God’s Here, So Put a Sock in It

     The Hagia Sophia, the church of Holy Wisdom is among the most historic buildings in the world.   It made the news again just about three weeks ago when the Pope was there.  Dedicated by the Emperor Justinian in 537 AD, it sits in modern Istanbul above the strait that connects the Mediterranean with the Black Sea . 

      Of course Istanbul was Constantinople -- the city of Constantine .  He intended it to be the new capital of the Roman Empire -- close to the true center of power and away from all those annoying Romans.

       Rome itself fell to the barbarians in the 5th Century.  But Constantinople lived on as the capital of the empire until it finally fell to the Turks in 1453.   In 1923 the Turks changed the name from Constantinople to Istanbul which is simply the Greek eistonpoli – “it is the city.”

       It is the city. And Hagia Sophia is the church -- or it was the church until the 1453 when the Turks added four minarets and turned it into a Muslim mosque.  

       Now as my friend Dale commented when we were there, "If you've seen one great church that's been turned into a mosque and then into a museum, you've seen them all."  And that's true.  This is the only one.  For today the great Hagia Sophia it is neither mosque nor church but museum. 

       The ancient walls show the signs of various occupants.  Geometric Muslim designs and inscriptions have faded with time to reveal crosses hidden beneath.  A beautiful gold-leaf portrait of Mary and the infant Jesus once more stands above a door -- open to the light after many years covered over.

       You stand in an ancient place like Hagia Sophia and remember the past.  You see the place filled with worshipers celebrating the birth of our Lord.  You hear the liturgy of St. James that had already been used for two hundred years by the Eastern Church when the Hagia Sophia was built.  And you hear the chanting of the Cherubic Hymn that is part of this ancient liturgy of St. James:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,

and with fear and trembling stand.

Ponder nothing earthly minded,

for with blessings in His hand

Christ our God to earth descendeth,

our full homage to demand.

       The theme of this majestic carol is reverent awe before God. 

       Now we don't tend to do awe very well.  We think of God as our friend, which He is.  He has shown Himself to be our friend.  But God is not only immanent -- right beside us.  God is also transcendent - way, way beyond us.

        And we must never become so comfortable with God that we forget who He is.  We must never forget that it is only by His amazing grace that we dare be here in His presence.  We must never forget that we have peace with God only through the blood of Jesus Christ and that apart from Jesus we would not only be sinners but condemned sinners. 

       One of the great biblical descriptions of awe is the one recorded in Isaiah 6. Isaiah writes, "I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of  His robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above Him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.' The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke."  

        This is the image of the last stanza of Let All Mortal Flesh.  It’s straight out of Isaiah.  Isaiah 6 is an encounter with the Almighty God - a "high and lofty" God -- a God surrounded by the regal trappings of power, by strange flying creatures, shaking pivots, and tendrils of smoke.  A holy God!

        Isaiah encounters a stunning God, a stirring God, a God beyond our reach, yet One, unbelievably, who reaches out to us.

       Isaiah says, "Woe is me! I am lost. I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; my eyes have seen the Lord of hosts!”

       Then one of the winged creatures flew to Isaiah and held a live coal to his mouth. This was no time for words that had not be fired in the crucible of holiness.

       Let all mortal flesh keep silence

       Every year on Christmas Eve we have a time of sitting in silence before God.  There is no soothing background music.  There is no scripture being read.  There is just silence.  In this time of silence you might hear a siren in the distance.  You might hear the rustle of an order of worship.  You might even hear God speaking to you.

       The time of silence is meant as a gift.  Christmas is such a busy, noisy time. But not everyone accepts it as a gift.  It only lasts one minute – but for some people that one-minute feels like an eternity.  We don’t do silence well but we need to.  Silence is a part of awe.

       Frederick Buechner tells of seeing a forest of giant redwoods for the first time. There were some children nearby, giggling and chattering and pushing each other around. As they entered the forest, however, no one had to tell the children to quiet down. They quieted down all by themselves. Everyone did. You couldn't hear a sound of any kind, writes Buechner, for these trees, two thousand years old and two to three hundred feet high, had a "stillness and stateliness about them that seemed to become part of you as you stood there stunned by the sight of them."

      There is a time to talk and there is a time to refrain from talking. Psychologist and philosopher William James mused over the prospect of immortality but finally laid his rationality aside and confessed that the notion of immortality is beyond our powers to comprehend. He suggested that, like Job, we must put our hands over our mouths and be thankful that in our personal littleness we ourselves are here at all!

       There is a time to talk and a time to just be quiet and let the moment speak for itself.   The great ones know the difference.  

       The Dodger's Vin Scully, for example, is considered the gold standard for baseball announcers. Even an unrepentant Giants fan like me knows that he's the best. 

       On September 9, 1965, Scully had a great game to announce.  It was a one-to-nothing victory for the Dodgers, pitched by Sandy Koufax, who retired all twenty-seven of his batters. A perfect game! Only five pitchers had done it before him and only nine have done it since.

       Scully is renowned for his carefully chosen and eloquent turns of phrase and thoughtful descriptions. But the recording of this game reveals that the achievement of the perfect game was followed by thirty-eight seconds of silence! That's a lot of broadcasting silence. Not a peep is heard from Scully, a man who is paid to talk! The newspaper columnists describe it as "a baseball moment so sublime, only silence could do it justice."

        Well God is even more worthy of our silence than Sandy Koufax.

        For "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

        The awe-inspired tone is set at the beginning of the biblical story.  Job, who endured incredible suffering and had every reason not to lift his eyes upward, said, "God does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number.”  The psalmist declares, "Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable." (Psalms 145:3)            

       The New Testament sustains this awed tone. Paul writes, in Romans, "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!" (Romans 11:33) Inscrutable! Incomprehensible! Unfathomable!

        This is the great God who comes to us in Jesus Christ.   And th4e carol says that this is the awesome God who makes an awesome demand on all who would follow Him.  He is the God who demands our homage – “Our full homage to demand.”

       According to a legend, Satan and his demons were having a Christmas party.  As the demonic guests were departing, one grinned and said to Satan, "“Merry Christmas, your majesty.”  Satan replied with a growl, “Yes, keep it merry. If they ever get serious about it, we’ll all be in trouble.” Well, get serious about it. It’s the coming of God.  It is the intervention of God.  It is the demand of God for our full homage – our full obedience.

King of kings, yet born or Mary.

As of old, on earth He stood.

Lord of Lord’s in human vesture,

 in the body and the blood

He will gave to all the faithful.

 His own self for heavenly food.

       God says to us, “I want to give you my absolute all.  I will give you my own self.  But I also want your all.”  He says this in many ways.  He said it in John the Baptist as John came to prepare the way.  We read John’s message before the sermon.

        Now let’s be honest.  John is a real killjoy. I know that.  I imagine I am sitting in front of a crackling fire with Nat King Cole's mellow voice in the background – or maybe Bing Crosby singing White Chistmas. Suddenly the door bursts open, a gust of wind blows into the room, and a man with a bushy beard and camel-skin tunic with a handful of locusts to munch on strides in. There is fire in his eyes.  It's the John the Baptist. He’s a real killjoy. I want warm fuzzies and he gives me caustic questions. I want a merry Christmas and a happy New Year, but he doesn't much care how I feel or what I  think. He just wants to know what I’ve done for the kingdom recently.  He asks hot-potato questions that much harder to handle than roasting chestnuts.   

         John the Baptist is very demanding: "Repent," he says again and again.  And even if we leave out his threats against us, we already know that God’s call to repentance is a call to us for radical change. The word "repent" means to change.  It suggests a whole new direction, a 180-degree turn. It suggests a change of mind first, and then John makes clear that it involves a change of behavior too -- that the change in repentance is not easy to conceal, as a simple change of mind might be.

       John says, "Bear fruit that befits repentance."   He says that true repentance is overt-you can see it expressed in action. And it is radical, as in root change-the ax is laid to the root of the tree -- right at the source change.  Both mind and action are to be changed-root and fruit.  John says that that’s the full homage God demands.

       Now the kind of change we're usually willing to explore is pocket change -- easy to contain, easy to conceal.  Pocket change is what we learn to practice in this season: random acts of kindness – but nothing systemic please! So the sound that our coins make as they clink against the bottom of the Salvation Army's kettles is deafening.  The kind of change we're willing to contemplate is often not the kind of change Isaiah and John are calling us to.

       That goes for me too.  I started this sermon at a study retreat up in Cayucos near Cambria – a good breakfast, a walk on the beach and creative work to do.  I saw an otter frolicking in the surf and those cute little terns running away from the waves with their skittery steps. It’s the kind of place and the kind of day that makes it seem like nothing is too bad.  So I'm not sure I'm looking for big change at the moment ... I've got a lot of work ahead these next weeks, these next years. I might look to a little tweaking here or there-deepen my prayer life, learn greater patience, do something more meaningful for the poor. But I'm not really gung-ho for a complete overhaul.

       But if I really see God for who He is – if I am silent long enough in our noisy world – I can be stirred.  I see that maybe the change is deeper below the surface than I'm ready for.  I see that God's call to repentance for me is not "a deeper prayer life," but just to stop lying so much to God and myself. It's not "greater patience," but to stop making myself the center of the universe.  It’s not to make myself God’s slave – that isn’t what He wants – but to open myself so I can receive the great good He desires to give me.

       What about you?  What does repentance look like for you?  What does full homage mean for you?  What will real change look like in your life – not pocket change but real change?

       I am reluctant to say what homage should look like for you.  I hate to sound like John the Baptist.  But I suspect that for some of you true homage to God has to do with a big change of priorities.  Some of you have treated worship as an optional extra – something to fit in when other things don’t get in the way.  You have treated it that way and so you have allowed merchants and youth sports leagues to treat it that way.  Push comes to shove and you let your obedience to God get shoved.

       For others it’s finances.  You hear what God expects of you – a tithe of ten percent – but you hope He’ll just let you by with a tip.

       For others, it’s that secret sin.  You have that one thing you hang on to in life that you know is wrong but you hold onto anyway.  Maybe it’s gossip. Maybe it’s porn.  Maybe it’s a brittle and critical spirit. As long as it is there, whatever it is, you will not be giving your full homage to God. 

       For others, it’s being two sided about your motives.  At times you live as a Christian.  But at other times you vote for your economic self-instead of what you know is right.

       Now don’t ask, “How did he know?”  Those are the things people do.  Those are the things I do.  

       So let us come before God.  Let us come in awe and silence.  Let us allow God to search our hearts and, in the silence, allow God to bring to our conscious minds those things that stand in the way of out full homage.

       We’ll take about two minutes – that’s all.  It may feel like an eternity.   But it may also prove to be, for you, the door to eternity.  “Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.”