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November 28, 2021
by Sara Baron

“The Future. The Past. Grief.” based on Jeremiah 33:14-16 and Luke 21:25-36

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

I can just HEAR the me from two years ago whining about the weird Advent passages, and how dark and gloomy they are, and can’t we have a more thematic set of readings. I can hear her, but I’m NOT her anymore.

The 2021 version of me reads these passages with relief, glad that the dystopian realities of the past two years have expression in our Holy Scriptures. Because, truly, people have fainted from fear – and with good cause. The powers of heaven and earth have been shaken. Foreboding has become normal, and all the nations of the earth are distressed.

YES, thank you Luke for putting it words.

I almost wish he hadn’t switched topics quite so quickly. I find I’m not quite ready to believe that all of this is going to be fixed by Jesus returning on a cloud, and there have been far too many metaphorical green leaves sprouting without metaphorical figs arriving for me to read the signs quite like that anymore.

However, when the passages ends with Luke suggesting, “Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place,” I do find that wish I’d heeded that advice, because strength has sure been needed, and I wish I’d prayed more to find it before everything came to pass.

Now, of course, unlike the first generation of Christians, I’m not expecting the end of the world imminently, nor expecting that the signs I see today suggest that’s coming. However, I believe we have all lived an end of the world as we knew it, and that requires some time to process and accept it.

Advent is a time of longing, and waiting, and hoping. It is a time when we acknowledge how broken things are, and how desperately we need God’s help to make them better. It is a time when we join in the yearning of people of faith throughout the ages, waiting for righteousness and justice and the kindom of God, and noticing that IT IS NOT HERE YET.

Friends, it is not here yet.

It doesn’t feel very close.

It feels further away than ever.

And I don’t even want to tell you all the reasons why, because I know your hearts are already broken, and I don’t think they need any additional burdens.

So I’m not going to. I’m going to trust that you’ve noticed that things are NOT RIGHT, and VERY BROKEN, and it is NOT OK.

And now I’m going to ask you to do something that you may not want to do.

I’m going to ask you to stay with the brokenness, and how much it hurts, and how awful it is, and all the emotions that come with it. I’m going to ask you not to think of ways to fix it, or what books or articles to read about it, or what music or game could help you forget about it, or what little unrelated thing you could try fix just to feel like you still have some power in the world. I’m going to ask that you just let it hurt.

I’m going to ask that you let yourself hurt, let yourself grieve, let your spirit wander around lost – and sad – and angry – and confused – and … most of all that you let it be without trying to fix it or ignore it.

This, dear ones, is the Advent I think we need.

Because we lost the world as we knew it, and it has been so scary and awful and disconnected that we’ve just tried to keep on keeping on, and so we didn’t ever deal with it. And so it has been dealing with us.

When I sit with people who have lost dear ones, I advise them that their job is to sit on the couch and cry. I worry that if people don’t sit on the couch, stare at nothing, and cry intermittently, that the grief will just ache harder and longer.

I want us to do that. To be with the pain, like God is with us. Emmanuel is one of the words we come back to every Advent – “God with us.” God is with us, and we need to be with ourselves as God is with us.

Over the course of my leave, I found myself coming to the song “Come and Find the Quiet Center” again and again, and its wisdom deepened in me as the weeks past. This week it is the second verse that is speaking most strongly to me:

Silence is a friend who claims us, cools the heat and slows the pace, God it is who speaks and names us, knows our being, touches base, making space within our thinking, lifting shades to show the sun, raising courage when we’re shrinking, finding scope for faith begun.

I’ve chosen this hymn as our Advent song, hoping that some silence and slowed paces might be gifts to all of us (and not just me.) I don’t want us to rush to Christmas this year, I want us to slow down the pace, listen to ourselves, and listen for God. I believe that grief takes TIME, and we need to give that time.

I think of what it takes for wounds to heal: they need to be clean, and dry, and protected. They can’t continue to be agitated and still heal. And even when all those factors are taken care of, it just takes time. That’s true in bodies, but I think its true in our spirits and souls too.

