11 January 2009, the 1st Sunday after the Epiphany/the Baptism of Christ

Following the scripture readings this week, I showed this clip on YouTube from the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" which you can see by clicking here.

Mark 1:4-11

Water flows throughout scripture:

• the waters roiling from the very beginning as God creates everything in the universe;
• the waters rising and covering the earth as Noah, his family, and all those pairs of animals float above the sinfulness that God was attempting to drown out;
• Moses parting the Red Sea allowing liberation and freedom for a people;
• those same people, the Israelites in the wilderness, having their thirst slaked with water flowing from a rock;
• the Psalmist reminding us that God’s voice can be like the tumultuous roar of a waterfall;
• Amos exhorting justice to roll down like a mighty water;
• water becoming wine at Cana;
• the waters in the pool Bethsaida churning so that someone may be cured;
• and I’m sure you can think of others but our attention is called to the waters of the Jordan in which Jesus sought out John for baptism.

Water is important, both in the physical and spiritual realms. Thirst is a much more difficult thing to bear than hunger; we can go much longer without food than we can without water. But probably the closest analogy between the physical and spiritual uses of water comes from birth, when a new life, a new human, actually breaks forth out of water and emerges from the safety of the womb into a noisy, bright, and most confusing world.

And so it is with baptism. The noise, brightness, and confusion are no less jarring when, as baptized people, we look all around us and yearn for a world in which sin does not reign and the clamor of greed and power do not drown out our attempts at quiet, spiritual lives. We think of Jesus there in the Jordan, and ache for that same dove-descending, water-rippling moment in our lives.

If we really look at the text, if we pay close attention to the gospel accounts of this amazing moment, especially the version from Mark that is the lectionary reading for today, the peace might be shattered a bit.

First of all, there is John. John is not a peaceful individual. The last time we heard from John was when he was leaping in his mother Elizabeth’s womb as the pregnant Mary approached. Well, now it’s some thirty years later and John has grown into a really interesting character. So interesting in fact that Mark, our sparest gospel writer, takes the time to tell us about John’s diet and wardrobe. He’s a societal outsider with his camel hair and leather and locusts and honey.

But even more so, John is operating way outside the religious establishment with his baptism of repentance. People were flocking to the Jordan to be washed clean of their sins. But you know what? That was the religious authorities job. Wild-eyed John was usurping the clout of the priests and scribes and rattling the cages of the big boys.

And it is to John, this power-appropriating outsider, that Jesus shows himself one day for baptism with all the other seekers and those looking for new life, a new beginning. And John, without really much fanfare from Mark, does just that; he baptizes Jesus.

What happens next though is interesting: Mark tells us that Jesus sees the heavens torn apart and the Spirit coming down upon him. Mark uses the Greek word for ‘torn apart’ only twice in his gospel: here and when the curtain in the temple is torn in two at Jesus’ crucifixion. The action bookends Jesus’ ministry for Mark.

This is not the skies just opening up to let the Spirit out; this is a violent, physical event. If you think back to a little over a month ago, you might remember that Isaiah implored God to “tear open the heavens” the very first week Advent. Isaiah was praying that God would get Godself down here to earth and take care of the whole mess through a ripped open heaven.

Well, here at the Jordan, centuries later, Isaiah’s prayers are finally answered. The heavens are torn apart; ruptured by the rush of the Spirit getting down to earth for this momentous event.

Baptism is not an easy-going, calm event. Baptism is earthy; it is tumultuous; it is, if one listens, life-changing. It is both cleansing and initiative; by washing clean the slate so far, those who are baptized enter into new life, a new start.

They got it right in the movie clip I started this sermon with from the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”. The film follows three escaped convicts as they seek to get to a treasure before a dam is built and the waters of the reservoir cover the treasure forever. Delmar, the slowest-witted of the trio, rushes headlong into the water, bypassing all the white-robed folks waiting their turns, jumping at the chance for a new start, ignoring the believers in their neat lines. The wrongs and sins from his past are over and gone; forgotten, he’s certain, by God and therefore, he believes, by everyone else. He is starting anew and, later in the movie, shows that new start.

