Loading...One of our prayers of confession of sin that comes from Enriching our Worship reads:
God of all mercy, we confess that we have sinned against you,
opposing your will in our lives.
We have denied your goodness in each other,
in ourselves, and in the world you have created.
We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done,
and the evil done on our behalf.
Forgive, restore, and strengthen us through our Savior Jesus Christ,
that we may abide in your loveand serve only your will. Amen.
A prayer of confession of sin is not always an easy prayer to offer.
It makes us face the truth in ourselves
even when we would rather distract ourselves with “news” about a celebrity or what to cook for Christmas dinner.
Confession requires us to stop and pause to reflect,
and then name ways we have “opposed God’s will in our lives”
or the ways we’ve “denied God’s goodness in each other, ourselves, and in the world God has created.”
Yet, even if it makes us uncomfortable,
confession reminds us of something more than just ourselves.
Confession reminds us that we are not All That.
We are neither the most important thing in the world,
nor the least important.
Confession honestly states that things are not right
and that we need God and God’s work in the world
to BE at work in and through us, and in and through the world.
When we confess,
we state – with nervousness shaking our voices, maybe –
that we “repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.”
That last phrase always stops me short: the evil done on my behalf. Wowzers. I can’t explain my way out of that one.
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Advent is a season of reflection and preparation (along with a number of other postures we are called to take in Advent).
- How have you not lived as God has created you to be
- In what ways have you denied the goodness in another or yourself?
- What is the evil done on your behalf: something that deeply pains another or the world so that you may have a way of life that you like? (I often think of my technological devices, with their rare metals within, mined in ways which damage the earth)
Yesterday, I was reading an essay written by a friend of my who was pondering the season of Advent. She quoted an opinion article written by the Reverend Tish Harrison Warren published this past week in the New York Times. Pastor Harrison Warren reminds us that:
“To practice Advent is to lean into an almost cosmic ache: our deep, wordless desire for things to be made right and the incompleteness we find in the meantime. We dwell in a world still racked with conflict, violence, suffering, darkness. Advent holds space for our grief, and it reminds us that all of us, in one way or another, are not only wounded by the evil in the world but are also wielders of it, contributing our own moments of unkindness or impatience or selfishness.”
This wise priest reminds us that we cannot just skip over or ignore the hard parts of life when they cause us pain or grief. For one thing, we do that at the peril of our emotional and spiritual health!
For another, Advent invites us to look beyond our mistakes,
and turn – re-turn – to God.
Pastor Harrison Warren continues: “[Advent] reminds us that joy is trivialized if we do not first intentionally acknowledge the pain and wreckage of the world.”
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The Advent season prepares us, makes us wait, fills us with expectation, has us watching for, and living in the hope of the fullness of God’s promise and of the new creation that God is giving us.
Listen to the prophet Isaiah as he describes this new, or re-ordered, creation:
The wolf shall lie down with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. (Isaiah 11:6-8)
Predators and prey together; the most vulnerable in society (children) are safe even among the venomous snakes. Harmony rules.
Paul, in his letter to the Roman Christians, calls us and asks us to live in harmony.
He reminds us that our sense of creation and “how things are”
has been re-ordered in Christ:
“May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus.” (15:5)
He goes on to tell us to welcome one another,
and he means not just the people in the room with us,
or the people you know, but everyone:
the refugee, people of another socio-economic class than your own, people with a different language or accent, people with different musical tastes, or, bless your hearts, who are in a different political place than you are.
Welcome one another, not to be nice or because your mother taught you to be polite, but because we are part of God’s re-ordered creation!
I don’t know about y’all, but that’s hard.
It’s hard to open myself up and welcome others who might be so different.
It means I have to make myself vulnerable, and to expose my soft underbelly. It means I have to, using the imagery from Isaiah words, put myself in the role of “prey”.
On the same day on which we hear about the wolf and lamb, leopard and kid, and all, and when St. Paul prays for us to live in harmony and welcome,
we hear ol’ cranky pants John the Baptizer, the prophets of old come to life again in the wild man of the border regions who eats bugs and honey:
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance!”
He also commands us to “repent!” and he threatens fire as punishment.
Welcome to Advent!
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John, in the style of the Hebrew prophets is both calling us out of an old way of being, and into a new way.
The “repentance” of which he speaks is not about feeling sorry or guilty for personal sins, but is an invitation, an exhortation even, to turn away from a way of life that participates in the lies (or, “post-truth”) of “the way things are”, and to turn away from our complicity with how the world has ended up: clamoring, fighting, injustice, violence, and hatred;
and to turn towards, or return towards, God and God’s way of life:
dignity, God’s justice, compassion, peace, abundance, freedom, love.
We are invited to turn towards hope.
Hope is not wishful thinking for something better, but God’s promise that is partially fulfilled; the promise seen and experienced in the love of Jesus (the Christ child and Immanuel).
Hope that is the kind that Desmond Tutu points to:
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
The kind of hope that Emily Dickenson describes in her poem:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –...
Hope is the way we live and thrive in Advent,
the Advent that is not just the four week time
of expectation and waiting before Christmas,
but the Advent that is the posture of our daily life –
as we live in the promises of God that are both
already filled and not yet complete.
The Advent which includes our honest confession of all that is awry,
and the joyful turning
--metanoia—
toward God and God’s hope for the world.
The Advent of living in our world that has
darkness and light
injustice and justice
violence and peace
clamoring for more and abundance for all
fighting and compassion
hatred and dignity & love.
Hope is our living in Advent – but not passively waiting.
Rather, we live in an active hope, a participatory hope,
sharing the “thing with feathers” that perches in the soul and hangs on, even in the gale;
being the light in the darkness and
carrying that light with you wherever you go.
As L.R. Knost, a child development researcher who advocates for children has said:
“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So, go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is [in] you.”
This is our mission. This is our call.
As the beloved, Advent-y people of God
who know hope and the source of the hope we live in –
Christ.
Immanuel.
Amen
