Second Sunday of Advent

Sermon Manuscript – Alison Williams – December 5th 2010 – 2nd Sunday of Advent

I’m thankful that Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit because I’m not too fond of water right now given all this snow and ice and slush. In Chicago when the roads were like this, Henry (my car) stayed parked and I walked. I took a bus or a train to get out of Hyde Park. Our little street never got cleared and it wasn’t worth the trouble of unburying Henry from the packed snow. And having grown up in Tennessee, I never learned to drive in snow anyways. So let me tell you, I’ve been having myself quite the adventure driving on these icy snow covered streets. I’ve only gotten stuck once at the end of my driveway after the sky dropped that bounty on us last Sunday. But I’ve skidded and spun and slipped enough to last me all winter. And it’s only December 5th.

I start thinking about Joni Mitchell’s River. “It’s coming on Christmas. They’re cutting down trees. They’re putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace. Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on.” But I’m certain her misery was more than just road conditions. The winter blues that set in as the days get shorter and our activities are more and more limited by the weather. As we have more time to click on the news and get depressed about the fate of the world. The greed and hate, the injustice and corruption. And as this is the church’s new year, perhaps we are thinking of new year’s resolutions. Do you ever get tired of grocery shopping, brushing your teeth, taking your vitamins, or the other million things you should do with your day? Not to mention doing your civic or Christian duty of voting, volunteering, or those kinds of things.

I wonder at what point we will have to get to before everyone declares “Enough is enough.” If  not in your own life, at the injustice in the world. At airport screening or global warming or child labor or senior abuse. Pick your issue. When is enough, enough?

And I don’t mean the kind where we give up because it is too difficult and we find Joni’s river so long it will teach our feet to fly. I mean the kind where we cannot sit still any longer and not do something. When will we get restless enough to take action? To change? Are we that brood of vipers trying to flee from the wrath to come? Or perhaps we are a field of stumps, chopped down for our inadequacy. Chopped down because, try as we might, we cannot bear fruit.

This is a dismal image. And I’m actually quite depressed thinking of myself as a tree stump. Imagine a congregation, a nation, an entire people reduced to fields of stumps. One where one stump turns to the next stump in the forest and says, “Guess I’m not shoveling off the driveway this afternoon.” That just sounds like the start of a bad joke. Or how about this: all the stumps agree they’re dead anyways and can’t shovel snow much less change the world and so we sit. In silence.

We will continue to sit in silence until we decide to change. Until we get restless enough to do something. Stop judging by what we see and stop deciding by what we hear and start believing. The writers of Isaiah and Romans plead with us to believe in a vision. To believe in the kingdom of heaven where the earth is so full of the knowledge of the Lord that lions and lambs lie down beside one another in peace. Where a small child plays with a serpent. Where water is not polluted and land is not destroyed. Where snow doesn’t become brown but is always sparkling with beauty. (Or perhaps where this is no snow to deal with?) Where we don’t constantly see the list of things we are not doing and should be doing but live in an entirely new way.

And since we’re all a bunch of stumps in a dead forest, it is clear we’re not doing much to bring about that kingdom.

The prophet Isaiah tells us that “a shoot shall come from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” And in this kingdom of heaven “on that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.” And then we fast forward to a time after Christ has died and rose again to hear Paul talk about that root of Jesse.

Or rather, to talk about the promise of new life that was fulfilled in Christ. To talk about all the ways in which a baby in a manger and a man on a cross became a servant of all. Christ is the promised Messiah welcoming all people so that God shall be glorified.

Do you believe then that the kingdom is possible? Since Jesus Christ is that promised root of Jesse, what does this mean for the kingdom to come? What does it mean when we pray in our Lord’s Prayer “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven?”

What does this mean if you imagine yourself as a stump in the middle of a field full of other stumps? What does it mean when John the Baptist is screaming at us and calling us a brood of vipers and telling us we’d better bear fruit worth of repentance?

And how much more afraid are we, as a field of stumps, when John tells us that someone more fierce is coming and he’s got fire! Then we’ll burning lumps of stumps in a field of ash.

Well that’s just fantastic. Thanks John. Oh, and he’s standing in a river offering us water of repentance. I hope you’re still picturing that burnt field of dead stumps because it looks like we’re getting drowned in that flood of water. We watch as a crazy man wearing camel’s hair, sticky with honey and smelling of locusts and river water, announces our death as he invites us to the enjoy the water.

Anyone restless yet? Anyone ready for a savior?

This is very counter intuitive to all things American and all things 21st century. This is not “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality. We are not keeping up with Joneses. (They’re stumps too after all.) The kingdom is not something that comes with a “Do it yourself” instruction manual. In fact, it’s not about us at all.

It’s about what happens next. It’s about who arrives on the scene next. It’s about the one that brings the Holy Spirit and calls us from our death into new life. This is the baptism that John the baptist spoke of that comes with Christ. A baptism of water and the Holy Spirit.

Brothers and sisters, baptism is powerful not because we splash some water around but because Christ revives us from our death and promises new life. Luther writes in the Large Catechism “Baptism is no human plaything but is instituted by God himself” [BC 457].

And as we baptize Reagan today, we recall our own baptisms. I’m not asking you to think back to the precise day you were baptized, especially if you were baptized as an infant like I was, but to revisit that grove of burnt drowned stumps once again in your mind. Do you see that God has caused those stumps to grow into a beautiful forest, bursting with life? Tall, strong trees bearing fruit?

This is the kingdom work that God is doing in you. And as you stand tall and strong, you bear fruit. You help grow the kingdom. Not only do you feed your brothers and sisters in Christ, you are doing kingdom work. You stand as witness to the powerful transformation that is Christ in your life. That is baptism. The acknowledgment that we have most certainly died and the truth that we have most certainly been raised up to new life in Christ. To a life far beyond the tree stumps we started out as when we depended on what we alone could contribute to the world.

Martin Luther writes again, “No greater jewel, therefore, can adorn our body and soul than baptism, for through it we become completely holy and blessed, which no other kind of life and no work on earth can acquire.”

Lean on Christ and trust in the knowledge that you have been made new in baptism. Allow that Holy Spirit that Christ brings to work in you. Though we are limited humans, with God all things are possible – even that vision of a perfect kingdom of heaven that Isaiah and Paul wrote about and that we continue to speak about today.

This is what the season of advent is all about. This is why we trudge through the slush and muck and gather in this space each Sunday. Because it is here that you get a taste of the feast to come. It is here you get to remember your baptism in a splash of water and recall how your life has been transformed and made new. It is here that you come to be lifted up by your brothers and sisters in Christ just as you lift them up.

Celebrate today and during this season and stand tall as baptized believers. Look towards that kingdom of heaven and towards the empty manger. As we work toward that kingdom we await our savior who is coming to bring new life into our death.

Amen.

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