What Pastor Jon Preached on Saturday, December 25th, 2010

The Nativity of Our Lord:
Christmas Day
Isaiah 52:7-10 • Psalm 98 • Hebrews 1:1-12 • John 1:1-14

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.


One of my favorite things to do growing up in Oak Park on Christmas Eve was to take a longer than usual car ride home late at night after going to church. By that time everyone who was going to put lights and decorations up on their homes had done so, and they were always so wonderful and beautiful to look at. We would usually take an extra ten or fifteen minutes and drive up and down some of the side streets, rather than taking the usual Oak Park Ave. or Harlem thoroughfares. As the years went by, the lights and decorations became more and more diverse. Some homes stuck with just simple white lights on the rim of their front porch. Some homes had towering trees in their front yard all done up with lights. And in terms of decorations, it always seemed like there was either one theme to the decorations, or another: One theme was all about Santa and his reindeer, the elves and the north pole. These homes had blow-up life-size Santas, illuminated from the inside; reindeer figures stapled to roofs—of course with Rudolph’s nose all lit up—and candy canes standing on lawns that were so big they almost functioned as streetlights. Then there was another group of homes that focused on various representations of Jesus’ nativity scene. Some just had Jesus, Mary and Joseph figures; some had the whole cast of characters including angels stapled to roof tops; some even had halogen lamps pouring lights down onto what was probably a very toasty warm baby Jesus as Christmas night grew later and later.

As I’ve seen these decorations go up these last several weeks and days in the neighborhood, I’ve noticed again this tendency towards either one theme or the other…and as I see these I ask myself: “Whose birthday is Christmas really celebrating?” It’s a question I also find many of us asking too, as we hear a “holiday classic” on the radio for the umpteenth time, as we drop dead from the stress of finding just the right gift at an affordable price, and as we look at the nighttime Chicago skyline lit up like a Christmas tree with abundant shades of green, red and white. “What is this season about, really?”

The answer of course that we were all taught when we were kids is that as much as we think Christmas is about Santa, the “reason for the season” is Jesus’ birthday—something I talked about with the kids at last night’s four o’clock service children’s sermon. And that is right, to a certain extent…we couldn’t have Christmas if it weren’t for Jesus. But when we look at the first chapter of John’s Gospel, the appointed text every year for Christmas Day, there is no mention of the kind of details about the manger scene that dots Oak Park lawns: no virgin Mary, no Joseph, no shepherds or angels or magi. There’s nothing in John’s first chapter that has inspired any kind of lawn decoration that I have ever seen on those late night drives! Those details and pictures of the story of Jesus’ birth come from the Gospel of Luke, which is always the lectionary text on Christmas Eve, and functions more as the descriptive narrative of Jesus’ arrival on Earth. But today, with John, if there’s no nativity, then, whose birthday is it? What does John have to say to us about Christmas?

John writes: “[Jesus] was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of humanity, but of God.” (1:10-12) Did you catch that? Whose birthday is it? “To all who receive him, he gave power to become children of God.” It’s us! Christmas, it turns out, is our birthday. John’s hymn to the Word incarnate testifies that Jesus comes so we might be children of God…children of God that God gives birth to once again this Christmas Day. God incarnates Jesus, gives birth to him, and in so doing affirms and restores our place in creation—as ones who belong to no one else but the love of God for all the world.

But I can hear one of our very bright confirmation students asking me, “But Pastor Jon, how could we be born again? Aren’t we already born once? Aren’t we only children once? How could that be possible?” It’s a question many parents talk about with their small children who ask, “how can Jesus be born again this Christmas if he was already born last Christmas and the Christmas before that?” These questions about our being birthed again by Jesus echoes the questions of a man who appears a few chapters later in John’s Gospel: Nicodemus. Jesus tells him, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” To which Nicodemus replies, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus replies, “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” (3:2-6)

The truth is regardless of how young, or how old we are, no matter how good life is going for us this Christmas or how terrible, we all need to be reborn, and today God gives that birth to the world once again freely and lovingly. Jesus comes to give us the power to be God’s children so that we will not be defined or held captive completely to our past. Jesus comes to give us the power to be God’s children so that we will not remain confined to the pain of a mortal life that is altogether so fragile. Jesus comes to give us the power to be God’s children so that we can belong complete to God and not to others who dominate and control and manipulate us. As The Message Bible of translated by Eugene Peterson translates John 1:12 so well, Jesus comes so God can re-make us again to be our true selves, our child-of-God selves, begotten of God and not of blood, or flesh or domination, but of God’s desire to regard us as nothing but God’s beloved children.

