{"id":1237,"date":"2010-11-30T16:44:19","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T16:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=689"},"modified":"2017-08-26T15:26:29","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T19:26:29","slug":"waiting-for-a-miracle-first-advent-tim-schmucker-nov-28-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/?p=1237","title":{"rendered":"Advent I: \u201cWaiting for a Miracle\u201d – Tim Schmucker – Nov. 28, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

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View Archived Sermons\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n


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NEW! Listen to this sermon<\/font><\/strong><\/a>
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThere are land mines buried in our road.\u201d The jeep driver was being extremely cautious as we headed up a dirt road into the Nicaraguan mountains. With no roof on the jeep, we were standing in the back, taking in the beautiful mountains and valleys of northern Nicaragua. The driver went on: \u201cthe counter-revolutionaries have mined the roads, so we have to follow the tire tracks of the last vehicle. Until we see a blown up jeep, we know that the last vehicle made it through without setting off a land mine.\u201d We, a group of Canadian Christians, gulped. He added \u201cthey\u2019re watching us right now.\u201d<\/font><\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We were a Canadian Witness for Peace delegation, and were heading slowly, as fast as possible, for \u201cQuilal\u00ed\u201d and \u201cWiwil\u00ed\u201d, peasant villages up in the mountains where bands of counter-revolutionary forces were gathering. Our presence in these villages would stop these quais-military forces from their usual operations of raping, pillaging and murdering peasants. Because their secret funding came from the US government, harming North Americans might cut off their financial support. So when North Americans arrived in a village, the counterrevolutionaries held off their attacks. That\u2019s why we were there.<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The year was 1985. Six years earlier there had been much exhilaration in the air. A popular multi-sector revolution had come to power in 1979, deposing the CIA-supported Somoza family dictatorship who had run Nicaragua for many decades as their personal fiefdom. Within only five months after taking power, the new government reduced illiteracy from 50% to 12%. It also had the support of many base Christian communities; there were even priests in the National Cabinet. In short, the revolution had gathered up all the hopes and dreams of the Nicaraguan peasants and labourers along with the professional and middle class. But now, in 1985, all this exhilaration and joy and hope and expectation had given way to terror, the terror of a counter-revolution financed by the USA, the most powerful country in the world, against the poor banana republic of a sparse two million people. All they could do was to be waiting for a miracle.<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [Play song 4.07 \u2013 4.29]<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waiting for a miracle \u2026 That was the conclusion of Bruce Cockburn, Canadian singer-songwriter, several months later when he also visited Nicaragua. The resultant song Waiting for a Miracle was also part of my personal journey after returning from Nicaragua, a journey that forced me to face the rage that burned within me toward Ronald Reagan\u2019s regime and his counter-revolutionary puppets who were destroying the hopes and dreams of an oppressed people. Cockburn taught me that, at times, we have to wait, wait for a miracle. The beginning verses of his song:<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Look at them working in the hot sun<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The pilloried saints and the fallen ones<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Working and waiting for the night to come<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And waiting for a \u2026 and waiting for a miracle<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Somewhere out there is a place that’s cool<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Where peace and balance are the rule<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Working toward a future like some kind of mystic jewel<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And waiting for a \u2026 and waiting for a miracle<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 During the time of the Isaiah scripture passage we read, the children of Israel were also waiting. After the mega-tragedy of the destruction of their beloved and holy Jerusalem and their forced exile into Babylon in 587 BC, they had finally returned, re-occupied their promised land, and rebuilt the temple. Ah, their temple. It was to be a glorious place of peace and well-being; the centre of God\u2019s shalom. But it hadn\u2019t been realised.