Rex Piercy
A Meditation for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 6, 2020
Preached at Sunday Assembly of Holy Wisdom Monastery, Middleton, WI
I have always considered Advent to be a season for the church insider. Out there beyond these doors it’s just December and the rush to Christmas. Outside the church Advent is little known and pretty much ignored. Out there these days from Black Friday and Cyber Monday to Christmas are often just a mad flurry of “to dos”: buy presents, even if online; write Christmas cards, or draft a single email to mass mail to your address book; maybe clean up the guest room (that’s a doubtful this year); finish tasks at work, even if you work from home right now, etc. etc. It’s tiring to contemplate. There is so much to do and so little time. We say that every year.
Outside the church the few nods given to Advent are now marked by boozy calendars which have become big business in 2020. Costco has a beer calendar that includes two dozen cans of German beer, one for each day of December up to Christmas Eve. Others like Target and Trader Joe’s have released versions filled with wine, beer, gin, and even hard seltzer. Aldi’s has more than 20 different Advent calendars stocked with books, candles, beer, wine, cheese, and yes, even pet treats for your Advent counting cat or dog.
One ad for these calendars claimed they would make each day of December “advent-urous!”
Now, I‘ll grant you that 2020 hasn’t exactly done much for our collective soul, making a turn to spirits of the liquid form somewhat understandable. I also saw fill-able ornaments so you could drink your way around the tree. It’s not exactly a good time out there right now.
If we thought an election would decide things, the turmoil and rancor still continue. The pandemic worsens. The economic ramifications are staggering. We may not be in exile from our homes as were our ancient Jewish forbears, but most assuredly we are exiled in them, and who knows when we will find our release.
Still in here, in the church, Advent is more than just a number of days of “to dos” before we collapse in exhaustion for the proverbial long winter’s nap. In here, Advent is both a mysterious blend of readiness for the annual celebration of Jesus’ birth in time, and a revealing look at the world not just as it is and how it has been, but also how it can be, how it will be in the fullness of God’s time. Far from a countdown to a date on the calendar, Advent is an invitation about “being” as much as it is about “doing.” Advent asks what this week’s text from 2 Peter asks: “What sort of people ought we to be?”
I recall the story told by Joseph Campbell, the noted teacher, historian, and mythologist. He remembered attending a lecture presented by the famous Japanese Zen philosopher D.T. Suzuki. Campbell reported the ninety-one year old Suzuki stood with his hands at his side, looked at the expectant audience and said:
Nature against God.
God against nature.
Nature against man.
Man against nature.
Man against God.
God against man.
Very funny religion.
It is very funny, because even now in 2020, we scurry about, trying to fill up our days, making and trying to keep schedules, using organizers and calendars and computers and the latest cell phones to keep track of our pace, when instead we would be better off to heed the ancient psalmist’s wisdom: “Let me hear what God will speak, for God will speak peace to God’s people, to God’s faithful, to those who turn to God in their hearts” (Psalm 85:8). In other words, a call for us to a whole lot more of being still and knowing that God is God, and that we are not!
Do you remember the parable that Jesus told about foolish preparations? I’m not thinking about the five wise and foolish bridesmaids and their lamps which we heard recently. Instead, I am remembering the story about the farmer who had done quite well for himself and desired to tear down his existing barn to build a bigger one. He proclaimed, “Self, you have done well, so relax. Eat, drink, and be merry.” But as you recall God had other plans and demanded the man’s self that very night, so what good were his preparations? Too bad he didn’t have the foolish insight of the one who said, “My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.”
Advent is about waiting, to be sure, but it is a special kind of waiting. It is an active practice not a passive activity. But even more, Advent is about hope. When we sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” it is a cry for our salvation, a pleading for God to come and save us, and a hope, a belief, that we can rejoice because liberation is just around the corner. Advent opens up space for expectation of a better future. Advent makes a way for hope to come in the desert of our despair so the good news that is promised can come.
In these waning days of a year we thought would never end, of a year we might aptly label “annus horribilis,” we look back longingly just twelve months ago at how things “used to be.” Like exiled Israel of old, we
might well wonder if God has left us. But then we hear the Advent message today in John’s words – God has not left us; hope is on the way, light still breaks into the darkness. Or as 2 Peter says, God is not slow about promises.
This week as I watched Stephen Colbert’s interview with President Obama about his new book, I was struck by their discussion of something the former president wrote. Obama said that it was important for him to take the long view and to recognize that everything is dust, even the accomplishments of a president! That is ancient Isaiah’s cry too: “All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades….”
Yet that recognition is far from being a glass half empty of doom and gloom. Advent shouts loudly to our much-felt human condition: Yes, surely the people are grass, but here is your God! The word of our God will stand forever. The Most High comes with might…to rule, to reward, to recompense, but also to feed us, God’s finite and frustrated ones, as a shepherd feeds the flock.
I remember a conversation in Mitch Albom’s little best seller TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE. There was an afternoon when Morrie talked to Albom about death, about the waiting for the inevitable. Morrie professed that if one is prepared to die, then that person will be ready for life. But how to prepare? So Morrie told the little story of the Buddha-bird: “Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?’”
There’s that “being” thing again – Am I being the person I want to be? Alongside all our “to dos,” we are while we wait! While we wait, hastening the coming of the day of our God, we ask ourselves what sort of persons we ought to be? While we wait, we lead lives of holiness and godliness. While we wait, we are who we are and we are whose we are. And that matters. As the writer of 2 Peter said: “Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting…strive to be found by God at peace….”
God is here. God is holy. God is beautiful. God is the Most High. God is the Mighty One who comes with a ruling arm, greater than we could ever be, but also one who bends low to feed us and lead us, like a shepherd, gathering us and gently carrying us.
Right now our zeal may be flagging! 2020 feels like it has sucked us into the maelstrom. And if these are not the last days, they sometimes certainly feel like they are. But God is coming to ransom our captive souls so that we can sing now in hope:
And you beneath life’s crushing load whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way, with painful steps and slow,
Look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing;
O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing!
For lo, the days are hastening on, by prophet seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold;
When peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world send back the song which now the angels sing.
(It Came upon the Midnight Clear, Edmund Sears, 1849)
So what, then? Can we dare to hope during this Advent season, and perhaps, for a few more? Yes, for new heavens and a new earth, that’s what! And in the meantime, we must continue to be the sort of persons who are living and striving to be holy and blameless before God where we can be found at peace.
Out there it’s just December, the countdown to the end of a tumultuous year. But in here, Advent is our time. Advent is just the right time for us and for our world to be healed and to be made whole.
Let me leave you with a quotation I have found helpful not just in 2020 but anytime: “Once what you are living and what you are doing has for you meaning, it is irrelevant whether you are happy or unhappy. You are content. You’re not alone in your spirit. You belong.” (Sir Laurens van der Post, source unknown)
In our being, with our belonging, we become part of what is about to happen when the old passes away and the new comes on the way prepared for our God. God has not forgotten God’s people. Because, as 2 Peter puts it, “[I]n accordance with God’s promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.”