Christmas Day Message 2011

A Christmas Message offered to the glory of God by the Reverend Scott D. Nowack

December 25, 2011 at the First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

Will you pray with me? 
Startle us, O God, with your Truth, and open our hearts and minds to your Word.  Silence in us any voice but your own, so that you Spirit may be within us today.  Amen.

I want to share with you some interesting historical happenings from the year 1809.  Had you picked up a daily newspaper in 1809, you would have read the big news that Napoleon I, emperor of France, had conquered Austria at Wagram, annexed the Illyrian Provinces (which are now part of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), and abolished the papal states.  The news of Napoleon’s exploits was the big story that captivated everyone’s attention across the world much like the news of the war in Iraq does for us today.

But in that same year, did you know, in France, Louis Braille, who devised a way for the blind to read, was born.  And in Germany, Felix Mendelssohn, the great composer of symphonies, was born.  And in England, William Gladstone, the four-time Prime Minister and the father of public education, was born.  Alfred Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate of Great Britain, was born.  Charles Darwin, the most influential scientist of the 19^th century, was born.  And in the United States, Edgar Allen Poe, the master poet and storyteller, was born.  Oliver Wendell Holmes, the writer and physician who developed surgical techniques still in use today, was born.  Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th President of the United States, was born. 

But, at the end of the year 1809, the only event anyone thought to be important was Napoleon’s conquest of Austria.  That was the big news story of the day!

Today, December 25, 2011, who remembers the “big news” of 1809?  Hardly anyone does.  Napoleon’s conquest is just a tiny blip on the big screen of history.  But the world was changed forever by a few seemingly insignificant births which took place that same year.

In the year Jesus was born, most people missed it.  Only a few shepherds and wise men had a clue of the cosmic implications of his presence in a manger in Bethlehem.

And so it is with all of God’s work.  Most of it is behind the scenes, hardly ever visible.  It’s in the small stuff.  It’s in the ordinary, mundane and the everyday.  It’s the still small voice.  It rarely makes headlines in the newspapers or as the big story on the evening news; instead it makes a huge difference in the lives of people.  God in the person of Jesus Christ entered into our world to be like one of us.  God did so because he wanted to share love, grace and hope with all creation, so that we would come to know God more intimately.  The birth of the Christ is truly an eternal gift from our all-powerful and transcendent God.  Amen.

Service of Carols & Candles Meditation

A meditation offered for the glory of God for the Service of Carols and Candles

December 18, 2011 at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

Will you pray with me? 

Startle us, O God, with your Truth, and open our hearts and minds to your Word.  Silence in us any voice but your own, so that you Spirit may be within us today.  Amen.

It was a cold and snowy Christmas Eve. Inside the warm house, the Christmas tree was cheerfully ablaze with lights and surrounded by dozens of colorfully wrapped presents. The man’s wife and children were dressed and ready to leave for church. “Come with us,” they urged.  Their dad, her husband did not go to church, but they would always ask him to come for they loved him very much. “Not me,” he snapped. “I don’t believe all that religion garbage.” For many years the man’s wife had been trying to tell him about Jesus Christ and the salvation he offers. How God’s Son had become a human being in order to show us the way to heaven. “Nonsense,” the man always said. The family left for church and the man was all alone in his cozy country home, sipping some hot chocolate in his big leather easy chair in front of the fire.  He glanced out the window at the cold snowy scene outside before he turned to warm himself by the fire. But as he turned, his eyes caught a movement in the snow outside. He looked. Birds! A bunch of small birds were tapping on the window with the wings and beaks. “The fools,” he thought. “They’ll freeze for sure!” The man put on his hat and coat and opened the back door. A blast of wintry air sent a shiver through his body.  He first tried to scare them away, but they kept flying around banging on the window sill.  “Come in here! Come inside the house where there’s warmth and food. You’ll die out there.” But the birds did not understand what the strange man was trying to tell them. He thought a minute and had another idea.  He walked outside to his barn. “Come in here! Don’t be afraid.  You’ll die out here.  I want to save you.” But the birds did not understand what the man was trying to do.  As the man waved his arms and hands jumping up and down in the snow like a crazy person, it was too late.  The birds were frightened and few away into the dark, blustery night. Dejected, cold and wet, the man stood in front of his barn.  “Well, I did everything I could for them,” the man muttered to himself. “What more could I do? I’d have to become a bird myself in order to reach them and save them. If I became a bird, I could tell them and show them. They would have to believe me then.” The man walked back to the house.  Just as he reached the door, the church bells rang in the distance. The man paused for a second and listened. Then he went in by the fire, got down on his knees, and wept.

