Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 11/30/14
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| Image courtesy of hermanoleon,com |
This morning I would like to start by sharing
one of Aesop’s more popular fables, perhaps you have even heard it before; It
is the fable of the Golden Goose. The story starts with a farmer one day who
goes out to his barn and discovers that his goose had laid a golden egg. The
farmer was overjoyed and quickly ran
into town to sell this golden egg. The next morning to the farmer’s surprise
the goose laid another golden egg. Again the man runs into town and sells the
egg. In the next few weeks the farmer discovered that each day his goose would
lay one golden egg, and each day he would sell that egg in the market.
Eventually, the man wanted more golden eggs. There had to be some way to get
more than one egg a day. Finally the man comes up with a plan, since the eggs
come from the goose, that means that there must be multiple golden eggs inside
of the goose. Therefore the man took his knife, cut open the goose, but to his
shock found no eggs at all, and now this prized goose that had delivered one
golden egg a day was dead, and he would never again have a golden egg.
This fable just speaks to our impatience as humans. We
absolutely hate waiting for anything at all. I mean how many of us get
frustrated when we are stuck in traffic or when we are in a long line at the
grocery store? How many of us can’t stand waiting during the commercials on
T.V. so we change the channel? How many of
us get angry because our internet is slow, forgetting how just a decade ago we
were still waiting through that annoying modem sound (make noise) just waiting
to get on the internet, and still how many of us forget how recent of an
invention the internet really is? We
live in world in which waiting until the next morning to read the news in the
newspaper is becoming a thing of the past, and even 24 hour news coverage on
T.V. can’t keep up with the instant news found on social media. And how sad is it that we can’t even wait for
the closest holiday to be over before moving on to the next. How many stores
had Christmas items on display in the middle of September! Even Liberty had
their Christmas tree up on top of Liberty Mountain not only before the start of
Advent, but even before we celebrated Thanksgiving!
Now by the time we get to this first Sunday in Advent,
when we start to light the candles on the Advent wreath, when we start to hear
those hymns that we love so much, we rush and say “I love this Christmas
Season!” But this is not the Christmas season, this is the season of Advent.
This is the important season that teaches us to wait, to prepare, to hope, and
to love. This advent season fights against our impatience, and for a moment
reminds us to be still. It reminds us of the joy of Christmas that is coming,
It teaches us the importance of our expectation, and it gives merit to our
anticipation. Funny enough it is usually the kids that can teach us the most
about time of Advent. As all of the decorations are put up around the house, as
the tree is lit and presents start to slowly accumulate under it, we can watch
the kids get more and more excited. They see the gifts, they know that it is
for them, but they also know that until Christmas, they cannot have them. We
see in the kids a joy and expectation for the arrival of Christmas, but also we
see the knowledge that they must wait. Even when they go and shake and listen
to their presents, they are really just hoping for what gift they might receive
on Christmas. During Advent we too are call to wait with expectation and
anticipation for the gift of Christmas, with a hope of what that great gift may
mean to the world.
As we wait, we then begin to wonder, what are we waiting
for? What is this hope we find a Christmas? Last week as we celebrated Christ
the King Sunday we talked about our hope of a time in which God will gather us
in as his flock and protect us. We talked about our hope of the Kingdom of God
coming in its fullest. We talked about the hope for God’s justice to reign here
on Earth. As we transition into Advent, our hope does not change, but we begin
to understand our need in a new way. In Advent we take the posture of those
Israelites waiting for the Messiah to come. We live into anticipation and
expectation, but we also live in that desperation. In our scripture for today
we hear the prophet Isaiah call out to God, “O that you
would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at
your presence-- as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to
boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might
tremble at your presence! The
Israelites are waiting with true anticipation, with true desperation for a
savior, for a Messiah. They had been in captivity for far too long, they had
struggled day in and day out, they needed a savior. The Israelites are
desperately praying for God to come and save them. To tear open the heavens and
come down. Things are so desperate that they welcome the fearful notion of the
mountains quaking at the presence of God. Things are so bad that they would be
fine with the Lord as causing the waters to boil, just as long as they knew the
Lord was with them.
