How was your thanksgiving?
Most years we barely even register that question.
“Oh, it was fine.”
“It was good! Great.”
“It was nice.”
“oh…Same old – Same old”
But this year was not, “same old – same old.” This year was different.
Whether you stayed home and had a much smaller gathering than you had thought or planned.
Or maybe you gathered with family and loved ones on zoom?
Or perhaps you did travel, you did go see people, but you took precautions…you wore masks, you stayed outside as much as possible, maybe you even quarantined and took tests…
So…how was it?
I know you can’t answer me…even if we were all here in the same physical space, obviously we couldn’t each give an answer.
But it’s a question I am pondering for each of you this morning…how was your thanksgiving?
It’s not just Thanksgiving that’s different this year.
The whole holiday season is different.
Advent is different.
Christmas,
will be different.
It is hard, and difficult, and sad to have to move through so much “different.”
That sadness, or difficulty, or hardness you may be feeling…that is grief. Anticipatory grief…anticipating the losses that are to come.
It is important for ourselves to name those things we are losing and letting go of this year.
Whether it’s traveling…seeing family
Or doing less shopping in person
Or not having the annual Christmas party or get together
Whatever it is you are losing this season,
it is okay to feel sad and angry, annoyed or melancholy about that.
Let’s even just take a brief pause here…take a deep breath or two…and just hear
that it is okay to feel whatever you’re feeling about this holiday season.
There is of course more grieving that may need to happen…and I do encourage you to pay attention to our Blue Christmas service, and Advent offerings here at St. Martin’s.
But I also want to point something out to you.
Do you notice, how the expectation of that loss in the future brings up sadness and pain now?
I’d like to just invite you to notice the power of expectations…what we anticipate about the future.
Now, I am walking a tight line here. So I want to be very clear. I am not saying that we shouldn’t have anticipatory grief…it is a normal and healthy process.
What I am trying to say, is the expectations we hold in our minds about what the future is going to look like makes a significant impact on how we feel, think, and act in our present moment.
For good and for ill.
There is lots of study in the field of psychology about this.
One very common psychological phenomenon associated with strong expectations, that I am certainly prone to, is the phenomenon of confirmation bias.
If I expect a certain outcome, like “my day will be lousy”…my mind will highlight those experiences that confirm my expectations while disregarding or even blocking out those experience that contradict my expectation.
And so as I go through my day, through this lens of “lousy,” I pay more attention to the genuinely lousy experiences I do have…which for me, the fixating on those experiences, tends to make me feel bad (angry, sad) which then leads me to speak & act in ways that I would describe as… “lousy.”
But, hopefully by now, you are thinking to yourself “yeah, but I am not trapped by my expectations.”
Just because I anticipate something doesn’t mean I’ve lost my ability to change and re-evaluate.
Exactly!
That’s right!
And that is where Advent comes in.
Advent is a season of preparation. It is a season of preparing one’s self to receive Christ, as an infant lying in a manger.
The mystery of Christmas is the incarnation. God is encountered in the world, in the creation…and this is most clearly seen through Jesus.
But to come to that mystery, for that to be part of your reality, there needs to be some preparation.
One of the key ways we prepare to receive Christ through creation, through a babe in Mary’s arms, is to examine what expectations we have about when and how God shows up.
Where exactly do we expect to find this “Son of Man” which Mark talks about?
Do we expect the Christ to come only in moments of joy and tradition?
Or do we remember, that Christ came in the midst of chaos, confusion, loss, and grief?
In the Christmas story,
Baby Jesus is born in a manger cause there is no room for his family in the inn.
Since they are giving birth where the animals lived, a difficult place for birth to happen, it means this family was poor and isolated.
Jesus is born in a town miles away from his family’s friends and neighbors because the Roman government was conducting a census to tax the people.
And then the family has to flee as refuges to Egypt to escape death.
God emerges in creation precisely in the times of difficulty, of hardness, of grief.
We encounter God there, not because that’s the only place God comes, but because these are the times when we are vulnerable and open to some new encounter with the Holy.
So try that expectation on with me:
I invite you to consider those moments when you’ll be stuck inside, no where to go, and missing your loved ones outside your household.
God is showing up right there. Christ is being born in those moments this season which are difficult and hard, filled with grief.
What does that do for us now?
How does that affect or change how we feel and act in our present reality?
That is the basis of the Hope we talk about on this 1st Advent.
We place our hope in God’s continual outpouring of God’s self through Christ in our difficult moments.
That’s what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel reading today.
“when all these things take place” the sun going dark, stars falling from the sky, terrible blackness, “then you will know he is very near, at the very gate.”
We put our hope in a God who acts out of love for us, that enters into our story exactly as it is…including the moments of grief so that we can know that God’s love and grace can and will overcome even this.
Even this.
When Jesus says “stay awake” he’s talking about staying vigilant to where God is showing up in the midst of the grief and loss.
In other words, Jesus says: anticipate hope. Put your expectations on God’s grace and love, they shall be the final word. Love will find its way into the darkness and the pain.
Things will not always be like this…there is a day coming…and it is much sooner than you think…a day coming when we shall be together in love, peace, and we shall see God in the flesh.
And this anticipatory hope, just like our anticipatory grief, strongly shapes how we feel, perceive, think, and act in this very moment.
If you are like me, and you find this anticipatory hope helps you live right now with more love for yourself, your neighbor, and God…
then we must examine this Advent:
What keeps this hope alive in me?
