Come Down Here, O God!

This sermon for the first Sunday in Advent was written and preached by Rev. Alecia Schroedel-Deuble. It reminds us that, although Christmas is about jingle bells and bright decorations, Advent is about waiting. We have all been waiting this year. This sermon reminds us what we are waiting for.

Welcome to the first Sunday of Advent. Welcome to the Christmas season! Already my husband John and I sat down in front of the TV, with our pumpkin pie on Friday night to begin the season by watching some of the classic Christmas cartoons. You know, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and a new one featuring The Minions. That’s how we expect the season to start with happy shows full of Christmas cheer, bright shiny jingling holiday commercials, and Hallmark movies. But in stark contrast, each Advent begins with what’s called “a little apocalypse.” It’s full of frightening images of doom and gloom and destruction, and the second coming of Christ. Our gospel text from Mark (13:24-37) warns of the sun and moon going dark and the stars falling from the heavens. Then Jesus will come again, rolling in on the clouds with overwhelming power and glory!!! Not the kind of images I expect Christmas to start with.

But maybe those are just the right images for us in 2020—a year of disruptions of Biblical proportions! We have endured one crisis after another akin to the biblical 10 plagues of Egypt! Plague—yep, we have that one in spades this year with COVID and how it has disrupted life. The moon turns to blood—we had that—when the fires in the west send thick smoke into the air the sun is blocked out and the moon looks blood red. The winds flattened, the land—yep, had that too. 2020 has seen more and stronger hurricanes than any previous year. Add on top of that general political chaos and you have a year we can’t wait to leave behind! I think the only thing we didn’t experience was a plague of frogs covering the land! So one of our biggest questions in 2020 is “Where is God in all this?” Where are you O God??? With Isaiah I think we raise our fists to the sky, turn our faces toward heaven demand, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” (Isaiah 64:1) Get down here O God! Get down here and do those big mighty deeds of power like you used to do. Get down here and do some smiting!!! We hear this furious lament from an impatient prophet who is sick and tired of waiting on God to get down here and fix things now! And we can sure relate to this!

We know what’s gone on in our world this year; and here’s what was going on in Isaiah’s world at the time: Jerusalem; the holy city, had been invaded by the Babylonians. The city was sacked, buildings were burned to the ground; and the holy Temple, the dwelling of God, had been completely destroyed, not a stone left upon a stone. Men, women and children were slaughtered and those who remained alive – the remnant – were marched into exile to Babylon. The nation of Israel was all but destroyed. It’s a scene of shocking violence! It’s hard to imagine a people more devastated. These were Israel’s darkest days. In our reading from Isaiah today (Isaiah 64:1-9), he calls out to God from a foreign land: “God don’t you see what’s happened to us? Tear open the heavens and come down! Make the mountains quake in your presence like you did before! Show our enemies who they’re dealing with. Show them your awesome deeds of power.” The people of Israel also beseech God in Psalm 80: “Hear us O God! Stir up your might! Wake up your power! Restore us! Save us! Where is the God of mighty deeds? Where is the God of the burning bush? …Where is the God who parted the Red Sea? God don’t you see what’s happened to us? Don’t you care about us? “Where are you God?!! Come save us!”

Psychologists tell us that underneath our feelings of anger lie other deeper emotions. Underneath Isaiah’s heated words are feelings of grief and disorientation. Israel was at a turning point in its history. It was grieving for the good old days and longing to go back to a time when life made sense and faith was clear. At the same time, it was waiting for God to come and make something new out of their confusion. They were waiting for God to come and put an end to their oppression and take them back home to the land of Zion – back to where things were normal and secure. What a frustrating spot to be in! We can relate. When you think about it, we are grieving too. We are grieving the way life used to be. We are grieving the ability to move around freely and to gather together. Some of us might be grieving the loss of a loved one and that awkward space of not knowing what to do next. Some are grieving the loss of a job and wonder “What now?” Some might be grieving the aftermath of an illness that has changed life. We are grieving not being able to worship together in the way we are accustomed. Wouldn’t we just love for God to tear open the heavens and come down and heal our confusing and chaotic world? Our anger softens to tears. In our grief we plead and beseech, Lord, come down here and bring us your comfort. Take us back to a more comfortable time and place! Or at least come down and solve our problems so we can move on into a new comfortable time and place. Either way, just come, comfort us, and get us out of this painful spot! But we can’t go back (although we wish we could); and we can’t quite move forward yet (although we wish we would). We’re stuck in this very uncomfortable spot. And that sums up this time we call Advent, this frustrating time of waiting. Just ask any child who is waiting impatiently for Christmas Day to come. For us adults, we feel frantic, like there is not enough time to get everything done we’d like to do before Christmas – it’s moving too fast. But to any child, this month feels like an eternity!

