Awake in Advent: Living God's Patience and God's Impatience. A sermon for the first Sunday of Advent.

The season of Advent began today, Sunday November 27, in the Western Christian liturgical calendar. Here's a meditation for those of you who observe this season, which marks the beginning of the Christian year.

I preached this sermon at the Parish of St. Paul in Newton Highlands, a small congregation in one of Boston's nearby suburbs. I'm grateful to the Priest-in-Charge, the Rev. Cara Rockhill, and the lay leaders and members of the parish, for their invitation and hospitality. I'm a great believer in offering apologies when they are needed and appropriate, and you will see at the beginning of the sermon an apology for the length of my sermon of a few weeks ago. This is my third or fourth time preaching in this parish, which I serve as a consultant on behalf of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.

The sermon is new, written and spoken for a particular time and place, but some of you will recognize both the title of the sermon and some of its content from retreats and meditations I have offered in the past.

In the name of the One

Who made us 

Who saves us 

and Who walks with us always, 

Amen.

It’s good to be back here with you.

Thank you for your hospitality.

I owe you an apology.

That sermon I preached a few Sundays ago was

Much. Too. Long.

I promise you today’s will not go on and on.

 

Lend me your ear, though,

for a different mood from Sundays past. 

We are entering Advent.

 Do you have an Advent wreath at home?

Do you light Advent candles?

When did you light the first candle?

On the vigil of the first Sunday, last night?

Or do you plan to light it tonight?

Or perhaps, as has happened to me more than once in the past, 

Will you begin your daily lighting of the Advent calendar 

midweek, 

because you haven’t made or bought your Advent wreath before then 

and the dining room table is a mess?

We have an Advent wreath here.

Take a moment (or two) to gaze at the flame of that first candle,
the one we have lit in our communal space
in this sanctuary.
Simply gaze.
Take a long slow breath or two

and look at that one light.

        (Silence.)

* * *

Advent and Christmas are in some ways
the ultimate celebration of space,
the celebration of God entering human space
in the most intimate way possible:
by becoming human.

The celebration of word become flesh,
of word becoming flesh
the discovery that God-the-other
is also God-with-us[1]:
That is the good news of Advent.

We celebrate in Advent
God's invitation
for us to view our space
—our society,
our environment,
our neighbor,
our own flesh—
    as sacred,
    pregnant with justice and hope,
    filled with hidden treasure.

But Advent is also a celebration
of time
and a celebration in time.

God enters
not just our space
but our time:
our history,
our present moment,
our human future.

Advent
challenges
our very relationship to time.

Advent challenges our impatience
and invites us to enter God's patience.

It is the season
of taking the long view,
the view beyond
our own small range of vision.

If we are to hear the good news
that God is
Emmanuel, God-with-us,
we may have to slow down.
        To slow down externally, bodily,
        But also to slow down inside
        —which can be even harder than slowing down with our body
    or slowing down our behavior.
Often God speaks very softly,
in ordinary ways and places,
in the daily events of our lives.

If the good news
is to take root in us,
we need to enter God's time,
God's timetable.

Advent
is not a flashy season.
It takes time for good news to sink in,
for love to grow,
for wisdom to ripen,
for lives to be transformed,
for truth to dawn in us,
for hope to take shape.

So in Advent, season of waiting for Christ,
we take in the good news slowly,
steadily,
lighting candles one at a time,
adding a new insight,
a layer of understanding,
every day
and every week.

(and) Yet

Advent is also a time to enter
God's impatience,
a time of righteous anger,
a time when prophets
challenge our apathy and paralysis
and urge us forward.

It is a season of visions and yearnings,
in which the stories and songs in the scriptures
speak of a God
who longs to transform
our hearts,
our society,
and creation itself –
soon, now, urgently.

***

One of these visions
is in the text from the prophetic book of Isaiah
for this first Sunday of Advent.[2]

Did you notice
how much this reading,
in addition to its images taken from nature,
addresses our life in human community,
including the community of nations?

