A God Worth the Wait

A God Worth the Wait

Text:  Matthew 3:1-12

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 12-11-2016)

It is not uncommon for me to run across victims of what I would call, “God abuse.” These victims have listened to pastors, mostly from conservative and fundamentalist pulpits, portray God as a vindictive bully and hateful to all but the select few. The God portrayed by these pastors is mean and petty and insists we be the same. Many good people no longer darken the doors of any church because they anticipate another dose of “God abuse.” I do not blame them. I would stay away as well.

To be fair, though, progressive pulpits advance their own form of “God abuse.” Much too often, progressive pulpits preach a laissez-faire God, who does not commands our awe, demand our attention, or call us to action. This God is removed from our daily affairs and if present at all, is yawning while sipping an espresso, trying to stay awake while listening to our dispassionate prayers. This God is nice and tame and largely a bore.

For me and all my progressive theological kin, it is a good thing that Cousin Matthew is back, has unpacked his large biblical suitcase and is planning to stay with us for a year. The God we meet in Matthew could never be accused of being a “vindictive bully,” but neither is this God an absentee or disinterested parent, distant and aloof, happy for us to do whatever we like, whenever we want to do it. The God we meet in Matthew is not a bore. This God is worth the wait.

No one points to this God with greater passion and precision than John the Baptist. I love the way that esteemed preacher, Tom Long, describes this oddly attired prophet:   “As the door to a new era swings open, John the Baptist is the ideal

hinge. . . His preaching style is vintage Old Israel; his message paves the way for the New Israel. He appears to have wandered out of the some retirement home for old prophets, but he announces the arrival of one who is even greater than the prophets. 

          “Everything is about to change. The old is passing away; the new presses in. The long, long night of hopelessness is coming to an end, and John the Baptist is the rooster who awakens the sleeping world with dawn’s excited cry” (Tom Long, Matthew, Westminster Bible Companion, p. 25).

 And just what is that dawn cry? Standing knee deep in the Jordan, “We all discover  . . . not only that we are cherished for who we are, but that we are responsible for what we do,” writes David Bartlett. “If God loves me enough to welcome me into Christ’s family, then God loves me enough to expect something of me” (Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4, p. 46).

The late Yale preacher and teacher of preachers, William Muehl, points to such a God in this Advent story, “One December afternoon . . . a group of parents stood in the lobby of a nursery school waiting to claim their children after the last pre-Christmas class session. As the youngsters ran from their lockers, each one carried in his hands the ‘surprise’, the brightly wrapped package on which he had been working diligently for weeks. One small boy, trying to run, put on his coat, and wave to his parents, all at the same time, slipped and fell. The ‘surprise’ flew from his grasp, landed on the floor and broke with an obvious ceramic crash.

          “The child . . . began to cry inconsolably. His father, trying to minimize the incident and comfort the boy, patted his head and murmured, ‘Now, that’s all right son. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter at all’.

          “But the child’s mother, somewhat wiser in such situations, swept the boy into her arms and said, ‘Oh, but it does matter. It matters a great deal’. And she wept with her son” (Muehl, Why Preach? Why Listen? P. 82).

          At dawn, John the Baptist cries: “Your relationship with God matters. It matters a great deal.” For those who think of faith as a family heirloom, something to which they are genetically entitled, John says, “Think again. God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” For those who think of faith as an accessory to wear on special occasions and certain holidays, John says, “Think again. One more powerful than I . . . will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

The God we meet in John’s pulpit is no one’s entitlement and will be no one’s accessory. John’s God won’t be squeezed into anyone’s busy schedule. For the dawn cry from the Jordan is that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That means that time matters and that we use every breath of the day to the glory of God; that justice matters and that we execute justice for all, but especially for the least of these; that righteousness matters and that we live righteous lives as a thankful sign to the world that the kingdom is at hand. The God to whom John points is not vindictive or boring; it is a God, who I, for one, want to know much better.  

          In my conversations with people who have nothing to do with the church or who were once active in the church but are no longer, I hear a common lament. Some are angry about something they have heard or how they have been treated or mistreated. Many speak of times when they were ignored in a moment of need.

The most common lament that I hear from those who are no longer in church is one of profound “apathy.” They feel no compelling reason to change anything that they now do, much less give up a perfectly fine Sunday morning, or any other time during the week, to worship God and commit to a life of Christian service. As they explain to me, the God they have met in too many fundamentalist pulpits is a vindictive bully, while the God they have met in too many progressive pulpits is hardly worth the wait.

I wonder what would happen if they were to encounter the God we meet in John the Baptist’s pulpit. His God loves us enough to burn away all the sorry excuses that keep us as casual spectators rather than fervent disciples. His God is no permissive pushover parent who wants us to do whatever makes us happy; but a doggedly engaged parent who loves us and cares for us enough to expect us to repent. 

In too many progressive pulpits, the meaning of “repent” is diluted to feeling sorry for what you have done or guilty about your past. That does not scratch the surface of what “the Baptist” means when he roars:  “Repent.” To “repent,” for John, is to say goodbye to one way of living in order to embrace the radical, in-breaking vision of God. It is live each day with confidence that “the kingdom of heaven” will not arrive one day in some distant future, but that the “kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

In Matthew’s Gospel, something decisive happened in that Bethlehem manger, in that Palestinian wilderness, on that Jerusalem cross, and on that first Easter morning. By the power of God’s Spirit, the risen Jesus is at work in our lives right now, at work in this broken world right now, and God loves us like the most devoted and demanding parent that you or I have ever met. Issac Watts long ago captured the true dawn cry from John, the only real reason for repentance, “Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.”

Now, unlike the God met in too many fundamentalist and progressive pulpits today, that is a God well worth the wait.

AMEN    

The First Christmas Carol

The First Christmas Carol

Isaiah 11:1-10

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, 12-4-2016)

What was Isaiah thinking? A peaceable kingdom? On this earth? It might make for a lovely children’s book, but it is not a reality you and I are likely to see. Ask endangered species about living in a peaceable kingdom as they are soon to be extinct through a global assault on creation. Ask leaders of the Palestinians and Israelis, of ISIS and North Korea about living in a peaceable kingdom. Ask Republican, Green Party, Democrat, and Libertarians about living in a peaceable kingdom. What was Isaiah thinking?

  Isaiah’s vision of God’s peaceable kingdom is over 2700 years old and it refuses to go away no matter how impossible we judge it. The vision begins not with the image of a healthy tree, but a rotting stump, a metaphor for anyone whose dreams have ever been pronounced dead.

In Isaiah’s vision, all that remains of the tree is a stump that is decaying into mulch. We cannot be sure of the precise time of this vision, but surely, it was a time in Israel’s life when hope for the future had been severed, hope in God’s promise of shalom was rotting like a decaying old stump. 

          So who invited Isaiah into Advent worship anyway? Who needs to hear one more thing about all the decaying stumps around us and inside us? Who needs to hear someone make another promise that you and I know is just not possible? I already hear “it is just not possible” about as much as I can stand. “It is just not possible to believe all this Jesus talk.” “It is just not possible to believe that the church can be something more than a real, old drag.” “It is just not possible to believe that God can do anything with that stump of faith that is rotting inside me.”

To most people today, you and I and churches everywhere are endangered species, if not already extinct. We are the rotting stumps. No wonder the church invites back Isaiah who has been dead for more than 2700 years to walk with us into Advent. At least, Isaiah tells the hard truth about living as a people whose hope for life and peace is like a dead, decaying stump. 

Lutheran pastor, Heidi Neumark began her ministry at the base of a decaying stump called the South Bronx. “The Bronx had international infamy as an urban desert, a landscape of withered hopes, barren of economic vitality, battered by violence, fear, and death,” writes Heidi. “The church’s membership was steadily aging. Most were resigned to the fact that their child-bearing years as a congregation were over.” (Neumark, Breathing Space, p. 11). 

You do not need to travel to New York to see “a landscape of withered hopes.” Some find it in their own mirrors each morning. It may be because they are too young for the job that they know they can do or too old for the job that they will never be given the chance to do again. It may be because they woke up this morning to an empty bed and to fresh memories of when it wasn’t. It may be because they are not the right color or of the preferred sexual orientation to live in the neighborhood where they want to live.

“It is just not possible” is the rotten refrain of the decaying stump. It is a refrain we know all too well. But before you and I buy into that wretched requiem; take notice that we lit a second candle this morning and with it Isaiah returned and not to the pulpit but to the choir.   

Looking out over a sea of “withered hope,” Isaiah sings, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”  Isaiah bounds into Advent like some singing fool, stepping around the scattered stumps within us and around us, singing, “Yes, children of God, it is possible.” He sings of a God who has a way of bringing life out of the deadliest locations, the most moribund situations, a God in whom all things are possible.

In the first few months at her church in the Bronx, Heidi spent a lot of time and money painting over graffiti on the church doors. “In walks around the neighborhood,” she writes, “I began asking teenagers and children I met if any of them would like to be part of an art class a friend had offered to help lead. It wasn’t long before a group of enthusiastic young artists came through our doors. Together we read stories from the Bible, which they then illustrated right on the doors.

“At one time, the members would have insisted that the proper place for such artwork was on a bulletin board somewhere inside, but no one could deny that this beat the graffiti. Week after week, the youth painted their hearts out on those doors. It was a joyous, messy process. In spite of all the newspapers taped down, some paint always splattered on the sidewalk, but no matter. It soon faded under the parade of feet that daily passed by, feet of people who stopped to look, to check out what was going on, to offer compliments and suggestions, and to inquire about the church. There has never been another stroke of graffiti on those doors” (Neumark, p. 11).

Isaiah continues his song, singing, “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. . . . He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear.” In the Bronx, others saw only a dying church in a dying borough; Heidi saw the Spirit of God at work. Others told Heidi as Isaiah was told, “It is just not possible. This church cannot survive.” Heidi heard a different song; she heard the crazy carol of Isaiah, that with God “all things are possible.”

In my brief time at Cove, I have learned that this congregation is anything but a dying church. I have watched fresh shoots sprouting, giving witness to what God makes possible out of what once seemed only a stump of dead possibilities. I have watched you leap over personal and political differences to care for each other and for everyone who walks through these doors. I have listened to your passion for the peacemaking power of God at work in Mexico, in Guatemala and in Haiti, in Charlottesville and Covesville. I have been moved by some who have been wounded by churches who have found a pew here and found new hope burning in their souls.

When the Advent candle of peace was lit this morning, I swear I could hear Isaiah singing, “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”  Long before Mary would ask, “How is all this possible?” Isaiah would sing a carol of stumps and shoots, of snakes and infants playing safely in the same crib, of peace that lasts long pass an uneasy ceasefire. Long before the star would guide the magi, Isaiah would sing the first Christmas carol about what God makes possible in the world, what God makes possible in us. 

In a world way too familiar with the refrain, “It is just not possible,” and in a church that far too often sings, “It is just not possible,” it is time to pass the microphone back to Isaiah. He has a new refrain for us to sing, a song of God’s peaceable kingdom alive in us and awaiting us all, a song of what God makes possible. Isaiah is back and he invites us to sing this carol smack in the middle of Advent. 

AMEN