Advent 1
Nov. 29, 2009
Advent means to be aware!
Advent means to be alive!
Advent means to be attentive!
Advent means to be alert!
Advent means to be awake! (Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas)
I will always remember the first Sunday of Advent; it’s change of liturgical seasons, it’s purple color of waiting, preparing, anticipation, close on the heels of giving thanks, wondering about what is to come, or who is to come among us.
Ten years ago, on the first Sunday of Advent my dad died. As a preacher himself, he loved Advent and Christmas. He loved the color purple. As a family we celebrated our last Thanksgiving together, he had settled his finances 2 days before, the house was paid off, he attended half of his favorite rivalry basketball game between Hope and Calvin Colleges, went to his small room at “The Warm Friend”, after fighting illness of both body and spirit at 78 years of age, he died of heart failure the next morning, his family still near at hand. We grieved and were grateful.
A few years later, on the weekend of Thanksgiving and Advent 1 our community read the incredible news that a local teenager, angry with his family, shot and killed them all; grandparents, parents, brother and his brother’s girlfriend. How can such a thing happen within a family?
A few years ago, our neighbor delivered a baby girl in this season, months premature, weighing only 12 ounces. Parents at her side, round the clock, Advent was spent waiting and watching to see if she would live. Her living and dying occurred within a few weeks and her parents’ waiting ended with empty arms.
I just received word from my clergy friend that she found her 17 year old daughter, lifeless in her bedroom, having taken her own life, this Saturday between Thanksgiving and Advent 1.
I will always remember this first Sunday of Advent, its scripture passages that beckon us to watch and wait, to be awake and alert. The Gospel lesson for this Sunday is always one that makes me squirm with its devastation, destruction, tumult in the heavens and on earth, its end-times drama, the scary scenes of imagination it conjures. Who picked such a theme to start off this season of hope? And who suggested that these passages offer the theme of Hope for which we light the first candle of Advent? Why begin the season every year, the New Year for the Church Year, with loss and grief, both personal and corporate? Besides our own personal losses and grief for loved ones we read of more troops sent off to war, more turbulence within and between nations and religions, more people hungry and in need of help from someone, from somewhere, homelessness rising. Where is the Hope in this first Sunday of Advent? Just what is it we are to awake to see and know? What is it that we are supposed to be aware of?
“Be on guard so your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:34-36 NRSV)
These words of Jesus are offered in the gospels shortly before his own arrest and death, some years before the destruction of Jerusalem (again), the years throughout his life and death which were years of an oppressive empire, of religious zealot and terrorist groups, of manipulative and exploitive political power, of desperation, religious and racial prejudices, homelessness, of sons and daughters not living past a day or but a few years, and even the leaders of God declaring who was acceptable and who was not, who was in favor and who was condemned.
The writers who include these words within the Gospel, the “Good News”, write them to followers who continued to live in difficult times of persecution and uncertainty, when hope was perhaps all one had to cling to. Out of the mouth of Jesus, the One to whom all looked for the words of hope and life, comes the reality that hardship “will come”. It will come to “all who live”, he says. Suffering and loss, grief and death, it will all happen. In these discouraging words (dis - taking away, cour – heart) is the encouragement (en-hearten), to “be on guard so your hearts” are able to endure. Seems like work of the heart to me.
“Be on guard so your hearts are not weighed down”. Does this mean bodies will be weighed down? Minds will be weighed down? Why concern for the heart? Was that the place of the spirit? Or The Spirit? When our minds can’t seem to understand and there is no sense in what is happening, when our bodies are worn out from crying and sleeplessness and pain, might hearts still be strong and courageous? Love and hope might still survive? Yes, I believe that is the heart work, the encouragement from Jesus.
Viktor Frankl in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, out of his own holocaust experience reminds us that everything can be stripped away from our sense of being, except how our heart’s response and the choice to love and hope in spite of circumstances. Its heart work when bodies and minds can’t make heads or tails of life and death.
For many in the Western World this season of Advent and Christmas is full of hope-filled children anticipating “the stuff” they want from Santa. And the season is filled with frantic parents trying to fulfill their children’s hopes and keep sane at the same time. And there are those experiencing loss of income and so the season may have new worries that weigh them down, or may have anxiety for so many who are walking or running around numb, unaware, unawake, senseless to what is raging all around and within slipping into an oblivious sleep-walking world. But what of those parents with empty arms and broken hearts, whose sons and daughters are no more, those neighbors who are homeless or refugees, whose home and work are no more?
The HOPE of Advent 1, in the middle of what seems so wrong, is that we are invited “to be aware!...
to be alive! …
to be attentive! …
to be alert! … to be awake!” (Rohr) to those things that weigh us down, that fragment (dissipate) our lives, that create addictive passions that drag us away from what is truly important, those worries that ensnare us with obsessions, those unexpected disasters and realities that would make us lose heart, or may trap our hearts in despair. The Hope is that in being alert to all that is within us and around us, to be truly awake, to be in prayer - that ever present residing in God, enables us to have the strength, enough maybe to escape the despair if not the hardships, but certainly to stand up and not crumble, to withstand, and stand beside and before, the One who is with us always. And maybe, it is an invitation to stand beside and hold up one another, or those presently weighed down by so much pain, and be their hope when they have no strength for it themselves; to be awake in one another’s behalf, to see hope when tears blur their eyes, to help one another keep from crumbling.
I will always remember Advent 1. The Word of the Lord invites us into Hope, into the courage of living awake.
Come, Lord Jesus, help us to awaken to God with us.
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