words from an advent sermon offered on my podcast

Isaiah 11: 1-9 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be the [awe] of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the rattling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Romans 15: 4-13 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, “Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name;” and agin he says, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people;” and again, “Praise the Lord all you Gentiles, and let all the people praise him;” and again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope.” May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I’ve decided to stick with Isaiah and Romans for our advent journey, though the scriptures specified for this week are not particularly easy to work with, at least not for me. There is a lot in there and I have found it difficult to pull just one teaching out without wanting to turn this into a multi-volume series. The choice to stay with the lectionary is mine, I like the challenge even as I wonder if I can do it; I could take an easier path with a peaceful nativity scene, but the hard work is where we grow so it is again literally and symbolically a good growth opportunity.

The theme for this week of advent is ‘peace’ so it could be nice to focus on the scene of animals that would be in conflict all snuggled up together, but like with last week, I don’t think the conclusion is the part of the story God is calling us in to study. That scene is the promise, but it is going to be work to get there, and it probably doesn’t even feel realistic. But the peace we are being offered is a peace beyond what we have ever known and outside of our logical understanding, we have to be faithful enough to trust that if we do the work of living in God’s world the peace of that world will be beyond our comprehension. And of course it won’t come easily, it will be hard, it will be challenging, it may even be unpleasant in the moment.

Of course that is the point though: to really have peace, the way it can hold you and envelop you in the presence of God, you have to know hardship. Let me say here that I am not advocating self-harm or suffering as a way to get to salvation. Forcing pain on ourselves is not necessary for the relief of peace. We have all, in some way or another, visibly or invisibly, suffered and known pain. In some places it is more obvious and acute, in others it may just be an internal discomfort that nudges us in another direction. It is not a competition. We have all hurt, and we all have the invitation to come into God’s peace.

When we are in that hard stuff we are given an opportunity to let go of the need to manage it all, to control the process, and as we do this we find that there is a little more room for God to be present with us and work. That is the place where deep peace resides.

As I always do I want to start with context and this week we will use Romans for understanding what we are meant to learn in these scriptures. In this letter Paul is writing at about a generation out from the life of Jesus, the “church” is still very new, is not formalized in any way, has no doctrine or orthodoxy to follow and is struggling to figure out what it is. “Christians” as an identity are mostly jews with more and more gentile and pagans loosely confederated as followers of Jesus, a now deceased jewish rabbi.

So this is where we find Paul in chapter 15 reminding the church in Rome that they need to be welcoming all people, that all people are invited to participate in following the teachings of Jesus that call us back to the jewish scriptures. This crazy scene of lions and lambs together makes about as much sense as saying we need to follow this old text, we need to go back to understanding something we missed, because that is where God is at work and that is where we find our peace.

We modern Christians like to think that Jesus was teaching something new, that he was creating a new religion, I’ve even heard people say he invented Christianity. But the fact is, and I use the word fact intentionally, he was not teaching anything new, he was teaching us over and over to go back to the original scripture and look for the deeper understanding of God’s kingdom contained in it. The lectionary this week also offers us a reading from Matthew, which we are not going to deeply explore because we already have a lot to work with, but in that lesson we find John the Baptist exhorting people to repent. Repent means to turn back. And that is precisely what Paul is telling us in Romans: turn back to the old ways, go understand what that means because we lost the message somewhere along the way. There is a totally improbable, illogical peace that lives in a kingdom that we have failed to make room for, probably because it is so crazy we didn’t believe it could happen.

Paul says to us, “for whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.” We are not being asked by God, as explained by Paul, to do anything new; we are asked to doing something old, differently.

Just acknowledging that we are off track can be so hard, especially if what we are doing seems socially and even ethically right. It feels both humbling and humiliating to say, ‘I think I’m going the wrong way,’ when everyone else is going in that direction. But if you can never acknowledge where you might be wrong, if you can never say sorry to yourself, or another person, or god, you just slowly build more and more emotional walls that keep fear in and peace out. You know when something is wrong, I truly believe that when you do wrong you feel it wriggling around inside, and you can justify your actions a million ways, you can numb that discomfort with any number of intoxicants and distractions, but when you are on the wrong path your heart and your soul are not at peace.

Repentance, turning back to God and God’s ways, lets you break down those walls so that true deep connection, spiritual nourishment, improbable peace can heal you and fill you.

Paul is reminding us that if we are followers of Jesus we have to go back, we have to repent of the worldview we are using to justify doing things our own way, that keeps some people in and some people out, that orders the system in a way we understand. We have to go back and hear what God was telling us to imagine all along, and to trust would manifest through faithfulness and righteousness. And what does that look like? As I said last week, we have an example in the life of Jesus, we need to do what he did: welcome each other wherever we are coming from. When we do that, when we go back to that old scripture that we think has nothing left to give us we find a new understanding emerge, what feels dead will give us new life in a way we can not imagine.

We like to point fingers, settle into our own self-righteousness. I do this, I think most of us do: I have a hard time comprehending how you can being doing X when I am sure that doing Y is the right way to live. Conservatives can’t agree with liberals, an atheist can’t have common cause with an evangelical. Someone always gets to be the good guy and that means someone always has to be the bad guy. But Jesus sat at the table with the rich and the poor, with the political and religious leaders, and the social and spiritual outcasts. ‘Welcome everyone as Christ Jesus did’, says Paul, and the steadfastness of the God of the ancient will revive in the people today to bring joy and peace. “A shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” Something we thought was dead is actually very much alive when we live in righteousness and faithfulness.

When we are faithful in trusting God and God’s ways, making space for God to work in and through us, when we act with righteousness in making space at the table for everyone, a peace beyond what we can comprehend emerges on earth. No one need be hungry, no one need fear danger, no one is taking advantage of their neighbor. My friends, God is not making this happen for us, we have been given the formula to make it happen right now. If we are willing to turn around and return to a faithful righteousness we make room for God’s peace to overflow our world.

It is not easy to say, “I think I have been doing this wrong, I think I have been focused on the wrong things.” But as hard as it can feel to say that, as dead and hopeless as it may seem, it is never too late for a new shoot to emerge. No it is not easy to say sorry, to change direction, to welcome that person over there who you are sure is evil. But if we want the incomprehensible, improbable peace that God is showing us a picture of, we have to try. This week I challenge you to say sorry where it feels terrifying but necessary, to say I love you when and where Jesus would, and to invite the possibility of peace that just doesn’t make any sense at all. Blessings today, and always.