Sermon December 9, 2012  What is your role in God’s Dream

Old Testament  Malachi 3:1-4

Malachi has some good questions for our day.  His very use of questions as a means of prophetic revelation counters the unthinking certitude of much so-called religious conviction.  “Who can endure the day of his coming (3:2)  Who will be “pure and blameless in the day of Christ? ()Phil. 1:10)  Who will prepare the way by repentance and forgiveness? (Luke 3:1-6).

The text of Malachi 3:1-3 appears in one of the signature choral works of this season, George Frideric Handel’s Messiah.

On this second Sunday of Advent, music can sing the Word, proclaim the good news, and challenge both preacher and congregation.  After the first presentation of Messiah in London in 1741, Handel wrote to a friend: “I should be sorry if I only entertained them.  I wished to make them better.”

Handels Hope was to make them just and better.  Mal. 3:3 proclaims: “Present offerings to the Lord in righteousness”

Malachi opens the church to some good questions for today.

Responsive Reading – Canticle of Zechariah (From Luke 1:68-79)

The ministry of the church is a complex and combustible concoction of fear and joy.  If charted it would  spike from fear and anxiety to joy and gratitude with little resting in between. The characters in Luke’s Gospel can be described as vacillating between Joy and Fear.

Look at Zechariah and Elizabeth.  Luke tells us that Elizabeth is barren and getting on in years. The angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah to announce that Elizabeth will bear a son named John, who will be the forerunner of the coming savior of Israel.

At this news Zechariah is terrified with disbelief, and so the angel renders him mute. Then Elizabeth conceives and bears a child.  When it comes time to naming the child, everybody questions Elizabeth’s naming him John.

Then, Zechariah confirms this name for his son, his mouth is freed, and he is able to speak but the people are terrified.

So Zechariah’s song is praising God for the coming Savior, he describes the ministry of those who will follow the savior, suggesting that we will “serve God without fear.”

In society there are times of terrorism, fundamentalism, and toxicity that infects all of society. Sounds like today since 9/11 doesn’t it.?

So back to Zechariah’s song of hope to “serve God without fear.”

Epistle- Philippians 1:3-11

Paul prays that the faithful will be blameless before God. In the 10^th verse he is praying that they may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ.  Can we stand and proclaim that we are pure and blameless if Christ was to come today?

Another Question to look within to see where do we stand with Christ today.

The story of Blame goes back to the Garden of Eden….She gave it to me…..Eve said the serpent beguiled me. And on and on it has gone since then.

To be a good Christian is to be blameless.  The desire for blamelessness can produce falsehood rather than righteousness.  In writing to the Romans, Paul seems to have reached this conclusion.  To the Romans Paul admits  “ I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Rom. 7:19.

The issues of blame can loom large especially in a season of preparation such as Advent, As we prepare heart and mind, home and church for the in breaking of incarnation, as we ready ourselves for the good news of great joy that is Christmas, the pitfalls of the blame game are prominent.

It might help for us to read over and over again the prayer in v. 9-10  “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you determine what is best.”

From the vantage point of love, assessing blame can teach us how to step up and do better next time, rather than leaving us mired in guilt or ensconced in defensiveness and denial.

The love we await in Advent is such love – a love that will overflow and leave us, if not fully blameless, at least closer to it than we otherwise would be.

Gospel  Reading ( Please Stand if Able) Luke 3:1-6

The Word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.  He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins….

The voice in the wilderness cries out for the way of God to be prepared with relentless urgency.

Prepare the way of the Lord.  If that is the central message of our passage, there is meaning in God’s choice of John, the wilderness-dweller, as messenger.  John was Gods dream come true. What is your role in God’s dream.

In Luke, the Word of God comes neither to the Emperor nor to the governors, and not even to the High Priest.  It comes to simple John, son of Zechariah, whom Luke introduces in the first chapter of his Good News. 

John the Baptist is to us a great prophet, who prepared the way for Jesus, but compared with the political and religious leaders of his day, he was just an ordinary guy – and yet, God chose John, and not the luminaries of his time, to be the messenger. Perhaps God has been calling you to be a messenger.

God sent the message to John, not in Rome, not in Jerusalem, but out in the Wilderness like Belt or Highwood.  Not the seat of political or religious power, but the wilderness, the out of the way place, the often scary and confusing place where God has spoken  to God’s people in the past and through which God had led God’s people to a new and promised life.

God’s choice of John and where God spoke to John are indications of what God expects from us. He may have called to you in the wheat fields. Out working the cows, or horses, or sheep. That is where God spoke and called great men and women of God throughout the scriptures.

Our repentance, our turning around, will likely involve us looking at the structures and the systems and the people of the world around us in new and different ways.

God has a dream for you.  Say that with me.  God has a dream for me. So what  is your role in God’s Dream?  There is a place that God has carved out just for you.

It may start simply by becoming a prayer warrior.  Leading a bible study. Establishing a men’s or women’s ministry. Ministering to the homeless, the down and out. Welcoming strangers. But God has a plan for your life.

 There is a purpose for your life.  There is a reason why you are where you are at today. There is a reason certain people have come into your life. God is trying to get your attention. Even by sending a southern boy in your midst that talks funny. After all he sent me to the other side of the earth for a reason only to bring me back to Montana just for you.

“Prepare the way this Advent,” the prophet John cries out.  John makes us uncomfortable.  Maybe this is the Advent preacher’s job as well – to make you uncomfortable enough truly to repent and prepare for the coming of Jesus.