Sermon for Third Advent 2017

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on December 17, 2017
Preaching Text: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Last Sunday, I had a bit of a moment. Midway through preaching my sermon at Grace, it’s just sort of hit me. I had rattled off yet another of my laundry lists of everything I think wrong with the world and, at the end of it, I just had this sick feeling. A moment where I realized, I’m just tired of this crap. I’m tired of living it.  I’m tired of talking about it. I’m burned out. I need a break. When I got to Canadochly and preaching the same sermon, when I got to that part of it, I just said, “You know what’s wrong out there. You don’t need me to tell you.” And I moved on from there.

Nietzsche, the German philosopher, once warned us about starting too long into the Abyss, into the dark parts of our reality, because after a while it starts to stare back. We start to become like it. We absorb the darkness and become dark ourselves. That’s a dangerous place for anyone of character or morality or faith to be. And I felt it happening to me.

So I decided after all that, this sermon today was going to be different. This is the Third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Gaudete, the Sunday of joy. The Sunday when we light the pink (technically rose) candle. The Sunday where I wear my pink shirt and put my pink scarf on as a substitute stole. The Sunday where I crack my joke about how “it takes a real man to wear pink” and tell the story about how a few generations ago pink was the boy’s color instead of the girl’s. The Sunday where all this and much more is meant to lighten our mood in the darkness of these final days of fall, when the sun sets so blasted early and rises so blasted late and it’s so blasted cold outside. It’s meant to be a day of fun. A day of joy. A day of smiles and happiness.

Yes, there’s things wrong in the world. God knows, I feel like I’ve named them all. You’ve seen them. You’ve even experienced a few of them. But there’s also a lot that’s going right. For every starving polar bear we’ve watched with horror and pity, there’s a guy rushing into a wildfire to save a frightened rabbit. There are stories of triumph over illness. Of good overcoming evil. Of the hungry being fed. Of justice flowing down like waters. Of things right and good and just. Things victorious.

Watch at your own risk. This is gut-wrenching.

Faith in humanity restored.

Sounds a little like Isaiah.

I mentioned last week the fact that scholars believe the book of Isaiah has multiple authors and is the prophecy of more than prophet. Last week’s text, Isaiah 40, was the beginning of “Second Isaiah” and took place in the last years of the horrible Babylonian exile, when the people had little to hope in. Today’s text from Isaiah 61 is the beginning of what scholars call “Third Isaiah” and it takes place after the people have been liberated from bondage and brought home in triumph and celebration.

In many ways, today’s text is God saying through the prophet, “I told you so.” I said I’d deliver you. I said you would see the Lord’s favor play out before your very eyes. I told you the ruins would be rebuilt, the desolate places made green and fertile again. I told you that you would rejoice again. I told you I would put right what has gone wrong.

The past is prelude. It’s one of the big reasons we read these ancient prophecies even when we know they are only in the most indirect sense addressed to us. But they show us what God has done before. They demonstrate how God is always at work, even in the darkest of times. And yes, the pendulum of history swings towards darker times, but it will swing back to the light again. God has promised this and God is always faithful.

If anything, that’s what Advent and Christmas are really about. The coming of the light into a dark world, a world full of all sorts of things that are wrong with it. It is not coincidence that the early Church decided to co-opt the pagan Solstice festivals as their day to mark the birth of Christ. For those festivals were celebrations of light, of its return in the midst of darkness, and that’s a theme we can all embrace.

Because there is light, even now. Two months ago, I was lying on a gurney in an Emergency Room bleeding out from a disease that has plagued me most of my life. I nearly died. And yet, I stand before you now, still alive. My daughter, despite some elements of immaturity in her like using profanity as punctuation (typical of young teenagers. I did it too.), is one the best people I know and I could not be more proud of the person she’s becoming. I have friends who love, care, and respect me. Colleagues who honor my opinions and thoughts. A beautiful wife who I love beyond words even when she ticks me off. (For what it’s worth, I’m sure I tick her off just as much if not more so.) These are gifts from God, light in the darkness, and they are what bring me joy.

And you? Stories of grandchildren. Memories of family. The singing of favorite songs (even if you can’t quite sing as well as you once did.) The beauty of a sunset. The story of triumph in a game, or a sport, or against a horrible sickness. Light in your darkness. Gifts of God. Sources of joy. They’re out there.

So look around you. See the world, not as the Abyss of Nietzsche’s warning, but as the emergent kingdom of God. See the compassion and the love and the good and the just. It may not be as common or obvious as we’d like it to be, but it is there. Because God is there. And he’s at work. Slowly, inexorably, bringing the world into what it’s meant to be. Setting right what is wrong. Doing as he promised and as he’s done before countless times for those he loves. There is joy to be found anywhere and everywhere, because God is faithful. Amen.

Sermon for Second Advent 2017

Preached at Canadochly and Grace on December 10, 2017
Preaching text: Isaiah 40:1-11

Hope. This whole season of Advent is about hope. The hope that the Christ child brings. The hope of the incarnation, of God-with-us. The hope of a new and transformed world, a place where every tear is wiped away and pain and death are no more. The hope of salvation. The hope of mercy and forgiveness. The hope of a new heaven and a new earth. The hope of everything wrong being set right.

