The First Sunday of Advent 2011

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
November 27, 2011

1 Advent B

Last Spring, my husband had the opportunity to spend two weeks in the West African nation of Liberia. Don was part of a delegation from our Diocese that is exploring the possibility of a companion relationship with the Episcopal Church of Liberia. Before Don went to Liberia, I knew very little about the civil wars in Liberia that destroyed the very fabric of life in that country. But since then, a good bit of my extra-curricular reading has been about Liberia, particularly in the form of memoirs. These memoirs, by current Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee, both winners of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, and by Helene Cooper, a White House correspondent for the New York Times, all describe the time of the civil wars in graphic detail. What they describe is the utter and complete breakdown of civilization, as war lords and their lieutenants recruited child soldiers, some as young as 8 years old, and demanded mind numbing brutality toward rival factions. The result is the total destruction of the infrastructure of an entire county. Now, even after years of relative peace, there is still no running water, electricity, or phone service much of the time in most of Liberia, even in Monrovia, the capital city. The unemployment rate is 85%, and opportunities for education, even at the elementary school level, are severely limited. Fourteen years of civil war destroyed roads, bridges, and buildings- the infrastructure of an entire country that is just beginning to be rebuilt after some 6 years of relative peace. There is simply no money.

Boh the reading from Isaiah and the gospel reading for the first Sunday in Advent reflect situations eerily similar to the situation in Liberia and in other war torn countries. In Isaiah, the Hebrew people of the 6^th century BC have returned to Jerusalem from their exile in Babylon to find their holy land ransacked, burned, looted and basically unlivable. There is nothing left. While they were in exile, they dreamed of their return home to Jerusalem, and how happy and easy life would be there. The reality was the opposite of their dreams. In this morning’s reading, we hear the people beg God to come down and be known to their adversaries so that the nations would tremble at God’s presence. The people acknowledge their sin, and God’s anger, even as they remember God’s powerful deeds in the past, and they trust that God will act again on their behalf.

In the gospel reading, Jesus has just described a scene that could have come right out of Liberia, or Bosnia, or Rwanda, or Iraq. In the verses immediately prior to this passage from Mark, Jesus described such horror that "those in Judea must flee to the mountains, the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat. Woe to those who are pregnant and nursing children in those days. For in those days there will be such suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of creation until now." In response to the depths of that suffering, a suffering the people were actually experiencing at the hands of the Romans when Mark’s gospel was written, we hear Jesus say "But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in heaven will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with power and great glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds." Keep awake, Jesus says, for you do not know when the master of the house will return.

How are we to understand Jesus’ words, when there seems to be so little real evidence that Jesus will actually return when things get bad enough? How much worse do things have to get than the complete breakdown of civilization, where brutality, self-interest, and sheer terror reign? Does this have to happen all over the entire globe for Jesus to return?
In her book "Mighty be our powers," Leymah Gbowee tells the story of how Christian and Muslim women, completely disenfranchised and brutally treated during the civil wars in Liberia, made a difference in bringing about peace in that county. These women of two different faiths, who had never before worked together, seized the power they had, which did not look like power at all- their power as widows, as women who had lost their children, as women who had been brutally violated, as women who had been denied a future, as women whose anger needed to be channeled in productive directions- and used that power to work for peace. Gbowee drew heavily upon chapter 54 of Isaiah, a chapter from the same era of Israelite history as the reading we heard this morning. She read to the women "Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed, do not be discouraged, for you will not suffer disgrace, for you will forget the same of your youth, and the disgrace of your widowhood you will remember no more." And "for the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed."

The Liberian women did not believe that God would come and rescue them, but that God would work through them to rescue Liberia. They remembered what God had done for them in the past, and trusted that God would act again, just as the Hebrew people did when they returned from exile in Babylon to find their homeland destroyed and unliveable. And God did act through the Liberian women and their courageous work for peace, which came at great personal cost and tremendous risk to their lives. God was faithful. God did show up, and God gathered women from all over Liberia, the four winds of Liberia as it were, to bring about peace in their war-torn country.

Today, we begin the season of Advent, the season of waiting for the Christ Child to be born in our midst and to return in glory. Some days, that hope seems as pointless as the hope of the Liberian women Leymah Gbowee writes about. Advent, however, is not just about waiting for God to act or just about hoping for a better future. We are not passive observers in the Advent drama. Advent is about being attentive, staying awake so to speak, being open to the ways God is calling us to use what power we have, which may not look like power at all, so that the Christ Child may be born among us. When we do that, no matter what the cause of our suffering, no matter the depths of our despair or the breakdown of our lives, the promise of Isaiah, the promise of the gospel, and the promise of Advent, is that God will act.

Amen.