DO NOT DISTURB

  Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

There is a man who is in the Guinness Book of World Records for his enormous collection of “Do Not Disturb” signs. He has traveled to 31 countries and has collected almost 3000 “Do Not Disturb” signs in various forms. He dreams of collecting such signs from all 191 countries of the world. Who would have thought it, that this would be a universal sign in every language – do not disturb. Well, maybe on second thought if we start examining ourselves and human nature, we know exactly why this is true. All of us feel it from time to time – leave me alone, let me be, don’t rock the boat, do not disturb.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent; the dictionary meaning of Advent is the “arrival of a notable person.” In Christian theology, Advent is a time when we celebrate the arrival of God into the world, the Messiah promised for ages. We know His name to be Jesus. We also celebrate the time when He will come again; the Second Advent. Advent is a time when we are reminded that God is intimately involved in history – or His story – that God has not heeded the “Do Not Disturb” signs of the world or in our hearts. He has broken into the world and taken those signs and thrown them down; He is the biggest boat-rocker in the universe. He is the disrupter of our dreams and our plans and our agendas. He does not leave us alone and thank God!

I’ve chosen two scriptures for you today; they should be familiar to you. One is Isaiah 11, read almost every Christmas. I’ve also added to that a few verses from Isaiah 61. The eleventh chapter talks exuberantly of the Messiah coming, “a shoot coming from the stump of Jesse,” that is a descendant of David, and how the Spirit of the Lord will be upon Him. And the sixty-first chapter is quoted by Jesus in Luke, claiming His Messiah-ship. Hear the word of God.

Isaiah 11: 1-9

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him – the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord – and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Isaiah 61: 1-2

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release them from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…

We’ve had quite a year, beginning last Christmas we had this huge tsunami that wiped out a lot of villages and people. Then came hurricane after hurricane…more than we can remember being documented before. And then earthquakes – the one in Pakistan, at last count, killed 50,000 people. More than one person has said to me that it seems like we are in the last days or the end times. I have to admit I have some mixed emotions about that. On one hand, as a Christian we are called to be expectant. We believe that Jesus will come back and He is going to make all things right in the end – justice and healing – no more death and no more war. We are called to be expectant, to wait, and to be ready. And, of course, we want that. It means God is going to win in the end. But at the same time, the cynical part of me takes over a bit, and I realize that over the last 25 years, if you really want to make some money, all you have to do is write another book about the end times. I can’t help but believe that in history many times people have thought that the end is near. The discussion about the bird flu has prompted other discussions about the Black Plague which happened in the Middle Ages, the Bubonic Plague which swept Europe and killed half of the population. Can you imagine that happening now, how people would feel? It would be horrible. Certainly they must have felt that the end was near…and other times in history too. I have come to believe that it is not ‘if’ but rather ‘when’ – Jesus is coming back and God is going to win in the end.

But the ‘when’ doesn’t really matter. We are called to live our lives well because either way we are going to meet Jesus – Jesus comes back and we meet Him or we are “promoted” out the back door and we meet Jesus. It doesn’t matter which way. What is important is how we live our lives now. We are called to live our lives well. What does that mean exactly? I think there are some hints in the scripture we read today. I have to admit that I haven’t read the Isaiah 11 passage, other than just reading it at Christmas time, I haven’t really studied it in quite a while. I was interested in the exuberance and the joy with which the prophet is proclaiming that the Messiah is going to come and telling about all He is going to do. One of the things it says about the Messiah – Jesus – is that He enjoys or takes joy and delight in the fear of the Lord. The word fear throws us off; we tend to think of course of cowardly or running or having the emotion of being afraid. But in the Bible it has that meaning but it also has other meanings; one is the fear of the Lord being awe and reverence of God’s presence and another is simply obedience and that is the sense here. The Messiah is taking delight in the obedience of doing God’s will. Jesus Himself will say later that “I have done nothing except what the Father has told me to do.” He takes delight in the Father’s will. Now that’s a good place for us to start because most of us, truth be told, very rarely read the instruction manual. It’s Christmas and we all have heard the old story about the father who wants to put together the bike for his son or daughter the next morning. We have all heard the story about how it didn’t go very well and the father finally reads the instruction manual. When he reads it, at the top it says: “Best results if you follow the instructions of the maker.” Very few of us read the instructions and then we think our lives are going to go well. Well a lot of your lives go well, don’t they? You just plod along and do pretty well. But it’s also kind of like the guy who puts together the bike on Christmas Eve – when he gets done, maybe the bike looks okay, but there are a few parts left over. The kid is riding the bike down the road and the handlebars or the wheels fall off. If we don’t read the instruction manual, sooner or later because you are not really obeying God, something is going to fall off. I just want to encourage you to read the manual; it’s a good time to start reading, discipline yourself to start reading. “Best results if you follow the instructions of the maker.” Take delight in the law of the Lord for your life. Learn how to read the Bible. It takes work; maybe that is part of the problem. It takes work and it takes discipline. Then you will have hope. I think one of the problems in listening to all of these things happening, when we read the Bible we have perspective and we are called to live lives of hope.

