Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri
The Worship of God · November 29, 2009
The First Sunday of Advent
Litany of Praise and Invocation
From Psalm 25
We lift up our hearts to you.
Do not let us be put to shame by those who work evil against us.
Make us to know your ways and teach us your paths.
Lead us in truth as we wait for you all day long.
Let us pray:
As your mercy and steadfast love have held us through the years
keep us now, for you are the God of our salvation! Amen.
Pastoral Prayer
Tim Carson
O God who is coming:
We pray not to go back, because we cannot, but rather to go forward toward your new creation, opening our hearts wide to your never-ending arrival. We wait with expectation for your next birthing in the world, the mystery of your word, your sacred wisdom, becoming flesh among us. As daylight wanes in these days of lost autumn, our anticipation grows and our hearts are warmed through the knowledge that you are never far from any of us. Glory to you, O God of hope, for the presence and the power, the truth and the life, and the love that will not let us go.
We confess to you that the journey has been long, the challenges difficult, and the way has often been unclear. There have been so many times we were tempted to give up, to turn back, to lie down, and never get back up. Sometimes we questioned whether we had it in us. But then, you came like an uninvited guest, bringing healing in your wings, a balm to our broken hearts, and we, who thought we could never sing again, began to hum quietly, as though another was humming for us. For this new song that was composed in our hearts, we bow before your restoring presence.
And now, we join our love to your own deep love, draped around those who thirst in the drought of the Spirit, who walk through the valley of the shadow of death, who endure the night sweats of a captive past, and contend with the struggles of life that test the soul. For these, for servants of the gospel everywhere, for brothers and sisters locked in conflict or battle, for the hungry, the homeless, the abused, the powerless, we offer our deepest prayers. Help us to hear you speaking to us as we see them. And transform our prayer into living that makes the kind of difference that would honor you.
So, we pray in the Spirit of the one who came and lived among us and whose presence haunts this world still, saying…
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever. Amen.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 33:14-16
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety: And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”
Message
Starry, Starry Night
Jacob Thorne
The year was 1986. I was six-years-old. All day long, I had been waiting for the big event of the evening. The school had been talking about it for weeks. My Dad and I went to this large hill behind our house. We grew up near St. Joseph, Missouri, on a street called Lovers’ Lane. (It was great.) We were on this giant hill. My Dad takes the binoculars, and he looks up at the sky. He looks, and I say, “Do you see it?”
“Nope. Not yet.”
We walk a little farther. We are looking and squinting. I ask him again, “Do you see it?”
Then he says, “Nope. I don’t see it yet.”
As a six-year-old, I am starting to get very worried. We keep walking and walking. We go to the very center, top point of this big hill. We are looking over the town, and Dad holds his binoculars up again. He looks up into the night sky. Then he says, “There it is!”
He hands me the binoculars. I look up in the night sky. Sure enough, shining in the darkness of the night is Haley’s Comet. I look up at that comet, and I think to myself, “I’ll be 81before it passes by again.”
Then I think about what our teacher had been telling us in the first grade about how astronomers had been observing the comet since 243 BCE. Our teacher had told us how Mark Twain was born on the night the comet appeared in 1835. He always said that he would die on the day the comet passed back through. You know what? That happened in 1910. That comet had so much history. It was so close, so old, so bright, and so noticed.
I hadn’t thought about that night for a long time. Then, this summer, I read an article talking about how August 25, 2009 was the 400th anniversary of Galileo inventing the telescope. [Editor’s note: Jacob had a telescope at the front of the sanctuary.] As you can see, we have the more recent version of the Galileo telescope here with us today.
What Galileo actually proved was the Copernican theory. It was the idea that the earth is not the center of the universe, but like other planets, it rotates around the sun. With this telescope, he was always tracking the stars in the night skies. He would move it back and forth, and he discovered that the starry heavens were not fixed and eternal, but they were full of infinite change. His discoveries landed him in prison for the rest of his life, because he challenged the authority of the Church. What he was able to do was prove that we are always moving. We are always readjusting. We are tuning in. We are tuning out. We are moving on to a different direction.
Today, this Sunday, the start of the new church year, we, too, are moving in a new direction. As we watched the Meade family light our Advent candle today on this first Sunday of Advent, we move into this season of welcoming the baby Jesus into our lives. We are waiting for the light in the darkness.
