Come, Restless Spirit!
(Rutgers, December 6, 1998; 2nd Sunday ofAdvent, Year A;
Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Task Force to Study Homosexuality)
Isaiah 11:1-10 (OT, p. 710); Matthew 3:1-12 (NT, p. 3)
Harmony. . . Justice. . . Light!
Our lessons and sung response offer us three vivid, hope-filled images
of the Messiah for this Second Sunday of Advent.
From the prophet Isaiah comes the image
of one yet to be born from the royal lineage of Jesse and David,
one who will come
manifesting the power of God's indwelling Spirit
one who will come to create anew
well-being and harmony in society and nature.
This is the image symbolized through a Native-American art style
on our bulletin cover this morning.
From the Gospel of Matthew comes the second image,
the image of one who will come to create anew
the practice of justice by individual persons,
baptizing them with water, God's Spirit, and fire.
And from the verse of the hymn “0 Come, 0 Come, Emmanuel"
that we sang between these readings from Isaiah and Matthew,
comes the third image, the image of one
who will come to create anew brightness in our souls,
bringing the light that dispels the world's darkness:
“0 come, Thou Dayspring (0 come, Thou Radiant Dawn),
come and cheer our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death's dark shadows put to flight.”
Now, these three images of the new creation
to be accomplished by the Messiah resonate with
and build upon the images of God's original creation
that are found at the very beginning of the Bible,
the images that open the Book of Genesis:
“... and darkness covered the face of the deep,
while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Then God said, ‘Let there be light'.
and there was light.” (Genesis 1:2b-3)
Dark waters, sweeping wind ... burst of light.
Ocean depths, rush of air .. . break of day.
Mary's womb, Life-engendering Spirit ... Light of the world;
fetal stirring, Restless Spirit ... Radiant Child-
Emmanuel, God-with-Us, Bright Morning Star (Rev. 22:16),
come with the baptism of water Spirit, and fire'
The compounding of these wondrously evocative images reveals to us
a basic truth about these Advent days of December darkness.
And that truth is this:
If we are to pray for Christ to be born anew in our hearts
this Christmas then we must pray now
for God's Spirit to come into the womb of our lives this Advent.
If we are to pray for the light of Christ
to come to a blazing intensity within us and through us,
then we must pray now for the rush into our innermost being
of that same Restless Spirit who swept
over the waters of creation;
for the rush into our innermost being
of that same Restless Spirit who gave birth to the Messiah
from the waters of Mary's womb
and the royal lineage of Jesse and David;
for the rush into our innermost being
of that same Restless Spirit who gives
each of us new birth in the waters of baptism.
Yes! For Christians, there must be a rush this December ,
but not the rush of work in the office,
nor the rush of shopping in the mall,
but the rush of God's Spirit allowed to come deep within us,
stirring us to give new birth to the Christ-like living that
creates here and now
well-being and harmony in society and nature,
stirring us to give new birth to the Christ-like living that
constitutes here and now the practice of justice,
stirring us to give new birth to the Christ-like living that
brings here and now brightness to our souls.
This weekend, our church has been hosting
some of God's most wonderful people,
gathered to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the report
to our denomination's 1978 General Assembly by
the Task Force to Study Homosexuality, a report that
it was my honor to write on behalf of the Task Force.
All weekend, I have had the poignant experience
of simultaneously recalling our work as a Task Force
and reflecting on the biblical texts and images that the
lectionary has assigned for pastors to preach on this morning.
For I can think of no Advents in my life during which I have felt more
strongly and deeply the stirring of God's Restless Spirit within me
than the Advent of 1976, during which the Task Force held
its second and really quite transformative meeting in St. Louis ,
and the Advent of 1977, which I spent, prior to
the Task Force's 10th + final gathering in New York City,
wrestling with final changes to the background paper
and writing the policy statement + recommendations
to be submitted by the Task Force's majority
to the 1978 General Assembly through
the Advisory Council on Church and Society.
I had begun my work on the Task Force as an open-minded but
cautious and homophobic professor of old Testament
who thought that an even-handed academic study of "the issue”
would "solve the problem" of whether or not to ordain to
ministry Bill Silver and-to use the parlance of the time-
other "self-affirming, practicing homosexual persons.”
I also subscribed to the rather traditional Protestant notion that
the Holy Spirit would somehow guide the church in such study,
but for me the Holy Spirit was, quite frankly, more
an intellectual concept studied in seminary textbooks
than a dynamic, life-changing reality.
But the period from Advent 1976 to Christmas 1977
changed all of that for me,
as I felt the stirring of God's Restless Spirit deep within me,
stirring me to give birth
to a new view of God's action in the world,
to give birth to a Christ-like recognition that the Spirit of God
is not bound or in any way constrained by religious tradition,
that the wind of the Spirit blows where it will (John 3:8),
and comes as it chooses, and that our task is first
to recognize the amazing and unexpected things
that the Spirit is wanting to do through us,
and then to do those amazing and unexpected things.
It was the period from Advent 1976 to Christmas 1977 that I,
for the first time in my life felt the rush of God's Restless Spirit
coming deep within me, stirring me to give new birth
to a Christ-like recognition that the Blowing Spirit of God
has in fact given gifts of ministry to many “unexpected” persons,
and specifically, to the gays on our Task Force,
to the gay, lesbian, and bisexual elders, deacons, + ministers
who spoke of their life experiences at our Open Hearings,
whom the Spirit allowed me at last
to see and recognize and embrace for who they are.
And through the past twenty years I have found over and over again
that it has not been the academic study of biblical passages-
even though as a professor of the Bible I have a vested interest
in the academic study of biblical passages-
I have found over and over again that it has not been
the academic study of biblical passages that has caused
cautious and homophobic Presbyterians to recognize the
Restless Spirit that wants to sweep across Christ's church
to create within us the justice of Christ's love.
No! What has caused cautious and homophobic Presbyterians
to be stirred one by one from sluggish complacency
to immediate action
has been the fact that the Blowing Wind of that Spirit
has reached deep inside the Presbyterian Church
to bring forth from the womb of this denomination
such incarnations of Christ's love as Chris Glaser,
and Janie Spahr,
and Bill Silver,
and Sandy Brawders,
and countless other gays and lesbians
in this congregation,
in other Presbyterian congregations,
and, of course,
within the Christian community
throughout this nation
and around the world.
If the justice of Christ's love is to be born from us
on Christmas Day or any other day,
then here and now God's Restless Spirit must be allowed
to come deep inside us to spark the fire
of that Christ-like love.
Ann Weems is a Presbyterian author dear to many of us
on the Task Force.
Let me share with you in closing excerpts from one of
her Advent poems, entitled “The Coming of God."
[in Kneeling in Bethlehem (Westminster, 1980), p. 13]
And I invite you, as you listen to Weems's poem,
to reflect on what I’ve been saying this morning: namely, that
at Christmas God is able to be born as a Radiant Child
because during Advent God has come as a Restless Spirit.
Ann Weems:
“Our God is the One who comes to us ...
Our God is the One who cannot be found
locked in the church,
not even in the sanctuary.
Our God will be w here God will be
with no constraints,
no predictability....
Our God will be born w here God will be born. . .
When God is ready
God will come
even to a godforsaken place
like a stable in Bethlehem.
Watch..
for you know not when
God comes.
Watch, that you might be found
whenever
wherever
God comes.”
This Advent be open to the coming of God's Restless Spirit.
Let us pray.
Come, Radiant Child!
Come, Restless Spirit!
Come even now.
Come even to us.
Come even to the Presbyterian Church.
Amen.
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