NOTICE TO ON-DEMAND WORSHIPPERS
In order to expedite posting the worship services here on our website, we are reducing the transcript to just the scriptures used and the message. Union Grove UMC in partnership with Southland Books & Cafe, began holding Second Sunday Community Church in January 2023. Second Sunday Community Church takes place at 3 p.m. ET the second Sunday of every month, meets in-person at The Bird & The Book, and is also live-streamed on Facebook. Holy Communion is offered at every Second Sunday service. If you are worshipping on Second Sundays online whether during the live-cast or through on-demand viewing, you are encouraged to have bread and juice or wine available as you watch the service and to participate in communion just as if you are present with us.
SCRIPTURE READINGS
God, open us to hear and receive your scriptures today as you would have us hear them, understand them as you would have us understand them, and to act upon them as you would have us act upon them.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
*Scriptures this morning are from the NRSV.
Isaiah 40:1-11
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
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.
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.
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, “Here is your God!”
See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
LORD, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
You forgave the iniquity of your people; you pardoned all their sin. Selah
Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.
The LORD will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.
Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.
Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'” John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.
He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.
I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
L: The scriptures of God for the people of God.
A: Thanks be to God.
Message – Our Just Peace*
Rev. Val
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock, and my redeemer, and may you see fit to use me as a vessel from which you pour out your Divine Word.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
So, no surprise … it’s still Advent. I know you knew that. This season doesn’t sneak up on anyone anymore. I know I used it last week: “Wow, is it that time already?” But it doesn’t really work anymore. Not because my message last week impressed you so much, you’re now all in better control of your calendars, always ready for every event that comes roaring around the corner at you. Not because you were super motivated by it to keep better track of where you are and what’s going on all around you, not because you keep our heads up and your eyes focused, not because you are leaning forward as you were told to lean forward into God’s promised advent. No, that’s not why it isn’t a surprise.
Rather, it’s not a surprise because all the marketing we’ve been hearing since pretty much Labor Day has been telling us it is the season long before the season arrives. “Christmas as it is meant to be,” a radio station says, while we’re “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” “This is ‘Thanks-getting’ so be sure you get what you really want,” says an electronics company. And does Santa drive a red imported sports car to deliver the presents, or does he rely on an international shipping firm? Either way, no need to fear that you won’t get your gifts this year, because a big-box store says “you aren’t ‘elf-in’ around” because gift giving and getting is serious business. They all say that. And who’s going to argue with them?
When our way of life is threatened, of course, we lash back. If we don’t spend a lot of money this year, our enemies win. That’s the underlying message of all that marketing. We should just buy our way out of the doldrums. “Retail therapy” some call it. More stuff. It insulates us from the emptiness, from what our hearts really long for. From what is wrong with us as individuals and as a nation. Let’s splurge this Christmas on our way to peace. Hey, I like stuff, too. I’ve got a list somewhere. It works, to a degree. For a while, we feel better. We feel loved. Which is good enough. Until.
Until the arms of the new cozy armchair, while comfy and soft, don’t pulse with life and love and acceptance. Until our gizmos and gadgets that can talk to us and answer our questions can’t wipe away the tears of loneliness and hold us until the empty spaces in our souls are filled. Until the brokenness we see in the world surrounds us as a society, as a people, overwhelms our consumer contentment, and we decide that maybe Christmas needs to mean a little bit more – thanks for that, Mr. Grinch!
Sorry to be so cliche. It’s just that sometimes something we all know needs to be said again. That love needs to be embodied. Incarnated. That peace needs to put on flesh. We need real flesh-and-blood arms to gather us up. We long to be gathered. To be loved. To know justice and peace. In a way, we can feel, even when we think we don’t. When we think we are doing just fine. We can get along with knowing we are loved. We don’t have to feel it. I mean, really, do we?
“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” (Isaiah 40:1, NRSV) There’s a committee meeting going on in the Kingdom. I know, bad news for those of us who aren’t terribly fond of meetings. But Isaiah says a committee meeting is going on in the Kingdom. And the meeting goes something like this:
God has the floor, pacing back and forth, ready to release the latest and greatest new idea from the divine office. The whole committee of heaven leans in, the archangels stop tapping their pens on the table. The cherubim stop eyeing the bagels on the side table. The seraphim put down their phones and start listening at last because God’s about to speak. About to pass judgment, about to lower the boom, they think. But they never know. God has this annoying – can God be annoying? Of course not! God has this omniscient habit of saying something completely surprising on a regular basis.
“Comfort,” thunders the voice that made planets and galaxies, “O comfort my people!” Michael and Gabriel exchange furtive glances around the huge conference table. Brows knit and eyes narrow among the angelic beings high and low. “Did I hear ’comfort’?” Comfort? Not judgment? Not burn or fry but comfort? No one questions, however, because God isn’t done yet. Just catching breath before the words come pouring out like a soaking rain on a parched ground. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid.”
