Always With Us
Rev. Barry W. Szymanski, J.D.
Minister of Pastoral Care
First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa
November 17, 2013
26th Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 21:1-19; 37-38

[Jesus] looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. [Jesus] said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.’ When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, ‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’ They asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this be,
and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?’ And [Jesus] said, ‘Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and, “The time is near!” Do not go after them. ‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.’ Then [Jesus] said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great arthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. ‘But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.’ Every day [Jesus] was teaching in the temple, and at night he would go out and spend the night on the Mount of Olives, as it was called And all the people would get up early in the morning to listen to him in the temple.

SERMON

Luke begins and ends this reading with Jesus in the Temple. It starts with Jesus ‘. . . looking up . . .’ and seeing a poor woman, a widow, put in just two copper coins. It is important to what we are know about that time, 2,000 years ago, because there was no social security, so a widow had limited means to take care of herself. She put in, Jesus tells us, two coins: all she had to live on. Jesus pointed out her trust in God, while he taught at the Temple in Jerusalem. After he finishes teaching at nightfall, Jesus leaves the Temple, and goes down the valley and then up to the Mount of Olives, to a grove of olive trees.

Jesus prayed a lot; it seems that his favorite place of prayer in Jerusalem was on the Mount of Olives where he could see the Temple – yet be alone in prayer. When Jesus prayed he was inspired through the Holy Spirit; then the next day he returned to teach and preach.

On this particular morning Jesus arose early, and so did the people who came to listen to him. Back at the Temple Jesus spoke about “. . . wars and insurrections, . . .” He comforts his listeners and tells them “. . . do not be terrified; . . . “ [Jesus] says: “Nation will rise against nation, . . . there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; . . . “ Many people throughout the ages have felt the time they were living in was the ‘end-time’. So it is no surprise some people believe now is the ‘end-time’; we are now in a dooms-day scenario; the time is ripe for the end of the world.

I think what Jesus really wants us to consider is every day is a possible end-time for us. When the true end-of-the-world date-wise is, is most unimportant. What is fundamental, Jesus says we should not be terrified no matter what happens. Jesus tells us no matter what happens, either to us, or in the world, “This will give [us] an opportunity to testify.” We will have the chance to witness to people about God the Father, and Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit. We will have the opportunity –in fact we have the chance now, today, when people around us are frightened, to affirm God’s love for us, and God’s care through God’s creation.

Jesus reassures us we do not have to prepare our defenses in advance; for He, Jesus, will give us the words to respond. Jesus even reassures us He, Jesus, will give us wisdom, the wisdom of God himself, so none of our opponents will be able to withstand or contradict it. These are marvelous promises.

Jesus tells us not to worry. Trust in Him; Trust in God the Father; Trust in the Holy Spirit. Jesus reassures us if we are betrayed by our family, or by our friends, and hated because of our faith in Jesus, not a hair of our head will perish, because by our patience and by our endurance we will gain our souls.

Within the lifetimes of the members of this church we may have experienced, directly or indirectly, World War II, the holocaust, the Korean conflict, the Vietnam war, the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, recent use of chemical weapons, bombings, mass shootings, individual violence, and threats of all kinds, local and international.

Individually we often hurt emotionally, ache from physical pain, and are worn down by worry. We fear the unknown. We agonize with our loved ones who suffer emotionally, physically, and mentally. We grieve over the deaths of whose we love. To all of this Jesus says: “This will give you an opportunity to testify.” Suffering, anxiety, grieving, and pain, are all chances to testify. . . . But what if I don’t want to testify! In my very prayer I ask God to take my suffering away. I don’t want my loved ones to suffer at all --- and I don’t want to suffer. I would do anything to take away the hurts of Eddie and Opal, Sue and Sarah and Dave: of everyone here: of all those I know and love.

There are days when I don’t even want to watch the news or read a newspaper. There are times I want to escape even the thought of having to testify about Jesus in the light of individual and world suffering from violence and earthquakes and floods, and famines, and wars and conflicts.

Yet, I trust in Jesus, because throughout all, Jesus promises to be with us. He promises to be with me. He promises to be with you. A promise is a contract. We can accept a promise, - or reject it. If we accept Jesus promises, then we are accepting him, -- who is he -- and what he says he is -- and we believe him. An offer of a promise and our acceptance of the promise is an agreement -- it is a contract -- it is a covenant.

We are a covenantal church. What does that really mean? When the people called Separatists, the Puritans, began to read the Bible carefully, they realized the God of the Old Testament made many promises about Who He Is, and Who We, the people, are. Those covenantal statements were offers by God to us humans, which the people could accept or reject.

Today, this morning, when God says that he is God, and that we are His people, we can accept the offer of God’s covenant, or we can reject it. Well, as the Congregational Separatists studied the Gospels they became more and more aware Jesus was a person for all times -- including their time.

Jesus, as a person, becomes even more approachable than He was before in the times of scripture. In fact, when reading the Gospels, they recalled Jesus taught us to call God Father! This very morning, we cannot get closer to the divine than to pray to a Father; to identify our God as a parent. Our belief in God is that of a family – He is familial – familiar.

Let me talk about creeds for a couple of minutes. The church at the time that the Puritans were studying the Bible, was a church of the creed. Now, creeds are important. They lay out the basic premises of Christian belief.

If someone asks, what it means to be a Christian, one way to answer that question is to give that person a copy of one of the many creeds that have been written over the course of centuries. Some find security in a creed.

For example, John A. Ross, a contemporary Presbyterian minister who was a Dean at the University of British Columbia, wrote, in ‘This We Believe’: “When I stand shoulder to shoulder with Christians, all declaring our common faith in the words of the Apostles’ Creed, something very deep stirs within me. I feel like a tree out in the great forest, surrounded by other trees all reaching up together from the same ground, all swept by the same wind, all steadily voicing the same ageless sounds that swaying trees have always made.”

I wanted to read John Ross’ enthusiasm for the creed because it is important to understand, like him, there are many people who passionately believe that creedal statements are important. Yet there is another approach.

Let’s listen to two. Edmund A. Steimle, another contemporary clergyman, who taught seminary, wrote this in ‘Are You Looking For God’: “Never be misled into supposing that we Christians think we have God all nearly packaged and labeled for easy distribution and consumption like a packageof frozen peas.

Our creeds and dogmas only serve to lead us into the ‘depth of the riches’ of God’s being. There is a mystery about the nature and ways of God that you and I can never expect to fathom entirely – otherwise God would not be God. We do but touch the fringe of his garment. But we do believe that the fringe which we touch is real!”

Let’s back up 500 years and listen to what Desiderius Erasmus, who was born in 1466 and died in 1536, and share his extremely powerful words: “You will not be damned if you do not know whether the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son has one or two beginnings, but you will not escape damnation if you do not cultivate the fruits of the Spirit which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, long-suffering, mercy, faith, modesty, continence and chastity . . . The sum of our religion is defined as little as possible, and in many things leave each one free to follow his or her own judgment. . . “

Erasmus was a great spiritual theologian. As I stated, he died in 1536. Robert Browne, one of the very first Congregationalists, wrote the ‘Statement of Congregational Principles’ in 1582, some 46 years after Erasmus died. Robert Browne’s writing is one of the first of a long string of Congregational documents.

I believe that there is an exceptionally strong correlation between Erasmus’ thoughts, and the thinking of the early Congregationalists – and Robert Browne’s documents point this out. The early Puritans closely examined the person of Jesus, and reflected on his teachings, and realized the Gospel calls for a personal, relational, familial, response to God’s offer of covenant. Jesus’ message is essentially a simple one to understand.

Now, knowing about Jesus and memorizing his teaching does not make it any easier to carry out, but at least we know who we are listening to, and who we are walking with, and who we should strive toward.

Jesus reminds us we are created for union with God; and we are caretakers of all of God’s creation, which includes the men and women around us, and the earth we inhabit. Sin, essentially, is the refusal to recognize God as God, but, rather, to make gods of ourselves; Sin, basically, is the refusal to accept God’s invitation to covenant; Sin is the refusal to take care of God’s creation, which includes one’s lack of respect and concern for the men and women – neighbors and the earth we inhabit.

We are a congregational church – a covenantal church. Our covenant is a beautiful statement of our agreement with God, and the universe of men and women around us, and of the earth we live on. Our Covenant is always printed at the top of the first page of every Order of Worship.

We state that we, as followers of Jesus Christ, commit ourselves to share in the worship and service of God. We commit ourselves to grow in the knowledge and expression of our faith, to reach out with compassion to those in need, to treat each other with love and understanding, and to return to God a portion of God’s gifts.

How can we serve God without serving our neighbor? Service to one includes service to the other. We promise God we will grow as His people, we will learn more and more about God, by increasing our knowledge of God through study of scripture, books, hopefully good sermons, and discussions with others.

As we think and talk about life, philosophy, and theology, these topics should lead us to directly apply our knowledge in our daily lives, in our business relations, so Jesus’ teachings’ will influence our common sense decisions in our and other’s lives.

By undertaking the Covenant of FCC, we pledge to commit ourselves to a full expression of our faith, to work for God’s Kingdom, “. . . on earth as it is in heaven . . .” As followers of Jesus Christ, we promise to commit ourselves to reach out with compassion to those in need.

The more we become aware of those around us, the more we realize that each of us is a person in need. We commit ourselves to treat each other with love, and to treat each other with understanding. Love cannot be an abstract. Love is real when it is concrete – when it is meaningful.

We know that to understand other people is often very difficult. here are so many cultures, so many ways of living, even within the communities that each of us in involved with, even within this nave, so that it is tough to stand-under the other person – to be under the souls of their shoes, if you will, to understand them.

There is a line in the movie, Sunset Boulevard, a film noir, where one of the key characters, walks past a shoe repair shop, and remarks about the shoe repairman he knows: ‘He looks closely at your heels, but he cannot see your soles.’

Understanding another person begins by listening. Isn’t that our own first requirement of our prayers? We demand God understand us! We hope God stands-under our very soul -- to know where we are coming from -- to empathize with us. In prayer we ask God to hear us.

We hear the psalmist say over and over again, as in Psalm 4: “Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer.” We want God to pay attention to us. What others want of us; what we want of others, and what we want of God: is to be listened to so that we may be understood.

The ending petition of our covenant is that, as followers of Jesus Christ, we commit ourselves to return to God a portion of God’s gifts. When we fully acknowledge what we have received from God is a gift, then we can easily return a portion to God. The gifts we have received are our talents, our personalities, our gene pool, our IQ’s, our body types, and how we have developed these gifts through self-training, and through guided decisions in life, based upon the circumstances in life that have also been gifts to each of us.

If a person seriously believes the talents he or she has are absolutely and completely based solely upon who they are, and what they have made themselves to be, then that person is not willing to give anything back to God.

But that is not our covenant. Our agreement is we are followers of Jesus. Therefore, no matter what happens in life, as listed by Jesus as earthquakes, both on earth and in our souls; and famines and plagues, whether on earth or in our souls, all will give us an opportunity to testify.

And even if we are betrayed . . . Jesus promises not a hair of our heads will perish, but by our endurance we will gain our souls.’ The gospel reading today concludes by telling us after every day Jesus taught in the temple, he would spend the night on the Mount of Olives. The next day all the people would get up early in the morning in order to listen to him when he returned to the temple.

As covenantal followers of the person of Jesus, may we listen to him, and may we follow his example and, at least occasionally, may we spend some quiet time with him on the Mount of Olives, to seek out the wisdom only God can provide.

Jesus’ testified to His Father by words, but his best testimony was how he lived his life. May we remember that our testimony can be done by words, but our best testimony is through how we live our lives. How will the world know us, except by watching us as we live our lives? Daily living in and with God is the ultimate of testimony. That is the definitive way to live out our covenant.

Jesus’ promise is that if we rely upon the Holy Spirit, God will always be with us. Recall that when Jesus was at the Temple, he looked up to see a poor widow put in two small copper coins. Jesus said that ‘ . . . this poor widow has put in more than all of the others; for all of them contributed out of their abundance, but this poor widow put in out of her poverty all she had to live on.’ That woman was living out her covenant -- the personal covenant she fully entered into with God. She recognized that God is God, and that she was a trusting child of God. She was living out her promise to God, not only in words, but in how she lived. May I continue to strive to do the same. May each of us continue to strive to do the same.