"Make a Path": An Advent Sermon by Rev. Robin Bartlett

​READING FROM THE GOSPEL (Luke 1: 68-79)
68“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. 69He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, 70as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, 71that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. 72Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, 73the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us 74that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, 75in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 76And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, 77to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. 78By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, 79to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

READING FROM THE GOSPEL  (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 of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4as 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. 5Every 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; 6and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

     
SERMON            “Make a Path”

Friends, I don’t know what to say to you today. Nobody has anything new to say, least of all me. I’m tired and numb. You are, too.

When we’re tired and numb, we use intellectualizing and outrage as tools to cope. We are human, so we are prone to using whatever national tragedy befalls us to support the firmly held beliefs of our particular group and its narrative. And while I get it, I am so tired of listening to it. Amen? The old script doesn’t unite us. It doesn’t prepare the way of the Lord, it doesn’t make a path for God. For Love.

We are engaging in ideological warfare, because it is all we can do when we see that real warfare and destruction is all around us and we are helpless to stop it.

As I try to ignore my own very human tendency to talk before I have listened, to have an answer before I even know what the question is, the ancient words of the gospel text for this week echo in my head. 

"By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

14 people died and 21 people wounded, and countless people traumatized in San Bernadino, CA during a Christmas party by a husband and wife wearing tactical gear and wielding guns and bombs. The largest mass shooting in the United States since this time three years ago when a man killed school children and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut.

There have been more mass shootings in America this year than days in the year so far: 355. 355 mass shootings in 2015. 48,427 incidents of gun violence this year, 12, 255 deaths, 642 children, 2,426 teens dead. No wonder we are numb. This has become business as usual.

God have mercy; Christ have mercy. When will the dawn from on high break upon us, we who sit in this darkness?

We sit in the darkness with very old tools. The script for gun violence in America, for mass shootings, for domestic, international, religious extremism and terrorism was created long ago, it is perpetuated on a weekly basis, and everybody knows their lines. I know mine, you know yours’.

Everybody has something to say right now. The politicians, the commenters in the comment sections, Twitter hashtags, the press, your Facebook friends and mine, liberals, conservatives, Fox News and CNN. 

Everybody has something to say. 

Presidential candidates, gun enthusiasts and anti-gun deriders. Islamaphobics and Islam defenders. 

Everybody has something to say, and someone to blame. 

There are people who blame all Muslims. People who blame mental illness. People who blame all white men. People who blame the Middle East. People who blame America. People who blame guns. People who blame religion and race. People who blame guns and religion. Atheists who blame believers. Believers who blame atheism.

Everybody has something to say right now, and you’ve heard it all before. 

But our job as an advent people is not to pontificate and defend and to shout out our opponents. It is to wait. To stay awake. To watch. To listen for the voice crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” We are waiting and watching for new revelation, in the form of a tiny baby born in Bethlehem in the midst of brutal war and genocide. Perhaps if we are quiet enough, if we turn off our televisions and our twitter feeds, we can truly hear the words of our Gospel and understand them anew:

"By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

I have noticed during this latest tragedy in San Bernadino in the news and on social media a new phenomenon termed “prayer shaming.” I have watched this trend with interest. 

You may have heard this rhetoric. Politicians have been making public statements with their “thoughts and prayers” for the victims of mass shootings while simultaneously voting to defund research into gun violence in congress that same day. The phrase “thoughts and prayers” suddenly has become synonymous with hypocrisy. And people on the left are calling this practice out as shameful—empty platitudes that do nothing to ensure that this kind of carnage doesn’t happen again. Even President Obama said “thoughts and prayers aren’t enough…we need to take action.” 

And the religious right has fired back, calling all of these accusations a “war on prayer.”

And that’s when the script starts sounding familiar again, right? 

But there is some truth in this conversation. “God isn’t fixing this,” was the headline in the New York Daily News on Thursday. That seems clear. We know that empty platitudes don’t put an end to carnage. Platitudes don’t ease our fears that our children will wake up tomorrow very much alive and full of promise, go to school, and be shot and killed in their classrooms. 

There is a cartoon I’m reminded of—it’s Jesus sitting with a man on the park bench. The man asks Jesus, “Jesus: why do you allow things like war, suffering, famine, disease, despair, crime, homelessness, etc. to exist in the world?” And Jesus answers him, “Interesting you should bring that up because I was about to ask you the same thing.”

Perhaps we need, as a people of faith, to figure out what prayerful action looks like. Perhaps that’s what Jesus is waiting for us to do, to prepare a path for him.

And I know the politicians and my liberal friends are talking about gun control as the answer, and the politicians and my conservative friends are talking about going to war on Isis as the answer.

Truthfully, I doubt either one of those things will stop human carnage, hate, and fear. It will simply give us something to do so that we aren’t doing nothing. 

So much of our response when we feel helpless is to say “don’t just sit there, do something.” When perhaps the best response is to say “don’t just do something, sit there. Wait, watch, listen, stay awake. Look for the in-breaking of the new world, which looks quite simply like Love. And then allow your action to come from that prayerful watch.” 

I don’t know. I don’t know what to say to you this morning. 

