Everything (In) Between: Neighbors & Strangers
This year’s Lenten worship series invites us to go beyond black and white binaries. The series amplifies Jesus’ invitation to move away from paralyzing polarities that obscure, instead of clarify, the reality we face.
These dualistic binaries and polarities at first glance may seem to simplify our lives, but they can easily keep us from grappling with the deeper truth into which Christ is calling us.
This morning we consider the alleged polarity between neighbor and stranger. Let’s dig in.
As we are presented with Luke’s text, the parable of the Good Samaritan is placed within another story. It’s a story within a story. A teacher of the law stands up to test Jesus. He asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Characteristically, Jesus turns the question back to the one who would put him to the test, asking what is written in the law.
The lawyer gives what may have been a rather commonplace summary:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.
This is a good answer as far as it goes, but then the teacher of the law must press the fine point of the law -- who is my neighbor?
But what passion is energizing him in this moment? It may seem that his passion is being clear about the law, or even to show Jesus up with his own scholarship, but there is a deeper, more fundamental passion to which the text alerts us:
Luke tells us that he presses Jesus on this point to justify himself. To justify himself. The lawyer is looking to set a boundary to the concept of neighbor to limit the extent of his obligation. His passion is to be on the right side of the law. If his obligation is unlimited, then he will never be able to justify himself. There will always be something more. He can’t stand that idea.
Another way to put this is to say that he is asking the question from a place of anxiety. His anxiety about eternal life, his anxiety about judgment. His anxiety about being somehow “bad.”
Jesus, on the other hand, simply talks about life. If you love God and neighbor, you will live. You will live.
So before we even begin to look at the parable, let’s step back and reframe the question in our own minds.
Now this takes us to what for me is a deeper and more important understanding of just how we ask for, and hear, Jesus’ guidance and teaching.
We’ve noticed in the last several weeks how challenging Jesus’ teachings can be. But why are they challenging? Well, a big reason is that we want to fit Jesus’ teaching into our goals, our plans, and our understandings of the world. And that just doesn’t work.
If our framework for operating in the world is to protect ourselves and our loved ones, to maintain our status and self-image, to be comfortable and content, then loving our enemy, forgiving those who wrong us, giving up our possessions or our claim to our time is not going to fit into that operating framework.
We would prefer Jesus’ instructions to overlay our operating framework, not undermine it.
But Jesus is not usually giving us advice as to how to fit better in the world’s framework. Instead, Jesus is inviting us into a different framework, namely the Kingdom of God or Kindom of God, or the realm of God. Or, we might even say, the kingdom of heaven on earth.
The lawyer wants Jesus to help him justify himself. Instead, Jesus is asking him to let go of himself and his felt need to justify himself. To get out of himself. Jesus invites him to hear with the ears of life. To hear with the ears of life. These ears of life are the ones Jesus refers to when he says in other passages, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
Parables, by their very nature, can allow us to hear. They are often designed to get around our pre-formed judgments and assumptions so that we can hear with the ears of life, the ears of the Kingdom of God. Parables sometimes set out to ambush our preconceptions.
Of course, the parable of the Good Samaritan is so familiar to many of us that it is hard to hear with new ears. But here’s a little thought experiment that may help us. Rabbi Sharon Brous writes:
My friend goes to a church of Caribbean immigrants in downtown Los Angeles. One day his pastor preached: Say you’re walking in downtown LA, or Chicago, or New York. A naked man runs in front of you on the sidewalk, screaming and cursing. What do you do? Most of us, of course, briskly cross the street. That guy’s unwell, we think.
But say you live in a tiny town of maybe fifty households. You’re walking around one day when a naked man runs in front of you on the sidewalk, screaming and cursing. And because you live in a tiny town, you know this man … it’s Henry. Last week, you just happen to know, there was a terrible tragedy, and fire burned Henry’s house to the ground, leaving him with nothing. What do you do? “Henry,” you say, “come with me, friend. You need a warm meal and a safe place to stay.”
Rabbi Brous continues:
What does it take to shift our collective consciousness from stranger who is unwell to Henry, my neighbor, created in God’s own image?…
The challenge is to imagine a fundamentally different reality: a world in which we recognize and fight for each other’s dignity. A world in which we … train our hearts to see even the people others might render invisible. A world in which we recognize that we—images of the Divine—are all bound up in the bond of life with one another. And our hardest and holiest work is not to look away. [https://cac.org/daily-meditations/knowing-our-neighbors/]
The polarity between neighbor and stranger is not in the person who needs help. It is in the context in which we encounter one another in our own situations and stories.
As has often been noted – one of the significant twists in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan is that the identity of the hero is the one with the alien, stranger, and enemy identity, not the one who was beaten and abandoned on the side of the road.
So how do we, as Rabbi Brous asks, “train our hearts to see even the people others might render invisible?”
Training our hearts to see, like training our ears to hear, is no small endeavor. Even to imagine ourselves in the story of distressed Henry set in the small village imagines us as having to focus our attention and activity with some significant energy. To imagine how we begin to approach persons in the context of a city that is constructed to almost guarantee that everyone on the street is practically a stranger to each other – or on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, full of vulnerable travelers who were not neighbors at home – and robbers who were – is even more difficult.
Perhaps we feel ourselves retreating to that place of self-justifying anxiety where we want to put boundaries on who we will count as a neighbor.
So let’s come at the neighbor/stranger polarity from a different direction.
One strand of response to the parable of the Good Samaritan is that while it’s great to take care of the stranger left for dead on the side of the road, what really needs to be done is to improve the road for everyone and get rid of the danger of robbers.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King is one of those who offers this reflection. Disapprovingly, Dr. King says,
There is no suggestion that the Samaritan sought to investigate the lack of police protection on the Jericho Road. Nor did he appeal to any public officials to set out after the robbers and clean up the Jericho road. Here was the weakness of the good Samaritan. He was concerned merely with temporary relief, not with thorough reconstruction. He sought to sooth the effects of evil, without going back to uproot the causes. [https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/one-sided-approach-good-samaritan]
I don’t think this tack really matches the parable’s moment, but it may lead us to this thought: perhaps we need to begin our consideration not in the dramatic crisis situation, but in the ordinary, everyday situations in which we find ourselves.
In Jesus’ day most people – and indeed for most people of most of human history – interacted with the same couple of hundred people their whole lives. Strangers were unusual. Strangers were “strange.”
Nowadays, however, we interact with strangers all the time: at the store, in our workplaces, at medical facilities, in the car, online, in the newspaper and on television. We are confronted by stranger after stranger. On top of that, more and more of us encounter more and more people of various ethnic backgrounds, clothing styles, and various features of personal adornment.
