Sermons from The Church of the Covenant

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Deborah Grant
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1 December 13, 2015 Third Sunday of Advent Sermons from The Church of the Covenant God Will Come The Reverend Amy Starr Redwine The Church of the Covenant Presbyterian Church (USA) Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio CovenantWeb.org

2 Isaiah 35: The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. 3 Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you." 5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. 8 A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

3 God Will Come Isaiah 35:1 10, Matthew 1:18 26 An article in the Christian Century describes this time leading up to Christmas as the numbing season. The author points to the ceaseless rounds of Christmas parties the flood of commerce the travel and the visits to family, spiked with all the stresses attendant upon such endeavors. Finally (and almost as an afterthought), there are added church responsibilities of nativity programs, Christmas Eve services and so forth. For us there is CircleFest and the Carol Sing, Giving Trees and the attendant celebration, and the children s Christmas pageant. The writer concludes, No wonder many of us are likely to dread Christmas almost as much as we look forward to it. 1 In my experience, this is no exaggeration. As much as we may genuinely enjoy the parties and the carol sings and the pageant and the gift-giving, every year since I ve been a pastor, I ve had people come to me and say, I m just not looking forward to the holidays this year. I wish we didn t have to celebrate at all. This season is just too hard since... since Dad died, since I lost my job, since the diagnosis, since my marriage is falling apart. Advent is a season of longing, and the waiting that goes along with it isn t just hard for children who can t wait for Christmas morning. We adults are waiting for something too, longing for God to break into the world again. Such longing is nothing new for God s people. When Isaiah wrote today s text, he was speaking to a people in a numbing, wilderness season. And it is into this wilderness, this numbness, that Isaiah speaks a word that seems totally out of place in this section of Isaiah which is filled with prophecies of desolation and despair. To a people who are numb with fear and pain and sorrow, Isaiah proclaims: Be strong! Do not fear! Here is your God...God will come...god will come and save you! Two weeks ago, we heard Isaiah s astonishing vision of hope: They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks... Last week we were treated to startling images of peace: The wolf shall live with the lamb...and a little child shall lead them. Today s passage is equally implausible. God will come to save us? 1 Rodney Clapp, The Christian Century, Dec. 8, 2010.

4 What would this even look like? And how are we supposed to hold onto our faith while we wait? Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children s Defense Fund, has learned a lot about persevering in the face of great odds. After the defeat of a gun control measure a couple of years ago, she wrote: I woke up the morning after the Senate vote thinking about Sojourner Truth, one of my role models, a brilliant and indomitable slave woman who could neither read nor write but who was passionate about ending unjust slavery and second-class treatment of women. At the end of one of her antislavery talks in Ohio, a man came up to her and said, Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does any good? Do you suppose people care what you say? Why, I don't care anymore for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea. Perhaps not, she answered, but, the Lord willing, I'll keep you scratching. Edelman writes: We must be determined and persistent fleas Enough fleas biting strategically can make the biggest dog uncomfortable. And if they flick some of us off but even more of us keep coming back with our calls, s, visits, nonviolent direct action protests, and votes -- we ll win. 2 Edelman writes this about convincing citizens and politicians about the need for gun control, but she could just as easily have been writing about any of the difficult issues facing us today: the issue of how we continue to be a country where people of any faith find refuge, hope, and a fresh start; the issue of systemic racism and intractable poverty and violence; the issues of economic and educational disparity; even the personal issue of how we hold onto our faith when we find ourselves caught up in grief and despair and fear, especially during the holidays. Maybe instead of having Advent candles that stand for peace, hope, joy, and love, we should designate one for courage. 2 Barbara Lundblad quotes this in her commentary on the Isaiah passage:

5 Again and again in this season of Advent, we are called to move through the pain and numbness and fear, to move, with perseverance and determination and courage, toward the promise of God who will come to save us. The preacher John Buchanan suggests that the whole Bible could be distilled into two words: Fear not. From the beginning until the end of the Bible we hear story after story of people who are afraid and who are told by God, Jesus, or angels that they don t need to be. Every time an angel appears, what s the first thing they say? Fear not! Do not be afraid! And yet, the Bible tells us, the shepherds in the fields were sore afraid when the angels appeared to tell them of the Christ child s birth. Even Jesus disciples were constantly afraid that he could not save them from a storm at sea, that he was going to die and leave them alone, and when he did die, they were so afraid that they hid themselves in a locked room. 3 There is a lot for us to be afraid of more every day, if we follow current events terrorism, global warming, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, to name a few. But maybe what we fear the most this time of year is that for all the prophets glorious predictions, for all the lovely hymns about the child in the manger, God s coming won t change a thing. Our loved ones who died will still be gone, the job lost won t magically be returned, the diagnosis won t miraculously be reversed, the severed relationship won t be restored, our country and our world will still be a mess. 3 John Buchanan, Journal for Preachers, Vol. 24, No. 1, Advent 2010, p. 11.

