1 Thessalonians 5:12-24
“And Are We Yet Alive: Thanksgiving”
Preached Sunday, January 28, 2024
Two weeks ago I started a three week sermon series entitled “Trusting in God.” This sermon series is about entrusting our past, present, and future into the hands of God. My hope is that through this series we can process together all that was, is, and could be - through the lenses of mourning, thanksgiving, and dreaming. And while it is focused on the life of our church community, each sermon also has individual applications.
Two weeks ago we talked all that we are mourning in the life of our church - most people mentioned specific people they love who used to sit by them in the pews and are no longer here due to death or other reasons. Our second largest thing we are mourning as a congregation is the generational shifts in our congregation, with less children and young families than there once were. The notecards with things that people are mourning, that people turned over to God two weeks ago, are on display in our Narthex. I’d encourage you to stop and look at them following the service, knowing that you are not alone in your mourning and yet - by processing our grief we can be assured of God’s steadfast presence with us - that guided us through the past, is with us now, and will remain with us as we are led into the faithful future.
And so this week I’d like to turn our attention to thanksgiving and how giving thanks is essential in shaping us in the present and guiding us into the future God wants for us.
The Bible is full of exhortations to give thanks. HUNDREDS of Scriptures that encourage us to give thanks. Today we heard Paul’s closing exhortations from 1 Thessalonians: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Here are some more:
Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! - 1 Chronicles
Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name. - the Psalms
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him; bless his name. - also from the Psalms
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. - Philippians
Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ… - Ephesians
For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. - 1 Timothy
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. - Colossians
Those are just 8 out of hundreds - if I were to list every one, I’d run out my voice and you would run out of your patience. These are just several Scriptures about giving thanks to God, praising God, giving thanks for each other to God, praising God with thanksgivings in all circumstances...the Bible would not be the Holy Book it is without its continuous flow of references of praise and thanksgiving to God. Gratitude is a thread, a theme, that runs through Scripture. So too is it supposed to run through our lives. In the Bible we see gratitude presenting itself as praising God, presented as lifting up thanks, presented as lifting up gifts and sacrifices to God, and presented as a life-style for those whose lives have been changed by God
Being a grateful person shapes us into being a more giving, more loving, and more grace-filled people - being grateful shapes us into being the kind of people that God calls us to be.
Greater Good magazine says that “Grateful people have been shown to be more helpful, kind, supportive, and altruistic.” One study showed that those who kept gratitude journals were more likely to be empathic and offer more help than those who wrote about struggles or even neutral events. The Templeton Giving Survey found that people who say that they practice gratitude daily, donate more money and volunteer hours a year than those who don’t.
Another example of how gratitude can shape not just individuals but a whole culture is the “Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address.”
The Haudenosaunee are an Iroquoian-speaking alliance of First Nations people in northeastern North America. The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address is a daily ritual of gratitude, giving thanks for the people and natural world around them. Individuals or groups may begin or end their day with this ritual of Thanksgiving. In her book “Braiding Sweetgrass,” Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about a school where native children started each day with the Thanksgiving address. In that book, Kimmerer connects indigenous wisdom with ecological knowledge and concerns. We could learn much from the way indigenous cultures have practiced sustainable harvesting and practiced care for our living world. Kimmerer suggests that, largely, it is a posture of reciprocity: realizing how much the earth cares for us and caring for her in return. And in caring for the earth, the earth then takes care of us.
There truly is a sense of generosity here: the abundance that the earth gives us through land and fruit and air and medicine. And the abundance that we give back to the earth: through sustainable harvesting, caring for ecosystems, being good stewards of all of God’s resources.
And it all starts with thanksgiving.
A practice of daily gratitude opens our eyes and hearts to the ways and areas that we have enough - or even an abundance. Perhaps of food, of friendship, of love. If one is not thankful, for the planet and the resources it provides or even our relationships and the love and care we have - we will not be generous in those relationships. And as we fail to pour generously back into them, they will not pour generously back into us.
The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving address is not a prayer in the sense that we think of prayer as Christians, but is a daily ritual of centering gratitude. It makes me examine myself and my own posture of thanksgiving…and admit it’s sometimes lacking.
It makes me think that as Christians…the rest of the world should look at us and see practices of generosity, sustainability, and reciprocity and be able to ascertain that it comes from living into a culture of constant thanksgiving.
