Marilu Thomas, “Begin Again”
There is a pop-up restaurant in Tokyo where there is a 37% chance that your order will be wrong. You might order sushi and get a burger. Or maybe miso soup and get katsu chicken. But believe it or not, 99% of the customers are happy with their mistaken order. They come to the restaurant expecting their order to be wrong because it is The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders. All the wait staff are people who suffer from dementia and who don’t always get the food order right. They light-heartedly admit their mistakes and receive kindness and forgiveness from their customers, who receive excellent food no matter what is ordered. It is the brainchild of Shiro Oguni, a film producer who visited adults with dementia and found their isolation heartbreaking. According to Forbes magazine, “Instead of reacting to dementia as frightening, depressing and dreadfully isolating, the responses are almost precisely the opposite: diners describe the experience as happy, gregarious, and comfortable…The roles are reversed. The customer is taking care of the employee. Diners say, “If your order is mistaken you can shrug it off and enjoy what comes your way.”
Being a Christian is like dining in the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders. You never know what you’re going to get or when it will come. For instance, the passage from Isaiah 61 today promises a Savior who will “bind up the brokenhearted” and “comfort all who mourn.” But for 700 years, the people of Israel waited for the Savior promised in Isaiah 19: 20, “When the people cry to the Lord for help against those who oppress them, he will send them a savior who will rescue them.” The faithful were expecting a warrior King but got a poor commoner baby. You can imagine the letdown. It’s like asking for The Terminator and getting Bambi. Or wanting Katniss Everdeen and getting Cupid.
Has this happened to you? You asked for a new job but had to stay in your old job even longer. You prayed for healing then uncovered more health problems. You thought you married the perfect mate and then found out he or she is not so perfect. You prepared for a problem-free year and then your life fell apart. You went to all the best schools but can’t find a job. You planned for a fun retirement but then you lost your partner. You wanted a sweet baby and got 18 hrs. of labor and colic for three months. You thought you had faith but now you’re wondering because your prayers go unanswered. We can attest to what W.H. Auden wrote about us as, “Lost in a haunted wood, children afraid of the night, who have never been happy or good.” We feel like a mistake.
You came to church expecting Christmas and you got Advent.
We’ve been taught through sermons and hymns that Advent is about preparing our hearts for the Christ child. We are like Will Farrell’s character in Talladega Nights who prays to the “8 lb. 6 oz. newborn baby” as his favorite Jesus. We think of Advent as preparing the nursery.
But one of my professors, historian Mary Jane Haemig, reminds us that Advent is the “proclamation of the justifying grace of God coming to an unprepared world.”
Fleming Rutledge adds, “All the Advent preparation in the world would not be enough unless God were favorably disposed to us in the first place. The Advent season encourages us to resist denial and face our situation as it really is. Advent is not for the faint of heart. The Advent question is wondering if there is a God at all.”
Paul Zahl, in his book The Christianity Primer, described this dilemma when he wrote:
I could not make the link between the impressive things [Christ] said and did and the idea that he was God’s son. That seemed beyond belief. To go from inspired wisdom to “God in Christ” was an awesome leap. Later, in college and then after becoming a husband and father, I felt as though I needed him. Or rather, I needed his compassion. In the middle of my own struggles and losses, even impasses, it was not enough to be like him—and my life experience showed that my being like him was impossible. What I craved was his sympathy, his outstretched hand…There was an empowering connection between his saving me and the fuel to do what he said I should do…
The Law drives us to our knees. The Grace of God, on the other hand, is God’s saying, “Even though you are an impossible and paralyzed mess, I will save you anyway. You cannot save yourself, but I shall save you from yourself.”
What Paul describes is the unprepared heart finding itself in need of love. Of compassion. Of acceptance and understanding. This is where we find ourselves in Advent, unable to prepare our own hearts and deeply in need of comfort. We cannot prepare for being loved. We can only receive love as a gift. Loving comes from being loved.
Back to the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders. Kazuo Mikawa plays cello, and his wife Yasuko plays piano for a musical interlude. Kazuo tells the diners that Yasuko was diagnosed four years ago with early-onset dementia and stopped doing a lot of things, including playing piano. She would say, “What’s the point of living.” He suggested they just start playing together. During their song, Yasuko gets lost in the music. Her husband stops to ask her if she wants to start over again and she nods. He shifts her hands to the right fingering, and they begin again. The grace is palpable-- in him and the room. They start from the beginning and at the end, she stands smiling for a round of applause. She needed faith outside of herself to begin again.
Advent is the ‘begin again’ season, reminding us of Christ’s continual coming to us; past, present, and future. Tish Harrison Warren tells us, “We come to God openhanded, holding our imperfect and incomplete lives before him. We need him to come to us, to rescue and restore us, in our everyday lives.” Our faith is not of our own making, but Christ’s faith received as a gift.
Our text from 1 Thessalonians tells us, “May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who called you is faithful, and he will do it.” This is the promise of Advent. The Lord Jesus Christ gives birth to faith in you. Faith is not yours to conjure up and tend like a fire, it is a gift. Fleming Rutledge proclaims, “We see the power of Jesus at work giving birth to faith. ...[T]he faith that is thus evoked forever remains a gift, not a human achievement. In this life, there will never be a time when we will not need to say to the Lord, ‘Help my unbelief!” We cannot choose to have faith; we can only receive it with joy and thanksgiving. Faith is not a work; it is God’s gracious gift in Christ.”
In describing this Advent faith, Strahan Coleman wrote, “I have some good news for you; there’s going to be bad news. Suffering will come, and sometimes it will be the sort you can’t spiritualize and probably think you can’t face. When it happens, don’t be surprised and don’t think it’s on you to make it into a miracle. Remember that it is Christ who overcomes—trust him, lean in, and allow him to do the work of saving you and the world. This is the earthly reality of the Advent story.” Like the wait staff, we admit our mistakes and are received with grace and forgiveness.
Christ has come, is with you now, and is in your future. God’s timing is not mistaken, and you have made mistakes but you are not a mistake. The one who calls you is faithful and has given you his very own faith. He knows what he’s doing. You can trust him with your life because he gave his for you.
Amen
