As this Advent season begins, what have you promised yourself about the holidays this year? Are you vowing to have a simpler Christmas? Planning to make time for some activity you love, or time with beloved people?
What promises are ahead for your family? Do you know some kids who are waiting eagerly to see what Santa will bring? Adults who are waiting eagerly to collapse, and finally get some rest? People who find this time of year hard, and are just hoping to get through it?
This is the season when we stop and see the wealth of God’s promises to us, as people of faith. We all have our own plans and promises to make and keep, but we are also swept up into God’s plans at this time of year.
Writing to the people of faith in the city of Thessalonica, Paul is remembering the promises that God has already kept in their lives.
The book of Acts (Chapter 17) tells us about Paul’s time with the church as Thessalonica. Paul and Silas come to town and speak in the synagogue there, and tell the story of Jesus. Acts 17 says, they were “explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, ‘This is the Messiah, Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you.’ Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.” But some of the people in town are not persuaded. In fact, they’re mad. They run Paul and Silas out of town.
In this letter, Paul writes to those who believe, and he commends the believers.
They have made a dramatic change in their lives, turning away from their old religions and toward this new, uncertain, chaotic faith in Jesus. In those early days, there weren’t organized churches, books, and systems of belief. Many communities met to worship in people’s homes. Every area had its own practices and habits. There was no Bible, as we have one, with an agreed-upon list of books. Each area probably had their own gospel, and maybe a letter or two from Paul. They had to find their way into faith without the support of the community all around them.
It’s a lot like being a Christian in our world.
Our lives are packed with idols and fake gods, too. Just like the people of Thessalonica, we’re surrounded by idols. Ours come in disguise, so they’re harder to avoid. Our old friend consumerism comes out in full force this time of year, and we think that the best gift will fix a relationship, or make up for our neglect all year. All year long, this particular idol tells us that the right car, the right kitchen remodel, the right outfit, or the right man cave in the basement will make our lives complete. When it never does, there’s always something else to buy in the hope it will fill a hole inside us.
There are other idols and false gods, too.
There’s perfectionism. If we just host the perfect party, keep a perfect house, find the perfect job, we think, then our lives will be perfect, too. Then there’s the false god of busy-ness. Our culture believes that being busy is a sign that we’re doing something important. There’s the idol of making our kids fit our expectations, instead of living up to their own talents. There is the false god of appearances, and thinking that how we look matters.
There are plenty of idols and false gods all around us. This time of year, they call to us especially hard. The holidays ramp everything up, and we can fall into these temptations so easily. Like the early Christians in Thessalonica, we have to turn away from the idols and false gods all around us to turn toward Jesus. We have to let go of the voices all around us that are telling us to do more, buy more, go faster, and instead turn toward to voice of Jesus.
Advent invites us into a time when we determine to get ready for Jesus’ coming into the world again. To get ready, we have to do the same thing — turn away from the idols of perfection, busyness, and consumerism. Advent calls us back to our faith, back to the core of who we are, and back from the false gods and idols that speak to us so alluringly.
Ron Levin tells about his own turn toward Christ in a moving memoir.
His father was born in a small Russian village, to Jewish parents. Not long afterward, his grandparents left Europe, fleeing the pogroms. In Philadelphia, his father married his high school sweetheart and tried to last through the Great Depression. The family eventually moved to North Carolina, and as the newcomers in town, he said, “we had an accent people laughed at, a name no one got right and a religion everyone got wrong.” It was not easy to grow up Jewish in a small North Carolina town.
There were daily taunts and punches from the other kids in town, and the weekly attempt to keep their Jewish faith alive, with no supportive community around them. They had to drive fifty miles to the nearest synagogue for the holy days. God seemed frightening and far away. A deep loneliness settled into Ron Levin.
He longed for a closer God than the distant God he knew. He remembered, “I yearned for a God whom I could get close to, put my arms around, and cry with in the deep-sea darkness of my childhood….God Will Punish You was written large in our daily lives.”
Neither college nor work filled the empty hole within him. He became wildly successful in his work life, and yet more lonely in his personal life. He tried all kinds of jobs, including nightclub entertainer and peach grower. He married, had a daughter, and divorced.
His friends made him promise to pray, and when he did, things happened. He was touched and blessed by the things that happened, but it was never quite enough for God to get his attention. He finally had to face the loneliness and the emptiness. All the idols of success, money, and fame were not saving him from himself.
“Why continue,” he wondered, as a gun lay nearby.
He managed to make a phone call to a friend, who heard his pain and urged him to open a Bible and read Romans 7 and 8. Reading the words of another Jew, something finally hit home. He slept, and in the morning he called his friend and said he wanted to be baptized. He said, “The destructive behavior patterns and hollow values that had been my idols had been sloughed off with no conscious effort on my part. It was as though a sign had been hung on me: ‘Under New Management’.”
He found his way to seminary, and now pastors a small country church, where he speaks about the God he has come to know well. The idols of his past life are gone, and God’s promise of new life is abundantly full in his life. His days are full as he passes on the good news he knows well. He said, “Yeshua died for all, not just some of us, and I am not making a pitch: I am passing on a promise” (The Christian Century, January 4-11, 1995).
There is nothing that we can make, buy, order, or bake this Christmas that will make God love us any more or any less. There is a promise that has already been made and kept for us. We can turn away from the shiny false gods of our world, and turn toward the God who promises us abundant joy, through our faith. As Paul prayed for the church and for us, may God “make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all…and may God so strengthen your hearts in holiness.” This is the gift that we are promised — all we have to do is claim and keep the promise.
In the name of the one who comes, Amen.
Prayer: O God of promise, we long for your coming, with a desperate desire deeper than anything else in our lives. Turn our hearts from shiny things and our eyes from things that don’t satisfy, and bring us closer to you in this Advent season. We know that you are coming to us again, and we long for the deep peace of your presence. Make us ready, we pray, so we can promise ourselves to you again. In the name of the Christ Child, Amen.