Sermons

Time

John Wilkinson                                 Third Presbyterian Church  December 21, 2003                    Micah 5:2-5a/Luke 1: 39-45

Our family went food-shopping Friday evening, looking for grape jelly to bring here the next morning for our Christmas basket enterprise. The grape jelly shelf was empty – it had been on sale, and my hope was that some thrifty Presbyterian had cleaned out the stock for the good of the cause.

Later this morning, some 80 or so sets of boxes will be launched from this place to families in need throughout our community. They contain food, hams, Christmas presents, a random candy cane or two, and yes, plenty of grape jelly. They are pretty good tokens of what we believe about this season. Many, many hands made this work light, as they say, so allow me to thank all of you who helped make this thing work, especially those who devoted hour upon hour in organizing and engineering, and to all of you who brought in food, and those of you who will load up your sleighs and deliver food this day.

Our food distribution efforts happen 52 weeks a year, by the way, so keep bringing things in, including grape jelly and many other things.

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Charles Causley’s wonderful poem “Ballad of the Bread Man” will set our stage. “Mary stood in the kitchen/Baking a loaf of bread./ An angel flew in through the window./ ’We’ve got a job for you,’ he said./

’God’s in his big gold heaven,/ Sitting in his big blue chair,/Wanted a mother for his little son./ Suddenly saw you there.’/

Mary shook and trembled,/ ‘It isn’t true what you say.’/ Don’t say that,’ said the angel./ ‘The baby’s on its way.’”

The baby’s on its way. That is the news we hear this morning. It’s time. The baby’s on its way.

And if you are traveling this holiday season, if you will be away from this place and rather elsewhere, please take that news with you. An early Merry Christmas, to those and those whom you love. The baby’s on its way.

A New Yorker columnist wrote this week that "The holiday season can be dangerous. People talk of it in terms of endurance and survival – oh, the gridlock, the fruitcake, the crazy great-aunt!” I am sure that is not your experience. She is not that crazy, you may be saying to yourself right now, or, if you happen to be a great-aunt, you may be saying to yourself, surely they are not talking about me.

But endurance, and survival? Those are hardly the terms we would seem to embrace for what we have incessantly heard being called “the most wonderful time of the year.”

Some 700 or 800 years prior to the birth we will celebrate again in just a few days, a prophet named Micah shared a vision of how things may be. He, too, was living in a generation whereby endurance and survival were needed commodities. War was on its way and exile was on the horizon. Religious practice was becoming more and more focused on the people doing the practicing, and less and less on the object of worship.

Prophets, as we have been saying through this month of endurance and survival, have two difficult jobs – the first is to say how things are and the second is to say how things will be. Neither is easy. We might think that sharing the news of how things are is as simple as looking around, reading the paper or spending a little time in front of CNN. It may be. But we, you and I, are such masters of deception, that it takes a special kind of visionary, a prophet, to dig a little deeper, to confront with honesty and integrity, to say the words that no one wants to hear.

I sometimes think of a prophet as that one person at a Christmas office party who everybody talks about when they leave. “What was up with that? What was her, or his, problem?”

Micah is no different. Things are not right, and rather than pretend otherwise, this prophet will tell the people. Because of a deep and abiding concern for the people, because of a deep and abiding commitment to the truth, these words are launched into the religious and political environment. Sometimes they will evaporate into the ether, like so many other words of truth that we ignore. Sometimes, though, they will hit home, and resonate.

And so our task becomes two-fold – to hear the word when it is spoken to us, and to speak that same word when we are told by God to do so. That is the first prophetic task, to speak the hard word of truth.

The second task is no easier, though it may seem to be. To speak the good word of hope. To articulate God’s intentions and desires, God’s agenda and aspirations. Why that may seem so difficult is because the odds seem so great. If December is a test of endurance and survival, what about life itself? What hope is there? And who are you to say such patently absurd things? And, even, who is this God?

