Advent 2 - Luke 1:68-79

“Song of the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:68-79)

Second Sunday of Advent, December 9, 2018

            We’re well into the season now!  Lights, music, TV commercials, cards in the mail; decorations around the city and around the neighborhood; shopping lists; eggnog; Christmas is upon us.  I love it, as many of us do.  But as much as we love Christmas, we treasure the story of the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ even more. 

The story of Jesus’ birth is a Holy Spirit story.  We can read Luke and clearly see that in the story of Jesus’ birth, the Holy Spirit is at work.  And, when the Holy Spirit is at work and we respond in faith, then the Spirit lead us into God’s peace.

The Spirit is mentioned over and over.  The angel who appeared to Mary promised the Holy Spirit would come upon her (1:35).  When Mary’s cousin Elizabeth came to visit, the Holy Spirit filled her (v.41).  Later in Luke we see the Holy Spirit fill Jesus and lead him into the wilderness to face Satan (4:1).

This morning we zero in on Luke 1:67.  Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy.  Earlier Luke described Zechariah as an aged priest descended from Abijah and his wife Elizabeth, also elderly and also a descendent of a priestly line, the line of Aaron.  The couple was childless and past childbearing years.  In this particular year, Zechariah was the one priest chosen to enter the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement to make the offering on behalf of the nation.  Alone in that sacred space, an angel came to him.  He wasn’t prepared for that!

Members of the clergy are as shocked and awed by direct encounters with divine beings as lay people are.  He wasn’t ready to meet an angel, but that’s what happened.  “Fear overwhelmed him” (1:12) as the angel told him that his barren wife Elizabeth would have a son who would be named John and be “filled with the Holy Spirit” (1:15). Zechariah couldn’t believe it, and said so.  The angel was not impressed by his skepticism, and so, he rendered old Zechariah mute until the miracle baby came. 

All who knew Elizabeth and Zechariah rejoiced with them at their son’s birth even as they marveled at the old priest’s inability to speak.  Their friends and family knew this child was from God.  Still, when Elizabeth gave the baby the name “John,” the neighbors and relatives called time out.  You can’t name him that.  John’s not a family name.  They all looked to silent Zechariah who grabbed a tablet and scrawled out “J-O-H-N.”  He held it up for all to see.  With the baby here, his voice was released.  Aloud he said, “His name is John.”

Then, the priest, the father of the miracle baby, Zechariah, silent the previous 9 months, sang this song.  It was a psalm in the form of Old Testament psalms.   The message was the stuff of prophets of old, word that had not been heard since Malachi, hundreds of years earlier. A psalm?  Yes.  A prophecy?  Most definitely, in the tradition of Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the great prophets.  Yet this song of Zechariah was also a song of the Holy Spirit.

Through the priest’s mouth the Spirit tells what God has done and is about to do.  Next, Luke will tell of the birth of Jesus.  John and Jesus, cousins; one born of a woman after she’s gone through menopause; the other born of a virgin; both inspiring great songs of faith: John, Zechariah’s benediction and Jesus, Mary’s magnificat.  John preceded Jesus.  After Jesus was baptized by John, his public ministry began, and John encouraged his own followers to leave him and follow Jesus.  Many did including some of the 12 disciples.

This story, flowing through Zechariah’s song, declares that God has acted. “Blessed be the Lord ... he has looked favorably upon his people” (1:68).  How?  “He has raised up a mighty savior” (v.69).  God’s people will be saved from powerful enemies who hate them.  God has shown mercy.  God has remembered his covenant with Abraham.  

Zechariah sings, because of what God has done, “we [may] serve him without fear.” Think Adam before the fall when he and Eve enjoyed complete freedom in their relationship with God in the garden, even freedom from sin.  When we put our trust in this savior foretold by Zechariah, we are rescued from the chains our own sins impress upon us. 

After praising God for Jesus, Spirit-inspired Zechariah then sings to his newborn son.  “You, child, will be called prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.”  In Jesus God has acted so that the very thing that separates us from God - God’s holiness verse our sinfulness - is removed.  He takes our sins on himself, and puts his righteousness on us.  When we put our trust in Jesus, we are made right where previously we were flawed.  Sin is that serious.  In sin, we are destined for death.  And we are all sinners.  But John the Baptist would come and show us that in Jesus, God forgives.