And that is what the Christmas story is all about. The Creator of the universe loved us so much that he came to earth to save us from sin and show us how to live. And if we listen to him and follow him, whether we fully understand it or not, we will not perish, but instead will be given everlasting life.

Advent: Ready, Willing and Able

A sermon preached by the Rev. Scott D. Nowack on November 27, 2011

at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

“Ready, Willing and Able”

Psalm 80: 1-7; 17-19

Mark 13: 24-37

Have you ever come to the end of your rope?  Have you ever come to the point in your life when it seemed that all was lost, that everything you hoped would happen is now just out of reach and there is a thick stench of hopelessness is in the air?  That’s where we find ourselves today on this first Sunday of a new church year, on this first Sunday of the Advent season.  Why?  All our schemes and plans for self-improvement have come to nothing.  If we haven’t already realized this yet, we know at a very deep level of our being we cannot save ourselves and without God’s intervention in our lives, we are totally lost and astray.  We are going nowhere fast.  We seek the restoration of our spirit through the grace of God.

Advent serves a dual purpose.  The first is that in spite of the intervention of the Holy Spirit and in spite of our very best intentions as the people of God, the world has yet to be redeemed.  Our prayer is for Christ to come again soon.  The second is we have the chance to travel back in time to the beginning of it all when men and women were longing for the first savior to come.  Advent tries to capture the spirit of hope in the midst of the hopelessness of the world around us.  It is a spirit of hope yearning for something that seems too good to be true; the yearning for a savior.

Over the four Sundays of the Advent season, we will both anticipate the new beginning for all creation in the person of Jesus Christ and at the same time celebrate the promise that this same Jesus will come again to bring all creation unto himself redeemed, made whole and complete.  We anticipate the first coming of Christ in the person of Jesus and the second coming when Christ returns as promised.

We all have some spiritual hunger within each of us.  It is a hunger based on having known a very precious truth that has in some way slipped from our grasp.  Our dilemma is we spend a lot of time groping in the dark, hoping to find a light that will reveal the meaning of life or a light that will light our path.  What light are you groping for in the dark?

At greyhound dog racing tracks, dogs sprint around an oval track much like racing horses do.  The dogs don’t have jockeys on them to make them run.  They are trained to chase after a mechanical rabbit on the inside rail.  A man in the press box electronically controls the speed of the rabbit, keeping the rabbit just out in front of the dogs.  The dogs never catch up to it.

At a Florida track some years back, a big race was about to begin.  The dogs crouched in their cages, ready to go, while betting spectators finished placing their wagers.  At the proper moment, the gun went off.  The man in the press box pushed his lever, starting the rabbit down the first stretch, while the cage doors flew open, releasing the dogs to take off after the little rabbit.  As the rabbit made the first turn, however, an electrical short in the system caused the rabbit to come to a complete stop, to explode, and to go up in flames.  Poof!  All that was left was a bit of black stuff hanging on the end of a wire.

Their rabbit gone, the bewildered dogs didn’t know how to act.  According to news reports, several dogs simply stopped running and laid down on the track, their tongues hanging out.  Sadly two dogs, still frenzied with the chase, ran into a wall, breaking several ribs.  Another dog began chasing his tail, while the rest howled at the people in the stands.

Not one dog finished the race.

