Advent
1A 2013
Father Adam Trambley
December 1, 2013, St.John’s Sharon
Waiting.
Advent is
the season of waiting.
A four-week
preparation
For
the coming of the Messiah.
Repentance
of sins and
Seeking
for stars
All so we
can better wait
For
whatever God wants
And
is willing to do.
More than waiting, thought, really.
Yearning.
Lamenting.
Wailing.
Falling into the full measure
Of creation’s
brokenness,
Recognizing
the impossibility of its restoration,
And fanning
the fickle flames
Of
hope that God will come with us
Into
the midst of everything
And make it right
again.
Isaiah and Jesus both speak out of that waiting.
Isaiah looks at all the ways
People of
ancient Palestine put God aside.
From the precipice of despair
Over false
religious practices
Where
children are sacrificed
Or
taken to be temple prostitutes,
Where gods
are made in the image of man
Where
violence and war,
Strike
everyone with fear and terror
Where
ignorance runs rampant
And where
decency and love have disappeared,
From that precipice of despair,
Isaiah
looks out to the mountain of hope,
The
mountain of the Lord’s house,
The
mountain of righteousness,
The
mountain of instruction,
The
mountain of peace, and plowshares and pruning hooks.
The
mountain of the light of the Lord!
The prophet sees
This
mountain
With every
fiber of his being,
From the depths of his very soul,
He hopes.
But no matter how vividly he sees
Every color
and hue
Every hill
and dale
Every
spring and tree
On that
mountain,
He sees it arriving
In days to come.
Meanwhile,
He waits.
And we wait.
Jesus
Is talking
about the same time.
He himself is bringing Isaiah’s mountain,
But the
people have forgotten to wait.
They eat and drink,
They marry and
give in marriage,
They do all
the things we do,
And some of them live their lives
With an eye
towards life
On the Mountain of the Lord.
But many don’t.
Jesus says:
Stay awake.
You don’t
want to miss it
When
things are finally put right.
You don’t
want to be so wrapped up
In
what doesn’t matter
That
you get left behind when
Everyone
else
Is
ready to go.
I can’t
tell you the time,
Jesus
says,
So be
ready.
Be waiting.
We’re waiting.
Still
waiting.
Waiting,
If we are honest,
for so much to be made right.
Waiting for Isaiah’s vision
To become
tangible to us,
Touching
our own hearts,
Made
manifest in our own lives.
Waiting to see
what God will do
to make right
all those things
we can’t
make right
ourselves.
The list is long, really,
Of what we
are waiting for.
So much hurts
And is utterly
beyond our power.
We experience deep personal losses.
Deaths of
loved ones
We
will not see again in this life.
Divorces
and other broken relationships
That
have left sensitive wounds,
And
callous scars.
Where
what we had wanted will never be
And
who we are now is not the same.
Divides
between parents and children
Where
insecurities, pains, fears and dysfunctions
Are
passed down in spite of ourselves.
Where
we seem least capable
Of
loving the way we want to.
We see overwhelming tragedies on a global scale.
Wars
repeating
As
hatred is passed from one generation to the next.
The poor
That
will always be with us
And
suffer so much preventable
disaster,
disease, and death.
Environmental
catastrophes
Where
the inevitable decisions of our daily life,
Keeping
pushing past any ecological equilibrium.
We find our social structures floundering.
Churches
less full than they used to be
People
we remember
No longer there.
Valued rhythms and
rituals
No longer
repeated.
Neighborhoods
less safe,
Or
less connected,
Or
less like we want a
Neighborhood
to be.
Cities
struggling
With
jobs lost
Infrastructure
decaying
And
children leaving.
America
Not
the way we want to remember it.
No
longer winning World War II
Or
putting men on the moon
Or
being the best and brightest
Or
the moral conscience for the world.
We ourselves have disappointed as well.
We hurt
people we love
And
we don’t always know why
And
we find we can’t always stop.
We hurt
ourselves
In
any manner of failings,
But
the seven deadly ones sum them up
Pride,
anger, lust, greed, gluttony, envy and sloth.
We see so much that needs to be changed
And isn’t
changing easily.
The next election isn’t an easy answer.
The newest
self-help fad isn’t fixing it.
The most
polished preacher or practiced pastor
Won’t
make it all go away.
The only answer is God,
But he
comes in his own way
On his own
time-table
From his
own mountain,
And
we have to wait.
Or, we have to wait if we want to watch for God,
But there
are other choices, of course.