Zechariah sang of being rescued from enemies.  The three greatest foes of all people in all times and place  - the three greatest enemies you and I face - are antagonists who cannot be defeated: sin, Satan, and death.  In Christ, we are safe even from these three evils.

Zechariah closes singing, “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet onto the way of peace.”  Ah yes, the way peace, where the Spirit leads those who trust in God.  In God’s light, we see the world as it is and ourselves as we truly are, sinners.  Without God, we are lost.  The journey to salvation is a free gift, one full of joy.  That’s doesn’t mean it is easy.

Pastor and blogger Alan Brehm likens what we go through when we step onto God’s path following the Spirit to the process of refining glass.  Touring a glass-blowing factory, he watched as the glass was heated up to remove impurities and make it moldable.  The furnace was so hot, even at his safe distance, he felt uncomfortable.  The goal was to make the glass a thing of beauty.  The process required intense heat that would change the glass from impure to pure, from rigid to pliable.

When we turn to Christ and put our trust in Christ, we are that glass, heated up, refined, bent, shaped, molded, and made into something new.  God goes to work on us.  The Holy Spirit takes up residence in us just as Jesus takes our impurities, our sins, and re-creates us as right and acceptable before God.  John’s job, as Zechariah stated, was to go before Jesus, paving the way.  Further on in the story, we see John baptizing people beside the Jordan River (3:3). 

God accomplished His work in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of the son.  God continues the work of salvation today. The Holy Spirit appeals the hearts of women and men, drawing them to God’s light.  

Of course, when we keep our gaze fixed on the world around us, we cannot see God’s light or know God’s peace.  When we make life choices based on the values of our current culture instead of the transcendent values of Heaven, we cannot see God’s light or know God’s peace.  When we hold on to old grudges, refuse to give grace, and instead view our fellow human beings with malice in our hearts, we cannot see God’s light and know God’s peace.  We have to see the world, but see it in God’s light.

Jesus has come.  The light is shining.  God’s spirit is here.  We can accept God’s gift or not.  We are called to repent, to turn from the darkness in the world to God’s light.  This was preached by John the Baptist and taught by Jesus.  Turn away from darkness, turn to the light.  Turn away from sin, turn to God.  Turn away from false, impotent saviors, to turn to the one true Lord, the crucified, resurrected Jesus.  We may choose faith in Christ.  The Holy Spirit helps us.  But even with the Spirit’s help, God allows us free will.  We can turn away from God.  God will not force us to have faith. 

To walk God’s way, the way of peace, we have to be honest about our self-indulgence, our need to control others, and the aggressions and prejudices that live within us.  We have to present ourselves, the very worst of ourselves fully to God.  We have to go through the Spirit’s refining fire.  We not only hear and tell the story.  We enter it.

We enter the fire and come out new.  We approach as sinners and emerge as people born again, as new creations.  When we hear the song of the Holy Spirit, ... and believe it, ... and decide to live it, ... then we begin to understand what new life really means.  We start to grasp the peace the Bible promises.

Christmas is great.  The peace of God is a whole lot better. When we hear the Spirit’s son and allow ourselves to be led into faith, peace is what we get.

AMEN

Works Cited

Brehm, Alan. “The Waking Dreamer.” Refining, 1 Jan. 1970, thewakingdreamer.blogspot.com/2012/12/refining.html.

Love has Come

Love Has Come (John 13:34-35; 14:15-24)

Second Sunday of Advent: Love

December 10, 2017

            One of my favorite Christmas songs, popular about 35 years ago, was “Love has Come,” by Amy Grant.  Here are the lyrics from the second verse:

If I could have a special dream
Coming true on Christmas morn'
I would want the world to see
How his father smiled when Christ was born
The greatest gift the world has known!
So come on kids, look high and low
For all the toys you've dreamed to find
But I believe you'll never know
A greater joy than Jesus' love inside[i]

And then after the chorus begins, “Love has come, for the world to know.”  The song continues from there.

            As much I love that song, I never put to it the question I’ll ask right now.  Why did love need to come?  Wasn’t love already here?  Was love missing?  Hold onto that thought.  Was love missing?  Is that why God needed to come to earth and inhabit human skin?