6 Maybe what we fear most is that Christmas will come, God will come, we will sing the songs and make the food and exchange the gifts, but we will still be afraid, and our hearts will still be broken. Years ago, in Alaska, there was a visitors center built with the sole purpose of showcasing one of Alaska s largest and most beautiful glaciers. A whole wall of windows faced the glacier, and huge curtains covered the windows. The idea was that a tour of the visitors center would end in front of the windows. After learning all about the glacier, the curtains would dramatically part and the visitors would get to see the magnificent sheet of ice for themselves. Sadly, though, the effects of climate change intervened. The windows are still there and the curtain still parts, but instead of a glacier, visitors see only a three-mile lake of water, much of which came when the glacier melted. 4 Reading today s Old and New Testament passages together has the same anticlimactic effect. We hear Isaiah s dramatic proclamation: Look! Here is your God! God will come...god will come and save you! And then the curtain parts and THERE IS Joseph, a young man full of fear and despair. The woman he is supposed to marry is pregnant. He knows with certainty that he isn t the father. In that culture to be engaged to someone was to have a contractual agreement with them. Joseph has every right to break the contract with Mary, to essentially divorce her and this is his plan, to do so as quietly and respectfully as possible. But no matter how quietly he does that, it s a small town. People are going to know, and people are going to talk. Then, in the middle of one of many nights of fitful sleep, Joseph has an extraordinary dream. In the dream the Lord speaks to Joseph through an angel, who essentially repeats the words of Isaiah: 4 Barbara R. Rossing, Journeys Through Revelation, Horizons Bible Study, pp

7 Be strong. Do not fear. Look! Here is your God. God is coming to save you...to save everyone. But in Joseph s dream, unlike Isaiah s prophecy, gone is the drama, gone is the transformation of all creation, gone are the blind who see, the deaf who hear, the lame who leap, and the mute who sing. In Joseph s story, there is simply a young, pregnant woman, and a young man willing to stake his reputation on a dream. In this version, God is coming not in power and might and glory, but the same way all of us come into the world: growing in a woman s womb. Yes, here is our God, who is coming to save us, but it is not in the way we might have expected or even hoped. God will come. This is the promise. The footnote to the promise is that God s coming will not be dramatic, it will not be flashy, it will be little more than a pinprick of light in an inky darkness. But it will be enough. Near the end of World War II, the Allies gathered together many of the English children who had been orphaned during the war. They provided the children with three meals a day and a bed to sleep in at night. The problem was, the children couldn t sleep. After all the trauma they had been through -- the bombings, the loss of their parents, hunger and malnutrition, they were too afraid to close their eyes and go to sleep; after all, who knew what the night might bring. Who knew if they would get to eat again tomorrow. After weeks of this, someone suggested that each child be given a piece of bread at night, a piece they could hold onto while they slept, a tangible reminder that they had eaten today and they would eat again tomorrow, that they could close their eyes, even in the face of all the fear and tragedy around them, they could hold their bread, and close their eyes, and sleep in peace.

8 A piece of bread may not sound like much, but it gave those children the courage they needed to sleep through the night in the face of the fear and uncertainty they faced. Joseph was a faithful Jew. He knew the prophecies and the predictions. He trusted that someday God s Messiah would come to save God s people. But instead of a dramatic salvation event what Joseph got was little more than a piece of bread. When Mary became pregnant, Joseph s hopes for his future crumbled but then he received this promise from God: it s not the way you thought I would come, but this is how I am coming to be with you, to be one of you, to save you and to save the world. Advent and Christmas do not come each year to take away our fears and our grief. They come to offer us something to hold onto so that we might have courage that pain and dread and fear and sorrow will not have the last word. Look! you who are grieving! Look! you who are afraid of what the future holds. Look! you who struggle to find hope or peace or anything like joy. Look! Here is your God. God is coming...as one of us. To be with us. To stand with us in our pain and grief and fear, and, yes, in our courage. It may not be what we expected, or even what we hoped for. But this year, may it be enough. Amen.

Family Advent Readings

Family Advent Readings First Sunday of Advent Light the first candle Leader: Today we begin our Advent journey, a time of listening and waiting. Leader: As we wait, hear this promise from the prophet Isaiah: