SERMON: The Beginning of the End? November ADVENTure

 

(Joel 2:23-32; 2 Tim 4:6-18) J G White / FBC Amherst

(using August Apocalypse, Aug 1, 2021, UBC Digby)

 Remember the turn of the Century? We can call it the turn of the Millennium, eh? I remember it. I lived in a small fishing village and tourist town in Nova Scotia: Parrsboro. In 1999 there was all this talk of Y2K, which means Year Two Thousand. The computers were all going to crash, and everything might fail! Remember all that hype?

The only, tiny bit of trouble I had on January 1^st? My desktop computer, as I typed, started having little 2000s appear randomly all over the screen. I quickly shut down the computer. But it was over; it was OK.

Many times, the end of the world has been predicted or expected or feared. Remember 2012? Some ancient Mayan calendar in stone apparently ended with what we call the year 2012. Perhaps that was to be ‘the apocalypse.’ No. Watch the film, “2012,” to see what did not happen.

Today we heard from Joel in the Hebrew Scripture: I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. (J 2:30)

Probably preaching five hundred years a before Jesus, or more, Joel the prophet is a mysterious figure. His four-page book has some memorable images and phrases – from all the talk of a terrible locust plague, to the famous images of The END of the world as we know it, the Apocalypse, the Day of the Lord.

Next month I want to explore “The End” and a few themes and doctrines of the End of the age, the second coming of Christ, and so forth. I’ll call this sermon series: November ADVENTure, because ‘Advent’ means the coming or arrival of something, in this case, God. We in the Christian Church know we have the Season of Advent, the four weeks before the Nativity, Christmas. But in our culture we do all of Christmas in these weeks before December 25. The parades and teas & sales and all often happen before Advent, not to mention Christmas! We are all decorated, singing ‘Christ is born,’ and having parties well before December 24. The 25^th comes, and it is pretty much all over and done, and we are worn out!

The theme of getting ready for the arrival of the Messiah is what Advent is all about – so we might as well get ready for the Second Advent of Christ in November, if all December will celebrate Jesus’ birth.

I think this is a bit like our Christian teachings about the End. It is all about anticipation, getting ready, preparing, waiting, watching... and Jesus never arrives! Always looking forward, never getting there!

I’m only half joking. Over the next weeks we shall explore some main themes about the apocalypse. (Of course, next week, we get to the End of Donnie here.)

One Bible teacher on ‘the end of all things,’ Rick Durst, of Golden Gate Baptist Seminary, prepared a metre to measure people’s interest in ‘Last Things.’ 

 

Fear of Future                     Fascination with Future

Eschatophobia                                   Eschatomania

 

How have you felt about these things?

In our day and age of fear, I do not want you to fear the end, the second coming, or the final judgment. I do not want any believer to be confused or easily be led astray into some strange teachings. And I do not want anyone to be obsessed with the end times either. We can make some sense of all this. Our God has these teachings for us to give us hope, not horror. 

The teachings about The End are found in many books of the Bible, and we will touch some of them, as needed. Such as Jesus’ own words in the Gospels. I wonder: before His death, Jesus said to the disciples, ‘I go to prepare a place for you,’ and, ‘I will come again,’ did He mean come back alive on the third day, or come back to earth a second time, later on?

I also want to explore a variety of common ways that Christians have come to understand all these teachings. There are quite a few approaches. Last year I studied this a bit, seeking to make up my own mind and figure out what I actually believe. I’m still working on this.

On these Sundays before Advent, we will look at the following: When is the End? How can we understand all the things that seem to be Bible predictions? Where do we end up? The final destination for people is what? Heaven? New Earth? Hell? And how does the final judgment happen?

Jesus’ End: What is His second advent all about? How will His story truly end?

Today, today we heard from Joel, prophet inspired by a swarm of insects. From my childhood I have always liked bugs, so a Bible book with a plague of grasshoppers gets my attention. The locusts become a metaphor for The END, God’s big day to get things finished. What Sharon read today sheds some rays of hope – the crops will grow back, what you lost will be regained.

And then, back to this Day of the LORD. Divided into three chapters, Joel chapter two begins with saying “the day of the LORD is coming, it is near—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness!” And ends with this bit about ‘I will pour out my spirit on all people; your sons and daughters will prophesy...’

Looking to the future is part of our Faith. It is what all religions are about, we might say. Looking ahead is just part of life. We plan. We watch and wait. We work towards certain goals. We grow up and grow old. We seek hope, and find it, and share it.