            Now, hear the words of Jesus in John 13.  “I give you a new commandment.”  “New” is a favorite word of the New Testament.  In Christ we become new creations.  At the end of the last book, Revelation, God promises a New Heaven and a New Earth, which is actually this earth made new, joined with Heaven made new.  It sounds lovely, inviting, but why did Jesus feels the need to give a new commandment? And why was that the commandment he felt was necessary? “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

            We’ve got a love problem.  This lack of love prompted Jesus to give this specific command as a foundation in the new age that dawned with his coming.  His so called new command was actually an old command, dating back to Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.  When asked, on numerous occasions, what is the greatest of God’s commands, Jesus always responded the same way.  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.  And, love your neighbor as yourself.”  This is the core of the Christian life.  We love God with everything that is in us, with our very selves, with the fullness of our lives.  This love we give to God is seen, made manifest, in the way we love our neighbors.  And neighbor, as defined in the Bible, is anyone we meet.

            Jesus felt the need to say that because he looked around and he didn’t see God-worshippers or anyone else doing that.  Amy Grant wrote and performed a song that declared Love had come with Jesus’ arrival because she was a Jesus-follower (and still is).  Her understanding of the world was such that she believed without Jesus, this love was missing. 

            We look around and see deep pain.  The way people thought about love in Jesus’ day did not alleviate the suffering caused by disease, colonization, dehumanization of people, and poverty.  Today, there is as much pain around us as in Jesus’ day.  We have 2000 years of technological advancement, developments in medicine, intellectual development, and developments in mobility and communication.  Yet, with all that’s been achieved, we look around and see as much pain as ever.  As many people hurt now as they ever have, and this is true in wealthy nations like the United States, just as it is in poorer countries. 

            Humanity has a condition no doctor can treat, no medicine can cure, and no technology can fix.  Each of us commits our individual sins.  Each one us in our own way is an agent of pain through our sinfulness.  That’s not all we are.  We are also each made in the image of God, each one very good, as it says in Genesis 1.  But because we have free will, we sin.  We willingly turn from God.  The condition of sin plagues humanity and all of creation. 

            There are many results of the sin condition.  The sin condition bears fruit.  One example is divorce.  A divorce is a death, the death of a relationship in which both participants originally vowed to stay together “until death parted them.”  Then those vows are discarded and the divorce happens.  And the insidiousness of sin leads our society to say it’s no big deal, not even a bad thing. 

Another condition is sexual confusion and sex scandals.  We treat sex casually, ignoring God’s boundaries, which are in place to keep sex healthy and beautiful and tied to a relationship of love.  The idea that one would keep himself or herself and wait for marriage is seen as quaint, childish, or old-fashioned.  Society giggles at the thought that one would actually submit to scripture as a guide for sexuality.  This is another result of the condition of sin.

Poverty is another result.  People living empty lives, void of meaning and utterly lacking in direction is another reality produced by our sinful condition.  We could keep listing things.  The human body gets a virus and symptoms break out: aches and pains, a rash, nausea, a runny nose.  The world has contracted sin as a sickness and broken relationships, toxic sexuality, violence, poverty, and emptiness are some of the symptoms, the results of our condition.

Our ideas about what love is aren’t helping.  Love as a feeling can’t be trusted.  I don’t mean to say that feelings are bad.  I love it when I feel love for my family.  There’s nothing better than being in love.  But, let me tell if you haven’t ever been married, there are days when you feel a lot of things other than love.  It doesn’t mean you bail out.  I hear of people getting divorced because they’re “not in love anymore.”  Love isn’t something you go into or come out of, it is something that’s in you.  It’s something you give, even when you don’t feel it.  Feelings are real, but they can’t be the only thing that drives us or even the first thing.

Love as a feeling doesn’t help with the pain that sin has imposed on the world.  Neither does love as romance.  I’m a big fan of sappy love songs.  I enjoy the way they make me feel, especially the ones from Broadway musicals like Phantom of the Opera.  But I know that romance, as fantastic as it can be, is fleeting.  Starry-eyed love does not heal the world’s pain.  Even the few people who are lucky to live the fairytale ending have to wake the next day and live that day under the condition of sin. 

God saw the world as it is and continues to see the world as it is.  God’s response was to take on flesh and walk among us.  God knew sin was too powerful and we could not overcome it.  So, in Jesus God came.  Here’s how Amy Grant thinks about in her Christmas song:

Love has come
For the world to know
As the wise men knew
Such a long time ago
And I believe that angels sang
That hope had begun
When the god of glory
Who is full of mercy
Yes, the god of glory
Sent his son

            Chris Tomlin, in his Christmas song “Noel,” sets this love God showed in Jesus in theological categories.  The opening lines are “Love incarnate, love divine.”  “Love divine,” is Godly love – love that human beings are incapable of producing.  We could work on developing our society for another 2000 years and we’d be no closer to divine love.  We have to depend on God for it, and we desperately need it to fully be what we were created to be – God’s image bearers.

            “Love incarnate” means this Godly love is here.  Incarnation is the idea of being completely and permanently present.  When Jesus is referred to as the incarnation of God, we are declaring that God walked among us as a human being.  Jesus was not God disguised as a human.  Jesus emptied himself of his divinity, Paul says in Philippians 2.  He never stopped being God, but he emptied himself to the point that he was fully human.  He was fully present.  To sing “Love incarnate, love divine” as Advent worship is to insist that Jesus is love and in Jesus, God’s love is fully with us.

            The love is seen in Jesus’ interactions with people like blind beggars, outcast tax collectors, poor gentiles, scandalized prostitutes, and uneducated peasant fishermen.  All were welcomed.   The love is in all of Jesus’ teaching.  And ultimately, it is expressed in his sacrificial death for us.  How do we live into this love?

            In John 14, he tells the disciples and tells us today, “If you love me you will keep my commandments” (v.15).  The verb “keep” has several connotations.  In saying, “keep my commandments,” Jesus tells us to pay attention.  The commands are “love God” and “love neighbor.”  So, we have to pay attention to God’s constant presence, and to the needs of hurting people around us.  We live into the love that has come by being attentive to people and to God.

            A second connotation is “observe.”  We love God by worshiping Him.  Our observance happens in our participation with the church in the singing of worship songs, communal prayer, and communal engagement with the Word of God.  We live into the love that has come by living lives of worship.

            A third connotation of the word “keep,” as in “keep my commandments” is fulfill.  Jesus’ will is done, his word fulfilled, when we extend ourselves to help others.  To whom will you show special kindness?  What hurting person will be blessed because you decided to give of yourself?  When we sacrifice our time, our resources, and our hearts on behalf of others, then the world begins to experience divine love.  The shallow, fleeting expressions of love that don’t help the world’s pain are eclipsed by the God love that lives in us and pours out of us because we have turned to Christ. 

            Divine love is not a feeling or sentiment, but a choice and action.  We can only live in this divine love with God’s help and Jesus also knew this.  So, in the same speech, John 14:16, he promises, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you the Advocate to be with you forever.”  The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, God the Comforter, is with us, helping us see the love of God in real ways in our lives. 

            The world is in pain.  Maybe you know your own specific version of that pain.  Have no fear.  The Christmas story is that love has come in Jesus Christ.  We can know that love, live in that love, and draw other hurting people into that love of God.  It begins as we turn fully to Him.  Love has come.  Receive it by giving your heart to the Lord today.

AMEN  

---

[i] Songwriters: Amy Grant Gill / John Shane Keister / Michael Whitaker Smith

Love Has Come lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, Capitol Christian Music Group

At Home in the Story (Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 1:67-77)

As Christians with an evangelical bent, we feel called to scripture.  The Bible is special, unlike any other writing.  With tools of analysis we read critically, probing, questioning, and framing.  As we do this, we hold our sense that the Bible is God’s holy word and will stand up to our scrutinizing. 

            The Bible stories speak in the real world historical situations from which them come, but the stories also reveals the Bible as transcendent, speaking beyond the historical circumstances of the original writing. 

            With this in mind, how do we Christian, Easter people live in the Old Testament?  How do we find a home there?

For instance, how can we live in Jeremiah’s prophecy? We don’t understand exile.  We don’t know what it is like to see our nation fall into slavery. 

Moses led the ancient Israelites out of slavery, performed wonders from God along the way, and led them to the land Promised by God.  David led the nation into the city of peace, Jerusalem.  That city became Zion, the city of God. 

