Rapture Relief

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 28, 2010

First Sunday in Advent

Rapture Relief

Isaiah 2:1-5

Matthew 24:36-44

Christmas tries to sneak into town right after Halloween.

Thanksgiving always puts up a good fight,

trying desperately to preserve November as its turf,

but once the dishes are put away after the turkey dinner

and the Tupperware lids are snapped shut on the leftovers

Christmas is off and running.

Stores open on the horribly named “Black Friday”

at 6:00 am, 5:00 am, 4:00 am, 3:00 am,

shoppers eager for the best bargains

for things that will find their way under trees,

wrapped with stickers that say,

“Do Not Open Until Christmas”.

We decorate our houses inside and out over Thanksgiving weekend.

Hopefully there is at least one Nativity

among the lights, the Santas,

the inflatable snowmen and the mechanical reindeer.

We start singing our favorite Christmas carols,

and as busy as the season is,

most of us tend to feel a little lighter

as we sing “Jingle Bells” or “Deck the Halls”.

All this Christmas preparation leaves pastors with a dilemma

on this First Sunday in Advent.

The word “Advent” means “coming”

but it does not refer to the coming birthday party;

it refers to the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Christ who came,

is the Christ who will come again,

come again in glory.

We begin a new liturgical year on this First Sunday in Advent,

and the Lectionary assigns texts

that speak to the day when Christ will come again.

We don’t start the liturgical year or the season

with stories of a cute baby in a manger,

or faithful Joseph,

or obedient Mary,

or shepherds abiding in the fields,

or wise men following the star.

No, we begin Advent with the powerful words from our Lord himself

that he will come again in glory:

“Then they will see the Son of Man

coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call.”

(Matthew 24:30ff)

We think of these texts

that speak of Christ’s second coming as apocalyptic,

a word that suggests a coming cataclysm,

days of violence and struggle,

the entire world caught in a massive upheaval.

The word “apocalypse” means no such thing, though.

The word means “revelation” or

“that which is revealed,”

and that’s just what Jesus is doing:

revealing what will happen,

what’s to come in the future.

From the moment Jesus uttered those words

more than two thousand years ago, however,

there has been a furious effort to determine

the precise date and time,

even the place,

when that will happen,

when Christ will come again.

It is baffling why anyone would do this

since Jesus himself said,

“But about that day and hour no one knows,

neither the angels of heaven,

nor the Son,

but only the Father.”

(Matthew 24:36)

That seems about as clear as can be –

if Jesus himself didn’t know,

then why would anyone presume that he or she

could figure it out?

Still, it hasn’t stopped the foolish from trying,

from believing that woven into the pages of the Bible

is some secret code that reveals God’s plan.

Baptist preacher William Miller, as one example,

had no hesitancy telling his followers,

“… that Jesus Christ will come again to this earth,

cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same,

with all the saints,

sometime between March 21, 1843

and March 21, 1844.”

His followers waited with great anticipation,

and then watched each day slip by with nothing happening.

The most common complaint lodged against Miller afterward

was not that he should not have tried to predict the second coming,

but that he got his math wrong.

Many have learned the folly of trying to predict

the time when Christ will come again,

and instead have immersed themselves

in graphic descriptions of what that day will be like,

what will happen to believer and unbeliever alike.

                 

There’s been an industry built around Paul’s words

from First Thessalonians:

“we who are alive will be caught up in the clouds together

…to meet the Lord in the air.” (4:17)

that passage many believe refers to the “rapture”,

a word that does not appear in Paul’s writings.

                                   

When the Bible was translated into Latin in the fourth century,

the Greek word for “caught up” was replaced by the Latin

“rapio”, which means “carried away”,

and from that Latin word came the English “rapture”.

And of course, if some are raptured,

taken up,

then presumably others will be “left behind”.

And that’s the premise on which Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins 
combined rather bad writing with even worse theology

and found a gold mine for themselves,

with their portrayal of the rapture and Christ’s Advent.

All of this is a muddle

and leaves us baffled and confused.

So, it isn’t at all surprising that clergy and congregation alike

prefer to skip over all this Advent stuff,

Second Coming stuff,

Rapture stuff,

and just go straight to “Joy to the World”.

Let’s get on with Christmas!

                 

The problem is, it’s Jesus himself who tells us

we need to pay attention to this.

