Now…and Not Yet

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Biblical Text: Matthew 3:1-12

John the Baptist expresses some clear expectations of the messiah. As a prophet he is concerned with the now. The Kingdom is near and God is acting now. This wants to think about like between the two advents, which is life in the now…and the not yet. Because everything that John the Baptist expected Now didn’t reach immediate fulfillment. This sermon attempts to proclaim the now that started with the first advent while acknowledging (and saving a bit for next week) the not yet.

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Midweek Vespers – An Explainer

If you have not been to a mid-week service for a while, or just not with me leading them, it is worth an explanation of what you might expect.  Probably the most practical thing is that I aim for the service to be between 20 and 30 minutes.  Their purpose is not a midweek Sunday.  It is a daily office.  Prayer at the close of day, but for a time during a season of preparation like Advent for communal prayer and praise.  The order of service is the canonical office of Vespers.

Now what does that string of words mean?  Canonical is a fancy word for regular. The canon of scripture is the list of regularly accepted books.  The ministers of a Cathedral church were known as the canons. The canons would lead prayer at regular intervals throughout the day.  The Didache, the first catechism coming from the 2nd century, encouraged Christians to pray three times a day.  That would have been morning, evening and at mid-day.  These canonical hours were expressions of living in community.  The canons, or the monks when monasticism grew and often replaced the canons, followed the daily office.  And the community around would join as desired.  It remains an open question to me if any of us moderns live in community.  Yes, we all live in communities, but do we know our neighbors? What do we share with them? These simple regular or canonical services were about shared burdens and joys.  They were the daily prayer and praise of living communities. But that is a deeper question of modern life.

The office of Vespers is the office that was originally sung after the day’s work had been accomplished, but usually before the evening meal.  Compline, meaning completion, was the prayer before bed.  But much of that was dependent upon the sun.  Vespers consists typically of a Psalm, a reading, a homily, prayer and a couple of hymns.  It is the type of thing that one could do alone (minus the homily) or within a family grouping.  This was often the encouragement of the Reformation which saw the extended family as the lived community and the father as the liturgical head of that community.

The one great distinction of the office of Vespers is its use of the Magnificat or Mary’s Song.  This is the song Mary sang carrying Jesus when greeted by Elizabeth carrying John the Baptist. You can find the biblical version and that story in Luke 1.  That song throughout the ages has inspired many different musical settings and translations.  Our hymnbook contains a beautiful chant version that is probably a bridge too far.  Maybe at some future time I will see if I can get the choir to prepare it for us to hear it.  Instead, what I have planned for these services is a tour of the hymn versions of the Magnificat that our hymnbook contains.  Mary’s profound words deserve such a place of honor in our prayer and praise.

So, what can you expect? Hopefully a short encouraging gathering of a community of prayer and praise.  A turning or returning to God in faith and hope and then toward one another in love in a season of preparation.

A New Hope

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Biblical Text: Isaiah 2:1-5, (Romans 13: 8-14)

It is the first Sunday in Advent, the church new year. Advent is a season set aside to prepare for Christmas. Like the secular New Year that looks backwards and forwards, Advent as a season looks at the past and then toward the future. At least for me its overriding theme is about Hope. The Bible is a book grounded in our human reality. If you think GRR Martin is salacious, read the Bible. Although the players in that Game of Thrones have reasonable motivations behind actions. In the bible the motivations are as often as not that we are just sinners and like sinning. And that we are all in this Empire of Sin. Advent is about the hope, the rebellion of the Kingdom against that Empire. The downfall, already accomplished and yet to come, of the tyrant and the coming of the Reign of Justice and Peace which is founded on love. Things are broken, but there is a New Hope.

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Thanksgiving Grace

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Biblical Text: Deuteronomy 8:1-10

A short homily for a thanksgiving sermon that asks what are we giving thanks for? Certainly, for our daily bread which in this land we have an abundance, but also for “every word which proceeds from the mouth of God.” We give thanks for this body and life, which should lead to thanks for the much greater grace we have been given in Jesus.

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Thanksgiving Rituals

Think for a second about the rituals of Thanksgiving.  Most of them are food: Turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie with some region and family variation. The further south you go the more pecan pie and mac-n-cheese show up.  In the Midwest the “green stuff” – you know the pistachio pudding and dream whip salad – and French’s Onion green beans are staples. But there are more.  Families still gather, many over great distances.  The annual report of the misery of being stuck in the airport on the “largest travel day of the year” is a ritual. The President pardoning the Turkeys which unfortunately seems to have erased the much deeper ritual of a written Thanksgiving proclamation which has roots in George Washington and before.  And we shouldn’t forget the football games.  And if you skipped any of these things, especially if someone thought you skipped them intentionally, it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving.  You can try and add stuff.  Maybe over time new things replace old, but probably not.

That is the American Thanksgiving liturgy.  And this is probably my most controversial claim, the rituals come first. It is through the liturgies that we learn the meanings and become part of something larger than ourselves. How do you know that you are at “the big game?” The really big game gets a Stealth Bomber flyover, although the Blue Angles also count. Having the Goodyear Blimp present is the entry stakes on a big game.  But the invocation of “the game” always starts with the presentation of the colors – the flags and the teams – and the playing of the national anthem.   That is the liturgy of the game and the creation of the congregation of the game.  Mess with the liturgies or rituals and people know that you are messing with the real meanings.  They might not be able to express in words what those meanings are, but they know them from repeated invocation.

We are all creatures of habit.  The real question is not if we are going to have habits – rituals, liturgies.  The question is if we are going to develop good ones, or poor ones.  As Ben Franklin/Poor Richard would say, “early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”  Few do it, but doing your homework immediately at the end of the school day is a liturgy of success. Not to mention that you get to spend your evening having fun without worry.  This is all in the realm of what the Bible would call wisdom literature.  Does it work this way for everyone? Absolutely not. But this is the thing about wisdom literature as Joshua Gibbs wittily put it, “Ways a man can live by, if he is not so foolish as to think himself special.”

This power and necessity of ritual, of liturgy, is something that the church knew for millennia but seems to have forgotten in some mad push for originality.  But even originality turns into ritual.  The demand for “prayers from the heart” turns into “Lord Jesus, we just wanna ask…”.  The third time through a chorus comes with the demand to “raise those hands in worship.”  Even supposedly non-liturgical traditions have a liturgy.  The question really is what does it teach, what meaning does it encapsulate.  This insight is old enough to have a latin phrase, “lex orandi, lex credendi” – the law of worship is the law of belief. How you worship says what you believe better than what you would say.  Is the man who does not fall asleep watching football on thanksgiving really giving thanks?

The Christian Liturgy I think tells us two key things.  The God who has made himself known is The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit. This God makes His grace present for His people here. He has promised to be here in Word and Sacrament which are the means of that grace.  We don’t show up to give God anything.  We show up to receive his grace.  Wherever two or three are gathered in His name. For which Thanksgiving is a proper liturgical response.

King of Kings

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Biblical Text: Luke 23:27-43

I don’t think we moderns understand what the word King means. The last Sunday of the church year is often called Christ the King Sunday. King is one of the three offices that are ascribed to Jesus – prophet, priest and king. But we don’t know what that word means anymore, especially if we are basing it off of our images of the modern British monarchy. This sermon attempts to think through what King means and how it might effect our lives.

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Sea of Stars

(Note, in the past I did not post my weekly “newsletter” articles. I don’t know why. I used to tell myself they seemed more congregation specific. But more specific than the sermons which I do post? So, I’m going to start posting them. In the newsletter they are called “Pastor’s Corner” and so that is the category you will find them under. They often, although not always, are reflections on one of the other lectionary texts of the week.)

Did you catch the first images from the James Webb satellite telescope?  The one that basically replaces the Hubble that was deployed over the summer?  Here is a link:  https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages. I know people have alternate responses to such things.  The militant atheists took the photo of that stella maris, the now much bigger sea of stars, and quipped “imagine thinking that you are in any way consequential.” And if I am staring at those photos as a pure expression the holiness of God, yeah, I get it. A holy unknown god should cause stark raving terror at the vast gulf between it and us.  There is something mischievously funny that every step we seem to make in knowledge of the universe, it reveals that the universe is both infinitely bigger and more strange than we thought.  It is almost like God chuckling, “oh, you think you have plumbed my depths and now comprehend the foundations, that you could answer my question to Job “were you there (Job 38:4)” with a yes? Well now, take a look at this.”  That vastness of space stares back at us as a metaphor for the unknown god.  And if god was simply unknown I think my conclusion would run along the lines of H.P. Lovecraft.  But God has not remained unknown.  God has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ.

When I think of the last Sunday of the Church Year, sometimes called Christ the King Sunday, my mind takes me to those cosmic images.  That is where our Epistle reading for the day (Colossians 1:13-20) goes. The first thing that the Apostle Paul wants us to know is that “The Father has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the Kingdom of his beloved Son.”  We have been removed from staring at that vast dark cold sea of stars and been placed in Christ.  The impersonal has been replaced with the named.  The second thing Paul wants us to know is that this is good news.  You could (or at least I could) image a deity where that unknowing and uncaring space was better. You don’t have to think too hard.  Any of the idols or the old pagan gods would be such.  The pagans didn’t seek the gods so much as give their sacrifices to keep them away, to ensure they continued to slumber. Because being on a first name with a pagan god usually ended poorly.  But what Paul wants us to know is that in the Kingdom of Christ we are not insignificant slaves.  In Christ, “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

And in Christ we are far from inconsequential.  In some of that cosmic language Paul wants us to know exactly who this Christ is.  “All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  That entire sea of stars – “the visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities” – is his.  Yet in Jesus “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”  God was pleased to reveal himself in Jesus.  And He revealed himself for this purpose, “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” God revealed himself to make peace.  God revealed himself by putting His “skin in the game.” And more than just skin, His blood.  God left that vast sea of stars to dwell in fullness with us, to save us.

The God who hides behind that sea of stars has come to us.  The God who has the power to make the stella maris, placed all that power in Jesus to save us.  Far from inconsequential, you have been invited into that divine life. You have been transferred from the darkness to the Kingdom.

Two Doomsday Questions

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Biblical Text: Luke 21:5-28

The last two Sundays of the church year usually are given over the “last things”. The old word for last things is doomsday which is just Old English Judgement Day. The text for this week is Jesus talking about the Temple. That temple represents everything of the Jewish world. Everything it meant to have a Jewish identity was tied up in that temple. And Jesus is just going to walk out of it. The disciples try and call him back to it. “See the marvelous stones and the offerings?” Jesus replies not a stone will be let on top of another. The entire Jewish identity will come down. That causes shock and two questions from the disciples.

This is remarkably relevant to our situation today. We are lost in conversations about identity. We build identities on some good things, some pretty lies, and some sins. Even the good things can be an idol in the Temple. This sermon thinks about doomsday, identity and the two questions the disciples asked.

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Who’s Blessed?

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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:1-12

How we use the word saint in the English language has a couple of meaning that are somewhat contradictory. This All-Saints Day sermon ponders those categories of saints a bit and then turns to who and what Jesus calls blessed.

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