God's comfort in our waiting...

NOTE: These are my sermon notes for Advent II. If you are around at 10:30 on Sunday, December 7th please know you are always welcome.

As many of you know, we gather together on this second Sunday of Advent standing in the shadow of death:

+ The slaughter in Mumbai is fresh in our minds.

+ The 20th anniversary of World AIDS day has come and gone – reminding us that in the last year alone 2.7 million new people became infected with this disease – bringing the international total to a staggering 33 million living souls.

+ And our dear sister and friend, Vicki, Sunday School superintendent at First Church for 8 years and champion of sharing God’s love with our children and families is now close to death after a grace-filled battle with pancreatic cancer that began in February. Small wonder we sing, “O come, o come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel” at this time of year. We are waiting in the darkness with our fears, our sadness and even our anger.

At the same time, however, at the very same time that we stand together in the shadow of death, we also meet to embrace one another in gratitude and hope. For today, amidst our grief we are also welcoming a host of new friends into the circle of Christ’s community we know as First Church – and that is a celebration – a cause for rejoicing. Again the old hymn says: “Rejoice, rejoice Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”

Waiting and comfort, death and new life, sadness and celebration: it’s all here together. Jean Vanier, a Roman Catholic priest who gave birth to a ministry of servant hood to people with special needs, once said: “Because we have been called together, we are a people of celebration; but in our celebrations there is always a note of sadness because not all the people in our world are celebrating.”

Many are lonely and in pain… We have been drawn together by God to be a sign of the resurrection and a sign of unity in this world, where there is so much division and inner and outer death. We feel small and weak, but we are gathered together to signify the power of God who transforms death into life. That is our hope, that God is doing the impossible: changing death to life inside each of us, and that perhaps, through our community, each one of us can be agents in the world of this transformation of brokenness into wholeness, and of death into life.

With stunning simplicity, Vanier gets it right: there is always a sadness in our celebrations because as a community we are seeking God’s comfort amidst the darkness. Sometimes that darkness is within our-selves, often it is in the world and every now and again it is a darkness we cannot name but feel profoundly. Entering into the wisdom of Advent, you see, acknowledges both the celebration and the sadness as we seek God’s comfort in the waiting – and it takes practice.

First, it takes practice to wait. I have rarely met anyone who likes to wait or who organically knows how to be patient. Everyone can get better at waiting, but none of us – especially today – can do it well all by ourselves. So Advent invites – not commands, ok, but invites us – to practice waiting. The Muslim poet, Hafiz, writes:

Don't

Surrender

Your loneliness so quickly.

Let it cut more

Deep.

Let it ferment and season you

As few human

Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight

Has made my eyes so soft,

My voice so

Tender,

My need of God

Absolutely

Clear

One of my spiritual mentors, Gertud Mueller-Nelson, understands that the discipline of waiting in Advent is essential for sacred maturity. In To Dance with God she writes:

Our whole life is spent, one way or another, in waiting. Information puts us on hold and fills our waiting ear with thin, irritating music. Our order from Amazon.com hasn’t come in yet. The elevator must be stuck. Our spouse or friend is late. Will the snow never melt, the rain never stop, the paint ever dry? Will anyone ever understand me? Will I ever change? Life is filled with waiting… so Advent asks us to embrace the very feminine state of being – not doing – waiting… teaching us that the tempo of haste in which we live has less to do with being on time or the efficiency of a busy life – it has to do with our being unable to wait.

Then she makes explicit why waiting – for women and men – matters using the very homey symbols of our home:

As in pregnancy, nothing of value comes into being without a period of quiet incubation: not a healthy baby, not a loving relationship, not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art… rather, a shortened period of incubation brings forth what is not whole or strong or even alive. Brewing, simmering, fermenting, ripening, germinating, gestating are the feminine processes of become and they are the symbolic states of being which belong in a life of value for they are essential to transformation.

And so Advent invites and even urges, but never demands, that we learn to wait – it is one of the ways we are embraced by God’s comfort in the darkness. That is the first insight for today – and the second is that without waiting most of us will be too distracted to see the very comfort that God – and God alone – is already bringing into our lives.