However, God’s people worshiped statues and idols.  God’s people dishonored the poor.  So God handed them over to foreign powers: Philistines, then Assyrians, and finally, Babylon. 

To the Babylonians, Jerusalem was not the city of God.   It was the capital of a backwater colony that was easily overrun. God’s chosen people, became slaves.

How do we feel the story?  Exile is not our experience.  Where is our connection?  How do we find a home in this story?  We have been told this is the word of God and in Jesus we are included among the people of God.  Through his prophet, God said, “I will fulfill the promise I made.  … I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up from David.”  What does that mean?  Did Jeremiah know that in the next part of the story there would be a virgin birth in a stable?  Did he see the cross coming?  Or the resurrection?  No.

How do we find the home we know is in the Old Testament but seems distant?  I suggest we pay attention to what the prophet tells us about this God who is our God.  Jeremiah says God promises that something better is on the horizon. 

God’s people had been utterly defeated by a large, powerful empire, the Babylonians.  In that situation of abject humiliation, God reassures His people that He sees them.  God is in control even in the horror of exile, and God will bring a new day through a future descendant of David.  When the Promised One comes, the people will experience the new thing God is inevitably going to do.  Jeremiah does not know what God will do.  But he knows God is going to do something. 

Insight into God’s character connects us to Jeremiah.  God is a God of promise.  God is present.  God is a God who acts.  We can relate to the words, but, what does it allmean?  What exactly has been promised?  What is it, specifically, that God does?

In Luke’s gospel we meet the elderly priest Zechariah. His wife has already gone through menopause.  They have no children.  Then an angel tells Zechariah they are to have a son. 

No one around them says this is it!  This is that Righteous Branch, that descendant of David that Jeremiah described!  No one says that.  Zechariah doubts the angel’s message, and who can blame him?  But the angel silences him. For 9 months, the priest cannot speak. 

Finally the miracle baby comes and Zechariah’s speech is restored and so too is his spiritual insight.  He remembers that God made a promise and that God was and is active in the life of his people.  A miracle pregnancy and a 9 month imposition of silence were effective reminders.  When Zechariah opened his mouth, he had a lot to say. 

Someone asked, what will become of the miracle son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, the baby named John?

⁶⁷ Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:

⁶⁸ “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
    for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
⁶⁹ He has raised up a mighty savior^[a] for us
    in the house of his servant David,
⁷⁰ as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
⁷¹     that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
⁷² Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
    and has remembered his holy covenant,
⁷³ the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
    to grant us ⁷⁴ that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, ⁷⁵ in holiness and righteousness
    before him all our days.
⁷⁶ And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
    for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
⁷⁷ to give knowledge of salvation to his people
    by the forgiveness of their sins.

Interestingly, the priest Zechariah answers a question about his own son, with a prophecy about someone else – Jesus.  What of your son, Zechariah?  He answers that God is about to change the world through ‘Yeshua,’ Jesus, the one named ‘salvation.’ 

Finally, after 8 stanzas of praising God’s action in the coming one, only then does he speak not about but to his own son, John.  “You, my child, will be the prophet of the most high who will give knowledge of salvation and forgiveness to God’s people.”

Zechariah knows things Jeremiah did not know.  We know things he did not know.  We know much that the disciples did not know.  Before we read about the cross, we know the story ends in resurrection.  We know Jesus will go to be with the Father and will send His Holy Spirit.  We have the completed Bible.

Because of this are we more at home in the entire story, Jeremiah and Luke included?  The crucifixion and resurrection happened almost 2000 years ago.  The Second Coming, when Jesus makes things right in the world as he brings our final rescue from sin and death is in some uncertain future time that will come long after our earthly lives have ended.  Yes, God is present in the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit is elusive.  Yes, God is at work in His church.  But the church is so full imperfect people that the messes we create make it hard to see God when we are together. 

We asked Jeremiah is what do you mean?  How can we be at home in your words?  Now, we ask Luke and Zechariah, what does it matter?  Between the resurrection, 2000 years ago, and the Second Coming, 2000 or so years from now, what good is the story today? What is my part in it and why would is it good news with all that’s happening in the world right now?

