new creation — Andy James

Unfinished Business

August 21, 2016 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 64:1-9 and Matthew 13:31-35, 44-50
preached on August 21, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As I’ve been preparing to leave New York over the past month or so, I’ve been doing everything I can to tie up all the loose ends swirling around in my life. But with less than two weeks remaining before the moving van comes to move me to North Carolina, I am realizing that there are some things that are just going to be left undone—there will be some unfinished business in my life and work as I move on to the new things ahead.

The biggest bit of unfinished business I will leave behind in the church is going on right on the other side of this wall in the space once known as the auditorium. As construction began a few weeks on our project to enhance the accessibility of our building and create new space for our children to learn, I got excited—it looked like I might actually get to see this work finished! This work is a major achievement in the life of this congregation. We have been talking about doing some sort of accessibility project for basically the entire eleven years that I have been pastor here—and I know that the conversation actually probably began eleven years or more before that!

But as the weeks have worn on and the work went slower than expected, it became clear that this too would be unfinished business for me. There are too many things still to be finished for all the work to be complete before my last day in the office on Thursday! And yet as I was talking with Lena Ronde about this the other day, I realized that this is like so much of my ministry in this place. I am not going to see things finished in the way I would like. The projects and work that we have begun together here to live out the mission of God in our midst will take new shape and form and direction in the days after I leave, and I cannot control that. I am leaving a lot of unfinished business—more than I would like—for you and your next pastor—and for God!—to keep doing in this place.

“The Exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the World,” banner from Bloomfield Presbyterian Church on the Green

The sixth and final Great End of the Church that comes before us today leaves me thinking about a lot of unfinished business. While a number of the things contained in these Great Ends can be quantified into achievable tasks—things like “the maintenance of divine worship” that we can clearly see when we gather here each Sunday or “the promotion of social righteousness” that we can assign to a number of specific actions that we can take as a church—this last Great End, “the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world,” is a much less defined thing. We cannot complete this task in an hour on Sunday, over the course of one job in life, or even in the lifetime of a person or a congregation. The exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world is always unfinished business—something that we must always be working on as God’s people.

Our scripture readings this morning give us incredible images of what this kingdom might look like in our world. First, the prophet Isaiah gives us a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven breaking in to this current world. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” the prophet cries. O that things would be different here and now, that everything would be finished and the church’s exhibition of the kingdom of heaven would be clear and complete!

After all, the prophet says, this has happened before: “When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.” God’s people have seen the kingdom of heaven before—maybe in a day past when more people were engaged in the life of the church, maybe when things were more hopeful in the world around us, maybe when we were more able to make a difference amid all the challenges of our world.

But the prophet is not calling on God to turn the clock back in time to fix all this. No, he insists that it is the people who must change, for we have gone astray, separating ourselves from the way that God intends: “We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Yet God still has unfinished business with God’s people:

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.

The kingdom of heaven, then, is revealed in the powerful appearance of something new that shatters the expectations and realities of the old, in the recognition of the ways that the things of this world must be transformed to make way for something new, and most of all in the present promise and ongoing hope of God’s care, concern, and creating love that shift and shape us and our world each and every day.

Then Jesus also offers us several visions of the kingdom of heaven in his parables from our reading from Matthew. In these five parables, a selection of a broader group in Matthew’s gospel that open with “the kingdom of heaven is like,” Jesus gave his disciples a picture of the kind of transformation and challenge that come with the kingdom of heaven. In these parables, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed planted in a field, to yeast that leavens bread, to treasure hidden in a field, to a merchant seeking a fine and beautiful pearl, and to a net filled with good and bad fish.

All these different images of the kingdom of heaven help us to understand four things about the kingdom of heaven that can help us as we exhibit it to the world. First, the kingdom of heaven starts small. Mustard seeds, yeast, and pearls all begin as small and unremarkable things, but they end up bringing an incredible and overwhelming gift. In these parables, the kingdom of heaven also can go unnoticed until it is discovered. Every way that Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven coming into being can so very easily be missed if we are not paying attention and looking for it to become real. Third, the kingdom of heaven is incredibly valuable and cannot be bought without a substantial price. Acquiring the treasure in the field and the pearl of great value both require giving up everything else. Finally, these parables show us that there are some things that look like the kingdom of heaven that really aren’t, so we must always sort out exactly what among us and beyond us is the kingdom of heaven and what is not.

