And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks by night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find the baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” Luke 2:8-14

I used to think that finding peace was impossible as a bereaved mom. In the months after Ethan’s birth and death, the devastating reality of all that I had lost could burst in on me anywhere. It might happen as I walked past a pregnant woman with a beautiful round belly on the street, or when I accidently turned down the wrong aisle in the grocery store and found myself surrounded by baby bottles and tiny terrycloth bibs, or when I opened the mailbox to find a store flier filled with rosy-cheeked infants. The world was full of reminders that I had been a mother and that my child was gone forever.

In the months after my son was born and died, I had to stop listening to the news on the radio or reading the newspaper. Nearly every story seemed to lead back to the shattered heart of a mother whose child had been killed, gone missing, been deported, gotten locked up in jail, or done something so terrible that it could never be undone. I could feel the grief of these other mothers as if it lived in my own chest. It took my breath away, knocked me off my feet, left me weeping over my breakfast or my computer screen.

Even now, four years later, moments of grief catch me by surprise, leaving me breathless with the fierceness of my longing for my missing son. But slowly, as the years have gone by, I have learned this: One of the gifts of loving Ethan is the gift of a troubled heart.

The peace that the angels announced at Jesus’ birth was not the peace of a calm and untroubled soul. It was shalom – the peace that comes when a whole community flourishes, when everyone has enough, when no mother is torn unnecessarily from her child, when no child begins life in dire circumstances. It is the peace of a community that is ruled with a kind of justice that takes the needs of everyone into account. It’s a peace that can be measured by the well-being of the most vulnerable members of a community.

Ethan was one of the most vulnerable human beings you could possibly imagine – a newborn who was disfigured and disabled, who never cried or even took a breath.  His tiny body was broken beyond repair, his brain was incapable of gaining consciousness. There was nothing that could be done for him except to love him as he was.

And loving him cracked my heart wide open. Everywhere I go, I see children like Ethan – vulnerable and beautiful, gifts from God.  And everywhere I go, I see moms like me – filled with a fierce unquenchable love for the children they have carried in their wombs, in their arms, in their hearts.

I see them now, and I cannot forget them – the mom who pulled into our church parking lot to wait out an immigration checkpoint with her toddler, the mom from my neighborhood who has watched her beautiful teenage boy get entangled with a gang and locked up in jail, the mom who just turned 80 and has no one to care for her disabled daughter when she is gone, the pregnant mom whose husband’s mental illness keeps them on the run from city to city without a roof over their heads or enough to eat.

It is not an accident that the sign of the arrival of God’s reign of peace was a newborn infant born in a livestock barn to peasant parents who would shortly become refugees. At the heart of this story of peace are the little ones whose lives crack our hearts wide open, leaving us troubled and longing for the day when God’s reign of peace will reach every corner of creation and provide a safe and sheltered space for the most vulnerable among us to flourish.

Let us pray: 

Come, Lord Jesus, and trouble our hearts with a longing for your reign of peace. Amen.

Dayna is a member of Durham Mennonite Church (Mennonite Church USA) and part of the Rutba House new monastic community. She and her husband Eric live in the Walltown neighborhood of Durham, NC and are parents of one living son, Noah.  Their firstborn son, Ethan, was born and died in 2009. Dayna is hoping this Advent for a heart open to God’s longings for the most vulnerable among us.

Jesus said: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.” John 14: 27 

I have waited with many who are waiting to have children.  Often this path is not full of peace.

My daughter found the pathway to peace to be a difficult one.  As they were thinking about a second child after having the first one through an IVF procedure, she asked, “Am I being selfish in pursuing this a second time? Am I trying to play God?”

God gave her peace when God spoke to her heart that in whatever direction they took, God was still in control, and that her desire to pursue God’s will was enough.  They had a second child, a beautiful boy.

After this IVF procedure they froze two embryos, so having a third procedure was not a hard decision for them. They were open to having more children. But, then they miscarried.

My daughter found herself asking, “Why?”  Finally, realizing that her question would most likely not be answered, she asked God to give her peace with the two sons He had given to her.   She says that “there came a day when God revealed to me that these two were all I needed, and I was okay.  Since then, I have realized that I need to simply pursue God more than pursuing anything else, and that is enough.”

Peace, as the world defines it, comes when life is in the order you want it to be -- enough money, the right family, the right place to live, on and on, and so peace, when it seems to come, is only fleeting and shallow because life is always changing.  The world’s peace does not last.

But as I see it, the “the peace of God that transcends all understanding” can only come from knowing that we are secure in our Father’s hands, that God knows what God is doing with our lives even when we don’t have a clue, and that loving us and transforming us into looking like Jesus IS Jesus’ way.  “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to humankind on whom His favor rests,” the angels say to the shepherds.

With my daughter, like so many of us who are waiting this Advent, peace is something we learn.

When life is exploding around me, I have to purpose to remember that God loves me and peace will come as I receive.  When I am covered up in insecurity and fear, I am to remember that I am God’s treasured possession and that God will not let go of me and peace will come.  When I am degrading myself, I need to learn to receive His words over me that I am the “apple of His eye” and peace will come.

One who is learning God’s peace doesn’t have an anaesthetized look, where she is bleary eyed or in denial of the rigor of life, but one who can have a holy boldness to go on (even when she is shaking within), knowing that “our momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4: 17, 18 NIV)  In essence, peace comes through relationship.

Israel only had peace from staying in relationship with Almighty God.  When they strayed from the relationship, war came, captivity came, and darkness invaded their souls.  Ironically, Jesus came during the time of “Pax Romana,” a forced military peace imposed by the Roman Empire, but their forced peace only rendered moral decay, confusion, and frantic searching.  Jesus came and brought the peace that the world could not give, the peace that comes only through being in a vital and vibrant relationship with Him.  When the angel came to Mary and told her she would become pregnant through the Holy Spirit, she said, “How can this be?” When told, “Nothing is impossible with God,” she proclaimed, “I am the LORD’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.”  God’s peace gave her the strength to be the mother of the Son of God!

Our exhortation is to be like Mary saying, “May it be to me as You have said, LORD?” and as we do, as we obey, as we seek relationship with Him, peace will come.

Let us pray:

I want to stay focused on You, Jesus, not on all of those things that deprive me of the peace that You have to give to me.  Jesus, show me again and again that You are enough, and that in You, “SHALOM” will come. Amen.

Beth Dotson resides with her husband Danny of 42 years in Signal Mountain, TN.  She is Presbyterian and is presently working in a ministry that serves HIV clients. She loves her family dearly, has five grandchildren, plays in the outdoors in all kinds of capacities with her husband and their black lab, Zeke. Her desire for her advent is that we would wake up to its wonder and how that wonder translates into the miracle of the mundane in our lives.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four^. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.  Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. Luke 2: 36-38

These last five years, my prayers have often included these words over and over again: “How long O Lord? How long will you keep us childless?”

There’s not a lot of peace in this. Asking for the same thing over and over. Being stuck.

I’ve heard from a lot of couples dealing with infertility the feeling of being “stuck” in an endless process without a lot of hope, and it is frustrating beyond words. It is so easy to feel perpetually impatient.

Our culture helps us learn this kind of impatience. If we want something, we are told to make it happen now. If we don’t get what we want, we are told to try harder or take another route. If we want babies and can’t have them, there’s a specialized field of medicine for this. There are adoption agencies ready to receive our applications.

But sometimes even when we do all the right things and open ourselves up to all the kinds of possibilities that the Spirit could move forth in our life, we still find ourselves with empty hands waiting.

On my own waiting journey, Simeon and Anna have become two of my waiting heroes. Night and day both of these seniors devoted themselves to prayer and waiting for Jesus to arrive in the temple. They waited and waited. And they waited some more.

Scripture tells us that Anna was 84, a widow for many years. Her entire purpose after her husband died was to be on this waiting journey—to be that prophetic voice that spoke the truth about baby Jesus who was yet to be born.

And then one day Jesus arrived at the temple with Mary and Joseph. Anna knew immediately who Jesus was and blessed him in a way only someone who had been waiting for years and years could offer. She spoke truth.  Jesus was God’s Son. Jesus would be the one who redeemed Israel. Jesus was God with us.

Though a vocation of waiting is not something I would have chosen (and I wonder if Simeon and Anna would have chosen it either?), I have come to realize that the longer I wait, the more peace-filled my waiting becomes.

Of course there are days when I still want to throw complaints up to the heavens of “Why me?” But more often now, contentment lives in me where dread used to be. This doesn’t mean that I’ve given up on my calling to motherhood either. I know I will be a mother to some little person sometime in my future.

But in the meantime my path is filled with meaningful work, and I wait. I find peace along the way. Who I am right now is ok. What I am doing right now is good. When children come into our home, we’ll be ready. Where the next step of our journey will take us, I do not know. How our waiting will come to an end, only God knows.

Deep peace. Deep peace of Christ to you as you wait on this day.

Let us pray:

God who waits with us, help us have the strength this day to wait with you. Help us to wait with the big unknown questions of our lives. Help us to wait when we see others so easily having what we want. Help us to find your gift of peace along our own journey of waiting. Amen.

Elizabeth Hagan is an ordained minister in the Baptist tradition, a freelance writer and a social media consultant who divides her time between Arlington, VA and Oklahoma City, OK with her husband Kevin. She blogs regularly at “Preacher on the Plaza” (https://elizabethhagan.com). This Advent Elizabeth is hoping for the gift of being present in the moment.

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
² As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before you!
³ For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
⁴ Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
⁵ You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways. Isaiah 64:1-5

 I imagined life would look drastically different today. Today (give or take a couple of weeks) was to be the day I would become a mother. I anticipated relating to Mary during the beginning of Advent—after all, I, too, would be “great with child.” Instead my arms and uterus are empty. My daughter, Avelyn Grace, died after 11 weeks in the womb.

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down . . .

After Avelyn, I was sent to a doctor who recommended a blood test. I tested positive for two strains of MTHFR, a blood mutation that can cause clots, blocking the way for nutrition to get to a developing child. I began a regimen of extra vitamins and baby aspirin. Assured that I was now armed against the dangers of MTHFR, we welcomed a second pregnancy. Seven weeks later, we had a scare. Our child was measuring a week behind with a heartbeat of 110 (slow for a developing child). The doctor was cautiously optimistic, suggesting that maybe our dates were wrong and the heart was newly developing. I’d come back in two weeks (the soonest the receptionist was able to schedule me), and we’d track what was happening.

Waiting. We often view Advent as an exciting time. We picture children barely able to contain their joy as they anticipate family and presents. Their joy becomes symbolic of our own hope as we wait for the coming Savior.

My wait was neither hopeful nor joyful. When a friend asked how I was doing, I responded the only way I knew how—that I was in hell. Was I carrying life or death? I went through the motions—taking my cocktail of pills, monitoring what I ate, attempting physical activity despite first trimester exhaustion—all the things that a woman is supposed to do while pregnant; but I knew that none of these actions could protect my child.

A week later, I called the doctor’s office, begging for an earlier appointment. I couldn’t go another week not knowing. I was asked to come in that day. The ultrasound confirmed what I already knew in my heart: our baby—Benjamin Charles—had not grown, and he no longer had a heartbeat.

