First Presbyterian Church
Allow Space for Service
Sermon for January 9, 2005
by Pastor Susan Barnes

Our reading from the prophets is on page 670 in our pew Bibles. We'll be reading from my translation, so a few words will be different. Isaiah 42 is one of the servant songs. God introduces one who will do and is doing God's transforming work in the world, powered by God's wind, which blows newness into the world. This spirit equips the servant to do what the world regards as impossible. Without raising his voice, he causes justice. Listen for the word of God as it is found in Isaiah 42: 1-9.

Behold, my servant whom I held up, my chosen in whom I (1) am pleased.
I give my spirit to him; he will bring out justice to the nations.
He will not yell, nor raise or allow his voice to be heard outside.
A reed will not be crushed , a dimly burning wick will not be extinguished;
for truth he will bring out justice.
He will not dim nor will he be crushed until he places justice on the land;
the coasts wait for his directions.
Thus says the God, Yahweh, creator of the heavens and extender of them,
Hammerer (2) of the earth and what comes from her,
Giver of breath (3) to the people upon her and wind (4) to those who walk on her:

I, Yahweh, proclaim you in right standing
and I grasp hold (5) of your hand and preserve you
and I give you as a covenant for the people,
a light for the nations to open blind eyes,
to free hostages from dungeons, from a house of imprisonment,
dwellers in darkness.

I Yahweh that is my name;
I do not give my glory to another nor my praises to statues.
The former things, behold, have come;
and new things I declare, before they have sprouted,
I will cause you to hear them.

This ends our reading from Isaiah.

The servant could be the people Israel. A people the prophets accused of being blind, deaf, and imprisoned will be the cause for others' sight, hearing, and freedom.

The servant could be King Cyrus, who allowed the Babylonian exiles to return to Israel. The prophets often reminded kings they were supposed to be God's servants, although rulers did not always act in God's will or for their people's interest.

Jesus came in that tradition of a servant king. Listen to our choir proclaim God's word as they ask, “Where is the King.”

Our unison reading is from page 504, Psalm 29. It begins with singing of God's glory, and ends with a call for peace, much like the heavenly host sang to the shepherds: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace.” In this psalm, God is raw, untamed power. Yahweh's voice is so powerful that it can twist mighty trees, the ancient cedars, a thousand years old. In the psalm, God works to conquer the chaotic waters.

I think most of us saw the pictures of the tsunami flood waters covering houses and twisting trees. In this psalm, God is even more powerful than that. God's voice sings into place the new order that overcomes chaos. Listen for the word of God as we read together from Psalm 29.

1 A Psalm of David. Ascribe to the LORD , O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
2 Ascribe to the LORD the glory of his name; worship the LORD in holy splendor.
3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD , over mighty waters.
4 The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.
5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox.
7 The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire.
8 The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
9 The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, "Glory!"
10 The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever.
11 May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace!

This ends our reading of the psalm. Epiphany was last Thursday. Epiphany means manifestation. It was originally a celebration of Jesus' baptism. Later on, the magi's visit was added to the celebration. Epiphany celebrates the manifestation of God in Jesus Christ and the news that Jesus is the one who would enact the good news of the realm of God.

In our gospel reading on page 3, John the Baptizer is in the wilderness, baptizing the crowds in the Jordan as they confessed their sins. Then the Pharisees and their political rivals the Sadducees came, and John preaches to them about repentance. Listen for the word of God as it is found in Matthew 3:13-17.

13Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan , to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?"

15 But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness."

Then he consented . 16 And when Jesus had been baptized , just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved , with whom I am well pleased ."

This ends our reading of God's word.

I always wondered why Jesus needed to be baptized. We baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; how can Jesus be baptized in his own name? We Presbyterians are used to thinking of baptism as a Christian sacrament, and a church ceremony. But in new testament times, baptism wasn't unique to Christians. The word baptism is from the Greek word ‘baptizo,' which means wash, or immerse. Some cults and religions washed or immersed people as part of a ceremony requiring physical or spiritual cleanliness. Converts to Judaism went through a ritual washing. In the old testament, priests washed before they offered sacrifices. Special sacrifices required immersion in especially holy pools. Washing was a way to purify yourself.

John told the Pharisees and Sadducees he was baptizing for repentance. But that is not why Jesus wanted to be baptized. He said it was to make justice fully known, or as your Bibles have translated, to fulfill all righteousness.

When Jesus was baptized, he was declared the son of God. When we are baptized, we are declared God's children, daughters and sons of God. And so when we think of our baptisms, we remember we belong to God's family. Let's listen to the folk choir proclaim the word.

Folk choir sings “Come and be baptized .”

As I worked on this sermon, I found that the question that nagged at me was ‘How can God be more powerful than the tsunami?' When we saw how the floodwaters filled houses, lifted trucks, destroyed boats, and crushed trees, how can we say with any faithfulness at all “The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; The LORD sits enthroned over the flood”? If God truly was more powerful than the tsunami, why did it happen?

It gets at the question many of us have about catastrophes and disasters and personal problems. Most of us are angry that there was no tsunami warning system in place. But in a land where people earn less than $2 a day, is it good stewardship to put in a million dollar warning system for an ocean that hasn't had any tsunamis in over a hundred years? Who is to blame? The governments of India, Sumatra, and the rest of Indonesia for not being able to see the future? The guerilla wars that decimated infrastructure so aid could not be given? The richer nations who exploit the poorer ones? The poorer ones for not being richer? The people who went out gathering fish during the sudden low tide, only to be caught up in the huge wave?

