just plug the computer directly into the wall. It needs the transformer.

So it is for us. To live honorably this Advent we live in the unconditional love of God through the cross of Jesus Christ. It is in the cross that our works of darkness turn to works of light.

Since life is lived in relationships, perhaps one of the concrete things you can do as people transformed by the cross is to act as role models for others. Certainly youth and all the rest of us need to see people living in the world who grapple with the injustices, the inequities and challenges by doing other things than going into the stands and pummeling the fans.

Think about it: you who are forgiven and transformed, how might you serve as a role model for others? How might you live honorably, as in the day? Amen.

Pastor Robert F. Holley