(Scriptures: I Samuel 2:1-11, Romans 16:25-27, Luke 1:25-56)
Every now and then, events come to pass that we thought we’d never live to see. When many of us were growing up, the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union was an entrenched fact of life, something we thought was an unchangeable reality, like death and taxes. Many who grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s remember bomb shelters and duck and cover drills in school, where, in case of nuclear attack, school children were told to kneel under their desks with their hands clutched around their heads and necks. In 1961, the Berlin wall went up, dividing capitalist West Germany from Communist East Germany. By the 1970’s, when I was in high school, the duck and cover drills had ceased, but the tension between our countries remained, as it seemed like capitalism and communism were in a fight to the death for world domination. And then, in the late 1980’s, it just….ended…in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and events continued rapidly from there. Similarly, many of us remember other moments we never thought we’d live to see – apartheid, which enforced segregation between the races in South Africa, coming to an end in the early 1990’s, what were called “the troubles” in Ireland, in which Protestants seeking union with Great Britain and Catholics nationalists wanting to preserve independence from Great Britain killed one another for decades starting in the 1960’s, coming to an end in the “Good Friday” Belfast Accord of 1998. More recently, years of violence in Liberia have come to end in a fragile time of relative peace under President Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf. In these times of change, there are many theories of what happened, what brought them about. In some cases, these events are still too recent for us to have fully developed a perspective on them; the histories are still being written.
This may seem like a very strange way to begin a sermon for the last Sunday in Advent. We want angels and wise men and a manger, not talk of social change. Our Advent readings include statements that seemed extravagant, unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky. But the examples of sweeping change with which I began this sermon remind us that sometimes entrenched oppression, entrenched misery gives way to new hope; the impossible becomes not only possible, but inevitable, and what seems unreal becomes reality.
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, as we draw near to the end of this season of waiting, today’s Scripture readings give us words from not one, but two mothers. Our Old Testament reading quotes the words of Hannah, the first of two wives of Elkanah. Elkanah’s other wife is Peninnah – in Hebrew the name just means “the second one” or “the other one”. Hannah had been barren, so perhaps Elkanah married Peninnah to assure himself that he would have children, that his name would live on on. Hannah went to Shiloh to beg the Lord for a child, and vowed that if the Lord gave her a child, the child would be devoted to the Lord’s service. As Hannah left her child, Samuel, with the aged priest Eli, she prayed the beautiful words we heard read earlier. And, of course, our Gospel reading includes Mary’s Magnificat, Mary’s hymn of praise to God and thanksgiving for the child within her, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
We have a number of moms in our congregation, those with young children, and those whose children are grown, but no doubt remember what it was like to be expecting. That’s an experience I haven’t had. But I would imagine that as your bodies were going through the changes of pregnancy, you had so many thoughts about the child growing within you. Of course, boy or girl? What will we call the baby? Would he or she take after you or the baby’s father? I’d imagine, as you gave birth and as your baby grew, you’ve had such hopes and dreams for your child. What sort of person would your child grow up to be?
And our two moms in our readings this morning, Hannah and Mary, had high hopes for their children – and that’s putting it mildly. Hannah and Mary both literally expected their children to turn society upside down – or maybe right-side up. Here’s Hannah: “Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil. He raises the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.” And here’s Mary: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” Not exactly the kind of language we’d include in an invitation for a baby shower. Hannah and Mary are speaking in what is sometimes called the prophetic past tense, speaking with such certainty that it’s as if all these things have already happened. If Jesus heard words like this as he was growing up, it’s no wonder that his first sermon, as recorded by Luke, was on the text, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This was Jesus’ personal mission statement, what drove him, what motivated him to ministry.
You don’t need me to tell you that many people in this neighborhood, in our city, our country, in the world are hurting. The divide between the rich and the poor is as wide as it has been since the Gilded Age of the 1870’s and 1880’s. For those at the bottom of the economic ladder, prospects for improvement are dismal. In these days, it’s easy to lose hope for anything better. In these days, it’s easy to become discouraged, and just expect more of the same.
When we think about the forces that have power to create change in society, we think of guns and tanks, or people of great wealth and political influence. But throughout the Bible, we see that when God wants to bring change, he sends, not an army, but a baby. Think of Isaac, son of the promise, born to the aged Abraham and Sarah. Think of Moses, born to lead the children of Israel to freedom. Think of Hannah in our Old Testament reading giving birth to Samuel, who marked the transition from the social disorder of the time of the judges to the relative stability of the monarchy. And think of the birth John the Baptist, born, like Abraham, to an aged, childless couple, born to proclaim the coming Messiah, and Jesus, born to Mary, God in the flesh, in whom we are all saved.
We may think of Hannah’s and Mary’s dreams for their children as extravagant, over the top. But I think perhaps the question for us is not “why did they expect so much?” but rather “why do we expect so little?” Why do we expect so little? Hannah and Mary expected their children to turn their society upside down – or maybe right side up. But throughout history, the church, which professes to follow Mary’s son, instead of turning the world upside down, so often has just blessed the status quo. Hannah and Mary looked for the poor to be lifted up and the powerful to be humbled. Too often over the centuries, the church has upheld and blessed entrenched power as God’s will, leaving the poor to fend for themselves. Here at Emanuel, I think we sometimes let our size discourage us from hoping that God can use our congregation; we think that because we don’t have hundreds of members in the pews and millions of dollars in the endowment fund, God can’t use us to usher in the reign of God.
In his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul said that God uses the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, uses that which is weak to shame the strong. Jesus was born, not in a palace, but in a stable. Jesus’ birth was a threat to Herod, a threat to the Roman empire and to all worldly empires, but good news to the shepherds and foreign wise men who came to pay him homage. It is not with the strong but with the weak that we find Jesus. So here at Emanuel, Jesus is right at home.
Hannah’s and Mary’s words gave voice to the hope within them, that the child within each of them would be used by God to turn society upside down – or maybe, turn it right-side up. And we here at Emanuel, as small as we are, still have new life within us – we’ve baptized several babies over the past year. Can a 150 year old church have children – “yes”! Can God use a 150 year old church to change lives, to nourish the life of the Spirit. Absolutely yes!
Did Hannah, did Mary know what plans God had for their children? Who can tell what plans God has for us, for the babies recently baptized and their families, and for those of us whose baptisms happened long years ago? We worship a God who uses old couples, long-childless mothers, unwed mothers to bring forth new life. And God can use us, if we’ll allow it. So, in a way, just as Hannah was expecting, just as Mary was expecting, so are we here at Emanuel – expecting, pregnant with possibilities, capable still of bringing forth new life, if God so wills.
During this Advent season of hope, peace, love, and joy, may we live with a sense of expectation – expectation that God who did great things in the past will do great things here in the future, that Jesus who passed from death to resurrection life will bring about resurrection life here at Emanuel Church. May it be so with us. Amen.
Showing posts with label Advent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advent. Show all posts
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Tidings of Comfort and Joy
(Scriptures: Isaiah 40:1-11, Psalm 126, I Thessalonians 5:16-24, John 1:6-8, 19-28)
We continue on in Advent, that season of waiting, waiting for the coming of the Christ child, waiting for the coming of hope, peace, and now, joy. The 3rd Sunday of Advent is traditionally called Gaudete Sunday, Gaudete, from the Latin for the word “rejoice”. Rejoice!
Our readings speak of a joy that is hard-won, a joy that comes at the end of a long period of endurance. Our reading from Isaiah comes at the end of the exile in Babylon, when the Jews are preparing to return to their homeland at last, after decades in a foreign land. After long decades of brutal exile, God will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom and gently lead the mother sheep. Psalm 126 captures the mood of those returning from exile – “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy.”
The Declaration of Independence lifts up three basic rights of human beings – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And Americans have been pursuing happiness for some 235 years now. During this Christmas shopping season, we’re promised, as we’re promised every year, that if we buy more, better, bigger, faster, we will be happy.
But the joy of today’s readings wasn’t bought at the mall. Some of you remember that early in my time here at Emanuel, I went on two trips with the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference to visit churches in Cuba, as part of a delegation forming a partnership between the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference and the Fraternity of Baptists in Cuba. Despite the signs everywhere proclaiming the triumph of the Castro Revolution – then celebrating its 50th year - by American standards, our hosts had very little – most buildings needed at least several coats of paint and most needed a good bit of exterior and interior repair, functioning indoor plumbing was a luxury, transportation options ran the gamut from surprisingly new Chinese buses to 1950’s vintage American cars, held together with hope and duct tape, to bicycle cabs to horses. On the way to a rural church, I saw a team of oxen pulling a jeep out of a ditch. Havana does have some lovely hotels and restaurants that cater to tourists, and so we ate quite well – and since we were paying, our hosts ate quite well while they were with us - but were very aware that many of those around us were accustomed to missing meals. Similarly, the churches we visited ran the gamut from long-established houses of worship that dated from before the Castro revolution, to churches set up in storefronts and even house churches. And yet at these churches the joy was just bouncing off the walls. From a material point of view, our hosts had very little to sing about – but at all the churches we visited, the joy of the Lord was in the house, evidenced by singing and clapping and shouting and swaying. And they shared the joy with those around them – even the smallest house church we visited raised rabbits and grew medicinal herbs for the members and also for their neighbors.
Our readings from Isaiah 40 and Psalm 126 show the joy of those returning from exile. It was a hard-won joy – they had been through a lot during the long years of exile. As Psalm 126 put it, they went into exile weeping, bearing seeds for sowing in a strange land, and now they were coming home with joy, bearing the sheaves, the fruits of their long endurance. And there was still much to endure – they were returning to a city of Jerusalem in ruins, a Temple site that had been burned to the ground. They had a whole lot of work ahead of them. And yet they were just so happy to be back home, back in the land that God had promised Abraham and his descendents.
I think I caught a tiny glimpse of what that joy might have looked like during my first winter here at Emanuel. You had worshiped downstairs in the social hall for a number of years because Rev. Grau could no longer climb the stairs. We went upstairs – so you were back in your sanctuary - but we had no organist. The search for an organist dragged on for months. Finally we found Ralph, our organist, and he graciously agreed to come and play for us, and was with us on Easter Sunday. And the joy in the congregation that morning – oh my goodness! - you were so happy to hear your organ again. Christ had risen from the dead, and it felt like something about the spirit of the congregation was resurrected that day as well. And the joy continues.
For a surprising number of our members, 2011 was a difficult year. The passing of various members of our congregation’s families, hospitalizations of other members, other personal tragedies that we’ve carried, and each one of us affected in one way or another by a difficult economy. For me, the joy is that as small as we are, we’ve been able to take each challenge, each tragedy, and wrap it in love and lift it up and offer it in prayer to God. As I’ve heard you say, more than once, we’re a small church, but we pray big. And even in this difficult year, there have been moments of joy – recovery and healing for several of our members, several baptisms, the many former members and friends of the congregation with us on our anniversary, the video you made of so many holy moments over the 150 year history of our congregation. This is joy that is a gift of the Spirit, a joy that can carry us through hard times. This is the joy that Paul was talking about in our reading from I Thessalonians:
"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances – in ALL circumstances - for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. "
So on this 3rd Sunday in Advent, we celebrate the gift of the Spirit that is joy. May the joy of the Spirit be with us in this season of Advent as we await the coming of the Christ child. And as we wait,
"May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this."
May it be so among us. Amen."
We continue on in Advent, that season of waiting, waiting for the coming of the Christ child, waiting for the coming of hope, peace, and now, joy. The 3rd Sunday of Advent is traditionally called Gaudete Sunday, Gaudete, from the Latin for the word “rejoice”. Rejoice!
Our readings speak of a joy that is hard-won, a joy that comes at the end of a long period of endurance. Our reading from Isaiah comes at the end of the exile in Babylon, when the Jews are preparing to return to their homeland at last, after decades in a foreign land. After long decades of brutal exile, God will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom and gently lead the mother sheep. Psalm 126 captures the mood of those returning from exile – “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy.”
The Declaration of Independence lifts up three basic rights of human beings – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And Americans have been pursuing happiness for some 235 years now. During this Christmas shopping season, we’re promised, as we’re promised every year, that if we buy more, better, bigger, faster, we will be happy.
But the joy of today’s readings wasn’t bought at the mall. Some of you remember that early in my time here at Emanuel, I went on two trips with the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference to visit churches in Cuba, as part of a delegation forming a partnership between the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference and the Fraternity of Baptists in Cuba. Despite the signs everywhere proclaiming the triumph of the Castro Revolution – then celebrating its 50th year - by American standards, our hosts had very little – most buildings needed at least several coats of paint and most needed a good bit of exterior and interior repair, functioning indoor plumbing was a luxury, transportation options ran the gamut from surprisingly new Chinese buses to 1950’s vintage American cars, held together with hope and duct tape, to bicycle cabs to horses. On the way to a rural church, I saw a team of oxen pulling a jeep out of a ditch. Havana does have some lovely hotels and restaurants that cater to tourists, and so we ate quite well – and since we were paying, our hosts ate quite well while they were with us - but were very aware that many of those around us were accustomed to missing meals. Similarly, the churches we visited ran the gamut from long-established houses of worship that dated from before the Castro revolution, to churches set up in storefronts and even house churches. And yet at these churches the joy was just bouncing off the walls. From a material point of view, our hosts had very little to sing about – but at all the churches we visited, the joy of the Lord was in the house, evidenced by singing and clapping and shouting and swaying. And they shared the joy with those around them – even the smallest house church we visited raised rabbits and grew medicinal herbs for the members and also for their neighbors.
Our readings from Isaiah 40 and Psalm 126 show the joy of those returning from exile. It was a hard-won joy – they had been through a lot during the long years of exile. As Psalm 126 put it, they went into exile weeping, bearing seeds for sowing in a strange land, and now they were coming home with joy, bearing the sheaves, the fruits of their long endurance. And there was still much to endure – they were returning to a city of Jerusalem in ruins, a Temple site that had been burned to the ground. They had a whole lot of work ahead of them. And yet they were just so happy to be back home, back in the land that God had promised Abraham and his descendents.
I think I caught a tiny glimpse of what that joy might have looked like during my first winter here at Emanuel. You had worshiped downstairs in the social hall for a number of years because Rev. Grau could no longer climb the stairs. We went upstairs – so you were back in your sanctuary - but we had no organist. The search for an organist dragged on for months. Finally we found Ralph, our organist, and he graciously agreed to come and play for us, and was with us on Easter Sunday. And the joy in the congregation that morning – oh my goodness! - you were so happy to hear your organ again. Christ had risen from the dead, and it felt like something about the spirit of the congregation was resurrected that day as well. And the joy continues.
For a surprising number of our members, 2011 was a difficult year. The passing of various members of our congregation’s families, hospitalizations of other members, other personal tragedies that we’ve carried, and each one of us affected in one way or another by a difficult economy. For me, the joy is that as small as we are, we’ve been able to take each challenge, each tragedy, and wrap it in love and lift it up and offer it in prayer to God. As I’ve heard you say, more than once, we’re a small church, but we pray big. And even in this difficult year, there have been moments of joy – recovery and healing for several of our members, several baptisms, the many former members and friends of the congregation with us on our anniversary, the video you made of so many holy moments over the 150 year history of our congregation. This is joy that is a gift of the Spirit, a joy that can carry us through hard times. This is the joy that Paul was talking about in our reading from I Thessalonians:
"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances – in ALL circumstances - for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. "
So on this 3rd Sunday in Advent, we celebrate the gift of the Spirit that is joy. May the joy of the Spirit be with us in this season of Advent as we await the coming of the Christ child. And as we wait,
"May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this."
May it be so among us. Amen."
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Wait and Hope
(Scriptures: Isaiah 64:1-9, I Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:24-37)
Today is the first Sunday in Advent – the first Sunday in the church year. As sometimes happens, the church is out of step with society, and today doubly so. While our society celebrates New Year’s Day on January 1st, we celebrate the beginning of a new church year today. At the same time, most of society is already celebrating Christmas, has been celebrating Christmas since about Columbus Day or thereabouts – but in the church, we wait. We’ll celebrate Christmas in due time, but for now we observe Advent – from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming” – a time of waiting for One we know is coming, but has not yet arrived.
This year, Advent begins at a time when it may feel like things are coming unglued, falling apart. We just went through a Black Friday in which gung-ho shoppers used fists and pepper spray to drive off fellow shoppers - at a mall in North Carolina, the soundtrack of Christmas music was momentarily drowned out by the sound of gunfire. At good old Penn State, wholesome Happy Valley – my alma mater – the university president, Graham Spanier, along with longtime football coach Joe Paterno were dismissed amid accusations of having covered up the sexual abuse of teens and pre-teens. There’s an increasing sense that our national government is dysfunctional, political leaders from both parties bought (or bought off) and paid for by Wall Street – and at Occupy Philadelphia and other Occupy gatherings across the country, people are taking to the streets to demand change. While the protesters have been mostly peaceful, in many cities the police have not, and we’ve been treated to the ugly sight of police officers pepper-spraying and beating nonviolent protesters. International news is no more comforting, amid the threat of financial default in Europe, the threat of war in the Middle East. Amid frightening national and international news, we’ve had our own personal traumas – death of family members or friends, illness, unemployment, domestic violence striking us or those close to us. At our community Thanksgiving service on Wednesday, I heard that the cupboard, with the help of our donations, served over 300 families last week. 300 families who, but for God’s grace and the generosity of Emanuel and other churches, would go hungry. What a witness of the struggles our neighbors are grappling with here in Bridesburg and surrounding neighborhoods. We may be tempted to throw up our hands in despair. For people of faith, we can hardly be faulted for asking, “Why doesn’t God do something? Is God on lunch break, or did God maybe clock out early and go on vacation? Where’s God when we need Him?”
Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah was written at a time when it seemed like things were falling apart, spinning out of control. It comes from one of the last few chapters of Isaiah, written after the Jews had returned from exile and settled back in Jerusalem. They had returned from exile with such high hopes. But the rebuilding of the Temple had been slowed down by threats and interference from surrounding tribes, and also bogged down by community infighting. Similar to some of our current controversies over inclusion within the church, there was disagreement over who could be called a Jew, who could gather to worship the Lord, with some calling for exclusion of all except the super-observant, the purest of the pure, while others called for broad inclusion. The devastation of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem matched the disorganization and conflict among the Jewish people.
And so in his frustration Isaiah cries out to God, “Get down here and do something, will ya! Tear open the heavens and come down! Send fire and earthquake, so that our enemies will know you’re still in charge!” Isaiah recalls God’s works in the past – “When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.” Isaiah confesses the guilt of the people – “We have all become unclean, and even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags….our sin blows us away like the wind….nobody calls on you.” And Isaiah even blames some of the people’s misdeeds on God, “You were angry, and we sinned, because you hid yourself we messed up.” Isaiah reminds God “Yet, O Lord, you are our father, we are the clay and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Now consider, we are all your people.”
In Advent, we remember that God did indeed tear open the heavens, did indeed come down here and do something. He came down here in the child Jesus. Mark’s Gospel tells us that at his baptism, Jesus saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion includes an earthquake. So, in Jesus, Isaiah’s prayers were answered, though likely on a schedule far different – and better – than Isaiah had envisioned.
From our Gospel reading we are reminded that Jesus will come again, not as a baby this time, but in power and glory. Jesus employs apocalyptic language and figures of speech used in his day to express the overwhelming scale and impact of this coming event – there will be signs in the heavens, and the Son of Man will come with great power and glory, to gather the elect from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
Jesus also said that only the Father knows when all this will happen – the angels don’t, even the Son doesn’t. There are lots of folks who want to try to set dates for us – this year marked the failure of not one but two of Harold Camping predictions, that of the Rapture on May 21 and the end of the world on October 21. I’m confident that the predictions of Hal Lindsay and John Hagee and the other screamers and shouters on radio and TV are just as far off-base – for example, Lindsay’s prediction of the Rapture a generation – estimated by Lindsay at 40 years - after the 1948 founding of the state of Israel is well past its sell-by date these 60+ years later.
That said, it’s easy to understand why so many listen to these predictions – because our world, like the world in Isaiah’s time, like the world of Jesus’ day, is threatening, especially to people of faith. Things seem out of control. Our natural environment is under assault on a global scale. There is great spiritual wickedness in high places. It may seem like God has left the building, like God has left the planet, has left us to our fate. When all that seems familiar is coming unglued, it’s a very natural human impulse to want the disruption to end. And it will, someday. But when it will happen, is not for us to know. In the meantime, in our reading from Mark’s Gospel, we have our instructions - to keep awake, to be faithful servants who are at their post whenever the Master returns. We have our instructions, to wait faithfully, and to live in hope.
The point of Jesus’ words is not for preachers on radio and TV to try to commit God to their timelines – the TV and radio preachers simply don’t have that authority over God. Rather, the point of Jesus’ words is for God to commit us to living our lives in a way that’s faithful to the Gospel. God in God’s sovereignty keeps God’s own council on matters of timing. Meanwhile, we are to preach and live out the Gospel. Jesus says, “Therefore, keep awake – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all – Keep awake!”
The day will come when Jesus will return in unimaginable power and glory. Until then, Christ’s body, the church, is here. Until then, Jesus said that wherever two or three gather in His name, he’ll be in the midst. Until then, every day in some congregations – among the Roman Catholics, for example - and at least every week here at Emanuel, the gathered church prays to God, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Until then, we’re praying for the coming of the Kingdom, for Jesus to return, and God will honor those prayers. Until then, through the work and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Christ is present in our words of love and deeds of compassion.
Remember that, as the saying goes, our lives – your lives, my life - may be the only Bible that unbelievers will ever read, the only Gospel they will ever hear. Let us at Emanuel Church not lead them astray by scribbling our own agendas in the margins. Instead, may we at Emanuel Church let God’s word shine forth from our lives, day by day for however many days God grants us on this earth. May those who walk through our doors truly say that “surely the Lord is in this place”, through our words of love and deeds of compassion truly come to know and love Emanuel – God with us. Amen.
Today is the first Sunday in Advent – the first Sunday in the church year. As sometimes happens, the church is out of step with society, and today doubly so. While our society celebrates New Year’s Day on January 1st, we celebrate the beginning of a new church year today. At the same time, most of society is already celebrating Christmas, has been celebrating Christmas since about Columbus Day or thereabouts – but in the church, we wait. We’ll celebrate Christmas in due time, but for now we observe Advent – from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming” – a time of waiting for One we know is coming, but has not yet arrived.
This year, Advent begins at a time when it may feel like things are coming unglued, falling apart. We just went through a Black Friday in which gung-ho shoppers used fists and pepper spray to drive off fellow shoppers - at a mall in North Carolina, the soundtrack of Christmas music was momentarily drowned out by the sound of gunfire. At good old Penn State, wholesome Happy Valley – my alma mater – the university president, Graham Spanier, along with longtime football coach Joe Paterno were dismissed amid accusations of having covered up the sexual abuse of teens and pre-teens. There’s an increasing sense that our national government is dysfunctional, political leaders from both parties bought (or bought off) and paid for by Wall Street – and at Occupy Philadelphia and other Occupy gatherings across the country, people are taking to the streets to demand change. While the protesters have been mostly peaceful, in many cities the police have not, and we’ve been treated to the ugly sight of police officers pepper-spraying and beating nonviolent protesters. International news is no more comforting, amid the threat of financial default in Europe, the threat of war in the Middle East. Amid frightening national and international news, we’ve had our own personal traumas – death of family members or friends, illness, unemployment, domestic violence striking us or those close to us. At our community Thanksgiving service on Wednesday, I heard that the cupboard, with the help of our donations, served over 300 families last week. 300 families who, but for God’s grace and the generosity of Emanuel and other churches, would go hungry. What a witness of the struggles our neighbors are grappling with here in Bridesburg and surrounding neighborhoods. We may be tempted to throw up our hands in despair. For people of faith, we can hardly be faulted for asking, “Why doesn’t God do something? Is God on lunch break, or did God maybe clock out early and go on vacation? Where’s God when we need Him?”
Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah was written at a time when it seemed like things were falling apart, spinning out of control. It comes from one of the last few chapters of Isaiah, written after the Jews had returned from exile and settled back in Jerusalem. They had returned from exile with such high hopes. But the rebuilding of the Temple had been slowed down by threats and interference from surrounding tribes, and also bogged down by community infighting. Similar to some of our current controversies over inclusion within the church, there was disagreement over who could be called a Jew, who could gather to worship the Lord, with some calling for exclusion of all except the super-observant, the purest of the pure, while others called for broad inclusion. The devastation of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem matched the disorganization and conflict among the Jewish people.
And so in his frustration Isaiah cries out to God, “Get down here and do something, will ya! Tear open the heavens and come down! Send fire and earthquake, so that our enemies will know you’re still in charge!” Isaiah recalls God’s works in the past – “When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.” Isaiah confesses the guilt of the people – “We have all become unclean, and even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags….our sin blows us away like the wind….nobody calls on you.” And Isaiah even blames some of the people’s misdeeds on God, “You were angry, and we sinned, because you hid yourself we messed up.” Isaiah reminds God “Yet, O Lord, you are our father, we are the clay and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Now consider, we are all your people.”
In Advent, we remember that God did indeed tear open the heavens, did indeed come down here and do something. He came down here in the child Jesus. Mark’s Gospel tells us that at his baptism, Jesus saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion includes an earthquake. So, in Jesus, Isaiah’s prayers were answered, though likely on a schedule far different – and better – than Isaiah had envisioned.
From our Gospel reading we are reminded that Jesus will come again, not as a baby this time, but in power and glory. Jesus employs apocalyptic language and figures of speech used in his day to express the overwhelming scale and impact of this coming event – there will be signs in the heavens, and the Son of Man will come with great power and glory, to gather the elect from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
Jesus also said that only the Father knows when all this will happen – the angels don’t, even the Son doesn’t. There are lots of folks who want to try to set dates for us – this year marked the failure of not one but two of Harold Camping predictions, that of the Rapture on May 21 and the end of the world on October 21. I’m confident that the predictions of Hal Lindsay and John Hagee and the other screamers and shouters on radio and TV are just as far off-base – for example, Lindsay’s prediction of the Rapture a generation – estimated by Lindsay at 40 years - after the 1948 founding of the state of Israel is well past its sell-by date these 60+ years later.
That said, it’s easy to understand why so many listen to these predictions – because our world, like the world in Isaiah’s time, like the world of Jesus’ day, is threatening, especially to people of faith. Things seem out of control. Our natural environment is under assault on a global scale. There is great spiritual wickedness in high places. It may seem like God has left the building, like God has left the planet, has left us to our fate. When all that seems familiar is coming unglued, it’s a very natural human impulse to want the disruption to end. And it will, someday. But when it will happen, is not for us to know. In the meantime, in our reading from Mark’s Gospel, we have our instructions - to keep awake, to be faithful servants who are at their post whenever the Master returns. We have our instructions, to wait faithfully, and to live in hope.
The point of Jesus’ words is not for preachers on radio and TV to try to commit God to their timelines – the TV and radio preachers simply don’t have that authority over God. Rather, the point of Jesus’ words is for God to commit us to living our lives in a way that’s faithful to the Gospel. God in God’s sovereignty keeps God’s own council on matters of timing. Meanwhile, we are to preach and live out the Gospel. Jesus says, “Therefore, keep awake – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all – Keep awake!”
The day will come when Jesus will return in unimaginable power and glory. Until then, Christ’s body, the church, is here. Until then, Jesus said that wherever two or three gather in His name, he’ll be in the midst. Until then, every day in some congregations – among the Roman Catholics, for example - and at least every week here at Emanuel, the gathered church prays to God, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Until then, we’re praying for the coming of the Kingdom, for Jesus to return, and God will honor those prayers. Until then, through the work and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Christ is present in our words of love and deeds of compassion.
Remember that, as the saying goes, our lives – your lives, my life - may be the only Bible that unbelievers will ever read, the only Gospel they will ever hear. Let us at Emanuel Church not lead them astray by scribbling our own agendas in the margins. Instead, may we at Emanuel Church let God’s word shine forth from our lives, day by day for however many days God grants us on this earth. May those who walk through our doors truly say that “surely the Lord is in this place”, through our words of love and deeds of compassion truly come to know and love Emanuel – God with us. Amen.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
God With Us
(Scriptures: Isaiah 7:10-16
Romans 1:1-7 Matthew 1:18-25)
Joseph had a problem. It came at a time which should have been the among the happiest of his life – he had just gotten engaged, to Mary. Wedding plans were in motion, and Joseph and Mary were ready to begin a life together. And then Mary turned up pregnant. And Joseph knew perfectly well that whoever’s child it was, it wasn’t his, as he and Mary had not been intimate. Uh oh.
What to do? Well, what does the Bible say? And at that time, the “Bible”, of course, would be the Old Testament, as the New Testament hadn’t been written yet. Deuteronomy 22:23 reads as follows: “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”
Ugh…kind of a harsh way to break off an engagement! Joseph loved Mary. He didn’t want to embarrass Mary, embarrass Mary’s family, risk Mary’s being dragged to the town gate and stoned to death. On the other hand, he certainly didn’t want to take responsibility to raise a child that wasn’t his. What a mess. How could Mary have let this happen to herself? Joseph’s dream of spending the rest of his life with Mary was turning into a nightmare.
Joseph turned embarrassing situation over and over in his mind, and had come to the conclusion that the best thing for both parties was to send Mary away quietly, to give both of them a chance to move on with their lives. Of course, that would still leave Mary raising a child alone, or maybe moving back in with her parents, but it would avoid public humiliation, and maybe even the risk of a public execution, for Mary. And Joseph could take some time to catch his breath, to get over his embarrassment and anger and sense of betrayal, and maybe begin a life with another girl. There need be no blood on the ground over this. Send Mary away quietly….yes, that’s how to make the best of a bad situation. Joseph had settled on his course of action……..
…….when he was visited in a dream by an angel, a messenger of God, who turned all his careful plans upside down. “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for this child is from the Holy Spirit.” Mary hadn’t been unfaithful to Joseph. Rather, the baby was a gift from God. You are to name him Jesus – it’s the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua, meaning, “The Lord saves” – because he will save people from their sins. And then the angel reminds him of a text that had been one of Judah’s stories, about a baby named Immanuel, meaning “God with us,” whose birth had been the sign that Isaiah had given to frightened King Ahaz, that he might trust in God’s protection. And unlike King Ahaz, whose faith in God was wobbly at best, Joseph trusted in the angel’s message and took Mary as his wife.
