A couple of weeks ago, on the first Saturday in December, I had the opportunity to do something rather strange. I, along with about 50 others, drove up to Scandia, about 40 minutes north, and spent the day in the first church built in Minnesota. It is a little one-room log building, built in 1852, about 15 ft x 20, and it seated the 50 or so of us just about perfectly. Though it was one of those days where the temperatures start out at a high of 15 and drop throughout the day, the building was surprisingly warm – it’s amazing how logs block out cold and hold in warmth.
So, what were we doing there in that little one-room Swedish Lutheran church on the first Saturday in Advent? Why, celebrating Easter, of course! As part of the seminary course on worship that I was taking, my class spent that Saturday afternoon and evening worshipping together, praying together, feasting together, and huddling together to stay warm, as we went through the entire Triduum, that is, the Three days of Easter: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil.
When I first heard about doing this, I thought it seemed weird and contrived. For one thing, I didn’t want to give up a Saturday in Advent, when I could have been spending the day playing with my kids in the snow or baking Christmas cookies. But I also felt like we would all be play-acting – pretending to celebrate Easter when we really were in an Advent and Christmas frame of mind. Even the weather was conspiring against us – it is hard to imagine singing “Now the Green Blade rises,” when there isn’t a scrap of green to be seen in the landscape and the snow is blowing across a solid frozen lake. It is hard to get your head around the symbols of new life that we associate with Easter when the world around us is going ever deeper into a winter slumber.
So I went to this day not exactly in the spirit of the thing, but determined to make the best of it, if I could. But as the day unfolded, as I heard the readings and lamentations and sang the songs and prayers, I began to feel that it was just as fitting to do this in the midst of Advent and winter as at the end of Lent at the coming of spring. After all, when it comes right down to it, the point of Advent and Christmas, is the same as the point of Lent and Easter. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
I have always been drawn to that line from the introduction to the book of John. The image is one that is so deep, so primal, an image that touches the very depths of what it is to be human. Light in darkness, light that cannot be overcome by darkness, gets to the heart of our longings. It takes us back to our beginnings, our ancestors gathered around a fire, with the darkness and wild animals threatening. Though most of us don’t live that way anymore, it is still easy to find darkness. We are confronted daily with darkness. The power went out at our apartment this past Sunday afternoon. We pulled out candles and blankets, covered the windows and doors to keep the heat in, and hunkered down. As the sun went down, it started to get dark, and we lit all our candles, so that it was bright enough to read a book in our living room. We were okay for the evening, and eventually we went out to a friend’s house for dinner. The power still wasn’t on when we came home and piled into one big bed covered in blankets to sleep. And it still wasn’t on when we woke up the next morning. I started to worry: what if it was still out that night, or the next? I don’t have enough blankets and candles to overcome the darkness and cold that was threatening at that moment.
Fortunately, the power came back on by mid-afternoon Monday, while Grace and I were taking refuge at Pastor Carlson’s house. We had a warm place to sleep that night, and the lights on our Christmas tree are twinkling today. But it left me thinking about light in dark places again. We were confronted with literal darkness on Sunday night, and with other kinds of darkness as well: cold, fear, worry. There are other darknesses that threaten to close in on us: money worries, unemployment, loneliness, illness, death. And we have lights, candles that we light to ward off those darknesses: savings accounts, 401ks, insurance, television, books, knowledge, technology of all sorts. But eventually, no matter how we shore up the defenses, those things fail. Sometimes they even become the darkness, as has happened this year with so many people’s 401ks. The stock market, which was the security blanket of so many, has become the source of worry and worse. Eventually, the power goes out, and we are left confronted by darkness.
In those moments, when we are confronted by darkness, we have one light left. At the darkest moments, when the darkness threatens to overcome us, a light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. On the darkest night of the year, a baby is born, the Son of God, in the darkest place, a manger in a stable. At the worst moment, when there is no room in the inn, when we are alone in the world, and all the lights that we have placed as defenses against the darknesses have failed us, one light remains, Jesus the Christ, God incarnate. God incarnate! God, who has been born into the world in the same messy and difficult way that each of us has. God, who has been born into the world to experience the darknesses: worry, loneliness, illness, death. God, who has been born into the world to bring new life through death and resurrection!