Each week of Advent this year, we are singing verses from the hymn “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.”  Jesus is anticipated, born to set people free and release us from sin, and Jesus gives rest.  It’s there in the words.  We sing it.  Jesus is the hope of all the earth and the joy of every longing heart.  And every heart is a longing heart. 

Yet, this sense of distance persists.  We read the Bible and read it some more, we go through worship every year, and somehow it feels beautiful for the season, but just that.  How can this story go from being just another feature of December something more?  I know God is in the story and is inviting me in, but there are times I feel more lost the more I read and more distant, the more familiar it becomes.

This week, I went to UNC hospital several days in a row visiting various HillSong folks.  One day when I pulled in to the parking deck, I had a parking strategy in mind.  I knew which entrance I needed and I was visualizing where I thought I’d find a good spot for my car.  As I was doing this, I was surprised to find a spot on the first level.  I never get spots there.  But here it was.  So I left the car there and went in.

I was in there a long time.  When I came out, I had a sinking feeling.  I could not remember where I parked.  I the parking strategy that filled my mind when I had first arrived hours earlier.  The memory of where I actually left the car, on the first level where I never park, was gone.    

So I walked all through level two, and did not find my car.  I thought it was there, but I tried level three.  I walked every row; no car.  Doubt crept in.  I didn’t park on level four, did I?  That’s under construction.  I would have remembered that.  So, hurriedly glanced down a few rows of level one, but I knew my car wasn’t there.

So I kept searching.  I knew what I was seeking was in this parking garage. My feet ached from walking.  Relief was in that building.  The home we need is in the Bible –words of hope, peace, and love and truth.  All we need to thrive in the face of the struggles of our day has been revealed in God’s word, both Testaments.

After an hour of wandering through UNC hospital’s parking deck, I called my wife.  She drove over with H__ and M__.  As they came through the entry gate on level one, H__ said, “I see Daddy’s car.”  Candy called me and said, “Tell me exactly where you are and just stay right there.”  I got in the van and M__ said, “Dad, why couldn’t find your car?”

Sometimes even in church, even in the pages of the Bible, it can be hard to find our home.  Everything need and long for is before us, but there is background noise and we are so vulnerable to sin, we miss seeing God even though God is right here. 

It helps me to remember that the Bible is the ongoing story of God.  Jeremiah, lives in one part.  The days of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection are part of that story.  God interacts with human beings in each part. 

As we saw from Jeremiah, God is the promise-giver.  The priest Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, shows that God is the promise-keeper.  Jesus on the cross and at the empty tomb brings the best news; the promise is a promise of eternal life.  We can count on it.

We can also count on God involving himself in our daily lives.  God’s story is not paused between the end of book of Revelation and the Second Coming.  God’s story is going on right now.  We are actors in it.  The stuff of our lives matters to God. 

I was focused on this idea that I am in God’s story throughout that silly hour when I wandered around the parking deck.  I thought, “I don’t know when I’ll find my car, but God is doing something and that fills me with hope.  And I need to be responsive to God in my life.”

Recently in a project I am organizing, I have asked God to bring additional people.  Numerous times, I just asked for people.  And God has done it! But then, I looked at the people God brought I said, “Not them, God.  I meant other people.”  God said to me, “You never needed people for this because you had me.  I didn’t give you these specific people because you needed them.  I gave you these specific people because your heart won’t be right until you see the beauty in these individuals that I see.” 

This happened because these individuals along with me are in God’s story.  You are too. 

At the Lord’s Supper table, Jesus keeps us in the story.  “Do this,” he said, “eat this bread and drink this cup in remembrance of me.”  Communion centers us.  We live stories than God’s.  We can find our home in other places.  The discipline of communion brings us back to God.

We come to the table at Jesus’ invitation.  He invites all who have received forgiveness and come into life in His name.  Of course receiving forgiveness implies we need forgiveness.  We come as admitted sinners, owning our brokenness.

At this table, we remember who we were, but also who we are.  We eat the body of Christ.  We, the forgiven ones, are filled with Him.  We drink the cup and are filled with eternal life because Jesus shed his blood.  Jesus, who died and rose, left his Holy Spirit to live in us and among us.  At the table, we encounter God and He revives us as He shows us our place in His story.  We can face the things of life, the good and the bad because God is here and we are His.  In Him, we find our home. 

