The Waiting Game

The Waiting Game December 4, 2011 Franktown United Methodist Church Have I ever told you the story of Big Jake? Victor Pentz, pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian Church, tells the story kind of like this: Imagine an old West Texas town. One day a horse wanders in carrying a battered cowboy slumped over his saddle. The townsfolk rush toward the man just in time to hear him utter his final words: "Big Jake is comin'." With that his body went limp. Needless to say the townspeople started to get ready. They locked up the children in their houses. They barred the doors to their businesses and covered the windows in their homes. They crawled behind tables as their lips moved in inaudible prayer. And before long they heard the clap, clap of a horse’s hooves. They peered out the window and out on Main Street here came the biggest, meanest-looking cowboy they'd ever seen in their lives. The guy was seven feet tall, riding a black horse, with a rifle, two six guns and bandoleers criss-crossing his chest. He has an ugly scar along his jaw, one glass eye, and lips curled into a cruel sneer. He stopped in front of the saloon and tied up his horse and as he walked through the swinging doors, he tore them off at their hinges. He brought his fist down on the bar and yelled, “Whiskey!” With that he grabbed a bottle from the bartender’s hand and polished it off in a single gulp. The bartender said, "Well, h-h-how ‘bout another one?" to which the big cowpoke said, "You crazy? I’ve got to get out of here. Big Jake is comin’.”* You might imagine John the Baptist a little like that cowboy. Not that he was a whiskey-drinking, gun-toting giant. He wasn't any of those things. But he was somebody he caught your attention. Like the Old Testament prophets we read about - Jeremiah, Elijah, and Ezekiel and others - John was known for disturbing the peace. He wandered around the desert places, wearing clothes made out of camel skin with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey. And, you know, none of these things would make him a fashion icon in our time, but they wouldn't have been all that strange to people who grew up with stories of Jeremiah and his ilk. You expect your prophets to look a little strange. What was remarkable was that people went out to see him. They went to the deserts to see John. They thought maybe he was the one they had been waiting for. But like the cowboy in the story, John said, "No. It's not me. Somebody more powerful than I am is coming. I'm not worthy to even untie the thong of his sandal" - the lowliest role that a servant could have. The people were waiting for a Messiah, but what they expected was someone seven-feet-tall and armed to the teeth. What they expected was a cataclysmic confrontation. But what John wanted to prepare them for was a savior who was not just going to challenge the enemies of God's people, but also challenge God's people themselves. In the Disciple Bible Study that meets on Sunday evenings we have been studying those Old Testament prophets and what we have discovered week after week is a really consistent message. The people of Israel and Judah are facing threats from foreign powers - Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt. They are hopelessly outmatched by these greater powers. It looks like the end is near. They are praying for God to deliver them. They look to the prophets and what do they say? Invariably the prophets say, "You have brought this on yourself. God has told you how to live and you ignored what God said. God said to care for the poor and you holed up in ivory palaces and ignored them. God told you to love only God - the one, true God of Israel and you worshipped other gods. God told you to give justice to the people in the gate where the legal cases are decided and you tipped the balance in favor of the well-connected. Why are you now surprised that things are going badly?" That's not all the prophets say, though. They talk about doom but they also talk about hope. They talk about a day of restoration that will come. It's almost like God is saying that even the worst thing that could happen to the people, and which will happen to the people, is not powerful enough to end the story of God's presence with the people. Big Jake is coming. Something greater than destruction is coming. Last week we saw how Jesus warned his followers about the things that would accompany his return to earth. We talked about the destruction and the division and the persecutions that would come and we wondered about Jesus' saying that that generation would not pass away before all these things happened. We wondered because that generation did pass away and we are still here. Still waiting. We're not the first to wonder. When Peter was writing his epistles to a group of Christians late in the first century AD, they were wondering, too. Why had Jesus not come yet? They had been looking forward to his return. When was it going to happen? In the passage we read this morning from 2 Peter, just before that section it says that people were beginning to ask, "Where is his promised return? For ever since our ancestors died, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.” (2 Peter 3:4 NET) But the writer goes on to say, "The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you, because [God] does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9 NET) Our time doesn't work like God's time. We get moment after moment in a sequence so there is a sense of space between this moment and some time down the road. But God, who dwells outside of time, in eternity, doesn't experience things like that. "A thousand ages in God's sight are like an evening past," to quote an old hymn. But it's not even like that. No evenings pass for God. Everything is eternally present for God. And this passage from 2 Peter tells us that in the eternal present of God there is something more powerful than punishment and destruction. God is not just sitting around waiting to zap us for our misdeeds. "God is patient not wanting any to perish." And that shows us that along with God's justice we also get God's love. Now if love is the thing that really matters. If love is the engine that the universe runs on, then some extraordinary things happen. There can be destruction and fire and all the heavens may melt away. That's what 2 Peter says and that's what science tells us earth's final destiny is - it will be swallowed up by the sun some billions of years in the future. But that's not the last word over us. If love is the most powerful thing in the universe then the consequence of our sin is not to make us forever unacceptable to God. Jesus came into the world so that our sin would not have the power to end our relationship with God. When we repent God is quick to forgive, because Jesus lays bare our lives before God, lays bare our every weakness, every failure, every blemish and God says through Jesus, "Come to me. I love you even in your broken condition. I love you just as you are because I know who you can be." If love is the thing we are waiting for, then it is a sign that God will not accept our despair and our hopelessness. These are consequences of not being able to see as God sees. God knows what our destiny is - we are meant for God - every one is meant for God. And God waits on us to accept that we have been accepted by God and to repent, to turn around, to let go of our junk and to walk with Jesus. If love is what God is really all about, and it is, then it is also a sign that God will not ultimately accept even God's own despair over this broken world. God weeps at the tragedies of war and poverty and neglect. God weeps when children die of AIDS. God weeps when people turn to hate-filled philosophies instead of towards life. God weeps when religion is perverted to be an instrument for death. But God's weeping is not the last word. What's the last word? It's born in a manger. It's been whispering in the wind since the dawn of creation. It's been spoken through the prophets. But at Christmas the last word became flesh. The curtain was drawn back on the greatest mystery of creation. And suddenly what God has been up to all along was laid bare before all who had eyes to see. Some got angels in a neighboring field to tell them the news. Some got a star to call them across eastern deserts to let them know. And what we get is the story. John the Baptist would say that your sin is unacceptable. Your despair is unacceptable. Your belief that you are eternally unacceptable is unacceptable. Because no matter what you have done or what has been done to you, you cannot escape the God whose name is love. Psalm 139 has a section where the psalmist talks about fleeing from God and finding that no place he could go would take him from God's pursuing love. "If I were to say, 'Certainly the darkness will cover me, and the light will turn to night all around me,' even the darkness is not too dark for you to see, and the night is as bright as day; darkness and light are the same to you." (Psalm 139:11, 12 NET) "Darkness and light are the same to you." God sees in the darkness. God knows who we are. And God loves us anyway. Thanks be to God. *Dr. Victor Pentz, "The Baby that Rocked the World," Peachtree Presbyterian Church website, 30 Nov 2008, http://www.peachtreepres.org/downloads/sermons/20081130sermon.pdf. Accessed 3 Dec 2011.

