First Sunday of Advent: we are all the work of your hands.

First Sunday of Advent

People have been asking me how I’m doing.  I respond, “OK. As best can be expected.”  And that’s completely true. If I were to give a detailed description of what “OK” actually feels like, I’d say that I didn’t ask for the events of this past month, but it happened and I’m dealing. I’d also say that in spite of all the hardship and heartbreak, I do feel and see God’s hand in all of this.

Things have happened that I had no control over and I’ve had to come to learn to accept what I cannot change. I am finding out that peace comes when I let go - that is when I surrender. Surrendering means I have to be malleable, like clay.  God is like a potter, constantly taking clay and molding it into something beautiful. I am the clay.  In Isaiah, “You are our father; we are the clay and you the potter: we are all the work of your hands.” As a potter God takes the clay and fashions it. The clay doesn’t lose any of its pain and sorrow, but as the clay is molded in the strong but gentle hands of the potter, sadness and loss are slowly fashioned into hope and serene acceptance.

When I was about 11 or 12 years old, my mother sent us to a day arts and crafts summer camp in Oddstad Park down the street from our house. Our art teacher had us kids spend hours “feeling” the clay and squeezing the clay in our hands and in-between our fingers. We were taught to imagine something that we really liked or something that our mother would like. And then we were told to let our hands mould the clay into what we saw in our head.  My mother saved everything that we ever made her. In fact, she still had the ash trays and a giant hideous yellow cat that I made her from that summer.

Scriptures teach us that God fashioned the world and that God so loved the world that he became flesh and made his home among us.  The world is blessed because God not only made it, but that God entered into it. This is the mystery of the Incarnation: the potter and the clay are one! Jesus taught his disciples that the world, therefore, was not a place of fear, but rather a place of blessing.  God isn’t a referee at a soccer match or a self-appointed vigilante looking to bust some heads or a mean yard duty teacher looking to punish kids that got out of line. No! Jesus taught us that God is our loving parent and that the world is a place filled with opportunities to serve and create.

Our task as his disciples is to be watchful and alert for precisely those opportunities to serve the poor and create new structures that are just for all people. “…you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’”  Watchfulness in this passage implies that we must always be ready to act on love.  Jesus’ message in about the most powerful act of selflessness: giving one’s life so that others can live.  To forgive debt rather than hold something over another person. To heal rather than injure and to gather together rather than divide and scatter.

But before we get ahead of ourselves and go out and save the world, we must first of all be watchful of ourselves, that is, to see what is happening within us. The work that is being done within us is GRACE.  This grace is given to all of us and it continues to fashion us. St Paul writes that “the grace of God (has been) bestowed on (us) in Christ Jesus, that in him (we) were enriched in every way, with all discourse and all knowledge…(we) are not lacking in any spiritual gift…”  So when I become more aware of Grace moulding me from the inside out, I begin to learn to let go of things I can’t change. I become more aware of accepting of the present moment. My head doesn’t obsess over the future. When I am fully present to the present moment, I am fully present to not only myself, but most importantly, to those around me. And when I am serene and in recovery - when I am just “OK,” I am more able to be there for others. I want to quote the FULL and ORIGINAL version of the famous “Serenity Prayer”  by Reinhold Niebuhr. 

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;  Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; 

Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life  and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.”

So as we come round this altar to receive the gifts of the Living Bread and the Saving Cup, the Body and Blood of Christ our Lord - I know that concretely Jesus will manifest his Grace drawing us not to just to him, but putting us into contact with one another. It will be a fitting start to my Advent Journey - and I would hope a good beginning place for you.