Pastor Erik

Homily: Wednesday, December 9, 2009: Advent Vespers

Text: Malachi 3:1-4

 

Almost two-hundred and seventy years ago the world was treated to the debut performance of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah, a masterpiece that set words from scripture to music so profoundly that centuries later we are barely able to read the scriptures without hearing the music – so that this past Sunday, as I stood in the central aisle and read the gospel text from Luke, “every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low,” it was all I could do to not break into song, singing “ev – ery vaaalee…shall be exalted.”

So it seems fitting that on this second Wednesday in our Advent vespers series titled, “Promissory Notes,” in which we are exploring the Hebrew scriptures that Christians have used during the season of Advent to connect our joy at the birth of Christ with the ancient expectation of our Jewish brothers and sisters that God will indeed come to save us, that we would acknowledge the musical notes that have carried the promises of the prophets forward in time, to deliver them to us.

Last week we heard again the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who delivered God’s assurance that “the days are surely coming” when God will fulfill the promises made to God’s people to inaugurate an era of justice and righteousness. I used the image of bearer bonds as promissory notes, legal tender, that are more than an investment in the future, but that have value for whoever holds them. That God’s promissory notes are valid here and now for those who bear them, which is us.

Tonight we return to the words of the prophet Micah that we heard this past Sunday. He also was a messenger of God’s promises – in fact his name, Malachi, means “my messenger.” Malachi, however, complicates our response to the news that God will come to deliver the world from its sin. He says,

The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple…indeed, he is coming… But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears. For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify…and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.

Handel’s Messiah incorporates these words into the bass solo, “But who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire.” Then the entire chorus comes in on “And he shall purify the sons of Levi.” It is a turbulent movement, full of descending arpeggios fired off in rapid succession. It carries a promise forward in time, but it sounds more like the kind of promise your mother might have made when she told you, “wait ‘til your father gets home.”

When Messiah was first presented in London in 1741 Handel wrote to a friend, “I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I wished to make them better.” That, I suppose, is the tone behind both Handel’s score and the prophet’s words. I can imagine Malachi’s partner saying to him after he delivered his oracle, “you came off a little harsh,” and Malachi replying, “I sought not only to comfort the afflicted, but to afflict the comfortable.”

Malachi was speaking to the nation of Israel after their return from exile to their homeland, Judah. In the interval of their oppression some had been left behind to labor under the occupier, some had moved to the land from other places and had intermarried into the nation of Israel, and some were returning with the desire that everything should return to normal. Each feels like the chaos of their lives is a result of the tainting influence of the other.

At first pass, it sounds as though Malachi is siding with those who simply want to return to how things used to be. He condemns the kinds of offerings that the Levitical priests are making, and says that after their purification the relationship between Judah and Jerusalem will be “as in the days of old and as in former years.”

We understand this impulse. We all long, from time to time, for a return to the way things were. A simpler time. We resent those who have complicated our comfortable traditions. It can sometimes feel as though strangers have set up camp in our own homes, our sanctuaries, our neighborhoods, our nations. The struggles of Israel are our struggles as well.

But the opening words of this promissory note make it clear that God is not coming to confirm our prejudices or conform to our comfort zones. “The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight – indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?”

We imagine that we delight in God’s intentions for the world, but the familiar words of one prayer of confession make it clear that we ourselves have departed from that path. Do you remember the prayer, “for the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways.” Malachi speaks to us, one and all, to remind us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We may delight in the promise of the covenant, but we do not delight in the will of God that calls us to make peace with those who threaten our sense of self, our boundaries and our desires to walk in our own ways.

Not more than a decade after Handel’s Messiah was first performed, he had become blind. Yet George Frideric Handel continued to conduct Messiah annually to raise funds for the Foundling Hospital in London, a hospital served widows and orphans of the clergy. He did not simply make beautiful music to bring praise upon himself, or glory to God; he made beautiful music in order to produce offerings that would be pleasing to the Lord.

