Take Up Your Cross Begins with Promise

 Sermon Genesis 9:8-17 February 20, 2021 First Sunday in Lent yrB

Take Up Your Cross Begins with Promise

This season of Lent our focus is on the cross we carry. We all know that our time of Lent is a time of reflection. It is a time we begin on Ash Wednesday and say- “we put ashes on our head: to remind us of all those around the world who are mourning and suffering; to remind us that we have sinned and need repentance and must cling to the promises and love of Christ; to remind us that we all die; to remind us of Christ’s suffering and death and resurrection; and to remind us that we are still claimed, named, called, loved, children of God.” This season we will take up our cross because we need to not only figuratively remember God, but we need to literally do the labor and the discipline to remember all that God has done for us. God himself became limited and chose to enter our humanity, to become weak, and to die to save us.

So, are we willing in this Lent to choose to take up our cross and walk with it for these many weeks, these 40 days, and become vulnerable before God and others? We can if we remember whose we are. Our taking up the cross begins this week with promise. The weeks to come we will take up our cross and follow, obey, believe, and be light. We begin this week with promise.

Lent Banner for NMPC

Promises, promises, it’s all we hear anymore from politicians, community leaders, anyone in the public realm, and we are just tired of empty promises. When we hear our children say to us, or we say to them, “I promise” are we even capable anymore of being true to that promise? A promise these days seems so fickle. No one makes a deal on a handshake, or the word of another. The ability to trust seems an ancient pastime. Yet, trust, faith and promises are the very foundation of our faith. And the truth of why they are the foundation of our faith is that we have been a human race of sin, deception, destruction, and disappointment to the very God of our creation.

These first eleven chapters of Genesis are important chapters well known throughout the ancient texts of the beginning of the earth. Every culture in the Mesopotamian delta had and has stories of the beginning of humanity, the fall of humanity, and the great flood that hit the reset button for humanity. Why does this matter? Because it lets us know there was an understanding across all tribes, religions, and developing groups of a sense of the importance of telling the story of the beginning relationships of humans to each other and gods or God.

The story of the flood is taught in Sunday school. It is great biblical literature taught to all children and remembered into adulthood. We remember being taught that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. We remember being taught that Noah built the ark out of gopher wood. We remember that Noah took in animals two by two. We remember that the waters eventually receded, and Noah landed on dry land and built an altar to thank God. We remember that God said he would never curse the ground or destroy the people again. We remember God placed a rainbow in the sky as a reminder of that promise. What we may not remember is the gift of God’s grace to us through this powerful story.

We have a God who we know created all that is. God created out chaos and nothingness a world of wonder and beauty. We recognize the depth and breadth and height of God’s grace as this moment plays out before Noah. God speaks to Noah after all the destruction is over. God accepts the sacrifice that Noah offers. God renews the responsibility to Noah to be fruitful and multiply and to care for the earth and allows for the sacrifice of animals for food.

And then God looks all around what is.

God witnesses the consequences of the judgment of sin.

God witnesses all that has been lost.  God sacrifices judgment for grace.

God places a limit on God’s own power of judgement.

God looks at Noah and the earth and the creatures of the earth and says, “enough is enough.”

God makes a promise to never, ever, ever, curse the ground again. God makes a promise to never, ever, ever, destroy creation again. In this promise God has set the limits on himself and allows his grace to rule.

Who does that?

Who limits their ability to punish?

Who limits their authority?

Who sets themselves in a position to be vulnerable to the mistakes of others?  

God does.                                                                                     

God loves beyond boundaries.

God loves beyond God’s own self.

God sent his Son into a world to become vulnerable to the point of death.

 Who does that?

DO we?

Are we able to offer ourselves in a promise to another that puts them first no matter what? Are we willing to love and forgive and to live the promise of forever with another? 

It’s those kinds of questions we ask ourselves when we witness what God has done with Noah.

But God goes one step further in this story.

God puts a reminder in the sky for God to not mess up the promise.

Photo credit Pastorale Farm, Rebekah Rodgers

You see God put all the colors in a beautiful giant bow that every creature can see, every human can see, everything that moves and breathes can see the rainbow. God put it there to make sure that God would remember the promise. God put it there because there is no mistake that this promise God has made touches everyone’s life from the past to the present to the future. God will be held accountable to every living creature, past, present, and future. The rainbow is forever!

