(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Psalm 80: 1-7, 17-19 (Advent 4A)

¹Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth

²before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your might, and come to save us!

³Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

⁴O Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?

⁵You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure.

⁶You make us the scorn of our neighbors; our enemies laugh among themselves.

⁷Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

¹⁷But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself.

¹⁸Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your name.

¹⁹Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

This season of Advent is about learning to hope.  It is about waiting, waiting on the restoration for which we pray and journey and that we believe God has promised us.  So, what does restoration mean to you?  In the days from which this Psalm came, the people had wandered in the wilderness, a wilderness that was not just hard to navigate but was downright inhospitable.  Danger lurked everywhere so the people prayed to God to restore them.  Restoration meant safety.  Restoration meant finally having a home.  They had been delivered but restoration is something more.

Thomas Merton once said that “the Advent mystery is the beginning of the end in all of us that is not yet Christ.” And so, we pray for that to happen.  We pray for God to restore us.  Again, what does that mean?  In our world, “restoration” means to put something back, to return it to its former condition.  Is that what it means?  I mean, why would God do all this and call us into the fray to go back to something that “was”.  One of the Perkins seminary professors once called that the “Kindergarten of Eden”.  Think about it.  We’re not trying to get back to some prehistoric utopian garden.  That notion was talking about the beginning, the time when we humans began.  It was a way of placing us into a history that was and still is and will always be.

But time is not linear.  Advent teaches us that.  We are waiting for the coming of a God who has come, who is here.  We wait for a vision of the world to come to be that is here now.  We just have to see it; we just have to become it.  We just have to let go of our expectations that it will be what we already know.  Richard Rohr says that “people don’t see things as they are; we see things as WE are.”  That’s our problem.  We are hoping for a restoration of what we imagine rather than the final restoration of a vision of God that is beyond anything we can fathom.  The restoration for which we hope and pray is not a return to what was; it is a coming to the vision of what will be.  The restoration for which we pray is not a return; it is a becoming.  It is all things becoming, as Merton said, the Christ.  It is hope and love and mercy and grace finally embracing a world that is wrought with despair and lostness and hopelessness. 

We live in between times.  The coming of God is already and not yet.  The reign of Christ is already and not yet.  We are being restored little by little, as if it is seeping into our bones and marrow even as we feel despair.  Remember, Paul’s description of Creation groaning with labor pains?  (Romans 8:22) Yes, we are waiting on the world to change.  It is a world that is already and not yet.

Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. (Suzanna Arundhati Roy)

Lyrics

The answer’s been here all along
We just need to hold each other ’til the hurt is gone
Oh, to belong, still a dream

Look what we’ve imagined with pain
Make believing we aren’t the same
But you and I know the truth
Imagine what we could do
If we imagined with love

Wild where the energy flows
The window’s wide open
All we see is the door that’s closed
Sad how it goes
So it goes, ’til it goes

Look what we’ve imagined with pain
Make believing we aren’t the same
But you and I know the truth
Imagine what we could do
If we imagined with love

Time for all of us to wake up out of this hypnotic state
Instead of dreaming fast asleep, we should be dreaming wide awake

Look what we’ve imagined with pain
Make believing we aren’t the same
But you and I know the truth
Imagine what, we could do, if we choose
Yeah, what do we have to lose
If we imagined with love?

Grace and Peace,

Shelli