THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT                       November 29, 2009
Jeremiah 33:14-16         I Thessalonians 3:9-13         Luke 21:25-36

                                     “Redemption Draws Near”

           We’re like a frog in a frying pan.  I’m not sure where this cliché originated but it’s something I’ve heard for years and years now.   . . . like a frog in a frying pan.  Here’s the deal:  if you place a frog in a frying pan that is already hot enough to fry something, the frog will very quickly jump out.  Ouch!  That’s hot!  Right?  But put that same frog in a cool frying pan and he’ll sit there quite comfortably.  If you very slowly begin to turn up the heat under that frying pan it is said that the frog will just sit there until it cooks to death, never realizing until it is way too late that he’s in trouble.
           We’re like a frog in a frying pan. 
           It is Advent, the first Sunday of four that will take us right up to Christmas and our celebration of Jesus’ birth, but the message this morning has nothing about the birth of a baby in Bethlehem.  Today we look not backward but forward.  A day is coming, says the Lord.  The Scriptures tell us that we should be alert, watching for signs, and ready whenever the day finally gets here.  Our closing hymn today is an old German chorale – Wake, Awake, for Night is Flying.  It’s an old 16th Century hymn from the days of the Reformation so it is surely a hymn that fits our heritage and our tradition, but sometimes those old hymns become kind of awkward and hard for us to sing.  Those melodies are hard for us today but the message is right out of the pages of the Bible.  We need to be awake because the signs are there to be seen and we need to be looking for the dawning of the day.
           Jesus tells us what to look for as we read his words from Luke 21.  On the earth nations will be in anguish and perplexity . . .  Men will faint from terror, apprehension of what is coming on the world.  We know what’s going on in the world around us, don’t we?  We have sons and daughters, friends and neighbors in the military, serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Some of us are in economic distress because we have lost jobs, because we’re looking to retirement and all of a sudden not feeling as secure as we thought we’d be.  We’re concerned about our nation and the direction it seems to be headed.  Anguish, perplexity, apprehension?  Yeah, that about covers it, huh?
            But what are we doing?  We’re like a frog in a frying pan.  We have been sitting here for a long, long time and we’ve gotten kind of comfortable.  Yeah, it seems to be getting hotter right about now, but I’m still okay.  I don’t really think it’s time for any drastic changes. It’s going to turn around pretty soon now.  They say the recession is over and the recovery is right around the corner.  I’ll be okay.
           The prophet Jeremiah tells us, The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.  In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land.  In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.  This is the name by which he will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.
           What will it take for us to wake up and realize it’s getting a bit too hot around here? It is, I have to say, very easy for us to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear and just hold onto the status quo above all else.  We don’t want to rock the boat, do we?  I like it when the waters are smooth and calm.  I don’t like tension and anxiety.  I don’t like walking around with a lump in my throat and tightness in my chest.  But how much and how long can I ignore problems and just pretend that all is right in the church and the world?
           Do we hear the word that the day of the Lord is coming and embrace it, or do we keep it out there at arm’s length?  Have I made some kind of uneasy peace with the world, with things as they are, so that I have no sense of need for God to come in and set things right?  I will not hope for the day and long for it if I have no sense that what is promised will be better than what I have here right now.  It is a word not of judgment but of salvation for the people of God.  It is a word to be received not with dread but with joy and celebration, but if I have no real sense of a need to be saved from where I am I will not embrace the message and long for the day of God’s promise.
           It is time to jump out of the frying pan before it gets even hotter, before it’s too late.  What will that mean for us?  That’s a good question.  Listen to Paul’s words to the church in Thessalonika:  May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.  May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
           I need God to act in my life.  I need to get out of the way and let God be the one at work in me.  I need to stop worrying about being right in my own eyes when that leads us to confusion and a lack of love for one another in the Body.  The day is coming and we need to be alert and watchful.  The day is coming and we need to get our act together, literally – together.  We need to be on the same page when it comes to who we are and what we’re about and the page is neither yours nor mine – it’s God’s.  There is no time for getting upset about what really are lesser things, certainly no time for getting on my high horse when it leads to offending a brother in Christ and doing damage to the Body of Christ in this place. 
           Here’s the deal.  I’m talking about the H1N1 concerns and the shaking hands thing that’s been going on for over a month and has caused way too much confusion and hard feelings here.  I reacted strongly to what the board decided and did not respect their concerns.  I was and am convinced that I didn’t say anything wrong but that’s beside the point.  Ultimately the sequence of events took things way beyond any notion of Christian fellowship and love.  I wish a lot of people were here this morning to hear me apologize but that’s just the sad result of all this.  Everyone was convinced of the rightness of their position and kept after it to the point that people got so confused, frustrated, and upset.  It has to stop and, to whatever degree I am to blame, I take responsibility for it, confess it, and ask for your forgiveness.
           There’s too much that really does matter for us to be doing as the church for us to get sidetracked about shaking hands or not.  Christ is coming.  We need, with one undivided voice, to be proclaiming the saving love of God in Jesus to the world.  I’m not staying in the frying pan.  I’m getting out and getting to work and I hope you’ll join me.  We need to get our eyes off of ourselves and our priorities and look to the Lord.  Ultimately, in the big picture, I’ve got nothing that is worth anything to offer in and of myself.  I need a savior.  I need grace and mercy and forgiveness. I need the One who is coming to save us all. 
           We are called to be the Body of Christ and live out his love in everything we do and say as individuals and as a congregation here.  We will not always agree on stuff and that’s okay, as long as it does not take away our love for each other and, so, blunt our witness to the world.  It’s time to set everything else aside and love one another.  It’s time for making sure nothing else ever gets in the way again.  The time is short.  It’s nearly dawn and the day of the Lord is at hand.  Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.  AMEN.

