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December 3, 2006
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Jeremiah 33:14-16, 1
Thessalonians 3:9-13, Luke 21:25-36
“Holding, as
‘Twere, Our Mirrors Up to Nature and Soul”
Happy New Year! First Sunday of Advent – the
New Church Year! Season of pregnant expectation upon the promise of New Life
for the world and for every life in it -- even by least expected ways and means,
persons and places! We know about eternally new beginnings from Genesis 1:26 –
“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our
likeness.’” Thus our theme for the season – “Make Way for the Image of God!” A
way that through Advent attentiveness leads to awareness, acceptance,
affirmation, and action – not unlike the four phases of worship – praise,
confession, word, and offering!
We are commissioned, you and I and all in God’s
“likeness” – even in our own remotest resemblance to God! – God creates us to
manifest God’s dominion – not domination but dominion! – on earth. We are to be
as images and agencies of God’s love and concern for the common realm, the
common wealth of the earth and all of her creatures! Ours is the image and
agency a parent may give to a child. In Genesis 5:3 Adam becomes father to Seth
in Adam’s “likeness,” and according to Adam’s “image” – each bearing likeness
and image to others!
There is a richness, a depth to us that does not
always or often meet the eye! It takes deeper probing, deeper reflecting upon
who we are. That is how we propose to enact this season of Advent together –
going deeper and more richly into ourselves, into each other, into all others,
and into the world, the earth, the creation herself! It is said in the Talmud
of rabbinic reflections upon Jewish law – “In front of every Child of God,
10,000 angels blow their trumpets and proclaim, ‘Make way for the Image of
God!’” That’ll be 10,000 angels in front of you, 10,000 angels in front of me,
10,000 angels in front of the very next persons we meet, 10,000 angels in front
of our own and national enemies of the moment, 10,000 angels in front of every
last one of us! No exceptions to God’s image!!
We believe in this season each one of us has
within us an image of God the whole hurting world is waiting for! Advent is
about God doing everything possible to reveal that image both in us and to us.
As we become clear about the many changing ways God may be reflected in us, we
become open to the same many ways God is reflected in others. As we become more
deeply self-reflective, we may become more reflective of others as well – until,
in Hamlet’s words, we “hold as ‘twere the mirror up to Nature” herself – to all
that goes on around and within, between and among us! Being “in the image”
means we are by nature “imaginers!” There is no end to New Life, New Creation
we can begin to see!
This is for us a season of “mirrors” and
“magnifiers” – to see ourselves just as we are, and to offer ourselves as we are
willing, by grace, to become – in the spirit of Mary’s words upon hearing that
she is to bring forth the New Life of God in this world – “My soul magnifies the
Lord!” What does it look like for each of our souls to magnify the Lord? For
the soul of our whole congregation?
Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “Nature is a mirror of
the moral state of the soul.” As we see the nature of things around us
reflected in us, what is the moral state of our souls? In Adult Class this
season we look at Mary in the tradition of women of faith – often scorned and
ignored by the world – and there’s a new movie at the Riverside called “The
Nativity Story” – Would someone like to organize us to see and reflect upon it
together these next few weeks? We pause for occasions to ask in this most
reflective of seasons, how do our stories and our traditions help to illuminate
and imagine the deepest, perhaps most fearsome, recesses of our own beings –
much less the being of life all around us? We will not always “like” what we
find there. But we will find “likeness” to God as well!
God promises Jeremiah God will tell of “great
and hidden things that you have not known.” With love-held mirrors and
life-born magnifiers, we may come to find “great and hidden things” we have not
known – about ourselves or about each other! Are we willing to trust and to
risk? To hold up such mirrors and magnifiers? And to have them held up to us?
That we may see ourselves freely and fully, richly and deeply? Even in light
of conditions of culture and nation?
God knows how much we need “a righteous Branch”
to spring up in place of those who are squandering both our good will in the
world and our resources at home. God knows we need justice and righteousness in
our land! When we are most fearful and suspicious, we are least likely to see
and acknowledge the “image of God” in others we fear and suspect. Then we need
most to see ourselves in new ways! God offers this season to heal, reveal,
restore, rebuild, cleanse, and forgive. Are we ready --to see others as we see
ourselves?
