Isaiah 64: 1-9
Psalm 80
Mark 13: 24-37

When It Can’t Get Any Worse!

Some time around 1978, a cousin of mine and her best friend visited some of that friend’s relatives in England. I think the trip was a celebration of their high school graduation. She brought back a new hit song, by Boney M, a German vocal group, titled “Rivers of Babylon” and as soon as it was played on the air waves in Canada, it became as much of a hit as it had been in Europe. The song was actually an adaptation of a Jamaican-Rastafari song written about 6 years prior. I remember telling my younger brother that the song’s lyrics were “from the Bible,” but he told me, as only a brother can, that I was mistaken, “no it’s not!” I’ll let you imagine the details of that exchange!

Well baby brother, I was not mistaken; according to Wikipedia, and clear to anyone who had ever actually read Psalm 137, I WAS right! This song adapts the soul searching lament of the Hebrew people living in Exile as outlined in Psalm 137. How can we sing songs of praise to God when we are not in the land we believe that God gave us? It is hard for modern people (at least for those who are not farmers) to understand the ties they had to their land and to the temple in Jerusalem. Farmers know the tie they have to the soil, to that specific patch of ground, from which they draw their life and their identity.

Apparently, the locals would taunt them and ask for their songs of their beloved homeland, just to rub salt in their open wounds. Nana nana na na!

In 1984 Canadian song-writer, Bruce Cockburn, went to Mexico on a trip organized by Oxfam to visit Guatemalan refugee camps and, “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” was written in response. There had been so much suffering that his anger was kindled against the whole situation, especially against the perpetrators. In wartime those who suffer the most are not the ones who carry weapons; it is the civilians and particularly the children. One line of his powerful song goes,

“And when I talk with the survivors of things too sickening to relate - 
If I had a rocket launcher...I would retaliate.” 

He sang that song with such passion that some people attempted to give him an actual rocket launcher - on three occasions (one of them being the Canadian General in charge in Kandahar)! Each time. Cockburn refused the offered gift!

The part of the book of Isaiah that you heard a few minutes ago is a response to the situation in which the people have found themselves in exile, far from their homeland, and in despair. Could it get any worse? The exile was such a major crisis in their lives as individuals and as a nation. While there is certainly more anger than hope in Psalm 137, we need to realize that this is not the only response. There are other passages to guide and support the people in crisis. The passage from Isaiah is a prophetic proclamation of hope in the midst of despair; light in the midst of darkness.

I don’t have to tell you that the world is in a bit of a mess; the 2020s have not been good years! As I was writing this sermon, I saw news coverage of the prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel, made possible by the cease fire. No one really knows how traumatized those held hostage are, how long the cease fire will last; nor do we know the depth of grief at so much loss of life and destruction on both sides.

And it goes on! Four people have died in a shooting in Winnipeg. Food bank usage is surging in Canada. We are facing a housing crisis with many people shut out of the home ownership market by skyrocketing real estate prices and some are not even able to find something they can afford to rent. Some are calling for a halt to immigration because there is no place for these new residents to live.

Yet, even in the midst of so much bad news there is hope. I go back to something I read about Fred Rogers, a while ago. Yes, Mr Rogers, from the TV show, Mr Rogers Neighbourhood. Apparently, he learned from his mother that in a crisis you should look for the helpers and see what they are doing. We can see hope in the efforts of those who seek to feed the hungry and house the homeless. We can see it in the efforts of the international community to take aid to Gaza even while shells and missiles were still flying. I see it in the medical personnel who work in war zones, saving lives in the midst of mayhem. I see it in those who refuse to accept this situation as a permanent feature of the relationship between peoples.

One of the searching questions that people of faith ask is “why isn’t life like it used to be?” Specifically, for the people of Israel, in the time of Isaiah, “why doesn’t God liberate us in the same way he led the people out of Egypt and across the sea?” Why? Why does God seem to be silent in the face of the difficulty that now surrounds us?

Yet, I wonder if that was truly the case? Was God really silent? The prophets had not been silent. The people stopped listening; had they stopped looking for signs that God was still present? Were they so tied to the stories from long before that those things were the only things they would recognize as “God’s presence?” Maybe God was not parting the Red Sea, or sending manna from the sky, but I am certain that God was doing something else; the people for whom Isaiah wrote, just did not notice.

What about us? The United Church of Christ, an American denomination with whom our church is in “full-communion,” had a slogan a few years ago, “God is Still Speaking,” which came out of their belief that God not only spoke in the past, but also speaks in the present and will in the future.

When people of faith read the scriptures they see that these old wo rds still have meaning in the present. On the whole these words adapt themselves to a new age, any age, whether similar or very different from the one in which it was originally written.

I believe that God continues to work in the lives of people in the present; if I dodn’t, I would not be doing the work I do!

People of faith continue to live in courageous and hope filled ways when a sane response would be to hide until the crisis is over. Some go on as if nothing is wrong - ignoring the writing on the wall. They are oblivious to the warning signs all around them. However, thre are the others though who know full well what the dangers are and decide to live in faith and hope.

