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Are We There Yet? - The Rev. Barbara Ballenger
Sermon from the Rev. Barbara Ballenger for the First Sunday of Advent.
Today's readings are:
Jeremiah 33:14-16 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 Luke 21:25-36 Psalm 25:1-9
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Advent/CA...
Let us pray.
In our family, we are the relatives that travel home. We have always tended to live several hours away from the family core, and so rather than being the ones that host Thanksgiving or Christmas, we're the ones that drive - in our case to all the way to Northeastern Ohio. Now, when we lived in Rochester, New York, we made the arduous trek through Erie, PA every December - for which we should get a special family medal. When we lived in Baltimore MD, the six hour trip home could sometimes become 12 hours because of the curse of The Pennsylvania Turnpike.
And as any of you know when you are traveling with young children on such journeys that are long and boring year after year you search for those signs that will help them to know that the journey is nearly over.
Are we there yet?
"No, but look, it's the Sapp Brothers Coffee Pot. That means we're near Clearfield, we only have an hour to go." And there it would be rising up out of the mountains of Central Pennsylvania , as a sign that we were almost done with that trip home from Cleveland back to State College where we lived at the time. Now apparently that coffee pot is a landmark from Omaha to Pennsylvania and it will lead you if you follow it to a truck stop. I appreciated it more as a sign that better coffee lay ahead if we were only patient. Regardless, it was a sign of hope on a long car trip home.
Signs are essential to the upkeep of hope - especially in the long journey that we're on with God. That's because a big part of the life of faith is waiting - waiting for delivery from exile, waiting for an end to oppression and injustice, waiting for the Messiah to arrive, the Kingdom to Come, waiting for Christ to return. Today's Scriptures are a good example - they acknowledge that longing of God's people.
"The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah," promises Jeremiah.
"Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith," writes Paul to the dear community of the Thessalonians; the first community he founded.
"Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near," Luke's Gospel quotes Jesus as saying, after he enumerates the various things that will happen before God's glory is fully revealed.
Advent is a season that relishes waiting - waiting for a coming Christmas that we know has already arrived. Waiting for a second coming of which we know not the time or the place.
To help us through, God sends signs that acknowledge our longing. Burning Bushes and 12 plagues. Oil that does not run out. Transfigurations. The Scriptures also offer us prophetic performances and veiled apocalyptic imagery like we have in today's Gospel. And people of faith are notorious for misreading them. God's signs are characteristically inexplicit in their timing, and when made into predictions, they invariably let us down.
There is an art to reading God's signs.
Now, when my husband Jess and I met in college and began to spend lots of time together, we often found ourselves looking for someplace to eat. We'd leave a class wondering which of the half dozen dining establishments in Kent, Ohio, would we choose that day. Let's follow the signs, Jess would say. A fallen branch on the sidewalk would suggest we go left. A crumpled piece of notebook paper sent us forward. A shadow pointing a certain way would steer us in another direction. Inevitably we'd end up at Wendy's.
I would not say that this was God's will. Divine signs don't work like that. Now the Apostle Paul, on the other hand, was very good at reading God's signs. I think he saw them everywhere, especially in the communities of faith that he helped to found. Listen to his delight in the Thessalonian community that he is separated from and longing for:
"How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?" he writes to them.
They are the sign that Paul turns to in order to endure the long slog of his work as an apostle. They give him hope as the Body of Christ in action in real time. The Thessalonians are not perfect - he knows that their faith is lacking in places. But that doesn't limit his joy. They are enough for him, because they speak to the presence of Christ among the faithful, even as they await Jesus' coming in glory.
Here is the true power of God's signs; of Christ's promises. They answer some of our most persistent questions, though not the one we usually find ourselves asking. More often than not, we cry out with the psalmist, "How long O Lord?" And we think what we want is a day and a time. But the questions that God answers are: Are you still with us, Lord? Will everything be OK? And to those questions God answers: "stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." The Kingdom of God is at hand. Redemption is drawing near. God is with us. This is what God's signs reveal as we journey from the now of God's will to the not yet of God's promises.
Because God knows that it hardly helps us to know how much time it will be exactly before our longing ends, when it's the present moment that feels like an eternity and seems so hard to endure. Often when things are very near their completion, time seems to slow down and stand still. I remember this from when I was in labor with my kids, and in that last week before they were born, everything just stopped and the inevitable seemed like it was never going to happen. Waiting for news - good or bad - can feel like this. Keeping vigil at a death can feel like this.
And then in an instant everything changes, and the end begins.
So we can't really trust our sense of time, and the impatience we find ourselves in because of it, but we can acknowledge our longing for the fullness of God's love to be revealed, for the return of Christ in glory, for the new world coming. And at the same time, we can relish the evidence of it along the way.
And very often it is not in the earthquakes or the roaring of the seas that God's presence is signified, as much as it's in communities of faith, like Paul's dear Thessalonians or our faith community here. God's signs abound here. Quotidian maybe, but astonishing to me all the same - the compassionate listening, the waiting by the bedside, the checking in on one another, the sharing at morning prayer, the ability to forgive or to try something new. These too are God's signs. They answer the questions: Are you still with us, Lord? Will everything be OK?