It is EASY to feel anxious and act out in unproductive ways, trying to change that feeling. It is hard to sit with our anxieties, and listen to them.

God calls us to do it anyway.

So I ask you some questions for this Advent:

What grief needs time to be heard?
Where is it that we are waiting for God to break in?
Where do we see God with us?

And, I invite you into a time of waiting, in the midst of brokenness, of silence and stillness. I welcome you to Advent.

Amen

–

Call to Advent

Siblings in Christ,

I call you to seek quiet, to seek God,

To let pain be.

To name what you’ve lost, and what we’ve lost,

To name what is broken (at least for yourself)

To let God into the tender-most parts of your being,

to make space for darkness, and allow pain and darkness to set the pace.

God is with us, Emmanuel,

may we take the time to be with God. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 28, 2021

Sermons

“Promise and Hope” based on Jeremiah 33:14-16, 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

November 29, 2015February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The holidays are supposed to be the highlight of the year – right? In truth they’re much more complicated than that. Holidays are overlaid with expectations and conflicting needs. Buttons can get pushed and desperately needed healing can fail to appear. Additionally, holidays bring up grief from the past, awareness of who is no longer present at the table, and who didn’t care enough to return. Many are lonely in our world, and loneliness can be strongest when happiness is most expected. Or, perhaps, time with family and friends is quite lovely! But afterward is a bit of a let down. Holidays are supposed to be the highlight, and that’s exactly what makes them so complicated. (Please note the existence of the Longest Night service on December 16^th at 7.)

Advent is a strange little occurrence in the midst of the secular “holiday season.” In the Christian liturgical calendar, we are in a season of waiting and hoping. Christmas itself doesn’t show up in the 25^th, and lasts all 12 days to January 5^th, culminating the next day in Epiphany. I have come to love the contrast between the busyness of the secular holiday season and the quietness of Advent. Together, they’re quite fulfilling.

Advent starts a new liturgical year, and we start in the waiting and yearning for God to act that has pervaded humanity for millenia. In Jeremiah, the yearning has emerged from military defeat and exile. Jeremiah preached before, during, and after the siege of Jerusalem. Most of his words are words of warning, of condemnation, and of despair. (After all, he was warning people about the battle they were able to lose.) But in a few passages, he speaks of hope. His hope is one that he does not expect to see in his lifetime, and yet his hope is BIG and profound and still relevant today.

Initially it seems that the promise is that David’s dynasty will not end, that eventually God will raise it back up, and use it to bring justice and goodness back to God’s people. Our passage ends saying, “In those days, Judah will live in safety, and Jerusalem will be secure. The land will known by the name: ‘God is our Justice.” More broadly though, it is a promise of restoration. Translators offer the last line “God is our…” as “justice” at times and “righteousness” at others. I wonder about this word.

There were many interpretations of the exile, I’m pretty sure trying to explain the exile is the theme of the entire Hebrew Bible. None of them came shame free. Either the siege of Jerusalem was lost because the people were unfaithful, or because God was unfaithful, or because God was weak. The generations who lived through the exile and all the generations since have had to struggle to make meaning of the world where the people chosen to be a light on the hill and a blessing to the nations, LOST like any other people. No matter what way it gets explained, there is shame – either shame in action or shame in belief.

Yet the promise is one of calling God Justice or Righteousness. It isn’t just that the people will come home and be safe, it is that their relationship with God will be restored. Perhaps I’m projecting a bit, but in my life, my relationship with God and my relationship with myself have flowed into one another so seamlessly as to be hard to differentiate. For a people struggling with loss and then with shame to return to a relationship of trust in the world with a clarity of God as Justice and Righteousness seems to be a particularly enormous transition.

The words of the prophet Jeremiah set out a guidepost of hope in the midst of destruction. The wholeness they offer seems well tuned into the shame they were responding to. This ancient yearning for the world to be turned right-side-up-again is the start of Advent because it is still our yearning.