God's righteousness and wisdom
and our human responses to them
are, in the text, directly related
to whether and how humans make peace or war,
whether we make the land into a battleground
or cultivate it.

The "swords into plowshares" passage[3]
is so well known
that we can gloss over it,
or in some way romanticize it.
Or perhaps more likely,
think it is nothing but a vision or a dream.

That metaphor has, however, been used in recent history
to describe something concrete:
what in the late 1970s we began calling "economic conversion"—
—the shifting of industrial, manufacturing, and scientific priorities
from military to civilian.
The movement continued for a couple of decades
and found its way into policy conversations:
there was even a bill
introduced in 1977 by bipartisan sponsors in the Senate
and then in the House of Representatives.
It was called the National Economic Conversion Act
and was repeatedly reintroduced through the years
but never became law.

Nowadays we speak more often
Of another kind of economic and environmental conversion:
Away from over-use of fossil fuels
and over-production of carbon emissions
that threaten us and God’s earth on which we live
with a greater danger than swords
and toward forms of energy
that can keep us and our children
and our companion plants and animals
and soil and water and sky
healthy and full of life.

Swords into plowshares.

It is up to us to take up the vision
and turn it into reality,
wherever we can.

Swords into plowshares.

* * *

So here we are:
smack in the middle
of cosmic,
personal, political,
ecclesial,
social, and economic
issues and upheavals,
all at once.

We are also
in the realm of visions of the messianic age,
which both Jews and Christians cultivate,
though in different ways.

The characteristics of that age,
of that kin-dom,
are the same, though:
peace among humans,
harmony in nature,
and the transformation
—some of it subtle, some of it dramatic—
that makes these possible.

* * *

Meanwhile, Jesus,
as the Gospel of Matthew presents him,
is far from meek and mild.
He warns us, puts us on alert,
shakes us up.

"Keep awake!"

Advent may be the slow and gentle season,
but it is—equally—
also the shake-up season.

God enters time,
but
the end of time is looming.

Jesus
grabs his companions by the collar.

No gentleness in this Gospel.

But no hypervigilance either.
By which I mean no jitters,
no super-speedy-overwrought reflexes.

Rather, we can read the Gospel as an invitation
to be awake and alert in a centered way.
It may be useful to read this Gospel in tandem
with a good dose of Buddhist mindfulness practice:

Can we be alert
but not reactive,
ready for the storm
but not overwhelmed
by its presence?

Can we spend Advent mindfully,
letting go of some of the reactivity
that has characterized so many of our conversations and responses
this election season
and the two preceding election cycles?

Can we spend Advent mindfully,
letting go of the reactivity that rises from us
not just in political conversations
but in many of our circumstances
today?

Can we spend Advent
mindfully, gently,
in the present
despite all the uncertainty and anxiety we are carrying
–in our work lives,
our relationships,
our family lives—
and yes, our church lives?

* * *

One of the challenges of this season
is to readjust our sense of time:
to discern when it is appropriate
to enter into God's patience
and when it is time to enter into God's impatience.

Perhaps it is also, then,
a time to learn mindfulness in a new way.

It is helpful to do this in community.
That's why we have the seasons of the church year.
That's why we have each other.

* * *

Today, on this first Sunday of Advent,
this first day of the new year[4]
and in the next few days,
before you do anything else,
take time.

Rest
in the patience of God.
All else will unfold,
in God's time.

        Amen.

[1] Emmanuel = “God with us” in Hebrew.
[2] The Revised Common Lectionary texts are here.
[3] A similar use of this image exists in chapter 4 of Micah, another prophetic book of the Bible.
[4] The new liturgical year.

First Sunday of Advent (Year B): meditations on the scriptures / sermon excerpts

 The Collect and Revised Common Lectionary readings for this First Sunday of Advent, Year B, are here.

These are two excerpts (beginning and end) from a sermon I preached on the first Sunday of Advent exactly six years ago (i.e. in the same cycle of readings, Year B) at Trinity Episcopal Church in Canton, Massachusetts, a racially mixed (African American and White, with a few West African members) parish, in the wake of the events in Ferguson, Missouri: the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed, young Black man by a police officer and the announcement this week that the Grand Jury did not indict the officer, followed by outcries and demonstrations of protest in Ferguson and around the U.S.

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down

so that the mountains would quake at your presence

--as 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 64:1-2]

                                                                                                     

Chaos and anguish.

Lament and longing.

Social unrest.

Scary weather.

This is what we hear in our readings

for the first Sunday of Advent.

Today is the beginning of the season of preparing

for Christmas,

the Nativity of Jesus,

who came to us as a child born in poverty,

and who at a very young age

became a migrant child,

carried by his parents to Egypt

so that he might be safe from the long reach

of violent tyranny.

And speaking of migration:

the part of the book of Isaiah we heard

is a book of exiles

returning home

bewildered, traumatized.

In the middle of finding their bearings.

In a harsh, disoriented time.

                                                                                                                    

In the image given to us by the Psalm,

we drink bowls of our own tears --

bowls of tears! ...

... Jan Richardson,

an artist, Methodist minister, and poet

says of today’s Gospel passage that it

“doesn’t so much beckon us across the threshold” of Advent

“as it throws open a door,

tosses a cup of cold water in our face to wake us,

and shoves us through.”

Not very cheery.

... There’s no getting around it.

This is a difficult and painful season for many of us.

Difficult for those of us who suffer from depression

or who are living with addiction.

Painful for those whose relationship with their families

is challenging

or conflicted

or non existent.

Difficult, even disastrous, for refugees from our own

Long Island Shelter in Boston,

hundreds of people

who now are doubly homeless

because of lack of timely repairs on the bridge to the island.

It is wrenchingly painful for the parents of Black and brown children,

especially Black and brown boys and young men,

who are full of fear every time their child leaves the house.

Is is discouraging and angering in the face of the lack of indictment in Ferguson

for an officer shooting and killing an unarmed young man.

It is discouraging for those law enforcement professionals

who do their jobs with care and honor

and a sense of responsibility.

It is frightening in a season of rising oceans and climate change.

It is enough to make us raise our voices in anguish and say to God,

GOD?

WHERE ARE YOU?

GET OVER HERE!

or

COME ON, JESUS!

SHOW UP!

So it was

for the people

from whom

and for whom 

the Gospel of Mark was written...

 [There followed several paragraphs about staying awake, reading the signs of the times,
mindfulness, vigilance, and faithfulness.]



... We cry, with the Psalmist,

Restore us, O God of hosts;
show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.

[Ps. 80:3,7]

This is not the ordinary light,
not that of electricity,
not even that of the moon and stars,
not that of the sun.

It is
a different light:
the radiant darkness of God
the Word that comes to us when the ordinary perceptions have gone.

This may well be why
we have this earth- and heavens-shaking
entry into Advent:
to return us to a different light.

Our opening collect calls us to “cast away the works of darkness.”
I want to offer us an alternative, which is to cease equating darkness with what is evil
and rather, to embrace the dark. To see the dark as the place where God is with us.

A radiant darkness.

So let us pray, in words given to us by Janet Morley,

God our deliverer,
whose approaching birth
still shakes the foundations of our world:
ay we so wait for your coming
with eagerness and hope
that we embrace without terror
the labour pangs of the new age,
through Jesus Christ, Amen.[1]

---

[1]  Janet Morley, Collect for Advent Sunday, in All Desires Known: Inclusive Prayers for Worship and Meditation, expanded edition (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1992), 4.

Paths to Trinitarian Life and Prayer

This essay was published nine years ago in the "Proclaiming Gospel  Justice" section of the late lamented magazine The Witness's online version. It remained up on the Web long after the magazine and its A Globe of Witnesses online incarnation ceased publication, until fairly recently.  I found a cached copy of the essay this week and reproduce it here. Thanks again to The Witness and its then Editor, Ethan Vesely-Flad, for offering me the opportunity to reflect on the challenging topic of the Trinity in the light of the scriptures from Year A of the Lectionary.

We are in Year A of the Lectionary again and I am preaching this weekend (in an Episcopal parish south of Boston). I may crib from myself a bit in the sermon... For now, study and prayer!

Andrei Rublev (15th c.), "Trinity"

 Paths to Trinitarian Life and Prayer
 
by Jane Carol Redmont
 
Friday, May 20, 2005

The Witness

Lectionary Reflections for Trinity Sunday (A)

 

Readings for Trinity Sunday, Year A, May 22, 2005

• Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a
• Psalm 8 (or Psalm 150)
• 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
• Matthew 28:16-20

 
Most of the preachers I know think of Trinity Sunday as Preacher's Nightmare Day. How to keep the sermon from degenerating into a doctrinal lecture? How to do justice to such a complex and vital doctrine in twelve minutes -- or even twenty? What is the connection with the scriptures? Why is the doctrine celebrating God's dynamic and relational self so easy to freeze or to ossify? What has the Trinity to do with the sufferings of our world? And where does any of this leave, lead, or involve the people of God, the true celebrants of this feast? (Preachers are only there to help open a few windows.)

Dorothee Soelle, the German theologian, poet, activist and mystic who died just two years ago, often wrote of how difficult she found it to speak about God.

Equally often, she quoted the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart's saying that God is "that which is most communicable."

This day's feast reminds me of both her statements.

It reminds me also that Soelle once wrote "We can only speak about God when we speak to God."

	It matters how we understand the ecology of God. We need the insights of icons and books, of ecofeminist and Orthodox Christians, of scientists in dialogue with theologians and ethicists.

These words are one of our windows for the day: one of the major paths to understanding the mystery of the Holy Trinity goes through prayer.

I say this not to avoid doctrinal discussion (well, perhaps just a little) since our understandings and formulations of God do matter. They matter to us as a Christian community, and perhaps more importantly, they matter to the broken world in which we live and to its healing. It is interesting (and, I think, no accident) that in recent ecumenical conversations, in fresh theological reflection in both Eastern and Western Christian traditions, and in the work of ecofeminist theologians from the North and the South (Ivone Gebara of Brazil comes first to mind) a renewed understanding of God as Trinity has gone hand in hand with increased attention to God's creation: attention to the environment, to the interdependence of earth, waters, skies and the sentient creatures who dwell there, attention to the impact upon them of human decisions, institutions, and societies. It matters how we understand the ecology of God.

We need the insights of icons and books, of ecofeminist and Orthodox Christians, of scientists in dialogue with theologians and ethicists. And nothing can replace the time that this kind of reflection requires nor our commitment to this mindful exploration.

But at some point, sooner rather than later, we need to hear and speak the poetry of God's mystery. And we will need, at some point, to do so in the second person, "you," speaking to God.

The feast of the Trinity is the gate through which we pass into the long season of the Spirit-filled year. God is alive. God is present. We have just spent the season of Easter remembering and proclaiming this reality, and at Pentecost last week we prayed it with particular intensity, remembering the multiplicity of human experience. Let not the celebration of Trinity, in its honoring of speech about God, lose its speech to God.

So to God we turn, today, even if we see only fragments, or through a glass darkly.

When God is "you," we can plead, argue, listen, fall silent. We can praise or lament. And we can gaze -- at creation in nature, at icons, at the faces of those we love and those we do not love enough.

This contemplation is not of and for the few. The Holy One who is also Multiplicity, and who remains One, is "that which is most communicable." We are not, with this God into whose life Jesus has invited us, in the domain of the spiritually privileged. "We are all mystics," Soelle reminds us.

