Isaiah 2: 1-5
Psalm 122
Matthew 24: 36-44

First, We Wait

Waiting is not something children easily do; its not really something adults easily do either! Welcome to the season of Advent, a season of waiting. In Advent we wait for the coming of the promises of God; we wait for the anointed one to usher in the world as God intended it to be. We wait for Christmas, both the first Christmas and the one that will come this year. So, to summarize our waiting has three aspects, or even tenses: past, present and future.

In life we wait for packages to arrive, for cookies to come out of the oven and for classes to be over at the end of term. We wait for the results of medical tests and expectant mothers wait for the time to come that the baby will be born. New parents hope the little outfits will last for a few washings before they don’t fit anymore! After voting we wait for election results or we wait for the morning news to tell us how bad the storm was or how long it will take for the power to be restored. We wait for the sun to come up, or go down, or for the plow to go by or for the crop to ripen or for that sale which will make the item we really want, finally affordable.

We wait for late airplanes. I could go on all day about waiting. Ironically our patience for waiting is often in inverse proportion to our desire for the item. If we want something to happen quickly, it seems to take forever and if we feel like more time would be great, it happens before we know it.

Often the same wait is viewed differently by different people. Children arriving home after the work or school day are told that it will be one hour before the meal, for example, and that hour passes so slowly for the children, but for the cooks, it flies by. When my friend and I were driving from Saskatchewan it seemed that the wait between hotels took forever, but between fill-ups, not so long! 4,000kms is not a short trip!

When I was much younger and expressed a desire for a future event to happen more quickly, the older members of my family would say something like, “don’t go wishing your life away.” Of course few children really understand what that means but when they become adults and do, there is the realization that the the clock cannot be turned back and when you try and tell kids, they don’t understand!

Christmas seems to be the prime example of waiting. Did you ever call a child to come from another room, and when she or he does not arrive and you call again, the response is often, “I’m coming.” Then you respond, “Well, so is Christmas.”

Advertisers used to warn us how many shopping days there are until Christmas; with Sunday shopping in place I have not seen that kind of ad for a while! Even when the day arrives there is even more waiting. When I was a child waiting for “the opening of the presents” time on Christmas day was excruciating. We had seen the number of presents under the tree grow slowly and they were duly shaken and the weight and shape inspected. We tried to peek through a gap or hold it up to the light. Once we could read the tags we would be really curious about what could be in our own presents and why a brother’s present was bigger or heavier than our own.

I was talking with a cousin the other day and it seems that my cousin’s family had started the tradition of what I call “extreme waiting” that I found to be so aggravating. In the morning we had presents from Santa Claus which he did not wrap. Santa was smart enough to give us a common toy to keep us busy while mom cleaned up the breakfast dishes and organized the main meal for the occasion. You know what is involved with that! Setting the table. Peeling the potatoes and other vegetables. Checking the turkey. Cooking the plum pudding and sauce. Preparing the coleslaw. Taking the turkey out of the oven and making the gravy and cooking the vegetables and getting it all on the table and then eating it. THEN the dishes had to be done and my father probably had chores in the barn to finish up. THEN my parents would disappear to their room to change and sometimes come down with one or two gifts they did not want us shaking and poking at for the days leading up to Christmas. THEN we could go to the living-room to open the wrapped gifts under the tree, UNLESS it was a year we were expecting the Charlottetown cousins, which meant we had to wait until they arrived. FINALLY we started. The youngest in the room showed a present to someone who could read the tag and then delivered it to the recipient. Unlike some households, we COULD open a gift as soon as it was received and for a little bit things were a little crazy. One of those same cousins told me that she remembers doing all of this at a relative’s house and opening one present at a time so everyone else could “ooh and aah” and admire the gift.

When my youngest brother married and had children this was one tradition he intentionally changed. When they got a little older, their children only had to wait till the breakfast was mostly cleaned up. All out on their own now, with children and in-laws of their own, the children have to make their own traditions.

Today’s passages speak of the world for which we wait. If we look carefully at the passage from the prophet Isaiah we are encouraged to both imagine and SEE this new world. We are given a picture of a world made new. I suppose some of us have heard or used the phrase, “I wanted it so bad, I could taste it.” The passage asks us to “taste” this future.

When I reflect on the years of Christmas waiting, it became obvious to me that Christmas waiting went faster, or seemed to, when I was busy doing some of the work. Though it not make the turkey cook any faster, and only so many people could work in a small pantry at the same time, it was much easier than idly watching the clock.

Today’s passages are filled with images and metaphors of change and as I reflect on them, I wonder if the “active participating” or “active waiting” of Advent is one way to live into the promises of Christmas during this season of waiting.

The passage from the prophet Isaiah, working and writing in the 8th century before the birth of Jesus speaks words of hope. It speaks of a time in the future when implements of war will not be necessary. The well-known phrases about beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks presents us with a powerful image. I grew into adulthood hearing about the organization, “project plowshares” which is an arm of the Canadian Council of Churches which promotes peace and justice. I read somewhere that one of the things the Roman Empire did when they conquered a nation or tribe was to retreat only after burning the crops and salting the fields. Such fields were then useless for agricultural production.

We know that plows are a staple of traditional agriculture - I say “traditional agriculture” because my Saskatchewan parishioners have all but given up on plowing, because of they promote erosion - but even there the metaphor would be well-understood. Of course we sing the hymn, “We plow the fields and scatter” in farming country, to speak of that relationship between creator and those who work the land. The other image is of a sword being turned into a pruning hook. While I can imagine a pruning hook being used as a weapon, its purpose is agricultural, a tool to trim and prune for the purpose of promoting growth and increasing yield. It goes without saying that without agriculture the people do not eat; without eating, there is no survival.

While the passages are clear that this new world of justice and peace, is God’s doing, there is a mandate in it for the people to be those who live into the kind of world God wants to see come about. Time and again the people of Israel are told that their unfaithfulness to the covent was the reqason for their downfall, the reason theyb were no longer free and in their own land. These promis of the Messiah was that they would one day be back on track. Back on track meant that they would become, once again, a people of justice and righteousness.

I read some advice somewhere, that we are called to BE the change we want to see in the world. As we sing about peace on earth and goodf-will to all, we need to form our lives in such a way that these promises can be seen in real time and are in front of us.

To be promoting the continuation of injustice and waging war are not fitting activities for those who are hoping for God’s reign of peace.

I was watching an ad on the internet the other day which was promoting the Terry Fox Run and the motto, “Finish It”. A short video was played of the ceremony in which he recceived his Order of Canada. The then Governor General, The Rt Hon Ed Schreyer is shown presenting the honour to a Terry Fox and quoting its motto, “Desiderantes Meliorem Patriam,” which means, “they desire a better country.”

Isaiah encourages us to desire the realm of God where Christ reigns and justicde flows down like a mighty river.

Amen!

Isaiah 11: 1-10
Psalm 72
Matthew 3: 1-12

Peace, Perfect Peace

There is a song that just about everyone who has been in church knows, it’s to the tune of Edelweiss, which is now over half a century old. At some time. Someone, somewhere wrote new words to that tune and it became very popular in church circles. One of those new lines goes, “Peace, perfect peace, courage in every endeavour.” The problem is, we are not allowed to sing it! Rogers and Hammerstein wrote the music and words to Edelweiss specifically for the musical, “the Sound of Music”. It’s not actually a favourite song of the Austrian people at all, though it was written to sound like one. First of all, it’s in English not Austrian-German which it would have been if it was a popular folk-song! The estates of Messers Rogers and Hammerstein have decided to deny permission to any words sung to that tune and any other tune to the original words. So, despite the fact that it is widely available, and well known, the copyright holders will turn you down if you ask for permission!

But edelweiss is a real flower, the national flower of Austria and Switzerland and is on the list of protected species. It is symbolic of purity, courage and the mountains of Europe.

We are in the season of Advent, a sacred season of expectant waiting. It is a season in which we listen to scriptures that tell us that the bad we see around us does not have the last word and is not the end of the story. Advent tells us that the disappointment we feel does not need to be the end. This ending of the Advent story has yet to be written - but it is a story as old as time itself. Each time we observe it, we add another chapter to the story of waiting for God’s promises to come to pass.

The great prophet, Isaiah writes about a shoot springing from the stump of Jesse. Jesse was the father of the great King David. Despite his many shortcomings, Jesse’s son was regarded as the greatest King Israel ever had and after the defeat of their nation - for generations, upon generations, people believed that his descendant was going to to once again occupy the throne and lead their nation to greatness.

I could tell at least one story about roots and shoots, for every house in which I have lived. There were the weeds I finally tired of trying to kill only to discover that they were a pretty plant called “bleeding hearts”. There was the manse where I had to deal with maple shoots coming from just about everywhere, including under the doorsteps, even though the trees themselves wwere gone. At that same house a crop of bamboo clung to life even though I tried to get rid of it every year. On the front lawn of the manse in Dundas PEI was a black locust tree, or rather for the most of the time I lived there, the stump of a black locust. Every spring shoots would spring from the stump and produce beautiful foliage. If I left it too long though the soft two inch thorns on the stems hardened and became very nasty to remove. At another manse was a lilac bush just in front of the bay window. I wanted to move the bush and decided to dig it up so I could move some of it to a place in the lawn further from the house. What I discovered was that several ministers in a row had simply cut the bush down and allowed it to grow back from the roots - the root ball was enormous! Finally, after much digging, I had it out and a much smaller bush a few feet away. I think I managed to kill all the rogue shoots that sprang up around the window and tried to keep it well mowed and trimmed, but it took some effort.

When I bought a brand new house I had to contend with the fact that there was so little topsoil on the property in which to grow anything and I had a hard time getting anything to overwinter. Some of my neighbours spent a lot of time and money building up their soil.

It seems ironic that weeds grow everywhere but the plants we want are delicate and require care. This leads me to ask the question about caring for this shoot from the stump of Jesse. How do we facilitate its growth?

As the Gospel’s tell us, John the Baptizer, distant cousin of Jesus, ended his public career as a wilderness preacher. His message was a call to repentance, the sign of which was baptism. He revived that ages old expectation for a new king on David’s throne. You can imagine how a promise that remains unfulfilled for generations would tend to fizzle and be dismissed as “wishful thinking,” or “an old wives’ tale”.

The main image in the Gospel passage is one of road building. The passage quoted from Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight, wasn’t just a metaphor. It referred to special preparations made for the visit of a high official or a king.

I remember a visit from Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip when I was very young - it was probably 1973, PEI’s centennial year. A certain floor of the Charlottetown, a stately grand old Hotel in that city was renovated and redecorated for the Royal Couple. I thought they should stay at the residence of the Lieutenant-Governor but no! As I recall, some weeks before, an advance party came to evaluate the preparations and determined that the Royals deserved better. New furniture was ordered. I believe they tried to recoup some of the costs by auctioning the furniture after the Royals returned to Buckingham Palace, but the rule of thumb was, and is, “only he best” for royalty. The people of Judea and surrounding areas would have known about the kind of preparations necessary for a Roman Official. Without heavy earth moving equipment, it would have been very labour intensive.

When the Olympics or Expo is due to be hosted in a particular city lots of preparations will need to be made. Often low income housing is converted to accommodate the hordes of tourists expected to attend, but once the event is over, the landlords can demand higher rents than the previous tenants can afford and the social disruption is enormous. One of my classmates was working in a poor area of Vancouver during Expo 86 and tried to be of support to those whose lives were disrupted by it. The city wanted its poor to just “go away” so their city would look better for the thounsands of tourists arriving for the festivities. Such events are never an easy time for the poor of the cities showing off for the world.

One of the things I find both sad and frustrating is that the poor and those in need are thought about only at Christmas time; as if they don’t have to eat in March! Or October! We think only of peace when war is being wages between countries, not when we know people are being oppressed for not being the same as those who have the power.

Lots of people claim to put a lot of effort into the coming of the messiah but I wonder if those efforts are really for the cause of promoting peace and good will, or not.

So we have Jesus’ distant cousin John becoming a popular preacher out in the wilderness. Great throngs followed him to the wilderness in order to see and hear him. They had noting to lose, and everything to gain, in embracing this promise. Those who did have something to lose were the Pharisees and Sadducees, and it is clear that John worried them; they did not need anyone rocking the boat. John did not trust them either! Did you notice that John called them “a brood of vipers!”

What if I had begun my sermon today with, “You nest of snakes. Do you think you can get into heaven by just coming to church and saying the right things? No you have to walk the walk and ACT like your have actually repented. In case you don’t know repentance in not just “feeling bad” about something but ACTING in a different way! To repent is to turn around and go in a different direction. You will never get to Amherst from here if you take the exit for Truro.

I’ve actually tried to begin my Advent sermon like that more than once, but I usually reserve it for my last Advent, in a pastoral charge, not my first!

We have heard a lot of news in the last couple of years from Israel and Gaza. The destruction and loss of life is unfathomable. The people often forgotten in the news though from that troubled area are the Palestinian Christians. In years gone by, many Christians from the west would make a pilgrimage to Bethlehem at Christmas time. It was probably a “bucket list” kind of thing. Last week, I Googled “Holy Land tours” but even though they seem to be offered I don’t think I would go this year, even if it was free!

On Tuesday I watched a video from a church in Ramallah, the administrative centre of Palestine. They proclaimed themselves as the “Land of Christmas” and broadcast a candle lighting - from one of the most troubled and dangerous spots on earth - to the Christians of the rest of the world. They are obviously a people who do not cease to speak their truth and speak their message of good will to all and peace on earth.

At more than one point during his time as Moderator the Very Rev Stan MacKay, a member of the Cree First Nation from Manitoba said that while we often refer to Israel and Palestine as the Holy Land, it is important to view the places in which we live, in Canada, or elsewhere, as “holy land”.

It is in these lands that we experience the presence of God. It is in these places that we are challenged to bring the message of hope, peace, joy and love. How can we look out at the Bay of Fundy while we eat fresh scallops and lobster, and not feel the power of Creation. How can we not look at a field of booming potatoes and marvel at creation, or stand on the Blomidon look-off to look at the valley below and not see the blessings of the Creator. Or a a field of canola in Saskatchewan, yellow blooms in every direction as far as the eye can see or walk on a train bridge in the Columbia Mountains and marvel at the diversity of this great land. And not feel small in comparison!

The reality is that we do not have to go somewhere else to see and experience the blessings of God or to find opportunities to serve. We do not have to have lived in another time to have been able to proclaim Good News in word and deed to those who are in need of such a message.

Christmas is about Jesuc coming in Bethlehem all those years ago, but it is also about us experiencing the rebirth of Emmanuel (or God with us) here in this part of Nova Scotia, this year and in our lives AND about desiring a better future for all.

Amen!