November 27, 2005

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas...

By Susie Bjork

Susie Bjork is a student at Pacific School or Religion and is our Pastoral Intern during the 2006/06 school year. This was her second sermon at FCC.

Well, Advent is upon us... and it's about time too... I mean all the stores have had Christmas decorations out since before Halloween and TV commercials about holiday meal preparation, holiday clothing sales, even holiday tire rotation specials have been popping up for weeks. I heard on the radio a few weeks ago that it was time to "get ready to get ready for the holidays." It's about time the Church caught up, right? Or, is it?

Ever since we began talking about using "Green Christmas" as our Advent theme this year, I have had the song White Christmas running through my head over and over and over again.

But White Christmas, though it has a lovely tune, and certainly I intend no offense to Irving Berlin, just doesn't sit right with me. Its somewhat saccharine lyrics about sleigh bells and glistening trees somehow miss the point of Christmas and certainly miss the point of Advent.

How then are we to imagine a Green Christmas and a Green Advent?

Is Advent really supposed to be just a pleasant prelude to a Holly Jolly Christmas?

Isaiah's striking, painful, angst-filled poem of lament which we just heard seems to point us in a very different direction.

"O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence" Cries the prophet.

This lament is characterized by pleading to God, pleading to God to re-enter history.

This initial cry refers directly to the mountain-quaking presence of God known to Moses at Sinai. The prophet recalls the tradition of Moses in order to issue a plea to God once more.

At the time this lament was composed, it is likely that many of the Israelites who had gone into exile after the Babylonian conquest of Judea and destruction of the Jerusalem temple had now returned home.

A great deal of hope was hanging on this return. But, in actuality, life remained quite difficult for some who came back. God still felt far away and Israel still felt alone and in exile.

The prophet pleads to God to remember God's people but also incorporates a confession of sin. The prophet argues that Israel is partially at fault for its own isolation, going as far as to say that "all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth."

But the prophet is also charging God with complicity in Israel's isolation. The prophet recalls that God's "hiddeness" was a factor in Israel's transgression and consequential exile.

Our portion of the poem closes with a plea for forgiveness and a request for God to remember that all are God's people.

So, what does this have to do with Advent? And more so, what does this have to do with a Green Christmas?

I think that this lament is primarily a plea for incarnation, a plea for the very real, very tangible experience of God on earth and in creation. It is a plea for the outpouring of God's mercy and God's justice. It is a plea for redemption and reconciliation.

The prophet calls for God to come down - not simply look down or extend God's pinky finger down - but to come down. It is this plea for incarnation that led the early Christians to place this text in the Advent liturgy.

Incarnation...

What if we expanded our notion of incarnation a bit to include the multiple manifestations of God in creation - an opening of the heavens at Sinai, a burning bush, a baby boy born in first century Palestine, Mary Magdalene's experience of Christ at Easter, the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and finally, the real presence of Christ in our lives and in our earth today?

On one hand, it's sort of as though we "play Advent" every year. We pretend as though God has not yet become present, that God is not already present, and that we must once again wait for incarnation.

But, on the other hand, we do feel isolation, we do hope and wait for God to break through once more, we can relate to this exiled feeling of the Israelites.

More than just simply a "downer" to start off Advent, the prophet's lament is a comment on reality. It does sometimes feel as though we are alone in exile and God is in hiding.

Whether we have experienced a recent personal loss, or we grieve for all of the recent tragedies that have taken lives and caused destruction across the globe, or we are dealing with other difficulties, we know what exile is like.

At times it feels next to impossible that a true Christmas, a true "life-as-we-know-it altering, earth shattering" experience of incarnation will ever happen again.

We look around at our natural world and see the destruction humanity has caused:

God's very creation is threatened by global warming, yet we continue to pump greenhouse gases into the air and, as a nation, have not yet gotten serious about reducing our emissions.

God's very creation is threatened by rapidly disappearing natural resources, yet we still consume far more than our fair share and fight to gain access to even more.

God's very creation is threatened by overpopulation that will push our earthly home past its carrying capacity to its breaking point, yet we cannot seem to work together as a global community to reverse these trends through education, empowerment of women, and redistribution of wealth.

We look around at all of this and cry out to God, "what have we done and where have you gone?"

We can relate to the prophet's experience of exile. We can relate to the prophet's intense craving for God's presence, for incarnation.

If we are to let the prophet's lament speak to us and inform our understanding of Advent, then Advent is not simply a patient prelude to an inevitable Christmas. It is, at least on one level, a time of anxiety and disquiet, unrest and exile, in which we remember why we need God and we plead to God to be present to us once more.

In the context of our Green Christmas, our Green Advent can be a time when we examine our own complicity in the destruction of our earth and by doing so imagine another way of being in the world.

It is a time when we put into practice some of these new ways of being. Perhaps we might lessen our consumption this holiday season. Perhaps we might examine how we can make some new lifestyle choices to lessen our impact on the earth.

In short, our Green Advent is a time in which we hope for (deeply hope for) and strive to work towards the reality of a Green Christmas.

I think that this hope is, at least partially, found in memory. Hope was found in memory for the Israelites in exile. They recalled the presence of God at Sinai and said "It can happen again!" "God will be present to us again!"

We too can recall the experience of Emmanuel, God with us, and can say, "It can happen again!"

It is easy to be discouraged when we look around at the state of our natural world and we wonder from where our help will come to change the course of our environmental stewardship. It is, no doubt, an overwhelming problem.

But maybe hope is found in the memory of incarnation, in the reality of an incarnate God who is present now, and in the hope for new experiences of Emmanuel in the future.

Hope is found in the willingness of communities to come together, to remember that God is always present and that we are never really alone, we are never really in exile from God, even though our experiences of exile and isolation are quite real.

Hope is also found in our willingness to come together as global and local communities and envision a different future.

As Margaret Meade said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

In essence, hope is in the dream of a Green Christmas. So this year, instead of dreaming of a White Christmas, especially in California, I am dreaming of a Green Christmas, and I hope you will too.

I'm dreaming of a Green Christmas, just like the ones I've never known...

...where humanity resists the urge to over-consume and lets spirituality and community resume.

I'm dreaming of a Green Christmas, just like the ones I've never known...

...where we acknowledge our own complicity in the destruction of our planet and each other and we plead once more for the grace of God to aid us in reconciliation and change.

...where we are reminded of our responsibility to be stewards of the earth and that loving our neighbor includes loving our planet.

I'm dreaming of a Green Christmas...

...where we acknowledge our interdependence and our inter-being with each other and with our earth.

...where we remember that evidence of incarnation is all around and we strive to treat our mother earth with the tender care and gentle love that Mary extended to her baby boy.

I'm dreaming of a Green Christmas...

...where we recall in fullness the hands of the potter who molds us gently, bringing us into being, and makes of us vessels of mercy and care to pour out lavishly upon creation.

I'm dreaming of a Green Christmas, just like the ones I've never known.

...where air is clean and water pristine and renewable resources are available to all.

And finally, I'm dreaming of a Green Christmas, just like the ones I've never known...

...where justice rolls down like a mighty water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

I hope you will join me this Advent in not only dreaming of a Green Christmas, but in examining how we can, with God's help, take steps in our own lives and in our communities to strive to make this dream a reality.

Amen.