Sermons for the Month
DATE: December 13, 1998
SERVICE: Advent III
TEXT: Matthew 11:2-11
Sermons for the Month
Pushing the Button
DATE: December 13, 1998
SERVICE: Advent III
TEXT: Matthew 11:2-11"To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN In the spring of 1992, 4th grade students in Portland, Maine carried out a novel experiment. Their teacher, Pamela Trieu, was teaching the kids about the ocean, specifically about the Gulf Stream that flows along the East Coast and then turns toward Europe. According to Reuters, she had the kids put messages with their addresses in empty wine bottles, and then a fisherman took the 21 bottles away from shore and threw them into the ocean. They hoped that some of their bottles might drift to England. Three months later, two bottles washed up in Canada. The class heard nothing else and assumed that the rest of the bottles were lost at sea. Two years passed. Then one of the students, Geoff Hight, received a surprise letter from a girl in Pornichet, France. She found one of their bottles while walking with her father on the beach. Patience is the focus of our reading from James. He notes that our efforts at sharing Jesus with the unchurched are often like tossing a bottle with a message into the ocean. It requires patience and a waiting on God's time not our time for a response. Our author offers us his own examples of patience for those waiting on the Lord: "7 …The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. 10 [Or]… take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11 Indeed we call blessed those who showed [such] endurance. [And finally] You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful." James observes first how a farmer must wait for the crops to grow. Next, he recalls how the prophets waited often for most of their lifetimes before the justice they were seeking came to pass. And finally, James notes how Job had to wait for what seemed an eternity before God spoke a word of grace in face of his losing everything--family, home, honor, health. I have not always been a patient person that I am. (All right! I see some of you smiling!) There was a day I thought an elevator would come more quickly if I pushed the button harder several times. My idea of purgatory is to get stuck behind a tractor on a two-lane road in the country. And a checkout line at Christmas time drives me up the wall. Former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and Councilman Mike Tarle, both recently acquitted of bribery charges, I am sure can tell you something of patience. But sometimes to tell a person or group of people to be patient is to prolong injustice. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. prepared to demonstrate against racial injustice in Birmingham, Alabama, eight local ministers urged him to wait, to be patient. In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Dr. King answered them by saying, "Justice delayed is justice denied." Dr King was right, but justice does not always arrive the moment we call for it, those responding to our invitation to attend our services, to join the kingdom of God do not come, probably will not come on our timetable. Advent is a reminder that we sometimes, often, have to wait. We have to wait NOT because God is reluctant to give justice, to give salvation, but rather that we are not always ready to receive it or pass it along. Like Lent, Advent is a season of patience and preparation. Unfortunately, the business of buying and selling Christmas can drive out the sense of Advent as a season of preparation. The malls start to play Christmas carols as soon as Halloween is over. And sending catalogs seem to be a way of life for many companies. That's why when the Worship and Arts Committee, the Faith Explorers asked if we could hold the Christmas pageant and church decorating one week later, you didn't find me balking. It is a common smile around here that ol' Pastor Stan wants to keep at bay Christmas Carols as long as possible in favor of Advent hymns these four weeks before Christmas. Advent is a time when we are asked to prepare our not only our homes, but also our hearts and minds for the true reason for the season (to use a now hackneyed but true cliché). For if we do not prepare ourselves with the true meaning of Christmas, then we are likely to go to sleep Christmas night with only the stuff under the tree to give our lives meaning for the next year. Imagine how different the world might be if it took the message of Advent seriously. What if this month before Christmas everyone devoted themselves to the message of James to "strengthen our hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near."? What if instead of rushing from shop to shop in search of the perfect gift, we all spent at least one day working in a kitchen preparing soup for hospice or a night in a homeless shelter? Or what if we just took one day off to pray and reflect and ask God to show us what we could do in our lives to bring the kingdom of God into the world? Advent is a particular time when we are asked by the church to strengthen our hearts, because we are not yet ready for the kingdom to come. Our hearts are stony ground that must continually be tilled, planted, watered, cultivated until we are capable of bringing forth righteousness. Before we come to the manger, we need to spend time listening to the prophets and hear their message of justice, righteousness and preparation as servants of God. Christmas marks the time that God chose to be vulnerable to human willfulness. Christmas marks the time that God came to us in the most helpless of forms--a human infant. Our common human response today isn't too far different than was the response even his disciples made 2000 years ago. Some were apathetic; some feigned ignorance; some were afraid to even listen; some were hostile; and some killed him. Yet God still waits for us to embrace him with love and share that embrace with others. On December 6, 1865, just months after the Civil War ended, the 13trh amendment outlawing slavery was ratified and became of the law of the land. But that didn't mean every state approved the ratification of the amendment. Mississippi's state legislature, for example, was dominated by whites bitter over the defeat of the Confederacy, and they rejected the measure. 130 years passed before Mississippi took action. By 1995 Mississippi was the only state in the Union that had not approved the ratification of the 13th amendment. Finally, on Thursday, February 16, 1995, the Mississippi Senate voted unanimously to outlaw slavery by approving the ratification of the 13th amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hillman Frazier, a member of the Mississippi's Legislature's Black Caucus, said, "I think it's very important for us to show the world that we have finally put the past behind us." Just as there was a delay in some states ratifying an end to slavery in the United States, so there is often a delay accepting the presence God's kingdom coming ever new here and now. Advent is a reminder we must never stop trying, never stop hoping, never stop preparing for the in-breaking of God's kingdom either into our own hearts or in our community. God's kingdom will one day hold sway over the entire world. When that day comes, my prayer is we will be prepared for its glory.
AMEN