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I like the scene in the movie “When Harry Met Sally” in which the two friends are talking on the phone late one night. Harry’s been going through a divorce and he’s been depressed about it; he’s been leaning on his friend Sally to help pull him through a tough time. They’ve both been watching “Casablanca” on TV in their separate apartments. As it ends, they get ready to settle down for the night.

I can’t say as I have ever stayed up late to moan and groan about my troubles. I sort of admire Harry for giving some voice to his troubled soul, though. The Isaiah reading for today is the fancy prophetic version of a moan, don’t you think? Beginning with the first line, actually with the first letter, “O.” “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” It’s an “O” that practically begs to be elongated into a satisfying, cathartic moan.

Let’s practice some moaning. If you’re perfectly happy and content with your life, having absolutely nothing to moan about, you can try out your dramatic skills. [Practice moaning.]

If you need something to moan about, allow me to inspire you. Super Committee. Deficit. Budget cuts. Unemployment. Stocks plummeting. Foreclosures. Climate change. Extinction. Murder, mayhem and more rain in the forecast. Now let’s hear some spirited moaning!

The ancient Israelites faced different kinds of problems than we do, but they were, like us, feeling like they were in such a mess that they didn’t think they were going to be able to solve their problems themselves. They were longing for God to take some dramatic action to get everybody’s attention, and ideally, to just FIX IT. Their situation felt intolerable, and they were sick of it, and they just wanted it to be over with.

In the midst of a good moan, they reflect a bit on what got them into this pickle. They know their own failures are at least partially responsible for their difficulties. But they would really like to find someone else to blame—a perennial human project. Our current political professionals and candidates for public office seem terrifically dedicated to advancing the science of finding someone else to blame, have you noticed? I don’t think the Israelites had political parties to target in the blame game; they went right for the top. They wanted to blame God for their failures. They admit they were sinful, but they claim that the reason was that God was angry and God hid himself. “Because you hid yourself we transgressed.” As if God standing in a pillar of fire next to them would have inspired them to shape up. As if some kind of ubiquitous divine surveillance system would have resulted in excellent behavior; as if God needs to be standing by to slap a wrist in order to insure goodness. “OOOOO, if only you’d been more obvious, we wouldn’t be in this jam.”

Through the prophet’s voice, the people reveal that they feel somewhat powerless to manage themselves. They are also making quite a leap as they read God’s apparent distance and nonappearance as a sign of anger. They think God must have withdrawn God’s presence because the people have gone astray. Theologian Bruce Epperly says “Isaiah and his community are going through a severe case of separation anxiety, assuming that God’s distance…is tantamount to God’s abandonment and anger.”[1] Stephen Wilson was just telling me about research in adolescent brains which suggests that many teenagers, because of their internal chemistry, will read a neutral face, a blank affect, as anger. A teen might leap to the conclusion that a parent is angry when his or her face is doing anything besides smiling, including looking preoccupied. Maybe with a little dose of guilt stirred in humans are apt to make a similar leap with God—we don’t see you actively smiling on our people, blessing us with peace and prosperity, so we have got to conclude you must be mad at us, OOOO God. OOOO please, OOO please don’t leave us here alone to deal with the consequences of our own iniquity.

Epperly, in good Process theologian fashion, points out that God’s withdrawal, God’s distance, allows for freedom and creativity to flourish in the human community. He writes, “Perhaps, as later Jewish mysticism suggests, God must withdraw for creation to burst forth in creativity and freedom. God does not overfunction or micromanage, despite God’s moment by moment presence in our lives. There is risk in God’s withdrawal – we may fear that God is gone forever and may also misuse our freedom, but the emergence of new possibilities demands that God give us space for growth.”[2] God gives us space—and although our fear and confusion might label that space “anger” in the manner of a riled-up adolescent, it doesn’t mean God has withdrawn or hidden in exasperation. We are created to become responsible adults, not perpetual children who have to be managed every second. You catch a whiff of this in Jesus’ little apocalypse in Mark, when Jesus says to the waiting Christians, “It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves and puts his slaves in charge, each with his own work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.” God leaves us to our own work, and bids us to watch for signs of God’s coming.

