WITNESS, TESTIMONY & REBUILDING

A sermon by George Pasley

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; John 1:6-8, 18-28

I want you to imagine a man named John. Not the John who wrote the gospel that we read, and not the John who came as a witness to the light, baptizing in the Jordan river, but a different John, someone a whole lot like someone you know.

John wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention in church Sunday morning.

Fact was, he wasn’t even real sure why he went to church that week, because he sure wasn’t in the mood for it. Of course, he did chuckle when the thought came to him that he rarely was in the mood for church these days.

But John perked up right smack in the middle of the scripture reading when he heard something about “restoring places long devastated.”

You see, John was divorced. Is divorced, still, and it’s no picnic.

John knows it’s no picnic for his ex-wife, either, but the memory of the love they once had, and the truth of the horrible way that it turned out, and the distance that the divorce placed between him and his kids, well it just hurt, no matter how much he knew that divorce was the best thing he and his wife could do, under the circumstances.

It didn’t help matters any that his apartment was just dreary, no matter how much he tried to brighten it up.

Nor did it help matters that his work place was filled with stress.

Nor did it help matters that he had an annoying health problem that was demanding way to much of his attention.

Nor did it help matters that there was so much trouble happening all over the world.

But there it was. “That’s life,” he told himself, “rarely a piece of cake.”

But he sat up when he heard that description of life gone wrong, “places long devastated.” So he paid close attention to the sermon, even though he was sitting in the back pew.

The preacher said the mission of Christ was redemption, which meant setting things right wherever they had gone wrong, and that the first step involved human beings making a place in their lives where Jesus could settle in and get to work.

The preacher said

Sometimes that meant repenting from sin.

Sometimes that meant repenting from failure to trust God.

Sometimes that meant repenting from resignation to “the way things are.”

Sometimes that meant doing things differently than everybody else.

And sometimes it meant just doing the best you could, holding on until God acted in a decisive manner and things everywhere changed.

So John started to wonder if God was waiting to rebuild the devastated place of his life, but was being delayed because John had not yet made “straight the way.”

He kept the bulletin from that Sunday, because he wanted to look up the scripture lessons again when he got home. That was something he’d never done before.

But before John went home he went to coffee hour, just like always. But this week John was more silent than normal, because he was thinking so hard. His silence let him overhear more than he usually heard.

He overheard one new member, Sarah, talking about how much fun it had been working at the soup kitchen last Sunday. When someone said it was really nice of Sarah to help out like that she exclaimed, “Oh, I was just helping Jesus out.”

He overheard the pastor tell someone about a grief recovery group that the chaplain at the hospital led.

He overheard Bob, a college student, talking about a mission trip to Guatemala that the presbytery was organizing.

And he overheard Julia offer to tutor one of the high school kids, Caroline, in algebra. John knew that Caroline was having a really hard time in school this year and that the school problems were making the whole rest of her life a struggle.

So John went home thinking about all the ways that God was at work in the world, doing the thing that the preacher called “redemption.” Hearing the things that he’d heard, seeing what God was doing, thinking about it that way was what the preacher called “watching and witnessing.”

But still, even the BIG things that people did seemed so small. And he was still divorced, no matter if he liked it or not.

So when John got home he put his church bulletin right where when wouldn’t forget it. Then the next day he got up early and looked up the scripture passages from John and Isaiah before he went to work. He wanted to think about them during the day.

What he wanted to know was, “How does it work?” and “When will the building project be done?”

When he read Isaiah, he found a clue. “For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.”

John wondered how the soil actually makes a sprout come up, or how a garden causes seeds to grow. His dad had been a gardener, and his brother still had a big garden, practically year-round. So after work, John called his brother Bill.

Bill told him that most seeds needed good contact with the soil or they wouldn’t sprout. Every variety was a little different, some sprouted easier than others, but there were some that absolutely would not sprout unless they were covered top and bottom with soil. Plus, the contact had to be firm. The soil needed to be prepared and the seeds needed to be settled in. That’s why gardeners did so much raking.

“Well,” thought John, “that makes sense if you’re a seed, but what does that have to do with redemption?”

So John made an appointment to see the preacher, and told her all he had learned about seeds, soil and gardening. Turns out the preacher was rather intrigued by that story.

“John,” she said, “Jesus is our soil. When we turn our hearts towards him- when we make a straight path to him- when we let him surround us with love and hope, he makes things happen in our lives, and when things are happening in the lives of Christians, things start happening in the world where we live.”

That made John smile, but there was still that second question- “When will the rebuilding project be done?”

The preacher sighed and said she asked the same question almost every week! But then she leaned forward and told him what she believed.

“This is what we teach, and what we hope. We trust in God, because we have known Jesus.

“Jesus came, and healed the sick.

He raised the dead.

He cleansed the lepers.

He forgave sinners and set them on a straight path.

He brought laughter to a world in mourning,

He brought hope to a world caught up in despair and resignation.

So we KNOW that God desires health and life, love and joy, peace and redemption.

We know it, because Jesus gave his life for those very things.

So we believe in the promises of God.

“But it is now and not yet.

We see those things happening in small ways, and we testify that God is doing those things, but God is not done yet.

“But because we believe in the promises of God, we experience something else, something like Christmas.”

And then she asked John a simple question- “When is Christmas?”

John wrinkled up his forehead at that strange question and gave his answer, “December 25.”

Then the preacher finished: ”But as glorious as that future day is, we experience much of it’s joy in the whole month that leads up to it, don’t we? And we experience that joy because we know Christmas is coming, and we make the preparations, and we sing the songs, and we celebrate as if it were right now, because we know it WILL come- right?”

“Yes!” answered John.

So that’s how we live, while the devastated places are being rebuilt.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.