Sermon for Sunday, December 7th 2014

This week’s message was also part of the following collection

http://www.wnyc.org/story/garner-sermons/

Here are the readings that this sermon are based on:

Isaiah 40:1-11

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.  A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  Every 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.  Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."  A voice says, "Cry out!" And I said, "What shall I cry?" All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.  The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass.  The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.  Get 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!"  See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.  He 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.                                          

2 Peter 3:8-15a

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.  The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.  Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?  But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.  Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him.                                                                 

  

Mark 1

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'" John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.  Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.  He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.  I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

Sermon:

This week, we continue our new church year and the season of Advent. Our reading, once again, come from the beginnings of our faith. We hear words from the book of the prophet Isaiah, who announced good news to a defeated people, who announced to the suffering that 1- God did not forget them  and 2- God would keep the great promises of restoration and salvation.  Parts of Isaiah are read every week during Advent.  Throughout the four weeks of Advent we also hear words from the first chapters of the Gospels. Here, among the opening words of Mark, Luke and John, we hear those statements that get your interest, make you want to read on and outline or explain what the whole book is about. 

Advent is the beginning of church year. It is best defined as the time of waiting and preparing for Jesus entrance into the world.  It is not just about waiting for Christmas.  We are waiting for Jesus birth, but we are also waiting for the end of the world, for Jesus second coming.   Obviously, both events are very different. Christmas is a joyful holiday, publically celebrated every year by Christians around the world and lots of other people too really.  Its symbols and familiar images include a beautiful, innocent baby born in a stable, stars, angels, gifts, lights, trees, and pastoral scenes of shepherds in the countryside.  The other, the second coming of Jesus is a complicated, confusing, and often misunderstood, made fun of or abused part of our faith. Its symbols and images are fire, destruction, chaos, war, brutal events, monsters, fear and judgment.   

To say that Advent is about waiting for Christmas, is only part of the story.  Advent is about waiting for Jesus entrance into the world, for God’s love to break into our lives, our hearts, our community, and our society, about God’s grace ripping apart our systems of inequality and injustice, about God’s love wiping out our hatred, God’s welcome burning down all the things that separate us from each other, and God’s power defeating sin and death.   Here, I do mean to use words like break into, rip apart, wipe out, and burn down.  With our Advent hope, we are not talking about small changes in how we do things or minor adjustments to what we say.  With our Advent hope, we are waiting for unsettling, drastic, disruptive and impossible things.  Our Advent hope is for a world where, among other things, everyone works, where everyone eats healthy, good food, where everyone drinks clean water, where diversity is celebrated, where resources are shared with compassion, where God is worshipped without fear, where everyone has enough, where we act in ways that really ask “how will this impact others”,  and where God’s grace is announced with comfort and clarity.

The images and language around the expectations of the messiah, and about the end times are intense. We hear of valleys being filled in and made into level ground, hills and mountains destroyed and made low places, and world powers, the things that we depend on for our safety and survival collapsing. We see a complete alternation of the physical world as a metaphor to show us God’s complete power over and alternation of all things, including the power of sin, death and presence of evil in the world. Everything changes. In Advent, we are looking forward to something big.      

600 years or so before Jesus birth, Isaiah tells the people to look forward to something big.  Jerusalem, was once the center of religious life and power.  In Isaiah’s time it is an eerie, quiet, ruined nothing. It is the impossible, the ruined City of God.  The people who lived through the fall and defeat of this city, were exiled.  Almost all of them felt abandoned by God, could not figure out what happened, struggled to even guess why or doubted that God even existed.  For them, Isaiah has big news: “the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.  He 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”.  We should never think of these words as an image of God walking around with some cute little sheep, they are words of hope that try to destroy an unbearable feeling of loss and they are promises of God’s continued love for a world that feels forgotten.                                                 

  

Peter, like Isaiah all those centuries before him, is writing to tell the church that God is about to do something big.  Peter is writing to a church that had been visited by many false teachers, some of whom convinced many of them that the present world, with all its systems and powers, would continue as it is without end. Peter writes to correct this, saying no, Jesus was not just a nice guy who taught us to help some poor people. Jesus came to really change things, to get the power of sin and death away from us, to get rid of all those things that separate us from each other, to speak love and light in a place of hate and darkness,  to cut out all the distractions that stop us from being God’s people here on earth.  There would not be a slightly better version of life; Jesus didn’t die and rise again for that. There would be a new heaven and the new earth, where to quote 2^nd Peter, righteousness is at home.   

John the Baptist, who we will talk about more next week, just like Isaiah before him and Peter after him, is a voice crying out in the wilderness, God is about to do something big.

Finally, in case it was not obvious, I wanted to share a few thoughts about the recent news and events happening in our city.  Today, there are voices crying out that things need to be changed.  I have been remarkably quiet here at church about the issues in Ferguson, in our city and all around the country.  I have not mentioned a word about it until now and I do not really plan to after this. This does not come from my idea that no one here cares, that this is not the church’s business, or that there is nothing we can do about it.  My belief is that our work here in this time and place is about sharing, explaining and looking at what God has done in the world, to explore and understand God’s saving work in our lives, how God treats us with forgiveness, grace and love, how God welcomes us regardless of what we have or look like, what God has promised us and what we are waiting for. When we leave here, comforted, encouraged, angry, excited, confused, hopeful, knowing that God loves each of us and were sent to do the same.  Then we are ready to work in the world.  I am not in the business of telling people what to do, or forcing my opinions on others, pretending they are God’s word or the only solution to very complicated, emotional and difficult problems. My work, and the work of the church is to give everyone a lens to look though, In this case, it’s the story of hope, of God’s entrance into the world for everyone,  of God’s universal grace, that saves all people, God’s promise that things will be changed and our instructions to work on it while we wait.  How you do that is up to you.