Today is the third Sunday of Advent. Liturgically, we have nine more days to reflect and wait as we prepare ourselves for the coming of Emmanuel, to experience again God with us in the form of a baby and the hope that means for our lives and our world. At the same time most of us are frenzied, scurrying around for the perfect gifts, getting them wrapped and in the mail or under the tree, eating too much, drinking too much, and realizing that for one reason or another Christmas is not the same as it used to be, the ideal we remember, or was it something from a movie?

The Advent season was created by the church many years ago and modeled after scriptural themes. It is a period similar to Lent prior to Easter, a time of self-examination and preparation. Biblically, the wait was for a savior, predicted by the prophets, who would "bring good news to the oppressed", but I have to tell you that generally it’s a good time for women in California. Personally, I haven’t really had the experience of being oppressed. The wait was for a savior, predicted by the prophets, who would "bind up the brokenhearted." Though I am deeply saddened when a loved one dies, most of the days of my life I’m really not brokenhearted. The wait spoken of by the prophets was for a savior who "proclaimed liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners," but most people in my neighborhood, in southern Marin have never seen the inside of a jail. I can say that I have known three or four people who have been political prisoners and others who have been through war and who feared for their lives but it is hard for me to personally imagine that existence, that longing for liberty. Maybe we have all we need here in Tiburon. We certainly have freedom. Maybe we don’t really need the real Christmas, don’t really need to be saved by a baby. Is Christmas meant for others, those who are oppressed, brokenhearted, or wrongly imprisoned rather than for you and me? Could it be that Christmas is for those whose lives need changing and not for us, the ones who, on close examination, really have it pretty good? What is it that we are waiting for during Advent?

Charles Wesley, famous writer of over 6,000 hymns, put his thoughts about Advent into the first song in our hymnal. I invite you to open your books to Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus, on page one. Let’s sing just the first verse now but keep it on your lap for use later.

Come, Thou long-expected Jesus, Born to set Thy people free;
From your fears and sins release us; Let us find our rest in Thee.

"Born to set thy people free." Have you ever felt imprisoned by another’s, that someone had an opinion about you that you knew was wrong but no matter what you did, you couldn’t get them to believe the true story, to see the real you? It can happen in a misunderstanding with a co-worker, a spouse, a parent, or an in-law, a conflict that comes from fear or intent, that traps you, imprisons you, keeping you from having an authentic relationship with that person. I’d like to introduce you to Greg Wilhoit who knows that kind of imprisonment only too well.

In 1987, Wilhoit was sent to Oklahoma’s death row to await execution for the rape and murder of his estranged wife, Kathryn, two years earlier. Wilhoit was convicted solely on the testimony of the prosecution’s bite-mark experts, both of whom claimed a bite on Kathryn’s body exactly matched Wilhoit’s. Hair and fingerprints found at the scene were not his. Wilhoit had confidence in his once-prominent attorney but was gravely disappointed when he showed up in court drunk and never refuted or even questioned the bite-mark testimony. Wilhoit’s family kept hoping the attorney would suddenly come through with the right evidence and argument but, instead, the jury found him guilty. The court’s decision was the death penalty. Greg Wilhoit couldn’t believe it was happening to him. He was utterly devastated. After six months on death row, a public defender, Mark Barrett, started to look at the evidence in his case and began to believe that his new client was innocent. It took little convincing to get Wilhoit to agree to send the bite-mark evidence to twelve of the country’s top specialists. All twelve sent back the report that there was no way the bite was Wilhoit’s. One found as many as twenty discrepancies. When presented with this new evidence, judge and jury freed Wilhoit immediately. It was April Fools’ Day, 1993, that he gained his freedom after almost five years on death row. Wilhoit said, "I was weeping like a small child," as was his extended family and most of the jury. "Every day that I wake up," he now says, grinning, "and I’m not dead or on death row, it’s a bonus day."

Greg Wilhoit, more than most of us in this room, knows the personal experience of being oppressed and suddenly hearing good news, of being released from prison into the light of day. At a time when all power had been taken away from him, the ability to raise his daughters and to earn a living, public defender Mark Barrett saw him for who he truly was and was willing to fight for him. New life stirred in Greg Wilhoit but the pregnancy period was difficult. After release, he struggled with fear, distrust, alcohol, and depression until a friend invited him to move to Sacramento. He has a new life now and has found his calling speaking to law school classes and civic organizations about the importance of a moratorium on capital punishment until we can be certain that innocent people aren’t being executed. He says he is now trying to change the world "a little bitty corner at a time."

