Something New Is Happening Here!
Advent 1b, Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24 – 37 (November 27, 2011)
Happy New Year! Here we are at a brand New Year, at least in the Church. But so much in the reality of our world seems to be , THE SAME OLD, SAME OLD. Topping the list from time immemorial is suffering, pain, injustice. Nine days ago I sat with my mother in an Emergency Room. Her one arm was broken. Both her hands were swelling. Such swelling dumbfounded her physicians. All the while they attempted to ease her pain. They literally pumped demerol, morphine and significant amounts of anti –inflammatory drugs into her system. But her pain not only persisted, it raged. She turned at me to speak. "Son, pray". She wanted, she yearned for an easing of her pain, perhaps even the end of her pain. Couldn't God just come down and do something RIGHT NOW?
It's the same sentiment, brutally honest, very real, that the people of Israel recently returned from Exile, exhibit in today's first lesson. Perhaps they had thought that once they arrived home, back to Jerusalem, that "things" would somehow fall into place. Like the "good old days" – which may have been truly good only in memory, or retrospect. But once they did arrive things didn't proceed quite the way they had hoped. Now with frustration, nearing despair, they recall the old stories, the recited remembrance of their forefathers and foremothers. Hadn't God delivered their ancestors from slavery, given all of them food and drink in the desert? So they cry out now, "Tear open the heavens and come down God." Come, RIGHT NOW God!
I must confess – even if it pushes religion or more importantly faith closer to magic – I am with those people sometimes and my mother too. Please God, come, show yourself in some unmistakeable way! End the Aids epidemic – where people old and young are ravished, where thousands of children through no fault of their own are left orphaned, to fend for themselves in a world where almost all of the "cards" are stacked against them. Come God into this word, give us a cure for cancer, or Lou Gehrig's disease or MS. Come God into this world and show the people who don't believe in you, just how wrong they are! Do something fantastic that will make Justin Bieber, Tom Cruise, Sidney Crosby or Travis Lulay or any other famous or hero like figure, appear to be the very mortals that they are. Come on God, tear open the heavens and come down, or up – but come here!
But very often God doesn't do anything like that. Some of us, maybe all of us at one point or another, lose hope, lose faith, give into despair or seek to escape into denial. Was Scrooge throughout most of his life right, "Bah, Humbug?
It is important for us to note that even the writer of Isaiah 64 demands God to come right now. And even though that same write attempts to blame God for his or her own people's sin, near the end of our passage, this same writer works to remind God of who God is and his or her people as to who they are. This is very important! Did you hear the writer's assertion? "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, and you are our potter, we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity, sin forever. Now consider, we are all your people."
What/whom do we consider this Advent 1, 2011? Yes, it's only 28 days until Christmas. Yes, all the demands on our time are ramping up? But in all of this, do we consider, are we fully aware that God is our Father/our Mother? Do we realize that we are both literally and figuratively clay? It's only been 17 days since my cousin's husband, Bernie, one whom I knew and loved for 43 years, went out to walk his beloved dog and collapsed, dying on the ground of a massive heart attack. I must not forget. Clay – we all are clay.
But that's not all we are! No sirree bob. We are also God's children – all of us. God is to be not just the potter, but our potter, shaping and moulding us, with love and skill, whatever may be happening. Do we see that? Are we open to such shaping – especially in those moments when we just want God to come in some way so that our struggles, our pain, our uncertainty, our insecurity can be over?
In this new year we are allowed to eavesdrop on Mark's Gospel. Mark yields interesting observations, some profound and powerful realities for those with ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts to be set on fire. As Jesus is baptized (in mark's Gospel), just as He is coming up out of the water, what does he see? Jesus sees the heavens torn (yes, that's the word, literally translated as torn) and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove upon him. Then Jesus hears a voice from heaven saying of him and to him, "You are my Son, the beloved. With you I am well pleased." You see in Jesus God tears the heavens open – maybe not in the ways we would have – but in God's own unique way. Through those torn heavens God does come among us!
Fast forward through Mark's entire Gospel to see more. Behold Jesus hanging on the cross. He is dying, suffering horribly. We want to turn our eyes, our minds, our ears, our noses off. It's so horrible, too ugly, not nice, certainly not Christmasy. At the cross there aren't any white Christmases or bells a-ringing or snow glistening. But don't do that. Don't turn away from Jesus on the cross. Seek to watch Him. As he gives a loud cry and breathes his last something amazing happens. The curtain of the temple is torn in two, from top to bottom. That curtain was symbolic of so many things. There was a system where things were offered in order to bring about reconciliation between God and people. On the cross God offers his Son in a particular way – that shows us new ways of reconciliation. Jesus' suffering an death on our behalf opens us up to being reconciled and reconciling. In addition that temple curtain being torn in two also reveals that the gulf between we people – often rebellious, hurtful, vengeful, selfish, denying people and God is very real and hugely immense. And yet as Jesus dies, Jesus bridges the gulf between humanity and God. Father forgive them, Jesus cries. In Jesus and his cross, God draws near to us – to bring about new life even in the face of all suffering and death.
To be sure, it's not the way we would have done it: in destroying our enemies or dancing in the end zone, or singing "nah – nah, nah, nah, – nah, nah, nah, nah. But to cross, Jesus vulnerable on that cross is God's way: to come to us – to be with us and for us, to destroy hatred and death.
Do we see this God, in the bedsides of our lives, in our pain, suffering and brokenness? Do we even now, 28 days before Christmas 2011, hear God's call to reflect the light of Christ, to depend on Him at all times, but especially when we just have to cry out, "God do something"?
Can't we see? God is doing something! The heavens are being torn in God's way in Jesus. Are we part of it?
Come Lord Jesus Come! Even to and through us. Amen.