Remember not our Iniquities

 

Isaiah 64:1-9

             The calendar still reads November, yet the familiar strains of O Come, O Come Emmanuel have announced we are entering that mystical season of Advent. Once a year, as the days grow shorter and our psyches darken, Advent arrives upsetting our December festivities with a plea to take seriously the Christ event.   

            We all know Christmas is around the corner. One cannot turn without being overwhelmed by the holidays. My favorite radio station has already been replaced with the sounds of the season. Yesterday I was listening to Miles Davis play selections from the album Kind of Blue when suddenly, without warning, I was subjected to Alvin and the Chipmunks singing Blue Christmas.  

That was as startling as the last time Deb took me Christmas shopping at Short Pump. To paraphrase the Apostle’s Creed, “I descended into hell.” It was awful. People flying from one store to another trying to get a bargain on some trinket they should have been bought on-line. Children were screaming as parents dragged them to sit on the laps of suspicious looking old men. Music blared through the speakers in a vain attempt to drown out customers fighting over the last Talking Elsa Doll……..OK the music was drowning me out but it was the last doll on the shelf. That woman should have acted her age.

            Of course, it is not fair to make commercialism the Christmas scapegoat. Deep down we really don’t want to admit why the birth of Jesus was necessary. Listen to the words of the ancient song that opened our service:    O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appears.

These words come from twelfth century Latin poems written specifically for Advent.  Each verse is a plea for freedom from tyranny, captivity, and sin. The music was added six centuries later when Thomas Helmore discovered a French tune used at funerals called “Libera”. How perfect to link a tune desiring liberation from death with poems mourning one’s exile.

Singing about exile and death seems inappropriate during this season of parties, lights, decorations, and gifts all concluding with the big Christmas dinner. Yet how often, at the end of the season, do you find yourself completely exhausted and  wishing for a little peace and quiet. How often, the night after Christmas, have you wondered if maybe we lost Christ somewhere along the way?

Christmas has definitely expanded beyond the faithful. Almost everyone celebrates Christmas regardless of their religious affiliation. Don’t mistake me for Scrooge. I am still a kid at heart on Christmas morning. I anxiously anticipate what might be wrapped in gifts bearing my name. I love turkey, cranberry sauce, and I have never turned down a piece of homemade sweet potato pie. I will even let you in on a huge secret. Once the Christmas Eve service is over, I really don’t want to think about anything related to Jesus until the following year. Christmas Day is my holiday from God. I love the festivities, the company, the football games, even the mess in the middle of the room. Just don’t ask me why Jesus had to come. That’s too painful a subject for such a glorious day.

That is why Advent is so important. Advent is when we raise those unspeakable questions. Advent is when we expose our most secret yearnings. Advent is when we cry “Come Lord Jesus,” even though we doubt he will. Christmas Day comes and goes, comes and goes, and comes and goes. The presents change with the ages of the children. The food is always wonderful and the stories delightful. The reason for Christmas hardly matters as we celebrate family and cherish how much we have been blessed. We NEED this one day as a respite, a break, from the tragedies of our world.

 But the faithful also need Advent.  We need Isaiah to ask those dangerous questions that haunt our souls. We need godly responses that sober our minds.  Representing the holy people, Isaiah prays, “O God, come down to us so that even the mountains might quake. Make your name known to our enemies so that they might tremble.”

Ever prayed this prayer? Ever called on God to bring down fire upon those who don’t think like you? Ever wished God would step into our world and make things right with a dramatic response. What a day that would be. So before you do, let me raise a red flag of caution. Be careful when you mess around with Old Testament poets.  They will tease your malicious appetite and then pluck the candy from your lips before you can take the first bite. Listen to the rest of Isaiah’s words. “God, have you been silent because we have been negligent? Have you been absent because we have forgotten your ways? Have you become angry because we have sinned? What about everyone else? Will you remember only our sin?”    (Stop)

With only 26 shopping days left until Christmas, nobody wants to hear a sermon about the memory of God. Nobody wants want to hear the preacher suggest our sin has left God deaf to our prayers demanding holy retribution. Yet in a nutshell, this reveals the paradox of Advent.

The prayers of Isaiah fascinate me. Its inspiration comes from a people complaining it had been too long since God made a house call. The cynical prophet prays, “My flaws may be many, but how can they compare with the sins of my enemy? Come down from heaven….Do something…..NOW!”

