Sermon: Doing pottery in the dark (November 30, 2014)

Advent 1B

November 30, 2014

Isaiah 64:1-9

            This week has been for me a lot of keeping awake and waiting. As many of you know, Michael and I spent the week in Florida visiting Michael’s dad, who is sick and getting sicker with cancer. A few days before we were to head down there, he ended up in the hospital with a couple bad infections; as a result, all of our visitation with him happened in an isolation hospital room. The week was a routine of waking early to get to the hospital, waiting for word from the doctors, waiting for surgeries, waiting for recovery, and then heading home exhausted, only to prepare for the next day of more of the same.

            On top of what was going on in our personal lives, of course, we watched and read this week

 along with the rest of the country the outcome of the Michael Brown case, and the lack of indictment for the police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Brown. I did my best to read both sides of the case, to understand why he wasn’t indicted for killing an unarmed teenager who some witnesses say was surrendering. But the majority of what I saw wasn’t so much about the details of the case as it was people aching with the realization of just how far we have yet to go in overcoming racism in our country. Watch

and wait, or do something while you wait, but either way: it has been a long wait for the achievement of racial justice, and one which is not yet over.

            "Not yet over": it’s a theme that is so often present in our lives, and in the church calendar it is especially prominent on this first Sunday in Advent. Isaiah begins his lament, “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” Come down, already, God – where are you? Your people are suffering down here! We need you, right now! Our passage from Mark, which comes from what is known as the “little apocalypse,” describes a day when stars will fall and the sun will be darkened, a day when the Son of Man finally will come down, but also an event for which we do not know the day or hour. We simply have to wait and watch and keep awake. And our prayer of the day sums all this up, taking its lead line from today’s Psalm: Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.

            Stir up your power, O Lord, and come – who has not prayed a prayer like this? In hospital waiting rooms, watching riots breaking out again on the streets of Ferguson, wondering when all of the sadness and brokenness of life will finally come to an end… God, if you are as powerful a God as you claim to be, then stir up that power and come. We need you down here!

            The season of Advent, these four weeks leading up to Christmas, was historically a penitential time, like Lent – a time for dwelling on our sins and our need for forgiveness. But now it has become instead of a time of waiting and expectation, a time of anticipation for God coming to earth. It is a

time of not yet. Our culture tells us it is already Christmas (it has been telling us this since roughly the 4^th of July). Many of us spend the long Thanksgiving weekend preparing for Christmas, decorating, shopping, putting up trees, etc. Thanksgiving is the official kick-off to the Christmas season. But the liturgical calendar doesn’t give us that instant gratification we Americans are so accustomed to. The liturgical calendar makes us wait, for four more weeks, and during that time, we come to realize more deeply why we celebrate Christmas in the first place.

            And as I said, this week has made the primary reason abundantly clear: because our world is so full of pain and brokenness and sadness and “not yet,” and no number of Christmas carols or lighted trees is going to fill that void like our God coming down from heaven can do. And that is why we plead, with Isaiah: we want God to tear open the heavens and come down right now. We want our God to come and be with us, and know us, and truly see us.

            Isaiah’s cry in our first lesson today really captures that anguish, the anguish of feeling like God is nowhere to be found. After his initial plea that God would tear open the heavens and come down, Isaiah remembers when God was present. “When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,” he says, “you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.” He goes on to recount the marvelous ways that God has been seen, and we have seen God. “No eye has seen any God besides you,” he says, “who works for those who wait for him.” Such faith! Such confidence! But then the tone changes, reflecting instead on the reality that God does not seem to be present now, and even blaming God, saying that it is because God has kept hidden that we have sinned and strayed: “because you hid yourself, we transgressed.”

            Isaiah’s lamenting sounds so familiar to me. It reminds me of Martha’s words to Jesus after her brother Lazarus died: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.” Lord, if you had been here, there wouldn’t have been a painfully empty seat at Thanksgiving dinner. Because you hid yourself, there is more rioting in Ferguson. If you would just stir up your power and come, already, things would be so much better!

This cry, this pleading, is a part of the waiting that is Advent. The world is sometimes very dark, and it is hard to see in the dark. It is hard to see God and it is hard to believe that God sees us when we live in darkness here on earth. But even as Isaiah seems to fall into despair, he does not lose hope. The hope peeks through first with one little word: YET. “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father,” Isaiah writes. Yes, we live in darkness, we endure pain, we sometimes feel like you are absent. YET, we know that in the midst of all that, you are our Father, and we still belong to you, and you still love us and care for us.

And then he goes on, “we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” This is a rich, deep, and well-loved metaphor, but what struck me about it today, in this world

context and as we begin Advent, is that it is a tactile image. For God to hold us and shape us and mold us doesn’t require light. This can be done in the dark, and indeed, what is more intimate knowledge than the knowledge that comes from touch? It is in that touch, that intimate molding relationship God has with us, that we become aware of God’s presence, and so begin to know and be known, to see and be seen by God.

And so, in the hope of that tactile intimacy, we also have the courage to light candles. During this Advent season, we light candles, first one on a wreath, then another, increasing the light and shedding the darkness that pressing in on us, as we draw closer to that night when the light of the world comes down to us, lighting our way, filling our hearts, and showing us that indeed, God was here all along, holding us and shaping us as a potter does his clay.

We know the end of the story. But this time of Advent waiting helps us remember why we tell that story, the story of a God who heard our prayer, who saw our need, and so who tore open the heavens and came down to be God-with-us in our suffering.

Let us pray… Stir up your power, O Lord, and come. Come down to this aching world. Come into our darkness and be our light. Grant us strength while we wait for you, courage while we seek you, and a knowledge all along that you are holding us as a potter holds his clay, and knowing us intimately. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.