ADVENT I A

Tell it Like it Is

“Prophets are those who take life as it is and expand it. They refuse to shrink a vision of tomorrow to the boundaries of yesterday.” 

― Joan Chittister OSB

Introduction

Prophecy has a bad rap in our day and age. When we think of people who prophesy we tend to think of the fortune teller type people.

Like that Fundamentalist guy down in the states who said the world was going to end a couple of years ago.

It didn’t. It never seems to. And so these people who tell us that they have heard God’s voice telling them the end is near tend to go down in history as being more or less crazy.

There were some famous people like this, Zarathustra and Nostradamus were two of the ones whose words seem to have survived… mostly because the conspiracy minded type people like to think that someone saw it coming…. In the year 2013 the moon will turn red… If someone wrote that in 1300 and it happens… it is a big deal.

The Mayan people prophesied that the world would end in 2012… so far we are still here.

The thing is… that is not Prophesy. That is, as I said, fortune telling. And it is almost always wrong, and mostly just a good guess if it right.

Prophecy is something else… it is hard core truth.

It is an inspired message. Sure, a lot of the time it is communicated as a message from the gods… But it is a message that cuts through to the core of the matter, that sees the world for what it is, and that wakes you up to possibility.

A true prophet does not say, the world will end some day. A true prophet says, look around, we are destroying the world.

For thousands of years we have come to see that prophets have risen up among the people trying to help them to see the truth right in front of them, trying to get them to see that things have to change, trying to get them to admit they need help.

To understand that baby born in a manger in Bethlehem, you have to understand this message. People who spoke for God spoke of someone needing to stand up and make a difference.

With the Kids

-          Preparing. How do you prepare your house for Christmas? What sorts of things do you do?

A Voice in the Wilderness

John the Baptist stood in the traditions of the prophets before him. Like Isaiah, Like Micah, Like Jeremiah, Like Ezekiel and all the rest John looked at the world before him and saw that it was not the way that God wanted it to be.

People had made religion into following rules. Romans were bringing a lot of foreign concepts and changing things. Life was hard an unfair.

And somehow, John saw that this was about to change. He knew that he was standing at the threshold of a different world.

See, here is what prophecy is. Think of it this way. Winston Churchill might have stood on the balcony one day and said to the gathered people, this will end in war. He did not make the war happen; he did predict it… he saw it coming.

We cannot be sure what John saw, but he saw it coming… a change. He knew someone was going to stand up and take over. He knew that the time was ripe for a new way of thinking. And so he was all about preparing, inspiring, and beginning to change the people.

The moment was right for a religious leader who would change everything.

God Will Save Us

You have read enough Psalms in church, you have heard passages like I read from Isaiah and Micah, what I am about to say will not surprise you. The overall prophetic message of Judaism for thousands of years was simple. Surely God will save us.

We are slaves in Egypt, The Babylonians have deported us, the crops have failed, God will save us.

When you read the Old Testament it is basically thousands and thousands of pages outlining a repeating pattern, we ignore God, we get in trouble, God steps in, we are saved, over and over and over….

We mess everything up and the flood happens so we can start over, we get trapped in Egypt and Moses comes along, we end up in a civil war and King David brings peace… This is the message of the Bible, the gospel truth, the good news… we mess up, God saves us.

Now, that is the simple answer… but it is not the real thing that is happening.

If we look a little deeper what the prophets are pointing out is far more complex: Here is the complex message that each of those Old Testament prophets, and even the New Testament ones like John… and even Jesus… preach:

The world is going to heck in a handbasket. Look around, things are not going well. And you know why? Because you have ignored the way you should live. You look to your own needs instead of the needs of others. You have become callous and self-centred… people have forgotten the basic ideas like generosity and love and compassion.

If things don’t change we will destroy ourselves.

You need to listen to the people that speak with God’s voice. You need to turn back to God’s way. You need to see that there are people right in front of you trying to show you the way. Listen to them and change your heart.

Martin Luther King Jr: On Vietnam

"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate in to the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." 

The Prophetic Voice

 See what I am saying. That is a prophet. That is someone speaking for God. They are looking at the world around them and saying, this is not right, this is not the way God wants it to be. Something has to change. Someone needs to step in and make things right.

This is our tradition. And it is into this understanding of the world that Jesus entered.

Jesus came to be just that person, Jesus grew up and embraced God’s love and God’s way of seeing the world so completely that he showed us a completely different way to live.

He showed that it was possible in the midst of poverty to still be generous, that it was possibly in the middle of a cynical world we can still have hope, that in the middle of self centredness we can still care.

He changed the way we thought about life.

Conclusion

When we speak of waiting for Christmas, when we speak of preparing for Jesus, when we speak of Advent, this is where we begin. We begin with the prophets, we begin knowing that we too live in a world that is not what it should be, We begin hoping that something, that someone will come once more to help us change it.

That is what we are waiting for.

