SunDec142008
Scripture: ISAIAH 61:1-4, 8-11; HODIE
(DELIVERED IN 3 PARTS, BEFORE EACH SECTION OF R. STROOPE’S HODIE, SUNG BY THE ENSEMBLE.)
It’s December 1, 2008: the first day of Advent this year. A four-year-old Federated boy is given an Advent calendar to help him mark the season. This calendar has an extra treat: each day, when the door is opened, there’s a piece of chocolate to be had. With great delight, he eats the first day’s chocolate. Then, not surprisingly, he says, “I want more.” To which his parents have to tell him, “Not today. You can have another piece tomorrow.” Hoping to change their minds, he asks them again, and again. To which the answer is always the same: not ’til tomorrow. Needless to say, he is somewhat frustrated.
That, in many ways, is an Advent moment. The little boy’s disappointment and disgust are something we all share, in one way or another. As time goes on, the hurts change shape. But they all have this in common: we can’t always have what we want, and life is frequently not what we wish it were. In Advent, we acknowledge this. We look unblinkingly at the world in which we live. This is a penitential season, one in which we grant that there’s an incompleteness to life, that we are regularly at fault, and that we have more than our share of pain, sin, and brokenness.
Somewhere in these pews, for example, sits a woman who has felt a lump in her breast and doesn’t dare go to the doctor. Nearby sits a man whose business is teetering and who wonders how long he can go on. A young person fights back tears, having not the foggiest sense of what the future holds. Someone else is disturbed by their own insensitivity or cruelty. A couple puts on a smile and wishes everyone Merry Christmas, but inside they are wracked by the knowledge that their long-awaited pregnancy has miscarried.
Further afield, that same brokenness discolors the wider world. A child starves and dies now . . . and now . . . and now. A teenager languishes somewhere in the city, broken by betrayal and death. The integrity of the earth is compromised by human waste and excess. Billionaire investment broker Bernard Madoff and Illinois’ Governor Rod Blagojevich become the poster children for tawdry self-centeredness. A young soldier, wanting only to serve and protect, wonders whether this will be the day that everything falls apart. In every direction, inside and out, near and far, there is failure and muck and agony. And because some, I know, are wondering, it’s not “being negative” to acknowledge this. It’s being truthful. As the passage from Isaiah reminds us this morning, there is oppression and broken-heartedness and captivity and mourning aplenty (Is. 61:1-2). This is simply what life is like.
As you hear the first part of Hodie this morning, you might take the opportunity to open up to God about what is empty and missing in your life: your fears and loneliness and despair and grief—the chocolate you crave, the fears that keep you up at night, the tears that come so often, the wound that aches, the peace that seems so elusive. Not so that you can wallow in it or see that as your destination, not because you’re a negative person intent on dragging others down with you, but because it’s only by bringing what’s fractured before God that any of us can really expect to be healed. What’s missing, what aches, for you and for the world?
II
So in Advent, we face what’s broken and we lift it to God. We name our fears and frustrations so that we are clear about exactly what it is that God needs to mend. As we do that, there’s something else we do: we wait. We wait for the birth of Jesus. We wait for presents under the tree and sugar cookies and perhaps a visit with family. We wait for the coming of that holy child to transform our lives. And whether we know it or not, we wait especially for the promised return of Christ, for that time when everything will finally be made right. We set our sights on a future in which what’s broken is fixed.
Theologians sometimes talk about salvation as an “already/not yet” proposition—as something that’s both “already” here and “not yet” here. That apparent contradiction is something we lift up at Advent. First the not yet: while it’s clear that that for which we long eludes us, it is nevertheless promised. It may not happen in our lifetimes, but it will happen: what we most long for will finally come to fruition. That’s what gives us hope. This is what Isaiah tells us: people are oppressed but they will have good news; many are brokenhearted but they will be healed; people are trapped in many different sorts of prisons but they will be set free. The Bible is filled with images like this: wolves living with lambs (Is. 11:6); righteousness and peace kissing each other (Ps. 85:10); the eyes of the blind opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped (Is. 35:5); swords beaten into plowshares (Is. 2:4); justice flowing down like waters (Am. 5:24). These are the images that keep us going. These are the pictures of God’s redeeming work. These are the hopes toward which we point. This is what God will, in due time, make happen.
