It is hard to believe we have just wrapped up another Church year and find ourselves once again beginning Advent. And while I am tempted to preach on the common themes of Advent, relating them to our daily life and preparations for Christmas, I feel I need to first address what has been going on in our great city. Not because I want to. In fact, perhaps like many of you, I am sick of reading about, hearing about, and watching what has been going on in Ferguson and the surrounding area. In the more than three months that have passed since Officer Wilson shot Michael Brown, we have been unable to escape the endless speculation on the Grand Jury, whose decision we now know. We have been surrounded by angry accusations from all sides and watched helplessly as a small number of fools burn, loot, and destroy not only part of our great city, but also our image around the world. What is maddening about the whole situation is that so many people fail to see, in the midst of their constant analysis, opinions, and arguments, a simple truth at the heart of the whole situation.
That simple truth is sin: original sin, passed down to us from Adam and Eve at the dawn of creation. This fundamental sin disposes us towards the things we ought not like or want and makes it hard to chose the things which are best for us and for others. Original sin which has put our world out of sync with God and his loving plan. But there is also actual sin, sin that I choose to commit. Deliberate thoughts, words and actions that drive me away from God and from other people and bring about hurt, selfishness, and destruction. No matter how you feel about what happened on August 9th between Officer Wilson and Michael Brown, one truth stands tall. At the heart of that encounter which took the life of one man and changed the course of another, in that moment which became a catalyst for incredible pain, destruction, and grief throughout an entire city, driving all these terrible things was sin. If you boil down any of the arguments, any of the reasons for why this took place, you will eventually trace it back to both personal and original sin, which is nothing more than our wandering away from God.
On Monday night, as I watched the various protestors, most peaceful and law-abiding, a few deliberately causing destruction and mayhem, I found myself getting angry to the point of hatred. Not just at the ones looting, burning, and destroying. But also at those people who seemed to be delighting in the lawlessness, seeing it as excusable, justified, or simply entertaining. As valid as my feelings might have been, I realized that everything happening in these days is a macrocosm, a super-sized version of what goes on in every human heart. Within each of us are the conflicting desires of love and hatred, mercy and vengeance, gentleness and force, order and chaos, right and wrong. Without God’s grace and help, any one of us could be the one destroying, looting, burning, and hurting. These are all results of sin, something we all struggle with; not a single one of us is immune.
So what we are seeing right now in our city, in a very graphic and painful way, is what happens when we wander away from God. And how quickly things go downhill when we try to address the pain of sin and its consequences with anything other than God’s grace and healing.
And that is where the season of Advent and today’s readings tie in. We are reminded that Christ is indeed near us at every moment of our lives. Our Faith reminds us that Christ wants to draw us back to him and put an end to our destructive wandering. That is the message for us on this first Sunday of Advent. Our gospel tells us to be watchful, to watch for the Lord’s coming and return to him. Jesus makes it clear that we must be prepared if we are going to be ready to receive him when he comes. This is a test we do not want to fail as people that bear his name; when he returns, we want him to find us waiting and ready.
But because of our sinful tendencies, because of our inclination towards chaos, we need this season of Advent. We need this time each year to examine our lives and ask ourselves if we are living in a way that puts Christ in the center of our hearts.
The amazing thing about our faith is the trust that God puts in us. Especially when you consider how so many of us behave. Yet, even so, God entrusts us with a building up a piece of his kingdom and all he says is "do a good job, behave well, and be alert for my return."
Christ is coming again, and we need him to come again; too many in the world have become unruly. But, while we long for his return, as Israel longed for his coming in the first reading this morning, while we long for the time when the world will be a place of harmony and peace, for the time when all things will be finally straightened out, the time when the wicked will get their just desserts and the faithful their reward, we need not be overly concerned about when it will come, we need not worry because we have our work to do in the meantime and we can trust God to honor that work, and to keep his promise to be merciful and kind to those who have lived by faith in him.
The Lord will come, and the faithful and the unfaithful alike will see him coming. They will see him coming with his angels in the clouds with great power and glory, and the angels will be sent out to gather his elect from the four corners of the earth, and there will be justice, there will be peace. A peace greater than that which any earthly court can render, a justice more just than that which any law can guarantee.
This is our hope, this is our Christian faith, and this is the time in which we show our Lord that we indeed can be trusted.
During this advent, let us allow the words of Isaiah in the first reading to resonate in our hearts and in our lives: “You, LORD, are our father, our redeemer you are named forever. Return for the sake of your servants. Would that you might meet us doing right, that we were mindful of you in our ways!”
