"The Extraordinary in the Midst of the Ordinary" (Christmas Eve Sermon)

Chetwynd Shared Ministry

December 24, 2017

Scripture:  Luke 2:1-20 and John 1:1-5, 10-14

“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us.”

A baby is born.  An ordinary, every-day occurrence.  Earlier this week, my sister gave birth to her second child, a healthy baby boy.  He was one of many babies born that day.  On average, every day in Canada, 1068 babies are born.  If you expand that to a global scale, an estimated 360,000 babies are born every single day.  That’s more than 4 babies being born every single second.

And yet if you’ve ever held a newborn baby, you know that each and every single one of those babies is a miracle.  There is a new life where there wasn’t before.  This infant is a 3lb or 5lb or 9lb bundle of potential.  All of the things that this baby is going to do and be are yet to be discovered.  The extraordinary miracle of life is found in the middle of the ordinary every-day.

Every Christmas, we read the same story about how Mary and Joseph travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and when they are there, Mary delivers a child.  “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”  The story doesn’t change from year-to-year.  After we’ve heard it a couple of times, the story can become so familiar to us that we don’t give it a second thought.

This is a birth like any other birth, filled with pain and messiness, followed by joy and relief.  But even though all births share some things in common, each and every birth is unique.  We tell birth-stories after babies are born.  When my sister tells her birth story from last week, she will probably tell of how she went to the hospital and was told that there was no room at the inn – in other words, the nursery was full – and how she was sent home and told to come back later.  I wonder what Jesus’ birth story looked like.  Imagine all of the details that are left out of the story that we read – all of the details that the narrator isn’t telling us.

I wonder if Mary was attended by a midwife; and if she was, what was the midwife’s experience of the birth?  The baby is placed in a manger – a feeding trough for animals – so I assume that there were some animals nearby.  I wonder what animals witnessed the birth of this baby?  I wonder if they were surrounded by Joseph’s extended family, or was the young couple alone in a strange city?  Even though the songs we sing at this time of year tell us, “the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes,” I’ve never met a baby who didn’t cry.  I wonder if he was a fussy baby or if he was easy to settle.

A baby is born.  An every-day experience.  But like all births, there would have been a unique birth story – after all, this was the only time that this baby was born.

And not only would there be a unique birth story, but in the middle of an ordinary, messy, and painful birth, was born a special child.  Nine months previously, Mary had been visited by the Angel Gabriel who told her that she would be giving birth to a holy child, the Son of God.  God’s Word had become flesh and had come to the world to dwell among us, to be one of us.  God had become human and the world would never be the same again.

In the middle of the every-day miracle of birth, God is born in human form.  In the middle of the ordinary, the extraordinary breaks through.  “She gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger.”

The first people in the story to hear about the birth of this baby, other than his parents, were some shepherds living in the fields.  Now shepherds weren’t people who held positions of power, or people who were respected.  Shepherds were people who lived on the margins of society; people who were not trusted; people who lived transient lifestyles.  Shepherds worked hard, were often cut off from society living in the fields, and their hard work was not well rewarded.

But that night, to a group of shepherds in the field, at first one angel and then a multitude of angels appeared to them.  In the middle of an ordinary night, the extraordinary breaks through.

Can you imagine what those shepherds must have been thinking or feeling?  The first thing that the angel says to them is “Do not be afraid” so their first reaction was probably one of fear or terror.  An army of angels is not what you normally expect when you are working on the side of the hill at night.  But after the angels leave them, the shepherds leave the hillside, visit the baby lying in the manger, and when they return to the hills outside of town, they are praising God for everything that they heard and saw that night.

And here we are, more than 2000 years later, gathered once again around the manger.  The story is the same one that we read last year and the year before.  The baby is the same, the manger is the same.

The manger, another ordinary, every-day object.  A trough, maybe made of wood, but more likely carved out of stone, filled with animal feed.  Yet did you notice that this is one detail that the narrator does include in the story?  We aren’t told about the midwife, we aren’t told about the animals, we aren’t told about relatives, but three times the narrator tells us that the baby was lying in a manger.

In an everyday, ordinary animal feed trough lies a baby who will grow up to say, “I am the bread of life.”  The one who lies where animals are fed will grow up to feed the world with the bread of life.  The extraordinary is breaking in again, and is lying in the ordinary.

One of my favourite Christmas Hymns, “See Amid the Winter’s Snow,” captures this perfectly, when the second verse begins:

            “Lo, within a manger lies,

            He who built the starry skies…”

And so here we are, gathered this night around the manger.  We are reminded once more that God is with us – that God has become human so that we, in our humanity, can no longer be separated from God.  The extraordinary has once more broken into the ordinariness of a birth; the extraordinary has once more broken into the ordinariness of marginalized workers just doing their job on the fringes of society; the extraordinary has once more broken into the world and lies in a manger from whence he will feed the world.

How are we going to respond to the extraordinary this year?  How are we going to be changed by the birth of this baby?  How are we going to live as though we can never more be separated from God?  How are we going to let the Christmas story change us?

Will we be like the shepherds, rejoicing and singing praises to God?  Will we be like Joseph, trusting that God has a plan for us and for the world?  Will we be like those who heard what the shepherds told them, amazed at what we are hearing?  Will we be like Mary, and treasure the message we have been given and ponder it in our hearts?

My prayer is that each one of us might be changed by this Christmas story.  That we might know not only that God is always with us, but that we might know that the extraordinary is always breaking into the ordinariness of this world.

Let us pray:

Holy God,

            we give you thanks for this holiest of nights.

We thank you that you are always present with us –

            always breaking in to our ordinary lives.

Fill us with the awe, the wonder, the joy

            that comes with the birth of a baby –

                        with the birth of your Word-Made-Flesh;

And let this awe transform us,

            and keep us close to you.

We pray this in the name of the Christ-Child.

Amen.

(Preparing the worship service)

"Mary's 'Yes'" (Sermon for Advent 4)

Chetwynd Shared Ministry

December 24, 2017

Scripture Readings:  Luke 1:26-38 and  Luke 1:46-55

I want to invite you to take a couple of minutes and imagine yourself into Mary’s situation.  She is engaged to Joseph but they aren’t married yet.  In a place and a time when the patriarchy was even stronger than it is today, and when women were married at a younger age than in our time and place, Mary was probably a teenager.  And marriage didn’t happen because two people fell in love with each other – marriage was all about a contract between families.  Two families would come together to arrange the marriage, and marriage was to continue the family line – in other words, the important thing about marriage is that you have children.

So here you are, a young girl who is going to be married into Joseph’s family in order that Joseph’s family would survive for another generation.  Your family isn’t a wealthy or powerful family.  You live in Nazareth, a small village in the rural part of the backwater that is called Galilee.  Everybody knows everybody in your village – after all, there aren’t that many people to know.  And you are a girl – you are the property of your father, until you become the property of your husband.

And here arrives an angel, a messenger from God, telling you that you are going to have a baby.  How do you feel?  Afraid of what your family and Joseph’s family are going to say?  Afraid of what your village is going to say about you?  Afraid of this new experience of pregnancy and birth?  Are you feeling ashamed of what is going to happen to your body?  Are you puzzled about how all of this is going to happen?  Are you curious about why God has chosen you; why you have found favour with God?

One of the first things that the angel Gabriel says to you is “Do not be afraid.”  I wonder if he says this because he knows that you are afraid of what is happening.  But then again, whenever angels appear to humans, the first thing that they say is “Do not be afraid.”  Maybe angels are inherently terrifying, or maybe this is the first part of God’s message to all of us.

But even if Mary is scared, she doesn’t let fear drive her actions.  Instead she says “yes” to the angel, “yes” to God.  “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

There is a popular Christmas song that asks, “Mary, did you know?”  Mary, did you know that the child that you’ve delivered will soon deliver you?  Mary, did you know that when you kiss your little baby, you’ve kissed the face of God?  Mary, did you know that your baby boy is the Lord of all creation?  Mary, did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s perfect Lamb; this sleeping child you’re holding is the great I AM?  Our reading today answers these questions.  Mary knew.  Not only did Mary know, but she agreed for it all to happen.

This year, there has been a lot of discussion about this story and how it relates to the current revelations of sexual abuse by so many people in power, and the #metoo stories that are being shared.  People are asking if this story should be treated as Mary’s #metoo moment.  There is something to consider in this perspective.  After all, in the encounter between Mary and the angel Gabriel, Gabriel has the power and Mary is in the much more vulnerable position – not only is she a female living on the margins of society, but she is a human compared to her angelic visitor.  Could Mary have given full and informed consent to what was about to happen to her body?

I choose to answer this question by looking for what isn’t in the story – for the details that we aren’t told.  We aren’t told whether Mary was the first young woman approached by the angel Gabriel.  Maybe she was just the first young woman who said “yes” – who gave consent for her body to be the home of God’s Word Made Flesh.  I can’t imagine that the God-Who-Is-Love would allow any woman’s body to be used without her consent.

And this then leads me to wonder more about Mary.  She said “yes” when God asked her, and she became the human parent of Jesus.  I wonder how Jesus would have been different if a different woman had said yes, if his human DNA had come from a different woman, if he had been raised in a different family.

But it was Mary who said “yes” when God asked.  It was Mary who said, “Let it be with me according to your word.”  Mary allowed her body, her very self, to be transformed by the workings of the Holy Spirit.

And shortly after that, we see what God is working in Mary when she visits her relative Elizabeth.  The Holy Spirit has not only created a foetus within Mary’s body where there should, by all logical reasoning, be no foetus, but the Holy Spirit has also given Mary the voice of a prophet.  She visits her relative Elizabeth, and when she is there, she sings the words of her Magnificat that we read responsively this morning – Mary’s words of praise to God, and her vision of what God’s world will be.  Mary sings out:

            “My soul magnifies the Lord

                        and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,

            for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.

            Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

            for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

                        and holy is his name.

            His mercy is for those who fear him

                        from generation to generation.

            He has shown strength with his arm;

                        he has scattered the proud in the

thoughts of their hearts.

            He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

                        and lifted up the lowly;

            he has filled the hungry with good things,

                        and sent the rich away empty.

            He has helped his servant Israel,

                        in remembrance of his mercy,

            according to the promise he made to our ancestors,

                        to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

Mary’s question, “how can this be?” has been transformed into “My soul magnifies the Lord!”

This is a very revolutionary song that Mary sings.  When you look at pictures of Mary on Christmas cards, or when she appears in the Christmas carols that we sing, she is often pictured as “meek and mild”; but not only did she have the courage to say “yes” to God, she also sings this song that is anything but meek and mild.  Mary sings about the powerful being brought down from their thrones, the marginalized being lifted up, the hungry being fed, and the rich being sent away hungry.

Does this sound like the teaching of anyone else in the bible?  Mary here sounds an awful lot like what Jesus is going to sound like 30-some-odd years later.  Jesus who taught that the last shall be first and the first shall be last.  Jesus who taught that the way we behave towards those on the margins of society is the way we treat Jesus himself.  Jesus who gave food to all who were hungry, healing to all who were ill, peace to all who were troubled.  I wonder how much of his message Jesus learned from his mother’s teaching?

How might Mary’s song be heard in the world of 2017?  We are living in a world today where a small group of people and corporations are becoming more powerful, and more and more people are getting pushed to the margins.  Imagine for a minute, what the world might look like if the powerful were brought down from their thrones and the marginalized were lifted up; if food was distributed so that everyone had enough and no one was hungry and no one wasted the excess.  Who might be brought down from their thrones, and who might be lifted up?  Now imagine the same thing happening here in our town of Chetwynd.  Who is having their power taken away, and who is being lifted up?  Who are the hungry who are now being fed?

Did you notice the verb tense that Mary uses in her song?  She sings her song as if these things have already happened.  God has brought down the powerful.  God has lifted up the lowly.  God has filled the hungry with good things.  God has sent the rich away empty.

But if you look at the world that Mary was living in, it would be obvious that these things haven’t happened yet.  The emperor in Rome was still in charge, still governing through fear and oppression.  There were still a small number of elite and a large number of people living in poverty.  This vision of God’s kingdom hadn’t happened yet.  And if we look around our world today, it is obvious that the things that Mary sings about haven’t yet come to be.  We still have people in our world who want to claim the throne of the empire and govern the world through fear and oppression.  We still have a small number of elite and a growing number of people living in poverty, both here in Canada and on a global scale.

You can remember things that have happened in the past; but is it possible to remember things that will happen in the future?  Are any of you fans of science fiction or time travel books and movies?  I think that there might be a loose comparison there for Mary’s verb tense issues.  Picture a character in a book or a movie who travels back in time by two hundred years.  This character can remember things that happened to her in her childhood, even though they aren’t going to happen for almost 200 years.  She is remembering things in the future.

Now I’m not saying that Mary has been time traveling, but she does seem to be remembering forward.  She is seeing the world from God’s perspective – from a perspective outside of time where all times are seen simultaneously.  She, with her prophetic voice, notices what is wrong in the world that she is living in, and compares them with God’s vision for the world.  She sees clearly what God wants for the world, she trusts that this vision is going to be realized, and she speaks as though it has already happened.

And our time travel, verb-tense-shifting becomes even more fun when you consider that God’s vision for the world had already begun at that point in time.  As Mary proclaims these words, she is already carrying within her a foetus that would be Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human.

One of the titles sometimes given to Mary is the Greek word, “Theotokos,” meaning “God-bearer” or “She-who-gives-birth-to-God.”  Mary is carrying God within her body, and in a few short months, she is going to give birth to God in the messiness of hay and amniotic fluid.  She is going to raise God-in-human-form in her family in a remote village in a remote province.

I believe that this is the start of the overthrowing of the power structures of the world that Mary sings about.  God has chosen someone from the very margins of society, someone with no power, to be the temple, the home of God – the body of a woman, from a poor family, in a geographically remote location.  For 9 months, the same God who created the heavens and the earth is going to rest within the body of a marginalized woman, and then throughout his childhood this same God is going to be nurtured by this same woman.

God has started to lift up the lowly.

God’s work is not done yet.  Mary sings as though she is remembering forward.  There will come a time when God’s work is done and we will be able to remember its completion in the past.  But we’re not there yet.  We are still waiting.

Mary’s “yes” to God transformed her body and gave her the voice of a prophet.  Mary sang a song about God’s topsy-turvy kingdom where the power structures are not only reversed but are completely destroyed – Mary sang as though this topsy-turvy kingdom was already here.  And indeed, that upside-down kingdom where the powerless and marginalized are raised up began when Mary said “yes” to God.

And so I ask you to consider – just as God called Mary to a specific task in God’s overall kingdom, God calls each of us to a specific task or vocation.  How can you say “yes” to what God is calling you to?  How will our “yes” fit into God’s vision for the world, where the powerful are brought down from their thrones and the marginalized and powerless are raised up?  How can we individually, and we as a group say “yes” to God?

Just as Mary’s body was home to God for nine months, our bodies are the home of the Holy Spirit.  God dwells within us too.  How are we allowing ourselves to be transformed, as Mary was transformed?

Let us pray:

Holy God,

            send your Holy Spirit to us.

Give us the courage to say “yes”

            when you call to us,

                        so that we might be transformed

                                    into who and what you call us to be.

Help us to sustain our trust and our confidence

            that the world that Mary sang about is coming,

                        and that some day,

                                    your kingdom will come

                                                and we will be fully and forever

                                                            in your presence.

All of this we ask in the name of the one

            who was carried in Mary’s body.

Amen.

"Madonna and Child"

by Parker Fitzgerald

"The Light Shines in the Darkness" (Longest Night sermon)

Chetwynd Shared Ministry

December 17, 2017

"Longest Night" Service

Scripture:  Isaiah 9:2, 6-7

 

In northern parts of the world, the month of December is a very dark time.  One morning earlier this week, I watched the sun rise behind the hills out that window there at 10:10 in the morning, and just over 5 ½ hours later, I watched it set behind the hills at 3:50 in the afternoon.  With so few hours of daylight each day and so many hours of darkness each night, it is very easy to start feeling down.

And then on top of it all, we are in the middle of the season of Christmas.  Every time we go into a store or turn on the radio, we hear songs telling us to have a holly, jolly Christmas, or songs about a reindeer named Rudolph, or songs telling us that the world is full of Joy.  Turn on your TV and you’re likely to come across Christmas movies with their predictable happily-ever-after ending.  For anyone who is having a difficult time in life, this forced jolly-ness can feel like a slap in the face; a constant reminder that we don’t or can’t feel jolly.