Between these parables of Jesus about the kingdom of heaven and the images of unfinished business from the prophet Isaiah, I think we have some pretty good guidance about exactly what it is we are called to do in “the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world.” We can recognize the incredible creation of God present in all people and honor it as best we can in the church and in every element of our lives—that is the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world. We can look for ways to claim the lordship of Jesus Christ in our world that demands that we name so many others as lord—that is the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world. We can take even the tiniest steps to work for an end to systems of injustice, inequality, oppression, and violence that go against the image of God in all creation—that is the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world. We can strengthen our lives of faith by walking together in worship, learning, and service so that when any one of us falls, the rest of us are willing and able and ready to lift her up—that is the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world. We can gather at this table where all are welcome and no one is turned away—that is the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world. And we can raise our voices in song, joining with all creation to proclaim God’s wonderful name in all we say and do—that is the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world. Our actions along this way may be as small as planting a mustard seed, mixing in a little bit of yeast, or finding a treasure or a fine pearl, but whatever we do, we offer one little step toward finishing all the unfinished business that is before us in our world.

We will never get this work done. It will always be unfinished business. We as the very human institution of the church will never offer a perfect vision of the things that God is doing to those around us. We will not be able to finish all the projects that need to be finished so that the world can see the transformation that God has in store for this world. And we will always leave unfinished business wherever we go because God will keep working to make us and all things new. Just because we can’t do this work perfectly or completely does not free us to set it aside altogether, but in light of all this unfinished business, we can deepen our trust and our faith in God as we pray that God will keep changing us and continue renewing us so that others can see in us the kind of world that God has promised for all creation.

So as our journeys diverge after eleven years of traveling together, may God continue the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world in all of us, working through us and in us and even in spite of us, finishing our unfinished business as we prepare to share the joyous feast of this table again with one another and with all the saints in the kingdom of heaven, united in new life by Jesus Christ our risen Lord. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

A New Vision of Eternal Life

April 24, 2016 By Andy James

a sermon on Revelation 21:1-6
preached on April 24, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As most of you know, I spend most Tuesday evenings singing with the New Amsterdam Singers. At one level, this is not a particularly surprising extracurricular activity for a pastor. The church has been involved in singing since before its beginning, and the choral repertoire was built on the music of the church almost exclusively until the last couple centuries, so even in our secular chorus we sing a lot of music that is built on the same topics and themes that I deal with in my day job!

A few weeks ago, as we began rehearsing the music for our May concert, I noted that one of our pieces had a surprising religious content. As I looked at it more closely, I discovered that its words were written by the great hymnodist Charles Wesley, the author of some of the great hymns of our faith such as “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus,” “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” and “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.” As a nonsectarian chorus with many nonreligious members, we certainly aren’t singing this piece for the meaning of its words—yet as I read and sang along, the pastor in me couldn’t help but cringe a bit at the theology in them. The words focus on the promise of new life in a world yet to come, insisting over and over:

I’ll sing hallelujah
And you’ll sing hallelujah
And we’ll all sing hallelujah
When we arrive at home.

I wasn’t particularly excited about calling life in the world to come “home,” but then we came to the last verse:

Give joy or grief, give ease or pain,
Take life or friends away,
But let me find them all again
In that eternal day.

This idea of “going home” to be reunited with long-lost friends and loved ones when we die has bothered me for a long time. For all the emphasis that we put on the afterlife as Christians, the Bible is surprisingly unclear about exactly what will happen when we die. In what it does say, I can find little or no suggestion that we will be reunited with loved ones or given a more perfect version of the life we have known in this world, with exactly the same relationships and way of life we have enjoyed here.

