Welcome to the season of Advent! In today’s worship service, we’re looking at how this season of waiting is different than the waiting that it feels like we’ve been doing all year. We begin this season with lament, yet our lament is grounded in hope: Christ is coming. This worship service is for November 29, 2020, and includes music, Scripture, candle-lighting, a sermon, and a visual liturgy piece.
For this online-only sermon for the first week of Advent in RCL year B, I found helpful this commentary from Courtney Buggs at Working Preacher and this one from Debie Thomas at Journey with Jesus.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Advent is hard. Because waiting is hard.
I’ve been wondering a lot this week how Advent is special in a year when it feels like all we’ve done is wait.
Do you remember when the pandemic was supposed to be over by Easter?
I don’t know if I believed that, but I remember that once we realized our Holy Week and Easter services would have to be online, I thought it’d be ok, because whatever Sunday we finally got back together in the building, we’d just celebrate Easter then. That first week back would be the big festival, with all the people and the triumphant hymns and the Easter lilies. In the meantime, we’d pause and stay in the season of Lent, the season of somber repentance, the season of reflecting on our mortality.
I remember a conversation Christin and I had in the spring, as we were walking the dog and looking at the teddy bears and stuffed animals people had put in their windows to show, I don’t know, solidarity with children or something (it made sense at the time – we kept ours in the parsonage window for about a month).
As we were walking, we talked about how on some level it was good that the pandemic was happening in the spring, because just think how hard it would be if it had happened in the fall around the holidays, if people weren’t supposed to go trick or treating or worse, stay home during Thanksgiving or even Christmas.
But it was only supposed to take two weeks to stop the spread, two weeks of everyone cooperating and then we could get back to normal. This is the longest Lent ever.
Again I wonder, how is Advent waiting anything new? How is this season of waiting any different than the waiting we’ve been doing for the last 9 months? It’s frustrating. It’s tiring. Waiting is hard. Advent is hard. Staying awake and watching and waiting is exhausting.
The interesting thing about today’s Scripture readings is that they don’t feel much like a countdown to Christmas. We’ll get there in the next three weeks, with readings about John the Baptist and Mary the mother of Jesus, and other familiar characters from the Christmas story, but this week, instead of Christmas pageant material, we get apocalypse and lament. We get frustration and questioning, and I think if we let them, these readings can meet us right where we are in 2020.
Isaiah cries out to God, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” Shake the world so the mountains would quake. God, let the whole world know you are here!
Three times in today’s verses, over and over and over, the Psalmist pleads with God, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.”
This season of waiting and preparing begins with lamenting. Advent opens with frustration, even desperation. There’s an honesty, a rawness in this Scripture, and in this season. So, let me be honest with you today. Here’s some of my lament to begin Advent.
I am tired of waiting.
I miss people.
I don’t like not being able to plan ahead.
I dread hearing that yet another person I know is sick.
I hate the way wearing a mask makes my glasses fog up.
I get so frustrated when people refuse to do the right thing and love their neighbors by wearing a mask.
I’m tired of being judgmental about other people not wearing a mask, or gathering in groups.
I’m angry at people who are too selfish to love their neighbors.
I’m angry at myself for doing the same thing, and also for being angry at other people who are doing the best they can…I hope.
I miss having people together to worship. I miss in-person games at confirmation. I miss getting to worry on Sunday mornings or Saturday nights what I’d do if the communion assistant or reader didn’t show up for the church service.
I miss visiting people.
I hate that I could just just keep going and all this feels like whining and like a manipulative way to get you to feel sorry for me when the people who have had covid in my family have recovered, and I’m working so many fewer hours than my friends who are nurses, and I’m a married, straight, white, able-bodied male with healthcare and a retirement account and as much privilege as almost anyone I know.
I’m tired of waiting for this to be over. I’m tired of waiting for things to get back to normal. And I’m worried that normal will be different and normal should be different because the world is broken and the world has always been broken. I’m tired of waiting.
So remind me, how is Advent any different than the waiting we’ve been doing?
I’m tired. You’re tired. Our nation is tired. Our world is tired. Tired of the pandemic. Tired of waiting. Tired of sin. Tired of trying to make it on our own apart from God. Tired of war and violence and famine and disaster and mourning and grief.
The gift of this Advent season is permission to be tired of waiting. Permission to recognize and admit that the world is not as it should be, permission to ask God to come down, permission to beg, even to demand that God tear open the heavens and enter into this broken world. You have permission to lament, and to long for things to change, even if the change is just to go back to normal.
Our world doesn’t like the season of Advent. Christmas is obviously a commercialized holiday, and Thanksgiving is getting to be, and the idea of pausing to notice brokenness, pausing to wait, pausing to anticipate and prepare before rushing to the celebration of Christmas is a hard sell. And I’m not saying you’re a lousy Lutheran if you already have your Christmas tree up and you’re listening to Christmas carols. Advent waiting isn’t about music or decorations.
What I want you to understand today is that faith does not require you to skip straight to the joy at the expense of the lament. The Bible is filled with examples of people lamenting, grieving, yelling at God. It’s ok to be tired. It’s ok to hate waiting. Resist what Debie Thomas calls “Polite piety and cheap cheer” and instead, be honest. Our world is not ok, and we long for God to break in and fix it, and it hurts when we don’t see God coming and acting.
And yet, Beloved of God, hear also the promise of today’s Scripture: Advent waiting is not in vain. The waiting will not last forever. Sometimes, perhaps, there can even be beauty in the waiting. God hears your laments. God answered Isaiah’s plea to tear open the heavens by entering into the world in the person of Jesus Christ. That’s exactly the celebration we’re preparing for.
Advent waiting is different because we know how it will end. Advent waiting is waiting in the twilight of the morning, waiting for the dawn before the light breaks through, for we know the light is coming. We know the good news, even if sometimes it’s hard to believe. And so we wait. And we lament. And we prepare. And we hope.
Listen to Paul’s words of encouragement: God will also strengthen you to the end. God is with you in the waiting. God is faithful, calling you into the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Hold on. Keep awake. Happy Advent. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.