Could You Please Speak Up?

Isaiah 2:1-5;

        I suppose it happens to all of us as we get older.  My entire life I have had folks, particularly folks older than me, gently and not so gently urge me to speak a little louder.  I could never really identify with their plight until I recently spent a couple days with my son.  Fortunately, David inherited most of his traits from Deb.  It seems the only thing I passed on was my habit of speaking softly.  David would speak,  and I would shake my head in agreement, having no real idea what I had agreed to.  For all I know David may have requested half my library and my complete CD collection.  But to keep from letting him know that I could not clearly understand what he was saying, I just kept smiling and nodding my head.

        Sometimes, even when our hearing is perfect, we still don’t completely understand what is being said.  When one reads Isaiah 2, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares”, what kind of image comes into our minds?  Is it a message of hope, of redemption, or do the words just fail to register with us?  The words of the prophets often seem like empty gestures raised into a prevailing wind of doubt, seldom louder than a whisper, almost always unheard.  The sacred words of the Advent season are often overwhelmed by a thousand less critical inquiries dealing with cultural traditions, family customs and making a list for Santa Claus.  We are prone to reach for the more familiar songs, the ones we learned as children and still adore today. But the time for “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World” has not arrived.  This morning, I cajole you to listen to the mysterious tunes which peer into the chaos of our souls and announce Advent as the Hope of the World.

        When is the first time you really heard, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel?”  Some of you know what I am talking about. You sing it forever and then one day, out of the blue, you hear it for the first time. This hymn is an incredible combination of clarity of words and mystery of sound.  “Come, Emmanuel, rescue captive Israel.”  The word “captive” speaks to anyone captured by time, or life, or any combination of the two.   “Captive” could be a job which has long lost its sense of vocation.  “Captive” could be a marriage where words are hardly exchanged.  “Captive” could be the frustration of being 13, or the fear of nearing 83.  In so many ways that hardly needs to be explained, we have been captured by our choices, captured by our situation, captured until the Son of God appears.  Then mysteriously, triumphantly, defiantly the next word heard is, “Rejoice! REJOICE! God shall come to you.”

        If you are a member of either choir , the first thing you learn is that our directors take punctuation very seriously.  They hate it when we don’t complete a phrase or if we don’t break at a comma.  Some of us are getting older and find that it is necessary to breath at inopportune times. But Dwight and Kathleen have told us more than once, the writer of the piece knows when a breath should be taken and when the music needs to be sustained.  All my life I have sung “Rejoice (comma) Rejoice (comma) Emman………uel  (comma) Shall come to thee.”  Imagine my surprise when I discovered there is no comma between Emmanuel and the time God shall come.  Emmanuel rushes towards us,  Emmanuel crashes into our lives, Emmanuel does not hesitate to rescue us.  Eman………uel shall come to thee, and thee, and thee.  Do you hear him coming?  Are you ready for him to come?  Do you long for him to come?

        O Come O Come Emmanuel is not our only advent hymn.  Charles Wesley spent the first 30 years of his life as an Episcopal priest.  Then he came to America and fell under the spell of Moravians who encouraged him to listen to the poems in his heart.  He listened well and wrote more than 6,000 hymns.  Wesley’s poems were usually sung to music heavily influenced by a German cadence. Originally “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus” was sung to a tune that could have also accompanied Hessian troops on parade outside Berlin.  But then Rowland Prichard, a fine Welsh composer, lifted Wesley’s words from the parade field and placed them among the hill country of a people lying in wait for a Messiah.  Moving from strict cadence to the magic of a waltz, Prichard releases the enchantment found in Wesley’s voice.   (Quote as if waltzing) “Come, thou long, expected Jesus, Born to set thy people free.  From our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in Thee.”  Can you hear the hope?  Can you feel the promise?  Can you savor the joy?    

        Granted, not all advent hymns fall as gently on our ears.  “Let all mortal flesh keep silent.  With fear and trembling stand!  Ponder nothing earthly minded, for with blessing in his hand Christ our God to earth descended; our full homage to demand.”  This is one of the oldest hymns of the church.  Originally it was sung before the Lord’s Supper was served.  “Let all mortal flesh keep silent.”    Ever been to a Quaker service?  It is quite different from what happens here.  The center piece of the service is silence.  People come to the meeting place to sit quietly and listen.  I am afraid I wouldn’t make a very good Quaker.  Sunday morning is my time to speak and all of you listen.  Imagine coming to Church and being bombarded with silence?  Imagine coming to church expecting to hear the voice of God?  Imagine coming to church ready to listen and then once the voice of God fell on your soul, having the courage to speak?  With fear and trembling you would stand.  All eyes would turn in your direction.  Your thoughts would contain nothing earthly minded.  The blessing received, the utterance you heard, had only one powerful, one cleansing, and one redemptive thought.  In a voice so clear, so persuasive that you might wonder who was speaking, you hear yourself say, “God demands our full homage.” What could be more radical than those words?  God demands our full homage.  They are hard words to hear and even harder words to embrace.