So where do we start if we want to be people of gratitude and create a culture of constant thanksgiving?
When you want to practice gratitude you have to pause from the daily to and fro, the buzz, the to-do lists and take stock of your life and of the world. And I want to be very clear here, too often when we take stock of the things we are thankful for, we rely very heavily on material gifts - on wealth, status, belongings -- but gratitude is not just about and not even just primarily about what we have materially. Gratitude is, at its core, about wondering at the goodness of God and the gift of life given to us and to all creation.
Spiritual writer and theologian Diana Butler Bass wrote a whole book on Gratitude and faith, one that is certainly worth reading. Butler Bass says, “Gratitude is, however, more than just an emotion. It is also a disposition that can be chosen and cultivated, an outlook toward life that manifests itself in actions—it is an ethic.”
And it is an ethic of gratitude that we need in the present so that we can be the type of people, be the type of Christians, who sustain and build the kind of church and community that God wants for us.
When we are grateful, that gratefulness overflows into generous actions of love for others. The ethic of gratitude in our lives looks like following the Biblical commands to care for the lost and the least, to give what we have, to love others as self, to always widen the circle, invite the stranger in, to make room at the table… Gratitude naturally leads to generosity. Just as there are hundreds of Scriptures about gratitude, just as gratitude is a theme, a thread, running through the Bible, so is generosity, so is selflessness, so is giving all that we can to the glory of God and love of neighbor.
Next week we will talk about the dreams we have for the future of our church. But before we can get to those dreams we have to stop and give thanks. For what was that produced fruit and shaped us into the people and community that we are. And for what is, our present, and all that God has given and fostered within us in the here and now. And we have to not only give thanks once, we have to become a people of gratitude, for grateful people are overflowing with love and generosity - what God needs of us to do the work God is calling us to.
Allow me to share one more story - the story of the hymn we will sing after the sermon today.
In the early days of Methodism, in the days of before, during, and after the American Revolution, Methodists relied on saddlebag circuit rider preachers. There was a clergy shortage due to the revolution and Anglican priests returning to Britain. And life in much of the colonies and then the early United States, was more spread out over large spaces of land. There simply weren’t enough clergy for every community to have their own and so the circuit rider - or saddlebags preacher - was born. Circuit riders were ministers who rode their horses from community to community, creating a circuit. They would offer the sacraments and preach in a town then get on their horse and travel to the next, ever riding in a circuit.
But once a year - all the clergy from all over the country would gather together in one place for a time of conferencing and worship. And they would begin each conference by singing the hymn “And Are We Yet Alive” - written by Charles Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist movement.
The hymn is primarily a hymn of thanksgiving - thanksgiving for the very life that they still hold on to. Thanksgiving for all that God had seen them through. Thanksgiving for being together. Thanksgiving for the community and mission they shared.
As we sing this hymn today I pray and hope we can give thanks for the same things: thanksgiving for the very life that we still hold on to. Thanksgiving for all that God has seen us through. Thanksgiving for being together. Thanksgiving for the community and mission we share.
This morning we will be people who give thanks in all circumstances. During the pastoral prayer, I will give you several moments of silence to write on the inserted notecard in your bulletin. Write something that you are thankful for in the life of church - it can be something that was or something that still is. It can be a person, a group, a sense of the culture here, a program of past or present, the feeling you get when you are in this space with these people…whatever you feel gratitude in your heart for. You will be invited to write it on this card and put it in the plate when the offering is being collected - an act of rejoicing and thanksgiving, given as praise to God. Keep your cards anonymous - don’t put your names on them. Next week, when we return to this sermon series, these cards will be displayed in the narthex.
I’ll close with these exhortations from our Scripture this morning: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
Amen.
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Monday, January 15, 2024
"God Faithful Will Remain: Mourn" a sermon based on John 11:17-37
John 11:17-37
“God Faithful Will Remain: Mourn”
Preached Sunday, January 14, 2024
Today we are starting a new three part sermon series that will take place over the next four weeks. I am calling this sermon series “Trusting in God.” My hope for his sermon series is that it helps us process - all that was, is, and could be - here together as the people and faith community of *** United Methodist Church.