Like these racing greyhounds, we seek direction and hope in our chosen “rabbit”.  We find ourselves groping in the dark looking for the light of truth to save us from the darkness all around us.  We need a Savior, the light of the world, to give us direction, purpose and hope for our lives; to reveal to us the truth.  Sadly, so many of us chase an illusion of hope, a mechanical rabbit of sorts that turns out to offer us no hope at all.  Without hope, we drown. But with hope, we have a reason to live. Hope is what keeps us going. It has been said that “as oxygen is to the lungs, so hope is to the human heart.”

Many people today have false hopes. They put their hopes in technology, or in hedonism, or in accumulating material wealth or power. But these hopes are like fool’s gold; ultimately they are worthless and have no power to keep us afloat.

We place hope in our own abilities and skills trying to live life apart from God depending on our own sensibilities.  We seek hope in things that can destroy our lives and of those who love us such as abusing alcohol, drugs, food, sports, Black Friday Doorbuster at Wal-mart or any other thing that we put in place of God in our lives.  We seek hope in the conditional love we receive from others rather than the unconditional love of our everlasting God in Christ Jesus.

That’s why Jesus came. He conquered death and the grave so that we could have hope that tomorrow the sun will rise; hope that we would know the truth and that the truth will set us free.

Only when we, the people of Christ, acknowledge our need for the salvation offered to us in Jesus Christ are we able to claim the message of anticipation and hope that Advent proclaims.  It is only when we pray with complete honesty and integrity the words from today’s psalm, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.” (Psalm 80:3)

            During the Advent season we must be willing to watch and wait, remaining ever vigilant in our hunger for the truth of God.  Watchfulness is necessary because there are those who, intentionally or not, mislead the faithful of God.  What time is it, anyway?  Who knows what time it is?  Many voices, inside and outside the church, claim to know what time Christ will come again and how it will be revealed: as a political crisis, a religious crisis, an economic one.  To which voice are we to listen?  Not all of them if any of them know what time it truly is or what are response should be. 

            We must remain watchful, according to Mark, because only God knows what time Christ will come again.  During Advent, we recall the waiting of Mary for the birth of Jesus.  It reminds us that the birth of Jesus was anticipated by only a few and understood by no one.  Only God knows the time.  As we God’s people wait today, we anticipate only that that time is God’s hands and certainly not our own.  We know that God will not leave us or forsake us.  We know God will not leave us without hope. 

God will not leave us without hope because we know, in the words of Brazilian theologian Rubem Alves, “Hope is having roots in eternity and hearing the melody of the future.  Faith is to dance to it.”

God will not leave us without hope.  Without hope, we drown. But with hope, we have a reason to live. Hope is what keeps us going.  It’s what pushes and prods us forward trusting God to lead us in the right direction; to trust God to place our feet on the right path; to trust that God will not leave us or forsake us.  We need this support, this encouragement, this beacon of light to lead us in the way we are called to live.

For when we reach the end of our rope, we need hope to carry on.  When we find ourselves crawling in the dark desperately looking for answers, we have a hope in Christ that shines a light that overcomes the darkness.  Whenever the world says to us that our dreams are a waste of time and can’t be done, the God of hope says nothing is impossible with me in your life.  When the critics say you’ll never get that promotion.  There are a hundred others ahead of you.  God says keep hope alive.  When the critics say our historic congregation here in Kilgore is getting old and fading away, the God of hope says I will give you the strength and courage you need to dream new dreams and a vision of hope for tomorrow.  There will always be naysayers telling us that we’re nothing, that there is nothing to live for, that there is nothing to hope for.  But my friends this is simply not true; for it is the God of hope who saves us from ourselves and the naysayers all around us. 

Our only true hope is found in Jesus Christ, the one who brings us a spirit of hope in the midst of the hopelessness of the world around us; the one who brings a spirit of hope that yearns for something that seems too good to be true; the yearning for our Savior, Jesus Christ.  God in Christ Jesus is the only one who can give us strength for today and hope for tomorrow.  And as we begin a new Advent, a new time of watching and waiting for the birth of Christ, we long for the day when Christ will return and all humanity and all creation will be restored and made new. 