When God puts the rainbow in the sky as a sign everything has a hope for the future.

All assurance is given that there is a tomorrow to plan for and to rejoice in.

Even amid the continuing chaos God’s promise of the rainbow reminds all that the earth will continue. God will never destroy it again.

So, when pandemics reign and death is at every corner, when sadness and grief is as deep as the ocean, God shines the rainbow and we know there will be another day to live for that will bring sunshine. In the bulb there is a flower. It enters the ground to die, so in spring it can return with the brightness of life. As Sib Towner described it, “ God enters into an everlasting covenant with alligators as well as human beings and guarantees their place within the providential order.”

The joy of the promise of God is that it is universal and eternal. It has a universal effect in the way the outreaching (horizontal bar) of the cross is to all people, to all creation. It has an eternal effect in the way the cross (the vertical bar) is God’s descent to bring heaven to earth and our eternal relationship through the threshold of life to death and resurrection.  

It may be a challenge to take up our cross.

It may be something we are not really willing to do.

It may be fear filled.

It may be all those things.

It may make us uncomfortable.

 

It will make us vulnerable.

It will make us aware.

It will make us open.

It will make us available.

It will make us present.

 

In this Lent we have the opportunity to experience grace as never before.

Embrace the promise of God.

Trust the promise of God for you today.

Trust the God who believes in second chances.

 

Remember as you take up your cross it begins with promise.

Look to the rainbow and rejoice.

Amen.

Resources: W. Sibley Towner Genesis Commentary; Feasting on the Word YrB David Lose

Property of Monica Gould sharing is permitted. Please send requests to reprint with permission to mongould@gmail.com

Walk and Not Faint

Sermon Isaiah 40:21-31 February 7, 2021

Walk and Not Faint

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. Now that might not be a big deal to many of you. Considering how messed up our sports seasons have been this year, many may not even give a hoot about watching this one football game. I do know though, that there are many who will sit down and watch this game just for a semblance of tradition as we’ve known in the past.

Tradition is something we hold dear as sport fans, as Americans, as families, and as Christian church goers. Traditions remind us that life has been worthwhile, and that life will continue beyond ourselves. Today is Super Bowl 55. That’s a lot of years for a sport to hold together a tradition in this fast-moving society. 

Which leads me to the question, "

what traditions do we cling to and why? 

Consider as we sit together today, 

here in the pews and those online, 

those things that bring comfort, joy, security, value, and purpose.

As we reflect, we will discover most of what we are considering involve being engaged with others in community. 

As we reflect on those traditions, they bring us an enormous amount of joy that draws us to a place of remembrance and praise. 

They fill us again with hope and joy.

The prophet Isaiah was talking to a people who had lost hope and were living their lives in the lament of what once was. The people of Israel had been taken captive and displaced to Babylon. They had been there for years. Life as they knew it ceased to exist. They were forced to take on manners and daily routines unlike they had ever experienced. They were full of grief and sorrow. They yearned for the day they could return to their country and return to their ways and their traditions. The people in exile were actually at a point where they were giving up looking forward. They felt abandoned by God. They wondered if the God they once believed in was really the God of deliverance.

As time went by, they became more and more despondent. And they doubted the God of wonders and the God of their tradition.

They had been in exile for so long they began to suffer amnesia and looked to the gods of their captors. Murdock was the sun god of the Babylonians as well as multiple astrid (or star) gods. Their knowledge of their traditions began to fade.

The book of Isaiah is divided into three parts. And chapter 40 is known as the beginning the second part of Isaiah. It is a crucial turning point chapter. It begins the first eleven verses with words we hear every Advent season… ‘comfort, comfort, my people’. Here in these verses we discover a God who has never abandoned his people, yet yearns to bring them from their lament to a life of praise and to return them to their traditions of worship and hopeful living.

I believe in every time and age God’s people have asked the question, “Can God really help us?” And, “Does our God still want to help us?”

Perhaps, that is where we have found ourselves as God’s people these past months. We have been removed from one another as in no other recent time. For many it is the first time in their life they have experienced a crisis. Many here were too young to remember 9/11 or WWII or the depression. But, even in those times communities were not isolated and cut off from each other. The greatest tragedy is when communities fail to function together and individual existence is more important. Even our Bible’s references are always on the universal community response to God as God’s people are called to live together.

How does the tradition of moving in life without fear, 

and seeking to participate together with God’s strength, 

return us to society?

We hear the words of Isaiah to the people of God and we respond to them.
Too many of us have been caught up sitting idle
waiting for things to change;
or waiting for things to return to what was.

Too many of us have socially distanced
ourselves from relationships.

It has been too easy to remove ourselves from society.
We can find all we need at our fingertips from home.

Our isolation from community has made it too easy
to be isolated and far removed from God.

We sing a hymn and an anthem where the refrain goes, “Come back to me with all your heart Don't let fear keep us apart,  Long have I waited for Your coming home to me And living deeply our new lives.” God is the one reaching out to us and drawing us back to himself.

Isaiah provides us with such grace in the reminder of the wonder and majesty of our God. He returns the listeners to the traditional truths of God.

God is the creator of the universe

and the ruler and power of the nations.

God is Lord of all.

God gives power to the faint and

strengthens the powerless.

Our God loves us to draw us up in our hour of need.

God removes our lament and

restores our souls with the songs of praise.

 

When we hear the song Majesty it too restores us to the tradition of God’s power and grace over all of us.

No matter how exhausted we find ourselves
we have the promise that God will renew our strength.

It is our Lord’s Supper tradition that we come to the Table remembering that Christ is our living bread where we are nourished and renewed, refreshed and strengthened. 

Photo credit Joe Valentine

In this tradition that God has given us

 we too trust that as 

we wait for the Lord 

we shall be renewed in strength, 

we shall mount up with wings as eagles and we shall run and not be weary, and we shall walk and not faint. 

It is the tradition that reminds us that we are the Body of Christ across the whole world. We are a community of faith drawn together through our Savior. Take time to return to the tradition of our faith and join in community here and now through reaching out to us as we reach out to you. Prepare your table before you as we sup as one.

Let us gather now and rejoice and praise God for his wonderful gifts to us. Let us lift up our voices and shout louder than the cheers at the football games, let us lift our spirits with joy! We are about to enter into the joyful feast of our risen Lord, it is time to praise our Jesus! Amen.

Resources: Interpretation Isaiah Paul Hanson; A Commentary on Isaiah Claus Westermann; NIB Christopher Seitz.

Property of Monica Gould sharing is permitted but not to be reprinted without permission.  

No Time to Waste

 

Sermon Mark 1:14-20 January 24, 2021

No Time to Waste

In the last ten months we have been jumping to schedules and radical changes and learning new ways that have been more than we could handle at times. Nothing before us has been like the way we are living now. 

I watched a Wheel of Fortune show last night that was from Feb 2020. It was so weird! They were standing close to each other and they were spinning the wheel with their bare hands. I was shocked.

And then I realized, oh my gosh-we’re now looking at everything pre-covid era and post-covid era. It’s been a real ride of radical change. Nothing before has turned us to quick thinking actions on our feet that we could be prepared to make. Everyday we keep thinking we have a routine until the call comes to say schools are shut down again. And then the call comes to say they are open again. 

Who in their right mind can keep a schedule like that? 

For some, perhaps life is a perpetual hamster wheel and each day is a desire to fill the moments with something to do. It has been a frustration of how to stay energized and part of the everyday life while staying at home.

We’re all realizing though, that there is no time to waste.

Each day there is new learning, new teaching, new methods. The miracle of new networks of friendships have developed in order to navigate in this way of living we never saw coming.

Thank God for the quick thinkers!

Thank God for the problem solvers!

Thank God for the unflappable mama bears out there!

What these mamas have done is no short of a miracle!

They remind me of the disciples who answered the call of Jesus.

Jumping out of a stable setting and running to something and someone most uncertain because the love in the call was so great-that’s the miracle…

In today’s text Mark, the gospel writer, doesn’t skip a beat to introduce us to Jesus. Jesus is baptized, sent into the wilderness and when he emerges from the wilderness we read that John has been arrested. In the same breath of the gospel writer’s announcement of John’s arrest he writes that Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the ‘good news’.  There is no pause for sorrow for John or even for Jesus to acknowledge the passing of the baton.

