Advent 3 C
December 16, 2012
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Canticle 9: Isaiah 12:2-6
Philippians
4:4-7
Luke
3:1-6
How hard it is today to sing “rejoice!”, as our first three
lessons from the prophets Zephaniah and Isaiah, and from St. Paul’s letter to
the people in Philippi, exhort us. Everyone’s hearts, since the horrific news
came out on Friday morning, have been torn and tortured, our minds filled with
terrible things, and our feelings angry and agitated:
What then should we do? What then should we do? Gun control?
Better treatment of people with mental health? Turn our elementary schools into
locked-down fortresses?
What then should we do? What then should we do? Hug our
children more tightly? Praise the heroic acts of gym teachers and librarians
and school psychologists? Weep? Mourn? Shout? Stay home and pull the covers
over our heads? All of the above?
And is any of this an appropriate conversation to have in
church?
| Churches in Newtown, CT |
Even though I was born in Syracuse, my mother’s family has
New England roots, and several years ago she came upon a quote from the diary
of one of our 19th century Peabody relatives, who had gone to hear Henry Ward
Beecher – one of the great American preachers. “Politics and the pulpit don’t
mix well together,” was my ancestor’s now famous (in our household at least)
line in response to Beecher’s visit to his New Hampshire town.
That remark may
have signaled one of the first cracks in the non-separation of church and state
in America. There was a time when politics and the pulpit were joined, when
everyone who came to church understood church as so much a part of American
society and American culture and the American way of life that preachers could
and did combine the two. Everything fit together, reinforced each other. Maybe
some of us here think we remember that time of happy union – happy for
Protestants with New England roots, anyway. We are probably remembering its
distant echo in the church-going 1950s – when churches like this were planted,
grew and flourished in an expanding, prosperous and peaceful America.
But not only for Mr. Peabody but for many other Americans as
well, what happened in church became disconnected with the travails and
challenges of daily life. A survey of the current church-going habits of
Americans revealed that right now 20 percent of us – fully one-fifth of all
Americans – have no religious preference. Many of these people believe in God,
have an active prayer life, even went to church in their younger years, but
now, on Sunday morning, when we get in our cars and come here, they say, no,
thanks. I’ll stay at home. I’ll go to Starbucks. I’ll go to the gym. I’ll do
yoga. I’ll spend time with my children, and hug them tight, because, after all,
you never know.
I think this is what the people who flocked around John the
Baptist were talking about. The religious establishment of their time – the
Temple and their leaders who were in the thrall to the Roman Empire – and of
course the politics and economics of their day were, from their point of view,
morally bankrupt. John the Baptist made sense to people for whom nothing
worked. Prophets like John used to speak to the reality of real people –
prophets like Isaiah and Zephaniah, and that whole host of characters we read
during Advent – prophets who promise that God’s creation of abundance and mercy
and peace will be restored. In the lives of the people gathering around John
the Baptist, their religious leaders are paying no attention to those prophets,
and so are paying no attention to the daily needs of these people, no attention
to the challenges and demands of their lives. What then shall WE do, they say
to John the Baptist. What then shall we do? For these people at the bottom of
the social ladder, it all made sense: share your warm coats. Don’t cheat. Don’t
steal. It’s pretty basic. The Good News from God is pretty basic.
There are a lot of reasons why people don’t come to church,
why the membership of this parish has declined in recent years. Some of those
reasons have nothing to do with us: the population has shifted. Corporations
who were massive employers have left the area. Sexual abuse, loss of trust,
bitter fights over who is in and who is out – all of that and more are
prevalent in the big society, and there are echoes of that here. Some people
are just bored with the church of the 1950s, or ‘60s, or ‘70s – as lovely and
attractive as we think we are -- and want nothing to do with it anymore.
Look again at the appeal of John the Baptist to the people
around him. He was direct. He spoke to their reality. He did not mince words.
He paid attention to them. He offered real hope that spoke to their real
longings.
What do we offer today, on this Third Sunday of Advent? What
do we say to our friends and neighbors who are hurting and yearning for hope?
To whom are we opening our hearts, and our doors?
It is time we took our light
out from under the bushel. This is a safe, a meaningful, an important place to
talk about the things that matter to us. This is a place where we share our
coats and share our hearts, where we know, and where we are not shy to say,
that in the face of the horror that drove that young man to kill all those
innocent children, God is with us, God is with us, God is with us.
Amen.
Find the Prayers of the People from today's service, along with links to the authors of some of the prayers, at our Forming Disciples blog.
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