Isaiah 2:1-5 (First Sunday in Advent)
The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
In days to come the mountain of the Lord's house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths."
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob, come,
let us walk in the light of the Lord!
We’re still waiting.
Every year when Advent rolls around we tell ourselves that we are waiting for the birth of the Christ-Child into our oh-so-messy world. We’re waiting. We’ve been waiting a very long time.
So why, if we’ve waited all this time, has nothing ever seemed to arrive? Perhaps we’re waiting for the wrong things.
I’m maintained for a long time that sometime when we were young children we got God and Santa Claus all mixed with each other. It’s easy to see how a child could do that. Big old man with a long white beard who lives somewhere far, far away and keeps tabs on us to see if we are being good or bad, and then rewards us when we are good and punishes us when we’re not. That description would nicely fit many people’s idea of either God or Santa Claus.
It's surely long past time we see God as Santa Claus.
Our job as grown-ups is to disentangle this confusion between the two and take Santa Claus out of the mix when we enter into Advent, but even for those of us who work at being grown-up believers the separation can be hard work. How often have you prayed and then realized that your prayer unconsciously sounded more like a child’s “wish-list” to Santa? How often have you caught yourself feeling that you “deserved” something you really pray for because you’ve been so very “good”? How often have you found yourself a little cranky with God because you asked nicely and God still hasn’t “done” anything in response?
Perhaps we're not seeing who God actually is because Santa is so much easier.
We’re still waiting.
But maybe, instead of spending these four weeks of Advent waiting for something to come to us, we might instead spend them looking into what it is we actually expect to come – and why we believe those things are still coming after 2000 years of waiting.
Take the Nativity narratives, for a start. The Mark Gospel, which is the first written down of the four, sometime around 70 C.E., doesn’t even have a birth story. Jesus first appears in Mark as a full grown man stepping out into his adult ministry.
The next gospel written is Matthew’s, written 10 to 15 years after Mark’s, and, while Matthew includes some of the extra stuff around the birth, like the long list of “begats” and the visit of the Magi, it still simply states that Jesus was born – no details, no frills.
The Gospel of John, written 20 years after Mark’s, again has no birth story at all, beginning with an adult Jesus. Three out of the four gospels focus on the work that he came to do among us, rather than on the fact that he was miraculously born.
It isn’t until Luke’s Gospel account, written close to the year 100 C.E., almost seventy years after Jesus’ crucifixion, that we come upon a full-blown story of his birth, the one with the angel Gabriel announcing the child to come, and shepherds running, and a sky filled with angels singing. Surely if all these were true, someone would have remembered and mentioned them sooner?
But this is the version that exists in all our Christmas iconography. Our idea of Christmas is largely formed by all those paintings and holiday cards featuring a serene Mary, sitting bolt upright just hours after giving birth (I think not) without a hair out of place and surrounded by adorable animals and worshiping kings.
We put our whole Christmas effort into this story, which has so very little space in scripture. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the story. I like the fantasy of the Christmas story, but perhaps while we are enjoying the pretty pictures and the sweet fantasy of it all, we might turn our attention a bit toward the “why” of the whole thing. Why was Jesus born then and there? There’s a line in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, where Judas is complaining to Jesus and asks him, “why’d you choose such a backward time and such a strange place?”
It’s a question I’ve always wondered about. Why occupied Palestine? Why a non-descript lower-middle-class family? Why not Rome or Alexandria? Why not a position of wealth and power? What is there about Jesus’ story that demanded he be speaking primarily to the powerless and the poor? Maybe the things relating to the poor and powerless are the very things we should be focusing on?
In an article about Advent that I read recently, the author included this quote from Isaiah 35 where Isaiah called out into the wilderness: God is with us: Energize the limp hands, strengthen the rubbery knees. Tell fearful souls, “Courage! Take heart! God is here, right here, on his way to put things right and redress all wrongs. He’s on his way! He’ll save you!”
Yes, we can still enjoy the beauty of the Christmas story. But remember, it is a story about what is to come. Let us at the same time keep our hearts tuned to what is, here and now. And chief among what is here and now is God—not coming sometime in our future but right here and right now.
As author Sarah Bessey* puts it in her blog post for November 24th: God seeks us out when we are in exile and when we are suffering, when we are callous and cowardly, when we are more concerned with common sense than faithfulness, when we are fearful and arrogant, when we are lost and broken, when we are sad and alone, when we are traumatized and wondering when the light will start to win, when we feel forgotten and bored and insignificant and tired, when we are wounded and when we are the ones who are wounding.
God is with us now and always – in all these ‘what ifs. God is always here in our midst. With those limp hands and rubbery knees; in a still occupied Palestine; in the Kurdish homelands; in concentration camps on our own southern border; and sleeping in tents on the sidewalks of our urban centers. As John Pavlovitz puts it so well in our meditation book this year: in the low places.
God is not out there waiting to come to us. God is there – and here. And calls us to be here, too. Present and alive and alert to here and now – this moment, this place – wherever this place may be.
