A Warm Glow

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

December 16, 2012

A Warm Glow

Philippians 4:4-7

“Rejoice in the Lord always;

again I will say, Rejoice!”

The Third Sunday in Advent is the day

traditionally associated with joy.

As we lit the third candle on our Advent Wreath,

we heard the call to rejoice,

and today’s text comes from Paul’s call

to the Philippians and to us,

“Rejoice in the Lord always;

again I will say, Rejoice!”

And yet, how can we rejoice?

How can we feel any sense of joy

with the killings in Connecticut on Friday overwhelming us?

The horrific deaths of 20 children,

six adults,

the gunman’s mother,

even the young man himself,

have left us all numb,

the very spirit of Christmas drained right out of us,

as though someone had pulled the plug on all the lights,

leaving us in somber darkness.

We don’t know all the facts,

but what little we do know has sounded all too familiar:

a young man,

semi-automatic guns,

a rampage,

innocent victims,

horror,

tragedy,

death,

And the question we’ll never find the answer to:

Why?

Why?

Rejoice?

How, when little children are dead?

When our newspapers and television screens

are filled with images of people crying, grieving?

If there isn’t any rejoicing on this Third Sunday of Advent

in Newtown Connecticut,

how can there be here in Manassas, Virginia?

Perhaps today’s lesson should be Matthew 2:16,

that terrible story of the massacre of the innocents

by King Herod shortly after the birth of our Lord,

when Herod, filled with rage stemming from fear,

had all the children under the age of two

in and around Bethlehem killed.

The text concludes with the haunting passage

from the prophet Jeremiah:

“A voice is heard in Ramah;

lamentation and bitter weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children;

she refuses to be comforted for her children

because they are no more.”

(Jeremiah 31:15)

We cannot rejoice.

But we cannot just sit here either.

We have to do something;

something to rid the world of senseless violence.

After all, isn’t that we are called to do as Christians?

The debate has already begun about

what to do with guns in our society.

No one questions the hunter,

the collector,

the sport shooter,

but surely we must ask the question

why anyone other than the military and police

should have access to semiautomatic,

much less automatic weapons.

They are not designed for sport,

they are designed for one purpose only:

to kill.

And surely, as we have this debate,

we, as Christians first, last, and foremost,

ought to agree that the answer is not,

as some have already proposed,

more guns.

Does anyone think putting a gun in the pulpit

is the answer to the question,

what would Jesus do?

It is in tragedy that we are quickest to turn to God,

to turn to our Lord Jesus Christ for comfort,

for reassurance.

For our Lord is our Savior,

our Redeemer,

our everlasting hope,

and the promise is sure,

that underneath each of us are the everlasting arms.

                      

Our Lord is also the Prince of Peace,

born to bring the world endless peace;

born to reconcile the world to God,

not by force or weapons,

but by the Word of God that is grace,

the Word of God that is love,

the Word of God that is Jesus Christ.

Our Lord came to reclaim the throne of David,

but he did not come to us as a warrior king,

resplendent as David once was in armor, shield and sword,

but humble, riding on a donkey,

telling us to put away our weapons,

“for all who take the sword

will perish by the sword.”

(Matthew 26:52)

The Prince of Peace reminds us of God’s hope for us

that we will someday melt down

every last one of our killing instruments

and re-forge them into implements that create,

that build,

that feed.

The life God wants for us was painted in words by the prophet Isaiah

more than 2700 years ago:

“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all people

a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,

…And he will destroy on this mountain

the shroud that is cast over all people,

the sheet that is spread over all nations;

he will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces.”

(Isaiah 25:6-8)

This is the life God wants for us,

and yet this life has eluded us century after century.

Could it be that a life of peace has eluded us

because we have refused to learn,

to learn from God,

to learn from Jesus,

to learn to work for peace, for reconciliation,

refused to embrace fully the life

the Prince of Peace calls us to live,

a life that doesn’t glorify violence

on television,

in movies,

in sports,

in video games,

but a life which glorifies peace.

It was the Spanish philosopher and writer

George Santayana who,

in the early years of the 20^th century,

wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past

are condemned to repeat it.”

Santayana may have been thinking of the lines

the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge

had written a century before:

“If men could learn from history,

what lessons it might teach us!

But passion and party blind our eyes,

and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern,

which shines only on the waves behind us!”

(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1831)

We can learn.

We must learn.

We must learn to live the life Jesus calls us to live,

a life filled with hope grounded in peace

that leads to joy,

for it is a life where every tear is wiped away.

        

In his letter to the Philippians,

after Paul tells us to rejoice,

he tells us why we can and should rejoice,

even in difficult times.

Paul himself wrote the letter while he was

bound in chains in prison.

“Rejoice”, he tells us,

“rejoice always”, because,

“The Lord is near.”

Yes! The Lord is near,

for the one who came,

the one born that first Christmas,

will come again,

come again to make all things new,

come again to usher in a life of peace,

of reconciliation,

of hope,

of joy,

even for those consumed with rage,

even for those struggling with

emotions they cannot control,

even for those who feel they must destroy.

The Lord is near, awaiting God’s word

to usher in the world God hoped for us

when God first created the heavens and the earth

and all the morning stars sang together,

“Glory to God in the highest!”

And yet the Lord is already here, even now,

for he is our Emmanuel,

Hebrew for “God with us”,

born for us,

the living Christ.

And so God is with us in tragedy,

gracing us with hope,

gracing us with strength to carry on.

“Forward”, the living Christ says to us,

forward, neither forgetting past tragedies,

nor arming ourselves against future tragedies,

but learning,

learning from God, learning from Christ,

learning from Paul’s words:

“Let your gentleness be known to everyone.

Do not worry about anything,

but in everything by prayer and supplication

with thanksgiving let your requests

be made known to God.”

                 

And the promise is sure that if we live that way,

then

“the peace of God,

that peace which surpasses all understanding,

will guard our hearts and our minds

in Christ Jesus.”

So let us go forward,

forward with gentleness,

embracing those struck by tragedy,

in Connecticut, on the Jersey shore,

here in our community,

anywhere, everywhere,

embracing all who struggle,

the hungry, the sick,

the anxious, the fearful,

the angry, the alienated,

all those who know neither hope nor joy.

Let us go forward drawing strength

from the words of the prophet Zephaniah

first spoken to our ancestors in faith

600 years before the birth of our Lord:

“The Lord, your God, is in your midst;

he will rejoice over you with gladness;

he will renew you in his love.”

(Zephaniah 3:17)

Let us go forward without worry, or fear,

secure not because of the weapons we carry,

but because our trust is in the Lord.

Let us go forward strengthened by love,

strengthened by hope,

that we would know that warm glow

that comes from putting our trust,

putting our lives utterly and completely

in the hands of the Lord our God.

Then we will surely know the peace of Christ,

that peace which surpasses all understanding,

now and always.

AMEN