Our reading from Matthew began with these words: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” The Greek word translated as “birth” is Genesis – the same word that is the name of the first book of the Old Testament. The book of Genesis gave us creation; the birth or genesis of Jesus Christ gives us new creation. In the birth of Jesus, as at the story of creation, all things are made new, never to be the same again.
God with us. Despite all of humanity’s resisting God and turning away from God, God insisted on being with us, intimately with us, with us as a little baby, with us needing to be fed and diapered, with us depending at every step on Mary’s love and Joseph’s protection from those who would soon be seeking to take the child’s life.
We all have those moments when our faith in God is shaken, when we feel that God is a distant, a million miles away, way out there in the heavens. We all have those moments of great tragedy, or daily moments of frustration, when we feel that God has forgotten us, like God has too much on God’s mind to be bothered with our problems. We ask, “where was God when my loved one got sick, or was in an accident, or was cut down unexpectedly in some other way. Where was God when these things happened to me?” The voice of doubt in our mind, like the voice of Job’s wife during Job’s afflictions, cries out in despair, “Curse God and die.”
Jesus is the sign of the promise that God is with us, intimately with us, with us in every experience of human life. Jesus knew what it was to be helpless, to be hungry and thirsty, to need to have his diapers changed. Jesus knew what it was to be a child, having to ask his parents for answers to every question, to be a teenager, finding his way, to grow into adulthood. Jesus experienced every bit of what it means to be human, and yet, Scripture tells us, without sin. Because of this, Jesus is truly God-with-us, God with us in our joys and our sorrows, our moments of helplessness, in all our daily trials and tragedies. In our moments of rejoicing, because of Jesus, God is with us, rejoicing. In our moments of sorrow, because of Jesus, God is with us, weeping on our behalf.
We might be thinking, “I don’t want God to stand next to me and weep. I know plenty well how to weep all by myself. I want God to fix things!” But for reasons best known to God, God doesn’t promise to insulate the faithful from life’s trials, but rather to be present with us, never to leave us nor forsake us. Despite God’s presence in their midst, Mary and Joseph faced life for a time as refugees from Herod’s wrath. In their trials God was with them, present to warn them of approaching danger, present to provide strength for the journey. As Paul said in I Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in this world to shame the wise; God chose what was weak in this world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in this world, the things that are not, to reduce to nothing the things that are.” At every turn, at every step, the ways of God turn the ways of human beings upside down – or more likely, our ways are upside down and God is turning them right-side-up. The power of human beings is like boots tramping down the ground, or like a sledgehammer coming down from above. The power of God is like seeds sprouting up secretly. When Herod wants to make his presence felt, he sends an army. When God wants to make God’s presence felt, God sends a baby.
For us who gather here today at Emanuel Church, this is good news indeed! God who has been with this congregation at every step of the way through the past 150 years, is still with us every step of the way, even today, this hour, this moment, in our midst. With our small membership, we who are weak by the worldly standards of numbers and dollars are open to being used by God in a way that those who are strong by worldly standards can’t. Our numbers and our resources, our own might, won’t get us very far; it is only by God’s grace that we can stand at all. Paul’s words again: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” Sounds like us at Emanuel all right! But those are the very people with whom God’s presence will abide, the very people who are open to being used by God to bring God’s great good news to others.
One of the prayers of confession in the UCC book of worship begins, “God, we confess that it is not easy to wait for you. Our world worships the power that acts quickly through force; how difficult it is for us to wait for the power of your rule which comes slowly through love.” Advent’s season of waiting will soon be over; in a few days, on Christmas Eve, we’ll celebrate the birth of the Christ child. May the season of Advent waiting give us patience to wait for Jesus, called Immanuel, God with us, to be attentive and alert for the signs of God’s presence.
Hear these words from Catholic author and mystic Thomas Merton, as he meditated on Jesus’ birth in a manger: “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.”
And let me close with these verses from a familiar hymn, written not so far from here in Philadelphia:
“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin.
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”
Let every heart prepare him room. Amen.
******************
At Emanuel Church, we are thankful that God has been with us for almost 150 years. You can be with us, too, on Christmas Eve at 7 p.m. We're at 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson) in Philadelphia's Bridesburg neighborhood. Let every heart prepare Him room!
Romans 1:1-7 Matthew 1:18-25)
Joseph had a problem. It came at a time which should have been the among the happiest of his life – he had just gotten engaged, to Mary. Wedding plans were in motion, and Joseph and Mary were ready to begin a life together. And then Mary turned up pregnant. And Joseph knew perfectly well that whoever’s child it was, it wasn’t his, as he and Mary had not been intimate. Uh oh.
What to do? Well, what does the Bible say? And at that time, the “Bible”, of course, would be the Old Testament, as the New Testament hadn’t been written yet. Deuteronomy 22:23 reads as follows: “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”
Ugh…kind of a harsh way to break off an engagement! Joseph loved Mary. He didn’t want to embarrass Mary, embarrass Mary’s family, risk Mary’s being dragged to the town gate and stoned to death. On the other hand, he certainly didn’t want to take responsibility to raise a child that wasn’t his. What a mess. How could Mary have let this happen to herself? Joseph’s dream of spending the rest of his life with Mary was turning into a nightmare.
Joseph turned embarrassing situation over and over in his mind, and had come to the conclusion that the best thing for both parties was to send Mary away quietly, to give both of them a chance to move on with their lives. Of course, that would still leave Mary raising a child alone, or maybe moving back in with her parents, but it would avoid public humiliation, and maybe even the risk of a public execution, for Mary. And Joseph could take some time to catch his breath, to get over his embarrassment and anger and sense of betrayal, and maybe begin a life with another girl. There need be no blood on the ground over this. Send Mary away quietly….yes, that’s how to make the best of a bad situation. Joseph had settled on his course of action……..
…….when he was visited in a dream by an angel, a messenger of God, who turned all his careful plans upside down. “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for this child is from the Holy Spirit.” Mary hadn’t been unfaithful to Joseph. Rather, the baby was a gift from God. You are to name him Jesus – it’s the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua, meaning, “The Lord saves” – because he will save people from their sins. And then the angel reminds him of a text that had been one of Judah’s stories, about a baby named Immanuel, meaning “God with us,” whose birth had been the sign that Isaiah had given to frightened King Ahaz, that he might trust in God’s protection. And unlike King Ahaz, whose faith in God was wobbly at best, Joseph trusted in the angel’s message and took Mary as his wife.
Our reading from Matthew began with these words: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” The Greek word translated as “birth” is Genesis – the same word that is the name of the first book of the Old Testament. The book of Genesis gave us creation; the birth or genesis of Jesus Christ gives us new creation. In the birth of Jesus, as at the story of creation, all things are made new, never to be the same again.
God with us. Despite all of humanity’s resisting God and turning away from God, God insisted on being with us, intimately with us, with us as a little baby, with us needing to be fed and diapered, with us depending at every step on Mary’s love and Joseph’s protection from those who would soon be seeking to take the child’s life.
We all have those moments when our faith in God is shaken, when we feel that God is a distant, a million miles away, way out there in the heavens. We all have those moments of great tragedy, or daily moments of frustration, when we feel that God has forgotten us, like God has too much on God’s mind to be bothered with our problems. We ask, “where was God when my loved one got sick, or was in an accident, or was cut down unexpectedly in some other way. Where was God when these things happened to me?” The voice of doubt in our mind, like the voice of Job’s wife during Job’s afflictions, cries out in despair, “Curse God and die.”
Jesus is the sign of the promise that God is with us, intimately with us, with us in every experience of human life. Jesus knew what it was to be helpless, to be hungry and thirsty, to need to have his diapers changed. Jesus knew what it was to be a child, having to ask his parents for answers to every question, to be a teenager, finding his way, to grow into adulthood. Jesus experienced every bit of what it means to be human, and yet, Scripture tells us, without sin. Because of this, Jesus is truly God-with-us, God with us in our joys and our sorrows, our moments of helplessness, in all our daily trials and tragedies. In our moments of rejoicing, because of Jesus, God is with us, rejoicing. In our moments of sorrow, because of Jesus, God is with us, weeping on our behalf.
We might be thinking, “I don’t want God to stand next to me and weep. I know plenty well how to weep all by myself. I want God to fix things!” But for reasons best known to God, God doesn’t promise to insulate the faithful from life’s trials, but rather to be present with us, never to leave us nor forsake us. Despite God’s presence in their midst, Mary and Joseph faced life for a time as refugees from Herod’s wrath. In their trials God was with them, present to warn them of approaching danger, present to provide strength for the journey. As Paul said in I Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in this world to shame the wise; God chose what was weak in this world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in this world, the things that are not, to reduce to nothing the things that are.” At every turn, at every step, the ways of God turn the ways of human beings upside down – or more likely, our ways are upside down and God is turning them right-side-up. The power of human beings is like boots tramping down the ground, or like a sledgehammer coming down from above. The power of God is like seeds sprouting up secretly. When Herod wants to make his presence felt, he sends an army. When God wants to make God’s presence felt, God sends a baby.
For us who gather here today at Emanuel Church, this is good news indeed! God who has been with this congregation at every step of the way through the past 150 years, is still with us every step of the way, even today, this hour, this moment, in our midst. With our small membership, we who are weak by the worldly standards of numbers and dollars are open to being used by God in a way that those who are strong by worldly standards can’t. Our numbers and our resources, our own might, won’t get us very far; it is only by God’s grace that we can stand at all. Paul’s words again: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” Sounds like us at Emanuel all right! But those are the very people with whom God’s presence will abide, the very people who are open to being used by God to bring God’s great good news to others.
One of the prayers of confession in the UCC book of worship begins, “God, we confess that it is not easy to wait for you. Our world worships the power that acts quickly through force; how difficult it is for us to wait for the power of your rule which comes slowly through love.” Advent’s season of waiting will soon be over; in a few days, on Christmas Eve, we’ll celebrate the birth of the Christ child. May the season of Advent waiting give us patience to wait for Jesus, called Immanuel, God with us, to be attentive and alert for the signs of God’s presence.
Hear these words from Catholic author and mystic Thomas Merton, as he meditated on Jesus’ birth in a manger: “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.”
And let me close with these verses from a familiar hymn, written not so far from here in Philadelphia:
“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin.
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”
Let every heart prepare him room. Amen.
