Rev. Tara Barber
The Community Church of Sebastopol
November 28, 2004
Isaiah 2: 1-5
In this season, these few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we enter a time warp of sorts. We count the days, anticipating the holiday; we run busily from shop to party to home and work; and we also look back at holidays and people and places where we once celebrated, or where we longed to celebrate like those picture perfect images we carry.
The liturgical season of Advent is not much different. We look back to the birth of a baby in a manger, and then look further back toward the Hebrew anticipation of a Messiah that was to come. We look forward to candle lighting and worship services, and all the while the air is filled with energy and some nervousness – dare I say worry – that this season will touch and renew and invigorate the spirits and hearts of all in this community.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “However different our Christmases have been, one longing most people have in common this time of year is the longing for a calmer, purer, more centered life, and the way most people talk about that life usually has a lot of “up” words in it – as in “rising above anxiety,” “keeping our heads above water,” or “lifting our eyes up unto the hills” (- and from today’s scripture – “let us go up to the mountain of the Lord”) as if belonging to God were a matter of being transported to God’s presence for as long as possible, to a place like this one where everything is beautiful, (peaceful), and focused, and right. Just like a Christmas card!…”
Just like a Christmas card… How are your cards coming? Let me ask you, how many did some sort of Christmas shopping this weekend? How many did some decorating? How many were transported back to some other time, filled up with memories? How many had some longing for a holiday – one that looks and more importantly, feels like a Christmas card?
The trouble with Advent is that it sets us up. It sets us up for living in the future and the past, but not really in the present. (partly because we are too focused on the presents!) The call of Advent is to be present each and every day, to live with hope, looking for God’s inbreaking presence amidst the preparations and celebrations, the tensions and memories, the high expectations and the reality checks.
We all know someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one this year, for whom Advent is a waiting period for a holiday filled with absence. We all know that there are those for whom this season is too stressful, too demanding, and for whom it is beyond financial and physical means to celebrate like the advertisements portray. We all know times when we had such high hopes for the family to be together, to overcome distance and disagreements, and be happy in each other’s company. But it just didn’t quite happen that way. These are the images that fill our eyes and hearts, but rarely make the greeting card aisle. For when we keep our eyes raised up looking for God only in the mountaintops of holiday cheer, we risk not seeing God at all.
So just where is God to be found this season?
Taylor answers that question by inviting us to seek “God-With-Us. Not the God-Up-There somewhere who answers our prayers by lifting us out of our lives, but the God who comes in the midst of them – however far from home we are, however less than ideal our circumstances, however much or little our lives reflect the Christmas cards we send.”
So what about this God-With-Us? Emmanuel, the long expected Jesus? This amazing man, born of God in the city of David, as the story goes, this man’s whose birth calls our attention to the astonishing idea that God enters each and every life, often not as we expect, not as we imagine, but right in the middle of the night, right in the middle of the mess and stench of a stable, right in the middle of a world that was not at peace. It’s so easy to skip to the sweet baby’s birth, that we risk losing sight of God’s inbreaking today.
Barbara reminds us that, “Prophets almost never get their verb tenses straight, because part of their gift is being able to see the world as God sees it – not divided into things that are already over and things that have not happened yet, but as an eternally unfolding mystery that surprises everyone – maybe even God…”
Today’s scripture lesson is no exception. Isaiah talks about the days to come, when God’s place shall be established on high, and when people shall stream to it. And then concludes with the invitation to come and walk in the light. There’s no middle section that says anything about hanging out twiddling our thumbs until that time of God’s presence arrives. The scripture calls us to live in the now, in the hope of things to come, but all the while acting as if God’s word, God’s love, has already arrived.
Living in the already and the not yet. Poised to act, to be present and aware of how God is with us. How are we living in the now? How are we participating in God’s massive recycling program, and beating our weapons into tools that will help us bear fruit instead of fear? These are not simply metaphors, these images of weapons and nations at war. They are all too real for us and for our world. A colleague writes, “God is not going to beat those swords into ploughshares, we are!” If it’s going to happen at all, it’s up to us to make peace, make hope, make love real for all God’s people.
“I am interested in what (poet) Seamus Heaney calls the meeting point of hope and history, where what has happened is met by what we make of it. What has happened is met midstream by people who are – among the multitude of things we are – spiritual beings (who use our) creativity, imagination, crazy wisdom, ancient wisdom, passionate compassion, selfless courage and radical reverence for life. And (whose) love – for one another absolutely, and … for something larger than ourselves… I am interested in the place, the places, where history is met by the hope of the human soul, life’s longing for itself. I am interested in hope on this side of the grave – for me there is no other kind – and in that tidal wave of justice that could rise up if only we would let it.” These are the words of Unitarian Minister Victoria Safford, whose article entitled, “The Small Work in the Great Work” appears in the book, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear. She and the other writers in this incredibly powerful collection, capture what is the essence of Isaiah’s plea, and Advent’s call. Let us see those places in our lives, and create those places in the lives of those around us and around the world, where God’s tidal wave of loving justice rises up into the light of day.
This Sunday we celebrate the sacrament of communion. It is really a meeting point of hope and history. Communion is the ritual that reminds us that God is among us, inviting us, daring us, calling us into relationship and revelation. This is a season of moments. A time to savor and dream and create the world where no one lives in fear, and all God’s people are at peace. Come, let us go walking in the Light. The light of God’s love, the light of God’s presence, the light of God’s call.