We are entering a time this
Sunday that depending on who you are and where you live and what things are
like at home,
You may call it Christmas
shopping season, you may call it the
End of the semester,
some have called it the “Most
Wonderful Time of the Year” or the “Happiest Season of all”
Others greet this time of
year with a deep sadness and grief
For some it would be more
aptly named “the loneliest time of the year”
Those who have lost loved
ones in this year or recent years will feel the ache of that loss again
Those who are struggling to
find basics of food and shelter will find this time of year exceptionally
painful
In Dickens’s memorable words,
“It is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance
rejoices.”
Among the names that this
season carries is Advent.
What does Advent mean?
Advent is a Latin word that
means “Coming”
Or “to arrive.”
Advent is a season of
expectation.
Expecting what?
It’s not about expecting
Christmas presents or school vacation –
Or the end of a school semester
It’s expectation that is much
bigger than these things – though these smaller longings are related.
It’s an expectation of the
coming of God’s redeeming grace among us.
Advent marks a time of divine
discontent. A sense of longing for God
to heal what has been broken
In our hearts, in our
communities, in our land.
Someone like Isaiah is
putting into the words the spiritual groaning of a people who long for healing
and redemption in their midst.
“O that you would tear open
the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence –
as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your
name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your
presence!”
This is the radical spirit of
Advent. A longing for God to enter into
our world and make right what the human race has made a mess of. It is a testament to the incredible complexity
of human experience that a few days after we’ve celebrated “Thanksgiving” and
remembered the value of cultivating gratitude, we can recognize the legitimacy
of a deep and real discontent that is in us as we look around and take in the
world in all of its pain.
Gratitude exists right
alongside lament. And to silence either
one is to neglect a real and significant part of who we are as human beings,
creatures of God living in a world which continues to deny its createdness.
I think this is an important
thing for us to remember when we experience frustration or despair or anxiety
about living in a world where violence and hatred and exploitation of land are
the stuff of the daily headlines.
The prophets and the psalms
of the Hebrew Bible are full of prayers of lament.
Prayers that often include
the agonizing words, “How long, O Lord?”
People who live under
oppressive economic or political systems,
longing for freedom that can
truly be called freedom,
For peace that can truly be
called peace.
I think a big obstacle to
being able to lament is our culture’s intolerance of what we call “negativity.”
I am sympathetic to the
negative reactions people have to what is called “negativity”
But I don’t think there are
only two choices of expression. Either
positive or negative. That’s too simple
for me.
I think there are many kinds
of expression which cannot fit into these two boxes.
Anyone who’s laughed in the
midst of tears can attest to the complexity of human feeling.
But while I don’t think there
are only two kinds of expression, I do think there are two ways of being which
shape how we can express those various emotions and responses to our world.
We can express ourselves as
atoms, islands in the cosmos
disconnected from others and
having no fundamental relationship
to either creation or creator.
Or we can express ourselves
as those who have been
“fearfully and wonderfully” made
by God,
each of us formed with
intention and delight like pottery at the hands of the potter.
Later on in our reading from
Isaiah as the prophet continues to mourn the failures of his people and cry out
for God to make some difference, he appeals to God as the artist, the one who
gave them life in the first place – who shaped them out of the clay.
“Yet, O LORD, you are our
Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your
hand.”
The two ways of being –
Martin Buber called it the difference between the I-it and the I-thou
relationship.
How we approach ourselves and
the world – as that which was made or as that which merely exists for us.
And so it’s not about
avoiding feelings of frustration or sadness and forcing ourselves to avoid this
or think about that – but to bring that discontent into a prayer of lament and
longing before the Creator.
There is a divine discontent,
a discontent not arising from
a sense of self-importance or hatred for a neighbor,
but from the ache of seeing
how beautiful the good creation is – and yet how abused the good creatures and
the good creation have become at the hands of human institutions and individuals.
The selfishly dissatisfied
indulge in cynical negativity,
The divinely discontented
give voice to lament.
Lament does not exist by
eliminating gratitude,
lament exists as the other
side of gratitude.
