The Irony of this Advent Season
Text: Isaiah 64:1-9
Have you ever wondered at God’s sense of humor? There’s something ironic about this Advent/Christmas season.
This year, Advent opens with the anguished and angry prayer of an ancient prophet. The world around him was “going to hell in a hand basket” as my grandmother would have said. Enemy armies were occupying the land; there was not enough food to eat; trade and commerce had ceased; the religious establishment was impotent. Neither the military leaders nor royalty were able to stem the tide of national woe.
A prophet cried out—“O God, break apart the mountains, break them wide open and come down. Come down and show us your power!”
The prophet was convinced that salvation would come only with God’s powerful intervention. “Set things right, O God. Punish the wicked. Preserve the righteous. You promise salvation, O God, and we are tired of waiting. Come. Come now. Break open the very sky above us and come down.”
So begins Advent. With anger at the intractability of the world in which we live. With anguish about all that is not right. With the painful realization that no matter how much we try, we cannot fix all that is wrong. Occupying wall street is but a symbolic act. Collecting a million food items for the food banks across this nation will not cure hunger. The rich will continue to get richer; the poor will find themselves more desperate; the middle class will disappear. Nations continue to learn war and full acceptance of minority persons in our society requires poltical battle.
Some forty years ago Miriam Terese Winter penned the words to an Advent hymn:
Want demands a hearing in far too many lands
The sick go unattended, death deals a heavy hand.
The dreams of men are empty, their cup of sorrow full.
Come, Lord Jesus, the light is dying,
The night keeps crying, come, Lord Jesus.
Advent is for the weary and fatigued. Advent gives voice to the hopelessness that can sometimes overwhelm us. Advent recognizes that there are times when just putting one foot in front of the other demands more energy than we can muster. Advent begins with the prophet’s prayer: “Come down, God, and show us in irrefutable ways your power and your might.’ Advent begins with the song, “The light is dying, the night is crying, “Come, Lord Jesus.”
And God’s answer to our Advent prayer? God comes, but not by breaking open the mountains, not with bolts of lightning or the roll of thunder; not with might and power, but with a determination to transform the world.
God answers the world’s desperate, anguished, plaintive prayers by sending, of all things, a baby. A baby! How ridiculously absurd! How utterly inconvenient! Babies are demanding creatures. Babies are vulnerable beings. They need to care and attention and protection. They require that we summon energy when we are bone tired; they rearrange our lives in ways we do not anticipate. They cause us to amend our priorities and re-consider what is important. By their very nature, they create community, Strangers approach them. Extended families embrace them.
This God we worship has a strange sense of humor. Salvation comes, not with might and glory, but in the person of baby born in Bethlehem. The world will be put right, God says, not with armies and legislation, but with the power of love and the exercise of compassion. Change comes to the world, not by God’s mighty intervention, but by Divine incarnation—the word and power and love of God, made real in human form and flesh.
We celebrate Advent by telling Christmas stories—not only the Biblical stories, but all those Christmas holiday stories we dearly love—Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, the Nutcracker, Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree, O. Henry’s the Gift, Amal and the Night Visitors, the Shoemaker by Tolstoy and Dicken’s A Christmas Carol.
In all those enduring Christmas stories, there is an unexpected turn of events. What is ugly becomes beautiful; what is insignificant has power; what seems to have no value becomes priceless. The small ones of the world take center stage in a good Christmas story. The forgotten are remembered. The rejected are embraced. The disabled are healed. Not with power and might, but by the transformative power of love.
The words, the music, the stories of this season bear witness to the biblical notion that salvation will come in unexpected ways and from unexpected sources. No wonder we hear over and over again the Advent admonition, “Watch and be ready.” Salvation will come. Healing and reconciliation will come. Justice will be done. But there will be no flashing lights, no neon signs, no media blitzes. God transforms lives—in the out of the way places, in the middle of the night. And by that same power, God promises to transform the world.
Amen.
The Rev. Charlotte Frantz, November 27, 2011