Chetwynd isn’t the only place in the world that sits in darkness at this time of year.  There is a town in northern Norway named Rjukan; and like Chetwynd, Rjukan sits in a valley surrounded by mountains.  But because this town is further north and the mountains are higher, and up until 4 years ago, Rjukan used to not see the sun for almost 6 months of every year – from late September until mid-March.

But the town now has sunlight in the winter.  They have built and installed giant mirrors on top of the mountains around town, and these mirrors track the sun and reflect light down into the town.  The people in town describe it as warming – not physically warming but mentally warming.

The interesting thing is that there was a lot of resistance to building these mirrors.  An artist who lives in Rjukan, Martin Andersen, was the one who initiated the project, and when he was asked about the resistance to the project, he had a very profound response.  He said, “What it was, I think, is that living in the shade must make you afraid to dream of the sun.”[1]

Living in the shade or the shadows makes us afraid to dream of being in the sunlight again.

I learned this week from a friend in Nova Scotia that tonight, December 17 2017, is the Celtic Christmas celebration.  Tonight is the new moon – there will be no moonlight tonight, even if the sky is clear, making tonight the darkest night in the darkest month.  And so tonight is the night when we can remember and celebrate God’s light, the light that is Christ, coming into a darkened world.

We heard words read this evening from the prophet Isaiah, words that are often read at Christmas – “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined.”

This idea is echoed in the opening of the gospel of John which we didn’t read this evening.  John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

That is a powerful thought – that the light of Christ shines into a darkened place, and the darkness can never overcome the light.  Think of a darkened room, or a dark cave.  If you light just one candle, or even a match, or these days the screen of a cell phone, you break the darkness.  As long as the match or the screen stays lit, you can never be in darkness.

At Christmas, we remember the birth of the infant Christ.  We remember the time when the God who created the heavens and the earth was born as a vulnerable human baby.  But if we look forward to the other great Christian festival, Easter, we can see a time when the world tried to put out the light of Christ.  On Good Friday, we remember the trial and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ;  and if we were to stop at Good Friday, it might seem as though the world had won.  It might seem as through the darkness had managed to extinguish the light of Christ.

But the good news is that the story doesn’t end on Friday.  The good news is that on the third day, on Easter Sunday, the tomb is empty and Christ is risen.  The darkness hasn’t had the final word; the light of Christ can never be extinguished.

And this is the hope that we can cling to, even when the darkness in our lives threatens to overwhelm us.  This is the hope that we can cling to in the midst of pain or grief or suffering or loss.

When we are living through these shadow times, it is often easy to feel like the people in that town of Rjukan, Norway.  It is often easy to feel afraid of the light because we have become so used to living in the darkness.

But as we approach Christmas, I invite you to let go of this fear, even for a short time.  I invite you to allow the light of Christ to enter into your darkness.  Remember that even when we are living through the Good Friday times of our lives, that Good Friday doesn’t last forever.  Easter is coming.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never overcome it.  Thanks be to God.

---

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/rjukan-sun-norway-town-mirrors

(Our tealights shining in the darkness after the service)

"Waiting for the Light" (A first-person storytelling sermon for Advent 3)

Chetwynd Shared Ministry

December 17, 2017

Scripture:  John 1:6-8, 19-28

(Note:  I presented this sermon away from the pulpit and my script so what I said probably doesn't match exactly what is written here; but this is the essence of the story that I told.)

My name is Miriam bat Ya’akov.  Don’t go looking for me in that book that you read from every week – you’re not going to find me in its pages.  But I was there.  I was there by the River Jordan.  I met this man, this John that you read about.  I listened to what he had to say, and I was baptized by him, right there in the river.

My family lived in Jerusalem, the biggest city that I have ever seen.  But even there in the city, we had heard about John.  We heard that crowds of people were going out to listen to him.  We heard that he was saying amazing things.  It has been so many years since God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy has sent a prophet to our people, we thought that maybe John might finally be the one.

And so we decided that we too would make the journey from Jerusalem to hear him for ourselves.  My parents and my two younger brothers and I prepared for the journey and we set out.  From Jerusalem we headed north and east to Jericho, and then from Jericho we continued east until we reached the river where John was preaching.

