Everyone Is To Blame. Everyone Is Loved.

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,  for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. ~Adolphe Adam

Some days the world feels old, crumbly around the edges.

Some years we feel discouraged, as every hope dies the minute it bursts into flame.

Some crowds leave us yearning for other faces, other places, other times.

Some moments we look in the mirror and wish a different set of features, a different kind of heart, stared back at us.

Sometimes, we wish we could “refresh” every page.

The calendar tell us, in January we start over. In August, the smell of sharpened pencils and musty gym lockers proclaim a new year. But the Christian church year begins with Advent. Because life is made new when Jesus comes.

New For Everyone

In his last and, many say, greatest novel, Fyodor Dostoyevsky introduces us to Father Zossima, teacher and spiritual advisor to Alyosha, the youngest of The Brothers Karamazov.

The setting? Imperial Russia, in crisis. Inflamed cries for human freedom, individual rights, and doubts about God swirled in the streets. The search was on for someone to blame for their economic and social misery.

Sound familiar?

When we find a nation in moral crisis, whose fault is it?. Zossima points the finger not at criminals, bad politicians, or a restless populace, but at the evil we all treasure in our hearts. Greed, selfishness, jealousy, resentment, lust, the desire for revenge, even indifference to need–we carry these with us, like a virus, wherever we go.

We are the moral crisis. Therefore, everyone is to blame.

This is the message of the gospel. Not, “those people are the problem,” not “those people need to change,” but that we all are badly in need of saving, to be made new. Not just once, but every day.

And Jesus has come to do just that. To open our eyes, re-shape our hearts, and make us new.

“And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love,” promises Father Zossima.

An Invitation

If this world seems vacant of hope, or you feel crushed by the demands of the season, I invite you to walk with me through Advent, and invite everyone to come along. We begin right here on Sunday.

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