St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent (December 23, 2007)
Liturgical Color: Blue
Reverend Doctor Lyle E. McKee
"On Earth As In Heaven"
Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
As I reflected on the Advent readings, my thoughts turned to the Lord's Prayer. It came to mind because it is a prayer that anticipates and hopes for the coming of the fullness of the kingdom of heaven. It is a prayer that is profoundly appropriate to Advent.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as in heaven.
These are the yearnings of all Christians at all times, but they speak with special poignancy in Advent.
Indeed, they give voice to nearly every reading we encounter in these weeks and days before Christmas. Listen to the prophet Isaiah today:
The Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying. Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. Then Isaiah said: "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted."
Trouble was the steady diet of the beleaguered nation of Israel. It was nearly constantly under attack—a situation that still obtains today. In this passage, there is near despair about the future of the kingdom, and God tells Ahaz to ask for a sign. But the king will not, lest he tempt God. So Isaiah intervenes with an oracle of salvation. Life is affirmed at the doorstep of destruction; a young woman will bear a child and his name shall signify his destiny, "God will be with us."
The depth of their dread was, therefore, matched by an equal depth of hope and yearning. They sought earnestly for signs of God's protective and delivering hand, even if the king was hesitant about offending God. Their spirits squinted to see a better future. They prayed, as do we, that God's kingdom would come on earth, as it was already known fully in heaven.
We have considered in these weeks the matters of waiting and hoping. These two continuing themes of Advent anticipate the kingdom without yet the possibility of fully engaging its celebration. Today, we hear these themes again.
We live in a world that lures us into a busy-ness that works to shield our lives from any valuing of waiting and wondering, hoping and praying for the coming of the Messiah and God's kingdom. Those who "make it" are often too busy to wait, too important to hope in anything greater than themselves. "Making it" means you are too smart to wonder, too adult. We want it all now. We find it irritating to wait for anyone or anything. And surprises make us uncomfortable. We avoid experiences of wonder. We do our best to screen them out.
But what makes us afraid? What keeps our pace fast, our vision narrow? Why do we avoid waiting and wondering, hoping and praying, as though they were a turn down a one-way street marked DO NOT ENTER? It's because waiting, wondering, and hoping open us to the possibility that current arrangements are not here to stay. It's because they make us realize that solid structures, for which we have worked so diligently, come apart and might give way to something unexpected.
So waiting, wonder, hope, and prayer provide the church year with a powerful start, even if it is a bit counter-intuitive and disorienting. We have a sense of both dread and delight. Waiting and hoping do nothing to prepare us for the empty spaces on a new calendar. They don't train us to keep a schedule. Instead, wonder and prayer prepare us for a life where God acts, where the unexpected future is unfolded as God intends, not as we desire or imagine.
Those in ancient Israel who heard the words of Isaiah were, no doubt, shaped by his words:
...the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel...before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.
Their imaginations were stirred. Their hearts were touched by yearning. But I suspect that in their imagination and hopes, they came nowhere near the fulfillment that was to come in Jesus.
When we accept Advent's invitation to yearn and pray, we find ourselves in the company of those ancients, with others who have tasted dread and delight—with ancient Israel, with John the Baptist, with the disciples, even with Joseph. In this morning's gospel, Joseph hears in a dream that Mary's scandalous pregnancy will somehow fulfill God's purpose. When he awoke, it was to wait and to wonder and to hope that his dream would bear out.
Can we follow these ancient leads? Can we wait, wonder, hope, and pray? Not only now, in the final two days of Advent, but during all the days to come?
There may yet come an opportunity some winter night when newly fallen snow makes the world small and quiet, and crisp cold greets us in the face. We leave boot prints behind us in the snow. The sky hosts only a few small silver stars. Then perhaps wonder comes, and prayerfulness. It's part of why we dream, and sing of dreaming about a white Christmas. (adapted from Charles Hoffacker, "Waiting and Wonder")
Another opportunity for waiting and wonder comes once the worship services have ended, the gifts are opened, the dinner is eaten, and in the living room the decorated tree is left to stand guard. Tired and at peace, we may choose to go to bed for a Christmas nap. And when we lie down, we are not only people in our prime, but the old men and women we may become, and the children we once were. About to drift off into the stillness of slumber, we may wonder for a moment about the Christ who was, and is, and ever shall be—the beginning and end of all our dreams. We may offer a silent prayer like the one the Christ child would later teach his disciples.
Advent invites us to wait, to wonder, to pray, and to hope for Christ. He was born in an obscure barn in Bethlehem. He will come with great glory when this world arrives at its eternal destiny. Now he is hidden where he can be found only by those who wonder and wait, hope and pray:
Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as in heaven.
Think again for a moment about Joseph's story. In it lies an important reason for us all to live a life of wonder and prayer, an important reason for the regular practice of waiting and hoping. If we, like Joseph, are in a trusting relationship with God through a life of prayer, if we value God's company on ordinary days, then, when the day of testing comes, we may recognize God's voice speaking to us. Then we may respond in faith by doing what God would have us do, by living as God would have us live, by embracing the Messiah and the kingdom that comes.
Many people see frightening possibilities in this relationship of humankind to God. Some people say, "Life is challenging enough if you have faith; but what happens to people who have no faith, who do not pray? What happens to them when things don't work out as they hoped or crisis comes?" Imagine this, people say: "What happens when people without faith lose a loved one? How can they begin to hear God's voice speaking softly to them in their bereavement when their grief shouts so hopelessly? In a troubled time it can be hard for anyone to hear the divine voice, to see the vision of a greater purpose. But how hard it must be without the experience of listening to God in better times!"
God speaks to us in a variety of ways. For Joseph, it was through the Jewish law and that remarkable series of dreams. For Ahaz, it was through the great prophet Isaiah. It can happen through the reading of Scripture or through the act of participating in worship, through personal devotions, the beauty of nature, the warmth of human love, the circumstance of each day. Our wonder may respond to God in prayer. Like waiting, prayer is not easy. There is always something else that draws us powerfully—active, engaging, and fun things.
Yet it is vital that we persist in waiting on God in prayer. Through our prayer, our response to God, our relationship with God, we become able to recognize the divine voice when it speaks, even while we wait and hope, even while we fidget and grow impatient for celebration.
Will the noise of our sense of urgency or our fears drown out the still small voice of God, or will we have the heart to hear? Will we put aside our busy-ness and our self-absorption, and wait, wonder, hope, and pray, preparing ourselves for the surprises of grace that are yet to be?
May God give us the heart for the challenge of Advent, even in its final days—the heart to pray in the fervent hope that God's kingdom may yet come to the earth. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto eternal life. Amen.
