Winchester
Lutheran Church, Borup, MN
Gloria Dei
Lutheran Church, Felton, MN
December 20, 2015/Advent
4
Luke 1:39-55
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
We’re deep in December, plunged into the darkness of
winter, far into a month when we crave the light, plead for the sun to shine once
again.
And as usual in this 12th month of the
year, you and I feel stuck.
We’re stuck, along with so many other Americans these
days, stuck in fear….stuck in anxiety about mass shootings…unnerved by terrorist
incidents…bogged down in our suspicion about strangers in our midst.
December is always the month when we’re most keenly
aware of what a mess this old world is in.
That becomes clearest every year, right about this time.
Even if we may not be stuck in the fear and foreboding
of this moment--we’re stuck
in the memories of Decembers past—the news reporters kindly reminding us, that
this past Monday was the third anniversary of that horrific elementary school
shooting in Newtown, CT.
We’re stuck in the deep, dark, fearful days of
December. Stuck in the mess that this
world seems to be in.
Even if we’re not thinking about the wider world’s affairs, we sense the
stuckness in our own little corners
of the world.
Why does it seem that so many people we’ve loved all
died in November or December? Joy and
I, in our own little family, remember how three of our parents left us in late
autumns past.
And in this parish, you’ve watched and waited and
prayed with your beloved Pastor Karla as her dear Duane was dying of
cancer.
Grief has its way with us all—and December is when we
feel that most keenly.
We’re
stuck in these December days, stuck, always stuck in fear and darkness and
distrust of one another amidst the aching grief of untimely loss.
We’re stuck so badly that we can’t stand it any longer…..which
is why on these four Sundays in Advent it’s only natural for us to cry out, to
plead with God to get us unstuck.
And
that, my friends, is exactly what God does—every December.
When it seems as though the darkness has won the day—the
light starts to return, God takes steps to get us unstuck once again, here and
now, on this fourth Sunday of Advent.
This morning God is showing up, to pull us out of the muck
of fear and grief and deep uncertainty about everything we thought we could
count on.
God shows up, placing on our lips two words about
getting unstuck, and those two words are “stir
up!”
Advent
is the “stir up” season of the Christian year…..and we’re not
talking about horses and the kinds of stirrups we find on saddles, either!
“Stir up” are the two words that begin each of the
prayers of the day on these four Sundays of Advent.
Sick
and tired of being sick and tired, we cry out:
“Stir up!”
Stir us
up, God, we pray on two of the four Sundays in Advent: “Stir
up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God,…open our ears to the words of
your prophets…Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son,”
we pray.
Two of the Sundays in Advent we cry out to God to stir
us up.
And that’s a pretty big prayer…but not nearly as big
as what we pray for on the other two Sundays in Advent.
Because on those other two Sundays—the first and last
Sundays in Advent, we pray for God,
pleading that God would be stirred up
for us: “Stir up your power, Lord
Christ, and come….save us from the threatening dangers of our sins….Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come….free
us from the sin that binds us, that we may receive you in joy and serve you
always,” we pray this morning.
It’s an astonishing thing, for mere mortals like us to
pray for God, to beg God to stir up God’s
very self for us and for this whole aching world.
But that’s what we pray for in this Advent season….and
that’s what’s playing out here in our Gospel lesson from Luke 1.
God is stirred up here….and when God gets stirred up—watch
out! Everything gets turned upside
down. All the stuckness of this old
groaning creation breaks loose. All the
messes we’ve made for ourselves get straightened out.
Things we just take for granted—the rich getting
richer, the poor getting poorer, the powerful keeping everyone else under their
thumbs—all of it gets tossed up in the air when God gets stirred up for us and
for our salvation.
And the reach of all this “stirring up” is so vast, so
far, so wide, so deep that you’d think God would need tons of dynamite or megatons
of nuclear power to pull it off….
…..but
that’s not at all how it happens.
When God gets stirred up on behalf of God’s whole,
sorry creation….God always starts small.
A young girl scurries across the Judean countryside, escaping from her
unsettled world, longing for the safety of her cousin Elizabeth’s kitchen.
And then, they’re both there, together, dancing a
little jig in Elizabeth’s kitchen: Mary
and her ancient cousin, both pregnant under extraordinary circumstances---because
God is stirring in their midst.
Old Elizabeth feels it….the first fluttering of the
fetus growing inside her old, dead womb….her child leaping for the first time
when Mary crosses the threshold.
THAT’s what things look like when God gets stirred up!
God enters into this messed up world in the smallest
of ways….in the word that Elizabeth’s child, John the Baptist, will soon proclaim
as he points to his cousin, God’s barrier-breaking, sin-obliterating,
future-opening Word Made Flesh: Jesus
the Christ.
When we are most stuck, most deeply sunk in fear and
distrust and suspicion of one another….God in the tiny child comes among us to
get us unstuck, to uncurl us from our fetal position, to turn us away from
ourselves and our anxieties, to return us to God, to turn us inside out toward our
neighbors: able to trust again, love
again, risk ourselves again as God in Christ has risked all for us.
And this shall be a sign to you: expect God to start small….in a baby, lying
in a manger.
This shall be a sign to you: anticipate God starting small in the
baptismal splash, the morsel of bread, the sip of wine, the word that strangely,
unexpectedly stirs you.
This shall be a sign to you: perceive God coming to us in the stranger who’s
starting to look more like a neighbor.
This shall be a sign to you: behold God replacing fear with faith, suspicion
with trust, hatred with hope.
This shall be a sign for you: realize that sin no longer has a hold on
you, the devil no longer has you under his thumb, death never again will have the
last word with you.
This shall be a sign for you: because God is getting stirred up, this world—your world--will never be the same
again.
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
