4^th Sunday in Advent

December 23, 2012                                 

Salisbury Community Congregational UCC

 

Micah 4: 1 - 4

Hebrews 10: 19 – 24

Luke 1: 46b – 55

 

“A New and Living Way” (It is a good time…) 

 In this world where might trumps right, where fear guides security decisions, and where grief, anger and resolution fade into frustration, inaction and resignation; I have Good News for you.  Enmeshed in our celebration of Christmas is the witness to a birth of a new living way to peace that cannot be defeated.

 I.

A message of world peace is hard to believe when we know that the day after Christmas nothing will apparently have changed.

Oh, at first, as we move toward Christmas, we sense things are changing for the better: there is food for the hungry, gifts for the poor (particularly children), families are reconciled, good deeds and miracles abound and “peace on earth” is proclaimed in cards and song.  But in dark recesses beyond the reach of the Christmas lights huddles a foreshadowing of the days after Christmas.

Our Christmas trees will go to the gutter to be shredded or to a corner in the attic to be stored.

The corporations and the wealthy will count their profits from the holiday season,

The stories of Scrooge, the Grinch, the shoemaker, the birth in Bethlehem, will be  put back in the bookcase,

Our families will scatter to resume their distant lives.

War, the poor, the prisons, guns, deficits and taxes will still be with us.

Apparently, even the Christmas message of world peace is not strong enough the change our everyday world.

 

II.

However, sisters and brothers in Christ, sometimes the message of Christmas does disrupt the way things have been in our lives.

In December, 1997 I found myself in a refugee camp near San Lorenzo, Chiapas, Mexico, near the border with Guatemala.  I was with a delegation of Illinois Maya Ministries on an accompaniment visit with indigenous Mayan refugees from the war in Guatemala.  I wrote these words in my journal.

 We arrive at dusk.  People slowly materialize from the perimeters of the refugee camp.  Smiling men and children cluster around us with welcoming handshakes.  The women dart back and forth amidst us to prepare the evening meal.

 It soon grows dark.  For two hours we meet in their community building. The orange glowing filament of a single light bulb reveals only the silhouettes of people sitting in the darkness.  We sit behind a table facing these sixty indistinct forms of men and children crowded on rows of benches.  One after another a dim specter stands to tell a story: 

           accounts of loved ones tortured and killed,

whole villages of people massacred,

houses and fields burned,

escape from Guatemala past shooting military and paramilitary guns,

fifteen years in a refugee camp. 

Each story is punctuated with the word, “pain,” flung into the darkness between us:  pain of grief, pain of fear, pain of powerlessness, pain of remembering.

Later, at 4 in the morning, I stand alone and sleepless outside the community building.  My eyes are drawn across a dusty moonlit yard to a cluster of one room dirt floor buildings: each a bedroom for eight or more sleeping people.  At dawn the bedroom will become a kitchen to cook a day’s supply of tortillas.  Later it will become a storeroom for possessions and a shelter on stormy days. 

 I stand there as the moon sets behind the buildings.  In the darkness, the past evenings cries of pain wash over me, clinging to me like the cold damp dew that reaches through my thin jacket.  My body shivers.  A baby cries. 

 Then, slowly out of my dark despair, a whole new sky flickers into view.  It is crisp and clear, full of stars that formally had been blurred by the full moonlight.  Out of the vastness of this newly revealed sky I catch the course of an earth-launched satellite moving slowly across the constellations.  I ponder, “How is it that we can send satellites into space but are unable to relieve the pain and create justice for these lost people?”  As the satellite settles behind a solitary cloud, a meteor shoots across the sky exhausting its billion years of stored energy in an instant of brilliance.

I wonder, “how many have seen these two lights passing:  one cast by human hand, one cast by the hand of God?”  And as I stand in that dark pain ridden refugee camp, the baby’s cries stop.

I remember the story of a star shining over a baby in dark Bethlehem two thousand years ago.  I give thanks that I have witnessed an every-so-often blessing of a baby and the outcast in the wink of a star.

I go back to my straw mat on the ground of our drafty sleeping quarters to sleep like a baby until morning. The refugee baby and the shooting star would disrupt my life far beyond Christmas day.

 

III.

And do you know what?  The blessing of Christmas is much more than the disruption of an individual’s life.  It is the disruption of the powerful, of unjust systems, of oppressive governments, of the proud and exclusionary plutocrats.

