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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