Rest Assured: Of Puzzles and Pictures

 January 11 2026

Genesis 1:1-2, John 1:1-5

         These early cold days of the new year causes me to remember when the winter days got to cold for us kids to play outside, my Mom would often get us to help her put together jig saw puzzles. You learned quick to find the corners but sometimes, like when the puzzle was round, you had to make sense of these pieces in other ways. You had to look at the picture on the box and begin to sort the pieces by their color. As I think about putting puzzles together, you know, without the picture on the front of the puzzle box, the task of putting the puzzle together would be almost impossible.Sure, you might be able to find the corner pieces but to figure out the the picture hidden there among the mess would be prove to be extremely difficult.

         In much the same way as putting a jig saw puzzle together, to figure out this life we find ourselves in requires a picture which can assist us to put the pieces together. In this series of messages called, “Rest Assured”, we are discovering just what Jesus reveals to us, which is that he has been given to us so that we might experience a life marked by rest. This is the promise Jesus gives to us in Matthew eleven, verse twenty-eight, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me , for I am gentle and lowly in your heart and you will find rest for your soul, your very life.” Jesus teaches us that when we unite ourselves with him then we will discover just what picture is there on the outside of this box called life. We at last can rest when we know just what life is supposed to look like and perhaps more importantly, we can also know where we fit in this picture Jesus lays out for us. You see, what it means for us to be yoked with Jesus is that we are bound to him so that where he leads, we will feel strangely compelled to follow. So as Jesus walks on those ancient paths which lead to our rest, we do not need to know the way for Jesus will be for us the very way we can get to this promised rest. As we follow Jesus, then our life becomes a moment by moment trusting upon the leading of Jesus. Jesus is for us then, not just the way that leads us to our promised rest, he is in all actuality, our very life because his life has consumed our own as we have allowed him to lead us is into the true picture of our promised rest. When we at last, look upon this picture, we find that it is the very image of Jesus himself. And we also find that we are able to fit into this picture when we become conformed to the contours of the piece of the puzzle called Jesus, for he is our truth about this puzzle of life. You see when Jesus is for us the way, the truth and the life as we find in the fourteenth chapter of John, the result for us is that we are able to rest as we abide with him. 

         Now the truth Jesus is leading us to is the very truth found in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, the story of creation.You see, Jesus is telling us the original back to the future story because where he is leading us to is to a future where the original creation found in the beginning is our ever present home. You see, what Jesus also reveals to us is that he was there right at the beginning when chaos gave way to creation. This was the mind blowing realization of the early church. I mean, listen to Paul, in the eighth chapter of First Corinthians who writes, “…yet for us there is one God, from who are all things, and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ through whom are all things, and through whom we exist.” Paul could further write in the opening verses of Ephesians that our Heavenly Father has chose us in Jesus Christ, before the foundation of the world. These amazing statements of faith given to us by Paul, of course come from what Jesus himself has revealed to us. In a prayer Jesus spoke on the night he was betrayed, as found in the seventeenth chapter of John, Jesus is heard to say, “Father, I desire that they also, all those whom you have given to me, may they be with me where I am, to see my glory, the glory which you gave to me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” So Jesus, by own admission, clearly tells us that he had a front row seat when chaos became creation. Jesus, as John records in the first chapter of his gospel, is indeed the Word made flesh. The Word is the same word John also tells us was there, in the beginning, within God, one with God. 

         So we trust the leading of Jesus because he is as we hear at the beginning of the book of Revelation, “…the Alpha, the beginning of all things and he is the Omega, the end of all things.” When we take what we now know about Jesus, that he existed in the Father’s love before creation and through him the creation came to exist, we can now look at the creation story with new eyes. This story begins with a statement about God; God alone is the one who created everything, the heavens above and all of creation here on earth, so that what is written here in Genesis is an account of what God alone has done. Now it is also important that we remember that this account was originally a story told perhaps around a campfire at the end of the day. It is a story whose telling brought hope to the people of God when God was forced to throw them out of the land promised to them because of their rebellion and idolatry. God told his people that they needed to spend seventy years being slaves to the Babylonians and only then would he bring them back to live in Judaea. This time span is important because after seventy years most of the people who left for Babylon would have died there. What it appears God is doing is raising up a new generation who might at last be the obedient people he expected them to be. So, the task set before the people of God was that they had to instill their faith into their children otherwise there might not be anyone left to live in the land promised to them by God. This was no easy task, either, because they would be raising their children in a hostile environment, one where the story of many different gods could be heard on every street corner. Again, this sounds quite familiar, doesn’t it? You see, the people of Babylon had their own creation stories, yet they were vastly different than the one held to be true by God’s people. God, I believe, understood that this would happen when his people found themselves in exile and he may have even welcomed a side-by-side comparison to these other, so-called gods. You see, in all these other stories, the world always begins as a mess for the gods to clean up and sort out. For the worshippers of false gods, the world has always been a mess, it is currently mess, and it will remain a mess, so just pick a god who you believe will be the best ruler over the mess we find ourselves in. Such a dismal state of affairs would never have been any great source of rest and peace for those who clung to such stories.

         Well, even though the people of the ancient world did not have much to hold fast to in the stories they told about creation, we can, nonetheless understand why they told these stories of their beginnings. You see, in the quiet evenings, there around a fire as they thought about life, the people would think of questions that they struggled to find answers to. As they looked in wonder at this world they lived in, people would quite naturally be curious as to just whose fingerprints were on these marvelous works they witnessed throughout nature? Then they may have thought, if there was one who had made this world, why had he made this world like he did? Why did there seem to be an order to the workings of this place we call home? And then it makes sense that people would ultimately begin to consider, just why they were here, just why had they been given a life here in this place? Then, like many of us may have wondered ourselves, they may also have searched for the answer to the question,  “Does my life have a purpose or is my life just some random event void of any meaning?”.

         The story of Genesis is the story is a narrative which gives us answers to questions such as these. You see, for those who first heard this story, the question of how creation came to be was not even a question they would have thought about. While many people today still try and use the story found in Genesis to explain how our world came to be, this simply is not the focus of this creation story. Perhaps the people who first listened to this creation story held to the wisdom found in the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, where God declares that just as , “..the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts…”. What this is telling us is that there will be many aspects of creation that will be beyond our comprehension and we must simply accept that this is how it must be. Yet even so, what the creation story found in Genesis does do is to answer those nagging questions about this life we have as people here on earth, questions that no scientific endeavor can give us the answers to. Here in Genesis is found the reasons why God created this world we live in and just what purpose we have as people who live within that creation. In other words, the creation story in Genesis gives us a pretty good picture to help us figure out this puzzle called life.

         So, in the beginning, we are told that the earth was without form, and it  was also empty, a scene of absolute nothingness. Here is where creation begins, with the waiting for God to do what only God can do, to make something exist where nothing used to be. What we can know about God right here in the beginning, is that he alone has the ability to create life out of nothing. This is a great comfort for us to realize, because here is the God who can take the nothingness that causes us to be afraid and through his power, the nothingness gives way to something. God calls us to know him as this sort of God so that we trust him even in the face of an unknown future, for what greater unknown future could there be then the one found right here at the beginning. 

