The First Sunday of Advent: Hope!

Isaiah 60:1-9

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence-- 2as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. 5You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.

6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.

Mark 13:24-37

24 ‘But in those days, after that suffering,

the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
25and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

26Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

28 ‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

32 ‘But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’ (NRSV)

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Outside the walls of this sanctuary, Christmas is already here. No matter that we hadn’t even gotten to Thanksgiving when the Christmas Bells started Jingling on the pop radio stations. No matter that Santa Claus won’t be breezing down the chimney for another four weeks. We are awash in a sea of red and green, immersed in a yuletide of hectic joy. Christmas is here.

Or is it?

C.S. Lewis said that “The Christian faith is a thing of unspeakable joy. But it does not begin with joy, but rather in despair. And it is no good trying to reach the joy without first going through the despair.”

I guess despair doesn’t sell enough video games. Because outside the walls of this sanctuary, something very strange is happening, and it happens every year. It is more akin to the masquerade of Halloween than the hard road to Bethlehem. It is a big game of make-believe, and it is a game with a high price tag, literally and figuratively.

The world around us seems to be saying, “Let’s pretend. Let’s pretend that there is nothing to cause us despair. Let’s pretend that everything will be okay if we get just get some new stuff, sing a few happy songs, and make appearances at a the holiday parties.” I’ve heard the December frenzy called “Eggnogging our way to bliss.”

Only there is no bliss at the bottom of the mug of eggnog. False cheer is a poor substitute for genuine joy. False cheer cannot grapple with truth, cannot observe reality. False cheer simply hopes that despair will disintegrate without ever acknowledging that it exists.

No wonder the church isn’t always a very popular place to hang out. Christians don’t have the option to ignore suffering and pretend that the world is peachy keen. The narrative of our faith boldly wrestles with death and despair. And the Season of Advent is no exception. The scriptures we read today are as far from false cheer as you can get.

As William Willimon writes, “The world wants Christmas jingles and the church sings a lament! The world has visions of sugar plums dancing in its head and the church sees only angry Jews standing by the fence, wailing toward heaven.”

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence-- ²as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!” Isaiah howls a lamentation to a God who seems absent.

His cry emerged out of a deep disappointment. The Israelites had returned from exile. The thing that they had hoped for had come to pass, only instead of experiencing a lasting shalom, Israel still found itself in a messy and troublesome world. Isaiah looks around for the great and glorious God of the past and just doesn’t see him. He sees the Israelites languishing yet again, and yearns for a bombastic mountaintop experience of the divine to draw the people of God back into relationship with him once and for all.

The timbre of Isaiah’s impassioned cry is all too familiar to us this year. We have heard echoes of his despair, we have murmured the same bewildered anguish. Where was God during the tsunami, the hurricanes, the earthquakes? Where was God when the people of the Gulf went into exile, rushing inland as the waters nipped at their heels? Where was God when family tensions reached a fever pitch, and relationships were broken?

We do not honor the gift of life if we pretend that we do not have reasons to mourn. We turn human existence into a farce if we ignore the depth of our sorrow.

But this is not a choice between sorrow and false cheer. The prophet Isaiah moves through his people’s despair – not around it, but through it. He traverses the path of despair to a curious hope—the hope that recognizes that we have run out of hope. The hope that only sprouts when we finally recognize that we cannot save ourselves: not with a credit card, not with a drink, not with a memory of a happier day. The only hope worth its weight in tears.

So within these walls it is not yet Christmas. Instead of turning the volume up and plugging the twinkling lights in, we pace ourselves. We add one wavering light to our wreath each week. Even though the radio plays jolly songs about St. Nick, our carols are tempered with anticipation until Christmas Eve.

Why go to all this bother? We know where the plot goes. We know a child will be born. And still we refuse to celebrate prematurely. We have the unrest of Isaiah in our blood. We know that we wait for a God who has been here before and will be here again. The scriptures of our ancestors bear witness to his faithfulness. We ourselves have seen glimmers of his glory and heard whispers of his presence.

So we fumble through this time in awkward anticipation. Yes, we wait for the child to be born in Bethlehem. But there is more to our anticipation than rehearsal. We wait for a new movement of Christ, a time when the Kingdom of God blooms like a fig tree, finally bearing fruit after the long winter. The hope we cultivate is necessarily rooted in the recognition that the world is broken. God’s good creation is damaged. And all our business here on earth happens in the in-between. Christ has come – but he has not yet come again. The fig tree is planted – but it has not yet born fruit. We are in between doubt and faith, repentance and rejoicing. Is it any wonder that Isaiah’s words, braided with equal parts hope and despair, anticipation and lamentation, are the Advent carol the church selects as our seasonal kick-in-the-pants?

This double-edged anticipation refuses to let us sentimentalize Mary’s pregnancy. We can’t simply coo over the expected baby Jesus, because for now, we are immersed in the darkness that preceded his birth and foreshadows his return.

“The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,” Jesus proclaims in the Gospel of Mark. “the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

²⁶Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. ²⁷Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”

The church chooses to tune out the chaotic artificial light that marks this season so that we will recognize the light of Christ when he comes. The church recognizes that a world without Christ is a world with a darkened sun and a shadowed moon.

By wrestling with the strange and angry words of the biblical prophets, we prepare ourselves for the unspeakable joy of incarnation, of Emmanuel, and plant our hopes ever deeper in God’s promise to redeem the whole of Creation.

So we wait. And hope. Our lives are shaped by this hope. We may live in the interim, after Act 1, but before the fulfillment of the heavenly theater. But as Christians we live in hope, we live into God’s extravagant promises. This time between isn’t always comfortable. Indeed, it is downright devastating sometimes, to look around our world and see God’s beloved children rebelling, suffering, and despairing. We must simply stay awake, keep our eyes wide open not with dread, but with honest expectation that is fluent in lamentation and celebration alike.

This anticipation is not as fun as false cheer, but when unspeakable joy covers the ends of earth to the ends of heaven, what a Christmas feast that will be. Amen.