Christmas Eve Meditation

Luke 2:1-20

Some things never change. Last weekend, it was snow and ice all up and down the east coast. Interstates closed, hotels so full that people camped out in the lobbies, flights delayed. Today there was a wintry mix from Minnesota to Michigan with full-blown blizzards from the southern Plains to the Dakotas. Already this morning, hundreds of flights at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport had been cancelled, leaving thousands of holiday travelers stranded. Once again, the unexpected wreaks havoc with life’s plans.

Maybe all those stranded travelers can take some small comfort in the fact that the same thing happened that first Christmas. Mary and Joseph, after all, had been planning for their baby’s arrival. In spite of the unusual circumstances surrounding Mary’s pregnancy, together they had made the plans and preparations every young couple makes to open their lives to a child.

In their case, the unexpected was not the weather, but the Emperor, who decided it was a good time for a census. That meant they had to travel to Joseph’s home town of Bethlehem, along with hundreds of other people. Mary and Joseph were especially unlucky, first, they couldn’t find a room with a proper bed and bath, but wouldn’t you know it, as soon as they settled down in the stable to try to get a little rest, Mary’s contractions started. Luke tells us nothing about the details of the birth, which suggests that it was probably no more or less challenging or monumental for them than the labor and delivery of any firstborn child.

I can’t help but wonder if the very normalcy of the birth surprised them. After all, Mary had been told by an angel that the baby she carried and nurtured for nine months was none other than, “the Son of the Most High.” She may not have understood what that meant, but she knew it was a big deal, that God was interacting with humanity in an entirely new way. Don’t you think when that baby was finally born, Mary and Joseph almost expected to hear angels singing when Jesus drew his first breath? But in the small, bare room, there was no sound except the cry of a newborn child and the adoration of brand new parents for their baby. That night, God came to Mary and Joseph, but not in the way they expected or planned.

Of course, just because there weren’t angels singing outside the stable doesn’t mean there weren’t angels singing somewhere. Out in the hills, where there were no inns or houses or even stables, angels were singing...to an astonished group of shepherds who had no other plans, that night or any night, but sleeping under the stars.

Shepherds were the migrant workers of New Testament times. They moved from place to place and slept in the fields; they were poor and homeless and they didn’t need to be counted for the census because, for the government, they really weren’t worth counting. But not for God.

God sent angels to the shepherds -- the poor, lowly shepherds -- to proclaim the good news: “to you is born this day the Messiah, the Lord.” The even better news was what the angel said next: “you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” In other words, this is no royal child born in a governor’s mansion, a child you can’t relate to or even hope to visit. This child is like you, poor and lowly, wrapped up in strips of cloth like all the infants born to common people, sleeping not in a cradle covered with jewels, but in a manger lined with nothing but clean straw.

This was something the shepherds had to see, a king, the messiah, born into a humble home. So they went to find the child, and when they do, it is the unlikely shepherds who share the good news with Mary and Joseph that the baby they have already fallen in love with is God’s love come into the world for all people, the fierce, unconditional, self-sacrificial love of a mother for her newborn child.

That love is the gift God gives us at Christmas. And God gives it to us no matter where we come from, how much money we have, or where we sleep at night. At Christmas, God comes to us all, and gives the gift of love.

*****

It happened at a Christmas Eve service at a church not so different from this one. The church was full of devoted members and expectant visitors and the sanctuary beautifully decorated with poinsettias, Christmas trees, and twinkling lights.

As Sam, one of the ushers, put it, “he swirled in like a dust devil,” looking for all the world like Charlie Brown’s friend Pigpen. He asked Sam directions to Central and Bridge Streets, but before hearing the answer, headed down the aisle in a cloud of dust and sat down in the second pew from the front. With some concern, Sam followed, sat down next to him, and gave him a bulletin. The man said his name was Joe.

Early in the service there was the baptism of a baby boy. Joe turned to Sam and said, “Oh my God...it’s baby Jesus!” Sam kept wanting to return to his ushering duties, but he decided it was more important to stay next to Joe as long as Joe wanted to worship. And Joe did worship. He sat in awe during the choir’s anthem and expressed surprise when a woman stepped into the pulpit to preach. But he listened to every word. During the offering, Sam gave Joseph a five dollar bill and told him he was free to keep it or give it away. Joe joyfully put it into the offering plate. And when the light of Christ was passed around and everyone sang Silent Night, Sam and Joe stood side by side, their shoulders touching. Afterward, everyone greeted Joe with enthusiastic Christmas wishes, handshakes, hugs, and kisses.

Sam was so moved by what happened that night that he went home, wrote it down in a letter, and sent the letter -- a true Christmas card -- to his family and friends. God came to Sam that Christmas in a most unexpected way and gave him the gift of love, a gift he could not help but share with others.

Love came down at Christmas...God’s gift to us all. Like Mary and Joseph, like the shepherds, like Joe and Sam, may we share it well. Amen.

The Soundtrack of Salvation (sermon, Dec. 20, 2009)

Luke 1:39-55

The movie The Pianist tells the true story of the Polish composer and musician Wladyslaw Szpilman. Szpilman lived in Warsaw, Poland and happened to be Jewish. He was performing a Chopin piano concerto live on Radio Warsaw when the Germans began bombing the city at the start of World War II. By an incredible combination of circumstance, skill, and sheer luck, Szpilman survived life in the ghetto and months of hiding in an apartment right in the heart of German-occupied Warsaw.

By 1944, the entire city of Warsaw was nearly destroyed. The Polish people who remained were deported and the German soldiers fled from the approaching Soviet army. Szpilman was essentially the only person left in the ruined city. One day, while searching an abandoned house for food, he was discovered by a German soldier. The soldier questioned Szpilman and upon learning he was a pianist, the soldier lead Szpilman to a piano in the house and told him to play something. With bony, emaciated hands and surrounded by the devastation of war, Szpilman played a Chopin concerto on that battered, out of tune piano.

Afterward, the German soldier not only spared Szpilman’s life, he helped Szpilman find a hiding place and for months brought him food and other supplies that ultimately enabled him to survive the war. It wasn’t the only time that music had saved Szpilman’s life; when he lived in the Warsaw ghetto, playing music allowed him to earn enough money to buy food for his family. After his family was taken to a concentration camp, it was Szpilman’s former colleagues from Radio Warsaw who found him apartments in which to hide.

Music is not just a trivial part of life, there to entertain us when we grow bored of the sound of silence or the sound of our own voices. As Szpilman’s story shows, music is powerful. Music inspires us; it stirs powerful emotions in us; it triggers memories we thought were long forgotten; it helps us to express ideas and thoughts we couldn’t articulate any other way. Like light in the darkness, music offers us hope against silence. All this is true even for those who have no musical talent or can’t carry a tune. You don’t have to be able to play an instrument or sing on key to experience the effects of music. Think about how music is used in movies to manipulate emotions -- to indicate that a particular scene is supposed to make you feel uplifted, sad, or anxious about what’s going to happen next. If there had been no music in the movie Jaws, the scenes of people swimming in the ocean would probably have made us want to be the swimmers. But the music let us know, in no uncertain terms, that those swimmers weren’t safe, that something very bad was about to happen.

Daniel Levitin explains why music affects us so deeply in his book This is Your Brain on Music. He argues that the ability of the brain to remember and recognize music is remarkable. Think about a song that every American knows, like “Happy Birthday.” No matter how loudly, how quickly, or what key it is played in, our brains recognize that song after we hear just the first few notes. Not even a computer can identify a song with that level of accuracy.

According to Levitin, our musical preferences begin to form when we are children as our brains learn to recognize the common chord progressions in the music of our native cultures. There is even evidence that such preferences are formed when we are fetuses in our mother’s wombs. And on the other side of life, Levitin notes that many Alzheimer’s patients who have lost so much of their memories often remember their favorite songs from their teenage years. Music is powerful.

While we can certainly assume that biblical characters didn’t have a clue about the specific ways music affects the brain, obviously they knew the power of music. Over and over again in the midst of biblical stories, a long narrative suddenly stops, and you can almost sense the flood lights going down, you see the spotlight swing onto the main character of the moment, and the silence is suddenly filled with the sound of a full orchestra. And that’s when the main character bursts into song.

Can you think of some of these musical moments in the Bible?
Hannah sings of God’s power and faithfulness when she finally conceives a child.
Miriam breaks into song after God parted the Red Sea and led the Israelites safely out of Egypt.
Then of course, there is King David, who wrote all kinds of songs, many of which we now know as psalms -- songs of praise, songs of repentance, songs of despair, and song of deep faith and trust.

In the NT, there is the gospel of Luke. The opening chapters of Luke are a musical in which the characters use song to express their emotions and faith. Today we heard the song of Mary that is called “The Magnificat,” but Mary isn’t the only one with a singing role in Luke. Elizabeth’s husband, Zechariah, is rendered mute after he expresses disbelief that his elderly wife had finally conceived a son. After the son was born, Zechariah gets his voice back and he uses it to sing a song of praise and prophecy to the Lord.

Then when angels announce to the shepherds the birth of the Messiah in Luke’s gospel, the angels too burst into song: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” Finally, an old man named Simeon who had been told by an angel that he would live to see the Messiah, sings a song of thanksgiving to God after seeing the infant Jesus in the temple.

Certainly in Luke but also throughout the whole Bible, the story of how God cares for Israel and all the world is told, not just through narrative, commandments, laws, gospels, prayers and letters, but in song, the very thing that has the power to trigger emotions and memories in the human beings God created.

In today’s reading, before Mary bursts into song, there is an intimate scene between these two improbably pregnant women: Elizabeth, pregnant in her old age after years of barrenness, and Mary, a young and unwed girl, pregnant after a miraculous encounter with the Holy Spirit. Their meeting takes place not in any of the famous cities like Bethlehem, Nazareth, or Jerusalem, but in an unnamed town in the hills of Judea. It would be like the mother of our Lord and the mother of his cousin meeting in a farmhouse in Holmes County, Ohio. No one who saw them would have ever suspected that their wombs carried both God’s messenger and God’s message (1). They would have seen instead the kind of scene most of us long for at Christmas: just two relatives sitting together, sharing a cup of tea and catching up, making the most of lost time.

What proves to us that Mary and Elizabeth’s meeting was more than that is first, Elizabeth’s declaration and second, Mary’s song.

Elizabeth would have had no way of knowing about the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary, or that Mary was pregnant. Yet as soon as Elizabeth sees her young cousin and hears her voice she is overcome with a prophetic awareness. The words then tumble from her as involuntarily as John the Baptist’s in utero leap: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb...blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

Can you imagine what it must have meant to Mary to have a trusted family member confirm what must have felt like a bizarre dream? Apparently, Mary wasn’t going crazy after all. If Elizabeth could have a baby after all this time, and if she could know what had happened to Mary just by looking at her, then what the angel Gabriel had told Mary must certainly be true: Nothing is impossible with God.

And how does Mary respond? With a song.

Mary’s song begins with a focus on what God has done for her: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant...”

But then, the song takes a surprising turn. Suddenly this is not just a song about Mary, this is a song about what God has done for all God’s people: “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

Mary’s song isn’t just the sweet tune of a faithful young girl, humbled at having been singled out by God: it is a powerful prophecy. Mary sings in the past tense about things that will happen in the future, which seems strange until we realize that she is singing about God’s character, God’s very nature. Mary’s song reminds us that we shouldn’t be surprised that God is coming to earth as a helpless infant because it has always been God’s nature to reach out to God’s people, especially the poor and lowly and oppressed, to stand with them and give them hope. The Israelite slaves who escaped from the powerful Pharaoh; the poor, barren women like Sarah and Hannah who conceived children who grew up to play major roles in Israel’s history; David, the young shepherd boy tapped by God to be king.

Mary knew all those stories, but now, with this confirmation from Elizabeth, those stories have become her story, now their song becomes her song, a song she sings to give hope to all who have known, at one time or another, what it is to be poor, to be weak, to be hungry, to desperately need God.

Music is powerful, there is no denying that. It is also a crucial way we participate in God’s story, the story in which the downtrodden and oppressed are lifted up and the powerful are brought down. From the Civil Rights Movement in this country to the musicians like Szpilman who played their music even in the terrible conditions of the Holocaust to the German people twenty years ago who gathered to sing songs of hope and protest which eventually brought down the Berlin Wall -- in every one of these cases the power of music allowed oppressed people to proclaim that God’s love and justice would ultimately prevail.

During Advent and Christmas, music is as important as prayer and candlelight. For when we sing the songs of the season, we join with Mary and with all people in proclaiming that the gospel story is our story. We sing for ourselves and for all those who, this Christmas, are still waiting for the promises of God to come true for them. When we lift up our voices in song we join all the faithful in heaven and on earth in praise of the One who loves us enough to become one of us so that all of us, no matter what our circumstances, can live with hope. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Cooper, Steven, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds., Westminster John Knox Press, 2009, p. 93.

Advent Fruit (sermon, Dec. 13, 2009)

Luke 3:7-18

My husband prides himself on keeping an endless stash of “cocktail tidbits” -- you know, interesting trivia that you pull out at a party when the conversation gets slow. As you might imagine, I’ve heard most of them several hundred times. Today let me share with you one of his favorites, which he read in the book Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. Here it is: Did you know that every seed inside of every apple has a different genetic code? Every apple seed, if planted in the ground and nourished with water and sunlight, will grow into a tree that produces a unique kind of apple, one that may or may not have much in common with the apple from which the seed came.

What this means is that, when a particularly tasty kind of apple is discovered -- like red delicious, gala, or honeycrisp -- the only way to grow another tree that produces that particular variety of apple, is to take a graft from the original tree and plant it in the ground. So every red delicious apple you’ve ever eaten can trace its lineage back to the very first tree to produce red delicious fruit. All apples of the same variety share a common original ancestral tree.

Of course, ancestry isn’t just important for apples. Most of us humans think it’s pretty important too. If we know our ancestors -- our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents -- that means we know things about ourselves; we figure out where our blue eyes came from, or our curly hair, or our musical or artistic talent. As we like to say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. A friend of mine married a man who was adopted as an infant and never knew his birth parents. Shortly after the birth of their first child, she overheard her husband talking to their son. “You are the only person in the world I know who looks like me,” he said. There is something comforting in being able to trace particular traits back to a person in our families; it helps us feel grounded in our identity.

Well, it seems that John the Baptist didn’t care too much about human ancestry. In fact, he believes that clinging too tightly to your family can cause problems when it comes to your relationship with God. When John began preaching to the crowds who came to be baptized and to hear his fiery sermons, he let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they had work to do -- the hard work of repentance, of owning up to the ways they had fallen short in their faithfulness to God. And he warns them that even though they can trace their ancestry all the way back to Abraham they still have to repent. According to John the Baptist, people will not be judged by who their ancestors are but by what kind of fruit their lives produce.

John the Baptist was one of the original fire and brimstone preachers, following in the footsteps of the Old Testament prophets like Amos, Hosea and Isaiah who announced that the full weight of God’s wrath was going to fall on those who didn’t follow God’s ways of justice and kindness and humility.

The remarkable thing is, when John finishes telling the crowds that their ancestry doesn’t earn them a “get out of judgment free” card, the people don’t run away in fear. They don’t call the authorities to haul him off to jail for disturbing the peace -- or for disturbing their peace of mind -- and they don’t stick their fingers in their ears and pretend they can’t hear. Instead, they ask him a simple question: “What should we do?”

And to our surprise, instead of raining down more fire and brimstone, John offers the people a refreshingly simple answer. Well, answers, actually, because he has specific instructions depending on who asks the question. To the common people who make up the majority of the crowd, John says, in a word: “Share.” To the tax collectors, he says: “Be honest.” To the soldiers, he says: “Don’t bully.” For all his apocalyptic imagery of fiery judgment, his advice is remarkably straightforward. As one commentator put it, “this feels more like the stuff of kindergarten than the Apocalypse.” (1)

I can’t help but wonder if the people in the crowd, and the tax collectors, and the soldiers were all just a little bit disappointed when John gave them their instructions. John had been announcing impending judgment and doom, complete with stones coming to life and axes chopping down trees and all-consuming fires. When the crowds asked him what they should do, they were probably expecting some major life changes. As he held them under the waters of baptism, don’t you think they expected to emerge with their lives completely transformed?

Isn’t that what we hope for at this time of year -- that our lives and our world will be completely transformed by Christmas? Every year during Advent as we cling to our faith that Christ’s birth brings hope and love and grace into this world in spite of the darkness all around us, don’t we secretly hope that this year, Christmas will change everything? That God’s love and grace will come into the world and really do something: stop wars, heal the sick, fix our families, give everyone food and shelter and jobs and healthcare? Deep down, isn’t that what we all really want for Christmas?

Well, if that is what we want, then we will be as sorely disappointed as John’s first hearers must have been when he told them what to do to bear good fruit and avoid God’s wrath. “Share. Be honest. Don’t bully.” In other words, don’t expect some kind of huge, miraculous change. When he baptized those crowds of people, John didn’t send them off into a brand new setting to start their lies of faith anew, even though that might have been easier. Instead, he sent them right back where they came from with a deceptively simple assignment: return to your work, your life, your family, but once there bear good fruit: live every day like your faith, your identity, really matters.

After all, baptism, both then and now, is all about identity. When we are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, something changes, but it’s not something we see, and in fact, it’s something we often forget. Baptism doesn’t change who we are, it changes Whose we are, which in turn changes how we act.

In baptism, we get re-rooted, just like a branch of an apple tree that gets removed and planted in new soil to bear good fruit. In our baptism our primary identity shifts. We become no longer just a member of our particular human family; we become a child of God. Of course, we are still related to all the people on our family tree, but in baptism we affirm that our most important relationship is with God.

But I suspect we all still have the question that John’s crowd had so long ago: “What then should we do?” It sounds like it’s going to be so complicated, but it’s not. “Share. Be honest. Don’t bully.” Return to the life that you have -- the job that may compromise your morals; the family that is never as perfect as all the other families seem; the fears and frustrations and anxieties that persist in spite of all your efforts to bury them away. They will be the same, but you can respond to them differently.

*****

My friend Caroline lives and works in New York City. She’s lived there for more than ten years now and she’s gotten used to many of the challenges of life in a big city, but not long ago something happened that she was totally unprepared for. A panhandler, started showing up in the same place every day on Caroline’s walk to work. Now she had a policy that she didn’t give money to panhandlers. But this guy was crafty. He saw that she was young, well-dressed, with sympathetic eyes. And he didn’t just stand there looking pitiful -- he looked her in the eye and talked to her. “Come on, can’t you spare some change?” She blushed, but kept walking.

The next day, he did it again. “Gimme some money, please lady,” he begged. She gritted her teeth and walked on. The third day he used his attention to detail. Caroline always wears a gold cross around her neck and this day, he called her on it. “You’re a Christian, aren’t you? Help me out, then!” That night, Caroline lay in bed, thinking about the man. She was determined that the next day, if she saw him, she would not make eye contact, but just keep going.

The next day, when she saw him, Caroline panicked. She bolted for the nearest door into a large office building. She was already caught up in a swell of people entering the door when she realized it was a revolving door. Stuck in the inside of the door, she couldn’t get out as the door moved through the inside of the building and the next thing she knew she stumbled back out onto the sidewalk. When she looked up, there was the man, standing right in front of her, a smile on his face and his hand held out.

Baptism, Christmas, any of the major events and celebrations in our lives of faith are like revolving doors. We enter a new space, we undergo a transformation, but then we come right back out where we started. Yet we are not the same as before, we are inspired -- literally, with the Holy Spirit -- and we are re-born into our former lives with a new identity.

Today John the Baptist reminds us that when we return to the ordinary circumstances of life, we have countless opportunities to live into our identity as children of God, opportunities to simply be faithful, to show that we are God’s people.

At the end of today’s speech from John the Baptist, Luke writes that John “proclaimed the good news to the people.” And it is good news, even to those of us caught in this Advent time between Christ’s birth and Christ’s return. John’s instructions to use the ordinary circumstances of our daily lives to show our true identity echoes the good news of the incarnation: that in the birth of Jesus God did not change everything, God redeemed everything. God came into the world to be Emmanuel, God with us, to be one of us, and in doing so God made human life and this world precious and sacred.

