Sermon preached on 9th December 2018, the Second Sunday of Advent, by the Rev’d Elizabeth C. Senft, Lutheran Pastoral Associate.
Malachi 3.1-4
Luke 1.68-79
Philippians 1.3-11
Luke 3.1-6
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
First of all, I want to say that all of our thoughts and prayers are with Tom, and of course Thomas. I am grateful that things weren’t much worse, but there is a long healing and recovery, not all of which will be easy. Giving them some space and time to recuperate and pitching in to keep things humming here is something that is already happening in a very loving way!
A messenger arrives to prepare the way: How many times in each life has a messenger prepared the way for something? For those of us that remember the days before drugstore tests, the doctor would tell you that you were pregnant. Later in life, another doctor describes the rigors of upcoming chemotherapy or the usual path of a disease that will end one’s life. A parent declares in graphic detail what will happen to a teenage child if he or she is found with drugs or alcohol.
In the second year of the presidency of Donald Trump, when Benjamin Netanyahu is the Prime Minister of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas is the President of Palestine and Michael Curry is the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and Alan Gates is the bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts, someone is waiting quietly in the wilderness, a messenger who will ask you what you will do, who will maybe ask you to change, and then ask you to work to re-make your corner of the world so that it is ripe to become God’s kingdom. Luke’s words for today set us in a particular time and a particular place. The reader and listener find themselves with John in the wilderness. And, John is proclaiming that the particular world in which Luke has just placed us is about to change. To be ready for that world to change, people must themselves change.
We are in a particular time and place. Our time is uncertain and in that, we share some space with our brothers and sisters in the time of John the Baptist. Who is the messenger God sends to us? And what is the message?
Malachi, like Luke, is set in a particular time and place. The time is after the end of the Babylonian exile. The people are home and apparently have already had time to fall into questionable ways. Malachi announces a time of cleansing, of refining. It isn’t entirely reassuring.
Some of us as Americans can identify with this. Many of us don’t feel safe. The world is changing and some are not adjusting well to the change. For those people, there is fear. Others of us have hope that change will bring out the best in us.
Malachi’s announcement thus rings true and it is also Luke’s announcement. Only in Luke, Malachi’s language of refining and purifying which almost sounds like a threat, is entirely absent. Instead, John the messenger announces a new way to change a heart and be ready for the security of a home with God.
He also calls for the natural world to be changed. God initially created the world. And, now, that creation is going to take on an entirely different appearance. Malachi the messenger tells of changes to come, changes in the individual as well as changes in the society.
Who is our messenger?
Let’s listen to Teresa of Avila, a very strange and mystic saint:
God’s messengers come through the conversations of good people, or from sermons, or through the reading of good books; and there are many other ways . . . in which God calls. Or they come through sicknesses and trials, or by means of truths which God teaches us at times when we are engaged in prayer; however feeble such prayers may be, God values them highly.
(The Interior Castle)
Messages like this one move us forward into a new time and a new place with very simple means. And that’s where the lessons of Advent can address us: what messages has God been sending to us lately? How have we been challenged to grow? Who has brought us hope?
Elaine Pagels, a theologian and scholar, recently wrote a book entitled “Why Religion?” I saw a review in the NYT a few days after its publication in late October and ordered the book. It is not a book justifying religion or faith as the title might suggest, rather it is a book about intense personal loss. Her first child died of a fatal condition at age six. Her husband died just over a year later, falling off a mountain during a hike. This is a book about the messengers and messages that come in the days after those losses. Both likely and unlikely, these messages and messengers come in the moments of hope, devastating grief, loss of faith, and everything in between that may accompany the death of a loved one. Some of the messages and their tellers are unexplainable but still move her. Others are quite clear and straight forward.
Having suffered my own deep loss in recent months, I found the book to be strangely comforting, not an adjective I would have willingly applied to much of anything Elaine Pagels has written previously. But to hear her tell her story of doubt, despair, grief, putting one foot numbly in front of the other until finally some emotional spark is stirred, gave me a kinship with her telling. It is the surprising messages and messengers that mostly unknowingly lead her along the way to a new existence in which she can mother again, contribute to the happiness of her fellow human beings through service and gift, and once again professionally to creatively evaluate the nuances of interpretations of the lives and words of Jesus and his followers.
I needed that message and that messenger. I needed to hear that some of the things that I have felt were messages from my own dear Mark are not crazy imaginations, but have a purpose. The comforting and funny banana tree that arrived a couple of weeks after his death that it turned out he had sent, the seal that poked his head up out of the water when Mark’s ashes were cast to the deep. And there are other things: a twinge of jealousy and frustration that told me that I was actually feeling something again, something of which I am not proud, but feelings that were unattached to my grief. I needed to hear that I might feel enough of anything once again to become a spark in this place, in this community, in this world. There’s a long way to go and there will be more messengers and messages, but now I know that I might hear them.
We need messengers and messages to confront us and to push us to new places of growth. John the Baptist was the messenger and message melded into a single word. Harsh word, for sure, but a word from God that could lead to repentance, forgiveness, straightened paths, leveled mountains, and filled in valleys.
We need to believe the God who said, “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way . . .” God continues to send us messengers for our good, for our best, for our future and present, even though we don’t recognize them sometimes. We need to believe the good news that God still speaks a personal word to each of us, one that pieces through the cacophony of global concerns right to our inner heart’s ear.
This year, like every year, Christmas comes. And, in Christmas, we celebrate the reality that Jesus really does come. Jesus is coming soon. And, there is work to do.
Have we heard the messenger? Is the world safe for the coming of Jesus? Have the paths been made straight? A woman is just over eight months pregnant, and she is readying herself for a journey over hills and through valleys. We still have time, a little bit of time before the world changes.
That’s Advent – hearing and receiving the Message and Messenger that God continues to send in many and various ways to prepare the way of the Lord. AMEN.