Oh! The Places You’ll Go! Excerpted from the incomparable Dr. Seuss
Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.
You’ll look up and down streets. Look’em over with care. About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.” With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.
…You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. And your gang will fly on. You’ll be left in a Lurch.
You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.
And when you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?
You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.
Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all. Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.
1. Dr Seuss tells a story about life. You see life does have its ups and downs and it “waiting places”. We are in one of those waiting places now. This is the first Sunday of Advent and so today we begin the long wait until Christmas.
a. But I want to offer my take to you on these waiting places. Dr Seuss is right – they can be pretty useless unless we listen for what those places are telling us.
i. Sometimes they tell us to look out for those who are less able to care for themselves than we are and so we put money in the SA can or we help a food pantry or we maybe say a prayer for the children in the world who do not have a place to live or food to eat.
ii. Sometimes they tell us to remember that we are to be peacemakers and so we learn ways to resolve problems without fighting
iii. Sometimes they tell us that it is important to tell our families how much we love them.
iv. And sometimes these waiting places tell us to look up to the heavens and to be amazed at what God has done for us.
2. So this is what I want each one of you to do this Advent season… First of course is to practice your part in the Christmas pageant real hard,
a. Let the images of this holy season wash over you so that you will be able to carry them with you into the new year.
b. Pay attention to the relationships that you have made with your friends and your family.
c. Be fully present to what is happening. Pay attention to the excitement and the anticipation but also to the sadness that is also a part of Christmas sometimes and to the loneliness of those who have no family here for the holidays.
d. Advent is in a time of remembering and yearning – of expecting and anticipating.
3. As we lit the first candle of our Advent Wreath, the candle of Hope, we asked that God prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of Jesus.
a. And part of that preparing is being engaged in what is going on around us.
b. Looking for signs of God’s action.
c. Being attentive to where God is in our lives – how God manifested in the day to day and how can we expect God to act.
4. There is a reason that the Advent lessons seem to dwell on apocalyptic writings.
a. It is a cosmic time in the liturgical year.
b. It marks the ending of one liturgical year that has for weeks now been focused on the movement of the Spirit in the midst of God’s people, on the teachings of Jesus, and on our faithful response to those teachings and the beginning of the new with all its possibilities of new life.
c. The liturgical year is a reenactment of the Christian experience of God’s action in the world and
i. so even as we await the birth of a baby we are aware that we are, in reality, in between that First Advent and the second.
ii. In between the birth of Jesus and the consummation of the Kingdom of God of which our scripture today speaks.
d. On one level we are aware of God’s presence in our lives, but on another the season of Advent is a season of anticipation that presupposes a sense of longing for what has not yet happened.
5. I am captivated by the intensity of the reading from Isaiah and by the Psalm.
a. Both remember the acts that God has done before.
b. They express a desire for God to be involved with them.
c. They lament what they perceive as God’s absence from them, God’s inaction.
d. And they yearn for God act in their lives again. To be intimate with them.
6. Isaiah recognizes that Israel has turned away from God and has sinned.
a. He accuses God of leaving them alone in this muck to fend for themselves and he implores God to reengage with them.
i. God has surprised the people of Israel
ii. God has been intimate
iii. In fact even the mountains quaked when God was engaged with Israel
7. The Psalmist sounds a similar note. We miss it when we chant the Psalm, but listen
i. “O Lord God of Hosts how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers? You have fed them with the bread of tears… Restore us O God of Hosts; let your face shine on us that we may be saved.”
ii. Is that so different from how we long for God to act in our lives today?
8. It is important whenever we try to compare scripture that we put it in the context in which it was written…
a. Israel was under attack from foreign countries, held in captivity, bankrupt, forced to labor for the well-being of others
b. Today we have our own problems. It is really hard to stay hopeful and expectant in a world where every news bite brings more stories of horror and tragedy into our lives.
9. It is easy in this season of waiting to see ourselves as merely onlookers who sit here during Advent waiting and watching and hoping for God to do something, - fumbling in the “Waiting Place”
a. But I think just as Isaiah reminded Israel of the times when God had been visible in their midst we too need to be attentive – watchful for the action of God in our midst.
i. Because if we hold faithful to the promises of God that we have been hearing all year and
ii. if we are aware of the movement of the Sprit in our midst
iii. then this is not just a time to wait and see –
1. it is a time to be making a log of where and when God does act each day.
10. Advent opens us to be aware of our need for God to break into our lives
a. It affords us the space to look at how God has acted in humanity before and to yearn for that same intimacy to return to our awareness.
b. Advent places us in a place of tension - between this world and the next, - between Jesus as King as we heard last week to Jesus the baby born in a manger just four weeks from today.
c. Everything about our Christian teaching, our faith, our hope – leads us straight into and through that tension.
11. Like the disciples in our Gospel reading today we are to be watchful. We are to be cautious of those who say they have all the answers or who claim to know when Jesus will return, because Jesus says, only God has the answers.
a. Jesus is not so much asking that the disciples "do" different things as He is asking them to "be" different. He is asking them to live their lives within a new reality.
1. Not as if there are two worlds – heaven and earth – but rather in the reality of God's dynamic action in this world.
ii. Each day that we live Jesus says is a day to live in the full and expectant hope of a mysterious union with God.
iii. Each day is a day to live in such a way that we become ushers of the inbreaking of God's Kingdom, right in this moment.
iv. We must be fully present, awake, aware, attentive and open to see and to hear God's word spoken in the truth that is reflective of Jesus himself.
12. Advent is a season of expectant waiting. A time of “already here” and “not here yet”
a. A time when we know that Jesus has already established the means through which we are drawn into relationship with God and the awareness that we are “not yet” in full communion with God.
b. This season that lies in this Incarnational tension is a time to open our hearts to hear God calling. It is a time to take advantage of these lessons that call us into the unknown, frightening places, because it is a time that prepares us for God's ultimate gift of Love.
Let us pray,
God of Hope, when Christ your Son appears may He not find us asleep or idle, but active in his service and ready. Amen
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