Midweek Advent 3 – The Spirit Blows Anew

This year for our Greene community midweek Advent worship services, we’re using the them “An Abundant Advent” based on Water Brueggemann’s book Celebrating Abundance: Devotions for Advent (Amazon link). Here’s my sermon for our third and final midweek Advent service, on December 19, 2018. This sermon draws heavily from two of Brueggemann’s devotions.

Matthew 1:18-21
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
Word of God; Word of Life.

We are still in the third week of Advent, not to Christmas yet, but I trust you are all familiar with the Christmas story we’re preparing for. If not, I apologize for the spoiler!

This is a familiar human story. A man and a woman are engaged to be married, and it so happens that before the wedding, she’s pregnant. Scandalous perhaps, but hardly unheard of.

Except, the woman’s fiancé is not the father. It’s not his child. Definitely scandalous.

Except, there is no father. Mary is not just a single unwed mother, she’s a virgin. Now the story is interesting.

Many theologians have attached great meaning to this idea of the immaculate conception and whether a child conceived in this way could escape the curse of original sin and all that might be interesting, but Matthew doesn’t go there.

Instead, notice what Matthew emphasizes: The child is from the Holy Spirit. Matthew the narrator says it, and then the angel says it to Joseph. This child is from the Holy Spirit.

God’s Spirit is up to something, and not for the first time. In the beginning, when the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, it was the Spirit of God hovering, blowing over the waters. It was God’s Spirit, God’s wind that blew the waters back in Egypt to let God’s people escape from their oppression and into promised freedom.

It is God’s Spirit who calls apostles and prophets and martyrs beyond themselves to do radical, dangerous acts of obedience. It is God’s Spirit who begins something new when the world is exhausted, when our imagination fails and our lives shut down in silence and despair.

One of the very few Hebrew words I know is ruach. It’s the word for the Holy Spirit, and it means wind. The breath of God is like the wind – you can’t see it, but you can experience it. You can feel it and see its effects.
In Greek, ruach is translated into pneuma. Pneuma is air in motion, wind, breath. Maybe you’re familiar with a pneumatic jackhammers, or pneumatic drills. Pneumatics is the branch of engineering that uses compressed air or gasses, from that root word, pneuma.

That’s the word the Bible uses to describe God’s Spirit. And God’s Spirit is in the business of breathing life.

Three weeks ago, Christin and I were at the Iowa state historical museum in Des Moines. If you’re in Des Moines, it’s well worth visiting. I learned a lot about Iowa history, lots about Iowa troops in the Civil War, Iowa’s Native American history, pioneer life, and my favorite exhibit, a stump.

If you can’t read that picture, it says, “Cut in Washington State, this section of spruce was unloaded in Des Moines by mistake while en route to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The tree was 267 years old when cut, and has a diameter of sixty-six inches.”

I love that it’s there by accident and that it’s not actually from Iowa. It’s just a piece of old dead wood. Technically, it probably doesn’t count as a stump, but when I hear this next passage from the prophet Isaiah, this is what I picture.

Isaiah 11:1-3
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

A stump is what’s left when the tree is cut off, killed, cut down. A stump is good for nothing. It’s literally just dead wood. We pay professionals to come remove dead stumps so they’ll stop taking up space in our nice lawns. It’s the corpse of a tree. Here, Isaiah is talking about the stump of Jesse. Jesse is the father of King David, the greatest king of Israel. Since David’s time, hundreds of years earlier, the monarchy has fallen apart.

Like Pastor Cathy talked about last week, the kingdom has split, the chosen people have been defeated and taken into exile. The promise God gave to Israel of an everlasting kingdom seems forgotten.

All that’s left is a useless, dead stump, the corpse of a kingdom, the relic of a promise. But, the Spirit of God is at work. Ruach. When God’s Spirit starts blowing, things change. Out of that dead stump comes a shoot, a glimpse of new life. Out of death comes life. Out of betrayal at a last supper comes the promise of God’s presence. Out of torture and death on a cross comes salvation and love for the world. Out of the tomb comes resurrection.

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. The season of Advent is all about the Holy Spirit starting to blow. In this story, the Spirit is blowing in something new. The wind is picking up.

God is making a way, not just for a child to be born, but for the world to be saved; for the world to be transformed; for you to be renewed. God is doing something new.

One more passage from Isaiah, this time from chapter 43.

Isaiah 43:19-20
Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

The season of Advent is about embracing the new thing God is doing. We know the old ways of life, where all of us will eventually die, and where dead things stay dead. We remember the past, often as either much better than it was or alternatively, as much worse than it was.

The people of Israel in exile spent a great deal of their time pondering how this had happened, what they had done for God to allow them to be defeated. They went over and over their sin, all the warnings from prophets they’d ignored.

We’re not that different. Sometimes it’s rather nice to keep going over how hurt or offended we are, to wallow in our guilt or anger. Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

God’s Spirit is blowing. God is on the move. A new shoot is coming out of the dead stump. The child is from the Holy Spirit. God is breaking into the world. Do you feel it? Can you perceive it?

In the birth of Jesus, God comes into the world to offer hope beyond our imagination. Jesus offers healing and grace, forgiveness and transformation, new life. The blue of Advent is the color of the new dawn of God’s light entering in. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
Happy Advent.