For Mark, the movement of the power of God is urgent, radical, and forward moving. The calling of the disciples as an opening act for the ministry of Jesus will give the disciples the authority they need to carry on after Jesus is gone.

Jesus comes to Andrew and Simon first and calls for them to follow him and fills them with a promise of a new vocation. His call to them implies a radical break from their former way of living. Immediately they left their nets and followed Jesus. Jesus places the same call on James and John who not only leave their nets but leave their father as well.

A radical departure indeed. 

They dropped everything and turned to a new way of life. 

Not unlike what so many of us had to do ten months ago and keep doing everyday!

We often get hung up on the ability of the disciples to have the will and the obedience to leave everything behind. But, if our focus is on what they did, then we miss the point of the power of God to change us and to turn us to a new way of life. 

Jesus CALLS them and they come running because Jesus’ call is undeniable and irresistible!

Barbara Brown Taylor suggests we’re missing something if we lay our focus on the yes of the disciples. 

“If we spend all our focus on what the disciples 

gave up and how they were so saintly and self- sacrificing 

we really miss the point of the message. 

These verses are about the miracle of God’s work 

in God’s encounters with people. She says, 

“the power of God to walk right up to a quartet 

of fishermen and work a miracle, 

creating faith where there was no faith, 

creating disciples 

where there were none 

just a moment before.”

Yes, God is at work with miracles within us. Jesus is calling us and we are without any apprehension following him through all that faces us because we understand the power of God.

Kate Huey suggests that we also get hung up on the idea that this disciple making or disciple becoming is something that we do. 

We think if we fix ourselves or shape our lives; 

if we determine our destinies, 

or take hold of the future 

then our independent choice of becoming a follower of Jesus is how we please God. 

But, it is God who works power within us 

and we can’t resist but follow. 

It is beyond our choice but a force so strong we know its right.

Taylor reminds us, “What we may have lost along the way is a full sense of the power of God – to recruit people who have made terrible choices; to invade the most hapless lives and fill them with light; to sneak up on people who are thinking about lunch, not God, and smack them upside the head with glory" (Home by Another Way). Whether we're ready or not, God acts.

I honestly believe God has acted in the lives of our saints during these radical times. 

We could not be here today in a secure and strong congregation 

without the miracle of God’s presence 

among us to stir us to action. 

The miracle is that God stirred our hearts 

to give us the strength to say 

that we would be the church through all times. 

God called us out of the darkness around us 

and puts us to work. 

We responded not out of our own ability but the 

strength of Christ within us.

At the PEVA Zoom presbytery meeting yesterday, I learned of all the ways the churches in our presbytery also heard God’s call to them that there was no time to waste. They turned to offering ministry and mission in their communities to meet the needs of many. They redid their food pantries and their child care. There was so much retraining and learning to work together with new technologies and assisting the home bound. Each church had a miracle story. We have our miracle stories.

You see when Jesus comes along and calls to us from the seashore, 

we drop everything and run to him knowing there is no time to waste. 

We are the church because the miracle of his call is still at work within each of us. 

We are the church because the power of Christ is irresistible! 

You see mamas know that when there is a challenge in front of us 

we don’t run and hide, we run to it for the sake of our family. 

Jesus called those disciples and they went running to him. 

They ran to him not because they were leaving anything behind 

but because they were running to him knowing it would be for the sake of many.

The little diddly put together to encourage the church in 2003 at First Pres in Harrisonburg, VA goes like this.

I am the Church

My church is composed of people like me. We make it what it is.

It will be friendly if I am friendly.

It’s pews will be filled (that’s online pews too), if I fill them.

It will do great work, if I work.

It will make generous gifts to many causes, if I am a generous giver.

It will bring people into its worship and fellowship, if I bring them (online too).

It will be a church of loyalty and love, of fearlessness and faith, and a church with a noble spirit, if I, who makes it what it is, am filled with these traits.

Therefore, with the help of God, I shall dedicate myself to the task of being all the things I want my church to be.

 When we see the face of Jesus and hear his voice, there is no time to waste. We come running to shore and follow him. 

Let each of us today heed his call and follow. 

There’s no telling how our lives will be. 

There’s no time to waste. 

Amen.

Resources: NIB Gospel of Mark Pheme Perkins; Barbara Brown Taylor; Working Preacher-Kate Huey 2012

Property of Monica Gould sharing is permitted but not to be reprinted without permission. 