Gratitude is the heart’s
response to the gifts of life, of community, of food, of love.
Lament is the longing that comes alongside gratitude,
Lament is the longing that comes alongside gratitude,
a prayer for the ones who
suffer from the consequences of human greed and abuse
and who are deprived of the
full enjoyment of God’s good creation, of life, of community, of food, of love.
Lament is the longing for
ourselves to truly experience God’s love on the other side of our hurt,
Lament is the longing for
others to truly experience a life free from fear and from want,
It is the brokenheartedness
which exists in the realization of the great distance between the now and the
not yet of God’s redeeming grace.
Even as we cultivate
gratitude, we need not be afraid to lament.
These are emotions that go
together.
Lament is sometimes
individual – and it’s sometimes a lament for a whole community.
If we watch the news or read
the papers, we have witnessed a variety of responses to racial division in
Ferguson, MO –
Even I’m not experiencing what’s
going on there first hand – I feel an ache within me for that community that
prays, “How long?”
Isaiah’s lament in today’s
reading concerns the people of Israel who had experienced the loss of their
place, a loss which threatened more losses – loss of culture, loss of identity. The people pray, “How long?”
I hear lament in our own
place from older people who remember a time when rural places like Acworth had
a stronger sense of community bond, a more authentic connection to the land,
and a more caring sense of neighborhood.
Many feel the ache of this loss – many are praying, “How long?”
In Doug Whynott’s book Sugar Season he tells about going to
hear someone in Concord talk about the changes in New England climate – and one
of the conclusions that the man gave he quotes, “Most disturbing are the
results of ecological modeling efforts that show the changes in climate could
potentially extirpate the sugar maple within New England. The maple industry is an important part of
New England character, way-of-life, and economy that, because it is highly
dependent upon prevailing climactic conditions, may be irreparably altered
under a changing climate.”
It was to my great surprise
when I was walking in the Boston museum of science with Bill and Shiela after
we had gone to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit,
I came across the “Seasons of
Change” exhibit about Climate Change in your backyard. And there was a display on Maple Sugaring and
so of course I walked over to check it out.
And there was our very own Alvin Clark on a video that was playing on
repeat.
And it’s a great little video
that shows Alvin and the sugarhouse and the maples right around Crane Brook
road there.
Alvin talks about the long
tradition of sugaring in his family and the quality of syrup that the granite
soils of New Hampshire can produce. And
he talks about the changes that have occurred in the last 60 or 70 years, that
have made an impact on flow of sap and the health of the maples. And at the end of this short video Alvin
reflects upon the predictions in a recent report that say the sugar maple will
disappear from this area by the end of this century and he concludes:
“I just hope that we can
continue on in our lifestyle as we have in the past – in future generations.”
It is the enjoyment of place
that mourns its loss.
It’s the love of community,
the gratitude for love that laments its being broken.
But it is out of the
experience of lament for present loss and future loss, it is in the praying,
“How long?”
that we are able to come
together around a common vision for a better place, a better way of caring for
people and for land.
Jesus speaks to a community
that longs for renewal,
That longs for God come upon
the scene and gather what has been scattered,
Reconnect what has been
separated,
Gather all of God’s children
from the four corners of the earth – and end the violence that destroys
communities and places.
He says that we have no idea
the time or the place when God will come among us and bring redeeming
grace. And so he says, “keep awake.”
In gratitude and lament, we
keep awake and we walk with the God who made all things and will make all
things new.
This Advent let’s consider
what longings arise in our hearts –
Advent is a time of
expectation for God’s renewing of our own love,
And for the healing of the
human community
To turn from following selfish
paths of destruction,
To follow the way of peace,
which remembers the goodness of creation and Creator
and with gratitude, gives
thanks,
and with lament, prays for
all things to be restored again.
Let’s pray our lament. And
let our lament create in us compassionate imaginations
that inspire us to become a
part of the Advent coming of God’s redeeming grace in our time and our place,
for the healing of God’s good
creation.
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