Welcome
Good morning, church. I’m Reverend Ashley Dargai.
A couple of announcements before we begin:
We have a congregational meeting December 6 on Zoom after worship, so please make plans to be there as you will vote on the budget for 2021.
Youth and Kid Zone
Advent kits
Our worship series this year follows the scriptures in the Advent devotionals in your Advent kits, written by our General Minister, Rev. Terri Hord Owens. The series is entitled Imagining a New World. Today, we imagine a new world in which God’s presence brings hope as we read a scripture from the prophet Isaiah.
Pastoral Prayer & Baby Dedication
The Lord be with you. And also with you.
This week, we mourn with Glenda Hoover at the passing of Wendal.
And today, we celebrate the dedication of Caroline Hendley. I invite Nicole, Cameron, and Caroline up now to join me for a blessing, and then we'll pray together as a congregation over Caroline.
Dedication
Nicole and Cameron, the covenant you enter into today rests on the foundation of the promises you have already made. This moment recalls the covenant you made in baptism to God, committing to the path of Jesus. This day recalls the covenant you made with each other in faithful marriage. At the time of both of those promises, you had no idea what lay ahead, and indeed had no idea what keeping those promises would be like. Do you pledge to continue to be faithful to the promises you’ve made to God and to one another?
We will, with God’s help.
Caroline Reid is a gift from God. Because God has placed her in your hands, you have great responsibilities toward her. Do you pledge to love her more each day, sharing with her all of God’s blessings, showing her the ways of the beautiful reign of God, teaching her gently about the mercy of Christ as she grows?
We will, with God’s help.
And do you promise to share her with the people of God, letting her be for us a sign of God’s unending love, of the Spirit’s persistent hope, and a reminder of the countless ways God cares for us through every stage of our lives?
We will, with God’s help.
And now, church: The Hendley family has invited us to join in dedicating Caroline to the reign of God among us. We will be privileged to witness God’s mysterious and powerful work in her and in her family. Do you pledge to pray for Nicole, for Cameron, and for Caroline, offering yourselves to accomplish God’s work in them?
We will, with God’s help.
Blessing
As I anoint your head and feet with oil, Caroline Reid Hendley, and mark you with the sign of the cross of Christ, claiming you as a child of God,
I pray that throughout your life,
The Lord bless you and watch over you,
That God’s face shine upon you
And be gracious to you and give you peace.
Here is the world, beloved child. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid, for God is with you even unto the end.
Prayer
Church, I invite you whether in person or at home to stretch our your hand toward the Hendleys for the prayer of dedication since we cannot lay hands at this time. Join me in blessing Caroline.
Gracious and Generous God, who like a mother sustains us and like a father upholds us, we give profuse thanks for Caroline and for her parents, Nicole and Cameron. We pray that you consecrate the vows they have made to you, to one another, and now to their daughter.
Uphold Nicole and Cameron as they guide Caroline in the ways of the coming reign of God, a world in which the smallest and most fragile lives shine brightly with imago Dei. May Caroline receive the gracious care of her parents, and may Nicole and Cameron receive the grace of their daughter. Blessed are they who loved Caroline before she was, and trusted to call her here with no idea of who she would be. May Nicole and Cameron continue to live a life of hope and faith that called Caroline to their family.
Holy One, may the Hendleys find a foundation of strength in their families of origin, in their families of choice, and in the church. May they find grace, belonging, love, and goodness in their community, resting in the many ways that You and Your people parent us. May Caroline know You through the people who love her, through creation, through the church, through questions and exploration, through Your gentle Spirit and the love of Christ. Today, we consecrate Caroline, your beloved child.
In the name of our Creator God, our brother and Redeemer Jesus, and the Sustaining and Holy Spirit, we ask these things.
And now together as a church, we conclude this blessing by saying together the prayer that Jesus gave us to pray:
Our Father, who art in heaven
Hallowed be Thy name
Thy Kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever.
Amen.
Sermon
Our reading this morning is from Isaiah 64:1-9.
64 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
2 as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil—
make Your Name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
4 From ages past no ear has ever heard,
no eye has seen any God but you,
intervening for those who wait for you!
5 Oh, that you would find us doing right,
that we would be mindful of you in our ways.
You are angry because we are sinful
because you hid yourself we transgressed.