         We are told next that the Spirit hovered upon the waters. The image we are to have is that of a bird which is hovering as they build their nest, a place for new life to spring forth from. Now, the people who first listened to this story would have also recognized that the Spirit appearing as a bird hovering over their nest, is the very same image given to them on the night of Passover. The night of Passover is the night when God brought the last plague upon Egypt so that the king who held the people of Israel captive would at last grant them their freedom. This plague was that the angel of death was going to go throughout the land of Egypt and in a single night, take the life of every firstborn child and animal. The only ones who would be spared were those who had painted the doorframe of their homes with the blood of a lamb as God had instructed them. The people of Israel waited in their homes on that terrible evening, prepared to go when the time came for them to be free at last. This is why they ate their roasted lamb and their unleavened bread with their sandals on their feet and their staff in their hands. And as they heard the cries go up from throughout Egypt, the people of Israel who had obeyed God’s instructions found that God had hovered over their homes protecting them from the angel of death which passed over them. On this night the people of Israel discovered that their God is a God who places himself between them and death, the God who can bring life out of a night of death. 

         So here at the beginning of Genesis, we have a similar image of God placing himself between the emptiness and nothingness of chaos and this something of life that he is getting ready to bring forth. What we can know about God, in just these first few verses of our creation story, is that the glory of God is seen as he begins with utter nothingness which we discover is no match for God’s ability to replace that emptiness with the wonder of his creation. So we can rest assured that God indeed can take the nothingness of our empty hands and fill them with the very wonder of his creation. Yet this is not all, for God is also found to be like a bird hovering over what he is bringing forth, covering his creation with his very self so that the chaos cannot damage it.The image may even suggest the truth that all of God’s creation is always covered by the wings of our creator God for we are never told that God has, at some point, stopped watching over that which he has brought about. So, again, what we have come to know about God is that he is a God who covered over his creation with his wings right at the beginning and that he continues to do so which is an amazing comfort for those looking for rest. 

         So, the story of creation begins with the faith that the canvas upon which God works is the vast expanse of nothingness, that which is without any form, totally empty So, the something of life that God is bringing forth has as its cornerstone, the power of God to do what seems so utterly impossible to us. This is the base upon which creation is launched. Then we also learn that God himself covers over us just like a mother bird protecting her young, and this protection is as eternal as God himself. Right here then, the picture of life is seen to be framed with the power of God as its lower edge and the love of God as its top edge. When this is revealed to us by Jesus, then his promise of rest becomes much more believable, doesn’t it?

         At last then, we are ready in our creation story to witness the formation of our universe, and just what does God do in order to bring order out of the void? The amazing answer is that God simply speaks. Into the nothingness where even sounds to not exist, incredibly a voice cries out, “Let there be light”. Then there was, indeed, light where only nothing had been. The power of God to take nothing, the dark emptiness of the chaos that threatens us and create something right there, the light, is all done with a word. A simple word that anyone can speak but when spoken by God, this familiar word suddenly has a strange power to bring forth a new reality. This is the same word that John tells us was there with God, and in God, and all things were brought forth through this word, the very word who took on flesh and has come to live with us. In this word was held life, what John records as being the light for all people. This life, held within that word, this is the light that has come to shine in the darkness, and yes, we are certain that the darkness has not, and will not ever overcome this light, this life of the one we know as Jesus. In this light, the picture we need to solve this puzzle called life can at last be seen. So, let us rest knowing that the God whose power and love were there at our beginnings is the same God, with us today and for all eternity. Praise the Lord! Amen!           

         

Rest Assured: Are You Ready to Rest?

 January 4 2026

Matthew 11:20-30

         Happy New Year! Can you believe that once again we find ourselves facing another brand new year? Well, the good news is that right here, at the beginning of yet another year, the wisdom of the church calendar proves to be very helpful. If you remember back to the beginning of the season of Advent we said that this is when the church has its new year according to the church calendar. What we learn during Advent is God’s plan to give us a hope and a future. This plan, we also discovered, was also tied to God’s plan to give us peace through our willingness to to be at peace with our neighbors. This then, was followed by the joy of God causing us to rejoice no matter what our circumstances. Finally, above all, God longs for us to know the the certainty of his love for all people, a love that binds our life together with the life of God so that we might know God. So there in Advent we waited for these promises God made to us to become at last real to all of us. We longed for the day when our life might at last be filled with hope, that we could find a way to experience a lasting peace, that joy could bubble up within us and love at last would be the very way of life for all people. This day arrived at last, the day we know as Christmas, the day when the baby Jesus was at last born. Here at last was the long awaited king in the line of David who would usher in an era marked by hope in the hearts of all people, a time of lasting peace, an age of abounding joy and steadfast love. This is the truth that Paul understood so well for he writes in the first chapter of Second Corinthians, that Jesus is the, “Yes”, to all of God’s promises. 

         What this means for us as we face this new year is that instead of being filled with dread and despair, we can instead greet this new year with a living hope within us. Instead of expecting a year full of drama and stress, we instead are ready to experience peace as we seek the peace of others. We can also know that this does not have to be a year of chasing after every new thing that we believe will bring us happiness because we now know where a deep and abiding joy can be found. So, yes, this is the year that love is going to rule our life. We can look at this year so differently all because we have been given a gift whose name is Jesus.

         So, we have gone through the season of Advent, which was the four weeks of the church calendar, and then a new season called Christmas began when the birth of Jesus was celebrated. The season of Christmas lasts only twelve days as we might know from singing the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. So, beginning on the seventh of January we enter yet another season which the church calls, “Epiphany”. This is just a fancy name for revelation. If we remember again how we lit candles during Advent what we are to understand is that with the coming of Jesus, the Christ child, a light has come into the world. Now at last we what previously had been hidden from our eyes because of this worlds darkness is at last revealed to us in the light of Christ. The season of Epiphany, then,  is a time for us to consider just what has been revealed now that the light and life of Jesus has entered into our world.

         As I considered how to explain this season of Epiphany, I was reminded of a story about our first daughter, Elizabeth, when she was a mere six months old on Christmas. This was such a fun time to take and show her off at all of the family gatherings. Well, something rather funny happened when we took Elizabeth to a Christmas party for Jennifer’s relatives. Jennifer had a cousin whose son, Andrew, was around eight years old that Christmas. Andrew was a very bright kid who was always thinking. It became obvious that Andrew was pondering quite a bit about this new baby that everyone was fussing over because he stood and looked at Elizabeth then exclaimed, “What does it do?”. You see, Andrew just could not figure out what all of the excitement was about this doll baby who did nothing more than eat and fill its pants. I believe that there just might be a lot of people who are much like Andrew when they celebrate yet another Christmas. They look upon the manger scene and see the baby Jesus asleep on the hay, and they too wonder, “What does it do?”. Much like Andrew wondered about this six month baby called Elizabeth, so too I imagine many people after Christmas are left wondering about this new born child named Jesus.They desperately want to ask, just why in the world is everyone fussing over this baby born in a little backward village named Bethlehem?

         Now if, say, one of those people who are thinking back on Christmas and wondering just what was all this celebration was really all about, and they came to you, what might you be able to tell them about Jesus? Just what exactly does this Jesus do? Without much thought we might explain that Jesus is our hope for eternal life, you know the gift given to us so that we might not perish and have eternal life. Yes, this is a very good reason to get excited about Jesus but what if this person goes on and asks you, but what does this Jesus do for me here, in this life I’m living right now? They are rightly wondering, is this Jesus of any earthly good? So, just what answer might you give to someone who asks you if Jesus has any bearing on this life we are living, right here, right now, in all of the mess we so often find ourselves in? 