We too often look back on our baptisms as placid affairs, done because it was the expected thing to do perhaps. Don’t feel badly though; centuries of art have portrayed it that way, as we see in this sculpture from the late 15th or early 16th century. The artist missed too the earth-shattering event that was going on as we catch a glimpse of Jesus just before the water hits him. So our tendency to thinking of this episode as a calm one is backed up by many years of others doing exactly the same thing.

In the taming of this feral event though, we miss the renting of the heavens and the voice telling us just how beloved we are. I have no doubts that Delmar saw and heard and experienced the whole messy affair as he put the robbing of the Piggly-Wiggly behind him and even the lies that he told in asserting his innocence. But we, in our calm, composed lives that probably have more in common with the authorities in Jerusalem than they do with some wilderness guy named John who needs a haircut and has a dandy recipe for locusts with honey, miss out somehow on the truly exciting, heaven-rending occasion that is baptism.

Baptism is a one-time event for most of us. Of our two sacraments, it is the single occurring one while communion is the on-going experience. So what’s done is done and there’s no turning back the hands of time to see if we can capture that experience of baptism that folks from Jesus through to Delmar have had.

But all is not lost; because we are called to remember and relive our baptisms daily, hourly, and even more frequently. We wade into the baptismal waters when we work to end poverty and when we aid those who are the least among us and when we comfort those who grieve, and there is plenty of grieving going on all around us these days.

It doesn’t matter how you were baptized or how old you were when it happened. It doesn’t matter if you have no recollection of the actual event whatsoever. It doesn’t matter if it was in a lake or a pool or a tub or beside a fount. What matters is that you remember and in remembering you are born into new life.

And as you do so, in the whole earthy, messy, outside-the-realm-of-social-convention-and-religious-authority practice of it, listen…listen carefully. A voice, perhaps a still, small voice, is going to be saying, “oh loved one…you really make me happy.”

The Baptism of Christ sculpted by Andrea Sansovino around 1500 in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. (Sansovino only did the sculptures of Christ and John; the angel was a later addition.)

Epiphany Sunday, 4 January 2009

The Star of Bethlehem
Edward Burne-Jones
1888-1891



Epiphany Sunday
Matthew 2:1-12 (Click the link to read the scripture.)


The Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall in New York City can only be described as a spectacle, and that word does not do justice to the event that happens there on stage at the corner of 50th Street and 6th Avenue (or Avenue of the Americas, as they’ve tried to rename it, though true New Yorkers tend to refuse that mouthful of a moniker). In fact, the official title of the show is “The Radio City Christmas Spectacular” which has played for over 75 years according to their website. (http://www.radiocitychristmas.com//) Of course, the Rockettes are a big draw as they high-kick their way through the holiday season. While Allen & I lived in New York I took my Mom to see the show once, and I continue to marvel at all that happened on that stage.

Besides the Rockettes, the big happening of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular is the telling of the Christmas story…you know the Christmas story with Joseph, Mary, & Jesus in it; not one of those more recent Christmas stories that involve elves or talking snowmen or other inventions of the marketing mind. For me, even as an adult some 15 years ago, part of the wonder of this theatrical occasion was that they used real animals in the show; right up there, on stage, in New York City, of all places, where the animals we were used to seeing were mainly pigeons and rats though if you had a chance to venture into Central Park you might find some squirrels begging for food.

But there they were up on stage: cows and sheep and goats and who knows what else. But probably the most memorable creatures to be part of the action, at least for me, were the camels; real, live, hump-backed camels.

Those dromedaries make their entrance, on cue naturally, with the Magi toward the end of the tableau in the midst of all the wonderful, dripping Art Deco interior that is Radio City Music Hall. No pigeons, rats or squirrels for these theatre-goers (though assuredly, I was in the minority as a New York resident in the audience…this show is mostly for out-of-towners I think I can safely assert). Camels; actual camels up there on stage.

So at the climax of this theatrical vision of visions, we have three actors made up to look like kings or magi or whatever corporate, ticket-selling America thinks they are, entering with their camels to complete the picture.