And yet, this is what we hear. It rings with the authenticity of truth. “You, Bethlehem – you little town whose claim to fame is that you are on the road to someplace else – you, Bethlehem, out of you will come the one who will rule us, the one we have been talking about for years, for centuries, for generations. From you this one will come. And the people who have been scattered will return, an extraordinary homecoming. And this one will feed us in ways that we have never been fed. And we will be secure in ways that we have never been secure. And that one will be the one of peace.”

Peace. “Until she who is in labor has brought forth.” That is the promise. The coming of the one who through the very human process of labor and birth will bring peace. It’s time – the baby’s on the way.

So that, centuries later, when an angel, a messenger, pops up and appears to a poor, young woman, we may be surprised by the timing, we may be surprised by the actual recipient of the news, but we should not be surprised at all that it’s happening. Here is God’s agenda made manifest, the agenda of creativity and imagination, of new life.

Kathleen Norris writes that “When the angel Gabriel first addresses Mary, it is exalted, even imperial language: ‘Hail, thou art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee.’ (I use the King James Version,” Norris writes, “because the New Revised Standard is flat by comparison, and sounds too much like Star Wars talk: ‘Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you.’)”

Then Kathleen Norris writes what we all must be thinking. “Gabriel addresses his majestic words in an unlikely setting to an unlikely person, someone poor and powerless, extremely vulnerable in her time and place, a young peasant woman about to find herself pregnant before her wedding.” (Amazing Grace, page 30)

This is all very unlikely, but if we have been paying the least bit of attention, it is not so unlikely. Again, we may be surprised by the timing, we may be surprised by the actual recipient of the news, but we should not be surprised at all that it’s happening.

After all, we have Micah’s words whispering in our ears, “When she who is in labor has brought forth.”

After all, we have the creation story itself echoing in our memory, God brooding over things like an anxiously awaiting parent.

After all, we have the Apostle Paul’s words echoing in our memory: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.”

I am a bit hesitant to equate all of this to the actual birth process. All of us here will not experience pregnancy and labor and delivery. Our common experience, though, is that many friends and loved ones will. Our even further common experience is more fundamental, that all of us are the products of pregnancy and labor and delivery.

So while I am hesitant, the language and imagery is all about us. All creation groaning in labor pains – awaiting, anticipating, expecting the birth of a new creation. God’s agenda to bring about this new thing.

And here is Mary, unexpected, surprised, but ready. The timing could not be worse, we suspect, and yet it is God’s timing. All creation groaning in labor pains – for peace, for reconciliation, for redemption.

The things we search for and long for are placed on some divine wish list with all of creation, and it is never a matter of “if,” but “when.” And the “when” is almost near.

Mary is silent for a moment, and then with the firm resolve of chosenness, she takes on the task with grace and integrity.

So that, at the end of the day, it is about timing. And the timing is never our own, but God’s. Always God’s. And the time is now. The time is now for the things to be brought forth for which we long. The time is now. And rather than waiting with complacency and cynicism, we, like Mary, hear the voice and work with God, work for God, to make such things happen.

A church that is fully just and welcoming and hospitable, a church that reaches in and reaches out with boldness and creativity. A community where young ones are safe and secure, happy, with places to learn and play and grow up. A city where the threat of gunfire is but a distant memory, where resources are more than adequate to meet very basic human needs. A nation that is broad and generous and just, a global community that seeks strength in peace, that shares from the bounty and abundance of its resources, that takes its differences seriously but takes even more seriously the common ground that we share.

And human hearts, yours and mine, that are whole and healthy and generous. And spirits that are joyful and filled with hope. And lives that have meaning.

At the end of the day, it is about timing. And the timing is never our own, but God’s. Always God’s. And the time is now. We know it because the prophet tells us. We know it because long ago an unlikely messenger paid an unlikely visit to an unlikely young woman with unlikely news. We know it because the whole earth cries out for it. We know it because our hearts tell us that it’s true.

It’s all about timing – and the baby’s on its way. The baby’s on its way. Thanks be to God, and may the blessings of this holy season be yours, and ours together. Amen.