Waiting in Hope

1st Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37, 1st Corinthians 1:3-9

It’s hard to wait. The challenge of Advent, of course, is the waiting.

Our contemporary society doesn’t help us with this at all. Advent is a church thing – society doesn’t recognize this time of anticipation. Society isn’t very good at anticipation, and we’re actually getting worse. Some of us remember 30 years ago – the “Christmas season” started sometime after Thanksgiving. Now, however, it begins sometime after Labor Day. Big business and gross annual sales drives the start of the “buying” season ever forward.

Waiting is hard. Sister Tracy is telling a wonderful story this week in her sermon. She says, “You’d think we would have learned by the time the second child rolled around, but no; we’re slow learners. So when we told Aaron a few weeks ago that we’d be going to his Cousin Garrett’s house for Thanksgiving, we doomed ourselves to weeks of 4-year-old time-confusion. “Is today the day? Will we go when we wake up tomorrow? When you pick me up from school, will we leave for Garrett’s?”

This is the time of the year that I spend a lot of time sitting in a hunting blind. Deer hunting is all about waiting in the forest. Waiting for the moment of harvest. Success comes to the patient hunter. I heard a story this last week that indicates that success may come to the sleepy hunter. Joe Black harvested a pretty nice animal last week. His dad tells me that he slept from the moment they arrived in the stand until just before the deer arrived.

Waiting is hard. Not just for children, mind you – it’s hard for adults. One of my choir members asked last week if we could start singing Christmas hymns earlier in the season. I understand the difficulty – I, too, want to sing those hymns. Christmas is coming, but first, we wait.

There is a tension to waiting. In our scriptures for this morning, you can sense the anticipation – Isaiah says, “O, that Thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at Thy presence.” We wait for the salvation of God, and the waiting is hard. “As fire kindles the brushwood, as fire causes water to boil – to make thy name known to Thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence!” We long for the salvation of God, and the anticipation is virtually more than we can bear. “Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Come quickly,” we plead.

Advent is the season of waiting. We wait for the second coming of our Savior, even as we waited for the arrival of that baby 2000 years ago. We are shaped by our anticipation of this event. What will we do while we wait? How will we prepare for His return? Will He find us prepared, or will we be caught off guard? These are the questions of Advent. These are the questions of waiting.

I have been astonished over the years by listening to those who have claimed that they can predict the exact time of the return of Christ. I had a friend in Houston some 13 years ago who was obsessed with the task. He was convinced that the scriptures held the clues – and almost as if he was unraveling a mystery, he searched, and conceived, and postulated until he was sure that Christ would return in 1998. I think he missed it. Others have tried to accomplish something of the same over the centuries. They easily forget the words of our Lord who said that even He “did not know the time.”

While we wait, we make preparation. Our sanctuary is a good example. We have started decorating. Making ready. We know He is coming again, just as surely as He once came. We have hung the banners, the cloths have been changed, and we have lit the first of our candles of anticipation. In a few weeks, we will celebrate again the birth of our Savior, and should He tarry in His return, we will continue to wait in anticipation.

I’ve thought a lot about my Dad over the past several months, and especially over this past week. It was about this time last year that we realized that Dad would not be with us this year. We waited. He waited. During the succeeding months, we all waited for his passing. But there were things to do. He had things that he needed to do, and I am not privy to all of those things. He had some things that he wanted to say to each of us, and we had some things we wanted to say to him. Then the news of his death came, and I realized that as much as I had tried to prepare – as much as I knew that this moment would come – I was not fully prepared. I don’t suspect that any of us can be fully prepared for something this tumultuous.

Isaiah’s frustration is the reason we have this Scripture to read on the first Sunday of Advent.
He was ready for the Messiah to come – for salvation to come to his life and to the lives of his people. He was frustrated that God was taking so long to send the Messiah. We understand his frustration. We are not very good at waiting.

We wait – we wait in a kind of darkness, not knowing, finding ourselves less than fully aware. The psychologist, Carl Jung, said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”1 I am intrigued by that last phrase. Last month, I went on a deer hunt over in McAlester. The organizers of the hunt would take us out into the field quite early in the morning – so early that we would be in our stands nearly an hour before first light. Those were interesting minutes. It was so dark that you couldn’t see anything – not even your hand in front of your face. On the second morning of the hunt, I was in my stand quite early, and sitting still. I could hear animals running around in the forest. I’d like to be able to tell you what they were, but I couldn’t see them. So, I tried to imagine what was running around down there. It could have been deer, and then again, it could have been coyotes. The imagining was fun - during those moments, the darkness was conscious. It was alive. But I was limited in my ability to experience what was going on. Animals of the night have different vision capacity from humans. They can see things we simply cannot see – because of our limitations. To them, the darkness is conscious.

Advent is the season of waiting. We are shaped by our anticipation of this event. What will we do while we wait? How will we prepare for His return? Will He find us prepared, or will we be caught off guard?

Mark works to illumine our task during this season. We are to wait in hope. I like the word hope, because in the biblical sense, hope and anticipation are virtually the same thing. In our society today, hope looks more like the lottery – we buy our ticket, but the odds of winning are so very slim. Biblical hope has security. Biblical hope has promise. When the scriptures speak of hope, it looks more like anticipation. The return of Christ is not a possibility – it is an assurance yet to happen. We cannot change the outcome of His return. We cannot hurry it up by creating more darkness, or by committing more sin, or by offering greater support to the nation of Israel. We cannot hurry the return of Christ by ushering in the next apocalypse, whatever that may be. What we can do is wait.
And we wait in hope. We are waiting, but there is still stuff to do. We continue to prepare. We continue to make ready – we make our own lives ready, and we tell the story of promise to those who will listen and prepare for themselves.

I read another intriguing quote this week – this one by the American poet Adrienne Rich. She said, “My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed. I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”2 I like what she said in this respect. Even while we prepare for the age to come, which we suppose will actually look like the world to come, we do what we can with what we actually have – which in our case is nothing less than our own world. Our families may be the best example of this kind of thinking. We do not merely acknowledge the history of our families, but while acknowledging and celebrating that which was, we prepare for the future of our own families. In my own family of origin, this was the year that the balance between the adults and the children actually, well, balanced. With Dad’s passing, there are actually as many grandchildren as there are parents and grandparents. There is a new generation coming of age – thinking of ways to think, to serve, to survive, to thrive, to prosper, to contribute, and to perpetuate. The future belongs more to them than it does to the family members of my generation, and so it should be. It gradually becomes more their family, and then it will pass from them to their progeny. “Age after age, perversely with no extraordinary power, reconstituting the world.”

Frederick Buechner says, “Advent means ‘coming,’ of course, and the promise of Advent is that what is coming is an unimaginable invasion. The mythology of our age has to do with flying saucers and invasions of outer space, and that is unimaginable enough. But what is upon us now is even more so – a close encounter not of the third kind but of a different kind altogether. An invasion of holiness. That is what Advent is about.”3

We wait in anticipation for the holiness of God to return. But how close is His return. Mark says, “recognize that He is near, right at the door.” And then later, he says, “Therefore, be on the alert – for you do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether in the evening, at midnight, at cockcrowing, or in the morning – lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.”

We do not know the day or the hour. We do not know. But we do know that He is coming. We have assurance. He came once – He is coming again. We wait in hope – confident assurance. We wait in hope.

And so we listen as Mark closes with these words. “What I say to you I say to all, ‘Be on the alert.’”

Richard W. Dunn, PhD.

1,2,3 - all three quotes come from Behold: Arts for the Church Year, Advent 2005 - Epiphany 2006 (Year B)

It’s the Little Things that Count

27th Sunday after Pentecost – Christ the King

Matthew 25:31-46

I have spent much of the past several weeks struggling with an ingrown toe nail. I doctored it, did a little of my own surgery, and eventually messed it up to the point that I had to go to the podiatrist. He cut out the culprit on Thursday afternoon, and by Friday morning, I was a new man.

