Serm-12-9-07 The Return to Our Spiritual Roots

December 9, 2007 The Second Sunday of Advent Sermon: The Return to our Spiritual Roots Texts: Isaiah 11: 1-10, Matthew 3: 1-12 This morning as you got up and faced the day, obviously, you decided to be here in worship this morning. But, what were your thoughts and concerns for yourself, for your family, for your friends, your neighbors or for your church? If you try to explain your thoughts or experiences to me or someone else, they'll try to understand but never in the way that you know your own reality. Your "real" world and how you see things is uniquely your own. Several years ago, a delightful movie came out that was entitled "The gods must be crazy." Do you remember it? The story is about a village man living with others like him somewhere in an isolated, remote area just living life and minding his own business. Then, one day a bottle drops from the sky. What to do? He leaves his village on a mission. He has to go to what he knows as the edge of the world so he can return this "thing" (what we recognize as a coke bottle) to the crazy gods who dropped it. As he travels to what he thinks is the edge of the world where the gods reside, he meets some interesting but strange people along the way. He tries with sincerity and frustration to explain to them what he needs to do. But, of course, they don't understand the urgency of returning this bottle to the crazy gods who dropped it. The point is that we all have our own definitions of reality. We usually assume our view is "reality," without remembering that our reality is based upon the way our ethnic, economic, political, or "tribal" background has rendered our peculiar way of seeing reality. In other words, we all think about the world from "our" point of view. If you lived when Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, your view of the world was deeply affected and your life was forever changed by this event. The view of the world for all of us since September 11 has been changed but particularly think about people who lived and witnessed the tragedies in New York City or Washington or rural Pennsylvania on September 11. When I visited the Gulf Shore of Mississippi in 2005 after Katrina, my understanding of the enormity of the recovery work was heightened. My great sadness was also increased as I viewed places I had played and visited as a child no longer recognizable. The reality of the devastation hit me hard because I knew this place well before the destruction. Some of you here this morning are fire fighters, you have served in the military and been in active duty, you have fought in terrible wars or you have been called on for emergencies in some capacity. You may know tragedy of some kind first hand. You know what it is like to have your world turned upside down, to see reality from a different side. Our cognition, our thinking and our behavior are determined by where we have been and what we see or expect to see. If you have returned from a tragedy, any war, you have a reality that others do not have and an understanding of suffering that many of us will never know first hand. You see the world differently and can help others be aware of the pain of suffering. This morning we meet the prophet of Advent, Isaiah, who calls people to return to a way to see the world as God would want us to see it. This prophecy of Isaiah, was composed at a time in which the dynasty of King David, the son of Jesse, has been reduced to a mere stump. The people of Israel are cowering in fear of the Assyrians, who are as cruel to God's people as the Egyptians had been. In the middle of the frightening and violent time, God promises to launch a new political initiative. Isaiah ecstatically speaks of a time when a shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse, as he prophesies a new beginning for Israel. Out of an old, dead stump, new life sprouts. Metaphor is piled on top of metaphor as the prophet struggles to bring to speech the newness that breaks forth. "The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them." (NRSV, vs6) We hear Isaiah's vivid description of God's new world and we say, flatly, it is not real. Everyone knows that in the real world, a lamb in a wolf's lair is lunch. Reason and reality assure us that a little child cannot lead a wolf or a lion by a leash without being a dead child. So, we listen and we want to hear these words but we want to be reasonable. We want to live in the real world and face facts. We listen but what reality do we hear? Are we like the village man who thought "the gods must be crazy." Before we dismiss as unrealistic and irrational Isaiah's peaceable kingdom of pacified wolves and lions and puerile leaders, consider that the prophet may be inviting you into a counter-rationality, another reality. Isaiah, the poet, teaches us to define people in terms of what they desire, that for which they long. Isaiah invites us to return (John the Baptist used the word "repent") to God's new world. That's right. Try to return to God's ideal, a world that is ruled, not by savvy politicians or tough generals, but by a little child. Imagine a