Joel D. Kline
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
November 28, 2004
The First Sunday of Advent
After Sunday School had ended last Sunday morning, I was observing a number of families with young children, gathering up their children and all the paraphernalia that goes along with providing for them. One of the fathers joked that, with three young children, life frequently seems out of control, a remark that caused me to remember how often Janice and I found ourselves saying the same thing when our children were infants and toddlers: “Life seems out of control.” Truth be told, while you and I would like to believe that we are masters of our own fate and that we are in control of our lives, that sense of control is but an illusion.
William Willimon, dean of the chapel at Duke University, suggests that “maybe all of life is a long process of honestly admitting that we are not in control, and then praying for the grace to let God be in control. Maybe that’s what real faith is,” continues Willimon, “a willingness to let God be the creator, a yearning to let the creator finish what was begun in creation. The world is not in our hands, thank God.”
But if we acknowledge our own lack of control, do we not also at times question just how much control God has of the world as well? In the face of spiraling violence and terrorism, fear and suspicion, brokenness and abuse and pain, where, we may well ask, is God? With so much of life seeming out of control, we may well wonder, where is God?
Some years ago I picked up a book entitled A Center of Quiet by Anglican pastor David Runcorn, intrigued especially by the book’s subtitle, Hearing God When Life is Noisy. Runcorn stresses that we who are products of a frenetically paced culture ever demanding instant results would do well to rediscover the power of waiting. In our busyness we are prone to consider the experience of waiting an unwanted intrusion, a significant inconvenience, a waste of our precious time. But Runcorn urges us to consider this matter of waiting in a new light, reminding us that:
Having to wait involves a submission. We cannot force the bus to arrive sooner or the doctor’s waiting room to empty faster. But our fury over a plane delay or even petty disruptions in our timetable shows how hard we find it to live with the truth of this. Waiting is an acknowledgement of our dependency. It exposes to us the illusion of our “control” over our lives. So it is in Christian prayer. The God of the Bible is the…“three-mile-an-hour God.” One of the most frustrating but essential lessons of Christian prayer is that God is not to be hurried. We are learning a new pace of life and new priorities to live by.
The Advent season of the church calendar begins with a call to wait. But it is not an idly-twiddling-our-thumbs kind of waiting. No, it is a matter of active waiting, of “keeping awake” (NRSV), “keeping watch” (NIV), as this morning’s Gospel lesson puts it. It is a matter of trusting that the God who entered the world so unexpectedly in an infant, in an obscure village in an out-of-the-way corner of the universe, born to parents of little apparent significance—this same God is even now at work, seeking to bring things aright in the world around us. Advent challenges us to place our trust anew in this “three-mile-an-hour God,” this God who seldom works as we would expect or as we would want to dictate, but this God who nevertheless is alive and active in our world. The God who chose to become one with us in Jesus Christ is the same God who promises to give birth to a transformed world, an altered world in which swords are beaten into plowshares, a new world in which all nations gather in peace, a redeemed world in which greed and grief and exploitation and violence shall be no more.
Several years ago Disciples of Christ pastor Mary Donovan Turner wrote in The Christian Century,
We long for transformation and wish it would happen magically, before our eyes. We wonder if it could be our Advent miracle. But it will not happen without serious thought, effort, sacrifice, conversation…Swords don’t melt into plowshares; swords are beaten into plowshares. We must hope for it to happen, pray for it, long for it, work for it. Advent may be a time for miracles; it is surely a time for committing ourselves to making miracles happen.
Can we envision the blade of the sword transformed into the blade of the plow, a blade used for cutting away at the surface of the earth so that new seed can be planted? Can we envision that new seed bringing life and hope to an aching world? Can we imagine putting away our angry thoughts that cut and slice at difference, and in their stead planting seeds of reconciliation and favor?
As we journey this Advent season, we must ask ourselves where we are headed. Where will our pilgrimage take us? Toward the highest mountain…? Can we lay down the swords of hatred that inflict wounds, that keep us at arms’ length from one another, that protect us from the “other”?
Perhaps God’s Advent longing is for us to hear at long last the nations say: we are ready. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.” “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
Advent is a season that calls us to say that we are ready—ready to turn from fear and suspicion and greed, ready to embrace life in God’s new order, ready to walk in the light of the Lord. It is a matter of living here and now as if God’s kingdom were fully present on earth. Indeed, is this not the calling of the church, to be salt and light in the world around us—seeking to embody God’s compassion and life, God’s peace and hope, God’s generosity and grace, in all we say and do. And we are empowered by God’s Spirit to put on this new way of living, because we trust that our “three-mile-an-hour” God will work in us and through and, when necessary, in spite of us, bringing about that day when nations shall no longer learn the ways of warfare and brokenness, but shall instead stream to God and embrace God’s vision for living.
It is this conviction that God is with us that keeps us alive and alert in faith, even at those all-too-frequent times when life seems so out of control. It is this conviction of faith that grounds and sustains us, that urges us on, even in the face of discouragement. Martin Luther King, Jr. once asserted that people of faith are called to be “creatively maladjusted vis-à-vis the world.” That is to say, we live by a different set of values, a competing set of priorities; we see the world from an alternative perspective. We believe that something’s coming, something we cannot fully imagine or adequately describe, yet something we yearn for, heart and soul.
