The Invitation

We begin the joyous season of Advent, those party-filled, gift-laden four weeks before Christmas Day, with what is perhaps the saddest Psalm of all, number 137. Written at a time when the Hebrew people had been displaced from the land they loved, and facing a future that they knew nothing about and had no control over, they had lost all hope.

Psalm 137

1 Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept
as we thought of Jerusalem.^[a]
2 We put away our harps,
hanging them on the branches of poplar trees.
3 For our captors demanded a song from us.
Our tormentors insisted on a joyful hymn:
“Sing us one of those songs of Jerusalem!”
4 But how can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a pagan land?

Over the next several weeks, there will be songs to sing- “Joy to the World!”- but sometimes, for some persons, those songs will feel tormenting, too. You might feel as if those songs of joy and hope and promise are being demanded of you at a time when you simply have run out of anything to sing.

I talk about the difficulties of the Christmas season each year. And if you don’t know why I do that, then some year, you will. Because for every year that passes in our lives, the opportunities for that empty place in the middle of our souls- that hole in the blanket of our memories- that place has a chance to grow larger. And at Christmas time and other special times of the years, the edges of that hole feel like they’re on fire.

My son’s girlfriend writes an on-line column (mybrotherisdead.blogspot.com) which I know several of you are regular readers of, too. She began her blog in late July after the tragic accidental death of her brother Kyle earlier that month, and as one means of coping with his death. Here’s something Miranda wrote in late September, as she was already anticipating the difficulties of Christmas this year:

“Usually, Kyle and I fly in from our respective schools and do Christmas Eve at my mom's and Christmas Day at my dad's. It's a casual affair - we're not a religious family and only slightly interested in ceremony. We usually end up trimming a tree, we stuff stockings that we may not hang, we exchange presents geared much more to necessity than luxury. Nothing spectacular. We may dress up to go to my dad's, but only because mom insists each year that she doesn't have any pictures of us, and with a photographer for a father, for heaven’s sake! It's pretty laid back. We like it that way.

“Which makes it a little surprising that, when I think about Christmas this year, I get shaky. Now, here, sitting at work in September, thinking about a holiday that I'm at best indifferent to and at worst annoyed by , I want to cry. The reasons are obvious, I guess. In LA, we stay with my mom in her two bedroom condo and having no one to fight with over the second bedroom, no one to fight with over the car, no one to gossip with about my parents, no one to drive with to my dad's Christmas Day is more lonely a feeling than I knew existed.”

The reason those of us who read her like her, is because of Miranda’s complete honesty in her writing. “Christmas Day is more lonely a feeling than I knew existed.” A lot of us feel that way some of the time. And many people feel that way all the time- it’s not just the first year of a person’s absence that hurts, or a child’s being away from home, in Iraq, at school, or even in their own home away from yours with their own new family. Those Christmas times when everything seemed to be- in memory- the way things should always be, can rear their heads over the present day manger scenes and holiday decorations in sad, lonely, and regretful ways.

As I stand right here, I can see a woman who for 15 years, arranged the Christmas celebration at her church. She arranged for 10 or 12 different music groups to come and perform for 2 hours, with a meal following. It was a solid month of planning. She baked decorated Xmas cookies by the dozens for her sons, took them for trips all over the place during Xmas vacation to see relatives, decorated the whole house for the family reunion Xmas night, and sent out about 500 Xmas cards, but this year she will have no idea it’s Christmas until she sees the tree on that day.

We’ve all got those wonderful but potentially crippling, depressing memories, and we’ve got to figure out what to do with them so they don’t define us in such a way that they cause us to miss this year, this day, these moments.

One of the things I say often at funerals is this: “The sadness of this day is the result of joys we shared during many yesterdays.” And while those words don’t lessen the sadness, they do help some people begin to put their sadness into a context of movement through time. Those people and times we miss, would not be missed if they had not been such a vital part of who we are right now. While we are alive, they are alive, in us and through us.

Everything about the people we might be acutely missing the physical or emotional presence of this year, everything about them continues moving through time, through us. You are great grandma’s gift to your children across time; Miranda is Kyle’s continuing presence to ever larger numbers of people, who are getting to know him through her. She’ll have no one to fight with this year over the second bedroom, but now there are 103 people here in this Texas church who have been touched by Kyle.

And if you like me at all, don’t forget that I am a continuing expression of the one “the one who brung me.” Who she was, is a big part of who I am, and not just physically. Your loved ones, because I love you, live in on me, too, and in each person who has received the gift of them, through you.

We are waves on the ocean for a little while; we are the water of the ocean for eternity. Everything we may regret not being able to see this Christmas season, or any time of the year- all of those people and events that brought us yesterday’s joys, are still in us. We can build the walls of our sadness so high that those joys become dammed up within us, or we can set them free, to wash over others. We’ve got the gifts of yesterday to give away today.

Miranda is helping untold numbers of people around the world cope, through her writing about her brother, with physical death. Kyle becomes a living gift to those people.

I can gripe and moan, even cry that I will never ever see again one of those incredibly decorated Christmas cookies. Or I can continue to give away her cookies in all the forms that cookies can take. Those cookies are not my cookies, they are our cookies, and they are living gifts of hers to whoever receives them.

To those people who sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept over the Jerusalem they had known, and believed they would never be a part of again, God sent a messenger. Isaiah had a message from the God of his understanding and that message, in its simplicity, was this:

You can continue sitting there in your sadness, and in your regrets. You can do that. God will neither stop you nor punish you for doing so. But you also have an invitation from God, to stand in a new place for a little while, and see the world as God sees it- as a continuing river of Life.

As Christians, we call some of the prophecies of Isaiah, messianic prophecies- 300 years before the birth of Jesus, they seemed to point toward Jesus. For certain, however, to everyone who heard them, and hears them, they are words of hope, words of a new perspective on the past, words of Light in a world that may seem very, very dark. He spoke for God:

Isaiah 55

1 “Is anyone thirsty?
Come and drink—
even if you have no money!
Come, take your choice of wine or milk—
it’s all free!
2 Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength?
Why pay for food that does you no good?
Listen to me, and you will eat what is good.
You will enjoy the finest food.

3 “Come to me with your ears wide open.
Listen, and you will find life.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you.
I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to King David.
4 See how I used him to display my power among the peoples.
I made him a leader among the nations.
5 You also will command nations you do not know,
and peoples unknown to you will come running to obey,
because I, the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, have made you glorious.”

What had belonged to King David 300 years before was exactly what still belonged to those people sitting by the rivers of Babylon. Wrap up those gifts of David in new wrapping paper, and pass them on, God said. Which is exactly what they did. Where once they had sat in fear and sadness by the rivers, they now began gathering together their knowledge about God, and the memories of their lives in Jerusalem. The gathered together the remembered psalms and proverbs. They collected the pieces of prophecies circulating among their people orally and on scrolls. They began writing down, and cataloging the great stories of Ruth, of Job, of Esther, King David, and King Solomon.

Out of their sitting sadness, the people stood up and handed on to eternity the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament. They would always feel sadness over the past they had known, but they turned that past- the joys of yesterday- into hope and promise for the future. They didn’t let the joy they had known become dammed up in their hearts and die. They passed it on. Out of their sadness, they became glorious.

In the Advent stories we will be hearing, and in the stories of Jesus we know, we will see the same kind difficult circumstances faced by the Jews, and by every human being who has ever lived on the earth- we will those difficult circumstances transformed by hope for the future.

Mary, pregnant out of wedlock. Joseph, a proud man, having to buy Mary’s story. Mary, Joseph, and the baby- homeless, being pursued by a murderer. Jesus, homeless again, accused of being a criminal, dying on a cross. The disciples, without a leader, accused themselves of criminality. Every chapter of the gospels contains stories that could have given rise to life-ending, dead-end stories of regret, depression, and overwhelming sadness. Every one of those chapters could have been the last chapter.

But every one of those chapters also contains Light. The Light of the Word made flesh and dwelling among, as a human- just like us! In every one of those chapters we can hear God saying to them, and now to us, It’s OK to sit there by the rivers and not be able to sing. It’s OK, really. You can be as sad as you want to be. But come, stand over here for a minute, because I’ve got something for you to see!

Look, Mary, I know this wasn’t part of your plans, but I’ve got bigger and better plans.

Look, Joseph, I know her story sounds preposterous, but I need you!

Look, shepherds, despite the hard and crummy lives you’ve led so far, I’ve got something for you to see that will be good news for all people.

Look, wise men, even though you’re disobeying your king, look up in the sky- there’s a star to follow that will take you to where that king back east can never take you!

Look, sick woman whose been bleeding for twelve years, he’s right there, go touch him!

Look, Mary and Martha, look at the tomb they laid your brother Lazarus in three days ago.

Look, Mary Magdalene, look past your sadness into the eyes of the gardener standing beside you.

Look, disciples, look who’s coming down the road.

Look, sons and daughters of mine, God says, look at the gifts- the heaps of joyful gifts you have received from those loved ones of the past- look at them and then see who needs them.

Those memories, those joys of the past that cause the sadness of this season- those memories, those loves, they are gifts now- your shared gifts- to be passed on. They are no more dead and gone than Jesus is dead and gone. As Jesus is here among us, so is every grandmother, aunt, child, wife, husband, and friend you have ever loved. So is Kyle, so is the woman I once knew so well. They are right here (heart), you feel them, you know them, every day, every hour. Just like Jesus, the world needs to know them. The world is waiting for them.

“Fear not,” Jesus said, “for I am with you always.”

Thank God, there are always new places to stand , and old and precious gifts to share with new people.