soli deo gloria

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THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT                  December 6, 2009
Malachi 3:1-4                  Philippians 1:3-11                      Luke 3:1-6

                                              “God’s Holy Fire”

            Once upon a time . . . a long, long time ago in what feels like it was a whole different world . . . I pretended I could play baseball.  I was in college.  No, don’t ask.  I don’t know.  Why did I decide in my freshman year that I wasn’t going to play basketball, which I at least had the height for, and then only a couple years later did I think I could play baseball?  I wasn’t any good.  It was really pretty sad.  I did get a spring training trip to Florida out of the deal so there was at least that one perk in it.  I pretended I could play first base.  I am tall and left-handed so there was some logic to it but I wasn’t a very good fielder and I was an even weaker hitter.  It was sad.  I had a teammate named David who played shortstop.  He was a little guy, built like a fireplug, a fiery guy with very little tolerance for my ineptitude.  He wore me out with his criticism.  I really think he was trying to get me going, to challenge me to get with it and do better but it had the very opposite effect.  The more he griped at me the more down on myself I got and it just snowballed.  I actually went to him one day and tried to reason with him.  “Please. Dave,” I told him, “Give me a break.  You’re just making it worse.  I need support and encouragement, not the endless criticism.”  It was as if I was speaking a foreign language.  He didn’t get what I was trying to tell him.  He was just that kind of person and couldn’t approach baseball any other way.  It wasn’t long into that season that had to admit the sad reality.  I gave up and left the team.
              Dave popped into my head the other day as I was thinking about the lessons for today.  The Day of the Lord is coming and there is an urgency to getting the message clear and getting it out to people but there seems to be two ways of going about it.  We’re in the Second Week of Advent and, as is the tradition, one of the focal points today is John the Baptist.  John was rough in every way you could possibly imagine.  When there was something to say John was going to make sure it got said without worrying about whose toes got stepped on in the process.  John comes along as the one preparing the way for the start of Jesus’ earthly ministry.  He walks in the steps of the Old Testament prophets, like Malachi who we also hear from this morning.  They both come on the scene with guns blazing.  They’re not sparing anyone’s feelings.  It’s too important to make sure people understand what’s on the horizon, what’s just around the corner.  There’s no pussyfooting in this prophetic tradition, no worrying about feelings, much like David trying to me moving my sorry rear end on the ball field.
            See, I will send my messenger who will prepare the way before me.  Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come, says the LORD Almighty.
            But who can endure the day of his coming?  Who can stand when he appears?  For he will be like a refiner’s fire.  He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.
            The day that is coming will be a day of fire, Malachi tells us.  You wanna burn?  He’s that blunt.  He pulls no punches.  John the Baptist is like him.  We’ll hear more from John next week.
           But that approach doesn’t always work, does it?  You know the old saying? You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  John and Malachi offended people.  People were put off by their abrasive approach.  This morning we also have a reading from Paul as he writes to the church in Philippi.  I have no doubt that Paul would pour out the vinegar when he thought that the situation called for it, but to the Philippians we get the honey.  I like honey.  I like support, encouragement, and love.  I imagine the Philippians liked it too.
