ADVENT I

"Setting the World Right: Security"

Psalm 25:1-10

Jeremiah 33:14-16

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

December 3, 2006
University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

The theme for Advent is "Setting the World Right". As we prepare for the birth of Jesus, we remember that it happened in the context of God getting fed up with the same old same-old and instead trying out something new on humanity in the person of Jesus. We remember this plan and we join God in contemplating what it might look like if we were to continue God’s work of setting the world right.

When God created the heavens and the earth, they were created good. But over the centuries humanity forgot their connection with God. Or worse, they recreated God in their own image—taking privilege, supposed racial superiority and wealth as a sign of God’s special and unique blessing upon them. The prophets sought to reign in the excesses of the Hebrew people and remind them of the goodness of all creat—that they were created to keep the world good.

Throughout Advent, we will hear the words of a truth-telling psalm and a hope-seeking Hebrew prophet as we ponder what setting the world right might entail. Each Sunday will have a different concept as its focus: Security, Purity, Strength and Clarity.
Today’s topic is Security.

We live in a time when National Security is rightly on our minds. We are vigilant against threats, and some may rightly say we have gone overboard in the interest of National Security.

In the interest of security, we as a nation have allowed: warrantless wiretapping; the searching of e-mail records; people to detained without due process; torture as an interrogation procedure; pre-emptive wars to be fought and a huge fence to be built in the desert southwest—all in the name of security.

At the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport a week or two ago, six Imams were detained as they were engaging in what some called suspicious behavior. They had the audacity to pray in public. Their prayers, their ethnicity, their language and their passion proved threatening to some other passengers. In the name of security they detained the Imams. Now we as a culture are looking again at the seeming grey area between threats to security, racism and religiously-based intolerance.

Pundits have asked Keith Ellison to prove that he’s not working for the enemies since he’s a Muslim. Others are calling foul because he dares to take his oath of office with his hand on the Quran. The American Family Association is even going so far as to call for legislation requiring people to take their oaths of office on the Bible.

These seem to me to be evidence of people’s lack of security. And I’m not just talking about national security.

I’m talking about people feeling safe in their own lives, in their own souls—protected from the creeping powers of evil in this world. Security is indeed a great concern in this world.

Jeremiah 23 and 33 record the following hopeful oracle in a chaotic world: "The days are surely coming…when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah: In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety."

We long for safety and security under the warm blanket of justice and righteousness. We long for a world set right. We long for a people living in peace. We long for a break from suspicion.

Jesus came to a land when people saw that national security was at odds with human rights. People were driven from their lands in order to pay for the great taxes instituted by the Roman Empire. People were feeling that government was not on the side of the poor and the outcast.

But the people feared the authority of the state. They feared the military might of the sate. Those who spoke against it were crucified. The Jewish leadership, trying to keep the "peace" was inept in stopping the brutality. When the prophets spoke of a Messiah, they were talking about a revolution. They were talking about setting the world right once again.

The arrival of Jesus both provided hope and threatened the security of ancient Israel. The very rumor of his existence undermined the known forms of security for the rich and powerful. This must have been why Mary sang, that "God had filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty, that God will bring down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly." (Luke 1:52, 53) The presence of this coming one both set people free and also posed a threat—so much so that Herod would seek to kill all children under two in a pre-emptive strike against any such threat to national security.

But at the same time, the coming of Jesus fulfilled a profound promise from God—namely that God would not leave the people comfortless. The coming of Jesus would establish justice and righteousness in the land. This is the essence of his moral and ethical teachings throughout his lifetime. He sought to establish justice and righteousness in people’s lives. To believe in Jesus, to be a Christian is more than saying a simple prayer and making a confessional statement. It is a lifestyle choice bathed in justice and righteousness and warmed by God’s eternal fire. This is what brings security and safety.

So where do we find ourselves as we address threats these days?

Where do we find our security?

Do we find it in elected officials of any party?

In the courts?

In the great law and justice system?

In our portfolios?

Do we find it in our homes?

In our families?

I would say that if we look to any of these we may have temporary security, but not ultimate security. All of these are human institutions. As such, they are fallible. God is the only security that is eternal.

God came to earth at Christmas to remind us that the ways of the world are not the places of ultimate security. The way God became human, born as an outcast, to unwed teenage homeless parents, on the run, away from the powers and principalities, this is how God comes into the world to show that security does not come from position and seeming power in the form of domination. God comes to the least of these. Perhaps to remind us that we are to look to all of the people of the world as God’s blessed children.

Pam Miller wrote in yesterday’s Star Tribune of security in the following way: "For the oppressed, the soul is the one thing that confinement and cruelty can’t steal." When our souls are in tact, we have a sense of security that can help us to endure great hardship.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Dorothy Day, Gustavo Parajon and so many more could not have done what they did against great odds, had they not had security in God that they were welded to a higher and more profound reality that seeks justice, righteousness, reconciliation and hope to a world.

To be a part of that movement of setting the world right, we need the security that we are joining in God’s plan of hope and love and mercy and compassion for the world.

Mary experienced this as she grew in anticipation of her child’s birth. I imagine her taking comfort in Psalm 25. The Psalmist says this: "O my God, in you I put my trust; Do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me." I can see Mary saying these very words as she realizes the implications of her unplanned pregnancy. "O my God, what will become of me? O my God, I’ll be the laughingstock of the village. O my God, my betrothed will not take me as a spouse. O my God, the people who called me their friend will not even look at me. O my God," I can just hear her crying.

But she doesn’t stop there. When all others have abandoned her, she may well quote the Psalm again: "In you I trust. Do not let me be put to shame. Do not let my enemies exult over me." It’s another way of saying "I need you for security because others have not proved trustworthy. You are the only one who has promised not to leave me comfortless."

Sisters and brothers, our ultimate security comes from God. Our earthly security comes from doing God’s work of setting the world right, bathed and warmed by the blankets of justice and righteousness.

But we can’t do any of this alone. We need to come together. We need each other. We need to support one another, challenge one another and help each other ponder how we can live safe and secure from all alarms. That is how God works in the world—through each and every one of us.

So when the Herods of the world are raging, desperately and feebly trying to scare us into submission, remember that they only promise temporary fallible security.

Real security comes from God.

Real security comes from God’s people together.

Real security sets the world right.

Real security offers hope, comfort, mercy and care to all of God’s children, especially the least of these.

When we embrace this vision, then we have power, we have blessing, we have peace, we have those holy tidings of comfort and joy that we sing about throughout the Christmas season.