Sermon 091129A
Lucas Mix
St. Philip’s in the Hills, Tucson
Advent 1
Collect
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of
darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in
which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the
last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the
living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Jeremiah
33:14-16
The days are surely coming, says the
LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the
house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch
to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the
land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And
this is the name by which it will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”
Psalm
25:1-9
To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul;
my God, I put my trust in you;
let me not be humiliated,
nor let my enemies triumph over me.
Let none who look to you be put to shame;
let the treacherous be disappointed in their schemes.
Show me your ways, O LORD,
and teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
in you have I trusted all the day long.
Remember, O LORD, your compassion and love,
for they are from everlasting.
Remember not the sins of my youth and my
transgressions;
remember me according to your love
and for the sake of your goodness, O LORD.
Gracious and upright is the LORD;
therefore he teaches sinners in his way.
He guides the humble in doing right
and teaches his way to the lowly.
All the paths of the LORD are love and faithfulness
to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.
How can we thank God enough for you in
return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and
day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever
is lacking in your faith.
Now may our God and Father himself and
our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and
abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.
And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless
before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
Luke
21:25-36
Jesus said, “There will be signs in the
sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused
by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and
foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will
be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and
great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your
heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Then he told them a parable: “Look at the
fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for
yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these
things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell
you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
“Be on guard so that your hearts are not
weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and
that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who
live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you
may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to
stand before the Son of Man.”
Sermon
We have reached Advent
and it is a time for the fulfillment of promises;
a time when the long expected Messiah is about to appear.
I don’t know about you,
but I feel as though I’ve been waiting for a long time.
This year has passed very slowly for me,
partly because I moved to a new town
and started a new job,
but partly also because it’s been such a year.
We find ourselves in a recession that seems to keep dragging on
and a war that keeps dragging on
and another war that keeps dragging on
and a flu epidemic or two.
It’s been a long year for all of us.
So it seems perfectly reasonable to ask,
where is God?
And what would it mean to have God with us?
In Advent we think seriously about what it would mean for God to come
in glory.
We have an abundance of stories
for what that would look like—
tales of Jesus arriving in the vanguard of heavenly hosts,
armies of angels descending upon the earth
to winnow the good from the bad.
The ancient Israelites had similar stories:
stories of the Lord God of Hosts arriving to reconquer
and return it to the people;
stories of dramatic retribution and justice.
They did not get what they were expecting.
The Messiah they expected was not the Messiah they got.
for God came up with a different plan,
a different self—if you will
a different face to show the world.
God did not fight fire with fire.
Armies were not defeated by armies.
Kings were not unthroned by kings.
Bankers were not bought out.
And slavers were not sold into slavery.
Every year at this time
we remember the difference between
what God could have been
and what God is.
Last week we celebrated God as King—
—and God is that,
but God is more.
I could say:
God is patient; God is kind; God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
God does not insist on God’s own way;
God is not irritable or resentful;
God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
This may not be the way you are used to hearing that passage
from First Corinthians,
but if God is love, then it follows:
God is patient; God is kind; God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
God does not insist on God’s own way;
God is not irritable or resentful;
God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
And, indeed, the Messiah we got was this kind of Messiah.
A suffering servant,
by no means passive
but never vengeful, spiteful, or hurtful.
Jesus did not take away our freedom
by conquering the world.
Jesus did not use the techniques of domination and control
to control us.
Jesus lived and died as one of us,
so that we might be free
so that we might be daughters and sons of one Father
fellow servants in the same cause.
Jesus reoriented the world.
What would it mean to have God with us?
Jesus did not bring an end to the things the Israelites worried about most:
Roman occupation, corruption, disease
But, for those who followed him, he brought an end to fear and death.
Jesus brought renewal—
renewal of the things that were important to God,
renewal of hope
renewal of faith
renewal of love
renewal of truth
renewal of relationship
I know how often I fail to value the things that God values.
I cling to security
and power
and control.
I try to use money
and position
and strength
to get what I want,
when the things that I want can be gotten through none of these things.
What I truly want comes from love and truth and openness.
