Advent 1C

Luke 21:25-36

Let us pray… May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

A few weeks ago, we heard the disciples questioning Jesus about the fulfillment of the kingdom. They wanted to know when they would see the things he had talked about. They wanted details and specifics, and Jesus told them they would have to wait.

Maybe you remember that I mentioned we were waiting for Emerson’s GRE scores. The scores arrived and all is well, so we were able to move on to something else.

Because there’s always something else, isn’t there? The world always has us on the edge of our seats waiting,

especially this holiday weekend:

Waiting

for the parade to begin,

for the sale to start,

for the countdown to commence.

Our attention is always being drawn to what’s next. So much so that we might miss what is happening right now.

In his gospel, Luke, like Mark before him, talks of signs and we remember that signs always point to God’s action. Luke encourages us to be on guard and alert to what is happening, to what God is doing. The foreboding felt by the people is being fed by their anxiety about the future. It is fear taking over. In response to our collective fear and worry, we are meant to hear Jesus’ promise that “redemption is drawing near”, “the Kingdom of God is near”, and His Word “will not pass away”. (v 28, 31,33)

This is the hope we celebrate in Advent.

In his letter to the Church in Thessalonica, we hear Paul’s own hope realized in the work that the faith community has been doing together.

Sometime after he left them, Paul sent Timothy to check on the church in Thessalonica and now Timothy has returned to Paul and Silas and told them the Christians there are thriving and that their faith is vibrant and strong. In response to this good news, Paul, Silas and Timothy write this letter to the Thessalonian church.

What we hear in today’s reading is the end of a second round of praise and thanksgiving that Paul offers to the church in Thessalonica. He had been so worried that their labors were in vain (1 Thessalonians 3:5) that he was overjoyed upon hearing what Timothy reported. His gratitude leads to thanksgiving.

Paul’s letter invites our own reflection on our community’s faith and witness. Here at Grace, we proclaim that we serve Christ and share God’s love. On this first Sunday in Advent, when we celebrate the beginning of a new church year, we could make a top ten list of all the ways we have served and loved our neighbors and each other well in the last year, and I expect every one of us would have a different list.

Ten things at Grace that brought joy to me this year were that:

We celebrated Día de los Muertos - when we remember our loved ones who have died - with about one hundred people from our congregation, preschool and community.

We cared for the family and friends of thirteen members at Grace who joined the Church Triumphant this year and are counted with all the saints now. And we continue to care for homebound members, with banquet bearers bringing them Holy Communion.

Three of our high school students affirmed their baptisms on Reformation Sunday after three years of study, fellowship and service.

We cared well for our community during Hurricane Helene and continue to help direct funds and assistance as we learn about needs.

We fed hungry neighbors by sponsoring food drives for Interfaith Assistance Ministry, Living Waters Lutheran Church in Cherokee and the Rescue Mission.

Staff, volunteers, young adults and youth traveled together to New Orleans for the ELCA’s National Youth Gathering, delivering thousands of dollars to ELCA World Hunger, and working, playing and worshiping together with tens of thousands of other Lutherans.

We welcomed more than twenty new or returning members to Grace, celebrating their place in our faith community.

We collaborated with St. James Episcopal Church and Trinity Presbyterian Church to host Vacation Bible School on Trinity’s campus and had youth and adult volunteers and children of all ages participating.

Our volunteers worked with dozens of ministry partners in our area to help them meet needs and complete projects during the Annual Servant Saturday in April.

Our preschool teachers and staff cared for more than one hundred thirty children, helping them learn and grow and supporting their families and we offered morning worship for our Grace Preschool families.

This praise isn’t about keeping score, and it isn’t about asking the church to do more or work harder.

Our lives of faith are never meant to become to-do lists. Paul’s praise gives thanks for the ways God has strengthened the Thessalonians’ hearts and names his hope that God will increase their love for one another and the world. (v. 12)

And our recognition for what we’ve done well together is similar; it is a celebration and thanksgiving for what God is doing, in, through and among us.

For us all, it is a recognition that the work is not yet complete.

The world is happy to help us remember that, with a secular litany of gift-giving, party preparations and all there is to do leading up to Christmas, but for us, in the Church, our focus is Christ.

We are called to wait and watch to see what God is doing and to participate with God in bringing about God’s kingdom here on earth. It is difficult work to wait on God, patiently watching, alert and attentive to what God is doing.

It’s much harder to wait than to busy ourselves with distractions or to grasp for control.

Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Taylar day Charrdan) writes about “trusting in the slow work of God” in a prayer called “Patient Trust”, where he writes

We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.[i]

A colleague calls this waiting stance “cathedral faith”.

Cathedrals are not built quickly. The great cathedrals of Europe averaged 250-300 years to complete. Here in our country, plans for the National Cathedral in Washington, DC began before the turn of the 20^th century in 1893, and the cornerstone wasn’t laid until 1907. It was 83 years before the “final finial” was set in 1990.[ii] Each architect and planner had to trust the next generation to continue the labor to create what is now one of the largest church buildings in the US and a place where hundreds of thousands of visitors go each year.

Holding “trust in the slow work of God” and having “cathedral faith” are ways of remembering that we are waiting on God’s action in God’s timing and not ours. It is a humbling and hopeful stance to take as we enter into this Advent season, eagerly anticipating Christ’s coming, both as Messiah at Christmas, and in His return.

Let us pray…

Good and gracious God,

Thank you for your Son Jesus.

Help us be attentive to the ways You are fulfilling your promises.

Awaken us and keep us alert for how we can participate in your kingdom.

Strengthen our hearts and give us patience to trust in Your work in, through and among us.

We pray in the name of Jesus, our Savior and Lord.

Amen.

---

[i] https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/prayer-of-theilhard-de-chardin/

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_National_Cathedral

20th Sunday after Pentecost

What we heard in the second reading today was the salutation and thanksgiving of the first letter we have written by the apostle Paul, the oldest letter in the New Testament canon. We believe the letter was written about 51 CE, nearly twenty years after the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Christ.

First-century disciples remained confident and expectant that Jesus would return in their lifetimes, but they suffered ridicule and persecution for confessing faith in one God, and not participating in the poly-theistic religion of Thessalōn′ica where culture reflected Roman and Greek politics and thought.

While Paul was on his second missionary journey and working in Corinth, his helper Timothy visited the church in Thessalōn′ica and this letter was written by Timothy, Paul and Silvanus to encourage the community they knew there. It comes as encouragement to us, also, nearly two thousand years later.

Despite the physical distance between the communities of faith – the ekklesias or churches – in Corinth and those to the north, a relationship was forged between them because of the common faith that they shared.

This is what we talk about today when we talk about being “Church Together”; everything we do in ministry is connected back to the Church, with a capital C, because we are working not for ourselves, but for God. Sometimes, that looks like financially supporting the young adults in global mission or hurricane relief efforts; sometimes, it is participating in an ordination of a new pastor, like I had the opportunity to do last weekend in Charlotte; and other times, it is holding communities in prayer, like we have for Las Vegas, Puerto Rico, Florida and the Gulf Coast.

With thanksgiving, Paul names how God has been made visible in the Church. First, he names “the work of faith”, that is, the work that, by faith, God has accomplished in us already. This is the work of the cross where Christ takes on all that is ours and gives us all that is his, and we are adopted as sons and daughters, co-heirs to God’s Kingdom with Christ. It is the work of the Holy Spirit calling us together as a worshiping community, giving us God’s Word and making us holy.

Then he names “the labor of love”, that is, all those ways in which we demonstrate faith in action, responding to God’s grace and the abundant love that we have first experienced, by serving others.

And finally, he names the “steadfastness of hope”, that is, an endurance which hope inspires and the expectation that God accompanies us and will fulfill God’s promises to us, in God’s own time.