An Advent of Biblical Proportions

I had been in Jerusalem for two days. The adrenaline that had been powering me through the jet lag was beginning to wear off. But I was determined to keep up my schedule. Just before I went to bed at the hotel I looked at the map to plan a morning run. Our hotel was on the west side of the Old City and I saw that if I ran around to the east side of the city and crossed the bridge across the Kidron Valley I would find myself in Gethsemane - the place where Jesus prayed on the night of his betrayal. Our schedule was full so if I was going to do this I had to get up at 5 am for a 5:30 run. But when the alarm went off at 5 am I groaned. I hit the button and briefly considered skipping the run and going to sleep. But then I heard Jesus' voice. That happened a lot in Jerusalem. I kept hearing Jesus say things. Like when I was running up the Via Dolorosa, the route Jesus had taken to the cross, and it was steeper than anything I had run on the Eastern Shore, and I was considering walking a little bit, and I heard a voice saying, "What would Jesus do?" But this was not the Via Dolorosa; it was the Garden of Gethsemane I wanted to go to. And what did Jesus say to Peter, James & John when he came back from praying there and found them sleeping? "Why are you sleeping? Could you not stay awake with me for one hour?" That's what I heard. So I got my lazy self out of bed and went running. It was dark at 5:30. The street lamps put splotches of fluorescent light on the sidewalks and pavement. Dogs barked. A rooster crowed down in the valley. Along the street in front of the south walls of the Old City Hassidic Jews lined up to catch buses to work. Around the east side Muslim workers did the same thing. Bells rang in the Christian quarter to call people to prayer. A recorded voice sang out the call to prayer from the minarets. In some ways it was like every other city in the world. In other ways it was like no other place. When I got to southeast corner of the walls the sun was just starting to peek over the Mount of Olives. The first morning I went running it shocked me to get to this point because I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by graves. Along the walls was a large Arab cemetery with graves right up to the walls below the Temple of the Rock. They even covered the entrance to the Golden Gate - an ancient gate that has been closed up for centuries now. Down below me in the Kidron Valley was a Christian cemetery and across the valley, all along the southern base of the Mount of Olives was a huge Jewish cemetery. Now why are all these people buried in the same area? The prophet Zechariah, in chapter 14, tells of a time when the Lord would come to vindicate the people against all their enemies. And Zechariah clearly says that God's feet will be on the Mount of Olives and the mountain will split in half to create a valley through which the people besieged in Jerusalem will escape (Zech 14:4). So the Jewish Messianic belief has centered on this notion that when the Messiah comes he will appear first on the Mount of Olives and that closed up gate, the Golden Gate, will open. To be buried on the Mount of Olives is to be in the front row for the day of the Lord's salvation. Muslim beliefs about the end of times also have a role for Jerusalem as a place of judgment. But as I heard the story, there is a defensive reason for the graves. No Jewish messiah would dare to touch dead bodies and to risk becoming unclean, so the graves are meant to block the Golden Gate. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but there are lots of stories in Jerusalem. Then there are the Christians. And what is it that we expect? Christians have traditionally looked to the east as the direction from which Jesus will return in the clouds to claim the chosen people. Most old churches are oriented toward the east. And if you're in Jerusalem, the sun comes up in the east over the Mount of Olives. So to be buried near the Mount of Olives, again, is to be in the front rows for the return of our Messiah. Why am I telling you this story on the first day of Advent? Because this is that strange season of the year. Time gets muddled. Expectations are all mixed up. Music in the malls has been proclaiming a baby in a manger since the day after Halloween. Thanksgiving disappeared in a Black Friday avalanche. The ABC Family TV network is proclaiming the 25 days of Christmas ending on December 25 instead of the traditional 12 days of Christmas beginning on Christmas Day. Santa Claus is already getting overexposed. Our credit cards are already maxed out. Cats living with dogs. It's all mixed up. Even in our scripture readings it's all mixed up. We come expecting angel choirs and shepherds in the fields and Isaiah tells us about dried up leaves and broken pottery. We want to sing 'joy to the world' and 'peace on earth,' but Jesus tells us to stay awake because the heavens are going to shake and the earth is going to quake and something dreadful is going to happen before the coming Day of the Lord. There will be wars and rumors of wars, famines, persecutions, family divisions. Happy holidays! Advent must