Creative Lament

Isaiah 64:1-9

Mark 13:24-37

We are entering a time this Sunday that depending on who you are and where you live and what things are like at home,

You may call it Christmas shopping season, you may call it the

End of the semester,

some have called it the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year” or the “Happiest Season of all”

Others greet this time of year with a deep sadness and grief

For some it would be more aptly named “the loneliest time of the year”

Those who have lost loved ones in this year or recent years will feel the ache of that loss again

Those who are struggling to find basics of food and shelter will find this time of year exceptionally painful

In Dickens’s memorable words, “It is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.”

Among the names that this season carries is Advent.

What does Advent mean?

Advent is a Latin word that means “Coming”

Or “to arrive.”

Advent is a season of expectation.

Expecting what?

It’s not about expecting Christmas presents or school vacation –

Or the end of a school semester

It’s expectation that is much bigger than these things – though these smaller longings are related.

It’s an expectation of the coming of God’s redeeming grace among us.

Advent marks a time of divine discontent.  A sense of longing for God to heal what has been broken

In our hearts, in our communities, in our land.

Where is my Neighbor?

Matthew 22:34-40

Last week we looked at the second part of the Great Commandment, Love your neighbor as yourself.

As yourself was our focus, trying to better understand what it means to love ourselves well.

This week I want to pay attention to the first part of this phrase.

Love your neighbor.

When I mentioned to a friend that this was going to be the text of my sermon, he replied wryly

“So your sermon is going to be, ‘Do it’?”

The Great Commandment is at once a very simple command, a very simple teaching.

And yet, as I mentioned last week we can very easily take it for granted that we know the command “Love God, love neighbor” and forget that as yourself is part of the mix.

In the same way I think there’s more to consider in love your neighbor than merely a general encouragement to do good.

When Jesus was asked by a lawyer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” he was answering one of the important questions we put to this command.  In Jesus’s characteristic style he answered by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan.

I want to put another question to this command, not “Who” but “Where is my neighbor?”

“Where is my neighbor?”

I think this is a really important question for us.

We can take a few seconds and in that short of time imagine many more people with whom we are connected than we can reasonably be expected to love or care for.

This for me has been one of the problems of Facebook.

What's So Often Left Out

Romans 13:8-10

One of the things I love about living here and being a part of this church community is how much people care about serving their community and helping their neighbors.

Small churches like Acworth are full of people who earnestly help, serve, and do good for their neighbors, for their communities.

I think it’s not insignificant how many people in this room work in some kind of service occupation or are retired from one.  Here in this room are nurses, teachers, counselors, volunteers, public servants.

Much of the week is spent in considering how to care for the neighbor or do good work for the community. 

We are a neighbor-loving people and if someone were to ask us what the most important commands in the bible are, many of us might summarize it so:

Love God. Love neighbor.

But something was just left out in that summary of the summary. 

Communion of Saints

Revelation 7:9-17

Matthew 5:1-12

When I was a young boy, I became fascinated by the book of Revelation.

I say I was fascinated. 

But I was also fascinated by pictures of mushroom clouds and stories of World War II.

The kind of fascination I found in the book of Revelation was much more akin to these kinds of fascination than, say, my love for the stories of Robin Hood or Redwall.

The book of Revelation for many in our day has become a kind of Rorschach test

Upon which people project their fears and desires – and many of the books we can read interpreting Revelation for today can tell us much more about the interpreter than about Revelation or today.

The writer of Revelation, John, was in prison on the island of Patmos – it was a time when Christians were being imprisoned and executed at the hands of the Roman empire because they would not denounce their faith in Christ.  The book describes a battle of good and evil that was a very real experience for John and his community – and this is why it still fascinates people today – because we still see forces of international greed and violence at play – and in every generation since this book was written, people have seen their time revealed in these apocalyptic pages. 

But the book was not written to give people a new code to decipher and forecast what will happen next, it was not written to be a textbook for the future.  It was written to be a source of imaginative hope for the experience of the present suffering at the hands of the empire.