A Baby Isn't Quite What We Expected
Sermon
Between Gloom and Glory
First Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany
I hope you noticed the sermon title. It seems to be a little out of place, doesn't it? A baby? A baby in a manger? Is that what I am thinking of today? Well, it is, but it does seem out of place, doesn't it? It is just the First Sunday of Advent. We have sung "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and lit the first candle on the Advent wreath, but it is still a little early to be talking about the baby, isn't it? There is no mention of a baby or a messiah in today's scripture reading from Isaiah. No mention of anything like that at all. Maybe you and I need to slow down a little bit this morning and not rush to the manger.
One of the difficulties I have with all of the Christmas preparations is the early date they begin setting out the holiday materials in the stores and the malls. I know of a minister who was shopping for Halloween candy on October 30. He was in the market looking high and low. He asked a store clerk, "Do you have any Halloween candy left?" The clerk replied, "Oh, sure. There are a few bags left over on aisle ten, behind the baby Jesus." Halloween candy piled up around the baby Jesus just seems weird, doesn't it? Soon somebody is going to start using a carved pumpkin for a manger and a Thanksgiving turkey for one of the farm animals.
Part of the problem with many of the celebrations and worship experiences that we find ourselves in during this time of year comes from the fact that we already know the end of the story. A baby may not have been what we would have sent if we were in charge of writing the script, but we know we're going to get one anyway. We might not expect a baby in real life, but during Advent and Christmas we really aren't that surprised. We know the story and it can very easily become rather ho-hum. Worship, if we are not careful, can become something like an old television Christmas special. We know the end of the story, so there is no real interest or involvement on our part. It is something to fill time and nothing more. We've seen Rudolph get away from the Abominable Snowman. We already know that Kris Kringle will be declared sane on 34th Street. We might get a little teary eyed when we watch It's A Wonderful Life, but even that is expected. There is a certain comfortable-ness to it all, but it can very easily become dull and boring too. Before we know it, our worship starts to feel just as dull.
If there is something worship should not be, it is this: complacent and dull. There is something nice about the well-worn and familiar aspects of worship during this season, just as there is something nice about the old television specials. I know of lots of folks who will schedule a time to watch Miracle on 34th Street. There is nothing wrong with hearing the old, old story again. After all, that is what evangelism is about, isn't it? Retelling the old story, again and again. We may already know the end of the narrative, but we retell it anyway as a reminder to us about who we are and how we are called to live. During the season of Advent there is a feeling of safety and a security in the secular and Christian re-telling of the old stories. These old stories, like old sweaters, feel comfortable and easy to wear.
But the comfort and ease they bring are only a part of the reasons we pay attention to them. There is more. With these old stories comes the announcement of action. The reading today from Isaiah 2 is an announcement of salvation and a call to respond. "The Lord's house," Isaiah writes, "shall be the highest ... all the nations shall stream to it." Notice here that he writes that "all nations" shall stream to it. No one will be left out of the opportunity to turn to God. All nations means all nations! Later he announces that God will "judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples." Then the people will "beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." This is not passive, sit back and wait for the warm fuzzies to flow kind of instruction. This prophetic speech is calling for a response. Go up. Walk in the light of the Lord. Beat your swords into plowshares. These are active responses not passive theological discussions. The actions do not bring God's salvation. That comes from the Lord. The actions are a response to God's involvement in our lives today.
If Isaiah were here today he might say, "The Messiah has already come? He was here with the Halloween candy? Fine, what are we waiting for then? Let us begin to prepare to turn around in our lives. Let us start living now in the light of the Lord!" Paul said something similar in Romans 13, "For our deliverance is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over, the day is about to dawn."
John Irving, in an interview about his novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, said, "We worship youth, fitness, hanging on ... but I thought that one was meant to live one's life not merely guard it." Marcus Aurelius is said to have said something similar, "It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live." That is the key: living our lives. The prophet Isaiah has described a relationship with God that includes response and action. It is not a passive, sit back and wait kind of religion. Rather, it is a relationship that calls us to actively live within the Lord's house.
I know of a church in a low income neighborhood that was interviewing candidates for their preschool director's position. The one who was hired got the job when she said, "If you want to know which preschools NOT to enroll your child in, find the ones with the greenest grass, the most immaculate toys, and the loveliest little classrooms. You don't want your child in those, because everything you see there is for show, not for your child. They care more for the building than they do for the children." This inner city church does not have thick green grass on its playground. The rooms look lived in and the toys have obviously been enjoyed.
For the first time in years, they have a waiting list for children trying to get in to their preschool. The church has invested their lives, their checkbooks, their buildings, and their lawns, in order to provide quality, low cost child care for their community. It was not an easy path to choose but they believe it was the right one.