We are a people WAITING for fulfillment of promises and for the living of hope. We start the liturgical year in a season of waiting and hope. We believe that God is at work to bring goodness into the world. We believe that the purpose of our existence is to participate in God’s work to bring goodness into the world. And the combination of the two: God’s work with ours is the reason for the hope.

And that brings us to the New Testament reading. These words of Paul are so TRUE! I can feel them in my gut. They sound like my life. I hope they sound like yours. He writes, “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?” I could spend all day making a list of people that make me feel like that! And, most of them I have met through the Church. I’ve met the most amazing people, and been regularly astounded by their love of God and people.

One of my favorite activities for teaching about the wonderfulness of “church” is an exercise on the Fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.) The exercise is simple. I ask whatever students I’m teaching to think of people in their church and match them to the gift they most embody. It turns out, though, to be a little bit hard because people have multiple gifts. In every case that I’ve done the exercise, we’ve left with wonder at the amazing gifts of God in community.

When we look through the lens of hope and gratitude, we find there is much to be excited about! God’s work is not done, but God is at work in the world. God’s people are not perfect, but God’s people are gifted by God in astounding ways.

And, the work that needs to be done is not always difficult. When have you been most grateful for another person recently? Taking time to reflect on the goodness helps it shine more light into the darkness. And it isn’t really all that difficult. It may also be a way of entering more fully into the season of advent:

One of the most frequently used forms of prayer in the Christian Tradition is the process of examen. It is a very simple form of prayer. Generally examen is a repeated process, done every day, or every week, or at some regular interval. After intentionally opening yourself to God, you and God consider the two questions (asked here in a number of ways):

What has been the best part of today? Or, what has been the most life-giving piece of today? Or, how have I best been able to shine forth God’s love today? Or, when did I feel most connected to the Divine today?

What has been the worst part of today? Or, what has been the least life-giving piece of today? Or, how have struggled most to show God’s love today? Or, when did I feel most distanced from the Divine today?

After reviewing the time since the last examen and answering the questions, prayer is offered to thank God for the good and the bad.

For those looking for a spiritual practice to guide them this season, that would be my suggestion. I find it is most helpful if the answers to the questions are either recorded in a journal or shared collectively with loved ones. Sometimes patterns emerge that are only visible if the answers are seen together.

In Biblical history, the exiles would come home, but not the same generation as the ones that left, and not all came home. It was 70 years later, and things were never the same again. But they came home, and rebuilt, and it was good again. And then … frankly, it got bad again. Things were pretty awful during the time of Jesus and got even worse afterward.

Life is complicated. I think maybe more so than average when your “promised land” is one of the crossroads of the world that every empire needs to control in order to expand, but really, it is for everyone. Good comes, and its great. Bad comes and it is terrible. Life ebbs and flows, and it is very rarely static.

I think life with God is like floating softly in warm water. There is gentle current nudging us along, but with the ease of a flick of a wrist we can resist the pull of the current. With one good kick we can define our own way. But we can also let the current guide us, and see where it takes us, trusting in what we can’t yet see. This metaphor is not just for the good and easy times. When the water is soft and gentle and warm, it can be a sweet soak, OR we can choose to live in fear of a stronger current, a cold spring, or a thunderstorm. When the clouds turn dark and rainy, when the wind comes with sorrows, we can give up and drown in the sorrow, OR we can swim with all our might for shore, OR we can keep floating, ride out the storm, and see where we are when the sun comes again.

Perhaps this is one of the meanings of the waters of baptism. Of course, at times, we will all fight the current, worry in the warm water, and swim with all our might until we are exhausted. We’re human. We work like that. But the waters of baptism aren’t a white water river, they aren’t an oceans undertow, they aren’t a churning sea. Faith won’t drown us. Sorrow won’t kill us (although it feels like it can). The waters of baptism are trustworthy waters.

Hope is the gentle current. It’s ok to float.

And dear goodness, during this madness of the holiday season, may the lessons of quiet Advent hope be the ones we rest on. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 29, 2015