        Then there is a song we might never hear except that the author was smart enough to attach his words to tune of the more familiar “Sing praise to God Who Reigns Above”.  In 1931, Walter Russell Bowie, professor of practical theology and dean of students at Union Theological Seminary was asked to write an Advent hymn.  The words that he chose sound as if they belong in the season of Lent.  Bowie remembered what we often forget.  Not only is Advent a preamble to a God event, Advent serves to remind us of the necessity of Christmas.  Listen to these words.  “Lord Christ, when first you came to earth, upon a cross they bound you.  And mocked your saving kingship then by horns with which they crowned you.  And still our wrongs may weave you now, new thorns to pierce that steady brow, and robe of sorrow round you.” Not much festive spirit in those words.  How easily we forget that from the beginning Christmas is only a precursor to the cross.  God wasn’t making it up as he went along.  From the moment the angel of the Lord visits Mary the dots lead to Calvary.  Across the manger there should always be the shadow of a cross.  For the cross not only defines the failure of civilization, it celebrates the hope of humankind.  Listen to verse three.  “New advent of the love of Christ, shall we again refuse you. Till in the night of hate and war we perish as we lose you.  From old unfaith our souls release, to seek the kingdom of your peace, by which alone we choose you.”

        Advent is not a time spent just “roasting chestnuts by the open fire.”  Advent is not just celebrated as a time for reminiscing about “being home for Christmas.”  Advent doesn’t even promise that “all our Christmas’ will be white.”  Advent does something much more important.  If you will allow it, Advent serves to reiterate that in the middle and muddle of our lives, God will come.  Advent is a precursor of what has happened and what will happen again.  I love the way Ann Weems expresses it. 

                The whole world waits in December darkness

                For a glimpse of the Light of God.

                Even those who snarl “Humbug”

                And chase away the carolers,

                Have been looking toward the stars.

                The one who declared he would never forgive

                Has forgiven.

                And those who left home have returned,

                And even wars are halted, if briefly,

                As the whole world looks toward heaven.”

       

        Advent is God’s gift to unresolved yesterdays.  Advent is the opportunity to place your life in “time out” and figure out what should be next.  Advent offers the prospect of believing that not everything is lost and nothing is beyond hope.  Advent is the time when hearing that God shall arbitrate for his people as they beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks is actually believable.   Advent is when Emmanuel rushes into our crooked lives, releasing us from our fears and sins.  Advent is when we get off the merry-go-round of life and fall silent in homage. Advent is when we celebrate Christmas by remembering the shadow of the cross that falls across the manger. Advent is when we recognize the sword of malice or anger or guilt or frustration that burdens our lives, and we bury it in the rich fertile grace of God’s forgiveness, allowing it to become the seeds of a new resurrection.   Open your ears; open your hearts; open your souls.  Listen carefully for the sounds of advent.

                        O Come, desire of nations bind,

                        All people in one heart and mind.

                        Bid envy, strife and discord cease.

                        Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.

                        Rejoice!

                        Rejoice!

                        Emmanuel shall come to thee.  

Amen.

Arriving on Different Boats

Thanksgiving

Psalm 103

        When I was four years old, my family moved from Georgia to Greensboro.   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 and still has 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 Hampton, 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 with which he was not quite willing to divulge.  But I was persistent.  “Dad, what boat brought us to America?”  He looked at me and said, “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 the narrative of our heritage.  In the 1729 an Englishmen named James Oglethorpe had a friend 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 help of George I, 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 parcels of land in the new established 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.  We all have friends whose ancestors cursed the loss of liberty when they entered Charleston Harbor in chains.  We lie to ourselves if we think the glory of national endeavors out weighs the shame of our corporate sins.  It is all part of our history.  And history serves little purpose when told incorrectly.

