Sermon Archive: Advent - Epiphany 2007-2008

February 3, 2008

The Last Sunday After the Epiphany - Rev. Common Lectionary Year A

Exodus 24:12-18
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9

The Rev. Arthur Holder

What Would Be On Jesus's "Bucket List?"

So what’s on your “bucket list”? I haven’t seen the “Bucket List” movie yet, but I understand the concept: Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are two terminally ill seniors who meet in the cancer ward and decide to spend their last days going around the world together, doing things they have always wanted to do before they die—that is, before they “kick the bucket.”
The term “bucket list” is new, maybe, but the idea has been popular for a while now. Ever since Patricia Schultz published her 2003 book called 1000 Places to See Before You Die, lots of people are making specialized bucket lists. books to read before you die; albums to listen to before you die; movies to see before you die; foods to eat before you die, cars to drive before you die; and even “1,001 lists you must read before you die”!

John Flinn, who writes a travel column for the San Francisco Chronicle, blames this fascination with bucket lists on aging Baby Boomers like me who are beginning to realize that we aren’t going to live forever after all. Guilty as charged, I guess. No one is likely to visit all the 1000 places that are in the book. Maybe we just want to read the book to find out what all we are going to miss. Or maybe it’s a way of having the experience vicariously. Instead of “been there, done that, got the t-shirt,” it’s “haven’t been there, won’t ever get there, but I read about it in the list.”

In any case, the bucket list thing is obviously all about me. It’s my personal list, even if some of my things are on your list as well. And in the interest of time, the desired experiences have to be relatively short in duration and preferably short on preparation. “See the Pyramids before I die; read War and Peace before I die”—difficult, maybe, but not impossible. I could even combine the two and read War and Peace on the plane to Egypt. But it wouldn’t work for me to say I want to become a ballet dancer before I die—it’s too late, and requires some talent. My bucket list needs to contain things that more or less happen to me—things I experience with a rush of adrenaline or can savor with pleasure.

What if Jesus had made up a bucket list before he died? What kinds of experiences would he want to have before he set his face toward Jerusalem and the cross? “Climb Mount Tabor with my closest friends. Swap stories with Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the prophet. Wear the whitest clothes anyone has ever seen. Be overshadowed by a heavenly cloud.” Sounds pretty ridiculous, doesn’t it? We know what was on Jesus’s bucket list: “Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Preach the good news. Do the will of the Father. Save the world.” Not a list of experiential highs, but a set of vocational objectives. Not all about him, but all about us sinners and the God who loves us. Whatever the Transfiguration was all about, it must have been something more than Jesus’s personal fulfillment.

Theologically, there are several different ways of looking at the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain. Some people understand it as a major turning point between Jesus’s baptism and his crucifixion, a reconfirmation of his messianic mission. Others see it as a temporary lifting of the veil of his humanity so that his divine nature can shine through. Still others see it as a foretaste of the resurrection, God’s bold act of reassurance that even the terrible suffering that is coming won’t extinguish the light that Jesus brought into the world. All of these interpretations have a point, but I think the 14th century Byzantine theologian Gregory Palamas has the best explanation. (See Gregory Palamas, “Homily on the Transfiguration.”)

Palamas says that in order to understand this story of the Transfiguration at the beginning of Matthew 17, we have to go back to the end of chapter 16. Note that our gospel today begins, “Six days later.” Later than what? Well, go back one verse and you will find Jesus saying: “:Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Talk about the ultimate bucket list! “Before I die, I want to see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” And what is this kingdom? Palamas says that the kingdom is nothing less than the glory of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. So Jesus is saying that some of his followers will, before they die, see God’s glory and be directly transformed by the power of the Spirit, and this is precisely what happened on the mount of Transfiguration.

The miracle, then, was not so much something that happened to Jesus as it was something that happened to the disciples Peter, James, and John. Here is how Palamas explains it:

Jesus Christ was transfigured on the Mount, not taking upon himself something new nor being changed into something new, nor something which formerly he did not possess. Rather, it was to show his disciples that which he already was, opening their eyes and bringing them from blindness to sight.

