Advent 2016

Monday, November 28, 2016
Advent 2016
What Are We Waiting For?

And so Advent begins for 2016. It is the advent, the dawn, of a new era. This era is completely unprecedented.

In the visual world, Donald Trump won enough electoral votes to elect him as the new president of our country. I am not alone in feelings of nausea, fear, anxiety, unrest, insomnia and the need to step away, for my own safety, from national news programs.

This is the last Christmas with the Obamas in the White House. During his administration so many who have been hiding from society have been able to step out of the darkness. We can be gay, transgender, lesbian, queer, bi. We are protected somewhat differently because violence will be prosecuted as a hate crime. People of the same gender can legally marry. The prevalence of cellphone cameras has caught white police officers acting badly in traffic stops of African American (mostly) men. This has happened so frequently (horribly) that people gathered together in numbers (safety in numbers?) to protest that something has to be done about the persecution, the incarceration rates of Black men, the prisons built by private agencies where states pay for their use, and thus, the more in prison, the more money the jail attenders make.

Anyway …
The point – the reason – I’m writing is because yesterday Advent began in a country I am afraid of, and cannot recognize – and a church, the UMC, which also hangs on by a thread swaying between inclusion and exclusion. It seems to be the anthem of all large bodies of people – human people – who make mistakes.

So into this new church order, new national order, I light my first candle on the wreath. Hope.

I do actually pray for world peace. I pray for a day when we will literally bend our swords into shovels and care for one another all across this world. I do believe that all humans are capable of love and to be loved. I believe we are all able to listen. I believe we have the capacity to tell the truth. I believe we can see evidence of peace during times of disaster but I believe it won’t have to be a disaster to get us there.

It seems we always have to fail in order to grow. I am coming to realize that more as I grow older. We don’t grow just because our DNA tells us to. We mature as people, Christians, citizens of our country and our world when we pitch the “shitty first draft” (Anne Lamott) and get serious about what we need to do next.

I believe the table of Jesus Christ is a sacrament, as long as you define as Sacrament as something that is a concentrated focal point of God’s love for us. I believe that also applies in baptism.

I believe the “Last Supper” is all about Jesus serving the disciples and doing so with the knowledge of the one who betrayed him and the one who would deny him, and he served them anyway. He withheld nothing. If Jesus let them sit at the table AND washed their feet, than we have no right to decide who can be at that table, because all of us are there by invitation only. We couldn’t buy a ticket of bribe an insider. We were invited.

And in the Eucharist, we tell this story and we also that Jesus was crucified under Roman law because he and his followers went against the status quo. He died that way, like many criminals before him, in a painful death. He was killed because of the things he said and did.

I do not believe in any guilt-ridden explanation of “The Great Thanksgiving” if it tells the story of his crucifixion and death that maintaining that Jesus “paid the price for sin” or was sacrificed for us (by us?) to pay some debt we owe to God. I think those are human constructs that made sense to a few and then became the creed – a delusional creed of good and bad and angry blood-thirsty God. I just don’t buy that.

That notion of “atonement” is not law. It is not “good news” by any stretch.

I do believe Jesus really was a person, a teacher, rabbi and prophet. I do believe he “got it” in terms of understanding God, and he understood God and the love of God better than any human ever had. He had a relationship with God that was also unprecedented. And he taught us to do the same.

I believe Jesus was resurrected, bodily. On Easter. And that resurrection was what Jesus was talking about when he said he would “come again”. He did.

There may be a day that we all “get it”, there more than likely will not. We as people don’t have to “get it” in any uniform way; we “get it” when we want it. Most of the time, it’s right before our eyes.

I believe that Advent is a time for the Church, and for me personally, to stop and be still. It is time to remember that out of nothing and no inheritance did Jesus enter this world in a humble way.

It is time to remember God coming into the world to show us the way to live in peace with one another, with our planet, and how to thrive, be well and enjoy the world we live in … this beautiful awesome world of mountains and streams and puppies and babies, oceans and valleys – people of all different colors, sizes, languages, laughs.

It is time to remember the Sermon on the Mount; the teachings about caring for each other, about humility, about simplicity, and not being a show off spiritually or financially.

It is Advent 2016. It’s time for something new. And if God could create this world/universe/cosmos, then God can lead us to new and incredible things.

Maybe the direction of the country designed by and for the people with the most money in the world will discover that money has no value. None. It doesn’t buy love or happiness. It doesn’t make the world a better place.

Money makes us steal and lie to keep it or get it or protect it. “The root of all evil”. Yep.

Maybe the “value” of currency worldwide will disappear altogether. The thought of buying and selling will vanish.

Even in Star Trek; the future of space travel, etc, they wrote into their scripts that currency is outdated; something of the historical past.
It is time for change. It is time to throw out all of our old ideas and just ask a prayer – we will lose nothing by dong so. Just pray. Pray for our world. Pray for each other. Pray for hope and joy and faith and peace. Pray like it’s Advent 2016!