a sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent on Isaiah 35:1-10 and James 5:7-10
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on December 12, 2010

This is a special Sunday for us in these Advent days, for today on the third Sunday of Advent we light that strange pink candle that stands so lonely among the deep rich blue of longing and hope that marks these days. Like that pink candle, today is a bit of a suspension of the introspective mood that marks most of Advent, for this is Gaudete Sunday, from the Latin word for “joy,” a time for celebration in the midst of a dark and uncertain season.

Our text from Isaiah suggests a bit of that joy for us, too. In the midst of the prophet’s relentless attacks on the people of Israel for their disobedience, simple stubbornness, and deep injustice, we find this little glimpse of hope for something new, a claim that one day things will be different and all people will cry out with a new song of joy and hope. The prophet makes it clear that things will be strangely different in this day to come. The wilderness and the desert will no longer be places for the outcast but will instead be filled with the glory of God. The weak and suffering will long for wholeness no more, for they will be made strong by the power of God. In this day to come, human bodies will work as they were intended as God eases pain once and for all. This way of life will not be difficult to find – it will be easily accessible by the best road imaginable, with God’s people always welcome and safe there, rejoicing and giving thanks to God at every step of the journey, with “everlasting joy… upon their heads” for all time thanks to the provision of God.

Now this joy that Isaiah describes is a bit beyond our imagination, let alone our immediate understanding – but we surely have had glimpses of this kind of joy here and there in our lives. As I think back over the last year, I must say that one of my greatest joys came back in July when Julie and I spent a week at St. Olaf College for their Conference on Worship, Theology, and the Arts. I’ve long admired St. Olaf from afar, but the sheer joy we found as we walked into that incredible place and shared such wonderful experiences of worship and music is some of the deepest joy I have known in a long time.

But what about you? Where have you seen joy at its fullest in these days? Where have you come closest to the kind of joy that Isaiah promises will mark all of our days? Take a minute or two to reflect and share your joy with someone near you, then we’ll come back together with a bit of singing. For blog readers, post in the comments!

(pause for conversation, concluded by singing “He Came Down” by John Bell)

Today, when we celebrate a bit of our joy in this season, we remember that even the greatest joy we know now is not complete. There is something more ahead. God is not done with the world quite yet. As amazing and joyous as Christmas is, there is more joy to come. But therein lies what makes this joy all the more difficult – it is not here yet. The world does not work as God intends all the time. Pain and sorrow and suffering and sighing are very much before us. Sometimes when it does come, joy disappears all too quickly and leaves us wanting and waiting for more.

And it is for moments like these that our reading from James this morning speaks so loudly to us: be patient. In fact, he says it four times in these four verses: be patient! He and his first readers knew that there was something more ahead, but like us they all too quickly recognized that something was missing from the world. In days of waiting, it is easy to give up, but James urges us to wait patiently, “for the coming of the Lord is near.” All the things that Isaiah promised and more will come true soon. Things will work as God intends. Pain and sorrow and suffering and sighing will be a thing of the past. And joy will be at its fullest, for God will be among us once again as Christ returns to live and reign among us forever and ever. But in the meantime, we must be patient.

It’s not quite as easy for me to be patient as it is for me to be joyful. Sure, it’s hard to wait on Christmas sometimes, but I think this kind of patience and waiting is even tougher than that. As I think back on the Advent season in recent years in my life, I remember so often waiting for something or other to come along – and year after year I find myself still waiting for so many of the same things, still frustrated by things too absent or too present in my life, still longing for that promised joy to become real – but it doesn’t.

What are you waiting patiently for this Advent season? How can you be reassured in the coming of the Lord that this need will be fulfilled? Take a moment and think on these things, and share with your neighbor again if you like before we come back together with a bit more singing. For blog readers, post in the comments!

(pause for conversation, concluded by singing “He Came Down”)

In these Advent days, I think we find a strange mix of patience and joy, a blend of these very different emotions as we walk with anticipation and hope into the incredible fullness of life that God intends. Our third text this morning blends patience and joy as well as any I know as it looks forward to that new thing that God is doing even now. We didn’t even really read it, but we sang it in our last hymn – this beautiful hymn is actually a powerful setting of the great, joyous text of Mary’s Song, an outburst of praise offered after encountering the angel who told her she would bear a son and name him Jesus and after sharing a sacred moment with her relative Elizabeth who was also bearing a strange and unexpected child.

Mary’s Song, in this great setting by Irishman Rory Cooney, shouts forth immediately with great joy for the many blessings God has showered on Mary and the people – but then it reminds us that “wondrous things” come “to the ones who wait.” Mary sees things changing – but they are not fully real yet.

