Behold: Joy

Luke 1:39-46

Advent 4 Year C

December 23, 2012

First Presbyterian Church of Clarksville

and Harmony Presbyterian Church

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Nothing in this text from Luke makes sense.

            It is about a poor, unmarried teenage girl who is pregnant going to visit her cousin, a woman well past her childbearing years who is, you guessed it, pregnant.

            The house is the house of Zechariah.  But upon entering, Mary greets Elizabeth rather than Zechariah.

            When Mary speaks, Elizabeth’s first words are praise to God for Mary because her words make the child in her womb jump.

            And all of this to prepare for the birth of the Messiah foretold by the angels who spoke to Mary.

            So we have unwed pregnant Mary visiting too old to be pregnant Elizabeth and upon entering the home, Mary breaks social custom and addresses first Elizabeth rather than Zechariah whose home it is at which time the words of unwed pregnant Mary make the child in too old to be pregnant Elizabeth’s womb jump at which point older Elizabeth breaks with social custom and gives praise and precedence for the child in younger Mary and for Mary as the mother of the Lord.

            Nothing in this text makes sense.

            This is not how things are supposed to work. 

            Of course, trying to make sense of the ways that God works in the world is a fool’s errand.  As the saying goes, God works in mysterious ways.  In fact when I was in seminary I had a professor who told us that when parishioners ask a particularly difficult theological question, you can just fall back on “well, it is a mystery!” 

I have to confess that I have used that escape hatch a time or two over the years

In truth, I have been using it on myself quite a lot over the last few months.  I suppose that the world makes no less sense in recent months than it did before but I for one seem to need to lean into the mystery of God more and more.

Over the last few weeks, another mystery, the whole phenomenon of the Maya calendar, has been occupying many people’s minds.  Were these ancient mezzo-American native people right?  Would the world indeed come to an end?

With few exceptions, most of us who quipped about the Maya calendar turnover last Friday did so tongue in cheek.  It made for a good laugh about not having to finish Advent and Christmas Eve sermons or not having to worry about holiday travel.  If the world came to an end, we would not have to pay our taxes, face another hot summer or endure another Alabama national football championship.

All in all the Maya gave us a good “the end is drawing nigh” punch line in the midst of a world that is less and less funny and working less and less the way we expect God’s world should or would work.

In a world where nations continue to rise up against nation; where people are divided by politics, poverty or religion; where the violence of our culture spares no one, including our children; a world where far too many children go to bed hungry or thirsty or despairing, making sense of things seems too much to hope for.  And the joy of the season?  Not easily found in this world of ours.

If this text makes no sense, this world makes even less.

This is not how things are supposed to work.

This is not how God is supposed to work.

In 1928, Thornton Wilder won the Pulitzer Prize for his book “The Bridge over San Luis Rey.”  The novel is set in the early 1700’s in Peru.  Five people crossing a rope suspension bridge across a deep river gorge die when the bridge collapses.  Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk on his way to Lima, is about to cross the bridge.   He witnesses the collapse and the deaths of the elderly Marquessa of Montemajor, her maid Pepita, the young scribe Esteban, Uncle Pio and his young charge Don Jamie, a boy of about 7. 

As he watches the bridge collapse and the five victims plunge into the river below, Brother Juniper is overcome with a sense of dread that such a thing could happen.  As he reflects on the events of that morning, he finds himself weighted down with a question.  If this is God’s world and God’s providence reigns, how could this happen?  Surely there must be some reason that God would take the lives of these five people at this moment.

To find the answer to his question, Brother Juniper sets out to investigate the lives of each of the five.  Over the next seven years, he interviews and researches to learn about the lives of each of the five.  He searches for some reason that God would cause or even allow such a thing to happen.  In the end, he gets his answer.  Or at least, he gets as much of an answer as he is going to get.

It is a mystery. 

