Advent
A1 OL BFC 2016
Isaiah
1:10-28; Matthew 3:1-12; Psalm 42
November
27, 2016
In chapter
1 of the great prophet Isaiah, God entreats us, “Come now, let us argue it out,” says the Holy One, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be
like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. Come now, let us argue it out.” Never has a singular passage made it so clear
that what God wants is relationship with us.
Isaiah, the prophet, believes that God has a case against the people,
but enjoining the people, God wants to hear their side of the story. “Tell me, so I understand,” God seems to be
saying, “help me figure out how you could have gotten it so wrong. Don’t hold back. Don’t pull punches. If you have something to say, make your
case.”
Some scholars believe that the first
chapter of Isaiah is the prologue for all of the latter prophets, prophets like
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, all who spoke from the Eighth Century B.C.E.
forward.[1] All of these prophets understood judgment and
hope as the two sides of one coin. This
same understanding is part of the gospel text we have with John the Baptist
preaching repentance to the people in the Jordan River. Repentance is not about hell-fire and
damnation. Repentance is about
purification leading to a different set of values, a different way of being in
the world that shows we have chosen a different path.
These prophets hear the same message
from the people in protest, “But we are the chosen people. We are the people of Judah and
Jerusalem. We are the people who
regularly go to church and do our religious duty. We are the ancestors of Abraham and
Sarah.” To the prophet, these are empty
titles which do not recognize what God truly desires—to protect the weakest in
their communities, the widows and the orphans, by doing justice. I know I have preached it several times
before, but I believe it is worth hearing again and again. There are several places where God refuses
the people’s worship because they continue to do injustice. But nowhere in the Bible, absolutely nowhere,
does God refuse the people’s justice because of the imperfect way they pray, or
sing hymns, or do worship. It is one of
the most common themes throughout these Latter Prophets: God refuses the people’s worship because of
their unwillingness or inability to do justice.
Isaiah clearly states in this passage that God will
not accept the worship practices, religious observances or festivals, because
of their violence and injustice. Their
hands are full of blood.
John the Baptist, much like the Hebrews walking in
the wilderness, does not depend on the Roman meal for his food. He practices repentance. He eats locusts and wild honey as a way of
showing his independence from Rome and dependence on God. John screams along Jordan’s shore, that the
axe is being laid to the root of the tree because the whole system is sick and
diseased. No good or real fruit can come
from running the world in this way. In
this judgment, asking for people to show their repentance, this is our
hope. We recognize that we cannot
re-make the world without God and God will not re-make the world without us.
As we begin this Advent season, we remember early
followers of Christ who believed God was acting to continue the story of
salvation during a dreadful time in human history. They created a narrative that ran counter to
the violence and death and injustice and night they found all around them. Dawn was breaking and they knew they were to
pay attention to the breaking of that dawn.
They were practicing repentance.
Rev. Grant Gallup said of early Christians:
Our believing ancestors thought of themselves as the
subjects of their own history, for they were The Story and they were the
tellers of the tale. They were wide
awake dreamers of wonderful dreams, in a world of nightmares, and they were
awake to tell the dreams. They brought light
into a world of shadows. They brought
hope into a world that had lost its hope and lost its way. They had been told by the God who visited
them in Jesus that they were Light in the world.
. . . God
saves us not as a pinchpenny saves coins but as a mother saves her child from
danger and delivers it to safety and health and maturity and responsibility . .
. [2]
I love that line.
“God saves us not as a pinchpenny saves coins, but as a mother saves her
child from danger and delivers that child to safety and health and maturity and
responsibility.” God does not save us to
continue the same violence and death and injustice and night. God saves us to be the fruit of a different
tree. God saves us to be people who
bring health and maturity and responsibility to our community and our
world. We are to be the actors not the
acted upon, the subjects of salvation not the objects done in by the violence,
death, injustice, and night that surrounds us.
We cannot save the world without God, and God will not save the world
without us.
Too
often, in the church, we have acted too courteously when God has asked us to be
lovingly confrontational, too polite when God has asked us to protest in truth,
too respectable when God has asked us to be resolute in seeking out justice for
the most vulnerable among us. “Come, let
us argue it out!” God says, the Holy God who desires not platitudes or a fake
politeness, but a real relationship with us.
Rev.
Dr. Peter Gomes, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister
in The Memorial Church at Harvard University since 1974, spoke at the United
Church of Christ General Synod for our 50th Anniversary. Speaking as an American Baptist in the mist
of New England Congregational heritage, a heritage that is part of Billings
First Congregational Church, Rev. Dr. Gomes showed his appreciation for the
United Church of Christ, saying that we have led out on every important social
movement in this republic. But, he said,
one of the greatest things we could do in our own time is “to overturn the
climate of low expectations” in mainline churches. People in communities like Billings have very
respectable expectations of local UCC churches, and it is our job to turn these
respectable expectations upside down.
He
went on. We give the occasional heifer
(referring to the Heifer Project), have the funeral for the respectable person,
every once in while marry the person not so respected. “Here is a chance,” Gomes said with a smile,
“for a great church to behave badly.”
As
Congressperson John Lewis said after his sit-in on the Congressional floor to
protest the lack of collegial courage around gun violence, “Sometimes you have
to find a way to get in the way. Or get
in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble.”[3]
What do we
think of that wild-eyed prophet calling for repentance out by the Jordan River,
eating bugs and wild honey for lunch? Do
we think he cared more about individual respectability or the world’s
salvation?
Is it
possible in a United Church of Christ Church, that our best days are ahead of
us? Many mainline churches have a habit
of acting like their heydays are all in the past. As in, “Oh, you should have been here back
then.”
Gomes
ended his speech by wondering aloud whether all the history of the United
Church of Christ was leading up till now, a time for us to act with conviction
and character . . . with a hope that God is still acting and speaking. What Rev. Dr. Gomes wanted to know is, “Are
we still listening?”
“Dare
it be said,” he challenged, “dare it be said, that the last 50 years (the whole
of our life as a denomination), the last 50 years were mere prologue for what
is to happen, for whatever role you were meant to play? Dare it be said that your founders simply
began what it falls to you to carry on and complete?”[4]
Dare
it be said that all of those people who began Billings First Congregational
Church, that they simply began this incredible project that now falls on us to
carry on and complete? As we look at the
violence, injustice, night, and death that surround us in this time, a time not
unlike the time of Christ, we may be the Light of the world, the subjects of
our own history. So here we are, sisters
and brothers of Billings First Congregational Church. Here we are.
This is our story and we are the tellers of the tale. Amen.
[1] J Clinton McCann,
“Commentary on First Alternate Reading—Lectionary for August 8, 2010” WorkingPreacker.org,
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=8/8/2010 .
[2] Grant Gallup, “First
Sunday of Advent A,” Homily Grits, http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits04_05/msg00020.html.
[3] “Interview with
Congressperson John Lewis,” The Late Show
with Stephen Colbert, September 1, 2016.
[4] Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes,
Synod in the City, United Church of Christ General Synod, Hartford, CT, June
26, 2007.
No comments:
Post a Comment