Perhaps it’s not so hard after all to imagine singing Easter songs as Christmas carols. In the manger we have new life, God who surprises us by choosing to be here with us. And in the cross we have new life, God who surprises us by choosing to die here for us. And in the resurrection, we have new life, God who surprises us by overcoming death and the grave, by being the light shining even in that, the ultimate darkness, the light that even the darkness of death cannot overcome. I guess the words of “Now the Green Blade Rises” do fit as a Christmas carol. Open your hymnbook to song #379. Can we sing the last verse together? “When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain, Your touch can call us back to life again. Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: love is come again like wheat arising green.”
Love is come again, born in the manger, to die on the cross, to overcome the darkness and bring good news of salvation to all people. Amen.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Advent 3 - Isaiah 61
Most of you know by now that I was not raised as a Christian. The exception was Christmas. Once a year, starting right after Thanksgiving, our home began to transform. Lights went up, the tree was decorated, cookies flowed like water, my dad set up a little village of ceramic houses on a cotton snow field. We looked forward to Christmas. Really, we started celebrating Christmas before December 1, and stretched it out as long as we could. It was bad luck to take the tree down before New Year’s. We didn’t talk a whole lot about God or Jesus during that time, though they were mentioned. But we talked a lot about joy, about mystery, about light coming into dark places. To understand Christmas in my childhood, you have to understand Christmas in my father’s childhood.
My dad grew up in an alcoholic home. His father was a binge drinker who was often abusive, mostly emotionally, but sometimes physically as well. His mother, though loving, was not able to shield her six children from her husband’s abuse. Eleven months out of the year, my father spent time ducking and hiding, developing coping mechanisms and figuring out how to get out of the way. One of his favorite ways to escape, once he was old enough, was to get on his bike and ride. It was on these rides, he says now, that he most experienced grace, in the ability to find out who he was beyond the confines of the family’s dysfunction.
The only other time that things let up was Christmas. Though there was still drinking, there were also lots of people around. The number of grown-ups in the house around the holidays meant that there were buffers to my grandfather’s moods. There were aunts and cousins and friends whom he wanted to impress, and who could distract him. For the time around Christmas, their father was on his best behavior, and my dad could relax and enjoy an almost normal family life.
One consequence of life in that household was that for about 11 months a year, it was pretty difficult for my dad to believe in God. The family went to church, where he heard about God, but he didn’t really see much evidence of God in his day-to-day life. And unfortunately the church he attended did not do much to help. But for about a month each year, and when he was able to get away on his bike, my dad could hear the words of Isaiah and believe that there was such a thing as a God who would send “good news to the oppressed, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners, and comfort those who mourn.” At those times, my dad could imagine what it would mean to “greatly rejoice, to exult, to be clothed in the garment of salvation, covered in the robe of righteousness.”
Many in the world today are skeptical of what we confess: that our God chose to be born into the world, chose to live here among sinners, and then chose to die on the cross for the sake of each and every one of those sinners. Given the condition of the world, I can understand their skepticism. Some days, I even share it. But at this time of year, as darkness closes in around us, we have some time to reflect on how mystery touches the world, as the year begins to turn, and the earth begins to tilt back toward the light. In this time of the year, we have the opportunity to speak to one another, and even to the skeptics, about mystery, about light coming into dark places, about joy. We have the opportunity to arise, greatly rejoicing in the Lord, and in so doing, share a bit of the good news ourselves.
In 1983, a friend asked my dad to help find a bike for her son for Christmas. She couldn’t afford a new one, so my dad pulled together some parts he found, and fixed them up. By the time he was done he had a handful of new bikes, including one for his friend’s son. Since then, he has delivered nearly 5000 bikes, including about 1000 to Africa and South America. He now has a workshop space downtown, and coordinates with local and international agencies and organizations. The Christmas bikes have become a ministry of his church, with organized work parties and donations throughout the year. When he talks about this ministry, he says that this is his way of sharing with others the moments of God that he experienced in his childhood. To put words in his mouth, this is his way of rising up and rejoicing, of exulting God, by sharing with others a foretaste of the feast to come, by allowing the kingdom some room to break in.
I see in my father’s life an example of how God works. Obviously things were hard for my dad growing up. And he still deals with the results of that broken family, as do his siblings, and even some of us in my generation. But that is not proof, as the skeptics would say, that God is not present. Rather the moments of escape, of finding ourselves in spite of the world around us, are proof that God is present, even in our darkest moments. In those moments, God is at work in us to redeem the world, one life at a time, by making room for light to come into dark places. And then God moves us, one life at a time, to share that light with others.