This is our hope.  My friends, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ, our hope for all time.

Advent: He's Not the Leavin' Kind

A sermon preached by Scott Nowack on December 18, 2011

at the First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

He’s Not the Leavin’ Kind

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Luke 1:26-38

God does some amazing stuff.  God catches us when we least expect it and in unexpected ways. 

My guess is that Mary’s to do list for the day Gabriel visited her did NOT include, “Have an amazing, life-altering conversation with an angel of God that will transform the world as we know it”.  It’s not every day that the angel Gabriel announces the birth of the savior of the whole world. 

This is what makes God’s love and grace so amazing.  Such an announcement illustrates God’s initiative; God takes the first step.  It is and initiative of grace and power: of grace in that what is soon to happen will express God’s favor toward the world; of power in that God can work through anybody God chooses to, even an unmarried girl.  God is able and God is gracious.

When Gabriel announced to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus, he was proclaiming the fulfillment of a promise made nine hundred years earlier to King David through the prophet Nathan.  Jesus is the promised Messiah of our Old Testament reading this morning, the king who would reign forever on David’s throne.  The Annunciation reminds us that God is a God who always keeps his promises.  He’s not the leavin’ kind.  God will do what he says he will do.

There are three themes that undergird this amazing account of the announcement of the birth of Jesus.

The first theme is from Gabriel’s final words to Mary, “For nothing will be impossible with God.”(1:37) It was not unusual for God to promise a child to couples well beyond normal child-bearing years.  The previous verses telling of the birth of John the Baptist to an elderly Zechariah and Elizabeth recalls a similar promise made to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis in the Old Testament.  Although it is highly improbable for Zechariah and Elizabeth and Abraham and Sarah to birth child at their old age, the pregnancy of a virgin is clearly impossible.  And it is this impossibility which Gabriel says has been overcome and made possible with God.

Such an impossibility offers us the first account of the impossible things that God has in fact done.  Throughout the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, Luke tells of the impossible things actually accomplished by God: healing the sick, the resurrection of Jesus, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the formation of the community.  These events cannot be believed and yet they must be believed.  Our God does the impossible.

The second theme is that of grace.  It is often overlooked.  We must be careful to not do so.  Gabriel announces to Mary, “You have found favor with God.”  The Greek verb here translated “favor” could also be translated as “grace”.  Mary is the object of God’s grace.

If it is true that Mary is the object of God’s grace, then I must ask: What is it about Mary that makes her appropriate as an object of God’s grace?  There are no reasons offered to say why Mary is chosen by God to birth the savior into the world.  Luke doesn’t describe any qualifications, virtues or vices about Mary that can be used to determine if she is worthy to take on the role of mother of Jesus Christ. 

The point is that the God of the Universe is a sovereign God; God chooses because God chooses.  Mary does not earn or deserve the honor of becoming the mother of Jesus any more or any less than any other woman.  We must remember that the biblical story is not where rewards are earned and sins are punished, but it is the place of God’s unearned and amazing grace.

The third theme is based on Mary’s response to God’s grace.  Mary identifies herself as a servant of the Lord.  She submits herself to God as a slave of God.  The text suggests that this relationship between Mary and God is an involuntary one on Mary’s part.  Mary’s response suggests to us that she has been selected by God for this purpose.  There is no room for her own will to be exercised, only the will of God.  Her service to God is a result of God’s plan for her life and not her own.  Her love for God and God’s love for all people are clearly evident in this encounter.  Mary puts God first and herself second.

Like Mary, we are a part of God’s plan.  When we submit to his plan, we are passive objects of God’s intervention.  God’s plan of action is the full expression of the love God has for each of us.  It is expressed as the effort to bring salvation to the whole people of God.  And this love comes to fruition in the long-expected birth of a savior, Jesus the Christ.  Love came down from heaven as one of us to teach us what love really is; to show who we were created to be and that we are loved unconditionally.  Love is the still small voice that speaks to our point of need.

