First Sunday of Advent Year B 2020

First Sunday of Advent Year B November 29, 2020 This past week, one of my friends shared a bunch of music on Facebook, and I’ve been listening to one of the songs, over and over. It’s call “Dark Turn of Mind” by the singer Gillian Welch. The song is about how the singer has been treated unkindly by a lover in the past, and this has opened up for her a new way of seeing the world that at first appears to be a burden but turns out to be a gift. Her way of seeing the world with “a dark turn of mind” opens her up to seeing beauty that is found in melancholy, in sorrow, in the shadows. Welch sings: “Now I see the bones in the river And I feel the wind through the pine And I hear the shadows a-calling To a girl with a dark turn of mind But oh ain't the nighttime so lovely to see? Don't all the night birds sing sweetly? You'll never know how happy I'll be When the sun's going down And leave me if I'm feeling too lonely Full as the fruit on the vine You know some girls are bright as the morning And some have a dark turn of mind You know some girls are bright as the morning And some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind”i Today is the first day of the new year for the church. It is the beginning of Advent, a season of longing and of expectation, a season where we are invited to have a dark turn of mind, for at least a little while. Our readings for today certainly offer us this lens to look through. Isaiah gives us a song of lament from a people in exile who are longing for God to break into their reality and to restore them to their rightful place in the promised land, to once again give them the gift of peace and hope and belonging. And today, we begin in Mark’s gospel, not at the beginning, but near to the end. Jesus is approaching his crucifixion, and he invites his disciples and us to dwell with him for a while under the shadow of the cross that is looming over him. While the disciples may not fully grasp the dark clouds that are gathering, the original hearers of Mark’s gospel are no stranger to them. The earliest of all the gospels, Mark was written right after a Jewish uprising brought down the full wrath of the Romans upon Jerusalem, and these early followers of the Way are living in the rubble of the destruction of their city and, perhaps even more grievously, the temple. This Advent season, in the midst of chaos and disease and turmoil, we are invited to recognize the longing of this season by seeing the shadows of despair, war, sorrow, and hate, in our own hearts and in the world around us, even as we are actively waiting for Jesus to come, lighting candles of hope, peace, joy, and love. “Likewise, to really hear what Mark is saying, we first need to enter the shadows, those places where all hope seems lost. Roman armies desecrate and destroy the temple, ruining the sacred heart of the world — not just in first-century Palestine, but also here and now. And in a time of pandemic, many people are already in the shadows of suffering, anxiety, exhaustion, and grief. A key message of Advent and Christmas is that such shadows are precisely the place where Jesus comes, and where the church is called to go.” ii One of the commentaries that I read this week had this to say about seeing the world through a dark turn of mind this season and dwelling in an among the shadows this Advent: “I recall 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… searching for the things that will bring them and their families some sort of fulfillment and happiness. Peace, the kind of peace that the world is hungering for, will not come from trying to fill ourselves up with material things. We try to stem our hurt and pride by running away from pain and caring only about what is ours. We cannot create peace through selfishness, but by opening ourselves to hope. Hope is what is left when all your worst fears have been realized and you are no longer optimistic about the future. Hope is what comes with a broken heart willing to be mended.” iii So many of us are longing for peace that we often try to create it, to manufacture peace ourselves. But Advent is an invitation to all of us to dwell for a bit in the darkness, to come along-side the suffering, the longing, the heartbreak until we can become friends with it. When we allow this world to break our hearts, then we create space for God to fill us with hope, and it is only then that we discover true peace. Your invitation this week is to spend some time with the shadows, to open your heart to the suffering that you feel or that you encounter in the world around you, and then offer that to God in prayer. And as you begin to make friends with the shadows, to see the world through a dark turn of mind, may you also begin to look for signs of hope. i. Dark Turn of Mind by Songwriters: David Todd Rawlings / Gillian Howard Welch; https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=57ms9XDjs64; ii. https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2017/11/27/keep-awake-lectionary-commentary-advent-week-one iii. Feasting on the Word Year B Vol 1. Ed Bartlett and Brown. WJK: 2008. Pastoral Perspective: Isaiah 64:1-9 by Patricia E. De Jong. P 4.