Handel’s promissory notes do more than entertain, and Malachi’s prophetic words do more than comfort, they are a refining fire. They convict us. They purify us. They make us better – better able to welcome the coming of the one who promises to inaugurate a new world order of peace and justice. Promises that should bring us joy, even as they make us wonder what in our own lives must give way for this new world to emerge.

Amen.

Sermon: Sunday, December 6, 2009: Second Sunday of Advent

Texts: Malachi 3:1-4  •  Luke 1:68-79  •  Philippians 1:3-11  •  Luke 3:1-6

 

Earlier this week, a man walked into my office off the street that I’d never seen before and haven’t seen since. My first impression was that he seemed a little disoriented, and then I smelled the alcohol. We sat down in the Lesher Lounge and he put his head in his hands as he asked me to help him. “I can’t feel God in my heart anymore,” he began. “I used to be able to feel God in my heart, but I can’t anymore. Now my mother has kicked me out of the house and my brothers will have nothing to do with me. Can you help me?”

He hadn’t brought up the fact that he’d been drinking, but I went ahead and asked. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’m drunk,” he said. And, then he shared that it’s his drinking that led to his family’s rejection of him. “That’s why I don’t believe in God anymore, because God gave up on me. God let this happen to me. But I do believe in angels, I’ve seen one. It appeared outside my window. It was beautiful. No one believes me, but I have. Do you believe me?”

At this point it was hard to know what to say for a number of reasons. Mainly because the man was still too drunk to be able to track the conversation well. Perhaps you know this from your own experiences of drinking, but the conversations that you have while drunk that feel utterly profound often are less profound to the other people in the room. That was definitely the case here. But also I was struggling with a dynamic that is often present when dealing with addictions. This man was asking for my help, but he was also setting up roadblocks and barriers to accepting what I might have to say. Other people didn’t believe he’d seen an angel, so he’d rejected anything else they said to him because they didn’t accept his extraordinary story. So I tried a different tack.

“Well, the word ‘angel’ comes from the Greek word ‘angelos’ that means ‘messenger.’ When angels appear in the Bible they usually have something to say. So, the question really isn’t whether or not I believe you saw an angel. The question is, what message do you think the angel was trying to get across?”

That seemed to stump him for a moment, so I continued. “You say you feel that God has abandoned you, but you’re convinced you’ve seen an angel. It sounds like God is trying to communicate with you, is sending you a message, but that you’re not able to hear it. What do you think you might be doing that’s getting in the way of being able to hear what God is trying to say?”

He lifted his face from his hands, and looked at me cautiously, like someone guarding something precious, distrust in his eyes. I pressed on, “do you think it’s possible that you’re so full of alcohol that there’s no room left in your heart to feel the presence of God that you miss? That you can’t hear the message God is trying to send you?”

Addictions are powerful forces in human life, and we are all dealing with them in some way or another. I’m not saying that we’re all alcoholics or drug addicts, though if we look at the prevalence of not only alcohol but also caffeine, nicotine, and prescription drug usage we start to look like an addicted society. But I’m also talking about how we eat, how we shop, how we watch television, how we surf the internet. How we find ways to distract ourselves from the painful emotions that are part of being human – grief, anger, sadness, loneliness. While we may not all be addicts, almost all of us have some form of compulsive, “go to” behavior we use for dealing with distress in our lives.

In the United States that behavior, and this is truly an opinion – not something I can back up with evidence, appears to be spending. Our nation, which has been in the grips of this recession for a few years now, moved from a production economy to a credit economy decades ago, which meant that economic expansion was being financed with credit debt. I learned this behavior early, when I got my first credit card in college. I didn’t even have to search one out, they sent me – an eighteen year old college freshman with no steady income – an application for credit. Being the immediate gratification junkie I’d learned to be through a steady diet of consumer fantasies broadcast across the airwaves in a pre-cable television adolescence, I got the card and began making unwise spending decisions right away. Midnight study sessions at Denny’s paid for with plastic. Shopping trips for new shoes, or other forms of “consumer therapy” when I was stressed, my heart was broken, or I was otherwise caught in the grips of a feeling I just didn’t want to experience.

