Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Active Waiting; Sermon, December 3, 2017

Isaiah 64:1-9
Mark 13:24-37

Advent comes with a feeling that God is far away.  It begins not on a note of joy, but of despair. 

Humankind has reached the end of its rope. 

We have tried tribal leadership, and we weren’t unified enough to fend off enemies.  Then we tried Kings, but kings have flaws.  Then we tried putting the religious folk in charge, but they forgot the meaning of God in an attempt to define what was correct.  Eventually we tried a representative democracy (of course this is not in the bible), a style of government that is all inclusive; it tries to include the will of all, but it is also inclusive of all those flaws; disunity between tribes, leaders with flaws, and religious people who forget the meaning of God.

All our schemes to extract ourselves from the traps we have set for ourselves have come to nothing.  The human experiment has failed. We have now discovered we cannot save ourselves, and apart from the intervention of God, we are totally and irretrievably lost.  And so advent begins with a prayer of the prophet Isaiah that is both a lament and a plea.

“Remember,” Isaiah pleads, “Remember God, when you did awesome deeds that made the mountains tremble?  Remember when you did these things we did not expect?  Well, we have become so entangled in traps of our own making How about we have some of that right now?? Please? Just a little demonstration of powerpretty please?”

How comforting is it to ask for a sign, a demonstration of power that will right all the wrongs and set everything in order again?  Who has not at one time or another wondered the same thing?  If in biblical times God intervened in history with ‘awesome deeds’, why does God not do so today?  Surely there are flagrant wrongs that deserve to be righted.  Why would God deliver Israel from Egypt but not deliver us?  We want the mountains to quake and the nations to tremble at God’s presence and God’s immanent justice.  It is obviously comforting, since humankind has been doing it since the time of Isaiah.  

But that is not our God. 

Instead, the sufferings of our day are too often met with divine silence.  Isaiah names YHWH as a God who makes you wait.   “No one has seen or heard of a God like you, who works for those who wait for him.”

Well that seems like a mixed bag.  God is on our side, as long as we wait long enough.

The season of Advent is about waitingwaiting in darkness, seemingly forgotten, but believing in the promise of light.  That although the world is challenging, although we have suffering and corruption and the powers of evil oppress us daily, we remain confident that God will break into the world with God’s redeeming power, in the most unexpected way.  We hold onto the hope that God will break into the ordinary.

God’s refusal to repeat a Red Sea-type intervention does not mean that God has abandoned Isaiah, Israel, or us.  Our hope does not rely on God’s performance today in the same manner God acted in ancient stories, but it does rely on God being the same God yesterday, today and tomorrow; a God who hears our cries, a God who does not abandon us, a God who will finally redeem all that is lost in a new heaven and a new earth.  We draw on the knowledge of what has happened in the past to cement our certainty that God will be present in our future.

God wants to mold us into his beloved, into the examples of his kingdom, which becomes clear when God delivers a human figure to earth in the infant Jesus.  In the midst of darkness, God will deliver himself to us in the body of an infant – the most precious, most vulnerable, subtlest form of breaking into the world.

And in the meantime, Jesus tells us to be aware and keep alert in our gospel reading from Mark.  “Keep awake!” as if we were sleeping.  Are we sleeping? Have we been hitting the snooze button on living life?  Are there parts of our world that we've ignored as if we were in deep slumber?  Does the coming kingdom of heaven require our active participation?  What are the requirements on us to be 'alert'?  How do we avoid dozing, or purposely escaping into dreams, when the world is overwhelmed by darkness - and instead be ready with lit candles to herald the dawn?

What is requires of us is active waiting versus passive waiting... active waiting is full of expectation, a way of living into a world that is both already and not yet.  Willing ourselves to live into the world as if we are already living inGod's kingdom, showing love in our interactions and grace to our enemies.  Treating each of God's creations with gratitude.  Finding purpose and compassion in the eyes of those around us.  Operating out of a radical generosity of spirit, of grace, of hospitality; inviting all into God's kingdom through our actions. 

Each year, we come back to this period of wandering and waiting, looking for the rays of light.  And challenges us to see where God is already moving in our lives, or in the world.  Where are people coming together to solve big problems?  Where are people responding to the needs of the downtrodden?  Where are we comforting the grieving, and tending to the sick? God is in all those places.

Here in this congregation, in this house of the Lordwe have baptisms, weddings, and today a confirmation ceremony!

There are cooking nights, and Bible Study, Fair Wage Discussions and Lenten suppers – opportunities to listen closer for God’s voice.   We sing together, eat together, rejoice together, discuss together.  We are completing reorganization, with new, willing people taking the torch from former, dedicated people and every nomination spot filled. We are drawing on people’s strengths and inviting them to try new things, to see how God might engage them in growth.

Stay attuned to where God is moving in your life.  Perhaps you have reunited with loved ones long missed, or found reconciliation in a problematic relationship.  Perhaps you have found the sacredness in every moment, and slowed down to be grateful for each blessing in real time.  Yesterday this sanctuary was filled for the Memorial service for Bob Johnson, showing how many people you can impact with your passion and your character. There’s hardly a better example of someone who fought to keep awake and harness his days with God. Perhaps you have found a new passion, and new people who share your passion, or new interests to enrich your days. 


Reading this passage at the beginning of Advent reminds us that we are not in control of the way God works in our lives, but we have to keep watch for it.  Too often we try to keep God in a box that we can manage, taming God’s power, but the prophet reminds us that God cannot be contained. And, thank goodness for that, because that means that God’s grace and God’s surprises can also not be predicted or contained.  Jesus asks us to keep awake, because God moves in subtlety, but is always moving.

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