2 Advent, Year A December 5, 2010
I want to begin this morning by sharing something I read recently by writer Shelley Douglas, a member of the Sojourners community in Washington, DC, about hope that got her through a tough time when she was a child. She wrote this:
“When I was about 9, living in Switzerland with my parents and attending local schools, I used to make-believe to lessen my homesickness. Walking home from school every day, I would tell myself that when I rounded the last corner I would see in the distance my grandparents old black Chevy parked in from of our Swiss apartment building.
Every day I would turn that corner more than half-expectant that the car would be there and with it my grandparents and the restoration of our family community. The car was never there; my grandparents didn’t make the trip. But I’ve never forgotten that heart-stopping sense of anticipation that any day they MIGHT be there. I would like to have that sense of the possible in my yearning for the coming of God’s kingdom. (Living the Word, p. 7)
It is just this sort of tremendous anticipation that saturates our readings on this second Sunday of Advent. These readings call out for what people in every generation have longed for – a time when we will live in love of God and each other – when all creation will be reconciled. When, as the Prophet Isaiah puts it, “They will not hurt of destroy on all my holy mountain.” Those words, along with the beautiful description of the peaceable kingdom of God that precede them seem all the more powerful when we realize that they were spoken as a gift of hope by the prophet to the people of the Northern kingdom of Israel who were being besieged by the Assyrians who would eventually take them away into a long a painful exile.
Those of us who gathered for our Advent day of refreshment yesterday mused together about how we can hear in this story of Israel’s exiled waiting, something of our own stories. When we embrace the invitation of Advent to slow down a bit and reflect on our lives, we come face to face with the incompleteness of our lives and an ancient longing reemerges in us. Then we sing “O come, O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel” we are not just echoing the past, but also pleading out of our own experiences of exile.
And self imposed exile is at least part of what Advent is about – to remove ourselves a little from our usual mode of living. To step back and find daily moments in which we let go of the frenzy of these days and instead listen in silence. When we find our best ways of doing this we can recognize our deep longing for and need of God’s presence and healing in our lives and we can begin again to stoke the flames of that longing. Then when we come together for worship, study and fellowship we can let the words of the liturgy and the loving words of each other ignite that longing into hopeful expectation.
Those of us gathered together yesterday also had the lavish experience of listening together to parts of Handel’s Messiah. We were moved by the way the words taken from the Prophet Isaiah combined with the composer’s musical interpretation of them lifted us to a higher plane of hopefulness even as we were acknowledging the exile experiences of our lives. As Viki Pretti, Vicar of West Newbury, noted, the day was special because it opened for us two doorways onto the realm of God – scripture and music.
The powerful effect that music has on the spirit clearly was not lost on St. Paul. In the passage we heard from the Letter to the Romans this morning, there is much musicality. He admonishes the Romans, “Live in harmony”, “with one voice glorify…God.”, “sing praises”. In a recent issue of The Christian Century Magazine D. Brent Laytham, a professor of theology and ethics, writes this about this passage:
“Note the correlation here between harmony and holiness. As diverse voices turn to song and tune to one another, they bring forth one harmonious sound. Likewise, as by the Spirit’s power diverse selves are turned toward God and tuned in love, they become Christ’s harmonious body….
… When we sing, time changes from the sequential progression of tick-tock to the complex layerings of meter, beat, rhythm and movement. Experientially, we are not enduring the song’s duration but participating in its anticipation of glory…
…Christian singing harmonizes and hopes in conformity with Christ – and joyfully receives the gift of time, the ‘not yet’ becoming our ‘already’, the future freeing our present.” (Christian Century Magazine, Nov. 30, 2010, p. 20)
Well I for one felt that yesterday as our small group sat together in the upper room of St. John’s Parish hall and let Handle’s Messiah wash over us and lead us into deep sharing of self and faith. Similarly, I have felt the same on a good number of occasions recently here in this blessed sanctuary as music has moved us to what feels like a place just outside the normal parameters of time – a place of harmony not unlike what the prophet Isaiah describes, where it seems it might just be possible for wolves and lambs, and leopards and kids, and lions and fatlings to coexist peacefully. A place where those at war might just be able to turn spears into pruning hooks. A place where the unruly pieces of my own being might just relax into a state of contentment. Have you felt it too through some to the music we have shared?
To round out his article in Christian Century, D. Brent Laytham writes: “What all song does, Advent singing does more of: it fills us with joy that we may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” I hope this will be true for us over these next weeks. And I pray our shared music and song will be one of the corners around which we anticipate God’s glory will be visible to us, until the full restoration of creation comes.
In Christ’s name. Amen+