We will be talking about mourning, thanksgiving, and dreaming - all to help our church trust in God’s plan for us. And this sermon series isn’t just for those who are members of our church - my hope is that these sermons will have personal meaning for each of you as well.
And so, let us start with talking about mourning.
We are a grief-adverse culture. Anthropologist Margaret Mead says, “When a person is born, we rejoice, and when they are married, we jubilate, but when we die, we try to pretend nothing happened.”
I sometimes think part of this shift in our culture coincides with the removal of death from our day to day life. It used to be that people died in homes, in their own beds. In 2018, the CDC said that 62% of deaths occurred in hospitals or nursing homes. And up until about 170 years ago - viewings and wakes would happen in the deceased home’s. The funeral home as we know it in America began to grow rapidly during the Civil War as there were so many dead and they had to be shipped back home over a long period of time, and embalming grew as a practice. My point in sharing this is, as death became less or something that we interacted with in our lives, in our homes, I think we have also become more afraid of it, more distanced from the reality of the fragility of our lives.
In 2023, I read two books, both published in 2023, both fiction - that were about grief. But each book came at the idea of grief sideways. In one, a middle schooler, distraught at losing his best friend, processes his grief journey through looking for the cryptid Mothman. The other explores grief through the process of a man slowly becoming a shark and how it affects him, his wife, and all those around him. Both books were so strange and I think speak to our grief adverse culture - that we have to get at it sideways.
Another aspect of our grief aversion may be the rampant heresy of the Prosperity Gospel in Christian circles. The heresy called the Prosperity Gospel is the false idea that if we could just be “right” enough with God - give right, pray right, act right, worship right - then God will make us prosperous. That we won’t be sad or sick or in want… And this mindset is so pervasive, especially among Christianity in the United States. It can often cause those who are mourning, who have experienced loss, to want to quickly brush past their grief, diminish it, as to not think that they somehow deserved this or somehow messed up. As if we believed that in order to be a good Christian we have to always be happy and prosperous. Which is simply not true.
It brings me to 1 Thessalonians 4 - where Scripture says “Do not mourn as those without hope.” What the Bible doesn’t say is “Do not mourn.” It says instead, “do not mourn without hope.” Mourning is an important part of processing loss and what it means to be human - we all need to mourn - and we don’t mourn without hope.
I chose the story of Lazarus and Jesus today to talk to you about The God Who Mourns, The God Who Wept, Jesus, our God.
In the verses immediately following the passage I read today, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead…but I purposefully didn’t read that part. Some say that Jesus planned to raise Lazarus from the dead all along - that’s why he took his time getting to his death bed, for the miracle to be all that much greater, to give glory to God and to show who Jesus was. And perhaps Jesus did know that he could raise Lazarus from the dead and that is what he would do - his conversation with Martha where he calls himself the resurrection and the life certainly points to that. And yet, even knowing that resurrection laid ahead…Jesus stopped in his tracks. He wept. He mourned. He didn’t rush past his grief to what the future held, he attended to his grief, crying for what he, in that moment, had lost. Our God in Jesus knows the importance of mourning.
Why is it important to mourn? Why do we mourn?
Psychologist William Worden talks about the tasks of grief. They are: “to accept the reality of the loss; to process the pain of grief; to adjust to a world without the deceased or perceived loss; and to find an enduring connection with the deceased or past in the midst of embarking on a new life.”
We want to skip the first three tasks and jump to the new life…but grief doesn’t work that way.
Many are probably familiar with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We move through them, not always in order and not without backsliding, to get to acceptance. In 2019, psychologists with the approval of Kubler-Ross’s family, added a sixth stage of grief - reconstruction. Rebuilding a new life on the other side of grief.
And again, we want to skip all the hard stuff and move right into that new life on the other side of loss…but our grief doesn’t work that way. Unprocessed grief will keep holding us back.
So far we’ve been mostly talking about grief as it relates to death, the loss of a loved one - but grief isn’t just about the death of loved ones. I don’t know where it originated but pastors are always saying, “all change is grief” and there is deep truth there. Even change that we want. Even change that we plan for. Even that change is grief. Things like changing jobs, moving houses, entering a new stage of life, becoming empty nesters, losing the ability to do things we once did or move like we once did, etc, etc - every change is grief.
