Sermon, "In Whom We Live, and Move, and Exist," Acts 17:22-28

Sermon 9/27/2026 

Acts 17:22-28

In Whom We Live, and Move, and Exist

I’ll admit to you that I’ve struggled with this sermon (and I understand that maybe at least one other preacher in this series struggled too!). When it comes to thinking about the Bible and thinking about creation, our relationship to God and the earth and the mutual flourishing of all that is - ourselves and all earth-others - there are a lot of texts that come to mind. Of course, there are the creation stories of Genesis themselves. There are writings from the prophets that speak to a vision of God’s people in harmony with the lands they inhabit, peace between people and the earth as a sign of a people living in right relationship with God. And there are Jesus’s teachings that are so rich in imagery related to a deep relationship with the land, and Jesus speaking of himself in metaphors grounded in the world around us - vines and sheep and bread and water. And out of so many potential images, this season of creation mini-lectionary chooses this strange text from Acts 17, an excerpt from one of Paul’s many sermons during his missionary travels. And I’ve been - baffled. It’s just not the first scripture - or the tenth scripture - that comes to my mind when I’m thinking about caring for creation. 

So, it’s been a challenge. But challenges can be good, asking us to step outside our normal ways of reading a text, paying attention to it in different ways, bringing a different pair of lenses through which we’ll read together. What happens, then, when we read this text through a green lens, on the lookout for a message about creation? 

Let’s look at the text. Our text finds the apostle Paul on one of his many journeys to spread the message of Jesus and plant communities of Jesus-followers everywhere he goes. Paul has co-workers in his ministry, and in particular in this part of Acts he is working with Silas and Timothy. Silas and Timothy are busy in other communities, though, and Paul is waiting for them in Athens. In Athens, he sees that the city is full of idols - that is, there are many statues in Athens of Greek gods and goddesses, dedicated to deities that directly conflict with Paul’s understanding that there is only One God.

Paul debates anyone and everyone he can. He debates the Jewish leaders and other devout Jews he finds in the synagogue in Athens. He debates the Greek philosophers - both Epicureans - who focused on the pursuit of happiness as the most important thing - and the Stoics - who focused on rational acceptance of everything outside of our control. And intriguingly, while Paul is upset about idols, the Athenians see Paul as the one talking about strange gods. They take him to the Areopagus - a place that was often used to examine people, hold councils, and conduct trials. They say: “tell us about this new teaching that you’re going on about.”

Paul’s response is where our reading begins. Although the idols to other gods distress Paul, he’s savvy. Instead of criticizing the Athenians, he says that he sees that they are very spiritual people, something he can see by their frequent monuments to the gods. In particular, he mentions one with the inscription: “To an unknown god.” In this inscription, Paul sees an opening. This god they don’t know, can’t describe or name? That’s God with a capital G - the God of all Creation. The One God. 

This God has created the earth and everything and everyone in it. This God can’t be contained in anything made by human hands. This God is the one who breathes the breath of life into all people. This God is the one who sets human hearts on a quest to find God, find meaning, even though, Paul says, God is never really far from them. Quoting Athenian philosophy, Paul says that this God is the one in whom we live, and move, and exist.” We, Paul says, are God’s offspring, God’s children. Offspring, children, Paul implies, can’t come from gods made of silver and gold. They can only come from the living God.  

When Paul goes on to talk about resurrection from the dead, after the end of our reading, he loses his crowd a bit. Some of them aren’t so taken with his sermon. But some - some of them want to hear more, and some of them become followers of Jesus. 

Looking through our green lenses, looking for messages about our relationship to God, each other, the earth, and its creatures, I’m struck by how it is that Paul describes God to the Athenians. Many times when Paul is preaching, he is recorded, unsurprisingly, as focusing on the person of Jesus and the work of Jesus in reconciling people to God. But Paul spends a lot of time in this sermon on the very nature of God. And what he says is: God created everything. God is not confined to shrines made by human hands. All the people of the earth are a single people, and we come from a common source even if we live across boundaries of geography. And even while we’re searching for God, God is always close to us - and that’s because we’re already in God - we exist in God. 

