"Are you the one who is to come, or should we wait for another?" John the Baptist asked Jesus, from his prison cell. Ever since we saw the "oubliette" in the bottom of the Castle of the Count of Ghent, in Belgium, I can better understand the depths of discouragement from which could only have come such a question. To find out what an "oubliette" is, and what we have in common with John, check out our third Advent Sunday (December 16, 2007) message at Emmanuel Mennonite Church, at C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\Sermons\Advent3-07.doc. One thing we have in common with John is his task, so ably depicted in the famous Triptych of Matthias Grunewald of the Crucifixion, from the Isenheim Altarpiece, 1515, copied above. Click on it to enlarge it and see where John is and what he is doing. That’s our calling too.

Mathew Swora, pastor

What does the image below do for you, emotionally speaking?

Images such as this 12th Century Russian icon, the Vladimirskaya Theotocos, have long endured and taken on cultural lives of their own because of how they affect us. I get a warm and reassuring feeling from it, even if I am not into revering or meditating on icons, or praying to the motherly saint depicted there. Maybe its because I have such a great mother (Hi Mom!). Make that two great moms and a wonderful mother-in-law.

But what about our Hebrew spiritual ancestors who did not pass on such visible and material images? They left us instead with divinely inspired verbal images, word pictures in the Bible, which also have long-lasting, powerfully formative effects, emotionally, spiritually and morally on us, which inspired the famous painting below, by the Quaker, Edward Hicks (1780-1849).

This past Sunday, December 9, the Second Sunday of Advent, I sought to unpack some of the history and the effects of the powerful verbal icons that we find in Isaiah 11: 1-10 (NIV):

1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
       from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

2 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 –

3 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;

4 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.

5 Righteousness will be his belt
       and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
       the leopard will lie down with the goat,
       the calf and the lion and the yearling ^[a] together;
       and a little child will lead them.

7 The cow will feed with the bear,
       their young will lie down together,
       and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

8 The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
       and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest.

9 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.

10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his place of rest will be glorious.

For more thoughts on the history of the impact and understanding of these verbal icons, and how they speak about the past and the present, as well as the future, click on this link: C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\Sermons\Advent2-07.doc  I’d be very interested in reading your thoughts and responses.

Mathew Swora, pastor

Matthew 24: 36-44

36"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,^[f] but only the Father. 37As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.  42"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

The message that was delivered on the first Sunday of Advent, 2007, STINKS! That is, it reeks of sulphur from the nethermost regions of you-know-where. Or it would, if it were anything other than an imaginative exercise in the spirit of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. As the theme of this First Sunday of Advent is "Be Ready!" I thought I would try to look at our calling to be ready from another angle. And I hope it didn’t freak anyone out to hear the perspective of "the other side" from our pulpit. I would appreciate your take on this attempt at a fresh look, from the other side, of what it means to be ready for Christ’s return, at Download Advent1-07.doc .