When I was attending seminary during the mid-nineties, my fellow students and I would often talk on the phone to coach each other through homework assignments, papers, and studying for exams.  I told my friends they could call me anytime -- except between 9:00 and 9:30 on Thursday evenings, because I would be busy watching my all-time favorite TV show.  Anybody want to guess what it was?

 

It doesn’t seem possible that it’s been seven and half years since the last episode of Seinfeld.  But even though the show is no longer being made, it lives on in reruns and DVDs, and also in the new words that it introduced to our lexicon.  Even if you never saw one episode of Seinfeld, you may have heard some of the terms originated by the show:

 

For instance, there’s the “double-dip” – this is the socially unacceptable maneuver of putting a chip back into the dip after you have already taken a bite from it.

 

Or how about “yada yada yada,” which has become such a part of our vocabulary that I’m told it can now be found in the venerated Oxford English Dictionary.  A new and improved version of “blah blah blah,” “yada yada yada,” is a phrase that enables one to complete a story, while conveniently leaving out some significant details that he or she may not want the listener to know.

 

And then there’s the “pop-in.”  This is an unexpected visit from someone.  You know, as in “I was just in the area and thought I’d pop in to see you.”  I will confess to you that I live in fear of the “pop-in.”  Now don’t get me wrong; I love to have visitors – as long as I am fully dressed, my make-up is on, and my house is clean.  But nothing strikes terror in my heart like the sound of the doorbell when I’m not expecting anyone.  Because usually I’m in my flannels and my house or my hair – oftentimes both -- are a mess. 

 

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of family and friends and feasting.  And now it is officially the Christmas season.  And although the secular calendar is telling us there are 33 days left in the year 2005, on the liturgical calendar, today – the first Sunday in Advent -- is the first day of the new church year. 

 

Over the past 52 Sundays, we have heard the story of God, revealed in Jesus Christ.  It is the story of the One whom we await during Advent, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas, whose sacrificial love we meditate on and integrate into our lives during Lent.  It is the story of the One whose crucifixion and death we mourn over during Holy Week, whose Resurrection we joyfully share at Easter, whose Spirit makes us one at Pentecost, and whose call to follow is central to all the other Sundays in the church year.  And just in case we didn’t entirely get the message over this past year, today we begin the story all over again, that it might change our hearts and our lives.

 

Before he died, Jesus promised his followers that he would come back, and he urged them to watch and be prepared for his return at any moment.  The word Advent means “coming,” and these weeks leading up to Christmas prepare us for God’s coming to us as one of us.  And coming not just as a baby in the manger 2000 years ago, but also coming back again, in the present and in the future.

 

On this day of new beginnings, it is a time for the renewing of hope and expectation.  And yet, even as we celebrate hope, peace, joy and love these four weeks of Advent, I know that some of you may be dreading the Christmas season.  Perhaps illness or financial problems or a breakdown in a relationship is casting a pall over your holidays, and you live somewhere short of the joy we’re all “supposed” to be feeling.

 

If that is the case, then you might be comforted to know that in Advent, we all live somewhere “in between.”  We live in between the “already” of God’s coming to us as a baby born in Bethlehem, and the “not yet” of Christ’s return at the end of the age; we live in between hope and despair, in between the presence and the absence of God.

 

Today at the beginning of this Advent, we all are living in the between times, in a state of “not-yetness” – the not-yetness of the end of the war in Iraq, the not-yetness of peace in the Middle East, of a cure for cancer and AIDS.  And some of us are in the middle of our own “not-yetness” – of our return to health, of a healed relationship, of financial stability.

 

And our Scripture this morning reflects this sense of living in between.  On this first Sunday in Advent, we would expect that our Gospel lesson would give us at least a hint of the birth to come – an appearance by Elizabeth or Zechariah, or perhaps an angel or two.  But instead, this morning’s scripture comes from the one of the last chapters in the Gospel of Mark, at the end of Jesus’ life rather than the beginning.  Jesus tells a parable about a man who goes away on a journey, leaving his servant in charge of maintaining his home. The man gives each a job to do, but he singles out the doorkeeper for a special warning. “Watch, therefore,” he says, “for you do not know when the master of the house will come…”; watch, “lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.”

 

Here we are, ready to hear about the coming birth of a baby in a manger with such soothing words as “gentle,” “meek” and “mild,” and instead, we get a description of Jesus’ final coming with these ominous words: “After that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”  I don’t know about you, but that image sure doesn’t get me into the warm and fuzzy holiday mood!

 

Scripture tells us that we won’t know when the master of the house will come back.  And yet, people keep trying to predict when Christ will return, or they think that Christ will let us know he’s coming again, so we can put the date on our calendars and prepare by cleaning up our act and getting our lives in order!

 

But as the prophet Isaiah tells us, God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and God’s ways are not our ways.  I would add that God’s timing is not our timing.  God never seems to act when we human beings expect God to act, nor in the way we expect, either.

 

Advent is the time for us to open ourselves to the ways Christ comes to us in the here and now.  We might think we need to straighten out our lives, to pay more attention to our spiritual well-being, before we can welcome Christ into our lives.  But Christ is interested in YOU – the REAL YOU; not the you that you project to the outside world – you know, that person who acts like you have it all together just enough that you don’t let on you are having problems at home or with your family or with your job, or that you feel like your living your life on the brink, or that you are leading, in the words of Thoreau, a life of “quiet desperation.” 

 

Christ is interested in the REAL you, the person you are when you think no one is looking.  So when you’re finally alone and drop the façade and let down your guard -- that is when you should expect the divine pop-in, because that is when Christ wants to see you.  Christ will come when he can finally slip past the door of your defenses and through the window of your carefully maintained veneer.

 

The gospel of Matthew says that Christ will return like “a thief in the night,” and indeed, Christ is after your valuables, but not your silver or your stereo; he’s after your heart, your soul, your mind.  Those are the treasures Christ wants.  And he will not warn you he’s coming because he doesn’t want to give you the chance to lock him out.  He knows how badly you need to be broken into, how badly you need him, and how hard you will resist.[1]

 

I suspect that many people come to church and read the bible and say their prayers – but still want to keep Christ at a safe distance.  “Don’t get too close, because I don’t want to change.”  Because it is true – if you let Christ into your life, he will turn everything upside down.  He will dismantle and then rebuild your world – rebuild it into something more meaningful and joy-filled.  He will satisfy that yearning in your soul, and he will fill that God-shaped hole in your heart.

 

Christ doesn’t care if your life is in order or that you’re spiritual house is clean.  What Christ wants to know: are you willing?  Are you willing to let him in past your carefully maintained façade and be transformed?

 

It’s Advent, and you never know when Christ is going to pull a divine pop-in.  And so keep awake – not to keep him out, but to let him in.  This Advent, let down your defenses, put aside your fears, open your heart, and let Christ in to your life.  Amen.