The Cost of Yes

 

Sermon Mark 1:1-14 January 10, 2021 Baptism of the Lord Sunday

The Cost of Yes

Disbelief occurred on Wednesday. The Capitol building of our United States was assaulted as the joint chambers were getting ready to certify electoral votes. For some they were grateful for the riotous behavior. They were feeling their voices were being heard. There was cheering across social media stating the joy they had in the take back of a country headed toward totalitarianism. Others though, were shocked that our nation could become so unstable in her democracy that a revolutionary coup was trying to take place. 

The insurrection has cost us as a nation. 

It has cost us as a people. 

It has cost us as a community and as neighbors and as people of faith.

I realize that on Thursday as I went to exercise and other places throughout the day, 

not one of us spoke of what happened. 

When 9/11 occurred, we spoke about it for weeks and months in shock and horror about what happened. 

But Thursday, all voices around me were silent about what had happened on Wednesday.

In less than 20 years we do not speak (except in media platforms) openly about our concerns of government, of social behavior, of faith, of security, of anything beyond TV shows.

Our opinions, our values, our thought processes of any subject are constantly rejected, mocked, yelled at, and even assaulted. We have never in our lives been so constrained in our ability to speak than ever before. We demonize anyone and everyone whose ideas are different from ours. 

How did we come to this?

As I studied Mark’s opening gospel message over the last few weeks, I was reminded again and again, the cost to Jesus for his Yes to God. Jesus stood before John the Baptist and said yes to a baptism of the Holy Spirit that would thrust him into the world of hate, envy, sin, evil and strife.

Who in their right mind would consider doing anything that would cost them their life?

And yet, we witness that there is always a cost to yes. 

There is always a cost to the who and what we say yes to. 

And if we choose to say yes, 

we best be prepared to know the truth 

of what we have made our allegiance to. 

If we say yes to Jesus we best be prepared 

that it is a costly yes. 

It is not a yes, of when we feel like it or something that looks good on a resume. 

It is a yes that takes over every ounce of our life, 

even our breath- if we are serious about it. 

How do I know this? 

I have Jesus as my example. 

An encounter with Jesus cannot be undone. 

The presence of the Spirit is something so powerful it changes us. 

It sets us out into a risky, scary world 

where we are to go and proclaim him, 

not deny him, 

because we trust he is guiding us.

We witness in this first chapter of Mark that Jesus joins the line of people standing at the edge of the river Jordan. He along with others are waiting for this new amazing fiery preacher man to baptize them into a new life. 

The people coming to John the baptizer were willing to accept the sin in their life and to reject it and to repent, to turn from their ways, and begin to live a new life saying yes to God. 

Jesus comes behind them and also rejects sin and turns to the life God sent him to live. He turns to the life that will lead him to death. He paves the way for his followers. 

He shows them that YES has a cost. 

It has a cost that began with the words of God calling him beloved Son and then immediately he was confronted with his yes by being tempted in the wilderness. 

The angels ministered to him and he was refreshed by the Spirit and ready for ministry.

Jesus came to preach the truth of God’s love. 

AND To preach the truth of love: he suffered, he was mocked, and he died. 

The cost of yes to be a follower of Christ, to speak the truth of God’s love is not cheap (as Bonhoeffer says). 

To be a follower is to risk our very life to say yes to Jesus and to live a life in the fullness of discipleship.

In every century beginning with the first disciples, the followers of Jesus were undermined at every turn. Here we are 2000 years later and we are grateful for their YES! They were undeterred in their willingness to preach the truth that Jesus is our God incarnate, Emmanuel with us, our Lord, and Savior. Can we still proclaim him like this outside of a Christmas service? Can we proclaim him above all other Gods? Or is that unsettling for many? We can gather and agree to coexist with other religions without religious persecution. But, that doesn’t mean we cannot share our faith and live our faith openly.

The gospel of Mark gives us a taste of the haste of the ministry of Jesus. In every generation there is a haste for his ministry. It takes us through his life with attention to his purpose and mission to share the truth of the kingdom of God and for those who hear of it to embrace it urgently for salvation is near.

As we read scripture we are influenced by our experience. 

