A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, December 6, 2009
Malachi 3:1-4
Luke 3:1-6
However we read the biblical story we must recognize the tenacity of God who held on to the children of Israel and who holds on to us. The Latin word is tenax, meaning “holding on tightly and persistently, not giving up or going away.” The French adapted it to “tendril” meaning a vine or root that grasps and won’t let go.
Whatever else we see in the great sweep of scripture certainly we see that God never gave up in despair or disgust. This is the God who created humankind for wholeness and called our ancestors into covenant and wept when we wandered and who brought us from slavery to Promised Land by way of the wilderness and who corrected us and who forgave us.
Whatever else we see in the biblical story surely we see the tenacity of God who just hasn’t let go, even now, even knowing how far we will run and how carefully we’ll hide.
If you’ve been in worship very much you know intuitively that I come back to this attribute of God over and over. I read the Exodus story as a crisp and clear metaphor of the whole sweep of the encounter between the human the divine. I talk of Pilgrim peoples and how God loves us enough to let us be free and to risk losing us. I get goose bumps as I read the parable we call the Prodigal Son and then remember that the parable is as much about the tenacious father who wouldn’t give up, or wash his hands and act as though his rebellious son was lost to him and effectively dead and gone. And this, as I see it, is the truth of how we encounter the tenacity of God.
Many of us go through times of profound separation from God – sometimes because we can’t acknowledge the possibility that God holds on even when our souls are in agony. We may be like a two year old having a temper tantrum, whose mother wisely creates a safe place for the child to flail about until exhaustion wins out.
But then by God’s grace we pass through the anguish of the midnight of the soul and see again how God rejoices when we pass through our rebellions and come with hungry and yearning spirits, praying for an encounter with the holy. As St. Augustine said 1500 years ago: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” So I would say faith is born out of our restlessness and our hunger for a transforming encounter with the living God.
I’ve spoken before of the ancient Celtic concept of thin places – when the human and divine can touch through the veil that separates heaven and earth. Do you have any places where God feels particularly near? Is there a church, a shrine, a cemetery, a place on the beach or the mountain top where you’re drawn in times of spiritual restlessness?
We visited many places in Scotland last summer that simply caused us to stop in silence. Heaven and earth came together there. There was the Church of the Holy Rude right next to Stirling Castle – an ancient stone sanctuary completed in 1414. The ruins of St. Andrew’s cathedral on the eastern shore is certainly such a place.
But most powerful by far was the expansive Kilmartin Glen in Argyleshire, where my Campbell ancestors lived 300-400 years ago. There are numerous stone circles and cairns that date from Bronze and Stone ages – perhaps 5,000 years ago. These monumental stones are precisely aligned so twice a year the sun streams through them – like the sights of a rifle – and illuminates an altar or burial chamber. And right near by is Dunadd, an ancient stone fortress where the first Scottish kings were crowned in the 5th century. Moving about these places we could still feel the mystery and spiritual energy of the Holy touching earth – truly a thin place.
Thin places aren’t only physical locations. Certainly there are certain moments in time when heaven touches our souls – moments when we’re open and receptive and may even feel a shiver down the spine that grabs our attention. We try all sorts of ways to position ourselves for the inflowing of the spirit, when the human and divine can dwell together: certainly liturgy is a way for some, the crafting of words and symbols and movements that bring us, open-hearted, into God’s space. We can find the divine in silent prayer, in the broken bread and poured cup of the Lord’s Supper, in moments of intimacy, in service to others, and even in suffering. So, I think, our experience of Advent certainly can be a thin place where our lives are touched by God’s Spirit.
In this season we know both the reality of our shortcomings, and the relief of God’s grace. Every Advent calls us to prepare the way of the Lord in our individual lives, in our collective life as the Church, in our world as it groans under the weight of our own shortcomings.
All of scripture bears witness to the tenacity of God – the persistent, almost fierce, determination to hold us and heal us. Today’s scripture tells us about two prophets – messengers who proclaimed the Word and will of God. From the Hebrew lesson, the author simply identified himself as mal’akhi meaning “my messenger.” An early biblical editor capitalized the word and turned it into a proper name. What we do know is that this messenger addressed the people of Israel, around 450 years BC. The exile in Babylon was past, the second temple in Jerusalem had been built.
This unknown prophet listened to the people complain bitterly that God is not just, that the wicked prosper while the righteous struggle. He then said to the people: “you have worn God out with poor offerings, with poor worship, with arrogance in your hearts. God’s pretty tired of y’all.” Then prophet bellowed: your salvation will feel like punishment, like a refiner’s fire that melts the gold and leaves the dross behind. God will send a messenger. Then God will send the savior. And “who can endure the day of his coming and who can stand when he appears?”
Christian scripture tells us of one such messenger who preceded Messiah. John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, came to prepare the way of the Lord. John preached repentance and judgment. He told the people that God expected them to keep their promises. Echoing the ancient words of the Prophet Isaiah, he said “prepare the way of the Lord… every valley will be filled, every mountain made low, and all flesh will see it together.
{Parenthetically, I recall a seminary class on the book of Jeremiah when I asked the professor how we can tell the difference between a prophet and a mentally ill street-preacher. The professor simply said: “what a true prophet says comes true.” I wasn’t satisfied and pressed him and he finally answered: “you know in your heart of hearts what is true.”}
God doesn’t sit idly on high, watching us wander, waiting for us to make our way through the wilderness to come into that holy place. Of course not! Picture instead something like the great “chunnel” project built under the English Channel in 1994. The British began at one end and the French at the other. They dug until they met in the middle… a feat worthy of its naming as one of the seven great wonders of the modern world.
God does the same – meeting us halfway, or three-fourths of the way – or even coming all the way to meet us where we are. But still, the prophets call us to prepare the way, to level the mountains and fill the valleys and open our hearts so this tenacious God can anchor us, hold us, and build us together into community.
This is the message of Christmas. God comes to us in Jesus Christ, finds us and embraces us. The Lord of hope and peace, love and joy seeks us in the wilderness and calls us to prepare the path so we may follow in faith.