You Can’t Shop for Christmas
Isaiah 11: 1-10
December 7, 1997
The other day, my wife said to me, “Let’s go shopping for Christmas.” I was engrossed in watching a football game, so I gave one of those husbandly replies, “Sorry, dear, but you can’t purchase Christmas, no matter how hard you try.” I won’t tell you her response, but after I got into the car with her to drive to the department store, I said to myself, “That’ll preach. You can’t shop for Christmas.”
Now, that’s not good news for most of us. We would like to encourage people to shop around for Christmas. Not at department stores, but at our religious malls, sometimes called churches. Preachers would like to convince people that it’s all quite complicated, this business of meeting God at Christmas, and therefore you’ve got to spend time and effort, and money, in experiencing God. After all, we spent at least three years in seminary learning about God. Doesn’t it make sense that the person in the Pew is expected to shop for a while before meeting with God? I believe we’ve done a pretty good job in making that point. Around Christmas time, we have a lot of window shoppers.
But consider for a moment what Saint Augustine said, before experiencing God, you thought you could talk about God. When you began experiencing God, you realized that what you are experiencing cannot be put into words.
They say that confession is good for the soul. Sometimes, when I look over my past sermons, I’m embarrassed. A logical, analytically explained about God. And yet, deep down, I know Saint Augustine was right. You cannot describe or categorize or even talk about God. All you can do is experience God.
In the 10 commandments, the prohibition against graven images of God makes the same point. The commandment is not simply a warning against making a statue of God. Rather, it is saying that God is beyond all images, physical or mental. Beyond our descriptions, beyond our categories, beyond even the most articulate of preachers. And, the implication is that if we persist in playing word games, we’re going to miss God completely.
The third commandment is a corollary to all this talk about graven images. It prohibits you from even mentioning God’s name. Judaism felt the name of God was so sacred that it couldn’t be said out loud. Part of this comes about because there was a realization that in naming you had to 1st describe whom you named.
Martin Buber, the Jewish theologian, once tried to read into history the way ancient Israelites handled this problem. He found out they used a symbol rather than a name. This symbol we have translated into the word, Yahweh, or in a more modern translation, Jehovah. But Uber points out, that Yahweh was not a name, not a word, but an exclamation that comes from an ecstatic experience. When a worshipper encountered God he or she might say Yahweh! The way we might say, wow what a surprise! Uber roughly translates Yahweh into the words, ohh you are the 1! God cannot be named only exclaimed.
And so, here we are in the midst of advent. A very strange season of the church year. A time when we are reminded that we really can’t do anything about God. We can’t shop. We can’t search. We dare not even speculate. All we can do is watch, wait for, and expect and possibly hope that God will come to us.
And so we sing, ohh come oh come Emmanuel. Emmanuel isn’t a name like George, or Harry, or Susie. It’s more like a longing, a wish, a prayer from the deepest recesses of our hearts. Emmanuel, roughly translated, means God is with us. And therefore the meaning of the hymn that we sang as we started our service volumes, oh come oh come and surprise us. We are waiting period, ohh come ohh come and be present.
The prophet Isaiah put it this way. Be prepared for anything. Be prepared for surprises from God. Be prepared for the one who comes in the most unexpected ways. A shot from the stump of Jesus a savior from an insignificant family. A still small voice in the midst of shouting world lies down with the lamb
Sometimes, we can find parallels in the strangest places. The other night, while I I was watching an old classic Marx brothers movie I found it a parable for Advent. In a day at the races, Groucho Marx is fooled by his brother Chico. They are at the race track. Groucho has been waiting to place a bet on a truly great horse, a sure thing. Chico comes by and tell him he can’t place his bet until he has first purchased and studied A breeder’s guide. When Groucho follows his brother’s advice, Chico then suggests that he also purchase and read a few other helpful books that trace the lineage and record of the horses. By the time Groucho has looked into all of these, the race is over.
We are offered a blinding truth in advent. No amount of studying, no amount of searching, will help us if we miss the gift. The gift we miss is God and God comes in the most surprising ways. Words cannot describe God’s coming. All we can do is wait, watch and expect and then exclaim ohh you are the 1!
Amen