I Won't Keep Silent

Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:22-40

A carol of Christmas originating in France begins:

“Sing we now of Christmas,
Noel, sing we here!
Hear our grateful praises
to the babe so dear.
Sing we Noel, the King is born, Noel!
Sing we now of Christmas, sing we now Noel!”

There is a lot of singing and telling going on in the Christmas story:

• An angel announces to Zechariah what’s going to happen. 
• The angel later appears to Mary and tells her what will happen to her. 
• Mary, in the presence of Elizabeth, tells out her song of glory and praise to God for what God is preparing for her.
• John is born to Elizabeth and when he is to be named, Zechariah’s divinely imposed silence is broken by telling the promise the child bears.
• An angel then appears in a dream to an anxious Joseph to tell him know to worry about the social issues he and Mary are living with; it’s all according to God’s plan.
• An angel, backed-up by the heavenly choral society, tells the rural Bethlehem shepherds about a special birth just happened in the village.
• The shepherds race off to Bethlehem, find the new born Jesus and tell the astonished parents all that they have seen and heard. Then back in their fields and homes, they tell everything to anyone who would listen.
• Then on the day of naming Jesus, first Simeon and then Anna proclaim the future of Jesus as the hope and salvation of his people Israel.

And if we step back from the individual stories, the reason that the gospels were written was that the good news of Jesus could be told. The apostle John notes in the opening of his first letter, “What we have seen and heard, we also announce it to you....We are writing these things so that our joy can be complete” (1 John 1:3, 4).

What is John’s joy? Simeon says it so well:

“...my eyes have seen your salvation.
You prepared this salvation in the presence of all peoples.
It’s a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and a glory for your people Israel.”

There is one theme throughout all the series pf “Christmas” tellings. That theme is hope. What John, Anna, Simeon, Zechariah, Mary proclaim is not wishful thinking. It is not rose-tinged optimism. It is pure unadulterated hope.

German theologian Jürgen Moltmann published his Theology of Hope nearly fifty years ago. For Moltmann, the hope of the Christian faith is hope in the resurrection of Christ crucified. When following the Moltmann’s Theology of Hope, a Christian should find hope in the future. Yet at the same time the believer will experience much discontentment with the way the world is now, corrupt and full of sin. The hope of Simeon, Anna, and others, is for the divine reordering of creation; not just the cancelling out of sin, but its complete removal. For Simeon and Anna, this is not a question of when in the future, but a present reality. Simeon declares, “Let your servant go in peace according to your word, because my eyes have seen your salvation.” As the gospel writer Mark says in the opening of his account, Jesus declares, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom” (Mark 1:15).

This is not optimism. It is hope. Miroslav Volf, in reflecting on Moltmann’s theology writes, “Optimism is based on the possibilities of things as they have come to be; hope is based on the possibilities of God irrespective of how things are....Hope is grounded in the faithfulness of God and therefore on the effectiveness of God’s promise.”(1)

For Isaiah, for Simeon and Anna, for Paul as he encourages the Galatian believers, hope is more present tense than future. God is indeed effective. There is a whole biblical record that supports that. God has worked through the underdog. And at times God has deliberately guided the situation so that the odds for a hopeful outcome were increased to the point of being incredible longshots. And that is when God came through with stunning results in favor of God’s people Israel. Of course there were times, too many times, when the people threw out hope in God and the reality of God’s effectiveness and blundered on in their own independence, ineffectiveness, and sinfulness, They rued the consequences.

If all we had was optimism, then school bombings in Pakistan, targeted killings in Ottawa and New York, house fires in Washington Court House, auto fatalities here and there, Ebola in West Africa, priest killings in Mexico, confrontations with law enforcement officers in countless cities, gridlock in Congress — they would all limit our ability to think that anything significant and good could happen ever again. Optimism is based on the best we can realistically envision. Hope is based on what God will ultimately bring about.

Because we are followers of the one who was born in Bethlehem, because we stake our lives—spiritual and physical—on the God of creation, salvation, redemption and eternal life, we know that God will not be mocked by the cruelty, the arrogance, the greed, the self-centeredness that rules the world and holds truth and righteousness prisoner.

As Isaiah of the exile wrote the final poems, he did so out of hope, out of the sure and certain knowledge that God was about to do a new thing, about to upend the tables of power, about to change the course of Israel’s life.

