"What Gift Can I Bring?
...VISION"
- Rev. Bob Thomas
Senior Pastor
the Old Testament Lesson:
Isaiah 35: 1 - 10
Advent V-POWER I
A few weeks ago I told you about my friend Bessie Isaacs and her family who live on the Navajo Indian Reservation near Kaibeto, Arizona. The Isaacs’ family live about 10 miles outside of the reservation village in the chaparral on the top of the White Mesa in northern Arizona. The entire area was a desert nearly 9,000 feet above sea level. The first two years we went there to do mission work they talked about growing small patches of corn and vegetables…but all I ever saw was scrub sage, rocks and sand. It was the driest, dustiest place I had ever been. But the third year was completely different. They had had rain. When we arrived and drove out the dirt road to their home for a visit, the landscape looked too green to be even vaguely familiar. We missed the turn to their house because the fence row at the road was all grown up. We walked out through the chaparral and it was literally bursting with color …bright red blossoms on the cacti, tiny yellow star flowers on the thin grasses, blue-toned buds on plants that not been there the year before…the desert had been transformed. There was new life all around in a place that I had only seen dust, parched bushes, rolling tumble weeds.
That’s the vision that the prophet Isaiah paints for the children of Israel…a blooming crocus or rose in the desert …waters gushing forth in the wilderness bringing new life, new vision, new hope: a highway for the people of God to travel to the new Zion. This was a powerful vision that the people of Judah needed because they were in the midst of a desert of destruction and despair. The Northern Kingdom of Israel had fallen to the Assyrians in 722 BCE. A little over 150 years later the armies of Babylon accomplished the unthinkable…
the walls of the city of Jerusalem were breached, the city was burned, the beloved temple was destroyed, the best and brightest who survived the slaughter were carted off into slavery in the foreign land of Babylon. And it is to these desperate, demoralized and downcast exiles that the prophet Isaiah casts a VISION of a desert bursting forth in blossoms, the wild animals of the desert shall become tame, all suffering will cease. It sounds almost too good to be true.
Generally, Old Testament Prophets have a reputation for being harsh, critical and judgmental…and they are by and large that is their task and function to pronounce God’s judgment on the sins of the people.
But the prophets have another side as well. That is the side that we experience in Isaiah’s words this morning: A blooming desert. A highway straight through the desert, straight back home. Sound like wishful thinking? No…this is not fantasy. This is Vision fueled by FAITH. The first part of ADVENT V-Power is Vision. This is the world as it looks to those who have faith in a God who makes a way when there is no way. We have Vision Power because our faith rests upon our experience of God’s goodness in the past.
This God made something out of nothing in Creation, light out of darkness, life out of death. This God found us when we were slaves in Egypt and brought us forth to freedom with a mighty hand. This God reached out to us in exile, caused the desert to be transformed, and brought us home. This God came to us at a place named Bethlehem and delivered us through the birth of a baby.
On the surface everything looks pretty good around here this morning… but I have a hunch that some of us…most of us…have some dust in our pockets. Desert experiences in our family relationships, health issues, job uncertainty, relationships tottering, aging parents, troubled teenagers…you can fill in the blank. So the Vision of the prophet is not just for our exiled fore-parents, it is for us as well. Our hope is not in our selves but in a faithful God who makes a way when we thought there was no way.
Advent is the church’s four-week answer to the question, “Can anything new happen under the sun?” The answer comes in the form of a Vision based on a strange paradox—God in the flesh. A royal king born in a cow stable. And the conditioned response springs forth from us honed and polished by the brightest and best from Madison Avenue and we ask: “What Gift Can I Bring?”
It is my job to proclaim the Vision articulated by the prophet Isaiah. It is a Vision of a God who comes to us and gives us that which we could not have on our own. The power of salvation that God gives can only come as a gift. We cannot earn it; it must be given.
Therefore, the stance that is most required of Christians at this time of year is a stance of receptivity. We are to live out the Advent Vision with open hands, receptive, needy hearts. For most of us in our culture, Advent represents a peculiar challenge. Most of us are accustomed to solving all of our problems by ourselves. We don’t pray to God for food, housing, or clothing. We may breath a quick thank you before we dig in. We solve most of those needs merely by opening our check books or swiping our bank cards. Most of us are go-getters, achievers, and consumers. But Advent speaks of a people whose need is so great, whose darkness is so dark, whose emptiness is so vast, that they cannot help themselves. Our hope, our help must come from the outside. It must come not as our achievement but as God’s gift. We who are so often in charge—must relinquish our efforts to achieve, to do, to work, and to accumulate. We must come before God with empty hands and receive God’s gift articulated in the Vision of the Prophet Isaiah and fulfilled in the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.
This first Sunday in Advent casts the powerful vision that no matter what desert you face in your life God is able to bring new life. God’s Vision offers real power to help with your family struggles, give you hope in the face of impossible decisions, call forth joy even in the face of deep hurt and loss. What gift can you bring to the manger to worship this transforming child? Only this, open hands, and a willing spirit to receive the vision of a new world order…where the infant born in the stable becomes the King triumphant over sickness, sin and death. Advent V-Power…Vision.
