Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Let Us Walk In the Light of the Lord

Scripture Lessons: Romans 13: 11-14 and Isaiah 2: 1-5 Sermon Title: Let Us Walk in the Light of the Lord Preached on 11/27/22 Have you ever been wrong? Wrong about a person? Wrong about a deep conviction? Wrong about directions? What if we, as a society, as a culture, as a nation, have it wrong? Looking backwards, it’s easy to see that not all society’s convictions stand the test of time. For example, up until around six hundred years ago, more or less the entire human population was sure that a ship that sailed too far west would fall off the face of the earth. A typical way to treat illness up until the beginning of the 20th century was bloodletting. More recently, in the 1920s, Lucky Strike cigarettes ran an ad celebrating how 20,679 physicians say, “Luckies are less irritating” and will protect your throat against your winter cough. They were wrong about that, just plain wrong. Today, on the first Sunday of the season of Advent, as preparation for Christmas begins in full force, I want to introduce you to the way that Church prepares for the birth of our Savior. During the season we call Advent, a time of expectation and preparation for the birth and second coming of Jesus, the Church gets ready by examining human assumptions, by placing convictions under the microscope. Advent is an opportunity for us to ask ourselves: What if we have it wrong? Speaking of having it wrong, when I was in high school, my algebra teacher swore up and down that we would use the stuff she was teaching someday. Maybe you use algebra every day, but I’m still waiting. Not all of what we believe to be true is; yet we are all capable of being stubborn. We operate under untested hypotheses. We get stuck in false assumptions and become rooted in baseless convictions. Advent is a season when we are invited to ask ourselves: What if we have it wrong? What if we really don’t know where we are going? What if what we thought was true wasn’t? We ask ourselves such questions during Advent because Jesus is coming, the only One who has ever gotten it all right. The rest of us are capable of getting it wrong, so in our first Scripture lesson from Romans, the Apostle Paul calls us to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light… Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” What does he mean by all that? He means that there is something in our flesh that keeps us from admitting when we are wrong even though we often are. Call it pride. Call it stubbornness. Call it whatever you want but know that there is this thing that keeps men from stopping to ask for directions when they’re lost and prevents women from apologizing when they were wrong, believing they must always be right. I know a woman who was so sure that her husband was overreacting that she made him walk from the parking garage to the emergency room. She wasn’t going to pay for valet parking when he was just being dramatic. Well, right before they took him for quadruple bypass surgery, she felt pretty bad about that. What do you feel pretty bad about? When were you wrong? When did you gratify the desires of your stubborn flesh but should have stepped under the true light of humility. That’s where Jesus leads us: to humility. His very birth assures us that if we could save ourselves, He wouldn’t have needed to be born to show us the way, so let Him show you the way. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord. On this warm November morning, while snowflake lights shine from the lamp posts, and trees are decorated with ornaments, remember that: Out of Zion shall go forth instruction, And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And shall arbitrate for many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks. For generations, the prophets have looked forward to such a day. Generation after generation has spoken of the day when the weapons of war will become the tools for peace. So ingrained is this image in the global consciousness that a statue stands outside the United Nations of a giant man, hammer in his right hand. The sword in his left is being flattened into a plow to prepare the soil for a new harvest. A harvest of peace. A new day of harmony. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? How can we prepare ourselves for such a day? How can we get ready for His coming? We must practice listening for the truth in a world where many have stopped listening. We must learn new ways of doing things in a world where many are stuck in old habits. Back to algebra. In the words of my friend Mickey Buchanan, “Math got really hard when they mixed in the alphabet.” Algebra was hard, so I expected the worksheet our teacher handed out to us as we entered class one morning to be difficult. I sat down and diligently began working like all my classmates did. I went from problem to problem all the way to the end and thought I had done alright, but then the teacher wrote the answers on the board, and I got every single question wrong. That was a new low, and the teacher seemed to be able to read my face and the faces of my classmates. She asked, “Did anyone answer these questions correctly?” Only one girl raised her hand. We all looked at her wondering what she knew that we didn’t. The teacher smiled at her, then simply said to the rest of us, “Go back and read the directions.” I did, and there, right at the top of the page, it clearly stated, “After you solve the equation, add 10 to your answer.” Now, before, I said that I’d never used anything I learned in algebra. That’s not entirely true because that day my teacher said: “Never start an assignment without reading the directions.” What are our directions? Forgive one another. How often? As many as seven times? Peter asked. Jesus said, “not seven, but seventy-seven times.” Those are the directions. What else did He tell us? He told us to love one another. What about the people who get on our nerves though? Jesus said, “You have heard it said that you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Those are the directions. What about the people everyone else turns their backs on? Can we go and do likewise? December 1st is World AIDS day. A good friend of mine who sends me an inspirational verse of Scripture every Sunday morning and has for the last five years is HIV positive. Since 1993 when he first tested positive, he’s felt rejected by the Church and even members of his own family, yet he remembers Jesus, Who in Scripture, again and again, reaches out to touch the outcast, the leper, the rejected, and those considered unclean. Jesus reaches out to touch them. He moved toward every outcast of society. Is that what we’ve been doing, or have we been leaving God’s people out in the cold? Follow the directions, or you’ll get lost. Do you ever feel lost? If so, remember that the moral of every great Christmas movie is the same: It’s not too late to change. It’s not too late to stop and ask for directions. It’s not too late to apologize. It’s not too late to admit that we have it wrong. That’s what Ebenezer Scrooge did. Money left him cold and lonely, but it wasn’t too late for him, nor was it too late for the Grinch’s heart to grow three sizes, and don’t even get me started on National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Cousin Eddie, who gets everything wrong, is the one who leads to everything turning out all right because not the boss nor Clarke has it all sorted out. No one does, and that’s OK, especially this time of year, because the thing that sets Christians apart is not that we get it right. It’s that we believe the One who got it perfect is coming, and we need only listen to His directions. Are you ready to listen? Are you listening for truth, hope, and joy? Emmanuel: God in human form is coming. Prepare yourself for His birth by letting go of old, handed-down prejudice and hatred. Discard old convictions. Put them out on the street with your Amazon shipping containers and wave goodbye. What we always thought was true may be holding us back from following Him today. Invite Him into your heart to teach you a new way to be. Let us walk in the light of the Lord. Amen.

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