Advent 1 - Year B

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“Where are you God?”… the cry of the psalmist, the entry into Advent.

 A lament.  “Where are you God?”… definitely a lament….. reflective sorrow.

Today I am lamenting over the loss of the lament in our culture; or perhaps I am recognising that it has changed presentation rather than intent.  Perhaps I am wondering if something has been lost in this movement…

What is lament in life?  The psalmist laments God’s lack of action.  At the same time the psalmist laments the human condition that seems to have caused God’s lack of involvement with their plight.  God is angry with them; they await the restoring to good favour in God’s eyes.

Meanwhile, the lament is strong in their waiting.  Their faith is strong in their waiting.. “restore us, O God of hosts;”.  There is a full confidence that God will do this; there is full faith in the power and right of God.  “O Shepherd of Israel…. O Lord God of hosts”…. their relationship with God is certain; there is no absence of God.

The lament is therefore about something in the human-God mix that recognises perhaps that God’s time and call on life is not being discerned in our living.  It seems to me it goes beyond a surface confession of not living how God wants us to live, or being sorry for human failure. 

I am wondering if God requires lament as a necessary part of being human; that we can lament together, God and I, God and you.  Perhaps our lament is about calling through our own expectation of life, the expectation and call of God.  Perhaps this is the only way to be fully human; to not separate any part of living but to reflectively use who we are to be God’s “who we are meant to be.”

It is when we persecute that divinity within ourselves that we are not lamenting, we are denying God.  It is when we live in fear of life that we are actually not living the all of life.  That is when God weeps; not laments.  The loss of passion and truth lived out in our lives is tragedy, even of the scale of crucifixion.  But when we realise that crucifixion has taken place, when we see that life is about loss, and we weep with God, then, then, the weeping can become lament and the mix of tragedy and love can bring resurrection.

There is weeping before lament.  Weeping is personal, even for God.  Lament is universal; especially for God.  When we can move beyond, and yet still with, our personal encounter with life into the God encounter with humanity, then the Holy Spirit is enabled.  When we cannot, or do not, then we separate God from the world.  And the weeping continues and doesn’t grow into Holy Spirit productivity.

Michael Leunig tells a personal story of the resultant productivity of reflection through the weeping.  He tells of the time in primary school, at the grand age of nine,  when he was accused by another student of doing something bad to her in the disused quarry behind the school.  His telling of the unfolding of the incident as the allegation was hounded against him is moving, as well as with some humour.  He talks of the days of dismay and gloom, of not being able to tell his parents, of slinking home each night… “a crown of prickles on my bleeding head.”  He talks of the darkness of the time that can still hover in his life; of his bewilderment that someone he knew could do this to him.  But why he asks, but why?  The next part of his learning experience was through the fellow students eventual confession that indeed he was innocent.  The incident had happened with someone else; she didn’t know what to do about it so fabricated another story.  Leunig writes:    page 166 “The Lot in words”…..

I would like to thank you, B, wherever you are; you gave me my first worldly lesson in false witness and dismay.

You helped greatly to open my eyes to the mysterious human darkness where I eventually learnt to see.  You helped to prepare me for many things disgusting and consoling in the human story: the passion of Christ, the crucible, Kafka, politics, dog-whistle politics, dirt files, hate mail, hate blogs, hoaxes, satire without values, envious attacks, art critics, book critics, suburban bloodlust, lunch mobs, witch hunts, sanctimonious warfare – and the shower of shit that falls from the sky upon anyone who dares to go it alone and live creatively, holding what is personal, unique and vulnerable above what is corporate, systematic and tribal.

It is through such accumulative reflective sorrow that Leunig recognises that he himself can indeed live at the fringe, creative and countercultural, as long as he is part of universal lament, not separate from it.  He and other inspirational humans can then call each of us into that cycle, painful as it is.  It is the place of speaking serious truth to their society.  It is the place of the prophet.  It is the place of Christ.

Let me share with you how Leunig describes those who speak such truth……

page 247 “The Lot in words”

…any man or woman who faces reality bravely, who feels life deeply, who hold love over gold, who frees what is repressed, who sees humbly, who speaks frankly, who touches and awakens what is divine in humanity, who illuminates the corruption and hypocrisy of institutional power: any man or woman who becomes a fully alive any soulful moral creature.

It sounds a little like the Beatitudes, Christ’s teaching on being a disciple…. and so I must share with you how Leunig continues…………. page 247-8 ibid.

Woe betide them because they will be lonely; they will be reviled and outcast through the insecurity and guilt and envy of the miserably powerful, who, in all their might, cannot do what the free and healthy spirit has done alone.  And with all certainty, the spirit that stands out courageously will be betrayed and denied and destroyed by the conforming mob – if not to the full degree then to a considerable extent, and certainly sufficient to cause anguish and suffering enough to break the heart: the everyday crucifixions we fear and know so well.

The key to lamenting is in that last line; that what we fear, that what we know so well.  We need to claim again the lament in life because from our weeping and fear of the tragedy of life comes the knowing well of it in our life. 

To learn to lament is to learn to pray.  When we begin to pray, we ask for this, we ask for that, we demand of God reason and order on our own terms.  Then through our impatience and frustration we somehow learn to be silent in prayer; we wait on God.  In one of my favourite Leunig prayers he puts it like this… “we wait quietly.  A small, shy truth arrives.” 

When we accept that small, shy truth, our prayer becomes intercession; it leaves the selfish place of only me and moves into lament for that which is truthful and painful.  Our fear moves into the knowing well; the knowing well is accepting God fully and truly in the unknowing. 

This is what the season of Advent invites us into; listening to those who speak serious truth, and inviting that truth into our own very lives.  Through this season we listen to Isaiah, to Samuel, to Jonah, to the psalmists,  to Paul, to Mary, to John the Baptist and, above all, as always, to Christ himself.  We hear their laments with open spirits; and we recognise that true lament contains much joy and hope because God is there, right there.

God goes before us; God is already waiting for each of us to share with God that we are waiting.  God is there – at the manger, waiting for our joy. 

Let me conclude with another Leunig poem; indeed, a lament……

God accept our prayers.

Send us tears in return.

Give freedom to this exchange.

Let us pray inwardly.

Let us weep outwardly.

This is the breathing of the soul.

This is the vitality of the spirit.

For this we give thanks.  Amen.