Homily
1st Sunday of Advent
Text: Matthew 21:1-13
X In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,
one God. Amen.
Whenever you watch Rachel Ray on “The Food Channel,” you’ll hear her
say it.
Whenever you watch the carpenter, Norm, on “This Old House,” you’ll hear him
say it.
Whenever you go H & R Block, they’ll do this
for you.
Whenever you join the Boy Scouts, you will say this as your motto.
Say what?
Rachel will tell you how to prepare
a tasty plate of food.
Norm will tell you that to paint this old house you must first prepare the surface of it by scraping.
H & R Block will prepare your
taxes for you.
Boy Scouts must be prepared.
We buy our
kids clothes, pencils, paper, backpacks, etc. so they will be prepared for school.
Every bride-to-be goes to great lengths to prepare
for their wedding day.
Judges expect the attorneys who come before them to have already prepared their briefs.
Morticians prepare the body for
burial.
So, you
would think that we have this aspect of life called preparation down pat. But
then I don’t really have to tell you that we don’t, do we? Oh, we delight ourselves when it comes time
to prepare to take a vacation. It’s easy to get excited to buy new clothes
as preparation for our first day in school. We get all energized as we prepare our Christmas wish lists. However, when it comes to our relationship
with God and with one another, we do a very poor job of preparation.
The Prophet
Amos [
In other
words, God is saying, “you better be prepared for My
coming to you!”
Today’s
Gospel reading is very familiar to you, because you also hear it read every
Palm Sunday. On that day, the emphasis is upon the Triumphant entry of Christ into
It’s not
like they didn’t have any warning! In our
Matins lesson this morning, the Prophet Malachi [3:5] wrote, “And I will come near to you in judgment; and I will be a
swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers, …against those
who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and those
who turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not Me,” saith the LORD of
hosts.” … “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the
great and dreadful day of the LORD.” [4:5]
Here we sit
firmly ensconced in our seats as “Sunday Morning Quarterbacks.” I know you think I meant “Monday Morning
Quarterbacks” but no. Those “Monday
Morning” people sit in judgment of the games on Saturday and Sunday. As “Sunday Morning Quarterbacks” we sit in judgment on the people who
have gone before us. Don’t you read
these Scriptures and think all high and mighty, to yourself, [referring to the
moneychangers] “You idiots! You should
have been prepared. You had all these prophets coming around and
you heard their pronouncements every Sabbath in your synagogue services. Why didn’t you pay any attention?”
In our second lesson of Vespers last night, we
heard from St. Peter who said, “This second epistle,
beloved, I now write unto you, in both of which I stir up your purity of mind
by way of remembrance, that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken
beforehand by the holy prophets and of the commandment of us, the apostles of
the Lord and Savior, knowing this first: that there shall come in the last days
scoffers, walking after their own lusts and saying, "Where is the promise
of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they
were from the beginning of the creation."
This has always been the strategy of our enemy.
· In the Garden, Satan
whispered to Adam and Eve, “Ye shall not
surely die.” [3:4, ff] Suddenly, though they realize they were now naked,
the fact that they didn’t die seem to give credibility to what the Serpent had
told them.
· What about the situation
in Noah’s life as he was building the ark?
“And
God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is
filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the
earth.” [Gen. 6:13] The actual process of building the ark could have
taken as long as 100 years. 100
years! Let that sink in. How long would
you continue to listen to someone who said something was going to happen
but after a decade it didn’t? Would you
still believe them?
·
· What about that awful period of
silence from God for four hundred years
from the Prophet Malachi ‘til the Prophet John the Baptist, the forerunner
appeared?
Again, as St. Peter said
about the scoffers…."Where is the promise
of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they
were from the beginning of the creation." Their attitude was , “You see? Look at all this time that has gone by. Nothing’s
ever going to change!” Wow, I
committed this sin and that sin and look! I’m not dead.
In fact, I just got a raise at work.
My kid made the honor roll at school and my wife lost 20 lbs.! Gee, I’m so glad God loves me so much, He
doesn’t really care about these little
sins of mine.
Beloved, be not
deceived. As the people of Noah’s day
perished in the Flood because they did not regard the Word of God, so the
heavens and earth are now, by the same Word, kept in store, reserved unto fire
against the Day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men. With all the advance warning, their
self-indulgent lusts kept them unaware of the judgment of God. One of our current political pundits, George
Will, once said, “The future has a way of
arriving unannounced.”
A fish can eat the bait on the end of a hook and for a short period of time there is the possibility where that hook can be spit out. However, if the fisherman knows how to set the hook, it gets embedded and that fish is quickly headed for the BBQ grill or the deep-fat fryer. When we sin and let that “bait sit in our mouth” it’s very easy to fall asleep or become numb to its danger. In this first week of Advent, the challenge for each of us is to examine our lives and see if we awake or asleep unto the presence of God. God has warned us that He is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness. The delay of His judgment is not a permission slip to continue in sin. He is longsuffering toward us, to give us plenty of time to repent, because He is not willing that any should perish, but that all come to everlasting life.
St. Paul has reminded us today, “…that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake
out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night
is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of
darkness, and let us put on the armour of light…” [
What is it that you want in life? Whatever it is requires some degree of preparation. For couples who are pregnant, they prepare a room for their new baby. To pass that test in school, one must prepare themselves by study. Do you want to win that piano contest; then you must prepare. Do you want to experience the Presence of the Lord more than words can describe? Then let me ask you, “how are you preparing yourself to encounter the Lord of lords and the King of kings?”
Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility: that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal. Through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and forever. Amen.