My sermon from 4 Advent - Christmas Eve morning, 24 December 2006 (they overlapped this year, so we did Advent 4 in the morning and Christmas Eve in the afternoon and evening... see my post for more info =o)

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Readings: Micah 5:2-5a, Canticle 3 or 15, Hebrews 10:5-10, Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

It's difficult to preach this morning. Having the Fourth Sunday of Advent fall on Christmas Eve must be about the pinnacle of anticipation as with a grand flourish the long anticipation is about to yield fruit in our glorious celebration of the birth of Christ into the world - a celebration that is heralded both in our spiritual lives as Christians and in our nation's marketing and media campaigns.

Here we stand, yet again, in the middle of two worlds that converge and diverge around some of our most sacred and significant moments in the church year, racing simultaneously to the finish of our preparations for family and friends along side our own attempts to make time for deeper spiritual contemplation on the nature of God born into the world through the helpless crying flesh of a human baby.

I am struck, particularly this morning, by the polarity between those two worlds, and perhaps it is fitting that as the rest of that world of marketing and worship of the almighty dollar has already plunged headlong into Christmas Eve as it prepares for the END of Christmas tomorrow, we take this last moment out of our frantic schedules to appreciate the profound nature of this celebration, which for us is just beginning tomorrow on the First day of Christmas.

As we heard this morning in our candle lighting, the Fourth Sunday of Advent is the Sunday of Love. It is this Sunday when we hear of God's promise through Micah; of Mary's song of praise for being chosen as God's "handmaiden;" and of Elizabeth's proclamation of a joy so profound that even the growing child within her womb leaps for joy. This is certainly a Sunday of profound joy, profound faith, and of profound love. And it seems to me that nothing short of something this profound could call us away from the palpable anticipation of Christmas Eve, just a few short hours away - and could call us back to that inner quiet as we take these last few hours to contemplate the awesome miracle of Christ's promised arrival.

Looking more closely at Micah, we see a prophecy about Christ the King, the messiah who would come and rescue Israel from the persecutions it had been enduring from practically every side. Messiah would call all the inhabitants and sons of Israel back from the foreign lands to which they had been scattered, and would stand victorious over Israel's enemies to take the throne of David - providing security and prosperity for all time. This strikes me as some pretty intense marketing on Micah's part - no doubt every family in Israel would have been sold on this kind of Messiah. Unfortunately, the release date kept getting postponed while the product was refined and revised until it finally meet with God's idea perfection...

Mary and Elizabeth, several hundred years later, are still children of this same marketing promise, only to Elizabeth has come the promise that her own child - the child of her late years after long years of barrenness and waiting - was going to prepare the way for this promised messiah to come! Mary, not to be outdone, has also had a visitation from the Angel Gabriel proclaiming not only that the messiah was finally going to come, but that she was going to bring him into the world (about six months after Elizabeth's son John the Baptist was to be born)! When they meet in today's Gospel reading from Luke, they are both so elated that they practically burst into songs of praise and thanksgiving.

I suppose by this Christmas's marketing standard, it's a bit like having a friend who says her son can take you to a place where they still have the Nintendo Wii in stock so you can get it for your family, and then finding out that your own eldest son makes the Nintendo Wii and will bring one for you in time for Christmas... or perhaps not. Somewhere the marketing breaks down. The promises don't appear to live up to what they claimed, and we arrive at a different destination than the one promised in the hype of pre-messiah marketing.

Hebrews gives us the Messiah 2.0, "Jesus edition," press release, explaining that Jesus abolishes sacrifices and offerings (representative of the law) in order to establish the will of God for all time. This doesn't quite sound ... well ... anything like the promises that were made before. Where's the king that releases all of Israel from captivity and sits on the throne of David for all time bringing peace and prosperity? Again, the marketing breaks down.

There is a profound difference, however, between the prophecies of Christ and the prophecies of our modern cultural icons in mass-marketed Christmas goods. What humans create, it is of our own greed and marketing tricks that we come to misrepresent a product. When God came to us in Jesus, it was of our human blindness that we couldn't comprehend the awesome gift of a humble messiah who would teach us God's Love.

This Love Sunday, the last Sunday in Advent, let us look with new eyes at the promises of Christ's coming. Where we expected earthly power and a ruler by the sword, let us reexamine our ideas of power and glory through the person of Jesus... In Christ we learn that true power and glory come from the healing touch that reaches out to the outsider and draws them in and heals them. True power and glory come from the abundant compassion that demands we share what little resources we might have in order to feed the hungry multitudes. True power and glory come from the willingness to put others needs before our own - to the point of laying down our lives for those we care about and love. True power and glory come from the confidence and strength to stand up for what we believe in, even in the face of persecution from others. True power and glory come from faith. While we may have missed the point of Christ's purpose as messiah, just as his own disciples frequently missed the point, we have the opportunity still to rejoice in this new coming of Christ - a cyclic new beginning that allows us, each year, to reflect anew on the awesome importance of Christ's birth, life, ministry, teachings, death, and resurrection.

At the heart of all of our readings today is the rejoicing that comes from reveling in the anticipation of something awesome - something that will change our lives forever. This last Sunday of Advent - indeed in these last HOURS of Advent - this is the joy that I hope for you to experience as we enter into the new cycle of Christ's ministry to the world. It is up to each of us how we will find the song in our hearts that resonates with the rejoicing of today's awesome anticipation, and it is up to each of us how we will bring that joy with us out of the marketing Christmas season and into the world.

As many of you know, Fuego and I made the decision a few months ago that we were going to adopt a baby. We began taking the necessary steps in the adoption process, and will begin our required parenting classes in January. By the time we finally become eligible as adoptive parents the waiting will begin in earnest as we're put on the list with other hopeful parents... I am learning anew what it means to anticipate something awesome that will change my life forever, and as such, this has been a particularly profound Advent. However, amidst the excitement in our own lives, as well as in the lives of friends and family also experiencing major life changes, Fuego and I both found this Advent that we were having trouble getting into the mindful anticipation of Christ's coming that usually comes so easily with the Advent season.

We decided to enjoy some of the media-mass marketing aspects of Christmas such as listening to Christmas carols (yes, during advent), while also entering into a more purposeful exploration of Advent themes in our own lives that relate and connect into the Advent of Christ's birth. We discovered that through some aspects of the market driven Christmas season, we have actually been able to experience a more meaningful Advent and are both shocked at how quickly Christmas is already upon us. Fuego put it wonderfully when she said that when Christmas finally comes, we'll get to celebrate it for another eleven whole days beyond the marketing hoopla.

As much as we as Christians in today's world find ourselves in two different worlds, it is important for us to explore those ways in which our worlds converge. It is in these convergences, such as Mary experienced in a more profound way than any of us could ever know, that we too might find ourselves rejoicing in the presence of God that transcends the artificial boundaries we place between the different "worlds" of our own lives. In the meantime, let us anticipate just a bit longer as we prepare our hearts and minds for Christ's coming.

Amen.