'Stop the world, I want to get off!'
Advent 2 and John the Baptist
Fr. Cathie was under the weather Sunday, so special thanks to Karen Jones for leading worship and reading the sermon already prepared!
You can read it below…
This week’s announcements
Click the button below for December 7th announcements …
St. Paul’s Annual Meeting
was held after the service on December 7th. Click the button below for the minutes…
(editorial note: St. Paul’s does more ministry that most churches three times its size!!)
Breaking News
The Case of the Missing Meatloaf has been solved!
Apparently, it never left the freezer, it was just hidden behind some bags of ice. Of course, that’s just what someone might say if the guilty party felt bad and snuck it back in.
I guess we’ll never really know the truth.
Enjoy the meatloaf, EP!
Fr. Cathie Caimano’s sermon …
Stop the world, I want to get off.
It’s gotten to the point that when I wake up and look at the news of the world, I just want to go back to sleep.
I just don’t want to hear it - another round of who’s at war with whom, how our government leaders would rather insult each other than deal with the nation’s problems, the latest sensational murder or terrorist attack.
Or most likely, the latest terrorist threat, since it seems that if we wake up to a day where there is not murder and mayhem in our streets, we find a way to remind ourselves that we all need to be vigilant, we still need to be fearful, because at any moment, there could be.
I don’t want to hear about the stock market, the job market, the real estate market. I don’t want to know how many people are out of work or homeless just when the holidays are here, just when it is darkest and coldest.
I am tired - so tired - of living in a world where it seems I am helpless to stop the stream of bad news filtering into my brain and my life, where I am angry and afraid even when I can’t actually put my finger on what exactly I am afraid of or angry at.
But they will tell me, I am sure.
They will tell me to be angry at whatever officials are currently in charge, those idiots we elected to office, until we elect new idiots and the cycle starts all over again.
They will tell me to be afraid of whoever does not look like me – those who practice a religion I am unfamiliar with, who come from a country that doesn’t speak my language, who live their lives in some kind of family configuration that doesn’t look like mine.
Surely if we separate ourselves from all of those people, then safety and security will reign.
I am tired of living in this world.
I want the world that Isaiah promises us this morning, the beautiful place with lions and lambs living together, a world so through with violence that even the wild beasts eat grass, a little child in charge.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
We could wake up in the morning to the play forecast, the news this time of year would be full of the excited anticipation of Santa and presents. And snow.
Wonder and curiosity would reign.
But that’s just a fantasy, right?
That’s just some religious yarn to get us through the darkness, spun by a man living through the destruction of his own country, his own culture, in his own time. The great kingdom of Israel brought to its knees by its own unfaithfulness and greed, now failing and being assaulted on every side.
So Isaiah sings them a lullaby, a beautiful song about how God will bring them a new world, something to distract them from the hard times they are actually living in.
And besides, we can hardly even hear that this morning because we have to listen to John the Baptist rant about vipers instead.
That man is so current he could get his own channel on YouTube.
Now, most of you know that John is my least favorite character in all the Bible, and not just because it seems by his description that he doesn’t smell very good and he does nothing for his image by eating bugs.
But especially today, especially this time of year, I just can’t take him because he sounds just like all those other voices that make me turn away.
I am tired of being yelled at and I am tired of bad news and I am especially tired of being told that even God is hanging around to punish me.
And that’s the really tough thing, isn’t it?
Sometimes, when I am up for more bad news, I look at the church statistics and see that fewer and fewer people, especially young people, find their way to our pews.
And yet I think, if they come here just to hear that God is going to get them if they don’t behave, then why should they come? Why should we?
John the Baptist does not make me want to say ‘thanks be to God,’ he just makes me want to turn off the radio and pull the covers over my head.
I want Isaiah’s world.
Not the world Isaiah lived in. The world Isaiah believed in.
And this, my friends, is Advent.
This is the time, this is the season, when we are acutely aware that we are waiting for something.
That something has got to give, that there has got be something more.
That we start searching the sky for the brightest star and scanning the horizon for a Savior because clearly, we have had enough of a world that cannot rescue itself.
And it happens to us again and again because again and again we have to be reminded that no matter how strong, no matter how smart, no matter how well-intentioned we are, we still need God.
We still need to recognize our weaknesses and limitations, our mistakes and our sins. We still need saving.
Stop the world, for just a moment.
Stop the madness all around us and really ask,‘What is the world coming to?’
Where are we going if we continue to believe in all this darkness?
And it seems to me that whenever we get here, if we really look, if we really wait, then sooner or later, a flicker of light appears.
Something happens: a small kindness, a moment of peace, we get some kind of sign that whatever the real world really is, it is not more bad news.
That even our longing itself is a sign that God wants more for us.
Isaiah, in a moment like this, wrote some of the most beautiful poetry ever written about the world at rest with itself, at one with its God. Isaiah heard God’s voice in all that darkness and could not resist how glorious it appeared.
Could the world really, someday, put away all its troubles? Can we all live in peace?
It seems to me, actually, that Isaiah’s vision and the one of John the Baptist were really different takes on the same thing: both were preparing the way of the Lord, both were prophesying about someone greater appearing, both were inspired by the power of God to deliver us from our sins and our suffering.
And both, according to our Christian beliefs, were forecasting the same thing: the coming of the Messiah, the Savior of the world.
It also seems to me that ultimately, of the two visions, John’s might have grabbed our attention first, but Isaiah’s was the one that was closer to the truth – a little child, attended by the beasts of the field, a new king who came not with a winnowing fork but with the songs of angels, innocent and vulnerable.
Whose judgment on the world, it turns out, was the judgment of sacrifice and love, not the judgment of division and violence.
Which says to me, to us, that no matter how many new ways we invent to believe in darkness, God keeps responding by bringing us light.
That whenever we are ready to believe this, to see this, it appears even brighter before us.
‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,’ Paul says to the Romans in our Epistle today, and it may be that hope is the best gift that we give back to the world.
If you can’t be here in person, join us online:
At Free Range Priest, we’re reimagining ministry in the digital age.
Subscribe to any (or all!) of these publications to be part of innovative ministry for the future of church.
