12-1-19 Readings & Sermon

A reading from Isaiah.

The word that Isaiah, son of Amaz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

In days to come, the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills.

All the nations shall string to it.

Many peoples shall come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths.

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, he shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples.

They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

The word of the Lord.

A reading from Romans.

You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us than when we became believers.

The night is far gone, the day is near.

Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery or in licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.

Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

The word of the Lord.

Thank you to God.

The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Saint Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus said to his disciples, About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven nor the Son, but only the Father.

For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the Ark.

And they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away.

So too will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Then two will be in the field, one will be taken and one will be left, two will be girding, grinding meal together, one will be taken and one will be left.

Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

But understand this if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have left his house to be broken into.

Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Happy New Year! No, I am not jumping the gun a month.

In our tradition, we celebrate the new year as we begin Advent.

So happy first week of Advent.

Today we begin a journey together through the four weeks of Advent as we prepare our hearts and our minds for the coming of Christ.

Advent, Latin for arriving or coming, marks a season of anticipation.

The arrival that we celebrate is threefold.

First, we remember Christ's first coming in that form of the infant child in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago.

Second, we await the arrival of the second coming of Christ as God's kingdom is fully established and all is restored.

And thirdly, we acknowledge the regular experience of coming and the indwelling of Christ in each of our own lives on a regular basis as we live as the body of Christ.

This is a season of waiting for the arrival.

And when we're waiting, we're on an edge, as if in between two worlds, the world of what currently is, and the world of what is yet to be.

We are on a threshold.

There is a poem that you should have gotten in your bulletin this morning.

I'm going to attempt to read it.

I will not do it justice, so I do recommend going home later today and listening to it being done by the actual author of the poem, Joel McCarrow.

You can find it on SoundCloud or YouTube.

But I will try my hardest to portray it here because I think it gives a good illustration of what I mean by living on the threshold.

I am an artist and a pilgrim of the threshold.

We are artists and we are pilgrims of the threshold.

Between the dying and the falling away of winter and the rebirth of the songs of the birds of spring, we dwell in rhythms of possibility.

Between oranges, okras, reds, and yellows, and greens, jades, limes, and ocean blues who thread themselves together in threshold tapestries of death and life, despair and hope.

A cocoon of shedding skins and promised wings, of caterpillars dying and butterflies rising, of dark enclosed night and light-filled day, where whispers of the night entangle threads into daylight.

In this lowering sun, I am at one with the dusk of earth's closing eyes, as my own stare into the glowing embers of a dying day, and I can see a world that was here all along, yet hidden until the dust fell, until the night met the day, until I dwell as a pilgrim of the threshold.

And the sky that breaks through this night bends low to whisper to me of green land that I once called home, where I stood tall in these rains, and I knew in those moments that life was larger than each drip and each drop upon my back, that there were stories that I could get lost in, that there were stories I could get found in, where there were puddles I played in with the pulling of all the things that would call us beyond these stars, out of our cocoons to play in rain-soaked playgrounds where anything was possible.

And yet now each drip and each drop broke their back upon the ground that they rushed towards.

Slow down, I want to yell at them.

Slow down and realize that life does not have to be like this.

Dreams do not have to wake like this.

For we are artists and we are pilgrims of the threshold, with one foot in the clay, one hand chained earthbound, as the other stretches high to the sky.

We find tears in the curtain where the divine reaches through his hand to offer her water to the lips of thirsty beggars and kings alike.

This is the true pilgrim, he who stands upon the threshold with one hand to the heavens and the other to the earth, to not run from the world into the heavens, but to hold the two together.

The dweller who holds worlds together beneath these stars, she holds worlds together beneath these stars.

I hold worlds together beneath these stars.

We hold worlds together beneath these stars, for we dwell in rhythms of possibility.

We are artists and we are pilgrims.

We are actors and we are dancers.

We are poets and we are prophets, we are singers and we are painters, we are lovers and creators, and there is hope in our eye.

Between the dying and the falling away of winter, and the rebirth of the songs of the birds of spring, there is hope in our eye.

Within the dying and the falling away of winter, there is hope in our eye.

Within the dying and the falling away of winter in which I lie, there is hope in our eye.

Isaiah was a prophet of the threshold.

If we were to go back and read chapter one of the prophet, we would see the two worlds that Isaiah is bridging together.

In chapter one, Isaiah writes, Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth, for the Lord has spoken.

I reared children and brought and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.

And later on, he writes, Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire.

In your very presence aliens devour your land.

It is desolate as overthrown by foreigners.

Isaiah speaks words of judgment towards the people of Judea.

He speaks of how they have abandoned God's will.

He also speaks warning of the threats from other nations.

These are the harsh realities of Judea in the 700s BC.

Isaiah speaks of corruption within and threats from outsiders.

It is while this first portion of Isaiah is written that Israel, the territory to the north of Judea, is taken over by the Assyrians, and their brothers and sisters are sent off into exile.

The threats and the fears that Judea are feeling are real.

Isaiah, as he writes this prophetic book, has one foot firmly placed in the harsh realities of what the people of Judea are facing.

Isaiah is, in fact, a realist.

And yet, with that other hand, Isaiah is reaching up towards the promise of salvation that God first gave to the Isaiah's ancestors, and that promise now that he sees in this vision.

It is a vision of impossible possibilities.

First, Mount Zion being the tallest mountain, the focal point of all the nations.

Hyperbole or not, the present Mount Zion is far from being tall or attention grabbing.

It would take some significant tectonic plate redistribution to push Mount Zion to be so outstanding.

Impossible.

And yet this is the vision.

Second, there will be no need for weapons, no need for knowledge of war.

Imagine telling a group of people bracing themselves for a battle, that weapons and intelligence will not be needed.

Unimaginable.

Lastly, nations, including their present enemies, will flock to little old Jerusalem for knowledge, for God's teachings.

Nations will not only value, but will long for what Judea has to offer.

And these nations, these enemies, will be blessed by Judea.

Highly unlikely.

Isaiah holds a vision of impossible things, a dream utterly otherworldly.

Who would believe such fairy tales?

And yet it is the promise that God is giving the people of Judea.

A vision and a promise that instead of enemies, there are communities.

Instead of weapons of war, there are tools for planting and cultivating new life.

Instead of destruction, there is creation.

Instead of the way of war, there is the way of God, as set out for him in the Torah.

On one side of the threshold are the harsh realities of the present, and on the other side are the fulfilled promises, life as God intends it to be.

Isaiah is holding worlds together through his prophetic vision.

Visions of the world as it is, and of the world as it can and will be.

We continue to live in a world of harsh realities, both because we have disobeyed God's will and also where our enemies are threatening us.

But we know the promise that God gives us.

A promise that was first fulfilled in the incarnation will be fulfilled in its entirety with Christ's second coming, and is fulfilled every day as we are Christ's hands and feet in the world.

We hold worlds together when we see and share the impossible visions of a future restored and make them a reality in the present.

We hold worlds together when we choose love over hatred.

We hold worlds together when we choose forgiveness over condemnation.

We hold worlds together when we choose community over self-preservation.

We hold worlds together when we choose growth over destruction.

We hold worlds together when we choose life over death.

We hold worlds together when we choose hope over fear.

We have the chance to make choices every single day, in big ways and small.

And this is what hope is.

Hope is holding worlds together, not being resigned to the present realities, nor running away from them, but holding worlds together, holding the present together with the future, being that bridge through which Christ's love flows into the present.

This Advent, may we become more aware of the arrival of Christ into this world and ask how we can be used by Christ to hold worlds together as we dwell on the threshold.