33:14 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

33:15 In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

33:16 In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: "The LORD is our righteousness."

INTRODUCTION:

It was a dark and stormy night. Thunder and lightening filled the sky. Mom was working away cleaning the kitchen after supper. Mom asked her son to go out on the back porch and get the broom and dust pan. As the little boy reached up to turn on the light. A bolt of lightening flashed across the sky and a loud crack of thunder filled air. And just at that moment, the bulb burnt out. It was like the flick of the switch had caused it all.

The little boy jumped, looked out at the now pitch black porch and then ran to his mother. "Mom the bulb burned out, it's dark and I don't want to go out there."

Mom said, "You don't have to be afraid. Jesus is with you. He'll be with you on the porch, too."

The little boy trudged back to the porch and just as he stepped outside, another bolt of lightening and clap of thunder shook the night. Wide eyed, the little boy said: "Jesus, if you're out there in the dark. Could you hand me the broom and dust pan, please?"

The dark is kind of scary isn't it. When I was a kid I was scared of the dark. I think I slept with a night light until I was 16. Just kidding, it was 14. But there was one place that always spooked me. Even in daylight it was the darkest place I had even seen. I'm talking about the coal bin in our house.

From the time I was in First Grade until we moved right after Fourth Grade, our house was heated by coal. As I got older, Dad began giving me chores to do. One of those was to fill the stoker with coal. The stoker slowly fed the coal to the furnace. And that coal was kept in the coal bin; a room in our basement built just to hold the coal. It had one light bulb, right in the center of the room. But that bulb didn't do a whole lot. The walls and floor were covered with coal dust. The room couldn't have gotten much darker if you painted it all flat black.

The darkness of that coal and the coal dust seemed to just swallow the light right out of the bulb. The best times were right after we'd received a load of coal. The room was full and I didn't have to go very far into the room. But when we started to get low on coal I had to go into that dark room. The hair would stand up on the back of my neck. I worked like a demon to get done as quickly as possible so I could get out of the dark and back into the light.

So what does that have to do with Advent and Christmas. Well, my folks didn't have to go very far to get the coal to fill my stocking if I had been a bad little boy. Actually, Advent is the dividing point between darkness and light in the world.

I. DARKNESS:

A. Advent starts in the dark. Take a look around you at night. It's just begun. Right now most of the world is in darkness. Oh, I don't mean total darkness. We have street lights, billboards and signs, etc. But what I'm talking about is festive lights. It's only just begun. As I've been out of an evening, I've noticed more and more Christmas lights and decorations going up. We've decorated the Church. The tree is lit. But it all started in darkness.

Last week the boxes that held all the lights and decorations sat in the back of the Sanctuary waiting to be opened and distributed. We walked past them and looked at them and our hearts were filled with anticipation. For we knew that the darkness wouldn't prevail much longer. We knew that the lights of the season were coming. And those lights would change everything.

B. Advent starts in the dark because it mirrors the world. All around us the bad news beats us down. All around us we see and hear darkness. All around us we hear the constant barrage of negativity. We hear and read of the increase in crime, in drug and alcohol abuse. We listen to the news and see images of Israel, Holy Land to the three largest religious groups in the world, under fire. And if you really look at it, you see that it's a giant family squabble because we can all trace our religious heritage back to the same individuals, Abraham and Sarah.

All around us there is darkness. The AIDs epidemic that is sweeping the world and decimating most of Africa. There are food shortages, floods, and droughts. There is still religious persecution and religious intolerance. We still have discrimination. We still have a proliferation of weapons and violence. Drug and alcohol abuse are on the rise, despite our war on drugs. We have hunger and illness in the world and in our own country. We can't even elect a president without a ton of turmoil.

Darkness is all around us, threatening to swallow any light that just might be available.

II. LIGHT:

A. Advent may start in darkness, but Advent is really about the Light. And not just any light. Not just Christmas lights, or night lights or street lights but the Light of the World. Jeremiah wrote: "The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: 'The LORD is our righteousness." (33:14-15)

John Wesley was a failure as a preacher until one night he attended a worship service at Aldersgate Street and there he "felt his heart strangely warmed" in one of those moments when time suddenly stands still. He met God face to face and the light was turned on for him. The light of grace and forgiveness. The light of hope. A personal light, not just any old light, but the light of Christ was turned on in John Wesley's life.

Wesley responded with a new commitment of faith and trust. And when he did, the light of Christ gave him a power he had never had before. And Wesley, himself, became a light to the world that transformed a whole country. He became the leader of the Methodist movement in England that proclaimed the presence of 'The LORD our righteousness,' in the world. That movement later became the United Methodist Church.

B. That light still shines today. The problem is that we don't always prepare ourselves to receive the light. At this time of the year we get so caught up in putting up the lights and decorating our homes and communities that we forget to look at the real light. The light of Christ.

We let the bright lights of the season out shine the light of Christ. The lights of the season can never really do that, but we let it. And we sort of relegate the true light of Christmas to that little corner of our celebrations known as Christmas Eve and sometimes Christmas day. When in reality, the Light of Christ, the Light that was born in that stable so long ago is the reason for all of the other lights.

And when we relegate the true light to some corner out of the way of the festivities, then it's sort of like blowing out the candles at a birthday party, then setting the cake someplace out of the way and eating the candles. Why would we do that? But we do it every year. We leave Jesus in the manger and the manger in the stable. Oh, they're safe from harm but also safe from changing us.

We're called to be prepared. And we do that through worship, through prayer, through remembering who's birthday it is that we are celebrating.

The gifts and the lights and the decorations and the parties are all OK, if we just remember and honor the one whose birth we are celebrating.

CONCLUSION:

Pastor Steve Brown tells about a car he saw one day while driving home that was the ugliest car he had ever seen. He said this car wasn't just ugly - it was ugly on top of ugly. If you looked up the word ugly in the dictionary, you'd find a picture of this car.

It had a large gash on its side; one of the doors was held together with baling wire; and several other body parts were almost completely rusted out. The car's muffler was so loose that with every bump, it hit the street, sending sparks in every direction. He couldn't tell the original color of the car. The rust had eaten away so much of the paint, and so much of the car had been painted over with so many different colors that any one of them (or none of them) could have been the first coat.

The most interesting thing about the car was the bumper sticker. It said, "THIS IS NOT AN ABANDONED CAR."

Steve Brown goes on to say, "A long time ago, in a manger, a baby was born. This baby was a sign to us. His very presence tells us, 'THIS IS NOT AN ABANDONED WORLD.'" (1)

Advent tells us that we matter to God. The Light didn't come into the world so the world could stay the same. The light came into the world to lead us out of the darkness. But the only way that can happen is if we are prepared. Prepare your homes but also prepare your hearts and your souls.

We have a great way to begin today, through the Sacrament. As we share in the bread and the wine, let us remember the cost of our salvation, the cross. And let us remember that the cross wouldn't have happened without the manger cradle. Prepare yourself. The one who is called "The LORD is our righteousness" is coming. Let His light shine in your life and drive away whatever darkness there is in your life. Rejoice in the light.

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Bibliography

1. OVERCOMING SETBACKS (Colorado Springs: Navpress Publishing Group, 1992), p. 62.

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