“An UNEXPECTED HOUR” –
a sermon for advent SUNDAY
|
|
Reading: |
|
|
|
|
Top Left: The
Time |
Bottom Right: Will Ferrell in “Stranger than Fiction” |
Mt 24:44 “Be ready for the Son of Man
is coming at an unexpected time”
Imagine the scene.
You come home burdened with Christmas shopping.
Everything has to be in the post by tomorrow and you’ve been out all day.
You’re cold and tired and hungry,
you never got to Tesco for the food shopping,
so you ransack the kitchen cupboards for something quick and hot to eat
and finally put on a saucepan of baked beans
and bang some toast in the toaster.
Meanwhile you strew the presents
and rolls of wrapping paper you have bought over the floor
ready to wrap everything up.
You empty three drawers and a cupboard
in a futile attempt to find the sellotape
and the address book with Aunt Minnie’s new address.
Then you sense smoke and rush back to the kitchen -
the toast is a cinder and the beans are black and cemented to the bottom of the
pan.
You grab the saucepan –
and just at that moment the door bell rings.
You rush to the door, tripping over the presents as you go
–
At the
door there are some old friends
“We just called by on the off chance” they say –
“I hope is isn’t an inconvenient time”.
“No, no” you say “Not at all – lovely to see you” –
and as you try to clear stuff from at least one chair, you say –
“Do sit down - I’m afraid you’re going to have to take us as you find us”
Our Gospel today is also about an unexpected visitor – the
coming of Christ -
“Be ready – for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour” (Mt 24:44)
We don’t know when he will ring the door bell –
when he will say “Behold I knock”
When will he come?
We don’t know – that’s the point of the Biblical passage –
God can come at any time, you just have to be ready
for his appearance at different times and in different places.
1. Ultimately, the
Son of Man will come in glory at the end of time,
when this world and all its history is finally wrapped up.
As we sit here, there are 30 members of a Russian sect
holed up in an underground bunker 400 miles South of Moscow,
threatening to blow themselves up if need be,
and awaiting the end of the world next May.
So much
for the Scriptures telling us that we will not know
the time or the place of Christ’s final coming at the end of time!
But such groups tend to discourage other Christians
from even thinking about the end of the world –
this is stuff for the loony fringe only, we say.
So maybe
we don’t give any thought to the end of the world –
which is actually quite odd, because for the first time in human history,
we live in an era when humanity has the power
to destroy the planet and all the life on it, and bring earthly history to an
end.
It is a time when
·
The
end of the world is scientifically achievable and
·
A
perspective which gives hope beyond that calamity is theologically vital.
If the
end does come (and it may happen sooner than we think)
we as a human race may suddenly find ourselves
summoned into God’s presence in the next world,
with questions to answer:
“What
triggered the ecological time bomb or the nuclear disaster?
How could such resourceful and knowledgeable people
order your world so badly as to allow such a calamity?”
So, “Be
ready – for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour”
2. But of course we
may find that final meeting with God
sooner than that – at the point of our own individual death.
If you want to hire a funny and quite thought provoking
movie over Christmas,
you might like to try “Stranger than Fiction” –
its about a guy called Harold Crick, played by Will
Ferrell.
Harold is a tax man, and he lives a very methodical and boring life,
governed by a strict and unchanging routine,
even down to the number of up and down brush strokes when he brushes his teeth.
Then one day his quite unexceptional life is changed –
he starts hearing a woman’s voice telling the story of his life as he lives
it.
So as he brushes his teeth in the morning, he hears this voice saying
“Harold got up and brushed his teeth methodically as usual”
No one else can hear the voice,
but the voice clearly knows all about him and his life,
and what the voice says tends to happen.
All this is of course unnerving in many ways,
as Harold goes about his business with this constant voice over in his inner
ear.
But things become much more fraught for Harold
when one day he hears the voice say
“As Harold went about his daily business,
little did he know that he was soon to die”.
Harold sets about discovering the source of these words,
and eventually discovers that the voice is the voice of Karen Eiffel,
a neurotic author who is writing a novel.
The words he hears are her words as she writes –
and Harold realises that he is a character in her unfinished book.
More, she wants to kill off his character,
but hasn’t yet decided how to do it…
In
amongst the humour, there are lots of interesting ideas here –
about the voice of our creator interrupting our ordered and predictable lives
and challenging our comfortable existence.
And about our deep spiritual need to understand
and get in tune with the ultimate story and voice of our narrator God.
And in
the meantime, Harold discovers that
“little did he know, but he is soon to die”
-
Or as the Scriptures prefer to put it -
“Be ready, for the Son of Man comes at an unexpected hour”
Les
flippantly – we live in a world where
·
A
naïve mistake over a teddy bear’s name
can be life threatening
·
One
thoughtless sexual encounter
(yesterday was Wold AIDS day) can be death dealing
·
Every
terrorist bomb, every car crash,
could have our name on it
·
And
of course, many of us live in a world where we mourn the death of loved ones
or face the imminent death of ourselves or those near and dear to us.
None of
us need to be religious extremists in a Russian bunker
to know that the world is more than this life,
and we would be well to be ready for the next stage of our journey beyond this
world.
And when God comes to us on that day,
how ready will we be to meet him beyond the grave?
Will we be prepared, or will we find ourselves apologetic, confused
saying to the Son of Man
“I’m afraid my life is in a bit of a mess, you’ll have to take me as you find
me…”
3. But of course God does not just appear to us
at the end of the world,
or even just at the end of our individual lives.
He is liable to speak to us at any time –
as indeed he spoke to Sarah and Abraham,
to Moses and the prophets, to Joseph and Mary.
By and
large these were not previously noted as holy or saintly people –
but suddenly, unexpectedly,
in the midst of the rush and the muddle of their everyday lives, God appeared –
not at the end of time, not at the point of death – but right in the midst of
life.
Maybe,
just maybe, someone you talk to today or tomorrow
might turn out to be God, knocking on your door, seeking to enter your life.
And what
will the Son of Man find, if today, tomorrow,
he rings the door bell of my life, your life?
I guess if that happens a lot of us
will have a lot of explaining and apologizing to do.
I guess
at that point we look at our lives with new eyes –
and suddenly see our lives as God sees them –
and see in the light of his presence
the tarnished and dirty and impoverished and grubby nature
of so much we have taken for granted in our lives for so long.
“I’m
sorry Lord,” we say
“my life isn’t all you would wish, I know,
and I wasn’t expecting this conversation right now….”
And then I
guess we will experience
that pain and regret and remorse and embarrassment and guilt
which are all part of true penitence.
Then
perhaps in sadness we turn to our visitor and say –
I’m
sorry, I see now that this life of mine is not worthy of such a visitor –
I will understand that you will not wish to stay.
Then
perhaps the Lord will say
“No my child – I have already been to a stable and a cross –
I am accustomed to places like this –
I came to be part of this dark and dirty world.
Let me come in, and maybe together we can do some spring cleaning.
That day will come –
I don’t know when, today, tomorrow, many years hence –
but it will come for each and every one of us.
And on that day, which of us will not be aware of the
light of God’s holiness
lighting up the darkness of our life?
who will not wish that we were not better prepared?
But let us do what we can - light the lamps, prepare the
feast.
And
always remember –
Christ comes not to condemn but to save,
not to deepen the darkness but to spread the light.
So, with trembling joy and holy
expectation,
let’s await his coming.
Oh – and don’t forget -
“Be ready – for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour” !
ORDER OF SERVICE
Organ: Choral Preludes on “Von himmel
hoch”
(From heaven above to earth I
come)
by Bach, Buxtenhude,
Bohm and Schneidemann
Call to Worship
|
Leader: |
We don't always
know what time it is |
|
People: |
but according to Jesus, it is time
to watch. |
|
Leader: |
We're not always
sure what we should wear |
|
People: |
but according to the Spirit, |
|
Leader: |
We're not always
sure what we should do |
|
People: |
But according to God, |
Hymn 86 “Tell out my soul”
Lighting
of the 1st Advent Candle
|
Leader: |
One
candle in the darkness and the dark is filled with light. God is light and our lives are judged in
the light of God’s love. God is love
and we look forward to the time when God’s will is done and the Kingdom will
come. |
|
|
Reader: |
The
people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; light has dawned on
them, living in a land as dark as death. |
|
|
Leader: |
God
of all hope, fill us with joy and peace; we trust you. We pray that in the darkness of our times
we may still be full of hope, looking for the coming of Christ in our
world. The Lord hears our prayer. |
|
|
People: |
Thanks
be to God.
Amen. |
|
Prayer
Reading for the 1st Sunday of Advent (Lectionary Year A):
Matthew 24:36-44
(p.994)
Hymn: 81 “Come thou long expected Jesus”
Sermon: “A Thief in the Night”
Hymn 241 “Lo, He comes” (during which the collection is taken)
Prayers
of Intercession (Methodist Worship
Book p.121)
Leader: ….Come,
Lord Jesus
People: Come, Lord Jesus
Lord’s
Prayer
Peace
Leader: The peace of the Lord be always with
you
People: And also with you
[Members
of the congregation offer each other with a handshake of peace]
[Young Church join the rest of the congregation]
Hymn
“Spirit of the Living God” (Tune HAP 295 )
(during which the collection, bread & wine are brought forward)
Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me,
Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Break me, melt me,
Mould me, fill me.
Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Spirit of the living God,
Move among us now,
Make us one in heart and mind,
Through our bread and wine:.
Taking, breaking,
Blessing, sharing,.
Spirit of the living God,
Bless our bread and wine.
Holy
Communion
Leader: May the Lord of Advent
be with you
People: And also with you
Leader: People of God, lift up
your waiting hearts
People: We lift them to the One
whose heart longs for us
Leader: People of God,
give thanks to the One who draws near to us
People: Let us come to God's
Table to offer our thanks & praise
Leader: We give you thanks and praise, O God, for
the night is nearly gone, and your light is dawning in the darkness.
Though the day and hour cannot be known, through your prophets, you have given
us visions of our approaching salvation.
In Jesus you have called all peoples to yourself, raising him from the
dead, and promising a day when he will come at an unexpected hour to gather up
your children and bring them home – a day when the weapons and works of
darkness may be no more, and all may be securely clothed in Christ Jesus
himself. So with all your people, on
earth and in heaven, we sing your praise:
People Holy, holy, holy is
the Lord,
(sing): holy is the Lord
God Almighty!
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord,
holy is the Lord God Almighty!
Who was, and is, and is to come!.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord!
Leader : Our
Lord Jesus Christ, on the night in which he was betrayed, took bread, gave
thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, 'Take this & eat
it. This is my body given for you. Do
this in remembrance of me.'
In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it to
them, saying, 'Drink from it all of you.
This is my blood of the new covenant, for the forgiveness of sins. Do
this in remembrance of me.’
People: Christ
has died. Christ is risen.
Christ will come in glory.
Leader: Like
those that look for the morning,
so our souls wait for the Lord.
People: Be
known to us in breaking bread.
Leader: The
true bread of heaven gives life to the world.
[The congregation sits]
Leader: Come, all who are
hungry, come and eat.
Come, all who are thirsty, come and drink.
[Please
come forward to receive bread & wine when invited by the steward. After you have received, please return via
the side aisles]
People: We
thank you, Lord, for feeding us with the bread of heaven and the cup of
salvation.
Keep us in your grace, and at the coming of Christ in glory, bring us with your
saints
into the life of your kingdom. Amen.
Hymn 255 (verses 1, 4 and 5) “Crown him with many crowns”
1. 면류관 가지고 주 앞에 드리세
저 천사 기쁜 노래가 온 땅에 퍼지네
내 혼아 깨어서 주 찬송하여라
온 백성 죄를 속하신 만왕의 왕일세
4. 면류관 가지고 주 앞에 드리세
온 세상 전쟁 그치고 참 평화 오겠네
주 보좌 앞에서 온 백성 엎드려
그 한량없는 영광을 늘 찬송하겠네
5. 면류관 가지고 주 앞에 드리세
그 손과 몸의 상처가 영광중 빛나네
하늘의 천사도 그 영광 보고서
고난의 신비 알고자 늘 흠모하도다
Korean and English Blessing
Organ Voluntary: Carillon-Toccata
on ‘Von himmel hoch’
(from Suite for Organ ‘Christus advenit’)
– Garth Edmundson
Our
morning liturgy today draws on a number of sources:
·
Call to
Worship: Thom M. Shuman, Greenhills Community Church, Presbyterian, Cincinnati, Ohio
© 2007 Thom M. Shuman
· Advent candle liturgy:
© Norwyn
Denny, from “Shine on Star of Bethlehem” ed. Geoffrey Duncan, Canterbury Press
2001
· “Spirit of the Living God” – v.1 HAP, v.2 Advent
Liturgy by Richard Becher © Virginia Becher
in “Shine On Star of Bethlehem” Canterbury 2001
· Prayers are adapted from the Methodist Worship Book;
Advent Liturgy by Nathan Nettleton, South Yarra
Community Baptist Church, Melbourne, ©2004 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net;
and Advent Liturgy by Thom M. Shuman (see
above)
CCLI Licence 58752.