1 Advent
Texts: Mark 13:24-37; 1 Cor 1:3-9; Isaiah 64:1-9

So this is the first Sunday in Advent – the first Sunday in our new liturgical year. Here at Hope we’re buzzing with new ideas – the decision to seek out more pastoral staff, our youth group is hopping, Sunday School is vibrant…I can go on for longer, but that’s not really necessary.

It seems that energy often runs high at this time of year – at least, if you buy all the hype from radio and TV about the ‘season of Christmas.’ At least, some of those ads tell you that your energy is brimming; others tell you you’re tired; burned out, and you can take a load off and let someone else do all your Christmas work for you – for a price. Ah, we can never ignore the Christmas hype. When Wal-Mart employees are trampled to death in New York by people looking for that ‘great Christmas gift,’ it’s difficult to ignore.

Of course, it’s also difficult to avoid the Christian hype. “Remember the reason for the season,” we’re urged. Calm, serene pictures of mangers, parents, babies, and farm animals clomp their way into our consciousness. There’s a whole lot of triumphalist messages associated with that: Christ came to save us; Christ came to conquer; Christ came to triumph.

Interestingly, that Christian message often misses the point of the Advent season – to prepare for the coming of Christ. We’re told “look up, and see the glory of the choir of angels,” and so we often miss the Christ child, born in a manger – at our feet.

As we prepare for the coming of the Christ we sometimes need to look beyond the urgings to look ‘up’ – to spend big, give big, everything big – to ‘celebrate’ his coming; to sing with the choir of angels, as it were. But the angels don’t know when Christ is coming. So we need to look down – for a baby in a manger, for a poor family travelling, desperately close to the time of birth. For Christ came down – to the lowly, to the poor, to us.

At least, kind of to us – at the times when we can bring ourselves to admit that we, though blessed through material wealth, remain as spiritually poor
as every other soul that has ever sought Jesus Christ.

At times, many of us are very similar to the Corinthian community to which Paul wrote. They were pretty affluent, but in the first part of the first chapter Paul is more concerned that they know where their blessings come from.

The Corinthians were rich; not only did they have money, but Paul stood amazed at the tremendous number of spiritual gifts they had been given as well. But they often had trouble remembering where those gifts came from.

“We’re righteous,” they’d say, “we’re blessed because we deserve it. We’ve worked for it.”

But Paul knew better. He knew that all gifts came from God, all manner of blessings not because people deserved it but because God was full of love and that He gave joyously.

So Paul appealed to the Corinthian community; that as they gave thanks for their blessings they needed first to remember the ultimate source of those blessings – God. The attitude is gratitude, as some phrase it.

And he reminded them: “God is faithful, by Him (and not by yourselves) were you called into the fellowship of His son Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The Almighty came down to show grace to the needy.

In my reading over the past week I was reminded of a story that many of you have probably never read before – it doesn’t show up in our lectionary, at all. It’s a story from 2 Samuel 9 about King David – but really, in the end it’s about how the king comes down.

King David sat on the throne of Israel, surrounded by servants, slaves, and supplicants. He was the richest of the rich; in all of Israel he was tops. People lived and people died at his command. He was a great warrior, could have anything he wanted. Had everything he wanted.

But he was troubled. He was troubled because a long time before he had promised the old king – King Saul – that he would look after his descendants. Now, Saul and his son Jonathon had been killed in battle many years before and as David settled into his fancy new digs he forgot about his promise, a covenant he had made with his friend Jonathon to care for his descendants.

In 2 Samuel chapter 9 we pick up the story: one cold night King David remembered that covenant. Calling a servant to him, he asked “is there anyone left of Saul’s family, to whom I could show kindness?”

And the servant replied that yes, there was. Jonathon’s son Mephibosheth, who lived and worked as in someone else’s house. The son of royalty lived as a pauper. The son of a beautiful man – as the Bible describes Jonathon – was a cripple.

He was a cripple, you see, because when his nurse had received word of Saul and Jonathon’s death she had picked him up to flee with him, but as she ran she stumbled and dropped the baby, leaving him lame in both his feet.

Now in David’s time if you were lame, you were lame because you deserved it. And nobody wanted anyone near them who was being punished by the Almighty.

But David sent for Mephibosheth, and he came. Crippled, poor, broken. He came to the King’s table and knelt as if to serve. Actually, he knelt to plead for his life, asking, “what is your servant, that you should show regard for a dead dog such as I?” As we come in humility before God, the son of the fallen came before God’s chosen.

But, even as our own Gospel story reminds us, that wasn’t David’s plan.

David took him, dressed him, and waited for Mephibosheth to be seated at the banquet before the King’s family could eat. They waited, while the lame man hobbled to the table and took his seat beside the King, like one of the King’s own sons. The poor, the deformed, came into the presence of the king and was treated like royalty. And he dwelt there, the story ends, always.

That’s grace. That the riches we have given through God we may share with those who have less, or have none. King David found that although he had everything he wanted – even another man’s wife – he that wasn’t enough. To be complete, he was compelled – even obligated – to show grace to others even as grace had been given to him by God.

I’d be willing to bet that none of you can remember the gifts that you were given in the Christmases of your childhood; but that all of you can remember when your family showed grace to another – helped in times of trouble. Or maybe, like mine, your family was the recipient of grace like that, and have since then done your best to carry on that kindness.

Our response to the blessing of God in our lives is that we, like David, in turn go and seek out and serve the people in the same way the he sought out and served Mephibosheth.

Keep awake. Watch. Watch for those images and actions of grace; those tiny, squirming bundles of hope through which we feel the presence of Jesus Christ.

Because he is coming: Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again, and we await his coming with hope that often not even words can express.

Amen.