Turnings

Matthew 3:1-12; Isaiah 11:1-10December 8, 2013Well. Good morning, and welcome, you brood of vipers, to the second Sunday of Advent.
It’s funny, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a “church-growth strategy” that began with John the Baptist. Believe me, they don’t teach us in preacher school to welcome the folks in the high holy days by calling them “sons of snakes.” That’s not considered “relational.”
So, no, when we are encouraged to “grow the church,” we are never encouraged to look toward John the Baptist. That’s a little odd, actually. Recent historical scholarship suggests that crowds as large as 50,000 people – enough to impress even ol’ Joel Osteen – turned out to listen to John, and there’s no indication anywhere that John was teaching the affluent and the powerful about how to have their best lives right now.Indeed, John set aside every notion of cultural comfort and conformity – heading to the wilderness, out beyond the ‘burbs, and leaving behind the nice clothes, comfortable lodging, and decent food. There he preaches a simple message: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near at hand.Repent! In the Greek “repent” here is a version of the verb metanoia, meaning to turn, as in, “turn from the path you’re on toward a new one.” In Matthew, this usage is in a verb tense that we might call present continuous, as in “keep on turning,” or “be about the business of turning always.” In other words, John the Baptist is calling into being a community of constant repentance, of continuous turning toward God.John the Baptist is quite clear that the way is neither straight nor simple. That’s why his opening call, quoting Isaiah, the voice crying from the wilderness, proclaims the necessity of making the way straight, of lowering the hills, lifting the valleys – in other words, the entire terrain has to be shifted, reshaped and reformed.The steep challenge comes in hearing, in these metaphors, a call to actual change – real change in the lives of real people. That’s not something most of us are comfortable with – even those of us, like me, who claim that they like change.For example, and not just any example but one that will continue to press in upon us with increasing urgency, I was reading an interview last week with some climate scientists. There was nothing particularly surprising in what they said to anyone who has been paying attention to the science for the past generation, but something in the simplicity of what they said really hit home. They said that Americans, in particular, must downsize. Even more particularly, they said, we ought to think a whole lot more about the size of our refrigerators. Seems that refrigerators are the single household item with the largest carbon footprint, and it turns out that the ones in most of our homes are bigger than those typically in use in homes all over the rest of the world.Repent! Turn from the path you are on! Actually be about the business of real change. But John, I don’t want to change.Ah, yes. I understand now about the brood of vipers. I have been warned of the wrath to come. I preach a good game, but actually being about the business of real change?
I suppose I am ready to confess – to own up to my own complicity in one of the great moral crises of our age. But am I ready to repent? To turn? To make a real change in my actual behavior?Yeah. This repentance business. It’s not so easy.Especially because John’s call, like that of the prophets before him and that of the One whose coming he proclaims, aims not merely at individual change but also at broad and systemic social changes. You can see that clearly because John tells us what stands in the way of change. It’s not merely individual choice or failure or sinfulness, but rather kinship ties, social structures and ossified traditions. Having Abraham and Moses in the family tree is not going to get you to repentance. Having a trust fund is not going to get you to repentance. Having connections is not going to get you to repentance.Nevertheless, repentance is precisely what Advent is about. Mary proclaims it when her soul cries out with a joyful shout that the world is about to turn. John the Baptist proclaims it when he goes out to the wilderness and shouts “repent!” Soon, Jesus will grow up to proclaim the exact same message: turn, turn, turn.As individuals, as communities, as institutions, as corporate and state structures – turn, turn, turn.I can imagine that John heard all the kinds of push back a prophet would come to expect: but I can’t change the world! I can’t fix those huge problems! What’s one person to do?Well, if I were channeling John the Baptist I’d probably say something about the fire to come: maybe “turn or burn buddy!” But instead I’ll stick a bit closer to Mother Theresa’s advice to start where you are with what you’ve got. Start with choices: spend less on stuff; give more away; ride the bus one day a week and leave the car at home; try not to do business with corporations whose overall practices are an affront to the values of our faith.You can’t change the whole world, but you also can’t not change the world. Your being in the world changes the world, so be mindful of the changes you can and do make. Make changes that bring the kingdom of God closer.Also, don’t try to change the world by yourself: do so in community. It took a whole lot of hands and hearts and energy to raise 650 pounds of fresh food for AFAC. It took a whole lot of hands and hearts and energy to make and distribute meals to hundreds of Arlington street people. It took a whole lot of hands and hearts and energy to raise $3,500 for People of Faith for Equality in Virginia to change the commonwealth.The arc of the moral universe is long, and it takes many communities working with countless hands and hearts and immeasurable energy to bend it toward justice.As the arc bends we turn the world toward the kind of communities of love and justice that Isaiah describes with his images of shalom.Clearly, we’re talking about something far deeper than a church growth strategy. Perhaps that’s why John was comfortable with his, uh, apostolic greeting – you brood of vipers!
No, proclaiming the turning of the world is not about putting butts in the seats. It’s about hope in a hopeless world, it’s about hearing for the first time that you are beloved – and that everyone else is, too – and, it’s about forgiveness when you don’t live that way; it’s about encouragement to live into that new reality.We are turning the world and turning with it, over and over and over again as we live together as a community of repentance. We turn, turn, turn toward congregations of bread and life, toward a fellowship of reconciliation, as sojourners in repentance, as the household of God, the gathering of disciples, seekers of light, the community of the beloved. We are turning.
And, as African-American Shakers would have sung it had there ever been any: Soon, and very soon, we will come ‘round right.

“On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.”

Amen.

An Unexpected Hope; An Unexpected Home

Matthew 24:36-44December 1, 2013Advent means “coming.” This is literally true. Culturally, well Advent really doesn’t mean anything at all. Culturally, it’s all Christmas all of the time from, oh, about Halloween on with the briefest of breaks for gobbling some Turkey. The Christmas decorations are up. The Christmas sales are on. The Christmas music? You can find dozens upon dozens of Pandora Christmas stations ranging from the Celtic Christmas to the Swinging and the Soulful.
When I flipped on randomly last week, the first song that played was I’ll Be Home for Christmas. What’s more classic than that? It carries the central cultural understanding of Christmas: come home! Specifically, it’s about coming home to a traditional family and to the kind of happiness that you can wrap up and put a bow on.Interestingly, that’s a central theme for Isaiah’s prophetic vision, as well. But what a different notion of homecoming we hear in the prophet’s voice than in the carol’s of pop-culture Christmas.It’s not surprising that some notion of homecoming would lie close to the prophet’s heart. After all, so many of the prophetic texts in scripture give voice to the longings of a people living in exile who want nothing so much as to go home. We hear, in much of Isaiah, the pain of a people living in Babylon longing for Jerusalem.But the nature of home in scripture is twisted free of our Hallmark version, and the nature of family in the gospels, in particular, breaks decidedly with tribal and traditional notions of kinship.As Old Testament scholar John Holbert suggests, the key lies in new ways of seeing. The Isaiah text, which we read in part as a call to worship this morning, begins like this:“The word that Isaiah, son of Amoz, envisioned concerning Judah and Jerusalem.”Isaiah “sees” the word of the Lord. He sees this calling from God. And what does it look like, this invitation “home,” that Isaiah sees?Probably not like “snow and mistletoe and presents ‘round the tree.”What does this homecoming look like? Isaiah sees the “nations” flowing to Jerusalem. The nations – goyim, in the Hebrew – means explicitly all those non-Jewish people. In other words, YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses who called forth, specifically, the chosen people of Israel, this God turns out also to be God of all nations.Guess who’s coming to Christmas dinner? Everybody!More than that: guess what they’re bringing with them! All the nations are coming. In other words, people from all over. People who historically don’t really like each other. Might be Palestinians and Israelis. Might be Hutus and Tutsis. Might be Hatfields and McCoys.And they’re bringing swords.If this were a made-for-TV drama we’d fade to black and cut to a commercial right here. So, now for a word from our sponsor:The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour! Tune in for a special report at 11:00.
Right. Our “sponsor.” This Jesus guy. Whose singular message is simple: love one another as I have loved you.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled broadcast.Everybody is coming! They’re bringing swords! And they are coming to the house of the Lord, to a place centered on a table prepared by One who commands, simply, love one another.
At this place, God will speak a word of judgment, Isaiah says, and, responding to that word from God the nations will beat their swords into plowshares – from weapons of war to instruments of plenty, of abundance, of stewarding creation for the feeding of the people.That is the vision of Isaiah. That is the homecoming he sees, and that he invites us to see, as well.When will this vision become reality? When will this unexpected hope meet some unexpected hour?It depends upon our ability to see. As Holbert suggests, “Rather than thinking about this as some future time, it is helpful to imagine this as a vision always available to those whose eyes have been opened to the newer reality of God. You can always go to this home, if you can see it, envision it – and in the power of God you can.”Advent means coming. Perhaps it is an unexpected homecoming, perhaps it is an unexpected hope-coming. We are invited to come to the hope of this table, along with all the nations.I dropped the Hatfields and McCoys in, coyly, to an illustration above. You probably recall those as the family names made infamous in their decades long feud in eastern Kentucky and West Virginia – a running battle that stretched across three decades and claimed dozens of lives.In the late 1990s I spent time helping out in a small Presbyterian church in Phelps, Kentucky – deep in the coalfields of Appalachia. I will never forget the first time we visited the church. The pastor, a delightful elderly man named DeWitt, was showing us around the church. He took us to the Sunday School area, and the room where the adult class met had a plaque by the door with the names of all the members of the class. On that signboard, members of the same Sunday school class, were the names Hatfield and McCoy. And these were the real McCoys ... and the real Hatfields.I have savored that brief moment ever since, because it is an image of the kingdom of God.People will come. From east and west, north and south, to sit together at this table. Hatfields and McCoys. Jews and Gentiles. Protestants and Catholics. Muslims and Hindus. Black and white and straight and gay. At one table in the kindom of God.We live out our little part in the great drama of salvation right here. In this very moment, in this place, at this table. A broken world yearns most deeply for evidence that such a thing is possible.
That is why we gather. That is why we invite others to join us.
Advent means coming. But what is coming is already in our midst, if we but open our eyes to see it. The word that Isaiah envisioned – hope coming home – we are invited to see as well at this table. So come. Taste and see: Emmanuel. God-with-us. Salvation and shalom. Amen.