Advent is a journey, a time to remember the life of Jesus as we prepare to celebrate his incarnation.  Advent means "Jesus is coming."

Each one of us is at a different stage of the journey of life, even those who share the chronological time frame.  We are each at different stages of spiritual becoming; different places in our theological, emotional, and social journey.  This Advent season, however, each of needs to find a way to the manger in Bethlehem, to kneel before the Christ child.

            Some walk straight to the manger and kneel there without conflict or concern.  Questions about who might have been there and what the scene might have looked like had they been there are embraced by faith in a God who is able to accomplish whatever needs to be accomplished.  In simple trust, the Christmas story speaks now, as of old, its story of peace on earth, hope to all people.

            For some, the manger scene of Bethlehem holds more questions than reassurance - questions about Wise Men and shepherds, questions about Joseph, questions about Bethlehem, the Star, and the virgin birth.  The symbolic truth of the Christmas story may be at odds with the evidence of historical reality.  Yet God so seldom works from outside in, from historical evidence to inner faith, from physical proof to spiritual belief.  My experience in matters of faith is that "believing is seeing."  We must find the Christ child within us before we are able to walk the streets of Bethlehem to the manger.

            On this first Sunday in Advent, the message is "Hope."  The hope we embrace in Advent, toward the coming of Jesus, actually began almost three millennia ago.  David became king and united the twelve tribes of Israel into a world power.  His son Solomon became king and built the Temple of which his father dreamed of building, a Temple for Yahweh - though it is always known as Solomon's Temple.  After Solomon's death, the nation united under David again split into two countries.  Soon, the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria.  Eventually, the southern kingdom of Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem, faced the armies of Babylon.  The end of their world was near.  Into this setting came the prophet Jeremiah.

The prophet Jeremiah lived right around the fateful year 587 BCE when the armies of Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem.  They burned and destroyed the temple Solomon had built.  It was the end of the world for the Jewish people, the end of their world. 

Jeremiah gave voice to the people's sense of hopelessness and loss.  In doing so he helped them to let go of what was no more and to grieve their loss. His became the imaginative voice of the poet, helping them embrace this loss, not as the defeat of Yahweh but within the context of their Yahweh faith.  Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann correctly understands Jeremiah's wisdom, that only through grief is newness possible.  For them as for us, new life can only become a reality when what is lost is grieved and let go. 

            Jeremiah allows his people to grieve and let go, to grieve and be free to embrace what will come next.  At first, what came next was exile.  They became a people without a home - learning to "sing the Lord's song in a foreign land."  Then, in the midst of exile, Jeremiah images a new world, a day when God will fulfill the promise made to the houses of Israel and Judah.  The old ways of corrupt monarchy no longer offer new life.  The lifeless Temple cult no longer provides hope.  The monarchy now destroyed will be replanted - a righteous Branch for David.  And the true worship of God - worship through the doing of justice and righteousness - will live in the land.  This was Jeremiah's vision, not the vision of a politician but the vision of a poet.

            The vision of prophets such as Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Micah was not a prediction of future political events.  Theirs was a profound proclamation that God present and active in spite of corrupt monarchies, in spite of exile, and regardless of those future political events.  In their vision, hope of a Messiah was born.

Even when Israel became a nation again, occasionally even with some measure of sovereignty, there were still corrupt leaders and times of exile.  The world into which Jesus was born was dominated by Rome.  The life of those living in Galilee and Judea was dominated by such as Herod the Great and his evil son Herod Antipas.  There was leadership in the temple and oppression of the poor, the widows, and the orphans.   In Jesus' world, messianic expectation was at a fever pitch.  Hope in God's promise to save Israel was high, even though it centered in a military messiah to overthrow the Romans.  Into such a world, Jesus came.  He was born, lived his life, and died, and the world is forever changed.

You and I live in a world vastly different, yet in many ways remarkably similar to that of Jesus.  We still live in fear from the threat of terrorism.  We still live in fear that our world will end as the threat of nuclear was has again become a reality.  Faith in our leaders suffers because of corruption.  Government is more concerned with sustaining itself than with the plight of the poor, the widow, and the orphan.  Cynicism is rampant and a sense of hopelessness is routinely distracted by the lures of materialism.  Even the church seems largely incapable of offering newness of life to the people.  Still, much of our messianic hope is centered in a military solution.  We still believe that force of arms will transform a broken world. 

            It remains the task of poetic imagination to enable us, to invite us, to kneel in Bethlehem, to find life and hope.  Ann Weems is a poet.  It is her book of Advent poetry Kneeling in Bethlehem that inspires this series of Advent sermons.  She writes:

Our God will be where God will be, with no constraints, no predictability.

Our God lives where our God lives, and destruction has no power and even death cannot stop the living.

Our God will be born where God will be born, but there is no place to look for the One who comes to us. 

When God is ready, God will come, even to a godforsaken place like a stable in Bethlehem.

Watch . for you know not when God comes.

Watch, that you might be found whenever, wherever God comes.

 

Some of us walk into Advent tethered to our unresolved yesterdays,

The pain still stabbing, the hurt still throbbing,

It's not that we don't know better;

It's just that we can't stand up anymore by ourselves.

On the way to Bethlehem, will you give us a hand?

 

In each heart lies a Bethlehem, an inn

Where we must ultimately answer whether there is room or not.

When we are Bethlehem-bound,

We experience our own advent in his.

When we are Bethlehem-bound,

We can no longer look the other way conveniently not seeing stars, nor hearing angel voices.

We can no longer excuse ourselves by busily tending our sheep or our kingdoms.

This Advent let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that the Lord has made known to us.

In the midst of shopping sprees, let's ponder in our hearts the Gift of Gifts.

Through the tinsel, let's look for the gold of the Christmas Star.

In the excitement and confusion, in the merry chaos, let's listen for the brush of angels' wings.

This Advent, let's go to Bethlehem and find our kneeling places.