Soft Before the Potter

First Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 63:16-64:8 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 Mark 13:32-37

This day is the beginning of a new church year. Time as always has moved swiftly on, and I am more and more aware of my own mortality. Death has shown its shadowy presence as loved ones have been claimed and tears have been shed. But death has also displayed its insistent and pervasive power in the wrong choices and infidelities of the days past. And I so often feel enveloped in the darkness of my own self-centeredness, and the web of callousness which permeates human relationships. When I am honest, I know how easily I am caught in that web, and death begins to hold sway over me.

That is why for the Church of Jesus Christ the new year is not marked by drunken and numbing merrymaking on December 31, but rather by joyful anticipation and urgent exhortation to stay awake and be watchful on the First Sunday of Advent. Something big is going to happen which is going to make everything different. The powerful grip of sin and death is going to be broken once and for all, and God is coming to be with us: "Emmanuel." The people of God say, "Amen!" This event has happened decisively in the history of the cosmos and happens over and over again in our lives by the power of the resurrection.

And so we cry out to God with our father Isaiah and say, "Oh, that you would tear the heavens open and come down...working unexpected miracles such as no one has ever heard of before." We are sorely aware that "we have all withered like leaves and our sins blew us away like the wind." Yes, that is the mark of our impotency. In spite of our grandiose posturing and massive nuclear phalanxes, we are tossed about by the softest breezes of fear and anxiety; a threatening word here, an imagined slight there. In the end, we are freed to be and to create when we can acknowledge in grateful humility that we are the clay to be worked and molded by the Master Potter.

That is not such a bad fate, you know. My friends who are potters tell me that you can never force the clay or it will slip off the wheel's center and collapse. No, the clay has a life of its own, and the beauty of the creation comes in the interplay between the clay and the potter. We are not to be senseless automatons, but rather co-creators with God in the shaping of our own lives, and in the ongoing work of creation in the world. We are made in the image of God so that we can respond to the divine initiative.

Paul tells us that God is faithful and that "it was he who called you to fellowship with his son, Jesus Christ our Lord." Jesus says over and over again, "stay awake;" we can never be certain when he is going to come. But come he will, for he is faithful, and he has called us to be in fellowship with him. New life is born for us out of this fellowship with the divine made possible in Jesus Christ. And I know that I need to claim that saving fellowship every day of my life.

Advent says, "Wake up!" The new year has come in the promise of the ages fulfilled in a vulnerable babe in a manger. And yet the powers of death cannot prevail against that personal and human gift of life offered to each one of us there in the unsuspected and the unpretentious.

Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 40:1-11 2 Peter 3:8-14 Mark 1:1-8

In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

What is the image presented to you by these words? An ancient, dusty prophet standing alone in a forgotten desert? Or can you permit the image to come a bit closer to home? The wilderness is the place where we are made aware most clearly of our humanity. It is a barren and inhospitable environment where we quickly realize our weakness and inability to cope.

In the desert we are defenseless against the elements and the wild beasts. We are alone and we know desolation. We are placed at the edge of survival and there is pitifully little we can do to protect ourselves. If we are not careful, we will wander aimlessly around in circles, lost and afraid. The very heat and emptiness make a mockery of our incessant activities, our "to-ings" and "for-ings." To survive, we must stop and be still and wait for rescue.

Rene Voillaume, one who is familiar with deserts, writes, "a desert has no apparent human purpose. It brings man to the edge of his weakness and impotency, and compels him to look for strength in God alone."

The wilderness experience runs deep in the blood of the people of God. Moses led the children of Israel through the desert to the promised land. In Hosea God leads the people into the wilderness that he might "speak tenderly" to them. Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry, as was Paul several years later.

And what of you and the wilderness in your life? Are you willing to explore the rough and broken terrain of your own being, that God might penetrate even that darkest and most desolate part of you, and speak the words of comfort and pardon? There must be willingness, as with the prodigal, to turn around and "prepare the way of the Lord."

Advent is a time of watchfulness and of preparation. And there is a confident joy in the preparation of the highway for the Lord who is to come. For he will come with his power which is like that of a shepherd who tenderly cradles his sheep in his arms. A 14th century English mystic described our God who cares for us so tenderly in these words: "He abideth patiently, He forgiveth easily, He understandeth mercifully, He forgetteth utterly."

The patience of the Lord God is the abiding patience of love freely given. "In the Lord's eyes, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years are as a day." In his grace he waits for us to initiate the work of preparation within ourselves. We can begin by looking at ourselves with the loving eyes of the Good Shepherd, and thus be enabled to participate in the pain of inner conversion, the work of divine love within. For the foundations will shake, and new heavens and a new earth will come. The inner terrain will be claimed by God's love, and we can then go with John the Baptizer to herald the Lord's coming into the wilderness of the world.

We are in the world to prepare the way for the advent of the Lord. By the life that we lead, we give evidence to the healing and transforming power of God's love. We become the signs of hope and of new life in the desolation and darkness which surround so many. We become transparent with God's love. Yes, as fragile and imperfect as we are, in us others will see the seed of the new heavens and the new earth. If our eyes are intent on the Lord's coming, that is. If our eyes are watchful for the signs of Emmanuel.

When this article appeared, Conrad Hoover shared a ministry of retreat direction and spiritual renewal at the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C.