The Meaning of Advent - Nov. 27, 2011

Mark 13:24-37

²⁴“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,²⁵and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

²⁶Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. ²⁷Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

²⁸“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. ²⁹So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. ³⁰Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. ³¹Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

³²“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. ³³Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. ³⁴It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. ³⁵Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, ³⁶or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. ³⁷And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

       

     The season of Advent can often get wrapped up into the Christmas season.  It is inevitable, since it speaks of expectation of the coming of Christ and we are surrounded by all he decorations of Christmas no matter where we go.  I remember walking around looking for Halloween costumes and decorations when I ran into an aisle for Christmas stuff, so we have been getting saturated with it for quite a while.  It is also at this time that the radio starts playing Christmas songs and all the wonderfully cheesy hallmark holiday movies are beginning to play, so Christmas is in the air and it fills all of our senses.

            So the expectation can easily be that the church, from which the Christmas season gets its whole purpose and meaning, should also be in the business of ramping up to Christmas.  One would imagine that the lessons would build towards the coming of the Christ Child, but instead we have a reading from Mark, a book of the Bible that doesn’t even tell the story of Jesus’ birth or childhood.  Instead Jesus just kind of shows up in his 30s, on his way to get baptized by John.  And what is the reading?  “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” And it goes on to discuss the need to Keep Awake.  Now what in the world does this have to do with Christmas, except that it is hard for children, and some adults, to sleep the night before in eager anticipation for the big day? 

            It really doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas, because the season is not all about looking towards Christmas.  We are not sitting around waiting for the Baby Jesus, because the Baby Jesus was born over two thousand years ago.  We do look forward to celebrating that birth and the great ramifications of it, but there is more to the season than this.  Advent is the recognition that great things have happened in the past, such as Jesus’ Birth, as well as his death and resurrection, and of the ways that these events have the shaped the world that we live in today and our present reality, and it is us sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to see what it is that God has planned next.  It is a season of anticipation of the coming of Jesus Christ, not as the baby, but as the Redeemer of the world who will bring creation to its culmination and bring us into Eternal life.

            We do not know when this will happen though.  There are consistently people out there saying that they have seen the signs and interpreted the scriptures in order to figure it out.  Twice this year Harold Camping predicted the end of the world, yet neither time did it happen.  And we can begin to mock those who speak about the end of time, when Christ will come again, but it is in our Creed, it is part of our faith.  Keep in mind that the Rapture is not a part of our creed and faith, but Christ’s return is.  And we know that we will not know when it will happen until it has happened.  There is no way to predict it, only the Father knows when that day will come, all we can do is keep awake.

            Now this does not mean that we are to never ever sleep again.  Rather it is in the way that we live our lives, in preparation for the coming of the King.  We are called to Keep Awake, in that we are called to be consistently ready to serve God.  When we are given the opportunity to serve God, whether with testimony or with action, we are to act upon that opportunity.

            A number of years ago, Roddy Cooper was a man with a plan.  He would go to the store and ask for any apples that they were going to throw away, hoping to get some for free.  His idea was to use these apples to feed the deer at the edge of the woods next to his yard, in order that they deer would feel safe and say in the area.  That way, when hunting season came around he would have plenty of targets.  And it worked.  He got the apples from the store, the deer stayed, and he got easy hunting.  But then something happened that altered his plans.  You see, the store had more to get rid of then just apples.  They had other food which was just fine but they knew it wouldn’t sell, whether do to a slight bruise on a piece of fruit or the expiration date drawing near or the bread being a day old.  So the store offered some of this extra food to him as well.  He didn’t know what he would do with it, but he accepted it.  He then remembered about an organization that helped battered women.  He decided to give the extra food to them, so that the women would have plenty of food and would not have to worry.  Other people started hearing about what he was doing, so they gave him food as well to take to the shelter.  It soon became too much food for even the shelter, so Roddy got some other people together and they decided to start a new mission, called Oak Mountain Missions, one that could support the shelter as well as others with needs.  This mission grew and grew and now serves fifty thousand people a year with food, gave furniture to several hundred, and helped even more with basic household needs and clothing, all in the greater Birmingham Area.  All of these people now are able to meet their needs and have had been freely shown God’s mercy all because a man wanted to hunt, but Kept Awake to the possibilities and opportunities that God gives.

            Not all of us will start such large missions.  But each of us are given opportunities to use the gifts that we have been given by our God to further His Kingdom and to help people be awakened to the reality that God is in the world and is with us each moment of each of our lives, helping us to live and to thrive in His creation.  It may be in helping someone at the store or someone who is lost, or giving a kind word to someone in need of hope and comfort.  But each of us has hope for the future, for God’s Kingdom, and that hope is to fill us and change us for the better.

            We are not a faith full of fatalists, looking forward to the world’s destruction, nor are we a sect of people waiting desperately for death in order that we may fly off to another world or into a spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet.  We are a people who are created in the image of God, a people who have the good news of God’s action in this world and of the life, death and resurrection of His Son and we are a people who have been given the strength to move mountains and we are a people filled with hope for all that is to come, not dread.  We believe in a loving God who sacrifices everything to come closer to us.  We believe in a God who emptied Himself in order to come to us as a baby and to live among us and to suffer for us out of love, not a deity who sits in the shadows as the world turns aimlessly.  We are filled with Hope, because we know our God and that God wills compassion and mercy instead of death and destruction. 

            So we keep awake, looking for ways to serve him, in order that we may show appreciation for all that He has done for us and so that when he comes again and our world is brought into completeness we may stand before Him and be able to say that we are his faithful slaves, ready and willing to serve, and He may look upon us and see that we have taken up our mantle and calling as His children.

Amen.

           

Nov. 6, 2011 - You are a Saint

Amos 5:18-24

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; ¹⁹as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake. ²⁰Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?

²¹I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. ²²Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. ²³Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. ²⁴But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

Bishop Oscar Romero served in El Savador until March 24^th, 1980.  Romero was seen as a bookworm and a conservative, which were both seen as positives by the church for a bishop in El Salvador.  You see, at the time El Savador was in the middle of a bloody civil war.  3,000 people will killed each month, a vast majority were poor farmers killed by an oppressive government.  The priests and bishops were expected to be silent about all the violence, but instead focus purely on the so-called “spiritual side” of people’s lives – leading worship, hearing confessions, and such.  Romero was seen as one who would hold this line, since he was the pious bookworm and had in fact criticized the theologians who aligned themselves with the farmers and the poor. But Oscar had a life-changing experience when one of the priests in his area was killed, alongside two parishioners, by the government for supporting the farmers’ right to form unions.  At the funeral, Romero could see in the peoples’ eyes the question, “will you stand with us as he did?”  In that moment, he knew that his answer would have to be “yes,” and it was.  From that day forward he ceased being the bookworm that ignored the world and he vocally supported the peasants, through speaking out against the military and the government’s practices.  He also begged for international intervention, and even wrote to President Jimmy Carter, asking him to stop aiding the El Salvadoran government, due to its massive human rights violations.  But no one listened and Romero was all alone on his quest to help the people that he served.  On March 23^rd, 1980 he said in his sermon “"Brothers, you are from the same people; you kill your fellow peasant . . . No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God . . .  In the name of God then, in the name of this suffering people I ask you, I beg you, I command you in the name of God: stop the repression."  The following day, while he was leading a Communion service, a shot rang out and Bishop Oscar Romero lay dead, killed to silence his condemnations of violence. 

            No Bishop Romero is not a saint, at least he is not one officially recognized by any major denomination.  Yet according to our beliefs, Romero is indeed a saint, for all of us are saints.  Each of us is purified by our loving Creator through the blood of Christ’s crucifixion and each of us is empowered by God’s Spirit, empowered to do amazing deeds in this world and each given a specific calling in our lives to fulfill.

            One of Bishop Romero’s gifts was in the empathy and compassion which he felt for those around him, which allowed him to be moved to act on their behalf.  He also required strength to live out the vocation that God had set for him, and God provided that as well through the Spirit.  Likewise, each of us is gifted our own vocation and our own skills, talents, and resources by God.  It is in living out these vocations and gifts that we glorify God.  It is when we put our faith completely in God and trust that He will provide us with what we need to complete the tasks He sets before us, that we begin to truly worship God.

          Our worship of God is not merely the songs that we sing and our gathering together on Sundays and our offerings.  No, true worship of God is in doing the work of God, in letting justice roll down like water and righteousness like an everflowing stream.  It is in using the gifts that we have been given to us to show the love that God has first given us.  That is the very definition of doing justice in the Old Testament, a direct response to God’s action in our lives.  It is the teacher who takes time after clas to talk with students who have questions, it is the neighbor who offers to be a prayer partner, it is the volunteer working in the food pantry to help people get food or making a quilt so someone is able to be warm.  A recent newspaper article proclaimed that Youngstown is the poorest city in the country.  Number one in the United States.  We do not have to look far to see people who are in need of God’s love and affection, and we are called to be God’s hands in this world, to show our brothers and sisters in this community that God does care for them and that they are not forgotten. 

