God created the human race with the capacity to follow His commandments and to live together in peace and harmony with one another. I am not talking in this sermon about how we should behave as nations and cultures and societies, but rather how we should behave with one another as individuals. God intended us to co-exist without seeking to harm or take advantage of others, and He created us with the ability to manage to do that. The question is this: Do we actually do it? Does the socialization of our youth lead into a peaceable kingdom in our adulthood? Does our behavior improve with age? Should it?

A military Messiah can only guarantee yet more military activity, but a comforting and consoling and vicarious Messiah can bring peace on earth, and good will to all peoples. As we see in the verses of Isaiah 53 however, the Bible does not clarify all mysteries. Sometimes, instead it magnifies the mysteries. The Bible may prompt more questions than it provides answers. It also may turn the glorious into the mysterious.

Christmas comes four days after the shortest, and therefore darkest, day of the year. After the emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christians superimposed Christmas onto an already existing Roman winter holiday, thus making Christmas one of the holiest days in the Christian year. Therefore glorious light is thrust into the thickest darkness, hope into devastation, and peace into great conflict.

During Advent, we are studying various messianic passages from the prophecy of Isaiah. Today we are looking at two verses from the eleventh chapter of Isaiah which talk about the Messiah as “a shoot from the stump of Jesse” (11:1) and as “the root of Jesse” (11:10). Who, you might ask, was Jesse? Jesse was the father of King David, and David was considered the greatest of the Israelite kings by most Jews throughout most of history. During biblical times, it was believed that whoever The Messiah would be (“The Anointed One” of Israel), he would have to be a descendant of David. In their minds, that was a messianic “given.”

Jesus Christ did not become the Messiah of the Christians on the basis of his parentage or birthplace or social class. Furthermore, he became their Messiah as much on the basis of what he said as what he did. He became their Messiah on the basis of how he lived his life. But his life was not anything like what the traditional Jewish concept of the Messiah decreed it should be. Jesus never appeared to be regal or monarchical; he appeared to be one of the people of the land and not the people of the city. He clearly claimed to be a servant, and not a master, a bringer of peace rather than a fomenter of war.

Compassion means perceiving a need, and doing all we can to satisfy that need. That is who Jesus was, and that is what he did. It also is what he bids us to do.

The dictionary has several definitions for the word “culture,” but the two I want us to think about are these: “5a : the integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, action, and artifacts and depends upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations b : the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group.”

If you have visited a variety of churches in different denominations throughout your life, you will be aware that every denomination has its own version of the Lord’s Prayer. Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and maybe the Eastern Orthodox all say “trespasses”: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Baptists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists (or the United Church of Christ) tend to use “debts”: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” It seems to me that in recent years, more and more churches across denominational lines are using “sins”: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

Daily security is our only reasonable prayer to God, just as daily bread is our only reasonable petition to God for bodily sustenance. People who pray for long-term financial security or long-term personal security are bound to be disappointed. God is not in the long-term care business. He promises to bless us only in the short-term, and in eternity. We must limit our requests to Him for daily bread. More than that is beyond the scope of His divine provision.

Let me ask you a question. Do you expect the kingdom to come? Do you look for it, now, as well as in the future? Or have you concluded that you’ve seen as much of God’s kingdom as you’re going to see, which isn’t very much? What do all of us expect? Whatever it is, that is what we are very likely to encounter until the day we die. Faith ignites the kingdom, and apathy extinguishes it. Its success depends on us. Do we depend on it?

Some people may wonder, “Why it is necessary to have fire codes or building codes?” And what difference does it make if we have seat belts in our cars, or whether we use them or not? Why should cigarette packs say that smoking may cause cancer, or why should ads on television be legal in which litigation lawyers tell us that if we were exposed to unusual levels of asbestos forty years ago, we might receive money in a huge class-action lawsuit? Regulations are involved in all of those issues, and regulations, not laws per se, are the focus of this sermon.

The history of the human race is in part a history of the movement of individual people or entire peoples (plural) from one place to another. According to the anthropologists and ethnologists, humanity --- at least our particular species of hominids --- originated in East Africa. For whatever reasons, for millennia on end, small groups of people began to move west and south from East Africa, but mainly to the north. Once they uprooted from where they had been born, they were in a land we might call Nowhereland until they finally got to where they believed it was good to put down roots again.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now” addresses people with a physical hunger. They want food. If they are hungry enough, they will eat any kind of food, even Brussels sprouts or Limburger cheese. “Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness” speaks to a quite different kind of hunger. Their hunger is to acquire goodness or righteousness or ethical acceptability. The first hunger is essentially physical, while the second is moral and spiritual.

The essential topic of today’s two readings focus on the natural human tendency to become overly concerned about financial and food security. We all want “enough” money, however much “enough” means to each of us, and we all want enough food. Persistent hunger and especially starvation are not happy prospects for anyone.

Let us begin by asking a series of questions. Is there a difference between suffering and pain? Is “suffering” more painful than mere pain? Are “agony” and “suffering” synonymous? Can suffering be defined as “intense pain”? Which is the worst form of suffering: physical, mental, psychological, or spiritual? Would everyone answer the same? If suffering is inevitable, could everyone here this morning describe your own experiences of genuine suffering?

The eleventh chapter is the best-known part of Hebrews. It begins with that famous verse, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Then the writer went on with a beautiful litany of characters in the Hebrew Bible who lived through very trying circumstances, in which their faith was severely tested. Nevertheless their hope never failed them, and they came through their adversities, strengthened by their experiences, and deepened in their resolve, even if the experiences depleted them and challenged that resolve.

A few weeks ago The New Yorker had a cartoon which is an appropriate way to start this sermon. It was the drawing of a tee shirt, with a large caption that said, “Undiagnosed Middle-Age-Onset Discomfort,” with the sub-caption, “Summer Tour.” Then it listed five ailments which had afflicted the wearer of the tee shirt: “Left Shoulder – July 5; Abdomen – July 12; Lower Back – July 17,18,19; An Inch or So Above the Groin – July 22; Right Shoulder – July 25.”

Probably more people in the world, especially more Americans, are more upset by what is going on in the world than ever before in the lifetimes of any of us. Everybody seems angry at somebody, and nobody can escape the ongoing tension. Only those who don’t know what is happening, who are ignorant of “the news,” are relatively content with the state of the world situation. The reason they are unfazed is that they are unaware of the multitude of problems.

Have you ever heard someone say that life is not fair? It’s absolutely correct; life isn’t fair. God never promised us that life would be fair. People are going to mess with us and trick us. That is inevitable. But God does promise, and Jesus does validate, that God will be with all of us if we choose to follow the law of love. And the law of love is what is found at the end of Luke’s eight-fold lesson on love or Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (7:12), “As you wish that people would do to you, so you must do to them, for this,” said Jesus, summarizing the essence of everything written in the Hebrew Bible, “is the law and the prophets.”

It seems so out of character! Jesus had just given a series of four beautiful and encouraging Beatitudes: Blessed are you poor, blessed are you who hunger now, blessed are you who weep, blessed are you when men hate you. And then, with no segue or warning, four stinging woes: “Woe to you who are rich, woe to you who are full now, woe to you who laugh now, woe to you when everyone speaks well of you.” Where in the world did that come from?