Walking in the Light

Isaiah 2: 1-5 & Romans 13: 11-14

First Sunday of Advent/ 28^th November 2010

  

Isaiah holds out for us a vision.  That’s what prophets do.   Less prognosticators of the future, prophets channel God, they’re conduits for God’s voice, they call people to set their sights on things that truly matter, upon God, and then they invite us to align our lives, our thoughts, our passions, every step of our lives in the direction of that vision.

Isaiah holds out for us a vision:  “In days to come, the mountain of Yahweh’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains; and shall be raised above the hills” (Isaiah 2:2).  Isaiah is speaking of Jerusalem, the city of Yahweh’s shalom, Yahweh’s peace.  The City of Yahweh will the place above every place, the focal point of the world.  “Come let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to the house of the God of Jacob” (Isaiah 2:3).  Why? So that Yahweh might teach us the way.

Isaiah holds out for a vision:  God’s house will be a place of instruction, of learning, where we discover the ways of God, where  God’s people are trained to walk in those ways.   “For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:3).  The ways of God shall be known among the nations.  The ways of God shall be followed by the nations.  The God of Jerusalem, who has much to teach us, is the God of peace.  Yes, there was a time for war in Israel’s long and bloody history.  Yes, Yahweh comes across as a warrior God.  But here we have a different witness, a different vision.  Yahweh’s people will be arbiters of the peace, working for peace:  “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4).  In God’s vision, instruments of death and destruction will be transformed and used to plant fields whose yield will feed God’s people, not destroy them.

Isaiah holds out for a vision and invites us to walk toward it, led by the light of Yahweh.

The vision that Isaiah held out for Jacob was in sharp contrast with their day-to-day reality.  The vision he sees is not consonant with how the majority would have viewed his world.  Isaiah offers an alternate vision.   In the verses that follow verse 5, Isaiah knows that all is not well with their souls.  Yes, God’s vision is clear.  God’s purposes are clear.  But Jacob, “for you, have forsaken the ways of your people, O house of Jacob” (Isaiah 2:6).  How?  They have been tempted by sorcery and wealth, drawn away by silver and gold, the tinsel trappings of other gods.  “Their land is filled with idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their own fingers have made.”  Idols have always been a cause a grave concern in Judaism because they knew, as we tend to forget, you become what you worship, so you better be clear about the object of your devotion and passion and obsessions.  That thing or person or idea you invest so much authority in and give value to better be worthy of such devotion, because you will become like it.  It was John Calvin (1509-1564) who said the human mind is a factory of idols.  He’s right.  It’s true – we are all adept at coming up with idols that we have created either with our own hands or constructed with our thoughts, invested with considerable authority and power and value, and then worship them forgetting we were the creators.   We have to be conscious of those idols in our lives that tempt and pull us away from God, from God’s vision, God’s view of reality.  Although Macy’s and the other gods of retail have told us that the close of Thanksgiving marks the start of  “the Christmas Season,” we who begin our walk through Advent this morning live in with a different narrative, hold an alternate view, we have a different view of reality, we see things differently, tell a different story, follow a different light.

Advent calls us to be different.  It is different.  We start this season from a different perspective and, hopefully, and end on December 25 or January 6, in a very different place.  Advent sends us down the road less travelled – and, as Robert Frost (1874-1963) knew, “that has made all the difference.”[1]  

We often talk about Advent as a journey – we think of the journey of Mary and Joseph toward Bethlehem, or the journey of the Magi to the place of the Christ child.  And so it is.  The metaphor of the Christian life as a journey might be overused and maybe even tired for some, but I still think it’s still fitting. 

            This first Sunday of Advent we begin a journey together.  Not Joseph and Mary’s journey to Bethlehem.  Not the Magi’s journey following after a star.  Although their stories are never far away from us this time of year, their stories set the pattern or template for our lives.  Instead, as we enter Advent, I invite you to think of it as a journey – your journey toward the place of birth, toward your birth or rebirth, maybe even God’s journey toward you.  Throughout scripture, God is always on the move – in the wilderness, in the promised land, sending people here, sending people there, sending God’s Son, the Son sending disciples, the Spirit of God sending disciples.  The sending and the journey are central to our experience of God.  It’s even implied here in Isaiah 2, in just a few verses.  Isaiah gives us a vision and then we’ve invited to walk in the way of the Lord (Isaiah 2:5).  We’re given a vision and then given a path and called forward into the future.

            God never leaves us where we are.  When it comes to our experience of Yahweh, no one has arrived.  We’re not there yet.  Yes, God accepts us as we are, but God never leaves us there.  God’s acceptance of us always includes a summons – the acceptance means the direction of our lives inevitably change.  When it comes to our life in Christ movement is constant, change and growth are constant.  God the teacher has so much to teach us, for instruction still flows from God’s dwelling place.  There’s so much for us still to learn about what it means to love and be loved, there’s so much still to discover about what it means to forgive and to be forgiven, to receive peace, to be being agents of peace, to be makers of peace.  The Spirit of Christ is forever nudging us forward, challenging us, comforting us, yes, but also prodding us on in order that we might grow and grow up into mature people in Christ. 

            The Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber (1878-1965), once said, “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”  He touches upon the fearful side of any journey – whether it’s a trip to the heart of Africa or to the depths of one’s heart, we know there’s some anxiety associated with journeys, going some place new and different. We’re all creatures of habit. We all like our well-worn paths, the familiar surroundings, the things we know. Sometimes we have to leave home, we have go where the Spirit sends us in order to discover the place of birth, the place of hope.  Sometimes the journey to Bethlehem – to the place of birth – requires that we leave home, going through new, and maybe even scary terrain.  For some, we cannot discover birth or renewal unless we leave home. Instead, we prefer the true, the tried, the tested.  There’s an old Chinese proverb that goes, “Unless we change the direction we are headed, we might end up where we are going.”  But what are we missing if we never leave home?  What are we missing going down the same old path?  How many of us drive the exact same road to work every morning and the exact same way home even evening?  How many of us take the exact same route to church and back each Sunday, never venturing home by another way?    

            We have all been through Advent before.  We have all heard the stories, heard these texts, and sung, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” ad nauseam (!), maybe we have sung this hymn far too many times and really don’t like all these Advent hymns in minor keys.  Maybe this year will be different.  Maybe we can take a different route to Christmas this year.  Maybe we find a new way to enter into the mystery and hope of Advent.  Maybe we can see these next four weeks as a journey – your journey.  I firmly believe that the Spirit of the Living God is always on the move and always wants to take us to some place new – to the place of birth, the place of joy, the place of hope, the place of healing, the place of resurrection!  This is part of God’s grace, that the Lord takes us from where we are and shows us the place where we need to go.  It means discovering what it means to be human, what it means to be alive, the very purpose of our lives.  The Italian Jungian psychoanalyst, Aldo Carotenuto (1933-2005) once wrote, “Although we cannot know why were were brought into this world, we can be sure that it was not just to stand there gazing off into space.”[2]

            This Advent, perhaps the Lord is summoning you on a different kind of journey.  Think of your own life, where are you on that road toward birth?  Where does Jesus need to be born in your life?  What is Jesus trying to birth in you?  Why were you born?  Where is the Lord trying to take you?  Where are you being led?  God’s Spirit summons us to travel, to move, to journey down new paths.  It’s difficult to travel in the dark.  In Jesus’ world, traveling at night was dangerous.  We need light to see where we are going.  Today, we have so much light in, natural and artificial, and we still don’t know where we’re going.  We think we have so much light and are so enlightened, yet we’re unable to see just how dark the world and people can be.  For some, the world is all dark and they yearn for light, even if only for a flicker of light.  For some the journey of faith has already taken them into dark realms, into shadow and they long for light. 

            Light is required for the journey – God’s light.  In this season of deep darkness that yearns for it, let us walk in God’s light leading us to that place where something new might be born (again) in us.  Let us walk in the light of God – staying close to the Lord, in prayer, in worship.  Let us stay close to the light, without fearing or avoiding the darkness.  “I cannot cause the light;” Annie Dillard once said, “the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.”[3]  What is God’s light?  Wisdom, insight, instinct, love – let these be our guides.  This is the light that shines even in the darkness and the darkness can never overcome it (John 1:5). 

