Texts: Isaiah 12: 2 – 6, Luke 3: 7 – 18<\/strong><\/p>\n[As Abraham:] \u00a0You seem surprised. \u00a0I guess I\u2019m not quite what you were expecting? \u00a0You thought maybe someone a little older, more . . \u201cpatriach\u201d-ish? \u00a0Maybe with white hair and a beard and a shepherd\u2019s staff? \u00a0I\u2019m not a common shepherd you know, I have people to do that for me: or at least I did. \u00a0I guess I\u2019m not anything to you anymore: just some heavenly forefather gathering up my departed children into my bosom as they reach this side. \u00a0Well, there\u2019s more to it than that. \u00a0I\u2019m sorry if my appearance today doesn\u2019t meet your expectations; but things are not as they appear. \u00a0I mean, that\u2019s the point today isn\u2019t it: things are never entirely as they appear.<\/p>\n
Well, to the matter at hand: I\u2019m supposed to read this text from your scriptures, from the good news as told by Luke. \u00a0Yes, I know, written long after my sojourn in this realm. \u00a0But I am no longer bound by your time or space. \u00a0So, to the text. \u00a0Um, I tell it with a bit more detail than the version you have in front of you so you\u2019re welcome to listen to the story.<\/p>\n
Luke 3:7-18: \u00a0John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You slithering brood of snakes! Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is coming? \u00a0Bear fruits worthy of repentance. And do not even start to say to yourselves, \u201cWe are safe: we have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. \u00a0The ax is already lined up against the root of the trees and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”<\/p>\n
And the crowds asked him, “What should we do then?” \u00a0So John told them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”<\/p>\n
Even those who collected tax for the Roman invaders who controlled the land in those days came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” \u00a0And John told them, “Collect no more than you have been authorized to.”<\/p>\n
Roman soldiers whose job it was to keep order and enforce Roman law also asked him, “And what about us, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation: just be satisfied with your actual wages.”<\/p>\n
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were wondering in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah; John answered them (even though they hadn\u2019t actually asked) by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. \u00a0His winnowing pitch-fork is in his hand, to clear the floor against which the stalks of wheat have been beaten. He will gather the wheat grain into his granary; but the leftover chaff he will burn with a fire that can\u2019t be extinguished.”<\/p>\n
Well, not too subtle, is it? \u00a0We\u2019ll come back to John\u2019s challenge shortly. \u00a0But did you notice he referenced me in this story? \u00a0\u201cChildren of Abraham.\u201d \u00a0Actually, that isn\u2019t anything new, they borrow my name all the time, you see: Abraham – if you hadn\u2019t figured it out yet. \u00a0In your tongue that\u2019s how it is said anyway. \u00a0When I was in this realm I remember hearing it more as \u201cAvram,\u201d or was it \u201cAvrahehm,\u201d or Ibraheem? \u00a0I forget now. \u00a0Or rather, it is no longer a difference to be remembered. \u00a0Either way, they borrow my name, all the time. \u00a0\u201cOur father Abraham,\u201d this and \u201cOur father Abraham\u201d that.<\/p>\n
You know why don\u2019t you? \u00a0They want to own me, or a piece of me anyway. \u00a0That\u2019s how it worked in those days in those places: naming something showed that you had some measure of power over it. \u00a0In this case they\u2019re trying to own . . . really, my faith.<\/p>\n
But I suppose we can\u2019t hold them solely responsible for that: they weren\u2019t the first to borrow my name after all. \u00a0You know who that was, right? \u00a0The first? \u00a0You know I can\u2019t say it. \u00a0I mean, it\u2019s not a secret who it was, I just literally can\u2019t say it \u2013 it\u2019s impossible: all consonant sounds with no vowels, it\u2019s designed not to be said. \u00a0You know, \u201cthe Name?\u201d \u00a0He was the first to borrow it as his own and to modify it some. \u00a0In order to show he owned me? \u00a0Sure, yes, I was his servant, I gave myself over to him when he first spoke to me and ordered me to give up my land beside the great rivers – the very rivers that had nourished our mother Eve and our father Adam. \u00a0The land I had a right to receive from my fathers. \u00a0That was the first thing he did for me: stripped me of my inheritance in this realm, this kingdom.<\/p>\n
I understood that he would give me another land and lots of descendents to fill it. \u00a0I had begun take possession of a new land in Canaan but then I abandoned it almost immediately because it was barren. \u00a0You should have seen the looks on the faces of those Egyptians when they saw this wealthy Babylonian with all his massive herds moving in. \u00a0Well, we didn\u2019t stay long, not at first. \u00a0And then there was the time of which I do not like to speak. They do, they never stop speaking of it. \u00a0But I prefer not to dwell on that time. \u00a0Eventually my descendents returned to Canaan and there established a commonwealth and soon after even a kingdom.<\/p>\n
