Welcome to Our World, Jesus

WELCOME TO OUR WORLD, JESUS          

A sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Stephanie J. Nagley on December 16, 2012 at St. Luke’s, Bethesda Maryland

Readings: Luke 3:7-18 and The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens’, Stave III concerning the dangers of allowing Want and Ignorance to Flourish

This isn’t the sermon I planned for today.  I planned a light hearted look at Advent through the eyes of John the Baptist.  What I hadn’t planned; no one had planned, was the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

It is one more tragedy added to the pile of human sorrow.  One more “How could this be?” One more, “Please, God, not again”.   But this one, this tragedy, is harder because the victims were children, babies really, who had just begun to explore the world.   Harder, too, because there’s been too much senseless sadness to bear.  There is no making sense of this.   That is what John the Baptizer is trying to tell us.  Stop trying to make sense of tragedy in the world. Stop trying to rationalize the irrational and get on with making the world better.

John is not someone who soothes the soul with pastoral anodynes. He doesn’t sugar coat and he isn’t worried about getting reelected.  What he is interested in and worried about is how we’re doing as the people of God, how our children are doing and if we’re really serious about practicing what we say we believe.

The Advent question John’s asks is not, when is God going to make everything better?   The question John asks is this:  When are the people who say they believe in God going to pursue with all their hearts the love and peace of God?  When are the people of God going to get serious, really serious, about beating swords in plowshares, pulverizing handguns and automatic rifles and all sorts of weapons? When are we going to get serious about taking care of each other, especially those who are most in need of care?

This tragedy tugs at the hem of our garments like the boy and girl of Dickens’ Christmas Tale, and begs us to attend to Want and Ignorance before it’s too late.  This tragedy begs to us do it now while we’re still trying to sew the pieces of our hearts back together.

 Alexandra Petri said this in her Saturday Washington Post op-ed piece:

“There are no words for this.  But we know how it goes.  I hate that we can’t just say, ‘Oh, God, how horrible.’  …that we have to say ‘not again’… (that)…in a few days or weeks or months after we have exhausted our grief and indignation nothing will change”. “I hate that there is a familiar outline to this…that we will poor over his [the shooter] life and habits and quirks”. “I hate that we will use this tragedy to know how right we were…people will go on television insisting that they know what caused this…I hate that we have a template for tragedy that should have no template. …Columbine, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, Colorado, and Clackamas, Oregon…this time there were young children, terrified, being told by police to close their eyes.”  

“There’s a ritual to it now. The name of the places where the horrible has happened becomes more than a name, the date on the calendar more than a date.  ‘Our hearts are broken today’ said the President. …We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics’. Alexandra Petri responds:  “How?  No single law stops this.  No one policy fixes this.  Evil persists. Some crimes cannot be prevented. But that does not mean there is nothing we can do”. She concludes:  “The next time we say “Not again”, I want it to be a promise”.

That is what John, in his plain spoken, even harsh way is asking.  He is asking us to make of our lives a witness to the promise to live in the ways of God.

Jesus, who we are about to welcome into our world again is the way to that promise and to the day the words “not again” will never be heard again.

We welcome Jesus into the real world.  John puts the dirty, ugly, painful realities of this real world in front us and declares that is what Advent season is about.  It isn’t the gauzy fairy tale of Christmas preparations or a focus on holiday parties.  It isn’t the worry of what to get Uncle Charlie for Christmas or the irritation of fighting mall traffic.  John isn’t welcoming us or Jesus into that world or to the manger in Bethlehem so that we will admire a pretty baby.  He is inviting us to deal with a life as it is, smudged and broken, and in the name of the baby in Bethlehem demanding that we do our best to clean and mend and renew.

In these last several weeks, where the horrible, unthinkable has intruded, John, shouts at us and begs that we get serious about our jobs as Christians, as people of God.  Wild eyed John, standing up to his knees in water telling us it’s in our power to change the world.  There he is telling us to do at least something to make it better – give a coat, drop a coin, buy a chicken for someone in Africa, give to something, care, be Jesus. Stop the violence. Stop the violence like what happened in Clackamas, Oregon and Newtown, Connecticut. 

But also stop the violence that we do every day to each other and to ourselves.  The unkind word.  The failure to see one another, to acknowledge the presence of the other.  Would it kill us to say ‘hello’ to a stranger, to offer kindness to someone we don’t even know?  The truth is that the failure to connect with each other, especially those we don’t know, is killing us. 

It’s time to stop the violence in our homes when we fail to honor those dearest to us.  Take time with each other. Don’t wait for another day when you’re less busy or less stressed.  This moment is the only moment we have.  It’s time to stop the violence of not taking care of ourselves, our bodies and our souls.   And when we stumble, fail, when we get too busy, or a little cross with one another, or don’t take care of ourselves, and we will, don’t give up. Renew the promise and begin again.

John shouts at us, a ropey blue vein bulging on his forehead, eyes burning, imploring us to stop waiting.   Stop waiting for God to wave a magic wand.  Stop waiting for God to do what human beings have the power and ability to do. Stop waiting and start being who you are and who you are and who we are is the holy hope of new life.   Move, choose, protest, write letters, pray, get a therapist, demand more, expect more, expect better, invite and anticipate the presence of God in everything and in every way.   

The modern prophet, Jewish scholar and mystic Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that we mustn’t accommodate to evil. We mustn’t adjust.  Evil should surprise us; astonish us on arrival because, as Heschel said, “an individual dies when he ceases to be surprised”. Evil should shake us to our core, rattle us in ways we can’t tolerate and move us to change.

We are the holy hope of new life.  When God came in flesh and bone God was offering to be with us in our flesh and bone, to work with us, to go hell and back with us in order to birth into life the kingdom of God.

I wish God would wave a wand and change it all.  If God is all powerful or so we are told that seems to me the easiest possible remedy for what troubles us.  Why it doesn’t work that way is a truth with which I continue to wrestle.   So far the wrestling has led me to this: We have to be fully invested, fully involved in the coming of a new day.  Without us God won’t.   Heschel wrote, “…We tend to read the bible looking for mighty acts that God does and not seeing that all the way through the Bible God is waiting for human beings to act”.

We welcome Jesus to our world in the manger.  But Bethlehem isn’t in the beginning of the story. Actually it’s more in the middle. What leads us to Bethlehem is a long journey with God and it’s been a journey of choices. Would we choose war or peace? Would we take care of those in most need of care? Would we choose to be faithful or go our own way?  At times we were magnificent in our faithfulness to God and at times miserable. But even in our failures God remained with us.  When we had fallen, our faces planted in the dust, God scooped up us and that dust as in the beginning and breathed a second chance into us saying, “Let’s try again”.

We are approaching Bethlehem but we can’t stay there just as we couldn’t stay in the garden.    Why?  The same reason we help our children grow and mature. We don’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t, shield them from the bumps, bruises and deep sorrows that comes from being human.  We have to give them the ability to chart their own life course. It’s the only way they grow up.  It’s the only way they have a chance to survive.  It’s the only way they can join the rest of the human race and be a responsible participant.  So it is with you and me and God.

God doesn't wave magic wands. It wouldn't help us grow and mature and become responsible participants in kingdom work.  In our journey from Bethlehem and beyond there is simply the always patient God waiting for us to grow into best selves.  There is simply the faith-filled God becoming part of us, a union that realigns our particles, rearranges our atoms, and reconciles our molecules into the beings God made us to be in the beginning of time.   And when God made us God said: “This is very good.”

 So when we cry out, “Not again!”, and God responds,“Promise?”, it's time, this time, to keep the promise.  It’s time to stop waiting and be the change we’ve been waiting for.

 

The sermon was followed by the choir singing “Welcome to Our World” by Chris Rice, the lighting of 28 candles and the reading the names of those who lost their lives on Friday, December 14, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut.