The season of Advent, which begins today, is countercultural. For many people in our nation this next month will be a hectic time as we rush from one concert to the next, to parties and festivals and programs. We have shopping and decorating and baking to do. In contrast, Advent is a season of meditation and reflection, often forgotten in the hurry and scurry of Christmas preparations. It is a season of penitence slipped into a world of indulgence. It is a time to consider pain and agony as the world shouts of joy. Yes, Advent is countercultural.
This Advent we will begin our worship each Sunday by turning to a psalm or canticle sung by individuals or groups in the Bible as they face challenge and difficulty. We will light our Advent candles as the choir leads us in singing when the going gets rough. These are not the popular carols you hear broadcast in the mall. Oh, we'll get to singing some of those too, more and more as we get closer to Christmas. We'll begin worship, however, with songs that arose in grief and confusion. How can we keep from singing? our Biblical role models asked, and so do we.
Today we began with Psalm 25. Unlike the songs we'll be using in the next three weeks, this one is hard to pin down. We don't really know its setting in life. I can't tell you for sure who the author was or what particular challenges he or she faced. The advantage of that is the generality of the circumstances makes it easy to insert ourselves into the song.
Psalm 25 is one of the many psalms of lament in the Bible. Bishop Judith Craig once defined lamentation as remembering facing God when you don't know where God is. Another way to define lamentation is an expression of deep grief made in the presence of God.
Lamentation is not very popular these days. We would rather sing "Deck the Halls" than cry out in grief and pain. We'd rather hang our stockings by the chimney with care than consider those who are barefoot and have no home at all. And let's not even talk about things like White Privilege or our consumer culture. Nobody wants to be made to feel guilty.
Yet we are poorer for our aversion to lamentation. Whether we like it or not life is filled with pain. Around Christmas grief becomes especially poignant. The empty chair at the Thanksgiving table last Thursday was more obvious than it is on any other day. The special cookies you learned to make with your mother remind you of her in both good and sad ways now that she is not here. And all the commercials about the best gifts to buy only emphasize people's poverty. There is much to lament in our lives individually and corporately. It is helpful for us to remember facing God especially when we don't know where God is.
Whoever it is who wrote Psalm 25 affirmed his trust in God even as he felt shame. "O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame," he prayed. Such a prayer seems to suggest the psalmist has sinned in some big or little way. Did she break one of the Ten Commandments? Did she fail to honor her parents? Slip an apple into her pocket at the market without bothering to pay? Use God's name in vain? "Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions." We don't know what her sins were, except that as human beings we all slip in some way or another and likely this person did too.
There are people who generally feel unworthy even though to everyone else their actions seems no worse than those of others. Such people feel ashamed not just of specific actions but of their very being. Perhaps the psalmist was someone like that. Lamentation enabled him or her to turn to God even without knowing where God was.
"Do not let my enemies exult over me," the psalmist went on to pray. It could be this person lived in a time of war, though it seems this psalm is more personal than national. The enemy therefore is likely more personal as well: someone else in the village spreading rumors; a rival who had destroyed his crops or gotten public notice when the psalmist got none. And so the psalmist cries out to God, "don't let my enemies exult over me."
"Remember not the sins of my youth," we too cry out. When I was seven years old we went to a family reunion in Minnesota on the old Ostrom family homestead. I was entranced when a second cousin showed me her rabbits. I got to pet one and I loved the softness of the rabbit's fur. Later, by myself, I went back to the hutch. I opened the cage to pet the rabbit again, and it hopped out. I knew I should not have opened the cage, and so I compounded my guilt by not telling anyone what I had done. I've always wondered what happened to that rabbit. "Remember not the sins of my youth, O God."
Sometimes our sins are those of the little girl who opens the rabbit hutch and sometimes they are the grown up sins of adultery and idolatry. They may be the overt sins of breaking the Ten Commandments or the more subtle ones Jesus identified when he reinterpreted the Commandments: lusting in our hearts or calling someone a bad name. "Do not let me be put to shame," we cry out. Truly how can we keep from singing when our lives are filled with sin, and God's love washes us clean.
Advent is a season of penitence and self reflection. This is the time to name our resentments, to truly consider how we have failed to love God and our neighbors in all that we do, to admit to God the ways we have failed to do what we ought to do and have not done what we should have done.
"Do not let my enemies exult over me." It is appropriate to take the opportunity this season to name our personal enemies. We're not talking here about Al Queda or ISIS, bad as they are. Who are your enemies, the people who have let you down or hurt you in some way? Or perhaps your enemies are not so much individuals as situations that seem too big for you to handle: the fear that has arisen in our nation after the Paris attacks; a culture of dishonesty in the office; the politics of cut throat competition in your profession; the "other" side of any issue be it national politics or a church discussion about finances. And sometimes it is our own bodies which let us down: the tumors which have invaded your body, your inability to process carbohydrates so you have to take insulin shots every day, or maybe your heart which doesn't beat strongly. Whoever or whatever your enemy is, you have to name it before you can forgive it or love it.
How can I keep from singing? In the midst of worry over shame and enemies the psalmist held onto hope by remembering God's inherent goodness and mercy. "Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right." In lamenting, by remembering facing God even when she did not know where God was, the psalmist's song enabled her to keep going though the way was tough. She knew that God is good all the time.
On this first Sunday of Advent we look to the God who was made incarnate among us in Jesus Christ. In Jesus God took on human flesh. God came among us as one of us and thereby redeemed us from sin and fear. By living among us in human form God blessed our very humanity. As Jesus sang a love song he taught us too to sing even when the going is rough.