On Our Way to Bethlehem
(Rutgers, November 29, 1998; 1st Sunday of Advent, Year A)
Psalm 122 (OT , p. 633); Isaiah 2:1-5 (OT, p. 700)
That great sage Dr. Seuss provides us a helpful thought for Advent
in his book Oh, the Places You'll Go (NY: Random House, 1997).
SaysDr.Seuss:
"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.”
Dr. Seuss advises us that we do have control over where we go,
that where we journey is a matter of free will,
a matter for our own deciding!
Well, during the four weeks of Advent,
the season that begins today and ends on Christmas Eve,
I hope you guys'll decide to steer yourself in an easterly direction.
I hope you'll decide to join me in taking a figurative journey
through the big city of Jerusalem
and on to the little town that lies some six miles beyond it-
the little town of Bethlehem.
Journeying together, with hope-filled expectancy, from our own,
quite mundane place and time toward a sacred place and time-
that's what's called "pilgrimage," and it's pilgrimage
that's spoken of in both of this morning's scripture lessons.
Psalm 122 begins, ''I was glad when they said to me,
'Let us go to the house of the Lord!"'
This psalm is one in a collection of fifteen psalms (120-134)
sung by pilgrims as they streamed
from their home villages to the holy city of Jerusalem and
as they there ascended Mt. Zion itself, the mount of God's temple,
where earth and heaven met
and pilgrims experienced transforming closeness with God.
Picture, if you will,
long columns of men and women, from all parts of Israel,
chanting Psalm 122 as they converged on Jerusalem
in order to celebrate a sacred festival-
their aching muscles and gritty feet forgotten amidst
the joy of their arriving at the holy site.
Pilgrimage is a journey
from the periphery of life to its center,
from the ordinary to the holy,
from the mundane to the meaningful,
from the normal to the highly symbolic,
from the everyday to the especially sacred.
So the pilgrims of Ancient Israel
would leave behind them the difficulties of their daily lives,
and they would march toward the city of God
seeking fresh new gifts from God,
singing, ''I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord!"
and then shouting out
the psalm's marvelously alliterative chorus,
"Sha 'alu shelom Yerushalayim,"
"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem."
And when these Israelite pilgrims returned home,
they were not the same people who had come.
Newly graced by their celebration of God
and by their experience of God's presence,
they returned to their daily lives
with both a renewed hope for peace and well-being and
a renewed commitment to bringing God's justice to pass.
For according to the view expressed in this psalm,
the peace prayed for in verse 6 will come fully to pass only when
the justice spoken of in verse 5 has come into existence.
Justice is the precondition for full peace.
That's this morning's first lesson, Psalm 122.
Our second lesson came from Isaiah 2, it is also about pilgrimage.
It portrays a future day when pilgrims will stream
to Jerusalem, to Mt. Zion, the temple of God,
to study and learn God's word,
a day when the pilgrims will originate not just from Israel
but from all the other nations of the world as well.
Then, these pilgrims, too, will sing as they march, saying,
“Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that we may learn God's ways and walk in God's paths."
And these pilgrims will then go on to declare
that there, on Mt. Zion, God will adjudicate between the nations
and arbitrate for many peoples,
with the result that all nations
"shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.”
This glorious prophecy of an age of justice and peace still to come
is emblazoned for our own time and place
on the grounds of the United Nations.
In it, the prophet envisions what God will bring to pass,
even though the time of its accomplishment is not yet here.
Against the backdrop of a current shabbiness,
the prophet imagines a far different future,
a future in which God's original intention for human existence-
the peace and well-being that existed inside Eden-
shall again come to be.
And who among us hearing these words of promised peace
does not experience within us a kindling of renewed hope?
For faith in the loving nature of God enables us
to hope for that which has not yet come to be,
and to heed God's call to begin walking the path of peace
that all nations shall someday travel.
It would be easy this December, amidst all the bad news
of the warfare and injustice that exist in our world-
the news of genocide in Kosovo and chemical weapons in Iraq,
of persecution in Indonesia and rampant AIDS in Africa,
of tyranny in Malaysia and hunger in America-
it would be easy to become cynical and depressed
and to either pull the blankets up over our heads
or run away from it all.
But a very different response to this bad news is urged on us
by the contemporary Presbyterian author Ann Weems
in her remarkable collection of poems entitled
Kneeling in Bethlehem.
In her poem "Toward the Light," Weems writes:
"Too often our answer to the darkness
is not running toward Bethlehem
but running away.
We ought to know by now that we can't see
where we're going in the dark.
[But] Running away is rampant . . .
separation is stylish:
separation from mates, from friends, from self.
Run and tranquilize,
don't talk about it,
avoid.
Run away and join the army
of those who have already run away.
When are we going to learn that Christmas Peace
comes only when we turn and face the darkness?
Only then will be able to see
the Light of the World. ' ,
So this Advent, let's run toward Bethlehem
to see the light that God wishes to make known to us
and to all people.
This Advent, let's set aside in our busy lives the time needed
to make the journey from darkness to starlight,
from outside Eden to Bethlehem.
Together, let's adopt an Advent discipline of worship and study.
This Advent, I invite you to join me and our parish associates
not only for worship on Sunday mornings at 11
but also for candlelight vespers on Wednesday evenings at 6:00 ,
in order to gain a glimmer of the starlight
that can keep you going during the second part of your week,
in order to be running toward Bethlehem.
And following vespers, at 6:45 pm,
join me for a bible study series entitled-
appropriately enough-From Eden to Bethlehem.
If you 're not free Wednesday evenings,
but are free Wednesday noons at 12:15
the same Bible series-From Eden to Bethlehem-
will be offered at that alternative time.
And to assist your Advent journey to Bethlehem,
I will offer a Sunday morning seminar series at 9:30.
Next Sunday at 9:30, come meet and talk with members of
the original Presbyterian Task Force to Study Homosexuality,
which will be celebrating its 20th Anniversary next weekend
at a reunion hosted by Rutgers Church.
On December 13, the topic of the Sunday morning seminar will be
"Taking Christmas Simply. ' ,
And then on December 20, the topic will be
"Taking Christmas Seriously. ' ,
This Advent, let's run toward Bethlehem on pilgrimage.
As Dr. Seuss says:
"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go. ' ,
So this advent, I urge you to use your God-given freedom of will
to choose to take a pilgrim's journey
from the periphery of life to its center,
from the ordinary to the holy,
from the everyday to the especially sacred.
Use your God-given freedom of will to choose a pilgrim's journey
from our world of war to Christ's stable of peace,
from our world of unrighteousness
to Christ's manger of justice,
from the despairing darkness that lies outside Eden,
to the hope-filled starlight that bathes Bethlehem.
Let us pray.
O God, draw us through the December darkness to the starburst
at Bethlehem, so that, filled by the prophet's hope for a world at
peace, we may heed the prophet's call to walk by y our light. This we
pray in the name of the Babe of Bethlehem, the Prince of Peace.
Amen.
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