So, here we are again friends, the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of our church year and our annual journey through the church calendar. It is a journey we take every year, a rhythm that seeks to shape our lives around the life of Christ and bring our story into the story of God.
As said at the start of the service, this year, our theme for Advent is “Words for the Beginning.” This theme again comes from a sanctified art. They say “Advent is a season of endings and beginnings. As the calendar year comes to a close, a new church year begins. When we ourselves navigate seasons filled with endings and beginnings, we need reminders. We need words that can feel like steady ground, like a path for our feet to find as we step forward into the unknown.”
I was drawn to this theme as it feels like a pretty uncertain time in our world. It is also a pretty uncertain time for our church, as we continue to grieve some very significant losses. And it is an uncertain time for me and my family and I am feeling very unsure, and somewhat anxious about next year. There are sad endings as well as new and exciting beginnings in store. And so I have found myself longing for something steady, familiar, some words to give me courage to step into the unknown of the coming year.
And so we begin this Advent season with the well known story of Mary, the story now called the annunciation. The announcement of the birth of Jesus. For us, in the rhythm of the church year it makes sense for us to reflect on this story at this point in our journey. However, it is probably worth remembering this event would have taken place 9 months ago and some churches do celebrate the feast of the annunciation in March.
This story invites us to reflect on how we, like Mary, are invited into God’s redemptive narrative—no matter how ordinary or small we might feel—for each of us has the potential to carry God’s love into our world. The story of Mary and the angel, Gabriel in Luke, illustrates how God selects someone the world might overlook to be part of something beautiful.
In this moment of divine mystery, Gabriel offers a blessed reassurance: “Do not be afraid for you have found favour with God.” When we wonder if our quiet worries or loud wonderings matter in the vast expanse of the cosmos, these words remind us that God knows our wandering hearts, acknowledges our fears, and moves toward us.
I do not imagine this was the way Mary and Joseph (who we will read about later) wanted to begin their family life. Jesus was probably not the child, they expected. Theirs was perhaps not the picture-perfect family they imagined. And yet this was how God, the creator of the universe, chose to enter and redeem our world. We would do well I think to remember this at those times when we too feel like we haven’t quite pulled off the picture-perfect family. Perhaps our culture’s, even our church’s version of what family should be isn’t the same as God’s.
Like many of you in the last couple of weeks I have consumed a lot of post-election analysis. To be honest perhaps an unhealthy amount. But this week I read an article from Christianity today by Tish Harrison Waren, an American author and Anglican priest. This article was titled, “go slow and repair things.”
In this article I found “Words for the Beginning” I needed to hear at this time. They reminded me that although we enter a time that is often busy and exhausting for secular society, at Advent, the church is invited into another kind of time. A time of waiting. Something that none of us are much good at but that we need to somehow cultivate in our incredibly fast paced and impatient world.
They reminded me of something we have been talking about a lot over this past year, that the Lord is indeed with us. Working not so much in politics and in the halls of power but up from the ground in our families, communities and churches. Through unexpected (perhaps unwanted) pregnancies and births and tiny babies born in obscure places. Through ordinary people willing to say, as Mary did, “here I am, a servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your will,” even when it is scary and uncertain.
And so I am going to share a vast chunk of this article with you now. She speaks about the American culture and church but I think it relates to us as well.
We are facing huge problems as a culture. Stories of violence and war blare from the headlines. Human life is devalued and left unprotected. It feels like we’re all exhausted by the past decade and the noise, chaos, polarization, and vitriol it has brought.
And I’ve never been as discouraged as I am now by the state of the American church, which often reflects the same polarization we see in American culture. And as I look around and speak to other writers, pastors, and leaders, it seems no one quite knows what to do. No one knows how to fix a culture and church that are so broken. But as I’ve sat with my own grief and anxiety about this stark reality, I’ve found hope and inspiration in the strangest of places: turtle rescuers.
I have slowly been reading Sy Montgomery’s Of Time and Turtles.