be something we didn't expect. Advent must be more than just a rehearsal of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. Advent must be about a day we didn't expect, but maybe we should. Advent on the Mount of Olives is about a time yet to come when even death is not the end of the story. There are thousands of dead people waiting at the Golden Gate for one more chapter in this story. So maybe we ought to be looking for more than just a good deal during this season. Maybe we ought to expect an advent of biblical proportions. The 13th chapter of Mark's gospel, which we read from this morning, has always troubled Christians. It comes near the end of the gospel as Jesus is preparing for his arrest and crucifixion. His disciples are trying to get a handle on how this all going to go down. They're in awe of Jerusalem and the Temple. In the opening verses of this chapter they sound like tourists. "Teacher, look at these buildings! Look at these stones!" Jesus is not impressed. "These will all be torn down," he tells the disciples. "Not one stone will be left upon another." Then he goes on to describe for them the tribulations that are to come. Disturbances of the earth and of the heavens. Persecutions for his followers. Conflicts that will lead to death and destruction. Horrible things. "Pray that it may not come in the winter," he said. Then Jesus concludes his warnings with this line that we have been puzzling over ever since. After saying that no one, not even Jesus, knows when the end will come, when he will appear over the Mount of Olives with his angels to gather the chosen from the ends of the earth, he says, "This generation will not pass away before these things come to pass." Now to hear this in 33 AD is one thing. And that generation did not pass away before many of those things did take place. The city was destroyed. The holy site of the Temple was desecrated with pagan worship. There were wars and rumors of wars. There was death and destruction and persecution. By 70 AD Jerusalem was a wasteland. But that generation did pass away and still Christians waited. And each new generation has waited. Maybe it will come when Rome falls. Maybe it will happen when we get to the year 1000. Maybe the year 2000. Maybe on in May of 2011. No, we miscalculated. Maybe it's October. Everyone who has ever made a prediction about the end of time in their lifetime has been wrong. Unless we missed something dramatic. So what could that mean? Well, maybe "this generation" doesn't mean a specific strata of time, but a kind of people. A kind of people who are less than holy, but who need a savior. A kind of people who know struggles and trials. A kind of people who thirst for a word from God. In God's time, maybe we are of the same generation of those disciples because we are the same kind of people. And what does Jesus tell such a people? To stay awake. To be ready. To be alert. How hard is that? Well, in chapter 13 Jesus tells the disciples to be alert and in chapter 14 he asks three of them, "Why are you sleeping? Could you not stay awake with me for one hour?" It's harder than it looks to stay awake. Staying awake means living your life in expectation. It's an active expectation. We don't wait for Jesus by putting our lives on hold and neglecting the world around us because, really, what does it matter if Jesus is coming again? No, to have an Advent of biblical proportions means to be know that everything we do every day, every moment is invested with meaning and importance. You think you're living your life and yours alone? You think nobody else should care what you are doing because really, it's nobody's business? Your business is my business. I can't live your life for you, but I can tell you that it matters how you treat other people. It matters how you manage the resources that have been given to you - your time, your money, your talents and gifts. It matters how you direct your life and what you give yourself to. It matters because there is a time at the end of time when our lives are exposed for what they are - a day of judgment. But it also matters because if the message of Jesus has transformed our lives and we are expecting the coming kingdom, our lives in the here and now ought to be infused with glimpses of that kingdom - "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." This season is a hard one. It's hard to keep. It's hard to hold yourself in a creative tension between what is now and what is to come. It's also hard because so many of us have so many things going on within us during the holidays. It's not always soft lights and warm memories. In our minds and our hearts are memories of past hurts that grow more painful at the holidays. Ways we have been wronged or slighted or neglected or abused. Loved ones that we have lost and that we miss more acutely at the holidays. Rough places that feel rougher. Hard times that feel harder. But keep alert. Keep watch. Don't hit the snooze bar until Christmas. Because you are not alone in this season. God has things for you to do and things for you to receive. And we have things to do together as a people waiting for Christ to come. Thanks be to God.