AMEN

Isaiah 40:1-11 2nd Sunday of Advent

Second Sunday of Advent – December 7, 2014

          She hasn’t eaten in days.  Her son, 10, and daughter, 5 look at her with sunken, hungry eyes.  The Babylonian army has marched around Jerusalem for weeks.  Supplies have long run out. 

          Then, the assault begins.  It does not take long.  They break through the city walls.  There is no resistance.  The few soldiers who put up a defense are quickly impaled on Babylonian spears.  Families are dragged from their homes, kicked into the dust of the streets that flow with Israelite blood.  They are forced to watch as the Babylonians burn Solomon’s temple. 

          Then, the march.  Mile after mile, in chains, they walk to their new home, their new normal as slaves in Babylon.  She does not survive the journey.  Her son and daughter do. 

Now they live as people without rights on the bottom rung of the social ladder in Babylon.  The little boy and the little girl are now in their 70’s, the elder generation of Jews in this foreign place.  They must do what they can to keep memories of Israel alive.

          They have to tell the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Joseph and the amazing things he accomplished when he was in slavery in Egypt only lives on as they tell the stories.  They remember Moses and the Exodus through the Red Sea.  They tell of Joshua and settling the Promised Land.  They remember the victories of David and the golden age of King Solomon.  But now the brother and sister are old, tired, broken people – people who have spent their lives under heel in Babylon.  For decades they have listened to their Babylonian overlords mock their God. 

          Is it true?  Are the Gods of Babylon superior to Yahweh, the God of Moses, the God of David?  Is their God as dead as they feel?

          A rumor spreads.  A new young prophetic voice is rising in the Jewish quarter.  Young people are talking about what he has said and written.  At a make-shift gathering where one of the few available scrolls of the Torah is read on the Sabbath (thank goodness the Babylonians allow this), people are saying a Jewish prophet has something new to say. 

          This old man and old woman are too tired to hope.  Their dreams were shattered decades ago, a thousand miles way.  Everything they hoped for was violently ripped from them.  Still, they go.  Why not?  What else is there to do?

          It is the largest crowd of Jews they have ever seen and there is a buzz.  The young prophet is there and speaks.  The people who have lived in slavery for so long are overwhelmed by this prophet’s words. 

Comfort, O comfort my people,
    says your God.
² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

          Can there be comfort?  The people of God have been swallowed by the sands of history, buried under the force of an enemy too powerful for God.  No, says the prophet.  What happened did not come about because Babylon was so strong.  Mighty Babylon; don’t buy it for a moment.  In dragging Israel off to exile in 586 BC, Babylon was simply a tool in the hands of the Almighty God, so says the prophet. 

          Exile did not happen because of Babylon’s strength but because of Israel’s sin.  Now the prophet says the penalty for that sin has been paid.  The Lord’s punishment has happened and now a new day begins.  The Lord Almighty allowed Jerusalem to be destroyed because Israel abandoned the conditions of her covenant with God.  God did not abandon them.  God does not do that.  God has always been and always will be faithful and sovereign. 

          To the Jews in Babylon, people stuck in their grief and their loss, Isaiah offers a new word from God. 

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
⁴ Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
⁵ Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
    and all people shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

          The prophet gives three commands.  The first is “comfort.”  Heavenly beings are ordered by the most-high God to give solace to His people.  No second rate Babylonian deity has defeated Yahweh, Jehovah, the God of the Bible. 

Scripture gives glimpses of a heavenly realm that is full of creatures we cannot understand or imagine.  There is no organizational chart.  The one clearly stated truth is God is supreme.  The heavenly beings mentioned in Genesis, Job, Daniel, Revelation and other places are superior to us, but subject to God.  This includes whatever otherworldly beings there were that oversaw Babylon.  “Comfort” – the word we see in Isaiah 40:1 – is a verb in the imperative form.  The heavenly beings must obey God’s order to comfort his people. 

A second command is “prepare.” The prophet prepares the way of the Lord – the way God will lead His people back to the Promised Land.  King Cyrus who will lead Persia to overthrow Babylon is to prepare the Jews by freeing them, sending them home in a second Exodus.  Centuries later, a wild eyed prophet named John prepares the world for the coming of Jesus by preaching repentance and baptizing those who come to him. 

