Happy Childermas!

"Massacre of the Holy Innocents" by Peter Paul Rubens approx. 1611

This morning, my google calendar alerted me twice that today, December 28, is "Childermas." (in the Western Church, December 29th in the Eastern Church).  I had no idea what that meant, so some research (aka, time-with-google) revealed that Childermas, or the "Feast of the Holy Innocents," is the fourth day of Christmas, commemorating the baby boys killed by Herod in his search for Jesus.

Matthew 2:16-18,

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: 
‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
   wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
   she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’

These baby boys are considered the first martyrs, in this feast day dating back to the 5th century.  Mass is celebrated for them (with suppressed Alleluias and Glorias) and purple worn for mourning.  Traditionally, the Coventry Carol, a lullaby of grieving for the slain children, is sung.

While a sad commemoration, like most holidays (holy-days, feast days) that are named for martyrs, it has gradually become a joyous day, in this case a day celebrating childhood.

Masses feature children's choirs, and customs at home include games and children's activities, and a parents' blessing of the children, similar to a sabbath blessing, which may simply be placing hands on the children's heads and saying something like, "May God bless you and be the guardian of your heart and mind, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

Here's where it gets fun.
Traditionally, the youngest child gets to be in charge of the household, choosing activities, foods, etc. - (though this can be shared among all the children).  In Hispanic countries like Spain and Mexico, it is celebrated like April Fool's Day by children, where children play tricks on their parents like the Magi did on King Herod, and say, "Innocente!" instead of "April Fool's!"

A pudding or ice cream with raspberry sauce, or something else red, is eaten, to remember the blood of the innocents.

Raspberry Sauce

10 oz pkg. frozen raspberries
1 1/2 tsp. cornstarch
1/2 c. red currant jelly

Thaw and crush raspberries. Combine with cornstarch. Add red currant jelly and bring to boil. Cook and stir until mixture is clear and thickens slightly. Strain and chill. Makes 1 1/3 cups. Serve over rice pudding, ice cream, blanc mange, white chocolate mousse, etc. (If you don't have red currant jelly, you can omit the cornstarch, too, and just purée the berries with a TBSP or two of sugar without cooking. Just blend well and sieve to remove seeds.).

Other random facts: Historically, it was considered a bad luck day for weddings or beginning any new venture on Childermas.  In what elicited dramatic grimaces and full-body cringing from my kids, we also learned there was in the 14th-16th centuries the custom of "slapping on the hinder parts any young folks who were surprised in bed on the that morning" which probably came from an earlier tradition of being awakened with a whipping so that the memory of the Innocents would "stick more closely" with them.

The Desmond Tutu Center for Leadership suggests celebrating Childermas as a way to remember innocent children throughout the world, particularly those suffering from AIDS, hunger and poverty, to make it day of giving and learning about the needs of children.

All this to say, when I shared a bit of my learning with my children this morning, and they looked at each other and squeed with delight, and immediately embraced a day of their rule in the home. (This may be the holiday they've waited for their whole lives).

So, today we are celebrating Childermas, which may have begun with eggs, sausage and gum drops for breakfast, and proceeded into art-making and the pitching of a tent indoors, statements like, "I declare it is time for the chewing of bubble gum," cuddling on command, ruminating about possible pizza for dinner and potential snow shenanigans, and will continue where e'er these youngsters take us.

Happy Childermas!

"Triumph of the Innocents" by William Holman Hunt, approx. 1884,
depicts the martyred babies accompanying the Holy Family as they flee to Egypt.

The Being With (Waiting in Wonder, Week 4)

(Isaiah 7:10-16)
Matthew 1:18-25

We’re spending Advent in wonder. 

I wonder about how God chose to come into the world. 

There is a lot about the WAY that God chose to go from being God almighty to becoming God WITH us, that mystifies me.

The first week of Advent we zoomed out to the cosmos, to find hope in the one who holds the big picture and promises the future. The second week we began moving in a bit to peace – the future hope is leading us to- the radical righting of everyday wrong in natural and social order, in the person of Jesus. The third week joy confronted us with it’s bombastic, all-out celebration of rightness, that comes to us in fits and bursts, and points us forward to enduring peace, and to the hope that carries us to that peace. 

This week we look at love, and wonder together what exactly love is and what it means that God comes in love.

On Christmas Eve we’ll get to the event itself - the moment God enters in to become God is with us. But before we zoom all the way in, tonight we get to face some of God’s strange and revealing choices along the way, and I have to say, I am amazed all over again at God’s decisions. 

Now I’m not a football person, but I do make a pretty good armchair quarterback - Monday morning quarterback-? So let’s get started.

Let’s begin with Joseph. Joseph is stuck in a real predicament, legally contracted to marry this girl who turns out to be knocked up by someone else.

Virgin birth for some is a sign of purity or divinity, and it certainly speaks volumes of a God who brings life out of impossibility, but like it or not, whatever it may actually be, at least there will be plenty implied. 

And poor Joseph, what does it say to him about his wife to be? And what does it say to the whole village about this girl he’s been pledged to?  He is within his rights to have her stoned for adultery, but decides to be “kind” and quietly divorce her instead.  

So, to begin, God, who comes to earth to save people from their sins, decides to come as the bastard child of a loose woman and her humiliated fiancé. 

This is the first decision of God’s coming that I question.

The second decision I question is the use of Mary and Joseph to begin with.  It seems like God is taking some awfully big risks all around.  Mary. really? Why not someone tried and tested? A priest’s wife or a wise queen, a spiritual leader of some sort? Instead God picks Mary, a young unmarried girl in a nowhere town, and just kind of springs this Messiah Mama thing on her.  Thank goodness she said yes, or what then? Did God have a back up in mind? 

And back to Joseph - this commonplace carpenter, by the way - Alone, confused, and stuck, he’s getting ready to do the only thing he can think of that is both proper and at least semi-considerate, that doesn’t hurt Mary too terribly but follows some semblance of propriety and God’s law, (though it does, as one scholar put it, “lack creativity and compassion.”)

Of course, God lets him puzzle out his plan first, and just when he is resolved to divorce Mary, God has an angel tell him in a dream that it will be ok, and he should just go ahead and marry her and carry on as planned with the marriage, because, don’t worry, this is God’s baby.

So, that should clear it all up…

And You, Joseph, are to name him Jesus, which means, God saves, because God is coming to save all the people.

And so, like Mary, Joseph also signs on... 

But to what? 

God doesn’t spell things out very clearly beyond that – after all, they end up delivering this baby in a pile of hay in a smelly barn outside an overcrowded inn in a busy town far from home.  Not exactly great planning. 

And don’t even get me started on what happens after the birth… what with an evil king and the fleeing to Egypt, and all.

Frankly, it just seems like the whole thing gets patchworked together with this disorderly assortment of ordinary people bumbling through it all in well-meaning but shortsighted ways.

The thing that it leaves me with is incredulity. Amazement. A little awe. 

God has got some guts. Coming to earth in this way. 

Just who does God think he is? Like he owns the place? No dignity; no dignitaries.  No etiquette or solid arrangements in place.

 Starts out as a scandal, born homeless and then becomes a refugee, all before he walks or speaks his first word…  I guess what I am saying is that God just comes right on in any old way God pleases, doesn’t use the front door or the guest bathroom; barges in the back way with muddy boots like one of us.  Like he belongs or something.

So, all this begs the question, why this way? You could do this any old way you want, any way in the entire cosmos, and this is the way you choose? What kind of God would come this way?

Well…

A God who has nothing to prove. 

One who doesn’t care one whit about appearances or public image.

Not too worried about getting dirty, either.  Or being mistaken for the help.

A God who likes to pull in unexpected characters and out of the way locations, who gets a kick out of surprise and irony, who challenges the status quo.  A God who is not easily intimidated, or overly concerned with efficiency and order.  And One who likes a little celebration and fanfare, but in the quirky, marginal way, not really professional quality center stage. 

 And, a God who comes for us all.  Who belongs to us all.

Not for the wealthy or the well-connected or the powerful or pretty. Not for the righteous and the rule-keepers and the good girls and the brave boys.  For us all, and so came poor and disconnected, in a scandalous way to some very ordinary people.

If we'd read all the verses before this one we'd see that Jesus is in the line of King David, except not really directly, he’s adopted in by the love and naming of his adoptive father Joseph.  

God comes to earth as an adopted kid.  

And does it one haphazard step at a time, just like all the rest of us. 

And so I think again of Joseph and Mary, because when they’re such average, ordinary folk, it’s easy to go there, and I wonder, What I would do in their shoes?

Would I say yes? 

Would you? 

Perhaps.  Maybe we would.  But to what?

I suppose the only yes one could give in a situation like this is a yes to the person in front of you, to the overall vague concept, without any idea of what it means in actuality.

What would the next day be like? Or the day after that? What kind of long-term plans would it require or personality traits would it expect of me?

I really like to know ahead of time what I am getting into, and it doesn’t seem like any of these folks had a clue.  They were pulled into this thing that just kind of unfolded as they went along.  Why didn’t God lay it out a little further in advance for them, give them some more heads up?  God seems to be placing an awful lot up for grabs.

So any yes that we could give would be just a kind of brave but scared little yes, a nervous little yes that says, ok, God, you want to do it this way, I guess you can count me in, and then seeing where things led from there.

  

But maybe that’s all we’re ever invited to.  Maybe that’s how it works anyway.

Love her, be his daddy, is God’s message to Joseph.

Say yes to that. Say yes to them. 

Move forward into this life that I am laying out before you alongside one another.

Don’t be afraid to do it, Joseph.

Say yes to this girl I am giving to you, and the baby I am giving to the world.  Be with them, and together put one foot in front of the other and see where it leads.

And maybe that’s what love is.

Not signing on for a big, clear, attainable plan. Not saying yes to a whole perfect project. But choosing to be with the ordinary people in front of you.  

And saying yes to the God who calls you, in all your own shaky ordinariness.

I will be there with her.

I will go there with them.

I will belong to them, she will belong to me, he will belong to us. 

And whatever comes after that, and however it comes, we’ll be in it together.

Love says, you are not alone, I will be with you. Even if it makes me look bad, or leads me to scary places, even if it makes me have to make hard choices, or rips my heart wide open, or makes me vulnerable and weak, or takes me where I never thought I would go.

 Love breaks hearts and leads people to do inexplicable things.

God became with us, not in a strong and invincible, powerful and sovereign, well-planned, and foolproof strategy to save the world, but by being with us, awkward and messy, tiring and scary, a little exciting, a little confusing, a lot needy and dependent. Completely in the hands of conflicted people, struggling to do the right thing and wondering even what that is.  Trusting ordinary folks to love and choose and be with God with us, come what may.  That’s how God came in.

OK, so, it may not be how you or I would plan it. It’s certainly not how anyone expected it to be. God chooses to belong to us, in order to let the world know that we belong to God. 

But maybe that’s the only way to truly go from being God almighty to being God with us. Through Love.  

Maybe that’s the way God saves.

 And if that doesn’t fill you with a little wonder…

O come, dear child of Mary, come,

God’s Word made flesh within our earthly home;

Love stir within the womb of night,

Revenge and hatred put to flight.

Rejoice, rejoice! Take heart and do not fear,

God’s chosen one, Immanuel, draws near.

-       Verse to O Come, O Come Emmanual by Barbara Lundblad

Anyway Joy (Waiting in Wonder, Week 3)

(Luke 1:46-55)

Isaiah 35:1-10

Joy is a nevertheless kind of thing.

It’s an anyway, despite, and in the face of kind of thing.

Joy is defiant, ridiculous, and a little bit out of control.  

Joy doesn’t say, “excuse me” “pardon me”, and “would you mind…?” and then wait its turn.  

It’s an outburst, an immodest, bubble-up rush that overtakes you. Joy is unexpected pleasure, unrestrained contentment, gratitude out loud and in the midst.

At the “wrong” time and place, it’s quite a thing for someone else’s joy to roll out in front of you all raw and real, pulling you in too.  Like tears unbidden or uncontrolled, joy is unprocessed and vulnerable, too close to the heart of things.  In fact, it is the heart of all things, refusing to remain silent and tucked away.  As Anne Lammott says, Peace is joy at rest, and Joy is peace on its feet.”

We don’t make joy, and because of its exuberance and spontaneity, its all-out nature, there is very little as creepy as faked joy. 

Joy comes from God, from our very most basic selves reverberating from God’s touch –(even if our conscious, rational minds don’t see it that way).  It’s the natural, uncontained response to the peeling back of the curtain and glimpsing of eternity.  Joy happens in the scraping of the surface and exposing for a moment the reality underneath and behind it all, that that our lives matter, that life is infinitely valuable, and it’s beautiful.  It’s a heartbreakingly, emotion-eruptingly beautiful thing to be alive.  Even in pain and suffering. Even in disappointment and confusion.  Life is precious indeed, and we’ve been given to one another.  We get to feel our own aliveness and run into the aliveness of others, and that is an astounding thing. 

The first week of Advent we zoomed way out – to life and death and past and future and the big picture painted by hope – hungry longing and trust in what we can’t see but know is coming - that what is broken will be made whole.

Our Isaiah text that week beat swords into plough shares and spears into pruning hooks and streamed all people up God’s holy mountain to learn love and peace together.  It display transformation to systems of violence and oppression, and the final end to separation and struggle.  And Advent begins by asking Hope to ignite us and steer us towards God’s future.

Last week in the second week of Advent we zoomed in a bit to the natural order, and the social order, to what we think things have to be because we can’t imagine them any other way, and then we imagined it another way, the way of Peace.  We saw lions lying down with lambs and young children leading, and heard a picture of life flipped right, healed up and flourishing – and the promise that what is broken will be made whole, in the person of Jesus Christ, God with us, coming to set all things right, to bring life as it was meant to be.  And hope pointed us to Peace, the future of God - life without fear in such harmony that we need poetry to help us imagine it possible.

This week we zoom in even more with Isaiah to a vivid picture of joy.  For a hopeless, defeated and maimed people resigned to regret and without a hope for the future, Isaiah paints on a barren background a vibrant watercolor  of rushing blues and bursting greens and brilliant reds and oranges as the stark wilderness breaks out in singing and celebration, erupting in color and noise, abundance and delight – breaking forth in joy. 

And transformation gets even more personal and boisterous – deep peace that can’t keep us silent or still - our own human frailties and weaknesses, our limitations and our emotions, our place and our destiny so fulfilled and overflowing that the blind see it first and the deaf tune us all into the music and the lame lead the dancing and the speechless conduct the chorus and the depressed break out the fine china and pop open the champagne cork and the old and forgetful sit us down and hush us still and tell the story for us all.  And we embrace the sage wisdom of toddlers and revere the gentle tenderness of the calloused stoics, and the chronically late kick off the festivities while the rigidly organized lead the messy crafts.  The big slow folks and the small uncoordinated ones are first chosen and most sought out for the after-dinner game, and the hopeless allergics throw on aprons and taste test and spice up the full feast without exception. 

And all those things that totalize us here, all those things that label and divide and define us finally and almost fully now are broken open and released, and a new future is unfurled before us, and we are free to be, completely and wholly, without omission or limitation or compromise or concession. 

Deserts bloom brightly and dry sand becomes deep cool pools and the path is so smooth and clearly marked and shared by all moving together that even complete fools can’t get lost, and the gift of life is abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.

