The Christmas Cactus
Sermon
Hope Beneath the Surface
Cycle A First Lesson Sermons for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany
Object:
Christmas has a way of bringing back memories. One that came to my mind as I was preparing this message was when my family would be driving home at night in the car and my father would lead us in singing a song. To all of us family members who remember those fun, cozy journeys toward home, there are many layers of meaning to the words. The song goes like this:
There's a long, long trail awinding,
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And the white moon beams.
There's a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true,
Till the day when I'll be goin' down
That long, long trail with you.
I've always found this song, which I understand comes from WWI days, to be a very emotional one for me. I think it's because it deals with the deepest yearnings in everyone's heart. It speaks of seeking after comfort and joy and fulfillment in those deep parts of our being, where we are still children, and where sitting on the lap of an adult in a big stuffed chair is still both possible and desirable.
The journey to the place of our dreams is, of course, a lifelong experience, filled with disappointments, surprises, and enormous challenge.
I have a bias which I will admit to you right up front. I believe that everyone's journey, everyone's drive and yearning, is to be fully connected with the One who created him or her. The drives for success, for money, for power, for a "high,'' for comfort, for security, whether we realize it or not, are attempted replacements of the basic need to be connected with God. Unfortunately many people have bought into the lie that the hunger they feel can be sated by something else, a substitute, like money or sex or a hot car or a good movie or a new job.
We are all on a journey. And it is a very "long, long trail awinding'' indeed, into the land of our hopes and dreams, into the arms of our loving God. Such a journey has been known by people as long as there have been people, for God placed that desire for relationship with God in our very soul. This is what Christmas is all about.
For the people in the day of Isaiah the prophet, 740 years before Jesus was born, their understanding of God was still a mixed message, all jumbled up with their hopes and dreams of deliverance and redemption as a nation. The Jews were a people who had known occupation and threat thereof, a people who knew great kings and leaders as well as weak ones who were unfaithful to God.
For the Jews, the people of Judah, to whom Isaiah was speaking, Zion was always the "land of their dreams.'' Zion, a word we hear in hymns and scripture, came to mean, over the centuries, the place where one could meet God. Specifically it is a rock outcropping near Jerusalem, now covered by the mosque of Omar. This rock traditionally was the site where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son Isaac. In time the entire City of David, Jerusalem, came to be known as Zion, the City of God. Only later were the Jews to learn that God was to be found everywhere.
Isaiah anticipated the time when, due to their moral and spiritual collapse, they would be conquered by the Babylonians and exiled to Babylon to the east. That finally happened around 600 B.C. Their only hope and every prayer during their 50 plus years of exile was to return to Zion, Jerusalem, the place where their God dwelt. Until then they had to live in Babylon, a pagan land, where people laughed at their faith.
Remember these words of the Psalmist written in the days of their exile?
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!'' How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
(Psalm 137:1-4 RSV)
To these people Isaiah wrote the words of the 35th chapter, to a people wishing to go home, wishing for a way back through the long, long trail awinding through scary and barren land, to the land of Zion, the land of their dreams, where they could meet God. What they were to learn was that they needed to take that journey back in their hearts even more than they needed to return bodily.
Is it not true that we are not far from being such a people? We are wanderers in a land that cares little for the holy and worships the idols of wealth and power. We are people who have been baptized as disciples of Jesus, one who came to live before us the radical new life which puts God before money and power, and others before ourselves. It's no wonder King Herod tried to kill the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. He was going to ruin everything!
I heard recently about a meeting of church leaders gathered to talk about major issues of the day. At one point someone suggested that, in order to properly celebrate Christmas, we should spend a minimal amount on presents and focus on the real meaning of Christmas. At this suggestion an irate man stood up and said, "What are you trying to do, ruin the economy and put people out of work? You call that Christian?''
We are on a journey. We are on a journey to Zion, to meet God. We are on a journey to the land of our dreams, some of them understood and clear, and others vague and only a deep longing for something more.
Such was the state of affairs in the world when "the fullness of time came,'' and a woman was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and Jesus was born. In the midst of darkness and despair and a religion heavy with oughts and shoulds and unbearable burdens of countless rituals to get right with God, came Jesus. In the midst of a land where religion was dust in the mouth to many, so much so that many had given up trying, there came an understanding of God's love.
In the midst of a time when people were in a religious desert, where they thought they had to earn the love of an angry, far off God through rituals and sacrifices, came Emmanuel, "God with us,'' who taught that God already loved them with an everlasting love, and called them to love God, their neighbor and themselves as a response to that love. There came streams of water in their religious desert.
Isaiah wrote to exiles who wanted to go home to Zion, thinking that that was the only way to get close to God. Do you think that you need to be in some other place or circumstance in order to get close to God, in order to continue the journey? Would you like to inhabit some other desert, any other desert than your own?
