Sunday, December 02, 2018

Advent 1, Year C (2018)


Psalm 25: 1–9; Jeremiah 33: 14–16; Luke 21: 25–36
This is the homily given at St. John’s Church, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, December 2, 2018.
“CLEAN US UP, DEAR LORD!”
Nothing cleans a house like company!
Remember that familiar saying? It’s quite true, of course. When company’s coming, we dust, we get into the corners and hidden places where those dust bunnies like to congregate. We scrub, we polish, we vacuum, fearing that the glance of our company will fall on some area or another that’s been neglected. After all, who wants to put their messy side forward when company’s coming?  No one.
Well, the truth is, company’s coming…..at Christmas as we expect and we will welcome the babe born in Bethlehem, and at the end of time (in God’s good time, in God’s good way, and in God’s manner), we will stand before Him who will sit as judge….our Collect for this First Sunday of Advent affirms both of these truths, for they are the two great themes of Advent.
So, if company’s coming, we’d better be about the business of some house cleaning.
As we set ourselves to the business of getting ready for these two encounters with the Lord, perhaps this prayer might be on our lips:  “Clean us up, dear Lord, and deliver us from our messy ways!”
(What follows is in the form of a litany.)
Lord, come and sweep away from us our tendency to let our mouth utter things that are hurtful, or which diminish others, things we wish we could take them back, swallow them and make them disappear forever.
“Clean us up, dear Lord, and deliver us from our messy ways!”
Bring the vacuum cleaner of righteousness and suck up into it all the actions that we wish we could simply blot out of our memories.
“Clean us up, dear Lord, and deliver us from our messy ways!”
For the things we’ve failed to do, even though we knew we had the means to do.
“Clean us up, dear Lord, and deliver us from our messy ways!”
Take away our tendency to be hoarders, claiming for ourselves alone the blessings you, Lord, have given us, for we often fail to care for the poor, the needy and those in any kind of trouble.
“Clean us up, dear Lord, and deliver us from our messy ways!”
Bring your dust cloth, O Lord, and take away the signs of our neglect of attendance at worship and study of God’s Holy Word.
“Clean us up, dear Lord, and deliver us from our messy ways!”
Place in the table of our hearts the freshness of a desire to proclaim Christ’s image to the world.
“Clean us up, dear Lord, and deliver us from our messy ways!”
So that, in that final and awful day when the Lord shall sit as judge of the living and the dead, and in the days which lie in between in which our Lord comes to judge our words, our actions, and our desire to seek His face, may we stand before the throne of judgment and be able to say: “Thank you, Lord, for cleaning us up. Thank you for your mercy and graciousness. Thank you for your holiness and righteousness. Thank for being willing to do the cleaning that we, ourselves, are unable to do.”
AMEN.