Advent 1 2024

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's kingdom now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Please join me in the litany for lighting the Advent Wreath.

Light of the world, in grace and beauty, mirror of God's eternal face, transparent flame of love's free duty, you bring salvation to our human race.

Sacred mystery.

We light the first candle of Advent full hope and truth.

We long for you to come to our world, to break through and reign with compassion, justice, and peace.

We remember times we longed for God to be present to us, this congregation, and this world.

We especially recall hurricanes Errol, Helen, and Milton, the conflicts in Ukraine and the Holy Land, the divisions in our own country, and harm in the Church of England.

He called God's people to do right.

Isaiah called them to be refashioned like clay by God the potter.

This Advent we call out to God.

Sacred mystery, break through all that keeps us from you.

Help us to see the truth about oppression as we prepare to become the beloved community.

We ask for your mercy and to see your image in one another.

This Advent visit us with your justice, love, and peace.

Amen.

Shine on us, O God of justice, guide our path through bloom of night.

Bear within us wisdom's glory.

Come to us, O Christ the light.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility, that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to life immortal.

Through him who liveth and reigneth with thee in the Holy Ghost, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

The word of the sovereign of heaven's legions came to me, saying, Thus says the commander of heaven's vanguard, I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and with great wrath I am jealous for her.

Thus says the ruler of the multitudes of heaven, I will return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the faithful city, and the mountain of the sovereign of the vanguard of heaven shall be called the holy mountain.

Thus says the Holy One of Heaven's armies, elder women and elder men shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand, because of their great age.

And the streets of the city shall be full of girls and boys playing in its streets.

Thus says the Majesty of the Heavens, Though it seems miraculous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, should it also seem miraculous to me, says the commander of the winged warriors?

Thus says the Sovereign of Heaven's Legions, It is I who will save my people from the East Land and from the West Land.

Then I will bring them to dwell within Jerusalem.

They shall be my people, and I will be their God, in faithfulness and in righteousness.

Thus says the commander of Heaven's Legions, Strengthen your hands, you all who hear in these days these words from the mouths of the prophets, female and male, who were present when the fountain was laid for the rebuilding of the temple, the house of the ruler of the multitudes of heaven.

For before those days the wages of human labor was nothing, and of animal labor less.

As for those coming and going, there was no security from the enemy, and I set every single person against their neighbor.

Yet now I will not deal with the remnant of this people as in the former days, says the sovereign of heaven's legions.

For there shall be a sowing of peace, the vine shall yield its fruit, the earth shall yield its produce, and the heavens shall yield their due, and I will inherit the remnant of this people with all these things.

And it will be that just as you have been a cursing among the nations, house of Judah and house of Israel, so it will be that when I save you all, you shall be a blessing.

Fear not, strengthen your hands.

The word of the Lord.

God is for us a refuge in strength.

Therefore we shall not fear, though the earth should change.

Its waters roar and churn.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God.

God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.

The nations roar, the dominions quiver.

The warrior Protectrix is with us.

Come, behold the works of the fire of Sinai.

She makes war cease to the ends of the earth.

Be still and know that I am God.

By this we know that we abide in God and God is in us, because God has given us God's own Spirit.

And we have seen and so testified that the Father has sent the Son of God as the Savior of the world.

God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.

So we have known and have believed the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

Love has been perfected even among us in order that we may have boldness on the day of judgment.

Because as God is, so are we in this world.

There is no fear in love, rather, perfect love casts out fear, for fear relates to punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

We love because God first loved us.

If someone says, I love God and hates their sister or brother, they are a liar.

For those who do not have love a sister or brother whom they have seen cannot love God, whom they have not seen.

The commandment we have from God is this those who love God must love their sisters and brothers also.

And it was in the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the lineage of Abijah.

His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.

Both of them were righteous before God, living according to all the commandments and righteous requirements of the sovereign God blamelessly.

Now they had no child because Elizabeth was barren, and they both were advanced in age.

And it happened that when Zechariah was serving as priest, and his order had the service before God according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by Lot to offer incense, and he entered the sanctuary of the holy God.

The whole assembly of the people was praying outside of the time of the incense offering.

There appeared to Zechariah a messenger of the living God, standing to the right of the altar of incense.

Now Zechariah was shaken when he saw the messenger, and fear overwhelmed him.

But the messenger said to him, Fear not, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard.

Your wife Elizabeth will give birth to a son for you, and you will call his name John.

You will have joy and gladness, and many at his birth will rejoice, for he will be a great, for he will be great in the sight of the sovereign God.

Wine and strong drink he must not drink.

He will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb.

He will turn many of the women and men of Israel to the Holy One their God.

He will go before the Holy God with the spirit of power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to prepare for the redeeming God a people made ready.

Then Zechariah said to the messenger, How shall I know this?

For I am an old man, and my woman is getting old herself.

The messenger answered him, saying, I am Gabriel, I stand before God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to proclaim to you this good news, the gospel of the Lord.

Welcome to the season of Advent.

It's a little bit hard for us to kind of go back to the ancient tradition because we have electric lights.

But imagine 125 years ago how dark it would be even this morning with only candlelight.

And of course, we know the days are apparently to us getting shorter.

So this is a time naturally where most about most of human history there's been a lot of time to well sit around and contemplate.

After all, it's pretty difficult to go work in the field by candlelight.

Right?

And so we have this sort of this is almost like uh Lent light.

Uh traditionally, this was a purple season just like Lent.

It was a penitential season in preparation for the pure white light of Christmas.

Uh probably about 1,500 years ago, we changed that purple to blue to soften it.

It's worth remembering that blue was as precious a color in the ancient world as purple.

Uh the color came from an ink sac of a particular crustacean in the Mediterranean, and the cloth was worth its weight in gold.

In fact, only people of noble birth could wear blue or purple.

So when you see on the flannel board the Virgin Mary with her hijab that's covered blue, rest assured she didn't own anything blue.

She would have been impersonating a royal, and beyond that, the story has Jesus being born in a food trough, not on a palace.

Right?

So this is a theological statement that Mary is royalty, but socioeconomically she was not.

So we have this blue to remind us about the royalty, and this particularly the season is about Mary, right?

This is really about Mary giving birth to the child, Joseph and the Holy Family in preparation, but it's to remind us to dig a little bit deeper, particularly as what we see is apparently darkening.

I hope that makes sense.

It's apparently darkening.

Maybe you feel that way about modern life.

I don't know.

Apparently darkening in some ways.

And so in order to prepare us for that true light, we're asked to steady our hands, to strengthen our hands for the coming of the Christ child by cultivating these four virtues.

And today we think about hope.

And next week we'll think about peace, followed by joy, and then culminating with love.

Now, uh hope is one of those interesting things because I think in English we use this word interchangeably with the word wish.

Like, I hope it won't rain today.

I wish it won't rain.

I hope the homily will be shorter today.

I will try.

Um, right.

Um, a lot of things that we wish for that are pretty easy.

There's another layer underneath that in which we say things like, I hope I'll have enough money for retirement.

I hope my health won't fail me before I die.

Or I hope my mobility won't fail me.

I hope my kid will find that faith that makes them come alive.

This is a little bit deeper level than wishing, isn't it?

A little bit deeper level.

Advent is pushing us, I think, to think even more deeply about what it is we hope for.

And it's doing it, I think, in these readings today.

I don't know if you notice the synchronicity.

The first reading came from the prophet Zechariah, who was writing to the people in captivity in Babylon.

They'd been hauled away, they were in Babylon, and Zechariah said as a message of encouragement, you're gonna go home.

You're not gonna live in exile forever.

You feel far from home, you're gonna return.

And when you return home, it's not that God will be there secondarily, God will be fully present in the city.

So whatever you think you've lost, you will find again and find an even greater degree.

And there'll be old people in your city again.

There'll be children playing in the streets again.

Then we fast forward to Zechariah as a character.

This is going to be the father of John the Baptist.

He's a priest.

His wife is also of priestly lineage, right?

So these are two really high rollers genealogically.

They've got an issue.

They don't have a kid, which sort of means that not only the family name will die with them, but the family identity.

Because without a son in the ancient world, we know this is misogynist.

We know this, right?

But it's what we've received.

Without a son in the ancient world, the property, the family identity in land, think about this.

We think something's old in the United States because you know it's been in the family for like 150 years.

These plots of land are thousands of years old.

Without a son, this land, this identity, what it means to be a member of a family, could be lost.

Zechariah's old.

The gospel tells us uh very courteously that Elizabeth has gone through menopause.

It's not possible that she's gonna have a baby.

And Zechariah goes to like this incense.

Remember, in the ancient world, things stink like really bad, like the locker room in your middle school.

Um, I don't even care when you went or where you went, your middle school locker room stunk.

And that was everywhere you went.

People put perfume on their lip so they didn't have to smell everything else.

So people are waiting outside the sanctuary to get a nice smell because everything smells like crap.

So they line up to get a good smell.

Zechariah goes in there, and Zechariah means in Hebrew God remembers.

We don't know what Zechariah is praying for, but I would bet you$100 he was not praying for a son.

I would bet you he gave up on that a long time ago.

So what's he praying for?

We don't know, but probably not a son.

And he goes in there, and then all of a sudden, this messenger shows up and says, You're gonna have a baby, and you're gonna name him John, and Zechariah says, Well, you must be joking, right?

How do I know that's gonna be true?

And the messenger says, I stand before God.

That's how you know.

The story cuts off, and because you didn't believe me in face value, you'll be speechless until the baby's born.

I think this is worth asking ourselves in this next couple of four weeks.

When is the last time you were speechless from good news?

I know when I've been speechless from bad news recently.

But when is the last time you were speechless with wonder?

God remembers.

It's not like God forgets and remembers.

That's how we usually say it, right?

Like, oh, I just remembered to call, to call my brother.

Like I was supposed to and I forgot, and then I found that information again.

This is an old English word, like the opposite of remember is to dismember.

Like to cut off an arm is to dismember, to remember is to put it back on.

So God remembers is about putting things back and putting them together.

And in the first reading from Zechariah, we get putting them together in such a way that God's presence is fully known.

And I wonder if you don't find yourselves sometimes having given up on the deeper hope of being remembered.

What do I mean when I say that?

Well, we talked a lot about family and our brothers and sisters, and the reading from 1 John did this, right?

Talks about loving our brothers and sisters.

If we don't do that, we don't love God.

Boy, I've got a brother, and I have to be honest, he is hard to love.

I'm probably hard for him to love.

Anybody got siblings that are hard to love?

I think that's why God gave us dogs, right?

To make up for that, right?

So I have to be honest, in my own real nuclear family, being remembered with God present in me being able to relax in the presence of my brother and enjoy him is hard.

It's hard.

Maybe I've given up on that hope.

But then, of course, there's our other brothers and sisters.

The ones in this room.

I'm not biologically related to any of you.

And yet here we are in God's family, all related to each other.

Have you given up on any of your brothers and sisters?

And what about in the greater Houston area?

What about your brother in Russia?

What about your brother in Ukraine?

What about your brother in the West Bank?

Well, they're not my brother.

They don't do the right thing.

That's not what the gospel says.

That's what we say.

Because we've given up the hope that God has for us.

We said it's too impossible, too impractical.

How can we do it when this happens?

So what we do instead of hoping is we start wishing for things that might be second best.

We start settling for things that might just be achievable.

And we forget to hope.

To hope for things like reconciliation, to hope for things like living in a common city with God as its member.

To hope for being remembered by God and in God as a family of God.

We forget.

Or we give up.

And it's very possible that you might even have members within yourself, parts of your life story, parts of your personality, parts of your marriage, parts of your siblinghood, parts of your parenthood that you have given up hope on as well.

And this season invites us not to be toxically positive or optimistic, not to be saccharinally foolhardy with our wishes, but rather to say, are there parts of me or parts of my family living in exile that God might be calling me to hope in once again?

And how could I strengthen my hands to cultivate that hope?

I think one of the hardest things we all face relationally is that we're afraid things won't work.

I could try hard, but he'll never accept me.

I can say I'm sorry, but she'll never accept it.

I can reach out in peace to my Muslim neighbor, but they'll never trust me.

I could wish really well for those Russians, but you know, they're whatever they are.

It's because I think we're afraid.

Not afraid that they'll hurt us physically, but afraid that we'll be rejected.

I think sometimes that comes from this idea that we read in Zechariah, the first one.

This idea that when things go wrong, it's because God is settling a score.

You ever have that feeling when something goes wrong?

I often have that feeling.

And there's this great thing we learn, which is that feelings are very real and they're not always true.

Sometimes I am afraid that God is mad at me.

I feel that fear.

But when I read 1 John, I see that that can't be true.

Because perfect love drives out all fear.

And so if I love my difficult brother perfectly, I'm really not afraid he's going to reject me anymore for who I am.

That's called codependency.

Instead, I choose to offer my love as a gift, as an incense offering.

He gets to do what he wants with it.

And man, I hope it'll come back.

When I pray for Vladimir Putin, that he'll have discernment and wisdom.

If I pray that in love, well, I suppose I've done what God does.

Loved him righteously.

If I stomp my feet and say, well, he didn't do what I wanted with my prayer, did I offer it in love?

No.

As the days grow apparently shorter this week, my prayer is that we, when we find ourselves put out, angry, bitter, sore, and justifiably so, that precisely in those moments we will by God's grace be able to turn not to despair, but to hope, and to offer love, a love that drives out all fear.