"Will it Always Be Winter?"
By Maddie Downer
(Isaiah 64:1-9, Psalm 80:1-19, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:24-37)
Today is the first Sunday of Advent. In the United Church of Christ’s lectionary calendar, the theme of this Sunday is longing. Here in our church, we use different themes for the candles. The first Sunday’s candle is hope. I had originally written a sermon about longing, about waiting for something, it was called “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing.” This is not that sermon.
Last night I was thinking about my sermon and I realized that talking just about longing, just about how Isaiah is yearning for God to make his presence known, that’s only half of it. Longing without hope is a deep and dark place. Longing without hope is despair and loneliness. But, we believe that our longing will be answered, that there will be a light in the darkness, while we are longing, we are filled with hope.
I thought of a favorite Christmas song of mine, “In Like a Lion” written by Relient K. They originally intended for the song to be a part of the soundtrack for the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the movie based on the book by CS Lewis. So, whether or not you know the song, you probably know of the book, maybe you’ve seen the movie. Just in case you haven’t been exposed to this great work, here’s a brief intro:
Four brothers and sisters, Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter Pevensie are sent to live in the countryside during World War II with Professor Digory Kirke; first Lucy, then Edmund, and finally all four Pevensie children find their way into the land of Narnia through a wardrobe in the professor’s house. When they find Narnia, the land is in a state of endless winter, a state it has been in for a hundred years already.
Relient K’s song, picks up on this key fact, “it is always winter but never Christmas.” They are always longing, but where do they find hope? The chorus of Relient K’s song says,
Cause when it's always winter but never Christmas
Sometimes it feels like you're not with us
But deep inside our hearts we know
That you are here and we will not lose hope
The Biblical writers know that feeling well, that waiting on the Lord, the deep longing. We know it, too. Have you ever yearned to be closer to God? Have you ever felt like God was silent, or too far away, or you were too disconnected? I’m sure we’ve all felt a seemingly endless winter at some point… Maybe we felt like people couldn’t understand us, like an illness had no cure, like we had no hope… Those are our winters.
This is Isaiah’s winter:
Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down,
That the mountains might quake at Your presence
Behold, You were angry, for we sinned,
We continued in them a long time;
And shall we be saved?
6 For all of us have become like one who is unclean,
And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;
And all of us wither like a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
For You have hidden Your face from us
And have [c]delivered us into the power of our iniquities.
And the Psalmist’s in Psalm 80:
4 O LORD God of hosts,
How long will You [d]be angry with the prayer of Your people?
5 You have fed them with the bread of tears,
And You have made them to drink tears in [e]large measure.
6 You make us [f]an object of contention to our neighbors,
And our enemies laugh among themselves.
And in chapter 13 of the gospel of Mark, Mark’s is cautioning – we don’t know when the Lord will come again, so be alert. The sense of disconnection, of waiting, of longing to be with the Lord once more, is there.
Here, two thousand years later, we are still in the middle of a winter – we are still waiting on the coming of the king, on a new heaven and a new earth, we are still longing to be fully present to the divine, we are still longing for peace and justice for all people, we are longing for a world where children don’t go to sleep hungry, where parents don’t have to decide whether to pay for the house or pay for health insurance, a world where the other 99% of the population is treated fairly, where people aren’t treated as less than based on their gender, their race, their religion, or what-have-you, a world where who you love doesn’t generate hate from others, a world where “ism’s” and “phobias” don’t exist… we’re so far from that now, we’re in one heck of a winter, we’re longing for a change in the weather…
Thankfully, in our longing, there is a deep sense of hope. Isaiah held onto this hope in the midst of his longing:
5 You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness,
Who remembers You in Your ways.
8 But now, O LORD, You are our Father,
We are the clay, and You our potter;
And all of us are the work of Your hand.
9 Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD,
Nor remember iniquity forever;
Behold, look now, all of us are Your people.
The Psalmist finds hope as well:
18 Then we shall not turn back from You;
Revive us, and we will call upon Your name.
19 O LORD God of hosts, restore us;
Cause Your face to shine upon us, [n]and we will be saved.
In the New Testament, the disciples’ hope lies in the return of the Lord, the second coming of the King, which they eagerly await. Our great hope, too, lies in the Lord.
However, something Mark said made me think that just waiting wasn’t enough. Mark tells us to ‘keep alert!’ which I think means, start acting now. Keep alert to the injustices in the world and the ways in which God would want us to respond to them. Do all we can in love, work towards respect and equality for all people, cultivate peace… In the middle of our winter, we can sow the seeds of hope. We must be alert, but not idle. For if the master of the house returns, do we want him to see the house the way it is now? Servants oppressing other servants, some starving, some fighting, the house in disarray? Or do we want to prepare the house as best we can?
We’re headed into the physical season of winter now. The days are shorter, the nights are longer, the air is colder. But, like the Biblical writers anxiously awaiting the coming of the messiah, we too have a reminder of this hope in Jesus Christ, in our remembrance of his birth, in our remembrance of his death on the cross and the great hope that his sacrifice gives to us. We have hope because believe that Christ has died and Christ has risen and Christ will come again.
I encourage you, this winter, to take a look at the places in your life, in our church and community, in our world, that are longing for something – for change, for attention, for love – and start infusing these darkened places with hope. Light a candle, say a prayer, sit with God and recognize the brokenness of our world, our selves… and recognize that in God there is hope, that all things might be made new, that it might be winter now, but soon, yes, soon it will be Christmas.
