Advent 1
December 3, 2000
Pastor David G. Mullen
Luke 21:25-36
Worship
This First Sunday of the new church year we always hear texts like the ones we just encountered. The scary symbolism of the end of the world may stir things up in us and surface some deep concerns about the world, and the way we are personally living our lives. For that reason, we don’t necessarily like to hear such readings from the Bible.
A preacher of moderate persuasion tells this real life story on himself:
Jesus says that for us all there will be a day when there is no tomorrow. The invitation comes, the door opens, the word is spoken, and it is time. When I was serving a little church in rural Georgia, one of my members’ relatives died, and my wife and I went to the funeral as a show of support for the family. It was held in a small, hot, crowded, independent Baptist country church. They wheeled the coffin in and the preacher began to preach. He shouted, fumed, flailed his arms. "It’s too late for Joe," he screamed. "He might have wanted to do this or that in life, but it’s too late for him now. He’s dead. It’s all over for him. He might have wanted to straighten his life out, but he can’t now. It’s over." What a comfort this must be to the family, I thought. "But it ain’t too late for you! People drop dead every day. So why wait? Now is the day for decision. Now is the time to make your life count for something. Give your life to Jesus!" It was the worst thing I had ever heard. "Can you imagine a preacher doing that kind of thing to a grieving family?" I asked my wife on the way home. "I’ve never heard anything so manipulative, cheap and inappropriate. I would never preach a sermon like that." She agreed with me that it was tacky, manipulative, callous. "Of course," she added, "the worst part of all is that it was true." [William Willimon. This article appeared in the Christian Century, December 3, 1986, p. 1085]
It sure seems that we are now on the cusp of literally God only knows what global social and technological changes, and many people are, quite frankly, scared. For many folks end of the world talk makes sense. The question as to how to make their life count for something fills many others with dread. And worst of all, though we don’t like to think about it, it is true that we never know what today or tomorrow will bring. Wasn’t that powerfully presented to us last Sunday before worship when Larrayne Wehsels was surprised by death knocking on her door right here at the back of the sanctuary? Larrayne was a faithful believer, but what happened to her stirred up searching questions that seem very close to what Jesus presented in our gospel: Can we handle crises with the serenity of faith born of seasoned trust in God? Are we ready for the end of the way things are? Are we ready to die and come into the presence of God?
To help us begin to grapple with such huge considerations, during this Advent season, we are going to be thinking each week about one of the four ministry priorities of our congregation. The first is today’s focus, Worship. Picking up the tone of our Advent texts, let me blunt. We will never be ready for what life brings us, or ready to discover and experience God, without faithful worship, here on Sundays, and out in daily life, reading the Bible and praying.
Our congregational ministry priority statement on worship points to the gift that comes to Christians who are faithful at worship: all God’s people experiencing the wonder of God’s presence through full participation in our liturgies of Word and Sacrament. "The wonder of God’s presence." Christ was born into our world to become, Emmanuel, God-with-us. But let us notice that faith in God not about is not mere agreement with church teachings, but is rather nurturing the gift of a relationship with God. Our participation communion symbolizes the relational thing faith is. When we commune, we walk up front with others, we open our hands to receive the Blessed Sacrament and by our actions, we are welcoming the presence of God into every fiber of our being!
The point is, over the long haul, faithful worship opens our eyes and makes us familiar with God and God’s ways. I have often wondering whether I would have survived as a Christian if I didn’t have to preach. Oh, it’s not the act of preaching itself that I mean, though I do love the calling, it is rather my need to each week ponder selected portions of the Bible, trying to hear what the living Word is saying to me, in order that I might have some real to say to you. Each week when I do that work, it feels like I’m being put back together as a Christian.
Truth is, however, that I would survive as a Christian without preaching, because the issue is not the preaching, but the plunge into the Word. Besides my preacher’s encounter with the Word, I make every attempt to read daily from the book of Psalms, along a few other portions of the Scriptures, and a reading from the church fathers and then I engage in prayer for the whole church of God and all people according to their needs–and that includes all of you.
When I am not as faithful as I should in my disciplines of daily Scripture and prayer, I find that I am not ready for the challenges and changes of life, and soon feel overwhelmed. My guess is that it’s the same for you. But when we are faithful in worship and prayer, so that the themes and story of the Bible shape the very way we see our world, then our existence gains clarity and serenity, and we will more like recognize the signs of God’s kind presence in our daily lives.
A parable:
The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him, and every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming. Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect him from the elements, and to store his few possessions. But then one day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, the smoke rolling up to the sky. The worst had happened; everything was lost. He was stunned with grief and anger. "God, how could you do this to me!" he cried. Early the next day, however, he was awakened by the sound of a ship that was approaching the island. It had come to rescue him. "How did you know I was here?" asked the weary man of his rescuers. "We saw your smoke signal," they replied.
Sometimes that little hut of security we think we must have has to go up in smoke before we’re able to see the merciful work of God in our lives. There’s a ballad ("Colorado") about a night blizzard on a Colorado mountain that forms a dark backdrop for a traveler’s story of a life frozen by a failed relationship. Yet even in the human drama, hope remains.
When the world leaves you shivering and the blizzard blows,
And the snow flies and the night falls,
There’s light in the window and a place called home,
At the end of the storm.
The more faithful we are in worship–both here on Sunday and in the practice of daily prayer–the more we will know though this world often leaves us shivering as the snow flies and the night falls, Christ is the light in the window and God is the place called home. AMEN