In the gap of Advent

Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent

The church bell at Christ Lutheran Church in Aptos, CA. (Image Source: Jonas Ellison)

Christ Lutheran Church in Aptos, CA

Readings: Isaiah 64:1-9 | Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19 | 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 | Mark 13:24-37

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Happy New Year, everybody… Yes, we have opened up a brand new liturgical calendar year. This is what I love about the church... She is countercultural. She operates to her own rhythms.

It is the darkest time of the year and the deepest place in the church year. Advent begins in the dark.

The color for Advent is Sarum blue. There’s deep symbology with this color blue. As the world outside shines and shouts with holly jolly Christmas, the church says, “Not yet.” As it is said, “The clock on the bank says it is day, but the hands on the church point to midnight.”¹ 

Good Lutherans (and those in other liturgical traditions that celebrate Advent) live a sort of double life this time of year. Outside the church, we do all the holly jolly things everyone else does (trust me, at our home, we’ve pulled out all the stops). But inside the church walls, we find sanctuary from the chaos of holiday expectations and all the madness that ensues this time of year. And, for those of us suffering any kind of grief (and I’d say that we’re all suffering some kind of grief), we are allowed to be... sad. Or even just a little off. They don’t want sad at the Friendsgiving party. No one wants to see us sobbing crocodile tears into our egg nog at the office Christmas auction. But the Sarum blue allows us to feel safe being blue. Which you think would make things worse. But like a good Willy Nelson song, there’s something about being okay with being sad that… feels good. So that’s the space God holds for us in Advent.

Advent is the season in which we await Christ’s  future coming, not the birth in the manger (which happened in past history). That’s next season, at Christmas. It’s strange how, in Advent, we move backward toward Christmas. We start the church year looking forward to the eschaton and move back to the incarnation.

Advent finds us in a gap between what we want God to do (our expectations of God) and where we are now. The themes in Advent are waiting and longing. It is a time when we recognize that our yearnings remain unmet. 

If we’re honest, I’d say that we live most of our lives in the gap of Advent.

There’s always something unfulfilled in our lives. The carrot keeps moving out in front of us the faster we run toward it. This is true if you’re a church-goer or not. This gap of Advent is a universal human condition that we, in the church, have put beautiful words and symbology to. 

Advent questions are honest ones like, “Where are you, God?” “God, when are you gonna clean up this mess?” And, “God, why is it so hard to be human?”

I think a lot of us have been asking Advent questions since learning that the ceasefire has ended in the Middle East, and the mass killing has started again. But it’s not just the big headline-grabbing events. The ones that don’t make the news can hurt the most. Estrangement, sickness, addiction, or even just malaise. 

Why is it so hard to be human?

There’s this one amazing existential scene (my fav scene ever?) in the Barbie movie where Barbie becomes human, sits on a bench observing the grittiness and beautiful messiness of mortality, and feels longing for the first time. Yes, there’s a sadness here in this valley, but there’s also an aliveness that Barbie feels for the first time. The camera zooms in, and tears stream down Barbie’s cheeks as Billie Eilish sings the incredible song, What Was I Made For?  This aliveness can only find us in the gap of longing. 

We are creatures who feel deeply.
And as beautiful as it is, it also hurts.
Yes, Jesus wept. 

In Advent, we can all sit on the bench with Barbie and just... Feel. To look deeply into our own life and see that our house may not be in the kind of order that we wished. We are all in some gap between life as it is and the ideal life that remains at a distance. 

Our friend, the prophet Isaiah, was in the gap, too. Israel finally returned home from their long exile under King Cyrus. It should’ve been a happy time. But when they return, they see their city of Jerusalem has been destroyed and their temple in ruin. Like your life and mine, life in Jerusalem was not a bed of roses. 

It’s like getting your house ready for your in-laws. Is it ever good enough?

What I find fascinating about this passage is that Isaiah doesn’t say that God hid from them because they sinned. He says that they sinned because God turned from them. 

I feel this in my own life. Is God watching? If I live in a way that hurts myself or others - or if I live a virtuous life - does God even care? 

These are Advent questions. Isaiah feels this divine absence, too, and is like, “God, HEY!… Don’t you DARE walk away from us! Rip open those clouds and get down here. We NEED you, God, because we can do nothing without you.”

