Advent 1C
11/29/09
"Hope For The Waiting"
Happy New Year! Welcome to the First Sunday in Advent, which marks the beginning of the New Church Year. There aren't the typical new years celebrations: no fireworks or "Auld Lang Syne". But we do have a lit Advent Wreath and a glowing Star that have appeared since last week's worship. These signs help to point us in the direction and prepare us for the coming of God-with-us Emmanuel. But we are not there yet, and so we wait.
Advent is a time for waiting and breathing, not a time to rush too quickly from one thing to the next.[1] I believe we miss something if we rush too quickly to Christmas. Advent helps us to pause, take a breath, and prepare, not only our homes and church, but our hearts and minds for what is about to come. For some people Advent is a strange practice amid the hustle and bustle of Christmas preparations. Advent has been compared to the hush that falls over the crowd just as the conductor takes his baton, raises it in the air, and pauses for that o-so brief moment before the symphony pulses with glorious music.[2] It's that last minute check of costume and make-up before the actress takes the stage and the curtain is raised. The audience and actors all pause and wait, wondering with anticipation what the future holds. Observing Christmas without Advent is like celebrating Easter without passing through Lent and Good Friday--it's possible, but the meaning can get lost so easily because our hearts and minds aren't fully prepared.[3]
We are one of thousands of churches around the world that live into the liturgical church year cycle and welcome the New Year today with Advent. The tradition of the liturgical church year has developed since the earliest church. The Lectionary-assigned Scripture readings that help guide our worship are from an evolving process that began in the 4th century and developed into the Revised Common Lectionary in 1992.[4] The Revised Common Lectionary includes a 3-year cycle of texts that were chosen to highlight different holy-days and events in the life of Christ and the history of the church. Each Sunday has four texts to choose from--an Old Testament reading, New Testament Letter, Psalm, and Gospel reading. It also helps us to hear a wide variety of Scripture over the course of the years. In case you are wondering, we are beginning Year C in the cycle today, and will focus on the Gospel of Luke most of the year in our Gospel readings.
Advent lasts 4 weeks and is followed by Christmas--a season 12 days long that starts on the eve of December 25th. But we're not there yet, even though it's hard to tell by looking outside. I have been hyper-aware of Christmas preparations this year. I found it downright disturbing to see Christmas Trees and decorations for sale during the 2nd week of OCTOBER. And the wreaths were hung by the shop buildings with care--before Halloween. It seems that in years past Thanksgiving was overshadowed by Christmas Shopping, but this year, even Halloween got overshadowed. Really? Halloween. Do we need to make the commercialization of Christmas last over 2 months? Will "Merry New Thanksgive-o-ween!" become the new standard holiday greeting?
The rampant commercialization of the holiday has almost at times zapped my hope for something different--something simpler. Now before I go any further, I must first say that I love Christmas--I love the music and decorations and yummy smells that permeate the season. I love spending time with family and friends and smelling the Beeswax and evergreen that fills the air. But I have to consciously hold my love of Christmas in tension with the waiting of Advent.
If you came today expecting to hear about Christmas, then you are likely disappointed. Our assigned Scripture Texts today do not include the birth narrative of Jesus. It's not yet time to sing Joy to the World or Silent Night.[5] Today is the day, instead, to begin anew to live into the hope of the waiting and longing for another day as we sing O Come, O Come Emmanuel. This morning through our assigned texts we heard the Prophet Jeremiah speak of a promise from God spoken to comfort a people amidst destruction and war, and we heard Luke's Gospel tell of a time to come when Jesus will return again. These passages, especially when held up together in Advent, help us to see our own lives as part of the ongoing narrative of God's people who live into the already-not yet waiting for Christ. We know he has come in the flesh and will come again this year at Christmas--and yet he hasn't arrived in the second coming. We hear the words of hope from Jeremiah's time as they live in the midst of war and impending conquest at the hands of the Babylonians. Life isn't easy for these people, and things sometimes only look like they will get worse before they get better. At the same time we hear Luke's recounting of Jesus' words just before his crucifixion about his return to earth in the future. For the early church in Luke's time, the Resurrection has come and gone, Jesus said he would come back soon, and it's been 2 decades... where is he? We can almost hear the Gospel writer asking, "Maybe it's time to reframe our thinking about when he'll arrive, and instead wait expectantly." And so we sit with hope in our hearts and wait.
