About thirty years ago, while working as the Associate Pastor at the Nichols church in Trumbull, Connecticut, my responsibilities included helping lead the church’s youth group.  And that meant helping with our annual fundraiser:  baking and selling fruitcakes.  We gathered flour, sugar, fruit and nuts; we took orders; we delivered the cakes and collected the money.  Ah, but first we all became bakers, making several hundred pounds of fruitcake every year.   And because our youth group was ecumenical we met with the youth from Trinity Episcopal Church just across the green from us.   A mandatory component of the traditional fruitcake-making process included having one of us clergy continuously pray the “stir-up” collect from the third Sunday of Advent in the Book of Common Prayer while one of the youth stirred the batter.  Over and over, we prayed:  “Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let thy bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us….” (Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent, The Book of Common Prayer, Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, page 160.)

 

For me, Advent has echoed something of that prayer ever since, whether I was conscious of it or not.  And it’s a powerful notion, to think of calling on God to “stir up” mighty, Godly power and come among us, to deliver us who “are sorely hindered by our sins,” and hopeful of God’s delivering us by “bountiful grace and mercy.”  It’s truly a hopeful prayer, and a bold one, too:  “Stir up thy power, O Lord.”

 

I thought again about that “stir-up” collect when I read the Psalm and the Hebrew Bible lesson for today.  They invoke the same hope.  First, the prophet also seems to be rousing God out for our deliverance.  Listen to the boldness of his prayer:  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence…. (Isaiah 64:1; New Revised Standard Version)  And Isaiah’s refrain is similar to that in Psalm 80, a chorus that’s actually repeated three times, as you may have noticed:  “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved!” (Psalm 80:3, and repeated in verses 7 and 19, NRSV.) Indeed, maybe you noticed that before this refrain first appears, the psalm invites God to “stir up your might, and come to save us!  (Psalm 80:2b)

 

My sensitivity to calling on God for help might just have been born at a church meeting a few days ago, where the leader asked us each to say something about ourselves.   One in the group was amazingly honest:  “I’m scared for my country.”  I’ve brooded over that comment. I suppose that uneasiness is common in any transitional time.  But that honesty helped me see my own discomfort.  Yes, as political power shifts, we all find the thought of change uncomfortable, no matter how we may have voted.  Add the uncertainty in financial systems, and in the banking system, and in the housing markets, and in the unemployment numbers, and in the slumping retail sales.  We may not be in a panic, but we’ve all lost some confidence.  What do I want for Christmas?  How about a bit of stability in my world?

 

I’m glad that one of the comforts of our faith is that it has endured such crises before.  Isaiah, remember, is writing to people who have been not only discouraged, but enslaved.  Their money became worthless when invaders took it from their homes.  Driven from their country, in Babylon they fall to their knees, praying with renewed passion. Having nothing else to lose, Isaiah’s prayer is blunt, raw, and even accusatory:  O God, “you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.”   (Isaiah 64:7b, NRSV)

 

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann notes that such the laments, like these we hear today in our lessons from Isaiah and Psalm 80, are actually a way of engaging God with our most honest selves.  He says, “The lament-complaint act dares to assault God and to notice God’s lack of attentiveness.  It takes courage to pray in this way.  When, however, God is put at risk by such speech and forced to change, then God is found to be, known to be, and forced to be, faithful, as God indeed was not faithful at the beginning of the conversation.”  (Brueggemann, Praise and the Psalms:  “A Praise of Glad Abandonment,” in The Psalms and the Life of Faith, ed. Patrick Miller, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN, page 116.)  Notice, Brueggemann is inviting the faithful to engage in honest dialogue – a conversation that changes God, and invokes God’s faithfulness.  He then uses a startling metaphor.  The people of faith, he says, have “required God to become more reliable than heretofore, just as a mother might not be reliable but is made so by the insistence of the baby.”  (Ibid.)

 

In God’s sight, perhaps, we are all infants, crying in the night.  But that’s okay, say the lessons for this day.  The season of Advent is a time to cry knowingly, honestly, and deeply.  We’re called to give voice to our deepest needs, like a child calling for help in the night.  Here is the challenge of this Advent:  confront in yourself the question, “What do I most need from God?”  For what purpose in my own heart might I “stir up” God’s deepest power?  Where is my lack, my hurt, even my sin, that most longs for God’s healing balm?

 

Facing our own need, honestly, then opens the possibility of honestly appealing to God.  Only when I know my own lack can I pray, with the psalmist, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.”  Only when I’ve faced the shadow of my soul in Advent will I be prepared for the light of Christmas morning.  Today, as you come to the Lord’s table, ask yourself where you hope God will “stir up” holy hope for you.  Perhaps, as the lessons suggest, God is waiting for you to ask, to be invited to send the Christ child to address our deepest needs.  “Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.”  Amen.

 

 

 

Amen.

 

Mamaroneck United Methodist, November 30, 2008.