WATCH, WAIT, HOPE
Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37
Let us pray: Creator of the world, you are the potter, we are the clay, and you form us in your image. Shape our spirits by Christ's transforming power, that as one people we may live out your compassion and justice, whole and sound in the realm of your peace. Amen.
I have a confession to make; I really like to celebrate Advent, not just celebrate the anticipation of the coming of the Christ child. I really think it is important for us, as a church community to delve deeply into the season of Advent and all that it entails.
I also know that many of us want to rush through Advent and get to Christmas. So many of those Advent hymns are gloomy and call for introspection--that time of mental self-examination of feelings, thoughts and motives. We want our Christmas carols. We want Christmas to begin the day after Thanksgiving and if you have been to any kind of store in the last month you might think Christmas is tomorrow since decorations have been out since Halloween. We long for Christmas, for those Christmas memories of our past and to feel the way we think we remember it did long ago.
But alas, we are in the season of Advent and we must wait for Christmas. We must live within this season of the church year when our religious life is called to hold both dread and hope in tension.
Our reading from the prophet Isaiah speaks so wonderfully to this complex season of Advent. The prophet reminds the Israelites and us that the rich memories of God's saving acts are mired in the muck of dashed expectations. We are also reminded of the experience of God's absence.
Isaiah, speaking on behalf of the people, both admits the people's rejections of God and calls on God to be present and to act on behalf of the people. The passage concludes with an affirmation of God's relationship with God's people using the powerful images of God as father and potter.
This reading in the book of Isaiah is part of a larger psalm that brings into play the image of God as the cosmic, divine warrior who has "come down" to Israel's aid. In desperation, the prophet implores God to act here and now, "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down." The prophet speaks of the people's belief in God's faithfulness and also their profound experience of God's absence. The covenantal relationship between God and God's people is in danger of being completely severed. When all hope seems lost and the chasm between God and people seems to have drifted far too far apart, the prophet makes this profession, "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people."
From the image of God as the divine warrior to God envisioned as an artisan; a potter working, molding, fashioning in a continuing way this broken people. Yes, this is the complex season of Advent.
Most of us keep track of time through our calendars, electronic or otherwise. Most of us follow time based on a calendar that turns over a new year on the first of every January. How many of us mark this week as the beginning a new year?
Nora Gallagher in her book, Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith, writes, "The church calendar calls into consciousness the existence of a world uninhabited by efficiency, a world filled with the excessiveness of saints, ashes, smoke and fire; it fills my heart with both dread and hope."
Dread and hope. There are those words again. Why is Advent a season of such mixed feelings? Why does the prophet Isaiah speak of such deep longing to feel the presence of God yet pose such sorrowful questions to God? I can imagine Isaiah crying out to God, "Where are you, God? Why don't you act to fix this awful situation? Why don't you "come down" and make things right? Where is God now?"
In the midst of the chaos we face in the world, the recent terror attacks in India; I believe that many of us cry out these same questions to God, "Where are you, God? Why don't you act to fix this awful situation? Why don't you 'come down' and make things right? Where is God now?"
Isaiah holds back nothing as he speaks to God. There is praise and thanksgiving, but also anger, doubt, guilt, even demands, just in case God has forgotten about the promises made on behalf of Israel. Remember, God? Remember that we are your children and you are our loving Parent; we are the clay and you are the Potter.
We, your beloved children, trust in a God who is big enough to hear our hurt, strong enough to handle our anger and pain. We like the prophet Isaiah and the Israelites are in a world of hurt and want God to know about it. The Israelites suffered in slavery, in exile, in crushing defeat and after the return of Israel from exile in Babylon, they lived on the edge of a power structure that didn't care what constituted true holiness in the eyes of God.
Our world reflects that same scenario. We can understand those shared stories of defeat. We can understand the prayers and pleas lifted up by the people of God. We lift up those same heartfelt, anguished questions of a people who have a history with God. This long shared history holds memories of God stepping in and doing something when the need was great. We can understand the shared stories of expectation of the glory of God to intervene and save the people God. We understand expectation, but as people of faith, do we "expect" God to act?
We, the children of God, need God. We and all of humankind stand before God in helplessness and need. If we are honest, we can admit that there is little we can do about our precarious state.
It is interesting that in this text, Isaiah does speak of sin, but seems to blame the people's unfaithfulness on God's decision to remain aloof: "because you hid yourself we transgressed." There really is simply a sheer need for God. And it is this need for God that fills our weeks of Advent expectation. It is our need for God that fills this time of expectation as we wait with hope for the birth of the Christ child.
These times of expectation during Advent that coincides with the world's jolly celebration of "the season" are so very different from each other. The symbols we use in this season in the church are very different from the red ribbons and green holly of the world around us: Purple, the color of remorse that hangs on the pulpit and is seen in the candles. The blue of the banners that is the color of royalty to welcome the coming of a king.
The colors are part of the ritual reminding us not to greet God to rashly, at least not until we acknowledge that we are clay in the potter's hands, people ready to be molded anew as the work of God's hand.
And as we are molded in God's hand we are reminded that God is present in our everyday lives and in world events. We do expect God to act because Advent is also about the nearness of God, our hope to experience God's radiance and power and love. No matter how bad things are, we are reminded that we belong to God, that all the earth belongs to God, and we believe that God breaks into this reality regularly.
Advent comes with the news that it is time to think about the possibilities for God's presence in the world. The possibility of a world that longs for peace, especially in the Middle East and in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Africa, even though we may feel helpless, hopeless, and brokenhearted over the devastation. Advent calls us to a time of both individual and collective self-examination as well as hope.
It is a time to proclaim that God is present in our future. It is a time to proclaim hope.
At Christmas, our congregations are often filled with people that are yearning for hope. Hope, to a life they once knew, with families, relationships, churches, or even a nation. But while we may look back, God always looks ahead.
So we must use this season of Advent to watch, wait and hope. To watch for the light of the Child born in Bethlehem, to wait for the light of the Child born in Bethlehem and to hope in the light of the Child born in Bethlehem. The light the darkness has never overcome. Amen.
November 30 , 2008
The Reverend Mary Alice Lyman
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