There is no obvious answer.  In fact, all evidence points away from this being an act of divine judgment.  The Marquessa, once a shameless social climber, has grown into a woman of deep faith and compassion.  Pepita, a nun sent to service in the Marquessa’s home, has developed a beautiful way with words and affection for her aging mistress.  Esteban, long despairing about the death of his twin brother, has learned to live and love living once again.  Uncle Pio leaves behind the fame of the stage to care for young Jamie.  And Jamie himself, just a boy, cannot have committed any sin so grave to deserve this kind of divine action.

These are five flawed, sinful but wholly redeemable people.  So why did they die?

This makes no sense.

This is not how things are supposed to work.

In the end, Brother Juniper comes to the same conclusion so many of us do.  It is a mystery.  The simple fact is that we do not know and we cannot know fully the mind of God.  Like brother Juniper, we are left with more questions than answers when we try to analyze and categorize and comprehend the mind of God. 

If we are waiting until we do fully understand God, we will be waiting a long, long time.  If we are waiting for some moment of epiphany when the world will make total sense, we will be waiting a long, long time. 

This text from Luke- this social norm violating, worldly expectation defying, and political order challenging text- does little to unravel the confusion and mystery of the world.  These words which are part of the proclamation of the coming of Messiah do little but confuse our expectations of how God almighty would come into the world.  Nothing here makes sense so there is little it can do to make sense of the world.  At least little that it can do to make sense on our terms with our vocabulary.

But this text is not about the logic of the world or even the logic of how we think the world should be.  It is about the goodness of God.  And the goodness of God is not about making sense of a confused world or even fixing a broken world.  The goodness of God is about making the world new. 

Even in the midst of chaos- like this text or like our world- God breaks through and the light of God shines through.  

And here, on this fourth Sunday of Advent, with the tragedies of the world still fresh in our hearts and our minds, this nonsensical text reminds us that even in the midst of chaos or social disorder or political unrest or any other thing, God in God’s goodness is never absent.  In fact, if anything God is evermore present in our times of need and trial. 

Brother Juniper realized, and we too struggle to understand, that the world does not work on an equation of action and reaction.  This perplexing story of a girl too young and a woman too old bearing children into the world is a story about how God really works.  God does not work in wholly predictable ways nor does God abandon us when the world goes askew from our expectations.  God does not only favor the well to do or the self-described righteous.  God’s goodness in God’s acts in the world are not dependent on the status or condition of the world. 

Instead, whatever the circumstance of the world, God just loves the world.  Loves it so much that God gave God’s only son to die for the world.

It may not be how we think the world would work, but it is how God works in and through the history of God’s creation.  When the works of God intersect the history of creation, they do so most often in unexpected and unusual ways.

The Greeks had two words for time.  There is chronos which is the time that ticks away on the clocks and slips by on the calendar.  It is the time of telling time.  The other word is kairos.  Kairos describes those moments, those opportune moments when chronos is intersected by an event that changes things- that shifts reality from its ticking trajectory. 

When they meet in Zechariah’s house, Mary and Elizabeth recognize it as a kairos moment.  They see it as a moment of great joy that transcends custom and politics and every other thing.

Something momentous is happening and they meet it with songs of joy.  They see a glimpse of the new world to come in the hope and grace of Christ and they cannot help but feel joy.  In fact, they cannot help but declare their joy in that moment and for the love and grace of God.  Joy, not fear or anxiety or even confusion, rules in that moment.

            Today we do not merely recall that kairos moment shared by Mary and Elizabeth, we celebrate that we are living in it.   We live in this centuries old moment when God with us came to truly be with us.  And, although Christ is not standing in our midst as Jesus, he is no less present.  And just as God sent the Christ child into the chaos of that moment so long ago, God continually sends the Holy Spirit to intersect our lives and our world and remind us that we are not alone.

            Friends, our world may not make sense.  This ancient text may not make sense.  But this does.  God is good and in that goodness, God is with us.  Even in the darkest hours of the soul; the most chaotic moments in history; the most joyless times in our lives, the goodness of God and the joy that is its companion seek us out until our souls leap like the child Elizabeth carried so long ago.