***

Have you ever heard someone say before (and maybe sometimes say it a bit defensively, when asked why they don’t go to church, despite proclaiming a belief in God, or a Christian identity) that they “really feel God more when they’re out in nature”? Maybe you’ve even said this, or thought this yourself. I certainly have. Many - although not all certainly - of my deepest experiences of God as a young person were “in nature” at Camp Aldersgate. I can still recall being at Aldersgate for a winter retreat with my youth group, and sitting next to the frozen, snow-covered lake, and feeling the silence like it was a tangible thing, and just feeling an overwhelming sense of God’s presence. So, when people say, “I feel God more when I’m in nature,” I get it. I do. 

But I also, I will confess, roll my eyes sometimes when people say this. I roll my eyes because sometimes I’m suspicious that the person saying this just doesn’t want the bother of coming to a worship service, the discipline of it. I roll my eyes because I’m suspicious not because I question encountering God in nature, but because I want to know if that encounter with God has changed anything. What do you do with your one-on-one encounter with God?  

Here’s another thing I hear folks say sometimes, a thing I’m sure I’ve also said myself. “That’s between me and God.” It’s something people say when there’s a part of their pain, part of their struggle, part of the sometimes one-step-forward-two-steps-back nature of our journeys of faith that they’re not ready to share with anyone else, not ready to bring out of the shadows. It’s “Just between me and God.” 

But I would argue - I would argue with myself - that God’s intention is always to have something between us and God: our neighbors. Jesus teaches that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our hearts, minds, soul, and strength, and the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. Loving our neighbors is like loving God. We can’t fully love God unless we love one another. We can’t be in a relationship with God that’s vibrant and growing unless we’re also working on our relationships with each other. We’re in this together. We’re accountable to each other, to challenge each other, help each other grow in faith, and lift each other up. 

All this to say, sometimes when people talk about finding God in nature, I think: That’s great. But where’s your neighbor? Our faith is not meant to be solitary. We live within the communion of saints, in Christian community. We are not isolated in our private relationship with God. To have a relationship with God, we’re accountable to other people. 

*** 

I hold these sentiments, though, next to Paul’s words from our text today. “The God who made the world and everything in it … does not live in temples made with human hands.” Although we often refer to our sacred and beloved spaces of worship as “God’s house,” Paul is reminding us that the inside of church buildings is not God’s permanent address. God is here. But God doesn’t live here, at least not only here, or even especially here. 

Increasingly, I think, the people of earth are “inside” people. And I mean this both literally and figuratively. We’re inside people because we’ve made the outside uninhabitable. I think, sometimes, about air conditioning. Although in the summer we may dream of the day when this particular space is air conditioned(!), many of you of a certain age probably reflect back on your younger years and think, “We didn’t need to have air conditioning when I was a kid.” I mean, we certainly never had such a thing in our house when I was growing up. And we mostly didn’t need it. But the earth is changing, thanks to our careless attention. Some people die when they don’t have air conditioned spaces to live in. And so, while the planet heats and heats, we retreat inside, where we can condition the air, manufacture it into a livable climate. We’ve had to become inside people. 

Sometimes we also become inside people by turning our hearts, our attention, our love inward. Sure, we’re learned that it isn’t just between us and God, so we include a close-knit community in our circle of attention. But then instead of “just between me and God,” it is “just between this small set of people and God.” Despite our intentions, most of us - and I am always including myself here - spend most of our time - especially most of our non-working time, with people who are basically like us. We’re inside people - we tend to turn inwards, to our own interests, to the communities of people we consider like us. 

***

The God Paul describes to the Athenians is radically different. This God is not an inside God. This God, who made the world and everything in is not contained to the spaces where we sometimes insist on looking for God. And this God who gives life and breath to all creatures  is not contained in one kind of people, in one community, in one tradition. Instead, as Paul reminds us, we all come from the same source. We are one people, despite any boundaries we erect between us. And this God, whom we seek and search out is not far. In fact, we carry God’s breath within us. Not only is God in the air that we breathe, but God is the air we breathe. Our breath is God’s breath. God’s hand has touched every life that we see. 

