27 November 2011

What is baptism? It’s an Advent Conspiracy.
“Worship fully”
1 Advent B
27 November 2011


One of my favorite episodes of the old TV series “Seinfeld” – maybe yours, too – is the one in which George Costanza’s dad Frank relates the creation of the holiday known as Festivus.
That character, played by Jerry Stiller, relates in the show how and why he decided to create another, alternative wintertime celebration, one without the commercialism and pressure of Christmas:

"Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way. [The doll] was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!"

And so another moment in popular culture was born; all over the country, unadorned metal Festivus poles have sprouted ever since; and people mark the date (December 23) with “Seinfeld”-inspired events such as “Feats of Strength” and the “Airing of Grievances.”
It’s not hard to figure out why people would reject tradition and choose a made-up, sitcom-spun wintertime celebration instead. Christmas has in many ways become a commercially bloated, disfigured, even mean-spirited shadow of itself. And every year, it gets worse … holiday decorations going up in mid-October … Christmas music plays on the radio right after Halloween … “Black Friday” slops over into Thanksgiving … shoppers pepper spray, trample and even shoot each other to get that One Great Bargain.
As for we liturgical Christians who mark the church year … today doesn’t begin Christmas, but Advent … a time of preparation, looking forward to Christ’s return to earth even as we anticipate the coming celebration of his birth … we don’t jump right into singing Christmas carols, we don’t have the sanctuary decorated with tree and lights the moment Thanksgiving worship is over, because we mark Advent first …
…well, we may mark it in here, but the light from our one, two, three, four Advent candles … it’s easily snuffed out the moment we get out the door, and are swamped in the tide of wall to wall Christmas.
Advent preparation and anticipation, it seems, has no place in the world anymore.
It was this realization which brought pastors from three different churches together to take a stand in their congregations, and create what’s now known as Advent Conspiracy. Rather than caving to the culture … which wipes out Advent altogether in a sea of wall-to-wall Christmas from October through December … rather than creating a new holiday like Festivus to show disgust with what Christmas has become … these pastors decided to, ahem, Occupy Advent, if you will … they decided to take a stand for the origins of the season and the traditions of the Church, and create a movement which would help people in their congregations fully engage in what these seasons are really all about.
The opening paragraph from the Advent Conspiracy brochure makes these intentions clear:

The story of Christ’s birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love. So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a Savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists. And when it's all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want out of Christmas? What if Christmas became a world-changing event again? Welcome to Advent Conspiracy, a movement calling us to proclaim Christ in how we celebrate Christmas.

The Conspiracy “takes back” the holiday by encouraging us to engage it differently than does the rest of the world. Sorry, there are no “Feats of Strength” or “Airing of Grievances,” but there are these four revolutionary actions :
• Worship Fully
• Spend Less
• Give More
• Love All

Now, admittedly, the churches in which Advent Conspiracy originated aren’t traditional Western catholic liturgical churches … Imago Dei in Portland, for example, is an emergent Evangelical worshipping community. But that there are four rallying points for the Conspiracy … corresponds nicely for us who do follow the liturgical year … four points; four Sundays in Advent.
And especially for us of Nativity, as we being to mark this year of special focus on the Sacrament of Holy Baptism … these four marks of Advent Conspiracy will guide us, as we move through these four Sundays of Advent, these Sundays of preparation and anticipation; guiding our thoughts and words and prayers and, I hope, our actions as well, here as we gather, and there as we are sent into the world.

