Grace Presbyterian Church

December 13, 2020, Advent 3B (recorded)

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Luke 1:46-55; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:19-28

Waiting With the Joy of the Lord

Last year the church’s worship committee added a new element to the visual adornment of the sanctuary for the season of Advent. A series of four banners was commissioned (made by one of our nursery workers, Carmen) each bearing one of the calls of the Advent season. You’ve been seeing these banners during these broadcasts, at the beginning and end of each service. The first week’s banner reminds us to “watch”; the second week, “prepare”; and the fourth week’s banner, to be seen next week, commands us to “behold.”

Meanwhile, the banner for week three, seen at the beginning of today’s recorded service, calls us to “rejoice,” an appropriate call for the Sunday with the pink candle in the Advent wreath being lit. In some circles it’s known as Gaudete Sunday (from the Latin for “rejoice”). As these banners were being developed last year, someone (I can’t remember who) wondered aloud why the “rejoice” banner and Sunday came before the “behold” command. I don’t remember what answer I gave at that moment, but if I had been thinking properly it would have been easy enough to point to the scriptures of the day for the answer – and that holds true no matter which liturgical year we’re talking about.

You begin to get the idea in today’s readings from the prophet Isaiah, who in this particular oracle declares that he is, under the leading of the spirit of God and the anointing of the Lord, called to “bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.” The oracle continues in a similar vein for several verses, adds in the pointed declaration on behalf of God that “I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing,” and finally climaxes in a section of rejoicing, or seems to do so, at verse 10. Even here, though, there is a bit of a head-fake; the rejoicing seems a more personal moment than the rest of the passage, a suspicion that seems to be confirmed by verse eleven’s return to future tense. “For as the earth brings forth its shoots,” says Isaiah, “and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.” The “will” of verse 11 echoes the “shall” of verses 3-4. 

Things look slightly different in the prophetic words of Mary, the impending mother of Jesus, in her song in Luke 1 (echoed in our first hymn today). It also begins, like Isaiah’s oracle, with a personal statement of call or commission, and launches into what seems to be a statement in the present tense – “he has” comes up a lot. Thing is, though, it’s not uncommon for prophetic oracle to appropriate present tense for God’s future action (which I suppose makes sense in light of last week’s statement from 2 Peter that in God a thousand years are like a day, and vice versa; perhaps in recounting a vision from God it’s hard to avoid slipping into the language of God’s “eternal now.” Again, here in Luke 1, the prophetic statement (from a teenage girl, yes) is one of God’s actions to come, or to be brought to fulfillment.

In neither case is rejoicing foresworn because of the not-yet nature of the proclamation; indeed, both statements point to something about the rejoicing that is part of Advent. Although John the baptizer, showing up again this week in our gospel reading, doesn’t seem like a bundle of joy here, he nonetheless wraps himself in the words of Isaiah (last week’s reading, actually). His proclamation here is in service of the promises described by Isaiah and other prophets; as such, he is also bound up in the rejoicing of the day. 

Even as John is proclaiming the imminent coming of this Promised One, it is still as yet an unfulfilled promise. As of the end of this reading Jesus – the one greater than John, the one for whom John isn’t worthy to tie his shoes – still hasn’t shown up yet, hasn’t presented himself. The Promised One is still just that: promised.

And yet the day is “Gaudete” Sunday, “Rejoice” Sunday, pink-candle Sunday. You see, our rejoicing is not contingent upon promises granted; we rejoice in the promise itself, or even more in the God who promises. Notice how both Isaiah and Mary place it that way: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord” in Isaiah 61:8, “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” in Luke 1:46. Joy is rooted in God, the God who has the whole history in here of faithfulness and provision and care and love for God’s people. The God who has done is the God who will do, and our rejoicing is in that God. 

Again, it falls to the epistle reading to draw things into perspective. You might think this sounds vaguely familiar, and it is indeed a portion of the same passage that was featured in a sermon about a month ago, on November 15. For today, the key words are the very first two in verse 16: “Rejoice always.” I mean, the rest of the passage is good too, but here this simple reminder from Paul to his beloved Thessalonians, reminds us that our joy is not contingent. When our rejoicing is in God, rather than in some particular thing we think about about God or some particular thing God has done or we expect God to do, that joy is sustained even in times when joy might not seem the most obvious reaction. 

But to put it bluntly, “joy” or “rejoicing” that is contingent is not joy. It might be happiness, or it might be pleasure, but it is not joy. Happiness and pleasure are not bad things themselves, but they are not joy, no matter how often we might confuse the two.

Our joy, our rejoicing, is in God, because God is God. We see the work of God; we read the fulfillment of what God has done, as witness the Son of God revealed in a low manger, and we read the promises of what God will do, keeping us “sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”; we rejoice, however, because…God.

For the time of waiting, and the joy of waiting, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise noted): #100, My Soul Cries Out With a Joyful Shout; #—, Rejoice! Rejoice in Every Time; #96, On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry

Grace Presbyterian Church

December 6, 2020, Advent 2B (recorded)

Isaiah 40:1-11; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

Waiting in the Way of the Lord

The verses given in today’s reading from the book of Isaiah, or at least the first five of those verses, are almost painfully familiar to anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the oratorio Messiah, by George Frideric Handel, which in a normal year would be getting performed so frequently and so many places this month that you wouldn’t be able to heave a brick without hitting at least three such concerts. The first two of those stand out to me as the only pieces for which I got to be a soloist in a big classical concert work of that type, way back in college more years ago than I can count. Even now, more than thirty years later, it’s almost impossible to read these verses aloud without breaking into song – (sung) comfort ye, comfort ye, my people or every valley – every valley shall be exalted. It’s a good thing that Lois was reading the first reading this morning and not me.

As if that weren’t enough, the reading from Mark echoes that passage in its first verses, at least part of it very directly – you could be forgiven for wondering whether Handel was using Isaiah or Mark for setting (sung) The voice – of him – that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord… This reading also introduces us to the figure of John the Baptizer, presented here as enacting the “crying out” in the wilderness described in Isaiah. Again we are reminded that there is no nativity story in Mark, and John’s appearance in this messenger role is where the whole story starts in this gospel. Conveniently enough, before the end of this first chapter of Mark Jesus shows up in the flesh; the wait is not a long, protracted one. If you take Isaiah’s oracle as forthtelling of someone like John, the wait is much longer – centuries so.

