Tag: Advent

Peace, peace, when there is no peace

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As I write this, another mass shooting is underway, this one in southern California. At the same time, I have my Bible open to write a sermon for the second Sunday of Advent, the Sunday on which we light the candle of Peace.

candle-11797-1024x576How does one preach the Prince of Peace when violence surrounds us?

We  begin with a Gospel of peace that blossomed in defiance of violence.

Jesus was born into a world infected with the darkness of oppression under Herod, Pilate, and Caiaphas, names that struck terror in the hearts of all who lived under their jurisdiction.

We cannot ignore, however, the Christian church’s perpetration of violence in the name of the Prince of Peace. From the crusades to the support of slavery and opposition to civil rights, the Church has shown itself capable of profound faithlessness while only a remnant had the courage to defy the culture of violence.

So, while we speak with one foot on the path of peace, we speak with the other foot in the culture of violence. Though it is in complete opposition to the words of Jesus, the culture’s message is seductive, telling us that the only solution to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And we are the good guys, right?

To quote Jesus, “No one is good but God alone.” (Luke 18:19)

I want to make sense of the violence that surrounds us. What is the motive, or agenda, or diagnosis of a perpetrator? What led him (or them) to pick up a gun and start shooting people? Were the victims chosen, or just random?

But, there is no real sense to be made.

Mass shootings emerge from reactivity, not reason.

When we can make no sense of violence, we can still defy it. We can use all our gifts of love and reason to work to build a more peaceful world to hand off to our children and their children.

In the depths of despair after the death of his wife and the terrible injury of his son in the Civil War, Longfellow wrote these words even as the war continued:

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

We lift our prayers for the victims of violence. If, however, those prayers absolve us of our responsibility as Christians to be the presence of peace in this world, then we have only half-prayed. The other half of a prayer for peace is to serve the Prince of Peace.

Without faith that the Ground of All Being will ultimately bring peace, defiance looks very much like denial.

Denial ignores evil in the world.

Defiance works against it with the confidence of the children of God.

On our own, our efforts as peacemakers would be futile. With God, all things are possible.

Hauling on the reins of the Runaway Christmas Stagecoach

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runaway-stage

The twinkle lights will soon be strung, and the greenery with red bows will be hung, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and the lectionary serves us up . . . Apocalypse.

“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.”

What’s up with that?

To most twenty-first century residents of the industrialized world, apocalyptic imagery just sounds weird. Whether from Revelation or Daniel or from this little apocalypse in Luke, the words just sound creepy and strange. Their misuse as texts of terror in the hands of charlatans and theological terrorists who want to frighten their followers into submission simply adds to the sense that these passages serve only the delusional among us.

What we find, however, among Christian communities who live under the threat or reality of violence and sudden death is that these apocalyptic passages are not texts of terror but of hope.

For Christian communities historically in South Africa under apartheid or today under ISIS rule in Iraq or Syria, the end of the world in a violent conflagration does not seem to be the stuff of an over-active imagination; rather, it seemed or seems the most likely outcome. The only question is when, and nobody knows the day or time.

That is the kind of situation that produced apocalyptic texts–Jeremiah’s community under attack from the Babylonian empire, and Luke’s community under attack from the Roman emperor. Destruction seemed inevitable. The only question was the day or time.

So, in hauling back on the reins of the runaway Christmas stagecoach, the church hopes to slow us down just long enough that we can listen. We don’t have to listen long to the news to hear the voices of our brothers and sisters living in an apocalyptic nightmare.

If we turn off the news and listen, we may even hear the voice of our neighbor, a friend who lives in her own little exile of loneliness; we may hear the voice of someone who lives in his own impending apocalypse of financial ruin or deteriorating health.

We may even hear the voices of doom in our own lives.

So, what then?

Beneath all the noise of the secular Christmas machine, the Bible calls out this word with a still small voice: hope.

The event we are preparing to celebrate is more than the birth of a very special baby to a poor Jewish couple in a stable in Bethlehem. The event we celebrate is incarnation. It is God becoming human flesh.

Here we have scripture written by people who can see the end of the world as they know it from where they stand; and still, they see reason to remain faithful and hopeful.

The extraordinary proclamation of Advent is that no matter how deep the darkness, no matter how cruel our adversaries, we are not alone in this world. We live in a world into which God has come in human flesh in Jesus Christ, and a world into which God enters still.

Third Sunday of Advent

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Here are a couple of Advent sermons for your reading pleasure as we await the Second Sunday of Advent. Enjoy.

John 1:26-27 (From The Message)

26-27John answered, “I only baptize using water. A person you don’t recognize has taken his stand in your midst. He comes after me, but he is not in second place to me. I’m not even worthy to hold his coat for him.”

Chipping Away At the Darkness

A legend of Michelangelo says that his patron looked upon the finished sculpture of David and asked, “How on earth did you carve such a realistic sculpture?”

