The Mystery of Hope

 

Text: Matthew 24:36-44

Focus: Hope

Function: 1^st Sunday in Advent

³⁶“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. ³⁷For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ³⁸For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, ³⁹and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. ⁴⁰Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. ⁴¹Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left. ⁴²Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. ⁴³But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁴Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Good morning to the beloved children of God.

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Advent is a season of reflection before the celebration of Jesus’ birth whereby we focus on important themes of our striving in our lives to reflect the love that Jesus has shown us to the world around us.

The themes of Advent are: Hope, Peace, Love and Joy.

This is actually pretty difficult for preachers to manage because Peace enjoys an integral relationship between Peace and Love, between peace and Joy, and between Peace and Hope. It is hard to separate them in my thinking, so it is going to be hard to draw a distinction in my preaching the themes for advent.

The first theme we see is Hope.

I choose the lectionary text about expectant hope from Matthew when Jesus is talking about what theologians call the second coming of Christ. Most of the prophecy in Matthew 24 was fulfilled in AD 70 when Israel ceased to be a nation for almost 2,000 years and then God brought the nation back, a miracle.

And I believe that Jesus is preaching the message to the church, to us, in order for us to not lose hope in the fact that He is here and has come to redeem the world from its selfishness and greed.

Jesus came to set up a kingdom that is not of this world. It is a kingdom that resides inside the hearts of men and women and it grows when we place our trust in Jesus and allow the Spirit of God to lead us to love others as Jesus commanded us.

Salvation from Jesus, the main thing we hope for, is Jesus coming into our hearts and giving us the love of God and leading us in the spiritual paths of God’s love for the whole world.

I think hope is a beautiful thing. But I feel at times that it is hard to hold on to.

I look at the story of Peter and Jesus on the water when the boat was sinking and Jesus appeared walking on the water and they thought he was the angel of death and they got afraid and then Jesus speaks to them and gives them hope.

Peter tests the Lord and for some reason, the Lord allows it, and Peter gets out of the boat and walks on water toward Jesus. But the text says that when he saw the waves and the storm he got afraid.

He took his eyes off of Jesus and got afraid. And when fear set in, he began to sink. Now when one steps in the water what happens? Whoosh! They don’t begin to sink, they sink.

So here is Peter, slowly sinking, a miracle is still going on and it seems to me that the more he allows fear in the farther down he goes.

The lesson, I believe, is to keep our eyes on Jesus and not to let fear control our minds.

That leads us back to hope.

Hope in the love of God delivers us from fear and keeps us in a place of faith where we can live our lives loving and serving God in spite of the way other people get along without living a sacrificial life for the good of others.

So, for me, as I mentioned, I can get afraid when I lose hope.

And when I think of hope, I think of my hope in the love that God has for us.

God is love. According to 1 John 4:8 and it says that everyone who walks in love, walks in God.

And this is where it gets hard because Love is another theme of advent and I need to save those scriptures for that sermon. But it is important to know that when we are loving others and giving of ourselves then the Spirit of God is working through us and is filling us with faith and that faith increases our hope.

And we just finished thanksgiving and we looked at the importance of gratitude.

I find that gratitude goes a long way when fear starts to set in and I lose sight of the power of hope in my life.

When I am grateful in the midst of my fear, when I find things to be grateful for, I then realize that God is indeed with me and will not abandon me.

And when I am reminded that God is love and God loves me and that God wants me, as we saw in the series on the beatitudes, God wants me to thrive in the midst of life, Good or bad, I find a reason to have hope.

Hope is like the mystery of faith. It comes from God and we have the choice to allow hope to build our faith our reject it.

This season of advent, let us let that hope fill our hearts so that we can share that love that Jesus has for us and the world entire.

Upside Down III

 

Text: Luke 6:20-31

Focus: Empowerment

Function: to increase faith

²⁰Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
²¹“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
    for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.

