This Advent I’ve asked a cross-section of Anchorage pastors, representing a variety of faith traditions, to submit a brief Advent Reflection under this year’s theme: “Does Celebrating Advent Really Make a Difference?”
Our next Advent Reflection was submitted by Rector Michael Michael Burke of St. Mary’s Episcopal at Tudor and Lake Otis.[img_assist|nid=163107|title=Rector Michael Burke|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=300|height=412]
Does Celebrating Advent Really Make a Difference?
I’ve been sitting here reading words written long ago… some 500 years after the Babylonian Captivity, back about 2000 years… Words tumbling and rumbling on down to today, the words of the prophet Isaiah in the mouth of John the Baptizer:
Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
Make his paths straight,
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of our God…
I’m thinking that this time in my life the barriers are not external, they are internal… Those things which keep me from God are not physical mountains or valleys or deserts, or rough ways outside of myself, but metaphorical and very real mountains and valleys inside myself.
Don Waring, a preacher from Ohio, writes that the “mountains, valleys, and rough places [John] referred to were not that of any outward landscape, but rather the untamed geography of the inner life. John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. That’s a fancy way of talking about a change of character, not a change of scenery.”
So for me, Advent is a time of “turning inward” to examine my own heart, and “turning outward” to others in service and compassion. If that sounds like “repentance,” that’s what it is…
In Hebrew: “repentance” is to STOP! And to “Turn Around” a change in direction, a new “facing forward” fundamentally different from what has come before.
What is it in my life that functions as a barrier to God? In what direction do I need to head to get around or over these things, and to “clear the way” for a renewed and lifegiving relationship with the Lord? These days at hand are days to plow out the old ruts and furrows which have held me for too long…
At first small changes in my life don’t feel any different; but they are in a new direction, and each footstep takes me closer to where God calls me to be. And if the mountain of habit, or comfortable patterns of life, or the valleys of discouragement seem too deep, the furrows too many and daily life too rough… If the life you and I live, and the lives of those around us seem to have taken too many crooked twists and turns for there to ever be a way home again… hear this:
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of our God…
God makes a way for our “turning.” God Does. God Is. Yes, this is repentance, when, in the words of St Augustine: “the dark night of doubt becomes the light of peace.”
In the words of Lutheran theologian Martin Marty, repentance is “not a sour dour mournful act,” but a joyous rebirth and celebration of our renewed commitment to follow Jesus in all we do.
Preparing for Advent then, is not just about celebrating the events of the past, the blessed birth of the infant Jesus in the manger in Bethlehem, nor entirely about our hopeful expectations of Christ’s second coming; ultimately, it is also about the present moment: a time of turning anew, and of living into the very present reality of God With Us,
Right Here…
Right Now…
Happy New Church Year.