Second Sunday in Advent; Dec 5, 2021; ICCM; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson
The Word of the Lord comes in many ways, through prophets, through scriptures, through music, through our loved ones. The United Church of Christ says it this way: God is still Speaking!
We heard the word of the Lord at through at least four prophets today, speaking to their own people in their own times about God’s coming: Baruch, Malachi, Zechariah and John. Each told the people to get ready because God was about to do something amazing. It’s not just those four though. The Scriptures are, actually, quite repetitive, from Abraham and Sarah, through the Old Testament prophets, in the time between the old and new testaments, in the life of Jesus and the early church, and carrying on through the centuries of Christian life the Word of God speaks its repeating spiral of grace, on and on and on.
We see it writ large over the centuries of history and writ small and personally, in our own life stories. Award winning author and social activist, L.R. Knost says it this way: “Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living: heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.”
Luke places his account of John’s prophecy firmly in history, starting with a string of historic references to power. In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor in Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitus and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness. John, plain John who gave up his inherited place in the priesthood, stands in stark contrast to the powerful figures mentioned. Gods shows up in plain sight—in the ordinary and specific lives of God’s ordinary people.
As you heard, we have two readings from Luke today, just a few verses apart in the gospel but describing events about 30 years apart in time. Luke, again, places the story firmly in historyL In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. Luke sets the scene for us—contrasting the height of power—King Herod, with little old Zechariah. In grand biblical style, the angel Gabriel announces to the priest that his wife, Elizabeth, will bear a son who shall be named John and who will lead many to God. But, Zechariah doesn’t believe it. They are an old, childless couple. So, the pastor is left mute for the next many months, until after the baby’s birth. That’s where we find Zechariah in today’s reading, on the baby’s naming day when Zechariah’s tongue is finally set free and he speaks his prophecy.
Remember, Zechariah wasn’t anybody important. He was just a priest in the hill country of Judea. Yet, something amazing was happening in that little out of the way place, among those ordinary people. Having had months of silence to think over what he learned and what it might mean—Zechariah’s song of hope still rings out across the centuries. It was indeed an amazing time.
You my child shall be called the prophet of the most high, to go before the Lord to prepare the way, to give the people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
I wonder what we might discover about the Word of the Lord coming among us if we were struck mute for months at a time. How would we see the world? The angel came and told the priest what to expect. His job was to shut up and listen, to Wake Up to God’s Presence. What if we approached our world that way? What if we saw the people around us as gifts from God?
Of course, Luke tells us about the birth of Jesus, too. Again, he grounds the story with historical power figures. The decree went out from none other than The Emperor Augustus. It was while Quirinius was Governor of Syria. There may have been powerful people in powerful places by the world’s standards, but, again, the real action was happening in the nowhere of Nazareth.
Mighty powerful things were happening in the world around Malachi and Baruch, too. The Word of the Lord came to them, two of the most obscure prophets. Malachi wrote after the exile, about 430 BC. His is the last book in the Old Testament. Malachi is both a name and a word that means messenger or angel, the one who announces the coming of God. He wrote at a time when the people had come back from Babylon but were still struggling. They had rebuilt the temple, their homes and their lives– but it wasn’t amazing it was awful. It was a time to hold on. He said the coming of God would be like the purifying fire of a smelter. The prophet reminds them to hold on through the heartbreaking time. It was a specific word for a certain time through unknown Malachi.
I’m guessing that many of you haven’t even heard of our other lesson today. What is Baruch, you may ask? It’s one of the books of the Apocrypha, the books written in the 400-year span between the Old and the New Testament. Those books were considered part of the scriptures until Martin Luther took objection to them in the 16th Century. Catholic and Orthodox Christians still include them. God was still speaking then and is still speaking now—for those of us awake enough to listen.
During those 400 years the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Hasmoneans and finally the Romans took over the ancient world. No matter which part of that time Baruch was writing, the Israelites were a dominated people. They were moved around by the world powers like pawns on a chess board. It was not an amazing time, and it may not have been an awful time either. It may have been one of those mundane times.