Again this week, though, it is the epistle reading where “the rubber meets the road” for those of us living on this side of the first Advent, with the second seeming like little more than a distant and fading dream. Unlike last week’s reading from Paul’s letter to Corinth, written around mid-first century, this letter given the name 2 Peter was far more likely to have been written somewhere around the *end* of that century – as much as sixty or seventy years after the physical life of Jesus on earth. Particularly with the rise of hardcore scoffers mocking the very idea, it was getting hard to hold on to any particular hope of any kind of second Advent or reuniting of any sort.

The author of this particular missive takes two different approaches to this creeping sense of despair among the churches here. The first approach is something different, not necessarily kin to such answers in other epistles such as Paul’s. Even as Paul was approaching the end of his own life he was prone to stress that Christ’s return was imminent, even if he didn’t necessarily expect to live to see it himself. You may remember some of the letters to the churches at Philippi or Thessalonica, recently read and proclaimed in these services, for Paul’s differing degree of imminence in speaking of Christ’s return and judgment. 

Today’s author takes a different tack; trying to hold God to human timetables is fruitless. If you’ve ever wondered at the source of that old saying on how “one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day,” well, there it is in verse 8. It’s the verse behind that final stanza of “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past” – you remember, “a thousand ages in thy signt are like an evening gone, short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun.” One might even dig up the old gospel song “When the roll is called up yonder,” which begins “When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more…” to remind ourselves that our linear time is not like God’s eternal now.

In short, we need to drop the idea that God is bound to our concept of time, or to any concept of time at all. As C.S. Lewis puts it in Mere Christianity, “If you picture time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn.”^[1] Linear time is our limitation; God is not bound by it, and we will be less frustrated when we learn this.

Our author’s second point makes a virture of what looks to us like delay: perhaps it is a form of grace, as verse 9 suggests. God doesn’t want anybody left out; God desires all to come to repentance. God is, in unbounded now, patient with us recalcitrant humans. What to us feels like interminable slowness is grace, opportunity, and patience.

Finally, our author wants us to be ready, not unlike other epistle writers. Our waiting, as this letter would have it, calls upon us to live “lives of holiness and godliness.” No small goals there. Verse 14 also encourages that we be found “at peace, without spot or blemish” when the “day of God” comes (shades of Paul’s “day of the Lord”). 

This is where things get challenging. These verses looking ahead to “the day of God” or “the day of the Lord” have a nasty little habit of catching us being very comfortable with the way things are. We live…good enough, perhaps? Not really “lives of holiness or godliness,” not really “at peace” or “without spot or blemish,” and when we are pressed hard enough we end up having to admit to ourselves that we’d just as soon see the “day of God” keep on being delayed. We are plenty comfortable where we are, and don’t need the “day of the Lord.” We’re good, thank you very much.

Or perhaps this is the year that puts the lie to that sense of comfort and security. Maybe now in time of corona we get that what we think of as security really isn’t, and our safety isn’t what we thought it was. Maybe we are in fact the ones who are most in need of God’s patience, as we are slow to rouse ourselves from our contented slumber into the life of holy waiting to which God calls us in this and every Advent. 

Perhaps the great lesson of Advent that we need to hear and remember is that in Advent, “to wait” is not a posture of passivity and helplessness. We don’t do anything to make God speed up the timetable for second Advent, but we live – actively and deliberately live – lives that point to and show the One for whom we wait. We don’t run away to a mountaintop to try to be first in line; we take on the task of living lives like Jesus showed us how to live, of being transformed by the power of the Spirit into true witnesses of the good news to all. We don’t just wait; we wait out loud, showing the Lord’s death until he comes. 

For the time of waiting and the way of waiting, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #87, Comfort, Comfort Now My People; #—, It Was Written By the Prophet; #104, O Lord, How Shall I Meet You

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^[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (revised and enlarged edition. New York: Macmillan, 1952), 147.

Grace Presbyterian Church

November 29, 2020, Advent 1B (recorded)

Isaiah 64:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37

Waiting for the Day of the Lord

The liturgical season of Advent, which we mark beginning today, tends to start off with a bang. 

While the liturgical season is framed as both remembering the coming of Jesus the first time and looking ahead to the return of Christ, the structure of the season tends to move backwards. That “looking ahead” part of the season tends to be confined to the first Sunday, while later Sundays move backward from there – presenting the proclamation of John the Baptizer in advance of Jesus’s public ministry, and finally working back to the events before the birth of Jesus such as Gabriel’s announcement to Mary or other events, depending on the gospel of the year. (With this new liturgical year B focused on the gospel of Mark, there is no pre-birth narrative to work from, so bits get borrowed from the gospels of John and Luke; but that’s a few weeks ahead.)

The texts for this first Sunday of Advent B do bring the fireworks. The gospel selection for today brings us Mark’s “mini-apocalypse,” a spectacle to taunt even the flashiest of Hollywood special-effects types. Those first verses are the stuff of more hellfire-and-brimstone “rapture” sermons than you can shake a stick at, with the sun and moon going dark, stars falling from the sky, and “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with angels scattering in all directions to gather in the faithful. The verses that follow turn to encouraging disciples to “be alert” and “keep awake” with all sorts of sign-watching and being prepared thrown in. It’s a nerve-jangler of a passage, to be sure.

The reading from Isaiah cuts a surprisingly similar profile, although from a different perspective; rather than foretelling the coming of the Lord, the prophetic oracle is practically begging for it. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence” – that would also be a Hollywood-worthy spectacle, but here the tone is of longing rather than of warning. Speaking from the midst of a people who have fallen away from faithfulness and have lost touch with God altogether, the prophet pleads for God to return – with as much drama as necessary, one might say. 

So it’s no surprise that these two passages get most of the attention on this day, to be sure. However, it might just be that in this time of Advent, particularly in this year of all years, the most important or needful statement out of today’s readings might just be in the one passage that quite possibly no preacher ever has preached to inaugurate this liturgical season: the epistle reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth.

