Advent Expectations

Peter Schellhase • December 3, 2023

Homily for the first Sunday of Advent

Welcome to Advent. Though for us Christmas doesn’t really start until the evening of December 24, the secular holiday season is already in full swing. A few weeks ago Erin noticed that Kohls was playing Christmas music. This was before Thanksgiving, so they were easing into the season gently, with less jingle bells and snow, more, as she put it, “Christmas relationship problems.”



The main reason for the music of course is commercial—to remind people that Christmas is coming and they need to do their shopping. However, the music also says something about what Christmas means to our culture. Everyone knows that the winter holidays are supposed to be a special time for family, friends, celebration, giving. Yet, at the same time, the holidays put a keener edge on poverty and want. We try to remember especially at this time those families who struggle to put food on the table, presents under the tree. And poverty at Christmas isn’t limited to those who are poor. A deeper spiritual and emotional poverty—loneliness, broken hearts, broken families—is behind many of the most popular holiday songs.


Mariah Carey sang “All I want for Christmas is you.” This represents the romantic aspirations of the season. But other songs tell the other side of the story. More often than not, these romantic hopes don’t work out. “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart,” sang George Michael in the ‘80s. But sure enough, he got used and dumped, though hope springs eternal. Maybe this year it’ll be different. More recently pop star Ariana Grande approached the same theme with even less optimism and more Gen-Z realism. “Santa, tell me if he really cares / ’cause I can’t give it all away / If he won’t be here next year.” Santa, of course, is silent, though the relentlessly cheerful music jingles with sleigh bells.


The eternal optimism of Hallmark Christmas movies—another seasonal favorite, with their cosy stories and predictable outcomes—is very popular, but even their biggest fans understand that they are a form of escapism. We don’t really live in that world. The holiday season as we know it overpromises and underdelivers. Even when everything is going well for us, our lover is by our side, the kids are home for the holidays, the presents are under the tree and nostalgia is turned up to eleven, we can still feel the emptiness within, asking for something, someone, to fill it.


That’s why, amid all the tinsel and twinkle, the cookies and mistletoe, the Christian faith has a bigger and a better story to tell.


Sometimes people talk about “modern alienation” as if it were a problem unique to the modern world. And I agree that it’s gotten worse. But alienation is really the oldest human problem—older even than death.


God created us, human beings, to live in fellowship with him. Impossible as it may now seem, we were made to be friends with God! Just as the Holy Trinity exists in an eternal relationship of love between its three equal and eternal persons, human beings were made to reflect the glory of this love by living together in community, and man and woman in particular share a unique relationship of fruitful love.


And yet from the very beginning this all fell apart. We became estranged from God through sin, and the knock-on effects of this sundering alienated us from ourselves and one another. Humankind is scattered, suspicious, and separated. Men and women still desire one another, but often fail to find true intimacy and trust. Deep friendships are rare and risk betrayal. We don’t know what we want, and when we get it, we still aren’t happy.


Just turn on the radio at Christmas—this is the story you’ll hear.


But there’s much more to the Christian story. Even as Adam and Eve are leaving the garden to make their own way in the world, God promises that he is working on a plan to save them, and their children; a plan to restore us to the friendship and intimacy with God and one another that we were created for.


As his way of doing this, he chose a childless old couple, Abram and Sarai, and told them that he would create a family from them that would bless the whole world. In his time and in his way, he brought this to pass. Their descendants, the children of Israel, became God’s special chosen people, chosen as a witness to the world of what friendship with God could be.


Of course, Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants didn’t live up to this high calling. Neither do we. Nevertheless, God was (and is) faithful to them, and to us. The prophets proclaim this reality of God’s faithfulness to an unfaithful people, and call on him to fulfill his promises, to restore the world to wholeness and love.


We listen to the Hebrew Scriptures to know what we’re hoping for; we look to the New Testament to see it being fulfilled. The Bible speaks of Jesus Christ, the Baby of Bethlehem, the Rabbi of Galilee, the Crucified and Risen King of the Jews, as the one by whom and in whom all of these promises are made real for us. Paul writes of this, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The fellowship of his Son—that’s another way to say, friendship with God, that for which we were made, once impossible because of sin, now possible again, and accomplished for us by Jesus.


It’s all done. He’s done it all. And yet his work is not complete. In Advent we look ahead to his final return, when he will finish the job, when “the hopes and fears of all the years” will be answered once and for all. This will be a happy ending of such weight and magnificence that not even Hallmark movies would dare to hope for. “They will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

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Sunday Sermon: Be Prepared!