And that theatrical entrance, entering stage left if I recall correctly, is what we’re on about today. Epiphany: The tale of the wise men who traveled from distant points to pay homage at the birth of a child who was destined to be a king. There is much lore that surrounds this narrative. It doesn’t say that there are three wise men but tradition has put it at that number because of the fact that we’re told they brought three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Once they were thought of as kings themselves; royalty who came to see this baby Jesus and pay homage to the king who was greater than they and thus the carol “We Three Kings” always comes to mind this time of year. But really, the proper translation is more along the lines of wise men. But we don’t know who they were or anything much about them; we don’t even really know if they had camels, but that’s such a good part of the Radio City show that why would we leave it out?

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that we celebrate Epiphany at the start of each new year. Epiphany is traditionally observed on the 12th day of Christmas, which is always the 6th of January for those of us who follow the western Christian calendar. A lot of churches, like ours, does not have a special Epiphany day service but mark the occasion on the Sunday just before or after, like we’re doing today. But Tuesday is really Epiphany, if you want to get technical.

But here we are, just barely into 2009, and our thoughts turn toward watching the night sky for a star to guide us. And who among us does not need that sort of celestial, heavenly guidance? Who has not stopped for a moment over the past few days and wondered what the oncoming months will bring?

True, this whole demarcation of time thing is humanly-created to fit our own human needs. At first we needed, as the supposedly intelligent creatures in the global neighborhood, to know when we were going to require shelter from summer’s scorching sun or winter’s cold. We needed to know when we should be out reaping from the plants that grew for the time ahead when food would not be readily available. Then we needed to know when to plant and when to harvest crops. So we came up with systems of marking time.

And today most of us mark time more with the ebb and flow of holidays and credit card bills than we do with agricultural concerns or the movement of those celestial bodies. And we’ve come to note when earth has gone around the sun in a full orbit. Of course, we can do that every day; every moment is twelve months, give or take a second or two I understand, from when we were at this particular point in relation to the course around our own local star. But custom has been handed down that we celebrate and note one precise moment in the orbit and say, “Now. Right now…at this point in the orbit…here is the start of a year.” And so we take time to reflect and ponder the future as calendars are replaced and champagne corks are popped.

Furthermore, we, of the western Christian ilk, have the opportunity for a double shot of that future-pondering. Because Epiphany, following on the heels of New Years Day, is when we seek, when we hope to learn, to discover. It’s when we look to the heavens, mimicking wise ones from centuries ago, for signs of new life and new hope; when we look for those stars that foretell change and new possibilities.


The word ‘epiphany’ comes to us from the Greek language.* It’s made up of two words: first, epi, which means ‘to’ or ‘on’; and then, phainein, which means ‘to show’. This celebration is indeed when God’s incarnation was shown to the whole of the world, represented by those gentiles, or non-Jews, whom we call the magi who came and recognized Jesus as God on earth. Those Magi, however many there were, stand in for all the rest of us who weren’t among the first century Jews.

Around 1300, there was another name used for this holiday: it was called, are you ready for this?, ‘Tiffany’. Yep, that’s right, the name that every other kindergarten girl seems to have these days comes from this festival. It got to be a name, in fact, because girls born on Epiphany, or Tiffany, were often named after the holiday.

Tiffany is itself a shortened name. It stands in for the longer word ‘Theophany”. Theophany…epiphany; notice the resemblance? That same root is at the end, our old friend phainein, to show. But standing in for that little word epi, we have theo which is the Greek word for God. Theophany means, essentially, ‘to show God’ or 'the showing forth of God', which of course is what was happening in that quixotic episode that Matthew recounts. God is shown to the world in the form of a kid in diapers, just as newborn offspring are shown to fathers standing with joy and thoughts of the future at the window of the hospital nursery…or at least that’s how they used to do it in the movies.

So the future-pondering in which we take part is not just idle speculation about the next five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes and what fate may bring to us during the course of them. No, this is one of those times when we get to stand apart from our culture, as seems to be occurring more and more often these days. As people of faith, claiming Christianity as our route to God, we are scanning the heavens not to see what the stars tell us of our future as a newspaper astrologer might, but for what most of us would consider the more-important search for Theophany…for a ‘God-showing’.