******************
At Emanuel Church, we are thankful that God has been with us for almost 150 years. You can be with us, too, on Christmas Eve at 7 p.m. We're at 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson) in Philadelphia's Bridesburg neighborhood. Let every heart prepare Him room!
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Are You The One?
In last week’s Gospel reading, we met for the first time John the Baptist, the wildman in the wilderness, that voice, crying in the wilderness, saying, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” In a few weeks, we’ll read of what happens when Jesus as an adult responds to John’s voice, and comes to be baptized. John is so overawed by meeting Jesus that he says that instead of John baptizing Jesus, Jesus should instead be baptizing him.
In today’s Gospel, we’re given a glimpse of both Jesus and John, maybe a year or two after Jesus was baptized. Time has passed, and both Jesus and John continued their respective ministries. In Matthew we’re told much about Jesus’ teaching ministry, particularly when Matthew gives us Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We’re also told early on that Jesus was a powerful healer, and following the Sermon on the Mount we’re given several accounts of healing – Jesus cleansing a leper, Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, Jesus restoring two demoniacs by casting out the demons, healing a paralytic so that he could stand up and walk, healing two blind men, restores speech to one who was mute, and even raising the daughter of a synagogue leader from the dead. At this point, the crowds following Jesus are so great that Jesus commissions his disciples to heal and to proclaim the good news.
While all this is going on, John the Baptist for the most part drops out of sight. But when we do get a glimpse of John, we get the feeling that John….has mixed feelings about Jesus. John preached about judgment, about the unquenchable fire of God’s wrath against the unfaithful. His message could be summed up in three words: “turn or burn.” John lived an ascetic, bare-bones life, living on locusts and wild honey.
Jesus’ ministry was different from John’s. While John’s preaching was all hellfire and judgment, Jesus spoke of a gracious God who forgave those who repented. While John’s disciples fasted, Jesus and his disciples ate, drank, even partied. When John’s disciples questioned the propriety of Jesus’ disciples feasting while they were fasting, Jesus said that fasting was inappropriate while Jesus was with them, part of the old wineskins that could not hold the new wine of the kingdom of heaven of which Jesus spoke. So John’s disciples and Jesus’ disciples, John’s ministry and Jesus’ ministry, began to part company. In today’s Gospel, John, now in prison because he fell foul of Herod, sends his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” John, who earlier in his ministry in holy boldness had publicly compared the Pharisees and Sadducees to a snakepit, was in prison, awaiting execution, and feeling discouraged. John, who earlier in Matthew’s Gospel was in such awe of Jesus that he wanted Jesus to baptize him, now has serious doubts. “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another? Jesus, you sure aren’t the kind of Messiah I was expecting. Are you the Messiah, or are you not?” John, who had done so much to prepare the way for Jesus, is now wondering if it had been all for naught. It had to be a painful moment, for John who had baptized and prepared the way for Jesus, and for Jesus himself, whose public ministry began with being baptized by John.
Jesus’ response is interesting. Rather than getting his back up, rather than mounting some lengthy defense of his authority, Jesus prefers to let the fruits of his ministry speak for themselves. “Go and tell John what you see: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Remember our reading from Isaiah earlier today, about the eyes of the blind being opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame leaping like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless singing for joy - the very things Isaiah said would happen, Jesus did – and more. Isaiah didn’t say anything about raising the dead, but Jesus did it nonetheless. Jesus went on: “And blessed is anyone who does not take offense at me” – the Greek means literally “blessed is the one who is not made to stumble because of me”.
After John’s disciples return to report Jesus’ words, Jesus goes on to talk about John. And while John had doubts about Jesus, Jesus had no doubts about John. Despite John’s doubts, Jesus proclaims that John is a prophet, and indeed more than a prophet – he is the one preparing the way for Jesus, the Elijah figure that many had looked for. And yet for all this, Jesus has these surprising and poignant words: “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” If John was like the prophet Elijah, John was also a bit like Moses, who prepared his followers to enter the promised land, yet who himself could not enter, but could only look at it from a distance. For all his prophetic ministry, John was stuck in old expectations and old practices, and struggled to accept fully that in Jesus, God himself had entered the scene and was doing something radically new.
While I don’t think any of us have been out in the desert eating locusts and wild honey as John did, I suspect that in a sense, we’ve all from time to time been with John in prison, feeling discouraged and having doubts. We’ve sacrificed much – time, energy, material wealth – to follow Jesus. We believed that becoming a disciple of Christ would totally transform our lives – we believed Jesus would save us, save us from our sins and shortcomings in this life, and save us for eternal life in the world to come. We’re on fire for the Lord! We want to see our lives, and the world around us, change – and not some time way out in the distant yonder, either, but right away, today, yesterday even! And yet, life around us goes on as it ever has, same annoyances, same problems, same tragedies. In fact, since we’ve begun following Jesus, maybe instead of getting better, things have actually gotten worse: we’ve lost a job and despair over how we’re going to feed our family, someone we’ve for whom we’ve poured out prayer upon prayer has instead of recovering, gotten sicker, maybe even died. Maybe we’ve prayed for God to help a family member turn their life around, but we see that family member stuck in the same self-destructive behavior. Or maybe our involvement in church has turned family or friends away from us. We invite people to church, and nobody comes. We read about passages like our Isaiah reading today about the wilderness and the dry land becoming glad, the desert rejoicing and blooming – but what we see in front of us and around us looks like the same desert we saw yesterday, the same wilderness we’ve been trudging through for days and weeks and years on end. And we begin to doubt: was committing to following Jesus a mistake? Is what I’m doing a total waste of time? Should I just go back to the life I knew before I met Jesus?
In these moments, let’s remember Jesus’ words for John’s disciples: “Go and tell John what you’ve seen: the blind can see, the deaf hear, and so forth.” In those moments of discouragement, remember what it was that made you follow Jesus in the first place. In those moments of discouragement, remember how God has blessed you along the way. Remember those times when God has used you to bring good news. Scripture tells us that “the word of the Lord will not return void.” Though we may not see the fruit of our efforts, we can have faith that nothing we do for Jesus is wasted. Our reading from the letter of James reminds us that just as farmers have to wait for their seed to bear fruit, so we must be patient, and continue in faith, keeping on keeping on in faith until the coming of the Lord.
A recent personal example: before I began hanging out in Bridesburg, I was a member of a larger United Church of Christ congregation in Center City. Compared to Emanuel, my former congregation was a good bit larger – even on a bad Sunday, they get 100 out to worship - and, unlike here, it was easy for folks to get lost in the crowd. Here at Emanuel, if you’re not here, everyone knows it, and your presence is missed – not to condemn, but just in the sense that we’re a family here at Emanuel, and we feel like we’re not complete when a familiar pew is empty, just like an empty seat at Thanksgiving dinner reminds us that a family member is missing from the table. But in a larger congregation, someone could - and quite a few people did - drop out of sight and it might be months until someone asked, “whatever happened to so and so.” Over and over at board meetings, I used to lament, “we have a big front door” – where people enter – “and we have a big back door” – where people sneak out and leave, never to return. And so one thing I did as one of the elders was to get the attendance records periodically from the secretary, and call or write cards to folks who hadn’t been to church for a while, or to folks I hadn’t seen recently. It was nothing very formal or organized, just something I did on my own in a fairly random, disorganized way. Three times a year – usually a few weeks before Christmas, a few weeks before Easter, and in mid-August, just before school started, I’d go through the attendance records, write out two dozen or so “thinking of you” cards and mail them out. And while every once in a great while someone would come back to church – for a few weeks anyway – the vast majority didn’t. And I got discouraged: “Is what I’m doing a waste of time and stamps? Why am I doing this? I’m beating my head against a wall. Nothing is happening.” But I kept on keeping on over a number of years, until I was called to be pastor here at Emanuel Church.
In mid-November, just about a month ago, I got an email from the pastor of my former congregation. He told me of his recent visit to a shut in member, who had a progressive illness that made it hard for her to get out, and as a result, while she had once been quite active, she had gradually come to church less and less until now she hadn’t been to church in years. The church sends out lots of broadcast emails to the membership, a few every week, and one day she wrote back, saying, “Could someone from the church contact me?” and hit reply. And the pastor went to visit. And as the pastor and this shut-in member talked, she told the pastor, “There was this guy at the church named Dave, and when I started getting sick and couldn’t come to church as often, I used to get cards from him, and he kept me in touch with what was going on at church. And then a few years back, the cards stopped. Whatever happened to him?” Of course, the pastor told the shut-in that I’m now serving a church in Bridesburg. But I felt like this was God telling me that I hadn’t been wasting my time; that all that time God had been using what I did, that for some people, those random cards over the course of the year were one of the threads that helped connect them to the church. And now, in those moments when I get discouraged, I can remember what the pastor of my former congregation told me about that shut-in visit, remember that God who was working at my former congregation is at work here at Emanuel Church, and receive encouragement to keep on going another day.
“Are you the one who is to come,” John’s disciples asked, “or should we wait for someone else?” And Jesus told them to tell John what they saw: the blind seeing, deaf hearing, dead being raised – people being blessed. While we may not feel God’s presence or see God working in exactly the way we expect, nonetheless God is present – God will never leave us nor forsake us. When we’re discouraged, like John’s disciples, we can remember those “God moments” in the past when we’ve felt God especially close. In moments of discouragement, may we remember and give thanks for the blessings we’ve received, and may we remember and give thanks for the ways that God has used us to bless others. Amen.
**************
O come, all ye faithful to Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org
In today’s Gospel, we’re given a glimpse of both Jesus and John, maybe a year or two after Jesus was baptized. Time has passed, and both Jesus and John continued their respective ministries. In Matthew we’re told much about Jesus’ teaching ministry, particularly when Matthew gives us Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We’re also told early on that Jesus was a powerful healer, and following the Sermon on the Mount we’re given several accounts of healing – Jesus cleansing a leper, Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, Jesus restoring two demoniacs by casting out the demons, healing a paralytic so that he could stand up and walk, healing two blind men, restores speech to one who was mute, and even raising the daughter of a synagogue leader from the dead. At this point, the crowds following Jesus are so great that Jesus commissions his disciples to heal and to proclaim the good news.
While all this is going on, John the Baptist for the most part drops out of sight. But when we do get a glimpse of John, we get the feeling that John….has mixed feelings about Jesus. John preached about judgment, about the unquenchable fire of God’s wrath against the unfaithful. His message could be summed up in three words: “turn or burn.” John lived an ascetic, bare-bones life, living on locusts and wild honey.
Jesus’ ministry was different from John’s. While John’s preaching was all hellfire and judgment, Jesus spoke of a gracious God who forgave those who repented. While John’s disciples fasted, Jesus and his disciples ate, drank, even partied. When John’s disciples questioned the propriety of Jesus’ disciples feasting while they were fasting, Jesus said that fasting was inappropriate while Jesus was with them, part of the old wineskins that could not hold the new wine of the kingdom of heaven of which Jesus spoke. So John’s disciples and Jesus’ disciples, John’s ministry and Jesus’ ministry, began to part company. In today’s Gospel, John, now in prison because he fell foul of Herod, sends his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” John, who earlier in his ministry in holy boldness had publicly compared the Pharisees and Sadducees to a snakepit, was in prison, awaiting execution, and feeling discouraged. John, who earlier in Matthew’s Gospel was in such awe of Jesus that he wanted Jesus to baptize him, now has serious doubts. “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another? Jesus, you sure aren’t the kind of Messiah I was expecting. Are you the Messiah, or are you not?” John, who had done so much to prepare the way for Jesus, is now wondering if it had been all for naught. It had to be a painful moment, for John who had baptized and prepared the way for Jesus, and for Jesus himself, whose public ministry began with being baptized by John.
Jesus’ response is interesting. Rather than getting his back up, rather than mounting some lengthy defense of his authority, Jesus prefers to let the fruits of his ministry speak for themselves. “Go and tell John what you see: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Remember our reading from Isaiah earlier today, about the eyes of the blind being opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame leaping like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless singing for joy - the very things Isaiah said would happen, Jesus did – and more. Isaiah didn’t say anything about raising the dead, but Jesus did it nonetheless. Jesus went on: “And blessed is anyone who does not take offense at me” – the Greek means literally “blessed is the one who is not made to stumble because of me”.
After John’s disciples return to report Jesus’ words, Jesus goes on to talk about John. And while John had doubts about Jesus, Jesus had no doubts about John. Despite John’s doubts, Jesus proclaims that John is a prophet, and indeed more than a prophet – he is the one preparing the way for Jesus, the Elijah figure that many had looked for. And yet for all this, Jesus has these surprising and poignant words: “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” If John was like the prophet Elijah, John was also a bit like Moses, who prepared his followers to enter the promised land, yet who himself could not enter, but could only look at it from a distance. For all his prophetic ministry, John was stuck in old expectations and old practices, and struggled to accept fully that in Jesus, God himself had entered the scene and was doing something radically new.
While I don’t think any of us have been out in the desert eating locusts and wild honey as John did, I suspect that in a sense, we’ve all from time to time been with John in prison, feeling discouraged and having doubts. We’ve sacrificed much – time, energy, material wealth – to follow Jesus. We believed that becoming a disciple of Christ would totally transform our lives – we believed Jesus would save us, save us from our sins and shortcomings in this life, and save us for eternal life in the world to come. We’re on fire for the Lord! We want to see our lives, and the world around us, change – and not some time way out in the distant yonder, either, but right away, today, yesterday even! And yet, life around us goes on as it ever has, same annoyances, same problems, same tragedies. In fact, since we’ve begun following Jesus, maybe instead of getting better, things have actually gotten worse: we’ve lost a job and despair over how we’re going to feed our family, someone we’ve for whom we’ve poured out prayer upon prayer has instead of recovering, gotten sicker, maybe even died. Maybe we’ve prayed for God to help a family member turn their life around, but we see that family member stuck in the same self-destructive behavior. Or maybe our involvement in church has turned family or friends away from us. We invite people to church, and nobody comes. We read about passages like our Isaiah reading today about the wilderness and the dry land becoming glad, the desert rejoicing and blooming – but what we see in front of us and around us looks like the same desert we saw yesterday, the same wilderness we’ve been trudging through for days and weeks and years on end. And we begin to doubt: was committing to following Jesus a mistake? Is what I’m doing a total waste of time? Should I just go back to the life I knew before I met Jesus?
In these moments, let’s remember Jesus’ words for John’s disciples: “Go and tell John what you’ve seen: the blind can see, the deaf hear, and so forth.” In those moments of discouragement, remember what it was that made you follow Jesus in the first place. In those moments of discouragement, remember how God has blessed you along the way. Remember those times when God has used you to bring good news. Scripture tells us that “the word of the Lord will not return void.” Though we may not see the fruit of our efforts, we can have faith that nothing we do for Jesus is wasted. Our reading from the letter of James reminds us that just as farmers have to wait for their seed to bear fruit, so we must be patient, and continue in faith, keeping on keeping on in faith until the coming of the Lord.
A recent personal example: before I began hanging out in Bridesburg, I was a member of a larger United Church of Christ congregation in Center City. Compared to Emanuel, my former congregation was a good bit larger – even on a bad Sunday, they get 100 out to worship - and, unlike here, it was easy for folks to get lost in the crowd. Here at Emanuel, if you’re not here, everyone knows it, and your presence is missed – not to condemn, but just in the sense that we’re a family here at Emanuel, and we feel like we’re not complete when a familiar pew is empty, just like an empty seat at Thanksgiving dinner reminds us that a family member is missing from the table. But in a larger congregation, someone could - and quite a few people did - drop out of sight and it might be months until someone asked, “whatever happened to so and so.” Over and over at board meetings, I used to lament, “we have a big front door” – where people enter – “and we have a big back door” – where people sneak out and leave, never to return. And so one thing I did as one of the elders was to get the attendance records periodically from the secretary, and call or write cards to folks who hadn’t been to church for a while, or to folks I hadn’t seen recently. It was nothing very formal or organized, just something I did on my own in a fairly random, disorganized way. Three times a year – usually a few weeks before Christmas, a few weeks before Easter, and in mid-August, just before school started, I’d go through the attendance records, write out two dozen or so “thinking of you” cards and mail them out. And while every once in a great while someone would come back to church – for a few weeks anyway – the vast majority didn’t. And I got discouraged: “Is what I’m doing a waste of time and stamps? Why am I doing this? I’m beating my head against a wall. Nothing is happening.” But I kept on keeping on over a number of years, until I was called to be pastor here at Emanuel Church.
In mid-November, just about a month ago, I got an email from the pastor of my former congregation. He told me of his recent visit to a shut in member, who had a progressive illness that made it hard for her to get out, and as a result, while she had once been quite active, she had gradually come to church less and less until now she hadn’t been to church in years. The church sends out lots of broadcast emails to the membership, a few every week, and one day she wrote back, saying, “Could someone from the church contact me?” and hit reply. And the pastor went to visit. And as the pastor and this shut-in member talked, she told the pastor, “There was this guy at the church named Dave, and when I started getting sick and couldn’t come to church as often, I used to get cards from him, and he kept me in touch with what was going on at church. And then a few years back, the cards stopped. Whatever happened to him?” Of course, the pastor told the shut-in that I’m now serving a church in Bridesburg. But I felt like this was God telling me that I hadn’t been wasting my time; that all that time God had been using what I did, that for some people, those random cards over the course of the year were one of the threads that helped connect them to the church. And now, in those moments when I get discouraged, I can remember what the pastor of my former congregation told me about that shut-in visit, remember that God who was working at my former congregation is at work here at Emanuel Church, and receive encouragement to keep on going another day.
“Are you the one who is to come,” John’s disciples asked, “or should we wait for someone else?” And Jesus told them to tell John what they saw: the blind seeing, deaf hearing, dead being raised – people being blessed. While we may not feel God’s presence or see God working in exactly the way we expect, nonetheless God is present – God will never leave us nor forsake us. When we’re discouraged, like John’s disciples, we can remember those “God moments” in the past when we’ve felt God especially close. In moments of discouragement, may we remember and give thanks for the blessings we’ve received, and may we remember and give thanks for the ways that God has used us to bless others. Amen.
**************
O come, all ye faithful to Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org
Sunday, December 5, 2010
A Voice In The Wilderness
(Scriptures: Isaiah 11:1-10, Romans 15:4-13, Matthew 3:1-12)
We continue today in the season of Advent. While many of our neighbors are going to the mall and letting their kids sit on Santa’s lap, we in the church are out in the desert with John the Baptist. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. And yet, today we also watched Al walk to the Advent wreath and light the candles of hope and peace – and these themes are picked up in our reading from Isaiah. And so even though John’s words are unlike anything you’ll ever hear from a shopping mall Santa, we can have faith that, ultimately, they are gospel – good news.
Today’s readings give us two powerful, and very different sets of images. The Isaiah reading tells us of a person coming in a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord – who is described as a shoot coming out of a stump. This person will bring such incredible peace that even the animal world will no longer be predatory. Even the animals will testify to God’s reign of peace. It’s almost like comparing the images we see on a nature show like Animal Planet – in which bigger animals hunt down and kill smaller animals – into something that looks like an old Disney cartoon, where all the animals live together in harmony. This mighty one to come will look out for the interests of the poor and vulnerable – will judge with equity for the meek of the earth. And then come these beautiful words: “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” And Isaiah’s vision is inclusive – even the nations – the Gentiles - shall inquire of Jesse. This image of the Gentiles coming to Judah to learn of God is echoed repeatedly in our reading from Romans, and we’ll see it again in Matthew’s Gospel. Similarly, last week’s Old Testament reading was also from Isaiah, and also had a theme of peace – it was the passage which prophesied that swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; nation would not rise up against nation, neither learn war any more. Isaiah gives us the image of the shoot coming out of a stump – the image is that of a place where there had once been a great tree, which had been cut down. The stump appeared lifeless and dead, beyond hope. The stump represents Judah, currently under attack from the very Gentile nations who will later come to Judah to inquire of God. But then, a shoot starts sprouting – in that stump, there’s still life. Even after a time of calamity and destruction, comes a sprout of hope. And that sprout, that shoot, will bring life, to Jew and Gentile alike.