Israel's release from exile, her “righteousness shines out like a light, and her salvation blazes like a torch” (62:1b). The nations will witness Israel’s newly acquired “glory” (vs.2a); and Israel shall receive a new name (vs. 2b) revealing her new character. Finally, Israel shall be seen as a “splendid garland” and “a royal turban” in the hand of God. These metaphors emphasize once again that what is happening in freeing Israel from exile is God’s doing. Sovereignty over these historic events belongs to God alone, but yet they also exalt the place that Israel has in the divine plan of salvation for the world.

As Simeon said,

“You prepared this salvation in the presence of all peoples.
It’s a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and a glory for your people Israel.”

Christmas is more than bright lights, carols, gift cards, tinsel, eggnog, cookies, Santa and reindeer. Christmas is God’s affirmation that what God has intended from before creation is being carried out and will be accomplished. “The zeal of the Lord of heavenly forces will do this” (Isaiah 9:7).

Because what will be is already so—not only in the mind of God but also the minds of believers—we cannot keep silent. We have to gush forth the “Glorias” and “Alleluias” of the heavenly choir. We have to tell all that we have seen and heard like the shepherds. We have to declare,

“Joy to the world the Savior reigns!
Let all their songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
repeat the sounding joy.”


(1) Miroslav Volf, “Not Optimistic,” Christian Century, December 28, 2004, 31.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 

Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Make a List, Check It Twice

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; Isaiah 61:1-4. 8-11; John 1:6-8.19-28

We have probably heard the lyric for a month now in store background music:

“He’s making a list and checking it twice,
Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice,
Santa Claus is comin’ to town.”

Lists need to be checked twice (or more). Even after I have checked the shopping list twice, I will forget something on it. And those of you who read the bulletin closely will know how frequently some wrong word or misspelling gets into print. Don’t blame Barbara, blame me.

The cardinal rule for carpenters is measure twice and cut once. You can shorten a board cut too long, but you can’t lengthen a board cut too short. An extended family in my previous congregation ran a printing shop. They would hire a teenager after school to clean up and do odd jobs. Frequently the new hire would be initiated by being sent down the street to the hardware store to get a paper stretcher. The rule remains, measure twice, cut once.

Lots of us make lists. Lists are useful. A management tip I saw recently said that the last thing a person ought to do before leaving work at the end of the day is to make a to do list for the next day while the thoughts of unfinished work or new projects are fresh in the mind. Years ago a New Yorker cartoon showed an executive conversing with an employee. He said, “Let me make a little list of those things.” The huge executive desk was covered with little pieces of paper bearing lists.

Paul is famous for his lists. They are scattered throughout his letters. There is the list of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, the list of situations which he has survived in 2 Corinthians 11, the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, and the equipment list of the armor of God in Ephesians 6, just to name a few. Some readers think that Paul’s lists are closed, when in fact most are open-ended. They are not exhaustive but illustrative. There ought to be an “e.g.” at the beginning, or an “etc.” after the last entry.

All this points out is that Paul’s lists are made according to the particular context. We have one of Paul’s lists in today’s reading from the first Thessalonian letter. Paul is addressing the new community or assembly meeting in Thessalonica. The Greek word he uses eventually becomes the word we associate with church – ekklesia.

Lee Bowman points out the important aspect of that context. The significance of the community, assembly, or church is not derived from its location in a particular piece of geography, but “from its ‘location’ in a particular god, namely the one God of Jews and Christians—known to both traditions as the Creator and Father of all.”(1) The community of faith is not the Thessalonians’ church of God, but God’s church in Thessalonica. That’s the context for which Paul makes his list.

The Thessalonian context includes a tension between ardor and order, between members who are sparked by the Spirit which results in a free-wheeling, prophetic, and messy church life and members who are trying to keep everything in order which results in a buttoned-down, constricted, institutional church life. Already in the earliest years of the church the clash of evolutionary and emerging versus settled and atrophied has begun. They didn’t use those terms, but that is the gist of the tension between the faction which threw caution to the wind with the expectation that Jesus would return any day and the faction which thought that the church might be in it for the long haul.

Advent is like the San Andreas Fault, where the North American and the Pacific tectonic plates rub against each other, causing a major earthquake every so often. Advent is like that because the first and the second coming a Jesus rub against each other in ways that create theology-quakes. Is Christ here manifested in the body of Christ called Church or isn’t he? Will he come again? Does he really need to return? Why hasn’t he returned?

