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Second Sunday in Advent
December 7, 1997
Trinity Lutheran Church
Alameda, California
Gary Pence
Luke 3:1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when
Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee,
and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis,
and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and
Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the
wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming
a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written
in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one
crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his
paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and
hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and
the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of
God.'"
In yesterday's paper I saw the results of a Gallup poll of 1,200
Americans on "Spiritual Beliefs and the Dying Process." The
survey asked people what it was that would worry them most as death
approached. Although most respondents said they worried about the
personal pain they might suffer or how loved ones would manage after
their death, when people were asked which overall area they were most
concerned about, 38 percent said it was spiritual matters.
"Spiritual needs far exceed the other needs," according to
George Gallup, Jr., the chairman of the Institute that took the poll.
But he added that what he found most surprising of people's spiritual
concerns was this: 42 percent of respondents said that when they
thought about dying, they worried "a great deal" that God
would not forgive them.
42 percent worry, not just a little bit, but "a great
deal" whether God will forgive them at the time of their death.
Perhaps some of you worry about that. Maybe some of you worry about it
"a great deal." It's hard to shake the notion that, if we
don’t live our lives the right way, we are going to get punished for
it sooner or later, even that God is going to punish us if not now,
then in eternity.
It's no wonder if we think that way. Rewards and punishments are
built into the structure of everyday life. We expect punishments to
follow crimes and sometimes people even demand it. This last week
there has been this big controversy involving Golden State Warriors
head coach P.J. Carlesimo and Warriors all-star guard Latrell Sprewell.
Apparently the Coach is not a nice man. He rides and swears at and
abuses his players to the point that Sprewell told a press conference,
"I couldn't take it anymore." So Sprewell grabbed Carlesimo,
choked him, and threatened to kill him. His explanation--"I
couldn't take it anymore."--acknowledges that he lost his cool
and lashed out at his coach in a rage. But when San Francisco Mayor
Willie Brown entered the scene, his response was, "Latrell's boss
may have needed choking. It may have been justified. Someone should
ask the question, "What prompted it?"
These are comments which--after a flood of protesting phone calls
into his office--the mayor has come to regret, with considerable
backpedaling in Saturday's paper. But why did he make comments like
that in the first place? Political motives aside, it's clearly because
we have come to expect that, when people act badly, as Coach Carlesimo
undoubtedly has, they ought to get paid back for their crimes. There
ought to be retribution, punishment. So the mayor as much as said that
the coach got what he deserved.
I saw another example of how we think about punishment in the news
story yesterday about new rules about to be instituted in the state's
prison system. No more long hair or beards for inmates. No more
standard inmate dress of blue jeans and a blue shirt; now inmates will
have to wear all-white 2-piece uniforms with CDC PRISONER stenciled on
the back. No more packages from home; families will have to buy food
and other presents from a state-approved list of vendors, who will
ship the goods directly to inmates. No more weights and barbells in
the corner of the prison yard; inmates will no longer be allowed to
work out to look and feel buff and in shape (to prevent them from
becoming more formidable adversaries in prison and when they are
released, according to prison officials).
These changes are supposed to make prison life safer and discourage
escapes. But the vice-president of the union representing the state's
19,000 correctional officers, the guards who actually work with the
inmates inside the prison walls, said, "We're all feeling, 'Holy
Cow! We hope the inmates don't react to this in a violent
manner." They don't seem to think these changes are going to
help. So why are they being initiated? I think that Mike Reynolds, the
father of an 18-year-old girl who was murdered by two repeat offenders
and who is known as the father of California's "three
strikes" law provides the real answer. He says, "I think
this new prison grooming rule is long overdue. These guys are in
prison; they're not at Fantasy Island." He means, these guys have
committed crimes and they should pay for them with lives as miserable
as we can make them during their time in prison.
And we can all sympathize with Reynolds' feelings. What must it do
to a person to have a daughter or son murdered? In situations like
that people feel like crying out for justice, for punishment, for
retribution on the criminal.
