Sermon at the Church of the Holy Trinty, New York City
December 5, 2010
In the Name of the One who waits with us to be born anew. Amen
Thank you for the kind invitation to be with you today. Thank you to the rector, Michael Phillips, for sharing the pulpit. I know that Richard and Mim Smith had a lot to do with my invitation, and having worked with Richard for many years in the Diocese of Michigan, I know how compelling his requests can be. So thank you to Richard and Mim as well. My husband and grandaughter are with me this morning. An opportunity for us to enjoy this congregation and this city and for me to get unabridged feedback on my sermon.
In the Old Testament reading on the second Sunday in Advent (Isaiah 11:1-10), Isaiah’s oracle captures our imagination with its unexpected and unlikely possibilities: “the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them”.
At first glance this oracle may seem preposterous to us, but I recently saw a revised version of Isaiah’s oracle on a street in New Mexico. I saw a kind of a scruffy looking young guy on the street corner flanked by a resting dog. A cat was resting on the dog’s back. On the cat’s back a mouse was resting. “How did you get them to do that?” I asked scruffy guy. He just shrugged and said, “I don’t know, be nice to them, I guess”. Well, there they were, like wolves and lambs - the eaters and the potential eaten just piled up together, lounging around without fear.
But you know what is most remarkable about this spectacle? Six months after I saw that unlikely group, the sight of them, content in their stack of animals, keeps popping up in my mind’s eye. What about this unlikely trio has stuck with me, I wonder? Well, I think it is the sheer incongruity of it, the way it doesn’t fit with my learned expectations. After awhile the wonder of it all moved for me, from wonder to possibility - kind of a “what if?” way of thinking began to creep in. I realized that possibility, the sister of hope, had entered the picture in my mind. And if Advent. the prologue of Christmas, is about anything, it is about hope. Advent is the season of “what if?”
Hope, described by Emily Dickinson as
“the thing with feathers,
Thatperches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.”
Hope is easy to come by for some of us and not so much for others. To some of us, continually tossed about by the changes and chances of this life, hope is elusive and evasive. For others of us, a life without hope is hard to imagine.
But make no mistake about it, hope comes and goes at will. Hope is not at our bidding, and it is dangerous to think otherwise. Hope is a gift from God. One that some of us, all to often take for granted. And since hope is a gift from God, we can’t just conjure it up whenever we want. In fact, hope defies the immediate gratification society by having a mind of its own. We are not hope’s boss.
Hope has a depth that is fueled by passion and imagination, And hope can come on like gangbusters or creep in like gentle mist. Hope can go very deep, and way down at the bottom of the hope barrel, desperation can be found lurking, And it is there, at the bottom, when we sometimes can’t even hope for hope. When we bottom out, at the depth of hopelessness, hope needs a mentor.
I think that the people who risked going into the wilderness to hear the preaching of John the Baptist, went into the wilderness out of the city because they were desperate. I think they were hoping for something to hope for. They had become afraid, the end of the world seemed imminent, they didn’t know what to expect, they were confused and, oh so, hopeless. But John the Baptist preached to them about a new empire, challenging the existing Roman Empire. He offered the people a vision of redemption and a tangible way to participate in it – he offered them baptism. John the Baptist was the mentor for their hope, and as God worked through John the Baptist baptizing each person, the holy spirit came to them in the water of the river Jordan, renewing their hope and preparing them for the coming of the Messiah.
I think our church needs a good dose of John the Baptist. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon in their book, Resident Alien, wrote, “Indeed, one of us is tempted to think there is not much wrong with the church that could not be cured by God calling about a hundred really insensitive, uncaring and offensive people into the ministry”.
John the Baptist was that kind of preacher. He scared people. I imagine that listening to him preach was like taking your life in your hands. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” But I bet that after hearing him, people were definitely awake and paying attention, probably even shaking in their sandals. Add to that wake up call a first encounter with the Holy Spirit and, you better believe, they were ON WATCH 24/7 for the Messiah. Their eyes were WIDE OPEN.
So now it is our turn to prepare the way for the Messiah. That is what all this hooplah around us is about. Contrary to popular north American belief, this season is not about us. It is all about God. It is about God acting in our life and how God can help us imagine a new creation: one that is peppered with the sheer incongruity of wonder, a new creation that doesn’t fit with our preconceived notions about creatures and creation and even notions about each other.
So let’s just wonder for a moment. Let’s wonder about God’s world in abundance, a world in which the food most of us have in such abundance is easily shared globally, let’s wonder about a creation where children around the world can sleep at night in safety and security, free to dream children’s dreams, and then let ourselves wonder about the joy we would get from knowing that somewhere in the world a safe child is dreaming mystical dreams while we are having our second cup of coffee. Wonder about a planet not endangered, a planet where lovely creatures don’t silently slip into extinction, a planet with rivers and streams teeming with fish and bugs and fresh, clean water. Let’s wonder our own wonders and then, let’s allow them turn into possibilities.
Wrapped up in all that wonder and possibility is hope dangling like raindrops on the wings of the Holy Spirit. Ready to fall to us when we least expect it and when we most need it.
It is Advent after all, the season of wonder and awe. It is the season of things unusual and unexpected – an unlikely stack of content animals, a relationship rekindled, a generous kindness offered or given, health restored, a bump in the road seen in a new way…Advent is the season of hope. The kind of hope that gnaws at us like a happy dog with a bone, reminding us from somewhere deep inside us that hope is insistent. That hope is not satisfied just to hang around with us, that hope prods us to action, hope demands that we prepare the way for Christ, hope demands our response to God’s call for a new creation.
As the old Advent hymn recalls: “The time has come, O maidens wise, rise up and give us light, the bridegroom is in sight, Alleluia.”
Amen.
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