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The First Sunday in Advent The breeze of God’s love and grace is ever blowing; may we set our sails to capture that breeze, and may it inspire these words and those who hear them. Amen. O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, The words of the prophet Isaiah were written thousands of years ago, and yet, the lament we hear in them is one that is as fresh as the morning news. Isaiah wrote these words at point in time where it felt like the world was going to hell in hand basket, when it ought to have been a time of joy and hope and devotion to God. The people of Israel had been freed from captivity. Their exile in a foreign land was at an end, and they were free to return home, free to resume life as it had been. And yet, as they returned to Jerusalem, things were not going well. From Isaiah’s perspective, it seemed as though God had abandoned them. Isaiah’s lament invokes a vision of a God who in the past has come in power to incite fear in those who oppose his ways, but a God who is now absent from the lives of his people who are mired in sin. There is even a hint that Isaiah is blaming God for the bad behavior of his people. It’s easy for us to feel, as Isaiah did, like our world is going to hell in a hand basket these days, too. The economy seems to be crumbling around us, we are embroiled in a war—two wars, really—that seem interminable. And we are horrified, almost daily, by events of unspeakable terror around the world, the latest of which claimed untold lives in Mumbai. Like Isaiah, we might be tempted to feel that we are living in an age in which God is absent, and we might be tempted to blame God for our failure to live as the people God calls us to be. Isaiah’s message, however, does not end in hopelessness. Even as he sees the children of Israel going astray, even as he feels the absence of God, Isaiah finds a note of hope. At the end of this passage, we hear a shift, as if the wind has changed direction as Isaiah cries, Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; You are the potter and we are the clay, we are all the work of your hand. Have you ever watched a potter working with clay on the wheel? It’s an amazing process—starting with just a lump of wet gooey clay and working it carefully, tenderly, shaping it just so, as the clay spins around. Occasionally it’s a process that seems to go backwards, as one shape emerges and then is worn down and reshaped by skillful fingers. It’s a process that seems full of promise, full of surprises, full of hope. You are the potter and we are the clay, we are all the work of your hand. Just as for Isaiah did, there is hope for us in these words—God is the potter and God is not finished with us, malleable clay creatures that we are, and if God is not finished with us yet, no matter how willful, how stubborn, how very human we are, there is still hope that we can fully become the people God calls us—and shapes us—to be. And that is a message to hold onto as we move into this season of hope and anticipation, this season of Advent. If we listen carefully, we hear this hope resonating in the gospel for this first Sunday in Advent as well. Advent is a funny kind of season—it moves from the end to the beginning, so that we commence the season that anticipates the birth of the Christ Child with more warnings about the end time, and I think this takes us by surprise. We’re starting to think about Christmas and we want to focus on the coming of Jesus in all of his innocence. But today’s gospel reminds that that even as we anticipate this joyful celebration of the nativity we cannot lose sight of the rest of the story. Jesus does not come to us just as a child in Bethlehem; Jesus comes to us as preacher and teacher and prophet; Jesus comes to us on the cross; Jesus comes to us in the resurrection. Jesus is with us now, working in and through us, and Jesus will at the last day come again in all his glory to gather us together into the eternal kingdom. And as we’ve been reminded over the last few weeks our task is to do that work Jesus calls us to, to stay awake, to be prepared, to keep our eyes on the prize as it were, the prize of the kingdom of God. Often we hear this as a fearful message but I think if we pay attention it is a hopeful message. The hope is really multi-layered, multi-faceted. We have hope that God will gather us together at the end time, but in the mean time we have hope that God is with us and as long as God is with us, then God is not finished with us yet. Like the clay on the potter’s wheel we are spinning in the hands of a loving creator who shapes us and molds us, and reshapes us and remolds us, as we become the creatures we are meant to be. All around us we see a troubled world. We see anger and fear and violence. We see hunger and brokenness and misery. We feel our own failures, no matter how small, keenly, sharply. And it is hard to see hope, to feel hope. But we can find hope—hope for ourselves and for the world—in the realization that even as broken humans God is not finished with us, God is still shaping and molding us. There is still hope for a world where we live in peace, a world in which every creature is valued and cherished, in which we learn to live with and treasure our diversity as humans, in which we will love one another and love God with all of our being. Our task is to be the clay, to let ourselves be formed by God, and then as newly shaped vessels of God’s love, to take that love back out into the world, helping others to experience that love in their lives, always remembering that we are the clay, and you are our potter; Amen
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