December 16, 2007
Edwards (Knox) United Church
Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 35:1-10
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Matthew 11:2-11
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson
In Advent we explore anticipation and waiting as ways of teaching our emotions. There is power in the practice of waiting before we move into new territories of life. Anticipation can form our hearts for new adventures and new ways of being. Anticipation can build excitement and energy for the events and tasks of life. Waiting sorts the helpful feelings of anticipation from the unhelpful so it can inform our acting.
The question is: what are we waiting for? What are we anticipating? We can be confused. Our anticipation can be fear filled and the waiting scary. In such a time rather than being filled with positive energy we move to excessive worry. We freeze. We get stuck. We get mean spirited. Our emotions turn into negative and destructive forms.
Thus it matters what we anticipate. It matters how we use our waiting time. What we hope for, work for, and live for matters to the future of our world. It is to anticipate the reality of God in our events and actions so we can face negativity and disappointment. It is to know that within reality is a force of love seeking well being for all. It is to form a sense that we trust God, to be grounded in the sense of God who continues to bring opportunities for rebirth. It is to create a way of life that will create a good for all of creation.
The waiting time is a time to sort. It is to ask hard questions about what is it that we are willing to give our life to. It is to ask the Peggy Lee question - is this all there is?
Our passages this morning raise these existential questions. They examine the tension within fear, comfort and joy.
Isaiah begins with the situation of comfort. Here the people are in captivity in Babylon. The problem is they are now comfortable. While enslaved it is still materially better than being in the desert. It is not difficult for the situation is one of benign oppression. They are slowly becoming acculturated to the culture of a foreign god and it feels good.
What a great metaphor for our time. For we too are comfortable with strange gods, material reality. Yet, there is the refrain - is this all there is?
Isaiah addresses this comfort because it is based on fear. To strike out into the unknown, to return to the heart of their faith means to travel through dangerous places. They have to travel through the desert. What Isaiah offers is the image of God being in those dark places bringing life and joy. The deserts will bloom. There water will spring forth. He tells the people they can overcome their fear, let go of comfort and move. He reminds them of the promises of God and asks them to trust God to be with them in their desert times.
Matthew raises a question about this trust. It fits so well with the spirit of our times. There is this strange encounter with John the Baptist’s disciples. They come asking if Jesus is the one they expected? The very question raises all sorts of question about the context of Matthew’s telling. After all we have had the story of John baptizing Jesus and saying he is the one. Why now the question?
It is because there is an existential crisis in Matthew’s community. It is one that is so in keeping with the issues of our culture. The question is - did we back the wrong horse? Did we put our trust in the wrong person? It is a crisis of faith.
For the Matthew community had lost their comfort zone, were having desert times and they wondered. The answer is not blind faith but to dig deeper into their experience and their story to find the answer. They had experienced fear because all the comfortable ideas collapsed.
What is so powerful about these texts is they acknowledge there are legitimate questions we can ask of God and our faith. We can ask the hard questions that circumstances raise - we can through deep questioning find a more a enduring faith. It acknowledges that there are tough experiences that actually can overwhelm us. Then there are cultural questions that our world raises about the efficaciousness of faith. Just note the number of books questioning faith that have become best sellers. Our response can also be the one our texts give - it is not blind faith but faith based in the realities of the inbreaking signs of Joy. Our response is to ask what makes us cope and flourish - what highway gets us through he desert?
That is a nice image Isaiah gives. The desert is full of fear, the place of, other gods and God creates a highway of joy through it. That highway makes the deserts bloom. And Joy comes to the wildness. This is the vision that there is no Godforsaken places and God makes a home in this world, and in us.
In this Christmas season we move between comfort and joy. Our fears keep us in a comfort that is false. Joy is the counter activity that overcomes fear so we can leave our false comfort zones and risk. Joy is more than being happy. It is the quality of life that allows us to be in dark places and see light breaking into our reality. William Sloane Coffin Jr. said, “Despair is not an option.”
Fear creates pessimism, and our reality seeks to keep us there in fear. Listen to some of the responses to global warming - they appeal to our comfort and fear. They say we cannot afford changing our attitudes and place stronger commitments to Kyoto. However,
The worse a situation gets, the more pessimistic you become, ... That is the moment for hope as opposed to optimism. I love what Vaclav Havel said,
"Hope is not tied to the successful outcome of an issue,
but to the fact that the issue makes good sense."
That’s wonderful. In other words, keep the faith, despite the evidence. Only by doing this has the evidence any chance of changing.
In this time of waiting and anticipating, Joy changes our way of being, changes our imagination. It allows us to see the hints of new reality of hope emerging in our time. We can see those hints of joy that help us move from fear, from comfort to challenge. It sends us out to confront. The thing about Joy is it overflows the banks that seek to keep us restrained. It is contagious. In the sharing of Joy we work together to transform reality.
To experience the exuberance of Joy requires that we spend some time in preparation so we can see the real from the phony. It is to remove clutter and compulsion from our daily life. There is a real difference between exuberance and excessive. Our materialistic culture wants of tame joy by changing it into excessive consumption. But deep down we resist. We want real experience rather than synthetic experience. That is why we gather and take our time moving to the moments of rebirth.
Joy changes our perspective. Something I learned from years ago was a comment of Peter Gzowski - he commented on how the carols of anticipation broke through the darkness of the season, how the coming of lights on homes signified a sense of there is more than we see. An answer to: Is this all there is?
Joy breaks the cynical posture of our world - reminds us there is a reality seeking to break into our world. We see this joy in the prophets of our time who remind us that we can collectively change reality - think of those who reach out to those who have nothing, who remind us that we are not stuck but we together can address issues of poverty and environment. They exhibit joy that is contagious. At its best this is what the church is about - building a people who work to make deserts bloom with joy - address the issues of society with hope. Advent creates hearts which welcome rebirth and gives us the energy to share that experience with all whom we meet.
George Hermanson
www.georgehermanson.com
