November 30, 2008
First Sunday of Advent
Rich in God’s Gifts
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Advent’s Attitude Adjustments
Advent is all about “attitude adjustments.” Advent is a time of year designed to adjust our “attitude” for the coming of the Lord based on the gift of Christ that we receive on Christmas day. I saw a vivid example of Advent’s attitude adjustment once.
Many years ago when our daughter, Kirsten, was only four years old and quite rambunctious, I caught her climbing up on the play table in the basement. And before I could grab a hold of her and sweep her up (because we don’t stand on tables in our house) her eye caught sight of a Christmas present Laurie had hidden out of sight high on an upper shelf.
And immediately Kirsten’s eyes lit up and she clapped her hands together quite angelically and she said, “Is that for me?” “Maybe,” I said as evasively as I could. Not one more word was spoken on that topic. And yet, I could see a significant change in her behavior for the rest of the day. She was sweeter, kinder and more cooperative. That is the effect that Advent—the promised coming of God’s gift—can have on attitudes.
Smugly Satisfied
Listen now to Scripture: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” The First Sunday of Advent takes us to Saint Paul’s first letter to the church of Corinth, a prominent port city along the Mediterranean in southern Greece. And I suppose that if there is one way we can characterize this letter, it is as an “attitude adjustment.” My word, all of the apostolic letters were attitude adjustments!—revolving around the imminent return of Jesus Christ.
There were problems in the churches. Behavior problems related to attitude problems. And Saint Paul addressed them head on even in his opening Prayer of Thanksgiving, which also serves as a table of contents to each of his individual letters.
“I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge…so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Read these words in the context of the entire letter and you will discover quite a bit of tongue-in-cheek in this opening prayer. For the problem with the church in Corinth was that they were NOT waiting for a better day ahead. They were NOT longing for it, praying for it, yearning for it. They were NOT waiting for the revealing of their Lord Jesus Christ.
They felt sufficiently blessed and enriched by their charismatic gifts (especially by their ability to speak in tongues, and by their advanced, sophisticated knowledge) that they were ready to settle for the present and were smugly satisfied with what they had now.
And what that resulted in was a self-contained and contented individualism, a crumbling down of the fellowship, and in a lack of love. Can you believe this? They were not even waiting for one another at meals of Holy Communion. That’s how bad it had become. They were like a fragmented family where each person goes their own way.
The Fragmented Family
And isn’t that our problem too? We have been so blessed in America…well, at least, until the last bubble burst…that we are satisfied for now. We are like a bunch of spoiled kids who never learned a sense of delayed gratification. And so, put it on the credit card. Take out a cheap home loan at a teaser rate. Run up the national debt. Borrow on our children’s future.
We think we are so smart and what that has resulted in a self-contained and contented individualism, a crumbling down of fellowship, a lack of love, the fragmented family.
Saint Paul’s Solution
Well, Saint Paul has the answer to our problems, and it is Advent. Waiting for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are NOT satisfied with now. We are waiting for a better day ahead full of grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
And like my daughter Kirsten standing on the table, we have already gotten a glimpse of that gift God has purchased for us.
And just for the fun of it, why don’t we think of it as this table of the Lord—the table of Holy Communion—a table from which we can look into the past and see God’s grace and peace coming to us from a man dying on a cross and a baby cradled in a manger. And it is “Top Shelf” stuff.
Here he is, Jesus Christ. God’s gift. God’s richest gift. The One for whom the world was waiting. The One who takes our guilt and wrong and brokenness away. God was faithful and he came! Full of grace and peace—two great gifts we have already.
The Gift of God’s Own Self
And that is the great wonder of advent: the One for whom we are waiting is the One who already came in a redeeming love to make us blameless on the Day of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what makes his coming so exciting. We are not waiting for a day of judgment, as in “just wait until your father comes home.” We are waiting for the Christ—a gift, a present—the gift of God’s own self.
And that, in turn causes a change in our behavior. We are been enriched in every way in Christ. We are not lacking in any spiritual gift as we wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I hate waiting. I hate waiting in lines. I hate being stalled in traffic. I hate being placed on hold. But what I hate about it is the idleness.
It is not to an idle waiting that Christ calls us, but rather to an active waiting—like “waiting” on tables and “waiting” on customers. Call it service. Call it action. Call it love. Christ has given us things to do while we wait. A Gospel word to speak. And a fellowship of people to care for.
When our attitude is right—a hopeful waiting for Jesus Christ—then a behavior change must follow. A behavior change called “love.” We are rich in the gifts God gives, and so we put those gifts to good use. That is the effect that Advent has on attitudes.
© 2008 Pastor Paul Jaster