Reading for Advent
3C: Luke 3:7-18
December 14, 2003
The Rev. Karen Siegfriedt
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino,
CA
"Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us..." [BCP 212]
It is an honor, a delight, and a sign of hope, to begin today's service with this radical prayer! Imagine, the well-to-do middle class congregation of St. Jude the Apostle praying this prayer! We, whose families and children are well fed and well futured, are asking God to stir things up, to make things new, to radically change the way we experience our lives so that justice, peace, and the dignity of all creation can be realized! This kind of praying is very counter-cultural. This kind of praying is very anti-consumerism. This kind of praying is a sign of hope to the world. Why? Hope is strengthened every time an individual or a community of faith has the courage and the willingness to take an honest look at themselves and the world around them and say: "Enough is enough. It is time to act in a different vision and with a different perception of reality. It is time to ask God to come among us, to stir things up, and to provide for a different future where justice, peace, compassion, generosity, inclusivity, and dignity are the operating principles, even if it means we must change." It is this different future, this desire for God to stir things up, that I would like to address in my sermon. Let's take a closer look at the gospel.
Today's gospel passage introduces us to the "bigger than life" character of John the Baptizer. The setting is 1st century Palestine and those who come to him for advice are being told to repent. John is addressing those who think they are religious people or want to be religious. However, they have some misconceptions about what is means to be religious. They have failed in their moral and ethical lives to be faithful to the commandment- to love God and love their neighbor. In forceful, direct, and impressionable language, John tells the crowds that they have to change if they want to be faithful. This means that they have to reorient their lives from focusing only on themselves, to focusing on the greater good. In other words, they need to be more compassionate and just. Repentance is simply a "churchy word" which means change, reorientation, and focusing on the greater good.
Three different groups of people have wandered out into the desert to seek out this eccentric prophet because they realize that something is not quite right with them or the world in which they live. They really want God to come among them. They are waiting for a messiah. So, they ask John, "What should we do?" John focuses his reply on addressing the inequities and injustices of that society. He tells the crowd to share food and clothing with those who have none. He tells the tax collectors not to be greedy but to collect only what is due. He tells the soldiers that the military must stop victimizing the public by threat, intimidation, and blackmail. And then he tells all of them that there is someone who is coming who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit and fire.
What is this fire and spirit that John speaks of? What is this judgment that is to come? And do we really want to hear about judgment when Christmas is only a few weeks away? Sometimes we have childish notions of God's judgment and our need to repent. Oftentimes, we mistakenly think of God's judgment as a Santa Claus up in the sky who makes a list of who is naughty and who is nice. And then, at some point in time, this God either showers gifts upon those who are nice or punishes those who are naughty by putting coal in their stockings. Unfortunately, the world doesn't seem to operate so justly. Instead, the powerful continue to oppress the helpless. The rich impose sanctions on the poor. The good-looking folks seem to get a break even when they are less competent. Young children continue to be sold into prostitution by adults. Justice does not always seem to operate in the short term and coal seems to occupy the stockings of the innocent and faithful. So, we need to look at judgment in a different way and see how a different understanding might inform our desire to repent.
Judgment is the consequences of our actions, whether those consequences are experienced by ourselves or whether those consequences are endured by the innocent. In either case, suffering is often the consequence of selfish actions; a kind of suffering that could be prevented. It seems that the laws of nature and the laws human relationships are set up in such a way that an action produces a reaction; where selfish actions produces suffering. Herein lies the sphere of judgment.
Repentance is an antidote to judgment. Repentance is a voluntary commitment to change the way we act in order to reduce the suffering in the world; either our own suffering or the suffering of others. Repentance is the willingness of an individual to reach out with compassion to others rather than focus only on the self. Repentance is the willingness of a community of faith to say "enough is enough" and to pray that God will stir up God's power and come among us and use us as instruments of compassion. But stirring up God's power often comes at a price because it may require us to undergo a process of purification and refinement. Change (as you know) can be painful. Here is a colorful image of the process of purification.
Think of yourself as a piece of green wood, thrown into the fire. At first, the flame does not affect the wood because it is green. But over time, the heat of the fire acts on the wet, green wood, and makes it exude moisture. It emits sighing sounds, and twists and turns in a hundred different ways with great noise, until it has been made dry enough for the flame to take hold of it. Then the flame consumes it without effort or noise, but quietly. This is an image of divine love on our souls that are still full of imperfections and inclinations of narcissism. Repentance is a willingness to allow God to refine us, to mold us into the people that God wills for us to be.
Susan Howatch experienced this purification process in the 1970's. As you may know, Susan Howatch is a famous novelist. When she was in her forties, she wrote racy novels about wayward and glamorous people getting their comeuppance. Her novels were successful, her social life was glittering with people, and she was rich. She was in constant demand and her books even sold at the checkout sections of American supermarkets. She was on a roll, totally focused on her self and her own success without a care or worry about others. All of a sudden, something happened to Susan and her life started to come apart. Something was wrong beneath the surface. Her marriage came apart. Her daughter gave the final blow when she announced to Susan that she was going to live with her father in America. She was knocked to the core. She said: "This experience made me think about everything. I felt a complete failure as a mother. It was a most alienating, destabilizing experience. All the things that I thought important, like money and success, weren't important at all. I became a recluse and I had nothing to say to anybody." Imagine, a successful novelist having nothing to say.
Susan was faced with a choice. She could either stick her head in the sand and blame someone else for her distress, or she could honestly examine her life and ask what God was calling her to do with her tremendous gifts. She chose the latter. This examination process caused her to get outside of herself. She began seeing herself as maybe God sees her. It was such a powerful and serious refining process that she hardly spoke to anybody for three years. Susan reoriented her life with a new foundation and is now an even more successful novelist. She is writing novels that have great psychological insight that appeal to educated religious persons. She has been reconciled with her daughter and has recently endowed a chair at Cambridge for the study of the relationship between Christianity and science. The world is much better off because of her repentance.
Hope is strengthened every time an individual or a community of faith has the courage and the willingness to take an honest look at themselves and the world around them and say: "Enough is enough. It is time to act in a different vision and with a different perception of reality!" This is what Susan Howatch was willing to do and this is what John the Baptizer calls all of us to do as we pray: "Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might, come among us."
| Updated 12/17/03 |
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