A sermon on Jeremiah 33: 14 – 16
Christmas tree light sabotage.
Her brusque greeting and locked body language left no doubt my wife was ticked off at me, but I had no idea why. I’d only been home from work for two minutes. Dayna put her hands on her hips and twisted her face into the “What the heck!” position I’ve come to know so well. “Didn’t you even notice all the work I put into lighting the tree?” she said.
This was more than 30 years ago, the first Advent season of our marriage. We lived in Iowa in a Methodist parsonage with a beautiful 30-foot pine tree in the front yard. It was so full and perfectly shaped that I worried they’d cut it down and haul it to Rockefeller Center in New York.
She said, “It took me all afternoon, and I had to tie the lights to a tennis ball and heave it up there umpteen times to get it to hook on just right, and you didn’t even notice?”
Inattentive husband fail. Shame washing over me, I said, “Uh, sorry. No.” I looked outside; the tree was dark. A little investigation revealed that someone had come along and cut the strand in the fifteen minutes between when she plugged in the lights and when I got home. Grrr. We drove to the store and got some new lights; the results were stunning. Something I surely would have noticed the spectacular job she did.
The next night, it happened again. Who would do such a thing? It had to be neighborhood kids. This was getting expensive. We had to ask if it was worth it. We fantasized about putting our 120-pound dog on a chain that went right to the sidewalk’s edge where the vandals did their damage. “I know! Maybe we can booby-trap the lights. What if we could shock them with a fake wire like the ones they use on an electric cattle fence on farms?” Nothing says the spirit of Christmas like pastors fantasizing about electrocuting middle-school kids.
Keep hanging lights!
I mentioned our dilemma to someone at church, and he shoved $50 in my hand and said, “Keep hanging up the lights on the Methodist parsonage tree. Let it symbolize our perseverance and let us keep displaying lights of hope no matter what darkness may come. It worked! Eventually, they stopped cutting the cord. But then it might have just been winter break. Nevertheless, it was a symbol for us. It doesn’t matter what bad things people do; we believe there is a light that the darkness cannot overcome.
Don’t get discouraged. Keep letting your light shine no matter how much somebody else tries to extinguish it. Surely, the days are coming!
Jeremiah flips the switch.
In Advent, we read the prophets like Jeremiah and seek ancient wisdom on kindling hope in dark times. Jeremiah is a fascinating character. For 29 chapters, he sounds like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. Doom and gloom. He predicted a day when the chickens would come home to roost for a society that traded in the fundamental values of sharing, kindness, and generosity for greed, selfishness, and cruelty. When those consequences manifested and the darkness set in, he flipped the switch and started preaching hope. This is not the end. God will do something new.
His image was of a righteous branch that would emerge. The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when God’s promises will be fulfilled. A righteous Branch will spring up—a leader bringing justice, righteousness, and safety.
The Righteous Branch
Early on, Christians, living through their chapters of darkness, identified Jesus as this righteous branch. But Jesus taught us that the Kingdom of God isn’t some distant, utopian dream—it’s breaking in among us right now. With every act of kindness, every gesture of compassion, every fight for justice, we see the kingdom breaking through. The righteousness Jesus embodies is love, forgiveness, inclusion, and justice. And no matter how dark it is around us or within us, we have a superpower called hope that gets us through it. So, we put up Christmas lights in part to remind ourselves that we have this extraordinary power.
The story of Christmas is about God coming to the darkness of the world and our personal lives. The story of Christmas is about trusting God’s promise that surely the days will come when they will be better.
And God is looking for partners to bring about that world.
Jesus needs some partners because many folks associate Christianity with the problem rather than the solution. They don’t see people gathered around the good news of great joy in Jesus. Instead, they see mean-spirited people pretending to speak for the whole faith. Those folks are tuned into the frequency of greed, selfishness, homophobia, intolerance, supremacy, and cruelty. Someone said Christianity is turning into a public swimming pool where the loudest noise comes from the shallowest end of the pool.
Jesus is looking for partners to make Christianity and Christlike again. Will you be leaves on the righteous branch? Is this the day you will embrace humility, peace-making, compassion, selflessness, service and let the loveliness of your actions drown out what is going on at the other end of the pool so that when folks think of Christianity, they see it as good news of great joy?
Keep doing the next right thing.
I know it’s hard to keep positive when it seems like things are regressing instead of progressing. Brene Brown is feeling it.
Overcome the temptation to see only darkness when there is light.
I like this reminder from Howard Zinn in his book You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train:
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. ~Howard Zinn (Book: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train https://amzn.to/48G2cVd )
Surely the days are coming.
Right now, we live in a time of rancor and division. But the days are coming when there will be peace and unity.
- Right now, we see injustice all around us—impulses to lie, oppress, and divide. But the prophet Amos says the days are surely coming when justice will flow like a mighty river, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
- Right now, many are isolated and lonely, feeling forgotten and unseen. But the days are surely coming when each one will be embraced in beloved community, where no one is left behind.
- Today, we see greed and selfishness running amok, where the few thrive while the many suffer. But the days are surely coming when we will reclaim our humanity enough to ensure all will have enough.
- Now, we live in a time of conflict—where nations clash and neighbors turn against each other. But the days are surely coming when swords will be turned into plowshares, and we will study war no more.
- Right now, the earth groans under the weight of exploitation and neglect. But the days are surely coming when people will work to heal so that all living things will thrive.
These are the promises of Advent, and they will surely come to pass. Keep shining your light in the darkness, and keep doing the next right thing. Amen.