Scripture: Matthew 24:36-44
Today is the first Sunday of Advent. It’s the Sunday we light the candle of hope on the Advent wreath, settle into the season’s darkness and wait the next month in holy anticipation, in preparation and prayer for the gift of Divine Love to be born within each of us and among all of us once again. I was happily anticipating this Sunday’s service with guest our guest preacher, ready to let him open my heart to this season with a special word about our immigrant and refugee siblings seeking justice this season when I looked at my phone and saw that Rev. Rebecca had called twice and I also had several texts and emails explaining that he was sick. I got these at 8:30am. Today.
So I did something I have never done before – I pulled up last’s year’s sermon from the first Sunday of Advent and adapted it for today. And then I turned on the Christmas carols. I have had Christmas carols playing every day already – since at least a week before Thanksgiving. My two year old loves them. I could say it was just easier to let her toddler will reign, but that would be a lie. I’m listening to Christmas carols as much as possible because chaos like finding out two hours before church that your guest preacher can’t preach feels like the norm right now. And more seriously, because the national border continues to look more like a war zone than a refuge, because too many of us have gotten used to the circus of our national politics, because the ravages of grief globally, locally and in our own hearts make me want to skip the waiting part of Advent and fast forward to the justice and joy of Christmas.
In short, too much of life in our world these days fits the description of barely contained chaos of the end of the world in our scripture today. We are in a time that feels like there is an “epidemic of lovelessness,” as cultural critic bell hooks says. Don’t worry. I’m not about to turn into an end-times, rapture pastor. This scripture is not really about the future end of the world and coming of Christ. It’s about the perpetual endings of the present. Because the world feels like it is ending for somebody, somewhere all the time, even right this minute.
Pastor poet Jan Richardson says it this way:
Look, the world
is always ending
somewhere.
Somewhere
the sun has come
crashing down.
Somewhere
it has gone
completely dark.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the gun,
the knife,
the fist.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the slammed door,
the shattered hope.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the utter quiet
that follows the news
from the phone,
the television,
the hospital room.
Somewhere
it has ended
with a tenderness
that will break
your heart.
We know this, right? We don’t have to like it, but we know it. The world is always ending with a tenderness that will break our hearts open. And that feels like wrenching chaos. But skip over the chaos of life as we know it, of the endings of the world as we know it, of the Advent world we live in, and Christmas doesn’t really mean anything. To state the obvious, there is no hope without the reality of despair. But perhaps less obvious, without chaos, there is no creation – neither of the world nor of a tiny brown, poor baby born to unwed parents fleeing persecution in the time of Herod we now know as Jesus.
This is why the Advent season always begins with scripture stories about chaos. We pay tribute to another beginning. In the beginning of the world the book of Genesis tells us, “darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” What does this mean? The Hebrew word we have commonly translated as “the deep” actually translates more literally to mean “chaos.” And that means that creation doesn’t come out of nowhere. Instead, God creates the world in cooperation with the waters and chaos.[1] It happens again with the re-creation of the world our scripture references at the time of Noah and the floods. It happens again and again and again throughout the scriptures and throughout history and throughout our lives.
The spiritual challenge our scripture calls us to is to be awake to the possibility of God’s creation and re-creation of Love even in this chaos. This is the whole practice of Advent – being Awake to Love, even when the world feels like it is ending.
Jan Richardson continues her poem:
But, listen,
this blessing means
to be anything
but morose.
It has not come
to cause despair.
It is simply here
because there is nothing
a blessing
is better suited for
than an ending,
nothing that cries out more
for a blessing
than when a world
is falling apart.
This blessing
will not fix you,
will not mend you,
will not give you
false comfort;
it will not talk to you
about one door opening
when another one closes.
It will simply
sit itself beside you
among the shards
and gently turn your face
toward the direction
from which the light
will come,
gathering itself
about you
as the world begins
again.
The Advent season will not fix you, will not give you false comfort. And the kind of blessing of Love it’s about is not Hallmark, glossy love. It’s not Love that only exists in a world to come on the other side of eternity. This is the kind of blessing of love that is always being born through the mess and pain of our individual and collective labors. It is the blessing of love that requires a choice of awakeness to notice that it is already sitting itself beside you, among the shards, already gathering itself about you as the world begins again though it feels like it is ending.
Beloveds, I confess I’m going to keep playing Christmas carols early. I need a little boost. But I’m also going to try sitting in the darkness a bit more this week. I’m going to sit with the challenge of our scripture to be “awake” to the Love breaking into to my house and my life at unexpected times.
Will you try it with me? We’ll practice right now with centering prayer on that phrase, “awake to love.” Or if that feels too woo-y for you, just try “awake” or “love.”
Here is the practice:
Find a way right now to sit comfortably and with eyes closed, if you are comfortable. Settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred phrase – “awake to love” – as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within you. When thoughts and grocery lists and schedules intrude, notice and breathe and just return ever-so-gently to the sacred phrase. Let us sit for just one minute now. …Amen.
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