(Sermon on YouTube at 29:00)
December 5, 2021
Sermon: “Jerusalem, our promised home”
Rev. Kristian Wold
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel.
The One is coming who holds the key of David in his hand. This is the key that opens the way to love and forgiveness and peace and possibility and joy and life. He opens shalom to our hearts and justice to our world. To prepare his way dark valleys of shadow and death are filled in, and hard mountains of indifference and injustice are laid low. What is crooked and bent in our lives will finally be made straight, and what is rough in our hearts will be finished and smooth.
The One who is coming has a look of absolute silly delight on his face - the happiness you see on the face of a groom as his bride walks up the aisle. The bride is the New Jerusalem, the church—you and I!—made whole and beautiful and complete at last by the vast love of God. We have been prepared “as a bride adorned for her husband,” (Rev. 21:2), clothed in a robe of righteousness and a diadem of glory (Baruch 5:2).
For those who are so keenly and unhappily aware of their own faults, failings, frailties, and shortcomings, the promises of God on this day make the heart leap with hope and longing. Ah! wholeness at last. For those who mourn and grieve and sorrow and suffer the hardness, the injustice and the evil of this world, a cry of relief goes up. Ah! God’s reign of peace, come now forever. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel.
You know, there are times and some years when we hear these stories of John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” — times when I hear those words as a stern command. As in, “Shape up! Get your house in order! Clean up your act! Repent!” And all that is there. Advent really is a time for critical self-examination and renewed efforts to work for justice in the world. We are certainly called, invited, and commanded to forgive each other’s sins, “put on” compassion in our lives, and labour for God’s reign to come. That’s all very much part of things. But this year, right now, my heart is more longing to hear the promises.
“Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction,” says the prophet Baruch, a disciple of Jeremiah’s. “Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height; and look toward the east.” And why? Because God is restoring the city, leading Israel with joy in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.
Blessed are you, Lord, the God of Israel, sings Zechariah in Luke’s gospel. And why? Because the promise is fulfilled. The Messiah has come, and in the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high has broken upon us.
And Paul, writing from captivity in a Roman prison, is filled with joy in his correspondence with his beloved Philippians. Why? How? Because he is confident of this, that the one who began a good work among them will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. He knows that God is transforming God’s people by degrees, leading them into the fullness of love.
These are the words of Holy Scripture that I hold on to this season of Advent, the promises that make my heart sing and leap for joy. In a world of shut doors, closed off opportunities, calamities, and potential disaster everywhere you look, I long for the coming of the One who holds the keys of David that open up the way of life. And I think a lot of other people do too.
In late 2019, as the world slowly began to wake up to the threat of a global pandemic, a South African artist, Master KG, was sitting in his studio late one night. A song was bursting from him and he had to get it down. He set down a basic track and then called his friend, the singer Nomcebo Zikode, to collaborate. That night, between them, the song Jerusalema was born. Set to a persistent Afro-beat, Zikode sings soaringly in Zulu,
Jerusalem, my home,
Save me!
Join me,
Don't leave me here!
My place is not here,
My kingdom is not here,
Save me,
Come with me!
Within months people all over the world were listening. And then they were dancing. Spreading like the dawn on platforms like Spotify, Tik Tok, and YouTube, people were emerging from their lockdowns to express their hope and longing and celebration of other possibilities in movement. The dance that you’ll see, if you look Jerusalema up on YouTube later, is a South African wedding dance. And it was embraced around the world by young and old, students, teams of nurses, airline crews, teachers, pro dancers and ordinary people alike. I even saw a video of an African priest and deacons dancing in full liturgical garb, just like mine! A South African nurse who performed the dance with her team said, “Jerusalema is more than just a dance. This is a celebration of survivors. It’s a victory from difficult and unknown times. This is a unity, formed like never before, for national and international people.”
And of course this is exactly what we celebrate this Advent, and every Advent. A future of joy, freedom, victory, and shalom — expressed now in dance, and in completion by Jesus our Key, the One who was, who is, and who is to come. Amen.