What I do know is this: I do know that at this time of year we have a story about a middle eastern baby boy born into a world of empire and violence and raging kings and genocide, and that baby was born “to give light to those who sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death guide our feet into the way of peace.”

What I do know is this: Jesus is depicted actually praying to God in our scriptures about 25 times, which is probably not a whole lot in the scheme of things.

What I do know is this: The rest of the time he was healing the sick, eating with sinners, welcoming the stranger, feeding people, loving and forgiving those who despise him, preaching about the end to false differences that divide us, uniting us into one spiritual family of God. Jesus’ ministry was about active love—embodied love. 

What I do know is this: that love looked pretty dangerous. It looked like risking his own health to be with the sick; it looked like stepping outside his own religion and purity laws to befriend and defend those who didn’t share the same bloodlines, it looked like visiting the prisoner—who most people fear, it looked like forgiving his enemies, even on the cross. It looked like walking toward trouble like that policeman in San Bernadino who told scared children not to worry, that he’d take a bullet before they did. 

In the end, Jesus’ love looked like climbing up on a cross to die rather than “being in the sin accounting business anymore.” (Nadia Bolz Weber)

 So maybe those who are criticizing empty prayer and platitudes are onto something this advent, since empty prayer was not what Jesus was about. Jesus was about erasing barriers between people despite fear, brave vulnerability, and risking death for love. 

My husband overheard a conversation at the YMCA in Worcester on Thursday. Three men were lifting large weights, and casually saying that they hoped that Donald Trump would round up all the Muslims in American and move them to a “camp.” “Obama let them all in,” they said. “Now they need to be kept away from us.” Never mind the fact that Christians commit acts of terrorism too, like Robert Dear who just shot up a Planned Parenthood last week. Never mind the fact that people who are practitioners of Islam—who go to mosque each week—are proven to be statistically unlikely to commit acts of terrorism; that Islamic extremists have all been proven to be the equivalent to “Christmas and Easter Christians”—not “real” practitioners of Islam. Never mind the fact that we Christians, Jews and Muslims all worship the same God of the same Abrahamic faith tradition, and the same sacred scripture. Anyway, Andy told me this story on our way home in the car, and we shook our heads in disbelief and clucked our tongues in disgust. We shivered in fear of what that rhetoric leads to, like Holocaust and war.

And my disgust about this story my husband relayed quickly turned to shame. Because just that same morning as I watched the news unfolding about Wednesday’s carnage in California on the TV at the gym-- the news that this was probable terrorism by an America citizen who had been “radicalized” by Islamic terrorists—that same day, and in that same place, I saw someone at the gym, a man who looked like he was of Middle Eastern descent. And I experienced more than a moment of fear. Could I get Isaac out of the day care fast enough if he had a bomb or a gun? Where is the closest exit? How can I protect myself on the elliptical trainer? I’m so vulnerable.

That’s evil. That’s what evil looks like.

That’s the evil we pray to be delivered from, this fear that we have of other people, manifested inside of us. This is the same evil that allows other people to kill. It’s a reminder that I, too, sit in darkness, that I need God’s help to guide my feet in the way of peace. The truth is, in that moment, I had an opportunity to see Christ, and instead I saw a terrorist. Lord, deliver us from the evil that suggests there is separation between us—for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. 

It is in those moments that I am reminded that the reign of peace does not look like safety; it looks like brave vulnerability. Being rescued from the hands of our enemies, our gospel says, means serving God without fear. 

Julian of Norwich wrote that “If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.”

So fall and rise again. Live dangerously. Make straight the paths of the Lord. Listen, wait, watch, stay awake, re-think, burn the old scripts of who is good and who is bad. Walk toward trouble. Refuse what is safe in favor of Love. Make your very lives a brave and vulnerable prayer to the Living God through manifesting your love in action. Maybe then all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Maybe then our feet will be guided in the way of peace.

"When the World Was Dark," an Advent poem from the Iona community.

When the world was dark
and the city was quiet,
you came.
You crept in beside us.
And no one knew.
Only the few
who dared to believe
that God might do something different.
Will you do the same this Christmas, Lord?
Will you come into the darkness of today's world;
not the friendly darkness
as when sleep rescues us from tiredness,
but the fearful darkness,
in which people have stopped believing
that war will end
or that food will come
or that a government will change
or that the Church cares?
Will you come into that darkness
and do something different
to save your people from death and despair?
Will you come into the quietness of this city,
not the friendly quietness
as when lovers hold hands,
but the fearful silence when
the phone has not rung,
the letter has not come,
the friendly voice no longer speaks,
the doctor's face says it all?
Will you come into that darkness,
and do something different,
not to distract, but to embrace your people?
And will you come into the dark corners
and the quiet places of our lives?
We ask this not because we are guilt-ridden
or want to be,
but because the fullness of our lives long for
depends on us being as open and vulnerable to you
as you were to us
when you came,
wearing no more than diapers,
and trusting human hands
to hold their maker.
Will you come into our lives,
if we open them to you
and do something different?
When the world was dark
and the city was quiet
you came.
You crept in beside us.
Do the same this Christmas, Lord.
Do the same this Christmas.
Amen.