In the Christian community Advent has seen changes. The word is taken from the Latin Adventus, meaning to move towards. We Christians are moving towards the birth of Christ which will come at Christmas. In the Church, we are called upon to prepare our hearts and minds to receive Christ. The season in the church has two themes: one is penitential and the other is joyful. It is penitential for we are called upon to be in prayer and prepare our lives spiritually and wait for the return of the Christ. The season is also joyful, for we are also called upon to celebrate the gift of the Christ child and his birth. The great festival of Christmas in our own time in the church, calls for a joyful celebration for we remember in the words of the Prophet Isaiah that unto us a child will be born, a son will be given and the government shall be upon his soldiers, and his name will be called wonderful, counselor, everlasting father and the prince of peace (Isa. 9 : 6 -7)
In this season of advent in our postmodern world, these dual themes have torn us apart. It was easy in the 7th century when everyone in the church was required to fast and any kind of festivity was forbidden. That changed in the Middle Ages and the people of the church were reminded to look joyously towards Christmas. In our own time, we have forgotten about the penitential theme and we are now more interested in the joyous theme. Yet, paradoxically matters of faith have taken a back seat to spirituality. People are now more spiritual than religious. Individuals are now more in search of meaning in a world that sometimes does not seem to make sense. Answers from religious creeds and dogmas are increasingly devoid of meaning to issues that are new in human experience. It does not help when the challenges to the old theology and teachings are mounted by religious leaders within the church itself. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, The Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. questioned pious religious irrelevancy on Sunday mornings from pulpits in light of the apparent racism expressed by the day of worship being the most segregated day of the week. Science has raised more moral questions in our time and many have found that digging into the old theologies, made irrelevant by political ideologies, is no longer adequate to answer the questions that many face. The American Philosopher, William James summed the angst that many feel when he stated that the world appears insane to many because the beliefs that they hold no longer makes sense. Here lies the view of the world from the prism of existentialism. The world appears absurd and meaningless to some; but for the postmodernists the need to seek meaning and re –discover the self, in light of all that is happening around us, is important.
Our reading today from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah 64 : 1 – 9, is a prayer from God’s people struggling with making sense of the world just as we are now. The speaker wishes that God would just come down from Heaven and show God’s power just like it happened in times of old. Yet there is acknowledgement that God abhors sins and work with those “who rejoices in doing righteousness” v. 5. There is also an acknowledgement that there is sinfulness in the land “..all of us have become like one who is unclean” v.6. Yet no matter the sins of the land, the prophet calls on God “But now, O Lord, Thou art our Father, We are the clay, Thou art the potter” Our passage ends with a plea for forgiveness.
As it was in times of old, we too have discovered that no matter the existential angst and no matter where we roam, we too can run to God who is our guide and protector. We discover that we can run to the source of all knowledge and that we can find meaning for our lives in the scripture. Advent is a time to take a look at our busy lives and the promise of God’s redemptive power. No, we are not going to blame the misdeeds of others in the past on religion. But we need to take a deeper look at what our lives mean. What does the old story of God coming in the flesh means to us in 2017? What does it mean to seek belongingness, to look to become and to be who we think we are? Who are we and why are we here? Can we discover anew the meaning of what it is to be alive and can we be guided by such meaning? Perhaps, the best question to ask may be why are we here and what is the purpose for our lives? In light of these questions, perhaps one more question that is relevant here should be: does the old story still has usefulness for our lives? Yes, we in our ministry borrow from the old liturgical arrangement but it is purposely done to bring awareness to the old story and to call our attention to its meaning in our lives in a postmodern world.
There are important reminders and lessons for us in our passage today. God has not changed. The Grace that safely guided the saints and the faithfuls in the past will continue to lead us home. God did come down from heaven and the mountain shook. Those who were familiar with the scripture could recall the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. God did wonderful things in the past and can do it again. In our preparation in this season of Advent, righteousness is not old fashioned. We cannot be heavy on the joyfulness and forget the penitential theme. We must also acknowledge our sinfulness and practice penitence. Giving to one or two charities is not enough.
Like those in the time of the prophet’s writing, we too have enough to worry about. As nations test new weapons of mass destruction and as states bring back old warning systems not used since WWII, we worry. Wars and rumors of war are constant reminders of conflict in our time. As globalization eliminates time and distance, we were supposed to become one. In some sense we have become one; globalization has brought the world closer. We have gained a deeper sense of the unity of the human race. We have gained a greater understanding that what affects one part of the world does not remain there but like a pebble in a pond radiates and covers the entire globe. We have borrowed generously from all corners of the globe and technology has made it easy to see how the neighbors live. Communication has increased contacts and we can, in the language of the old commercial reach out and touch those who were considered once distant. We have borrowed food, language, music, fashion and political systems, but unfortunately, all is not well. Diseases have spread rapidly more than ever and in 2015, Ebola that began from a village in Guinea in West Africa, became a worldwide scare that set Dallas in panic. HIV and AIDS have devastated many in our world. Like the prophet, we too wish that God would just rend the heaven and come down.
Old ethnic and religious cleavages have been opened and wars have begun because of these differences. Terrorism is now a part of our daily lives and so it is no longer the Sunnis and Shiites in foreign lands but youths radicalized by these ideologies in our cities make life scary and fearful. Technology has further opened our eyes to the atrocities of war, poverty, oppression and misery. Though we realize that people are products of their history, we question practices that subject a child to ill treatment in the name of culture. We strive to make a difference while we try to get by and navigate our own individual lives. As we get into advent and prepare for Christmas, It is common for pastors to preach and lament the commercialism that Christmas has become amid the apparent absurdity of our condition. At the personal level we just manage to get by. It seems like all that we are doing is just work and pay the bills without getting ahead. In Africa, and other poor countries, people just work to buy food. Yet we read every day and hear about others making lots of money. Reality Television, a new genre of our time, now brings videos of how others live into our living rooms. We see reality stars on expensive vacations and private jets and we wonder why we are still struggling. Others sometimes wonder if to buy the medicine they need to live or if they need to buy food, a difficult choice indeed and so we wish God would just rend the heavens and come down
Advent is a time for us to take a deep breath and reflect on the meaning of living, on being, on becoming and on belonging. God did send his son to come down. (John 3 : 16) If God so loved the world that an only begotten son is sent to the world, what does that mean for me and for you? We do however forget that Advent carries a dual theme. We need to celebrate the coming of Christmas, but we also must remember the penitential theme by remembering those who are suffering and by remembering our call to serve God by serving others.
As you get ready to enter into the Christmas season, the Bible reminds us to take some time to reflect and to prepare for the season. Yes we do that by buying a new outfit, buying a gift for the lawn person, the cleaner, the gateman and each other. Yet we seldom prepare our hearts and our minds in the examination of ourselves and reflecting upon God’s promises for our lives during advent. Each and every day in the coming few weeks, we will select Bible passages to help you think about what is important: our spiritual self. Take a little time before bedtime or before you get out of bed in the morning to read a scripture and pray. Prayer, someone wrote is not only talking to God, it is listening to God. What is God trying to tell you amidst the chaos that is out there? Fortunately the word of God is right there in the Bible. Take a few moments to be in prayer and as your prepare your heart and your mind, we pray that this season will guide you to reflect on God’s gift and your relationship to God in a broken world. The prophet wished that God would just come down from the heavens. Our duty and responsibility as the people of God is to prepare for the coming of God’s son, by preparing our lives. Thanks be to God! Amen