I've thought a lot about waiting with hope in the past week, as I've wondered where I see hope in our world today. Sometimes if you are anything like me, we have to be intentional to look for hope because it is so hard to find amidst all the bad news and Christmas consumerism. Where in the world is God at work giving us signs to wait with hope and, at the same time, fulfilling the promise to be with us forever? I posed the question of where we find hope to my Facebook page to see what others had to say. I asked, "Where do you see hope these days?" One person named watching younger generations volunteer to help those in need--noting the example of the Moravian Youth Fellowship from here that went gleaning a few weeks ago to gather sweet potatoes for the Food Bank. She said, "Maybe because of the [youth] willing to do that, love still stands a chance in the world." Another person said, "Love Wins, and God is love." Yet another person claimed the beauty around her in creation quoting, "I see skies of blue and clouds of white, the bright blessed day and the dark sacred night, and I think to myself, what a wonderful world." God is indeed at work around us giving us signs of hope to hold on to in the waiting times.
On my search for hope to help with this waiting of Advent, I began looking around intentionally for signs. Signs of God's presence and what is about to take place, signs of the breath just before the curtain rises. Then I woke up one morning this week and saw it--right there in the window--my two Christmas Cacti were blooming. Not just one bud, but three flowers open, and the rest of the plants about the burst open. I am always amazed when these plants bloom, given my track record of over or under-watering. One of these plants is quite old. The other one is an off-shoot of the first that I rooted years ago, and has become another beautiful plant, so they sit in the window almost like a sign of rebirth and new life. Seeing these blooming plants led me to look with new eyes again--where else do I see sign's of God's hope in my midst? Well, the plants I got at the plant sale are still blooming. My biggest surprise was the Gerber daisy from earlier this year. It is still alive and blooming now too. Now if you had seen this a month ago, you would have agreed with me that the daisy had no hope of survival. I had actually given up on it, due to my over abundance of watering, but I just hadn't thrown it in the compost bucket yet. I'm still amazed it's blooming, especially now. It's the end of November and I have beautiful plants flowering! What signs of hope for these damp, dark November days.Jeremiah's words likely took his listeners by surprise, much like the flowers did me. During Jeremiah's time, things were tough. The Babylonians were pressing down about to overtake the city. Jerusalem was about to be destroyed. Jeremiah sat in jail because officials were trying to keep him quiet. He had been the prophet of doom and gloom for quite a while. If it could be cursed, he had cursed it.[6] Things were so bad, it seemed as though hope left town and had taken a vacation.[7] Amid these tough times, we hear Jeremiah's words, "14The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 16In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”" (Jeremiah 33:14-16). A new branch will spring up from a dead stump, or a flower will grow from a dead daisy. These words brought hope and comfort.
If the new growth from the dead stump wasn't enough, the previous chapter of Jeremiah told of his prophetic sign from God to purchase a plot of land. Jeremiah declared that some day, "houses and fields and vineyards shall again be brought in this land." (Jeremiah 32:15). Though it seemed foolish to buy land while an enemy army prepared for battle, God's sign of hope shone bright in those dark days. Signs of hope for a people longing to hear that God's promise through the covenant with Israel would be fulfilled. Justice will prevail, and it will be God's justice that reigns supreme. People will live out God's call to love God with their whole hearts, soul, mind, and strength, and love their neighbors.[8]
So where are your signs of hope to help with this Advent waiting? What do you see when you look around with new eyes, just waiting for that curtain to rise and the actors to take the stage? What blooms in your heart to prepare you for the coming dawn? How is God at work as you take a moment to breathe this Advent? Do you hear the whispers? Do you see the signs? Where do you find hope for the waiting?
Poet Dom Helder Camara writes, "The Spirit is Breathing/ All those with eyes to see, / women and men with ears for hearing/ detect a coming dawn;/ a reason to go on.// They seem small, these signs of dawn,/ perhaps ridiculous.// All those with eyes to see/ women and men with ears for hearing/ uncover in the night/ a certain gleam of light/ they see the reason to go on."[9] May we all wait with hope this Advent. Amen.
Benediction: May the God of HOPE fill you with all JOY and PEACE, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in LOVE this day and always. In the Name of the Triune God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Frederick Buechner, “Advent” in Whistling In The Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary (NY, NY: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988) 3.
[2] Buechner, “Advent” in Whistling In The Dark, 3.
[4] http://www.commontexts.org/rcl/index.html For the Moravian Version of the Revised Common Lectionary, see http://www.mcsp.org/resources/res_wor_res.htm and click on the Lectionary Link for a downloadable PDF version. There are many great resources on the web about the Lectionary, but one of my favorites is www.textweek.com .
[6] Frederick Buechner, “Jeremiah” in Perculiar Treasure: A Biblical Who’s Who (NY, NY: HarperSanFrancisco, 1979) 66.
[7] Gary Charles, “Homiletical Perspective” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 1 (Advent through Transfiguration), eds. David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009) 3.
[8] Deuteronomy 6:4; Leviticus 19:18
[9] Dom Helder Camara, “The Spirit is Breathing” in Imaging the Word: An Arts and Lectionary Resource, ed. Kenneth T. Lawrence (Cleveland, OH: United Church Press, 1994) 78.
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