Now that was a dangerous journey.  Everyone knows that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho is somewhere that you don’t want to linger.  It’s downhill all the way, but with tight corners and big boulders beside the road, it is a perfect place for thieves and bandits to hide.  But we made the trip safely – it probably helped us that so many people were travelling together – it seems like half of the city of Jerusalem was heading to the river to hear John speak!  All along the way, we kept meeting families we know.

It took us a couple of days to reach the river – with my younger brothers, we couldn’t travel too quickly.  But when we got to the river, it wasn’t hard to find John, because there were crowds of people around him.  I don’t think that I have ever seen so many people gathered in one place, not even in the temple at Passover when our people travel from all over the world to celebrate.

But whenever John started to speak, it was easy to hear him because people quieted right down.  My first thought when I saw him was that he was Elijah, one of our prophets from hundreds of years ago.  The scroll of Kings that is read in the synagogues and in the temple tells us that Elijah wore clothes made of hair and had a leather belt around his waist; and here was John wearing clothes made of camel hair with a leather belt around his waist.

I started to wonder if this John person was really Elijah, returned to earth.  After all, Elijah never died, but was carried off in a whirlwind to be with God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy.  And the prophet Malachi wrote on his scroll, “Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.”  So if this John was really Elijah come back to earth, that would mean that God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy is going to be coming to earth soon too!

For longer than I’ve been alive, for almost 100 years, our land has been governed by the emperor in Rome rather than by our own people.  And yes, people talk about the “pax romana,” the Roman Peace, but it isn’t really peace.  There isn’t any war these days, but that doesn’t mean much since everyone is living in fear.  If you dare to disagree with the rulers, you will be put into prison or worse.  And there are always rumblings of revolt underneath the so-called peace.

But people are talking that maybe God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy is going to send a Messiah to us – an anointed one – anointed like a king – anointed to free us from Rome and free us from the fear that we are living with every day.  If John is really Elijah come back to earth, then this Messiah might be coming next, and then maybe God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy will come to earth!

My family and I, we listened to John.  He kept saying that he wasn’t the Messiah; that he wasn’t the one we were waiting for.  But he did tell us that we were to get ready.  He read the words from the scroll of Isaiah – “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the ways of the Lord.’”  He told us that we had to change our ways; that we had to turn back to God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy.

Even now, telling you about it, I can feel the fire of his speaking running through me.  I so long for God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy to come to earth, I was willing to change anything, to do anything.  And so I made my way to the front of the crowd, and John asked me if I was ready to repent, to change my ways, to turn back to God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy.  I said “yes!”  I wanted to shout it from the mountaintops!  Yes!  And so I went with the people who were being baptized, and John pushed me under the water, and it was like I was re-born to this new way of living and being.

A few days after we arrived there at the river, there was a commotion.  A group of officials had arrived from the temple back in Jerusalem, and boy-o-boy did they make a show out of their arrival.  The priests back in the temple had heard about John, and this group was sent to test out what John was saying.

They kept quizzing him.  Who are you?  What are you doing?  Who gave you the authority to teach and to preach and to baptize?

They asked him – are you the Messiah?

He answered them – I am not.

They asked him – are you Elijah?  I guess they were thinking the same thing that I was!

But he answered them – I am not.

They asked him – are you the prophet?

He answered them – I am not.

He was really good at telling them who he wasn’t!  When they pushed him even more, he answered using the words from the scroll of Isaiah that he had been reading from – “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the ways of the Lord.’”  He still didn’t answer their question directly!

But then they started quizzing him about who gave him the authority to be teaching and baptizing.  The authorization certainly didn’t come from their group at the temple!

That’s when John started to talk about one who is going to come after him.  He said that he was even lower than a servant or slave in comparison to this one coming after him.  He wasn’t even worthy to untie the strap of the sandal of this one coming after him.

I’m really starting to get curious about who this one coming after John is.  If the Messiah is going to be a king, anointed with oil like our kings in the past, coming to defeat the Romans, then why wouldn’t John be able to be the Messiah’s servant?

I wonder what God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy has planned for us?  John didn’t tell us how long we were going to have to wait.  He just said that this mighty and glorious one is coming after him.

