A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent
Linda M. Maloney
Isaiah 65:17-25
1 Thessalonians 5(12-15), 16-28
John 1:6-8, 19-28
Two weeks ago I was in Philadelphia, where I saw a special exhibition of the works of Edward Hicks, a Pennsylvania painter from the early 19th century. By trade Hicks was a sign painter, and it shows in his work; but he was a great religious artist as well. There was one subject he painted over and over again-probably eighty per cent of the art he produced in his seventy-year life span depicted just one theme. It is usually called "the peaceable kingdom"-"the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox."
When Edward Hicks was a little boy his mother died and his father had to give his children to other families to raise. Little Edward went to a family of Quakers, and so he himself became a Quaker. It was out of his deep Quaker faith that he painted his "peaceable kingdom" pictures of lions and lambs, wolves and oxen quietly lying down together. They weren't very "realistic" in our terms-Hicks had never seen a lion, so the lions have long, flowing manes, and whiskers like a tabby cat. But they symbolized his deep faith in God's peaceful will for humanity, and his distress at divisions within his own Society of Friends, the Quakers.
We "modern" people are obsessed with "realism," as we call it. Often we are so busy being realistic we forget all about truth. When my youngest son was little, he used to ask me if some story or other was "true," and I used to frustrate him by asking what he meant by "true." Of course, what he wanted to know was whether the story "really happened." But I wanted him to begin thinking about the difference between historical "fact" and the truth of things. As one wise teacher said of our own Scriptures: "everything in the Bible is true, and some of it really happened."
If we fixate on the real to the exclusion of the true, we can really only be cynical toward the Bible. How realistic is it to think that there could be a new earth where no children would be sick or die, where old age would be a pleasure, where God would answer our prayers before we even think to pray? How many of us can remember a time when Jerusalem was not a place of strife and bloodshed-is it realistic to think it could be a joy? About as realistic as thinking that wolves and lambs and lions and oxen would all munch straw from a manger in which an innocent child lies. About as realistic as thinking that that child could be God's very self, incarnate, one of us.
Edward Hicks was distressed by strife among his fellow Quakers. He belonged to a faction called the "Hicksites," after his cousin Elias. They wanted to get back to a more primitive and simple faith, and they were at odds with the "Orthodox" Quakers headquartered in England. Many of Hicks's paintings show a splintered tree to symbolize the strife. How realistic was it for him, or for us, to believe in a church always rejoicing, always praying, always giving thanks-a church in which the Holy Spirit is active and never quenched, even when she chooses the outcasts for her very own-a church in which the prophets speak boldly and the good news they bring becomes the church's treasure?
How realistic was John the Baptizer when he proclaimed that the bridegroom, the host of the Messianic banquet, has come?-that the time of rejoicing that Isaiah prophesied had arrived? Well, someone must have thought he was all too realistic: the powerful people chopped off his head! But look around you: does this world look redeemed? Does it look like Isaiah's promise? Or is this church of ours just a crutch for the weak-minded, as a powerful person of our own day has said?
The heart of the problem is that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was not the least bit realistic, and so his church, the people who love and follow him, can't really afford to be realistic either. Jesus said: "I am the truth," not "I am the historical Jesus; I am really real!" He was about truth, not facts: the truth of the kingdom of God, the realm of God's infinite love and care and plan for us, where the rules are not even remotely like this world's rules. God's perspective on this world is as "skewed," from the realistic standpoint, as Edward Hicks's perspective on nature. In God's world, you might say, the lions have pussy-cat whiskers.
Because God's view of the world is so different from ours, people who try to use the Bible as a book of rules for living in this world always mess up. The rules don't match the situation. This world is "real," but God's world is "true." The kingdom of God, always present and still coming, cuts diagonally across the grain of this world and calls it into question. And it provokes questions in turn. "Who are you?" the people ask John. "Are you Elijah? Are you the prophet? What do you say about yourself? Why are you baptizing?"
We must expect to be questioned, too, if we are on God's path, that diagonal path of the kingdom of God that cuts across this world's grain. "Who are you?" What do you say about yourself? Why do you do what you do? Are the words you speak from God, or should we go to someone else?" These are not just questions for the clergy. They are directed at all the followers of Jesus Christ, and all of us should be prepared to answer them, to give an account of ourselves.
Spirit of the Heartland is one set of answers to those questions. We have discerned and discussed and we are preparing, all of us together, to give witness in the world in which we live to the truth of our lives as Episcopalians and disciples of Jesus Christ. One reason why I was in Pennsylvania was to attend, and preach to, a gathering of the clergy of that diocese. It is very different from ours: almost totally urban and suburban, numbering thousands of Episcopalians, and with a vast gap between parishes with endowments in the millions and others struggling to keep the roof on their "historic" building. I went there to tell them about you, keeping the faith out here on the prairie, holding up the lamp of your hope like a shining star to guide others to the place where Christ is born and reborn in holy lives.
Dear people of God, you are the light of the world. Remember that in this dark time of the year. Keep the candles of faith and hope and love burning until the bridegroom comes again; on that day, let us all be prepared to meet him and to give a good account of ourselves and of the church entrusted to our care.
And all shall be well; and all manner of thing shall be well. Amen.