2010-11-28 Hope From the Heart of God

Hope From the Heart of God

Scriptures:

 

Isaiah 2: 1-5
Romans 13: 11-14
Matthew 24: 36-44

Just a few minutes ago we lit the first Advent candle and we dedicated it to “HOPE”. We start with hope this Advent because it is the thing which makes all else possible. This thing called hope is very hard to pin down. Emily Dickenson famously called it “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without words”. Hope is not attached, you see, to specific things. Hope is more of an attitude of the soul. A turning and a leaning toward a better possibility but one that you cannot quite see yet.

I think first we have to just come right out and ask if there is any reason for hope? Is there anything on the horizon that would incline us in that direction or are all of our human dreams and aspirations destined to to be ground into powder and ashes? God knows, there are no lack of reasons to wonder what is happening in our world. The great theologian, Walter Brueggerman, said this about the state of our public life: “ For all our intellectual sophistication, seemingly assured affluence, and confidence in our technology, a deep, unsettled feeling that things are indeed falling apart cuts across the spectrum. Our best institutions seem oddly dysfunctional. Churches worry about survival, courts only sometimes yield justice, medical institutions provide sporadic access and care, schools only occasionally educate and all our institutions seem in a deep crisis of purpose as well as finances..and the presence and threat of violence is everywhere.” It sounds as if Dr. Brueggerman has been reading our mail, as the saying goes. Sometimes it does seem as if we are lost in a social, political, moral, and environmental wilderness and the way out is not clear and any paths we glimpse turn out to lead in a circle. Our personal universe may not be much better. For some of us this Advent hope is not only hard to find; it is hard to even believe in. There are those who have trouble with work, either finding a job or being able to bear the one they have! Others are ill and do not really foresee feeling much better. There is, somewhere out there, a brokenhearted mother, father, son or daughter. I heard two thing this week that broke my heart. One, a mother died while her son was in prison and it was her only hope that she might have seen him one more time. I also heard of a very young man who wished to take his own life. He didn’t do it, thank God, but just to think of one so young and so despairing. It’s hard out there. You do not need me to tell you that life is hard.

And then, well, along comes Thanksgiving and the holiday stuff heats up and we entertain the possibility that we might be distracted with some tinsel and glitter and a peppy Christmas tune. The neighbors are starting to put up lights, maybe, and certainly the malls are all a glitter and certainly seem to promise that if we only find the right stuff for the holidays all this sorrow would somehow dissipate. But, no, the lectionary and the universal church in it’s wisdom won’t let us skip Advent; won’t let us throw ourselves into the merriment just yet.

Every year the scripture for the first Sunday in Advent directs us to think about the apocalypse and the end of time. Of all things! The idea that this human scented earth that we love and and all that is on it will come to an end in a cataclysmic disaster is not an invention of the modern age, Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thought has been around for more than two thousand years and has always enjoyed a period of renewal when things were especially tough. According to the “New Oxford Annotated Bible” the purpose of apocalyptic literature is to “comfort and encourage the faithful in difficult times” (p.362) . For roughly two hundred years before and two hundred years after the birth of Christ, some Jewish and Christian thinkers proposed apocalyptic visions of the coming end of the world. And, always, the mighty show of disaster that would ring down the human curtain was to take place before the generation present at the time of the writing passed away. So far, they have been wrong…

The apocalyptic writers of the 400 year period of time surrounding the birth of Christ were writing to people who lived in terrible circumstances and very tough times indeed. The people to whom these verses were intended lived under the boot of Rome. They survived, as best they could, in an occupied land without enough of anything and with their Jewish culture slipping out from underneath them like sand in a tidal wave. They looked to their leaders and found them corrupt, incompetent, and indifferent to their suffering. They saw their religion compromised and their temple desecrated. All of the apocalyptic visions recorded in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation were written after the temple was destroyed and the people devastated and scattered. The apocalypse of their world had already happened and this literature was written to comfort them when they had lost their home, their way of life and, if fact, their religion.

Well, Jesus of Nazareth was born right into the middle of this 400 year period of apocalyptic thought. He was born into a world of poverty, oppression, and unrest. The final destruction of the temple had not occurred but it was a real threat. His time was a bad time so a relevant question for Christians today is whether or not Jesus was an apocalyptic thinker. Many scholars think not; some think he was. Almost everyone believes that it depends on how you define apocalypse. Is it the end of time, or the beginning of a new age? It is, of course, both the end and the beginning. And, for Jesus it was tied up somehow with the Kingdom of God.

