Where are you Advent?

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight (Matt 3:3b).

Bake cookies. Make a list. Shop for presents. Check for free shipping deals online. Shop for presents. Hide presents. Wrap presents. Bake more cookies. Address cards. Make travel plans. Hang the wreath. Hang the Christmas lights. Make candy. Buy a tree. Decorate the tree. Buy last-minute presents. Go the grocery. Go back to the grocery for the things you forgot. Fill the stockings. Watch the Hallmark channel—or maybe Die Hard…. This is how we prepare for Christmas. I googled “Christmas Checklist” and I got 105 million—that’s right, 105 million, results. These lists have names like Christmas Countdown Checklist, 150 Ways to Prepare for Christmas, and The Ultimate Christmas Checklist.  Many of these claim the preparation needs to start as early as August. We have turned this holy season of God’s incarnation into an orgy of consumerism, a hectic hamster wheel of busy-ness that is exhausting, stressful, and complicated—running and spending for weeks, all the while hearing Andy Williams and Johnny Mathis singing to us everywhere we go that this is the most wonderful time of the year! When I hear people wish we could keep the Christmas spirit all year ‘round—I think: heaven help us!

Years ago, when I converted and became an Episcopalian, one of the things I found to be the most counter-cultural was our observance of the season of Advent. We use Advent as a time to reinforce the odd idea that Christmas preparation not really what the world and goggle think it is. We use Advent as a time to help us realize, as the Grinch came to see, that “maybe Christmas—doesn’t come from a store—maybe Christmas—perhaps—means a little bit more.”

But this year…this year…this year there is the border crisis, and Syria and the Kurds, and Hong Kong, and Brexit, and impeachment, and family members on both sides of the MSNBC vs. Fox News battle, and the opioid crisis…and again, I think: heaven help us!

If Advent is to be a time of preparation, given all of that, how can we find the strength and will—even the hope and the courage—to prepare, rather than self-medicate…and what exactly are we preparing for?

The watchword for this second Sunday of Advent is PEACE—But what are we to do when it seems there is no peace to be found? How can we find peace when we’re lost and wandering in the cacophony and chaos, in the wilderness of the world around us?

In Matthew today, we find John the Baptist wandering in the wilderness of Judea. He is preaching, proclaiming a baptism of repentance—that is, a baptism of changing our minds, turning and going in the opposite direction of our current actions—a baptism of reversing the course of our whole lives, re-turning to God’s course rather than sticking with our own. What is John saying? “The Kingdom of God has come near.” “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

You see, in the ancient world, when the ruler, a king or emperor or Caesar was coming to a town, people would make sure all the potholes where filled, all the rocks and branches and trash cleared—make sure that that path was ready and welcoming. It’s just like what we do at our place when we  have people for dinner: we work hard to clear a path, to pick up the dog and kid toys, to push off all the mail and papers and schoolwork covering every horizontal surface in the house—we work to make space for others in our lives.

Advent is a time for us to make space for Jesus in our lives. We need to hear John the Baptist’s prophetic voice in the midst of our consumer-Christmas wilderness. We have exiled ourselves from God’s grace, as we spend more time scouring the ads for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, more time each day checking out the Amazon Prime 12 Days of Deals list, than we do reading scripture. We are desperately hoping and looking and longing for just the right thing that promises to fill us and fulfill us and make us complete and whole. I heard an ad yesterday that literally said, “finally, find what you’re really looking for this Christmas—underwear!”

Instead of underwear for Christmas, I offer this to you this for Advent: Perhaps the madness of the world around us right now is just what we need, because there is no possible way we can have the illusion that peace is to be found in this world. Prophets, in the wilderness, have no illusions about peace—in the wilderness, even daily sustenance and life is a gift, not an expectation. The hopelessness of the wilderness is what prepares prophets, what opens them up and empties them, to hear and then to proclaim the word of God. In Numbers 11:29 Moses cried out, “Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” I too pray that the Word of God can come to each of us, in this place and time of wilderness vulnerability, because we are finally ready to hear what God will say, and we will find prophetic voices.

During Advent, we light the candles of hope and peace and joy and love, in preparation for the birth of the Prince of Peace. It’s up to us, to you and I, to show what preparing the way of the Lord—preparing the way for the Prince of Peace—looks like…We need to hear the voice of the prophets, and to be prophets ourselves: prophets to our children, prophets to frazzled checkout and customer service workers, prophets to cold and hungry families, prophets to coworkers—prophets to a weary, chaos- and darkness-filled world. It’s going to take more than saying Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays!—but it doesn’t take much more. Maybe we can find five minutes of peace each day to read a few verses of Scripture. Maybe each evening—perhaps as a family meal-time prayer—we can take just two peaceful minutes and give thanks for someone or something that provided a moment of grace for us that day. Maybe when we’re about to speak harshly to our spouses or our children, we can take three seconds and breathe in deeply the peace of Christ. Maybe when we’re about to shout back in anger and disgust to someone on the other side of the social media divide, we stop for four seconds first and try to listen to what they’re saying. This, my friends, is what preparing the way of the Lord looks like. My prayer for us all this week is that heaven will help us—help us find God’s peace that passes understanding—help us keep this kind of Christmas spirit—this Advent spirit of preparing the way of the Lord—in our hearts all year long.