Every year when Advent rolls around we tell ourselves that we are waiting for the birth of the Christ-Child into our oh-so-messy world. We’re waiting. We’ve been waiting a very long time.
So why, if we’ve waited all this time, has nothing ever seemed to arrive? Perhaps we’re waiting for the wrong things.
I’m maintained for a long time that sometime when we were young children we got God and Santa Claus all mixed with each other. It’s easy to see how a child could do that. Big old man with a long white beard who lives somewhere far, far away and keeps tabs on us to see if we are being good or bad, and then rewards us when we are good and punishes us when we’re not. That description would nicely fit many people’s idea of either God or Santa Claus.
It's surely long past time we see God as Santa Claus.
Our job as grown-ups is to disentangle this confusion between the two and take Santa Claus out of the mix when we enter into Advent, but even for those of us who work at being grown-up believers the separation can be hard work. How often have you prayed and then realized that your prayer unconsciously sounded more like a child’s “wish-list” to Santa? How often have you caught yourself feeling that you “deserved” something you really pray for because you’ve been so very “good”? How often have you found yourself a little cranky with God because you asked nicely and God still hasn’t “done” anything in response?
Perhaps we're not seeing who God actually is because Santa is so much easier.
We’re still waiting.
But maybe, instead of spending these four weeks of Advent waiting for something to come to us, we might instead spend them looking into what it is we actually expect to come – and why we believe those things are still coming after 2000 years of waiting.
Take the Nativity narratives, for a start. The Mark Gospel, which is the first written down of the four, sometime around 70 C.E., doesn’t even have a birth story. Jesus first appears in Mark as a full grown man stepping out into his adult ministry.
The next gospel written is Matthew’s, written 10 to 15 years after Mark’s, and, while Matthew includes some of the extra stuff around the birth, like the long list of “begats” and the visit of the Magi, it still simply states that Jesus was born – no details, no frills.
The Gospel of John, written 20 years after Mark’s, again has no birth story at all, beginning with an adult Jesus. Three out of the four gospels focus on the work that he came to do among us, rather than on the fact that he was miraculously born.
It isn’t until Luke’s Gospel account, written close to the year 100 C.E., almost seventy years after Jesus’ crucifixion, that we come upon a full-blown story of his birth, the one with the angel Gabriel announcing the child to come, and shepherds running, and a sky filled with angels singing. Surely if all these were true, someone would have remembered and mentioned them sooner?
But this is the version that exists in all our Christmas iconography. Our idea of Christmas is largely formed by all those paintings and holiday cards featuring a serene Mary, sitting bolt upright just hours after giving birth (I think not) without a hair out of place and surrounded by adorable animals and worshiping kings.
We put our whole Christmas effort into this story, which has so very little space in scripture. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the story. I like the fantasy of the Christmas story, but perhaps while we are enjoying the pretty pictures and the sweet fantasy of it all, we might turn our attention a bit toward the “why” of the whole thing. Why was Jesus born then and there? There’s a line in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, where Judas is complaining to Jesus and asks him, “why’d you choose such a backward time and such a strange place?”
It’s a question I’ve always wondered about. Why occupied Palestine? Why a non-descript lower-middle-class family? Why not Rome or Alexandria? Why not a position of wealth and power? What is there about Jesus’ story that demanded he be speaking primarily to the powerless and the poor? Maybe the things relating to the poor and powerless are the very things we should be focusing on?
In an article about Advent that I read recently, the author included this quote from Isaiah 35 where Isaiah called out into the wilderness: God is with us: Energize the limp hands, strengthen the rubbery knees. Tell fearful souls, “Courage! Take heart! God is here, right here, on his way to put things right and redress all wrongs. He’s on his way! He’ll save you!”
Yes, we can still enjoy the beauty of the Christmas story. But remember, it is a story about what is to come. Let us at the same time keep our hearts tuned to what is, here and now. And chief among what is here and now is God—not coming sometime in our future but right here and right now.
As author Sarah Bessey* puts it in her blog post for November 24th: God seeks us out when we are in exile and when we are suffering, when we are callous and cowardly, when we are more concerned with common sense than faithfulness, when we are fearful and arrogant, when we are lost and broken, when we are sad and alone, when we are traumatized and wondering when the light will start to win, when we feel forgotten and bored and insignificant and tired, when we are wounded and when we are the ones who are wounding.
God is with us now and always – in all these ‘what ifs. God is always here in our midst. With those limp hands and rubbery knees; in a still occupied Palestine; in the Kurdish homelands; in concentration camps on our own southern border; and sleeping in tents on the sidewalks of our urban centers. As John Pavlovitz puts it so well in our meditation book this year: in the low places.
God is not out there waiting to come to us. God is there – and here. And calls us to be here, too. Present and alive and alert to here and now – this moment, this place – wherever this place may be.
* Sarah Bessey, Sarah Bessey’s Field Notes: Does Advent even Matter when the World is on Fire? November 24, 2019
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