The holy work of Advent

Luke 1:26-56

 This past week has been a hard week for hope, for me, and I anticipate this coming week, peace will feel like a challenge.  Which is why Advent is such a gift.  If I had to look at the circumstances in the world, in the lives around me, and feel hopeful, or say they speak of peace, I feel hard-pressed to do this.  

My kids’ school has been torn apart by incidents of racist and homophobic hate speech, with two students suspended and whole grades rising up in student-led protests decrying hate and demanding further action.  But through the week, the rhetoric and tone of the students began to change and escalate into a mob mentality of punishing, vigilante justice. It’s become a tangled mess of sin, which is to say, of people forgetting that we belong to each other – at every level –hate being met with hate, fear amping up fear. Revved up teens and exhausted, tense adults are facing off with no clear way forward, certainly not one provided by our culture, which offers nothing resembling mercy, practices vengeance in the name of justice, and persists until lives are destroyed, or until our attention gets grabbed by the next commotion.  

Our kids are doing what we’ve taught them to do, and they’re doing it to a couple of their own.  And that has been breaking my heart this week. Then the drama culminated with the announcement early Friday morning that restroom graffiti was discovered warning of a school shooting on Monday, which means hardly anybody showed up to school on Friday and school will be closed tomorrow, and now we are all suspended, in this state of tension and division. 

 

This, in the shadow of the school shooting in Michigan – the 28^th school shooting in America this year. We are averaging more than two a month, you guys, so all the administrators closing schools in an abundance of caution are not wrong to do so.  And yet another community is suffering unimaginable loss and grief. 

 

 Meanwhile, this morning’s headline read “Omnicron plunges the world into collective uncertainty.” As if we haven’t already been living in collective uncertainty for coming up on two years.  And so far we have no idea what this variant means or doesn’t mean, but that doesn't stop us from dooms-guessing.  So we let our already weary and tense selves get worked up and worried about what might be coming. And I don’t know about you, but once I get started, the apprehensions start to flow, and they’re hard to stop. Andy pointed out yesterday that I have a tell, a catch phrase that once he hears it, he knows I’ve handed over the reigns and anxiety is running the show.  It is when I start to say, with urgency and strain in my voice, how badly the dog needs her nails trimmed. 

 

So thank God for Advent. Thank God.

I welcome Advent’s demand that I wait in darkness for the light of God. Because there is darkness - around us, within us.  I believe this, I feel this, I struggle against this and often I succumb to it.  And I need to be told it’s ok to notice it and let myself feel how heavy and terrible it can be.  And yet, I also need to hear there is no darkness into which the Light does not shine; there is no darkness that can overcome the Light, and one day there will be no more darkness at all.  And that does give me hope. I am told to wait for peace, to expect it, to seek it and join it, and work for it, because I can trust that it is coming, that it comes. Into the darkest places, the most hopeless situations, God comes in.  This is what God does.

 

This story before us today pulls us back to the big picture: God comes into this life. 

It’s the continuation of my favorite story in scripture – last week we left silent Zechariah and pregnant Elizabeth, keeping mum about her pregnancy for the first five months too, because who could begin to explain? And who could she tell that would believe or understand?  Last week we jumped ahead to finish their part of the story. But that’s not how it happened – this part is what came in the middle, what shaped the next part, ultimately bringing them to tiny baby John the Baptist’s birth, and the end of Zechariah’s silence with his great proclamation to his startled neighbors, that culminates with exactly the words my soul needs to hear today:

By the tender mercy of our God,
   the dawn from on high will break upon us, 
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
   to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

 

So while Elizabeth and Zechariah are suspended in a state of uncertainty, Gabriel appears to Mary and invites her to share in the redemption of God, to let go of all that she though her life would be and step into this new role, God-bearer.  And when she is just as confused and questioning as Zechariah was about how the impossible could happen, Gabriel has a little more patience for her, and says, Even now your relative Elizabeth, who was barren, is in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with God.  