         Well, if you listened carefully to the scripture for today, you will know that Jesus indeed has something to give to all of us, today. In our scripture we do find that Jesus himself is telling us just what has been revealed when he was born as one of us. Like all of the stories found in the Bible, the background circumstances prove to be very important and this is true for the scripture we read here in the eleventh chapter of Matthew. We find that Jesus has done some powerful and amazing works in the cities that are located around the Sea of Galilee. As we may recall, Jesus healed the sick, going from place to place because the crowds had grown so large. Yet in spite of these people seeing the evident power of God at work among them, they, nonetheless, refused to allow this witness to affect their hearts. God had shown up in their midst in a demonstration of power and healing and the reaction of those who saw these miracles was a yawn, and maybe a shrug of their shoulders. They easily turned back to their life like nothing had ever happened. But something great had happened, heaven invaded earth so do course, Jesus was angered. Jesus was shocked by the unwillingness of these people to let their minds be transformed by what had been revealed to them. Can you begin to understand the crisis that arises when God reveals himself to us in power? As we enter into a season when we ask the question, “Just what has God revealed to us in Jesus?”, we have to expect that we will become different people when we witness the power of God.

         Jesus, yes, was rightly outraged by the refusal of these towns to be affected by what they had witnessed. So he takes the truth about judgment day, and he brings it to bear upon that very moment when these people turned their backs on God. Jesus reaches back to the infamous story of Sodom, found in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, where God judged this town worthy of destruction all because he could not find ten righteous men living in that city. Jesus states that on judgement day that it was going to go better for the citizens of Sodom than for those who had seen his miracles and went home unmoved. You see, they, unlike Sodom, had indeed witnessed the mighty acts of God in their midst, yet such displays of power had borne no fruit in their lives.

         Now it is right here that our story takes a strange turn because Jesus goes from pronouncing judgment on these unrepentant people to being caught up in a moment of intimate conversation with his Heavenly Father. Here, again, we have yet another revelation. We discover in the words of Jesus that the reason why it was that so many people refused to be transformed after witnessing the works of God. You see, God, our Father, hides his grace from those who think they have life all figured out. No, God rightfully, gives his grace only to those who are actually interested in his plan, that great goal that God has for all people. This is why Jesus tells us that the ones God is looking for are those who know themselves as being children. Just like we laugh at a child telling their parents just how they intend to live their life, so God too must be shocked by our arrogance when we believe we can demand that he support the plans we might have. Like children we must know we are utterly dependent on our Heavenly Father. We must come with our hands held out ready to receive a gift. After all, this is the way Jesus approaches his Father, for in his prayer he reveals to us that all things have been handed over to him. Can you see the Son standing before his Father, his hand held out in anticipation to receive? So too, we must follow this posture of Jesus. Jesus in childlike obedience takes what is given to him by his Father. Jesus then turns, and he offers his gift to all who come to him as a child, hands held out ready to receive.

         You see, when we receive this gift from Jesus, this grace of God, we come to know something of the goodness of God. Through the receiving of this gift we have come to know that, as James says in the first chapter of his letter, every good gift, and every perfect gift comes down to us from our Father above, the one whose face never turns away from us. So, yes, we can come to know ourselves as those Jesus has chosen to share his life with us, an unbelievable honor. All of this leads us to the moment when Jesus tells us these well-known words, “Come to me all you who labor and are carrying loads that are way to heavy for you to bear, I am the one who will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me. I am gentle, lowly in heart. With me you will find rest for your soul, your very life. My yoke is easy; my burden is light.” At last we come to the whole point of what Jesus is getting at which is that he is the gift which really does, keeps on giving. Jesus is the gift given to us by our Heavenly Father, the only one who is able and willing to give to us something called, rest. You see, Jesus did not need the gift of prophecy to see which of those who had seen God’s power and had refused to repent. All Jesus needed is to look and see that these people were restless. They were walking around with the weight of the world bearing down upon them. There they were, rushing about, fussing over what they were going to have for dinner, and what they were going to wear, becoming consumed by all of the concerns of their life and it was wearing them out. Who says that the Bible doesn’t connect with real life, right? You see, the reason why Jesus was so upset by their lack of enthusiasm with what God was up to, is that the result was so tragic. Here God was holding out a way for his people to find relief from this nagging restlessness that overwhelmed their life and instead they chose to stick to their own wisdom and understanding. A common definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, and such was the situation Jesus witnessed, people living in a hell of their own making, refusing to try something different. It simply did not have to be like this. God had stepped into their situation and he offered them a gift named Jesus. Yet, they were so busy wringing their hands over their situation that they could not simply stop and hold their hands out to receive what God had to offer, the gift of Jesus who held out the gift of rest for all of them.

         So the answer to the question, “ Just what does this baby do?”is this: This child named Jesus, is a gift from God, the Father, who offers to all the gift of a life marked by rest. We should not be surprised by this offer of Jesus to give us rest though, because what Jesus tells us here in the eleventh chapter of Matthew is a mere retelling of what we find in the sixth chapter of Jeremiah. There God tells his people, “Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” This truth that God reveals to us about rest is further found to be very similar to what God spoke to Moses after the tragedy of the Golden Calf. In the thirty-third chapter of Exodus, Moses prays for the people of Israel so that God’s wrath would not be upon them. Moses pleads with God to remain with his people, reminding God of the grace he had shown to him. Moses says to God, “ Now that I have received your grace, please show me your ways, your ancient paths, so that I may know you, so that I might continue to receive your grace. Remember that this nation is your people.” God responds to this prayer of Moses by telling him, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”. Where the sin of God’s people abounded in their worship of the Golden calf, God’s grace abounded even more, for even to these sinful people, God holds out the possibility for them to know his presence and experience his rest.

         What we find when we go searching for a better understanding of this idea of rest is that it is rooted in the story of creation, where on the seventh day, we are told that God rested from his labors. This is the very reason why the people of God were told to rest every seventh day and call that day holy because this is what our holy God did there in the beginning. In the next several weeks, in this series of messages entitled, “Rest Assured”, we are going to consider, more closely, just what has been revealed to us in this gift of Jesus. We are going to consider just what does it mean for us to receive this rest offered to us by Jesus. What might it mean for us to enter into this new year and not be wore down from all of the concerns, anxiety and worry that can come over us as we look to an unknown future. I love this quote by the Holocaust survivor, Corrie Ten Boom who says that we should, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” As we set out on this new year, let me ask you, “Are you ready to trust this unknown future ahead of us to the God that we know?”. “Are you ready to stop wringing your hands and instead simply hold out your hands out, like a child, saying, “Rest, please!”, and then expect that Jesus will lead us to rest in the Father’s arms. So, are you ready to put the yoke on, and unite yourself with Jesus as he walks the ancient paths, knowing that he is leading us to find rest in a future yet unknown? I pray that this is the year that you experience Jesus as the one who gives us the rest we all are searching for. To God be the glory! Amen!

         

Ready or not? Written in Love

 December 21 2025

Jeremiah 31:31-34

         I have to make a confession that might surprise some people, which is this: I don’t really like having a live Christmas tree. What you have to know, when I say this, is that Jennifer and I have had close to forty live Christmas trees decorate our home over the years. Even so, I don’t really like having to go out on a snowy day to the tree farm and pick out a tree which you hope will not be too big but will be anyways. Then when you bring it home and get it in the tree stand and find that it is impossible for this tree to stand upright. Of course, you will have to turn the tree just so in order to hide the gaping hole that you swore was not there when it was cut down. After that you get the ladder out to place the star up top and watch as the star droops to one side because as the branches are too weak to hold the star up. And on it goes, the fun with light strands and the placing of ornaments and of course, the daily watering. So, you are right to ask, just why do we keep on getting a live tree? The answer is that this whole messing around with a live tree is an important part of our family’s Christmas story.  You see, for our family, the placing of a live Christmas tree in our house, has now become a part of the story that we have come to treasure despite the hassle and the mess. Our family loves to tell and retell the stories about the many different farms we have gotten trees at, even cutting one down on the way back from bringing Sarah home from college. We have had trees that came loaded with poison ivy, and trees that were so crooked at the base the only way to steady them was to wire them to a screw in the window molding. One time when the Christmas tree fell over, a special ornament was broken so we had to get a rush order on a new one to get it here before the arrival of Christmas. So, yes, these live Christmas trees are simply an indispensable part of our family’s Christmas story.