By Peter Schellhase • November 30, 2025
How was your Thanksgiving? For me, it was great to be with my family and close friends who gathered at my parents’ home to celebrate. My parents especially enjoyed spending time with their grandchildren, especially baby Jane who they’d hardly seen. At the same time, the difficulties and broken relationships within our family were felt through the absence of some. Four of my siblings and their families joined us in person, and two others who live far away tuned in through Zoom. But my youngest sibling was conspicuously absent. A cousin’s marriage, I learned, has fallen apart. Sadly, he wasn’t there, nor were other members of his family. Another older couple has celebrated Thanksgiving with us for several years after being shunned and cut off by their own adult children, boys I grew up with. We love these friends and are glad to have them with us, yet together we grieve these circumstances. So the holidays are a time when we experience both the joy of togetherness and the pain of loss and brokenness. They are also a time when it is easy to be caught up in frenetic consumer activities. A consumer survey (from Nerdwallet) reports that American gift-buyers expect to spend an average of $1,107 on holiday gifts this season, and those who journey for the holidays expect to spend an average of $2,586 on travel. All told, these shoppers and travelers will spend over $552 billion during the holidays. My generation, the Millennials, will spend the most, and Gen Z, the youngest generation of American adults, will spend the least. However, both younger generations are most likely to drink to excess at holiday parties, with Americans in general likely during the holiday season to imbibe twice the amount of alcoholic beverages they normally consume. I don't think anyone has published how much Americans are spending on inflatable Grinches, but judging from our neighborhood it must be a few billion at least! Christmas is a wonderful time, especially when we are able to keep the main thing—the birth of Jesus—in view. We can and should celebrate! But for many, holiday shopping, decorating, and partying may be less about remembering the Incarnation of our Lord, and more a way of coping with our feelings of pain and emptiness. A friend of mine put it like this: we’re stringing up artificial lights in the darkness of our lives. And today, God, through the Holy Scriptures, has a word for all of us: Wake up! The Lord is coming! Be prepared! First of all, this is a word of comfort and hope for those who have little else to hold on to. The prophet Isaiah directs our attention to the future state, when the Lord will have established his kingdom on earth. In this vision, the dwelling place of God will be exalted on earth, and all nations will be drawn there. We tend to think of “judgment” as a bad thing, and it often is, especially when sinful human beings attempt to wield it. But Isaiah shows us a future world in which people, all people, are attracted to the perfect judgment of God. They want it, they seek it, they need his law to make peace among the nations and peoples of the earth. In those days “nation shall not lift up sword against nation.” Think of it—a world in which nations not only seek to avoid conflict, but the arts of war are forgotten. “Neither shall they learn war anymore.” In one of the greenhouses attached to our church there is a little figurine on a pedestal, depicting a muscular figure hammering a sword into a plowshare. This is modeled on a statue of heroic proportions by Evgeny Vuchetich which stands at the United Nations, a gift from the USSR in 1959, a few years after this church was founded. It’s revealing how even that officially atheist regime could find no better emblem for its propaganda campaign than this striking image from the prophet Isaiah of a peace that comes about not by human effort but by divine rule. In the nearly 70 years since, neither Soviet collectivism nor American capitalism nor any other human agency has shown any ability to turn from making war to making peace. Ironically, in the ’80s the image and title of this sculpture was used as the badge of a Christian pacifist youth movement in East Germany. They were of course persecuted by the Stasi. Witness the contradictions of the regime that promoted “peace movements” abroad but hounded the children of peace at home! Yet in the days prophesied by Isaiah, God’s people will be honored by all the nations of the earth because the Lord will make his dwelling-place among them. His justice and his rule will go forth from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. Though this future state is not something they can bring about themselves, Isaiah encourages his people to “walk in the light of the Lord” in hope and expectation of that day, and as witnesses of what is to come. If they walk in God’s light, God will be present with them as Lord and lawgiver, and many peoples will be attracted by the holiness and the power of God that is manifested among them. But the final day of peace and justice will not come but through tribulation. It is, after all, the day of judgment. Jesus himself teaches his disciples to soberly expect this day—though not to fear it. He says that the final day will come much as came the flood upon Noah's unwary neighbors who had refused to see or hear his witness to the righteousness of God. And if we're not careful, we may find ourselves in that same condition. To help us make ready, the Church gives us this season of Advent. While all around us it is a time for shopping, partying, traveling, getting ready—although people hardly know what it is they are supposed to be getting ready for—we are to conduct ourselves differently. “Stay awake,” Jesus tells us, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Advent is the season for preparing, not so much for the celebration of our Lord’s Incarnation, as for his second and final appearing at the end of days. How do we prepare? St. Paul says, in unison with Isaiah and our Lord, that it’s time to wake up and walk in the light. The world is dark both symbolically and literally; nights are growing longer and days shorter. Yet the eternal day is coming; Christians are to live now as if the day of God has come; we are to live as those who belong to that kingdom which has yet to be revealed on earth. Christ’s judgment and his gracious law of love is manifested here and now, not in the world at large, but in and through his Church. Where the world practices carousing and drunkenness, we are to be sober, self-controlled, and filled with his Holy Spirit. While people in the world are divided and alienated from one another by fighting and envy, we are to love our neighbor as our own selves and forgive as we have been forgiven. While the world pursues personal gratification no matter the cost, we are to be faithful, chaste, and content with our lot in life, knowing that we await the inheritance of the redeemed, washed in the Savior's blood. In short, as Paul says, we are to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” the whole and perfect Man who does away in us all that is unworthy of him. May his gracious judgment purge us of all that is unworthy, and his law of love be written forever on our hearts!

