Sermon
preached by the Reverend John E. Kitagawa at the Celebration of the Holy
Eucharist, on
WHAT IS GOD GOING TO DO NEXT?
So, we know how the story ends. That is what today’s Gospel is all
about. It tells us about the end times. Relax, neither am I going to give you a
formula to calculate the date for the rapture, nor am I about to make a
prediction. However, I do want you to
pay attention to the apocalyptic vision in today’s Gospel,
Then they will see
“the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory” (Mark
Knowing the end of
the story ought to allow us to live in the present with joy and hope; and, free
us to make the fulfillment of our call to be Christ’s witnesses the highest
priority of our lives. One would think
that knowing how the story turns out would empower us to focus ourselves on
zealously doing God’s work in the world.
Even though we know how well the story ends,
we look around and what we see makes us join with Isaiah in seeking God’s
intervention.
O that you would
tear open the heavens and come down … (Isaiah 64: 1).
The Biblical and historical
context of these words was the return of the exiles from long years of Babylonian
captivity. The Israelites returned with
joy in their hearts, and with high expectations and hopes. But, things were not worked out as they had
hoped. Discerning people like Isaiah
began to recognize that the shortcomings of
O that you would
tear open the heavens and come down...
We find in this Isaiah passage a sense of
frustration and feeling of disappointment shared by his contemporary Israelites. His words might well be on our very lips
today. For what we see in the world easily
engenders a sense of despair and hopelessness.
Consider, for example, the plight of so many
men, women and children still suffering the consequences of the earthquakes in
O that you would
tear open the heavens and come down….
Or, in the words of
the Psalmist:
Stir up your strength, O Lord, and
come to help us (Psalm 80: 2b).
Consider, for example, the seemingly
intractable problems of the
O that you would tear
open the heavens and come down...
[And] Stir up your strength,
O Lord, and come to help us.
Consider the cruelty of ethnic cleansing
perpetrated in too many places around the world. Or, consider how racism continues to tear at
the fabric of our society, and dehumanizes all of us. Or, think about the widening gap between rich
and poor, and the rapidly growing number of poor families in
O that you would tear
open the heavens and come down...
[And] Stir up your
strength, O Lord, and come to help us.
The media report situation after situation
abroad and at home where despair abounds.
Peace and justice are elusive.
Natural disasters continue to plague humankind. It would seem that there is no way to account
for hope. Things much closer to home
make us cry out to God that God might intervene. That might be a loved one stricken with
Alzheimer's Disease, A.I.D.S., cancer, or some other dreaded medical
condition. It might be a child or spouse
addicted to alcohol, or other drugs. It
might be a friend unable to extricate herself from an abusive
relationship.
O that you would tear
open the heavens and come down...
Today is the First Sunday of Advent. We celebrate the truth that God did
"tear open the heavens and [came] down". We begin to make preparations for celebrating
that God tore open the heavens and came down in the form of a baby. You know the Christmas story well enough to
tell it in your own words. When that
child grew to adulthood, once again, God "[tore] open the heavens and
[came] down" to say:
You are my Son, the
Beloved; with you I am well pleased (Mark
Because God has broken into human history
with the gift of his only and beloved Son, and because God continues to break
into our lives with signs of his love and power to heal and reconcile, we can
be people of hope. True, we cannot make
all those distressing situations vanish like magic. But, due to God's Incarnation and God's
actions in the world, it is possible for Christians and Christian communities
to offer hope, and concrete acts of love in situations, which seem beyond
hope. To those who despair and feel
helpless, and to those who look for excuses not to be Christ's agents in the
world, Paul wrote these words to the Christian community in
... you are not
lacking any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus
Christ (I Corinthians 1: 7).
In other words, do
not try to go it alone; and, do not sit around waiting for God to fix all our
problems. God has given us gifts to work
on those issues ourselves. Referencing
back to the psalmist, we may, in fact, be some of God’s “strength” here on
earth. Scripture is full of ordinary
people like us who, in faith, were able to do things beyond their wildest
imagination.
Advent is about new beginnings. In Advent, we celebrate that there is every
reason to hope. As Isaiah said with such
assurance:
O Lord, you are our
Father, we are the clay, and you are our potter (Isaiah 64: 8).
Like the prophet
Isaiah, let us reflect on the ways our shortcomings make us spiritually drowsy and
unaware of God's presence and activity in the world. We need to contemplate Isaiah's insight. The consequence of human sinfulness is so
pervasive that he says:
We have become like
one who is unclean,
and all
our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We fade
like a leaf, and all our iniquities, like the wind, take us away (Isaiah 64:
6).
New beginnings require
us to recognize that self centeredness and self interest can infect and subvert
our best intentions, and corrupt what we do.
The good news is once acknowledged, God is always ready to forgive, and to
tear open the heavens and to be with us in spirit and in truth.
Cardinal Cushing, the Roman Catholic prelate
of
In the words of one writer,
Advent hope means
not only that you “never know what God is going to do next,” but also that
God’s creativity is not exhausted in the past.
Our faith is to be turned toward the future, just as it is supported in
the present by the promise of Jesus, “remember I am with you always, to the end
of the age” (Matthew 28: 20b).
Ours is not a faith
with a hopeless end, but one born of endless hope. Let us together come alive as hope-bearers to
a despair-ridden world. As Leon Joseph
Seunens wrote: “I am a man of hope, not
for human reasons nor from any natural optimism, but because I believe the Holy
Spirit is at work in the Church and the world…”[2].
Indeed, let us be
“hope-bearers to a despair-ridden world.
Let the following prayer be a good place to start; to be a guide towards
hope-giving action.
help me to remember those who have no home at all;
When I am without pain,
help me to
remember those who suffer,
And remembering,
help me to
destroy my complacency;
bestir my compassion,
and be
concerned enough to help;
By word and deed,
those who
cry out for what we take for granted[3].
AMEN.
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