November 27, 2011 






 

 LONGING….

Isaiah 64:1-9;   Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19

 The season of Advent is strange.  It is one of those counter-cultural things that the church is so good at that makes us seemingly so out of step with everything else going on around us.    It is intentional.  In this season  the world around us is engaged in making us want more….more gifts, more music, more lights.   More, more more.  The economy depends on it.  There are plenty of people who talk and write about the need for simplicity but the vast, belching engine that drives the celebration is a demand for more which not only fuels the economy but is designed to promise a fulfillment of a longing for something.  The problem is that the longing…the hole that is yearning to be filled isn’t in the shape of a “tickle me Elmo,” a new turbo charged power tool or a Tiffany necklace.  It is God-shaped because it is God created.  It is what fuels the human search and quest for what is good and holy and justice brining and peacemaking and compassionate and loving. 

In many ways and dimensions it is difficult to really appreciate the complexities of what our Spiritual tradition has to say about the basic longing for God that, some say, is the driving force in human life even if we haven’t identified it properly.  We have created a culture that has honed the art of denial of this profound and primal hunger.   And we have supported a culture that is so full of counterfeits that it takes extraordinary circumstances for us to recognize the real deal. 

The texts for this first Sunday in Advent land in our rather plump and marginally satisfied laps feeling about as welcome as a lump of coal in a Christmas stocking to remind us that we live in a real world of longing and yearning for a God that often seems very far away.  To be honest about that is a critical step in recognizing what is at the root of our restlessness and depressions and  maturing in our spiritual life because each step on the journey depends on realizing you haven’t arrived yet.  If we don’t know it’s really an intimacy with God we are missing how will we learn how to recognize it, even when it is all around us.   How can we welcome the  evidence of the Holy in our lives if we keep insisting we never missed it?  Your grownup kid walks in the door after months away and says “Hi, I’m home!”  and your reaction is “Oh…you’ve been gone?  That lump on the sofa with the remote wasn’t you?”    It’s not much of a relationship when you can’t tell the real thing from the fake, or if it is so superficial that you don’t sometimes absolutely ache inside when the other is absent.  Why would we think it is different with God?  Yet, it is so easy to assume that what we get in our God talk and our God symbols is all there is….all we really need. We in the church are better at administration than helping people identify the places where God is active in their lives.

Beyond the church, so much of what we do…especially all those things we do in excess to try and fill that hole in our lives or patch over the hurts, like shopping, eating, sometimes even things like drugs and other addictions…is really a search for wholeness….for becoming the complete people we long to be but that we can only be when we are connected to the divine center of life.  The problem is, of course, that we sometimes misunderstand what that would be like, or look like or feel like and when it doesn’t look or feel like what we think we should expect we assume God is not really there after all.

Both of today’s readings give voice to the longing.  They speak for all of us at those times when we feel God is absent and for the parts of us that know that what’s being marketed as God is a fake., and  to the silent cries that we all make from time to time for God to come to us on our terms.   “Oh, that you would open the heavens and come down.”  Such spatial images may sound odd to those of us who know that God doesn’t reside “up there.”  But isn’t that basically what we are saying when we are experiencing firsthand all the pain and unfairness and injustice that this old world can throw in  our direction and when we long for a superman God to come and fix it?  When it doesn’t all work out like we had hoped, is that because you are mad at us God?  And if  what I do, even when I’m trying to do my best can make you that mad, God, maybe I don’t really need you in my life after all.

Perhaps by now you are wondering why in the world you bothered to come here.  This is the season of joy and magic, and love, and music.  Who needs these laments.  String up the lights and crank up the stereo and put some cookies in the oven and some mistletoe over the threshold.  Is the church just hopelessly out of step?  Can we not pretend for a couple of weeks in this season that  everything is OK?  Isn’t that why we come to church in the first place…to feel good?  I’ll concede that there’s truth to that but only if we are basing our joy and hope on something real.  And  that means that anything we say and affirm in this place has to pass the test of speaking a word of comfort and hope to all those for whom the least relevant adjective to describe their lives today is joy.  Any word the Church speaks in this season must withstand the hurricane force winds of lament.  It must speak with authenticity to Nancy whose daughter just died…..and to her grandsons Nicholas and Christian….and to the people who just ran out of unemployment benefits, and the ones whose child got blown up in Afghanistan, and the ones who have never known a life without violence, the one who just heard the finality inherent in the dreaded diagnosis.  The longing for God comes in many shapes and sizes and any word that the church speaks must be authentic in each context. 

