Heaven and Earth: Meanwhile, We Hope and Wait | November 30, 2025

This Sunday, we enter into the season of Advent, a season of waiting, watching, and preparing for Jesus.

We often think about our participation in church and worship as us taking time for God, but Advent is about God taking time for us. Advent is about God refusing to leave us alone, and instead relentlessly insisting on breaking into our world.  In Jesus Christ, God is bringing heaven to earth and changing everything.

Today, we’re beginning a new four week Advent series “Heaven and Earth” based on Will Willimon’s book Heaven and Earth: Advent and the Incarnation. In this series, we celebrate and anticipate the earth-shaking, life-transforming good news that God is coming to us. Watch out. Get ready. God is on the way!

Today’s Scripture readings are Isaiah 64:1-9, Psalm 80:3-7, and Mark 13:24-37. For an Advent children’s message this week, I shared Mo Willem’s book, Waiting is Not Easy from the Elephant & Piggie series. It’s a great Advent illustration!

Here’s the worship livestream from Christ the King and the sermon podcast audio: 

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Grace to you and peace in the name of the One who was, who is, and who is to come, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

I used to think the challenge of Advent was the waiting. Especially for kids, there’s so much anticipation, so much to look forward to at Christmas that it’s hard to wait and be patient. Are we there yet? Is it time? How about now?

And of course, each year it seems like the Christmas season begins earlier and earlier. Christmas shopping used to start after Thanksgiving; now decorations are out well before Halloween. Christmas Day’s still weeks away, but Christmas school concerts are this week, our Sunday School kids started practicing their Christmas program this morning, and I feel like we keep saying it’s almost Christmas time, it’s almost Christmas time, but it’s not here yet, just wait. We do Advent calendars and light candles to keep track, to mark how much closer we’re getting to the celebration. Waiting is tough.

But now I think the bigger challenge is not just the waiting, but the anticipating. It gets a little harder each year to get excited about Christmas, about Advent, about this celebration of Jesus’ birth. I don’t think I’m burned out on Christmas, but year after year in the season of Advent, we hear how we should prepare for Jesus’ birth, how we should get ready for the wonder of Christmas, the joy, the excitement, the surprise. And after about 2,025 years, it’s not that surprising. We know Jesus is going to be born.

Someone asked me a couple weeks ago if we were going to celebrate communion at our midweek Advent services, because after all, Jesus hasn’t been born yet. But…we know he’s born. We know who he is, and we know he’s going to grow up to die on a cross. And we even know he’s going to be raised again on Easter. This is familiar. It’s hard to keep the same level of excitement for this world-changing event of Jesus’ incarnation when we celebrate it every year, when we know the rest of the story.

But perhaps the point of Advent is that we do know the rest of the story. We know what we’re waiting for. We know who we’re waiting for. The season of Advent calls us to live in the here and now, not pretending we don’t know what’s coming, but because we know what’s coming. God wins.

The story of Christmas is the story of God acting in history, God refusing to leave us alone in this world, but insisting on getting involved. God enters this world in a way that’s still a surprise, even if the story is familiar by now. Advent invites us to live with the end in mind. Christmas, and Christ’s return. Resurrection hope.

Our theme for this Advent is Heaven and Earth based on a book by former United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon. In the book, he talks about Advent as a season that plays with time, where we proclaim the promise of faith that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. We worship the One who was, who is, and who is to come, who exists outside of time, yet is present with us here and now. God shows up.

Today’s readings challenge us to wonder if we want God to be involved. That sounds strange to even ask, because we’ve already prayed several times just in this service for Jesus to come. But do we really know what we’re asking for?

It’s clear the world is broken. We’ve tried our best new year after new year, advent after advent, to fix things. We’ve made plans and resolutions, we’ve formed committees and voted, we’ve tried all sorts of ways to live better, make good choices, vote the right way, save, decided to make a fresh start, done our best to be good people, good neighbors, involved citizens, given money and time, worked hard, and it’s not enough. The world is still broken. No wonder we get tired, even a little cynical.

Isaiah says, “All our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”

Willimon writes, “It’s not within our own power to make a fresh start. If we’re to have a future different from the past, it must come as a gift, something not of our own devising. What we need is a God who refuses to be trapped in eternity, a Creator who is not aloof from our time. We need a God who not only cares about us but who is willing to show up among us and do something with us here, now.”

The Psalmist begs, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine upon us, and we shall be saved.” Isaiah cries out, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”

Advent pleads for God to intervene, to do what we can’t. But if we’re going to ask for God to get involved, if we’re going to ask for heaven to bump into earth, we should be prepared to be shaken up. When God takes our pleas seriously, when God tears open the heavens and comes down, it shifts our reality. Jesus talks about stars falling. “Be careful what you pray for” warns Willimon.

“This thing—the birth, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus—is cosmic, world-shaking, time-disrupting. God won’t be tucked away in your heart, or confined to an hour at church on Sunday morning, or limited to matters personal and private. God thinks God owns it all and God is going to get back what belongs to God.” Yikes.

When God turns toward us, it turns the world upside down. God interrupts our lives. And for us who have a fair degree of comfort, who have food in the freezer and some money in the bank, for those of us who agree things are wrong in the world, but wonder if maybe we tried a little harder it could be ok, for the comfortable, God interrupting is a bit unnerving. We’re not so comfortable with Jesus’ apocalyptic language about cosmic signs, at least I’m not. Maybe we just want to get through another busy holiday season, not imagine the end of the world.

But the hope of Advent is that God is relentless and God is active. God who refuses to leave us alone in our half-contented discomfort. And not just us, but the whole world.

So Jesus tells us, “stay alert.” Be ready. God’s going to act. Watch out. Keep awake, because we don’t know when God’s getting involved.

When? We don’t know. We don’t know when our prayers will be answered. God comes at Christmas long ago in Bethlehem, God comes in the future, God is present now. We know not the day or the hour.

And yes, the waiting is hard. It’s hard to keep up the anticipation, to look forward, to even imagine a different world when we’re so enmeshed in this one. But God will act. Heaven is breaking into earth. In God’s time.

And so in the meantime, we wait. Our waiting is not passive, idly wondering when God will move, but active, trusting God to use our feeble efforts as part of the kingdom. We act. We pray.

Not just little mild, meek prayers, but pleas for God to act, for the Holy Spirit to burn, for the world to be shaken. For us to be changed for good. We proclaim hope, the promise of the kingdom coming, because this is good news. Uncomfortable, beyond our comprehension, out of our hands, good news.

May God bless you, prod you, stir you, shake you up in this Advent season. Come, Lord Jesus.
Amen

Other sermon in this year’s Heaven and Earth Advent series:
Week 2: Love’s Surprising Interruption
Week 3: Joyfully Pointing to Light
Week 4: Rejoicing at Peace