Our reading this morning from Revelation gives us one of the clearest biblical views of what is ahead, insisting that there is an entirely different kind of world yet to come, “a new heaven and a new earth,” that is not about meeting our own individual needs, giving us a happy heavenly home, or restoring our individual lives to the way we might imagine them to be perfect. Instead, Revelation insists that our hope for life beyond what we know now is rooted in God bringing about a new creation where the things that make for destruction in the world are themselves destroyed.

For a book that is filled with mystery and uncertainty, this vision from Revelation is surprisingly clear. There is a new and different heaven and earth, for the old ones have been destroyed to make way for something entirely new. The capstone of this new creation, the holy city Jerusalem, comes down out of the new heaven to the new earth, ready and waiting to be made one with God. And not only does this holy city emerge from heaven, it also becomes the home of God and humanity, the common dwelling place of the Creator and the Created.

As these things come together to live in new ways, they take on new qualities. God will wipe every tear from the eyes of God’s people. “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more,” for the ways of life that have enabled these things of death to persist will themselves die. If all that were not enough to convince us of the hope and wonder of this vision of John, this moment closes with confident and hopeful words offered by none less than the one on the throne:

See, I am making all things new….
To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

This vision of a new heaven and new earth seems a good bit different from the sort of thing promised to us in the world to come by Charles Wesley and so many others. There’s no mention of reunification with long-dead friends and family, no chance for conversation with philosophers, theologians, and notable persons of different eras, no place for personal rejoicing about all the individual afflictions that no longer mark our days. Instead, there is a simple new creation marked by the absence of death, mourning, crying, and pain—but even more by the presence of God in everything.

This vision is further marked by the reality that these things are not about individual happiness but rather the transformation of the world. The things ahead offer us the world as God intends, setting aside the human destruction of sinfulness that has taken hold of things, reclaiming the way of life in wholeness, hope, and peace for all people that God set forth from the very beginning. The deep relationships of the world ahead come not from being reunited with people that we have known before but from the fullness of life that comes when we can finally dwell without fear in the closeness of God. And the wonder of things ahead will not be built on some foreign, distant understanding of things but on the very creation that we know and love now, restored and transformed with love and hope to be as God intends.

So what does all this mean? Why is it important to set aside a popular understanding of heaven for this more biblical way of looking at things? What difference does it make for us to get what we believe in line with what scripture promises us is ahead? After all, if we recognize that all these things are a mystery to begin with, doesn’t that mean that it is okay for us to go on believing the wrong things about them since it doesn’t matter anyway?

Maybe so. Maybe it really isn’t all that important to worry a lot about what we believe will come in the days after we die. Maybe the differences here really aren’t that big of a deal. Maybe all this is just a question of theology that doesn’t really matter for our everyday lives.

But I am not convinced that we can set this question aside so easily. The reality is that what we believe about the days to come affects how we live here and now. For far too long, Christians used the promise of a better world to come as an excuse for not doing anything about the problems of this world. Slaveholders justified claiming ownership of other human beings by claiming that they were introducing their slaves to a way of life that would enable them to enjoy eternal life in the next world even as they were treated like nothing more than property in this world. The rich and powerful have over and over written off their responsibility for the poor in this world by proclaiming a gospel of hope grounded in the next—with no change in the ways of this one. And Christians have used fear of missing out of the glories of eternal life to destroy the fullness of the image of God in far too many people who live and love differently from what seems to be the norm. If the focus of our hope for the world to come is on our individual lives, on “find[ing] [life or friends] all again / in that eternal day,” then our hope for God’s future is centered in our own desires rather than being rooted in the mutual flourishing of all creation.

Those different ways of thinking bring very different ways of living. If we are focused only on ourselves and the things we want to be different in our eternal life, we ignore the consequences of our actions in the lives of others. We miss the many signs of brokenness in our world that go beyond the immediacy of our individual lives. And we dishonor God’s clear instruction to love our neighbors as ourselves, in this world and the next.

But when we recognize that the things ahead are about the transformation of all creation, we join God in living the resurrection of Christ today, in declaring that evil has been defeated once and for all in Christ, in welcoming others to share the wondrous gift of life that is promised for us in this world and the next, and in proclaiming in our words, in our deeds, and in our lives that God is making all things new.

