Nebraska Synod ELCA

“Truly, O people in Zion, inhabitants of Jerusalem, you shall weep no more. God will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when God hears it, God will answer you. Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying,‘This is the way; walk in it.’”—Isaiah 30:19-21—

Beloved of God,

Now is the season of Advent. Many of us who’ve been part of the church for a while know that this is a time when we remember the coming of Jesus among us as a living, breathing human being, and also when we consider how it is that God continues to arrive among us here and now, today. This year, I invite you to consider things from a slightly different angle.

We know that promises and dreams of a messiah were a present reality for God’s people for generations. Too often, however, we jump straight from those hopes and prophecies to their fulfillment in Jesus without considering one crucial element: Jesus of Nazareth, son of a carpenter, born in questionable circumstances, was not the Messiah that many were prepared to receive. In its own time, the story of a humble child conceived out of wedlock, born of an unwed mother who could only find shelter in a barn, raised in a town of no great reputation far from the halls of power in Jerusalem and Rome, was not seen as the ironic reversal of expectations and proof of God doing a new thing: that’s an interpretation revealed through scripture, study, and the Holy Spirit. The small group of women and men who followed Jesus in his own time were boldly following a path, one step at a time, often against the expectations of their own family, friends, and church.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the wilderness wanderings of the Exodus this fall, particularly this one remarkable fact: manna that lasts for only one day means that God’s people had to trust that God would be there for them, every single day.

Every.

Single.

Day.

They didn’t know where God was leading them. They had to trust that God would walk the way with them, providing what they needed when it was needed, until the time came when God’s people would arrive at the next place, the next thing, the next way in which God would have them walk out of the wilderness into something else.

That’s another side of Advent we should remember: we don’t always know what’s coming next. We are a different church than we were even one year ago, to say nothing of the thousands of years before that. Just like in Jesus’ time, we may not recognize what God is doing right away; we’re called to trust in what God reveals to us today, and to continue to walk in the way before us.

In a few short weeks, many of us will sing, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” I do believe this is true: Jesus is the fulfillment of all that God intends for this world. But I also remember that this beloved carol was written hundreds of years after Jesus’ actual birth. I wonder: what songs will be written about what God is doing among us here and now, in 2022? What will we see if we open our eyes to see what new things are coming into being in our hearts, our lives, God’s church? This is the way of Advent, the way of faith: walk in it, and walk with hope.

Yours in Christ,

Bishop Scott Johnson