            We are not called to be shrinking violets or a stagnant pond that conform to the world around us, instead we called to be the waters of justice and righteousness, waters that bring about great life to their world and create change.  Rivers are home to a multitude of beings, yet also cut away the land that is around them, creating new formations.  Sometimes this means that a turn will be cut away or added to a river, and sometimes it will create a whole new landscape, such as the Grand Canyon, formed over the years by water.  Each of us as well, empowered as the saints of God through the Spirit, are also called to create these changes, some adjustments and some earth shattering, but all vital to God’s mission and to all of God’s children.  Justice is not the static lady holding a scale. Justice is dynamic, it is lifting up those who are seen as nothing by our culture and the world around us and showing them God’s love and compassion and it is being fair in our decisions, instead of bowing before those who would give us the most benefit.  

            Not all of us will be martyrs like Bishop Romero, who reach international recognition, but each of us is a saint and has our own vocation.  In my short time here at Jerusalem, we have already seen two of our local saints join the great cloud of witnesses, leaving us to mourn – Roberta Nelson and Nancy Field.  Our lives have been touched by these women and their marks have been made.  We have known their amazing abilities to forgive and seen their gifts at work, whether it be in the kitchen or on canvas.  Each of us has also lost others in our lives who have touched us deeply and whom have served as great examples of faith, and we mourn their passing and the loss of them in our lives.

            Yet we do not mourn as though who have no hope, for we know that while we are indeed both saints and sinners at once, we know that we are made perfectly saints through the death of Christ on the cross and that we are purified through Him, so that we may join with Him at the great feast that is to come.  It is that very promise that we bring through our actions in the world, that God takes us as we are, no matter how screwed up or broken we may seem, and He puts us back together and forms us in His image, in order that He may be glorified through us.  As the lyric in one of Bad Religion’s songs says, “There is no such thing as human debris.”  No matter our level of wealth, or lack thereof, no matter what has happened to us in our lives or the things that we have done, no matter what, God uplifts us and names us “saints.”  Our Sin is no longer seen and instead we are God’s own children.  That is our message to the world and that is our calling in the world, to honor the name of our true family, the family that unites us with God and with all of the people on this world, with all of those who have come before us and with all of those who are going to come after us, each of them made saints as well.  It is out of thankfulness of this that we are to act and go beyond our walls and beyond seeing worship as just the things that we do on Sunday mornings and instead seeing it as how we live out our daily lives and how we make each of our decisions in life.  Worship is understanding that all people are our brothers and sisters and that we need to treat them as such and be willing to bring aid and comfort to all who are in need.  When we truly worship we live out our names as Saints and we are bring life and change to the world around us, with the flowing waters of justice and righteousness.  So let us learn from those who have come before us about true worship and let us stand with them to bring about glory and honor to God and all of God’s family.

Amen.

Oct. 30, 2011 - Reformation Day

Romans 3:19-28

¹⁹Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. ²⁰For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. ²¹But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, ²²the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, ²³since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; ²⁴they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; ²⁶it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. ²⁷Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. ²⁸For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law

            Today is Reformation day, the day that marks when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses, or complaints, onto the door to the church in Wittenberg.  He had several issues with how the church was operating, including the powers of the Pope and the selling of indulgences, which were supposed to free loved ones from purgatory or forgive the sins of the living.  These indulgences supposed that the Pope had the power of God and chose not to use it lovingly to bring about freedom from suffering and death and that money could buy off God.  These actions by the church did not flow from Luther’s understanding of the scriptures, especially considering today’s second reading from Romans, which shows that we are forgiven by God not through our own works and deeds, but rather by the righteousness of God, and so he asked the hard questions.  This led to him being excommunicated by the church, called a heretic, and people were told that if they killed him, the church would have no problem with it and it would not be a sin.

            Luther’s reaction?  He burned the documents excommunicating him and he translated the Bible from Latin, the language of the scholars, to German, so the people could read and hear the Bible in their own language.  Thus, the people were able to know what was in the Bible and be able to examine it and ponder it themselves.  This is one of the great gifts of the Lutheran church, that the people are given the opportunity, and are expected, to study for themselves and are given the freedom to question those who lead the church.

            Luther also created a new liturgy for the church, called the German Mass.  Instead of the service being led only by the priest and a select few who did all the chanting and assisting, only the priest getting both the bread and the wine, and the service being done in Latin, once again keeping the people ignorant of what was actually going on in the service, the people got to sing and take an active part worship service and take consume both the bread and the wine.  The word liturgy itself translates into “the work of the people” and Luther took this very seriously, which is why the people were given the opportunity to fulfill the various parts of worship and sing the hymns and parts of the liturgy, instead of solely trained professionals being allowed to do so.

            Another of Luther’s changes greatly affected my life and sure makes me happier to be a Lutheran minister – He said that pastors were allowed to marry, since he pointed out it was biblical for pastors to marry and it defied God for them to vow to not marry.  I know that if I had to make such a vow, I probably would not be standing before you today, so thank God for Luther.

            But Luther’s greatest gift to the church and to all Christians is the idea of grace, which he picked up from reading our text from Romans today.  Instead of focusing on having to do and say the exact right things all the time and believing that it was the ritual that saved us, as though worship was a sacrifice instead of a joyful giving to God, and instead of focusing on every little error and sin that we commit, which caused Luther quite a few meltdowns and long, boring confessions, Luther pointed out that God loves us all freely and forgives us all our sins and promises eternal life to each of us due to our relationship to God, being God’s children.  We all fall short and all of us are sinners, but each of us is saved because of God’s righteousness, not because of our own worthiness.  It doesn’t matter who we are or where we are from or anything else.  It doesn’t matter if we are white, black, Latino, Asian, or Middle Eastern, rich, poor, or middle class, straight or gay, republican, democrat, green party, or independent, male or female, clergy or laity, or anything else.  None of us, absolutely none of us are worthy of getting anything from God, let alone forgiveness and salvation.  Yet we are gifted it by our loving God.  No matter how badly we screw up or how much we argue with God, we are given a gift because of Christ’s righteousness and Christ’s love for us.  And no matter how much we give away, no matter how much we pray or how much we study or anything, none of us is worthy of God’s grace.  It is not our work; we do absolutely nothing that earns us salvation or God’s love.  All we do is exist.  This is why we baptize infants, because they can do absolutely nothing that would earn them anything.  Instead, we are gifted the Holy Spirit when the only skill that we have is crying for attention.  That is what our faith is, a gift from God, a gift that shows us that no matter how bad life gets, no matter how deep we are in the gutter, God is there loving us and caring for us. 

            Now, this is not to say that we are free from following the law of God and going around destroying the planet and robbing people to get what we want.  While Luther did say “Sin Boldly,” that is not what he meant.  While we may be justified by faith apart from our works of the law, the law is a gift from God as well which instructs us on how we are to live in a manner that is not only pleasing to God, but also in a way that allows us to form and maintain right relationships with one another, as well as live in a community together.  In fact, Christ makes it a point to not only lift up the Law but also expand upon it in the Sermon on the Mount, so we cannot say that we are to ignore it.  No, instead we are called to not only live by the letter of the law, but also to live by the Spirit of the law, and live according to the Spirit that God has placed in us.  It is the law that also forces us to recognize that we are sinful people, we are not the perfect embodiment of goodness that we would like to imagine ourselves to be.  The law is a mirror that allows us to see us as we truly are.  It films us in HD and causes us to see every little pore and ever little defect on our being, each of which is caused by Sin, the times where we thought too highly of ourselves or thought only of ourselves or put an idol ahead of God, whether it be wealth or our nation, or even our families.  The law, which can be boiled down to “Love God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself,” forces us to look upon ourselves and see all that we have done which has tarnished the name of God and the damage that we have done to God’s creation and to all of our fellow children of God.  This knowledge makes it all the more powerful when we find that God takes us as we are and scrubs all that grime and filth off of us and makes us brand new, so that we may join Him for all eternity.  It is through God, and only through God, that we are able to live life according to that law and truly glorify our creator.  We cannot will ourselves into being good, we are simply not strong enough, but with God, and only through the power of God, we are able to achieve amazing things, changing the world around us for the better. 

            These changes are both very focused in scope, as well as very broad.  It is in helping to comfort someone who mourns the loss of a loved one, both those that we know and those that we have never met, such as the families of soldiers who receive letters from our congregation..  It is the giving food to the Way Station, in order that people who otherwise would starve are filled with good food.  It is in sharing your story of faith with friends and acquaintances who have a need for grace in their lives, in knowing the love of God that passes all understanding.  It is the strength to fight against injustice, no matter how impossible the odds may be.  And in all of this, and the many other ways that God acts through us, may we give glory to God and not to ourselves, for there is no room for boasting in God’s kingdom.

            So we do not celebrate the man Luther this day, but rather we celebrate the return of the focus being put on grace, on God speaking through a German monk to His people, allowing them to hear once again that we are made perfect by God, not by our own works, and we are free from Sin due to the righteousness of Jesus Christ.  We are now free from fear and are promised that we shall share in Christ’s eternal life, so let us not waste our time with boasting or with ill will towards our fellow brothers and sisters, no matter what denomination or faith, but let us rejoice that we are loved by our eternal, loving King, saved through His Son, and empowered by His Spirit.

Thanks be to God,

Amen