And in the life of the church there is certainly change and grief: transitions of pastors, the sunsetting or ending or programs, changing sanctuaries or buildings, the pews being less full than they once were, having less noises of children and youth among us, people who’ve left us whether through moving, disagreement, or death… and still even more change.
And so often we don’t mourn these changes, these losses, but yet we carry the grief around with us. And we can get stuck. A distinction I recently learned is the idea of yearning versus nostalgia.
Yearning is a strong desire to bring back what was lost. Think of those who are always talking about “the glory days” - in their own life, in our country, in our church. They often are wearing rose colored glasses regarding those glory days…and their desire to go back to the way it was keeps them from living in the present or moving forward to the future in productive and healthy ways. Being stuck in the past, being stuck in yearning, can actually be destructive to the present and to the future - it keeps us from facing the reality of the present and going in a new direction for the future.
Nostalgia on the other hand is looking back on the past having done our grief work, having mourned. Nostalgia is being able to look back on what was with gratitude and hindsight, connecting us to the energy and creativity of the past without shackling us to it.
Lutheran Bishop Michael Girlinghouse says, “The purpose of grief processing is not to wallow in the grief but to get to the place where we can take up life again. For a congregation this means finding energy for mission and ministry, new directions in congregational life and a deeper sense of God’s calling on the congregation in this present day.”
And so this morning, I would like to work through part of the process of grief together - by simply naming some of our griefs as they are related to the life of this congregation. During the pastoral prayer, I will give you several moments of silence to write on the inserted notecard in your bulletin. Write something that you have lost and are mourning in the life of the church - or perhaps something that you have already done your grief work around and look back on with nostalgia. It can be the name of a person who is deceased or no longer here. It can be a program or ministry that has ended. It can be a sense of time, culture, or place. You will be invited to write it on this card and put it in the plate when the offering is being collected. Acknowledging your grief and giving it to God. Keep your cards anonymous - don’t put your names on them. In two weeks when we return to this sermon series, these cards will be displayed in the narthex.
And now, allow me to end my sermon with this…
Not much is known about the history of the hymn “Be Still, My Soul” - the words are attributed to a German Lutheran nun of which very little is known. But what we do know is the deep sense of trust of God through change and grief that comes to us through the words of this beloved hymn. Perhaps with so little being known of the history of the hymn, it leaves us open to think of our own life changes and how God has guided us through each and every one of them to get to this point.
“Be still, my soul: the Lord is on your side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief and pain;
leave to your God to order and provide;
in every change God faithful will remain.”
In every season of our lives.
In every change
In every loss
In ever grief
In every ending
And in every beginning
God, the God Who Mourns, The God Who Wept, Jesus, our God - will remain faithful to us. Even in our mourning, may we trust our faithful God.
Amen.
“God Faithful Will Remain: Mourn”
Preached Sunday, January 14, 2024
Today we are starting a new three part sermon series that will take place over the next four weeks. I am calling this sermon series “Trusting in God.” My hope for his sermon series is that it helps us process - all that was, is, and could be - here together as the people and faith community of *** United Methodist Church.
We will be talking about mourning, thanksgiving, and dreaming - all to help our church trust in God’s plan for us. And this sermon series isn’t just for those who are members of our church - my hope is that these sermons will have personal meaning for each of you as well.
And so, let us start with talking about mourning.
We are a grief-adverse culture. Anthropologist Margaret Mead says, “When a person is born, we rejoice, and when they are married, we jubilate, but when we die, we try to pretend nothing happened.”
I sometimes think part of this shift in our culture coincides with the removal of death from our day to day life. It used to be that people died in homes, in their own beds. In 2018, the CDC said that 62% of deaths occurred in hospitals or nursing homes. And up until about 170 years ago - viewings and wakes would happen in the deceased home’s. The funeral home as we know it in America began to grow rapidly during the Civil War as there were so many dead and they had to be shipped back home over a long period of time, and embalming grew as a practice. My point in sharing this is, as death became less or something that we interacted with in our lives, in our homes, I think we have also become more afraid of it, more distanced from the reality of the fragility of our lives.
In 2023, I read two books, both published in 2023, both fiction - that were about grief. But each book came at the idea of grief sideways. In one, a middle schooler, distraught at losing his best friend, processes his grief journey through looking for the cryptid Mothman. The other explores grief through the process of a man slowly becoming a shark and how it affects him, his wife, and all those around him. Both books were so strange and I think speak to our grief adverse culture - that we have to get at it sideways.
Another aspect of our grief aversion may be the rampant heresy of the Prosperity Gospel in Christian circles. The heresy called the Prosperity Gospel is the false idea that if we could just be “right” enough with God - give right, pray right, act right, worship right - then God will make us prosperous. That we won’t be sad or sick or in want… And this mindset is so pervasive, especially among Christianity in the United States. It can often cause those who are mourning, who have experienced loss, to want to quickly brush past their grief, diminish it, as to not think that they somehow deserved this or somehow messed up. As if we believed that in order to be a good Christian we have to always be happy and prosperous. Which is simply not true.
It brings me to 1 Thessalonians 4 - where Scripture says “Do not mourn as those without hope.” What the Bible doesn’t say is “Do not mourn.” It says instead, “do not mourn without hope.” Mourning is an important part of processing loss and what it means to be human - we all need to mourn - and we don’t mourn without hope.
I chose the story of Lazarus and Jesus today to talk to you about The God Who Mourns, The God Who Wept, Jesus, our God.
In the verses immediately following the passage I read today, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead…but I purposefully didn’t read that part. Some say that Jesus planned to raise Lazarus from the dead all along - that’s why he took his time getting to his death bed, for the miracle to be all that much greater, to give glory to God and to show who Jesus was. And perhaps Jesus did know that he could raise Lazarus from the dead and that is what he would do - his conversation with Martha where he calls himself the resurrection and the life certainly points to that. And yet, even knowing that resurrection laid ahead…Jesus stopped in his tracks. He wept. He mourned. He didn’t rush past his grief to what the future held, he attended to his grief, crying for what he, in that moment, had lost. Our God in Jesus knows the importance of mourning.
Why is it important to mourn? Why do we mourn?
Psychologist William Worden talks about the tasks of grief. They are: “to accept the reality of the loss; to process the pain of grief; to adjust to a world without the deceased or perceived loss; and to find an enduring connection with the deceased or past in the midst of embarking on a new life.”
We want to skip the first three tasks and jump to the new life…but grief doesn’t work that way.
Many are probably familiar with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We move through them, not always in order and not without backsliding, to get to acceptance. In 2019, psychologists with the approval of Kubler-Ross’s family, added a sixth stage of grief - reconstruction. Rebuilding a new life on the other side of grief.
And again, we want to skip all the hard stuff and move right into that new life on the other side of loss…but our grief doesn’t work that way. Unprocessed grief will keep holding us back.
So far we’ve been mostly talking about grief as it relates to death, the loss of a loved one - but grief isn’t just about the death of loved ones. I don’t know where it originated but pastors are always saying, “all change is grief” and there is deep truth there. Even change that we want. Even change that we plan for. Even that change is grief. Things like changing jobs, moving houses, entering a new stage of life, becoming empty nesters, losing the ability to do things we once did or move like we once did, etc, etc - every change is grief.
And in the life of the church there is certainly change and grief: transitions of pastors, the sunsetting or ending or programs, changing sanctuaries or buildings, the pews being less full than they once were, having less noises of children and youth among us, people who’ve left us whether through moving, disagreement, or death… and still even more change.
And so often we don’t mourn these changes, these losses, but yet we carry the grief around with us. And we can get stuck. A distinction I recently learned is the idea of yearning versus nostalgia.
Yearning is a strong desire to bring back what was lost. Think of those who are always talking about “the glory days” - in their own life, in our country, in our church. They often are wearing rose colored glasses regarding those glory days…and their desire to go back to the way it was keeps them from living in the present or moving forward to the future in productive and healthy ways. Being stuck in the past, being stuck in yearning, can actually be destructive to the present and to the future - it keeps us from facing the reality of the present and going in a new direction for the future.
Nostalgia on the other hand is looking back on the past having done our grief work, having mourned. Nostalgia is being able to look back on what was with gratitude and hindsight, connecting us to the energy and creativity of the past without shackling us to it.
