"Demanding the Impossible" December 3, 2017

Isaiah 64:1-9 Mark 13:24-37 Your Joys are our joys, your laughter brings laughter to us, Your Sorrows are our Sorrows, your Fears and Nightmares we accept, we feel your Tears, because you have become Part of us, God is part of your life, that does not, cannot ever, go away. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was formless, a void, Shadows of Dark covered the face of the deep where light have never been, while the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters. God commanded “Let there be Light”; and there was light! And God saw that the light was Good; and God separated the light from the dark.” Having witnessed images of the Blackness of Space, having stared into the pitch of night, having awoken with nightmares, this image of hopelessness, black darkness, seems the appropriate beginning. What I love about the Bible, is that we can take a word-picture like this: “The earth was a formless void covered in shadows of deep darkness” at face value. We can also peel back the layers of time and space, to an image before Once upon a time, before the Big Bang, to suggest that that formless dark, deep shadows, where no light had ever yet been, an image before time and space, was WITHOUT GOD. Yet, when God established time and space, reality as we know it, God did so by bringing LIGHT into the world. The difficulty is that life requires balance, homeostasis, order, so God did not eliminate darkness with Light. God called Light into being, and part of the nature of Free Will is our natural selection of Light versus Darkness. There is a certain clandestine fun to darkness. A velvety blanket of Secrecy, where nothing escapes, nothing is certain, everything is hidden. The problem, we spend a life-time learning, is that DARK is a vacuum, SECRETS have power over us. The last several weeks, much like WIKI Leaks, secrets of powerful individuals in every arena, have Come-to-Light. People whom we did not know personally; but whom we felt we trusted and welcomed into our homes, every morning, evening, and before we closed our eyes, people whom we trusted with world power... The fact that these men succumbed to their own worst is not surprising… This week, the Hospital created to bring life in South Sudan, Our Staff dedicated to save Mothers and Children, was the scene of our own MASS SHOOTING. NO, the surprising fact, is how long and at what cost these men lived in their own Darkness, telling lies, revealing only half-truths when those were found out, rather than coming out into the light. These armed youth had been bred and nursed to kill their Enemy, believing no one in the outside knew, no one cared. The wonderful part about being a Church, is that as much as History describes us as Saints, In Church we each know we each are Sinners, who have also done wrong. The wonderful simplicity of Faith is that we move heaven and earth lying to others, trying to keep secrets by telling more lies, BUT when secrets are exposed to Light, the world does not end. Especially because we in the Church share in being the Body of Christ, that we will never abandon you, you are not alone. A few weeks ago a young child shared during the Concerns that his hair had been falling out, and he was having tests for his parents to learn why. We vowed, as we do now… Your Joys are our joys, your laughter brings laughter to us, Your Sorrows are our Sorrows, your Fears and Nightmares we accept, we feel your Tears, because you have become Part of us, God is part of your life, that does not, cannot ever, go away. We have many favorite verses from the Prophet and Priest, Isaiah: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord of Hosts: The whole earth full of God’s Glory! Comfort, Comfort my people… A Voice in the Wilderness says Cry… All flesh is grass… They will mount up with Wings like Eagles, they shall run and not grow weary… but this is different, this passage from Isaiah is a PRAYER OF LAMENT, somewhat of an accusation to God, that if you are God “Why not come down here and act like a God?” ADVENT is not simply the DICKENS Nostalgia of Roasted Chestnuts and Bing Crosby. Instead of sitting on Santa’s Lap, Wishing for what we believe we cannot have, ADVENT is DEMANDING THE IMPOSSIBLE: To no longer keep secrets. To approach others: strangers, neighbors, co-workers, family, that person in the mirror, not as those we take advantage of, but as if they are God in our reality! Let us DEMAND A DEATH TO KILLING! Let us DEMAND GOD ENTER OUR LIVES! We cannot have God on Sunday mornings for an hour, then put God away when we want to live secrets. For God to come, Once, for All people, God needs to RIP OPEN THE BARRIERS between us that there would be no power in SECRETS anymore. A problem with Hebrew translation into English comes in VERSE 5: “Behold, God was Angry and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?” None of us were made to Sin, because God was angry. In English we reversed the phrases… BEHOLD WE SINNED & GOD WAS ANGRY, making the emphasis of this verse whether because we have continued to sin a very long time, months, years, decades, generations, Can God still forgive us? ADVENT is a brief 4 Weeks, where we live Knowing God has Come into the World AND ALSO believing in God’s Coming into Each of our Lives. This is the time of “ALREADY/NOT YET”. There is a song about “You better watch out, You better not Cry, Better not Pout I am telling you Why…” Which fits with waiting for the Messiah. Rather than bi-furcating, living ignoring what we believe, saying we want God in our lives, but not when we are cheating, not when we are going to get caught. Instead, live as if Children waiting for Grandma and Grandpa to arrive! Live with Hope and Excitement, rather than fear. Funny, this passage has been used by those believing in THE END TO THE WORLD as proof of a coming Apocalypse. This is not some NOSTRADOMUS Prediction… Here, Jesus describes Reality: The Temple at Jerusalem has been destroyed for ever. There have been and continue to be WARS and rumors of War. This is ASSURANCE… AFTER the Tribulation, the SUN will be DARKENED, the Moon will Not Give Light. Just when it seems DARKNESS and SECRECY have WON, the Messiah Comes Again. IT is NOT about WHEN; Jesus describes that even HE as the Son of God Does Not Know, Only God knows. Pay attention to the World around us… Have the Leaves lost their Trees? Have the Temperatures become Colder? So what is going to happen? For Months the days have been getting shorter and Darkness has been expanding, YET After Winter, what has ALWAYS come? With less time in darkness and greater light upon God’s world.