Davison's Doodle

Edgy Advent

On the first Sunday in Advent, I was gifted the trust of the pulpit for a colleague recovering from an illness. The Lectionary is turning to Luke in Year C. The text for the day was Luke 21:25-36. I’ve written about an edgy Advent before. These are the words I shared.

In the book A Walk in the Woods, Bill, a travel writer in his 60s, returns to America after living in Europe for many years.  He is a bit restless in his new, old, surroundings.  Seeking inspiration and a desire to explore, Bill decides to hike the Appalachian Trail, all 2000 miles of it.  Afraid to be on the trail alone, Bill calls friends to see if anyone would take the journey with him.  The only one who shows up is an old friend from high school.  Stephen is overweight, significantly, and he has a slight drinking problem.  He only eats junk food and insists he has to eat every hour to keep from having seizures.

Bill and Stephen buy all the supplies they think they need.  Bill pays for it all.  They pick out the right backpack, tent, sleeping bag, bear repellent, hiking boots, and socks. They gather up the suggested food packets for the trail.  They plan the days of hiking and depart on the best weather day after a last supper in a restaurant surrounded by other hikers preparing to set out as well.  Their adventure has low points and some mountaintop vistas along the way. 

It is easy to get all the stuff together, read the map, and plan. Any hike, any journey begins with that first step and many more to follow.  Christian tradition considers Advent one end of the Christian trail with many entrances and exits.

Some walk the trail anew each year.  Some fondly remember the first steps, the first mile, the first blisters.  Some in this room know the trail you can point the way or be the guide for others.  During Advent, you will hear stories in this sacred space and around tables in your home.  One or two might fill you with all the emotions a person can feel.  You will hear and see things that set you on edge.

Remember, sometimes, being on an edge requires risk.  On the edge can feel too hard. Too painful.  Though appealing, the view from the mountaintop doesn’t feel worth the risk.  Remember, you don’t usually get to mountain vistas or back to the safety of the valley without traversing a few edges.  Even an edgy Advent.

The first Sunday in Advent begins a new Lectionary year. This is Year C, which means that Luke’s faith experience is the primary gospel reading with a sprinkling of Matthew and John during Lent and Easter.  Here are a few details to remember as we enter Luke’s gospel.

• The author has the letters of Paul, the Gospel of Mark, and a collection of Jesus sayings that scholars call Q, as well as other material not found in the other gospels as the source material.
• The author of Luke is most likely well-educated, and scholars think is also the author of Acts.  Some suggest reading Luke and Acts as a two-volume work. 
• Luke is a rich narrative about the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth.
• All the gospel writers are active participants in their cultural moment.  Their time was as edgy as our own

Many Christians embrace the traditional themes of Advent: hope, peace, joy, and love.  But don’t forget the lectionary readings for Advent begin with Jesus speaking in apocalyptic language about the kindom of God. Advent often begins with a warning, “No one knows the when.  Don’t even ask.”

We are near the end of Luke’s gospel. Jesus speaks of events that take place here on Earth and in the stars.  It’s a painting, a vision, that doesn’t include a specific timeline.  And no one is given the time to ask,  “When will this happen?  Without taking a breath, Jesus kept talking and told a parable with the hook, “So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.  Truly, I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.” And in v33, there is an odd transition, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

Be on guard.  Be alert at all times. If that doesn’t make you a little edgy, I’m not sure what will. Tense. Nervous, Irritable, Unable to relax.  Those aren’t side effects in a drug commercial.  They all describe what it means to be “on edge.”  Can you sense it in yourself and others?  Do you hear it?  A little squeaking sound.

Our devices and our news silos give us instant access to all the terrors and wonders of the world through our preferred filter. 
FOMO, fear of missing out. 
YOLO, you only live once.  
It’s understandable.  It seems like it has been this way since the last fireworks faded from the night sky on New Year’s Eve in 2000.  It was amped up in Sept 2001.   And again during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, through two decades of election cycles.
Covid-19.
January 6.
Russia invaded Ukraine.
Hamas and Israel are killing each other, again.  
Viral political profiteering.

I don’t think your politics, theology, religion, or ideological perspective matters.  No matter how early Christmas music begins in the stores, little has felt “normal” for a long time.

But it is Advent, and we are invited to hike or walk the Christian trail.  A sign at the trail entrance has the words Hope, Peace, Joy, Love written in big lettering.  Smaller lettering at the bottom reads, “People will faint from fear and foreboding.  Be on guard.  Be alert.”

Some of our cousins in Christian faith think they can manipulate the Holy into acting on their timetable.  In their woke-ness, they see signs that fit their perspective and politics, thinking this is it.  To me, that’s not hope.  That is despair. In the book The First Christmas, New Testament scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan identify the struggle like this.

The imperial kingdom of Rome — and this may indeed apply to any other empire as well— had as its program peace through victory.  The eschatological kingdom of God has as its program peace through justice.  Both intend peace — one by violence, the other by nonviolence.  And still those tectonic plates grind against one another.

Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Birth. HarperOne (New York) 2007. p 69-70.

The longer I live, the more I think of Advent through the lens of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.  
Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s business partner in life, appears in spirit form, weighed down by a long chain and his ledger books.  Scrooge tells the spirit that Jacob was a good businessman in life. And Jacob, recounting his life and how he made his chain link by link, shouts at Scrooge, “Humankind should have been my business.  But, you, Ebenezer, you still have a chance to change.”

I think we are visited by hope, peace, and joy, which are the building blocks of knowing love.  During Advent, we are visited by these spirits, these glimpses reminding us of what the writer of Psalm 122 said, “For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’ For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good.”

At the end of his second inaugural address, President Lincoln said.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address.” March 4, 1865

Those words always jar my being.

When my cousin Matthew was in 6th grade, his mother bought him shoes three times that year. The summer before 7th grade, she bought him shoes two sizes too big, and she did so each year until he left home after high school. Matthew looked pretty goofy, walking around in shoes too big, and even after learning to navigate the bigger size, sometimes he stumbled. Lincoln gave the Nation a vision back in 1865, an idea at least two sizes too big, even for today.

And the same is true for the prophets in the Hebrew bible.  We hear Isaiah spin an image of God’s comfort, reminding us that it is our task to comfort exiles wherever they are found.  We must cry out and act out through the lessons taught by our own grief, suffering, growing, and maturing.  Act out: the Lord our God is revealed in the way we live and move and have our being. Revealed in the way: practice hope,  practice peace practice joy practice love.

It’s an edgy Advent that challenges our time’s distracting sentimentality and consumerism.
An edgy Advent comforts, welcomes, and is gracious without reciprocity.
It’s an Advent that names the wilderness and points to the good news of God.
It’s a compass to help us prepare a way, our way, the Lord’s way, and navigate the trail’s wilderness, valleys, mountaintops, and edges.

Maybe Advent is a bridge that spans a chasm on the Christian trail from ordinary living to another kind of living . . . another kind of neighborliness, compassion, or grace.   You have better words that describe what the other side of Advent and Christmas is or is like for you.   Advent may be one of those two sizes to big ideas.

I don’t know if you plan to enter the Christian trail this year through Advent or elsewhere.  The experiences in your life may be too painful, too confusing, or you just aren’t feeling it: Advent and Christmas.  If so, you are not alone.  I know many embodying that space, admit it or not.  It’s ok.  Maybe the best you can do is hear the stories of others who walk this part of the trail.  A story like this one from a Magic Monastery.

They have a Brother there who was one of the shepherds who first greeted the Christ Child.  Of course,​ this Brother is very old now, but when you hear him play his flute, you will become very young. (Be careful. You may do something silly.).

The three Wise Men are there also.  Each Christmas, one of them will give the sermon.  Listen very carefully.  You may have difficulty with his language, but that is because he is so wise, and you are so foolish.  I thought he was superficial, talking about incense on Christmas.  It was only later that I realized he had been talking about the Real incense, and now I can smell that wherever I go. Perhaps when you go there, he will be speaking about the real gold or the real myrrh.

And then there are the angels.  You’ll hear them singing.  What shall I say?  It is God’s music.  It gets into your bones.  Nothing is the same afterward.

But all of this is nothing.  What really matters is when the Word becomes flesh.  Wait till you experience that.