“Well I love a rainy night; I love a rainy night.
I love to hear the thunder;
watch the lightning when it lights up the sky.
You know it makes me feel good.
Well, I love a rainy night; it’s such a beautiful sight.
I love to feel the rain on my face;
taste the rain on my lips,
in the moonlight shadows.”
I used to have a record player in my bedroom growing up. I had a stack of 33 LPs and 45s.
I can still hear the pop and crackle of the needle as the records spun round and round.
My first record that I bought with my own money was an Eddie Rabbit 45, I Love a Rainy Night.
I’ve always loved the rain. It must come from growing up with hot summers and being outside, playing, cutting grass, running. The rain would come and cool everything down, wash the dust away, make everything green and lush again.
Gene Kelly, Singing in the Rain, closing his umbrella and dancing in the puddles. There it is.
The rain.
God’s kingdom is like that. The rain.
One of my favorite verses of scripture is in the psalm today, “he shall come down like water upon the mown field, like showers that water the earth.”
I can hear Eddie Rabbit and Gene Kelly singing it.
The arrival, the advent, of the righteous ruler, who sets things right, who brings peace, who makes life flourish, who brings out the best in all of us.
We carry the tremendous hope, that there will be more.
Expectant hope, looking forward to the rain.
All the readings today are about this hope, proclaiming that the weather is about to change, that rain is on the way, the showers that water the earth.
Things should be a certain way, the world ought to be a certain way. We feel this deep in our bones. The should-ness of things, the ought-ness of the things.
Faith means being unsettled, unsatisfied, with ourselves, with church, with society, with the world.
We feel deep in our bones that we aren’t there yet, that things are not right. Things are not OK.
Faith is a kind of grief, feeling the brokenness of things, of ourselves.
We know there is more, and we know it isn’t here yet.
The irony of the discomfort of faith is that it also carries peace, an acceptance of limitation, of the tenuousness of things.
We know the rain is coming so we rejoice, until then we know the world is shriveling up into dust, so we grieve and strive to make things grow anyway.
Faith is the outer band of the approaching weather front, a sprinkling of the showers that are to come.
Advent is like that, the first sprinkling of the showers that are to come.
We are the people of the Advent.
Be that first sprinkling of water, the change in the weather, the hint of things to come.
I love the rain.
Cooling everything down, washing the dust away, making everything green and lush again.
Jesus is like that.
Feel the rain on your face.
Taste the rain on your lips.
Sing in the rain.