Third Sunday of Advent (A), December 15, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

“Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.” Some of you might remember that I already declared my favorite collect of the day a few weeks ago. This one is also my favorites. “With great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.” I’m sure you don’t need me to read this to you again, but I can’t hear it enough. Today, on the third Sunday of Advent, it’s the American Episcopal Church’s Stir-up Sunday.

In England, Stir-up Sunday is the last Sunday before Advent when the collect begins with the plea for God to stir things up. Maybe you know the children’s rhyme: Stir, up, we beseech thee/ the pudding in the pot/ And when we get home/ We’ll all eat it hot! In other words, the children don’t want to wait until Christmas to eat the Christmas pudding. Do you know people who don’t want to wait until Christmas to eat Christmas treats or open Christmas presents? (I’m not one of them, but I am married to one!)

The passage from the Hebrew Bible or the First Testament that we heard this morning is a little bit like a treat that can’t wait. It’s one of the most vivid and beautiful poetic descriptions of the realm of God in all of scripture. But it’s set in the middle of grim rants describing God’s rage about people’s arrogant sense of autonomy, God’s fury about their armies, God’s madness about people’s indifference to exploitation and suffering among the nations. Historically, the first 39 chapters of the Book of Isaiah, are referred to as 1st Isaiah, and come from the 8th century or early 7th century BCE. Chapter 35, however, is an interruption in a narrative of escalating wreckage and hopelessness, of increasing destruction and desolation in the face of so much violence and oppression. Some biblical scholars think that this hope-filled beauty of a poem belongs to a much later time -– either toward the end of the Babylonian exile or after the return from exile in the centuries that followed the early part of the book of Isaiah. It seems to have been written much later and inserted here by an ancient editor.

The Rev. Barbara Lundblad, who is a professor of preaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York, writes this about the beautiful poetry in poetry in this thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah: “It’s out of place where it is. Who moved it? Some things our best scholarship scholarship cannot explain. The Spirit hovered over the text and over the scribes: ‘Put it here,’ breathed the Spirit, ‘before anyone is ready. Interrupt the narrative of despair.’ So, here it is: a word that couldn’t wait until it might make more sense.”¹ It’s kind of scandalous for Episcopalians, isn’t it? Our lectionary is holding up and even celebrating something that is out of order!

I want to say something about the fourth verse: “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear!’ Here is your God, Who will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense, Who will come and save you.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually associate the word vengeance with being unafraid! Vengeance is a word that sounds like violence in response to violence; vengeance just increases and perpetuates violence. The Hebrew word is nakam. Biblical scholar Hendrik Peels argues that vindication or liberating retribution are better translations.² “Requital” is how the Jewish Publication Society’s edition of the Hebrew Bible translates the word. The focus is on restorative justice. “Terrible recompense,” can literally be translated “benefits of God.” Quite a difference! Promises of liberating restoration and the benefits of God, Whose name is Love; that sounds like it might save us.

You know yesterday was the anniversary of the terrible gun violence at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut. What’s even more terrible is that there have been 27 school shootings in the US since that one. But the problem is not just in our schools; it’s a disease of the whole country. Something like 33,000 people were killed by guns in this country in the last year. I understand that our nation’s violent-crime problem is much bigger than guns. But I still think getting guns out of most people’s hands will reduce gun violence. And I like to say that if we can’t figure out how to take guns out of people’s hands, let’s find a way to take the bullets.

There are glimmers of hope in the midst of so much devastation and despair. The violent-crime rate in the US has actually declined steadily and dramatically over the last forty years, although Gallup polling shows that the majority of Americans continue to believe that violent crime is getting worse. It’s not clear why, but overall pessimism, encouraged by the media, has something to do with it. To tell you that violent crime is very low seems as out of place on a tragic anniversary as this passage from Isaiah’s thirty-fifth chapter. It occurs to me that we might be experiencing God’s restorative justice as the crime rate drops and not even know it.

You know, all over the country there are programs promoting and organizing restorative-justice circles that respond to crime in ways that heal, hold accountable, and put right what has been wrong. My friend Jean Bell is the co-founder of one such program in the Boston area called The Communities for Restorative Justice (C4RJ). C4RJ is a community-police partnership that bases its work on the understanding that crime is not just a violation of the law, but a violation of people and relationships. Restorative justice circles include victims, offenders, loved ones, supporters, law-enforcement officials, and community members and aims for restitution and reconciliation. Jean had done prison ministry for many years, based at Trinity Church in Concord. I met her in the fall of 1997, just as she and her friend Joan Turner were organizing a community forum on the topic of restorative justice. hey say that when two-hundred-thirty people showed up at that community forum, they knew they were onto something! The logistical challenges of setting up a program were daunting, but the Concord Police Chief also knew they were onto something and didn’t want to let the idea drop. They got their first case in 2000 and have offered restorative justice in hundreds of cases in metro Boston since. There are at least a dozen police departments that now refer cases to them. They have a 13-member board, employ an executive director and support staff; and their volunteer force has reached 100. Jean says that the moral of this story is: never underestimate the power of two.³ Isaiah would say: never underestimate the power of God (or Love) to restore and redeem.

Walter Brueggemann says that the restoration of God’s honor and the rehabilitation of God’s people cannot be teased apart. They are inseparable; and we are called to the work of restoration and rehabilitation, which is reconciliation. It takes patience. You know, the patience called for in the epistles of James is not the same as passivity or inaction. The patience referred to in the epistle of James is more like dogged persistence. The whole letter of James is about activism on behalf of and care for those who are least and lost and last. It’s a wild patience, as poet Adrienne Rich says in one of her books of poetry: A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far.⁴

The patience James speaks of is like the patience of Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund. She refuses to wait until the time is right and everyone is on her side. After the latest defeat of a gun-control measure, she wrote:

I woke up the morning after the Senate vote thinking about Sojourner Truth, one of my role models, a brilliant and indomitable slave woman, who could neither read nor write but who was passionate about ending unjust slavery and second-class treatment of women. At the end of one of her antislavery talks in Ohio, a man came up to her and said, “Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does any good? Do you suppose people care what you say? Why, I don’t care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea.” “Perhaps not,” [Sojourner Truth] answered, “but, the Lord willing, I’ll keep you scratching.” [Edelman goes on in her own words]: “We must be determined and persistent fleas….Enough fleas biting strategically can make the biggest dog uncomfortable. And if they flick some of us off but even more of us keep coming back with our calls, emails, visits, nonviolent direct-action protests, and votes, we’ll win.⁵

My charge to you on this snowy morning is don’t wait to participate in God’s project of making a way where there is no way. Don’t wait to participate in Love’s project of turning devastation and despair into restoration and reconciliation. Don’t wait.

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