The Rev. Carol S. Wedell
November 30, 2008

It is a fairly common occurrence for one of our children to say something that surprises me, but Jessica really got me a few days ago.  She said, "I really like Advent."  I looked at her in somewhat stunned silence and finally blurted out "what part of it do you like?"  "Oh, you know - the stuff you are supposed to like - the church stuff, but I like all the other things too."  OK, she is a preacher's kid, but I wasn't full time until 4 years ago, and this was a totally unprompted conversation!

Well, since we're hoping to go out this afternoon to cut down our tree (which won't be up for at least a week, and we will be doing well to have our house decorated by mid-December) , I had to think of what else she meant.  Actually, as a family we do have some Advent traditions that are fairly important to all of us.  Most of them are focused around dinner.  We always have an advent wreath (often with used candles, since I inevitably forget to go out and buy them in time, and by then all the purple ones are gone). That means this afternoon, Mark will head to the attic and bring down far too many boxes of Christmas decorations, and I'll hopefully find the box with the advent wreath without opening all of them.

For grace each evening during Advent we sing a Christmas carol, a tradition we started long ago, so that our kids would know "Joy to the World" as well or better than "Santa Claus is coming to town."  Now they all know the first verse of the most familiar carols. We have an advent calendar, and scripture is read.  And all of these "jobs" rotate among the kids.  For some reason, blowing out the candles is one of the favorite choices.  This year, with the exception of this evening, Jessica is going to have her way, with both brothers away!

With Thanksgiving a mere three days behind us, today officially marks the beginning of the Church year, with the first Sunday of Advent - the special season celebrated by the four Sundays preceding Christmas.  With origins in Latin, Advent means coming - for during Advent we wait and celebrate Jesus' coming as a babe in Bethlehem.  It also points to the future - the coming of Christ in glory to fulfill God's purpose for all humanity.  That is why many of the traditional lectionary texts focus on what we might call "the end times," when Christ will come again.

This year I've chosen to follow a theme, rather than the lectionary per se - although each week will include at least one of the designated readings. For the next three weeks, we will explore how to make room for Jesus.  For it seems to me that in our mad dash to get to Christmas, we often miss the gifts of Advent:  a time for waiting, for watching and   for preparing, a time for making room.  For many of us, a large part of preparing for Jesus, (as opposed to waiting for the secular Christmas of which all of us are a part), will mean making room, clearing the way so that Christ may come among us.

Christmas often seems to be a time of "adding things."  Advent, in much the same way as Lent, offers us a time of stripping things down to their essence and deciding what really matters to us.  While most of us want to move straight to the main event of Christmas, Advent challenges us to slow down, take a deep breath and re-evaluate our lives.

Our reading from the prophet Isaiah speaks of the people's desire for God to make an appearance, "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountain would quake at your presence!"  Things are not going so well for Israel, and they ask the age-old question, "Where is God in all this?"  In a week when terrorists wreaked havoc in Mumbai, when thousands are cut off from supplies of any kind because of a landslide in Brazil, when a Wal-Mart worker was trampled to death by "Black Friday" shoppers eager to get to their bargains, and as the economy continues to falter, not to mention the personal pain carried by many of us this morning, who hasn't asked that question: "God why don't you come on down and fix this mess?"

We, like the Israelites, find it easy to forget about God when things are moving along smoothly.  But when the diagnosis isn't good, or the relationship falls apart, or the overdue notices pile up, we desperately want God to come and make things right.  Isaiah was trying to get the people to open up their eyes, to remind them how they chose to ignore God for years. 

Yet after more than 2000 years, we know that God doesn't always act in the way we expect. Thank goodness!  God didn't come in a cloud of glory, didn't tear the heavens apart.  God chose instead to come in the form of a newborn, whose family couldn't even find a proper place for him to be born.  Few people made room for Jesus in their life at that point - or even when he began his ministry. Do we?  Do we make room for Jesus in our life?  That's the challenge and the promise of Advent.

Think about the week you have coming up. What commitments, appointments or plans do you have made?  Here is our week:  in addition to school for Jessica, and Mark and I working full time, Monday evening I have an appointment, Tuesday evening we are driving to Wooster to hear Scott sing in his acappela group  -- possibly the last time we will hear him sing with them.  Wednesday night is a big meeting at Jessica's school about the transition to high school next year. Oh - and the house cleaner comes the next day, so we need to run around and pick everything up so that there is room to vacuum, dust, etc.... Thursday night, I have a meeting, and Jessica has a school concert - postponed from a week ago, when too many girls were sick.  Oh - and Jessica also has basketball each day after school until 4:45pm - and the games haven't started yet!

I am not reciting our schedule to gain your sympathy.  Many of you here could easily say, "Oh yeah, well listen to what we've got to do...." and quickly "beat" us for the craziest schedule.  I don't view it as something of which to be proud. What I am highlighting is what has become normative for much of the western world:  a pace that allows little room for any additions - including Jesus.  What becomes abundantly clear is that we have filled our lives to the brim, with scarcely room for anything.  I even heard a recent retiree say, "If I had known I would be this busy, I would have kept working!"

Those, whose schedules may operate at a calmer pace, still have lives that have been filled, often with little room left.   Our lives are quite full of distractions:  television, movies, email and other computer activities, cell phones, texting, time on Facebook (I am quite aware that I am not talking to most of you here on these last two! - Ask one of our youth to explain!).

In our house, in order to put the Christmas decorations up, some other things have to be temporarily put away.  The furniture is moved to allow for the tree.  And we often find some interesting "goodies" underneath -- cat toys and Christmas ornaments the cat has knocked down usually heading the list.  We have to empty the book shelves and put away other decorative items, so the Christmas array may be put up (now multiplied since Mark's parent's cleared out their house.)  It takes a whole evening just finding appropriate and safe storage places for the "ordinary" stuff of our life.

I think that's a great analogy, friends.  We can't  expect to somehow make room for Jesus in our life by squeezing him in between our morning work out and shower, or while waiting in the car pool line. Those of you here this morning know what one of the keys to making room for Jesus - making worship central in your lives.  This Advent we have added midweek prayer services, as well as a service of healing and wholeness, and a service of solace for those who want to refocus their Advent. There are devotionals for each day available, and many opportunities to reach out to others.  If you don't make time in your calendar or blackberry to remember and claim God's presence in Jesus in your life, how can you possibly prepare? 

Sometimes, perhaps even often, we get so focused on just getting things done that we miss the moments of wonder that are there waiting for us every day.  I read this week online (source misplaced) about a father who was Christmas shopping in a mall with his three-year-old son and became impatient with a store clerk behind the cash register.  As the father was arguing about the sale price of a shirt, the little boy wandered away.  Minutes later, the father realized he was gone and began a frantic search to find him.  The child was standing outside a window, with his nose pressed up to the glass, looking in at a manger scene.  When he heard his father call his name, he shouted gleefully, "Look Daddy, it's Jesus!  The baby Jesus in the manger!"  The father grabbed him by the arm and said, "C'mon, we don't have time for that today."

That father made a choice - and a sorry one at that.  When it comes right down to it, our ability to make room for Jesus in our life this Advent is precisely that - a choice.  Or more accurately, a series of choices.  One of my favorite books is one that I've taught here a few years ago Unplug the Christmas Machine (by Jo Robinson and Jean Coppock Staeheli).  They write, "The Christmas Machine has this power over us because it knows how to woo us; it speaks to the deepest, profoundest, and most sacred desires of the human heart.  (p. 20)We get a clear picture of how people really want Christmas to be when we ask workshop participants to spend a few minutes fantasizing a perfect holiday.  We ask them to imagine what the celebration would be like if they could throw out all their old ideas and habits and start anew with only their personal tastes and preferences to take into account." (P. 117-118)

While acknowledging that it will take negotiation with various family members and friends, their book reminds us that we do have enormous control of these next few weeks.  They don't have to control us, like a conveyor belt we cannot get off. 

Years ago, when Scott was only about 4, Mark and I went through the process of the book and made choices about what mattered the most to us.  The result has been a set of traditions that have meaning to us and our children and generally do not overwhelm us.  But I realized this year, that with the kids so much older, it was time to ask the questions again - what really matters.  I can guarantee you that homemade cinnamon rolls (no raisins or icing) and homemade sugar cookies are on the "keep list."  I'm hoping to make some shifts so that there is more time for quiet, for sitting by the tree, for being less focused on ourselves and more focused on giving to those truly in need.

The easy part is hanging the wreath and baking the cookies.  But Advent is about making room for the One who came as a baby and will come again in glory. Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is a much bigger deal than making room for your boss or difficult uncle.  it may well mean putting some parties on hold, changing the nature of gift giving, welcoming those into your home who would not ordinarily be there.  We have choices to make.  Choices that can make room for Jesus in our lives. We are talking about preparing ourselves to welcome God in to the very fabric of the lives we live.

Friends, Jesus we wait not only for Jesus' coming, but for our eyes to recognize him in our midst.  The reading from 1^st Corinthians reassures us as Paul reminded the believers there that the grace of God had been given to them.  This first Sunday in Advent, let us open our lives to the places where Jesus may enter - probably in some unexpected places.  Maybe the gas station attendant or the garbage collector.  Maybe in the gruff school teacher who isn't looking forward to Christmas because she will be alone.  Maybe in the child who hears for the first time of one that was a baby, and grew just as they are growing.  Is there room in your life for them?

Henry Van Dyke, over 75 years ago reminds us where we find Jesus in his poem, entitled Christmas

Are you willing:

To stoop down and consider the needs and desires of little children;

To remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old...

To bear in mind the things that other people have to bear on their hearts...

Are you willing to do these things for a day?

Then you are ready to keep Christmas."

 From Henry Van Dyke, "Keeping Christmas," Six Days of the Week (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924).

And you are also ready to find room in your life for Christ.  We wait in hope, knowing that God will never abandon us, trusting that God is among us even now, and ready to be seen anew.