First Sunday in Advent

O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…

So, I have good news today: according to the venerable Stephen Hawking, there is a perfect solution to all the worlds’ problems. A perfect solution to pollution, pornography, poverty, and possibly even war: and, best of all, it’s easy!

Get off the planet.

I’m serious! Isn’t that foolproof? Why waste time and money trying to fix our society’s problems, when we can simply get out of Dodge and make everything better? As the Huffington Post article quoted him saying:

"Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million.

"Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space."

Now, that is the best solution that I’ve heard all day – why bother working together for a solution? Why bother with this obviously misguided talk of “peace on earth”, when our genetic code means it will never happen. And Stephen Hawking should know, right? I mean, this is the physicist who said “religion is bunk” and made national headlines. The last time I said, “theoretical physics is a bunch of hooey”, people just said “he’s a theologian, what does he know?”

All right. So maybe I’ve picked on this subject enough for today – but its frustrating to think that we’re to the point that this is regarded as a viable solution to our problems – of course, it has been since Ray Bradbury wrote his first book in the 1960s. Any fans of science fiction here? What’s worse, is that we seem willing, as a society, to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars on these programs, rather than investing in, say, education, the environment, and healthcare, which could perhaps fix those problems from the bottom up.

We’re not the first people to look at the world around us and think that it’s too broke to fix. You don’t have to look very far to find that people have often, if not always, looked at the world around them and wished that someone – or something – could fix the mess they’re in.

“O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…” is there a more plaintive cry from Isaiah than what we heard today? His people have been in exile. They have lost touch with the God, they have sinned and fallen short of the covenant they made with God. The only solution that Isaiah can see is that God must come, now if not sooner, and set things right.

And Isaiah argues with God! “because you hid yourself we transgressed!” Isaiah shouts. And maybe, just maybe, Isaiah is right. God can be maddeningly silent and remote at times; especially at times when we feel we need God the most.

At times like that, we most often have one of two responses, and neither is particularly helpful: one, is to throw up our hands and say “that’s it, we’re in this for ourselves!”; and the second, is to start feeling like we’re responsible for God’s remoteness – and then the thought of God with us becomes a frightening possibility, fraught with judgement and ruled by terror. God’s perceived aloofness must be someone’s fault; it may even my fault.

Somehow, though, it’s not like that for Isaiah. Isaiah sees hope in God’s presence with God’s people; he sees the presence of the God who created all things as a good thing, a blessed thing, something that should be looked forward to with hope.

But we don’t, do we? At least, not for the most part. There’s a huge amount of baggage that we associate with our cultural conceptions of the day of Christ’s return. If you’re familiar with the Left Behind series of books you know that there’s a lot of fuss made about who’s going to be ‘the elect’ that Mark mentions in his gospel; a lot of speculation; no, a lot of “fact” about the signs that are supposed to accompany the return of Christ.

There are several Christian denominations that focus much of their energy and attention on what is imagined will happen on that day – judgement, hellfire, and damnation. The only way to avoid it, they say, is to make the right decisions for yourself, choose Jesus, and be prepared to watch everyone who hasn’t face the consequences of those decisions.

In that way, then, people are saved through their own actions – which, really, is what Stephen Hawking is saying. A lot of Christians, I think, would agree with Hawking that the world is headed to hell (though not necessarily in a handbasket). And, although they’d disagree with means, their solution remains the same – focus all of our attentions on the few, so that the cream of the crop can rise to the top.

In both scenarios – either Hawking’s colonization of space, or a fundamentalists’ judgement on the last day – only a few, the deserving, are saved. The vast majority of people are condemned, either to hellfire, or life on a planet from which all life has been driven.

Does either of those scenarios give you hope? I don’t find a lot of hope in the return of a Christ of judgement – I am too aware of my sins. And I don’t find hope at all in Hawking’s idea of colonization, because I know that neither myself nor anyone I know or love would ever be on the ‘list’ of people who would be moving off-planet. Both scenarios are for the elite; for the powerful. In one scenario it’s the genetically superior who are saved; in the other, it’s the spiritually perfect.

But this day, this season of Advent, is about hope. It’s about hope that God truly does “so love the world;” hope that Christ will return, not to judge the world to hellfire, but to judge the world in righteousness; because in Christ we share that righteousness – we are given, as Paul writes, the grace of God…in Christ Jesus.

