TEXT:
Isaiah 64:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
HARK: Longing for a Change
A
hunter walking along a road in the mountains of
The hunter was
astounded. "You mean to tell me
that you can tell all that just by listening with your ear to the ground?"
"Ear to the
ground, nothing," the famed hunting guide said, "That was the truck
that just ran over me."
This is the time
of year when it's easy to get run over by the sheer weight of things to do and
places to go and people to see; run over by the sheer volume of all the
activities and invitations and festivities swirling around us; run over by the
needs and the wants and the rollers of credit card presses. It's easy to get up on the day after Christmas
with little more than the faint recollection of the large red and green truck
that crushed us beneath its wheels. It's
easy, with that kind of memory from Christmases past, to greet the nearing of
this year's season like the wealthy old dowager in the cartoon who says to her
husband, "Gad, Henry, here is Christmas at our throats again."
Gad. Surely there is a better word with which to
begin our Advent walk toward Christmas.
Surely there is a more eager word to channel our attitudes and shape our
perspectives. I guess it won't surprise
you to hear that I have one to suggest.
Hark. It's an archaic sort of
word that doesn't crop up much around coffee tables these days. If it weren't for the Christmas hymn,
"Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," we scarcely would know the word. It's a "King James" kind of word
that comes from the 12th or 13th century.
But even though
it's not a very frequent visitor to our conversation, we pretty much know what
it means to "hark". It's like
putting a verbal exclamation mark in front of a sentence to call attention to
something important about to be said. It
is to say "tune in" or "perk up." It is to say "Listen!" or
"Quiet," or " Pay attention" or "Listen up!" It is a buck grazing leisurely in a field
suddenly jerking up its neck and cocking its ear into the wind at the slightest
out of the ordinary sound. It is a word
that sits you a little straighter and draws you out to the edge of your seat.
Which makes it a
pretty good word with which to start these days. "Hark" the herald angels sing. "Listen closely for the early sounds of
Christmas before the noises of the season take over. "Hark!
Watch closely for the little signs and wonders; the quieter melodies and
movements of God that so easily get run over.
This, if we had them, would be the season to stretch out our antennae.
Of course it's
not the only time for such to happen.
Advent is simply a season of rehearsal; a time to practice and sharpen
the harkening skills we are called to use year 'round. Because the truth is, it's easy to get run
over by life in general. We live in a
world of co-opted ethics, morals, life-styles, values, visions, and
loyalties. We live in a world in which
dramatic confusion reigns about the relative weight of moral virtues and vices;
in which argument has replaced persuasion; in which combat has superseded
diplomacy. Longing for something better,
the prophet’s exasperated plea to God is often our own: “O that you would tear open the heavens and
come down…so that the nations might tremble at your presence!”
Advent is the
season to long for something better, and to practice being ready when it comes,
for no one, we are cautioned by scripture, knows the day nor the hour - neither
the angels nor the son.
But if harkening
is “longing,” it is hopeful rather
than wishful longing. It is expectant. Harkening is being sensitive to the sounds
and signs of God's movement and inbreaking rule. If Christ began that transformation in a new
and decisive way, as we, in our conversion, confessed, and we name the obvious
– that the transformation is incomplete – then faithful watching is keeping
alert to God’s ongoing transformation.
There is more to come and more to be done, as when a family moves into a
new home: they are home, to be sure, in
a new and wonderful way, but there are boxes to be opened for weeks to come,
unpacking and placing and storing, arranging.
There is still
so much to be done. With homeless
people wandering the streets of every city in the world, and soldiers dodging
terrorists in the Middle East, flames dancing frighteningly close to fuses;
with human apathy to environmental deterioration and virulent racial
separation; with a culture in which we know, at ever younger ages, how babies
are made, but forget what to do with them once they are made, there is still so
much to come; still so much Christ to be born.
But we believe, as the prophet confessed it, that “God is the potter; we
are the clay; we are all the work of God’s hand.” A work decidedly still in process.
Hark. It is living sensitive to the moldings and birthings
of Christ still going on. It is living
sensitive to the movements of God and God's voice in our hectic days and cold
nights. It is listening for the ways and
opportunities for us to participate in that work - for the ways and
opportunities to build mangers of our own that Christ may be born anew in
us. We have, as Paul reminds the
Corinthians, every perfect gift. We have
all the resources we need to make of this wait both faithful and creative. I see it in this church all the time. We have here all the raw materials one could
possibly imagine: money, talented and
resourceful, and influential people; functional, visible, and accessible
facilities, the heritage of a responsive and committed church. We indeed have every perfect gift - which is
strange to hear when all the time we are wanting so much more. But whatever else we want; regardless of
whatever else we might get, we have everything we need for life changing, world
altering ministry right now.
"Hark"
then the herald angels sing, "listen up to how God is calling us to use
them; listen up for the vision toward which God is moving us - that specific
and earthy piece of God's vision that God is calling us to pursue right here,
with the raw materials that we have uniquely gathered together. Listen up for the baby's cry in the mangers
all around us, and let us come adore him."
It is so easy to
get run over by it all - to spend the season and the days that will follow more
exhausted and fretful than joyful. But
perhaps the greater danger in being so distracted is that we will miss the
comings when they are born, and we do not know the day nor the hour. Advent, then, is the season when we practice
paying attention. And perhaps it is God,
working hard to attract it - frustrated like the five year old boy who is
trying to talk to his mother whose mind has wandered onto something else,
saying: "Mommy,", he begs,
"listen to me! You're not inside
your eyes."
God make us
attentive. Let us quit simply going
through the motions. Let us not move
through this season simply taking care of business - even business that is
important and fun. Let us assemble our
considerable gifts and, living inside our eyes, make of them something
attentive, responsive, and transforming.
"Hark," the herald angels sing. Hark.