Reflection based on today’s scriptures for the First Sunday of Advent, 2017

Advent charms our restlessness

Challenging us to begin again

As breathless clay in the hands of a potter

An apocalyptic summons to calm our volatile egos

To rest in the mud and miracle of creation

 

Watch and wait

In all that is not perfectly whole or loved or finished

Tangled half-truths and corrupted injustice

For a new presence of divine peace

Spaces in our darkened world where light

Shall reflect the beauty of our Creator’s imagination

 

This year I wait for Jesus among mangled hope

Walking amid shattered glass from boarded up store fronts

Stepping over cardboard huts along the street

Leaning up against the survivors of hurricanes and fires

Watching for tenderness not blame

 

With all my heart I believe

Jesus will be born in Puerto Rico this year

Amid dark-outs and lack of fresh water

Hidden in the empty schoolhouses

Seeking shelter under the rumble of roofless homes

 

Jesus will be born somewhere in the sex scandals

Where relationships of power finally give way

To humble awareness that we cannot control or demean people

Somewhere deflated egos will make a home for real love

 

Jesus will be born in vast divides this year

In inflamed discussions about hospitality of immigrants

Or buried in the concrete pilings of border crossing walls

He will paint red and blue into a hue of hope

For skin shades of brown and white and black

 

Jesus will be born this year along the freeway of human trafficking

Where our journeys will lead us into caring for our children

Jesus will be born this year in the controversies of guns

As we grieve innocent people from unimaginable violence

 

Jesus will be born among our leaders and bishops and among the hopeless

Holding together the challenges and paradoxes and arguments

Whether or not love should be our most valuable friend

Where hope is dried under the nails of the potter’s hands