Worship at First Presbyterian Church of Marion, Illinois

Luke 1:5-13 [14-25] 57-80     John the Baptist’s birth;

Blessed be the God of Israel who has looked favorably on his people.

           This is a narrative that should be

familiar to Zechariah. He and his wife Elizabeth are both of lineages of the

temple and priesthood. Both of them are descended from Aaron, and they are named

as righteous before God, living blamelessly. That description echoes that of

Job, which should be a warning to those of us who remember how that turned out.

Zechariah and Elizabeth are old, they have no children, and Elizabeth is

barren. Does any of this sound familiar?

           If we go all the way back to Genesis

17, Abram gets this same type of visit, and has the same type of response. As a

matter of fact, Abram laughs. (That’s right, Abram laughs in 17, Sarai laughs

in 18, but most people only know Sarai’s laughter.) In Genesis, God follows

through on the promise, with no real punishment for disbelief. In Luke, Gabriel

silences Zechariah for his disbelief.

           The promised child is born, Zechariah

sings, and the story repeats. The story of the promise of a child that will

begin the process of blessing the world, born to unlikely parents, begins

again. Zechariah wasn’t ready for God to include him and Elizabeth in the

story. Are we? Do we know the story well enough to recognize when God is at

work right in front of us?

Ezra 1:1-4; 3:1-4, 10-13             Return from exile and rebuilding the

temple.

           Here we are in Ezra, with the people

who are about to return from exile in Persia back to Jerusalem. This passage,

and the narrative of return isn’t good news for everyone. The people who were

left behind in Jerusalem, and the people who had married foreigners end up on

the outside. As often seems to be the case, the people with connections and the

people with power are the ones who get what they want, and they get to define

the reality. That’s a really long story, and it’s an important one.

           In the season of Advent, that’s an

important message. There’s another message that hides in this text as well. As

we so often do, we need to check another passage to get the whole story. Cyrus

of Persia figures largely in the Bible, and is named as God’s anointed in

Isaiah 45:1. Who could imagine that a Messiah for Israel would be found in

Persia? Who would have thought that the king

of Persia would be God’s anointed, and God’s tool for liberating the people

of God from their captivity in Persia? Who would have thought that the king of

another place would send the Israelites home with goods, and gold, and animals,

and instructions and directions to rebuild the temple?

           How do God’s Messiahs come? Should we

be surprised (if we know the stories) that God uses Messiahs from unexpected

places to do unexpected things to deliver the people of God?

2 Kings 22:1-10 [11-20]; 23:1-3           Josiah’s Reform (Luke 24:30-32)

           When the

temple is rebuilt, like when we renovate or remodel, surprises are found. In

this case, there is a scroll found, a book of the law. It’s a surprise. It’s

old fashioned. And it is not really good news when it comes to Josiah.

           Josiah hears

the words, and realizes how far he and the people have wandered from those

words. Josiah panics, probably appropriately, and tears his clothes, and then

calls for his advisors. They send for the prophetess, who sends back a verdict.

The people did indeed abandon God. And God is ticked off. There’s a long list

of not so good things that will happen. But, because Josiah repented, he and

his shall be spared. Josiah gathers the whole community, reads the law to them,

and makes a covenant with God to follow God, a covenant into which the whole

people enter once again.

           The recovery

of the law causes quite a shock, even among the people who were supposed to be

God’s people. That recovery convicts them of their failings, and converts them,

many of them for the first time, to the worship of God.

           What

convicts and converts us when we hear it again, or when we hear it for the

first time? What makes us rend our clothes in mourning over our faithlessness?

Isaiah 5:1-7; 11:1-5                  Isaiah’s Vineyard Song(Mark 12:1-3)

           Isaiah’s

prophetic voice is not to be underestimated. With 66 chapters, there’s a lot to

consider, read, and hear. Isaiah’s use of metaphor is wide and varied, and

today we hear two different images, both of which have to do with plants and

growing.

           The vineyard

is a major investment. Hills are selected and purchased, cleared, and freed

from stones, the vines planted, a watchtower erected. All of this comes at

great cost. It takes time, and resources, and investment. And yet, only wild

grapes. So God asks the rhetorical question of what should be done. God answers

the question with destruction, and a verdict upon the people of God.

           The next

metaphor is also of growing things. This time it is a shoot, a shoot coming out

of a stump, of new life coming from something dead. And without cheating too

much and yelling “It’s Jesus!” let us consider what such a metaphor might mean.

It might mean that even after death, life can reappear. It might mean that even

after the vineyard is torn down, there is a chance for fruit to arise.

           Both of

these passages are prophetic statements, and if we take Scripture seriously, we

can’t just read them the way we always have. How do these two passages inform

our faith today, in warning, and in hope?

Hosea 11:1-9                                                         Hosea(Mark 10:13-14)

           The benefit

of hindsight is great. Often we see things we had no way of seeing before, or

we see things whose significance we did not recognize in the past, or in the

moment. We receive warnings in advance, and yet we do not heed those warnings. We

say that we’ll never do that, and

then when we’re there, we do just that.

           This passage

in Hosea comes to us from a prophetic point of view. Hosea is, after all, a

prophet, who comes to speak to the people of Israel. Often viewed as a prophet

of doom, during the decline and fall of the northern kingdom, Hosea’s name

means salvation. It’s not a book of comfortable metaphor or message, as it

describes a faithful God married to a whore in the people of Israel.

           By the time

we get to this chapter and this passage, we have heard a lot of negative

prophetic warning happening. We hear it in the beginning of this passage as

well. Often we view those negatives as threats. But hear the tone of the rest

of the passage, in which God describes being unable to destroy God’s people. Can

you hear in this passage the words we say about ourselves, and our own

children? Can you hear the echoes of hindsight in the words of prophecy?

1 Kings 18:[17-19] 20-39       Elijah at Mount Carmel (Mark 9:2-4)

           We have here the classic battle

between power and faith. Elijah, that most famous of prophets, it facing off

against Ahab, who accuses Elijah of troubling Israel, when Ahab has followed

Baal. This is the introduction of Jezebel who gets the short end of the stick

historically and in the Biblical tale.

           While we

have typically read this as the foreign woman who led the Israelite king off

after other gods, let’s be honest, she’s following her god. Nothing says the

king has to follow her god too. Solomon set a really bad precedent in the

family line by marrying and worshiping as many foreign wives and their gods as

he could.

           Ultimately,

this is a simple story. It is about a king who pursued power, his own power,

rather than faithful service. It is a story of a leader who pledged his loyalty

to that which would enhance him, rather than remembering where his loyalties

should lie. Ahab accuses Elijah of being unfaithful to Israel. Elijah counter

accuses.

           So there

must be a test. A final debate of sorts between the powers that be, to see

which god will rule the day, and which power is greater – the power of the

moment or the power of covenant. And that is the drama of the day, a calling

for fire from heaven to consume an offering. Elijah ups the ante, and rocks the

450 priests of Baal.

           And so we

have the answer. It is the answer we knew. It is the answer we expected. But

we’re still not done chasing other gods for the short term reward, are we?

Jeremiah 33:1-4, 10-22             Promise of the Messiah

           Jeremiah is a prophet for the people

of Israel. He is prophet of God Almighty, to the southern kingdom (Judah)

through the fall of Jerusalem. He has an unpleasant, unwanted message for the

people of God – that they have violated the covenant, and that God will

withdraw God’s blessings.

           By the time we get to Jeremiah 33, the

people are in exile (Babylon) and the message has changed from what will come

as a result of their unfaithfulness to the covenant to what will happen because

of God’s faithfulness to the covenant.

           That

is why we read this passage on the first Sunday of Advent. We are also people

looking forward to the faithfulness of God. For the people then, it was a

message of hope from the unlikely source of Jeremiah. That message of hope

comes to us today.

           What is God’s vision of promise for

them? What is it for us? Listen to the words used. While they are agricultural

terms, we can do some translation into our terms. Towns will no longer be

desolate. The sounds of life shall be heard in the streets. Life will happen in

dead places. More than that, there will be justice and righteousness.

           This passage reverses what has

happened. But the reversal hasn’t happened yet. What God has promised through

Jeremiah for destruction has already happened. The message that comes next should be trustworthy. But will it be?

Will there be restoration following destruction?

1 Kings 12:1-17, 25-29                     Kingdom Divided(Mark 10:42-45)

           Just 2

generations later, we end up in these passages. We hear what we often hear

about the young neglecting the wisdom of their elders, of men who need to

impress with their strength and virility, and of people who take the wrong advice.

Rehoboam angers the people who was meant to serve. Israel leaves, and Judah

remains; the kingdom is split.

           Then we meet

Jeroboam, who had been in Egypt after fleeing from Solomon when he conspired to

schism off the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom to be their king. Following

Rehoboam’s actions, Jeroboam succeeds in splintering the kingdom, and becomes

the king of the northern kingdom. And then he fears that the people will return

to the house of David if they keep on worshiping in Jerusalem. So he builds not

one, but two golden calves. These are what the people are to worship – these

are what brought them out of Egypt – these are their gods.

           How quickly

we forget. How quickly they forget. They forget being servant leaders. They

forget God’s wrath about golden calves. How quickly we forget. What are our low

points, as people or as the church, in which we have so quickly forgotten?

John 3:9-17

Focus on the idea that the verse is translated poorly, with the world (cosmos) being the focus, not man (anthropos). We’ll talk about how we need to do our part to live in community with the earth and our neighbors.

Christina Krost, Faith in Place

           The tail end

of this passage is often used at weddings. Often the bias in using it is

towards having the woman docilely follow her husband or her husband’s family. That’s

not really the power of the narrative though. We have a renewal of the earlier

story of the chosen people of God moving from one place to another due to a

famine. Then the family ages, and the men die. That leaves the women who have

to decide what to do. Read that again – the women have to decide what to do.

           Of the two

daughters, one goes home to her family of origin and one goes home with the

family of her marriage. Both go home. They chose which home, and in so do chose

which family, and the arc of their lives from that point forward.

           Home is more

than a place. Home is a sense of where we belong. Ruth shouldn’t go home to

Israel. She’s not from there, she has no prospects there, she has no real

reason to go there. Yet she goes. She goes home. And for those of us who know

the rest of the story, we know how big a deal Ruth becomes. As we tell this story,

let us remember how it is or has been for us to come home to God’s country when

there was no good reason for us to be there.