"Seeing Advent" November 27, 2016

Exodus 33 Isaiah 2: 1-5 Matthew 24:36-44 What was your favorite part of Thanksgiving? Thirty some years ago, I offered to clean and stuff the turkey for my wife’s grandmother, and somehow that became my job. When children came along, we taught them to make pie crusts, and one prefers Apple, another Cherry, a third Pumpkin, and another Mincemeat. One person prefers homemade Cranberry sauce, while another has childhood memories that Cranberry sauce needs to have the rings from the inside of a can. But far and away, my favorite part of Thanksgiving is the opportunity with family and friends to stop and give thanks to God for just how blessed we are. I recognize that my ailments of the last few years all trace back to a bad fall from a ladder, and there have been many times when I feared, I might have to retire at age 58 no longer able to carry a baby around the Sanctuary, no longer able to endure standing to preach, no longer able to marry couples, in the last two years enduring 4 knee surgeries and recovery to be able to hope there could be life after. Looking round the table to my bride and our children, to places that had been occupied by grandparents and now were filled with new friends. We dare not take this life for granted, but pause in Sabbath before the coming Advent to give Thanks to God. It seems as though we have been on a spiraling treadmill, accelerating in speed. There was one Convention, then the Olympics, then another Convention, then Labor Day and the Start of School, Halloween, the Election, Veterans’ Day and Thanksgiving and we are off on the marathon to Christmas, New Years… Life is coming at us like headlights in the dark, and all we have known to do is to keep going onward. But Advent is about envisioning something different. Christian Faith is about Seeing the Advent of things around us. Seeing differently. That where others might simply see Water, we envision the Grace of God and Spirit of God washing over all of us in Forgiveness. Where others might see a simple meal of Bread and Wine, we envision a foretaste of the Kingdom of God, where there are no divisions, no hate, but we are gifted to see through the broken-ness to witness the Glory of God. The Book of Isaiah begins with an indictment of the way things are, the corruptions, the wars, the way people like sheep each try to get their own not concerned about anyone else, trodding down the grass and muddying the waters for others. When suddenly in Chapter Two The Prophet Isaiah, son of the High Priest Amoz, records “Seeing the Word of God.” That is not the way in which we talk is it? Ordinarily, we hear the Word. But the Word which came to Isaiah came as a Vision much as Martin Luther King Jr described having a Dream of world beyond Racism, and John F. Kennedy envisioned Americans landing on the Moon. Isaiah’s Vision was of a future where there would be no war no more. Growing up, my family had a sailboat, and my father loved to take us sailing. He taught each of us, to turn your head, until you could feel the wind equally in both ears, in this way knowing which way the wind blew and came from. When we got a little older, he would have us trade places with him at the tiller to steer. While the temptation was to jerk the tiller back and forth, or to allow the wind to blow where it would, the instruction we received was to pick a point on the far horizon and keep the bow headed in that direction. Most often that point was a barn atop a high hill, or some other beacon in the distance. Isaiah’s prophecy was of Seeing the Mountain of God as that landmark that everyone chose to head for. Instead of each going off in their own direction, or competing as in a race, everyone was drawn to the glory of God. The point is not that all the world would come to be Jewish, or Christian, but that instead of simply going wherever the wind blew, or going off in our own directions, we would each seek God. I love the image, that when the Hebrew people realized they had done wrong by fashioning a golden calf as an idol for themselves, Moses used to set the Tent of Meeting outside their encampment, and when he went in to meet with God, every person stood at the door of their tent to watch. Yet still Moses sought something greater, to be able to witness the Glory of God, and God made accommodation that Moses could be hid in a crag in the rock by the hand of God, until God passed, then Moses could witness where God had been, and evidence of God’s presence but not where God was going. The English Translations of the Bible describe Isaiah’s Vision being “It shall come to pass in the Latter Days” but that is not exactly what the Hebrew says. The Hebrew is more like “In the back of the days” or better “In the midst of the present.” What Isaiah is describing is that the Present is Pregnant with God’s Presence. There is a subtlety to life, that God is about to do a new thing, and we need to be atuned to Witness God’s Doing a New Thing. In Matthew, Jesus described that this is like the time of Noah, when God took away all that was ordinary and God preserved a tiny remnant, only a couple of each kind. Over the Centuries this passage has been taken by the Left Behind Movement, to emphasize that you better get yourself in order, because the Cloud is coming and you do not want to get left out. But ironically, what Jesus said was just the opposite. That those who were unworthy would be the ones taken, and the ones left behind were the ones chosen by God to inherit the earth. Suddenly our seasons changed. A week ago yesterday it was 65 degrees in Central New York. People were outside in t-shirts and shorts. Now the snow lays all about, the skies are overcast and gray, and sunlight itself seems different. Advent requires that we see life differently. Instead of the rat-race we have been about, to stop, rather than escalating fear and distrust we need to be about making our technology into something new. When I was very young, we had a wooden train-set, made by the Larabee family here in Skaneateles New York, perhaps you had one too. At the time, I did not know of Skaneateles, but those train tracks had with them blocks for houses, and a red block with two adjoining rectangles like the towers of our church. I am told that there used to be an actual train that ran from Syracuse to Skaneateles, the Station and Wheel House being where the Banks and Tops Grocery is on Fennel Street. But that when the train stopped running, an there were a pair of steel tracks reaching all the way from here to Syracuse, that someone took up the steel and had it sliced into razor blades! That is a story about recycling and making Smooth-faced men out of the railroad pioneers who settled this territory! The added emphasis of the Scriptures is that the steel of Swords and Weapons would be folded over, heated and hammered growing in strength to be made into plows to cut the earth and rock. It seems I can no longer read this passage from Matthew, about the thief breaking in at night, without recalling our first year here. That we were having a new roof put on our home, and the College-aged roofers arrived each morning, often before our sons came down to watch television, or my wife and I to make coffee. Late Friday night, our Dog began making a ruckus, and having already been to Town Court because of her barking, we quieted her down and went back to sleep. On Saturday morning, I came downstairs and found a young man with torn slacks, looking very disheveled, asleep on our couch. I walked passed to make coffee, resolving that it must be one of the roofers who was not feeling well and had come in to rest. But the more I thought that, the more presumptuous it seemed. SO, I took a cup of coffee and roused the man from sleep. He inquired where he was, and said he had been at a Wedding Rehearsal the night before where the other Groomsmen had urged him to drink too much. He had known the family who lived in this house before us, and knew how to break in quite quietly, so as to find rest. After we were certain he was safe and had finished his coffee we sent him on his way. BUT you need to know there are many connections in this Village, and if you name to a pastor that you were at a Wedding Rehearsal the night before, it does not take 3 minutes for the clergy to know at which church and who is responsible. Twenty minutes later the Priest, the young man and his father, were back at our home apologizing for breaking our back door and disturbing our sleep. We thought nothing more of it, and said nothing to anyone. Until one of the College students from the Church came home for Christmas, and described that there were instructions being given at parties, that if you have had too much to drink, Go to the Pastor’s house, the Back door is open, they will make certain you are safe and give you coffee in the morning before sending you on your way. And I decided that was not a bad reputation for the Pastor to have.