Greg’s world turned upside down not once but twice; first, when he heard the guilty verdict and then again, after five years of waiting, when his innocence was publicly affirmed.

Long ago the life of a young girl, Mary, was also turned upside down in a way that, like Greg’s life, is hard for most of us to imagine. How could Mary, much less the religious people of the time, the people of faith, believe what the angel Gabriel said to her? How could those in power trust that she, a girl from the backcountry of Galilee would become the mother of the one who would sit on the throne of David? But, the angel Gabriel reminded her of the words of the prophet Jeremiah when he said, "Nothing is impossible to God." She went off like the wind, light on her feet, to the hill country and her older cousin Elizabeth. Mary couldn’t contain her excitement. When they caught sight of each other their realities were confirmed. Elizabeth was too old to be pregnant and Mary was too inexperienced but God’s spirit was stirring in both of them and they couldn’t hold in their joy any longer. The lives of both women were turned upside down, and Mary called out, "My soul magnifies the Lord." Through her lowly life, God was even bigger, magnified! Mary sang of all God meant to her from the depth of her own experience. "God is merciful and strong" and turns the world we know upside down. "God scatters the proud, brings down the powerful and sends the rich away empty. God lifts up the lowly and fills the hungry with good things." It is a song filled with hope, filled with mercy, filled with promises to Greg Wilhoit and Mary and "the descendants of Abraham and Sarah and all who love God from generation to generation, forever."

The thing that makes me feel uncomfortable when I think about my life, especially during Advent, I realize that to the rest of the world I am not the lowly person in need of hope or the hungry person who needs to be filled with good things. Instead, the rest of the world would probably see me as one of the powerful ones, the proud ones, certainly one of the rich ones. In Mary’s Magnificat she sings that the world in which I am on top is promised by God to be turned upside down! It’s a reorientation that is hard for me to believe or accept, similar to the adjustment we make when someone cleverly holds up a globe with North America on the bottom and Africa and South America on the top. Our brain tells us that something is wrong, but our heart quickly realizes that it certainly is one version of right.

Our world was turned upside down in many ways this past year and we are must re-orient ourselves. Who would have thought that as our lives lay buried in the rubble of 9-11, that the year 2002 would see so many reversals? The most recent example is the resignation of Cardinal Law in Boston this week. The realities of the abuse of power, of 400 alleged victims in Boston who have been living in their own personal prisons, and the resulting demand for justice by such a strong group of lay people offers hope to the victims and those who see this action as a requirement of faith for the entire denomination. The lives of the wheeler-dealers at Enron and many that supported that house of cards has turned completely upside down. We all remember the high costs for electricity here in California that now we know was during the same period that Enron traders were betting on prices and trading in billions of dollars gaining hundreds of millions in a single day. We didn’t personally create these problems and the many others of our society and world but we live in a culture that let them happen. And…we live in a culture that forces them to change. The whistle-blowers led the way including a public defender Mark Barrett for Greg Wilhoit and the many others who sought justice this year in the private businesses, in government, and in the churches. Now as the year ends we hate to think, we can hardly believe the possibility that we will be forced into war but we hear the threats daily. What will that do for the hungry and the lowly? Shall we walk together for peace this Saturday at 4:00pm in San Rafael? How realistic is it for us to believe God’s promises today? Is there a way to end this war before it begins? Is Christmas really for us?

Yes! That little baby born in a food trough to a young girl from a nothing town was sent from God of love and justice and mercy to offer life to us and through us, even those of us in southern Marin. The responsibility is ours to prepare ourselves during Advent to be part of the reality of Christmas, that the savior is born again in the world and we are to magnify God’s love. This fall two families in our congregation opened their lives and their homes to babies adopted from starving villages in Guatemala. As we work to offer medical care near Antigua and serve Fair Trade Coffee on Sunday mornings helping coffee workers, we also welcome Elana Petrini and Gabriel Blake into our community. On December 24, at 5:00, Gabriel, born to a young girl from Pueblo Barrios in Eastern Guatemala will represent baby Jesus for us in the children’s Christmas Pageant. I invite you to be here. Christmas is for all of us, to receive and to give God’s promise of hope. As we close, let us sing together the third verse of Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus.