Sermons

Advent Visions: Continuity and Change

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
December 9, 2007	Isaiah 11:1-10/Matthew 3:12-12

    
What do we expect? What do we expect? From ourselves? For ourselves? From this season? From this one whose birth we anticipate, prepare, expect?

We speak of expectation a great deal in Advent, so it is worth asking the question – what do we expect?

Several weeks ago, a group of our youth watched a movie called “The Whale Rider.” Our overall recommendation was “thumbs-up,” though we agreed it took a while to get going. The film is set in a small New Zealand coastal village, where a group of the Maori tribe claim descent from Paikea, the Whale Rider. In every generation, a male heir born to the Chief succeeds to the title. Twins are born – a boy and a girl, but the boy and his mother die in childbirth. The surviving girl is named Pai.

Family dynamics unravel, as the father leaves Pai to be raised by her grandparents. Her grandfather, who is the Chief, refuses to acknowledge Pai as the inheritor of the tradition because she is a girl. It is clear to all – except the chief, her grandfather, that Pai is the natural heir, the whale rider. He trains every 12-year old boy in the village. Pai is forbidden to participate, and yet she soaks in the training from afar.

Meanwhile, deep within the ocean, a massive herd of whales is responding, drawn towards Pai. The whales become stranded on the beach. I won’t give the rest away…(See www.whaleriderthemovie.com)

The question remains, answered in a compelling way by this sweet movie: what do we expect? And what do we do when the response to our expectations is not what we expect, but rather turns our expectations inside out?

What do we expect for ourselves in order for us to live the lives we are called to live, to find the kind of meaning we hope to find, to make the kind of difference we hope to make? What do we expect from ourselves? How do we contribute? How do we make a difference? What do we expect from this season?

Culturally, Christmas is in our faces, everywhere we go, but we know that the church is not quite ready yet, nor the world, if it is really honest with itself.

Nor are we. We need this time to get ready, to prepare, to anticipate fully. But for what, exactly? We know the story so well, sometimes perhaps too well, that we breeze by the need to get ready for it. What do we expect?

One of the paradoxes we experience is the fact that we know the story so well that we are often-times unready to let it work its wonders on us. Yes – a child will be born in a most unusual, unexpected way. And yes – he will grow to live a most unusual, unexpected life. But Advent means that we prepare ourselves, our church, our world, as if we are hearing the story for the first time, and let it work its unusual, unexpected wonders on us.

That is to say that this story embraces a deep, fundamental vision of continuity. After all, God’s drama from the very beginning has reflected a steady story line – the creation and ongoing restoration of God’s people. The change we experience every Advent is never a deviation from that continual pulse of restoration and renewal and reconciliation, but rather a calling back, a return, a homecoming, to where we’ve always been.

What do we expect? What we’ve always expected. What we always will expect.

For the prophet Isaiah, in some of the loveliest, most compelling words in scripture, the expectation is clear, if never easy. One shall be born from David’s line, a king born from the tradition but most certainly an untraditional king. “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord...with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.”

And not only that: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” A peaceable kingdom with every kind of species, and the earth itself, reconciled and dwelling together. “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

That is what we should expect.

We do not live in a biblical world, but we can live with a biblical vision. That is to say, the qualities of the king anticipated by Isaiah should not be equated with the qualities we look for in a political leader. At the same time, however, those same qualities are what we should expect, and work for, in the world in which we are living.

Lutheran scholar Ralph Klein writes that these gifts of the spirit – wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of God – gathered what Israel needed in a king: a wise judge, a good general, and a pious ruler. In Jesus, we will certainly get #1 and #3, but the need for military leadership will fade away as even the lamb and the lion will co-exist peacefully.

Listen to Klein’s description: “Wild and domestic animals will become strange bedfellows and dinner companions--wolves with lambs, panthers with young goats, and cows and lions, with a young child tending this mongrel herd. Cow and bear will eat from the same pasture, and the carnivorous lion will become vegetarian. Human infants will play with horned vipers; yes, nursing babies will put their hand into the lairs of vipers with no harm resulting. The earth will be transformed into the Garden of Eden, that is, conditions of the end time will return to the conditions enjoyed by our first parents...”

As we have said before, and as we must keep saying, this vision of the king, the ruler, the messiah, cannot be confused with a job description for a 21st century politician. But we can certainly embrace this messianic vision, and its values, as ones that we who expect and prepare for this baby can help permeate into every corner of our life together.

Australian theologian Howard Wallace writes that the king, as envisioned by Isaiah, “was to judge not only with equity and fairness but with a concern for what we would call social policy and welfare…the law was not just there to settle disputes fairly, but to address the social and economic inequities in society.”

Do you know the phrase “managing expectations?” It is used all over the place – in politics, when describing a candidate’s hoped-for outcome in an election. In business, when a profit and loss statement is being considered. In sports, when a player does well when he or she manages their expectations by playing within their limitations.

I don’t know, but it seems to me that the messiah – anticipated as a king by Isaiah and as a radical prophet by John the Baptist – throws any conversation about expectation management out the window.

Jesus transforms expectations at every corner. John the Baptist’s view seems, at first blush, to contradict the lovely and gentle vision imagined by Isaiah. But not so fast. Each vision imagines a world different than the current one – the expectation of fairness trumping that of injustice, the expectation of peace trumping that of warfare, the expectation of hope trumping that of despair, and, for John, the expectation of a lively and meaningful life of faith trumping one of empty piety and hollow ethics.

For John, it is all about repentance, and never the kind of repentance typified by the poor soul standing at the street corner, “the end is near” sign firmly in hand.

This kind of repentance is active, challenging, and presses us to align our practices and behaviors with the faith we profess. “Repent,” he said. And they did, first by being baptized, and then by seeking to lead lives that bore the kind of fruit Isaiah described. A maverick kind of hope that insists that our lives – yours and mine – can be changed, and that as our lives are changed, the life of the world is as well John prepares the way.

We prepare the way. Or rather, John prepares us, and our expectations undergo a kind of revolution.

William Loader writes: “Put negatively, there are no favorites: everyone must be immersed in the waters; everyone must join the transformation. Turned into positive terms, this also means: no one is to be written off as inferior or worthless. Every person matters to God. We are into the logic of love which flows out from the ministry of Jesus, embracing the unloved, including the outcasts, lifting up the fallen, inviting those beyond the pale, finding a place for the sinners…we sense something new is afoot, for which we remind ourselves to prepare year after year in the season of advent: preparing ourselves by openness to the revolution of love.”

We are not sure we like John so much, and not only because of his scruffy attire and unconventional diet. All of this repentance talk makes us nervous. We would rather think about lions and lambs cavorting together in a meadow than look seriously into our own spirits and hearts. But here it is, and when we look, truly look, we know it is what we need and the faithful thing to do.

Brian Stoffregen (www.crossmarks.com) reminds us that repentance involves more than just thinking in a different way. And it is about more than aspiring to do better, aspirations that will ultimately fail and let us down.

Repentance is about turning to God, not just once, but again and again and again, and discovering each time that God is waiting for us. It is not about right thought or proper behavior, but rather a posture that will lead us into a transformed understanding of who we are, whose we are, and who we are called to be in the world.

“Repentance is the ongoing lifestyle of the people in the kingdom,” Stoffregen writes, "and it is in that very lifestyle that we are connected to a vision of wisdom and justice and hope.”

The pulse of continuity is just that, the fundamental reminder of righteousness and joy that God intended from the very beginning and intends even now. Isaiah draws us to it; John the Baptist draws us away from its shadow-side. This is not about new attitudes, or the occasional good deed. This is about changed lives, transformed lives, lives that were set to go in one direction but rather have undergone a dramatic course correction.

What do we expect?

If we expect things never to change, in our lives, in the world, they probably will not. And if we expect our December preparations to provide tired old reruns, they probably will. But if we expect God to do a new thing, and if we are prepared to change course so that our hearts and spirits are open to such new expectations, then who knows.

In “The Whale Rider,” the tribe and its traditions were saved by a 12-year old girl. For us, steeped in the prophetic tradition and the tradition of a rabble-rouser named John, we anticipate, as Ralph Klein writes, “a time when God can bring life from death and victory from defeat. Everything is changed by the advent of this messiah.”

Howard Wallace writes: “As we look toward Christmas, we anticipate not only the birth of a baby with its accompanying wonder and joy, but the coming to fruition of God’s new creation. In Advent, we prepare not just for Christmas, but for the feast of the reign of Christ, and the fullness of our hopes in God’s kingdom. Isaiah speaks of equity for the meek, justice for the poor, of righteousness and faithfulness, of the overcoming of the destructiveness of power and might, and the ascendancy of what is powerless and vulnerable. On the other hand, in our anticipation of the birth of Jesus, with all its earthiness and inclusion of what is commonplace, we also anticipate the coming of the fullness of the kingdom of God, with all its glory and hope for what is ‘uncommon’ in our world – peace, justice, equity and security in both the worlds of human society and nature.”

What do you expect? Perhaps not this. But then who could? Amen.