The lenses of our reading for understanding are framed by the templates of our prior reading and the world of our learned experiences. 

It is important for us to constantly test our understanding as we pray with an open heart trusting the Spirit to reveal God’s insight for that text before us.

The approach to reading and studying scripture should match that of the Bereans who we read about in Acts chapter 17 as soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. ¹¹ Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. ¹² As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

The ability to discern and search for truth is key to our yes to faith.

We must ask questions. 

We must research. 

We must scrutinize. 

In our search for truth we have the opportunity to be open to the joys of growth in faith. We will receive strength in our resolve to proclaim what we believe.

When we have a handle on our yes as a follower of Christ it becomes the rule by which we make our way in all other aspects of our life. If our yes to Jesus as a follower is wishy washy, if it is on shaky ground, if it is only when we feel like it, then all other ideals will supersede our following Christ. We will end up chasing after an ideal that sucks us away from any yes we ever made to the discipline of faith in Jesus.

You see in this 21^st century we can’t escape the influence of radical ideals who have gone before. 

History books and other texts have been rewritten and altered. 

We will be confronted with the teachings of Karl Marx, Malcolm X, Stalin, and many others. We best know our own constitution and democracy were influenced by Toqueville of France.  Karl Marx called religion the opium of the people. 

He was successful in stealing the hope of heaven 

from the faithful 

by mocking the very truth 

of their ability to transcend difficult times. 

He succeeded in dividing people into groups of hate and sedition. 

He is only one example of the effect 

how 

one man’s 

writings and propaganda 

can have on a large scale.

Marxists were successful in pushing the ideal that it is human effort that make humans make history. 

Writers, philosophers, theologians, idealists 

make their mark on our conscious and our outlook. 

What they contribute forms a template of influence. 

These sources enter into our psyche as we relate to Jesus and can distort us.

Christians have no choice but to wrestle with the dominant culture of their time in every time. H.R. Niebuhr

As nations struggle; 

As governments rise and fall, 

it is the Christian responsibility 

to study the struggle 

and make choices 

of who we say yes to. 

We make sure that in every oath we take: 

baptism, 

ordination, 

marriage, 

public office, 

confirmation, 

membership; 

that we are willing to live by the YES to those oaths. 

Our words and our yeses hold us accountable to God and to each other.

Cheap grace, as Bonhoeffer said, is the deadly enemy of the church. 

I would add that a weak yes to Jesus is the demise of our strength as a church and as an influencer in society. 

As followers of Jesus we don’t want to impose our faith on others for fear of offending them. If the grace we believe is truly as costly as Bonhoeffer says, only those who truly want to take the risk will say yes. It won’t offend anyone. The gospel doesn’t offend because in Romans 1:16  For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 

Good news of love and new life is never offensive. We just need the courage to speak what we believe. Perhaps we can really believe the intensity of God’s love for us as we witness the heavens tear open for Jesus as the Spirit descends and declares him a beloved Son at his baptism.

How can we live the Christian life in this modern divided world? 

We remember our baptismal vows and rejoice in them. They give us the ability to live the costly grace in our everyday life. We make sure our yes to Jesus is above all other yeses. We believe in sin and the need for forgiveness. We believe in repentance and the truth of forgiveness. We believe in the new life given to us as followers of Jesus. We believe it all and allow it to rule our life and guide our ways.

When we can do this then we can come together to seek to find a way to talk about all of our life and our different ideas and our different choices. It has to start with us. How did we get to this? I’m still learning. But, I know one thing for sure. In Jesus Christ I have the courage to engage with each different thought as we seek to put Christ first with our yes. There is a cost. There is always a cost. Let us be willing to seek to serve and witness the heavens open to us calling us beloved as we go forth. Amen.

Property of Monica Gould sharing is permitted but not to be reprinted without permission.

Resources: NIB Gospel of Mark Pheme Perkins; Christ & Culture by H. Richard Niebuhr; The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Live not by Lies by Rod Dreher

The Return Home

 

Sermon Luke 2:36-39 December 27, 2020 Christmas 1

The Return Home

It’s hard to imagine a life as a widow for more of your life than the years being married. But, it happens. It happens more than we realize. Anna is a blessing story for us. Her short entrance into the story at the birth of Jesus causes us to pay attention.