Or perhaps the problem is our need to find someone to blame, because when blame is affixed, we can rest easy knowing that we are not to blame.

How can we declare the truth of Christianity in the midst of a disaster? One man said to a monk in World War II, “Don't speak to me of Christianity. Just point out some Chrsitians.” (6)

I have some examples.

Four years ago the youth group for Avondale Presbyterian Church from Charlotte, North Carolina began a mission trip to build a labyrinth at a tiny church in West Virginia. A labyrinth is a tightly curved path for walking meditation. Walking a labyrinth is a form of prayer. The youth and leaders had a lot of supplies with them. But on their way, it began to rain.

They had come for a mission trip, with their own food and supplies to build a labyrinth. Their mission changed. They were in the middle of the summer floods of 2001 in West Virginia. The region was badly flooded in July, and the relief efforts had made some headway, when they were flooded again a month later, this time worse.

The group looked for other ways to help out. Because the youth group was already underway, the members made it into the disaster zone before the other professional rescue teams did. They didn't know they had gotten through impassable roads and past state police roadblocks until afterwards.

They stopped once to ask a man directions. The man was a local Baptist pastor, and directed them to Mullens, a tiny town almost wiped out by a flood. They went, and the mayor put them to work

“One seventeen-year-old named Megan said, ‘In every house, they were thanking God for us, that we came. They said we were angels. They said that they couldn't believe that God had sent angels to them.' Megan admits that angelic is not a term that she often applies to herself. They slogged through grocery stores and churches to retrieve what was salvageable, made sandwiches, pulled out muddy carpets, wip[ed] up a lot of mud.” They spend a lot of time shoveling out mud and contaminated water. The shovels and spades they had intended to use to make a labyrinth became used for another kind of spiritual strengthening.

“Megan said, ‘We had to work hard as a team to get anything done. There was so much confusion when we arrived , and we were sent there out of nowhere. People were still in shock, didn't know what to do. So if we hadn't gotten along, we wouldn't have been able to get anything done.'

“Joy Wilkerson, who was 16, said ‘There were people who lost everything. But they were thanking God for sending us to help out. Maybe some people would blame God for sending a flood…but they said that the flood wasn't God's will. In fact, it was (the will of) God that sent us.” (7)

Jesus told the disciples to be servants of all, and to serve one another. Isaiah said God's servant, “will bring justice to the nations… I give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations to open blind eyes, to free hostages from dungeons, from a house of imprisonment, dwellers in darkness.” Jesus called the disciples his brothers and sisters, and told them to love one another.

We are God's children and God's servants. It is a realization we have to come to; it isn't one that we can preach.

We can't tell someone who has lost a family and home ‘Take comfort you are a child of God.' All we can do is help them find a place to stay and food to eat. We're not all in the right place and the right time with the right skills to help someone recover who has survived a great loss. And so we give money or time so that someone more skilled than we are can offer what's needed.

But we can long to help. And if we let the spirit nurture that longing inside us, there will be an opportunity for us to help sometime, in the right place and the right time. Sometimes we have to wait for it.

Harry Yeh is a scientist who specializes in fluid mechanics. He traveled to India last week. He's studied more than a half-dozen tsunamis, but says [he] is struck each time by the jolt of leaving academia, with its computers and mathematical models, for scenes so visceral. There is something in meeting the survivors that reminds him what's at stake in his work. "That really makes me feel I might - I might - be contributing to society a little bit," he said. He traveled to India with a team of scientists …in hopes that some small observation in the field, some unexpected quirk of rushing water, could help tweak a model, refine a forecasting tool and perhaps save more lives next time. Through it all…they will be torn between intellectual excitement and a penetrating sorrow at the devastation they have come to measure.

An oceanographer, Bruce Jaffe said “It's important to stay out of the way of relief efforts, but still move fast, while evidence is fresh.” They want to know how far inland vegetation has been killed by salt water. How high are the broken tree limbs? Where are the high water marks? What do the survivors remember?

Jaffe's gear is usually fairly low tech: shovels and trowels, a hand lens and sample bags. Always, said Jaffe, "it's a very conflicting experience," as the rush of gathering scientific data mingles with "being in a place where people have died or been injured , imagining what it was like for them." That's gotten harder with time, he said. Now that he has children, his own 2-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son also jostle in his imagination while he's away. He copes, as others do, by reminding himself of the potential usefulness of the work. (8)

This Christmas and epiphany, Christians are called to make room for Christ in our hearts. We listen to what God is calling us to do. Our baptisms celebrate that we were made daughters and sons of God, sisters and brothers of Christ. Jesus called us to serve one another. So when we make room for Christ, we make room for service. We prepare our hearts so that we too can be useful in saving others.

We might use our skills and our shovels to investigate tsunami sed iment deposits to learn the behavior of the water inland, or we might use a shovel to scoop contaminated mud out of one elderly person's home. Or we might send money so that others can buy shovels to use. Make room for service.

Amen.

(1) My nephesh, my soul

(2) as a metalworker overlays a metal, or as gold is plated ; the hammering stretches out the surface

(3) nishamah

(4) ruah (wind, spirit, breath)

(5) or strengthen

(6) Lawrence Cunningham, quoted in Context, Oct. 15, 1997, p. 6.

(7) Smith, Alexa. “Angels unaware,” The NEWS, PC(USA), August 10, 2001.

(8) Dahlberg, Carrie Peyton. “Researchers seek lessons amid debris” Sacramento Bee, December 31, 2004.