Take the risk of speaking to God, of approaching or letting yourself be approached, in the boldness of the Spirit and the terror of these times. Alone, or, as this Sunday, in a praying community. In song, in silence, in poetry, in gesture.

Take the risk of speaking to God, of approaching or letting yourself be approached, in the boldness of the Spirit and the terror of these times. Alone, or, as this Sunday, in a praying community. In song, in silence, in poetry, in gesture.

Amos Wilder, the biblical scholar (brother of Thornton Wilder, the playwright and novelist) wrote nearly thirty years ago:

It is at the level of the imagination that the fateful issues of our new world-experience must first be mastered. It is here that culture and history are broken, and here that the church is polarized. Old words do not reach across the new gulfs, and it is only in vision and oracle that we can chart the unknown and new-name the creatures.
Before the message there must be the visions, before the sermon the hymn, before the prose the poem.

The scriptures today do not offer us a formula. They offer us vision, imagination, paths into Trinitarian life and prayer.

"Hallelujah! Praise God with timbrel and dance and strings and pipe." Hear and read and sing the Psalm. Hear it anew. ["Praise God and Dance" from Duke Ellington's Second Sacred Concert, which premiered at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1968, is a setting of Psalm 150.] Engage in that praise, directly, with cymbals and trumpet and and voice.

Today's Epistle is doubtless in the lectionary because it is one of the few places in which an explicitly Trinitarian greeting appears. But notice other words from this letter to the church at Corinth. "Do you not realize that Christ is in you?" "Do what is right." "Live in peace." What invitations come with the Trinitarian blessing?

Read and hear the words from Genesis both dramatically and reverently: stars, sky, earth, swarms of living creatures, waters of the sea, fish and human creatures, and -- hear, O busy, overscheduled ones -- God's sabbath rest, and the earth's, and ours. What response will we give to this when we go forth into all the nations?

Pray the feast. Let the feast live in the people of God.

Guns, Grief, and Gaudete: Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent, after the Newtown Massacre

The Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday), year C                                               

December 16, 2012                                                                                         

St. Mary’s House, Greensboro

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Canticle 9 [from Isaiah 12:2-6]

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18

In the name of God

Who creates us,

Who saves us, and

Who remains with us always,

Amen.

Charlotte Bacon, 6 years old

Daniel Barden, 7 years old

Rachel Davino, 29 years old

Olivia Engel, 6 years old

Josephine Gay, 7 years old

Ana Marquez-Greene, 6 years old

Dylan Hockley, 6 years old

Dawn Hocksprung, 47 years old

Madeline Hsu, 6 years old

Catherine Hubbard, 6 years old

Chase Kowalski, 7 years old

Jesse Lewis, 6 years old

James Mattioli, 6 years old

Grace McDonnell, 7 years old

Anne Marie Murphy, 52 years old

Emilie Parker, 6 years old

Jack Pinto, 6 years old

Noah Pozner, 6 years old

Caroline Previdi, 6 years old

Jessica Rekos, 6 years old

Avielle Richman, 6 years old

Lauren Russeau, 30 years old

Mary Sherlach, 56 years old

Victoria Soto, 27 years old

Benjamin Wheeler, 6 years old

Allison Wyatt, 6 years old

[short silence]

Nancy Lanza, age unknown

Adam Lanza, 20 years old

Let us pray.

O God, who came into the world

as a fragile child

and who lived as one of us,

even unto death;

Risen One,

Mysterious One beyond our understanding,

who created and creates us,

who seeks us out,

and whom we seek;

Comforter and advocate,

our shield and our strength,

hold us in our grief;

Oh Holy One,

in Whose name we gather,

Amen

Like most preachers in this country,

I threw away the first draft of my sermon on Friday afternoon.

Advent took on starker colors.

It became more urgent, its prophetic calls more sharp.

At the same time

it went into slow motion

as our world does after trauma.

Twenty-six people shot and killed,

each shot several times, from the medical examiner’s account,

in an elementary school in a quiet, privileged community

in Connecticut.

