Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent, Year C, December 6, 2015

C Advent 2 OL BFC 2015

Isaiah 57:14-21; Luke 1:68-79

December 6, 2015

I am not sure who I might vote for in upcoming elections for Republican and Democratic candidates for President of these United States, but if Bernie Sanders should happen to win the Democratic nomination I think his broader appeal will have been achieved in one, singular moment.  Before one of the debates, Sanders was asked by CNN’s Rachel Maddow, “What is the largest misconception people have of you?” 

Sanders responded, literally, tongue in cheek, “People think I’m grumpy.  People think I’m too serious.”  Sanders then smiled wider than I have ever seen him and said, “But I have seven beautiful grandchildren and they are the joy of my life.”  In a moment, I thought Sanders dispelled his greatest weakness—that he is a joyless, grumpy man, with no connection to younger generations.  Therefore, he is electable. 

Truth told, there have been a number of articles written about Sanders and why this 73 year-old grandfather has wide, intergenerational appeal.  Senior Politics Writer for Elite Daily, Jonathan Haltiwanger, believes that millennials strongly support Representative Sanders because he is saying the things they have believed all along:  1) Sanders believes we must speak to the issue of student debt and has introduced legislation to make college free;  2) Sanders believes that inequality is immoral and bad for the economy;  3) Sanders has focused on the need young people have for jobs and thinks it is ridiculous that, instead, we focus millions on mass incarceration of young people;  4)  going along with 97% of the climate change scientists in the world, Sanders agree with the wide majority of Millennials to say that climate change is real and it is our fault;  and, finally, 5) Sanders believes with 73% of millennials that same-gendered marriage should already be legal.[1] 

Again, this is not stumping for Bernie Sanders.  I certainly have a number of foreign policy issues with Representative Sanders that give me pause, but it is informative that the demographic we have such a difficult time bringing into mainline churches is giving wide support to a 73 year-old grandfather.  I would argue they do so because they believe Sanders is invested in not only the present but the future of their world.  Millennials experience Sanders preparing a way in their world. 

Prepare the way of the Living God.  What are we preparing for?

In a liberation song that probably pre-dates the Christian movement, the priest Zechariah sings of a political and economic reversal for the Jewish people initiated by the same God who has historically delivered the people so that the people may serve God in a community life marked by wholeness and justice.   This song uses language tied very closely to the Psalms using idiomatic phrases which relate a people in need whom God is liberating and freeing by, quoting Zechariah’s song, “having their feet guided on the way of peace.”  God is both liberating the people from domination by their enemies and freeing them for service to God in their promise to covenantally love their neighbors.  As early Christian scholar, Richard Horsley puts it, “In sum, [this] is a song about God’s liberation of [the] people from subjection to their Roman domestic rulers so that, as God fulfills the covenant to Abraham [and Sarah], they can serve God by maintaining covenantal justice among the people.”[2]

Zechariah sings the song.  John the Baptizer, the Immerser in the River Jordan, that wild-eyed prophet, is the child of promise who bears the burden of incarnating the fulfillment of his father’s song.  Remember that this is a prophecy sung about a man who is beheaded.  John the Immerser does not win.  He does not carry the day.  Even his followers do not raise up armies to overtake the one who beheads him, Herod, or meet the military force of Caesar and the Roman legions with an even greater force.   John comes into the world demanding that covenantal justice from client king, Jewish collaborators within the religious hierarchy, and occupied and oppressed people alike.   This is what he does.  John prepares people to live out the Exodus story to suggest that they are liberated and free and no longer have to participate in the violent and death-giving story found all around them.

And Christians, in looking back on his life, say that he is the promised child of Zechariah’s song.  Don’t you find that curious?  Isn’t that exactly counter to the way the world works?   Maybe if he had won a few battles on behalf of the Jewish people?  Carried out a few key assassinations?  Begun a well-timed rebellion or revolt?  Then his name could have gone down in Jewish and Christian lore as someone who headed off the Romans for a time.   Instead, John the Baptist prepares for something else.  As our children sang for us today, John the Baptist prepares by not eating the Roman meal, the bread and circuses, to keep the people entertained and unprepared for the way of peace. He eats bugs for lunch, the locusts and wild honey provided by the Creator of the Universe, the Living God.  John is not preparing the way for a military campaign.  His Source of Power is not located in Rome or Jerusalem but actively walking as a pilgrim in the wilderness, along the banks of the Jordan River.