How many of us truly anticipate Christmas with this type
of desperation? How many of us during
this time of Advent feel compelled to fall to our knees and cry out O Lord,
that you would tear open the heavens and come down? Sadly I don’t think that
this is what Christmas means to us anymore. Advent and Christmas have become
less about the hope of a Messiah who has come to save us, and more of a routine
of celebrating the way things are. Christmas has become just another holiday to
spend with our families. It has become another reason for us to go out of our
minds emptying our wallets for toys and gifts that in a few months will be hidden
in the depths of the closest never to see the light of day again. Christmas and
Advent have become a time to dress up our houses with the most decadent
decorations to show to the world how great and festive we are. Advent and
Christmas have become a celebration without something to really celebration. We
celebrate joy without truly knowing misery. We celebrate hope without knowing
despair. We celebrate peace without ever experiencing unrest and we celebrate
love without ever truly facing hate.
Until we approach Christmas with the same expectation and hope of the
Israelites in captivity, we will not be able celebrate in the way that we
should.
The problem is that we have become blind to why we need a
Messiah in the first place. We have become comfortable with the lives that we
lead. We have become ignorant to our sins and the sins of the world around us.
We like the man with the goose who laid golden eggs think that we can figure it
all out ourselves. We feel as though do not need to wait for some outside
assistance, and then in our arrogance and sin, we destroy the very thing we
loved. In order to truly appreciate the joy of Christmas, we must first
acknowledge that we are broken and we need desperately need help. We fail daily
to do the will of God, we fail to hear the cry of the needy, we have abandoned
God’s law and we have not loved our neighbors. We have failed, and we cannot
save ourselves.
Our desperation is not only personal, not only have we
failed, but as humans we continue to spiral into a world of sin. We continue to
live in a broken world desperate for a Messiah to come and reign. We can look
to Israel and Palestine where brothers and sisters of sister religions continue
to fight and kill one another on God’s holy land. We can look to Syria and Iraq
were countless people including Christians are being persecuted by the militant
group ISIS. We see people in Africa dying from Ebola, while people in other
nations advocate that we just let them die, instead of risk our own lives to
try and help. Even in our own communities we can see so many who are without
jobs, with a home, without food. We see those in prison for years for a foolish
crime they committed in their youth, and we see many who die alone without any
friends or families around them.
This week we as a country may have seen one of the
greatest examples our need for a Messiah take place in Ferguson, Missouri. As the grand jury released its statement that
the officer who shot and killed Mike Brown several months ago would not even be
indicted for anything, our nation watched and realized that we are broken.
While for many white Americans like myself it may be hard to understand why
there were riots over the outcome over a single grand jury decision, we must
realize that this is about more than a single event. For many black Americans
this is just another reminder of racial injustice in our country. It reminds as
a nation we have become more upset about cops cars burning in the street than
we were about the death of a young man. It reminds us that there are still
systems of oppression where poorest communities are overwhelmingly African
American. It reminds us that less than 150 years ago blacks were sold and
traded as property. It reminds us that the Civil Rights Movement that we teach
in our history books, was actually experienced by a majority of American living
today. It reminds us that even though we get so tired of talking about racism,
we must continue to speak because it still exists today. As cops fully armored
in riot gear stood under a Seasons Greeting banner, it reminds us of why
Immanuel, God with us is so necessary.
O that you would tear open the
heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence. When we begin to recognize the
brokenness in our world and the sin in our own hearts, when we realize that
there is nothing that we can do to fix it, the we can finally embrace the true
hope and expectation of Christmas. We can begin to truly appreciate the fact
that God has not abandoned us, that God has seen our pain and our destruction,
and that God gave us the greatest gift the world could ever have, hope. Hope
through the arrival of the Son of God come to Earth. Hope because the heavens
were torn and God did come down and dwell amongst us. Hope that God sought us
out in our greatest need, not born in a royal palace but born amongst the weak
and the lowly.
Advent reminds us to wait in anticipation of this
wonderful hope of Christmas. It reminds us that our own actions will not save
us, that we need a Messiah. It allows us to say to God just as Isaiah did, “we are the clay, and you
are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” This Advent let us put our lives fully in
God’s hands. Let us avoid the rush and chaos that so often overcomes at this
time, and let us be still, acknowledging that are the clay in God’s hands. Let
us acknowledge as we look around at our brokenness and the brokenness of the
world that God is the potter who can fix these broken pieces, and that God has
in fact started to piece us back together through the power of his Son Jesus
Christ, who came as a lowly infant, but left as king. This morning let us be
still and wait with both hope and desperation for the arrival of this great
gift.
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