What all that means is that we are radically interdependent. Our independence is an illusion. We’re entangled, and we cannot be unraveled from one another anymore than we can unravel ourselves from God, thanks be to God. And our interdependence, our entanglement includes the whole web of creation. We are bound up with each earth-other - humans, animals, the trees and plants who breathe out what we breathe in, the soil that cultivates the nutrients, the biodiversity that allows things to grow, the living water upon which our existence depends. Not only is it not just between me and God, not only is it not just between me and my selected set of neighbors - it also isn’t just between me and the rest of humanity. Bound up in our ability to draw close to God is nothing more and nothing less than the whole of creation. In God, we, and all the earth with us, live, and move, and exist. What would it mean if we reoriented our lives to that radical truth? 

As we spend our lives seeking after God, reaching out for God, longing for God, here is the good news: God is not far from us. God is within us. And within our neighbors. And within those we have forgotten are neighbors. And within every being and every thing created. May we have the vision to see the delicate web of creation in which we are entangled, every strand a gift from God. Amen.  

Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, "Good Trouble," Exodus 1:8-20 (Proper 16, Ordinary 21)

Sermon 8/23/2026 

Exodus 1:8-20

Good Trouble

8 Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13 The Egyptians subjected the Israelites to hard servitude 14 and made their lives bitter with hard servitude in mortar and bricks and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. 18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this and allowed the boys to live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20 So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very strong.

The book of Exodus quickly brings us to troubling words, just a few verses in to the very first chapter. “Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” Someone doesn’t remember the nation’s history, and it immediately sets the stage for oppression and mistreatment. That’s an unfortunately familiar story, and it is one that is as ancient as the Bible. The “Joseph” this text speaks about is the “Joseph” of coat-of-many-colors fame, whose story we find in the last several chapters of the book of Genesis. He was a favorite child of his father, Jacob, and his jealous brothers had him sold into enslavement and faked his death. But Joseph was smart and clever, and he had a gift for interpreting dreams - well, the dreams of others. He wasn’t so good at understanding his own dreams. His gift led him to become a major asset to the Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, as Joseph helped Egypt, and his brothers and the emerging Hebrew people along with them, avoid starvation during a years-long famine. Joseph was a hero to the Egyptians and to the Hebrews. 

And so when we hear that a new leader in Egypt doesn’t remember any of this history, we know that there will be consequences, and we see that very quickly in our reading for today. The new king observes that over the years, the Hebrews who moved to Egypt were growing in number. And he thinks ahead, calculating, and fearing the day when there will be more Hebrews than Egyptians. When this happens, worries the Pharaoh, surely the Hebrews will join with the Egyptians’ enemies to overthrow them and take the land for themselves. If this sounds to you like the Great Replacement Theory, an ideology of the ultra-far right that suggests that immigrants and minorities are intentionally trying to replace and eliminate white people in Europe and the US, you’re right. It is basically the same fear the Pharaoh expresses, millennia earlier, fueled by the same fear of the “other.” 

So, even though we hear of no such colluding on the part of the Hebrews to work to overthrow the Egyptians, the king decides to enslave all of the Hebrews into forced labor, making the lives of the Hebrews bitter and hard. Yet, this does nothing to reduce the burgeoning population of Hebrews. So the Pharaoh goes a step further. He orders Shiphrah and Puah - two Egyptian women who act as midwives to Hebrew mothers - he orders them to kill any baby boys who are born.

Shiphrah and Puah, though, do not comply, do not follow orders. Exodus tells us that they “feared God,” a description for non-Jewish people who respect or connect with the God os Judaism - they are words that are an expression of a person’s faith. And they let the boys live. When Pharaoh confronts them, they lie. They tell him that the Hebrew women simply give birth too quickly, already giving birth before the midwives arrive. Their actions save lives. Indeed, after this passage we see that a baby boy, allowed to live, and eventually adopted by Pharaoh’s own daughter, is Moses - the very child who will become the leader who leads his people to freedom.  