            In the face of the insipid consumerism of this season, in the muck and mire of materialism, be brave to chart a different path.  How?  Listen to God, seek instruction from the One who knows you best.  In  the light of God’s light discover something new about yourself this Advent, discover something new about God’s love, seek to discover something new about what the birth of Jesus means to you.  What is God calling you toward? What is the Spirit is stirring in the depths of your souls, in your dreams, in your aspirations, in your loss, your pain, your suffering, but also your joy?  What is the Spirit stirring up in you?  What is the vision that God is holding out for you?  With grace and with courage, let us step out and walk in the light of the Lord.

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[1] Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” first published in Mountain Interval (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920).

[2] Aldo Carotenuto, To Love To Betray:  Life as Betrayal. Joan Tambureno, trans. (Wilmette, IL:  Chiron Publications, 1996), 32.

[3] Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek (New York:  Harper & Row, 1985), 33.

The Servant Church

Isaiah 65: 17-25

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 14^th November 2010

This past week in Philadelphia, Broad Street Ministry hosted a unique pastoral leadership gathering for pastors and church leaders.  Broad Street is a unique Presbyterian ministry in the heart of urban Philadelphia. [1] Our middle schoolers spent the night there two years ago and came back transformed and they’re going again.  Our Crossroads youth determined and Session approved that next year’s major mission trip will involve an entire week at Broad Street.  The gather this past week was not directly related to youth ministry, but about the church as a whole, building a greater sense of community and connectedness, imagining new forms of being church in a new day (and it’s a new day for ministry, friends, if we haven’t discovered that yet), requiring new forms of leadership.  I wish I could have been in Philly, but could not get away.  My friend, Jan Edmiston, a Presbyterian minister in Northern Virginia, was there.  She has a great blog with an intriguing name, “A Church for Starving Artists,” and Jan posted some of her reflections from the conference.  She shared that Peter Block spoke at the gathering.  Peter is a organizational consultant, he’s Jewish, and he spoke about the nature of community and community-building.  He named four things that “kill” community, four things that we should be aware:  first (and we’re not going to like this) is pews facing forward so that only the person in front is heard; second, answering questions instead of asking them; third, expecting people to perform for us – our children, our friends, our colleagues, our leaders, our pastors, worship leaders (like the choir); and fourth, being helpful.[2]

            It would be worth our time and effort to attend to each of these so-called “killers,” but the one that caught my eye as we consider Mission Sunday and host a Mission Fair is the last one: being helpful.  There’s probably considerable resistance to all of Block’s observations because he’s critical of the way many of us view the church, particularly this church.  But being helpful?  What’s wrong with being helpful?  How can being helpful hurt community?  How can providing assistance do harm?  Isn’t this what the church is supposed to be doing, to be precisely this – helpful, full of help to those in need?  Years ago, I learned that one way to view ministry is finding a need and then meeting it or filling it.   Not so, says Block. By helping, Block means rushing right away to being or becoming fixers.  We discover someone is hungry, we fix a meal and “fix” their hunger.  We learn that someone is without shelter, so we build a home and “fix” that problem.

            But what’s wrong with trying to fix things?  It’s been said that men are always in a rush to fix things.  If we discover something’s broken – a fence, a furnace, a tricycle, a relationship, a heart – then we rush to try to make it better, repair it.  It is said, that when women find themselves in a similar situation, they aren’t as quick to want to have the problem solved by their partners.  Not surprisingly, this is often a topic for conversation in marriage counseling. But these gender differences break down, because women are also just as quick to offer comfort and assistance in times of trouble, make the pain go away, make things better.   But what’s wrong with that?  Isn’t this what it means to be caring?  Serving the needs of our neighbors, isn’t this what it means to love one another?  Aren’t we in the fix-it business as a church?  Isn’t that what mission is all about – being helpful, fixing things, fixing people?

            Yes – and maybe that’s a problem, a problem with the way we’ve come to view mission.  The Anglican Bishop Creighton  (1843-1901), once observed “no people do so much harm as those who go about doing good.”  It’s a counter-intuitive statement, isn’t it?   We would think more people doing good would be good for everyone.  That is, unless, the people doing good are naïve as to how improvement happens, how systemic social transformations actually occur; unless the people doing good are too idealistic and too confident in their ability to realize the good for all; unless the people doing good toward others are doing what they deem is good and needed, instead of listening to the people in need, that is, those on their receiving end of all our goodness so that they might tell us what they need and don’t need from us.