Now we are talking, right? Here is something you definitely want to see before you die: the glory of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ transfigured in all his beauty. But wait a minute; Gregory Palamas isn’t through yet. He goes on to explain just how it is that the disciples were able to see the divine glory:

[T]hey are changed by the power of the Divine Spirit. They were transformed, and only in this way did they see the transformation taking place amidst the very assumption of our perishability, with the deification through union with the Word of God.

According to Palamas, the disciples didn’t just witness the Transfiguration; they participated in it. The Lord’s divinity came down to the mountain, and at the same time he lifted the disciples’ humanity up to meet him. He took on their mortal nature, and they were so closely joined with him that they became one with God. So the Transfiguration is the working out of the Incarnation. As Palamas and the other Greek fathers often taught, “The Word became what we are in order to make us what he is.”

Many years ago when I was in seminary I served as a chaplain in a big hospital in Atlanta. I was asked to visit a middle-aged woman who had come to the hospital as a patient from out of town. In spite of a long series of treatments with chemotherapy and radiation, she was dying of inoperable cancer, and she knew it.

The first few times we talked, she was full of doubts and anxieties about herself. "What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to feel? What am I supposed to say to my family and to my friends?" "I'm not ready for this yet," she told me, "I'm not prepared to die."

At the ripe old age of twenty-two, I didn't have much to say to her, really, but I was able to watch and to listen as she struggled to make sense of what was happening to her. As the days passed and our conversations continued, her attitude changed. Somehow she came to a profound calmness, an acceptance of what was, and of what was to be. She stopped worrying about bucket lists, and she discovered within herself a kind of courage and honesty and strength that I had never seen before, and seldom since.

Just a few days before she died, she told me: "Looking back on my life, I see now what was important—I mean really important: my husband, my children, my work sometimes. And all those other things I thought about so much—what I was going to wear, what I was going to do, where I was going to live—those things weren't nearly so important after all. I've learned some things from my life, and now I am learning even more from my death, which is coming soon."

Then she said the most amazing thing to me, and I wish you could have seen her face when she said it. This woman who just a few days earlier had been asking me what she was supposed to feel, this same woman looked me straight in the eye and with a clear strong voice of authority said: "Young man, remember what I'm telling you about all this. Maybe someday you can pass it along to someone else. And that will make it all worthwhile, if my life can help someone else live their own life a little better, and if my death can help someone else to understand."

Forget the bucket list. Or if you must have a list of things to do before you die, just put one thing on there: “See the glory of the Lord.” Or maybe you can add a second, but it’s really the same thing: “Be transformed by the love of God.” That’s all you need to put on the list, because living your life so that you are going to be ready to die has very little to do with what you experience and where you go. The glory of the Lord is everywhere, and the beauty of the Lord is present in every encounter. At the end of the day—at the end of your life—seeing the glory of the Lord is not about what you’ve done, or what you’ve experienced, or how you feel. It’s about whose face you see, and what you love, and who you’ve become through the grace of God.

You’ll hear all this again, more lyrically, when the choir sings the anthem in a few minutes. Listen for the last words of that anthem and make them your own prayer for the forty days of Lent:

Bring to bright transfiguration all our raging conflagration of self-seeking, reckless living; with your Passion, sear us, Lord. Now bring us radiant from ordeals that tempting, scorching sands will wield into joy all joy surpassing, to your life everlasting. Hosanna.

Amen.

 

January 14, 2008

The Second Sunday After the Epiphany - Rev. Common Lectionary Year A

Isaiah 49:1-7
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42

The Rev. Robbin Clark

It was almost forty years ago, but the intensity of the experience makes it still stand out in my memory. There were six or eight of us in a circle, hunched over those folding desk/chairs used by generations of students in makeshift classrooms. We had gathered for a difficult discussion. My class of nursing students felt that a particular instructor was bullying some of us and was verging on verbal abuse with his cutting, derogatory remarks. We asked for a meeting with him and some other faculty. The situation was further complicated by ‘otherness’ factors of race, age and gender. The other students and I had real fears of retribution if this did not go well. The conversation lasted nearly two hours. At the end of it, I was absolutely drained, but also elated. It had gone better than anyone expected. Despite our fears, the very best in us came out. We went beyond our skills and abilities. Another power seemed to guide and support us. The only way I could explain it was that the Holy Spirit had come upon us in that moment. 