It might be helpful to simply acknowledge that for many of us, interacting with strangers, let alone trying to be neighbors with strangers, can be stressful. And that’s ok.
So perhaps a major task as a response to this parable, is to do what we can to foster a sense of neighborhood, of trust, of acceptance, and community. Perhaps the most helpful stance we can adopt is to be open to encounter the image of God in those we meet in our words, our deeds, and our expectations.
That openness gives the image of God in the other person the opportunity to shine forth and not hide. Neighbors are as much created as they are discovered, and they are created in encounters in which we remember the image of God that is us, which resonates with the image of God that is them.
Or, as a kind of shorthand: The task is to live with Mr. Rogers’ ongoing invitation: won’t you be my neighbor?
In this way we build a stronger, more durable, network of connection so that we create a social context that is more like the village of fifty households than like the anonymizing city or the violent Jericho road.
And church – by the way – is one of the best structures we have for doing that. Here we build a shared network of love and care that then reaches out, turning strangers into neighbors – before the moment of crisis.
And, finally, perhaps it will help us to return to the two commandments themselves.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.”
We can get tied up in legalistically parsing out the dichotomy of neighbor vs. stranger. But in the larger cosmic story, the larger story of love that encompasses neighbor and stranger and everything in between, we receive a vision of the bigger picture. Love is actually all one and not parsed between love for God, love for ourselves, and love for our neighbor and love for the stranger. It’s about allowing that one love to flow freely in our receiving and in our passing it on.
Richard Rohr connects it all this way:
The only way I know how to teach anyone to love God, and how I myself seek to love God, is to love what God loves, which is everything and everyone, including you and including me! “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19). “If we love one another, God remains in us, and God’s love is brought to perfection in us” (1 John 4:12). Then we love with God’s infinite love that can always flow through us. We’re able to love people and things for themselves and in themselves—and not for what they do for us. That takes both work and surrender. As we get ourselves out of the way, there is a slow but real expansion of consciousness. We’re not the central reference point anymore. We love in greater and greater circles until we can finally do what Jesus did: love and forgive even our enemies.
Most of us were given the impression that we had to be totally selfless, and when we couldn’t achieve that, many of us gave up altogether. One of John Duns Scotus’ most helpful teachings is that Christian morality at its best seeks “a harmony of goodness.” We harmonize and balance necessary self-care with a constant expansion beyond ourselves to loving others. …
Imagining and working toward this harmony keeps us from seeking impossible, private, and heroic ideals. Now the possibility of love is potentially right in front of us and always concrete. Love is no longer a theory or a heroic ideal. Love is seeking the good of as many as possible.
That is the path that leads us away from our anxieties of self-justification. Leads us away from the paralyzing polarities that deflect us from the deeper cosmic reality of God’s creation. Leads us out of the binary framework of us vs. them.
“Love is seeking the good of as many as possible.”
That, my friends, is the path to life. The life into which Jesus invites us every moment.
The First Sign of Jesus
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“And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy
Yes, God will delight when we are creators of justice, justice and joy.”
These are the words of the refrain of the song For Everyone Born, a Place at the Table, by Shirley Erena Murray. We’re not singing it as one of our songs today, but I’d like you to hear the refrain as a frame to the message in the next few minutes. “And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy.”
This miracle of turning water into wine might seem frivolous. Beneath Jesus. Not worth mentioning in the Bible. This passage from John’s Gospel might have seemed downright evil to our Prohibitionist forebears, who clearly saw the dangers that alcohol abuse posed to the community. There’s no question that alcohol abuse is social problem in several dimensions. But this story is not about temperance! And it is not particularly timely for dry January.
But let’s step back and try to read this story with the eyes of our gospel writer, John and his audience. Let’s look at it in the context of how John tries to depict Jesus as incarnating God, i.e. bringing God into our world.
First, let’s notice with what prominence the Gospel writer recounts the story. He tells us that it is the first of his signs.
The first of Jesus’ “signs”. In the Gospel of John there are seven signs that Jesus performs. These are signs that reveal to any who would see, that Jesus is bringing God’s reality into the world, that God is entering the world through this Jesus of Nazareth. For reference, two of his other signs are the healing of the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead. I’ll leave it to you to Google the others.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ glory is pointed to, revealed by, the signs that showed the inbreaking of divine power, grace, and love. The signs are God’s abundance breaking into our world.
This turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana is the very first of these signs. Not preaching, not healing, not raising the dead. Turning water into wine.
We find Jesus, his mother, and the disciples have all been invited to a wedding feast. The gospel writer tells us that the wine gave out. We don’t know if the groom had not planned well enough ahead, or if the guests were particularly thirsty, or if more people had stayed longer than planned. We don’t know.
But whatever the reason, John’s audience would immediately understand the gravity of the situation and how it might have happened. If the wine has truly given out, the party was about to come to a halt. This was not a BYOB arrangement. You might think that’s foolish or wrong or whatever, but that was the reality in those days in that context. That party was in trouble.
Jesus’ mother raises the subject to Jesus himself: They have no wine.
Now, the next words from Jesus are puzzling to us: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me. My hour has not yet come.”
And, as you might imagine, biblical scholars have a lot to say about this. Some of it is interesting and helpful.
When Jesus says My hour has not yet come, he is saying that the hour of his death and resurrection has not yet come. So, whatever happens here needs to be understood in terms of that.
But what might be particularly troubling here is how we read “What has this to do with us?” One way to read this is negatively. Jesus is implying this is none of our business. It’s too trivial a matter with which to reflect his glory.
But the other way to read this is more like a frame: What has this to do with us? I’ll show you what this has to do with us. Just watch!
And that take fits with the story because his mother is not put off by Jesus’ words. In fact, she believed that he was saying that he will take care of the situation because her next words are to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.”
Then we learn that there are six stone jars nearby. Jesus tells the servants to fill all the jars with water. Once they had done this Jesus tells them to take some out and give it to the chief steward, the fellow in charge of the food and drink for the feast. So that’s what the servants did. When the steward tastes it, he is amazed. So late in the party this new wine is better than the wine that began the party. The steward calls the bridegroom to express his astonishment.
This is unheard of. Generally the good wine is served first while people’s taste buds still have some sensitivity. But you’ve been hoarding the good stuff for late in the feasting! He is amazed.
John concludes the story by saying that in this act, Jesus revealed his glory and that his disciples believed in him.
This miracle is not frivolous. It is not beneath Jesus. It is a sign.
What does this sign tell us? What does it say that the first sign is to bring wine to a wedding feast?
In the Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky devotes a brief chapter to a reflection on this story. Alyosha hears it being read by one of his fellow monks who is sitting up with the body of the honored monk and elder Zosima. The story changes his life and as he hears it he weeps with joy. Here’s what he says:
I love that passage, it's Cana of Galilee, the first miracle... Ah, that miracle, ah, that lovely miracle! Not their grief, but their joy Christ visited when he worked his first miracle, he helped their joy . . .
He who loves people, loves their joy. Father Zosima used to repeat it all the time, it was one of his main thoughts . One cannot live without joy.
Joy, the joy of some poor, very poor people... Why, of course they were poor, if there wasn't even enough wine for the wedding, And his mother, knew that he came down then not just for his great and awful deed, but that his heart was also open to the simple, artless merrymaking of some uncouth, uncouth but guileless beings, who lovingly invited him to their poor marriage feast.
As Jesus begins his ministry he begins it in a celebration of abundance. He reveals how God created the world to be- filled with blessing and joy.
The prophet Amos had foretold
Behold the days are coming when the mountains shall drip sweet wine and all the hills shall flow with it. [Amos 9:13]
Now, let’s go back to the turning point question that Jesus asks and deploy it to set an agenda for ourselves. What has this story to do with us?
As tomorrow we remember with gratitude the life and ministry of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, let me share a recollection he wrote of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery as part of the voting rights struggle. This takes place just a few weeks after the infamous police violence at the Edmund Pettis Bridge and the murders of two civil rights workers:
Some of us started out on March 21 marching from Selma, Alabama. We walked through desolate valleys and across tiring hills. We walked on meandering highways and rested our bodies on rocky byways. Some of our faces were burnt from the outpourings of the sweltering sun. Some literally slept in the mud. We were drenched by the rain. Our bodies were tired. Our feet were sore. The thousands of pilgrims had marched across a route traveled by Sherman a hundred years before. But in contrast to a trail of destruction and bloodshed, they watered the red Alabama clay with tears of joy and love overflowing, even for those who taunted and jeered along the sidelines. Not a shot was fired. Not a stone displaced. Not a window broken. Not a person abused or insulted. This was certainly a triumphant entry into the "Cradle of the Confederacy." And an entry destined to put an end to that racist oligarchy once and for all.
The marchers “watered the red Alabama clay with tears of joy and love overflowing, even for those who taunted and jeered along the sidelines.”
Friends, we live in uncertain times. With tomorrow’s inauguration of President Trump, many of us are worried about what comes next. What comes next for our trans siblings? What comes next for migrants and undocumented workers? What comes next for democracy and the rule of law? What comes next for those who depend on SNAP benefits and Medicaid? What comes next for the prospect of expanded economic justice? Maybe our worries will turn out to be misguided. Maybe not. I can’t say for sure with the authority of the pulpit.
But I can say this: we are continually invited into joy. We are continually invited to live out justice and joy – they go together.
Dr. Barbara Holmes, an African American theologian and spiritual teacher, who died much too early just a couple of months ago teaches us this:
We are born with an inner fire. I believe that this fire is the God within. It is an unquenchable, divine fire. It warms us, encourages us, and occasionally asks us to dance.
Suppose that at the entrance to heaven there is a scale—not a scale to weigh good and bad deeds—but a scale to measure joy. Suppose our passage into the next life will not be determined by the number of souls saved, sermons preached, or holiness pursued. Just joy.
We’ve become very somber Christians in a very somber age. It’s not that we don’t have things to be concerned about. There are wars, natural disasters, deficits, broken relationships and viruses. But in the midst of this, we’re called to joy by a joyful God and a joyful Savior. Hierarchies have always been afraid of a dancing, joyful Jesus. They’re not so worried about the institutional Christ, but they fear this living, singing Jesus who can boogie, who sings all the way to Gethsemane, and tells jokes. Remember the one he told the Pharisees about the camel and the eye of the needle?
No matter the circumstances, we’re called to joy.
Live into joy! God is inviting us into a life of joy.
Since we believe that God is present in all times and places, then there is at least some echo of joy to remember – even if we can’t exactly feel it – in every time and place as well.
Jesus’ turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana is The First of Jesus’ signs. It’s not simply first in time, but it also sets the stage for Jesus’ whole life and ministry. He’s showing us that a foundational confidence/appreciation of joy lubricates the difficulties. Energizes. Inspires. A spirit of celebration is infused into life that both flows from, and testifies to, our trust and faith in God’s goodness.
What does this have to do with us? This has everything to do with us. Let us demonstrate that with our lives! Let us show that as we grow together as a joyful community of faith.
“And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy.”
Let us spend a quiet moment locking that affirmation of justice and joy into our hearts, so that we may keep it with us for whatever lies before us in the days ahead.
Advent 4: The Promise of Justice
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Well, here are. The 4th Sunday of Advent! Where did these 4 weeks go? Each Advent, I look forward to hearing the voice of Mary.
For the past couple of weeks, we have heard about the promises that the prophets foretold (Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Micah). We’ve heard from the messenger preparing the way—Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist. We’ve heard about the promises of Truth, Compassion, and Restoration. Today we hear from a different messenger: Mary. And what she has to say points us in the direction and tells of the promise of Justice! Perhaps we can even call her Mary the prophet!
Today is just as good as any day to remind us that women are very much underrepresented in the bible. In the entire Bible, women speak about 14,000 words collectively – that may sound like a lot, but this represents merely 1.1% of all the words in the Bible. (Christian Jennert, “Listen to Mary”, sermon, St. Matthews Lutheran Church).
But women are crucial to the whole story of God and God’s people. We know that. At least I hope we know that!
Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, is the first one to hear what Mary has to say. She, too, is pregnant — about six months further along than Mary, and much, much older. (Remember—2 weeks ago we heard about her and Zechariah’s story.) Elizabeth greets her cousin loudly because she is excited that Mary has come to see her; because her own baby has jumped for joy inside her. Behind the sudden events of this story lie the long years when Israel waited in hope for the promised Messiah. Now there is hope of a new life. And it’s from women.
FYI:
This story, known as “the Visitation,” is the longest account in all the New Testament in which women hold center stage.
Mary’s Magnificat is the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the entire New Testament. “My soul magnifies the Lord,” Mary sings “and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” https://jasonporterfield.com/the-subversive-magnificat/
Mary has a voice, a strong voice, a powerful voice. It may even make us uncomfortable, with all the talk of sending the rich away empty. She has faith in God, who, through the angel Gabriel, announced to her that the child she is carrying would turn the world around.
Mary’s voice is a voice we need to hear still today because there is still so much injustice, so much suffering, in our world today. Her voice has the power to inspire us to speak up and act when we encounter that injustice.