            There’s a flip side to wanting to help and to fix too much:   it might produce more harm than good.  Yes, we are here this morning to celebrate our mission efforts, to hear from our partners and agencies, to hear the difference we are making in the world.  Catonsville Presbyterian Church has always had a strong tradition of supporting and doing mission, locally, nationally, and globally.  When you look at all that we do, when you look at all that we’ve accomplished for church our size, when you read the “thank-you” letters from people grateful for our support, it’s clear that we have a lot to celebrate and be grateful for.  At every level of the congregation we are inviting people to become engaged in mission, whether it’s our children collecting peanut-butter and jelly for the food pantry, buying medical boxes from IMA World Health for Haiti, putting together back packs for students through CEFM, gathering our nickels for Baltimore Presbytery’s Centsability program, building the Santi School in Nepal, volunteering at the Habitat work site in downtown Baltmore, baking casseroles for the Westside Shelter, or buying safe motherhood kits for mothers in Africa, and our long-standing work in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  This is just a small sampling of what we do.

            But I think we also know that unless we also work for systemic change in communities, all of our efforts are like band-aids on the festering wounds of society.  Yes, we are educating and raising consciousness of the pressing issues faces us, but that’s not enough.  We’re only scratching the surface.  Sure, it’s better than nothing and we’re doing something instead of nothing.   But maybe the church’s (our church and the church as a whole) attempt to do so much helping and fixing prevents us from being attentive to the deeper structures of power and economic inequality that are really the root cause of so much pain and suffering in the world.  This is where all of our good does little to bring about real change and might in the end do more harm. 

In a poem entitled, “A Worker’s Speech To A Doctor,” the German poet and playwright, Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) gets at the heart of the matter.  Listen to how he describes a visit to the doctor: 

When we come to you

Our rags are torn off us

And you listen all over our naked body.

As to the cause of our illness

One glance at our rags would

Tell you more. 

It is the same cause that wears out

Our bodies and our clothes.  

The pain in our shoulder comes

You say, from the damp; and this is also the reason

For the stain on the wall of our flat

 So tell us:  Where does the damp come from?[3]

 George Macleod (1895-1991), the founder of the Iona Community, told the story that when he was pastor in the slums of Glasgow that he got tired of praying for people with tuberculosis without praying for the entire society, the system, a community rotting to its core, caught in the grips of poverty, hunger, and unemployment.

            Yes, we know the needs of God’s people are enormous.  Yet, if we ran about trying to meet or alleviate every need, help every person in need, fix every problem, if this was our ministry we would be exhausted.  Some of us might be exhausted.  But, isn’t this what mission is?  Isn’t this what the church is called to do, isn’t this our mission?

            It depends.  It depends what we mean by mission.  There’s no doubt it’s important.  As my friend Tim Hart-Anderson says, “Mission is basic to what we do.  Get mission wrong and we get church wrong.  Drift away from mission and we drift away from church.  Stop mission and we stop church.”  So, if it’s so important, then what exactly is it?  What do we mean by it?  Being clear about the definition of it will have enormous implications for a parish.

            This gets us to the heart of the matter.  There’s something not quite right with the way the church has been using this word for the last two hundred years or so.  We tend to see mission as the work of the mission committee, of it being one part of the overall ministry of a church, along with evangelism, and Christian education, and fellowship, and so forth.  We tend to associate it with “charity,” mission aid and support beyond the walls of the church to those in need.  Through mission the church becomes a vendor of religious services and goods, doing good, fixing problems out there in the mission field, beyond the doors of the church, or some place other than where we live, some place we have to go to get there, like downtown Baltimore or on mission trips.  But as contemporary scholars and practical theologians are reminding us, this way of understanding mission worked in a culture that viewed it itself as primarily Christian.  Mission work was always viewed as being elsewhere, someplace else.   Our culture is far from having a Christian outlook.[4]  Therefore, the challenge will be for us to reclaim its original biblical meaning. 

