Advent – Page 4 – Salvaged Faith

Hope or Despair? Birth Pangs of the Kingdom

Posted on November 29, 2009Leave a comment

As I started exploring and reading our texts for this week, I was instantly transported back to my best friend’s kitchen – 1997. I was a sophomore in high school and my family had recently started going to church. I knew the basics of the Christian faith, but was becoming aware of how muc more there was to the bible.

The late 1990’s was a time of religious fervor – at least as far as I remember them. Mega churches were just starting to be noticed, the Left Behind Series of books were on everyone’s reading lists, and in my high school bible studies and prayer meetings were popping up all over the place. Oh – and the year 2000 was on the horizon and no one quite knew what to expect.

For the most part, I was a typical high schooler and oblivious to what was going on in the rest of the world. Living in rural Iowa, that scope of vision was even smaller. So as a new Christian, sitting in my best friend’s kitchen, my entire world was rocked when my friends and One of their moms started talking about end times prophecy.

I can’t remember why we started talking about it, but before I knew it they had pulled out these time lines and charts and bibles and were explaining to me what order things were going to happen for Christ to come back again. They talked with such certainty, such confidence, and I remember feeling nothing but lost.

In fact, my stomach turned as visions of the world being destroyed passed before my eyes. I remember feeling clammy when I thought about billions of people dying in the tribulation. I was terrified by descriptions of the seven seals being opened.

Perhaps most of all, as I sat on that kitchen stool, I remember how unprepared I felt. My friends knew all of this information – but more importantly, they believed and were confident in the face of impending doom! I, on the other hand, was uncomfortable, had questions I was afraid to ask, and if they were right, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be among the faithful. That assurance they felt that told them they would escape the troubles… yeah, I didn’t have that.

I mostly avoided talking about it with my friends, but I nearly gave up on Christianity after a series of those conversations. I started reading the Left Behind books and I was so upset by them I stopped a few books in. The picture of God that was presented by them and by all of this prophecy just didn’t match up with the God I had met in my United Methodist youth group. There we talked about love and grace and forgiveness and becoming a new creation… and all I could see in what my friends were so sure of was judgment and destruction.

In some ways – we get that same kind of feeling from our gospel text this morning. We are told to be alert at all times so that we have the strength to escape from all of these things that are about to take place. We are told that people will faint from fear of what is to come because the heavens will be shaken. I hear a lot of doom and gloom in these few passages that come to us from the gospel of Luke.

But I hear these words very differently today than I did ten years ago. After we got past the Y2K scare and I started reading the Bible more, I realized that the sure and certain scenarios presented on those time lines in my friend’s kitchen weren’t the only possibility presented to us in the Bible.

As we have talked about in Sunday School recently – I started to see that Revelation isn’t a schedule for the apocalypse but a book of hope in secret code for a community being persecuted. I have now read just as many verses in Paul’s letters that talk about not knowing what is going to happen in the future, as I have the ones that seem to have the inside scoop. And – perhaps more importantly – I have started seeing the scriptures as a whole, and not in isolated verses.

When we look at the entire scope of the scriptures – we see the story of a God who created us out of love and has been continually yearning for relationship with us. We see the story of a God whose response to our endless denial was to come and be born in our midst. We see the story of a God who lived among us to show us the path of the righteous, and who died so that we could follow him. We see the story of a God who is not interested in scrapping this world and starting over, but who re-creates and redeems and transforms even the heavens and the earth.

Read in light of that story – these verses in Luke sound very different. People will faint and tremble not because terrible things are looming – but because they THINK terrible things are looming… they don’t understand what is happening… they don’t understand the signs.

About a year ago – my husband and I had some of our own signs to decipher. We go over to his sister’s house every Friday night to have dinner with their family. It is a wonderful time to eat good food and play games and hang out with our niece and nephew. A couple of weeks went by and I started to notice that my sister-in-law had stopped having her usual glass of wine with dinner. Then I noticed that she was eating less and less at our meals and was tired and seemed to be losing weight. And I started to get slightly worried, because I didn’t understand what was happening. Was she sick? Was there something that we should be concerned about?

And then the announcement came – Bevin was pregnant! She had stopped eating and was losing weight because she had such terrible morning sickness. She was tired because there was new life growing inside of her!

I had completely misread the signs.

If we go back a little bit further in Luke, chapter 21 this morning, Jesus is trying to tell his disciples not to be afraid by what might come next – by what appears to be happening around them.

They ask him for a simple answer – when are these things going to happen? How will we know? And in response he tells them not to listen to those people who say that the time is near. He tells them not to be afraid by the signs of the times. Or as the Message translation puts these verses: “When you hear of wars and uprisings, keep your head and don’t panic. This is routine history and no sign of the end … nation will fight against nation… over and over. Huge earthquakes will occur in various places. There will be famines. You’ll think at times that the very sky is falling.”

But those are just the outside symptoms. They are similar to the things I was seeing in my sister-in-law: weight loss and not eating and I thought something was wrong because I misinterpreted the signs.

Jesus goes on to talk about a particular time when it will seem as if all is lost, or as the Message bible puts it – “everything will come to a head.” And at that moment – when things appear to be their worst, when all appears hopeless – that is when the Son of Man – that is when Jesus will be seen.

I think all of this would be a whole lot easier to understand if Luke didn’t leave out and important detail. I think he left it out because Mark and Luke have almost identical passages. If you look at Luke chapter 21 and Mark chapter 13 – there are many similarities except for one… after Jesus reminds them that there will continue to be wars and natural disasters he says: This is but the beginning of the birth pangs. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

I was with a group of pastors a few weeks ago in Indianapolis and we were reading this exact same passage in Mark. One woman spoke up and said – I’ve had five children… I know exactly what Jesus is talking about!!! It always seems to be the worst, it always seems like you just won’t survive, right before your child is born. That’s when the pain is the worst and that’s because you are growing and stretching and waiting for this new life to emerge. That’s a really different way to understand this passage.

Paul talks about the groaning of creation, he talks about the birth pangs and waiting for redemption and if we think about God’s Kingdom being born in our midst, its going to take a little bit of change and transformation. Things will be shaken up a bit just like when birth happens in our lives.

We could look around us at the melting of the icecaps and tsunamis and tornadoes and the strange weather we have had this past year and we could be worried about the end. We could look at the violence in our own community – much less in the world – in this past year and think that we are on a downhill slide into immorality and destruction. We could look at the wars we are engaged in – especially in the middle east – as signs that all is lost… as the impending day of judgment and doom.

Or we can listen to the scriptures. In our passage today, it says Stand up and raise our heads because what is coming is not destruction – but redemption. What is being born in our midst is the new creation.

Today is the first Sunday of the Christian year.

Today is the start of a season of hope in the midst of despair, the season of light when everything appears to be dark.

If last week we prayed for Christ the King to come on earth – then today is the day that we start looking for the Kingdom.

Today is the day we look around and see the signs of the kingdom everywhere. We see it in the hunger that young people have to understand and learn more about who God is. We see it in the hunger we experience as we gather to worship and pray. We see it in that spark of hope that is in our hearts – even though we could look at the world and think radically different things.

I think in many ways this church understands that because two years ago you were faced with a tough decision. You looked around and church attendance was declining and you had to decide if you were going to go to part time or stay with a full time pastor. Some churches in that situation would have said, well – we are pretty much hopeless.

But you said that something new is being born in our midst – and we are going to wait and see what happens. That’s why we light this candle today. We light this candle remembering that hope is just around the corner that the promises of God are almost in our reach. That all of the groaning and birth pangs around us are merely getting us ready for what is to come. There is no fear to be had. There is no trembling on this day. Because God is coming near to us. God is coming and so let us stand up and raise up our heads and await the glory of our King. Amen and Amen.

Let it Be with Me…

Posted on December 21, 2008Leave a comment

This is our fourth week of waiting for that coming of Christ – and we are so close we can almost taste it! We are ready for the heavenly choirs of angels mingling with the smelly shepherds in the field, for the time when wise men led by celestial signs witness the fragility of an infant of a manger. It is a season of holy anticipation – not for experiences beyond this world, but ones that are embodied in things that we can touch and feel, live and breathe. We are getting ready for God to take on human flesh in our midst!

This morning, we get to hear the beautiful telling of the annunciation – the announcement ! – in Luke’s gospel this morning. The angel Gabriel appears and proclaims Mary to be favored in God’s eyes – blessed among all woman – for she will bear a child who will be called the Son of God. And Mary, for her part, asks but one question: How will this happen? And then responds with that very familiar statement: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Maybe this is because for over half of my life I have heard this story as a child – but Mary has always been in my mind a wise and beautiful woman, full of the grace of God and ready to face any challenge that might come her way. She is filled with a maturity that to me has always belied her age. She seems so much older than me, so much more ready to accept God’s joyful burden, and yet- Mary was probably no more than fourteen or fifteen years old when the angel Gabriel stood before her.

Fourteen or Fifteen years old! For nearly half of my life I have been OLDER that this amazing young woman who said yes to the impossible.

Now, granted, Mary was living in a world of prearranged marriages and was likely promised to her husband-to-be, Joseph, for many years. Young women would have been married and having children by the age of eighteen to be sure. But it was also a world where a woman’s only education would have been in the home, a world of Jewish faithful living under a Roman occupation, a time of darkness and poverty, disappointment and despair.

We witness her willingness to accept the burden that God is bestowing upon her. We hear her song of praise to the God who has come to her, a lowly servant. “Let it be with me according to your word.” And we forget how difficult it must have been to not only accept this joyful burden with those words, but to carry that joyful burden in her life.

Because of the nature of Christmas, we hear the annunciation on Sunday, and by Wednesday evening we have a beautiful, bouncing, baby boy in a manger. There is so much we skip in these precious few days before Christmas… and in part, we skip this part of the story because we do not know what happened. The scriptures leave us to fill in the blanks.

We are told in the gospel of Matthew that Joseph probably would have quietly broken off the engagement had not an angel of the Lord intervened. Thank God for angels.

Mary would have still been living with her parents at this time, but we don’t know how they responded. I can tell you that it was customary to send an unwed mother off to live with distant relatives, so as not to shame the family… perhaps this is the cause of Mary’s hasty trip to visit her cousin Elizabeth after the angel Gabriel appeared. Elizabeth, herself, was overjoyed to greet Mary and her unborn child – yet Elizabeth was also in on the secret of this divine birth and was in the middle of her own miraculous pregnancy. Her husband Zechariah wasn’t so sure… at least not at first.

With the exception of these two, we don’t know how the rest of the family responded, or how her community responded. A young woman, still unmarried, becomes pregnant and the people are supposed to…what? Celebrate? Extol her virtues? Even if Mary told everyone that it was the Son of God in her womb, who would have believed her?

I think that this is an important part of the story that we miss, because if she wasn’t believed, and if she wasn’t protected, Mary would likely have been stoned for adultery. And yet, it is precisely in this vulnerable and difficult experience that we come to understand that Christmas as the celebration of God entering the world, not to condemn it, but to redeem it.

Christ comes into this world not to condemn it, but to redeem it.

Two thousand some years ago, a young woman, a girl really, said “yes” to God’s invitation – and just look at how the world has changed. But then, if you think about it, that is how God has been working all along. It is how God has always changed the world.

From the very beginning, the people of God were transformed and moved along and inspired by ordinary nobodies who hesitantly said “yes” to God. Think of the poor nomad Abram, think of the murderer Moses, think of the shepherd boy David.

Each of them, in their own way, said “let it be with me according to your word.” And they opened themselves up to God’s will in their lives. They followed his call. They tried to live obediently. And God accomplished amazing things through them. That is how God works.

Does that mean it was easy? No. Does it mean that they faced straight paths with no obstacles? No. Does it mean that they found perfect happiness? No.

Think again of our young Mary. She would have to struggle to protect her child from the slaughter of infants by fleeing to the foreign land of Egypt. And then she would live to see her own son crucified by the Romans. There was no way of knowing when she said “yes” to God that this would be the course her life would take. But still she said, “let it be with me according to your word.”

We look back, and perhaps we are thankful that we have not been faced with such a momentous decision. We are thankful that we do not face persecution because of our faith. We are glad that God did all of that work a long time ago, so that we can now enjoy this life that we have in Christ.

The Gospel of John reminds us that:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…. And the Word came and lived among us, and we have seen his glory… From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

The Word came and lived among us. God took on flesh – God worked through human lives, God’s will was embodied in the small “yeses” of many insignificant people. And the world was changed.

But you know, right now, in this season of Advent, we are not only preparing to celebrate what happened in the birth of Christ 2000 years ago, we are also preparing for Christ to come again – we are getting ready for the new thing that God is about to do in our midst.

And the question I want us to really ponder today, is what would it mean for the call of God to ring out again? How would we respond, if we, as ordinary people not unlike Mary or Joseph, or Moses or David, we asked to say yes. Not as some kind of temporary commitment, like a new years resolution that we make today and forget about tomorrow, but in a real and powerful way?

What would it mean for us to stand here, fully and openly before our God and say, “let it be with us according to your word.”?

Are you ready, are you prepared for something new to be born within your spirit? Within this community? Are we ready for Christ to enter our midst, our hearts? Does that idea terrify you?

You know what. It terrifies me a little bit. Because I hear that call of God all the time. I hear that call of God challenging me and challenging us to really and truly take the plunge, to hand our lives over to God’s will.

I hear God calling us to stop being simply Sunday Christians, or even, every other Sunday Christians, and to fully let the Word of God dwell in our hearts every single day.

I hear God challenging us to take risks and to put ourselves on the line as we go out into the world to be the hands and feet of Christ. I hear God urging us to say yes, because God doesn’t want to change the world without us.

And what is so hard, what is so scary, is that saying yes means everything will change. The kind of transformation that God wants to see in this world – the kind of redemption that God is continuing to bring about is only possible if we leave behind everything that we know and follow.

The reason that we haven’t fully said yes in the past is because we keep assuming the path will be easy. We keep hoping that whatever comes our way won’t involve some kind of radical change. We want to believe that we are already living the way we are supposed to and that not too much more will be required.

I can guarantee you – that is not the case.

Everything changed for Abram. Everything changed for Moses. Everything changed for David. Everything changed for Mary. Everything changed for every single one of those disciples who put down their nets and their tax bags and decided to follow Christ.

But you know what… they didn’t have to do it alone. And when someday, we find the courage to say yes to God, we will not be left on our own either.

As the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, one of the first things that he whispered in her ear was: “Do not be afraid.”

The words of that hymn we have used quite often – “You are Mine,” seem to express the words of encouragement that might have helped Mary find the strength to accept this blessing in her life, in spite of the difficulty, in spite of the whispers behind her back, in spite of the long hard road ahead. “Do not be afraid, I am with you… I love you and you are mine.”

No, we will not be left to our own devices when the time comes and the call is given. Because while God freely chooses to use ordinary people to accomplish his will – God also gives us everything that we need.

That is what grace is all about. That is what love is all about.

During this time of year, there are goodies everywhere. My sister-in-law loves to bake, but she also really wants to involve her children in the process. Now, Cami and Xander are 3 and 7 respectively, and so there is only so much that they can do as children in the kitchen, but Bevin tries hard to include them nonetheless. She calls them each into the kitchen, gives them various small tasks to do, and pretty soon, before they know it, they have made a beautiful and delicious masterpiece.

In many ways, that is how God works. God wants so much for this world to be transformed, but he also loves us so much that he lets us in on the secret, wants to teach us the recipe, and hopes that we will want to help out where we can. So little by little, we are charged with the task of redeeming this creation. Little by little, we do what we can. Little by little, God helps us along. Like a loving parent, God will not leave us on our own to burn ourselves, or let us be with a sharp knife, but carefully, painstakingly, helps us to navigate through the dangers. God molds us, supports us, guides us and leads us.

Don’t be afraid. I love you. I will see you through this. You are mine and I am never letting you go.

Are we ready to roll up our sleeves and say yes? Have we spent enough time preparing? Have we put off the call long enough?

In three days, we will come together again in celebration and joy for the birth of the Christ child. May these days of waiting and anticipation help us to get ready for Christ to be born in our hearts. May these days help us to be able to say, “Yes, Lord, Let it be with us according to your will.”

Friday Five

Posted on December 19, 2008Leave a comment

I’ve been a HUGE slacker and haven’t played with the RevGals for like a month or so.

Here’s this week’s Friday Five – and feel free to play along in the comments if you want!

The Nativity shown here is the Willow Creek one that I got last Christmas from my mom and dad =)

There are only five full days before Christmas Day, and whether you use them for shopping, wrapping, preaching, worshiping, singing or traveling or even wishing the whole darn thing were over last Tuesday, there’s a good chance they will be busy ones.

So let’s make this easy, if we can: tell us five things you need to accomplish before Christmas Eve.

1. Christmas Shopping with my hubby. We are going on Monday morning and I pray the roads are good. We have done a little bit of shopping, but have a lot left to buy. We are doing little gifts, and joint gifts (all the siblings going in together) type of things and probably also some homemade goodies.

2. Revising the Family Christmas Program script & finding someone to read the second part. I got very inspired by Kathrine Hawker’s “outside the box” liturgies for Christmas Eve – one is a retelling of the Christmas story that includes and vocalizes some of the inconsistencies in how we put together our naitivity scene, but it does so in a way that can be funny and involves kids in costumes. It works nearly perfectly for our “informal pageant” but will need some tweaking for our context and to take a little bit of the skeptical edge off.

3. Scripting our Lessons and Carols Communion service (probably again using some of Hawker’s materials with more traditional readings and some of our bishop’s Christmas prayer.

4. An unexpected (well, they are always unexpected) funeral tomorrow. It will be a small gathering and prayers for the family who loved her dearly.

5. Wrapping up presents for our many family celebrations. We have gatherings on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Saturday and Sunday next week – PLUS an Epiphany Christmas gathering with my immediate family.

Lectionary Leanings – Let It Be With Me

Posted on December 15, 2008Leave a comment

Here is the fourth installment of my article for the Circuit Rider online:

December 21
II Sam. 7:1-11, 16, Luke 1:47-55 or Ps. 89:1-4, 19-26 , Romans 16:25-27, Luke 1:26-38

We read the beautiful telling of the annunciation in Luke’s gospel and imagine Mary as a mature, wise young woman, full of the grace of God and ready to face any challenge that might come her way. We witness her willingness to accept the burden (or joy) that God is bestowing upon her. We hear her song of praise to the God who has come to her, a lowly servant. And perhaps in light of our contemporary visions of teen pregnancy through such movies as “Juno,” “Saved,” and television shows like “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” we are ready for the happy ending and to find out how it all works out in the end.

In doing so, we skip over the part about what a struggle it must have been for Mary in her pregnancy. How was she treated by her family? We are told in the gospel of Matthew that Joseph probably would have quietly broken off the engagement had not an angel of the Lord intervened. Her kinswoman Elizabeth was overjoyed to greet Mary and her unborn child – yet Elizabeth was also in on the secret of this divine birth and was in the middle of her own miraculous pregnancy. With the exception of these two, we don’t know how the rest of the family responded, or how her community responded. A young woman, still unmarried, becomes pregnant and the people are supposed to…what? Celebrate? Extol her virtues? Even if Mary told everyone that it was the Son of God in her womb, who would have believed her?

Luke gives us Mary’s song, commonly known as the Magnificat, precisely because it is the cry of a woman, or a people, waiting for liberation. It is the song of someone who has nothing left to lean on but God alone and whose sole trust lies in the promises of the scriptures. She sings as if the promise has already been fulfilled, “He has scattered the proud… He has brought down the powerful… he has filled the hungry.” Yet in her reality, life was still hard and the promise was still waiting. Mary’s joy is not the happy emotion of someone leading a perfect life, but the true joy that comes only from communion with the most holy God. It is the outpouring of emotion that comes only from surviving oppression and affliction and adversity.

As the angel appeared to Mary, he offered her comfort: “Do not be afraid,” the angel whispered in her ear. The words of the hymn, “You are Mine,” seem to express the words of encouragement that might have helped Mary find the strength to accept this blessing in her life, in spite of the difficulty, in spite of the whispers behind her back, in spite of the stigmas that would be attached. “Do not be afraid, I am with you… I love you and you are mine.”

Lectionary Leanings – All Will Be Well

Posted on December 9, 20082 Comments

December 14
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11, Psalm 126 or Luke 1:47-55, I Thess. 5:16-24 , John 1:6-8, 19-28

A few summers ago in seminary, I participated in a course called “Church in the City.” We traveled around Nashville exploring many diverse neighborhoods and heard many powerful stories of how churches were impacting the communities that they lived in. Throughout our lessons that summer, one scripture kept coming back to us—today’s lectionary passage from the book of Isaiah. Whoever this author was, he was speaking to people in exile, people who were longing to go back home, people who were desperate for a word of hope. And his word of hope was that good news was on its way—that they would soon be set free and that God would lead them back to Zion.

The verse that really struck us, however, as we read this good news is found in verse four: “They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities…” Yes, God will lead them back, but they will be blessed with the opportunity to repair and rebuild and restore the devastation of many generations. That is what we witnessed in those communities in Nashville. Families that had been exiled by gentrification, individuals who literally had been imprisoned, churches that were broken down and falling apart, were returning to and reviving these neighborhoods, rebuilding the city around them.

This message of promise and hope from Isaiah was renewed this summer as my state of Iowa was devastated by flooding. Five months after the waters crested twenty feet above the flood stage in Cedar Rapids, many city blocks still look like a war zone. Many families have crowded into homes with friends or relatives or into the FEMA trailers delivered to the area. Exile is a very real concept to many of these close-knit neighbors who are now scattered across the city.

But little by little, they are returning to these flooded neighborhoods. Little by little, there are signs of rebirth. Whether it is another business reopening or another home that is gutted and rebuilt, the people of Cedar Rapids are raising up the former devastations. They are rising above the floods that threatened to overwhelm them. It has been amazing to witness how the good news and the grace of God have been present in the recovery. Strangers are going out of their way to help one another. Churches have become beacons of hope. There is a very real sense that while this was a terrible tragedy, while the way forward is unknown, God is there. And the people are not rebuilding alone.

There is a sense of pride, as there should be for the countless hours of hard work that have gone into making a dent in the devastation. But that pride is tempered by the knowledge that the job of the church is not to take credit, but to simply point to the gospel and the One who came to bring the good news to life. Like John the Baptist, we know that we are not the Messiah, but we are witnesses to the light of Christ that has broken into our midst. And we hold onto and proclaim the promise that “all will be well. You can ask me how but only time will tell.” (All Will Be Well, by the Gabe Dixon Band).

Lectionary Leanings

Posted on December 2, 2008Leave a comment

The second installment of my articles for the Circuit Rider:

December 7
Isaiah 40:1-11, Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13,
II Peter 3:8-15a, Mark 1:1-8
Anticipation is not an emotion that we experience too often these days. We live in a “have it your way, fast” kind of culture. Anything you want in the entire world is at your fingertips through the wonders of the Internet, and now that the Internet is built into many of our cellular devices, we can literally take the world with us wherever we go.

Not only can we access information, music, images, and people with lightning speed, but we actually seem to be able to fit more things and tasks into our lives through the wonders of multitasking. The other day, I was driving to a meeting, trying to go over my notes, eating pretzels and listening to NPR on the radio. Coincidentally, the morning program was about multitasking. According to the neuroscientist on the program, our minds really can’t do multiple things at once; we simply shift our focus between all of these tasks very, very quickly.The problem with all of these rapid shifts between activities is that we leave ourselves very little time and space to prepare for what comes next.

More importantly, we have forgotten about the importance of waiting. We think we are avoiding all of those terrible feelings like anxiety and impatience and frustration when we occupy our waiting minds with other things, but we also miss out on feelings of what Merriam-Webster calls “pleasurable expectation,” or anticipation.

Just think of the anticipation that would have surrounded the crowds who came out to hear John preaching there in the wilderness. He was a sight to see for sure, with his camel hair garb and that strange diet of locusts and honey. We get to experience
Advent every year. It’s on our calendars and so we know it’s on its way. But those crowds who traveled from Jerusalem out to the countryside had no idea how long they would have to wait or what they were even waiting for. All they knew was that this crazy guy was standing in the river, washing away sins, but that someone even more powerful was coming. Someone who would not only wash them clean, but who could make them whole. Someone who was about to turn the whole world upside down.
Now, that’s what I call anticipation.

Wake Up!

Posted on November 30, 2008Leave a comment

This news story was posted yesterday on Yahoo News –

“Sebastian D’Souza hears the gunfire at (shah-trapati shiv-a-ji)) Terminus from his office across the street at the Mumbai Mirror tabloid.

He follows the sound through the sprawling station, slipping unseen through parked trains. When he first catches sight of the young men, he doesn’t realize they are the gunmen. They look so innocent. Then he sees them shooting.

“They were firing from their hips. Very professional. Very cool,” says D’Souza, the newspaper’s photo editor. For more than 45 minutes he follows as they move from platform to platform shooting and throwing grenades. Often, D’Souza isn’t even 30 feet away. The few police at the station are either dead, in hiding or had long fled.

There are billboards everywhere, signs of India’s economic boom. At one point, he photographs them standing beneath a tea company sign. They appear to be having a calm conversation. “WAKE UP!” the billboard reads.”

“Wake up!” the billboard reads.

The season of Advent is a time of paradox. While on one hand we are preparing for the warm and beautiful scenes surrounding the birth of the Christ child, we are also preparing ourselves for the second coming of Christ. We find ourselves surrounded by this rich color purple, both because it is a symbol of the royalty of our Lord, but also the color for repentance and confession.

It is hard for a pastor to live in that paradox. It is hard to not give in to the cultural emphasis on Christmas – what with decorations and music being found in the stores before Halloween. As I chatted with other colleagues in this past week, we all struggled to take seriously the desperation and the seriousness that the scriptures from this morning call for. It’s almost Christmas after all, and wouldn’t a sermon on the apocalypse be a little too heavy?

We don’t want to talk about the darkness and evil in the world because this is supposed to be a season of joy and light, peace on earth and good will toward all.

“Wake up!” the billboard reads.

Some days the darkness sneaks up on you. Some weeks it is hard to ignore. Most of my pastor friends were up long into the night re-writing their sermons. We simply cannot let the evil of this world go unnoticed this Sunday morning.

There are so many things that are heavy on our hearts this week. The loss of life in Mumbai. The trampling of a woman at a Wal-Mart on this Black Friday. Friends and family that have been laid off or fired. Tomorrow is World AIDS Day and we remember that there are now 33 million people living with HIV worldwide.

What does any of this have to do with Advent? We have to think back to the paradox of the season. You see, we celebrate Advent because we need to remember that God came down to earth as a vulnerable baby. We recreate nativity scenes and put stars on our trees to recall the shining light that led the world to the Christ child. We recite the promises of the prophets and remember that our God is faithful.

But we also celebrate Advent because we must remember that there are still promises left to be fulfilled. There is still darkness and evil in our world. There are still people crying out for healing and salvation. God’s work has begun among us, but it is not finished yet.

“Wake up!” the billboard reads.

A friend wrote yesterday, “can anyone explain to me how any sale can be so good to not only line up at 5 in the morning but then to trample, to death, a worker at the store. And then complain when the store announces it is closing in light of the incident!

That new world, really, is it coming soon? Because some days I really start to lose hope in this one.”

Hope is what this first Sunday of Advent is all about – and yet it is hard to be hopeful.

We are desperate for the coming of the new heavens and the new earth. We are at the end of our ropes. We are waiting O God! When, are you going to act?

That desperation. That bold trust that God will come. Those are the things that this season is all about. That is why we start Advent with an apocalyptic vision:

From our gospel reading this morning we hear, “in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven… Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory…. When you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates… beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come.

“Wake up!” the billboard reads.

Apocalyptic writings can be frightening to hear. They urge us that the time is coming, and coming soon, when God will set all things right. And they often do so with visions of disaster and tragedy, death and destruction.

Most days, we would hear those visions of apocalypse and have very little to connect us to the reality that birthed these types of prophecies. We don’t understand what could possibly be so hopeful about these terrifying visions.

But what we have to understand is that apocalyptic scriptures are not born out of times of safety and security, peace and well-being, but they are born out of times of desperation. They are written only in times of suffering and persecution. They are born out of a yearning for God to intervene.

As his people were being taken away to exile in Babylon, we hear the words of the prophet Isaiah this morning “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!… to make your name known to your adversaries!”

In other words – we are struggling down here, O God! Come and set things right!

“Wake up!” the billboard reads.

Just who is it that should keep awake? Who is falling asleep? Who isn’t paying attention? In some ways, I feel like Isaiah is calling out to God to wake up. Wake up! Look at what is happening! Why aren’t you doing something?!

But perhaps Isaiah is speaking to us as well. Maybe Isaiah thinks that we are the ones who need the wake up call. Who need something as dramatic as the heavens tearing open in order to get our heads right.

Maybe the call is not to wake up to the reality of evil and darkness around us – but to wake up to the promise and the hope of our God. To stop letting the evil take us over, to stop letting it control our lives, and instead to wake up to the reality of the in-breaking Kingdom of God.

You see, Isaiah has some harsh words for his brothers and sisters, who seem to have succumbed to the darkness. He wants them to look around for themselves and to see that God has not left them.

“We are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” God isn’t quite finished with us yet. God hasn’t finished shaping our world. God has not abandoned us.

“Wake up!” the billboard reads.

In these seemingly dark days – with disaster and tragedy, difficulty and despair all around us, it is hard to see the signs of God’s presence. We are eagerly waiting for something dramatic to shake the earth to its core – to set things right once and for all. We are waiting for the grand finale – for the completion of God’s work.

And Advent is that time of year when we get slapped upside the head with challenging images of the heavens shaking and the earth trembling and voices crying out in the wilderness. Advent really isn’t a time for the soft and cuddly, but a reminder that the every present Kingdom of God is about to fully break into our midst – whether we are ready for it or not.

But perhaps part of our wake up call also needs to be prepared not for catastrophic billboards from on high, for cosmic signs and wonders, but to simply wake up and notice where God is already active in our midst.

Yes, Christ promises to return, and in the Advent season we eagerly await the return described in Mark. But Advent is also the reminder that God has already come down and made his life among us, and that while there may have been a star in the heavens, the presence of God was found in the ordinary. An infant born and laid in a manger of hay. Smelly shepherds coming in from the fields. A holy meal of simple wine and bread.

“Wake up!” the billboard reads.

Wake up and look around you. Look with eyes wide open for the signs of the Kingdom of God.

Look for where hungry people are being fed by food banks all across the country.
Look for where the oppressed are set free through prison rehabilitation programs or through AlAnon.
Look for where the sick are healed, like our loved one Mike Schott.

If you look hard enough – you will see that God is still working. God is still active. God remembers the promises that were made. And know, that our hope rests in that God. That he will see us through.

Even now as we wait – as we look around – as we take it all in… we dare to hope.

Amen. And Amen.

Lectionary Leanings – Keep Awake!

Posted on November 25, 20081 Comment

My lectionary leanings for the next month or so are actually going to come from sermon starters that I wrote for the United Methodist Publishing House’s “Circuit Rider”

November 30
Isaiah 64:1-9, Ps. 80:1-7, 17-19, I Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:24-37

Isaiah thinks that we need a dramatic wake up call. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” we hear in the first verse. Mark, too, seems to be drawing our attention to signs and wonders in our readings for this first Sunday in Advent. Get ready! Be prepared! The signs are all around you!

Maybe we are too distracted by the Christmas music that has been playing in stores since the end of October. Maybe we have let the election steal our attentions for the past two years. Maybe our church has been so preoccupied by a building campaign
that we forgot to notice the gospel right in front of us. Whatever it may be, Advent is the time of year when we get slapped upside the head with the challenging images of the heavens shaking and the earth trembling and voices crying out prophetic words from the wilderness. Advent isn’t a time for the soft and cuddly, but a reminder of the ever present Kingdom of God that is about to fully break into our midst – whether we are ready for it or not.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the signs and wonders, but unlike Isaiah; I don’t necessarily believe that God has hidden from us. Maybe we just aren’t paying attention. Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in her sermon, “Late Bloomer,” (found in Gospel Medicine) “…what better way to live than in the grip of a promise… to wake in the possibility that today might be the day. To remain wide awake all day long, noticing everything.” What if the call to keep awake was not a call to be prepared for catastrophic billboards from on high, but to simply notice every day where God is present around us?

Yes, Christ promises to return, and in the Advent season we eagerly await the return of Christ. But Advent is also the reminder that God has already come down and made his life among us, and that while there may have been a star in the heavens, the presence of God was found in the ordinary. An infant born and laid in a manger of hay. Smelly shepherds coming in from the fields. A life lived among the people of God. A holy meal of wine and bread.

We claim and proclaim a Kingdom that is already here and not yet fully realized. To live in that tension is a call to be always aware of where God is active and moving among us, and also to be aware of where and when God is about to do a new thing in our midst.