We are also called to, like the Messiah, not judge with just our eyes and our ears. That is what it says about Him; He will judge not by what He sees with His eyes or what He hears with His ears. He will judge rightly and justly. We need to take a lesson from that, a lesson from history. It’s really easy to get down about what is going on, but when we read the Bible, when we know that God is in control, we take perspective on what is going on. It is hard to trust the news media when all you hear is bad stuff; that is how they make their living. When you read all the books that say that Jesus is coming back tomorrow, it is hard. I know the reason why Jesus didn’t give us a time – He said to His disciples that only the Father knows – because He knew that someone would run out and start making a chart about when it was going to happen. Sure enough the charts are out there. I really believe that God has a sense of humor and – being an English major – what is called a sense of irony. I have a whole sermon about this, but there is one piece I want to tell you about. Jesus was born in Bethlehem; we’ve heard the story a hundred times. He was born in Bethlehem with the poorest of the poor parents in an animal stall, a barn, in a manger, in straw, among shepherds who at that time were the stinking-est, thieving-est people in the whole world – only those people came – the lowest of the low. Just four miles to the southwest is a city called Herodium. Now King Herod was a Julius Caesar wanna-be; he wanted to be an emperor and had been to visit the Caesar’s. He had been to visit Rome; he wanted to be just like that. He built magnificent cities, a magnificent temple, he built several fortress cities around to protect himself and the pearl of them all was Herodium, built on a hill with 200 inlaid marble steps up to the summit. He was buried there – they haven’t found his tomb yet, but we are told that he is buried there. You can still go to the ruins. It was a beautiful place, a symbol of power. Yet four miles down the road, the real King of Kings was born in a stable. King Herod power lasted a little while and he is dead and gone. His city is in ruins. Don’t believe what you see with your eyes.

Or about people…we tend to make judgments of people by what we see. I understand that people make a judgment about others within just a few seconds based on what they look like. We do this. We judge people by what they look like so often. Sometimes we judge people by what they have or the cars they drive or the houses they have or how much money they have in their wallet or how much they don’t have. But we can’t judge like that. I don’t know how many times it has happened to me when I’ve led a mission trip somewhere and people come back and say, “Those people are so happy and yet they have nothing.” It’s so different from us. Again you cannot judge by what you see but if you believe even a little bit about what you see, the lifestyles of the rich and famous are full of tragedy, drugs, and eating disorders. They are not happy people; they may have 50 million dollars but they are not happy. It has nothing to do with appearances. We are called to go out and witness to people. We are called to have a spirit of generosity. That’s what it says. It says: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, to preach good news to the poor, to shed light on the captives, to take away the chains.” And certainly that means the literal captives and the literal poor. But there are people in poverty all around us. Some of them have the biggest houses. Poverty is all around us. Jesus says when He is quoting this, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to do these things.” Well we may think that He is Jesus, certainly the Spirit of the Lord is upon Him to do those things. But we are told later that Jesus gave us the Spirit; the Spirit of the Lord is on you and me. We are not Jesus, but we have been given the Spirit to do the very same things and to do those things takes a spirit of generosity. It means that we have to take off the “Do Not Disturb” sign. So often we just want to live our lives our own way. So often we don’t want to be bothered…we say, “Let me be, I’ve done my part” or “I’ll just write a check.” God comes to you and me and takes the sign off. Be generous. In order to do God’s mission, you have to be generous. We have to consider what Jesus meant when He said, “He who tries to save his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will save it.” He’s not necessarily talking about going out and getting shot. He is saying that if you try to save your life or preserve your life here just to do what you want to do, you are going to lose it. Jesus tells the story about a man who has a lot of stuff. He has a great big harvest, he is rich and can do whatever he wants to do. He wonders what he will do with his big harvest; he decides to build bigger barns so that he can have stuff laid up for years and be comfortable. The way Jesus tells the parable is that God comes to him that very day and says, “Fool, tonight your life is required of you. What are you going to do? Who is going to get all that stuff you have?” This man tried to preserve his life and lost it. We need to give our lives generously so that we may gain them. To gain your life means to be generous with your time and effort for those around you who are lost and in poverty, who don’t know the Lord like you do. That doesn’t make you better than them, it just means that you know the Lord and we are called to share that. Be generous. So we are to be hopeful. We are not to judge by our eyes and our ears simply and we are to be generous…take off the sign of “Do not disturb.”

Last but not least, we should be thankful. I read a story about a man who got invited to one of those parties where you bring a gag gift. I like these; during the year, I am always looking for something like that. I got one a while back. It is a little rabbit holding a little rifle, dressed up in Army green, and it sings the Army song. I got it when I was a chaplain at my last church; the senior pastor was an Army chaplain too and he didn’t really like his very much. This man was wondering what he should bring and he found a taco warmer, a little burlap taco warmer that had sewn into it “Taco” with yarn. He thought it was a perfect gift and he took it to the party. Everybody had a great time and thought it was a great gag gift and he was sharing that with his family the next morning. Before he could stop himself, he noticed his daughter was crying. She had given him this as a gift years before and at that moment the Lord spoke to him and said, “How often do you not treat my gift to you very well? I have given you myself and my Son.” Of course he treasured that gift after that. I would simply say to treasure the gift that God has given you. But the gift is not just for yourself but for others. Be thankful; I really think as Christians that we are called basically to be joyful at heart. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have bad days, maybe sometimes more bad days than good days. But why not be joyful when we have been given the Lord and been given forgiveness and know that God is going to win in the end and that we belong to Him? Even if we don’t have any money now we will be rich in a sense. Isn’t that great? What we really have to do is take off the “do not disturb” sign, the “it’s about me” sign, the sign that says, “don’t bother me, I’ve given at the office” or “I’m going about my own business.” Advent is a good time to do that. It’s a good time to rethink our lives, to think about all the things that God has given us and just respond in joy and thanksgiving and in generosity and hopefulness because these things are ours by new birth-right.