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Jay Weldon The
Journey of Advent Mary had a dream one night, and she woke up almost in tears. “Joseph,” she said, “I had a dream that everyone was planning a party for Jesus, but they spent so much time on themselves, when we arrived with him, nobody seemed to care that he was even there.” A journey always has a starting point as well as a destination. The beginning and the end of each subset in the mosaic of life serve as trusty defining actions—our journey is marked by its beginning and its end— and yet the color and shape and texture of life’s mosaic is found in the journey. While marked most obviously by the starting point and the destination, the journey itself is where we travel in between and actually live life. It is like the dash on a gravestone that represents so much more than a simple dash should; between 1924 and 2003 this person lived life, now summed up with a stunted line. Advent is like that dash—not just a precursor to the destination of Christmas, but a place for us to find life. It is the picture we paint between start and finish, while we wait, while we anticipate, while we journey on, and often discover that in this in between, there we learn and remember who we are. Advent reminds us that our beginning is Christ and our end is Christ, and yet there is still a journey from here to there, and even beyond. We know our destination. It is as trusty and reliable as that star that leads us there into the Bethlehem night, but while that second genesis is the destination, just as that final genesis that will be is our ultimate destination, we must be reminded today that we are not there yet. As we begin this journey, I notice how many various images there are in this Advent tapestry, how many different roads we travel, how many smaller pictures create this larger masterpiece of life. Like the quilt that our grandmother spent a lifetime sewing together, like the chapel ceiling of a European sanctuary, like the many paths Robert Frost must have considered before choosing the one that would make the difference, this Advent tapestry holds so many images. In Advent exist the images of peace, light, God’s victory at the end of times, swords being beaten into plowshares, preparedness and expectations. There is the more obvious imagery of wreathes and candles, of mangers and the invasion of holiness. These are images that begin to define us, not just because we may arrive at that final destination of birth and rebirth, but images that can define us as we travel along. They compete for our attention. They ask us if we know who we are, and if we really know where we are going. They remind us that we are not there yet. In New York City, across from the United Nations Headquarters building in Ralph Bunche Park, the Isaiah Wall faces the leaders of the world with an inscription familiar to us: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares. And their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war any more. -Isaiah" Across the street from the park, on the United Nations’ own property, stands a statue that was a gift of the Soviet Union. In 1959, a soviet sculptor created in stone that very image of a sword being beaten into a plowshare, a weapon once designed to take life, being transformed into a tool that sustains life. It was reported one year later, in 1960, that soviet premier Nakita Kruschev passed by that statue on his way into the United Nations building where he beat his own shoe onto the table with his famous acclamation, “we will bury you.” Some claim that this was an aberration from truth and simple journalistic sensationalism, but there is truth in these conflicting images: if we as a people believe we know who we are and where we are going, if we can see in that statue and in those prophetic words a world reborn, yet see in our hands swords still drawn, we must admit that we are not there yet. When we lived in Atlanta, the short four-mile stretch of Peachtree Road that lay between us and the shopping district of Buckhead was lined, among other things, by a string of churches. Each year, in Advent, there were two churches that caught my attention. Each of the two hung roadside banners every year during this time of Christmas anticipation: one read “Peace Will Come,” and the other, “All Will Be Well.” I loved them because of their simple messages stated in austere beauty, shining into the early darkness of the late afternoon. I began to appreciate the irony of these signs each year, calling out to shoppers huddled in grid-lock, racing slowly against each other to buy their way through another holiday season. They called out like St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans, “Sleepers, awake! Salvation is so close!” Each of us believed the message of those signs; we were simply looking for our salvation in the shopping malls that lay ahead. It was also during this time that what some have called the “War on Christmas” began. Stores across America, waking up themselves to the realities of a new millennium, began asking employees to wish patrons a simple Happy Holidays. As nativity scenes disappeared from storefronts, as Targets and Starbucks and Best Buys toned down any hint of the gracious incarnation, as those familiar words of the season disappeared from most seasonal transactions, some were incensed. I have to admit that I was among those at first who missed the simple warmth of a “Merry Christmas.” I once became quite angry with a work colleague of mine who refused to wish me anything but a happy holiday. “You are a Methodist!” I told her. “We talked about your daughter’s confirmation retreat. I think it is alright for you to wish me a Merry Christmas!” She was unrelenting, and I remained quietly offended. It was a sign of the times, but slowly I began to learn something from those church banners juxtaposed against the malls of Atlanta. Starbucks gave me the coffee I wanted, Target gave me the candle holder I needed for my mom, Best Buy gave me the gift certificate I needed for my dad, but they couldn’t give me Christmas. It had nothing to do with their holiday salutation; Christmas wasn’t found there, and a simple phrase wouldn’t change that fact. I had to come to notice that the writing was on the wall, just as literally as Isaiah is crying out to the world in etched stone, just as these churches were calling out to me in their roadside signs. “When you drive on,” they seemed to say, “you will be reminded that what you are looking for this Christmas will not be found in those stores. When you have finished, come back and let us journey together that long road to Bethlehem. Let us beat the swords of our hearts into plowshares together, again.” If we know who we are this advent, and we know we are not yet there, we must remember again where it is we are actually going. Today begins a new year in the church calendar. We will voyage again this year through readings of Christ’ birth and presentation, his baptism and first miracle, his betrayal and death, his glorious resurrection and ascension, and receive again the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Actually, we have just completed the story, and yet today we begin again. We do this year after year, repeating again and again the stories of the life of Jesus, because eventually we find that his story becomes our own. As St. Paul says, we find we are children of light, not of darkness. And so, even today as we watch the days grow shorter, as we watch a world full of both hope and fear, just as darkness tempts to overcome us, we remember that call to salvation, and we awake to find salvation is now closer than it has ever been before. We find that the light shines even brighter in the darkness. In fact, we begin this new year with the vision of the completed reign of God, not just through Isaiah’s vision of peace, but in the fully consummated reign of God in our Lord Jesus Christ. We begin another year of sanctification with the clear relief of justification. We awake from the darkness and move into the light, at peace in the knowledge and assurance that our salvation and deliverance has already been sent. Even in these dark days of winter, there is no question to be asked of our identity, borrowing the language of the Prayer Book: we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’ own forever. We are the fruit of that second genesis; we are children of the light. We may not be there yet, but along the journey, we learn and remember who and whose we really are. Our identity is formed in the journey we make. In his book “The Long Walk to Freedom,” Nelson Mandela says that his 27 years of waiting in a South African prison changed him in a way he did not expect. He went in wanting freedom for his people, but after 27 years, he came out wanting liberation for everyone, white and black, rich and poor, oppressed and oppressor. It was in that terrible journey that he realized who he truly was, and that his destination was not what it first appeared to be. A journey always has a starting point as well as a destination. The destination is always beyond us. It does not mean that we will not make it, but simply that we are not there yet. But this Advent, just as in life, it is not about the destination; it is the journey that we make from here to there. It is about the peace and light, God’s ultimate victory at the end of times, waking up to find that we can beat our own swords into plowshares, of preparedness and expectations, of wreathes and candles and mangers that we encounter along the way—images that transform us along the way. God willing, we will again be changed by the journey. Amen.
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