He himself is the one who says repeatedly in the gospels

that he will come again

and that we need to be ready for that day.

He tells us all this as a call to action.

He calls us to be alert,

to pay attention to our lives as disciples,

to live faithfully.

He calls us to live as he teaches us to live.

If we do that,

then we’ll have nothing to worry about,

nothing to fear;

We won’t be left behind.

If we live as Jesus teaches us to live,

we can find “rapture relief”.

(M. Yurs)

Jesus himself tells us,

“Now when these things begin to take place,

stand up and raise your heads,

because your redemption is drawing near.”

(Luke 21:28)

That’s good news – the sun will shine!

The Isaiah text we heard

portrays the joy, not the sorrow,

that awaits us when God’s kingdom is established:

“In the days to come,

the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established

as the highest of the mountains,

and shall be raised above the hill;

all the nations shall stream to it.

Peace will reign, not war.

This is what we can look forward to.

        

But there is an “if” to all this.

We can count on the sunshine and the good news,

“if” we are ready.

Jesus makes this so very clear --

that we dare not get lazy,

that we cannot assume that we’ll have

enough advance notice of Jesus’ Advent

that we’ll be able to get ourselves ready

when we have to.

Jesus will not text, “B thr n 15 mins.”

Don’t be like the people who stood by

and watched Noah build the Ark, Jesus tells us,

those men and women who laughed at Noah’s efforts,

thought it was all ridiculous, a waste of time.

Look what happened to them,

Jesus warns us: they were lost

because they hadn’t been alert,

they hadn’t paid attention;

they hadn’t lived as God told them to live.

So what are we to do?

Spend all our time here at church?

All our days on our knees praying?

No, of course that’s not what is expected of us.

The best way to prepare for Christ’s coming again

is both very simple and very difficult:

it is to live as Jesus tells us to live.

        

Living as Jesus calls us to live

begins with Jesus’ two great commandments:

first: we are to love God with all our heart, our strength,

all our mind, all our soul.

Second, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Of course, there is the corollary

to the second great commandment:

that everyone is our neighbor,

including the alien, the foreigner, and the stranger.

How we struggle with that part of Jesus’ teaching!

Jesus teaches us with such wonderful directness and simplicity

how we are to live:

“I was hungry and you gave me food;

I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink;

I was a stranger and you welcomed me;

I was naked and you gave me clothing;

I was sick and you took care of me.”

(Matthew 25:35ff)

To be ready is to live according to the Sermon on the Mount:

it is to hunger and thirst for righteousness,

it is to be merciful,

it is to be a peacemaker,

going so far as to love your enemy.

It is not to be judgmental,

remembering the log in your own eye

before you condemn the speck in the eye of another.

As we learned last week,

it is not to store up treasures on earth,

but to store up treasure in heaven.

It is to live remembering that our Lord has taught us:

“in everything do to others

as you would have them do to you.”

(Matthew 7:12)

“Be dressed for action,” Jesus teaches us,

“have your lamps lit;

be like those who are waiting for their master

to return from the wedding banquet

so that they may open the door for him

as soon as he comes and knocks.

Blessed are those servants

whom the master finds alert when he comes.”

(Luke 12:35ff)

The message of Advent is that

the story we love so much at Christmas

was only the beginning.

We live in the middle of the story,

and there will be an end to the story,

an end when Christ comes again.

It will be a glorious day

if we are alert and ready.

        

If we are alert and ready,

living as Jesus calls us to live,

then when he comes, we’ll be able to sing out,

“Joy to the World,

the Lord has come!”

AMEN

Offering Our Very Selves

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 21, 2010: Consecration Sunday

Offering Our Very Selves

Selected Texts

Reading 1:

From Exodus chapter 23, verse 19: “The choicest of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.”

Reading 2:

From Leviticus chapter 27, verse 30:  “All tithes from the land, whether the seed from the ground or the fruit from the tree, are the Lord’s; they are holy to the Lord.”

Reading 3:

From Deuteronomy chapter 15, verse 10: “Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.”

Reading 4:

From Matthew chapter 6, verse 19: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Reading 5:

From Luke chapter 6, verse 38: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Reading 6:

From Second Corinthians, chapter 8, verse 3: “For, as I can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means.”

Reading 7:

From Second Corinthians, chapter 8, verse 12: “For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have.”

Reading 8:

From Second Corinthians, chapter 9, verse 6: “The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”

Reading 9:

From First Chronicles, chapter 29, verse 5: “Who then will offer willingly, consecrating themselves today to the Lord?’ Then the leaders of ancestral houses made their freewill-offerings, as did also the leaders of the tribes, the commanders of the thousands and of the hundreds, and the officers over the king’s work. They gave for the service of the house of God … Then the people rejoiced because [they had all] given willingly, for with single mind they had offered freely to the Lord”

God speaks to us in so many different ways,

different texts written by different people

at different times over the centuries,

each written to help us all hear the message:

that God delights when we give,

when we share,

when we live our lives recognizing

that all that we have comes from God,

when the song that we sing is

“Praise God from whom ALL blessings flow.”

God calls us to share in countless ways and we do:

providing food for SERVE,

clothing to the Goodwill,

a bag of Purina to the SPCA,

a check here, a check there to

the Red Cross, UNICEF, Doctors without Borders,

Beacon, Literacy Volunteers,

and countless other worthy charities.

We all give, we all share,

but what God really wants from us is… all of us.

God wants us to give our very selves

give ourselvers utterly and completely to him

through his Son Jesus Christ.

C. S. Lewis once wrote,

“Christ says, ‘Give me All.

I don’t want so much of your time

and so much of your money

and so much of your work.

I want you.

No half measures are any good.

I want all of you.

[in return] I will give you myself.”

(Mere Christianity, 196)

But, oh how difficult that is,

to give ourselves completely to Christ.

We look for compromises,

giving ourselves fully here and there,

now and then,

but keeping most of ourselves for ourselves.

But that’s not what God wants.

He wants us to consecrate ourselves,

to give our lives over completely to him.

In a few moments you’ll have that opportunity.

When you put your yellow card in the basket

you’ll be doing more than just offering

your pledge of financial support

for the work we hope to do next year

in the name of Jesus Christ.

When you put your card in the basket

you’ll be offering yourself anew to God;

consecrating yourself anew, all of you,

giving yourself completely,

following the head of our church, Jesus Christ.

As we all put our cards in the baskets,

we will be pledging ourselves anew to God,

consecrating ourselves anew to God,

reminding ourselves how easy it is

for us to get our priorities wrong,

how easy it is to put other things first,

to push God down the list,

to offer God time, energy, and finances

that are left over after we take care of other things

we consider more important.

This is such a wonderful time for us

to consecrate ourselves anew to God,

to our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is Thanksgiving time and

we have so much to be thankful for in this church:

where so many churches are struggling,

our church is strong and solid.

Where so many churches are shrinking

we welcomed 14 new brothers and sisters last week.

Our ministries are thriving:

Every week we offer joyful, inspirational worship services;

We engage in vital outreach work through Mission;

Our Membership Ministry team provides us with

many wonderful fellowship opportunities throughout the year.

Our Early Learning Center provides a very special ministry

to almost 200 children Monday through Friday.

A few months back we hired Melissa Kirkpatrick

to help us strengthen learning opportunities

for everyone in this church, the youngest to the oldest.

How we take care of our Youth is still a concern for us.

Matt Walnock needs to step down after two years as leader,

and we have not yet found someone to take his place.

Three weeks ago you saw the wonderful energy and faithfulness

of our high school students as they led worship.                 

You also may remember Taylor Tuckerman’s

eloquent and heartfelt words

as she spoke of how important youth activities were for her

as she went through Middle School and High School.

But did you also remember that she also wished

that there had been more consistency,

more continuity in leadership,

as we once provided to our youth.

The economic downtown has pushed back our timing

on our goal to call an Associate Pastor,

but it hasn’t changed the need,

and we are still determined to make that happen.

“Do not lag in zeal,

be ardent in spirit,

serve the Lord,”

Paul tells us.

(Romans 12:11)

You and I are called to be consecrated disciples,

consecrated followers,

consecrated workers in the name of Jesus Christ

in every part of our lives.

The texts we heard were probably familiar to most of you;

but even if some of them were new to you

here’s one you surely know:

“For God so loved the world the he gave his only Son…”

(John 3:17)

                          

What will you give in return? Your heart? 

Your self?

Your all?

