SCRIPTURE: Matthew 24:36-44
TEXT: 44Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. THEME: The signs of God moves us towards hopeful future. INTRODUCTION When we began to believe in Jesus, there were all kinds of things for us to believe; Jesus rising from the dead, the promise of resurrection, and God loving us so much that God forgives us of our sins as a parent forgives the hurt a child has caused. Then there was more as we came to believe; Jesus was born of a virgin, the God of Creation created the conception in Mary, Jesus is Divine and human at the same time. The signs that fill his life reveals God’s presence among us. Jesus’ ministry and his insightful teachings revealed the heart of God for us to live. Jesus shows us how to live beyond the strict observance of the Law, into a fluidity of a life lead by God’s Spirit. But now, like the people of old, we too wait, for the Messiah to come, as he promises to return from heaven, back to Earth. As we begin this year’s Advent journey to Christmas, we take on the posture of a people, who has their waiting shaped by their relationship with Jesus. SCRIPTURE When we first came to believe the learning, curve was huge. We used the Bible as our guide, referencing our experiences of God with the stories of our spiritual ancestors. We used the Bible, our friends, pastors, and books as guides along our pilgrimage. We took on a few templates as maps, but with new understandings we had to set aside these maps, for more detailed descriptions of where our travels would take us, while discovering more about God as our traveling companion. Advent marks the beginning of the Church’s New Year. The Church marks time with the hope of the coming Lord. This is the setting for our lectionary reading for this First Sunday in Advent, from the end of the Gospel of Matthew looking towards the second coming of Christ. Just like the story of Noah. Of all of the people, in all of the ‘world’, Noah was the only one who had an acknowledgment, an awareness, and a relationship with God. Aware of the creating force of life, living in skillful mastery of all that was around him and in relationship with his family and the ways of God, he was aware of God’s intent that warned him of the flood. As destruction was eminent, God planned to save what was most precious to him; those who lived in fellowship with God, including the animals. This is key to understanding the rest of this passage, Those who were saved, were the ones who were left behind and not swept away. Living in the time of the Roman occupation of Judea, if you were not alert you could be abducted into the Roman army, kidnapped, enslaved, abused, robbed or killed. Those who tended to their tasks and were aware of their surroundings had a better chance at being left behind. Using that template, we can see that the result of vigilance is being aware of what God is doing around us as we prepare and participate in what God is doing. So instead of escaping danger, we are moving towards a hopeful future with God. If we know when the robber is coming then we would be awake at that hour, but because we do not, we lock up our valuables, we lock all of our doors and windows and make sure everyone is tucked in for the night before we go to bed. We have a dog that will sound an alarm with a vicious bark. We can live unaware and let tragedy befall us, or we can live in fear and worry and tragedy could still catch us. How could the people in the day of Noah miss what he was building in his back yard? Or ignore the collection of animals that he was accumulating from around the world? It may be like our ignoring of the signs of climate change or severe weather, or the effects of coal burning industries that deplete the ozone. We are more concern about our comfort today than the destruction of the earth a few generations from now. We, like them, are so caught up in the affairs of our world, that we are unaware of the presence of God, God’s signs around us, or how our selfishness affects others and is destroying our world. APPLICATION Our hope in the coming of Christ, is not to try to escape pain, sorrow, fear, or hardship, but to live with God as our parent, in a community of faith with companions, and to help others along the way with a hope for a better life. In whatever situation we find ourselves in, God is there to help us navigate through it. As we begin this season of waiting for our Messiah to come, we are hoping for something better. It comes with being aware of what God is doing around us. Here is one thing that I see, Iao UCC not having a pastor and WUC being in a unique situation of having resources available to meet a variety of pastoral and worship needs. I am proposing that our churches with the Revs; Wayne Higa, Kealahou Alika, Roxanne Whitelight, Fa’anu Mau, Jack Belsom, and myself get together to talk about how we could coordinate our ministries, ethics, music, to address the Pastoral needs of our Parish. We have addressed the language needs of the past with our separate ministries but now maybe it is time for us to be church in a different way and coordinate our efforts, combine some of our resources, and share