Hard Evidence of a Savior

Mrs. Turpin was glad that God had made her the right sort of person. It could have been so different. Sure, she was a large woman, overweight, but she was of a good class of people – a ‘home-and-land owner’ with a farm and a husband. There were other people with more money and much bigger houses and more land, but she was not of a lower class and she was grateful for that.

photo by Cristina Cook

As Flannery O’Connor describes Mrs. Turpin in her short story, “Revelation,” she thought of herself as a proper Southern woman living in the mid-twentieth century. She sometimes thought about what would have happened “if Jesus had said to her before he made her, ‘There’s only two places available for you. You can either be a [black person] or white-trash,’ what would she have said? But she hadn’t had to make that decision and she was feeling very grateful for her position in life. Though she sometimes had dark dreams. When she fell asleep after ranking all the people around her by their class and status, she would have “all the classes of people…moiling and roiling around in her head, and she would dream they were all crammed in together in a box car, being ridden off to be put in a gas oven.” But that was in her sleep. In the light of day she knew her place and the place of everyone around her.

She was sitting in the waiting room for the doctor. Her husband, Claud, had been kicked by a cow in the leg and needed attention. So she sat there, sizing up the other people in the room. There was a “stringy old fellow,” “a thin leathery old woman in a cotton print dress,” “a lank-faced woman” she considered kind of trashy, a common woman and her dirty child, a pleasant woman that Mrs. Turpin considered her equal, and a young girl scowling at her over the pages of a heavy book titled Human Development. Gospel music was playing. The song was familiar to Mrs. Turpin, “When I looked up and He looked down…and wona these days I know I’ll wear a crown.”

As O’Connor tells the story, we hear more and more of Mrs. Turpin’s judgmental remarks and thoughts. She also becomes more and more disturbed by the girl with the bad disposition who is glaring at her as if she hates her. Finally Mrs. Turpin tells the pleasant lady, who is the girl’s mother, that if there is one thing she is, it’s grateful. “When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a good disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, ‘Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!”

With that the girl, whose name is Mary Grace, hurls the book at her, hitting her just over the left eye. Then she attacks Mrs. Turpin, grabbing her around the neck until she is pulled off of her. The doctor comes in and gives Mary Grace a shot to calm her. Mrs. Turpin gets up but something tells her the girl has a message, a revelation, meant for her. She goes to the girl and asks, “What you got to say to me?”

The girl raises her eyes and locks her gaze with Mrs. Turpin. “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.”

Now Mrs. Turpin’s world is turned upside down. Everything she thought she knew she no longer knows. The order of things that she thought she could trust has been totally rearranged. Back home at the farm she goes out and starts hosing down the concrete of the pig barn she has on the farm, staring at the hogs. She talks to God, “What do you send me a message like that for?...How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell, too?” It’s a shocking turnabout.

John the Baptizer is sitting in prison. Fierce John. We met him last week in our gospel reading when he was out in the desert. Wearing rough, itchy clothes of camel hair. Eating bugs. Shouting at the people who came to see him – religious leaders, soldiers, ordinary people, whoever would come. “Repent,” he said, “for the kingdom of heaven is upon us.” “The ax is at the root of the trees,” he said. “You bunch of snakes,” he said to the Pharisees. “Get ready,” he said, because the Messiah, the savior we have been waiting for, is on the way.

Then he came. Jesus came to John in the desert and it seemed so clear. Here was the one. He was the one. “I ought to be baptized by you,” John said, but Jesus said, “No, let it be so for now.” And John had baptized in the Jordan River.

So it’s very confusing now to see John have such doubt. He’s sitting in prison. He’s wondering what it’s all about. His world is turning upside down. Everything he thought he knew he’s no longer sure of. The order of things he thought he could trust has been totally rearranged. What had he expected? A quick march to Jerusalem? A grand showdown with the powers that be? Another king like the great King David?

John sends word through his disciples to ask, “Are you the Coming One or should we wait for another?” It was that unclear. Even John was beginning to doubt, to look for evidence.

I know you don’t ever have these moments – these moments of doubts. Or do you? Are there times when you wander through the lights and tinsel of this season and wonder if there is some magic yet in this old world? In Advent we light the candles and wait on a Savior as generation upon generation of Christians have done and do we ever wonder why – whether the waiting has been in vain – whether the hopes and fears of all the years will really be met in the coming of Christ again? We make plans for being with family and friends. We tell ourselves that we are going to be happy. We are going to be joyful. We are going to see the promise of God in the land of the living. But we wonder.

We wonder if there can be transformation in this world. We wonder if there is power in this place. We wonder if peace on earth is more than just a sentiment we sing but a possibility. We wonder about the intractable problems of the planet – the wars that never cease, the hatreds that brew, the lives that are lost, the children who suffer, the bereaved who grieve, the marriages that falter, the deep, racial wounds that never seem to heal. We wonder if the savior is coming into this.

Sara Miles is a Christian laywoman in St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco. She came to Jesus by stumbling into the church as an adult and receiving a piece of bread from the communion table. “I didn’t know who Jesus was until I tasted him,” she said. But the taste led to a whole new life for her.

She started a food pantry in the church – right there in the sanctuary around the big round communion table that St. Gregory’s had placed in the center of their worship space. The table hit her like the book that slapped into Mrs. Turpin. It led her to see the world in a whole new way. She found that she was changed and that others were changed when they gathered around that table – both for worship and for the Friday food distribution.

When the people of the church saw that they need around them was great, they prayed for an answer. How could they help provide more people the opportunity for food, for bread, for transformation? A lawyer working on a federal case had contacted Sara about being the recipient of a settlement that was to benefit California charities. Even though he was not a believer, he had heard they were doing good things. He went to work on the case and Sara kept praying.

