Yesterday, I returned to New Community of Fellowship and filled in for their interim pastor. I was delighted for the invitation and opportunity to preach on the first Sunday of Advent. I thought I’d share my sermon here:
New Community of Faith
11/30/08
Isaiah 64:1-9
“While We Wait”
Today we find ourselves ending a holiday week designed to be a reminder of the things in our life for which we are most grateful. It’s sacred in many ways. Thanksgiving connects us to a very rich, Biblically-based theme of giving thanks. This week, we as human beings were once again reminded before and after the Thanksgiving feast was shared, the very essence of how fragile human life is, how dangerous evil can be, and how we as a society often contribute to the chaos that exists.
We found out about the horrible tragedies of lives lost in the attacks on Mumbai, India. We are now beginning to hear the stories and see the faces of the Americans who lost their lives in the attacks. We will probably never know about all who were lost in that great tragedy.
It is still an outrage that we as a consumer-driven society cannot also see the evil in our quest for luxuries. To think that a man lost his life while others literally walked over him in an attempt to catch the first good deals of the day reminds me that we have our priorities out of order. Two disputing men decided the way to handle their argument was in a crowded store on the same day, surrounded by other men, women and children. We should be appalled at these acts of violence, yet we seem to be becoming numb to them. It seems our tendency is to say, “Oh, that’s so sad.” And yet we continue on like nothing ever happened.
Yesterday, we awoke to news that hundreds have been killed in Nigeria due to a war caused by religious tensions between Christians and Muslims. Tomorrow, December 1st is World Aids Day, and there is still much work to be done in terms of treatment, care, support, and prevention of this terrible disease. In 2007, it was reported that 33.2 million adults/children in the world were living with HIV/AIDS.
Shall I go on? We’ve yet to even cover the economy, issues of poverty, etc. I haven’t mentioned the personal struggles and places in our own “private” lives that we bring with us to worship. Enough! We cry—we live in these places every day… do we really have to hear about them from the pulpit on Sundays too, we ask ourselves?
With fear and trepidation of the reality that you might not ask me back depending on how I answer that question…. I say yes. Yes, we need to talk about these things. Yes, we need to bring them into the worship of God. Yes, we need to ask, where is God in this midst of this chaotic world?
And yet, have hope. We are not the first ones who have asked these questions, watched tragedies unfold, and witnessed evil being acted out by human beings. Our scripture text today is from the book of Isaiah. Most modern scholars believe that this section of Isaiah was composed after the Babylonian exile sometime during the 6th century. We hear it this morning as a lament, an expression of mourning and sorrow for their present situation. The lament here is something similar to what we would hear in the book of Psalms. The writer getting God’s attention, reminding God of ways God has worked in the past and imploring God to work now in the present. In our text today, there is lament here- real call for Divine intervention.
“On that you would tear apart the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!” As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you! For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down and the mountains trembled before you.”
Here we have the written words of people living times of destruction, war, poverty, and oppression. They have a real sense of disappointment about them here. God has not shown up in the way that the wanted, and they are living in the reality of waiting for restoration. They are trying to be a hopeful people calling on God and calling out the power that God has to work in their lives. They are hoping for redemption. They are waiting for redemption.
We find ourselves here on this first Sunday of Advent wondering what to do next. Where do we go from here as faith-filled people? The Israelite children cried out to God for restoration and redemption. And then they waited. They waited to see what would happen next. How would God come and bring redemption? How would God come and bring restoration?
Why is this a text for the first Sunday of Advent? Because it’s a story of what it means to be a people waiting on God to act and respond to a people in need. What do we do while we wait? We take our hope in the text we have this morning. Isaiah 64:8 reads, “But now, O Lord, You are our God; We are the clay, and You are the Potter, We are all the work of Your hands.” Our hope is that while we wait, we are being re-formed. The Israelite children prayed for God to “look upon us… for we are all your people”.
As God’s people, we have a choice of how we are going to live out the waiting period this Advent. Waiting is a difficult thing to do. We don’t like to wait, but we are forced to do it, sometimes in the most inconvenient of places. We have to wait on a table to eat, wait to see our doctors, wait for a call or a letter from a friend.
A few weeks ago, I heard a line from a Marc Cohn song that has stuck with me. In the song, the singer asks the question repeatedly, “Am I willing to wait for the miracle?” I had heard that song multiple times but on this particular morning, I heard it louder and clearer than ever before. I shared it with a colleague of mine whose response was, “Sounds like an Advent question to me.” That is the question of Advent I suppose. Such a tough question. I long for the miracle that the Israelites longed for. Yes, I want the heavens to tear open. I want for God to show up in some really BIG way to demonstrate the God I serve is powerful, interested in redemption, and cares about people who are hurting.
Instead, God chose to show up in the form of a baby. A baby? Really? Our miracle that we had to wait for came in the form of a baby? And advent is supposed to remind us of that miracle each year. Advent is supposed to be our time of preparation, our time of waiting… waiting for God to show up once again.
How do we survive these chaotic times while we wait? Do we keep to ourselves in our communities of faith, reading, praying and singing Kum-ba-yah, all the while pretending that we aren’t affected? While we wait, we are to keep awake looking for all the places that God might show up to us.
I read this week in the Christian Century a story about a place in Seattle, WA that looks a lot like a Starbucks we might find in any of our neighborhoods. It’s called the Recovery Café. The folks who wander into the inviting space aren’t necessarily looking to “shed their addiction” or get off the street. Sometimes folks just show up because they are hungry. Coffee is always hot, and soup and salad are served at lunchtime. A man named Don told the writer of the article about his journey of recovery and involvement in the community at the café. “I’d be dead if not for this place.” And he’s even found a way of giving back. “They trust me with the keys, to open and close, to get the food ready…” Another man who had a habit of disappearing for months at a time said, “Now if I’m not here for a while, people notice. I have to call if I’m going to be away.”
The founder of the Recovery Café said there is a “sense of the deep relationship between being healed and healing others” as a deep theological marker for the café. This story reminds me that we don’t have to be perfect ourselves to offer something to others. The Recovery Café sounds like a place where folks are using their waiting time wisely. They are offering their own story and opportunity of recovery as a gift to someone else.
It can be a time of re-formation for us and for the communities that we are involved in. We can wait and prepare for the arrival of the Christ child. We can be molded and formed in the waiting periods. There is no doubt that we will wait, but how we respond to the waiting period is up to us.
As we enter into this Advent season, may we wait with eyes wide open to the miracle of God entering the world once again. May we listen for the ways that we may be bearers of hope and peace while we wait. May our story of waiting bring healing and transformation to our lives, our communities and our world. Amen.
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