Isaiah 64:1-9

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence--
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil--
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who gladly do right,
those who remember you in your ways.
But you were angry, and we sinned;
because you hid yourself we transgressed.
We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls on your name,
or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
Yet, O LORD, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD,
and do not remember iniquity forever.
Now consider, we are all your people.

---

You cannot believe how difficult it was to get our Advent wreath together for this morning, the first Sunday of Advent. You see, a few months ago someone accidentally pulled down the rope that ran through a pulley high above us there. This was the pulley and the rope that held up our massive Advent wreath. Though made out of artificial greens, it was the one used around here for years to signal the beginning of Advent.
And so this last week has been all about getting another line fed through that pulley and getting the wreath back up or coming up with some kind of “Plan B.”.

Early in the week the conversation quickened—what was going to be the approach and who was going to be involved? A plan of attack was hatched. On Wednesday three adventurous parishioners attempted to use their boating (or was it fly fishing?) skills to get a line up there without going up a ladder. Alas, to no avail. And then miraculously (I thought) a man came to our 10:00 AM Thanksgiving Mass, a man who ran a contracting business and was comfortable on tall ladders. This, however, didn’t work out either.

And then yesterday our “Plan B” not only surfaced but began coming together. A metal stand appeared courtesy of the generosity of a parishioner, a wooden form was cut out to sit on that stand, a wreath and other greenery were affixed along with the candles and suddenly we were all set for this morning.

In the middle of these adventures, it struck me that this was a perfect image for our spiritual challenge this year. In the odd, unpredictable and stunning times we live in, how do we once again find the not only the heart but the way to hang our own psychological and spiritual advent wreaths, the wreaths by whose gradually growing light we will watch for the coming of a God into the world?

How do we bring them out this year when we seem to be living in a time when our ropes have disappeared, when what you might call our “Plan A” is no longer feasible?

You can do anything you want with this image, of course—the image of no rope to hang your well beloved or at least your well known wreath on and your “Plan A” blowing up on you. What I think about is our country’s economic situation, the impact it’s having on many of you and or others we know, the disorienting mess economically and politically that lies before us still to be sorted out.

How do we find a way to bring our hopeful and expectant wreaths at a time like this?

The words from the Book of Isaiah in our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures are very much addressed to a people whose Plan A did not work out for them, who were in a state of extreme disorientation.. Having lost their homes, their temple and, they believed, their favor with God, they returned home from exile in Babylon, yes, with a sense of thanksgiving to have survived and to back home, but also with a combination of shame and complaint against God that led to disorientation and alienation from the source of their very being.

And so the prophet cries out on their behalf to God saying: “Would that we could feel your presence, O God, as in former days. Would that your presence, O God, were so palpable that the mountains quaked and the nations trembled. Would that we could feel your closeness, O God, as in the former days.”

But just as it is for us, it was for them. We don’t get to have back the sense of security with God and in our lives that was of a former time. We don’t get to return to the way things were in the past because it feels less disorienting or safer to us. Often in our lives “Plan A” is dead and gone and “Plan B”—well, it’s not exactly clear what “Plan B” should be.

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.

This is what the prophet who cried out to God on behalf of the people comes to when all his cries about the desire for the former days, the former relationship with God have been said..

O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.

“Plan B,” it turns out is not so much about what we will figure out for ourselves through our own ingenuity. It also not about God swooping in and putting things back into place the way they used to be. Instead, it has something to do with being pliable, inert and ready, expectantly receptive as the hand of God comes upon us, a hand that is more like a potter than a potentate, a hand that has its way with us, forming us into something humble, earthen, real and useful: God’s new vessel.

And so Advent tells us to wait and watch like clay waits for the potter’s hand, or as our Gospel says, like the doorkeeper waits for the owner of the house to return. But our reading also suggests that there might be more to do for our waiting to be real. For our waiting to be real, it often cannot bypass what is a lamentation for the former days—for our “Plan A” that did not work out. And so drawing from our passage from the Book of Isaiah, waiting for the coming of the hand of the potter may involve crying out, opening up the channel of lament that God’s people have always found to be a way to open up their connection to God. Sometimes the only way to get to expectant receptivity is through a lament for what has been lost, for what is no longer possible.

I want to end by returning to our Advent wreath, not because it has to do with lament, far from it, but because it offers us a little picture of “Plan A” finally giving way to “Plan B.”.

Notice that once we discovered that the rope was no longer threaded through the pulley that we tried and tried again to find a way to return things to the way they were before. Notice that we did this even though the wreath was artificial, something that, in principle, we don’t go along with when it comes to liturgical objects. Notice that for a moment we even believed that God had miraculously provided a person who would show up with a ladder who could take care of this for us. But notice that once this plan had died, really even as this plan was dying, another plan was taking shape, a new way to bear the gradually growing light by which we will see the coming of God into the world.

Back to Sermons