There is a longing in our hearts, O God,  we sing each Sunday of Advent. For wholeness, for healing, for justice ……… Despite the manufactured excitement of the season, and even some of the genuine beauty it carries, the seasonal celebrations cannot speak to the unspeakable griefs and unbearable sorrows which we carry with us individually and collectively.  They are not God and neither is the best that we can patch together liturgically in our church celebrations.  Most of us know that we need the real thing.

The readings today give voice to the longing.  They speak the language of lament.  But the incredible testimony of these writings, despite their anger and pathos, is the assurance…the utter trust and conviction that transcends immediate experience that their words are not being shouted into a cavernous void but that there is a God who is present and who hears and who acts.  And that has been the testimony of the church in all times and places and of God’s people of other faith traditions with other sacred texts as well. (pay attention to these)  When you really start peeling back the layers, and get beyond the tendency toward magical thinking, and hoping for superman or superwoman or some other superhero decked out in faux divinity, you find an amazing consistency in the witnesses and they boil down to about three basic themes:

  • That in this world where awful things happen God’s presence is always one that embodies love and comfort and possibility…even in the midst of tragedy….even at the end of life as we know it.  Always.  No exceptions.
  • That because God is God….not just a bigger version of ourselves…..we are free to be human.  We can weep bitter tears and we can shake our fist at life’s injustices.  If the psalmists and the prophets have done nothing else for us they have modeled how to be real before and within God.  Our limited understanding and knowledge do not limit the mystery of the one who is in every breath we take and there to envelope us with love when we breathe our last.  And so we don’t have to pretend that things are not as they are, denying our tragedies and masking our griefs because God is present even when we cannot see through the tears and in ways that are often quite unexpected.  Always.
  • And the third theme is that God works not by restoring what was but by creating something new in our lives.  This is the hardest thing to understand.  Isaiah pleads with God to be present like he assumed God was before….with smoke and fire on the mountaintop. He could never have imagined God present in Bethlehem for instance. We say put it back.  Take us back in time. Our limited human imaginations cannot fathom what newness God can open to us if we are vulnerable enough to welcome it and trusting enough to follow where it leads.   God’s power and love do not manifest in a return to never-never land but in a new tomorrow.    God is in this with us and in tomorrow and will not leave us.  Always.  No exceptions.

We cannot control how God will come to us or how God is present with us but we can recognize that this is what we long for and learn to recognize the unexpected echoes of mercy and whispers of love that blow through our lives.   In this world where awful things happen God is present and faithful, we are free to be honest and human and God’s power is at work to bring us through whatever it is we are going through, to fashion hope out of despair and joy out of sorrow, and possibility out of each dead end.  Always.  No exceptions.      

Amen.


Mary Gaut,
All Rights Reserved


 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

LONGING….
Isaiah 64:1-9;   Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19






 

 

Isaiah 64:1-9

 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,so that the mountains would quake at your presence— as when fire kindles brushwoodand the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
From ages past no one has heard,no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who gladly do right,those who remember you in your ways.
But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.
We have all become like one who is unclean,and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;we are the clay, and you are our potter;
   we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity for ever.
Now consider, we are all your people.

 

Psalm 80

Prayer for Israel’s Restoration

To the leader: on Lilies, a Covenant. Of Asaph. A Psalm.

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh.

Stir up your might, and come to save us! 

Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

O Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?  You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure.  You make us the scorn of our neighbours; our enemies laugh among themselves.

Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

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But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself.

Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your name.

Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.