Don’t Work Against Yourself

Here is a common phrase, “I am my own worst enemy,” or even more often it is a declaration about another, “He is his own worst enemy.” Whether it is admission or accusation, why so familiar? Not to be too negative, but perhaps it is because human beings, generally are so willful and stubborn. Often we hear what others think is best, but we think we know better, and do what we want. Have you ever been accused of being hard headed? Was it an unfair description?

Here is another common human experience. Things are a mess, and the ones caught in it look for others to blame. We hear things like, “Why didn’t you warn me this could happen?” That usually begs the rejoinder, “I did; you just wouldn’t listen.” There is something about thinking we already know everything that makes us deaf to other interpretations. Hearing and hearing, we just hear nothing, Seeing and seeing, we do not really see.

When we come to the beginning of the Church year, the First Sunday of Advent, we hear the recorded spiritual lessons of the Hebrew prophets, of Jesus of Nazareth, and others from his world. We should remember something here about prophecy. We can mistakenly think prophecy is always about foretelling what will happen sooner or later. Sometimes that is the nature of it, but it is often about foretelling how things are. Prophets often wanted people to absorb God’s message on how it is, and how things could be. When the prophet, Isaiah (the lesson of 1 Advent) announces the word, he begins with the people’s yearning. We want the importance of God’s ways to be cosmically loud-and-clear so we will really pay attention. This is related to the blaming tendency mentioned above. When warned unmistakably, there is no question about what God is up to—it will get our attention and we will conform:

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!  When you did awesome deeds
that we did not expect, you came down,
the mountains quaked at your presence.  —Isaiah 64:1-3

This, I feel, is both an apocalyptic appeal God will come powerfully and straighten out the mess we have made of this world, and a bit of an impatient complaint that God should directly assert the divine will. It is a lament that God’s movements are too hidden and unclear for distracted humans: “You handle it, God; we stink at this. It’s too hard.”

Several verses later we come to a prominent, repeated prophetic metaphor: of the potter and the clay. First there is a serious penitential tone, a realization we are blown off course by our own iniquities

We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.    —Isaiah 64:6b-9.

The potter and clay image is poetic, but it has its very serious elements. It carries the reminder that clay is malleable, and the potter can always start over with a completely different idea. No creation, no current shape of the clay, is guaranteed or secure in the potter’s hands. The artist can always go in a new direction. So the prophet teaches us to beg for mercy, “Lord you are our Father; we are your handiwork. Do not let your anger pass all bounds, Lord, and do not remember our iniquity forever; look on us all, look on your people.”

This takes us to the words of Jesus in the Gospel for 1 Advent. He describes the coming of an ominous and unmistakable cataclysm, which all who bow to the Son of Man must anticipate with vigilance.

Jesus said, “In those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven…So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But about that day or hour no one knows…therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.”   —Mark 13:24-27, 29b-32a, 35-36

Let’s not work against ourselves. In preparation we are all to strip off the works of darkness and to don the personal protective equipment of divine light instead. It is the aim of the Son of Man to welcome us into the realm of immortality. I don’t think it could be said any better than in the words of the Collect for The First Sunday of Advent which follows. But first I can’t resist squeezing in some verses from Charles Wesley’s wondrous Advent Hymn, number 57:

Lo! He comes, with clouds descending, once for our salvation slain:
thousand-thousand saints attending swell the triumph of his train,
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!  Christ the Lord returns to reign.

Yea, Amen! Let all adore thee, high on thine eternal throne;
Savior, take the power and glory; claim the kingdom for thine own:
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!  Thou shalt reign, and thou alone.

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.