6 All of us became unclean and soiled,
Even our good deeds are polluted.
We have all withered like leaves,
and our guilt carries us away like the wind.
7 There is no one who calls on your name,
or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have delivered us into the hand of our sins.
8 Yet you are our mother and father, O God;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not let your anger go beyond measure, O Lord,
and do not remember our sins forever.
Now consider, we are all your people.
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Dear Caroline Reid Hendley,
What a year to be born! You entered the world this year as we collectively held our breath, quieter than usual, waiting to see what would happen next. You know most people only by their eyes because of our masks, and you have been held by only a fraction of those who would want to scoop you up and kiss your head. Babies are always precious, but this year especially, you are a sign of hope. You are a reminder that deliverance comes from a most fragile place.
It’s the first Sunday of Advent. You see, Caroline, even though many of us, including me, have already put up Christmas decorations, the first Sunday of Advent is traditionally jarring. Each year, we begin our new liturgical year with a text that does not seem very merry at all. It’s usually a text from one of the gospels, or like today, from a prophet, that sounds the alarm. The scripture we read today sounds like the banging of pots and pans, like the shouting of the townspeople saying, “Wake up! Wake up! Something’s coming!” It’s a lot like your hungry cries in the middle of the night actually.
And though beginning Advent like this feels strange most years, this year, in 2020, well, let’s just say, it’s definitely more our style.
Our reading today is from Isaiah, which is a very long book, and we’re reading from the end of it, which was probably not written by Isaiah himself, but rather his students that came after him, taking up the work he left. And I tell you this, Caroline, to say, that I know you just got to church and already it feels like there is a lot to learn. I haven’t even really explained what Advent is yet or why you’re here. But you don’t have to know everything today. Or even 30 years from now. Or 30 years after that. The work of faith is very long. It outlives all of us. When we arrive on this earth, squishy and delicious like yourself, we take up our part and walk as long as we can, following the path of those who have gone before us, making sure the path stays clear for those who will come after us.
Anyway, the prophet Isaiah and his students lived during a very difficult time. His people were scattered after losing their home a few generations before. And though they worked to pass on the faith, they also carried with them profound grief and disorientation. Their world kept changing.
And then one day, years later, some of them got to move back to Jerusalem, thanks to benevolent Persian king, Cyrus, and they rebuilt their Temple. And they reunited with the children and grandchildren of their ancestors that had stayed behind all those years ago when they thought everyone had been carried off to Babylon, and while that should have been a happy reunion, it actually produced a collective identity crisis with community squabbles about what it means to be a true Israelite. Was it those who stayed behind or those who went to Babylon? Everyone had their own opinion, but thankfully, Twitter didn’t exist then.
I am sure, Caroline, that you have received many cards and gifts with sweet scriptures on it about love and God’s care as you entered the world. And those scriptures are true. But today’s scripture does not allow for sentimentality. It cuts straight to the heart, it names uncomfortable things, and it doesn’t really have a happy ending. This poem lets out a hungry cry that says, “Pay attention to me! And also I am afraid of what you will find when you do.” And this scripture is also true. It tells us something about what we’re all waiting for.
Maybe we should talk about Advent now.
Advent is the mysterious time leading up to Christmas where the church plays pretend, if you will, and we go through the motions of waiting for Jesus like those long before us waited for the chosen one of God. It reminds us that we are still waiting on God to set things right.
But it’s important that you understand that we aren’t just wasting time or scrolling on our phones in the grocery line. No, this kind of waiting is an expectant waiting, a hopeful waiting, even impatient sometimes. It’s like when your dad watches the baby monitor as you sleep, waiting for you to wake to start the day. He stands there fidgeting and holding his breath a little, wondering if it’s time to finally go in and rouse you from sleep.
Or it’s like when your mom was waiting for you to be born, where each day, she woke up and asked, “Will this be the day?” And she kept waiting and asking that question after your due date, wondering what was taking you so long, trying to be patient, but anxious to meet you.
You see, Caroline, Advent shows us the holiness of waiting, of being patient, of biding time. It’s a part of the long walk of faith.