And in these signs God answers:" I am here. I am with you. And all will be well." Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
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By St. Martin-in-the-FieldsSermon from the Rev. Barbara Ballenger for the First Sunday of Advent.
Today's readings are:
Jeremiah 33:14-16 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 Luke 21:25-36 Psalm 25:1-9
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Advent/CA...
Let us pray.
In our family, we are the relatives that travel home. We have always tended to live several hours away from the family core, and so rather than being the ones that host Thanksgiving or Christmas, we're the ones that drive - in our case to all the way to Northeastern Ohio. Now, when we lived in Rochester, New York, we made the arduous trek through Erie, PA every December - for which we should get a special family medal. When we lived in Baltimore MD, the six hour trip home could sometimes become 12 hours because of the curse of The Pennsylvania Turnpike.
And as any of you know when you are traveling with young children on such journeys that are long and boring year after year you search for those signs that will help them to know that the journey is nearly over.
Are we there yet?
"No, but look, it's the Sapp Brothers Coffee Pot. That means we're near Clearfield, we only have an hour to go." And there it would be rising up out of the mountains of Central Pennsylvania , as a sign that we were almost done with that trip home from Cleveland back to State College where we lived at the time. Now apparently that coffee pot is a landmark from Omaha to Pennsylvania and it will lead you if you follow it to a truck stop. I appreciated it more as a sign that better coffee lay ahead if we were only patient. Regardless, it was a sign of hope on a long car trip home.
Signs are essential to the upkeep of hope - especially in the long journey that we're on with God. That's because a big part of the life of faith is waiting - waiting for delivery from exile, waiting for an end to oppression and injustice, waiting for the Messiah to arrive, the Kingdom to Come, waiting for Christ to return. Today's Scriptures are a good example - they acknowledge that longing of God's people.
"The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah," promises Jeremiah.
"Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith," writes Paul to the dear community of the Thessalonians; the first community he founded.
"Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near," Luke's Gospel quotes Jesus as saying, after he enumerates the various things that will happen before God's glory is fully revealed.
Advent is a season that relishes waiting - waiting for a coming Christmas that we know has already arrived. Waiting for a second coming of which we know not the time or the place.
To help us through, God sends signs that acknowledge our longing. Burning Bushes and 12 plagues. Oil that does not run out. Transfigurations. The Scriptures also offer us prophetic performances and veiled apocalyptic imagery like we have in today's Gospel. And people of faith are notorious for misreading them. God's signs are characteristically inexplicit in their timing, and when made into predictions, they invariably let us down.
There is an art to reading God's signs.
Now, when my husband Jess and I met in college and began to spend lots of time together, we often found ourselves looking for someplace to eat. We'd leave a class wondering which of the half dozen dining establishments in Kent, Ohio, would we choose that day. Let's follow the signs, Jess would say. A fallen branch on the sidewalk would suggest we go left. A crumpled piece of notebook paper sent us forward. A shadow pointing a certain way would steer us in another direction. Inevitably we'd end up at Wendy's.
I would not say that this was God's will. Divine signs don't work like that. Now the Apostle Paul, on the other hand, was very good at reading God's signs. I think he saw them everywhere, especially in the communities of faith that he helped to found. Listen to his delight in the Thessalonian community that he is separated from and longing for:
"How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?" he writes to them.
They are the sign that Paul turns to in order to endure the long slog of his work as an apostle. They give him hope as the Body of Christ in action in real time. The Thessalonians are not perfect - he knows that their faith is lacking in places. But that doesn't limit his joy. They are enough for him, because they speak to the presence of Christ among the faithful, even as they await Jesus' coming in glory.
Here is the true power of God's signs; of Christ's promises. They answer some of our most persistent questions, though not the one we usually find ourselves asking. More often than not, we cry out with the psalmist, "How long O Lord?" And we think what we want is a day and a time. But the questions that God answers are: Are you still with us, Lord? Will everything be OK? And to those questions God answers: "stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." The Kingdom of God is at hand. Redemption is drawing near. God is with us. This is what God's signs reveal as we journey from the now of God's will to the not yet of God's promises.
Because God knows that it hardly helps us to know how much time it will be exactly before our longing ends, when it's the present moment that feels like an eternity and seems so hard to endure. Often when things are very near their completion, time seems to slow down and stand still. I remember this from when I was in labor with my kids, and in that last week before they were born, everything just stopped and the inevitable seemed like it was never going to happen. Waiting for news - good or bad - can feel like this. Keeping vigil at a death can feel like this.
And then in an instant everything changes, and the end begins.
So we can't really trust our sense of time, and the impatience we find ourselves in because of it, but we can acknowledge our longing for the fullness of God's love to be revealed, for the return of Christ in glory, for the new world coming. And at the same time, we can relish the evidence of it along the way.
And very often it is not in the earthquakes or the roaring of the seas that God's presence is signified, as much as it's in communities of faith, like Paul's dear Thessalonians or our faith community here. God's signs abound here. Quotidian maybe, but astonishing to me all the same - the compassionate listening, the waiting by the bedside, the checking in on one another, the sharing at morning prayer, the ability to forgive or to try something new. These too are God's signs. They answer the questions: Are you still with us, Lord? Will everything be OK?
And in these signs God answers:" I am here. I am with you. And all will be well." Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org