december 1, 2019
first sunday of advent
Romans 13:11-14 & Matthew 24:36-44
When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher Ms. Jorgensen got pregnant. At first this was very exciting. Her belly grew, and we were going to have a long term substitute, and she was happy to have the baby.
But one day, she told the class, in a very serious voice, that if anything happened - if she collapsed, or went into early labor, or if there was some emergency with her and the pregnancy - that we were supposed to use the intercom to call the office and tell them what room we were in, and what was going on. She also said we should use the class phone to call for help.
I’m sure she was just covering all her bases, reminding us what to do in case of an emergency. It’s possible she even stressed that it was a highly unlikely risk. But at the time, little fourth grade me heard the following: I, YOUR PREGNANT TEACHER, AM GOING TO HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY AND YOU, LILY DODGE, WILL DELIVER THIS BABY ON THE FLOOR OF ROOM SEVEN-P, AND IF YOU DO NOT REMEMBER YOUR TRAINING AND DO EVERYTHING CORRECTLY, HORRIBLE THINGS WILL HAPPEN AND IT WILL BE YOUR FAULT.
Every day after that I’d stare nervously at her belly, rehearsing in my head what I’d do when - not if - she went into labor and the day fell on me to save. I was beyond relieved once we got the substitute, and she had her baby, and everything turned out fine. I still get really worried around pregnant people.
I’ve always been like that - consumed with an anxious belief that it all rests on me, that my effort is the one thing standing between the current situation and total disaster. And for situations where this is accurate, it’s a relatively useful mindset. (Ask me about my trip to New Orleans last weekend with Logan and the extensive itineraries I prepared.) But most things in the world are not actually within my control, and as a result, believing that they are tends to cause me lots of unnecessary stress.
So when I read the verses for today, the first time, and, I’ll be honest, a good handful of the subsequent times, that’s the message I got. I read the words “be ready,” and I instantly start making a packing list in my head. It feels to me like a very active command. Be ready. Get ready. Do something.
It’s a very easy leap from there to feeling like God is looking at Earth and going “well, I sure would love to come down as the Messiah to bring salvation and redemption in my Second Coming, but that Lily Dodge, she has a bunch of unread emails and won’t stop gossiping about people she doesn’t like, so, guess it’s not really the right time. I’ll just wait till you all get ready.”
But that’s...not actually what these verses say. Once I read more closely, trying to puzzle out what they actually ask us to do, I realized there’s very little action required of us. In Matthew, all we’re told is to “be ready” and “keep awake.” The verse in Romans asks a bit more, but it’s still not exactly a to-do list. We’re called to refrain from bad behavior and to be our best selves. That’s it.
The absence of a to-do list is not my favorite thing, which is probably why I tried so hard to project one onto these verses before figuring them out.
There’s a maxim I learned in therapy: “If I’m not the problem, there is no solution.” It means, if there situation is beyond my control, then attempting to change or resolve it is not a productive use of my time. There is a reason I have spent a lot of time and money trying to learn this fact, and the reason is that I do not like it very much. want to see every negative situation, every challenge, every difficulty, every bad mood or unpleasantness, as a Problem with a Solution. I want to make a plan and work hard and resolve the issue. I want to live in a world where if I just work hard enough and do the right things, everything will be okay.
So that’s what I want Advent to be. I want it to be about me. I want to make it possible for the Christ child to be born, I want to stockpile weapons to fight off that metaphoric home intruder, I want to dump out and re-organize every sinful corner of my life, I want to make things ready. And I want the Bible to tell me what to do and how to do it (and that I’m doing a very good job).
But instead we are asked, in this season, to wait. Just...to wait. To let God do this great big thing, on God’s timeline, in God’s way. Because that’s really the only way this can happen.
Assuming that everything rests on me, that my actions have the capacity to hinder God, or make God’s work possible, makes God too small and makes me way too big.
I used to find my old worldview comforting - we come up with these ideas for a reason, after all, and it’s not just to give the world’s therapists some job security. I didn’t like the idea of a problem that had no solution. I refused to accept that I might come across a situation I personally could not change or resolve. I found comfort in action, and having to be passive or just accept things as they are - it felt awful.
But there’s a freedom in it - the freedom that always comes from something that’s true, even if that truth is uncomfortable or convenient. When I started learning to let go of what I couldn’t control, I had more energy for the things that I could. And I stopped holding myself to impossible standards that claimed I could fix the unfixable.
Because that - fixing the unfixable - is God’s job. And it shouldn’t be a surprise that for anyone else besides God, trying to do God’s job is exhausting.
Fourth grade me was never responsible for the healthy delivery of my teacher’s baby. My real job was just to be present in class, do my best, and be happy for my teacher. All the time I spent agonizing over what I would and should and could do, was not time well spent.
Advent asks us to wait for a birth - not like I did as a child, with self-focused anxiety and a conviction that it will all go wrong without our efforts - but with joy, with expectancy, with a healthy balance of knowing what you can control by way of preparation, and where you must simply wait and see.
Waiting often feels like doing nothing which feels like time not well spent. But it’s not. Advent blesses us with an entire section of the year dedicated to this sacred task. It asks us to be present to who and what we are, and where we are, and when we are. And that means letting go of where, and who, and when, we are not. The active waiting we are called to during Advent does not mean passively ignoring the reality of God’s imminence in our world - but it also does not mean that we are responsible for it.
Advent does not call us to sleep, or to apathy. But it calls us to wait. And for a lot of us, that can feel very similar. Waiting can feel passive. It can feel frustrating. But do we really wish for a world in which the enormity of God’s work is laid on our shoulders? God has asked us to keep awake, to be ready, to lay aside the works of darkness. That’s our job. Do we really want there to be more?
In this church season, we are wrapped up in warm clothes. We wrap our church in fabric and gauze. Children wait to unwrap gifts, tantalizingly concealed under the tree. There are things we can’t see yet, that we don’t know. That can be terrifying and comforting at the same time. We’re at the mercy of the future - unknown, uncontrollable. Wrapped up. Safe, cozy, only to be revealed by the power of a force larger than ourselves. Time. God. Love. The weather. Things we can’t control - maddening, yes, but would I really want to live in a world where everything falls to me?
Advent, to me, is a powerful reminder that God is bigger than our fussing and the works of our hands. God includes us in this holy and divine mystery, but does not make it reliant on us. What a relief that is! Waiting is an acknowledgement that we are not fully in control. That we depend on something larger. And while it can feel vulnerable and helpless to be dependent on something outside of our own control, what an amazing thing to wait on a God who promises nothing but goodness and glory, who we can trust, to sit with us through the winter and rejoice with us at the coming of the child.