In her book, The Whisper Test, Mary Ann Bird writes about how she was born with a cleft palate.  She writes,

“When schoolmates asked, “What happened to your lip?” I’d tell them I’d fallen and cut it on a piece of glass.  Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different.  I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me.

There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored, Mrs. Leonard.  She was short, round, happy – a sparkling lady.

Annually we had a hearing test….Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn.  I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back – things like “The sky is blue” or “Do you have new shoes?”  I waited there for those words that God must have put into her mouth, those seven words that changed my life.  Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper, “I wish you were my little girl.”

God calls out to each of us with an amazing love, “I wish you were my little girl” and “I wish you were my little boy”.  Nothing is impossible with God because God is a God of grace and love who refuses to stop loving us no matter the mess we’ve made of our lives.  He refuses to exclude us.  He refuses to kick us out into the cold.  That’s why he finally sent us Jesus[1], so we could enter into a loving, grace-filled relationship with the savior of the world and its creator.

Because before Jesus, we were all outside of the fence of God’s grace. 

Let me conclude with one last story.  In World War II, a group of soldiers, fighting an intense battle in rural France, lost one of their brothers in arms.  They did not want to leave his body on the battlefield and wanted to give him a Christian burial.  They remembered seeing a church a few miles back with a small cemetery surrounded by a white, picket fence. 

A priest, old and frail for his age, responded to their knocking.  One of the soldiers blurted out, “Our friend was killed in battle and we want to give him a church burial.”  Apparently the priest responded, “I’m sorry, but we can bury only those of the same faith here.”

Weary after many months of war, the soldiers simply turned to walk away.  “But,” the old priest called after them, “you can bury him outside the fence.”

Cynical and exhausted, the soldiers dug a grave and buried their friend just outside the white fence.  They finished after nightfall.

The next morning, the entire unit was ordered to move on, and the group raced back to the little church for one final goodbye to their friend.  When they arrived, they couldn’t find the gravesite. Tired and confused, they knocked on the door of the church.  They asked the old priest if he knew where they had buried their friend. “It was dark last night and we were exhausted.  We must have been disoriented.”

A smile flashed across the old priest’s face.  “After you left last night, I could not sleep, so I went outside early this morning and I moved the fence.”[2]

Jesus did more than move the fence; he tore it down.  Jesus broke into human time to declare some amazing stuff: God’s love is for everyone. 

God’s love and grace is so amazing because it chooses the impossible, the least expected, the road less traveled, removing the barriers, the fences, between God and us.  God can work through anybody God chooses, even we as the meek and lowly sinners we are.

“He ain't the leavin' kind, He'd never walk away, Even from those who don't believe, And wanna leave him behind, He ain't the leavin' kind, No matter what you do, No matter where you go, He's always right there with you.  He ain’t the leavin’ kind.”[3]

---

[1] Messy Spirituality, by Mike Yaconelli. (

[2] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954), 135.

[3] Rascal Flatts “He Ain’t the Leavin’ Kind” from the CD “Me and My Gang” released in 2006 on Lyric Street Records, Nashville.

Advent: Looking for Joy in all the Wrong Places

A sermon preached by Scott Nowack on December 11, 2011

at the First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

Looking For Joy in all the Wrong Places

Luke 1: 46-55

            We have just read one of the most inspiring passages of the Bible.  These words of Mary have been put to music more than any other passage in scripture.  It is a message of triumph and victory, of strength and might.  It is a message of true joy.

            What is true joy and where does it come from? 

Where do we find joy in our lives?  Is there someone here today who finds joy in their work, their career?  Our personal identity is often grounded in the work we do.  It feels good to know that you need to be somewhere, to know that you are needed someplace to do a specific job for which you were the most qualified applicant.   To be needed and to have a purpose for your life: what a joyful feeling!  But that’s not the joy I’m talking about.