The words we hear today from Isaiah are the very words that Jesus spoke in the synagogue in Nazareth. God, who spoke through the prophets, who was born to us in a stable, and who comes to us again and again, year after year, and day after day, spoke these very words, and claimed their purpose as God’s own. And year after year, day after day, God works in us and in our lives, renewing us through our baptism, forgiving our sins and offering us a moment of grace, a time of joy, a touch of mystery, and a glimpse of light coming into dark places. Each of us has experienced it. And for each of us God finds a way to move us so that we too may rejoice in it, may share it with others, may arise to meet God in the light.
My dad grew up in an alcoholic home. His father was a binge drinker who was often abusive, mostly emotionally, but sometimes physically as well. His mother, though loving, was not able to shield her six children from her husband’s abuse. Eleven months out of the year, my father spent time ducking and hiding, developing coping mechanisms and figuring out how to get out of the way. One of his favorite ways to escape, once he was old enough, was to get on his bike and ride. It was on these rides, he says now, that he most experienced grace, in the ability to find out who he was beyond the confines of the family’s dysfunction.
The only other time that things let up was Christmas. Though there was still drinking, there were also lots of people around. The number of grown-ups in the house around the holidays meant that there were buffers to my grandfather’s moods. There were aunts and cousins and friends whom he wanted to impress, and who could distract him. For the time around Christmas, their father was on his best behavior, and my dad could relax and enjoy an almost normal family life.
One consequence of life in that household was that for about 11 months a year, it was pretty difficult for my dad to believe in God. The family went to church, where he heard about God, but he didn’t really see much evidence of God in his day-to-day life. And unfortunately the church he attended did not do much to help. But for about a month each year, and when he was able to get away on his bike, my dad could hear the words of Isaiah and believe that there was such a thing as a God who would send “good news to the oppressed, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners, and comfort those who mourn.” At those times, my dad could imagine what it would mean to “greatly rejoice, to exult, to be clothed in the garment of salvation, covered in the robe of righteousness.”
Many in the world today are skeptical of what we confess: that our God chose to be born into the world, chose to live here among sinners, and then chose to die on the cross for the sake of each and every one of those sinners. Given the condition of the world, I can understand their skepticism. Some days, I even share it. But at this time of year, as darkness closes in around us, we have some time to reflect on how mystery touches the world, as the year begins to turn, and the earth begins to tilt back toward the light. In this time of the year, we have the opportunity to speak to one another, and even to the skeptics, about mystery, about light coming into dark places, about joy. We have the opportunity to arise, greatly rejoicing in the Lord, and in so doing, share a bit of the good news ourselves.
In 1983, a friend asked my dad to help find a bike for her son for Christmas. She couldn’t afford a new one, so my dad pulled together some parts he found, and fixed them up. By the time he was done he had a handful of new bikes, including one for his friend’s son. Since then, he has delivered nearly 5000 bikes, including about 1000 to Africa and South America. He now has a workshop space downtown, and coordinates with local and international agencies and organizations. The Christmas bikes have become a ministry of his church, with organized work parties and donations throughout the year. When he talks about this ministry, he says that this is his way of sharing with others the moments of God that he experienced in his childhood. To put words in his mouth, this is his way of rising up and rejoicing, of exulting God, by sharing with others a foretaste of the feast to come, by allowing the kingdom some room to break in.
I see in my father’s life an example of how God works. Obviously things were hard for my dad growing up. And he still deals with the results of that broken family, as do his siblings, and even some of us in my generation. But that is not proof, as the skeptics would say, that God is not present. Rather the moments of escape, of finding ourselves in spite of the world around us, are proof that God is present, even in our darkest moments. In those moments, God is at work in us to redeem the world, one life at a time, by making room for light to come into dark places. And then God moves us, one life at a time, to share that light with others.
