Echoes of God
Text: Luke 3:1-6
The Gospels are more than simply telling the story of Jesus. As I mentioned last week, the expectation of a Messiah around the time that Jesus was born was so high, there were many different ideas about who the Messiah might be, and how the Messiah would appear to the people. The expectations were so high that when Jesus lived, it’s not surprising that many… perhaps even a majority of people… weren’t able to see God right in their own midst.
The writers of the gospels are doing a lot more than just telling the story of Jesus. They’re making a case for Jesus as the one who fulfills the expectations of being the Messiah, the holy one of God. It’s why the gospel writers, Luke and Matthew in particular, are constantly drawing these links back into the Hebrew Bible. After all, the desire, the hope for one who would come and redeem the people had been building for centuries. When it came to Jesus, perhaps hindsight was 20/20… and perhaps reminds us that often our own experience of God is something that we most often realize in hindsight.
While it has waned in popularity somewhat in recent years, some of you may remember the short story or poem called “Footprints in the Sand” or simply “Footprints.” I have always been a bit reluctant to use it in a sermon, as for a time it was horribly overused. When I was a student, many of the ministers I knew had a closet full of “Footprints” merchandise. You couldn’t swing a cow by the tail without hitting them. It was frequently used sympathy cards, when people really didn’t know what else to say… Four different people claimed to be the author, and therefore the inheritor of all the merchandising rights and income to go with it. Because of all this, the profound allegory it represents was replaced with a kind of sentimental pablum…
Yet when we look at what Luke or any of the gospel writers are doing, they are looking back across not only the life of Jesus, but trying to see God’s footprints throughout the whole history of the Bible. They’re trying to draw those links forward, and to say that God was present in the past, that God was present in the life of Jesus, that God was with the church communities in those early days, and that God would continue to be with them in the future. How did they know? They saw it in echoes of the prophets… and among the first of them was John the Baptist.
John the Baptist, as much as we know, was a preacher in the wilderness, and was one of many voices proclaiming the hope for a Messiah. Some have proposed that John was an Essene –the same Jewish sect that is thought to have collected the Dead Sea Scrolls –or at very least he had learned from them. He lived an austere life, living out away from the cities, encouraging people to wash away their sins in the waters of the Jordan. He was a voice… proclaiming the coming of God, and calling people to prepare… a voice, in the wilderness.
For Mark, Matthew and Luke the parallels couldn’t be ignored. This voice in the wilderness echoed something from Isaiah. “Prepare the way of the Lord!” They saw something there… Even though Isaiah 40 was written to the Exiles some five hundred years earlier, even though it was a call to the Exiles to prepare for a return to the Promised Land, the echo of those words resonated in the experience of John the Baptist. They saw it pointing to something new, and that these words from Isaiah took on a new life and new meaning. God was up to something, they saw God’s footprints.
In a very practical sense, Luke and the other gospel writers saw themselves as tracing God’s footprints in and around the life of Jesus. As I said earlier, they were making a case for him by noting events that seemed to parallel in the words of the prophets.
If can shift gears for a moment, the gospel writers were looking for the echoes of the prophets in the life and events of Jesus of Nazareth… but how often do we do that ourselves? How often do we take a moment and listen for the echoes of the Biblical story in our own life and experiences?
I suspect not very often.
Most of the time we see Advent as a time where we’re anticipating the coming of Christmas… we’re in the midst of all of our various preparations, while at the same time figuring out which Christmas party we need to get to, what arrangements we need to make, securing travel plans, cards to fill out and mail… not to mention gifts… But while Advent is all about preparation, it’s not about all of that ancillary stuff. It’s about the anticipating of Christ coming into our lives, and us making room for him. Let every heart prepare him room! as the carol goes.
Ever since Christmas started being celebrated in the 4th Century, Advent was and is a time of preparation very similar to Lent. Believers would take up a time of fasting, refraining from things, taking time to read, learn, pray, reflect on how God, how Christ, how the Holy Spirit comes into our lives. It’s about taking time to listen to the Echoes of God in our personal lives.
I think there’s a real wisdom in that, because in this season we do get so busy because we’re spending all this time preparing for this event, that event, making sure that we see everybody so nobody gets left out… and at the same time we end up finding ourselves exhausted rather than able to really celebrate Christmas for two weeks once we actually get there. It doesn’t have to be that way!
What if we were conscious about taking time to listen for the Echoes of God in our lives?