And we who read the Bible and worship the Lord and believe God is real and is all powerful and does love us – we are commanded to prepare the world for Jesus’ return.  We do this when we bear witness to His grace and the salvation we have in Jesus.  We help clear the path into the hearts of friends who will listen to our testimony.  The clutter that obstructs the way into the heart is removed and they are made ready to meet God.

Comfort.  Prepare.  The third command is “Cry out.”  Proclaim God’s word.  The prophet knows this is to Him directly.  But, what he asks, is He to cry out? 

All people are grass,
    their constancy is like the flower of the field.
⁷ The grass withers, the flower fades,
    when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
    surely the people are grass.
⁸ The grass withers, the flower fades;
    but the word of our God will stand forever.

All people are grass.  The King of Babylon is grass just like the blind beggar who lives in the ally mud, day after day, hoping someone will spare a bit of bread.  All people are grass. Eric Garner, Darren Wilson, Michael Brown, Bill O’Reilly – all people are equal.  All wither and fade.  What am I to “cry out,” Isaiah asks.  All people are grass. The wealthy slumlord and the tenant trapped in poverty stand before God in the same condition.  Right now one has it easy and the other suffers, but that inequality will not last.  Inequality and injustice will not stand, not before the almighty God.  Suffering happens for a season, but God will put all things right.

The tears that suffering brings are real and should be shed.  Maybe some here today have dealt with serious hurt and loss.  Tears pour forth from shattered hearts.  God sees.  God knows pain is on the prowl and death is claiming victims in our country, in our world right now.  God hears our cries. 

Isaiah does not whimsically dismiss the pain of right now as if it were not real.  Isaiah knows suffering.  The Old Testament knows disillusionment, defeat, and death.  And most of the Jews of the 6^th century BC were ready to give in as would people of any nation at any time.  But the prophet saw beyond the immediate dire circumstances.  The prophet was given God’s view.  The prophet knew and we can know that God is a deliverer. 

Get you up to a high mountain,
    O Zion, herald of good tidings;^[a]
lift up your voice with strength,
    O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,^[b]
    lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
    “Here is your God!”
¹⁰ See, the Lord God comes with might,
    and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
    and his recompense before him.
¹¹ He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
    he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
    and gently lead the mother sheep.

Living as we do in the age of the church, we know the ultimate fulfillment of their words.  Isaiah knew God would gather his lambs in his arms.  We know how God did it.  We know Jesus. 

The birth of Jesus reminds us that God sees the inequalities and injustices that show how broken the world is.  God sees and has done something about it.  In Jesus, God empathizes with us and takes upon himself the worst of us and nails it to a cross.  Our sins, our pain, our grief, our loss – it has been crucified with Christ.  In Him, we are no longer slaves to sin.  We are new creations.  While we linger in the fallen world, we serve as today’s pointers.

We aren’t prophets.  From time to time, prophetic words must be spoken.  But we are not prophets like Isaiah.  We are witnesses.  In this age, the people of God, all who are in Christ, bear witness to what God has done, to the truth of His kingdom, and to the salvation we have in Jesus.

Withering grass and fading flowers reminded Isaiah that in the end, all are equal before God – equally small, equally sinful, equally lost.  The greatest athlete, the president of the United States, the handicapped homeless child, you, and me – we all fade.  But, Isaiah tells us that God gathers in his shepherd arms.  God holds us, feeds us, and lifts us up to where God is. 

Jesus uses different metaphors, a table, and a cross.  At that cross, we are all dead.  He invites we who are dead to the table – all of us.  The famous physician has a seat right next to the unemployed alcoholic.  The imperfect, the defective, the broken – we sit together in a community of love. 

We serve each other bread – his body broken, our sins covered.  We serve each other wine – his blood shed, eternal life given to us. 

As we walk in the promises of Isaiah, acknowledging that pain is real but has been defeated by the power of Christ, we walk to the table.  We walk arm-in-arm in a family of love – the love of God.  We dare to believe that God is real, can be trusted, and will make the world right.  We dare to live in that belief.  And then we go out and testify to life, life in Christ.  In this age – the age of the church – we walk as those who are in the light and we spend our lives bearing witness, telling of the God who gathers us in His shepherd arms and gives us comfort.

AMEN