The words we hear today from Isaiah are the very words that Jesus spoke in the synagogue in Nazareth. God, who spoke through the prophets, who was born to us in a stable, and who comes to us again and again, year after year, and day after day, spoke these very words, and claimed their purpose as God’s own. And year after year, day after day, God works in us and in our lives, renewing us through our baptism, forgiving our sins and offering us a moment of grace, a time of joy, a touch of mystery, and a glimpse of light coming into dark places. Each of us has experienced it. And for each of us God finds a way to move us so that we too may rejoice in it, may share it with others, may arise to meet God in the light.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Advent 2 - Isaiah 40
I don’t know about you, but I have nights when I lie awake, unable to sleep for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s because of something outside myself, like the night I sat up all night with Holden because he was sick and couldn’t sleep. But usually my wakeful nights come from inside my own head. At one point, when we lived in Seattle, I realized I wasn’t sleeping because I was lying awake trying to remember everything that I had to do for the rest of the week. I solved that problem by getting myself a date-book so I could keep my calendar and make lists of things that needed my attention. For a while after that I slept really well. But more often than that, I have found myself lying awake thinking. Well, thinking isn’t really the best word for it, more like stewing, or as Nelson calls it, “perseverating.” Sometimes I’m worrying about what to say in a paper or sermon that I’m working on. But more often I’m worrying about something I said or did that I wish I hadn’t, or something I didn’t say or do that I wish I had, or how I can mess up on something that I’m going to say or do. Stewing about these things can’t actually change them, I know, but that doesn’t stop me from stewing. And it always seems like I do the worst of my fretting in the darkest hours of the night.
In the season of Advent it is easy to fall into stewing. Here in the darkest hours of the year, we are inclined to look back at the things that we have done over the past year. Though our culture likes to focus this yearly review around New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, the church year has already started, and the readings that are set for the season of Advent invite us to take some time to look back and consider where we have been. Indeed, we are invited to stew a bit in the darkest days of the year. But this is stewing with a purpose. We are stewing now in anticipation, as we prepare for the arrival of our God, whose incarnation we will celebrate in just two weeks. In the meantime, we are invited, especially in this week’s readings, to think about how to prepare ourselves for that arrival.
Today’s Isaiah reading reminds us of John the Baptist’s call to repentance and our preparation for Christ’s arrival. The problem is, in our culture, and sometimes even in the church, we tend to confuse stewing with repentance. We shy away from the word “repent” because we think it means that we should sit and think about all of the things we messed up, and focus our energy on how we’ve gone wrong. And frankly, that’s a real downer, so why would we want to do it? Why would we want to repent, if it means we are going to spend our time focusing on everything that’s wrong, rather than those few things that we get right?
But that is not the kind of call that we hear from our God through Isaiah. Instead of harsh condemnation or a focus on our sins, the first words from God’s mouth are “Comfort, O comfort my people…speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” Yes, Isaiah acknowledges the sins of Israel, and indeed that Israel has paid for those sins. And Isaiah stews a bit on these sins. When God calls on him to preach to the people, to cry out, Isaiah responds, “What shall I cry? All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades…surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades.” That sounds a lot like what is going through my mind when I lie awake at 3am, going over and over my failings. Isaiah is perseverating as surely as ever I do.
Yet in contrast to condemnation, to wallowing in our wrongs, what we hear next is God’s promise: “the word of our God will stand forever.” Here in the darkest night of the year, as we stew over all that we might have done differently, all that we didn’t do that we wish we had, all that we imagine we will do wrong in the coming year, Isaiah reminds us that even here God’s word stands. And knowing that, we might actually be able to rest. We might actually find our rest and dream about God’s promises through the night.
Because there is where repentance really happens. Not in the hours that we lie awake and play over and over our worst moments. But later , after the hours of rest, when we finally allow ourselves to fall asleep and rest in the dreams of God’s promises. We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. Why then, would God want us to lie awake beating ourselves up for something that we can’t fix? Instead, God invites us to rest, to turn ourselves over to the dream, the vision that God has for our lives, the promises that God has set before us. The stewing has its place, but that is not the work that God has set for us.
Having planted the dreams of God’s promises here in our rest, God now nudges us awake. In the light of the new day, those worries of the wee hours always seem strange, overblown, out-of-place. In the light of the new day, we can compare our stewing to God’s promises, and we can see that God’s promises win. And then we are able to repent. In Hebrew, the word that we translate as repent means to turn back, to return. It is a word that is about remembering what God sees in us, what God has promised us, and then trying to align our lives with that vision. It is the moment when we awake and make our plans for a new day, a day that will be different from the ones that left us stewing. Of course we’ll still get it wrong, but in those moments we can remember what God has promised: Comfort and constancy.
