The text for this homily is Psalm 80.
God, come back!
Smile your blessing smile:
That will be our salvation.
Have you ever prayed a prayer like that? My niece Kirsten surely did last week. She is a school teacher in Toledo raising her 8 year old daughter. She lives in a house my sister, her mom owns in an older neighborhood in Toledo. My sister was just saying at Thanksgiving that she would like to get rid of the house before she retires. She isn’t charging her daughter enough to make it worthwhile as a rental and for obvious reasons she doesn’t want to kick her out to make it a more profitable asset. Kirsten doesn’t want to buy it, which kind of irritates my sister and there was an awkward silence when the subject got broached on Thanksgiving.
Sunday morning this week, Kirsten comes home from church and is knocked down by…well a smell like poo. My niece is not the best housekeeper but she knew this was not moldy cheese in the refrigerator she smelled. She ran down into the basement and on her floor was an inch and a half of raw sewage. The Noah’s Ark like rain that Toledo received last week had somehow backed up her block’s sewers into her basement. The drain in her floor was just bubbling forth with this gift like the Texas Crude that Jed Clambett found on his land in the Beverly Hillbillies.
It took an entire day with the help of my sister and her husband to clean up the mess. Even with gallons of bleach, the smell lingers. My sister was cross because she had wanted to sell this place anyway. She told her daughter to start making plans because it was going up for sale. My niece was upset because her house is unlivable, her mom is mad, everyone is cranky and tired after a day of cleaning up other people’s waste, and she doesn’t know where she is going to live next. It was one of those days when we are just overwhelmed and the answers to our problems can’t easily be found. Her post on Facebook that night was simple. God, if you are out there, remember me.
God, come back!
Smile your blessing smile:
That will be our salvation.
Wendy came with her young daughter to our church for the first time on Girl Scout Sunday last March during Lent. She had never been one to go to church but something just clicked for her here at Messiah. She enjoyed the service so much that she came with her older adult daughter to the new member classes that just happened to be starting up shortly after Girl Scout Sunday. When I explained to the class that to join the church you had to be baptized, she approached me shyly afterward to explain that she had never been baptized. She apologized for this as if we would be terribly disappointed with this news.
Of course, quite the opposite, for Lutherans there is few things more visually powerful than to see an adult at the baptismal font that we normally only babies and children gather around. Wendy was baptized at our evening Saturday Vigil service. It was so special. A couple of weeks later we celebrated with her as she joined our church, the first church she had ever become a part. Two weeks after that I greeted her in her pew before the service began and heard the news. She had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. Things did not look good.
She attended faithfully for about another month, but one Sunday she asked if it were okay to simply drop off her daughter for Sunday School. With the Chemo, she just couldn’t sit in the pew on Sunday morning, but her daughter didn’t want to miss. This would be the last time I saw her. Last week, we received word from her husband that she had died. Pastor Thadd led the memorial service for her family on Wednesday. Wendy was 44 years old.
Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful that she wandered into Messiah before she died. Baptism changes our relationship with God and I am glad the pure white baptismal dress is what she has put on to see God. On the other hand, I wish with all my heart she were still here, to raise her young daughter with us, grow with us in faith at Messiah, serve alongside of us and to have her voice become a familiar one in our pews on Sunday morning. God, why? 44. Wow. Where are you God in the midst of all this pain?
God, come back!
Smile your blessing smile:
That will be our salvation.
I don’t lack for stories about God seeming silent. Bob and Gretchen Rice’s 50 year old daughter died last week after enjoying a Sunday meal with her parents. Mac and Cheryl’s five year old grandchild got so sick so suddenly last week and she is still not out of the woods. Many in this place that have held good and valuable jobs that provided well for their family are getting discouraged as this recession drags on and no one wants to make use of their talents. Young people who would make wonderful parents are not given the special gift of life, though they have tried so hard and seen so many doctors. Other young people are scared and worried because they have found themselves gifted unexpectedly with new life.
God where are you? Why are you silent? Will you hear me? Us? Your people? Advent is the season when we take our worries, our darkness, our burdens even our doubts and anger, and we lay them before God. Advent is a season of night, inky black, with the first colors of morning starting to play on the horizon. Advent is about hope. Hope that God is not asleep though he seems absent. Hope that God hears our pain though the silence is deafening. Hope that God has not and will not abandon us though the evidence seems to say otherwise. Advent is about waiting for God to come, in the midst of our troubles and grief. And none of us like to wait. While we wait, we prepare for God with us. There is so much I can’t make sense of, but at the end of the day, the hope of God’s promise is what keeps me moving.
God, come back!
Smile your blessing smile:
That will be our salvation.