Isaiah 9:8-21
Rev. Fleming Rutledge says, “Advent is not for the faint of heart.” Contrary to the sentimentality we’ve ascribed to the season, primarily focusing on sweet baby Jesus, advent begins in the dark, forcing us to wrestle with the depth and breadth of the human condition as we await Christ’s second coming. “To grasp the depth of the human predicament, one has to be willing to enter into the very worst. Entering into the very worst means giving serious consideration to some of the most hopeless situations….”
We like to say the Advent season is about hope and joy, but Fleming Rutledge insists that hope and joy have no context or content apart from the real hopelessness and the despair sin has wrought in our world. Of all people, Jesus’ Mother would know how right is Fleming.
Take for example the Johnson family, a family I’ve known since 1993. They were among the over sixty people my parents accommodated in their home as the result of the mass exodus of residents from Buchanan City during the height of the Liberian civil war. They lived in our home for almost two years and the familial bonds formed during that time have lasted through the years.
On December 6, they gathered in Monrovia to celebrate the wedding of the oldest daughter of the family, Vivian. Throughout the day, Abel Johnson, a brother of the bride, excitedly shared pictures from the wedding on Facebook.
Around 4 p.m. that afternoon, I received a text from my sister, “We just heard from Liberia that Abel Johnson passed away.” I did not believe my sister.
“That can’t be true,” I texted back.
“He was sharing pics of the wedding just a few hours ago.”
I logged back in to Facebook and instead of seeing more pics of the joyous occasion, I was instead reading messages of lament and condolences and Rest In Peace from friends, family, and loved ones.
What should have been one of the best days for the Johnson family, was now the worst day. Abel, a healthy 43 year old son, brother, husband, father, uncle, nephew, cousin, and friend, full of life, kind, compassionate, passed out at the wedding reception and was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.
Here’s another story.
On Dec. 10, three year old Josephine Bulubenchi was playing with four of her brothers and sisters that Saturday afternoon when Emanuel Fluter, her maternal uncle, allegedly grabbed her and slashed her throat. According to Clinton County Sheriff Jim Guffey, the girl’s father heard her screams through a baby monitor and ran into the room to find that his brother-in-law had attacked his daughter. Josephine’s dad was injured as he tried to disarm Fluter. Josephine was rushed to the hospital and died the following day.
Or how about this story: On Tuesday, Dec. 04, Steve Locke, a professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, in Boston Massachusetts, was on his way to get a burrito before his 1:30 class when he was detained by police. He writes:
“I noticed the police car in the public lot behind Centre Street. As I was walking away from my car, the cruiser followed me. I walked down Centre Street and was about to cross over to the burrito place when the officer got out of the car.
“Hey my man,” he said.
He unsnapped the holster of his gun.
I took my hands out of my pockets.
“Yes?” I said.
“Where you coming from?”
“Home.”
Where’s home?”
“Dedham.”
How’d you get here?”
“I drove.”
He was next to me now. Two other police cars pulled up. I was standing in front of the bank across the street from the burrito place. There were cops all around me.
I said nothing. I looked at the officer who addressed me. He was white, stocky, bearded.
“You weren’t over there, were you?” He pointed down Centre Street toward Hyde Square.
“No. I came from Dedham.”
“We had someone matching your description just try to break into a woman’s house.”
“You fit the description,” the officer said. “Black male, knit hat, puffy coat.
“Do you have identification?”
“It’s in my wallet. May I reach into my pocket and get my wallet?”
“Yeah.”
I handed him my license. He walked over to a police car. The other cop, taller, wearing sunglasses, told me that I fit the description of someone who broke into a woman’s house. Right down to the knit cap….
For the record,” I said to the second cop, “I’m not a criminal. I’m a college professor.” I was wearing my faculty ID around my neck, clearly visible with my photo.
The first cop returned and handed me my license.
“Where do you teach?”
“Massachusetts College of Art and Design.”
“How long you been teaching there?”
“Thirteen years.”
“Okay, We’re going to let you go. Do you have a car key you can show me?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to reach into my pocket and pull out my car key.”
“Okay.”
The cops thanked me for my cooperation. I nodded and turned to go.
“Sorry for screwing up your lunch break,” the second cop said.
I walked back towards my car, away from the burrito place. I had about 45 minutes until my class began and I had to teach. I forgot the lesson I had planned. I forgot the schedule. I couldn’t think about how to do my job. I thought about the fact my word counted for nothing, they didn’t believe that I wasn’t a criminal. They had to find out. My word was not enough for them. My ID was not enough for them. My handmade one-of-a-kind knit hat was an object of suspicion. My Ralph Lauren quilted blazer was only a “puffy coat.”
His concluding words echoes the sentiments of many people of color who live in a constant state of fear: “Nothing I am, nothing I do, nothing I have, means anything because I fit the description.”
Fleming Rutledge, who’s white and elderly and from Virginia and was converted out of her own childhood racism by hearing MLK’s Dream sermon in real time, says in her book, Advent Begins in the Dark, argues that the Black Christian community more so than any other part of the Body of Christ understands the season of Advent for they are an Advent people, a people waiting and hoping for Christ, in this in between time between the already of Christ’s first coming and the not yet of his return, longing for Christ to make good on his promise to come again and make right the wrong wrought in our world.
Advent, Fleming says, is a season for sober honesty not sentimentality because, of course, we believe our faith isn’t just helpful or uplifting. We believe it’s true.
And because we believe our Gospel is true, we believe we can face the ugly situations in our world and ourselves truthfully.
Around this time six years ago, the Sandy Hook massacre happened. Sandy Hook was gut wrenching for many of us. We felt hopeless, we felt helpless, and maybe even depressed. We shook our heads. We held vigils. We demanded justice. We protested. We blamed. And then we moved.
But Advent reminds us that we can’t just move on. During Advent, we have to face the world’s pain. Like Job’s imperfect friends, we have to sit with hopelessness.
We have to pay attention to the lived realities of majority of the world’s plight…. For some of us, this is hard because being attentive to hopelessness depletes us of energy, of joy. It’s not our problem. It’s not our experience. We don’t know what to say. We are uncomfortable so we go to our happy place. We find or do things to comfort and soothe us.
On the other hand, some of us face it head on. We stand in solidarity with the poor, the underdogs of society. We fight for justice. But justice doesn’t come, at least not the way we imagine. And before we know it, we are frustrated, burnt out because nothing seems to change or get better. We are depleted of energy and joy. Soon, we too, go to our happy place. We find or do things to comfort and soothe us.
The darkness is too much. It is overwhelming. We don’t want to think about it—not the darkness around us nor the darkness within us. We want a way out of the darkness. We want the cuteness of Christmas pageants. We want the beautiful Christmas carols. We want to hear the preceding verses from Isaiah, set to the beauty of Handel’s Messiah:
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined…..
6 For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 His authority shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.
He shall reign forever and ever.
We want hope. We need hope. Hope. Hope is central to Advent but, “it is intolerable to speak of hope unless we are willing to look at the overwhelming presence of evil in our world.” What hope is there for parents who will never know what killed their vibrant son because they live in a part of the world where medical examiners are non existent and even if they were, they would not have the finances to pay for an autopsy. What hope is there for a father hearing the piercing cries of his three year old daughter and for siblings who have to live the rest of their lives with the sight, sound, smell, and touch, of the day their uncle murdered their sister? What hope is there for those who always live in fear because the color of their skin automatically means they fit the description?
Hope is central to Advent But, “it is intolerable to speak of hope unless we are willing to look at the overwhelming presence of evil in our world.” This is the task Advent. This is the task of the texts we read, especially from the prophets. The readings are intended to disturb our peace and security, expose our pride and arrogance. They are intended to have us ponder, “If we in our in our human limitations find the ugliness of the world disturbing and uneasy, ugliness attributed to our human actions and inactions, then what must it be like for God?” Remember, even Jesus himself is born with monsters at his manger, and Mary’s lullaby to him on the first Christmas Eve is occasioned by the cries of all the other mothers in Israel whose boys King Herod has killed.
Even ‘Joy to the World’ is sung against the backdrop of the curse of Sin and Death: as far as the curse is found…
When was the last time we really considered God’s feelings about the state of the world? What must it feel like for God who, as we learned from an early age, has the whole world in Her hands? The prophet Isaiah gives us a glimpse of how God feels about the mess we’ve made of God’s world: “For all this, God’s anger does not turn away and Her hand is stretched out still.”
The prophet Isaiah, with lyrical and poetic genius, brings words of warning to God’s people. This is not the first time the prophet has had to do this. Earlier in his career, he uttered these words to his kinfolk in the northern kingdom of Israel, but they didn’t listen to him and that resulted in Assyrian invasion. Now Isaiah finds himself on location in the southern kingdom of Judah, bringing yet again, words of warning to the leaders, movers and shakers of Judah, to Judah’s political elites. And the people’s response?
