Scripture Text: Isaiah 64: 1-9 (Advent 1B)

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— ²as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! ³When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. ⁴From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. ⁵You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.

⁶We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. ⁷There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. ⁸Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. ⁹Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.

I’m backtracking a little and going back and picking up some of the Scriptures from yesterday’s lectionary.  And, yes, this passage assigned to us as the Old Testament reading for the first week of Advent seems a little dark and dreary.  I know.  You’re ready for some twinkling lights and perhaps a star and some signs of hope.  But we get a lament.  How does a lament fit in with this season?

The truth is that our culture, particularly in this country, doesn’t handle laments well.  I don’t know if we’re too shaped by our English Puritan roots or what.  But somewhere along the way, we became convinced that all of those things that go wrong, all those things that are uncomfortable, all of those things that involve grief and such, should be pushed down, or bottled up, or hidden away in the junk drawer of our lives.  So, when we lose those we love, when health issues don’t seem to cooperate with the life that we envisioned for ourselves, when things just do not go according to our plans, we tend to hide them away.  We are taught to be strong, even stoic at times.  And we are convinced that there is a proper way to grieve and an expected and timely way to move on.

So, consequently, reading laments is an odd, if not uncomfortable, practice for us.  Take this one, for instance.  The Israelites have returned home after years in exile.  But home was not the same.  It would never be the same.  The Temple (the place where they knew God was) had been destroyed.  And in their search for God, for a God that seemed elusive or even hidden, they began to look at their own lives and name their grief and pray a prayer of lament.  But how does that fit into Advent?

Well, see, we’re often told to move on.  Do we really move on?  Do we really put those things away or do they just continue to gnaw at the comfortable parts of our lives?  Is that really the best way to handle our grief and our losses and our failed expectations?  Maybe we should take a lesson from our brothers and sisters who are immigrants or refugees or part of the African, Middle Eastern, or African American traditions.  They openly wail their grief and pound their chests in atonement.  Their lament is tangible.  It can be felt.  It can be heard.  It can be shared. It can be named.  And in that naming, it is claimed.  And in its midst, God enters.

I have lived most of my life with little loss.  That changed over the last seven years or so.  In those years, I have lost people I love, a beloved dog, as well as my own well-being and security.  I have lost what I expected to be.  I remember when my wonderful friend Suzy died of ovarian cancer, I tried to be strong, to “move on” the way that everyone expects you to do (particularly as a pastor—for some reason people don’t want their pastor to grieve uncontrollably).  I did fine for several months and then at Annual Conference that year, where Suzy and I usually sat together and ate together and caught up with our lives, I heard her name read in worship and I collapsed into sobs.  I was pretty much given the impression from one of the other clergy that that probably wasn’t acceptable.  I didn’t care.  It was cleansing.  It was prayerful.  It was lament.

Re-read the lament.  Or write your own.  No, we don’t “move on”.  That’s a farce.  What we do is we walk the journey of lament.  We name our grief or our loss and we claim it.  And into our grief and our despair and our loss, God comes.  God comes not as a magic Band Aid that fixes our problems but as a Master Creator that re-orders them.  We do not move on.  We are never rid of them; instead, they are redeemed and recreated.

In this season of Advent, we are sometimes tempted to put our best face on, to work to make the season one of joy and memories.  But the season calls us to be fully ourselves, to be the ones into whose lives God enters.  Maybe a few laments wouldn’t be all that bad. Maybe some good old-fashioned wailing will make us realize what God offers us.  Maybe sharing with others will lead to transformation for all of us.  God doesn’t wait to enter until everything is perfect.  That was never the deal. God enters when transformation is at hand.  God enters when God is needed the most.  So, maybe go ahead and clean out that junk drawer!

Spirituality is the ability to live with ambiguity. (Ray Anderson)

I have sort of been on a Carrie Newcomer kick, so I guess you are too! She is Quaker. Her mentor is writer Parker Palmer, whose writings many of you may have read. She has a rich catalog of music that echoes peace, love of others, the beauty of this world, and a deep and abiding spirituality and belief in the God who is always and forever coming into our lives. I hope some of her music will bring you the joy and peace it brings me.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli