Advent Longing

[For Evening Prayer; Psalm 119:81-88]

For a long time, I have loved Advent more than Christmas. Now, I used to think I loved Christmas. My childhood memories feel sparse and patchy, but I remember enjoying lying on the ground behind the Christmas tree to read books. I remember one time as a child when my mom let me go to the 11 pm candlelight service, and being impressed by the sense that as we drove home, it was no longer Christmas Eve, but Christmas Day. And yet—maybe you’ve experienced this—when it actually comes to Christmas Day, or at least the evening of the 25th, there’s a bit of a let-down. No matter how much and how long you’ve been waiting for Christmas to come, the day itself can never quite match up to our expectations.

As a pastor, I’ve been forced to reconsider what it is about this time of the year that I appreciate. For obvious reasons, like Christmas break, it is not the case here, but in other places I’ve served, everyone has his or her expectations for what makes for a good Christmas Eve or Christmas Day service; what hymns they need to hear; the feelings they need to have when they leave. It’s possible I’ve even been accused of ruining Christmas because I did not choose someone’s favorite Christmas hymn. So there is a bit of a burden attached to Christmas, which seems steadily to increase year after year, partly because of the way the world pushes buying and selling and decorating back into October.

I don’t say that to criticize those people in those churches, as much as to diagnose some of the reasons I’ve come to love Advent more than Christmas. When you come to Christmas and your expectations are not quite met, even if you do get your version of the Red Rider bb gun; when people you love die around Christmas time, or die during the previous year, and your Christmas is never quite the same; when your family doesn’t look like a version of the perfect advertising picture of a family at Christmas; when you’re sick, or struggling, or whatever might be interfering with your ideal Christmas celebration; then you also can see how Advent is much more like real life than Christmas.

The psalmist says, “My soul longs for Your salvation; I hope in Your word.” My soul is exhausted; it languishes; it looks desperately for Your salvation. Our longings and our hopes are not yet fulfilled, not yet seen; they are always less than what we expect or want them to be. In The Chronicles of Narnia, it is “always winter, never Christmas.” For the Christian, in this life and in this world, it is always Advent and never Christmas. We know longing, waiting, hoping much better than we know having, seeing, and experiencing. We are like John in prison. Or like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who said: “a prison cell like this is a good analogy for Advent; one waits, hopes, does this or that—ultimately negligible things—the door is locked and can only be opened from the outside.”1

“My eyes long for Your certain words.” “I hope in Your words.” These are Advent thoughts, where we have not yet seen, but we have hope and longing tied to certain promises, to the assurance of the One who speaks these words. We have hints of that fulfillment when we come to the end of Advent, or to the end of Lent, in our celebrations, but let’s be honest, we didn’t really fast in the days prior to our celebrating. My belt certainly hasn’t gotten looser during Advent.

Even so, on we go, to ends and to beginnings, all the while living in an Advent world that is still much more full of war than peace, or death than life, of sin than holiness, of the prisons we build and that are built around us, than the freedom of the sons of God. Much more longing than longing realized; much more of hope and faith than of sight; much more of hearing than of seeing. We are like wineskins dried and shriveled in the smoke of this world and the smoke of our own sins.

But we have not forgotten the words of our God. Christmas is tied to a promise: the promise of the God who would take on flesh and enter His world, a world we have remade as we saw fit, and save His creation and us with it; the promise of a baby, whose name would be Yah-shua, because He would be Yahweh’s salvation in the world; the promise of that Savior, ascended and invisible, who will appear with all His angels to gather His Church into His resurrection glory; the promise that the Jesus whose birth we celebrate at Christmas is Immanuel, God-with-us, now, as He delivers His word of forgiveness and His body and blood to us; the promise that our lowly bodies will be transformed to be like His glorious body. We have not forgotten the words of God; they are all we have in an Advent world. But Christmas is coming; the celebration of His birth is only the beginning of the celebration that will go on forever; the Mass of Christ as we gather around His altar is only the beginning of the everlasting feast of the Lamb. Advent feels more real for now, but it will give way to Christmas, and then the presence of Christ, our born, crucified, resurrected, glorified Lord will be the only reality there is.

1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Christian Gremmels et al., trans. Isabel Best et al., vol. 8, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), 188.