This is at least the second letter Paul has written to this church, although it is the first we have in scriptural canon. Apparently some things have gone off the rails since Paul last wrote, and the Corinthians have gotten to be a bunch of folks rather pleased with themselves, for all the wrong reasons. The backhanded complimentary tone of this “thanksgiving” points to the trouble spots; it turns out the Corinthians are rather proud of the “knowledge” mentioned in verse 5 and the “spiritual gifts” noted in verse 7, as if, somehow, they were themselves responsible for them or had somehow earned them. Paul gently rebukes that idea, reminding the Corinthians that both of those were gifts of God; to put it in a modern idiom, Paul reminds the folks in this church that, apart from the gifts and the grace and the strengthening that comes from God, you aren’t ‘all that.’

But the key phrase, really, is the seemingly offhand line that comes after that spiritual gift bit: “…as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (emphasis mine) 

The word to the Corinthians, as it is to any church that thinks it is ‘all that,’ is: you do not hasten the “day of our Lord Jesus Christ” by your knowledge or your spiritual gifts or your money or your votes or by any thing you do. As Jesus says in that mini-apocalypse passage in Mark, nobody knows when that day will be, not even the Son, only the Father. And you can’t do anything to change that or hurry it up. What you do is wait.

Waiting is not passive. Waiting is doing the work the church has always been called to do. Waiting is ministering to one another and to the world around us as Jesus showed us how to do. 

That’s why we keep going with things like St. Francis House and Family Promise even in this time. That’s why you are still making your pledge commitments to the work and ministry of this congregation (you are doing this, right?) Because waiting, in this case, means doing the work.

If we’ve learned anything in this pandemic tide, it is that we live in a society that is abhorrently bad at waiting. Had we had leadership and citizens who were willing to do the hard work of waiting back when this virus first appeared, we wouldn’t be the world’s official coronavirus petri dish. (For evidence of this claim I offer basically every other country in the world.) We have proven ourselves incapable of or unwilling to wait, to the point of hostility and threat of violence. Apparently, the numbers of those dead and sickened cannot hold a candle to the right – no, imperative – to have exactly what we want and to have it right now. We have utterly failed at waiting and it has cost us.

Guess what? When it comes to the “day of the Lord,” that is our main job: to wait. We do the stuff Jesus called us to do, and we keep doing it, and we keep doing it. We don’t get to ‘force the issue’ or hasten the timetable in any way. We don’t get to negotiate an accelerated schedule. We don’t earn our way to a quicker second Advent. We don’t manipulate Jesus into an early return. 

We do our job, and we wait. 

For the time of waiting, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise noted): #347, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence; #—, I Thank My God for You; #348, Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending

Grace Presbyterian Church

November 22, 2020, Reign of Christ A

Ezekiel 34:11-22; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46

Who Reigns?

This has been a year in which it has seemingly become impossible to keep track of the passage of time. 

Days stream by without any seeming differentiation. Weeks feel like months, months like years. Our calendar says it’s November 22^nd, but honestly it feels like the calendar never has flipped and today is actually March 267^th. It feels as though Covid-19 has been spreading forever (the satirical website The Onion refers to its “first 15,000 years of coronavirus coverage), but in fact the first known case was diagnosed only a year ago this past week.

Within the life of the church this same sense of disorientation can be found. Do you remember we were just a short time into Lent when the first shutdowns were put in place? The church made it through Lent and Holy Week and Easter mostly online (with a few foolhardy churches meeting in person and spreading the virus even more), and then came the season of Easter and then Pentecost and finally the long, winding stretch of what it just seems wrong to call “ordinary time.” 

Finally we approach the end of that stretch; having observed All Saints’ Day three weeks ago, we have finally arrived at the final Sunday of the liturgical year. Yes, next Sunday really will be the first week of Advent, with purple vestments and Advent wreaths and all that. But for today we observe the final Sunday of Year A of the three-year cycle known as the Revised Common Lectionary. And as with all three years of that lectionary, the scriptures appointed for the occasion point us toward not an event in the annals of scripture or the history of the church, but to a particular tenet of the church’s belief: the exaltation of the resurrected Jesus as the ruler of all, for all eternity.

For decades, even centuries, this date has been known as Christ the King Sunday, which is a logical enough and seemingly straightforward name. You can read the concluding verses of today’s reading from the epistle to the Ephesians, as it practically sings of how God “raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion,” and it makes pretty good sense to speak of Christ the King.

Recent years, though, have seen a move toward a slightly different label for the day. In some resources you will see the day labeled as “Reign of Christ” Sunday. For some folks this probably sounds like some kind of political correctness run amok, but I’ve frankly come to believe that the change of label is probably a good idea. 

One reason is this: we human beings do terrible things to the whole idea of having a king. To be specific, we humanize it, in the worst sense of that word. 

Take the image that crops up towards the end of that passage, describing how God “has put all things under his (that is, Christ’s) feet.” In its context it’s a vivid enough metaphor for the way in which Christ is installed by God above any authority humanity can muster. We, however, are prone to ramp up the violence inherent in such an image, real or potential. We imagine those feet crushing those under it.

Furthermore, we also presume ourselves somehow worthy to decide exactly who they are who are placed under the feet of Christ. As Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor has observed, “many of the people who need saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way as they do.” We get ourselves excited about the idea that King Jesus is gonna crush those … well, frankly, whoever we don’t like. Jesus the King basically becomes our revenge machine, allowing us to fantasize about all those people we imagine have slighted us or belittled us or mocked us for our faith being routed and ruined the way the villain in an action movie might ultimately be vanquished. Even worse, that revenge fantasy can be awfully prone to getting mixed up in not only professed religious beliefs, but into our civic and social and even political life as well, with disastrous and even deadly results. 

That second reason for preferring “Reign of Christ” as a title for the day follows from this first reason somewhat. To put it bluntly, very few people really have a grasp of what the Reign of Christ really looks like, and that’s sadly true of an awful lot of the “good church folk” even more than those outside the church. Maybe we really need to use the energy of such a day to remind ourselves of what that reign really does look like, and our other two readings address this pretty well.