I can tell you from this experience, it’s the little things that matter. During the preceding weeks, I limped around like a geezer, protected my toe with keen awareness of other’s whereabouts, and generally suffered because of this little, miniscule problem. But the toe – well, it’s amazing how much pain a little pain in the toe can cause to the entire body. My gait changed, which changed my posture, which required so much more effort and energy during the course of the day – I ended every day for about 2 months simply exhausted.

Our parable for today is a conundrum for me. Capon lists this among the “Judgment” parables, and I suspect rightly so. I am not even vaguely Calvinistic in my theology, but this parable forces you to choose between a rather severe “works” theology, or an acquiescence to “Calvinist” theology. Let me show you what I mean.

First, the “works” side of things. This parable could be interpreted so as to affirm the idea that it is what we do that determines our salvation. We have two groups in the parable – sheep and goats. The sheep are the good guys, and the goats are the bad guys. One way of interpreting this parable is by saying, “Well, obviously, the sheep got to be sheep by doing all of these wonderful things – feeding the hungry, quenching the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, comforting the ill, and visiting the imprisoned. On the other hand, the goats got to be goats by neglecting to do all of these things.” That’s the way we arrive at a “works” theology.

Now, friends, this kind of thinking is rampant in our society. Just the other day, I was talking to this doctor who was about to surgerize my hallux magnus, and he asked me what I do, and I said that "I, too was a doctor, but not the kind that can do you any good." He responded, “Certainly, you do a lot of good, for a lot of people.” I said, “well, if they listen.” To which he said, “and they have to do what you say.” He went on to discuss his distaste for the idea that people simply have to “know” that Christ is Lord in order to find salvation – that he feels that people must “do” much good in order to prove their worthiness for salvation.

Now, I’m not picking on this guy. But his thinking is typical of so many people in our society. It’s a “works” theology – we have to do a certain number of works in order to be worthy of the sacrifice that Jesus paid for us. Let me ask you – just how many works are we talking about? Do you have a number? How many good things does a man or woman have to do to merit God’s salvation? The antithetical question is just as disturbing – “How many bad things must a person do to be undeserving of God’s salvation?” Do you have a number? Any ideas?

I debated this idea extensively when I was younger, and finally came to the conclusion that this particular scripture teaches that sheep are sheep, and goats are goats, and Jesus does the separation based on their nature, not their actions. Furthermore, I came to the conclusion that mankind is saved by the grace of God, manifested in the sacrifice of Christ, and that it is our belief/trust in Christ that saves us. Still, we struggle with the value of works in the whole scenario – “how good do I have to be to please God, and how bad do I have to be to displease God, and what are the consequences of my actions?” Those are really the questions that occupy most people’s minds when they start trying to think theologically about their salvation.

Now, that’s the “works” side of things. I really don’t buy that kind of theology, and so I have to come up with another way to process this story of Jesus. What other possibilities exist. Some time ago, John Calvin, one of the Reformation Church Fathers, came up with the idea that scripture teaches that God and God alone determines who will be saved and who will be damned. You’ve heard me rant about this for seven years now – my personal distaste for Calvinism. He put forth the idea that man is “predestined” – either to salvation, or eternal damnation. That it has absolutely nothing to do with man’s actions, beliefs, etc. We are saved or lost by the will of God alone.

Now, you can make a case out for this out of theology and scriptural interpretation. I think you really have to work at it, but you can make a case for this kind of thinking. To do so, you have to suspend some of your rational capabilities and processes – for example, I listened to a sermon by a pastor in our town who, in defending his proposition that Calvinism is a viable concept, literally said, and I quote, “You must choose to believe in the mercy of God, or in the sovereignty of God, but you cannot believe both.” Well, he’s wrong – I happen to be able to entertain both ideas in my mind – both concepts are plausible and rather easily understood in the God I serve.

So, this passage serves as something of a conundrum for me. I’m never really sure what to do with it. For this year, let me offer two or three things that we might glean from this story.

First - and this may sound to you like I’ve taken a page from the Calvinist’s handbook – Christ is the judge. There will come a time when Christ will judge all of humanity. Now, I want to help you get a handle on what Matthew was trying to say to us with this story that he brings from the teachings of Jesus. We have spent the better part of this last church year in Matthew. We have learned some things – not the least of which is that Matthew had an agenda when he started putting these stories down on paper. Perhaps the major point of his agenda was that, in writing to the Jews, he was attempting to show them, over and over, that Jesus was the promised Messiah. He went about it in a variety of ways, but he was trying to get that point though to them – Jesus was the Messiah. In doing so, part of his argument pointed to the fact that Jesus was God – God expressed in human flesh, in human form – but God, nonetheless. I think this is the point he’s trying to make here – maybe more than any other point – Christ gets to be the judge. It’s not merely this simple, but his point is quite simple – Christ will be judge. It is Christ who will separate the sheep from the goats. It is Christ who will look on the hearts of man. It is Christ who will call sin into account, will reward His faithful, and will give the unrepentant their due. No one else will make this call – it will be Christ sitting on the judgment throne.

I think there’s a second teaching here for us today. It’s my title for today – “It’s the little things that count.” I was talking with a friend recently who was bemoaning the fact that he’s about to turn 60. For him, it seems to be quite the milestone, as it would be for a lot of us. In taking stock of his life, he’s looking at the big picture, and is trying to get a handle on that “grand thing” he’s done that has changed the world and significantly aided the kingdom. He’s not so unlike the rest of us. We measure our lives that way. We’re taught to do so – “Make something of yourself.” “Go out there and change the world.”

Now, friends – I’m not putting down that kind of thinking. I wish more of us would try to change the world. Last year I put that little saying out on the marquee – “How did you change the world today?” We left it up there for months, and lots and lots of people commented on how that primed their thinking of a morning when they would drive by on their way to work. It’s not a bad thing to try to do the big thing to change the world.

But Jesus is reminding us in this parable that it’s the little things that count. It’s when we hand out food to hungry people, or give water to thirsty people, or give clothes to poor and naked people, and take in a stranger, care for someone who is ill, and visit those who find themselves in prison. It’s the little things that count. We make much to do about the big things – well, the little things are important. The betterment of this life is not defined by the big things so much as it is by the little things.

I’m not going to get literal on you here, but these six things Jesus mentions – they’re not a bad place to start. As I’ve watched you over these last seven and a half years, you’ve gotten pretty good at these six things. Listen while I point out a few, and then we might brainstorm as to how we might to similar things in the future.

Feeding hungry people. Do you remember when we got involved with the Catholic Soup Kitchen, “Our Daily Bread” – we went and helped them raise money to build their new facility, and then some of us have actually spent time in the serving line helping out. We collect food a couple of times a year for the Food Pantry, and many of us are known to fix a meal for someone, or give money to help feed hungry people. You know, people are a little more likely to listen to the story of Jesus when their bellies aren’t growling.

We’ve done some things with clothing drives, as well. We’ve done some things with garage sales, and then what we don’t sell, we take to Hope Outreach. Some of you have given money to help buy clothes, or school supplies, or pay electric and gas bills for those who need housing and clothing help.

Many of us visit. I am always proud to hear who has “beat me to the hospital” when one of you is sick. That’s a wonderful ministry. And visiting in our Nursing homes – that’s a ministry that we can all be a part of. It’s the little things, don’t you know.

Larry and Jan have gotten many of us involved in visiting the prison. There’s more to do here, and more of us can “risk the bait” on this one, but many of us already know about that tremendous ministry. There are other prisons that people find themselves in – the prison of relational difficulties, the prison of addiction, the prison of the financial rollercoaster – you have all helped someone in those situations.

I didn’t mention giving water to those who are thirsty. You may not know this, but one of the ministries that CBF is involved in is digging water wells in parts of the world where water is not readily available. You have a part in that ministry when you give your mission dollars.

Friends, Christ watches us. It’s the little things that count. Let’s remember those two things as we seek to serve Christ this very week.

Richard W. Dunn, PhD.

