Endings

I despise endings. I think that most of us do. An ending means that things will not be the same thereafter. Endings mean that something new is around the bend, just over the next hill, around the corner. It's not that we dislike new things, I think. I think that we hate giving up the familiar and comfortable. We do not like seeing the usual pass.

A great sense of loss accompanies most endings.

I remember when my father died, at the age of 53,in 1989. At the time, my wife and I were living in Junction City, Kansas, serving a good congregation that was filled with good people. Lisa was seven months pregnant with our daughter, Casey. As I sat at his memorial service, held at my home town church in Bremen, Indiana, I remember thinking that this ending meant that I could no longer rely upon my father to bail me out of any trouble that might arise. That ending meant that I was on my own. The world changed in that moment.

I remember, too, when we left that congregation in Kansas and headed for Evansville, Indiana, to serve a congregation there. The loss of the ending in Junction City was modified somewhat by the anxious anticipation of the relationships and ministry that awaited us at Christ Church UCC. We lost much in the ending, but gained as much in the new environs.

Advent is as much about endings, it seems to me, than it is about beginnings. While we tend to want to cling to the lovely story of a baby who is born to be the savior of all humankind, a baby who never cries in the manger, never needs, never poops, the reality of Advent hits us hard. Nothing can be the same. His coming means an end to the old ways, a cosmic transformation that undoes and redoes everything that is, was and will be.

That is good news, but more for those who have no stake in the way things have been. For most of us, who have found ways to cope and succeed in life as it was, the ending of Advent is a loss. The rules change, and with those changes comes a need to adapt to new ways. The transformation is uncomfortable and inconvenient. It takes us into uncharted territory, into uncertainty and doubt and wonder.

So we grieve the loss that Advent brings. But we celebrate too. We celebrate the fact that Advent means that God's will in embodied in human nature, first in a little baby and then in those who seek to embody his example. We move from lives that are governed by economics and politics and social status to lives that are defined by compassion and caring, sacrificial ministry and service to others. We transition from worlds that are about "Me" to worlds that are about "All."

Sure, there is loss there. But the loss of a world that is defined in violence, warfare, privilege, position and power is hardly a loss when compared to the compassion, caring, mercy, grace, forgiveness and generosity that is in the world to come. Advent is an ending. It is also a beginning. Thanks be to God!