For nothing will be impossible with God.

This week is where it gets tough to stay with Advent.

Just when we want to be saying, “OK, let’s go, let’s get to Bethlehem” God wants us to pause, to put time on hold and to pray, just as Mary did.

Just when the music, the trees, the daily stream of cards, these things are all around us and we are straining forward to the mystery and wonder of Christmas, God says “be still”.

It’s hard to sit and wait right now, there is shopping to be done, there are cookies to be baked, gifts to be bought and wrapped, hints to be dropped, gatherings to attend and on and on and on, and God says “wait and listen for the sound of a candle”.

Impossible to hear a candle?

For nothing will be impossible with God.

But it isn’t easy, it means doing something that most of us don’t do very well, we need to stop and wait and look around us and pray.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German Theologian, described the necessary wait of Advent in terms that he came to know well near the end of his life: "A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes...and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent."

And if you don’t know Bonhoeffer’s story, let me assure you he knew what it meant to sit in a prison cell, for he sat in one before his execution by the Nazis for his role in a an assassination attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler.

This was his view of Advent: "A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes...and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside. . . “

How does that compare with our version of Advent? We also want freedom in our lives, freedom from our past sins, freedom from our selfish motives, freedom from our misguided life values, but that kind of freedom can only come when we sit and wait and hope. But we don’t sit and wait and hope, we can’t even see or admit that we are in cells, self-created prisons. Instead we run around our little cells - our jobs, our relationships, our inner realities - and we play with trinkets and decorations, so we don’t even notice when the silent gift is given, we don’t notice that the door has been unlocked, we are too noisy.

But prayer is sitting, waiting and hoping for God to unlock the cell that we have created.

We are not real good at that.

What we are good at is filling our calendars, and then bragging and complaining about the busyness.

What we are good at is noise and lights and commotion, and worrying about “what’s next?”.

Advent calls us to prayer with the question of “what’s now?”.

Prayer that starts by stopping.

Stopping the madness.

Stopping the noise.

Stopping the “doing” of stuff.

And the starting the sitting.

This, today, is where Advent gets tough.

Yet, and perhaps it has happened already, if not then sometime soon, over the next two weeks, there will come a moment, a moment of silence, a moment of anticipation, a moment when we know, not think, not guess, not wish, but know that God is indeed opening the cell that we have built for ourselves. It will be the moment when we suddenly lose interest in whether or not people talk and worship and love and live just like we do; we will lose interest in people we don’t know, the personal lives of Hollywood stars and Florida golfers; we will lose interest in what we once had or what we hope to have someday and focus entirely on the still unseen, but tangible, reality of God with Us, as noticeable as the whisper of a candle. And in that moment, time stands still.

In that moment, which is true prayer, all of the Christmases we have ever known and all of those yet to come will open the door to this one, reminding us that there will never be another one like it, our children, our parents, our peers will never be the age, the health, the people they are right now.

Sometimes you can plan the moment and know that it is coming, I hear the sound of a candle each year, on the 24th of December, as we light our candles, it is a whisper that flows into song: silent night, holy night . . . Jesus, Lord at thy birth. But sometimes, around this week, the moment finds you when you sit and let your mind and heart and hearing and vision, go with God in prayer.

This past week I was about as sick and miserable as I have ever been, undone by a mere cold that has tormented me for a month, leaving me banished from hospital and home visits, and yet I heard the whisper of candles. I bought a little pink outfit for a little girl I will never meet - the little girl in our Church adopted family, through Safe in Hunterdon - and as I checked out, the world grew quiet and I anticipated her smile that I will never see, and I heard a candle whisper. Then on Friday Debi and I hung old memories, disguised as ornaments, on our trees, and we rode over to McCarter Theater and let the story of the impossible joy of a Christmas Carol work its wonders upon us once again and I remembered all of my many and previous Christmases Past, anticipated my fewer and more precious Christmases yet to Be, and thought about today and these next few weeks, this Christmas present, my 60th Christmas, and I heard, as the words of Tiny Tim, God Bless Us Everyone, hung in the air, and all of my grand hopes and silly fears were met, the whisper of a candle.

For nothing will be impossible with God.

If life is troubled for you, as it is for so many this December, consider Mary’s prayer with God’s messenger she said “how can this be?” – a reasonable question, given the circumstances - and the answer she got was nothing will be impossible with God and her response, made famous by Lennon and McCartney, was: “Let it be.”

Let it be for you this week.

Let silence intrude into your lives, make room for the moment that brings the gift of Joy that comes to us, when we let the world be, for a little while.

And Joy becomes rejoicing and rejoicing becomes Prayer, for God is with us, and all the silly things we count on for security slip away.

It was Paul Quevedo, our once-upon-a-time student pastor, who taught me to watch carefully during the story of Charlie Brown’s Christmas, and when Linus has his moment when the spotlight is on him and he uses Luke’s words to remind them all of what Christmas is really all about, he drops his security blanket to the ground, during the telling of the story.

As you and I tell the story of what Christmas is all about, as we point out, to each other, God’s presence in our homes; as we remember together the messengers of God who shaped our souls in other Decembers; as we anticipate the changing joys of Christmases yet to come; as we cherish those who stand with us now, in December 2009; we will feel those security blankets drop from our clutching hands, as we rest ourselves in the grace and peace filled hands of God.

And yes, Linus did pick his security blanket back up when he finished with Luke’s story, but he used it a few minutes later to form the base and foundation of Charlie Brown’s tree – transforming it from a sad little thing to a tree of beauty.

This week is where Advent and Christmas start to overlap each other and it gets tough, and preachers complain about it and sometimes we all try to choose one or the other, but if we don’t recognized both we will never get where we want to go.

When Debi and I take our little boat through the churning waters of Barnegat Inlet, as we head out from the bay to the Atlantic, or back home again, it is in that meeting of the waters, that unclear and uncertain stretch that belongs to both the ocean and the bay, that danger waits for those who aren’t paying attention, ready to see what is really there and to react to it.

We are in the inlet, still Advent, but Christmas surrounds us and waves and tides from each, need to be studied and respected. Prayer is the navigator of our souls, it respects, even fears the churning waters, as Mary did; but it rejoices, it allows the joys we have known, not just this December but every December, to be expressed in words and songs and symbols and smiles and conversations and eloquent silences spent together; and it allows us to lay down the security blankets of calendars, checkbooks, health, jobs and proclaim the presence of God and to turn all of those things over to God’s use: Let it be, with me, according to your word.

And after we are finished living out the Christmas story this year, we will be able to use our blankets of security, those same calendars, checkbooks, health, jobs to bolster the dreams of others, we will learn how the joy we can know, in the silent moments set aside this week, can take the sad little things of life and turn them into things of beauty in 2010 and beyond.

But all of that comes later. For now, for today, for this week, sit and listen for the whisper of a candle and you will hear it, and so much more.

For nothing will be impossible with God.