The hardest job many of us ever attempted was being a parent. Remember encountering our children’s “active resistance”. Remember being called the worst parents in the world. Remember our high expectations not being met. Remember when they claimed it was somebody else’s fault. Remember telling them that offering excuses or blaming others was not acceptable.

I remember occasionally getting angry with my children. I remember being terribly disappointed in the choices they made. I remember thinking I could have stepped in and smoothed things out. But what would they have learned? What responsibility would they have taken for their inappropriate behavior? As parents we would seethe, we cool each other down, and then we try to initiate the proper discipline to motivate different behavior. Looking back sometimes it was our anger, not our love, which helped our children become who they are today. 

Imagine how God must seethe at our behavior? Imagine how angry God must be over the chaos and unrest that exist in our very nation?  Some folks scream, “Where is God? Why doesn’t God step forward?”          My fear is that God might.

Imagine what God would say. Actually we would not have to imagine because we practiced the words on our  children. “What were you thinking?” “Did you actually believe we had no idea what you were doing?” Or my personal favorite, “Have you lost your ever-loving mind?”

Could it be God the parent has become really tired of our excuses and inability to share in the responsibility of our personal and global problems? Could God’s greatest pain come from good folks doing too little? Could Advent be a holy timeout where a bit of honest confessing is expected?

For most of the world Christmas Day has become a truce on having to think about any of the ungodliness that soils our lives. That’s why folks want every day to be Christmas. No more thinking. No more responsibility. Only Advent dares to highlights the love and anger of a righteous parent with holy expectations.

Advent proclaims that God once saved us. Perhaps now it is time for us to save ourselves.

Advent reminds us that until Emmanuel comes again,

GOD IS WAITING and GOD IS COUNTING ON US!

Light a candle

But don’t hold it close.

Lift it up against the darkness.

With the birth of Jesus, God took the first step.

The second step begins with us.

Amen.

Arriving on Different Boats

 

Thanksgiving

Psalm 103

        When I was four, my family moved from Georgia to North Carolina. I have many stories in my collective consciousness concerning Georgia, but all were learned from hearing tales around the dinner table.  My family, especially my father loved to tell stories.  Like most families we heard the stories so many times dad would start and we could finish it from memory.  The good news is my father’s stories were not limited to his experiences.  He had a keen understanding of history.  So on days like Thanksgiving we would be given a full recitation of the all the events surrounding Plymouth Rock.  Once I asked, “Did our ancestors come to the New World on the Mayflower?”  He would shake his head and say, “No, we arrived on a different boat, but we should still give thanks to God.” 

        When I was nine, my family moved to Virginia.  Dad had spent part of his childhood in Martinsville so this sparked a whole new set of stories.  Exploratory trips were taken to Williamsburg, Yorktown, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Appomattox and Mitchie Tavern.  On Thanksgiving, the stories reverted from Plymouth Rock to Jamestown. I can remember Dad telling us about those Virginians who gave thanks to God 14 years before the arrival of the Pilgrims.  He would brag that Myles Standish had nothing on John Smith and those 108 hardy settlers who arrived in 1607.  We visited the settlement, and dad took us aboard the replicas of the Susan Constant, Godspeed and the Discovery.  I figured one of these ships must have been my family’s transportation from England to the New Colonies so again I asked, “Were these my ancestors?”  Again he responded, “No, we arrived on a different boat, but we should still give thanks to God.”                 

        At some point in time I figured my father had information he was not quite willing to divulge.  But I was persistent.  “Dad, what boat brought us to America?”  He looked at me and said, “Son, we are from Georgia.  Our story is not quite as heroic as John Smith or the Pilgrims. Then Dad took a deep breath and shared either the narrative of my heritage or a fabrication created from actual facts. Great stories often bare a touch of imagination. In 1729 an Englishmen named James Oglethorpe had a friend who die of smallpox in a debtor’s prison. Oglethorpe decided there had to be a better solution than prison for folks who had stepped outside the law.  With the blessings of King George, Oglethorpe established a colony at the present site of Savannah.  The site was made up exclusively of inmates from English and Scottish prisons.  These men and their families worked off their debts as indentured servants.  Once the debt was paid they were given land in the colony of Georgia.    

        After hearing the story I asked if he knew what my ancestor’s crimes might have been.  He smiled and said, “They were Highland Scots.  I imagine they were sheep thieves, but they still gave thanks to God.”

