"Earworm" | Beth Ferguson | Divine Feminine: Day 7 • Sunday Sermon | December 8, 2024

It has been about six weeks since Nathan asked me if I would preach one of the Sundays in Advent.

I asked if I could have this week, the week about the prophets. At the time, I was also preparing for the Godly Play version of the Bible Basics class that we did for adults this fall, and I was preparing for the story of Isaiah, so I had prophets on my mind.

And, as it turns out, relentlessly on my mind, like an earworm.

Raise your hand if you know what an earworm is. Okay yeah, you got it.

An earworm, if you don't know, is the term for when a part of a song is stuck in your head and just goes constantly. The Godly Play story of Isaiah, like today's readings has a lot of the words and phrases that are familiar to you if you, like me, had Handel's Messiah as part of your holiday playlist as you were growing up.

"Is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen," right?

Let me tell you, those words and phrases are really sticky, and they have played on repeat in my mind for about the past 6 weeks– maybe in yours this afternoon!

In the reading from Luke that we just heard, John is described as the one who will come like a voice crying out in the wilderness, and then using that language from Isaiah, "Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth."

Switch to the King James translation, and you will find yourself deep in the Messiah. Also uses similar language about the mountains, the valleys, the level ground.

There's so much great material in these readings today, and yet here I am going to get ready to talk about making straight in the desert a highway of our God, making the crooked straight and the rough places plain, and the rough places plain– you got it.

I'm glad, because right now the road to the kingdom of God seems really rough. We long for the path to be made straight and smooth, but somehow, it seems that like roads after a big storm– the path has actually gotten worse. It's pretty washed out and filled with potholes.

It probably doesn't help us to know that this is familiar territory for the people of God. Today's prophets, Baruch and Isaiah, both wrote around the time of the Babylonian exile.

In Godly Play, the Exile is represented by a big heavy chain, and we drop it on to the underlay of the story in a vertical line with kind of a loud clunk.

A few weeks ago, one of the first graders took the chain and changed it from that vertical line into a circle, and he said, this is when the exile is like infinity.

Yes Alex, sometimes it feels like the exile, the difficult times, the distance from the kingdom of God, are infinite, and it feels like the world just keeps us in a state of despair, and even you. During the Babylonian exile, the prophets did write messages of hope and renewal, visions of a future and a time that the people of God could look forward to, when they could take off the garb of their sorrow and affliction.

So while I'm not ignoring what's happening today in our world, from the transitions in our Cathedral to the challenges of our city, the divisions in our country and the turmoil around the world– but I also am seeking out messages of hope, and I've been seeking them out for the last month or so, not just in these scriptures, but also from prophets.

The day after the election, one of my favorite new prophetic voices– a Pelaton cycling instructor named Robin– used some pretty literal language in an especially challenging class. She said, "Despair is not a strategy. Hope and hard work will get you up this hill." Incidentally, the music for this part of the ride was a great song by Mumford and Sons and Pharrell Williams together called Good People, which I had high hopes at the time would take the place of the Messiah in my brain, but it didn't. But you should check it out anyway, it's a very good song.

Then fellow Episcopalian and modern-day prophet Brene Brown said something similar that same week. Note that biblical prophets often quote each other, and sometimes it's hard to know who said it first, that's okay. But she wrote on social media, "Despair is a claustrophobic feeling. It is the emotion that says nothing will ever change." Kind of like the chain in the circle of the exile. She goes on to say that research shows that hope is a powerful antidote to despair, and that hope is about having a goal, a pathway to achieve that goal in a sentence of agency.

So I don't know if the prophets of old were cognitive psychologists, but they probably figured out that if their only messages were warnings, they were going to lose their audience.

So how do we keep on that pathway of our God despite the challenges?

I wonder if we can make that pathway a little straighter, a little smoother, less hilly for ourselves and for others, especially the those who continue to be marginalized and threatened.

How can we be the prophetic voices in the wilderness of our times?

Well, after several weeks of perseverating about what to say next this morning, it finally dawned on me in the last couple days that I don't need to have the answers for you. That was a huge relief, actually.

God has the answer for you.

In Godly play, we say that a prophet is someone who comes so close to God and God comes so close to them that they know what God wants them to do and say. Our challenge, our blessing in this life is to come so close to God that we can discern what the work is that God has given us to do.

We get there through prayer, alone and in this community.

Through gathering here together in fellowship each week.

Through checking in with each other.

It could be joining the Catechesis class to learn more about the Eucharist and this community.

In the Episcopal Church it is through reading and reflecting on scripture and sharing how the good news has changed us.

Through respecting the dignity of every human being.

Through staying engaged in Jfustice and peace, but also in resting when necessary.

And of course, by seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.

This is the ministry of all the baptized, of all of us.

As for me, I continue to discern daily what God is calling me to do, and I'm also going to continue to look for messages of hope.

The last one I'm going to share with you today from another Episcopal prophet, the the late Rachel Held Evans, is this:

"The prophets believe stubbornly, relentlessly that God is in the business of making all things new, of setting things right, and so they sing that song long and long, loud into the night."

Again with the relentless earworm, right?

For some it rings as a warning, for others a freedom song. For all of us, it is a call to act action, an appeal to align our hopes, ambitions, and choices, and plans with the hopes, ambitions, and choices, and plans of God. Prophecy is where the dreams of God and the dreams of God's people meet."

I think that really is what the definition of a prophet in Godly Play gets at.

Before I close, I want to tell you about this little miracle that happened two nights ago. Tthe Messiah stopped being the soundtrack of my life, apparently that was the message, and once I got it onto this paper, I could let it go.

So I have a new song in my head right now, and it is the refrain from that song I heard a couple of weeks ago in Pelaton, and the little phrase that's stuck is, "Good people been down for so long and now I see the sun is rising. Welcome to the revelation."

And so I wait for what will be revealed to me, to you all, to our community.

Friends, God has begun a good and wondrous work in each of us. May the rest of our Advent journey, as we join the prophets, the angels, the shepherds, and the holy family on the way to Bethlehem to greet the Messiah be a road that is just the right kind of hilly, is pretty straight, but with some good surprise turns.

And with the rough places plain, and the rough places plain. Amen.