For many of us, this year has been a tough year. It has been a year of economic difficulties. That is putting it mildly. Isn’t it? A year of job losses. A year of people losing their homes. We have been asking, “When is this all going to end?” The numbers alone are staggering. In October 2007, the stock market was at its highest – two years ago – at 14,093 points. By March of this year, it was at its lowest, 6,690 points. The rate of foreclosures has risen by 80%. The rate of unemployment is the highest it has been since the 1980s. Together, Americans have lost 14-trillion dollars of wealth.
Now, for some, these are just statistics. For others, it is not just a number, but it is a life story. It is a story of life being turned upside down. A new normal? A new way of living?
Our Scripture this morning is taken from the prophet Jeremiah. During the time that Jeremiah was writing, Jerusalem was falling apart. The armies of King Nebuchadnezzar were on their way into the city where they would leave nothing standing. The situation was bad, and Jeremiah knew, as anybody during that time would know, the worse was still yet to come. The city was doomed. Jeremiah’s prophecies about judgment, his prophecies that landed him in prison were coming true. However, in the midst of that catastrophe, the prophet finally begins to speak words of comfort and words of hope.
In the previous chapter, when Jeremiah saw all of this coming, he decided to purchase a piece of land. Now, doesn’t this seem to you like a strange thing to do? If you knew the army was coming into your city and nothing would be left standing, why would you purchase a piece of land? However, Jeremiah says, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”
In the midst of doom, in the midst of destruction, there is hope. Jeremiah continues, “A shoot shall come out of this stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of its roots.”
This image of a new branch growing out of a dead stump is meant to be an image of new life, of unexpected joy. Over time, scholars and generations of the Jewish and Christian communities have interpreted this passage to be speaking about the Messiah, our savior, Jesus.
But how can Jeremiah be so confident about this hope? How can he be so certain that God will meet us in the midst of our despair, even when everything looks so completely and utterly bleak?
The other day, my colleague Mark told a story about a woman his wife had met at a graduation party. You know how these graduations parties go. They will be here in a couple weeks with the December graduations. His wife was at this party, and she sat down at a table. She had her cake and punch. This woman sat down next to her. She had never met her before. The woman turned to Mark’s wife and said, “I just hate these graduation parties.”
Mark’s wife simply nodded. The woman then started sharing her life story. The whole time Mark’s wife sat there listening. The story went something like this.
As a child, this woman had bad parents. They were rarely home. They didn’t take an interest in her. They were alcoholics. She was left to fend for herself. Then she discovered, at a young age, that she was very, very good at school. Her teachers encouraged her all along the way. She became a stellar student, through elementary, junior high, and high school. She made straight A’s all of the way through – 4.0 grade point average.
The day for high school graduation came. She was given a gold cord to wear around her neck as a symbol of her achievements. She walked into the auditorium with all of the other graduating students. The principal welcomed everyone and gave his speech. Then he said, “Please, please hold your applause for all the graduates.”
Of course, nobody followed the rules. The air horns were blaring. Everybody was clapping for their graduates, calling out their names. As her name was closer to being called, she started looking, but nowhere does she see her parents. Right before her name was called, she sees her Dad stumble in the back door of the auditorium, and he is drunk. Her name is called. She walks across the stage. There is simply complete silence. Nobody claps. Nobody calls out her name. She felt so alone and so ashamed.
Time moved on, and she decided to go to college. She was a great student. In college, again, she graduated with a 4.0 grade point average. Graduation comes along, but this time, she decides to skip the graduation. She has her eyes set on what it next. It is law school. She goes to law school and graduates at the top of her class. This time, she says to herself, “I’m going to attend the graduation.”
She walks into the auditorium for the law-school graduation, and those same feelings begin to build inside of her. She feels alone, ashamed, and nervous. She sees a group of teenagers standing in the back of the auditorium. She goes to them and says, “I’ll make you a deal. I will pay you money if you clap for me when my name is called.”
It was time for her name to be called. She walked across the stage. It was just like high school. Nobody clapped. Nobody cheered. She felt so alone and so ashamed.
The years continue to pass by. She is in and out of a couple different law firms. She is stumbling around. She is lost. She becomes an alcoholic. She is always searching for what is next.
Then something changes. She falls in love. She begins to attend Alcoholics Anonymous. She marries this great, wonderful guy. Her newly-wedded husband is a computer engineer. He is a wizard at the computer with all of its technology.
