[Propertalk] 2 Advent a

Sat Dec 4 00:13:14 EST 2010

Here's what I have for Sunday ....

May you have fun with John 8 - )

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  	       	 
THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
ISAIAH 11:1-10	                          		    	    	                  					 
5th DECEMBER, 2010
ROMANS 15:4-13				                            				   PSALM 72:1-7, 18-19
MATTHEW 3:1-12			  	

I’d like to begin with the same quote with which I opened my homily on 
Wednesday night.

	Joan Chittister framed what we’re about today when she wrote, “Hope 
rides on the decision either to believe that God stands on this dark 
road waiting to walk with us toward new light again or to despair of the 
fact that God who is faithful is eternally faithful and will sustain us 
in our darkness one more time.” 1

In other words, we have a choice about how we want to live our lives – 
with hope, believing that God cares; or without hope, believing that God 
doesn’t care. We can think negatively – you know: “I’ll never get to the 
store early enough to get one of those 55-inch LED HDTVs”; “No one will 
ask me to dinner on Thanksgiving, so I’d better buy whatever I want to 
eat for myself.”; “This economic situation is going to suck everyone 
down.” In other words, nothing good will ever happen to me. Hope is for 
suckers. As that billboard at the entrance to the New Jersey tunnel 
says, words written on a background showing three camel riders moving 
towards a woman, a man and a child, on whom a star is shining, words are 
printed - “You KNOW it’s a Myth. This Season, Celebrate REASON.” 2

Or we can think positively: “I know much of life seems threatening, like 
an endless dark tunnel. I may not get that 55-inch HDTV, but does that 
REALLY matter? I know that there will always be someone to walk with me, 
even if I can’t see or hear that person right now, or know who or she 
is.” There’s an anonymous saying, “I believe in the sun even if it isn't 
shining. I believe in love even when I am alone. I believe in God even 
when He is silent.” In other words, hope is not foolish. Hope is what 
feeds and nourishes rationality and gives it the freedom to ask 
questions.

   But Hope doesn’t give us an easy ride through life. Choices can be 
difficult and painful. Darkness comes pretty early these afternoons, 
even if there are less than three weeks till the daylight seconds start 
to increase. Hope simply tells us that it’s ALWAYS worthwhile asking 
questions, and challenging assumptions, AND preparing for something 
exciting to come. And THAT’S where our Gospel invites us to live for a 
while.

Theologian Martin Marty tells the story of someone who “had gone to many 
churches and heard (each) preacher say, ‘Don’t try to impress God with 
your works’ or ‘Don’t attempt to please God with your merits’ or ‘Don’t 
try to keep the rules and regulations and thus win your way.’ (The 
visitor) looked around at nearly slumbering collections of utterly 
casual Christians and wondered, ‘Who's trying?’”

  	That story was labelled, appropriately, “Recognizing our Need to 
Repent”. 3

	The great news about the hope we have as followers of God’s Son, Jesus, 
is that it invites to live a life filled with examinations. An odd 
thought, perhaps, especially at this time of the school and university 
year, when even the word “examinations” can fill us with chill. But, a 
few sadists aside, those setting the exams aren’t trying to catch any 
students out. Their goal is to invite the student of life to delve deep 
into memory and experience and to bring back up what’s already within 
us. The only originality of thought for which those weary teachers long 
is in finding someone discover how to turn a thought around to impact an 
undreamt-of concept. The grader of exams lives to be lifted out of 
repetitive formalisms and to be taken into rooms where familiar thoughts 
can open completely new doors in the imagination. And GOD is no 
different. God longs to find us listening, listening to sounds, 
listening to silence, and trying to incorporate what we discover about 
God and life in such a way that our own lives will be turned around.

	THAT’S the message the message of Advent – that there’s hope BECAUSE 
we’re brought to the threshold of change once again. John isn’t out to 
beat people up. His costumier may be a little off-beat; his chef may not 
be cordon bleu; his accent and vocabulary may not be too Episcopalian. 
But he’s a decent guy. His only problem is that he doesn’t have time to 
mess around. He calls a spade a spade, and then tells us we need to use 
it this afternoon. Forget the football game; never mind the nap; don’t 
bother with whatever you may have thought was important. Instead gather 
up the family. If your relatives or neighbours come over, don’t use them 
for an excuse to cop-out – take them with you on the next leg of your 
journey to discover how God comes among us and what God wants us to do 
about it. They probably need to discover John’s leadings as much as you 
and I do. In fact, NOT taking them, NOT offering those whom we count as 
close, and use for an excuse, NOT offering them the chance to choose is 
contradicting God’s challenge for us this morning.

	It’s funny the world in which we live. We’re drawn into instanticity. 
An immediate replay of a set from yesterday’s football game; a repeat of 
a comment made on the news; and so on. We seek answers right away. But 
then, when someone comes across our mind – someone even remotely like 
John – we, like the local powerful bigwigs in the Baptist’s time, we 
tend to put off any thought of listening to words about change, about 
self-examination. We can get to that some other day. We’re too busy this 
afternoon.

