One
of the most sacred holiday traditions that Jamie and I observe is watching the
movie Home Alone. Home Alone was a blockbuster hit when I early 90s. The Christmas
comedy stars Macaulay Culkin who is cast as eight-year-old Kevin McAllister.
Kevin is accidently left home alone in Chicago while his family takes a
Christmas vacation to Paris.
When
Kevin realizes his family has “disappeared,” he believes his Christmas wish has
come true. The first thing he does, of course, is to eat all the junk food in
the house. He watches all the movies his parents have forbidden him to watch.
After realizing his
toothbrush is in Paris, he raids his older brother’s room for some cash. As he
prepares to pay for his toothbrush at the local drug store, Kevin’s next-door
neighbor, who he falsely assumes is a mass murderer, walks up to the counter. Still
holding his toothbrush, Kevin runs from the store without paying. And what
happens next is a comical scene where a Chicago police officer tries to run
Kevin down – with no luck.
Meanwhile, there are two burglars
on the loose – Marv and Harry – and Kevin’s house is a prime target. Kevin catches
wind of their plan, and he sets up a series of highly sophisticated booby traps
to stop them. Remember, he can’t call the police because he is the eight-year-old
toothbrush bandit. Marv and Harry are relentless and literally endure being
shot by BB guns and burned with blow torches to finally catch Kevin.
However, Kevin’s neighbor,
the one Kevin thinks is a murderer, helps Kevin break free. Marv and Harry find
themselves in the back of a police car and disaster averted. But this isn’t the
end of the movie. Kevin revises his Christmas wish. He does want a family after
all.
Little did he know; his
mother was in route in the back of a rental van with Gus Polkinski – the Polka
King of the Midwest. When his mother walks through the door, Kevin is ecstatic
and runs into her arms. Kevin isn’t alone anymore.
In so many ways, Advent is
a season that marks what happens when God leaves his children alone in this
often dark and chaotic world. With God absent from our lives, we feel prone to
rebel against what we perceive as harsh rules. With God absent from our lives,
we let fear rule our hearts instead of love. With God absent from our lives,
best intentions go sideways fast. With God absent from our lives, we tend to
take matters into our own hands.
Eventually, a season
without God will lead us to a place where we realize we don’t actually wish God
was absent. In our lesson from Isaiah, we see the prophet almost begging God to
come back. The people of Israel have changed their mind. They do want to have a
God who protects them after all. The prophet reminds God that they are nothing
without God. And finally Isaiah makes the ultimate plea, “Now consider, we are all
your people.”
We are all God’s people. This statement is the
lynchpin of our faith. This statement answers the question, “Why does God
continue to pursue a people who continue to wander from God?” For God, the
answer is quite simple, “because you are my people.”
In the same way Kevin’s
parents send neighbors and police officers to tell Kevin that help in on the
way, God sends messengers and prophets to rescue his people – to remind them, “you
belong to me.” But for a handful of reasons, the message never gets to the
people. For whatever reason, God’s people won’t hear the message of salvation.
Even though the people of
Israel fend off the enemy with a series of booby traps, the enemy still breaks through
their defenses and take their land. Who will save them?
God is going to have to
come to them. And there are lots of stops and detours between heaven and earth
just as there are lots stops and detours between Paris and Chicago. In order
for God to remain true to his word, he must work through those whom he made in
his image to save humanity. And like Kevin’s next door neighbor, God will use
the most unlikely of characters to save his people from sin and death.
But before the rescue
operation can begin, before the Son of Man descends from the clouds, there is a
time of waiting, a time where God’s presence is found mostly clearly in his
absence. Someone said God’s absence is a “No” that clears the way for a more profound
“Yes.”
It only occurred to me a
few weeks ago that God’s absence in our lives does not mean that God is not
present. As I just said, God’s absence is sometimes the greatest evidence that
God is present for the simple reason that God’s absence leaves a notable void
in our lives. It’s like the old cliché – we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s
gone.
For humanity to truly
know the power of God’s presence, God must become absent for our sake, God must
be pushed to the cross for our sake, God must take on human form in the most
vulnerable of places for our sake – all with the hope that we will be awakened
to God’s notable presence by way of his absence.
While we become quite
vulnerable to sin and death, to the Marv and Harry’s of this world, during this
time of aloneness, this time also provides us the opportunity to see ourselves
as the formless voids we are without God.
The prophet Isaiah puts
it like this, “You are the Father, we are the clay, you are the potter, and we
are the work of your hand.” This time alone allows us to see ourselves as
essentially, well, playdough. Without God, we are formless. We have no
direction. We have no shape. We are just kind of a blob sitting there waiting to
be formed.
But even without God we
have free will. During this time away from God, we can shape ourselves into
what we need to be to survive the changes and chances of this life. We can mold
ourselves to be sweet and kind. We can mold ourselves to be mischievous and
playful. We can mold ourselves to be tough and cold. We mold ourselves to
endure whatever we need to endure while God is absent.
The problem here is that I’m
not sure any of us will like the playdough mold that we make out of ourselves.
After a while, we might find ourselves standing in front of the mirror only to
say, “I don’t recognize that person anymore.” Without the goodness and presence
of God in our lives, we become unrecognizable to ourselves, to others, and even
to God because we are made in the image of God. We are not made in the
idealized version of ourselves.
At the end of the day,
Kevin McAllister is not defined as a bratty eight-year-old. He is not defined
as the toothbrush bandit. As great as it was, he is not defined as the kid who
held off two professional criminals with sophisticated booby traps. In the end,
Kevin was saved by a stranger and was reminded of who he belongs to when he
fell into the arms of his mother.
The truth about Kevin is
the truth about all of us. As hard as we try to fend off evil by ourselves, we are
too weak. We need a Savior. In our pursuit to be different, to stand out, we
will all reach a point where we don’t recognize who we are anymore. We need to
be reminded of who we are. We need to be reminded that our true identity begins
to take shape in the hands of God our Savior.
During this season of
Advent, I invite you to take notice of what you’ve become in the absence of
God. I invite you to do this as gracefully as possible. I invite you to do this
with as little judgment as possible. After all, it has gotten you here today.
But hear me when I say
this – it will not be enough to get you home. Only the grace of God has the
power to carry you home. Only a power outside of yourself will carry you home.
So, pay attention to that
moment when the playdough mold that you’ve worked so hard to construct dries up
and begins to crack. Pay attention to that moment when God sends you a Savior
in the back of a Budget Rental Van carrying Gus Polinkski.
And in that moment, ask
yourself, “Who am I going to let shape my life?” Will I continue to shape my
life with my own hand? Or, will I finally let God take a hold and mold me into
the person God fearfully and wonderfully made in my mother’s womb?
In the meantime, “Keep
awake”. Amen.
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