And then comes that other image – that of John the Baptist, the wildman in the wilderness. We don’t get much background in Matthew’s Gospel, but Luke’s Gospel gives us some back-story – his father, Zechariah, was a priest, of the priestly order of Abijah. An angel proclaimed his birth to Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, both old and long past the years of childbearing. But while John was born into a priestly family and likely spent at least part of his formative years among his father’s priestly colleagues, by the time we meet him in Matthew, he has long since left behind the world of the Temple, of sacrifice and liturgical ceremony. John is out in the desert, dressed strangely – in fact, with his robe of camel hair and leather belt, his dress evokes the community’s memory of the prophet Elijah. He lives a marginal existence, eating locusts and wild honey - a diet like that of the guy on Survivorman or one of those other wilderness survival shows - telling people they had to repent and get right with God – and people flocked out into the wilderness to hear him.
It’s not hard to imagine what his message sounded like – because we have street preachers right here in Philadelphia. They look funny. Sometimes they smell funny. Their voices grate on our nerves. Usually we try to avoid them. There’s one in particular, who died some years back, that I remember, and maybe you might as well – she was a lady with the sandwich board that used to preach in the area around City Hall some years ago – she had a sing-song, raspy voice, and day after day, fair weather or foul, she proclaimed her message: "Sinner….
Sinner…If you want to see the devil, take a look in the mirror…..” If you were on the El and she walked into your car, you might move to another car. But Matthew’s gospel said that folks went out into the wilderness to hear John the Baptist – his message that they had to change their lives hit home with them. In fact, Matthew goes out of his way to say that the people of Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region along the Jordan – some of which was Gentile territory – came out to John. In Isaiah we read about the Gentile nations coming to inquire of Jesse, and we see that vision playing out in John’s ministry. John sacrificed much in the way of comfort – plentiful food and comfortable clothing, community life – in order to be faithful to God’s call. In this sacrifice, John’s listeners could see that John’s message had integrity – John not only talked the talk, he walked the walk of faith.
Matthew’s gospel says that Pharisees and Sadducees were coming out to see this wilderness prophet. Remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t get along – the Pharisees believed in the resurrection while the Sadducees didn’t; the Sadducees were tied into the Temple leadership – John’s father Zechariah likely knew lots of Sadducees - and the Sadducees played politics with Rome while the Pharisees were more for the common people. But, as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend – at least for the moment. They were able to put their differences aside for the moment and join together in a temporary, cynical sort of alliance against the threat both groups saw in John. And of course, John sees right through their charade of piety: “You brood of vipers -Who warned you to flee the wrath to come….!” Ouch! But, remember, John had grown up among the Temple establishment, so he likely knew what he was talking about. Heaven knows that in our day, there is no shortage of vipers among the clergy and lay leadership of some churches and even some denominations.
Of course, as Jews, the Sadducees and Pharisees saw themselves as God’s chosen people, while the Gentiles in the surrounding nations were not. The Sadducees and Pharisees thought they would be saved by their family heritage, their status as leaders of God’s chosen people, their membership in a long line of ancestors leading back to Abraham. But John the Baptist bursts their bubble – “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor.’ ” Last week’s Isaiah reading, as well as this week’s reading from Romans, speak of the Gentiles coming to glorify God’s name – and John the Baptist tells the crowd that God can raise up children for Abraham out of the very stones on the ground, if God so desires. The Sadducees and Pharisees cannot rest on the accomplishments of their ancestors. Their own lives had to be right with God. In a sense, through John, God is telling these religious leaders, “Yes, yes, I know your ancestors well – but their deeds of faith are in the past. So what have you done for me lately?”
John goes on to use even more urgent imagery – “the ax is lying at the root of the trees”. If I’m a tree, one thing I don’t want to see anywhere near me is an ax. If I’m a tree, an ax has the power to turn me from a towering oak into a stump – sort of like the stump in the Isaiah reading. John is giving the Sadducees and Pharisees a stark choice: bear fruit or be cut down. Produce or perish. Grow - or die.
John also uses the image of a winnowing fork. A winnowing fork was used with grain that was newly harvested from the fields. The farmer would use the fork to throw the grain up in the air. The chaff, or husk, of the grain was lighter, and when the grain was thrown up in the air, the breeze would carry it off. The heavier kernel would fall to the floor, and it was those kernels of grain that would be used to bake bread, after the chaff or husks had first been removed.
In the United Church of Christ we rarely hear this sort of stark, “turn or burn” language. It makes us uncomfortable. It reminds of us slick TV evangelists and wild-eyed fundamentalist preachers condemning everyone around them to hell. That’s not who we are in the UCC. So I’d like to follow John’s words in a slightly different direction than what you’ll hear from the TV preachers – though I have no intention of letting anyone off the hook of John’s words.
John’s words are first and foremost motivated by a sense of urgency. He is presented as announcing the coming of “one who is more powerful than I.” The coming of this “more powerful” One will change everything. John wants his listeners to be ready for the coming of this powerful Savior of the World. I can see almost picture John wanting to pick these smug religious leaders off the ground and shake them – “Wake up! Pay attention!”
John knew well the words of Isaiah that we read today – the image of the peaceable kingdom of God, in which justice and peace would be the order of the day. He also saw clearly how things were – and that the status quo of hostility and injustice wasn’t leading toward the vision in Isaiah. John also knew that this “powerful one” who was coming would bring in the Kingdom of God – Isaiah’s peaceable Kingdom – but this would require, not just minor tweaking or tinkering with the status quo, but radical change, gut-level, heart-wrenching change. John’s listeners couldn’t rely on religious ritual – as represented by the Sadducees – or the inherited faith of their ancestors. For them to experience the blessings of the Kingdom, they had to make a personal commitment – and this meant their lives had to change.
Today’s readings offer a very real challenge to us here at Emanuel, but also offer great hope. John’s words remind us that we can’t put our faith entirely in our history and our heritage – as if to say, we’ve always been here, so we’ll always be here. John challenges us – in fact, urgently challenges us - to continue to make a personal and a congregational faith commitment, a commitment that will bear good fruit, both in our individual lives and in the life of our gathered congregation here at Emanuel. We can’t rest on our history. God is always challenging us, as individuals and as a congregation, “So what have you done for me lately?”
The image of the winnowing fork separating wheat from chaff may lead us to think of God separating the good people from the bad people. That is one way to read John’s words. However, I think we’ll acknowledge that most people, likely including all of us here, are a mixed bag, wanting to be faithful to God, but often distracted by other priorities or led by sin into behavior destructive to ourselves or others. And I very much count myself in that description. The line between good and evil is not a line that has perfect people on one side, and perfectly awful people on the other – but rather the line between good and evil runs through every individual human heart, and every congregation. So I see the winnowing fork as a symbol of God’s commitment to work in our lives to clear away the chaff, the distractions, to clear away anything that stands between us – us as individuals and us as a congregation - and God. This is how John’s voice in the wilderness calls us to prepare the way of the Lord – to allow God to remove the chaff of evil and destraction in our lives, to clear away the rocks and fill in the potholes on our life journeys, to allow the Lord to clear the way so that we may walk in fellowship with God.
The great hope in our readings comes from our faith in an awesome God who, even if we are cut down like the stump in the Isaiah reading, can always help us to sink our roots deep into the soil of Christian faith and bring forth a shoot of new life. Or, to use John’s image, we as Gentiles are like those rocks and stones that God can use to produce children for Abraham.
God uses our individual acts of faith, hope and charity to help bring Isaiah’s vision into reality. God can use the caring community here at Emanuel to inspire those around us to say, “See how these Christians love one another.” God can use us to help change Philadelphia into a place that is truly a city of brotherly love and sisterly affection. All we have to do to be awake, and to be willing to let God use us in His service.
During this Advent season of anticipation and preparation, may we be awakened to God’s powerful presence, here on Fillmore Street, and in our individual lives. Amen.
*******************
Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 am. as we prepare the way to welcome the coming of the Christ child. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
We continue today in the season of Advent. While many of our neighbors are going to the mall and letting their kids sit on Santa’s lap, we in the church are out in the desert with John the Baptist. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. And yet, today we also watched Al walk to the Advent wreath and light the candles of hope and peace – and these themes are picked up in our reading from Isaiah. And so even though John’s words are unlike anything you’ll ever hear from a shopping mall Santa, we can have faith that, ultimately, they are gospel – good news.
Today’s readings give us two powerful, and very different sets of images. The Isaiah reading tells us of a person coming in a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord – who is described as a shoot coming out of a stump. This person will bring such incredible peace that even the animal world will no longer be predatory. Even the animals will testify to God’s reign of peace. It’s almost like comparing the images we see on a nature show like Animal Planet – in which bigger animals hunt down and kill smaller animals – into something that looks like an old Disney cartoon, where all the animals live together in harmony. This mighty one to come will look out for the interests of the poor and vulnerable – will judge with equity for the meek of the earth. And then come these beautiful words: “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” And Isaiah’s vision is inclusive – even the nations – the Gentiles - shall inquire of Jesse. This image of the Gentiles coming to Judah to learn of God is echoed repeatedly in our reading from Romans, and we’ll see it again in Matthew’s Gospel. Similarly, last week’s Old Testament reading was also from Isaiah, and also had a theme of peace – it was the passage which prophesied that swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; nation would not rise up against nation, neither learn war any more. Isaiah gives us the image of the shoot coming out of a stump – the image is that of a place where there had once been a great tree, which had been cut down. The stump appeared lifeless and dead, beyond hope. The stump represents Judah, currently under attack from the very Gentile nations who will later come to Judah to inquire of God. But then, a shoot starts sprouting – in that stump, there’s still life. Even after a time of calamity and destruction, comes a sprout of hope. And that sprout, that shoot, will bring life, to Jew and Gentile alike.
And then comes that other image – that of John the Baptist, the wildman in the wilderness. We don’t get much background in Matthew’s Gospel, but Luke’s Gospel gives us some back-story – his father, Zechariah, was a priest, of the priestly order of Abijah. An angel proclaimed his birth to Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, both old and long past the years of childbearing. But while John was born into a priestly family and likely spent at least part of his formative years among his father’s priestly colleagues, by the time we meet him in Matthew, he has long since left behind the world of the Temple, of sacrifice and liturgical ceremony. John is out in the desert, dressed strangely – in fact, with his robe of camel hair and leather belt, his dress evokes the community’s memory of the prophet Elijah. He lives a marginal existence, eating locusts and wild honey - a diet like that of the guy on Survivorman or one of those other wilderness survival shows - telling people they had to repent and get right with God – and people flocked out into the wilderness to hear him.
It’s not hard to imagine what his message sounded like – because we have street preachers right here in Philadelphia. They look funny. Sometimes they smell funny. Their voices grate on our nerves. Usually we try to avoid them. There’s one in particular, who died some years back, that I remember, and maybe you might as well – she was a lady with the sandwich board that used to preach in the area around City Hall some years ago – she had a sing-song, raspy voice, and day after day, fair weather or foul, she proclaimed her message: "Sinner….
Sinner…If you want to see the devil, take a look in the mirror…..” If you were on the El and she walked into your car, you might move to another car. But Matthew’s gospel said that folks went out into the wilderness to hear John the Baptist – his message that they had to change their lives hit home with them. In fact, Matthew goes out of his way to say that the people of Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region along the Jordan – some of which was Gentile territory – came out to John. In Isaiah we read about the Gentile nations coming to inquire of Jesse, and we see that vision playing out in John’s ministry. John sacrificed much in the way of comfort – plentiful food and comfortable clothing, community life – in order to be faithful to God’s call. In this sacrifice, John’s listeners could see that John’s message had integrity – John not only talked the talk, he walked the walk of faith.
Matthew’s gospel says that Pharisees and Sadducees were coming out to see this wilderness prophet. Remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t get along – the Pharisees believed in the resurrection while the Sadducees didn’t; the Sadducees were tied into the Temple leadership – John’s father Zechariah likely knew lots of Sadducees - and the Sadducees played politics with Rome while the Pharisees were more for the common people. But, as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend – at least for the moment. They were able to put their differences aside for the moment and join together in a temporary, cynical sort of alliance against the threat both groups saw in John. And of course, John sees right through their charade of piety: “You brood of vipers -Who warned you to flee the wrath to come….!” Ouch! But, remember, John had grown up among the Temple establishment, so he likely knew what he was talking about. Heaven knows that in our day, there is no shortage of vipers among the clergy and lay leadership of some churches and even some denominations.
Of course, as Jews, the Sadducees and Pharisees saw themselves as God’s chosen people, while the Gentiles in the surrounding nations were not. The Sadducees and Pharisees thought they would be saved by their family heritage, their status as leaders of God’s chosen people, their membership in a long line of ancestors leading back to Abraham. But John the Baptist bursts their bubble – “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor.’ ” Last week’s Isaiah reading, as well as this week’s reading from Romans, speak of the Gentiles coming to glorify God’s name – and John the Baptist tells the crowd that God can raise up children for Abraham out of the very stones on the ground, if God so desires. The Sadducees and Pharisees cannot rest on the accomplishments of their ancestors. Their own lives had to be right with God. In a sense, through John, God is telling these religious leaders, “Yes, yes, I know your ancestors well – but their deeds of faith are in the past. So what have you done for me lately?”
John goes on to use even more urgent imagery – “the ax is lying at the root of the trees”. If I’m a tree, one thing I don’t want to see anywhere near me is an ax. If I’m a tree, an ax has the power to turn me from a towering oak into a stump – sort of like the stump in the Isaiah reading. John is giving the Sadducees and Pharisees a stark choice: bear fruit or be cut down. Produce or perish. Grow - or die.
John also uses the image of a winnowing fork. A winnowing fork was used with grain that was newly harvested from the fields. The farmer would use the fork to throw the grain up in the air. The chaff, or husk, of the grain was lighter, and when the grain was thrown up in the air, the breeze would carry it off. The heavier kernel would fall to the floor, and it was those kernels of grain that would be used to bake bread, after the chaff or husks had first been removed.
In the United Church of Christ we rarely hear this sort of stark, “turn or burn” language. It makes us uncomfortable. It reminds of us slick TV evangelists and wild-eyed fundamentalist preachers condemning everyone around them to hell. That’s not who we are in the UCC. So I’d like to follow John’s words in a slightly different direction than what you’ll hear from the TV preachers – though I have no intention of letting anyone off the hook of John’s words.
John’s words are first and foremost motivated by a sense of urgency. He is presented as announcing the coming of “one who is more powerful than I.” The coming of this “more powerful” One will change everything. John wants his listeners to be ready for the coming of this powerful Savior of the World. I can see almost picture John wanting to pick these smug religious leaders off the ground and shake them – “Wake up! Pay attention!”
John knew well the words of Isaiah that we read today – the image of the peaceable kingdom of God, in which justice and peace would be the order of the day. He also saw clearly how things were – and that the status quo of hostility and injustice wasn’t leading toward the vision in Isaiah. John also knew that this “powerful one” who was coming would bring in the Kingdom of God – Isaiah’s peaceable Kingdom – but this would require, not just minor tweaking or tinkering with the status quo, but radical change, gut-level, heart-wrenching change. John’s listeners couldn’t rely on religious ritual – as represented by the Sadducees – or the inherited faith of their ancestors. For them to experience the blessings of the Kingdom, they had to make a personal commitment – and this meant their lives had to change.
Today’s readings offer a very real challenge to us here at Emanuel, but also offer great hope. John’s words remind us that we can’t put our faith entirely in our history and our heritage – as if to say, we’ve always been here, so we’ll always be here. John challenges us – in fact, urgently challenges us - to continue to make a personal and a congregational faith commitment, a commitment that will bear good fruit, both in our individual lives and in the life of our gathered congregation here at Emanuel. We can’t rest on our history. God is always challenging us, as individuals and as a congregation, “So what have you done for me lately?”
The image of the winnowing fork separating wheat from chaff may lead us to think of God separating the good people from the bad people. That is one way to read John’s words. However, I think we’ll acknowledge that most people, likely including all of us here, are a mixed bag, wanting to be faithful to God, but often distracted by other priorities or led by sin into behavior destructive to ourselves or others. And I very much count myself in that description. The line between good and evil is not a line that has perfect people on one side, and perfectly awful people on the other – but rather the line between good and evil runs through every individual human heart, and every congregation. So I see the winnowing fork as a symbol of God’s commitment to work in our lives to clear away the chaff, the distractions, to clear away anything that stands between us – us as individuals and us as a congregation - and God. This is how John’s voice in the wilderness calls us to prepare the way of the Lord – to allow God to remove the chaff of evil and destraction in our lives, to clear away the rocks and fill in the potholes on our life journeys, to allow the Lord to clear the way so that we may walk in fellowship with God.
The great hope in our readings comes from our faith in an awesome God who, even if we are cut down like the stump in the Isaiah reading, can always help us to sink our roots deep into the soil of Christian faith and bring forth a shoot of new life. Or, to use John’s image, we as Gentiles are like those rocks and stones that God can use to produce children for Abraham.
God uses our individual acts of faith, hope and charity to help bring Isaiah’s vision into reality. God can use the caring community here at Emanuel to inspire those around us to say, “See how these Christians love one another.” God can use us to help change Philadelphia into a place that is truly a city of brotherly love and sisterly affection. All we have to do to be awake, and to be willing to let God use us in His service.
During this Advent season of anticipation and preparation, may we be awakened to God’s powerful presence, here on Fillmore Street, and in our individual lives. Amen.
*******************
Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 am. as we prepare the way to welcome the coming of the Christ child. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
Saturday, December 20, 2008
A Holy Interruption
John Lennon’s song “Beautiful Boy”, written for his son Sean, contains the words, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” Tomorrow’s New Testament reading (Luke 1:26-55) is about God bringing new life to Mary while she was busy making other plans. We’re not told exactly what Mary was going when the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, but we can be reasonably certain that the visit was not expected. Mary wasn’t sitting by the window waiting for Gabriel to come up the front walk. Rather, the Angel Gabriel came to Mary and said, “Greetings, favored one! Blessed are you among women.”
Mary is understandably perplexed, and wondered what sort of greeting this might be. She’s suspicious of this stranger with his words of friendly greeting. Was this stranger blessing her, or setting her up to take advantage of her? The angel senses her fear, and says, “Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God. And now you will conceive and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary understandably objects, “But I am a virgin” or as some translations say, “I do not know a man.” The angel explains that God will make all this possible, and tells her that in her old age her cousin Elizabeth is six months along in her pregnancy – for nothing will be impossible with God.” Mary gets in the last word: “Here am I, a servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. God broke in on Mary with new life at a time when she least expected it. “Blessed are you among women” Gabriel said. And Mary was blessed – because she was willing to allow a holy interruption to her plans.
Mary heard the words, “Blessed are you among women!” What does it mean to be blessed? When we pray, “We give you thanks, O God, for our many blessings…” what do we think of? Good health, a job, a family. Prominent evangelists such as Joel Osteen and the wonderfully named Creflo Dollar preach that “God wants us rich”. But Gabriel’s words and Mary’s response give us a very different picture of what it means to be blessed. For Mary, being blessed meant being part of God’s plan, being used by God – even at great personal cost. Being blessed means being where the action is, action in this case meaning God’s acts of saving the world. May we have eyes to see and ears to see the ways in which God is waiting to interrupt our plans, to experience the blessings God has for those whose trust is in the Lord.
Mary is understandably perplexed, and wondered what sort of greeting this might be. She’s suspicious of this stranger with his words of friendly greeting. Was this stranger blessing her, or setting her up to take advantage of her? The angel senses her fear, and says, “Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God. And now you will conceive and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary understandably objects, “But I am a virgin” or as some translations say, “I do not know a man.” The angel explains that God will make all this possible, and tells her that in her old age her cousin Elizabeth is six months along in her pregnancy – for nothing will be impossible with God.” Mary gets in the last word: “Here am I, a servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. God broke in on Mary with new life at a time when she least expected it. “Blessed are you among women” Gabriel said. And Mary was blessed – because she was willing to allow a holy interruption to her plans.
Mary heard the words, “Blessed are you among women!” What does it mean to be blessed? When we pray, “We give you thanks, O God, for our many blessings…” what do we think of? Good health, a job, a family. Prominent evangelists such as Joel Osteen and the wonderfully named Creflo Dollar preach that “God wants us rich”. But Gabriel’s words and Mary’s response give us a very different picture of what it means to be blessed. For Mary, being blessed meant being part of God’s plan, being used by God – even at great personal cost. Being blessed means being where the action is, action in this case meaning God’s acts of saving the world. May we have eyes to see and ears to see the ways in which God is waiting to interrupt our plans, to experience the blessings God has for those whose trust is in the Lord.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