Today may we remember our baptism and recommit ourselves to the simple yet powerful task of living out our faith wherever we may be. And as we do, may we bring to the world the miracle of Emmanuel, God-with-us. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. David Lose in his Working Preacher commentary on Luke 3:7-18; online here.

Pregnant Pause (sermon, Nov. 29, 2009, First Sunday of Advent)

Luke 21:25-36

The movie Scrooged is an updated version of Charles Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol. The movie stars Bill Murray as the Scrooge figure, a television executive named Frank Cross. Cross is a total cynic who hates Christmas except for one thing: it’s the time of year when his TV network can make a lot of money, and money is the only thing that seems to fill the persistent emptiness in Frank Cross’ life. This year, Cross has produced a flashy Christmas special that will air on Christmas Eve. The special itself isn’t controversial, but the ad he creates to promote it is. The ad features a series of alarming images of nuclear holocaust, a bloody drive-by shooting, terrorists exploding a plane, and drug addicts shooting up heroin. At the end of all this comes the somber voice-over: “In a world as terrifying as this one, now more than ever you need to see the Christmas Eve spectacular here on NBC.”(1)

The ad may have been effective, but everyone who saw it hated it. And they hated it because it was the antithesis of Christmas. At Christmas we expect to see images of serene pregnant women; bright stars piercing dark, cloudless skies; shepherds leading a few white and fluffy sheep; stately wise men bearing luxury gifts; and, of course, a well-swaddled, peaceful baby Jesus. Most of us feel that Christmas is not the time to dwell on the atrocities of our time: economic crisis, wars, natural disasters, terrorism. Christmas is the time when we want a break from all that. No wonder Frank Cross’ ad for the Christmas Eve special was such a flop.

But when we read today’s gospel lesson it looks like Frank Cross might have actually been on the right track. You see, it turns out that each year, on the first Sunday of Advent, the lectionary readings for the day point us to one of the apocalyptic texts in the gospels. “Apocalyptic” is just a fancy word for things that refer to the end-times, what some people call the “Second Coming.” Although it may not be something we talk about much, it is part of our understanding of who Jesus is that he not only came to the world as God in human flesh, but that someday, in the fullness of time, he will return. So the first Sunday of Advent is the day we are called to acknowledge that Advent -- the season during which we prepare for Christ’s coming -- involves our past, present, and future. Advent is not just about getting ready to celebrate what happened in the past -- Christ’s birth -- it’s also about celebrating that in the present Christ is with us in the Holy Spirit, and that at some future time Christ will return.

In today’s passage from Luke, we heard part of Jesus’ answer to the question “when will this happen and what will it look like?” Jesus’ answer sounds a bit like Frank Cross’ commercial for the Christmas special: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

I don’t know about you, but that’s really not what I was hoping to hear about in church on the first Sunday of Advent. I wanted to hear the beginning of the story of Jesus’ birth and instead this text is all about the end of the story, the end of time, when Jesus will come again to judge the earth and all of its inhabitants.

Jesus isn’t just telling his followers what to expect here, he is warning them to be on alert, to be on guard, to pay attention and make sure they are ready to stand before God when Jesus finally returns. We may have come here today hoping for comfort, but instead we get a frightening glimpse of the future and a stern warning to get ready for it.

*****

The question is: how? How can we possibly get ready for such an event? Well, how about by swinging. My son loves and hates to swing at our local park. He is always drawn to the swings, but he never stays on them for long. It seems he doesn’t actually like the sensation of swinging. Well, a life of faith is like swinging. We swing back and forth from joy to despair, from sincere faith to disorienting unbelief, from feeling the wonder of God’s presence to wondering if God is even there. But when you are on a swing there is a moment at the highest point when you are no longer sure if you are still going up or if you have started to come back down. That moment, that pregnant pause, is Advent. It is a moment between time, out of time, and it is a moment (despite the fact that it scares us half to death) that offers us a great opportunity.

In Advent, we have the opportunity to choose how to respond to the gift of God’s presence with us in Jesus, a gift that was given to us when Jesus was born so long ago and a gift that God has promised to return to us in the fullness of time. Advent marks the first day of the Christian year, and as with our secular New Year, this can be a time for us to reflect on our faith and to recommit ourselves again to our relationship with God.

