"Change and Reorder Us, O God" - Sermon for Advent 2, 2017

Sermon: Advent 1 2017

Text: Isaiah 40:1-12, Mark 1:1-8

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who brings change as a gift.

            Change and reorder us, O God. Prepare the way of the Lord. The first thing I think about when I hear that is from Santa Claus is coming to town, You'd better watch out You'd better not cry, You'd better not pout I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town. It feels to me very much like the God and religious equivalent of that saying, if you don’t behave and change your ways you’re getting coal!

            And so often I think it is used as like that, as a thing to tell other people, It’s almost Christmas, you’d better change your ways! You’d better prepare the way, because Jesus is coming. A thing that we tell to others when we don’t agree with their behavior. Frankly I’d like to tell that to quite a few of our political leaders on both sides at the moment. But this thought often causes us to revert to the penitential way of thinking about Advent and forget that Advent is all really about hope.

            When we think about change we get stuck in a you’d better change your ways from the bad rut. Change here is still of course like that, change has to be from one thing to the other, otherwise it’s not change, but for us, here and now, what’s important is how we frame that change. We get so distracted by change from the bad, we forget that it’s change to the better, change to the good. That this change is in fact a gift, it’s what we need. It’s part of what why we cry out Come and Save us. In that saving, we need to be changed and reordered.

            When I look at how “Prepare the way of the Lord” is being used in our passages today, from a quote found in Mark and the original found in Isaiah, I see that gift, that need and want for change being found. In those texts it’s not an accusation or threat, it’s a promise of good news, an assurance of gift.

[Isaiah]

            Isaiah is now in the midst of exile, this passage begins what is often called 2nd Isaiah, the second of three sections in Isaiah. The first section is all the first usage of prepare the way, it’s accusatory, threatening. If you don’t change your ways, you’re going to deserve what’s coming to you. You’d better watch out, because you’re screwing up big time right now. But, now, it’s different. In 2nd Isaiah, well, they did indeed screw up royally, and they find themselves in that exile we always bring up, and with these first words to them in that exile, the prophet doesn’t do a I told you so, or you’re on your own now, or just pull yourself out of this. Instead they hear;

            “Comfort, O comfort my people,
  says your God.
 2Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
  and cry to her
 that she has served her term,
  that her penalty is paid,
 that she has received from the Lord’s hand
  double for all her sins.
 3A voice cries out:
 “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.

Prepare the way of the Lord, because the Lord has not abandoned you, the Lord is still your God. This is not a threat, it’s a promise that God will still be with them.

            God does not long for punishment, God longs for grace, relationship, love, and peace. Our call this day of Change and reorder us, O God, comes not out of anger but out of need. We don’t seek change because of punishment, we seek change because we have no other options. Change is not penance, it is good news.

            Looking at Mark it begins, 

1The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
  2As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; 3the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ”

            Mark is in a near identical situation to the people of Isaiah, just not exile, but occupation. The roman empire occupies Palestine. The new Christians, just 25-30 years after Christ’s death and resurrection, are repressed by both the Romans and the Jewish leaders. Unable to worship freely, nor gather in the Synagogues, it’s unclear whether the Temple has been destroyed at the time of writing Mark. It was reduced to rubble by the Romans in 70 AD, the timeline of Mark places it somewhere in the middle to late 60’s in terms of authorship, but whether it was gone at this point or not, the writing is on the wall, change is coming, and definitely not any good change in the foreseeable future for them. And yet, this is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ. This is why they are called to prepare the way. Because into the midst of all that’s happening, into the chaos going on in their lives, in the world around them, Christ came to them. Christ was born to them. And that changed everything. Into the midst of all our chaos, while we are crying out Come and Save us, Christ is born for us, and Christ comes to change, to reorder our lives.

            I like to think about it like this. What if you are called to clean up your house. Clean it up! Get rid of all that stuff you don’t need. It sounds like work, it sounds like accusation. But, why is it that you are asked to do so. What if you then know that it’s because a new couch is showing up, unannounced, entirely free. What if you were to tell a kid, go and clean up your room! They’re not going to do it. But if you say, Go clean your room, because we need room for your new TV, or new Lego set, they’ll of course jump to work.

            Now, Jesus is of course not the same as brand new stuff, but the change that’s coming, that we need to do, is not punishment, it’s getting rid of stuff that we no longer need, that in fact hold us back. Get rid of your hatred for others, get rid of your love of money before God and others, get rid of your racism, your sexism, your abuse of power, get rid of your privilege that holds others back. Because in Christ, if we truly lived as Christ wants, we don’t need those things. In fact all they do is get in the way of accepting and receiving that God seeks to give us.

            This stuff is all hard, we like the things of this world, we like the privileges and power that things in the world give us, but they don’t help us to bring forward what God wants of us. The change Christ brings is comfort, because it puts us in line with what God has in mind for us. A quote I read this week from Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine Monk, 

"Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness."

            So, often we hear change, and we don’t want to go through with it and this makes us turn away the gifts that God gives us. Part of change, of preparing the way for the Lord, is being aware that these gifts are given to us no matter what, but do we accept them, do we see them within ourselves. This change is comfort, because within this change we find who we truly are. Children claimed and loved by God, given blessing after blessing, so that we may go out into the world to bring about God’s kingdom, to tell the world that God loves them so much that Christ was born, and he died, all for them. God comforts us in order that we may at long last become what God wanted us to be from the beginning." People who see the God createdness of all those around us, and who find our trust and life in the midst of a God who comes into the midst of our most direst need.

Let us pray,

God we call come and save us, and you do, you save us by helping us change, you save us by helping us prepare the way for you to come to us once again. We thank you for changing us, for even though it is hard to give up things of this world, we need to do so, we need to turn from things to you. Change and reorder us, O God, for it is what we need. Amen.