"Prepare the Way." A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on the Second Sunday of Advent

"Prepare the Way"

Luke 3:1-6

The time for John the Baptist to come out of the wilderness came in the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius.  Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was ruling Galilee. Annas and Caiaphas were serving as high priests in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Luke places John in historical context, much like how the Old Testament prophets were introduced, placing him and his call to prepare the way for the Lord in the middle of worldly events and places.

He reminds us that God sends messengers in the center of our earthly life, too. In the second year of the presidency of Donald Trump, when Rick Snyder is Governor of Michigan, when Francis is the Pope in Rome, when J. Herbert Nelson is Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA), we are reminded that no time is forsaken by God. All time is subject to God’s inbreaking. Prepare the way of the Lord!

Luke’s litany of government and religious authorities does more than date John’s ministry to 28 or 29 CE. It also contrasts human kingdoms with God’s reign. The claims to any authority that Tiberius or Herod or the high priest make are not ultimate.  God’s people owe allegiance first and foremost to God. And it is God’s word that sets John’s ministry in motion. John has been commissioned to prepare the way not for Caesar or any earthly authority, but for the one true Lord.

           The major focus for Luke is salvation, but it’s important for Luke that we understand the messy reality of the day-- to understand the world into which God is bringing salvation.  The word of God came to John in the wilderness, and spoke through John to a wounded and unjust world. 

            John proclaims a baptism of repentance that leads to release from sins.  The word that’s translated as “release” is the same word that Jesus uses twice in Luke 4 to describe his mission: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me…to proclaim release to the captives and…to let the oppressed go free….” 

The release that follows repentance doesn’t un-do past sins, but it does unbind people from them. It opens the way for a life lived in God’s service.  When John proclaims this release, he’s fulfilling his father Zechariah’s prophecy:  “You, child…will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness / release of their sins.”[1]

I agree with Judith Jones when she says that this salvation “looks like a new dawn for those trapped in darkness and death’s shadow. It is light that reveals a new path, the way toward peace.[2]         

The second Sunday of Advent invites us to anticipate the drawing close of the holy in our midst. The scripture texts invite us to listen to the voices of those calling us to be prepared to welcome the Messiah.  John the Baptist comes to us, proclaiming the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

            God chooses a nobody—an itinerant preacher to call people to repent and to prepare the way.  John went into all the region around the Jordan River, proclaiming a baptism of repentance.  Luke quotes the prophet  Isaiah:

            “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

            ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

            make his paths straight.

            Every valley shall be filled,

            And every mountain and hill shall be made low,

            And the crooked shall be made straight,

            And the rough ways made smooth;

            And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”[1]

            “All flesh.”  All people.  All humanity. 

Luke quotes Isaiah’s prophecy detailing what is required if all flesh is to see the salvation of God. Make straight desert highways. Valleys will be lifted up, and mountains made low.  

I like the way Jill Duffield describes this:  “A great leveling will occur. Rough places smoothed. Obstacles obliterated. Nothing will stand in the way, obscure or create a stumbling block for the coming of the Lord, for the gift of salvation. No one will be left behind, sacrificed because they are slow or infirm. All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”[3]

            On this second Sunday of Advent in 2018, John the Baptist calls to us to repent…to prepare the way of the Lord. What do we need to do to get ready?

            Whatever it takes will not be easy or painless. Transformation requires radical change, and change brings discomfort. Heeding John’s call means giving up our self-satisfaction or apathy or ambivalence. It means pushing past our fears and resistances, whatever gets in the way of submitting to the re-formation of God.

            Preparing the Lord’s path toward peace requires overturning the world as we know it. Luke’s gospel is full of images that help us envision what that means. Mary sings of the God who has looked upon her humble state, the One who saves by de-throning the powerful and exalting the humble…sending the rich away empty-handed and filling up the hungry.[4] Jesus blesses the poor and the hungry and those who mourn but announces woe for the rich and well-fed.[5]  On the Day of Pentecost Peter warns the people, “Be saved from this crooked generation.”[6] The word that’s translated as “crooked” is the same word that Isaiah uses for the things that need to be straightened out.

