The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for 11 December 2005

Texts: Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11/John 1:6-8,19-28

Sermon Title: A Case of Mistaken Identity

             A plot is to a literary work what an engine is to an automobile.  In a word, it is essential.  That glitzy high performance automobile, the showroom floor’s main attraction, may collect “oohs” and “ahs,” but eye appeal won’t set the wheels to rolling.  If you want to roll you better find an engine.

               The piece of fiction the writer labored over may have several interesting characters given wonderful lines to recite, but you or I, the reader, will soon lose interest if there is no plot line around which the narrative is building. Hemingway, Dickens, and Shakespeare, equipped their characters with extraordinarily engaging personalities, but their work has stood the test of time because the three were master craftsmen in creating plot.

            Plot is indispensable to good writing; it provides the guide rails along which a storyline develops.  Plot is the overall plan of a work; think of it as the axis around which the work moves.

            A plot is frequently based upon an unresolved question.  Will Ted win Alice’s heart?  Will the hero foil the villain in time?  Can the quarreling partners learn to coexist?  An unresolved mystery is also attractive subject matter for the author in search of a plot.  Who murdered the rich playboy?  Where is the buried treasure hidden?  How did the villain escape without being seen?

Plot engages us.  The good ones draw us into the action; cleverly transport us into drama as it unfolds.  No longer spectators, we unite with the victors in their victories, and grieve with the defeated in their defeats.  We laugh, we cry, we cringe in terror, we surrender in disbelief, and all these responses from the emotional pallet induced through a well-conceived plot.

                    Literature, even the most imaginative and exotic, is drawn from background and experiences people like you and I share.  We create plots, but you and I are also actors in a plot.  We are actors in an unfolding saga conceived and overseen by God.  Other characters have become known to us through scripture, people like Abraham, David, Moses, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and Mary. Yet the will of God as it was announced through these and other human agents was constantly thwarted.  Sin found its way into the plot line that God envisioned.  As to the origins of human sin in God’s creation, no final answer can be given, though the willful disobedience displayed by our ancestors Adam and Eve may expose as much of the answer as we likely to have.

                    The history of the world, its plot line, has been shaped through the sustained encounter of good and evil, and every human being living or dead has played a role in the unfolding of that plot line.  Though each person contributes in some way to the plot line, those individual contributions, for good or ill, seldom gain much notice beyond the relatively small circle of people with whom they relate.  Yet when the energies of individuals are collectively focused on some worthy, or unworthy end, their impact on history may be extraordinary.

                   If you were an Israelite living in the sixth century before Christ you would have found yourself living in extraordinary times. The conviction that Israel was God’s chosen race was several centuries old by the sixth century BC.  A Jew living in the sixth century could trace God’s plot line all the way back to Abraham, through a history replete with great victories and huge defeats.  Yet it would most certainly have been upon the latter, the defeats, that the mind of a sixth century Jew might have fastened most strenuously.             

                   The sixth century, 587 BC, to be exact, saw the Israelites suffer what was arguably their greatest defeat.  The land and Jews occupied and loved had been overwhelmed by the invading armies of Babylon.  The nation’s capital, Jerusalem, was sacked, and the Temple, the premier holy place of the Jews, and God’s abode on earth, was destroyed.  Had evil at last gained the upper hand?  Where was God?  Could the plot line be rewritten to assure some other outcome?

              If you were a sixth century Jew you might have maintained all kinds of questions pertaining to your future.  Vulnerability will do that.  Think of the questions we entertained, and continue to entertain about our future in the wake of the hurricane, and you will probably come close to approximating the mental state of the Israelites.

                Vulnerability is not a passive state, but rather sends the mind lurching for protection behind some promising strategy or plan.  Unfortunately Israel sought protection in the wrong places.  She constantly misidentified her source of help.  She sought allies to counter the Babylonian threat, nations willing to unite with her in throwing off Babylon’s yoke.  She succumbed to a bad case of mistaken identity.  Her allies could not help, so said God’s prophets, only the sovereign Lord.  God authored the plot line they were enacting.

                Sin obscures the vision, creating all kinds of confusion about who is in charge, who is sovereign.  Sin boasts that it knows the better way, and we bite.  Israel rejected the counsel of God that his prophets delivered.  The prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel with one accord counseled Israel to sit tight, that God would deliver them from Babylon’s grasp.  Israel wasn’t having any.  The Israelites weren’t buying hope on the layaway plan; they wanted what they wanted now.

              Vulnerability is not a passive state, and none of us is invulnerable.  We put aside some money to protect us against financial vulnerability.  We take out insurance and exercise to protect us against physical vulnerability.  We enter into relationships to protect us against emotional vulnerability.  Sometimes we acquiesce to the belief that we are our own best protector.  We have enough money laid aside, we have good insurance, and we have good healthy relationships.  We are good people and we expect good things from life, if for no other reason that we have repeatedly received good things from life.

                 Confidence is a good thing; indeed it is essential to life.  But confidence must be rightly placed.  Life, and you know this, simply has too many ways to undo us to warrant great confidence in the life strategies we personally devise.  You say, “Miller, that’s obvious,” but I say, many of us are missing the obvious.  We ignore the fact that the plot line, the plan, we have worked out for ourselves may not hold.  We simply are not in charge, despite all evidence to the contrary.  The purpose for gathering in this place for worship is to remind ourselves of that reality, and to recommit ourselves to God who is in charge.

                   We are participants in a plot that is even now being worked out as God’s will and our human wills, compromised by misplaced confidence and sin, vie for ascendancy in our lives.  That reality emerges with special prominence during this season of Advent because the theme of the season is repentance, waiting, and watchfulness.  Our aim throughout the season, and in all aspects of this worship service today, is to build, or reinstate confidence, in God’s plot, his plan, for us and the future of the world. 

                  Confidence is a fragile commodity, particularly when it is vested in someone else.  “I’m depending on you.  But can I really count on you to show up?”  “The diagnosis may be correct, but is the physician someone I can really trust?”  “I have some money to invest, but is the stock market my best option?”  We are either confident or we are not.  We either act or we don’t.  We have options, but what is the BEST option?

                   For centuries people of faith, people like you and I have been saying that God is the best option.  We watch, we wait, for a reality that has yet to fully emerge.  We watch, we wait expectantly for the renewal of creation because we have sufficient background in this plot line we call life to justify our confidence.  And why is that?  Simply for the fact that God’s plot line as it has been revealed to us in Scripture and lived out in the actions of God’s faithful, inspires our confidence more so than any other plot line of which we are aware.  There is truth conveyed through that plot line that makes sense of the world as not alternative can.

                 The truth we have been invited to apprehend is that god conquers evil, that the ruins of our lives can be rebuilt, that light banishes darkness, and that hope shall ever conquer hopelessness.  God’s plot has most certainly not fully evolved, there undoubtedly will be more chapters to add, but the consistent message pronounced through God’s plot line is that God will not be mocked.  Good news will be brought to the oppressed.  The wounds of the brokenhearted will be bound up.  The captives will be liberated.  The prisoners will be released.  And how about Lakeview and Mid city?  Grass will grow again, trees will blossom again, children will be seen walking the streets again. Businesses will re-open again. 

                Yesterday many of the residents of Lakeview gathered to collect information on where our community is headed.  We wanted answers. Could the information we were receiving be trusted?

                 At another time and in another place a people sought answers. Their quest led them to prophet named John. John had come into their midst announcing the dawn of a new era.  Who was this man anyway?  Could he be trusted?  Was he the Messiah?  No, he assured them, he was not the Messiah.  But he knew enough about the Messiah to point them in the right direction.

                  As God’s plot worked its way out in the destruction and the later reinstatement of Israel, so the plot was carried forth through John who came to earth to announce the dawning of God’s new day in Christ. 

                   God’s plot is consistently pointing, pointing to an end point in history when all the mysteries of life that so bedevil us will be explained, and we shall know even as we are known.  For the people of Israel, for the crowds that gathered around John, precious glimpses of that day were offered.  For some those glimpses were enough to inspire confidence in their waiting, the conviction that what Isaiah and John were talking about would actually come true.  But others drifted away, the plot line too exaggerated, too exasperating, to appear reasonable.

