SURPRISE
November 28, 1987, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Isaiah 64:1-8
‘Mark 13:32-37

“Watch—-for you do not know when the master of the house will comeé,..."
-Mark 13:35(RSV)

Six hundred million dollars. That is the 1987 retail sales estimate
for the North Michigan Avenue area, and much of it will change hands during
the next four weeks. $600,000,000. That is alot of money. It's no
wonder we are emblazoned with white lights and color and frantic festivity.
And the question that presents itself to the Christian community today is
this: "How in the world can we do or Say anything with a chance of being
noticed in the midst of this festival? How are we going to get a word in
edgewise. in the next four weeks?

In many ways it is the most difficult season for us. It is surely
the most subtle. Ministers and church musicians learn to be wary of it
because the world is already celebrating Christmas and, - according to our
calendar, it-hasn't come yet. It is Advent and one of the things the
Christian church has felt most consistently over its 2,000 year existence
is that Christmas requires a time of intentional preparation. But the
world is already celebrating. People want to sing carols. I understand.
I can recall my own youthful exasperation about: it.

I have always loved Christmas and everything about it. You'll never
hear me complaining about the appearance of Christmas decorations too ~—
early. I love it. when the first tree or wreath appears in Indian Summer to
remind me of what is coming. I do discipline myself to not play Christmas
music until Thanksgiving. But for me, at least, Christmas begins in earnest
at about 6:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.

So I used to get exasperated.:. I hada job on weekends at J. C.
Penney one year. I worked back in the rear, where they sold work clothes -
heavy flannel jackets for the deer hunters. J. C. Penney had two Christmas
records that year, 45s - Perry Como singing "0 Come All Ye Faithful" and "0
Little Town of Bethlehem" and Percy Faith doing a jazzed-up version of
“Deck the Halls" and “Joy to the World." Over and over I heard them. They
are still burned into my memory. “And J do recall my exasperation on Sunday
morning when I went to church for the “real stuff," and what I got was some
obscure hymns I didn't know, in a minor key...

"O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here...'

That's what I thought had happened to me - “mourning in lonely exile
on a hard Presbyterian pew, while everyone else had the good sense to be
singing 'Hark the Herald. Angels Sing.'"

Why do we do it? Well, for one thing it just may be that if we
pulled out the stops, and tried to compete for attention with that
$600,000,000 bonanza, if we had a live Mary.and Joseph and baby Jesus in
the Garth, twenty-four hours a day, with real sheep and cows and the
morning choir hovering angelicaliy on the manse roof, Singing the
“Hallelujah Cherus" - if we took a page from that book we just might fall
on our faces. And then again, we just might succeed and that would be
worse than making fools of ourselves because if we succeeded, we would miss
the point of the whole business in the first place. The point is that once
upon.a:time Ged came into the world — in darkness and silence, in modesty
and restraint in a way-almost nobody noticed. The point of the whole
business is a subtle one; namely that God can be counted on-to continue
coming into the world... The point is, it is still possible to miss it,
because of its quietness .and modesty and subtlety. :

So it is Advent. With a joy so profound I can never fit it into
words, we enter into a period of waiting and anticipating. Just as
everybody turns out the lights in order to see the birthday candles better,
so in Advent the church goes intentionally inte the darkness — in order
better to see the light of the world.

You see what Advent is about is the most amazing idea anyone ever

‘ had, namely that God, the Creator and the ruler of the universe, comes into
your life and mine and the life of the world with great love and power and
hope and enormous potential. The most amazing idea of-all is that the one
who creates all of us, knows each of us - intimately: comes into our lives
with creative love, just as He came into the startied lives of Mary and
Joseph. The most amazing idea of all is that God is no stranger to the
human condition, that God came into our humanness and therefore knows about
humanness — about. ecstasy and despair, about joy and sadness, about hope
and grief.

The oldest and most primal human prayer, even before there is a
theology, is one that comes out of the extremities of the human situation:
“0, God, make it right." Everyone of us has. prayed that prayer or a
variation on the theme. "Make it right, make her well, give him back to
me, make me victorious, make me successful, make justice, make. enough food
to eat... make it right."

The prophet Isaiah pled with God, 2,500 years ago: “O that thou
wouldst rend the heavens and come down..." "Make your name known te your
adversaries," which means, make it right, square things with your enemies
(who, by the way, happen to be my enemies also). The situation to which
Isaiah wrote was, in fact, captivity and exile. God's chosen people had

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been exiled, pushed around, humiliated and treated with contempt. Now they
found themselves virtually in house arrest in a foreign land that they
hated. And so they prayed every night, "Oo God, make it right."