            Preparing for God’s arrival means re-thinking systems and structures that we see as normal—but that God judges as oppressive and crooked.  It means preparing to have God humble everything that is proud and self-satisfied in us, and letting God heal and lift up what is broken and beaten down. The claims that the world’s authorities make often conflict with God’s claims. God’s ways are not our ways. But God’s ways lead to salvation.

            What this re-shaping looks like is different from person to person, from congregation to congregation, from community to community, but it does require repentance…turning.  It can shake things up.

            John’s preaching of repentance will literally turn people away from the powers that be to God and it’s a threat to those invested in the present order. When we read further on in the story, we hear that John’s preaching will ultimately lead to his beheading, and later Jesus will be crucified by the empire. Those who are threatened by repentance and forgiveness and newness will not go without a fight.

            In the season of Advent, Christians prepare to celebrate a deep mystery of our faith, the Incarnation, how God came to live among us, full of grace and truth, in the person of Jesus.  Part of what Incarnation means is that God is with humanity and works in and through us. 

            I believe in a God who works in and with and through us, through the work of those who are learning to love as God loves, those who are learning to love peace as God does, those who love justice and mercy as God does.  Through those who are learning to reject violence in their own lives… and who work in small and large ways to end violence and hunger and injustice in our world…. 

            God isn’t finished with us yet. 

            Preparing the Lord’s path toward peace and justice requires changing the world as we know it.  Preparing for God’s arrival means re-thinking systems and structures that we may see as normal but that God condemns as oppressive and crooked.  It means letting God humble everything that is proud and self-satisfied in us,  and letting God heal and lift up what is broken and beaten down. 

            John’s call to repent reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways.[7]  John and Isaiah call us to open ourselves to let God work in our minds and hearts   and to let God work through us to re-shape the world’s social systems. 

            The good news is that God’s ways lead to salvation.  God’s glory will be revealed in Jesus, who comes to save us.  This is good news for us and for the whole world:   all flesh will see God’s salvation.  All humanity will see God’s salvation. 

            Thanks be to God!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

December 9, 2018

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[1] Luke 1:77

[2] Luke 1:78-79

[3] Jill Duffield, in “Looking Into the Lectionary, 2^nd Sunday of Advent – December 9, 2018” at Presbyterian Outlook.  https://pres-outlook.org/2018/12/2nd-sunday-of-advent-december-9-2018/

[4] Luke 1:52-53

[5] Luke 6:20-26

[6] Acts 2:40

[7] Isaiah 55:8

"God So Loves." A sermon on John 3:16 from Littlefield Presbyterian Church.

Sculpture depicting Numbers 21, on Mt Nebo in Jordan. Photo: Fran Hayes

"God So Loves"

Numbers 21; John 3:11-21

John 3:16 is one of the most quoted and most memorized verses in the Bible.  We may see it displayed for the cameras at sporting events, on banners or signs. In some parts of the country you might see it painted on big rocks by the roadside. It reads simply: “John 3:16.” 

            Depending on where you’re coming from, it’s a verse that can be used both to assure-- or to threaten.  Some invoke it to emphasize the extravagance and universality of God’s love.  Others invoke it to drive a wedge between believers and unbelievers… the “saved” from the “unsaved.” 

            “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.” This is one of the most iconic verses of the Christian faith. It expresses the wondrous love of God, who reaches out to the world in self-emptying reconciliation. And all we have to do is “believe.”

            Some of us memorized this verse, if we when we grew up in the church. It’s a beautiful and simple expression of our Christian faith, of a God who loves and a people who respond in belief.
            And yet, it’s only when we read the verse in its context in the Gospel of John that we can understand it more fully and be transformed by it.

            James Kay, who was my preaching professor at Princeton Seminary, says that when the Christian message is reduced to a sentence, instead of heard as a story, it’s a problem.  When the sentence becomes a magic formula or a mantra or a slogan instead of a story, when the verse is so engraved in our memory and so familiar—the temptation is that we may think we already know what it means.  The gospel of God’s love has become so familiar that we are no longer amazed by its majesty or its mercy.[1]

            And so, Professor Kay says, we need startling images, obscure, bizarre metaphors—like snakes—to wake us up.  We need “strange stories” instead of “safe slogans,” to help us comprehend what’s happening in these verses.