Our response to the coming of God will have to be more than expectation.
It must include wonder and joy,
but above all, God asks us to be ready with true abandon.
What does it mean to have God with us?
He lived and died 2,000 years ago.
But we celebrate his coming every year.
Every year we wait with bated breath for
a
God who is always new.
We must keep our eyes open for the God who is never
quite
what we were expecting.
to
keep our eyes open for the Messiah who is
rather
than the Messiah we wanted,
to
keep our eyes open for the people we were created to be
rather
than the people we thought we would be,
to
keep our eyes open for the treasures we find
rather
than the treasures we seek.
Advent is that time,
a
time for waiting
with
open eyes.
Jesus said, “There will be signs in the sun, the
moon, and the stars,”
and “Look at the fig tree and all the
trees;
as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for
yourselves
and know that summer is already near.”
I was trained as a scientist,
and
I’m a sucker for science metaphors.
Our
readings this Sunday are all about biology and astronomy.
They
ask us to understand the natural world
and
to see the messages that are all aound us.
To
see what is, and what will soon be.
They
are about trying to figure the world out.
Keeping
your eyes open means more than just looking for what you expect.
It means
being open to things you do not, or cannot expect.
It means
being ready when something new appears.
It means
changing your mind when someone gives you
a new and
better way of looking at the world.
For me,
science offers this incredible gift to Christians
NOT looking at the world only
through the lens of materialsm,
a world of numbers and
mechanisms, theories and predictions,
BUT looking at the world with a
sense of wonder,
Valuing reality in a way
that makes you vulnerable to
changing
your mind.
We have to
learn how to be open.
We have to
be prepared to change.
And this
can be terribly difficult.
Our ideas
about the world quickly become old friends.
They work for us and even when
something better comes along,
we are loathe to give
them up.
It can be
far worse when an idea has been with us for centuries.
Ideas like how we think about God or
how we worship.
Ideas like money and capitalism,
democracy and progress.
Ideas like universities and
denominations.
I don’t
think these are bad ideas, but we’ve stopped thinking of them as ideas,
and started to think of them as
reality.
We’ve
confused our model of the world for the thing itself,
and that is blindness.
We’ve
confused our model of God for the living, breathing person in our lives,
and that is idolatry.
We must
open our eyes to the world as it is
and as it is becoming.
There is a continuity between
the things of this world and the
WE are the kingdom come,
it
will be born of us,
as
Jesus was born among us
and
as we are his body and blood.
If we are to see the world to come, we
must fashion it from ourselves,
the
wondrous and often unexpected people
we
discover ourselves to be
when
we love fully.
Advent is all about
reorienting ourselves to the kingdom come,
the world that came into being with Jesus Christ.
And there is fear in that.
Fear that things will never be the same,
But wonder also.
Wonder that this new way might be better.
Wonder that God can make miracles,
not out of
thin air,
but out the
fabric of the world,
out of flesh
and blood.
God is infinitely creative.
So pay attention.
God is doing a new thing.
He became one of us a little
over 2,000 years ago.
And no, that wasn’t normal.
He lived and died as one of us.
And he rose again.
And no, that wasn’t normal either.
Some people seem surprised that we, “living in the 21st century”
could actually believe in the resurrection
—or the
incarnation, for that matter.
“That’s just superstition; in an age of science we know
better.”
But it was never easy to believe.
Mary
Magdalene did not believe it at first.
Neither did Peter or the other disciples.
It wasn’t normal.
It wasn’t expected.
It wasn’t even reasonable.
But it was true, and that made
all the difference.
We must accept that sometimes
something wonderful happens, something miraculous
Not something alien or foreign or supernatural,
But something profound and different,
born of everyday events
but reaching
into eternity.
The apostles saw this.
They were scared and confused,
but they kept their eyes open.
They paid attention.
They watched the trees and the stars and the people.
They saw things in a new way,
and discovered that this world was not
the place
they thought it was.
The Messiah is coming
and
when you meet, neither you nor he will be what you expected.
Both will be infinitely more wonderful.
May God meet you.
May God open your eyes.
And may you see the world as
it truly is.