When you are touched by the Spirit like that, it makes a real impression. I think of Peter, James and John on the Mount of the Transfiguration. I think of the Centurion at the foot of the cross. I think of Saul, knocked off his horse and blinded by a vision of Jesus and emerging as Paul, the apostle to the gentiles. It’s a ‘mountaintop experience’, a ‘watershed event’, a ‘sea change’ in one’s life. It’s a glimpse of the awesome power of the Spirit when it comes upon us and we are open to it. Most of us are amazed if it happens to us even a few times in our life.

So think what it must have been like Jesus. John testifies, “ I saw the Spirit descending form heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.” Imagine living your whole life with that intensity and power at work on and in you. Imagine being in bare copper contact with God all the time. For Jesus, it was simply who he was, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” When John thus identified him, he seems to have been saying more than even he knew. At this very first moment of Jesus’ appearance as an adult, John proclaims him the Son of God, an affirmation it will take others years to come to.

The disciples who heard John must have been pretty intrigued, because they started to trail after Jesus. And Jesus, observing them following him utters his first words in John’s gospel. Fittingly, they form a question, and one that will be repeated again and again throughout John’s story of Jesus. “What are you looking for?” he asks. Notice how they avoid the question. It’s too demanding, too revealing, way too much to the point. We will hear him ask it in several ways through the Gospel. “Whom do you seek?” “What do you want me to do for you?” It’s the core question of our lives. How do we want to be in relationship with God through Jesus?

“Where are you staying?” they ask in return. That is to say, ‘Where can we get in touch with you when and if we want?’ ‘How can we stay in control and keep a safe distance from any demands this relationship might make on us?’ It’s the classic moved to opt for a chaplaincy model rather than full discipleship. ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you’, we tell God ‘I’ll let you know when I want you around’ But Jesus doesn’t let them get away with it. “Come and see,” he says. And right away, he’s issued the first call. It’s a call to ‘presence with’, and an invitation to ongoing relationship and everyday closeness. I think Jesus knew even then that this kind of closeness and ongoing relationship with him is what we are each really looking for. We yearn to remain with the One with whom the Spirit remains. We need the power and guidance and support of that Spirit. But bare copper contact is too scary. We need it mediated through the friendship of Jesus on an everyday basis.

So John’s disciples listen to him and go with Jesus. They find where he is staying and hang out with him the rest of the day. “It was about four o’clock in the afternoon,” the gospeler tells us.  I imagine teatime conversation morphing into dinnertime conviviality and long and deep discussions into the night. I imagine that the hearts of the guests of Jesus “burned within them”, as did those of the two who spent time with Jesus unknowingly on the road to Emmaus that first Easter afternoon three years later.

Spending time with Jesus. Remaining with the One on whom the Spirit rests and remains. That’s what the evangelist means, I believe, when he writes about ‘abiding in’ or ‘indwelling’. Not going our own way and summoning Jesus when we want him to tweak this or that aspect of our lives to our greater satisfaction. Discipleship is consistent following and being present with our Lord, whether he is leading us to the mountaintop or to the cross. We become better people when we stay close to Jesus. We are empowered to go beyond ourselves. We become vehicles of the Holy Spirit. We, like the Baptizer, become able to testify and point to “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

But where do we tell people to find him? And what do we say when they ask ‘where is he staying?’ Now it is our turn to issue the invitation, “Come and see.” We who have come to Jesus and been joined to him in baptism are now his Body in the world. Our new life in the Spirit is mean to reveal God’s presence in the world. And by ‘our’, I mean, not just the personal life of each of us, as important as that is, but our life together as a community centered in Christ. Right here is where Jesus is meant to be staying: here in the prayers and proclamation, here in the music and fellowship, here in the learning and service, and most especially, here in the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood.

We receive that sacrament to be sustained in faith and empowered for ministry. Do not our hearts burn within us as we experience the presence of Christ in all the ways he is among us? And, when we are thus touched by the Spirit, might we, like Andrew, share the good news with another, and another, and bring them along as well “Come and see.” I’ve found what I’ve been looking for. I’ve found a way to touch what is most real and important.’ Or you may just say, ‘check it out. I find it helps me.’ Or even, ‘come with me to this great class; to help feed the hungry, to hear this lovely music, or ‘you’ll really enjoy these interesting people.’
“Come and see.” It is integral to our own call to invite others to join us. That is the way the Body will be built up and the ministry of Jesus extended through us. But be aware, the best way for us to help people discover the grace and truth of Jesus here at St. Mark’s is for every one of us to be firmly rooted in the life of our Lord and reflecting that life in our own. When we invite them to come, people will see what they see. Let’s try to show them Jesus.

January 6, 2008

The Feast of the Epiphany - Rev. Common Lectionary Year A

Isaiah 60: 1-6
Ephesians 3: 1-12
Matthew 2: 1-12

The Rev. Robbin Clark

Finally, the manger scene is complete. The three kings are in place. Having been away a week, I had to hustle my home figurines across the top of the sideboard Friday night to make up for lost time, so they could ‘arrive’ today. And soon our Godly play class will process with the traditional gifts to the traditional hymn. But this year we have a new twist. We, also, will be able to offer Christ our own gifts, as symbolized, appropriately enough on this festival of light, by a candle before the altar.

John Westerhoff writes that, “On Christmas we celebrate God’s coming to us. On Epiphany we celebrate our going to God.” I like that thought, but I fear it creates a false dichotomy. The reality is much more unitive – and paradoxical, as befits a great mystery. In the incarnation our God ‘gathers into one things earthly and things heavenly’. At Epiphany we both see and seek the evidence of that gathering together. As observed some centuries later, “you would not be seeking God unless you had already been found by God.” There is a profound interactivity, a relationship operating as we seek because we’ve been found as much or more as we find because we’ve been seeking. This essential mutuality finds further expression in St. John’s image of indwelling or ‘abiding in’ one another.

But, whether it is God coming to us or us going to God or both at once, there is movement and there is change. The Magi deliberately set out on an arduous physical and geographical journey, which may have taken up to two years by some accounts. Their trek was costly and the way was anything but comfortable or clear. My figurines get inched along the sideboard in token of it. Our spiritual journeys into Christ may be just as arduous and intentional, or we may find ourselves being inched along by forces we can’t claim to control. For those eastern sages, it was all about following a star seen from its rising and filled with heavenly portent. For us, it is about being touched by the light that shines in the darkness that the darkness cannot overcome. And it is always about movement and change. And not just change, but transformation.  But these happen in a myriad of ways. Let me illustrate, using two takes on the refrain of We Three Kings, which we’ll sing at the offertory.

Amy, splendent in her red velvet dress and matching ribbon corralling her blond curls, stole the show one Christmas pageant in Santa Fe. She put her whole body into that refrain, especially the O – o part. It was like she was leading a charge. Who could help getting with it and going along? She reminded me of the hearty, enthusiastic and purposeful ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ sort of faith that is behind so many good works in our world. These are the folks who see the light and roll up their sleeves and get busy, working to spread that light around. They run the shelters and cook the suppers. They volunteer for the non-glory jobs. They push for the MDG’s. They’re there when it is not convenient or fashionable, and sometimes not even safe. Their journey in Christ is fueled by such words of Jesus as, ‘Love one another as I have loved you,” and “just as you did it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” We bless and thank them for their readiness to rise to the challenges of this broken and hurting world in order that all may know God’s love and care for them. The star shines on in and through them.

But there is another encounter with this refrain, which has also grasped and held me. A Chanticleer Christmas concert I had on in the background penetrated my December busyness with the transfixing repetition of just three words. They resonated in me like the tapping of a Tibetan prayer gong. ‘Star of wonder, star of wonder.”  Suddenly, it was not all about, ‘Ok, let’s get going and find this new King.’ It was not even about ‘I’ve got to get this tree up and these gifts wrapped and this house cleaned and these cards out and...” It was not about doing at all. It was about wonder. It was about mystery and awe. It was about becoming again a child with mouth agape, taking it all in and being carried by it. It was Clara in the Nutcracker, seeing the tree become enormous and entering into the delicious second act fantasy. It was that ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ I’d learned about in drama class. It touched that part of me that just feels daunted by the hearty, bootstraps, O – o approach.

