It is a newspaper image I will never forget. And for me it is an image of Advent. The time was the early 1990s. The place was Sarajevo — the gutted, bombed out epicenter of the Balkan War — when ethnic violence had destroyed beauty and buildings and any sense of human community. One day, a man put on his tuxedo, picked up his cello and a chair, and went and sat at the central intersection of town — in the cross fire of hatred and brokenness and devastation — and there he played his cello for hours — defying all reason, embracing all hope — proclaiming through his melancholy melody that darkness and death never have the final word.

Today, my friends, is the first day of the Christian year, the beginning of Advent, the season of waiting where God is the darkness that promises light. Unlike the glare and noise and rush of the secular world — here within this sanctuary of our faith — we find ourselves in purple shadows — shadows of quiet and shadows of longing.

Advent is not a sub-category of Christmas. It is a time and a season unto itself. According to our liturgical calendar, Christmas doesn’t begin until midnight on December 24. Before that miracle and that joy, however, comes four weeks of somber, sober, waiting and the brutally honest acknowledgment that the world is dark, our lives are dark, and the shadows we have created obscure God’s light. Just when we’re ready for a bit of good news, the scripture forces us to hear bad news. Just when we crave the comfort of a cradle in Bethlehem, our gospel text captures the gloomy predictions of an adult Jesus, spoken on his way to Jerusalem, on his way to the cross. You might well ask, “Why is the church so out of sync with the world? Why is the church confronting us with honest reality, when a bit of soft fantasy is what we long for?” Well, my friends, the answer is quite simple. It is the world that is out of sync with the church. It is the world that is out of sync with God.

The scripture readings for the First Sunday in Advent are always about the second coming. Not the first coming when Jesus embraces us with an infant’s charm, but the second coming when the cosmic Christ assaults us with cataclysmic change. We read about strange signs in the sun and the moon, about stars falling from the sky, about a dark and frightening time when God will come in muscular form to wrestle with the forces of evil — a time so terrifying that people will faint from fear and foreboding. For the listeners of Luke’s original words, these predictions spoke to the very heart of their existence — a time when Jerusalem had been destroyed, when the cruelty of Roman rule was suffocating the fledgling Christian community, and when staying faithful to God demanded courage amidst the seeming absence of God.

The problem is that these dire predictions of the imminent second coming did not happen as predicted. That does not mean that the crisis or the promise embedded in these predictions did not, does not, or will not come true. The central meaning of Advent is that God has a plan. God is present in the midst of apparent chaos. And no matter how deep our darkness, no matter how cataclysmic our crisis, God will continue to hold onto us — both with affection and with accountability.

So the question arises — where are the places this scripture speaks to us today — the places where the sun seems darkened in the lives of people we love — the places where all hell is breaking loose and cultural stars are falling hopelessly to the earth? You know the headlines as well as I do. After thousands of Iraqi and American lives were destroyed, Iraq is again doing a death dance inside a tinder box of suspicion and hatred. Generations continue to disappear in the violent and arid deserts of Africa. Here in the metropolitan New York area, despite the breathtaking rise of wealth, there has also been a 6% increase in those needing soup kitchens and food pantries. Millions of people continue to die from the devastation of AIDS — and most of the new victims are innocent women and children — twelve million children have been orphaned by AIDS in South Africa alone.

And the litany continues. In our diminished and conflicted denomination there are hyperbolic cries of constitutional crisis as we continue to struggle and vote about who is in and who is out within God’s family of grace. In a statistical sense we mainline Protestants are in a big time crisis mode. Our denomination has lost 50% of its membership in the last fifty years. Here in the lower Hudson Valley, in the last fifteen years, our rolls have diminished 15%. Our worship attendance is down 15%, our mission giving is down 12%, and our infant baptisms are down 24%. One cynic has predicted that at the rate we are going, the last Presbyterian church will close its doors in 2085.

