Scripture: Luke 21: 25-36
Today is the first Sunday of Advent. It’s the Sunday we light the candle of hope on the Advent wreath and ask ourselves “Who are we waiting for?” We settle into the Advent darkness and wait the next month in holy anticipation, in preparation and prayer for the gift of the Divine to be born within each of us and among all of us once again.
I have a confession to make though: I have had Christmas carols playing every day already – since at least a week before Thanksgiving. As a pastor, I feel like I’m supposed to be observing Advent with austere piety. But once again, I remind you that I preach not because I’m more pious than any of you. I preach because I’m willing to share where I’m failing and where I’m struggling and where I’m growing. It’s a strange job.
Why am I listening to Christmas carols as much as possible already and soaking up all the Christmas cheer I can prematurely? Because as the national border looks more and more like a war zone, as the police keep killing people in our state, as children starve in too many places, I really would like to skip the waiting part of Advent and fast forward to the justice and joy of Christmas. Because as the working days are long, but the daylight is short, I need those twinkling Christmas tree lights to change my brain chemistry. Because even though the moments are gorgeously fleeting with my sweet baby, the exhaustion of parenting is cumulative after a year and so I crave Christmas cookies to keep me going on a sugar high.
In short, too much of life in our world these days fits the description of barely contained chaos Jesus describes as the coming end of the world in our scripture today. Which is not to say I’m about to freak you out and turn into an end times rapture pastor. This scripture is not really about the future end of the world. Instead, it’s coded language about the perpetual present we live in now and Jesus lived in once upon a time too. 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 light without the contrast of darkness. 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 bible 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 “Tehom” we have commonly translated as “the deep” actually translates more literally to mean “abyss” or “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]
Now I’m on a J on the Meyers Briggs personality test. Chaos gives me heartburn. There are literally few things that make me happier than label makers and boxes with compartments for all the Christmas ornaments to fit just right. And yet, it seems chaos, as awful as it feels to me, is integral to the creation of the world. And honestly, having just celebrated our daughter’s first birthday, this retelling of the creation story reminds me a lot of birth too. Out of the depths of chaos, the dark waters like a womb, with a little of God’s holy breath and spirit mixed in, babies are made and born. Pregnancy and gestation are kind of like Advent. There is a lot of waiting in the dark, in circumstances totally out of our control, and breathing through nausea and pain until a new holy life arrives. Just like gestation and birth, Advent reminds us we have to spend time in the mess to experience the miracle.
In fact, the mess, the chaos, the waiting in darkness can be a blessing. That is the truth of Advent. Advent meets us where we are so that when Christmas arrives, we can recognize its significance. 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.
This is the kind of blessing of hope of this season of Advent, of the first candle on the Advent wreath we lit today. The Advent season will not fix you, will not mend you, will not give you false comfort. And the kind of hope it’s about is not Hallmark, glossy hope. It’s not hope in a world to come on the other side of eternity. This is the kind of hope poet Mary Oliver calls a “fighter and a screamer” when you need its fierceness. Or if need you a balm, this hope will simply sit itself beside you, nestle itself within you quietly to accompany your grief. This is the hope of what one theologian from another chaotic time that felt like the end of the world calls the hope that is “the divine power that makes us alive in the world.”[2]
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 this word, “hope” and see what it has to say to me in the wreck of chaos, in the exhaustion of life, in the work of justice even when the world feels like its ending.
Will you try it with me? We’ll practice right now with centering prayer on that word, “hope.”
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 word – hope – 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 word. Let us sit for just one minute now. …Amen.
[1] For full biblical exegesis of this theory, see Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep.
[2] Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope
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