Jesus talked a lot about the Kingdom of God; there’s no question about that. What is less certain is what he meant. Does the Kingdom of God refer to God’s direct intervention in the future, something connected with the end of the world and the last judgment? Or does it mean something already present but……harder to find? There is an awful lot in the gospels to suggest that Jesus saw the Kingdom of God as present now and all around us. Nearer to us than we are to ourselves but overlooked , misplaced, and buried, in the rush of our days. Maybe in the intensity of Jesus’ poetic vision there was no difference in God’s present or future activity. Over and over we are told that the disciples did not understand his vision. Child of spirit and earth, our invocation this morning called him; he did not fit neatly into any of the roles that people wanted him to play.

If Jesus adopted the apocalyptic view, how do you explain the passage in Luke (17: 20-21) when, referring to the apocalypse, a pharisee asked Jesus when the Kingdom would come? Jesus said: “The Kingdom is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘look, here it is! or ‘there it is’! For, in fact, the Kingdom of God is among you.” But you don’t have to look verse by verse, you can look at the parables as a whole: The Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the dinner party where everyone is invited, the leaven in the bread, the mustard seed, the pearl of great price, the treasure in the field. The parables are likely to start with the words: “The kingdom of God is like…..and these parables are not at all about some cataclysmic end time; they are about how we treat each other here and now. They are about the unchanging indestructible loving relationship between God and humans. We know for sure that Jesus taught that.

So, why, on the first Sunday in Advent, do we have to listen to warnings from Matthew, or Mark, or Luke (depending on the year) about the need to be ready for some future chaos? Well, it has something to do with the fact that this is not just the first Sunday in Advent, it is, liturgically speaking, the first Sunday of the New Year. So, on this liturgical beginning of the year, all over the world today, Christians will hear passages about the end!As near as I can tell, that’s the point. For God, the end and the beginning are both one, the Alpha and the Omega. In Advent we are told to gather our hope and remember the past, look to the future, and act in the present.

In other words, we are invited to participate in the Kingdom of God. In other words, we are to make ready for the Incarnation; God within us, which was, and is, and will be.

The invitation requires something of us though. It requires our attention, it required that we be ready, wake up, prepare, pay attention! The Kingdom of God is happening all around you and within you but if you are not prepared to receive it you might miss it.

We spend a great deal of time preparing for most parts of Christmas. Some of us more than others, to be sure. I recall a day when I was a little child and the Christmas wreaths were down from the attic. They were laying, in full view on the dining room table and I was bursting with the desire to get them on the windows and let the season begin! But my mother was horrified by the thought because, you see, the windows had not been cleaned. It was, apparently, impossible to put Christmas wreaths on dirty windows. I did not think much of this rule at the time but it has become an important metaphor for me concerning Advent. You can’t hang Christmas on top of a lot of old grime. Clean your windows; clear your vision!

And yet, as we enter Advent we cannot help but bring ourselves to it in whatever shape ourselves are in! As we stand at the starting point some of us are in pretty good shape and some of us are not. It doesn’t matter what condition you are in physically, emotionally, or spiritually. The invitation is to get ready, shake off your apathy, clear your vision, and consent to the journey to the stable even if you don’t think you can make it; even if you’re not sure there is anywhere to get. Because the good news is that it is in the biggest wrecks that the best work of God happens. God, it seems, specializes in making beginnings out of endings. But we have to raise our heads, look up and say “yes”.