Walking in the pathways of the Lord is rarely easy. It is seldom something that comes naturally or smoothly. It often involves difficult choices. It means allowing the light of God to envelope us fully and completely. That is tough to do, because in the light of God we are fully exposed for who we really are. Our weaknesses and our failures are also brought into the light. The wonder of it all, though, is that God loves us anyway. God was not waiting for us to get it all together before God came to the mountain and established it as the highest of all. God was not passively sitting to the side waiting for us to correct all of our mistakes before God invited us to walk in his paths. God invites first, then asks us to consider new ways of life.
We are invited to walk with God and discover along the way that God loves us as we are. We will also see, on this walk with God, that we are all weak and imperfect. We all share the same burdens. In the pathway of the Lord we are invited to confess our weakness, our failure, our sins even, and discover that God's invitation is still open.
I heard about a minister who took a work trip to Mexico with a group of young people. Some of the youth were unchurched. A few of them were doing something with a church for the first time in their lives. There was one young man who stuck out from the rest. His language was crude. He loudly announced at the first campfire service that this was the "most boring thing he had ever done." All week long he was saying and doing the wrong thing. On the second to last night in Mexico a storm ripped through their campground. This young man's tent was blown down in the wind. His curses and foul words could easily be heard above the roar of the storm. The cook, a life-long Christian, got in the young boy's face and began to chew him out. "Who do you think you are," she began. "We're Christians. We don't act that way. You need to go home!" Before it went any further another cook joined in the conversation and confronted her coworker. She pulled her aside, out of earshot of the boy, and said, "Be still. We're here to build homes for Jesus. So is he. In the work of the Lord anyone is invited to walk in the light of God's ways. Even people who swear too much."
That is it. That is the essence of the good news we share here in this sanctuary every week. God doesn't just invite the nations or the people who are already acting the way they are supposed to, God invites all the nations, all people. Everybody.
A minister once said to a group of ministers, "Do you want to make people Christian? Give them something Christian to do." We do not have to wait for people to figure out how they are supposed to live. We do not even have to wait for them to admit they need God. For if we look carefully we'll see that everyone, even the good church-going folks like us, are not quite ready to admit that we have made it to the pinnacle of faith.
When we choose to walk the pathways of God, some of the little, seemingly insignificant things will begin to take on a sacred nature. Walks with our spouse, helping the kids with their homework, staying up all night to finish a project for work. They become sacred not through our doing them but through the realization that everything we do is done in the name of God.
Amazingly, according to the promise of the prophet, a little baby will be the one to lead us. This little child, who will be born in a back-water town in the middle of nowhere, will be the one who finally shows us the way home. This baby may not be what we expect. We might rather have a JFK or a powerful preacher or a General Schwarzkopf. Yet as we walk in the path of the Lord with Isaiah and the apostle Paul and with each other we may discover, perhaps for the first time, the gift of hope. A baby won't quite be what we expected, but that baby and the hope that he kindles, the paths that he leads us to, they will be more than enough.
They will be more than enough. Amen.
One of the difficulties I have with all of the Christmas preparations is the early date they begin setting out the holiday materials in the stores and the malls. I know of a minister who was shopping for Halloween candy on October 30. He was in the market looking high and low. He asked a store clerk, "Do you have any Halloween candy left?" The clerk replied, "Oh, sure. There are a few bags left over on aisle ten, behind the baby Jesus." Halloween candy piled up around the baby Jesus just seems weird, doesn't it? Soon somebody is going to start using a carved pumpkin for a manger and a Thanksgiving turkey for one of the farm animals.
Part of the problem with many of the celebrations and worship experiences that we find ourselves in during this time of year comes from the fact that we already know the end of the story. A baby may not have been what we would have sent if we were in charge of writing the script, but we know we're going to get one anyway. We might not expect a baby in real life, but during Advent and Christmas we really aren't that surprised. We know the story and it can very easily become rather ho-hum. Worship, if we are not careful, can become something like an old television Christmas special. We know the end of the story, so there is no real interest or involvement on our part. It is something to fill time and nothing more. We've seen Rudolph get away from the Abominable Snowman. We already know that Kris Kringle will be declared sane on 34th Street. We might get a little teary eyed when we watch It's A Wonderful Life, but even that is expected. There is a certain comfortable-ness to it all, but it can very easily become dull and boring too. Before we know it, our worship starts to feel just as dull.
If there is something worship should not be, it is this: complacent and dull. There is something nice about the well-worn and familiar aspects of worship during this season, just as there is something nice about the old television specials. I know of lots of folks who will schedule a time to watch Miracle on 34th Street. There is nothing wrong with hearing the old, old story again. After all, that is what evangelism is about, isn't it? Retelling the old story, again and again. We may already know the end of the narrative, but we retell it anyway as a reminder to us about who we are and how we are called to live. During the season of Advent there is a feeling of safety and a security in the secular and Christian re-telling of the old stories. These old stories, like old sweaters, feel comfortable and easy to wear.
But the comfort and ease they bring are only a part of the reasons we pay attention to them. There is more. With these old stories comes the announcement of action. The reading today from Isaiah 2 is an announcement of salvation and a call to respond. "The Lord's house," Isaiah writes, "shall be the highest ... all the nations shall stream to it." Notice here that he writes that "all nations" shall stream to it. No one will be left out of the opportunity to turn to God. All nations means all nations! Later he announces that God will "judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples." Then the people will "beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." This is not passive, sit back and wait for the warm fuzzies to flow kind of instruction. This prophetic speech is calling for a response. Go up. Walk in the light of the Lord. Beat your swords into plowshares. These are active responses not passive theological discussions. The actions do not bring God's salvation. That comes from the Lord. The actions are a response to God's involvement in our lives today.
If Isaiah were here today he might say, "The Messiah has already come? He was here with the Halloween candy? Fine, what are we waiting for then? Let us begin to prepare to turn around in our lives. Let us start living now in the light of the Lord!" Paul said something similar in Romans 13, "For our deliverance is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over, the day is about to dawn."
John Irving, in an interview about his novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, said, "We worship youth, fitness, hanging on ... but I thought that one was meant to live one's life not merely guard it." Marcus Aurelius is said to have said something similar, "It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live." That is the key: living our lives. The prophet Isaiah has described a relationship with God that includes response and action. It is not a passive, sit back and wait kind of religion. Rather, it is a relationship that calls us to actively live within the Lord's house.
I know of a church in a low income neighborhood that was interviewing candidates for their preschool director's position. The one who was hired got the job when she said, "If you want to know which preschools NOT to enroll your child in, find the ones with the greenest grass, the most immaculate toys, and the loveliest little classrooms. You don't want your child in those, because everything you see there is for show, not for your child. They care more for the building than they do for the children." This inner city church does not have thick green grass on its playground. The rooms look lived in and the toys have obviously been enjoyed.
For the first time in years, they have a waiting list for children trying to get in to their preschool. The church has invested their lives, their checkbooks, their buildings, and their lawns, in order to provide quality, low cost child care for their community. It was not an easy path to choose but they believe it was the right one.
Walking in the pathways of the Lord is rarely easy. It is seldom something that comes naturally or smoothly. It often involves difficult choices. It means allowing the light of God to envelope us fully and completely. That is tough to do, because in the light of God we are fully exposed for who we really are. Our weaknesses and our failures are also brought into the light. The wonder of it all, though, is that God loves us anyway. God was not waiting for us to get it all together before God came to the mountain and established it as the highest of all. God was not passively sitting to the side waiting for us to correct all of our mistakes before God invited us to walk in his paths. God invites first, then asks us to consider new ways of life.
We are invited to walk with God and discover along the way that God loves us as we are. We will also see, on this walk with God, that we are all weak and imperfect. We all share the same burdens. In the pathway of the Lord we are invited to confess our weakness, our failure, our sins even, and discover that God's invitation is still open.
I heard about a minister who took a work trip to Mexico with a group of young people. Some of the youth were unchurched. A few of them were doing something with a church for the first time in their lives. There was one young man who stuck out from the rest. His language was crude. He loudly announced at the first campfire service that this was the "most boring thing he had ever done." All week long he was saying and doing the wrong thing. On the second to last night in Mexico a storm ripped through their campground. This young man's tent was blown down in the wind. His curses and foul words could easily be heard above the roar of the storm. The cook, a life-long Christian, got in the young boy's face and began to chew him out. "Who do you think you are," she began. "We're Christians. We don't act that way. You need to go home!" Before it went any further another cook joined in the conversation and confronted her coworker. She pulled her aside, out of earshot of the boy, and said, "Be still. We're here to build homes for Jesus. So is he. In the work of the Lord anyone is invited to walk in the light of God's ways. Even people who swear too much."
That is it. That is the essence of the good news we share here in this sanctuary every week. God doesn't just invite the nations or the people who are already acting the way they are supposed to, God invites all the nations, all people. Everybody.
A minister once said to a group of ministers, "Do you want to make people Christian? Give them something Christian to do." We do not have to wait for people to figure out how they are supposed to live. We do not even have to wait for them to admit they need God. For if we look carefully we'll see that everyone, even the good church-going folks like us, are not quite ready to admit that we have made it to the pinnacle of faith.
When we choose to walk the pathways of God, some of the little, seemingly insignificant things will begin to take on a sacred nature. Walks with our spouse, helping the kids with their homework, staying up all night to finish a project for work. They become sacred not through our doing them but through the realization that everything we do is done in the name of God.
Amazingly, according to the promise of the prophet, a little baby will be the one to lead us. This little child, who will be born in a back-water town in the middle of nowhere, will be the one who finally shows us the way home. This baby may not be what we expect. We might rather have a JFK or a powerful preacher or a General Schwarzkopf. Yet as we walk in the path of the Lord with Isaiah and the apostle Paul and with each other we may discover, perhaps for the first time, the gift of hope. A baby won't quite be what we expected, but that baby and the hope that he kindles, the paths that he leads us to, they will be more than enough.
They will be more than enough. Amen.