O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…down to a manger, down to a world full of sin and hopelessness, bringing the promise of hope, peace, joy, and love. God tore open the heavens and came down, bringing the promise of light that shines in the darkness; light that the darkness cannot overcome.

We are an Advent people; we wait for the coming of Christ. We wait for the birth of a baby – a baby we know has already been born, has already lived out his mortal life, and reigns forever as Christ the King. But at the same time, there is a very real longing – and maybe you feel it. Maybe you feel in yourself the deep-seated wish that the baby would be real this year – that rather than commemorating an event, we would have a real celebration.

We are an Advent people; we prepare for Christ’s return. We keep awake, we watch with longing for the coming of a Saviour – not a wrathful judge, but the deepest longing of our hearts that grace, and mercy, and love will one day reign in this world, will one day replace the grim grey reality of hatred, hostility, and helplessness that seeps into the core of our being and stiffens and cracks our compassion for each other.

We are an Advent people; we wait for the master of the house to come, we wait for the chance to rejoice at his presence. If you look for a picture of an announcing angel, or in particular see a statue of one as part of a religious structure, you will see that they face east; they look to the rising sun in anticipation of the king who comes with the dawn.

Beloved of God, look east, and wait with hope. Wait with hope that Christ comes to free from suffering, not cause more. Prepare for his return by caring for his body, the Church; and wait with peace because the king returns in power, and in glory, to end all suffering, and to redeem all those who trust in him.

Look east, and watch with hope. For the child is coming; the child is coming for you, for the whole people of God.

Let the people of God say amen.

All Saints' Sunday

I have an announcement to make: I’m going to start a movement.

(And no, I don’t mean that I’m going to eat lots of fibre and lock myself away for the rest of the service with the latest issue of the Examiner.)

I’ve been keeping track, over the news and internet, of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. You’ve probably heard of it: around the rallying cry of “we are the 99%!” people created a tent city in New York to try to raise awareness of the growing gap between the rich and the poor. The movement spread, to other American cities and recently to Canadian ones, too. If you’ve been through downtown Edmonton lately, you’ve seen the little tents at Churchhill square. I kind of think, though, that a tent city has a slightly great chance of staying up in protest in California or Vancouver through the winter than it does in Edmonton.

That cry of “we are the 99%” is a reference to the economic reality that 1% of the world’s population are billionaires and thus disproportionately influence the lives of the rest of the population. And the protestors blog about it on their iPads and text each other on their iPhones and enjoy the close proximity to Starbucks.

And they call us hypocrites?

As I said, I’m going to start my own movement. I’m going to call it “Occupy Church Street,” and we’ll rally around the cry of “we are the 1%!”

And we are the 1%. Seriously; it’s not that we’re billionaires, but the population of Spruce Grove is around 23000 people; there are probably 250 people today worshipping here and at St. Augustine’s down the road. So, we really are 1% of the population.

So come on, and Occupy Church Street! Come for All Saints’ Sunday!

Flesh out that figure a little bit more to include the other churches in the city, and I think we could say that between 2500 and 3000 people are in churches here this morning – that’s a little better, more like 10% of the population.

And that’s really not all that bad. I read somewhere that on an average Sunday about quarter of any given churches’ membership comes to worship. So, 40% of people in our city would be members of some church in the area. How does that sound?

You’re either an optimist or a pessimist: either you thought hey, that’s not bad, or oh my goodness we need to do more evangelism!

But you know what? I think both are all right. After all, today is All Saints’ Sunday – a day when we remember that we take seriously that line in the creed about believing in the “communion of saints.” Today we are reminded by John’s letter that we should look and, “see what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God.”

Yup. Children of God, because God loves us. That should be enough, right? Then, we shouldn’t be spending too much time thinking about the 99% or the 1%, because we are truly all in this, together. This great work of life that will end when Christ returns again and bring peace and order to this troubled world…why can’t we all just get along?

Except…you all know that I’m not that naïve. And I know that you’re not. The world doesn’t work like that – we have rules, and boundaries, and we know that we have to work for what we have. We know that there are some people – some saints – who will have it better when Jesus comes again. And we may know who those people will be.

Certainly us. We, who are the 10%. And from that point, the list varies depending on who you talk to. But rest assured, there will be a list! There will be a list of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The ‘us’ go to heaven, and the ‘them’ go to hell. That’s something everyone can agree on.