                   When I was growing up in Wisconsin, long about the end of March or early April, winter would loosen its grip sufficiently that we would catch that first hint of spring.  Not a big glimpse mind you, the sun shining a bit more insistently than it had before perhaps, the first robin hopping along on a patch of lawn newly liberated from the snow cover, or the last piece of ice breaking up on the lake.  With that first hint of spring people would emerge on the street in short sleeves, some in shorts.  I personally went to my closet for my baseball glove and ball.  It was barely forty degrees outside.

                   Predictably as every winter was, however grudgingly, giving way to spring again.  What pure unadulterated joy we experienced as we watched one season fold into the next.  How great it felt to be alive to savor that moment, the plot line, spring following winter, was working as predictably as it ever had.

Would that you and I could work up as much confidence in the ways of God as we do in the predictability of the seasons.  Would that you and I could work up as much enthusiasm for our future under God as the changing seasons aroused in my friends and I in Wisconsin.

                   God is at work, but the waiting is difficult, and events in the world do there very best to undermine our confidence.  There is the matter of sin counseling us to give up hope, to declare that this world is all we will get.  And we fall for that counsel simply because we misidentify the true source of authority and power in our world.

                    Then, however, arrives on the scene a prophet sent by God to remind us that God is still in charge of the plot line.  “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners,; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  It is significant that Jesus appropriated these very words of the prophet Isaiah as he began his public ministry, assuring all who would listen that, yes, winter would give way to spring.  Yes, the seasons, but also the future of the world is in God’s hands, and we are in God’s hands.  WE are in God’s hands. 

Prayer

              Sovereign God, whose arms enfold us, whose eyes behold our every step, and whose breath gives us life, we watch and wait for the day when your plans will be fulfilled, when we shall know and we are known.  Unto that day grant us faith to life with uncertainty, trust to persevere, and courage to do what you call us to do.  Even as we acknowledge our failures to live as you appoint, we know  your redemptive power will not be thwarted by our stubbornness, our determination to place self above others.   Even as we succumb to the same old temptations, allow momentary passions to subvert good judgment, use your good name in vain, you watch and wait for us to come to our senses, as a father waiting for the prodigal to return home. 

                  “Watch and wait, salvation will come.”  From generation to generation that refrain has issued forth on the lips of the prophets and saints who have borne your message of hope and liberation.  Yet it has ever been a trial for us to watch and wait, for we are impatient people.  Swept up in all the details of living, concerned about our economic futures, our health, the state of the nation and the world, the immediacy of these things is so consuming that we make little time to ponder our future with you and what that future may bring.

                   Lord, you have consistently disclosed through the voice of your prophets, through the voice of our Savior, your Son, Jesus, that your reign will be established on this earth.  May our eyes be open to the signs of your presence wherever they may appear, and in that openness bid you welcome.

                   Living God, enfold in your mercy all who live in peril today.  We pray for the persecuted who are deprived of justice.  We pray for those who are harassed on the basis of their race, their skin color, or creed.  We pray for those who are hungry and ill clad, whose exertions this day are directed merely to surviving to live another day.  We pray for the women and men of our armed forces who live in harms way, whose service to our nation deprives them of the benefits of home and family.  We pray for whose who engage in humanitarian activities in hostile environments, the women and men who teach living skills to the sick, and bring hope to the oppressed.  We pray for those members of the press who, neglecting personal safety, accept danger as a burden to be borne so that the truth might be brought to light.

                  We pray for our loved ones, for Bill hospitalized with a stroke, for Shane whose cancer will not respond to medication, for Darrin who mourns the loss of his wife, for Walter undergoing medical tests, and for our friends in Lakeview and across this city who fight depression. We pray for the lonely who search for companions to share their lives. We pray for those who are emotionally exhausted, who deprive themselves of the rest they need.

               Jesus, light of the world, so transform this church and each of us that we may be light-bearers, people in whom your image is perfectly revealed.  Mend our brokenness, O Lord, forgive our sin, and direct our steps that we may ever walk with thee.  It is your name we wear, may that name, Christian, not merely be for us a title of convenience, but define our purposes and express our passion.

             For the day, for each other, for the great expectations we maintain for our world under your reign, O Lord, we pray the prayer Jesus taught us…