December 1, 2019 - God Promises Deliverance - Jeremiah 33:1-18

God Promises Deliverance

Jeremiah 33:1-18

Advent 1 – December 1, 2019

“Promise of the Messiah”

“Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and the awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful” – L.R. Knost

·    Not sure when I started following this author; often see this quote along with a few others floating around the internet, posted by my friends

·    And to read it and some of her other works, you wouldn’t necessarily guess what her life has held in the past several years

o  Fighting a rare, incurable cancer they don’t quite know how to treat

o  Raising children, some with special needs

o  In danger of losing health insurance because her husband’s company is downsizing and he may get laid off

o  One thing after another with no promise or guarantee of a happy ending

In some ways, her story reminds me of what is happening in the time of Jeremiah this morning

·    Not exactly the same, of course

·    This is a whole nation caught up in a situation that has them at the brink of utter destruction

o  Besieged for the past year by Babylonians who are gaining in strength and might and power

o  Houses are in rubble as the people have tried to bolster their walls

o  They themselves describe it as a “waste without human beings or animals” – desolate, without inhabitants

·    No sense of the amazing here. No sense of the ordinary or the mundane or routine here either – pretty much just the awful; just the trying to survive from one day to the next as supplies get thinner along with the people, as the military threat grows

·    And lucky Jeremiah – the weeping prophet – he gets to be the one to carry the bad news to the people and the leaders that things are only going to get worse – that ultimately they will be conquered and carried off into exile in a foreign land (about 10 years from today’s reading in the biblical timeline)

o  It’s why he’s in prison – confined in the court of the guard – the king didn’t take kindly to Jeremiah’s word from the Lord…

·    It’s a time of chaos and hopelessness and despair with no way out

We know what it is to feel besieged/trapped by bad news or bad circumstances

·    Moments or seasons when everything seems to be spiraling downward, when it feels like everything is falling apart

·    Divorce or death of a spouse; long-stretches of unemployment with interview after interview with no job offers; substance abuse; depression; caring for a loved one with dementia or Parkinson’s;

·    On a larger scale, we look around the world and see places with the kind of devastation the book of Jeremiah describes – places torn apart by long-raging wars, reduced to rubble by hurricanes or flooding or wildfire

·    All of these kinds of awful situations where we can only hold on hoping to get through them…

But just as LR Knost says that life is amazing and then it’s awful and then it’s amazing again … and then it’s breathtakingly beautiful despite all of the challenges she faces, God speaks to and through the prophet Jeremiah, giving a word of hope and a vision of the better future to the people of Judah (still in the southern kingdom, the northern one was destroyed 100+ years ago) – even in the middle of the awfulness they are experiencing

·    “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time… Thus says the Lord who made the earth… ‘Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known…’”

·    Though the Chaldeans/Babylonians are coming in to take over your city: “I am going to bring it recovery and healing; I will heal them and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security…

·    “In this place of which you say, ‘It is a waste without human beings or animals’…” in these towns and on these streets there shall again be the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness – wedding parties and joy and praise”

·    Indeed, life will go so back to ordinary, mundane, routine, that there will be time and energy and safety for the shepherds to count each of their sheep as they take care of them

·    “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made… I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land…”

·    Just as God has promised to the people over and over and over again – God will continue to be their God and they shall be God’s people

o  God will allow them to go through the struggle, God will allow them to be carried into exile, but God will never abandon them. God will ultimately deliver them and lead them home.

God promises to deliver us too

·    This is the promise we have spoken to us down through the generations through Jeremiah too

·    That though sometimes life is awful, God walks with us through it and never leaves us alone

·    Hope and longing and waiting of Advent points us toward the One God promised who would bring justice and righteousness in the land, the one who would bring peace and joy; healing and wholeness; redemption and reconciliation

·    God sends Jesus, the Promised One, who loved us so much he became one of us, sharing our lives, knowing the amazing and the awful and the ordinary, mundane, routine

o  He carries our pain with us

o  He promises to deliver us from whatever we are trapped by

·    So breathe in the amazing, exhale through the ordinary, and hold on to Jesus during the awful. He will heal and restore you.

·    Thanks be to God. Amen.

November 27, 2019, Thanksgiving Eve - God Blesses as Gift - Deuteronomy 8:7-18; Luke 17:11-19

God Blesses as Gift

Deuteronomy 8:7-18; Luke17:11-19

Thanksgiving Eve – November 27, 2019

“Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing!”

·     The words of the great, young theologian and reluctant meal-time pray-er, Bart Simpson, when pushed by father Homer to offer grace

·     It’s funny because it’s all too true

This temptation to think that everything we have is ours because we have earned it is a tale as old as the human race

·     Moses sees it in the people he has been leading lo these past 40 years

o  Deuteronomy is a collection of Moses’ final words to the people of Israel as they stand on the cusp of finally entering into the promised land, the land they have been waiting 40 years of wandering in the wilderness to go into

o  And now here they are, about to receive all that God has promised

·     And Moses has a word of warning to them:

o  Don’t forget your history; Don’t forget where you have been and how you got to this place

o  "Do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions.

§  He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not you…"

o  Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.”

·     In other words, don’t say: “Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing!”

It’s a strong temptation though, to forget the gifts and blessings of God, to let our history get kind of hazy and fuzzy and to just somehow look back and see our own efforts in getting or achieving wherever we are in life

·     Even if we’d never pray Bart’s prayer out loud or even consciously, sometimes we are tempted to act as if we believe what he says, that we are the ones who are responsible for our own successes

·     To somehow fail to see all of the ways that God is involved in bringing blessings to our lives

GW/GT: The day and season of Thanksgiving offer us a chance to remember; to recalibrate our lives, and re-center our vision on the giver of all good gifts

·     Both the story from Deuteronomy and the story from Luke remind us that God’s blessings come first

o  Before anything they ever did, God chose the Israelites

§  God led them out of slavery in Egypt and into freedom, and now finally to this land that has been promised

o  This amazing land: a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates (ooh, pomegranates! Yum), a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.”

·     Whew, what a description of the abundant blessings God is going to continue to pour out on them, as if bringing them out of slavery wasn’t enough!

o  And all out of love, not because of what they’ve done (their grumbling and complaining in the wilderness certainly didn’t merit this!)

·     And the gospel too – the lepers approach Jesus and ask for mercy, and just like that, Jesus heals them as he sends them on their way to the priest

o  There’s no quid pro quo here – just generous gift, sheer blessing, a willingness to make them whole, just because

It reminds me of Martin Luther’s explanation of the 1^st article of the Apostles’ Creed:

·     “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”

·     What does this mean? I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that God has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. God also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, spouse and children, land, animals, and all I have. God richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life. God defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil. All this God does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey God.

·     This is most certainly true.

In baptism, God calls and claims us as God’s own children and God continually rains down blessings, just because God loves us.

·     “…it is [God] who gives you power to get wealth” – and all other good things that bring meaning and joy, not just our own efforts

So as we think on this night and in this season about what we are thankful for, what we have been blessed with, may we turn back, praising God with a loud voice and giving thanks to the One who blesses us with all good gifts.

And maybe we can adapt Bart Simpson’s prayer

·     Dear God, we may have paid for all this stuff, but we know you are behind it all – so thanks for everything!” 

Amen.