We have just come out of Ordinary time, a long stretch on the church calendar where there are no High Holy Days, just ordinary days. Advent brings us into the season of Christmas, but it also begins a season of Holy Days that will stretch us into next summer, when we hope and pray and wait to see if we will all be able to gather again inside, without worrying about our friends getting sick. This has been a long, difficult year with crisis after crisis. Everything keeps changing, and we are tired and sad and overwhelmed.
And so we begin this long stretch of Holy Days, appropriately with a reading of lament. It’s a poem of sorrow, and a student of Isaiah wrote it in the midst of turmoil in her community, where everything seemed upside down and nothing as it should be. She cried to God, “O God, if only you would shake up the earth, give us all good jolt and come down here like You’ve done before. We need You. But, if you were to come down, Lord, which I’m not sure you are because I can’t find you, I hope you would find us doing good. But I don’t think You will. Because look around at this motley crew. We are all guilty of something, we are all tangled up in sin.”
And you know, this poem says that God hid God’s face from the Israelites. I don’t know whether it’s an accusation or an observation by the poet, but I think it’s interesting. I don’t think God was playing peekaboo, per se, but the poet does go on to liken God to a parent and then to a potter. Perhaps the poet herself was bouncing a baby on her knee as she wrote, inspired by her family life.
I mean, she was essentially praying, “WHERE ARE YOU? WE NEED YOU! Look at the state of things! It’s like we’ve soiled ourselves!” That sounds like a prayer a baby might pray if I ever heard one. Perhaps you have prayed this very prayer yourself, Caroline.
And that is how we begin Advent. Isn’t it funny? We arrive at this season, breathless and worn out, hoping for a miracle.
And the thing about waiting on God is that it makes us take stock of things while we wait. Counting the cost, examining our heart—these are spiritual practices. And the Israelites were taking stock in the waiting. They were reevaluating their identity and thinking about who they were and who they wanted to be. And all of this reassessment prepared the way for the Israelites to be called by God once again. As the scripture ends, “We are all your people.” The Israelites were waiting on God to reaffirm that truth and trying to be ready to hear it. Waiting and trying to be ready, those are also spiritual practices.
Little Caroline, you were born this year. But you will be born again and again throughout your life. One day, we hope and pray, you will be baptized into new life. And you will find little baptisms and births all throughout your long walk of faith, reaffirming who you are to God, calling you anew. The people in this courtyard and watching online would testify that while God’s work is slow, while God’s timetable is not ours, God does show up on this long walk of faith, giving us fresh eyes, new hearts, hope distilled in a bird’s song, a call from a friend, a baby’s laughter. We are born again and again, called again and again, and need only wait.
And what you will find, what this faith that you inherit will testify to, is that God will be as attentive and loving as your own parents. God will be as patient and creative as a potter is with clay.
And you will find that waiting is a holy time—it prepares us for the unexpected. That is the first Sunday of Advent’s message every year: be prepared, but be prepared to be surprised. God may seem hidden, but we are not waiting for nothing. We know that we will see God’s face again because we have seen God’s face before.
Perhaps God is playing a kind of peekaboo with us after all.
Amen.
Sharing Our Resources
Sometimes I think Isaiah’s lament is echoed in our time. We wish that God would split the sky and do something miraculous for us in this moment in history. But especially in this season, we are reminded that God chose a young woman to carry this good news. Instead of wishing God to do something grand, we should respond like Mary, and allow God to work in us to change the world. We have received this gift of life, of love, of grace. We are called God’s beloved, everyone of us. But not everyone has felt that deep in their bones. It’s our calling, our ministry, to share this news with the world. Your gifts, to this church, help make that possible. We are in a season of pledging to this ministry for the coming year. It is so vital to our church leadership that each of us is counted as we build a budget for what we can accomplish in the coming months. Even when we are not worshiping “in person,” we are still doing ministry with this community. So please, if you haven’t filled out a pledge card, please do that now as an act of worship, do it on like, mail it in or call the church office with your pledge. You can give to this ministry in several ways listed in the comments below.
Benediction
For our benediction today, I borrow words of the poet Jan Richardson, and I invite you to hold your hands out and open to receive the benediction:
Mother, Father, Potter God,
May we know the hope that will not keep quiet or be polite,
The hope that knows how to holler when it is called for,
The hope that knows how to sing where there seems little cause,
The hope that gives birth to us not someday,
but this day, every day, again and again and gain.
Amen.