Lectionary Lab PREMIUM Edition for the Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Year C
November 13, 2022
Another hurricane-impacted release! Thanks, Nicole… But there’s a fresh sermon by Bubba, so read on!
Comments by John Fairless
Isaiah 65:17-25
It is important to note, I believe, that God’s act of creating heaven and earth is not simply a fact of the far-distant past; rather, it is ongoing and, perhaps, somewhat progressive. God is still creating a world that will be as God has always intended it — free from sin and death, the great plagues of our existence.
I am particularly moved by the line, “no more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days….” Few things are more tragic than a child’s passing; parents are inconsolable, families and communities are caught up in grief. Yet, even in these most difficult of times, God hears and sees our prayers (yes, God SEES our prayers, especially when we have no words!)
God’s answers are already on the way, before we can even finish praying them according to v.24. Now that’s something only God can do!
Isaiah 12
These lines function as a psalm portion for today’s worship; they make a great congregational reading, either in unison or responsively.
Malachi 4:1-2a
“The day” here will automatically carry overtones of the ending of time in the minds of the hearers, especially in light of the gospel’s apocalyptic tense. The fiery judgment of God contrasts nicely with the “sun” of God’s righteousness — a fire that does not consume, but rather brightens and shows the way.
Psalm 98
There are previous comments on Psalm 98 found here and here.
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
“Don’t run ahead of God!”
I remember those words from a sermon I heard long ago (most likely in my youthful days of evangelical fervor!) The point was, I think, that we should not presume to know how best to find our own way, but that we should wait on the Lord and allow God to direct our paths.
Well, perhaps this same advice could be applied as Paul’s wisdom to the Thessalonians, some of whom were assuming that Jesus was about ready to come back and take them home — so they had decided it was okay to quit work and just wait. Perhaps Paul is saying, “Don’t SIT ahead of God!” Jesus will come when God is good and ready for him to come…in the meantime, you should work steadily and do what is right.
Or, you might get hungry!
Luke 21:5-19
The church is not the building, it’s the people. Many congregations have been called to learn that somewhat difficult-to-appropriate lesson upon the leavetaking from a former, beloved location. (My church certainly had to wade through it a few years ago!)
Jesus stood with the prophets of Israel in trying to help people understand that it was not “the Temple of the Lord” that was actually their source of peace and security — it was the Lord of the Temple! They had gotten more than a tad attached to the Temple, its beauty, and its apparent strength.
This passage has also been used by countless evangelists and end-time authors to describe what life will be like “when Jesus comes back.” Methinks that the emphasis is not so much on what will happen when Jesus returns, as it is on what we (the church) are supposed to be doing until he does so.
“Before all this occurs…,” Jesus says, “you will be given an opportunity to testify.”
Our profession of the faith — daily — is what matters most to Christ.
Sermon by Delmer Chilton
When I was twelve, about this time of year, our little mountain Baptist church was having its annual "Revival." They brought in a traveling evangelist, and we had services every night for a week. After a visiting choir from another church, or a men's gospel quartet, or a family trio, sang and testified a while –
the evangelist preached the night's installment of "Jesus is coming soon and you better be ready."
The sermons were all about the Second Coming, and the Rapture, and the Tribulation, and the Final Judgement, and the Lake of Fire, etc. etc. etc.
While it was quite fascinating, it was also, to a 12-year-old boy, very, very real, and very, very frightening.
One morning during revival, I woke up to a completely empty house. I shared a bedroom with two brothers. It was 6 AM – they were already up and out. I got out of bed and flipped on the light switch – nothing. "Hmm," I thought, "bulb's out." I stumbled downstairs, surprised at not hearing breakfast cooking noises coming from the kitchen. No lights would turn on, no TV, no radio, no Mama, no Daddy, no siblings. Though I was barefoot and wearing nothing but the T-shirt and shorts I slept in, I ran out of the house into the backyard looking around, even the dog was missing. Suddenly, my well-trained fundamentalist mind kicked in – "Oh, my Lord, the Rapture has come, and I have been left behind!”
I fell on my knees in the cold, dewy grass, and began to pray- fervently and inarticulately: "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Don't leave me, don't leave me! Please come back, Pleeaassee come back!"
Whilst I was wailing and gnashing my teeth, I heard some familiar sounds –"Putt, putt, putt, putt" "Yip, yip, yip, yip.” I looked up to see our farm tractor coming over the hill behind the house, pulling a trailer full of cured tobacco and my family, with our dog Rover chasing all around. Jesus had not come back; I had not been left behind. Well I had, but not by Jesus. This was the time of year we prepared tobacco for market. Once a week or so we transferred a load from the packhouse to a cellar under the house where Mama and Daddy worked on it while we were at school.Usually it was "all hands on deck," but I had been a little sick the night before, so Mama left me in bed. And, the power had gone out, as it often does in the mountains. No Rapture, just a series of, for me, random, unfortunate events. Whenever I read a text like today’s Gospel lesson - "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven."- I remember that cold morning in the backyard, and shudder a bit, both from the cold and the residual fear.
The Gospel story starts innocently enough. Jesus is in the temple in Jerusalem, being followed about by a large crowd made up in equal parts of admirers and the merely curious. Someone made an offhand remark
about how beautiful the temple was. I'm sure everyone was a bit surprised when Jesus "went dark," talking about natural disasters, political intrigue, and international violence as signs of the end of time.
Probably not a few started thinking something like, "Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
But, Jesus was not preaching gloom and doom; Jesus was preaching life in the real world. Jesus was not predicting some far-off day of ultimate battle; Jesus was talking about how real life was in Israel on that very day, as they stood in that very temple, surrounded by streets full of Roman soldiers. Israel was an occupied country, ruled over by the distant and cruel Roman Empire. It was inevitable that bad things were going to eventually happen to God's people and very, very soon. At moments like that the questions boil down to two: 1) Where is God in the midst of our trouble? And 2) What are we to do?
Jesus answers the first question "Where is God?" with the promise that God is where God always has been and always will be – in the midst of our life and our trouble with us. In answer to the second question - "What are we to do?" - Jesus says that the faithful life is about trusting God and daily doing that which God places directly in front of us.
verse 9: “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified.”
verse 14: “So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance, for I will give you words and a wisdom.”
verse 18: “Not a hair of your head will perish.”
verse 19: “By your endurance, you will gain your souls”
Just like the people of Israel at the time of Jesus, worrying about destruction by the Romans, we have plenty of things to worry about. The ridiculous mess in Washington, the ongoing and war in Ukraine, global warming, school shootings, inflation, Covid, and, and, and. . . One of the real problems we have is that all these things that worry and frighten us seem so large and global and intractable and unmanageable; while we feel so very small and limited, and ultimately powerless to do anything about anything, that we begin to feel as though nothing we do matters – and we are tempted to throw our hands up in despair, bury our heads in the sand, and hope against hope that it all turns out all right.
About twenty years ago there was a spiritual bumper sticker that I saw frequently in Nashville, TN: “VISUALIZE WORLD PEACE!” One morning I was driving my son across town to school; we were bogged down in the usual 7:15 AM commuter mess when I saw a different bumper sticker that expressed my frustration perfectly: FORGET WORLD PEACE; VISUALIZE USING YOUR TURN SIGNAL!
I thought to myself, "That's right “Visualizing World Peace,” is too hard, and too unlikely, to spend a lot of energy on. But I can use my turn signal. “Who knows?” I thought to myself, “Maybe if everybody in Nashville - and Tennessee - and “the south” - and the US – would use their turn signals properly, it might be a real start toward World Peace. I know it would reduce my animosity toward my neighbors."
Jesus’ words in our Gospel lesson call us to a life of endurance, patience and faith, in the midst of a world that is often very, very difficult, and very, very frightening. Jesus words invite us to a faith that looks above and beyond our current, temporary circumstances to the promise of God to hold us and keep us forever. Jesus’ words remind us to do each day the little things, the seemingly unimportant things, that may mean nothing in the moment, butwhich turn out to mean everything for eternity.
In Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Unitarian Minister Robert Fulghum tells the story of a medieval stonecutter who was working on a Cathedral. An interested bystander saw the man working day after day, carefully cutting and shaping and polishing one small piece of stone. Finally, the watcher said to the cutter “This stone must be very important. Is it a part of the baptismal font? Is it the base of the pulpit? Is it the front of the altar?” The cutter got up from his knees and wiped his hands and led the man around the scaffolding and pointed out a very obscure corner of the building. “It goes there,” he said. The onlooker was astounded, “Really, you’re working so hard on something nobody will ever see?” The stonecutter smiled and said, “God will see it. We’re not building this cathedral for nobody; we’re building it for God.”
Amen and amen.