Between Broken Reality and Yearning for What Might Be

An Advent Message

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The following is excerpted from a sermon preached by Arkansas Bishop Laura Merrill on December 2, 2023, using scripture texts from the first Sunday of Advent: Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; Mark 13:24-37

– It’s Advent, as you know; ”ad” means toward, and “vent” means to come. Those are movement words. We know this is a season of waiting, and for me, stillness in the darkness is central to observing the season. But this time is not exactly for resting. As Jesus tells us in the gospel, it’s certainly not for sleeping! There’s instead a tension to Advent, a tension that we hear pronounced in the texts, especially early in the season.

We know it well, this tension between the broken reality of what is, and the yearning of the heart for what might yet be. As we read and sit with the scriptures, we find an implicit and sometimes explicit understanding of the circumstances necessary to resolve that tension. We know we need the power of God at work, that the mess around and inside us is more than we can fix, especially given the fact that we helped create it. So there’s our cry to God, which always resonates in my heart so deeply: “Tear open the heavens and come down; stir up your strength, and come to save us! Let your face shine, that we may be saved.” We beg, we plead, we yearn. We are clear that we need the power of God.

But we also know that movement needs to happen on our side. The scriptures ask us to engage, to participate in the work of this season–to read the signs in the sky and learn the lesson of the tree; to learn to do right and remember the ways of the Lord; to submit ourselves to those ways, as clay in the hands of the potter; to be attentive and keep watch for what is coming. We know the patterns we can get stuck in–everything from heads in the sand to hot resentment smoldering in our hearts, if not exploding in our words and our actions. We are old enough to know, this can’t all be on God. As quiet as this season can be, with the candles of the wreath dim in the quiet darkness of the morning or the night, there is tension and movement rumbling underground during Advent. Something’s coming, the scriptures remind us, something that will not match up with what currently is. Change is coming, with kindling set to fire, water boiling, mountains quaking, the front door opening unexpectedly in the night. Ad–toward; vent–to come. Something is coming, and it frankly feels ominous. What might this coming be, and what might it mean for us?

In response, I want to offer you a witness that comes largely from my recent mission engagement tour with five other United Methodist bishops and staff of the General Board of Global Ministries to Cambodia and the Philippines. These are places where I had never been and quite honestly had never thought about wanting to go. But the liminal space that’s created by going somewhere very different can become an open-hearted space, and I found my heart deeply moved. Upon reflection, I’ve realized that I felt a thread of gentleness woven through my time there, a thread that is thin yet strong, and one to which I continue to cling. It’s a thread that may yet save the life of the church.

We spent most of our time in Cambodia, which is a majority Buddhist country. One custom there is to remove your shoes before entering a home or temple, out of respect and to keep the dirt of the street out of the place where people gather for relationship. Another custom is to bow in greeting and to thank one another liberally–”Akun. Akun,” we learned to say. I know customs don’t always translate fully into who people are, but it was an intentionally gracious way to interact with others, even strangers, a ritual graciousness that gave me comfort. 

While we were there, we watched along with the world, as war unfolded in real time in Gaza and the West Bank, with innocents, as usual, suffering the most. We also learned about the terrible genocide committed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from 1975-79. Hearing about the life of Kissinger this week brought back the US role in setting up that terrible time. Pol Pot’s stated aim was to return Cambodia to an agrarian society, rooting out Western influence of every sort with a ruthlessness that is indescribable. When you count the intentional killings of those four years, along with disease and starvation, an estimated nearly 3 million Cambodians died at the hand of their own government, out of a population of 7 million. There are very few old people there today; only in the past several years have people over the age of 65 surpassed 5% of the total population. 

Our group visited the site known as the Killing Fields, where, in the interest of saving expensive bullets, people deemed a threat to the plan were killed in brutal, primitive ways, using dried palm fronds, farm implements, and even the trunk of a tree. From the old people to infants, all were buried in shallow mass graves. The stories and the evidence are staggering, like a punch to the solar plexus. Cambodia has a wet season that’s six months long, and with the help of all that rain, the earth to this day offers up the remains of those lives–clothes and bones continually surface and litter the ground, 50 years later; we saw them everywhere. The bones that have been exhumed were collected in a shrine, and when I entered that building to pay my respects, with skulls stacked high, row upon row, I felt a presence I cannot duly describe–a place of death, yet of alertness, of quiet, intense presence, something that resembled peace. Gentleness, even there. 

”How could this happen? I thought they loved us; we loved them.”

