Advent 3, A, 2019

Isaiah 35:1-10
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11

You’ve all heard of urban legends: those fantastic or funny or pithy or horrifying stories that make the rounds of coffee clutches and water coolers and facebook friends as true stories. They may or may not have ever had a basis in fact, but it doesn’t even matter any more because they have taken on a life of their own. It turns out churchy folks have their own set of legends, ecclesiastical legends, if you will. I read about this one making the rounds of a Methodist seminary a while back – one about a video tape that everyone had heard about, but no one had ever seen.

The Methodists apparently have a number of ministers who come to ministry in a round about sort of way, as a second career, or a vocation in addition to their career. Sound familiar? Instead of the sort of team discernment and formation approach we employ, they agree to go part time to Lay Pastor’s School for several years rather than seminary.

Story goes, a video tape surfaced of the first sermon of the first preaching class of one such lay minister. The man was relatively new to the Methodist Church. He had been raised in a Pentecostal tradition and brought much of that ethos and sensibility with him to Pastor’s School.

“He said, ‘I got here today to preach and this preaching teaching fellow asked me ‘Where is your manuscript?’ and I says, I says, ‘I ain’t got no manuscript.’ So he says, ‘Well, where is your outline?’ And I says, I says, ‘I ain’t got no outline.’ And he says, ‘Well have you got your sermon memorized?’ And I said, “How could I memorize it if God ain’t told me it yet?’

He looked at me kind of dumb-founded so I says, ‘Look here, I just flip open the Bible and put down my finger and then God gives me utterance on whatever verse my finger lands on.’ Now this here preaching teaching fellow stared at me a minute, then he says, ‘Well, what do you do if you run out of things to say?’ And I says ‘Well now, I just reach back and grab me a handful of Isaiah and go on!’” (Rev. Delmer Chilton, The Lectionary Lab, 2016)

You could do worse things in life than grabbing yourself a handful of Isaiah and going on:
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.

While much of Isaiah up to this point exhorts a wayward people to return to Yaweh, and communicates Yaweh’s anger at his rebellious brood, this is the voice of a prophet comforting his people. A voice encouraging a broken, beaten people within a wilderness of fear and exile…
Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
“Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.

A handful of Isaiah goes a long way. That’s what Jesus does. Grabs himself a handful of Isaiah-that’s what he does when those messengers of John the Baptist come with his sad, desperate plea, are you the one?:
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer

And let’s be clear – John can use a handful of Isaiah about now. Not the first voice of Isaiah. Not the angry God, you people screwed it all up, make it right Isaiah. The hopeful Isaiah. Because John is running a little low on hope at this point.

American author Barbara Kingsolver wrote, “The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.” John knew what he hoped for, lived in it, within it, reaching for it, preaching for it, living for it, striving for it. And it landed him in prison. As it turns out, calling the king an incestuous adulterer does not improve your lifestyle, even if it is true, possibly especially if it is true. Now John sits in a Herodian prison in his camel skins, munching a snack of locust, pondering his markedly reduced life expectancy and wondering, as we are wont to do when time runs short, if he got it wrong. He’s been proclaiming his cousin as the Messiah since they both snuggled cozily in their mother’s wombs. He preached so confidently, pointed the way – but he has yet to see any ax wielded against unfruitful trees, witness any winnowing, discern any fire at all much less the unquenchable variety. Maybe, maybe I got it wrong. We don’t know how he responded to the handful of Isaiah Jesus sent back to him. I find myself hoping it helped, brought some peace, if not some joy. John seems such a serious fellow.

He’s the patron saint of spiritual joy, did you know that? All that womb leaping, I suppose. The patron saint of spiritual joy. And this, this Sunday, in which we squat with a sad and broken baptizer in his squalid cell, this is Rejoice Sunday – pink candle, pink vestments for many churches. Rejoice – while the Herodians and the Romans rule from sumptuous selfishness? Rejoice – while the manger lies empty? Rejoice – while we languish in various prisons, some of our own making? Rejoice – while the nights get longer, the days get colder? Rejoice – while the glitter and consumerism of the secular Christmas overtake all notions of peace on earth? Rejoice – while the earth struggles under the burden we place on her? Rejoice, yes! Grab yourself a handful of Isaiah and rejoice.

Maybe, as one author suggests, John “realized that God’s work is bigger than the difficult circumstances of his own life, calling him to a selfless joy for the liberation of others. Maybe John’s joy was otherworldly in the most literal sense, because he understood that our stories extend beyond death, and find completion only in the presence of God himself.” (Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus). Maybe he did. Clearly James urges patience in our epistle.

But know this truth preacher Frederick Buechner penned, ”…to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is not just a passive thing, a pious, prayerful, churchly thing. On the contrary, to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is above all else to act in Christ’s stead as fully as we know how. To wait for Christ is as best we can to be Christ to those who need us to be Christ to them most and to bring them the most we have of Christ’s healing and hope because unless we bring it, it may never be brought at all.” (“Be Patient,” Frederick Buechner Blog). Amen.