Christmas is ten days away. You and I have nine more days to squeeze in shopping and baking, to finish the cards and worry about how much we’re spending and hope the events and gatherings go well and people don’t get in the arguments they get in when they’ve had too much to drink or the wrong people are seated next to each other.   Ten more days to build up expectations and tamp down disappointments and feel like life is too busy and full and breathless and pressured.  Ten more days to sit in the waiting, and wonder what it is we are waiting for.

And in the middle of that I want to invite you into the joy. 

I want to invite you into the joy the prophet foretells, the joy Mary sings out, the nevertheless joy that God sees it all and then also underneath it all, to what really matters, to where we really are broken and incomplete, lost or hurting, longing and yearning, to the place where we can say what we love and who we need and how we feel and where we’re stuck, and what makes us ever so achingly grateful, that raw and vulnerable place inside, all wrinkled and unshaven and without make-up where our childlike wonder still nests. 

I want to invite you into the anyway joy that it is to be alive when the rest of it that clutters our minds and hearts and homes and relationships falls away for those brief glimpses of beauty and hope and peace and broken things made so whole that it makes you want to jump to your feet and pump your fist, or double over in tickled laughter.

And just so you know, now that we’re watching for it together, it isn’t when everything is perfect that the joy rears up.  It almost never arrives when it all goes down as planned, and is nearly guaranteed to be absent when we successfully mask our weaknesses or disguise our limitations.  Joy refuses to wait for when we’re adequately spiritually prepared or religiously ready, all cleaned up and aired out for divine inspection, and prefers, actually, to come unbidden and unanticipated.

And just like it was with peace and hope, Advent’s invitation once again is simply to pay attention, to be open, to pause worrying or rushing or fearing long enough to participate in your own life.  Advent invites us to step into the waiting, where the God of peace and hope is waiting for you.  And then you least expect it, and sometimes when you most need it, eternity will peek through and joy will surprise you.

Amen.

Peace, Enduring and Unafraid (Waiting in Wonder, Week 2)

Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom

 Isaiah 11:1-10

This week I saw a heartwrenching video that began like a typical nature show, a cheetah hunting in the wild, stalking its prey, finally dashing out and snatching a baboon by the throat and dragging it off.  When she drops it, blood on her mouth, she suddenly notices there is an infant clinging to the dead baboon mother.  

The cheetah approaches it, teeth bared, mouth open and sniffs the tiny creature.  Then she picks it up in her mouth and eventually takes it into a tree.  She sets it carefully down on a limb and lays down next to it. The baby slips, and she tries to snatch it back up with her paw, finally climbing down and boosting it back up from below. 

For five minutes this minute attention goes on, and all the while, you are aware that the cheetah could eat this miniature animal with one gulp.  That, in fact, she had already hunted and killed its mother, and left that meal behind to focus on this tiny creature. Here she is, with a defenseless and weak prey in her giant paws.  All laws of nature say she should kill it, she is its predator, she is hungry, there is nothing at all to stop her.  But instead, she licks its head an face, and then she curves her paw around it cradling it against her chest, and lays down to sleep holding this the baby of her prey, and the clip ends.

I watched this whole thing with my heart pounding, scarcely daring to breathe. 

Everything about it was wrong. It was terrifying – any second things could go wrong – or right? – again. 

And there is no reason to think this would, or even could last. 

How would the cheetah feed the baby baboon? 

What would happen if it grew bigger?  

That kind of order is not sustainable on this side of eternity – predators need to be predators to survive; prey will never be safe sleeping in the arms of predators.  Babies can’t go sticking their arms in snakes’ holes, and nursing infants can’t be laid down right next to serpents.  Wolves can’t live in dens with lambs, lions and calves can’t lie down together and sleep, and little children don’t lead us all.  Not yet anyway.

And it is foolish, dangerous, even, to act as if these things are possible.

We are raised to fear.  Fear things; fear each other. Fear keeps us safe; it keeps us from driving too fast, ingesting things that could kill us, balancing on high narrow ledges, leaving our baby in harm’s way unattended. Fear keeps us alive. 

