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Mark Wheeler
Luke 3:7-18
Third Sunday of Advent, 12/12/2021
“Making Room … for Joy!”
Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church
MP3 – Hope Waits Accompaniment
Welcome everyone! Happy Advent!
When we read today’s Gospel account, we see that as John baptized new converts, he invited them to live with “changed hearts and lives.” When he was asked how to do that, his answers all point to making sure no one is cheated or left without the basic necessities of life, including the right to not be harassed.
A full life of joy, which the prophet Isaiah describes as an everflowing spring, is the birthright of all children of God. May our faith work toward making that so.
MP3 – Hope Waits Verse 3
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Advent Song of Peace
Joy waits for us at Advent Joy waits for us to sing.
Joy waits for our amazement at the grace in everything.
In this time of preparation for the work of co-creation,
for the birthing of a world where wonder is restored. Joy is born in us once more!
Lighting the Advent Candle of Joy . . . . . . Chan & Sherry Park
Chan: Today we offer the Light of Joy to illumine the Door of Welcome.
Sherry: May this light shine in our hearts, in our lives, and in our church.
Chan: May Joy awaken us to possibilities and lead us to greater hospitality.
Sherry: There IS room in this Inn, a House for the Holy.
MP3 – Hope Waits Verse 3
Chan lights the Advent Candles of HOPE & PEACE & JOY
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Thank you, on behalf of our Elders’ Council, thank you for … allowing a sense of JOY even in this continued COVID Season by:
“Wearing your mask while inside the building.”
This is not because we are afraid, but because we want to love our neighbors. We truly want that no one should feel judged, and everyone should feel safe, so continue to be gentle with each other. Listening to the Philippians 2:4 passage:
“ in humility, each counting others better than himself; each of you not just looking to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others.” Philippians 2:4
We are gathered in our church sanctuary – a holy place – and it’s also a safe place – where the divine and the human connect together. Welcome to this holy sacred and safe place today.
CAMERA
Let’s take a second to welcome each other, and those in the room, look at the camera and say HI to your friends who are at home. Tell your loved ones, whoever you can see , “The Joy of Christ be with you – and also with you!”
Welcome to this “gathering” in God’s name. We are assembled in NorthEast Spokane, WA, along with people from all over the world. We are very glad you are “here” with us.
Be filled with God’s Holy Spirit presence and power, in your homes, through your phones and computers, in this building here, and in your lives. Pray with us … and hear and be transformed by God’s Word.
Our opening song of praise and devotion –– #146 – Joy to the World! The Lord is Come – led by Lilly Haeger!!Please join her and sing these words shouting for joy together.
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We pray today with the Prophet Isaiah from the book of Isaiah 12:2-6:
God is indeed my salvation;
I will trust and won’t be afraid.
Yah, the Lord, is my strength and my shield;
he has become my salvation.”
You will draw water with joy from the springs of salvation.
And you will say on that day:
“Thank the Lord; call on God’s name;
proclaim God’s deeds among the peoples;
declare that God’s name is exalted.
Sing to the Lord, who has done glorious things;
proclaim this throughout all the earth.”
Shout and sing for joy, city of Zion,
because the holy one of Israel is great among you. Amen.
In this Advent Season of discovering the Inn where the Holy Family was staying, of hearing that we are welcomed into the Inn that welcomed Mary and Joseph, and then of becoming the Inn where “God with us” enters into our lives and where God now dwells, and where we, in the image of God, welcome others into God’s presence with us… let’s imagine, with appropriate biblical references, Old Testament promises and prophecies and New Testament proclamations and professions, what that place looks like, what it sounds like, what it smells like, how it feels, what it means … for us … today.
Today, from the New Testament Gospel According to Luke and we jump beyond Jesus’ birthday and childhood, and we go to where Jesus’ 2nd cousin John is at the Jordan River baptizing people into a new life of humble repentance and faith reform into God’s-Kingdom-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven-living. Listen to God’s Word from Luke 3:7-18 —-
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3 7 Then John said to the crowds who came to be baptized by him, “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? 8 Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives. And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, Abraham is our father. I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones. 9 The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire.”
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10 The crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” 11 John answered, “Whoever has two shirts must share with the one who has none, and whoever has food must do the same.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized. They said to him, “Teacher, what should we do?” 13 He replied, “Collect no more than you are authorized to collect.” 14 Soldiers asked, “What about us? What should we do?” He answered, “Don’t cheat or harass anyone, and be satisfied with your pay.”
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15 The people were filled with expectation, and everyone wondered whether John might be the Christ.
16 John replied to them all, “I baptize you with water, but the one who is more powerful than me is coming. I’m not worthy to loosen the strap of his sandals.
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16 He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 The shovel he uses to sift the wheat from the husks is in his hands. He will clean out his threshing area and bring the wheat into his barn. But he will burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.” 18 With many other words John appealed to them, proclaiming good news to the people.
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The text from Isaiah that led us in prayer a few minutes ago, was written by a prophet of God to a people exiled from their homeland, their homes and families and businesses and schools. Consider your most dire straits, and then imagine them 10-times worse. That’s what the Israelites were living in – Babylon’s darkness and dread. And Isaiah writes of the Lord’s presence even in our desperation: “You will draw water with joy from the springs of salvation.”