The problem is that the Advent season has been so taken over by secular forces that it’s hard for any of us to find the time, space, and silence we need to reflect and recommit. There are decorations to hang, parties to attend, cards to address, gifts to buy, food to make, a perfect holiday to create for family and friends. No wonder so many of us feel exhausted by the holidays before they have even begun.

Apparently, Jesus knew the challenges we would face. “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life,” he said. Eugene Peterson, in his translation The Message, says it like this: “Don’t let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping.”

What Jesus is talking about here is how we over-consume as a way to avoid the real work of getting ready. And we avoid it for good reason: because when we go before God we are likely to come face to face with the loneliness and despair that grips us all from time to time. We drink too much, eat too much, spend too much, and the reason we do this at the holidays is not just because we’re enjoying the season. It’s because our culture -- a culture of over-consumption and over-indulgence -- demands that we use this time to try, for at least a little while, to forget all that’s wrong with the world and with our lives. We too often over-consume and over-indulge in an attempt to forget the very reasons we need God in the first place, in an attempt to fill the empty places inside our souls.

Fortunately, there is another way to fill yourself. And that way is Advent. Advent begins by calling us to keep the end in sight, to remember that this season isn’t just about celebrating Jesus’ birth but getting ready for Jesus’ return. We also remember why that return is so important: because we desperately need what Jesus gives us: redemption from the evil and violence and darkness that so often seem to have the upper hand. The reason God entered the world the first time was not because things were going so smoothly, but because the world was desperately in need of love and guidance and hope. And God will come again not when we finally get it right, but when it looks like all hope is lost. “When these things begin to take place,” Jesus says, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” In other words, as long as you are ready, fear not! For the day of judgment is also the day of grace, the day when God will once and for all make everything right again.

So during Advent, this pregnant pause of the church year, we need to take some time out, remembering that the most important thing about the next few weeks is not checking off every item on our to-do lists but reconnecting with God, making sure that we are ready for Christ’s coming, even if being ready means only that we acknowledge our emptiness and our hunger for God to come into our lives and into our world.

*****

The writer Anne Lamott tells a story of taking a vacation to Lake Tahoe with her two year-old son, Sam. This area near Reno is a hotbed of gambling, which means that all the rooms in hotels or condos have curtains so heavy and thick that the rooms can be dark as night even in the middle of the day. This is supposed to encourage tourists to stay up all night gambling and spending money, and then sleep all day.

One afternoon, she put Sam down for a nap in his crib, closed the curtains, and went into the other room to work, pulling the door shut behind her. A few minutes later, she heard Sam calling to her. Sam had climbed out of his crib and gotten to the door. But when he had grasped the handle, he had depressed the button lock. Try as she might, Anne could not get him to unlock the door. When it became clear that his mother couldn’t open the door, Sam cried and screamed while his mother, in a panic, called the rental agency for the condo and left a message, then called the building manager and left another message. Finally, not knowing what else to do, she lay down next to the door, reached her fingers in the small space underneath it and told Sam to reach down and find her fingers in the dark. He did. And as the reality of his mother’s love and presence sunk in, Sam gradually calmed down. Mother and son stayed like that for a long time, lying on the floor side by side, a locked door between them, taking comfort in the touch of their fingers. (2)

All too often we are like toddlers in a pitch-black room, not sure where to go or what to do, longing to simply throw open the door between us and God. But we can’t. And so we panic, running around the room, screaming and crying and trying to find another way out. Or we try to pretend there isn’t anything wrong, going off in a corner and finding ways to pass the time, no matter how self-destructive those ways might be. But in Advent God calls us to come to the door. It’s still locked, and when don’t know when it will opened. But when it does open, we want to be ready to greet the God who will be revealed on the other side of the door. And so we wait and in Advent we prepare, by lying quietly by the door, grasping the fingers of the God who loves us enough to wait with us, the God who has come and who will come again to unlock the door, shine light into the darkness, fill our emptiness, and redeem this broken world once and for all. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. from an illustration in the sermon “At That Time” by Scott Hoezee; read it here.
2. from an illustration in the sermon, “Belonging”, by the Rev. Mark Ramsey, in Journal for Preachers, Vol. 23, No. 1, p. 23.