            John 3:16 isn’t meant to stand alone. It opens with a word we translate as “for.”  In the original Greek, it has a sense of “in this manner” or “in this way,” which means that God’s loving gift of the Christ for the salvation of the world needs to be understood in light of what comes before.
            “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

            The allusion is to one of the strangest stories in all of Scripture, from the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Numbers. 

The Israelites on the move from Egypt to the land of promise were their own worst enemies-- but then, who of us is not?  Of all of the harm inflicted upon us in life, some of it self-inflicted. Of all the judgment we encounter in life, a lot of it is self-imposed.  The people were complaining again. This is the sixth “murmuring” incident.  The people are grumbling: why had Moses brought them out into the wilderness to die?

Isn’t it also just like us humans –-- then, as now?  God brings us out of trouble… gets us safely through a time of danger.  Yet we grumble because the place God led us to isn’t as nice as we’d hoped.  What good is it to be God’s own people, if all it gets us is wandering on and on through the wilderness with nothing to eat except manna?

Then what happens next in the story?  Poisonous serpents-- lots of them, biting the people, so that many of them were dying. 

Now, I know the text says that the Lord sent the serpents.  But I have to confess that I have a hard time with that.  I don’t want to believe that the God of steadfast loving-kindness would kill people for whining.

Yes.  God gets frustrated with us.  But given the situation described, I wonder if at least some of the “serpents” could have arisen from within.  I think we poison ourselves sometimes if we get locked into complaining… selective remembering…or useless longing for good old days that weren’t really all that great.

Without even trying very hard, we can poison ourselves or one another-- with anger… bitterness…blaming…  or despair.  So, I think there may be more than one way to understand the serpents.

Now, whether the serpents are literal or metaphorical doesn’t end up mattering very much, because the people come to their senses and come to see that they themselves are responsible for the serpents coming into their midst.  They see that it was their own sinfulness that brought the serpents into their midst and caused their pain.  They repent and pray to be rescued: “Lord, the serpents are biting us!  We’re dying!  Save us!”

God hears them and makes it possible for them to survive.  Rather than making the serpents disappear, God provides an antidote to their venom.  Rebellion and sin have their consequences. God told Moses to make a serpent and set it on a pole, “and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”  God saved them by requiring them to gaze upon a symbolic representation of the very serpents that endangered them.

            "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son...   For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world-- but that the world might be saved through him."

            God loved the world...   loved so much that God gave.  Not to condemn...  but to save, John says.

            But what does this mean?  What does it mean to be saved?  There are different ideas about what words like “savior,” “save,” and “salvation” are supposed to mean.  

            The Greek word that we often translate as “save” can mean to save, to keep safe, to rescue from danger or destruction, or it can be saving someone who is suffering from disease… to heal… to restore to health and wholeness.

           

            “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son be lifted up.” The image of the Son of Man lifted up like the serpent on a pole points to the crucifixion.
            In the Roman Empire, the cross was an instrument of state-sanctioned violence that was used to execute those who destabilized the imperial order.  As Robert Williamson suggests, Christ lifted up on the cross serves as a symbolic representation of the very real violence of the Empire, threatening death for any who refused to submit to its authority.[2]

            In John, “lifting up” has a double meaning.  In a literal sense, it’s about the physical lifting up of Jesus on the cross. But in a metaphorical sense, it’s about how Jesus is glorified on the cross, so that the whole world can see God’s great act of redemption and healing.

            Did you notice? There’s no mention of punishment or payment for sin here. The cross is the sign that reveals God’s love for the world.

            God loves this world.  God chooses not to condemn this world. God desires salvation and life eternal and abundance for this world. And if we love the light more than the darkness, we are called to desire those very things for this world, too.

            That's the call for all who have received the gift of God's Son:  to love the world God so loves, to reflect the light of Christ, and be the light that both exposes evil and reveals truth.