²²“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. ²³Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

²⁴“But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have received your consolation.
²⁵“Woe to you who are full now,
    for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,
    for you will mourn and weep.

²⁶“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

²⁷“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; ²⁸bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Good morning to the beloved children of the Living and Loving God!

May you be filled with the peace of Christ today and always!

Today is part three of the sermon series upside down as we look at the beatitudes from Luke’s account of the sermon on the mount.

The first week we contrasted worldly values with the values taught to us by Jesus. We contrasted selfishness with generosity.

Last week, we saw how the word blessed means that we are empowered to make positive changes in our lives through faith in what the Holy Spirit does through us.

Today, as promised, we are going to look at our blessings compared to our wealth and hopefully ask ourselves questions about how we put into practice the command to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves.

I deliberately left the woes out of my sermon last week.

Let me re-read the woes on the passage started with verse 24:
²⁴“But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have received your consolation.
²⁵“Woe to you who are full now,
    for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,
    for you will mourn and weep.

I read those woes and I wonder how we can put that into context in such an affluent time and culture as ours. God has blessed us.

As I ponder the woes, I wonder what is wrong with having enough to eat? I wonder what is wrong with joy, especially when my main source of joy is God and my family? And I wonder what is the standard of measurement that says a person is rich or poor? Compared to the culture, I am barely hanging on to the middle class, so I am not rich, but as we pointed out, compared to those whom I have served in Haiti and Tijuana, Mexico, I am fabulously wealthy.

And, when I think of this passage, I am full now, and I laugh now and I have enough to live on. These woes can apply to me.

Are these woes judgments?

No. Again, we teach that God blesses those who serve God and those blessings as we have seen in scripture sometimes include material possessions.

Solomon had wealth we can’t imagine.

But then, that wealth corrupted him.

Sometimes when the lottery get obscenely high, I buy one ticket to participate in the community hysteria around such a windfall possibility. And I might spend a few hours day-dreaming about to whom I would give the money after I got out of debt and upgraded a few things.

But in that imagination, I get scared that I might forget God because the money would be such a distraction. Jesus is reminding us that we need God in our lives and we should depend on God to move inside of us through the Holy Spirit.

So here is what I learn from this passage: Whether we are rich or poor, we need God.

God wants us to live by faith in God. We continue to pray for our daily bread and Jesus commands us to not worry about the future because we are loved by God and God takes care of us.

If we are not worried about the future, we can be generous and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

There is nothing wrong with laughter and there is nothing wrong with having enough to eat. Jesus wants us to remember, however, that in every circumstance, we depend on God.

The book of Proverbs gives wise advice about our relationship to our wealth:
Proverbs 30:8b-9: give me neither poverty nor riches,
    but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
    and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
    and so dishonor the name of my God

It is a good perspective and his perspective confirms my fear about winning the lottery and abandoning God because riches make us proud.

The woes pronounced in this passage remind me that God is the source of life and light in our lives and we live by faith in God, not ourselves.

Living by faith is sometimes hard. Because, in the midst of the woes, the times of hunger, tears and limited resources, we still have God to depend on when we have faith.

For me, I am aware that when living by faith, I can’t count on what I have for security, I have to count on God.

And the problem with that for me is I feel a need for security. Jesus is telling us that our security is in him and not in our wealth and our ability to produce wealth. Both of those, wealth and the ability to earn it are gifts from God and he pronounces these woes to remind us that God can take them away if God chooses. So, live by faith.

Remember when we are laughing that God is the one who has brought about the laughter and we can rejoice in that day’s laughter. And, remember when we are weeping that God is present and will turn the weeping into laughter by the power of the Spirit in our lives.

Upside Down II

 

Text: Luke 6:20-31

Focus: Empowerment

Function: to increase faith

²⁰Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
²¹“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
    for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.

²²“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. ²³Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

²⁴“But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have received your consolation.
²⁵“Woe to you who are full now,
    for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,
    for you will mourn and weep.

