THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT – 17 DECEMBER 2006
ST PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCH, ABQ NM – THE REV. P. L. HOLMAN
Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18
“Centering Hope”
We all know something about home … the place we live, the place we grew up, the place of calm or refuge, the place of chaos or conflict. When I googled the word “home” the response included over 4 billion entries, so I checked out the definition page.
Home isn’t what it used to be…
Traditional definitions of the noun, adjective, adverb, transitive verb:
Place of residence, environment offering security and happiness; starting position or headquarters;
Adverb meaning to the center or heart of something: “your comments really hit home”
Popular phrases and quotes:
Home work (not on winter break!), home plate (go White Sox!), homebound
Home is where the heart is, home is where you make it, and you can’t go home again
Psychological impact :
“Since it can be said the humans are generally creatures of habit, the state of a person’s home has been known to psychologically influence their behavior, emotions, and overall mental health. For example, in the introduction to the film PATCH ADAMS, the concept of “home” is compared to the human need for peaceful sanctuary and the absence of [this peace leads] to restlessness. Such restlessness, as [that film shows] may lead to depression and, ultimately, to a loss of sanity.”
The prophet Zephaniah named the power of home in the context of his words of hope for an exiled people…after two and a half chapters naming the brokenness of the people, their apostasy and evil ways, the prophet shifts to words of encouragement and hope: Rejoice and exult…the LORD is in your midst…he will renew you in his love. “I will remove disaster from you…and I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you” … says the LORD. “I will change their shame into praise and … I will bring you home.” Their hope for home was being restored to Jerusalem, a removal of shame and a gathering into community of the saved who were being restored to wholeness.
John the baptizer called people to a different sort of home. John called anyone who would listen to find their center, their home in the heart of lived repentance. “What then should we do?” Live it: share your extra coat and share your food, collect only what is due, be fair and honest in working relationships, and model the smooth path of faithfulness, trusting in all things that God will satisfy your need. As you follow this path, rough places are made plain…
A friend shared that there was a slogan at the alcohol rehab hospital where he worked which read, “Act yourself into a new way of thinking.” There is a similar saying attributed to Jesse Jackson: “It is easier to walk your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of walking.” John the baptizer might agree. How shall you prepare the way? Get walking, centered in what matters to God and your neighbor, and it’ll balance your life, clarify your vision, and re-root your life in the peaceful sanctuary called hope. Like the psychological comment on that googled definition page reminds us, we all need that sanctuary, yet we won’t always find it in the place we list as “home address.” Actually, if we do find it there it is only for a time. The peaceful sanctuary that centers our living is the one that travels with us – the sanctuary provided by trust in God and hope in God’s future. St. Augustine named this truth centuries ago: “Our hearts are restless, O God, until they rest in thee.”
Advent finds us all in some way longing for home, seeking to find balance amidst the chaos and changes of life. Seeking to finding meaning amidst spiraling deficits, inadequate health care, injustice in immigration policies; seeking balance between our need for security and our need to welcome the tired, the poor, the restless masses yearning to be free, a welcome that is our heritage as a nation; longing for healing in our friendships and family relationships that right now seems a far distant hope …
Into the midst of the seeking and wrestling, God shines with the light of Advent hope. God shines with the light of forgiveness, and the power to change. God shines with the gift of life and a welcome to new life like that which we extend for Christ’s sake to little Tegan this morning, a welcome the world cannot give, and for his parents a source of strength that defies reason to help them be faithful in the face of any challenge their life as family might bring. Listen to the words we say as we present his baptismal candle: “Tegan Daniel, walk in the faith of Christ crucified and risen. Shine with the light of Christ.” It echoes John’s words to the people struggling in expectation, struggling to find the smooth path, the faithful way: share your life, pursue justice, love kindness, walk humbly and honestly showing forth God’s light as you await the coming of the One who is Light.
In his Advent devotional MANGER IN THE MOUNTAINS [c.1999 Augsburg Fortress], James Nestingen shares stories of the work of Lutheran World Relief in Peru and Bolivia. In a recent reflection he ponders whether, like her husband Joseph, Mary could have been a carpenter too.
Maybe if she had been a young Aymara (ay-MA-ra) Indian woman living above La Paz, she would have met another sort of John the Baptist who could have trained her to be just that.
He had the look of a John the Baptist, tall and long-armed with a full gray beard and flying hair. A German man, he had been sent to Bolivia as a missionary long enough ago to have become more at home in Bolivia than in his homeland. He talked in a lickety-split manner to dramatize what he was saying.
Burkhard Sievers, missionary and pastor, had seen what was happening to women and their children when there was no work available. So he started a group called Yatiyawi (yah-tee-YAH-wee), designing and building furniture out of pine and bamboo. He began training unemployed women from the area, setting up a carpenter’s school. At the same time, he started building a factory, purchasing the machines and hand tool needed. Within not so many years, the women were being recognized as some of the finest carpenters in the country, and their furniture was marketed as far away as Germany and the U.S. Soon he was not the only one speaking a word of hope.
As we walked through, we saw the women – and an occasional man – hard at work, their long black braids tied together behind them so they wouldn’t drop into the blade of a table saw. There carpenter women straightened what once were crooked paths. They dared to learn, and point people to the manger, to a promise and hope. [pp.30-31]
John prepared the way for Jesus, yes, and John’s words heard in this time prepare us anew for that journey into God’s promised future as well. How shall we live? Be focused, centered in what matters. Live your life centered in hope. Shine with the light of the One who is coming, has come, and is in our midst even now: share what you have, remembering that we are not islands unto ourselves but people created by God and gifted by God to live in community. Our neighbors across the street and across the border are our concern, and we theirs. Be honest in work, faithful in relationships, centered in hope that despite the chaos of the present God can and will deliver healing, light and peace. God is the one who created all life and called it good, and God in Christ has the power to change every shame into praise and bring us all home.
Amen