A Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, Year B

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,

so that the mountains would quake at your presence--

The days in which today’s words from Isaiah were first spoken were not a good time for the people of Israel. Some 60 or so years before, their holy city Jerusalem had been destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Many of the Jewish people, including the nobility and political and business leaders who had survived the war, were carried to exile in Babylon, hundreds of miles away across the desert.

After 50 years in exile, an amazing thing had happened. As promised by earlier prophets, the Israelite’s were allowed to return home. This, they believed, would be a second Exodus, accompanied, like the first, with great signs and wonders from God. Israel’s shame would be erased. Jerusalem would be restored. Prosperity, joy and blessing would flower for all the world to see.

Reality proved much more mixed. Rebuilding the ruined city proved a challenge for the returned exiles. A foundation for a new Temple was laid, but work languished for years. Conflict with those who had not gone into exile was endemic. Simply growing food enough for the community to survive was a struggle. The glorious restoration for which they had dreamed did not materialize.

And so in today’s reading from Isaiah, we hear their frustrated, desperate cry to God to tear open the heavens, come down and do the awesome deeds they had hoped for. We hear, too, words of confession– perhaps it is their own sin that has left them in this mess. They plead with God to be angry with them no longer; to remember that they are God’s own people and to bring them the restoration that they long for.

Your holy cities have become a wilderness,

Zion has become a wilderness, 

Jerusalem, a desolation.
¹¹Our holy and beautiful house,

where our ancestors praised you,

has been burned by fire,
and all our pleasant places have become ruins.

Reading these words this week, I couldn’t help but think of some of what I saw in Liberia. That nation has suffered years of civil war and the country is greatly damaged. To be sure, you couldn’t call the capital, Monrovia, a wilderness or desolation. The streets teem with people – but most of them are poor. During the war, many had fled the rural areas looking for safety. Now the city is overcrowded, with people living in shacks or squatting in empty office buildings with no electricity or running water. Crime is a major concern, as there is a whole generation of young people who grew up knowing nothing but war. Because of that danger, barbed wire tops the walls of every going concern, including the Episcopal Cathedral.

Buildings are scarred with fire, gutted by fighting, or completely destroyed. City roads are full of potholes that would be thought huge in America – but are small compared to what you find on rural routes. In city and countryside, what cars and trucks exist are filled to capacity and beyond, with goods and sometimes people piled on the roofs. And very few of these vehicles would ever be allowed on the road in this country – they are simply too old and too dangerous.

Again and again as I asked, people told me how different it all was before the coups and the wars. I heard lament for the devastation and losses – how all their pleasant places had become ruins. I heard confession, too – a sense that though greedy and power-hungry leaders played huge role in all that had happened, the nation’s wounds grew out of long-standing divisions of class and tribe for which ordinary Liberians accepted a share of responsibility.

But if this were all I told you of my experience in Liberia, I would leave you with a woefully unbalanced picture. There is energy and life on the streets of Monrovia – people working, selling in whatever ways they can to make a living. Roads are slowly being rebuilt.

Education is functioning again – kids of all ages in colored school uniforms walk to and from school in city, towns and the country. Exiles who fled during the war have returned and are starting to rebuild lives and businesses. Life is returning, and hope – and unlike the returned Israelites in Isaiah’s time, they know it will be a long, slow and difficult process.

Also unlike those Israelites, I heard no desperate, frustrated plea for God’s dramatic intervention.

As I reflected on that, I realized that the reason for that might be that the people in Liberia have an awareness of God’s presence with them now, in the midst of the joys and challenges they face – and it is that awareness of God present, alive and active that I want most to share with you this morning.

Here are a few instances of where I learned to see God’s presence in Liberia: Many of the taxis – the most common form of falling-apart transportation – have phrases like “I trust in God” or God is in control” painted on their bumpers. Now, maybe you need to believe that in order to ride in one of those cars, but I think it speaks to a deeper sense of God’s presence in daily life.

As Rilette told me before I left, Liberian hospitality is abundant and generous. Food was rich and wonderful. I was not allowed to pay for anything except clothes I brought home as gifts for my family. In the words of last week’s, Gospel, I was a stranger and was welcomed as if I were Christ.

I saw God at work in the rebuilding of a 300-bed hospital whose medical director is the Sr. Warden of the parish I visited. Transfer of patients from the converted warehouse that had served as a makeshift hospital for years is being completed this weekend. God is at work at Cuttington University – an Episcopal institution that had to be rebuilt not once, but twice, but where students from all over the country are now learning skills that will help them renew their nation.

Dedicated clergy work hard to lead and care for their congregations without the resources – such as functioning automobiles -- we take for granted and for pay that American clergy couldn’t imagine living on – yet they keep on with their work. People without hymnals sing with an energy and passion that I’ve heard in very few American churches.

And for me, there was an extraordinary gift of God’s presence -- the opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist, preach and baptize two people last Sunday as the only white face in a congregation of over 200 hundred, using this same Prayer Book out of which I’ve worshipped for 30 years. God is palpably present in the joy, energy, hope and life of the people of Liberia. Prayer of petition and thanksgiving abound. There is an awareness of God in the midst of challenges few of us in America know.

Advent is traditionally a season of waiting for God to come -- to come as the child at Christmas; to come as the Lord of the Kingdom at the end of history. As my experience Liberia shows, there is much in world that needs to be set to rights. So it good that we should pray, wait, work and hope for God’s coming. But as we do, we should never forget the reality of God’s presence in this world now that I also experienced in Liberia. God is here; God is good, all the time.

The Rev. Jack Zamboni

November 20, 2008