For Mary, the acts of God reveal God’s heart for the weary, oppressed, anxious, exiled, and afraid. God is flipping the world upside-down (or perhaps right-side up) by seeing the overlooked, humbling the proud, lifting the lowly, feeding the hungry, and keeping God’s promises (1:50-55). God’s faithfulness stretches from generation to generation and is better than anything we could have imagined. A Savior is born to an unlikely mother who cannot contain her joy. A joy not only for herself, but for everyone who finds themselves left out or skipped over, for the generations who have waited for this promise to be fulfilled. (Kate Bowler, A Weary World Rejoices)
Let’s just sit with that for a second. It is powerful.
At the end of our Gospel reading, she bursts into song—called the Magnificat: (It is named after the first word of its first line in Latin (“Magnificat anima mea Dominum,” or “My soul magnifies the Lord”). And this is not just any song, but a radical, hope-drenched song that soars with promise for the world's poor, brokenhearted, and oppressed. Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes the Magnificat this way:
"It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings.... This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind."
We can set aside the picture of Mary as “meek and mild.” She is nothing less than the first disciple, a force to be reckoned with. Her world-turning “yes” and “let it be” come from her conviction, her fierce, bold, deep-down-in-her-bones trust that God’s love, even now, is making all things new.
But at the same time, this is a gentle revolution, not some grand show of power. God chooses the margins of society, where God will be born in dire circumstances, to an unwed mother in unsanitary conditions without even a proper roof over her head. To a new dad, forced to take his family and flee the country from a powerful and vengeful king.
This is the world that God chose to enter at Christmas.
Our world.
So God could be the difference we didn’t know it needed.
And may our response to that act of love be, “Thank you, God.” Amen
Advent 3: The Promise of Restoration
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Today is Joy Sunday! Traditionally, the third week of Advent takes “Joy” as its central theme. It’s sometimes called, “Gaudete Sunday” (gaudete means “rejoice” in Latin), and its candle in Advent wreaths is often rose-colored. Ours is not but that’s a story for another time. The overall idea here is that while Advent is a time of waiting for Christ to come, there’s also room for joy in his arrival!
If we were to read all 4 assigned (lectionary) texts for this Sunday we would hear this theme: Joy.
From Zephaniah we hear that it’s time to sing, rejoice, exult! Paul tells us to “rejoice in the Lord always.” Isaiah would have us “draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.” And even in the gospel reading, where John the Baptist speaks) about the unquenchable fire, you can even perhaps detect the joy in his message--- for the downtrodden. So, joy, it is today.
I am guessing the book of Zephaniah is not one that we are super familiar with. Right? Let’s dig into Zephaniah a little bit and explore joy…and the promise of restoration that he shares.
Zephaniah is a prophet called by God to speak to the people of Judah during the reign of King Josiah (640-609 BCE). The first three chapters of the book are filled with judgment oracles and communal memories of suffering (1:2-3:8). These oracles declare that turning away from God only leads to destruction (3:8). But Zephaniah makes a dramatic turn from judgment and destruction to joy and rejoicing with the arrival and presence of God (3:15; 17). The day of the Lord finally does arrive, but it is not what the people expect. They expected the Lord to appear as judge and executioner, but instead, God reveals a savior who rescues, protects, loves, and rejoices (3:17-20). The oracle ends with a focus on restoration (3:19-20). The oppressed will be protected, the exiled will be brought back into belonging, and those who feel shame will now rejoice. It is a day when those who are restored will rejoice that God is such a loving savior, and one in which God will rejoice over those who have been redeemed. Zephaniah (much like Jeremiah) proclaims that “days are coming” when God’s future and God’s promises will be fulfilled. But until that day, God’s people must hold fast to the promises and character of God. (Kate Bowler, A Weary World Rejoices Advent Devotional).
Hold fast to the promises and character of God.
Hold fast to the promise of restoration.
Today. Right this very moment.
We have a God who is about the work of restoration. And yet, so much gets in our way. Perhaps it’s pain or disappointment, grief or shame, woundedness or a feeling of being unworthy. Sometimes our past haunts us or bitterness creeps in that we can’t let go of. We wrestle with addiction or anxiety or despair or unforgiveness that overwhelms everything else. We have a hard time imagining the wholeness that God longs for us all. A wholeness that is rooted in our very creation (Genesis 1:31). (Kate Bowler)
A wholeness promised for us. A wholeness that brings joy, healing, and peace.
But…How? How do we hold the promise of restoration and the joy as we carry ALL THE THINGS we are carrying around? Is it even possible? Really?
For many people I know, joy feels hard to access.
But let’s talk about joy for a second. It’s not about feeling joy ALL the time.
Brene Brown says in The Gifts of Imperfection:
It’s about twinkle lights. You know what I’m talking about when I say twinkle lights?
Twinkle lights are the perfect metaphor for joy. Joy is not a constant. It comes to us in moments. . . . A joyful life is not a floodlight of joy. That would eventually become unbearable. I believe a joyful life is made up of joyful moments gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude, inspiration, and faith.
I can get behind that metaphor for joy. With those twinkle lights in mind, maybe we can allow ourselves to hold the joy alongside the weariness that so many of us are feeling. Because true joy—biblical joy—does not sweep tensions under the rug. It tolerates doubt and sadness; fear and loss. It is a celebration of God’s presence with us, even—especially—in the darkest of days. (Nadia Stefko) PCUSA Lectionary Column
In Advent, we are reminded that the coming of Christ is about the ongoing work of God in the world—a work that seeks to heal, restore, and reconcile all people. God's presence in the world is not static but dynamic. It is actively involved in the struggles of humanity, challenging systems of oppression, bringing liberation, and working to build a just and compassionate world. This season is not just about waiting for Christ’s return but about embodying the hope, joy, and peace that Christ represents. It calls us to be agents of transformation, to work toward the renewal of all things, and to ensure that God's promise of restoration is realized in our own communities. It calls us to be a part of the ongoing restoration of creation, working toward justice for all, especially for the oppressed.
So, on this Third Sunday of Advent, let us hold on to the promise of Zephaniah: a promise that God is always working for our restoration, healing, and peace. Let us be open to God's transformative love and, in turn, work for a world where all people experience the fullness of this promise. May it be so. Amen
Advent 2: The Promise of Compassion
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The Gospel text for today is often called the Song of Zechariah. But, before there is a song, there is usually a story.
Here is the story:
Zechariah is the father of John the Baptist – and just like Mary (mother of Jesus), he is visited by an angel.
