Sermon for 12/1/2013 from Pr. Mark T. Peterson at Christ the King Lutheran Church, Holliston, MA.
First Reading: Isaiah 2:1–5
The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning
Judah and Jerusalem.
2In days to come
the
mountain of the LORD's house
shall
be established as the highest of the mountains,
and
shall be raised above the hills;
all
the nations shall stream to it.
3Many
peoples shall come and say,
"Come,
let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to
the house of the God of Jacob;
that
he may teach us his ways
and
that we may walk in his paths."
For
out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
4He
shall judge between the nations,
and
shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they
shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and
their spears into pruning hooks;
nation
shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither
shall they learn war any more.
5O
house of Jacob,
come,
let us walk
in
the light of the LORD!\
Greetings to you in the name of Jesus Christ,
In the early 80’s, the North Carolina State men’s
basketball team got a new coach, the young, brash, Jim Valvano. When Coach V
got to the team, he had them do a funny thing at the start of the very first
practice.
Instead of shooting free throws or doing defensive
drills, the players practiced cutting down the nets on the basketball hoops.
This seems like a strange way to begin a basketball season, but Coach V wanted
his players to know what to do, when they would win the NCAA national
basketball tournament and take part in the post-game ceremony of cutting down
the nets so that they could bring them home as trophies. Now, Coach V wasn’t
going through this exercise just for fun, or to try and be smug. Coach did
this, to help instill in his players and coaches the vision he had of where
their journey together would naturally lead.
In our reading from Isaiah today, we are also given a
vision of the future, a good and glorious future. This is the vision of the
days to come, and it is a vision of peace, a time when nation will not rise up
against nation, but instead, all nations will live in harmony, according to the
will of God.
This, being the First Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday
of our Church year, we remember that we are waiting for this vision to come to
fruition. And, as we get older, we may be wondering what’s taking God so long
to accomplish it. Even a quick glance at the world around us tells us pretty
quickly that we aren’t exactly living in this time of peace. When we read of
this vision today, we may not even be that concerned with the macro level of nation
rising up against nation, instead, it may be that we just have to think about
all the things disturbing the peace in our own, individual lives that seem to
make these visionary, “days to come” very unrealistic.
So, as we start this Church year, even as we try to wait
with hope and joy, we can, at the same time feel hopeless, depressed, or even
apathetic. For example, thinking about the days to come, as one struggles with
serious illness may not lead us to happy visions of those days. Or as someone
ages, and things get taken from them, visions of the future starts turning from
dreams of what you’d one day hope to do, to realizing how much you no longer can
do. Perhaps, with these grandiose, prophetic visions or in the midst of our own
unmet expectations, there’s just generalized disbelief, or loss of faith, in
this God who proclaims such peaceful visions, but hasn’t really delivered on it
so far.
So in the midst of this tensions, of seeing this vision
and also feeling so far away from it, we go back to North Carolina State for a
moment, when Coach V had his players cut down the nets at that first practice,
the exercise didn’t count on every player’s belief, nor did it magically cause
every player to believe that someday they would be national champions. What the
exercise did do, was unite the team in a vision of what they would be working
to become. And, for the team, this vision became a reality in 1983, as the
Wolfpack became one of the most unlikely champions in all of sports history,
and cut down the nets for real.
This championship was so unlikely, that some even called
it miraculous, but it didn’t just happen by chance. It took years of hard work,
it took staying focused on the vision when things went wrong, and it took a
coach who showed the players what he thought of them through this visionary
exercise, , that they were champions, and why they were brought to play
basketball at North Carolina State in the first place.
Through no work of our own, in the waters of baptism, we
have been made in essence, God’s players, God’s team. God has chosen us to make
Isaiah’s vision of peace, that we hear this morning, a reality, God has chosen
us to start the work that it foretells, the peacemaking process, the work of
making swords into plowshares, the work of teaching forgiveness instead of
vengeance, the work of becoming a community that exists and is sustained only
for the sake of love, the work of sharing the God who has given us this love so
that all people may live into this vision.
And, even though we’ve been made a part of God’s
proverbial team, there are many things that make this vision from Isaiah seem
completely absurd, and the God who gives them to us simply a wish or a dream.
The Good News in all of this, is that this vision is God’s vision, and it
doesn’t depend upon our feelings or belief to make it happen, it is God’s work.
The Good News, is that we are given a real, living taste of this vision, when
God comes to us in Holy Communion, and not only declares peace with each of us
as individuals, but brings us together in the peaceful unity of this meal we
share. The Good News, is that in this meal of Holy Communion, the peace of this
vision from Isaiah, the peace we are waiting for, God’s peace, which transforms
our violence into love, and our individuality into community, is given to us.
On this, the first Sunday of Advent, we start out this
year with a vision of peace, a vision of life with God. This is a vision that
is given to us, and made real in us not by how we feel, or our belief, but by
the work of Christ transforming us. We come to our meal of Communion this
morning to be fed with this vision, and we pray that just as Jesus has come to
us, this same Jesus Christ will continue to come and grow through us to become
a vision for all the world.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Amen
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