So may God give us a new vision of eternal life, marked not so much by the things ahead for each one of us but by the wonder of the kingdom of God that includes all creation, that we might celebrate at this table as people who will share this even greater feast even as we join God in working in these days to make all things new in Jesus Christ our risen Lord. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

Filled with Grace

March 6, 2016 By Andy James

a sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 and Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
preached on March 6, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

James B. Janknegt, 2 Sons

One of the most amazing things about the Bible is the way the same stories manage to slip into our lives over and over again. Somehow this great collection of writings manages to carry some sort of meaning in every generation. When things in the world are changing, these ancient stories still speak to our present realities. When the situations in our lives shift for one reason or another, these same stories take on new meaning for us. And when we need comfort amid turmoil in our lives, these stories give us hope for God’s presence through it all.

We need look no further than our reading from Luke this morning for a perfect example of all these things. The parable of the prodigal son told by Jesus in Luke 15 manages to use the same words to speak volumes of meaning into radically different times and places. Every time I turn to this text, I am reminded of something different about who God is. Each time I hear these words, I get a glimpse of the many different ways God loves us. And each time I hear this story, I find myself entering into the parable from a different perspective—some days it is as the younger son, some days as the older, some days as some other minor character around the edges of it all, some days even the father.

Wherever we enter this incredible story, though, from whichever viewpoint seems clearest to us in this particular moment, we gain a glimpse of the grace of God streaming into our world in all time. Grace permeates every moment of this parable. Even the setting for its telling is a moment for grace—Jesus had stirred up trouble with the Pharisees and scribes because of the company he kept, because he welcomed tax collectors and sinners and ate with them, so he wanted to help them understand why he responded to their gracelessness with compassion.

The story, like the setting of its telling, is filled with moments of gracelessness. It opens with the younger son showing no grace whatsoever as he asks to receive his inheritance while his father is still alive. It is as if the son told his father that he was as good as dead to him, that he was worth nothing more to him than the value of the things that he owned. The father had the opportunity to respond with the same lack of grace that was shown him, but he chose to give his son what he asked for.

Andrei Rabodzeenko, Prodigal son

As the son wandered the surrounding lands and squandered his inheritance, he experienced a similar lack of grace like what he offered to his father from those he encountered. The people of his new homeland saw no reason to show this stranger in their midst any sort of grace. They treated him solely as a hired hand, leaving him to fend for himself in the midst of a severe famine, not even suggesting that he ought to take some of the food that he was feeding to the pigs to sustain himself. The son showed so little grace to himself along the way, too. He counted himself so worthless that he would not even be treated as a son by his father, that his father’s grace toward him had long run out, that he was so deeply undeserving of any care other than as a hired hand.

Amid all the gracelessness of this story, the younger son’s return home was filled with great grace. His father’s grace upon his return was so abundant and so much at the ready that he seemed to be on the lookout for his son’s return each and every day, and so he ran to greet him when he saw him from far away. This greeting was not one of stern rebuke but rather warm welcome. Before the son could even finish his carefully rehearsed speech begging for mercy, his father called for a robe, ring, and sandals, then he made plans for a great feast and celebration to welcome the lost son home.

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son

Amid all the grace shown in this story, the older brother was not particularly excited about his father’s generous welcome to his deadbeat younger brother—it seems that the deep grace of the father had not been passed down to either one of his sons! But the father would not let his older son’s gracelessness undo the grace that defined his life and he was so willing to share. When the older son protested that he had remained at home, working faithfully and diligently while his brother had “devoured [the] property with prostitutes,” and had enjoyed none of these gifts that had suddenly been showered upon him, the father reminded him that the kind of grace shared with his brother was also shared with him, too, but that this moment was worthy of celebration, for “this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” No matter how much the older son might try to derail it, no matter how badly the circumstances were set with gracelessness, even no matter how difficult it might be for the younger son to accept it, the father insisted in his words and actions that grace would shine through.

In the end, Jesus’ parable is about grace—grace that gives more than we think we can receive, grace that opens us to a radically different way of relating to God and one another, grace that fills even the most graceless places of our world with God’s mercy, compassion, peace, and life—and this parable helps us to see how that grace can take hold in our lives and our world. When it does, we can do what Paul suggests in our first reading, from now on to “regard no one from a human point of view,” to embrace the new creation that comes to us in Christ, to make our lives marks of reconciliation and grace each and every day.

I suspect none of this made much sense to Jesus’ disciples as he told this parable as he made his way to Jerusalem. They probably grumbled about the kind of people who showed up when Jesus welcomed tax collectors and sinners. The disciples may even have found themselves more in line with the devoted older son, complaining about all the people who managed to join the crowd along the way when they had been with Jesus from the beginning. And while they may have appreciated his pointed criticism of the Pharisees and the scribes, we know that in the end they weren’t quite ready to put their own lives on the line to join him in this message. But as time went on, as the light of the resurrection shone upon them, it all finally began to make sense, for the resurrection of Jesus showed them that his death brought a new meaning of grace to everyone. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus ultimately made it clear that his parables about God’s generosity and grace were not just pipe dreams. No—the grace that the father embodied in this parable was the very same grace that was possible and real for everyone because of the reconciliation made possible in Christ.

As hard as it was for the disciples, living such grace is not easy for us, either. It is so much easier to choose to exclude those people who look or act or live differently than we do, to join the Pharisees and scribes in their grumbling about who gets welcomed in and who gets fed, to be so tightly bound by our rules that we end up like the older son and miss the joy that comes when transformation takes root and hold in our world. As hard as it is to show this grace to others, it can just as difficult to show this grace to ourselves. It is all too easy to end up like these brothers, so stuck in assumptions that we do not merit the generosity of God’s grace because of the depth of our wrongdoing or so mired in the despair of legalism as we focus on our own understanding of doing what is right that we miss the opportunity to share the joyous celebration offered when others come to know God’s grace in new ways. Our humanity makes it all too easy to exclude others and even ourselves from the abundance of this grace, but Jesus’ parable and Paul’s words remind us that this is no longer the way we are to live. We are called to set aside the gracelessness that comes to us so naturally and embrace the abundant grace of God in our lives as we become a part of God’s new creation.

So as we journey through these Lenten days, as we walk with Jesus on the way to the cross, may God show us how to welcome this grace more deeply in our own lives, may God help us to set aside our fears of those who might join us in benefiting from this incredible gift, and may God fill us with grace anew as we see others from this new point of view of mercy, peace, hope, and grace, as together we wait, watch, and work for the new creation to be revealed in our midst by the power of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Death and Life

June 14, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:14-21
preached on June 14, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As a pastor, I have a bit of a strange relationship with death. I am occasionally given the privilege of being present with someone as they die, and I do my best to approach this holy moment in the same way as I do for any other event of life even amidst the understandable difficulty for me and others. A little more frequently, I am asked to preside at funerals or memorial services, where death is the unfortunate occasion that brings us together even as we often find a unique bond of life to link us to one another and to God. And then there are the times when I walk with you all or other friends through days of grief, sorting out how the death of family, friends, colleagues, or even others beyond those circles changes our lives. In thinking about all these moments, I see the incredible transformation that death brings—even as I know that it is yet another moment of life and living.

So when Paul starts talking about death in our reading from 2 Corinthians this morning, I know exactly what he is talking about. For Paul, death—specifically, the death of Christ—changes everything even as it is yet another moment in the life of the world. In the wonder of this unjust death, we are convinced that all have died. In the light of this amazing love, we are shown that he died for all, regardless of belief or practice. And in the face of this transformative moment, we are shown how this death invites “those who live [to] live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.”

Christ’s death shows us the depth and breadth of God’s love for us, and that love “urges us on,” Paul says, guiding us into new life in this world and the next. This love, Paul says, gives us a new point of view: “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view.” First, we received a new vision of Christ himself, for we once knew him as we know our human companions on the journey, but now we know that he is more than this, that in his death and resurrection he has overcome all the challenges of this world and entered into new life.