The Pharaoh says that he’s trying to be shrewd - showing cleverness, practical smarts. But he’s really just cruel. It’s Shiphrah and Puah who are shrewd. They know what the Pharaoh is doing is cruel and wrong. And maybe they don’t feel they have the power to speak up and risk a direct confrontation with him. But instead, they assess the power that they do have, and they use their situation to the best of their ability. They don’t see themselves as helpless. They’re aware of how they can wield their positions, and they do it. They take a risk. And maybe because they’re women, or they’re working with enslaved people, or other reasons - no one double checks what they’re doing. They’re discounted. And they change everything because of their daring. 

It can be scary, trying to resist oppression and injustice. Unfortunately, those who seek to oppress and belittle often have incredible resources of money and position on their side. It can feel like pushing back, resisting, is nearly impossible. And yet, our history, too quickly forgotten, gives us stories like Shiphrah and Puah’s, and more recent stories too. When I was reading over the text this week, what came to mind was the phrase “good trouble.” You might know a little of this history: Civil rights leader and longtime congressman from Georgia, the late John Lewis was the chair of the student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, during the 1960s. Lewis is remembered for a life of activism, often putting himself directly in the way of danger. In 1965, for example, Lewis and others marched from Selma, Alabama and attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, protesting against the police brutality against civil rights protesters. As Lewis and others tried to cross the bridge, state troopers attacked the marchers, leaving several, like Lewis, bloodied and beaten, an event eventually known as Bloody Sunday. 

Reflecting on his life’s work across various occasions, Lewis focused on the phrase, “Good Trouble.” At a commencement speech in 2014 at Emory University, he told graduates, ““You must find a way to get in the way. You must find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble. Use your education . . . use what you have, use your learning, use your tools, to help make our country and make our world a better place where no one will be left out or left behind. You can do it and you must do it. It is your time.” Just months before his death, at a commemoration of the Bloody Sunday events, he said, “I want to see young people in America feel the spirit of the 1960s and find a way to get in the way. To find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble, necessary trouble and redeem the soul of America.” 

These words really resonate with me: “Use your education . . . use what you have, use your learning, use your tools, to help make our country and make our world a better place where no one will be left out or left behind. You can do it and you must do it. It is your time.” Maybe we’re not like Moses, who took on the Pharaoh directly and led a whole people to freedom - although Moses also didn’t think he was Moses - didn’t think he could do what he did! - but we can all make good trouble in the face of injustice, even if we operate like Shiphrah and Puah. They knew what they did have the power to do, they used what they had, rather than dwelling on what was out of their control. They took action. And they saved lives. 

What can we do? Very recently, an issue came to my attention where I could see the opportunity for justice and reconciliation to take place, for reparations for past harm to come to fruition. I don’t mean to be vague, it’s only that the situation is still unfolding. What’s more important than the specifics today is how I responded, and how I wanted to respond. In this situation, where I saw what might be done to bring about justice, my impulse, my first action, was to tell my idea to some other people because I hoped they would do something about it. I wanted to hand it off, the concern I had, and let some others do the hard work. And they did give me advice, but they put the ball firmly back in my court. I’m trying hard not to make excuses for myself to not follow through, to convince myself I can’t make a difference before I’ve even begun to really try. I’m trying to remember the gifts and abilities and experience I have at my disposal to act for justice. I hope I can be brave and persistent, and make some good trouble. 

What good trouble can you stir up? Friends, in a world that seems doomed to ever forget its own history, oppression and injustice bubble up in new and insidious ways. Part of Christian witness is calling each other into remembrance - when we read the scriptures, when we sing the songs of faith, when we remember God’s acts of grace as we share in sacraments together. Remembering our history is part of our witness. And then, inspired by the stories of the good troublemakers, the saints of God who have gone before us, using whatever gifts God had given them, we go forth to join the struggle. Will we take all that we have, all that God has given us, and use it for some good trouble? Let us say yes, with God’s help, we will.

