I have a confession to make: sometimes I am not a very patient person. I really hate waiting in lines. Slow internet connections make my blood boil. I go out of my way to drive the route with the least amount of traffic lights. I avoid busy restaurants. Because waiting is the worst. There’s a funny episode of South Park where one of the main characters, a 4th grade boy named Eric Cartman, cannot wait for the new Nintendo video game system to come out in 3 weeks. The episode begins with Cartman pacing back and forth in front of a store at the mall muttering, “Come on…come on!!” He is so frustrated. He can’t sleep at night, he can’t function. He tells his mom that it’s like waiting for Christmas times a thousand.
Waiting for Christmas. You know, there’s a word for that. “Advent”. The season of Advent is all about waiting. The word “Advent” comes from the Latin word meaning “coming” and is used to describe the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas, which starts today. This season is called Advent to refer to the many centuries of waiting by the Israelites who fervently hoped and prayed for the coming of a savior, the Messiah, to be born. We know this savior to be Jesus, the baby born in a manger on Christmas.
Sometimes I think we have forgotten “the reason for the season” in the midst of the busy-ness and chaos of what the Christmas season has become: fighting crowds, spending money, stressing out about buying all the right presents, waiting in long lines and traffic jams, cleaning up messy kitchens, untangling extension cords. There’s a funny song that I hear on the radio every year that reminds of the craziness that Christmas has become, called “The Twelve Pains of Christmas”, a parody of the Twelve Days of Christmas. It features such pains as: Stale TV specials, Batteries not Included, Finding parking spaces, Facing your in-laws, Five months of bills, Sending Christmas cards, Hangovers, Rigging up the lights, and Finding a Christmas tree. This year in particular, I’ve been reading a lot of news about how difficult the holidays are going to be, that Christmas is “at risk” due to things like the continued pandemic and supply chain issues. I saw a meme going around social media that said, “Saying Christmas is ‘at risk’ due to supply chain problems leads me to believe that you don't know the reason for Christmas.”
Our scripture lesson from Jeremiah this morning reminds of us of the real reason for the season. It begins with Jeremiah’s optimism of God’s salvation: “The days are surely coming…” Such hope and promise must have been a great comfort to those who first heard them. For centuries, the Israelites had been persecuted. Between being held as slaves in captivity and getting lost and wandering around in the desert, the history of Israel was filled with brutality and their future had always seemed bleak. But tragic events in 586 BCE caused Israelites to lose almost all hope of a bright future: Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and sent the people into Exile. This is when Prophet Jeremiah writes to the Israelites to encourage them to have hope, hope in God’s righteousness, hope for a new and better future, hope for deliverance, renewal, and liberation.
But in the meantime, the Israelites would have to wait. And waiting is the worst. Waiting can be discouraging. Demoralizing. Waiting can bring depression, paralysis, denial, hopelessness. Waiting can create despair. It would have been super easy for the exiled Israelites to devolve into violence and chaos and just give up. But Jeremiah’s words encourage the Israelites to wait patiently with hope, instead of impatiently with despair. Jeremiah is desperately trying to keep the Israelite’s hope alive.
Even for me the eternal optimist, it’s sometimes hard to keep my hopes alive. Especially when the wait is long and discouraging, I feel like giving up and letting my hopes die. For example, it has always been my hope to help make the world a better place, but every time I turn on the news, a little bit more of my hope dies, a little bit more of me feels like nothing I do will ever make a difference and I feel like giving up. Maybe you feel that too, or maybe you have other dead or dying hopes in your life. Maybe you were hoping to make some changes in your life, maybe you made an important New Year’s resolution 12 months ago, maybe you make the same one each year, but year after year nothing seems to change and you struggle and you don't even expect a change anymore. Maybe you've hoped for peace and harmony in your family, but now you have gotten to the point that you are just willing to live with discord because you have given up hope for anything more. It might be in your career, where you were hoping things would be better or that you would be at a different place and it's just not working out that way. When things are broken, it’s hard to see the light in the darkness, to see hope in the midst of despair. It’s easy to just give up. I think we have all felt at least a little bit of the hopelessness and despair that the Israelites felt, and we, like them, need to be constantly reminded that the darkness will not last forever, the light will eventually come, that we need to wait patiently with hope.
We are lucky because we know what happens 500 years after the start of the Babylonian exile. After much waiting and much strife, the savior did finally come. He came to save them, to rescue them, to bring them justice, to give food to the hungry, sight to the blind, and love to the lost and lonely. The birth of Jesus fulfilled the hopes of the Israelites for a better world and a better future. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Joy to the world, the Lord has come. This is the reason for the season: the fulfillment of hope represented by a baby born in a manger. God heard the cries of the oppressed and brought deliverance. When we celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas, we celebrate the birth of love, the birth of peace, the birth of joy, the birth of hope.
But sometimes it feels like we are still waiting for a savior. Waiting for a change in our lives. Waiting for the end of loneliness or grief. Waiting for the world to finally be at peace. Waiting for a day when people no longer have to flee their country in order to stay alive. Waiting for a day when people of all nationalities, all races, all genders, all orientations, are treated with love, dignity, and respect. Waiting for a day when no more unarmed black boys are shot dead by police. Waiting for a day when mass shootings are no longer the norm. Waiting for a day when violence is no longer the answer to brokenness. Waiting for action to be taken against climate change. Waiting for the world to be a better place.
The good news is that the savior has already come, and he is called “Emmanuel” … which means “God With Us”. Our savior is here, God is with us. God will journey with us through the darkness to the light. God is working with us and through us to usher in the hopes we long for: a change in our lives or a change in our world. But things can’t change overnight. We will still have to wait. But as Jeremiah reminds us, we need to wait patiently, with hope, not with despair. We can’t just give up because it feels like it will never happen. We need to keep going, keep trying, keep doing what we can. We cannot give up hope that we can make a change, that we can make a difference, in our own lives or in the world.
But what does it look like to wait with hope? I’m reading a wonderful book right now called: “Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy” by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. In it, they describe the difference between having passive hope and active hope. Passive hope is about waiting for someone else to bring about what we desire. Active Hope is about becoming active participants in bringing about what we hope for. Active Hope requires us to take steps to move ourselves in the direction that we hope for. They write, “Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life on whose behalf we can act.” The invitation of the book is to stop being overwhelmed and start living in a way that makes a difference even if it's one small step toward our hopes. Active Hope is about doing the best you can.
Today, the first Sunday of Advent, the day we celebrate hope, is a great day to begin to practice an active hope, to take one small step towards moving our lives or the world in the direction we hope for. One step we could take is re-imagining those “Twelve Pains of Christmas” so that we can bring the “reason for the season” back into our Advent and Christmas traditions.
When we put up Christmas lights, can we remember there is light in OUR darkness, can we consider how we can be the light in someone else’s darkness? When we plan our gift giving, can we consider what we can give to others instead of more stuff -- a hug, a smile, a gesture of love, time, togetherness, support, encouragement? When we gather with our families, can we practice unconditional love for ourselves and for people with whom we don’t agree? When we are stuck in traffic jams, can we practice forgiveness, understanding, and patience? When we are waiting in lines, can we wait with a patient and loving heart, and give a gift of peace, a simple smile, to the cashiers and those waiting around us?
Let’s do the best that we can to wait with an active hope; hope that one day God’s love will reign, that one day God’s peace will be the light that drives away all darkness. May we be agents of hope and builders of the Kingdom of God here on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
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