We pause amidst the spectacle of camels in Manhattan and let our eyes leave the fabulous Art Deco surroundings and even suspend for a moment the high-kicks of the Rockettes, holding the champagne corks and pausing in our calendar replacing for an instant, to notice that the stars lead to a baby whose birth we just celebrated; the very same baby who is our Theophany…who is our Tiffany…who is our Epiphany.

Yes, we will wonder about the weeks ahead in 2009, but don’t lose sight of your search in the heavens for a star, for a sign that will lead you to God-among-us.



* Etymology of Ephipany, Theophany, & Tiffany came from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=epiphany&searchmode=none.

Five Candles

Four Advent candles are now aflame...only the tall white candle in the center remains unlit, waiting for the spark of new life and love. We have come to the culmination of our period of preparation; that which we expected is indeed to happen. Our patience over the past four weeks is to be rewarded with the gift of God's presence with us.

That final candle, that central tall one still dark, is our last, best hope; for ourselves and for the world. It is the candle that will provide the light for a star in the night sky that will guide wanderers and wonderers, seekers and questioners, doubters and believers over centuries. It is the candle that will brighten shadowed corners of our world, if we will but share it. It is the candle that will inflame our hearts and ignite our souls with a message of love and grace for ourselves and for all humanity. It is the candle that will not extinguish, that burns eternally in spite of efforts to snuff it out throughout history. It is our candle of faith.

That is why it is the Christ candle.

A Blessed & Merry Christmas,
Gerry

21 December 2008, Advent 4

The painting to the right has been a favorite of mine for many years. I took the picture that you see at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on a visit there a few years ago, when I just happened upon the painting, after having really loved it for years previously. It's The Annunciation and was painted by Henry Ossawa Tanner in 1898. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. A better image of the painting is here: Tanner Annunciation.
Now on with this week's sermon. May the remainder of your Advent be one of discovery and joy.
Gerry

Luke 1:47-55, Luke 1:26-38 (Click the link to read the scriptures.)

There is something about the two passages from Luke that are set as today’s lectionary readings that really get to me. I am attracted to them in ways that I cannot fully explain, catapulting all of it into the realm of the spiritual, as far as I’m concerned. And I’m not really alone, I know; many artists and musicians throughout the ages have tried to express the mystery of this event between an angel and a young woman.

But why are we all drawn to this event that non-believers around us would scoff at and call yet more evidence of superstitious foolery? Why does a story which occurred thousands of years ago, the actual factual truth of which is really of no importance to me, still make some of us catch our breaths and stop for a moment to reflect about how the divine and creation interact? Why this fascination in art and music and imagination with a story that’s no more than a few lines of an interchange and the subsequent song that young girl sang in response?

I think that part of it is because it is such an unusual tale; it’s a narrative we’re not used to, not even in the bible. If you consider the other miraculous births that we have from scripture, they all involve old women…elderly women…barren women…women well past their childbearing years: Sarah laughing her head off at the thought of her and Abraham adding a nursery after all these years; Hannah, barren and childless, dedicating her baby Samuel to service to God in grateful response to the birth. Even Elizabeth, whose tale of bearing a son in her later years is told just prior to and intertwined with the words we heard this morning in Luke, precedes Mary in becoming pregnant by only six months.

But in those six months, that tiny space of time when you think of the entire scope of human history, God does a new thing, a different thing, a radical thing. God chooses a young woman to bear the Messiah, God’s anointed one. God selects a woman who is at the beginning of her childbearing years to be the mother of this most important gift.

Of course, women had little if any status or position in society throughout the many histories of humankind. What status they did have came most often because of the man to whom they were married or perhaps due to their age or sometimes due to what we would call their family of origin. So maybe these other women, the Sarahs and Hannahs and Elizabeths, did have some degree of standing, just a bit of stature in the community.

But Mary? She had none of that it seems. She wasn’t yet married. And the man she was going to marry in fact was just a carpenter—likely he wasn’t a landholder and he wasn’t a priest or any of the other vocations that carry a certain amount of standing.

And Mary was young. We all probably remember hearing for the first time someone saying that Mary was probably a teenager. I haven’t done the research myself so I have to rely on the scholarship of others as likely you do too. But it does make sense, doesn’t it, that Mary would be just a teenager? Thinking about it in market terms, if you have a commodity, such as a daughter, you’re going to make use of her by arranging a marriage to her while she’s young, while she can still provide the future husband, the buyer, with offspring, wouldn’t you? Plus you may want to get her out of your household as early as you can so you don’t have to provide for her anymore. So it seems to be logical that Mary was indeed young.

