Advent Message: The Way We're Supposed to Feel

Text: Lamentations 3:1-24, 31-33

“I think there’s something wrong with me, Linus.  

Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy.

I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”

That opening line from Charlie Brown rings just as true today as fifty-three years ago,

if not more so.

“I think there’s something wrong with me.

I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”

There are plenty of other times of year when you can get away with feeling miserable and people won’t notice. But at the holidays, the pressure’s on. 

Be thankful! Be joyful! Be generous! Put on a happy face!

“I think there’s something wrong with me. 

I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”

Weird that so many people can feel that way, yet each feel like we’re the only one.

It’s enough to keep Lucy’s five-cent psychiatric booth going full time. 

“Wow, great way to start off Advent, Pastor Tim! Nothing says 'Christian hope' like reading from Lamentations and talking about seasonal depression! 

We feel better already!”

But I think Charlie Brown is working with a bad assumption, 

when he talks about how he’s “supposed to” feel. 

There are some seasons in our lives, 

when we’re actually supposed to hurt.

When we’re supposed to feel tired.

When we’re supposed to feel sad.

When we’re supposed to feel

 like we have a piece missing.

There are some times in our lives, when there’s nothing wrong with you if you feel that way, and there might just be something wrong if you didn’t!

Tradition holds that the prophet Jeremiah wrote Lamentations right after Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians. Thousands from the city got carted off to Babylon, hundreds of miles from home. Who wouldn’t be hurting at a time like that?

But Jeremiah feels this national tragedy, in a deeply personal way. 

God hasn’t just attacked Judah. God has attacked me.

God didn’t just do this to my country.

God did this to me.

And as a theologian, I pull back a bit when I read this: “Hold up hold up, God loves everyone, God doesn’t punish people like that. We live in a fallen world. Sin runs wild and causes some bad things to happen to good people, but God never wanted this for us, God didn’t directly do this.” And intellectually, I believe that’s true. 

But emotionally, when we’re grieving, like Jeremiah,

sometimes we feel like God did do this.

In times of grief, loneliness, emptiness, sometimes it’s hard not to point our finger at God and say, “Why? Why are you allowing this? Why aren’t you fixing this?”

And if we believe God is good all the time, we stop and think, 

“wait wait wait,this isn’t how we’re supposed to feel.”

When we worry, we’re supposed to feel calm because God has it handled, right?

When fail at something, we’re supposed to feel hopeful 

because God has something even better planned, right?

When we lose a loved one, we’re supposed to be happy they’re with Jesus, right?

We’re getting ready to celebrate the Christ Child! Happy is how Christians are supposed to feel, because everything will work out in the end, and if it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end…right?

So what happens when Christians don’t feel

the way we’re “supposed” to feel?

We crack open Lamentations,

And see we’re not alone.

We see that sometimes, even the most faith-filled people say things like, 

“gone is my glory and all that I had hoped from the Lord.”

Believe it or not, sometimes,

Even people of faith are supposed to hurt.

Even the one with the strongest faith you can imagine, still said, 

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Sometimes it’s only natural to say to God,

“why did you do this to me?”

Again, I don’t think God does these awful things to us, 

but sometimes we feel like God did.

And sometimes it even helps to say it out loud,

Because we can’t hide it from God, anyway.

I think we do a lot of harm to fellow believers, 

when we talk about how a Christian is supposed to feel. 

Because if Jesus wept, then we can, too.

You want to know why the Advent season is my favorite? 

Because it’s a safe place to be in pain.

It’s a shelter from the big, bright, glitzy onslaught of manufactured happiness 

we see everywhere else.

It’s a little dark corner, under God’s wing,

Where we can rest from pretending to feel how we’re supposed to feel, 

and feel how we actually feel.

Advent is a time to wait, to not be fully satisfied, to grieve, to long for what will be.

To feel incomplete.

To know that until Jesus returns,

There’s a little piece of every person that’s missing. 

Why would we be perfectly, completely content, 

when God’s kingdom hasn’t fully come?

Why would we be completely at home,

In a world that still isn’t finished?

Advent reminds us that we’re not supposed to feel complete, 

until the world is completely the place it’s supposed to be!   

So we say “Come, Lord Jesus!”

And we trust that God’s steadfast love never ceases, 

and God’s mercies never end.

They’re new every morning.

Even on the mornings, and the evenings,

And the long, long nights,

Where we don’t feel

how we’re supposed to feel.