Isaiah 64:1-9
In our first gathering for our Advent study this past Thursday (it’s not too late to join us!), I invited everyone to introduce themselves and share one thing about this time of year that they love, or that is special to them. People shared stories of childhood, of sacred time with their own children and grandchildren, and family traditions that have been passed down through the generations. Some reflected on the music that defines this season of the church year, and some talked about their favorite foods. But something that struck me, something that was echoed by many in the group, was the sense of pressure that seems to creep in to December. Multiple people said they were joining this Advent study in the hope that they could reclaim a little bit of Advent for themselves, a little relief from the hustle and bustle of holiday business. They longed for the holy waiting, the calm before the shining, glittering, gift-wrapped storm. A break, no matter how brief, from the cooking and cleaning and decorating and hosting and shopping.
A few people also approached me quietly, after the session had officially ended, to share the complicated grief and pain they feel. It is impossible to ignore the dissonance between our hymns and the reality of the world. It is impossible to approach the Christmas story without remembering where it took place, and what is happening to the people there now. There are even new verses that have been written for the hymn O Come O Come Emmanuel to give voice to the prayers of so many for peace in the Holy Land.
There are also the personal griefs, the losses and diagnoses and the empty chairs that are even more painful when the world is celebrating as if that person isn’t devastatingly absent. There are the pressures of assignments and exams for students, grading and lesson planning and classroom management that becomes more difficult for teachers with every day closer to the much-needed break. Some of us are moving, some of us are leaving jobs and positions that have been important parts of our identity, some of us are starting something new. Both of our communities have been working at top speed these past few weeks to prepare for beloved events, the Massies Mill parade and the Cookie Walk, while our dedicated leaders work to prepare Annual Meeting reports and budgets and close out the year. The invitation to slow down for Advent feels almost laughable, if not impossible. We might say we want to keep things simple this year, but if we’re honest, most of us will go overboard in one way or another.
In the Holy Land, the Christian churches are taking the invitation seriously. I think one could argue they have no other choice. Christmas will come to Jerusalem, and Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and Gaza, and the West Bank. But the Christian churches there have made a commitment, together, to a quiet celebration. The expensive and elaborate decorations will not come out. Instead that money and energy will be directed to medical missions, to supporting local vendors who have lost their livelihoods when tourism halted suddenly, and to calling for a just and lasting peace. The worship will be just as beautiful, the music just as vivid and the preaching just as poignant. But there will be a lot of funerals between now and then.
It is at times like these that it can feel ridiculous to talk about hope, and yet that is what we focus on this first week of Advent. The four virtues of the Gospel, Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love are four themes that many churches study during the four weeks of the Advent season. This year, we join the Episcopal churches in the Middle East in doing so. We begin this journey with hope.
I have been told that some of my sermons lately have not made people feel better about what is going on in the world. To that I say, maybe frustratingly, good. It would not be honest of me to try to make anyone feel better about the horrors of war or the devastation of unexplained illness or the injustice of loss. It would be empty optimism, not hope. Optimism says that things are actually okay after all. Despair says that nothing is okay and there’s nothing to be done about it. Hope tells the truth. Hope says things are not okay, and that must change. Hope says the world is not as it should be, and we know that it is possible for this world to be better than it is. Optimism tempts us to make do with what we’ve got. Hope propels us forward into building something better.
This is the kind of hope we share with the prophet Isaiah, who calls out to God in desperation. O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, God. Oh that you would disrupt all that is wrong in this world. Isaiah cries out for God’s intervention in a world gone wrong, telling the truth that things are not as they should be. Isaiah, the prophet who hears from God more than most, mourns God’s silence. When he says these words, the people of God are in the in-between, no longer exiled but not yet restored to their long-hoped-for kingdom. The prophet’s audience feel that God is absent, and Isaiah begs God to make God’s presence known as a refining fire and an earthquake. Imagine how devastated the people of God must have been, to pray for an apocalypse. They want a big God, one who will come crashing into earth and eradicate all that ails them. Sometimes I want that too.
What we get instead is a small God. Tiny, in fact. Small enough to grow in someone’s womb. Small enough to fit in a feeding trough in an overcrowded stall in a backwater town. Small enough to be wherever we are, even when we fill our heads and our hearts and our spaces with noise and distractions and Amazon packages. That is huge. That is everything, that God who could tear open the heavens instead chooses to come among us red-faced and crying and so, so tiny. That is our hope, that God who cries real tears. Our Advent Hope is honest, it tells the truth. The truth that the world is not as it should be. The truth that sometimes God feels absent, or at least far away. The truth that war should cease, and captives should be freed. Hope is not a positive attitude or an empty optimism that turns away from the realities of the world. Hope is the stubborn insistence that something better is possible. Hope is showing up and asking “What can I do to help?” Hope is how a region at war still makes plans to celebrate Christmas. Hope is all we have, and thank God, it is enough.
Mother A Writes 