All Saints Episcopal Church, Thomasville

Advent 3, 2005

"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away."

(Isaiah 64)

Back in seminary when I first started reading the gospels in any kind of concerted, concentrated manner, one of the phenomena that struck me continuously was how it fell to the evil and the possessed to recognize first who Jesus really was. Those most associated with the world, the flesh, and the devil were somehow given the insight to recognize that so very powerful spark of Divinity residing in an otherwise so very unassuming human being.

One reason that fact stood out to me so vividly stemmed from my years of fascination with the horror movies made by Universal Studios in the 30's, as well as the later ones in the 60's from the Hammer Studios in England. Dracula's fear and terror of a simple crucifix comes to mind -- or else the Frankenstein monster's fascination with the Good, True, and Beautiful - and his frustration that all of these are beyond him because he exists with the brain of a criminal, and his creator did not have the means to grant his creature a soul.

In Sunday School we've been reading Plato's remarks about opposites, and how death begets life and life begets death; evil begets goodness and goodness begets evil. Light begets darkness and darkness begets light. So on and so forth. This primal and basic concept of opposites is so profoundly embedded in the gospels (the demons recognizing Jesus), that Jesus would begin His most lengthy and developed piece of teaching with the same precepts of opposites: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."

Jesus is by no means speaking of economic poverty. That is, those who most thoroughly recognize the depth of their sin; those who recognize how unclean they are; those who have the spiritual eyesight to discern the fact that in their present spiritual condition they are not what they are meant to be; these are the ones who have the greatest hope of enjoying the everlasting bliss of God's heavenly Kingdom.

On the other hand, if you think you've really got it all together morally and spiritually then you're probably not poor in spirit, and you very well could be barking up the wrong tree, if not out rightly existing already with one foot in hell. This is precisely the reason the Church directs us to recite the General Confession each Sunday, and why we would only rarely with the most thorough of reasons, ever leave it out. "We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table, but, thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy." God have mercy upon us if we ever lose sight or forget so seminal a fact.

"We are not worthy." "There is no health (wholeness) in us." Our culture makes it more and more difficult for us to think such things about ourselves. I trust I'm not alone in finding it more difficult with each and every Advent that comes my way, to sense my interior inadequacy - to use Isaiah's words from the first lesson, to feel my uncleanness. He even goes so far to postulate that "All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags." When I first read that sentence I thought Isaiah meant rags that had become dirty from cleaning a car or a bathroom, however, the translators of the King James Bible had a sense of modesty that perhaps we need not heed today in the middle of Advent. The actual Hebrew reads "All our righteousnesses (all our good deeds) are as filthy menstrual rags."

Isaiah knows his condition morally and spiritually. He recognizes his need to be made clean and whole. More important, he knows who can make him clean and whole and as a result, God means - and will continue to mean - that much more to him. "Blessed are the poor in spirit."

My dear friends, we are so fortunate to have lived our lives with the constant knowledge of the love of God as manifested in Jesus. I don't think there is a soul in this church who cannot remember a time when he or she did not know something of the care and consolation of the Father shown through the Son.

Can we begin to imagine what life would be like without this knowledge? Of course there would always be those with the insight (like Isaiah) to reason the fact that he would not be able to discern and name his and his people's uncleanness, had he no sense of Real Cleanness: "Thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. Be not wroth very sore, O LORD, neither remember iniquity forever."

And yet, there are not that many of us who can claim the insight of an Isaiah. As we prepare for the impending news of God's message of Peace on earth; goodwill toward men, does it not behoove us to think about what life would be like were we not to know the Gospel.

W. H. Auden paints quite simply one of the most terrifying pictures of such a state in his poem "A Christmas Oratorio": "Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, Dreading to find its Father, lest it find that the Goodness it has dreaded is not good: Alone, alone about a dreadful wood."

Apart from Auden’s reference to the beginning of Dante's "Inferno", can we not picture ourselves wandering about, alone and terrified -- terrified not only of ourselves and each other but of God as well - seeking Goodness, but fearing that the Goodness we seek isn't good at all.

Again from Mr. Auden: "The Pilgrim Way has lead to the Abyss (hell). Was it to meet such grinning evidence We left our richly odoured ignorance?" Again he's writing about life apart from God. I wonder what could be worse: following our own way (the Pilgrim Way) to the Abyss, or remaining in that state of "richly odoured ignorance". Indeed can any of us summon the nerve to admit that most of the time we really do (even with Jesus) live in a state of richly odoured ignorance! It's terrifying to contemplate, but perhaps even more terrifying to be in such a state and not be able or want to admit it.

Auden continues: "We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act; the Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle."

Why is Fr. Buechner reading such horrible things two weeks before Christmas? How could a great poet come up with such depressing thoughts in a poem about Christmas? I should mention of course that the verses I read come from a section of the poem titled "Advent". Beloved, we will miss the gravity, as well as the beauty of Christmas if we do not right now begin to think in terms of God preparing an outright assault upon the world, the flesh, and the devil as manifested in each of us. God is preparing His own Armegedon with us. And His weapon is Jesus, Whom Auden calls "an outrageous novelty".

Of this outrageous novelty he writes: "Why were we never warned? Perhaps we were. Perhaps that mysterious noise at the back of the brain We noticed on certain occasions...was not indigestion, But this Horror, starting already to scratch It's way in?"

What a strange way to speak of our dear Lord: "this Horror trying to scratch It’s way in to our lives". No wonder the sight of a crucifix made Dracula recoil and hiss, or that the demons are the first to recognize in the gospels Who and What Jesus really is. In a very real sense He is God's Doomsday Machine. And yet, maybe some of us can summon enough honesty to admit to thinking of Jesus as this Horror trying to scratch Its way into our lives. If we can, it's not that difficult a leap to admit as well that "We are all as an unclean thing, and that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags."

And that my friends is the Good News! This is right where we need to be in Advent. Isaiah says of God that He has hid His face from us. But this is one of those very few times that the prophets failed to get things correct. Christmas will come, and that means that God has not at all hid His face. Christmas means that God instead, has set His face like a flint directly upon us, and that He really will launch an all out assault on the world, the flesh, and the devil embedded so thoroughly in you and me.

We must not for the moment think of Jesus as the cute little baby, but as the one who "standing up, filled all things living with death." God's weapon is Jesus, and we can face this attack in one of two ways. Either we might (like Dracula and the demons), shun Him as the outrageous novelty, the Horror trying to scratch Its way into our lives - or else we can sing with Isaiah, "O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand" - and allow Him to remake us in His image.

Remember Isaiah's wonderful words from last week, about how God was coming and that "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low: the crooked straight and the rough places plain"? Isaiah wasn't giving a geography lesson when he composed those words. He was writing about the hills, valleys, and crevices of our very being, and how we need to get our soul in order so that when Jesus comes to lodge there, He won't seem like some sort of outrageous novelty who has no business there, but rather as the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.

Let us pray: O God, who wouldest fold both Heaven and earth in a single peace; Let the design of thy great love lighten upon the waste of our wraths and sorrows. And give peace to thy Church, peace among nations, peace in our dwellings, and peace in our hearts, through thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.