I want to tell you a story which was told to me as true a long time ago but I can’t testify as to the origin. There was a little boy in a rural area and he was playing out in the open field. His parents were watching but suddenly, he disappeared from their view. Vanished. What had happened was that he had fallen into a deep vertical hole. Probably an abandoned well or a hold that was dug for a well that never hit water. He was trapped about 15 feet down in the pit but not unconscious or apparently badly injured. The mother kept an eye on the top of her blond boy’s head now dusted with dirt while his Dad ran for help. Very soon an assembly of men and women were hovering over the pit and they could, with difficulty, talk to him but they did not know how to get him out and he was running out of oxygen and in a state of panic so there was little time. They considered several plans none of which seemed promising and finally, even though they were not sure he was old enough to cooperate in his own rescue, they decided on this plan. They lowered a rope with a flashlight tied to it and they called to him. “When the rope gets to you untie the flashlight and then put the rope through the belt loops in your jeans and tie it in as good a knot as you can. As soon as you are ready, when you are ready, turn the flashlight on and shine it up. When we see you shining you light, we’ll start pulling and keep pulling until we get you out.” They didn’t know how well the little child could hear way down there and didn’t know if the plan would work or if the sides would collapse. But the rope was lowered and the little boy was able to get it through his belt loops and tie it. And then he put the flashlight up as well as he could and he turned it on. And on top they saw the beam of light and began to pull slowly on the rope. And as they very carefully pulled the light got brighter and within minutes a little blond head covered with dirt came into view and the child was pulled out of that pit and into his parents anxious arms.

I think Advent is like that. If we want the coming Christ child to pull us to safety we have to be ready, we have to be willing, we have to have the courage to let our lights shine even if we are not sure that this season we are starting has anything to offer to us. Even if we are not sure that there is any hope for us in the heart of God. Advent is about shinning that light even in the face of uncertainty; even knowing what we know about the shape of our worlds inside and outside of our skins. In a state of uncertainty best to return to what we know.. We may not be able to settle the questions surrounding the apocalypse and what Jesus thought about it, bu thanks be to God, there is much in the good news that we can be certain about. The gospels are not at all ambiguous about what where our heart should be in this time, ourtime.

“Love the Lord, your God, with your whole soul and your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus told stories to show very what that would look like, “fleshed out”, you might say. A pharisee asked him “Who is my neighbor” and Jesus, answering him, said, “A certain man went down from Jerusalem and fell among thieves..and a certain Samaritan came where he was…Then Jesus said: “Go and do likewise”. Jesus healed people and he told those who would follow him to go and do the same thing in his name. He sat at the table and shared his life and he said “Do this, in my memory…and he said “My peace I leave to you…be not afraid.”

The point of waiting in hope and preparing in anticipation is not that we be preoccupied with signs, predictions, and anxious wondering about some possible future catastrophe , but that we act with gentleness, compassion and love in the here and now. And pray with confidence and seek to find a way to fear not. It’s no news that we fail to do those things often enough. If that were not the case, the world would not be so full of violence, poverty, cruelty, and war. The news would be a lot better and the projections of our future would not be so grim, and we would not be so fearful……if we didn’t fail. But we do, the truth is that we fail.

Still, the message of Advent is that even if everything is falling to pieces; even if everything we thought was fixed is flying apart, and even if every fixed star in our world is wavering, and what has held together before will hold no longer hold…….. our redemption is drawing near. How can this be? It can be because the heart of God is full of hope for us and this hope will not be denied.

This hope is just beginning to be visible on the horizon in the form of a baby, a baby, for heaven’s sake, a baby, for our sake. And that baby, small and fragile like ourselves, will be triumphant. If the future were not the promise of Jesus but the predictable outcome of present trends, despair would overrule us. If we logically follow our own projections, the future would look unbearable, we would choke on our own fears. But the message of Advent is that we can never take our own projections more seriously than God’s promises. When we least expect it and when there is no evidence for it, God’s power comes into this godless world in ways the world itself would never predict or foresee.

What if, this Advent, we consented to wake up, be alert, make way, what if we cleaned the windows to put up the wreaths and dared to believe this year that the incarnation, GOD WITHIN US is not only possible, it is inevitable. But to see it, to be prepared to see this hope and this promise fulfilled we will have to be ready. We may find ourselves in a pit but God is forever lowering a rope with a light for us to shine…when we’re ready.

Will you pray with me please?

Gracious God, we ask for your presence as we begin our walk through Advent on our way to the birth of goodness and grace and peace once more poised to make it’s claim on us. Help us, we pray, to shake off our indifference, open our eyes, and prepare our hearts to receives the gifts which are offered with an open hand. We pray, as always in the name of the one who came to teach, heal and restore us. Christ Jesus, our savior. Amen.

First Congregational United Church of Christ
November 28, 2010
First Sunday in Advent
Rev. Judith Vicari