Many species of turtles, she explains, are at extreme risk of extinction. The dangers they face are nearly endless: dog or raccoon attacks, climate change and light pollution, cars and trucks that flatten slow-moving wildlife, development of nesting areas, and a black market where certain species go for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The problems are so big it feels almost pointless to try to help these creatures. Yet Montgomery finds a merry band of people, networked together across the world, who go to breathtaking extremes to save and rehabilitate turtles, one by one, shell by shell.
As odd as this connection may seem, this book has renewed my commitment to the local church. The problems these turtle rescuers face are huge, their cause seems almost entirely lost. Yet with fortitude and defiance, they take up their small works of repair and rescue every single day, with joy and a sense of purpose.
Each story of a turtle released into the wild reminded me: Often, in the face of huge problems, all we have are small solutions, but that is where we start. That is how all creation can be restored, day by day, life by life.
As we face huge problems as a culture and a church, it’s tempting to look to big things for big solutions: national elections, mass movements, revolution, a spectacular revival, some intensely viral online message. I want something obvious and epic to bring a speedy resolution. I am impatient for change.
But Montgomery has reminded me of the virtue and necessity of change wrought by smallness, patience, and time. “Time,” she writes, “is what turtles have.”
There’s a saying that began as a mantra in Silicon Valley but increasingly applies to our culture more broadly: Move fast and break things. This past year, as we have grappled with our bewilderment at how to be faithful in this cultural moment, my husband and I have adopted a mantra of our own: Go slow and repair things.
I don’t know how to solve the big problems of the world. I wish I did, but I don’t. And I don’t know how to repair a church in America that has become politically idolatrous and does not exhibit the fruit of the Spirit.
But I know we can go slow and repair things in the ways that we can, in the places where we dwell, in the institutions we inhabit, with the people around us. We can serve the needy and the disadvantaged in our cities and towns. We can seek faithfulness in our small, local congregations. We can help form churches that are humble, accountable, and a radical alternative to the world, to both the political right and the political left. We can think and read deeply, learn from the saints who’ve gone before us, and teach and embody a more robustly biblical, orthodox political theology. In our work, friendships, homes, and neighborhoods, we can take up the challenge of building something solid, slow, and enduring—something that can witness to Jesus and his kingdom, a kingdom not captive to politics in any way.
This essay comes on Election Day, a day when our country makes a big decision. I voted. And if you choose to vote, I hope you will vote for whomever you believe will best uphold democracy and seek justice for those who are vulnerable. I believe Christians can seek the common good and promote justice and mercy through politics.
But even in this pivotal election, voting cannot be the climax or sum of Christians’ political mission. It is likely not even the most important thing you will do today. The first social task of the church, is to be the church—an alternative community formed by Jesus that embodies a different sort of kingdom.
Allegiance to that kingdom is our truest political and social responsibility.
This work will be frustratingly small and local, under the radar, and away from the headlines. It will feel insignificant, it will be long, risky, and uncertain.
Right now, I don’t have much left to say. But I can still say this.
The work we need to do is still the slow—and long, risky, and uncertain—work of repair. And we cannot accomplish this work merely through a vote. Rescue and redemption will not be won through any political party.”
I am sorry if this was a bit much. As many of you know I had an unexpected and rushed trip to Adelaide this week with Nina who required knee surgery. Thankfully it went smoothly and she is recovering well and I am again grateful for your prayers. But it didn’t leave me much time for sermon preparation.
But I loved this so much and I wanted to share it with you at this time. For Mary, bearing a child probably did not feel like she was solving the great problems of the world. Despite the miraculous circumstances of the conception I reckon the hard work of caring for a baby and raising a precocious child and teen probably felt pretty ordinary. But it mattered a lot to the bringing of the Kingdom of God. As does I think the ordinary work we do.
This article also reminded me of what I think is the most important thing we celebrate at this time of year. That is our rescue and redemption has in fact already been won. It has been won by Mary’s Son. We don’t have to make it happen, we just have to participate in it. At Christmas we remember this One, who came quietly and humbly into the world taking on our humanity and redeeming it. But we anticipate His coming again. When this happens there will be a new heaven and new earth and this Kingdom will have no end.
And so let us sing, our first carol of the season, O come, O come Emmanuel