Amen.   

Sermon for the Feast of the Annunciation, "Between the Question and the Answer," Luke 1:26-38

I've been meaning to post this sermon for several months now!

Sermon 3/24/26

Luke 1:26-38

Between the Question and the Answer

I’ve been a United Methodist my whole life, and so I can’t say that I have ever celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation before, which is technically tomorrow, March 25th. The small Methodist community of my childhood, ever mindful of doing anything that seemed “too Catholic,” would definitely have been suspicious of a Feast Day focusing on Mary, mother of Jesus. As I was looking at the lectionary readings for this week, though, I noticed the readings for the Feast of the Annunciation tucked in there, and I just couldn’t pass them over. And then when WoMA focused on Mary’s Magnificat for part of their chapel last Tuesday it felt even more “right,” this tugging toward Mary’s story. 

The Feast of the Annunciation is the day that we remember the Angel Gabriel visiting Mary with the news that Mary has been chosen to carry and give birth to God-in-the-flesh, a child who will be named Jesus. In the Roman Rite, the Feast of the Annunciation is a solemnity, a holy day that celebrates a mystery of faith. And indeed, the incarnation of Jesus, and Mary being filled with the Holy Spirit as means of the incarnation - that is full of mystery, isn’t it? The Feast of the Annunciation is celebrated, sensibly, nine months before Christmas - the length of a pregnancy. And so it falls, always, during Lent - only adjusted if it actually falls during Holy Week itself. Today, then, we celebrate the Annunciation - the beginning of the beginning of Jesus’s life - even as next week we will remember his crucifixion. The juxtaposition is a little jarring. 

I, like many of you, am preparing to graduate from Drew this May, but also like many of you, I am not quite there yet. I have a dissertation that’s written, but not yet defended, and a graduation fee that’s been paid for months, but no diploma in my hand. But even though I am not yet finished, and there is no guarantee yet of finishing, I’m planning for, I must plan for, and imagine the future, working on the assumption that there is a “what’s next” after this. I know some of you are in similar situations - making plans for a future that isn’t yet guaranteed, not quite. To draw on President Obama’s language, it is the audacity of hope. 

And I think that’s what celebrating the Annunciation during Lent is like. It’s this audacious, bold hope that is planning on new life that comes after heartache. In the sombre wilderness of Lent, we’re already hearing about the incarnation of God in our midst that is to come. It’s Dean Tanya’s family preparing for new life in their midst even as they are mourning her death. It’s people living under fascist and authoritarian rule planning for a future that’s dependent on the end of oppressive regimes. It’s building for a future that trusts that the present heartache is not endless, not the only thing, and not the last thing. And so, Annunciation. An announcement of good news. This incredible, miraculous, seemingly impossible hope for the future that shows up right in the thick of Lent.    

So, what exactly happens in this annunciation text, an account we find only in Luke’s gospel? God sends the angel Gabriel to deliver a message to Mary, a young women - a virgin, we’re told, who was engaged to a man named Joseph, who was of David’s house, and who was living in Galilee, in Nazareth. Gabriel shows up and says, “Greetings, Mary, favored one” - which literally means one to whom grace has been shown. “God is with you,” Gabriel says. This greeting alone is confounding to Mary, and she ponders the angel's words - which here means that she has a kind of internal debate about them, weighing and measuring these words. Although it would make for some nice symmetry, the word used here is not the same as when Mary is pondering everything that happens with Jesus’s birth in Chapter 2. This pondering is a bit more deliberative, perhaps even more skeptical, or at least uncertain. 

Gabriel, perhaps reading that uncertainty, tries to assure Mary: “Don’t be afraid.” He reiterates that Mary has found favor with God - God’s grace is with her. And then the Big Thing: “You will conceive and bear a son named Jesus, and he will be the Son of God, who will have an eternal claim to the throne of David, and he’ll reign endlessly. 

Mary asks, “How can this be, since I have never had sex?” 