            I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart.  God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
            Just like Malachi and John, Paul knows the day is coming.  It was the motivation for his incredible missionary ministry. He believed that Jesus was coming back any day and nothing mattered but spread- ing the Gospel in the time he had left.  He wants his readers, believers he knows so well and loves so deeply, to understand and change their lives in response to this message.  As I said, Paul pours out the honey, not the vinegar.  We hear words like joy and longing, having them in his heart, and the affection he feels for them in Christ.
            Here’s how he writes it:  this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blame- less until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
            The approach is different but the bottom line is the same:  lives transformed by the power of God’s Spirit at work in us. Malachi talks
about the refiner’s fire – the fire of God that will prove what our life is really all about.  The good stuff will survive like gold purified by fire, but all that is something less will be burned off and burned up so that only the good remains.  It’s not a pleasant image, being tried and purified by fire, but it is what God does in our lives. 
            Paul says the same thing, but he says it so much nicer: so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.  We need to become and be pure and blameless before God so that we can be worthy vessels for his precious Word and accomplish his will for us.  Only that which is pure and blameless will survive the flames that purify us, the work that is even now taking place as we live in this world.
            Again, it’s not about Christmas.  It’s about announcing to the world what God is about to do among us, what is even now coming upon the world.  It is about the fire that is coming, the fire that will purify each and every one of us, but as rough as it sounds it is the good news of God’s coming to save us in Christ.  Only in Christ is there forgiveness for our sins and the sins of the whole world.  Only as we receive his saving grace and love can we hear this message as good news of salvation rather than a word of judgment and punishment.
            We’ve got work to do, each one of us and all of us together as the church in this place.  We need to be in the process of discernment.  What is best for us?  How do we live as the purified people of God so that the world will see and know the reality and the love of God in us?  Ultimately it’s not about us.  Thankfully we already know the Lord and have come to be known by him as his children.  In Christ our life is now for all the people who don’t yet know him.  We live for them, not for ourselves.  As we look to 2010, a new year filled with new challenges and new opportunities, it is time for us to set priorities for our life and ministry.  How do we use the gifts and resources God has given us?  How do we best proclaim Christ to this community in which God planted us long, long ago?
            It is appropriate that today we consider this as we partake of the body and blood of Christ together.  Here is life for us, not of ourselves but of Christ.  Here we are forgiven.  Here we are fed and nourished for life in the world.  Whether the word comes to us with honey or with vinegar, it is the same word – the day is coming and it’s time for us to get our act together, purified by God’s refining fire, that we might be the light the world needs to see and experience.  AMEN.

soli deo gloria

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THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT              December 13, 2009
Zephaniah 3:14-20             Philippians 4:4-7            Luke 3:7-18

                                           “Rejoice in Hope!”

