Advent Hope

In church land, Christmas is a whole season. It begins on Christmas day and runs through January 5. This is also known as the twelve days of Christmas. But we haven’t reached Christmas yet. We are still a whole church season away—just starting advent.

Advent is the time we use to prepare for Christmas. We get out the Christmas decorations, plan meals with family, buy gifts, bake yummy things. I enjoy these parts of our Christmas preparation. But that’s not really the point of advent. As the carol Joy to the World reminds us, advent is about preparing our hearts for the arrival of God among us. “Let every heart, prepare him room.”

Preparing room for the Christ child can be challenging. We have all the things on our to do list….plans to make, cookies to bake, trees to decorate, lights to hang. Sometimes those things, which many of us enjoy, can be a distraction from preparing our hearts and minds for God among us.

And then we look around the world. We see the destruction in British Columbia caused by severe weather and climate change. We hear there is another covid variant traveling the world and stories of death in our own community. Even this community of faith is in a time of change. You can list many more things that shake our lives.

Luke talks about the destruction that is to come. “There will be signs, people will die of fright, anticipation of what is coming upon the earth. The powers in heaven will be shaken. They will see the Chosen One coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” Our fear, concern, and uncertainty at what we see and experience around us are real. They are a natural response to things that unsettle, or even shake us to our core.

We can always anticipate terrible things to come, and we can always find signs of destruction. But if all we experience is fear and uncertainty, we have closed our hearts to hope. The passage invites us to embrace these signs, not as something to fear but, as signs of hope. “When these things begin to happen, look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption is near.” These are not signs of the end. These are signs of the possibilities to come. In order to see hope, we need to look directly at the signs and see them for what they are.

But God among us will change the world. The destruction in British Columbia is a sign that climate change is real and happening now. It is a call for us to faithfully care for God’s world and make choices that minimize climate change. The new strain of covid is a call to care for the people around us so that we can be safe and minimize the spread of covid. Our faith community in a time of change is an opportunity for creative thinking and choosing a faithful path forward. God among us offers hope but we need to prepare ourselves for that hope.

The hope requires us to see ourselves clearly—to see our part in climate change, in the spread of covid, in our current community of faith.

Once we see ourselves clearly, hope requires us to repentance….my favorite definition of repentance is being in the same situation and behaving differently. We continue to live with climate change. How do we behave in ways that heal the earth rather than destroy? We continue to live with covid. How do we behave in ways that minimize the spread? We continue to live in this community of faith. How do we behave in ways build up and support each other in a time of change?

The hope requires us to have patience with ourselves and others. We will all make mistakes on the journey, but I believe in a God who offers us grace and compassion. That is hope for each of us and the world.

This first Sunday in Advent offers an invitation to hope, “Let every heart, prepare him room.” Look to the signs around us. See the signs not as destruction but as hope of God among us. May your heart prepare a room for the Christ child as begin your advent journey.

Bearing Witness

The story of Rizpah found in 2 Samuel is an obscure one. I had never heard of Rizpah before I did my theological training. Rizpah is the widow of King Saul, who came before David. According to the story, Saul “put the Gibeonites to death.” Essentially, Saul authorized a genocide.

Several years later, there is a famine in the land, and David is told that the way to end the famine is to avenge the Gibeonites. David has Saul’s sons and grandsons killed and leaves the bodies to rot. It is a gruesome story of murder and revenge.

Rizpah hears what happened and as a grief-stricken mother goes to the place where her sons died. There was nothing she could have done differently to keep them alive. Rizpah stays there for six months and spends her days keeping away the birds and her nights keeping away the scavengers. She couldn’t protect her sons from violence while they were alive, but she can protect their bodies. She could bear witness to the violence. Eventually, David hears about her vigil and gives the bodies a proper burial. Rizpah’s witness creates a break in the cycle of violence.

When I first heard this story, it got me thinking about the women who stood at the foot of the cross and watched Jesus die. They couldn’t do anything to stop the chain of events. They couldn’t save Jesus from his death but they could witness his suffering. They weren’t there just as curious bystanders. They were there because no one should have to suffer alone or have their suffering go unnoticed. Interestingly, the women who witness the crucifixion were the first to witness the resurrection. Noticing, witnessing, and being present with the suffering meant that they were more able to embrace hope and the possibilities of new life.

There is always suffering and violence in the world. The connections I saw between Rizpah’s witness and the women at the foot of the cross, made me wonder about the power of witnessing violence and suffering. The witness, the being present is an act of faith. It means that the suffering does not go unnoticed. It means that the violence cannot be a secret.

We might feel overwhelmed by the suffering we see in the news or hear about from friends and family and our inclination might be that we don’t want to know. It sometimes feels easier to turn away or pretend that the suffering is not ours and doesn’t impact us. And yet the biblical narrative reminds us that suffering and violence are never in isolation. God witnesses the suffering, and we are called to witness the suffering around us.

This is not about being curious bystanders or wishing we could change the past. Being a witness is about being faithful to the current reality. We are changed by what we choose to witness and that change in us creates change in the world around us. Allowing ourselves to witness the suffering means that the future is changed. If Rizpah hadn’t stood over her sons’ bodies they would have laid there and been scavenged and the cycle of violence would have continued. If there had not been witnesses to Jesus’ death, there couldn’t have been resurrection. The story would have ended with death. The simple act of witnessing changes the future.

What is the suffering we need to witness? With Remembrance Day just past, we are reminded that we need to witness the horrors of war—past and present. We need to be present to and witness the legacy of colonialism, residential schools, unmarked graves, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. We need to acknowledge and witness the ongoing racism that happens every day in our communities. We need to witness the cries of the earth impacted by climate change and human destruction.

When we bear witness to suffering and violence, we are faithful to the biblical story. We stand in a long tradition of ordinary people who refuse to look away, who are committed to witnessing the suffering in the world, and who are willing to be changed by that experience. When we witness the suffering, we create space for hope and space for new life.