²⁶“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

²⁷“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; ²⁸bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Good morning to the beloved children of the Living and Loving God!

May you be filled with the peace of Christ today and always!

Today is part two of the sermon series upside down as we look at the beatitudes from Luke’s account of the sermon on the mount.

Last week we contrasted worldly values with Jesus’s value system as we looked at the importance of living by the command from Jesus to love others as much as we love ourselves and to treat them as we would have them treat us.

In my morning devotions the week before last, Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, wrote how Jesus would have phrased these words in the Aramaic. What we have in the gospel account from Luke is a translation of what Jesus said from the Aramaic to the Koine Greek, the language that most of the NT was written in.

And Father Rohr points out the Aramaic word for Blessed takes on a different meaning that what we regard it to mean when we translate it a third time into English.

When we think of blessed, or bless*ed, we understand it to imply that these are people who are enjoying special favor from God. Right?

But the connotation in the Aramaic for the word that Jesus used in this passage has more to do that being in God’s favor. It implies that these people are strengthened by God. It means that these are people who are enabled, or empowered by God.

And, in the context of being poor, hungry, and mourning it implies that these are people who by the Spirit of God have power from God to change their situation.

When God blesses them, when God blesses us, God equips us and gives us the power by faith to endure and actually change the situation.

When Jesus promises us eternal life, he is promising an abundant life with the possibilities that faith can bring to a situation.

We are not going to look at the woes pronounced in this passage today, we will look at them next week as we consider what it means to be as blessed as we are in this land of plenty.

This was a radical message to those hearing it. Remember, the large part of Jesus’ audience were people who were suffering, hungry and mourning under the weight of poverty and Roman oppression. They were an occupied people whose taxation rate to their conquerors was keeping them in misery. And Jesus is giving them the promise that God sees their misery and wants to help them change the situation.

And Jesus gives them an upside down way of taking back control from their oppressors: Shame them into compassion.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used this same tactic to change the oppression that was happening to the black people. When they marched on the bridge on Selma and were beaten mercilessly by the State Police for exercising their civil rights, the national uproar sparked the civil rights movement and helped to gain some advances for the black people in our nation.

Revenge and fighting is the worldly way, Jesus offers a way of peace.

Let me read his upside down way of taking back control starting at verse 27 from today’s text: ²⁷“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; ²⁸bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Simply put, do not retaliate when you are mistreated.

Walter Wink points out that those two phrases: “Turn the Cheek” and “Give the shirt also” had deeper meaning.

Without spending a half an hour explaining it, those two actions would have shamed the debt collector who demanded the coat and the master who used corporal punishment into inaction.

Jesus doesn’t want us to be stuck in bad situations. Jesus, I believe has a plan for us to get out of it.

And again, Jesus plan is upside down.

As he states in the last verse from our text, Treat others the way you want to be treated is the social contract that lies at the core of the Kingdom of heaven.

So, the first principle from the passage is don’t retaliate. Remember, vengeance belongs to God. We are called to forgive since we have been forgiven.

One of the things I like about atonement theology is that we get grace that we cannot earn and that gives us the unction to give that mercy toward others as well.

The second principle from these blessings is to live in community and treat others with as much care as we treat ourselves. That is upside down in a world that says “me first” is okay. That is the problem I have with America First. God wants us to treat everyone as well as we treat ourselves.

And finally, the third principle is to strive to move forward by faith. When he says we are blessed, he is saying that we are empowered by God to affect positive change for ourselves and our community.

This sermon from Jesus gave the poor hope.

Upside Down

 

Text: Luke 6:20-31

Focus: Discipleship

Function: to show people a different way of living

²⁰Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
²¹“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
    for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.

²²“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. ²³Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

²⁴“But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have received your consolation.
²⁵“Woe to you who are full now,
    for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,
    for you will mourn and weep.

²⁶“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

²⁷“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; ²⁸bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Good morning to the beloved children of the Living and Loving God!