This week we are stewing, lying awake, waiting for the rest that is to come. But we can see it, not far off. Soon we will meet God’s promises face to face, in the form of a newborn baby, God born into the world for our sake. It is the promise of Jesus Christ that we can rest in. It is the promise of Christ that gives us the strength to face the new day, the new year, and to repent, to return to what God has promised. God invites us now to rest, to dream, so that we can awaken to the reality of God’s promises in the light of Jesus Christ, and arise to meet God in the light.
In the season of Advent it is easy to fall into stewing. Here in the darkest hours of the year, we are inclined to look back at the things that we have done over the past year. Though our culture likes to focus this yearly review around New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, the church year has already started, and the readings that are set for the season of Advent invite us to take some time to look back and consider where we have been. Indeed, we are invited to stew a bit in the darkest days of the year. But this is stewing with a purpose. We are stewing now in anticipation, as we prepare for the arrival of our God, whose incarnation we will celebrate in just two weeks. In the meantime, we are invited, especially in this week’s readings, to think about how to prepare ourselves for that arrival.
Today’s Isaiah reading reminds us of John the Baptist’s call to repentance and our preparation for Christ’s arrival. The problem is, in our culture, and sometimes even in the church, we tend to confuse stewing with repentance. We shy away from the word “repent” because we think it means that we should sit and think about all of the things we messed up, and focus our energy on how we’ve gone wrong. And frankly, that’s a real downer, so why would we want to do it? Why would we want to repent, if it means we are going to spend our time focusing on everything that’s wrong, rather than those few things that we get right?
But that is not the kind of call that we hear from our God through Isaiah. Instead of harsh condemnation or a focus on our sins, the first words from God’s mouth are “Comfort, O comfort my people…speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” Yes, Isaiah acknowledges the sins of Israel, and indeed that Israel has paid for those sins. And Isaiah stews a bit on these sins. When God calls on him to preach to the people, to cry out, Isaiah responds, “What shall I cry? All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades…surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades.” That sounds a lot like what is going through my mind when I lie awake at 3am, going over and over my failings. Isaiah is perseverating as surely as ever I do.
Yet in contrast to condemnation, to wallowing in our wrongs, what we hear next is God’s promise: “the word of our God will stand forever.” Here in the darkest night of the year, as we stew over all that we might have done differently, all that we didn’t do that we wish we had, all that we imagine we will do wrong in the coming year, Isaiah reminds us that even here God’s word stands. And knowing that, we might actually be able to rest. We might actually find our rest and dream about God’s promises through the night.
Because there is where repentance really happens. Not in the hours that we lie awake and play over and over our worst moments. But later , after the hours of rest, when we finally allow ourselves to fall asleep and rest in the dreams of God’s promises. We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. Why then, would God want us to lie awake beating ourselves up for something that we can’t fix? Instead, God invites us to rest, to turn ourselves over to the dream, the vision that God has for our lives, the promises that God has set before us. The stewing has its place, but that is not the work that God has set for us.
Having planted the dreams of God’s promises here in our rest, God now nudges us awake. In the light of the new day, those worries of the wee hours always seem strange, overblown, out-of-place. In the light of the new day, we can compare our stewing to God’s promises, and we can see that God’s promises win. And then we are able to repent. In Hebrew, the word that we translate as repent means to turn back, to return. It is a word that is about remembering what God sees in us, what God has promised us, and then trying to align our lives with that vision. It is the moment when we awake and make our plans for a new day, a day that will be different from the ones that left us stewing. Of course we’ll still get it wrong, but in those moments we can remember what God has promised: Comfort and constancy.
This week we are stewing, lying awake, waiting for the rest that is to come. But we can see it, not far off. Soon we will meet God’s promises face to face, in the form of a newborn baby, God born into the world for our sake. It is the promise of Jesus Christ that we can rest in. It is the promise of Christ that gives us the strength to face the new day, the new year, and to repent, to return to what God has promised. God invites us now to rest, to dream, so that we can awaken to the reality of God’s promises in the light of Jesus Christ, and arise to meet God in the light.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Advent 1: Isaiah 64
Last year, my family and I left Seattle, where we had lived for almost 14 years, and moved to St. Paul so that I could attend seminary. It was exciting and stressful all at once. Though we were looking forward to our time at Luther Seminary, we were also leaving behind our first house, our neighbors, our dearest friends and most of Nelson’s family. We had to say goodbye to the church where we both came to faith, where we were married and where both of our children had been baptized. We drove out of a city that was our first home together, a city that we know by heart and adore, heading east toward a much larger and completely unknown metropolis. Once we arrived, we had the distractions of housing problems, moving twice, unpacking, getting Grace registered for and started in Kindergarten, finding a job for Nelson, getting childcare for Holden, who was too young for the seminary daycare, and of course, getting me started on my seminary coursework. By the time the dust settled, it was Thanksgiving, starting to get cold. We weren’t quite sure what to expect of our first winter in Minnesota.
