Sermon — December 3, 2023
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Now, I don’t often stand up here and brag about my own accomplishments, but you should know: In addition to being loving father and a decent cook and a once-distinguished student of ancient languages, I happen to have been known, in the late-’90s Winchester youth sports scene, as one of Little League baseball’s worst-ever hitters.
Now, I know it’s hard to believe, but no matter how many hours my mom and I spent in “spring training” out in the front yard, no matter how many how many times I fantasized about being up to bat for the Sox in the bottom of the ninth, there I’d be, batting ninth—they’d have me batting tenth if they could—failing to connect with yet another pitch.
I had a brief renaissance during the first years of “kid pitch,” when the combination of my gangly frame and my peers’ complete inaccuracy led me to an on-base percentage driven by walks and being hit by pitches, but I swear my batting average was never above about fifty; and I do mean that like .050.
But my coaches were nice guys, so I was mostly on the receiving end of positive, affirming coachly shouts. “Good eye!” they’d say as the ball sailed past, four feet from the strike zone. “Keep your head in the game!” as I instinctively ducked to avoid a pitch we all wished I’d let hit me in the helmet. And my favorite piece of sports advice: “Look alive!” an expression they surely teach in Dad School.
“Look alive!” Now that’s one I can do. I cannot hit a baseball to save my life, but I can look alive, because I am alive, gosh darnit. And I can look the part!
Of course, that’s not what “look alive” means. It’s not “look alive,” but “look alive.” Pay attention, be alert, keep your eye on the proverbial or literal ball. If Jesus were your baseball coach—surely that’s the title of a country song, right?—if Jesus were your baseball coach, he’d say, as you stepped up to the plate, “Come on, now! Keep awake!”
“Look alive!” Advent is here.
“Keep awake,” Jesus says to his disciples. “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.” (Mark 13:37, 33) We often spend these four weeks in December looking forward to Christmas Day, to God’s arrival in the world in the form of the baby Jesus, born in Bethlehem. But the church’s worship also looks forward to something else. When Jesus says “you do not know when the time will come,” he’s not talking about his own birth. That would be a little odd. He’s not talking about the “First Coming” of Christmas. He’s talking about what’s sometimes called the “Second Coming,” some future day when “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,” the stars will fall and the heavens will shake and “they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.” (Mark 13:24-26)
And this is why Jesus tells the disciples to “keep alert,” “keep awake,” because that day is coming, “but about that day or hour no one knows,” neither the angels, nor the Son, nor any preacher who tries to calculate the date—but only the Father. (Mark 13:32) So they should keep watch, Jesus says, lest it catch them unawares.
Now of course it’s hard to know just what this means. Jesus has to be exaggerating, somewhere. If the “Second Coming” is some actual day of earth-shaking darkness and divine judgment, which still hasn’t happened yet, then the urgency is exaggerated: surely the disciples do not need to stay awake for more than two thousand years. And if they really did need to keep awake, to keep alert, to “look alive”—if it’s really true that that first generation of disciples wouldn’t pass away before these things happened—then maybe he’s not actually talking about some literal day of darkness, some future day of the “Second Coming.” Maybe he’s talking about something else.
Advent, after all, isn’t just a season of vigilance. It’s a season of memory, and comfort, and hope. It’s a season in which, during what are literally the darkest days of the year, we are reminded of the great things that God has done, and the great things that God will do, and the great things that God is doing even now.
The prophet Isaiah looks back to the past, reminding God of the times “when you did awesome deeds that we did not expect.” (64:3) And Isaiah hopes for the future, Isaiah prays for God to do something—one of my favorite prayers, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” (64:1) But Isaiah also acknowledges the ongoing work of God: “O Lord… we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (64:8) And my middle-school pottery-class skills were as poor as my elementary baseball skills, but even I know that a potter’s work is not one and done. There’s a shaping and a guidance that takes place, between a potter’s hands and a sad old lump of clay, and I love this as an image for human life, because you can’t look at any given pot at any given moment and know what the future has in store for it, any more than you can do with people. That one looks pretty rough now, but it’s still on the wheel. That one looks pristine, but maybe it’s about to crack in the kiln.
Paul does the same thing, balancing the future and the past with a healthy dose of the present. He begins his letter to the Corinthians by giving thanks for the grace that has been given them in Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 1:4) And he reinforces the promise that God will strengthen them, so that they can be found blameless at that Second Coming, “on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 13:8) But he’s more focused on the present: on the ways in which God is enriching them now, on the spiritual gifts God is giving them now, as they wait. He talks about what God is doing for people in the present, because he wants to talk about what the people are doing to each other in the present: after this positive and encouraging opening, he’ll go on to spend most of the letter trying to sort out the conflicts and disagreements that keep happening between the members of this very human church. Like Jesus, Paul also wants these Christian disciples to be vigilant—not for the ways in which God will one day come to them, but for the ways in which God is already now among them, working in them and through them, and in and through the people around them, people who sometimes really get on their nerves.
In the darkest days, in the midst of great suffering, when it seems like the whole world, the whole universe, is coming apart—in other words, most days—the Son of Man is coming, wrapped in clouds. But those clouds are apparently pretty thick. You’d think that when God does tear open the heavens and come down, it would be an obvious thing. And yet Jesus tells the disciples, over and over again, to look alive. Keep awake. Be alert. Because this awe-inspiring appearance of the Lord might otherwise go as unnoticed as his birth did, in the back of an inn, somewhere in Bethlehem.
How many awe-inspiring moments sail on by while we’re swinging at something else and missing? Not the baby’s first steps, or your first time at Niagara Falls. But the child’s 100th drawing of a ninja or the blueness of the sky on a November morning. Not the few big moments in life, but the hundred thousand small ones. Not the one big life-changing experience, but the million little spiritual gifts that lie hidden for us, scattered throughout the stuff of daily life.
So keep awake, this Advent! Be alert! Keep watch for the ways God is appearing to you here and now; keep watch for the hand of the potter shaping you, and the people you love, and the people you don’t much like. Keep your head in the game, and eyes on the ball. And if that’s too much, during this chaotic season before Christmas—if it’s too much, amid the shopping and the cooking, the family visits and the final exams—then at the very least: Look alive! Because you are alive, thank God—and “I give thanks to my God always for you,” knowing that God loves you, and that “God is faithful” to you, and that by God you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.