The stories we tell in our faith, the ancient poems we recite, the images in our hymns and our dreams: they all prompt us to have some hope, and to act differently, and to wonder and be curious, move ahead.

We take a chapter, like Joel 2, and try applying it in a few ways. ‘I will pour out my spirit,’ we read, ‘The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes.’ Was this a promise to those Jews of long ago that came true a few decades later. It happened? They were blessed?

Or is it about a day just two thousand years ago, when those first Christians were filled with the Holy Spirit and preached to crowds who understood them in a multitude of native languages? Peter in Acts chapter 2 quotes Joel to explain that day, long ago.

Or is Joel 2 about our future, something we read of again in Revelation 6? Remember the 1984 movie, ‘Ghostbusters.’ Maybe good watching for the end of October. There is that scene where two of the ‘ghostbusters’ talk religion.

Winston: "Hey Ray, do'you remember something in the Bible about the last days when the dead would rise from the grave?"

Ray: "I remember Revelation 7:12 (sic) 'And I looked as he opened the sixth seal, and behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became as black as sackcloth, and the moon became as blood.'"

Winston: "and the seas boiled, and the skies fell."

Ray: “Judgment day.”

Winston: “Judgment day.”

 Ray and Winston did not get the details perfect, including the chapter and verse number, but they are pretty close. And Revelation six is awfully close to Joel two.

Then again, I know at least one person who finds, in this chapter, a metaphor for her own life journey. The promise came true: God repaired the years that were eaten away and destroyed for her. The years the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter... This became a personal message about now, about her... she was set free from the years of abuse and oppression by other people in her life. 

The language of the apocalypse can be multi-layered. But it cannot mean everything. It takes work, and prayer. Next month, we will do a bit of work, and praying, before we get to our official Advent season. I want to address the things you want to know. I’m curious what you may think about these things:

Do you wonder about the purpose or usefulness of some apocalyptic stories/scriptures? Doctrines? 

What ones, and why? 

What areas would you like addressed on Sundays? What do you not want to hear about? :)

 Let me have the last word today by saying what I was told is the actual theme of Revelation, summed up in one verse. The theme is found in chapter 11 verse 15. The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever. 

God wins, we might say. And we get brought in to win with Christ. Good news! Though we could say it more beautifully, and profoundly, as the scriptures do. 

Those Revelation 11:15 phrases are well-known, in the lyrics of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ from Handel’s Messiah. Here are all the words of this famous chorus. This could be what all the doctrines of The End should sound like, when summed up. Not a song of fear and terror, but of joyful praise!

Hallelujah!

For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth

Hallelujah!

The kingdom of this world is become

the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ

and he shall reign forever and ever.

Hallelujah!

King of kings and Lord of lords

and he shall reign forever and ever

Hallelujah!

Knowing God, or: Sour Grapes, Itching, & Faith on Earth?

 

10:30 am, Sun, Oct 16, 2022 - J G White / FBC Amherst

(Jer 31:27-34; 2 Tim 3:14-4:5; Lk 18:1-8)

 

I finally read some of Annie Dillard this past summer, but not the book where she says this:

Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? …It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. [Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41.]

We are here to know about God, to know God, and to be with God, together. Let me give a 3-part talk.

PART 1. Sour Grapes: contact with God is personal. The fifty pages in your Bible we call “Jeremiah” has this proverb quoted in it. ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Must have been and old saying. Here, the prophet says it is not to be true. Each generation of people will live and die as they choose. And he goes on. There is coming a day when people will know Yahweh God, without being taught, or told to ‘know.’

Here we are, a few thousand years later. Has this come true, at least partly? Yes. Partly. The evangelical movement of the past couple hundred years has done its part to emphasize that Christianity is a personal relationship between people and God. The pendulum has swung a bit too far (as pendulums usually do) to the “it’s just Jesus and me,” side of things. We’ve all gotten very independent in our religion & spirituality.

It is a very Baptist idea to respect the soul freedom of every person. In fact, you are so free to know God for yourself and respond, that we won’t baptize you into the Church until you can decide for yourself. Right on. Of course, we also exercise our freedom to welcome you in as a member if you did happen to be christened as an infant, once upon a time.

We instil in the young – and all others – that knowing God is bigger and better than just knowing all about God. I have always been interested in how people learn and develop, what are people actually doing when they pray, how do people change their minds, what happens in their experience of the Divine.

I think of Canadian author, Ralph Milton’s testimony about praying. [I] think of something that happened in the last week or so. I tell that story to God, in words that form in my head. I try to say what I did, what others did, and how I feel. I express myself in the kind of language I usually use. Sometimes this includes some old-fashioned four-letter words. I don’t think God minds. [Sermon Seasonings, 1997, p. 140-141]

After I’ve told God everything, I try to listen. That’s called praying. One person’s experience.

PART 2. Itching Ears: how does the Bible work for us? People have itching ears, and seek out whatever they want to please them: new thoughts and theories, stories and beliefs they want. This may be what we are warned of in this old letter today, from one early minister in the church to another. Young Timothy is reminded of how he learned the scriptures – in his case this was the Hebrew Bible – and the Christian teachings that were built upon this.

Baptist Christians, among others, emphasize what we can call Bible freedom: this belief that it is and should be available to all of us, and we can work with it. The Bible has not always been used this way. Now, we have a lot of freedom, and the scriptures are readily available to us, in a multitude of forms.

But these words, in the Bible, warn: For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires… 

Isn’t curiosity a good thing? What about questioning? In a way, I have had ‘itching ears’ all my life, and keep looking for new answers, and new ways to figure this all out. Yes, yes it is good. By the grace of God we seek a balance. We balance knowing what the basics are, and where we go next to interpret life, the universe, and everything.

We have this great phrase here, the scriptures are inspired: they are ‘breathed’ by God. And so they inspire us: something new is breathed into you and me. The word I like to use is influence – I think of the Bible influencing us. More than just ‘what it means,’ ‘life application,’ or exact ‘teaching.’ How does it influence us?

I use the word ‘us’ there on purpose. Because I believe it is together, not alone, that we will truly be influenced well. One wise thinker has said that the Bible is not completely the Bible outside of the Church. It only fully makes sense and has its power in and from ‘the People of Jesus.’ Also, as another wise guy said, the Bible not understandable and working if it is not the whole Bible, together. Each part, each verse, chapter, and book, can only fully live within this whole little library called the Holy Scriptures.

This is an antidote to scratching our itching ears and going off in all directions. We have great freedom with the Bible, but we keep it together, and we use it together, as Church.

All the personal bits here in the letter speak to this. Timothy is told to remember how he learned, from whom he learned the word, and what it meant, in Christ. He had is mother, Eunice, and grandmother, Lois, to thank for this, among others in his life.

Perhaps you remember some of your teacher from your past… and some of the exact lessons you learned. I heard on the morning radio yesterday a fellow calling in, an almost 90-year-old man, wishing his school-teacher a happy birthday. So, he’s congratulating one of his old teachers? How old was she? 107!

I look back to the people who taught me at a Baptist Church, and surely influenced me, when I was 10, 14, 18 years old. Mr. Fancy, Mr. Tufts, Mr. Reese, Mrs. Diggins, Pastor Blaikie, Rev. Robertson.

As I thank God for them in my life, I urge us all – who are adults now – be excellent influencers today, for the people around us. We have a living faith to pass on to them. Not to mention some faith to receive.

PART 3. Faith on Earth: Who prays? That’s the question Jesus ends with, after telling a parable about a cruel judge and a determined, poor, widow. ‘Won’t God do right by those who pray?’ He asks. ‘Yet will He find faith on earth?’

To be persistent about praying for good things is a simple lesson… until things don’t seem to work out. Perhaps all your prayers have always been answered; I have not observed that.

We have our ways of coming to understand this, and sometimes we still wonder about things. About the disasters in our lives and our world that don’t get stopped – by God or by anyone else. I’m going to leave that sermon for another day.

Let me say now: I think our practice of prayer is persistent: I believe in that. ‘Pray without ceasing’ we hear in one New Testament verse. All the activities we call ‘prayer’ are good for us and good for the world. Like eating, breathing, moving, socializing – quality time with God is an important piece of life.

I think prayer is a bit like eating. For almost everyone, eating food comes quite naturally. Doing it well – having a good diet and all – this can be a challenge. So too with this stuff we call praying. Many of us don’t have a well-balanced diet of prayer. Maybe our praying is fatty, or salty, or sugary, or it is all pizza and fast food, or we are just plain malnourished – not getting enough.

There are many ways of praying, as you know. Sometimes I like trying other things, such as walking prayer, silence, pondering nature and scripture, keeping a prayer journal, reading prayers written by other people, and so on.

You could come walk with me this coming Saturday, on a little nature trial near here, out on the marsh. It will be a social event, yes; it will be a nature walk, yes. It will also be a ‘spiritual stroll,’ with a few moments for quiet reflection and observation. Seeking the Creator in creation… together.