Most of them children.

More than half of them girls.

Their teachers, all women,

killed trying to protect them.

A young man

not long out of childhood,

killing others and himself,

and before that, killing his own mother.

The rose color of Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of rejoicing,

this third Sunday of Advent,

and the words of our first scripture readings for today,

clash with our reality.

It shouldn’t happen.

The blood,

the guns,

the police,

the media,

the empty children’s rooms

   with weeping parents,

the questions.

I threw away my sermon.

And then I asked myself:

why don’t I throw away that sermon every week?

Where, in our sermons,

in our prayers,

in our community work,

are the names of the children

who die of gun violence

every day?

 In 2008 and 2009

—these figures are from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention— [1]

5,740

children and teens

were killed by guns.

Five thousand

seven hundred

and forty.

In two years.

This number would fill more than 229 public school classrooms

of 25 students each.

More than 170 of the children

killed during those two years

were pre-schoolers.

Black children and teens,

who were 15 percent

of the total child population in the US

during those two years,

accounted for 45 percent

of all child and teen gun deaths.

Trayvon Martin.
We remember his name – do we?
But do we know the other names?

Do our news media publish them?
Do we pray them?

Do we remember them?
Do we weep for them?

This shouldn’t happen

in a quiet suburban community.

It shouldn’t happen in a noisy urban community.

It shouldn’t happen to any mother’s child.

Or to any mother.

Or father.

Or human person of any kind.

Columbine High School, Colorado.

Wedgwood Baptist Church, Texas.
Atlanta day trading, Georgia.

            I know you want to put your hands over your ears–

bear with me and with this list for another minute—

Lockheed Martin,  Mississippi.
Living Church of God, Wisconsin.
Red Lake High School and Reservation, Minnesota.
Amish School, Pennsylvania.

Virginia Tech University, Virginia

Northern Illinois University, Illinois.
American Civic Association center, New York state

Fort Hood Army Base, Texas

Tucson congressional constituent meeting, Arizona

Oikos University, California

Seattle café, Washington state

Movie theatre, Colorado

Sikh temple, Wisconsin

I skipped some.

We don’t feel much like rejoicing on this Gaudete Sunday.

And religious platitudes won’t help us.

The voice and visions from today’s scriptures from Zephaniah and Isaiah,

words of justice and joy,

speak to some of us

but fail to reach others among us.

Some of us feel more like the passage from Jeremiah,

the same passage quoted in the gospel of Matthew on the massacre of the innocents:

“...a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children;

she refused to be comforted for her children,

because they are no more.”[2]

When children die,

our God dies.

Our faith is shaken.

Our hope begins to faint.

Our visions and dreams turn to nightmares.

Into this world

this very world

Jesus was born

and is born

and will be born.

In this world,

John the Baptizer

spoke,

and speaks,

to both rich and poor,

to the occupied and the occupiers,

the conquered and the empire,

the religious and the not so religious,

the violent and the silent.

Last week we encountered John already,

preaching repentance –

-- repentance and forgiveness.

Repentance first.

And did you notice that the author of the gospel of Luke

very carefully named the context, political and economic,

of John’s preaching -- do you remember?

"In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea..." and so on –“the word of God came to John...”

We might well say:

In the seventh year of the Roberts Court at the Supreme Court of the United States, the seventeenth year since the founding of the World Trade Organization,[3] the one hundred and twelfth Congress, the fourth year of the presidency of Barack Obama, when Bev Perdue was governor of North Carolina, the word of God came...

This week,

the gospel’s author, and John the Baptizer,

get very practical.

 
What should we DO?

What should we do?

One of the things we tend to do when a catastrophe happens is to simplify.

We want a cause. We want a reason. We want a simple answer.

We want it theologically

and we want it socially.

We want it theologically:

You know that saying, “Everything happens for a reason”?
What a load of theological hogwash that is. 

As if we could know.

 

On an emotional and spiritual and theological level,

we don’t know.