Our God is not hiding. Our God does not have to break open the heavens and come down - our God is already in our midst. In the biblical tradition, the image of the potter is a powerful one for the ways in which God’s people are moulded into vessels which symbolize faithfulness. I take great satisfaction and hope as I see people, usually young people, refusing to accept the status quo, who look at terrible situations and believe that things can change for the better, rather than believing that it will always be so!

Potters use their skills to make a lump of clay into a beautiful and functional pot or pitcher. Plastic surgeons can take time from a career of catering to the egos of movie stars and repair the damage caused by illness or accident. Doctors can envision a better life for their patient. We see lots of ads on TV about cleft palate surgeries in developing countries where this surgery gives hope to a child who would otherwise have very little. Cochlear implants open up a hearing world to many woho would otherwise live in silence. These advances have been made possible because someone had hope that life can improve.

Yet, when it comes to our spiritual selves are we willing to let the divine potter mould us, shape us, make us into the vision laid down at the creation of the world. Or would we rather invite a few friends to our pity party and just hang around and mope.

The truth of the matter is that from a Christian perspective, faith is a matter of choice; it is a path we learn as we take it and grow in it.

There comes a time in every child’s life where the mom can no longer, “kiss it better,” where the adults cannot fix a problem for a child. A number of years ago, I was visiting a family and the young man of the house was about to make a phone call to someone from whom he had borrowed something, but had carelessly lost or broken it. The parents had decided that he was old enough to take responsibility for his actions. He had to telephone the person, apologize and offer restitution. Then he had to replace it, have it repaired, or whatever the person on the other end of the line wanted done! It was probably a very hard call for him to make, but it was an important part of his journey to adulthood.

Our life of faith as adults becomes of one making the choice to see and hear the words and actions of hope in the world. Living in faith is to take that first step, and then the second, to act as if our lives and our actions matter and that God is with us speaking and guiding us.

When it seems as if “it cant get any worse”, and indeed, that “it won’t get any better”, people of faith need to latch onto hope and with God’s guidance, renew the creation. And then it will be as if the heavens have been torn open and God will be among us.

Amen.

Isaiah 40: 1-11
Psalm 85
Mark 1: 1-8

Preparing the Way!

When I was in junior high, the road that went past my family’s home was paved for the first time. We werent far from the end of the pavement, that had been laid when I was about 4, (I remember this because we got the last of the asphalt in the truck, just enough to make a tiny, thin patch of paved driveway by the back door). By the 1970s we were tired of walking from where the pavement ended to our new house in the muddy weather and tired of getting stuck in that same mud when we took a chance, but the road had not dried out enough in the spring. Clouds of dust enveloping each car in the dry summer season was no fun either and had become more dangerous with increasing traffic.

As I remember it, the project involved building up the road between two hills using fill from a couple of nearby fields. They built a long culvert under the bridge that passed over a small stream near our house and then dynamited the deck of the old bridge to smithereens. Each blast shook the house and the noise bothered my mom’s mom greatly. BUT, we kids got to push the plunger on the detonator unit, many times; it was kinda fun! Don’t tell anyone! I don’t think they were supposed to let children, or any unauthorized persons, anywhere near dynamite, even in the 1970s.

Canadian history is filled with stories of building bridges and tunnels and roads and canals over and through difficult terrain, such as between the each of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, the Rogers Pass in the mountains of BC, the Strait of Canso that links Cape Breton to Nova Scotia and, I have to mention it, the Confederation Bridge linking New Brunswick to PEI - The longest bridge in the world over seasonally ice-covered waters.

Today’s gospel story begins with the message of the wilderness preacher, the wild and kind of weird, John the Baptizer. He uses the images of road-building as a metaphor for the kind of work people should be doing to prepare for the “one who was to come.”

Back then, the visit of a dignitary to a remote area meant a great deal of advance preparation, even building a whole new road, or seriously upgrading one already existing. For this reason it was an easily understood image for the people listening to John’s preaching.

Are any of you Downton Abbey fans? You may have seen the movie which followed the conclusion of the series. It is 1927, and the Crawley household is thrown into a tailspin when they are informed that the King and Queen are coming to visit. The preparations are complicated and expectations, exact. Then, the Royal staff arrive and take over. They assume they are the only ones who know how to fulfil the expectations. With a little subterfuge, the Downton staff prove they can rise to the occasion and do a stellar job of protecting and welcoming the Royals.

These days, I think preparations for such an event fit into two basic categories: security and “looks”. Officials want to manage the situation so anyone who might want to harm the famous person does not get the chance AND to give that person a “good impression.”

Sometimes the preparations have a bit of a hidden motive. I read somewhere that just before the Pope (probably John Paul II) visited a slum somewhere in Latin America, the officials had running water installed on all the streets he was to visit, and ONLY those streets. I hope he was naive enough to believe that all the “houses” in the neighbourhood were that well equipped, but the officials tried!

Six or seven years ago, the community in which I lived, decided it needed to upgrade the sewer and water infrastructure, some of which had not been touched in over 100 years! The work proceeded very slowly because the people living there needed daily access to their driveways and functioning sewer and water systems. I think it might have been faster and cheaper to evacuate the town by sections, put us all up in hotels, and dig the holes only once and fill them in only once - but they did not ask me!