St. Lucy, Virgin and Martyr

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            In some ways, St. Lucy is like St. Patrick: there are a lot of celebrations that take place around the world, while the actual details surrounding the saint’s life are hard to state definitively. For example, it is not at all clear that St. Patrick actually drove a bunch of snakes out of Ireland! I am sure he would never countenance such an abomination as green beer. Even so, from probably the sixth century, Lucy’s birthday of December 13 has been celebrated around the world with various traditions, from her home country of Italy, to Scandinavia, England, Greece, and the Philippines. She is one of the eight women named in the Roman Canon of the Mass, showing how popular and widely known she is.

            The traditional story of Lucy’s life matches many of the themes of that category of saint called “virgin-martyr.” It says that she was a firm believer in Christ from a very early age. She was promised as a wife to a pagan in Syracuse, Sicily in the very early fourth century. She convinced her mother (whom tradition says was miraculously healed) to give to the poor her dowry price. This, apparently, did not please her fiance, who then turned her in to the authorities for being a Christian. They tried to force her into prostitution, but the legend says that when they came to get her, they couldn’t move her even with a team of oxen. They piled wood around her where she stood, in order to burn her, but the wood wouldn’t burn. And, finally, they put out her eyes and killed her with swords. Another legend says that she refused to be betrothed to anyone but Christ, so she put out her own eyes. Both of those legends have led to artwork with Lucy holding two eyes on a golden platter. The conclusion of the story is that when they went to bury her, her eyes were miraculously restored. So she’s been considered the patron saint of the blind.

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Blessed is the Nation

[Preached at University Lutheran for Evening Prayer, 11/6/24]

No matter how many times we’ve heard or said it, it probably needs to be said again, because we never seem to learn it: “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish” (Psalm 146:3-4). The “princes” will always disappoint you, whether they win or lose. And of course that applies not only to princes, but also to those who are subject to them.

Maybe you’re happy about the way the election went down; maybe you’re unhappy. Either way, where is your trust? In the things of this world that fade away, like money, the economy, promises to make things better—or great? If your candidates won, be happy. That’s ok. And if your candidates didn’t win, be unhappy. That’s ok, too. But if you believe your life depends on the person occupying the White House, your idolatry is showing. What may and should give us pause is that even if you believe the right person was elected, even when Donald Trump is inaugurated in January, Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York voted to enshrine the killing of children in the womb as a fundamental, constitutional right.

Psalm 33 (and all the psalms, of course) give us a different view of things. First, it is a view not from down here, where things are so messy that we feel compressed, entangled, and anxious; it is a view from above, from God, who made the heavens by His Word, and everything in them; who puts land and sea together in their ordering; “for He spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (33:9). Because He is the Creator, “Let all the earth fear Yahweh; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him!” (33:8). No exceptions, no votes, no elections. Let every knee bow and every tongue confess. And it gets worse for nations: “Yahweh brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He frustrates the plans of the peoples” (33:10). Again, the psalmist doesn’t distinguish between right and left, red and blue, Democrat and Republican. He brings their counsel to nothing and He frustrates their plans.

Some people—some Christians—might find refuge in verse 12: “Blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh, the people whom He has chosen as His heritage!” But I am sorry (not sorry) to say that that nation is not the United States. He chose Israel as His people, and promised that He would bring them into the Land. The fulfillment of that choosing is that Jesus Christ was born an Israelite, of the house of David, in the Land of Promise, and that He gathers both Jews and Gentiles into His nation, His Kingdom. You are the ones He has chosen, you are the ones He elected; not because you are Americans, but because, in His great love, Jesus’ blood and resurrection cover you. The Church is that people; the Church is that blessed nation.

And that makes all the difference for us in how we go about our lives here, or how God’s people go about their lives in whatever nation God has put them. The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength; the war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue (33:16-17). A president is not saved by the electoral college; the economy and border security are false hopes for salvation; voters, and legislatures, governors, and congressmen cannot rescue anybody from anything.

“Behold, the eye of Yahweh is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His steadfast love, that He may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine” (33:18-19). So, dear, beloved, baptized children of God, “Our soul waits for Yahweh; He is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in Him, because we trust in His holy name. Let Your steadfast love, O Yahweh, be upon us, even as we hope in You” (33:20-22).

— Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 11/6/24