At the beginning of the Gospel of Luke we read about Zechariah who is a priest in the Temple. He and his wife Elizabeth are “well along in years,” and they are childless. One day, Zechariah is in the Temple doing his priestly duties –tending to the holy spaces – when an angel appears and says, “Zechariah, fear not, your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth is going to have a son. This son will not only be your joy and delight, but he will bring the people back to God – he will go before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah. He will make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Luke 1:11-17
Zechariah takes a step back, in the quiet of the place, and he says, “How can this be? We are old.”
And the angel replies, “Oh, Zechariah, it can be, and it will be. I am Gabriel, I stand in God’s presence, and I’ve been sent to tell you this good news. But because you have not believed my words, you will not be able to speak until this comes to pass.” And Zechariah is unable to speak. For 9 months.
Elizabeth does conceive, and then for nine months we hear nothing from Zechariah. At the same time the angel comes to Mary (Elizabeth’s cousin), and announces that Mary will bear the Christ. Mary runs to her cousin Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth’s baby leaps in her womb, and she calls out to Mary: “Mother of my Lord!” And Mary sings the Magnificat – “My soul glorifies God. God is bringing down the powerful, and lifting up the lowly.” (We’ll talk about that song in 2 weeks.)
And then, nine months later, we circle back to Zechariah and Elizabeth. Elizabeth gives birth. A crowd gathers, and they are ready to name the baby after his father. That’s how it’s done. But Elizabeth steps in and says, “His name is John.” And, since she’s a women and this is not the way babies are named -the crowd looks to Zechariah. He looks to Elizabeth. And he motions for a tablet. And he writes out: “His. Name. Is. John.” And in that moment, Zechariah can speak. After 9 months of silence, Zechariah can speak and Zechariah has something to say. And what he says – or sings – is today’s Scripture:
“Blessed be the God of Israel, for God has looked favorably on the people and redeemed them.
God has raised up a mighty savior for us…..
By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
In this song of salvation, Zechariah sings that God is doing this, God is saving us – through God’s tender mercy : Salvation is coming, not in the power of mighty armies, but in the power of God’s tender mercy. It is a tender mercy that will bring down and lift up. It is tender mercy that will save us from everything.
Isn’t that the promise of compassion---God’s compassion revealing itself through Emmanuel, God with us. What an opportunity we have during this season of Advent to sit in wonder and delight at what God has done and is still doing. According to Kate Bowler—in our Advent devotional this season, Jesus is the picture of God’s love on display:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Jesus is God-with-us so he could be God’s compassion for us, in a word and deed. Compassion, in Latin, means to suffer. When Jesus saw someone suffering, he wept with them and came to their aid. He talked with the excluded and marginalized and ate with the outcasts. There was no one whose illness or status rendered them unapproachable or untouchable. This is the kind of radical compassion that says, I am not just helping you, I am with you. (Kate Bowler, A Weary World Rejoices Advent Devotional).
As we experience God’s compassion, we are also called to that work. Zechariah’s song invites us into the saving work of tender mercy - to embody good news to the poor – to bind up the broken-hearted – to work for the release of every captive, for the full freedom of all who are oppressed. What does God require of us? To do justice, love kindness – to love tender mercy, and walk humbly with God and with each other.
I don’t know exactly what you bring with you this day…and I don’t know what you need. But I do know this. This promise of God’s saving love, this promise of tender mercy, this promise of compassion-- it is a promise for you. God has loved you from the beginning. For all time, God has loved God’s people and accompanied them through every minute of every day. And when things were at their worst, God came to us in Jesus Christ, God comes to us in Jesus Christ, and walks with us-gives us life -gives us a song to sing -inviting us and empowering us to live the lives of tender mercy-of compassion. This is our story. This is our song. May it be so. Amen
Benediction:
The song that Zechariah sings – it is a song for you, and for me, and for all people and all time (let us know it and live it):
“God is raising up for us a savior...
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Advent 1: The Promise of Truth
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Advent is my favorite season of the church year. It has a different feel to it than the other seasons. There is a sense of yearning in Advent. A sense of anticipation. It is a time of watching and waiting. A time to remind ourselves that there are forces at work beyond our control.
Also, Advent is a season for feeling out of kilter.
It is a period of waiting in the darkness. It is a season in which we are caught between joyful expectation and the harsh realities of the present condition while we wait for the promise to be fulfilled. And this season puts the church at odds with contemporary American culture, in which the holiday season consists of bright lights and celebrations and packages tied with neat bows. There is no room for darkness and little patience for prayerful expectation when holiday carols blare from every speaker and the neighborhood is glowing with displays of lights. Yet ironically, this experience of being out of sync with our surroundings may attune us more deeply to the nature of Advent. In Advent, we live in the unsettling tension between what is and what will be. The prophet Jeremiah speaks to a community that is acutely aware of this tension.(Ann Steward, Working Preacher)
And biblical prophets, like Jeremiah-- never shy away from hard truths. They hold a mirror up so people can see the brokenness, the pain, and the suffering that they witness. Jeremiah noticed the ways that the world was not as it would be, not as it should be. He saw the world through tears. Jeremiah has been named “the weeping prophet” because of the nature of his message and the grief he expressed for his people. Jeremiah was a prophet who knew the harsh reality of the human experience. He writes from prison (Jer 32:1-2), living in the aftermath of Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem around the year 587 (1:10). Jeremiah offers a dose of reality and lament.
Yet he also saw something hopeful shining through.
Long before the birth of Christ, Jeremiah predicted his coming, and he told everyone: “The days are coming…they are coming” when someone will come whose very name means truth and justice and love and compassion and peace and safety and righteousness to make all things right.
Fast forward over 500 years, and enter a baby born to usher in a new creation, a new hope, a new truth—a truth that the world would one day be restored. This is the very promise of God that began in creation and is now being fulfilled in the person of Jesus. And perhaps this is what the season of Advent invites us to bear witness to. Yet that doesn’t mean we can’t tell the whole truth about what we are experiencing in the here and now. –Just like the prophets.
It takes courage to wrap our minds around the truths, the difficult truths, the complicated truths all around us.
God has made us for truth-telling, to have eyes that glimpse through tears at the already-and-not-yet that we live in. And at the same time, these same eyes are trained on Jesus, who embodies the compassion, restoration, and justice we long for.
We need truths that can stand the test of time because we live in the already-but-not-yet. Like Abraham being shown the stars in the sky that will outnumber his offspring or God declaring creation good, or Jesus declaring the mighty reversals of the Kingdom of God we are given a portrait of the work God is doing in the world, but we don’t experience it fully.
As New Testament theologian N.T. Wright says, “Sometimes there is no answer but lament”— Right? There is so much truth in that statement. Jeremiah and N.T. Wright remind us that sometimes, all we can do is to acknowledge how wrong and unfair things seem and weep with one another before we can move our attention toward hope.
