St. Paul's On-The-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

Advent 2; December 6, 2009

Baruch 5:1-9

Luke 3:1-6

STOP!

In the 1^st year of the Presidency of Barack Obama, when David Patterson was Governor of New York and Andy Spano was County Executive of Westchester and Bill Hanauer was Mayor of Ossining and Catherine Borgia was Supervisor, the word of the Lord came to the town outside – in the wilderness.

Well that's what happened. The word of God came into a real time and a real place and to a real person. It was not a theological concept, a doctrine of things to do or not do handed down through the generations, or simply handed down through the generations.

The word was spoken to a real person in a real place and a real time; and God became a person in a place and a time – like all places and times, just like this place and time under Barack and David and Andy and Bill and Catherine, to us.

And the word that John heard from God, and took to all the people, was this. It was “Stop.” Stop what you're doing.

He took it to the region around the Jordan. He did not keep it in the wilderness with him where he could live a safe and pure life, renouncing sin and waiting to get into heaven. He took the word into Galilee and Trachonitis and the area around Jerusalem, so people would come to him, ordinary people, not just important people, so they could hear the word.

He took it to them, as well as to Philip and Herod, which is how he got killed, by challenging the people in the halls of power. But he also spoke to all those people who came to him at the Jordan, people like us.

And the word he spoke to people like us was this one: “Stop,” or “repent” for the forgiveness of sins. Turn over a new leaf. Change your minds, change your habits, stop what you're doing.

Stop – and Prepare the way of the Lord. Our stopping will prepare a way for him to come into our hearts and into our world and change it for the better.

So we stop what we're doing. In Advent we stop, for a month, we stop our habits and our head long race through life, and we allow God in. We allow him to take up that space we customarily fill with our selves and our habits, bad and good.

Let me tell you about one habit.

I had a friend who used to mourn the fact that her mother never held her. It drove her up the wall, and she got especially upset when she saw her mother also not hold younger brothers and sisters, or nieces and nephews and grandchildren.

We were talking about it one day and, as we talked, she mentioned that her mother had been abused as a child. Then her mother not holding her made sense.

It became obvious that the only emotion her mother had ever experienced from her own mother, was violence and abuse.

So when her mother had her own daughter, my friend, she only knew what not to do. She didn't know what to do. She only knew not to be violent, not to abuse; but she didn't know what to do; she didn't know how to hold, how to hug, how to love.

So she did the best with what she had. She didn't hit. She didn't hurt.

Alas, she didn't know how to love or hold or heal. Nobody had every shown her that. So she did the best with what she had.

Now my friend, who was never hit by her mother, has learned the next lesson, how to love and hold. She is a priest and she does a good job.

With our own human knowledge, we ordinary people can follow the teaching of John. We may not know what to do, but we know what not to do.

We can stop. Advent is the season of stopping, and waiting, and creating a space for grace that Christ will fill at Christmas. Like Mary we stop, and create a womb where Christ can be born and then go out and teach.

Like the disciples we stop doing what we're doing, leave our fishing nets and concerns like they did for a time, so that when Christ is here to teach, we can listen. And having listened we can then create, we can then follow, we can then help, we can then love.

Now is the time for stopping. If we are alcoholics we do not know how to change our lives completely, but we do know how to stop, and not take that next drink. In the space created by not taking that drink, grace can come in and tell us what to do next.

If we smoke too much, we don't know how to change our lives completely, but we do know how not to take that particular cigarette, and so create a space for grace to come in and show us what to do next, how to live next, how to change next.

If we abuse, maybe we don't know how to change our lives completely, but we do know how not to hit that one particular time, and allow grace in to show us what to do next, maybe even to hug.

My friend told me the story of her mother when she was telling me how once, she saw her mother sitting while her little niece had fallen down and hurt herself, and the mother did not hug her or hold her.

My friend told her, angrily, “you hold that child,” remembering her own emotionless past. The mother did. In the space for grace created by not hitting, she heard a message of loving and – most importantly – how to do it: by holding. And she did.

And the child's life was changed out of that space for grace created by stopping.

So often we don't know how to love, how to help, how to create a new world around us. But Jesus does. This is what he teaches us throughout his life. If we just listen – or read his words in Scripture – we can do it too.

So in Advent we stop, for a while. And then at Christmas Jesus comes and speaks in that space created by our stopping, that space for grace, and he tells us how to love, how to help, how to heal the world.

But first we have to stop, repent, prepare the way of the Lord. We can all do that, even if we can't yet hear Jesus' voice, even if he's not quite yet in our world, even if the voices of Pontius and Tiberius, and Lysanias and Caiaphas and Annas and the powers that be are too loud!

Don't take that drink, that cigarette, abuse that person. Don't take that drive, buy that product or use up that resource. By not doing those things, we ourselves, without waiting for someone else to tell us, create a space for grace, pull the world back from craziness, and make it possible for us to hear Christ, who was born in this world, in a similarly crazy time, to similarly ordinary people.

So in Advent we first stop, and listen.

Then at Christmas with the words of Christ ringing in our ears, we can act. Live. Love. Prepare the way of the Lord. Bring in the Kingdom of God.

It is as if after a long Advent of trying not to be absorbed with our own needs, and not buying for ourselves all the gifts we think we need, we come downstairs on Christmas morning and we see the gifts we really need – gifts of being able to help others, of being able to love others, of being able to heal the world.