our expertise. I am wondering if this is the ark God is beginning to call us to build? People and the skilled mastery of creation are important to God. I am wondering how we could participate in this faith venture with our neighboring churches. CONCLUSION If we are aware of what is going on around us, we can continue to be on a learning curve with what we believe, shaping our theology, and writing our story as the people of God at WUC. The Wailuku Mission Housing project is backlogged in the State Historic Preservation Department. Prayers to help this move forward are needed. The news last week of shootings that targeted the LBGTQ community were disturbing. The dividing lines that used to be drawn as sin are becoming erased, as we bridge those ties with love, understanding, friendship, respect, grace and acceptance. One summer while on vacations, I got to worship in several different churches. Almost all of their architecture looked like upside-down ships. Open beamed arched roofs, that could become the haul of a ship if turned over. Now paired with the story of Noah, maybe the ark was more of a treasure box than a life boat. What was most precious to God was placed in that box: life, relationships, goodness, joy, happiness, fellowship and love. These are the same values that get repeated in Paul’s letters to the church as he encourages Christians to live their relationship with God together as a church and into their daily lives. Our theology is changing from focusing on sin, to affirming the incarnation, that we are good, loved by God and so we too can discover the good in others and be loving. Then maybe people in our neighborhood will see the collection of animals that make up our church and wonder, “What’s God up to now?” As Christ comes to reign, we can be awakened to a hope, to be something new with God.
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SCRIPTURE: Luke 21:5-19
TEXT: 19 By your endurance you will gain your souls. THEME: Our relationship with God can withstand all of the changes around us. INTRODUCTION This year as we went through the lectionary readings for the Gospel of Luke, it became apparent that the people Jesus gather to himself were an expansion of the people of God. They were different in composition from the usual crowd in the temple but were loved by God and believers. Then when we take off the lens of Jesus having to go to Jerusalem to be crucified as a payment for our sins, we can begin to see Jesus’ love for us by expanding the worship of God, to include us. The People of God are more of an eclectic group who have a relationship with God through Jesus. Worship at the temple had become a center of fealty, where pilgrims journeyed to make grand gestures of sacrifice, in an attempt to fulfill an insurmountable debt with God, to gain eternal favor. But Jesus does not draw people to Jerusalem, instead he goes out to where they are, traveling through Samaria, offering the Peace of God to foreigners, cripples, blind, outcasts, sinners and tax collectors. Certainly, if the outreach was extended to these, it meant that all were welcomed at Jesus’ table. But at the Temple, these people were not welcome. They were scrutinized, judged and treated them more like tourist to fleece, than a family member who had returned home. SCRIPTURE King Herod spent 80-year rebuilding and refurbishing the Temple, sparing no expense, with huge sheets of white marble and gold- and silver-plated gates and doors. How beautiful this building must have been? Can you imagine the taxes and slave labor that contributed to its beauty? Today on Stewardship Sunday, can you imagine the tithes and contributions needed to build this sanctuary and keep up its maintenance? Because of staffing shortage, we lost our last cleaners of the church. The new ones will begin next week at about three times the amount of the other. Jesus say that the worship of God is not dependent upon the beauty of the temple. In fact, by the time the gospel of Luke is being written, there is a good chance that this very temple was already destroyed by the Romans. Jesus’ words are describing what is happening in real time. The Disciples don’t ask “How” this will happen; they ask “When”. For us today, like back then, there are great disruptors to our faith. Post pandemic we need to consider “What do we really need to do to be the church?” As well as “What does it mean for us to be a church?” We are experiencing Sustainability Challenges with how we have set ourselves up to be the church. Our buildings and properties can use up a lot of our resources unless we find ways to turn that around and have them bring an income that supports our ministry. Shifting our focus off of the building and on to being the church. “Not one stone will be upon another” freed Judaism to be the people of God instead of care takers of a building. The political setting, we live in is changing, we have some nations spouting off dangerous rhetoric, threats of recapturing former glories, and posturing with armaments. We keep praying for peace, as Russia insists on war against the Ukrainians. “Nation against Nation”. Our national setting is changing. We do not