May you be filled with the peace of Christ today and always!

I am glad for Carol’s discernment earlier this week when she was preparing our worship service for today and she texted me and said that there are several sermons in this passage of scripture.

I hadn’t written my message yet and I didn’t know how I was going to cover so much in 15 minutes and so I decided to look at these beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount as we prepare for Thanksgiving celebration.

So, we are going to spend the next couple of weeks studying this passage of scripture.

I titled the message Upside down because Jesus is here giving instructions to the disciples and us, his followers about how we are to live this Christian life.

Throughout the New Testament we read of the contrast between the value system of the world and the value system that Jesus gives us, especially in the sermon on the Mount which started out with the Beatitudes of Jesus.

When Paul refers to the clash of value systems and he speaks of the non faith based side, or the non loving your neighbor side, he calls it the values of the World and he warns us to reject those worldly values when they clash with the teachings of Jesus.

And it isn’t hard. Jesus said, a new command I give you, Love one another. So, anything that deprives us of the value of loving our neighbor as much as ourselves is part of the worldly value system we are called to reject in this upside down way of living.

I shouldn’t call it upside down because that seems like it is a negative way of living when instead it is actually the way God intends humanity to live. The worldly way of living is in the negative compared to the teachings of Jesus.

What is worldly living? Paul called it doing the deeds of the fleshly body that isn’t controlled by the Holy Spirit.

He gives us a good contrast of this clash of values in Galatians 5: 13-26 when he talks about the deeds of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit.

There is a contrast between the nature we had before we let the Spirit of God lead us in our lives and the one we have after. Beforehand we believed the worldly values of things like “I don’t get mad, I get even.” Or “I refuse to forgive.” ir “me and mine first.”

Let me do a short list to contrast worldly and Christian living: As Christians, we place the value of community and relationship over personal ambition and greed. The world we live in values greed and selfishly hoarding instead of sharing and making sure there is enough for everyone.

The world that we live in values insults in a debate instead of a civil conversation.

The world we live in says that people who are different from us are to be feared and disrespected instead of valued as human and someone from whom we can learn and grow.

The world that we live in says that only certain people are welcome here when Jesus said that the way we treat the stranger is the way we treat him and he will either bless or condemn a nation on how well they treat the stranger among them.

I said those to get us thinking that Jesus actually has the better way for humanity.

There is a huge difference in the way Jesus teaches us to live and the way the world says it is okay to live.

Let me re-read the 4 blessings and the 4 woes from today's text now that we are thinking about living for Jesus as being different from living worldly values.

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
²¹“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
    for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.

²²“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. ²³Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

²⁴“But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have received your consolation.
²⁵“Woe to you who are full now,
    for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,
    for you will mourn and weep.

²⁶“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

So: Blessed are the poor is contrasted with woe to the rich.

Blessed are the hungry is contrasted with woe to the full.

Blessed are those who weep is contrasted with woe to those who are laughing.

And Blessed are we when we are hated for doing the right thing is contrasted with those who go along to get along.

I can relate to the blessings and see in them the care and the comfort that God gives in the midst of suffering. And we will look at that next week.

But when I get to the woes, I can get a little nervous. Compared to the rest of the known world, we here in America are rich. That is why people are dying to get into this country. I am not hungry and I eat almost every meal until I am full. The only thing I have going for me is that I know how to weep so two of the three woes apply to me.

So what do we do about the implications of these woes?

I think it comes down to the last blessing and woe that Jesus mentions in this passage.

He speaks of people with the boldness to speak up and speak out against the abuses that society places on the poor and the marginalized.

He speaks of their courage and faith in order to face persecution for doing the right thing. Courage and faith go together to accomplish God’s desire for humanity.

It is important for us to live by the values that Jesus taught us instead of the values of the world around us.

This is a radical passage calling the people of God to forgo greed and selfishness and share with others for the common good of everyone.

May we orient our lives to be boldly striving for God’s way of living on earth.