They have been married for several months. He throws a surprise birthday party for her. All of her friends are there. Everyone is having a great time. At the end of the evening, he invites everyone to the living room. They sit in front of the television. He has made a video of her life. All of her pictures were used to honor her, affirm her. At the very end of the video, there was a picture of her at graduation. Only this time it is different, because her husband has recorded his voice calling out her name 100 different times. He has worked in the applause in the background. She sees herself walk across the stage, and she hears her husband calling out her name. She hears all of the applause surrounding her. She stands up. She breaks into tears. She runs into the bedroom.
Then it became very awkward. Her husband had to invite everybody to leave. She stayed in the bedroom with the door shut. She just cried and cried. Finally, at four o’clock in the morning, she comes out of the bedroom. She wakes her husband. Together they sit on the couch. They turn on the television again, and after putting the video in, they fast-forward to the clip of her at graduation. Sitting next to her husband, she watches with him as she walks across the stage. She hears her name being called out 100 different times. She hears all of the applause. At that very moment, she said, “I know what it is like to be loved. I know what it is like to have hope.”
If we are honest about it, we all know her struggle. At one time or another, we have all been in the darkness. But, in the midst of despair, God seeks to free us, to help us encounter the gifts of our own lives, just as her husband did.
The good news of the gospel and the good news of Advent is that God meets us in our deepest and darkest moments in life. God is the one who is there to cheer us on. The Savior comes to us when we find ourselves either wholly or half spent.
Do you remember the passage from the Bible when Jesus is teaching on the mount? He is on this hill. His disciples and others who are interested are gathered around listening to him. The very first line he says is this: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Just a few lines later, he says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Essentially, Jesus is saying this: “God blesses those who don’t get it or who can’t get it.” The unnoticed. Those who are passed by. Those who keep stumbling. You and me. In our failure, God announces, “I am with you. Come to me, all who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens. Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
God is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the One who has been calling out to you. Even in his darkest moments, when the prophet Jeremiah was imprisoned by his own government, he never lost sight of the goal of hope. Because, when God starts to meet you where you are, then you see life differently. You begin to interact with others differently. You can say to somebody, “I will meet you where you are, because that is where I, too, have been met.”
Jeremiah clung to the hope of this branch shooting out of a dead stump. I think we can even imagine him planting a vineyard, years later, in the field that had been destroyed. His image of this new branch, this new life, even speaks to us today.
For as long as I can remember, my family has taken vacations to Estes Park in Colorado, and to Rocky Mountain National Park. In the late 1970s, there was a terrible fire. It was in an area of the park near Ouzel Falls. Everything was burned and destroyed. Several years later, my family and I were taking one of these guided hikes with a ranger. She was a backcountry ranger. I was probably six-years-old at the time. That sounded like such a cool idea to me to be a backcountry ranger riding on your horse in the mountains of Colorado. She was talking to us about the fire and how it destroyed everything. She said, “These Ponderosa Pine Trees have seeds that will not come out of the cone until they have been consumed by a fire.”
She was telling us all of this as the sun was beating down on us. There was no shade anywhere. There was nothing on this hillside. I thought to myself, “This ranger is just crazy. I don’t see anything.”
Imagine my surprise when, this summer, we went back to that same area by Ouzel Falls. We hadn’t been there for at least 20 years. As we started winding through the hills on the mountainside, I couldn’t get my bearings straight at all, because these large Ponderosa Pine Trees were towering over us. We were engulfed in shade. We could smell the forest. (I learned on the very first trip that the sap of a Ponderosa Pine Tree actually smells like vanilla.) The trees were swaying in the wind.
As I think about that hike, it reminds me of my faith, because this first Sunday of Advent is a message all about hope. It is about a hope and a knowledge that things will never stay the same. The apostle Paul said it like this: “Faith is the evidence of things hoped for. It is the substance of things not yet seen.”
As Christians, we make a claim. The claim says this: “No matter where we are in the spectrum of life from young to old, the best years of our lives are yet to come.”
When asked who he was and who we are, Jesus said it like this: “I am the light of the world. You are the light of the world. Where there is light, there is hope.”
Therefore, as we journey together through this first Sunday of Advent, and we look east to where the star comes from, we rejoice that the One is coming who speaks to us, who calls us by name, who leads us with tender care, and who engulfs us in the love of Christ.
We all say together… “Amen.”
Benediction
Now, people of God, go forth in hope,
loving and serving the Lord all the days of your lives.
Amen.