Gabriel responds that the Holy Spirit will come upon her, and she will be “overshadowed” by the power of the Most High - language that we see again during the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop. Mary’s child will be holy. Mary’s child will be God’s son. And, in case that’s not enough, Mary’s relative Elizabeth, an older woman, who was thought to be unable to have children, is pregnant too. Because, as Gabriel concludes, “nothing will be impossible with God.” 

And then Mary says, “Here I am, a slave of God,” language that Mary returns to in Magnificat, when she envisions the systems of domination-upending that God will do through her. “Let things happen to me just as you’ve said.” And Gabriel, satisfied, departs. 

I don’t know about you, but my initial reaction to this text is that I’d have had a few (hundred) more questions than Mary seems to have. She asks one question, which Gabriel answers in weird language. And that’s enough for Mary to respond, “Yes, fine, that works for me.” Uh, what? How about: Why me? How about: What will I tell Joseph? How about: How much trouble will this get me in? How about: What do you mean, God’s child? How about: Will you protect me if I agree to this? How about: so many other questions! 

I’d like to believe that we’re seeing here what we often see in Biblical accounts of conversations. The scriptures have a different sense of time than we do. This conversation seems to take mere seconds as we read it through. But maybe this exchange happens over the course of hours, or days. Maybe Mary’s pondering lasted for some long time, giving her ample time to think it all over. And maybe we’re not seeing here what we regularly don’t see in Biblical conversations: the whole story. So many conversations in the scriptures seem to drop off without resolution, like how on TV shows people never seem to end conversations when they’re on the phone. They don’t say goodbye. They just hang up. So I’d like to believe that Mary really asks every question she has, but that Luke considers all of this uninteresting. All that matters to Luke is that Mary agrees with the plan. 

And no doubt, that’s an important detail. But there are some other parts of this exchange between Gabriel and Mary that interest me too. What I find most interesting is this: Although we don’t hear Gabriel pose God’s plan as a question to Mary - “Would you be ok, Mary, with being overshadowed by the Most High?” - she seems to receive it as one. Mary says “Yes,” and her yes, her consent, implies her understanding that she was being asked, even if everything we read in this story is expressed as a statement of what will assuredly be according to God’s plan. 

Mary says yes - and her yes implies that she could also have said no. And that is so, so important. Because I don’t believe that “God’s will” is something that is supposed to be visited upon us by force, without our consent, without our participation. Rather, I think we do better when we think of “will of God” as God’s dreams, God’s best hope, God’s most creative, inspired plan for what might be, what might become, what might be called forth if we, God’s partners, God’s co-creators, you and me - if we say yes to God’s imagination. I like all of those images better than “God’s will,” which makes God a dictator, and us passive recipients. Mary did not hear Gabriel’s announcement passively. Indeed, many biblical figures do not. Jesus does not. Mary listens, ponders, and decides that she can see God’s vision, can see that saying yes will lead to the liberative work she proclaims just verses after our text in the Magnificat. 

Mary could have said no, I think. And thinking about that made me wonder - maybe there were others who were visited by Gabriel who did say no. Maybe Mary was not the first. Maybe she was just the first to say yes.  

We do not have to say yes to the potential futures God lays before us. God’s will - if we must call it that - isn’t coercive. We can say, “I just can’t imagine that future right now, I’m sorry.” And I think that’s ok - truly. I don’t think God punishes us for not being ready, for not embracing God’s dream. Sometimes, we are not ready. Sometimes, we have a different vision to offer to God. Sometimes, we need to do some more healing, or more growing first. Sometimes, we need to ask a lot of questions before we’ll be ready to say yes. And sometimes, we just can’t grasp, yet, the new life that’s coming beyond the Good Friday that looms large before us. We can say “Take this cup from me.” We can say no. Or not now. 

But I do think we miss out, then, on being part of the impossible becoming possible. Saying “yes” is like imagining, even in the midst of our worst grief, that there will yet be joy. 

Somehow, Mary could imagine exactly what God was imagining, and ever is imagining: the humbled exalted and the exalted humbled, the hungry filled with good things. Liberation. Justice. Life. She could imagine with God, and so she answered what she knew to be an invitation. “Here I am. May it be so.” 