\u00a0 The \u201cideal Jerusalem\u201d \u2013 to be, indeed, a new creation \u2013 hadn\u2019t been realised by the restoration and rebuilding of the temple. The bricks and mortar were there, but the great hope initiated by the enlightened policies of [sigh-rus] Cyrus the Great, the Persian Emperor who defeated Babylon, that great hope was fleeting. The children of Israel were still subject to a foreign power, with little autonomy. In addition, division and strife remained among them. The Temple did not go back to being the only institution for Jewish religious life. Other centres for worship remained strong, including among \u201cthe people of the land\u201d who hadn\u2019t been exiled and who distrusted the returnees from Babylon. There were also other Jewish centres among those half-breed Samaritans in the north, and even in Babylon where some hadn\u2019t returned from exile, where some had found a new Promised Land there. <\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Indeed, there was so much infighting among the children of Israel back in the Promised Land over the re-building of the temple that [sigh-rus] Cyrus the Great\u2019s government put a stop to the rebuilding for two decades. Clearly, the glory days of the Davidic monarchy had not been restored. In a word, they were still waiting for Jerusalem to become all it was dreamt to be, \u201csome kind of mystic jewel\u201d in Cockburn\u2019s words. They were waiting for a miracle. And so, the compiler of the Isaiahs put their dream, their vision at the very beginning of the book, chap 2<\/strong>: <\/font>
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In days to come, the mountain of the Lord\u2019s house<\/font>
<\/font>shall be established as the highest of the mountains<\/font>
<\/font>all the nations shall stream to it \u2026 and say,<\/font>
<\/font>\u2018Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh,<\/font>
<\/font>that the Lord may teach us the Lord\u2019s ways <\/font>
<\/font>and that we may walk in the Lord\u2019s paths.\u2019<\/font>
<\/fo\nnt>Yahweh shall arbitrate for many peoples; <\/font>
<\/font>they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0 and their spears into pruning-hooks;<\/font>
<\/font>nation shall not lift up sword against nation,<\/font>
<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0 neither shall they learn war any more. <\/font>
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the days to come. Days to come. The future. For now, they were waiting, waiting and hoping for that day. But is waiting enough? Is it? And besides, how do you sustain hope while waiting?
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In Cockburn\u2019s song about the Nicaraguans, he poetically portrays how they weren\u2019t just waiting, not just waiting for a miracle; they weren\u2019t waiting passively. The chorus:
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You stand up proud<\/font>
<\/font>You pretend you’re strong<\/font>
<\/font>In the hope that you can be<\/font>
<\/font>Like the ones who’ve cried<\/font>
<\/font>Like the ones who’ve died<\/font>
<\/font>Trying to set the angel in us free<\/font>
<\/font>While they’re waiting for a \u2026 while they’re waiting for a miracle<\/font>
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thousands in Nicaragua had cried and died \u201ctrying to set the angel in us free\u201d. One was a 14 year old boy in 1979 who refused the order from the dictator\u2019s army to move off the church steps that were an entrance to a community liberation centre. He was shot dead. \u201cTrying to set the angel in us free\u201d. That\u2019s active waiting. Many Nicaraguans had given their lives to pushing their country toward, as Cockburn sang, a place that’s cool, where peace and balance are the rule. This \u201cplace\u201d is analogous to the Jerusalem of the people of Israel\u2019s vision as expressed in Isaiah chapter 2: a \u201cplace\u201d where all walk in the Lord\u2019s paths, where swords are beaten into ploughshares, where war would be no more. Both the people of Israel and the people of Nicaragua looked for and worked toward, in Cockburn\u2019s words, \u201ca future like some kind of mystic jewel.\u201d Working toward that future is precisely setting the angel in us free \u2013 struggling toward getting the good in us all to rise above self-interest and work toward the peace and wellbeing of all.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And here our New Testament lectionary passages shed some light on both the Isaiah oracle and Cockburn\u2019s Nicaraguan song. The apostle Paul writes that \u201csalvation is nearer to us now\u201d. Salvation? What salvation? Here we can learn from and understand the Jewish concept of salvation which was more about salvation for an entire people rather than salvation for an individual. So when Paul in his letter to the Romans, and then Matthew in the Gospel reading for today wrote about salvation and the return of Christ, they referred not simply to a bodily return of Jesus, but rather to all that Jesus represented, the inauguration of kin[g]dom of God. This is exactly what Isaiah\u2019s oracle was talking about: \u201cthe mountain of the house of the Lord\u201d \u2013 Jerusalem \u2013 where all learn Yahweh\u2019s ways and learn war no more.\u201d This is salvation, where the Lord will arbitrate between all nations, resulting in swords being beaten into ploughshares. Then nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This sounds like Cockburn\u2019s future Nicaragua, a place where peace and balance are the rule, a place where the angel in us will be free. A miracle! Salvation! But it doesn\u2019t just happen, Paul says; we too do our part, we have to \u201cput on the Lord Jesus Christ\u201d. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Keep awake, yes. Watch for the signs, yes. But also work at making the signs appear. Here! \u2013 An outbreaking of peace and balance. There! \u2013 Glimpses of the world\u2019s people walking in the Lord\u2019s paths. Swords beaten into ploughshares! Miracles! Yet still they\u2019re only foretastes; we\u2019re still waiting for more miracles, fuller miracles, complete miracles.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The children of Israel were waiting for Jerusalem to be that glorious centre of universal peace and wellbeing. The Nicaraguans were still waiting for a miracle \u2013 a more just society. They and we are still waiting for these miracles because we can\u2019t simply make such miracles happen. We can\u2019t design and plan them into full existence. So then we groan and cry out with Cockburn \u201chow come history takes such a long, long time? \u2026 How come history takes such a long, long time, when you’re waiting for a miracle?\u201d The Gospel of Matthew\u2019s response to our cry is that \u201cabout that day and hour no one knows”. We must remain diligent, watchful, for \u201cthe Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour”. Patience and readiness while working toward and waiting for a miracle. A miracle.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And now it\u2019s Advent 2010. What miracle are you waiting for this advent season? What will \u201cthe Lord\u2019s coming\u201d mean for you during this Christmas season? Of course we all want an end to war and poverty and oppression and violence in the world. We all yearn for these miracles, of course. That\u2019s the core of salvation, the centre of Yahweh\u2019s\u2019 mountain Jerusalem. But there\u2019s an additional dimension to salvation. Salvation of a whole people isn\u2019t complete if some members are suffering, it\u2019s not finished when some members aren\u2019t experiencing peace and wholeness. Individuals \u2013 that\u2019s you and me — are part of the core of salvation. Salvation, wellbeing and peace also have deeply personal implications. So, now I\u2019m asking you personally. For Advent 2010, what miracle will the Lord\u2019s coming bring for you? This advent, what miracle are you waiting for?
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\n
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  • A new relationship \u2026 or a renewed relationship?<\/font><\/li>\n
  • A fulfilling job \u2026 or any job?<\/font><\/li>\n
  • Belonging \u2026 acceptance?<\/font><\/li>\n
  • Health \u2026 physical health \u2026 emotional health?<\/font><\/li>\n
  • Freedom from resentment or grudges?<\/font><\/li>\n
  • Healing of wounds \u2026 strength to live with the scars?<\/font><\/li>\n
  • Release from that which binds you?<\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waiting for a \u2026 waiting for a miracle. What\u2019s the miracle that you\u2019re waiting for this advent?<\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [pause]<\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.\u00a0 So put on the Lord Jesus Christ. But about that day and hour no one knows\u2026. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.<\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Going up to the mountain of the Lord<\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Beating swords into ploughshares<\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waiting<\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waiting for a miracle<\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How come history takes such a long long time? <\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Setting the angel in us free<\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.<\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now? This Advent? Could it be?<\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Miracles this Advent.<\/font>
    <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waiting \u2026 waiting for a miracle.<\/font>
    <\/font><\/div>\n
    Endnotes:<\/strong><\/font><\/font><\/h5>\n

    2 <\/strong>– Following Childs and Sweeney in dating this redactional \/ theological insertion into the beginning of Isaiah as post-building of Second Temple.<\/font><\/p>\n

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    \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u00a0 View Archived Sermons\u00a0\u00a0 NEW! Listen to this sermon \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThere are land mines buried in our road.\u201d The jeep driver was being extremely cautious as we headed up a dirt road into the Nicaraguan mountains. With no roof on the jeep, we were standing in the back, taking in the beautiful mountains and valleys of northern Nicaragua. The driver went on: \u201cthe counter-revolutionaries have mined the roads, so we have to follow the tire tracks of the last vehicle.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-a-worship-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3989,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions\/3989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}