Advent 4B -- December 21, 2014

Interrupted By Blessing

For audio, click here: https://soundcloud.com/emsworthup/december-21-2014-11-20-40-am                                

Luke 1:39-56                                                                                                                                               ³⁹In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, ⁴⁰where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ⁴²and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. ⁴³And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? ⁴⁴For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” ⁴⁶And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” ⁵⁶And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.           

This week, I showed up at the travel clinic, stuck out both my arms and received 6 necessary immunizations in preparation for my trip to South Sudan.  Well, 7 immunizations, if you count the flu shot I’d been delaying and decided to get since I had my sleeves rolled up anyway.  The nurse at the place where I got my shots spent a lot of time telling me about all the health risks I was taking in traveling to Africa.  She gave me a book of information that may have just as well been titled, “Planning Your Trip To South Sudan.  Where You’re Probably Going to Get Really Sick and/or Die.  Have A Good Trip!” If I were a person who is easily frightened, I may have called the whole thing off there and then.  But I didn’t.

What struck me most weren’t all the possible issues involved in traveling to the developing world.  I didn’t even really mind all of those injections .  What struck me was how all of this was familiar somehow.  It reminded me of how I have felt at other times in my life.  The only way I can explain it is that it was that feeling you get when you’re heading into something brand new and you’re not quite sure what to expect and you’re not sure if it’s the smartest decision you’ve ever made.  But you feel something like an irresistible and almost holy energy pulling you forward into something entirely beyond your capacity to imagine. 

You know that feeling.  Really, you do.  It’s the feeling you had the moment before your first child was born.  Or the moment you said, “I do.”  Or even the first time you stepped onto an airplane that was going to fly over an ocean to a place you’ve never been before.   They are moments in which you step out without certainty into something that may be the best idea you ever had or the worst mistake you’ve ever made. 

But I’m not sure I’m talking about that moment in particular.  Maybe what I’m talking about the nanosecond before that the “I do” moment.   The best way I can describe it is it’s like a long slow fall through space, and I have no idea how long it will be before I land on solid ground, and all I can do is pray that I might land on my feet.  That’s how I felt this week while getting all those shots.  I felt like the falling part has begun and I’m not sure when it will end.  But I also feel the holy pull of it while I’m falling.  Which makes me suspect that God has something to do with it.

I wonder if that’s something of how Mary felt when the angel Gabriel shows up.  I wonder if Mary also felt an irresistible holy pull into the unknown when she heard the outrageous idea the angel tells her.  I wonder if it felt a little bit like falling when she pondered the call for her to give birth to the Son of God, the Lord most High.  Did she feel like she had found favor with God?  Did she really imagine herself as blessed?  Did she wonder if the angel might have the wrong girl?  Or did Mary feel like somebody whose life has just been interrupted by God in the most extreme sort of way?

We call this scene the annunciation, and I love the way a poet describes so many holy moments in which we are both gratified and horrified by what God has in store for us:

Behold the moment that is a doorway, a threshold,

upon which history itself has paused its stride,

poised to take a new unguessed direction, sensing

like someone whose eyes have seen dawn coming

on a different horizon, that this moment is God’s creation…[1]

Every year, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, history pauses for moment when we come to these texts about Mary, mother of Jesus.  This is the big day for a young girl that most Protestants don’t give much thought to beyond the pale portrait we see of her on our Christmas cards.  Mary exists in many imaginations as the pretty young girl, dressed in blue, permanently glued into the crèche and gazing adoringly into the manger containing her son. 

But I’m not sure that any faith tradition knows what is true about Mary.  Throughout Christian history, she’s been buried under so many layers of theology, piety, and politics that she’s nearly impossible to know.  Some people pray to her.  Others ignore her on principle.  Some call her a victim of divine coercion.  For some, she represents a troubling model of pious femininity – ever pure, ever virginal, ever a doting mother.  Mary can often seem too good to be true.  In truth, she’s probably one of the most complex characters in Scripture.  In other words, Mary, mother of a wholly human, wholly divine baby is pretty darn human herself.  I think that’s why she’s so troubling.[2] 

 When the angel tells Mary the outrageous and scandalous plan that God has in mind, Mary says, “I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”  We so often hear that answer given with an air of perfect confidence and serenity, as if God had only asked her for a cup of tea. 

