I don’t mean to alarm you, but it is now December and Christmas is in 22 days. Chances are, this fact hasn’t escaped you too much. There are numerous ways to count down the days, from functional décor to chocolate filled calendars to large placards at the entrance of a store. As an adult, time seems to accelerate during this month, which is extra full of activities and things to do. But as a child, I remember feeling like Christmas was never going to get here. It couldn’t come soon enough, and I, like many children, would repeatedly ask “how much longer?” We have entered into a unique time of waiting in the next few weeks.
In the church year, this is the season of Advent, a time marked by wonder, and expectation. It begins on the third Sunday before Christmas, and is a time set apart for anticipation of the coming of Christ, both the celebration and commemoration of his first coming with his birth and the anticipation and longing for his second coming which has not yet happened. These two Advents are both marked by the common factors of waiting and anticipation. It is a season in which we ask “how long,” as a sign of our deep yearning for God’s to be with us. And each time we ask this question, we voice our faith, and join God’s people throughout the ages who have longed for God’s presence.
This is the setting for both of our texts today, which begin on a more sober note than the twinkling lights, tinsel, and Christmas parades. Psalm 80 and Isaiah 64 voice serious lament and anxiety about the state of the world. With this,
Advent begins not on a note of joy, but of despair. Humankind has reached the end of its rope. All our schemes for self-improvement, for extricating ourselves from the traps we have set for ourselves, have come to nothing. We have not realized at the deepest level of our being that we cannot save ourselves and that, apart from the intervention of God, we are totally and irretrievably lost. . . . The season thus attempts to capture that spirit of hope in the midst of hopelessness, a spirit of yearning for that which would be too good to be true: some new and unique expression of God’s intention to save a world gone wrong[i].
The traditional theme for this first Sunday of Advent is hope, specifically recalling the hope of the prophets. For Isaiah, we hear it in chapter 64, which comes almost at the end of the book after the Israelites have returned from exile. All should have been restored, but the reality doesn’t reflect that. There is still intense oppression and struggle; a life fraught with challenge. The verses we read today are a prayer for salvation that express two components of true Advent hope:
on the one hand, a deep sense of desperation about a situation out of control is sounded. On the other hand, a bold and confident trust in God is voiced, addressed to a God who can intervene (if God will) to make life peaceable and joyous. Life without God is unbearable. That is the present tense. Life with God can be completely transformed. That is the urgent hope of the prayer[ii].
As our call to worship said this morning, this is not a naïve hope or wishful thinking, but one born out of deep conviction and trust. It is, as Vaclav Havel called it, an “orientation of the spirit,” distinct from optimism, in that “it is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of those it turns out[iii].” Advent is about this kind of hope, a conviction held even in the face of adversity, made possible by faith in God.
In a similar way, Psalm 80 voices hope as well. Its setting is similar to Isaiah, with subscript notes that it is a Psalm of Asaph, which puts it among twelve other psalms (50, 73-83) that are a collection “likely of northern origin, reflect[ing] a strong interest in divine justice, Israel’s history from exodus to exile, and Zion[iv].”
The Psalm expresses a deep desire to figure God out as the people wait to see signs of God’s presence. The Psalm gives voice to the grief of the people over the impression that God has disappeared. Rather than remain paralyzed and silent, the Psalm gives the voice to move the people from despair to hope. This movement is found in the question “how long?” that breaks the silence and creates a space for truth telling and discovery among the people. The Psalm demonstrates a deep faith, marked by a questioning of God’s purposes that coexists with the affirmation that God is the one who offers salvation and deliverance. As Talitha Arnold notes:
Psalm 80 is an incredible confession, not of sin, but of faith. It confesses the people’s trust in a God who is big enough to hear their hurt, strong enough to handle their anger and pain. It also identifies the congregation as a people who, even in their suffering, have the courage to call on the Lord God of hosts to help them[v].
Both of these texts remind us that Advent is more than just a counting down the days until we get to sing silent night and remember a sweet baby in the manger. Advent is about a deep longing for God’s presence in the world, one that extends to our lives today. Advent ushers us into a season of communal prayer and petition along with the prophet Isaiah and the Asaphites and God’s people throughout the years who have hoped and called out for God to come into our lives yet again. We do this by offering our earnest cries of “How Long?”
How long will it be before things feel “normal” again after we have lost a loved one? How long before we will have a child after several miscarriages? How long will I be out of work? How long until I am able to do the things I love after a surgery or series of treatments? How long until a memory is no longer painful? How long until I am taken seriously or respected? How long will my prayers go unanswered?
And, as many “how longs” as we have in our own lives, there are just as many if not more in our own faith community and in the world. How long until we are on solid financial footing and are no longer laden with debt? How long until our pews are again overflowing each week? How long until the need is gone for something as basic as food? How long until our elected leaders can work together without letting political bias and lobbyist agendas set the tone? How long until young girls are not coerced into sex trafficking? How long until “mass shooting” is absent from our news cycle? How long until all women and men are safe from harassment and misconduct in the workplace? How long until troops come home to their families because there is no longer a risk of war and conflict has ceased?
How long? How long? We cry out to God, over and over again, how long? And then, as the Psalmist does three times, we ask for God to deliver us from the state that we are in. “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.” It is a call for a blessing, a longing to receive something only God can offer. It echoes the Aaronic priestly blessing from Numbers 6:22-27, “may the face of God shine upon you” in ways that are only possible for those who are in the presence of God. And the grammar of this request for blessing is both “wish and declaration,” something we hope to happen and something we already know to be true[vi]. This is the posture of living in between the two Advents of God’s coming.
We know God’s presence coming to us is within God’s ability and the way God has engaged with the world, made manifest in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. And, at the same time, it is a hopeful orientation to the world of what is still possible, of trusting that God can, at any moment, break into our difficult and heavy experiences of longing with a fresh vision and presence.
Advent is about being bold enough to ask God to do just that. It is an expression of hope, based on a deep seated belief that what God has done before, God can and will do again. It’s about adopting a posture of expectation and anticipation of God bursting on the scene. It is about watching and waiting, yes, but also actively engaging in dialogue with God marked by our hope in what God can do. It is about making the active choice to hope, even when that looks like cries of “how long”? May this be our approach to the next 22 days. Amen.
~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford
December 3, 2017
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[i] “First Sunday of Advent,” Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV – Year B, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993).
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Vaclav Havel, as quoted by David LaMotte in Worldchanging 101: Challenging the Myth of Powerlessness, (Montreat, NC: Dryad Publishing, 2014), 28.
[iv] William P. Brown, “Book of Psalms,” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. ed. K . D. Sakenfeld (Nashville, Abingdon, 2009), 4:673, as quoted by James K. Mead, “Commentary on Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19,” Working Preacher, December 3, 2017, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3484, accessed 11/30/2017.
[v] Talitha Arnold, “Pastoral Perspective: Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 1, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008).
[vi][vi] Rolf Jacobson, Karoline Lewis, and Matt Skinner,“Sermon Brainwave, #572 – First Sunday of Advent” Podcast by Working Preacher, Posted November 25, 2017, http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=950, accessed 11/30/17.
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