	Not so, warn the Advent readings. We oughtn’t not to be too busy. The 
Jesse Tree right over by the pulpit-lectern has eight different symbols 
on it already. The non-descript branches are starting to pick up a 
flavour of who Jesus’ ancestors were and what they were about. If you’re 
not much of a gardener, as I’m not, you may be forgiven for not knowing 
much beyond the fact that it’s a deciduous tree. But beneath that burlap 
lies a hefty root-ball already
filling out with roots, just waiting to draw nourishment from the ground 
outside in a month or so.

	Not only is that tree non-threatening, however, it actually draws us to 
itself in order to check out just whose birth we’re waiting to celebrate 
in less than three weeks. We’re invited to look at God’s creation, and 
things that humans have done right and things that we’ve done wrong. 
We’re invited to think about what people did when the situation in their 
lives was unbearably difficult. How did they survive? Amazingly, we find 
that God became recognisably present. It may have been a person who rose 
out of the community to draw them together and gave them a sense of 
identity as people of God. It may have been some force outside of the 
community whose understanding or treatment catalysed citizens and helped 
them to remember what their common spiritual and social history was.

	So even this tree joins in with the Scripture passages to plead with us 
to engage in self-examination and to think about what needs cleaning and 
healing within our lives and relationships, and what we have already 
that actually builds us up.

	A programme on British radio last week talked about violence in society 
and how it affects us. The interesting comment that intrigued me was 
that in the opinion of the presenter – who was Britain's most senior 
police officer, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police – the people of 
the world’s cities have the power to change what goes on within their 
cities. He said that, compared with ten or twenty years ago, the 
citizenry of New York has reclaimed the city from violence. 4

	He didn’t mean that violence had disappeared. But I think he WAS saying 
that people are becoming more involved. They’re looking at what’s going 
on around them, and not tolerating anti-social behaviour. He refers to 
this as an act of “Social Confidence”.

	I think what John – and all the Advent cast of characters – are calling 
us to do is to live out acts of “Religious Confidence” – to inculcate 
hope, to inspire pride in ourselves as well-loved children of God, to 
remind ourselves that by virtue of God sending John and his successors 
into our communities to this day, we are valued – AND have a valuable 
role to play in encouraging others to hold on to the hope which God 
holds out to us.

	And that is probably one of the greatest re-formations which needs to 
go on in our lives, as individuals and as communities.

	Another radio programme I heard talked about the “nature of being lost 
with Reverend Peter Owen Jones .... described by the Times as ‘the 
bravest vicar in Britain’. Peter has journeyed deep into the wilderness 
in the footsteps of St Anthony. In a hermit's cell in the heart of the 
Egyptian Sinai Desert, he lived alone. The experience, he says, withered 
his illusions and allowed him to see things as they really are.” 5

	Not for everyone, perhaps. But we can, we MUST take time for ourselves 
and our God to come face to face, to listen to one another, to sort 
things out, to set both our Social and Religious Confidence. That’s the 
call of Advent.

	We can, of course, choose to ignore John; to give up on imagination; to 
go with that New Jersey billboard and discard hope as outmoded for the 
twenty-first century. We can, if we wish, choose to journey as far away 
from here as possible, giving up on the thought that perhaps this planet 
CAN be saved. We can disbelieve that our economy WILL be turned around; 
that people MAY learn to trust and respect one another.

	We can give up on one another, and ourselves, and sink into despair 
that it’s neither desirable nor possible to turn our lives towards the 
light that’s coming. If that’s how we think, then we might want to pay 
attention to Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a Wazoo professor, and Paul Davies, a 
physicist at Arizona State University, who “believe a Mars base would 
offer humanity a ‘lifeboat’ if Earth became uninhabitable. … They argue 
that humans must begin colonizing another planet as a hedge against a 
catastrophe on Earth. They believe the one way trips could start in two 
decades.” 6

	Now I could be cynical and say that shipping out a few people whom I 
shan’t name out loud right now might not be an altogether bad thing. But 
then that’s not the route that John wants me to take – nor you.

	John holds out hope. We have to choose whether to accept it. And what 
to do with it.

NOTES:
1 	Joan Chittister	via “The Text This Week: World AIDS Day 2010” 
http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20101129JJ.shtml
http://www.textweek.com/festivals/AIDS_day.htm
2 
http://www.charter.net/video/index.php?vendid=18&vendkey=cnn_us%2F2010%2F11%2F29%2 
Fvo.nj.billboard.cnn
3	Via Joe Parrish	joeparrish at compuserve.com
4	“Violence – A New Perspective”. “Night Waves”, Thursday 25th November, 
2010. Lord Blair of Boughton, as Sir Ian Blair, was Britain's most 
senior police officer, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 
February 2005 until the end of 2008. BBC Radio 3. 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vyylg
5	“I Don’t Believe in Being Lost” with Anita Rani BBC Radio 4. 28th 
November, 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qn7f
6	“Scientists propose one-way trips to Mars” By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS 
Associated Press The Associated Press Monday, November 15, 2010 3:11 AM 
EST 
http://www.charter.net/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CD9JGEM602%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=969 
Also in Albany Democrat Herald – Monday 15th November, 2010

Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)
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