The Best Advent Ever?

12-11-22

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.

How is your Advent going? Are you going to finish strong, or did everything go off the rails starting the afternoon of the first Sunday in Advent? Are you behind on your Aldi Chocolate Advent Calendar? These texts for this 3rd week in Advent aren’t exactly helping foster any Christmas spirit- There is still no sign of Mary, Joseph, angels, shepherds, manger, or anything resembling the Christmas story. Instead, here’s John the Baptist, again!

This week, though, he is no longer “the preacher on fire” in the desert. Instead, John has been thrown in prison for his bold words. Last week John described righteous judging and fiery smiting… which by this point in Matthew’s gospel Jesus is NOT doing. So it’s no wonder that John sends people to ask Jesus, “are YOU the one who is to come? … or is it someone else?”  I wonder if John was just a little bit disappointed in the kind of savior Jesus is turning out to be. 

Disappointment is just par for the course around Christmas time, though, right? Though we DO get disappointed all the time, this is the time of year we may feel it most. This so-called “most wonderful time of the year” is instead full of family being difficult, friends letting us down, opportunities not panning out, the weather being iffy at best…not to mention the wreck that the world seems to be in at the moment, with the Triple Pandemic, violence on the rise, inflation is still a thing… Maybe we should just forget any hope of Christmas 2022 being anywhere close to “normal.”

And last, but not least, we can’t let God off the hook for being a disappointment. Think about all the “if-onlys” and “what-ifs,” even of just the past year – where you had wished that God would have acted more like a savior, both in your own lives and in the world in general. 

And so, we wonder along with John - is THIS the savior we’ve been waiting for?

The savior we WERE given came as a helpless baby, born to a teenage mother far away from home. He grew up to become a homeless healer and preacher and got on the wrong side of the people in power. Jesus disappointed John the Baptist, Jesus disappointed his family, he disappointed his own followers, and he died, disappointing the hopes of a nation waiting for God to act.

And in dying, Jesus was again a disappointment… This time, disappointing death itself. Because dead people are supposed to stay dead, after all. And - spoiler alert - Jesus did NOT stay dead. 

Today, though, Jesus asked the crowds what they had expected to see when they went out to the desert to see John the Baptist. What they got was the opposite of a man in soft robes – they got a man who lived his convictions with every ounce of his being – even down to his diet and wardrobe. 

Today we could also ask ourselves: What do WE expect this Advent season? Are we expecting a Christmas to arrive that is as lovely as sort of pre-2020 ideal, as pristine as most of our nativity sets? As lovely as they are, most of them depict the holy family well-rested, composed, and ironically enough, draped in soft robes.

But that is dead wrong. God is not just found in the perfect glittery Christmas cards and the Hallmark family channel movies. God is not just found among palaces with soft robes. Instead, here is our God, who sticks by us, no matter what, every year, through all the good and bad Christmases alike.  Here is our God, born to us as a tiny helpless infant, who probably had plenty of blow outs and days where he refused to nap. Here is our God, who died and rose again for you, even when you disappoint yourself and others. 

As we continue our march toward Christmas, we can remember some wise words shared by Pastor Sarah Scherschligt, Pastor of Peace Lutheran in Alexandria, who wrote a facebook post nearly every day for a year and a half during the height of Covid. She actually compiled her work into a book called “God Holds You.” Now available on Amazon! Makes a great Christmas gift! On December 23rd, 2020, Pastor Sarah wrote this: 

I always imagine on Christmas Eve, after everyone has gone to sleep, there's a …  moment…  in which God does something small and powerful and unstoppable. And it doesn't depend on us at all.

We can’t know exactly where the next year will take us. But we can know where God is in all the happenings in our lives. God is right here, in the beginnings and the endings, in the disappointments, and the busy-ness, in the starting strong and in the fizzling out, in the dying and in the rising. Our God is right here: in the arrival of our savior Jesus, in the manger, on the cross, at the table. In the bread and wine. And in the face of one another. Things that are small, but powerful, and unstoppable. Thanks be to God. Amen.