Our 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.  We all have heard our unique stories around the dinner table.  But 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 Pentecostals have docked their boats, here, to praise God, together.  Episcopalians and Lutherans have docked their boats, here, to praise God together.  Presbyterians, Unitarians, Church of Christ 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:

God,

who saved the Pilgrims from the harshness of winter;

        God,

who revived the Virginians from the dismay of disease;

        God,

who rescued the Georgians from the disgrace of prison;

        God,

who offered safe harbor for anyone seeking freedom.

Today, together as one;

We dare to lift our voices in praise and thanksgiving to:

God,

who abhorrers and eradicates human bondage;

God,

who offers a path in the wilderness to the sojourner;

God,

who responds to the cries of the oppressed;

God,

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.  To quote our President, “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 warns 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.

Assyria has come and gone.

        Babylon has come and gone.

                Greece, Rome, the Ottoman and British Empires

                        Have come, and are gone.

                                The United States has come,

                                        And one day it will be gone,

But the steadfastness of the Lord,

is from everlasting to 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,

We give thanks to God.

                                                            Amen.                                    

God's Creative Imagination

Isaiah 65:17-25

As I sit and write this sermon it has come to my attention there are 40 shopping days left till Christmas.  Those of you who are Biblical scholars know that the number 40 has great significance. Noah was on the Ark for 40 days, the children of Israel were in the wilderness for 40 years, and Jesus spent 40 days in the desert before beginning his ministry.  The number forty is not to be taken literally. It is the Biblical way of saying, “a long time”. But for those of us who have children and grandchildren, forty days will be here in no time at all.  There are so many decisions. Do I get them something practical? Would the children rather have money? Do I need to spend the same amount on each grandchild? Most importantly, do I dare make any decision without first checking with Deb?

    There are 40 shopping days left till Christmas.  What sort of dreams and visions do you have for the coming days?

        Our Isaiah text is all about dreams and visions.  The writer of 3^rd Isaiah is all too aware of the length of the number 40.  His generation had spent 40 years in exile, roaming the streets of Babylon, waiting for that precious moment when God’s grace would allow them to travel back to Jerusalem.  The writer was familiar with that marvelous song of hope that serves as the eloquent prelude to Second Isaiah.  “Comfort ye, Comfort ye my people.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.  Cry to her that the penalty has been paid for all her sins.  Through the wilderness the Lord has prepared a way.  Every valley shall be lifted up, every mountain shall be made low and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.”   This song had given him and his generation optimism for the coming years.  They traveled west with the excitement of building a new city, starting new lives and living in the light of the Lord. The exiles made that perilous trip across the desert, gleefully expecting the transformation of Jerusalem to be the simple task of reassembling a few bricks.

        But the hopefulness of Second Isaiah gave way to the reality of a ruined city.    What those exiles discovered was a disaster.  The walls around the city no longer existed. Not a hand had been lifted to restore the temple.  The Jerusalem of their dreams quickly turned out to be a nightmare.  Optimism turned to fear. Hope reversed to pessimism. When one reads Isaiah 56-59, it is hard to imagine anything rising from the ashes of that tragedy.   Yet by chapter 65, something has happened.  The writer of third Isaiah once again was given a reason to dream and as you might have guessed, the source of his hope stemmed from his faith.  In a vision, our writer encounters the very imagination of the Almighty. In lyrics that still ring in our ears, the poet describes Zion’s coming glory.  “God is in the process of doing a new thing.  God is creating a new heaven and earth. The former things shall not be remembered.  God will transform Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight”.   The poet spoke of a time when peace would reign, a time when the inhabitants of the city would be righteous and a time when good tidings would lift the poor and the broken hearted.    Listen again to his words.  “Everyone will  own a home and harvest fruit from their garden.  Children will live to be adults and the elderly will be respected.” 

For a people born in slavery, a people who had heard tales of children slaughtered by their enemies, a people who had seen their elderly cast aside, this was a radical vision. People who have suffered, people who experienced grave disappointments are not easily swayed by words.  To transform someone who has never risen out of the dust of their own misery takes more than wishful thinking. It must be acknowledged, then believed and finally lived. The writer of Third Isaiah believed that once the people of Jerusalem visualized life’s possibilities through God’s eyes, a radical transformation would emerge within their thoughts and they would live as if nothing other than God’s covenantal word mattered.

That is a deep-seated and dangerously radical thought.  Who here has not had their hopes raised only to be crushed? Just a week ago people in the Philippines were preparing to celebrate Christmas. Their dreams and visions centered on a promise of peace and justice that was promised to us 2,000 years ago. What are they dreaming about today?

