If you were to ask me who was my favorite author, it would be a very difficult question to answer – there are just too many that I hold close, for a variety of reasons. But if I were to narrow it down to a handful, then Kurt Vonnegut would be in that handful.
Many of us who enjoyed the novels of Kurt Vonnegut were surprised to read these words among his last public utterances before his death in 2007: “No matter how bad things may get for me, the music will still be wonderful. My epitaph, should I ever need one, God forbid: “the only proof he ever needed of the existence of God was music.”
Although this was unexpected from the Kurt Vonnegut depicted in his writings, I’m right there with him. I am a music person – I love all types of it. I grew up in a family that was singing parts during hymns as early as I can remember. In fact, one of the most exciting things about my commute is that I have 2 hours each day to listen to what I want to.
As we enter the season of advent, music plays a large role in setting the stage - It only takes a few bars of “Let all mortal Flesh keep silence” and I’ve got chills and it feels like December. – or skipping to the final act as many of you who were brave enough to venture shopping this weekend no doubt discovered. We have chosen to look at O Come, O Come, Emmanuel as our lens into Advent here at FPC. It looks a little different than the hymn in your hymnal, but you’ll see all about that in the coming weeks.
The opening verses O Come and our texts this morning help to place us in proper perspective for the start of our church year – remembering our pasts and looking to our future, reminding us of who we are, and whose we are, not something we’re always willing to hear. Psalm 25 (like many of the psalms) allows us in. The open-endedness of the unnamed ‘enemy’ provides us space so we can each identify with the psalm in our own circumstance. “The enemy could be a badly performing economy that has left us destitute and ashamed, a friend who has abandoned us, or a political leader who proves to be a bitter disappointment[1]” as easily as it could be Babylonian soilders or roman guards.
As we move through the passage the focus goes from other as the source of the lament to an understanding of self-identity as “the writer moves from the circumstantial challenge of needing to be saved from persons called enemies to personal recognition of a need to be taught and finally to repent[2].” Like children, we come before God, tattling and laying blame before finally recognizing and owning the role we play in each situation. We cry out ‘ O Come our Wisdom, To us the path of knowledge show, teach us in her ways to go!’
We know the story, we repeat the affirmations, we mouth the promise, but when we’re honest with ourselves we know that at times our confidence in the promises wavers and we trust in that which is less than God. It is during the Advent season that we recognize and remember that we are exiles. We are the ransom captives. Too often we’re the ones wandering in the wilderness complaining about the beauty and riches of our own egypts. We look to our jobs, our intelligence, our prestige, our money, our friends to fill the holes in our lives. We lose sight of the vision; we give up hope and settle for the things in front of us, the things our culture offers.
The Psalmist helps to reorient us. The psalm declares that “YHWH is not instrumental to the hope of Israel, but YHWH is in fact the very substance of that hope.[3]” The very same carries over into our experience. This is the hope to which advent invites us, the fulfillment of the promise that, in all aspects of our living, God will provide for us, take care of us, save us. This is the hope of which Jeremiah speaks.
In the midst of exile – of death and destruction Jeremiah tells his audience that God’s future will come not by giving up on God’s promises and making the best of a bad situation – you know ‘when in Babylon’ – but by trusting in the creative and redemptive and sure purposes of God[4]. “The days are surely coming.” We, like Jeremiah’s exiles are encouraged to grasp the importance of waiting, anticipating, and trusting in a promised future that seems much removed from our current circumstance.
As I listen to the cries of Jeremiah I long for the day that is coming when the poor are not sent to shelters or forced to sleep on the streets. I long for the day we have no tolerance for violence, when we stop producing body bags because there are no solders to fill them. I long for the day that is surely coming when our world is no longer torn asunder by racism, sexism and homophobia. I long for the day when justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Advent is precious because it comes to us at the darkest of times, when we need it the most. Dwelling in the bleak midwinter, waiting with expectation of the new life spring will bring. Advent serves to take us out of our patterns and reassure us that there is something greater, and more powerful than our unnamed enemies, more powerful than ourselves. It shakes our day to day reality, lifting our eyes from the ground and refocusing them on what’s ahead – God’s promised future.
Advent invites us to look toward the fulfillment of human history, to the ongoing process of redemption and salvation and to God‘s continuing activity in our own lives. It invites us to hope – for a greater life, a better world, a more just future. So, even in our darkest days we hear the echoing, haunting refrain: Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee o Israel, and we place our trust in that melody of hope that gives us strength and carries us forward.
[3] Walter Bruggeman. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 497.
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