Today, on this first Sunday of Advent, we gather in beautiful buildings where sunlight pours through stained-glass windows, candlelight illumines the altar, warm coffee brews in the common room, and purple banners, paraments, and vestments clothe us with reminders that this is a season of anticipation and hopeful expectation. At home we prepare our favorite comfort foods, frost our homes with lights, build crackling fires in our fireplaces, and buy gifts for people we love. In stores and restaurants the aromas of cinnamon and pine wrap themselves around us like invisible security blankets. As we prepare for the birth of Christ—a baby in a manger who will be the Prince of Peace— we long for the comfort and security associated with the this season.
So why does
the gospel of Matthew disturb our sense of comfort and security with the image
of a thief in the night; of a God who will come at an unexpected hour? Why this
image of household invasion? We don’t typically think of breaking and entering
when as we prepare for the birth of Christ. We are used to thinking of God’s
presence as green pastures, still waters, the peace that passes understanding—but
the ultimate “come to Jesus” moment when we have let our guards down? This
feels like the very opposite of comfort and security, and inspires more fear
than hope, more doubt than certainty. How
can we possibly prepare ourselves?
We like to arm ourselves with
certainty. We secure our homes with elaborate security systems. Our cars have
howling alarms. Our phones and computers are password protected. Even our
animals can be protected with an injectable microchip to locate them if they
get lost. Every fiber of our being is wired to avoid risk and vulnerability. So
we tend prepare ourselves by trying to create fortified places—majestic cathedrals,
organized committees, fool-proof programs, and well cared-for sanctuaries. God
does certainly show up in all of these places. But in today’s gospel reading we
find a people hard at work, busy preparing the fields, preparing their homes,
and preparing their food when God breaks in to find that some are ready and
some are not. It leaves us asking just what kind of preparation does this God
of unscheduled inspections require of us?
Shortly
after the devastating typhoon in the Philippines, I saw a photo in the
newspaper of a religious procession in the badly damaged province of Leyte. This
was not a grand procession in the traditional sense. In the foreground of the photo
are four women processing through the typhoon’s aftermath. The women at the
front of the procession carry statues of saints bearing large crosses. These
women are vested, but only short-sleeved t-shirts, shorts, and expressions of
exhausted determination. The women’s dirt-sleeved arms hold the statues close
to their bodies like mothers carrying their children out of an apocalyptic
wasteland. In the background of the photo lies the wasted land itself, heaped
with the splintered remnants of households and buildings—the scattered
oblations of so many lost lives. This seems like a place God forgot—a place
where pain and destruction had the last word. But God is in the business of
breaking and entering. God broke through the harsh darkness of what seemed
beyond repair and entered the hearts of women who found the courage to rise up
and walk, putting one foot in front of the other, carrying the symbols of the
source of their hope. These women expected that hope, not pain and destruction,
would have the last word. Perhaps these women understood what the apostle Paul
meant when he called early Christians to “put on the armor of light.” With all
of their fortified places strewn beneath their feet, they lead us in procession
as instruments of Light—the light of
Christ that grew in their hearts around so many Holy Eucharists, baptisms and
prayer circles.
The
community for whom Matthew wrote faced similar displacement after the death of
Jesus, then the fall of the temple at Jerusalem. Without their Messiah or a central
gathering place to give them an identity, they could no longer point to a
building and say, “that is where our God lives.” In Jesus Christ they had witnessed
the Kingdom of God breaking and entering. He broke down the barriers between
Jews and Gentiles, between clean and unclean, between the powerful and the
powerless. He entered the homes of tax collectors, ate with sinners and washed
people’s feet. Now in this in-between time, a time of unbearable conflict and
strife, they probably asked themselves,
“Is the God of Israel still powerful and faithful to his promises? How long
must we wait before God restores peace?”
We are no
strangers to these in-between places. We each make our own pilgrimages through
conflict and struggle—we pray for hope after loss, for wisdom in difficult
decisions, for resolution to painful transitions, for forgiveness in broken
relationships, and for healing of physical and emotional pain. Where the weight
of inequity and injustice seems overwhelming, we pray “Lord have mercy.” In all
of these in-between places of our lives we wait with expectation and hope that
God will break in and enter our struggles, healing, restoring, and redeeming
them all.
Then the gospel of Matthew warns
us, in so many words, be careful what you pray for! For God is coming in an
unexpected hour! Keep awake and always be prepared! This second-coming that
Matthew describes, often referred to as the “rapture,” is really about hope and
fulfillment. It’s a vision that calls each of Jesus’ disciples to become more
than just people who believe things about God while they go about the business
of life. This vision calls them, and calls us, to become a word of God spoken forth for the sake of the world. It
calls us all to “put on the armor of light.” While creating beautiful, secure,
fortified households and churches can be a part of this preparation, we are
called in our baptism to an even higher vocation. We are called, both
individually and corporately, to create space for God—a place where awe and
wonder, compassion and hope, find a home.
This is what the Incarnation is all
about. Brazilian theologian Rubem Alves describes the purpose of the
Incarnation as “the way that God chose to reach out to creation and
establish relationship and connection…a
divine act of solidarity with humans and an investment in our realizing what
God intends for humans to become.” When the gospel of Matthew implores us to
“be vigilant” he is not imploring us to just think about being good Christians.
He is calling us to fulfill the vocation to which we are all called in our
Baptisms: to feed the hungry, give water the thirsty, clothe the naked, nurse
the sick, befriend the stranger, and visit the imprisoned. These acts of
compassion, mercy and love are how God’s Kingdom breaks in and enters the world.
They are what the armor of light is made
of.
In church we practice these acts of
love every day. When praise bands play and sing at homeless shelters, God
breaks in. When an outreach team delivers 120 back snacks, God breaks in. When
we provide hundreds of pounds of food for
food pantries, God breaks in. When we care for the children in our
church’s Day school, God breaks in. With each act of compassion, mercy, and
love, God becomes what author Melissa Tidwell calls “Embodied Light.” God
breaks in and enters the world through us—His body gathered.
We are used to thinking of
preparation as working harder, doing more, producing more. We think we need to
have something to show to prove that we have been vigilant. But our God of
unscheduled inspections hasn’t come merely to judge us, he has come to redeem
and transform us. Like a handmade pottery candleholder with slight crack in it,
our identity as God’s children comes from our willingness to receive and share
God’s light, not from being without cracks. In fact, God uses our cracks and
imperfections. As songwriter Leonard Cohen puts it, “there is a crack in
everything. That’s how the light gets in.” So when we prepare for the birth of
Christ, God-with-us, it may not feel comfortable at first. Every fiber of our
being resists vulnerability. But this is precisely what God asks of us. God
calls us to practice grace, to be “embodied light.”
That is what spiritual formation is:
practicing God’s grace and giving Christ’s light hands, feet, mouth, eyes and
ears for transforming the world. To help
with this, print out this Advent calendar with simple spiritual practices for each day
of Advent. (www.thomasmousin.wordpress.com) They are radical because
they ask us to participate in making a space for God to break in and enter the
world. With each practice the light grows, making all around it light.
Each time we come to Christ’s table
for Holy Eucharist we are united with all of those disciples who came before us
in receiving Christ’s redeeming presence. Here we are fed with spiritual food
that strengthens us to carry the light of Christ’s presence out into the world.
Here we catch a glimpse of the fullness of God’s Kingdom not yet revealed. As
the first Advent candle burns in our midst today, may it remind us of the God
who is in the business of breaking and entering. May God’s presence at an unexpected hour find us on our knees
engaged in acts of justice and compassion, mercy and love. May God find us
rising up, after our fortified places have broken down around us, and carrying
the Light of Christ into the world.
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