“Could the world be about to turn?” she asks in the words of our song. There are incredible marks of God’s justice ahead, worthy of great rejoicing even now, even though they are not all real yet. There are amazing possibilities for God’s way to take hold, so awesome that she can sing praise for them even though their fullness is still far off. And even amidst the turmoil and waiting of the world, Mary rejoices because God “holds us fast” as we bear the promise from generation to generation until we must be patient no longer.

And so my friends, it is this kind of joy we find before us today – joy not fully revealed, joy still strangely incomplete, joy still awaiting its full revelation in Christmas and to the end of the world. But this joy nonetheless breaks into our waiting – our stubbornness, our frustration, our despair, our pain, our doubt, our certainty, our uncertainty, all the things that mark this season and all our days – and then this joy starts to turn things around. We know that Christmas and all its glory and hope lies ahead, but we must still wait for the even greater glory yet to come, when all things will be made new, the world is turned around, and rejoicing will be all we do.

May God strengthen us in our waiting and sustain us in our rejoicing until we know the fullness of God’s joy each and every day. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

a sermon on Matthew 3:1-12 for the Second Sunday of Advent
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on December 5, 2010

In the midst of a busy season, somehow John attracted a crowd. People didn’t come because of his clothes – if anything, they came in spite of his animal skin wardrobe. People didn’t come to enjoy the finest meals in Judea – his food was the simple subsistence of the poor, as he ate whatever insects he could find and made them palatable with wild honey. And people definitely didn’t come because it was nearby – John made the wilderness his headquarters for living and teaching and preaching, choosing to stay far away from the center of power and prestige in Jerusalem, and yet people went out of their way to hear him.

John was on the margins, and yet he attracted a crowd. Maybe people came because of John’s message, then. But this was no easy message, either: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Turn away from the way of life you have known and turn back toward God. Leave behind the accommodations to the empire and lip service to religion. Take up the mantle of new life, peace, and hope because something bigger is on the way.

But John’s message wasn’t all that he offered – he also invited those who heard him to join him in a ritual washing of sin in the Jordan River. Even this ritual washing wasn’t all that was going on – people were changing. Things were shifting. The old ways were starting to open up. A new way was coming into being because there was something more ahead, and a crowd was gathering around to see what was going on.

Nowadays I for one wonder a bit about John’s message and the crowd it brought in. Repentance doesn’t seem to be the way to attract people these days – so many churches that seem to be successful by the world’s standards in 2010 worship in buildings that look more like a school auditorium than a sanctuary, come up with creative names that avoid the word “church” – let alone any denominational affiliation! – at all costs, and promote a faith that belongs more in the self-help section of the bookstore than in the pews of Sunday morning – all a far cry from the message of repentance that John offered in his ministry. But John nonetheless offered his proclamation to them and us: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Repentance is a cornerstone of our faith, and it is good that John reminds us of it in this season. While we have often allowed commercialism and nostalgia to take precedence in this season, the real preparation for Christmas comes in making room amidst the clutter of our lives for the new thing God is doing at Christmas and beyond, opening ourselves to the kingdom of heaven as it becomes real around us. The call to repentance is an excellent approach to these days, but it is more than just a legalistic condemnation of moral missteps. As one commentator puts it:

Repentance is not primarily about our stands of moral worthiness, but rather about God’s desire to realign us to accord with Christ’s life. Repentance is not so much about our guilt feelings as about God’s power to transform us into Christ’s image. (John P. Burgess, Feasting on the Word)

Maybe it was John’s message that brought people out to him after all, and maybe that same kind of message should shape our own proclamation in these Christmas days, our simple living in peace and joy and justice in response to the one who has come and is coming again.

But John was not finished with his message quite yet. Repentance was important for everyone, but he had a special word to share with some of those who had made the trek out to the wilderness. Some of the religious leaders of the day – from two different and opposing sects, no less! – all made their way out to the wilderness to see for themselves what was going on – perhaps to join in, perhaps to oppose it (the Greek can mean either – see William R. Herzog II in Feasting on the Word). But John’s message was not about reinforcing the establishment leaders. Instead, he called them a “brood of vipers,” suggesting that they too needed to take repentance seriously so that they too would bear fruit in these new days. No one had an exclusive hold on the line of faith after Abraham as they seemed to think – instead, John reminded these leaders that God could raise up children to Abraham even from the stones of the wilderness. So he called everyone who would hear to be a part of something more, to do more than just repent and be baptized but to wait and listen for another with more power and more presence who was coming after him to do what he did and much, much more.