Three kings. Three! – and it was all over. \u00a0Three lousy kings and then they turned against one another and became weak against their neighbours; the northern half falling first to Sennacherib and then the southern to Nebuchadnezzar, both kings of the lands of my fathers. \u00a0There they were, a thousand years after the Name had called me out of that place, back in it again \u2013 no longer as possessors but as the possessed. \u00a0Then there was a brief return to Canaan for some before it was the Greeks and then the Romans, and then . . .<\/p>\n
I used to think that he had forgotten his covenant with me – his covenant to give me descendents and a land for them to live in. \u00a0I got descendents (and that\u2019s a story in itself) – lots of them, through Isaac and Jakob, and through Ishmael \u2013 descendants like the sands on the desert, as promised. \u00a0But what of the land? \u00a0Since leaving this world I have sometimes despaired of his ever giving the peoples who bear my name their own lands?<\/p>\n
And then I remembered: he, the one I cannot name, he bears my name. \u00a0\u201cI am the god of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jakob\u201d That\u2019s how he introduced himself to Moses, and then to them all. \u00a0And they, not knowing his name, borrowed my name for their own and for his. \u00a0This is how they called him, \u201cthe god of our fathers, Abraham . . .\u201d<\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t know his name because he wouldn\u2019t give it to them. \u00a0Just tell them, \u201cI am who I am\u201d he told Moses. \u00a0Do people of your time and your place understand this? \u00a0You can\u2019t know the god\u2019s name, because you can\u2019t own him or any part of him. \u00a0He is not a tiger or a frog that we might name and have dominion over. \u00a0He is not to be seen, or touched, or spoken of as if we \u201cknow\u201d who he is. \u00a0We don\u2019t know. \u00a0He is not god of just this thing or that thing, nor god or just this place nor that place. \u00a0He is not the god of this mountain or that mountain, that we might call just those mountains holy. \u00a0There are no holy mountains or holy lands: it is all holy land; for wherever he is, that place is holy, just as he said to Moses when he met him at a bush in the desert. And he is everywhere! \u00a0As my son David sang, \u201cThe whole earth is the Lord\u2019s and all that is in it.\u201d \u00a0He is . . . Master of the Universe.<\/p>\n
So, did he give me a land for my children? \u00a0He didn\u2019t just give me \u201ca\u201d land, he gave me all lands. \u00a0In all the many lands to which they have been disbursed they carried my name, standing in place of his \u2013 \u201cthe god of Avram . . .\u201d And he did not give all lands just to my children: he gave us all lands for all his children – the sheep of his pasture and the people of his hand.<\/p>\n
Well, the Baptist had it right in Luke\u2019s little story about the sons of Abraham, both the \u201cpure\u201d ones and those who had become Roman tax collaborators, gathering with their Roman possessors at the edge of the same river, all hoping to get clean. \u00a0John first made them come clean. \u00a0He wouldn\u2019t let them in the water until he did what the Name had first done for me: strip them of power to name the land \u2013 liberating them from the powers of these kingdoms. \u00a0To my descendents he said, \u201cGod can make more of you people out of stones.\u201d \u00a0He\u2019s right. \u00a0He\u2019s absolutely right, just as the Name brought my first born son Ishmael back to life at a stone, and gave me my second son Isaac through my and my princess\u2019s stony bareness. \u00a0God can make sons of Avram any time, any place. \u00a0So he told them, \u201cRelinquish the power of your culture, your tribe, and share with whoever has need of what you have more than enough of.\u201d<\/p>\n
To the tax men he said, \u201cRelinquish the power that Rome gives you to take whatever you like, and just collect what is needed to pave the roads and build the aqueducts.\u201d<\/p>\n
And even to Caesar\u2019s own soldiers he dared say, \u201cRelinquish the power your earthly citizenship gives you to pad your earnings at the expense of those whose land you now possess. This is not your land, nor theirs, nor the land of those who held it before them. It belongs to the one too holy to name.\u201d<\/p>\n
You people today, you make the same mistake I did, along with my fathers before me in Babylon, and my children in \u201cIsrael.\u201d \u00a0He struggles with God, that\u2019s what Ish-ra-el, means. \u00a0My people contended with their god, and their neighbours, for a blessing of land. \u00a0So when they and you have managed to pester the Master of the Universe sufficiently for him to let us learn the hard way, we take possession of his lands and name them as our own.<\/p>\n
In recent centuries you have tended to divide God\u2019s land among yourselves into nation-states, where culture and language determine who is in and who is out. \u00a0Yes, here in this land you have experimented with the idea of a nation based on legal and ethical values, rather than linguistic and cultural uniformity. \u00a0Most recently, though, your Trudeau\u2019s vision of such a nation seems to have fractured some; and in any case, that nation still relies on the protection of the sword and the amassing of great wealth in the hands of you few citizens of this holy earth. \u00a0However just or unjust your society is, the nation claims sovereignty for itself and denies the Holy One\u2019s sovereignty over the whole earth. \u00a0This is why you are still about the business of choosing who is allowed \u201cin.\u201d<\/p>\n
