December 15, 2002
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Third Sunday of Advent Advent is about looking back and looking forward at the same time. The season began on a bleak note that called us to reflect on what the coming of Christ then, and the coming of Christ in the future means for us. We are moving toward a time of celebration. Now on this third Sunday in Advent, “the coming of the Lord is accompanied by great joy on the part of the people. As anticipation moves toward the moment of his birth, our once muted expectation turns more and more into expressions of gladness and celebration. That which was past has gone and a new day has begun to dawn. There is no suppressing the consequent mood of hopeful ecstasy”. (Texts for Preaching – Year B. Louisville. Westminster/John Knox Press. 1993, p.21) We know that one of the things that brings us hope in these days has to do with gift giving. The now adult son of friends of mine remembers that when he was a little boy, he and his sister would take the toy catalogs and put a mark by all the things they wanted. As and adult he recalls that every Christmas morning, he would look at this gifts and think “there was more stuff on my list than this”. Many of us are like this young man. We have a Christmas wish list. Either we have actually written down and left in plain sight a few of the items we would like to receive as presents, or we are well along in dropping some hints about what we would love to find under the tree or in our Christmas stocking on December 25. We love to get gifts, and we probably enjoy giving them too. That is all good, but it is not the real point of the season. The real point is that all of the gifts we give or receive are symbolic. They are, whether great or small a representation of the gift of light and life we have been given in Jesus Christ. How do we show our gratitude for what God has done? Gratitude is our response to the gift we have received. We are grateful to God today for the gifts of hope, peace, joy and love that we have. We are grateful for the gift of Jesus Christ whose arrival we celebrate even as we proclaim his presence with us now and as we wait for his presence with us in the future. God has given us the gift of a Son and a savior. So what can we give to God? What gift can we offer? We can give God a Christmas gift. I know it sounds a bit presumptuous, if not preposterous to speak of giving gifts to God at Christmas, but we can. Our lessons today suggest four gifts we can give. How do we show our gratitude? First, we remember. The opening words of Psalm 126 recall a time when God kept the people safe in a time of danger. The time was likely during the exile when the people of Israel lost everything they had except their faith in God. Somehow they knew that the God who led their ancestors from Egypt to the promised land, and who was with them in exile would not abandon them now. We can give God the gift of memory. Do you remember that moment in your life when it felt like it was all gone? The future you had planned may as well have been a fantasy. The hope you had was dashed. The strength you had was depleted and the God you worshiped was gone, or at least it felt that way. It was hard work just to make it through the day. Yet somehow you not only made it through that day, but the day after and the day after that. And then, little by little, you remembered that God had given you life, that God had given you peace, that God had time after time, picked you up when you felt down and almost out. You might be different than you were before, but even so, when you remembered what God had done in your life, something good within you began to stir. I know some people are still in that lonely and hard place. While you are, feel others praying with you here. Hold on to the remnant of your faith on this Joy Sunday and let a dream for a new future take root. Find new hope for your Spirit, feel your strength renewed. Know that the day is not far off when all that was lost will be restored. God is in this house and in our lives, and because God is here, we can remember and be glad. Israel remembered when God was the source of their rescue and release. They remember that redemption was the cause of joy and laughter. They remembered that in their new life with God they looked so different that people noticed and said, “God has done great things for them. They called back – “yes, God had done marvelous things for us”. When we remember that God has given us the gift of this space for work and worship, when we remember that God has given us companions and friends with whom to share our lives, we can say, “God has done great things for us”. God has given us a spirit of openness and inclusion that leads us to welcome folks here in the name of the Christ who has welcomed us. We can say, that God has done great things for us and if God did it for us before, God will surely do it again. So we share our memories and our stories of rescue and redemption and we say, “please God, do it again. We may be sad now for what we’ve lost, but we remember your goodness and we are ready to shout with joy. We may go out feeling burdened with tears stinging our eyes, but we remember God how you share our burdens with us, and bear the ones that are too heavy for us. Please God, do it again”. As we recall what God has done for us, we recall as one writer puts it: “that like Israel-of-old, the church remembers God’s saving deeds, but in this instance they are memories vested in Jesus of Nazareth – in his birth, in his life, in his redemptive death and resurrection. And because we remember what God has done, we also have certain hopes and expectations concerning what God can and will do; that he who