Advent 1: Heart As Home

 

I am going to begin the preaching of Advent by reminding us how we spent last Advent. We explored SHELTER facing the complexity of the housing crisis in this province and in our neighbourhood: homelessness, couch surfing, out-of-the-cold shelters, low income and geared to income rentals, affordable housing, group homes, nursing homes. We learned about organizations providing options and advocacy. We were called to do something to change the injustice within systems, and to be vocal with all levels of government. It was hard and demanding work. It was stressful and weighed heavy. It took to uncomfortable places. This year, not to diminish the great need for continued housing justice and advocacy – but to balance our spirits and capacity for such work, we enter an Advent period of respite and comfort reflecting on a theme of HOME.

Today we consider HEART as HOME.

 

The first reading of the season comes to us from chapter 2 of Isaiah. This is a unique chapter crafted from words and phrases unlike those of the surrounding text. It comes at the heals of a miracle. With fear and a sense of doom the people of Jerusalem have witnessed the advancement of the Assyrian army.  The mighty army marched through the Levant – Syria, Lebanon, Israel – capturing every city in its wake, redistributing people, destroying and pillaging. Every city was taken by the Assyrians on their march to build an empire that rivalled that of Egypt and reached Egypt’s borders. Miraculously, the Assyrian army on its approach to Jerusalem, stopped and turned around. Jerusalem is saved. The people of Jerusalem understood the event to be the providence of God - saved – due in large part to Isaiah’s prayers. The Assyrian troops, this time, turned around because they were called back to fight a civil war in their own capital city.

Isaiah calls the people to come home, to remember the covenantal promise. Isaiah is stirred up saying, “If you think this so-called miracle is amazing, just wait! For in the days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of mountains … Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.”

 

From the first Word of Advent, we hear the heart of the Advent season: home. This prophecy from Isaiah 2, reminds the people of covenant home. Many come home and flock to the house of God. There is instruction, and justice, and living covenant (loving God, people, and creation). And there is peace: swords and spears are made into plowshares and pruning hooks. An action that stirs up images of farming, fruit and bread, harvest, and abundance – food for all.  

 

The focus Gospel for this year is that of Matthew, a writer who used organizational patterns, for instance, 12 citations that announce the fulfillment of prophecy, found throughout the Gospel to emphasize that prophecy is being fulfilled now. Today’s text is a snippet of what we will hear through the year of Matthew’s presentation of apocalyptic vision of the world with spheres of divine and demonic influence. In all, we will journey with Matthew’s overriding theological motif, the presence of God.  

Where is God to be found? Matthew tells us that God is home in:

Jesus who is called Emmanuel meaning God-with-us;

Secondly, Jesus remains present in the church and his followers post-ascension. Jesus says to the disciples before physically leaving, I am with you always to the end of the age;

And thirdly, God is home, in the church present in the world. Matthew is the only Gospel in which Jesus explicitly talks about ‘the church’- which is not a building or community, but a missionary movement.

The church is called to be the light of the world, the living body of Christ, making Christ present in the world just as Jesus was God’s presence.

The Psalm from the candle lighting liturgy nicely draws together the ideas of Isaiah and Matthew. The Psalm is a song of ascent, meaning a Psalm that was recited as one approached the city of Jerusalem and made pilgrimage to the Holy. The words stirred up the heart of the pilgrim, I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”

In the ascent a prayer is prayed for the peace of Jerusalem – that would be the miracle, the fulfillment of Isaiah’s in days to come vision.  In the Psalm the peace of Jerusalem is expressed as Peace be within your walls and security within your towers.

Reciting Psalm 122 and hearing the Gospel of Matthew, the following two lines jumped out at me:

I will say, “Peace be within you.”

For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.

 

I understand these lines as heart as home. There is a movement from the vision that is not yet, the peace of Jerusalem that has been centuries in the making and continues to be waited upon in our own time, to a peace and presence of God that is within, a peace that is possible now, as Matthew’s Gospel describes. A peace and presence that has the action of seeking good for the sake of the house of the Lord --- the miracle, the fulfillment of God’s covenantal promise.

 

 

The Gregorian Sacramentary is a 10^th century illuminated Latin manuscript, likely created in Regensburg Germany. In it there is a liturgical calendar that was used by the Benedictine Abbey of Fulda. A sacramentary is a book filled with prayers and liturgies for the seasons of the church year. The prayers are numbered, much like those in our hymnbook (you can find tiny numbers beside many of the prayers- I encourage you to check it out later). The prayer from this morning is prayer #778 from the Gregorian Sacramentary, “Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come.“ All 16 Advent prayers in the sacramentary begin with the Latin excita. The traditional English translation is “Stir up.”

Definitions of ‘stir up’ are two-fold, to arouse or excite emotion and a desire and passion to do something.

 

Advent prayers actively invite God to be present – peace within us- at home in us – and to stir up emotion and desire; a desire with actions to bring Isaiah’s description of home closer to reality, a place of peace and abundance where implements that cause death, destruction, and pain are refashioned into tools that are life-giving, feeding, and greening.

 

Advent texts remind me of the many conversations I had with members of this congregation who came to Canada after WWII as Displaced Persons, known as DPs. I was told stories of people fleeing, leaving their homes with only what they could carry. DPs were unable to return to their physical homes. Homes had been destroyed or taken in the mapping of new borders. Over and over, DPs reflected that home was what you were able to carry with you, not the material goods in a suitcase that could be taken from you. Stories were about holding onto hope, looking for signs of promise, keeping the feet moving and hands busy. The stories told were of finding home in the kindness and generosity of others, the sense of home because of the shared experience, and a belief that goodness is greater than evil. I heard many miracle stories. Home was manifest in the prayers that rested in their hearts, the hymns that came to mind, the snippets of poems and stories remembered, cherished memories of those who loved them and those they loved. All the years before the war that were spent in school, reading books, going to church, singing in choirs and so on were the preparation that readied them for being displaced, provided a home for them in their hearts when physical home was gone. It was the time spent in listening to the wisdom of others, gathering knowledge both head and heart, that contributed to their ability to carry-on through the days clouded with war.

Home was in the heart, and heart was home. Home to what hope, love, peace, and joy there was in the now.

 

 

Stir up in us, Emmanuel, a desire to make room in our hearts for you. We invite you into our lives to make our heart your home. To fill it with hope, and love; peace and joy. Then with heart, may we, go into the world and make home for others. Amen.