C
Advent 3 OL BFC 2015
Isaiah
65:17-25; Isaiah 1:1-11; 2:1-5; 3:1-3
December
13, 2015
For each Sunday of our Advent season, we light
successive candles which represent hope, peace, joy, and love. Today we lit the candle of joy. Often we light those candles speaking of our hope, the peace we might achieve, the joy we experience in the season, and the love
God has for us. I want to offer a different perspective on
those Advent reflections today. Instead of thinking about the joy we
experience or might experience during the season, I would like us to reflect on
what we think gives God great joy. What
do we believe makes God’s heart resound with joy?
If we
were to use the Scripture verse from Isaiah that Clair read for us earlier in
the worship service, we would see God’s joy made complete in a characteristic
reference made by the Jewish prophets.
Rather than a beautiful prayer offered like incense to the Almighty, or
a canticle lifted at the beginning of a beautiful worship, or a well-thought
out and researched sermon . . . “I mean, c’mon, God, I’m working hard here . .
.”, God wants something that extends out
into the community and nation. Crushed by
an earlier empire, God finds joy when self-determination, justice, and shalom
are present among the people. The people
do not build homes for others, as an oppressed and enslaved people might. No, they build homes and inhabit them. They do not plant and tend vineyards so that
others might eat the fruit of the vine as peasants without power. No, they eat the food produced by the sweat
of their own brow. They do not labor in
vain.
Then
there is one verse in Isaiah 65 that is a reminder of just how terrible the
Babylonian Exile must have been for the Jewish people. It says, in verse 27, “They will not bear
children into a world of horrors.”
Imagine what it must mean to give birth to your children into a world
that is violent, full of war, terror, and poverty, natural disaster, hunger and
deprivation—all descriptors of the Jewish experience of the Babylonian Exile.
In this new earth that God is co-creating with
the Jewish people, the author of these words in Isaiah writes, all of these
horrors will come to an end. God’s joy is accomplished on this new earth where
self-determination, shalom, justice, and a promised future for children of long
life and well-being shall carry the day.
This shall be God’s joy.
Many
of you have heard me quote from the autobiography of early Christian origin
scholar, John Dominic Crossan, who asks the pivotal question whether religious
faith is more like sex or politics.
Which is it? Crossan writes,
Sex, love and marriage are
profoundly human and holy, but we usually do not come together at certain times
and places to conduct those activities in common unison and all together.
Christianity could be like that. We could worship God through Christ in the
privacy of our own homes. Like we have a bathroom or a bedroom, we could even
have a Godroom. And we could all know
that everyone else does something more or less the same . . . So why is
Christianity . . . not like that?[1]
Crossan believes that
Christianity is really more like politics where people come together because
they want to make a difference, because they want to reshape society, because
they want to get something done.
That something to be done
is bringing our world into union with a God who is Justice itself, a Justice
that involves the fair distribution of the material bases of life, a Justice
that was incarnated in the life and execution of Jesus, a Justice that was
vindicated by his resurrection within a community continuing that incarnation.[2] The historical Jesus talked about the Kingdom
of God, not the Community of God or even the Church of God . . . it was clearly
a deliberate challenge to the Kingdom of Caesar. Because of that, the Kingdom movement
had both a vision and a program, and it was for action rather than talk that
Jesus died on a Roman cross . . . The Kingdom and the (Movement) were to
establish, from the bottom upwards, that utopian vision of the . . . justice of the Jewish God over against the
normalcy of human greed and imperial violence that was, from the top downwards,
the Roman Empire. That is still the same and only destiny of the Christian
Church.[3]
Crossan’s
words are echoed in that Isaiah passage.
Very simply put, God’s joy is found in our justice and wholeness and
well-being, not simply as individuals, but as a community and nation which
remembers those who might be on the margins building homes they may not inhabit
themselves, growing food they themselves may not eat, raising children who may
not make it through the horrors and violence of their early years.
You
may have heard that the United Nations Climate Summit in Paris, referenced as
COP 21, ended last night as representatives from nearly 200 nations worked to
finalize a global accord. The agreement set ambitious goals: proposing
to reach zero emissions in the second half of the century and hastening the
transition away from fossil fuels to clean economies. But
for many climate change activists, there was great disappointment that all of
these goals are seen as voluntary and easily escaped and still leave millions
of people and places vulnerable to the ravages of climate change.[4] What
to do when it still feels like midnight and there is no sure sign of
transformation in the halls of power and influence?
Perhaps
the most moving testimony I heard coming out of the summit was that of Kandi
Mossett, leader in the Indigenous Environmental Network, who spoke of the death
by a thousand cuts she and her people experience in North Dakota. Coal fire plants, which once populated her
homeland and she believes probably led to her cancer, have been replaced by
oil-drilling and fracking. In a story we
know all too well from stories in the Gazette this past year, Mossett speaks of
how the lust for fossil fuels has led to a 168 percent increase in violence
against women, particularly rape. She
then broke into tears as she described 14 to 16 year-old girls offering themselves
in “man camps”, becoming addicted to heroin due to the organized crime that has
moved into the area. Finally, she
relates two young friends of hers who recently died from this destructive and
poisonous system. What is it like when
the children you love might not make it through the horrors and violence of the
world you see before you?
The full impact of the environmental
damage done in this area of the world will not be realized, Mossett says, until
twenty years from now when her 2-and-a-half year-old daughter is an adult. But her daughter, who in the future will
certainly experience the ravages of choices made now, her daughter has no say
in this climate conference. Mossett
believes the people in her community are considered “sacrifice zones” for the
profit, addiction, and power provided by the drilling and fracking.[5] There is no self-determination. There is no justice. There is no shalom. And in such a world, God’s heart is joyless.
Joy!
This is the third Sunday in Advent, the Sunday of joy. While the Advent and Christmas season are
laced with warm memories, gifts given and received by loved ones, and a
seemingly quaint religious story, the actual stories themselves are some of the
most radical found in Scripture, God’s plans being worked out among peasants in
rural backwaters, in the hill country, and in the wilderness.
As I related in the Adult Forum that began some weeks ago, John Dominic
Crossan does not like to use the word “context” or “landscape” or “background”
for the world in which Jesus lived and moved.
He believes that still has a feel of Jesus somehow floating above it
all. Crossan uses the word “matrix” as a
way of understanding that Jesus interacted with the world as described by the
author of Luke. Lest we think religion
has nothing to do with politics, the author of Luke would dissuade us. “In the days of King Herod of Judea . . . “
“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world
should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while
Quirinius was governor of Syria
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius
Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother
Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of
Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, . . . “
Each one of those political, ruling
statements is followed by marginal people who witness God actively working in
their lives. In the days of King Herod
of Judea, there was a man named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth living in the
Judean hill country. In those days a
decree went out from Emperor Augustus, and responding to that decree are two
migrants and refugees, Joseph and Mary, from the backwater Galilean village of
Nazareth. In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor
Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, the word of God came to
John, living out in the wilderness.
Luke
knew that God’s activity happened within the political matrix of first century
Rome. Biblical scholars will tell you
that when Biblical writers take pains to include such detail, we would do well
to sit up and take notice because the writers are trying to tell us something
about the drama that is about to unfold.
To understand the story, one has to know the political chess pieces and
how those chess pieces affect all the people on the board. Luke could not make it more clear: the gospel story takes place within the Roman
Empire. And God’s activity is a
rejoinder to that Empire—in the days of King Herod there was a man named
Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth; in those days a decree went out from Caesar
Augustus and Mary and Joseph went from Nazareth to Bethlehem; in the fifteenth
year of Emperor Tiberius, the word of God came to John.
Each
one of these Biblical stories represented a community of Jewish people who were
faithful. Elizabeth and Zechariah
represented a historical people who continued to tend the flame of God’s
promise—waiting for something new to be born.
Mary represented a prophetic people who openly spoke of God’s liberating
love—that God might choose the most unlikely whose most identifying
characteristic was a willing heart. John
the Baptist represented a courageous people who were willing to speak truth to
power—recognizing that God’s will for the people’s shalom and life would not be
unseated.
God’s
plan, God’s resounding joy is being worked out on the margins of the Roman
Empire by people we now call the heroines and heroes of faith. By their stations in life, however, these
heroines and heroes have no cache or power within imperial Rome. Yet the gospel story continues with peasants
in the Judean hill country, a pregnant immigrant girl and her betrothed making
their way back to the homeland, and a wild-eyed prophet who shouts for a new
way to be made from the wilderness.
The
Qur’an says that when you do not have hope, you have to find it in the face of
another.[6] And in a day where it feels like the world’s forces of
death, destruction, and hate seem like they will most certainly prevail, maybe
we can find our hope in the faces of people like Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary
and Joseph, and John the Baptist and Jesus. This is the intent of sacred
texts. That we may see them, identify
with them, and draw courage from the fact that the story repeats itself in each
age and era.
The
author of Luke makes it clear who is in charge—Rome, Caesar, and its client
kings. And for these people of faith,
far from the center of power, it certainly seems like it is midnight. But this is where the gospel begins, all the
while believing that God’s purposes are being worked out so that dawn will
break, a new age will be ushered in, and that the joy of God might be made
complete. Why then, would we think
ourselves so small so as to not see the possibilities for a new dawn breaking
in our world?
It
is the dream of God, upon the heart of God, that we might see ourselves in the
gospel story and act in such a way that as Isaiah writes it, “we will not bear
children into a world of horrors.” Speaking
of the future of the Christian Church, John Crossan says we’ll need to choose
clearly “ . . . between Christianity and chloroform, baptism and lobotomy,
worship and Prozac.”[7]
In
the second term of President Barack Obama, when Steve Bullock was Governor of
Montana, and Jon Tester and Steve Daines were the Senators of Montana, the Word
of the Living God came to a struggling congregation, an historic, a prophetic,
and a courageous people, in the heart of Billings. And upon hearing the Word of the Living God,
this congregation made sure that no person would labor in vain, and that no
children in Montana, in North Dakota, among the Crow or Northern Cheyenne,
would be born into a world of horrors. And
the heart of God was large among these people. . . and full of joy. And full of joy. May it be so. May it be so. Amen.
[1] In the collection The Once and Future Jesus ed. G. Jenks for the Jesus Seminar
(Polebridge Press 2000), pp. 127-128
[2] John Dominic Crossan, A Long Way
from Tipperary (San Francisco
[3] The Once and
Future, pp. 127-128
[4] Suzanne Goldberg, John Vidal, et al., “Paris climate deal: nearly 200 nations sign in end of fossil fuel era,” the guardian, December 12, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/paris-climate-deal-200-nations-sign-finish-fossil-fuel-era?CMP=twt_gu
[5] “We are Sacrifice Zones: Native
Leader Says Toxic North Dakota Fracking Fuels Violence Against Women,” Democracy
Now! December 11, 2015. http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/11/we_are_sacrifice_zones_native_leader.
[6] “Interview with Mark Hyman, James Gordon, and Penny
George: The Evolution of Medicine,” OnBeing with Krista Tippett, December 3,
2015. http://www.onbeing.org/program/mark-hyman-james-gordon-and-penny-george-the-evolution-of-medicine/transcript/8187#main_content.
[7] The Once and
Future, pp. 127-128.
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