This nerve-wracking time in the middle of things is the place where hope lives. Today we lit the candle of Hope. Hope is a word with motion underneath it. It has a sense of looking forward to something. Hope has a sense of a vision of something better, something different, something more. Hope lives in the turning point. And turning points are not comfortable places to be. We know this in our churches. Everything is so different this year. We can’t gather together, we can’t sing together, we worship via technology. We wish we could just go back to the way things were when the church was filled. But we know that’s not possible and the way forward is not clear yet either. This in-between time of Advent is calling us to have patience—patience with ourselves, patience in the midst of things we can’t control, and even patience with God.

Our impatient prophet Isaiah realizes that he too has to take a deep breath and be patient. “YET”, says Isaiah in the midst of his lament; “YET, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, you are our potter.” Even though life is uncomfortable and frustrating, Isaiah does not turn back. He acknowledges that God is in charge and he puts his trust in God’s hands and waits on God’s timing. That sums up what Advent is all about: an uncomfortable spot between the past and the promised future. Yet It is a season of hope – and hope is in motion. Hope is coming towards us. When we say “Christmas is coming” that phrase has a sense of motion in it. Christmas is coming toward us and will be upon us if we are ready or not! In the same way, the essence of Christmas is hope – hope that God will come down and meet us, hope that God will restore our well-being and restore our relationship with Him and with our brothers and sisters; and hope that God will restore our church. We wait with longing for the future God is shaping. Isaiah encourages us not to turn back, but put our hope in God as we await the birth of the Promised Son – and as we await the birth of our future. By the way, God did tear open the heavens and come down, but not in the powerful way Isaiah envisioned. God opened a hole in the heavens and gently, quietly, on a silent night, he sent us His Son, the promised One, the Savior we had been hoping for – and the world hasn’t been the same since.

This Advent, our Advent candles will call us to wait with patience and perseverance as we prepare to greet the One the prophets proclaim as God’s Promised Son. Have patience, people of faith. Keep awake and wait on the Lord. God is not finished with us yet. With Isaiah, we cry out, “Open the heavens and come down, O God!” Let these words be our Christmas prayer this year. We have railed against heaven and demanded that God come down! We have beseeched God and acknowledged our grief over what we have lost this past year. As we wait in hope now, ready for what will happen next, let us use these words not in anger or in grief, but as an invitation to the Holy One to come and enter our lives and our world with healing, justice and peace. Come, O come, Emmanuel! Let us invite him in as we wait in hope. We are open, O God, and we invite you to open the heavens and come down. And while we wait, may the peace of the Christ child be with you all.

Thanksgiving Among the Weeds

 It has been a rough year. Now that we have arrived at Thanksgiving, many people wonder how they can give thanks in the midst of what seems to be an overwhelming number of problems. People have given thanks for years, though, no matter how many difficulties surrounded them. And that is the subject of this sermon!

This Thanksgiving will be anything but traditional. Oh, there are plenty of frozen turkeys in the meat case at Kroger, but most of us won’t be eating them with our extended families. It’s just too dangerous this year; one of those extended family members might be an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19! And because we won’t be visiting with friends and family, we’ll miss out on everything that we have come to expect from Thanksgiving Day. We won’t hear Uncle Harry holler at the intercepted passes during the afternoon football games. We won’t hear Cousin Marge comment, as she does every year, about how the kids are just growing up too fast! We won’t even have to listen to Grandpa pontificating about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket as he sits at the head of the table. No, all those Norman Rockwell scenes won’t be taking place this Thanksgiving, and it’s all because of an invisible virus that has put our lives on hold for almost a year! That virus is behaving like the weeds in Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30). Jesus’ disciples knew all about weeds that appeared in a wheat field. They were all too familiar with weeds that spring up and cause us no end of trouble.

When Matthew wrote his gospel, of course, he knew nothing about viruses or a global pandemic. Some biblical scholars think that Matthew was talking about people in his church which at that time was made up of a very mixed bag of Christians. The wheat may have been devoted followers of Jesus, and the weeds were those who were there for other reasons. Christians, for example, had a reputation of taking care of their own, so that no one in their church community went hungry. That might have attracted people who were more concerned with their stomachs than with their spiritual lives. Other church members might have been spies, sent there by the Roman authorities who wanted to find a reason to arrest members of this new religion. When Matthew wrote his gospel, the weeds that he talks about might have been sitting in the church pews! Today, we aren’t worried about Roman spies; and people who want a handout usually go to the food pantry or show up at the soup kitchen. No, we’re standing among other weeds today; and we don’t have to look very far to see them.

Over here is a patch of financial problems. Lots of folks are standing in those weeds. They live from paycheck to paycheck – if they even have a paycheck! They don’t have enough money to feed their children, or to buy them warm clothing for the winter. Some have even been evicted from their homes because they lost their jobs during the shutdown after COVID hit. And the worst part about these weeds is that if you stand there for very long, their tendrils snake around your ankles and hold you there. These weeds are really nasty!

Right next to the financial weeds is a big patch of medical problems. Lots of us are standing there. Some of us have medical concerns of our own, while others are coping with the medical needs of loved ones. Those weeds can get so tall that they dwarf us! If we get stuck in these tall weeds, they are all we can see; and pretty soon we can’t see the wheat at all.

And all around us are weeds that have popped up during the election season. I’m not even talking about our country as a whole – plenty of weeds there, though. I’m talking about the relationships that have been strained, even broken, because we disagree on how to go about repairing the problems that face us. We even disagree about what those problems are! Oh, yes, we have weeds all around us. And Jesus tells us that they aren’t going anywhere any time soon. When God comes at the end of time to harvest the field, those weeds will be burned in the fire. But until then… well, here they are.

The Pilgrims – our ancestors who first celebrated Thanksgiving on these shores – lived among weeds, too. Those early settlers landed on what is now called New England late in the fall, just as winter was setting in. The supplies that they had brought from Europe weren’t adequate to get them through that year’s harsh winter. Many were already ill with scurvy after the long overseas voyage. Others became ill from cold and hunger. Some starved to death. Of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, over half died during that first terrible winter. We tend to forget how tall and abundant the weeds were then. Over 250 years later, in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln established an official Thanksgiving Day, the weeds may have been different, but they were just as abundant. In that year, our country was divided by civil war. During the previous summer, the Battle of Gettysburg had stopped the invasion of Confederate troops into the north, but at a terrible cost – almost 50,000 troops killed or wounded in just three days of battle. During those days, just as in the time of the Pilgrims, the weeds threatened to choke out everything else. But even in the middle of all those weeds, both the Pilgrims and President Lincoln chose to give thanks. They couldn’t ignore their weeds, and it was very difficult to simply make the best of them. So they decided to give thanks for what they did have instead of focusing on what they didn’t have! They gave thanks for loved ones who survived cold, hunger, illnesses, and battle. They gave thanks for friends who supported them when they were certain that they could not get through another day. They gave thanks to God whose presence went with them whether their days were good or bad. They gave us a good example to follow as we struggle to live among our own weeds!

We can choose to give thanks, too. Some years ago, several people who are Facebook friends of mine posted daily what they were thankful for during the month of November. Now, I know these folks; and I know that they all have weeds in their lives: some small, some large, and some very large, indeed. You might be interested in what they were thankful for.

