Out of the Ordinary
Julie Smith
First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa
November 27, 2011

November 27th First Sunday of Advent

In our New Testament lesson given for today we find ourselves participating in Paul’s greeting to the church in Corinth. Please note - this is found in First Corinthians 1 verses 3-9 in your pew Bible page 1038. Listen and hear God’s Word…

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, For in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind – just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you – so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

In our final reading for today we will hear the Prophet Isaiah, beginning in chapter 64 verses 1 through 9. Again…listen,

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence – as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil – to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down; the mountains quaked at your presence.

From ages past no one has heard no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity…

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people. Amen

Out of the Ordinary

There is a rhythm to our year… an ordinary or expected pattern to the seasons. The seasons change, and in the Midwest we have distinct changes in weather that help us remember the cadence to the year in our very bodies. Spring slips into summer and summer gives way to the whirlwind of fall as the trees become bare and the cold draws us toward the end of the year. This is the flow of the year, and whether we celebrate or struggle with the change of seasons, the reality of change is part of the “ordinary” that we expect. In the church calendar year we call this the Ordinary Time.

Yet in the breath we take to recover from Thanksgiving and Black Friday we can almost forget that today…the first Sunday of Advent… moves us out of the “ordinary” and into the season of Advent.

Perhaps we almost need a jolt out of the ordinary to remind us that as citizens of the world we look toward this season moving us forward to the end of the year… yet as Christians we are reminded that Advent is the beginning of our year…a time of anticipation and waiting…a time when we remember the ancient and lived promises of God coming to us, all the while being mindful to God’s presence already in our midst.

Congregational minister and author Patricia De Jong writes, “The coming of Advent jolts the church out of Ordinary Time with the invasive news that it’s time to think about fresh possibilities for deliverance and human wholeness.” (Feasting on the Word: First Sunday of Advent)

Advent is also a time in which we are asked to practice waiting…I am reminded of a Christmas Eve when our oldest son was not quite 3, our middle son a baby, and our youngest child not yet a glimmer. We were gathered with the extended family… Grandparents, Uncles and Aunts…no other Grandchildren at that point had arrived. The day had been long with anticipation and waiting. Even though Santa would visit during the night, there were piles of packages under that tree from the relatives. I had told Charles that after dinner we would be able to open - just one package. Well the waiting was unbearable… dinner took too long, but finally everyone was gathered by the tree, filling the floor, chairs and couch.

A package was handed to each person and finally, finally it was Charles’ turn to unwrap that one present…He tore open the wrapping and took the lid off the box and found…a new pair of jammies! Charles looked up from the box and then put his head down on the couch and said in an indignant and sorrowful voice, “I don’t deserve this!” All of that waiting and longing spilled over into a longing…for something else, something out of the ordinary.

Perhaps here at First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa you are experiencing a bit of the “out of the ordinary” as seasons in your own church experience change. Even this morning you may have noticed that the order and flow of the Bible lessons are a bit out of the ordinary. Yet in this small way I hope that by placing the lessons in what I presume is an unexpected flow we might be more alert to a response that draws us out of the ordinary.

All of the lessons or readings for today touch on an Advent theme of active waiting - or even - a type of passionate patience.

Our first lesson from the Gospel of Mark reminds us as Advent begins to stay awake and be alert - not only to God among us now but to the new way that God will come among us in the future.

The Psalm we prayed together bears similarity to the Isaiah text combining a longing for the past with hope that God will act.

While Psalm 80 is a communal prayer of longing, the New Testament lesson I read from 1 Corinthians is Paul’s greeting and encouragement to the community of the church to realize the grace and peace that is theirs in Christ. Paul encourages the congregation toward actively waiting for Christ’s coming, as well as reminding the congregation of the very gifts they have been given in Christ.

As I read this text in preparation I was reminded of how grateful I am to First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa. It was in this church that my children were baptized and nurtured during Sunday school, Vacation Bible School and Family camps. And it was this church that first encouraged me to pursue an education and path in ministry. I am grateful that with God’s help - in May I will graduate from Seminary. And so as Paul writes, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus.”

Let us return and spend some time together with the Isaiah text…these people had been through the ringer- that which had given their life structure and stability shaken or gone…the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed and many of the people had been taken from their home and all they had known into exile far away in Babylon. Yet time has passed, Babylon has been conquered and the people are beginning to return to their homeland.

However it is a crumbled kingdom and among the people are divisions and power struggles. Remember - the Temple, that which had been central to their understanding of God in their midst - had been destroyed. Their current experience was disorienting, hope gave way to a sense of God’s absence and Isaiah 64 begins with a plea… “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down” … and the plea continues in the flavor of reminder to God to behave in the powerful and extraordinary ways that are remembered from the days of old. And isn’t it possible to see ourselves in this mirror? Hope, for many of us is coupled with a longing to recapture or restore some beloved aspect of our past. In the Isaiah reading we might even hear a touch of blame placed at God’s feet as we read in verse 5, “…because You hid yourself we transgressed.”

Is there perhaps in Isaiah’s plea a sense that the longing and waiting was eating at their faith and making room for the division and power struggles these people were experiencing - even as they were returning to what they considered their home?

Embedded in their plea is also the question; where are those awesome deeds of the past? Why has God not intervened in the way the people hope and expect? I would imagine that every generation has felt cause to ask these same questions. But, in our hope and expectation…do we long for God to break into our life and circumstance in a new way?

Verse 7 notes again that God’s face has been hidden - and the people are in trouble, but in the next breath the complaint has given way in verse 8 to humble trust and recognition of the creative image and power of God saying, “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand…”

Perhaps we can remember again that the season of Advent takes us out of the ordinary. Perhaps we can be that much more aware that in fact we need God to break into our lives not only as individuals, but also as a community in Christ.

Perhaps in this season of Advent we can practice more deeply, simply being clay in the potter’s hands…to participating in the gifts God has given us in Christ…being alert and awake to how God is molding this community for a new day. May it be so…Amen.