Gifts of Advent

 

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14

John 14:27

               We’ve been reading a lot of difficult passages lately.  Looking intensely at some of the harder and harsher words from the Old Testament.  And I feel that today’s readings are a deep blessing instead.  They are a breath of deep and fresh air.  Today as we begin Advent, we begin with this promise of something beautiful.  We begin with seeing once again the deep love of God. 

While Jeremiah is addressing a people in captivity and in exile, I want to invite you to think for a minute about how these words might apply to you, too.  While we are not literally in captivity or in exile, there are areas within each of us that are in captivity and/or in exile.  Maybe you are in captivity to anger that you are holding against someone else.  Maybe you are in captivity to fear about what is happening to a loved one, to yourself, to the country.  Maybe you are in captivity to an addiction that you just can’t shake, no matter how much you may want to, or something you have to finish, a chore, a promise, a commitment that you simply do not want to fulfill, that is holding you captive in that it prevents you from moving on, from doing what you may want to do.  Maybe you feel your body is holding you in captivity in its limitations, in the ways you may now be limited physically, or prevented by bodily issues from doing the things that you would like to be able to do. 

And exile?  Are there people in your life from whom you are estranged?  Are there relationships that you cannot reconcile?  Are there places where you feel uncomfortable, uneasy, separated, distant?  Are there places that have meant “home” to you that are no longer accessible?  Or people with whom you felt at home that you can no longer be with (because of many things, even death, that keeps us apart)?  Where are the areas within you that you have pushed out or that you cannot face?  Where are your shadow sides that you have exiled away from you?  Are there parts of yourself that you hold off, keep distant, exile?

With those images in mind, I invite you to listen again to these beautiful promises of love, these sweet and awesome promises of the future.  Close your eyes and hear these words for you again:

“I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope.  When you call me and come and pray to me, I will listen to you.  When you search for me, yes, search for me with all your heart, you will find me.  I will be present for you, declares the Lord, and I will end your captivity. I will gather you …, and I will bring you home after your long exile, declares the Lord.”  

I want you to hear those words in your hearts. These are advent promises, promises of a time to come, a time of unexpected release and comfort, a time of hope, a time of reconciliation and healing, a time of peace. 

In the book The Life of Pi, Pi had been on a boat that sank with all his family and everything that he had.   He was the only human who survived on a lifeboat.  But he was on that lifeboat for a very, very long time.  It was an incredibly difficult time.  As he described it, sometimes there weren’t any fish to catch, to eat.  And sometimes the sun was way too hot and the despair was absolutely overwhelming.  When he was asked how he survived it, if it was all just miserable and awful, he said, “You reach a point where you’re at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you’re the luckiest person on earth.  Why?  Because at your feet you have a tiny … fish [to eat].” (217).  

The truth is that we can, almost always, find signs (like a fish meal when we are hungry) of God’s love, of LIFE.  And those gifts, those signs of hope and of life are promises in themselves.  They are reminders that God created you because God loves and that is God’s very nature to love you into being YOU.

In the book, Finding Chika, Mitch Albom wrote about caring for Chika who was a little girl dying of a brain tumor.  He wrote about what he learned, how he grew during that time.  One of his chapters was entitled, “Lesson Three: A sense of wonder” and he wrote, “We took you to Disneyland once, Chika.  Do you remember?  It was after the radiation treatments.  You had been wondering about Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, which they show at the start of every Disney movie.  ‘Is that real?’ you’d ask, and we’d say that it was, and someday we would take you to see it.  One night, after putting you to bed, Miss Janine and I looked at the missing patch of hair above the back of your neck.  Your forehead was perspiring.  And we said to each other, ‘What are we waiting for?’  We made the reservations.  We flew to California.  I bought tickets for a weekday, hoping for smaller crowds, and we arrived before the park even opened.  What I remember most is what you did first.  We entered through Main Street, passing souvenir shops.  The rides were up ahead, and I wondered which would make you scream ‘Can we do that one?’  Instead we passed a small pond, and a gray duck wandered out of the water.  And with Astro Orbitor to your right, Thunder Mountain to your left, and Sleeping Beauty’s Castle straight ahead, you pointed down and yelled, ‘Look!  A duck!’ And you chased after it and giggled wildly, ‘Duck!  Duck!’… With all those amusement park attractions calling, you got low to marvel at another living creature.  … Children wonder at the world.  Parents wonder at their children’s wonder.  In so doing, we are all together young.”

