Advent II 2007
December 8, 9 2007
The Rev. Barbara Schlachter

One of the many wonderful things about our new son-in-law is that he likes cartoons and will send ones he thinks are especially appropriate for us over the internet.  So this week we received one that was a Christmas letter.  Every year we write that letter and send it out like some people send fruitcakes.  We hope they are wanted, but regardless, we have a compulsion to do it anyway.

So I opened up the cartoon of the Christmas letter.  It was a monk in a scriptorium with a single illuminated letter on a piece of parchment.  That was his Christmas letter.

I started to think, what is the letter for Advent, if there was one letter I had to choose.  I finally settled on “L.”  So in the words of Sesame Street, this sermon is brought to you by the letter “L.”

There are three “L” words that speak of Advent.  This “l” list will help you  to remember the sermon.  The words are lament, longing and light.  Lament, longing and light.

Lament is an honest cry to God, a gut wrenching cry.  There is too much suffering and hardship in this world, in this country, in this community, perhaps in our lives at this time of the year that we would like to feel only the joy and excitement of preparing for Christmas.  So many of us have lost loved ones this past year or can see that we will before too much longer.  We have a war taking our nation’s resources and using them not for good but for ill and we see no simple solutions ahead.  Environmental crises largely of our own making have finally come home to roost and we know that we face some big lifestyle changes in the future.

And even though I would love to see people spend less time in malls at Christmas, keeping them out through fear that they might be shot is not what I have in mind.  Doing alternative Christmas shopping of giving gifts to those who need them in honor of those who don’t need anything is our calling as givers at Christians.

I lament how understanding Jesus as God’s gift to us has turned into a shopping feeding frenzy.  Jesus needed the gifts of the wisemen because he became a poor peasant in an oppressed city.  St. Nicholas who became St. Nick and the precursor of our Santa Claus, gave gifts because people needed them.  He gave doweries to young women who did not have them—perhaps the first micro-loans to women, a proven way of lifting a family from poverty in a developing nation.  Where did we ever get the idea that more gifts that cost more money mean we love someone more?  Do you hear the lament?

When we look at our lessons for this morning, we can see them as longing that comes from lament.  The prophet Isaiah laments the condition of God’s people and longs for a different time, when a shoot will come forth from the stump of Jesse, when the kingdom of creation will dwell in peace, when righteousness and faithfulness will be the way of government. 

And John the Baptizer picks up that longing for the Messiah who would accomplish these things for Israel.  He longed for God’s people to repent, not rest on their place of privilege, to get their hearts and lives ready to receive the one that God promised, for truly he was coming near.

And what do we long for?  What is your heart yearning for this Advent time?  What do you hope for in these short days of the year, when there is more darkness than light?  Do you long for peace within your families, healing for your loved ones, a sense of hope within your heart?  Do you long for justice and peace in the world, a re-ordering of values in this nation, the right candidates to win in the Caucuses?   I imagine we all yearn and long for these things.

Paul in his letter to the Romans gives us memorable words for our longing:  “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”   Paul saw Jesus as the one that God promised to the patriarchs, to Jesse and his descendants, the one whose presence in the world and in our hearts would never let us down.

We long for Christ’s peace which passes all understanding, because when we look at the world and the outer conditions of our lives, there is not a lot of evidence for hope.  It is a different kind of hope, that lies within us that Paul believes Christ to be.

For finally, our longing must be for God, for the love of the one who loves us, who desires us, who gave us Jesus as the most fully evidenced life of how God loves  and dwells with us: among us and within us. 

We long for knowing God, for God’s peace, for God’s love, for God’s light, deep within us.  That takes us to the third L—light.

John the Baptizer baptized with the outer sign of water and said that the one who was coming would baptize with fire.  He had it partly right, that there would be fire and passion and the light that goes with fire and passion, but it would be the fire of love, not hellfire.  Jesus came as one who healed, one who taught, one who loved.  He came as the human face of God.  In his light, we see light.

We know that these dark days are going to increase for only a few more weeks, and then the days will start to get longer.  We know that the light is coming.  That’s a scientific, natural understanding of how the earth turns.  But our hearts need to know that the light is coming within them, too, has come, has never been dimmed.

Our hearts need to be prepared for the reminder that the light dwells within. 

There’s a story of a pediatric nurse who likes to give the children she cares for a chance to listen to their hearts through her stethoscope.  While all children find this a marvelous mystery to listen to their own heart beat, one little boy had a unique twist on this experience.  When she put the stethoscope on his heart and asked him, “What do you think that sound is?”  He became very wide-eyed and said, “Do you think that is Jesus knocking?”

Jesus is always knocking on the door of our hearts, waiting for us to open to the light that he brings, that he is.  Our job is to make sure we are listening for the knock.  It’s very easy at this time of the year to get so busy that we forget to listen.

Here are a few things you might do:  Light the candles of Advent and say the prayers with your family.  Read the lessons that prepare us for the birth of Christ.  Get up 15 minutes earlier when it is dark—and it’s not hard to get up these days in the dark because it is dark so late—and light a candle and sit by a window and wait in the dark for the light, either the actual first light of the morning or the light within to bring peace and warmth to your heart. 

Imagine that your heart is a nest and that all your preparations for Christmas are adding feathers or straw to your nest and that the nest is where the Christ will be born again and placed within you.   Prepare a home in your heart for the light of Christ to dwell, even when darkness in all its forms seems to be so present.

Light comes into the world of lament and longing, not to banish it, but to overcome it, to illuminate the presence and love of God in the very hurts and hopes of our lives.

Here is a prayer by Ted Loder to take with you:

Gentle me,

Holy One, into an unclenched moment, a deep breath, a letting go of heavy experiences, of shriveling anxieties, of dead certainties, that, softened by the silence, surrounded by the light, and open to the mystery, I may be found by wholeness upheld by the unfathomable, entranced by the simple, and filled with the joy that is you.  Amen.