One day in early December, I hiked up the hill for class, through the cold morning air, contemplating how to deal with the coming colder weather. On the way, I passed a few people wrapped up in winter scarves and hats, so that only their eyes showed. I figured I probably knew them, but I couldn’t tell who they were all wrapped up like that, so I just nodded, and kept going. In class, I saw and spoke to a few people, talked about coursework and the coming holidays, but there were no deep conversations. As I left and headed home at the end of the day, the sky was darkening and snow was beginning to fall. I suddenly felt lonely. A deep, heavy, sinking feeling, longing to hear the voice of my best friend, to hold her kids and have dinner with her and her husband, wishing to drive to my mother-in-law’s house, where we are always welcomed with warmth, food, drink, good conversation, and games. It was such a strong longing, it was physical, visceral. I had to stop for a moment. I found my phone and called Amy, by best friend, just to hear her voice, and it helped, but the feeling lingered. It was a desire to be with the people who know me as well as anyone can know me, and who love me anyway. It was a very Advent sort of feeling.
This is a time of year when we can’t help but feel a little out-of-sorts, even surrounded by loved ones. The whole world is going to sleep, and our natural instinct is to take a nap, too – to snuggle down and wait, and dream. On a practical level, we’re dreaming of the return of warmth, the sun, green things growing. We’re dreaming of the renewal of life in the natural world, and so we surround ourselves with candles and lights and evergreens. But on another level, a more difficult-to-explain level, we’re dreaming of the renewal of life in ourselves. And so we long – my longing for my loved ones was an echo of this longing, of the dreaming we do during the Advent season. We long for God, and as the world goes to sleep around us, we may feel God’s absence more often than we feel God’s presence. Certainly as we look at the difficult times in the world, as words like recession and unemployment, terrorism and chaos are thrown around in the media, as we anticipate the coming change of government, no matter your political leanings, we have reason to feel anxious. Times of change are always difficult, and as the dust settles, we may be left wondering where we fit in, just as I did on that day last December.
The prophet Isaiah speaks about that pain in the section we just read. This was written in the time when Israel had returned to Jerusalem after years of exile. They had been expecting that everything would be perfect after their return, and they found instead that things were still difficult. There were obstacles yet to overcome, and they found themselves wondering where God was in all of this. Isaiah says that God has hidden from Israel, because of their sins. Even their righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. Things are so bad that even when they do right, they do wrong, and are left feeling that God is missing. The consequences of decisions we make, even good ones, can be painful, and we can be left wondering, “where is God in this?”
As we ask ourselves “where is God?” we also must ask ourselves, “what kind of God are we looking for? What kind of God do we long for in this dark and troubled time? What kind of God is it that we are dreaming of in this season?” Are we, like Isaiah, dreaming of a warrior God, who “would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake…so that nations might tremble”? We may feel that this is who we’re seeking – a God who will come and set things right, clear up the troubles that we have caused, set the markets right, clean up the seas and the air, put our adversaries in their place. Indeed, that may be the God we dream of in our darkest moments, as it seems that we are at our loneliest. We, like our psalmist, may pray,
O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
9But those who seek to destroy my life
shall go down into the depths of the earth;
10they shall be given over to the power of the sword,
they shall be prey for jackals.
Yet Isaiah reminds us, God is our Father, our potter, our Creator. God comes to us, yes. God comes to us to support us and be with us in our darkest moment. Just when the nights are longest, just when we are at our coldest, and our most lonely, just when we are sure that we will have nothing before us ever again but our dreams, God comes to us. But God comes, not as a warrior, bent on destruction. No, God comes to us as a baby, a little vulnerable human being, bent on reconciliation and relation. At our darkest moment, when we long for those who know us as well as anyone can and who love us anyway, God comes to us in human form, and says to us, “I know you better even than you know yourself. And I love you enough to live in the broken world alongside you. And I love you enough to own everything that you are and everything that you have done.” And the light begins to shine, and our dreams begin to fade, and we begin to awake to the reality of God’s promises.