 

And it doesn’t say that the angel tells her to go to Elizabeth but what else would Mary do? She immediately sets out on the 100-mile journey to visit the person she can share this with completely. And when she arrives, tired and hesitant, at her word of greeting, fetus John flip flops inside Elizabeth and kicks her out of her own silence to welcome Mary with joy and wonder, like a personal gift from God, Who am I that the mother of my Lord would come to me? She blesses Mary and her experience and trust, and Mary declares back to Elizabeth God’s greatness and what God is about to do. And right there the community of mystery-keepers and hope-bearers is formed: these two women, proclaiming the fulfillment of God’s promises with words and by their very bodies, and silent Zechariah taking it all in in wonder and witness.  Being together in this is what makes them able to trust that it is real. Bearing it together is what vanquishes fear and stirs possibility, what breeds hope and helps them anticipate the fullness of God for us all.  

 

We’ve said before that these three were church before there was a church. Even as Christ’s body was being formed, they are the nascent Body of Christ, helping each other remember the real reality breaking into this world, to see it unfolding right here in their very own lives, even. Together they are able to imagine the future God is bringing, can literally see in each other what God is doing for the future of the world, and proclaim it with confidence and trust. Together they move from suspended tension to hope-filled waiting.

 

No matter what unfolds in the world around us, in our own lives and bodies, in our communities and country, in the midst of whatever impossibility we are facing, or anticipating, or fearing, God is always breaking in. There is no life, no moment, no violence or horror, no despair or stuckness, no division, tension or uncertainty that God is not breaking into, not right alongside, not underneath and within. 

 

And we are given to one another- community to bear this reality together for the whole world, to remind each other of hope, to practice belonging and trust, to help each other watch God breaking in, and help each other live into the future that is coming. 

So we wait together in darkness for the light of God, and remind each that it’s ok to notice it and feel how heavy and terrible it can be.  At the same time we watch for the light and we seek peace, because the light shines in the darkness, and we trust that God comes in to bring redemption and life. That’s what God does. That’s who Jesus is: Emmanuel, God-with-us.  

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

 

Amen.

 

Even so, and forevermore

Mark 16:1-8

They fled from the tomb terrified and bewildered and said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

This is it, folks.

This is how Mark tells the story.

It’s so awkward and jarring that some time around the second century a few other endings were created for the book that smoothed it out - made it more clean and palatable, with the disciples and the women on board with it all, and Jesus appearing so it could be validated that he had indeed risen.

But it is nearly universally agreed that originally, this is just how Mark ended not just the passion narrative, but the whole book of Mark.  They fled from the tomb terrified and bewildered and said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

Alleluia!

I actually love that Mark does this. And that it makes future Christians so uncomfortable.

We like to read the bible for how we’re supposed to be; we compare ourselves and think it is meant to tell us what we should believe or should do, but Mark doesn’t really let us do that, because in Mark all of Jesus’ followers are such terrible examples of faith as we like to think about it, that there isn’t much to aspire to.

Because this isn’t a story about us. Or about them. Or about a religion, or a belief system, or a way to live and behave.

This is the story of God. God with us. God who keeps on breaking through all our expectations and rules for how God should be.

First God comes in, to share this life with us. What?

And then God dies, by literally allowing those God created and loves, torture, betray and kill him. Who is writing this script? 

And then just when it’s all over, when these dear women are in grief, with all the comforting and familiar rituals that attend to it, and adjusting, as we do when death rearranges the future, when their hopes and aspirations have been reduced to literally what is right in front of them – how will we move the big rock? –suddenly the fabric of all that makes sense is ripped open before them.

And I love how it’s told. When they get there and the rock is already moved for them, they step gingerly into the tomb and see this young man, calmly sitting there, and the text says, “they are alarmed.”  And so he says with a steady, even-keel voice, “Do not be alarmed.” And then he walks them through it gently and carefully as possible:

“You (pointing at them) are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.

He has been raised; he is not here.

Look, (pointing across from him) there is the place they laid him.

But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’

And they back out of the tomb slowly, perhaps stumbling over each other and tripping at the entrance, where adrenaline kicks in and they drop their parcels, hike up their skirts and high tail it out of there. And then, they said nothing to anyone because this is the most terrifying thing to ever confront them.

And I don’t think those women fleeing are so different than we are, because we flee too, just in semantics and symbols - we sing of victory and triumph, and turn resurrection into another thing to make us feel secure or safe – like eternal insurance, a policy we start paying on now that will pay off in the end, and make the risen Jesus into an idea that helps us back to the security, safety and success that we really worship.

But Mark’s telling of the story doesn’t let us do that.  He makes us sit in the discomfort of their fear and confusion, and shows us that the gospel is anything but business as usual. And this is uncomfortable.

Because is no human logic in any of it.

Why should God come among us?

Why should God die with us, for us, by our hand?

It is only love. The logic of love.

God is determined that nothing, not ever, can separate us from God.

And when we say that Jesus came to save us from sin, we are not saying that we are bad and dirty people who need to be washed by a blood sacrifice to be saved.  We are saying that given the choice, we will most often choose ourselves over others.  Given the choice, we will most often choose comfort over generosity.  Given the choice - and we are given the choice - we will most often choose to protect and preserve or placate ourselves at the expense of anyone else. Safety. Security. Success. We will claw toward those things even if it eats our souls out, and we will step on others’ faces to keep our own above water.

This is what sin is.  Sin is whatever blocks us off from God and each other, whatever tells us we are not worthy of God’s love, or that we are but someone else is not. Sin is what breeds competition and fear, isolation, self-centeredness and destruction..

God made the whole world to be a reflection of God’s love and creativity – every part fitting together, all the wild and wonderful variety of creation and humanity lifting up and supporting one another so that all are fed, all are clothed, all are known and seen and valued, and every voice gets to speak and every person gets to feel what it means to be seen and known, and to see and know others, and to be lavishly generous and fearlessly open-hearted creatures made in the image of God.

But we are suspicious of such things, and we’re pretty sure that if we let our guard down we’ll get screwed, so we turn on each other, and insulate ourselves, and shut out God, and that is what sin is – it is that thing that says, I don’t need you, to God, and to each other. 

And I don’t know about you – but I need saving from that. 

And when I look at this world – this precious, breathtaking world, and I hear the languages and music and see the faces, so alike and so different, reflections of souls, and let myself begin to witness the astonishing ways love is lived all over this planet,

when I stop and recognize God’s creativity poured out and painted in vast canvas and intricate detail of color and noise and tastes and smells and more beauty and joy than any one of us could take in in a thousand lifetimes,

and appreciate that it’s all given freely, it’s all a giant welcome to us from God, a gift to enjoy together, that it’s all meant to be shared with all these fellow creatures made in God’s image, capable of incredible depths of love and pain and hope and vision –

and instead I see people fleeing across oceans from villages decimated by violence and brutality, and putting up laws and walls and barriers and blockades to protect the strong from the onslaught of the weak, and steeping ourselves in cruelty and corruption and callousness and killing and cutthroat competition, oh my God, save us please! Jesus, come and save us!

God does. Not by rescuing some out of it but by plunging right into it, right alongside us all. There is nothing - no suffering or pain, no sorrow or loss - that God does not take directly into God’s heart. And the biggest threat of all, the one all others are designed to either mimic or combat, is death. And so, Jesus goes there. He goes right to the furthest most terrifying place. 

And by our logic, it makes no sense.

But our logic is flawed.

Because we think it’s about climbing, and advancing, and avoiding death, and pain. But that’s not what it’s about. We’re made to sink in and slow down and open up and be with each other in whatever comes, because that is where love is. That is where hope is.  That is where truth is.  And life.  And Jesus.

Jesus is right there. In those places.

I love that the women fled in terror and bewilderment and didn’t say a word to a single soul because they were afraid. Of course that’s what they did. Who among us would do otherwise?

But reality doesn’t hinge on their reaction in this moment. They don’t hold the reigns, God does. They don’t have the power to change the story or take the truth off course.

Christ has risen!  And it’s nobody’s job to convince anyone of that. Because a risen Christ means a living God and God is out there, out here, meeting us in the flesh, summoning us to love, releasing us from sin and bondage, reorienting us to the real reality, the Kingdom of God that endures forever.

Watch for the risen Jesus! If he looks like fear and condemnation, that’s not him, keep looking. 

But where you see forgiveness and mercy, there he is. 

Where you see compassion and generosity, Jesus is there. 

