A Fourth Church Sermon by John A. Cairns

November 28, 2004 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

So Begins the Season of Ascent

John A. Cairns
Dean, Academy for Faith and Life,
Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 122
Isaiah 2:1–5

O day of God, draw nigh
In beauty and in power,
Come with your timeless judgment now
To match our present hour.

O day of God, draw nigh
As at creation’s birth;
Let there be light again, and set
Your judgments in the earth.

Robert B. Y. Scott
The Presbyterian Hymnal, #452

This is the Sunday that sneaks up on us, that forces us into a quick turnaround. We have barely stepped away from the Thanksgiving table and suddenly it is Advent. Now, I know that our neighbors on Michigan Avenue are ardent Advent enthusiasts, because they have been helping us prepare for this transition for about a month. They are so excited about celebrating Advent that they couldn’t wait for the liturgical calendar! What devotion! But whether the merchants have helped or hindered, Advent has arrived. The season begins today, ready or not!

I have found that in addition to the question about our readiness to enter into this new season, there is another concern, a concern about the general relevance of this time of preparation and waiting. The themes and the images of Advent seem far removed from 2004. We may treasure the words of prophecy and the expectation of the Savior’s birth, but there is no longer a sense of mounting anticipation attached to these four weeks. It is a story of long ago–well rehearsed, well known—but there have been no recent updates, no new twists. So, we are inclined to wonder about the real-time relevance of an already unfolded drama, wonder about the need to go through all of the build-up again.

Yet balancing that is the excitement and joy, the festivity and the tradition we associate with these weeks leading up to Christmas. They hold a list of must-do activities, which, in spite of our complaints, we cannot imagine omitting from our schedules. And then there is the matter of hope, of the expectations that Advent brings. Somewhere, somehow, that survives year after year. “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.” “No more let sin and sorrow grow, or thorns infest the ground.” “Peace on earth and mercy mild; God and sinners reconciled.”

And so in spite of the fact that we’ve done it all before and we think we know every landmark along the road, there is a reason for the season, and it centers on hope.

Isaiah sounds that note in our scripture for the morning: “In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains . . . and many people shall come and say, ‘Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord’” (Isaiah 2:2–3). I’d like for us to think about that as our Advent assignment, our way of entering into this season of hope: “Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.”

I suppose that unless you work at Walt Disney World, it is preposterous to think about seeing a mountain actually take shape before your eyes, but that is just what I’d like us to do this morning—to find that window in our imagination where we can watch a grand and glorious mountain rising in the distance. This is not an amusement park mountain; this is a travel poster mountain, a glorious, towering assemblage of rocks and trees and streams and vistas, a real out-in-the-distance-type mountain set among significant but smaller hills. Let your imagination go and perhaps you can see the beauty, the appeal, the draw of this place; perhaps you can see it as a place where you’d like to spend some time, a place that holds the promise of rest and renewal. Here is a place that reaches out to you, a place where you can find healing and reconciliation and hopeful direction for the future. Here is a place of peace, where injustice is set right and sorrow and sighing flee away.

Is that a mountain you can picture? Or is that too grand a vision even to imagine? What Isaiah points toward is an image (for him it is a mountain) that reminds us of God’s unmistakable sovereignty, of God’s clear authority and power and presence, and of the fact that the future is in God’s hands. The problem we are up against is that in the midst of our rapid-fire routines, we never find the time or the vantage point to see beyond our overstuffed day-to-day frenzy. The fact that Advent holds expectations and promise is lost on us because we can’t raise our eyes from our computer screens long enough to see what’s out there on the horizon.

If we can step back and look, if we can focus our attention for a moment, what we will see in this Advent time is not simply a season of candles and calendars that slides into and then out of our lives; we will see Advent as an invitation to begin a journey. There is a mountain out there, and we are being summoned to climb it. We are summoned to climb it not just because it’s there, but because the climbing has something to teach us, because this enterprise is all about drawing closer to God and, more importantly, allowing God to draw closer to us. And the first thing we learn as we begin to make our way up the mountain is that our developing relationship with God is not focused primarily on us. Our experience of God has social implications. All the possibility and promise we imagined as we gazed upon this mountain from afar now reaches out and engages us and the world in which we live. The mountain-climbing experience may help us to develop some personal discipline, but it is not about achieving private rewards. The climb up this mountain provides new vistas. We discover that this uphill journey is supplying us with a glimpse of the kingdom of God and of the work we are invited to do so that that kingdom might come.

You remember that I said we should consider this climb to be our Advent assignment. I believe that, but I also know that it is far too easy to lower our eyes, to stop our climb, and to find a nicely shaded bench where we can sit and wait for Christmas; far too easy to sit and talk to one another about how we intend to resume the climb tomorrow—or soon—or sometime. It is far too easy to lose our enthusiasm and to let despair and disappointment overtake us. We need to start climbing, but we are too easily worn down by an endless stream of harsh words and dehumanizing attitudes. We are insulted by the way we, and others, are so often valued only for how we look on the outside or for the material wealth we can generate or by how we dot our i’s and cross our t’s. We need to start climbing, but our energies are drained—and hope is waning.

We are dismayed by the onslaught of violence, by the endless varieties of human suffering. We are overwhelmed by the lack of community, by the absence of common concern about adequate housing and health care, about the need for good jobs and quality education. We need to start climbing, but all we can think about are the obstacles—and hope is waning.

We are shocked by what passes for ethics and values and leadership, by the paranoia over the speck in our neighbor’s eye with no concern for the log in our own! We are exhausted by the constant collision of wills and the clash of temperaments. We need to start climbing, but we have lost our enthusiasm for the journey—and hope is waning.

We are disappointed not only in others, but in ourselves: disappointed by our failure to take a stand against a hurtful joke or an inhumane public policy; disappointed at having settled for a life shaped by statistical norms and common denominators. We are aware of how long our list of missed opportunities has become. We need to start climbing, but the inertia of inactivity has overtaken us—and hope is all but gone.

So, in our weariness, we are content to sit in the shade and to periodically gaze upon the mountain in the distance and to daydream of a better time, a better life, a better world. And then Advent comes and—with it the promise that Christ is coming to make all things new. Advent comes—and with it the challenge to you and me to not only see, but to ascend the hill of the Lord, the highest of the mountains and the one that holds the promise of the coming of the kingdom of God—that offers us hope.

You see it is only as we climb, only as we walk into God’s presence and God begins to show us his ways, that the promise of this season has any chance of becoming a reality. It is only as we climb that the kingdom of this world has any chance of becoming the kingdom of God’s reign. It is only as we make our way up the mountain that we find the will and courage to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks; it is only as we make this Advent journey that we are able to turn our pain into promise, our uncertainty into conviction, our suffering into healing, our selfishness into generosity, our rivalries into friendships, our brokenness into wholeness, and our fear into hope.

So that is our Advent assignment. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord”; let us begin our season of ascent.

Amen.