A Advent 1 BFC 2019
Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44
December 1, 2019
Many of the Scripture lessons we have
from Sunday to Sunday are written in dangerous times, filled with fear and
trepidation about how life will turn out for the communities they were written
to. The author often writes to make
sense of the current situation, to ask where God stands or moves in the present
age, and tries to help the community see the world through God’s eyes. But in dangerous times, times filled with
fear and trepidation, how do we open up the situation before us to respond with
more than fight or flight, something with broader possibilities and color,
something more than the reptilian part of our brains? Do we see more color than black and white?
For that is how I see faithful people
responding in each age. They seem to
know that there are more choices available to them than what the situation
offers on its surface. Who knew that the
most faithful choice was for Claudette or Rosa to remain in their bus seat
while the rest of the community then refused to use the bus service? Who knew the faithful choice was for Martin
and the community to fill the Birmingham jail?
Who knew the faithful choice was for the community to consistently and
persistently confront the armed police with prayer and universal indigenous
displays of solidarity at Standing Rock?
Or for grandmothers to offer flowers and words of advice when the threat
of the federal police loomed large in Oaxaca, young men standing with their
guns, to create threat as the federal police in Oaxaca? Those choices seem nonsensical, don’t they,
especially in the midst of so much threatened violence from the other side?
Advent is supposed to be a time when
we prepare ourselves to notice God and the way God is moving in the world. The church repeats this part of the
liturgical year with the hope that we might practice the countercultural activity
of seeing God in places thought to be dismissed, long-forgotten, or small. This gets harder and harder every year
because the Advent and Christmas seasons have been co-opted by the big, lights
blinking, and bountiful bonanza of the bombastic and flamboyant. We rush to keep up with the cultural holiday
and hope that the Biblical holy days of hope, peace, joy, and love find us. We so want the deep meaning to find us.
There is a deep water, however, a
stream we need to be wading into so that our eyes, ears, lips, and fingers
might be attune to the ancient story of God’s presence and movement. Sometimes we are blessed that our Advent and
Christmas seasons are set off-kilter and, as it happens, we experience God
during this time when having all the presents neatly wrapped or the family
coming into town or the papers all turned in or graded doesn’t work out the way
we intended. Then we are open to
something new. But the best way, the
very best way, to experience God’s presence and movement during this time is to
develop counter-cultural practices we keep each year which send us wading out
into the stream. Or we connect with
hurting places and peoples in the world or our own hurting places to stand in
solidarity with healing and wholeness and life.
Or we join the struggle, maybe it’s a struggle we strongly identify
with, but a struggle that requires our own courage and witness. When we do any of those three things--develop
countercultural practices, connect with hurting places and peoples, or join the
struggle, we begin to hear the whisper of God in our world and the Scripture
verses we read don’t seem so romantic and far-off. Their real grit awakens our hearts and makes
us vigilant for the presence and movement of God in the world.
As a church, I hope you can hear how
leadership has identified those places and offers opportunities to see yourself
as part of that story. Just this week,
we will host the World AIDS Day celebration tonight, host the climate strike
grief vigil with people around the world on Friday, and provide leadership for
the interfaith Las Posadas event next weekend with Sanctuary
Rising. The following weekend we will
host the Native American Development Corporation’s Holiday of Giving. All of these are opportunities for us as a
faith community to prepare for God’s presence, movement, and activity during
this Advent and Christmas season.
But those are ideas and events we have
put forward as your church leadership.
My belief is that you all, as spiritual beings yourselves, have
countercultural practices you do that help center yourself for this season,
ways you connect with hurting people and places, or join the struggle that
requires your courage and witness.
I want to hear from you now. Please remember that any ways you do these
things, however small, has you wading in the stream that makes you open to the
presence, movement, and activity of God.
What are those countercultural practices, the ways you connect with
hurting people and places, or join the struggle which requires your courage and
witness so that others might learn from you or gain hope from you? I also want you to say them out loud as a way
of testifying over and against the cultural Christmas which either makes it all
about Jesus . . . but nothing about his life and ministry; or all about the
bells and whistles without the engagement of the dangerous, violent, and
fear-laden times we are in. Now, if you
would, tell me about the countercultural practices you have for Advent and
Christmas, the ways you connect with the hurting people and places, or the ways
you join the struggle which requires your courage and witness.
(after the congregation has offered)
Sometimes the silence is the best way for us to
contemplate how we move forward. At a
time of violence and war, the prophet Isaiah tried to help the people imagine a
countercultural peace, where predators actually lie down with their prey in
healing and wholeness, in shalom. It is
a nonsensical vision but perhaps it opens people’s eyes up to the possibility
and to think what might make for such a radical peace. The writer of the gospel of Matthew, seeing
the evil, violence, and warfare all around, says that to hear God’s voice and
God’s plan, people will need to be vigilant and keep awake in a culture where
people are disappeared regularly and with no notice. We have no idea when God will move into such
a space but it will happen. Get into the
stream. Today, I want to invite you to
or once again to small acts of countercultural practice, connection, and
struggle so that Isaiah and Matthew begin to make sense in our world . . . and
so that the presence, movement, and activity of God become real to us during
this Advent and Christmas season. May it
be so. Amen.
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