I love the images the prophet Baruch uses to speak to the people. He invites them to take off the sorrow and affliction they have been wearing like a garment and to, instead, put on forever the beauty of the glory from God, the robe of the righteousness that comes from God; the jeweled crown of the glory of the Everlasting, so God will be able to show their splendor everywhere. They are to stand on the high point where Jerusalem sits and look out to the East and West and to see how God has and will repeatedly restore them. No obstacle will be left to impede God’s actions—the high mountain and the everlasting hills will be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that God’s people may walk safely in the glory of God.
Oh, it can be so easy to wear our sorrow or pain like a cloak, to drape our afflictions all over the rest of who we are. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, when I grieve, it can feel like a heavy blanket dragging me down. The prophet acknowledges the sorrow, the affliction and invites the mourner to take off that garment and put on the beauty of the glory of God, the robe of righteousness!
That clear word of God comes across the centuries right into our advent ears today—There has been sorrow and affliction. Oh yes. We have lost loved ones, we have experienced difficulties there have awful times when we’ve just had to hold on. The season of Advent calls to prepare, to set aside, like Zechariah—to shut up and listen so that we can open our eyes to the opportunities in front of us each day to be a part of what God is doing here and now. These prophetic voices call us to wake up!
This morning we heard an arrangement of a cantata by Bach, as our prelude. Wachet Auf is often translated Sleepers Awake! It’s one of my favorite pieces. Thank you Kirk, for your arrangement and performance of that piece today. I thought it was particularly fitting for today, given our lessons and what I heard in them this week. Bach composed the chorale cantata in 1731 based on a hymn by the same name written by Phillip Nicolai who was the pastor of a town called Unna, near the German city of Dortmund.
Think of it this way: It was during the reign of Rudolf the II, the Holy Roman Emperor in 1598 when the word of the lord came to Phillip Nicolai. The pastor had just taken the job in 1598, when the town was hit with a terrible plague. By the end, almost half of Unna had succumbed. For Nicolai, whose parsonage overlooked the cemetery and who had to perform countless funerals, it must have felt like the apocalypse. It was an awful time—a time to just hold on. Pastor Nicolai consoled himself by writing a collection of meditations to, “comfort other sufferers visited by the pestilence,” He called this collection his “Mirror of Joy,” a hopeful light shining in the midst of terrible darkness. And to round it off, he included two original hymns, one of which was Wachet Auf.
On top of the plague’s devastation, a Spanish military invasion came through the area, putting down the protestant movement that had grown up there. The words of the hymn speak of a bright light coming in the middle of the night, and the first verse tells believers to wake up from their sleep and hold up their lamps. Rather than preparing for some new awful thing, the hymn is saying to be prepared for joy by sharing your light. Nicolai’s lamp was his faith and his hope for a brighter future, and Wachet Auf was his way of shining that lamp for his congregation.
That message of hope and joy, written in the middle of profound tragedy, made Wachet Auf a popular hymn among Lutherans and the formed the basis, over a century later, for Bach’s cantata. Bach starts his own melody first, dancing over the bassline. Then, he brings in Nicolai’s hymn as a slow, insistent counterpoint. The two melodies intertwine in a cross-century collaboration between an almost unknown pastor and one of the greatest composers of all time. Its message is as universal as any of our prophetic texts today. We don’t know what will happen next, but we do know that we can and will get through it. What we can do now is be prepared, hold up our lamps, and bring light to each other’s lives.
So, hear the Word of the Lord:
In the third year of the presidency of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, while Joe Biden was president of the United States and Justin Trudeau was in his 6th year as prime minister of Canada, when Pope Francis was seated in Rome and the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton presided as Bishop over the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the word of the Lord came to Rebecca, daughter of Ed and Ann, and guest preacher for the English Speaking Congregation of the Christian Congregational church in Mazatlan, known as the Blue Church, located on the corner of Melchor Ocampo and Cinco de Mayo in El Centro.
We are invited to shut up and listen. To Wake Up to the Word of the Lord in our ordinary lives, to welcome the coming of God among us. Amen.