This is why Jeremiah reminds God’s people “the days are coming” and to trust the redemptive work of God. For the days are coming when we will see all of God’s promises fulfilled. And until then, we must hold onto hope for the future even while we live in the already-but-not-yet world. (Kate Bowler, A Weary World Rejoices Advent Commentary).
Advent may be a season we feel off kilter. But that is not a bad thing! Perhaps is helps us to see the truth in a different way. Perhaps this advent we are invited to see the world as it really is while still hoping for a future we can only sometimes glimpse. And this Sunday let’s give thanks for the prophets of old and now who about to tell us the truth. Amen
Tossing and Turning: The Anxiety Over Choosing
Jonah 2:1-10 / Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
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What’s the biggest decision you ever had to make? Have you ever bargained with God to help you make a decision? Decision making can feel like hammering the nails into the coffin of opportunities. We agonize over making the wrong decision. But here’s the thing I want us to remember this morning--whatever decision we make, we can never stray so far that we are beyond God’s grace. Never.
In 2001 as a new graduate of St. Lawrence University, I was ready to take on the world in Columbus, OH as I began a 4 year Masters of Divinity program at The Methodist Theological School in OH. It was exciting and scary all at the same time as I had only ever lived 2 hours away from home. My parents helped pack me up and out to OH we went. I got all settled in. Less tears than when they dropped me off for undergrad! I was ready. At least I thought I was ready. Yet, it didn’t take long for self-doubt and doubting God’s call to ordained ministry to set in! About a month in, feeling too young, too inexperienced, too unknowledgeable, too in over my head…that when I flew home to be in a friend’s wedding on Labor Day my plan was to tell my parents I was going to be a seminary drop out. I had changed my mind. I had made a choice that was very difficult. I didn’t want to be a failure. I didn’t want to disappoint all those where got me to that place. Except, I couldn’t actually get the words out. I found myself at the airport to head back to OH. I had a quarter in my pocket to call my parents to come get me but I couldn’t put the quarter in the pay phone. I eventually got on the plane. I couldn’t turn around. That night, mad, angry, scared and very confused regarding the day’s events I cried out to God. With lots of tears and words I cried to God. “Why?” Why am I here? I don’t want to be here.” That is when I had an assurance and the message that God laid on my heart: “Richelle, if you weren’t supposed to be here you wouldn’t be here”. And with that peace- I continued on and it changed my life in so many ways.
In life, we all face moments when we need to make decisions—some small, others life-altering. The weight of these decisions can leave us feeling uncertain, anxious, or paralyzed, wondering if we’re making the right choice. But as believers, we don’t make decisions on our own. God has promised to guide us, direct us, and help us make choices. Today, we are looking at two great examples of decision-making in the Bible: Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish (Jonah 2:1-10) and the disciples’ decision to replace Judas in Acts 1:15-17, 21-26. Both of these passages reveal how God gives us guidance when we seek God in times of uncertainty.
Jonah’s story is a powerful example of how God guides us even in the midst of our failures and disobedience. After running from God’s call to go to Nineveh, Jonah found himself in the belly of a great fish, swallowed by the consequences of his wrong decisions. Yet, in this moment of desperation, Jonah turns to God in prayer. In Jonah 2:1-10, we see how God guides Jonah through prayer and brings him back on course.
Jonah, realizing he was completely helpless, calls out to God in prayer. Even in the depths of his despair, God listens. Prayer is the first and most important tool in receiving guidance from God. When we turn to God in prayer, especially when we’re facing a tough decision or struggling with our own mistakes, God is faithful to listen and answer. Despite Jonah’s initial disobedience, God doesn’t abandon him. After Jonah’s prayer, God commands the fish to spit him out, giving him another chance to obey. God’s guidance comes not only through answers to our prayers but also through second chances. No matter how far we’ve gone, God is always ready to redirect us and help us.
Then, when we turn to Acts, the disciples face a significant decision: choosing a replacement for Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus. This is an important decision as they need to maintain the number of twelve apostles. In this passage, we see how the disciples seek God's guidance through prayer and communal discernment.
The disciples’ first step was to pray. They didn’t just choose someone based on their own judgment or preferences. It was not a popularity contest. They asked God to help guide them. This is a crucial step in decision-making: rather than rushing to a conclusion, they paused to seek God’s will through prayer, asking God to guide their choice.
In Methodism we also talk about a process of discernment. We turn to Scripture first. We look at what our Christian tradition can teach us. We use our reason- our best thinking. We use our experience, and the experience of others to help us decide. The fancy name that Methodists call this discernment: The Wesleyan Quadrilateral. It’s pretty amazing!
The disciples also didn’t make this decision alone. They gathered together, prayed together, and made the decision as a community. Sometimes God’s guidance comes not only through personal prayer but through the counsel and wisdom of others in the body of Christ. The early church models for us those decisions should be made in unity, seeking God’s will together. We are not alone.
And here is the ultimate good news. Even if we have done all the discernment, and we still feel stuck, even if we get it wrong, we are never beyond God’s grace. As we seek God’s way, God will direct our paths and bring us to the place where we are supposed to be. Just as Jonah found God’s mercy and direction in the belly of a fish, and as the apostles found God’s guidance in their communal prayer, we can trust that God will lead us in every decision we face.
The bottom line is about trust. We are invited to lean into the truth that God is guiding us, even when we don’t have all the answers. We must be willing to trust that God will lead us even when we can’t see the full picture.
So, don’t be afraid. Talk to wise people in your faith community. Pray and pray together and then decide. God’s got your back- no matter what. Amen
Tossing and Turning: The Future
Matthew 6:25-34 / Isaiah 41:10-13
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What keeps you awake at night? There are nights when I loose valuable sleep time, tossing and turning in bed, trying to work out a solution to an issue--worrying about all kinds of things. Any other worriers out there? I can’t be alone! Eventually, I begin worrying about not getting enough rest to handle the challenges of the next day!
So, what is it that we worry about? Any given day it could be something different: Fear, troubled relationships, finances, our kids, our health, our country, the environment, an uncertain future, whatever it is—we all give in to worry at one point or another.
This week, we continue our “Tossing and Turning” series with a focus on The Future. Why do we worry about the future? Why do we lose sleep over it? Because you have pulse! Your human. We often like to control the future of our live. We stress out and worry about things that we can’t control. Note: we can have dreams for the future (at lease things we might be working on in present to get us to a certain place). We go to school and to college to make a living at something. We date to find that special someone. We save money to do things in the future. Those things are ok. We have to do those things. But when worrying about them keeps you up at night or thinking that you have all the answers or that you’re in control of your future, well that is not good. Anyone who is living knows you can’t control the future.