A woman whose life did not go as she planned ends up living her life at the Temple serving God day and night. I’m assuming that the Temple offered her a home. The requirement under the Law is that all widows and orphans are to be taken care of as part of the ministry and commitment to God. Usually it is the family responsible and then if there is no family to speak of it becomes the responsibility of the faith community. This is why we can assume that Anna had no family. We can also assume that she was respected and well liked because she was known in the Temple. The words spoken about her are quite positive.  

Just like Simeon she had been praying in the Temple waiting for the coming of the Messiah. And just like Simeon the Spirit of God revealed to her that Jesus, the baby, was the Savior of the nations. It’s also interesting to note that her lineage is important enough to Luke for him to mark it down for the readers. She was the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher. Asher means happy. Asher is the eighth son of Jacob and therefore the eighth tribe of Israel. This tribe ended up with the land North and west along the sea between Sidon and Helkath. Tyre was also located within the land of the tribe of Asher. I’m sure the name of her father and the name of her tribe was important to the readers for the credibility of the testimony of Anna to the world.

Luke pays attention to the details  that matter for the telling of the story of Jesus. He wants to make sure he has documented everything that will make folks tune their ears and their hearts to the saving story of Jesus.

What details of your story around this Christmas with Jesus are important for you to document for future readers to understand how this Christmas was different? How has this year with Jesus at the manger made an impact on you and your family? It is often in the tiny details that the Spirit makes us aware of what we need in our life to change our life and be on the road of continued growth in Christ our Lord.

In this last verse of chapter two (39) we learn that Mary, Joseph and Jesus headed home to Galilee where he would grow up from a baby into a young boy and into a man.

Everyone headed home.

The shepherds, the wisemen, all those who had gone to the different cities for the census, they all returned to their homes. They returned to the ordinary of their lives.

Perhaps, we need that reminder. Return home. You see we have a need for stability. We have a need for normalcy. We have a need to know that everything will turn out right. While the fanfare of the celebrations are great. And this year even that has been challenging. We still did our best to make a big deal about Christmas. I’m not sure if you have already put away all of your decorations, gifts, put the trash out on the road, or if your still gazing in wonder at your beautiful tree and the glowing fireplace, and the adorable Santas and nativities? Either way, the question is, what next?

Simeon in his, what next plans, let us know his plans. He could now go and rest his weary body and transition from this life to the next. He could do this in peace because his dreams and promises had been fulfilled. Anna, in her what next plans, could transition from preaching about the Savior who was to come, she could praise the Savior who has come.

Christmas and Easter are life altering moments for people of faith.

We approach these church events every year already knowing what to expect.

Yet, every year we also anticipate the surprise of the experience of Christmas and Easter as if for the first time.

We reach into the recesses of our memories and

search for that moment in our life when

the love of Christ appeared to us and made sense.

We reach back and we try to remember

our first church experiences

when we paid attention.

When we listened to the readings and

we remembered them so well we could recite them with the reader.

Treasured moments.

We are moved emotionally, spiritually, in a way forward in our faith and in our growth of love. And each year we move in the direction that draws us closer to God and family. And when the moment is over, we return home.

Returning home is where the new experiences occur.

By returning home we

allow the sacred moments to

enter into the ordinary of our life.

As we all return home at the end of this season we have the opportunity to document the things that mattered.

We document them for how we responded to an important event in the time of our cycle of life.

I think its pretty amazing how we celebrate the Christmas story of the birth of Jesus.

Each year we are a year older, yet the story itself is 2000 years old.

The story doesn’t change but we change and grow with it.

 

So, today, before the flashes of those special moments of this year are gone, write them down.

Write down the words that were exchanged.

Write down how you communicated through the computer.

Write down how you sat around a firepit to sing of the Savior instead of in a heated sanctuary.

These little memories may serve well in the future in ways we least expect.

 

We do not hear about Jesus again in scripture until he is twelve years old. And then it is just a glimpse. The next time we hear about him is as he enters the ministry God has sent him for. The people who witnessed the blessing of our Savior at his birth, were able to return to their ordinary lives filled with hope.

They were renewed in faith, love, and certainty that God loved them. It’s there for us too, to carry the certainty of our faith into the days ahead. God’s love for us is from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.

 Written copyright material of Monica Gould December 27, 2020. Not to be duplicated without permission from author.