Raise a glass to freedom

 Scripture Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 NRSV

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

    because the Lord has anointed me;

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,

    to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

    and release to the prisoners;

2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

    and the day of vengeance of our God;

    to comfort all who mourn;

3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion—

    to give them a garland instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

    the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

    the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

4 They shall build up the ancient ruins,

    they shall raise up the former devastations;

they shall repair the ruined cities,

    the devastations of many generations.

8 For I the Lord love justice,

    I hate robbery and wrongdoing;

I will faithfully give them their recompense,

    and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

9 Their descendants shall be known among the nations,

    and their offspring among the peoples;

all who see them shall acknowledge

    that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.

10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,

    my whole being shall exult in my God;

for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,

    he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,

    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

11 For as the earth brings forth its shoots,

    and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,

so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise

    to spring up before all the nations.

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Sermon   Raise a glass to freedom!

Good morning!    It rained!  Yay!  And today is Coffee Zoom Day!  No, that is not because I drank too much coffee.  I’m not even sure there is such a thing as too much coffee.  No, Coffee Zoom is what we are going to be doing after worship today!   Around 11:15ish, if you’re on our email list, you will get an invitation to join a Zoom meeting.  Well, It says meeting, but it’s really a virtual coffee hour. A chance to see each other almost in person, and catch up on what we have been doing for the last nine months or so.  We’ll be doing this the 2nd and 4th Sunday of every month, and once life is somewhat closer to normal, we will be doing it in person. In the church library/parlor, which is currently getting a face lift.  So, I hope to see you in a little while.

As I am sure you all know, we are currently living under very strict guidelines in an effort to bring the infection rates and number of hospitalizations down.  Right now they are still going up.  So please, stay home if you can, be very careful if you must go out, and wear your mask.  And pray.

Our theme for Advent this year is difficult journey to a beautiful destination.  Very few passages speak to that theme better than this one. The people have been in exile, waiting in despair for their suffering to end.  They have been living in an unfamiliar place, and had been for quite a while and then God tells Isaiah to bring them hope and comfort.  Isaiah is told to ease their grieving and bring peace into their hearts.  To prepare the way of the Lord! To cry out in the wilderness! For soon their time of trial will be at an end.  Soon there will be gladness and rejoicing!  

For the people of Israel in exile, just knowing that God was going to send someone to free them was enough to lift the worst of the burden from their shoulders.  They could wait as long as they knew they were not doomed to be in Babylon forever.  God had proclaimed liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, an end to the oppression under which they had been living for so very long.  They were told they would rebuild their ruins - and we know the Temple in Jerusalem lay in ruins, having been destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar’s armies. Maybe he wasn’t coming right this minute, but for now they could celebrate a bit, assured that their savior would come. 

Kind of sounds like us right now, doesn’t it?  We have been waiting and worrying for over 9 months now, ever since the coronavirus started to show up here in the U.S.  We have been on strict lockdowns and less strict lockdowns and back to strict ones again.  We’ve had to learn about tiers and which one we are in so we know whether we can go out to eat or get our hair done.  We have learned more than we ever wanted to know about hand washing and how respiratory illnesses are transmitted, and we now know the best time to go to the market for toilet paper and disinfectant. Masks are fashion accessories.  For a minute it looked like things were getting better. We started planning for a return to in person worship. And then it got worse, and we are still worshipping online.  We’ve been asked to not spend holidays with family.  Our children are struggling with online learning - and so are their parents and grandparents.  We are experiencing an exile from our normal lives that may seem to us to be every bit as difficult to live under as the exile the people of Judah experienced in Babylon, with no end in sight.  

And then hope peeked over the horizon.  A vaccine was found to be effective in clinical trials, then another vaccine, then a third.  On Friday the first of those vaccines was approved by the FDA, and distribution is about to get underway.  Hope turned into joy, even if just for a moment, because the end is in sight.  We don’t know exactly when that end will come, but we know it will, and that’s the most important part right now. Knowing that this too really shall pass.  

