Isaiah has been watching the nightly news again.
He’s been watching the TV news and reading the newspapers, and he feels in his gut the daily litany of pain across the world. 30 years of AIDS. Starvation and war in Africa, sweatshops in Asia, global warming, the financial melt-down – these are not far-away “issues” to be discussed rationally and quietly. This is sin. This is despair. This is suffering.

And it is to be raved at. Yelled at. Screamed at.

Isaiah snaps off the TV, stares at the ceiling and yells,

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence, to shock your enemies into facing you and make the nations shake in their boots.

“But no one prays to you or makes the effort to reach out to you because you’ve turned away from us, left us to stew in our sins. Because you abandoned us, we transgressed.”

Isaiah has been watching the nightly news again.

Haven’t we all.

We are the “people who live between the first and second Advent, as people who know God's love for the world and who anticipate it in its fullness.” We are between Christ’s first coming and second coming meaning we know the story of Christ’s life on earth, we know of his ministry, healing, saving ways and call for social transformation, for justice and peace. And we await those things to become a reality in our world now.

Advent is that time, Christ has come, Christ is coming, Christ will come again.

We are perpetually Advent people, waiting people. But in this season we deliberately focus on waiting, resist the cultural stampede to worship Christmas rather than Christ, and prepare ourselves for a new, nigh on violent reality to come forth.

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence, to shock your enemies into facing you and make the nations shake in their boots."

I’m not so sure I want God to tear open the heavens and come down. Do you? What would that mean?

To those in Isaiah’s day desperate for change it was a plea for help, for salvation, for a powerful God to sweep away their enemies and restore them.

This is a moment in Israel's history when those exiled to Babylon were limping back to Jerusalem. They’ve been given leave to return to their lands, their cities but what awaits them is devastation, destroyed temple, ruined cities, the fabric of their life shredded.

This return, anticipated and hoped for, is really a descent into misery and despair. Where is God? Why were we abandoned? Why didn’t God take care of us so we wouldn’t sin? (an interesting way to avoid accountability) What do we do now? These are desperate, terrifying, dim times. They are waiting, waiting, waiting in the darkness for the candle flicker of hope.

We are not so different.

Desperate waiting is very real right now
The crashed Economy and General Motors potential failure
Two wars continuing on and on
30 years into the AIDS crisis and still no cure, no equitable access to care
We wait in the in between of one administration and the next

We wait and we worry and we wonder, where is God?

I know there are some of you who are afraid. Afraid that you will lose your jobs., afraid that your declining retirement benefits won’t cover your bills. Afraid that you will get sick because you don’t have health insurance. Afraid of losing your home. I know you are scared. I get scared too.

Advent tells us that even when we are afraid, even when we are sure that God is not present, has bailed on us, that we can, we must, still hope.
We are waiting. We wait and we wait. And our lives can get pretty desperate.

But, the light will come.

Elmer from El Paso wrote this for the NPR series, This I Believe:
 
"This I believe, that my family will be whole again.
In October 2003 my daughter turned one year old, on February 2004, my wife was deported, in June 2004 I lost my job, on August 2004 our house caught on fire.

"This I believe, my family will be whole again

"Losing my job is not so bad, I had been laid off before so finding another job is not really hard but I can’t bring my wife back and make my family whole. Rebuilding my house is not so hard, the home where my three kids were growing up with our dog. Rebuilding the house is easy, hire the insurance contractor, hire my own contractor or be my own contractor. But I can’t bring my wife back and make my family whole again.

"But this I believe, that my family will be whole again. 
Deportation was hard on me and my family, I moved the little ones to be with my wife because the babies could not be without their mother. We have the kids in school in that country. We made the kids dual citizens. What I can’t do is bring my wife back and make my family whole again.

"But this I believe, that my family will be whole again.

"I do everything I can to be with them but I am a foreigner in that county, I speak the language but I don’t read and write the language, so I cannot work there. I do everything I can to make them happy and safe, but I can’t bring my wife back and make my family whole again.

"This October my daughter will by 5 years old, I will be there, but I can’t stay because I have to go back to work.

"But….One day I will come home from work and be home with my family because This I believe. "

Awash in our foreclosed homes
Broken marriages
Estranged families
Unemployment
Chronic illness
Uncertain health care
Do we believe?

Sometimes we are not sure why evil and suffering exist in the world. 
We think, “it is human beings’ fault.”
Or we muse “is it God’s fault” as Isaiah suggests.
Or is it no one’s fault? Does natural disaster and random misfortune just occur, a roll of the dice?

The Greeks told the myth of Pandora’s Box. Prometheus had angered Zeus, the king of the gods, by giving human beings fire. So Zeus decided to punish him by making an incredibly beautiful woman to be his wife. Each of the gods gave Pandora a gift-- beauty, grace, great intelligence --her name means all gifted—and Zeus sent her to Prometheus. Prometheus guessed a trick was up and refused to marry her so Zeus chained Prometheus up and gave Pandora to Prometheus’ brother who was happy to take her. Zeus’ marriage gift was a jar or a box that Pandora was told never to open.

One day, inevitably, out of curiosity or deviousness, she opened the box. Out flew all the evils of the world: malice, hate, disease, despair, hunger, poverty, war, sickness, death, old age, greed, violence. In desperation Pandora slammed the box shut but all had escaped. That is, all things save one. When in despair she opened the box again, in the bottom lay one more thing: hope.

Lord knows we suffer. Isaiah makes sure the Lord knows.
“We all fade like a leaf
The holy cities have become a wilderness, a desolation
All our pleasant places have become ruins.”

God, get down here!

“Keep in mind we are your people, all of us.
You are our Parent
We’re the clay and you’re our Potter
All of us are what you made us.”

We go through hard times, challenging times, times when we cannot see and we think that God is gone.

After I graduated from college I hiked part of the Appalachian Trail which is a hiking trail that stretches from Georgia to Maine. I hiked from Virginia to New Hampshire, a journey that took about two and a half months.

It was a very difficult time in my life. I had just failed my senior thesis, finding out on the day I was to graduate. My parents were going through a bitter divorce. I had just had a relationship end. I did not know what I was going to do after college or what my direction in life was to be. I was sad, angry, scared, alone.

One day on the trail I was hiking but could not find a place to spend the night. Usually I camped or stayed in shelters that are on the trail but I was in a section where the hillsides were too steep. There was no place to camp; I had to keep going. I was in a section of true wilderness. It got later and later and eventually night fell. I kept hiking and hiking until finally I was hiking in the absolute dark. I struggled to stay on the trail, hiking through brush and stumbling up and down the hills. It grew later and later until it was past midnight. I was exhausted and scared and alone.

I kept hiking and then, on my way up the next incline, I stopped. Fifty feet in front of me were two orange spots of light. I froze. What was it? Were they the eyes of a bear or a cougar? This was wilderness. I started to panic and my imagination went wild. Was it a demon or some nightmarish creature ready to pounce?

Finally, after a long, long moment, I realized that it was the embers of a campfire. Two lone spots of light that had not burned out from the fire. I was safe. I could lie down and rest. There was light.

Across the Advent silence, 
the long dark nights before the solstice, 
the cold winter chill in our homes and in our hearts, 
across the desolation of our souls and the destruction we have endured and also created, 
a voice, a promise comes

Wait.
Hope.
Get ready.
The light will come
The light will come.
The light will come.  

Amen.