Sermon for Advent 3, Year B, 2016

The First Lesson: Isaiah 35:1-10

The Canticle: The Song of Mary/Magnificat

The Second Lesson: James 5:7-10

The Gospel: Matthew 11:2-11

The Collect:

God of the burning sand and thirsty ground: you called John into the wilderness to announce a new creation far from palaces of royal power; make us ready for your intensity, the judgement that opens our senses to the poverty of our world and calls to life what lingers in death; through Jesus Christ, the one who is to come. Amen. 

The Sermon: 

          May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you O Lord, God of the burning sand and the thirsty ground. Amen.

          We are all thirsty. The kind of thirst which is quenched by water is part of living in a body. But there are other kinds of thirst which run much deeper. Often, we must wait for those deeper thirsts to be fulfilled.

          By the time of Jesus’ ministry, the Jewish people had been waiting a very long time. The arc of Scripture details their journey with oppression. For centuries, they lived under the power of one overlord or another. And for each day in those centuries, they craved justice for their suffering and freedom from oppression. Their thirst was deep. And they waited. This was the context of the question John sent his disciples to ask Jesus. “Are you the one of is to come?” That is: are you the Messiah? At the time, many expected the Messiah would lead a rebellion resulting in the overthrow of the Romans, the overlords at that time. They wanted a leader who met the expectations of worldly power. God, however, had other intentions: to end the suffering of the outcast and heal the broken. In such actions are the kingdom of God truly found.

          As I prepared for this sermon, I thought about my paternal grandmother. Today is her birthday. Were she still with us, she would be eighty-seven. Like many of my relatives her age, she grew up in rural South Dakota, where the prairie is vast and the land is often thirsty, and farmers wait for the outcome of crops in which they invested so much. Grandma knew deep hunger in her own life, too. When she was nine, her mother died suddenly. One of the things my grandmother thirsted for was family. Part of this was her generation, but I think another part was the loss she experienced so young. She missed her mother deeply, and her entire life. Of course, she had her brothers and sisters. And within a few years of her mother’s death, her father re-married and through that marriage she gained additional siblings. She grew up and raised seven children of her own. She was always surrounded by family and family was the center of her world. Yet through it all, she still missed her mother. When she was well into her seventies, she spoke to me of the day her mother died with tears. Grandma waited for more than seven decades to be reunited with her mother. During that time, she thirsted.

          Today’s epistle from James speaks of waiting as being a blessing. When I read the text in preparation for this sermon, my first reaction was: “that’s crazy!” Just as being thirsty is physically uncomfortable, waiting is emotionally uncomfortable. I hate waiting – I want to be done with whatever task is at hand, so I can check that task off my list, move on to the next thing, and check that next thing off the list, too. You may hate waiting, but I’m sure you’re not nearly as impatient as I am! I avoid lines wherever I can. I look for the shortest line at the store. If I’m enjoying an afternoon at the coffee shop and need a snack, I stay at my table and keep myself busy until the line dissipates. If I am going somewhere and expect to be waiting more than five minutes, I take my knitting with me. (And if I forget my knitting, I’m on my phone.) I can’t stand wasting time by not being busy. It’s hard to see how waiting could ever prove a blessing, particularly when one is in the middle of that waiting.

          The faith communities to which James wrote were in a far more serious situation than the examples I shared from my own life. They were a minority religious community who was misunderstood and mistrusted. They faced pressure to conform to the surrounding culture. Like the people of Israel in the Old Testament, they were waiting for freedom. James understood this and sought to encourage his hearers. Patience through waiting, like the farmer’s waiting for his crops, doesn’t promise to always bear fruit – but sometimes, by the grace of God, it does.

This season of Advent involves waiting, too. The weeks leading up to Christmas are different for every family. I imagine Mary and Joseph during the last weeks of waiting for Jesus’ birth. I imagine they felt both excitement and apprehension, looking forward to the future and yet wondering what that future would hold. Families with small children experience excitement and impatience. When can we open the next chocolate square on the Advent calendar? Is Santa coming yet? Families who have lost a loved one experience sorrow at that which was but is no more. Whether the loss was recent or long ago – as it was for my grandmother – matters not. The love we hold for those who have died remains with us, though their presence does not.

No matter where life takes us or what life brings us, we all experience thirst, and waiting to have that thirst quenched. The people of ancient Israel – and the ancient church – waited for freedom. The broken wait for healing. Christmas shoppers wait in line. We wait for in hope, knowing one day we will be reunited with loved ones gone before. No matter what we wait for, or how thirsty our parched souls, God, our Immanuel, is with us. The God of the thirsty ground is with us always. 

Source:

Felder, Cain Hope. The Letter of James in the New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press: New York, NY, 2001.