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Second Sunday of Christmas

Isaiah 62
6O Jerusalem, I have posted watchmen on your walls; they will pray to the LORD day and night for the fulfillment of his promises. Take no rest, all you who pray. 7Give the LORD no rest until he makes Jerusalem the object of praise throughout the earth. 8The LORD has sworn to Jerusalem by his own strength: "I will never again hand you over to your enemies. Never again will foreign warriors come and take away your grain and wine. 9You raised it, and you will keep it, praising the LORD. Within the courtyards of the Temple, you yourselves will drink the wine that you have pressed."
10Go out! Prepare the highway for my people to return! Smooth out the road; pull out the boulders; raise a flag for all the nations to see. 11The LORD has sent this message to every land: "Tell the people of Israel,[e] `Look, your Savior is coming. See, he brings his reward with him as he comes.' " 12They will be called the Holy People and the People Redeemed by the LORD. And Jerusalem will be known as the Desirable Place and the City No Longer Forsaken.

Titus 3
4But then God our Savior showed us his kindness and love. 5He saved us, not because of the good things we did, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins and gave us a new life through the Holy Spirit.[a] 6He generously poured out the Spirit upon us because of what Jesus Christ our Savior did. 7He declared us not guilty because of his great kindness. And now we know that we will inherit eternal life.


One of the things that I truly love about my job is getting acquainted with men and women who can share stories of our city. It is social history, the texture of individual lives lived that make the city's past come alive. A few examples:

Alex, whose father build houses in the 1930's, and the day that a gentleman bought one of them, in cash, in three one-thousand dollar bills. His best guess was that the house was being bought for the mistress of a bootlegger.

Jack, who worked at the TTC maintenance yard, and participated in endless speculation about how fast a streetcar could really go. One evening, while crossing the Bloor Viaduct, a driver answered the question when he reached 70 mph before reaching the Danforth side only to be met by a cop. Needless to say, it was his last trip.

Or Rose, who worked for 42 years at the pen counter at Eaton's. While some might wonder how fulfilling her work selling fountain pens was, she would remind them that she was one a first name basis with most of Toronto's business elite. She was sent to Montreal on at least one occasion to tour the Waterman factory, and also conducted a clandestine friendship with the "pen girl" at Simpson's across the street in the day when Eaton's employees were not allowed to fraternize with the enemy.

Hearing the stories, listening to the intonation of the teller, one cannot help but be drawn into an abiding sense of innocence. Certainly stories of bootleggers and speeding streetcars and outhouses being tipped over on Halloween have some edge to them (that's why they are great stories) but the underlying tenor of the stories is a kind of innocence that seems lost to us today.

Enter the news. It has been a difficult week to be a Torontonian, difficult to watch news items that describe reporting on American networks that seem to say "their urban context is really no different than ours" or "reality catches up with Canadian cities too." Commentators speak of "loss of innocence" or the end of "Toronto the Good" and use coded words that hint at race and class and lead to conversations that begin with words like "you know what the problem really is" and end with very uncomfortable conclusions.

The death of 15 year-old Jane Creba, coming in the middle of an election campaign and following a season of handgun and gang-related violence, may actually result in concrete changes. Her death may mark a turning point in how we deal with violence in our city, and we can only hope the changes will be for the better.

Our task, as Christians, is to enter conversations and hopefully bring a perspective or two that is missing from the dialogue. We need to find our voice and imagine a way of describing our present situation that begins by looking within and discovering the ways in which we are part of the context, how we are part of an unfolding story.

***

Jerusalem, I have posted watchmen on your walls; they will pray to the LORD day and night for the fulfillment of his promises. Take no rest, all you who pray. Give the LORD no rest until he makes Jerusalem the object of praise throughout the earth.

The exile has ended and the Israelites have returned to city in ruins. The object of their desire, the city they heard described in story and verse is no longer there. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem to make final the demise of a culture and a people they could not abide. Removed from home and the proximity of the Lord's presence in the Temple, the Israelites become a people forsaken, and object of ridicule and contempt.

The civic leaders struggle to recreate a community amid the ruins and begin in a most disarming way: they post watchmen atop the city walls to pray aloud and remind God to fulfil his promises to the city and those now returned from exile. The effect is electrifying, and the voice of the prophet animates God's response with these words:

Go out! Prepare the highway for my people to return! Smooth out the road; pull out the boulders; raise a flag for all the nations to see. The LORD has sent this message to every land: "Tell the people of Israel, `Look, your Savior is coming. See, he brings his reward with him as he comes.' " They will be called the Holy People and the People Redeemed by the LORD. And Jerusalem will be known as the Desirable Place and the City No Longer Forsaken.

This is a reading for the Second Sunday of Christmas precisely because this is what incarnation does. A Saviour is coming, look he is already here, and he will bring the reward longed for in a people redeemed and a city with two new names: The Desirable Place and the City No Longer Forsaken. He will bring hope.

***

New Year's sermons are generally light affairs. I will Google a few New Year's resolutions and make fun of them (in a kind way, of course) and remind people that when "fast away the old year passes" we have a chance to set some new goals as a congregation and begin the year fresh.

I suppose the overall gist of this message remains, insofar as that we can think about the things that are happening in our city and we can use an insight or two to read the newspaper differently or in a more critical manner, but unless something happens within these walls, we have likely failed in our mission to the community.

St. Paul wrote these words:
But then God our Savior showed us his kindness and love. He saved us, not because of the good things we did, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins and gave us a new life through the Holy Spirit. He generously poured out the Spirit upon us because of what Jesus Christ our Savior did. He declared us not guilty because of his great kindness.

It was William Countryman who said "hearing the good news is the beginning. The rest of our life forms our response." (Resources, p. 24) To understand that we are a forgiven people, to know that the Holy Spirit lives in our midst, to understand that God has entered our world once more through a tender babe--all these things--must be for ourselves and others to remain true. The greatest sin of the church is to imagine that we are somehow unique and disconnected from the city around us. The God who "works in us and others by the Spirit" cannot see the divisions that we insist on creating, but only creatures created for love and mercy.

The thing we can teach and the thing we can live and the thing we can share is compassion. Thomas Merton learned from his Buddhist friends that compassion "is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all...living beings, which are all part of one another and all involved in one another." Compassion makes many one and fills us with a sense that another's joy is my joy and another's pain is my pain too.

***

Too often, I fear, we help others and they remain "other." We create social programs and adequate housing, we employ people to manage the needs of those who struggling and somehow, and in some way, we think this is enough. We think that meeting the basic material needs of each member of our society will make for peace and maybe even prosperity. But what about the things that are harder to supply? How do you supply hope? How do you supply a sense of purpose or the assurance that someone matters in the grand scheme? A house and money and even a vote do not provide understanding or solidarity or the sense that someone truly belongs. Without a sense of belonging, without a sense that you are truly a participant in society, you may give in to despair. Without hope, or a sense that you belong, it seems a quick trip to meaninglessness and maybe even violence.

The only positive thing about returning to a destroyed city was that the Israelites, for the very first time, were equal. They were having a common experience, an experience that led them to imagine new ways of forming and maintaining their society, new ways of seeing each other. Exile and return became a new beginning, where compassion happened more readily. This was then translated into the birth of hope found in Jesus, and the grown-up teachings we read throughout the year. In many ways the message is the same: understand Jesus and you will see God. Love him and follow in his way. See him in others, and have hope. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 6:08 AM