12-15-19 Readings & Sermon

A reading from Isaiah.

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad.

The desert shall rejoice and blossom.

Like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing.

The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.

They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.

Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those who are of a fearful heart, be strong, do not fear.

Here is your God.

He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.

He will come and save you.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

The lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert, the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground, and the thirsty ground springs of water.

The haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes, a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way.

The unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people.

No traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.

No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come upon it.

They shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there.

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing.

Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads.

They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

The word of the Lord.

The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.

You also must be patient.

Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.

Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged.

See, the judge is standing at the doors as an example of suffering and patience, beloved.

Take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

The word of the Lord.

Or are we to wait for another?

And Jesus answered them, Go and tell John what you hear and see.

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.

As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John.

What did you go out into the wilderness to look at?

A reed shaken by the wind?

What then did you see?

When do what did you go out to see?

Someone dressed in soft robes?

Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces.

What then did you go out to see?

A prophet?

Yes, I tell you, am more than a prophet.

This is the one about whom it is written.

See, I am sending out my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.

Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist.

Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Today is Gaudete Sunday.

Forgive me if my Latin is pronouncing that wrong.

It is the third Sunday of Advent.

Gaudete is Latin for rejoice.

And while we continue to wait for the coming of Christ, this Sunday reminds us to be joyful, to rejoice even in the midst of waiting.

Through Advent, I have been reflecting on how we wait on the threshold, straddling between two worlds, the world that is dark, broken, and painful, and the world that is God's kingdom full of peace and abundance.

We know that we wait for the coming of God's kingdom in its completeness, and as dwellers of the threshold, we witness those inbreakings of the forever into the present.

At times we ourselves become conduits through which God's love travels into the here and now.

Living on the threshold is being aware of and participating in that now and not yet.

So what do we do while we wait at the threshold?

I believe one thing that is suggested for us is that we make space for rejoicing.

And why do we rejoice?

Because, as Isaiah says, here is your God.

Let us return again to our threshold dwelling prophet, Isaiah.

The reading we have today jumps forward in time from where we had left off the last two weeks.

Before Judah was fearful of being taken over by the enemy, and now their fears have become a reality.

They are in exile.

They have lost their promised land.

And even still, Isaiah reaches up and holds on to hope and finds something to rejoice in.

To those in exile, Isaiah offers a vision of a way home, a road back to their axis point on which all is balanced, a way back to Mount Zion.

Isaiah also offers a vision of where their bodies and the world and creation is all healed.

To give you a little context to make this poem become a little more vivid, I invite you to think about a map.

On one end you have Mount Zion, and on the other side, you have where the people are currently being held in exile, and in between is this large, impassable, dangerous desert.

The only safe way to get from point A to point B to get back to Mount Zion is to head northwest, way out of their way, and then southwest, eventually getting back.

All of this so that they could circumnavigate that dangerous wild desert.

But Isaiah here is suggesting that there will be a direct path back.

That there will be no need to go from Houston all the way to Atlanta just so you can get to Seattle.

There will be direct flights back to Mount Zion.

Allow me to get a little geeky for a moment with Hebrew poetry.

This type of poem is often called chiastic because of its format, and that's something that's often used in Hebrew poetry.

When you divide up the poem, it could go something like A, B, C, B, A.

Meaning that the first thing that is mentioned in the poem is connected to the last thing mentioned in the poem.

And the second thing mentioned in the poem connects with the second to last thing mentioned in the poem, which then puts you in the middle.

And that thing in the middle is at the heart of what the poet is trying to get at.

And so in this case, we have A talking about creation, a creation that is broken but moving towards restoration.

And then in the end, the very last thing is talking about that final creation that is fully restored.

B is talking about the broken human body, but that it's moving towards restoration.

And then mirrored, as the second to last thing being mentioned in the poem, is now the human body fully restored.

Which then brings us to the middle, that pivotal moment, that place where Isaiah shouts out, Here is your God, the God who comes and saves.

Through Isaiah's vision, God is promising a way back.

And not only a way back, but a direct path, a safe path, a path that even a fool can't get lost on.

There will be no need for GPS and Google Maps.

At the center of this promise, though, is that truth that here is your God.

Your God is present.

Your God will make right the wrong.

Your God who will heal the broken, who will restore creation, and all will find their way back home.

Even the most directionally challenged, even the most hopeless cases, even they will find their way back to God.

This is a promise.

This is a thing to hope for because here is your God.

And this is indeed worth rejoicing in.

Even in the midst of exile, even in the midst of desert, joy can be present because the promise of what God is going to do, what God is already doing and will do.

And we today are encouraged to rejoice, even in the darkest times, because we know that this is not the end.

We've rejoiced because we know that God has been present, has been making merciful intrusions into this world since the beginning of creation, since Adam and Eve were in the desert.

God has never stopped breaking into the present, and God will have one final, ultimate intrusion, that second coming, and that will be the last word, and it will be restoring all.

As dwellers of the threshold, we are called to rejoice in God reaching down to us and the grace which unites us with God.

These are moments, these are foretasts to what will come when God's grace removes all darkness, removes all fear and pain, and heals the broken.

That there is the dark side of the threshold.

As we learned of the death of Sergeant Kayla Sullivan.

Tuesday night for many was a night filled with anxiety as helicopters were flying overhead, noises of police cars and their flashing lights, and those first reports that a police officer had been killed, and a suspect was fleeing through this very neighborhood on foot.

And then with the rising of the sun the next morning, anxiety seemed to remain high as the suspect was still at large.

And grief grew as we learned that it was Sullivan who died.

Many of us here had had interactions with her at one point or another.

At school here on Wednesday, even the children remained inside, not going out for gym or recess.

We all wondered when safety would be restored.

This week was a reminder that we live in a broken world.

That we are still waiting for the coming of Christ to be made complete.

We are still waiting for these crises, things like this week, to be nothing but ancient history.

What do we do in these moments of darkness?

How do we remind ourselves that we are dwellers of the threshold, always reaching up to God as God is reaching down to us, breaking into the present and showing us glimpses of the promise that God has been making all along, of a world complete of shalom.

Isaiah reminds us to ask, where is God in our desert?

And invites us to search until we can repeat Isaiah's words.

One of our parishioners was acting as a lay chaplain for the first responders this week.

She was present while the area was still an active crime scene, and then continued to meet with the first responders over the following days.

I asked her, Did you witness God's presence even in this terrible situation?

She explained to me that in fact, yes, she had.

While she was filled with anxiety before she got the phone call, and then experienced extreme sensory overload when she first arrived at the scene.

She found that as soon as she put on her chaplain vest and credentials and began her duty as chaplain, she felt an overwhelming sense of peace and stillness.

She knew that God was present with her and within her.

She knew that she was there to hold this peace and stillness for everyone.

She was to be the light of Christ in the midst of that dark night.

And we rejoice with her that she was able to be a servant of God Tuesday evening.

That people could be reminded that God was present, was breaking into even this unimaginable situation.

We rejoice that God is present in the darkness in our own deserts.

And we stand on the threshold.

We rejoice because we know this darkness does not have the last word.

We rejoice as deserts begin to bloom abundantly.

We rejoice as we hear the words of God.

Here is your God.

And we sing with joy, asking, Death, where is your sting?