you can show & prove

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Advent 2 sermon from Joel:

What a hodgepodge passage of scripture!
The timeline isn’t clear. Prophecies of judgement are crammed next to prophecies of hope… And I’d be tempted to complain about it; but I know you all have bigger grievances during these busy, busy days. It’s a chaotic time of the year, isn’t it?

So, I’ve got to ask, it is my pastor-y duty. It is now, after all, the second week of Advent. The Long, Dark Night  gets ever closer. 

How about it? Are you any more ready, any more prepared than you were a week ago?

Are you ready for Jesus’ arrival???

…Okay. Perhaps we should set our sights a little lower.
Are you prepared for all the stress that’s part and parcel to this time of year? Are you ready for yet another meal with the in-laws? Is the house prepared? What about the gifts, have they all been purchased and wrapped?

Or how about the sorrows of this season? Are you ready for your first, or fiftieth, Christmas without your beloved? Can you handle the lingering memories of Christmases past?

What about the letdown? Have you prepared for disappointment that always seems to come with taking another dried up tree, to the dump? What about the way the kiddos break most of their gifts in less than an hour? What about the children who are a little older this year and now only seem to want money?

Or how about the hangover? Are you ready to to deal with another week of your child’s excitement? What about when it boils over into meltdown in the checkout aisle? What about all the credit card bills?

So, are you any more ready than you were last week? It’s already the second week of Advent. Soon the hour will be upon you. Are you ready?

*…I know; you’re about ready to kill me, aren’t you?

Well look, I know how hard this time of the year is. In fact, when I submitted my November report to the council, I complained the month had totally gotten away from me. One day Shana/Karen came into my office to ask for the Advent liturgy, the plans for Holden Evening Prayer, the agenda for the Thursday night book study, the plan for Christmas Eve services, and not to forget to write my newsletter, either - and on, and on, and on!

Advent had snuck up on me unawares. The season had caught even yours’ truly, unprepared.

We all know what it’s like. Including me. So no, I don’t have a seven-point how-to sermon on efficiently preparing for Advent. Sorry. All I have today is this hodgepodge of scripture, and benign observation; that it’s the way it always goes: All this chaos in the midst of our lives.

We look up at the calendar and wonder how it got to be December already. We notice the clock, only to realize we’re already late. Suddenly the hour arrived; and we aren’t ready. We had been going about our business as usual; but nothing was usual anymore.

And the trouble is, that’s how it always goes. Not just this time of year, but more often than not…

All those moments of our lives. That death you had been expecting, only when it actually happened, you found yourself completely unprepared for the sadness that settles in. The birth you spent nine months preparing for, only to take the child home and realize you have no clue. 

The calls that go unanswered. The diagnosis. The pink slip. The wedding band taken off and put away, because looking at it would be too hard. All those moments in our lives we thought we were ready for. Only when they came, we found ourselves utterly unprepared. 

That how it always seems to go, doesn’t it? In a moment, everything changes. And in just another, we find we weren’t ready for it to happen…

What makes this season, Advent, so hard is the way it all gets crammed into a few short weeks. The crucible of this season where our hopes collide with our fears. Our excitement is shelved next to our worry. Our expectations jockey with our disappointment. Our joy rubs elbows with our sorrow…

So much to balance, in such a short amount of time. All this chaos. 

Then, to top of it all off, we’re also expected to prepare during these days we can’t even get through the to-do list.

In Advent we’re tasked to try and get ready for Jesus; and in the meantime the calendar bears down on us. Everything collides. In the midst of that whirlwind, we try and hold it all together. To put off the dreaded moment, when everything comes apart…

All this chaos in the midst of our lives, especially during this time of the year…

Well, would it be any comfort if I told you, we aren’t the only ones? Because, that’s how it was for the prophet Joel, too. 

That’s what’s so jarring about his book of prophecies, the way messages of hope and destruction sit right next to each other. The way he calls for repentance and in the very next breath, calls for rejoicing. 

The way time collapses. Beginning his prophecies with a call to sound the trumpet, hit the alarm. A little later, where our passage began, holding open a glimmer of hope, with the words “yet even now.” Then, after just ten measly verses, suddenly looking ahead, declaring, “then afterward.”

In Joel’s prophecy everything collides, hope with sorrow. All in a moment, when time ran out. 

It’s a hard prophecy.

If nothing else, thought, it is a prophecy we have ears to hear, isn’t it? 

It’s a word for us on this second week of Advent. As The Long, Dark Night gets ever closer. As time itself seems to collapse. As our hopes and fears, our expectations and disappointments all collide. As we try to hold everything together, knowing full well it won’t be long before the hour is past.

All this chaos in the midst of our lives…

Yet, it is exactly from that tumult, that Joel declares something unexpected. Something we could never get ready for: the shocking announcement of God’s presence - right in the middle of all this chaos!

“You shall know,” declares the Lord, “that I am in the midst of it all, and that I, the Lord, am your God -and there is no other.” 

When everything comes crashing together, when the moment we could never be ready for, happens; God shows up. In the midst of it all, God shows up.

That’s what Joel’s prophecies, this season of Advent is about. 

Not doing the impossible, getting ready for something you could never be; a birth, a death, a divorce, a marriage; God’s arrival. But rather the miracle that God shows up in the middle of it all, to you; to be your God. That God isn’t afraid of our stuff. And there’s another word that begins with the letter “S” I could use too, isn’t there?

The promise of Joel, of Advent, is that in the midst of all this, God shows up.

We imagine God showing up once we’ve got everything together, when everything is in order. 

What Joel declares, though, is God meets us in the midst of, not a quite hour of prayer, but all this chaos of our lives, of this time of the year… 

You know, when I first began preparing for this sermon, I tried to pull apart the various strands. To put it in order. Separate the prophecies of hope from the prophecies of doom. 

Only to realize, that’s the point. That’s how it’s supposed to work. And not just this prophecy, but our lives too. When it all comes crashing together, God doesn’t abandon us, but instead shows up right in the midst of it. 

Savior this moment. The truth is, from here, it will only get more hectic, more chaotic. The emotions more intense. 

So get ready. The one who meets your hopes and your fears comes to you. And not a moment too late.
In the midst of everything, the prophecy of Joel is true as ever. “You shall know,” declares the Lord, “that I am in the midst of it, and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other.”

This is your God. What the church has you prepare for, ready or not.

Because God’s arrival, right in the middle of it all, that is what will get you through, not just this season, but all of your life. The promise of God’s presence, in the middle of it all - to be God for you.