The book of Isaiah covers such a span of time that there had to be more than one person who wrote under that name. Chapters 1 through 39 is “first” Isaiah and is concerned about the faithfulness of the people of God. A variety of moods are represented in those chapters, but the dominant one is judgment. The people were complacent, selfish and self-centered. They found solace in things and not in the ever-present Spirit of God in their midst. Isaiah preached until he was blue in the face, and it didn’t amount to much. Until Babylon. Until Assyria. Double for all their sins. The Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom both, overrun by enemies who caught them with their guard down, and now there is desolation, desert in the middle of the Holy Land. Desert, a land forsaken. Now, in Chapter 40, they are broken, afraid, longing for arms to gather them up and croon a lullaby.
After the initial shock, the beings around the table begin to nod along with the echoes of the Lord’s proclamation. And the amen corner pipes up, a voice, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.” In the wilderness that used to be a lush garden, find an oasis. In a sandy, windswept desert that used to be a marketplace, clear a path. But this roadwork, they understand and want us to understand isn’t so that we can get out. It’s so that God can get in. Make straight the highway for God.
It’s not that God’s GPS isn’t functioning; it’s that God needs to know we want a visit. The consummate gentle presence, God never comes where God isn’t welcomed. God never opens doors that we barricade. God never climbs the mountains we build to block access to the deepest parts of ourselves. And there is a lot of unwelcome, barricaded doors, and mountains blocking access in the whole world these days.
Back to that heavenly meeting. The committee meeting becomes a gospel choir and as always happens in God’s kingdom, worship breaks out.
Around the table a voice says, “Can I have an amen?” Another says, “What are we amen-ing?” Then one jumps onto the table and sings out, “That these troublesome, yet lovable, fragile yet creatures beloved by God have access to eternity!”
“In the Word,” the chorus rings out, “In the Word, is eternity, hope, reclamation, restoration!” “AMEN,” rumbles God as the I Am slides to the door to usher out the singing, swaying angelic beings. “Head to the rooftops, to the mountaintops; shout, and sing, again and again, until all can see,” says God. I’m coming.”
The heavenly host rushes out to tell us. Again. And at the door stands … the Word, the Logos, the Prince of Peace who smiles and says, “Soon. I’ll be there soon. Save some room for me.”
And the chorus echoes all the way through the years to John, sitting in the desert, eating his bugs ‘n honey breakfast cereal, and his head starts to bob, and his toes start to tap. “Amen,” rumbles from the core of his being, as he becomes the voice that repeats the words and prepares the way.
But wait! Is John’s message in our Gospel text one of peace? Of comfort? Notice that he includes the words about preparing, but he skips the comfort bit. John is not about comfort at all. Or at least not comfort as we imagine it. You know. Comfort as in taking it easy. Comfort as in lying back and letting go. That’s not a John sort of sermon.
John is about stirring things up, not lying back; he’s about working hard and not taking it easy. He’s not about soothing troubled waters but about turning things upside down. And that is certainly true. But … beneath the words and the bluster and the creative costumes, John is confident that the One who is coming will offer true peace. A peace that transforms, equips, and unites. A just peace that lifts up those who have been pressed down, gathers in those who have been ignored, strengthens those who have been made weak.
We are called to move beyond individualistic thinking. The comfort proclaimed in Isaiah and echoed by John in the Gospel of Mark is not my comfort or your comfort, but it is our comfort. We are called to think beyond the “I” into the “we,” from the “me” to the “us.” That’s the Advent call, the invitation to invite God to inhabit our world by working together to open the roads, remove the barriers and fill in the pits so that we can see God coming and rush to worship together.
But it’s a little hard to feel that right now, isn’t it? I mean with all the chaos going on in the world. It is for me. This message has been a struggle. I wanted to bring you nothing but joy this Advent season, and frankly, I’m struggling with the whole concept of peace. Of being a peacemaker. And how, exactly, do we attain just peace?
I saw a newsclip of a political rally this week where the crowd was holding up signs that said “peace through strength.” Their idea of strength leaves me cold. Their idea of “strength” is force … both forced compliance and brute force. That’s not the peace that Jesus gave us … it’s the exact opposite. And the peace that Jesus spoke of, how do we go about living into it, making it?
Maya Angelou had an idea about it:
Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes
And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Flood waters await us in our avenues.
Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and grey and threatening.
We question ourselves.
What have we done to so affront nature?
We worry God.
Are you there? Are you there really?
Does the covenant you made with us still hold?
Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air.
The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,
Come the way of friendship.
It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Flood waters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground.
Hope is born again in the faces of children
It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets.
Hope spreads around the earth. Brightening all things,
Even hate which crouches breeding in dark corridors.
In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft. Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.
The word is Peace.
It is loud now. It is louder.
Louder than the explosion of bombs.
We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.
We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.
It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.
On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.
At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.
All the earth’s tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of Peace.
We, Angels and Mortals, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.
Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.
Dr. Angelou, your words to God’s ear … we could all use that kind of peace. And so we wait, we anticipate, we pray, we cry and sing for peace. The whole world waits, anticipates, and cries with us. Amen.
Credits:
- Unless listed below, all works cited within the text above.
- *Adapted in full from “Our Just Peace” Preaching Notes, Discipleship Ministries Worship Planning Series, December 10, 2023.
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