I am thankful for co-workers who care enough about me to phone me when they hear there's a huge accident that would keep me from getting home safely.

I am thankful for the songbirds in our yard.

I am thankful for my spouse. It’s not always easy, but it is completely worth it.

I am thankful for warm jammies.

I am thankful for books, because I love to read!

I am thankful for conveniences – a washer, a dryer, and a dishwasher.

I am thankful to spend time with my family.

I am thankful for the opportunity to learn. Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to get a good education.

I am thankful for laughter.

I am thankful for life.

Are you thankful for some of those things? I know that you are – and for many others that I didn’t mention. This year, I invite you to give thanks despite the weeds in your life, no matter how many of them there are and how big they are. I invite you to hang on to God’s promise that the weeds won’t last forever, and that one day, they will all be thrown into the fire! I invite you to join the Pilgrims, Abraham Lincoln, and all the saints throughout the ages in giving thanks to God for all the good things in our lives. Even in the midst of the weeds, may you have a blessed Thanksgiving!

Practicing for the Kingdom

Today is the Sunday that is known as either Christ the King Sunday or the Reign of Christ Sunday. Regardless of its name, it is the day when we look forward to the time that Jesus' reign of love and peace will be fully realized. But as we look forward to it, we need to ask ourselves, "What do to get ready for it?" This sermon answers that question.

Today is the Sunday that we look forward to the coming Reign of Christ, when the Kingdom of God will be established in its fullness for all time. We all wonder what that Kingdom will look like; and the prophet Isaiah gives us some tantalizing glimpses of it. He tells us that there will be universal peace. People won’t have any more use for swords and spears, so they’ll melt them down and remake them into hoes and hedge clippers. (Isaiah 2:4) He describes a time when everyone will live together, even those who are natural enemies. When little lambs lie down to sleep, friendly wolves will be their furry pillows. (Isaiah 11:6) He shows us a picture of a table groaning with all kinds of good things – apple dumplings, roast new potatoes, fresh-picked pears, and chocolate mousse – and everyone can eat as much as they want and never gain an ounce! (Isaiah 25:6) And the best part is that death and the sorrow that accompanies it will be a thing of the past! (Isaiah 25:7) The peace, the feast, and the fellowship with God and with one another will go on forever! 

If Isaiah, though, is the one who offers us glimpses of the coming Kingdom, Matthew is the one who tells us what will happen before that Kingdom begins. In his description of what is known as the Last Judgement (Matthew 25:31-46), Matthew envisions all people being divided into two groups: one group that will be welcomed into the Kingdom, while the others will be shown the door. His description reminds me of tourists on a cruise ship who are being divided into groups for shore excursions. As they gather in one of the larger rooms of the ship, they mill around asking one another, “Where are we supposed to be? Are we in the right place?” while cruise personnel direct them. “Group 9? Over in this corner. Group 12? The front row, please. Group 19? You’re on my right. Now, don’t wander away. We’ll be leaving any minute.” After everyone is organized, a tour guide in each group raises a brightly colored paddle that looks like a big lollipop and says, “This way, please. Stay with me!” and they’re off to explore exciting sights on the shore. In Matthew’s vision, however, there are only two groups – he calls them the sheep and the goats – and instead of a cruise director running the show, Jesus is up front holding the microphone.

After everyone is assigned to a group, Jesus turns to the group on the right. “Welcome, friends!” he says. “I’m happy to have you traveling with me! You have done some fantastic things! Why, you’ve helped me again and again. You’ve invited me to dinner, you’ve made sure that I was warm in the winter, you’ve brought me chicken soup when I was under the weather. Why, you were the first one to call me to offer help when I had a spell of bad luck! Good job! The entrance to the Kingdom is the first door on the right. You don’t have to hurry; you have all the time in the world.” But those folks will answer, “What? I never helped you, Jesus! You lived almost 2,000 years ago! How could I have possibly helped you! You must be mistaken!” And then Jesus will answer, “Oh, no; no mistake. Any time you help someone who can’t return the favor, you help me. Now, welcome home!”

