Second Sunday in Advent Year C 2009

02 Advent C 09
December 6, 2009

Malachi 3:1-4
1 See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight--indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. 2 But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; 3 he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. 4 Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.

Luke 1:68-79 (psalm)
68 "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. 69 He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, 70 as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, 71 that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. 72 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, 73 the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us 74 that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, 77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. 78 By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

Philippians 1:3-11
3 I thank my God every time I remember you, 4 constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, 5 because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. 7 It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God's grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. 9 And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10 to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11 having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Luke 3:1-6
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 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. 5 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; 6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"

The Whack of Peace

A preacher named Scott Black Johnston, in a sermon on this morning’s text, mentions a story by Flannery O’Connor about the wife of a pig farmer named Ruby Turpin. Ruby is an appalling racist, who has no awareness of her racism, regards it in fact as a great virtue. She delights in more or less constantly thinking about and talking about the relative bigoted rankings of this race and that race, of rich people and poor people.

One day, while she’s waiting in a doctor’s office for her appointment, while she’s going on about how grateful she is that she isn’t black or poor, a young woman in the waiting room walks up to her with a copy of a book called “Human Development” and whacks Ruby in the head with it. The young woman then calls Ruby a “warthog from hell.”

Interestingly enough, Ruby does not interpret this as an attack by a rebellious teenager, but as a message from God. She goes home and while she’s hosing down the pigs she asks God some questions. “How can I be a hog and me too?” she asks God. “How am I saved and from hell too?”

And Ruby has a vision. She sees a ladder on which people are ascending to heaven, walking together in the groups that she had placed them. She and racists like her are bringing up the rear of the procession; they are the "last," following all of those whom they have despised for so long. But as she looks at the ones at the head of the procession, she learns something even more remarkable. O’Connor writes: "…she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away."

Some of you may remember the story of a friend of mine, a recovering alcoholic who is now living a productive and sober life. He likes to remind himself of a particular day, back when he was drinking. He was homeless, and wandering the streets of a major city. It was winter, terribly cold, and he spent the day collecting dimes and quarters from sympathetic strangers. At the end of the day, he had collected enough for a big bottle of Mogen David 20/20, or Mad Dog as he used to call it. He took his bottle to a Salvation Army clothing bin, climbed in, buried himself under the clothes, opened his wine, and as he took his first delicious sip, he said to himself, “This is the life.”

Human beings naturally tend to look at the bright side of life, to consider any focus on the down side as negative and unproductive. “Count your blessings,” we are often told, and we do. Here we live in a lovely peaceful hamlet on a beautiful body of water that is often dotted with the sails of expensive boats. The people are friendly and easy-going. The homes are attractive and neat. The cars are mostly new and clean. Almost everyone is comfortably well-fed, many a little on the tubby side. Life is good. If we have any longing at all for peace, we don’t have to look far to find it.

Every Advent, we lectionary preachers insist on all this minor-key, somber stuff in the four weeks before Christmas. Some of us find it’s a real downer. “This is Christmas for crying out loud, a happy time for parties and feasting and shopping. When will those bleeding hearts stop moaning about the poor? When will those commie peaceniks stop complaining about war and violence? We’re sending out Christmas presents to poor children aren’t we? Leave it alone for God’s sake.”

Many of us would call the last three hundred years of world history “the Age of Reason,” or “the Modern era,” or “The Enlightenment.” We are accustomed to believing that these three hundred years have been a unique time of progress and enlightenment. We term the ages before it as “Dark” and think of those who came before as ignorant and backward and even brutish. And yet in these same three hundred years, from 1700 to the present, over 250,000,000 people have been murdered by violence or by intentional neglect, more people, either in numerical or in per capita terms, than have been murdered in all of recorded history prior. Right this minute, thousands are being murdered in various parts of the world.

What does all this violence have to do with our peaceful, pleasant, prosperous village by the water?

In the twelve step fellowships, there’s a saying. “Denial is not just a river in Egypt.” Denial is a survival mechanism that works very well in terrible situations from which there is no escape. I’m fairly certain that slaves in the American South in the nineteenth century didn’t get up each morning and think, “I’m in a terrible situation. I’m owned by an oppressive and racist bigot who will torture or murder me if I try to escape.” No, in order to survive, the slave probably had to say to himself, “Well, it’s a lovely morning. Not so hot today. We’re going to have grits this morning, and that’s my favorite breakfast. This is a good day.”

Denial is a subtle and insidious process. Denial is a reflex, an instinctive reaction to negative things. We ignore the violence and injustice that buys us our peace and prosperity, our privilege and opportunity. The land we build our neat little homes on is soaked in blood, but we don’t want to think about that. The Christmas gifts we buy are made affordable by the homelessness and hunger and exhaustion of millions of poor workers, but we don’t like to think about that. What point is there in being so negative? What can we do about it anyway?

It’s a good question. And the answer is “Not a thing.” We’re as trapped in our situation as that slave in nineteenth century Alabama. We’re as without options as my friend with his bottle in the Salvation Army clothing bin. We’re as clueless as old Ruby about what is good and what is not. So why think about it? Why not just let it go?

Because the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. It didn’t come to Tiberius Caesar. It didn’t come to King Herod. It didn’t come to Caiaphas the high priest. It didn’t come to Obama, it didn’t come to Palin, it didn’t come to Oprah, it didn’t come to O’Reilly, it didn’t come to Sam Walton or Warren Buffet or Dr. Phil or Joyce Meyers. It came, as one theologian put it, “to a nobody, son of a nobody, in the middle of nowhere.”

Whack! Comes the smack upside the head. Whack! God got my friend out of the Salvation Army bin. Whack! God got Ruby out of her prejudice and ignorance. Whack! God delivered the Hebrew slaves out of their bondage in Egypt. Whack! God gave Sarah a child in her old age. Whack! God gave his word to a nobody, son of a nobody, in the middle of nowhere, and the word of God was:

“Repent and I will forgive you.”

The peace of the world, the shalom of God, begins with an amazing strategy. God offers forgiveness to those who are willing to admit they don’t have a clue, that they don’t have any options, that they are out of ideas, that they are ready to do whatever God asks. The peace of God begins with surrender.

We said last week that the coming of the Lord is not a peaceful evening of family joy, but a shocking and marvelous intervention in the disaster of our broken world. It is the God of eternity entering the flesh and blood world we live in right here and now, and bringing about miraculous transformations through ordinary nobodies, the children of nobodies, in the middle of various nowheres. We said that to get ready for his coming is first to face the darkness in ourselves so that we can see the darkness in the world around us.

On this second Sunday in Advent, we take the next step, to open our arms to the forgiveness of God. God is offering us peace, peace with God. He is willing to come into our world, but he is asking us to prepare his way, to surrender our helplessness to him. He promises that if we do, he will do in us that which we cannot do in ourselves, he will do for our world what we cannot do for our world. He will scrub us with the kind of soap that takes off layers of skin. He will refine us in a fire that will burn most of us away.

If we let him, he will bring his peace.

Amen.