Sunday Sermon: All Saints Day

By Peter Schellhase • November 2, 2025
Daniel was born a prince of Jerusalem, but went into captivity after the Babylonian conquest, probably as a teenager, and lived as an exile in a foreign land for the rest of his life. Daniel rose to high influence when Nebuchadnezzar the king had a troubled night. None of his soothsayers could tell him what his dream was or what it meant. Daniel did both. He described the king’s vision as a great image of a man, made of a series of materials that grew more and more base as it progressed from head to foot. Finally, a stone struck the image and blew it to smithereens, and the stone became a mountain that filled the whole earth. This, Daniel said, was a vision of the kingdoms of men, of which the finest was Nebuchadnezzar's own, which would be followed by a succession of various empires until finally the God of heaven would “set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, and it shall stand for ever” (Dan. 2:31-44) Nebuchadnezzar raised Daniel to a high position and relied on him to help govern the empire. But after the king died, his son, Belshazzar, ascended the throne, and Daniel was put out to pasture. Now Daniel himself receives a vision. The things depicted in the vision is very different, but its ultimate meaning is the same as in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. It is not sent to a Babylonian king drunk on his own power. It is sent to an old and worried man, an exile whose influence has waned in the new administration. This time, no golden statue. Instead, four rough and gruesome beasts. Unlike in the vision of the giant statue it is very clear these beasts are not glorious but brutal and bestial. The vision evokes the turmoil and chaos of the world as the churning waters of an angry sea from which these beasts emerge. Our reading today skips a bunch of verses that talk about their fearsome appearance and blasphemous deeds. Yet in the end, these great powers are subdued under the reign of “one like a son of man,” “the ancient of days.” Who can this be but Jesus, the eternal Word of the Father, who is both “eternally begotten of the Father,” and who for our sake “was made man,” according to the creed, and who will come again in glory. The consequence of his triumph over these powers is glory and exaltation for his holy ones. “The saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, for ever and ever,” the interpreter tells Daniel, the repetition emphasizing the finality of these eternal victory. Daniel is especially disturbed the vision of the fourth beast the one with ten blasphemous horns, which is greater and more terrible than all the others, and the vision is recounted and interpreted a second time. Notwithstanding these things, he is told, this fourth beast will be utterly destroyed and the Lord will reign forever. And now for something completely different. For our offertory hymn today we’ll sing that fun little children's hymn, “I sing a song of the saints of God.” I have a love-hate relationship with this song. It’s so English—so early 20th-century English—that it seems maybe a little too cute or even inaccessible to our culture: “You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea.” Of course, that's also its charm. Go ahead and smirk. I do. Just don't let the smirk distract you from the very serious point this cute little song is making: The saints of God are are indeed ordinary, everyday people, people like you and me. In fact, they are you and me. By faith, we are to receive this sainthood as our true identity and vocation: men, women, and children called to be saints to the glory of God. St. Paul puts it like this: “In him” (Jesus), “according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will, we who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” What a great promise this is. What do we bring to the table here? Hardly much. Only that the Word of God has come to us, the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, and we have believed in Jesus as the fulfillment of all God’s promises. In this faith we are sealed, marked with the gift of the Holy Spirit, who enfolds us in the reciprocal love of the Father and the Son. This is as much a present reality as it is a future hope. It is true both now and to eternal ages. That doesn't mean that life for the saints is all cottage gardens and cream teas with the Vicar. Again, that cute Sunday-school hymn goes pretty hard: “Who toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew.” And then in the next verse: “And one was a doctor and one was a priest and one was slain by a fierce wild beast”—probably a reference to St. Ignatius who was thrown to the lions, but could just as easily refer to thousands of Christian martyrs throughout the centuries. But what about that cheerful, jaunty tune? The music is actually very well matched with the text, because these hardships in no way diminish the tone of celebration. To suffer for the sake of Christ, even to die, is to participate with him in his conquest of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Well may the Psalmist declare: “Let the faithful rejoice in triumph; let them be joyful on their beds. Let the praises of God be in their throat, and a two-edged sword in their hand.” That sword, of course, is not the human weapons of war but the word of truth that proceeds from the mouth of God. So today, on the Feast of All Saints, we can hardly do better than to remember and celebrate all those saints of God who follow in his triumphal procession, singing his victory chants, raising his cross as their standard, clothed in the seamless garment of his righteousness.