Old South Sermons:

Party

by Quinn G. Caldwell, Associate Minister

Mark 13:24-37

First Sunday in Advent

November 30, 2008

Listen to this sermon

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Will you pray for me?  Lord, may the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

It was the biggest party anybody could remember.

Word had spread far and wide.  People had come from all over town, and from the neighboring towns as well.  Partygoers in their hundreds gathered in the house, and in the barn, and in the yard, and some, before that night was over, in the cornfields as well.  No one had ever been to a party quite so big before and it was, by all accounts, awesome.  I, being just a freshman in high school at the time, was not there, but as I went to bed that night, I could see and hear that party raging a mile and a half away across the fields.

It was the biggest party anybody could remember.  And the occasion?  Well, there was no occasion except that my older sister and her best friend Molly Walpole were seniors in high school—and Molly’s parents were away for the weekend.

The scene the next morning was pretty much just what you would expect: the house was trashed.  Plastic cups and garbage and kegs were all around.  Vomit covered many if not most surfaces.  Teenagers with headaches were lying all over the place.

Now, Molly’s parents were due home that afternoon, so my sister and Molly woke up and got to work first thing .  They managed to get everyone out and cleaned the place from top to bottom, during which they discovered that Molly’s mother’s prize antique hurricane lamp had—utterly predictably—gotten smashed.  With the parents’ return imminent, a frenzied search through every antique store in the tri-county area ensued.  They finally did find a lamp that matched the original closely enough that it would be years before Mrs. Walpole discovered the switch, but it cost the girls every cent they had made on the party and then some to buy it.

Molly’s parents found nothing amiss when they returned later that day, and so the girls thought they were safe.  But it turns out that loose lips not only sink ships, they also blow teenagers’ cover.  Somebody told somebody about the party (your know how this goes), and before long, everyone knew and all of the authorities were involved.  Though my sister and Molly did manage to maintain their teenage honor and never revealed—not even under questioning by the Sheriff—who exactly was on the guest list or what overage person had provided them with their libations, the fallout was apocalyptic.  Mass detentions.  Athletic suspensions that left the sports teams crippled for a year.  Groundings by the score.  It was many months before any teenager in Groton, NY or any of the surrounding towns was free of suspicion or stricture.

In today’s passage from Mark, Jesus says that if you want to know what’s going on, you have simply to look around.  That in the weather, and the skies, and the trees lie the signs that will tell you what’s happening and what’s about to happen.

Here are some signs I’d like you to consider.  In the last hundred years, the average surface temperature of our planet has increased by just under one and a half degree Fahrenheit.  Scientists project that it is likely to increase by another two to eleven and a half degrees Fahrenheit in the next century.  The effects of such changes are likely to be apocalyptic, and can already be seen.  You know the litany: glaciers, sources of fresh water for millions and reflectors of the sun’s rays, are retreating measurably each year.  Ice shelves are retreating in the Arctic and snapping off in huge sheets in Antarctica, raising sea levels and endangering coastal areas everwhere.  New England’s maple forests are moving northward, out of New England.  Mosquitoes are moving into areas where they have never been found, bringing malaria and dengue fever with them.  Named storms are increasing in frequency and intensity and the cost of their destruction.

If you want to know what’s going on, Jesus says, look around you, to the skies and the trees and the waters.  Read the signs.

Our burning of fossil fuels for industry and energy and transportation, our clearing of the forests for same, the heat that keeps this building warm, the lights that allow you to read your bulletin, all of it contributing to where we find ourselves today, which is, the signs say, not a good place.

Speaking of today, it is, as you’ve noticed, the first Sunday of Advent.  Today begins our great annual period of expectant waiting, when we anticipate and prepare for the coming of our God to this world.  Now, if you just glance at Advent, just glance at the things we as a church do, you might get the impression that all we are waiting for is Christmas, the day that God came to us in the flesh, two millennia ago.  If you just glance at Advent, you might think that all it points to is a birthday…and God’s birthday would certainly be enough for such a season as this.  But that is not all we celebrate in Advent, and it’s certainly not all we’re waiting for.  We’re waiting for God to come again.

In Advent, we remind ourselves that everything about our God is an approach toward us, that God cannot seem to keep away.  That God is always coming to us in this world, in our history, in our kind of flesh, over and over and over.  That having come once, our God returns to make all things—the skies, the trees, the weather, us—new.  In Advent, we hope not only for the birth of the Christ, but for the rebirth of the whole wide world.

Jesus says that we never know exactly when God’s return will be.  It’s like a thief in the night.  Jesus says that it’s like a man who leaves his house on a journey and puts the servants in charge of the place, and that smart servants know better than to be caught asleep if the master returns unexpectedly.

Well, given the state of the environment, reading the signs in the weather and the trees and the ice and our own health, I say it’s less like a man went away and left the servants in charge and more like the parents went away for the weekend and left the kids to mind the house.  And friends, we have been throwing one mighty big party.

Irresponsible development.  Unwise production.  Wastefulness in our driving and eating and heating and lighting.  Pollutant on top of toxin on tip of pollutant.  A party, an orgy of consumerism and consumption and greed and waste.

And you guys, look around: the house is trashed, and the Parent is on his way home.

Unlike Molly’s parents, our Parent already knows about the party we’ve been having.  And though it breaks God’s heart to see what we have been doing with our world, our God comes back not to punish like an human parent, or principal, or sheriff.  Whatever global consequences we suffer—and they are likely to be severe, maybe even apocalyptic—will be our own doing and none of God’s.

Our God comes not to punish, but to help us clean up our mess.

Jesus says that when things get really bad and all the signs point to apocalyptic fallout, that’s when the Son of Humanity comes with power and great glory.  The power is the power of resurrection; the glory is the glory of the world made new.  And here’s the good news for today: because of what God did at Christmas, the power and the glory of God are ours.  Resurrection, the power to make new: they are ours.  And when things get bad, God comes back to help us not just make them better, but to make them new.  That’s what we wait for at Advent.

Our church’s waiting has not been, is not, will not be passive.  We’ve been cleaning the house while we wait.  We’ve commissioned an Environmental Stewardship Assessment of the church and its systems, and are pressing forward with implementing many of its recommendations despite a difficult upcoming budget year.  We have cut our use of disposable cutlery and paperware for church functions considerably.  We have instituted recycling policies, are well on our way to using only recycled paper and other products, and have begun switching to non-toxic chemicals and cleaners in the building.

And we’re getting ready to tell the world about the signs we see, too.  On Wednesday, December 10th, we will begin getting the message out.  At 12:30PM, just when the people in all the office buildings in Copley Square are headed out for lunch, Bell Master David Vogan will begin tolling the Great Tower Bell to get their attention.  Meanwhile, teams of Old Southers will hand out leaflets (printed on 100% recycled paper, of course) that will explain the current climate crisis and invite all those passersby to join in the movement to call government and individuals to work to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to safe and acceptable levels.  We will give tips and suggestions and ways to help, and we will remind the world whose house this is.  In this way, we hope to begin calling the world and ourselves to wake up and get to work.

It can be done.  Scientists agree that, with international agreement and individual commitment, it is still possible to lower the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to acceptable levels, that most pollution can still be abated, in short, that global warming can be stopped and apocalypse averted.

Sisters and brothers, the party has been fun, but now the place is a mess.  Unlike my sister and Molly, we clean up not to hide what we’ve done—there’s no hope of that—but simply because the place is not ours and the Owner is not happy with what we’re doing.  It will not be easy.  The signs are not promising.  There is a lot of work to do.  The lamp we get to replace the one we broke may not match exactly, and we may need to spend all of the money we made on the party to get it.  There may need to be groundings.  We will need the power of God within us and coming to us if we are to do it.

In Advent, we wait not as ones who have no hope, but as ones who have been promised that that which we wait for is coming.  Jesus says that the power and glory of God, the power of resurrection and the glory of newness for the world are ours, and so we wait, and hope, and work.

Come, Jesus, come.  Amen.

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