Our current situation, of course, is not like the Babylonian Exile, even though it might feel like it.  They were in Babylon for 70 years! They raised two generations there.  They did not know if they would ever be able to go back to their land, or worship in the Temple, or see whatever relatives were left behind.  They could have lost hope.  They could have assimilated.  They could have turned to the gods of Babylon . . . but they did not. They never lost faith in the God of Israel.  They never stopped praying - although for a long time their prayers were more like “My God, why have you forsaken me?” than “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord.”. What they gained was humility - because these exiles were the elites.  They weren’t the farmers and the servants and the fishermen.  Those were left back in Judah along with some few to rule over them for Babylon so the land would continue to be profitable for the conquerors.  No, the exiles were mostly leaders, the nobles, the wealthy, the ones who thought they were all that, who ignored the poor, who allowed injustice to flourish in their own country.  So they learned what it felt like to be at the bottom instead of the top of society. They learned to not take their accustomed lifestyle for granted.  And they learned that God loved them, no matter what.  I imagine that when they did return home they danced for joy along the way, like David danced when they brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem.  I imagine that when they got home, they raised a glass to freedom.

Fast forward 500 years and the people of Judea were waiting, watching for the signs, praying for the one who would come to deliver them, once again, from the conqueror. This time the arrival of the Messiah would be much less obvious, and his purpose not exactly what they expected.  This time, instead of physical freedom they would receive spiritual freedom. They would be liberated from the chains of sin and sorrow.  Freedom would come, not to an entire nation all at once, but to each person as each heart opened to accept the Christ.  We have seen how Jesus gathered his disciples, one or two at a time.  The crowds came to hear him and have their bodies healed by him, but the body of those who followed him closely, day in and day out, who sat at his feet and learned from him, who traveled with him where ever he went, grew more slowly.  And even they didn’t understand what it was they were waiting for.  To come to that understanding they would have to walk the most difficult of roads, the road that led to the crucifixion.  And from there to that most beautiful, most joyful event - the resurrection.  

I titled this message “Raise a glass to freedom!’ - yaaass, another Hamilton reference.  Because when you think about it, we do that every Sunday.  Every Sunday we celebrate the freedom we have found in Christ by raising a glass, or a chalice, or a even a coffee cup, during the Lord’s Supper.  Every Sunday in the words of institution, we tell the story of that difficult journey, and we celebrate the resurrection, and we anticipate our Savior’s return. 

In Advent we wait.  Just as the exiles in Babylon waited, and the people of Judea under Rome waited, so too we wait to welcome the Christ child in just a few weeks, and for our Savior’s return, whenever that might be.  For he told us he would return.  We don’t know when.  But we know he will.  So we wait with joy in our hearts and on our lips, for the coming of Emmanuel, God with us.

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Discipleship “Challenge”

You know, most years we talk about not losing the meaning of Christmas in the excitement of shopping and parties and gift wrapping and Christmas music and trees and stockings and stuff. We talk about how important it is not to let the secular Christmas rooted in commercialism overshadow the manger.  Most years we, as a congregation, will gather canned tomatoes to help our neighbors through Selma Cares, or go caroling at the Selma Convalescent Hospital and take little gifts for the residents, or buy gifts for a needy family through our Angel Tree.   This year we can’t go out as readily and put coins in the Salvation Army bucket - or for that matter, volunteer to ring the Salvation Army bell.  This year is entirely different.  We aren’t able to do all those things we’re used to doing.  So how do we carry the message of Advent, how do we spread joy in 2020?  

I challenge you, as Disciples of Christ, to go out and tell it on the mountain.  Not an actual mountain, necessarily, but from whatever place your voice can best be heard.  Maybe that’s Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or at work, or on the phone, or in your Christmas cards.  Remind people that God IS with us.  Right now people need to hear that.  Right now your friends and colleagues and even family members need to know that God IS with us, and God will always be with us, no matter what.  Tell them about your Hope for the future and about the Peace and the Joy that you receive through your faith.  Tell them that Emmanuel has come and will come again.  

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