                                   

Come,

“Who then will offer willingly,

consecrating themselves today to the Lord?”

AMEN

To Be Continued…

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 14, 2010

To Be Continued…

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Once upon a time,

the wind swept over the formless void and darkness

that was the earth;

and then suddenly there was light,

and God saw that the light was good

and God called the light “day”

and the darkness God called “night”.

Once upon a time there was a fugitive,

a man who had run away to a land far from his home

after he had beaten a man to death.

He found work as a shepherd

in the hill country of the new land,

and one day as he tended his flocks

he saw the most amazing sight:

a flame erupted from a bush,

but the bush didn’t burn.

And then the man heard a voice speaking from the bush,

“Remove the sandals from your feet,

for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

Once upon a time, a teenager almost collapsed

under the weight of armor strapped to his skinny body.

He took off the bronze helmet and the breastplate

that more battle-hardened soldiers had put on him;

He laid down the gleaming sword he’d been given,

and then he stunned the men around him

when he picked up his trusty sling

and a gathered five smooth stones

from the dried riverbed just a few feet away.

With stones and sling in hand,

he walked out onto the battlefield

to face the most fiercesome enemy

the Israelites had ever encountered.

Once upon a time a young man and a young woman

talked of marriage, talked of life together.

The young man was a simple carpenter,

good at his craft and a hard worker.

The young woman was hardly more than a girl,

but radiant in peace and wisdom beyond her years.

It was her eyes that grabbed him;

he was lost in love the very first time he looked into

their dark, soft glow.

Still, for as much as he loved her,

he was troubled beyond words when,

right before their wedding date,

she told him something so shocking,

so completely unexpected from her…her.

Stories from the Bible.

Stories we know so well:

Noah and the Flood;

Jonah and the Whale;

Elijah riding up into heaven in a chariot of fire;

John the Baptist wild-eyed as he ranted at men and women

standing on the banks of the Jordan.

                                   

The Bible isn’t a book;

it is a library of books,

sixty-six, to be exact,

books filled with story after story:

action, adventure,

romance, comedy,

war, peace,

and of course, tragedy,

almost too much tragedy.

The season is almost upon us

when we’ll eagerly turn our hearts and minds again

to the story of Mary and Joseph

and the baby born in the stable;

the story of the shepherds quietly tending their flocks at night

when an angel of the Lord bursts upon them

saying, “Behold, I bring you good news of great joy”;

the story of wise men following the star to the baby,

so they could kneel before him

and offer him their gifts – and their homage.

Our two Bible study groups have spent the past two months

watching the superb DVD series,

“Christanity: The First Three Thousand Years”,

in which Oxford University Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch

tells the story of our faith,

tells the story of how it grew from that small ragged group

we call the first disciples

to more than 2 billion followers

living the Christian faith in virtually every country

on this planet.

It is an incredible story –

beginning in that stable in Bethlehem

and winding through a hill just outside the gates of Jerusalem,

a hill we know as Golgotha,

followed by a brief stop at a tomb,

and then outward, outward,

up into what is now modern Turkey

and from there west into what is now Greece

and on to Italy, France, even as far as England.

                          

The story didn’t travel a single road, a single direction, though.

Even as it was moving north and west,

it was also moving east across what is now Iran and Iraq,

across the central steppes of Asia,

into China, down into Southeast Asia,

up to Korea,

across to Japan.

        

And it completed its move around the compass

moving south into Egypt,

down into Ethiopia,

and across the countries of the African continent

that hug the Mediterranean.

                                   

And of course the story traveled across the Atlantic to this country.

But, the story came in so many different forms and settings:

the same basic story, of course,

but shaped within the culture of the Puritans of Massachusetts,

the Dutch Reformed in the Hudson River Valley,

Presbyterians in New Jersey,

Quakers in Pennsylvania,

Roman Catholics in Maryland,

Anglicans in Virginia.

It is a story that continues to this day,

a story that we tell,

and a story that we are part of.

                          

Who doesn’t remember the story of that day

when shortly after Jesus’ ascension into Heaven,

the exhausted, befuddled band of disciples

suddenly found themselves filled with the Holy Spirit,

and found as the first Pentecostals

that they had both the courage and the ability

to go out into the world

to tell the story of Jesus Christ,

to share the gospel, the good news.

And off they went, each his own way,

telling the story,

adding to the story,

each of them a part of the continuing story.

