Advent 1 Sermon Script

"Stay Awake" Isaiah 2:1-5 & Matthew 24:36-44

Stay awake, don't rest your head don't lie down upon your bed

while the moon drifts in the skies stay awake, don't close your eyes

though the world is fast asleep though your pillow's soft and deep

you're not sleepy as you seem stay awake, don't nod and dream

stay awake, don't nod and dream -- Mary Poppins (movie)

Advent Season has begun. We prepare again for the joyous miracle of Christmas. [I explained why we're singing Christmas carols during Advent.]

I'm a perpetually optimistic type. Even if last Christmas didn't turn out the way I hoped, I'm ready to believe that this one that's coming this year will be different. Even if my team blew it horribly last week, I'll cheer them on in the hope that this time they'll pull it out. I guess I've got a lot in common with that famous football placekicker, Charlie Brown.

Advent is not just looking backward to Bethlehem. It's about daring to move forward into a world that God has envisioned for us.


A prophetic voice is calling, calling in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.

We know the Way. Jesus gave us this vision:
Two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.
Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.

Jesus gave us these apocaplyptic visions, not to scare us but to wake us up. Jesus was asked about sudden tragedies (Luke 13:1-5). Some of the people present at that time told him about the demonstrators who were killed on their way to church. He replied to them, "Do you suppose that these…were any worse than all the rest just because they suffered this fate? No, I tell you, but unless you all re-shape your lives, every last one of you will suffer a similar fate. Or those eighteen on whom the [tower of Siloam]…fell and killed them, do you think this happened to them because they were worse sinners than all the other citizens…? No, I tell you, but unless you all re-shape your lives, every last one of you will suffer a similar fate." [Cottonpatch Version]

It's not that they died--we all must die. It's that they died unexpectedly. They weren't ready. They weren't awake.

Today’s lessons invite us to wake up and experience life before death. Don't be like the people before the flood who were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away.

This coming week marks the 30th anniversary of the Martyrs of El Salvador. Dec. 2, 1980, Catholic sisters Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, and laywoman Jean Donovan were killed by US-trained Salvadoran soldiers.[Luis
Antonio Colindres Alemán, the officer who ordered the murders, had attended a School of the Americas training in 1980.]

All four of the women went to El Salvador in response to the call of Archbishop Oscar Romero, fully aware of the great suffering of the people of El Salvador and the danger.

Sister Maura had written, “One cries out, ‘Lord, how long?’ And then too what creeps into my mind is the little fear or big, that when it touches me very personally, will I be faithful?”

Sister Ita wrote to her sixteen-year-old niece:

This is a terrible time in El Salvador for youth. A lot of idealism and commitment are getting snuffed out here now. The reasons why so many people are being killed are quite complicated, yet there are some clear, simple strands. One is that people have found a meaning to live, to sacrifice, struggle, and even die. And whether their life spans sixteen years, sixty, or ninety, for them their life has had a purpose. In many ways, they are fortunate people.

Brooklyn is not passing through the drama of El Salvador, but some things hold true wherever one is, and at whatever age. What I’m saying is that I hope you can come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you, something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead.

Jean Donovan grew up in Westport, CT, had a degree in business and a promising career. She was engaged to a young physician, and felt a strong call to motherhood as well as her call to do mission work: "...I sit there and talk to God and say 'Why are you doing this to me? Why can't I just be your little suburban housewife?' He hasn't answered yet." Two weeks before her death she wrote, “The Peace Corps left today and my heart sank low. The danger is extreme and they were right to leave... Now I must assess my own position, because I am not up for suicide. Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador. I almost could, except for the children, the poor, bruised victims of this insanity. Who would care for them? Whose heart could be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and loneliness? Not mine, dear friend, not mine.”

Despite the terror, the women were inspired and compelled by the hope of the Salvadoran people, and with them, they stubbornly clung to the prophets' promise of a day of peace, when "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." (Isaiah 2:4).

Advent is usually described as a season of waiting. We are getting ready for something. But the Advent message is a hard sell in a culture of instant gratification. My generation and all who came after me have bought the idea that we can have it all, right now. Just put it on the credit card, or borrow it from the future. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, we’re all spending our grandchildren’s inheritance through Federal deficits, and we can't or won't stop ourselves.

Why wait? Because we’re not in charge. Because control is an illusion. And because life--real life--is what happens when we slow down and wake up, when we live within the bounds of humanity and reach out to the others with whom we share this journey.

Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on "Staying Awake through a Great Revolution." He used the story of Rip Van Winkle who fell asleep for 20 years, and slept through the American Revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain a revolution was taking place that at points would change the course of history—and Rip knew nothing about it. He was asleep. Yes, he slept through a revolution. And one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.

Isaiah prophesies there's a better world coming. Can we believe it? "O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!" (Isaiah 2:5).

We are called, whoever and wherever we are, to turn toward that new world.

We are called to turn from ways of destruction into ways of peace and justice.

We are called to stay awake and alert to what God is doing in our midst.

Let us prepare to be changed as God comes to us once again in a new way.

A voice is calling, calling in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Amen.

--Jack Lohr, Interim Pastor

PS: The recorded sermon, as delivered, can be heard at http://pcmk.org/sermons/2010-11-28.wma