“We Acknowledge Our Weariness”
Luke 1:5-23
You don’t need me to tell you what a heartbreaking, despairing state our world is in as we begin the season of preparing for God’s love to break into our lives and the life of the world yet again.
You don’t need me to tell you that it can be challenging, if not impossible, to fully prepare for something we’re not sure we can believe will actually happen.
You don’t need me to tell you that in times like these celebrating the holidays can feel like an almost obscene indulgence, a turning away from the very real pain and suffering of life on this Earth to sing songs and exchange gifts.
I’ll never forget Thanksgiving 1988, when I was in the village of Beit Sahour in the Occupied West Bank, the village near Bethlehem where, according to tradition, shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night were once serenaded (and freaked out) by the sudden appearance of an angel of the Lord and a multitude of the heavenly host, praying God and saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace!”
Back then, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were engaged in what has since become known as the First Intifada, a nonviolent campaign for recognition and rights and land. From that place, in the home of a long-suffering but generous Palestinian family, I saw scenes of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade through their eyes, and I felt embarrassed and ashamed.
How could we Americans, I wondered, spend obscene amounts of money to create gigantic floats of cartoon characters when so many people—not only around the world, but also in our own country—were hungry and homeless and struggling for the most basic human rights?
Well, I’m older now. I would like to think I’m also wiser, but maybe I’m just more weary. Because even though conditions in Gaza and the West Bank are worse than ever, this year I am not looking critically upon seasonal celebrations—especially those designed to open our hearts to love, compassion, and solidarity with the poor.
To the contrary. When I read a pastoral letter issued last month by the patriarchs and heads of churches on “the celebration of Advent and Christmas in the Midst of [Israel’s] War” against Hamas, it gave me pause. Oh, I’m 100 percent behind their call to church leaders there “to focus more on the spiritual meaning of Christmas” and to focus on praying for those affected by the war and for “a just and lasting peace.”
But I couldn’t agree with their primary message, which was that the best way to “stand strong” with those suffering from the war is to forego “any unnecessarily festive activities.”
I’ve come to believe that the more urgent question is not “how can we tone done our celebrations in light of what’s happening in the world?” but rather, “Given everything that’s happening in the world, how how can we tap into the healing power of joy?”
How does a weary world rejoice? How do weary people rejoice? How do we find joy in the midst of grief and uncertainty?
The writer Ross Gay frames it this way: “What happens,” he says, “if joy is not separate from pain? . . . What if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things?”
This Advent, amid so much violence and suffering in the world, so much loss and sorrow and struggle in our own lives, how can we make room in our hearts and minds for joy? For something more wonderful and transformative than we can even imagine?
And that’s the thing about Advent: All the preparing, all the waiting, all the hoping and making room is, in and of itself, an act of faith. Because, no, we can’t know for certain that God’s love will break into our hearts or into a particular situation at any time, much less a time certain.
All we can do is hope and trust. All we can do is prepare the way. And the holy work of keeping our hearts and minds open, the holy intention of living with open hearts and minds so that we might receive the love, grace, healing God wants for us is not only a practice for the season of Advent. It is the spiritual work of a lifetime.
It is holy work, and it is hard work.
Because life itself can be hard. Because life comes with disappointment, loss, and heartbreak. Because life is not fair, and the evidence for that is overwhelming.
And so we get weary.
And when we get weary, we are tempted to give up. Sometimes we give up without even realizing that’s what we’ve done and, consciously or not, we resign ourselves to the way things are. We settle. We lose the capacity to believe that things could be different or better than they are.
The seemingly unfettered evil that ravages the world, the human propensity to violence and greed, the constant lying and fighting and name-calling, and—on top of it all—the daily indignities of our own lives and the tragedy of cruel illnesses and untimely deaths—it all adds up.
If we’re not careful, if we’re not living with intention, if we’re not relying on God’s grace and always looking for love, over time all the pain and injustice can wear us down. Then, one day we wake up and may not even realize that we’ve let disappointment, suffering, evil, and loss harden our hearts to the point that we can’t even receive good news any more.
I wonder if that is what had happened to Zechariah.
Our scriptures tell us he was a priest and a righteous man, and that both he and his wife, Elizabeth, had lived blamelessly all their lives. They were good, faithful, good-hearted people.
And yet Zechariah and Elizabeth’s greatest desire—nothing extravagant, mind you, just the gift of children and grandchildren, just a home filled with the energy and laughter of children, just to live again through the hopes and dreams of their offspring—had gone unfulfilled. They had done all the things they were supposed to, they had not done any of the things they weren’t supposed to, they had prayed without ceasing, they had made sacrifices, and . . . nothing.
Maybe you’ve been there, too. If so, you know all the feelings.
How could they not be weary? How could their empty hearts not ache? How could they not be angry—or at least disappointed—with God? How could their faith not falter?
And yet Zechariah wouldn’t let himself go there.
But here’s the thing: To not go there—to not acknowledge our grief and weariness, our anger and pain—is to let it fester. To not express our anger is to allow our hearts to harden.
And so it was that when an angel of the Lord appeared to Zechariah with great news—amazing news, from an angel of the Lord!—Zechariah was not able to receive it.
The angel had just told Zechariah that God had heard his prayers and that he and Elizabeth were going to have a son—not just any son, but a prophet!
And Zechariah’s response was essentially, “Oh yeah? I don’t think so. You must be mistaken. Not falling for that.”
Zechariah reminds us that the world can wear us down and wear us out. When injustice overwhelms or we get hurt again and again, it’s natural to let our hearts go hard, to give up on hope.
And yet all through history—and even, as we’ll see later, in Zechariah’s life—goodness and growth, peace and justice have been enabled by God’s love and grace working through people who refused to give up, people who were willing to risk being disappointed again, to have their hearts broken again—all for the hope of something better, all for the possibility of something seemingly impossible.
And so it was that, to show Zechariah and all people for all time the dangers of having a hardened, closed, unimaginative, untrusting heart, the angel rendered him mute—from that very moment until the moment he would see with his own eyes the impossible things Love can do.
Zechariah got a wake-up call to the spiritual dangers of denial, the very real risks of hopelessness, the serious side-effects of pushing through pain instead of feeling it, the harsh reality that a heart closed to grief is also closed to joy.
Thank God our wake-up call is much gentler and much more enjoyable; it’s called Advent. Our wake-up call to joy and blessing is a season of intentional watching and waiting, opening and trusting.
So, as we walk through this blessed season of Advent that comes in a seemingly cursed time, let us heed the lessons of Zechariah. Let us acknowledge our weariness in prayer and in connection with one another. Let us express our fears and disappointments, our griefs and our pain. Let us begin the season resolved to live with our hearts wide open.
We never know when or where an angel might show up with good news of great joy. May we be ready when she comes.