In this way I joined the ranks of the average American, who is saddled with credit debt. By the end of last year, 78% of American households had one or more credit cards, with an average of 5.4 cards. Only two percent of college undergraduates had no credit history, and half of college undergraduates had four or more cards. The average outstanding credit card debt for households that have a credit card was $10,679.

By March of this year, U.S. revolving consumer debt, which is made up almost entirely of credit card debt, was about $950 billion dollars. Now, by way of comparison – since these are such huge numbers, ones that can’t really be conceptualized on their own – the United States spends an average of $450 billion a year every Christmas. And, here’s the kicker, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, it the annual cost of launching the necessary agricultural programs needed to completely solve world hunger is $30 billion a year.

I’m not making a causal connection here. I’m not trying to say that Christmas is the cause of starvation and global food insecurity. I’m just trying to give us a sense of proportion. The cost of addressing global hunger is just over 3% of what Americans alone (not even talking about people in other countries) are carrying in credit card debt. The annual cost of addressing global hunger is less than 7% of what our nation spends on Christmas each year.

In the Hebrew bible passage for this morning, the prophet Malachi – whose name means “my messenger” in Hebrew – brings a message from God that the people were reluctant to hear.

I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the LORD whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple… But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendents of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. (Malachi 3:1-3)

Malachi brings a message the people don’t want to hear, an angel with a message people found terrifying. He speaks about purifying the descendents of Levi, which was the priestly caste of the nation of Israel, so he’s talking about corrections that need to be made among the faithful people of God, and the object of his criticism is the type of offerings God’s people are giving. Malachi wants the priests to be presenting offerings to God that are righteous, that reflect God’s intentions for the world – not our intentions for God.

But we aren’t always as curious about what God requires of us as we are about what God provides, or doesn’t provide, for us. We are quick to ask, “why has God abandoned me?” But we are slow to ask, “why have I abandoned God?” Or, as is the case when we are trapped in our addictions, “what am I doing that fills the place in my heart where God deeply desires to dwell?” We jump to the assumption that it is God who does not hear the cries of the hungry world, when we suspect, when we know, that it is in our own power to meet the needs of our neighbors – and with a fraction, a small fraction, of what many of us are spending on ourselves.

This second week of Advent we are focusing on the second direction coming out of the Advent Conspiracy. If you look in the back of your bulletin you’ll see the four directions summarized: worship fully, spend less, give more, love all. Last week we heard Jesus words about the end times, and the call to “stand up and raise your heads” as encouragement to enter more fully into our worship during this season. We talked about the ways that our worship is trying to awaken us to the movement of God in the world. How our worship, in its words but also in its rituals, tries to point our attention toward the new reality that in God we are joined to one another in bonds of mutual obligation and common destiny.

This second week of Advent we hear how the words of our worship flow into critical self-examination – as a nation, as a church, as households and individuals. If, as Jim Wallis has famously said, budgets are moral documents of our priorities, then how do our national, ecclesial, household and personal budgets and expenditures demonstrate our care for the neighbor?

Some economists have suggested that the recession that has put the United States into a panic is not so much a recession as a correction. Decades of over-spending on credit, of home purchases made on bad mortgages, of conspicuous consumption, are coming to an end. This time of correction is like the refiner’s fire or the fuller’s soap that Malachi, the messenger, spoke of.

Yet, like the man who desperately wanted me to believe that he had seen an angel, but who could not tell me what message the angel was trying to deliver, we see the signs all around us that our stewardship of God’s gifts is not an acceptable offering of what God has first given us, but we do not want to hear the message that logically follows. Spend less. Give more. Love all.

During this season of Advent, when television specials and holiday movies encourage us to imagine the holiday as a festival of warm feelings and personal moments, the church has to work especially hard to fight against the culture’s desire to privatize the meaning of Christmas. God gains nothing from the $450 billion we in the United States will spend this year – but the credit card companies get balances they can charge interest on for the next year or more. That’s a gift that keeps on giving, but to the wrong people.

No, we generally don’t want to hear the message God’s angels, God’s messengers, are bringing us. John the Baptist preached his word of repentance outside the walls of the city, away from the temple in Jerusalem, because no one in those halls of power wanted to hear what he had to say. But what John the Baptist said to those who were willing to leave the city, is what he has to say to us this morning, “prepare the way of the Lord, make God’s paths straight.”