I was touched by a quote from Scott Russell Sanders:
... to withhold yourself from where you are is to be cut off from communion with the source. It has taken me half a lifetime of searching to realize that the likeliest path to the ultimate ground leads through my local ground.
(Context, November 1, 1993)
It was "local ground'' that produced Mary and Joseph; it was local ground that produced Jesus; and it is the local ground where God is at work in your life and mine, bringing streams of living water flowing into our desert spots on our life's journey.
An ornithologist once pointed out that there are two kinds of birds flying over our deserts. There are the hummingbirds and the vultures. The vultures only see rotting flesh, because that's all they look for, and they thrive on it. But hummingbirds pay no attention to dead animals. Instead they look for tiny blossoms and cactus flowers. Each bird finds what it's looking for.
Is it possible that there are some flowers in the midst of the pain in your life that are left untouched by your gaze, whose nectar is waiting to refresh you, a gift of God, manna from heaven?
There's an amazing parallel to Isaiah's 35th chapter, in the 84th Psalm, verses 5 and 6.
Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.
Isaiah writes of the highway to Zion, to the land of their dreams, where God is no longer distant, a highway which shall be called the Holy Way.
The Psalmist writes, "Happy are those whose strength is in [God], in whose heart are the highways to Zion.''
Do you hear that? "In whose heart are the highways to Zion.'' No matter what the outward circumstances may be, no matter the desert dust and heat and wind, the journey to Zion is made in the heart. The local circumstances make up the territory, but they are not the highway to God. The highway is in the heart. The long, long trail is in the heart, where neither winning the lottery or losing the winning ticket in the trash makes up the road surface, though it may be a dramatic part of the scenery.
Some of you must have a Christmas cactus. What a gorgeous plant that is. Dainty, bright red blossoms sprouting out on the end of the dark green flat leaves. It was right in the midst of the desert of political unrest, poverty, and religious cynicism that God sent Jesus to live and to be a blossom of hope and truth, the means of connecting us once and for all with our Creator, who loves us more than we can possibly know.
God is always doing such things for us as we traverse the long, long trail awinding into the land of our dreams. No matter the desert through which your life's journey may be taking you this Christmas, no matter the scenery, take to the highway of God. It is that Holy Way in your heart, whose presence Isaiah foretold and whose reality God revealed in a manger, on a cross and in an empty tomb. It is a pool of water in the desert; it is the blossom on the desert cactus; it is the Way, the truth and the life.
It's what really makes it ... a Merry Christmas.
There's a long, long trail awinding,
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And the white moon beams.
There's a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true,
Till the day when I'll be goin' down
That long, long trail with you.
I've always found this song, which I understand comes from WWI days, to be a very emotional one for me. I think it's because it deals with the deepest yearnings in everyone's heart. It speaks of seeking after comfort and joy and fulfillment in those deep parts of our being, where we are still children, and where sitting on the lap of an adult in a big stuffed chair is still both possible and desirable.
The journey to the place of our dreams is, of course, a lifelong experience, filled with disappointments, surprises, and enormous challenge.
I have a bias which I will admit to you right up front. I believe that everyone's journey, everyone's drive and yearning, is to be fully connected with the One who created him or her. The drives for success, for money, for power, for a "high,'' for comfort, for security, whether we realize it or not, are attempted replacements of the basic need to be connected with God. Unfortunately many people have bought into the lie that the hunger they feel can be sated by something else, a substitute, like money or sex or a hot car or a good movie or a new job.
We are all on a journey. And it is a very "long, long trail awinding'' indeed, into the land of our hopes and dreams, into the arms of our loving God. Such a journey has been known by people as long as there have been people, for God placed that desire for relationship with God in our very soul. This is what Christmas is all about.
For the people in the day of Isaiah the prophet, 740 years before Jesus was born, their understanding of God was still a mixed message, all jumbled up with their hopes and dreams of deliverance and redemption as a nation. The Jews were a people who had known occupation and threat thereof, a people who knew great kings and leaders as well as weak ones who were unfaithful to God.
For the Jews, the people of Judah, to whom Isaiah was speaking, Zion was always the "land of their dreams.'' Zion, a word we hear in hymns and scripture, came to mean, over the centuries, the place where one could meet God. Specifically it is a rock outcropping near Jerusalem, now covered by the mosque of Omar. This rock traditionally was the site where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son Isaac. In time the entire City of David, Jerusalem, came to be known as Zion, the City of God. Only later were the Jews to learn that God was to be found everywhere.
