Monday, December 10, 2007

Year A, 2nd Advent: Out of the Brood

2nd Sunday of Advent Year A
Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12

Preaching with St. Mary's House Episcopal Center
Greensboro, NC


"The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and te lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them...They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea."


"But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?"

IN THE NAME OF GOD, WHO MADE US, SAVES US, AND WILL NOT LEAVE US ALONE. AMEN.

Wolves eat sheep. Lions eat calves. Justice is withheld from the poor and those who need it most. Snakes bite children, and at times, knowledge of the Lord seems as scarce as water in a land where we will scarcely have enough to drink if we keep cleaning the grass of our lawns. THIS is the world we live in.

In my corner of it, one of the more irritating moments occurs each day at 11:55. The children finish their lunch, leaving a linoleum battlefield infused with streaks of green peas in their wake, and make a mad rush for the sink where I sit waiting to receive them: a man, helpless for all their unawareness of it, at the mercy of their apple sauce infested snot-covered slobbering mouths. I despise hand washing: it is simply an unnatural act to commit with a group of ten toddlers. I could handle one, I could even take on three or four at a time, but our State Health Regulations require that the whole gaggle of them wash their hands before and after each meal, before and after each turn at the sand table, after each trip outdoors, before they ever escape to contaminate other parts of the classroom with their germ-infested fingers. The structure and the discipline required to wait patiently at a single sink while a peer labors through the tasks of rinsing, scrubbing, rinsing, and drying, each for the appropriate length of time, is, to say the least, beyond the nature of my children. Benjamin can never seem to fully support his body weight at the sink, and unless I can grasp his torso with one arm while I splash his wandering hands with the free one, he comes away soaked from the midriff down. Celia is determined to take vast wads of paper towels in her hands and reduce them to sopping wet fistfuls which she then plops to the floor in mad delight. Jackson thinks it hilarious to turn the water off just when I get him situated, and Joshua takes his time to marvel at each of the bubbles which have collected on his palm, while his fellows pull, pinch, and push one another to the brink of an irritated oblivion behind him. But perhaps the most amazing gymnastic feat comes from Graham, who manages, each time my attention is diverted by a shoving match that has broken out in the line, to balance himself entirely on the edge of the sink, submerging his whole head beneath the running stream of water to emerge a soaking, grinning, mess, as if from a self-imposed baptism. Armored, as I am, with a merely human sense of good humor about all this, and a collection of hand washing songs that will weary even the most veteran of preschool teachers after their fortieth repetition, I reach a breaking point almost every time. (I have one colleague who greatly enjoys imitating the flat-lipped expression that appears on my face during these moments.) And as much as I would like to think that I am not domesticating my children against their wild and woolly appetites for exploration of the world around them in all its mess, it is this time each day that proves me quite to the contrary.

I just can’t seem to win with these guys, and, I imagine, in my martyred piety, that this must be how John felt when the line got too long at the Jordan. Too long, and too full of people who he knew didn’t care one whit for the repentance he was pushing.

The world, it seems, is out to get us. Matthew trots the Pharisees and Sadducees out to cast their shadow of doubt and unrepentant religiosity over John the Prophet. The Book of Isaiah heralds a Davidic and Zionist King to a people who could probably stand to alleviate themselves of impending Assyrian domination before considering a divinely sanctioned imperialism. Meanwhile, we, the just and dutiful citizens of Greensboro sit at home and shake our heads at the news of the latest schism in our Church, the latest political disgrace in our Nation, the latest scar upon our good Earth, and the latest shooting in the neighborhoods which lie just beyond on own. For us, as for the prophets, there is a particular breed of frustration that comes with having all your ducks in a row, and wondering why the rest of the world hasn’t fallen in line yet. Most of us know the feeling well. After all, we’ve done out part: we fought the good fight, put in the extra hours at work, stood in picket lines against the War. We’ve written to our congressional representatives, voted correctly, replaced most of the incandescent bulbs in our house with fluorescent ones and paused in the Friendly Center traffic to let not one but two vehicles merge into our lane before us. The least the world could do is show up to class on time. The least the world could do is wake up to the absurdity of any black or white solution to our crisis in immigration. But it doesn’t, and it won’t, and at times all our bellowing cries for repentance seem like so much hot air blown out on a bed of snakes. Hope is as common at times as wishing that the world were on our side for once. In the great hymn of hope laid out in Isaiah this morning, the Prophet longs with his people for a time when all the world will fall in line under the justice established by their King. The advent of such a peaceable Kingdom would so transform the world that even the natural order would be changed. But even the aims of such grand ambitions in the world are marked by the desire for some peace on the home front to come out of it. Suspiciously enough, when the natural order IS transcended, its mostly to the benefit of domesticated livestock and small children. No one asked the Lion if HE was interested in changing his diet.

Hope is as common at times, as this: as common as wishing that life were easier.

“I hope tomorrow is better,” we say to the coworker who has been going home to argue with her partner all week long. We are beyond the point of being surprised at how much the struggle has dulled her countenance. There are no new details of her story to share, we simply endure the days that must be lived in the long passages of time between developments. We have long since convinced ourselves that we have done anything we could have: we have given our best advice, we have given our opinions- even and perhaps especially when they weren’t solicited, and at this point, all that we can pair with the constancy of her burden is our own silent presence. “I hope that tomorrow is better” we say, and we know it isn’t enough, and we catch ourselves feeling foolish at even offering it, but it is all that we CAN offer, and she is gracious enough to smile as our words fall to the floor. Hope winnows our own helplessness out of moments such as these. Hope exposes our awkward vulnerability at wishing for something that is just beyond the reach of our control. Yes, it would be easier if our Messiah would appear and give succor to the needy where our own has seemed to fail. And while he’s at it he can take his winnowing fork and pluck out all the grain heads from the burly obnoxious strands of wheat that we’ve been threshing through- but when is that going to happen and what are we supposed to do in the meantime? In that tired space where our own efforts have taken us as far as they can, and we stare out into the blank distance towards that imaginary place where all our striving can been knit together in a world that is striving for the same, we are left only with bare, naked, hope. The kind of hope that makes us feel weak without our neighbor and our God.

Yet once we are there- Isaiah’s vision teaches us- once we have entered into the foolishness of Hope, we might as well go all the way. Hope is as common at times as wishing that life were easier, yes, but its also as grand as imagining a world upside down. If we’re going to be foolish enough to hope against nature, then let us be foolish enough to hope in epic proportions. Let us hope for a world that travels on foot, and farms, and crafts, and sustains itself. Let us hope for a world where teenagers aren’t so self-conscious about the way they look and grow up instead loving their own bodies and the bodies of their peers. Let us hope for a world where gay and lesbian adolescents don’t think twice about falling in love and growing up to mary the man or woman of their dreams. Let us hope for a world where Mothers and Fathers have to work some of the time but mostly get to stay at home and play with their kids. Let us hope for a world where gourmets slop free stew on street corners and jazz bands trill from the shade. Let us hope for a world where Victorian mansions are restored to public use and filled with poets and painters. Let us hope for a world with clean air, clean water, clean earth, and wild woolly animals. Let us hope for a world where greed and anxiety have been put to rest. Let us hope for a world where the shootings have ended. Let us hope for a world where the Mothers of warring nations will no longer look up to see the limbs of their slain children spread across the rubble as the smoke has cleared. Let us hope for a world where every vain thing conceived in our pain against our brethren is shucked away to reveal the sweet goodness of God’s love for us and one another, a people, singing, wanting nothing, hand in hand before our Creator.

There! Do you see how foolish it is? Do you see how impossible? Do you see how uncomfortable it makes us feel, how squeamish and how easy it is to dismiss with the usual logic we have about getting things done in a reasonable manner? The truth is that we will not get the life we hope for and Thank God for That, because if God stopped the world at our own hopes and dreams what a limited world it would be. Rather, It is our hope that will train us in the bigness of God’s vision, in the upside down absurdity of God’s boundless grace for all, exposing the distance left to be traveled until we can recognize one another within it. Our hope will not keep us happy in our own dreams and desires, rather it will break us out and place us into the Mercy of God and God’s people. And it is mercy we will need, for it is our hope for the Kingdom of God that will bring us into a brood of vipers, shaking our fists at the crowd gathered around us in one last fit of rage against the injustice of this world, before surrendering completely with a disheveled, pathetic cry.

At the end of the day, it is our wishing for more that will leave us with less, it is our hope that will break us.

Yet we are not afraid, for if our faith has anything to show our hope at that point, it will be that in that moment, in our brokenness when we face the crowd, we will find that Jesus is there waiting among them. Waiting to step down into the river beside us, to take a piece of what we’re offering.

Wolves eat sheep. Lions eat calves. Justice is withheld from the poor, and those who need it most. Snakes bite children, and at times, knowledge of the Lord seems as scarce as water in a land where we will scarcely have enough to drink if we keep cleaning the grass of our lawns. THIS is the world we live in. It is the world that has shaped us in our pleasure and our pain. It is the world that has forged the hope which will cary us to its end. And, it is the world where God has come to meet us, and will continue to come, time and time and time and time again. I hope, in that case, that tomorrow is better for us all. AMEN.