Sermon by Reverend Dr. John W. Mann | December 17, 2023

Psalm 126 & Luke 1:46-55

One time my brother Jim came to visit in Glasgow. Wanting to show him a good Scottish time, I took him to a city center pub where we met up with some of my Scottish pals. They and I were wearing our kilts. We ate lunch and sampled some whisky. We had been at our table for a while when a woman who had been sitting nearby approached.

“I heard your accents,” she said, “Are you on holiday?”

I felt like saying, “What are you doing, eavesdropping? Do I look like I’m on holiday Missus?” but instead said, “No, I stay here. My brother is here on holiday.”

She responded as if she had not heard me and said, “Welcome to Glasgow. Here’s a wee welcome gift.” She handed us some chocolates, one of which was unwrapped, and a little folded up piece of paper, like a religious tract; which is what it was. By then she had moved on, but her lunchtime message delivered with a smile and some dodgy chocolate was that we, the readers should repent from our sins lest we spend eternity in the fires of hell.

Instead we ordered another round of whisky.

What is it about some religious thinkers who look at another human being and not knowing anything about that person assume, there’s a soul that needs saving? Is the expected outcome of some dodgy chocolate supposed to inspire someone to embrace a religious view that is punitive and shame based?

For those of us who tend to resonate with Presbyterian reformed theology, we see that every human being is a child of God. As for the soul and what manner of salvation we need, our particular wrinkle on the subject is that God is the one who does the saving and God who determines who needs what manner of saving. Our task is to live our lives with goodness and mercy and to trust that the message of our words and actions serve to reflect Christ and that by so doing we continually bring him into the world. I believe that we are not drawn into the love of God just so that we can become indentured servants in a cosmic soul saving industry.

The words attributed to Mary, “My soul magnifies the Lord,” reveal a deep truth about our relationship with God. We don’t own God or possess God, so much as we reflect God in our inner being. We are like the magnifying glass that God shines through. God is ultimately a mystery. But that’s okay. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. To understand someone, you have to see what life is like from his or her perspective. We just can’t do that with God. It’s more important that we believe God understands us.

All the words ever spoken in all the languages ever known cannot begin to capture that which is God. The best we can do is wonder at the statement – God is Love. God has revealed that love in different ways – God for our understanding is like Jesus. He is the reflection of God. What God desires, what God intends is reflected in the person, teachings and ministry of Jesus Christ.

There are times when we see the image of Christ reflected in another soul. Sometimes you might see that Christ when someone is engaged in an obvious religious activity. But more often than not I think you find Christ where you find people at their most human. When people are down and suffering and to the point where they don’t know how they can face the day at hand, yet somehow they do, there is Christ; as if to say, “This is where I carry you.”

As if God speaks to our soul saying, “This is where impossible turns to possible.”

Jesus once said that if you have a little faith you could move big mountains. Some people take that to mean that if you have enough faith you can accomplish just about anything you put your mind to. Faith is not stick-to-itiveness. It’s not mind over matter, elbow grease or positive thinking. Faith is more like seeing what is actually there. Life presents a certain reality and part of that reality is God’s presence – a mystery, yet also a possibility.

Five hundred years before the time of Jesus, when God’s people were living in Babylon against their will, the prophets reminded them that it was not a permanent situation. “God will take us home,” they said. “Even now, God is laying the stones for that homeward highway. Just keep the faith. Don’t give up hope. God will come through.”

But it’s easy to think back. It’s easy to remember not all that long ago and to say, “Where was God when we needed God? Where was God when the city was destroyed, and we were plucked out of our homeland and prodded like cattle? Where was God when we were forced to sing the songs of our homeland to our captors? Where was God when they took our little ones and made sport of bashing in their skulls?”

“Now prophet, you tell us that we paid enough of a price, that it’s time go home? Maybe it would be better just to stay on in Babylon. Jerusalem is a ruin of a city. Only dogs and goats walk its streets. It will have to be rebuilt and renewed from the inside out. Life here isn’t so bad, is it? We prosper, we worship as we see fit. Maybe we should just stay put.”

There’s a choice for the ages. Stay put, or move on. Maintain the status quo and hope that it works out, or take some daring leap of faith into an unknown future, trusting that when you land, God has prepared the ground under you.

There was an attitude among God’s people, the Jews. It’s still present even today. You can find your home anywhere and you make your bed where you find it. But there is only one true place to call home; Jerusalem. There is no other home. The land where God said to Abraham, “look around and for as far you see, I will give you this land and to your descendants forever.”

For more than fifty years God’s people lived in Babylon. They even thrived and prospered there. But they did not let go of their identity. They taught their children the stories and traditions of home. It was in Babylon that the synagogue came into being. A place where the community of faith could gather as a home away from home. The easy thing to do would have been to give and give up. But they didn’t. Today archeologists and historians study Babylon. Israel is a nation.

When the people went home and rebuilt the city of Jerusalem, they described themselves this way: “We were like people who dream. It was like a dream it seemed so wonderful. We laughed and cried for joy. God is so good. We knew it would happen.” One writer described their homecoming in Psalm 126. At the end of the psalm there’s an odd saying, a proverb almost. “Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.”  What could that possibly mean?

One way to look at that proverb is simply as: keep the faith. In good times and bad, keep the faith. It’s simple, but not always easy. For our time as we think about what it means to prepare for the coming of Christ into our lives, the idea of sowing seeds of faith has real power.

When the Psalmist said “Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,” the writer was talking about when the last of the harvest has been used and you’re down to just the seed for planting next year’s crop, and you’re on the verge of going hungry, you can do one of just two things: You could use that seed for food. Make bread and eat. Or you can take it and plant it and hope that you can survive until harvest time. And it’s easy to say when your stomach is full, “Of course, we would plant the seed for next year.” When your children are starving and crying for food and you know you must plant the seeds or surely you will die, that’s when you understand the meaning of “those who go out weeping with seeds for sowing.”

For the Jews in Babylon it was a clear choice, to prosper in the short run and face extinction, or to trust that God would redeem them and bring them home, therefore they must reject these present idolatries of materialism and keep the faith alive for that day when they would return. It was a dream, and it seemed like a dream come true when it actually happened. Impossible, but in God’s realm so very real. There are very real parallels in between their story and ours.

Faith is a challenge. It’s not so much about saving our soul as it is finding our soul. As we continue our Advent journey this week, remember that God’s possibilities come through us. It doesn’t take much faith; a few seeds will do. The challenge is to allow the measure of your faith to meet the measure of God’s intention for your life. Amen.