Advent 2 C December 6, 2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Malachi 3: 1-4 + Luke 1: 68-79 + Philippians 1: 3-11 + Luke 3: 1-6
Grace and peace to you from the One for whom we wait…Jesus the Christ. Amen.
In the classic holiday movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life” the angel Clarence makes this request to God: Might I perhaps win my wings?
I’ve been waiting for over 200 years now, sir, and people ARE beginning to talk.
Waiting is never an easy thing go do. Even when we are waiting on wonderful things, it can try one’s patience to wait. My niece and her husband are eagerly awaiting the birth of their first child. Some of us are waiting on baseball season, or waiting to see if at long last Alabama will reach their rightful place as #1 in the AP poll later when it’s released later today.
There’s not a lot we can do in the above scenarios, to bring about an end to the waiting, though. Each Advent we turn our thoughts and our prayers and our lessons and our liturgy to this same theme….of waiting. We wait for Jesus, who has already come into the world to come again. We hear the stories of those who wait for his arrival….Elizabeth and Zechariah; Mary and Joseph; God’s people Israel. And yet it seems that there is not much we can do to bring about an end to the waiting.
A few years ago John Mayer, the contemporary musician wrote a song about waiting on the world to change. It’s a song of frustration of a young generation, who feel lost and misunderstood….so they keep waiting on the world to change. When we listen to these lyrics we could take the frustration of a young generation and put it in almost any time in modern history. There has always been a movement of change that stirs from the rising generation as it sees the error of the one preceding it. And that should give us hope. That they are waiting on the world to change means that maybe, just maybe, they will accomplish more for peace and justice than we have managed.
The Psalmody for today is another song by one who is watching a new generation being born. Zechariah, who is the father of John the Baptizer, sings this amazing song of praise following the births of his own son, John, and Mary’s son, Jesus. Zechariah is waiting on the world to change through the fulfillment of the promise God made to the people Israel. That they would be saved from their enemies and from those who hate them. And in these births, it seems to Zechariah that this promised change, this salvation, has come to pass. But it wasn’t just that they would be saved….it was that they would be rescued in order to serve God without fear or reservation for the remainder of their days.
For what then, do we who live on the other side of the fulfillment of this promise wait? Are we waiting on the world to change? I doubt that there are any of us who would not say that it needs to change. It needs to change into a world where mass murder is not simply another news story….and into a world where children no longer go hungry…either around the globe or in our neighborhoods. It needs to change to become a place where the wisdom of our elders is valued and heard and where they never have to struggle to afford health care. It needs to change into a place where no one ever has to seek shelter under an overpass or in tent cities or in the doorways of church buildings
This is where the story of John the Baptizer is helpful to us. In our readings today we went from his father’s song of praise at his birth in Luke 1 as our psalmody, to the Gospel reading from the third chapter when Luke writes of the now grown John, son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. The word of God has come to him in the wilderness and he is proclaiming that word across the whole region.
The word of God, as it comes to John also came to the prophet Isaiah. “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
Can you imagine it? Valleys that are filled and mountains that are leveled and crooked places made straight? This is kingdom work….this is Gospel work….this is work that is possible only because Jesus is in and among the people. But it is work for ALL flesh. It’s easy to overlook that at the end of all of those earth moving verses: “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Not, just some of the people. Not even just the people. But all flesh.
This truth is at the heart of the Gospel message….that God comes and lives among us not because we deserve it and not because there are a few chosen who are in and few not chosen who are out. God comes and lives among us and the world is turned upside down so that all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
What difference would it make in the world if we remembered these words and pondered them and thought of them before we judged one another as worthy or unworthy as in or out? In this country, and in others, we have made a dangerous move in that direction. People are painted with wide brush strokes. Because there are some terrorists who were Muslims, they are all Muslims. But if that is going to be the logic, let us not forget Dylan Roof, the murderer in that Charleston church. Because if that is going to be the logic, then, since Dylan Roof was an ELCA Christian, all ELCA Christians are mass murderers. You see, it just doesn’t work.
When John and Isaiah talked about the world changing in ways that involve mountains and valleys and crooked roads, they were, of course, not speaking literally. They were describing a world that would need to be overturned to reflect the peace of God. A world where skin color and religious tradition and education level and political views and gender and sexuality were not used to determine worthiness. A world where all are loved and valued and cared for.
We have heard it said here that the way we participate in God’s work in this world….the way we are part of overturning the known world for the world that God intends…is to effect change and to be in relationship where we are. Right here. On the corner of Greenwood and 132nd in North Seattle. And we do that in so many good ways. We feed the hungry and we provide socks and hand warmers and hats and smiles and love for our neighbors. And we have indicated our desire to do it by providing homes for the homeless. But I want to tell you the stories of two of our neighbors this week and how they were moved by a message of reconciliation and peace from this place.
These stories are both about social media. They both involve posts to our congregation’s Facebook page or about our congregation on Facebook. On Tuesday it was my intent to change the Greenwood Ave. sign. I was going to post an invitation to our mid week Advent service there, but time got away from me and it remains up still: Jesus is a Middle Eastern Refugee. On Wednesday, there was notification that someone had posted about our church on their Facebook page. A neighbor named Marci Fradkin snapped a picture of our sign in the darkness and posted it to her Facebook page with this caption: “Saw This on the Way Home. Loved it” and she noted her location, at Luther Memorial Lutheran Church, Seattle. Fifty one of her friends “liked” the photo. Fifty one people we don’t know at all, fifty two if you count Marci, who saw a message of inclusion and love. And then, on Saturday, when I was still tardy in my intentions to change the sign, we received this post to our page from Amanda Habiba: “Hi! I’m a Muslim lady who drove by your church yesterday! I LOVE your sign! I took a picture and posted it to my wall. Much love to my Christian friends.”
I know that these are small things, that they do not bring back lives lost to hatred or bigotry and that they don’t cancel out the noisy rhetoric of our day. But they do offer a glimpse of what it means to bear the light of the Christ child into the world outside of our doors. Until then, with Zechariah and Isaiah and John the Baptizer and John Mayer and countless generations we await the time when, 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 into the way of peace.
Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come. Amen.
“I am so tired of waiting, aren’t you? For the world to become good and beautiful and kind?” – Langston Hughes