A sermon preached on December 3, 2023, by the Rev. Patrick H Wrisley, D.Min.

            Are you an owl or are you a rooster? Are you a “clucker” or are you one to sit back and observe all that is unfolding in front of you?  Richard Landes, former Director of the Center for Millennial Studies, wrote an article over twenty years ago as the year 2,000 was approaching, that essentially there are owls and there are roosters. Owls are stoic and quietly observe what is happening in front of them whereas roosters are easily excitable and crow, making noise every chance they can.^[1] As Georgia rock band REM sang years ago, it’s the end of the world as we know it and roosters make a lot of noise that Jesus is coming and he’s bringing with him quite an attitude!

            Reflect back 24 years ago when everyone was wondering what was going to happen when the year 2,000 rolled around. People thought computers would freeze up and the world would come to a standstill. Religious zealots thought the world was going to come to an end and Christ would return to summon all the deserving faithful home. Owls are people who would say, “Now just relax, everything is going to be fine. Roosters are the zealots who are telling everyone, “The end is near!”

            Today is the very first day of the new Christian liturgical year. On this very first day of the Christian year, we begin our commemoration of Advent, which literally means ‘coming’ or ‘arrival.’ It is the slow march towards Christmas Day when we celebrate the arrival and birth of the baby Jesus. Advent is the season of preparation and so today, as we prepare for Christ’s birth, we are reminded that we are a people who wait with and in hope. The first day of Advent is also the day the larger church remembers the coming of Christ at the culmination of time when all heaven and earth will be laid bare before the gracious judgment seat of Christ. The first Advent is the birth of Jesus in the manger; the second Advent is when Jesus comes in judgment at the fullness of time. The Christian calendar always begins reflecting hopefully on the second Advent of when Jesus is coming again and will be revealed in glory.

            The first Sunday in Advent is the day the Church hopefully waits for the apocalypse. Roosters in our world have crowed that the Apocalypse is a bad and terrible event when Jesus comes back, flips tables, and takes names. We have let the fiction of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins in their books, Left Behind, shape our thinking about when Jesus comes again more than we have scripture. The word apocalypse literally means, “the revealing.” Advent is the Church’s way of forcing us to slow down and reflect on what the great reveal means to both of us personally and as a church while we wait for Jesus to appear. Advent is a season of waiting, not only for Christmas Day, but is a time of waiting and preparation which forces the Church to ask, “How are we preparing for the revelation of Jesus when he comes again?” In our text this morning, Paul refers to that time as the Day of the Lord. Advent is a time we wait for Jesus to be revealed in an attitude of hope, not one of dread.

            Our scripture this morning is from one of the many letters Paul wrote to his most difficult church, the one in Corinth. What we have in our Bible as First and Second Corinthians is thought to be a series of letters Paul and others wrote to the church some sixty miles southwest of Athens, Greece. Corinth was a sea town that was a crossroads of trade and commerce and its reputation for being shady was well known in antiquity. It was the original “sin city.”  Non-biblical author of the second or third century, Alciphron, noted in letters how the people in Corinth were not very friendly or graceful and that the rich acted haughty, coarse, and disgusting while the poor groveled for scraps of bread. The more we read Paul’s letters to the Corinthian church, we begin to see that not a lot has changed since Paul’s time and a couple of hundred years later.^[2]

            Our text is from the prologue of his letter to them and sets the scene for what he will unpack later in his writings, namely how they are using their spiritual gifts and how they are treating one another in the Christian fellowship. Hear the Word of the Lord!

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

³Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. ⁴I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, ⁵for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind— ⁶just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— ⁷so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁸He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.^[3]

            What does this text have to say to us during our time of waiting and preparation? To answer this, we must remember who Paul is writing to in the first place. As sophisticated twenty-first-century folks, we think Paul is writing to us, i.e. to you or me. We love to personalize everything! We need to remind ourselves that Paul is speaking to the collective church in Corinth. The letter is not written to Patrick, Bob, Bryan, Sandy, or Carol; it’s written to the collective community of Christians there. The ‘you’ Paul uses is not singular; it’s best translated, as “all y’all”! This is how we need to hear our text this morning:

Grace to all y’all members of First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for First Presbyterian Church Glens Falls because of the grace of God that has been given all y’all in Christ Jesus, for in every way you as a church have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind — just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among the membership of First Presbyterian Church— so that as a community of faith, all y’all were not lacking in any spiritual gift as together y’all wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen First Pres to the end so that as a church, y’all will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him, First Pres was called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. 

So, Church, how does this literal reading of Paul’s words instruct us on how we wait? Personally, I believe it causes us to ask some penetrating questions of ourselves as a church who at times has struggled to understand each other.  Paul’s words are a wonderful corrective lens we gaze through and are presented with some questions to ponder as a community as we wait with each other, as we as a community of fellowship prepare for the coming of the Lord.

            First, we are reminded that what we have is a gift from God. Look around this room, and think of the ministries we have conducted in the past or are a part of doing now – all we see and all we have done and are doing are a result of God’s gifts and grace to us first. As we wait together for the coming of the Lord, I want us to spend time this Advent reflecting on how God has blessed this congregation over the years and how we are to extend those blessings into the future.

            Second, this season of waiting, of Advent, is a time for us to remember and celebrate the spiritual gifts this body has been endowed with for the good of the gospel ministry of Jesus. As a congregation, you have shaped generations of children through our preschool and Sunday school ministries. You have been a vocal witness to the glory of Christ in Albany Presbytery but also with the community of Warren County and beyond. You have been a leader in demonstrating the justice, mercy, and loving ethic of God to those in our community. Those are gifts you have shared; what are the gifts you, Church, want to share now and into the future while we wait?

            Finally, Church, as we wait, as we prepare for the Lord’s coming, we are to ponder on how God will strengthen and support us in our waiting. We are reminded of God’s faithfulness for our provision and sustenance, for God’s abiding care and love for us as a family of God. As we wait for Jesus’ coming day, we wait hopefully, patiently, knowing God is faithful even when the world and its news try to tell us otherwise.  Paul’s words to the church are a wonderful reminder for us, the Church, that God’s faithfulness and grace are best expressed through what we as a fellowship do for and with each other.  Let us come to the Table and be nourished by the hand of the Lord as we hope and wait.

            In the Name of the One who is, was, and ever more shall be. So be it.

© 2023 Patrick H. Wrisley. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, 8 West Notre Dame Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801, and may not be reproduced or repurposed without permission from the author. All rights reserved.

^[1] Richard Landes, On Owls, Roosters, and Apocalyptic Time: A Historical Method for Reading a Refractory Documentation, From Union Seminary Quarterly Review 49 (1996): 165-85.

^[2] J. Paul Sampley, New Interpreters Bible, Acts, Vol. X (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), p. 772.

^[3] New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. See http://nrsvbibles.org.