We focused a few moments ago on what doesn’t work in our lives. It’s time now to focus on all of that working—to picture exactly what wholeness and healing look like in our bodies; to imagine what reconciliation with a friend or family member entails (an apology, perhaps, forgiveness, a caring word, a hug); to lift before God our fondest hopes that sword and shield be laid down in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Sudan, in Congo; to conjure in our mind’s eye the notion of every single person in the whole world having enough food and water and housing and health care. The promises of God are not abstract promises about general happiness and goodness. They are promises that what’s not right will be made right—in your life, in my life, in the world. Take it in. Imagine it. And open yourself now to your role in making it real. God’s salvation is not yet here. But it will be.
III
One more thing. It’s not just next year or in the next life that God’s fondest hopes come to be. Salvation, restoration, healing, wholeness: they’re not just a “not yet,” in other words. Remember what the Ensemble is singing this morning: Hodie: this day! This day Christ is born in our midst. This day our fondest hopes are fulfilled. This day do we taste and smell and see and hear and touch the sweet love of God. The scent of evergreen; the sight of children waiting eagerly for Santa; the sound of music, like this morning’s, that fills us with light and hope; the deep massage, the gentle kiss, the child nestling into our lap as we read a gripping story; the taste of pecan pie and eggnog and korv and chocolate: this is the presence of God made real here and now.
Sometimes that holy presence comes to us like a lightning bolt, and when it does it’s worth stopping to say “thank you.” That’s the “already” part of salvation, and it’s God’s gift to us.
Sometimes, too, that “already” part takes shape as we share the grace we know with the world. Again and again God confers upon us the wherewithal to transmit that love to others. With each smile and hug after today’s worship, with each gift taken to St. Paul’s, with each family housed through IHN, with each young person taught by the Youth Jobs Partnership of Scranton Road Ministries, with each outcast person welcomed into a circle from which they were once excluded, we pass on God’s light and make real what was previously only imagined. That’s our work and our vocation. It is, in fact, our highest privilege: to bring to others the “already” of God’s salvation.
Remember how we began today: a four-year-old Federated boy receives an Advent calendar that offers him a piece of chocolate every day. That first day, he presses for more, but is told several times that he’s limited to the one per day. So, after several repeated requests, but without too much of a struggle, he relents and goes to another room. His parents are frankly somewhat surprised. They marvel that the boy is evidently maturing, that he’s learning how to take disappointment and to move on.
Several minutes later, the phone rings. It’s the Bainbridge police department. “Did you just call 911?” the dispatcher asks. “No,” they say. “Well someone from your house just called here.” Quickly they locate their three children, and see that that all of them are breathing and fine. As the mystery deepens, they notice that their four-year-old has a phone in his hand. And suddenly it all comes clear: he’s been told that you only call 911 in an emergency, and when you don’t have chocolate, in his eyes it’s an emergency! Of course he’s called them! He’s learned his lesson well!
That’s an Advent story. It’s partly that the whole episode embodies for the family the joy of the season. But it’s also that the boy lives through this whole dynamic of pain, “not yet,” and “already.” He notices the brokenness of his world: there’s not enough chocolate! He can see the future, the “not yet,” the promise of God’s coming fulfillment, the chocolate that will come tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. At the same time, though, he knows that sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands, that you have to take that future and wrench it into the present, to make real, right now, the glory and power of God. So he does it.
May we celebrate the gifts of God that are here and now. And may we wrest from the future all the justice and love and peace that are ours to live into, this day and always. Hodie! This day is the day of redemption!