Sermon 11/30/08 (Isaiah 64:1-9)

“Works in Progress”
Isaiah 64:1-9
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 30 November, 2008
First Sunday of Advent
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 I am a little shocked that the Season of Advent begins today. I should be ready for it. After all, I have seen Christmas advertisements in the stores since late September. I have been getting Christmas catalogs since August. And now “the holiday season” is really in full swing. “Black Friday” has taken place, and although I was far from the shopping malls I saw pictures of the mayhem in the news. I am working on my annual Christmas letter and will sit down to begin my Christmas cards in a week or two. But right now I’m not ready for it. ...Why is that?

I think there is one main reason Advent shocks us -- or at least me. Outside the walls of the church the Christmas season is in full swing. We see Santa Claus and snowmen and cheerful babies in mangers, surrounded by a glowing Mary and Joseph. I sat in a deli last week and was nauseated by a constant stream of bad Christmas carols, sung by overwrought musicians. A crowd of 2,000 greed-blinded people rushed through the door of a Wal Mart on Friday, killing an employee who was hired to assist with the busy holiday season.

These experiences are what “the Christmas season” has become to the outside world. Then I walk in the doors of the church and am in a different world. Here the Christmas season does not even begin until December 25th. The Advent season -- the four weeks leading up to Christmas -- is a solemn time in the church. It is a time for contemplation and prayer. ...And look at the scriptures! We are not welcomed this morning with a sentimental tale about a Christ-child born in Bethlehem. Instead -- smack! -- we are hit with dark words about the anger of God toward a sinful people and about the Second Coming of Christ. We must reconfigure our cheerful holiday mood when we enter the doors of the church and prepare for something a little different.

It is a shock to the senses to go from “Oh, Holy Night” to “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” It makes the head spin to go from “Jingle Bells” to “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence...to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!” Yet there they are. There are those dark words that usher us into the Season of Advent. And once we get past the initial shock, I hope we will realize the beauty of the words and their reason for being here. The theme of the First Sunday of Advent every year is “hope,” and I pray that we will see the hope contained in Isaiah’s and Mark’s shocking words too.

Our reading from Isaiah begins with a desperate prayer for God to make God’s presence known: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” Is this not exactly what we need? Our world is hurting terribly right now. We set aside our pain as much as we can so we can “get into the holiday spirit.” We shrug off our woes so we can make the best Christmas possible for our families. We ignore the horrors of the world and delve into “Christmas cheer.” ...This is not entirely a bad thing. Escapism has its purposes. But perhaps this year, more than ever, what we really need to be doing during this season is calling out to God, begging for forgiveness, and becoming aware that we are created by God.

We talk every week about the troubles in our lives and in our world. This week, the terrible violence in Mumbai, India was one more thing to add to our prayers. Is there not tremendous hope in the idea of God tearing open the heavens and coming to save us?

Then there is Isaiah’s cry for forgiveness. Even as we weep in horror at the transgressions of our fellow humans we, too, commit sins. Isn’t confessing those sins before God a perfect way to prepare for Christ’s coming into the world? Whether we have turned from God in large or small ways, cleaning our slate is a way of showing that we respect and honor the Christ who is about to come into our midst. It is also a good way to check our own spiritual gauge during what has become a “holiday season” about greed and hectic activity.

Finally, there is Isaiah’s description of God as the potter and humankind as the clay. This is a beautiful reminder that we belong to God and that God has not, in fact, stopped the process of creating us. We’re works in progress. Advent marks the beginning of the Christian year, so maybe this can be a new beginning for us -- a time to allow God to re-create us, to mold us in God’s image.

This morning, in a few moments, we will baptize Jonathan Russell. Jonathan is at the very beginning of his life’s journey, and one of the things we emphasize at a baptism is the Christian journey. As a congregation, we will promise “our love, support and care” to Jonathan “as he lives and grows in Christ.” It will be easy to think of him as the clay that God is molding, because he is so young. Every time he does something, we can practically see the wheels turning in his brain as he learns new things about his world.

But perhaps the words of Isaiah, and the coming Advent of Christ can help us to realize that we, too, are being molded and changed; that we are growing in new ways with every breath we take. Today is Margaret King’s 95th birthday. Today Jonathan will celebrate his first birthday. Let us take this season of Advent to remember that Margaret is a work in progress, just as Jonathan is. God is creating us continuously, developing our spirits and our hearts and our minds from before we are born until the day that we die. Let us respect and honor God’s creation of us by taking time to nurture our spirits during this Advent season.

Now let us pray.