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As we saw last week, Advent begins with apocalypse. It begins with a vision of cataclysmic events, with warnings of signs in the heavens, in the sun and moon and stars, with words of warning about turmoil in the seas and nations in agony, with warnings of people fainting with terror, and the heavens being shaken, and the Son of Man coming in a cloud of glory. Yet even in the midst of apocalypse, as Father Richardson pointed out, there are words of hope, as there are today -- a voice crying in the desert, searching out those whose address in the world is wilderness. Even in the midst of apocalypse we hear words offering deliverance and peace. The language of Advent is poetry through and through, a way of speaking of salvation, a way of assuring and a way of hearing, through the inadequate medium of mortal words, that what is transient will pass away but what is permanent will endure. Even things that seem so permanent to us now -- things like the earth itself, and the seas, and the heavens -- all this will pass away, says Jesus. But what is permanent will endure. My Word will endure, he says. It will never pass away. In the beginning was the Word that Jesus is, St. John tells us. The Word was with God, and the Word was God, that Word which this morning is announced by John the Baptist in the wilderness of the world. The Word that Jesus is has been around for a long time. It was with God in the beginning, and even after the heavens and the earth have passed away, Jesus assures us, the Word will not pass away. The Word Jesus is will endure. Even now, says John, that Word is coming into the world; behold the Lamb and Word of God. Two women were having lunch about a week before Christmas. "None of my Christmas cards is addressed," said one, "and my presents aren't ready. And the stores are so crowded now, and all the good gifts are gone. I haven't done any decorating, and I haven't even thought about a Christmas tree. I simply don't know what I'm going to do!" And the other replied, "You poor thing! Didn't you know it was coming?" Advent focuses on what is to come. Advent calls our attention to the fact that in the days to come, some things will prove to be transient, and therefore they will change and fade away. And some things will prove to be permanent, and they will endure. Watch for them. Know the difference between the transient and the enduring, and be prepared for the passing away of the one and the resilience of the other. We confuse the two so much, the transient and the enduring. We spend so much time on the one, so little on the other. We can see this confusion in our careless use of words. Consider our use of the word "great." Some of you are old enough to remember Howard Cosell, a once well-known but now forgotten, sportscaster. Some years ago I took the trouble to count the number of times Cosell used the word "great" during one particular football game. According to Cosell, that one game contained at least fifty "great" plays and more than a dozen "great" football players. But we all know that's nonsense. We confuse the great with the ordinary. No game has that many great plays or that many great ballplayers. Few of us today even remember those plays or players now, just twenty or thirty years later. I can't even remember which teams were playing that day. Compare that with Plato, the Greek philosopher who wrote down his thoughts about life and the world 2,400 years ago. It was, I think, Alfred North Whitehead who said that all thought in the Western world in the last 2,400 years -- that includes the thought of Aristotle and Augustine and Aquinas and Thomas Jefferson and Einstein and everyone else -- has been nothing but a footnote on what Plato had to say. Now that's greatness! That's endurance. Plato's were words that had staying power. Or consider Lincoln. At Gettysburg in 1863, President Lincoln was not the top attraction. In fact, having Lincoln address the dedication of the cemetery was an afterthought for the committee planning the occasion. The main event was a celebrity of the day, the orator Edward Everett, a man who made his living with words. For the 1860s Everett had the drawing power of a modern-day talk show host, even perhaps of a rock star, and the organizers of the cemetery's dedication were willing to postpone the event for a month beyond the date originally scheduled so that Everett could make his customary thorough preparation. And Everett did not disappoint the crowd that gathered that day. From memory, he recited a carefully crafted text that held the crowd's attention for two hours. Lincoln's remarks, by contrast, were over almost as soon as they began, and the immediate reaction was a respectful puzzlement at their brevity. But who remembers Everett's words today? It is Lincoln's words that have endured, and Everett himself was among the first to realize what had happened -- that Lincoln, with his profound gift for language, had captured the meaning of the event in 272 simple, but eloquent words that had staying power. "I should be glad to flatter myself," Everett later said to Lincoln, "that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes." "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.... Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.... From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion...." These have proved to be words with enduring meaning. That's greatness. That's creation, poetry. As in philosophy and national and personal life, so in the life of the Church. Who today remembers the theological arguments of the 8th and 9th centuries? Who today remembers the words of the emperor, Leo III, words issued 1,200 years ago that declared all images, all physical representations of the holy, to be idols and that banished them from the Church? Who remembers the arguments that ensued over icons and over the wording of the Nicene Creed, words that split the Church in two in the 11th century and over which the Church remains divided a thousand years later? Who remembers the Azymites of that day and their words that insisted that God requires only unleavened bread in the Eucharist? Theirs were heated arguments, words piled upon words. But heat and quantity does not generate greatness. In the Church, as in every area of life in apocalypse, there is the transient and there is the enduring. What Plato and Lincoln and Edward Everett knew, as Jesus knew, is that some words endure and some don't. They also knew that this is because words have power, the power to create and the power to destroy. We deny it sometimes. "Sticks and stones may break my bones," we say, "but words will never hurt me." But the cruel fact of life is that if you ask someone to recall his or her most painful moment, it is likely that it will involve what someone said. Like a never-ending echo, destructive words have a way of reverberating within the psychic walls of each of us. Some words hurt us and contribute to apocalypse, to destruction and decay. On the other hand -- and this is the good news today -- words also have the power to create and build. Words that heal and bless and encourage are words that edify. They create and build rather than destroy, and so contribute to life, to salvation....
Words such as these never pass away when they are genuinely offered. I said that in his day Edward Everett had the drawing power of a modern-day talk show host. But Everett, a former President of Harvard College, was more than a talk-show host or an entertainer. He was a serious and highly trained scholar who sought to provide words that would capture the meaning of an important and serious national event. Everett earned his living with words, but he was more than an Oprah Winfrey or Rush Limbaugh. It was once reported that Oprah Winfrey earned 98 million dollars in one two-year period. That's about one million dollars a week, or $200,000 a day. I imagine that Phil Donohue and Rush Limbaugh and whoever it is who does that Saturday night show, and all the others, I imagine they all turn their words into comparable dazzling wealth. It's astonishing, isn't it, what we will pay for what is transient, what we will spend for entertainment, for talking heads who offer words without end. But do they offer anything that will last? Will their words endure? Will their words offer comfort and strength when your world begins to crumble, when the earth and the heavens begin to shake, when all you've counted on is no longer there? Will their words offer meaning to your life, a hand to hold, someone to love, a place to stand? "Heaven and earth will pass away," Jesus promises, "but my words will never pass away." In the beginning was the Word that Jesus is, St. John tells us. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word Jesus is has been around for a long time, because that Word is eternal. That Word was with God in the beginning, and even after the heavens and the earth have passed away, Jesus tells us, that Word will not pass away. The Word announced by John the Baptist in the wilderness today, the Word Jesus is, will endure. For that Word became flesh and dwelt among us, not to confuse or condemn the world, but to save it, because God loved the world so much that he sent his Word into the world so that all who hear and receive him will have life, abundant life, life that endures, life that has meaning even when all that is transient is changing and crumbling around it. Monica Helwig, a contemporary theologian, once said that "if it won't play in a cancer ward or a shoddy nursing home for the elderly, then whatever it is, it is not the Gospel." In a crisis, in a cancer ward, in a nursing home, when divorce papers are filed or when a child runs away from home or is killed, when so many things that one has held onto for so long are changing or passing away, one needs that which will endure, a word of strength, a hand to hold, someone to love, a place to stand. The Word that Jesus is was sent into the wilderness of the world that is passing away to speak a word of endurance and hope in the emergency room at two o'clock in the morning, which it has since the creation, and always will. Behold the Word announced by John today! What Advent announces, what the Gospel offers, is a Word that reveals the meaning, the significance, the destiny of your life, regardless of circumstance, regardless of apocalypse. It is the Word which the Cross shouts from Calvary -- that when all else fails know that you are loved, loved by Him who was with God in the beginning, and who is with you now, and who will be forever. Even when the earth and the heavens themselves wash away in a torrent of cosmic dust, the Word I have lived and died among you, promises Jesus, will endure as a sign of the fact that your life has meaning, that you count with God. Advent promises that when all has been said and done, when even the words of Plato and Lincoln and Saints Peter and Paul and all theologians will have been forgotten by the last person, when all the talk show hosts and sports broadcasters and preachers have at last mercifully stopped talking, when even the heavens and the earth themselves have passed away like last year's Christmas toys, even if you find yourself in the cancer ward or the nursing home, even when you are at the door of death itself, even then, God is. And because God is, you are. Because God's word is for you, not against you. That's what the Word means when He says that God loved the world so much that he sent his Word into the world for it, and for you. Advent is about life and death. Or rather, about death and life. Advent is about thresholds, about the passing of an old world and the birth of a new. Edmund Waller (1606-1687) knew this and expressed it in wonderful words now themselves over three hundred years old, words he wrote as he stood on the threshold in 1686, the year before he died: The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;Spend little this Advent and Christmas on that which passes away. Watch, instead, in the midst of apocalypse, for the Word announced by John today. Watch for that which creates and builds, and so endures. Watch for the enduring gift of Christmas, and invest in it. Invest in that which endures for good and for blessing. Watch for that eternal trinity, for faith, and hope, and charity. And watch for the ones God sends to bring them. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |