12-8-19 Readings & Sermons

A reading from Isaiah A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear.

But with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.

He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the whole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples.

The nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

The word of the Lord.

A reading from Romans.

Whatever was written in the former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

May the God of the steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another in accordance with Jesus Christ, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Welcome one another, therefore, for just as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God, for I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God, in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentil might glorify God for his mercy.

As is written, therefore I will confess, you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name, and again says, Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.

And again, praise the Lord, all Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him.

And again, Isaiah says, The root of Jesse shall come.

The one who rises to the rules of the Gentiles in him, the Gentil shall hope.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in the hope of power of the Holy Spirit.

The word of the Lord.

In those days, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight.

Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locust and wild honey.

Then the people of Jerusalem and all of Judea were going out to him, and to all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But we when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Bear fruit worthy of repentance.

Do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our ancestors.

For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees.

Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.

I am not worthy to carry his sandals.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

The gospel of the Lord.

Today we continue our journey through Advent.

Advent, that season of waiting, waiting for the coming of Christ.

We wait for Him and His coming in three ways.

As we wait to celebrate the event of the incarnation, as we await that second coming when God's peace will be fully known.

And thirdly, as we acknowledge Christ's coming into our lives today, in the present.

Last week I spoke about dwelling on the threshold, and I used the poem by Joel McHarrow as an illustration.

As dwellers, we are aware of the two worlds that we straddle as we wait.

The world that is broken and often painful, a world often disconnected from God's light and life, and on the other side, a world that is complete, whole, joyful, and fully in relationship with God.

It's often tempting to either run from this broken world and try to hide until the waiting is over and all is finished.

Or to become resigned to those harsh realities of the present and to forget that we have that connection to something bigger.

Part of being a dweller of the threshold is then waiting in hope.

Hope that while we are in this in-between space, this threshold, we can in the present be conduits of God's love, and eventually the world we are reaching up for will fully be present here on earth.

Part of actively waiting on this threshold is to be a seeker of peace in a world of destruction.

As we continue with the prophet Isaiah today, we are given this image that we can hope for, an image of peace, where nothing can any longer bring harm, and God's appointed is in fact the ruler.

Our lectionary readings for Isaiah during the season of Advent help us to focus on what our hand is reaching up towards.

While, if I'm honest, it seems to me that it doesn't do the best job at recognizing the words in Isaiah that speak towards the brokenness of the present, which Isaiah often pointed towards also.

Listen to these verses that come just before today's readings.

This very day he will halt at Nob, he will shake his fist at the mount of the daughter Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.

Look, the sovereign, the Lord of hosts, will lop the boughs with terrifying power, and the tallest trees will be cut down, and the lofty will be brought low.

He will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.

Isaiah is a dweller of the threshold and is continually addressing both sides.

On one side, the harsh realities in which the Jordan people were currently experiencing, and on the other side, the promise of a world as God intends.

The Israelite kings were being judged and were being found wanting.

Thus they were being taken down a notch, and not only a notch, but were taken down until only their roots were left.

The forest of tall leaders would be no more.

In the early parts of these prophetic writings, Isaiah speaks against the actions of King Ahaz.

Isaiah believed that the king was failing under pressure.

The king was going to the Assyrians to form an alliance because he felt this would protect him and Judea.

In general, an alliance between nations is not necessarily a bad thing, but in this king, in this case, King Ahaz was putting his trust in a foreign god and in military strength instead of putting his trust in God.

Essentially, King Ahaz was worshipping a foreign idol.

It wasn't only those in royal position who were in the wrong, though.

The way of living which the ancestors had given to the people of Judea was a way that was not being followed.

There were rich landowners who were acquiring all the wealth, while among them there were many who were vulnerable, poor, and needy.

This behavior, too, was being judged by Isaiah.

These behaviors were what were what left the Judean community susceptible to outside influence and danger.

The results of their disobedience and untrusting hearts were destruction.

These are the harsh realities of this world.

When one disobeys God, when one trusts her own ways over God's, one makes space for a world of brokenness and pain, not only for herself, but for others.

The present reality is a reality of destruction.

Isaiah, the threshold dweller, kept one foot firmly planted in the realities of this broken present.

But with his other hand, he was constantly reaching up to that other reality, the world made complete as God intends.

He holds on to the promise of a future where God's peace, God's shalom, flows out to cover the earth.

And the vision given to us today is a vision in two parts.

One is that of a righteous ruler.

While King Ahaz was misguided and unable to trust, even shook like a tree at the sight of his adversaries, and ultimately would be cut down and cut off.

There is a promise that a new leader will rise up from the same line so as to keep reminding us of the importance of the past and the promises then made.

But this ruler will be different.

There will be a righteousness unlike anything ever experienced.

There will be a ruler that brings peace.

The vision also shares that there will be a new way of living that will impact all.

Even the most vulnerable will be kept safe, such as that baby with the snake.

It will be a way of shalom.

Shalom carries a meaning that is about so much more than simply the absence of war.

Shalom is when well-being is all, the well-being of all is being experienced.

And not only can nation live peaceably with beside nation, but all within are fed and care for.

Judgment and repenting are about transformation, so that we can turn from the present world of brokenness towards the world of God's intentions fulfilled.

Not even the serpent will be destroyed.

Instead, the serpent will be transformed into a being that can find peaceable living with a child to dwell at the threshold this Advent season.

We are to cast off those things that bring destruction and turn towards those things that bring shalom.

In conclusion, I'd like to share with you a story.

A village in Kenya had a bit of an elephant problem.

The local beasts would regularly come stomping through the fields, destroying whatever crops they didn't eat.

The village was going to starve if they didn't find a solution and quick.

Their prospects looked bleak.

A few young men told the villagers they would take care of the problem for a reasonable fee, and the villagers paid up.

In the early hours the next morning, the villagers were awakened by noises of gunshots.

When they went out to investigate, they discovered the young men had killed an elephant.

And the men said, Don't worry, after a few more deaths like this one, the elephants will learn and they'll stay away.

This did not sit well at all with the villagers.

They knew the importance of elephants to the land and to their culture.

They had to find a different way.

After some time and research, they discovered that elephants hated red chili powder.

And so, in their desperate state, they went out and outlined their fields with red chili powder.

And believe it or not, it worked.

The elephants would get close to the fields, smell the powder, and back away quickly, leaving the fields undisturbed.

These villagers are threshold dwellers.

They live in a world that is not always easy, and a significant challenge came to them, which could have meant life or death.

If they had only focused on themselves and took the lives of the elephants, then they would have created bigger problems for their community and for the ecosystem.

Instead, they waited for a peaceable solution to come to them.

They were seekers of peace even in the midst of destruction.

And because of that, peace was able to win out in the end.

While most of us will never have to protect our families and our livelihood from elephants, we each face challenges in our own lives.

Reminders of this harsh world that we do live in.

May we not rush to find easy solutions, which can only lead to destruction.

But instead, as dwellers of the threshold, may we patiently reach out for peace and trust that it will come even as we wait on the threshold.

The thoughtful people in the church realized that even though Jesus came a long, long time ago, quite frankly, we're yet to realize the kingdom of God that John says is at hand.

We'll return here next year and hopefully draw a little bit closer.

But our inventory this year is to draw a little bit closer.

Knowing we're not going to make it all the way, we're asked to take a step.

And so consider last week we were to think upon the virtue of hope.

Now, out there, hope is really associated with wishes.

Like, I hope this sermon is not very long.

I hope it will cool off.

I hope it won't rain.

That is ordinary hope, and of course it is not in any way special or holy or sacred, which is why we come here and we're asked to think about what is real hope, not our wishes, but how it is that we set smart goals, quite honestly.

How it is that we say, given who God is and the distance from that from where we're living, how can we make goals, do work, progress, recruit other people into something that's actually holy and not just regular.

That was last week.

This week, we're really asked to consider how do we make room for peace.

I don't even have to tell you how we need peace.

Turn the TV on.

Look at your Facebook feed.

I'm not just talking about violence and military conflict.

I'm talking about how we cannot even talk to other human beings and listen.

The peace out there, ordinary peace, is quiet.

Boy, I would settle for some of that.

But that's ordinary and it's not holy.

Now, you know, the interesting things happen when we talk to our children here at the day school and we say, What is peace?

Like three years ago, one little girl said, peace is what you have after you step on a cockroach.

But you know, our kids are very, very clever.

I'm gonna return to that one because it's funny, but it's but it's but it's helpful today, too.

Our kids are very, very clever, and they know, even the three-year-olds, they know that the opposite of fat is skinny, and they know that the opposite of tall is short, and they know that the opposite of war is peace, right?

And so what they know is that peace, like Martin Luther King Jr.

said, is not the cessation of conflict.

That's not the opposite of destruction.

They know that peace is about new creation, they know that peace is about building bridges that had been burned down.

That's from the mouths of our children.

Speaking of children, there are ways of war that we nourish without even realizing it.

I used to teach math at a Christian high school.

It was expensive, it was fifteen thousand.

A year to go there.

And I was an early adopter of a Blu-ray DVD player.

And I told my students this.

And these were families who intentionally sent their children to the school to spare them from negative social environments.

These were families who intentionally invested in homes to spare their children from police sirens in the middle of the night.

And one of my students said the great thing about that Blu-ray, watch the matrix.

You can hear the bullet casings hit the floor.

We don't want our children exposed to real violence, but we choose to be entertained by it.

We choose to be entertained by comic book stories in which violence is the way of overcoming our enemies.

Peace is what you get after you step on a cockroach.

That's ordinary peace, and friends, it doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

Jesus is very, very clear that violence begets violence.

So we get to hear something different today from the prophet.

This is holy peace.

It's something, boy, I don't even know how to settle for.

I don't even know how to imagine it.

The prophet says real peace is when the leopard lies down with the kid.

Real peace is when predators and prey are reconciled in such a way that they can be in one another's presence and be completely vulnerable.

When they can sleep and rest and relax together, it is beyond my imagination.

And isn't that exactly why we come here?

Because otherwise we'd just be worshiping ourselves.

Advent is about us worshiping God and not ourselves.

And we have this week, this opportunity to reimagine peace.

And not just through this diagram.

I want you to know, by the way, that Christine Alexander, our stained glass architect, has got some of this going on in the panels.

You'll see not the animals, you'll see their constellations, because of course what God is going to do is not just reconcile animals on earth.

God is going to reconcile what we consider to be our enemies and adversaries in the stars, in the heavens, eternally.

We're asked, I think, to reimagine it and live into it.

And boy, I've got to tell you a little bit about violence since I already talked about it.

To me, there's a couple of kinds of violence, and having wrestled in high school and college, I'm really familiar with subduing my opponents or being subdued by them.

This is very natural.

I have a brother who's three years older.

I know about violence.

But I want to tell you that the most violent thing I've ever seen in my life is something I can't do.

And it's something I think that is beyond me and worth considering as we hear what Mary is getting ready to do.

You see, the most violent thing I have ever seen in my life was my wife giving birth to my daughter.

Her body, seven years later, is still not what it was.

One of her tendons came attached, detached.

It hasn't hooked itself back up.

From the moment my daughter was a thought, my wife violently made space in her body for somebody else.

At the expense of everything she ate, at the expense of her moods, her factual recall, you've heard of pregnant brain, perhaps, maybe you've had it before, changed who she was.

And at the end of all of that violence that she took into her own body by making space for somebody else, there was, of course, a new life.

And I want to suggest to you that might be the kind of peace that God is asking us to pursue.

Not the peace where we triumph over our enemies because we stomp on them, but the peace in which we make room for new life.

The peace in which, to our own peril, and I think it takes it, we give nourishment so that other people can grow.

Now listen, I'm not saying I don't believe in accountability.

I do.

But accountability and dignity are not the same thing.

And we're asked to do that difficult work of winnowing those two out.

You see, in the world, when John the Baptist shows up with unquenchable fire, he's gonna burn the people you don't like.

In church, when John shows up, when Jesus shows up, he's going to burn the parts of you, the parts of you that are keeping you from seeing the wheat in everybody else in the world.

Not all of you, the parts that are keeping you from who God intends you to be.

This is a week where we're asked to join God in the most glorious of bonfires, where we burn things like wrath and hatred and vengeance, so that we can join God in building bridges that go somewhere.

I pray it will be a holy week full of peace for you in your imaginations, in your hearts, in your families.