Advent 1B
November 30, 2008

Change

The ancient cry, as voiced in Isaiah, is ours.


Time was, God, when you used to get our attention unambiguously. There was no doubt about it—not for us, not for our adversaries. You would tear open the heavens and come down. You were overwhelming, overpowering. Your awesome presence started a fire that burned clean, that changed things the way fire boils water into steam. Back in those days, we didn’t expect your advent, your coming; but when you arrived, the mountains, and we with them, in fact all the nations, trembled at your presence. From the experience of your unexpected and unpredictable ways, we developed a pattern—a way to expect you, even in your unexpectedness. This pattern, this worship, became our way to put ourselves in the right place at the right time; after all, we realized that you meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways.
Yes Lord, we remember the way things were; but some thing changed. You changed, God; everything changed. Why? Why did you no longer show yourself in the ways to which we had become accustomed? Yes, at first you had been totally unexpected. However, we got used to that about you. Your newness back then changed us. But then you changed. Why? Were you angry with us? Is that why you hid yourself? That’s why we transgressed; that’s why we sinned! Oh, some of us still go through the motions of being in what we thought were the right place and the right time, but all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We are fading fast, like dry leaves taken away on the wind. We don’t know any longer what to expect. Is this a punishment? You have hidden your face. We don’t know where you are, what you are thinking, or whether you’ll ever do anything ever again.
No one attempts to take hold of you, Lord—nobody feels like that’s possible. So nobody calls on you. For you have hidden yourself, you are not obvious, you are not predictable. And here we are in this predicament of unknowing and stumbling through all the ways people try to invent for knowing the unknown, for predicting the unpredictable, for anticipating what’s going to come next, for managing change, and even controlling you.
Yet, O Lord: you are the potter, we are the clay. We have been fighting that. O Lord, do not remember us this way forever. Change us. We are all your people.
Just as the Psalmist sings his plea:
Yes, Lord, let your face shine. Stir up your might, like you used to, and come to save us. Restore us O God of hosts. If you make it be the way things were—rebuking our enemies and showing favor to the one at your right hand; if you change things back, we will never turn back from you. Give us that life and we will call on your name. O Shepherd of Israel, do it again. Yes, lead us like a flock.

The earliest teachers of the Church, such as Paul, teach us.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace and Peace—not as you have been saying: the anger of a hidden God; no, but God being God.
Even in what you would call dark times or hard circumstances, by the grace of God in Christ you have been enriched, strengthened. You are not lacking in any spiritual gift. You just need to wait: not for things being returned to the way they were, not hat kind of restoring. Rather, wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ: the way things are—new and ever-changing. Fear not. God will strengthen you. God is faithful and gives you the spiritual gifts to be faithful in fellowship, in relationship, with Christ—Lord of the ever-new creating.


Christ speaks Gospel:
The way things come, the way God is, changes.
Nobody knows the day or hour. What was the right time and place yesteryear is not tomorrow. Therefore, don’t try to predict, don’t try to control. Beware, keep alert. After all, do you want memories of the way things were, or life, love and fellowship with God and humanity as it is and will be?
So Christ says to all: Keep awake.

Yes, we are in for a change.
The world is changing; it always has been.
God is changing; God always will.
We are changing.
The world we know is already the world that was. Whether we call it family, tradition, church, custom, nation, earth, universe—
What we know has already changed and is changing yet.
Consider, then, as you pray, not that God will make things be that certain way you can depend on. Pray, instead, that you can be depended upon to open up to what comes as God comes—that you are open to the change that is God.

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