First Sunday of Advent, November 27, 2022 – Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44

The song Now and Then There’s a Fool Such As I was a standard in country music long before Elvis Presley got hold of it. But it’s interesting to look at the sheet music or at a record label with the name on it because the way it is printed is this: [parenthesis] (Now and Then There’s) [close parenthesis] A Fool Such As I. And that parenthesis is very interesting. Now and then. For most of us, most of the time, that expression means pretty much the same thing as occasionally. Now and then. But, in the song, it means all the time. Back then and even now. Now and then.

Back in the 1950’s, the Coasters sang a story song about Sweet Sue and Salty Sam and Lonely Lanky Jones. And Salty Sam was always trying to do dastardly things to Sweet Sue but, just as the crisis was about to strike, who would come along but Lonely Lanky Jones. And, in order to build up the suspense in each of their little stories, the Coasters would go, “And then…, and then…, and then….”  In that song, the “then” is very interesting.  It’s not a “then” of “back then.” It’s a “then” of right now.

Fast forward about twenty years or so, and Harry Chapin has a very melancholy song about a father’s fractured relationship with his son. “And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the moon. ‘When you coming home, Dad?’ ‘I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, son. You know we’ll have a good time then.’”  That “then” is a future then. Then is a very interesting word in the English language. You can refer to then, back then, or then, way ahead of time. 

We are beginning another Advent. There are people here in the congregation, most of them lifelong Catholics. A few of you brand new Catholics. But I’m on my 70-somethingth Advent. It seems the same every year. An Advent is made up of three times. We heard them in the Penitential Act. You came. You come. You will come. You came way back then. Jesus of Nazareth born a Jew, more than 2,000 years ago. You are coming, in word and sacrament and all the other ways that our Church teaches that Jesus is present among us. You will come, in some vague future about which we know nothing except the bald fact that it will come. 

But, you know, Kris Kristofferson’s song Help Me Make It Through The Night pointed out a very important thing. “Yesterday is dead and gone. And tomorrow is out of sight.” He said that about a love affair, but it is true of almost every part of life. Yesterday is dead and gone. No matter what we did for good or ill even though we may be suffering the consequences of it, or rejoicing in the effects of it, it’s over, never to be again. Tomorrow’s out of sight. That’s true as well, isn’t it?  Tomorrow is out of sight. We make our plans, and we have our hopes and dreams, but we really don’t know anything other than today. 

We are in a now, and that now is the parenthesis I talked about at the beginning of my Homily.  It’s filled with “now and thens.” That parenthesis has two different kinds of things in it. The parenthesis is the situation in which we find ourselves at the present time. Our political situation.  Our cultural situation. Family situation. A situation at work or school. It’s not the same as it was last year, but there are lingering elements of what was before. We are in kind of a cocoon in which we are enveloped as we enter this season.

But there is also another parenthesis. And that is how you found yourself today. You may have come filled with anger. Or bitterness. Or disappointment. Or fear. Or jubilation. Or contentment. Or expectation. Just today. 
And, what our Church says to us about Advent is that the Jesus who came, comes into our parenthesis. Both the parenthesis of our time and place in history. Teaching us to distinguish between right and wrong. Between healthy and unhealthy. Between generous and miserly. And all those other yin/yangs in our lives. And walking with us on our journey. And saying, “Yes, I know how you feel this morning. And whether what you are feeling is upsetting or comforting, I’ll walk this moment of the journey with you, because I came, and I am always coming, and I will come again.