Then, in the midst of their wondering about where God was leading the food pantry, Sara got a letter from the U.S. District Court. A big settlement had come through and they would be receiving $20,000 a year for the next ten years. Sara called Derek, the lawyer. She called to say thanks, but he stopped her and said, “No, thank you, for giving me the chance to do this…I had to go to church when I was a kid, and they kept telling me what to do—sit still, say this, and…and, you know, I didn’t like that. I don’t like being told what to do…

“Now I take my kids to an Episcopal church…really rich, everyone’s very nice, but you just sit there…When I went to your pantry, I saw all the food, and I thought this is what church is for.”[i]

Maybe doubt slips in because we’re looking too hard for miracles that are shaped the way we would shape them. Maybe the miracle of the savior is not in grand, comprehensive moment of conquest. Maybe peace on earth doesn’t happen in an instant we can capture on live TV. Maybe Christmas doesn’t happen in the ways we try to channel it. Maybe it happens in the hardened heart of a trial lawyer. Maybe it happens when we receive a piece of bread and realize that we are cupping our hands to receive ‘God with us.’ Maybe it happens in the midst of messy, mundane relationships because that’s just how it happened the first time.

Jesus can be frustratingly vague about all this. Sometimes I just want him to answer the question. “Are you the Coming One, yes or no?” But then again Jesus is pretty concrete in how he answers. “Go back and tell John what you see and hear. People who are blind see. People who cannot walk, walk. People with leprosy. People who are deaf hear. The dead are raised to life and the poor have good news proclaimed to them. And happy is the one who is not repelled by me.”

When we touch the world and are touched by it…when we understand that the transformation of the world is happening one life at a time…when we understand that we can be the dead raised to life and can offer that same gift to the walking dead around us…well, Christmas can come.

Mrs. Turpin’s last vision as she stands by the pig parlor washing down the shoats is to see a purple streak in the sky as the sun sets. It cuts “through a field of crimson and [leads] like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk…She saw the streak as a cast, swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black [folks] in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and God-given wit to use it right…

“At length she got down and turned off the faucet and made her slow way on the darkening path to the house. In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.”[ii]

We don’t know in the end whether Mrs. Turpin has been truly transformed and redeemed. We don’t know what she did with this revelation. But then we don’t know what we’re going to do with it either yet, do we? There is a great parade coming. And a place in the battalions of freaks and lunatics for people like you and me. Lives are being changed. Will you join Jesus? Will you taste the kingdom? Will you let Christmas come in you? Thanks be to God.

Matthew 11:2-11

Now John, when he heard in prison about the work of Christ, sent word through his disciples and said to him, “Are you the Coming One or should we wait for another?”

Jesus answered them, “Go, tell John what you hear and see; the blind gain sight and the lame walk; lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised and the poor have good news proclaimed to them; and happy is the one who is not repelled by me.”

Then, as they were going, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John. “What did you go out to the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? No, what was it that you went out to behold? A person dressed in soft clothes? Look, the ones wearing soft clothes are in royal houses. So, really, what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and much more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written:

‘Look, I send my messenger ahead of you,

Who will prepare your way before you.’

“Truly, I tell you, no one has arisen who is greater among those born of women than John the Baptizer. But the least one in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

---

[i] Sara Miles, Take This Bread, [New York: Ballantine Books, 2008], ebook location 3660.

[ii] Flannery O’Connor, “Revelation,” in the collection Listening For God, ed. by Paula J. Carlson & Peter S. Hawkins, [Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1994], pp. 18-35.

Signs of the Season

So here we are at the dawn of a new year in the church calendar. That sounds strange, doesn’t it? Here we are at the end of November and I’m saying ‘Happy New Year’ to you. Even after my whole life in church it still catches me up short, too, but today is the day when the whole church year starts moving in a new direction.

Advent is the name for this season. It comes from a Latin word and the ‘vent’ part is related to the verb for ‘coming.’ The ‘ad’ part refers to all the advertisements you’re going to see between now and Christmas urging you to spend money you don’t have on things no one needs. Actually, that’s not true. I mean it is true that you’re going to see those ads, but it’s not what the word means. An advent is an important arrival and it does come from Latin roots that mean ‘coming to.’

What is the important arrival we’re waiting for during this season? In a sense we’re looking in two directions in Advent. The church year really walks through the life of Jesus. It begins as we look towards the promise of a coming Messiah – a savior for God’s people – and it moves to the story of Jesus’ first advent – first arrival among us in the manger of Bethlehem. But we are also looking ahead to the second advent of Christ.

We are also moving into a new gospel for the coming year. This last year has been the year of Mark and today we start to hear a lot more from Luke, who will be our primary companion in the gospel readings from now until next Advent. Luke is the one who gives us most of our images of Christmas. This is the gospel that talks about the shepherds in the fields and the angel appearing to Mary and ‘no room in the inn’ – all of those important Christmas images are in Luke and nowhere else.

That’s not the section we read from today, however. Today we read from a section of Luke that talks about Jesus’ second advent, his second coming. Jesus is talking to those gathered around him in the Temple in Jerusalem and he is telling them to pay attention for the signs of his return. The signs will be fearful for the nations. They will look at the sun and the moon, the star and the seas, and they will be afraid -- dropping dead from fear and foreboding, even. The return of Jesus on the clouds will be a source of confusion for the world, but for Jesus’ followers it is something to look forward to. “Be strong. Take heart. Keep your heads high,” Jesus says. “Your day of liberation is drawing near.”

He goes on to tell them to pay attention to the signs that can see in the fig tree. They know that when the blossoms appear on the fig tree it is a sign that summer is coming. In the same way they should be alert because the signs should tell them that the reign of God is ‘drawing near.’

That phrase keeps repeating. ‘Drawing near.’ Your day of liberation is drawing near. Summer is drawing near. The reign of God is drawing near. Jesus wants us to pay attention because something is drawing near and he does not want us to miss it.

Are you in danger of missing it? Do you get anxious like me at this time of the year – afraid that maybe there will be so much activity – so much frenetic busy-ness – so much distraction that you will miss it? I don’t even know what ‘it’ is, but every year I have this sneaking suspicion that all the stuff I fill December up with is keeping me from paying attention to something God is trying to tell me.

It feels a little like those tests they did where they took a bunch of people and showed them a series of playing cards. They would flip them over one at a time and the test participants would just have to stop them if they saw something wrong. The researchers replaced two of the regular cards with cards that were wrong – something like a red club or a black heart. The test participants could not pick out what was wrong.

They were so programmed to see a deck of playing cards a certain way that they couldn’t pick out errors, but they did get more anxious as the test went on. On some level below the surface they knew something was wrong and they just couldn’t figure out what the problem was. That’s how I feel about this season. Something is going on and I don’t want to miss it.

When Suzanne and I were living in England during the year I served a church there in the early 90s, I picked up on a British habit that seemed very curious to me at the time, but which I appreciate more and more. It had to do with gifts. When our British friends would receive a gift, it would receive a lot of attention. No matter how small, no matter how seemingly insignificant, the recipient and whoever else was around would begin to evaluate it.

It could have been a tea kettle and they would start to say things like, “Ooooh, it is dear, isn’t it? That color is very bright and it will look quite attractive in the kitchen beside the cozy. And look at the spout, it’s at a very good angle for pouring. Look how its lid fits just so in the opening. I quite like that handle, too.” They would turn it over and admire it from every angle. And for the rest of the day they would talk about it with whomever they met. “Don’t you know, Alex and Suzanne gave me this tea kettle and it’s dear, isn’t it? Look at the spout, it’s a very good angle, isn’t it? It just wants putting out with biscuits for an afternoon cupper.”

My first reaction to all this was to think, “My goodness. Come on. It’s just a tea kettle. Don’t make such a fuss.” But then I started to think about how we often receive gifts in our culture. We are so used to the qualities of mass production that we are not very attuned to the uniqueness of the things we get. We are grateful to receive a gift, but very often we don’t consider the gift. We don’t see the wonder in it. We just put it to use or add it to our collection.

Over time I began to see that what my British friends were doing was expressing wonder and love in their response to the gift. I mean, they are British, after all, and not well-known for expressing affection. But in spending so much time on something as simple as a tea kettle they were saying, “This gift is important. It is touching to me that you would give me this item and I want to appreciate it in the best possible light. I’m going to stop and marvel in this item because I am marveling in this moment and I am thankful for you.” At least, that’s what I choose to believe they were doing.

Recently I have been reading for my prayer time a prayer book that uses the work of the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins as its focus. Hopkins lived in the 1800s and became a Jesuit priest in the Catholic Church. He had a rather frustrating career as a parish priest and then as a professor in Dublin, Ireland and he never had a poem published during his lifetime. Even when he died at the age of 44 his best friend, named Robert Bridges, who collected his poems, refused to publish them for fear that they would not be received well. It wasn’t until 30 years after his death that they were published and now he is recognized as one of the best poets in the English language.

What I am discovering is that Hopkins had this English ability to appreciate a thing in its uniqueness. In his journals he would look at something as simple as a bluebell and describe it so vividly that it was impossible not to see that flower as a sign of God’s glory. Just listen to how he describes this:

I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it. Its inscape is strength and grace, like an ash tree. The head is strongly drawn over and arched down like a cutwater. The lines of the bells strike and overlie this, rayed but not symmetrically, some like parallel. They look steely against the paper, the shades lying between the bells and behind the cockled petal-ends and nursing up the precision of their distinctness, the petal-ends themselves being delicately lit. Then there is the straightness of the trumpets in the bells softened by the slight entasis and by the square splay of the mouth.[i]

Isn’t that amazing? I mean, I have no idea what all that means, but the attention that Hopkins is giving to a flower – seeing in it the beauty of God. I tried it the other day. I was out by the garden space in the watershed here at the end of the church building and I decided to try and describe the scraggly magnolia tree. It is not a picture of perfection like the bluebell Hopkins had, but by the time I had spent ten minutes writing about this tree I was convinced that it contained the universe. And I know now that should that tree fall before I do, I will mourn its loss. Because I paid attention, I see something new. Even that magnolia is filled with the glory of God.

I can only hope that God sees in each one of us a little bit of that wonder. Hopkins uses the word ‘inscape’ to describe that inner structure of all living things that is a bit of the divine within. If we can see the inscape of each living thing, each person, we will perhaps be seeing as God sees and not missing ‘it.’

So this is my annual Advent charge: Be alert. Keep watch. “Be careful that your hearts do not become weighed down in stupor and drunkenness and care for the matters of this life and that day catch you not expecting it like a trap.”

This season is too important to let it pass by in a blur. Don’t just do something; stand there. Stop and be. Watch and pray. Your soul, like the Virgin Mary’s, is giving glory to God. Don’t miss it. Thanks be to God.

Luke 21:25-36

"Now there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars and upon the earth an imprisoned dismay among the nations who will be in anxious watch at the roar of the sea and waves. People will be dropping dead from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the civilized world, for the powers of the heavens will be rocked. At that time they will see the son of humanity coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, be strong and keep your heads high, because your liberation is drawing near."

Then he told them a parable, "Look at the fig tree and all the trees; when you see them put forth blossoms, you know that summer is already drawing near. In the same way, when you see these things taking place, you will know that the reign of God is drawing near. I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words shall not.

"Be careful that your hearts do not become weighed down in stupor and drunkenness and care for the matters of this life and that day catch you not expecting it like a trap. For it will come in upon all the residents upon the face of the whole earth. So be awake at all times, praying that you will be able to escape all these things that are about to take place and to stand before the son of humanity."

---

[i] Gerard Manley Hopkins, quote in 40 Day Journey with Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. by Francis X. McAloon, [Augsburg: Minneapolis, 2009], p. 30.

Becoming Human for Christmas: Hope

The Rev. Kathleen Baskin-Ball

Since duck hunting season has come around again I guess it’s as good a time as any to tell this story. The tale is told about a man who gets a new bird dog and he goes out to train it the first time and he finds out that, lo and behold, this dog can walk on water. He can’t believe how fortunate he is but he knows no one will ever believe it.

So he goes to his most pessimistic friend and invites him out hunting. Doesn’t say a word about what his new dog can do. They’re out there on the marshes one day and it’s a great day for duck hunting. The weather is cold and wet and dark. A great day for duck hunting.

A flock of ducks go by, they shoot, and one of the ducks falls out of the sky. The dog knows exactly what to do. It jumps off the bank onto the water, walks right on over to where the duck is without so much as getting his paws wet, gets the duck and brings it back. This goes on all day long. Every time they shoot a duck, the dog walks across the water to retrieve it. And the man who owns the duck doesn’t say a word about it. Pretends it’s as natural as can be. But the pessimist doesn’t say a word either.

Finally, at the end of the day, the man can’t stand it anymore and he asks his friend, “So, did you notice anything about my new dog today?”

His friend says, “Yeah, I sure did. Your dog can’t swim.”

That story leads me a little ways in the direction I’d like to go today. In this season of Advent as we’re headed toward the coming of Jesus in the flesh, we’re talking about what it means for God to become human and for us to become human. Last week we talked about formlessness and how one of the things that marks us as truly human is the necessity of our being transformed. Like clay before the potter, we have to place the messiness of our lives before God to be remade into the thing God wants us to be.

Today I want to spend some time thinking about hope, and I want to say that another mark of being truly human is to live with hope. To look forward to what God is doing in the world. And to see the miraculous things that are already at work in the world because of the love we know in Jesus Christ. If, like the pessimist, we can only see what’s wrong with the world, we haven’t gotten the eyes that will allow us to see that ultimately something is terribly, terribly right with the universe, because God has come to redeem it.

Last week we spent some time with Isaiah and I want to go back there again today. In the passage we read last week we had those strange images of Advent – the filthy rag and the dried up leaf. Today the passage gives us some images that are a little easier to handle. Remember that Isaiah is trying to bring good news to the people of Israel in exile. They have been carted off to a foreign land. They’ve lost everything they held as sacred—the land, the Temple, and their king in the line of David. Jerusalem, the holy city, has been destroyed. They are being oppressed by the great Babylonian Empire. And Isaiah’s first words are, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” This is a God who is going to redeem them from their suffering.

Isaiah offers a vision of a grand highway stretching across the desert to take the people back home. They will not have to go home the long way following the course of rivers. They will not have to worry about mountains and valleys impeding their travel. They will not have to worry about potholes and detours. This road is going straight through the desert to take them home. And what do we call this road? The highway of God. And when the nations see this caravan going home they will know that our God is a mighty God.

It’s good stuff, isn’t it? Just what you’d want to hear if you were living in exile far from home. But then Isaiah follows it with this strange phrase that doesn’t, at first, sound like hope: “All people are grass,” he says. “They don’t have any more staying power than a flower in a field. Here today and gone tomorrow. Surely the people are grass.”

But before you go start singing “Blue Christmas” let’s think about what Isaiah is saying. Is he really saying that we are hopeless creatures who wither into insignificance? Is he saying that ultimately nothing really matters because ultimately we fade away? Is he saying that God gets a kick out of our humiliation, out of saying “Respect my authority” because you are puny little creatures? Or is he saying something much deeper and much more hope-ful?

Listen to the next verse: “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” That’s where he’s going with the grass thing. Our lives have meaning and purpose and direction and hope because they are connected to God’s story… and if we’re going home it’s not because of anything we’ve done…it’s because of what God will do for us and with us and in spite of us…for no good reason except pure love.

Hope for Christians is built on this notion that our gifts and our talents are only of use when they are placed in the service of something larger and we are constantly bumping up against that something larger, which can make us feel small and insignificant. But the response Isaiah calls for is not depression. It’s not to think of ourselves more lowly than we ought to think. It’s not to hang our heads in despair and to approach our lives with downcast eyes. The response he calls for is this: Look at yourself. See that you are limited, that your power to sustain yourself will ultimately fail. But also see yourself in the light of the one who is to come. See that your story does not end with fading flower and withering grass. See that your hope is not placed in your ability to achieve liberation and success. See that your worth is not determined by what you can earn monetarily or by what power you can exercise over others. See that suffering and oppression are not what God intends for the creation. See that you are like grass and flowers and that God loves you for that!

That’s a little bit of a paraphrase but you get the picture. And its because God spoke with tenderness and hope to the downtrodden people of Israel in exile that John the Baptist picks up on his words in the Mark passage. To the people who came to the desert to see this strange prophet, John says, “God is still making a highway through the desert. We still need to be ready for the one who is coming to save the people. God has still not abandoned the people of God. And when God comes, you will see yourself in a whole new light. So get ready. Be baptized. Prepare for the coming of the Lord.”

What does hope look like for Christians? It looks like Jesus. It looks like people who put themselves in the footsteps of Jesus and try to model their lives after him. It looks like people going to Russia through our Children’s Hope Chest program and spending a week with orphans they would never have known and never have had a relationship with had it not been for the love of Jesus. It looks like people who write those same children notes and support them monetarily from the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Small things in the grand scheme of things, but how about that hope that it brings and the good news it proclaims.

I’ll tell you what else it looks like for me. It looks like one of my first colleagues in ministry, Kathleen Baskin-Ball. In the summer of 1989 we both went into ministry in the inner city of Dallas. I was beginning my seminary internship as the youth coordinator for a United Methodist-related community center. She was going to start a new congregation in the abandoned church next door.

Neither one of us knew what we were doing or what to expect. Both of us were just learning Spanish and we were working in a heavily Latino neighborhood. Kathleen was single at the time, only about 30 years old. She was idealistic and charismatic and she loved everybody.

Our paths crossed a lot that year. We were working with many of the same youth and they formed the nucleus of her new church community. I remember the meeting in her house when we started talking about a name for the new congregation. Nueva Esperanza – New Hope United Methodist Church. I remember one cold, cold night near Christmas when the two of us were the guitarists as we walked through the streets of West Dallas singing with members of that congregation as we went door to door in a celebration of Las Posadas – a Mexican tradition remembering the journey of Mary and Joseph to find a room in Bethlehem.

Kathleen was never satisfied with doing ministry from a distance. Actually, it was what worried me about her. West Dallas was not an easy place to live. It was the same neighborhood that produced Bonnie and Clyde back in the 1930s and it was still a troubled place with a lot of poverty, a lot of drugs, and a lot of despair. But Kathleen did not want to serve a church in a neighborhood where she did not live, so she moved in.

She bought a house near the church – she was probably the only single, white woman in the neighborhood. She says the experience opened her eyes to realities of life that she could not have seen before that. It took a toll on her. But she was convinced, as she said later, that it was only by loving deeply and opening herself to the pain that comes from loving deeply that she could begin to experience hope. “When it’s not convenient, when it costs us and we still take the time to listen to another’s heart and we love deeply, hope emerges,” she said.[i]

What happened in that neighborhood was hard on Kathleen, but you know what? Hope emerged through her ministry. Youth went to college who would never have gone. People came to know a powerful God in an impoverished part of the city. And 5 years after she came to an empty church building, 130 members were a part of the Nueva Esperanza congregation, most of them Hispanic.

Kathleen went on to many other things. She served two other churches and they both grew, the latest to 1500 members. She married and had a boy named Skyler. She was well-respected in the North Texas Conference and led their delegation to our General Conference last summer.

About two years ago, she got a diagnosis of cancer and the prognosis was not good. I listened to a couple of her sermons this week and in the more recent one from this summer I could still hear her vibrancy and faith and liveliness, but her voice was weakened and hoarse. She didn’t want to pull back from her church family and she didn’t. She kept on preaching hope. She kept on believing that God would be faithful to the promise of life.

Just a few weeks ago she preached her last sermon and last Saturday she was receiving people in her home, just as she had in West Dallas, against everyone’s best judgment. But she was not going to stop loving deeply now. So there she was hugging people and comforting them when they had come to comfort her. Then on Tuesday she died. My friends in West Dallas called me that day and we remembered nothing but joy.

I am grateful for the witness that people like Kathleen offer. They remind me that our hope is not built on everything going right. We don’t look forward to the future because it promises to be Easy Street. We look forward to the future because God is already there and because Christ has promised to come again to help be truly, fully, deeply human.

This period of the year is a rough one for many, many people. We too often use our winter eyes to understand who we are. We feel overwhelmed and perplexed. In the midst of all that you will face in the week to come, remember that God comes to those in need, and when we identify those places in our lives and in our world where we feel that need, we are ready to welcome and meet the God who has chosen us, for no good reason but overwhelming love. Thanks be to God.

Isaiah 40:1-11 (NRSV)
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.
A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

A voice says, "Cry out!" And I said, "What shall I cry?" All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, "Here is your God!" See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.

[i] Kathleen Baskin-Ball, “Longing for More: Hope,” sermon, Dec. 9, 2007, Suncreek UMC, Allen, TX, http://www.suncreekumc.org/worship/sermons.asp.