Isaiah 40:1-11
So I was disappointed to learn on Thursday that this afternoon’s Buffalo Bills game will not be televised. I did not see any of the four games they lost in November. I figured I must be the critical factor. If I don’t watch, they lose. If I do watch, they win. So I wanted to watch the game today so they could win. But, unfortunately, the game will not be televised. Only those who are there will see it!”
This sad situation reminded me of a song that I haven’t heard in many, many years. The song’s title is “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. It was performed by a poet by the name of Gil Scott-Heron, and I doubt any of you have ever heard of it. I first heard it around 1970 or so. Have you ever heard of rap or hip hop music? I’m going to claim that this was the first rap song recorded. I’d play it for you, but it could be a bit jarring for a church service, so I’ll just dwell on the song’s title, a phrase repeated over and over again in the song, “The Revolution will not be Televised”. You can look it up on You Tube if you want to hear it.
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. That phrase gives me an insight about what God is doing during the weeks of Advent. It’s a revolutionary season in the life of the church in which two things are happening. The first thing happening is that God is trying to get your attention. God is turning towards you, and, believe me, that is a revolution. You thought, maybe, that God barely takes notice of you, or that God focuses judgment on all of your mistakes. But God is turning to you in hope and love. Six billion people in the world, and God is turning towards you, eager to get your attention. It is a revolution - what we thought we knew about God has been turned on its head.
The second thing happening is that we feel change in the air. We don’t know exactly what that change will be, or where to find it, but we anticipate something different, something life-changing, something revolutionary. It’s about to happen, and we can feel it stirring. Advent is the anticipation that something is about to change. The changes we yearn for are not superficial or cosmetic, they are revolutionary because they get to the heart of all things. God is trying to get your attention, and our attention is shifting away from all of the distractions as we seek something new. In the intersection of these two things miracles are possible, miracles begin, miracles are celebrated.
As I was reminded by Gil Scott-Heron’s song, neither of these two things is likely to be found on your television or in any other obvious way. What God is doing during Advent and how we reach out to touch what God is doing, is most likely not going to be found on your television. Your television is the last place.
So, first, God is trying to get your attention. How is God trying to do that? With loud advertisements, with big billboards along the road, with busy shopping malls, with bright lights? I think that God is trying to get your attention in ways that are much more subtle than that - quiet, sometimes barely noticeable to anyone, well off the beaten track, unexpected. Isaiah gets it exactly when he describes God trying to get our attention as “a voice crying in the wilderness”. It’s not a voice easily heard, it comes from the margins, from far-off, and it is so easily drowned out by all of the distractions around us. Are we listening for that voice? I hope so!
One day Arline Marshall came to my church in Rochester and handed me a brown paper bag. She waited until no one was looking and then she slipped the bag to me, along with her stern whisper, “don’t tell anyone where you got this!”. What was in that bag? Illegal narcotics? Government secrets? Stolen property? Had Arline robbed a bank? I opened it. It was a bag full of kazoos, clearly meant for the children of the church. Arline was the last person in the world that I would have expected to do something like this. She rarely smiled, didn’t seem to like children, and she always looked at me like I was set on making her life worse. Yet, in my hand I held this unexpected gift from an unexpected person. God was getting my attention in an unexpected way. I thought I had God all figured out, and then Arline came along to surprise me. God really blind-sided me that day with that bag of kazoos. At the end of that afternoon’s Advent party, with all of the kazoos blasting away you would have agreed that the revolution had come, and it was decidedly not happening on television! No one in the whole world knew about it except those of us in the dining room of that little church.
And, then, second, we are hoping and dreaming to apprehend and locate the change that is in the air. We know God is up to something new, but how to identify it, how to even begin to know where to look. I think Helen Hulburt ran right into this, as she told us a story last Sunday about an abused baby that Child Protective Services brought to her daughter’s home for care and safety. The little boy was so injured by an abusive parent that the lower half of his body was in a cast. Helen described it with such vivid poetry that we could picture the scene in our minds, a little boy trying to crawl with a body cast, but smiling at the caring people he had just met. Helen went to her daughter’s house for dinner, and was hit right between the eyes with a change that is badly needed. And she could see the change already happening as that little boy received the love and care that was missing from his life. What Helen told us about is not on television, but she saw it with her own eyes. Unexpected, but real. Overwhelming, but not beyond help or hope. And as she told the story, those who heard it were developing their own schemes to reach out to children with even more love and energy than before. I love the revolutionary vision of Isaiah, who sees the intersection of the human and the divine in such a dramatic way: God calling out to us, trying to get our attention, saying “comfort, O comfort, my people”. Will we hear this? “A voice cries out in the wilderness - prepare the way of the Lord.” Are we hearing that voice? Hearing our hopes and deepest aspirations, God promises, “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” Are we seeing more clearly the places where God is about to act? I am worried about the world, very worried, but I am excited to be a part of what God is about to do in Jesus!
Now, a footnote: When I served a church in Rochester, I was always bothered by how Christmas Eve was covered in the news. Every year on Christmas Eve, for the eleven o’clock news, the news cameras would bring scenes from the biggest churches and cathedrals in Rochester. The churches with tall steeples, huge choirs, every seat filled. “Why don’t they ever come to our little church on Lyell Avenue? We don’t have a steeple, we have no choir, and most of the seats are empty for Christmas Eve. Why don’t they ever come to a church like ours?” I vented my frustrations to our secretary. To my surprise, that year, as we gathered for our Christmas Eve service, the TV camera crew came into the sanctuary and our little congregation was on the eleven o’clock news that night. Twenty little flickering candles and twenty faces lit up with hope. That night the revolution was being televised, but for those of us there the revolution was live!
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