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down . . .

As I’ve reflected on Advent, I’ve realized that those long generations waiting on the coming Messiah were not overjoyed in their anticipation—they were desperate. From those at the time of Isaiah, uprooted from home in the Babylonian exile, to those contemporaries of Mary, living under the rule of Rome, the people of God were reaching to grasp hope out of their extreme need.

Today I find myself empty. I find myself begging God to tear open the heavens again . . . surely then our pain would be healed. Surely then life would make sense. Surely then God would right all that seems so desperately wrong.

This year waiting during Advent means clinging to the hope of Immanuel—God with us. If God is with us, then God is here holding me, comforting me. God is breaking through the heavens to reach me, to reach all of us.

Let us pray:

O God who breaks through the heavens, let us see you even in grief. Strengthen our grip on hope when it threatens to fail. Be ever with us, Immanuel. Amen.

Jennifer Harris Dault and her husband, Allyn, live in downtown St. Louis, MO with their two cats, Sassy and Cleo. She is a member and occasional minister at St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship. She works among the Methodists as a church administrator and serves as a freelance writer, editor, and supply preacher. You can find her online at http://jenniferharrisdault.com This Advent, Jennifer hopes on behalf of those who cannot

 “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.” Psalm 8:10

As a midwife, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing love at it’s most primal, it’s most raw.  Midwives talk of a woman wandering off to “labor land,” where her neocortex is quiet and her animal body is in charge.  So often we relegate love to the realm of emotions and ideas: feelings, thoughts, a list of qualities we like or don’t like in a person.  But there is deep power in the non-verbal, embodied-ness of love: the way your lover smells, the comfort of his touch, your breathing synchronized in sleep.  It’s this embodied, animal love that we see in birth.  Yes, there are thoughts of meeting baby, this new person swimming into the world.  There are words of affection and mantras of courage, but mostly, it’s a body sort of love.  It’s an excruciating, exhilarating, wide-open labor of love.

The sounds and smells of labor are unique, earthy, grounded, and guttural.  There is sweat, blood, vomit, humid warmth from the tub, and the scent of lavender wafts in the air.  There is also timelessness: the sun rises and falls, we cover the clock, and the moments are marked by waves of intensity, surges of overwhelming body-love.

Transition, the final stretch of cervical dilatation before pushing, is one of the most powerful bits of labor.  It’s the moment when a woman, out loud or deep in her secret thoughts, will declare, once and for all, that she cannot, will not, do this any longer.  She will throw in the towel or die, because she has reached the brink of impossible and beyond, and it seems the magnitude of her own body’s power will crush her.  To this I whisper, “Yes, good, now you are close.”  While the laboring woman fears drowning in her own intensity, I see the final signpost preceding the finish line.  This all-spent, everything-you’ve-got labor of love not only asks her for all she has, but also reveals her unbelievable capacity for courage, power, and strength.  She dives deep into reserves she never knew she had, and resurfaces as a mother, ready for the daily diving deep into self-sacrificial, redemptive, instinctual love.

I see that God, too, labors and births in and through this world, redeeming and re-creating it bit by bit, moment by moment, day by day.  This is not the kind of creating that snaps the finger, waves the wand, and “Voila!”  This is a slow and steady love, a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, then back-to-the-starting-block sort of love.  The sun rising each morning, the flower opening each day, the child forgiving her sibling, the husband loving his wife, these are the moments of new life, birth and redemption in this world.  These are the wafts of lavender and the warmth of water soothing our groaning souls as we labor through the darkness and pain of this world.   God, the mother, moans through our failures, pushes toward our freedom, labors in love to birth us anew each day.  If we open ourselves wide to this gift of aching love, we are invited in as co-creators with the creator of all.  We stretch, open, dive deep, and find our place in the excruciating and exhilarating labor of redemption.

Let us pray:

God, please give me the courage to open wide and willing, ready to labor with you toward redemption and re-creation, ready to become, by your grace, who you have made me to be. Amen.

Susan currently lives with her dear husband and black lab in Edmond, OK where they attend St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. On any given day you will find Susan nurturing her small midwifery practice, her kitchen, and next year’s garden. Her hope for this advent is to be quiet, to reach deep into the soil of her soul with the tangled roots of her faith, and to find there the living water that nourishes new hope, love, joy, and peace into bloom.

"I am confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." Psalm 27:13

I’ve waited for the labor pains to push a child out of me four times. My firstborn, a girl, slid into our arms on a frosty February morning. We had no idea that four days later, we would sit across from a cardiologist as he delivered the devastating news that her heart had stopped beating for 30 minutes that morning.

We’ve become intimate with waiting. Waiting by our daughter’s bassinet, barely able to think clearly enough to groan to God, “Please don’t let her die.” We waited for her body to recover enough to undergo surgery; we waited through 12 hours of extremely risky surgery, unsure whether hoping for the best would hurt more than bracing for the worst.  We waited six long weeks before we finally took her home. She had survived, but not without tremendous losses. A brain injury damaged her gross and fine motor skills, leaving her with severe cerebral palsy and seizures.

The next eight years, we loved her the best we could, clinging to hope of seeing good in the land of the living even as we braced ourselves to lose her. We celebrated each tiny accomplishment and tried to enjoy each good moment in the midst of the survival mode we found ourselves in.

Waiting is a mind game. Spiritually, it’s a heart game too. I’ve learned that it takes constant vigilance to keep myself from getting too far ahead. Left unchecked, waiting becomes a chance to concoct elaborate worst-case scenarios so that I can attempt to control the outcome by preparing for every horrible outcome I can imagine.

I’ve lost count of how many times these scenarios left me sobbing and puffy, usually at the wheel or in bed late at night. Eventually, hopefully before I’m utterly distraught, I remember that I’m upset over a what-if, not over truth.

These many years of waiting have taught me a really important thing about what-ifs: What-ifs are not true. When I catch myself thinking things like “What if she dies?” or “What if the surgery fails?” or “What if he’s disabled like his sister?” I am not thinking on what is true. Philippians 4:8 tells us “Finally brothers, whatever is true… think on these things.”

What should I think on instead? A favorite during times of waiting, especially when things look bad, is Psalm 27:13 – “I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” In the land of the living – no matter how desperate and dark these days get, I will see goodness in this life.

Life has been very dark for us. Our daughter died early on a Sunday morning in October 2008, just 15 months after our fourth child, a boy, was born with similar heart defects. He is much healthier than she was, but the years between his diagnosis at the 18-week ultrasound and the “all clear for now” from his cardiologist were terrifying, exhausting, and tearful. But all that worst-case scenario thinking I did in my quiet moments did nothing for me when the worst did happen. God’s grace in the form of peace and the love of friends and family flooded in right at the moments when we needed help the most. No amount of anticipating can compare.

Today, we are in a new season of waiting. This advent, the fifth since our daughter died, I find myself longing to see her, but not in the body that trapped her in this life. I look forward to seeing her healed and whole, rejoicing in the presence of God. I continue to resist thinking about the what-ifs, replacing them with God’s truth, as we watch and wait to see how our son will grow and what he will need in the future.

Let us pray:

Father God, thank you for promising that we will see goodness in this life. Help me to find peace and comfort in what is true. Help me to remember that you will be with me in the waiting and even in the worst that could happen. Amen.

Joy lives in Ohio with her husband, three surviving children, a cat, and a dog. She grew up non-denominational, attended a Baptist college, spent several years in ministry in Baptist churches, and now attends a Presbyterian church. She writes regularly about her musings on life and faith at “Joy in the Journey." This advent, Joy hopes to dive more deeply into the liturgy of waiting and thus experience more clearly the joy of Jesus' birth.

Did you miss Day 1 post? Click here. To learn more about the scope of this Advent devotional project click here.

Then he blessed them and told Mary, “This child of yours will cause many people in Israel to fall and others to stand. The child will be like a warning sign. Many people will reject him, and you, Mary, will suffer as though you had been stabbed by a dagger. But all this will show what people are really thinking. Luke 2:34-35

I do not remember the prayers that were prayed when I was baptized, when I got married, or when I was first commissioned for ministry in a little Baptist church in rural North Carolina. At every important juncture, since before I could understand the words, people have prayed for me. My whole life has been clothed in a handmade quilt of prayer. But I forget most of the words.

Which is why this five-word prayer that a friend scrawled on a card when my wife and I were in the midst of adopting our first son is precious to me. I’ve never forgotten it.

“Blessings on your unusual expectancy.”

As I recall, this prayer came to us about six months into an expectancy whose due date we could never quite pin down. We had not set out to become adoptive parents. We prayed for a child and told God we’d be happy to welcome it however it might come. That same week a friend sent an email saying that the foster son of a mutual friend had been freed for adoption and needed a permanent home. Might we be interested?

We met the boy, which sealed the deal, I suppose. We jumped on a trampoline, played with a football, and learned to discern his two-year old jabber. In the natural course of things, as I understand it, women go through a nine month process of embracing their maternal instincts. A dozen dads have told me that, for them, it all became real when they saw their child for the first time—when the doctor who’d just delivered their baby wrapped it up and put it in their arms. I’m the father of two—one adopted child, one biological. Best I can figure, I started becoming a dad the day I met my son, jumping on a trampoline.

It didn’t happen all at once, of course, which is why I hardly realized I was becoming a dad at first. We signed up for adoption classes, had a home-study done, changed our locks to bring them up to code and installed a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. (Good thing we adopted first, I tell my wife. None of the baby books tell you to install a fire extinguisher in your kitchen.) All the while, we spent weekends with the boy, amazed how quickly he was growing up. And hardly realizing that he had our hearts.

Then the adoption committee at social services called to ask if we would come in for an interview. Another piece of the process, I thought. I put the appointment on my calendar. When we showed up, a few minutes early, the couple ahead of us was just coming out of the meeting room. I looked them in the eyes to greet them. It wasn’t until they looked down that I felt in my gut what was happening. They were here for the same reason—for the same boy. And this committee had to decide who the best parents for this child would be.

It was about this time that the card came in the mail: “Blessings on your unusual expectancy.”

Unusual indeed. And agonizing. Hope, I suppose, is necessarily an expectancy. But it is a thing with feathers, Dickenson said, because for all if its potential to take off and fly it is, like a bird, fragile. Our unusual expectancy taught me just how fragile Christian hope is. It throws our doors open to the stranger, who just might steal our hearts. But it does not promise that the child we love will become “ours.”

Let us pray:

Lord, may we in this day open ourselves to Jesus—that we might let him steal our hearts, even—but that we would know in this unusual expectancy that He is not “ours.” Help us wait with reverence and fragility for a hope that is real.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is a father of two. He and his family live at the Rutba House, a Christian house of hospitality whose stories Jonathan tells in his new book Strangers at My Door (Random House). This Advent, Jonathan is looking forward to watching a new Rutba House being built one block down the street.

Our Advent "Baby Jesus Blog" devotions begin today. Follow our postings each day of Advent. To learn more about the scope of the project click here.

At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ ‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’ But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. (Matthew 25:1-13)

On your mark….get set….wait!

