Jim Street

I am often put off by some of the Christmas songs because they are so sentimental, so romantic and so not-my- experience.

Sometimes I feel as if I am going to blow if I hear one more song about holiday cheer, faces all aglow, happy shoppers on their way down glistening, snow covered city sidewalks.

I live in the Atlanta area.  The last time we had snow at Christmas was around the time the Magna Carta was being signed.  And as for happy faces all aglow....ha!...I say, "Ha!"

I see harried faces (even hairy faces!), distracted faces and most of them anything but "all aglow." 

I live in the suburbs.  You see tail lights all aglow.  You see strip malls.  You see enough concrete and black top to cover Rhode Island.  You see power cable, telephone lines and litter.

To many Christmas songs I say, "Bah!"

Unless....unless I hear those lyrics not as descriptions of what is but as yearnings of what could be.

Maybe there could be a day- even here in the 'burbs of HOTlanta"- when there is snow on the ground, happy people scurrying here and there with nothing more than a "Merry Christmas" on their breath.

Hearing those songs in that way may just rescue me from my humbuggery.

Reading the Isaiah texts in the Revised Common Lectionary is really what has rescued me from another season of singing, "Bah, bah, bah, bah, baaaah.." instead of "Fa la la la laaaa."

Listen to these words about the coming the Day of Lord...

"He 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 more any more." (2:4)

Or read these words and just imagine...

"The wolf shall sleep with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze together, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the adder's den.  They will not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (11:6-9 NRSV)

I suspect there were those who first heard Isaiah's words with a "bah" and a "humbug."  They read the paper like everyone else; they watched the evening news.  They worked in the sweatshops and traversed the market places.

No more war?  No more studying war?  No more tragedies?  No more "nature red in tooth and claw."

Bah!

All those folks are gone.  However, the words of Isaiah still stand and give their hope.

Isaiah expresses a vision.  However...and this is important...Isaiah's vision is not simply the poetic expression of wishful thinking or overwrought romanticism.  Isaiah is not Mel Torme sitting at a piano in California in the heat of summer writing about "chestnuts roasting on an open fire."

Isaiah speaks to human yearning, yes.

But the word Isaiah speaks, the vision that Isaiah describes is not Isaiah's word and not Isaiah's vision.  His word and vision are not simply the yearnings of one man or the whole people. 

This is the word and the vision of the God who is faithful and who will do what God promises. 

Advent is the time of yearning...ours and God's! 

Advent is the time when we are reminded that our deepest longings, the ones we offer up to heaven, will be met (and then some) by the God who never leaves us nor forsakes us!

North River Community Church where I preach is beginning a new ministry we are calling "4:4 No More!"  The 4:4 reference is to Lamentations 4:4.

The ministry, which is a part of our larger missions outreach, will focus on reaching out to the poor of Latin America and the Caribbean with the gospel of Jesus and helping to provide food and fresh water wells to the "powerless destitute" in those regions. 

For a fuller expression of our mission you can go to this site, which we will keep updated with developments.

I have been emphasizing the importance of congregational prayer in my sermons lately.  My concern about that narrow topic grew out of the reading and thinking I have been doing with regard to the missional church.  My thinking about that topic has taken me back to the first 4 chapters of the Book of Acts. 

As I  learn more about the missional church and contemplate the earliest days of the church, one phrase rings in my mind: "the enormity of the calling and inadequacy of the called."

Think about it: Jesus meets with his disciples one last time before he ascends to God and tells them that they will be his witnesses starting right where they are, into the surrounding region, over into an area they avoided to a people they despised, and even to the uttermost parts of the world.

That's an enormous calling.

He called people who, in themselves, were not up to it.  He called the very people who had abandoned him and denied him.

That's the "inadequate called."

What did they do?  They didn't seize control and try to manage their way forward and they didn't flee (again). 

They prayed constantly together.

Yesterday we thought about that body of believers as they prayed following the arrest of Peter and John.  Luke records the actual prayer they prayed.  (you can read the whole account here)

In the sermon, I noted 4 parts of the prayer:

1.  They acknowledged who God is (Sovereign, Creator).

2.  They acknowledged what God said through David the Psalmist.  (That the nations and their rulers would be against them)

3.  They acknowledged what God did. (He had a plan that even those who crucified Christ followed.)

4.  They acknowledged what God can do. (He can give them even more boldness to continue proclaiming the gospel and can do signs and wonders to demonstrate his power)

The take away is that in the face of a crisis, they did not shrink back in fear but  recalled the nature of God, the truth of God's word,  God's involvement in the past, and they prayed for greater boldness, for more courage to go on.

When we acknowledge that everything is God's and that God is engaged with us just as God has been in the past, we can pray our way forward undeterred by any obstacle.  We can go on trusting that as the gospel song puts it: "If He did it before, He can do it again!"