The First Sunday of Advent

Advent 1 Year B November 30, 2014 “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence-- as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!” And so we enter this new year of the church, this first Sunday of Advent with a bang! These words of Isaiah are a rather dark beginning as we begin telling the story all over again for another year. It is both strange and appropriate that we begin with a lament where we see both a baffling God who hides from God’s people and a redeeming God who is their father and maker. Composed sometime after the children of Israel are taken into captivity in Babylon and before the rebuilding of the temple, this portion of Isaiah reflects the people of God’s disorientation in the wake of a devastating exile. And we know a little of that disorientation, don’t we? We live in a time of already and not yet; a contradictory time of frenzied activity and a strange sort of emptiness; a time of both unceasing access to other people and ideas and a deep longing for fulfillment and meaningful connection. This season of Advent can be for us a disorienting season that is “marked in equal measures by joyful anticipation and hectic, even pressured, preparation. Dinners, buying gifts, parties, cards, school holiday programs... [And, oh, the decorating!] Each and all of it can be wonderful, and each and all of it can become rather overwhelming.”i But one of the gifts of Advent is that it shakes the church and us out of Ordinary Time with the insistent news that it’s time to think about fresh possibilities for fulfillment and human wholeness. It’s a bit contradictory, this fresh start, this season of hope in the midst of this season of darkness. It is not nearly as easy to be hope-filled and expectant as we slowly slink toward winter and cold, dark days. And many of us fear the dark. It is when the familiar landscape suddenly becomes strange and sinister and unfamiliar. During Advent, we are invited, even encouraged to dwell in the dark for just a season, to search out the hidden God in the dark corners of our world and our souls, searching by the light of just a couple of candles. And that is very counter to what is going on in the world around us. One commentator writes that she recalls a comment that “our country has changed over the past years from one that wanted to be good to one that wants to feel good. We see some of this desire every Christmas season as people run from store to store and shopping mall to shopping mall searching for the things that will bring them and their families some sort of fulfillment and happiness.”ii Advent is a season where we are invited to dwell with our longing without trying to rush to fill it, where we live in the tension of our relationship with a God who is at times hidden and who is at other times fully present and actively redeeming. And what we long for, really, that we rush to fill isn’t more. We long for peace. And we cannot create peace for ourselves through selfishness. Peace comes when we open ourselves to vulnerability, to brokenness. Peace comes when we open ourselves to hope. Peace comes when we are willing to go a little deeper, to dwell in the dark, to peek around and become friends with what we might find there. So perhaps…our task this Advent is to be the ones who look to do good above trying to feel good. Perhaps our task this Advent is to dwell in the dark a little while, to sit with our own longing and with the longing of others. We do this by looking for Jesus in the need of those around us and to be awake to God’s presence in response to our own need. In this season of making lists and checking them twice, I invite you to make a different sort of list –call it an Advent list. You can make this list in your head or on paper, but I want you to list a few of the things that will occupy your Advent this year. Now, think about how in each of those events and activities you might be more attentive to the vulnerability and need of those around you and more honest and open about your own need that you might receive the care of others. iii I’ll leave you with some words from the poet T.S. Eliot to help guide you in the making of your Advent lists: “I said to my soul, be still and let/ the dark come upon you/which shall be the darkness of God.” i. David Lose on his blog: http://www.davidlose.net/2014/11/advent-1-b/ ii. from Feasting on the word Pastoral perpective p 4 iii. This idea came from David Lose on his blog: http://www.davidlose.net/2014/11/advent-1-b/