Lutheran Bishop Michael Girlinghouse says, “The purpose of grief processing is not to wallow in the grief but to get to the place where we can take up life again. For a congregation this means finding energy for mission and ministry, new directions in congregational life and a deeper sense of God’s calling on the congregation in this present day.”
And so this morning, I would like to work through part of the process of grief together - by simply naming some of our griefs as they are related to the life of this congregation. During the pastoral prayer, I will give you several moments of silence to write on the inserted notecard in your bulletin. Write something that you have lost and are mourning in the life of the church - or perhaps something that you have already done your grief work around and look back on with nostalgia. It can be the name of a person who is deceased or no longer here. It can be a program or ministry that has ended. It can be a sense of time, culture, or place. You will be invited to write it on this card and put it in the plate when the offering is being collected. Acknowledging your grief and giving it to God. Keep your cards anonymous - don’t put your names on them. In two weeks when we return to this sermon series, these cards will be displayed in the narthex.
And now, allow me to end my sermon with this…
Not much is known about the history of the hymn “Be Still, My Soul” - the words are attributed to a German Lutheran nun of which very little is known. But what we do know is the deep sense of trust of God through change and grief that comes to us through the words of this beloved hymn. Perhaps with so little being known of the history of the hymn, it leaves us open to think of our own life changes and how God has guided us through each and every one of them to get to this point.
“Be still, my soul: the Lord is on your side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief and pain;
leave to your God to order and provide;
in every change God faithful will remain.”
In every season of our lives.
In every change
In every loss
In ever grief
In every ending
And in every beginning
God, the God Who Mourns, The God Who Wept, Jesus, our God - will remain faithful to us. Even in our mourning, may we trust our faithful God.
Amen.
Monday, January 8, 2024
"How Does a Weary World Rejoice? Trust Our Belovedness" a sermon on Mark 1:4-11
Mark 1:4-11
“How Does a Weary World Rejoice? Trust Our Belovedness”
Preached Sunday, January 7, 2024
Do you know you are loved?
How do you know you are loved?
Through Advent and Christmas we have been asking: “How does a weary world rejoice?” We answered that question in the following ways:
We acknowledge our weariness - laying down our burdens with God and each.
We find joy in connection - connecting with others who will hold our weariness and joy for us.
We allow ourselves to be amazed - at all that God is doing in our world, at our world’s many wonders.
We sing stories of hope - joining in the prophetic tradition of so many of our mothers and fathers of the faith, we sing and dream about the future that God has planned.
And we make room - for God and for each other.
All of these ways that we rejoice in a weary world have the same strong and fertile foundation: that we are rooted deeply in God’s love for us.
That we know, above all else, that we are loved. That we are beloved. Meaning a much loved person. And that the core of our belovedness stems from the truth that God loves us, deeply and without measure.
Today is what we call Baptism of the Lord Sunday - and when Jesus comes out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove and a voice from the heavens said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Some translations of this Scripture, instead of “with you I am well pleased” say “in you, I find happiness and delight.”
When we are baptized, we are baptized in the name of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Some refer to the Trinity as Lover, Beloved, and Love Itself. We are baptized in the name of Love. Romans 8 - possibly one of my favorite chapters in the whole of Scripture in the whole Bible - Romans 8 tells us that we are children of God with Christ, and if children then heirs. We are Children of Love, heirs with Belovedness, claimed by Love Itself. God’s words to Jesus in his Baptism are also God’s words to us in our Baptism, our shared Baptism in Christ: “You are my child, my Beloved. In you I find happiness and delight.”
This is where the source of all of our joy, our rejoicing comes from: We are Beloved.
But…do we really believe it? Do we really trust that we are God’s beloved? Do you?
Henri Nouwen was a Catholic priest and theologian who left the prestige of academia to care for people with profound physical and mental disabilities at L’Arche Daybreak community. He was also a prolific and profound writer, writing over 30 books. One of his most well-known and heartfelt books is “Life of the Beloved.” A secular friend of Nouwen’s, Eric, asked Henri to write a book for him and others like him, the not-overtly-religious-but-seeking. He said to write “about the deepest yearning of our hearts, about our many wishes, about hope . . . Speak to us about . . . God.” The Life of the Beloved was the answer to that request. In that book, Nouwen talks about our belovedness, that belovedness is the very foundation of our lives and identities. I cannot stress enough that I wish every person alive - and certainly everyone in this room - could read this short but impactful book - to spend time contemplating their belovedness.