But what I hear in Mary’s answer is a sort of breathlessness, maybe because she really does understand the full implications of the task God is asking her to take on.  She’s in that moment of feeling lifted up off her feet, not knowing where or how she will land, or how all of this will turn out.  The rest of us who are well-versed in this story know what will happen, but Mary didn’t have a clue about how this plan would work.  Can you imagine how it sounded to her? 

Difficult.  Risky.  It was a divine interruption, to be sure, but a complicated one for any human being to undertake, especially a young woman in an ancient society.

No matter how you hear the answer Mary gives to Gabriel, I think we can all agree that by the time Mary arrives at Elizabeth’s house, Mary is probably a wreck.  The distance from Mary’s town to Elizabeth’s was nearly 100 miles, so even if Mary went “with haste,” she still had plenty of time to worry during the long journey. 

But when Elizabeth looks at Mary, she doesn’t see a poor, dirty, tired, troubled, unwed teenager running away from home.  Elizabeth takes one look at Mary and says, “Blessed….Blessed…Blessed are you among women.  And blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

And then there’s Elizabeth.  Elizabeth is another complicated woman whose life has also been upended by a strange and holy intervention.   Unlike Mary, whose pregnancy came inconveniently early without Mary asking for it, Elizabeth’s pregnancy had been exceedingly delayed, despite years of prayer and long after Elizabeth had reasonably given up hope on ever being a mother.

Maybe Elizabeth is more able to see Mary’s pregnancy as the miracle it is because Elizabeth has learned something about God’s power to bless, even when any reasonable person has given up on hope.  This old woman, with the same sort prophetic intuition that the son in her womb will inherit, takes Mary into her arms and affirms what Mary was afraid to believe – that God will work in Mary’s life to make everything work out.  Mary isn’t just pregnant a baby, but has been called to be a prophet herself and bring God’s love and justice and mercy and peace into the world. 

And with that holy call tucked firmly into her servant heart, the prophet Mary begins to sing:

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.”

Without casting any aspersions on Mary’s originality, the song she sings has echoes of a much older song, sung in the Old Testament by Hannah.  Hannah, like Elizabeth, grew old and despaired of ever having a child until God heard her prayer and blessed her with Samuel.  When her child was finally born, Hannah took him to the temple and she sang just like Mary.  Perhaps Mary had heard Hannah’s song while she was growing up, and in the moment of her joy remembered the song.  Maybe Mary remembered something in Hannah’s story that reminded her of Elizabeth’s story and her own.  Some have suggested that the singing of Hannah and Mary contain themes so universal that they crop up again and again whenever God stirs people’s hearts and they know that they have been blessed.

Mary sings.  She believes what she has seen in Elizabeth’s eyes and words.  Mary embraces the truth of how God is working in her life.  Mary sings that she has received the blessing of God.  Even she – the lowest of the low, the smallest of the small – has received a promise that she can believe in with her whole heart. 

This is a very happy scene and we could envision a smiling Elizabeth and singing Mary on a Christmas card too.  We may think that Mary is just singing about how happy and blessed she is, but… listen…what do we hear? 

Mary is singing, not only about her own blessing, but also about the blessings of other people.  She is singing about powerful and rich people losing everything, and about the poor and hungry being lifted up.  This ordinary young woman is singing about an extraordinary shift in the balance of power in the world.  “Her song is for Abraham, Issac and Jacob – and for Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel – for every son and daughter of Israel who thought God forgotten the promise to be with them forever, to love them forever, to give them fresh and endless life.”[3] The last will be first and the first will be last.  The world will be made right because of the child Mary is carrying inside. 

