Receive to Prepare
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church December 4, 2011, the 2nd Sunday of Advent.
Texts: Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-8
Every one of us has at some point been in need of comfort. Not the pillows and velvet kind of comfort, but the kind of comfort we need when we’re at the end of our rope, when we’re sad or frustrated or when things seem to be spinning out of control. You know the times I mean; those moments of life when we want to crawl up into a parent’s lap and feel their arms wrap around us, when all would feel right with the world if only we could hear the comforting words, “there, there.” Think for a minute about times in your own life when you desperately wanted such assurance, encouragement, consolation.
Perhaps it was a time when something happened that you had no control over, such as a death or another loss of some kind; maybe what comes to mind is a time of suffering, of illness, of pain; or maybe you begin thinking of those times when you’ve been overwhelmed by life, anxious, or depressed. For some of us, we may remember times when we desperately needed comfort in the midst of a mess that we were responsible for. All of us experience these times when we yearn for comfort, when we long to be held and be assured that everything will be OK—“there, there.”
For some of us, as we draw closer to the end of the year and as we move into the season of Advent leading up to Christmas, we need comfort more than ever. This season brings to mind memory, perhaps more than any other. We pull out of our closets and attics and boxes the symbols of Christmases past. For some of us this past is a happy memory, for others it is full of pain, and for many it’s a mixed bag…But regardless, we are reminded of times and people who are no longer part of our lives; we are reminded of what was or what we wish had been. I’m one of the lucky ones for whom Christmas has always been a happy time of celebration. But this year as I unwrapped the ornaments for our tree, I was aware of my grief over what has been lost in my life, over the distances that exist, the happy times that will never be relived. This doesn’t overshadow me, but it is present, it is real. And I know that for many this time of the year brings these kinds of feelings.
And while there is a certain energy and even comfortable familiarity to the insanity of what Christmas has become in the hands of the secular, consumer culture, the catchy advertisements and glitzy decorations of the malls are cold comfort when what we really want is to crawl up into the warm lap of a parent, that knowing voice saying “there, there,”—when what we really need is something that truly cannot be bought or sold.
Our God speaks to us today in the words of the prophet Isaiah and calls us back to what all this craziness and activity is really about: it’s about God’s steadfast love for us even when we have made a mess of things; it’s about our God’s coming to us in the wildernesses of our lives, about God’s forgiveness, about God’s care for us. The story we tell, the birth for which we wait, is of a God who longs for us to be freed from the situations and temptations that keep us from living lives of wholeness and peace. And of a God who acted and acts in the world to save us.
This God comes to us in those moments of life when we need assurance. It is a spiritual blessing that in our hemisphere we find ourselves celebrating the birth of Christ when the shadows of night fall early and last the longest. Is it any wonder that the prophet tells us that we are to prepare a way for God in the wilderness? It is precisely in those dark, wilderness times that we are especially susceptible to come face to face with God. Maybe because when it’s dark, really dark, there aren’t flashy, neon detours or glittering distractions; perhaps we’re more apt to be aware of God in the wilderness because there we cannot escape our vulnerability, our dependence, our hunger and thirst.
But this God whom we proclaim, the One who promises to come to us is not one to say “there, there” and then fix our messes. This God loves and forgives, is steadfast and eternal, holds us close and walks with us—even carries us at times. But our God is no dictator; our God is no magician; our God says through the words of the prophet John, “Prepare a way for me to come to you.” And how do we prepare? We simply come to God and acknowledge our need—our need for comfort, our need for love, our need for forgiveness. This humility and openness to God is all we need to bring—we don’t have to bring our cleaned-up lives.
We may understand that we have to repent before we can be forgiven…lots of translations interpret the words of John this way: (e.g. Peterson: “preaching a baptism of life-change that leads to forgiveness of sins.”) This places the responsibility on you and me to work harder, to prepare the way of the Lord in our lives and in our world by our own effort—we’ve got to get ourselves together! We’ve got to get cleaned up, we need to get our temper under control, we need to get our finances sorted out, we need to stop cheating on our spouse, we need to stop drinking so much, we need to stop this and that and start that and this. In other words, prepare the way for yourself to receive God’s mercy. Change your life and then God might forgive you.
But John points to Jesus, the one more powerful, the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit…and we know that Jesus’ way of forgiving didn’t require payment up front. From the cross, Jesus didn’t say to all those around—“Now see what you’ve done? You all need to repent of your actions, find a way to undo as much as possible, show me that you have truly changed your hearts and minds and then I’ll forgive you.” Jesus simply says, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they are doing.” (Lk. 23.34) That kind of mercy and forgiveness is powerful. It transforms. It even, on occasions when it is truly received, leads to repentance, to a real change in someone’s life.
Today we are all invited to receive God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness. If today you feel lost or alone, addicted or empty, suffering or confused, guilty or sad, hear God saying to you, “There, there…I am with you—will always be with you—all you have to do is open your heart and your life and receive my love my mercy my forgiveness. All you have to do is to turn and open your heart to me; you can by grace step into tomorrow closer to whole. Just keep moving through whatever wilderness you are experiencing…”
The promise is comfort in the darkness, forgiveness for the humble, a changed life for the penitent, strength for the journey, and a steadfast love for you that is so strong that nothing will keep it from finding you. “Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plain.” (Isaiah 40: 4)
Nothing you’ve done, nothing that’s been done to you, nothing you’ve lost or found can get in the way of God’s grace. It’s there ready to hold you, enfold you, and give you peace. The choice is yours. Just receive… And get ready for the birth of something new.