Paul has such longing to see face-to-face and
sustain the Thessalonians in their fear and suspicion. The next best thing to
seeing face-to-face, Paul says famously elsewhere, is seeing “in a mirror,
dimly!” Let us aspire this season together to move through our dimness and to
meet face-to-face, as we get to know one another better. Let us intend to share
heart-to-heart, as we grow in trust and risk. And let us commit to work
hand-in-hand, as we do what has to be done to support this ministry and the
mission, in our own congregation and in our connectional church!
Let us find ways so to “mirror” and “magnify”
one another. To “hold” and to “lift” one another in thought and in prayer, in
image and in agency. One of our models may be the way those preparing for
membership next Sunday have come and have shared together – and the way their
sponsors even now are coming together and sharing together with them. Please
hold and lift them all. Let this be a season to ask ourselves how we might grow
each and all of our souls.
Jesus, like Jeremiah, is preparing God’s
faithful remnant in Jerusalem for the fear and suspicion, arrest and persecution
coming our way – if we dare to try to stand for the justice and righteousness of
the One who is coming to make all things new! Jesus prepares us top know, if we
follow him in his nonviolent, peace-making resistance to wars all around us, we
will be brought up on charges in his name. We may not find ourselves thankful
for it, but we will be richly blessed with opportunity to examine ourselves in
the full mirror of faithfulness! To see where we stand and how we are to
testify – as to who we are and are willing to become. Jesus says he will give
us the wisdom and words to witness for him.
Jerusalem will be surrounded, he warns –
anticipating what the gospel writers know to be the desolation and fall of both
the city and the temple not long after Jesus’ own death. He commends us to flee
to the hills! As if to become freedom-fighters and a guerilla army of
nonviolent resistance to domination!
I find it easy to think of Joseph and especially
of Mary that way – with her Magnificat committed to reversing all repression and
oppression, all disrespect and denial of the “image of God” in any and
especially in the poorest and neediest of us all. Jesus truly holds the mirror
up to all Nature! Jesus invites us to a mystical missional science -- with
reflecting/ refracting Hubble telescope in our hands -- taking in “signs in the
sun, the moon, and the stars” – and connecting -- even as climate change does!
-- distresses of heavens and earth!
No wonder we “faint with fear and foreboding of
what is coming upon the world!” With fear and foreboding for those generations
to follow. The warnings of Jesus invite us to set aside all lesser matters of
contention and conflict around and within, between and among us – and to
concentrate on greater matters all creativity and imagination – literally, that
image-in-nations needed for us to respect and include one another all over the
world – no matter our serious differences and divisions together. Can we not
seek to meet the one common challenge to the well-being of all? The critical
mess we have made of the earth? Of a faith that sustains the earth? This is
what full Advent awareness asks of us.
Jesus urges us at the coming of the “Human One”
and the “Cosmic Christ” -- with power and glory for all the earth! -- to respond
not with fear and suspicion but with trust and risk! To hold a mirror up
boldly to all of the dangers we face as earth’s peoples – yet as we face those
very disasters and destructions, Jesus calls us to stand up! Raise our heads!
Magnify our souls! Act as if we believe in spite of the evidence that our
redemption is drawing near! Then watch as the evidence changes. In the mirror
held up by Jesus, we find all of nature reflected in the fig tree. Even now, in
the bleakest approach of winter, the fig tree carries the promise of summer.
Even now our severest challenge becomes opportunity!
We are called to encourage every last sign of
the New Life, whole New Creation of God being born among us! It will take our
every power of Advent attentiveness – from today’s candle-lighting of “Awareness
to the Image of God as reflected in all of Creation” -- through acceptance of
self and others just as we are -- affirmation of hopes and dreams, possibilities
and opportunities come to pass – and action upon the full promise of nonviolent
peace-making in every last aspect of our life together!
The fig tree reveals that promise, in words of
the prophet Micah. Please sing them with me –
And everyone neath their vine and fig tree
Shall live in peace and unafraid.
And everyone neath their vine and fig tree
Shall live in peace and unafraid.
And into ploughshares turn their swords
Nations shall learn war no more.
And into ploughshares turn their swords
Nations shall learn war no more.
And every one neath their vine and fig tree
Shall live in peace and unafraid.
Amen.
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