Advent 1

Today we embark upon the season of Advent. "Advent" means "coming". It is the season of remembering Christ's coming into the world, and anticipating his coming again. This evening, I'll preach from the lectionary gospel text, Mark 13:24-37. In the passage, Jesus warns the listeners to "keep awake - for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at a cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake."

The Christian claim is that as we wait for Christ to come in the future he takes up residence in the present. Therefore, we must heed the words of Jesus to keep awake because he is here among us. I conclude my sermon saying:

A funny thing about my son's name, Ira, is not that upon first hearing it one isn't sure if it's a boy or girl name or that it's an old-school name hardly used in this age or that it sounds particularly Jewish and to think that a protestant pastor would give his son a Jewish sounding name is kinda funny. Okay, so maybe those are funny things about my son's name but for our purposes today, what's funny about the name Ira is it's meaning.

The name "Ira" means "watchful, vigilant." A little divine humor on this day that we are called to be watchful, maybe? Perhaps Ira stands as a reminder that we are to be watchful, alert to Christ winking at us through the circumstances of life. The spiritual rigor to which we are called is to set aside our small preoccupations and recognize what's really important. We are to allow ourselves to be lifted up by the expectation of Christ present and active.

Each of us can take "Ira" as an Advent name, whether we are man or woman, boy or girl, we can add this name to our own in the depths of our hearts for the period between now and Christmas, and let it remind us to be vigilant and watchful. And so we will have "Joe Ira" and "Laura Ira" and "Mary Ira" and "Gilda Ira" and "Tom Ira" and ...