Isaiah 2: 1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13: 11-14
Matthew 24: 26-44

Patience, My Friends

We have probably all been on a long trip with a child who kept asking, “Are we there yet?” We know that long car trips are hard for children, but we also know that this question can quickly become tedious and aggravating, especially when WE KNOW we won’t be there for hours, and we are road weary, and we begin calculating how many times we will have to answer that question.

I think it was Mrs Canon, one of my high school teachers who said, over and over, “Patience is a virtue, achieve it if you can.”

Advent is a season of waiting and expectation. We have been celebrating the season of Advent, waiting for Jesus in the season of hope and expectation for generations and, in one sense, the answer is “no” we are not there yet. Yet, in another sense, we arrived there about 2000 years ago. In still another sense we know we will arrive out of breath and spent of energy, on December 25 just as we do every year.

Time travel and other dimensions of existence have long been the subject of science fiction but most of the ideas have not come from serious scientific inquiry. Recently however, serious scientists and mathematicians have begin exploring the concept of “parallel universes” through the field of quantum physics. Advent could be said to operate in three dimensions, “times” or even “three parallel universes” at once. While it might sound a little like an episode of Star Trek please bear with me.

The Advent journey takes us through the month of December (and in most years a little of November) and we know that we will land at the manger on December 24. Mary will be visited by an angel as will Joseph. The taxation order will go out and they will journey to Bethlehem. Magi, star gazers from far away, will arrive some time later and then we will pack up the manger and the wise guys until next year and wait for Lent. It’s the same story we have been reading for close to 2000 years. We sing “Silent Night, Holy Night” and it can be as if we are actually transported back 2000 years and we can smell the animals in the stable and hear the unmistakable cry of a newborn baby. Are we there yet?

The Advent journey also takes us personally through a journey of self-discovery and change. Some years our personal discovery of the newly born Incarnate One is more dramatic than other years, but there is a sense that in this dimension the Christ is re-born in us, each and every year. We sing, “Make my heart a Bethlehem” as we wait for a very personal experience of the Holy. It can be as if we ourselves have been born anew. It can be as if it is happening for the very first time and we feel the peace on earth proclaimed by the angels as we never have heard it before.

In the third and hardest to grasp onto dimension of Advent waiting, we hope for the time when the singing of “Joy to the World” will be true LITERALLY. We hope for the time when all weapons of war have been changed to those designed for agriculture. The Christ who comes will be the ruler; he will be the one who gathers the sheep and goats together and you obviously wanna be a sheep. It is the world actually living by God’s laws and it is world where Shalom is fully realized and there is no mistaking that sin and evil are a thing of the past. Oh what a morning when the stars begin to fall. Are we there yet?

So - here we are, dipping a big toe in the waters of these three dimensions at once, trying to decide if we will jump in with both feet or not. Do we have to choose which one we are waiting for this year?

My answer is “of course not”. Sometimes we are not feeling at all like Christmas and in those years we can go deeper into the tradition of “Emmanuel”. Sometimes we really, really need to get beyond what can be a superficial expression of peace that only thinly covers the consumerism that marks the traditional Christmas. We need to sit and experience the presence without focussing on the presents that can be wrapped and put under the tree.

It matters a great deal where we want to go this year and what it is that we are waiting for.

Do we wait for the perfect gift?

Do we wait for the perfect reaction to the perfect present we have given of the kind that the “Best Buy” commercials promote?

Or do we wait for something that will last longer than even the Energizer Bunny? Do we wait for something that will last longer than that 35 pound Christmas Turkey that took two people to lift it into the oven?

It seems to me that we wait best by living that for which we wait and hope into being. If we hope for peace on earth we wait for it best by living the peace in which we believe in the best we can. We may not be able to beat our actual swords into actual plowshares (I don’t even have a sword to start the process with) but we can convert some of our resources into food for the poor - such as donating food to the food-bank, or supporting the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.

We can bring into being the real meaning of Christmas by focussing more on what we cannot buy and on relationships and on the things that will last.

We can live into the peace for which we hope by stepping off the overpowered treadmill on which we live for a day a week and slowing down, recharging our batteries and focussing on the things we must enjoy before they change, grow up and move away.

The passage from the gospel that I read just few moments ago is about finding the holy at unexpected times; about being ready at all times, and about not being surprised that we are surprised. It is about being ready to experience grace in the most awful of circumstances because God is present at all times.