            I would be willing to guess that there are some of us here today who find joy in material possessions.  Who doesn’t want a nice car to drive or a beautiful home to live in or nice clothes to wear?  I love getting new things, especially as gifts from other people.  As a kid during Christmas, my brother and I would be aching with anticipation on Christmas Eve night for Christmas Day to arrive.  I remember lying in bed one year having a staring contest with my alarm clock.  I lost.  The minutes felt like hours.  It was as if time were standing still.  Finally the time came that we were allowed to go downstairs to open our gifts.  The joy and the excitement was electric!  New toys – Yeah!  New clothes – Boooo!  The laughter, the cheers, and the sound of ripping paper filled the room.  It was such a joyous time!  But that’s not the joy I’m talking about.

            The joy I am talking about is the one that seeks us out; that finds us at unexpected times and places, in unexpected ways.  It’s the joy that catches us off-guard and unprepared.  It’s the joy that comes to us in God’s time and not our own, infiltrating our lives at the core of our being.  It’s the joy that is eternal and rooted in God, not the fleeting, here today gone tomorrow, form of joy that we often confuse with the happiness we experience when opening Christmas gifts.

            Many years ago, the mother-in-law of a good friend of mine was dying of cancer.  I met her for the first time at my friend’s wedding.  I must tell you I had never met such a joyful person in my life!  What a wonderful woman!  Her positive attitude and her reliance on God’s grace amazed me.  I remember visiting her on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I was blown away by her loving and enduring spirit.  She gave me a big hug when I arrived.  She was smiling from ear to ear; the joy that she had in her life filled the entire house, every nook and cranny.  Despite the fact that she struggled everyday with her cancer and slept in a hospital bed with oxygen 24 hours a day, her spirit and her attitude were unbroken.  Would any of us expect to see such joy flourish, grow and prosper in such a desperate situation?   

            One Christmas I found myself in one of the coldest places I’ve ever been, Chicago, IL.  It was a Sunday and it was cold.  I went to church that day downtown on North Michigan Ave., a.k.a. the Magnificent Mile.  It is named as such for all the fancy and expensive stores and malls that line up both sides of this street.  After church, I braved the cold and did some shopping for Christmas.  After a cold and crisp afternoon going in and out of stores, I had had enough.  So I walked to the subway station to head uptown.  As I sat on one of the benches, tired and exhausted from my mighty shopping expedition, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, a man; a simple man.  A tired man whose wrinkled, aged face did not accurately tell his true age.  He was standing by the tracks with a paper coffee cup on the ground at his feet.  He was wearing old, dirty sneakers with a couple of layers of socks on each foot.  His pants were black, worn and faded.  Under an old army camouflage jacket, this man wore several layers of tattered shirts and sweaters which when worn together combine for a true drab look.  Upon his head was a beat up Chicago Bulls wool hat, on his hands were a pair of finger-less gloves, and wrapped around his neck was a long, old wool scarf.  He was not a beautiful sight to behold.  But just when I was about to write him off in my mind as another bum on the street, he began to sing.  His voice was magnificent!  It was like that of the angels who announced to the shepherds that Jesus the Messiah was born.  His voice carried beautifully through the entire subway station.    As he sang “Little Drummer Boy”.  As he was stomping his foot on the station floor and clapping his hands together, he sang his song.  “I have no gift to bring, ba ra ba ba ba”. The music was so joyful and so amazing.  I was overwhelmed.  Here was a man, down and out, a bum by society’s standards, singing in the subway station that he has no gift to bring as thousands of people come and go with bags and boxes of gifts for Christmas.  The irony of it all is that this man did have a gift, a gift of joyful praise to God to be shared with all of us who heard him that afternoon.  The joy I felt that afternoon was not from all the Christmas hoopla or from spending money on Christmas gifts.  Like the joy I saw in my friend’s mother-in-law, the joy I felt came from a most unexpected source and at a most unexpected time and place. 

