Come Down Here, O God!

This sermon for the first Sunday in Advent was written and preached by Rev. Alecia Schroedel-Deuble. It reminds us that, although Christmas is about jingle bells and bright decorations, Advent is about waiting. We have all been waiting this year. This sermon reminds us what we are waiting for.

Welcome to the first Sunday of Advent. Welcome to the Christmas season! Already my husband John and I sat down in front of the TV, with our pumpkin pie on Friday night to begin the season by watching some of the classic Christmas cartoons. You know, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and a new one featuring The Minions. That’s how we expect the season to start with happy shows full of Christmas cheer, bright shiny jingling holiday commercials, and Hallmark movies. But in stark contrast, each Advent begins with what’s called “a little apocalypse.” It’s full of frightening images of doom and gloom and destruction, and the second coming of Christ. Our gospel text from Mark (13:24-37) warns of the sun and moon going dark and the stars falling from the heavens. Then Jesus will come again, rolling in on the clouds with overwhelming power and glory!!! Not the kind of images I expect Christmas to start with.

But maybe those are just the right images for us in 2020—a year of disruptions of Biblical proportions! We have endured one crisis after another akin to the biblical 10 plagues of Egypt! Plague—yep, we have that one in spades this year with COVID and how it has disrupted life. The moon turns to blood—we had that—when the fires in the west send thick smoke into the air the sun is blocked out and the moon looks blood red. The winds flattened, the land—yep, had that too. 2020 has seen more and stronger hurricanes than any previous year. Add on top of that general political chaos and you have a year we can’t wait to leave behind! I think the only thing we didn’t experience was a plague of frogs covering the land! So one of our biggest questions in 2020 is “Where is God in all this?” Where are you O God??? With Isaiah I think we raise our fists to the sky, turn our faces toward heaven demand, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” (Isaiah 64:1) Get down here O God! Get down here and do those big mighty deeds of power like you used to do. Get down here and do some smiting!!! We hear this furious lament from an impatient prophet who is sick and tired of waiting on God to get down here and fix things now! And we can sure relate to this!

We know what’s gone on in our world this year; and here’s what was going on in Isaiah’s world at the time: Jerusalem; the holy city, had been invaded by the Babylonians. The city was sacked, buildings were burned to the ground; and the holy Temple, the dwelling of God, had been completely destroyed, not a stone left upon a stone. Men, women and children were slaughtered and those who remained alive – the remnant – were marched into exile to Babylon. The nation of Israel was all but destroyed. It’s a scene of shocking violence! It’s hard to imagine a people more devastated. These were Israel’s darkest days. In our reading from Isaiah today (Isaiah 64:1-9), he calls out to God from a foreign land: “God don’t you see what’s happened to us? Tear open the heavens and come down! Make the mountains quake in your presence like you did before! Show our enemies who they’re dealing with. Show them your awesome deeds of power.” The people of Israel also beseech God in Psalm 80: “Hear us O God! Stir up your might! Wake up your power! Restore us! Save us! Where is the God of mighty deeds? Where is the God of the burning bush? …Where is the God who parted the Red Sea? God don’t you see what’s happened to us? Don’t you care about us? “Where are you God?!! Come save us!”

Psychologists tell us that underneath our feelings of anger lie other deeper emotions. Underneath Isaiah’s heated words are feelings of grief and disorientation. Israel was at a turning point in its history. It was grieving for the good old days and longing to go back to a time when life made sense and faith was clear. At the same time, it was waiting for God to come and make something new out of their confusion. They were waiting for God to come and put an end to their oppression and take them back home to the land of Zion – back to where things were normal and secure. What a frustrating spot to be in! We can relate. When you think about it, we are grieving too. We are grieving the way life used to be. We are grieving the ability to move around freely and to gather together. Some of us might be grieving the loss of a loved one and that awkward space of not knowing what to do next. Some are grieving the loss of a job and wonder “What now?” Some might be grieving the aftermath of an illness that has changed life. We are grieving not being able to worship together in the way we are accustomed. Wouldn’t we just love for God to tear open the heavens and come down and heal our confusing and chaotic world? Our anger softens to tears. In our grief we plead and beseech, Lord, come down here and bring us your comfort. Take us back to a more comfortable time and place! Or at least come down and solve our problems so we can move on into a new comfortable time and place. Either way, just come, comfort us, and get us out of this painful spot! But we can’t go back (although we wish we could); and we can’t quite move forward yet (although we wish we would). We’re stuck in this very uncomfortable spot. And that sums up this time we call Advent, this frustrating time of waiting. Just ask any child who is waiting impatiently for Christmas Day to come. For us adults, we feel frantic, like there is not enough time to get everything done we’d like to do before Christmas – it’s moving too fast. But to any child, this month feels like an eternity!

This nerve-wracking time in the middle of things is the place where hope lives. Today we lit the candle of Hope. Hope is a word with motion underneath it. It has a sense of looking forward to something. Hope has a sense of a vision of something better, something different, something more. Hope lives in the turning point. And turning points are not comfortable places to be. We know this in our churches. Everything is so different this year. We can’t gather together, we can’t sing together, we worship via technology. We wish we could just go back to the way things were when the church was filled. But we know that’s not possible and the way forward is not clear yet either. This in-between time of Advent is calling us to have patience—patience with ourselves, patience in the midst of things we can’t control, and even patience with God.

Our impatient prophet Isaiah realizes that he too has to take a deep breath and be patient. “YET”, says Isaiah in the midst of his lament; “YET, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, you are our potter.” Even though life is uncomfortable and frustrating, Isaiah does not turn back. He acknowledges that God is in charge and he puts his trust in God’s hands and waits on God’s timing. That sums up what Advent is all about: an uncomfortable spot between the past and the promised future. Yet It is a season of hope – and hope is in motion. Hope is coming towards us. When we say “Christmas is coming” that phrase has a sense of motion in it. Christmas is coming toward us and will be upon us if we are ready or not! In the same way, the essence of Christmas is hope – hope that God will come down and meet us, hope that God will restore our well-being and restore our relationship with Him and with our brothers and sisters; and hope that God will restore our church. We wait with longing for the future God is shaping. Isaiah encourages us not to turn back, but put our hope in God as we await the birth of the Promised Son – and as we await the birth of our future. By the way, God did tear open the heavens and come down, but not in the powerful way Isaiah envisioned. God opened a hole in the heavens and gently, quietly, on a silent night, he sent us His Son, the promised One, the Savior we had been hoping for – and the world hasn’t been the same since.

This Advent, our Advent candles will call us to wait with patience and perseverance as we prepare to greet the One the prophets proclaim as God’s Promised Son. Have patience, people of faith. Keep awake and wait on the Lord. God is not finished with us yet. With Isaiah, we cry out, “Open the heavens and come down, O God!” Let these words be our Christmas prayer this year. We have railed against heaven and demanded that God come down! We have beseeched God and acknowledged our grief over what we have lost this past year. As we wait in hope now, ready for what will happen next, let us use these words not in anger or in grief, but as an invitation to the Holy One to come and enter our lives and our world with healing, justice and peace. Come, O come, Emmanuel! Let us invite him in as we wait in hope. We are open, O God, and we invite you to open the heavens and come down. And while we wait, may the peace of the Christ child be with you all.