Well, it's official... as of today, it's the most wonderful
time of the year.
Although every year the most wonderful time of the year
starts earlier and earlier... In my childhood they started playing Christmas
carols and decorating stores right after Thanksgiving. Then a little later they
started decorating the stores and playing the carols right after Halloween. And
I believe I saw Christmas things in the stores not long after Labor Day this
year, but now I'm in Las Vegas, and I believe you folks do things a little
differently here!
But the celebration of Advent and the Christmas shopping
season are not the same thing. The Christian church gets to say when Advent
begins, not Macy's or Nordstrom's.
Advent is a peculiar season. Is it a season of memory or
hope? Does it look forward or backward?
Do we remember the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem or do we hope
and pray for his return to judge and redeem us and the world in which we live?
Is Advent a time of preparing for Christmas or a journey
into the past?
Does Advent awaken memories of a young woman named Mary,
only a teenager, and her husband Joseph... a crowded town... a filthy
stable...shepherds watching... angels singing... a star shining... magi
bringing gifts... cattle lowing... "The little Lord Jesus, no crying he
makes"?
Or does Advent anticipate a nearly unimaginable future when
the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea? Of
a time when we shall beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into
pruning hooks, when there shall be no need to send our troops to Kabul or send
F-14 fighter jets over some islands claimed by both China and Japan?
In these weeks before Christmas do we hope and pray that
some day God will spread out a banquet for all who hunger and are homeless?
Do we fervently pray for that day when every tear shall be
wiped away and death shall be no more and there shall be no more mourning nor
crying nor pain?
"Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people
free..."
So which is it? Is Advent a journey into memory or a time of
hope?
The answer of course is both.
Advent reminds us that we live our lives in that uneasy and
sometimes uncomfortable place between the already and the not yet.
Several years ago my friend Rabbi Jonathan Miller and his
son Aaron, now a rabbi himself, visited a history class I was teaching. One of
my students asked a question that she had always wanted to ask a Jew:
"Why don't you believe in Jesus?" And so I sat there, red-faced and
deeply embarrassed. But Jonathan calmly turned to his son and said,
"Aaron, would you like to answer that question?" And Aaron just as
calmly replied, "Jews believe that when the messiah comes, he or she will
bring in an age of peace, and that hasn't happened yet."
It's a great answer. And also a great challenge.
If Jesus is the messiah, then why isn't the world at peace?
Why haven't the lion and the lamb snuggled up together? Why are there still
troops in Kabul?
Maybe we all had the wrong idea about the messiah. Maybe
Jesus is saying to us, "What are you going to do to bring about an age of
peace? What are you going to do to help the lion and the lamb to become
friends? What are you going to do to build a world in which troops won't have
to go to Kabul or Baghdad again?"
I think those are even better questions than the one my
student asked Rabbi Miller. The question is not, "Why don't Jews believe
that Jesus was the messiah?" The better question is why don't Christians
live as though Jesus really is the Prince of Peace?
In today's gospel reading, the psalmist tells us to
"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem," but we misunderstand that psalm if
we believe the psalmist is only telling us to pray that there will be no more
violence in Jerusalem.
The Hebrew word shalom that we translate as
"peace" means so much more than an absence of conflict or violence. Shalom
is a positive word. It means well-being, plenty, prosperity, completeness.
"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" means "Pray
that Jerusalem - God's city, the place where God dwells on earth, may be a
place of plenty, a place where the hungry are fed and the homeless will have a
roof over their heads, a place where the lion will lie down with the lamb, and
little children will dwell in security."
In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah says, "In days
to come
the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established as the highest of the
mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to
it."
The "mountain of the Lord's house" is Mt Zion, in
other words, Jerusalem. Isaiah is expressing the hope that Jerusalem, the city
of God will encompass the whole world, that all the world will know the peace,
the shalom, for which the psalmist bids us pray.
Advent is the time when we hope the hopes that Isaiah and
the psalmist hoped, when we pray their prayers, and when we work for the future
they envisioned.
In Matthew's gospel, Jesus said, "Keep awake therefore,
for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." Keep awake, watch...
These are the key words of Advent.
Each day we must be like Noah building an ark... like a man
plowing a field, like a woman grinding grain. Each day, each hour, we must be
doing whatever we have to do to build the new world that God wants to build in
our world.
So my hope and prayer for you and for all of us in this
Advent season is that we will live just a little UN-comfortably, a little
UN-easily between the memory of the past and the hope of the future. And that
our discomfort and unease will prompt us to build that world in which swords
will be beat into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.
