{"id":1208,"date":"2020-12-05T20:54:21","date_gmt":"2020-12-06T01:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=1208"},"modified":"2023-12-06T14:22:20","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T19:22:20","slug":"begin-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2020\/12\/05\/begin-the-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"Begin the Beginning – Journey to Joy 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n


by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor
Second Sunday in Advent\/B \u2022 December 6, 2020<\/h2>\n\n\n\n


Isaiah 40:1-11<\/a> \u2022 Mark 1:1-8<\/a>
<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together<\/p>Isaiah 40:5<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


Have you seen the glory of the Lord? Sometimes it isn\u2019t where we expected. Years ago, Jacquelyn and I visited the Louvre Art Museum in Paris. We were so happy; we\u2019d just gotten engaged, we were in love and we were in Paris. Now when you go to the Louvre, everyone goes to see the Mona Lisa because it\u2019s glorious. So we went to see it. Here we were, in the presence of one of the most famous paintings in all Western Culture, seeing something the master Leonardo da Vinci himself created and peering over someone\u2019s shoulder, all I could think was, \u201cIt\u2019s so small.\u201d I don\u2019t know what I imagined but the picture is barely as big as a good sized photograph: no inspiration\u2014no glory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2026the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together\u201d [Isaiah 40:5a] Have you seen the glory of the Lord? Have you been inspired? What do you imagine when you hear this? Some great natural event, a shooting star lighting the sky, a dark thunderstorm cracking lightning and shutting out the world with a curtain of rain? Isaiah imagined: a parade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


\fJust before this, he says,<\/p>\n\n\n\n


A voice cries out: In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


This prophet lives in a strange and divided time. God\u2019s people had been in exile in Babylon, God\u2019s people had been living among other God\u2019s in another culture with other customs. One of those customs was the big New Years Festival in Babylon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It worked something like this. Months before, workers, slaves probably, perhaps some of them Israelis, were taken out into the rough country surrounding Babylon. They built a magnificent image of the God Marduke, the patron of the city. Like a float in the Rose Bowl parade or Macy\u2019s Thanksgiving, this float towered up and on its top, the King of Babylon would sit. Now, you can\u2019t move something like that easily so they would clear the area all the way into the city. That way, it could be rolled in on logs. Little dips and valleys were filled in; rises and hills were leveled off, rough places were smoothed out, a road was built, level, safe, smooth so the processional could go forward to the great New Years ceremony where the king would come off the throne and kill a carefully drugged lion.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when Isaiah speaks about making straight a highway in the desert, he\u2019s not imagining, he\u2019s remembering; he\u2019s thinking about what that processional was like. When he talks about hills leveled and valleys lifted, he\u2019s remembering this great festival and how the people of Babylon, the biggest, greatest place he\u2019s ever been, celebrate their God. But he\u2019s not in Babylon; he\u2019s I Jerusalem. Jerusalem isn\u2019t a big city anymore, it\u2019s a refugee camp. Some time before, Jews had been allowed to return from exiled but what they returned to wasn\u2019t the shining city of David, it was ruins that looked more like Berlin in 1945. Not much glory there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\fBut if he\u2019s remembering Babylon, he\u2019s also remembering that there was a time when God\u2019s glory was obviously present. That time was when God saved this people in the wilderness, there was a time when God led them on the Exodus in the wilderness, there was a time when God brought them out of the wilderness into a promised land. It\u2019s not an accident that then herald begins, \u201cIn the wilderness\u2026\u201d The wilderness is where you have to tell people what\u2019s coming, the wilderness is where you announce the future before someone gets there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


You need that herald in the wilderness because it\u2019s scarey in the wilderness. You may not see God there, you may not see anything familiar, you may not seed anything comforting. You may be alone, you may feel overwhelmed because that\u2019s what the wilderness means: that place where you feel lost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a friend, a mother, once whose little boy was going through one of those moments where he had decided to assert his four year old independence. So every day was a struggle, every day was a fight. He would get mad and tell her she was a bad mommy and he was going to run away. One day, she was so fed up, so tired of it, that when he said that, she said, \u201cNo you\u2019re not; I\u2019m running away.\u201d She went up to her room, got out a suitcase, threw clothes in it, came down and said, \u201cI\u2019m running away, goodbye,\u201d and slammed the door behind her. And then she just sat down on the step. She calmed down and she heard her child crying inside. You see, without his mom, his house became a wilderness and he was scared. So, like all good mothers, she sighed and opened the door and went back in, took him in her arms. She comforted him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


That\u2019s just what Isaiah is imagining. He\u2019s sitting in the ruins of Jerusalem and he\u2019s imagining it\u2019s the wilderness and he knows they are in the wilderness because they walked away from God until it felt like God ran away from them. He thinks God ran away and he\u2019s imagining that moment when God comes back, proclaims comfort to Jerusalem.
“Say Comfort, Comfort to Jerusalem.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s remembering the great processional festivals in Babylon and thinking it might look like that: straight road, valleys lifted up, hills pushed down until everyone, all peoples, see the glory of God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


\fThis is a wilderness moment for many. Every day we hear about deaths mounting nd nothing is the same. Simple things like meeting a friend for coffee are off the table. We miss normal, don\u2019t we? We missed the people we didn\u2019t see this year at Thanksgiving and it\u2019s beginning to dawn on us that on Christmas we\u2019re going to miss them again. So what do we do here in the wilderness?<\/p>\n\n\n\n


This is what Isaiah says;<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, \u2018Here is your God!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


Get up and look for the glory of God. Consider that it might not be where you expected. I expected amazing art when I went to the Mona Lisa but I was distracted by something as silly as size. What do you think the glory of God looks like? It looks like someone proclaiming comfort because God is coming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


The glory of God isn\u2019t fireworks; it\u2019s every time someone acts like the love of God makes a difference, it\u2019s every time someone acts out what Jesus said: \u201cLove your neighbor.\u201d This is a story of one of those moments. Dave, age 16, acting out his frustrations, broke a window of a car a few blocks from his home. He didn\u2019t know Mrs. Weber, the elderly owner, and she had not known any teenagers personally for years. So after years of absorbing society’s negative stereotypes about teenagers, this experience made her acutely fearful. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


The typical criminal justice system would have punished Dave and ignored Mrs. Weber. Instead, a restorative justice program enabled the parties to meet with a mediator and address the problem constructively. Their meeting helped Dave recognize for the first time that he had financially and emotionally hurt a real, live human being, and so he sincerely apologized. In turn, Mrs. Weber, whose fears had escalated and generalized to an entire generation, was able to gain a realistic perspective and feel compassion for this one individual. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


They agreed that Dave would compensate her loss by mowing her lawn weekly until September and performing a few heavy yard chores. Each day while Dave worked, Mrs. Weber baked cookies which they shared when he finished. They actually came to appreciate each other. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


No fireworks; no streaking star. But this is the glory of the Lord. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


The glory of the Lord shines forth in the missions of this church because the mittens and the coats and the Christmas presents and the gifts we bring make a real difference, make a loving difference. We\u2019re not saving the world, that\u2019s not our job, that\u2019s God\u2019s job. We\u2019re like the little sparrow in the famous story. A farmer was walking along and saw a sparrow lying on the ground, legs stuck straight up. \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d He asked and the sparrow said, I heard the sky was falling, so I\u2019m holding it up. The farmer laughed and said, \u201cAre you strong enough to hold up the whole sky?\u201d And the sparrow replied, \u201cOne does what one can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n


When we do what we can, we are the ones proclaiming God\u2019s coming because we\u2019re acting as followers of Jesus Christ. When we do what we can, we are proclaiming the comfort of God, we are saying, here\u2019s a way out of the wilderness, just like Isaiah said. We\u2019re smoothing the path, we\u2019re lifting the valleys, we\u2019re making a way for someone. We are the heralds of good tidings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


That\u2019s what John was doing out baptizing in the wilderness: he was making a way home for people who\u2019d become so burdened by their own sins and failings that their lives had become a wilderness, the geography was just what fit. But he took up the challenge;; he became a herald of good tidings. He proclaimed the coming of the Lord and so can we.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


This is not the end; it\u2019s a wilderness time between. The oldest account of Jesus, the first Gospel, starts, \u201cThe beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It\u2019s time to begin the beginning of God\u2019s coming. It\u2019s time to proclaim the good tidings of God\u2019s love. It\u2019s time to do what we can to make a way from the wilderness so that all people can indeed see the glory of God, not hanging on a wall, no up in the sky, not only in the past but coming, coming now, coming here, coming today. Get you up, herald of good tidings, say with your own life, the light and love of God is coming into this place, this time. Begin the beginning of the good news, the gospel, of Jesus Christ.
Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We should become heralds of good tidings by doing what we can to proclaim the glory of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[68,39,146,108,3,13,2,130],"tags":[132,30,98,288,9,287],"class_list":["post-1208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advent","category-exegesis","category-mark","category-scripture","category-sermon","category-theology","category-worship","category-year-b","tag-advent","tag-glory","tag-hope","tag-isaiah-401-11","tag-joy","tag-mark-11-8"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1208"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1370,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions\/1370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}