Between Sundays for Week of December 4, 2023
Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down.
Isaiah 64:1
The prophet Isaiah gives voice to Israel’s longing for God’s presence. It’s a plea that is as vivid today as it ever was. Like our ancient ancestors, we know what it is to long for God to show up in some visible and tangible way in our lives. We know what it is to hope for a restoration of the things that have been torn apart. We know what it is to long for healing or wholeness. We know what it feels like to be at our wits end and to demand that God hear our cry.
The stories of longing for God’s presence or activity to enter into this world fill the pages of scripture. These stories teach us to be honest about our lives and our circumstances, the way our ancestors in faith were honest about theirs. These are the stories that teach us hope.
When we are honest about the world we are living in, when we are honest about the ways that neither our world, nor our lives, reveal the fullness of what God intends, when we can point to the ways that we experience God’s absence more than God’s presence, that longing for something more that we experience in that moment is hope. And we would not learn hope, we would not experience hope if we didn’t also know what it is to long for something more.
In Mark’s gospel, we hear Jesus inviting us to “keep awake,” to live in a state of hope-filled waiting. We keep awake with our eyes peeled for signs of God’s new life breaking forth. Our honesty requires us to name that the world is a mess, but Jesus is the one who comes to remind us that God has not abandoned us, indeed, God is with us. Even now, as we await Jesus’ return, we live with the promise that the story of all creation ends in the empty tomb of Jesus blossoming into new life. In Jesus, God has begun the work of restoring ALL creation and bringing it, and us, into God’s abundance. We will not see the fulfillment today, but we live in the hope of this promise.
P.S. Want to listen to the readings and hear the full sermon from Sunday on this text? Click here to view the fourth Sunday of Extended Advent. Visit our website to learn more about Extended Advent at Bethlehem, including this year’s theme Beyond Human Time, and all the ways you can share in our preparations this Advent season.
Don’t miss an episode as we celebrate 12 Days of Christmas starting on December 25th wherever you listen to podcasts.
Abby and Amy reflect on the ways that the faith they share welcomes questions more than answers and how conversation with others is one way we can wrestle with living out our values.
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Ponderings
“It is not true that our hopes for liberation of humankind, of justice, of human dignity of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history—
This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that the true worshipers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.
So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ—the life of the world.”
Read Allan Boesak’s entire poem, Advent Credo. Boesak (born 1946) is a South African pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church, politician, anti-apartheid activist, and author of fifteen books. This poem is taken from his book Walking on Thorns (Eerdmans, 1984), and is often but wrongly attributed to Daniel Berrigan.
