The Reverend John E. McGinn, Rector
Saint John’s Episcopal Church
Sandwich, Massachusetts 02563
December 9, 2007 2
Advent
Today’s sermon is taken from
the Old Testament lesson Isaiah, chapter 11, versus 1-10.
Wilderness is the place of
Moses; a place of no longer captive and not yet free, of letting go and
learning new living. Wilderness is the
place of Elisha, a place of silence and loneliness,
of awaiting the voice of God and finding clarity. Wilderness is the place of John the Baptist,
a place of repentance, of taking first steps on the path of peace. Wilderness is the place of Jesus, a place of
preparation of getting ready for the reckless life of faith. We thank God for the wilderness. Wilderness is our place. As we wait for the land of promise, teach us
the ways of new living, lead us to where we hear your word most clearly. Renew us and clear out the waste lands of our
lives. Prepare us for life in the
awareness of Jesus’ coming when the desert will sing and the wilderness will
blossom as the rose. Amen
Another thing they didn’t
teach us about in seminary: Christmas Eve. An Episcopal priest once counseled with an
engaged couple who wanted to be married on Christmas Eve. This pair of love birds chose Christmas Eve
because, as they said, their love for each other was the greatest gift they
could give. So romantic, don’t you
think? Then a few days before the
wedding the love birds showed up at the priest’s office with their feathers
definitely ruffled. The young man had
given his beloved an early Christmas present.
“That’s a bad thing?” the priest asked.
The young man explained that this was a gift his future wife really
needed. He should have known
better. The future wife rolled her eyes
and announced, “It was a set of tires!”
“They were Michelins,” the young man protested. He couldn’t understand her lack of
gratitude. And so the priest opened up a
conversation on the differences between men and women. Wants versus needs, and
many other mysteries that exist between the sexes.
Sometimes at Christmas we
don’t get what we expect; and sometimes we don’t get what we want. This was true the first Christmas. The people of Israel were living in
expectation of the Messiah, but the Messiah they got was not the Messiah they
expected. They expected a warrior king
who would lead them to victory over their enemies. Instead they got a tiny babe in the manger in
the tiny, obscure town of Bethlehem. If
only they had read the prophecies of the coming Messiah with more care.
There are no more beautiful
words than those of Isaiah 11 which Wendy just read, which foretells the coming
of Jesus. And here is part of what
Isaiah had to say:
“A shoot shall come out from
the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a branch will bear fruit and the spirit
of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the
spirit of counsel and of power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the
Lord; and he will delight in the fear of the Lord, and he will not judge by what
he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with
righteousness he will judge the needy.
With justice, he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. Righteousness will be his belt and
faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard
will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and the little child will be there. The
cow will feed with the bear; their young will lie down together, and the lion
will eat straw like the ox. The infant
will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child shall put his hand on
the den. They will neither harm nor
destroy on all my holy mountain for the earth will be
full of the knowledge of Lord as the waters cover the sea. On that day the root of Jesse will stand as a
banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him and his place of rest
will be glorious.”
This is a world turned upside
down. The picture that Isaiah paints of
the Masonic age goes far beyond vanquishing one’s enemies. It speaks of a world where evil and violence
themselves have been forever rooted out.
It is a vision that exists in the mind of God. This is where creation is headed. No more war, no more hatred, no more tears,
no more pain. Can you see it? Can you taste it?
If you can’t sense a new
world coming, maybe it is because the bright lights of this world obscure the
heavenly light of God’s promise. Maybe
if we lived in a harsher world, a world of more darkness, you could see it.
One of the things I love (and
I’ve said this before), one of the things I love about Cape Cod is there are
places in which the stars in the sky just come alive because there are no
lights. The other night I was driving along,
and in my car I have the luxury of having what they call a moon roof or a sun
roof or whatever it is called, and I was looking up and I could see the
stars. It was beautiful! And also, then come along the new inventions,
those lovely headlights that shine into your retinas that cause you to almost
drive off the road, so that you no longer can see the stars in the sky if you
have a moon roof, but you can’t see the lights in homes that are along the road
either, because you are hanging onto the steering wheel hoping that you don’t
drive off the road.