Ever since that day when the officials from the temple came to question him, John has started talking more about this one coming after him.  He calls this one “the light.”  I don’t know what he means by that.  He says that he himself is not “the light” but he has come to tell us about “the light.”

I wonder if this light is God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy?  After all, in the beginning, God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy said, “let there be light” and there was light.

For now, I’ve told my family that I am going to stay with John and this group of people who are with him.  I want to wait and see who this one to come after him is going to be.  And while I’m waiting, I’ve started telling people around me about this one who is coming; this one whom John is calling “the light.”  I’m so excited about this that I can’t keep it to myself – I have to share it too!

Won’t you wait with me?  Won’t you join our group of people who are waiting for the light to come into the world?  Won’t you help me to spread the good news about the light?  John says that the light is coming – let’s wait together!

(The Christmas Tree in the front of the church, lit in anticipation of the coming of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World.)

"Between the 'Already' and the 'Not Yet'" (Advent 2 - Sermon)

Chetwynd Shared Ministry

December 10, 2017

Scripture:  Mark 1:1-8

 

So are you ready for Christmas yet?  Have you got your tree up?  Is your house decorated?  I hope that you stayed safe if you put lights on the outside of your house – we’ve had a fair bit of ice these past weeks.  What about your Christmas baking – is it done yet?  Do you send Christmas cards?  Are they in the mail yet?  And what about your Christmas shopping?  Have you got all of your presents, or at least figured out what you are going to buy?  Are you ready for Christmas yet?

The good news is that here in church-land, it isn’t Christmas yet.  This is only the second Sunday of Advent – the season of Christmas doesn’t begin until the evening of December 24 and then lasts for 12 days – the Twelve Days of Christmas.  The season of Advent is followed by the season of Christmas is followed by the season of Epiphany.  We aren’t there yet – this is the season of waiting and preparing.

And in today’s reading we heard about John the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

This is the very beginning of Mark’s gospel.  We don’t have any of the details of the story of Jesus’ birth that we find in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels.  We don’t have any background on John the Baptist – it is in Luke’s gospel that we read about how he was a cousin of Jesus; born to Elizabeth and Zechariah who, by all rights, should probably have been too old to have children; who leapt in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary came near to Elizabeth.  Mark doesn’t include any of these details about John.  Instead, Mark tells us that “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

Now John seems to be quite a character.  He was dressed in camel’s hair.  He had a leather rope tied around his waist.  And he certainly didn’t eat what we would consider to be a balanced diet – instead he ate bugs and wild honey.

And he didn’t seem to be a gentle preacher.  He shouted at people, telling them to repent – to turn away from their sins and turn back to God.  And then he shoved them underwater in the river Jordan to symbolize their re-birth to this new way of living.

And yet people were drawn to John.  Despite the lack of comfortable pews or chairs or even a church building; despite the lack of coffee time or potluck after his services; despite the lack of a praise band or flashy powerpoint to accompany his message; despite the harshness of his message, people were drawn to John.  We are told that “people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”

John is very much an in-between character, living in an in-between time, and living in the wilderness which is an in-between place.  If you look closely at the reading, you will find John there in the centre of the text, but the text points backwards to the prophets, and John himself points forwards to Jesus, the one coming after John.  He knows that he isn’t the main character in this unfolding story, but he calls on people to get ready.  It’s coming.  It’s almost here!

John is also out in the wilderness – I don’t know about you, but I find the wilderness to be an in-between place, a threshold place, a place that is outside of our normal time and space and lives.

One of my favourite places to be and one of my favourite things to do in the summer is to go out on a canoe trip – the longer the better.  One of my friends and I like to go out for a week or two at a time.  We carry our food and our tent and our sleeping bags in our backpacks and paddle from lake to lake, down rivers, sometimes carrying our canoe and gear around rapids and waterfalls, or sometimes choosing to run the rapids.

It is not necessarily a comfortable place to be.  Our canoe has capsized a couple of times.  It is hard work, paddling and portaging all day.  At night, we are sleeping on the hard ground, as there isn’t room for fancy air mattresses in our backpacks.  And depending on the time of year, the mosquitoes and blackflies can be something fierce – I’ve been known to come out of the wilderness with mosquito bites layered on top of mosquito bites.