No, John shouts, “Prepare the way of the Living God!”  “Pre” a word meaning beforehand and “pare” to cut off or trim.  John advocates taking some action beforehand in getting ready for the future.  Cut off the excess baggage.  Detach yourself from the violent and death-giving system.  Trim that which will not only make you unhealthy but does damage to a life of wholeness and righteousness with your neighbor.[3]  Do this so that your feet might be guided into the ways of peace.  John does not win.  He is beheaded.  Why is the gospel, the good news, written this way?

Once again, tragedy strikes our country and we are surprised.  My colleague, Rev. Maren Tirabassi, with these tragedies in full view, wrote a beautiful poem using Scripture from Isaiah 40 that was part of our Communion Hymn for today. 

Comfort O comfort, my people
speak tenderly to San Bernardino
as to Colorado Springs

as to so many places,
saying that there can be an end
to the gun violence.

In this country that glorifies
this wild-westerness wilderness
that turns away
from straight talking,
prepare the way for God.

Every restriction to gun purchase
should be lifted up
and the second amendment
should be brought down.

The culture of independence
and revenge,
of vigilante and rogue cop,
of arming school teachers
and admiring movies
about super heroes and renegades
should be made plain.

But first we will cry out,
for the fragile lost lives
blown away like the dry grass
of California —

fourteen people
whose banquet has ended,
whose lives are cut short,
whose families
need the words of God
that we seem to be repeating
again and again and again —
Comfort, O comfort.[4]

The UCC pastor from Sandy Hook even wrote a beautiful letter that appeared on the UCC website which asked us all to observe December 10 through December 14 as Gun Violence Prevention Sabbath.[5]  If someone would like to lead that observance out, I have the website listed in the printed versions of my sermon. 

And it is good and right that we do, to prepare the way.  We take some action beforehand to get ready for the future.  Even President Obama has indicated that we will not be terrorized and we need to come together to search for answers.  Prepare the way.

But here’s the thing.  We continue to be surprised.  And there is a broader narrative, a bigger picture.  We keep pursuing violence and war halfway around the world, in the longest wars we have ever known, and we pretend that it is not somehow a spiritual practice that gets into our bloodstream. 

Last week Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who advanced through intelligence positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, called the Iraq war a blunder that led to the formation of ISIS.[6]  Last year, former British foreign secretary David Miliband conceded that the Iraq War created ISIS.[7]  I feel like I am using this phrase way too often in my discussions with people, but if we continue to see the whole world as a nail why would we think that law enforcement, people who feel like they have been dissed, mistreated, or bullied in their lives, would not have some people who rightly think that the best way is to go around carrying a hammer?  We must get ready for an endless war on terrorism and terrorists such we use our hammer to create more and more terrorists through the billions we are spending on war.  As Episcopalian priest Grant Gallup wrote, “[W]e must prepare for an endless war on terrorism and on terrorists.   And so we have done so, and are prepared indeed to destroy all life on the planet if necessary, to save it for the market, for capitalism, and to keep it from choosing socialism or home-rule or independence or the Religion of the Prophet, or any way but our own way.”[8]

I don’t know about you.  But as a person of faith.  I’d like to use my hammer to pound out something else.

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan told then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if there ever was an alien race that waged war against the planet, he was sure that their two superpowers would form an alliance to fend off the attack.  That statement could not be more prescient and frightening as the two superpowers of the United States and now Russia come together to fight those places and people in the world who sit on natural resources desired by our two countries.  The “alien race” has become the poor and disenfranchised of countries where we have skin in fossil fuels.  And every day our preparations for war are creating immigrants, refugees, and enemies on a daily basis.[9]  We get what we prepare for.   

And I don’t know about you.  But I’d like to use my hammer to craft something else in the world.   

Whose way are we preparing for with our own lives, with our own resources, with our own skills and gifts, with our own commitments?[10]   This is the Second Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of peace.  How are we preparing to have our feet guided into the way of peace?  As I thought about that, and hoped you were not already preparing the gallows for me at the end of this sermon, I asked myself where I have heard of people struggling to make and build peace in our world.  I read material from the Truth Commission in Guatemala and the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa to get a sense for what those countries have learned about building or making peace. 