“Ehn, God’s gonna do whatever God wants, so we’re gonna do whatever we want.” The leaders’ inability to think of anyone other than themselves, their repeated lies, their oppressive policies, their lack of compassion, their unwillingness to see the hopelessness and chaos they have unleashed angers God and results in God’s judgment.
God’s anger and judgment unsettles us because we comprehend it through our limited human lexicon. It has a negative connotation for us because we associate it with condemnation. God’s judgment does not equate to condemnation. Condemnation is our thing. We condemn anyone who does not look, think, love, or act like us. Condemnation is our thing, not God’s. As the gospel writer John reminds us, God does not condemn the world; rather, God saves the world—God makes right the wrongs and mess we have made of the world.
“God’s judgment is God’s justice, and God’s justice is God’s righteousness and God’s righteousness is God’s justification— it’s all God’s rectification; it’s all God’s work of right-making.”
God’s work of making right the chaos we have unleashed in the world is echoed in the refrain of the text: “For all this God’s anger has not turned away; God’s hand is stretched out still.”
The prophet’s words are a re-membering of God’s liberating and salvific track record. It goes back to the unraveling of God’s creation that happened in the Garden of Eden and the unraveling of creation that has continued since. For all humanity has done, for all the ways we have undone God’s good creation, God’s anger has not turned away; God’s hand is stretched out still.
And then to an angel sent to a young girl, God determines to be Emmanuel, to make right in the flesh, bearing our wrong-doing in his own body.
When I heard the news of Abel’s death, I expressed my condolences to his family. One of his sisters responded. “Please pray for our mother.”
I told her I would and I have been through my tears and lament for all of them, recognizing that Only God can heal them from this heartbreak and unbearable pain.
We will never fully understand someone else’s experience but we can acknowledge their pain. We can lament with them, sit with them, pray for them, allowing Spirit of God to work through our prayers—comforting, consoling, healing and mending their broken hearts.
On the Go Fund Me page created for Josephine’s funeral expenses, the family turned to scripture, quoting Galatians 6:9: “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.” It is easy to lose heart in this world where stories of death is everywhere—in the darkness and the light. Yet, the promises of scripture are God’s gift to us. The stories that lie within, the good, the bad, and the ugly, remind us that God never leaves us nor forsakes us.
When Steve Locke was being detained, passers by looked at him like he was a criminal. He wrote, “The police are detaining you so clearly you must have done something, otherwise they wouldn’t have you. No one made eye contact with me. I was hoping that someone I knew would walk down the street or come out of one of the shops or get off the 39 bus or come out of JP Licks and say to these cops, “That’s Steve Locke. What the F are you detaining him for?”
And as if God heard his plea for help, he suddenly noticed a black woman further down the block. She was small and concerned. She was watching what was going on. “I focused on her red coat. I slowed my breathing. I looked at her from time to time. I thought: Don’t leave, sister. Please don’t leave.” And she didn’t. After he was released, he went over to her:
“Thank you,” I said to her. “Thank you for staying.”
“Are you ok?” She said. Her small beautiful face was lined with concern.
“Not really. I’m really shook up. And I have to get to work.”
“I knew something was wrong. I was watching the whole thing. The way they are treating us now, you have to watch them. ”
“I’m so grateful you were there. I kept thinking to myself, ‘Don’t leave, sister.’ May I give you a hug?”
“Yes,” she said. She held me as I shook. “Are you sure you are ok?”
“No I’m not. I’m going to have a good cry in my car. I have to go teach.”
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
But it’s not Christmas yet.
And let’s be honest, a whole lot of us aren’t okay either a lot of the time.
As Fleming says, you can see the Light most bright only when you’re surrounded by the Darkness.
Our hope— our only hope in the world we have made in our own image— is that what St. John tells us tomorrow night is true: The light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.
In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. Amen.
By Rev. Chenda Innis Lee
Chenda’s strengths, from the Gallups’s Strengths Finder inventory include: harmony, adapatibility, empathy, deliberative, and consistency. But you wouldn’t gather that from the degree to which Jason fears her (or, her preaching, which is deeply influenced by Jesus’ message of inclusion for those on the margins of society. Though often challenging, her preaching comes from a place of deep compassion, love, conviction, and desire for all God’s people to live fully and freely in the abundance of God’s grace. A native of Liberia, West Africa, she came to the United States when she was sixteen, after surviving Liberia’s civil war. She enjoys documenting, on social media, the crazy and beautiful (crazetiful) things her daughters do, exploring ethnic cuisines, and reading young adult fiction. She and her husband, Asa, met during their time at Wesley Theological Seminary. They are stewards of four spirited daughters—Akeemah, Jaanaiya, Cydah, and Camaini.
