Advent Sermon by
Dan Rice
December 14, 2016
Isaiah 45:5-25 Luke 7: 19-23
It was this time of the year. I was serving my first parish after
graduating from Divinity School and returning to South Dakota. My appointment as a United Methodist minister
was to two churches, The large parish in Brookings as the Associate Minister
and to a small rural church at Bruce, South Dakota.
It was a Sunday evening at the Bruce
church and the Sunday School Christmas pageant was underway. The chancel area in the front of the church
was filled with children dressed in costumes to portray the traditional
nativity scene of the Holy Family surrounded by shepherds, domestic animals,
and, of course angels.
My two daughters, Lisa and Kristi, were
about 5 and three years old and were dressed as angels. They wore the typical white gown, large filmy
wings and, of course, halos made from silver tree trimming. They looked angelic but, as their parent, I
was not deceived.
The program was progressing as well as
these things usually do with Advent hymns and the nativity narrative delivered
with weak and halting voices and promptings from the teachers. In a moment of silence during a pause in the
program, our five year old Lisa said in a very loud and scolding voice to her
sister, “Kristi, you wings are falling off!”
As I thought about the sermon for
tonight, this scene from many years ago came vividly to mind.
Those words shouted out by a five-year
old seem to capture exactly how I am feeling during this Advent season in the
year 2016.
As I reflect on the presidential
election these words seem to describe much of the Christian church and our
country. I want to shout at them, “YOUR
WINGS ARE FALLING OFF!”
My mood these days swings from despair
to outright terror at the thought of what might come.
This sermon is my sharing with you my
own personal struggle with how to maintain my faith in the face of what I view
as a possible disaster for our country and the world. So please bear with me, especially if you do
not share the sense of panic that I do.
How do I (we) maintain our faith when
all about us the wings are falling off?
Maybe an airplane is a better image than
an angel!
Those of us in the church who were in
college and young adults in the 1960s and 70s are not naive about either the
church or our country. I don’t need to
repeat the long litany of bad presidents, political scandals, the fight for
civil rights, and unjust wars. We know
all too well that neither the church or our country are inhabited by angels,
far from it!
But in my humble opinion, this current
situation is qualitatively different. In
the academic world we would call it “an outlier.” Something so far beyond the norm that we have
no adequate way to explain it.
Never in my lifetime has the victor in a
presidential election been a person so lacking in moral character, so mean-spirited,
so blatantly dishonest, and so reckless.
Not since the Vietnam war have I felt that our nation was on the brink
of disaster.
Not since those days have I thought the
church was so divided and have I been so bewildered by the actions of many who call themselves Christians.
What are we to make of this? What word do we speak to the church and to
our country at such a moment?
Which brings me to the scriptures for
today.
First, the reading from Isaiah. The clear and persistent message from the
prophet is unmistakable:
“I am the Lord, there is no other.”
(repeat)
The Hebrew prophets and, for that
matter, what we Christians call the Old Testament, proclaim what has been
called “radical monotheism.” The passage
from Isaiah is a perfect example of this theological assertion, “I am the Lord,
there is no other.”
The claim of this faith perspective is
that there is one God, no other. And
importantly, this one God is beyond our human comprehension, this God is the
creator of all that is.
The prophet chides us and puts us in our
place, “Woe to you who strive with your
Maker, earthen vessels with the potter!”
“I the Lord speak the truth, I declare
what is right.”
The prophets bring us up short. They remind us of who we are and who the Lord
is. We are reminded that there is a
moral order to the universe.
One of my father’s favorite books was
written by J.B. Phillips and titled, “Your God Is Too Small.” The book was about this concept of “radical
monotheism.” Phillips reminded Christians
of our tendency to domesticate God, to make God a proponent of our flawed and
limited denominations, our clumsy and obtuse creeds and dogmas, our pretentious
and pandering religious leaders.
And Phillips reminded us that the God of
the Bible is not a patriot of any particular country or political party or
ideology. Claiming otherwise is actually
a way to trivialize God.
It is difficult to hang on to this
greater sense of order at times. We
humans seem to be a forgetful lot. We
seem to make progress but then we fall back in to our old ways. We fail to keep our commitments, to uphold
our highest standards. We are prone to
follow demagogues, fools and charlatans in religion and politics.
We dare not forget that these same
prophets called Israel and her leaders to stand for justice.
Isaiah wrote, “But Israel is saved by the
Lord with everlasting salvation;
You
shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity.”
There is hope. I don’t know about you but this is a truth I
need to hear right now.
The second word comes from our Gospel
reading.
In Advent we are anticipating the birth
of Jesus, but this Gospel reading jumps forward in time to when Jesus is an
adult, preaching in the countryside. But
the issue is the same, is Jesus the promised one?
In the reading from Luke, John the
Baptist sends two of his disciples to observe Jesus and to ask him the big
question:
“Are you the one who is to come, or are
we to wait for another?”
That is the question, then and now. “Are you the one to come, or are we to wait
for another?”
Every year during Advent the Church
brings us back to this basic question, “Are you the one to come, or are we to
wait for another?”
Jesus does not answer the question
directly. Rather, he says to the
followers of John the Baptist,
“Go and tell John what you have seen and
heard.”
In each generation, each of us must make
up our own mind, based on what we have seen and heard.
“The blind receive their sight, the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have
good news brought to
them. ”
That is our answer.
It is interesting that the lectionary
pairs the prophet Isaiah with Luke, the physician, the Gospel so focused on concern
for the poor.
So on this Advent night in the midst of
our despair, in the cold of winter, when
all about us the wings are falling off, the
Word comes to us.
From the prophet:
“I am the Lord, there is no other.”
“Only in the Lord…are righteousness and
strength.”
And from the Gospel:
“Go and tell John what you have seen and
heard.”
“Blessed is anyone who takes no offense
in me.”
So where does this leave us, those of us
who struggle to follow the Christ?
For me, it leaves me at odds with much
of my country and many in the Christian Church.
Which makes me so grateful for this
church, St. Stephens, and other churches
that share our understanding of the Gospel, and I am so grateful for our
priest, Jamie, and for all of you.
May the Lord be with us in our struggle
to be faithful to the One who came to be with us, and whose coming we await.
Amen
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