And you and I are part of the apostolic succession

that began on that first Pentecost,

that makes us all Pentecostal

even if we don’t embrace that term,

for we are all filled with Holy Spirit

and called by the Holy Spirit to keep telling the story,

writing the story as we live it.

When Paul rebuked those in Thessalonica for not working,

he wasn’t just teaching an economics lesson with his threat,

“anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

He understood that those who had stopped working,

did so not because they were lazy,

but because they had listened to Paul’s teachings

and believed, as Paul did,

in the imminent return of Christ.

Surely they just wanted to be ready.

But Paul knew how important it was,

how important it is,

that every follower of Christ keep adding to the story,

each follower in Thessalonica,

and each follower here in Manassas,

adding a word, a sentence,

a paragraph, a page, a chapter.

The word that we hear as “idleness” in the text

comes from a Greek root that doesn’t suggest laziness

as much as it it suggests

that you are simply not doing your part

to build the community.

You’re not lazy;

you’ve abandoned your responsibilities

to the rest of the group.

There are 400 of us here within this community

called to be part of the story,

to keep writing the story.

Four hundred and now 14 more as we welcome

our newest brothers and sisters.

Every one of us has a part to play,

a word, a sentence, a page to add

to keep the story vibrant, vital, alive.

Paul’s lesson is that everyone should be involved,

active, participating;

no one has an excuse for not being part of the story.

The Presbyterian minister and novelist Frederick Buechner,

a masterful story teller, has written,

“The truth that Christianity claims to be true

is ultimately to be found,

…not in the Bible, or in the church, or theology…

but in our own stories.”

Our stories, yours and mine,

each of us Pentecostals,

each of us filled with the Spirit,

the very same breath of God that first blew across

the void and the darkness;

each of us called by the Spirit to share the story

as we live it.

Each of us living out our faith,

you living yours,

me living mine,

you and me living our faith here in community

nurturing one another

helping one another to add to our individual stories

and from there to the communal story.

They are stories of love, of joy,

of laughter;

they are also stories of sadness, of loss,

even tragedy.

Stories written in prose, poetry,

song, and yes, even rap.

They are stories that have no end;

Each of us is adding to the story even now;

a word, a sentence, a paragraph,

building on all that has gone before,

reaching out to what lies ahead.

Knowing that when we turn out the light each night

every day ends with the words,

“to be continued…”.

AMEN

You Have Spoken Well

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 7, 2010

You Have Spoken Well

Luke 20:27-38

There was Riley with his rhymin’ and his rappin’;

We were all goin’ with it, no one nappin’.

He was telling us ‘bout Martin Luther,

and we learned Reformation from the Youthers.

Calvin, Zwingli, and John Knox the Presbyterian;

all those dates, all that writin’, it was wearyin’.

But the message was so simple, ain’t no foolin’,

it was there but it needed some retoolin’:

By grace we are saved, that’s God’s promise;

Got his blessing and his love always on us.

No penance to be paid,

no clergy to be bribed,

ain’t no worry from our birth to the day that we die.

Give it up to our Savior.

Give it up to our Savior.

So we got it, we are loved through Christ Jesus.

Take away all our worries God will ease us.

Our lives they are his, that’s the core of this biz:

grace alone, faith alone, you’re never on your own.

Give it up to our Savior.

Give it up to our Savior.

Give your life to our Savior.

Give your life to our Savior.

The gospel put in rap,

laid it neatly on your lap.

To the ears of the Sadducees,

Jesus’ preaching and teaching must have sounded

a lot like rap sounds to many of us:

a little too different,

even a little threatening;

definitely not what we’re used to

when it comes from a 50-something WASPish preacher!

The Sadducees were elite priests at the Temple,

leaders of the Jewish community along with the Pharisees.

The Sadducees were the priests for the rich,

those at the top of the economic pyramid,

Jerusalem’s versions of Wall Street bankers,

and corporate CEOs.

They were fierce traditionalists,

and they read the Hebrew Scriptures literally.

Their theology differed from that of the Pharisees

on many issues;

no issue more than resurrection.

The Pharisees believed in resurrection,

while the Sadducees rejected the very idea

that the dead would be raised to new life.

In denying that there was any such thing as resurrection,

the Sadducees actually stood on pretty firm ground biblically.

