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.