Staying Alive

(John 1.1-5)

A sermon preached by Dave Shull

Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ

Sammamish, Washington

The Second Sunday of Advent: December 6, 2009

Calvin is walking through the woods with his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. Hobbes always comes alive when they’re alone. Calvin says to Hobbes, “Know what I pray for?” “What?” Hobbes asks. Calvin replies, “The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can’t, and the incapacity to tell the difference.” Hobbes says, “You should lead an interesting life.” And Calvin responds, “Oh, I already do!” (Bill Watterson, The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, Andrews & McKeel, 1995, p. 200)

One piece of advice about what you need to do to live a good life ….

Talk shows, grocery store check-out racks, and bookstore self-help shelves overflow with advice about the kind of life someone thinks we need. So we can feel alive. And stay alive.

The second-century Christian Irenaeus said the best way for Christians to show the world what God looks like is for us to be fully alive. Henry David Thoreau said most of us “lead lives of quiet desperation” and go to the grave with the song still in us (Walden, p. 10).

In this season of Advent, we open ourselves to the Word of God who became human in Jesus Christ. We open ourselves to this living, risen One. Who creates us for life. And who gives us what we need to stay alive.

The Word was first,

the Word present to God,

God present to the Word.

The Word was God,

in readiness for God from day one.

Everything was created through the Word;

nothing – not one thing! – came into being without him.

What came into existence was Life,

and the Life was Light to live by.

The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;

the darkness couldn’t put it out (or understand it).

(adapted from The Message)

The Gospel-writer John uses poetry to tell us the person of the Trinity who is the Word is Life and Light. This Life-Light creates life and gives us what we need to stay alive.

A few chapters after the Life-Light blazes out of the darkness and into this world as Jesus, Jesus says, “I have come, that you may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10.10).

Abundant life.

Life overflowing with fullness.

Life blazing through any darkness that seeks to send us to the grave with the song still in us.

This is the Life-Light that blazed into the world that first Christmas.

In Advent, we remember the Word coming into the world as Jesus Christ. And Advent is much more than remembering. We remember this birth. At the same time, we know Jesus Christ is alive. Easter’s empty tomb promises us the risen Jesus Christ, who is the Life-Light, is alive right here, right now. This Advent, the Life-Light shines through our world – through individuals, families, churches, communities, institutions, and nations. Today, I hear the Life-Light saying,

I came into the world to give you what you need to stay alive.

When the darkness doesn’t understand you or tries to put you out, don’t be afraid.

I hold you in my love and power. I am Light and Life for you.

How are you doing showing the world how to live?

How are you doing showing the world how to stay alive?

Recently, my Dad sent me a column he’d written about health care reform for our hometown newspaper. He scribbled a note on the bottom of the article. He said the state of the economy, the environment, and the rise in religious extremism in the world today make him feel like his generation isn’t passing on to future generations a world that will be very good to live in.

Nine years ago, the bloodiest century in human history drew to a close. I grieve that, this week, our president chose a policy in Afghanistan that will only add to the bloodshed. We may be the world’s only remaining military superpower, but we are no superpower when it comes to imagination.

We have identified an “enemy”. And the only way our policy-makers can imagine responding to enemies is to kill them. The only way we can imagine staying alive, and keeping others alive, is by killing.

Our Life-Light told us the only way to stay alive is not to kill our enemies, but to find ways to love them (Matthew 5.44ff; Luke 6.27ff). Most of us Christians don’t take this teaching of Jesus seriously. Most of us believe talking about nations loving their enemies instead of killing them is dangerous, naïve, and grossly unrealistic. But remember the Waorani tribe I talked about last month (for a full description, see Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct, by Michael McCullough, Jossey-Bass, 2008, pp. 213-14). The Waorani are an indigenous group in Ecuador know for their blood feuds. If you killed a member of my family, then I’d get my friends together to kill you or someone you loved. Then the cycle of killing the enemy would start all over again. These blood feuds threatened the Waorani with extinction. They were literally killing each other off. Then a group of Christian missionaries arrived. Some Waorani killed five of them. Then the people who killed these missionaries learned that they had had guns on them when they were killed. They had refused to defend themselves if that meant killing their attackers. Realizing that it’s possible for people to live with this kind of love for others, the Waorani who killed the missionaries became Christians. And they refused to continue living by an eye for an eye. Now, when a loved one was killed, they refused to kill in return.

Their numbers are increasing because they now refuse to hate their enemies. The love of the Life-Light shines through them. And gave them what they needed to stay alive. We Christians need to show our government that our nation can be better than this.

These days, the air is filled with Christmas musak. So how do we hear the song that imagines a new way to stay alive in these days? How might we live into this Advent season and beyond as his Body,

making real his song of life and new life?

I’d like to share two sources of wisdom.

First: in the second verse of our opening hymn, “Today I Awake”, we sang,

Today I arise and Christ is beside me.

He walked through the dark to scatter new light.

Yes, Christ is alive, and beckons his people

to hope and to heal, resist and invite (by John Bell © 1989 GIA Publications).

One way we as the Body of Christ show this world about living and about staying alive is by being a community who hopes, heals, resists, and invites.

Hope and resistance are active things. One writer says, Hope believes in spite of the evidence … and watches the evidence change. Hope and resistance don’t surrender to the forces that try to silence us by telling us what’s realistic or possible, what’s practical or safe. The vision of those who hope and resist moves the world where we never thought we could go.

When we are a community that heals and invites, we tell people they have another chance.

They thought the end of the story had been written … but after being offered healing and invitation, they discover there are pages in their life story they never knew were there.

So they turn a page. And they find an open door …

“You asked me what I would like to have,” the poet Alex Noble writes. More than I would like to have knowledge, more than I would like to have certainty, I would like to have a door opening into a wide field, filled with songs of small birds, filled with light, filled with dancing and with gladness. And far across the field, another door opening into Summer, into wilderness, a greening of imaginations. And finally, at a great distance, another door, opening, opening …

The second source of wisdom:

what a youth pastor is learning from the youth he has spent his career walking beside. His words are on the back page of the bulletin: “[T]he … question youth [are] asking in every interaction with adults [is], ‘Do you know how to stay alive?’ Beneath the anxiety, youth want to know how to live fully in this world. They are asking: Do you know how to become yourself despite the constant messages telling you you’re lacking? Do you know how to keep from becoming overwhelmed by the pain and suffering in the world? Do you know how to find a home, a place of welcome and relationship? Can you tell me how to stay hopeful and creative in a world obsessed with violence, death, and conformity? Do you know where I can offer my gifts meaningfully in a world consumed with trivia? How do I stay alive? How do I remain open to God and others when so many seem closed, distant, and angry? They hunger to know how to live well, how to avoid the despair and sullenness that seems to possess many adults” (Mark Yaconelli, Contemplative Youth Ministry, Practicing the Presence of Jesus, Zondervan, 2006, pp. 66-7).

Do you know how to stay alive?

My friends, we are the Body of Christ. Through us, Christ our Life-Light yearns to blaze in the world’s darkness. As hope and heal, resist and invite, we love this world into a new way of staying alive. We teach it a song this world never knew it had in it. Amen.