Over 20 years ago, during a snow storm, I walked over to the local hospital to visit a woman who was dying of cancer. I walked because I was afraid my little car would get stuck - and I really didn’t want to shovel the driveway. I figured that I could keep her company for a while that day as her husband would not be making the 25 km trip because of the weather. But when I arrived he was there already and she told me that she was not at all surprised that he had come in such a storm.

I was visiting another woman in the hospital and she told me about the special bouquet of flowers her husband had brought to her. He had not spent any money on them; he had walked to the back of the farm and had to cover some very rough ground to get to the only place where these flowers grew. The journey was part of the gift; a gift no amount of money could have purchased.

In this season of giving and receiving we can give bth giver and recipient will become more open to the surprising grace and presence of God who has come to us in the person of the one born so long ago in Bethlehem, the one whose birth we await this year, and the one whose final triumph we await with every fibre of our being and every action of our lives.

Let us keep awake for opportunities to encounter the holy this year - if we are awake we will surely know the presence of the one who is to come.

Amen.

Isaiah 11: 1-10
Psalm 72
Romans 15: 4-13
Matthew 3: 1-12

Hope For A Better Day

At first glance, you might think that John the Baptizer very much needed to take one of those Dale Carnegie courses, or something of that kind. There are no polite stories about how well he was treated at the local hotel or how helpful the waitresses are at the restaurant. There are no comments about the beautiful view after having been in the wilderness for a long time. I guess you could say I gave the children “John Lite” for the children’s time. ((For the Children’s Time I dressed as John the Baptist and talked about things we need to change like bullying and hungry children. )) In the scriptures, by contrast, John is depicted as being very abrupt and was someone who did not hesitate to tell people what he thought. Calling people a bunch of snakes is kind of harsh, especially, that is if you want them to turn them to your way of thinking. Yet, John wasn’t selling anything, he was there to do what a prophet does best; to call the people back to a genuine and life-giving relationship with God.

Yet, it seems that he still should have changed his style - perhaps just a liiiiitle bit.

In their culture, telling them that their ancestry wasn’t going to win them any favours was another harsh insult. You just can’t tell people that God could make better “synagogue going people” out of the dust on the ground.

I don’t know, but maybe it would be like saying to a group of sixth or seventh generation Islanders that the people from away were more worthy of living here than they were!

(Pause)

Speaking as someone whose ancestry goes back five generations on the sides of three of my grandparents, them’s fighting words! But they are also words that make me stop and think.

John was speaking to both common folks and to the religious elites. A large part of the problem was that the elites wouldn’t give anyone else any respect at all. Not only did you have to follow the letter of the law, which was very difficult if you had to work as a common labourer for a living, you had to be from the “right” family to be anybody in their books. Since the elites made the rules, they made “the cut”, so they rested on their laurels and did not feel they needed to live in ways of true justice and faithfulness. It seemed that some of them thought they were above these concerns!

John was also a prophet who was willing to “speak truth to power” and it eventually cost him his life. He was God’s spokesperson and that was what mattered to him. He was the herald of the messiah; he was the road-builder; he was the one preparing the way! Prophets were often weird people; John was especially weird. His apparel was noted - his diet was noted. I remember a number of years ago, the church where I was serving used a Vacation Bible School program that featured a silly song which mentioned John’s diet of “bugs and honey”. I wonder if the organic food movement could be able to capitalize on this historic diet?

Welcome to the second week of Advent; the second week of hoping for the coming of the messiah; the second week of hoping for the reign of God.

In my last pastoral charge there were a number of tree stumps very close to the manse foundation. The trees had been let grow too big and their root systems were very extensive. The trees had been cut down before my arrival because if they had been left any longer they would have cracked the foundation. I figured they were the stumps of maple trees because every so often I would have to pull small maple trees from my flower beds and from beside the shrubs and other trees. They were shoots from the stumps of these trees and their root systems. That’s the nature of trees. If you have a shrub that’s out of control, cut it down! It will grow up from the stumps.

The prophet Isaiah, long before, during a very difficult time, had presented a compelling image to the people of his day. The nation is like a tree trunk, or perhaps even a stump of a tree that has been cut down, but far from being completely dead and lifeless, as it may seem to be, this is a message of hope. New life will come from this stump. New hope will once again blossom in the land of their ancestors. The message was really that there was hope for Israel - if they turned again to God and followed in God’s ways.

John the Baptizer was preaching during a similarly difficult time; Israel was once again an occupied country and it seemed as if this was to be their destiny. John came and preached about a new leader who would usher in a new age, a leader who would be greater even than David, a leader so great John was not even worthy to be his servant. His role was to prepare the way for this new leader; that is all.

When a member of the Royal Family is planning a visit to PEI there will be plenty of preparations. Various people will visit long before the royal plane lands and make sure the preparations are appropriate. Nothing is left to chance. If the furniture, for example, is not good enough, the hosts will be told to change it. The highways budget will have lots of money for paving and touching up the roads. Similarly, in the gospels, John is seen as preparing the way for Jesus. Just like they have been trying to do in Hunter River, the hills are to be shaved off and the valleys filled in. These are real road-building images!

While there is a mood of despair in these passages there is a great deal of hope as well. The situation is grim; the prophetic voice does not really need to remind them of that, but the prophetic voice reminds them of the hope that is inherent in their faith. Their God is a God of life; their God created what is out of nothing; their God can bring life from what seems like death; can turn despair into hope.

We really don’t need many reminders of the sadness and violence of our world. We all know about the natural world of large animals eating smaller ones. In Africa lions eat zebras and here coyotes endanger sheep and cats unfortunate enough to be out at night. Yet this is the natural world. In the human world the tragedies seem far greater as AIDS continues to ravage large areas of Africa; child poverty remains a problem in Canada, a rich and prosperous nation, and family violence affects the lives of many. This says nothing of the toll taken by cancer, disease and accidents.

What would it be like if the lion and the lamb slept side by side and both were vegetarians and the lamb had no need to fear the lion? What would it be like?

What would it be like if the world were a perfect place. If people did not fear their neighbours; the soldiers from a nearby town or from a distant country? What if people could count on enough to eat and enough money to keep a roof over their heads and enough to keep them warm in the cold winter months and enough left over so they could put a crop in next spring. Wouldn’t that be great?

In Charles Schultz’ s Peanuts cartoon strip, Snoopy lies on top of his doghouse and dreams that one day the bunnies and the beagles will lie down together as friends. Wouldn’t that be great?

In the season of Advent we are invited to envision this kind of world. In Advent we are invited to listen for God’s guidance as we seek to do what we can to make this kind of world a little more real, a little closer to actually happening.

On Friday our choir sang in Souris for the CBC Annual Turkey Drive. The goals is that every family have a turkey for Christmas - doesn’t that make things seem more like what Christmas has come to be about? I guess we have to forget the prophecy about turkeys and people becoming buddies!

Advent is about believing that God’s vision is worth striving for, despite our broken and fractured creation. Advent is about connecting the messages of the long ago prophets with what we know of the One who came in Jesus of Nazareth and seeing how, this year, this day, we can move closer to what God wills for creation.

Amen

Isaiah 35: 1-10
Luke 1: 46b-55 (VU )
James 5: 7-10
Matthew 11: 2-11

Is Jesus The ONE?

It’s an important question; perhaps it’s the most important question for the early church: “Jesus, are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?”

We ask questions similar to this all of the time - in many ways. If a church is thinking of calling a minister they ask it of the candidates for the position (at least they ask it to themselves); employers ask it of most prospective employees; young people may ask it of their prospective partners: “Are you the one with whom I want to spend the rest of my life.” We ask it of our politicians, after the novelty of a new administration wears off, and especially if tough decisions have been made that have disappointed the electorate. There are some in the United States who are asking that about their President; “are you the one we thought we were getting when we voted you in as president?” In order for President Barack Obama to survive the election in a little under 2 years that answer will have to be “yes”. In order for Lawrence MacAulay the local Member of Parliament”, or Prime Minister Harper, or Premier Ghiz or any politician to be reelected that answer has to be “yes” for a majority of the voters.

Pause

What are WE looking for? Is Jesus the one we were expecting, or had we better go out and look for something else?

Today we encounter John the Baptizer once again. A great deal has happened since we first met him and we will hear some of the story during the season of Lent. To make a long story short, John had run afoul of the authorities because he had the courage to speak truth to power. He told the king that he should not have married his brother’s wife and as a result, John ended up in jail. In those days people in prison often had a lot of contact with the outside world, so it is not unusual that John would have heard about Jesus’ ministry and been able to meet with his disciples and commission them to ask Jesus a question and report back to him.

We will remember that John had baptized Jesus; that he knew that he was the messiah. Why did he doubt it now? Why was John asking this question?

When I first contemplated this sermon early last week the only thing I could think of for this kind of question was that John was disappointed in Jesus. He had interpreted his own preaching to mean that Jesus would literally bring down the mighty. Of course he did not literally want Jesus to build roads in the wilderness, but he wanted Jesus to institute REAL change, the kind of change that would mean his immediate release from prison. The kind of change that meant a real King of David’s line would sit on the throne and have real power; not like the kings they had, who were only puppets of the Roman empire.

The disciples of John had been sent to ask Jesus: “Are you the one who will bring the mighty low, are you the one who will raise up the lowly; are you the one who will make this nation great once again - or do we have to go back to our disappointment and wait for someone else?”

Almost every leader is asked this question at one time or another - and how Jesus answered it is very intriguing.

What do you see happening? Go and tell John what I am doing. I am performing miracles and bringing good news to the poor. This last line is very telling. In the prophetic literature, the concern for the plight of the poor was very important. It is clear in Jesus answer that is telling John, “open your eyes and see for yourself, the answer is YES”.

Sometimes there is a great gulf between our expectations of what we wish for and the reality of what we have received.

Have you ever received something for Christmas that was just the coolest “must have” thing that Christmas and you were so happy when you did indeed receive it, but by the middle of January, it was just another thing gathering dust on a shelf? This could have been last year, when you had been a grownup for years, or it could have happened when you were a child! OR have you given a fancy toy to a small child only to discover that he or she finds the box to be far more exciting?

Did you ever get what you prayed for and then realized that you didn’t really want it after all? Sometimes this realization can have very sad consequences. A couple I once knew seemed like the “perfect couple”. They married and had 2 beautiful children. They seemed like the perfect family. I lost touch with them. A few years later I heard through the grapevine that he had left. I heard that he decided he did not want to be a dad anymore. Perhaps fatherhood itself wasn’t what he had expected. Perhaps he had decided that it wasn’t what he wanted anymore. So now she is raising the children by herself and he is involved only when he feels like it.

Maybe we can look at this passage by asking “What might be behind this question?” Instead of this merely being a question directed to Jesus, it may point to what we in the modern world might term “an identity crisis” on John’s part. John has spent his entire ministry proclaiming that the Greater One was coming and now that he was here, John’s job was over. What was he now and what was now his role? If Jesus was not the one about whom John had preached, the one for whom he had prepared and baptized the people - then he had to get back out and do his job. Like a dentist who had eradicated tooth decay or a doctor who had eliminated all disease, John had worked himself out of a job. What would he do now; what was his purpose or calling now?

Perhaps the answer to this dilemma was that John needed to become Jesus’ disciple. His role was the same as for anyone who had come to believe in Jesus

This does not diminish his importance, except to say that this specific ministry was complete; he had done his job and done it well. In the Orthodox Churches which have a tradition of religious art known as “icons” - there are often great walls of icons - and on these walls John and Mary the mother of Jesus are often pictured on either side of Jesus - pointing to him and supporting and proclaiming his identity.

December is the season for Christmas movies. We watch the “Grinch” and “Charlie Brown” and “A Christmas Carol” and “Miracle on 34th St”. Each has a message about Christmas, and some are better than others. All of them have become “classics”.

In the 1946 movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life”, a small-town banker named George Bailey, is severely depressed and feels he has no reason to live. He used to have great plans for this life but they all fell through. Through an unfortunate loss of money his bank is on the verge of collapse and he wishes he had never been born. He is about to commit suicide when an angel intervenes and is able to show him what life would have been like in Bedford Falls if he had never been born and that knowledge rescues him and brings him to a new appreciation of his abundant blessings. We finds out what he has “really” known all along: that while the grumpy skinflint Mr Potter has all of the material possessions anyone could want, he is lacking what is most important and that he, George Bailey while he is struggling financially, is blessed with a loving family and many friends. The million dollars he had wished for in his youth could not have made him as happy.

While it has been 60 years since it was produced this movie has a message that still rings true, which is of course why you can still watch it in 2010.

Perhaps marriage, or parenting or your new job isn’t what you expected, but it seems to me that some of the message of this passage is: instead of focussing on your unmet expectations, focus on what is here, what is good and positive about what is and do the best you possibly can with it. When you do this you will discover that you already have all that you need, your expectations have been met and that you can experience true joy.

Open your hearts. Know where love is being lived out.

Open your eyes. See where healing is happening.

See what is happening. See those who find joy in extending love to others.

Praise God. God has blessed us greatly.

Amen.