advent4-dec-18

Sun, Dec 18, 2016: St. Peter’s

Sermon Fourth Advent

The strange circumstances of King Ahaz

Bible Study and
lectionary

In our reading from Isaiah this week, God responds with as it were a sigh of exasperation at King Ahaz who says in a voice of mock piety, "Nah, I don’t need a sign from you. I’m doing just fine. To which God (the Lord) says, “Well, I’m going to give you one anyway. A young woman is with child. And his name will be Immanuel.”

That’s not particularly remarkable we can observe, except perhaps the name which means “God is with you.”

But then if we add some of the back story to the short reading it all just seems even weirder – at least to me.

You see Ahaz is being attacked from an alliance of the northern kingdom and Syria (“2 kings” from the reading). God has promised to rescue King Ahaz from the predicament. But Ahaz thinks he can do just fine without God’s help so he makes the response we have heard today.

The text as we all know was used by the writers of the New Testament as an anticipation of the coming of Christ. I am interested for the moment, however, in the perplexing sort of way that God (through Isaiah’s words) gives Judah a vision of hope in a time of great danger and intrigue.

• opening of Romans
• Matthew, birth of Messiah

A clear theme from these past weeks

This man, a prophet, named Isaiah? A man so much of his own time and speaking God’s message to his own time. But his intimacy with God gives him a heart to see a time that is not yet real but that in God’s time will be.

• Be a people of peace.
• Be a people of justice
• Be a people of mercy

These were words that we heard at the conclusion of the message 3 weeks ago.

We began to learn a song … choose to hope, love. Love is greater than hatred.

We are sisters and brothers. We share the same story.

One way to understand the word of God in the Bible we call scriptures is to say that we recognize ourselves in the stories we hear. It is we ourselves in these prophecies. God’s message transcends time.

Last week we heard a phrase that we can use to think of the kind of time that we live in. A time that may appear broken, even evil times, but – we live in an already but not yet world.

The world around us is broken, violent, full of injustice and lack of mercy – but – we have a foot in a new land.

I have a particular image that I think in this already but not yet space. It is like the mixing together of the divine and the human. It is the meeting of God and mortal. An old Celtic image thinks of the shore where land and sea meet, waves crashing and mixing with the sand. If the Ocean is the divine world and the shore is the human world, at that point they are mixed together.

This leads to another similar image from a similar environment. If at one moment we are floating in a boat, on a lake or a river. Then we reach our leg over the side and we step onto the muddy ground. One moment floating. The next moment standing on secure earth.

So perhaps is the mystery of the already but not yet that we must live out our lives of faith, hope and love.

Image of William McNamara Earthy Mysticism

I once saw an Old Testament prophet. I have thought ever since through the decades that time had somehow melted for me in a church auditorium in Pueblo Colorado. I didn’t who the speaker was, but my priest had thought I might enjoy it so I accompanied him. His name was William McNamara.

He was introduced by a priest, possibly a bishop, I’m not sure, but a giant of a man walked up to the microphone. He had a long beard and a cassock that reached to the floor. All you really saw was wild hair growing from his head and long flowing robes. Then he spoke. He spoke with a boom. And somehow it was as authoritative as if God himself were speaking. At the time I thought, "So that’s what the people meant when they heard Jesus speak and said that he spoke with authority. web site

I learned from his talk that he was a hermit-monk and had founded several monastic communities of hermits – interestingly they were founded as combined men/women communities. I learned that he had just written a book titled Mystical Passion.

He talked about contemplative prayer that was meant for everybody, all kinds of people. Later I would learn that Thomas Merton said much the same thing. He said things like prayer needs to be grounded in the real nitty gritty of the life we live. It needs to be grounded in what he called an earthy mysticism.

I was utterly captivated by him and his writings helped me get through seminary. A time of a lot of nitty gritty somehow sandwiched with a lot of prayer.

Building on a lifetime of teaching that his “earthy mysticism” was for all Christians, McNamara produced many guides for folks trying to be faithful in difficult times. One such guide is:

Rule of Life from: earth mysticism

What to do?
Everyone — all lay people, students, workers, homemakers, even beach bums — needs a Rule. Try this:

1. Wake up and fall on your knees — ten minutes of prayer. Put your stamp on the day with God’s help. Read a gospel or a psalm.
2. Live mindfully all day. No compulsions. No frenzy. No trivialities. Joy in everything. Make something, love, especially.
3. Angelus at noon. Stop!
4. On the way home — stop in church, in a park, a favorite spot. Do something wild every day, i.e., break the moribund daily pattern and imitate Christ – the Wildman.
5. Glad, loving entry at home — share something you noticed that day; then music, laughter, and good food.
6. Visit the sick, the poor, aged, children and animals. Play. Walk. Run.
7. One half hour of meditative reading leading to quiet prayer. Go out or to bed peacefully.

obituary and summary: obituary

Message of the song: “learn to believe a little child will lead us”

I, at least, have been learning to find a way this Advent with the help of the song we have been learning from Marty Haugen.

• we have a choice in what to believe, “that love is stronger than hatred.”
• if our hearts learn to see that we all share the same story, love can shine.
• and finally that we can recognize that we are to be led by one who is a “little child.”

That is where we find ourselves at this time. We must prepare ourselves for living into the vision: the Peaceable Kingdom under the leadership of a child. What a strange journey we are faced with?