First Sunday of Advent
My Colleague and distant cousin, Frank Showers, moved out to Chicago many years ago. He went out there with the promise of a job, which then fell through.
Frank also writes a semi-regular devotional that he shares via social media. This past Tuesday he shared the following:
Expressing gratitude is not just a wise practice of etiquette. It is a strategy for remaining hopeful. ----HFS
As children we are taught to be polite. When we receive a gift or someone does something nice for us we learn to say "thank you". But I have learned the hard way that expressing gratitude is not just a polite gesture. It is a strategy to keep open to reality.
When griefs or anxieties overtake us, we can mistakenly think the glass of our life is half empty. But that is not true. …The glass is really half full!
I learned this when I was out of work for almost a year. I attended a support group for the unemployed …led by a very capable coach and therapist. She recommended to us the practice of gratitude. Each day we were to arise and write in a journal 5 things for which we were thankful. At each group session we would not end without sharing at least 3 of those things. We found ourselves enlivened by the practice and even encouraged others to see gifts, to which they were perhaps blind.
We are living in hard times. The troubled economy, the fear of terror, and constant change can wear on us. We need a strategy to remain hopeful. Gratitude is it. The early Christians gathered together as their lives were being threatened by persecution. They met to share a thanksgiving meal, which the Risen Christ had given them before his death. There were grateful hearts in their eating and drinking. The energy that came from their thankfulness was the very presence of Christ himself.
As we gather this week for our Thanksgiving feasts let us sincerely practice gratitude. May it bring hope to our hearts. Let us also remember those around us without hope. Encourage them to open their eyes to the gifts before them. When needed share the gifts you have to build a more hopeful world.
Frank’s point, in part, is that it’s easy to allow our anxieties to get the better of us, but it takes some work to get over them. And when it comes to dealing with anxiety, it doesn’t appear as though the Gospel for this week offers us much help. What do we have, after all? We have Jesus talking about the end of days and some people being left behind and others being taken up! The dread, the tension of not knowing when it’s going to happen. The thief coming in the night! So we need to stay awake! We need to stay vigilant! Can’t sleep! Load up the coffee maker with espresso! 10 Cups?? Forget it! Get the 120 Cup industrial-sized coffee urn!
There’s got to be more to this than fear and anxiety, and the other lessons for today bear this out. Isaiah writes: [God] shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. Judgement Pronounced on Arrogance5 O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
The Psalmist encourages us: I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD!"… Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers." 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.
And Paul is, well, Paul is Paul: Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near… [Let] us live honorably as in the day…
If the central defining characteristic of God is “love” (and in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, I can come to no other conclusion), then there must be something more to the return of Christ than fear and anxiety. How about gratitude? How about anticipation? How about excitement? How about fulfillment? As people of faith, what does it mean to us to live in the fullness of Christ? What does it mean to us to know that the incarnation of Christ was not a one-time historical event, but like creation is an ongoing process; is, in fact, the ultimate expression of God’s ongoing creative, redemptive work in the world today? In the end, this is what The Church is really about: Christ’s ongoing incarnation in the world, as an ongoing expression of God’s redemptive work. But that’s really a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? So what does it mean? It means that God has always been at work, transforming the world around us.
Today’s lesson from Isaiah is all about transformation: When the nations allow themselves to be judged not by themselves, but by the Lord, then the world itself is transformed. Swords are beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. War shall be neither practiced nor taught. Those things that have been dedicated to the destruction of life are transformed into tools that help to sustain life. The very darkness of the world will be banished. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
The Psalmist also talks about what it means to allow ourselves to be transformed by God: That we learn to see beyond ourselves and our own immediate, often selfish, needs: 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.
In Romans, Paul writes: “…it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep… Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Again, clearly, it is the language of transformation.
It’s a feedback loop; a self-amplifying process. Our understanding of ourselves as transformed people, reinforces our behavior. And our transformed and transforming behavior reinforces our perception of ourselves and the world around us.
Paul is talking about what it means to be made holy; to understand that Christ came as the fulfillment of the law, that we might live a life of holiness that is formed by the Spirit in order to be a reflection of Christ himself. And that entire teaching can be summed up in one short sentence: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Again, it’s the language of transformation and mission. No longer is our primary concern our own well-being, but the well-being of those around us. Our neighbor. And we know from the teachings of Jesus, in particular the story of the Good Samaritan, that our neighbor is not the one we choose but the one who chooses us. The neighbor is always the other person given to us, the one who crosses our path whether we like it or not, the one whom we might not usually associate with or even try to avoid! The neighbor is always an unexpected appearance in our midst, in the midst of our lives. Unexpected, like a thief in the night! Our perception is transformed and by it we are transformed, so that maybe, juuust maybe, the one whose return comes unexpectedly is precisely the neighbor who encounters us in the street. Maybe, juuust maybe, Christ's second coming is this continual return of Christ in and through the neighbor.
Our Advent preparations are then transformed: They now have little to do with preparing ourselves for a culturally defined Christmas celebration, and everything to do with a celebration of Christ's incarnation as body, in the body, as the body of my neighbor – God in the flesh.
Over the past several years, this congregation has been through both transformation through the LEAD process and hibernation, by virtue of COVID. And slowly but surely, we find ourselves waking from our sleep. This congregation has experienced growth, as well as a period of enforced fallowness, and now find ourselves awakening once more. Yet through it all God has been present in Christ Jesus and we discover that through times of growth and times of challenge we have been transformed, we have had to learn to understand this congregation and ourselves in a new way. I know that this process has not always been easy. We’ve had to go through a sort of reacquaintance with one another and a rediscover of what it means to be a congregation called to service in the name of Jesus. We’ve had to come to grips with not recognizing every face or remembering every name. We’ve had to learn how to deal with adapt our structure and leadership in order to meet the circumstances in which we find ourselves. It’s been a learning process and a challenging one at that.
I know that it’s not been easy and I really do understand what it’s been like for you, because it’s been just as much a challenge for Pastor Anke and myself. The congregation has a different “feel” to it for us, than it did eleven years ago when we first arrived here. Just as it feels different for you. And just like you, part of our tendency is to respond with anxiety. Those are the times when Anke and I need to remind each other that, yes, things can be stressful… Yes, there are times when we get a little too caught up in our own feedback loops that are less than positive, as we start ruminating on everything that isn’t they way we think it ought to be, or the way it used to be. But there is something happening here that goes beyond us and our own personal comfort. There is a new thing that is happening here. Ministry is growing, here, and that is not something that is to be taken for granted. We are part of something bigger than us, our feelings, or our personal level of comfort. And for that, we are grateful.
Take some time now and share with the people around you three things about Calvary for which you are grateful.
As I said, we all are part of something bigger than us, our feelings, or our personal level of comfort. The Holy Spirit has blessed us in our ministry here, with a sense of mission and call and a firm footing from which to pursue them. For that, we can be grateful. And it’s in that moment of gratitude that we are transformed. And anxiety gives way to Thanksgiving and peace. AMEN.