 

The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls it, “…the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings.…This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.”[4]

If we wonder about the power of Mary’s song, we only need to look at the son she will raise.  Mary’s song becomes the song of her son, whose ministry will echo his mother’s outrageous tune about God’s blessing on the least and the lost.

This is the Mary we need this Christmas.  We need this disciple – the first disciple – to show us how to say yes to this blessedly crazy plan of God to be born into this sulking world, not just once, not just at Christmas time, but also every day. We need Mary to teach us the song of joy that God is still interrupting the lives of lowly people -- people like Mary and people like you and me – and entrusting them to do great things.  Mary invites us into this story that affirms what our hearts so often do not dare to believe.  That God is fully present and fully in us, just waiting to be born.  Here and now.  Again and again. Every single day we are alive. This is the good news of Mary’s Christmas carol. 

But do not be naïve.  Mary may have at some point regretted ever teaching this song to her beloved son.  Later, when Mary witnessed the human expression of God’s love slaughtered by an empire who saw God’s purposes as a threat to their own, perhaps she wished that she had stayed silent.  We may also choose silence as the safer course for ourselves, even now. The world still does not much like the upside down view that Mary sings in which the values of a violent, cruel and unjust world are replaced with peace, kindness and mercy.   

Thanks be to God that Mary was courageous enough to sing.  And thanks be to God that, in every age, her song is still being sung.

In the face of all the wrong that is all so strong, we need to sing and keep singing Mary’s song of liberation and hope.  Mary’s song is our song. Mary’s song is our inheritance. And if we are at any moment tempted to think of passive, pious, placid Mary as a model of Christian life, we need to shake off the dust of inaction and start singing.   Here and now.

Can you be open to the interruption of Christ being reborn in you, this Christmas?  Will you welcome the invitation into the dance, or resent God’s summons that completely disregards your sloth or anxiety or insecurity or fear? 

When we allow God to be born in us, there is no telling, no telling at all, what will come to pass.  Let us in these quiet moments of waiting dwell deeply in the mystery that was God’s gift to Mary and God’s gift to us.   Angels are still speaking if we only have the courage to listen.  There are messages of joy for us to hear if only we have faith enough to receive them.  We have been chosen – you and me -- to birth God’s love into this world. How can this be?  With God.  All things are possible.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

---

[1] Andrew King, “A Poetic Kind of Place,” downloaded on 12/18/14. https://earth2earth.wordpress.com

[2] Debie Thomas. Journey With Jesus website, “The Pause Before Yes.” Downloaded on 12/17/14. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml

[3] Taylor, Barbara Brown. Home by Another Way, 17.

[4] http://susanjoan.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/the-magnificat-2/

Advent 3B -- December 14, 2014

Like Those Who Dream

For audio, click here:  https://soundcloud.com/emsworthup/december-14-2014-11-22-03-am


Psalm 126           

¹When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.

²Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”

³The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.

⁴Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.

⁵May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.

⁶Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.           

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11                                                                                                                                         The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; ²to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; ³to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.⁴They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

⁸For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. ⁹Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed. ¹⁰I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. ¹¹For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

When I was a little girl, my great Aunt Ruth lived with us during the last years of her life.  My mother converted our dining room into a room for Aunt Ruth, and it was a beautiful space, with big bay windows that allowed Aunt Ruth to sit in her wheelchair, bask in the warm sunlight and observe the activity in the neighborhood.   And the activity that Aunt Ruth loved to observe the most was watching me walk home from elementary school.  From her perch, she could see me slowly wander up the hill doing something that just tickled her to pieces.  I talked to the trees.  She just loved watching this little girl meandering towards home, dreamily chatting to herself and the big poplars that lined our street.  I wish I could tell you what I was talking about, but I have no idea.  But for most of my childhood, I had the reputation of being a daydreamer.  I was the kind of kid who is was so preoccupied with talking to trees and creating stories in my mind that I tripped on the sidewalk and skinned my knees at least once a week.

And I still have the scars to prove it.  And I bet a few of you do too.  I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one here who had the reputation of being a dreamy kid.  When we are children, when life seems to stretch out endlessly before us, filled with nothing but promise and possibilities, dreaming comes naturally.  When we are children, everything is possible and nothing seems impossible.  If we can dream it, it can most certainly happen.