Make a pathway in your heart for God to enter once again. Figure out what it is that is filling the space in your life, in your heart, in which God deeply desires to dwell. Prepare a way for God to enter in, as God is always doing.

If you go online to adventconspiracy.org you’ll find that they’re asking everyone to consider giving just one less gift this year. They’re focusing on clean water instead of world hunger, an issue that’s just as vital to global health, and they’re encouraging everyone to take the cost of the one gift you’re not going to buy this year and to donate it directly to global funds working for clean water. I’m asking you to consider doing the same. Whether the cause is global hunger, or clean water, or HIV/AIDS, or malaria. Decide now to make a gift acceptable to the Lord, one that proceeds from our worship, one that reflects our awareness that we are all sharing a common life by virtue of our common creator. If you want more ideas about ways to make this gift, go to the ELCA website and search for their “Good Gifts” program. I’ve put the link up on our facebook page again. There you’ll see a variety of opportunities this church is providing to be a part of the healing and restorative work of our church throughout the world.

And if you determine that the very best thing you can do this year is to spend no money at all, as many Americans are deciding during this period of correction, this recession, then look for other ways to give more of yourself. Spend less, give more. That’s the direction we’ll be exploring next week as we hear more from John the Baptist, and his encouragement to give more – of ourselves, our time and our talents. Signs of God’s gracious love.

With thanks for all that God has given us, and most especially that God has given us each other for the sake of the world.

Amen.

Homily: Wednesday, December 2, 2009: Advent Vespers

Text: Jeremiah 33:14-16

 

A staple plot device of many an action/adventure movie is the “bearer bond.” In the make-believe worlds of Hollywood cops and robbers, there are stacks of “bearer negotiable promissory notes” being stored in locked vaults which could be cashed in by anyone in possession of said notes. This device has been used in Goldfinger, Die Hard and Mission Impossible. It’s the updated version of stealing gold from Fort Knox.

Promissory notes are contracts. They are private agreements between two parties for one party to deliver payment to another at either a fixed or a determinable time, with or without interest. The “bearer bond” is a type of promissory note, one that can be cashed in by whoever is in possession of the note, as opposed to the one to whom the note was originally made.

In essence, promissory notes are a form of private currency. It’s for this very reason that many governments do not allow bearer bonds – since they carry the potential for creating a shadow economy, which is exactly how they were used by money launderers and tax evaders in the United States before they were banned in 1982.

Governments have a vested interest in keeping control over their currency. It’s what allows them to determine and collect taxes, it’s essential for determining value in international finance and trade, it’s how inflation and interest rates are determined, it’s how the value of a person’s work is determined. It’s in the nation’s self interest to keep control of its currency.

The Hebrew Bible texts read by the church during the season of Advent offer a kind of promissory note to those who hear them. Issued by the dissident voices of Israel’s prophets in the era before the life and ministry of Jesus, the Old Testament texts assigned for Advent declare unconditional promises to deliver invaluable goods to God’s people at a future time.

This past Sunday, and again this evening, we hear from the prophet Jeremiah who offers the following promises on behalf of God,

“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’” (Jeremiah 33:14-16)

The God of Israel has made a promissory note with the houses of Israel and Judah, households that we believe have been opened to include all people and every nation in Christ Jesus in whom “there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female” (Galatians 3:28). It is a promissory note with a maturation date, “in those days and at that time.” The question I’m pondering tonight is, are God’s promises bearer bonds?

Can we cash them in?

There is a way that the season of Advent, with its theme of hopeful anticipation, might suggest that the promises of the prophets we hear across the four weeks leading up to Christmas are not bearer bonds – that they have not yet reached their maturation date. That they are a good investment to hold in our portfolio, but that it’s not yet time to cash them in. But I don’t think that’s the case.