‘Spiritual practices,’ or, ‘spiritual disciplines’ have fascinated me for years, now. I have read about Christian meditation, lectio divina, spiritual direction, solitude and silence, fasting and prayer, and a dozen other practices. Have I put them into practice? Not much! Ah, there’s the trouble.

Sometimes I am a cynic. I have this theory that a lot of those people out there who say ‘you’re in my thoughts,’ or ‘I’m sending prayers,’ don’t do much more praying than just saying that. I guess I know how not-so-persistent my own prayer habits are!

So it’s very personal. I am interested in working with lots of you on prayer and spiritual practices… for I need plenty of work myself.

We are in this together. This knowing God thing. Sharing our spiritual practices, practice makes perfect. Sharing our scriptures, we are inspired and influenced. Sharing our personal spirituality, we belong, together, in the family of God.

Let us share What we know.

Let us share Who we know.

 

SILENCE

 

PRAYER     With words and silence, let us   pray:

Giver of the perfect Gift, we give thanks to You – Father, Spirit, Son – for every blessing, for all our lessons and challenges, and for the promises given. Now, in silence, we praise You for these things…

 Praise to You, Spirit of life!

Personal God, as the Trinity You are already a Relationship, a Community, a Belonging. We pray now, asking for help in the lives of many people. Silently, we pray for people we know, and those we’ve been asked to pray for today…

 Have mercy, Great Physician!

Holy Friend, You show Yourself in many ways. Be our Teacher, Guide and Master, we pray. Now, we pray quietly for those who could use guidance and bravery right now…

 Spirit of Truth, lead our lives.

Living Word of God, in Your name, O Christ, we intercede for the world now, where terrible violence flares up in every quarter. Our prayers range from Canada to Turkey, from Thailand to Afghanistan…

 Creator, You’ve got the whole world in Your hands. Now, as we go to share a fellowship meal, and then depart: lighten the darkness, equip Your people, renew the earth. To You be the glory, God who was, God who is with us, God who will be. AMEN.

Sermon: ThanksLiving

 

10:30 am, Sun, Oct 9, 2022 - J G White / FBC Amherst

(Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19)

 

I hope you are feeling great today! Though, your day may not have started wonderfully. I heard there are two ways to awake in the morning. As you open your eyes and stretch, you might say: ‘Good morning, Lord.” Or, you think, “Good Lord, it’s morning!”

A friend of mine, who is no Christian, who is no practitioner of any religion, does have some spiritual disciplines. Like, starting each day by being thankful. He writes in a little book ten things to be grateful for, and does it again the next day. He trained himself to be thankful, and now that he has weathered a year of cancer treatments and is back running ultra marathons, he is more grateful, for more and more things.

I think I could say he is thanks-living. He truly appreciates every single day.

Gratitude has its waves of popularity. Every once in a while, there is a trend to keep a gratitude journal, or at least start each day (or end it) by listing ‘ten things you’re thankful for.’ Or some such activity.

Today’s Gospel story is of the ‘ten lepers’ who were healed by Jesus, once upon a time. It seems to become a lesson in expressing thanks.

11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

 

Leviticus 13 has instructions for people who come down with a disease. They are to be examined by the priests, who can see what they have and what’s to be done. Jewish priest and physician were one in the same, it seems. These ten men knew they were diseased, and ritually unclean. As Leviticus 13 says, 45 “The person who has the defiling disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ 46 He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.

(Keep your finger in Leviticus, we will be in the next chapter in a moment.) Suffice it to say, there is a long tradition in Judaism of how to respond to illnesses. And when you were not well, there were things for you to do, and not to do, all listed in your scriptures. It seemed all closely connected with your spiritual state – your sins and lack of ‘holiness.’

So, when Jesus says to these ten fellows, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” they knew what this might mean. Mighty they be healed? When a cleansing had taken place, there was a whole procedure laid out, in what we call Leviticus chapter 14.

1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “This shall be the rule for the person with a defiling skin disease at the time of his cleansing: “He shall be brought to the priest; 3 the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall make an examination. If the disease is healed in the defiled person, 4 the priest shall command that two living clean birds and cedarwood and crimson yarn and hyssop be brought for the one who is to be cleansed. 5 The priest shall ...then do a whole bunch of ceremonies, involving a series of animal sacrifices, shaving of hair, bathing, anointing with oil, and so forth, over the course of eight days, typical of ancient Judaism.

What would you do to get healed? And to say thanks for how you came through something? Many of you know – you’ve been through it, or someone near and dear to you has. Maybe you are here today, thanks to some blessed help, and even a few miracles.

Anyway, those ten skin-diseased fellows: as they went, they were made clean. Bigger than the gifts of food that we enjoy, are the reasons we have to give thanks that we are alive, still alive, after death and destruction had threatened.

Those big answers to big prayers can bring out our big gratitude. Yet, there will also be thanks in the midst of trouble. As the New Testament tells us, give thanks, whatever happens. (1 Thss 5:18) We still have questions when some things don’t happen.

I read about healing with our staff this week, from the writings of Frederick Beuchner. If your prayer isn’t answered, this may mean more about you and your prayer than it does about God. Don’t try too hard to feel religious, to generate some healing power of your own. Think of yourself rather (if you have to think of yourself at all) as a rather small-gauge, clogged-up pipe that a little of God’s power may be able to filter through if you can just stay loose enough. Tell the one you’re praying for to stay loose too.

If God doesn’t seem to be giving you what you ask, maybe he’s giving you something else.

[Wishful Thinking, 1973, pp. 36-37]

We peeked back into the days of Jeremiah, again. And there, in the time of the exile of the people in the land of those who conquered them, the prophet tells them to live. To settle in for a while, even though they were forcibly taken from their homes and their land. Live, build homes, plant crops, marry off your children. Live, even though this is not what you’d wanted. Underneath: be grateful for what you’ve got, and be a blessing.

A young pastor was visiting in his local nursing home, along with a deacon. A person he visited said they should go see someone else, down the hall. (Spencer Boersma, Feb 13, 2019:) So, she phoned her, and the lady was up for us visiting. As we walked down the hall, I suspected this would be a difficult turn in an otherwise mundane pastoral visit.

We stepped into a room with this middle-aged lady. I tried not to stare. Bedridden, her limbs were terribly, inhumanly swollen. “Come in, don’t be alarmed,” she said with a beaming, bright smile. I was surprised. She was in wonderful spirits.

We inquired what her condition was. She had a rare lymphatic infection, that has left her bedridden, functionally paralyzed. Every day, day in and day out, she had to receive a steady drip of strong antibiotics. But also, steadily, day by day, the infection grew immune to the antibiotics. The very thing that was saving her, was also the very thing slowly killing her. Day by day the inflection slowly but surely was winning.

And yet, to my amazement, I have never met a happier person.

She proceeded to tell me that at the beginning, she was bitter and resentful. She prayed angrily that she would be healed, and of course, while she still does pray for that now, something changed in her disposition.

“What changed?” I asked.

“I realized that Jesus was enough. Everyday, I get to thank God for another day, and I know he is with me. He listens to me and is my friend. That is enough for me.”

She told me that she saw her condition as a calling to be Jesus’ presence here in the nursing home, to the nurses and other patients, who in her mind needed hope and healing more than her.

This person knew the gift of eternal life. She knew the gift of his presence. While she still prayed for healing, that was enough.

Sounds to me that this woman, miraculously, was thanksliving.

But now, let me get to the finale of this healing story from the life of Jesus. Famously, one of the ten says thanks to Jesus. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. So… the moral of the story is: give thanks to Jesus?

Wait a minute. This is the one fellow, of the ten, who did not do what Jesus instructed. Christ said, ‘go to the priest.’ This one fellow did not. But he did the right thing. Jesus asked, “Where are the other nine? 18 Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” He was a Samaritan.

I won’t go into this whole thing at length now, but just remember, that for the Jews, Samaritans were not good. They were foreigners who’d gone astray and had gotten their religion wrong. Don’t even associate with them!

So, this guy had good reason not to go to the Jewish priest: he wasn’t even, technically, Jewish. And coming back to Jesus to praise God, there on the street, was a right thing to do, so it seems.

ThanksLiving: complete, day to day gratitude – when the need arises – is about everything. The spontaneous expressions of thanks, and the ceremonies of the Faith.

There is life in the natural, personal ways we appreciate the gifts we are given. What you do, what I do, when a blessing comes along, is unique. Alongside this are the ways we learn to share our thankfulness. The shared actions that bring us together. A song. A prayer. A gathering. I like both: how we thank on our own and how we can be grateful together.

I hear about cancer patients who share the experience of ringing a bell when they have their final treatment. That celebration is a tiny ritual some of you’ve had, in common with so many others. I know marathon runners who all share the exhausting thrill of running across the finish line. Likewise, our Christianity has shared ceremonies for giving thanks. As well as for saying ‘help us,” or “please guide us now,” or “I’ve got faith!” or “we trust You.”

Thank you, for sharing gratitude today. Just by being together in this room. You’ve brought your blessings to one another here, before the face of Almighty God. And the smiling Face shines upon us again. Keep living: thanksliving.