We can fill
That
emptiness inside
With all
manner of things
That will
not satisfy,
With the
distractions and delicacies
Of
daily life lived as escape.
Modern America
Has raised distraction
to its heights.
We never
have to be quiet enough,
Inside
or out,
To
recognize how deep our longings
Really
are.
Why sit still
And
experience the anguish of our souls,
When we can
get up and get a cookie,
Or numb
ourselves with a drink,
Or laugh
ourselves to sleep
Watching
the TV’s in our bedrooms
Or make
lists and check them twice
And
then find all the sales
Or read
what all our friends did on Facebook,
Or
overwhelm our minds
With
3-D, surround sound, big-screen
Entertainment
extravaganzas.
Or even run
from one religious piety to another
Until
we feel that God owes us and
Is expected to
show up
When we want him.
All of these,
At the
right time,
Can
contribute to God’s work.
But so often we use them
Just to prevent
us
from
feeling
what
we need to feel.
What we need to feel
Is the
longing for God to make it right.
We need to get in touch
With the
yearning in our soul
For Jesus
to show up.
We need to find that place
Deep inside
us
That knows
We need to
live on Isaiah’s mountain
And
nothing else
Is
adequate.
And we need to wait
In painful
woundedness
For Jesus
to return.
In Advent,
We open
ourselves up
To
the entire saving history of Jesus
And
experience the tension
Between
what God has already done
And
what we are still waiting for.
In Advent we are waiting for Christmas
Knowing
that God has become man
And
that God is with us
And
that God is in all creation
But that we
still don’t fully experience
His
presence with us.
In Advent we are waiting for the life of Jesus,
Knowing
what he taught and how he lived,
But that we
can’t fully live out
His
teaching and example
In Advent we are waiting for the deliverance from sin
Knowing
that Jesus died
To
deal with sin once for all time
But that we
are still wracked with guilt and shame.
In Advent we are waiting for resurrection
Knowing
that Christ is Risen!
But that
those we love are still dying.
In Advent we are waiting for Christ’s Ascension,
Knowing
that Jesus reigns
At
the right hand of the Father
But that he
still needs to come back
And
make things right.
In Advent we are waiting for Pentecost,
Knowing
that the Holy Spirit’s power has come upon us
But that we
still feel inadequate to the tasks at hand.
In Advent we are waiting for God,
Knowing
what he has promised
And
refusing,
Like
some annoying nine-year old,
To
stop looking at him
Until
he does what he says he’d do.
Advent is the time
We
cultivate that waiting.
In Advent
We listen
to the pains and hurts
To hear the
things we are really yearning for;
We expose
our cracks and crevasses
To see just
what needs to happen
To
make us whole.
And we wait
for that salvation to come to us.
In Advent, we wait
And in our waiting,
We find our
deepest prayer.
Our whole being
Hurting
Crying
Wailing
Lamenting
Attentive to the fissures fracturing
Ourselves
and our world
Come more
and more completely
to cry out to God.
Our anger and resentments,
Our shame
and guilt
Are burned
away
In our refusal to blame anyone
else,
Including
ourselves
For those
things
That
we realize
Only
God can handle,
And in their consuming flames
They become burning prayers.
Our brutal honesty
About the
depth of our pain
Becomes the
depth of our prayer
As we
confront God
From the
brokenness of our entire lives.
Whatever we give up,
Whether the
food we fast from
The TV we
turn off
Or the
distractions we deny,
Become
strengths
In
the petition of our
Body,
mind and spirit
Every effort we offer to just sit
With what is
needed
For
ourselves and the world
Becomes a
prayer
To
pull open the doors of heaven
Until we
are answered.
Perhaps no prayer is more powerful
Than the
utter realization
Of
how much we need God
And the
decision to wait for him
Until
he meets those needs.
Advent is accepting the inner emptiness
Of knowing
that everything needs restoration
And that
only God can restore it.
Then Advent is waiting,
Eagerly and actively
Passionately
and profoundly,
With tears
and laments
Heart-broken
yet somehow hopeful
Until
Jesus come again.
We open our entire beings
As sounding
chambers
To echo the great advent prayer
Marantha –
Come Lord Jesus,
Then, when we know
Only the
sorrows of the world
And the
promises of God
Our hopes and our prayers
Roll down as mighty waters
From
the seeming barren desert
of
our
Advent
Waiting
Until finally
Jesus comes.
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