December 5, 2010 Advent 2
Roger Ray, Pastor
Isaiah 11:1-10
A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
6 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. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
10 On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.
Matthew 3:1-12
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 3This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, ‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” ’ 4Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
11 ‘I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’
Many of us were first introduced to existentialism in the most tedious way imaginable, not by hearing brief quotes from Kierkegaard in excellent sermons but by having to endure Samuel Becket’s existential play, Waiting for Godot. The play is very boring because nothing ever happens. The play consists of two homeless French tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, sitting by a road waiting for the arrival of Godot.
As the play unfolds, it becomes apparent that these two men have grown old, waiting for Godot. Their lives are meaningless. They speak of suicide from time to time but then return to the tedium of a conversation which would make watching paint dry seem like a very welcome diversion.
The playwright, Samuel Becket, always refused to say clearly who or what Godot was. Though many commentators claimed that Godot was God, Becket would taunt them saying that it was, instead, a play on French slang for “a boot.”
In one interview, he did acknowledge that it was unavoidable that people would assume that one possible interpretation of the play is that Estragon and Vladimir have spent their lives in meaningless waiting for God, but this is, after all an existential play and so it is also true that they may have been waiting for nothing at all. The larger point is that life is boring, meaningless and fraught with sorrow. Aren’t you glad you won’t be spending the Christmas holidays with Becket?
The traditional season of Advent is a season of waiting. Originally, the church edited an annual calendar of scripture readings which went from the birth and baptism of Jesus, through his preaching career, execution and resurrection and the remainder of the church year led up to the season of Advent which was not a 4 week preparation for Christmas but a time of anticipation of the second coming of Christ at the final judgment.
Belief in the second coming was a lot easier to sell before so many generations of the church had grown old waiting and millennia passed along with holy wars, crusades and holocausts and Godot never shows up. Advent evolved from being a time of penitence and waiting for the final judgment to a time of festivals, lights, decorations, presents and celebrations of Christmas.
Culture changes and attitudes evolve but church tradition is slow about catching up, and so the lectionary still hands us these apocalyptic texts about the final judgment to be read during December worship services. At just the time when we decorate our homes and there are office parties and family gatherings defined by rich foods, decadent desserts and possibly even some excesses of Christmas “spirits,” John the Baptist shows up in church every December, like the crazy uncle you always hope won’t show up at the family gathering. When everyone else is dressed in their holiday finest, he is there by the punch bowl, wearing flea riddled camel skins and eating grasshoppers rather than bourbon balls.
And when everyone else is jockeying for position under the mistletoe and joyfully singing Christmas carols, John the Baptist delivers the same message he shouts out ever year, “Repent!”
I was trained to be a fairly strict lectionary preacher. My worship professor very nearly threatened us with our lives if we ever dared to give up the Advent of anticipation of Christ’s return in favor of decorations and Christmas carols. So far as he was concerned, that was to wait for the Christmas Eve service and then continue for two more weeks until Epiphany.
What I learned, over the years, is that people are interested in singing Christmas carols before Christmas and will look at you like you are a lunatic if you try to keep it up one day after the tree has come down!
Now that we have taken a few steps away from any denominational constraint on how we worship and what we are supposed to do in any particular season of the year, what then does Advent mean to us?
In part, as I have said, I think it behooves us to not cut ourselves off from our roots. This can be a touchy subject because we don’t come here for a dose of nostalgia and yet, there is a part of what we will say and do which is, in a way, throwing a rose in the direction of the more evangelical faith most of us grew up with. We have to accept some hymns and carols for their poetry even when their theology wouldn’t be something we want to pass along to the next generation.
But where I really have to part company with the liturgical traditions of the church is in the whole business of waiting for deliverance. Apocalyptic or “end of the world” images are not unknown in the Biblical narrative but they are rare and I am prepared to take them as being entirely metaphorical. All of us are racing towards our own “end of time” or “final judgment” but I do not think that the world will come to an end by an invasion from heaven, complete with Revelation style battles and plagues.
Waiting for the world to change is bad theology. If, in fact, Vladimir and Estragon are representing the Protestant and Catholic churches, always on the verge of suicide but lingering in meaningless waiting for the arrival of God’s Kingdom then Becket may have given us a good look in the ecclesiastical mirror.
I’m sure that you remember a couple of my favorite proverbs and you’ll have to excuse me for repeating them again, but there really is a Chinese proverb which says, “He who waits for roast duck to fly into his mouth waits a long time.” And the American version of that is, “If you want milk, don’t just sit on a stool in the field and wait for a cow to back up to you.”
John the Baptist evidently was something of an apocalyptic preacher. He preached to the nation of Israel about a coming judgment, about a messiah who was going to lay an ax to the root of their dead culture but I charge you to notice that there is nothing in John’s message about sitting and waiting.
His message was not “wait.” His message was “get ready.” Now, I don’t know how you get ready for an apocalypse. In the mid nineteenth century when there was an apocalyptic craze in America, everyone made ascension robes out of white cotton….. I guess you at least want to be properly dressed for an apocalypse.
John is something of an obscure figure in the pages of the New Testament but one thing we can be sure of, when he told people to get ready, he did not mean that they should go shopping for an ascension robe and a pair of sensible shoes. Look at what he said, there in verse 8:
8Bear fruit worthy of repentance.
The Kingdom of God does not literally descend out of the clouds and deliver us from all that is unjust, wrong or immoral. The Kingdom of God comes when we work to bear good fruit….. the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven, when we work to make it so.
It is not uncommon for me to find myself in an impromptu theological debate. It happened recently when a man I was talking with turned the conversation to what he has understood to be my teaching about Jesus. He said, “So you don’t believe in the Trinity or the divinity of Christ, you believe Jesus was just a nice guy who went around doing nice things…..”
That is infuriating to me to try to diminish the integrity of progressive faith by waving it off as if “well you just think that Jesus was a nice guy.” And yet, it comes from a very honest place….. it comes from a place in the pews of cathedrals and churches where people have been told to sit and wait for Godot to come and do something. As if simply sitting and believing in contrived religious constructs means anything at all.
If you are going to meet Jesus, divine or prophet, you probably need to get busy producing fruit which is worthy of what you claim to believe. As John said to the righteous of his day, in verse 9 of your gospel reading:
9Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.
We’re not really in the market for any more good Catholics or Episcopalians or Methodists or Presbyterians who just want to sit and wait….. it is time to get busy.
I had stopped by Chuck and Ruth’s house one day this week to pick up some coats to take down to Bill’s Place….. that’s something John the Baptist would like…. You remember he is the one who said, if you have two coats, give one to someone who doesn’t have one. Ruth watches for when those big down coats are on sale at Walmart and she picks up a few for those guys who need the extra insulation and the water repellant covers.
Ruth was telling me about their experiences around the Navaho when they lived out west. The native American spirituality taught that the world you talk about, the world you think about, the world you yearn for is the world you live in. If you think negative thoughts, say negative things, believe the worst in people…. That will be the world you will inhabit.
As Gandhi is famous for having said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” The kingdom comes when we have kingdom thoughts, beliefs, language and actions.
That beautiful poetry which Cheryl read to us early from Isaiah, that fabulous vision of a coming Kingdom in which the wolf lies down with the sheep and the lion with the calf, that beautiful poetic vision of a kingdom in which there is no violence and no fear…. In which a child is safe with the leopard and the bear…. Like that commercial we see on TV so often these days of all of the animals playing together at the water hole, predators and prey, fearlessly cavorting in the sun.
That Kingdom doesn’t come down out of the sky. That kingdom will come out of your heart. The ancient Zoroastrian religion, the religion which, in many ways, predated both Christianity and Judaism, taught that the right way to live is to have right thoughts, right speech and right actions.
Right beliefs are ok too, I suppose, if you need them, but if you have right thoughts, right speech and right actions, I really don’t care what your doctrine is because you have everything that religion has to offer.
You cannot feed your mind on anger and hatred and live in a world of love and joy. You cannot repeat gossip, lies, slander or utter harsh criticisms of others and expect to live in a world of healthy friendships. You cannot sit and wait and expect that someone else will feed the hungry, buy a coat for a cold person, or lift the burdens of illness, loneliness and poverty. If you sit and wait, you can grow old with Vladimir and Estragon but you will never live in the Kingdom you have been dreaming of.
The root of the English word “belief” is a combination of two words, “by” and “life.” Literally, your “beliefs” are the convictions you live your life by. If your beliefs are just in your head then they aren’t worth much….. your real beliefs are the convictions which we hear coming our of your mouth and witness in your actions. It is a lot easier to simply worship Jesus than it is to try to live your life by his teachings but it is trying to imitate that nice guy that will make the Kingdom come.