Michelangelo replied, “It was easy.  I took a big piece of marble and carved away everything that didn’t look like davidDavid.”

The Gospel writer John, telling us his Christmas story of the Word becoming “flesh and blood and moving into the neighborhood” (The Message) begins with the other John, the cousin of Jesus, and begins to chip away at all that is not Jesus.

Nope, I’m not the Messiah, John says.

Nope, I’m not the Light; no, I’m not Elijah, no, I’m not the prophet.

John, in the tradition of the prophets, presents himself as next to nothing, just a voice, “thunder in the desert,” a sound that comes before the life-giving rain.  Amos said, “I’m only a shepherd;” Moses said, “I can’t speak well enough;” Jeremiah said, “I’m too young.”  John says, “I’m not worthy.”

That’s not the response we would expect from someone who is about to get a ticket for baptizing without a license.  We might expect him to flash his credentials, to defend himself, to say, “Hey, I’ve got a right to be here!  God sent me!”  Instead, the voice crying out in the wilderness echoes Isaiah who resisted his call, saying, “I am a man of unclean lips.”

It’s the third Sunday of Advent, and we’re about ready to hear Luke’s version of the Christmas story, about Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, ending up in a stable where Mary gives birth with all the farm animals, then the shepherds coming to tell them what they heard from a chorus of heavenly angels.

But, that’s not how John tells it.  If all we had was this gospel, our Christmas pageants would be easy:  just one child, standing on a dark and empty stage, reciting or singing about the light:

“In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.”

And instead of Joseph and Mary riding into Bethlehem, as we imagine, on a donkey, in the Gospel according to John, there’s just one guy, the other John, maybe not even visible, but just a voice out of the darkness, because he is not the light, but a witness to the light.

Which brings us to the reason the temple police came all the way out from Jerusalem to Bethany, some backwater village known for its lepers and outcasts:  “If you are not the Messiah, not Elijah, not the prophet, why do you baptize?”

John’s answer, of course, is a non-answer.  He doesn’t tell them why he baptizes; instead, he tells them that those who are baptized with water are a preview of the One who comes after him.

A few years ago, I served a congregation as it went through a building project that included a small chapel. The building committee counted the cost, listened to ideas from the whole congregation, prayed and discussed and tried to discern the shape of a building that would serve as a tool for ministry in the decades to come.  The architect, began to draw.  The committee looked at the drawings and said, “We like this; this part, not so much.”  The architect drew some more.  He drew the floor plan, then the elevation from each direction, then more detailed drawings for the plumber and electrician.  By the time we broke ground, we had a stack of drawings an inch thick.

I studied the drawings carefully and felt like I knew this building.  I knew what it would look like inside and out, and I knew how it could be used.

And then, after construction had continued for a few weeks, I drove up one morning and the framing was underway.  By that afternoon, the walls and the joists were all together and it looked like a building.

When I walked through, and came into the middle room on the north side with the vaulted ceiling, I realized that the drawings were just pointing to the space.  They could give us information, they could describe the space, but they were not the same as walking into a place that instantly opened all my senses to the presence of something Holy.

Looking at the drawings, I knew that the middle room would be pretty.

Walking into the space, I felt the need to worship God.

That’s something like what John is saying about baptism with water.  It’s the architectural drawing.  We who are baptized are not the light; we’re not Elijah, we’re not the Messiah.  We are people with ordinary names.  Like architectural drawings, those names may be beautiful.  And all together, we are called the church, the body of Christ.  But, we are not Christ.  We are not the light, we only point to the light, the Word made flesh and blood.

In a culture where Christmas has become primarily a marketing event, we in the church have to struggle to keep our attention on the light to which John pointed.  At a time of year when the days are short and the night is long; when all the music and merriment can emphasize the loneliness and heartache for those on the sidelines, it is a struggle to focus on the incarnation, the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ.

If your Christmas tradition includes giving to organizations that are changing the world, you may have noticed must how much need there is in this world. Browsing through the Alternative Christmas Market catalogue could be a downer.  Without a faith in the light of the world, it would be easier to keep our spirits up through the darkest time of the year if we tried not to think about the intractable poverty of the people of Haiti; tried not to look at the haunting photograph of a child sold by her parents as a sexual slave; if we tried to forget about people who will spend this Christmas on the street or in homeless shelters.

For some among us today, this is the first Christmas after the death of a loved one.  For those in the still-fresh pangs of grief, the merriment of the season can deepen the sadness of all we have lost.

This, however, is the darkness into which the light of Christ came.  The light of God, the Christmas light, God made flesh, came into deep darkness.  The good news of Advent is that the light still enters the dark.  With the Christmas story of John, we have no fear of the dark; the darkness of the world is like bits of stone that Michelangelo carved away from the marble to reveal his vision of David.

As those who are baptized with water, we chip away at the darkness with the faith of those who know that the light is breaking through in Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God.

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