A Child is born to us. Once again we hear the story of our God choosing to live among and within us and we are blessed beyond our greatest wishes. May your Christmas be joyful -- whether large and loud or small and quiet. Hope and Peace and Joy and Love are born among us today. May your day be holy, and may the New Year ahead bring you Love ~~ Pastor Cherie
Psalm 89:1-4 (The Message) “I’ll never quit telling the story of your love...” The theme for this last Sunday in Advent is LOVE. In the past three weeks we’ve explored Hope and Peace and Joy — each of them so important in our understanding (such as it is) as well as our relationship with God. But the One who holds all of these — and all of us — is Love. Without love we do not have hope or peace or joy.
I shouldn’t have to explain that we’re not talking about romantic love here — although that is a part of the overall package. We’re talking of the love that gives of itself, that recognizes that all we are is a gift from the One who loves us more than we can imagine. Love that sees the Divine in every person we meet. The Old Testament prophets don’t speak too much about love — they are more about obedience and faithfulness. There are stories of loving actions but the word itself as we use it doesn’t play a large role in the Hebrew scriptures. It isn’t until the One they were waiting for does finally arrive that we hear the word spoken so often. It is Jesus who speaks to us of love. When challenged on what is the greatest of the commandments, Jesus answered, quite properly, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” but then he followed that immediately with, “A second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” These two are inextricably linked — we must love God with everything we have, but in order to do that we must love our neighbor, but to love our neighbor we must first love ourselves. In the words of playwright/actor/poet Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Love is love is love is love is love.” Love is a unity. It cannot be diced up into little separate boxes. I’ll love this, but I’ll hate that. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not just what we feel, it’s what we believe. Love either is — or it isn’t. As the psalmist says: Your love, O God, is my song, and I’ll sing it! So sing your song of love into the world and welcome the Child of Love into your hearts and souls and into this oh-so-needy world. Come, Lord Jesus! Welcome Love! Amen. Psalm 126:1-3 The theme for the third Sunday in Advent is JOY. Most likely this particular psalm was written and sung by the Israelites to celebrate their release and return from their Babylonian captivity. I printed this out in two versions today because they are both interesting. The NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) is the more traditional language and sticks close to translating the original writing. The Message is more colloquial and gives a better image of the actual joy felt here — it feels joyful.
It is right to rejoice in God’s goodness and God’s work in our lives, but while the people are rejoicing here they are also, a few verses on, intreating God to act for them again and save them from a then current drought. God’s work in and for us is never “one and done.” Joy is given us over and over again. Singing in a choir and hearing it, just that once, all come to perfection. Holding your child for the very first time. A sunset that blows past all “normal” for beauty and leaves an image you will carry forever. Sitting around with friends and loved ones and laughing and laughing at silly things. Occasions for joy fill our todays and they fill our memories. And the deepest of these is the true knowledge that God and God’s joys are always with us. We have our personal joys and our communal joys — but one day, we are promised, we will see God’s kingdom come to full fruition here among all peoples. This requires that we all play our part. So, what can we do to bring joy to others? It isn’t just a gift we get to hoard to ourselves and the work to spread joy does not all rest on God alone. Get up and spread that joy around! Even if you’re feeling down at the moment. Sometimes, like now perhaps, we may feel a long ways from there, but we just keep working toward it, sharing, caring, seeking justice for all — the day our tears will turn into laughter. And on that day, as Isaiah reminded us a couple of weeks ago in our First Sunday reading, “all peoples will see it together.” Rejoice! Our God of hope and peace and justice and joy reigns! Amen. Isaiah 52:7 The theme for the second Sunday in Advent is PEACE. There’s a certain irony in the fact that when I get to this week in Advent I usually find myself singing one of my favorite Christmas hymns, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” which is taken from a poem titled “Christmas Bells,” written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The poem was written in 1863 in the middle of our Civil War — a time when peace was far from most people’s day to day reality. Longfellow’s wife had died in a terrible accident not long before and then his eldest son, who had joined the Union Army, was severely wounded in battle, just barely surviving after a long, painful recuperation. The poem begins with the first stanza celebrating the Christmas bells singing out Peace and Goodwill, but a few stanzas in we hear Longfellow voicing the reality of war and his current belief in any lasting peace with these words: “And in despair I bowed my head; ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said; ‘For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men!’" It’s not until the final stanza that his faith in God’s peace reasserts itself: “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: ‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail, with peace on earth, good-will to men.’” The irony comes in because it is that middle verse which attracts me to this hymn. I’ve actually been singing this carol to myself, off and on, all year now — this horrible, no good, very bad year in which we’ve been stuck for too many months now. And it is exactly in times such as these that we need to keep reminding ourselves and each other of words of peace and goodwill and hope. The middle verse sometimes seems so undeniably truthful, so apropos right now — “For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men,” but it’s that last stanza that I truly need to hear now — over and over — “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: ‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; the Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail, with peace on earth, good-will to men.’” Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.” Read the words of Scripture and of good, wise people, like Ms. Roosevelt, and – just maybe -- listen to your own heart. I was reminded of this earlier this week when facebook of all things, gave me back one of my own “memories” – a post I had written four years ago for the Second Sunday of Advent (and that I don’t remember writing at all): This second Sunday in Advent may we all experience peace. Not the peace that comes from sitting back noticing nothing, doing nothing, but the peace that comes with doing the work our hearts call us to do -- standing where our hearts call us to stand. In a world run by nonsense our brains may become chaotic, but our hearts tell us truth. So go and be a peacemaker; believe in it and work at it; trust God and trust that the right shall prevail; find peace inside yourself and offer it out whenever and wherever you can.....and listen to the longing of your heart. Amen. |
Rev. Cherie MarckxArchives
January 2025
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