I went to hear our Bishop preach this week. A called, not required but if you knew what was good for you you’d be there clergy meeting. So I went. All the way to Zionsville. Clergy Covenant Day it was called, an opportunity to celebrate or at least remember that we belong to one another, we belong to something bigger than ourselves. We live in islands most of the time. Me and my church and it is easy to forget that there is a bigger church, a capital C Church that we need to remember, that we are a part of, that we are beholden to. So, I went all the way to Zionsville to hear words from my Bishop, whom I hadn’t met yet.
There were other words, of course, colleagues and friends, students and mentors both, we exchanged greetings and inquiries, touched based and managed to avoid anything of substance. As you do. When you talk to people in certain settings you find you aren’t really talking. Talking to be heard. Talking to share something deep, or significant about yourself. You’re talking to fill the silence. You’re using words to keep the distance between you. Not in an angry way, or even a hurtful way, but just in a self-protection mode. “How are things?” “Great, things are just great.” Even when things aren’t great. Which we could hear if we listened. If we chose to listen a little deeper, a little more. If we took the risk of listening, who knows what we might hear. Instead we go with impressions, trigger words, insider language, determining who is for us and who is against us. Words let us choose up sides, not build community. Words become weapons, flaming darts that degrade and call names, instead of the Word that creates and gives life.
No, I’m not talking about a clergy meeting any more. Perhaps you gathered that. I’m looking a little wider, raising my sights to the landscape in which we find ourselves these days. A war torn, cratered surface, blood strewn landscape of our political discourse. A nation torn by words of hate and fear. But now it’s over. Right? Let’s breathe a sigh of relief and get back to being ... great.
Isaiah 65:17-25 17 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. 20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23 They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD-- and their descendants as well. 24 Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent-- its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.
We’re doing an extended Advent at Aldersgate. We launch this week and will count down the six Sundays before Christmas (and Christmas Day is on Sunday this year, where it ought to be! More on that another time). But this extended Advent allows us to spend three weeks on the original meaning of the season, the anticipation of the coming Kingdom of God. Advent was always about the second coming of Christ. Later on the season got co-opted by the juggernaut of Christmas and we began to focus on the first coming. There are, of course, connections between the two and it should be possible to do both. But invariably we lose something in the blending. “Why do we pretend it hasn’t happened yet?” Someone asked me that a previous Christmas. Why do we play act, instead of just celebrate what has already been done? That’s the danger of losing Advent. We think it’s all been done. We think the story has ended and this is what we’ve got. Oh, there are a few problems to sort out, but a little more elbow grease and we’ve got it done. Without Advent we become a works righteousness community that feels guilty for not getting everything fixed. And we gather week after week to be piled on again and again, more and better, work harder, do more. We come to be lifted up and relieved of our burdens but we trudge away from our encounter with God with an even heavier heart. As if we met our loving Father and He wasn’t pleased, and we’ve got to work harder to be worthy of the love we are dying to receive. Because we’ve given up on Advent, we’ve lost our grip on faith. We’ve become the very Pharisees that Jesus complained were adding to the burdens of others and not lifting a finger to help.
Fingers have been lifted lately. What has happened is that Advent was stolen from us. Stolen and twisted by people hungry for change. That’s what Advent is about, the recognition that the world as it is needs to change. That the sin which leads to brokenness is beyond our power to repair. That the consequences of our hatred and prejudice and self-centeredness have gotten beyond our ability to correct. That our way of living has excluded too many, has pushed down and set aside, has run over and used up people and resources and relationships and cultures, and we need help. It has gotten so bad that it isn’t just the “them” who feel it, we feel it too. And we cry out for change, for a savior. And the problem is there are saviors aplenty. And because we are desperate we listen to them, when they promise to make our lives and our world better. Never mind that others have to suffer, others have to take the blame for the brokenness, enemies - scapegoats have to be found. It can’t be our own sin that has gotten us here. So we’ll follow the one who points out the cause of our pain and drive out the offender, the sinner from our midst. So we can live in security and comfort.
Except that isn’t how Advent proclaims the kingdom of God. Advent proclaims there is only one Savior, there is only one source of security and comfort. And when the kingdom comes it is precisely those on the margins who will be gathered in first. It will be the broken and the grieving, it will be the lost and different, it will the outcast and shamed who sit at the table with the One who brings the new heaven and the new earth.
And here’s the mark, the sign of the Advent proclaimed Kingdom, there will be joy in the people of the kingdom. There will be delight. Not hate, not division, not laughter that demeans and diminishes, but laughter that rejoices in the community that we will become in the Kingdom of God, in all its surprising diversity. And the struggles of the poor, infant mortality, health care in old age, homelessness and hunger, and more will all disappear in the Kingdom. That’s what we long for. An inclusive Kingdom of joy, not a country made great based on fear and scarcity, based on hatred and an abusive hierarchy instead of an equality rooted in the recognition of our heritage as children of God.
Best of all, did you notice, we will be heard. Our words won’t be barriers but an invitation to enter in, to connect, to invest ourselves in one another, because there is one who is invested in us. One who hears the cries of our heart, One who knows us and cares for us and shows us how to care for others.
We have words to use in this Advent world in which we live. Words that could wound and divide and separate. Or we could speak in ways that show what we are longing for, for a Kingdom that has room for us. For all and for any and for us. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Shalom,
Derek
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