Free to worship him without fear, *

Preachers tell us we need prophets. Prophets tell us what is really going on. They are not primarily people who predict the future. They tell us what is going on right now in our present situation and what it means in the light of the sovereignty of God. Sometimes what they have to say lasts beyond their own time. Isaiah and Baruch, for example. John the Baptist, for another. And Zechariah, John's father.

A more modern prophet lived in the last century. He was a German Lutheran theologian, and he spent most of his life in Berlin. Most of his life. He visited Spain, New York City, England, and Sweden. And at the end of his life he was not in Berlin, he was in a prison camp.

What had he done to earn that? From the beginnings of his country's turn to national socialism, he had spoken out to his fellow Christians about what it meant. What it ultimately meant. 

To some of them, it meant good times ahead. What could be better than a strong leader who would clean house and bring church and state together to strengthen the nation? 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for that was his name, saw differently. He was not alone, but he did not, at the end, have many friends. There were family members who were much more, or much less, implicated in resistance to the national socialist regime that took over their country.

What he did at first and for many years was simply to point out what it meant for the church to merge its identity into a national project. What it meant not to be an independent voice, for justice, for the poor, for the person on the edge of society, and for the person pushed there by politics. 

During the war he became involved in working for military intelligence, but while he worked there he was also a courier for the resistance movement, trying to build bridges for democracy with people in other countries. And his main clandestine work for awhile was raising money to allow Jews to seek safe haven in Switzerland.

He was famously involved, but only peripherally, in a plot to kill Hitler. That plot failed in July 1944 and gradually the conspirators were rounded up. Eventually they came for Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

But that is not the end of the story. In prison he was able to write friend and family, and continue to develop his understanding of what was going on. He continued to be a prophet.

One thing he said that I have been thinking about puts a different spin on Advent.

Advent we rightly hold to be a time of preparation, of repentance and renewal, in anticipation of the arrival of Christ at Christmas. 

It is a time of hope, hope that bridges the distance between faith and love, between what we hold to be true and how we put it into action.

That is what got Dietrich Bonhoeffer into trouble. Most pastors just went along with what was going on - or took quieter ways to resist.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer had taught something important to think about.

What Christmas means to us, Christmas that is coming, is hope. It means the arrival of God in our world, bringing peace on earth. The good news is even better: Christmas means that he is already here.

God is already active in the world. How can we not love a season that invites us to begin to live like that? We are invited this pre-season, as every season pre- Savior, to look at ourselves and see what God sees in us: not mortal sinners but eternally beloved children.  

We see the love of parent and stranger, community and chorus of angels, shining the love of God on one child. But not only him.

Children in the Holy Land today, in places torn by war, civil strife, or natural disaster, children desperately crossing waste places through the desert to hoped-for new homes of safety, children placed in foster homes or cherished by grandparents, children safe and embraced by loving families, all these have the light of the love of God shone on them.

And when they grow up, they may not be as cuddly, but they are still children of God's grace. They are beloved of God. Each of them, all of them. We are with them. 

We know we need Advent. It's short notice to get ready. To begin to see the impact of God's present - since the beginning - in the world.

We know we want Advent. We want wreaths and glory to the king and simmering cider and cookies and greetings from strangers and all the rest. The chance to give to relieve the suffering and brighten the days of the lonely. The chance to give and the chance to receive. For we have all received, before we have had a chance to give, God's love.

God of Freedom, protect those who worship amid fear, and grant courage to those barred from sacred spaces. Soften the hearts of those in power, that they may choose mercy over oppression. Bring peace to every street and let justice flow through the land. May all worship in freedom and safety, and may peace and dignity be restored to all.

Lord in your mercy…hear our prayer

Sabeel weekly newsletter, November 11, 2024. 

https://sabeel.org/wave-of-prayer-218/

Second Sunday of Advent
Year C
RCL
Baruch 5:1-9 
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6
Canticle 16

Second Sunday of Advent, 2024: December 8th. Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson. 8 & 10:30am.

• Baruch 5:1-9
• Philippians 1:3-11
• Luke 3:1-6
• Canticle 16

Free to worship him without fear, *
holy and righteous in his sight
all the days of our life.

http://opera.stanford.edu/iu/libretti/messiah.htm

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness; prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
(Isaiah 40: 1-3)

Ev'ry valley shall be exalted, and ev'ry moutain and hill made low; the crooked straight and the rough places plain.
(Isaiah 40: 4)

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
(Isaiah 40: 5)

Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts: Yet once a little while and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations; and the desire of all nations shall come.
(Haggai 2: 6-7)

It is the time of year that we remember that the Christ has come before. Much of the run-up to Advent, at the end of the long season after Pentecost that culminates in the feast of Christ the King, reminds us that we await the Messiah. His second coming is anticipated with fear and desire; His first coming, with joy.

Joyful anticipation is a way to see Advent through to Christmas. Penitence or at least preparation is another. In fact we do both, as we recall and renew the promise of ages, that the Lord will comfort his people and set them on the right path. They will need to seek the right path. This applies not just to the ancient nation of the Hebrews in time long remembered, but in our own time and in our own lives.

For at the very last, when Zechariah proclaims in song the prophecy and its fulfillment, we grasp fundamental freedoms: freedom to worship him without fear. This comes out of promise and out of preparation. Anticipation, of the coming liberation. Not domination, but freedom. 

FDR addressed his country once (January 6th 1941) on the state of the union in a speech noted for his articulation of Four Freedoms:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want--which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-franklin-roosevelts-annual-message-to-congress

https://www.fdrlibrary.org/four-freedoms

FDR was an Episcopalian. He kept the Book of Common Prayer by his bedside. And every morning that he said Morning Prayer out of that book, he would have heard the words of the song of Zechariah:

Free to worship him without fear.

He did not say freedom would only come with the second coming of Christ. He did not say that it fully had with his first. But with Christ we could strive to see the day when that freedom, and those freedoms, became clear, evident, more real in our lives and in our deeds that ever before. 

There is sliding backwards. There is failure. There is often despair. These are only human. 

The divine hope, the divine promise, and the human response in faith and love, persevere.

What will we do this Advent day to prepare the way? The way to the Cross, yes, but through the Cross to the dawn from on high that shall break upon us, as promised, as the reign of God becomes real to us.

To shine on those who dwell in darkness - is partly our job. Near and far, friend and stranger, there are those among us in the human family with whom we walk the way of peace who need our company.

We accompany those of different abilities, backgrounds, and even faiths, as we walk toward peace. 

The reign of God - 'already but not yet' in the familiar phrase - comes closer when we come closer to God.

JRL+