In many of your lives, there are personal crises — bitter marriages wounding and unraveling — bodies crippled by the relentless ravaging of cancer and disease — financial debts fed by the consumer seduction of our materialistic society and personal dreams shattered by the daily realities of boredom and responsibility. Yes, my friends, on this stark, dark New Year’s Day of the Christian year, we are being called to recognize a world in crisis. We are called to acknowledge that we are not in control of the rhythms of life that can either make us hate God or cling to God as the only source of comfort and strength. Remember that in the Chinese language the symbol for crisis is twofold. It means both danger and opportunity. I wonder — what are the dangers and the opportunities of this Advent time in the life of the church, and in the lives of each one of us?

When I read the words of Luke 21 I see a simple outline of a particularly Christian course — a Christian Crisis Management Course: Crisis Management 101.

Crisis Management Step 1 — Look. See. Watch. “Heads up,” Jesus says. Acknowledge the reality of the crisis. Look behind the gauzy curtain of Christmas nostalgia and see the pain. See the brokenness. See the despair. See the danger. Look for Herod — the Herod of modern day Hitler, the Herod of Assad, the Herod of TV evangelists preaching a gospel of prosperity and success instead of Jesus’ gospel of service and compassion. Look for the despair of the homeless and the hungry, the lonely and the depressed — as well as the falling stars of our own lives — dreams that are deferred and relationships that are broken and values that are ignored — thus distancing us from the grace of God. Yes, Step 1 of Crisis Management is honesty.

Crisis Management Step 2 — Stay alert. Stay awake. Stay vigilant. Plan little. Expect anything. Accept everything. The uniqueness of our Christian God is that God is everywhere — in our human birthing, in our human grieving, in our human striving, in our human loving, in our human suffering, in our human dying. God is in the darkness and God is in the light. God is in the crisis and God is in the mystery. God is in the past and God is in the present. And God is absolutely, irrevocably, in the future.

My first boss was a senior pastor named Bill Barker. He was a complicated and faithful man who taught me much. I remember especially a late night conversation we had where, exhausted by the pendulum swings of a typical pastoral day, Bill shared with me how to manage the crises of a God-shaped life. Early that morning, Bill had been summoned to the bedside of a 101-year-old man who was dying. The two men prayed together and read scripture together. And then with the satisfaction of a life lived well, that 101-year-old disciple closed his eyes and died. It was the most stunning death Bill had ever witnessed. A crisis — which every death is — but a crisis of opportunity, managed with utter faithfulness.

Two hours later that same day, Bill officiated at the funeral service of a three-month-old baby who died of crib death. Wrenched apart by the pain of those young parents, Bill did the only thing he knew how to do. He uttered the promises of a God who is always with us, who never lets us go, who takes us through the darkest valleys of life until we find the promised light. One more crisis — the crisis of tragedy — this time managed with humble, honest hope.

Then late in the afternoon, Bill received a phone call from his son — announcing that Bill was a grandfather for the first time — that William P. Barker III had just fallen from heaven, a starburst of wonder streaking into a wounded world. A third crisis in one day — but this time the crisis of creation managed with the passion of love. Yes, for Bill Barker, that day was a whirlwind of crises — birth and death bumping up against one another — a day shaped by God’s rhythms and God’s reasons — and all Bill could do was stay alert, paying attention, expecting God to be God and opening up his own life as a channel of God’s blessing.

This leads us to Crisis Management Step 3: Give up control and then take control. Yes, my friends, the best way to manage a crisis is to let God be God — intuitively trusting that everything depends on God — a God who tosses stars of life and death into our lap. Letting God be God also means to claim the God inside each of our souls. We must keep on working, keep on dreaming, keep on hoping, and keep on loving — just keep on keeping on — living as if everything depends on us. This is the paradox and the power and the promise of Advent. We are to watch as if everything depends on God. And then as we live between the beginning and the end of God’s saving grace, we are to work as if everything depends on us.

May it be so, for you and for me, in these uncertain times. Amen.