The New Normal
Advent 2 Texts: Isaiah 11: 1-9; Matthew 3: 1-12
Yesterday a friend of mine sent this note.
“I want to share a dream with you. It feels like an Advent dream,” she writes. “The night of the American election, I went to bed very disturbed, as I know many of us did. I had a fitful sleep. Somehow in the midst of that sleep I dreamt. My dream was short, but very vivid. I dreamed that I was in a room surrounded by women. All of the women were black. They seemed larger than life to me. And they were all gorgeous women. Without being told, I knew that these women were all Orthodox priests (which is an impossibility in the Orthodox tradition--female priests). They seemed to be dancing, very elegantly around the room. The thing that stood out the most was how grounded and confident and assured these women were. As if they were fully being who they were created to be. That was my dream. When I woke, the despair and disappointment from the night before had diminished. I felt comforted, even hopeful.”
And then Lori goes on to say, “I took my dream to my spiritual director. After I finished telling him, he asked me why I looked so sad? The dream was so beautiful. I answered, “I know, but I can’t believe that this dream is saying that we are supposed to feel good about the results of the election- because I don’t”.
He replied, “No, I don’t think that is what your dream means.
This dream is a vision. The bible says “When there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). This dream is a vision of what things could be. We need to hold on to these kinds of visions, especially now and in the days to come.
“As we prepare for the coming of the Christ into our hearts and into the world,” Lori concludes, “may your dreams be not of sugar plum fairies, but of visions that tell the story of God’s intentions for us and for all the world. And may we all receive the strength and will and courage to tell and live out those dreams. And we will not perish.” [1]
Visions that tell the story of God’s intentions for us and for all the world …
“The wolf shall live with the lamb. The calf and the lion together.
The calf and the bear shall graze and their young lie down together.
The nursing child will play among the snakes
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord.”
Who knows if this vision came to the prophet Isaiah in a dream one night of a fitful sleep … or just how it arose in him … this vision of a world at ease, where there is harmony, safety, trust, prosperity … a world filled with a deep sense of well-being. Who knows where he went, with whom he first spoke of it. What we do know is that this vision comes to us because he was bold enough to tell of it.
Without a vision, the people perish.
Walter Brueggemann, that great biblical scholar who is prepared to meet and work with whatever arises in scripture, he takes a look at this vision from Isaiah and what does he say? “Unheard of and unimaginable! All these images of unity sound to me so abnormal that they are not worth reflecting on. But then I look again, he says, and notice something else. The poet means to say that in the new age, these are the normal things. And the effect of the poem is to expose the real abnormalities of life, which we have taken for granted. We have lived with things abnormal so long that we have gotten used to them and we think they are normal.” [2] Violence within families and communities, between races, among nations; the exploitation of people-- of children--of the land … it’s just how it is.
“We live in a world unaware of how abnormal and unnatural it all is.
But this vision is about another kind of reality in which natural enemies become playmates and friends and brothers and sisters. It is the announcement that God wills the world another way, and that it will be that way … for the world is not intended for alienation but for unity!” [3]
Without a vision, the people perish.
We so need people who are bold enough, free enough to carry in their beings these God-given visions. We so need people who are bold enough, free enough to live from these visions that declare another way … another future … a God intended future. In all likelihood they will be known as disrupters … naïve perhaps … even crazy. Perhaps you know some. Maybe you are one.
This morning, onto the stage comes John the Baptist … out there in the wilderness, away from the places of power …clothed in animal skins, with a diet of locusts and honey. We’re given this picture of a man living pretty much off the grid … a man free enough, disentangled enough to not only receive the Spirit’s call .. but to be a voice for the Spirit. Unafraid to call a spade a spade, we hear from him this urgent, fierce call for things to be different. It’s time to wake up! Repent! he shouts. Repent meaning give your head a shake! Turn about … change your mind -- change your course. This is a man who is filled with a vision of a different way … “the kingdom of heaven is near,” he says. It’s not a threat … it’s a call to risk God’s dream, God’s intention for our life and the life of the world. We might expect his voice to be lost in the wilderness, except that people flock to him … that’s what we read: the people of Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the region along the Jordon, they were going out to him. Something in his message compelled them … resonated deeply in them. And so what did John do to reinforce their response, their desire go another way? One by one he invites them into the river where he immerses them and raises them up. It’s this physical gesture that connects with the stirring of the spirit within them. It’s a cleansing, it’s a dying and a rising … it’s a birthing. It marks a new beginning.
So where did they go from there? It’s not part of the story we’re given. Were Mary and Martha and Lazarus among them? Peter, James, John? We don’t’ know. Maybe the more pressing question is where has the stirring of the Spirit taken us? Where are we going? How does this passion for another way, how do these visions, live in us --how do they move us -- you and me-- at this time in our life, at this time in the life of the world? How do we carry this hope for another way when the tide is rising against it?
This morning, along with Lori’s dream I want to share with you another story that Steve Garaas Holmes offered this past week.
Here’s what he writes:
“Evil has its days. Sometimes the voice of hate and bigotry rallies its minions, and their cheers evoke dread in my soul. I see mean-spiritedness at work and my heart wrinkles up like a dried fruit. I went to bed last night wondering, ‘What can I say?’
I awoke early, in darkness, unable to sleep. Despair lay on me, palpable as my blankets. I got up in the dark and lit my prayer candle.
In my Bible reading I’m currently making my way through 2 Chronicles and Hebrews, and always, a couple of Psalms a day.
This morning in the dark I read by candlelight: “O grant us help against the foe, for human strength is worthless” (Ps. 108.12).
“Do not fear or be dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s” (2 Chron. 20.15). “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Heb. 11.1).
I prayed till the sun came up. Then I went for my morning walk in the woods.
The sun stretched itself, climbed into lower branches and sat there. Migrating ducks and geese chatted on the pond. Upper branches began to light up like candelabras. Somewhere, beyond my seeing, the Milky Way spun silently, elegantly. And somewhere beyond my seeing, good people were kind and courageous for justice.
When I despair for the world, I am looking at it from a human point of view: I see the evil we are capable of, and I am afraid for us. I am like Job, asking. “Why is there evil?” And God invites me, like Job, to see it from God’s point of view. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38.4). ...This world [with our suffering and our evil]— exists entirely within God, in God’s heart. God’s goodness infinitely outweighs and overpowers the forces of evil. I just can’t see it, like the Milky Way I’m part of.
But if I look with the eyes of faith, I will see signs. The dawn comes for me when I remember that there is more at work than meets the eye, especially the eye of fear. …
It is into darkness that God sends light. … God’s dawn from on high breaks upon us—but it is not a disembodied light. The way the dawn comes is that God sends people into the darkness —people like Jesus, like us—who shine with God’s light. It rises in us. We embody it. Our simple acts of love and courage, every act of kindness, every witness for justice, every prayer for another, no matter how feeble, no matter how doubtful or conflicted, every tear shed for the world, no matter how fragile, is light that transforms the darkness, that gives light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and guides our feet into the way of peace.
I walked home from the woods this morning warm with hope and shining with a Presence I had not expected. I hear geese above my house. I pray that the light of Advent may dawn in your heart as well.” [4]
Friends, this is Advent … that is Advent. Lori’s dream is Advent --
this unforeseen arrival of hope, a new found strength and Presence for the way forward. If Advent means anything it means ‘it’s not over!’ There is something unfinished that’s still in the making. And somehow in God’s wisdom, we human creatures are being given to share in this reconciling, restoring, new-making work that the Holy Spirit is already and always about.
There’s a vision for us to hold onto.
I wonder what other visions will be given to us in the days to come that remind us of God’s intention for us and for the world.
May we be open … and watchful … for it seems these visions have a way of coming as gifts in the darkest of times.
May we receive the strength and courage to live into them … and we will not perish.
[1] Lori-Megley Best, Advent Reflection
[2] Walter Brueggemann, Peace, Chalice Press, St Louis, MO, p.45
[3] Walter Brueggemann, Peace, Chalice Press, St Louis, MO, p.46, 48
[4] Steve Garnaas-Holmes, In Darkness, Light; posted on www.unfoldinglight.net December 2, 2016