The Vitality of What Will Be

Advent 1B; Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37; St. Paul’s, Smithfield 12/3/2017

Jim Melnyk: “The Vitality of What Will Be”

Growing up I was always taught several things about crossing the street.  First, go to the corner or a crosswalk if at all possible.  Second, never – ever – step out between parked cars.  And finally, before you cross the street wherever you cross the street – look both ways!  If we make a habit of not looking both ways, sooner or later we’re liable to get creamed.  I even look both ways in front of the Church’s Office when heading to my car, even though Church Street is one-way.  It’s amazing how many people fly down that street the wrong way!

Advent is a season that challenges us to look in two different directions – all the while standing in one place.  First, Advent challenges us to look to the past – recalling the stories and events in which God gathers and names Israel as God’s people, and the many stories of their faith – their failures as well as their successes.  Advent challenges us to look to the past – to the stories of our faith which eventually lead to the birth of the Christ Child in Bethlehem.  Advent calls us to remember the life and teachings of Jesus, and to remember his death, resurrection, and ascension. 

At the same time, Advent challenges us to look toward a future – a future when Christ will return in great glory to bring the kingdom of God to fulfillment – a kingdom where all God’s people are honored and welcomed – a kingdom where the whole of creation is treated with dignity and respect – a kingdom where justice, mercy, and peace abound as reminders of God’s great love for all. 

Yet all the while we are meant to keep our feet planted firmly in the here and now – to help make the wisdom and grace of the past real today – to help bring into this very moment the fullness of God’s kingdom here on earth, as it is in heaven. 

We simply cannot live in the past – it’s already gone.  But we can remember, and hold on to its sacred truths.  We cannot live with our eyes and hearts fixed firmly in some other-worldly future – it’s not yet here.  We cannot use the future – some great promise of justice in the great by-and-by – as an excuse to not live in righteousness today.  We can only live in the now – having learned from the past and in anticipation of a great hope for a future yet to come – a future which we are called to help shape.

It’s like crossing the street.  If we’re too busy looking behind us – or so focused on what might be coming up on the other side of the street – on what lies ahead – we forget to look both ways, and WHAM!  We may just find ourselves flattened in the middle of the road!

Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver is possibly one of the best known poets alive today.  In her poem, “Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness” she seems to capture the essence of Advent:

           

“…who would cry out

to the petals on the ground

to stay,

knowing as we must,

how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?”

How the vivacity – or the exuberance – of what was is married to the vitality – to the life giving reality – of what will be?  The looking back – the remembering that we are called to in Advent – is inexplicably married to the “what will be”.  And both the past and the future meet us in the present – meet us in the here and now – and challenge us to live our lives of faith with deep integrity and the fullness of God’s love.

Our lessons for the first Sunday in Advent remind us that the world around us – and in fact each of us in this world – wrestles with one degree of brokenness or another.  We cannot escape Isaiah’s understanding of a God who is both frustrated and angry at Israel – not only for Israel’s betrayal of their covenant with God, but also for the way in which the most powerful of the land have treated the least among them.  And we cannot escape Israel’s pain at living in exile from Jerusalem – feeling totally abandoned by God and left captive in a foreign land. 

The people long to be restored to their homes and with their God.  They seek healing and wholeness in their lives and in their relationship with the God who first gave them life and purpose. They want God to jump in and act – to do something – even if it means bringing further judgment upon themselves.  Anything – as long as in the end there is restoration – as long as in the end there is reconciliation.  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” (64:1). As the Psalmist writes, “Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved” (80:18).  O God, bring us back to that place where we were once at one with you!  Israel remembering her past, looking forward to a great hope, and seeking to live faithfully in the present despite being lost in exile.

And lest we find ourselves feeling somehow superior to the brokenness of Israel in this morning’s lesson, one of the very reasons we retain and tell these stories of ancient Israel is because we, who have chosen to follow Jesus over the many centuries of the Church, have committed the very same sins – have found ways of giving lip-service to God, and ways to ignore the least among us.

Mark’s gospel offers us that same sense of looking both ways.  The gospel opens thirteen short chapters earlier with Jesus proclaiming, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15).  In a very real way the waiting is over – God’s reconciling love is being revealed to the world in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.

Yet on this First Sunday of Advent our reading finds Jesus in Jerusalem during the final days of his life – looking ahead to the fulfillment of that great hope of God for God’s people.  We find him speaking about a culmination of the coming kingdom in a way which still remains hidden to all but God alone – which still requires waiting on our part. 

But we only have to look back one chapter in Mark’s gospel to see what is foundational to the life, faith, and teachings of Jesus – foundations looking back into the history of his people.  Jesus names the greatest commandment in the long-standing witness of Israel.  “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” The second commandment, Jesus tells us, is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these’” (12:29-31). 

In Jesus we begin to understand that the waiting is meant to be an active waiting – meant to be a waiting informed by the past stories of our faith, and empowered by our hope for a glorious future.  Advent is a promise of the bright sunshine breaking over the darkness of our hearts – dispelling the works of the night and bringing hope for all – especially for those who have lived too long without any sense of hope.

So now, on this First Sunday of Advent, we find ourselves with our feet planted firmly in the here and now – challenged to live our lives of faith with deep integrity and the fullness of God’s love.  We find ourselves called by God to help make the wisdom and grace of God real today – called by God to help bring into this very moment the fullness of God’s kingdom – a kingdom fully realized here on earth, as it is in heaven.