Even the OWS people. Looking through pictures of the movement, I have seen some people bearing signs that say ‘blessed are the poor’, even some that say ‘the rich man went to hell’, referencing the parable Jesus tells about a rich man and a poor beggar.

Then, there are the people who protest the protestors, and they have signs decrying the behaviour and beliefs of those: “repent, or burn”, “Jesus can save you from hell”. You’ve seen some of those signs, yourself. Hell is a useful tool. It can cut through the chit-chat; it can end arguments quickly. It’s also a oddly comforting idea: knowing that hell exists means that those people who harm or oppress others, or believe differently than us are going to get their just desserts.

And today I’m certainly not going to debate the existence of hell. It’s in the creed; Jesus descended into it. I don’t think that Jesus descended into a metaphor; hell is a fact.

You can go to it, burn in it, roast in it, drive like it, preach like it, endure it, walk though it…like hell you will, like hell you won’t; like hell you could, but simply don’t. There’s a lot of hell out there.

In fact, there’s so much hell it’s a bit of a wonder that we can actually set aside a day and call it All Saints. Is there anyone left who may actually enjoy the pleasures of the resurrection? If it were up to us to judge, do you ever get the feeling that the list of saints would be a pretty short list?

But on all Saints’ Sunday, we need to reimagine our conception of hell. Yes, it exists. Yes, it is a frightening place. But our Saviour went there. And let me ask you this: have you ever looked at the creed, and wondered why, in fact, we confess that Jesus descended to the dead, or in the old language that he descended into hell? After all, what did Jesus do in his life that he deserved that?

The problem with thinking like that is that you imagine that Jesus descended to the dead as a victim. Jesus didn’t. Jesus descended to the dead as a conquerer, to drive open the very gates of the law and condemnation and preach to those souls that could never save themselves. Christ went to the dead for you; that death would have no dominion over you. For you, Christ damned death; for all the saints that have lived and will ever live Christ endured the cross and grave so that you may know what it is to be children of God.

To be children of God.

To be, children of God. See what great love the Father has for us, that we should be so-called.

Are you saved? I don’t know. I’ll tell you what a good Lutheran answer probably should be: Not yet. You have no need to fear hell; Christ has been there for you. But you are not in heaven, yet. Today we celebrate and remember the lives that have touched ours, however briefly, and who now rest. We know they rest with their Lord and Saviour, because of his great love for us.

Blessed are we. Blessed are those who mourn, who cry, who are poor in spirit, who are reviled, who are persecuted, who fear. Blessed are you, because now you are free. Free to live as a child of God, free to know that you are one of the multitude at the throne of the lamb, knowing that there is a day when mourning and crying will cease, that hatred and war will end, that persecution and struggle will be no more. Blessed are you.

Live like that’s true. Our Saviour tells us to rejoice, and be glad. There is no fear of death, no sting of hell. Rejoice, and be glad.

There’s a story told about a man who went swimming in the ocean with his two young children. They were laughing and splashing, and it wasn’t until it was too late that he noticed they’d gotten caught in a current that had pulled them far, far away from shore.

And the man began to panic, because he knew that he wasn’t strong enough to save both his children; he couldn’t swim to shore with both on his back, and by the time he made it back to shore with one, the other would be too far out to sea.

But he didn’t let his panic show. He said to his daughter, who was older: “sweetie, do you remember when daddy taught you that starfish float? You do? Good. Now here’s what I want you to do: I want you to float here, while daddy takes little brother back to shore. I’ll come back for you quick, you understand? Now go ahead, and float.” And the little girl said okay, and did just that.

And the man let his son grab onto his back and he struck out for shore, which seemed so very far away. And no matter how hard or fast he swam, it kept getting farther, and he was getting weaker. Finally, he reached the shore, and collapsed on the beach. He couldn’t rest, though, and he began to run down the beach yelling, “someone, help me! My daughter’s back out there on the water!”

And finally he found someone with a boat who was willing to help, but by this time his daughter was so far out to sea he desperately feared that he wouldn’t be able to find her. But they kept looking until, between the swells, he saw his little girl, still floating. And they moved to boat to her, and he swept her up in his arms and cried “my girl! Daddy’s so proud of you!” And she looked at him as said, “well daddy, I was just doing what you asked me to do, and when my arms got tired and I didn’t want to float anymore, I just remembered that you were coming.”

Blessed are you, children of God, for your Father is coming.

Let the people of God say amen.