GOD, PLEASE ACT DRAMATICALLY, AGAIN
A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

November 30, 2008

Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37

Do you remember, I do, a time or times in your life when you either got down on your knees or looked high into the heavens and asked, begged, or sought to appeal to God, saying something like, "God now would be a good time for you to act! God a little sign would be greatly appreciated, here! God!? GOD! GOD?!

Why, God, are you so silent, so seemingly unconcerned with helping me out here? You've done things for others before now to help out, how about me now?" Do you remember the emptiness, after your most sincere request into what seemed the universal abyss after your call has seemingly gone unanswered, unheard? The silence is what I remember. There is nothing quite so humbling to remind us of our seeming aloneness in this life as when we cry out to the frequently described God of Great Intimacy only to feel more alone than before we started talking to God.

The sermon title this morning, which is not printed, is "God, please act dramatically, again." If you are a regular reader of the Book of Psalms you know that the sermon title reflects the content of many of the Psalms where the author is beseeching God to move on behalf of the people of God. Sometimes the requests are rather benevolent and other times the Psalmists
are vindictive and mean spirited and angry to the extreme, calling for God to dash the heads of their enemy's children against the rocks.

Embedded in so many of ancient Israel's scripture stories—such as the one we have from Isaiah this morning, where the author pleads for God to tear open the skies—is the shared Jewish corporate memory that once, in fact many times, God had acted dramatically for them as a people. They knew so from the stories that they had been told. God parted the sea to let the Israelites cross through, God fed them when they were hungry in the wilderness.

You and I know the stories as well. The long biblical witness holds memories of God stepping in and doing something when the need was great. We can understand that shared stories of defeating Pharaoh, raining bread from heaven, and enjoying the glory of David might lead the people to have certain expectations of God. And that is the word for Advent, expectation, believing that God will move again. Our question today, our question every day is in what way can people of faith expect God to act? Advent is the four weeks before Christmas where we remember that God acted in the reality, the person of Jesus and we hope that God will act or is acting, again..., but how?

Our text from the Hebrew Scriptures this morning, from the Book of Isaiah, is very interesting when we look at it in detail. It seems to blame the people's unfaithfulness on God's decision to be inactive and silent. It says in verse 5, "because you hid yourself, God, we transgressed."

We know this reality only too well in our lives. Especially as children or with our own children we remember how when mom or dad were not present, well, the cookies just disappeared or without the parental oversight our sister or brother just got hit when we were mad at them. A large part of growing up, maturing is doing the right thing even when or especially when we don't have to, when there are no external controls over us.

The development of our own moral compass and guide is a sign of spiritual maturity. It is not stretching this too far this morning, to understand that when we read the Scriptures we are often encountering our faith ancestors at many stages of spiritual development. Our text from Isaiah this morning is one of profound "youngness." The author's reflections are at that stage of early adolescence where we know better but we do it anyway and then blame our parents or God for not exercising their authority over us. Faith has maturation stages—both for us individually and as faith groups like churches. First UC, First United Church of Bloomington is a very spiritually developed congregation. Really you are. I remain humbled at how you are and I know that we all are aware that God is moving in us and our expectations of a new advent of God's movement is something to be counted on, not vainly hoped for.

Historically, in church history, advent has been first about repentance and only later about celebration. We are a mixed group here at First UC. We have been decorated in our red, green and white Christmas finery as well as showing the colors that we associate more with Lent, purple, the color associated with repentance.

Jewish and Christian faith have long known that without adequate repentance, without the full acknowledgement of our sins, our failures, our shortcomings, our participation individually, nationally and globally in systems of exploitation and abuse—that without repentance and owning up to our sins—God's movement in us seems so very retarded, slow and scantly in existence. Our sins, the things we have done wrong, the things we have held against others, the refusals to serve when the needs were right in front of us, our years of neglect of either our family, the human family, the earth, the creatures..., that which we have not paid attention to has accumulated in us and it is only through seeking repentance, owning up to our wrongs and seeking to make amends that allows the dam to be broken and for the fresh advent of God, the new movement God to run through us like the Pentecost revival of old. 

Advent repentance is not about wallowing in guilt and remorse, but about putting ourselves finally and fully, completely into God's hands where we can be molded anew by God, recognizing that God is the potter and we are the clay.

The liturgical colors turn white on Christmas Eve, not so much because we have become more pure, but because the pureness of God is seen so clearly in the one, Jesus, who allowed himself to be so clearly expressive of the gift of God living in him. No less so does the gift of God live in us. No less so. Jesus said in Mark's Gospel that we who believe will do even greater things after him. Jesus was a most excellent and unique model of what full expression of God can do in a human being. We are called to be Christ-like, like Christ, like Jesus.

Advent is also about the nearness of God, not just about how far away God so often seems. Advent is about our hope to experience God, right here, in our lives. We desire to know God's radiance and power and love. I do and I trust you do as well. And you know as well as I do that God is not going to be found and experienced as the result of buying a house full of presents any more than God is to be found in absolute and stark frugality.

I grew up in a very, very, very poor home. I know what it is to get very little for Christmas and be very disappointed as a child. The Sears/Montgomery Ward/J.C. Penney's catalogues would come to our house and I knew what was available to be had and it just never worked at our house. It just never did. Poverty is never easy, but it is only accentuated when one is surrounded by the perceived plenty of others.

So I overcompensated as an adult. Neither I nor my children have ever gone without, ever since I was able to provide; in fact they have never gone without a lot. I have spent more money on Christmas than ever makes sense. I had to learn, I guess, and I confess, I repent, that Christmas is not about having a lot of stuff or having none—it is about being loved, feeling and knowing that we are loved, living simply, sharing and giving to the least of these, those who have great needs and risking being molded anew by the great and loving presence of God in our personal and corporate lives.

Our Scripture lesson from Mark's Gospel is initially a very confusing one for the first Sunday in Advent. It is very apocalyptic, an end-of-the-world kind of reading. The sun will go dark, the moon's light will be no more, the stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will shake and we will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

We never enjoy hearing this Scripture lesson in Advent. But, Advent is about God's coming and the faith tradition of all the Abrahamic faiths includes this apocalyptic message which more often than not seems to include the destruction of the world as we know it, the judgment of everyone and God's elect being raised to eternal salvation and more often than not those who are enemies of God are dumped into an equally eternal fire of damnation. I say that and interestingly you will note if you read Mark's passage in detail that there is no judgment mentioned in the apocalyptic text, but there is more than enough in all the others to keep it front and center.

I often wondered how difficult it would be to just remove these texts of apocalyptic doom from our Bibles and serious study. Why? Because one of the realities of believing that God is seen so uniquely and brilliantly in Jesus is that God slipped fully into our reality in Jesus of Nazareth without the sky tearing open, earthquakes and volcanoes erupting. And he was killed, horribly tortured and misused and the next day and the next two thousand years of days have happened with the world pretty much operating status quo. There have been a host of Caesars, Czars, Imperial and Fascist Regimes. There have been earth tremors and meteorites falling and terrorist attacks and each day we still must rise up and make life happen. Is it because God hasn't shown up, yet? Or is it because, even though God is fully present, we are still responsible for making our world happen and if it is ever going to happen more right than wrong it will because we have stood up and made it so?

Kali and I were going through downtown on Friday evening when the lights surrounding the courthouse were turned on. It is really such a beautiful idyllic Bloomington Hoosier Jimmy Stewart It's a Wonderful Life Bing Crosby I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas event. Moms, dads, grandmothers and grandfathers and scores of little children were in attendance along with a lot of young lovers embracing each other just to keep warm. Christmas memories, much like those that surround this church and its sacred Christmas rituals are being made anew in the lives of many young people. This is all wonderful and perfect.

What is not so perfect for this minister is our slow testimony to the reality that God is already fully present and there is no pie in the sky event yet to happen that will make all our dreams come true, unless we come together with the reality of God already here and make those dreams a reality. God will be present tomorrow whether we are or not. The question is whether or not we are in deep and abiding conscious and unconscious relationship with God in all our waking moments, all our ordinary moments, in our coming in and going out, in our joys as well as our sorrows.

God was experienced in Jesus and if there was a population of say 10 million people on earth at the time, probably fewer than 50,000 people encountered him and few of those knew what they ran into. God is sitting right next to each of you right now. If we were to be so brazen as to reach out and touch the person closest to us…! God is fully present in that person, just as in Jesus. If we were to reach out and grab hands in such a way that it could—and wouldn't it be wonderful if it could—reach all the way around this globe, there is no person, no creature present who is not fully filled with God's presence. It would be a holy hand holding that would represent something that God surely most wants us to know—that God is not only in the world, but surrounding the world with a holy presence.

That presence in all of us could transform the most vile and ugly realities of this world to peace and compassion and righteousness. But, God knows we have yet to begin to allow the advent of the Christ, the advent of God's spirit to reach out much beyond the ten or so people with whom we are most intimate.

We've not yet allowed our souls and mind and hearts to let go of our most sacred needs to be right and protected, to feel secure and not overly committed, to demanding our rights while others have none. God's advent, God's coming again, whether in the clouds or in the baby Jesus, is not waiting on God's action, but in our response to the reality of God already here. Peace on earth good will to all will not fall out of the sky like a falling star, but will happen when we join not only our hands but hearts around our town, our nation and world.  

Merry Christmas is a dream that can come true, but only when we allow the God who has never left us, to be fully expressed from within us. LIVE THE GOD IN YOU and the world will know peace and joy and no hungry scared child will ever be found that will not be loved.

Amen.