2021-12-06
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text
Scriptures
Malachi 3: 2-3
“But who can endure the day of God’s coming? Who can stand when God appears? For God will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap and will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.”
Philippians 1: Assorted verses.
3 I thank my God every time I remember you, 4 constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, 5 because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. 9 And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10 to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11 having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
Luke 3: 1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler[a] of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler[b] of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler[c] of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
5 Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
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Sermon - “A New House for Christmas”
When I first read the Gospel for today, and thought of the poor reader trying to get through all those words, some of which I’m not even sure how to pronounce, I was tempted to take out those names in the beginning of the passage. But then I realized Himself would be my liturgist, and I knew he’d be up to the challenge. And also, after a bit of study on the text, I realized I couldn’t eliminate them because they were essential to the whole point of the passage. The Biblical scholars note that the whole point of setting up all those specific names of people and their titles and locales, was to establish that they were the power people. We hear the list of emperor, governor, rulers and high priests- and then, in total contrast, in jarring juxtaposition, we hear that the word of God came NOT to any of them…but to John, simple spiritual journeyer in the wilderness. Indeed, against all those titles, and all that formal language, we hear that the word of God came not to any of those power people, but to plain, old John, whose only title is “son of Zechariah” and whose only location is…the wilderness.
Who was this John and why did the word of God, why did the first word about the long awaited coming of the Messiah, come through him? Well, despite his lack of pedigree, John was still an interesting character to be sure. We are told that he wore only the simplest, rough hewn coverings, and that he ate only locusts and wild honey. This suggests that he was either a member of, or sympathetic to, the Essene sect within Judaism. You know, there were the pharisees, the legalists from the common people; the sadducess, the priests from the upper crust, and the essenes: the ascetics who lived in the desert in spiritual community, holding all things in common, (sort of the hippies of their day) and seeking purification and spiritual growth through self denial. As one heavily influenced by the Essenes, John was probably also celibate, and probably spent all his time in self renunciation in the dessert, seeking spiritual growth. We are kind of talking the Hare Krishnas of the day whose only purpose was to grow spiritually, and who were willing to take the hard path to get there.
Why is this important? Well, for a couple reasons, only one of which I will belabor this morning. Since John is the one whose job it is to help us to prepare for the coming of Christ, I think there is something to the fact that he was all about personal spiritual discipline: personal renunciation of anything that held him back spiritually; living an austere and simple life so he could focus on God. As the one chosen by God to call us to prepare for Christ’s coming, I think we would do well to follow, to some extent, some version of his example in terms of where we place our own, Advent emphasis. And so this morning, let us consider this scripture: “In the two thousand and twenty-first year of the reign of President
Biden, when Mike Dewine was governor of Ohio, and Hamilton Throckmorton was the great hight priest, and his Associate Pastor, Moi, the High Priestess, in the region of Chagrin Falls at Federated Church…the word of God came to…Marty, Martine, Joshua, Alexandra, Sunny, Peggie Jo, Don, ….insert your name here” The voice of one crying in the wilderness “Prepare the way of the Lord!”
So what does it mean for each one of us, humble spiritual journeyers that we are, to prepare the way of the Lord? Well to begin, let’s look at the other scriptures for the day. The prophet Malachi also sounds the theme of personal purification. In Malachi, God is likened to a refiner’s fire, which burns away the dross or alloy in order to leave pure gold and silver. And in Philippians, we are told that God, who began a good work in us, will be faithful to complete it.”
So just what is this work that God has begun in us? What’s all this about dross being burned away to leave pure gold? What, exactly, is John calling us to do by way of preparation for the coming of the Lord? Well, to get at that, we have to go all the way back to the beginning of Genesis, where we are told first of all that we are created in the image and likeness of God, just a little lower than the angels…in other words, GOOD! strong, whole, quick-spirited, love-based, and glorious! That’s the truest truth about us human beings! That’s how God created us, and that truth runs deeper than anything else. If anyone ever tries to tell you that humans were created in sin, you send them to Genesis 1 and 2. We were created as magnificent. However…then along comes the next part of that early story, where we are told that those earliest humans somehow gave in to something else as well. Our ancient Israelite brothers and sisters called it sin and represented it metaphorically by the eating of the apple against God’s specific command. Every religion and philosophy has a version of it…this new ingredient added to the human mix against which we struggle, this lower self…I kind of like the term “ego mind” adopted by contemporary meditation teachers. The name or terminologies don’t matter so much, it’s the universal concept that somehow, in addition to the whole and glorious creatures that we were made to be, there is something else, a part that resists that. Some call it our lower self, or false self. At the end of Romans chapter 7, Paul does a marvelous job of describing this “feet of clay” part of our nature where he says, “why do I so often do what I don’t intend to do, and not do the good I want to???” Boy, can I relate to that…this struggle between the part of me that is made in God’s image, that loves the light, and genuinely wants to take the high road; and then this other part…this lower part of me that just wants what it wants when it wants it, and that chiefly wants just to be left alone.
The book that some of you studied a couple years back, called Living at God’s Speed; Healing in God’s Time says that for each of us, there is, in life, what the writer calls a “fundamental option.” Charles Sidoti, the writer, says that each of us has a fundamental choice to make about the overall direction of our lives. Will you spend your life learning to love and serve, working for the coming of the Realm of God? or will your life be all about getting what you wanted running your own show? In other words, which self will you feed…the higher or the lower? Perhaps you know the old Cherokee Legend about this. In it, an elderly grandfather is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy,“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is sick – he is envy, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is whole and healthy– he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one that you feed.”
