Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from December 4, 2005

“And the Peace That Surpasses

All Understanding”

Rev. Thomas Ratmeyer

Scriptures:

Isaiah 40:1-11

Mark 1:1-8

How is your season of Advent going?  How are you doing?  Have you found a way to make Advent a part of your week outside of church?  Some people have an advent wreath at home.  Some have looked up prayers and scriptures for each of the four weeks.  Some may even sing a hymn at home.

Advent is a time that invites us to draw inward.  Maybe it means unplugging the phone for an hour and making a cup of tea.  It is alright if your spirituality looks for other vehicles than a traditional advent wreath.  Maybe it would be fun to specifically shop for one beautiful candle that will be your advent light this year.  That might be one anxiety-free shopping trip for this season.  Maybe there is a piece of music that fills a place deep inside you with a sense of hope, and you could make a point of listening to that piece once a week—not just have it play in the background, but really sit down and listen to it.

Advent is a contemplative time, a time to pause and check in with what really matters.  The church takes this opportunity to pause and contemplate as well.  We get to ask ourselves:  What are we all about?  What is being a member of the church all about?  You will always find that there are many answers to that question. 

Many will say that being a part of the church means to have values that are taught to our kids and that we can discuss with one another.  Some say that values in the world around us are diminishing.  Others say they are just more diverse.  So the church is a place to engage in a conversation about values.  All of us look to the church for support in times of crisis.  I think we all look for stability in a world that is changing faster than we can comprehend.  There’s a reason why the Christmas service doesn’t change much—and shouldn’t change much—and that’s because we look for that reminder that some essential things are going to be just the same, year after year, whatever else changes.

All of those are important reasons to be part of the church, and yet they don’t describe the full story.  They all are ways of coping with the world.  There is no doubt that our faith helps us to do that—to cope with the world and to cope with life as we know it.  Yet there is more at the core of our faith.

We are a people of hope, and our hope is for the promise of God that helps us more than cope with the world around us and life as we know it.  It helps us do our own piece to shape the world according to God’s promise.  We shape the world not based on what is but what is to come.  If  you think about it, in 2000 years of waiting for Christ’s return, the Christian faith community has learned to be realistic.  But let me use that word realistic in a special sense.  We have to be concerned with the matters of the world around us.  There’s no question about it.  But our reality includes the presence and the promise of God.  So, yes, we are realistic but with a much broader sense of what that reality entails.  That’s what makes the difference.

The promise of God, the kingdom of God—we could spend some time thinking about what that’s going to look like.  Does it look the same for all, or is it going to unfold according to each person’s vision of what paradise is like?  Does it have a stable with horses for one, and a sailable ocean for another, and a leather chair in a room with books for the third, and an artist’s studio for the next, and a park for skaters?  Does it have dance floors and football games and lacrosse sticks?  Is there an X-box in heaven or a PlayStation or, since it’s heaven, both?

If we had to put it into one word what God’s promise is and what our hope is, that word would have to be peace—what we are dreaming of, what we are hoping for.  I like Chris’ distinction between wishing for something and hoping for something.  What we are hoping for is peace with ourselves, peace with others and peace with God.  Peace as the absence of any fear.  Peace as the only reality that there is, as opposed to war as the inevitable reality somewhere in this world.

If we listen to God’s promise in the passage from Isaiah 40, the peace that is to come is not an abstract, transcendent, utopian peace that comes at the end but, instead, it is a peace that transforms the very world that we know.  The way that is made for the Lord is a way in the wilderness, in the desert, in the exile. So God’s promise makes its way right into the wilderness, the worst experiences of our lives, something that is not entirely removed and outside.  You might ask, “what do we have to do with wilderness?  There isn’t much of that around in New England.”  But wilderness is what threatens our peace.

Isaiah puts the finger on the wilderness in this very passage:  “A voice says, ‘Cry out!’  And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’  All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.  The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass.  The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.’

We are confronted with our own mortality and that of our loved ones.  When we receive a bad diagnosis, it takes a while to even think of that illness and ourselves in the same sentence.  It takes us a while to our mind around the idea that my name and cancer can belong together.  When someone we love dies, it may take a long time until we feel permission again and the will to go about living in the absence of the other.

Sometimes, the wilderness that we know is an economic one.  Isaiah says this in the previous chapter, describing the Babylonian victory over Israel:  “Days are coming when all that is in your house, and that which your ancestors have stored up until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, says the LORD.”

Through Heather, I hear the stories of people who have lived in our community all their lives but now have to move just to pay their property taxes.  There’s a person whose house was bought by her grandfather for $4,000.  Now she is paying $25,000 in taxes per year and has to sell; she’s fourth generation because she, too, has children.  There’s a lobsterman has lived here all his life in a small house; a small house in the neighborhood that ten years ago wasn’t even considered attractive.  Eventually, the houses in his neighborhood were all sold and rebuilt into bigger houses.  Property values rose.  Now his taxes consume what money he makes and he has to sell.  My point is that the wilderness hits us wherever we are.  There’s nothing that makes one person less prone to be in the wilderness than the other.

But our hope for peace that we have in Jesus Christ meets us right in the wilderness as we know it.  It is not abstract, it is not separate from this world.  Instead, it helps us transform life as we know it and shape the world we live in.  We can trust where we would have fear.  We can feel at peace where we would have been in turmoil.  We can counteract the logic of violence and war—to the point that there are Christians who purposely go into conflict zones and create places of non-violence without taking sides just to demonstrate by the example of their lives that there is a third way.

Advent is the time to remember that we are a people of hope.  It is also a time of preparation.  Listening to Mark’s gospel about John the Baptist, and listening to the theme that has permeated the scriptures about God’s kingdom in the past few weeks, the theme is one of preparation for what is to come.  God’s promise doesn’t come like a check in the mail.  Instead, it reveals itself to us in a process of gradual discovery and faithful living.  It reveals itself as a reality that is already in our midst and that, once we live in this reality, has yet ultimately more to reveal to us.  But preparation it takes; otherwise, the peace that can be ours and that will help us shape this world will pass us by and we won’t ever know it’s there.

How do we prepare?  Let me give you two ways.  I think there are at least two levels on which we prepare—personal and communal.

First is the personal level:  Are you willing to let God fill the empty spaces in your life or are you looking elsewhere to be filled?  Are you allowing the hope that we proclaim to make a difference in your very life everyday?

Then, as a community:  Are we working to shape the world—not just cope with it—according to God’s kingdom?  Are we working toward peace?  Are we responding to the needs of people?  Are we welcoming to all?

Ultimately, I believe the community cannot be prepared if its members are not prepared.  But the good news is:  It’s not too late.  There is time yet to prepare.  Go home and light a candle.

Amen.