Then, at some point, we grow up and life slaps the dreaming right out of us.  We wake up and can see reality with all its sharp and dangerous edges.  At some point, we lose our ability to daydream, and begin thinking like straight up rational adults.  We remember exactly where that bump in the sidewalk is located and will go way out of our way to walk around it.  Even at night, we no longer sink into that deep and dream-filled slumber that comes so easily to children.  When we get into bed at night, many of us spend more time tossing and turning than dreaming.   

Maybe that’s one of the reasons we are so grateful for Christmas when it finally rolls around every year.  There’s something downright dreamy and child-like about the Christmas story.  The Christmas story isn’t brightly lit, but bathed in soft starlight with plenty of bumps on the way. The story we hear about Jesus’ birth at Christmas is so outrageous, it sometimes seems like a fantastical fairy tale that could only be imagined by a child.  It is an impossible story, about a majestic and mighty God coming down to earth and taking on all of the frailty and foibles of human flesh.  It is a crazy story of the king of kings and lord of lords being born into a most unremarkable family, in the most inhospitable environment imaginable.  It is an improbable story, complete with stinky shepherds and corrupt politicians and sneaky magicians and heavenly bands of angels appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the night.  It is a story so impossible that it has mostly become the stuff of children’s pageants, because it may be that the Christmas story is so fantastic that only a child can believe whole-heartedly in it. 

Because the Christmas story is the stuff of an imagination that cannot be contained or controlled or tamed by human reason.  The Christmas story is the product of God’s inventiveness, God’s dreaming, God’s intention for how the world will be forever changed and redeemed.  And maybe the only way that God could imagine changing a world that very often makes no sense at all is through a story that makes no sense, at least to a reasonable adult mind.  But God’s dream – this scandalous, child-like dream -- makes all the sense in the world.  God’s dream of incarnation makes all the difference for the world. 

Both of our Advent texts today invite us to become like people who dream.  Children and grown ups alike are invited into God’s imagination through the words of the psalmist and the prophet.  And, not surprisingly, God’s dreams startles us with the insistence that life as we see it is not how God sees it.  Which is why, if we’re going to enter into the Christmas story with all of our hearts, the first thing we have to do is let go of our hard earned realism.  Advent calls us to become like dreamers who are not shaped by the limits of our experience.  We have to open our minds to the limitless possibilities inspired by God. 

The psalmist speaks of Zion’s dreams of restoration after years of agonizing exile in foreign land.  We see God’s people who, despite great tragedy, have begun to dream again, and what they are imagining is not just restoration for themselves, but for all people.  We see people who dream of restored relationships that filled not with anger or distrust, but with laughter and joy.  We see people dreaming of a new community, so overflowing with God’s justice and peace, that other nations look upon them with great amazement and say, “Look at that!  Look at what God is doing through them!”  We see people dreaming of tears and weeping being transformed into great shouts of joy. 

The people begin to dream of something wildly and divinely new, trusting that the Lord who has done great things for them in the past has the imaginative power to do great things through them in the present, even through their tears and weeping. 

If we cannot dream in Advent, when can we dream my brothers and sisters?  When can we make room in our hearts, in our worship, in our prayers for God’s dreams if not in Advent?

Ok, I’m going to tell you a story about how my family celebrated Christmas when I was a little girl that’s going to make you think they are terrible people, but they weren’t.  Believe me.  They were just goof balls.  Particularly, my goof ball uncles.

Every year at Christmas, we would gather at my great-grandparents’ farmhouse, the only place big enough to contain my extended family for Christmas dinner.  We’re talking a cast of thousands here. Total mayhem.  In my mind’s eye, I remember sitting at a dining room table that seemed to go on forever and ever with hundreds of people, just like the Who’s in Whoville, but it’s more likely I was sitting at the kid’s table in the kitchen.  In any event, when dinner was over, one of my uncles would stand up and say, “Kids!  Check the bottom of your plate.  Whoever finds a red dot on the bottom will win a prize.”  Every year, my uncles did this.  And every year, the awarding of the prize would go something like this:

“Susan!  You’ve got the sticker!  You’ve won!”

“Uncle Bobby, what did I win?”

“Well, Susie, ba-doozie, what do you think you’ve won?

“I don’t know.”

“What would you like to win?”

“Uh.  A color television?”

“That’s it!  You’ve won a color television!  Merry Christmas!”

Whichever uncle was in charge that year would send the winner running upstairs to one of the bedrooms where the child would expect to find their gift-wrapped color television waiting for them.  And when the child got to the bedroom, you know what he or she would find?  Nothing but a giant pile of coats stacked on the bed.  No prize.  No present.  Not a color television to be found.  One year, my cousin won and she expected to go upstairs and find a gift-wrapped pony.  It was very disappointing, and maybe we weren’t the smartest kids because we fell for it every single year until we finally got tired of playing.  We got too old and too wise to believe our uncles anymore.  Experience finally taught us to give up on ever getting the pony, to ignore the goofballs at the other end of the table, and just eat a few more Christmas cookies.

I know that’s a terrible Christmas story, but here’s the point.  We are like those worldly wise and pouting teenagers at the table, shoving cookies into our mouths because we’ve stopped believing in the possibility of God surprising us.  The people who heard the prophet Isaiah were the kind of people who had the rug pulled out from under them at least once too often, and were loath to believe any of the promises of God.  No more, Isaiah.  You’re not going to fool us, you crazy dreamer, you.  The exiles returning to Jerusalem took one look at what was left and felt as betrayed by God as I felt betrayed by my uncles.  No temple.  No homes.  No there, there. Nothing left in the place that was once God’s glorious city. 

But Isaiah speaks to them of this dream given to him by the spirit of the Lord God.  A dream not rooted in the sharp edges of the reality staring them in the face, but in God’s reality.  Before the people of Israel can begin the hard work of building up the ancient ruins, raising up the former devastations, and repairing the ruined cities, they have to learn to dream again.  To trust not only the voice of the prophet, but also the dreaming purposefulness of God. 

Can we dream of our ugly Christmas sweaters – and let’s admit, we all have ugly Christmas sweaters -- we dream of our Christmas garb as our garments of salvation?  Can we dream of our wrapping paper as a robe of righteousness?  Can we dream of our bows and tinsel and twinkle lights as the garland that decks the bridegroom and the jewels adorning the bride? 

Can we dream that in receiving the gift of Jesus Christ, we have been entrusted with God’s dream of bringing good news to the oppressed, binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, proclaiming the Lord’s favor, comforting all that mourn – to adorn the whole world with garlands, anoint the whole world with oil, and boldly raise a mantle of praise instead of letting our exhaustion lead us to drop the hammer of cynicism?

It would be so much easier to limit our Christmas dreams to nothing more than a few flakes of snow, some holly, and maybe a new television.  Those are perfectly fine dreams, but they are not the dreams of the prophets.  They are not God’s dreams.

Several generations later, the scriptures tell of us of another dreamer, another prophet, another man who came back to his hometown synagogue to preach. The fourth chapter of the gospel of Luke tells us that this man was given a scroll to read.

He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

‘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 favour.’

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ (Luke 4:17-21)

We remember from this text that the people stared at this man for a long time, because he had read well.  But they saw him not as a prophet or the Messiah, or the Son of God, but as Joseph’s son, that dreamy kid they knew when he was growing up.  And a couple verses later, when Jesus speaks of God’s dreams for all people, not just their kind of people, his friends and neighbors wanted to kill him, like the prophets before him.  But God’s dream was Jesus’ mission on earth.  A mission that has been passed down to us – the people of God.