-If-that's the-oldest: prayer, the oldest theoiogical quandary -rélated
to it is.- "If there is a God, why. isn't he making it right?" Why don't 7
see some evidence ~ some mercy, justice, kindness? Why, if there is a God,
is there all this sadness and tragedy in the world?" Every age asks that
question: Five hundred years before Christ the prophet. asked it.

In our day it is asked by the poets and artists, in theater and
sometimes in. comedy because. preachers and theologians are not brave enough
to give it. full voice. Theologians pay attention to Woody Alien, for:
instance, because this question runs through much. of his work. For many
people (me among them), Woody Allen is a contemporary Isaiah who in many
ways and through many cinema characters pleads —- "0 that thou wouldst rend
the heavens and come down." ; mo

And Lily Tomlin's wonderful. bag lady Trudy, who Ihave quoted
before...

“One thing I have no worry about is whether God exists.
But it has occurred to me that God has Alzheimers and has
forgotten that. we exist." ,

"OQ. that. -thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down."

The early Christian community asked the question and prayed: the.
prayer... The time immediately after Jesus was bleak. They were powerless ‘in
the face of Roman hostility. They were nothing but’ a minor nuisance the
empire had. decided to eliminate. And. when they. got together, they recalled
the ancient promise of the Day of the Lord, when:God would act decisively
and defeat all the nation's enemies. They recalled the words of Jesus
about God's Kingdom coming into the world. .And*out’ of. that came an-idea
which was almost immediately a problem for them. and which has confused
Christians ever since... The return of Jesus Christ:. the Second Coming. -

The problem has resulted when the two ideas joined: - i.e. -the
decisive act of God to make things right and the coming of Christ. _ People
who interpret literally here,. past. and present, often:sell all their
belongings and stand around waiting for the end of the world. They were
doing it in Thessalonica in the First Century and they're still. doing’ it.
The simple fact is that the world didn't come to an end and Jesus didn't
come back as they. believed he. would and as he seemed tobe saying he~
would... unless, of-course, he meant something else; unless he has come”
again and again and again. :

And yet, every so often, Christian people fasten onto the idea of the
Second Coming of Christ and the end of the age with a zeal bordering on
obsession. Usually it is in: times of stress, turmoil, persecution. and
oppression. Whenever the future looks grave the idea of the return of
Jesus and the end of the world sounds pretty good. So today - there
are people who lift the 13th Chapter of Mark out-of the First Century: and
try to fit it. into the front page of the Chicago Tribune. And when Mark

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says. Jesus said "nation will rise up against nation" - these folk read in
Iraq and Iran, or Russia and the United States or Israel and Lebanon, and
when Mark says Jesus predicted calamities and tribulation these folk read
in Ethiopia famine and California earthquakes. And it's not long until
everybody. is convinced that this is it, particularly in that we do now have
the capacity to-create-our own Armageddon with a mushroom cloud umbrella
over it. That's potent stuff and it continues to seli a lot: of books.

Madeleine L'Engle, ordinarily the gentlest of Christians, gets angry
about the equation of the Second Coming with nuclear disaster.

"That cannot: be,":she writes. "Of one thing only am I certain: the
Second Coming is an action of love. The judgment of God is the judgment of
love... To equate it with nuclear holocaust is to expect God to curse
creation, not to bless; to look for hell, not heaven, ‘whichis a kind of
blasphemy, for. we are called to live in hope.” {A Stone for a Pillow, p.
417) ve

Interestingly, Jesus will not be pinned down on the subject. The
climax of the 13th Chapter of Mark is not the revelation of the date, time
and method —- but the open-ended and hopeful mandate to "Watch" - to
anticipate ~ to be alert and ready - for the Lord's coming.

And a good thing too because we didn't do so good with the’ first
coming. After all, no one much noticed it. Herod, of course, understood
all too well the ultimate. threat the Jewish infant posed to his authority.
Those. Eastern mystics with their heads in the stars knew that something
mysterious was. going on..° And -the shepherds, the social misfits spending
their lives outside the perimeters of polite society, seem to have noticed
something: peculiar going on in Bethlehem. ~But that's about it. No one
else.caught it: not the merchants, not the. crowd at the bar at the Inn,
not the census takers, not.the priests, not even the inn-keeper whose year-
end profit and loss statement was going to look a lot healthier because of
all the .census-business.. And later, as the story plays out, he is not
exactly overwhelmingly recognized by anybody - except a few folk, here and
there, again mostly the disreputable outcasts whose credibility was taken
seriously by no one. So his advice to his disciples to watch and be alert
and awake -— so as not to miss his coming again, was well taken.

What is there that relates to that? Try this. "Surely, it's not
here: already," we are heard to say. The nearly unusual response ‘to the
season is a kind of hackneyed surprise. “Here it comes again ~ seems like
it was just Labor Day. I haven't even begun to think Christmas and here it
is." One morning you wake up and and the twinkling lights are on and the
Hancock tree is up. We're never ready - even for this glitzy part, it
seems, and that's precisely the point. The event itself... this
extraordinary birth - is always a surprise - as are all the comings and
goings of God into. life.

Where? Where exactly does God rend the heavens and come down?
Well, history and our own experience teach us that God doesn't come

like an avenging army; that for all the praying down across the centuries
to make it right, God isn't in the business of rearranging natural

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processes and historic forces to do favors for his children. God's coming
into those situations when we: feel desperate and cry. for help is subtle,
quiet and unobtrusive. God comes and changes people, brings redemptive
possibility into the most hopeless of circumstances.

From the Nazi prison where he was held-and where he died, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer wrote —

"A-prison cell in which one waits, hopes, and is completely
dependent..is not a bad picture of Advent.” jlLetters. and
Papers From Prison, p. 416]

.. God's coming into the world, Bonhoeffer, discovered, is not confined
to happy family parties, with Christmas tree, gifts, and all the trimmings,
but becomes very real in the darkness and isolation of a prison cell.

Jesus Christ has come again, and the promise of Advent is that Jesus
Christ will continue to come again, not simply on some future Armageddon,
but - into our world with creative potential now; and into the hearts and
minds and souls of people...now, people who are impatient with war and
planning for war and whose hopefulness is expressed in an insistent demand
for peace.. That is a coming of Jesus Christ. When the negotiators
actually get it done, and take a step and sign a document, angels sing and
shepherds quake and Christ comes.

And when ordinary people can simply no longer tolerate the injustice
our system has created for the poor, and who demand that somehow we deal
with homelessness and education and employment ~ Christ, friend of the
poor, is coming again.

_ And when ordinary people see a portion of the population which has
been isolated by convention and now is condemned to die alone of AIDS and
say, "this is not right," and begin to do something about it, the one who
reached across so many societal taboos has come again... When hope simply
refuses to die in the world — Jesus Christ comes again.

Be alert...awake...watch. Jesus Christ is coming into your life, as
well as the life of the world.

One of my favorite Frederick Buechner observations, which has meant a
great deal to me, is this one -

“Listen. to what's happening in your own life... Pay special
attention to those times when you find tears in your eyes,

even if you don't know why the tears are there. Listen to

your life." [Christian Century, 11/83]

So it happens... Christ comes... You're in the hospital elevator,
on the way down from oncology and the door opens onto obstetrics and you
hear anew born cry...

-or you're sitting in the sanctuary, your mind wandering and you hear
"Amazing Grace" and you know it is from God to you...

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; - 7or.you're in the hellish captivity of a broken relationship, and from
deep within yourself. you feel the power to forgive or to ask forgiveness...

_ “or you're alone, in-exile, in darkness and someone reaches ‘in and
holds your hand and in that hand you feel God's hand and you know. that
Jesus comes again and -again-and again. me

It is the most amazing idea anyone ever had. The Creator comes into
the creation. The one who made us all —- loves us each and comes ‘to-us
each. The future — regardless of what it holds - will be one into: which
Jesus Christ will come. ; oo

Historians think there may have been a.kind of cryptic code word by
which those first Christians identified each other.. An intriguing remnant
remains in the New Testament; a simple. Aramaic phrase: —-"Marantha‘: which
means "Come Quickly."

"Come Quickly - Lord Jesus." We may be so distracted by the lights
and loud music and brilliant colors of the season that we miss it...

So. let us. pray the prayer...
Come, Lord Jesus. . :
Come with peace to. our world.

Come with reconciliation to our nation and our city.

:Come with -healing- to: our relationships. : : :
- Come into our lives with your love and joy and strength and hope.
Come quickly, Lord Jesus... Amen.- . ae :

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