Because the season of Advent isn’t about waiting for Christ to be born, which has already occurred, it’s about waiting for the fullness of the reign of God to be realized – a new world order which we crave as desperately as a hungry person craves a square meal. In this moment in time and space, when we are committing 30,000 additional troops to engage a war almost a decade old, when the hungry keep coming to our door in greater and greater numbers, we are not desperate for cash – we are desperate for justice and righteousness, for ourselves and for all the people of the earth.

God’s promises act as a sort of shadow economy. They offer delivery of goods that the nations say they want to provide, but never seem to produce. They are contraband goods. They threaten the market, which is why I think these are bearer bonds.

God’s promises are ready to be cashed in by anyone in possession of them. They are a sort of currency that give us the power to act as though the future has already arrived. Those in possession of these promissory notes will recognize the words of Mary’s song as notice that the day of redemption has arrived. As we sing her song, as we sing her notes – some two-thousand years old, we are declaring that the bonds we carry, issued by the prophets and backed by God’s unfailing Word, are worth far more than the paper on which they were printed – they are worth everything, because they encompass everyone and they leave no one out.

These promissory notes, these bearer bonds, are not hidden in a vault. They are not held under lock and key. They are freely issued, and you – who have heard God’s promises – are now bearers of these notes. In this season of spending, the question that remains is: how will you use the invaluable currency with which God has gifted you?

Sermon: Sunday, November 29, 2009: First Sunday of Advent

Texts: Jeremiah 33:14-16  •  Psalm 25:1-10  •  1 Thessalonians 3:9-13  •  Luke 21:25-36

 

“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” (Luke 2:1-7)

Wait – that’s not the text for this morning, is it? I just get so confused around this time of year. One minute you’re baking your turkey and making your stuffing, and the next you’re watching Santa Claus bring up the rear end of the Thanksgiving Day parade. It’s like we move seamlessly from one holiday to the next, with nothing in between, no season of Advent left at all.

That isn’t the text for this morning, it’s the one we’ll hear on Christmas Eve. Between now and then we have an entire season in the church’s life, the season called Advent. “Advent” being the Latin word for “coming,” this is a season of anticipation. But “advent” is also the direct translation of the Greek word “paraousia,” which is the word the early church used to refer to the second coming of Christ, and as we hear the texts for this morning and for the entire season, we will realize that it’s this second coming they are referring to. Here’s the first reading for this morning again,

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’” (Jeremiah 33:14-16)

Not Christmas Eve at all, though both passages of scripture make use of the phrase, “in those days.” On Christmas Eve we hear that “in those days a decree went out…” and it signals to us that the life of Jesus began at a particular moment in history. That God was made incarnate in the concrete details of human existence as we experience it. In that passage, “in those days” is looking backward, remembering a story.

But this morning, the very first passage of the very first Sunday of a new year in the life of the church uses the phrase “in those days” differently. Today we hear those words as looking forward, into the future. “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up.” Not “I am causing” or “I have caused,” but “in those days… I will cause.” Looking forward. Waiting. Advent.

So we live with at least two calendars, and some of us with more than that, perhaps. For the most part we live our lives inside the Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory XIII in the late 16th century. It’s based on the Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar, that goes back to about fifty years before the birth of Christ, which breaks the year down into 365 days divided into 12 months with names that sound like Greco-Roman gods. January, coming from the name of the god, Janus, god of doorways who leads us into a new year. February, from the god Februus, the god of purifications because of the early spring rains that fall in February (if you live in Rome, we have to wait a few more months in Chicago). You get the point.

Depending on what kind of work you do, you might also be living with a fiscal calendar, that may or may not begin with the first of January. But in the church we live with a calendar that’s off. It begins four Sundays before December 25th, which means that “New Year’s Day” in the church falls on a different day each year. This year it falls on November 29th, last year it fell on November 30th, and next year it falls on November 28th. All just about the earliest dates possible. In 2012 Advent doesn’t begin until December 3rd. What’s important about all this though, is that in the church we mark time by the incarnation of God in the world in the birth of Christ.

That is the beginning of time, and how we organize our calendar, which – to some degree – puts us at odds with the culture around us. In a season when many people feel like we’re winding down, beginning the long season of holidays that culminates in that week that stretches from Christmas to New Year’s, a season of endings and closure, Christian worship says we’re already at the beginning of a new year.

We are out of step with the world around us, which over the centuries has only gotten more ironic. As the Julian calendar became the Gregorian calendar, as the world’s way of keeping time began to circulate around how the church kept time, it was easy to lose sight of those differences. But now we live in a time when the church’s waiting and the world’s waiting don’t quite line up, do they? You feel it too, don’t you?

The Santa Claus of the Thanksgiving Day parade has very little to do with the coming of Christ, or with Christ’s return, though there is a connection buried deeply somewhere in that custom. But as the television and newspaper reports begin to come in with estimates about how effective “Black Friday” was at moving companies out of the red and into the black near the end of a fiscal year, we are being lured into thinking that the secular meaning of Christmas as a season of gift-giving and the church’s understanding of Christmas as the sign God’s self-giving are one and the same.

This means we’re out of sync with the culture – and I’d like to encourage us to get even more out of sync with the culture. Some of you may have noticed the link in the last eNewsletter to the “Advent Conspiracy” website. Advent Conspiracy is a project that developed out of the frustration a group of pastors felt about the commercialism that defines the weeks before Christmas – that cycle of spending and excess that drives families further into debt and deeper into depression… all in the name of celebrating God’s incarnation in the world.

Advent Conspiracy is a movement that invites us all to do four things during this season of waiting: worship fully, spend less, give more and love all. And, because the Advent Conspiracy has four invitations, and Advent has four Sundays, we’ve got a chance to really explore each of those invitations more fully. Today we can consider what it means to “worship fully.”

“There will be 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. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:25-28)

There’s a bit of background I want to give, just in terms of how the ancients understood the relationship between what happened on earth and what was happening in the heavens, but before I do that I just want to put the larger question on the table: how does our worship equip you to “stand up and raise your head?”

Taken alone, these words about signs in the sun, moon and stars; the sea and the waves; all sound pretty apocalyptic. When we read them in isolation they sound like the kind of cryptic prophesies that make their way into movies about the end of the world. We’ve already heard that sermon earlier in the month though, so I won’t wander down that road too far. What’s more important is to remind ourselves that these verses have a context. In the paragraph preceding this portion of the gospel of Luke, Jesus has just said,

“When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those inside the city must leave it, and those out in the country must not enter it; for these are days of vengeance, as a fulfillment of all that is written… For there will be great distress on the earth and wrath against this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken away as captives among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled on by Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” (Luke 21:20-22,23b-24)

Now, as we’ve discussed a couple of times over the course of the last month, this is precisely what was happening in Jerusalem in the year 70AD. And the gospel of Luke, which was most likely written somewhere between five and twenty-five years after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, remembers this event with all the horrific details of a person with post-traumatic stress disorder.

This is where it’s helpful as well to remember that our ideas about heaven and earth (whatever those may or may not be) are not the same as the ideas that were operating in the imaginations of the ancient world. For the ancients, the events of earth were a reflection of the events taking place in heaven. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple, believed by many to be the dwelling place of God, might have been understood as evidence of a war in the heavens. So we read that “there will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars…” as a continuation of the previous chapter about Jerusalem being surrounded by armies.

To a people living with the trauma of the destruction of all they’d known, and questions about God’s sovereignty and power, Jesus is actually issuing a word of comfort. To people who were filled with fear and foreboding, Jesus says, “when the world is at its worst, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is near.”

Is that the kind of message you’re hearing as you work your way through the mall, looking for presents?

The advent of the marketplace is the coming of a holiday of spending and consumption. Something is coming alright, but it’s not Christmas – not with a capital “C.” No, it’s christmas, a lower-case festival of domestic cheer. A family reunion with opportunities for photographs and a second round of turkeys and hams. But the Advent of the church is about a different kind of coming altogether. It is ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ which is so cosmic and bizarre that it’s hard to even begin to speak about what it means, except to note that it’s God’s response to a world devastated by war and all the side effects of human violence: hunger, disease, dislocation and poverty.