That visit shook me hard, yet only two days later I found myself in the Philippines, preparing to preach at Taytay UMC in Manila. The Taytay congregation was impacted by a process similar to disaffiliation, and many of their former members had departed from the denomination, along with the historic building. I saw the same look in their eyes that I’ve seen in Arkansas – ”How could this happen? I thought they loved us; we loved them.” I hoped to speak to some of that context, but you never know how a sermon is going to land, especially half a world away. So as I sat on the chancel that Sunday morning, I was mulling it over and praying. 

We were gathered at a conference camp, in a large pavilion of sorts, with openings below the eaves, on three sides. Lush vegetation surrounded us, and little birds flew in and out and all around, singing and singing, as the service began. The music people began their song, too, and a woman’s beautiful voice soared from behind me, in a song that is not new but that I could not remember having heard–”Holy Spirit, living breath of God, breathe new life into my willing soul…” the lines kept coming–“Cause your word to come alive in me; give me faith for what I cannot see… Kindness to the greatest and the least; gentleness that sows the path of peace. Turn my strivings into works of grace; breath of God, show Christ in all I do.”

As the beauty of the music and the words soared and joined the chorus of the birds, I felt such a presence filling that place, God coming to me and to us, singing and swirling and breathing life into people who weren’t quite sure of how to keep going. Soothing my broken heart, pouring out upon all of us the grace and mercy that should be our culture as Christians, the culture that should form us and by which we must shape our interaction with the world. The heavens that day were indeed torn open, and the living Lord came down, to lavish peace on God’s people in that place. 

I cannot help but think that gentleness is key to our path forward. As we awaken to this day, in which God has called us to live and to serve, as we try to read the signs in sky and tree and battlefields in every place, including in our own neighborhoods, our way forward must be a gracious one. We must note that gentleness does not preclude working for justice. I met the most remarkable deaconesses in the Philippines, risking their very lives to advocate for the poor and victims of human trafficking, yet with a spirit of humility, even in the struggle. Gentleness does not mean lying down and bending over and giving up. But it does mean clinging to the goodness of God as people who know that goodness is from whence our salvation comes, the source of our very lives and of every other life, whom we must take care to regard as such. 

We humans are capable of terrible things, and I can’t help but believe that the horrific atrocities of the killing fields of every age have their root in the same sinful impulse that allows us to disregard each other, whatever the setting. On the world stage, certain public voices use language and advocate policies that could easily tumble into genocide itself. In our own church, we have heard lies told about us, over and over. In certain little Arkansas communities, there is active, public shunning of people who chose to remain United Methodist. In other places, more traditional folks feel ostracized. Certainly none of that is the same as genocide. But this willingness to harm each other, on any side of a fight, is dangerous. 

So keep watch, beloveds; claim Christ’s gracious, gentle culture, no matter what; and do not be afraid. 

In that context, we know, as United Methodists, that we have stayed for a reason. Even if you feel you haven’t quite made up your mind yet, you are here, and not someplace else. Not because we all agree, not because the answers are clear, not because it makes us right or the biggest or most powerful. But because, in the midst of the violence of the world, we are trying to do no harm. In the midst of fighting, we want to choose not-fighting. In a place of war, whether in Gaza or Ukraine or Facebook or the local school board, we seek gentleness that sows the path of peace. In the place of tension, we seek the love that will turn our striving into grace. I am convinced that this is who we are as United Methodists. This is the time and the way to which God has called us. 

At the risk of repeating what you already know, our communities need that kind of church. There is a desperate need in this world for who we are at our most humble, for what we know, especially we who have sat in a hard place and chosen grace anyway. And that kind of church will naturally find that it needs the community. I truly believe that this is what’s coming. A day when God’s own life has been poured out in the midst of death, and we have the privilege of being witnesses to it, in a world weary to its very bones. A day when we stop talking about what we lack, because we’ve found it all in the hearts and lives and dreams of people outside the church. A day when the tiniest, most vulnerable flesh, so easily destroyed in the killing field, is the way the thread of gentleness becomes woven through the world. A day when the skies tear open, and justice rolls down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, love flooding the earth.

What more could we hope for as a church? What deeper, sweeter promise could God make to us? We will surely yet face days when it feels that the mountains themselves are shaking. What is now is not what will be for the church or the world. But those who wait upon the power of God, incarnate in Jesus, can trust that our tension will find its rest. So keep watch, beloveds; claim Christ’s gracious, gentle culture, no matter what; and do not be afraid. 

Bishop Laura Merrill serves as resident bishop of the Arkansas Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. This post is republished from her email newsletter.