            The Israelites in the wilderness were told to gaze upon the serpent in order to be saved.  I think Robert Williamson is right when he says the way to salvation for us is to gaze upon the crucified Christ--to recognize the violence that has undergirded the prosperity of our own Empire. It is to remember the genocide of native peoples that accompanied the founding of our nation and to face the facts of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the inhumane exploitation of life and labor that built the wealth of our nation.
            To gaze upon the Christ is to see the Christ Child among those gunned down in Columbine and Newtown and Parkland. To gaze upon the Christ is to acknowledge how much pain has been inflicted on innocents like Jesus in the name of enriching the few and securing our own privilege.
            If we believe that salvation comes through believing in the Christ who is lifted up on the cross to save us from a life that is complicit with the violence of the Empire of our time, the claim in John 3:16 takes on a much more radical meaning. 
            Gazing upon the crucified Christ means repenting of ways in which we are complicit in systemic injustice and violence and turning away from the politics of fear.
            Believing in Christ means choosing to turn away from the violence of the Empire and to commit ourselves to the reconciling power of God’s love.  

            God loves the world so much, that God comes not to condemn or judge us, but to love and save us.  God labors constantly to give us new birth-- to push us into abundant life-- if we are willing to trust God enough to know God in a new way...to live in a new way that reflects God’s love and justice.

            And that, my friends, is good news!

            Thanks be to God!  Amen!    

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[1] James F. Kay, Seasons of Grace: Reflections from the Christian Year (Eerdmans, 1994), p. 50.

[2] Robert Williamson Jr, “Justice for Lent: Overcoming Violence (John 3:14-21), at https://robertwilliamsonjr.com/justice-lent-overcoming-violence-john-314-21/

"An Audacious Promise": A sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on Luke 3:1-6 on the Second Sunday of Advent.

"An Audacious Promise"

Luke 3:1-6

            We’ll be hearing a lot from the Gospel according to Luke in the coming year.   This week’s reading tells about the beginning of the ministry of John the Baptist.   Luke first identifies John by placing him in historical context, much like how the Old Testament prophets were introduced.

            The word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah the priest, in the wilderness.  But Luke lets us know that it happens in the wilderness of the political world:  during the reigns of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee.   The major focus for Luke is salvation, but it’s important for Luke, that we understand the political reality of the day-- to understand the world into which God is bringing salvation. 

            But Luke doesn’t stop there.  He goes on to the “spiritual” or “religious” power structure as well, by naming the high priests Annas and Caiaphas.  Now the high priesthood was subject to annual re-appointment by the Roman authority, so Luke may be listing them as another part of the political hierarchy. 

            In any case, this is the messy reality of the world, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius.  The word of God came to John in the wilderness, and spoke through John to a wounded world. 

            God chooses a nobody—John.   John became an itinerant preacher, and he went into all the region around the Jordan River, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, “as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah.:

            “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

            ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

            make his paths straight.

            Every valley shall be filled,

            And every mountain and hill shall be made low,

            And the crooked shall be made straight,

            And the rough ways made smooth;

            And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”[1]

            “All flesh.”  All people.  All humanity. 

            Such an audacious promise!  Do we have an audacious-enough hope to believe it?

            This has been another tough week.  And yet—though we may feel as saddened… as sickened every time—we don’t feel as shocked or surprised when we hear of a mass shooting.

            Three years ago on a Saturday afternoon in early Advent I was frantically re-working part of my sermon for the next morning, because the day before a gunman had entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 20 children and six adults.  We sounded the chimes on the organ for each life that was lost.  But we’ve had so many mass shootings since then that we’ve given up on sounding the chimes for all the souls lost.         

            This Advent,  pastors have been agonizing again over sermons following yet another massacre.  And some of us feel the need to address what may be on people’s minds after the headline on the front page of the New York Daily News:  “Fourteen Dead in California Mass Shooting.  God Isn’t Fixing This.”

            I think this and articles from Sojourners and other publications are pointing to the hypocrisy of politicians who offer “thoughts and prayers” for the victims and their families while opposing laws that might prevent some of the massacres. 