We need to sit, in Advent, in the night,

in our not-knowing,

the not-knowing in which faith is forged,

the place where hope will be born

–in this we trust—

in the faint light of the rose and purple candles.

But this will not happen fast

or easily.

And socially, we want a simple answer too.

That is another kind of “everything happens for a reason”

which might be rephrased as 
“everything happens for one reason.”

No; I think

that things generally happen

for several reasons.

In the case of the Connecticut killings,

and of other killings by gun violence in this nation,

the lax gun laws, yes.

Yes. Yes.

AND

the fact that it is easier to get a gun

than to get mental health care.

The lack of good mental health care.

The stigma

that those of us who have suffered from mental illness still bear.

The glorification of violence in our entertainment industry

and the shaping of our desires

through this industry.

The images and models of masculinity in our culture.

Social isolation.

And this country’s particular sin:

We enslaved each other through violence.

We are a country enslaved to violence.

AND

whatever it is

that causes humans to kill each other,

as the ancient story of the brothers Abel and Cain recounts.

We are all entangled with this.

Call it evil, call it sin, call it the way of the world;

call it what you want.

We are, one way or another, a part of it –

- some perhaps more than others, but all of us.

Today’s collect[4]

puts it in old-fashioned language: “we are sorely hindered by our sins.”

We hear this against the backdrop of last week’s gospel:

the reality of repentance

and that of forgiveness.

What should we DO?

Say the people

in today’s gospel.

John the Baptizer,

in the Gospel of Luke,

encounters different audiences

who ask what they should do

to change.

The crowd asks.

The tax collectors ask.

Even the soldiers ask.

John takes these groups of people

where they are.

They are not starting from the same place.

No hoarding, he says to one group.

No skimming, to the other.

No extortion, to the third; no abuse.

It’s not everything.

But it’s a place to start.

In Advent,

we live

between God’s patience

and God’s impatience.

Advent is a time to rediscover

both of these,

God’s patience

and God’s impatience,

and to discern

when and where 

to respond to them

by living in them:

Living God’s patience:

in grieving together,

in holding each other’s hands,

in listening,

in doing the small, daily things

that assure us, after the catastrophe,

that we are still alive.

Living God’s impatience:

in outrage

and action

for justice;

for change.

Dorothee Soelle, the German theologian,

has always been helpful to me.

She grew up during the Shoah [the Holocaust]

and after World War II, she said,

she didn't have much stomach for

“the God who so gloriously reigneth."

For her,

in that period of history,

God was weak

and did not have enough friends.

The God who is with us

in Advent,

and who will be with us at Christmas

as a fragile child,

needs us 
as friends.

Let us pray.

Come, o brother Jesus.

Come, o wounded savior.

Come, weak God who shows us strength where there is none.

Come, challenger of empires

and of the language of empires

and of the weapons of empires.

Come to us and make us your friends.

Come to us who are charged with protecting

you,

your children,

your life.

Come to us who fail;

come to us who struggle;

come to us who need forgiveness.

Come to us

and teach us to work

patiently

stubbornly

together

for life.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Weep with us.

Hold our hands.

Stay in our hearts.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Anger us.

Be our guide.

Teach us to be your friends.

Teach us your hope.

Amen.

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[1] These figures and others are detailed and analyzed in the Children’s Defense Fund report on children and gun violence, "Protect Children Not Guns 2012." http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/protect-children-not-guns-2012.pdf

[2] Jeremiah 31:15.

[3] In a shorter, related meditation for an Advent retreat, I also included in this enumeration “in the sixty-eighth year since the establishment of the Bretton Woods Institutions.”  I include these transnational economic institutions (the Bretton Woods institutions –the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund— and the World Trade Organization) because politics and economics, as they were two thousand years ago though in different ways, are deeply connected, and because our lives are affected by economic as well as political institutions. You can replace the names and institutions above at will. Try it.

[4] Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen. Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent, the Book of Common Prayer.