December 5, 2004

Prepare the Way of the Lord

By Julianne Stokstad

It is truly a great joy to be here today, this second Sunday of Advent. I am very excited and a little nervous too. I find it lovely and unusual in my experience that you have blue as the color of Advent here. I appreciate blue both as an artist and a scientist. Not only is it the color of the sky and the sea, it is a primary color, basic and indivisible. Also blue light has the highest energy in our visible spectrum.

Blue is the color appropriate to symbolize our deepest and widest hopes. Hope according to the dictionary is the "feeling that what is desired is also possible."

Its synonyms are expectancy and longing. Hope, you see, requires a vision of what it is we hope for. Increasingly in our culture, commercialism has co-opted our expectations and our hopes, especially during the Christmas season. It is very difficult, counter-cultural in fact, not to buy into this and look to our deeper yearnings. We long for a new vision because we know happiness is not found in having more things, but in wanting fewer.

If I were to ask you what you hope for, I'd get probably many different answers. Some might say, time to get our house in order or perhaps no fighting with the relatives or maybe freedom from worries. There are all kinds and sizes of hopes because in our personal lives, we are all in different places. But there are some common big hopes we all share.

Our scriptures today speak ancient prophetic answers to the timeless longing and big hope for peace and justice. Prophets, never been popular folks, push the envelope, rock the boat and speak out the God's truth usually at their own peril.

John the Baptist bluntly tells us to change our lives. God's kingdom is here he proclaims. Even as he baptizes many in the river, he speaks of the one who is coming and who will ignite the kingdom life to be burning within you. John's language reminds us of the ancient Hebrew prophets and their message for the people to change their ways or else. To tell you the truth, I find John's strident tone and harsh judgment hard to hear because it is so dissonant with the out pouring of love around the manger scene. And yet without changing our lives, without new eyes to see God's kingdom, we will certainly miss it.

How I love Isaiah's ancient vision from hundreds of years before John which describes the new day when the Messiah will come bringing peace. On this new day even natural enemies will live together and the world will be without violence. He will have God's spirit resting upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might and knowledge and awe of God, like the ancient leaders of Israel. Then we are given a description of the peaceable kingdom where the fierce leopard will lie down with its prey, the vulnerable kid and the carnivorous lion will eat straw. Yet the voice of my inner biologist says, come on, that can't ever happen. How can the predator and the prey co-exist without harm? Oh its just metaphor. But then I think of the Monterey Bay Aquarium where in the their big central tank, predators don't eat their prey because no one is hungry. All are safe when the needs of all are met.

Hope in this time is what we need, and hope can be hard to find and hold on to. Sometimes hope for peace in this violent and warring world seems very distant. Imagine a world where everyone's needs are met, when now so many millions are hungry. It seems very far off indeed. But wait! That is what this season is all about, hope and new life being born in us in dark times, and it is all the more crucial to have hope now.

Let me tell you some of the reasons why I have hope, hope for the kingdom of God coming, hope for peace and justice in our world here and now.

Each autumn, even though the days are dark and cold , I plant tulip and daffodil bulbs because I trust that spring will come and somehow under the ground these bulbs will grow roots, and shoots and in their time will burst forth with the flowers. I cannot tell you the great pleasure I get out of sprouting tomato plants on my window sill,

I have hope for our hurting earth because I have seen the earth heal. I have seen recovery and restoration of areas that seemed beyond any hope. I used to go to Yosemite and work with Yosemite Institute doing restoration and clean-up. I remember one year a group of us were asked to simply rake forest leaves and twigs over a dirt road. We dragged old fallen branches on to the road. All we did was help speed up the process of re-growth, natural processes did the rest.

I have hope because I have held a miracle in my arms, a newborn baby. Talking to the children here at Children's time brings great hope in my heart.

Jesus said that we would do things he couldn't dream possible. And when I think of modern medical technology, I see that is true. I have hope because I have seen bodies broken beyond any recognition heal. My friend Alice lay in the ICU for 5 months, hovering between life and death. And a year later, she was dancing at her 50th wedding anniversary with her granddaughter in her arms.

I have hope because of our beloved UCC. It seems to me that the UCC is a breath of fresh air in increasingly fearful and repressive times. I hope you have all heard of our TV ads and now all the attention given to the rejection of these ads by the networks. Our denomination has a long history of living Jesus' acceptance to all people, from the rejection of slavery to the ordination of women more than a hundred years ago.

But most of all I have hope for the light of God's kingdom to break forth because because I trust God. I love and trust that God is working all the time to take our lives, whatever we do in them, and to bring forth light and good and truth in our lives. I know that God is still becoming and creating with us in new and wonderful ways we have yet to experience. I have great hope and trust in God.

But we have some work to do. We have to be willing to let go the deadwood in our lives and nurture new life - that which brings hope, joy and peace. I know it can happen, right here, right in our lives. The season of Advent is about the hope and promise of new life, not only long ago when the birth of Jesus brought God's light into the world, but here and now. This is what I'm talking about - - - new life kindled in each of us. It is about seeing that new life born of God in each other.

No matter where you are, or what is happening, I'd like to end with one of my favorite hope-filled poems by Howard Thurman.

I Will Light Candles This Christmas

Candles of joy, despite all sadness.

Candles of hope where despair keeps watch.

Candles of courage for fears ever present,

Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days,

Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens.

Candles of love to inspire all my living,

Candles that will burn all the year long.