Sermon 12.9.07

For the season of Advent, the church has decided to do something slightly different. Instead of the sermon coming after the Gospel, we've brought the sermon to the beginning of the readings; to set them up. That way, the readings become the sermon. The texts for this past week were Isaiah 11:1-10, Romans 15:4-13, and Matthew 3:1-12

Three Spirits

This morning you are going to be introduced to three spirits: A spirit from the past, a spirit of the present, and a spirit who will point us forward, towards the future. In hearing these spirits, your mind and your consciousness will be taken away from this place. This ceiling will open up to reveal the annals of time spread out before you. And there you will be placed in the annals of time along this vast tapestry that is laid out before you. Your guides will be arriving shortly; they will stand over there, and over here. They will read for you these visions and paint those pictures. But first, but first before we travel, let me lay out the terrain for you so that you can walk it carefully. After all, these spirits do not visit for just any reason. They visit to point out to you those points in the history of the world’s salvation, the history of your salvation.

So come, allow the ceiling of your mind and your heart open as the picture is painted.

In our first reading you will go back, far back in time to 700 BC, to encounter a Spirit from the past. It is the spirit of hope. In glimpsing this spirit of hope, you’ll see Isaiah, a curious prophet and advisor. He’s the first of three prophets to write under the name “Isaiah,” and has served under king after king in Judah, and none have done what they’ve promised to do. None of those kings have done what they were expected to do. Each king has somehow alienated and isolated Judah from the powerful nations that surround them, or has given Judah over to be a slave-state for more powerful kings with powerless gods. Every action by a king brings them farther and farther from God and God’s holy plan for them, and they are on the cusp of destruction.

So what does Isaiah do, spurred on by this spirit of hope? Isaiah begins to see visions. Isaiah begins to dream dreams. He dreams of things that are not yet, but can be with the power of God. He dreams of a king, a perfect king, who does not rule with a sword in one hand and a bag of gold in the other. He dreams of a king who does not bend a knee at the power of surrounding armies, but bends a knee to scoop up a poor child or a bleating lamb.

“Imagine that this place is laid desolate,” Isaiah says, “and God has cut down every king that we’ve ever known. And we are left, like the stump of a tree that was once mighty. The stump of Jesse, our great-grandfather. Even then and there, God will revive our hope. A twig will spring forth from that dead stump, a king unlike these other kings we’ve had! He won’t rule with a sword around his waist, but with righteousness! He won’t lead with ideas that will line his own pocket, but will lead with ideas that will help the poor. This king will bring peace to this land, scarred by war. Peace that is so lasting, that is so pervasive, that even the animals will feel it! Our children will not die of snake bites. Our goats will not be killed by wolves. Harmony. Equality. Wisdom. These will be the hallmarks of this king’s reign.”

The spirit of hope will lead us to this vision of Isaiah; you’ll hear it in full in a few moments. But take a moment now to ponder what this might look like in our own war scarred world, today. No longer would our children die of drugs that snakes have sold them on the streets. No longer would the animals die because their habitats are poisoned or destroyed. No longer will our leaders and leaders around the world search out tax codes, practice business ethics, and advocate for laws that line their own pockets, but will watch for the vulnerable and poor. No longer will they lobby for war after war, killing our children, wives, husbands, friends, neighbors. Peace. Harmony. Equality. Wisdom. Righteousness. These will be the marks of the land, like a new branch rising from the stump of a world that continues to poison itself.

What would this spirit of hope mean for us today? What would this spirit of hope mean for us this Christmas?

But we can’t stay here, we must move one. Enter the spirit of unity to show us a glimpse of the present. This spirit lets us take a glimpse at a letter that the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. Oh, don’t write this off yet, this is a glimpse of the present. You see, this church in Rome, they were fighting amongst themselves. Some of the members were Jewish-Christians who wanted to follow the laws of the Torah to the letter. Circumcision! Dietary laws! Specific worship practices! True followers of God adhere strictly to the law and all others are outsiders!

And then there were the other members of the church, the Gentile-Christians. They didn’t know the Torah. They weren’t circumcised. Their worship practices were different then those Jerusalem reverencing Jewish-Christians. This church was ready to split down the middle!

