On this Fourth Sunday of Advent, our season of waiting is almost over. Ready or not, Christmas is almost here. If that thought just made your heart beat faster with a feeling of stress, let’s take a deep breath together and listen for God speaking.
Today’s reading comes from the letters to the Hebrews, written to connect this new, early faith in Jesus back to the traditions of Judaism. The author of this book isn’t known to us, but it seems to have been written to encourage believers who were facing persecution for their faith.
Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body you have prepared for me;
in burnt-offerings and sin-offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, “See, God, I have come to do your will, O God”
(in the scroll of the book it is written of me).’
When he said above, ‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt-offerings and sin-offerings’ (these are offered according to the law), then he added, ‘See, I have come to do your will.’ He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Over the years, I notice that my relationship with my cell phone has changed.
You may find yourself somewhere along this spectrum. At first, I had it only for emergencies. Then, I fell in love with my now-husband, and I had it for emergencies and talking to him. Then, I started to talk on it more…and my work gave me a phone that I could use for directions and reading email, which was the gateway drug to more. Some years ago, we gave up having a landline. We still have a number, so telemarketers can call us to their hearts’ content, but there’s no actual phone attached to it. We get a text when someone leaves us a message.
But there are flaws in this relationship of ours. I feel that the balance of power is off. Sometimes the phone drops calls, or there’s an odd delay before I hear the other person, leaving us to talk over each other. Experts call this gap before we hear the other person “cell phone latency.” I call it annoying.
The season of Advent in the church calendar has a similar feeling of delay and disconnection from the rest of our lives. If you’ve been out shopping, you know that the stores are full of Christmas carols and Santas. Decorations are everywhere, and friends and family are celebrating with festive gatherings. It’s Christmas everywhere!
Except church…we’re the only ones with this odd season of Advent. We’re out of step. I wonder sometimes if we should just give it up and have a month of Christmas, like the rest of the world. Well, Christmas starts in September out there, but we could have the month of December as the Christmas season. We could just do away with Advent altogether. It’s an odd season. We’re supposed to be reflecting, but we don’t have time. We’re supposed to pause, but we can’t seem to do it. The hymns are somber, and we’d rather sing Christmas carols all month anyway. There’s never enough time for Christmas carols.
And then we have these texts. On the last Sunday in Advent, when we’re inching toward Christmas, we get the book of Hebrews.
What does this have to do with Advent, anyway?
Today’s text shows us another side of Jesus. As we wait for his coming, we’ve heard texts that understand him as the one who fulfills God’s ancient promises, who changes our lives, who brings us joy. Now we have this image of Christ as our high priest — the one who intercedes for us with God, and who connects us to God.
In the Jewish tradition, the high priest was human, and was able to understand human frailty and the hopes of the people. He (always a he, in those days) was also chosen by God for this role. He stood in a unique place between God and the worshipers. You can see why early Christians picked up this image for Jesus, whom we call both human and divine. Jesus, too, stands in this distinctive place, with a unique understanding of humanity and a special understanding of God.
The early Christian faith grew out of the Jewish faith, and so this image would have been familiar to the believers. The writers of this passage took a well-known religious figure, and made it unique to our Christian faith with the presence of Jesus. Just in case we’re tempted to think too much about Jesus as a baby, or as the dusty, sweaty figure who walked all over Palestine, this text offers us another image of him. This is a figure deserving of our awe. This is a figure to make us stop and take note, not to be taken for granted. This is where we need to pause and take in the mystery of Jesus, with all of the sides and facets that we don’t see during most of the Christian year.
Advent is that place where we pause and take in Jesus in a new way. We stop for surprise, and rest in awe.
This doesn’t come easily, especially in this season when there’s so much to do. But Advent invites us to choose to stop. We take a spiritual and mental break, and take in the wonder of the Jesus who comes as a baby, and the Christ who is our high priest, our connection to God.
Author Gretchen Rubin, who writes about happiness, says that there’s hope for us. We can learn this skill of pausing. When we do, our faith grows richer. We can learn to embrace the things that are difficult. Anyone can learn to wait, gracefully…even productively. In this season, when God invites us into a time of waiting for Jesus, waiting for God’s good news, we can transform our experience of waiting.
The practice of our faith is the practice of waiting, in Advent. Gretchen Rubin says we can make waiting into a fruitful activity. She suggested that we put the word “meditation” with any activity where we have to wait, any activity that’s difficult for us, and let it become our teacher. It might be “cell phone delay meditation” or “waiting for school pick-up meditation” or “watching soccer practice mediation.” It could even be “paying bills meditation” or “gift wrapping meditation.”
Rubin adds another suggestion, “Dig in. As they say, if you can’t get out of it, get into it.” We can’t get out of it Advent…so we might as well get into it, embrace it, savor it, even up to the very last day. She adds, “If something is boring for two minutes, do it for four minutes. If it’s still boring, do it for eight minutes, then sixteen, and so on. Eventually, you discover that it’s not boring at all” (from her blog, GretchenRubin.com). If we’re not good at waiting, the cure, it turns out, is to do more waiting. If we find something annoying, the solution is to embrace it.
Advent makes that come alive in our faith.
Advent calls us out of the rush, the hurry, the overwhelming madness of Christmas, into a stillness where we meet Jesus the high priest. We learn to pause and then learn from the pause. Advent invites us to stop, to wait, to dig in, and to find the mysterious presence of Jesus again as we do. It makes us suspend the world’s time, and get on God’s time.
And that is our very best preparation for Christmas.
In the name of the Christ Child, Amen.
Prayer: Merciful God, save us, we pray, from rushing through these days. Stop our hurrying so we breathe deeply of your presence. Still our busy fingers so they can fold in prayer. Slow our rushing steps, so we see you in one another’s faces. Make us wait, we pray, so we can take in the fullness of your Presence, as you come to us again in Jesus. Amen.