Some of you live on a well, so you know the reality of the sense of the “bottomlessness” of a well. Most of us just turn a knob and water pours forth from a faucet, also seemingly bottomless. Right? No matter how much we dip into the well, there’s still more to get.
When we visited Brianna in Shishmaref, AK, their water is collected from rainfall. And because of the extreme cold temps, there is very little actual plumbing. So each household needs to make regular visits to the giant water-tank at the Washateria, to get 50-gallons, take that home and use sparingly until you need to do it all over again.
Most of us live with plenty – of water, of food, of shoes, of stuff! And Isaiah and John the Baptist remind us that real hospitality means we share with those who don’t.
Isaiah writes: Sing to the Lord, who has done glorious things; proclaim this throughout all the earth. Shout and sing for joy, city of Zion, because the holy one of Israel is great among you.
Sing for joy – not because all is happy or easy or comfortable or convenient! Even when life is hard, when health diagnoses declare dis-ease, when finances fall short, when loss of life looms near – sing for joy not because we are happy – sing for joy because the holy one of Israel is great among you – Immanuel, God is with us! This is what Christmas proclaims so very clearly!
Joy is what happens when we go to that eternal well-spring of life, when we drink from that “living-well” of God’s holy presence!
Kenyan-born, Pastor Grace Imathiu, asks if we trust God enough to experience joy no matter our life circumstance? Do we trust that God will see us through and that we will get to this place of deep wells, and that God is, in fact, with us in the muck of life?!
Isaiah calls out to the city of Zion to shout and sing for joy! But they’re not even in Zion. They are exiled from Zion! But sing for joy because the holy one of Israel is great among you, is with you right now!
This is faith, right? To celebrate Christmas when we are still wearing masks, when the Omicron Variant threatens even more contagion than does the still present Delta Variant of this dang Corona Virus that keeps us at arms’ length. Singing Joy to the World, while praying for our loved ones whom we might not be able to see because of health concerns or travel restrictions.
Hear this! You wanna get even with this Pandemic? Celebrate Christmas with Holy Spirit Joy! Real celebrations are a thing the world does not understand! (That’s like heaping hot coals on their heads, by loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us – let’s do that, too!)
We feel like we live in this sense of scarcity, like our resources are scarce, when indeed what we need for utterly complete joy is already super-powerfully present. Right? This year especially, with fewer Christmas trees, and limited supply chains, and more expensive gifts with less money…. But this Isaiah text assumes abundance, the drawing of water with joy from the Springs of salvation and a spring is something that actually, it’s a bottomless pit. I mean, it’s ever-flowing. And so, whenever we see this mention of spring, a water spring, in the Bible, it’s pointing to abundance, a never-ending supply.
San Francisco Theological Seminary Old Testament professor Jon Berquist says this reminds him of the Old Testament stories of manna. How you get enough for today and then there’s still enough for tomorrow. And how this process teaches us the rhythm of trust and hope and experiencing that in a way that teaches us to only take what we need, only what we need. “Give us this day our daily bread ….”
After we get what we need, we can celebrate that the rest belongs to other people. And the rest of creation, for that matter. And that it is God who has done all these glorious things for all the earth. This is even bigger than the biggest well-spring we can imagine. Because this spring goes out to every nation and still never runs dry.
To have joy just by yourself really isn’t possible. So, if we’re not sharing it, it’s not joy. And this experience that the Holy one is great among us is something that will heal the world. Not just our city, our church, our community, our house, our kind of people, our way of life. The joy just moves out so much further than anything we can imagine.
This is what John is talking about in this Luke passage about changed hearts and lives. People ask him, “What do you mean?” A heart transplant is a big deal. It’s complicated these days. Imagine what it was like 2000 years ago. We just can’t do. We can’t change. It’s too disruptive. And what John keeps showing us is that no matter who you are or what you do, every day there’s an opportunity to reach out to one person. And that’s what it means to have a changed heart and a changed life.
Jon Berquist says it’s as simple as, If you have two of something, share with someone who has none. Take the food you have and share it with one person. We don’t need a large task force and an initiative with massive global funding to cure hunger. That’s not what we’re called to do in this passage. We’re called to feed people one at a time.
That is the beauty of things like our outdoor Food Library! We are incompetent to the task of feeding all the hungry in Spokane. And so we freeze, we’re not sure what to do. But, 18-months ago when our office was closed and no one was in the building to help people from our Food Pantry, our Deacons had this brain-storm of an idea putting one outside, and inviting our neighbors to contribute to it! And they do! Last Thursday morning I was in the parking lot with Cary Peden, who was helping Gene’s project of installing a better door and lock on our shed – and I got to meet two neighbors come and put food INTO our Pantry, and within an hour two others came and gratefully filled one bag of groceries each!
We can not fix it all, but we can do what’s right in front of us.
That’s what “If You Could Save Just One” does for our low-income, at-risk teens and their families! That’s what we do with Child Empowerment Outreach in Kenya. Discern what’s right in front of us, which actually invites us to simply open our eyes and our hands. And in some ways, open our doors, come out of the church building, see what’s happening right there.
So, as we talk about housing the holy, the idea that God’s abundant generosity enables us to trust Him with our generosity. Good things can start out so small, seemingly insignificant; like a new-born babe, maybe lying in a manger. Right? How much more insignificant could one possibly be?
But here’s where we see the incarnation that this season leads to.
For Isaiah and John the Baptist, it’s about loving our neighbors so that there’s always enough from the well-spring!
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On this Third Sunday of Advent 2021 we re-discover the joy of faithful connection with the God of righteousness, and our connections to our fellow neighbors.
As we are welcomed into God’s presence, may we be such an invitingly warm welcome of righteousness to everyone around us.
There’s real Joy in that! Amen.
16 Preparing Our Hearts in Prayer,
MP3 – Make My Heart a Stable – Advent 3
Make of my heart a stable, a house for the holy, a warm and sturdy place for joy to live and grow.
In this moment we open the doors of our hearts to honesty before God
about what we’ve done and left undone that created less hope in a hurting world.
Let us breathe out this regret… [pause to breathe out]
and breathe in the life-giving, forgiving Spirit of God… [pause to breathe in]
and out again with the Peace of Christ… [another breath out].
17 Make of my life a stable, a house for the holy, a warm and sturdy place for joy to live and grow.
In this moment we open the doors of our lives to the call of the Holy Spirit,
inviting us to become more than we can ask or imagine.
Let us breathe out our fear… [pause to breathe out]
and breathe in the courage of the Spirit of God… [pause to breathe in]
and out again, with the Peace of Christ… [another breath out].
18 Make of our church a stable, a house for the holy, a warm and sturdy place for joy to live and grow.
In this moment we open the doors of this church,
filling it with the compassion of Christ for all those who are struggling.
Listen for the prompt, and call out a name or a situation …
We remember and pray for…
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… those who are celebrating God’s presence with victory and faith;
may joy abound!
… those who are suffering economic hardship, and insecurity in basic needs;
may abundance be shared.
… those who are suffering mentally, finding it difficult to cope;
may paths open and hope return.
… those who are suffering illness or injury;
may healing abound.
…. those who are suffering loneliness and isolation;
may companionship and solace arrive.
… those who are suffering discrimination, fear and violence;
may they know respect, respite, and safety.
May the Advent of Compassion be born in us,
reside within us,
move outward from us,
to meet the needs of the world,
making a house for the Holy that is each and every child of God.
We pray this in the name of Jesus, who taught us to pray:
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Many imaginative tales have been spun about “The Inn” and the people who may have been involved in the story. As we’ve already said, we know very little about the Inn from the Bible. There’s a theory that it wasn’t an “inn” at all but the downstairs of a house where the family animals were kept, under the top floor where the family lived. (The Church in Bethlehem is actually built over a “cave”, or a “home’s basement”, where this could have been true.)
This scenario suggests that each and every home can be a birthing place for more goodness in this world.
It suggests that this House of God, this church, might contain a surprising nook or cranny that could house a holy endeavor for bringing more joy to someone’s life. (I think maybe what happens across the street in the garage is, indeed, this kind of hospitality!)
This Advent season may our tithes and offerings stoke the possibilities for our own hospitality.
Listen to this “Christmas Joy Offering” minute for mission from our Missions Elder, Scott Lockwood:
– Offering (4449 N Nevada St, Spokane, 99207 ; or click HERE, or text 833-976-1333, code “Lidgerwood”)
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Expedition Song – What Child Is This? #150 –! – Donna Stone! Each week of this series we will “expedite” with a Christmas Carol. Yes, Advent is not yet the birth of Christ. For today’s closing carol we sing “What Child Is This?” that invites “peasants and kings” to claim Christ as their own. Chatterton Dix, the writer, was not a pastor like most of the 19th century hymn writers. He was an English businessman who asks the question, “Why lies He in such mean estate?” referring to the stable, and in the second verse he answers that by connecting the humble, wooden birth manger to the wood of the cross “borne” at Jesus’ death.
True joy acknowledges the reality of suffering in the world, and invites all people regardless of status to claim Christ’s grace and joy. May we offer that Hope and Peace to the hurting world around us, and experience God’s Joy together!
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We continue with this benediction: May God’s Door of Welcome
swing open in our hearts and in our lives.
May Christ’s humble first dwelling
remind us of the plenty we already know.
And may the Holy Spirit lead us into
more possibility and hospitality
than we can imagine,
making room in The Inn for all.
May it be so for you. May it be so for us.
May it be so for this church. Amen.
29-30 Announcements
31 December Birthdays
7 – Joanne Medhus 10 – Ridge Wanyonyi 14 – Kathy Sandusky 17 – Doug Stone
23 – Nancy Jo Cromer 26 – Edina Wanyonyi
Resources:
McFee, Marcia; “The Inn”; Worship design Studio; 2021. (Interviews with Jon Berquist and Grace Imathiu.)
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