Listen again to the vision of Mary, mother of Jesus. 

God has routed the proud and all their

 schemes,

            God has brought down the monarchs from

 their thrones and raised on high the

 lowly.

             God has filled the hungry with good things

                        and sent the rich away empty.

These are revolutionary words.  The authorities in Guatemala in the 1980’s labeled these words from scripture subversive and banned them.  Most of the time, most people and governments do not notice words of scripture. The Guatemalan government noticed.  The Roman government of Jesus’ time noticed. 

Trouble starts when the words of the prophets and the Christmas birth narratives are taken seriously.  They have influence stronger than any coercive power of domination. 

Consider the words of Micah and Isaiah:

            God will judge between many peoples and…

                        among great and distant nations.

            They will hammer their swords into plows

                        and their spears into pruning knives.

            Nation will not take up sword against nation.

            They will never again be trained for war.

If listening and noticing, what will these words of God’s judgment and promise tell our leaders:

about 300 million guns possessed in the United

            States & NRA requesting more to guard

            our schools.

about our participation in wars across the

            world,

about our preparation for war on terror,

about the fiscal and taxing policies of our

 government?

about more children in poverty in the U.S

            Than any other developed nation.

Let these words reach past the Christmas season into noticing and hearing of government leaders. 

And, how about the words in the letter to the Hebrews:

            We ought to see how each of us may best

 arouse others to love and active goodness.

Taken seriously, the words of Advent and Christmas disrupt our lives and the life of social systems, our government and international institutions.

 

IV.

So, here is the Good News.  This year can be the year we live beyond Christmas day to a time of “a new and living way.” (Hebrews 10: 20)

The Scripture readings for Advent suggest that when people are discouraged and hurting it is a good time for God’s new vision to take hold.

It is a good time for the small group of men and women in Newtown, Connecticut who have begun to meet to do something about gun violence.  They are proclaiming that we’ve had enough of our former ways.  We can tolerate it no more. 

Perhaps they could be guided to a new way by the urging of the Hebrews letter to “see how each of us may best arouse others to love and active goodness.”  With this goal as a guide, what is to be said about the escalation of gun ownership or even the status quo as a means to love and goodness? 

It is a good time:  to arouse others to love and active goodness. 

To rely on diplomacy and service rather

 military might       

To reform our prison system:

1 in every 33 adults in our country,

1 in every 3 African American men,

2000 juveniles serving life without

parole.

To provide new homes for refugees:

                        12 million undocumented in the U.S.,

Palestinians isolated by barriers on the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem,

To share resources of food, medical and

technology with children & adults in need instead of selling weapons among the nations of the world.

            To provide health care for the mentally ill, take

           them out of the criminal Justice system.

To be people in religious communities with a

Mission to enhance love for one another and advance goodness for all people, all nations and God’s whole creation.

 This year of great trouble, grief and pain can be the year we live beyond Christmas day to the time of “a new and living way.”

Conclusion:

Imagine the goodwill of Christmas preparation extending beyond Christmas day.  This Advent and Christmas season, we in the churches have been given the blessing of the letter to the Hebrews:  “See how we may arouse others ( churches, schools, the business community, the officials of our government…) to love and active goodness.”

We learn from the prophets and through the Christmas narrative that God chooses the weak and the powerless to lift up the rest of the world.  That means us. 

Sister and brothers in Christ, this church has been chosen to disrupt the accepted ways of the world.  God knows you are small enough and poor enough.  You are like the baby born in a stable behind an inn, at first no one will believe that you can have any effect on the world.   

Society and governments are not prepared for the small voice that speaks with the power of God’s new and living way:  a voice that asks over and over in every situation:  “In what ways do your ideas and solutions excite others to the ways of love and active goodness?”

The question can be asked to yourselves as you consider the future of your ministry here in Salisbury and prepare for your next minister.  And it can be introduced into debates on issues in every segment of society, business and government. 

It will be resisted as too naïve, impractical, too unspecific to meet immediate problems.  But persistence will influence evaluation of realistic and practical ideas.  And most of all, it will introduce others to an experience of the ways of love and active goodness.

As the Prophet Micah envisioned:  “In the days to come…people will stream towards it…learn God’s ways, walk in God’s paths… they will never again be trained for war.”

It is a good time and a good year to excite others to the ways of love and goodness that leads to peace and justice for all people and for God’s creation.  Thanks be to God.