As people from all over those societies try to build or make peace, the first thing that has to happen, of course, is a cessation of war and violence.  We must agree that we will not take advantage of the vulnerability in coming to the table to lash out, take lives, or score points.  The second thing required, of course, by the very names these commissions hold is that the process of truth-telling must begin.  Only in that truth-telling can healing happen and reconciliation be made possible.   

I know.  I think of beginning those things to end not only wars but the mass shootings in our country and it seems impossible.  Then I remembered what it must have felt like to people in Germany who prayed for the Wall to be hammered down in Berlin, or people in South Africa or Mandela in his jail cell who prayed for something other than apartheid to be hammered into existence, or for those early Civil Rights Leaders who knew that the road was long and hard but the way had to be made.  Prepare. 

So what would truth-telling look like?  I think the leaders of the NRA need to sit across from victims of shootings in places like Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Columbine and listen to the incredible pain of mothers and fathers, teachers and spouses.  This must be done hour after hour, day after day.  So even though those leaders may still end up disagreeing with reasonable gun control legislation, they will never, ever, ever be dismissive of the heartache experienced.  A route, a corridor, a path, a way will be made.  They will prepare the way of the Living God and love their neighbor. 

We must begin truth-telling in Iraq and hold out amnesty, as is done in so many Truth Commissions, only if our leaders are willing to tell the truth.  And they should not only listen to the pain of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria, but also to the pain of our returning veterans as they tell haunting tales of unspeakable acts they may have committed or witnessed so that some of them might finally find healing.  Our former and current leaders must stand face to face with veterans who share what it is like to lose a limb, a friend, their minds.  An avenue, a trail, a track, a passage, a way will be made.  They will prepare the way of the Living God and love God and their neighbor.

While some of these Truth Commissions have travelled this far none of them have contemplated what it might be to then make sure peace is firmly established by distributive justice.  That is on some distant horizon, and God awaits us there.  We must take our hammers and hammer our swords into plowshares in peace.  And I don’t know about you, but I want to use my hammer to hammer out justice.  I want to hammer out justice. 

While others might tell you that the substance of their faith is based on incredible miracle stories found within the pages of Scripture, the substance of my faith is based on the idea that the Living God wills and wishes and wants the healing and reconciliation of the world.   And that this compassionate and merciful God seeks our collaboration in making a path, building a highway, preparing a way. 

Again, I know, I know.  This seems impossible.  There is no viable presidential candidate who is offering a way to peace.  Good thing.  It will take a movement of people who care less about winning than doing the next . . . righteous . . . thing.  I believe such a movement is rooted deep in a faith that the Living God is at work in the world.  And the call from John the Baptist, that prophet shouting out in the wilderness, the guy who ate bugs for lunch, comes across the ages commanding us, Pre-pare.  Prepare the way of the Living God.  Cessation of war, violence, and conflict.  Truth-telling.  Justice.  Let us prepare the way for peace.  Amen.

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[1]John Haltiwinger, “Bernie Sanders is Saying What Millennials Have Been Thinking All Along,” Elite Daily, June 9, 2015.

[2] Richard A. Horsley, The Liberation of Christmas:  The Infancy Narratives in Social Context (New York:  Crossroad, 1989), pp. 118-119.

[3] Grant Gallup, “Advent II, December 10, 2006,” Homily Grits.  http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits06/msg00034.html.

[4] Maren Tirabassi, “Reflection on Isaiah 40 for San Bernadino,” Gifts in Open Hands, https://giftsinopenhands.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/reflection-on-isaiah-40-for-san-bernadino/.

[5] Materials can be found here: http://decembersabbath.org.

[6] Matter Ferner, “Former Military Chief:  Iraq War Was A ‘Failure’ That Helped Create Isis,” HuffPost Politics, November 30, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/iraq-war-isis-michael-flynn_565c83a9e4b079b2818af89c.

[7] Tom Porter, “Iraq War Created ISIS Concedes David Miliband,” International Business Times, August 10, 2014, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iraq-war-created-isis-concedes-david-miliband-1460557.   Lydia Wilson has written an incredible piece for The Nation which reflects that ISIS fighters resist the characterization our country’s leaders and media make of them.  Wilson found the people she interviewed to be effectively war refugees who needed to latch onto something in their hopelessness.  “What I Discovered in Interviewing Imprisoned ISIS Fighters,” The Nation, October 21, 2015.  http://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-discovered-from-interviewing-isis-prisoners/.  

[8] Gallup, “Advent II.”

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.