        Today on the eve of Thanksgiving, we each claim stories concerning the boats our ancestors sailed to reach this land.  Perhaps there is someone here who can trace their linage back to Jamestown or Plymouth Rock.  Maybe your ancestors and mine shared dried fish and hardtack on their way to Savannah.  Possibly your ancestors rejoiced on seeing the Statute of Liberty rising out of New York Harbor.  Many of us have friends whose ancestors cursed their loss of liberty when they entered Charleston Harbor in chains.  We lie to ourselves when we believe the glory of our national endeavors outweighs the shame of our corporate sins.  Slavery is part of our history and history serves little purpose when told incorrectly.

Our nations ancestors arrived at this place by a variety of boats.  Many crossed an Ocean; some crossed the desert; a few where already here before the boats arrived.  All have heard and then shared their unique stories around the dinner table.  Today, despite our different histories, our boats have docked at this place to give thanks to God.

I look out at this wonderful group who has gathered to sing and give thanks.  You make this place sacred by your presence.  Not only do we come from different lands, we come from a variety of different denominations. Baptist and Methodist have docked their boats, here, to praise God, together.  Catholics and Lutherans have docked their boats, here, to praise God, together.  Presbyterians and non-denominationalist have docked their boats, here, to praise God, together.  If I have overlooked someone I know, you will forgive me because today we have not come to be recognized, we have come that God may be glorified.  We have not come to sing our praise, we have come to sing God’s praise.  We have come to fill our hearts.  We have come to be together. We came that we might give thanks to God.

How appropriate that on this eve of Thanksgiving, this service of praise, this service of remembrance, we should be regaled with words of the 103^rd Psalm.  “Bless the Lord O my soul, and all that is within bless God’s Holy name.   Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me give thanks for God’s grace.”  Today; together as one; we dare to lift our voices in praise and thanksgiving to:

The God who forgives;

The God who heals;

The God who redeems;

                The God who offers steadfast love and mercy.

Today; together as one; we dare to lift our voices in praise and thanksgiving to:

The God who saved the Pilgrims from the harshness of winter;

        The God who revived the Virginians from the dismay of disease;

        The God who rescued the Georgians from the disgrace of prison;

        The God who offers safe harbor for anyone seeking freedom.

Today, together as one;

We dare to lift our voices in praise and thanksgiving to our great and merciful God:

who abhorrers and eradicates human bondage;

who offers a path in the wilderness to the sojourner;

who responds to the cries of the oppressed;

who restores exiles to the land of their birth.

        We arrived on different boats, but today, together as one, we give thanks to God.

        Our histories and our stories are different.  We are the sons and daughters of the faceless men and woman, farmers and slaves, tailors and butchers, soldiers and sailors, who labored, constructing lives for themselves, their children, and their grandchildren, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, dreaming of ways to perfect our imperfect union.

                We arrived on different boats,

But today, together as one, we give thanks to God.

The Psalmist reminds us that our days are like grass,

        We will flourish like the flowers of the field,

                We will disappear with the fickleness of the wind.

But the steadfastness of the Lord is everlasting.

We came on different boats,

        But today, together as one, we give thanks to God.

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

        May God’s grace give us grace.

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

        May God’s Hope give us Hope.

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

        May God’s Love give us Love.

Bless the Lord, O may soul.

My the God of Grace, Hope and Love,

Bind us together,

In this one boat,

                As today,

Together,

We give thanks to God.

                                                Amen.                                    

The Least of These

 

Matthew 25:31-46

        Our faith journey is filled with epiphanies. Just when we think this faith stuff is figured out, we will read a book, or encounter a new idea, or have a life crisis which pushes us to another level of this Godly road we travel.

        One of my earliest epiphanies came 50 years ago. I had just finished my sophomore year in college. Many of us know what a dangerous time this can be. As a freshman I majored in ping pong, spending much more time in the Student Center than the library. In my sophomore year, a fear of the draft convinced me to take the academic side of college a little more seriously. By the end of that year I had become a literate snob, believing no question was beyond my understanding.  It was also the year that I discovered a disconnect between the traditional values of the church I loved and a counterculture I was beginning to embrace.

        My father, with whom I engaged in many political arguments, never discouraged my exploration of the road less taken. Even as I wandered down what I am sure he suspected was a rabbit hole, he always supported my right to be wrong. I give him credit for introducing me to an alarming poem by Bob Rowland called Listen Christian.

I was hungry and you formed a humanities club and discussed my hunger --- Thank You.

I was imprisoned and you crept off quietly to your chapel in the cellar and prayed for my release. –Thank You.

I was naked, and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance. ---- Thank You.