What does the Bible say about all of this?
We have some excellent messages in scripture this morning from words of Jesus in Matthew 6:25-34 and the promises of God from Isaiah 41:10-13. Together, these passages help us confront our worries about tomorrow and anchor us in God’s promises today.
But first—something a little personal. Being a United Methodist pastor can give one lots of experience on this topic—what does the future hold. While each of us would like to control the future, sometimes God has greater plans.
I graduated seminary in 2005 and was appointed to my first charge (2 churches-Oswego and Martville ¾ and ¼) It was a wonderful few years of growing and learning and seeing how joyful these two churches were to have a young pastor (with all kids of crazy ideas) and going through the ordination process. It didn’t take long for them to trust and love me and feeling was mutual. Everything was honky dory until one March (right before Easter) I was sitting at my desk and received a call from my DS. I was still too new to know what a call from the DS in march meant. Then I heard the news that I would end my appointment in Oswego/Martville and start at Auburn that July. A larger congregation made up of 2 churches that just voted to merge and become 1 new one. Sure, appoint someone who is not even ordained quite yet---with 3 years of pastoral ministry experience. Let’s just say I felt pretty good that they trusted me to have the gifts and graces to walk with this new church but I would be lying if I thought maybe the bishop/cabinet/God may have gotten this a little wrong! If I were in control I would have stayed in Oswego and continued the work God was calling us to.
I very much thought my plans to control the future were the way to go. I had no idea what God had in store for me in Auburn! Opportunities for incredible leadership growth, living in a parsonage for the first time, selling a few church properties, merging 2 churches and meeting Mike, and bringing 2 children into the world. Who knew??? God.
Each of us has this sense that we are born with, this sense that if we knew exactly what would happen every step of the way that things would be so much better. We feel that if we knew the future, there would be safety, security, or that we could change something if we don’t like what the outcome will be. The question is, do we really know what is best?
Let’s turn to scripture to see what God has to say about wrestling with the future. Right away in our text from Isaiah we hear a profound promise from God: “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.”
We aren’t alone in facing down the future, whatever it might hold. God is not only with us, but God will provide for us with strength, presence and help. This text powerfully assures us of God’s strength and care. Set during Israel’s exile in Babylon—a time of deep despair—God speaks through Isaiah to comfort the Hebrew people, reminding them of the protection they have through their God.
When the future is unclear or in times of transition, we may feel anxious and worried about what lies ahead. Yet, trusting in God and that God is at work on our behalf can provide a deep sense of security, even when the path is unclear. Instead of dwelling on the unknowns, we can rest in the truth that God is already working everything out for good, even if it unfolds differently than what we expected.
As we turn to our text from Matthew, we see that God meets the needs of everything, including birds and flowers. Jesus reminds us that if God is willing to take care of birds and flowers, God will take care of us. We aren’t called to worry; we are called to follow the heart of Christ.
“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink... Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap… yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Jesus calls us to trust God’s provision rather than striving for control. Just as God provides for the birds and flowers, God will meet our needs, even in ways we might not expect.
Let us remember that Jesus is telling us to live a life with our head in the sand and one that is detached from reality or all emotion because there's a difference between being concerned and being worried. In many ways, worry is our attempt to control an outcome that has yet to occur. We end up doing all of this worrying. We put all of this emotion into something that hasn't happened.
As we consider the words of Jesus in Matthew 6, maybe the challenge for us today (and every day) is to leave our worries about the future in Jesus' hands today. Let’s focus on what God is calling us to do right now, trusting that God is already in the future, guiding, providing, and working for our good. There’s plenty that God is calling us to in this very moment (remember Esther’s story---perhaps you are born for just a time as this)? Let’s focus here. Right now. And continue to do the next right thing-trusting in God’s presence now and in the future—whatever it might be. Though we may toss and turn over the unknown, we can rest in God’s unchanging faithfulness. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Tossing and Turning: Fear
Deuteronomy 31:1-8 / Philippians 4:4-9
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I have really, really struggled with what to say today. Not because I don’t have things to say. Because—believe me—I always have things to say. But as the pastor of a church, the things I say and the things I don’t say matter. I am human and I won’t always get it right. But I try. But what I want you all to know before we dive into our text for today is that I love you and I will do my best to love all of you even if we don’t think/believe the same way. Yes, there are many among us who are upset, scared and fearful for the future after the election on Tuesday. I understand why. Yet, I also know that there are those, yes, maybe in our church and in our families who see a bright future ahead and are happy and hopeful. Can we all exist together and be the church together? Yes. Christ and Christ’s mission is what unites us. What I do know is that Christ calls us to build bridges, not walls. Christ calls us to minister to the least, the last, the lost, and the marginalized in this world—even when it is uncomfortable to do so. Christ calls us to break down unjust systems of oppression—no matter who is in office remains the same—to work for justice. To find common ground. To preach resurrection in a world that is filled with death and despair. Our job has not changed and will not change until Christ comes again. We will live our baptismal vows to accept the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.
So, together, let’s work on that. There is plenty to keep us busy and doing God’s work. Amen? Amen.
Now, for our regularly scheduled sermon!
Today we begin a new sermon series exploring the things that keep us up at night, tossing and turning. As you can probably guess, I’ve been doing some tossing and turning myself lately with what to say/preach today! What are the things that keep you up at night? Worry? Fear? The Finances? Health? What does the future hold for me? Does the Bible even talk about that? Is God too big to worry about my everyday life concerns?
Over the next few weeks we will be exploring a few of the many reasons we've been up all night plagued by constant worry that runs through our minds. We will be naming some of the common things that keep us up at night that stress us out through the day the things that worry us to our core. And most importantly we're going to talk about our God who accompanies us through those nights.
First up...fear! I'm willing to guess that most of us have had an experience with fear at some point or another in our lives.
In one sense, of course, fear is a natural emotion for us to feel. Its’ like we have a built in panic button. It’s quite useful; it helps prepare the body for action, whether the action is fight or flight. The body needs to fight against an aggressor, or it needs to run away as fast as it can. Fear gives it that little extra burst of energy that helps it respond more quickly and decisively. And in that sense, we don’t want to discourage fear. People who have no fear often do foolish things.
But what we don’t want is to be paralyzed by fear. And most of all, we don’t want fear to stop us trusting in the love of God for us, and we don’t want it to stop us from loving one another and being there for one another.
One of my favorite psalms is Psalm 46. I’ve actually come back to the psalm over and over again this week and we used it in the Post-Election Prayer meeting. Psalm 46 was written in a time of fear. We’re not sure exactly when it was written, but Jerusalem was in danger of being overwhelmed by an enemy. We get the sense that the world was being shaken up; that strong kingdoms and powerful countries were tottering and falling. The psalmist’s world was being shaken to the foundations, which is what makes the psalmist’s faith in God so remarkable.
