Advent: Preparing for the Journey with Christ
Advent: Preparing for the Journey with Christ The Rev. Bingham Powell Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday of the new Church Year. It is the first Sunday of our annual journey through Jesus’s life, from his birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension, on to Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down upon the Apostles and then sent them, and us, as the Body of Christ out into the world to be Christ’s loving hands and heart. We go through this journey of the first part of Jesus’s life so we can pattern our own lives on his and better be the Body of Christ. The first steps of this journey more properly belong on Christmas, when we celebrate his birth. That is when his life began, after all. So what are we doing in Advent? Why is this the start of the new Church Year? This short four-Sunday season of Advent, which is three and a half weeks this year, is a season of preparation for the journey. It is always wise to prepare for any journey. We need to get our tickets, line up our lodging, pack our bags, throw in a couple of changes of clothes and any medication, find a good book to read, and anything else we might need for a successful trip. Whether this journey is a hike or a car ride, a train trip or airplane flight, or a boat voyage, we also need to throw in our pack some good snacks to keep us well nourished. Of course, our liturgical journey, our journey with Christ through his life, is not literal. It is a spiritual journey, and Advent is a time to prepare spiritually. While the preparations we do in Advent are things like getting the Christmas tree up and trimmed, hanging the lights, baking the cookies, wrapping the presents and so forth, Advent is also, and I would suggest more importantly, a time for us to fill our spiritual baggage with all that we need for this journey through Jesus’s life, to prepare our souls to grow with Christ this year. One of the items that Advent gives us to throw into our pack for the journey is some rich and meaningful Scripture readings. There are certainly some great Psalms, Epistles, and Gospels, like we heard today, but I encourage you to pay extra close attention this season to the first reading from Isaiah every week. We will hear from Isaiah every week of Advent this year. Make sure that you pack those readings into your luggage. Isaiah lived in a time of great despair, and a time of great hope. These two things are not opposites. They are related to each other. I recently read a book on hope by a Korean-German philosopher, Byung-Chul Han, in which he argues that despair and hope go hand in hand like a mountain and a valley. They need each other, they create each other. The deeper the despair, the higher the hope we can have. Isaiah lived in a time in which everything that he and his people thought about the world, their identity as a people, and their relationship to God had been uprooted. The temple, the center of their faith, was destroyed, and the people were sent to live in exile. This was the time the Psalmist would say we hung up our harps and wept. Into this time, God sent Isaiah for two purposes: to explain what happened and why they were living in this great despair, and to offer them hope. The explanation that Isaiah and almost all of the prophets gave for why they were in this situation, is pretty straightforward. They failed in the twin commandments to love God and love neighbor. These two commands are linked in creation, for where does the image of God reside but in your neighbor. As Genesis teaches us, every single person is made in God’s image. They had failed to worship God, and equally failed to honor the image of God in others. Their failures were especially acute around those who were suffering, the poor, the widow, the orphan, and many more. And yet, Isaiah was also sent to offer hope. Out of the deepest despair can come the highest hope. They need each other, they create each other. And boy, did Isaiah have some lofty hopes that he shared in th