to mark the season of advent and the accompanying waiting and yearning for new life in all of its various forms, i’m posting a sermon i preached this time last year at shady grove church. it’s the most honest and vulnerable sermon i’ve ever preached, and i’m including it in the MakeShift revolution because it is equally influenced by my ministry and my motherhood. the texts of the day were jeremiah 33:14-16 and luke 21:25-36. interspersed throughout the text are some block prints i did in 2007 for the advent bulletin covers atidlewild church.

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The “baby watch” had begun. The future grandparents called every 12 hours or so to ask about signs of labor. The great-aunt was on standby, ready to babysit the two-year-old on a moment’s notice. The nursery had been complete for a good month, the baby clothes had been washed, folded, and put away, the name had been selected, and the birthing plan had been mapped out. The new car seat was secure in the car. The two-year-old endured periodic explanations about what was about to happen, even though he really just wanted to play with his play dough in peace. And everywhere she went, that is, everywhere I went, I was a walking, waddling, symbol of Advent, pregnant, like Mary, during the days leading up to last Christmas. 

Meanwhile, the season of Advent set the stage with its rich stories. The prophets were prophesying the coming of a new king. John the Baptist was urging his congregation, the brood of vipers, to repent. Mary and Joseph saddled up a pack animal and went to be registered. The young adult Jesus was telling his disciples, and us, to look for the signs of the second coming. The weeks unfurled to the sights of Christmas lights, and the sounds of TV ads meant to herald, or perhaps beg for, salvation for our broken economy. There were the usual to-do lists and the painfully unusual absences left by death and empty nests. I don’t need to tell you what the holidays are like. We all know that strange hybrid of hope and impatience, excitement and desperation that comes when we are expecting God to break into our midst. But for me, last year, it really did all come down to the baby. My baby, who threatened all winter to make an early arrival and beat the baby Jesus to the punch.

I spent some time last year thinking that being very pregnant during Advent gave me a special entry point into this season of preparation and waiting. This brought an added measure of importance to the usual third-trimester symptoms: shortness of breath, night-waking, paranoia about missing the signs of imminent birth, mistaking my own impatience for signs of imminent birth, indigestion, emotional highs and lows, and attempts to conform this miracle to my schedule by eating spicy food, standing on my head, walking laps around the mall, etcetera.

But then I remembered that all of my Advents before had been marked by the same symptoms. Perhaps you suffer from some of these inflictions too: shortness of breath, night-waking, paranoia about missing the signs of imminent birth, mistaking your own impatience for signs of imminent birth, indigestion, emotional highs and lows, and attempts to conform this miracle to your schedule. After all, Advent’s vulnerable waiting wrapped up in the frenzy of pomp and circumstance transforms us all, every year, into people who are expecting, whether we’ve ever been pregnant or not.

But it was not just my pregnancy that connected me so intimately to the Advent story last year. It was another common thread that weaves through the prophecies and the gospels, through my story, and perhaps yours too. I was lured into believing that I knew what to expect when I was expecting.

The people of the houses of Israel and Judah are certain that the coming king will be a ruler, like the rulers of their day. Jeremiah TELLS them that the coming king will establish justice and righteousness in the land, and they just assume that this justice and righteousness will happen in the usual way – by killing off their enemies. They are lured into believing that they know what to expect when they are expecting.

The people who crowd around Jesus in the gospel of Luke, and later many Christians of our time are certain that the second coming of our king will be signaled by the sun, moon, and stars; distress among the nations; and the roaring of the sea and the waves. Jesus TELLS them and us that the Son of Man is coming on a cloud, and from then on our generation of followers has just assumed that this event can be quantified, predicted, screen lit, packaged, and sold. We, that is many Christians of our day and time, are lured into believing that we know what to expect when we are expecting.

The ultrasound tech told my husband and me that our baby was to be a boy. And because we already had one of those — a precious, curly-headed, spirited wonder –  we just assumed that the baby growing in my womb would be another precious, curly-headed, spirited wonder. We were lured into believing that we knew what to expect when we were expecting.

But the people of the houses of Israel and Judah did not get what they were expecting. Their king was a baby, and though he eventually did work for justice and righteousness, he didn’t follow the military model. Instead, he preached about forgiveness and nonviolence

The people who crowd around Jesus in Luke and even now don’t always get what we are expecting either. There are glimmers of the second coming all the time but the cataclysmic event that hits it big in the box office does not seem imminent, nor does longing for it heal the longing in our souls

And a test in the sixteenth week of my pregnancy revealed that my expectations were not accurate either. My little boy had an elevated risk for downs syndrome. Downs or no downs, he could still be a precious, curly-headed, spirited wonder, but I could no longer cling to the silly notion that my second son would be just like my first.

Twice, I endured procedures designed to tell me for sure whether or not my son had Downs. Twice these procedures failed. I was left with no choice but to move through the season in a sort of embodied uncertainty. I had no idea what to expect while I was expecting, and I realized then that nobody else REALLY does either.

Well, this was an entirely different kind of waiting than I had signed up for. The place in my heart that I was preparing for another precious, curly-headed, spirited wonder slowly died, and in its place grew a reluctant, and eventually exuberant openness to this baby, who would change my life forever. Advent comes each year with its traditions and stories, associations, and plans. We have learned to prepare our hearts for these things, so comforting with their certainty. But only the uncertainty, only the wild prospect of an unpredictable savior, only this different kind of reluctant and eventually exuberant waiting can really open us up to the fullness of new life that is promised. Sometimes our expectations keep us from the radically receptive kind of expecting to which we are called.

My son, [the bird], was born on January 17^th of this year, and he does not have Downs Syndrome. But in my opinion, the real victory in this story lies elsewhere. From the moment the doctor handed me my baby, fresh from the womb, I felt nothing but unconditional love. The question about Downs that had ruled so much of my pregnancy had no relevance at all in the face of this love, so powerful, this baby, so divine. Miraculously, I had made room for him, and all that he is, and all that he will become.

This is how my little [bird] taught me what Advent is all about before he was even 5 minutes old. It’s about opening our hearts to a God who is never limited by our expectations. It’s about embracing uncertainty. It’s about casting aside all of those things that have no relevance at all in the face of love and divinity. But most of all, it’s about making room for the baby, born in the city of David, and all that he is, and all that he will become.

AMEN.

it finally happened. all of the deadlines that i set for myself to protect me from THE DEADLINE came and went. i left the house sunday morning with barely enough time to get to the church. a trail of index cards and commentaries followed. i would have to finish the sermon (sure to be my all time worst) in the car.

andy drove while i scribbled illegible notes and envisioned myself lost in translation as i cowered behind the pulpit. concentration was elusive as i began to remember, in great detail, the host of things i had forgotten: the scripture reading, shoes, my robe… PANTS! 

andy was on the cell phone attempting to borrow a robe from a colleague when he made the snap decision to take an off-road shortcut. a rocky embankment prohibited us from driving the rest of the way, so the two of us scaled the jagged surface (leaving yet another trail of index cards and commentaries). i had picked the wrong day to go barefoot but if we hurried, there would still time be to make it for my part.

a scary yard dawg and a nagging home owner with a “no tresspassing policy” sent the two of us and my dwindling preaching paraphanalia back to the car, where we peeled out, backtracked, drove slowly through traffic toward the church, and tuned in to the service broadcast on AM radio station 600.

who knew that unspoken anxiety and anger could be transmitted over radio waves? andy and i listened as the congregation organized an impromptu hymn sing while they waited for me. we were stopped at a broken red light. i realized i still had on my pajama top. i had forgotten to brush my teeth.

and then i did what i should have done in the very beginning. i forced myself to wake up. i told the whole dream that it could take its flying index cards and commentaries and board a plane to timbuktu. i packaged up my anxieties over the forgotten robe, shoes, and scripture reading, along with that nagging neighbor and her yard dawg, and i shoved them all off of the rocky embankment.

but as i lay awake in bed, i could not seem to tune out the sounds of AM radio station 600, which was taking a break from regularly scheduled nightmares for a little public service announcement:

the “transportation parade” at the monkey’s school would be taking place in less than five hours. “have you decorated your son’s big wheel?” the announcer chided.

no. clearly i hadn’t decorated the damn big wheel. many thanks to my subconscious for pointing out the error of my ways. and what does it say about me that i just had a full-blown anxiety nightmare over a four-year-old’s school transportation parade?   

now… does anybody know where i can get balloons and streamers at 6:12 in the morning?

dear readers,

i think that you and i are familiar enough with one another now that i can really show you the ropes. this makeshift parenting thing is serious business, and you can either hold your life together with a ladder, an old shoe, a cardboard chimney, an art frame, and some plastic bags, or you can bind up the chaos in a neat little package, held together by guilt and ridiculous expectations. choose wisely because it’s a matter of survival.

a year and a half ago, our family moved into our current home. in our previous home, all of the bedrooms were upstairs. in this home, the master bedroom is downstairs and the kids’ rooms are upstairs. this floor plan will be ideal in ten years, but for right now it presents some challenges.

one such challenge became an issue about a year ago, when the monkey learned how to hurl himself from his crib and onto the floor. we quickly moved him to a toddler bed, which was kind of like moving a child from a prison cell to a candy store. suddenly, the monkey was bouncing off the walls in his room during nap time, and it wasn’t long before he was spotted fondling pins and needles in my sewing nook and teetering dangerously down the stairs!

many parents would take these as signs that the two-and-a-half year old had grown out of his need for naps. but i wasn’t ready to face this notion.

then, one sunday morning, i preached a really crazy sermon on the good samaritan that involved costumes. after googling “samaritan” and discerning that a blue miss america-style banner was needed to clad this particular character, i fashioned such an accessory and schlepped it off to church with the other props. and then, as i was in the middle of proclaiming the text, i gazed over at the church member who was playing the part of the samaritan, and an idea came to me. it was a simple solution, really, and one that has drastically enhanced our quality of life.

before you dial the number to child protective services, you should know that the doorknob is tied to the railing with a slip knot. one pull of the end of the stole (if you will), results in instant freedom for the monkey — in case of a fire, for example.

judge me if you want to. i think this makeshifting idea was a sign from god.