            "Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel."
These are among the most familiar words from any Advent hymn there is and this is the Sunday for singing these familiar words.  Rejoice!
            From the book of the prophet Zephaniah we hear these words, “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel!  Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!”  From Paul’s letter to his friends in Philippi we hear it again:  “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!”  Even the appointed Psalm for the day, which actually comes from the 12th chapter of Isaiah, picks up the theme: “Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth.  Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”
            In the old tradition of a purple Advent this is the Sunday that takes the focus away from an almost Lenten penitential emphasis and tells us to light a pink candle because even now there is something in which we can rejoice, be glad, and sing songs of praise to our God.  The old tradition labeled this Sunday as Gaudete Sunday after the Latin word for “rejoice.” 
            But for quite some time the more popular color for Advent has been blue.  Here at Zion’s we’re sort of torn between the old and the new – the wreath candles still being three purple and a pink, while the paraments have been blue for some ten years. The blue, so they tell us, is from a Scandinavian tradition that says blue is the color of hope, surely a good Advent theme as we prepare and wait in hope for what God has promised to do for us and send to us.
            It might seem a bit paradoxical, the mixing of the two colors, these two themes – purple and blue – rejoicing and hoping.  And yet in this mix, in this paradox is the real good news for us this and all of the Advents we keep.  This is a time of hopeful waiting and anticipation.  It is a time of hope because God has given us the promise of something we have yet to see, an experience still future for us.  Even so, as we trust in the Word and the promise of God we can rejoice because the end is now at hand and, if God is the one making the promise to us, there is nothing and no one who can stop it from being fulfilled.  What God promises will happen, the outcome is never in doubt.  We can rejoice even as we wait for it.
            But as we wait in hopeful anticipation, as we wait and prepare with joy for what God is about to do among us, along comes this guy named John and he seems to have a whole different thought about the future that is coming.  Read over these verses from Luke’s Gospel over and over, again and again, and I dare say you will not find anything even remotely joyful sounding.  Instead we hear words of the “wrath to come,” of an ax that is “lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  John seems to have a thing for, what shall we call it?  Heavenly fire?  The One who is coming will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.  Using a harvest image, he talks about the good wheat being gathered into barns but the worthless chaff being burned with unquenchable fire.  Last Sunday I talked about John using vinegar rather than honey.  Today I’ll stretch the image and say that John’s vinegar is on fire.  How’s that?
            So which is it?  Is this Gaudete Sunday or not?  Are we supposed to be rejoicing or what?
            Luke tells us something about the teaching and the ministry of John that no one else tells us.  Luke gives us specifics and that is always helpful.  It’s one thing to hear the message and believe that we ought to respond but it is much more helpful to know what that response might look like.  Luke gives us three specifics: members of the crowd get direction as do tax collectors and soldiers.  What does this tell us?
            John’s message was powerful.  His call that people come and be baptized as a sign of repentance in preparation for what God was about to do in the world changed people’s lives.  Just as the people in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost asked Peter, What, then, shall we do? these folks find themselves cut to the heart by John’s powerful words and know that things must change.
            If we’re not careful, however, we might think that these people are looking to change out of fear rather than out of gratitude.  Even as John’s words are forceful, his message is good news.  The Holy One of God, the Messiah is coming – the promised redeemer is coming to save! 
            What kind of changes does John suggest?  Share your clothing and your food with those who are in need, the poor and the hungry.  That one was directed to everyone, to the whole crowd.  Then he gets a little more specific – to tax collectors: collect no more than you are required to collect. To soldiers - no intimidation, no strong-arm tactics, be satisfied with your pay.
            More irony, more paradox – the people want to know how to change to be ready for what God is going to do and John tells them how to live with the people around them.  They think there asking a “me and God question, a religious question, but John gives them a “me and my neighbor” answer and it all boils down to how I live in the real world with my stuff and my neighbors.
           The most significant teaching here is what John says to those baddest of the bad, to the tax collectors and to the soldiers.  There will come a day when the early Christians will say that disciples of Jesus shouldn’t even be in those occupations but John doesn’t say that.  He does say that you have to be different, radically different.  If you’re going to be a godly tax collector you’re going to stick out like a sore thumb.  If you’re going to be a godly soldier, people are going to think there’s something wrong with you.
            Why would you want to do that?  Why would you want to live your life so radically different from everyone else around you?  It would have to be that something radical had happened to you, that you had undergone such a change that everything about you was different.
            This is hard for most of us.  The pressure in the world we live in is to fit in, to be the same, to think, feel, and behave just like everybody else.  I’m going to need a really good reason to be different, to be odd, to be peculiar.  If this kind of change is going to be genuine and permanent the motivation needs to be positive rather than negative.  Joy can bring about that kind of transformation, a whole lot better than fear can.  The good news of Advent is the good news of the Gospel in general, the good news of all that God has accomplished for us in Jesus Christ.  Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!  Salvation is at hand and that gift of life is unconditional – it is a gift. God has done it, is doing it, and will bring it to final completion.  It doesn’t fall to me to make it all work. The good news that the weight of all this is NOT on my shoulders is amazing.  Knowing all that God is doing in me and in the world is more than enough motivation for me to make some serious changes in my life. 
            What will you do?  How will you change your life so that those around you know that God is not just real but actively involved in your life?  Share your stuff with the poor.  Don’t put your possessions on a higher level than the people in your life.  Don’t make everything about you.  Instead use the gifts God has placed in your hands to benefit the lives of your neighbors, especially those less fortunate than yourself.
            Rejoice!  Again I say Rejoice!  The Lord is near.  Salvation is near.  Live your life in such a way that those around you know that God is most important and that they are next.  Be different because God has transformed everything that matters in your life.  AMEN.

soli deo gloria

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