In fact we have already rehearsed this day of rebirth at our baptism, the day we were granted that life which knows no ending; when we were promised God’s eternal commitment and we were created anew in the very likeness of God. As water washed and spirit born people of God, we have already experienced the “second birth” that the hymn “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” speaks about.

So as we go about our Christmas traditions today, as we look at lawn lights and decorations, as we sing carols and put on our favorite festive music, at the heart of all of it all stands this promise: that because Jesus comes to dwell among us, God is not a God of hate, or fear or animosity. God is a God of love, whose Son forever claims us as God’s own beloved children. As Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (3:17)

When we may say to one another today “Merry Christmas” or “Blessed Christmas”, we’ll perhaps be thinking of Bing Crosby, or Santa, or maybe if we’re really focused…the baby Jesus. But today we can also say to each other and to the world, “Happy birthday!” and remember that we have been re-birthed as a God’s children, children to whom Jesus comes to give life, and give it abundantly for the sake of the whole world. (John 10:10) “Happy birthday!” Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Friday, December 24th, 2010

The Nativity of Our Lord:
Christmas Eve
Isaiah 9:2-7 • Psalm 96 • Titus 2:11-14 • Luke 2:1-20

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!" When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us." So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Sometimes even worship bloopers—improvisations on familiar worship actions—can speak profound truths about the message God speaks to us in worship.

A few months ago Marlo Thomas, a folk artist from the seventies, was giving an interview on the radio about growing up, and she was talking about being raised in the church. She loved to play practical jokes on her priest. One day she and her friend decided to try their most daring stunt yet. Now some background about Roman Catholicism helps set the stage here. Roman Catholics believe that during holy communion, when the priest blesses the elements of bread and wine, these elements actually become Jesus’ very flesh and blood. And often in Roman Catholic churches, right after the words of institution, the ringing of bells signifies this transformation. Well Marlo, with her friend, decided to steal those bells from the altar, so their priest could not ring them at this very pious, holy moment in worship. So during mass they sat there, trying not to giggle, and when the priest finished raising up the bread, “Do this in remembrance of me”, he knelt down and reached for the little set of bell chimes that were usually within reach. Only they were not there! What was he going to do? What would happen if the bells weren’t rung? Would that mean Jesus would not become present in this meal? He would not let that happen! SO what does he do? “Ding-a-ling-a-ling! Ding-a-ling-a-ling!” the priest shouted. Marlo and her friend could barely contain themselves with laughter. And again the priest raises up the cup and says “Do this in remembrance of me.” The priest knelt down. “Ding-a-ling-a-ling! Ding-a-ling-a-ling!” Marlo and her friend of course gave themselves away as the culprits by their shrieking and howling with laughter, proud that they had provoked the priest’s improvisation.

We Lutherans have a slightly different belief in Holy Communion: the bread and wine, we believe, still remain bread and wine after the pastor’s blessing, but they do contain the true presence of Jesus “in, with and under” these earthly signs that are means of Jesus’ forgiving grace. We do not have a “ding-a-ling-a-ling” sound at that moment in the liturgy…but we do yearn and pray for Jesus to be truly present, given to us in his meal…a yearning that we preface with the highest words of praise in our whole worship service, words that echo a song sun on the night of Jesus’ birth—the thunderous song of the angels that appear in the cold night air to the shepherds: “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. ‘Hosanna in the highest.’ (Lk 2:14) Blessed is the one who comes in your name.”

These words are our “ringing of the bells”, our “ding-a-ling-a-ling”, a song sung song with those angels on a night like this, a song of anticipation and praise of God’s work in the world in Christ. And as that song rings with anticipation, just before the blessing of the elements, it reminds us of another set of bells that ring in each of our homes, a sound that speaks of similar kind of anticipation that our threshold is wanting to be crossed. Doorbells, the sound indicating a guest has arrived—a sound guests make from outside as they push a button, clamoring to enter through the door and into safety—this bell is the sound of expectation, of arrival, of the end of waiting and the end of a long journey.

Tonight the angels’ song announcing good news of great joy rings as a door bell announcing throughout the whole world that God has heard our ringing of the door bells for protection, for comfort, for forgiveness, for salvation. In Jesus’ birth, God opens the doorway to a Savior for us, waiting to receive us. The cosmic doorway between God and humanity has been forever opened and Jesus will never let it be shut. The song of the angels rings as a heavenly doorbell, announcing the arrival of the will of God revealed for the world, and Jesus’ birth does not signal a closed door, where God does not answer, where no one is at home, but his birth hails God’s open door policy with us—God’s open door of loving-kindness, peace and fidelity to us.

