In a world that is full of sweet familiarity, Advent, the Christian season of Advent, stands guard over the good news of the surprise and disorientation of God’s arrival. (I’d like to invite you to imagine Advent as the season of the Surprise of God.)
How many of us really like surprises? How many of us prefer to know what’s coming? Heather doesn’t like surprises. I learned that early in our marriage. She likes to know what’s coming, so she can make a plan. My brother (very different personality from my spouse), he needs to have a plan too, despite his non-traditional Portland lifestyle. Just needs to know what’s coming. I suppose for nearly all of us, that’s true – for one reason or another. For some, it’s because we just like to be in the know, for others, it’s because there is so much chaos and unknowable, if we can have some sense at least, of what’s coming up, it gives us some comfort and peace.
But the Sundays of Advent—and particularly these readings today—stand in stark contrast to the comfort, the peace, the security of sweet familiarity that we all crave.
Advent, the season that celebrates the Surprise of God!
A season of reflecting on the many and various ways that God comes to us. It’s hard to be surprised anymore about God coming to this earth as a babe in Bethlehem. We’ve heard the story so many times that what was once a huge surprise is now an image in our front yards, on the cover of our Christmas cards, at the center of our worship – a baby, a mother, a shepherd, some angels and some animals. We’ve seen it. Not too much is surprising about it.
Christ invites us to re-focus and re-open our eyes and our lives this Advent season, to brace ourselves for his disorienting and surprising arrival in many and various ways. To watch out. Keep alert. Stay awake. You know never know.
Some of you may have heard this story, but the most surprising encounter I ever had with Jesus was when I traveled to Skid Row in Los Angeles…
“urban walk-about” when I was at California Lutheran University…
Another time was worshiping on a Sunday in a shanty village house somewhere in the middle of Nicaragua. Open windows and doors, dogs and chickens wondering through our “sanctuary”, passing a common cup around at Communion with white upper middle-class college students from St. Louis University and poor survivors of the Sandinista revolution…
Another time, most recently, encountering God unexpectedly was holding my dog as the Humane Society chaplain-nurse put him to sleep. And I wept uncontrollably, and Christ was there.
Doesn’t have to be exotic service opportunities, don’t have to travel across the world, just be awake as you move though your week. God in the everyday arrives. Disorienting us into lives of love and service toward our neighbor.
Christ always arrives, but not always in the way we would expect. Watch out.
And in the meantime, let us wait for God together! Let us take our cues from the prophet Isaiah, who cries out, “O God, that you would tear open the heavens and come.”
Can you identify with Isaiah? O that God would enter clearly and powerfully into our existence! God helped all those people in the past, why can’t God help me? Why can’t God break into our world, our Congress, our hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness? Why can’t God conquer enemies, demolish hatred, end persecution, granting liberty to all of us enslaved by illness, anger, apathy, depression, and pain? O God, that you would tear open the heavens and come! Advent is a season for crying out. Crying out to God. Our anxiety, our fears, our concerns about the future. Get them out there, like Isaiah.
And God will arrive, albeit surprising.
And then, watch out. It’s happening already. May not be how you expected. Look for it, in the poor, in the hungry, in the lost and in your neighbor. Jesus arrives and arrives and arrives, especially when we are at our lowest, our darkest, and are least expecting of God to show up.
And, thanks be to God, not only in unexpected ways does Christ come. But Christ arrives in this place, we can be sure and secure—even if we don’t have bulletins, even if the music or the people or the space is a little different. God arrives.
God arrives in this meal and in this Holy Word. And in each one of us upon which God’s Spirit is poured out...and that might be the greatest surprise of all.
No comments:
Post a Comment