7 December 2008

Advent 2B

The Rev'd Lloyd Prator

New York City

I was returning home to get ready for a dinner party I was having for my friends Bob and Nancy. I went up the steps to the house and the door was standing ajar. Someone had broken in. Inside the front door, lying on a crumpled up rug was an empty box which had contained a valuable old chalice I had inherited from my Bishop. Gone. I walked into the living room. There was no evidence of a disturbance there. In the dining room, though, there was an empty spot on the sideboard where a coffee service had sat. My foot crunched on something. It was — sugar! My burglar had stolen the coffee service, but had dumped the unwanted sugar on the rug. It crunched underfoot. I went upstairs and looked around. Yes, a small box of cuff links and a watch were gone, but then I had a very funny moment. The burglar had stolen a very peculiar item It was a digital alarm clock. But it was not a colic I would very much miss. It had had some kind of digital nervous breakdown deep inside its little plastic carcass, and now its alarm went off unbidden at totally unpredictable hours, regardless of the time for which it was set. I laughed when I thought of my burglars being awakened at three-thirty in the morning by my deranged alarm clock. At least they could sit down and have a nice cup of coffee from my stolen coffee service after thy had been awakened in the middle of the night.

Breaking in. It is always a shock. You feel violated. For days afterwards, you think when you open the front door — Is any one there? Will they come back? What happened to my stuff? Has it been melted down, sold to strangers, sitting in some disreputable pawnshop? Who knows? You never feel quite the same about your possessions or your place.

Advent is about breaking in. Not about a criminal breaking into your place, but about God breaking into your life.

The writer of Second letter of Peter had it right: The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night, strive to be found at peace by the Lord who comes when you least expect him.

John the Baptizer proclaims: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” God is coming; he marches onto the scene in Mark’s Gospel like a writer tearing into a new land, scattering all and sundry to one side or another.

What odd imagery to use about a God who elsewhere is proclaimed as such a peaceful and loving presence, such a gentle encounter with the holy.

But it is important to think of God breaking into our lives because sometimes that is just what we need. You know that from your own experience. Sometimes your attention can be gotten by subtle suggestion or casual thought. But sometimes it needs to be seized, grabbed by the neck, shaken hard. In recovery programs, people sometimes talk about the need to “hit bottom” — to lose everything in order that they can get the picture. Some people have to be shaken up before they can hear, have their eyes pried open before thy can see, have their assumptions explored before they can think. Or, to put it more honestly, at one time or another, probably more than once in our lives, each and every one of us needs a good break in.

Sometimes these divine break-ins are cosmic. Suppose you have a certain set of political or social convictions. And suddenly, your assumptions are challenged by new facts. Suddenly, you know your philosophy of life has been bankrupt and you need to think and act differently as a citizen of this land. For a while, in your thinking, everything is up in the air. You have to reconstitute your philosophy of life. You have to build again from the ground up.

Suppose you have been going on along in your intimate life, having — for just one example — a relationship which, when you look at it honestly, is characterized by unfaithfulness, cruelty or neglect — or maybe all three. And then something happens, some confluence of events or ideas and you realize that you are not living the way God make you to live, and you have to change. Your way of loving has to be reconstituted from the ground up.

Sometimes these divine break-ins are more intuitive and less dramatic. Suppose you have been going to church pretty much regularly for a long time, but never really considered giving your self, in all your fullness, to God. Perhaps you have a prayer life, maybe even a fairly good one, but there comes a day when every bit of it grows cold and feels as lifeless as summer’s geraniums after the first frost. You have a religious crisis — and you know that you have to reconsitute your faith and re-express your faith or you are going to lose it.

The Bible often uses horticultural imagery for our relationship with God. Not in today’s reading, alas, but you can remember many other times when God is described as being like the gardener, like the landowner. We are described, as being like a vineyard, like a fig tree, like an olive tree, like a pal tree. And if you know anything about gardening — even about tending a few houseplants in your apartment, you know that there are times for different kinds of care. There are times to cultivate the soil, times to pack in fertilizer, times for a careful trim. And then there are times to pull up, cut down, and root out.

Advent is about the times for doing drastic things, to celebrate those moments when the immediate, the invasive, the confrontative, the challenging are the things to be done.

Advent si preparation for Christmas, which indeed comes as a weak, feeble child in a shabby environment. But the God who comes in that gentle, subtle way also comes with power and might, because power and might are the things we need in order to change when we must change, to repent when we must repent, and to choose a new course when old ways are bankrupt.

Have you had a break in lately? Watch out. There might be one on the way.