I was sick and you knelt and thanked God for your health.  Thank You.

I was homeless and you preached to me of the spiritual shelter of the love of God.  Thank You.

I was lonely and you left me alone to pray for me.

You seem so holy; so close to God. But I am still very hungry, and lonely, and cold.

                Thank You.

That sort of “in-your-face” rhetoric perfectly fits the bill of wanting to save the world before suppertime. The poem has those wonderful components that tweaks folk in all the wrong places. Inspired, I took my stand against the powers that be and shamelessly asked how a church could preach the words of Jesus and ignore the face of poverty. My rants were targeted at the beloved congregation which raised me. Their patience was a reflection of both their wisdom and hope that one day I might strive to better understand the complexities of social justice.  After some years of wandering through the wilderness, I took their challenge to work within the system rather than simply be amused by tossing inflammatory barbs whenever the spirit might move me. In other words, I went back to school.

Part of the educational ritual at a good Presbyterian institution is to inundate the learner with the writings of Augustine, Barth, and Calvin, or in other words, the ABC’s of a Reform Theological Education. I was offered a solid understanding of the doctrines of Atonement, Creation, Sin, Incarnation, Resurrection, Justification, Sanctification, and all the other “tions”.  I learned some fancy words like Exegesis, Eschatology, Ecclesiastical, and a lot of other theological terms that don’t start with the letter “e”.  I did not learn was how to Eliminate poverty.

Outside of Theology 101, 201, and 301, I encountered folks like Harvey Cox, James Cone, Will Campbell, Dorothy Day, Gustavo Gutierrez, and a host of others. The one thing these folks had in common was their insistence that an answer to poverty was probably not going to come from those who had never experienced poverty. While that eliminates a lot of folks whose hearts are in the right place, I came to understand the wisdom of their words.

What is most important to us? I am guessing the big three are Family, Health, and Investments. We have worked hard to get where we are and we are most concerned about catastrophes that might cripple those plans.

What are our basic theological concerns? According to recent article in Christianity Today, the big questions dominating conversation about God centers on defining sin and salvation. In other words, who is in and who is out?

I go to Presbytery meetings and discussions break out defining what is a sin and what is not. Issues concerning poverty, racism, immigration, and prison reform, are considered by many to be political not theological conversations.  How can that be? The answer is painfully obvious. Most folks who go to presbytery meetings are not poor, discriminated against, an immigrant, or in prison.

Venturing into this type of conversation is both uncomfortable and divisive. Folks cry out, “Tell me about heaven not hell on earth.  Preach from the Bible, not from some left wing Latino espousing Liberation Theology.” And therein lies the real problem. A few Biblical passages talk about heaven but not that many. We like to hear them often because they offer the assurance life after death is going to be OK. But a lot of folks are living check to check; a lot of folks have lost jobs; a lot of folks have experienced discrimination; a lot of folks have a family member in prison. Their number one priority is finding winter coats for all their children. This may surprise you but the majority of the Bible was written with these folks in mind.

 Before heading to Jerusalem to suffer persecution and death the last words Jesus spoke were these. “When I was hungry, you gave me food. When I was thirsty, you gave me drink. When I was a stranger, you welcomed me. When I was naked, you gave me clothing. When I was in prison, you visited me. When you did it unto the least of these, you did it unto me.”  This was not an afterthought. It was a summation of his ministry here on earth.

Fifty years after being inspired by a sarcastic paraphrase of Matthew 25, it seems like I am right back where I started. The poverty, the hunger, the sickness in this world is still overwhelming. All the education and theological education I received has changed my view point very little. But I am not discouraged.

 I see you delivering wood instead of forming a discussion group. I see you volunteering for the Rescue Squad instead of thanking God for your health. I see you filling baskets of food instead of preaching about waiting for manna from heaven. I see you visiting the sick rather than just praying for them. In you I see the face of Jesus. In you, I see words transformed into deeds. Your commitment to value the life of every human is the centerpiece of our ministry here. I cannot say Thank You enough.

What is salvation? It is touching another heart with love. It is caring about another human being, even when they can barely care for themselves. Salvation is when we stop from obsessing about ourselves and begin to worry and respond to the needs of others. 

Yes, poverty is systemic. Yes, many stories don’t have happy endings. But if we get discouraged, if we lose our way, if we fail to see Jesus in every person we meet, sin will win, and no one here wants that to happen.

Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, care for the sick, embrace the stranger, and go to nursing homes and say, “Hello”. This is the word of the Lord.  Amen.