3rd Sunday of Advent
Dirty Hands Dirty Feet
I’m over my head it’s made a mess of
me
But it keeps you coming back to the
Way of love never stops on easy street
You’ve gotta walk through the muddy water to come clean
Dirty Hands, Dirty Feet by Peter Mayer
I just love the counter intuitiveness of this line, “You’ve gotta walk through the muddy water to
come clean.” John the Baptist wasn’t the first one to ever
say something like this because way back in 2 Kings 5 Elisha said, "Go, wash in the Jordan
seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean." 11But
Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would
surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would
wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! 12Are not Abana and Pharpar,
the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash
in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage.”
So, there is precedent of prescribing some kind of
“
cleansing” ritual in water that appears to be less than hygienically satisfying.
I actually like Naaman’s reaction. He is used to getting his way when it comes
to being treated in the manner in which he thinks he should be treated. He’s
nobody’s fool. And yet, it seems to be foolish that “You’ve gotta walk through
the muddy water to come clean”
John the Baptist calls his congregation a “brood of vipers.”
His message is so compelling that people from all walks of life decide that it
is time for a change. John is really give it to them and so he calls their
self-importance in to question by saying: “God can make children from stones if he wants. What counts
is your life. Is it green and blossoming? Because if it’s deadwood, it goes on
the fire.”
10 The crowd asked him, “Then what are we supposed to
do?”
11 “If you have two coats, give one away,” he said. “Do
the same with your food.”
12 Tax men also came to be baptized and said, “Teacher,
what should we do?”
13 He told them, “No more extortion—collect only what
is required by law.”
14 Soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”
He told them, “No shakedowns, no blackmail—and be content
with your rations.”
THE MESSAGE
“You’ve got to walk through the muddy water to come clean.”
It’s as St. Francis of Assisi said,
“it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
(Special bonus) Peter
Mayer is dropping by our 8 and 9 am worship services today. So, here’s what’s gonna happen in the sermon:
Advent 3c - 121612
Pastor Ronald T Glusenkamp
Home
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5Let
your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6Do not worry about
anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let
your requests be made known to God. 7And the peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Blessed be the holy Trinity,
+ one God,
the Lord of Israel who comes to set us free,
the mighty Savior who comes to show mercy,
the Dawn from on high who guides us into peace.
Amen.
This morning we gather here with heavy hearts. And we hear
in the First Lesson the words from St. Paul, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again
I will say, Rejoice.” And what’s interesting is that the word “rejoice”
grammatically is an imperative, that is, it is a command, not a suggestion,
“REJOICE.”
I can’t think of anyone who better communicates the gospel
in such a creative way than my good friend Peter Mayer. He’s going to sing a
song and invite us to sing along with SING JOY.
Thank you, Peter. Frederick Buechner has written:
“We are in constant
danger of being not actors in the drama of our own lives but reactors. The
fragmentary nature of our experiences shatters us into fragments. Instead of
being whole, most of the time we are in pieces, and we see the world in pieces,
full of darkness at one moment and full of light the next.
It is in Jesus, of
course, and in the people whose lives have been deeply touched by Jesus, and in
ourselves at those moments when we also are deeply touched by him, that we see
another way of being human in this world, which is the way of wholeness. When
we glimpse that wholeness in others, we recognize it immediately for what it
is, and the reason we recognize it, I believe, is that no matter how much the
world shatters us to pieces, we carry inside us a vision of wholeness that we
sense is our true home and beckons to us.” (pages 109-110) Frederick
Buechner in The Longing for Home.
Peter has a song called Harmony. The refrain goes something like this:
“Hear the children singing peace on earth
Must they close their – eyes to -see
You can dream of home for Christmas
But it’s a long way back to Harmony”
I find it to be one of the most poignant of this season.
It’s about the relationship or more correctly the lack of a relationship
between a father and his son. Obviously there are the issues of judgment,
disapproval and distance. In many ways it’s a modern day take on the Prodigal
Son.
“It doesn’t really matter if it’s yours or if it’s mine
It’s
the same amount of distance taken one step at a time
Three more years a choir sings in Harmony
The old man and the market fade away
But his son’s been coming home to talk to him
To wrestle out a thing or two he could never say
Chorus
Hear the children singing Peace On Earth
To this scattered family
It’s never enough for all you try to be
But you’re welcome home
It’s a long way home
But you’re welcome home in Harmony"
I call this next song, Pete’s version of “
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.” You know that Jimmy Stewart movie with him as George Bailey?
Lend a heart, lend a hand
Make a start and understand
Lend a hour lend a day
Wrap
yourself to give away
“Rejoice in the Lord
always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5Let your gentleness be known to everyone.
The Lord is near. 6Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7And the
peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and
your minds in Christ Jesus.”
AMEN
rtg
Last but not least, the Archbishop of Canterbury's 2013
Lenten read is called Abiding by Ben Quash. He has some great things in there
about the Rule of Benedict.