Well, today, John the Baptist and Malachi and Paul are reminding us which wolf to feed. One of my favorite writers, CS Lewis, says this is the whole purpose of Christianity and church and really of human life in general. That each of us is on a journey to grow up and out of that lower wolf side, out of our lower or false self, and into Christ consciousness! Into the freedom and joy and glory of having been made in God’s image and likeness, just a little lower than the angels! Lewis says it is like we are being changed from little, toy people, like the toys children may play with in a doll house, into real, abundantly alive, magnificent men and women. Or, in another metaphor, he says,
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what God is doing in getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently God starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is God up to? The explanation is that God is building quite a different house from the one you thought of -throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but God is building a palace out of you, and intends to come and live in it! (Lewis continues) God says that by “putting on Christ” we will grow into that likeness and become “little g” god’s and goddesses: dazzling, radiant, immortal, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love that we cannot now imagine it. A bright, stainless mirror which reflects back perfectly God’s own power and goodness.
Lewis also says that this process, what the church traditionally calls “sanctification,” is really the whole purpose of Christianity, and of life: this idea that each of us is on a spiritual journey of growing up and into our higher self, that healthy wolf, the fulness of who God created us, uniquely, to be. Lewis then goes so far as to say we are to become “little g” gods and goddesses! (Incidentally, this is a thread of Lewis’ theology that tends to be little known because it sounds, to his usual orthodox audience, like he is going sort of new-agey on them. As someone who has been reading Lewis since I was fourteen years old, I have to say, in this one thread of his theology, he may be doing exactly that.) He is suggesting that as Christ came to share in our humanity, Christ’s purpose was that we might, in a way, share in his divinity, (some of you might remember that line from the Catholic Mass, “having come to share in our humanity, grant that we might share in your divinity!”
And the thing is, Lewis was not the first to say this. And like so much of what we call “new age theology,” it’s actually very old age. In fact, this notion was prevalent in the early church! In the words of theologian Richard Rohr, “The early church fathers and mothers were quite clear about God's goal for humanity. Augustine in the fourth century described it in one phrase: "For even as Christ became a human being, so now human beings could become like Christ." It is that simple, says Rohr. “What Christ put together, we too have the opportunity to put together.” (He continues,) “In the second century, Irenaeus said that Jesus became what we are in order to make us what he himself is.” Rohr concludes: “The early church understood our task as a true process of divinization “ (to become divine!) 2 Peter 1:4, given little attention, says we are to “become partakers in the divine nature.”
So that’s what we’re in for! That’s the purpose of the spiritual journey, and of life, really. That we might grow up into our inherent, divine nature, and together, live our way into the creation of the Kingdom of God where love will hold sway and manifest as justice and righted structures, righteousness, for all, with the poor and disenfranchised at the front of the pack. The process will be long, and in part, very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less.
That’s what John the Baptist was working on in the wilderness. It’s what he calls us to start anew at this time in each liturgical year by preparing for Christ’s coming. It’s what the refiner’s fire is all about, and the good work that God began in us, and will be faithful to complete. It’s about our God who accepts us as we are, but loves us too much to leave us that way.
So now to the real question this morning, one which only you can answer. Where does God want to be at work in your life? What dross does God want to purge away so that you can grow from the poor, feeble, lower self; from that sad, sick wolf, into the god or goddess you were created to be, and so that you can live from this new self not just for your own well-being, but toward the healing of the world? Maybe it is something simple and fairly obvious, like an addiction or compulsion you need to deal with: maybe alcohol or workaholism or addiction to other peoples’ approval or to shopping, (which Amazon now makes so convenient;) maybe its a character trait that keeps tripping you up, like compulsive worry or repeatedly losing your temper, or the tendency to become tediously judgemental…and try as you might, you seem unable to make headway and you need extra help! Maybe its more subtle and complicated, like being too attached to your own thoughts and opinions, and you take them as reality instead of seeing that you have created your own mental universe with them and you can learn to spot them, but not be owned by them. Maybe you are somebody who perpetually lives ten feet ahead of yourself and just needs to learn to live in the moment, to stay in your spiritual bubble, which is really where God lives. Or maybe you don’t really know, and you need to figure out what your dross is, what’s holding you back from that divination process. Well, my friend, then advent is for you. It’s supposed to be a time of reflection and consideration of one’s life in order to simplify and turn ourselves over to God in a new and deeper way. I believe that may be why God chose John to announce Christ’s coming. We all need to take on our own version of locusts and wild honey- offloading the excess in order to see where God wants to purge away the lower self, the sick wolf, in favor of the higher one.
So I would invite you, in the weeks that are left of Advent, to focus on one thing in your life where you would like to seek God’s transforming power to make a change in you. One way in which you will stop feeding the sick wolf, the lower self. And will you ask God to come into the house that is you, and repair that which is broken, maybe even put up a turret or a spire to make you into a living palace, just in time for Christmas?
It’s time for a good housecleaning, a great sweeping away of everything that does not bring life. Let the winter winds blow their stinging gusts through the spare trees and fields of your life, uprooting the dead weeds and branches, and carrying away all dross. Let the new, fledgling sparks of divinity take hold and grow up in you, to God’s glory and the healing of the world. Amen,