Almighty
God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of
light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came
to visit us in great humility
There have been
some break-ins in my neighborhood over the last several weeks. Not home breaks-ins,
but car break-ins. Really I guess
you would call these smash and grab
operations: the culprit smashes a car window then grabs any other electronic
device that can be easily scooped up. GPS devices seem to be quite “hot” item
this holiday season. And I do mean “hot.”
As my family drove down our street Thanksgiving Day we saw
yet another smashed car window.
A cement block, broken glass and some debris littered the road and it
looked as if no one had yet discovered the deed. We pulled over and John knocked on the neighbor's door. A
very groggy young man came to the door in his pajamas. He came out and surveyed
the damage. The two men spoke briefly, sadly shaking their heads.
When John got back in the car he reported
that the car break in was not the worst of it. The young man and his wife had
been up late into the night caring for their dying cat. It was just adding
insult to heart breaking injury.
These break-ins are annoying. They are more than that. They
are aggravating and infuriating: I remarked to my family as we drove away that
we should form a little neighborhood night patrol and see if we could catch
these rascals in the act.
Well, sure enough, I wasn't the only one
who wondered how we could combat these frustrating works of darkness. We
subscribe to our neighborhood list serve. All kinds of helpful and sometimes
unhelpful posts are made to the list.
Someone posed a similar suggestion on the
list serve Thanksgiving night: let’s organize some kind of watch and see if we
can catch a thief? Before you could say “incoming” our inboxes lit up with
increasing incendiary charges of vigilante-ism and elitism. The merits of community watch verses
private security companies were heatedly debated. Yikes! Trying to cast out the
works of darkness without casting
judgment upon thy neighbor is harder than one might think.
In the collect for the First Sunday in
Advent we implore Almighty God to “ give us grace to cast away the works of
darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life.” I love the sound of that.
I want God to give me this grace to cast
away the works of darkness. I want to find this armor of light and use it like
a flash light to cast some illumination on the dark places and evil doers in
life.
Combating
the works of darkness begins and maybe even ends in confronting sin in our own
life. Give us grace” the collect
says ...meaning we cannot cast out sin but must have God’s help.
Advent is the
time we are preparing for all kinds of break-ins. Yes, the break-in and break
downs that come as a result of human sins, especially our own failures, but
more importantly, Advent reminds us to prepare for the sometimes alarming but
more often exhilarating ways that God is ready to break into our lives.
We remember all the times God has broken
into the world to show us a way to start again to get back to the business of
making peace, of beating our swords of hostility into plow shares of a
community that lives in love and charity with our neighbors. We remember how
God broke into the domination system of Pharaoh and led his people to freedom. In
Advent we remember how God broke into the life of a peasant girl living in
Judah; we look back to Bethlehem where God broke into human flesh.
And in Advent we also look ahead in
anticipation of ways God will once again break into the course of human
history. We can’t know the time or the place, just that it will happen. And we
need not be afraid; just prepared.
The Rev. Anne Hodges-Copple.
Rector at St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Durham, NC
Follow us on Twitter @StLukesDurham