In contrast to the Israelites’ impulsive wish for God to be as noticeable as a hole ripped in the sky, a mountain earthquake, and a brushfire, God’s overtures to the world are subtle, and filtered through the creation. As Bruce Epperly puts it, “God’s…revelations in our lives come clothed in creaturely clothing and gentle inclinations.” One has to be alert, awake, to recognize them. They are not the kinds of signs that wake a person up from a sound sleep, like an earthquake or an explosion. They are the kinds of signs of hope that shift the “O” of a moan to the “O” of insight and the “O” of delighted surprise at something new unfolding. Isaiah recalls the days when God “did awesome deeds that we did not expect.” God is still the everflowing source of creativity and goodness we did not expect. Whenever we see something good and hopeful we did not expect because of our discouragement with the way things are, we can be sure God is at work.

Being attuned to such subtle signs of God renewing the world is a chore, though, because staying awake means slogging through an awful lot of awful news. I think we should acknowledge that keeping awake in this day and age is not altogether pleasant. I’ve had numerous conversations with people about the daily challenge of reading or listening to news. Some have given up on it altogether because it is too depressing, and I don’t blame them. I’m not sure we humans were designed to take in as much information as we have access to right now, especially when the “news” is slanted toward the dramatic and violent because “if it bleeds, it leads.” It is a constant temptation to tune it all out by whatever method is available to us. Timothy Leary’s infamous phrase from the sixties, “Turn on, tune in, drop out” comes to mind. Leary later had a detailed explanation of what he meant by that in his autobiography, but many people interpreted this catchy phrase as meaning “Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.” There are plenty of ways to “get stoned” either literally or figuratively—whether through actual drug and alcohol use, or through getting stuffed, getting entertained, gaming, obsessing over sport or hobby… There are a bajillion methods of falling asleep so as not to deal with the complicated pain of existence. One of the reasons I wanted to sing John Bell’s “God Bless and Disturb Us” in this service was because it is one of the few hymns I’ve ever heard that acknowledges the powerful lure of drugged culture: “When powers thrive on heroin / Where people run from pain / Where parents watch an addict child / Left life run down the drain / Where hope’s a hit, a drink, a shot / And death seems like a gain.” In the musical “Chicago” the lawyer offers an explanation for his client’s bad behavior and coaches the press to sing “Understandable, understandable, Yes, it's perfectly understandable; Comprehensible, comprehensible, Not a bit reprehensible; It's so defensible!” That’s what I would have to say about anyone who finds a means of snoozing through the world’s almost intolerable pain.

And yet—keeping awake is the only way to be attuned to what God is still doing, the only way to be on the watch for Christ coming into the world. The Advent candle liturgy spoke a deep truth: “Christ is coming. Christ is always coming, always entering a troubled world, a wounded heart.” We will not see it, we will not be surprised by the hope that is sparked by God’s unexpected deeds, if we have fallen into a drugged sleep. We are people who are called to keep watch, to declare our hope, to strengthen one another with the spiritual gifts God has bestowed on us, while we wait for Christ to come into the world in ever-new disguises.

People of faith, are we ordained to stay awake and moan? Maybe so—since we are not meant to close our eyes to the world’s pain or our personal pain. Someone’s got to notice that all is not as it should be in God’s realm. But moaning is not the end; it is a waystation. The “O” of the moan of pain does turn to the “O” of insight and the “O” of delighted surprise as God ministers to our wounds and then molds us into instruments for the repair of the world. What we need during this season of Advent is to give voice to the “O” of longing for God to be made manifest in our lives, manifest in our hearts and hands, in our communities. As the first hymn said, “O come Christ the Savior / From below, from above / And infect the depths of earth / With heavenly love.” O Come, Emmanuel, be with us and in us to plant in our world hopes and dreams and visions of what is yet to be.

[1] http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yearb/2011-11-27/first-sunday-advent

[2] http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yearb/2011-11-27/first-sunday-advent

Sermon: "O"

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