Sermon Notes for Dec. 11 Lk. 1, Is. 35

I hate waiting passively, so I bring a book. John Mayer had a song waiting on the world to change.Is. 35, again goes to the opposite of what will happen to the enemies New exodus=-return-utter change/reversal, topsy turvy-alton riverfront changed-no grass in the sidewalks-take a look more closely at all of the reversals   Is. 35 Counters to the destruction of enemies in 34. cultic liturgical procession route or the transportation imagined, not the route of conquest.

Reversal abound. Announces end of judgment

As Walter Brueggemann has reminded us, “Israel’s doxologies are characteristically against the data.” We see and hear the data every night on the news . Add to that the data of our own lives: waiting for the test results from the doctor, mourning the death of a loved one, wondering if we’ll make it through the next round of layoffs.

Wilderness (midbar) has multiple contacts for Israel. It is a place of flight and of freedom (Genesis 16, 21; Exodus 3, 13), populated by deadly animals (Deuteronomy 8:15). Water is scarce (Exodus 15, 17),. It is dangerous (Exodus 14:3). . it is easy to get lost (Num 32; Psalm 107:4). Yet, Wilderness is where God's people learn to become a people. In wilderness God carried them (Deut 1:31), fed them (Exodus 16), and gave them improbable water (Exodus 17). In wilderness God found God's people, guarded and cared for them, and lifted them up (Deuteronomy 32).

When God empties the rich of their excess and fills the hungry with good things, the result is not social reversal -- with the powerless and the powerful changing places -- as much as it is social leveling. Thus God provides for the poor and honors the humiliated. When the arrogant are scattered and the powerful brought down, then every person has access to enough, and no one has too much.(Judith Jones) Every person is treated with dignity and respect, and no one uses power to harm.

-Mary sings about the God who saves not just souls, but actual living people.  God is not content  to point people toward heaven; God’s redemptive work begins here on earth. God fills the hungry not only with hope, but with food. Rather than being satisfied with comforting the lowly, Mary’s Lord lifts them up, granting them dignity and honor, a seat at the table and a voice . At the same time, God shows strength by disrupting the world’s power structures, dethroning the powerful. Jacobsen- songs are powerful-, know that when we gather together and sing to God, the hope and consolation of Israel and the world, are represented. We, like Mary, are swept into God's divine activity to save and redeem that world. A few voices drawn together in song in late December may seem a small thing in the face of the wars and worries of the age, but surely no smaller than those voices joined in Leipzig twenty years ago or those two voices joined in the Judean hill country twenty centuries ago. Mary's God, we should remember, delights in taking what is small and insignificant in the eyes of the world to do extraordinary and unexpected things. So it has been, is, and ever shall be "according to the promise God made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

James 5:7(patience) patient endurance or keeping at it. Is that the best you’ve got? Job clearly not patient but he never, ever gives up on his prayers of lament to god.  Mt. 11:2-11 Announcement of new age and the baptist-look at the Jesus program-He is clearly his mother’s son.Jesus is also immersed in Scriptural passages such as Is. 35.