The famous “parable of the sheep and goats” points to exactly how the reign of Christ, the one who will “sit on his throne in glory,” will not conform to our human, power-happy conceptions of kingship. The ones favored by this king are not the powerful, the wealthy, the influential, the important; indeed, none of these even factors into this account at all. The only division between the welcomed and the banished in this parable is how they behaved toward “the least of these,” the ones the king calls “members of my family.” Those who cared for “the least of these” are welcomed; those who didn’t are not. And there’s no indication that our opinion of either group is at all relevant to the judgment of the king here.

The oracle from the prophet Ezekiel puts a different spin on the role of the king. Following a longstanding prophetic tradition, Ezekiel identifies the role of “king” with the work of a shepherd, one who gathers up the scattered sheep, brings them to good pastures and places of safety. That’s familiar enough territory – you can get that out of Psalm 23 – but there’s also this discourse about lean and fat sheep that suggests how this king-shepherd will not only care for, but also judge the sheep as well; those who foul the waters and tread under the grasses of the pasture will be judged, and it’s pretty clear the judgment won’t be kind. Here more than just direct interaction or care for “the least of these” is invoked; the ones who make life unlivable for “the least of these” are under judgment as well.

In short, the Reign of Christ demands a world in which we not only care for one another in the form of direct help to “the least of these”; the Reign of Christ demands that we live with and among one another in such a way that “the least of these” are not dragged down into poverty or hunger or thirst or sickness or homelessness or imprisonment; the Reign of Christ demands that we live in the world without ruining it for others. If we can’t live in such a way, we are not living in the Reign of Christ.

We are living in a world where plenty of the louder Christians are quite willing to scream and holler about Christ the King but show absolutely no awareness of what the Reign of Christ actually looks like. Maybe that itself is a good reason to take this day to reflect upon the alternate name, and to make it our calling to live into it.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #363, Rejoice! The Lord is King; #268, Crown Him With Many Crowns

Grace Presbyterian Church

November 15, 2020, Pentecost 24A (recorded)

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Who Do We Serve?

We read the beginning of this letter, back in October; it’s only fitting, I suppose, that we take in the end of this, possibly the first of Paul’s letters to the churches under his care, as well.

What we have here in these final verses of chapter 5 is a pretty fair summary of what would become typical for the apostle in concluding his letters to the churches. First we have what might seem a rather random “laundry list” of exhortations to the community; in some later letters these exhortations might become even more compact and broad-ranging. Here the “laundry list” extends from verse 12 all the way through verse 22, and while the initial exhortation about respecting “those who labor among you” is somewhat elaborated, by the time we get to verse 14 Paul really gets rolling. 

This “laundry list” is followed by a blessing, a very typical part of Paul’s closing formula. (The blessing I usually invoke at the end of the service is taken from Paul’s blessing at the end of the second letter to Corinth: see 2 Corinthians 13:13.) The letter wraps up with a couple more instructions and a fairly typical closing statement, also applicable as a blessing. The one part of this formula that is a little unusual is the strong instruction of verse 27: “I solemnly command you by the Lord that this letter be read to all of them.” This would evolve as typical practice in the churches to which Paul wrote, and it may be that at this early stage Paul felt the need to clarify that this letter was for the whole church, not just those leaders laboring among them mentioned above. 

So for all that, what’s the point of such a closing?

We can certainly acknowledge the practical aspect of such a list; it’s time to wrap up the letter (some of you remember writing letters, right?), but there are a few last things you need to say quickly before signing. Some of this is certainly at play.

We can also suspect that such reminders are tied to the things Paul instructed the Thessalonians when he was with them in person. Remember, these are still new followers of Christ. As noted in an earlier sermon, most of the Thessalonians apparently came from a Gentile background and did not have the grounding in the Jewish tradition from which Jesus (or Paul for that matter) came. Some basic review was going to be necessary for a while. 

There is, though, a more significant function to all of these seemingly varied instructions, and it has to do with how the church at Thessalonica, or any church for that matter, bears witness, and by extension serves the God we claim to serve.

Small as the behaviors listed here may seem, they are visible signs of what the community is about. When the community respects those who lead it, lives at peace with one another, admonishes the “idlers” (not a great translation; probably better rendered as “disorderly” or “disruptive” ones), encourages the faint-hearted and weak, rejoices regularly, gives thanks constantly, and prays always; when the community never quenches the Spirit but always tests everything; when it keeps itself away from evil; these things are not only beneficial to the community itself, but also bear witness to those in the larger city or state or empire as to what kind of people are found here. 

And perhaps even more on point, these small things bear witness to the One whom such a community ultimately serves by serving one another. These aren’t “normal” behaviors. To see them practiced with anything approaching consistency and faithfulness will inevitably catch the attention of those around. It is a form of bearing witness to live together in these ways, one that defies the logic of the empire that reigns around any church community, in which the powerful rule and the disposable are disposed of. In the body of Christ no one is disposed of, though some may choose to turn away. 

Now please hear what I am not saying. These are not behaviors or “tricks” to “grow your church.” There may be some who are attracted to the fellowship by seeing such community in action, but that is not the point of such counsel as Paul gives here. Paul would likely be quite befuddled by the church growth strategists of today; even Grace Presbyterian, small as it is, is probably larger than some of the church communities Paul worked with, and he largely didn’t concern himself with how large or how small they were. Their faithfulness, their compassion and service to one another and to the Lord were paramount, and anything that interfered with those things was to be put aside. 

If there is such a thing as a gift for discerning the future, God didn’t give it to me. I have no idea what Grace will look like on the other side of this pandemic. Already some of our members are discovering that their lives need to change; one has already decided to move away to live with a family member for health reasons, and others may do so as well. On the other hand, someone who came upon this church in this time of streaming and pre-recorded services may decide to give us a live look when it becomes non-hazardous to get together in worship again. We don’t know. God makes no promises about getting bigger.

God makes promises about being faithful, such as those Paul invokes in his blessing: to sanctify us, and to keep us “sound and blameless” against that day when we are, at long last, reunited with our Lord Jesus, whatever way that happens. 