Instead of answering “I don’t have time for that.” What if we made the time? I know it’s easier said than done, but nobody said that Advent is easy. Waiting is hard work. Taking time to slow down and listen for the echoes of God is hard work! But there are some real, positive and practical results that can come out of it… not the least of which is less stress and more peace. Where we do have the choice is how much we let ourselves get swept up in the hype.
In my Christmas letter, I spoke about the Advent Conspiracy movement, which talks about spending less on gifts, and giving more of our time to where it matters. There’s some wisdom there. In Spending Less time trying to make things perfect, or trying to buy the perfect gift, we end up Giving More of who we are, and learning that’s what matters. It’s in this shifting of priorities that we starting hearing the Echoes of God in our own lives… as John the Baptist proclaimed, we end up preparing the way of the Lord in a much more tangible way.
If I need a more practical example, I really don’t have to go much farther than the announcements at the beginning of the service. This year, the Circle of Friends decided to take on something called a “Prayer Shawl Ministry.” The principle behind it is pretty simple, actually, but the symbol of God’s all-encompassing love is pretty powerful.
The idea behind the Shawl is to provide a gift for someone who is in need… it becomes a physical symbol of God’s love that is freely given. They are not purchased, they are made by people in this congregation, from materials the people have donated or donated money for. They are simply given as a gift… and done so prayerfully. The shawls are made to be given away, and even the very act of knitting or crocheting them becomes an act of prayer… even if the one who is making it doesn’t know who it is going to. It’s a deeply Spiritual exercise. Having given at least one of them away on their behalf, I have personally seen how this can touch people right in this community, to let them know that Christ is with them even in their time of trial.
The Circle of Friends here at Clarkson have taken this up as a response to listening to the echoes of God in their own lives. For those of you involved in it, who are actually making the shawls, you may not realize it, but this really is a response to God already working at something in this congregation. When Fern told me that you were taking this up, I was very excited. The echoes of God often turn up where we least expect it.
I think too often we are simply caught up in the midst of our own “busy” that we don’t really see that God is already at work right in our midst. The gospel writers, were trying to point that out, and the best way they could was to mark these echoes of God by drawing these lines from the Biblical stories to Jesus. Maybe we could stand to do the same.
Amen.
The Gospels are more than simply telling the story of Jesus. As I mentioned last week, the expectation of a Messiah around the time that Jesus was born was so high, there were many different ideas about who the Messiah might be, and how the Messiah would appear to the people. The expectations were so high that when Jesus lived, it’s not surprising that many… perhaps even a majority of people… weren’t able to see God right in their own midst.
The writers of the gospels are doing a lot more than just telling the story of Jesus. They’re making a case for Jesus as the one who fulfills the expectations of being the Messiah, the holy one of God. It’s why the gospel writers, Luke and Matthew in particular, are constantly drawing these links back into the Hebrew Bible. After all, the desire, the hope for one who would come and redeem the people had been building for centuries. When it came to Jesus, perhaps hindsight was 20/20… and perhaps reminds us that often our own experience of God is something that we most often realize in hindsight.
While it has waned in popularity somewhat in recent years, some of you may remember the short story or poem called “Footprints in the Sand” or simply “Footprints.” I have always been a bit reluctant to use it in a sermon, as for a time it was horribly overused. When I was a student, many of the ministers I knew had a closet full of “Footprints” merchandise. You couldn’t swing a cow by the tail without hitting them. It was frequently used sympathy cards, when people really didn’t know what else to say… Four different people claimed to be the author, and therefore the inheritor of all the merchandising rights and income to go with it. Because of all this, the profound allegory it represents was replaced with a kind of sentimental pablum…
Yet when we look at what Luke or any of the gospel writers are doing, they are looking back across not only the life of Jesus, but trying to see God’s footprints throughout the whole history of the Bible. They’re trying to draw those links forward, and to say that God was present in the past, that God was present in the life of Jesus, that God was with the church communities in those early days, and that God would continue to be with them in the future. How did they know? They saw it in echoes of the prophets… and among the first of them was John the Baptist.
John the Baptist, as much as we know, was a preacher in the wilderness, and was one of many voices proclaiming the hope for a Messiah. Some have proposed that John was an Essene –the same Jewish sect that is thought to have collected the Dead Sea Scrolls –or at very least he had learned from them. He lived an austere life, living out away from the cities, encouraging people to wash away their sins in the waters of the Jordan. He was a voice… proclaiming the coming of God, and calling people to prepare… a voice, in the wilderness.
For Mark, Matthew and Luke the parallels couldn’t be ignored. This voice in the wilderness echoed something from Isaiah. “Prepare the way of the Lord!” They saw something there… Even though Isaiah 40 was written to the Exiles some five hundred years earlier, even though it was a call to the Exiles to prepare for a return to the Promised Land, the echo of those words resonated in the experience of John the Baptist. They saw it pointing to something new, and that these words from Isaiah took on a new life and new meaning. God was up to something, they saw God’s footprints.
In a very practical sense, Luke and the other gospel writers saw themselves as tracing God’s footprints in and around the life of Jesus. As I said earlier, they were making a case for him by noting events that seemed to parallel in the words of the prophets.
If can shift gears for a moment, the gospel writers were looking for the echoes of the prophets in the life and events of Jesus of Nazareth… but how often do we do that ourselves? How often do we take a moment and listen for the echoes of the Biblical story in our own life and experiences?
I suspect not very often.
Most of the time we see Advent as a time where we’re anticipating the coming of Christmas… we’re in the midst of all of our various preparations, while at the same time figuring out which Christmas party we need to get to, what arrangements we need to make, securing travel plans, cards to fill out and mail… not to mention gifts… But while Advent is all about preparation, it’s not about all of that ancillary stuff. It’s about the anticipating of Christ coming into our lives, and us making room for him. Let every heart prepare him room! as the carol goes.
Ever since Christmas started being celebrated in the 4th Century, Advent was and is a time of preparation very similar to Lent. Believers would take up a time of fasting, refraining from things, taking time to read, learn, pray, reflect on how God, how Christ, how the Holy Spirit comes into our lives. It’s about taking time to listen to the Echoes of God in our personal lives.
I think there’s a real wisdom in that, because in this season we do get so busy because we’re spending all this time preparing for this event, that event, making sure that we see everybody so nobody gets left out… and at the same time we end up finding ourselves exhausted rather than able to really celebrate Christmas for two weeks once we actually get there. It doesn’t have to be that way!
What if we were conscious about taking time to listen for the Echoes of God in our lives?
Instead of answering “I don’t have time for that.” What if we made the time? I know it’s easier said than done, but nobody said that Advent is easy. Waiting is hard work. Taking time to slow down and listen for the echoes of God is hard work! But there are some real, positive and practical results that can come out of it… not the least of which is less stress and more peace. Where we do have the choice is how much we let ourselves get swept up in the hype.
In my Christmas letter, I spoke about the Advent Conspiracy movement, which talks about spending less on gifts, and giving more of our time to where it matters. There’s some wisdom there. In Spending Less time trying to make things perfect, or trying to buy the perfect gift, we end up Giving More of who we are, and learning that’s what matters. It’s in this shifting of priorities that we starting hearing the Echoes of God in our own lives… as John the Baptist proclaimed, we end up preparing the way of the Lord in a much more tangible way.
If I need a more practical example, I really don’t have to go much farther than the announcements at the beginning of the service. This year, the Circle of Friends decided to take on something called a “Prayer Shawl Ministry.” The principle behind it is pretty simple, actually, but the symbol of God’s all-encompassing love is pretty powerful.
The idea behind the Shawl is to provide a gift for someone who is in need… it becomes a physical symbol of God’s love that is freely given. They are not purchased, they are made by people in this congregation, from materials the people have donated or donated money for. They are simply given as a gift… and done so prayerfully. The shawls are made to be given away, and even the very act of knitting or crocheting them becomes an act of prayer… even if the one who is making it doesn’t know who it is going to. It’s a deeply Spiritual exercise. Having given at least one of them away on their behalf, I have personally seen how this can touch people right in this community, to let them know that Christ is with them even in their time of trial.
The Circle of Friends here at Clarkson have taken this up as a response to listening to the echoes of God in their own lives. For those of you involved in it, who are actually making the shawls, you may not realize it, but this really is a response to God already working at something in this congregation. When Fern told me that you were taking this up, I was very excited. The echoes of God often turn up where we least expect it.
I think too often we are simply caught up in the midst of our own “busy” that we don’t really see that God is already at work right in our midst. The gospel writers, were trying to point that out, and the best way they could was to mark these echoes of God by drawing these lines from the Biblical stories to Jesus. Maybe we could stand to do the same.
Amen.
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