         You see, a person’s whole Christmas experience is often captured by the Christmas story they hold dear. So, yes, even if the Christmas tree is a real mess, it nonetheless remains a vital part of the story of our family tells about Christmas.This is why that even though I may not always like having a real tree, I can still admit that the Christmas story we tell would simply not be the same without having one.

What we also all know so well, is that these Christmas stories that we love, are our stories, and no one else’s. So if you want to know us and the stories we treasure then there is no better way than to take the time to listen to the stories that we share, and this is never more true then when is comes to our Christmas story.  Now what is also interesting about so many of the stories that make up our Christmas story, is that very few, if any, ever get written down yet they are hardly forgotten. No, the truth is that these stories are written down just not with ink. No,  stories like our Christmas story, we might say, are written in love on the tablets of our hearts, the very treasury of all we hold dear.

         You see, the very reason why we treasure the stories that tell of our life together is because of the love we have for each other. Only love is able to bind us together and unite us in the stories we tell, and this is the reason why we can say that love is the very ink that writes these stories upon our hearts. Perhaps this idea will help us make sense of our scripture for today. There we hear God tell Jeremiah about this new covenant that he is going to make with his people. God reveals that this new covenant will be not be written on stone tablets like the covenant sealed at Sinai. No, this new covenant will instead be written, strangely enough, upon the  hearts of God’s people. We are left wondering just what might God be writing there upon our hearts? I believe that the answer is found in yet other profound claim by God in this scripture where he tells us that in the coming days all people will know God from the person held in the lowest esteem to the those due the greatest honor. The way we will know God will be just as we know each other,  through listening to the story God is speaking. Now, it makes sense, doesn’t it, that these stories God tells to us are going to be held by us to as something to be treasured because they tell us of God’s great love for us. So there upon our hearts we will write the story that God is telling because we will want to speak of of his love forever. Our scripture tells us that the story that we have heard from God, the story that we treasure, the story of his love for us which causes us to love God in return, this story is called a covenant. A covenant, quite simply, is the name for this relationship of love that we have with God. This means that the story written on our hearts in love is not just a story of knowing God, but rather this story that we treasure is the story of knowing who we are, God and us, united together forever. 

As we wait for the coming king, God speaks to us about our life together, a life marked by hope for we now have a certain future which God gives to us through his power. All God asks of us is to trust him. We must trust God that he is indeed able to bring life out of this dead end way of being that we have found ourselves in. This is how our story, the story of God and us united together, has its beginning. Well, as God continues with his story we discover that he desires that we experience a life of peace and rest. Yet God also wants us to know that such a life cannot be found by living apart from the rest of the world. No, God insists that we get busy doing everything we can to make the lives of our neighbors experience the same peace we are searching for, for when our neighbors live in peace then we too will find peace and rest. So now we find that this story we have with God has become intertwined with the stories of our neighbor as we take their longings and and we weave them into our story with God. The story God speaks to us, though, is far from over for he adds that we must catch hold of the joy in his heart. We are to become aware of how our God blesses our lives, even in the worst of circumstances. These blessings turn us toward God in gratitude and thankfulness. By faith we witness the joy of the God whose goodness radiates over us and in the flame of his joy we rejoice. So, yes, through us listening to all God has spoken to us have indeed come to know God. And not only that, but we also have stories of our experiences living with God, trusting him as we have gone along. These stories that we treasure in our hearts are stories that we can say are indeed, written there in love. This love is what writes the story of our relationship with God, a new covenant which binds us together forever. .

Now this sounds all well and good, doesn’t it? Yet as we are all so well aware, the world we live in is a world filled with many stories. These other stories we listen to can create fear and doubt to creep in, making us wonder about our future, destroying our hope. The peace we pursue is difficult in a world where it seems that everybody has an axe to grind. And joy, this is perhaps the most difficult of all because the world demands so much of our attention, we forget to be grateful for all that we do have been given by God. So to be honest, this love between us and God can become strained, as we begin to listen to every story except for the one story that really matters, the story God is speaking to us. So it is good that our God knows us so very well, because when our love stops writing our story, this is when God tells us again of our Christmas story, the Christmas story which speaks of God’s great love for each one of us. This Christmas story tells of how our God gave us a gift, a gift which forever speaks of God’s great love for all of us. When we hear this Christmas story we remember once again, that when our love grows weak and cold, God’s love is strong enough and certain enough to hold our relationship with him together, forever.

So, let us once again hear the Christmas story, the story of the long awaited king, God’s anointed one, the Christ, the one whose candle we are now ready to light. But first though, let us hear these familiar words of the Christmas story. Here is the story which tells of how God so loved all of us, that he gave us all the most precious gift, the gift of his own dear Son. God did this all so that we might know of a love that refuses to let us go. So, listen once again to the first few verses of the second chapter of Luke, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governed of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. Joseph went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judaea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth, and Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and she laid him in the manger, because they found no other room available.”  

         This story about the birth of Jesus never gets old, does it? We have heard it so often we probably could recite it by heart if asked to do so. Yet, what is not recorded for us in this story is what Mary and Joseph kept within their hearts. You see, the reason why Mary and Joseph were part of the Christmas story is that they had first listened to the story God was speaking to them. As we hear in the first chapter of Luke, Mary heard of how God was going to bring forth the long awaited king who was going to bring righteousness and justice to the world, and Mary wanted to be part of this story. Mary became part of this story by simply saying “Yes”, to God when God called her to become part of his Christmas story. Joseph also listened to the story God spoke to him, and Joseph also said, ‘Yes” to God, and so he too played a role in the Christmas story. You see, the story of the giving of Jesus to the world is a story which required that Mary and Joseph respond to God with love. 

Now most people who have heard the Christmas story may never have realized that they too, just like Mary and Joseph, have a role in the Christmas story. You see, the Christmas story tells of how Jesus is sent to us to be for us the, “Yes”, to all of God’s promises just as Paul tells us at the beginning of the first chapter of Second Corinthians. When God, so very long ago promised that a king would be born from the dead legacy of King David, God gave Jesus to be the, “Yes”, to this promise. Likewise, when God promised to give people a hope and a future,  God gave us Jesus to be the, “Yes”, to this promise. The peace God promises us that we are to make with our neighbors finds its, “Yes”, in God’s gift of Jesus. And yes, God promises to fill us to overflowing with joy and this promise as well, finds its,”Yes”, in God’s gift of Jesus. Then at last we discover that what binds all of these promises together is the promise of God’s love to us, the promise that we at last might know God, and have a relationship of love with him, God and us united forever together, a promise fulfilled by the, “Yes”, of God’s gift called Jesus.

         So Jesus, the, “Yes”, to all of God’s promises, is given to us at Christmas. All God asks of us is this: “Will you say,”Yes”, to Jesus? God wonders, will we be like Mary and Joseph who first listened to the story God spoke to them and then said, “Yes”, to God’s invitation to be part of this great story that began at Christmas. You see, the story of Christmas continues even today because all people are invited by God to enter into this story about a new king named Jesus given to us by God so that justice and righteousness might reign upon the earth. This king is given by God as a gift which expresses his deep love for every person. And all God desires is that we respond to his love by simply saying “Yes”, in love, to the one who is God’s, “Yes”, to us, this Jesus given to us at Christmas. Like all Christmas stories, our saying, “Yes”, to God may make our life a mess. Luke records that the world didn’t even have a place for Mary and Joseph on the night they needed one the most. But what Mary and Joseph did have is a place in the story God is telling, this story begun at Christmas. Just like God had a role for Mary and Joseph to play in this story he is telling, he also has role for each one of us. God invites all of us to be part of this story that began so long ago at Christmas. So today is a good day to become part of the Christmas story. Let us, right now, discover that our hope is indeed found in Jesus; that our rest and peace has been born in Jesus; and our abundant joy is  caught from the joy radiating from the very face of Jesus. 

(Lighting of the Christ Candle) As we light the Christ candle, we witness that Christ, our king, has been born. So now is the time for all of us to know Jesus as being for us the very, “Yes”, to all of what God has promised to us. 

Here we normally conclude the lighting of the Advent candle with a prayer. Today, though, we are going to do something a little different. We are going to take a moment for all of us to have a time of quiet prayer. This is simply a time for us to respond to the Christmas gift of Jesus. During this time, I am going to play the beloved Christmas carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. Instead of singing along, try instead to listen to the story it tells.  At the ending of the third stanza, we hear, “where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.” So, perhaps instead of singing this line we should be those meek souls who invite Jesus into our life, saying, “Yes”, to the one who is the one who is the, “Yes”, to all of God’s promises. Let us today enter into the story God is speaking, the one he began at Christmas so long ago.

Ready or Not? Catching Joy

 December 14 2025

Jeremiah 31:10-14

         It sometimes surprises people when I tell them that I got my start in ministry by doing youth ministry. One thing I could always count on is that when it came time to get serious and have a quiet time of prayer or communion, inevitably someone would break the silence, usually by passing gas or burping. Upon hearing such noises, there would begin this internal struggle as each kid tried really hard to be on their best behavior all the while desperately wanting to burst out laughing.The race was on to see just who will be the first to start snickering under their breath, which sets the whole room laughing. You see, all it takes is to have just one kid begin to lose their composure, and get the giggles and suddenly the room is filled with great silliness.

         What this memory from my days reminds me of is this truth that joy is something that is caught. Joy happens when the snickering of one person sets off this chain reaction of laughter and giggles in the whole group. Perhaps this what makes joy different from happiness, for while joy is caught, happiness is often bought. Our country was founded on the ideal that we desire the right to pursue whatever makes us happy. So for those of us who call themselves the people of God, this ideal should leave us conflicted, for as we learned last week, what we are called to pursue is peace. We are to  be busy working on restoring the relationships around us, helping our neighbors to have a life free of those deep, nagging longings. We are to talk to God about any needs, or struggles that our neighbors are going through. As we pray to God we also must remember that God may even use us to help restore our neighbor to a life of contentment and ease. You see, seeking the rest and peace of our neighbor is the outcome God expects of people living righteous lives.We are to follow the lead of God who rested after creating the world. God was pleased and delighted with all of his labors, saying that thy were indeed, “Very good”. God tells his people in exile that as they wait for the coming king that they were to spend their time working at restoring their relationships so that they too could be people who rested from their labors, looking out upon their world and stating that it was indeed, “Very good”.

         So if we are all gung-ho about pursuing peace as God desires we do as we wait, then what happens to the happiness that the rest of the world believes we should be pursuing? Well, here we must remember that where happiness is often bought, joy, on the other hand is caught. You see, the joy of our God is the flame which sets our souls ablaze with joy. Consider the candles we have lit every week. The candle of hope is lit to witness that the hope we long for has been found through our faith in God and his plans to restore our relationship with us. Then we lit the candle of peace to make the claim that we are going to pursue peace with our neighbors. If God seeks to restore his relationship with us after the way we have treated him then if he desires that we get busy restoring the relationships in our life, how can we refuse to do so? 

Now when we trust God and place our faith in his plans, can you imagine the smile on the face of our God? And when we are working hard to get to know our neighbors and we talk to God about them instead of just making life all about us, can you see the glow on our heavenly Father’s face, as his children are contented and at peace? Of course God bubbles over with joy when his people at last begin to grasp his beautiful vision for all humanity. So when we look into the face of our Heavenly Father and see his joy, how can we not rejoice? We are to experience and know for ourselves the truth declared in Zephaniah, the third chapter, the seventeenth verse, “The Lord your God rejoices over you with gladness, he settles your soul by his love, he exults over you with loud singing…”. This is how God desires to be known by all of his children. The question that we must ask ourselves is, is this how we know God? The laughing, singing, God who overflows with love for all of us?

         In our scripture for today, there is an unusual Hebrew word found in the second half of the tenth verse. There we read, “I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, I will give them gladness in exchange for their sorrow.” In the phrase, “I will turn their mourning into joy”, the word normally translated as being joy is a Hebrew word which actually means something deeper than the emotion of joy. What is being expressed in this word is the feeling to go from a situation of death and loss and being transported to a time where God is extravagantly blessing his righteous people. This is a joy where our grief is quickly forgotten replaced with an overwhelming sense of the Lord’s goodness.This is what Jeremiah is writing about when he states that the people of God, “…shall come and sing aloud on the hills of Zion. They shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord…”. You see, what brings us to this experience of being overwhelmed by the greatness and goodness of God is for us to simply pause to consider how gracious and good our God is to all of us.

         In this season of Advent we are in a season of waiting, a season to remember that the world was once waiting for the promise of God to at last happen. God promised that a new king was coming to bring about justice and righteousness all over the earth. God gave such a promise to his people even though he was sending them into exile, to live as captives of Babylon. In this strange land surrounded by people with different customs and lifestyles, the people of God were called to find hope and pursue peace. Yet, the question on their minds was just how could they be expected to endure such a terrible loss, the death to the life that they once knew? Everywhere they looked they were reminded of the high cost of their sin. Here the people were to remember what God had told them. God promised to take their sorrow and replace it with an experience of being extravagantly blessed by God right here in Babylon. So instead of looking at our circumstances, we are to instead called to gaze upon the goodness of our God. When we begin to focus on what God has blessed us with instead of focusing on what the world has taken from us, this is when we are on our way to catching joy. You see, when we count our blessings instead of counting the days, we will soon behold the one who gives us all of those blessings, and we will see that our God is radiant with goodness. When we bask in this radiance of our God how can we not become radiant people ourselves, joyful in the presence of our joy-filled God?

         During this Advent season when we wait the coming of the Branch, the new king out of the dead stump of King David’s legacy, we must let our joy be the indicator of where our focus lies. If we begin to let the world with all of its wrongs, with all of its sorrow and turmoil, become what we fixate on then it should come as no surprise that we will find the fire of our joy growing cold. So when we realize that our joy is being replaced by ba-humbug grumpiness, then we need to once again draw our attention to the goodness of God. Instead of counting all of our grievances, let us instead count our blessings. Our focus needs to be on what we have been given instead of just what it is we feel we need in our life. As we read today, we should be radiant over all of the goodness God has given to us. And then as we are overwhelmed by the ways God has blessed us we are to realize that God has done so all because he rejoices over us. The face of our Father lights up anytime we take time to meet with him. And there, before the fire the joy of our God, the flame of our joy is set ablaze. So, yes, rejoice and again, I say rejoice! Amen!   