‘God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.’ (Psalm 46.1-7)
‘Therefore we will not fear.’ That’s an astounding thing to say! Of course, we all know that the Bible often tells us not to be afraid; it’s one of the most common statements in the Bible. But here’s the thing—how many of you find that to actually be helpful? I know that when I’m told to not be afraid I can’t help but immediately think: how do you stop yourself from being afraid? How? How? How?
But first… I like the fact that what so many translations of Psalm 46 actually say is not ‘we will not be afraid,’ but ‘we will not fear.’ To me, being afraid is something that happens to me. I don’t have a choice about it. It’s an emotion that hits me and gets my heart beating faster and the blood pumping around my body, so I’m ready to fight or run away, as need be. But ‘we will not fear’ sounds like a decision, not an emotion. It has to be a decision about what we do with the feeling. Do we let the afraid feeling take over? Or do we say what the psalmist said: “Right, the earth is shaking to its foundations, and the city is in real danger, but I’m going to roll up my sleeves, trust in God, and remember that God’s my refuge and strength. ‘The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge’ (v.7). ‘God is with us.’ Really.
But are we always aware that God is with us? Do we have a sense of God’s presence with us? Do we know how to rest in God’s love for us?
If we are unsure about this important promise then we can be really lost when times of trouble come, because no one else is up to God’s job. No human being, no matter how great they are, can give us what God can give us. So this is one thing we can do to lower our stress levels and stop fear from paralyzing us. We can intentionally take time to be aware of God’s presence with us. It is like a built in calm down button.
Example:
Maybe we can light a candle to remind us of the light of God’s presence with us. Intentionally taking time to be still with God is one way we can counteract our fear.
The other way is to love one another.
God is calling us to faith, love and trust. We are called to rest and be still in God’s presence. And God’s calling us to reach out to one another in love. In this way, even though we’ll be afraid, ‘we will not fear.’ No: we’ll trust God, and we’ll love each other “and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
As we face the challenges of this week-whatever those challenges may be, every time fear grips you, imagine that God is with you, walking with you.
Together as the Body of Christ we can face our fears—whatever they may be—knowing God is with us and we have one other as we journey this road together. Fear will not paralyze us. We will trust. We will love. And we will not lose hope. May it be so. Amen
All Saints’ Day: At Home With God
Revelation 21:1-6a / John 11:32-44
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Today is All Saints’ Day when we remember the Saints, those in our lives who’ve died and have joined the church triumphant. This is a day we celebrate their lives, remember their lives and give thanks to God for the ways they helped us make us who we are as individuals and as a church.
Friends, death is not easy. It is personal. It is real. It is hard.
The names we will read later in the service, represent serious and real voids for those who have lost a loved one during the year. I wanted to name this reality for us and know that this is a safe place to be.
This morning we’ve heard from two—pretty familiar texts from the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation. We hear of a new heaven and a new earth. Mary crying, (Martha) stating the facts, Jesus weeping and then bringing a dead man back to life.
These are our images, our companions, for All Saints. They situate us in the tension between now and what is to come, and they ground us in the glorious truth that God has made, is making, and will make God’s home among us. God is in the business of moving into the neighborhood of humanity. In the joys and the sorrows, in the peaceful times and in the crisis moments, God sticks it out right alongside us. Thanks be to God!
First, let’s dig into our Gospel reading from John. In it we have the shortest passage in the bible: Jesus wept. Jesus wept. 2 simple words. Words that have a way to connect our humanity with Jesus’ humanity. In Jesus—we have God incarnate—the Word made flesh. Divine. And yet human—with emotions. Emotions that each of us have.
Perhaps, today, on All Saints’ Day, in Jesus’ tears we find the freedom, the permission, to weep for our own losses. We need to give space for that as we worship today. Tears and sadness as we remember those saints in our lives- are not to be seen as lack of faith or hope. No, we can hold both things together, grief and hope. Joy and sadness often sit side by side in our hearts and in our communities. The heart of Christianity is the trust that even in the deepest sorrow and thickest darkness, there is light and love and hope. And it comes from the witness of scripture, beginning to end: the history of God’s people down through many centuries, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the history of the church.
The heart of Christianity is also the trust that God is with us through it all. There is light, love and hope through Jesus. Jesus, who knows what it is like to be angry, frustrated, and grief stricken. Jesus, who weeps for his friends. And Jesus who performs this incredible miracle so that they might believe—that they may have hope. What an incredible text for us today!
And then we have our text from the book of Revelation. Many people prefer to ignore the book of Revelation. It makes us nervous with its bizarre and frightening imagery. One way to try and make sense of the text is to know the context—when and why the book of Revelation was written. We do know that it was written by a man named John decades, maybe more, after the life and death of Jesus, a man who was exiled, in a prison cell, a cave actually on the Greek Island of Patmos. We know that the book is actually a letter he wrote to several small Christian communities. We know that they were undergoing fierce persecution by Rome at the moment. That is who John was writing to, communities that had very real fears. And because of that danger he uses the wildest, most bizarre and creative symbols he can think of. His readers know who he means when he describes the great beast. It is Rome. They know what he means by a New Jerusalem, a beautiful city of peace and security and wholeness descending from heaven: the old Jerusalem is a pile of rubble, having been destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.
John tells them that there is light in the midst of their current darkness, that the absolute power in the universe is not Rome, it is God, a God of mercy and peace and compassion and love. And ever since, his words of comfort and hope have inspired people in trouble, people oppressed and to people facing the reality of death. Such words of comfort! And I could end my sermon right here. But…
But there is also a call and a vision for us…as John shares his vision with the churches in Asia Minor—his message is true for us as well. Perhaps if we are to be the New Jerusalem where God is at home among us, we must put an end to the violence in our homes, cities, countries, and world. In the New Jerusalem we embody the unity God dreams for us.
You might be thinking that this is impossible. Maybe it is impossible to change the whole world all at once. However, it is not impossible to change ourselves and the way we embody Christ. There is no room for fear, hatred, and violence. We live in such a divided world and a divided country. This presidential election has shown us just how much. It is heartbreaking on so many levels. We don’t know what will happen on Tuesday or Wednesday and the days that follow. No matter what the results reveal we must remember that Jesus hated no one and sought to bring healing and hope to all he encountered. How will we do the same?
We must love. We must love-through it all. Perhaps then we will be close to the Kingdom, the New Jerusalem, and God will truly be at home among us.
May it be so. Amen