            So what do we do in response to these horrific events?  Do we chime in with more platitudes?   “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families.”   Or does our faith call us to do something?  What could we do that could make a difference?   I don’t have any easy answers for you this morning, but we need to be talking and praying about what we could do as a community of faith, and as part of the connectional church and the interfaith community, working together.

            I’ve been paying attention to what I’ve heard some of you have been saying…and what people have been saying on social media.  Some people are angry at God.  Some are angry at “those people.”  Some are despairing…and hopeless.  Some—many—are afraid. 

            As people of faith, we need to ask, “Where is God in the midst of this?”

            What I do know with certainty is that God does not will these horrific massacres.  The God who created the world and said, “It is good,”  the God who created human beings in the divine image, the God who is love, the God who loves the world does not cause massacres as part of some divine plan. 

            I agree with Roger Owens, who wrote this week, “The only one who hates this violence more than we do is God.”[2]   I believe that in some ways that we don’t fully understand, God was with each of those who were wounded or killed. 

            But I don’t believe that God is going to fix the violence in our nation and in the world, in the way some people might wish-- because God’s way of “fixing” is by working through human beings. 

            In the season of Advent, Christians prepare to celebrate a deep mystery of our faith, the Incarnation, how God came to live among us, full of grace and truth,[3]  in the person of Jesus.  Part of what Incarnation means is that God is with humanity and works in and through us. 

            I believe in a God who works in and with and through us, through the work of those who are learning to love as God loves, those who are learning to love peace as God does.  Through those who are learning to reject violence in their own lives… and who work in small and large ways to end violence and hunger and injustice in our world…. 

            God isn’t finished yet.  Throughout the Bible, God used unlikely characters to announce God’s redemption and to embody God’s love and justice and peace in the world.   God keeps using unlikely characters, like you and me.

            In the fifteenth year of the twenty-first century, when Barack Obama was President of the United States, and Rick Snyder was governor of Michigan, and Jack O’Reilly was mayor of Dearborn and Mike Duggan was mayor of Detroit, and Gradye Parsons was Stated Clerk and Heath Rada was Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the word of the Lord came to Littlefield Presbyterian Church in Dearborn!

            The word of God came to John in the wilderness, and he went into all  the region proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  Repent.  Turn.  Change. 

            John quoted the prophet Isaiah:  “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.…”

            Preparing the Lord’s path toward peace and justice requires changing the world as we know it.  John quotes Isaiah to describe the earthshaking transformation that needs to take place.  Imagine it:  valleys filled full, mountains and hills humbled—made low.  Everything crooked made straight and true.  Mary sings of the God who has looked on her humble state.  She praises the One who saves by dethroning the powerful and exalting the humble… sending the rich away empty-handed and filling up the hungry.[4]

            Remember how Jesus turned conventional, worldly says upside-down? He blessed the poor and the hungry but announced woe for the rich and well-fed.[5]  On the Day of Pentecost, Peter warns the people, “Be saved from this crooked generation.”[6]  In the Greek, “crooked”, skolia, is the same word that Isaiah uses for the things that need to be straightened out. 

            Preparing for God’s arrival means re-thinking systems and structures that we may see as normal but that God condemns as oppressive and crooked.  It means letting God humble everything that is proud and self-satisfied in us,  and letting God heal and lift up what is broken and beaten down. 

            John’s call to repent reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways.[7]   John and Isaiah call us to open ourselves to let God work in the landscape of our minds and hearts   and to let God work through us to re-shape the world’s social systems. 

            But there’s good news too.  God’s ways lead to salvation.  God’s glory will be revealed in Jesus, who comes to save us.  This is the good news that John proclaims, and it’s good news for us and for the whole world:  all flesh will see God’s salvation.  All humanity will see God’s salvation. 

            This is God’s audacious promise, and our audacious hope.  Let’s prepare the way!

            So be it!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

December 6, 2015       

           

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[1] Isaiah 40:

[2] The Rev. Dr. L. Roger Owens, “God Isn’t Fixing This,” posted at the PTSBLOG at www.pts.edu.  Dr. Owens teaches at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

[3] John 1

[4] Luke 1:52-53

[5] Luke 6:20-26

[6] Acts 2:40.

[7] Isaiah 55:8