            With Mary and Elizabeth, may we glorify the Lord with shouts of great joy and forever give thanks to God.

            Come Lord Jesus.  Amen.

Behold: Salvation

Malachi 3:1-4

Luke 3:1-6

Advent 2 Year C

December 9, 2012

First Presbyterian Church, Clarksville

And Harmony Presbyterian Church

Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Our two readings this morning, first from the writing of the prophet Malachi and the second from the Evangelist Luke, are about John; John the son of Zechariah, as he was known to family and friends; John the Baptist or the Baptizer as he is known to the church.

            The words from the prophet set the stage for John.  God says, “See, I am sending my messenger.”  In the Hebrew ‘my messenger’ is Mal-a-ki and it is this Mal-a-ki who declares the coming of another messenger, the one who proclaims messiah.  I suppose you could say that the declaration of God of the prophet Malachi is the foretelling of the coming of the one who will foretell the coming of the Lord.

            Paired with that prophecy is a reading from Luke’s Gospel.  It is a reading that recounts the fulfillment of that prophecy.  Malachi tells of one who will come, Luke tells that he has come.

            Now as a listener, it might be worth out time to consider what it is that this messenger has to say.  I mean after all, the message is so important that the coming of the messenger was foretold by another messenger!

            God’s Word came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.

            There are a lot of people in this world that I am glad I am not- a lot of jobs I am deeply grateful God has not called me to do.  Being the guy who was alone in the wilderness who is given the Word of God to proclaim the coming of the Word of God in the person of Jesus Christ is one that is easy to put at the top of the list!

            I mean imagine it.  You have a full life, I have a full life.  Imagine that in the midst of that life the Word of God came in and said, “proclaim the Word of God and the salvation of the world!”  Thank goodness John got that job, right?!

            Yeah, I’m not buying it either.                     

            Try as we might to cram this whole story back into John’s hands, the message that this messenger whose coming was declared by a messenger is not something that dies on the pages of the lectionary readings for the Second Sunday of Advent in year C.

            We come to this place and encounter the word of God in reading, in prayer, in song and, we hope at least occasionally, in sermon.  We come to this place to hear and to proclaim the same message that John proclaimed so long ago.

            Still, we do have it a little better than old John.

            Imagine having the burden of proclaiming the coming of the Christ on your own!  Thank goodness we have each other.  We have this community of faith, the whole of the Church of Jesus Christ to share the task of proclaiming the Lord’s coming so we are not alone in our work the way John was so long ago. 

            But make no mistake about it, we are called upon to be messengers just like John was because God’s Word has come to us as well.

            Now I don’t know about you, but when there are a bunch of people who are tasked with the same thing I am, I occasionally find myself thinking, “well, if I don’t get to it right away it’s OK.  Someone else will get to it sooner than I am able.”  We often have that tendency don’t we.

            We’ll leave welcoming new members to the welcome committee.

            We’ll leave the visible presence of the church in the community to the pastors.

            When it comes to understanding our place in the proclamation of God’s word it is tempting and often very easy to let ours individual selves fade into the background of the larger community of faith.  We become spiritual wallflowers, one eye scanning the crowd to be sure we are not noticed and the other watching the door to make sure we have a clean getaway route.

            John didn’t have that option, and we should be wary of it.  The God who encounters us through the word is the same God who told Jeremiah that God knew him by name in his mother’s womb.

            God’s call to proclaim is not some sort of generic ya’ll come casting call for the faithful.  Like John, we are encountered, in some way, by the Word of God.

            So if we are going to go around proclaiming this message, we should probably know what it is right?  Well, Luke gives us the message John proclaimed.  They were not wholly new words.  John did not go out and reinvent the wheel, instead he took God’s words and used them to proclaim God’s Word. 

as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths 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;

            Prepare the way of the Lord.

            When was the last time you used those words in conversation?

            “Robert, what have you been up to lately, well it is Advent so just the usual things- getting liturgies together, working on my Christmas Eve sermon, going to a few Christmas parties, you know, just generally preparing the way of the Lord.”

            Prepare the way of the Lord.

            Sounds really weird when you try to put it into conversation doesn’t it?!

            I think perhaps that is because, like John, our proclamation is meant to take less the form of words that are spoken than words that are lived.

            Our calling is not merely to tell the world to prepare the way of the Lord but to begin to actually do it; to fill in valleys and level mountains and straighten the crooked and make smooth the rough. In short, we are called to invite the world to join us in preparing the way of the Lord not by shouting a generic ya’ll come, but by inviting the world through our very living.

            John went down to the riverside and baptized.  He invited the people to come and join him in preparing the way of the Lord.

            I have a friend who is a Baptist preacher and we have a running debate on baptism.  He, of course, advocates for full immersion and I, in good mainline Protestant fashion, am find with a little sprinkling.  One time when we were bantering about it he said, “you Presbyterians just don’t get it.  John did not go down into the river and throw the water out on the people!”

            While I still disagree with him about baptism, I think he makes a good point about this reading today.  John did not stand by the river and passively throw water at people in the hopes that they might notice that they were a little wet.  He invited them down into the river.  He invited them to join him in living the word of God.

            For John’s community preparing the way of the Lord meant taking a tangible step toward joining a movement- being marked if only with water as belonging to someone or something else.

            Going down to the river and baptizing was how John helped prepare the way of the Lord, and the church continues that today.

            What else, I wonder, is there that we need to do to prepare the way?

            Perhaps another way of asking that is, what are the valleys we need to fill, the mountains we need to make low?  What are the obstacles we erect that divide us one from the other?

            God is not satisfied for us to peer at our neighbors across a great chasm whether spiritual, physical, political, economic or any other human made division.  God wants us shoulder to shoulder and if that means leveling mountains to make it happen, so be it.

            You know obstacles I mean; the things that divide us one from the other.

            Self-centeredness.

            Self-indulgence.

            That healthy dose of cynicism and doubt that makes us feel oh so postmodern.

            Fears based on gender, race, faith or lack of faith or a different kind of faith, physical appearance, sexual orientation or identity, ethnicity or nationality, economic status,…the list of all of the things that keep us from taking deep breaths of the Spirit in the presence of another.

            The way of the Lord is through the hearts and minds of God’s people.  If we are to make that way straight, we must be willing to let go the things that clutter the path of the Lord into and through our hearts and lives.

            Have no illusions. 

            It is difficult. 

            Preparing the way of the Lord is difficult and in our own lives it often seems impossible. 

            Knowing how great the challenges are, Isaiah and later John use images of nature to show how great the healing power of that love will be.  The deepest valley will be filled and the highest most unconquerable mountain will be made low.

            Every obstacle will be removed through the power of God.

            It begins with us and our commitment to remove the obstacles in our power.  With our individual hearts cleared of all that extraneous junk, the obstacles that divide the world will be removed so that the love of the Lord can sweep across all creation.

            And to what end?

            Why does John proclaim this message?  Why do we?

            What will happen when we prepare the way of the Lord?

            all humanity will see God’s salvation.”

            We struggle and labor to clear the path of the Lord not for ourselves or for the church or for Christians alone, but for all people in every time and place.  We clear the path of the Lord not for ourselves alone, but for the web of humanity that makes our world.

            That is the salvation John and we are called to proclaim.  Not salvation that comes through any action of ours but the salvation that is freely given by God in Christ Jesus.  We are called not to save the world, but to help clear away the clutter so the world can see that God already has.

            Just when it seems that all hope is lost.

            Just when it seems that the world is going straight to hell.

            A voice cries out from the wilderness; prepare the way of the Lord.

            The word of God calls out to us in this season of hope in the midst of a world of doubt.

            What will we do when we hear it?  Will we remain in the wilderness hoping that someone else will heed the call of God?

            Or, like John will we take God’s Word into the world and allow God to call us mal-a-ki, my messenger?

            In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Behold: Hope

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Luke 3:7-18

Advent 3 Year C

December 16, 2012

First Presbyterian Church, Clarksville

and Harmony Presbyterian Church

Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

* Note:  This sermon was preached on the Sunday following the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, CT.  

            Earnest Hemingway wrote at the end of A Farewell to Arms, “the world breaks everyone.”

            The world breaks everyone.

            I love Hemingway, but at times he can seem to be a bit of a prophet of doom perhaps overstating the case just a bit.

            Still, those words do, from time to time, ring painfully true.  The world can be a cruel and even despairing place. 

            I imagine that this is especially true for a woman who woke up today still trying to come to grips with the reality that her grandson killed her daughter, took the lives of 20 grade school children and six educators before taking his own life.  If a life has a breaking point, that would certainly fit the bill.

            As I struggled to find the words to preach this morning, I found myself being drawn to one question.  Was I her pastor, what would I say this morning?  What could I say?  What word is there that might help let in even the smallest sliver of light into what must be a nearly overwhelming dark night of the soul?

            In truth, any words this morning are going to come with some measure of danger.  Few issues are as divisive and passionate in our culture than gun control and gun violence. 

            My theology professor in seminary is fond of saying that there is no theology without risk.  This morning I propose to take a risk with you and attempt to make some theological sense of this moment in the wake of the events not only in Connecticut but in every part of the world where the children of God are smothered and broken by the weight of a culture of violence, hate and despair. 

            Let me say here that this is not a gun sermon.  That is not because I am opposed to preaching about gun violence or the gun culture.  You know I am not.  As you have heard me say before, I truly believe that the church has an obligation to speak without ceasing against a culture that values the right to own a gun over a child’s right to be safe from one.  I believe that with all my heart and my soul and I do count it as a conviction of my faith. 

But that is not the word that a mourning grandmother and mother needs to hear.  And I am not sure it is the only word to say today.  So this is not a sermon railing against guns, it is instead a sermon seeking to say a word in favor of hope.

Hope is an increasingly rare commodity in our culture.  We have, as a culture, nearly accepted Hemingway’s despair as the defining last word of our life together.

The world breaks everyone. 

That, much of the world says, is the final word.

The prophet Zephaniah has a somewhat different word to speak to us this morning.  Now to truly understand the weight of what the prophet says, it is important to understand his context.  Zephaniah is an advisor to Josiah, the king in Jerusalem.  With each passing day, the world both within the city and without is trying to break the children of God.  Religious and civil unrest in the city is compounded by widespread political chaos across Asia Minor.  It is still a few decades before Jerusalem would fall to the Babylonians, but the pressure is already building. 

If there was ever a cultural moment for a prophecy of doom, this is it.  But Zephaniah is no prophet of doom.   In fact, among the prophets, he is one of the most hopeful.  In the midst of the pressure of the world, that pressure seeking to break everyone, he writes, “Rejoice, Daughter Zion!...The LORD, the king of Israel, is in your midst; he has turned away your enemy.”  God, he says, is right there in the midst of the brokenness; right there at the heart of the community’s common life.

Paired with the prophet’s words this morning is the continuation of the story of John the Baptist.  John’s was not a world wholly unlike Zephaniah’s. 

By John’s time Jerusalem was living under the burden of Roman rule.  They might not have been exiled from the land, but this place with these occupiers did not feel like home.  An earthquake had shaken the city just years before, its evidence and aftermath still all around them.  The circumstance of the world was continuing to exert pressure on the people; pressure that could all too easily lead to brokenness and despair.

Standing down at the river preparing to baptize the crowds that had gathered, John answers their questions about what they can do to help prepare the way of the Lord.  “If you have two shirts, give one away,” he says. “Do your work, but be fair.”  “Don’t cheat or harass anyone.”  In other words, just go about your lives, but do it with compassion, fairness and honesty.  That is how you prepare the way of the Lord. 

God is coming right into the middle of everyday life. 

In both Zephaniah’s and John’s words, a common promise is made; God with us. 

God with us.

That is the promise of the scriptures and that is the promise of this Advent season; that God, unwilling to cast aside God’s creation, dwells in our midst.

Ours is God with us.

Hearing what some people who purport to speak for the whole of the Christian world have to say in the wake of the shootings in Connecticut and those at a mall in Oregon or a movie theatre in Colorado, I find myself wondering if they ever read the texts for this morning.

Preacher after preacher, pundit after pundit have made the careless and dubious claim that what happened Friday was the result of prayer being taken out of schools; that the reason for so much gun violence in this country is because we have somehow banned God from our lives; that God is using this tragedy to teach us a lesson. 

They say that God has abandoned us.

They claim that if the world breaks us, we have no one to blame but ourselves and God is not going to lift a finger or cry a tear.

Not to put too fine a theological point on it, but that sort of theology is a load of buffalo bagels!

These false prophets, these preachers of a theology of abandonment do nothing but contribute to the myth of meaningless and hopelessness that says, “the world breaks everyone.”  They perpetuate the illusion that the God who stayed Abraham’s hand; the God who created us from the dust of the earth; the God who comes as the Prince of Peace is a god of blood-lust and vengeance rather than a god of self-sacrifice and hope.

The God we know from our readings this morning; the God we celebrate this Advent season; the God witnessed to from “In the beginning” in Genesis to “Amen” in Revelation is not a God who withdraws from us forever because of our misdeeds but the God who draws ever nearer to us in spite of them.

This one truth that God draws ever nearer to us is the foundation for our hope.  If there is a consequence of our drawing away from God, it is not the loss of God’s love and care but the loss of hope found, as the hymn says, nearer to the heart of God.

Ours may not be a nation under siege like Zephaniah’s or a nation under dictatorial rule like John’s, but ours is a nation and a world in deep need of a message of hope.  We need that word today in our world.  We need to hear HOPE shouted from every point and place on earth. 

We need that message.

But who will deliver it?  Who will be the prophet of the hope of God today?  Who will be our Zephaniah or our John proclaiming the day of the Lord and calling on the world to make clear the way of the Prince of Peace?

Who delivers the word of hope today?  We do.  Or at least we should.

When we share in the meal at this table, we say in the prayer, “as this bread is Christ’s body for us, send us out to be the body of Christ in the world.”

The church is the body of Christ in the world and just as Christ would not be silent in the face of a world gone mad, the body of Christ must not be silent.

It is we who are called to proclaim the hope and the love of God against the despair of the world and even against the false teachers from within the church who would proclaim that God has abandoned God’s children. 

This is the season of Emmanuel, God with us, and we must proclaim him and the hope that though the world may try to break us, we are forever made whole in Christ Jesus who lived for us, died for us, rose again in glory for us and reigns today for us.

We may never know what led that young man to commit such unspeakable acts.  We may never know what within him gave way to such despair and anger.  What we can know and do know is that despair and anger do not get the last word.  The last word belongs to God and God with us has spoken loudly, clearly and finally.

Hope.

In the midst of the crushing reality of the world, hope finds a home.

Hope is the final word of God even in this world that tries to break us.

As we continue our journey through this season of preparation, it is my prayer that we will all keep our hearts and our spirits fixed on the expectation of God’s promised tomorrows even as we cope with the realities of our yesterdays. 

May expectation of great joy fill each of our hearts and our entire world with the hope of Jesus Christ.

Come, Lord Jesus.  Amen.  

Behold: Redemption

Luke 21:25-31

Advent 1

December 2, 2012

First Presbyterian Church, Clarksville and Harmony Presbyterian Church

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

           

            Today we begin a pilgrimage.  Those four weeks of expectation and anticipation for the birth of God recalled on Christmas morning. 

            Today we set the scene for our Advent journey as together we prepare to stand in awe with shepherds in fields, hear together the trumpet blasts of the angels announcing the coming of Messiah and journey, if only in imagination, back to that night in Royal David’s City.

            Today we light the first candle, we share in the meal, we admire the Nave decked out in its holiday finest and we look toward the holy silent night.

            What then does it mean that our gospel text today recalls the slaughter of thousands?  What does it have to do with Christmas?

            This scene from Luke’s gospel comes not from the sentimental opening chapters with the familiar characters and scenery from children’s nativity pageants, but from the end of Jesus ministry. 

            By the time Luke wrote his gospel account, a number of jarring world events had occurred since the resurrection, but few rose to the level of the first revolt of the Jewish people against Roman rule and the subsequent destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

            If you or I were sitting in Luke’s moment in time listening to this retelling of Jesus’ apocalyptic vision, it would not be some abstract and antiquated way of speaking about the future.  Echoing in the hollow empty quiet that followed the first revolt against Rome, Luke’s retelling of Jesus’ words envelops us.  They so fully saturate the moment in history we share that even the sun, moon and stars, those constant watchers of the day and the night, are not left undisturbed by this remembrance of events so near in both time and place. 

            The image of Roman roads lined with hundreds, even thousands, of crucified neighbors, friends, and family remains stingingly fresh.  The cries of children left alone in the ruins of their homes, their parents never to return, echo in the streets.  The rubble of the Temple, the sign of God’s presence in our midst, stands as a visible reminder that the might in this world rests not with the faithful of God’s house but with the powers and principalities of the moment.

            That memory, that remembrance, that moment in history is what greets us this morning as we begin our Advent pilgrimage.

            What, in the name of all that is holy and good, does the memory of such a dark moment in history have to do with preparing for Christmas?

            Perhaps rather than asking how this troubling text can be appropriate for the beginning of Advent, we should ask another question.  What text could be more appropriate?  What other than the memory of such a dark and desolate moment in the history of God’s people could better illumine the sublime truth of this season of expectation that though the world is in great darkness, God is Emmanuel- with us?

            That is, after all, what he season of Advent is truly about; preparing us not for the sentimental birth of a child but for the coming of God into the world.

            The name of the season, Advent, comes from the Latin word adventus or coming and more specifically the coming of God in Christ Jesus.  Over these four weeks we prepare for the adventus of God into a broken and sinful world.

            That notion of Advent as a season of preparation for Christmas doesn’t have much purchase outside the church these days.  In fact, Christmas has ceased to be 12 days in late December and early January and has instead become a nearly year-round cultural and marketing behemoth.

            This summer when I was doing some work on the back deck at my house I noticed a rip in one of my patio chair cushions.  Company was coming so I decided to run out the home store to get a replacement or something to repair the tear.  Now it is important for me to note here that this was July 3^rd, right in the middle of last summer’s horrible heat wave and drought.  I got to the store and before I was five steps through the door I stopped in place stunned.  I could not believe what I was seeing.  The store’s employees were unboxing,

            …any guesses?

            Christmas trees!  Artificial Christmas trees in JULY!

            Once I regained my composure, I uttered a few words of disapproval under my breath and went about my cushion buying but, I still cannot believe it.  Christmas trees in JULY!

            No wonder we have lost a sense of Advent expectation, Christmas has jumped the line to get ahead of not only Advent but Thanksgiving, Halloween and Labor Day!

            Forget the war on Christmas; let’s talk about this war on Advent!

            Even in a time when the season of Lent has begun to be recaptured by the church as a season of spiritual discipline and preparation for Easter, the season of Advent remains buried under a shiny veneer of Christmas cheer.

            William Muel, former professor at Yale Divinity School recalls going to his child’s Christmas pageant at school one year. 

            Following that logic that is found only in school pageants, the teachers cast the production according to the number of available costumes for each role.  If you have eleven wise man costumes, why not  have eleven wise men? 

            When the lights dimmed, out came Joseph followed by the three virgins Mary.  Then came the angels Gabriel; 20 or so little girls in diaphanous white gowns supporting enormous gauze wings.  An equal number of little boys, the shepherds, came out in their coats of many colors with their shepherd’s crooks of many sizes.

            To ensure that this large cast would fit in the limited space provided by the school stage, the teacher had ingeniously marked the stage with chalk to indicate where to stand; circles for the angels and crosses for the shepherds.  It was a good idea, except for the fact that she had marked their stations when they were dressed in their street clothes.  By the time the angels were in their places, their flowing gowns covered the marks for the shepherds.  After a few moments of shoving and pushing and generally treating angels as they had never been treated before, one of the little shepherds had enough, put his hands on his hips and declared, “these damn angels are fouling up the whole show.  They’ve covered up all the crosses.” 

            They’ve covered up all the crosses.

            How easily we do that when we get swept up in the tide of Christmas!  We let the holly and the ivy, the tinsel and the lights cover up the crosses or at least decorate them away.

            I think that is part of why Christmas has begun to creep into July and I have no doubt that next year I will be able to buy a Christmas tree on my birthday in mid-June.  As long as we are distracted by the decorations and the holiday spirit; as long as we can brighten things up with images of Santa and Rudolph; as long as there is all the stuff, we can keep the cross hidden in the background.

             That is certainly tempting and it is made easier year after year by our friends at Wal-Mart and Macys and Garden Ridge and Hobby Lobby and all the other purveyors of the stuff.  It is certainly easier to throw on some tinsel and pretend that the sorry truths of this world do not even exist. 

            But that is not Advent.

            God did not come into the world to make it safe for holiday cheer.

            God did not come into the world to save the holly and the ivy.

            God did not come into the world to create an illusion of Santa’s workshop to distract us from the ills of this world.

            God came into the world to cure the ills of the world; to save the world; to redeem the world.

            If you want to know the true meaning of Christmas, don’t turn to It’s a Wonderful Life, look instead to the cross of Christ.  Not because it is somehow a remedy to overdoing the sentiment or the holly-jolly of Christmas, but because in the cross of Christ we are reminded of just what it is we have to celebrate.

            In the cross of Christ, the love of God for the world is summed up and the brokenness of the world is made whole. 

            When in our passage from Luke today, Jesus said, “there will be signs in the sun, moon and stars…The planets and other heavenly bodies will be shaken, causing people to faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world…,” he adds, “…your redemption is near.”

            The events and realities that shake the foundation of our being; that shake even the stalwart watchers of day and of night are not the last word.  In the wake of every human event, in the wake of every human tragedy, in the wake of everything is the redemption of the people of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

            That is what awaits us at the end of this Advent journey.  There is no reason to put a glossy coat of Christmas over the realities of the world; to let the angels cover up the crosses.  We who begin this Advent journey do so knowing that at the end of this pilgrimage is redemption.

            Now that is a reason for holiday cheer!  When we understand the miracle of Christmas in the context of the darkness of the world, the twinkling lights of the tree shine brighter, the holly and the ivy seem greener, the good cheer and Merry Christmases become tidings of great joy. 

            The trouble is not that we have too much holiday cheer but that we too easily forget what it is we have to celebrate. 

            That even in the midst of times such as these, the redemption of God in Christ Jesus will come and the God of promise will indeed be with us.  What better reason can there be to deck the halls and share joy and good cheer!

            Friends, may the coming days and weeks of holy expectation fill your hearts and your lives with the joy of the redemption known only in Christ Jesus and may we each and every one keep in sight the cross of Christ and with it the promise that is the coming of Emmanuel; God with us.

            Come, Lord Jesus.  Amen.