Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44
Presented December 2, 2007, by J.D. Kline
The First Sunday of Advent
How can we share the Gospel in ways that will move ourselves (and our congregations) more intentionally toward joyous worship, active peacemaking, passionate faith, and spiritual maturity? This is the critical question four fellow pastors and I have been considering as part of a Sustaining Pastoral Excellence grant from Bethany Seminary. During this season of Advent we enter today, worship will consider these four qualities of joyous worship, active peacemaking, passionate faith, and spiritual maturity, qualities that reflect spiritual vitality and mark the promise of new life. We begin this morning with spiritual maturity.
What does spiritual maturity look like? What shape does it take, in our personal lives and in the life of our congregation? And what does the Advent season, with its call to watch and wait, to hope beyond hoping for the unfolding of something radically new in our midst—what does all this have to say to the matter of spiritual maturity?
Advent carries a two-fold character, first as a time of remembrance, a time of preparing ourselves anew for celebration of God’s unexpected coming into the world. No matter how frequently we consider it, Christ’s coming continues to surprise and even astound us. For Christ is birthed, not in pomp and fanfare and splendor, not replete with iron fists and political domination, but as a vulnerable infant, one who comes quietly and silently into the world. Christ comes embodying peace, encouraging us to look at life—and enter into life—from a markedly new perspective. For Advent is not only a time for looking back and recollecting; Advent also compels us to look forward, to anticipate that day when life shall be fully transformed, when swords are beaten into plowshares and nations no longer teach the ways of war, when all humanity lives in justice and all peoples walk in the light of God’s gracious love.
This morning’s Gospel lesson from Matthew, chapter twenty-four, calls us to new levels of alertness, as we long for the unfolding of God’s kingdom in our midst. Keep awake. Be ready. Be on the alert. Stand ready. These images suggest that a key quality of Christian faithfulness is constant vigilance, keeping our eyes and our hearts wide open. Julie Polter, writing in Sojourners magazine, reminds us that this is not a matter of “looking nervously over our shoulder or heading for a high hill to sit and wait,” but rather “paying attention to the details of our lives,” seeking to discern the ways God chooses to work in us and among us, the ways God acts through us and even sometimes in spite of us. As followers of Jesus, standing ready and alert involves learning to ask God-questions rather than simply asking I-questions. God-questions shift the focus beyond ourselves alone, prodding us instead to grapple with the ways you and I fit into the larger picture, the ways our lives are being transformed and re-focused by the promise of God’s kingdom being fully formed on earth, even as it is in heaven.
To stand ready and alert is to trust that the God who was birthed in Jesus Christ some 2000 years ago can also be birthed here and now in our hearts, inspiring hope in the midst of despair, peace in the midst of life’s chaos, grace far stronger than anger and judgment, light that is able to overcome the power of darkness. And so we learn to wait hopefully and open-endedly. Henri Nouwen puts it this way:
To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical stance toward life. It is trusting that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God molds us according to God’s love and not according to our fear. The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance in a world preoccupied with control (The Path of Waiting, quoted in Michael Ford, ed., Eternal Seasons: A Liturgical Journey with Henri J.M. Nouwen).
Spiritual maturity is a matter of embracing this radical stance of trust, believing that God yet has much in store for you and for me, and for all humankind. Episcopal priest James Fenhagen, writing in his book More than Wanderers, puts it another way. Fenhagen challenges us to pay attention to the deep points of thirst within us, to our yearnings for something more in life—something able to sustain us when we encounter struggle, difficulty, and pain in life, when we are faced by life’s uncertainties and challenges. Writes Fenhagen,
It is of critical importance that we learn what it means to drink from the inner spring, not as an escape from the hard realities of life, but rather as the way which, in Christ, we seek to engage these hard realties. Our task is to rediscover at every level of our being what it means to live in Christ.
Spiritual maturity is recognizing that we are called to be more than wanderers in life; we are invited on a spiritual journey, a journey toward the light. We are called to live by a new set of values and priorities in life, to be in the business of doing justice, proclaiming peace, loving tenderly, tearing down walls of misunderstanding and fear, building bridges that offer reconciliation, walking humbly with God and one another. But the spiritually mature understand that we cannot long journey toward the light on our own strength alone. We need to discover at every level of our being what it means to drink from the inner spring, what it means to live in Christ.
One of my favorite Henri Nouwen stories is one he tells of an old man who early every morning goes to meditate along the banks of the Ganges River in India. One morning, having finished his meditation, the old man opens his eyes and spies a scorpion floating helplessly in the river’s strong current. As the scorpion is pulled closer to the tree, it becomes caught in the tree’s long roots. The more the scorpion struggles frantically to free itself, the more and more it becomes entangled in the complex network of tree roots.
Seeing all this, the old man stretches himself out onto the extended roots and reaches out to rescue the drowning scorpion. But as soon as he touches it, the scorpion reacts by stinging wildly. Instinctively, the man withdraws his hand, but then, after regaining his balance, he once again stretches himself out along the roots, attempting to save the scorpion. Every time the old man comes within reach, the scorpion stings him so badly with its poisonous tail that his hand becomes swollen and bloody and his face distorted with pain.
A passer-by stops and observes what is happening, and after a few moments cries out, “Hey, stupid old man. What’s wrong with you? Only a fool risks his life for such an ugly useless creature. Don’t you know you might end up dying, just trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?” Slowly the old man turns his head, looking calmly in the stranger’s eyes and responding, “Friend, just because it is the scorpion’s nature to sting, why should I give up my nature to heal and to save?” (quoted in Fenhagen, Ministry and Solitude, 80-81.)
There are some who would define spiritual maturity as a matter of being able to recite right doctrine, but genuine maturity of faith involves so much more than speaking proper words. Genuine maturity of faith is a living out of the values of Jesus, a modeling of Christ’s peace and compassion, gracious love and mercy, self-giving care and servanthood. With the old man in Nouwen’s story, we may well ask, Just because it is the nature of the world around us to bite and to sting, to live greedily and to make war, why should be let go of the Spirit of Christ transforming us into persons of compassionate and self-giving love?
This morning we celebrate a milestone in the lives of two of our members, as Scott Douglas reaffirms a calling to ordained ministry and Jay Wittmeyer embarks upon the process of licensing, a time of exploring where the Spirit of God is leading him. For both of them, it represents a willingness to live open-endedly, to grapple with the God-questions of life, not simply the I-questions—questions that may well lead them in directions they do not yet fully foresee. Both Scott and Jay affirm their intention to drink deeply from the inner spring, to explore what it means to live in Christ’s Spirit. And while the church rightly lays hands on some of its members for set-apart leadership, truth is, all of us are called to be on this same journey towards the light. Indeed, the very nature of Christian community is that we support, encourage, challenge, walk with, and endeavor to uphold one another in a common quest of discerning who God is calling us to be and how we might reflect together the peace and hope, the compassion and joy, of our Creator God.
The prophet Isaiah spoke challenging words of invitation at a time when many of the people of his day too easily satisfied themselves with unfaithful living. Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, that he may teach us God’s ways and that we may walk in God’s paths . . . Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord! (Isaiah 2:3, 5). Spiritual maturity is embracing that invitation, living here and now in the promise that the Christ who was born 2000 years ago can indeed be birthed anew in our hearts, in our faith community, in the world around us. Sisters and brothers in faith, come, let us journey together toward the light. Amen.