A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Associate Professor of New Testament, given in Christ Chapel on December 6, 2005

Advent is not a cozy season. Scripture sets the stage with a piercing cry in the desert air. The land's contours are jagged, those rough places treacherous, the paths torturous. The air is cold, the camel's hair scratchy. Belly hungry, face gaunt. Beasts of prey prowl just outside the camp. And we wait for the Lord.

Prophets cry out -- obsessive poets with unrealistic demands. They expose sin. They explode denial. Proving the power of their speech they do mighty signs: produce bread in the midst of famine, clean the skin of the leper, bring dead children to life. Prophets clear clutter, block escape routes -- They eliminate distractions. They preach: REPENT.

Elijah, Isaiah, John call us to account, and they instruct us how to wait.

Advent's bare landscape and the clear notes of the prophets stand in alarming, even absurd contrast to the crowded commercial calendar in this country where people drive to Walmart at the stroke of midnight on the Friday after Thanksgiving to buy IPods and Xboxes at special pre-Christmas prices. The wind of Isaiah's voice howls through the malls and the Congress and the courts. It blows through prisons, even those that appear on no map. Elijah is at home in Darfur, or Bagdad, or New Orleans' Ninth Ward. John the Baptizer takes us to these places in Advent, summons them for us and speaks the word of the Lord there. What these prophets confront us with is more than we can hear in four weeks.

Lots of us can't wait for it to be over, for God to fulfill the promise, the baby to be born, lights to go on, temperature to warm up, the presents to be unwrapped and stacked in piles. But I think Advent goes too fast. Learning how to wait upon the Lord, from these scriptures, takes all the time we have to give it, because most of our lives are expended in this waiting, seeking God's elusive face, calling on God to lift us up, or to hide us, even on this side of Jesus' birth, even on this side of Jesus' resurrection.

Waiting for God is harrowing. Israel in exile knew that, and so did Judeans ruled by Herod. Bonhoeffer in prison knew it. Soldiers driving trucks in Iraq know its anguish and so do their parents and spouses and kids. Faithful waiting is dangerous -- just listen to Isaiah complain about the wicked, the perverse, his adversaries. Hear the psalmist: When evil doers come upon me to eat up my flesh, yet will I put my trust in God.". . . though an army should encamp against me, yet my heart shall not be afraid."

"Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil falsely against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for in the same way they prosecuted the prophets who were before you."

God does not make Godself known by wiping out those whom you judge to be wicked. God does make Godself known in the faith and witness, the courage and the broken hearts, of those who die at the hands of sinners.

"In the path of your judgments oh Lord, we wait for you."
We know that God is righteous, but behold, we see bloodshed. Revered institutions are not trusted. Lies repeated over and over, obscure truth. Greed and gluttony run unchecked. God looks powerless or even, absent, or uncaring, hiding God's face. Isaiah laments, giving words to disappointment and threatening despair: "Oh Lord, your hand is lifted up but they do not see it."

The cries of the Advent prophets call us to wake up, to sober up, to see what's really happening. Their true speech is the antidote to the strong drug that makes us dull, or in prophetic language: blind and deaf. Their true speech counteracts the force of denial that afflicts us with "compassion fatigue" that became a chronic syndrome just when we needed most to be able to feel. Whatever we medicate ourselves with - food or alcohol or drugs . . . . on-line poker, pornography or by shopping we are hard for God to get through to, both in judgment and in grace.

There are soldiers from the Iraq war who have been so badly injured, yet spared death, that their families move to Walter Reed for one to two years to keep them company while they are treated.
I don't want to think abut this pain. Isaiah calls me there.

I don't want to think about the people pulled off the roofs in New Orleans now living in Austin without money, job, education. John the baptizer brings me there.

Lament of the prophets is the opposite of denial; it is the waiting which is the response of faith. And just before we get ourselves worked up into a self satisfied tirade against "them" -- the prophets pull us up and convict us of sin -- of neglect for the weak, of a deficit of mercy -- of greed and our own violence. They say the only way to wait for God with any integrity is for us to repent, to confess, to change our ways, to turn around.

John the Baptist's preaching uses the prophetic pictures of sweeping, threshing, cleaning, sorting clearing out, making room -- all to mean to repent.

In the Advent chill we await Jesus. This Jesus whom we await in hope is a prophet like Elijah, who befriends and feeds the widow and brings life to the dead. Taking her by the hand, he says, "Little girl, I say to you, arise." Jesus blesses and breaks the loaves and feeds the hungry in the desert. Elijah followed Elisha, and Elijah came to life in John and Jesus was baptized by John who preceded him in death. "And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus."

Jesus whom we await speaks truth to power. And it scares the heck out of Herod. When he hears that Jesus and his disciples are curing sick people and casting out demons -- Herod says, "John whom I beheaded has been raised."
"They were afraid of the crowd for they all regarded John as truly a prophet."

Jesus comes to show that God is not absent and not powerless. God's power, Christ, the power of God and the Wisdom of God only looks weak. In this dark time, we are not crazy to hang on to compassion and tenderness. God does not oppose terror with terror. Terror can never be defeated by terror.

How to wait in Advent. Repent of your violence and lust. Seek God's face no matter what. Even if your father and mother forsake you, God will not. There is another chance. There is hope and deliverance for those who grieve, and there is healing for limbs lost and minds warped and people swept away. The faith of the psalmist who waits changes from agonized lament to eloquent faith in the space of one verse: "For I Believe I will see the Lord in the land of the living."

AMEN.