"Ready to Be Transformed"

Advent 1A: 12-1-13

Sermon Texts: Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44

Ready to Be Transformed

Imagine for a moment that it’s not the first Sunday of Advent, that we’re not coming into the final legs of the harvest, and that the first frosts that promise a winter just around the corner haven’t been gracing our yards and fields.  Imagine instead that the snows have already melted, the winter has passed, and we can finally smell Spring in the air.  As we start slowly putting away the thick down coats, the snow pants and the Carhartt coveralls, we start getting out the canvass gloves, the comfortable shoes, the favorite shirt, those things that get us ready for another season of work out in the garden.  And once we’ve got our gardening “uniforms” on, we go out to the shed or the garage and grab the well-oiled, wood-grained stock of the Marlin 336 rifle hanging on the wall, take it out to the garden, and start tilling the rows to plant our cucumbers, carrots, zucchini, and tomatoes.

At this point, I’m noticing some of the hunters out there shifting in their seats… but what if this was what all our implements looked like?  What if John Deere, International, Allis-Chalmers, and Ford started building their tractors out of M1 Abrams tanks and F-16 jet fighters?  What if that new garden trowel you picked up at True Value had a handle made from a .38 magnum and the barrel flattened out?  What if the plowshare behind your tractor tilling the fields was made out of bayonets?

We know the images and the language that Isaiah uses to paint them in this passage, but it’s hard to really imagine it happening.  But what if there was someone out there who is doing that very thing?  What if the next time you went out to the Opry at the Junction, the band was playing on guitars, fiddles, and drum sets made from shotguns, mortar shells, and magazines from AK-47’s?  It may sound crazy, but this is the very kind of thing that Mexican artist Pedro Reyes has done in a project, titled “Disarm.”  It’s something that is better seen than described, so I’d like to take share the video below:

I realized that this could be a sermon unto itself - in many ways, it still is - especially as we meditate on the imagery of peace and the idea of those things to come that we hear in Isaiah’s vision.  Isaiah looks toward a time where people are eager to receive teaching from God, where people no longer teach one another the ways of war, but teach instead ways of peace, where swords are no longer needed, but are turned instead into tools for creation.

But there’s something more here that stuck with me since I first heard of this artist - it’s the sheer idea of transformation in his project that fascinates me the most.  In just one instant, these tools that had been used by drug cartels and criminals as instruments of death become redeemed in the hands of a master artist - whose last name, perhaps ironically, comes from the Spanish word for “King.”  And out of the tragedy that those weapons caused, one person created something uniquely beautiful and affirming.

And isn’t this the same thing that happens to us in our journey of faith through Jesus Christ?  We, broken and sinful people that we are, full of flaws and capable of doing terrible things to one another, are given the chance to experience redemption of our own and made part of Christ’s own body.  It gives me goosebumps every time I think about it - just how much we are loved, how God is somehow able to see through the filth that surrounds our lives and to see the people whom God created in God’s own image, despite how we’ve marred it on our own.  And in just that one instant, that moment when a baby first draws breath in a stable and cries those beautiful, life-affirming cries, we are redeemed.

Today we mark the beginning of the Advent season - and we recognize this time as one marked by anticipation - its name comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “coming.”  We begin our church year with a season of waiting, a season of expectation - and yes, we’re waiting for Christmas, for the day when we celebrate Christ’s birth and remember the amazing moment when God became flesh and dwelt among us… but we’re also waiting for something more.  As the readings from the last few weeks have been reminding us, we stand here in the midst of a strange moment of “already and not yet.”  We celebrate Christmas, but recognize that Christ has already been born, that salvation has already come to the earth, that we are already living in a world made completely different by the coming of Christ - so then why do we continue to celebrate Advent as this season of expectation?  Because just as we’re in the season of already, we’re also in the season of not yet - Jesus came and freed us from our sins, but the work is not yet done.  There are still those who have not yet encountered this amazing love of Christ.  The kingdom has not yet come completely to earth, and we are not yet at the point where Christ comes again to rule in this wonderful kingdom.  And so we remember Christ’s words from Matthew’s gospel as we celebrate this time of not yet, and we take this time of Advent to slow down, to reflect on the fact that we are waiting eagerly for Christ to return, and to ensure that we are ready for that day.

Jesus tells the disciples “You must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”  And I ask us this question today:  Are we ready?  Are we ready, not just for the coming of the Christ again to establish the kingdom for which we yearn with every fiber of our being, but for the work that is also already happening all around us?  Are we ready for the reality that as we continue to worship and follow Christ, we also allow ourselves to be transformed by the savior?  Are we ready to be made into something better, to allow Christ to work within us and to use us in this next year for his own glorious purposes?  Are we ready to be taken from our places of darkness and sin, melted down in the holy love of our Messiah, and remade into a redeemed creation, fit for beautiful and amazing things done through Christ in the power of the Spirit?

Come - let us walk in the light of the Lord!  To God be the glory, Amen.