Advent
3A 2013
With Guest Artists from Walnut Lodge and the Ballet Theatre Shenango Valley
Father Adam Trambley
December 15, 2013,
St. John’s Sharon
We are waiting.
Today this church, along with many other liturgical
churches, is celebrating. Advent is a
time of waiting for Christ’s coming, both as the baby in the manger at
Christmas and as the King of the Universe on the last day. The question today is what is the world going
to look like when Jesus shows up?
Some people seem to expect Jesus to come on a sleigh drawn
by flying reindeer. Well, usually the
expression is more sophisticated, but not the idea. They believe that we can have an encounter
with God that really doesn’t require anything of us. Set out a plate of milk and cookies and Jesus
will show up with whatever we want. Then we can go about our business as usual,
only with more stuff. I don’t think that
this understanding of the coming Kingdom of God is true or very helpful to
anybody.
Other folks seem to have an understanding like John the
Baptist’s vision. The strength of the oppressors is broken. Captives are set free. Those who rely on God will be rewarded. John got the idea right. He just didn’t understand the method. He wanted his Messiah to show up, tell
everybody he was right, and then burn away anything or anyone that wasn’t in
agreement. Too many Christians today have
expectations of Jesus are similar to John.
They miss that Jesus loves everybody and comes for everybody and is
going to engage everybody in whatever ways he can. They miss the boundless joy, the abundant
hospitality, and the unfathomable love overflowing onto all creation that will
come with the Kingdom of God.
That overwhelming, incomprehensible, awe-inspiring love is the
fundamental characteristic of the Kingdom of God given freely by the one John
proclaimed and the one we are waiting for, Jesus Christ our Messiah, our Lord,
our King. Jesus is the one who fills the
hungry with good things, who lifts up the lowly, who cleanses the outcast. Jesus is the one who allows the lion to lie
down with the lamb, the wolf with the kid, and makes it safe for the children
to play with cobras. Jesus is the one
who makes the crocus blossom abundantly, who causes streams to break forth in
the desert, and orchestrates all the beauties of nature. Jesus is coming to bring in a Kingdom so full
of goodness and truth and beauty that not even fools will be able to miss it,
and we going into it singing with everlasting joy.
The problem for us today is that the Kingdom isn’t here
yet. We know that pain and brokenness
still exists. We see the evils that
people do to each other, and, when we are honest, recognize the many instances
where we ourselves have failed. We’ve experienced
the sickness, the harm, and the tragedy that seems to be woven into the
structures of the world around us. We
can be so overwhelmed that we lose sight of the Kingdom of God we are hoping
for. Yet the darkness sometimes
surrounding us is precisely why we need to find ways to live out the values of
the Kingdom now. By living into Kingdom
in tangible ways, we are able to announce its in-breaking presence to ourselves
and the world around us, even while we wait for Jesus to come and finally usher
it in.
How do we do that?
Well, we’ve seen the cartoons with people carrying signs on street
corners reading “Repent. The end is near.”
There may be a time for such placards, but I’m not sure they are so
effective. Instead, we proclaim the Kingdom of God when we
demonstrate the love, the goodness, the truth or the beauty that Jesus lived.
We’ve had some great examples of people announcing the
Kingdom in various ways recently. Pope
Francis has captured the hearts of the world because he refuses to hold onto
anything, including basically good religious pieties, that prevent him from
sharing God’s love with the poor and the outcasts. Instead of delegating care for the needy to
some cardinal he may be sneaking out into the middle of the night to spend time
with the poor. He hugs those with
physical deformities, he washes the feet of those who don’t fit in, and he
doesn’t stop proclaiming in word and deed the same things Jesus announced to
John. How can we not see God at work in him?
How can we not want to spend eternity with people who have that much
love for everyone? How can we not hope
that God will transform us with the courage to love our brothers and sisters
with the same reckless abandon? How can
we not want to follow such a man into a deeper relationship with whatever God
he is serving?
People throughout the world also remembered Nelson Mandela
this week. Here is a man who went into
prison with a righteous injustice for his people, looking for a violent
overthrow of those in power, sounding like John the Baptist in some ways. Then, through the mercy of God, he became
transformed through decades in prison to understanding the incredible power of
God’s reconciling love. He wasn’t
perfect, and people of good-will can disagree about any political choices. But he came out of prison understanding that
he no longer had enemies, and he worked to bring healing and unity to a divided
country. He built relationships with
anyone willing to work with him, even those that could have been considered
enemies, for the good of his people. He oversaw
the formation of a Truth in Reconciliation chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
that actually allowed people who had done heinous crimes to each other during
the Apartheid era to face each other, confess their sins, and go forward
together. He lived the risks of trying
to govern by the reconciling love and justice proclaimed in the gospels instead
of the real-politic of power and self-interests.
We can take these two men as models. Like Francis, we can
stretch ourselves in love and care for the poor and outcast. Like Nelson who was injured in ways most of
us can’t even imagine, we can always seek forgiveness and reconciliation with
those who have hurt us and who we have hurt.
But there is one other way I want to talk about today that we can live
into the Kingdom of God. We have all
these artists here today, and beauty is fundamentally a characteristic of God. When we focus on bringing forth the beautiful
in art, music, and dance we are offering people an opportunity to come before
God. Passionate beauty in any medium
makes our spirits soar beyond drudgery of daily life into the glorious heart of
the almighty God. Beauty is at God’s
core, and we are made in the image of that beauty. In many ways, without the beautiful in nature
and in art, we can’t really know God or ourselves.
This need for beauty is why churches are filled with
architecture and sculpture and stained-glass and woodwork and tapestries and
color and music and poetry and even costume and dance. If we want to point people to the Kingdom of
God, we have to at least try to look like it a little bit. The Kingdom of God is lusher than the most
verdant meadow; the Kingdom of God is more glorious than the most resplendent
sunset; the Kingdom of God is filled with music richer than the best Bach
cantatas or doo-wop harmonies; the Kingdom of God is filled with seraphim
flying and saints dancing more passionately and gracefully than the most
elaborate stage productions. The Kingdom
of God is so beautiful that we desperately need people like Ron and our choir,
and James and Abbey, and Sam, and Miss Jill, and these vocalists and dancers
that have joined us today to dedicate themselves to their craft so that we can
experience some greater portion of who God is and the Kingdom we are yearning for. Some days that happens in church, and many
days it happens in other places. But wherever
and whenever it happens, we are blessed, and are grateful.
So we are waiting.
Waiting for Christmas. Waiting
for Jesus. Waiting for the Kingdom of
God. But we are not waiting without
hope. Instead we are looking forward to
the love, the reconciliation, and the beauty of the Kingdom, living them out
whenever and wherever we can today, so that we can recognize them in their
fullness when the Kingdom finally comes.
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