2 Advent A December 4, 2016
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Isaiah 11: 1-10 + Psalm 72: 1-7, 18-19 + Romans 15: 4-13 +
Matthew 3: 1-12
O Come, O Come Emmanuel…ransom your people….until we rejoice again. Amen.
Is there anything quite as magical as seeing this season through the eyes of a child? As the decorations begin to appear – trees and candles and sparkling lights — the faces of the littlest ones around us begin to animate just a bit more. Boys and girls ask if they can help with the cookie baking and they steal the store circulars from the Sunday paper so they can circle the toys they hope Santa will bring them.
The perspective of a child in this season can warm even the coldest of hearts.
A couple of years ago our congregation hosted the rotating Mary’s Place shelter at just about this time of year. We welcomed 5 mothers with their children into our building for a week. Although our enthusiasm for the season was high, we were able to remember and respect the religious diversity of our guests. Nonetheless, in our eagerness to help and share the love of the One we follow….we thought that it might be a nice gesture to offer gifts for the children.
What we saw were children with no trees of their own to decorate; they had no Advent wreaths on the kitchen table to light. There was likely not a stocking with their name in glitter hanging anywhere. So, the idea of giving the children a gift…it felt good.
I will always remember the conversation. Two of the mothers sat me down on the pew in the hallway, as though I was a child who needed to have the lesson explained to her slowly and in simple terms, so I would understand. Gifts for their children, they said, would simply be one more item they would have to carry with them from place to place. It would be one more toy their children would have to leave behind during the day, never sure that it would not disappear while they were in school. It would be one more reminder of what they did not have, namely a safe place to call home.
It’s all a matter of perspective; understanding is made more possible when we can begin to see things from one another’s point of view.
John the Baptist is the central character in our Gospel reading on this second Sunday of Advent. The writer of Matthew’s Gospel tells us that John appeared in the wilderness. This is not an insignificant detail. This detail offers us a specific location for this one who was sent to prepare the way for Jesus. it meant that his was a lone voice, crying out from an secluded and set apart place.
In the second reading today, Paul writes to the Romans, who, from their perspective, did not believe that God would send the Messiah to be for ALL people….certainly not for the Gentiles, but rather just for the Hebrews. And Paul’s task is to remind them that their perspective is flawed, that in fact, Jesus came for ALL people.
And in the reading from Isaiah, the prophet reminds the people that when the promised Messiah comes, the poor and the meek and the children, that would be the oppressed among us still, they will be the ones to have favor…that in God’s perspective, they are the ones who will lead us to live in peace again.
Each of us sees what’s happening today… in the world, what’s happening in our nation, and what’s happening in our lives, from a unique perspective. It is ours alone. In these days that seem new and unexpected and raw, many of us have spent a great deal of time and energy trying to put into words what that perspective feels like.
Many have sat with one another post election and held hands and wept. Wept in fear and uncertainty that all of the civil rights and all of the progress toward equality that has been a hallmark of our nation over the last decade is about to come undone.
Many have taken another perspective – one that holds that what is ahead of us will be a time of economic progress and a strengthening of our nation’s place in the world.
Still others see these days as something much darker. A return to a time when one race or one gender or one sexual orientation holds dominion over everyone else.
And these are just some of the varied perspectives that people are holding around this moment in history.
Those at Standing Rock have another perspective, one that is about justice for Creation. The first Americans take a particularly holy perspective when it comes to caring for what God made. They see the land as sacred, as life giving, and as something we were told to tend and care for by the One who created it. Those who support them, including the hundreds of clergy who have traveled there, our own bishops among them, and including the veterans who will travel there this week….share this perspective.
Advent is a season in the church that offers a unique perspective. We are waiting for Jesus, who has already come into the world. But we wait on him to come again. And so, in our waiting, we take the stories of others who have waited for him….to be born, to save them, to teach them, and to return….and we place our stories of waiting alongside theirs. Alongside John and Paul and Isaiah and Mary and Miriam and Sarah.
In the northern hemisphere, Advent arrives in the darkest of seasons…and here in the Pacific Northwest, that season is dark indeed. The night falls on us early and lingers long. For many it is a difficult season, one that plunges them into depression and despair.
And in response, the Church lights candles….first one….then two….to remind us of the light that grows as it shines in the darkness.
Each week, on Thursday mornings, I gather with a group of colleagues to read and study the Scripture texts we are assigned for preaching and worship. This past Thursday, we were reflecting on what it feels like to be observing a season of waiting and watching and preparing….the season of Advent….in this unique and particular moment in history. One of my colleagues noted that, most years, the lighting of the Advent candles feels like a hopeful act. A light in quiet darkness. This year, she said, it feels, from her perspective, like a defiant act. It is one that says oh….no….no way are we going to let the darkness have its way. No way will we sit idly by when the sin….the sin….of hatred manifests itself in the world in ways that history has already called evil. We will speak out….we will work against….injustice in all of its forms.
Each candle we light is our NO to the hatred in the world.
NO to racism.
NO to homophobia.
NO to xenophobia.
NO to gender inequality.
NO to the neglect of Creation.
NO to profits above people.
NO.
NO.
NO.
We stand, like John the Baptizer, in the wilderness of what human sin and human hatred has caused and we light each candle defiantly shouting in the wilderness that the one who is to come….this Jesus….has commanded us to live lives of love in the face of hatred.
We stand, like Paul, writing to the Romans that Jesus came, not for any one group, not just for the Christians, but that Jesus came as the God who loves all. Every Muslim, every Jew, every Sikh, every Hindu, every unbeliever, every one. And God calls us to love one another with just that kind of love.
We stand, like Isaiah, waiting on that day when justice will prevail upon the earth….when the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together….we wait for that day, defiantly lighting candles of light and love in the midst of darkness and hatred. We wait for that day when a little child shall lead them.
Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Thanks be to God, and let the church say…Amen.