An Advent Sermon

In the spring of 1983, my mother and I took a trip. It was a trip many of you have made yourselves or with your children. We went off in search of colleges. Our search took us up interstate 81 north. This particular stretch of road runs from just outside of Greeneville, TN all the way up to upstate New York. My parents drove this stretch of highway for many years when they came home for Christmas. They lived in Cortland New York and their trips home to Tennessee were always fraught with long drives through snow and rain, up hill both ways, with driving wind and darkness.

But this trip was much different. This was my trip not my mother’s and I had never been that far up the road much less that far from home. It was an anxious trip for both of us into the “wilderness” of Southwest Virginia of all places.

For those of you geographically challenged, contrary to popular belief there is a whole host of land between Knoxville and Roanoke Virginia. Rolling hills and tobacco farms for certain but beautiful country that I came to call home for a good portion of my adult life.
But as we took the Meadowview, Virginia exit, my mother looked around and said, “Are you sure we can get there from here?”

We may wonder much the same about our texts today. Isaiah’s description of the Peaceable Kingdom and John’s wilderness path. Both are troubling in their own way, requiring some thought and a good deal of action on our part.

The text from Isaiah, on the surface at least, is a beautiful passage of peace in the world… the whole world of all God’s creatures. This is not just any peace, but "shalom." "Shalom," Walter Brueggemann says, "is creation time, when all God's creation eases up on hostility and destruction and finds another way of relating." So it is easy to see lions and lambs lie together and the fatted calf sitting with the bear in this Shalom.

The poet Les Murray once called this time, the time when the apple was put back on the tree.

But the poetry of these verses is written at a time much like our own. There was war with Assyria and the capital city of Samaria, in Israel would fall in 722. What followed was a siege on Jerusalem.

As my friend Tom Warren says, “Israel’s time was indeed a time of wars and rumors of wars. It was a time when real leaders spoke only of national defense, homeland security and God’s favoritism. It was a time when only fools spoke of peace.”

So who is this fool that Isaiah envisions?

It is doubtful that this describes any one of our candidates for president this election season.

Instead the description of this leadership is rooted in the spirit of the Holy. This spirit is the same spirit the “ruah” we hear about in the creation story. It is the creative active powerful breath of life. Not the winds of war so often felt in much of our world.

A spirit of wisdom rendering decisions based on fairness and equity with decrees that enable and affirm the poor and oppressed. A spirit of understanding that declares a community just and faithful and one that does not uphold the way things are but up-ends the status quo to create a society the way things should be.

This leadership establishes a reign of justice and concerns for the least of these. Isaiah describes the poor and the meek of this recreated world.

Oh if it were that easy!!

How do we get there from here???

My mother’s question came to me as our directions took us to the Meadowview VA exit. Now Meadowview has a bank, a mercantile – and yes it was a mercantile with chicken feed, farm equipment, work boots and maybe a jug of milk in the back – and a little Methodist church at the corner of the exit ramp.

The directions said to take a right so we did. The road we were on, better known by locals as “old number 11” paralleled the railroad tracks. In my 17 year old mind I thought ok, so if we follow the tracks we will surely get somewhere. After a seemingly endless 5 miles of clapboard houses and tobacco farms and more cows than I could count much less than I had ever seen, my mother and I exchanged looks that could only be described as wide eyed.

How do we get there from here?

And then there was John! John the Baptist scares me and I often wonder if he is merely a plot character or a real wild and crazy guy. I have struggled with John in my life of faith. Not because of who he is or what he does but what he asks us to do.

REPENT!!

I can still here a preacher from my past speaking that word. In his imposing stance and booming voice -- Repent and be saved. Repent and turn away from your sin. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.

This word has been so loaded with baggage that our caricatures of the phrase say “Jesus is coming, look busy!” And so we do.

