11-27-22 Sermon & Scripture

I haven’t yet seen the latest Steven Spielberg movie, The Fabelmans, so I don’t know if it’s good. I bet it is. Usually, Spielberg movies are generally considered pretty decent quality. But I was struck by one of the accolades from Rolling Stone magazine that showed up in the trailer – “This is the movie we’ve been waiting 45 years for him to make.” Really?

What happened 45 years ago? Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Rolling Stone is like, “Okay, what else you got?” Okay, Indiana Jones. “Meh.” E.T. Jurassic Park. Schindler’s List. Saving Private Ryan. Lincoln. Come on, give us something good, huh? Apparently, The Fabelmans, finally – this is what we’ve been waiting for. You did it! We knew you had it in you, Steve! We believed in you, buddy! 

Advent is a season of waiting and expectation, waiting for Jesus to finally show up. And yet, Jesus has already arrived. And Jesus is constantly showing up all the time, if we have the heart to perceive it. That’s what Advent is about.

Advent means coming, and there are three aspects to that. We get ready for Christmas and the birth of Christ, and the prophets also point to the Savior to be born. We look to the return of Christ when he will reappear to renew creation. And Jesus has promised to be with us – in the scriptures, in the sacraments, in the saints, in strangers, in our songs, in our silence, in our suffering, in the Spirit. In everyday moments. And the Advent command is to be watchful and to be working at our daily lives and relationships, preparing hearts, communities, and our world to receive the coming Christ. Be watchful! Stay awake! Focus! Be purposeful! Eliminate distractions! This time of year, eliminate distractions? Yes, especially this time of year.

And to look forward to the future, we will go the beginning, as we read about the coming kingdom of God promised in the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. And as we begin our year of the Gospel of Matthew, we begin with words from Jesus at the end of his life, pointing towards the end of the age. We end at the beginning. We begin at the end. And Paul reminds us in Romans how to live now, in the present, as if the kingdom has already arrived, and how to find it and appropriate it by faith.

We look forward to Christ coming, and his rule and reign, and it wouldn’t be inappropriate to be anxious about it. That’s fine. We should be. What we shouldn’t be is, “meh.” This is what life is all about. We will be judged by whether or not we lived lives in accordance with God’s loving purposes. Or were we distracted? Or neglectful? Or downright rebellious? Watch out.

But we should be excited as well because our deepest prayers will be answered, and our deepest fears will be addressed. And today, it’s our fear of conflict. Everyone is afraid of conflict, even little conflicts, and we probably don’t even know why. Why are we afraid to address something someone does that we don’t like? Why are we afraid to receive criticism from someone else? We’re so insecure.

And we literally are insecure, in many ways. Conflict can easily lead to a loss of something that is important to us. Conflict can lead to losing our jobs. Losing our job because of conflict with others might make it hard to get a new job. Conflict can lead to the end of our marriages or friendships or relationships. It could strain relations with our kids or our parents or siblings. It can just rob us of a sense of peace. And all that makes us question whether or not we really are the people we think we are, because someone sure disagrees. And that is just the small everyday stuff.

We also know that conflict can lead to violence – the loss of life, the loss of physical security, the loss of political freedoms. It can lead to wars, insurrections, gang violence, domestic violence, incarceration, being a refugee or a fugitive, family separation. We live in in a fairly stable place and time in human history, but all of that history of this world, red in tooth and claw, all of what our ancestors went through as well as we ourselves, that is hard-wired into our instinct, residing in our DNA, our amygdala, and whatnot. So all that is in there when very little things automatically trigger a fight-or-flight response. Got conflict? You could die!

And we do live in a world of constant threat. Some of us are more aware of that than others, and for some the threats are more potent. A fear of conflict can cause us to shrink and try to go along with everything, or it can make us puff up and make everything go along with us. Assyria (or as historians refer to it, the Neo-Assyrian empire) was a nation that sought to achieve peace through superior firepower. They would conquer the nations around them, and if everyone does what we say or else perish, then we don’t need to fear conflict. In the beginning of Isaiah, Judah and Jerusalem were scared out of their minds, because Assyria was right at the doorstep and threatening to swallow Judah up. 

