Advent 2

December 6, 2009

Baruch 5:1-9

Canticle 4

Philippians 1:3-11

Luke 3:1-6

              “Once upon a time...”  No that’s not right.  Hmmm.  “It was a dark and stormy night…”  No, not that one.  Ahhhh., “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…”  Nope.  That won’t do it. 

              So, how would you begin to tell the greatest story ever told?   What words would you use to foreshadow this dramatic high point of God’s salvation history?  How would you prepare a people for an event which would change their life and their world forever?

              How about this:  Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction…rise up, stand tall. God is ready to lead you, with joy, into the light of his glory.

              Or, how about this:  Be confident!  God is about to plant his seed in this world and begin a good work in you.  And you will receive a harvest of righteousness.

              Or this:  The dawn is going to break into your darkness; God is about to save you from your sins, redeem you from their consequences, and fill your life with peace.

              And this:  “Prepare the way of the Lord.  Our God is bringing salvation to all the people of this world.  Everyone.  No exceptions. 

              Now, these are the ways we might enter into the greatest story ever told.  No dark and stormy nights in these story leads.  No “once upon a time;” THIS story is for ALL time.  I mean, we’re talking salvation, here.  “Worst of times” isn’t even a category, and “best of times” doesn’t even come close. 

              It’s the writers of our scripture lessons today who show us how to begin telling the greatest story ever told.  Their words inundate us with promises of hope, and peace.  Their images wash over us with light and life.  Their message liberates us from every obstacle which could keep our body, mind and soul from knowing, and believing, and walking in the joy of our salvation.  And the best part?   This second Sunday of Advent is our once a year invitation to enter into this greatest story ever told; to read it and hear it, as theologian Marcus Borg would say, “once again, for the first time.”   

              Advent is our time to open this favored chapter of God’s salvation history, yet once again, so that we can begin to tell our story anew; to hear it more clearly and to read it into our minds and hearts and souls more deeply.  To savor our anticipation of this unfathomable God event.  To become so engaged in this story we will not want to put it down, or put it away.  To become so lost in it, we find ourselves in its message; participants in salvation history, a people redeemed, not just from this world, but in it. 

              As people of faith I think we can safely say that we are already consciously and intentionally engaged in this story of God’s salvation history.   In fact the main reason we come together to worship is to remember our story so that we don’t forget; so that we continue to live more consciously and intentionally in its promises and its hope.  We are already characters in God’s story; we are already players on God’s stage, seeking to find ourselves in the script God has written for us.  We read our script in scripture, we say it, we sing it, we pray it, we live it, and we take it into the world to reveal our God to others.

              But what about those people in our world who have never heard the story.  And what about those who have heard it, but have forgotten it, or denied it, or walked away from it, or who only want to argue with it.  In my experience, hope and promise are either lost on such people or they look for hope and promise in all the wrong places.  Instead of the hope Francie referred to last week in Emily Dickinson’s poem, the hope which has wings, so many people in this world tether themselves to empty promises and elusive wishes that have no basis in concrete hope.  Such people seem to play out their lives in stories fit, not for God’s salvation, but for life’s comedies and tragedies.  Life becomes an unending series of problems to solve, and little tragedies which result from our bad choices.  A relentless seeking for happiness and tidy endings are the goal of comedy, and the goal of tragedy is to bring our self-seeking, self-centered and self-serving to dead ends.  But constant striving for happiness will never bring us deep joy, and the goals of self-will can never fulfill God’s purpose and promise for our life.  The promise of redemption and the joy of salvation require us to live a story much different from the story we write for ourselves. 

              I am reminded of Shakespeare’s well-known character, Macbeth, who shows us what happens when human beings insist on writing their own script for their own life’s story.  When Macbeth realizes that by his foolish choices, his self-seeking ambition and self-serving will he is about to lose his life, lose his war, and lose his kingdom he tells his tragic story in this despairing metaphor of lament:  “Out, out brief candle.  Life’s but a poor player who struts and frets his way upon the stage and is heard no more.  It is a tale told by and idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  Sad, isn’t it.  But this is not our story. 

              Despite the comic and tragic moments in our own life and in our own stories of scripture, God’s salvation begins and ends in concrete actions, promises delivered and verifiable hope.  And yet I would be less than honest it I did not admit that there were times in my life when I found myself in such places of emptiness and despair.  But I also know from personal experience that these are also the places where God finds his best opportunity to enter into our life.  If only we will receive him, if only we will let him in, God will fill those places with the light and joy and peace and hope that is real, and promises you can depend on.

              As I look around me this morning, it looks as if I might be preaching to the choir, so to speak.  But I think it might be helpful on this second Sunday of Advent to ask ourselves how God’s promise and hope of redemption and salvation might become lost to people of faith?  People like us who know the story because we have heard it; people like us who have received the church’s religious rites of passage and identify ourselves as Christians; people like us who are so busy doing God’s work in the church and in the world.  How do people like us lose God’s promise and hope, and sometimes not even know it?  Well, take it from one who knows by her own life and by her experience with others in the church, the greatest story ever told can be lost to people of faith who take it for granted.  Faith can slip away when we stop feeding it and nurturing it by our spiritual practices, faith can become lost when we are no longer hearing our story or remembering its message.  Like people who take the lessons of history for granted, we are bound to forget the promises of scripture; bound to repeat the mistake of not remembering, bound to re-live the transgressions of a self-seeking, self-serving life, bound to become separated from God and from the very people God places in our life for the sake of salvation.          

              This is the reason for this season of Advent for.  Advent is the time for people of faith to remember how much we have forgotten and how far we have strayed from God’s promise of salvation.  Advent is the time we begin at the beginning so we can remember how it all began.  Advent is the time we become more alert and mindful of things we have lost or taken for granted over this long green season of Sundays after Pentecost.  And our scripture readings during Advent do a fine job of bringing us back to this all-important beginning.  Last Sunday was our wakeup call.  Jesus told us to stand up, raise our heads and look around.  A new thing is about to happen, said Jesus, and I don’t want you to miss it.  See that light coming into your darkness.  It is the light of hope.  Get ready to follow it. 

              Baruch and Malachi pick up on Jesus wakeup call in today’s scripture lessons.  “Take off this garment of your sorrow and affliction…and put on forever the beauty of God’s glory.”  And that the Lord we seek, the Lord we delight in?  He is coming to us.  Zechariah tells us to bless our Lord because his reason for coming is to set his people free and to bring them peace.  He reminds us that God has not forgotten us and we should not forget him, because when we forget God, when we take him for granted, when we abandon God and God’s purpose for our life, that’s when the darkness begins to creep back in, the bonds of sin and death begin to take over our life.  Throughout salvation history God tries every way he knows to bring us back when we forget him, or abandon him.   When all else fails God decides come to us himself.  And Paul reminds us today and in all of his letters to his congregations that we are never to take such unfathomable love and sacrifice for granted. 

              But it is John, the Baptizer, who has the lead voice in today’s prologue to God’s incarnation.  God gives John the word and tells John to prepare his way by proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  Today John prepares us for Jesus’ coming with the quote we know well from Isaiah.  He cries out to us today in our own wilderness.  We know the words well.  But allow me to say how they speak to me on this second Sunday of Advent as we prepare to meet our Lord in that manger once again, and hopefully, for the first time. 

              Prepare the way of the Lord.  Come back to the pathway God has given you to walk in.  Straighten out the cramped and crooked places of your mind to focus your thoughts on God.  Level the exalted and misdirected passions of your heart and rekindle your passion for God.  Fill the empty valleys of your soul with the God who wants to enter into them.  Know that God wants to make your bumpy journey through this world smoother through this with his promise of salvation.  Most of all, know that our indiscriminately inclusive God promises salvation to all his people.  But we don’t have to wait until we die to receive this gift.  We don’t have to wait for the life to come.  By his promise of forgiveness and the hope of repentance God is redeeming us right here, right now, in this life, in this world.  If only we will receive him into our life and into our world.  Who would not anticipate such a gift; even those of us who know we already have it.

              This Advent, and every Advent we find ourselves at the beginning of God’s story of salvation; the prologue, if you will, to God’s Incarnation.  And beginnings are important, aren’t they.  You were well-familiar with the beginnings I quoted at the beginning of my sermon.  But “once upon a time,”  “dark and stormy night,”  “best and worst of times” just don’t cut it.  These beginnings do not begin to tell the greatest story ever told.  Only the words of our scriptures, the words of our prayers, the words of our hymns and the words our Eucharistic can begin to tell that story.  The question for us and for people of faith in every age is this: How will we begin to tell our story this year.  How will we begin to hear it, and pray it and sing it, and live it.  Once again, and for the first time.