​     Do any of you remember that ketchup commercial?  Rich, thick ketchup takes an inordinate amount of time to ooze out of a bottle.  Pounding the bottle fails to make the substance move any faster.  Meanwhile, a child sits expectantly awaiting the ketchup’s arrival.  The music in the background: “Anticipation.”
 
     That commercial doesn’t exist any more; the technology has changed.  Squeeze bottles have rendered waiting for your ketchup unnecessary.  Delayed gratification is a thing of the past. 
 
     We’ve gotten spoiled, haven’t we?  It’s not just ketchup.  You can throw your clothes into a washer and let it do the work while you’re doing something else.  The same goes for the dirty dishes after dinner. 
 
     In 1849 it took 166 days to travel coast to coast by stagecoach.  By the 1860s it took 60 days. A decade later it took a train 11 days.  In 1923, an airplane did it in 26 hours, but by 1975, a plane travelled coast to coast in five hours.  Today, the Space Shuttle does it in 8 minutes!
 
     We don’t much like to wait.  This applies to our faith as well.  Possibly you’re familiar with the prayer, “Lord, give me patience, and give it to me now!”
 
     Perhaps this attitude toward waiting is what causes Advent not to be universally appreciated.  Advent’s a season of waiting, of expectation, of anticipation.  We await the celebration of the birth of Jesus until the 25th; we look for the coming of Christ at the end of time.  We wait.  We prepare. 
 
     One of the prominent figures in helping us to prepare is John the Baptist.  Even though he was a prophet some 2000 years ago, the way he prepared for the first coming of the Messiah gives an excellent model for how we should prepare to receive Christ at Christmas as well as when he comes again to judge the living and the dead.  So let’s imagine for a minute that you’re part of the crowd that went out to the wilderness to hear him.  You’ve heard that this prophet might have something to say that will help make some sense of life, which too often seems more than a little senseless.
 
     You live your life pretty much the same as everyone else.  You make a living that keeps body and soul together and then some.  Most people think that you’ve got it “together.”  But there’s still an urge that tells you you’re missing something, something that makes everything else make sense.  So you’ve come to hear this man John, who just might have the key.
 
     You feel a little timid, maybe a bit foolish, because here you are, a self-respecting citizen, going to the riverbank to hear a man dressed in camel’s hair, with a leather girdle around his waist, whose diet consists of locusts and wild honey.  In your saner moments you might have written him off!
 
     He begins to preach.  His first words are, “You brood of vipers!”  (This isn’t getting off to a very good start!).  “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruits that befit repentance… Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
 
     You’ve forgotten your anger at John about how he’s spoken to you.  You’re wondering what you can do to bear fruit. What impossible feat is he going to expect you to do in order to satisfy God’s anger?
 
     John’s answer to you: “He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; he who has food, let him do likewise.”  In other words, “Prepare for the coming of Christ by responding to the needs of those around you, and do what is within your power to fill those needs.”
 
     The problem John paints is gigantic—a matter of life and death, yet his answer seems mundane.  He doesn’t tell the tax collectors and Roman soldiers to give up their hated professions; he doesn’t suggest taking up a dramatic lifestyle like his own.  He simply says, “Share out of your abundance; be responsive to the needs of others, don’t cheat or abuse others in your businesses.
 
     Such a dramatic problem and such a simple solution!  Yet, it’s the ordinary situations in life that give us the most difficulty in leading moral, faithful lives.  Scripture’s clear.  Our relationship with our heavenly Father is directly related to how we treat our neighbor.  Being prepared to receive Christ, whenever he comes, depends in part upon how we care for those in need—physical, mental, spiritual, or emotional need.
 
     I’m preaching to the choir.  You are sensitive to the needs of others.  You are generous with your time, your talent, and your money for the needs of the Church and for the needs of others.  You know the requirements of the Gospel and you seek to fulfill them.  But, you know, I suspect you’re rather like the people who went to hear John the Baptist.  The ones who probably needed to hear him the most wouldn’t take the time to do that.  So, in a sense, I suspect he was preaching to the choir, too. 
 
     Each of us needs to be reminded of these truths, and let’s face it, probably most of us could be more responsive to need than we are.  Furthermore, each of us has something in our lives that is resistant to the Gospel, something that is indeed very basic.  If we’re going to be prepared to receive Christ, that something is what needs to be dealt with.  And that, my brothers and sisters, is the hard part.  By the grace of God, only you know what that something is and only you can deal with it, by the grace of God,
 
     When we all do that, as a community of faith, Jesus Christ shines through us.  I need this time of anticipation in order to be prepared and I hope you will join me in making the most of this holy season of Advent.

A woman went into a post office to buy some stamps for her Christmas cards. “What denomination do you want?” asked the lady at the counter. “Good heavens!” she exclaimed. “Has it come to this?  I suppose you’d better give me 20 Catholic and 20 Presbyterian stamps, then.”
 
 As we all begin to make preparations for Christmas, with gift purchasing, and the sending of cards, and some of us even beginning to decorate for Christmas—here we are in the Church being very counter-culture in a very visible way. You don’t see any Christmas trees, no festive lights. There are fewer candles on the altar. The color is purple, suggesting penitence. There are a few decorations: the Advent wreath—a plain circle with four candles, only one of which is lit today; a stable with animals; the picture behind the Lady Chapel altar is covered with a purple cloth; a picture of the Annunciation is on the altar; and three outdoor wreaths with purple bows are on the red doors. For throughout the Church this is not the Christmas season. It’s the season of Advent, a season of waiting.
 
 And Advent is not just a season of preparation to celebrate the birthday of our Lord. It’s a season that focuses, first and foremost, on preparation to receive him when he comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. It’s a season devoted to contemplation of last things, the traditional themes being death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Advent is a time for examination of our lives and confession, for resetting our priorities, and for special acts of devotion and self-denial. It is as if to say that when we are prepared to meet the Lord when he comes again in glory, then we will also be prepared to celebrate rightly the annual observance of his first coming as the Babe in Bethlehem.
 
 With the exception of the first reading from Jeremiah, the readings appointed for today, as well as the Collect of the Day, point us in this direction, toward the Last Judgment.
 
 St. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, urges them to be abounding in love toward one another and to all people, and live holy lives so that when Jesus comes again he may find them blameless before God.
 
In Luke we have the familiar warning that “there will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the seas and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.”  If you were living last month in Sarasota, Florida, where Linda and I are from, when both of the hurricanes struck, you might have thought this biblical prophecy was coming true!  A dear friend actually died from fear during Helene.
 
With what’s going on in the Holy Land and in Ukraine and Russia, just to name a couple of nations, it might seem to some that that’s enough distress among nations to qualify as a sign of the end time. In this prophecy of things to come, Jesus tells his disciples that the Son of Man is coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
 
The earliest Christians truly believed Jesus might come at any moment. Early in his ministry St. Paul clearly believed that Jesus would come again before Paul died. Every day was Advent in the early Church.
 
t took some 40 years after the resurrection for the first account of the Gospel to be written. Have you ever wondered why there weren’t disciples cranking out best sellers immediately after the resurrection?  They believed there was no need for a written record, probably that there wouldn’t be enough time to get one written, before the Second Coming; and time would be better spent in getting out the word. And so they had no problem living each day as if it would be their last opportunity to get their lives in order and to proclaim the message of salvation.
 
Some 2000 years have passed. The Son of man still has not returned, yet the readings in this season remind us that the promise has been made. Jesus shall indeed come again. That coming may still be a thousand years away or it may be today. And that coming will be a time of final judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed.
 
The idea of judgment is based on the presupposition that there is such a thing as right and wrong, that there is such a thing as sin, that God intends for his people to have a certain standard of life, and that there is a way to break out of the cycle of sin. That “way” is Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life.
 
Is there any doubt that the world is just as much in need of a Savior now as it was 2000 years ago?  Watch any news report on any given day and you’ll find many examples of our world’s need of the Savior. They’re filled with examples of war, violent crime, reports of divorces, stories of neglected and abused children. I don’t agree with William Bennett on some key issues, but I think he got it right in an article published years ago titled “Redeeming our Time,” when he stated that “there are other signs of social decay that do not so easily lend themselves to quantitative analysis….For there is a coarseness, a callousness, a cynicism, a banality, and a vulgarity to our time.
 
There is a sense in our time that there is no such thing as sin, and if there is a God, he doesn’t much care about how we live our lives and we certainly are not going to be held accountable.
 
Advent, all four weeks of it, reminds us that the world still needs the Savior. It reminds us that our thoughts, words, and deeds do have eternal significance, and we will be held accountable. It calls us to get our priorities straight and to be the sign to the world of all of these things. Yet our preparation for the Second Coming, as well as our preparation for Christmas, is a joyful preparation, in a quiet sort of way, for we know the Savior and we want to make him known. There is a solution to the problems that face us as individuals and as a society, and that solution is the One whose birth will be celebrated this Christmas Eve.
 
I invite you, during this beautiful season of Advent, truly to make it a time of preparation—to examine your lives and make your confession, to reset your priorities, and to make special acts of devotion and self-denial, all to the end that when our Lord Jesus comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.