The second part of John’s message is one we would probably prefer to ignore, and usually we drown it out with choirs of children and all the other wonderful sounds of the holiday season. But John’s message of judgment upon the religious leaders of his day hits pretty close to home. It suggests that we may not have the exclusive claim on God’s message that we think, that God may be working in the world beyond our imagination or comprehension, even that we might not deserve the privileged status of faith that we think we deserve in these days. In John’s proclamation we see hints of this becoming real in the world. John doesn’t put the focus on himself but insists that the focus be on repentance and preparing the way. He demands not assent to his way of life but a change in each person’s way of life to align more closely with God’s intentions. And John steps out of the center of power to say that there always places where God’s message needs to take root – not in bringing more to “believe” exactly as we do but in making God’s way of justice, peace, and love more real and complete for all people.

So how do we proclaim this message? Can we take John’s proclamation of “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” seriously in this season when we are so focused on getting ready for the trappings of the holiday that we so easily miss the incredible things that God is doing? Can such a message be heard? And what sort of response can we really expect?

While we certainly can wonder about how others will hear this, I think we have to start by hearing these words anew and taking them seriously ourselves. At the core, these words call us back to a way that we can remember. They suggest that we reclaim something we once had and demand that we look back to determine what is ahead. These words do not suggest that we can solve our problems by returning to what we think we once were but instead offer us something new grounded in the core promises of God that we can remember: the ability to overcome sin by no power or action of our own, the promise of God to overturn the ways of the world and make all things new, and the response that we are called to offer as we walk the way of repentance in this day and always.

And so John invites us to repent – to ground ourselves anew in the promises of God to bring new life, to be held accountable by God and the community of faith for the kind of life that we see demonstrated in these days, and to hold our hope not in the gifts or trappings of an arbitrary holiday but in the new life that God promises to make real and whole around us. Only after all this can we find the kingdom of heaven coming near and imagine the way of peace and justice described in the incredible words of Isaiah we heard this morning becoming real in our midst. In the light of repentance, we can finally see the creatures of the earth coming together in peace and harmony, led by the grace and mercy of a little child as God’s presence becomes real and whole in all the world.

So as a seal of this promised day yet to come – and a reminder of the promises already fulfilled – we gather at this table, a place where we can know God’s presence and God’s grace as all are welcome to be filled and made whole again and we glimpse the coming kingdom of heaven in the faces of those with us here and the presence of no less than Jesus himself.

Until that day when Isaiah’s words become real and complete and whole for all creation and we feast at table with Christ as our host, may we make a place in these Advent days for what God is doing in our world, what God has done around us and before us, and what God promises to do ahead of us so that all things can be made new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

a sermon on Isaiah 2:1-5 and Matthew 24:36-44
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on November 28, 2010

Andre Sanchez spent the better part of his Thanksgiving holiday waiting at the doors. He arrived at the Best Buy in Union Square at 1:00 Tuesday afternoon so he could save some $600 on a couple electronics items when the store opened early on Friday morning. He told the Post, “When I finally got in, it felt like the gates of heaven opened up.”

He was surely not alone – based on the sheer volume of advertisements via paper, email, and television these days, a great majority of Americans spent at least some part of the last few days shopping, and more than a few of them surely spent some time waiting at the doors. This Black Friday “holiday” has become so notorious that one of the staff in our denomination’s Office of Theology and Worship even wrote a Christmas carol about it!

Early on a Friday morn, anxious drivers blow their horns.
Swiftly to the mall they race, praying for a parking place.
Humming carols of the season, spending with no rhyme or reason.
Checking, savings overdrawn, all before the light of dawn.
Save a dollar! Save a dime! Happy, happy shopping-time!

Bargain hunters stalk their prey all across the U.S.A.
Checkout lines around the block, just like back at Plymouth Rock.
Stuffed with turkey, pie, and gravy, they maneuver like a navy,
stacking high their shopping carts, maxing out their credit cards.
Save a fortune! Save yourselves! Stuff is flying off the shelves.

Prophets have foretold the day all of this will pass away:
parking places gone to seed, escalators clogged with weeds;
Nordstroms, Saks, and Nieman Marcus empty as a turkey carcass;
heaven’s children at the feast where the greatest serve the least.
Savior, save a place for me, where the best of gifts are free.

– David Gambrell

As Advent begins today, it is tempting, I think, to see these days as a time of waiting at the doors of Christmas Eve, longing for gifts galore, living into the strange reality of consumerism that permeates these days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, looking for heaven as a big-box store opening up with great deals, and celebrating Christmas without getting ready for it – or by getting ready for it! But our children’s bulletin for today suggests that there is more to Advent than all this:

People get ready during Advent by decorating, baking, shopping, wrapping presents, and visiting friends and family. Use Advent to get ready on the inside, too.

– Kids Celebrate, Advent 1A

So how do we get ready on the inside? What can we expect as we wait at the doors of Christmas? And what will we find once we get on the other side? Will the gates of heaven bring us to some great megastore in the sky? Or is there more to this time that that?

Our texts today start to answer that question – not with visions of angels and shepherds and wise men but with a look far forward, well beyond Christmas Eve, into the world that comes into being because of what God is doing in these days. Isaiah starts us out with a hopeful vision of peace and justice that shows us how things will look one day – not just on the other side of the gates of heaven but “in the days to come” here on the earth, too, as we wait at the doors for something new.

In these days to come, God’s life in the world will be more evident and real, for people everywhere will be drawn to God and look for God’s presence, not just in their own way as they feel led but together, as many peoples coming joining as one, to seek instruction in how to live.

But these days to come are not just a time to sit around and enjoy something new – in this time, the word of the Lord will go forth to bring justice and peace to all the world, to “beat… swords into plowshares, and… spears into pruning hooks” so that the whole world will know the fullness of God’s presence and what this means for people each and every day.

Finally, if it weren’t already clear, the prophet invites everyone to join in: “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

If the light of the Lord weren’t clear enough from Isaiah’s words, Jesus offers us another vision of the gates of heaven in our reading from the gospel according to Matthew. Unlike the deals advertised on Thanksgiving Day for Black Friday, Jesus suggests that the things to come as we wait at the doors will be quite a surprise, a sudden, dramatic change that isn’t at all understood or pictured but is coming nonetheless.

Jesus even makes it clear that we won’t know anything about this time to come until it comes, and this “rapture,” as some Christians describe it, demands only that we be ready for it whenever it might come, staying awake and alert for the day when the Lord is coming. One commentator sums it up well:

We are not expected to know everything, but we are expected to do something. The Jesus of the verses before us calls persons to a life of work in a spirit of wakefulness.

– Mark Urs, Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1

This is not just a version of that wonderful old adage, “Jesus is coming – look busy!” – this is a real attentiveness to the time before us, a real turn away from the world’s pull upon us toward greed and consumption, a real turn toward preparation and making things ready, constantly asking that wonderful question posed by our opening hymn this morning: “O Lord, how shall I meet you?” Jesus insists that we be ready for something more to come at any time.

There is something real about waiting at the doors these days. Even if we dismiss the insane excesses of the holiday shoppers around us, even if we are ready to put off the Christmas carols until December 24, even if we have a pretty good answer to how we shall meet our coming Lord, we still wait at the door for something more. We know there is something missing in the life we have. We start by trying to fill it with all the “stuff” of these days only to find that we have just dumped an incredible amount of time, energy, and money into a black hole that cannot be filled with these things.

And so as this Advent begins and we wait at the door of Christmas once again, we also wait at the door of something more. We wait at the door of a world transformed by God’s power and presence. We wait at the door of a dramatic and complete change that can’t be expected or described or contained in human words. And we wait at the door of a new way of life that can only begin by God’s own initiative but that happened once in an entirely unexpected way, not in regal robes in the palace, announced with trumpets to nobility but wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger, announced by angels to the lowly field workers on the night shift.

The little glimpse of things ahead that we get from our texts today is probably not enough to satisfy our longings and fill our spirits, but the door is nonetheless open. We can peer inside and get a glimpse of the glory yet to come in these and other words. We can wait with patience and hope for a new way to come into being. And we can take this invitation seriously to come and walk in the light of the Lord, for when we take even a little step toward this new way, we join in what God is doing in this Advent season and throughout all time to make things new.

And so, this Advent, as we wait at the doors of something new, how will we respond to God’s invitation? How will we meet our Lord? How will we walk in the light of the Lord? Will we wait at the doors with the world, focusing on the busyness of these days, the shopping that must be done by December 24, the errands and cooking that have to be finished, and the gooey sentimentality that marks so much of this season? Or will we wait at the doors of a heaven far greater than any big-box store, stepping back to prepare our minds and hearts and lives for the coming of an incredible and long-expected child, taking a new and fresh look at a well-worn season in hopes of finding something new in these days? As my friend Carol Howard Merritt put it:

We will never know the reign of God that is in and among us until we wake up and become attuned to those promises of peace and justice, until we can become alert to those things that are going on around us that remind us of God’s presence, until we walk away from the cynicism and despair that can sedate us and become busy, working for a world where the downtrodden will be buoyed and the ravaged will be made whole.

So may God open our eyes to the possibilities before us in our individual lives and our life together in this place, give us trust that these days can bring us something more than just temporal pleasures and seasonal highs, and show us how to look for the real joy and hope and renewal that can come only from walking in the light of the Lord. May these Advent days be filled with hope and expectation not just of a happy, idealized Christmas morning but of a world exploding with the glory and promise of a God who comes into our midst to make all things new.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.