Because belovedness is what we are all seeking - to be loved. And often in our world, we chase things that we think will get us there, that we think will love us as we long to be loved, that we think will satisfy our soul’s deepest longings… We chase belovedness thinking that this job, this project, this trip, this relationship, this diet, this goal, this New Year’s Resolution…this will finally be the thing that satisfies my soul. But…of course they don’t. And the endless chase of love leaves us feeling empty, anxious, restless, wanting. It leads us to spiritual exhaustion - Nouwen even goes as far to say it leads us to spiritual death.
Because our weary world will try to shout over the voice of God - trying to stick us with names, titles, identities that are less than Beloved Children of God. Our weary world will say to us: you are weary. You are a lost cause. You are exhausted. You are a failure. You are not enough.
And if we are not careful to decenter these voices, we can come to believe that they are at the core of our identity. And a life without belovedness at the center - a life with exhaustion and deprecation at the center…that life doesn’t lead to true and abundant life. It doesn’t lead to Love.
Henri Nouwen says it like this:
“...you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief.”
The Christian Band casting Crowns says it like this in their 2003 song, “The Voice of Truth”:
“But the waves are calling out my name
And they laugh at me
Reminding me of all the times
I've tried before and failed
The waves they keep on telling me
Time and time again. "’Boy, you'll never win!’
‘You'll never win!’
But the Voice of Truth tells me a different story
The Voice of Truth says, ‘Do not be afraid!’
And the Voice of Truth says, ‘This is for My glory’
Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of Truth.”
Pastor Allison says it like this… I say it like this:
Trust your belovedness. You are a child of God, loved by God beyond comprehension. All other less-than-identities - we died to them in our baptism. And in that baptism, as we were resurrected with Christ, we were born again with the new identity of Beloved Child of God.
When we trust our belovedness, when we hold fast to it, when we come back to our belovedness again and again, then all other voices are drowned out. And it is there in that belovedness that we find the source of all of our rejoicing, all of our joy.
So… Do you know that you are loved by God? How do you know that you are loved by God?
It all starts at the baptismal fount and extends to the table of the Lord.
These are our constant reminders in our weary world of who and whose we are. That no matter what - God has claimed us as beloved in our baptisms. And that no matter what, God saves us a seat at this table.
These are touchstones in our weary world that we are called back to time and time again to remember who we are: Beloved. That which is the source of all our joy - even in our weary world. When God calls us child, when God feeds us and invites us in - we can experience the love of God that claims us and sates us with the joy of Belovedness.
So today we will come to the fount and to the table. To bask in God’s love for us. To feel God’s love for us. To remember the love of God who has claimed us in the name of Lover, Beloved, and Love Itself. We come here today and then we go into the world, trusting our belovedness.
“How Does a Weary World Rejoice? Trust Our Belovedness”
Preached Sunday, January 7, 2024
Do you know you are loved?
How do you know you are loved?
Through Advent and Christmas we have been asking: “How does a weary world rejoice?” We answered that question in the following ways:
We acknowledge our weariness - laying down our burdens with God and each.
We find joy in connection - connecting with others who will hold our weariness and joy for us.
We allow ourselves to be amazed - at all that God is doing in our world, at our world’s many wonders.
We sing stories of hope - joining in the prophetic tradition of so many of our mothers and fathers of the faith, we sing and dream about the future that God has planned.
And we make room - for God and for each other.
All of these ways that we rejoice in a weary world have the same strong and fertile foundation: that we are rooted deeply in God’s love for us.
That we know, above all else, that we are loved. That we are beloved. Meaning a much loved person. And that the core of our belovedness stems from the truth that God loves us, deeply and without measure.
Today is what we call Baptism of the Lord Sunday - and when Jesus comes out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove and a voice from the heavens said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Some translations of this Scripture, instead of “with you I am well pleased” say “in you, I find happiness and delight.”
When we are baptized, we are baptized in the name of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Some refer to the Trinity as Lover, Beloved, and Love Itself. We are baptized in the name of Love. Romans 8 - possibly one of my favorite chapters in the whole of Scripture in the whole Bible - Romans 8 tells us that we are children of God with Christ, and if children then heirs. We are Children of Love, heirs with Belovedness, claimed by Love Itself. God’s words to Jesus in his Baptism are also God’s words to us in our Baptism, our shared Baptism in Christ: “You are my child, my Beloved. In you I find happiness and delight.”
This is where the source of all of our joy, our rejoicing comes from: We are Beloved.
But…do we really believe it? Do we really trust that we are God’s beloved? Do you?
Henri Nouwen was a Catholic priest and theologian who left the prestige of academia to care for people with profound physical and mental disabilities at L’Arche Daybreak community. He was also a prolific and profound writer, writing over 30 books. One of his most well-known and heartfelt books is “Life of the Beloved.” A secular friend of Nouwen’s, Eric, asked Henri to write a book for him and others like him, the not-overtly-religious-but-seeking. He said to write “about the deepest yearning of our hearts, about our many wishes, about hope . . . Speak to us about . . . God.” The Life of the Beloved was the answer to that request. In that book, Nouwen talks about our belovedness, that belovedness is the very foundation of our lives and identities. I cannot stress enough that I wish every person alive - and certainly everyone in this room - could read this short but impactful book - to spend time contemplating their belovedness.
Because belovedness is what we are all seeking - to be loved. And often in our world, we chase things that we think will get us there, that we think will love us as we long to be loved, that we think will satisfy our soul’s deepest longings… We chase belovedness thinking that this job, this project, this trip, this relationship, this diet, this goal, this New Year’s Resolution…this will finally be the thing that satisfies my soul. But…of course they don’t. And the endless chase of love leaves us feeling empty, anxious, restless, wanting. It leads us to spiritual exhaustion - Nouwen even goes as far to say it leads us to spiritual death.
Because our weary world will try to shout over the voice of God - trying to stick us with names, titles, identities that are less than Beloved Children of God. Our weary world will say to us: you are weary. You are a lost cause. You are exhausted. You are a failure. You are not enough.
And if we are not careful to decenter these voices, we can come to believe that they are at the core of our identity. And a life without belovedness at the center - a life with exhaustion and deprecation at the center…that life doesn’t lead to true and abundant life. It doesn’t lead to Love.
Henri Nouwen says it like this:
“...you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief.”
The Christian Band casting Crowns says it like this in their 2003 song, “The Voice of Truth”:
“But the waves are calling out my name
And they laugh at me
Reminding me of all the times
I've tried before and failed
The waves they keep on telling me
Time and time again. "’Boy, you'll never win!’
‘You'll never win!’
But the Voice of Truth tells me a different story
The Voice of Truth says, ‘Do not be afraid!’
And the Voice of Truth says, ‘This is for My glory’
Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of Truth.”
Pastor Allison says it like this… I say it like this:
Trust your belovedness. You are a child of God, loved by God beyond comprehension. All other less-than-identities - we died to them in our baptism. And in that baptism, as we were resurrected with Christ, we were born again with the new identity of Beloved Child of God.
When we trust our belovedness, when we hold fast to it, when we come back to our belovedness again and again, then all other voices are drowned out. And it is there in that belovedness that we find the source of all of our rejoicing, all of our joy.
So… Do you know that you are loved by God? How do you know that you are loved by God?
It all starts at the baptismal fount and extends to the table of the Lord.
These are our constant reminders in our weary world of who and whose we are. That no matter what - God has claimed us as beloved in our baptisms. And that no matter what, God saves us a seat at this table.
These are touchstones in our weary world that we are called back to time and time again to remember who we are: Beloved. That which is the source of all our joy - even in our weary world. When God calls us child, when God feeds us and invites us in - we can experience the love of God that claims us and sates us with the joy of Belovedness.
So today we will come to the fount and to the table. To bask in God’s love for us. To feel God’s love for us. To remember the love of God who has claimed us in the name of Lover, Beloved, and Love Itself. We come here today and then we go into the world, trusting our belovedness.
For it is only in trusting our belovedness, that we can share the God of love with the world.
So know this: You are loved. You are loved by God. You are God’s Beloved in whom God finds happiness and delights.
Amen.
So know this: You are loved. You are loved by God. You are God’s Beloved in whom God finds happiness and delights.
Amen.
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