“Whose Talents”

26th Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 25:14-30

Fred Craddock tells a wonderful story about the way we look at things. “In a certain village the school bell rang at 8:30 a.m. to call the children to class. The boys and girls left their homes and toys reluctantly, creeping like snails into the school, not late but not a second early. The bell rang again at 3:30 p.m., releasing the children to homes and toys, to which they rushed at the very moment of the tolling of the bell. This is how it was every day, with every child except one. She came early to help the teacher prepare the room and materials for the day. She stayed late to help the teacher clean the board, dust erasers, and put away materials. And during the day she sat close to the teacher, all eyes and ears for the lessons being taught.

One day when noise and inattention were worse than usual, the teacher called the class to order. Pointing to the little girl in the front row, the teacher said,

‘Why can you not be as she is? She comes early to help, she stays late to help, and all day long she is attentive and courteous.’

‘It isn’t fair to ask us to be as she is,’ said one boy from the rear of the room.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she has an advantage,’ he replied.

‘I don’t understand. What is her advantage?’ asked the puzzled teacher.’

‘She is an orphan,’ he almost whispered as he sat down.”[1]
I love the way Jesus tells a story. This story is full of possibility, intrigue, fear, suspense. The four characters are notable – the master, John D. Rockefeller IV is taking off on the European vacation, first to the south of France and then to the Italian Alps. He’s going to be gone a long time – not sure really how long. Let me pause for a minute to thank you for my second week of vacation. I’ve always noticed that I have to work harder the week before I leave and the week I get back from vacation. Some years ago, I commented to my brother about this, and he had noticed the same thing, and he shared sage wisdom from a friend who said that one should always schedule two weeks of vacation back to back – his theory – that when an employee is gone for a week, nearly everything can wait on them until they return, and stuff just gets dumped on their desk until their return. But hardly anything anymore can wait two weeks, and so if you’re gone that length of time, someone else, by necessity, must pick up the slack. Neither he nor I have yet tried his friend’s theory. Anyway, the master’s going to be gone for a long time – too long to let things go while he’s away, and so he chooses three servants to entrust with his personal savings accounts – Smith Barney, Edward Jones, and I.B.Diggin. Old Smith, he’s really a great investment broker. Most of the folks in town know that if you want to make a profit on your investment that Smith’s the one to use. He’s got most of the business in town, and he gets most of John IV’s business on this little venture – five talents. Edward – well, he’s the up and coming star in the investment business, but he hasn’t really made a name for himself yet, and so John IV only invests 2 talents with this guy. But what to do with the other talent?? Quite the dilemma. He’s been workin’ with old I.B.Diggin for a lot of years – trying to help him get his business off the ground. “Certainly he’ll respond admirably to an opportunity as tremendous as this one – I’ll drop off one-eighth of my portfolio on his doorstep, and he’ll come through with flying colors – I just know it.”

You know, how we see things often depend on our perspective. Let me offer a rather mediocre illustration - if you’ve watched carefully over the years, you’ve noticed that, as the parent of a mentally handicapped child, I have what perhaps might be described as a more tender heart than some toward those who are mentally handicapped. I can weep at the drop of a hat toward their state of being, the pain their parents must feel, and the eternal struggle they must have. But if you watched even more carefully, you perhaps have noticed that I have a greater intolerance for the behavior of some who are mentally handicapped, and certainly a fear of many of the ordinary things of life that are associated with mentally handicapped people. These actions and feelings on my part are borne out of genuine pain and angst that has accompanied 25 years of personal experience. I am not proud of my feelings – nor am I necessarily ashamed. No longer do I judge myself harshly, and I certainly don’t judge other parents of mentally handicapped children – at any level.

