This is the beginning

This is the beginning, and the beginning begins with a promise of return.

This is the beginning of Advent, the very first Sunday in fact, and it is when we notice changes.

Gone is the green chasuble hanging on the altar rail and now hangs the blue.

This is also the only season where I will not be wearing a stole handmade by my mother who is so gifted at quilting and has made me various beautiful stoles to match the various seasons.

While this one is nice too, I bought it off the internet and well, it just feels different.

But there is hope and Christmas is coming!

And speaking of Christmas…

This is a season of preparations, when, if you haven’t already, we head down to the fire station or tree lot or farm and pick out a Christmas tree that is just so.

We might pull it from a pile of other trees leaning in temporary wooden corrals and bang them on the ground to make sure all the needles don’t fall off.

We inspect them up and down and walk around their circumference making sure there are not too many bald spots and if there are some they can be at least hidden in the corner or against the wall.

We sometimes do this after work and the darkened daylight savings skies bring a chill to the air and for the first time we break out mittens to wear and winter coats with receipts and loose change in the pocket that have been there since the last time we wore them, before the fall and the changing leaves, before the summer and the sunny beaches, before the springtime when we placed those same coats in the closet for another year.

We are shifting our routines.

We are moving towards fireplaces and arguments about the proper temperature to which the thermostat should be set.

Now that the kids are away in college, the reflex remains to tell smaller people in my house to “put on a sweater if your cold” or “get under another blanket.”

Just as an aside, my daughter and I went up to Boston to see a show when she was up in Connecticut over Thanksgiving break.

As we left to get in the car she brought with her a blanket.

I asked why she was bringing a blanket.

She said, “Because I get cold when I’m in the car with you.”

I do hope she was talking about the temperature.

My daughter left that day for Boston prepared.

Even the smells we smell are changing.

The crackling scents kicked up when we step on dried leaves are transitioning in to the wafting aromas of cinnamon brooms and scented pine cones; cookies baking and pies cooling entice us to the kitchen with their tempting fragrances.

Yes, things are changing and this is the beginning of all that change.

The clanging bells are already clanging outside the grocery store.

The lists of wants and needs are already being accumulated; the responses to those lists, the replies of “tell me something you want besides cash” have already been spoken.

The changes, the beginnings, the signs of a new season are all around us.

And still.

It is not just Christmas for which we prepare.

For this season, Advent, is not just a prelude to Christmas.

It is not the time of the year when we just get our things together, our wrapping paper and our gifts to be wrapped, our menus and the foodstuffs to cook, it is more than that.

This is the time when we prepare for the birth of our savior anew.

This is when we anticipate Christ’s arrival, when we change not just jackets, but our very selves so that we might meet this child washed from sin and conceit.

Some people, some priests will get up to preach on this day, the first day of Advent, and tell the folks to whom they are speaking, Advent is not about Christmas.

They will be very adamant about this, adamant about Advent, that rhymes.

Advent is not about Rudolph and Frosty and Kris Kringle and Santa, no.

It is solely about preparing for the Christ child.

To a certain extent, I agree.

And still, it’s okay to allow certain amounts of anticipation for Christmas into our hearts for that feeds our expectations for Christ’s birth in a manger set in Bethlehem.

As we gather to sit in our family rooms to watch a Rankin and Bass Christmas special, let your hearts be opened to prayer as we await the arrival of Jesus.

As we sit in a room alone lit only by the lights of a Christmas tree, let the nostalgia you feel for better days wash over you with hopefulness for this is not always an easy season and actually, it can be hard.

For this is a season when we can miss those we love most of all and still we can know that Christ’s return can bring many things.

Let those many things feed into the anticipation for this infant savior’s arrival.

Yes, all of that secular stuff can lead to so many feelings and those are the feelings with which we prepare for Christ’s birth.

I spend a lot of time talking about nostalgia, about my past, about my family in these sermons, sometimes too much I wonder, but I do so in order to build a connection with us all.

We are all born of and live different experiences, and yet it is in those experiences we can find commonality.

And from that commonality we can better understand that we are of one people loving one God and each other.

That is our hopefulness, that is our faith.

Faith in all that Christ’s arrival will bring, faith in compassion, in togetherness, in reunion.

And that is for what we are preparing.

So, how do we prepare?

Well, I’ve said this before and I will keep on saying until I can no longer say it.

We prepare by loving each other.

We prepare by feeding the hungry.

We prepare by giving the thirsty something to drink.

We prepare by healing the sick.

We prepare by visiting the prisoner.

That is all I got.

I have no magic tricks, no special incantations with which to call on Jesus to get here faster, no special tools that will bring God’s kingdom here to earth without Christ.

Instead, I have the promise of a new beginning, a new season of hope, a series of weeks interrupted by joy and the anticipation that a child shall arrive to change this world for the better.

At the close of our service this morning, we shall sing the hymn, “Rejoice, Rejoice Believers”.

It’s final verse reads,

Our hope and expectation,

O Jesus, now appear;

arise, O Sun so longed for,

above this shadowed sphere.

With hearts and hands uplifted

we plead, O Lord, to see

the day of earth's redemption

that sets your people free.

It is through hope and expectation that we are able to imagine the arrival of our savior.

And it is through preparation that we will realize that arrival.

Now is the season of hope, as real as the tinsel on a tree, as electric as the Christmas light lining a house, as undiminished as the desire we have to find peace in this world and the arrival of the kingdom on earth.

And what happens if we don’t prepare?

Well, on the Sunday when she was to return to school we drove up to Glastonbury so we could share church together before she left in an Uber to get to the airport.

As we drove up 84 we were both lost in thought and the car was quiet.

I’m not sure even music was playing, it was just a quiet reflective car ride.

Speaking aloud to no one in particular, Victoria broke the silence.

“I wish I brought a blanket,” she said.

I do hope her Uber was warm.

Amen.