“The Promise of Deliverance”
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Luke 21:25-36
I have a theory about traditions, those things that come around again and again, those things we do more or less the same way with mostly the same people at roughly the same time of year.
My theory is that one of the reasons traditions are so meaningful and treasured is that in a world where everything changes, traditions provide a sense of continuity and stability. And in our ever-changing lives—amid the joy and sorrow of children growing up, relationships beginning and ending, physical and mental vitality coming and going, our sense of God and practice of faith evolving in any number of ways—traditions can remind us of all that is good, even if it has changed. Traditions encourage us to reflect on how blessed and privileged our lives are or have been, even if we consider those changes with a bittersweet wistfulness.
Now, I’m quite aware that traditions can also become empty, nothing more than a going through of motions that no longer carry meaning. I realize some traditions can keep us stuck in the past instead of growing into the newness God is forever promising and preparing. I’ll grant you all that.
But at their best, traditions make us more aware of the seasons and cycles of life. At their best, our most treasured traditions open our hearts to the all-too-fleeting awareness that life is more than the here and now, more than what we have, more than what we can see, more than the way things are. At their best, traditions help us get in touch with what is most meaningful and important to us.
That’s why we choke up when we gaze at our loved ones gathered around a holiday table. It’s why hearing a certain carol or unwrapping a treasured Christmas tree ornament can bring tears to our eyes. It’s why, almost three hundred years after it was written, Handel’s “Messiah” still brings together total strangers—some of them utterly incapable of carrying a tune—to sing their hearts out. It’s why people of every faith and no faith resonate with the song, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
Insert your favorite heart-opening, hopelessly sappy holiday tradition here.
[pause]
At their best, traditions reveal our truest selves and our deepest longings. And that, in essence, is what Advent is about. At its best, Advent is an invitation to get in touch with our deep, true, essentially human longing for the transcendent, to notice the God-shaped hole in our hearts, and to give it some focused attention and unconditional love—some baby Jesus, if you will.
All that said, Advent is not a tradition I grew up with. That means, among other things, that it’s easy for me to decry the ways in which even Advent has been commercialized. I didn’t grow up with Advent calendars, so I can be quick to note that there is no spiritual connection between chocolate and the Word Made Flesh—until I see a couple in their 70s, one of them slowly and sweetly slipping away from this life, who may be about to celebrate his last Christmas or may not quite make it. And then I, too, rejoice in the chocolate-filled calendar they’ll begin enjoying today.
Because what did the Word Become Flesh reveal to us if not—as we’ll sing on another Sunday in Advent—that the flesh is good and holy and meant to be enjoyed and celebrated?
And God knows we can get so caught up in the traditions and pressures, expectations and full schedules of Advent and Christmas that we not only lose sight of their meaning but also lose connection to our yearning. Think of that yearning as you will, but I believe it is most deeply a longing for our Maker, a longing for Love with a capital L, a longing for hope and peace and joy, a longing for better days, and a longing to be truly, fully home—not just for Christmas, but always, not just in body, but especially in heart and spirit with a live-giving depth of connection, understanding, and affirmation.
Hope. Peace. Joy. Love. God With Us. Home.
I’m going to pause for a moment here to allow you to notice how you’re feeling right now, to name any yearnings or fluttery feelings that are stirring within you, to notice any tears that might be welling up.
[silence]
If you are feeling something, I invite you to consider where those feelings are coming from and how you might honor them this Advent. I invite you to share them with someone—maybe at Coffee Hour or over a cup of tea, on a long walk with a good friend, or in prayer with the One who is forever and always coming to be with us, to deliver us, to heal us, and to turn our upside-down world right-side up.
And if you’re not feeling anything, I invite you to consider what your heart most needs during this season of your life.
And . . . to get back to our scheduled programming, I’ll say it again: Advent is about longing.
Think about it: Why else do we pass on the amazing story of a God who loves us so much that the Creator of All becomes a tiny baby—and not just any baby, but a baby born to an unwed teenage girl living under brutal occupation, a baby whose parents will become refugees to protect his life? Why else do we delight in the story of wise ones who left everything behind to follow a star to who knows where? Why else do we become verklempt while singing carols whose theology we no longer agree with? Why else do we light the candles and prepare the way and make ready our hearts and—if we are really paying attention to the story—sign up to partner with God in a holy revolution where the mighty are cast down from their thrones and the lowly are lifted up?
Why do we keep coming back to these stories, these truths, these yearnings year after year after year?
I encourage you to think about that, to even pray about why you keep coming back to traditions that may or may not touch something deep within you.
Meantime, I’ll offer you another theory: That in addition to being about our quintessential human longing for justice and joy, love and community, redemption and connection, and our home in the Holy, Advent is about remembering God’s promises to fulfill those longings. It is about remembering God’s promises to create a new heaven and a new earth for all people and all creation. It is about waiting and watching and preparing the way for God’s realm—and then waiting some more, hoping some more, and loving some more that we might know when the time is near.
The message of Advent—that the God who is Love is forever and always breaking into our lives and into the world with mercy and grace and love that looks like justice, that the God who created everything and called it good is coming to restore that goodness—that message, that truth, never changes. The promises of God—promises of deliverance, redemption, healing, and beloved community—never change. The truth of the story and the truth of our need for it never change.
What changes over time is our openness to the promise. What changes is our willingness to partner with God’s love. What changes are our circumstances and our willingness to follow the way of life.
If we step back and take a big-picture look at the stories of our faith, we will detect a pattern: an endless cycle of blessing-sin-grace-deliverance-return-blessing-sin-grace-deliverance-return and on and on and on. It’s God’s blessing, our sin, God’s grace, God’s deliverance, our return, God’s blessing, our sin, God’s grace, God’s deliverance, our return, and God’s blessing again and again and again.
Some day, Advent promises us, God’s coming will transform us so utterly that we will stay close to God and the cycle will be broken. Some day, Advent promises, when the night is so dark, the future so bleak, and our hearts so filled with fear, we will have reached the end of our own rope and will begin to understand that the realm of God will draw near only if we let it.
Advent promises that our deliverance—which is to say, God’s coming, our liberation, God’s blessing, our healing, God’s justice, our redemption—is always at hand.
Beloveds, I don’t have to tell you that we are living in a time of deep, dark shadow. Most of us are afraid of what is coming. The very earth is in turmoil because of our abuse.
That is one way to look at it.
Another way, Jesus says, is that these circumstances should wake us up to our need for God’s love and justice. These circumstances should open our hearts and drive us to our knees in prayer for God’s deliverance. In a paradoxical way, desperate times should give us hope because God does her best work in the dark depths of our despair. It’s when we are tempted to resign ourselves to the horrible way things are that God is busy making a way out of no way. When everything seems to be falling apart, our redemption is drawing near.
This Advent, may we see and respond to the signs. May God’s grace work through our sometimes silly traditions in such a way that our hearts and eyes are opened. May we live into the promises of Advent, which are, of course, the same promises available to us 24/7, all-year ‘round.
“I will fulfill the promises I have made,” God says. “You will be saved.”
Now and always, and especially during this season of promise, may it be so.