This is the awe of Advent, the wonder of Advent.  Does it mean everything is okay?  Of course not.  Again, that story I read you about Chika was from a child who was dying.  A very young girl (5 -6 years of age) who died of a brain tumor.  An extremely tragic experience full of pain and loss, of painful treatments and hospital stays.  But it was in the midst of that that she found joy, wonder, delight.  God’s promise for us is one of peace: a place of rest, a place of healing for our souls: a freeing from the captivities of our minds, a return from the places of exile within.  Those moments of joy, of sight, of feeling, sensing, resting in God’s presence.  These are the gifts of Advent, the promise of that new life to come, of God’s being with us in person.

But Advent does not just leave us here.  Advent also calls us to be part of the movement, part of the growing, to pass on that hope, that peace, that joy and that love to those we encounter. 

Bishop Michael Curry, in his book, Love is the Way (New York: Penguin Random House, 2020.  P 154), wrote about the ministry his congregation was doing in the “rough” neighborhoods, in the poorest areas.  The congregants made a commitment to make a difference in those neighborhoods.  They started by singing on the street corners, and they preached five minute sermons about God’s love on the street corners.  He wrote, “During the winter holidays, we shifted to Christmas caroling.  One night, as we walked the streets near the church with our flashlights, I could sense that enthusiasm was waning. Caroling on the streets isn’t like singing in church.  In a church, voices bounce off the walls with a resonance that amplifies and improves the sound.  A mouse can belt like Patti LaBelle.  But on the streets, we got no such lift.  Our voices seemed quiet and flat, lost in the air of boarded-up and derelict homes.  Still, we stuck with it, determined to share some spirit that night.  We stopped on one block near an alley and began a quiet rendition of ‘Silent Night’ even though we couldn’t see a soul.  As we neared the finish of the first verse – ‘sleep in heavenly peace’ – we were about to walk on.  And then from the darkness of the alley, we heard a response.  A voice sang out from the darkness finishing the song, ‘Sleep in heavenly pea-ace, sle-eep in heavenly peace.’  I experienced surprised elation, but also sadness. Down that alley someone was listening.  And also down that ally someone was possibly cold, possibly hungry, possibly high.  I would never know, because he didn’t show his face.  And yet, he had responded.  Thanks to that unseen neighbor, we understood that even when it didn’t seem like it, somebody was listening.  That was a beginning, and over the years, a relationship between the community and the churches in the community began to emerge and grow. 

“I came to see that night as symbolic of the same transition we were going through as an entire congregation – a reawakening toward the community outside our walls, which was leading to a reawakening of the reality of God within and without.  It was, I suspect, part of why I was brought to St. James, and it was the hardest work any of us had ever done. 

“This is a hard and necessary work, for all of us.  It’s easy to contribute money and time to ‘do good’ and help others, whether through compassionate acts of service or by joining the movement for social justice and change.  It is far tougher to maintain a humble and dedicated relationship with God and with others, especially others who are not like you.  But that kind of relationship – the I-Thou relationship – is how we create a new dynamic, where there are no saviors, but only people working together for a better future for the good of all.  Without that mutuality our good acts all too easily replicate and reinforce the status quo.  When we draw on the ‘energies of love,’ to use Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s phrase, we reconnect with God and others, and in the end, with the whole world.

“As that happens, even if episodically, I-Thou overcomes I-It, and life becomes less about egoistic ‘me’ and more about altruistic ‘we.’”

MLK said it this way, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” 

So, during this advent we are invited to rest in the peace God offers, but also to extend that peace in every interaction we have.  To step forward with courage and confidence and to invite those around us to do likewise. 

There is a beautiful Amish proverb that says, “Faith gives us the courage to face the present with confidence and the future with expectancy.”  Those are the promises of Advent.

This first Sunday in Advent we focus on hope, the  hope that comes through trust, through faith.  We are invited to find that hope within, to lean on God to be able to pull that hope to our hearts, to claim it as the promise that it is.  And then to pass it along to those we encounter.  So I want to end our sermon today with the words that Jesus spoke in the scripture we read this morning.  These words are for YOU.  As we enter this Advent season, I invite you to bring them into your heart as the promise, the hope, the Advent of a new day that they are.   As we heard today from Jeremiah:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope for the future.”  Thanks be to God.  Amen.