And that is what we believe that Jesus can do when he is born once more into our hearts at Christmas. 

Pentecost 15 - C

Dinner at the Table
Introduction

I remember that there was one basic rule in our house that trumped all others. We ate supper together. It was possibly the only thing we did together, especially as my brother and I aged. My dad worked a lot, both before and after supper. We often only saw him at supper… but we probably saw him at almost every supper.

Inevitably we would be asked all those questions that now that I am a parent, I appreciate more… how was school, what is new, how is your project coming? I almost always answered, fine, or that nothing was new. As do my own kids…

But I understand now what my father was about. He wanted to make a connection. He wanted to have this one time when we heard each other, when we solved problems as a family, when big decisions were made.

Family meals were about character building. They were about values. They were about connection.

As an adult I love dinner parties for exactly this reason, or even having a conversation over a cup of tea. It is food and fellowship that bring us together. Jesus knew this. He loved a good dinner party and almost all of his instruction happens around meal times… whether with his disciples, or with his enemies, or with strangers… Jesus sat down and ate and talked and shared.

And just like in my home, it was during those meals that a lot of character building and instruction got handed down.

Dinner with Kings

What if you have dinner with a king? What I just read are actually instructions about decorum of speech, handling conflict, and maintaining one’s honor and reputation.

What it boils down to is this: Do not question the king’s wisdom (verses 2–3); do not be drawn into corrupt schemes at court (verses 4–5); do not be hasty exposing others’ misdeeds lest you misstep and bring shame upon yourself (verses 8–10).

In sum, hold your tongue, keep your nose clean, and don’t meddle -- all good advice for those climbing the ladder of success at court.

What we are going to see is that there is a lot of similarity to Jesus’ advice when he has dinner with the Pharisees… and there is good reason. In essence it advises courtiers to keep a low profile for it is better to be lifted up than put down. And that is good advice for anyone…

But more importantly we are talking about motive… it is about asking the question as to who you are serving and why. Are you doing it just to get ahead, or are you trying to do the right thing.

If you are going to be dealing with kings, with government, with your career; then acting out of the best motives and being humble and moral are very good ideas as to how you can get ahead.

But this is just to set the stage and remind you all that there are a couple of thousand years of wisdom, at least, boiled down in these dinner time conversations. And even the ones I had with my dad were similar… how to make friends or avoid bullies on the school yard often boiled down to just these same sorts of advice… keep out of trouble, say the right thing, don’t make enemies of people…

But is this about faith? Or just about Common Sense?

The Best Advice Ever

My grandfather was the family’s dispenser of wisdom. He was a Baptist who was also a school principle who had also fought in World War Two. He started with nothing and ended content with his lot in life.

And sometimes he said wise things, to be sure. He often told corny jokes though, and you could confuse the two…

The way he really taught was by example. He would let you have your say, ask you questions to consider your options, and then live his life the way he thought was right. He almost never said you had to do it his way… but he made it clear that his way was right. And you wanted that, you wanted the certainty, the knowledge, and the peace which it seemed to bring him.

So what did he do? He worked on things, he helped anyone who asked, he did not lie or cheat or swear… I don’t know, he had a life before I was around and when I was away, so he might not have been perfect all the time… but when he was around you he modelled the good and godly life.

Which is what all of this has been focussing on this morning, the wisdom that gets handed down from generation to generation, often at the dinner table, but maybe out in the barn, or the classroom, or on long drives….

So what is the best advice you ever received? What is the best you have ever given?

This wisdom, as most good advice does, echoes the wisdom of the Bible, is about who we are meant to be, and how we are meant to be. It acknowledges that God is good and created us to be good, and it is about living out that goodness in the real world where we find ourselves.

I Have a Dream

You may have heard on the news that this week was the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington by Martin Luther King Jr. King was an activist and Baptist preacher who wanted to ensure that there were equal rights for black people. He was also one of the best preachers ever, and it showed.

The thing is, he believed that equality, that love, that black and white people eating together at the table, was all part of Jesus idea of the heavenly banquet… that this is what God intended for us.

So on August 28th 1963 Martine Luther King Jr. gave a speech in Washington, that would become known as the “I have a dream” speech. Here is some of what he said:

“I have a dream that one day right there in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers….

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character…

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood."

Seems to me that this is not very different than Jesus’ dream; seems to me that this is what God has been trying to get across to us forever. So what is your dream for the world? What part of God’s way would you like to see made a little more real?

Conclusion

“One does not live by bread alone,” as Jesus argues in the temptation scene. It is not like Jesus is only concerned about what happens at meals. His teaching is about the way we treat others, especially those among us who unable to “pay us back.” We say in our modern world that all people are created equal… but are we so different than the folks back in Jesus day?

We do have our ways of making sure that there is an us and a them… we create distinctions between people,… and most of the time these distinctions keep us from true fellowship with one another. Jesus’ story is a reminder to us about the company we keep. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood, “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”