Read through the books of the Old Testament

and you’ll see that in Moses’ time,

David’s time, Solomon’s time,

death was the end.

You took your last breath and then,

in the language of the Scriptures,

you “slept with your ancestors”,

as you went to a place called Sheol,

a place that was neither heaven nor hell,

but simply the place where everyone, good or bad,

went once they died.

The idea that there might be something more after death,

the idea of resurrection,

did not appear in any writings until about 200 years

before the birth of Jesus.                           

We find a hint of it in the newest book of the Old Testament,

the book of Daniel, written about that time, where we read,

“those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake…”

(Daniel 12:2)

It’s in apocryphal books – books from that time,

but not included in the Bible, like the Maccabees and Enoch,

where we find the idea of resurrection developed and expanded.

By the time Jesus walked the roads of Judea,

resurrection of the dead was accepted

by almost all but the Sadducees.

When they confronted Jesus,

the Sadducees weren’t interested in debating the point with him.

They were an arrogant, cranky lot

who couldn’t even get along with one another.

(Josephus, Wars, 2.8.14; 166)

All they wanted to do with Jesus was humiliate him,

so their question to him was absurd:

“whose wife is a woman in the resurrected life

if she’s had seven husbands?”

Now those who have been married more than once

may think the question perfectly reasonable –

but don’t you see –

the question assumes that our resurrected life,

our lives in heaven,

will be similar to the lives we have had on earth.

Heaven for a teenager might be a place with no school

and unlimited pizza and texting;

For a golfer it might be unlimited rounds at Augusta

with no greens fees.

For me it would Vermont’s Northshire Bookstore ,

where I would need neither money nor glasses.

Jesus takes the Sadducees question and

masterfully turns it into a teaching moment,

helping the Sadducees and us understand

heaven is not like anything we know on earth.        

Jesus helps us to understand that the resurrection life

won’t be a continuation of our earthly lives,

it will be new life,

a gloriously new life.

It will be a life of love,

eternal love in the company of the eternal God.

It will be a life in which we will be community

as God intended us to be.

We’ll be in communion with all:

including those who have gone before,

those we live with in the present,

and those who will come long after us.

We’ll live in full communion with one another

with no strife, no differences, no quarrels

There will be no elections,

no Democrats, no Republicans;

no right, no left;

no rich, no poor;

no sick, no frail, no outcast;

no haves, no have-nots.

Jesus helps both the Sadducees and us to learn

that Scripture, even the Old Testatment,

does teach us that there will be a new day,

a new place, a new time,

where all God’s hopes for us will be fulfilled.

Scripture teaches us that there will come a time

when the powerful will be brought low

and the lowly lifted up,

the rich cast aside,

the poor fed, the sick healed,

war will cease, peace will reign.

(Luke 1:52-53; 1 Samuel 2:3-10)

Doesn’t our Lord himself teach us that

it will be the meek and the humble

who will inherit the earth,

not the powerful or the influential?

Yet we seem so intent on building a world just the opposite,

where it is the rich, the powerful, the influential

who are in charge.

The resurrected life will be utterly different

from the life we create here and now.

                 

And here’s the wonderful thing:

we can have a glimpse of it

here and now here at this Table,

for this Table is a place where we all come together,

commune together, all of us,

along with all the saints who’ve gone before.

Here at this Table we eat the meal our Lord has prepared for us

and are lifted into Christ’s presence,

even if just for a few moments,

all of us reconciled, differences melted away.

But we come to this Table

not just to get a brief look at the future;

we come here to be fed and nourished,

so we can go out into the world

strengthened in spirit and discipleship

to do the work Christ calls us to do,

which is: build the world that God wants us to build,

a world which anticipates the resurrected life.

The Sadducees, for as arrogant as they were,

got it; they learned the lesson,

and before walking away from Jesus,

said, “Teacher, you have spoken well.”

Nourished by this meal,

we can speak well, too.

if we go from here speaking of

grace, mercy, justice, and peace,

speaking through both words and actions,

building on those things that we find so intermittently,

but which God wants us to have in abundance.

Come to this Table

and be renewed and refreshed.

Come get a glimpse of the life that awaits us,

the glorious new life.

But you will see it, of course,

only if you,

“Give it up to our Savior;

Give your life to our Savior.”

AMEN