Advent is here! The work of this liturgical season is to wait for the birth of a baby Savior. Of course, while I wait I will decorate the house. And buy presents. And bake those peanut butter rice crispy treats with the chocolate topping that are so calorie-filled I only make them once a year.

The days of passive, peaceful waiting are officially over. Here in Advent 2013, waiting is an opportunity to check our email, make that last phone call, or use the online options available on our teeny-tiny screens. Most of us today are busy wait-ers. We are active in our waiting, prepared to fill any downtime with semi-productive scrolling through our phones.

So what does Advent, the season of waiting, have to teach us in this active age?

In Matthew 25:1-13, Jesus suggests that while we wait for him to come, we need to do the work it takes to be prepared for his coming. We need to have gone to the store, and bought oil, and trimmed the wicks on our proverbial lamps, so that whenever Jesus comes, we are ready. This passage suggests that we are to practice a sort of active and prepared waiting. By one read, Jesus seems to be advocating a certain sort of busy-ness as we wait for him to come.

Perhaps the concern of Advent is not our busy-ness, but what we are busy with.

During Advent, we are waiting for the birth of Jesus; we are waiting for Jesus to come again into our world. And the work we are called to is the work of preparing our lives for Jesus’ coming.

When I spend my time decorating and shopping and making chocolate-peanut butter treats, I am preparing to have a meaningful, memory-making time with my family. I am preparing a web of warmth and love that I hope will hold my children through a world that is too often harsh. I am doing good. But I am not doing the work of making space for Jesus to come into my life. I am busy, but I am not busy preparing a space for Jesus to come into my home through the stranger, the hungry, or the recently-incarcerated (all those people Jesus says he will come disguised as a few verses later in Matthew 25).

This Advent I will be an active wait-er, just as I have been every Advent of my life. But this Advent, I want my activity to reflect what I am waiting for. I want my activity to reflect my hope…my hope that Love will be successfully born into the world once more. What do we need to do in the next four weeks to be ready for that sort of birth?

Let us pray:
Lord God, teach us to wait for you. Reveal to us what we need to change in our lives for you to be able to come into the world. Claim our busy-ness for your kingdom, and keep us ever mindful that you are the hope, the light, and the end for which we wait. Amen.

Sarah Jobe is an ordained Baptist minister, prison chaplain, teacher, and mother of two. She lives with her family at the Rutba House, a Christian house of hospitality in Durham, NC. She is the author of Creating with God: The Holy Confusing Blessedness of Pregnancy. As a prison chaplain, she is hoping for the reconciliation of mothers and their children this Advent.

Waiting with the Shepherds
Luke 2:8-12

Who is on your list of people that you don’t like?

Of course, talking about people who we don’t like isn’t really something we often do in public, especially in church. And, I know it is Christmas. Most of us are well on our way to be appearing to be nicer than we seem with the corporate theme of “Peace on earth and goodwill toward all men”

But, seriously, I’m asking. Who is on your list of people you don’t like?

We all have them.

From the mechanic who installed faulty brakes in our car just last week to the neighbor who wakes up at 6 am and starts the leaf blower or the chainsaw directly below our bedroom window.

To the family member who tells racist jokes about our dear friends, even when we ask them to stop.

And horrifically, to the shooter who changed the world as we knew it on Friday morning—when 26 precious lives were taken from this world by gunfire at their elementary school.

(Such is of course an example of “people we don’t like” that I didn’t plan on including in my sermon for this morning. But nonetheless it happened. If you are like me, as the scenes of parents picking up their children from Sandy Hook Elementary rolled across the television screen on Friday and reports of how many parents would not —I couldn’t help but think oh so mean thoughts about the kind of person who would do such to innocent little children in school. Very mean thoughts in fact).

From the trivial to the tragic, there are plenty of really valid reasons to not like people—even as we know our calling as people of faith is to “love one another.” It is as my husband says to me after we’ve had a “friendly” marital dispute: “Honey, I love you but I just don’t like you right now.” (Anybody ever had been in this place too?). We all have people in our lives that we just don’t like, even if we love them or know that we should love them.

And along these lines, I suggest that the sermon title for this morning should be changed from: “Waiting with the Shepherds” to “Waiting with the Despised” or “Waiting with those whom we belittle” For the small chunk of our beloved Christmas story before us today features a group of folks who were very much disliked in their time. Though for many reasons that maybe weren’t fair—prejudge and classism— the shepherds were put down nonetheless.

When I say “shepherds” it’s hard to get your mind around the idea of the association of not liking them, isn’t it?

If you know anything about Biblical history, you know that scripture is full of stories about shepherds. If you are a child growing up in children’s Sunday School as some of us were—you learn how to get good at sheep crafts because there are lots of lessons by which they apply. I can’t tell you how many cotton ball sheep I made in all my years of church classes.

Pertaining to sheep, we tend to think favorably of them. Moses was a shepherd when God called him. So did David claim this profession and several of the prophets too. What more beloved passage of scripture do we have than Psalms 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want?” Didn’t Jesus later say, “I am the good Shepherd?

And these days- when we think shepherds we often think of cute kids with bath towels wrapped around their heads in Nativity plays.

Or we think of burly but strong characters from our coffee table manger scenes.

Or at worst we think of smelly field workers who could really use a hot bath, but not the despised.

I mean, how could we dislike characters that were among the first to worship and greet our Lord?

But, in the time of Jesus’ birth, to be a shepherd was not a ticket to popularity. While sheep are cute and the Bible seems to speak of sheep and shepherds often—what we need to understand is that being a shepherd in this day and time was the modern equivalent of being a trash collector or a someone who empties the latrines of our airplanes or someone who is forced to pick up trash on the side of the road as part of the patrol from jail.

For what does a shepherd do? They raise sheep and goats—smells and all. They guide their sheep to graze in open land. They live a nomadic life without a permanent address or even a P.O. box. They put up with some of the most unpredictable creatures on earth—fuzzy, stubborn creatures who don’t always go where they were led or remember to stay in the bounds of their owner’s land.

It was a rough life. We don’t know if they had mental health issues that had forced them outside the bounds of “normal” society. We don’t know if they had addiction problems. We don’t know if they had mother or fathers or wives to welcome them home once the herding was over. We don’t know if they wished they had a better job—if they’d only be offered the opportunity to thrive somewhere else.

All we DO know is that to be a shepherd in Jesus’ time was to be unseen by those outside of the working class like them. It was to be overworked, without holidays or weekends off. It was to be paid less those with more important jobs in palaces, the city square or even at the temple. And most of all to be shepherd was to be a little less human.

And it is to this collection of guys the multitudes of the heavenly hosts appears at night saying, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior which is Christ the Lord.”

The Presence of the Living God comes to this unlikely band of sheep herders and says, “The best thing that has ever happened to the world is in your hood. Your heavenly Father has picked you first to see it. Now, go!”

Wow—what a special invitation this all was!

But, remember our theme. Today we are talking about what it means to wait. In particular, what does it mean to learn from the waiting the shepherds did to get to this climatic moment in their lives?

Different from other sermons in this series, we’re not talking today about the process of actually waiting and what it was like for the shepherds to hear the good news. Because, hey! I don’t imagine that this group of fellas thought they were waiting for anything special at all. No wonder scripture tells us “they were afraid.”

So, today, rather, we’re taking this opportunity to wait with them, to consider that these were THE ones who were asked to attend to the birth of Christ first. What does it mean to wait for Jesus alongside the lowly among us? What does it mean to wait with those in our life this Advent season who are on our “I don’t really like them very much” list?

It’s one of those piercing questions because of who’s on that list. I don’t like to go there. I don’t like to be forced to consider the fact that I think I’m better than the men who pick up my trash every Friday morning.

I bet you don’t either. It’s easier to go about life as if we’re the most important character. It’s easier to go through life as if we are kings and queens of our own kingdom, inviting only those in our lives who are we like.

But, what if we began to wait with the shepherds among us? What if we saw the world from the perspective of those in whom our society doesn’t value? What might our waiting entail then?

In a mid-size US city much like ours, a man named William Well is homeless. He was interviewed recently by a television station about his story. This is what the reporter said about him:

William is a convicted felon and recovering addict who’s stayed sober four months and counting.

The reporter says about William, ”He’s ready for the cold shoulders and weary eyes likely to greet him from the family next door, should he land a spot in supportive housing for the chronically homeless. For now, though, he’ll bide his time on a waiting list.”

At 59 years old, the Chicago native insists that he’d be happy just to hold down a job and mind his own business.

William says: “At this stage of my life, I wanna be able to help myself … buy my food, buy my clothes, pay my own rent,”

“You’ve gotta give a person a chance,” he said. “It’d make me feel like a man.”

But men like William who walk the streets every day aren’t those who we often give a second chance too.

It’s annoying sometimes to be greeted by a homeless person at an intersection of a shopping center, isn’t? Or, to be greeted by someone going door to door in our neighborhood asking to do odd jobs around our yard? Or to be given a flyer by a person standing a street corner for a service or product we could care less about and becomes just one more piece of paper to have in our purse of pocket?

We look at people like this as beggars, wasting our time, or most of all suspiciously who are just going to take and take and never give back to society. We look at their criminal past and judge them without an eye for the possibilities for the future. We often don’t think God could appear to them, speak through them or be the central characters in a play school children would perform for centuries to come, as the shepherds became that night.

But, the God we know of our beloved Christmas story is the God who appears to those in our world we might dislike, despise or might otherwise overlook in our busyness.

The God we know of our beloved Christmas story is the one who goes where the hungry seekers of faith are found-- those who have been rejected by the world, who are working jobs at fast food restaurants, in cleaning companies, and as street cleaners.

The God we know our beloved Christmas story is the God who often goes outside of the bounds of the city to find those who are ready to worship the Christ child—those in the trailer parks, those in the shacks of country houses, and those who find themselves camped out in the woods of Reston in the tent cities because they have nowhere else to go.

If we truly want to be people who wait with the shepherds as the third candle of our Advent this year asks us to do, then we’ve got to first re-orientate ourselves to the types of people that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ asked to come and worship Him first.

One of Bill Watterson’s famous Calvin and Hobbes cartoons speaks of the type of mania we deal with this time of year: “Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer.... Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously? ”

There’s a popular phrase this time of year and I bet you know it. And it’s “Jesus is the reason for the Season.” It’s kind of the Christian catch phrase we use to talk about the rise of consumerism and emphasis on all things Santa that seem to take the thunder away from Jesus.

And of course, it’s true, Jesus’ birth is the reason for all our preparations and waiting this Advent season, and yes, it should be our main focus.

But, I’m here today to offer you something more. Who are we waiting beside? What kind of people are we waiting with? Are we waiting for the celebration of Christ’s birth this year alongside people just like us? Or are we waiting with the shepherds?

Who will be around your dinner table this Christmas? Who will you buy presents for? Who will you befriend in the New Year? If there's anything I've heard over and over about this school shooter in the past 24 hours it is that he was "a loner." Where were his friends? Where was the church?

I dare suggest that if we wait with the shepherds among us this Advent season, what we’ll really find this Christmas is Jesus.