So if we figure that God is like us, it's no wonder if we believe
that God must be angry with us when we act badly, and that God will
demand punishment or retribution of us. And, of course, there are
plenty of stories in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament,
that portray God in exactly that way--full of rage at one people or
another and slaughtering them to appease his righteous anger. No
wonder that 42 percent of persons responding to the Gallup poll said
that when they thought about dying, they worried "a great
deal" that God would not forgive them.
But our feelings, our expectations, our desires, our responses are
not always God's, and the birth and life of Jesus which we are
anticipating during the Advent season reveals just how different God
is from us. Today's Gospel quotes those wonderful verses from the
prophet Isaiah:
"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
'Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill
shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"
Some of you may have seen that PBS special about the Lewis and
Clark expedition to the northwest in the 19th century, long
before the national interstate system was built, long before there
were any roads at all to help them on their way. They were forced to
make their way through valleys, over mountains and hills, along
crooked paths and rough ways. The journey was so rugged and so
dangerous that was something of a miracle that only one member of the
expedition died. The whole trip took three years.
But when God comes to us in the life of Jesus, it’s as though all
humanity is gathered to greet him along a road that is smooth, even,
straight, and easily accessible to everyone: "All flesh--every
human being, whether strong or weak, sick or healthy, male or female,
Jew or Greek, slave or free, persons of every race and nation, persons
of every social or economic class and status, models of morality and
moral reprobates--all shall see the salvation that comes from
God." That's the message of Advent.
So the pity of this Gallup poll is that people are worrying about
something the Christian Gospel tells them they need no longer worry
about. Those brutal Old Testament stories of a jealous, vindictive,
and violent God reflected the understandable but limited ideas of
people who projected the violence of their own lives onto God (the way
might be inclined to do today). But in the coming and the birth and
life of Jesus God lets us see and know his true nature. Unlike some of
those earlier fierce and frightening images of God or the equally grim
ones we might draw from our reading of the daily newspaper, on
Christmas God comes as a baby--weak, vulnerable to cold, poverty, and
danger from King Herod. Jesus lives a peaceful life with ordinary
people, soothing and healing people's suffering, feeding the hungry,
reconciling enemies, teaching about forgiveness given 70 x 7 times, by
which he means unlimited forgiveness. Now let me ask you this: If
Jesus tells us to forgive each other 70 x 7 times, an unlimited number
of times, how can God live by any lower a standard? Jesus is acting
out for us what God is like--one whose forgiveness, kindness,
compassion, and love are unlimited.
And when we come to end of Jesus' life, he is captured by the
authorities and sentenced unjustly to death. And does Jesus assert
some divine prerogative to stop this miscarriage of justice? Does he
rise up in self-righteous rage to blast Pilate and the high priest and
his betrayers, roasting them with divine retribution? He does not. He
goes almost silently and submissively to his death rather than lift a
finger against his accusers, his judges, or his executioners. And
Jesus is revealing to us what GOD is like. A God whose forgiveness,
kindness, compassion, and love are unlimited.
And when Jesus three days after his death rises up alive from his
grave, does he return to confront his accusers, his judges, or his
executioners, to laugh them to scorn, and finally to execute his own
wrath on them with the punishment we might say that they deserved? He
did not. He meets quietly with his own followers to give them hope and
courage for the future, to feed them, nurture them, support them, heal
them, prepare them for their ministry in his name, a ministry of
forgiveness, kindness, compassion, and love in the name of the God for
whom forgiveness, kindness, compassion, and love are unlimited.
John the Baptist, we are told in the Gospel this morning, preached
a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. But in the Jesus
who is to come, every person of every sort and condition everywhere
sees and knows a compassionate God who has already forgiven us and
invited us to a life free from fear and a life beyond death free from
pain and every suffering. That is the Advent message.
Healing
Religion's Harm
Gary Pence, Ph.D.
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