Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37
Presented November 30, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The First Sunday of Advent
Alfred Delp was a Jesuit priest in Germany during the days of the Nazi regime, an outspoken opponent of Hitler’s government who was eventually arrested, as were a number of his fellow Jesuits. While in prison, Delp was offered freedom in return for leaving the Jesuits, but he would not deny his faith. Sentenced to death by hanging for high treason, Delp nevertheless wrote shortly after his trial that his life had been given a theme “worth living for, and worth dying for.”
Is this not the power of the Advent season we are entering, this season that anticipates the coming of Jesus into the world and that yearns for the ultimate fulfillment of God’s new creation—that time when life shall be fully transformed, when swords are beaten into plowshares and nations no longer teach the ways of war, when all humanity lives in justice and all peoples walk in the light of God’s abundant love? As we embrace this vision of Jesus and make it the guiding premise of our lives, do we not discover something worth living for, and indeed, something worth dying for? Do we not discover a wild and wonderful hope, in life and in death?
Alfred Delp described the season of Advent as “a time for rousing,” a time “when we are shaken to the very depths, so that we may wake up to the truth of ourselves.” Asserts Delp, “We must let go of all our mistaken dreams, our conceited poses and arrogant gestures, all the pretenses with which we hope to deceive ourselves and others.” In place of this arrogant self-preoccupation, we take hold of a new vision for living, a wild and wonderful purpose in life.
Peter Gomes, pastor of Memorial Church at Harvard University, defines the agenda of Advent as a matter of “wait[ing] for that which we have not yet seen” and “work[ing] for that which has not yet been accomplished.” Advent has the flavor of the ancient prophet’s petition to God, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down” (Isaiah 64:1). The prophet is recalling God’s self-manifestation to Moses at Sinai, and urgently yearns for a repeated appearance that will cause the nations to tremble, bringing fresh recognition of God’s grace, God’s goodness, God’s activity in the midst of human life. Isaiah and the people know all too well the pain of life in exile, separated far too long from all they had known and cared for, and they are hoping beyond hope for God to come among them, bringing healing and mending of their broken world.
Just so, Advent is the season of the church year that announces that this is precisely what God does. In Jesus Christ, God tears open the heavens and comes among us. But God comes as few would anticipate—not as a warrior king eager to destroy the enemy and remold Israel into a political power to be reckoned with. Instead, God initially is manifested as a vulnerable infant, as one who grows and matures into a suffering servant who takes it as his ongoing task to urge us to embrace a new way of living—to love our enemies and pray for those who would persecute us, to go the extra mile in relationships, to seek those things that make for healing and peace in human life, to overcome oppression and proclaim the promise of a love that knows no limits. Advent therefore positions us in a time of waiting, a time of expectation, a time of hoping beyond hope that this markedly new way of living will fully take fruit in our own day. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down . . . so that the nations might tremble at your presence” (64:1-2).
And yet, when most of us think about waiting, we envision something far more passive than this, a hopeless estate determined by events totally out of our hands. Feeling helpless, we assume we can do little more than idly fold our hands, as if there is nothing else we might do. But Advent invites us to work and pray and yearn for the unfolding of that which has not yet been fully accomplished. It’s a very different kind of waiting indeed—a waiting impatient with the status quo, a waiting that prods and challenges us to ever be on the lookout for justice and righteousness that are unwilling to make easy peace with business as usual. It is a matter of ever being on the lookout for mercy and grace extended even to those many would deem to be beyond the reach of God’s love; it is yearning expectantly for lasting joy to triumph over selfish whims, for a holy peace to reign in the place of brokenness and hostility.
This kind of waiting and watching suggests a constant alertness, a “keeping awake” for signs of a wild and wonderful hope, signs that life is indeed being transformed. This kind of Advent waiting is not simply biding our time, but actively entering into God’s vision—embracing Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, seeking to be a community of light in the midst of darkness, of gracious acceptance in a world of judgment and division, of peace in a world hell-bent on violence and warfare, of a wild and wonderful hope in the face of despair. Advent waiting is trusting that a seed has already been planted, and ours is to nurture that seed.
Alfred Delp put it this way: “It is the time of sowing, not of harvesting. God is sowing; one day God will harvest again.” In the meantime, affirms Alfred Delp, “I will try to do one thing. I will try to at least be a healthy and fruitful seed, falling into the soil. And into the Lord God’s hand.” Another biblical commentator reminds us, “Being a faithful Christian does not just happen like crabgrass or dandelions popping up in the lawn. It requires the care, attention, and cultivation of an expert gardener.” It requires a continual praying of the ancient prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, here and now on earth as it is in heaven.”
Pullitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver questions in a poem entitled The Summer Day:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
The grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself on the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around her with enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
And then Mary Oliver confesses,
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? In his book Finding My Way Home Henri Nouwen urges us to embrace the enormously radical stance toward life of “wait[ing] with openness and trust,” an attitude and perspective towards life he further defines this way:
It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God molds us in love, holds us in tenderness, and moves us away from the sources of our fear. Our spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination or prediction. This, indeed, is a very radical stance in a world preoccupied with control.
What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Those who are enamored with power and control will find troubling the gospel’s call to active waiting and trust. The gospel reminds us that you and I do not set the timetables for life. Speaking of coming times of turmoil and difficulty, Jesus asserts, in Mark’s Gospel, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Creator” (Mark 13:32). Through the generations there have been countless folk who have wasted energy seeking to decipher God’s timetable, when the gospel makes it abundantly clear that our calling is simply this, to live our one wild and precious life faithfully and creatively in the interim—to live in constant watchfulness and alertness, trusting that, come what may, we are held in God’s compassionate and caring arms. As Mary Oliver suggests, it is a matter of paying attention. It is a matter of finding something worth living for, and even something worth dying for. It is a matter of finding a wild and wonderful hope to empower our own wild and precious life.
Maya Angelou has a Christmas poem entitled Amazing Peace. Included are these lines:
We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait awhile with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you to stay awhile with us
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.
It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.
On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.
At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues the coming of hope.
All the earth’s tribes loosen their voice
To celebrate the promise of Peace.
We, Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves,
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation:Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.
This Advent season, let us anticipate the gift of peace, transforming our one wild and precious life with a wild and wonderful hope. May it be so. Amen.