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A Sermon for DaySpring
By Eric Howell
The First Sunday of Advent
Jeremiah 33:14-16
November 29, 2015
The psalmist sings us into the beginnings of the church year. To you, O Lord, I lift up
my soul. The direction is up. The movement is up. Everything is directed upward.
To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
That’s how we begin the new year. By lifting up: our eyes, our hearts, our prayers,
our hopes for our community, our lives and our world. All that we were, and are,
and hope to be is raised up before the Lord who is coming with power and glory,
justice and righteousness.
The question is: does this sound like good news or not?
Where you are when you hear about how God’s recompense is coming and how a
new world is breaking in matters in how you hear it.
Where you are when you hear that God is coming because of human inability to do
what is right and human incapability to right the world’s wrongs matters in how you
hear it.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord. Is that good news or bad news?
For folks who come to church wanting advice about how to make their marriages a
little bit better, or hoping for suggestions on how to make their parenting of highpotential kids a little more effective, or looking for assurance that their lives are
indeed what they hope they are before the God of love and mercy, this whole
business about looking forward in hope to God’s inbreaking kingdom is a little . . .
inconvenient.
Especially this time of year.
By now we’re gearing up for Christmas. That’s the day that’s surely coming and
there’s a lot going on already to get ready for that day. You can see some of it in
here. More tonight for sure. Lists are already being made: wish lists, gift lists, and
grocery lists.
It almost goes without saying that the scripture texts we think we’re ready to hear
are about a sweet young couple travelling home, welcoming a baby into the world,
angels, shepherds, wise men, and so on.
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But we’re not ready to hear them yet. That’s the wisdom of Advent. We think we’re
ready to hear, but we aren’t ready to hear. Our ears are stuffed with the
accumulated wax of self-satisfaction and the inevitability of God’s goodness poured
down upon us worthy servants. Before we can receive a word about God’s coming
as reassuring, we need to hear clearly some other words--both warnings and
promises, both history and future hope.
And so from the prophet, to a people who were watching everything they loved be
taken away, we hear words of judgment and mercy.
From Jesus we hear prophesies of a divine inbreaking—the revolution doesn’t start
with us and our good intentions, but in the heavens. “There will be signs in the sun,
the moon, and the stars” that show God’s inbreaking is near, and we’re told to be
alert and be awake and be ready because it’s coming . . .He’s coming.”
How we hear those words about God’s inbreaking probably says more about where
we are than anything specifically about the message. Folks who are just looking for
a little better way forward through a pretty good life don’t find those words
particularly helpful or hopeful. They sound scary.
We listen politely as a preacher stands, opens the Good Book, and proclaims the
ancient words: “They will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and
great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your
heads, because your redemption is drawing near . . . Truly I tell you, this generation
will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass
away, but my words will not pass away. Be on guard lest that day catch you
unexpectedly, like a trap.”
When the preacher is done and the words settle over the room, we say to one
another, “What lovely imagery. This is a foremost example of apocalyptic literature.
It comes from a time and place where imagery is to be interpreted. Here the cloud
doesn’t really mean cloud and heaven doesn’t really mean heaven, and ‘this
generation’ doesn’t really mean the people all around you. You see, an interpretive
lens is necessary such that the form of the text, most likely in a chiastic of some sort,
they almost always are, right, may retain its rhetorical force while we mitigate some
of its most arresting features . . .Well, now, that just about explains it. Let’s go to
lunch.”
But the preacher, not finished, extends a craggy finger: “For it will come upon all
who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may
have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before
the Son of Man.”
“Well now,” we say to one another, “this is just getting a little intense. Especially for
Christmas time, ok Advent time. Yes, I know it’s not Christmas yet, but still. Pass the
wassail.”
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That’s how we hear this sort of thing when we’re comfortable and all is already right
with the world. All this strange, hard talk is inconvenient at best to a people who
feel themselves perfectly capable of doing whatever needs to be done to accomplish
whatever needs to be accomplished: in short, a people who don’t really need an
inconvenient God mucking up our reasonable lives.
But there are times when we need this more than we could possibly need anything
else. When you’re not at the top, when you’re at the bottom, when you don’t know if
you have the energy or faith to lift up your soul one more time, one more inch, then
you just hear this different.
You hear this different if you’re on the Texas-Mexico border and you’ve just walked
a thousand miles with your two children to find the YMCA detention camp as the
only sign of hope you have. God is coming to make all things right? Thanks be to
God.
You hear this different if you’re at the end of your rope, and if you’ve had ideation of
being at the end of a rope. This life isn’t all there is? Praise be to God.
You hear this different when the word hope isn’t just a decoration on your living
room wall, but is a lifeline you grasp hold with anything you have left.
William Willimon once told the story of a man who with his family lived in a house
almost next door to the church. “The man’s yard was always a mess. The children
were poorly cared for. Rumors were that he got drunk on Saturdays, abused his
wife, and cursed his children.” Willimon says his church decided to help him and so
he visited the home.
Some of the youth group also went by and invited his kids to go on a trip to the
mountains. The women's group asked the wife to the annual Day of Prayer. The man
and his family came to church for a few Sundays, and then they stopped coming.
Willimon says: “That was the last I heard of him until a few months later when I met
him on the street. At first, I didn't recognize him; he looked so different. 'Joe, is that
you?' I asked. 'Yeah, it's me,' he said, with a smile. 'At least, it's mostly me. I've
changed.'”
Willimon says: “I could see it. His whole physical appearance had changed. He
looked great. Come to think of it, his whole yard had changed. It looked great. What
had happened?”
“He told me how, a few weeks earlier, a group had come by to pray with him after
they had heard that he had been on a binge. A church group. But not from our nice,
middle-class [mainstream] church. They were from a Fundamentalist church, the
one over across the tracks, the pre-millennial, fire-baptized, washed-in-the-blood
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Bible church. They told Joe that if he didn't stop drinking and beating his wife that
he was going to die, and burn forever in hell. They told him that God was coming to
get him and that God was mad.”
“They got his attention. They got him to their church where they prayed for him by
name and asked God to let him live just a little longer 'til they could get him saved.
He got saved, turned inside out and upside down. He was redeemed.”
“I said something about how I was sorry that our church had been unable to meet
his needs, but that I was happy that their church had. Joe responded, 'Preacher,
don't feel bad. Your church gave me aspirin. I needed massive chemotherapy.'" (told
by William Willimon)
Spiritual chemotherapy or invasive soul surgery is all that God’s prophets have to
offer. “Peace, peace” the other pastors would say, but there was no peace. Our trials
will be short-lived and mild, the other pastors said, when the prophet of God knew
and spoke the cutting truth: times may be hard, but God is good. God is just and
righteous and holy, and wants to lift you up to higher ground.
The prophet Jeremiah knew the days coming would be hard for everyone. The first
26 chapters of the book are about just how hard and how dark it will be for
Jerusalem. But then Jeremiah, with the authority you can only have when you’re
willing to face the darkness, said, these days will be hard, but other days are coming
when God will fulfill the divine promises, a branch will rise for David’s throne, and
he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
To those losing everything, that’s good news. Those are the days that are coming.
God will bring righteousness and justice, and true hope for better days with it.
May the Lord lift up our eyes to the throne. Our hearts in praise. Our thoughts in
adoration. May the Lord lift up our spirits that we may be ready for the day of the
Lord and until that day raise the hopes of all in this life and for life to come.
Copyright by Eric Howell, 2015