2nd Sunday of Advent year B

Advent 2B 2017 December 10, 2017 Have you ever had an experience where it felt like the entire landscape of your life was changed in one moment? It could happen through loss—the death of a loved one—a spouse, a parent, a child; the loss of a job, a home, status, a large amount of money, a marriage, or another type of relationship. It can also happen in a moment when God gives you an epiphany—a manifestation of God’s presence, an understanding that people or the world work differently than you thought, or that you have been called to live your life in a different way, called to go in a different direction. Have you ever had an experience when it felt like the entire landscape of your life was changed in one moment? What once was smooth going has become rocky, arduous. What once was a verdant valley has become a barren wilderness. What once was an easy way through a flat landscape has become a treacherous climb up the highest of mountains. This can happen to us as individuals, but it can also happen to us as a people, as a culture. We’ve seen it in the Church (that’s church with a capitol C) over the last couple of decades—a realization that the landscape of the church has changed and must continue to change to continue to fulfill its calling as God’s ministers of reconciliation in a way that is relevant to a quickly changing culture. We’ve seen it happening in our culture—there is a definite sense that the landscape is changing daily, under our very feet, that all the old, familiar cultural landmarks are being transformed in unrecognizable and frightening ways. Have you ever felt that the entire landscape of your life, your world has changed in one moment? Well, you are not alone in that. The Children of Israel have this same experience when they are taken into captivity in Babylon. They are made the slaves of a foreign government who worshiped a foreign god, and all that was most precious to them—that which sets them apart as Yahweh’s chosen people—is destroyed—their homeland, their government, their families, and even their temple, the center of their worship and their holiest of holy places. Their voices cry out in the wilderness of their new lives, and God hears them and promises to respond. “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.’” God promises to rearrange the landscape. And although it will certainly look differently than it did before, and it will be re-arranged through most unexpected agents, God does fulfill this promise for Israel. God does fulfill this promise for us. Have you ever felt that the entire landscape of your life, your world has changed in one moment? Isaiah 40 is the love song that God sings for you in the midst of your broken-heart, in the wilderness of your changed landscape. It is the work of the church to sing this love-song to all those who are broken-hearted, (and there are so many of them, here in the pews with us and also outside of these walls). It is our work to offer God’s promise that God will restore all things and to keep watch with them as they wait in longing for the fulfillment of that promise. In closing, I want to share with you a blessing written by poet, artist and UM elder Jan Richardson. Prepare A Blessing for Advent Strange how one word will so hollow you out. But this word has been in the wilderness for months. Years. This word is what remained after everything else was worn away by sand and stone. It is what withstood the glaring of sun by day, the weeping loneliness of the moon at night. Now it comes to you racing out of the wild, eyes blazing and waving its arms, its voice ragged with desert but piercing and loud as it speaks itself again and again: Prepare, prepare. It may feel like the word is leveling you, emptying you as it asks you to give up what you have known. It is impolite and hardly tame, but when it falls upon your lips you will wonder at the sweetness, like honey that finds its way into the hunger you had not known was there. —Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace i i. http://adventdoor.com/2015/11/29/advent-2-a-blessing-for-preparing/