First Sunday of Advent Yr A Dec 1 2019

Audio  First Sunday of Advent Yr A Dec 1 2019

Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44, Psalm 122

Prophecy

We enter into the season of Advent, the season of waiting and preparing. Advent, the season that demands that we be in three whens at once, the when that has been, the when that is now, and the when that is not yet. It is not an easy place to rest.

A hard part of Advent is that we don’t really know what to do with it. Our culture has been at Christmas since Halloween. Completely skipping over the now and not yet hard stuff of Advent, the beginning the middle and the end of this sacred story. Before we arrive at incarnation, God in the flesh, the birth of the baby in a barn, we’ve got some work to do.

Matthew’s gospel gets us started this Advent, this story that traces the days of Noah before the flood, eating and drinking, and knowing nothing of the flood. And then continues with two in the field and one taken, two in the kitchen and one taken. Stay awake, Matthew warns us, stay awake. Not because you are so afraid you cannot sleep, but because God is doing something amazing.

Today we are working on prophecy. Prophecy is a word that has multiple meanings. We have heard it used to talk about telling the future, predicting events. We have heard it used to describe a particular type of preaching, prophetic preaching. Prophecy is a big part of the belief we have of what will be, we may call that end times, we may call that revelation or apocalypse. But for us, here and now, prophecy is a call to change. It is a call to change course, do something differently. To take seriously following Jesus in the here and now, not at some later time. This prophecy calls us to stay awake!

The events that are described in scripture, and specifically in Matthew’s gospel, are signs of God’s awesome power, and they are a terror only to the faithless. Remember, the arc of God’s love bends toward mercy and compassion, there is no reason to be afraid. Sometimes this passage from Matthew has been used to make us afraid. It is one that has been wielded as a weapon to keep us in line as we hope that we are the one to be taken, or raptured, and not left behind.

Prophecy is not to terrify us; prophecy is to call us to change. Sometimes, that change needs be drastic, prophecy may call us from death to life. But not out of fear, but out of love, the love that God shows us in the incarnation, in appearing in the flesh, then, now, and yet to come.

Prophecy, the call to change is all around us. We see it in our climate, we see how important it is that we care for this creation that God gives us, or we will continue to experience the extremes of weather. We see it in our culture, we see how important it is that we treat each other with mercy, compassion, justice, or we will continue to walk down the road of fake news and name calling, disintegration. We see it in our neighborhoods and our families, we see how important it is that we love our neighbor, the ones that don’t look or think or love like us.

Our scripture calls us into this relationship with God through Jesus, that turns us around, that rights us, that heals us. And our scripture shows us that wholeness and healing may not happen in this physical life, but indeed will happen when our hearts and souls are joined with God and the communion of saints in the eternal now.

Prophecy is not only in our scripture. Prophecy, the call to change, is part of our storytelling. The prophetic story shows us a world that may be if humanity doesn’t pay attention or stay awake to what is happening around us. Stories, the world building of novels, can help us see what profound change may be needed in our world today.

Madeleine L’engle’s story, A Wrinkle in Time, begins with a family in sorrow, at the disappearance of the father. The oldest daughter, Meg, her youngest brother, Charles Wallace, and her friend, Calvin, encounter three beings, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. These beings call the children into a journey that will save their father and bring new light and hope to the world as well. This is a story that acts as prophecy, a story that shows us what the world might look like if we humans don’t do something different right now. This is a story that calls us to change.

I want to pick the story up at a very dark place, the children have traveled to a very dark world, a world shrouded by a dark cloud. On this dark world they discover an IT, that holds all of the inhabitants in power and fear and has captured not only the father the children are looking for, but the child, Charles Wallace as well. Our hero, Meg, encounters IT, and must free both her father and her brother. Meg discovers the means by which she can free her father and her brother. She must love herself, and she must love others. She must live into her own uniqueness. Meg is indeed the square peg in a world with only round holes. On this dark planet is the lie that they are all happy because they are all alike. On this dark planet is the lie that there is only one way to think and to be, and as long as everyone falls in line, everyone will be happy. It is clear in this prophetic story a world away, that power rules, not love. And power over people results in darkness and death, whereas empowering people through love, and active love, not a romantic feeling, results in freedom.

Darkness and death are dire. Love, the love that is born into our time as a small baby, the love that was put to death on a cross, the love that was raised from the dead, the love that changes us, transforms us, frees us, is what the prophets point us to. This is the love that calls us into life, this is the love that frees us to love fiercely.

Sometimes, I think this prophetic little story is happening today. It seems like there is a darkness covering us. A darkness capable of fragmenting us into pieces of hate. But the light shines in the darkness, the light of love, the light of hope, the light of peace, the light of joy.

The prophets show us the way. You are loved, God’s love in this world matters. Carry that love, that light, into all of the places you find yourself. In this Advent, this coming of God, this incarnation, stay awake, be ready, you are God’s beloved, you belong to God already.

