November 28, 2010 (1st Sunday of Advent)
1. It is my intention to focus our attention during this season of Advent on the Psalms that occur in the lectionary readings. These ancient songs of temple, synagogue, and church—I hope—will provide us with just the right music for this time of expectation and preparation. So, to get started, let me share with you a song that has become a favorite around our house, and, if I may modestly admit it, I wrote it myself. I wrote the song as a response to my children’s frequent conviction that my decisions are not fair, or that their lives are too difficult, or that not all of their needs and wants are being met quickly enough. The song goes like this:
There is no justice on this earth!
There is no justice on this earth!
There is no justice, there is no justice,
There is no justice on this earth!
My kids don’t really care for this song, but I like it a lot. For me, it revives ancient themes, ones that we often see in the Psalms themselves. When the people of Israel look around at their position among the nations, they see that they are small to the point of insignificance, and all too often they are conquered and hauled off into exile. Not surprisingly, perhaps, their songs lament the lack of justice on earth, but they also imagine a different world where there is justice. A world where God is in charge in the holy city of Jerusalem, and things are the way they ought to be.
2. In Psalm 122, which we sang this morning, the psalmist finds joy in going to the house of the Lord because in that house, it is possible to imagine a world where God’s justice is the norm rather than the exception. The words of the psalm asks us to pray for the peace and prosperity of Jerusalem.
Of course, for the ancient Israelites as well as for many today, Jerusalem is the centerpiece of God’s creation. It is the holy city where God is most pleased to dwell, the home of the ancient Hebrew temple, the home of Jesus passion and resurrection, and the home of the Dome of the Rock, one of the most revered places in Islam.
And members of all three of these religions have longed after peace for Jerusalem even as all of them have also been guilty of bringing strife and warfare to this same city. Jerusalem today is one of the most fraught places on the planet. Everyone seems to want the city for themselves to the exclusion of others, and perhaps this is how they feel about our God as well. We want God for ourselves in such a way that limits God’s potential affection for or relationship with other people.
Jerusalem, in this way, becomes much more than one particular geographical city. It rises to be the ideal place where all history comes together and God’s promises come true. It is the place where people from all over the earth metaphorically pin their hopes and dreams, and it is for this reason that the psalmist’s appeal to us to go up and be happy worshiping God in Jerusalem is such a timeless hymn. At the end of the seder meal at Passover, our Jewish brothers and sisters proclaim with hope: “Next year in Jerusalem!” Most have no sense that they will go to the earthly city called Jerusalem, the one that straddles the border between the modern political entities of Israel and West Bank. They instead refer to the Jerusalem of promise, the holy city where God lives, the mount of Zion where ancient hungers are satisfied, where justice flows down like a stream, where swords are beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks, where we will learn war no more.
3. What marks our longing for this heavenly Jerusalem is our shared conviction that this will be a place that will feature both justice and peace. We have a sense that justice and peace ought to be related somehow—after all, most of our towns have an elected position called “the justice of the peace” who is responsible for keeping order by settling disputes. We know, instinctively maybe, that if we have justice, we will also have peace. But there is plenty in our world to suggest the opposite. Plenty of judgments are made everyday in our modern world that disturb the peace. I refer to judgments which concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, judgments which choose knowingly to pollute the environment, judgments to make war instead of to seek peace, judgments that divide the powerful from the weak, the haves from the have-nots. These kinds of so-called justice drive a wedge between people and make peace seem like a far-away fantasy. But we know, as the psalmist knew, as the prophets knew, and as Jesus himself knew that true and godly justice will go hand in hand with peace. For this reason, we can understand where the psalmist was coming from when he imagined a city where “thrones of judgment” were set up. When the one doing the judging is the source of all creation and the author of justice, this is good news indeed. This judge creates a city so just that no more harm is done, no more alienation occurs, no more oppression is possible. In the purview of these thrones of justice, peace spreads. No wonder the psalmist seems to equate the practice of justice with the act of making peace as well as with the liturgical praise of the people. Justice-seeking equals peace-making equals praise-singing.
4. In front of these thrones of judgment, the sinful divisions we create unfairly between ourselves are done away with and we are all able to worship with freedom and human equality before our God. In this act of justice, we find peace, but Psalm 122 also suggests that in this justice we will also find prosperity. This prosperity is utterly unknown in our world, however. Sure, there are plenty of people who are well-off today, but unlike earthly wealth, the prosperity in the psalm is not won at anyone else’s expense. Biblical prosperity is not the accumulation of wealth in a system of scarcity. It is rather the fair and equitable sharing of God’s gifts to us. In this season of heightened consumerism and continuous demands that we buy more and spend more and live always at the edge if not beyond our means, it is instructive to remember that the prosperity and peace that are imagined in the Bible do not resign some people to poverty and dependence. The peace of the house of God, where God’s justice reigns, is the kind of peace that restores the dignity of all people, that brings low the mighty and raises up the lowly; it is the dignity that comes unexpectedly both in a manger and in glory.
5. So, the psalmist says, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’
Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together.”
When these words are intoned, who is it that belongs within Jerusalem’s gates? Who is being invited to enter into this city of justice, where all is bound so firmly together? Is it for us pious Christians gathered here this morning? Is it for the holy? Who can come into this city chosen by God? In other words, who receives God’s promises? To whom do they apply? When Jesus says he came to seek out and restore the lost, to whom was he referring? I suppose the thrones of judgment are for all people, ready or not. For some, they will mean a reversal of fortune. But for all people, the promise stands: God’s justice will bring peace.
6. Well, you may be saying to yourself, “What does all this have to do with Jesus? What does any of this have to do with Advent?” Advent is a time when we affirm that the world can change. Not by our own labors, but as the psalmist suggests, by the arrival of a just judge to sit on the thrones of judgment. When Christ comes to reconcile the world for once and for all with God, the world will change. The injustices, the grief, the inequality, will be set right. Peace and true prosperity will reign. We Christians must live off of this Advent hope. It is like a song that has gotten stuck in our heads, and we can’t shake it. We believe Christ can and will change the world. This is our story, this is our song. Soon, little Avery Elizabeth will be baptized, and her own life will become part of this song of hope. In her, as in all of us baptized, ancient promises are being answered. As we await the coming of the Christ, let us see ourselves as we truly are. Let us prepare ourselves for praise, for justice, and for peace-making. I began with a cynical song about the lack of justice on this earth that I sing to my children. Let us end with the hope that all of us—even our little children—will realize a new song of gladness, justice, and peace. Amen.
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