That’s harder than ever to feel, particularly in this time of distancing and mask-wearing. It’s so tempting to feel cut off and isolated, confined and maybe more than a little stir-crazy. Yet we are not abandoned; we are still under the care of the Lord who first called us into this life, and will not abandon us whether we live or die, as was talked about in chapter 4. We hold fast, we continue to care for one another, we admonish those who try to break up this communion, we both respect those who lead and teach and test what they say against the witness of Christ. All of these things and more are not only part of serving one another, they are part of serving our God and bearing witness to that God who loves us and saves us.

It’s not always easy, and there’s no guarantee we’ll see big obvious tangible results from it. But it is part of being the body of Christ, and yes, it is our call.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #667, When Morning Gilds the Skies; #548, May God Support You All Your Days (Psalm 20)

Grace Presbyterian Church

November 8, 2020, Pentecost 23A

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Who Do We Wait For?

After his words to the Thessalonians about those members of their community who had died, Paul picks up in this next portion of his letter by moving from the what of that coming resurrection and reunion to the when. That particular answer is not Paul’s point – he blows by almost dismissively without even a pretense of a specific answer; rather, this becomes a opportunity to talk to the Thessalonian church about just how they should comport themselves in the time of waiting. 

More than a few preachers in the church’s history, particularly in this country, have failed to follow Paul’s wise course of non-action. Perhaps the most famous recent example of such rashness remains the multiple predictions of radio evangelist Harold Camping, who predicted first a series of dates in 1994, then dates first in May and finally October 2011 that would bring about the Rapture and destruction of the earth. Camping lived long enough to repent of those predictions and even to call them “sinful,” something which few of his predecessors ever did. Perhaps the largest-scale such event in US church history revolved around the predictions of one William Miller, a Baptist preacher who forecasted the second coming of Jesus in October 1844. Many followers even went so far as to get rid of all their possessions in anticipation, only to be in difficult straits and great disappointment when the day passed without incident. 

Paul is having none of that here. He will be drawn into speculation about something Jesus claimed not even to know himself (see Mark 13:32).

His message to the Thessalonians is not complicated; stay alert, don’t get “drunk” on the distractions of the world, wear the faith and hope and love God gives us (echoes of 1 Corinthians 13!), remember who is in charge, and encourage one another (echoes of 4:18 of this book). The way that Paul gets to this message, however, includes some images and metaphors that have, in the years since, been twisted and tortured into positions and theologies quite the opposite of Paul’s intent. For example:

• “like a thief in the night”

Here Paul intends to suggest the suddenness of this event of the Lord’s return. Particularly when combined with the description of “peace and security” in verse 3, giving way to “sudden destruction,” it’s a striking and dynamic image. However, more recent generations of Christians (like, um, ours) tend to be all about peace and security, whether it comes in the form of a politician we trust to give us (the church) what we want, a big bank account and a big building with no debt, or even simply some measure of “status” or “respect” in the world (whatever those words mean). Somehow we manage to forget that Jesus largely rejected such claims for us in this life – recall his proclamation in Matthew 10:34 that he came “not to bring peace, but a sword”. This description of a “thief in the night” turns bleak and threatening in our souls, when Paul makes clear in verses 8-10 that’s exactly how we’re not supposed to react. But we fear losing our “stuff,” and we get scared, and we follow leaders who prey upon those fears. 

• light and darkness

In a culture with no artificial lighting or no lighting at all outside of towns or cities, darkness was a fearful and dangerous thing. This metaphor was for Paul’s readers and hearers extremely accessible and vivid. However, when these images of “light” and “dark” get twisted in later centuries to suggest that the qualities of sinfulness and inferiority are found in persons of darker skin color, this is nothing less than a theological crime. Yet such imagery here and elsewhere in scripture became useful to those who wanted to defend, for just one example, the enslavement of Africans and persons of African descent. This is completely alien to Paul’s message. 

• “us” 

In this passage Paul is not overly concerned with those outside the church, not yet joined to the body of Christ. Aside from the encouragement not to be like those who sleep or are drunk (images that aren’t developed here at all), Paul has nothing to say about such persons. Again, however, the later church has presumed that Paul’s talk of “us” must be balanced by some kind of “them,” and “them” must be an enemy against which we are called to wage war. That language is easily found in corners of today’s church, and many times over the centuries (like, oh, maybe the Crusades, for example). 

All of these represent more than just seeking excuses for hatred or cruelty, which is bad enough to be sure. More damning, though, is that all of these distortions of Paul’s language here are nothing less than a rejection of the provision of God and the redemption that is ours in Jesus. We cling to our earthly “peace and security” and threaten the recalcitrant with the threat of the “thief in the night”; we trust in our own “light”-ness and demonize and oppress the dark; we go to war against “them” (sometimes literally) and trust in our own strength instead of God’s salvation. 

Our call to keep awake and to show faith, hope, and love doesn’t leave room for taking matters into our own hands. Waiting faithfully for Jesus isn’t about conquering everybody else or pushing the right buttons to manipulate some Rapture into happening. It involves waiting, living faithfully, doing the stuff Jesus told us to do and showed us how to do, and encouraging one another along the way. Sometimes the job is simply, to borrow from the parable in Matthew 25 and today’s first hymn, to “keep your lamps trimmed and burning.” It’s not easy for impatient people like us, but it is the only faithful way. 

And yes, it is our call.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #350, Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning; #358, Steal Away

Grace Presbyterian Church

November 1, 2020, All Saints Day

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Who Do We Hope In?

Note: No written sermon today.

https://videopress.com/v/2RRnbqel?preloadContent=metadata

Grace Presbyterian Church

October 25, 2020, Pentecost 21A (recorded)

1 Thessalonians 2:1-13

Who Do We Listen To?

Thus may poor fools believe false teachers: 

though those that are betray’d do feel the treason sharply,

yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe.

–Shakespeare, Cymbeline, King of Britain, act III scene 4

Who do we listen to?

More specifically: who do we as the church, the church writ large, the Church Universal, listen to?

It seems painfully clear that, given the wild divergence of opinion and action and attitude on the part of the various corners of the church in the US, much less the world, there really isn’t one voice to which the church as a whole truly listens. One would of course like to say that the church hearkens (to use fancy biblical-sounding language) only to the voice of God, but (to put it bluntly) it’s hard to trust in that in all cases and places. It takes only minimal amounts of looking around to run into examples of “the church” that don’t seem to have listened to a word from the Lord in a very, very long time. The venom spewed by such churches or their pastors “in the name of God” sickens. 

(Remember, I spent four years living about a half-hour from the infamous Westboro Baptist “Church” in Kansas. The stories you’d see in the newspapers about their, um, actions? Those stories likely undersold the vitriol of that congregation.)

I’m not necessarily talking about the voices of those who are up before the congregation on Sunday mornings, virtually or otherwise these days, offering up a portion of scripture and a hopefully-valiant attempt to say something about it with the Holy Spirit’s help, although those people (like, uh, me) are certainly the “first line” of voices an average congregation might hear. The multiplicity of voices vying for the attention of the church extends well beyond the walls of any one pastor or church staff, and can be found emanating from the halls of political power, fame or celebrity, the performance stage or the pages of books. 

Paul’s entreaties here in 1 Thessalonians 2 may seem to be a distant subject in comparison to the noise of politicians and megapastors and media mavens who seek to lead the church in one direction or the other. It’s not, though. Remembering that Paul uses the common Greco-Roman rhetorical practice of offering himself as an example (we first encountered that in Philippians), what we discover here is perhaps a less explicit but no less pointed demonstration of what the Thessalonians were to seek in those who claimed to be called to lead them. Those who lacked such traits or indeed practiced the opposite of such deeds among the people were, in turn, not to be trusted.

So, when Paul recalls that he and his co-workers Silvanus and Timothy “had the courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition,” there’s a clue to the kind of voices we need to listen to; those that do not flinch from speaking the truth of Jesus in a time or place where speaking that truth will be opposed and challenged. We’ve already observed just last week that Jesus his own self faced opposition and even death for the gospel he proclaimed and the life he lived; it won’t be any different for us, and those who aren’t up to that challenge should probably not occupy a lot of our time.

When Paul speaks of appealing to the Thessalonians not from “deceit or impure motives or trickery,” things get more challenging; it’s not always easy to spot a con man (or woman). This kind of selection requires discernment; we have to be paying attention to the track record of those who clamor for our attention. Speaking “not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts” points to a characteristic that is not easily received; we are often enough the mortals who want to be pleased by the words of the preachers or prophets or singers or best-selling authors or politicians. Similarly, we are susceptible to the “flattery” Paul forswears in verse 5; but the one who truly fulfills the call of proclamation will not be seeking to tickle our ears with how we’re such good people, God’s favorites even. The “greed” reference in that same verse is hard to miss, sometimes, given the ever-swelling bank accounts of many of those preachers and politicians and authors and whatnot clamoring for our attention. 

Perhaps the most notable part of this description is the care Paul describes for the church folk at Thessalonica, “like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children” (notice that Paul isn’t afraid to invoke a quite “feminine” image to describe God’s care for us, and the care that he and his co-workers were thus called to show as well). When the care shown is for the church and its people first, in the way that God cares for the church, you’re hearing a voice that’s probably worth listening to; a voice that will build up and encourage and care for and exhort and occasionally cajole and prod and poke not for the sake of worldly gain or power or wealth or influence, but for the good of God’s people – all of God’s people, to be sure, not just “us.” 

Of course there are other passages of scripture to which one can point for examples of what or who to listen to; one might think of those who show the “fruits of the Spirit” described in Galatians 5, or those virtues to think on from back in Philippians 4, as further examples of what we would do well to seek in those we choose to listen to. And of course there are those gospels again, with all the words and deeds of Jesus that we just identified as our only model to imitate and emulate back in chapter 1 of this epistle. We do have guides for how we direct our attention; we just need to heed them.

Paul was writing in a time when these letters he wrote to congregations had to be carried by hand, on foot or sometimes by boat, over distances of many miles. We live in a different time; A person can type in a few words and maybe add a picture of an approaching storm, an unfolding tragedy, or a grotesque indiscretion of a public figure, and then with a click of an “enter” key or an icon on their phone that report can travel worldwide in an instant to anyone who has that particular social media app, and before long even beyond that number. What we amplify with our attention matters.

There are voices out there coming from folks who want nothing less than to destroy those they hate. There are voices out there coming from folks who want only to rake in everything they can for themselves, with no regard for those from whom it is taken. There are voices out there who only want all the control, as long as you pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Our call is, among other things, not to feed those particular beasts.

Who do we listen to? That is an ongoing choice, and one which we need to make with prayerful discernment and care, seeking out the voices of those who speak from God’s integrity and Christ’s compassion and the Spirit’s power, lifting up the least of these and demanding justice and mercy and the fruits of the Spirit and the virtues to think on. It isn’t necessarily easy to find; those voices are often not amplified much, and they don’t necessarily flatter us. But it is another one of those ways of bearing witness, and yes, it is our call.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns: #303, God the Spirit, Guide, and Guardian; #722, Lord, Speak to Me That I May Speak

Grace Presbyterian Church

October 18, 2020, Pentecost 20A (recorded)

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Who Do We Imitate?

One of the more talked-about and provocative books released on the subject of Christianity this year addresses the increasingly evident presence of what is commonly called “toxic masculinity” in many quarters of the church in the United States over the course of the past century. The book, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez of Calvin University in Michigan, traces this development as far back as the fascination with “muscular Christianity” of the early twentieth century, but particularly observes the post-WWII rise of a strain of thought in the church that claims particular privileges for men within Christianity.

This is hardly new in the church’s history. In this case, however, the results are terribly present with us today: a heavy degree of politization of church leaders; encouragement of aggressive or even potentially violent aspects of stereotypically “male” behavior; encouragement of behaviors among male church leaders that deny roles of leadership to pretty much anybody other than white males; justification or excusing of abusive or illegal behavior by those leaders; and reduction of women to roles of subservience to men. Along the way the book also notes occasional “role models” of this hypermasculine model of Christian manhood – oddly enough, not always men who practice any sort of Christianity. While Oliver North, he of the Iran-Contra scandal, or William Wallace, the Scottish warrior played by Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart, turn up as well, the most prominent such figure cited by those studied in the book is the one who turns up in the book’s title alongside our actual Messiah: Jesus and John Wayne.^[1]

It is impossible to avoid drawing a sharp contrast here with a theme to which Paul alluded in the letter to the Philippians and which he states overtly here in the greeting of his first letter to the church at Thessalonica. 

Somewhat like the church at Philippi, the Thessalonian community was still largely on good terms with Paul, and vice versa. We read in Acts 17 that Paul had a rough time on his visit to Thessalonica and had to be slipped out of town under cover of darkness. From that account we also learn that while a few members of the local synagogue heard and received the gospel, the number of “Greeks” (the city was located in Macedonia) who did so was apparently a good bit larger. As a result, the numbers in the Thessalonian community skewed far more towards Gentile converts, unlike other churches Paul founded in which the balance between Greek and Jewish believers was more even. 

One thing this means is that many of the Thessalonians had in fact been literal worshipers of idols, to which Paul alludes in verse 9. He also notes in verse 6 that they had suffered attacks by others in the community, noted in Acts 17 when Paul’s host in the city, a man named Jason, had seen his home attacked and had been dragged with some others before the city authorities on false charges. Their faithfulness, both as new converts and in the face of outside agitation, had apparently built a reputation and endeared them to Paul particularly. The result is this particularly effusive greeting from Paul, along with his co-workers Silvanus and Timothy. 

But back on the subject of idols for a moment. As noted a few moments ago, Thessalonica was in the region of Macedonia. Alert followers of ancient history might recognize that name: it was the home of no less a historical figure than Alexander the Great, who had taken his father Philip’s already substantial empire and expanded it as far as the Greek world could see. Even decades after his death, and even under the rule of Rome, Alexander’s fame and glorification still remained strong in his homeland, so to speak. Folks living in Macedonia had plenty of alternate role models, beyond the mere idols of wood or stone that were scattered throughout the cities.

It is against this backdrop that we read Paul’s greeting to the Thessalonians. Even for the standard letter greeting style of this period it is an effusively warm greeting, fulsome in its praise for the church at Thessalonica and giving a glowing report of its reputation not only with Paul and his co-workers, but among other churches of the region as observed in verses 8-9. 

What is it that so exhilarates Paul about the Thessalonians? It is most succinctly described in verses 5-6: the gospel came among them not just in word, but “in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction,” and the Thessalonians “became imitators of us (Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy) and of the Lord.”

You know what? On the surface, to us moderns, this might not look all that impressive. What does it even mean to say that the message of the gospel came among them in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction? From the twenty-first century that sounds like religious platitudes more than anything else. And frankly, from our perspective in history talk about anything being “in the Holy Spirit” can frankly sound suspicious, polluted by decades of false preachers and con artists for which such talk is a way to bamboozle the easily fooled and to play folks for suckers.

And becoming imitators of Paul and his colleagues? We don’t know much about Silvanus and Timothy, but we’re painfully aware of Paul’s imperfections, both from his letters and from the accounts of his missionary journeys in Acts. There we see a man who, for all his successes, was extremely short-tempered, not quick to forgive (as demonstrated in the split with Barnabas over bringing John Mark back into the work in Acts 15), and just maybe given to whining a little bit about his difficulties on occasion.

The only thing that works here is that, for all their imperfections, the example that Paul and Silvanus and Timothy had set among the Thessalonians led them towards the imitation of the Lord.

Here is a point where we need to hold two seemingly contradictory truths in our heads and hearts:

• There is no one worthy of imitation for the Christian other than Jesus Christ.
• Our example will be observed and imitated, for good or bad.

Any parent can tell you about the latter phenomenon – being caught in, say, a slip of the tongue that gets endlessly copied by your child? There is but a small example of what happens when others, perhaps especially Christians still in formation, see us and strive to use us as an example. The other possibility, of course, is that our example might be seen as wanting and that those who see us might be dissuaded from the faith by our bad example.

But the former point is the one that sticks. There is really no other model for us to imitate besides the Jesus who is revealed to us in the gospels. Not Moses – ask that Egyptian who was murdered by him. Certainly not David – ask Bathsheba, or even more her husband Uriah the Hittite, left for dead by the army at David’s order. And no, not Paul. Not even John Wayne. If we’re going to claim to be followers of Christ, we must be imitators of Christ. And if you’re read the gospels, you know that’s a risky thing to do. Jesus made trouble. Jesus didn’t always play nice with the authorities. And Jesus paid the price for it.

And yet, being imitators of Jesus is about the only way we’re going to present the kind of example that caused Paul to gush so warmly about the Thessalonians. It’s about the only thing that will make folks stop and pay attention, and maybe draw them to Christ. It is all we can do.

And yes, it is our call.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #644, Give Thanks, O Christian People; #300, We Are One in the Spirit

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^[1] Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne. Published 2020 Liveright Publishing Corp, a division of W.W. Norton.

Grace Presbyterian Church

October 11, 2020, Pentecost 19A

Philippians 4:1-9

Think Joyful

Unlike letters such as those to the churches in Corinth and Rome, which served in the former case to address some major foul-ups in the church and to introduce Paul in the latter, this epistle to the church at Philippi is quite brief, and in fact we are coming to its end. As a result we now encounter some recapitulation of subjects Paul has already addressed in the letter, along with a few closing instructions, final greetings, and some reflection on Paul’s part (as well as words of thanks for the gift the Philippians had sent him). It’s a fairly typical way for Paul to end a letter, particularly in a situation where he is not having to clean up after some major conflict or trauma in the church in question.

What has long been interpreted as the conflict in question in Philippi comes up quickly in this passage, as Paul addresses to the congregation his concern that two of their members, Euodia and Syntyche, “be of the same mind in the Lord.” This is familiar language from the very beginning of the letter, as you may remember. Most interpreters argue that the two, whom Paul says “have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel,” have come into some sort of conflict or disagreement, one which (as modern churches know all too well) could cause division in the larger body. 

