Promises in the Snow

The first snowfall has finally come – so what better thing to do on a Sunday than celebrates our Swedish heritage?  John and I head for Ebenezer Lutheran Church in Andersonville (a neighborhood of North Chicago) and afterwards to the Julmarkrad at the Swedish American Museum.

Now aside from Swedish Chicago and our first real snowfall, there are two more things you ought to know about Ebenezer and this week in Illinois.  First, Ebenezer is well known in Chicago Lutheran circles for being a church where gay and lesbian people and their families are welcome.  And second, this week in Illinois the legislature voted to allow civil unions of same gendered couples and the governor of Illinois has vowed to sign the bill.

On with the story.

This Sunday at Ebenezer the couple sitting immediately in front of John and me (Matthew and Brian) came forward to have their marriage blessed.  The interim pastor at Ebenezer commented on the civil union law, saying that while it was a step at progress, it wasn’t all the justice we seek.  We blessed Matthew and Brian’s marriage (who cares what the state says!) and the service went on.

On the second Sunday of Advent we hear the words of the Prophet Isaiah.  He speaks in God’s voice promising that a messiah will come, one who will judge with “righteousness.”  Under his reign, Isaiah proclaims that there will be peace. 

But the people are in despair.  They look around and know that the messiah isn’t in their midst yet.  Isaiah tells them not to worry about how things seem now; something new is coming: “A shoot will come our of the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” 

I thought about Matthew and Brian and how there isn’t justice for them yet.  Civil unions in Illinois do not fix marriage law in our country.  They do not fix Don’t Ask Don’t Tell or stop the bullying of gay teens in schools.  But it is a start – a shoot, a branch, a promise.

At the Swedish American Museum John and I were reminded how the growing of a shoot takes work, and how promise does not come easily.  We looked at exhibits on Swedish immigration to America in the 19^th century.  How people left behind farm and family for a new life.  They took with them noting but their trunks, 20 salted herring per person, and a bag of potatoes.

And when they got to America they did not find streets paved with gold.  They did not find good jobs and warm homes.  Instead they started from nothing, working as domestic servants and common laborers.  Holding on to their faith, they believed in the promise of new life, for themselves and for their children.  They worked to make that promise grow.

Each of us has a stump of some sort in our lives.  A place that seems abandoned by hope, a place where new life seems unlikely to bloom.  The Gospel promise, the promise of Advent, is that God grows life exactly when and where it seems most unlikely – in a Swedish immigrant community in a new land, for gay and lesbian people where justice seems far off, in a manger in Bethlehem in your life and in mine.

This Advent watch for signs of life and work to help them grow.

Thanks be to God!