Wednesday, December 7, 2016

SUNDAY SERMON 12/4/16 by THE REV. DAVID M. STODDART

In Les Miserables, Jean Valjean spends 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. When he’s finally released, he breaks parole and flees to a new town where he is taken in by a kindly bishop. He returns the kindness by stealing the bishop’s silver. He’s caught, but when the police haul him before the bishop, the bishop tells them that he gave the silver to him as a gift. It is a pivotal moment of mercy, of undeserved love, that changes Jean Valjean, who goes on to become a very admirable character. But he’s always on the run for violating the terms of his parole, and he is pursued with a vengeance by a police officer named Javert. Javert is a by-the-book person: everything is black and white, right and wrong. Crime must be punished, and criminals are beyond redemption. No one can change. His worldview is crystal clear and merciless. Well, in the great upheavals of 1832, Valjean is helping some of the leaders of the uprising when they capture Javert. And then Jean Valjean has his great chance: he can kill this man who has pursued him for years and cast a shadow over his whole life. But just as that bishop showed mercy to him at a critical moment, he shows mercy to Javert and in a pure act of loving his enemy, lets him go.

But the results are not the same. Javert is not changed: he refuses to be. He cannot comprehend how any person can show such love. He will not let it in. It actually throws him into despair: he can’t live with the idea that his life has been granted to him as a gift by this “criminal.” So he leaps to his death from a bridge, but right before he does he sings these words:

            And must I now begin to doubt,
            Who never doubted all these years?
            My heart is stone and still it trembles.
            The world I have known is lost in shadow.
            Is he from heaven or from hell?
            And does he know
            That, granting me my life today,
            This man has killed me even so?

Now, I want to ask, “How could anyone ever perceive a heavenly love as a hellish reality?” but I know better. I have done it myself, and I have listened to many, many people do the same. The reality is that it is hard to be loved, to let God’s love really penetrate our being. For some people, it threatens their very sense of self: they don’t feel like they are worthy of such love. The story they tell themselves is that God’s love may be real, but it’s for other people. They are somehow outside the reach of it. Others are just too busy and too focused on the daily grind: they don’t want to deal with a God who is real and close and loves them personally and passionately. They just want to check off the church box and then get on with doing their job, taking their kids to soccer, and just trying to make it through the week. And then others need to be in control: they want to feel like they earn whatever they get, even heaven, and not be beholden to anyone, even God. But underlying all of this, I believe, is the deep realization, which we may not even consciously admit to ourselves, that if we allow ourselves to be that open, that vulnerable, if we really let God love us, then it will change us in ways we cannot predict or control. And, like Javert, we don’t like change: that is what makes God’s love so scary.

And that is what makes John the Baptist so scary. He wants people to actually experience the life-changing nature of that love. He uses the imagery of fire: Jesus will baptize people with fire, instilling new life and power within them. But the chaff, John says, he will burn with unquenchable fire. The message is not that God will treat some people well and others poorly. That is not true: God is always love. The key is remembering that the fire which baptizes also burns; the love which uplifts us also undoes us. How we experience the fire of God’s love depends on how open we are to letting it change us. That’s why John criticizes the Pharisees and the Sadducees: they want to go through the motions of repentance without ever allowing God to change anything about them. For all their religious posturing, they don’t want the divine fire to mess around with their lives at all. And so for them, that fire can only feel destructive. Only those who are really open and willing can know what it is like to be baptized by the Spirit and be led to richer, fuller life in Christ.

I am better dressed and more polite than John the Baptist, but my message today is essentially the same as his. If we are just here to light candles and listen to pretty music, then whatever else we may be doing, we are not preparing for the coming of Jesus Christ into our lives. The outward forms of Advent are only beneficial to the degree that they help us open our hearts and minds to the love of God which Christ seeks to pour into us.

So here is my Advent challenge to you: If you fully accepted that God is real, that Jesus is alive, risen from the dead, and that the Holy Spirit is actually within you; if you fully accepted that God knows you thoroughly and loves you unconditionally, what would change in your life? If you were vulnerable enough to let the whole truth in, what do you think would happen? Are there destructive behaviors you could finally let go of? Would you forgive others more? Would you worry less? If the love of Christ filled your being, do you imagine you would spend more time on the people and activities that really matter and less time on trivial things that frankly don’t matter at all? And how would that love affect your relationship with money and status symbols and worldly success? But most important: when I ask you questions like that, where do you feel resistance, where do you feel yourself digging in? Because that is exactly where your Advent and my Advent needs to happen — right where we are most guarded, unable to trust and unwilling to change. That’s where we most need to let God’s love in. When John the Baptist calls us to repentance, that’s what he’s talking about.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. The great paradox of our faith: God loves us just the way we are, but loves us too much to leave us that way. And every Advent we are confronted with the same question: are we prepared to be loved like that? If the answer is yes, then we can honestly pray the great Advent prayer: “Come Lord Jesus, come.”




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