This is the joy that comes from God; the joy Mary felt when she received the news from God that she was going to have a son.  Here is Mary, a woman, a teenager, not well educated, poor, engaged to Joseph, not well-connected, a nobody in her culture, who gets an unexpected message from God.  Who would have ever imagined that Mary would be called by God to be a major player in God’s plan for the redemption of the world.  And Mary is open to what God is calling her to do.  She accepts her unexpected call with the true joy we read in our scripture lesson today.  Where does Mary’s joy come from?  It comes from God.  Where did my friend’s mother-in-law joy come from?  It comes from God.  Where did the subway singer’s joy come from?  It comes from God.  True joy comes from God.

God can work through the powerful and wealthy and mighty of this world, but is too often ignored or forgotten.  But God also works through the lowly, the poor, the oppressed, and the outcast and gets results.  By doing so, God turns our understanding of the world upside down.  We see this “role reversal” in verses 52-53,

“He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

            Through the words of Mary, we come to realize that God has been at work in the world since “the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever”(v.55).  God’s disruption of our world didn’t end with Abraham.  It continued through to the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.  God continues to be at work in our present day working to bring about justice and peace for all people.  We are also assured that God will continue to disrupt the world straight into the future.  We have not been abandoned or left alone.  Our God has been with us in the past, God is with us today, and God will be with us in the future.  There is great joy to be found in this truth.

True joy comes from God, not our careers or our possessions or through earthly power and influence.  True joy comes from God and God alone and it is available to all who believe and trust in Him.  In essence, Jesus means joy.  If we are truly filled with this joy, it should be on the brink of bubbling and gurgling out of us each day.  A father asked a child why she liked her Sunday school teacher so much.  She answered, because her eyes twinkle like she's laughing inside all the time.  Jesus as our joy keeps the corners of our mouths perpetually turning up.  Keep smiling!

            May you be given the gift of discernment to know what God is calling you to do for your life and for the life of our congregation.  May we be watchful of the movement of the Holy Spirit and be in tune to God’s plan for each of us, our congregation, and our world.  Let us have the same joy to serve our God as Mary did and the same courage and faithfulness to carry it through. 

Advent: Return, Restoration and Redemption

A sermon preached by the Rev. Scott D. Nowack on December 4, 2011

at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

“Return, Restoration & Redemption”

Isaiah 40:1-11

Mark 1:1-8

            What is on your mind as you get ready for Christmas?  Chances are that repentance and confessing your sins are not on the top of the list.  Yet how much better it is to come to the manger on Christmas day with clear eyes and a pure heart rather than eyes and hearts clouded by the secularization of the season.  There are many people who, rather than seeing Advent as an opportunity for spiritual growth, are thinking about the in-laws who are visiting, what they’re going to get for their spouse,  how they’re going to pay off their credit card debt,  who’s going to babysit the kids during the Christmas party, how to handle Uncle Leo who always drinks too much of the eggnog, whether to serve turkey or ham, and whether it’s feasible to get Grandma from the nursing home and include her in the festivities.

            Maybe there’s more to Christmas than this.  John the Baptist reminds us that there is.

            The role of John the Baptist is that of the one who “prepares” the way.  He prepares the way that leads straight to God by proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  People came from the city and the country to be baptized in the river Jordan to prepare for the coming of the promised Messiah. 

            The Jewish people were very familiar with this type of “bathing”.  Ritual washings in large baths called Mikvahs were a regular part of the life of a Jew.  The point of bathing in these mikvahs was not to be made germ-free or physically clean with soap, but rather they were for “spiritual cleaning”.  It was done before meals, high holidays, times of prayer, and religious services.  Symbolic washing and purifying was woven into the very fabric of Jewish ritual as described in Leviticus 11-15.  It must be noted that John the Baptist was taking the practice of “spiritual cleansing” in a mikvah to a new level.  He was proclaiming a baptism for forgiving sins, a practice reserved solely for converts to Judaism.  What Mark is suggesting here is that God’s people were preparing to come “home”; to come back to God ready to receive the one the prophet Isaiah spoke of in our text this morning.

            If we wish to return to God, we need to prepare ourselves.  We need to be prepared.  It starts with confession and confession must be made to three different people. 