Our journey can be inspired in either way, or in some other. The important thing is to set out, to get on the way that beckons us forward into the light of Christ, now manifest in the world. It may seem a crazy thing to do, totally counter to society’s advice. But Westerhoff also characterizes Epiphany as “the festival of dreamers.” Who else, after all, would set out to follow a star? Or believe that the helpless infant of a ragged, displaced family would alter the destiny of the world? And who would think to transform society using a rag-tag bunch of uneducated workers, ne’er do wells and social outcasts? Who, indeed, but that helpless infant grown up with a child-like delight in upsetting the status quo? Who but the one who gathers together things earthly and heavenly? Who but the one whose star we have seen and whom we seek? Who but the one whose glory has arisen and appeared over us, as promised by the prophet Isaiah?

Now, the prophet goes on to promise that this light will transform the world through the lives of those who see and follow the ‘star of wonder.’ “You shall look upon him and be radiant”, he says. Think about that for a moment. We shall see and be radiant. Do you think that the extent to which we can truly see and enter into the star of wonder might have something crucial to do with the extent we can radiate that light to others? Might there be a real connection between the two takes on the refrain of We Three Kings?

Having eyes alight with awe and a heart full of wonder and naive optimism that we can make a difference, no matter what the odds, might be the very means by which we can undertake the arduous journey of ministry in Christ’s name. By the same token, giving ourselves over to lightening the burdens of the poor, ill and oppressed might just spark in us a childlike trust in God’s goodness and presence with and in us. Perhaps this integration of God’s coming to us and our going to God might be key to our own manifestation of Christ this Epiphany season and through the coming year. I invite you to reflect on what gift you may wish to lay before the Christ child this year. During the singing of We Three Kings, please join the costumed Magi, who will present the traditional gifts, and come forward to light a candle and place it before the altar. This will symbolize your own journey into radiance and participation in Christ’s light in the world.

In addition, I bid you pray Almighty God that this year may be a season of peace, of plenty, of justice, and of hope for all the people of the world; that good harvest and fair distribution of the earth’s bounty may diminish hunger and want; that warfare, oppression, violence, and discord may be confounded; and that we, with all Christian People, may give a good accounting of the Faith that is in us, so that, whether we live or die, we may gladly proclaim the Salvation of Christ our God in all life, and may draw ever closer to our heavenly inheritance.

© Copyright 2008

December 30, 2007

First Sunday of Christmas - Rev. Common Lectionary Year A

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7
John 1:1-18
Psalm 147 or 147:13-21

The Rev. Ellen Ekström

I used to call the time between Christmas and the middle of January the dark time.  This started when I was a little girl and continued until I began to understand the difference between darkness and light where it concerns God. 

Why did I call it the dark time?  Christmas was over – Christmas trees were kicked to the curb; gone were the shiny decorations, the bright, colored lights, the fake snow in a can, the Glass Wax snowflake stenciling on the windows, the endless carols on the radio stations – the happy season of peace on earth and good will towards all was torn off the block of calendar sheets for another three hundred and sixty four days.  It seemed to me, and this is my humble and personal observation, that the smiling faces of people on the street faded and people looked grim, worried, preoccupied – again. 

The dark time was upon my world.

Like so many other times in my life, I was dead wrong. 

There was light in the world.  It wasn’t a pale beam of winter sunlight that crosses the floor during the day, but a spark that was ignited on Christmas, an ember that smoldered deep within, and within me, maybe within you, and you.  All that’s required is fanning the flame with love, trust and belief.   And that kindling came from a sentence as simple and as powerful as they come:

“In the beginning was the Word.”

It has been said that the prologue to the Gospel of John, which you have just heard proclaimed, is a synopsis of the Gospel itself, it is a summary of Christian life -- conversion, baptism, Eucharist and quest for higher spirituality -- and a revelation of the true identity of Jesus and his connection to God.  Or it is all three.

I like to think that this prologue continues the mystery and beauty of the Christmas story, and, that you and I are invited to carry that mystery and beauty with us during the rest of the year, to move out of the dark spaces and corners in our lives towards the light that embraces, offers grace.  John’s poetic language perhaps tells us that God wanted to lift us out of the darkness so very badly, that he did something deities and monarchs rarely do – God climbed off whatever throne we frail humans planted him on, and came down to our level.  What’s even more amazing is that when God arrived, it was in the form of a frail, helpless, infant, born to common, yet uncommon people, and experienced the joys, sorrows and delights of your average first century Galilean, and inconceivable pain.

Why?  Why did this extraordinary incarnation happen?

Love.

God loves us and went to a great deal of trouble to show us how it is to love perfectly and completely in the form of Jesus.

No, the dark time is really a time of light, it started with the story of the child born in a manger, and continues with healing, of power beyond belief, a fullness of being, of humanity receiving grace upon grace and to be blessed with the gifts God has bestowed upon us through Jesus.  Unfortunately, there were and are those who for whatever reason cannot recognize that Jesus is the light of the world and rejected the man and the message.  But to those who did accept him, then and now, and that is to say, put their trust in him, made a commitment to the Word, a deeper relationship is formed with Jesus; he becomes our brother, and therefore, we become children of God.

Whatever darkness may envelop the world, whatever gloomy clouds may hang over us in our own lives, neither is strong enough to extinguish the light. The smallest spark of a flame will illuminate a room. The smallest gesture of kindness, act of compassion, or work of mercy will light up the life of someone else, and in turn, will light up the world.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

We are embarking on a new year with new possibilities, new hopes and dreams.  As with every New Year there is a fresh canvas before us, waiting for us to apply the first brush stroke.  We have it in us to be transformed by the light and beauty of the Gospel to be children of God and to follow the path of real, yet vulnerable and powerful life in Christ, or to go about with grim, set, faces on our business as usual, preoccupied with matters that we have no control over and live in a dark time.  Or we can dispel the darkness and walk in the light.

I pray you, walk with me towards the light.

 

December 25, 2007

Christmas Day, Rev. Common Lectionary Selection II

Isaiah 62:6-12
Titus 3:4-7
Luke 2:(1-7)8-20
Psalm 97

The Rev. Robbin Clark

Just yesterday morning we were pouring out our longing in song, “O come, O come, Emmanuel!”  Come to us, O God, and ransom captive Israel; be with us, save us.  And now he is here.  Emmanuel, ‘God with us.’  The baby has been placed in the manger.  We’ve sung a new “O, come,” this time inviting all the faithful – and the uncertain, and the yearning, and the wondering, and even those who just couldn’t get out of it – to join in this celebration of joy, this welcoming of the newborn king.

We gather tonight as God’s family.  Some of us fill a whole pew because everyone’s come home.  Some of us sit alone.  Maybe there’s no one to come.   We miss some of the folks we usually see, and hope they’re having a good visit elsewhere.  Our prayers are with those who are in harm’s way tonight.  May God keep them safe.  And we remember those who have passed from us and have been drawn into God’s nearer presence, even as God now brings that presence here to us in the birth of Jesus.  And we gather with countless other congregations throughout the world – huge or tiny, in splendor or simplicity, of every tribe and tongue – all around the same manger that cradles our light in darkness, our heart’s consolation, our hope.  The God and Lord of all has come to be with us.  In Jesus, he is one of us.  He is born.  Each of us was born.  We share the bond of the flesh and all that means.

God is with us.  And how tenderly and poignantly, at that.  We get misty as we coo and gurgle at the smiling infant, singing our sweet lullabyes.  And we expect him to do the same right back; to smile on us and make us happy and hopeful.  We want him to cure the world’s ills, and our own.  That’s a lot to put on a tiny baby, even God incarnate.  But we’re sure he’ll grow into it.

Well, Jesus does grow up.  And, despite all the fanciful tales of his building bridges of sunbeams and the like, he seems to have had an ordinary, and even somewhat serious (if we can tell anything from the one incident known to us in scripture, were he stays behind to talk to the sages in the Temple in Jerusalem) childhood.  When we meet him as an adult, we’re less inclined to coo and gurgle.  He has some hard things to say to us.  First, he confounds us with his wildly reversed illustrations of blessedness – the poor and the meek, those who weep and mourn and are hungry, those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.  He’s a sharp critic of religious hypocrisy and material acquisitiveness.  He heals all manner of people, but then tells us that we must let go of our very lives to really find them.  And, if we aspire to greatness, the way there is to be servant of all.

Suddenly, this God seems way too much with us; meddlesome, in fact.  We might rather he be tucked up safely in heaven, or at least in a manger some two thousand years and half a  world away.  But no, this Jesus marches straight into our comfort zone and wreaks havoc with it.  But what else where we expecting?  Did not God’s messengers, the prophets, do the same?  Did not they confront the materialism, the self-centeredness and power lust, the faithlessness and empty rituals of their age?  Did not they call God’s people back to a loving obedience and trust in God? And did not they also hymn the hope that is founded on God’s love and faithfulness toward us?

It is not for nothing that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”  And the Hebrew tradition knew that one could not look upon the face of God and live.  In that light, “O come, O come, Emmanuel” is the most daring of pleas.  But, whether or not we’d thought it through before asking, God is now with us abiding.  I think we forget sometimes that, when we call upon God, we can’t do so selectively, to get just the bits we want.  When God comes to us, it is in God’s fullness.  It’s the effective power behind all creation; it’s the strengthening and soothing Spirit; it’s the infant in the manager; it’s the teacher, healer and dinner companion of Galilee; it’s the broken body on the cross; and it’s the risen Lord walking unrecognized with us on the road or popping in to bless us, or to knock us off our horse.  All of these are “God with us.”  And they are often daunting.

But what if we were to look at that phrase another way?  What, if we were to think of “God with us,” not in contrast to “God apart from us,” but, rather, in contrast to “God against us?”

That is at least as valid a message to proclaim on this great festival.  I truly believe that God came to be one of us by living a human life in Jesus in order to demonstrate , not only the full potential for a faithful and holy God-centered life, but also God’s solidarity with us; for we are the creatures created most fully in God’s own image.  God is not only for us, God is here for us.  God is with us in every sense.  That is the great good news of Christmas.

And this good news is a word of consolation and hope.  However far we may feel from God, God is never far from us and is always eager to be part of our lives.  However bleak our situation may seem, God can work with it and craft a future from it.  When we are tempted to despair, we can turn to God’s promise, “I will draw all the world to myself.”  Our eternal future is secure because God has come to us to gather us home.  All of us.

But this good news is also a word of challenge.  The world into which Jesus was born was, and still is, a world fraught with sin and oppression.  We are called by Jesus to participate with him in its transformation.  We are Jesus’ heart and hands and voice in the world today to carry forward his message and ministry.  As servant leaders in our households and workplaces and communities, as citizens of our global village, and as members of God’s family, we can and must pray and work for peace, we must bring forth justice and promote the right use of the riches of creation.  We need to treat one another tenderly, with the same care and joy we show to the baby in the manger.  God is with us to help us and guide us in this most important responsibility which has been laid upon us.  If it seems too great a task, fear not.  God will empower us to grow into it.

“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight” we often sing.  So it has been since long before that hymn was written.  And it will ever be.  “God with us” is the answer to our deepest prayer.  For only the one whose birth we now celebrate can carry us through our fears and sustain our hope.

May you be filled in this holy season with a profound sense of God’s presence with you and in you.  And may that sense bring you joy and a new or renewed resolve to walk the path of Jesus, so that this world God has given into our care may shine with God’s glory, and be at peace with itself.  And may we love and care for one another, that we may each know the peace of God in our own hearts, now and always.

 

December 16, 2007

Third Sunday of Advent - Revised Common Lectionary Year A

Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm 146: 4-6
James 5: 7-10
Matthew 11: 2-11

The Rev. C. Robbin Clark

In the year 1793 on an August afternoon in the great prison of the Bastille in Paris, a man was desperately trying to finish a book. He had a good idea he would die soon. He was correct. He was executed within twenty-four hours. His name was the Marquis de Condorcet, and he was one of those rare people who knew how to read the signs of the times. Some two centuries later, he would be hailed as one of the great futurists of the modern world. His book, The Progress of the Human Mind, foresaw such things as women’s suffrage, universal education, the sexual revolution, the insurance industry and even genetic engineering.

The late twentieth century, fueled by millennial fervor and freaked by the accelerating pace of change, has been fascinated by futurism. What’s in store for us? Where are we heading? We all want to see around the bend of time and know what to expect, and especially so in these times of turmoil and upheaval.

Twenty centuries earlier, in another time of turmoil and upheaval, another great futurist was sitting in prison and trying desperately to assess his own ‘book’ of the future, which he had cried out publicly in the wilderness beyond the Jordan. The unsettler has become the unsettled. Fiery and feisty John is done baptizing and proclaiming. Now he is asking a question. He has heard the reports of his cousin’s work. Interestingly, we do not know the content of these reports. Jesus is midway through his earthly ministry and one would have to say that the reviews have been mixed. Hailed as the Messiah by some, he was jeered and sent packing by others. He had gathered a rag-tag band of followers and had aroused the ire of the authorities what had John been told that moved him to send messengers to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

He had been so certain, and now this question. It makes you wonder what he was expecting. He had proclaimed one whose winnowing fork was in his hand and who would come with the Holy Spirit and with fire. That one would increase even as he himself would decrease. It had been over a year. No great movement seemed to be building. Had he gotten it all wrong? Was his whole life’s work a sham? John’s was no idle inquiry. His whole sense of the validity of what he had been about was at stake. Had he totally mis-read God?

The answer Jesus sends back seems to be one of great affirmation couched, perhaps, in the gentlest of reproaches. He practically quotes John’s prophetic predecessor, Isaiah, using the very passage we have heard this morning: “the blind received their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” These are all clear signs of the coming of the Day of the Lord, the messianic age, the kingdom of heaven. John would have no trouble identifying them as such and extending the message to include the other signs in the Isaiah passage. Creation itself would be renewed and all human frailty would be transformed into strength and joy. The path of return to the Lord would be safe and secure. Anxiety would cease. Jesus is deliberately highlighting these signs, I think, to dispel the notion, held by so many of his time, that the Messiah would need to be a political liberator, a new and great king according to the earthly model. Did John’s question come a bit from that point of view? Was he disappointed in what Jesus was doing? That’s where I hear just that little edge in the reply, “And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.”

We don’t know whether John rested easy when he received the reply. But Jesus used the exchange to teach the crowds and challenge them about their own expectations. “What did you go out to the wilderness to look at?” he asks. ‘You knew what you were doing. You wanted to hear a strong word from God, and you knew it wouldn’t happen in the midst of the comforts of the status quo. You needed a prophet, and you sure got one. John was the very messenger you’d been told to look for, the reliable futurist, the one who would announce the coming of the new age. He’s right up there with the greatest of the prophets. But let me tell you now, the story is so much bigger than even he understands. John may be as good as it gets in the life you know now, but even he is as nothing compared to all those who will share the life I’ve come to bring-life in the kingdom of heaven, life in the very bosom of God.

Today’s reading leaves it there, but Jesus goes on to reproach the crowd for their unwillingness or inability or plain outright refusal to receive his message and follow it. You and I can feel the sting of that reproach even now. We have heard the word of salvation. We have been baptized with both water and the promised Holy Spirit. We are participants in the resurrection and citizens of the kingdom of heaven. We share in the heavenly banquet, the feast of the world’s redemption. So why are our lives and world not transformed along the lines of Isaiah’s prediction? Why is the highway still a place of carnage and road rage and interminable traffic jams instead of a Holy Way where “no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray”? Why does the desert not blossom, but shrivel up from global warming and resound with explosions of violence from the present oil war? Why is human frailty still so demonstrably frail, with so many ill and hungry and oppressed? Why do we remain so anxious and afraid and trying to see around the bend of the future, not so much to look forward to it, but to steel ourselves against it?

Maybe we’re a little like John. Maybe we’re needing an ‘expectation check.’ Have we read Jesus right in terms of how he works in the world and in our lives? Are we waiting passively for some magic ‘fixer’ for our condition? Have we selectively tuned out our own responsibilities in participating in the new future God has given us? Listen again to Isaiah, “strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear!” James also counsels us, “you also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Beloved, do not grumble against one another.”

Advent is our great season of expectation. A lot of what we hear is about our expectations of Jesus as what he will do for us. But it’s a good time to examine those expectations carefully. How God works is not up to us. And it’s also a time to examine our expectations of ourselves. Because how we respond to God is up to us. How are we to participate in the transformation promised by the prophets and lived by Jesus? What is already happening? What signs do we hear and see? And what do we make of them? 

Can we live into that ‘both/and, already/not yet’ paradox of waiting and fulfillment? We don’t need to be futurists to know that we do not need to ‘look for another’ to show us God’s intent and path. Jesus has shown us the path of new life. Jesus is even now our guide along the way. And Jesus waits to beckon us home. It’s an expectation we can count on. But how it happens is not ours to say. God is God and we are not. And we are blessed if we take no offense at that.