The Leveling

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

12.04.11; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lessons:  Isaiah 40:1-11; (Mark 1:1-8)

Over the past few months, I’ve been exploring the hills and the valleys of the Occupy DC and Occupy K Street movements.

I’ve read articles about their demonstrations in both print and online media.  I’ve wandered through their encampments.  I’ve followed them on Twitter.  It’s hard not to be sympathetic to their cause, to their idealism, to their yearning for justice in all things.  They want equality in society, and for our culture to cast aside the radical polarization of wealth that is threatening the integrity of our republic.  But I’ve not gotten involved, not really, for a variety of reasons.

First off, while I’m not a fan of injustice, I don’t really like cold-weather camping, particularly if given the option of either a) sleeping out on hard frost-bitten ground or b) curling up in my own cozy bed under several layers of down and flannel.  

Mmmm.  Flannel.  I will always err on the side of flannel.  I get that from the hobbit side of my family, I guess.   

Second, I’m not sure I could handle the odd bureaucracy.  Whenever you get a bunch of anarchists and leftists together, the first thing they do  is create the most impossibly well-meaning and convoluted ways to make decisions.   Back in October, when I visited their camp, I observed their decision-making in action.  A group of earnest people dressed like extras in Les Mis sat in a circle, talking intently amongst themselves.   To express their approval or disapproval of a particular idea, they would either do jazz hands up for yes, or jazz hands down for no.   

I’m reasonably sure that wasn’t how the organizers of the Montgomery Bus Boycott or the First Continental Congress got things done.  I just don’t know about a revolution that involves jazz hands.

Third, I have the unfortunate tendency to remember history.   Movements calling for more equity and the righting of economic imbalance have risen up throughout the story of humankind.  This week, I read the jazz-hands-approved manifesto of Occupy DC, which calls for an end to all self-serving, exploitative, and oppressive systems.   Then, I read another manifesto.  You can never read enough manifestos.   This was one I remembered from my graduate education, a little something subtly entitled An Arrow Against Tyranny.  

This second one dates back from England in 1646, and was written by a man by the name of Richard Overton.   He was part of a leaderless movement called “The Levelers.”  Anyone remember this little movement from history class?  They got their name because they’d tear down the fences that kept peasants out of the fields of the wealthy and powerful landholders.   The movement was concerned with equity and justice, demanding that all men...and it was men back then...be treated equally.     It’s interesting stuff, because some of the language lays the foundation for our own nations’ founding documents.  Listen, for example, to this quote from Overton:

No man has power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man's.  [...]  For by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like propriety, liberty and freedom; and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a natural, innate freedom and propriety — as it were writ in the table of every man's heart, never to be obliterated — even so are we to live, everyone equally and alike to enjoy his birthright and privilege; even all whereof God by nature has made him free.

Sentences were longer back then.  Despite the centuries separating them, the similarity between the Levelers and Occupy is clear.  Then again, later in the essay Overton spends a bunch of time demanding the overthrow of what he calls, and I quote, the “...barbarous, inhuman, blood-thirsty desires and endeavors of the Presbyterian clergy.”   

I don’t like that part very much.

The yearning for things to be made right and returned to balance is a powerful one, whether it’s right now, four hundred years ago, or twenty-five hundred years ago.   It was without question the point of the message conveyed in the section from the book of the prophet Isaiah that you heard this morning, a section echoed in the reading from Mark’s Gospel.   

This portion of Isaiah is the very beginning of what is often called “Second Isaiah,” meaning that it was most likely not written by the same individual who composed chapters 1 through 39 of the Book of Isaiah.  It was, most likely, written by a disciple of Isaiah, one who fully understood the essence of his teachings, and was equally connected to the One who spoke through them both.

That first section describes and relates to the kingdom of Judah in the eighth century before Christ.  It is full of challenge, challenge directed particularly against the wealthy and powerful in Jerusalem.  This section, on the other hand, speaks to a completely different context.  Running from chapter 40 through to chapter 55, it is primarily about reconciliation, grace, and restoration, and appears to be speaking to an Israelite audience living in Babylonian exile nearly two hundred years later.

This was a people who had been utterly shattered.   Unlike the proud and the powerful who lived in Jerusalem and gathered in the wealth of the nation, this was a people who had been torn from their land and forced into slavery.  They had watched as their holy city had been destroyed.  They had watched as their temple, the holiest of holies, the place where they communed with God on earth, they had watched as it had been razed and looted.  Everything they were as a people had been taken.  They were nothing.  They were deep, deep, deep into that valley of loss and sorrow.

At this point, the One who spoke through the prophet no longer spoke words of judgment.  Where the first thirty nine chapters speak in some pretty harsh language, what we hear beginning in chapter 40 is God’s commitment to restoration and reconciliation.  In the face of the suffering experienced by the people, the words that the prophet had to share with them were not rebuke, not condemnation, not mocking and rejection.  Instead, the message of God to them was one of comfort and hope. 

The reminder to this shattered people was that the suffering of the now was as impermanent as the grass and the flower of the field.  More importantly, the prophet announces a time of transformation and restoration.  In verses three through five, the people who have wandered in a wilderness of loss and sorrow are assured that the desolation they are feeling will not be permanent.

The rough times, those deep and impassable valleys, those imposing, unclimbable mountains, they’ll be leveled out.  That wilderness will be overcome.   In its place, we hear that a way will be prepared for the justice, glory, and comfort of the Creator.

It was, in that time, a word of truthful encouragement that the enslaved people of Judah desperately needed to hear.   In our own time, in this Advent time, it’s a word that we equally need to hear.

These weeks prior to Christmas are, after all, that point in the year when we should be making the effort to make the way straight for our Creator.

Within culture, that means actually paying attention to the ways that our society casts up impediments to the reconciling mercy and comfort of our Maker.  In this season of preparation, it’s important not to allow cynicism about the sputtering struggle for justice throughout history to keep us from being aware of our Maker’s intent for us.   Though we’ve made rough going of the story of ourselves as a species, casting up soaring heights of avarice and power, and doubly deep valleys of need and oppression, we’re reminded that this is not our purpose.  We’re called to act, recognizing that though perfect balance just isn't possible, giving in to cynicism is doubly unacceptable

That’s going to mean making space in our lives to work directly against the oppression that comes from hunger and want, and making space in our identity as citizens of a democracy to speak...and vote...in ways that reflect our commitment to being a nation in balance.  Ours is a nation founded on ideals, ideals that at one time seemed as pie-in-the-sky as those offered up by Occupy or the Levelers.  If we are to be the just and gracious nation we were intended to be, then we need to live into that ideal.

Individually, that means reinforcing those places within ourselves the help us be about the work of Christ’s love and justice.  Our psyches are, if we’re honest with ourselves, all too frequently rough and ragged wildernesses.  Though that bright and gracious way exists within each of us, we often do not make ourselves that level way.   We let ourselves live in deep valleys of depression, anxiety, and self-recrimination.   We cast up great mountains of anger and pride.

In this advent time, work to find that gracious level place that has been placed within all of us.   There is that path within us, no matter where we find ourselves in our journey through this life.  

Prepare it.  Make it straight.

Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.