Reflection on the First Sunday of Advent

Jeremiah 33:14-16 Thessalonians 3:12–4:2 Luke 21:25-36

 I struggled with today’s readings and was relieved to find that even the scholarly have difficulties with Advent. Words of several commentators mirrored my difficulties and eased my anxieties, and in the process gave me an unusual collection to patch together for my homily this morning.

“The season of Advent is puzzling,” writes Presbyterian pastor Gary Charles.”The readings during this season are, by and large, not childhood favorites: no star in the east …, no choirs of Angels …, no harried innkeeper …, no touching moment when Mary ponders these things in her heart. 

“The stories of Advent are dug from the harsh soil of human struggle and the littered landscape of dashed dreams. They are told from the vista where sin still reigns supreme and hope has gone on vacation. … Advent [time] also leaves us dizzy. …. Advent is not a steady, constant ‘time marches on’ kind of time, a persistent drumbeat of day after day, year after year. Advent is unpredictable time, unsteady time … contorted time. We look for a baby to be born while we know that the baby has already been born, and yet is still being born in us — Emmanuel, who came and is coming and is among us right now.” 

Emmanuel, the one promised in the first reading, is speaking directly to us in the third reading while offering strengthening love in the second reading — Emmanuel who has come and yet for whom we still long in these days of wars and disasters, disappointments, anxiety and powerlessness. Lutheran pastor Heidi Newmark writes from her ministry in the roughest part of the Bronx about longing as the heart of Advent.

“Probably the reason I love Advent so much is that it is a reflection of how I feel most of the time. I might not feel sorry during Lent when the liturgical calendar begs repentance. I might not feel victorious even though it is Easter morning. I might not feel full of the Spirit, even when it is Pentecost. But during Advent, I am always in sync with the season. Advent unfailingly echoes my reality. And what is that? I think of the word ‘longing.’  Advent is when the people of God can no longer contain their unfilled desire and the cry bursts forth, Come, lord Jesus. Oh, come oh, come, Emmanuel.”

The theologian Moltman says, “Hope is the divine power that makes us alive in this world.” Hope allows us to live expectantly. Barbara Kingsolver’s book “Animal Dreams” tells the story of two sisters from Arizona, one of whom, Hallie, goes to work in the cotton fields of Nicaragua. She shares her farming skills and confronts the ways that war is affecting the people she has come to know and love. Hallie is kidnapped but not before sending a last letter in which she wrote: “Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work – that goes on, it adds up. It goes into the ground, into crops, into children’s bellies and their bright eyes. Good things don’t get lost.

“Here’s what I’ve decided: The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I hope is so simple, I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That’s about it. Right now I’m living in that hope, running down its hallways and touching the hallway on both sides. I can’t tell you how good it feels.”

And finally, Pittsburgh Pastor Karie Charlton writes, “I’ve heard clergy people read Emily Dickenson’s ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’ after events that made us feel a little helpless but want to claim hope for ourselves and our community. The poem helped me visualize a sweet little bird with broken wings nuzzled against my neck singing softly to my soul during a thunderstorm. Hope is comforting.

“But lately, for me, and for what seems like many others, that image isn’t working. Instead, I find this quote from an unnamed source circulating among my media friends, ‘People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair. Hope just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.’ I think all of us are feeling a little worse for wear over the last few years, and this spunky image of hope certainly captures that feeling. We have changed. Hope, or the practice of hope, must change too.

“I admit I love the feisty image of hope. She’s working hard to fight for causes and people she cares about. But this woman needs to learn when it’s enough. When I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, cycling through the worried answers to my disaster scenarios, I’m learning to refocus my thinking and ask, ‘What if I have done enough already? What if I assume success, how does that shape the future? And what if everything is actually fine.’ These questions shift my thinking, from worry to hope. The answers to those questions are full of compassion for me and others. Changing worry into compassion makes way for the shape-shifting hope.

“Have you done what you can? Chances are yes. What would it look like to prepare for joy instead of disaster? Allow yourself to daydream a little. How do you feel in this moment? Listen deeply. Is that little feathered creature singing to your soul? Is there a warrior battle cry deep in your bones? Or perhaps hope has shape-shifted again into something beautiful and new.”

Perhaps this Advent is a good time to collect and share more stories of hope.