So today, we begin, right where we are supposed to begin, for us, our first, last and always call as we walk the discipleship walk, following Jesus: Worship Fully.
Worship. The main activity of the Christian church is gathering on each Lord’s day for worship. It’s been this way ever since the beginning … we stand firmly in the tradition of our Jewish brothers and sisters, and come together in community to hear God’s word, sing God’s word, be fed and strengthened on God’s word … from the Scriptures, from the tradition, from the preacher who is prayerfully guided by God to stand at the intersection of all of them and proclaim a message of engagement and relevance to us, here, today …
… and we also stand firmly in the Word of Jesus, who calls us from the ages, and from this table, to gather each week around Jesus’ very self, in bread and wine, given to and for us to feed and strengthen us, food for the journey of our lives as his people.
Fully. The call, God’s call to worship is not an ornament or bauble, a nicety which fills out our resume or is something we “do” once we get done with everything else which fills our schedules and calendars … no, God’s call to worship is one of full, undivided presence …
… God’s full presence, here, with us, as we are called and gathered, fed on Word and Meal, and then sent forth for service to our neighbors.
And our full presence, too. Worship isn’t the last thing we do at the end of a long week … it is the FIRST thing we do at the beginning of a new week, it sets the tone and stride for us, all week. That’s why St. Paul , when he describes the Sacrament of Holy Communion, that’s why St. Paul writes “as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” THAT means we are to do it OFTEN, and FULLY, engaged with all our heart and soul, mind and strength.
Worship Fully … it means, like the other Sacrament around which we gather, the one which will guide our worship in this liturgical year, the Sacrament of Holy Baptism … Worship Fully, like baptism, implies that this is not just a “one and done” thing. As Baptism is a mark, a sign, a beginning of the life of faith within us, a work of God which fills and empowers us for our doing God’s work in the world … so Worship Fully is a word emphasizing just that … worship is a posture, a lifestyle, a way of living into which we are called … walking wet, baptized people of God, spreading our water-signed footprints everywhere we go.
It’s been said that the Church is the only organization which exists solely for the sake of those who are not part of it yet.
Well, that’s a little extreme, but you get the point. We … God’s people, the Church … we are called and gathered by God’s Word to worship God, fully, engaged fully in that worship, as part and parcel of who we are … and then we continue that worship in serving and proclaiming to others.
Our focus … in worship, for worship, is not ourselves … our motivation … in worship, for worship, is not ourselves … but God, and God’s call to GO and SERVE and PROCLAIM in word and action, the coming of God’s kingdom.
When we start focusing on ourselves, we stand in judgment … God’s judgment … the place of needing to be corrected, in our worship, in our work as God’s gathered and sent people.
That is what our Scripture readings on this first Sunday in Advent are all about; words we commonly refer to as readings about “the end.”
The words of Isaiah do come at the end of that book, but aren’t necessarily just about God coming down at the end of all things. They are more about repentance … the repentance of God’s people, God’s people who have returned from their forced exile out of the land of God’s promise, God’s people who have returned to that land once again, but life has not turned out for them as well as they had hoped. Looking inward, looking at what they have done, how they have sinned … the gulf, still wide between them and God … their call, their cry to God, “Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever,” these are words of worship, corporate repentance, a plea for forgiveness, a prayer that God would hear them.
The verses from Mark we commonly refer to as “Mark’s Apocalypse.” “Apocalypse” simply means “of the end;” each year on the first Sunday in Advent, we hear words of Apocalypse from one of the chronological Gospels (Matthew, Luke; this liturgical year as we are immersed in Mark’s Gospel, those are the words we read). Despite all the fear and foreboding surrounding words of Apocalypse, these verses simply illustrate that one, potent verse of our Creed which we confess together as God’s people: that we believe that Jesus Christ will come back, bodily, to earth, to establish God’s reign fully, on earth as it is in heaven.
Granted, these words from Mark’s apocalypse aren’t popular ones. They stand fully opposed to where the culture lives, right here, right now, one month out from Christmas Day but fully tinsled and decorated nonetheless.
And yet, we need these readings, coming as they do each year, heralding to us the beginning of the Advent season … because they point out so well the two ditches into which followers of Jesus can easily fall at this time of the year:

• Focusing on ourselves … Christians hear the words of Apocalypse and judgment, and either worry about our own salvation to the neglect of everyone else; or we smugly assume, “Oh, that’s not me Jesus is talking about, I’m one of the saved, not one of the sinful ones who aren’t.”
• Or, another focus on ourselves … we ignore these words calling us into Advent meditation, preparation and hope of final restoration of it all, as we go pedal-to-the-metal toward Christmas.

But both of these are just wrong.
You see, what these words of Scripture really introduce to us, is that Advent is a four week miniature course in what it is to be a baptized child of God, claimed by Jesus, and marked with the cross of Christ forever.

• On the one hand, Baptism = death. Being joined to Jesus in his baptism means dying to the old ways of sin and death. Dying to the death-bound ways of the world. Dying to all that those words of Isaiah point out, how far short we fall from where God calls us to live and be, to and for others.
• On the other hand, Baptism = life. Being raised with Christ, we are raised FOR something. And that something is life … full, rich, and abundant … free from the fears that we’re going to lose out on something … whether it’s place or stuff or whatever other gods, other idols we’ve placed in our path along the way. In Baptism, we have DIED to the death-bound ways of the world, and been RAISED to life together, in Christ, forever. We no longer fear “the End” because our End is in Jesus Christ, the Lord of life and forgiveness and salvation, with God, forever.

And so what do we do in this life now? We Worship Fully. The point of Church isn’t that we’re just another social club of the like-minded or an all fun, all the time feel-good organization … nor are we a little holier than thou gathering of the piously religious, who lord our “betterness” over the rest of the world …
No … though there are churches and Christians who do behave that way … that isn’t what we’re called to be about …
and this is not what we will be about.
Our call as baptized children of God, brothers and sisters of our Lord Jesus Christ … in whatever season of the year … was, is, and always will be … to come together as dead-and-alive redeemed sinners who worship fully, exalting God for God’s sake, and serving God’s people for God’s sake … and theirs.
That is what “being church” is all about … first, last and always … Worshipping Fully.
And yes, even though it’s true that we exist as Church for the sake of those who are not yet part of us … we still get something “out of it” too. Of course we do.
What we “get” is real and right and true … the anticipation, the preparation, for the real Advent of our Lord … his making fully, on earth as it is in heaven, the realization of all that our Lord has in store for our neighbor and for us, giving us the faith and freedom to risk and try NOW, to go deeper in faith, deeper in discipleship and faith friendships, deeper in prayer and study and service, to live our worship outside these walls as richly as we receive it inside them …
God’s people, people of Water and Word, take your wet footprints forth from this worship this week, and leave your mark out there, Worshipping Fully even as you have been fully filled, fully blessed, fully saved FOR the sake of our Lord and the life of your neighbor.
Amen.