Isaiah anticipated the time when, due to their moral and spiritual collapse, they would be conquered by the Babylonians and exiled to Babylon to the east. That finally happened around 600 B.C. Their only hope and every prayer during their 50 plus years of exile was to return to Zion, Jerusalem, the place where their God dwelt. Until then they had to live in Babylon, a pagan land, where people laughed at their faith.
Remember these words of the Psalmist written in the days of their exile?
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!'' How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
(Psalm 137:1-4 RSV)
To these people Isaiah wrote the words of the 35th chapter, to a people wishing to go home, wishing for a way back through the long, long trail awinding through scary and barren land, to the land of Zion, the land of their dreams, where they could meet God. What they were to learn was that they needed to take that journey back in their hearts even more than they needed to return bodily.
Is it not true that we are not far from being such a people? We are wanderers in a land that cares little for the holy and worships the idols of wealth and power. We are people who have been baptized as disciples of Jesus, one who came to live before us the radical new life which puts God before money and power, and others before ourselves. It's no wonder King Herod tried to kill the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. He was going to ruin everything!
I heard recently about a meeting of church leaders gathered to talk about major issues of the day. At one point someone suggested that, in order to properly celebrate Christmas, we should spend a minimal amount on presents and focus on the real meaning of Christmas. At this suggestion an irate man stood up and said, "What are you trying to do, ruin the economy and put people out of work? You call that Christian?''
We are on a journey. We are on a journey to Zion, to meet God. We are on a journey to the land of our dreams, some of them understood and clear, and others vague and only a deep longing for something more.
Such was the state of affairs in the world when "the fullness of time came,'' and a woman was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and Jesus was born. In the midst of darkness and despair and a religion heavy with oughts and shoulds and unbearable burdens of countless rituals to get right with God, came Jesus. In the midst of a land where religion was dust in the mouth to many, so much so that many had given up trying, there came an understanding of God's love.
In the midst of a time when people were in a religious desert, where they thought they had to earn the love of an angry, far off God through rituals and sacrifices, came Emmanuel, "God with us,'' who taught that God already loved them with an everlasting love, and called them to love God, their neighbor and themselves as a response to that love. There came streams of water in their religious desert.
Isaiah wrote to exiles who wanted to go home to Zion, thinking that that was the only way to get close to God. Do you think that you need to be in some other place or circumstance in order to get close to God, in order to continue the journey? Would you like to inhabit some other desert, any other desert than your own?
I was touched by a quote from Scott Russell Sanders:
... to withhold yourself from where you are is to be cut off from communion with the source. It has taken me half a lifetime of searching to realize that the likeliest path to the ultimate ground leads through my local ground.
(Context, November 1, 1993)
It was "local ground'' that produced Mary and Joseph; it was local ground that produced Jesus; and it is the local ground where God is at work in your life and mine, bringing streams of living water flowing into our desert spots on our life's journey.
An ornithologist once pointed out that there are two kinds of birds flying over our deserts. There are the hummingbirds and the vultures. The vultures only see rotting flesh, because that's all they look for, and they thrive on it. But hummingbirds pay no attention to dead animals. Instead they look for tiny blossoms and cactus flowers. Each bird finds what it's looking for.
Is it possible that there are some flowers in the midst of the pain in your life that are left untouched by your gaze, whose nectar is waiting to refresh you, a gift of God, manna from heaven?
There's an amazing parallel to Isaiah's 35th chapter, in the 84th Psalm, verses 5 and 6.
Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.
Isaiah writes of the highway to Zion, to the land of their dreams, where God is no longer distant, a highway which shall be called the Holy Way.
The Psalmist writes, "Happy are those whose strength is in [God], in whose heart are the highways to Zion.''
Do you hear that? "In whose heart are the highways to Zion.'' No matter what the outward circumstances may be, no matter the desert dust and heat and wind, the journey to Zion is made in the heart. The local circumstances make up the territory, but they are not the highway to God. The highway is in the heart. The long, long trail is in the heart, where neither winning the lottery or losing the winning ticket in the trash makes up the road surface, though it may be a dramatic part of the scenery.
Some of you must have a Christmas cactus. What a gorgeous plant that is. Dainty, bright red blossoms sprouting out on the end of the dark green flat leaves. It was right in the midst of the desert of political unrest, poverty, and religious cynicism that God sent Jesus to live and to be a blossom of hope and truth, the means of connecting us once and for all with our Creator, who loves us more than we can possibly know.
God is always doing such things for us as we traverse the long, long trail awinding into the land of our dreams. No matter the desert through which your life's journey may be taking you this Christmas, no matter the scenery, take to the highway of God. It is that Holy Way in your heart, whose presence Isaiah foretold and whose reality God revealed in a manger, on a cross and in an empty tomb. It is a pool of water in the desert; it is the blossom on the desert cactus; it is the Way, the truth and the life.
It's what really makes it ... a Merry Christmas.