So we have a young woman, a lowly servant, as she describes herself; one without stature or standing or connections. That’s quite different from those who had been granted miraculous pregnancies up to this point. And that’s the point: this radical choice proclaims to the world that God is choosing a new route; this birth will be completely different from all the others. God is entering humanity from the very bottom of society, where God is needed the most.

And Luke, our gospel writer this morning, gets that. Luke’s gospel, Luke’s good news, is all about God’s preference for the poor; Luke’s emphasis is on Jesus’ ministry to the lowest of the low. And this emphasis doesn’t start with the angels announcing to those smelly societal outcasts, shepherds, though that certainly is another big hint from Luke about what we’re going to hear from his recounting of a miraculous birth and life and ministry. Luke gets to his emphasis on the poor earlier than those shepherds abiding in their field. He hits us with it in the care that he shows in presenting Mary’s story, especially in contrast to Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth’s tale, as wonderful as it is, is the way things used to be done. And her son, John the Baptist? Well, we know where he fits in here. For two week’s in a row this Advent, if you’ve been paying attention, we heard two different gospel writers recount him saying that he’s just not worthy to even lace up the sandals of the one who would grow up under Mary’s care. The former things are past and gone and over; the new things, God’s new-fangled ways, are what are important here.

This is indeed radical stuff. Don’t believe any of the prosperity gospel preachers who are so popular who preach that if God loves you, you will be rewarded with material goods and wealth. Luke would hear none of that and Luke tells us that Jesus wouldn’t either. Luke reminds us that Jesus not only came for the least among us, but indeed came from that very place of poverty himself in the fact that it was Mary who bore him.

Listen to Mary. Hear her story and let it fascinate and move you too. Give into any urgings that you might have to just sit with those few words of interchange between Mary and Gabriel, who was probably wondering, as he spoke aloud those words of comfort and surprise, just what God was up to this time. Let Mary’s story live in our culture. And watch for new ways in which God continues to act as you end your Advent preparations and at last celebrate that miraculous gift.

Bated Breath

Each week, I produce a newsletter for my congregation and begin it with a paragraph or two. This week I'll start putting those words here to add to the sermons which I already post. Hope you enjoy these too.

Gerry

"We wait with bated breath." As I sit here at my computer trying to come up with something clever, or thoughtful, or profound, or, at the least, worthy of your time to read these lines, that phrase came to me as I considered the fact that we're over halfway through Advent 2008.

Advent is a time of waiting; we all know that. But I began to wonder about that "bated breath" part. What does it really mean? Where does it come from? I wasn't even sure of the spelling but realized that spelling it b-a-i-t-e-d would only make us think of worm breath, rather than how to prepare for the Christ.

And so, without even moving from my desk chair, I did a little research on "bated breath" in an online dictionary. Indeed, I found out that my spelling instincts are correct and it is b-a-t-e-d. And then I learned that "to bate" means "to moderate, restrain." Bating one's breath, then, is breathing a bit more shallowly or with a more even pace in anticipation or hopes of what is to come.

What a perfect fit with Advent! We moderate not just our breath but our very being in anticipation of the One who is to come. We restrain the culture's attempts to get us to rush headlong into Christmas and instead savor the weeks that lead up to a God-with-us event. Our moderation stands against the excesses of the greed and materialism and consumerism that is all around us.

And so, with bated breath, we seek a star in the sky or strain to hear an angel's voice. With bated breath, we creep ever closer to a rough, straw-filled, impromptu crib to peek at a newborn baby. With bated breath, we look into the faces of everyone we encounter throughout our days and ask ourselves, "is this the Christ?"

Pace e bene,
Gerry

14 December 2008

Advent Table at Chalice

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

When I probably was about high school age, I was with my Mother at a small, local shopping center. We were walking from the parking lot to the sidewalk that ran along in front of the stores. I have no idea now of what came over me, but I broke out into a run and leapt over a low, backless bench that was firmly rooted in the concrete on the sidewalk. Well, I should say, I attempted to leap over the bench because I misjudged and, splat, went flat out onto the sidewalk. Mom, quickly figuring out that I wasn’t really hurt anywhere, laughed a bit as she picked up the heap on the sidewalk that was her second son.

