Today marks the beginning of a new liturgical year with the first Sunday in Advent. It’s not quite like the secular observance of a new year – Advent doesn’t begin with festivities or celebrations, but with lamentation in Isaiah, with a letter from Paul written in response to reports of in-fighting – of quarrelling in the church in Corinth, and with the Gospel of Mark’s “little apocalypse” – Jesus’ prediction of the end of life as his disciples know it. (The end, according to Mark, will be a good thing because of the enormity of suffering, because of the desolation being experienced.) And because First Advent coincides with our Thanksgiving holiday weekend, we are singing hymns of gratefulness – songs of Thanksgiving and reading scriptural passages of lament – and that seems just right to me. We have plenty to be thankful for and we also have plenty to mourn.

I’ve been thinking about the way that the “liturgical” churches mark the change of seasons – changing colors and music and prayers and other rituals to emphasize a variety of religious sensibilities, spiritual sensitivities. But the conventions and timing can feel contrived – too narrow and mismatched with the mood of any individual. Taken together, however, they represent a communal stretch – a wide range of motion and flexibility throughout the year that I believe strengthens us as a whole. Fractures happen in communities that don’t stretch together on a regular basis. To reduce or even prevent injuries, I think we all have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable – with stretching (when I say “all,” that includes me of course). Stretching increases our capacity to hold in tension thanksgiving and lament.

So as a church, we give thanks and not everyone feels grateful. We lament and not everyone feels despair. Church seasons are not about telling you how you should feel. It’s not about should. Church seasons are about acknowledging a fuller range of experience -- representing a bigger world than any of us might notice on our own, and about getting stronger as a community, than any of us can be alone. We need to get stronger as a community, because we have plenty to be thankful for and plenty to mourn as we make our way through a month in which there is excessive consumption and considerable charity, but insufficient will or strength or grit and cohesion to effect economic justice and right-relationship. (1)

If you’ve been at Emmanuel or in a liturgical church for the last few weeks, you might recognize that our Gospel reading from Mark is a condensed version of several weeks from Matthew’s Gospel. We are beginning our new year with a reprise. For the past month, I feel like I’ve been preaching my heart out on the themes of keeping watch and keeping awake, of slaves left behind and put in charge, of the Son of Man coming in clouds to gather the elect from all over the world. And so today I’m feeling drawn to preach on our text from the prophet Isaiah.

In Mark, like Matthew, the little apocalypse passage is at the end of the Gospel, and our portion today from Isaiah is also from the end of Isaiah. We’ll be working our way backwards through Isaiah between now and Christmas. Isaiah 64 is chosen for the first Sunday in Advent, Year B, because the passage from Mark is a kind of midrash on the first verse of this chapter in Isaiah. The context for our passage from Isaiah is that the Israelites have been freed from the captivity of the Babylonian Empire where they had been humiliated, utterly defeated, and enslaved. But then the Babylonian Empire collapsed – overcome by the armies of Cyrus of Persia, who let the people go. Among the freed Israelites, there was great rejoicing, great hope – great thanksgiving, but the rejoicing was tempered by the sobering reality of the devastation of Jerusalem -- the wilderness that Zion had become. And life had been so hard for so long that the idea of God had grown dim. God seemed distant, quiet, and uninvolved in the experience of the people.

The writer of the third part of Isaiah is sometimes called Third Isaiah because there are at least three distinct writers who composed the book of Isaiah. And so the writer of this part of Isaiah is calling the people from their desolation to consolation, from their despair to hope. It’s not something that can be rushed. It takes honesty and patience and courage to live into a restored community when all you can see is devastation and your thanksgiving is mixed with regret for what might have been or how things used to be.

Isaiah calls the people to prayer and Isaiah’s prayer is a not so patient plea to God to tear open the heavens and come down. Isaiah isn’t politely asking God to simply look down. It’s not “look with favor upon thy people.” It’s not, “O God hear us.” It’s “O God, get down here where we are. We are in a big mess and we need immediate help. Tear away the scrim that separates people from the deep connection with You, O Holy One of Israel, Who our ancestors experienced when they were freed from slavery in Egypt and wandered in the wilderness.” Isaiah is calling on God to remember that God has set things right before and God must do it again, so that the restoration can begin.

What I love is that in the course of the prayer is a confession – that the people have sinned for a long time. The people have become polluted and feeble – dried out. And in a stunning prayer move, Isaiah tells God that actually, it’s God’s fault! It’s a bold move – it’s a bold faith that Isaiah is claiming, calling God to account on behalf of the people. Isaiah says, “No-one invokes your name, O God, because you have hidden your face from us.” In other words, show your face, O God. Show yourself – come here and stir things up so that the restoration can begin.

The metaphor for beginning the restoration is the clay and the potter. It’s a lovely metaphor really. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the god of the source of the Nile River was said to have formed the first humans on a potter’s wheel. In Ancient Babylon, pottery was a form of wealth – beautiful and very valuable. Pottery in Babylon was multi-colored with glossy glazes: highly functional art.

The relationship between potter and clay is hands on and pretty messy! It’s the potter who prepares the clay and does the centering and shaping, but good clay has to be both highly malleable and also strong enough to retain its shape. The clay has to form a cohesive mass in order to be worked.  It needs grit -- sand or grog -- to help it stand. And the grog softens the hands of the potter as the potter works with the clay. It’s hands on and mutually transforming
Isaiah’s prayer is for the people to be malleable and strong like good clay, and for God to make the people into something functional, beautiful and valuable again like a good potter. “Pay attention God,” he is saying, “remember that we are your people, O God, so that the restoration can begin in Zion, among the Israelites, in the cities and in the nation.”  So as we mark the beginning of Advent, let Isaiah’s bold prayer be our bold prayer as well – so that the restoration can begin in our communities, in our cities, in our nation, and in our own hearts, in our own parish. Pray that we be malleable and strong. Pray that God, like a good potter, will fashion us into something functional, beautiful and valuable so that our name, Emmanuel, God with us, can be truer than ever.