Since we know Christ in this new way, we also have to look at our human companions from a new perspective. Everything is different from this new vantage point. The assumptions we have made about others no longer apply, because we know that all are beloved children of God. The outside appearance and visible actions that have been the basis of all our judgments before now must be set aside so that we can focus on knowing one another in the way that God knows us. And the death that seems like it brought things to an end is actually the beginning of new life. One commentator summarizes this change beautifully:

Believers are not simply offered a new perspective they may or may not adopt as and when they see fit; rather, something so fundamental has changed in such a profound fashion that the old ways of looking, perceiving, understanding, and, more profoundly, evaluating, have to be let go and replaced with a new way of seeing and understanding. (J. Paul Sample, New Interpreter’s Bible)

He goes even one step further:

People have value because Christ has died for them. People, whoever they are, whether they have responded to Christ or not… are treasured by God.

In the same way that the death of Christ changes our view of death, when we look at one another from this new perspective, everything is different. We see those whom we once named as our enemies and approach them as friends. We replace our way of assessing one another based on the things of this world with assessments of one another as beloved children of God. And we stop looking at death as the end of something for one of us and approach it as the beginning of everything for all of us. Paul names this new perspective as the new creation:

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

The new creation stands at the center of everything that Paul proclaims. The new creation calls forth a different way of living and loving that takes into account the love of God demonstrated in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The new creation makes it clear for us how faith is to be expressed through love of our fellow human beings and by extension all of the created order. The new creation shows us that redemption is expressed “as a kind of creation renewed, made over… a new thing that recaptures, not jettisons, the old.” (J. Paul Sample) And the new creation reminds us that death is not the end of the story for any of us, for one death began the process of transformation that invites us into this new life, and so death opens the possibility of something new.

This new creation begun in Christ opens us to, calls us to, even demands of us participation in, the transformation of the world. Because we have been reconciled to God in Christ, we are called to be reconciled to one another and the whole world. Because we have this new relationship with God, we need to have a new relationship with others as we appeal to them as ambassadors on God’s behalf. And because we have for our own sake been united with one “who knew no sin,” we “become the righteousness of God” as we demonstrate the new way of Christ to the world.

As participants in this new creation, we not only look at the world around us differently but also interact with it differently. We treat everyone with deeper reverence and love as we recognize the myriad ways that all are treasured by God. We live with our focus on others and especially those for whom God has particular concern: the poor, the oppressed, the victims of war and violence, the unloved and unloveable, and those like all of these. And we do our best to embody the wholeness that we long to know for ourselves and all the world.

As I journey through this life, facing the interesting challenges of life as a pastor, walking through death and life with people like all of you, seeking to offer the presence of God in Christ to all I meet, I am convinced over and over again that this idea of the new creation is what we need in our world. We do not need to turn back the clock to a day and age that are now past but rather need to hope and pray and work for God’s new way to be revealed in our midst, a way that is far better than anything we have known before.

In this new creation, we are shown that God has more in store for our world that what we know now. Through this new creation, we are called to live differently ourselves so that we can join in what God is doing all around us. And because of this new creation, we ourselves are made new as we recognize again and again that Christ has changed everything for everyone.

So may we live in this new creation even now as we wait for God to finish it in the days ahead, so that we might be God’s ambassadors of new life and reconciliation in our broken and fearful world, journeying in life and in death in the path that Christ opens for us, now and always. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Something’s Coming

November 10, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 and Haggai 1:15b-2:9
preached on November 10, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Something is coming. That’s the clear message of these days in our world. Just with the coming of a new year, we’ve got a new mayor coming into office in our city, a new way of getting healthcare for many people in our country, and the inevitable parade of all sorts of other new things around us. Depending on who you ask, the degree of this change may vary, but it is clear that a number of things will be different around us on January 1.

Our two texts this morning reinforce this message that something new is coming into our world. First came Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica, with its words of comfort as they wait for a new thing to come into the world. Like most of the early church, Paul’s listeners were expecting Jesus to return practically any day, and if anything they were getting restless that things were not moving as quickly as they had been promised. If they were already that frustrated after twenty or thirty years, I can only imagine how much more unsettled they would feel if they knew that we would still be waiting nearly two thousand years later!

The Thessalonians knew that something was coming, something that would surprise everyone, something that would put the powers of evil and darkness in their place, something that would change things once and for all, and they were more than ready for it. And so Paul comforted the Thessalonians in their waiting, insisting that the things ahead would build on the things of this time and show something new and greater in the world.

In our other reading from the prophet Haggai, it was clear that something was coming into his world, too. In his day, the people of Judah had returned from exile in Babylon, but there was much that was out of order. The comforts of home that they had known before exile were gone. The temple where they had gathered for worship lay in ruins. All the institutions and structures that had held life together needed to be rebuilt. So God called Haggai to speak a different word to the people, a word that did not ignore the difficulty of their situation but yet recognized that there was a possibility for something greater and new.

God called Haggai to proclaim a message of courage, perseverance, and new life—new life that would transform, even shake, “the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land,” so that all nations would stream to Jerusalem and all people come to know and recognize God at work. And God called Haggai to proclaim a new promise: “The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former… and in this place I will give prosperity.” This was a great message of hope and promise that something new and different and great was coming, something that would establish God’s authority over the nations, that would cement God’s promise to Judah for all time, that would make things even better than they had ever been before.

These messages that something is coming resonate deeply for us today. Beyond the changes we know will come in the new year, we sit with the Thessalonians and the Judeans wondering what new thing God has in store for us. We wonder what God will do in our lives as the things that have become common will quite likely change. We wonder how God will respond to all the troubled moments of our world. And we wonder what God has in store for our congregation as we approach this new year, the first year in quite some time where we will not have a full-time pastor among us.

Over the eight years I have served as your pastor, I have heard many questions that sound like those raised here by Paul: When will the time come for something new to take hold? How much longer do we have to wait? What are we supposed to do in the meantime? And I’ve heard many here wonder much as Haggai did: “Is there anyone still among you who saw this house in its former glory? How does it appear to you now? To you does it not seem as if it were not there?” (Haggai 2:3, Revised English Bible) These are the kinds of questions that we tend to ask along the way, questions that have no easy answers, questions that leave us pining for a different way of life, questions that make us want a different order of things, questions that keep our eyes focused on the past or present and turned away from possibilities and promise of the future.

But on this stewardship Sunday, on this day when we bring our commitments to the life and mission of this congregation for the coming year, now might just be time to focus on something new, on the kind of shakeup that stands at the core of Paul and Haggai’s words, on the kind of transformation and new life that we know are coming and wish would come sooner. This is the time to think about what we really long for in this place. Are we looking for a return to the way things were? Are we looking for new life that can only look like what we’ve seen before? Are we looking simply to rebuild the temple exactly as it was? Or are we looking for a real shakeup, for a new and different way to take hold, for God to shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, for the new thing ahead to be greater than what has come before?

The commitment we make today to the life of this place in the coming year must reflect what we really desire. We can keep doing what we’ve always done before, placing our commitments at the same level they’ve always been, letting our traditions become a memorial to the life we once knew but that will soon pass away. Or we can take these words from Paul and Haggai seriously, taking courage for the new things ahead, standing firm and holding fast to our tradition while embracing new ways for a new time, working to make God’s promise real in this time and this place that is different from what we have known before.

Ultimately, this is the stewardship commitment that is before us today—not so much how much we plan to give next year, as important as that is for our life together and even for the sense of commitment that it brings in our journeys of faith. No, what really matters is rather the commitment that we make today to join in God’s work of making all things new, work that has its roots in our life together here and that demands our money and our time our commitment, and our lives in every imaginable way, both within and beyond these walls. It’s not about rebuilding the temple, maintaining the church building, keeping a pastor around, or even just making it through until the something that is coming is realized—it’s about being faithful in these changing times, taking courage amidst all that pulls us away from this calling, and working to live these things out in faith, hope, and love.

And so today as we bring these marks of our commitment to this congregation and most especially to the hope we know in Jesus Christ, may God give us the strength to be faithful, may God help us to take courage, and may God give us a glimpse of the new glory beyond anything we have ever seen before but that is surely to come in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.