I’m sure she laughed because it must have been quite a spectacle, because, you see, I was not the most coordinated of people, then or now. I was…am…always tripping over things or bumping into things or otherwise performing unintentional slapstick humor. I was no good at athletics, always the last chosen in gym class. The gift of athleticism was given to my sister and two brothers, but not me. They were the ones who could throw, kick, or hit balls and run gracefully while I stumbled my way through life. I do think that there were times they would all, all five of them including my parents, look at me and wonder just how I got in the family. The athletic-capability entrance exam must have been waived when I came along.

Of course, some 30-plus years later, I’ve gotten somewhat used to it by now. I don’t fall as often mostly because I’ve stopped trying to jump over shopping center benches. I’ve learned some tricks along the way that help me to stay upright and in one piece. But the truth is I was, am and evermore shall be a klutz. And that’s okay.

But what doesn’t seem okay to me is my also ongoing spiritual klutziness. Spiritually, my world is filled with oughts and shoulds. I should read the Bible more than just for sermon preparation. I ought to be looking for God in the faces of people I see. I should pray more. I should. I ought. I should. Those shoulds and oughts plague me. And I feel like a spiritual klutz most of the time, tripping and stumbling my way through faith like a bad Chevy Chase imitation of Gerald Ford.

And then I get to the readings we had for today and I really feel like the faith family outsider. Yeah, I know that these readings are uplifting and joy-filled, but when I really look at them, I have to start to wonder where I fit in.

Take the Isaiah passage for instance. These words, which Jesus himself used to proclaim the start of his own ministry, cause me to look at myself and ask some question. I haven’t done that much good news bringing to the oppressed lately. I haven’t even talked to any prisoners or captives, none-the-less proclaimed liberty and freedom to them.

The Psalm wasn’t much help either. Sure I’ve done my share of sowing in tears in my time, but I think I’ve missed out on the reaping with shouts of joy somehow.

And Thessalonians…yikes! Pray without ceasing? Giving thanks in all circumstances? Holding fast to what is good? I consider myself lucky if I touch something good, without thinking about holding on. But those ‘without ceasing’ and ‘in all circumstances’ phrases really make me uncomfortable when I’m judging my spiritual self. More klutziness!

These scriptures pull out the measuring stick, stand me against the wall, and mark my spiritual height. And sometimes it looks like I’m shrinking rather than growing, using their yardstick.

But then I get to read John’s gospel. And in those first few verses of the passage which we heard today, in which John’s poetic writing reminds me about John the Baptist I find the comfort I need in my spiritual klutziness. John the Baptist wasn’t the light, I’m reminded. John testified to the light. John indicated the light. John pointed to the light. And I remember, in the midst of my faith trips, stumbles, and false starts, that I don’t have to light up the world myself. All I have to do is point.

I may be the worst spiritual mess on the face of the living earth at any given point in time, but I can usually still point. I can point to the light and say, “there it is, go get it.” And sometimes, I admit, that’s the most I can do for myself or for anyone else.

As these lectionary lessons for today percolated in my head over the past week, I was really drawn to the image of the light. I was preparing for all sorts of clever ways to talk about light, riffing on those couple of verses from John. For instance, we’re approaching the Northern Hemisphere’s winter solstice, when daylight becomes more and more scarce and thus precious. We’re celebrating Advent, in which we gradually increase the light in our world by lighting one more candle than we did last week. I knew we’d be discussing the Magi in our worship today and thought about how they relied on a light in the midst of darkness to guide them. All these ideas were tumbling about in my head.

But then I read something in preparation for our gathering last Tuesday on Handel’s Messiah. What I was reading was actually about another light-filled scripture, the one about “arise, shine for thy light has come,” but it seems just as valid here in the glow of John’s verses. I realized how light is so very important throughout our scriptures. Light is there at the very beginning in Genesis. It is the first thing created, in verse 3 of chapter 1. And light is at the end as the last chapter of the final book of our Bible, Revelation, proclaims, “And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”(22:5 NRSV) Throughout the Bible, in the Psalms, the prophets, and the epistles, light is used over and over again to help us understand God in some small way.

And, if you’ll notice, the light that is referred to is different from the sources of light that we know. In Genesis, God created light first off but didn’t get around to creating the sun, the moon, and the stars for a few more days. There’s a difference between them, you see. Even in the Revelation passage, God’s light shines separately from and over and above any other kinds of light. Those lights simply cannot compete with the divine light that has shone so brightly since before the beginning of time and came to earth in Jesus’ radiance.

So in the glow of the divine, I don’t really have to worry about my spiritual klutziness anymore. I can point. I can seek the light of which John wrote and be guided by it, be drawn to it, show it to others who live in the shadows. It’s really very simple when it comes down to it. Those other things…proclaiming release, and bringing good news, and praying without ceasing and the other things that make me feel spiritually uncoordinated…they will happen in and due to the pointing that I can do. Finding God’s light and letting it shine in your life is release and liberty; it is reaping with shouts of joy even when the seeds of tears are all too well remembered; it is lifting out of oppression the forgotten and broken ones of our world; it is rebuilding the shattered and broken foundations of our faith walls.

Advent is our time of expectancy of Christ’s coming and John reminds us that this coming, in this wonderful birth we wait for, is a shining in the darkness; in the darkness of night in an insignificant corner of a world far from us in time and geography, and in the gloom of humanity’s faith story. In your Advent preparations, as the December sunlight does become more rare and as a star over a manger rises higher in the east in the skies of our imaginations, seek that light that brings life and peace and righteousness to our world.

7 December 2008 ~ 2nd Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 40:1-11

I begin today, surely against the advice of good preachers and the instruction of homiletics professors, with a quote:

We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has conscience. Only when we have felt the terror of the matter, can we recognize the incomparable kindness. God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love. *

The author of that quote knew something about evil and death—he didn’t speak out of the safe confines of an ivory tower though he was an academic. Nor did he pen these words in a hermitage cave atop a lonely mountain, though again, he did spend many, many hours of his life alone and locked away.

This message to us comes across the decades from the years of World War II and was written by the German pastor, theologian, and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer, many of you may already know, was arrested by the Nazis for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler in March of 1943 and was imprisoned until his death at the hands of his captors in April 1945. His imprisonment did not stop him completely; he was a prolific writer and out of his imprisonment, in which he most assuredly would have known that he could be executed at any point, came words of hope and faith and comfort.

Ah, comfort, the word which begins the Isaiah reading this morning. Quite different from the opening words of last week’s Isaiah reading in which God was implored to “rip open the heavens.” From that violent image the lectionary moves us to comfort this week.

When we hear the word “comfort” though these days, we often think of ease: a soft sofa perhaps; a fuzzy bathrobe; a heated car seat. We sink into the word “comfort” and just relax, lying there and enjoying life and perhaps an excellent wine.

But the author of these words from Isaiah that we heard today, all those centuries ago, was probably not thinking of sofas or bathrobes and, unless he was extremely prescient, didn’t even envision car seats, heated or otherwise. No, he was had other things on his mind.

Those of you who attended our bible study this past week during which we are looking at the texts used in Handel’s great oratorio Messiah know that these comforting words are the very ones that begin that majestic work. Many of us can still hear it: a high tenor floating out above the strings quietly accompanying him with the refrain of “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.”

You may also remember that what we know as the book of Isaiah was written by at least two different people. The first 39 chapters of Isaiah are from the prophet Isaiah, who lived in the late 8th century b.c.e. The remaining chapters, which begin with the verses from today’s reading to the final 66th chapter, were the work of at least one other prophet; some scholars insist there is even a third one in there. Those who think hard about such things and often get paid to do so, generally refer to them as First and Second Isaiah, though sometimes you’ll hear Second Isaiah referred to as Deutero-Isaiah. (By the way, just a warning in case you go out of here and show off your new found knowledge about all these Isaiahs to our more conservative or biblically-literalist Christian brothers and sisters: this two and three author theory of Isaiah drives them over the wall. They will insist that it was all the same person who wrote Isaiah and that was Isaiah, pure and simple.)

