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“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” That’s our guiding phrase from our gospel text for this week. “Anything good?” Surely you can hear how that sounds. Surely in our contentious environment, you hear the presupposition behind the sarcasm. You can hear the prejudice tucked away in such an innocuous joke. We are potentially dealing with some difficult topics this week. They are not difficult because they are complicated but because they are threatening. And personal.

We survived 2020, and while there might still be lingering effects of the pandemic and the unrest, it is time to embrace a new possibility, a new hope. The heavens have been torn open. But this isn’t a threat; it’s a promise of something new, something better.

We’re wrapping up Christmas this week. Some may have already packed everything away; others may still be sitting in the glow of the lights and tinsel. But the goal isn’t to shuffle it all away, but rather to embrace the fullness of the community that we have become – incorporating the new but becoming one in Christ.

There is an inevitable let down after Christmas. This is December 27, only two days after the day that most are still digesting. The other phenomenon that normally occurs at this time is that folks are starting to depart; families are returning home; people are going back to work. That may all be different now, even as we will still be recovering or enduring the pandemic. But there is still a shift in thinking, in focus. Christ has come!

It’s the fourth Sunday of Advent, and the tug of war is over. Christmas now takes center stage. We need to relive the first coming of Christ, even as we still anticipate the second. We need to live into the first. We are on the threshold of a new world.

After finding the mess and cleaning it up, what now? Decorations! We reflect our inner experience with our outward appeal. When we are a place of joy and invitation and inclusion, our environment reflects that. When we are a place that understands the depth of pain and suffering, of the ugliness in our world, then our doorways open to a place of comfort and beauty and welcome. Having reflected on our need to address the mess, we now set about bringing beauty and light into the world.

This second week of Advent, we pray. We pray as though we were members of a clean-up crew, knowing we are making a difference in the world and in the lives of those around us. But prayer doesn’t prevent us from acting or from giving or serving or working. The clean-up crew has plenty to be doing.

Advent is a penitential season, which means that we aren’t just preparing our external space to receive the Guest and our guests. We are also preparing our internal space for that reception. Spoken and sung prayers of confession can be accompanied by times of prayer at the altar rail, or in the pews, that give space for and invitation to new commitments. We begin the season of Advent by acknowledging our need to clean house, because “Company’s Coming”.