John’s world was one where the oppression was prevalent in the ordinariness of their life, religious and otherwise. The power wielded by the Jerusalem elite and their Roman patrons was experienced in exorbitant taxes, confiscation of ancestral property, and chronic shortages of food, among other things. This contributed too much social unrest and desire for change. Unlike the Old Testament prophets or the annunciation story that we shall read on the last Sunday of Advent, the Baptist does not point toward the nativity of Jesus, but rather to his ministry, life, and death

This is John the Baptist, the crazy separatist who speaks of the eschatological renewal to come.

This is John the Baptist, the crazy prophet who knows there is more to life than what is before us.

This is John the Baptist who gets his name from what he DOES, baptizing not in the way the ritual immersions were modeled but in a way that sealed the deal for those who came to be baptized

No John’s Baptism was a once and for all thing. John’s repent is the stop sign at the crossroads.

We cannot ignore his calls for repentance.

John does indeed ask us to repent then we need prepare a road in the wilderness. Finally he asks us to look into the waters of the river and see our reflection. The reflections of who we are. The reflection of people who have fallen short of expectations. To look at the reflection of a people who have failed at being the people of God. And who are facing the reality that maybe our ways won’t bring about this society of peace of which Isaiah speaks.

But within those waters we also see a reflection of the children of God. Who are claimed as God’s own.

If we can imagine ourselves loved so much that we can be called children of God, then we can take a step toward the vision Isaiah so clearly describes. A place where we sit together. Where we sit across the table from those who are also loved.

A place where we do indeed eat together in a peace that passes all understanding.

My mother and were at a crossroads. As we looked past our stop sign we saw the gates to Emory and Henry College. The place where I would spend years learning and growing in a community that nurtured me, a place that has ultimately led me here.

John asks those at the river to stop and look into the future. A future that comes from out of the wilderness and into the peaceable vision of Isaiah.

How do we get there from here?

We are told to PREPARE. Prepare the way of the Lord, makes his paths straight.

If Isaiah’s words can be any encouragement, this leader, this Lord’s path goes straight from John to the peaceable kingdom. I don’t know about you but I can’t imagine this world from Isaiah. I can almost see the wolf and the lamb, the cow and the bear, the leopard and the kid, but I can’t quite get the children and the snake pit. I am sorry. That one is beyond me and is as disturbing of an image as I can conjure up.

Our poet writes

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod

The path we have taken to this point is soiled with too much. Is covered with too much mud and muck and blood and sweat and yes tears.

We have worn this path out. A path that places the fast lane over the slow lane. We have worn out the paths that are strewn with twisted guardrails and broken glass on the cement. We have worn out the express lane at the grocery because it means I get to get out faster than you do. It means I never look in your grocery cart to see if you are buying steak or noodles. I never see if you are paying by cash or food stamps. I never see if you drive or walk home. Or if you even have a place to call home.

The old roads won’t get us there.

We can’t arrive at this peaceable place without going through John’s stop sign. I don’t think we can blow through this one as if it doesn’t matter. As if we can keep doing things as we have always done and expect to get there.

After his conversion, St. Francis saw the world in a new way. A theologian at Claremont College “He saw everything upside down. He was not enamored at the strength and security of well-grounded towers, walled city states and impressive cathedrals. Rather, he saw everything hanging over nothing. And he was astonished, but grateful, that everything did not fall down.”
We must stop and reflect and look both ways before we cross at the crossroads.

John’s requirements are difficult not because he asks us to turn from our ways but he asks us to look at our ways. To look at what these actions do to the world around us. Maybe they are crooked. Maybe our roads need to be straightened. Straightened to lead to the reign of a God who can bring a Peaceable kingdom. It is John the Baptist, that scary guy who scares us not because of his less than conventional ways, but scares us because of who he points us to.

A God who loves us enough to let us dream about peaceable kingdoms and hopes with us as we prepare a new way.

A God who loves us enough to send peace on the wings of a promise and hope that comes like morning’s first call, and joy that comes on the winds of a Spirit.

Come, Lord, Jesus Come