Doorbusters and Dreams

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

The last few weeks have been so busy, and we still have so many weeks to go before Christmas! Last Sunday we lit the first candle on our Advent wreath. And only a week before that, while we were still concerned about finding a big enough turkey and looking for Grandma’s stuffing recipe, we celebrated Christ the King Sunday…. But I’m forgetting a holiday or event of the last few weeks. Do you know which one I didn’t mention? Maybe this will give you a hint…and it’s not either of my weddings… though the reception with my family in Wisconsin also coincided with the first major snowstorm of the season in the Midwest.

having fun at the wedding!

Perhaps this story will help. While I was in seminary in Minneapolis, right after Thanksgiving I drove down to Iowa with a friend from college, to attend another college friend’s wedding. Ironically, there was a snowstorm that weekend too! At the time, the friend I drove with had a full-time job in the fine china and luggage department at Macy’s. In order to get the day off to attend this wedding, she agreed to come in to work at a ridiculously early hour the day before for this very special “holiday” I’m refereeing to.  

Between the hours of 4 AM and 1 PM, she alone sold approximately twelve thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise. Ninety-five percent of all employees of her Macy’s were needed that day. The next day, on Saturday, her voice was still nearly hoarse from saying over and over again, “Would you like a gift receipt with that?” all day long, on Black Friday.

Do you remember “way back” when people woke up in the darkness and wee hours of the morning to get a “doorbuster” deal? And now, just over eleven years later, that seems quaint. This year, I have seen “black Friday doorbuster deals” starting in early in November, not to mention the number of stores that are open all day on Thanksgiving.

We have entered into in the season of Advent, a time of brightness as the sun sets earlier every day.  It is a time of waiting as the world demands instant gratification. It is a time of reflection as our lives kick it into overdrive. It is also a time to celebrate our savior coming to us as a helpless baby born to a teenage girl in poverty, even as our society continues to treasure and seek only riches and power.

The whole idea of Advent is pretty much the opposite of what the “Christmas Season” has become. So, we are going to do the opposite of what you would expect. Instead of offering FEWER events in this busy time, we will offer one thing MORE to your plate: the space to pause, and a moment to remind ourselves that “Jesus is the reason WE celebration this season.”

We all could use a little renewal and reflection no matter what season we find ourselves in, but it seems that every year December reaches unheard of levels of busyness and stress. Between school plays, pageants, concerts, visiting family, dinner parties, exams, and the twelfth time in one day you’ve heard the song “All I want for Christmas is YOU,” who has the time or sanity to take even a moment to pause and think about what this whole season is for?

Isaiah today reveals to us the vision of what we have to look forward too, as we make room for the coming of a new kind of kingdom in our lives. Isaiah describes a world where mighty predators coexist with the most helpless and vulnerable among us. A world where the powerful and the powerless live together in peace.

We may even recast Isaiah’s vision in different ways. What do you imagine the coming kingdom of God to look like? I think it might look something like this, from the reflections of a colleague: “The CEO will dream with the peace activist … the senators will dance with the undocumented farm workers … the American military leaders will dine with Pakistani mothers… children from all nations will play together and learn together and grow in to their full God given potential … animals and the earth will be treated with respect and care … war will cease and they will not harm anywhere in this holy creation “ Now THAT would be a pretty amazing thing to see on a Christmas card, wouldn’t it?

This is the vision of how life can be that we are making room for - the vision of a new kingdom getting ready to be born in the world, a kingdom you are a part of. This is the kingdom we are turning TOWARD, turning to face as it arrives, like the dawn that comes after a long night, like a shoot growing up from a stump long thought dead.

And right now, when we in the church are celebrating Advent but the rest of the world is in full-blown Christmas mode, the voices tell us that our Christmases are supposed to look and feel like the most perfect Hallmark card. And we all know that deep down, that’s not true. But we can’t help feeling like inadequate failures compared to them.

Those voices do not deliver. Following these voices takes us down a road that ends in credit card debt, strained relationships, a planet in peril, conflicts and wars and poverty and national anxiety, leaving our lives as dead as a stump left behind after chopping down a Christmas tree.

Another voice, echoing Isaiah’s original idea, comes from John the Baptist - a voice from the wilderness cries out that the kingdom of heaven is coming near to us, and a new way of being is not only possible, but on it’s way to us RIGHT NOW. We are Children of the Promise, not “Children of Snakes,” and we belong to a kingdom where new shoots grow out of dead stumps. We belong to a kingdom where the old, “snaky” person in us dies, so that a new person, a new creation in Christ, can be born. It’s time to get ready for this kingdom to arrive.

But there is certainly a lot of junk left over from the old life, the “brood of vipers” life that is cluttering up the way and making our paths of following Jesus pretty crooked. This extra stuff needs to be given up and left behind …. Things like trying to keep up with the Joneses and having the picture-perfect Christmas.

Earlier this week I spoke at the annual Memorial Tree Lighting around the corner at the Leaver-Cable Funeral home. Every year, Lou Baynes, the owner, invites families that have lost someone in the last few years, to come and write their name on a dove to place on their Christmas tree, which is then lit up. This time of year is hard for many people for many reasons, and their space was filled with people grieving, one of things I shared with the group was that,

“When things look their darkest, when the way through is obscured in a dim fog, when the way that took you here has disappeared and the way forward is still hidden… at the time of the year when the night is the longest - THIS is when the hope is born… when we string lights on trees that remain green even in the coldest weather, and dream of a white Christmas because of sense of rebirth that fresh snow brings.”

I also read from a book that I find myself turning to more and more, “Ash and Starlight,” a book of prayers written by a Presbyterian pastor who lost her father in 2015. In a prayer called “The Parent’s advent prayer,” she writes:

“But, [Jesus] you came to me amidst darkness and stars— reminding me how darkness and light are most beautiful together. And, in that holy, mysterious and messy night, you redefined perfection, promising me that leaning into the mystery …  [is] the most faithful response…. This will be more than enough, because you’ve made a manger in which my heart will rest …” (128)

Thanks be to God. Amen.