And the question posed by the Advent Conspiracy, our question, is “how does our worship equip us to notice, to name, and to join in God’s response to a suffering world?”

I hope it’s your experience that our worship does do this. I hope that when we say those words of confession at the start of each service, or when we remember our baptism, you experience our worship as a profound sort of truth-telling. We confess that the world as it is isn’t the world as it should be – that we ourselves are not the people we should be – and we make this confession at the beginning of our worship so that we can receive the gift that God is offering to us and to the world, a gift more precious than anything in Santa’s bag. The gift of forgiveness, redemption, reconciliation, the abatement of guilt and the power to be part of setting things right.

I hope it’s your experience that our encounter with the living Word of God – not words on a page, but the living Word of God, that comes to us in scripture and song and preaching and passing the peace – confirms in you a sense of confidence that God is not absent from the world, but that God is already born, already incarnate, already risen from the grave, and already alive in you and around you, speaking freedom and passing the peace – in our sanctuary and in the streets.

And it is certainly my hope that when you come to the communion rail you hear those words that are spoken each time we share the bread and pass the cup, “the body of Christ given for you. The blood of Christ shed for you.” But also that you see that you are not alone at the rail. These are the means of grace for you, and for all. This is the table of plenty that stands as God’s contradiction to a world gripped with greed that sends people home empty-handed, uninsured and hungry.

I hope that our worship allows you to worship fully, and during this season of Advent I hope that you will take every opportunity to worship here at St. Luke’s. The prophet Jeremiah was writing to a people who had been removed from their land and taken into the Babylonian exile, and he said, “in those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.” The community gathered around the gospel of Luke, living in the terrorizing years after the end of the world as they knew it remembered Jesus as having said, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is near.” Advent begins with words of reassurance that God does not leave the world in its suffering, but promises consolation to all of creation.

During this season when the culture seems to call for obligatory cheerfulness, sappy sentimentality and an extra helping of nostalgia it can be hard to tell the truth about the suffering in the world, or even in our own lives. And yet we are living in a time of desolation. The New York Times this morning reports that one in eight Americans, one in four children, are now receiving food stamps – the greatest proportion of citizens receiving food assistance since the Great Depression. That is not just an abstract number, it is lived out right here in our sanctuary, among you who are worshipping this morning.

And the common desolations of this holiday season can be invisible to each other, but no less real. We are people grieving the deaths of loved ones, estranged from family or friends. We are a community comprised of people who do not know what the future will look like.

It is unlikely we will find the redemption that is drawing near in a check-out line anytime soon – though God does work in miraculous ways. But perhaps in the quiet of a mid-week Advent service on a Wednesday night, or in the truth-telling of our Sunday worship, we will find the strength we need to stand up and raise our heads, to look for the coming of the Lord.

“In those days…” – in these days, I invite you to remember that it is a new year. That we are living with a calendar that marks God’s time, and points to God’s creation and new creation in Christ Jesus. That God’s promise is to come for us, wherever we are in exile, wherever we are lost, and to restore us to one another and to God’s own self. These are gifts that require us to worship fully so that we can more fully receive the healing they offer. Come enter into the season of holy watching and waiting that is Advent.

Amen.

Message: Awake or Asleep…

The first Sunday in the church's new year, the first Sunday of Advent, picks up where the last Sunday in the church's calendar, Christ the King Sunday, left off - with anticipation of the coming of Christ Jesus.

"The days are surely coming," we hear from the prophet Jeremiah, "when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah." And from Paul's letter to the Thessalonians we hear, "may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints."

Earlier this week our Cafe group was studying a passage that comes later in the same letter (1 Thess. 5) that concludes,

For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.

That was a comforting passage for us - the idea that in Christ Jesus God is coming for all of us, those of us who are "awake" to the reality of God's advent in the world, and those of us who remain "asleep" to God's motion in time and history.

So then, when we hear from the gospel of Luke this Sunday morning, "Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near" we should hear it as an invitation, not a threat. In Christ Jesus, God is continually coming into the world for the purpose of healing, restoring and reconciling us to one another and to God. What a sight that will be (and already is) - not something to be missed!

In Christ,
Pastor Erik