Jesus has his own backdrop – Rome, and a swelling movement among Jews that will grow into a violent resistance. He warns of a time coming when working class people, just living ordinary life, are going to experience terror and disruption. One will be taken, one left behind. We hear that and we think “the rapture” – no. Don’t get me started. For anyone living under foreign military occupation, it doesn’t need explaining. Sometimes they just come and randomly take people – take this one, leave this one. The one who is taken may not be heard from again. Who knows? You want to be one of the ones left behind, but you also don’t want to experience any of it! 

A lot of fear going on, but God comes to give us courage in a time of fear.

In comes a prophet named Isaiah, called by God to imagine a new world for people, to promise a new world for people when it is hard to imagine it, at just the right time when people need to hear it. 

First thing he says is that there is coming a day when Zion, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, is going to be the highest mountain in the world. 2700 years later, it’s still just a hill. Not the tallest mountain in the world. Maybe one day, or maybe we are being too literal. Isaiah further describes his meaning, that all the nations of the world will stream to it. “Stream,” like water, and we know water doesn’t flow uphill. But if we are going to have peace on earth, our natural response to conflict needs to be overcome, maybe even miraculously.

The peoples of the earth are going to say to themselves, “We need to go learn the ways and instructions of the God of Jacob. He is going to teach us the right way of life.” And with all these conflicts we have, God is going to sort out conflicts between the nations. The nations of the world are going to take all their weapons of destruction and turn them into tools of production and meeting people’s needs, feeding them. No more fighting, no more violence. They won’t learn war anymore. Because fight or flight is natural, but warfare is something we have to learn. We have to learn how to win these conflicts, how to kill and maim and terrorize effectively. Or how to prevent it from happening to us. These skills will be unnecessary. 

Is that pie in the sky? Let’s talk about the three Advents – past, future, and present. 

Advent past – Christ was born. He lived a life in keeping with the law of the God of Jacob. He expounded on that law in his teaching, on a mountain. He made disciples to put his way of life into practice. This way of life was one of radical peacemaking, nonviolence, love of enemies, humility, reconciling in conflicts, dealing with the anger and hatred in your heart and in your words before it leads to further escalation. And he went to the hill in Jerusalem, and he died, laying his life down, paving the way for people between humans and God and humans with one another. And he rose again, and a church came up which seeks to put his teachings into practice, and to see the world shaped by Jesus, and it has been. 

I actually believe that Jesus literally saved the world as well as spiritually. I don’t have evidence for such an outrageous claim, but I think that had Jesus not come when he did and done what he did, the human race would have ceased to exist by now. We would have destroyed ourselves. Say what you want about Christianity, Christians can be awful people, especially when we have power, but Christians have also been instrumental in international peace, safeguarding and expanding human rights, social justice, individual liberties, civil rights, problem solving, bringing down totalitarian regimes without violence, upholding the dignity of the poor, women, children, religious minorities, the disabled, the mentally ill, prisoners, and those with differing sexual orientations or gender expressions. This is true, even if the dominant narrative highlights examples to the contrary, which are often also, tragically true. I know what kind of Christian I would like to be. And Jesus of Nazareth has also influenced people who are not Christians, most notably Mahatma Gandhi.

Advent future. We Christians hold on to this absurd idea that Jesus actually is coming back. Heaven and earth will be renewed. The dead will rise again. There will be a final judgment. There will be no more sickness or sorrow or death. There will be no more hunger or war. The nations of the earth will be healed from the leaves of the tree of life. Swords will be beaten into plowshares. I’m sticking to that belief, but I also live in between Advent past and Advent future. Advent everyday now.

It is now that Christ is still bringing about the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. It is now that Jesus has promised to be with us until the end of the age. And Jesus shows up all the time, but it is faith that sees Jesus – in the bread and wine, as we hear the Word of God, in the faces of other people, in creation, in the Spirit. Keep awake therefore. You don’t know when he is coming back at the end. You don’t know at what moment in your day you will encounter him. You may encounter him in judgment. You may encounter him in warning, You may encounter him in comfort. However you encounter him, it will always be because he loves you. But we do have to prepare our hearts and be looking for his appearing.

You can try to make your tree as bright as you can by putting on more lights and more lights. You won’t see how it really shines until you turn off the other lights, so that the tree is the only thing shining. This Advent, prepare for Christ’s coming by walking in his way of peace. Learn from Christ a life of peace and peacemaking. Make things right with other people. Forgive them. Ask for forgiveness from them. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Try to understand. Overcome the natural responses of your amygdala, and stream uphill to learn the practices of peace.

House of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.