And in enters Paul, guided by the spirit of unity. Watch him write furiously as he attempts to squelch an argument from afar. “Come now,” he instructs the church, “the Torah is written for instruction, but is primarily provided to point us to the hope that is in Christ. Therefore, do not deride each other, but welcome each other. We are all seeking the same thing: closeness to the God who shows us love in Jesus. Jesus welcomed all, Gentile and Jew, and seeks that we might be one in him. These divisions over the Torah and the law are not helpful, and distract us from our true purpose: to believe in God and act on that belief to serve one another.”

The spirit of unity will lead us to this vision from Paul’s letter, and in a few moments you’ll hear it in full. But let’s take a minute to ponder what this would mean for our own church, here. These divisions that Paul writes about are not too far off from our own divisions in the church today. Christians fighting over which parts of Scripture to follow. Who to allow in worship and to communion. Whether traditional worship is preferable to contemporary worship. These fights are found in our own church, here, as well. Perhaps we could use a personalized letter from Paul today to remind us, under the spirit of unity, that focusing on these fights will distract us from our true purpose: to love God and act on that love in service.

What would this spirit of unity mean for us today? What would this spirit of unity mean for us this Christmas?

Ah, but we can’t stay here. We must move on to the strangest of all the visions, to a glimpse of the future. Here we find the spirit of promise showing us an eccentric man. He’s barely wearing anything: just some hide and leather. He eats what he finds on the earth, mostly locust and honey. He is the spitting image of the prophet Elijah, and many people think that he might be Elijah come back from the dead. But, although he speaks like Elijah, dresses like Elijah, and eats like Elijah, he is actually John the Baptist.

We find John the Baptist at the outset of Jesus’ ministry. He is an unusual character in the story of Christ’s work. He is actually a rival of Jesus for attention; John had many followers. You can see him down there by the Jordan, by that river of life for the people in that land, and he is commanding a large and diverse audience.

“You brood of vipers!” he yells, “who warned you that God was coming? Who told you to come and repent of your Sin? I am not God, I am just a messenger of God. I baptize you with water, the lifeblood of our physical lives, but God is coming! And God will baptize you with righteousness that will come like a fire upon your spirits, and it will burn a righteous fire within you to purge Sin.”

I can tell, this vision disturbs you. So close to Christmas, where our thoughts are of a baby and silent night, the spirit of promise shows you a vision of a man yelling about repentance and fire. But this vision is brought to us to refocus us this Christmas. You see, this vision reminds us that not only did God come in the baby in a manger, but God continues to come. God will come again once and for all with the spirit of hope seen in Isaiah, with the spirit of unity heard written by Paul to the Romans, to fulfill the promise that John the Baptist reminds us of today.

God is coming. God is coming to us in ways we don’t expect: like the peaceful leader who shows mercy instead of anger; like the great unifier who throws out those things that divide us; like the little baby, born in a stable; like the green shoot the springs out of what we thought was a dead stump. God is coming this Christmas to you, and to me, to this world. And John, speaking with venom of fire, is here to remind us of this.

Ah, but we cannot stay here. We must rush back to those pews, regain our sense of where we are. But the spirit of promise has led us here for a reason, so lets consider, if only for a moment, what John the Baptist’s message might mean for us today. If we hear again that God is coming, what do we do? Do we repent, as John encourages us to do? Do we daily remind ourselves that we belong to God, and are not gods ourselves? You know, in this season of Christmas, where we can whip out a credit card and buy whatever our hearts desire. Where we can fulfill the wishes of those around us with a gift. Where we can pass by someone hungry on the street, only to walk into a Starbucks and spend $4 on a coffee, it is easy to feel like a god. And so, as we hear this strange man yelling from the river of life, as we hear this promise for the future, a future where God comes to meet us in unexpected ways with hope and unity, how do we respond?

We respond by hearing the Word of God again. We respond by reminding ourselves that we are not gods, and we repent of our selfish ways. We respond by hoping and working for peace, by working for unity, by living in the promise that God speaks to us in the Word today.

You’ve seen three glimpses today of the past, present, and the future. You’ve been led by the spirit of hope that you’ll hear in Isaiah, the spirit of unity that you’ll hear in Romans, and the spirit of promise that you’ll hear in Matthew.

Hear these words in a new way this Christmas season: the hope, unity, and promise of a God who continues to come and will come again. And then, go, and live in that hope, in that unity, in that promise.

Amen.