In her book May I Have this Dance? Joyce Rupp reminds us that Advent
is not meant to be a cozy, self-satisfied time in which we wait for ‘Baby Jesus’ to be born…. Advent focuses instead on…whether or not this Savior who was born and lived on our earth has made a difference in our lives.
That’s the key question for us to ponder, whether we have allowed Jesus to transform how we live and relate with the world around us, the extent to which Christ’s Spirit has softened our fears and planted within us a new heart of compassion and peace, of grace and self-giving love. In his book The Path of Waiting Henri Nouwen reminds us, “The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our imagination or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance in a world preoccupied with control.”
A few years ago I came across the story of a middle-aged, well-to-do white South African woman boarding a British Airways plane leaving Johannesburg. She was a woman accustomed to the illusion of control, so much so that, upon arrival at her assigned seat, she immediately called the crew attendant to demand another place. In the seat beside hers was a black man.
“What is the problem?” questioned the attendant.
“Can’t you see?” responds the woman indignantly. “I can’t possibly sit next to this man,” and again she demanded, “Find me another seat!”
“Please calm down, ma’am. The flight is very full today, but I’ll see what I can do.”
The indignant woman glared at the appalled black man beside her, as well as at many of the surrounding passengers. A few moments later the attendant returned bearing good news. “As I suspected, economy is full, but we do have one seat in first class.” Before the relieved woman could respond, the attendant continued, “We generally do not make this kind of upgrade, and I had to get special permission from the captain. Given the circumstances, the captain felt that it would be outrageous that another passenger be forced to sit beside such an obnoxious person.”
And with that the attendant turned to the black passenger and said, “So if you’d like to get your things, sir, I have your new seat ready for you …” At which point the neighboring passengers stood and cheered as the man walked to the front of the plane.
How tragic when our need to control, coupled with prejudice and ignorance, keeps us from experiencing life as God envisions it, life in which we acknowledge the kernel of God’s Spirit in all manner of people and anticipate that day when all nations shall stream to God.
Spiritual retreat leader Brennan Manning begins his book Ruthless Trust by sharing an encounter he had with his spiritual director. Said the director, “Brennan, you don’t need any more insights into the faith. You’ve got enough insights to last you three hundred years. The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have already received.”
Is that not the message of Advent, that we are to take the step of trusting wholeheartedly in the love of the God who came to us in Jesus Christ and who promises to be with us in the creation of a new world of compassion and peace and right living? In our need for control, many Christians have chosen to substitute adherence to dogma in place of radically trusting God. Some have even attempted to create timetables for God, ignoring Jesus’ own words, “But about that day and hour, no one knows, neither the angles of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father…Therefore be ready” (Matthew 24:36, 44).
Writers Brennan Manning, “If we could free ourselves from the temptation to make faith a mindless assent to a dusty pawnshop of doctrinal beliefs, we would discover with alarm that the essence of biblical faith lies in trusting God.”
This Advent season, will we embrace anew the heart of faith, which is trusting God? Will we acknowledge that we are not in control, that we are not the center of the universe? Instead, will we commit ourselves to the risky task of living as the people of God, hoping and praying and working and waiting for that day when all nations shall stream to God’s presence, when swords shall be beaten into plowshares, and together all shall say, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”
Something’s coming! Get ready! Amen.
O God, the messages we hear during this season sometimes confuse us. We hear the good news of Immanuel, God-with-us, wrapped in an infant born in an out of the way village in an obscure corner of the world—an infant who grows to become our Redeemer, our Example, and our Lord; an infant who later as an adult lives and proclaims the way of self-giving love, eventually enduring death on a cross, that we might come to know life that is abundant and filled with meaning and grace and peace and hope. Yet we celebrate that simple birth with a spending spree. Where are you, O God, in the midst of these mixed messages?
Your angels sing of peace on earth, good will to all, yet we continue to wait and hope for yearn for that day when swords are finally beaten into plowshares, when nations stream into your presence. Advertisers tell us that the right Christmas purchases will make us the envy of our neighborhood, while Jesus prods us to put away greed and selfishness and self-centeredness.
Holy God, in the mixed messages of life, remind us that your message of love—redeeming, renewing, recreating, transforming love—stands at the heart of the Advent and Christmas seasons.
God of all creation, open our hearts and our arms to those in need. We pray for victims of the world AIDS crisis, and we pray for caregivers who offer your arms of love. We pray for the poor, the broken, the homeless, the forgotten, and ask that we have the courage to put feet on to our prayers, that we might reach out with compassion and grace.
Hear us now, gracious God, as we remember those in our midst in special need of your healing touch. We hold before you…
O God, may your kingdom come among us. May your will be done here on earth, as it is in heaven. May we live and proclaim your justice, your peace, your loving kindness, your compassion in all we say and do. Amen.