Paul lists one of the gifts of the Spirit as prophetic utterance. Sermons as we know them hadn’t developed yet. And most of the scriptures which we read today from the New Testament hadn’t yet been written. So often the focus of a gathering of the Christ followers was around a Spirit inspired, impromptu, unrehearsed utterance by someone whose spiritual gift was prophecy. Now just because these folks weren’t seminary-trained and didn’t have bound commentaries and internet Bible websites, didn’t mean that they had nothing to offer their hearers. Their words could give guidance, reveal teachings, or deepen the faith of people who were having trouble living their newly-gained faith in the culture of the community or who were beset with persecution.

In some ways, the early church may have functioned something like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in that every one pitched in to help each other live the new life, the clean life, the life built on Christ and free from the addiction of false gods and idols.

Of course the prophecies could not be taken untested. The dynamic of “I saw it on the Internet, so it has to be true” operated the same when everything came by word of mouth. Fact-checkers and truthers are needed in every age. Yet without the manifestations of the Spirit the church becomes dull, ingrown, and atrophied.

The church – including you and me in the church today – has this tension of the Spirit pushing us to see beyond touch and sight and good solid people saying, “Not so fast.” Urgency is one thing, rushing headlong, leaping before looking is another. The tension is between knowing that Christ could come at any time, and yet living as if our Lord is depending on the church indefinitely. Culturally we live this out with children asking if Christmas is here yet and adults advising patience. The Spirit will not be patient and the staid institution will not get excited.

How do we allow the Spirit of God to be active in our midst without quenching it? If we quench the Spirit in worship, it becomes mere ritual, rote words devoid of feeling. If we quench the Spirit in teaching, then thinking becomes as occluded as blood vessels clogged by cholesterol. If we quench the Spirit in mission, the church becomes a destination rather than embarkation place. If we quench the Spirit in relating to the world around us, we further demean and devalue the very individuals and classes of people who desperately need highways in the deserts of life, filled-in valleys and smoothed-out rough places, who have broken hearts yearning for binding up, who are imprisoned by bars not just made with iron, but also with penniless dollars and untrained learning, who mourn not only their own mistakes but also the negligence and disdain of others.

John the Baptist, channeling Elijah, prepared the way for the Messiah’s coming. He turned hearts with prophetic fire and ordered words so that the curse might be lifted from the land. When John’s father, Zechariah, learned that his elderly wife Elizabeth would bear a son, he was stricken with dumbness for not believing. Only when he wrote the child’s angel-given name on the tablet, was his tongue loosed and his proclamation heard.

Hear again Paul’s list, this time transcribed by Eugene Peterson in The Message:

• Be cheerful no matter what; 
• Pray all the time; 
• Thank God no matter what happens. (This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live. )
• Don’t suppress the Spirit, 
• Don’t stifle those who have a word from the Master. 
• On the other hand, don’t be gullible. 
• Check out everything, and keep only what’s good. 
• Throw out anything tainted with 

May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. The One who called you is completely dependable. If he said it, he’ll do it!

With assured hope expect the future but live faithfully as if the future were already here. That’s the list. For Advent, Christmas, every day. Check it twice.

(1) Lee Bowman, “1 Thessalonians 5:15-24; Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), Year B, vol. 1, p. 64. 

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 

Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

A Hope for Righteousness

2 Peter 3:8-15a; Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8

It’s that time of year again, when children say, “Won’t Christmas ever get here?” and every adult who has experienced quite a few Christmases says, “What? Is Christmas here again?” That’s the human equivalent of Peter’s observation about God’s time: “that with the Lord a single day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a single day.” Let’s face it, God doesn't operate according to Timexes, Casios, Bulovas or Swiss-made Rolex chronometers. God made time and stands outside it. We are stuck in time we have, accurate atomically to billionths of a second, although every so often a smidgeon of time has to be added to the clock because the rotation of the earth has ever so slightly decreased.

Time is said to be the fourth dimension after length and width and height. Einstein said that time is relative. Peter and the writer of Psalm 90 would agree, although certainly not in terms of E=mc2. God simply doesn’t operate according to our timetable.

Peter was writing to believers who faced persecution every day. They wanted out of their suffering, away from the threats to life and limb. And it wasn’t happening. Part of the issue was not just the seeming slowness (or even inattention) of God. Part of the issue was a misdirected sense that we human beings can tell God what to do.

Yes, God on occasion does follow human desires. Abraham bargained with God for the righteous inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah; Moses interceded successfully for the ever-disobedient Israelites as they impatiently bided their 40 years in the wilderness. (And we complain about an hour’s wait in the doctor’s office.) David prayed to God for forgiveness when the prophet Nathan called him out for his indiscretion with Bathsheba and his contract killing of her husband Uriah.

God even invites self-intercession. God told Solomon, “If my people who belong to me will humbly pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

The message that Peter wanted believers to get was that we are not “god” to God. The Lord God remains creator, redeemer, sustainer, and operates according to God’s own understanding of the flow of time and salvation history, whether we get it or not.

Peter was writing to people who had come to think that Jesus would return any time now, be it in a blaze of glory, a military victory, or a cataclysmic end of everything as we know it. Christ may return in any of the above or in none of the above.

John the Baptist knew that God’s promised one would cross his path at some point. He scanned the crowds every day thinking this one or that one might be the one, until that fateful day when Jesus came and John knew he was the one. That day was in God’s time, not John’s. As expectant as John was, it was about God and not about John. And for Peter it was about God and not about the recipients of his pastoral counseling.

To the Christians wondering about God’s delayed return, Peter offered a three-part challenge. He pushed them to think about God’s loyalty. When has God ever failed to keep a promise? Never, and God will not fail now. Peter pushed them a little further. When has God ever fulfilled a promise in quite the exact way all of us think that God should? Never. Why should God start now? Then Peter broadened the picture of on-going salvation history. What could God possibly be waiting for? Lots of reasons that aren’t about us but about people who are in desperate need of the Savior, people who are ignorant of God’s promise.

What has God promised? Peter said that according to God’s promise “we are waiting for a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.” Advent becomes the time when believers recognize the enduring promise of our faithful God, and receive afresh through the birth of Jesus the assurance that God’s will for creation will be accomplished in God’s time.

The remembrance of Mary’s pregnancy becomes the incubation period for our own reflection on God’s enduring presence. Through our own expectant remembering of Christ’s first coming we celebrate the metaphor of the birth of the new and final order that God intends. This yet and not yet time allows us to look forward to the end of the earth as we know it only because that ending means the fulfillment of another of God’s promises—God’s creation of new heavens and a new earth. God’s purpose for people is not destruction but re-creation; not annihilation, but renewal.

The prophet Isaiah recorded God’s promise to the people: “ ‘As the new heavens and the new earth that I’m making will endure before me,’ says the Lord, ‘so your descendants and your name will’ ” (Isaiah 66:22). All believers can joyously look forward to the restoration of God’s good world. That’s the message of the final visions of John’s Revelation, a beautiful description of the new heavens and earth (Rev. 21:1-4), that assures believers that righteousness is at home there because God himself will live among his people.

Peter concluded this series of thoughts with one final point for reflection: “Consider the patience of our Lord to be salvation.” Just as believers are asked to be patient, they are also called on to think of God’s patience as their salvation. God restrains the divine anger. God counts to “10” many times over because God dearly loves the created world and all who are in it.

Rather than fret over the timing of the coming of the new heaven and new earth, God invites us to participate in it. Yes, at some point, everything will be destroyed, but until then, our ancestors in the faith had an obligation which they passed on to us, and which we ourselves now transfer to tomorrow’s new disciples. That obligation is to consider in the words of Peter, what sort of people ought we to be? The apostle says that we “must live holy and godly lives, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God.” There are not one but two responsibilities – to wait for and to hasten the coming day of God.

That doesn’t mean that God’s day will happen tomorrow. What it means is that as we live godly lives, as we live as examples of godly living, as we instill those values in the next generation of believers, as we constantly review and reform those values to the faithful measure of God, we help to advance God’s kingdom work. None of us want to be accused of slowing it down.

To hasten the coming of God’s kingdom means that we must be in the world which God is seeking to redeem. Wayne Sams describes that activity this way:

We are to be of the world but not in the world. This can be illustrated by noticing the submarine. It is in the water but not of the water. If it is on the ground (out of the water), it is of no purpose ... it is not accomplishing its mission. But when it is in the water, it must be insulated (not isolated) from the water. If the water ever gets into the submarine, then there is cause for alarm and emergency. We must be insulated from the world but not isolated from the world.(1) 

Since God is our rock and redeemer, since Christ is the unquenchable light of the world, since the Spirit groans with us for the world, we can be in the world and we can endure our stretch of human time within the span of God’s time. There is hope for righteousness. It will be at home with God on one grand, glorious, and victorious day. Our faithfulness will have hastened it.

Thanks be to God.

(1) Cited by Homiletics, December 7, 2008; http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93040423

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.