As the shepherds receive this good news from an angel, Luke says the shepherds “were terrified.” (2:9) They were overwhelmed with fear, wonder and amazement at the appearance of a messenger of God. They were astounded by the piercing light that poured out of from the normally empty and dark night sky. But the angel’s message to them , “do not be afraid”, can also be translated, “stop reverencing me”, as in, “do not get lost in awe of me and the singing of this holy, holy, holy hymn of praise…listen to the message itself: the Messiah is born this day!” As lost as we can get in our love of the ringing of the door bell—the sound of music that announces the good news of Jesus’ birth—the angels’ words speak to us as well, asking us to stop and hear these messengers’ message: a message that God embraces us…in a most unconventional way, not by coming in a high and mighty palace, but in a lowly manger, born of peasant parents in a barn.

This message of God’s embrace of our weakness, a message that hums underneath the events of the story of Jesus’ birth, puts to silence the powers of death that try to keep the angels’ song from ringing in our ears. No matter how silent our human frailty may make us, no matter how powerful death may seem to be at silencing us…the song of God’s love in Christ cannot be kept silent. As much as Jesus cannot stay locked in a silent grave, as much as a pastor cannot keep from shouting the ringing of the communion bells, as much as we cannot help but cry Joy to the World, the Lord is come this Christmas Eve…even more so…God cannot withhold God’s love for the world.

This song is a song that rings on in the shepherds as they flock to see this thing that has happened, and it rings on in us this night. These very bells of our church that now ring could very well be ringing on their last Christmas Eve. These bells may be coming down in a few months’ time due to the necessary dismantling of our bell tower. Each bell is inscribed in Norwegian with the good news of the angels: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among those whom God favors!” (2:14) But even if these bells are silenced, God’s song cannot be withheld from ringing loud and clear in us. Children often say “every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings”; well this night the bells are ringing and we all receive our wings to become God’s messengers of good news to the world. Go, dear angels, and sing it out, ring it out, ring the all doorbells of the neighborhood! We have a message to tell; good news to share: God’s doorway has opened forever with the embrace of Jesus. Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, December 12, 2010

Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 35:1-10 • Psalm 146:5-10 • James 5:7-10 • Matthew 11:2-11

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me." As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, 'See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.' Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."

A few years ago, the Washington Post did an experiment. The goal was to see whether people in a subway station would really stop and pay attention when something unexpectedly and extraordinarily beautiful broke into their midst. The scheme was hatched, the plan was set, everything was put in its place: a professional solo violinist would stand at the entryway to a crowded Washington, D.C. metro train station, seeing how many people would stop and listen. Out of almost eleven hundred people who passed this performer in 45 minutes, how many would we guess stopped for at least 30 seconds? 150? 200? 300? Out of those 1100 about 70 stopped with only a handful of those staying for more than a few moments. A total of about 30 dollars was collected. Just a few nights earlier, people had paid well over 100 dollars to get a cheap seat to see this violinist play a Boston concert hall. International violin virtuoso Joshua Bell, who was playing his multi-million dollar Stradivarias instrument, was himself shocked by this performance experience. Person after person whisked by him, as if not hearing anything at all, let alone a world renowned performance. (Workingpreacher.org, David Lose, “Do You See What I See?”)

Why did so many people not stop? Why did such an extraordinary event fall into people’s lives as another part of the ordinary wall of sound surrounding them, rather than the extraordinary event it truly was? Were people late for work, listening to their iPods, rushing to get home, or did they just not care?

Most of us have specific moments and times when we expect the magnificent to occur in our lives. In this case, people would have expected this kind of surprise appearance at a concert hall setting. But do we expect and anticipate and hope…that the ordinary can indeed be an opening for something extraordinary?

John the Baptist has fallen into this trap with God. In last Sunday’s Gospel, before he meets and baptizes Jesus, he sounds confident and sure that God was about to do something big: The Messiah has come! “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” (Mt. 3:3) This week, John doesn’t sound so sure. He’s been imprisoned by Herod, and receives word of the early ministry of Jesus, full of miracles of healing and acts of mercy. Huh? That’s all this Messiah is up to? Sounds so…ordinary, John thought. As he dispatches this message to Jesus from his cell, he wonders if he had been wrong all along: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Mt. 2:3) Perhaps John wondered if Jesus was not fulfilling his role as Messiah in showing mercy to the sick, blind, deaf and others he was healing…and instead could be doing even more powerful acts of amazement…perhaps even freeing John from prison.

Jesus’ answer to John may not be as extraordinary as John wants. But yes, it is in these extraordinarily “ordinary” ways, if they can be called such, that the prophet Isaiah’s dream of a Savior comes true: Jesus gives sight to the blind, raises the lame, cleanses lepers, opens the ears of the deaf, raises the dead and brings good news to the poor. (11:5) In a way, the whole rest of the Gospel of Matthew can be considered a response to John’s question, “Are you the one who is to come?” From that point, Jesus’ continues his healing and proclaiming ministry of to lavishing his extraordinary mercy into ordinary lives, all the way to the cold walls of Jesus’ own prison cell of a tomb. He turns that place into an opening for the pathway of his mercy ministry to enter in, and lead us to new life. John may wall in his expectations of who Jesus is from within his own cell, but that will not stop the whole of Jesus’ ministry from breaking down the walls of doubt and fear that try to keep us captive from hearing and receiving the extraordinary music of Jesus’s love and justice.

Jesus may not answer John in the way John wants to hear, but Jesus in his response proclaims to John…and to us…that we do not need to go and find Jesus for Jesus to show up in our lives. John does not need to break out of his own prison to find the Messiah. John does not need to look or listen for one, big, spectacular event for Jesus to show that, yes, he himself is the one John is looking for. Jesus always comes to us, precisely in the ordinariness of where we are…whether it’s a prison cell, office desk, street corner, church pew, or train station. Jesus paves his way to us not with yellow bricks, or paved interstate highways, but with his deeds of mercy…deeds that conquer death with new life, deeds that speak of what he comes to reveal: God’s saving love for us all.

Of the few who did stop that day to listen to that violinist in the train station, many of them stopped because children were tugging at their sleeves to stop and pay attention to this holy disruption into their routine. Shortly after Jesus’ reply to John, he echoes the power children can have in speaking God’s mercy to us: “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants…” (11:25) Jesus’ advent comes in the form of a child, in the birth of a baby who is coming…who is tugging on our sleeves to stop, watch and notice God’s merciful work, active in the world, waiting to burst into our captivity, to break down walls and break forth into a song we can share together.

What places is Jesus coming to us this Advent? Does the Advent hope of “religion made real” and of a “shoot growing from the stump of Jesse” still seem far off? Jesus comes into this place, the church, in ordinary things—in bread and wine, water and word—holy things that carry holy promises. Ordinary things that put us in harmony with the music of God’s mercy for us. But Jesus breaks in not just in this place, but out in the world, amidst the ordinariness of our daily lives. Jesus’ path to revealing himself goes straight into the unemployment office, the hospice room, the widows’ kitchen table, the homework desk. Jesus sends us out today, to sit with our brothers and sisters for whom these ordinary places and any place has become a prison cell. Jesus promises that when we go there, we will find him too, along with John…rejoicing that the music of God’s mercy always finds a way to us when we see no way out. Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, December 12, 2010

Second Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 11:1-10 • Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19 • Romans 15:4-13 • Matthew 3:1-12

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will
gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

As an old man, he had nothing left. There was nowhere else to go. And then it came back to him. Ah, yes, there is someone I could turn to. And he went back to the tree. And the tree said it did not have any more apples in its limbs for the man to eat or sell, as it did when he was a young man. That’s okay, he said, I don’t have any teeth left. I don’t need apples. And the tree said it did not have any more branches for the man to swing on to his heart’s content, as it did when the man was a boy. Oh, I don’t need to swing anymore, my body can barely move. So what could the tree offer this man who had nowhere else to turn? This tree after all these years, had been cut down, and was now just a stump. The man and the tree looked at each other for a moment…both of them…stumped. Well, the man said, I am tired, and I could use a place to sit down. The tree stood up as straight as it could and told the man that, of course, he was welcome to come over have a seat on the tree. And even though it was just a place to sit, even though there was still no sense of what the future held for these companions, hope was born that day as the man sat on what was no longer a stump, but a throne.

This final scene from Shel Silverstein’s children’s story The Giving Tree echoes an image that abounds in our first lesson from Isaiah and in Matthew’s Gospel text. As unlikely as it sounds, Isaiah prophesies that “a shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” (11:1) John the Baptist testifies to the power of Jesus’ coming by proclaiming that Jesus’ justice will come like trees that do not bear good fruit being cut down. (Mt. 3:10) We look at these texts and we are stumped! Can God do as Isaiah says, and renew the covenant of a promised Savior who will come from the line of Jesse and David? Can the Jesus that John proclaims really be the one who can make good on God’s promise to raise new life out of death?