This is the first time in Paul’s writing that we encounter this triad of faith, love and hope, but as we approach our own season of thanksgiving, I’m struck by the ways in which they remain visible, and the ways in which our communities of faith continue to be bound together by our common faith.

This Wednesday night, we will be gathering with brothers and sisters at Shelby Presbyterian Church for dinner and a program to mark the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation, but did you know that we are bound with the Presbyterians by more than the work that Luther and Calvin began in the 16^th century? Nearly a hundred years ago, the congregation of Shelby Presbyterian provided a meeting place for the thirteen people who later signed a charter to form our congregation, and for the last twenty years, our denominations have been in full communion –which means we agree that we share a common calling,

a desire to bear visible witness to the unity of the church

and a need to engage together in God’s mission.

Last week, I attended the ribbon cutting for the West End Reach Transit, a collaboration between churches in West Shelby, including Hopper’s Chapel and Living Waters’ Ministries, the hospital’s foundation and the city to establish a bus route that residents can ride for free. Three days a week, a transit bus now goes to Cleco and the hospital, the grocery story, Walmart and the library, helping connect people to the places and services they need to meet their basic needs of food and medical care.

And a month from today, on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, neighbors across our community will be breaking bread together for community Thanksgiving meals at Graham School, Jefferson Park and on South Lafayette Street.  For a second year, Feeding Kids Cleveland County is organizing sponsors and cooks and again asking neighbors to come out and sit together so that we can listen to each other’s stories and learn each other’s names.

While posting on social media and sending texts or emails have mostly replaced letter-writing, Paul’s letter reminds us to look for encouragement in the stories of where God is working in oru communities. Hearing stories across the synod and the Church, in conversations between local ministers and congregations, and through the witness that each of us bears into the world in our daily lives, we continue to be bound together by a common faith, strengthened to face the world we live in and to persevere against the powers and principalities that would distract us or discourage us.

Let us pray…

Holy God,

We give you thanks for your abundant grace,

for the gift of faith that you provide,

for our teachers and mentors,

and for the bond that is forged between people of faith.

Remind us of the work of faith that you have already begun in each one of us;

Give us courage to labor in love for all of your children;

And assure us of the steadfastness of hope that we have in You.

We pray in the name of our Savior Jesus,

Amen.

September (er, & October & November) in the Preacher's Corner

So the last four months disappeared before me without me adding anything to the conversation here. I was more active on Twitter and I continue to post my sermons weekly on Soundcloud. My absence here was accidental...like forgetting to call someone back, and then remembering when it really is too late. So, if you like, think of the links below as lost voicemails (or answering machine messages if you remember those). You may feel like listening, but if you don't, because September 7 or October 26 feels very far away now, that's ok. I'll call again.

A common thread through my preaching and in my conversations outside the pulpit is the importance of us seeing how this gift of faith that God has given each of us is connected to our day-to-day life. We cannot disconnect faith from life when we're in a church building; we cannot leave faith behind us when we step outside. Hopefully, that message is enduring.

September 7, 2014 13th Sunday After Pentecost
Listen
Matthew 18:15-20

September 14, 2014 "Holy Cross Sunday"
Listen
John 3:13-17

September 21, 2014 15th Sunday After Pentecost
Listen
Matthew 20:1-16

September 28, 2014 16th Sunday After Pentecost
Listen
Psalm 25

October  5, 2014 17th Sunday After Pentecost
Listen
Matthew 21:33-46

October 12, 2014 18th Sunday After Pentecost
Listen
Matthew 22:1-14


A series on 1 Thessalonians
October 19, 2014 "Bread for the World" Sunday
Listen
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 


October 26, 2014 Reformation Sunday
Listen
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8


November 2, 2014 All Saints Sunday
Listen
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13


November 9, 2014 22nd Sunday After Pentecost
Listen
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 25:1-13


November 16, 2014 23rd Sunday After Pentecost
Listen
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30; Psalm 90:1-12


November 23, 2014 Christ the King Sunday, "A Celebration of the Church Year"
no sermon