         

Ready, or Not?: Pursuing Peace

 December 7 2025

Jeremiah 29:7-9

         Everybody knows that the weeks before Christmas are the time when people are in pursuit of the perfect gift for all of their special someone’s. Now, this pursuit of the perfect gift seems to be much more difficult for us men than it does for the women in our lives. Perhaps the reason is simply that men just normally do not have a clue so why expect that we will pick up on the clues as to what might make the perfect gift for someone. You see, in order to to be in pursuit of that perfect gift requires that we pay attention to the people in our life so that we might notice just what might make the perfect gift. One of my favorite memories is when the J.C. Penny catalogue would arrive. All of us kids wanted to look at all of the new toys and games which we would soon convince ourselves we just could not live without. How we felt about this perfect gift didn’t really matter though, because the hardest part was to convince someone else that this is the perfect gift that we just could not live without. So, we would make our list and check it twice, and we would anticipate one day holding that perfect gift in our hands. 

         Now, it just makes sense that the perfect gift that we want is something that we can actually hold, and touch, and play with. I mean, no one really wants the present that my mother-in-law would say she wanted, just love, joy and peace; this is what she considered the perfect gift for Christmas. I mean, you just will not find such a gift in the J.C. Penny catalogue. Our scripture for today, though, is of much more help because it does imply that if we are in pursuit of peace, then there is a way for us to obtain this most perfect of gifts. This season in which we are in, the one where we are in pursuit of the perfect gift for that special someone, is called Advent.  Advent simply means, “that which is coming.”, as when God declares that the days are coming when he will raise up a righteous king to bring justice and righteousness. In the season of Advent we remember the time when the world waited for the most perfect gift to be given to us. We remember when the people of God had reached the lowest point in their relationship with God, when they had spurned his love, and refused to know him, then God had no choice but to deliver his people over to the Babylonian army. God allowed his people to be carried off, to a strange land, a thousand miles from their home. There they were to live as strangers and slaves for seventy-years. What God was doing was allowing his people to experience serving the people of the world so that he could then offer them a choice. They could now decide if they would rather serve as slaves to the world and its pursuits or whether they would rather serve God and worship him alone. As we found out last week, to serve God is to accept the plans that God has for all people, plans that he gives to us in order that we might know a living hope, a known future. God offers us his plans in order to give us peace, what the Jewish people know as shalom, the restoring of life to its original goodness. God desires to restore our relationship with him even though we often have spurned his love, and have resisted his grace. Yet God is a God of great love and this is why God pursues us for we are what God considers the perfect gift.

         So, when we know of God’s amazing love for us, we trust that he is a God who is able to bring life out of death, the God who can make something exist where nothing once was. This is the true substance of our hope, a future where life has defeated death, where there is something instead of the dreaded nothingness that drives our fear. We are given a glimpse of this future in the new king God is raising up from the dead end of Davids descendants. This king who brings forth justice and righteousness and those who follow him, these are God’s glorious future. So in order for us to be ready for this coming king, we must be people of faith, people who believe that our God can indeed bring forth life, who can make there be a future where one previously had not existed. God promises us that he does hear us and all God asks from us is that we desire him. We are to give God all of our hearts for we now know that he alone is the treasure we are willing to give everything for, the perfect gift that we pursue.

         So when we find our hope in the promises of God, then God calls us to be people who pursue peace. We are to seek after the creation of shalom, just as God had said his plans would create shalomfor us. In our scripture, we hear God tell his people that during their waiting, they were to keep themselves busy seeking the peace of the city where they find themselves. They were to pray to God on behalf of the people that they lived with in the city of Babylon. Only as peace, what is known as being shalom, is found in this city would the people of God then experience peace.The short version is this: if you want peace in your life, seek peace for your neighbor. Now, if such ideas cause us to have some serious hesitation, imagine how these orders from God went over for those exiled to Babylon. We really need to walk a mile in the shoes of the people of Israel at this time. Imagine witnessing the Babylonian army tearing across your country with their fast horses and chariots destroying everything as they go. Then this army arrives at Jerusalem, and they surround the city and lay siege to it, so that the people of Jerusalem are slowly starved into submission. Then as death and disease ravage the people of Jerusalem, defeat is announced and the city gates are at last opened. The vast horde of Babylonian warriors rush in, destroying everything as they tear through Jerusalem. The beautiful Temple is vandalized, the enemy burns its structure and the gold fixtures are loaded up and hauled back to Babylon. Then they enslave those healthy enough to make the long journey back to Babylon. The pain and anger and the hurt of their loss is captured in a song, Psalm 137, where the song writer ponders aloud how they will be able to sing a song to God while living in a foreign land. The songwriter shouts that blessed will be the one who repays Babylon for the evil they have done. And then he goes farther and desires that one day the Babylonians witness the same horrors that the people of Jerusalem simply can not forget.

         What the Psalmist writes about in the 137^th Psalm seems fairly relatable, doesn’t it? I mean, most people who face the same situation as the people of Jerusalem had gone through would state that revenge is not only acceptable but it may even feel necessary in order to even the score. We need to understand their need for justice so that we too can be confounded by what God calls his people to do while they waited in captivity in Babylon. This expectation God desires is found in the Hebrew word for peace, this “shalom’. Shalom, is a much deeper concept than what we normally consider to be peace. You see, shalom is the restoration of a situation to its original goodness. Shalom is founded on the belief that in the beginning everything was just as it should be, nothing, including our relationships, were out of order. So when God calls his people, the very people who had witnessed atrocities at the hand of the Babylonian army, to seek to restore their relationships with the very people who had captured and enslaved them, well, it becomes obvious God is asking for something quite impossible. Almost immediately when we hear this big ask that God gives to his people, we begin to wonder just why God would ask his people to do something so difficult. And then we may recall that, as we heard last week, God tells us that he has plans for us, plans for peace, for the restoration of the relationship God has with each of us, and not for evil. You see, the people of Israel, who are just like us, walked away from God; God never walked away from them. They were the ones who had destroyed all that God had put in place so that his people might live in peace. In doing so they had damaged the very reputation of God, bringing shame upon the very name and character of God. So God had every right to seek revenge upon his people for their damage and destruction of all of who God is and what he is creating. God could have just let the Babylonians have his people and then walked away. Yet, God did nothing of the sort. No, God called out to his people and told them that he has a plan that will restore the relationship he has with them, a plan to give them a hope and a future, with God, not apart from him.

         So when God calls his people to restore their relationship they had with the Babylonian people, all he was doing was merely asking his people to follow his lead. God told his people that if they trusted in his plan, then they would be able to call on him, and pray to him for he would indeed hear their cries. Yet this promise was not just for them alone for God states that his people were to pray even for the people they lived with there in captivity. Once again, we must pause and consider just what is involved in order to pray for these strange neighbors who are so very different in their customs and beliefs. You see such a situation is much like figuring out just what might be the perfect gift for someone. In order to pray to God for someone you have to have some clue about who they are, what their needs are and just what they are longing for. You see, when God told his people to be those who sought to restore their relationship with these strangers they lived with, praying to God for them, he was implying that his people had to be actively looking for ways to care for their neighbors life. So, think about it; they had to go from thinking of ways that they could seek revenge and instead they were to be looking for ways to do good for their neighbors. God then, take this exercise one step further because after the needs of these neighbors had been lifted up to God, then God tells his people they must be willing to be given by God to be the answer to the longings of their neighbors. We can understand that what God is asking in this situation is unbelievably difficult. We are right to wonder just why God would demand so much out of his people who have found themselves far from home living among strangers who they want consider their enemies in the worst kind of way. Yet, the word of God stands. God’s plan seems to founded on an awkward wisdom that rubs against the grain of common sense. Yet, perhaps God is on to something when he tells his people that they must take upon themselves the task of restoring the relationship with those who had taken them captive. I believe the reason why God is so insistent that this is the way his people should deal with their new neighbors is that through the seeking of peace with their neighbors, the people of God will find the peace that they are pursuing. They longed to live in that original goodness first experienced by human beings, as we find in the first chapter of Genesis, the goodness simply described as being, rest. Originally, we were people who were content, satisfied, knowing that every longing is met by our loving God. God’s goal is to have all people return to this state of rest, this state of utter contentment, where no longings or strivings exist. What God understands is that unless everyone is at rest than no one can really be said to be at rest. We probably see this best in the places we work, where the turmoil someone is dealing with at home is brought with them to their place at work and it quite naturally affects how they are able to do what is expected of them. And of course when this person is troubled at work then their co-workers are also affected. There is simply is no way for us to live in our own little bubble hoping to plug our ears and put our blinders on so that we can remain calm while ignoring the turmoil going on outside of our little shell. This, as God tells his people quite often, is a false peace. This is why that right after God tells his people to get busy working on making their new world a peaceful one, God also tells them to stop listening to the prophets and the fortune tellers for answers. No, they would not be going home anytime soon, there would be no rush to get back to their little safe spot to hole up so that they can pretend that peace is found by forgetting the rest of the people around you. To do so would be to miss the very reason for the people of God to even exist in the first place. We must remember that we are in waiting, people who know that days are coming when a righteous branch will suddenly appear out of the dead stump of David’s legacy. This king is going to be the king who at last will bring justice and righteousness to the whole earth, not just some small part of it. What justice and righteousness looks like is every person seeking to bring into the life of their neighbor a measure of peace, a bit of that original rest for which they were created. 

         So in this time of waiting for our righteous king to arrive, God is telling his people to prepare themselves to live in that new age which he is going to bring forth through the rule of our new king. If our king is going to bring forth justice and righteousness then we must get busy today, working at bringing forth justice and righteousness right now. God is telling his people that they are to begin to be the very people the king can count on to follow his lead. In doing so, God promises that we will discover something quite incredible about our life for there will be a real sense of rest and contentment that is now very present in us. This is the strange truth that God lays out for us, that the only way we can have peace in our life is by first by seeking the peace of the lives of our neighbors.

         Now what history has shown to us is that not many of those who went into exile actually followed this command of God to seek first the peace of their Gentile neighbors in order that they might have a measure of peace in their own life. We know this because when that king arrived he discovered that the people of God wanted nothing to do with being the peacemakers God wanted them to be. This king found that the very people that he had been sent to save wanted nothing to do with him, simply because he refused to seek revenge on their enemies. This king followed the rule that peace can only be found in our life when we are willing to seek the peace of our neighbors. When this promised king came to Jerusalem to create peace on earth, as we hear in the nineteenth chapter of Luke, he wept over this city because the people who lived there refused to seek the ways of peace and so his true identity was hidden from their eyes. So their tragedy was not only that they would never experience the rest that God desires all people to know, but they also missed the arrival of the king promised to them hundreds of years before, the king who came to bring justice and righteousness to the world. So in our time of waiting once again for the arrival of our king, I wonder, will we be able to see this king who is the righteous branch given to us by God or will he be hidden from our eyes because we have refused to seek the peace of the people around us? We have time to avoid this tragedy, so let us begin today. Let us listen in love to those around us, and lift their longings up to God, so that they might experience a measure of the rest and contentment God created them to know. And then let us rest, and there behold our king. Amen!

                 

         

Ready or Not?: Finding Hope

 November 30 2025

Jeremiah 23:5-6, 29:10-14

         Today marks the beginning of the season which the church calls Advent. The church, over time, created a church calendar marked by various seasons to help us to enter into the story of Jesus so that we might become part of his story. We may have heard the story of Jesus quite often, I imagine, yet I wonder, how many can say that they are actually a part of this story that is known so well? So where we begin is right here at the first Sunday in Advent. This Sunday marks the first day of the new church year. Now, you might remember that last Sunday was Christ the King Sunday. This is when the church recognizes that the end of time will be when Christ is acknowledged by all that he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This is the glorious ending to the story of Jesus of which we want to be a part of. Today, then, we marks where all people enter into that story, here in a season called Advent. This strange word, “Advent”, simply means, “arrival” or, “coming”. We hear this same idea in the beginning of our first scripture for today, from the twenty-third chapter of Jeremiah where God tells us, “Behold, the days are coming…” So the four weeks of Advent represent the time when the world, and especially God’s people were waiting for those days to come, for the time to be the right time for the fulfillment of the promises of God.

         Well, what God promised his people is that in the days to come he was going to raise up for King David what is called, a righteous Branch. This one who is considered to be like a righteous branch is a coming king who will deal judge and rule with wisdom. This king is one who shall at last bring forth justice and righteousness. Now there is a lot to unpack in this short, little announcement. We can start by understanding that this statement is given as a response to what God has just said about the kings that previously ruled over the people of Israel. God’s expectation for the kings of Judah is that they would be like a shepherd who watched over the flock of God’s people. So at the beginning of the twenty-third chapter of Jeremiah, God issues his warning, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! God continues by exposing the evil actions of the king, “You have scattered my flock and driven them away. You have not tended to them.” What is clear and obvious is that the kings who were supposed to watch over the people of God were absolutely horrible at their job. Instead of gathering the flock, as a shepherd should do, they instead scattered them all over the country side. Instead of leading the sheep to green pastures and still waters, these guys drive the flock away, out to the ends of the earth. Instead of keeping a watchful eye over the flock, keeping them safe from wolves and lions, they are chasing after other pursuits. 

         So God has made a great case for sending these, so called, “shepherds”, packing. They would be sent to live far away, in Babylon, never to see Jerusalem ever again. There was only one little problem with this dire situation. God had made a promise to his servant David. We hear of this covenant God made with David in Second Samuel, the seventh chapter where God tells David that he was going to build David a house, an everlasting legacy, so that the kingdom of the throne of David will be established forever. So, we fast-forward to the days of Jeremiah, and we witness the descendants of David being shipped off to Babylon, and all of God’s people wonder, just what has happened to the claim that the house of David was going to be established forever? The image that was used to describe the lineage of David after this tragedy was that of a stump, a sad reminder of a once glorious tree that has been cut down, end of story. The great days of the reign of King David have come to a sad end for God simply had no choice but to put an end to those evil and wicked shepherds. 

         To this rather bleak outcome to David’s legacy, God speaks a word, telling Jeremiah, “I will raise up for David a righteous branch.” God is saying that out of that rather dead end, out of that stump, the remains of the great tree that was the house of King David, God was going to do what only God can do, he was going to make life shoot forth from the most dead of outcomes. What God expects from those who hear these outrageous words, is faith, the faith that can believe that God can bring forth something out of nothing. This is the very faith that Abraham demonstrated to God, as Paul writes at the end of the fourth chapter of the book of Romans. Paul says, that the Abraham believed that our God is a God “…who gives life to the dead and calls into existence that which does not exist.” So God calls us to believe that even though the line of David had been cut off, so that it no longer existed, even so, our God is able to cause a king to come forth to fulfill the promise he made to King David. You see, it is obvious that the only way that a living branch could come out of the nothingness of that old, dead stump of David’s legacy is for God and God alone to cause it to happen. You see, Jeremiah also believed like Abraham because he knew of the story of creation, as we find in the fourth chapter of Jeremiah. There Jeremiah remembered the words found in Genesis, how there was once an emptiness that was without form or void, utter nothingness. Yet, as Jeremiah recalls, out of that nothingness, God brought forth the order and wonder of creation, something where nothing once was. This is the faith God calls his people to hold on to as they watch as the last of the line of David is placed in chains and hauled off to Babylon.

         So when we hear of this good news that God is going to do by raising up for David a righteous branch, we must remember that such a prophecy must be received in faith, the faith that God alone can make something exist where nothing once was. God was going to raise up a king to reign in righteousness in a new way as only God can do. This is important for us to remember when we hear the scripture found in the twenty-ninth chapter of Jeremiah. It seems that this is one of the most oft quoted verses from the Bible. Yet, I wonder if people really understand what God is telling Jeremiah in this verse. The first thing that has to be taken into consideration when we hear about God’s plan to give us a hope and a future, is that this was spoken to people who have been forcibly removed from their homeland and made to march a thousand miles to a place called Babylon. God told his people that only after they had lived there for seventy years, only then God tells them, will he come and visit them. So the expectation of God to those he has promised to visit is that they will have realized how very hopeless their situation is. The question that lingers in the air when we read this is, is had the people of Israel remembered the promise of God? Did they keep the memory of home alive in their hearts or had they given up and decided that Babylon was their final destination? You see, God made a promise to his people that he would indeed visit them, so what God was searching for after his people had lived for seventy years in captivity was faith. Had his people kept the faith, this is what God hoped he would find. God desired to find the same faith as he found in his servant Abraham, the forefather of all of God’s people. The people of God were in desperate need of faith for their experience was much like the experience of the kings who used to rule over them.You see, the people of God had also experienced a death of their own. The life they once knew had died when they were torn and uprooted from the land God had promised to them. Now God’s promise to them had become broken, not because of any unfaithfulness on the part of God but rather because of the continued unfaithfulness of God’s people. So the people of God witnessed the death of the life they once knew all because they refused to return and come back to the God whose love for them had never wavered.

         Well, the people of God then, were told by God that they had to be expelled from their home for seventy years. We are right, I believe, to wonder why God decided on seventy years as the right length of time for them to remain in Babylon. Perhaps this was the length of time required for his people to come to the end of themselves, to realize that there was absolutely nothing they could do to change their current situation. Only when God’s people knew the depths of their hopeless situation would they be at last to consider the hope that God had to offer to them. Clearly, these people who found themselves in Babylon, now being forced to work at the rule of strangers, surely such a situation had to make them forget any thoughts about the future, for what future did they have there in exile? 

         So when we read of God having a plan that would give his people a future and a hope, perhaps this meant something quite different for those who first heard it said than it does for us. What God calls his people to accept is his plans, to trust once again in his guidance. When we stop for a moment and consider what God is saying here it should perhaps shake us a bit. I say this because everyone is someone who makes a lot of plans. I mean consider just how much planning is required each year just to pull off yet another Christmas. Over time, we hope that we get good at all of this planning, and we even might have a little pride at how we are able to schedule everything so that our life runs like a well oiled machine. And this machine runs along pretty well right up until God comes along and throws a monkey wrench into the works. God insists that it is his plans, and not our plans, that will open up the future so that we might have hope. Now, when God brings up the future in his declaration of his plans, we have to admit that this is where all of our planning gets all messed up. I mean listen to what James tells us at the end of the fourth chapter of his letter. James writes, “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make some real money- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? You are nothing but a mist that appears for a time then disappears.” What James writes here is a truth that all of us know deep within us, this uncertainty of our lives. This is the underlying reason for all of our anxiety and worry, this lack of knowing what the future holds, for any of us. So when God tells us that he alone has a plan to give us a hope and a future we are right to be intrigued. 

         So here we come to the very beginning of our Advent journey. In order to be ready for Advent, we must begin by making a choice. The choice is this: Will we choose to continue to place our faith in the plans we make, plans that can be upset by so many situations? Or will we choose, instead, the plans God makes for us, those plans that will give us a hope and a future? As the author, Henry Blackaby, often wrote, “You can’t go with God and stay where you are at!” When God offers us his plans we must make a choice, a choice to choose the wisdom of God over our own, a choice to scuttle our own plans because we have found something far better in the word of God. The choice to follow the plans of God requires faith, the same faith of Abraham, the one who believed that God can indeed bring life out of death, that God alone can bring forth something where nothing used to be. You see, there is a direct connection between what we hope for and what we believe in. Faith, as we hear at the beginning of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, makes what we hope for a reality, convincing us of what we cannot see. The plans God has will give us hope, yet this hope only becomes real to us through our faith. Only as we believe in God will we become convinced of our unseen hope.   

         So when God asks us to choose his plans over our own, he desires we choose his plan because his plans offer us a glimpse of what lies in our future. You see if what we hope for becomes certain through the faith we have in God, then at last we can glimpse the future God has in store for us. If we know that our faith is founded on the ability of God bring life where there is death and that God alone can make something exist where nothing used to be, then we have a certain hope for the future. By faith we can be certain that our future is one where life has defeated death, a future where there is indeed something instead of that dreaded nothingness that causes us to fear. Now there is also one more piece to the puzzle we call our future. We also know that our future will be one that will be ruled over by the branch, a new living shoot that will rise old dead stump that was the legacy of King David. It is this new king who will lead us into a future, a future where God causes life to spring forth from death, a future where God will make something exist where nothing once was; this is our hope. This is the future where those who follow the rule of God’s new king will all live in righteousness.

         The question that remains, then, is just how we can muster up this kind of faith, this outrageous belief that God seems to expect from us? The answer is found in God’s description of the plans he has for us because he tells us that his plans are for our peace, our shalom. The Hebrew understanding of peace, what they call, shalom, is a restoring of our situation to its original goodness. You see, God is saying that even after people reject him and refuse to listen to him, God nonetheless shows up with an offer of, “Let’s begin again”. Such love that forgives our failures and offers us a future seems to demand from us to a response of faith. We sense that this is what God expects because he says when our faith in him is at last restored, then this is when we will call out to God, when we will fall on our knees and pour out our hearts to God. It is in this moment that we will discover that we do indeed have the certainty in the God who hears us. Sadly though, God also knows that if our hearts become divided, if we are no longer loyal to God alone, then our hope is in jeopardy.. As the prophet Habakkuk wrote in the second chapter, “The righteous shall live by faith but God declares, that if they shrink back he has no pleasure in such a person” When we hear of how God offers to us plans, plans for the restoration of our relationship with him, plans which will give to us a future that we hope for, then God is right to wonder just why such a promise is not received by us as being a treasure which we would give everything to obtain. 

         Here at the beginning of a new church year, at the beginning of our waiting for the day to arrive when the branch shall at last be raised up by God, we are called to consider just what are we hoping for? Just what is the future that you long for? And just who is it that will give to you what you this future that you hope for? I mean, just who is it that is going to deliver you to that future you are looking forward to? If you can say that it is God, that you have chosen his plans to give you your hope and your future, then are you certain that God alone is the one who can bring the dead to life, that God alone can make something exist where there was once nothing? If this is not our faith then let us use this Advent to come back to God with a heart undivided in our faith in God, for our  hope and our future depend upon it. Amen!