That's Advent

1 Advent B 2008
(Isaiah 64: 1-9; Ps 80: 1-7, 16-18; 1 Cor 1: 3-9; Mark 13: 24-37)


Advent makes me remember stories from when I was young.
They’re not tales of snow and Red Ryder BB guns. The stories I remember are edgy, moments of fear and of truth.

One tale I remember each Advent was when my best buddy and I played in the forbidden abandoned car. The doors locked, and we could not open them ourselves. My big brother Rick heard our seven-year old cries and tore the door open with brute teenaged force. Trapped in the hot dusty car in July, knowing we’d gotten ourselves in there, helpless to open the doors ourselves—that’s Advent. Someone strong coming to save, the sound of that door tearing open, the rush of cool air and the feel of the free earth as we tumbled out free—that’s Advent.

The other tale I remember was when another brother, his friend, and I were caught out on Long Island Sound with the steep waves that built effortlessly with a northeast wind. We had to beat it through miles of open water before heaving to off the harbor mouth. We finally made the one risky turn and rode the breakers past the savage jetties, coasting slowly to a stop on the still waters of the protected harbor—that’s Advent.

Advent is when I realize how I’ve run myself into tight spots like the inside of an abandoned car. Advent is when I realize I need to be brought into a safe harbor. Advent is when I have deeply mixed feelings about what the larger culture calls “the holiday season.” I understand Charlie Brown who, in the vintage cartoon, takes a long look at all the Christmas busyness, sighs and says “Rats.” He’s looking for something real, something worthy of his trust and his joy. He’s not settling for something cheap.

Good friends in God, let’s not settle for anything cheap. The good news is, we do not have to. And we cannot afford to. We don’t have time. Today, Jesus in his teaching ends with one of the clearest commands in the Gospels—“stay awake.”

I wake up and realize that I’ve been expecting the wrong things from my life and from God. I’ve been waiting for complete financial and professional security, for “enough money.” And as time marches on, I’ve been waiting for assurance that I really will not begin to slowly acquire medical issues, that I’ll live nearly forever, completely healthy.

And then I wonder why I sigh and say “Rats.”

Save me God from my messed-up desires. Save me for thinking, for even a moment, that I am not like every other human being on this earth. Save me from thinking and acting like I can control that which cannot be controlled. A storm on open water is less treacherous than the storm I create in my own conflicted heart. An abandoned car is less of a trap than the trap I make for myself.

“Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down…”

In the darkening of the year, Isaiah’s mighty voice rolls out with the deepest cries of our hearts. Come, you our God who has been hidden in the confusion of our world and in our lives. Come, find us where we have hidden ourselves from you and from our own deepest truth. Come, tear open all doors of despair and darkness and gloom, come bring us to safe harbor. Come, make our souls boil with new hope. You are faithful, do this for us. You are wondrous, dazzle us with your wonders. Heal, forgive, raise to new life, as you have done for your faithful people of old, do now for us for we are yours. Spin us again on the pottery-wheel of your creative love. Re-make us as only you know how.