One day in early December, I hiked up the hill for class, through the cold morning air, contemplating how to deal with the coming colder weather. On the way, I passed a few people wrapped up in winter scarves and hats, so that only their eyes showed. I figured I probably knew them, but I couldn’t tell who they were all wrapped up like that, so I just nodded, and kept going. In class, I saw and spoke to a few people, talked about coursework and the coming holidays, but there were no deep conversations. As I left and headed home at the end of the day, the sky was darkening and snow was beginning to fall. I suddenly felt lonely. A deep, heavy, sinking feeling, longing to hear the voice of my best friend, to hold her kids and have dinner with her and her husband, wishing to drive to my mother-in-law’s house, where we are always welcomed with warmth, food, drink, good conversation, and games. It was such a strong longing, it was physical, visceral. I had to stop for a moment. I found my phone and called Amy, by best friend, just to hear her voice, and it helped, but the feeling lingered. It was a desire to be with the people who know me as well as anyone can know me, and who love me anyway. It was a very Advent sort of feeling.
This is a time of year when we can’t help but feel a little out-of-sorts, even surrounded by loved ones. The whole world is going to sleep, and our natural instinct is to take a nap, too – to snuggle down and wait, and dream. On a practical level, we’re dreaming of the return of warmth, the sun, green things growing. We’re dreaming of the renewal of life in the natural world, and so we surround ourselves with candles and lights and evergreens. But on another level, a more difficult-to-explain level, we’re dreaming of the renewal of life in ourselves. And so we long – my longing for my loved ones was an echo of this longing, of the dreaming we do during the Advent season. We long for God, and as the world goes to sleep around us, we may feel God’s absence more often than we feel God’s presence. Certainly as we look at the difficult times in the world, as words like recession and unemployment, terrorism and chaos are thrown around in the media, as we anticipate the coming change of government, no matter your political leanings, we have reason to feel anxious. Times of change are always difficult, and as the dust settles, we may be left wondering where we fit in, just as I did on that day last December.
The prophet Isaiah speaks about that pain in the section we just read. This was written in the time when Israel had returned to Jerusalem after years of exile. They had been expecting that everything would be perfect after their return, and they found instead that things were still difficult. There were obstacles yet to overcome, and they found themselves wondering where God was in all of this. Isaiah says that God has hidden from Israel, because of their sins. Even their righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. Things are so bad that even when they do right, they do wrong, and are left feeling that God is missing. The consequences of decisions we make, even good ones, can be painful, and we can be left wondering, “where is God in this?”
As we ask ourselves “where is God?” we also must ask ourselves, “what kind of God are we looking for? What kind of God do we long for in this dark and troubled time? What kind of God is it that we are dreaming of in this season?” Are we, like Isaiah, dreaming of a warrior God, who “would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake…so that nations might tremble”? We may feel that this is who we’re seeking – a God who will come and set things right, clear up the troubles that we have caused, set the markets right, clean up the seas and the air, put our adversaries in their place. Indeed, that may be the God we dream of in our darkest moments, as it seems that we are at our loneliest. We, like our psalmist, may pray,
O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
9But those who seek to destroy my life
shall go down into the depths of the earth;
10they shall be given over to the power of the sword,
they shall be prey for jackals.
Yet Isaiah reminds us, God is our Father, our potter, our Creator. God comes to us, yes. God comes to us to support us and be with us in our darkest moment. Just when the nights are longest, just when we are at our coldest, and our most lonely, just when we are sure that we will have nothing before us ever again but our dreams, God comes to us. But God comes, not as a warrior, bent on destruction. No, God comes to us as a baby, a little vulnerable human being, bent on reconciliation and relation. At our darkest moment, when we long for those who know us as well as anyone can and who love us anyway, God comes to us in human form, and says to us, “I know you better even than you know yourself. And I love you enough to live in the broken world alongside you. And I love you enough to own everything that you are and everything that you have done.” And the light begins to shine, and our dreams begin to fade, and we begin to awake to the reality of God’s promises.
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