Some interpreters, though, offer an alternate and quite opposite suggestion; Paul is offering up the two women leaders in the church as examples not of conflict, but of exactly that being “of the same mind.” Paul is recommending these leaders in the church (for that is what they are, to the dismay of those who don’t think women can do that) as being worthy of the members’ emulation and support in the work. I’m not biblical scholar enough to weigh in with any credibility, but in one sense it does make sense that their names be invoked here, in the wrap-up of the letter, rather than in the early part of the letter if they are being named as models for emulation rather than as sources of division. But I leave that for you to ponder.

As is also common in his letter conclusions, Paul starts to wax rhapsodic here, or at least seems to. The word “rejoice” becomes quite important rather suddenly in verse 4. That became the source of one of those simple repetitive songs* I was taught as a child – “rejoice in the Lord a-al-ways, and again I say rejoice!” or something like that – that had the unfortunate effect of making the verse impossible to think about in any kind of depth as I got older and especially as I got into this particular vocation. Listen to it again: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” 

*I have to say that it never sounded like that when I was a kid.

Seriously, Paul? Are you looking around at all? It is a statement that resounds with seeming tone deafness at a time like our current time. Rejoice in a pandemic? Rejoice with so much rampant injustice? Rejoice over an increasingly ruined climate spewing deadly weather all over? Rejoice, Paul?

Well, here’s another spot where we need to go back and remember from chapter 1 Paul’s situation as he writes this letter. Remember, he’s in prison. Being in a Roman prison wasn’t a hopeful situation to be in; most who entered a Roman prison didn’t leave alive. Back in that first chapter, Paul had noted how his imprisonment had opened up some new opportunities for witness to the gospel. Here, he seems more concerned to equip the Philippians for whatever kind of difficulty might be coming their way, at least partly so that their own witness in time of conflict or even persecution would be similarly fruitful.

For many readers, the verses that follow directly after verse 4 can seem rather like random bits of counsel being poured out before Paul runs out of parchment or ink. I’d like to suggest, though (hopefully under the prompting of the Holy Spirit), that these following verses are actually pointed towards enabling the Philippians to live up to that exhortation in verse 4? Rejoice? Now? How? Well, Paul says, doing these things will help.

“Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.”

I can’t help but be reminded of a verse that stood out from that series in the book of Ecclesiastes several weeks ago: 9:17, “The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouting of a ruler among fools.” The blustering bullying of a so-called leader obsessed with looking “tough” or “manly” or “strong” really doesn’t impress the world when it comes from one who claims to be a follower of Christ. Gentleness, particularly to those who have been treated by the world with anything but gentleness, is a witness like no other. Living like those who know the Spirit is with us makes all kinds of difference in how the world hears us.

“Do not worry about anything…”

Here’s one where we really need to hear the whole thought: “…but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Living in anxiety does not solve those needs we have, but the rest of the verse doesn’t give us leave to quit caring about those needs once we have offered them to God, nor is it a prompting to break out in the old Bobby McFerrin hit “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” If our prayers don’t have feet in some way, they’re not worth the oxygen required to breathe them. And it is in this putting our needs before God that we are brought into the peace of God, which the Greek literally says will “stand sentinel over” our hearts and minds. What we don’t put before God cannot be guarded with the peace of God, and our ability to rejoice is cut short.

“Finally, brethren…” 

This list of virtues in verse 8 is perhaps one of the most well-known passages in the book, even if it can be challenging to keep them in your memory in the right order. One of the remarkable things about this list is that it is not necessarily distinctly “Christian” in its origin. Any ethicist of the Greco-Roman realm would have almost reflexively put forth these virtues as those that their students should learn and emulate. 

Further, thinking on these things – things that are true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, praiseworthy – requires more than just thinking happy thoughts. This isn’t about some kind of Norman Vincent Peale positive thinking business, nor is it an excuse to break into a different song – “Accentuate the Positive” in this case. No, this is about a process of training and shaping our minds to know and recognize these virtues in ourselves and one another and the world around us. Other epistles, such as Galatians and Colossians, use the metaphor of clothing to make the same point – applied here, Paul might have said “clothe yourselves in what is true, honorable” and so forth, with the idea that in this case clothes really do make the wearer. Study these things, contemplate them deeply, reflect on them; these habits in turn make these virtues basic to your own thinking and reflecting on the world around you – both to spot the presence of these virtures and their absence. Paul then follows in verse 9 by again offering himself as an example, and again invoking that in doing these things “the God of peace will be with you.” 

In short, these exhortations are about being made into followers of Christ able to “rejoice in the Lord always,” even in prison or pandemic. To quote Debie Thomas, an Episcopalian Christian educator and contributor to The Christian Century:

So I wonder whether these famous verses from Philippians are not about feeling good so much as they are about cultivating the inner life of the soul. In Paul’s view, peace and joy are not emotions we can conjure up within ourselves. They come from God, and the only way we can receive them is through consistent spiritual practice…

In short, these encouragements are not about simple happy thoughts, but the hard-but-necessary work of soul rehabilitation. Spiritual exercise, if you will. Thomas continues:

In other words, joy requires us to sidestep sentimentality and cynicism alike. It requires that we hold onto two realities at once; the reality of the world’s brokenness in one hand, and the reality of God’s love in the other. Joy is what happens when we daily live into the belief that God can and will bridge the gap between the world we long for and the world we see before our eyes.

This doesn’t happen easily. That trust is hard when the world we see before our eyes is cold and brutal and callous. Joy will shed some tears along the way. Joy won’t sit quietly in the face of injustice of any kind. But it is this cultivated discipline that makes joy – the real stuff – possible at all, and that in turn makes our lives able even a little bit to bear witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

The serious work of cultivating disciplined joy, practicing fierce gentleness, studying genuine virtue, and bearing real witness is not at all easy. Far from it, no matter how easily Paul seems to toss it off in the final flourishes of this letter. And yet, one more time, this is our call. 

Thanks be to God. Amen. 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #821, My Life Flows On (How Can I Keep From Singing?); #852, When the Lord Redeems the Very Least