. . . Jesus who humbled himself, coming from all the lights of heavenly glories to become a baby, a tiny, helpless baby so that we could all know how much God truly loves each and every one of us

. . . Jesus who came to help the broken, the tired, the lame not the well and happy

. . . Jesus who came to teach us God’s abundant grace lavished on all of us, not just the select few.

If we want to know Jesus, let us wait with the shepherds among us, let us learn of them, and most of all let’s invite them in to our lives.

AMEN

Advent 1: Jeremiah 33:14-16

I’m proud of you for being in church today for the season of busyness is upon us. No longer in the causal days of fall activities, and not yet to the Sunday before Christmas (where everyone seems to feel the call stronger to go to church).  Seemingly it feels like a not-so special day. But, it is in this post-Thanksgiving, early December date that the excitement of the Advent season begins, the four Sundays on the liturgical calendar of the church where we stop and prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ.  This year, we are approaching Advent together as we “Wait With . . .”

Many of us have the “hurry up” part down. Maybe not the waiting . . .

We know how to get things done.

Many of us braved the crowds this weekend and headed to the malls to get the first or second round of our Christmas shopping completed like Kevin and I did. Oh, what insanity.

Many of us took that climb into the attic or on the top shelf in our garage to get our Christmas decorations down and have our house look like a disaster zone for many hours until it all started to come into order.

And, then some of us timed ourselves to see how many Christmas cards we could write before we knew the responsibilities of life and work got to us again this coming week filling our kitchen tables with stamps, address labels and cards galore. There always seems to be something to do this time of year.

But, wait?  That’s what we are talking about today?

This is not just our forte. By nature we are an impatient people. We like to have things OUR way, when WE want it, don’t we?

When will the train come? How long will this grocery line take? How many more miles till we get there?  When will my life get better? When will my husband or wife change? When will I get everything out of life that I wished for?

However, my desire for this Advent season both through the Sunday worship services and the Wednesday night worship services that you and I have the ability to redefine what it means for us to wait for Christmas.  And this year instead of focusing on the typical Advent words like hope, joy, peace and love—we’re going to stick with what it means to wait with others.

We’ll wait together for Christmas to come as part of our spiritual discipline of worship. We’ll hope to see this waiting period not as wasted time or meaningless time. We’ll hope to see this Advent not as punishment . .. “Can’t it just be Christmas already?” We hope this waiting period becomes an opportunity to feel in our bones the urgency of the season, urgency to position our lives through a posture of waiting to receive the love that is ours to have in the kingdom of Christ.

Today, as we begin, the exhortation scripture leads us to begin with is to wait with the prophets, in particular the prophet, Jeremiah.

Who is Jeremiah?

Jeremiah is known in Biblical history as the weeping prophet, an emotionally charged, unlikely spokesman who was called to ministry about one year after King Josiah of Judah began making his reforms in the temple—a key moment in the history of the nation.

I say an unlikely spokesman because Jeremiah was the least likely kind of guy to expect himself called to God’s service.

If you think throughout scripture, all the great leaders or prophets made excuses to God when they were called, some were too young, some were too old, some said they simply didn’t know how to lead. And the same was true of Jeremiah.

He told the LORD that he did not know how to speak, for he was only a child. But, scripture tells us that all of this changed when the LORD reached out his hand and touched Jeremiah’s mouth reminding him that he put words in his month. There would be no excuses; Jeremiah was equipped for all that was to come.

And spoke Jeremiah did, calling the people of Israel to a life that pleased God.

For the next 40 years he served as God’s spokesman—though when he spoke, as it common with those with spiritual gifts of discernment and prophecy, few listened.  But he kept on keeping on.

One chapter prior to our text’s opening for today; we hear the banner statement over and over again throughout the book, saying "the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah."

And this was the context: corruption of the kings of Judah went from ok to worse after its good king Josiah. God allowed invaders to come in the country.  The fall was upon them.

So at this present time, already hundreds of Jerusalem’s residents had been forced by Babylon’s king, Nebuchadnezzar into exile. Soon others would be forced to go as well as Babylon was growing stronger by the day.

We know that it was the 10^th year of Zedekiah’s reign, another one of Judah’s kings known for his corruption. Though King Zedekiah had struck a deal with Egypt to hold off Babylon a little bit longer in the previous chapters, thinking he’d provided for himself the security he craved, this too would soon fail.

Above all, it’s a storm of confusion all around as they refused to listen to God.   However, the worst had not happened yet, but any person with common sense could see that hardships were even going increase.

But to everyone’s surprise: this is not the time when the weeping prophet wept.  Oh, to the contrary, at this seemingly impossible juncture, Jeremiah gives a word of hope.

Look with me again at verse 14:

“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness the land.”

It’s a promise. It’s a word of restoration. It’s word of the Lord that focuses their attention on their past and not just present that can have redemptive qualities, but on their future.

Seems strange, though, because the people were in mourning. Grief broke out across the land. They were grieving about what could have been. Grief about what will never be. In particular, this grief had everything to do with the loss of David’s dynasty, the history of this family generation after generations leading the people. They were sad to now be even smaller and less significant than they were before. But, to this grief, Jeremiah says, “Don’t call this a tragedy just quite yet.”

Why? Because a “righteous branch” is going to spring forth from David’s line.

If we read this as and Messiah prophetic text (i.e. pointing our attention to Jesus), we see that the one would later be born in David’s city, Bethlehem with Joseph as his father (from the house and lineage of David), then the prophecy came to be. Of course, it didn’t come as the people expected. It didn’t come in the lifetimes of the people who heard this word first. But it did speak for a God who would go with the people through the rocky places of their journey as individual and as a nation and never leave them without hope.

It is true that some prophetic words are harsh throughout scripture, or seem harsh to our ears, but ultimately HOPE is the real motive behind any true prophet’s message. Prophecy is a loving gift of the spirit enabling us who are walking in the darkness of life to see light at the end of the tunnel.

And our exhortation this morning is to wait with prophets like Jeremiah and all the other prophets of our day and time. To wait with expectant ears around those of us whose giftedness is to hear God’s call and then share it with us.  To wait in the coming month in celebration of this righteous branch being born! The fulfillment of the great joy!

We don’t talk a lot about waiting with prophets or even the modern expression of prophecy very much in church because when we simply say the word, prophet, we’re afraid. We’re afraid because of all of the negative experiences we’ve had with folks in our world claiming to know God’s plans, only to have their predictions fall on their face.  We’re afraid of the Kool-Aid, literally.

But what a shame this is. For I believe the false prophets among us have destroyed the good reputation of what is most needed in our time, those who are willing to tell us the truth. Those who are willing to look at what seems like a “bad situation” and give us hope, just as Jeremiah did with Israel.

Have you ever experienced a person with prophetic gifts? And by this I mean a person who told you the truth—not just in every day conversation, but truth-telling at a deeper level, truth-telling that cut to the heart of a situation you sought to hide or ignore?

We love to speak ill of prophetic types (as much as we like them) because it is true their role is to tell us what we don’t want to hear.  Or simply stated, prophetic types can be annoying. They are really good at cramping our style.

In college I had a friend full of these kinds of gifts, prophetic ones. She was a dear to me, however, I didn’t have thick enough skin for her honesty quiet yet. But I would have much to learn.

One afternoon in the middle of my junior first semester, well into the bulk of my education certification coursework, I sat in our shared apartment with this friend. I was practicing my handwriting for my cursive writing class and next up was cutting out letters for my bulletin board making assignment. And this friend took one look at me and the pile of art supplies around me and said, “You’ve got to get out of that major. You’ve got bigger things to do in the world than displaying good handwriting or pretty bulletin boards.”

It was hard to hear of course—I’d planned my whole life around being a teacher and to drop the major mid-way seemed like career suicide.  And not that there is anything wrong with being an elementary teacher, but it wasn’t me.

But, I knew she was right.  I needed her to tell me the truth. I needed to get off the couch and think about going to seminary. And you need those people in your life too.

Where would I be today without that friend? I can imagine, you’ve had prophetic voices that have guided you, re-directed you and  lovingly told you to listen to God afresh also. And without them, you wouldn’t be here today either.

What a great reminder, then this week of Advent is for us to wait with the prophets among us.  To give thanks for Jeremiah, his voice, his passion, his word of hope that we get to see fulfilled on Christmas Eve. And for us, to know that God’s word is alive and well and there are spoke people, given as gifts of grace that help us find our way. Because ultimately what Advent is all about is making more room for God in our lives. And, without prophets we might not know where to start cleaning out the spiritual closets weighing us down.

And, an opportunity to know God is here today—here at this table—ready for us to receive what was broken for us, not just for the sake of being broken, but broken so that God’s light might shine in us and in our dark, dark world. Let us gather and shift our hearts to taste and see that God is good beginning. Let us wait for this prophetic word which is the living bread given for us. Let us eat together in expectation of a God who always gives us hope and never leaves us alone.

AMEN

Have you ever been in a situation where a houseguest has left early in the morning before you woke up?

Or you've parted ways with a friend in a mad dash to the airport without final words?

Or you haven't been able to find that favorite teacher or buddy in the midst of the large crowds at a graduation ceremony to say "thanks?"

I think we all have.

And, I hate situations like this.

I like saying goodbye. Closure is a great comfort.  Words like, "Thank you" or "I love you" Or, "I look forward to our paths crossing again" are a part of what good endings are all about.

In the church, as many pastoral leaders can tell you, we suffer from a lot of cliff hanger types of relationships with our parishioners. Lots of folks leave without telling us that they are leaving and most certainly not saying goodbye.

Someone has a spiritual or family crisis and goes from present every Sunday serving in multiple ministries to the status of "Where in the world did they go? Anybody heard from them?" in a flash second.

And in response, when contacts of concerns are made by the pastor or other caring church family folks such as: "We miss you. . . .  We hope you are alright.  . . . We hope you're still alive . . . " and there's no response.  It is a great grief is suffered when it feels like the cold shoulder is given. Leaving without saying goodbye can feel like a slap in a face to what the relationship has meant in the months and years prior.

I understand that relationships and the dramas of life are messy, though. I understand that the best possible scenario of closure just is not always possible. But, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't do a better job of holding ourselves accountable to end as well as we began.

So, as you all know, I will be leaving my post as pastor of Washington Plaza Baptist Church on December 24th.   It's a little less than a month away. And, in these next several weeks, I want to make good use of the time. I want to continue to engage in the life of the church as much as a possibly can so to make this time of transition a healthy and smooth one for everyone. And, I don't want to leave without saying goodbye.

My pastorate at WPBC has been about more than just the members or regular worship attenders. Many of you online have been a part of our church and many of you have popped in and out of our ministry as your life situations have allowed. I want to include you too. Let me not leave without getting to see you too. Consider coming back to one of our Advent worship services that begin THIS Sunday at 11 am and continue throughout the month.

I have shared with the congregation this week that I am available to meet with folks for lunch or dinner or coffee over the next several weeks. Don't hesitate to contact me to find a time to get together.

I want to say goodbye, celebrate the good work we've done together and anticipate the great future that is ahead for both of us!

I haven't left yet.