Repent: BHAV, December 6, 2009

Malachi 3:1-4
Luke 3:1-6
The Scriptures for this morning are not what we are accustomed to. For many of us this calls attention to the most radical and frightening concept of faith. For, we are a people who “make do”, we know how to cope and get along, no matter the circumstance, and the Word that comes from Malachi and from John the Baptist is not Make Do, but rather REPENT. Do we still believe in REPENTANCE? Literally, turning around to go in a different direction. Little by little, through so many fears, our hope and our humanity have been compromised.

We hear of Wars and Rumors of Wars. Terrorist attacks and Economic crisis. We listen to the NEWS and hear reports of a Veteran returning home, who then stabs and kills his friends; we hear reports of a young man murdering his Grandmother over money for drugs; we have become so accustomed to stories of a Postal worker going on a rampage, we have created the term “Going Postal”; and we affirm, there may be hard days but we are not yet that bad.
I sit on the Ethics Committee for a local hospital, and the Psychiatrists tell me that they no longer use the classification “Sanity versus Insanity”, in part because there are so many different Dementia and Depressions, in part because of the stigma of Mental Illnesses, but more because all of us in our coping, in our making do, have accepted realities that are a little insane.

Of necessity we have created a PROGRAMMED CULTURE. On one extreme is Chaos and disorder, on the other are the looming multitude of increasing responsibilities. A few generations ago, we spent our entire life in a single community, knowing the people our parents and grandparents had known. Today, we are connected around the world, we have the opportunity to travel, to learn, but our contacts and contracts and things we have to do, have grown exponentially, to where the only way we could function was to make do, make accommodations and program a controlled routine. The fallacy of a Programmed Culture is that as rational and reasoned as we are, we are also human. Humans need to BELIEVE, we need MYSTERY and MIRACLE. Without Mystery, a programmed culture is flat, ordered and routine, a stagnant image of what once was. Without Miracle, there is only what is, and not what could be. Recall and remember how a friend with Cancer, had that Cancer go into remission. Recall and remember stories of shipping the tools and materials for the Clinic Sudan around the world, with reports of their being hijacked, and lost, when suddenly they drove up to exactly where and when they needed to be. Recall and remember that when the contractors needed water to make concrete, and the only well had run dry, they went to a wedding in the community and a well-driller came as a guest. Throughout the last five years, we have supplied medicines and staff, but in order to change mortality we needed to change birthing practices and mothers who had lost pregnancies were those delivering others. This week the first class of Birth Attendants were trained, and where the goal was to be 20, 25 completed the course.

Rather than Making Do, making accommodations, programming ourselves, we need Repentance, to believe in a Vision beyond ourselves and beyond our ability to program and control. We are in a season of preparation, but not the preparations we have listed. We have lists, of home repairs and honey-dos, of Christmas cards and letters, shopping, decorating, making certain everyone has what they want, even if not what they need. But the Gift of God that is Christmas, is not automatic, not programmed, not for us to buy or make. The gift of God that is Christmas is the Only HOPE of the Hopeless, Faith to those who have Lost Believing in anything, Love to those who Cannot Feel.

To Repent, is not to focus on Our Hopes: for a Flat Screen or a Wii, a Puppy or Coat, a Diamond or a Car. To repent is to name the wounds and hurts and hopelessness of our lives, to name it and claim it as our own, and to believe beyond that reality, beyond what we know, that Only God can provide Hope. Speaking with a group of friends recently, each described having a Grandson or daughter returning home from a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan, with possibility of having to return. A friend whose wife has a number of tumors in the brain. Church leadership divided over this issue and that. Couples married for decades considering divorce. Children away at College wrestling with depression and loneliness. In our humanity, we can make allowances, we can make do with all these circumstances, a little of us dying with each one. Or, we can Hope against Hopelessness, trusting that God can and will change reality.

Our PREPARATIONS are to name the Hopelessness, to own our responsibility for these, and also to name our intent to change, to stand with one another, because alone is hopeless, but wherever two or three are gathered there is the assurance of God's Spirit, and the possibility of fellowship, encouragement, trust.

In previous years we have named that Jim Collins is a Business Management expert, who coined the phrase BHAG to represent Big Hairy Audacious Goals, like American Architects creating the Empire State Building in response to construction of the Eiffel Tower, Kennedy's pledge in response to the Russians putting a Dog in Space that within a decade we would land on the Moon. For the Church, for this Advent, I would challenge that instead of setting Goals we believe in Big Hairy Audacious Visions. A Vision is beyond ourselves, a Vision is from God.

John the Baptsist's Vision was that Mountains and Hills would be brought low, and valleys would be lifted up. The reality is that all of life cannot be a HIGH, we cannot go from Mountaintop to mountaintop experience, in part because our stride is human, smaller, but also because we need to come down to dwell among other people to share the vision, to work together to repent, to change the world. Mountains and Hills being brought lower, is a metaphor that we can use our gifts, our abilities and opportunities to fill in the rough places, to raise expectations. In addition, what I love about BIG HAIRY AUDACIOUS VISIONS is that rather than being a BHAG that means nothing to us, this acronym is BHAV, that our Vision creates in us new Behaviors, repentance to live life differently.