Where you notice people coming alongside each other and bearing each other’s burdens – there is the body of Christ, God’s kingdom in the flesh.

I’ve started tagging things I see on Facebook with ‘The kingdom of God is like…” 

...Pope Francis washing immigrants’ feet, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, and calling them sisters and brothers, children of God.

The kingdom of God is like… a woman on a subway sitting next to a stranger who is agitated, talking to himself, eyes darting around in fear, his body rocking, and because she’s a mom and recognizes that this man is someone’s son, she gently reaches out and takes his hand in her own, and he calms down and rests beside her. 

The kingdom of God is like… 300 union plumbers volunteering a whole weekend to install water filters in homes in Flint, MI, because they have this skill to give and this community is filled with people who need it. 

The kingdom of God is like… a cook and a janitor staying on when the rest of the staff leaves an assisted care home that has closed, but a few residents remain with nowhere to go, so these two men care for the patients around the clock for several days until the fire department and sheriff take over, and when asked why, one of them replies,  When I was a child I was abandoned, and I know what that is. I was I was not going to do that to them.” 

The kingdom of God is like… locals at the Mexican- US border using the border fence- meant to keep people separated and secure - as a giant volleyball net, connecting them like neighborhood children.

The kingdom of God is like… 40 farmers with tractors showing up one morning on the fields of a neighbor who is laid up with cancer, and while he and his family look on, harvesting all their crops, because we all belong to each other.

The kingdom of God is like… my own neighbor, on a day when life feels fragile and scary, telling me to come over and bring a bowl, then filling it with soup from a giant pot on her stove, and then the two of us standing there hugging, feeling the truth that we are not alone, and that life is for sharing.

Jesus embodies and brings the kingdom of God, and when he dies, and rises from the dead, the kingdom of God persists and spreads and invades the whole earth and it is unfolding right now all around us and between us. 

This thing God is doing is not going to stop. 

God is never going to leave or forsake us, and this life is utterly infused with, and irreversibly headed toward, love, where it began and where it will end.

This is not a hypothetical thing.

God is here. Right here. In this room. Meeting us in the space between us, in the love within us, in the longing that draws us toward hope.  

And God is out there. In the very middle of every sad and scary thing, with each lonely and frightened person, in every corner of this earth: Jesus has risen, and there is nowhere that God is not present.

And if you want to see God, if you want to touch God and hear God and feel God, then join God.  Don’t turn your back on someone else’s pain or questions.  Don’t close your eyes to the beauty around you; don’t get caught up in the lies that seek to own you about your own worth or someone else’s, or what makes for a good life. 

But here’s the truth about our sin and our need for saving: You will turn your back on someone else’ pain and questions, and you will close your eyes to the beauty, and you will get caught up in the lies.  You will deny him three times before the rooster crows.

So hear the good news of the gospel: while we are still sinful, that is, while we are still buying into the lie and closing ourselves off from others and from God, Jesus comes into it all for us, with us, and takes on every single thing that divides, distracts and destroy us.  God takes on death and bears it into the very heart of God. 

And then, when death seems like the biggest and most true thing of all, resurrection interrupts the deceptive narrative and says, nope, you’re wrong - life wins and love prevails.

You and I are going to forget this, and even flee from it from time to time in terror and confusion, but nevertheless, it is true.  And it’s not up to us to make it so.  It keeps on being true, and God keeps on being here, and love keeps on being the most real thing, and no amount of our fleeing or fearing can keep us from being part of the true story. 

Because this isn’t a story about us, or about them. Or about a religion, or a belief system, or a way to live and behave.  This is the story of God. God with us, Jesus, who join us, whom death could not hold back, who is out there in the world waiting for us to join him.

Go now, the calm man sitting in the tomb tells the alarmed women, tell the disciples (and especially Peter!, the one who thought he made himself unworthy by denying Jesus!), tell them all, that Jesus is alive and out ahead of you.  Go home and you will see him there.

The kingdom of God is among us, it is between us and around us and out in the world, and it is not our job to make that so, it is so. 

 So go bravely into your life, go unreservedly into the world, and watch for the risen Lord; go and you will see Jesus there.

Amen.