How do we prepare a highway for God? How do we do it in such a way that it is means real change and not just “window dressing?”

Well, John, a distant cousin of Jesus saw himself as the herald, the advance team of one, the one whose job it was to get the people ready for Jesus and his mission. His job was to tell the people they had to repent and be baptized. It was not Christian baptism though, as it was not until later that baptism became the ceremony of entry into membership of the community of faith, at first called “the way” and eventually “the church.”

I would like to focus on what it means to repent. First I want to say that it has little to do with feelings. If it were about feelings, you would just have to feel really, really, really badly about your actions. NO! It might start with feelings, but it has to go further.

Most families try and teach children to apologize if they have hurt someone.

A child says to her younger brother, “You are so stupid.”

The mother intervenes and says, “That is not a nice thing to say. You have to apologize to your brother.”

The child sighs, turns to her sibling and says, “I’m sorry you are stupid.”

There is no remorse in that situation and no apology!

In the original Greek, the word used for repent has the meaning of turning around and going in a different direction. The gospel of Matthew uses the imperative mood of the word; in that Gospel, it is written as a command. REPENT.

Several of my favourite tv series are classed as “police procedurals”. The police come along and find an armed robbery in progress or a suspect running away; they draw their weapons, point at the perpetrator and shout, “Stop, Police.” In that case, it is NOT a suggestion, or a request. It’s a command.

We give driving directions using imperatives. To get to Melfort, you first go through Codette, follow the road through Tisdale and turn right as soon as you cross the tracks. That right turn is vital. Sometimes, when my GPS unit thinks I have made an irreversible error it says to me, “turn around when possible.” In its computer brain, if you don’t turn, you will never get there!

When I was in university, one of my professors who spent his summers in Greece, told us that in modern Greece there were evangelical preachers who would stand on a street-corner and shout Μετανοειτε, the Greek word which means “REPENT.”

I suppose you have heard the small country church that needed the outside of the building painted. They decided to put it out to tender. The painter submitting the lowest bid in order to get the job really wanted to make more money so he watered down the paint. It looked great when he was finished.

Just as he finished putting his gear back in his truck, black clouds rolled in and down came the hail and the rain. When the skies cleared, he looked at the church and to his dismay, most of the paint had washed off and puddled along the foundation. A voice from the sky boomed, “Repaint, and thin no more.”

To repent is, essentially, to change; behaviour, attitudes, or priorities. The time leading up to Christmas is a time when many people, who don’t usually do so, give a little to the food bank or put a toy in a bin at the store for a child who might not have one otherwise. I wonder why generosity is easier at Christmas but isn’t even on people’s radar the other 11 months of the year.

In a sermon at a church gathering, a colleague who lives in a big city, said that he has told his children that part of the family income will go to other families - those who are in need. He was trying to model generosity and simpler living to his children by NOT giving them everything they wanted, even if they could afford it. He was trying to teach them that happiness does not come from having the best and the latest in the world of “in-things and gadgets”.

I don’t know about you, but I am a fan of Harry Potter, first the books and then, the movies. In the first book and then the movie, Harry Potter wins a spot on the Griffindor Quiddich team. Quiddich is a little like football, or like polo, but it is played on brooms while flying through the air! A secret benefactor gives him the latest and greatest broom, the Nimbus 2000! As his second year begins, he discovers that the father of one of the members of an opposing team gave each team member a Nimbus 2001, the next in the line of “latest and greatest.”

The advertising industry tries its best to get people to want and need the latest phone, or the newest model of their snow-machine, or jet ski or boat or car. The want everyone to be in a mad rush to have all of these things because they make more money. They like the consumers are in a mad rush for an ego boost, a tangible sign that they are good at something.

If we remember back a few weeks to the parable in which sheep and goats were separated, the criteria was not wealth, or status, or hard work, or the number of awards and commendations that one had accumulated, but the helping of the poor, the imprisoned and the lonely.

When we are young adults, so much effort is often spent on a certain trajectory. Those learning skilled trades, and teachers, have lots of course work and a number of practicums. Those headed for other professions have many years of university and have to be very focussed. Some of my classmates had full or part time work to pay their bills as they had children to nurture and support while going to school. I wondered how they did it - all their course work, a job, spent time with their family and managed to get any sleep at all. In hindsight, I think maybe they had a more realistic life-work balance than I did.

As time goes on, as adults we make choices or a series of choices about our priorities. Will we volunteer for this or that? Will we be generous to the poor or give to the other charities we have chosen or will we allow our needs to expand with our income? When we have a life change such as the birth of a child, a major job change, retirement and a downsized house, or move to assisted living or long term care, how will our financial priorities change if we have the ability to exercise a little freedom.

There was an old gospel hymn, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.” Following Jesus is not a one time decision - it’s not like we are on a jumbo jet headed for Canberra,Australia and we have no way to get off the plane. Christian faith is about having to decide each and every day the depth and degree of our commitment, and how many roads we can help build. The good thing is that each day is a new opportunity, a clean slate, a new chance to express in word and deed that we follow the one who gives us strength and insight and love, each and every day.

Amen.