And yet there is something about being away from the internet, away from telephones, away from Facebook, away from other people.  And yet there is something about the repetitive actions of paddle… paddle… repeat; or portaging along a rough trail with a canoe overhead and a heavy pack on your back, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.  And yet there is something about being in tune with the cycle of the day from sunrise to sunset with no watch or clock to track the hours.

It seems like each time we go on one of these trips, one or both of us is discerning something, working through a major life decision, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously.  Stepping outside of our regular life into the rhythms and surprises of the wilderness gives us the time and the space to work through these things.  There is something special about these in-between places of wilderness.

Now John the Baptist’s wilderness was different than the northern Ontario wilderness, or the northern BC wilderness.  John’s wilderness was a desert wilderness – a dry and rocky place with no trees or grass growing except near the river; brutally hot during the day and freezing cold at night.

And still people were leaving their homes and the cities to head into this harsh wilderness, and when they returned home they were changed.  They had confessed, they had repented, they had turned back to God, and they were preparing for the one who was to follow John.

Just as the wilderness is an in-between place, this season of Advent is an in-between time.  We are in the middle of this season of not-yet-Christmas, yet we are called to prepare ourselves.  The world around us is also telling us to prepare – prepare your homes, prepare your food, prepare your gifts, make this the most perfect Christmas ever.  Here in the church, we have brought out our Christmas decorations; we are lighting our Advent candles one-by-one preparing ourselves to light the Christ Candle on Christmas Eve; we are having special events like the Ladies’ Christmas Dinner this week.  Like John the Baptist, we are looking forward to the coming of Jesus Christ, God’s Word-Made-Flesh.

But if we step outside of the story of Mark’s Gospel, and if we step outside of the rhythm of the seasons of the church year, if we place ourselves here in Chetwynd in 2017, we can also look backward to the birth of the Christ Child more than 2000 years ago.  Jesus is already born!  We don’t have to wait until Christmas to celebrate – we can celebrate in the here and now.

Just as the wilderness is an in-between place and Advent is an in-between season, we are living today in in-between times.  We are caught between the “already” and the “not yet.”  God has already been born in the person of Jesus Christ.  God’s kingdom has already broken into our world through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.  The time of God’s kingdom is now.  But God’s kingdom has not yet reached its completion.  We aren’t quite there yet.  God’s kingdom is now; and God’s kingdom is not yet.

And in this season of Advent, we can rest in this tension, and celebrate it.  We can allow ourselves to be pulled backwards into the story that began centuries before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  We can allow ourselves to be pulled backwards into the world of John the Baptist, preaching a baptism of repentance.  We can allow ourselves to be drawn backwards into the story of the birth of a baby who changed the world.

But at the same time, we can allow ourselves to be pulled forward as we prepare for the celebration that is Christmas.  We can allow ourselves to be pulled forward as we imagine and dream into being the sort of world that John and Jesus proclaimed.  We can allow ourselves to be pulled forward as we prepare ourselves for the coming fullness of the kingdom of God.

The word “gospel” means “good news” and the opening words of Mark’s Gospel proclaim that the story that it tells is only “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  The good news of Jesus Christ continues beyond the words printed in the Gospel.  The good news of Jesus Christ continues right through to today and beyond.

I’m going to spend some time in the Advent wilderness in the next couple of weeks, sitting in this tension of the “now” and the “not yet.”  Won’t you join me there?  We lit the candle of peace this morning, and my prayer is that as we sit in this tension, we all might be filled with the peace of God which surpasses all understanding.

Let us pray:

God of the wilderness,

In this time of busy-ness,

            help us to make space in our lives

                        to slow down,

                        to listen for your voice,

                        to wait and anticipate,

                        to prepare.

And into that quietness,

            help us to look back

                        and remember all of the stories that came before;

            and help us to look forward

                        and prepare ourselves for your coming kingdom.

We pray this by the power of the Holy Spirit,

            through Jesus Christ, your Word made Flesh.

Amen.

("My" Wilderness - a portage beside the Bloodvein River, Atikaki Provincial Park, MB)

(Photo Credit:  Laura Marie Piotrowicz)