December 6, 2009
The Second Sunday of Advent (Year C)
Baruch 5:1-9; Canticle 16; Philippians 1:3-11;
Luke: 3:1-6
There are two themes in today’s lessons that caught my attention this week. The first from Baruch is about putting on a robe of God’s righteousness and a crown of everlasting glory after we have taken off the garment of sorrow and affliction.
The second theme is the theme from the gospel of preparing a straight path for the Lord where every hill and mountain shall be made low and all the roughness made smooth.
These two themes, so common to Advent and to our thinking about the coming of Christ, coming as a baby in the manger, coming as Christ again, these themes are ingrained in our minds, our hymns, our words of prayer. But I wonder, how often do we stop to ponder these themes and take them into our consciousness apart from the prayers and the churchy talk we hear this time of year.
Most of us – and I am particularly guilty of this – do not think of these themes in our day to day life. There is no waiting for Christ to come again in the day to day life of people in twenty-first century United States of America. If we ever do think about the idea of putting on the garment of righteousness, it comes in the form of winning arguments, being right, knowing our actions are the right actions. Our way of thinking, our perceptions, our viewpoint, from politics to religion, wars to chess games, family arguments to friendly debates over favorite sports teams – we all like to believe we have the righteous viewpoint and are therefore righteous in God’s eyes too (if we even stop to think about how God fits into our righteousness), and that those who differ or vary from our viewpoint are somehow lacking God’s support (if we even think of God then either!)
Really believing in the righteousness of our opponents, detractors, political or social foes is one of the most difficult things we have to do if we are truly to wear a garment of God’s righteousness! And it certainly is essential to making paths straight and mountains level. Frankly, when we really robe ourselves in a garment of God’s righteousness as opposed to our own, it is much easier to see the equal righteousness of the opposition, even to see those people who are differing in viewpoint from us as beloved. And then it’s easier to do what the second lesson suggests, which is to make the crooked straight and the mountains into valleys.
If we hold on to Jesus, the great leveler of all, then we will be far more concerned about robing others in righteousness than robing ourselves. If we hold Jesus at the center of our being and before our own need to promote our own “agenda” (as the saying goes), Jesus is the One who makes all level and all people are equally loved and equally judged, equally righteous and equally unrighteous.
There was a time when sins were rated in the catholic church as venial, mortal, etc. But once Protestantism came into being the error of that kind of thinking was exposed and the commonality of our sinfulness is what we can claim, never that we are more or even less sinful than anyone else, more or less righteous. There is of course right and wrong—but as we all know there are far more shades of gray than there are black and white anything—even right and wrong.
So what does all this mean to us as we prepare for Advent? We know that Christ is coming, just as we know Christ is in our hearts, and just as we claim that Jesus is our redeemer, companion, and mediator. So two thousand plus years after Jesus came the first time, the mountains are still standing and those of us who live in New England at least know there are still many crooked paths, not to mention highways, streets, and byways around here that are plenty crooked!
So, like all biblical passages, I think it means that we do not have to take these passages literally, but we do have to understand their metaphorical reality, the impact of knowing what it is to see Christ in the face of all others, to find them righteous even in opposition to our own perceived righteousness. Even more, I think it means that knowing Christ transforms our world, and nothing will be the same as it has been, once we recognize Christ. Once, because of our relationship with Christ, we find the holiness in those we think the most unholy, or are compelled to recognize it because of the power of Christ working in our new way of seeing and understanding things, then the impossible becomes possible and that which was “always that way” – even a metaphorical mountain as high as Everest – suddenly is not.
I think it also means that we have to work hard to recognize Christ’s power working in us. For as I said few of us humans are capable of robing ourselves in God’s righteousness of impartiality and love. We are too absorbed in our own way of seeing things.
There are many ways we practice that robing: one of them is by giving away out of the substance of our being. We pledge to take care of this community because in this community we are challenged to meet Christ in unexpected ways, as well as, of course, in ways that bring comfort and peace and familiarity. Today being Pledge Sunday you may put your pledge in the basket in the center when you come forward for communion. If you have forgotten your pledge form, extras are in the back of the church. But pledging is only one way of preparing ourselves to be robed in God’s righteousness.
Another is to make stewardship a part of our every day way of being. And I would suggest that means taking care of the planet God has entrusted to our care. It means robing ourselves in the care of our air, water, and earth as truly as God who created it all, would. There is righteousness that feels godly – at least to me – in caring for the earth as we are expected to care for each other. At the very least it is good practice for framing our lives with the presence of Christ working in everything we think, say, and do. There is an insert in your bulletin that describes a candle light vigil that will take place next Saturday night. Churches will walk from St. Matthew’s Methodist church to West Acton Baptist church to draw attention to and in support of the Copenhagen conference on global warming that meets all this next week.
And finally two other events are in the news this week that I think strongly invite us to think about putting on God’s righteousness or seeing “others” as beloved. The first is an incident at congregation Beth Elohim here in Acton this week. A swastika made of wood planks was left at their doorstep along with a pumpkin with a swastika carved in it. This symbol of hatred, racism, and Nazism breeds all the things that I would say are the opposite of God’s righteousness. Yet this incident has brought all the clergy of many denominations and faiths together to write a letter to the editor that condemns the actions of placing these despicable objects on the synagogue’s doorstep, but not the people. For even people who would do something so inflammatory and cruel are God’s beloved. That is a hard thing to imagine but as followers of Christ, we can only assume that is true.
The second incident is that last Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent, Bishop Shaw decided that the “pastoral generosity” to interpret marriage canons in an historically new way that was offered at General Convention to all bishops who live in jurisdictions where marriages can legally take place between people of the same gender, authorizes him to allow the clergy of this diocese to perform such marriages. We are not obligated to do so, but we may. This is a topic that causes us to take sides, to see our viewpoint as righteous, even as those who see it in completely opposite ways see their viewpoint as righteous; we see ourselves as right and others as wrong, no matter which side of the fence we are sitting on. So this, too, is an opportunity for all of us to practice putting on that garment, that robe of God’s righteousness, not claiming that our side is God’s side, but learning, hearing from, and trusting that God is working in those who differ from us most completely.
As I said in the beginning, it’s hard for humans to think as God thinks; it’s hard for humans to imagine those with differing viewpoints being as righteous in God’s eyes over such decisions/issues as these. Yet, here they are! There is a chance for us to practice loving those who would put symbols of hatred on the doorstep of a place of worship of people most of us know and love. There is a chance for us to practice caring for this community with our pledges, caring for it as God would. There is a chance for us to recognize marriages that we could not have imagined taking place when we were children because we love the people who make them. There is a chance to practice caring for creation as God would in caring for the earth. There are millions of other ways. These are just the ones on my mind this week. We are never without opportunity, but only if we dare to robe ourselves in that robe of righteousness as God would.
When Christ comes again, we liken it to the mountains being made flat and the paths being made straight. Maybe if we are able to live into these possibilities presented to us to practice holiness and God’s righteousness, maybe we will recognize Christ coming again, here and now. Again and again.
Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd