|
Back to Sermon Archives
December 3, 2005
Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Isaiah 40:1-11, 2 Peter 3:11-13, Mark 1:1-8
“Rosa and the Four Roses: Leavening Levelers
of Uneven Grounds”
Anyone else get “Advent funk” for the first few weeks of the season? When
Peter’s “landscape of righteousness” here proves to be desert and
wilderness? And while Isaiah offers us, “Comfort, comfort my people,” John
the Baptizer, the Bulldozer, pushes beyond all “comfort zones?” Meets us
with promised salvation but only on his own terms? On his own turf? All the
familiar and wonderful songs, stories, sights, sounds, tastes, smells,
decorations – yet something deep within me has to be dragged along kicking
and shouting, “But I am not ready yet!”
It makes me think of Ishmael at the beginning of Moby Dick – with “dreary
November” in his soul, wanting to knock the hat off every person and to join
every funeral procession he meets! Then he knows it’s time to take himself
back out to sea in a hurry! And when I hear the beginning of Mark’s Gospel I
think of the song in “Jesus Christ Superstar” when the apostles, feeling a
little sorry for themselves, just want to write their memoirs so someone
will talk about them when they’re gone! And I know it’s time to start our
story over again.
“Advent” means that which is “coming” into our lives and our life together –
that which is promised, awaited, anticipated, without ever quite knowing
how, when, where, or to whom. When we talk about “every little thing” this
season matters, counts, makes a difference, -- every little thing may be
seen as a gift to bear, a goal to share – we mean “every little person” as
well – every single person anywhere, whatever we have to offer, whatever we
have to witness, to work for. And “every little people” –especially the poor
and the outcast, the forgotten and the marginalized – along with those who
move from centers of comfort and complacency in life to stand in solidarity
with those who live on and beyond the margins, the edges of our usual
awareness. Every one of them matters today!
This morning we give special thanks for sister Rosa Parks. 50 years ago
Thursday she refused to give up her rightful seat on a bus in Montgomery,
Alabama. She did so in such a setting and with such an intent – for her way
to this moment had been well prepared -- as to help launch a movement of
40,000 “little people” -- beyond all usual awareness by anyone else --
making systemic change! Which means, we have not been the same since! This
morning we give special thanks for North American religious Sisters Maura
Clarke, Ita Ford, and Dorothy Kazal, and laywoman Jean Donovan – often
called the four roses who bloomed in December – because they were murdered
and martyred by government orders in El Salvador 25 years ago Friday –
because they insisted upon staying and standing with the poor and oppressed
“little people,” and children, in that seemingly faraway place. We have not
been the same since.
Today I ask we give special prayer as well for four members of the Christian
Peacemaker Teams. ( www.cpt.org ) CPTers
seek to embody the non-violent witness and service of Christ in places of
war and systemic conflict around the world. Now four of them are held
captive by anti-Occupation forces in Iraq. Their names are Tom, Norman,
James and Harmeet. They are just folks like you and me -- bearing gifts,
sharing goals for justice and for peace – based on the promise of God still
awaited. Apropos of “preparing the way” this morning, Christian Peacemaker
Teams call their work, their witness, one of “Getting in the Way.” That’s
the book they have written of their experiences. They mean “getting in the
way” both literally, in “the Way of Jesus,” foreseen by Isaiah and fleshed
out by John in scripture this morning, and figuratively, in the way of
messing with our dull and routine resignation to systemic injustice and
strife.
Beginning today and growing throughout the season, we find life-sized
figures of gift-bearers and goal-sharers standing with us around the church
-- thanks to Sandi Beckett and others. These figures offer us words and
signs full of hope. We are invited to consciousness, to awareness, of the
smallest, most subtle, fragile and gentle of gifts and of goals in each one
of our lives – in our relationships, families, workplaces, homes,
communities of life and faith. We are invited to imagine how similarly born
and shared are the gifts and the goals of folks just like us everywhere – in
Montgomery and in El Salvador, in Haiti and in Iraq, in South Africa and in
East Timor, and in every last place in the world.
We are invited to spend Advent taking into ourselves as much of all the
world’s brokenness as we can bear and as we can share. We are invited to all
forms of bearing and sharing – from the most intimate and most direct
charitable forms of our everyday lives – to such systemic forms of outreach
and solidarity as represented by, 1) Apportionments to the work of our
larger church! 2) Emergency relief on the Gulf Coast and in Pakistan! And,
3) Millennial Development Goals (
www.us.millenniumcampaign.org
) of the United Nations we name in worship each week, study in adult class,
wear symbolically as our wristbands, -- “Voices against poverty! No excuses
2015!” -- pray about constantly, and act on as we can. Please pick up a band
and join us!
“Every little thing,” every little gift, little goal, of our everyday lives,
makes a difference. We never know which one God may use to bring about
change! Ours is not necessarily to make the change for ourselves. In fact,
some of our most tragic and deadly mistakes – personally and corporately --
are based on our best of intentions to try to force changes in somebody
else. Rather, ours is to make the WAY – Prepare ye the way! – for God to
change us – for God to change each and change all of us – in right
relationship with one another!
Isaiah the prophet calls upon us as those who are waiting on the full
promise of God who is coming. That promise is full of mercy, full of grace,
full of forgiveness that opens the way to justice -- to restoration of right
relationship – in each and every last part of our lives and our life
together. Isaiah changes and challenges us in our own times and places – in
our own Babylons, Romes, and Americas – Do not be distracted and deadened!
Do not be seduced and subdued, by bondage to unbridled profit and trade --
by cycles of selling and shopping for dubious goods and superfluous
services! All this will pass, like the grass, says Isaiah – at Christmas, or
at any time! Strengthen what lasts and endures!
What lasts and endures is the same word of God out of whom we have lived our
whole lives and the whole life of this creation! And the first word of God
is, Comfort! Comfort my people! Strengthen my people – my littlest people –
my last and my lost among people. Carol Palleson -- our calligrapher of the
word-gifts posted around the church and available for us to receive on our
ways into the Fellowship Hall – points out how many powerful words begin
with the prefix “c-o-m.” “Com-“ meaning “with” – in this season of waiting
signs of God’s “with-ness” to us and all peoples – the very meaning of
“Emmanuel!” God with us!
Isaiah means “comfort” not in some passive or purely receptive sense. Some
of us may need to start there. The deeper our alienation, our feeling of
lastness and lostness from God – our “Advent funk,” stuck in “dreary
November” this season -- the harder for us just to receive the Gospel, the
Good News of God’s Love-Life – just for us! As part of God’s Love-Life for
all peoples everywhere! No matter how passive it sounds, “com-fort” means
“com-forte!” With “loudness,” with boldness, with strength – for all of
God’s people – strength not only left to each individual person, but
strength built into the structures and systems meant to be serving,
sustaining us all!
I invite each of us to come up with our list of Carol’s “c-o-m” words and
signs of how we invite God to be “with us” this season – as we ourselves
intend to be “with one another” and “with ourselves.” Here’s another such
word: Norman Mitchell reminds us, what presses upon us this Advent season
“is not primarily a birthday, but the beginning of a decisive new phase in
the tempestuous history of God’s hunger for human companions!” Imagine that!
God the creator of all! That one and same God is hungry for each of our com-pany,
our com-panionship – both of which mean our “with-bread-ness!” Our
hospitality, our openness of preparation to eat and to be together -- our
at-table-ness with God! God who longs for com-munion with us all along our
ways and our way together!
How do we find, and offer, “comfort” today – in times of more than 2000
United States military personnel – and of uncounted Iraqi civilians, caught
up in cycles of violence and vengeance? How do we find, and offer, hope --
in times of now 1000 executions by states around our nation since capital
punishment was revived -- and of uncounted detainees and, in effect,
political prisoners, here and around the world? How do we learn to lend
urgency to the words of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” – words of mourning in
exile and longing for ransom? How do we learn to receive Isaiah’s vision of
God’s new promise as one of restoration in place of all retribution?
Forgiveness, renewal, in place of all punishment?
Our friends who are the Nevada Shakespeare Company have created a wondrous
seasonal drama called “Stille Night.” It witnesses to the “new thing” God is
offering us even today – represented by the spontaneous truce that breaks
out Christmas Eve, 1914, between British and German troops on the Western
Front of World War I. It happens just because of “every little thing” among
“every little person and people” – the sharing cigarettes, chocolate, and
photos of their children and families – the playing of soccer and, of
course, the singing of carols – together! We can see it here in the
Fellowship Hall the next two Saturday and Sunday evenings at 7 pm. (
www.nevadashakespeare.org )
The company just performed a variation upon the script with the
schoolchildren of St. Albert the Great -- where Pat Perry is principal and
Cameron Crain teaches. Jeanmarie Simpson, co-author with Patsy Gehr, is
careful to say the version to be offered here is not for children – “War is
not for children, even though they are profoundly affected by it.” And
Cameron adds, “Kids are kids for such a brief time. We should be protecting
them from violence.” Shortly before she was murdered, Jean Donovan wrote
from El Salvador – “Several times I have decided to leave. I almost could
except for the children, the poor bruised victims of adult lunacy. Who would
care for them? Whose heart would be so hard as to favor the reasonable thing
in a sea of their tears and helplessness. Not mine, dear friend, not mine.”
“Here is your God,” says Isaiah. Here is your God. Here is our God. Amen.
top of page
Archives
|