5 Lent Yr B March 22 2015

Audio 3.22.2015

From the prophet Jeremiah we hear today, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. What I hear in this passage is that God doesn’t give up. No matter how many times God's people turn away, God doesn't give up, love wins. 

First, let's recall the pattern of the sacred story. This story is told over and over in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. God creates, God blesses the creation, and God promises always to be our God, creation turns away from God, and God calls us back. God reconciles creation, and restores the relationship. 

The part of the story we read this morning from the prophet Jeremiah, 

represents one of the many times people turned their backs on God and God reaches out again, as God had done many times, and continues to do today. God reached out to Moses and the people wandering in the wilderness, the people were whining and gripping, and God gave the “ten best ways” to Moses, and what did the people do? They worshipped the golden calf. Then, under Abraham, God promised many descendants, and what did the people do? They continued to worship the Canaanite gods.

The story in Jeremiah is prophecy, and Jeremiah is a prophet. We sometimes get a bit confused about what prophets are and what prophecy means. Prophets were men and women who were and are in relationship with God, and their jobs are to tell the people to return to God, to repent and turn around. Prophet does not mean one who predicts the future, and prophecy does not mean stories about the future. Prophets constantly remind people to return to God, because people are always finding someone or something to worship other than God. The stories of the prophets are not stories that tell the future. They are stories that show the dire consequences for behavior that takes God's people away from God.

In this story in Jeremiah, once again we hear God entering back into relationship with the people who keep turning away. Just think of it, all of these stories tell us that no matter what we do, no matter what we worship, God will call us back, God will not let us go, Love wins.

This time, it’s not commandments on stone, it’s not a promise of many descendants, but this time the law is written on their hearts, the law is written on our hearts. And what is the law that is written on our hearts?  In the other gospels, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, when the question about which law is the most important law is posed, Jesus responds from sacred scripture, scripture all good Jews know by heart, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and, Love your neighbor as yourself.

How is this law written on our hearts? There is a story that I have heard, 

that is attributed to Madeleine L’engle, my favorite author, I've told this one before.

A mom and a dad had a new baby, and one night after they put the baby to bed, their older child came to them and asked if he could go see his little brother. The mom and the dad being just a little fearful of the older child’s intentions, said that would be fine and one of them would go with him. 

The older child insisted that he go see his baby brother by himself, and his parents gave in. So the older child entered the bedroom of his baby brother and walked over to his crib. His parents, being very curious and somewhat fearful, eavesdropped at the door. In a soft whisper this is what they heard their older child say to his baby brother. Please, could you tell me what God is like, you just came from there, and I’ve been away so long I’m beginning to forget.

God’s law is written on our hearts, we tend to forget it. I think it is part of our humanity to love God with every fiber of our being, and to love our neighbor as well. It is in living that we begin to forget. Our children, who can be prophets too, remind us what love of God really is. When we pay attention, we observe that profound desire to love and worship God.  The sadness is that we learn a very different lesson. Our culture teaches a lie that love is appropriately placed in things and stuff, and that fulfilling our own needs and wants is more important than any God or any neighbor.

But the Good News is that once again God calls us back, and in an absolutely new way. The radical shift in the gospel of John is that God gives up all power to come into our world as one of us, so that we may return to God, so that we may be healed. The Glory of God is Jesus, and in Jesus, in living and loving and dying on the cross, the relationship between humanity and God is restored. But the story doesn’t end at the cross. The story goes through the cross to resurrection, because it is in death and resurrection that we become a people, a community, a body of Christ. And yet today, this 5th Sunday of Lent, we stand oh so close to that cross. 

We stand in the promise of the resurrection. We remember that after the pain and sadness of the cross comes the joy and new life in the resurrection, and we know that we are not there yet. We know that our journey today is in the hope that when that grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it will bear much fruit. That’s what the story in our scriptures tell us, that’s what we celebrate each time we come together here at this table.

We know that love of God and love of neighbor are not easy, in fact, love of God and love of neighbor can be very hard and painful indeed. There is much pain and sadness in our world, in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our lives. Pain and sadness are a part of living fully, pain and sadness are realities that we never choose for ourselves, but come part and parcel with the joy of living. We need to intentionally look for Jesus in our midst, we need to focus on God’s divine spark in others,  so that we can find God in our midst, so that the transformation that God promises, will be realized.

Another story. Again, I've told this story before, but I think it speaks so clearly to where we find ourselves. The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery. The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. "I know how it is," he exclaimed. "The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore." So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other.

"It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years," the abbot said, "but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?" "No, I am sorry," the rabbi responded. "I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you." When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, "Well what did the rabbi say?" "He couldn't help," the abbot answered. "We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving --it was something cryptic—was that the Messiah is one of us. I don't know what he meant." In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi's words.

The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that's the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. 

But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people's sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred. But surely not Brother Phillip. 

Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn't mean me. He couldn't possibly have meant me. I'm just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn't be that much for You, could I? As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends. Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi's gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.

Sir, we wish to see Jesus. Through the life, death, and resurrection we can see Jesus, and the law is written on our hearts. Jesus is right here among us. Amen.