First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Isaiah 40 and Mark 1

“Preparations and Provisions”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

December 7^th, 2008

I wish there had been a list of rules given when I was ordained. I wish someone had said, here are some important tips. Tips like always preach a happy sermon on Palm Sunday. It isn’t that it has to be trivial or silly, but your sermon on Palm Sunday needs to convey a sense of joy. Another tip would be: mention mothers on Mothers Day. You would think these things would be self-explanatory, but they’re not. The lectionary calendar and the hallmark schedule of special days don’t always jive.

You would think that the hymnal would come with tips like this. Tips for young pastors choosing hymns. The current hymnal says, National Hymns. It should read: choose these hymns on the Fourth of July and Veterans Day. And where our hymnal has maybe ten advent hymns and forty Christmas carols, there is no advisory aid that says, fail to sing the carols in Advent at your peril. Singing Christmas songs after the trees have been thrown away will just annoy people. It’s too late.

And there could be other tips like show up. Just show up. Another one is read everything, especially things you wouldn’t choose or are certain to disagree with. I wish someone had said to me when I arrived in my first parish that while there is “no crying in baseball” that doesn’t apply here. At some point you will start burying and marrying and baptizing and bidding farewell to people you adore.

I am envisioning here a kind of box of practical wisdom and lore that might be filled with some examples of best practice. Maybe a few sermons from pastors that deeply resonated with people. Historic photos should be in this “open upon entry” box for pastors in their first church. If I were making such a box I would put in Peter Drucker’s Managing the Non-Profit Board, as I for one didn’t know there were boards in churches that would require my management skills. (I know skill is a bit of a stretch here.)

At the bottom of the box beneath all the anecdotes and lists, the helpful books and safety tips, though, would be a cryptic note written in nearly illegible handwriting; perhaps it would be torn; at the very least it should be frayed. On the note the new pastor would read, “beware of the Civil War.”

For those who are inclined to take good advice they would follow, obey, and thus avoid the shelf after shelf of books with such titles as Grant and Lee; they will never know who McClellan was; Andersonville will just be some city in the south; and most importantly they will remain free from the lens that seems to redefine our nation and the landscape of freedom and devotion to the principles of being a people.

At some point you need to know these things. You need to know that more than 600,000 people died in four years; as a pastor trying to cross the wires of what it means to be right with God and right with each other in this place, at some point you will need to ask what does it mean that a nation bitterly divided found a common ground in grief and thus transcended all the politics to be a people again, at least to be a white people. It would take another hundred years and more dead before we would be one people without a need to qualify it with color or creed.

For the most part I have heeded the imaginary warning “beware of the Civil War.” Last year I started to venture beyond Lincoln and was fascinated enough to know this was dangerous. This year though I waded even deeper. After my sermon on Bull Run and fast days I thought I was safe. But there is a reason why caution is called for. I am blaming Tom Walker for this. Tom listened to my Thanksgiving sermon and said, “I have got something for you.” What he had was nine videotapes of Ken Burns’ documentary The Civil War. This is twelve hours of narration and photos and a lamenting fiddle playing. He dropped this off in my office and when I brought it home it sat as a kind of dare next to our television.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I watched the first four hours of this Herculean collection of images and first hand accounts. Kathy came in from time to time to scowl at me with a look that said, the day before Thanksgiving is not a time to check out, it’s a time to cook and clean or at the very least play with your children. I pointed to our daughter Laura who was watching one of the tapes with me to say, “I am interacting.”

I maintained enough sanity not to watch any of these on Thursday. But on Friday I got up early and started to make my way through the remaining eight hours. At three o’clock I was down to the last tape. My eyes hurt from the effort, but I didn’t complain. I did debate a bit as to whether I should leave one for the next day. But the scowls I received suggested better to concentrate my misdeed. I am glad I did.

The last episode of the documentary was a kind of wrap-up. If you hadn’t heard the thesis before this point in the narrative and the claims of historians, it was stated directly. The point they tried to convey was that America was a hope after the Revolutionary War, it was a child of possibility as de Tocqueville walked the young country; in the Civil War, ironically, we became a people; we became a country of principle and ideal on the altar of sacrifice. Everything before was revolt; this was our redemption.

To make the point they described the fifty-year reunion of Gettysburg. All the living veterans of the battle were tracked down and invited to attend a Fourth of July celebration together. A tent city was constructed for the veterans of both the North and the South and they came in droves. By this point they were mostly in their seventies. There were many who still bore the markers of the conflicts in the missing legs and arms. But mainly what they bore was a desire to be together and abide in the midst of one of the most tragic events our nation has ever seen.

On the Fourth of July, not only our national birthday but also the day after the final day of the battle of Gettysburg, the veterans were asked to participate in a reenactment of Pickett’s Charge. Now Pickett was a confederate general who was charged by Lee to lead his men on what was in essence a suicide mission. On the Third of July in 1863 in a small Pennsylvania town it was clear to Lee that he had to win this battle at all costs so he sent Pickett’s men, 12,000 of them, marching across a field and then told them to walk up a rise toward Cemetery Ridge where the union soldiers stood behind rock walls, not an easy task.

On the very day of the battle fifty years later the veterans all took their places. The confederate veterans stood out in the field and the union men took up their places behind the rock walls. Slowly, remember these fellas were not spry, slowly the confederate men made their way toward the rise. As they started to walk up the hill the union soldiers panicked. They couldn’t take it. They just couldn’t do it. And then they bolted. They climbed over the rock walls and started walking toward the confederate veterans. Eyewitnesses say they ran out to them. What they did was run up to their former enemies and embraced them, begged them to stop, and then wept together. The reenactment came to a stop. Some things need only, can only, be lived once.

It may just be that I have some of the Civil War fever that comes over the unprepared, but when I read the passage from Isaiah where he says comfort, comfort my people and then speak tenderly to Jerusalem; tell her her sin has been paid; she has paid double for what was owed: when I heard this I couldn’t help but think of those veterans in the field running out to the foe now friend and saying, no, this price has been paid. This is not for us to repay. We paid double. We didn’t know it but our sacrifice was compounded as we fought against ourselves.

I was reluctant to follow this thread, as this is advent. This is the time where you should hear sermons on how peace is possible. Suffering should not be a big theme with Christmas so near. It is not as if there is a rule about this, but it should be on the list of important safety tips. Don’t preach about civil war battles, even reenactments of them during Advent. I would put it on a top ten list. I was ready to leave this story for another day, but better angels prevailed.

The better angel was what the New York Times called one of the best books of the year. Reading the synopsis and then reading the text itself it was as if I cried uncle. Alright, alright already. The book that was considered one of the best was called The Suffering Nation. Again, not the sort of book you should read during Advent, this is a time for Chicken Soup for the Christmas soul. Suffering Nation? No.

But the thesis of the book was what had lingered since the documentary marathon. It was this idea that sacrifice provided us with a nation. Suffering taken up by so many paid the price for generations to come.

I was sitting in a meeting this week where I saw this idea come up in an unexpected way. The comment was something I had heard countless times before. Someone was entitled to something; children had a right to a certain level of care; people should be given benefits and goods just because they are there. Usually I chafe against this notion; I say both to myself and others that our rights are privileges with responsibility not an entitlement to be expected. But then I remembered those soldiers in the field holding one another and weeping and I thought what if the bill has been paid? What if as a people we have paid, in essence, for the benefit of others?

During Advent we like to hear Isaiah say prepare the way of the Lord. David Elmer led us in this last week as he always does. And the Baptist repeats these words in our Gospel lesson. He is there to prepare the way for the one for whom he is unworthy to untie his sandal. His baptism with water is supposed to prepare the people for the baptism of the spirit. Yet what John does is not only prepare, but provide; in giving up his life he provides for the way of Jesus’ sacrifice. John the Baptist is known as the last of the prophets. With his death a way has been made, the double payment of Isaiah is complete. Now the people are prepared and provided for.

This is really a foreign notion for us. We don’t talk this way today. I make a way for myself; I choose for myself; I pay my own way. Oh, we know we didn’t pay for the highways and the bridges; few people are alive to remember what it meant to fight on Omaha Beach at Normandy when the sacrifice was for our people, our vision of democracy. We are still confused by the sacrifices of Korea and Vietnam and for all intents and purposes we are not seeing the point of Iraq, which doesn’t bode well for those in harms way. We live in a time where we have come to believe that only an individual is called to suffer or sacrifice. That is their choice; their personal act of devotion. We can appreciate it but we fail to see the way it makes us who we are.

Isaiah says when the Lord comes to restore Jerusalem he will bring his reward with him; he will carry it in his arms as he gathers his flock to him. This is Second Isaiah speaking to exiles in Babylon. He is promising to make them a people again; to gather those who have been thrown far and wide; to bless those who have been cursed. What is hard for us to see here, I believe, is that he is talking to a people not to a person. When Isaiah talks about Jerusalem being a high place, he is talking to a people who know that Jerusalem is in rubble; it is a field of weeds and wild flowers. The city was no more. His words are meant to say I will restore you; your sins have been paid in full, even twice of what was owed.

You would think that as a people the one thing we would understand is debt. We know what it means to be in debt; to have debt; perhaps we may know what it means to be drowning in debt. And knowing the way credit and lending works, we really know what it means to pay two fold. That is always the gulp I take when I sign a mortgage: in the end of thirty years I will pay for the house twice. Despite this immersion, I feel we are not in sync with what it means for the death of the Baptist and then the death of Jesus to have made a way for us, to have paid for our sins, to have wiped out what was owed, our debt.

There is that great scene in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life where the stock market has fallen and the banks are closing down and the Saving and Loan opens. Remember the scene where George Bailey is trying to convince the people that their debts and deposits are not an individual thing, but they are shared. Your money he says is in his home and you have a home not because you paid, but because we are all in this together. If you take your money out you are in essence hurting others. There is the one person who doesn’t get; he wants to have what is his. But then a woman asks if she can have thirteen fifty, just enough to help her through. George Bailey kisses her for her sacrifice.

I am not sure if we see the death of Christ as covering the debt of our sins; I am not sure we see this as having prepared and provided for our lives. John took all of Jerusalem and Judea out to the Jordan to be baptized in muddy water to say we need to understand this life is a gift; this land in which we are dwelling comes out of this water like a birth. It is a gift fully paid for; our sins have been paid for. All you need to do is repent and recognize that God forgives us and then we must forgive one another.

Our life has been provisioned, stocked, with mercy, the way has been cleared and paved, a highway has been formed for us to approach God. This has not been our doing, but it is our benefit. In the same way as a nation we were born not by our sacrifice, but the blood and tears of others before us. Somehow we need to remember that we are prepared for eternal life, a life of the spirit, a blessing that is extravagant and seemingly endless because someone died for us. We are given life because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

As you prepare for Christmas, as you trim and wrap, give and receive, remember this year the great sacrifices that have been given and are being given. Remember we have provided for, someone has paid the mortgage of our soul for us. Remember and be ready to give thanks for such a gift.

None of us have made our own way. None of us have provided for ourselves. All we have is a gift given, a sacrifice made on our behalf. Amen.