Lamenting with the Father

It was a familiar seen, a mother had brought her three children to McDonalds for lunch on a Tuesday afternoon. You could see the excitement in their eyes as they jumped up and down, flinging themselves at mom’s legs and other extremities to express their excitement in only a way children can do. All three of the children were excited at the prospect of the happy meal to come, but particularly the little boy; I overheard that his name was Teddy. Teddy ran from his mother’s side over to the display case of happy meal toys, pointing with force to the one he wanted, only to cling back to his mother’s leg. The mother all the while, through the veil of pretty constant exhaustion, had a quiet love and pride in their excitement and energy. When the happy meals came, they went over to the table, detached themselves from their mother, and Teddy and his brother and sister sat down. When they opened up their happy meals, Teddy dug to the bottom of the square red box, pushing the French fries and chicken nuggets to the side and pulled out the shrink rapped toy and quickly realized that this was not the toy he had been hoping for. With disregard for his mother he ran over to the toy display, wrong toy in hand, crying and banging the toy on the display.

            There are many things as we get older that can hold that same promise of happiness for us. We think that if we can just move onto that street, live in that house, and drive that car, that the problems of the world will melt away. Often times, though, it is something much smaller than the dream for upward mobility. We have dreams that one day we will have a better jump shot, weigh a certain amount, have the perfect number of friends, finally get to pick Peyton Manning in fantasy football. And little by little small desires in our lives become bigger expectations.

            We begin to live in the promise of the next thing, our hearts set on things of this world and then we find ourselves staring at our new cell phone or new car saying, ‘I thought this was supposed to make me happier than I am right now. Then we come to Church on Sunday asking the Lord and ourselves, why do I feel hardened, why do I feel full of guilt, Lord, why do you seem so far away?

The Israelites in today’s first reading are facing the same kind of questions about their relationship with God the Father. The author of this lament has just finished remembering the great works that God has done for Israel in the past, how the saving God brought them through the red sea and out of the desert on the fertile land. The author remembers the Lord as victorious, leading Israel’s warriors to drive out Israel’s enemies, and he remembers the Lord God as Israel’s loving Father, giving to her all of his good gifts. But now the Israelites are in exile, driven from the land the Father had given them, because even surrounded by so many good gifts of the Lord, the lure of a better life with a more powerful god led them to worship the idols of the foreign lands. They collected wooden idols, looking for the next most powerful god that would provide new benefits in the new land. They joined cults dedicated to these new gods, losing touch with their tradition and their God. Those who still dedicate themselves to the Lord lament that there is almost no one left who is faithful to the Lord. So today we hear Israel crying out to the Lord, why have you let us wander in exile, why have you let our hearts become hardened, our hands unclean, and our hearts full of guilt. We have withered like leaves and the Lord has turned and hid His face from us. Seeking the allures of this world took them not toward the promised joy, but to alienation from their Father in heaven.

But the very structure of this lament highlights God as the Father who despite the people’s experience of alienation has never abandoned his people. “You Lord, are our Father: our redeemer you are named forever.” Even in the act of lamenting of their alienation from God, God puts this realization on their hearts, so that they can’t even get to their lament, to their alienation, without pointing to this most basic fact of their existence as a people: God is their Father. God’s fatherhood is proclaimed at the beginning of the text and as its final exclamation, “Yet O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay and you are the potter: we are all the work of your hands.” If God is present as Father at the beginning and present as Father molding and shaping at the end, then God is present working as Father through the whole of Israel’s crying out. It is God the Father who puts on the lips of his people “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down.” God puts the hope of a loving Father on the lips of his people. Even as the Israelites are lamenting that they have hardened hearts, that they have become unclean, that they full of guilt, and that the Lord has turned his face, God is working to move them toward the hope that God the Father can still act. This hope is a reversal of what you would expect from a people who have alienated themselves from the Lord. It is not just a request for God to come back in the picture, or erase the guilt, but to tear the very fabric of heaven apart and come down. God the Father gave them the hope that He was doing something new for them.

            Teddy ran away from his mother and started hitting the display case of toys in tears, his desire of a toy took him away from the reality that the most important thing at that table was not the toy but the love of his mother and family. Of course we can fill out what the rest of the scene looks like in our heads. The mother might get frustrated, try to go get him. At some point he will make his way back to focusing on his mother, she is too important in his life not to. I can bet you at the end of the day his mother still tucked him in and kissed him goodnight, and he kissed her back.

Just as Teddy’s mother still loves him after being sidetracked by a toy, so God our Father loves us even when we move away from Him. Every year he interrupts our normal way of approaching him. He gives us anew the gift of these four weeks of Advent. He puts on the lips of the Church in the midst of our distracted journey these words of hope: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. O Come, O Come Emmanuel, rend the heavens and come down. O Come O Come Emmanuel, be with us when we are more interested in our new car then you. O Come, O Come Emmanuel, be with us in the moment we realize our new phone can’t bring us fulfillment. O Come, O Come Emmanuel, be with us when we place our hope in status.  O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, reveal to us God’s constant and loving fatherhood. O Come, O Come Emmanuel. God our loving Father puts these words of hope on our lips. Light the lone purple candle in your homes and God will take these words of hope and mold them deep into your heart this Advent season.