Then, Jesus will turn to the group on his left. “I’m sorry,” he’ll say, shaking his head. “I’d love to invite you in, but my Kingdom isn’t for you. You never did anything for me – no food when I was out of a job, no gently used clothing for my kids, no twenty-dollar bill to help me with gas money. In fact, when I asked, you gave me every excuse in the book, but you never gave me any help. I’m sorry. The exit door is right over there.” Then those folks will object, too: “Wait, wait, wait! What are you talking about? I would have given my life for you if I had seen you – which I never did, by the way. And I’ve led a good life! I haven’t broken even one of the Ten Commandments. I’ve read my Bible every single day; I’ve gone to church every single Sunday; and I even tithe! I haven’t done anything wrong!” But Jesus will answer, “No, you haven’t done anything wrong; but you haven’t done anything right, either. You haven’t done anything; and that’s the whole point. You wouldn’t fit into my Kingdom, because people here love one another. Who exactly is it that you love? I’m so very sorry. You can let yourselves out.”

Now, I’m not convinced that Jesus will be as hard on us as Matthew says he will be. Matthew, after all, comes from a time when the Christian church was being persecuted; and I’m sure that he was more than a little resentful of those people who called themselves Christians but didn’t act like Christians should. I’m also pretty sure that life isn’t nearly as black and white as Matthew would have us believe. But he makes a good point, and one that we would do well to take to heart. What we do speaks louder than any words we might say. We can profess loudly that we are Christians, but if our actions don’t reflect what we profess to believe, then our Christianity looks a little thin. The Kingdom isn’t for those people who just talk about Jesus; the Kingdom is for those folks who treat other people like Jesus. The Kingdom, in other words, is for those who practice what they preach.

And practicing being a Christian is what makes us fit for the Kingdom. Imagine, if you will, a football team getting together for their first practice of the season. All the young men bounce up to the coach, each one hoping to make it into the starting lineup. “OK,” the coach says, “it’s good to see all of you again! Now, before we get started, I want to know what all of you did to stay in condition during the off-season.” “I did weight training,” one says. “I lifted weights every single day.” “I worked on running,” another says. “I ran at least a little bit every day.” “I worked on my catches,” says a third. “I can catch that football now if I’m upside down!” I imagine that the coach is happy with all those answers. But what if those young men would have said, “Oh, we didn’t do anything. We stayed home and didn’t risk an injury. We read all about football, though, and organized a discussion group about the game. We’re all ready to play!” Coach wouldn’t be so happy about that, would he? He might say, “What do you mean? You can’t get ready for a football game by talking about it! You have to practice for it!!” In the same way, God wants us to practice for the Kingdom by showing love, compassion, and acceptance through our actions. We can talk about it all we want, but we need to do something to practice our Christian skills. Otherwise… well, we just won’t be ready!

There is an old story that illustrates the difference between being in the Kingdom and being on the outside of it. The story goes that God offered to show one of the saints the difference between heaven and hell. God took the saint to hell first. There was no fire and brimstone, and no little black imps tormenting the residents with pitchforks. In fact, the residents of hell were seated at a huge banquet table with all kinds of delicacies in front of them. They were lamenting bitterly, though, because none of them had elbows and they couldn’t get the food to their hungry mouths. God then took the saint to heaven. The scene was the same. The residents were seated at a banquet table there, too, with the same delicious food in front of them. None of the heavenly residents had elbows, either. But the scene was entirely different. The people in heaven were rejoicing, because they fed one another.

Have we practiced for the coming of the Kingdom? Have we considered the hunger of others when we go shopping at Kroger? Have we been as concerned about the clothing on the back of a poverty-stricken child as much as the clothing in our own walk-in closets? Have we worried about the availability of health care for others, or only about the cost of our own? Have we tried to connect with people who are different than we are, or do we just ignore them? Maybe we need to look around and realize that Jesus is in every one of them. OK, saints, so practice starts right now! After all, we want to be ready for the big game! And God wants us to be ready, too.