So, here we are… In this gap of Advent. Jesus tells us to keep ready. To stay woke:) St. Paul even piles onto this and talks about all these supposed ‘spiritual gifts’ we’re supposed to have.

Passages like these can easily go straight to a preacher’s head. It’s easy for us to stand up and tell you to straighten up and fly right! The LORD is comin’ back! You’d better get your ducks in a row. Work on those spiritual gifts, people! 

But that would be missing Isaiah’s point: Nothing moves until God moves. We can sit here and yell at each other all day - the world yells at us all day. I can’t go to Target without a t-shirt yelling at me, “BE KIND!” Doesn’t help. I’m still a bit of a jerk most of the time. 

Even with Paul’s letter - the language he uses is indicative, not imperative. It describes what God does in you and me when She moves through us in the Spirit. When God moves, we almost can’t help but move. We can close our ears and eyes and try like mad to ignore Her (yes, for the record, I often use she/her pronouns for the Holy Spirit because Jesus does). 

See, God didn’t just get up and leave us until the ‘second coming.’ Jesus promises that the Spirit is always interceding. God is always moving - we just mostly look in the wrong places. We only look for God in glory, success, and perfection. But Jesus reveals that God is not a God of perfect. God is one who hangs on a cross and redeems what is broken. God moves here in real life. In our messy and imperfect life. God sits with us in church when we put on a good face and our Sunday best, but inside, we’re grieving and wounded.

God meets us in the dark of Advent. In the Word and Sacrament here in this sanctuary. God is here in the gap. 

We don’t know when Christ will return to press the big cosmic reset button. Jesus says we are not designed to be able to comprehend things like that. He does, however, give us an image of a fig tree. What’s interesting about fig trees in Jesus’ desert climate is that they were one of the only trees that blossomed because most trees in Judea were evergreen. When fig trees blossomed, it was already really hot. It was a sign that summer was already in full swing. This is what Jesus likens the second coming to. We’ll know when we see it, and it’s already been done. 

But now we’re in the gap. So what do we do here? When like Isaiah, our life isn’t in the order we want it to be in? How do we prepare? How do we stay awake? What must we do to hone those spiritual gifts Paul talks about?

I say that our only job is to wait attentively.

Now, this will get you crucified, especially today. Waiting is one of the biggest threats to modern life. If we wait, how do we get what we need to live? If we’re not hustling for resources or recognition, aren’t we just… Dying? How will we take care of ourselves and others if we just… Wait?

I have a lot to say about waiting that I don’t have time for in this sermon. We’ll talk about waiting a lot in Advent. But this is the commission of the church - to wait. See, the Gospel doesn’t call us into a life of getting or having. It calls us into a life of being with God (and neighbor). We are called to be fully present, awake, and alive in this gap. To be attentive to how God is active right here in this valley. 

If God is an eternal Word, it’s helpful to see this Word as a divine tuning fork. If we’re busy rushing around yelling in our own voices as we strive to get and have, we won’t hear it. But if we stop, wait, and listen, we hear it humming at the core of all existence. It calls us to hum along with it. This is resonance, and it’s what we really long for.

So, take a second. Close your eyes if you want. Do you hear it with the ear of your heart? This divine resonance will make you see fig trees blossoming that you didn’t before when you were concerned with getting and having. But when you stop… And you wait… And you can just BE… You’ll see that fig trees are blooming everywhere. 

Oh, and about those spiritual gifts… You already have them. Most of them, you’re blind to. Remember, God is the first mover. Let’s go back to the indicative… God HAS enriched you. God HAS strengthened you. God HAS given you grace. You are here. Breath flows miraculously through our lungs, and somehow our hearts beat. 

God hums tremendously through you. Yes, we can easily get distracted from it. Our world of getting and having pulls us into its spell. As soon as we go into DIY fix-it mode (which we all do), we lose the tune. We become our own gods, which is a false reality that God will let us splash around in until we get tired. 

But here amid the Sarum blue of Advent… In the shadow of this cross… God, in Jesus, rips open the heavens to get to you. God has never turned away from you. In God’s eyes, you are blameless and beloved just as you are. As you take an honest inventory of the ruins in your life, you can be gentle with yourself. God wraps His arms around you, holds you, and reclaims you in the fertile depths of the valley. 

1. Quote is from the modern prophet of Advent, Rev. Fleming Rutledge.