Mission, from missio, means to be sent.  In scripture, Yahweh is revealed as a sending-God who sends people, churches and even nations off on a journey with a purpose, the mission of God.  What is God’s mission?  To proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim the redemptive love of God, to represent and embody the compassion, justice, and peace of the reign of God. We can even view the sending of Jesus as part of God’s larger mission.  This means that mission is not something that the church does.  And mission is not a trip.[5]  The essence of the church is missional, “for the calling and sending action of God forms its identity.  Mission is founded on the mission of God in the world, rather than the church’s efforts to extend itself.”[6]  This means that even the sending of Jesus can be view as part of God’s mission.  The practical theologian, Alan Hirsch (who once spoke here at CPC), defines this shift in thinking in this helpful way:  “we frequently say ‘the church has a mission,’” but a more theologically correct statement would be “God’s mission has a church.”[7]  We exist to serve God’s mission

            What if we started moving away from thinking of mission as an instrument of the church and, instead, began to view it as the identity and essence of the total church? This means what we now view as mission would still be part of serving God’s mission, but also viewing Christian education as serving God’s mission, and evangelism as serving God’s mission, how we care for one another is serving God’s mission, the work of the deacons and elders is viewed as serving God’s mission, the work of the trustees as service to God’s mission, the stewardship of our dollars as serving God’s mission. Not serving the church as an end in itself, but serving the mission of God through the church.  It would mean getting out of the way of our agendas and perspectives and even our comfort zones in order to place our lives and our lives together into service to a higher call, to God’s mission in the world.

            This brings me – finally – to Isaiah 65.  What is God’s mission?  It’s pretty clear throughout the Bible.  We know what matters most to God – justice, righteousness, peace, forgiveness, reconciliation, love, hope, people living in harmony with their neighbor, with themselves, and with God.   It’s beautifully summarized in Isaiah 65.  He envisions a New Jerusalem built up out of ruins of its destruction.  It will be a place where there is no weeping, no cry of distress.  It’s a place where infant mortality rates are very low and the elderly live out their lives for more than three score and ten.  People will build homes and live in them – their own homes, not someone else’s home.  People will plant vineyards and eat from it – their own, not someone else’s.  People will work not because they have to, but because they want to.   There will be meaningful labor, work that blesses and doesn’t curse, work that contributes to the wellbeing of the community, not work that struggles to keep up with the rising cost of living, trying to satisfy the burden of our consumer needs and our accustomed standards of living.  Offspring will be blessed – not for one generation but for many.  And peace, peace all the way down between people right down to peace between wolves and lambs.  It’s a place where people are free to dwell without the threat of destruction or annihilation.  This is God’s mission.

            Now before you get all ginned up and eager to work for this vision or before you become overwhelmed with despair given the enormous burden of this vision – before we run out bringing God’s goodness and fixin’ up the universe,  meeting every need, we have to stop.  Stop.  Stop and remember this:  it’s not about us.  “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” says Yahweh, “the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice – why? – be glad and rejoice and be glad in what I am about to create …for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people where as a delight.”

            It’s God who does all of this work – it’s God’s mission, to create and recreate.  The Hebrew here for create – bara – is the same beautiful Hebrew word used to describe God’s original act of creation.  It is God who builds and rebuilds – with us and through us, to be sure – but it’s really God’s work, God’s power to create.  And the good news is that it’s not about us, which means we can relax and be less anxious about trying to help everyone and fix everything.   This doesn’t mean there isn’t work for us to do.  But it’s all about God’s mission and the good news, by God’s grace, is that we as the church get to experience God’s joy and delight because have been called to serve it – not the church, but God’s mission – the mission of God.

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[1] For more information about the dynamic and exciting work at Broad Street Ministry see http://www.broadstreetministry.org/.

[2] I'm grateful for Jan's blog entry and the comments posted there which became the spark for this sermon.  Jan Edmiston, A Church for Staving Artists, http://www.achurchforstarvingartists.com/2010/11/dont-be-helpful.html

[3] http://journeywithjesus.net/PoemsAndPrayers/Bertolt_Brecht_A_Workers_Speech.shtml

[4] See Darrell L. Guder, ed. Mission Church:  A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Eerdmans, 1998), 77ff.

[5]On mission trips, see Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian:  What the Faith of our Teenagers is Telling the American Church (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2010), 154-159, 170ff

[6] Guder, 93ff.

[7] See Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways:  Reactivating the Missional Church.  Foreword by Leonard Sweet (Grand Rapids:  Brazos Press, 2006); and Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come:  Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church, (Peabody, MA:  Hendrickson, 2003).