...it's independence day!

Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free;

From our fears and sins release us; let us find our rest in Thee.

Born thy people to deliver, born a child and yet a King,

Born to reign in us forever, now Thy gracious kingdom bring.

---Charles Wesley, 1744

Advent is all about…well, you know…hope, peace, joy, and love, right? This hymn says Advent is all about…freedom…deliverance…a kingdom of grace. A topsy-turvy kingdom ruled by a child-king, reigning not over us, but in us. Free from what, we may wonder? We are living in the USA, as free as any people in the world. But there are bars that imprison us in a narrow world of small expectations and low risks. We are prisoner to our fears and sins, allowing them to hold us back from full participation in Christ’s kingdom of grace. In so many ways, we are far from free.

But the reign of the Christ Child? All about the freedom, my friends. In this kingdom, we are beckoned, day by day, to venture beyond the limits we set for ourselves and each other. In this kingdom there is no place for our small-minded fears and doubts.

Talk about your revolution….it’s independence day!

...set free from fear and failure

Come, Thou long expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us; let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel's strength and consolation, hope of all the earth Thou art;
dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.
---Charles Wesley, 1744

Fear and failure. Fear and failure. Are there any two more potent negatively-charged concepts in modern language? Can anything paralyze us more, sap our energy, drain our creative potential, cause us to second-guess ourselves and doubt the motives of those around us, than fear and failure? When we are trapped behind masks of fear, limiting our life choices and building walls to divide ourselves from the 'other'; when our past failures echo in our ears and memories so loudly they drown out the call to venture again; here we are trapped, and here there is no rest.

Our word for sin is from the Greek 'hamartia', an archer's term for 'missing the mark' --- failure. This Jesus, then, born Israel's strength and hope of all the world, comes somehow with the power to set us free from the strongest chains --- the ones we forge ourselves from our own fears and failures. Our pasts are the only prisons we've ever needed, and we are expert jailers; we excel at imprisoning ourselves and others behind thick walls made of our own fears and the failures of the past, both personal and corporate.

Christ comes to leave not one stone on stone. Are you ready to be free? Are you ready for others to be free? Fear and failure have no power over us in the path of the coming Christ!

...no journey for the faint-hearted

Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand;

Ponder nothing earthly minded, for with blessing in His hand

Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.

---Liturgy of St. James, 5th cent.

Friends, we step this day onto holy ground; crossing what is sometimes called in Celtic spirituality a ‘thin place’ between one world and another. For this day we begin to mark the Coming, the welcoming not only of the Babe to the manger but of the reign of God in our hearts and in the world. And where we welcome God’s reign, not one thing can remain the same --- not one social construct, not one ‘good old day’, not one stone left on stone. This Advent, this coming, is no journey for the faint-hearted.

So, on the cusp of this new year --- between the brokenheartedness of our shortcomings, our failures, our disappointments, and the possibility, the chance, the prayer that all things will be made new --- let us stand still, silent, awed by the holiness of God come to us as ‘us’. From our eyes, from our hands, from our minds fall any considerations aside from this holiness.

And we worship.