Biblical scholars agree that today’s words from Isaiah come from within the experience of exile. God’s people have already lived a whole generation in Babylon: they have birthed and raised children in this new and foreign land, they have buried and mourned the loss of their elders by the waters of Babylon and they have started to forget what their old existence looked like. So the One who is Holy speaks to a group of angels and commands them to go to the people in exile and speak tenderly to their hearts that the darkness and waiting is over.

Comfort, oh comfort my people," says our God. "Speak softly and tenderly to Jerusalem… and make it very clear that she has served her sentence, that her sin is taken care of – forgiven – now it's over and exile is done with forever.

Jerusalem? It is already in rubble – destroyed and ravaged – telling us that God is preparing to come into the lives of those who are wounded and in the darkness. But come with what? Judgment? Fear? No… with forgiveness so that exile is over and done with forever.

This call to the angels, you see, is to assure that all flesh – not just the Jews or in our case the Christians, not just the baptized or those with right doctrine or pedigree or tradition – but all flesh shall see and experience the blessing of God’s grace and glory in the darkness of real life. And the only response to all of this grace, light, forgiveness, comfort and joy is to do our part in clearing away whatever obstacles we can see that are in the way.

Prepare for God's arrival! Make the road straight and smooth, a highway fit for our God. Fill in the valleys, level off the hills, smooth out the ruts and clear out the rocks. For then God's bright glory will shine and everyone – all flesh – will see it. Yes, all flesh, just as God has said.

A maturing spirituality of Advent – like church membership or even living as people committed to the way of Christ – is NOT about getting it all right. It is not about having the right words or images or traditions – it has NOTHING to do with when we sing or don’t Christmas carols – and it really has precious little to do with right doctrine. They call that getting trapped in the trappings and it always lets us down – mostly because it is our busy work – but also because it is so often mean-spirited.

So what we are asked to explore – in Advent, in church members, in cultivating a spiritual life – is getting rid of the clutter: the stones that might cause us to stumble, the ruts that often trip us up, whatever we notice getting in our way of God’s grace. One of our nation’s finest preachers, Barbara Brown Taylor, puts it best when she says, look:

We are lovers of a God who specializes in turning the world’s values upside down. We are followers of a Lord who waited tables and washed feet. We are heirs of a Spirit who has power to revive the whole creation, beginning with us, but only if we will allow it - by giving up all illusions that we know how to save ourselves and begging God, one more time, to show us how it is done. One reason we run from God’s wisdom, I think, is because we do not know how to behave once we have surrendered our power. Do we just go limp now? Probably not. We should probably go on trying to be the best we know how to be, using the best tools at hand. We just should not fool ourselves into thinking that we know what is really going on. It is entirely possible that some of our proudest achievements are embarrassing to God and some of our most dismal failures please God very much. There is simply no way of telling, since our wisdom is so different from God’s wisdom. The only thing we can be sure of is that everything we offer up is eligible for the transforming power of God, who loves nothing better than bringing the dead back to life.

I think we have some work to do, don’t you? Getting rid of the clutter, wasting time on stuff that doesn’t matter, running around without stopping to prepare ye the way of the Lord. God’s angels are still coming to bring comfort to our hearts for that is a promise forever.

Earlier this week, I was standing in the shadow of the valley of death with Vicki – and as I have shared with some of you, her imminent death has really hit me hard leaving me unusually fragile and raw inside – but I am there. And as I’m kneeling by her bedside hoping to be a sign of reassurance and God’s love for her, she takes my hand, looks me straight in the eye and whispers: “It’s going to be ok. I’m ready. Everything will be alright.” And in that instant, I knew she was right.

Comfort, oh comfort my people," says our God. "Speak softly and tenderly to the very heart of Jerusalem… and make it very clear that she has served her sentence.

Let's get rid of the clutter that doesn’t matter, ok? Inside and out – within and among us – for the Lord really is coming with comfort.