came once will come again, and that the interim is a time in which the church shows the living Christ to the world by means of its witness and its works of service” (Texts for Preaching, p. 26). Because we remember, there are other gifts we can give to God in this giving season. The second gift we can give God the gift of worship. The letter to the Thessalonians describes worship in three short imperatives. Rejoice, pray, give thanks. These are not activities to be done only between 10:30 am and 11:45 am on Sunday morning. “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all things”. Are we to be happy all the time? No. Never despair? No. Never allow ourselves to grieve and mourn? Absolutely not. We understand that life can be hard, that there are tragedies and disappointments we have to confront. How then do we rejoice, pray ceaselessly, and give thanks in hard times? We can do it as we assume these two truths. The first is that worship of God is indeed the context for all of life, not just the part we devote to God during our time in the sanctuary. Whether good or bad be our lot, a life of worship, of seeking to please and honor God in all things and of doing God’s will means that we rejoice in God’s presence, offer prayers of praise and lament, and we are thankful that we know that God exists. The second truth is that God calls us to go deep sometimes, to not live life only on the surface where life is easier, but also in deep places where life is harder. The journey calls for deep faith and deep trust in God. (New Interpreters Bible, volume XI Louisville, Abingdon, 2000, p. 733-734). That can happen when we worship God. Because we remember and because we worship, we have a third gift to give. We can give to God the gift of discernment. That is, we can give to God the gift of recognizing who God is and what God wants of us. Discerning is a life long process of learning to distinguish God’s voice and God’s will in all the noise and chaos of our lives. That chaos wants us to believe that we are helpless and utterly on our own. A discerning spirit tells us that the Holy Spirit of God is with us and that it empowers us. So when we feel some divine energy moving in us, we can let it lead is. It will not get out of control or allow us to do or say things that are hurtful. If it does, we are under the spell of another kind of spirit. It is not God’s. In the spirit of discernment, if there are prophets among us, people called and commissioned by God who can speak truth to power and truth to the powerless, let’s hear them. Listen critically. Measure what you hear against what you know. Then use what you know and by the grace of God resist the evil that surrounds us. Keep away from what devalues people, dismisses you, and dishonors God. Give the gift of discernment. As we remember what God has done, as we worship, as we know who God is, the fourth gift we can give to God this Christmas is the gift of holiness. We may hear that word holiness and get nervous. We ask, does being holy mean that we organize our lives around a list of pleasurable things to avoid – no dancing, no drinking, no games of chance, ever? No. Holiness is not about deprivation. It is about embracing what pleases God. It means that we live our lives in Christ who has come to us as light that no amount of darkness can overcome. That is it. We remember what God has done for us. We give honor and glory to God for being God. We learn to listen and to distinguish among all the voices that call to us which is the voice of God, and we live lives that are pleasing and open to God. These are not so much gifts we give to God, but rather they are all gifts that God through Jesus Christ has given to us. God has led us to recognition of God in a world of demonic chaos. God has called us to holiness and will through his son and by his own Spirit give us what we need to live faithful lives. That is God’s gift to us, and it leads us to ask: “What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a wise one, I would do my part; Yet what I can give him, give him my heart” (In The Bleak Midwinter. Christina G. Rosetti). Our gift to God is to give back to God the gifts God has given to us by given ourselves heart and soul to God by being the church of Jesus Christ in this place. Every time we come to the table, we remember the saving acts of Christ. Every time we insist, even through tears, on rejoicing, on praying, on thanking God for what we have, we are in an attitude of worship. Each time we work through and pray through, and talk through, and think through difficult issues, and keep before us the living God, we have acted with discernment. Each time we remember that we belong to Christ and that Christ has given himself to us completely, and we begin to live as if being in relationship with him matters, we live as a sanctified people. We do not have to worry about whether the gifts are the right size or color, of if they are age appropriate – God is after all eternal. We need not bother with giving a single thought to whether the gifts come from the right store, or if we are the right sort of person to give the gifts. These come from the heart and if our hearts are right, the gifts will be too. All we have to do is put our trust in God, through Jesus Christ, and believe that we are called by Christ, and that he is faithful to bring us where we need to be. And when that happens, the worst of what we can be can be let go and the best of what we have been will be even better. Let’s give God the gift of ourselves this Christmas. The one who calls us is faithful, and he will do this. Thanks be to God. Amen. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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