November 30, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.
The Heinz family, that singular conglomeration of aristocratic noblesse oblige, didn’t get rich by underestimating the American people.
When they made their luxuriously thick ketchup, they realized they had a potential problem. The ketchup was so dense you could hold the bottle upside down for what seemed like hours before the first drop would dribble on to your cheeseburger. Almost no one in the United States has that kind of patience and the Heinz people feared millions would desert their delicious condiment in favor of Brand B, some thin, runny, but instantly available tomato liquid. Brand B offered lower satisfaction, perhaps, but instant gratification.
In 1979, with the aim of stemming the migration away from their viscous product, the Heinz people implemented a TV ad you may remember well. Two boys are shown patiently holding a Heinz ketchup bottle over their hamburgers as the first drops of red goo begin to form at the bottle’s mouth. In the background, Carly Simon sings: “Anticipation. Anticipation. It’s making me wait.” In the 32-second commercial, the boys have plenty of time to decide postponed gratification is good. As the scene closes, the words appear on the screen: “Heinz Ketchup. The taste that’s worth the wait.”
There you go. An Advent sermon in a single sentence. The taste that’s worth the wait.
This singular phrase, historic in the ad business, is a helpful clue as we parse the curious passage placed before us today. This is not only the first Sunday in Advent, but the first Sunday of Year A, the year of Matthew.
The passage quotes Jesus’ prediction of the end times. It is not very Christmassy. There is no babe in the manger poetry, no paeans to the Christ child, no glory to God in the highest, no peace on earth. Instead, we are warned that the end times will come without warning and we must stay awake or we’ll miss it. We’ll be eating and drinking and playing computer games and the flood will come without warning and sweep us away.
That’s not Silent Night. That’s Johnny Cash singing, God’s Gonna Cut You Down. It’s always a bit disconcerting when the first Sunday in Advent brings dark warnings of the collapse of all we know? Where are the tidings of great joy?
The passage in Matthew, like its counterparts in Mark and the Revelation to John, is the basis for the expectation of the rapture, that at the end of time Jesus will appear in the clouds and send out his angels to collect his elect from the four winds.
Rapture theology can be distracting and even dangerous, as you may recall if you were watching for the end of the world on September 23. Believers quit jobs and liquified bank accounts expecting to be swept into heaven on that beautiful fall day
And suddenly it was September 24 and nothing happened.
Each year there are numerous predictions of the Rapture and they don't happen either.
This is not what Jesus is talking about when he said the Son of Man is coming when we least expect it.
“The Bible does not contain hidden codes that we are to find and decipher,” writes Al Mohler, a conservative theologian and Baptist seminary president. “While Christians are indeed to be looking for Christ to return and seeking to be found faithful when Christ comes, we are not to draw a line in history and set a date.”
Advent, like the Heinz Ketchup commercial, is a time of waiting. And a time of wakefulness.
For me, and perhaps for many others who have served in the military, it’s a little bit like guard duty on a cold, dark night.
I was an Air Force chaplain’s assistant in England in the mid-sixties and the brass kept us in a perpetual state of anticipation by calling practice alerts several times a month. The siren usually sounded in the middle of the night and we would be ordered out of our warm beds, crammed into a rickety bus that smelled of leaking petrol, and transported to the flight line. There we would be issued World War II era M-1 carbines, placed on a small truck, and taken to our posts.
The guard duty would last about six hours. I’m sure I pulled a lot of it in spring or summer but mostly I remember cold, dark winter nights, pacing in front of an F-100 super saber jet uploaded with tactical nuclear weapons. The night was quiet in the English fog and I couldn’t see more than a few feet away.
My orders were clear and simple. Stay awake. Wait and be alert until the sergeant comes around to relieve you. What was not so clear was what I should do if the plane was suddenly attacked by a mad Russian or Baader Meinhof terrorists. Form a discussion group?
Wait. Do not sleep. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to sleep on guard duty because it would endanger your unit, yourself, and the people you’re protecting. There are many stories in military lore of sleeping guards who were jailed or sentenced to hang.
But in the middle of a long, cold night, as you pull your GI parka around you, surrendering to its warmth, sleep is an almost irresistible temptation. And I won’t say I never drifted off on guard duty. But I did develop a remarkable talent for sleeping standing up. I would pass the time writing rock songs in my head, or thinking of the warm, sweet tea and delicious biscuits that would be available in the guard room when it was over.
Wait. Stay awake.
This is exactly what Jesus is asking us to do as Advent begins.
Catherine Sider Hamilton, professor of New Testament and Greek at the University of Toronto, writes,
“Advent is the time the church year gives us to remember what we know. The day of the Lord is coming: Be ready. Get ready! In the midst of the eating and drinking and marrying, the Christmas preparations and parties, the cookie-baking and shopping, Advent gives people time to remember what we know. It is Jesus who is coming, now as a child at Christmas, to be God-with-us in forgiveness and grace; then, on that day of God, as Lord of all, in righteousness and truth.”
The future, for many of us, is a very scary place because so little is known about it. No matter how hard we try to live virtuous lives, all of us have fallen far short of perfection – and the future, we fear, is where all our chickens come home to roost.
This month when we watch the inevitable rebroadcasts of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol (if you only have time for one, I recommend the 1992 Muppets version) the ghost of Christmas yet to come is the creepiest character of all – not because of his menacing cowl and skeletal fingers, but because he shows Scrooge his own just desserts, the righteous judgment on the grasping, self-obsessed life he has led. It is Scrooge, not the ghost, who is the chilling character in these scenes. Ebenezer’s life of depraved indifference to the poor leaves him no chance of heavenly reward, and he knows it. He fears the ghost of Christmas future most of all. He has no hope of relief, no promise of the joys of postponed gratification, so his anticipation of the ghost’s awful truth is agony for him.
“Anticipation. Anticipation. It’s making me wait.” And the anticipation is hell.
Most of us, perhaps, have less to worry about than Ebenezer Scrooge, but at Christmas time we’d still rather trill with Silver Bells than pulsate with apocalyptic cannonade.
Given all this, it will take a little discipline to remind ourselves: when we anticipate the coming of Jesus, there is no difference between welcoming him as an innocent child or as a rescuing savior.
Theologian Karoline Lewis offers reassuring words: “The darkening of the sun, the dimming of the moon's light, and the stars falling from heaven means the end of the world as we have known it. That death will be no more because God will die is something to anticipate during Advent. This is not to be a downer just when Bing really kicks into high gear with White Christmas. It’s to speak the truth, about ourselves and our unrealistic expectations; about God and how God exceeds them.”
Advent begins, and there will be many joys to share in the coming weeks: the Advent wreaths, the manger tableaus, the pageants, the lights, the presents, the family gatherings, and the familiar carols.
The Advent message, as always, is that the Creator of the Universe has taken on human flesh, coming to us in the form of a powerless, innocent infant.
And the message is also that God, through this child, has come to die on a cross, conquer death, and ultimately to return to gather those who have been redeemed in loving arms.
What does it matter if the flood overwhelms us if death has been defeated and a new, more perfect life begins?
The bottom line on the first Sunday in Advent is this: the coming of Jesus is good news.
And our Advent prayer is to savor the anticipation of the miracles yet to come.
Come, Lord Jesus.
