Everything will be okay?

Several months into the pandemic I was walking by a church. There was a small sign by the door that said: everything will be okay. I thought to myself: I hope so. Faith is believing so. But I’m not so sure. Maybe everything will not be okay. The problems of the world seem insurmountable at times.

So happy new church year! Advent is ushered in with a bang. Not with a dose of sugary optimism. Rather, with the reality that things are not okay.

That’s what we get from today’s scriptures, at least. Humankind is at the end of its rope. Things are out of control. Despair is rampant. In the Isaiah reading, the people are in exile. Ready to go back home. Ready to return to normal. Their disappointment is visceral. God was going to make everything okay. Wipe the tears from their eyes. Restore their fortunes. Instead, the city and temple are in ruins.

In such times, people shake their fists at God. They lament. They question. They rant. “Rip open the heavens. Come down and save us,” Isaiah writes. Give us some of that divine intervention you’re known for. Don’t be a remote and removed deity in the sky. Tear open the heavenly barrier. The Hebrew text suggests breaking open the “skin” of the firmament, the sky. Like an animal tearing open a cage. Now, that’s vivid.

And the psalm is no less shocking. The writer is no happy camper. Not all happy with God. You’ve made us a laughingstock. We’re drinking bowls of tears. We pray and you just fume with anger. Hear us, O God. Save us. Restore us. Stir up your strength. We’re in desperate straits. We’re not okay! Hello, where are you, God? Are you listening to our prayers? Get the hell down here and help us.

That’s pretty much what the psalm is saying. Kind of shocking, huh?

Sometimes we preachers and we people of faith move too quickly to the good news, the hope, the assurance that things will be okay. Before we’ve told the truth. Life is hard. Hearts break. Bodies fail. Justice is denied. Advent begins by debunking the lie we tell ourselves. That we don’t need a Savior. We can fix the world, we can save the world, we can heal the world.

I was struck by two pieces this past week in which the author remembers times they were not okay. I’ll share them in the chat during the announcements. The first is by Meghan Markle, famously married to Prince Harry. She writes about the losses we share in common as human beings. She begins with the cramp that brought about a miscarriage. Clutching her firstborn child, she was losing her second.

Meghan reminds us how important it is to move beyond our isolation and simply ask one another: are you okay? We all have stories to tell—beyond the perfunctory, “how are you?” Rather, as we listen with an open mind and heart, the load becomes lighter for all of us. And healing comes. And the Advent surprise: Christ comes again.

The second piece is by Pope Francis. At age 21 he didn’t know whether he was going to live or die. He had a flu that led to taking a liter and half of fluid from his lungs. The doctors didn’t know if he would make it. He remembers the extraordinary care of two nurses as he reflects on all those serving today amid the many crises of this year. Rather than fighting for person freedom, Francis applauds those responding to the most vulnerable, those working for the common good. In such times and such people, the Advent surprise: Christ comes again.

Holy Trinity’s theme this Advent is: All Things New. Francis writes, “God asks us to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. . . We need to slow down, take stock and design better ways of living together on this earth.”

Some of us are reading reflections on the pandemic and faith by biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann. All creation struggles and groans for the new to break forth, he writes. Things are not okay! The new creation does not come easy. It’s not the automatic next thing that comes with progress. Technology is not our savior, he writes. The old creation has failed us: domination and exploitation, false truths and certitude. The newness God brings isn’t us congratulating themselves. It’s the hope and candor of those who receive what they cannot conjure for themselves!

Our gospel is from Mark 13 is a doosie. It uses apocalyptic material with this jist: things will be worse before they get better. But hang on. Things are not okay now. But just when it seems you can take no more, God will make everything new in the end.

Okay. Heavenly powers shaken. The sun darkens. The moon’s light gives out. Stars fall from heaven. Then Jesus returns with power and glory!

Yah, but it’s been over two thousand years. When Jesus is coming? Things are not okay. We’re still waiting.

Not so fast, Mark writes. No one knows the day or hour. Keep awake. Keep alert. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss the advent. Don’t miss his coming. Don’t miss the moment. Don’t miss the birth of something new.

The readings and hymns on the first Sunday of Advent are to shake us with a bolt of something stronger than caffeine: wake up, life is short.

So: here’s a shocking biblical tidbit. Mark writes that you can’t know whether Christ will come at evening, at midnight, at cockcrow, or at dawn. Why these four times, you ask. I’d be happy to share what I learned this week. Remember, this chapter is right before the passion and death of Jesus. So get this: Mark links the four times of the day to the passion: Jesus gathering with his disciples at evening, betrayed and arrested at midnight, denied at cockcrow, and sentence to death at dawn.

For Mark, the cross is the apex of history. In this godforsaken moment when things are darkest, most not okay—Jesus is revealed as Lord. At Jesus’ death the sky is darkened. It is the apocalyptic moment. Christ comes when life is bleakest, when things are not okay, when hate seems to triumph, when hope is a distant dream.

Yet this is the advent, the birth of something new. God promises that everything will be okay, or at least we will be okay.

I know it’s mind-boggling. I know it doesn’t make sense. Yet Advent bids us to let go. Like an addict, to admit we cannot do it ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. For Christ is coming. And Christ comes this day. In our cross-shaped Advent. In losses too many to name. In the dark winter. In broken, yet open hearts. In times, places and people that seem most godforsaken. In the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

Christ’s coming is always a surprise, always unexpected. Maybe the past ten months will make this Advent like no other. Come, Lord Jesus. Rip open the heavens. Wake us up. Make all things new! We’re waiting. It’s Advent and we’re waiting.