SunNov302008
Scripture: ISAIAH 64:1-9; I CORINTHIANS 1:3-9
As Advent sounds its first bell this morning, I’m reminded of that Southwest Airlines ad on TV, in which the customer is greeted by the friendly attendant at the terminal, and then, as soon as he asks about checking extra bags, her nice face turns 180 degrees and becomes hard-edged and mean. Two seemingly incompatible faces on that woman. And two faces for us this morning, as well.
Advent is filled with dualities. Like the ancient Roman god Janus, it looks both backward to God’s past deeds and forward to God’s call. That’s one duality. A second is that Advent is a season of waiting, but it’s two kinds of waiting: it waits for the birth of Jesus, and at the same time it yearns for Christ’s coming again at the end of time.
And then, in a third duality, we get the two faces presented in this morning’s scripture readings, which we’ll fill out a little bit more this morning. First face: the people have been notable failures and God has seemed incredibly distant. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” says Isaiah to God. “[Y]ou were angry and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. ” (Is. 64:1, 5-6). In the eyes of the prophet, God has left and gone to live in some faraway land, and the people have behaved incredibly badly. Isaiah is torn between wanting to blame the people for their awful behavior and blaming God for vanishing.
People failing, God vanishing: this is the first face. And it wasn’t just long-ago Israel that encountered that face, either. The prophet speaks for us, too. He sees what a mess we make of our relationships and the earth itself. He sees how hard-edged we can be with our children and our parents. He sees how easily a wave of greed can sweep us away on its swell and undermine an entire financial system. He sees how readily we’ll waste the earth’s resources for the sake of our own convenience. He sees how prone we are to guarding our turf at work, at church, in the home, eager to declare our own rights, not so willing to concede the rights of others. So, yes, he speaks for us when he says “We’re all sin-infected, sin-contaminated. Our best efforts are grease-stained rags” (64:6, The Message). We are less than honest with ourselves if we don’t gaze upon this face of Advent, if we don’t let Advent point a rather scolding finger at us, reminding us of our shortcomings.
Perhaps even more alarming, and just as much a part of that first discomfiting face: who can blame us if we act that way? Where is God as things go so badly here; why has God abandoned us and left us to our own devices; why has God let me get sick, or let me lose my job, or let my spouse stray or my marriage decompose; where is God when terrorists attack Mumbai, or a beloved soldier dies in Iraq? We understand when the prophet says, “Because you hid yourself we transgressed” (64:5).
This first face of Advent is a disagreeable face. It makes us wince. It exposes both our own worst instincts and also our deep bewilderment at a God who so often seems to have gone on vacation. We are deeply compromised, and God has apparently left the premises. This face isn’t much fun. It doesn’t make us feel good. And it’s a true face.
At the same time, though, we’re gifted by a radically different second face. What a bracing counter-message we hear from both the prophet Isaiah and the early apostle Paul, both of whom speak a restorative and hopeful word into the truth of our obvious failures and God’s apparent distance. This second face is extraordinarily far removed from from the first. They are poles apart.
Here’s the word of that second face: in Isaiah’s eyes, God is the forgiving parent, the potter who shapes us with infinite care (Is. 64:8). In Paul’s eyes, God is the one who bestows grace and peace, and assures us that we “are not lacking in any spiritual gift”; God strengthens us and promises that we will finally be blameless; “God is faithful” and wraps us in the arms of God’s own community (I Cor. 1:3, 7-8). What an incredibly dissimilar face this is to that ugly first one.
If we’re honest with ourselves, this is where we live our lives, on that cusp, in the doorway between those two rooms. We stand right on that threshold, knowing that we could go either way, and knowing, too, that both rooms contain a piece of us. As does everyone, each of us sins and falls short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23), and most of us wonder, at least occasionally, where God is and why everything isn’t made right. We have one foot in that sometimes harsh and scary room. And at the same time, that other room calls to us: grace and peace are ours; at our final destiny, we will stand blameless before God; and no matter how things look, we are not lacking in any spiritual gift.
Advent is the season of that endlessly dichotomous gift. When the season is full and spiritually healthy, we make it a time of both confession and assurance. We let God and each other know what we’ve done wrong. And we bask in the forgiveness offered to us anyway, by the grace of God. We revel, in other words, in God’s declaration of pardon.
If you’re like me, you may find it difficult to confess your shortcomings. Many of us recoil at having to acknowledge that we have done something wrong. I can spend a good deal of time justifying my behavior to myself and occasionally to others. “Well the reason I did this was because so-and-so did it to me first”; or “I couldn’t help it”; or “I was tired”; or “I didn’t know all the facts.” I’m so not beyond justifying my behavior, explaining it away, making excuses for it.
Some of the best moments of my life, though, have come when I’ve finally been able to say, “I shouldn’t have done that. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.” Rather than make up excuses, it can be such a relief to say simply, “I forgot. I made a mistake. I let you down and I really regret it.” Acknowledging that we have hurt each other can be wonderfully freeing.
It’s only possible to do this, though, because we know ahead of time that God, and perhaps God working in the heart of the one we’ve wronged, is inclined to offer us forgiveness. If I think that all I’m going to get is a slap and punishment for what I’ve done wrong, I am likely never to confess it. I’m only able to confess because I sense that there will be forgiveness. And there will be forgiveness, because this is what God has promised.
Ernest Campbell, a wonderful preacher, tells the story of a family that “was the proud possessor of a valued vase that had come down through several generations. It stood in the living room as a prized artifact. The young son was admonished never to roughhouse in that room, out of respect for the vase. [You can see where this is going!] One afternoon he and one of his friends began tossing a ball around in that room. The unwanted happened. The ball hit the vase and toppled it into an irreparable mass of worthless chips. The father arrived home first. Seeing his son convulsed in tears, he summoned his compassion and said, ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s all right’ [and if you’re like me, your first instinct is, ‘Good job, Dad’]. The lad was not consoled [though]. A short time later his mother entered the room, put her arms around the boy’s neck, and said, ‘It matters, but it’s all right’” (Preaching as a Theological Task, Long and Farley, ed’s., pp. 107-8). It does matter. But it’s still all right.
This, in a word, is the good news of the gospel, and it’s the news that’s played out in the meal we are about to receive. First face: just as the bread is broken, so we too are broken. It’s an undeniable fact that we have injured and offended each other and God. And that matters deeply. It does us no good to pretend otherwise. “We have erred and strayed from [God’s] ways”; we have burdened God’s world with choices and actions that have marred its fabric and hurt its people and even threatened its future. That’s pretty awful, and it begs to be confessed.
At the same time, though, there’s the second face: right in the midst of that broken bread, there is wholeness and nourishment. Our sins and errors matter, but it’s all right. No matter how grimly we have behaved, we are welcomed home, at every step, by a father who adores us, a mother who says, “I love you anyway—begin again.” So as you eat this meal, “go and sin no more” (John 8:11). And at the same time, even if, and when, you do sin, confess the fault and hear the words of God addressed to you and me: “you are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). This is the gospel. Thanks be to God.