Things are Not Okay: Advent 1

I fear that in my excitement to begin waiting and watching, I have forgotten what this first bit of Advent is really about. Beginning on Sunday we have been lighting the “hope” candle, which tends to be associated for me with happy ideas like joy, love, and peace. We cannot really have hope, however, until we first acknowledge that things are not okay. Think about it: “hope” is not necessary for people when things are going well. Hope is the treasure of the broken, the hurting, and the lonely.

In our readings for Morning Prayer from the lectionary this week, we have been hearing, not a story of excitement over the coming Christ, but a story of brokenness and failure. In the readings from the prophets (Isaiah 1-2 and Amos 3-4), Israel is condemned for oppression and hypocrisy and the poor cry out for justice. In the Psalms, the people are surrounded by enemies and injustice on all sides, crying out to God for mercy. In the Gospels, we find John the Baptist crying out against the hypocrisy of religion many hundreds of years later, because things have not changed.

Part of why the oppression found in Israel is such a travesty is that these are the people whom God called apart to be a safe place for the hurting of the world: the strangers, the orphans, the widows, and the outcasts. Yet our readings for this first week of Advent cry out, “Things are not okay in the world!” It is a cry, not only of the Christian Church, but of the whole world. We long for something new, for justice and mercy and hope that things will not always be this way.

The Church too has been called to be a people set apart, a blessing to the strangers and outcasts in our lands; but we, like Israel, have become unjust and hypocritical instead. So in the first week of Advent, we are called to repent- to acknowledge that something is deeply wrong with the world and, not only can we not fix it, but we are a big part of it.

Yet the prophets do not leave their people in condemnation and the rhythm of Advent doesn’t leave us there either, as we come to the end of this first week. Even as we are reminded of the ways in which we’ve failed the world, failed God, and failed ourselves, we are given a promise: God is going to do something new among you. God has seen that you cannot be the blessing to the world on your own, so God will break into our time and space to dwell among us and be the justice we long for. The bad news is we can’t do it. The good news is that God can: and soon will.

Now, as I sit with my first Advent candle at the end of a long day, I think about the brokenness of the world and repent of my role in it, both personally any communally. Then I beg God to come and transform the mess we’ve made. I sit in stillness for a moment, and I blow out the candle with a sense of hope, knowing that by acknowledging my own inadequacy I have made space for God to come and dwell among us. Because God never barges in unwanted and uninvited. That, my friends, is the hope we profess this season: not a greeting card sentiment, but a deep, almost painful assurance that God has not forgotten us.

Hurry Up and Wait

Tis the season of hurry up and wait. If there is any time in the Christian year when it is appropriate to learn the discipline of sitting with ourselves in the stillness, Advent is it. Yet every year, Advent springs upon us just as we’re gearing up for finals- and patient waiting couldn’t be further from our minds.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve seen a steady but predictable decrease in students attending midday prayer in the chapel and an equal increase in people coming on their own to de-stress through meditation or jamming on the piano. Students studying English as an Additional Language are learning the word “stress” for the first time and even the cafeteria is unusually empty over lunch.

It is strangely counter-intuitive, then, to begin December with a practice of quietness which helps us step back from the rush of exams and holiday preparations to simply wait. This doesn’t have to take a great deal of time, but I encourage you to set the coming season apart as different, as new, the hope-filled waiting that our ancestors declared it to be.

When I was a student, I found my Advent practice to be particularly refreshing amidst the busyness because it reminded me that there was more to life than my impending exams; that this too would pass and the world we long for will one day be a reality. Each night before going to sleep I would light the appropriate candles in my Advent wreath and say a simple prayer before sitting in silence before God, watching and waiting for something much more than the end of term.

My second practice during school was a wonderful little Advent meditation put out by my Lutheran chaplain friend, Sherry Coman, and her colleagues. Last year it included a short reflection, some kind of service response to the reflection happening in the world, a musical meditation, and a prayer. What it’s going to look like this year is still a surprise! I’ll post the URL here when it becomes available on December 1^st, but in the meantime check out their facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/574263379294230/.

What about you? What kinds of contemplative practices are you going to engage this Advent as you practice waiting and watching?