Our bodies are wired for fight or flight, we knew how to react when the saber tooth tiger approached, and we’ve honed that reaction in every traffic jam, frozen computer screen incident, infuriating argument, and long line at the grocery store, not to mention things like undergoing surgery, sending your kids away from home when they’re supposedly “grown up,” losing your job or wrapping your head around a terminal diagnosis. 

Our lives are lived in a perpetual state of constant alert and carefully subdued terror, exhaustingly cued in to whatever disaster may be looming just ahead.

Our text tonight is written to people living in exile, who see no other way of life than captivity. Their fight or flight is honed in, they know the enemies and the predators, and they’ve learned the ways of self-protection. Aware of their own participation in bringing themselves to this point, the prophets warnings had come to pass, and any hope for the future has been obliterated.  Now they would live under the oppressive rule indefinitely, and they were adjusting their lives and expectations to that reality.  No point in wasting energy on foolish hope; today has enough worries of its own.  There is no reason for God to intervene, we’ve turned away from God and God has turned away from us. The end.

Into this malaise comes this message from Isaiah, a message of strange, unafraid peace, brave, heart-stopping hope. 

The third graders down at the Elementary School have just started a unit on poetry.  This week they tromped up the hill three blocks in the - 4 degree weather to the neighborhood library to hear about poetry and pick out a poem book for the month.  They’ll spend the month learning and reading and sharing about it.  I kind of wish I could be a fly on the wall.

I don’t really get poetry. Until recently, I’ve assumed that means I don’t like it. But those delightful times when I do get it, it’s only because it gives me pictures. It makes me feel things by describing scenes, and while I may not get what the poet is trying to say, I can feel what the pictures evoke in me.

Isaiah’s picture-filled, poetic message to a people in exile imagines a new beginning, it opens up hope, like a tender green shoot from the dead edges from what had seemed over.  The rule of David’s line was wiped out and the story ended.  And yet, there’s more. 

A whisper, a stirring movement, an unfolding seedling, and a savior comes. 

And this savior brings God’s true justice, not swayed by the things that sway the rest of us, what we can see and hear, the natural order of things, but in wisdom and gentleness, with the Spirit of the Holy upon him, he will uphold the weak and strike down the wicked. 

And this new beginning, ushered in by this savior, becomes a vivid scene of fearless, even contented, total creation harmony –radical, status-quo obliterating peace.

The "natural order" that demands we distrust one another, that we live in constant fear of predators, disease, disaster and death, will be so upset by the coming of Jesus that we will have nothing to fear.  

Literally nothing.  

No need to hunt and hide, to defend and protect. No need to educate about and arm against.  No danger, no threat, no need to compete and struggle, to hoard and hunker.

Instead of division and striving, self-protection and fear, peace is right relationship with God and one another – the whole world and all its inhabitants is connection, interdependence, fully and trustingly living out their authentic purpose alongside all else doing the same. 

In the reign of God, all people, all creatures in all the world will live freely, fully, unafraid, in Peace.

They will not hurt or destroy
   

on all my holy mountain;


for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
   

as the waters cover the sea.

Last week Advent began byzooming us way way out, to the big picture.  We looked at the prophet’s vision of hope, and the warning/promise that it could come at any moment –interrupting ordinary life with justice and rightness that would be shared by all; it’s coming, we said. And hope pointed us to the future and told us to live like that’s true.

Hope points us to God’s future. Peace IS God’s future.

Hope is what propels us forward; Peace is where we arrive. 

Hope is temporary, a vehicle from here to there, perhaps even no longer needed when the reign of God comes in all its fullness. 

Peace is the reign of God in all its fullness.

And again, now, we are invited to sit in Advent with the picture the prophet give us. 

The peace the vision promises, the longing it evokes. 

And also to know what he didn’t know at the time: that it has begun.  The savior who comes, who shares life with us, invites us to live in hope, to anticipate peace.  And while it is temporary, fleeting, felt now in glimpses and gasps, it nevertheless participates in the reign of God that is unfolding and one day will be all in all.

So, the times when things go against the “natural order”, when a lion does lay down with a lamb (or the cheetah with the baby baboon), when our courage rises past apprehension, when strangers reach out to help each other, when enemies sit down to a meal, when people stand up for each other and see each other and choose to share one another's place, the times we feel in sync with the beauty of the world and at rest, when we taste briefly that all is well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well, we get a glimpse of what is coming, and we share in what is coming.  

Those moments we refuse to adjust our lives and expectations to the captivity of perpetual fear, we join in the course-altering power of God’s peace. We're oriented to God's future again and told to live like it's true.  And it is foolish, dangerous, even, to act as if these things are possible.  

O come, green shoot of Jesse, free

            Your people from despair and apathy;

                        Forge justice for the poor and the meek,

                        Grant safety for the young ones and the weak.

 Rejoice, rejoice! Take heart and do not fear,

God’s chosen one, Immanuel, draws near.

                          (Verse for O Come O Come Emmanual by Barbara Lundblad, shared on Working Preacher).

Amen.

Zoom (Waiting in Wonder, Week 1)

Isaiah 2:1-5

Matthew 24:36-42

Why does Advent always begin with apocolypse?  Why, dear God?

In one way, I appreciate it because we are already well into our consumeristic coma – spending and pressure and Christmas cheer and family guilt and to-do lists and baked sweets all swirled into a frenzied frapaccino that I, for one, almost never hesitate to guzzle. 

Nothing like getting slapped awake by a little bit of end times terror on the first Sunday in December. 

As a kid, I always heard these apocolayptic texts with a kind of fear and foreboding. I wanted to grow up and get married and have kids and grandkids and accomplish lots of great things and be super old and ready to die before Jesus came suddenly like a burglar to snatch me out of the world.   It was a toss-up, which was less desirable, actually, being left behind or being taken up. 

What a massive disappointment to God I would be, because of my reluctance to be reunited forever, and what a massive disappointment God would be to me, if I had to trade in the chance at a full life on earth for some kind of pearly gates and golden streets and a boring eternity with a harp (no offense, Jeanne).

So on our first Sunday of Advent, here we are suspended between two end timesy texts to kick off the season.  One is a dire-sounding warning about the suddenness of God’s impending return, KEEP AWAKE! You don’t know when its coming – dramatic and unexpected, snatching us out of a life of order and duty and predictable roles, and into the realm of God!

The other, though, is a vision of the realm of God.

That people from all over would be united in their common desire to be guided by God. That what we’ve made for destruction would be turned into tools for sharing and feeding in a completely different game than we’ve been playing at all along.  That the yearning within us -- that would God speak to us, would show us the way to live, correct the things we’ve messed up, that God would hear our complaints, arbitrate our disputes, set things to right-- this longing would be fulfilled. 

My kids found a picture book at my mom’s house this summer, that someone gave my sisters and me when we were kids. 

It is called Zoom, and it starts with a picture of, say, a red wavy line, then it zooms out and you see that it is the comb on top of a rooster’s head, and then it zooms out and you see that the rooster is sitting atop a barn, and the next page shows the whole barnyard with animals, and then you realize it’s a toy barnyard and wooden animals and two kids are playing with it, then you see that they are in a window of a small house surrounded by its own yard, and then you realize the yard is part of a picture, and the picture is part of a postage stamp, and the postage stamp is on a letter, and the letter is in a mail carrier’s hand, who is in a biplane over a tropical island, which is on a travel poster,

which is on the side of a bus, which is on a busy city street, and so on, out and out and out until you are looking at the entirety of earth in the distance. 

Advent uses today’s apocalyptic texts to zoom us way way out, out of Christmas, out of winter, out our routines, out of ordinary days of giving and being given in marriage, going to work in the field and grinding wheat, thanksgiving meals and cancer treatments and commuting to work and long-distance phone calls and petty arguments and meeting new neighbors, and earning degrees, and retirement parties, and it zooms us into the realms of hunger and pain and longing and justice and hope, and it keeps going beyond that until it reaches past and future, life and death, eternity and God, and there it stops us. 

It will turn around and plunge back in the next few weeks, all the way in, until we arrive at the very specific picture of a baby in a manger and a mom and dad and animals sitting nearby, the event of God’s coming, the moment when God breaks in – in flesh and blood and hot tears and scratchy hay.  It’s super present-tense, you can smell and feel the reality of it, tension and elation, a baby comes into the world. It doesn’t get more personal, more concrete, than that. It will take us there eventually.

But first, it wants to pull us way out here.

Why?

Zoomed way, way out here, we’re in big picture territory. We are shown history and eternity, what is and what hasn’t yet come to be, embracing way before we were and inviting dreams of what could be -promises of what will be- and then saying to us, It begins HERE!

The countdown to God’s coming, the place to stop wait, slow down and wonder, wake up and pay attention – it starts here. 

WAY bigger than you and me. A little bit scary. A lot mysterious.

This is a big deal. Advent says.  This is beyond anything this world has ever, even contemplated- greater than nations at war, stronger than waves of unending violence, more powerful than the weapons we use to protect and divide ourselves. This has cosmic proportions that call us into a reality well beyond what we see and hear and participate in every day. 

And you know you want it.

You can feel that part of yourself deep within that is sick and tired of being sick and tired. That part that moans with sighs to deep for words at yet another school shooting, not even bothering to read the details it is so heartbreaking and appalling. 

That place within that holds your breath when the images of war or disaster scroll across the news, Syria, Palestine, Iran, the Philippines, India… because you feel so removed, so horrified, and also so afraid of what it might mean for everyone. 

It calls out the part of you that has deep sadness that terrible and awful things happen to children, that hunger rages fierce, and alzehimer’s attacks loved ones, and marriages crumble, and inexplicable evil or apathy or deterioration seem to be everywhere. 

It grabs hold of that part by the shoulders, shakes it into awareness, and then it points it to a promise. 

Justice will prevail.  

And all people everywhere will find that part of themselves summoned together in one voice to point our questions and our fears and our longings and our hope toward God, who will take in the pain and repair and redeem and restore a broken world and the brokenness within us all. 

And that is a big, fantastic, crazy kind of promise.

Who is this apocalyptic God who comes like a thief, like a flood, in the blink of an eye in our ordinary moments when nobody at all would expect it?  Who is this God? we ask our text, we ask Advent, And what is God up to?

Not a stranger to this thing.  Not a distant judge, an uncaring critic. 

This is the God made known in Christ Jesus, who came to share it all with us, that is the God who will come. The God who will break into both the horror and the humor, the things we hate and the things we love and the things we pay absolutely no attention to and completely take for granted. The God of justice comes to interrupt whatever we’ve got going and make right all that is wrong.

Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord! the text ends.

Let’s just walk in that. 

That light-  that streams down from the mountain of God oozing hope and shared desire of all for peace and connection and restoration – let’s walk in THAT light. 

Let’s live in that Hope.  Let’s help one another trust in what we cannot see, let’s remind each other and everyone else that we don’t have to live like it’s not coming when it is.  Let’s stop a moment and zoom out, with our questions and our longing, and see all around us all the people who hold those same longings and questions inside and anticipate together the day when the magnet pull will point us all in the same direction and love will draw us all in.

So, then Advent advises, keep awake.

Notice it.

The ways the longing flares up painfully – pause a moment before tamping it back down. Sit with it, and wonder.  When, Lord?  

And then, can’t you feel the waiting? 

The waiting comes then. 

The kind of waiting that makes us get up and do something. 

The kind of waiting that makes us want to prepare for what’s coming.

We are waiting.  Always waiting.

Not so that we’re not surprised on that day.  (Jesus himself will be surprised!)  But because God surprises us everyday.  There are signs of this promise breaking into our present from God’s future, every day.  

Notice them, Advent invites. Be ready.

Come, Let us walk in the Light of the Lord!

Amen.