A little over a week ago, I celebrated my 45th birthday. In those two score and five years, I have seen amazing things. Hopeful things. I have seen once lethal disease brought to heel. I have seen us journey via probes and sometimes in person into the depths of space. I have watched tyranny fall, sometimes without even a shot being fired. I’ve seen the wall come down. I’ve seen unbelievable advances in technology. I’ve seen civil rights expanded to people who once were denied. And I’ve seen God behind it all, revealing to us his continuous transforming love. Behold, he seems to say, a preview of what is to come.

History is often compared to a pendulum. It swings out and then swings back. For many of us, it seems like it’s swinging back. Many of those hopeful things I just mentioned were years or even decades ago. Now, we look out on a world and see very little to hope in.

In my original manuscript, I followed up here with a laundry list of all the things wrong in the world. But I'll admit I'm tired of talking about that. I rant and rave about it every day on my Facebook feed and I'm burning out from it all. You all know what's wrong in the world. You see it on the news and in your newsfeed everyday. Things are pretty terrible right now and you don't really need me to repeat everything all over again for you to know it.

I admit that I do not live much in hope these days. Fear has become my constant companion, which is probably why I’ve preached on it so much. I fear for my family, for my wife and myself with our health issues. I fear for my friends who at Latino or black or gay. I fear for my daughter, growing up in a world where men of power and means feel entitled to abuse and harass her. I fear for the country I love that now seems hellbent on a course backwards.

The truth is, thought, we’ve been spoiled. Very spoiled. The past 60 or so years on this planet are an anomaly of history, where we have seen unprecedented peace and prosperity. No generation before saw the world work so well in their favor as we have. Yes, there have been wars. Yes, there have been famines and disasters and disease. But not like there was before. No modern conflict even remotely compares to the brutality of the world wars. No modern disease compares to the Black Death or even the Spanish Flu of 1918 (death toll 100 million). No modern disaster equals Pompeii or the Great Kanto earthquake in Japan in 1923 (an 8.0 earthquake that killed almost 150k and leveled Tokyo).

As I said last week, as bad as things seem, they could be a lot worse.

But here’s the thing. In the midst of all those horrible horrible things that past generations of humanity have faced, God was there. God was at work in those times, slowly, incrementally, bringing the world closer to his kingdom.

Case in point is our first lesson. Isaiah 40 is the beginning of what scholars call “Second Isaiah,” a portion of the prophetic book likely spoken by a different prophet than the first 39 chapters. Yes, my friends, it seems likely there was more than one prophet identified as Isaiah (although whether that was his actual name or not is not known to us.) We know this because this second section of chapters take place at a different time than the first. They take place deep in the Babylonian exile. Jerusalem has been destroyed. The people of God have been carted off into slavery in Babylon. A generation or more has passed since those horrible events.

Slavery, conquest by a foreign power, desolation of the homeland, all nightmarish things that have come to pass upon the people of God. And yet this new Isaiah proclaims “Comfort, O comfort, my people.”  A new hope is arising. God is still at work. He will metaphorically level the mountains and the valleys. He will come with might and liberate his people. Feeding them like a shepherd.

It’s wonderful poetry, but it also came to pass. Cyrus, king of Persia, the only figure in the Bible besides Jesus to bear the title “Messiah,” would soon conquer Babylon and set free its slaves. He would help rebuild Israel and give the land back to the people. God proved faithful and brought the nightmare to an end.

It’s no coincidence that this passage that predicted the first Messiah would later be used to describe the Christ. For here again is one who will set the people free. Here again is one who would bring comfort. Here again is one who would feed his flocks as a shepherd. The nightmare will soon end.

This is how God works. Time and again, throughout the struggle of human history, God remains at work, slowly incrementally bringing his kingdom to fulfillment. Jesus was a big step, the biggest, the one who came to live, die, and rise again for the sake of all people and the whole world. For you and for me, to set us free from sin and death.

God is faithful. Yes, as the pendulum of history swings us towards darker times, he is still at work. His prophet’s cry is still “comfort, O comfort, my people” because he will. He always has. The light of God’s mercy and love will never dim even in the darkest of times. No matter what we or the world face, God is still on the throne. He will always be on the throne. He will always work to bring his people out of darkness. He will never give up on us. And in that, my friends, is our true hope. Amen.

Sermon for First Advent 2017

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on December 3, 2017
Preaching text: Mark 13:24-37

I had an interesting conversation a week or so ago. I was working on my sermon for last Sunday, for Christ the King, when Stephanie, who is a good friend of my wife who was staying with us for Thanksgiving, popped her head into my home office. She asked me what I was doing and I told her I was working on my sermon, getting ready to preach on Jesus’ famous parable of the Sheep and the Goats from the Gospel of Matthew. As that parable is one of the End Times, that got us talking about the Second Coming. Is it soon? Don’t you think things are so bad that Jesus is bound to return soon? Etc.

That answer I gave her is “No, I don’t think it’s soon.” Part of it is my historical perspective. I have a hard time believing, even as much as I loathe this age in which we live, that things are the worst they’ve ever been. I know better. Yes, the age of Trump and terrorism, AIDS and Global Warming, nuclear North Korea and a resurgent Nazi party is pretty bad. We’ve got Trump, Hillary, Kim Jong Un; bad haircuts and worse politics, but hardly as bad as the European genocide of the Native Americans, from the Spanish conquistadors to the cowboys of the Wild West. Hardly as bad as Vlad the Impaler and the reason for his nickname or Attila the Hun, the “Scourge of God” or other brutal conquerors. Hardly as bad as the Black Death, a plague that killed 1/3 the world’s population.

Hardly as bad as the original Nazis, Hitler, the Holocaust, the devastation of Europe or their allies in Japan with the rape of Nanking and still more atrocities. Krakatoa that blew a whole Indonesian island to kingdom come or Vesuvius that buried Pompeii. No, as bad as we think things are, they could be a lot worse. And if that’s our criteria for what compels our Lord and Savior to return, how the bad things have gotten, we’re in for a disappointment if we’re starting at the sky expecting his arrival any minute now.

I have to confess though there are times when I wish he would show up. I didn’t live through any of those other nightmares I mentioned, so my perspective is that of the scholar, not someone who’s actually experienced one of those monstrous events in history. So while mentally and intellectually, I know things are not as bad as they seem, emotionally I share the desire of many to see Christ return now. I see the evil of our world and it frightens me. It frightens me for the sake of my flocks, for the sake of my family and friends, and for myself; many of whom could be on the firing line if things get just a little bit worse. And I feel powerless to make a real difference in the world. The work of charity and compassion that I endeavor often makes me feel like the boy in the old story where he sticks his finger in the dike to stop the coming floor. It doesn’t feel like it matters.

So, yes, there are times I want Jesus to come back NOW. I want him here to set the world right at last. To inaugurate the new age that I often speak of in funerals, the time when evil is no more, death is put asunder, hunger and thirst are no more, and every tear is wiped away. I want the new heaven and the new earth. I want the promise of eternity fulfilled. I want the streets of gold and all that is broken put back together, restored, redeemed. I want all the things that we trust God will bring when the Kingdom comes in its fullness.

Part of it, I’ll admit is my frustration, my weariness. I’m tired. I’m burned out from trying to do good in a world that does not reward it, but instead prefers evil, deceit, and hatred. And I don’t think I’m alone. I think a lot of folks who pine for the End of Days feel the same way. “We’ve tried, Lord. We did as you asked and, despite our best efforts, the world is just as rotten as ever.” Come, Lord Jesus, and fix what we cannot.

As tempting as it is to make that our prayer, that’s not how this works. The parables of Matthew that we had over the last several weeks make clear the reality of Christ’s absence from the world.

The Bridegroom has not come, the master of the household has gone to a far country, the king is away while his sheep and goats do as they do. Our Gospel lesson today from Mark carries forth that same theme. “It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work.”

I don’t know when the Master is returning. No one does. It very well could be today or tomorrow or a thousand years from now. It’s not for us to decide. What is ours to decide is what to do today for the sake of the Kingdom. What to do with the time we’ve been given.

Seems I’ve heard that somewhere before. Oh, yeah, Gandalf’s counsel to Frodo in my favorite books The Lord of the Rings. “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil.”

Frodo shares our frustration, having the quest of the Ring thrust upon him and having to face a Darkness so terrible it threatens the world entire. Tolkien wrote those books in part as a reflection on his own experiences in the trenches of WWI, yet another of history’s nightmares. The wisdom of his fiction reminds us, as does our own Scriptures (not coincidentally, given Tolkien’s faith), that even in the worst of times, we have work to do.

But as Gandalf said to Frodo, so it is also true for us. There are other forces at work in our world. And the work we do is not done alone. Yes, Matthew emphasized the absence of Christ in a post-ascension world. But that absence is not total. Yes, Christ no longer walks this Earth as a physical human being, but his Spirit is ever present. Paul speaks of this in our Second Lesson in his introduction to his letter to the church in Corinth. We are not lacking in any spiritual gift. We have been strengthened and enriched by a faithful God who has called us into his fellowship.

We are stronger than we know. Our voice is louder than we realize. And we can make a difference in this world. Isaiah reminds us as he reminds God that “we are ALL your people.” The hungry still need fed. The poor still need advocates. The sick need care. The world needs US. The Bridegroom is still not back. The Master of the household is still away in that far country. The king sits on his throne and lets his sheep and goats do as they please. And what shall we do? Christ came to this world to announce a kingdom of God where all the evils of the world are put right. And we believe in that kingdom, but the world Christ came to save does not. Or should I say “does not believe in it YET?” You know what makes the difference. All of us living out the work that Christ has entrusted to us until he does return.

We have work to do. Amen.