December 6, 2009 Second Sunday of Advent
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Luke 1:68-79, 3:1-6
Johann Sebastian Bach published a book of keyboard exercises called
Two and Three Part Inventions. The gospel passages today remind us that peace
is a two-part invention, too. There is the purely divine part and the prophetic
human part, and we need to hear and heed them both.
I have several CDs that I return to every Advent to help me immerse in the
beauty and power of the season. Bach is among them, and of course so is
Handel’s Messiah. Yesterday on my way to recycling I was listening to the
Dartmouth Handel Society’s Messiah conducted by Helmuth Rilling for their
200th Anniversary.
The tenor begins by singing from Isaiah Chapter 40, “Comfort ye, comfort
ye my people, saith your God…Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto
her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.” There I was
with the bottles clinking and cans rattling and a slight scent of garbage in the car,
and tears started welling up in my eyes. I felt a little ridiculous, but I also felt
how deeply I long for that comfort the tenor was singing about, how deeply I long
for warfare to be over for my nation and for struggle to be over in my soul.
Then the tenor sings the next verse from Isaiah, which is what we heard
John the Baptist quote in the gospel today: “The voice of him that crieth in the
wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord…” Finally the full chorus comes in
on the last verse of the passage, “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and
all flesh shall see it together.” And that is when I really lost it, and tears were
streaming down my cheeks. It was partly Handel’s heavenly music, and it was
partly the thought of the specific voices of this congregation that were helping to
make that gorgeous sound on the CD, but it was even more the thought that the
day may come, the day may really, truly come, when that glory will be revealed
and all flesh shall see it together and all struggle and warfare shall cease and
comfort, pure, profound comfort, shall come at last.
Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, put it this way on the day John
was born: “By the tender mercy of our God the dawn from on high will break
upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to
guide our feet into the way of peace.”
I was so thankful that I managed to hit the Strafford recycling center at a
miraculously deserted moment so that I didn’t have to explain my embarrassing
tears, but I wonder if I have to explain them to you. Have you ever let yourself
feel how deeply you long for peace? Maybe you have longed for it during a time
when war was escalating yet again, or during a painful struggle in a relationship,
or during a time when you seemed stuck in illness or addiction or anxiety or
grief. Have you ever at such a time let yourself imagine the possibility that God
was coming to lead you to deep peace? If you can believe that promise even for
a split second during such a hard time it can bring tears to your eyes—tears of
gratitude and hope that peace may really be possible.
The ancient Hebrew people knew this aching, hopeful feeling. You can
hear it in the Psalms and the Prophets, you can hear it in the book of Exodus
when the children of Israel were slaves in Egypt. The Advent hymn “O Come, O
Come Emmanuel” uses the ransoming of captive Israel from Egypt as a metaphor
for Christ’s ultimate saving of our world situation. It sings out “Rejoice!
Rejoice!” long before there is anything to rejoice about except the vision of a
possibility. It is a hymn that is meant to be sung with the kind of tears I was
crying on my way to recycling. This is the true spirit of Advent and Christmas:
the longing for one who we believe is coming “to give light to those who sit in
darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
As monolithic as the forces of violence and war are in our world today, as
unstoppable as they seem, it is easy to think that we will not have true and lasting
peace unless there really is a divine Prince of Peace who is going to come and
guide us into the way of peace. And that is the first part of the two-part
invention; but Advent reminds us that the other part is also crucial, and that is
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’”
Last week I quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a German Lutheran
pastor and theologian imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II. He
compared Advent to a prison cell “in which one waits and hopes and does
various nonessential things…but is completely dependent on the fact that the
door of freedom has to be opened from the outside.” (Watch for the Light p xvi)
Father Alfred Delp was another German priest imprisoned by the Nazis
who wrote about Advent, and while he certainly agreed that our freedom and our
peace are dependent on the door being opened from the outside by the grace of
God, his writing challenges the idea that what we do in Advent is nonessential.
Delp wrote in prison about the reading we heard today. He said, “Woe to
an age when the voices of those who cry in the wilderness have fallen silent,
outshouted by the noise of the day or … growing smothered and fainter for fear
and cowardice. The devastation will soon be so terrifying and universal that the
word ‘wilderness’ will again strike our hearts and minds….Not for an hour can
life dispense with these John-the-Baptist characters.” (Watch for the Light p 92)
These days it feels as if the voices crying in the wilderness for peace and
justice are being “outshouted by the noise of the day,” and many have fallen
silent or grown faint. Economic, militaristic and environmental devastation are
growing, the wilderness of greed and cold-hearted injustice spreading. The
Prince of Peace needs voices like ours to cry out far more loudly, and needs
hearts like ours to be much more intentional about preparing the way within us
for his power to flow through us.
“Comfort ye my people,” is how Isaiah leads into this passage. The
comfort is first that the Prince of Peace is coming, and second that there is
something we can do to help. We can prepare the way of the one who will guide
our feet into the way of peace by doing the things that make for peace, working
for universal health care or economic reform, working to help those who are sick
or hungry, working with violent youth in our schools or international
peacemaking organizations, or we can raise our voices to remind people that
other ways of living are possible. But we also prepare the way by preparing our
own hearts for peace. During Advent that can mean things as simple as reading
inspired writings or lighting candles or listening to Handel’s Messiah on the way
to recycling.
The recycling center was not completely unpopulated, of course. There
were two people working there. One was up on the back of the flatbed truck that
collects garbage. As I approached with my bag I noticed that she did not look her
usual cheerful self. She was staring off into the woods looking troubled.
Saturday mornings are not times when I have the leisure to chat, so I had never
had a real conversation with her before and I don’t think she has any idea who I
am, but I felt moved to ask her what was troubling her. She told me, and we
talked about it a little, and I found some comforting and reassuring things to say.
It seemed to help.
We were both so engaged that neither of us noticed that I walked off
without paying. I woke up to the fact ten minutes later and came back and found
her in the same position up in the truck, but now she was looking cheerful again,
and she laughed about our both forgetting the money. It was still early in the day.
There were many residents of the town still to come. Instead of someone
troubled, they were going to find someone radiating her usual peace and good
will. I know that I can’t take the credit for it, but I think the little bit I did made a
difference.
If I had not listened to Messiah on the way to recycling and been so
moved, if I had not prepared the way of the Lord in my heart through that music,
I might not have initiated that conversation. The Prince of Peace might have tried
to come into the situation through me, but I would not have been prepared and
would have blocked him with my usual Saturday morning rushing around. This
is why peace is a two-part invention.
“By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon
us,” and by the grace of God the voices of prophets will reach us, but we who are
not prophets have a part to play, too. We have the Advent task of heeding the
voices crying in the wilderness, the task of making our hearts attentive to what is
coming and preparing ourselves. If we do that, the Prince of Peace may come to
us and work through us, and the comfort and peace we feel inspired to bring to
another person may ripple out and join the great cosmic force of God’s love that
is coming even now to change the world.
Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 12/06/2009