Hope can be a dangerous mistress.   Let’s face the facts.  We don’t have to pick up a newspaper or listen to the murmurs from last week’s election to know that many folks feel they are slogging their way through complicated and difficult days.  Some find it impossible to see the world as anything other than a survival of the fittest.  Yet this passage from Isaiah serves to remind our weary and suspicious minds that God has always encouraged us to strive to create beauty, and goodness and holiness even in the midst of our chaos.

Please note the words I used. “God has always encouraged us.” That is a far cry from saying, “God will do it for us.” Consider the following. If God is completely responsible for the human experiment then the first step in moving away from a belief in God begins with an examination of the human condition. Helplessness can overcome any amount of optimism. Then it is only a matter of time until we blame God for our present circumstances and reassess the very foundations of our faith system. This process leads to two highly relevant questions. “If God is not involved in transforming the world, what good is God?” This is followed by the equally volatile suggestion, “If God’s transforming action is no longer evident, is this not proof of the non-existence of God?”

Many folks have reached the conclusion that proving the non-existence of God is easier and far more logical than grappling with the possibility that this mystery we call God my still be relevant. You will be happy to know I have I yet to join this group. Not only am I continually overwhelmed by God’s creative genius, I have not succumbed to holding God responsible for the madness that dominates our headlines.

It would be so easy to judge God based on the desires of my heart. If I were God there would be no more wars, no more hurricanes, no more school shootings, no more poverty, no more disease, no more madness. What about you? If you could be God for a day what would be first on your priority list.  Knowing that all of you are a compassionate people, I suspect your desires mirror everything God desires for humankind. So what is the problem? Why will we wake up tomorrow to another tragedy?

You know the answer before it leaves my lips. God placed us in charge. Unfortunately, we who celebrate freewill more than life itself are driven and derailed by memories. We remember the Alamo, the Maine, Pearl Harbor and 911. Tucked deep in our psyche is the idea there is someone out there trying to get us. It might an Islamic terrorist; it might be a politician in Washington; it might be a stranger that lives in the neighborhood; it might be our brother-in-law. Regardless who it is I believe our level of trust toward other humans is not great enough to create a society based on God’s desire for justice and compassion. We have memories and those memories are not easily reconciled.

When the exiles from Babylon arrived in Jerusalem, do you know the first thing the new occupants did? They kicked out all the current residents. They believed only those who had suffered captivity could be trusted. They believed the ones left behind must have collaborated with the enemy. Those memories fueled distrust, this distrust forced long time residents from their homes, and this expulsion left the city with too few folks to build a wall in a timely manner. Memories derailed the task at hand.

So God announced, “Together we will build a society were children are treasured, the elderly are honored, folks live in the homes they build, and each family eats from the gardens they cultivate. But in order for this to happen, you are going to forget the past and embrace the opportunity of today.”

So how did that workout? You know the answer. Look at the human equation or should I say human divisions today.  Forget the political impasses that dominate our headlines. Forget Liberal and Conservative; Forget Palestinians and Jews; Forget North Korea and Iran; Forget Global Warming. Just think about your life and that one irreconcilable issue that cannot be resolved. You know what it is. It fills a good part of your brain and tears up a bigger part of your heart. You can’t let it go and I dare say perhaps you don’t want to let it go. That memory has become a permanent part of your psyche. You feast on that memory not realizing you are the one being devoured.

        How can we move toward healthy resolutions if we refuse to place our memories aside? I know the famous quote, “Those who forget the past end up repeating the past.” But I also know fixating on the past seldom leads to new and creative ways to mend a broken world.

“God is creating a new heaven and a new earth.  The former things shall not be remembered or come to past.” Christmas is less than 40 days away.  In Christ, God did a new thing. In Christ, God desires us to do a new thing. During the next 40 days we are probably going to spend a load of money on children, grandchildren, spouses and even ourselves. Why not spend some time on examining our memories? Keep the good ones. But let go of the ones that hurt and destroy your inner peace. Trust in the possibilities of tomorrow.  If the past controls our future and our past is controlled by our fears, how can tomorrow ever be any different, unless, for the next 40 days, we go a little crazy. Imagine a world where the lion and the lamb lie down together. Imagine the possibility of working toward God’s peaceable kingdom, perhaps not in the world, perhaps not in the nation, but just in you own little hemisphere. Imagine letting go of your hurtful memories in order to create a better future. Imagine restoring just one relationship in the next 40 days. Imagine what kind of Christmas you might celebrate if you forget the past and welcome an old advisory to a new future.                                         

There are forty days left until Christmas. What sort of dreams and visions do you have for the coming days?