Can We Actually Trust In God's Promise In Todays World?

 It occurred to me, as I read the reading for the first Sunday of Advent they are most appropriate readings, and quite relevant, for today's world.   

In Jeremiah we hear the prophet offering hope to those who have been living in exile for years.  

They are a "people who. have been taken captive, dragged from their land, and deprived of their Temple.  They are beaten, imprisoned, and face death as a people, and, like Jeremiah, they cry out to God  in anger and despair.” ( Kathleen O’Conner (quoted by Jennifer Ryan Ayres) page 4 in Feasting On The Word)

This was a people without hope in a foreign land. 

Jeremiah was trying to give them a light of hope into the future that God has promised.

14 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ¹⁵In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. ¹⁶In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’ (Jeremiah 33)

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 

He is reminding them of the hope they had grown up knowing and believing when God would provide them with security and a peaceful existence.

He was promising them a future that seemed impossible, and unrealistic, to them at this time in their history.

Advent is a time of waiting and hoping for a Messiah who would bring the exact thing that Jeremiah was promising in the Old Testament.

A promise of resolution, and reconciliation, a new time where their lives will once again find joy and freedom.

Luke’s Gospel is also talking about the same kind of world Jeremiah did:

25 ‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. ²⁶People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. ²⁷Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. ²⁸Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing nea29 Then he told them a parable: ‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees; ³⁰as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. ³¹So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. ³²Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. ³³Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.(Lk. 21)

The Advent readings give us an indirect vision of God’s positive activity in a fallen and despairing world 

A vision that seems a bit fictitious or fabricate — impossible to conceive of  — in the face of our world’s reality today.

History has an impressive way of repeating itself.  Repeating itself, not in the same-exact-way; but relative to the moment in each generation.

So we are once again faced with the promises of God; over against the reality of what we are actually seeing, feeling and experiencing right now.

It is the same dilemma people have been asked to grapple with since the beginning of time; when Adam and Eve first bit the forbidden fruit on the tree

14 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 

Is as true today as when Jeremiah first spoke.

Pure Grace

 It has been sometime since I have had the need to write to all of you, to say the least, l

Last year somehow dampened my creative thinking.

However this morning I am thinking about the major dramas our nation — our world — have been living through. Between the pandemic and political attempts to eliminate the power of our democracy; many people have found themselves debating where God is in it all.

Have you ever wondered about how faith, faith in the Creator God, has stayed alive through all of history?

Thousands and thousands of year of wars, plagues, epidemics, political battles for power, pollution, oppressive attitudes towards justice and the welfare of all people. Through it all the stories of God, and God in Jesus’ skin, have not faded away in people's lives and hearts

Why do you suppose that is?

What is it that keeps faith moving down through history into our lives — our world-- today?

This most transcendent presence — force — seems to have a lasting power to move in, and through, in the midst of all the physical factions of human life.

Transcendence is the “existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level.”  (Oxford Dictionary) 

God is beyond all of our knowledge, learned behavior, conditioning, intellect, reason or logic.  

All we seem to know, understand and believe to be true — the unprovable -- continues to  lives in this very provable world.

And despite all of the information we are so tempted to value, or hold on to, God seem to make sense to billions of ordinary people; as well as some of the top scientist throughout world history.

Interesting.

We, who are of the theological mind-set, call it the great mystery.  

“By mystery I mean the infinite depths of being that we can never plumb, never know, never exhaust, given the limits of mortality, our finitude, our creatureliness....Our inherent sense of mystery is in our irrepressible longing for something we cannot name but intensely miss.”  (The Haunt of Grace p.15)

The fact that you are reading this blog, tells me that you are one who is searching for something outside of the physical world.

You have a sense of something more, something far beyond what we can see and touch. 

Or even imagine.

We find God’s grace in his coming to earth as one of us.  God came, in Jesus' skin, to help us -- enable us -- to grasp the presence of the ultimate truth of his activity among the living.

So, I am thinking that without Jesus, who brought the pure truth of God, it would be difficult for anyone to believe in such an invisible elusive God.

Not that God could not have done it without Jesus.  But I believe that God knew us well enough to know that it would be easier for us to hear and see Him in physical form.

That is pure grace.

The Odd Ball Church

 In my last blog I wrote about the challenge of exposing our children to both the Christian faith and the pubic school environment.

This morning I read this:  “A few years ago a feature in the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer called the church I served “The Odd Ball Church.”  It wasn’t a slur.  The reporter got it just right. What else would a gathering of Christians be but at least a little odd — at odds with the counsels of timidity and security, comfort and consumption; at odds with the way of injustice, exploitation and discrimination; at odds with the stifling ways of institutional self-serving and pompous self-righteousness and the idolatry of inflated nationalism”. What else but odd would any group be that took Christ seriously, that tried to strive for God’s kingdom?

Strive! Be odd! That involves taking risks.  It means talking on controversial issues because they’re the ones that matter:…..

To take Christ seriously is to be at least a little odd, Thank God.”  (pages 26 & 27  The Haunt of Grace by Ted Loder.)

And I had to smile.

Following Christ’s ways must seem a bit odd to a world like we living in today. A world that prides itself on wining, financial security and power.

Yet to believe in a God, in Jesus skin, allows us to face the future — tomorrow — with an assurance that no matter the outcome, of the worst situation, God will create something better.

Better by taking evil and making good 

¹⁹But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? ²⁰Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.(Gen. 50)

Imagine Joseph’s kind of mentality being the norm in the land of the living today.

I dare say that the majority would call Joseph a wimp, a fool or someone who has lost touch with reality — quite odd.

Am I being negative?  No I am not.  I am just being forthright in my assessment of the kind of culture -- this kind of world -- that I have been experiencing in the last ten or twenty years.

And that assessment is a challenge to the ordinary everyday Christian.  It challenges our  faith in the goodness and power of our Creator God that creates good out of not so good.

What we would be wise to remember is that God is not the one who has created the huge disturbance of mores and values of his people.

And you might suggest:  

                            Well God could have stopped it.  

                                                                        Whatever it is.

However, the God I believe in doesn’t treat us like puppets.  

The God I believe in gives us the choice to be “odd” or not.

God doesn’t make the human situations.  God just deals with the consequences; and not-so-good choices that humans make.