Sleepers, awake!

A note before we begin: I made a slightly belated New Year's Resolution (because the first Sunday of Advent is the Christian New Year), which has caused this blog to appear a bit late.  I am posting it late on Saturday night, so it'll seem like Sunday morning for most folks.  Just to clear up any confusion; LAST Sunday (12/2) was the first Sunday of Advent. THIS Sunday (12/9) is the second Sunday of Advent.



I have recently started reading scripture at my church.

This is a weird sentence, as many people who read this blog might say, "But I've heard you read scripture so many times/I've seen you teach workshops on the thing, and you haven't been reading scripture?"  But truth be told, it took me a long time to start to get involved at the church I attend in New York.  Partially because I started attending this church while I was still in school and therefore had no time outside of Sunday mornings, partially because I'm shy, and maybe partially because I wanted to experience simply attending service instead of being involved.  But one fellow parishioner finally got through to me--after probably a year of sitting in front of me in worship and trying to get me in the Parish choir, she told me that they only rehearsed Sunday mornings before church, and I agreed, and crossed the threshold to the parish house.  It was only recently that I informed the rector that I had experience as a scripture reader and crucifer--knowing, of course, that once I volunteered that information, I would never find myself in service without a job again.  (Such is life in the church.)

And so, with eagerness a couple weeks ago I opened the email with my first assignment for reading scripture at the 9am service, and what I found was…

…this.

As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued  and flowed out from his presence. A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him. The court sat in judgment, and the books were opened. As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.  His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed. (Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14)

…WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!  OF ALL SCRIPTURES I GET THAT?!  THERE'S ONLY SO MANY TIMES I CAN MAKE A VARIANT ON "FIRE" AN OPERATIVE WORD!

But I calmed down.  A challenging scripture, to be sure, but I reached out to my religious friends on Facebook for help (special shoutouts here to Jenny McDevitt and David Bone!), read the verses cut out of this reading (which were even more confusing and involved several beasts and a talking horn), and was able to come into worship with a strong understanding and a clear reading.  The reading was referenced in the sermon and I grinned as I understood the context that the rector was giving us, and I assured myself that the next reading wouldn't be so difficult.

But then when I received the reading for the next week's Evensong, I found:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon a donkey, and upon a colt, the foal of a donkey. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the war horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the nations: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth. (Zechariah 9:9-10)

…WHAT'S GOING ON?! AM I BEING TYPECAST AS A PROPHET READER?!

The prophets are the books of the Bible I know the least about (yup, I know more about the wisdom books than the prophets!).  I always feel like the prophets require a good amount of context to make sense of them.  (And on the flip-side, they provide context for the significance of the Christ story to the Jewish people of the time.)  When I studied Daniel, for instance, I learned about the corrupt political sphere at the time (represented by the beasts and horn cut out of the lectionary reading), and how the promise in the prophet's words is that God will come to reign and release the world from these corrupt systems.

The language of the prophets is always intense, and sometimes can sound a bit absurd to the modern ear.  In preparing for this blog post I realized that prophetic scriptures are the only ones I've turned into image macros.

THIS IS ACTUALLY A LINE IN ISAIAH.

AMOS CAT WAITS FOR JUSTICE

But in the past few weeks I've started to grow towards the prophets, and that was brought together last Sunday - the first Sunday of Advent.

I was raised in a tradition that associates each candle on the Advent wreath with something like "joy" or "love".  The first Sunday of Advent, in this tradition, is the Sunday of Hope... also known as the "Prophecy Candle". (Sensing a theme yet?)

In our liturgical year, Advent is the season of waiting, of preparation, before the birth of Christ.  It is also the beginning of a new year--and new years are always associated with times of change and renewal.  A new year is a reason for us to think, "things can be different."  And as we come to the Christian New Year, we start with hope for that renewal, that Christ's coming will be the change we wish it to be.

But this Advent, I would like to hope like a prophet hopes.

As I've studied the words of these prophets, I've been astounded at the insistence of their hope.  Their words are strong and bold.  Their hope is not a wish.  It is not a dream.  It is not like our passive Christmastime thoughts of "what if goodwill and cheer lasted all year?" that get dismissed along with the remains of Christmas trees and tinsel.  It is a vibrant hope, an active hope, a living hope that the kingdom will come upon the earth.  One of Webster's definitions for hoping is "expecting with confidence".  That is a prophet's hope. 

Of course, it is easy to think of such a confident hope as a delusion.  It is easy to dismiss that as foolishness, accuse those who hope of refusing to see the world as it is.  It's so easy.  And that's the problem.  It is easy.  It takes no effort to resign yourself to the way that things are.  It is hard to insist, "But this is not the end of the story."  It is hard to look around and see the state that the world is in and see not only what it is, but what it can be.  In a world that as tumultuous as ours, where gulfs between social, political and economic groups grow wider and wider, it is hard to even dream of what these prophets envision, let alone expect it confidently.

But that is what we are challenged to do--because if we do not insist that this is possible, who will?  If we do not say, "Change is coming!" it will not.  A living hope is subversive.  A living hope is one of the most dangerous weapons against the status quo--because no one can force that hope away from you if you hold onto it with the verve of the prophets--and that hope can wake us up, open us up, put us on alert for that change moving through the world, so we start to listen, start to look, start to become attuned for it.  The hope begins the process of making us a vessel.

And hope is dangerous because it's contagious.  We all want to believe that things can get better, but sometimes we just can't.  Despite being a pretty hopeful person, I recently went through a period where I ran out of hope regarding a major part of my life.  It felt like it hit a dead end and I flatlined.  Completely.  Even my rugged "I'm-obsessed-with-Job-and-Ecclesiastes-and-wrote-multiple-papers-on-St.-John-of-the-Cross-and-the-Dark-Night-of-the-Soul-and-read-Bonhoeffer-for-comfort" hope failed me, and I rarely left the house and I panicked on the subway one day and texted one of my friends, "What if I never shake this?"  It took people sitting down with me and saying, "You know, you don't have to keep living the way you have been.  There are so many other options for you," for that hope to rekindle.  It didn't take alcohol, it didn't take anti-depression medications, it took a spark of hope.  It took an idea of what life could be.

So that's where we begin the new year, and the season of Advent--with an insistent idea that things can change.  We begin with opening ourselves to that hope--to sharing it when we feel it, and receiving it when we need it.  We wake up to that hope and therefore what the world can be, seen through the prophets' eyes--a world ruled not by whoever has the most money, or friends, or bombs, but instead by the ultimate law of love and understanding and care for all people.