Sworn to Protect a World...

This Sunday marks the beginning of the Christian year—the beginning of Advent.  For some people, it marks the beginning of the Christmas Season.  For others, that began the moment Santa Clause rode his float down 6th Avenue.  Or is when he makes the turn onto West 24th?  You get the point though—in many families you don't even consider putting out the Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving.  Of course, with advertisements for Black Friday sales and the way seasonal sections of grocery and department stores work, we've been seeing Christmas creeping in for months already.

For the record, when it comes to the church year, Advent and Christmas are not the same thing.  The Christmas Season actually begins on Christmas Day and runs up until Epiphany on January 6th.  For those of you counting, yes, that's 12 days!

So...  if Advent isn't all about "Away In A Manger" and "Go Tell It On The Mountain," what is it about?

Advent is more like, "Come, oh come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here..."  Advent is all about seeing all the stuff that's wrong with the world and yearning—no, needing—for someone to fix it.

Advent is like the words of the prophet Isaiah, speaking directly to God:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
   so that the mountains would quake at your presence —
as when fire kindles brushwood
   and the fire causes water to boil —
to make your name known to your adversaries,
   so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

This is a familiar theme for geeks.  An oppressive monarch.  An evil empire.  A downtrodden people eager for a hero to come and save them—it's the starting point for nearly every hero journey I can think of, from the Chronicles of Narnia, to The Lord of the Rings, to Star Wars...  In fact, it's so familiar that it's tempting to blow right past it as I consider those words from Isaiah.

Because I don't know about you, but while I resonate strongly with the great desire for the ills of the world to be rectified when I read those words from Isaiah I find myself...  hesitant.  I mean, do we really want God to tear open the heavens, make landfall, and hit the ground running?

The truth is that just a fraction of that kind of power freaks the average human being out.  The Marvel Universe has always had a handle on this:  Spider-Man is a menace.  The Mutant Registration Act.  The whole Civil War storyline.  Superheroes have amazing powers that they use to save the world—and the world is terrified.

Sometimes that fear is legit (can you say Onslaught, boys and girls?), but more frequently it's unfounded.  Your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man feels his great responsibility.  The X-Men protect a world that hates and fears them.

And then, sometimes, the fear is less about danger and more about disrupting the status quo.  The gut-instinct fear reaction to the existence of girls who can walk through walls is less about protecting yourself than it is about protecting your stuff.  And it's less about protecting your stuff than it is about your mind balking at how her existence changes everything.  Never mind that she's a person, right?  Her parents are Carmen and Theresa.  She's Jewish and her grandfather Samuel was held in a Nazi concentration camp.  She has a name, Katherine Ann Pryde.

But most people call her "Kitty."

The point I'm trying to make is that we seem to be all to willing to cry out "help me!" as long as the people who answer the call are just like us.  We're all too willing to ask God to tear open the heavens and come down to earth until Jesus turns the tables on us—literally and figuratively.

The point I'm trying to make is that if we want to the world to change, we can't let that fear stop us.

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
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The scripture lessons for November 30th—First Sunday in Advent Year B—are:
Isaiah 64:1-9—Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19—1 Corinthians 1:3-9—Mark 13:24-37