On this third Sunday of Advent, let us be thankful for dreamers.  Let us be thankful for God’s dream of abundant life and great joy for all people, in all places, in all times.  Let us be thankful for the dreams of righteousness, even in the face of the sharp edges and cruel injustices that still rule in our streets and in our lives.  May we have the child-like courage to bear witness to what God is doing among us by speaking truth, even hard truth, the kind of truth that will build up ancient ruins, raise up former devastations, repair our ruined cities and the devastation of too many generations.  May we provide comfort for those who mourn, and give them a garland of joy instead of ashes.  May we be blessed with the treasure that is God’s dream that is coming to us in Jesus.  May we welcome the scars that mark us as God’s dreaming people.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Advent 2B -- December 7, 2014

What Shall We Cry?

For audio, click here: https://soundcloud.com/emsworthup/december-7-2014-11-18-41-am/s-WMJmr

(This is one of those sermons in which I was influenced by so many people thinking and writing and preaching and speaking, that it is difficult to know where all of the following words come from or to correctly attribute them.  I know I am in debt particularly to Walter Brueggemann for giving me courage to speak and reminding me about George Carlin: http://www.journalforpreachers.com/pentecost2013-Brueggemann.html , the blog, "Peace Bang," http://www.peacebang.com/2014/12/04/the-intellectual-condescension-of-white-liberals/, this NPR Morning Edition report about civil rights attorney Constance Rice http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/12/05/368545491/civil-rights-attorney-on-how-she-built-trust-with-police, the extraordinary women in my pastor group at PPI, and most especially to the wisdom and generosity of Rev. Frederick White of Kingdom Life Fellowship https://www.facebook.com/KingdomlifefellowshipPittsburgh)

Isaiah 40:1-11                                              

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. ²Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.³A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. ⁴Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. ⁵Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

⁶A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. ⁷The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. ⁸The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

⁹Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” ¹⁰See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. ¹¹He 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.

Nobody would ever mistake George Carlin for a prophet.  But, like the prophets in both the Old and New Testament, the well-known comedian George Carlin had a knack for saying words that upset people.  You might remember that Carlin set off a firestorm in 1973 with his now infamous monologue, “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on T.V.”  Do you remember that?  Don’t worry, I’m not going quote it. 

A man named John Douglas was so offended by hearing Carlin’s routine on the radio that he wrote a letter of complaint to the Federal Communications Commission.  Mr. Douglas’ complaint was the only one received by the FCC, but that one letter was enough to set off a national debate about what is and isn’t appropriate language for television and radio.  The Supreme Court finally settled the matter by establishing the provision that gives broadcasters the right to broadcast indecent, but not obscene material between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am, when it is presumed many children will be asleep.  Non-broadcast media such as cable television and satellite radio have never come under that provision which is why you can hear all of Carlin’s seven words and many more 24 hours a day on HBO.

I don’t think any of us would argue against preventing children’s even accidental exposure to George Carlin’s 7 not very polite words.  But I think that all of us, whether we are aware of it or not, walk around with our version of the FCC in our minds, editing our words and thoughts into categories of what is ok to say out loud, and what is not. We want to be liked.  We want to be loved.  We want to be seen as reasoned and reasonable people.  But sometimes we become so wrapped up in our desire to not rock the boat and not make other people uncomfortable that we do not speak words that need to be said.

I’m not thinking about dirty words like George Carlin’s.  I am not thinking about yelling fire in a crowded theatre.  I am not thinking of idle chatter or gossip or wasted breath.  I am thinking about words of truth.  The truth about our lives.  The truth about our community.  The truth about our political and economic systems. The truth about the world around us.  The truth we know deep in our bones, but do not speak out loud because it might make someone angry.  “The truth can set you free,” Gloria Steinem once said, “but first, it will (tick) you off.” 

Prophets in the Bible do not seem to worry about ticking people off. On this second Sunday of Advent, we encounter two prophets who are not afraid of speaking truth.  At the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, we run headlong into a cranky, weatherworn prophet named John the baptizer.    Like the prophets before him, John takes a good look at the world around him and tells the truth.  He cries out what other people were thinking, but no one else dares mention.  A person could get himself killed by the authorities for that kind of thing.  But for people who have long been holding their breath, crushed under the weight of a brutal empire, hearing John’s words is like taking that first gulp of air when you break through the surface of the water.  The words uttered by John are words of life for the people streaming down to the Jordon to be baptized.

That’s how prophets are. They are usually not polite. They are not worried about proper leadership technique.  Prophets seem to see above and beyond what ordinary people can see.  Prophets are called to tell the truth, even when it’s a messy truth.  John cannot ignore or tamp down the fire in his belly or in his words.  Even when his words pose a danger to  authorities that have a vested interest in keeping the status quo, the status quo.

Mark introduces John by casting his words in the tradition of another prophet who spoke his mind -- Isaiah.  Like John, Isaiah isn’t afraid to speak out.  Earlier, Isaiah called out and named the devastation that lay ahead for Israel.  And in Isaiah 40, the devastation has happened.  The people of Israel have suffered all that Isaiah foretold and Jerusalem is a ruined city.  The people feel abandoned by God, so much so that they can barely believe that God still exists for them.  The prophet Isaiah who warned of the unspeakable horror of Jerusalem’s destruction now invites the people to look beyond the horizon of suffering and see God’s vision for humanity.  Because he has the eyes of a prophet, Isaiah can look at a flattened landscape and envision a peaceable kingdom, where the child plays unafraid of the wasp, where leopard and kid lie down together, where the wolf and lamb play. 

Isaiah speaks of great changes that are surely coming.  Big changes. He says to the fearful and trembling exiles “Comfort, O comfort my people says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”  The fearful people listening to Isaiah know better than anyone that flesh, grass, and flowers fade and wither.  They have seen unspeakable death and destruction happen before their eyes.  To those who have been in exile under foreign domination, Isaiah’s words of God’s transformation sound completely ridiculous, scandalous, certainly naïve. Comfort?  A word of comfort is pretty thin gruel when you are in the middle of unspeakable grief.  How can they believe in the promises of God when they feel utterly forgotten by God?

Yet Isaiah boldly speaks words that fly in the face of the reality.  He speaks impossible words that must be spoken to people who will die without some sort of crazy hope. Just like the people from the Judean country and the city of Jerusalem who streamed out to John the Baptist to be baptized in the swirling waters of Jordon.  The words of Isaiah and John the Baptist are for people who walk in darkness so deep that they have given up hope of ever seeing light again. 

To say that Advent is about waiting for Christmas is only part of the story.  The prophets remind us that Advent is about waiting for Jesus’ breaking into the world and God’s love breaking into our lives.  Advent is about God’s mercy ripping apart our systems of inequality and injustice, about God’s love wiping out hatred, God’s welcome burning down all things that separate us from each other, and God’s power defeating sin and death.  Words like breaking, ripping, wiping out and burning down are not comfortable words for people who like the world the way it is just fine, but they are Advent words. In Advent, we are not talking about small adjustments to the world.  We are talking about valleys being lifted up and mountains crumbling.  Advent words speak of unsettling, drastic, disruptive and impossible changes, like a world where everyone can earn a living, where everyone eats good and healthy food, where everyone has access to clean water, where differences and diversity are not feared, but embraced, where resources are shared with generosity and compassion, and where people act in ways that first consider how their actions will impact others.

In Advent, the prophets tell us that we are not looking for a small baby in a manger, but a very big thing that does not fit on a Christmas card.  We are looking for God’s complete power over all things, including the power of sin, death and the presence of evil in the world.  Something mighty is coming at us like a speeding train that we cannot control, and we anticipate that powerful in-breaking every year in Advent.  In Advent, we remember that God’s intention is to transform the whole world by taking on the flesh of every human being.  And in Advent, we listen to prophetic voices crying out to make straight a highway for our God in the desert of human life.  Voices crying for God’s glory to be revealed not just for some people, but for all people, that we might see God’s glory not as a divided people, but together, all people.  Voices crying for God’s mercy to bring justice and comfort to every rough place and anywhere there is still uneven ground.

A voice cries out in the wilderness!  What shall cry out this Advent, my brothers and sisters?  What shall we cry?  Will we cry out words that are safe?  Or will we cry words that call upon the power of God to bring down the mountains?

I have been thinking for weeks about what words are safe for me to speak from this pulpit in the wake of Ferguson, and Staten Island, and Cleveland.  I am not a prophet, but I am not deaf.  I cannot ignore the voices crying out this Advent about things that need God’s transformation. 

A voice cries out it the wilderness.  What do I hear?

I hear voices of fear and despair. 

I hear the voices of police officers who are fearful when they go to work in the morning. 

I hear the voices of police officers’ families who are fearful that their husbands or wives or mothers or fathers won’t come home in the evening. 

I hear the voices of so many in the African American community who are fearful that their sons are at risk every time they leave the house, whether or not they are guilty or innocent of a crime. 

I hear voices like that heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be consoled because they are no more (Matthew 2:18).

I hear voices of fear.  And everyone is afraid.  Every one is afraid.  None of us can breathe.  Whether we are white people or black people.  Whether we are white police officers or black teenagers.  Everybody is holding their breath including the protestors on the streets, and people in arm chairs trying to drown out the crying voices by turning up our Christmas carols. 

I have been holding my breath for weeks wondering what I can say to you.  Then God broke in.

The pastor of a African American congregation that is leasing the Knoxville U.P. Church asked if he could meet with me this week.  I am the chairperson of the administrative commission helping the Knoxville Church decide what to do with its building as it considers a merger.  So Rev. White of Kingdom Life Fellowship asked me to meet with him about some issues related to the building on Thursday morning, the day after it was announced that the grand jury in Staten Island decided not to indict the police officers involved in the death of Eric Garner.

We got through our business stuff quickly.  At the end of the meeting, I asked Rev. White, “How are you speaking with your congregation about Ferguson?”  And then we had a conversation that lasted for two hours.  Actually, it wasn’t a conversation.  Rev. White talked.  I listened.  I listened hard.  And in his words, I recognized the voice of a prophet.  Who told me what it was like to have his young son frequently stopped and questioned by police officers when he walked home from school in Quaker Valley through neighborhoods where very few people share his skin color.  I heard the voice of a prophet who said the people who burned and looted in Ferguson and other parts of the country were destroying their own neighborhoods and that kind of violence made no sense and wouldn’t make things better.  I heard the voice of a prophet who is talking to the commander of the police precinct in Allentown, hoping to begin conversations that might build trust and understanding between the officers who serve in -- and the people who live in -- that troubled hilltop neighborhoods – especially the young people.   All of whom need to know one another’s names and faces and stories. I heard the voice of a prophet who sees how vital it is for the police and the community to come together and try to solve problems instead of being afraid of one another. 

When I asked Rev. White what I might say to you to help us understand what’s at stake for folks in his community, he asked us to engage in empathetic imagination.  We are not much different than the people in Knoxville.  We love our children.  And like people in Knoxville, we have seen our children make bad choices, sometimes terribly destructive choices.  The difference, said Rev. White, is that our children’s worst choices do not often put their lives at risk. 

Rev. White asked that we just imagine for moment being in the shoes of an African American mother or father or sister or brother for whom the world is often a very, very frightening place – and begin to imagine how we might all work together to make it less frightening for everyone.

It is not Rev. White’s job or my job to tell you what to do or how to think or how to respond.  All I can do is offer you is this lens to look through by offering you are these biblical stories of unreasonable, outrageous and sometimes dangerous hope.  All I can do is point to God’s entrance into the world for everyone, God’s grace for all people, and God’s promise that no matter how bad it seems and despite all evidence to the contrary, the world was and is and will be changed when God enters into it.  All I can do is point to Jesus’ instructions to work for the kingdom as we wait for its completion, and how you decide to do that work is up to you.  

But today, I will tell you one thing to do, and it’s direct quote from an angel of the Lord.  Fear not.  Fear not.  Fear not.  Because a Savior is being born for us.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.