And it’s not just trusting a God who can work in these kinds of unimaginable ways that stumps us. When we look around at the world, it seems fair to say that like the old man, we search far and wide for signs that God is sustaining us but all we can see are stumps, dead ends, trees cut down around us. Hopelessness appears to be our only response as we look at headlines of a continued national economic recovery that remains stagnant; hopelessness may be our response as we may face hurts in our families that can emerge at this holiday time of year; and yes even Cubs fans, notorious for relentless hopefulness, may be losing hope after the recent death of legendary player and broadcaster Ron Santo. As our congregation responds to the recent news about the necessary dismantling of our bell tower, hopelessness may have set in for some of us…or perhaps it hasn’t for others. Either way, the gravity of this emergency before our church cannot be minimized: we face desperate challenges to our future sustainability as a congregation. The foremost challenge is the lack of sustainable financial resources to address the ongoing stewardship of our building as a means of God’s mission for us, rather than an end in itself. We face becoming a stump. As all these things surround us, we have many reasons to believe these cut down “stumps” can lead only to hopeless dead ends.

But when God sees stumps, when God looks at us, and when God looks at United Lutheran, God promises that out of what’s been cut down can come a renewal of God’s promises. After all, it’s out of a stump of Jesse, a lineage with the most righteous and faithful of Israel’s kings, Jesse’s son David, that God promises to raise up a leader of such powerful family stock to lead home Isaiah’s exiled Israelites. It wasn’t some brand new, some pie-in-the-sky Savior, someone coming out of nowhere to liberate them…it was someone who grew out of the righteousness of God’s past who would lead them to a new disclosure of that righteousness in a way that had never been seen before. And the cut down tree stumps of which John the Baptist prophesied were the roots out of which God grew the tree branches that brought God’s saving, life-giving love to the world—the tree of Jesus’ cross.

Stumps, it turns out, are the shape that God’s hope, God’s peace and God’s new life in Jesus takes. Just as the tree discovered a way to give hope to the old man in the Giving Tree, Jesus discovers a way to give hope to us by turning our stumps into the thrones upon which he sits to rule and transform death to new life, to raise up our hearts, our lives and our world. Jesus comes this Advent to be our Giving Tree, to renew our hope in God’s promises wherever it is that we have been stumped.

Hope can be a wish, a dream, a fantasy. But in the biblical sense, hope reassures us of God’s presence here and now, even in the depths of when we’re down and out. Hope doesn’t predict the future, but hope can renew a vision of God’s peaceable future, a future that’s not necessarily seen in the clearness of daylight but that can be sensed even in the thickest of winter darkness.

When we were confirmed, perhaps this kind of hope was not at all what we were thinking about when the pastor laid hands on us. But, hope is what God is asked to renew in us whenever we affirm our baptism. In that rite, the prayer that we use during the laying on of hands comes directly out of Isaiah 11’s prophesy of a Messiah who will grow out of the stump of Jesse. We ask God to send the Holy Spirit, the wind, the breath of God upon us. I wonder if anyone can remember the words that began that prayer used in renewing us in baptism? It’s also the words that began our Prayer of the Day today, and they’re words we use at the start of each Prayer of the Day in Advent. Stir up the gift of your Spirit… “Stir up” is what we pray for God to grant us in this Advent season… “Stir up your power, O God” we prayed last week…today we prayed “stir up our hearts”, and next week, “stir up our wills…” and finally on the fourth Sunday of Advent, “Stir up your power, O God, and come.” God promises that God can stir up the gift of the Holy Spirit into which Jesus baptized us. God stirs up the waters of our eternal covenant with new life, waters that soften our hardened hearts, and flood our blind eyes with visions of God’s Giving Tree.

So today, let us affirm our baptism, let us again be confirmed by God’s Spirit, a Spirit that renews our hope in God’s Giving Tree—Jesus.

Let us pray. Stir up your Spirit among us, Lord God, that we would be flooded again with the grace revealed to us in your Son, who joins us in the depths of our emptiness, who sits with us at our stumps. Send that Spirit which you rest so fully upon him, and upon which we so desperately yearn for, so we can again envision your branches of righteousness and mercy, and wonder at his love that brings your people together under the shade his protective care. Stir up our imaginations again in these Advent days, O Lord, with your Giving Tree called Jesus who is our hope, for he is foolishness to the world, but he keeps us forever in covenant with the ways that show forth your faithful working among us. Lift us up to be the bearers of your hope, as means and channels of your presence to a world you love so much. Amen.