work together across party lines to accomplish what is best for our citizens, instead our parties strategizing about winning and staying in power. This will kill our democracy as we become so inflexible that we will be unable to adjust our ideology to work towards a common good that take into consideration, all sides. Our good intensions will kill us for our own good. We ignore the warning signs of our dependance upon fossil fuels, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and severe weather changes. Our cutting down of rain forests, our land fill mountains of debris and our indestructible plastics prevent the earth from healing itself. Reusing, recycling, and reducing is more time consuming, more expensive, and takes more effort than just getting rid of something, adding it to a landfill and buying something new that we have to dispose of later. Fixing something so we can use it longer, composting in our garden, collecting and taking our recycling to a center, is “Skillful Mastery of God gifts.” It takes effort, money and imagination of how something can be used again in another way, for the good of the planet. Doing this maybe inconvenient to us but can be a life-giving gift to future generations. How we live our lives of faith with God is our testimony, and sometimes we have to use words. Our behavior and how others have experienced us, speaks volumes. Maybe at that point, words won’t make much of a difference if how we live doesn’t. I am uncomfortable with not preparing for a defense to testify, unless it means that we are already living our defense by how we live with love, kindness, forgiveness, grace and generosity. Jesus is not giving us legal advice, and I do cringe a little when a defendant decides to defend themselves thinking that they know more than someone who has a law degree or who has passed the bar exam. But I do believe in trusting in God who is going to help, no matter what situation we find ourselves in. Jesus threatens ideology, what we have, our selfishness, and how we treat others. In its simplest form, supremacy is based in a perceived fear of loss. A fear that someone is going to come and take what I have, my job, my opportunity, my home, my privilege, my life as I know it, my family, my children’s future, my status, and my power. Jesus threatened all of this and is hated for this, and so are we. So here is the flip side. Temple worship, with its system of sacrifice for the payment of sin, helping us to survive our relationship with God with some hope of eternity. But what if that has already been promised to us through God’s love for us. God’s unconditional love for us disrupts the structured temple worship. No sacrifice necessarily makes the temple irrelevant and unnecessary. Jesus is already out with the people calling, healing, forgiving and inviting them to the peace of God and to supper. The Love of God is not to be protected, it is to be lived and so the transition is to move from a religion that helps us to survive in the presence of the Holy, to a faith in God that helps us to thrive in life together. APPLICATION What was the most important part of being the church during the pandemic? It was trying to stay connected. We needed cell phones, we needed the internet, but we didn’t need the sanctuary. It is symbolic. It is nice to see and worship in, it is marvelous to be back in person, but we could worship from my cluttered kitchen to yours on Facebook live. That is what we miss in YouTube, that we can’t check in with comments during a broadcast like we could on Facebook. But we can come to church and meet in person again. We can do this with the people we worship with at home. We can do this with the groups we meet with that are the church even though it is not on Sunday at 9 o’clock. There is a women’s group that meet after church to have church. We have church at Bible Study on Monday. The Women of Faith have church when they meet on Tuesdays. The Food Pantry folk have church on Thursdays when they pick up food and on Saturdays when they distribute food. The choir has church when the practice on Saturday afternoons. Next week we will join the Samoan Congregation at their worship at 11:00. Rev. Ma’o said he will do half of the service in English and the other half in Samoan language. I asked him to throw out an occasional English word to keep us guessing at what he is saying. Then we will potluck lunch together. I’ve also invited Iao UCC and Kaahumanu Church to join us, because we have to begin to do more things together. CONCLUSION I have to admit that I find it hard doing things that are different from our usual. Usual building, usual times, usual style, usual people. But when God begins to do the unusual, I want to be there, with God’s called people, eating at the buffet Jesus provides, sharing with stranger who become brothers and sisters in Christ. Who knows, maybe the unusual will be our new normal. So, remember next week, you have a little bit more time to make your potluck, show up at 11 and feast after worship in Dodge Hall. |
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April 2024
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