Hush Your Life

Mark 13 and Isaiah and a bit of Exodus, too… 

            This time of year leaves fall to the ground, and smoke rises into the sky off fall’s first fires.  And both go at it slowly.  From my study at home I watch a single leaf drift and wander through the air, dancing in gentle defiance of gravity’s pull.  It will eventually land softly and not too soon and become a part of the thickening blanket of leaves that intends on becoming winter’s quilt to warm the ground below.  I say ‘intends on becoming winter’s quilt’ because it will not, after all, be so.

            Indeed, it may well be the plan of God, Creator, that winter’s leaves warm the ground against the cold, but the plan of man is something quite different.  You see, the yard must be kept neat, so the leaves will have to go.  They will be blown to the street and sucked up by the city and carted off to who knows where.

            Smoke rises slowly into the air out of the top of my neighbors’ chimney.  It curls toward the heavens.  I imagine my neighbors down below the smoke are doing something slow inside their fire-warmed home, knitting perhaps or reading or talking about their plans for the day ahead.  At least that’s what I hope they’re doing as I type Advent’s first sermon.

            Advent means arrival; it is the four-Sunday season that leads to Incarnation Day, which most call Christmas.  Incarnation means God is here.  Christmas increasingly means “Buy stuff to give people as presents.” and less and less means “Stop.  Hush your life, and sing praise to God Almighty for the gift of his presence in the arrival of the incarnate Christ.”  Advent is the quiet time and preparation time.

            Advent is the opposite of Black Friday.  Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year.  It is a blitz of sales and stuff stuffed into the empty space in our over-sized trunks.  Advent is the opposite of Black Friday--which may be okay-- because, according to the church calendar, Black Friday was last year, as our new year begins today: the first day of Advent.  The crass materialism of Black Friday was “so last year,” right?  We’re better now; promise.

            I mean, maybe we got it out of our system on Black Friday, and now we’re ready for the measured, God-dependent quiet of Advent.  I hope we’re not like the alcoholic who is going to blow it out one last time before he quits cold turkey, because that rarely works.  If we really want to change our Black Friday ways, then we’ve got to begin to intentionally work some kind of Advent recovery program.  Few people can quit bargain shopping for stuff cold turkey.

            Oddly, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving.  It’s like our reaction to the gratitude day is gluttony.  An advertisement I saw on television the day before Thanksgiving still has me rattled.  An increasingly berserk white woman grows frothy and rabid at a Target ad when she realizes that Target is going to open for business at midnight on Thanksgiving Day.                                  

            It’s actually quite a funny ad.  It’s a parody that is decidedly true to life.  In fact, the nightly news on Black Friday led with video coverage of midnight shoppers.  They had interviews with these people.  That’s news?  Bizarre.

            Advent is the antithesis of Good Friday.  Black Friday says, “You wouldn’t dare miss this sale!”  Advent says,  “Would you dare miss that sale and risk letting God  fill the empty space within?”

            If there is discontent in the world, then Black Friday, like a modern day snake-oil salesman, pitches a cure-all elixir: “Just buy something new!  You’ll feel better instantly!”        
     If there is discontent in the world, Advent says, “Hush your life and wait on God.  It gets better along the Way.”

            Three thousand some-odd years ago in the ancient Near East, the first generation of folks called Children of God, the Israelites, were miserable and perhaps rightly discontented with their lives.  They were slaves in Egypt.  Their story is recorded, like poetry in prose, in the second book of our bible, Exodus.

            In the second chapter of the Exodus tale as the story goes,

               The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out.

               Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God….

               God heard their groaning….

               God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.

            The scripture says that the cry of the Israelites rose up to God.  I imagine their collective lament rose slowly like smoke rising off a candle just extinguished.  I imagine the deep groaning of God’s discontented children rose slowly towards the heavens like smoke whispering up out of the chimney top.  And if the Israelites--that early generation of God’s children--are anything like the current generation, which is perhaps epitomized by the wild-eyed woman in the Target ad, then they want satisfaction for their discontent now--or yesterday, if possible.  In fact, I am sure they were people who wanted their problems addressed in a decisive and timely way.

            Isaiah said as much on their behalf in this mornings OT piece.         

A few generations after the Exodus, the Israelites find themselves immersed in the soup of discontent again, and the prophet Isaiah cries out to God, “ O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down” [here]!  That great line is in this morning’s Old Testament passage, and I think it rings so true for those of us who wrestle with emptiness, despair, discontent, and fear.

            How often have I been in the valley and felt like shouting or weeping and saying, “God if I am your child, tear open the door that seems to keep you confined in the heavenly realm and come down here to help me!”  We shout that, and then we say more quietly almost to ourselves: “because if you won’t come, then I’m off to the store.”

             The Israelites made the golden calf out of melted gold, and our generation buys the golden calf made of molded plastic.  The occupation of the idol is the same; its job is to take the place of God, who seems to move slowly and who seems to prize patience.

            The Israelites did not have their problems solved immediately.  The story of their deliverance is not a long weekend with a superhero; (Remember the plagues and the parting of the sea and the wandering in the wilderness?)  it is a collection of stories as told at the fireside over hundreds of years.  All along the way God says to his children, “Hush your anxious hearts, quiet your desperate minds, depend only on me.  I am coming.  It gets better along the Way.”

            Advent means arrival.  And when God arrives in Jesus Christ, he arrives in a most unusual way.  He does not arrive as mighty, warring liberator; rather he arrives as an impoverished peasant child: a baby defenseless save for the warm protection of his mother’s arms.

            Ahh, but that’s getting ahead in the story.  For now, it’s Advent.  And Advent is waiting and patience and practicing God-dependence.

                                                           *

            The day before Thanksgiving my sister gave me my Christmas present.  She handed me a large flat package, wrapped in brown paper and said, “Will you open your Christmas present?”

             I thought to myself, “Well, we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here.”  But I wanted to be polite, so I  said, “Sure,” and I untied the ribbon and slipped the paper off and worried in secret that I wasn’t practicing what I preach, in as much as I was skipping Advent--before Advent had even begun--by opening a Christmas present before Thanksgiving.  When the unwrapping revealed the gift, I was suddenly aware that the gift will actually anchor me in Advent.

            The gift is a photograph, neatly framed behind glass.  It is a picture of two hands.  The body of the person to whom the hands belong is not in the frame, just a bit of the forearms which are mostly covered by the dark brown cotton sleeves of whatever garment the person is wearing.    

 The sleeves put me immediately in mind of the habit of a nun.  At first glance I thought of Theresa, sainted daughter of God and servant to the poor.                                                                                                              

            The hands are strong and delicate, decidedly the hands of a faithful woman, I thought.  And they are crossed for communion.  The hands are brown from work and exposure to the sun.  On the meaty part of the palm--that part that leads to the thumb and overlooks the fingers and the valley of the hand--on that rise there is a cut, covered by a band-aid.  Only, the band-aid doesn’t cover the cut entirely; a bit of scabbed-over red leaks out on each side.  On the opposite hand a small piece of crusty, porous bread rests ready to be eaten.  Indeed the hands are crossed for communion.

            There is a thin band of gold on one of the fingers, the back of a ring.  The picture is washed in light.  Below the hands there is a powerful and somehow soft light, reflecting up off a piece of shining mosaic which is embedded in the floor of the church where the hands are lifted up and laid open for Eucharist.  The photograph is one of the warmest, most fulfilling images my eyes have ever seen.  It is Advent illuminated.  The hands lifted up and laid open remind me of my own hands raised countless times over the years to receive communion sustenance.  I am reminded of your hands lifted up in this church Sunday after Sunday.

            I put my hands together as I stare at the photograph, and I am suddenly aware that I am now staring at all that I truly possess: me.  That is, my empty outstretched hands, crossed for communion, represent the most precious possession I could ever hope for: my very life.  All the stuff I need is me.

            There is strength in my hands and there is brokenness too.   My hands bear my own scratches and scrapes from past cuts.  The crusty communion bread laid on the hands in the photograph captures all I need to know about God’s arrival and continued presence in my life.

            God doesn’t open shop at midnight.  God may not thunder down from the torn-open heavens.  God steadily provides.  I have but to hush my life and lift up my hands and wait for God to arrive.

            Would it change the rhythm of your life at all if you tried an experiment like working an Advent  recovery program?  What if, every time in the next four weeks that you were tempted to hurry to fill the empty discontent inside with something other than God, you simply cross your hands as if for communion…lift them up and look into them…offer thanks for the life they represent and ask God to fill them?  Is there anything that can fill your empty hands like encounter with God?

            It’s Advent.    Hush your life.  Lift up your hands.  Wait on God to arrive.

            This time of year the season provides the signs.  Smoke rises into the sky off fall’s first fires. Leaves fall to the ground.  And both go at it slowly.

Amen.