The first one is to confess to yourself; to be honest and open with yourself.  It is a part of our nature that we close our eyes to what we do not wish to see, especially our own sins and shortcomings.  I have no doubt when the prodigal son left home he thought he was all that, that he was the man, the myth and the legend.  But before he took his first step back home, he had to take a good, hard, long look at himself and confess his sinfulness and shortcomings.  There is no single person harder to face than ourselves; we continually get in our own way.  But the first step to getting right with God is confessing our sins to ourselves.

            The second one is confessing to those we’ve wronged in the past.  The human barriers have to be removed before the divine barriers can go away.  We can’t turn to God confessing our sins until we say we’re sorry to those we’ve hurt and offended. 

            In January, 1697, on a day of fasting called to remember the Salem witch trials, Samuel Sewall slipped a document into the hands of his pastor, Samuel Willard, at Boston’s Old South Meeting House.  Mr. Sewall, one of the seven judges who had sentenced twenty people to death in Salem five years earlier, stood silent before the congregation as Willard read: “Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family…desires to take the blame and shame of it, asking pardon of men, and especially desiring prayers that God, who has an unlimited authority, would pardon that sin and the other sins…”  Sewall believed that eleven of his fourteen children had died as divine punishment for his involvement in the witch trials.  His only spiritual hope was confession as public as his sin.  It can be said that to make a confession to God is easier than a confession to one we’ve hurt.  There can be no forgiveness until we are humbled before the ones we’ve wronged, as Mr. Sewall sought to do on a cold Sunday in Boston.

            The third one is confessing our sin to God.  Where pride ends, forgiveness begins.  It is only when we say, “I have sinned” those have the opportunity to say, “I forgive you.”  We will not discover God’s forgiveness for our lives if we try to relate to God on equal footing.  We must come before God on our knees with humble and contrite hearts if we wish to receive forgiveness for our sins.  Sin and repentance are the only grounds for hope and joy; the only grounds for reconciled, joyful relationships.  No matter where you find yourself, you can be restored and redeemed if you are willing to prepare the way.

            Anything that you do if you want it to last requires extensive preparation.  Any teacher will tell you that to become an effective teacher is simple.  You just prepare and prepare until drops of blood appear on your forehead.  Preparation is the key to doing anything in life.

            All athletes, before they compete, must prepare themselves for their competition.  When I ran cross country in high school, I couldn’t just show up for a meet or an invitational and expect to run a good race.  It required extensive preparation: an effective running training program, eating right, and staying healthy.  I couldn’t skip practice and expect to be prepared to run that week.  Preparation was the key to succeeding. 

            Any musician will tell you it takes years of preparation to learn how to play a musical instrument.  You must practice, practice, practice.  There is no other way to do it.  My band teacher in high school would always yell at me that I didn’t practice enough.  I had to take my trombone home and practice over the weekend.  Since he was my best friend’s dad, he knew when I practiced and when I didn’t based on my social calendar on any given weekend.  If I wanted to play well with the wind ensemble and jazz band, I had to practice and prepare well in advance of the concert.  If I didn’t know the music, I wasn’t going to perform.  It’s that simple.

In the same way, we must prepare ourselves to return to God by confessing our sins so we may be able to receive the savior we’ve been waiting for; the savior we’ve been hoping for with clear eyes and a pure heart.  The hope in Advent is not grounded in the possibilities we can see in the human community, but in the faithfulness of God that is not conditioned by human fickleness and uncertainty.  It is God who is faithful, who comforts us, who loves us, who cares for us.

John the Baptist is preparing us to be ready to receive the coming King.  A new era is about to be born; God’s mercy is soon to be made evident in fresh, new ways that are beyond our understanding.  The Jews in exile no longer had to fear the power of Babylon.  The Jews in Jesus’ day no longer had to fear the power of the Romans.  We here today do not need to fear, for there is every need to be very grateful and glad we have a savior who fills us with hope, peace, joy and love.

            Let us prepare the way of the Lord with hopeful anticipation!