In these days of Lent, in these quickly waning days of another semester, in these days where we can barely stand to look at the news, in these days when our community is in mourning, in these days when it seems that less and less is possible for our planetary future, in these days when it sometimes feels as if evil will prevail… in these days, can you imagine - will you imagine - will you cultivate your imagination - will you listen to what God is imagining - what comes after this grief? 

Amen.

Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, Year C, "Raise Your Heads," Luke 21:25-36

Sermon 12/1/2024

Luke 21:25-36

Raise Your Heads

Last Sunday, I was guest preaching at a church in New Jersey, and my text was one of the classic lectionary texts for Thanksgiving Sunday - the text from Matthew’s gospel, from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount where he talks about how we should not worry, but instead strive after bringing about the reign of God on earth here and now, trusting in God’s love and care for us, trusting in how deeply God treasures and values us. It’s a bit jarring, then, to switch from that to this text for the first Sunday in Advent. The same Jesus who tells us not to worry also tells us that the sun and moon and stars will be giving us signs that cause distress on earth and the roaring of the seas. He talks about people fainting from their fear and anxiety about what is going to happen. He talks about how we should “be on guard” so that we’re not caught unaware when Christ returns, as if we’ve been snared in a trap. Instead, we have to “be alert at all times” so that we have strength to escape all the terrors foretold, ready to stand confidently before Christ. Oof. Hearing his words in this week’s text, it’s harder to hold on to Jesus’s “do not worry,” when in fact, it seems we very much should be anxious. 

And it indeed, it is hard not to be anxious, isn’t it? I’ve had this image stuck in my head: When I drive to Syracuse, where my Mom lives, from New Jersey, where I study and teach, I drive through the Poconos Mountain region. It’s the place where I first glimpse the colors of falls - the foliage in the region is stunning. And it’s also the region where I’m mostly likely to hit snowy weather in winter. With the increase in elevation, it’s usually significantly colder in the area. My trip this week was no different - it wasn’t snowing, but there was snow on the ground, something we still haven’t seen yet in New Jersey this season. And I noticed another thing - there were so many trees that were bent over, practically leaning into the road. I’m not sure what happened - but they looked like they’d been bowed by a heavy weight - a big snowfall? Ice storm? I’m not sure. But there were dozens of trees along my drive that looked like they might never stand tall again. And there was just something about that image that caught my attention: how weighed down those trees seemed. The load they had been asked to hold was too much, and they looked drooping and defeated. 

And I couldn’t help but resonate with them a bit! Maybe you can too. There’s a lot that can be weighing us down as we look at the world around us. I’ve been weighed down by the election cycle and its results and potential consequences, especially for some of the most vulnerable people in my life. There are wars and violent, devastating, indiscriminate loss of life that fill our news everyday and leave us feeling helpless. Perhaps we enjoy less snow to shovel, but we can’t help but have climate change niggling at the back of our mind, reminding us of the price we pay. People have been struggling financially, and the gap between rich and poor is ever growing, both in the US and globally. And none of this speaks to the personal crises we might be wrestling with - illness, anxiety, broken relationships, relentless work and family expectations. Weighed down. I relate to those trees!

And so what do we do with a text like this, at the beginning of Advent when we could use some baby Jesus, prince of peace, but all Matthew has for us is grown up Jesus, full of dire warnings? 

This scripture passage belongs to a genre of biblical writing called apocalyptic literature, along with some parts of the book of Daniel, snippets from the prophets like Ezekiel and Zechariah, a stray passage in 2 Thessalonians, a few passages in the gospels, and of course the Book of Revelation. When we hear the word “apocalypse,” we think “end of the world,” and with good reason - apocalyptic texts are full of dramatic, world-changing imagery. But the word apocalypse actually means “uncovering” or “unveiling” - it’s a “revealing” - that’s why the book of Revelation has that name - its Greek name is apocalypsis - the revelation - the uncovering. But what, exactly, do apocalyptic texts reveal? 

When I was a child, my mother encouraged me to read my Bible daily, and since I was an obedient child, I did just that - read the Bible cover to cover. I didn’t understand it all, of course, but it shaped my faith deeply and stayed with me. But she told me I shouldn’t read the Book of Revelation - it was too scary, too grown up, too hard to understand, and would just leave me too worried. But in this, I disobeyed. I knew its reputation - that it was about the “end of the world” - and I was curious. I wanted to know - how will it end? And so I read. There was a lot that I didn’t understand of course. Still don’t - the book is highly symbolic, and has been interpreted and interpreted, but of course, we can’t know what was in the mind of its author. But what I did understand was the message that I thought seemed pretty clear: If you are faithful, you don’t have to worry. Everything works out well for the faithful followers of Jesus. Eventually, when I studied Revelation as an adult, I learned that my childish take away held up - Revelation seems to be about encouraging the early Christians to remain firm in their faith despite the persecution they were facing from the Roman government. It’s a dramatic book meant to give hope more than it is meant to scare and alarm. 

What if, when we read apocalyptic passages in the Bible, we can interpret them with that lens, with those assumptions about their intent and purpose. Even though the imagery can be overwhelming or frightening, apocalyptic texts are trying to comfort us, not alarm us. They’re trying to bring us hope. And in Jesus’s case, I think he’s trying to remind us: God is coming. That’s not meant to be a threat - not when we’re trying to be faithful followers of God and God’s way. It’s meant to be a promise in which we can put our hope and trust. God has, and is, and will be among us and working among us. 

Look back with me at some of the details of the text, and read them again. Jesus says that when these distressing signs of trouble take place, his followers should “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” To be redeemed is to be saved. Now, to be “saved” is certainly a loaded theological word, but in context here, we can at least understand that to be redeemed or saved is a desirable outcome. Just when things are seeming particularly ominous, Jesus says, lift up your heads: redemption is coming. 

Next, Jesus talks about fig trees. You know, he says, when the trees are about to blossom. There are so many signs that summer is on its way, and you can tell when the trees are ready to blossom. You’ll also know, he says, when the kin-dom of God, God’s reign on earth, is on its way and soon to arrive. You’ll see signs. God’s reign, God’s way, on earth as in heaven. You’ll see glimpses of the fulfillment of those promises all around you. 

And finally, when Jesus is talking about traps and escape, what he says more specifically is that the way we prepare is this: “‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.” Jesus is again telling us that it is worry that can make it hard to draw close to God. He’s not asking us to be worried about the future. He’s telling us that the more we can seek not to be overwhelmed by this life, but instead trusting that God’s reign, and God’s way, is drawing near, the more ready we will be for its arrival. 

I’m not trying to convince you that apocalyptic language isn’t over the top, or attention-grabbing. It is meant to be! It is extreme imagery for extreme world circumstances. The early Christians, living under occupation, facing threats to their existence, facing obstacles from following Jesus: it felt like their world was ending. And it was, in many ways. The world they knew was changing rapidly. There were threats to Judaism and Christianity, persecution, wars, turnovers in leadership and policies from the ruling Roman Empire, and then, just a few centuries later, the seemingly eternal Roman Empire was toppled, a future that I’m sure none in Jesus’s day could even imagine. And in the midst of that, words like Jesus offer promises. The world is ending - the world we know. Things are changing. But they have to - for unjust systems to be dismantled the world we know has to end. For a world that’s guided by God’s way and God’s reign, the current powers-that-be must be overthrown. For the long arc of the universe to find its way to justice and righteousness, we should be on the lookout for the sign of things bending towards hope. 

I think of those trees, bent and drooping, weighed down, on my drive home. Eventually, they’ll stand tall again. Eventually, they will bud and blossom. Eventually, winter gives way to spring, and signs of new life abound. As we wait, as we long, as we hope in this Advent season, let us wait with confidence in the promises, not the threats, that Jesus shares. Raise your heads. The day of redemption is coming. That’s a promise. Amen.