It is time to cry out!
Year
B, Advent 2
The texts for today are beautiful
texts. They speak to the greater message
of Advent, to preparation for the coming of God and to hope in general. I wanted to talk about what it is to have
hope when things seem lost, but I had a really hard time writing that. It is been an exceptionally difficult few months
in our nation. This week was no exception.
I don’t understand why violence is such a big part of our culture. The average child will see 40,000 murders on
TV before they finish elementary school and that is not including video
games. It almost seems as though we have
become immune to it to some extent. Yet there
are times when something shakes us from this numbness to violence.
Just a few months ago the nation gaped
in horror when a video was released that showed the beheading of a journalist. This week the video of Eric Garner’s death
was released. It was gut wrenching to
watch that video. It’s not just in the
movies or video games, it’s real and it’s on youtube. What frightens me is that our reaction to
violence is often more violence. I
looked at the comments under the video of the journalist’s beheading and people
wrote things like, “Let’s bomb them!”
What frightens me even more is there was a part of me that really
understood that and empathized with that emotion…that need for vengeance. After 9-11, I remember feeling so happy to
watch the news coverage of bombs dropping in retaliation. We see again and again that violence begets
more violence.
It’s hard to know what to feel right
now. I have immense respect for our
military and our police. They have very
difficult jobs. I just don’t understand how our society got to a point where
all of this was the norm, when people felt like they needed guns to protect
themselves. Fear is rampant in our
society and in many ways it is merited.
Yet this fear is not protecting us.
It is just causing more pain, more violence. I don’t know what the answer is. What I do know is that we are never going to
get the answer if we don’t start talking about these difficult issues, even in
the church.
The church is supposed to be a light
in the darkness, not a shelter from the darkness. Both the reading from Isaiah and the Gospel
are about proclamation of the message of God.
Isaiah is a little confusing in the way it is written. It would be easier if it was in script form
so we knew who was talking in any given moment.
It starts with that famously repeated line, “Comfort, O comfort my
people, says your God.” It would seem as though God is telling someone
to comfort his people. Scholars have
hypothesized that God was talking to a divine council, kind of like God’s
entourage. He was asking them to comfort
his people. You might think, hey, isn’t
that God’s job? Shouldn’t God have been
comforting the people? In a way he was.
He was imploring his people, the people who were not beaten down by
weariness and pain, to share his love and comfort with those who were.
What I like about this specific
council that we hear from in Isaiah is that they seem to interact with God and
one another. One member of the council
said, “Cry out!” And then another said, “What shall I cry? All people are like grass, their constancy is
like the flower of the field…” This voice sounded frustrated. I mean, what’s the point of crying out when
you are crying to grass, grass that withers so easily? The people of Judah screwed
up again and again. They committed their love and loyalty to God again and
again just to abandon him. Because of
that, this speaker’s frustration is understandable. The divine council has no
reason to trust the people of Judah. Then
the voice that began responded, “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the
word of our God will stand forever.” It
would seem that this member of the council had little confidence in people, but
a great deal of confidence in God. This
voice was saying, it’s ok that people are weak.
It is God who sustains us, even in our weakness.
Then this text shifts again because
someone else is talking. “Get you up to
a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings, lift up your voice with
strength…lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your
God!’” It would appear that this member of the council is done talking amongst
themselves. It is time to talk to all of the cities, all of the people. It is time to proclaim the good news. And the good news is not that God will save
them or even comfort them, but that God is here, ready to lead. He will not only lead them, but he will feed
them and even carry them if he has to.
Because that is what the good shepherd does. The shepherd carries us in our weakness, in
our indecision and fear.
I have a little more confidence in
people than this divine council in Isaiah did.
I believe that we can conquer fear.
But only if we address it. Only
if we stand up to it and cry out-- even when it seems like those cries are not
heard or just ignored. Much like the
divine council, we must speak to one another so that we can encourage one
another. Because in the midst of all
that is going on in our world and our nation, it is tempting to give up the quest
for justice, mercy and love. It is
tempting to grow a little numb to violence and hatred. But we cannot.
Jesus was born as a baby so that he
could experience what we experience, so he would be vulnerable to pain both
physical and emotional. He did that to
remind us that God’s love is stronger than the fiercest hatred. Jesus knew what it was to live in a violent
world as a member of a persecuted people. He knew what it was to die a violent
death. We know that he conquered all of
this when he rose from the dead.
It’s true that sometimes I can feel
a little hopeless about what is going on in our world. Yet, I feel more hopeful now than when I
started this sermon. I also believe that
God is stronger than my hope or lack of hope and that together as the body of
Christ, we become stronger. We become
louder. Isaiah called people to go to
the mountain top and cry out. I wonder if that is why so many of our churches
are so tall, so that we can be that mountain top in the world. Here at St. John’s we have a mountain top
(ours is even newly renovated). More
importantly, we have the voices. Now all
we have to do is to cry out.
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