world where all is at peace, where even our old enemy, the serpent, is soothed by the child. Envision a world where the longing is to sit down and hear, touch and see through the eyes of the innocent, the poor and the injured. What is life like for the Palestinian Arab family who has lost a son in a street battle? What is it like for a West Bank Jewish Settler in fear for his family's safety, an Afghan family living in a cold tent on the Pakistan border, a migrant worker in Florida, or a single mother on in Sheboygan with little money and lots of bills? What is it like to live daily with a debilitating illness or see a loved one suffer with an irreversible illness? What is it like to have a random shooting in a local mall destroy those most precious to you and the hope of a "normal" life. God's reality is a call to a wide imagination and an expansive intellect. It takes a large imagination for us to imagine a world as a place where God reigns. Imagine yourself as a peacemaker. What does that mean for you? God's reality calls us to return to notions of what can and cannot be in God's realm. It attempts to help us envision a world where God reigns. It speaks of a reality beyond our present realities, that time when God gets God's way with the world. It challenges us to see a discrepancy between God's ideal and our social reality. The poetry of Isaiah and the preaching of John the Baptist is a call to return to God's way with the world. It's that old call to repentance that John the Baptist gave so long ago. It is our call to return to our spiritual roots. It is a reality call to look for the new regime that comes from a bud, a sprout, a young leaf. Not from a warrior king or a conquering army. We know this shoot to be Jesus the Christ, the one born as a vulnerable baby in a manger of Bethlehem, the city of David. He doesn't come to us at Bethlehem as a Messiah with unlimited military might, even though legions of angels are at his disposal. Rather than scorching the earth with firepower, these angels are instead singing on Christmas night, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will toward all." The initial creation of the kingdom of God introduces the Prince of Peace, one who has "the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord." (vs 2) We are beckoned through our Advent texts to return to a reality that is of God's making. It is a world of a new heaven and a new earth. It is a world in which there is peace in a world at war, a war in which animals that normally devour one another love one another. Isaiah says this vision is "a signal to the people." (vs 10). Do we practice love instead of punishment? Do we speak the truth in love, especially to those who are hurting themselves and others? Do we show concern for the poor and oppressed of the earth by conservation of the earth's resources and less consumption of its riches? According to Gandhi, there are two kinds of power: One is obtained by threats of punishment. The other arises from acts of love. Which do you think is God's signal? Speaking of love and positive signals, when the Quakers broke the food blockade on Germany and Austria after World War I they were not motivated by emotional love toward individual Germans, but by a higher sense of what makes politics work. Thirty years later, Quaker relief groups, and they only, were allowed to rescue Jews inside Germany, even at the height of war. Why? Because they did not use threats of punishment but what Gandhi referred to as "acts of love." The impression they made on the mindset of the people gave them a power that helped save lives. Martin Luther admitted, "It is a ridiculous thing, that the one true God, the high Majesty, should be made human... Reason opposes this with all its might. Hear those wise thoughts with which our reason soars up towards heaven to see God the Majesty and to probe how God reigns there on high, are stripped from us. The goal is fixed elsewhere, so that I should run from all the corners of the world to Bethlehem, to that stable and that manger, where the babe lies....Yes, that subdues reason...there it comes down before my eyes, so that I can see the babe there in his Mother's lap....Where are the wise? Who could ever have conceived this or thought it out? Reason must bow and must confess her ignorance in that she wants to climb to heaven to fathom the Divine, while she cannot see what lies before her eyes in the manger." We, too, think that what we need are strong armies, lots of things for Christmas, and a back to normal 2007 economy. The only reality God offers, the only reason is a baby, a lamb, to help us think things through again and return us home. May we celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace and the call of Isaiah and Jesus to a peaceable kingdom. In this Advent season of preparation and the days beyond, may we return to graft our lives to the shoot that has emerged from the stump of Jesse and pray for God's peace to fill us and transform our world. Let us return to our spiritual roots to be God's people of peace, justice and vision. In this vision is our comfort in the return is our redemption. Amen.