Advent 2, A, 2019

Matthew 3:1-12

Advent is a time of quiet, of stillness. As the lake surface coalesces into motionless iciness and the snow muffles ambient noise, the weather seems complicit in the stillness, even as our human driven surroundings of glitter and glitz and shopping and the steady world diet of violence and fear and hostility seem to combat any sense of quietude. In a tumultuous and hectic world – I look forward to that stillness every year. I have to admit that I did not anticipate and do not fully appreciate the extent of quiet that I have involuntarily achieved so far this Advent.

Aside from the obvious inconvenience of laryngitis, Advent brings us some very powerful words from the formidable John the Baptist – words about vipers and wrath and fire and repentance – words I guarantee he did not whisper at the crowds that gathered. Honest and zealous, Jesus’s brutally candid cousin had no trepidation about public opinion, no fear of trampling on powerful toes, no sense of humor and even less sense of fashion, but the man could preach. He could preach with a spirit that drew the people to him, to his baptism, to his message – draw the people even though his message seems to suggest a rather uncomfortable future of being chopped down and burned up. Preacher. Prophet. Voice in the wilderness.

In his book, Healing the Shame That Binds You, John Bradshaw shared the the parable of the Prisoner in the Dark Cave:

There once was a man who was sentenced to die. He was blindfolded and put in a pitch dark cave. He was told that there was a way out of the cave, and if he could find it, he was a free man.

After a rock was secured at the entrance to the cave, the prisoner was allowed to take his blindfold off and roam freely in the darkness. He was to be fed only bread and water for the first 30 days and nothing thereafter. The bread and water were lowered from a small hole in the roof at the south end of the cave. The ceiling was about 18 feet high. The opening was about one foot in diameter. The prisoner could see a faint light up above, but no light came into the cave.

As the prisoner roamed and crawled around the cave, he bumped into [large] rocks…He thought if he could build a mound of rocks and dirt that was high enough, he could reach the opening and…escape. Since he was 5’9”, and his reach was another two feet, the mound had to be at least 10 feet high..

So the prisoner spent his waking hours picking up rocks and digging up dirt. At the end of two weeks, he had built a mound of about six feet. He thought that if he could duplicate that in the next two weeks, he could make it before the food ran out. But as he had already used most of the rocks in the cave, he had to dig harder and harder…with his bare hands. After a month had passed, the mound was 9 ½ feet high and he could almost reach the opening if he jumped. He was almost exhausted and extremely weak.

One day just as he thought he could touch the opening, he fell. He was simply too weak to get up, and in two days he died. His captors came to get his body. They rolled away the huge rock that covered the entrance. As the light flooded into the cave, it illuminated an opening in the wall of the cave about three feet in circumference.

The opening was the opening to a tunnel which led to the other side of the mountain. This was the passage to freedom the prisoner had been told about. It was in the south wall directly under the opening in the ceiling. All the prisoner would have had to do was crawl about 200 feet and he would have found freedom. He had so completely focused on the opening of light that it never occurred to him to look for freedom in the darkness. Liberation was there all the time right next to the mound he was building, but it was in the darkness..

John found his wilderness far away from the edifices and restrictions of the religious hierarchy, in the harsh land surrounding the Jordan in which he baptized his followers – a literal wilderness. A land far away from here, a life far away from now. But his wilderness could have easily been in the darkness of a cave, or on a dimly lit street corner, or in a brightly lit home touched by grief, or addiction, or poverty, or loneliness, or illness. One author describes the wilderness as “a place of vulnerability, risk, and powerlessness. In the wilderness, we have no safety net. No Plan B, no rainy day savings account, no quick fix. In the wilderness, life is raw and unsettled, and our illusions of self-sufficiency shatter fast.” (Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus)

John cries out urgently in the wilderness. “Repent!” He cries. Turn around. Change. Head for the way out of the darkness that surrounds you, the walls that hold you. Jesus stands with you in the wilderness, in the darkness.

“Repentance…” one author notes, “[also] underscores that change isn’t necessary for change’s sake, but rather that change is necessary because we’ve become aware that our actions are out of step with God’s deep desire for peace and equity for all God’s people and – taking Isaiah’s vivid imagery in the second reading seriously – for the whole of creation. Repentance, in short, is realizing that God is pointing you one way, that you’ve been traveling another way, and changing course.” (David Lose, in the meantime)

Jesuit priest Gregory Joseph Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world. This program, which reaches over 10,000 people a year, centers on repentance in response to the unconditional love of God. In his 2017 book, Barking to the Choir, Father Boyle wrote this about Advent:

In Advent time, we are reminded over and over again: “Stay awake.” This is not a warning that death is coming but a reminder that life is happening. Now is the day of salvation. We see as God sees: with amplitude, wideness, and mercy. The only moment left to us to participate in this larger love, this limitless, all-accepting love, is the present moment. Can you hear it? The voice of the Beloved (90). Amen.

Advent 1, A, 2019

Isaiah 2:1-5
Matthew 24:36-44

We’re going to really put the new microphone to the test this morning…

Those of you who have worshipped here at Holy Trinity for a while have lived through the experience of laryngitis with me more than once. This is how it works: I see sick people all day, every day. I wash my hands constantly. I stay healthy. My youngest child gets a cold. I immediately, invariably catch her cold. Said cold inevitably attacks my vocal cords. Voila – laryngitis. I pay this price, and gladly enough, for snuggly progeny. The duration of this malady used to be predictable – 5 days. Every. Single. Time. 5 days. Today is day #5. The last few times, you see, the course has been extending. I suppose my vocal cords are losing their elasticity just like everything else does as I age. The last time I had this it lasted for 11 days. 11.

For anyone who hasn’t tried laryngitis – I honestly don’t recommend it. I don’t feel sick. I don’t have pain. For these things I give thanks, but I squeak. I croak. I whisper, but I’m not whispering. My real voice breaks in teasing me with normalcy, then disappears into its bed of phlegmy rasping. I stomp my feet to get my children’s attention – because the din of everyday life completely obscures such voice as I can currently produce. I used to worry that I wouldn’t be able to maintain proper parental authority without my full range of vocal amplitude. “But,” my daughter tells me, “you are so much scarier when you can’t talk!”

When Matthew penned this Gospel narrative around the year 80 AD, Jesus hadn’t talked for a long time. Matthew recorded this particular good news for a waiting community. Waiting 50 years. Waiting to hear their savior’s voice again. Waiting to see their savior’s face again. Waiting, and maybe, beginning to wonder. Maybe, beginning to forget. Forget why He lived. Forget what He meant. Forget how to live like He taught them they should. Unlike the earlier evangelist Mark whose community had not waited so very long, Matthew reached for these images from Jesus. Images to wake people up. Shake them up. American novelist Flannery O’Connor wrote, “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind, you draw large and startling figures.” Jesus’s followers had become hard of hearing, nearly blind, deafened by the din of everyday life. Jesus is, metaphorically speaking, shouting and stomping His feet and drawing huge vivid pictures in startling and disquieting detail to grab the undivided attention of His increasingly stupefied, oblivious followers, lulled to sleep by his silence. WAKE UP!

Today marks the beginning of Advent, the first day of the new church year. We lit the first candle of the advent wreath, the candle symbolizing hope. But the days are getting shorter, the nights longer. The one will be taken, the other left. The thief comes in the night. The fires burn. The school children run from their school under threat. Oil leaks into precious wetlands and ocean floors. Hate fuels hate, anger fuels anger. Nation raises sword against nation. War is a lesson begun in the nursery.

Advent comes in the dark, and the quiet – the sometimes frightening quiet place that holds the chaos of the world in tension with God’s promise.

Pr. Michael Coffey wrote:

Hope is a blue note on a jazz-worn clarinet a chromatic
piano chord dissonant and handsome a minor modal
song sung diaphragmatically strong a silence between
hymn and homiletic puzzling it holds the day in
a miter-cornered frame setting off the eyes of the
hopeful like sapphires hope is a run on sentence waiting
for some punctuation to signify an end or a pause
or an unknowing or an exclamation of what is yet to come that
is better or beautiful or at least makes what is now worth
the long, melodic, sorrowful, endless, wonderful wait

Hope blooms in what one theology professor calls the “not yet places of the world. Places where justice and equality have not yet been found. Places where hunger and thirst have not yet been alleviated. Places where school children die of senseless violence. Places where the planet is not yet being treated with respect.” (O. Wesley Allen, Jr., Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org) We must wake up to these places. Bring hope in these places. Be the church in these places. Shine the light and love of Christ in these places. Beat our swords into plough shares, spears into pruning hooks, each of us according to our gifts.

The city of Culiacán, Mexico holds the record for the highest rate of gun deaths in the nation. In response to the gun violence, creative activist Pedro Reyes collected 1,527 guns in Culiacan for the project Palas por Pistolas. He melted those 1,527 guns down into 1,527 shovel heads. Now those 1,527 shovels are being used to plant 1,527 trees in the city. “If something is dying, becoming rotten and smelly, I think there is a chance to make a compost…” said Reyes. (Amanda Froelich, “Mexican artist melts 1,527 guns, makes shovels to plant trees,” pocho.com.http://www.pocho.com/chilango-artist-melts-1527-guns-makes-shovels-to-plant-trees/?fbclid=IwAR0HOASU423v6Aj39ao38XrLipvtRoV-FtKY8LsD5V33rCPMEz3ZkAhWN4E)

Death into life. Swords into ploughshares. Darkness pierced by the light. Wake up.

Jesus means to awaken souls. In the ending is the beginning – the birth of hope. We wait. Awake. Quiet. Searching. Living in hope. Acting in love.

Amen