All of us have fears that are a part of our lives. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve experienced the kind of disabling fear that the one talent servant exhibited, and that has cause some of us to re-write this particular Gospel story. You know how we’ve re-written it, don’t you. We’ve re-written it the same way that old I.B.Diggin did – he looked ahead to the day that J.B. IV came back from his European holiday. He looked ahead to that day, and he knew that the stock market was volatile, and he knew that he didn’t know as much as Smith or Edward, and he just knew that he was going to be compared to those two guys, and he knew that if he lost money - heavens forbid, what if he lost it all – that Mr. Rockefeller would shoot him and tell God he lost him, and that would be the end of that. And so he did the only really safe thing – I.B.Diggin went to diggin’. He dug him a big hole – as big, really as all his hopes and dreams and pride and self-worth, and he buried that one-eighth of old J. B. Rockefeller IV’s money, and then he went back to playing solitaire on the company computer during office hours. That’s how we’ve re-written this parable. We suppose that had any of these guys failed at their investment strategy that Mr. J. B. Rockefeller IV would have seen to it that they were put out of business, and for good.

I’ll say it again – if you’ve lived long enough, you’ve experienced the kind of disabling fear that the one talent servant exhibited. At least one of the reasons we react that way to this kind of opportunity is because of our perspective. I’ve watched it in the church for years. People who seem to be blessed by God with all kinds of talents – five talent kind of folk - are more than willing to accept other opportunities. They step up to the plate - they sing a solo, teach a class, drive a bus, chair a committee, even stand up to preach if they’re really needed. We applaud them, we value them, we trust them, and in some ways, we envy them. They aren’t so very different from the two talent folks – just more tried and proven. The two talent folks are the up and coming church leaders and fellow servants. They’re willing to try anything, and what the parable doesn’t speak to is that they fail from time to time, but God keeps handing them opportunities. And then there’s the one talent folks – I’ve heard it literally hundreds of times over 30 years of ministry – “Pastor, I couldn’t possibly do anything like that. I’m not talented. I can’t sing, or preach, or talk in front of others. You’d better ask someone else to do it.”

You know, they’re right. They’re not talented. But God is. They are God’s talents. That’s where we get things wrong. That’s where our perspective gets skewed. Ask any one of them – ask any of the five talent people, or the two talent people, and they’ll tell you right up front – they aren’t their talents – they’re God’s talents.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that fear and belief are our only two options. “They can fear, or they can believe. They can panic and fall overboard or they can ride out the storm. They can despair or they can wait, very quietly, for sanity to return. They can be afraid or they can believe. Judging by my own experience, it is almost never a matter of either/or. I do not know anyone who believes all the time, but I do know how both fear and belief feel, and that there is a palpable difference between the two. Fear is a small cell with no air in it and no light. It is suffocating inside, and dark. There is no room to turn around inside it. You can only face in one direction, but it hardly matters since you cannot see anyhow. There is no future in the dark. Everything is over. Everything is past. When you are locked up like that, tomorrow is as far away as the moon.”[2]

Just the other day, I got myself lost in the woods on my hunting lease in Texas. Now, I’ve been on that lease for 15 years now, and I’ve tromped through nearly ever square yard of the place. But I got myself turned around, and for the briefest of moments, I was lost. Panic set in, and then I paused and remembered two important things. One thing I thought, and the other thing I knew. I thought (believed) that the road was one certain direction. And I knew that there was a fence all the way around the property, and that pretty much any direction that I followed long enough would get me to someplace that I was familiar with.

One of my favorite books is a West Texas story about a boy named Speck who is coming of age in the early part of the 20th century. His father constantly tells Speck that he has to “risk the bait.”

My own paternal grandparents knew something of that. Tom Dunn Sr. worked for Terrell Labs over in Muskogee during the Depression. Not once, but twice, all of their retirement savings was wiped out. Finally, Tom and Effie started their own saving account – under the mattress. But eventually, they gathered enough money to risk the bait, and they bought two quarter sections of prime cotton land south of Lubbock that eventually supported my grandmother in her retirement years.

Our perspective can change. Even the one talent kind of servant can come around to the perspective that his or her talent is really God’s talent, invested in them, for the good of the church. The best motivation – every Christian is called of God to use those talents which God has invested in them for the growth and betterment of the Kingdom of God. We serve God best by serving one another with what we have.

Only God knows what may come as a result.

Richard W. Dunn, PhD.

[1] Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, Mike Graves and Richard Ward, eds. (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001), p. 16.
[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, “One Step at a Time” in The Preaching Life (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1993), p. 93