So this prophet, whom we only know as Second Isaiah, begins his prophecy with this word “comfort.” While First Isaiah preached to the people of his time that they were doing wrong, that bad things were going to happen, and that God was peeved with them, to put it mildly, Second Isaiah lived a different circumstance. By his time, the big bad empires had indeed swept through and overrun their tiny countries, taking many citizens captive. Second Isaiah spoke out of the midst of captivity. Second Isaiah didn’t need to tell the people of impending doom anymore because it was now history; it had already happened. Second Isaiah’s message that he was called to preach was likely even harder; out of that pain of captivity, he was called to speak of comfort and of looking forward to people who were in the utmost depths of despair.

In fact, Second Isaiah used that same word ‘comfort’ thirteen times in the 26 chapters that make up the end of the book. The Hebrew word behind the English word ‘comfort’ comes from the verb nacham. Nacham is used all throughout the Hebrew Bible, about 108 times in all. Most of the time, its meaning is as we heard it today, translated as ‘comfort’ or some derivative, like ‘comforter.’ Sometimes though, it means ‘repent’ or even ‘sorrow.’ For instance in 1 Samuel 15 the reign of the first king of Israel, Saul, was coming to a sad and disastrous culmination. In that chapter we read, “Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.” God being sorry about making Saul king is that same word, nacham. God is repenting the choice of Saul as king. God is comforting Godself over a wrong move. That sense of nacham casts a different light on the whole ‘comfort’ thing, doesn’t it?

Centuries and centuries after Saul, the prophet cries “comfort, comfort” as the very first words out of his mouth to a people in exile, living as slaves in a foreign land far from home. But even in that situation, comfort comes with an understanding of repentance or turning back, of lamenting one’s state and one’s distance from God.

So here we are, 21st century North Americans, far removed from Bonhoeffer’s prison cell in Nazi Germany and even farther from the dire circumstances of the captives of Second Isaiah’s day. Do we need words of comfort or do we need someone prodding us into action this Advent 2008? As I said earlier, the comfort which comes to our minds is often ease without that sense of finding comfort by returning to God. We are all about sofas and bathrobes and heated car seats. We lack the urgency about which Bonhoeffer wrote; that before God-with-us is good news, it is terrifying and should shake us to our soles. (I wrote that word as soles with an ‘o’ as in the bottom of our feet. But this good news in fact should also shake us to our souls with a ‘u.’)

Being comforted then is not relaxing in the hot tub of life’s bubbling water. It is work, actually. It is making plains where there once were hills and filling valleys so they are level. Because God is sending a messenger, Second Isaiah tells us, a messenger who needs direct and easy access. We’ve got to clear out the brush and pave the desert so that there are no impediments to God getting through to us.

Now even to those exiles thousands of years ago who knew all too well about physical hills and valleys and deserts, these words that seem to us to involve backhoes and payloaders, were not to be taken literally and neither should we take them that way. We’re not going to turn un-ecologically pc all of a sudden. Advent is a time, however, for the clearing and paving that needs to happen within us. Too often we do feel like we are filled with hills and valleys that seem impossible to traverse; we carry inside deserts that appear too foreboding to cross; barriers to God’s messenger getting through.

But it is precisely there in that tough internal work that we find comfort, that we find release. Because God not only cares about what is going on around and outside of us, about what we are doing to make God’s creation a more comfortable place to be, God cares deeply about what is happening within us. And until we make an arrow-straight highway through the desert within and give God’s messenger half a chance at getting through, we are not going to find comfort.

This Advent, in the remaining weeks before we once again tremble to our very depths at the laughable, frightening premise of God-with-us, find comfort. Allow God to get a message through to you by stopping whatever it is that keeps you busy and distracts you. God’s messenger is seeking to get through; your work, your comforting repentance, is to find a way to allow that to happen.

*Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Coming of Jesus in our Midst,” from A Testament to Freedom, The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, edited by Geoffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995), 185; as quoted by Lindsay P. Armstrong, “Preaching the Advent Texts,” in Journal for Preachers, Vol. XXXII, No. 1, Advent 2008, p. 6.