Here, Now, in Hope

Busy. Stressed. Overwhelmed.

What’s your synonym for December?

For even the most mindful among us, this month is just filled with A LOT. Many good things, of course: lots of meaningful worship. Socializing with family, friends, and colleagues over various deliciousnesses. So much talent on display at concerts and pageants and ballets. Generosity and kind thoughts expressed in gift giving and card sending.

But all of that is made possible by work: baking and cooking, shopping and wrapping, scheduling and preparing, traveling and hosting. Good, but so much. Not to mention the requirements of our paid work. Whatever cheery, spiritual platitudes we may think we need to utter, the honest truth is that the end of the year is simply quite demanding. Yes, we can focus on essentials–but even essentials take effort. Anyone who doesn’t think so probably isn’t helping very much with either the physical duties or the emotional labor.

So the question is really how we handle a joyful, chaotic, hectic season with the right attitude.

My minister made an off-handed observation in this past Sunday’s sermon that helped me think about this problem. My church’s Advent sermon series is based in Romans and focused on hope. This week, we examined Romans 8:26-27, which focuses on the Holy Spirit’s role in translating our inarticulate prayers–a hopeful thought, indeed. Here’s Romans 8:26: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.”

What got my delighted attention is that my pastor pointed out in passing that the particular Greek verb “helps” here (“the Spirit helps us in our weakness”) is only used in one other place in scripture, Luke 10:40: “But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” Naturally, that got my notice since I love Martha more than any other Bible character–and here was a new nugget of language awesomeness to enhance our scriptural understanding.

Maybe we can relate: in this passage, Martha pleads with Jesus out of the loneliness and overwhelmedness of her preparations. “Recognize me, Jesus,” she seems to say, “and how I can’t do this all by myself.” But of course, it’s not Mary’s help Martha needs. In her very human admission of inadequacy (her own version of “groaning”), Martha is calling on who she knows can actually help her: Jesus. Martha tacitly admits that she sees someone who wants to help and has the power to do so. Paul’s diagnosis in Romans 8 that we can’t even fully name what we need is paralleled here with Martha’s cries of frustration. But what a comfort that both passages remind us that the mighty Trinity is here to do all the work: Martha calls on Emmanuel–the embodied God right in her kitchen–and Paul reminds us that we don’t need clarity or ability or eloquence, the Spirit will do all the work of communication for us. God seeks us out, stays with us, and sacrificially does all the work. O God our help, indeed.

At her church this week, my dear friend Jane Zwart was thinking about hope, too, as she led prayers for her congregation. As has become our tradition, she gifted it to me to share with you. May it lead you towards God’s ever-present love here, now, this Christmastide.

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by Jane Zwart

We sing, asking you to come to us, Jesus. And we know that you already did. We know that Christmas is your birthday and that advent is partly pageantry, and we thank you for it: this remembering, these traditions. We thank you for the chance to reenact the eagerness of the wisemen, however much the kids show us up with their impatient joy. We thank you for making room for those of us who are only up to playing shepherds, who are not feeling especially expectant and will need angels to startle us. Even if, this Sunday, what we hear most clearly is John the Baptist, telling us we are chaff and calling it good news, we thank you. Ready our hearts for the birth of Immanuel. Heap the straw of our lives for your body to lie on. 

But also, Jesus, remind us that “O come, o come, Immanuel” is not only an echo. Remind us that it is our song, that we are asking you to come back to a world that so desperately needs a savior.  

In the part of the world where you were born, death and more death. In this country, nationalism branded with your name. In the world you called very good, no end of pollution or corruption. In the world you so loved, another heyday of contempt and mutual indifference. O come, o come, Immanuel, and ransom us all.  

In the smaller worlds of our lives, too, things keep breaking. Our hearts break.  

So we pray: O, come, Immanuel, and console those who are trying to celebrate your birth even as death has subtracted from those with whom they gather.  

O come, Immanuel, and heal us. With doctors and nurses’ competent and gentle hands, mend the sick, the injured, the frail. 

O come, Immanuel, and with our abundance, feed the hungry and put roofs over those who need a place to call home. 

Come, and with our presence, keep company with those who are lonely. 

Come. And remind us of how you came to us and how you are coming to us yet, and do not let our hands grow weak. 

Dear Jesus, 

You are the great I AM who chose to become one of us: subject to time and tense, to the was of death, to the waiting of will be. You are the Word who chose to become speechless, an infant, to make it easier for us to trust you with our wordless prayers. You are all the otherness of God made approachable, the eternal I AM and Jesus, telling us I’m here. 

Alleluia, you are coming. 

Alleluia, you are here. 

Amen. 

Jane’s Note: This prayer borrows words from Zephaniah and three songs: “O come, o come, Immanuel,” “Ready My Heart” (Steve Bell), and “Alleluia, He is Coming” (Martha Butler). 

Photo by Alto Crew on Unsplash