Stir Up Your Power

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, December 3, 2023
Isaiah 64:1-9

    One of our neighbors this Thanksgiving was delighted to share with us the good deal he got at Costco on a fully-prepared, ready-to-serve smoked turkey for Thanksgiving.  His family doesn’t really like to cook, and they were hosting this year.  “Why would anyone spend so much time doing it themselves at that great price?”  he asked Rich, having no idea that right at that very moment Rich had smoker going with our homemade smoked turkey, brined 24 hours prior by me and injected with a delicious maple-bourbon blend to keep it juicy.  Well, people have different interests and hobbies I guess – we enjoy the occasional time-consuming cooking projects to eat food we’ve prepared ourselves.  To top that, during our Thanksgiving meal, my mom, who grew up on a farm, shared about her grandparents preparing the goose that they had butchered themselves – my grandpa always wondered why they couldn’t have turkey like other (normal) people!  Farm people take it to the next level when it comes to homemade!
    In a lot of ways, we are distanced from the source of where our food comes from and how it gets to our table fully prepared and ready to eat.  When we go out to eat, we don’t usually see the chefs in the kitchen working to chop, boil, sear and serve what comes to the table.  In the grocery store, many foods including meat are already fully packaged, ready-to-serve.  We don’t see how wheat becomes bread – and beyond food, who wove and sewed together the fabric of my pants, or how this clay pot was crafted.  
    Our first reading from Isaiah describes God as fire that kindles brushwood and causes water to boil.  Later on, Isaiah says, “we are the clay, and you are our potter.”  God is the source of all living things.  God provides the very basic necessities for life – fire, water, clay, clothing, food.  And yet so often in our daily living, we forget to look beyond the thing itself – the food, the clothes, the clay pot – to the source, our Lord, our Father, our Potter who creates, molds, and reshapes us.  We just see things, and forget God is there.  We may even lose faith that God IS there with us, even though we can’t obviously see God at work.
    The word “Advent” simply means, “Coming.”  This season of Advent, which we begin today, encourages us to trust that Jesus is coming again in fullness and power, and God is already with us.  We look for God’s presence and power even if it may be more behind-the-scenes, like a potter working with clay, or a cook in the kitchen, toiling over boiling water to cook the perfect al-dente pasta.  It may be comforting to recognize that people of faith throughout the ages have struggled to be patient and see God at work behind the scenes, beyond what we obviously see.  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,”  Isaiah pleads with the Lord!  “Restore us, O God of hosts, let your face shine upon us, and we shall be saved,” our Psalmist requests.  It would be great if God more often hit us over the head with the answer to what to do when we have a difficult decision to make or wanted an answer to prayer.  We long for peace in our world, healing for all, forgiveness where it seems impossible.  Advent – this season of waiting for Jesus to come again, just as we celebrate Jesus coming the first time at Christmas – both helps us be patient, and gives voice to our deep longing for Christ to show up in a more powerful, obvious way, like an earthquake, like the heavens tearing apart.  Advent assures us that God is with us even now in our waiting – Emmanuel – both Isaiah and Matthew promise us.  God has never left us!  And Christ will stir up his power and come again.
    In our gospel from Mark, Jesus describes the coming of the Son of Man in both an earth-shaking event and a seemingly regular seasonal reality.  When you see a fig tree sprouting leaves, you know that summer is near, Jesus says.  Can we take time look beyond, behind, within, and around to see Christ’s presence with us even now, even if we do not see his face directly?  What signs do we see that encourage us that God is faithful and that Christ will come again?  Can we trust that God shows up in the ordinary as well as in the extraordinary events of earthquake, fire, and mountains shaking?  This is one reason we have been sharing God-sightings in worship.  If we are feeling God’s absence or silence, struggling to feel or experience God’s presence this week, we are buoyed by the sharing of others where God has shown up:  sometimes in very ordinary ways (a birth of a baby, an upcoming wedding) and sometimes in powerful ways (someone coming to faith, someone experiencing a miraculous healing).  Together, we encourage one another that God IS faithful as Paul assures us in our reading from 1 Corinthians.
    As we enter into this Advent season of waiting, watching, and preparing, what are you longing for from God?  Where do you see God responding to your longings?  Are we ready for Christ to tear open the heavens and come down once again?  In the coming months we will hear how at Jesus’ baptism, the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove.  At Jesus’ crucifixion, the temple curtain was torn in two from top to bottom.  At Jesus’ resurrection, there was a great earthquake.  God sent his only Son into the world to save the world and God DID tear open the heavens and come down in Jesus Christ.  Thanks be to God!  We also recognize that before these earth-shattering events, Jesus, the Savior of the world, was born in a humble stable, in a manger – a feeding trough for animals, to poor peasant parents.  The shepherds, sleeping under the stars, familiar with the rhythms of the land, people close to the source of food and clothing in raising animals for that purpose, these shepherds are the first to recognize that God is doing something great in this baby’s seemingly ordinary birth.  May we help each other pay attention like the shepherds, point others to the Source of all living things, see God at work behind the scenes, and wait and watch patiently for Christ’s coming again.  Amen.