You benefit from your citizenship in such a strong and usually noble society. \u00a0But why should only you benefit? \u00a0Why did the Name bless you with such enormous privilege? \u00a0Surely only so that you would bless others with the same.<\/p>\n
Well, I did the same as you, as did my fathers and my descendents. \u00a0I know you want to do better than we did. \u00a0I know you want everyone to have such great blessing as you have. \u00a0One of you told me that your grandparents came to this place from Russia after the communist revolution and they were so grateful to have been \u201callowed\u201d to come here, they hung pictures of the king and queen in their living room as a sign of gratitude. \u00a0And they did this even though they were pacifists whose welcome here included years on the barren prairie during the great depression, suffering ridicule for speaking German, the language of the enemy against whom they would not fight. \u00a0They were grateful.<\/p>\n
Of course, the land they farmed, when it would be farmed, had previously been the land of the Blackfoot people to whom they sent their young horses to be broken in, but who they could not recognize as equal partners in the cycle of being oppressed and oppressing, being possessed and possessing.<\/p>\n
One of you told me of a time when you became suddenly aware of the Name when you were visiting the Roman peninsula, and went to a local church with a new acquaintance who could not speak your language, nor you hers. \u00a0But in the presence of Holy One, there was no need to agree on naming other things. \u00a0You were not far from the Kingdom of the Holy One.<\/p>\n
Similarly one of you told me of a time travelling in Africa, the land that may well have given birth to all our mothers and fathers, in the land of that great ancient civilization, Zimbabwe. \u00a0You were travelling across a national border, and it was closed to you. \u00a0Fortunately, it would open, to you at least, in the morning. \u00a0In the cool of the night, with no place to sleep, Zim women travelling the same path shared their blankets with you, showing you where on the pavement it would be safe to sleep and how to secure your things against thieves. \u00a0These sisters and you were not far from the kingdom of the Holy One.<\/p>\n
Many, many, many times you each, most of you, have reached across borders of nation and status and language and all manner of identity barriers \u2013 the dividing walls of hostility \u2013 to say to another, \u201clet me give you my name \u2013 I am your servant.\u201d \u00a0Many times together you have assisted those new to this land, and you are still doing that. \u00a0As families and individuals and smaller clusters, you are reaching out to all the stones that the god of Avram has named as his own and you are saying, let me give you my name \u2013 I am your servant.<\/p>\n
There are many good ways to do this, and to challenge the kingdoms of this world to do the same. \u00a0To remind them, as did my son, my beloved son, Yeshua (Jesus) that they would have no power on the earth except that the Holy One allowed them power. \u00a0You can tell them that and sometimes they will listen. \u00a0You can show them how to do justice to the sojourner in the land, and sometimes they will learn from you.<\/p>\n
There are many good ways to welcome the Holy One\u2019s sojourning children to this place – this church, your home, this nation. \u00a0Whatever of these many good ways you choose to do good, know that the Holy One who borrowed my name, does you an even greater honour, giving you far greater power. \u00a0For the god of Avram not only knows your name, he gives you his name. \u00a0Yes, you are privileged to know and bear the name of the one whose name is too holy to speak. \u00a0As citizens of the kingdom of the Holy One, you bear his name, Christ, as you sojourn as \u201cChristians\u201d in the kingdoms of this world. \u00a0Rely then, on the power of the Holy One, and fear not the power of the nations. \u00a0If the Holy One is for us, who can be effective against us? \u00a0The earth is the Lord\u2019s and all that is in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Raising rocks: \u00a0this land is whose land? Third Advent Sermon, by Jeff Taylor December 16, 2012 Listen to this Sermon Texts: Isaiah 12: 2 – 6, Luke 3: 7 – 18 [As Abraham:] \u00a0You seem surprised. \u00a0I guess I\u2019m not quite what you were expecting? \u00a0You thought maybe someone a little older, more . . \u201cpatriach\u201d-ish? \u00a0Maybe with white hair and a beard and a shepherd\u2019s staff? \u00a0I\u2019m not a common shepherd you know, I have people to do that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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-1668","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\/1668","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=1668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1670,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1668\/revisions\/1670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}