But, you know, in the
darkness, in the bright lights of the world, God is at work in the world, not
always in ways that we will recognize, not even in ways because of our
sinfulness. We will always approve; any
more than Israel approved God taking up himself in the form of a babe. God is at work in the world and in our
individual lives. It is so important
that we do not lose faith in the presence of God in our world.
Viktor Frankl,
survivor of a brutal Nazi concentration camp in World War II, wrote the book From
Death Camp to Existentialism. In it
he noted the desperate need that all individuals have for hope. Hope keeps us alive. In the concentration camps especially, the
prisoners needed to have some hope of rescue.
Their hopes for rescue became especially fervent around Christmas
time. Everyone dreamed of going home for
Christmas. As Christmas neared, the
prisoners stopped complaining about lack of food and beatings and freezing
temperatures, and all the other human practices they endured. They focused on the hope of going home. But then Christmas came and went with no
rescue. A few prisoners committed
suicide, then a few more, and still more.
And some didn’t take their own lives; they just stopped getting out of
bed, they stopped eating. One morning
they just didn’t wake up. It was as if
they had willed themselves to die. Six
months later when allied soldiers took over Frankl’s
camp and liberated the prisoners, they found that almost half of the prison
population had died since Christmas.
They could not live without hope.
The experience of those
prisoners is sometimes paralleled in our minds.
There are times when we must hold on to hope: death in the family, death of marriage,
disappointment in someone we admire, a terrifying diagnosis in the doctor’s
office, problems at school, at work, rejection by our friends. It is important that we not lose hope, that
we do not lose faith. Writes Isaiah in another
place: “The people who walked in
darkness have seen a great light.” That’s
where we are sometimes; walking in the darkness, but we must keep going. We must believe that we will see a great
light.
Viktor Frankl
experienced soldiers giving up hope and dying.
You and I cannot imagine the deprivation of those prisoners, but there
are times when we dare not give up as well.
There is a life shining in the darkness.
“The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the
goat, and the calf and the lion and the yearling together and a little child
will lead them.”
This is the amazing promise
of Christmas. God has not forgotten us
nor forsaken us. In fact, God has become
one of us. A little child will lead
them. Those words have particular
meaning for followers like us of Jesus.
I have a friend; she now lives
in Florida. She has lived in the south
because her husband is in the Air Force and they have lived on different
bases. She is retired now and her name
is Barbara. Barbara was trying to make
Christmas special for her family while living in the south where sometimes it
is not quite the same as the cold snap we have here or the possibility of snow;
and you know, that kind of beauty that comes here in the wintertime. But she wanted to make Christmas special and
to instill in her children the true meaning of Christmas. That is, that it is Jesus’ birthday.
Now Barbara is not what we
call a holy roller, but she believes with all of her being that Jesus is the
light of the world. Because her children
had always had birthday cakes in special shapes, Barbara made Jesus’ birthday
cake in the shape of a
Christmas tree. She baked the cake, but
because of the busyness of the season, she hadn’t had time to frost and decorate the cake until she was preparing Christmas
dinner. She used hard candies to
represent Christmas balls and lights on the tree, and she put a tall, thin
candle in the center of the cake.
The children were surprised
and excited to see the special birthday cake for Jesus, and as they looked at
it, one of children piped up, “Who is going to blow out the candle?” And Barbara didn’t know how to answer, so she
said, “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait
until later to find out.” They placed
the cake in the middle of their table and enjoyed their Christmas dinner. When they had finished eating, the family
joined hands, and they sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. And just as they completed the song (now
remember, this is in the south - North Carolina), a gust of wind came in
through the window and blew out the candle.
Barbara’s three kids stared in amazement, and one of them said, “Jesus
blew out his candle.” Now some might say
it was only a coincidence that a gust of air came through the house at just
that moment. It would have been hard to
convince those children, however. For
them, it was proof positive that Jesus was with them.
You and I need to understand
that God is with us. It doesn’t make any
difference how difficult things might be for us. God has not forsaken his
own. Don’t give up. Whatever your circumstance, God loves you,
God understands you, God forgives you, God reaches out
to you. God will deliver you. Put
yourself into God’s hands. No other
hands in this world can satisfy.
Amen