Grace Siloam Sermon Podcast

By using the phrase “upon,” Jesus is saying that God is not off in some distant place called heaven or in some distant future called the afterlife, but God has come upon the people Jesus is addressing right now. You don’t have to wait until you go to heaven when you die to experience God’s presence. It is upon you in this person Jesus. That’s part of what Jesus’ baptism was about when the heavens were torn in two and the Holy Spirit (God’s spirit) came down upon Jesus in the form of a dove. There is that word “upon” again. Matthew is telling us that in Jesus, God’s reign of peace and justice is here.

I pray that in the days to come, we will continue to invite others to come and see so that they might hear Jesus question, “What are you looking for?” and find a loving community journeying together toward that promised land of peace and justice.

And so it is true for us as well. We have been adopted into the loving relationship of God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - all three expressions of the Godhead present at Jesus’ baptism. The Holy Spirit has descended upon us and we have been marked as God’s own forever. And whether we can hear it or not, there is a voice from heaven that says, this is my child whom I love and in whom I take great delight.

What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of humans. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infants bands. But He has decreed that ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness.

God is creating a new world with the birth of this baby, a world that would be created through him, and by him, and with him; a new humanity that would find its origin story in Jesus’ origin story.

That’s why I believe coming to this table each week is so important, because this is a place where we experience God’s grace. It’s not about beating ourselves up for how bad we are, but accepting God’s forgiveness in Christ and accepting the invitation to a heavenly banquet.

In a similar way, we engage our imaginations in the story of anticipation this Advent season and so enter into a reality beyond our current experience. We are carried, if you will, into the past as well as the future, because the season of Advent holds us in the present moment while simultaneously reminding us the Jesus’ second advent is also part of this season.

As we celebrate the Reign of Christ in our hearts and at the end of time, we recognize that God is still creating, still working, still making us into God’s beautiful beloved community. We see God at work in our own lives and in the lives of those around us, refining, reworking, transforming, and restoring the image and likeness of God that in the beginning God proclaimed as very good. And in the end, at the culmination of the Reign of Christ, God will renew all things through Christ.

Jesus affirms that in the resurrection we are claimed by God in Christ, in life and especially in death. For to God all are alive. That abundant life begins now.

It is a subtle but very important point in this story, and it is one reason that we have this lesson when we celebrate all the saints. There is wisdom in the community.

You see the point Jesus is trying to make is not to give up on trying to live a Godly life, but to live our lives as an offering to God, recognizing that God loves us no matter our failures. We live in a world that is already full of judgement and scorn, our own and others. Humility recognizes that all of us are in need of God’s grace as well as each others’ grace. As we strive to live as followers of Jesus, we offer our thanks to a God who has been revealed to us in Jesus as compassionate and forgiving just as we are to be compassionate and forgiving to each other.

Remember the widow is asking for justice, for equal treatment under the law, for something which is unjust to be made right. And when I pray for justice, maybe there are things I can do in addition to praying, that can bring about positive change. Maybe in my praying God can help me see my place in the transformation of my relationships and community. When I persist in prayer I begin to see things from God’s perspective.

Maybe there is a difference between our bodies being made clean or healthy and our whole selves being made well. It seems the only factor that differentiates the nine from the one is gratitude, thankfulness, a recognition in the moment of God’s graciousness. Maybe it is the awakening of gratitude, of not taking things for granted, that enables us to see the miraculous in the present moment.

The point Jesus is making with his disciples and us, is that we have already been given all the faith we need. By trusting in God’s love for us in Jesus we have all the resources of God. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean we will get everything we want, but maybe Jesus is trying to help us see that if we have God and each other, all the rest will take care of itself, one mustard seed at a time.

God desires for everyone to be seen and cared for, for every human being to find the dignity of knowing themselves as a child of God. So it matters that we see each other that way, as well as ourselves.

But Jesus uses this moment to teach everyone around him that deep forgiveness results in deep love. And the image for forgiveness that he uses is the cancelation of debt. Jesus tells the people a story about a man who cancels two debts, one large and one small. The people listening to the story agree that the one who owed the most money would be the most grateful for debt forgiveness, and would respond with the most love.

Jesus is comparing himself to the shepherd and the woman. Instead of grumbling about the people he hangs out with, he suggests, the Pharisees should come to the party to celebrate their return. When I put myself in the same role that Jesus does, that of searching shepherd and seeking woman, I feel bad that I lost something in the first place. I get unstuck when I remember that I am also the lost sheep and the misplaced coin. I have been sought and found.

Baptism is not just a nice little symbolic act that we go through for our kids and ourselves to join this club we call church. Rather, baptism is a statement about who God is claiming us to be, part of a new reality and a new family that has unequivocal status in our lives. Our new last name is Christian and our parent is God and Jesus is our older sibling. We have chosen a new family and these are your new brothers and sisters.

We are all beggars at God’s table, not one of us deserves the place of honor, especially when we see who has taken the lowest seat there, It’s Jesus. But God’s love is so great that God invites us to God’s table because of Jesus.

Our relationship with God is inextricably tied to our relationship with each other. As goes one, so goes the other. Or to put it the way Jesus did, the whole Bible can be summed up in these two relationships, Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. The prophet Isaiah seems to be saying the same thing in our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today. You have to remember that, in the biblical sense, love has very little to do with how you feel about someone or something, and everything to do with how you act.

If our world were nothing but a place of created goodness and profound beauty, a space of flourishing for all, just and life-giving for all in God’s creation, then Jesus’ challenge would be deeply troubling. If, on the other hand, our world is deeply marred and scarred, death-dealing for many, with systems of meaning that are exploitative and non-sustainable, then redemption can come only when those systems are shattered and consumed by fire. Life cannot (re-)emerge without confrontation. This is the basis of the conflict Jesus envisions. He comes not to disturb a nice world but to shatter the disturbing and death-dealing systems of meaning that stifle life.

And if you’re in one of those difficult places in your life right now – go outside on a clear night – and look to the heavens – and begin to count the stars – and remember – God always keeps God’s promises – and in Jesus, we see how far God will go to prove God’s great love for us and everyone!

The purpose of Ecclesiastes seems to be that there is nothing under the sun that is capable of giving our lives meaning – no matter how many possessions we acquire, they always leave us feeling empty, so we acquire more in the hopes of filling the lack we feel in our hearts.

We have two sets of choices: 1. When we see injustice, or want the world different, will we succumb to the temptation to use the methods of the evil one in the name of God, or will we resolve to hold to the non-violent patterns of Jesus even knowing what he faced? 2. Will we attempt to manipulate God into coming and fixing everything for us, the way too often sacrifices, prayers, and rituals have been understood, or will we allow ourselves to be manipulated into the tools of God’s deliverance? These are the tough questions that this prayer asks us to wrestle with, but not unaided; if we keep this prayer on our lips, we are promised that our hearts will change, the spirit will come, and God will be with us. AMEN.

Are you worried and distracted by many things? I know I often am. It takes real effort to stop my frantic activity and sit quietly and simply listen in the silence. For about ten years I have been practicing a form of prayer called Centering Prayer. It is very different from how I learned to pray as a child or teen-ager, through a variety of formulae that I would use to tell God what I needed, as if God didn’t know already and then how I expected God to answer my prayers, as if I knew better than God what to do in each situation.

If you’ve asked that question and are still wondering what we might say, I hope you hear Jesus’ response to the lawyer today, because that is our response as well – love God with all that you are and love your neighbor the way you love yourself. Jesus says to the lawyer, “do this and you will live.” But now comes the more difficult question – how do we love God and our neighbor? Living those ideals is much more difficult than proclaiming them as our core values.

Mary steals away and no one knows what she’s up to until she returns and without saying a word she anoints Jesus’ feet with enough costly perfume she could have embalmed a king for burial. How much is that you wonder? A year’s wages. 

God’s love is not transactional, God is love. God desires relationship with you and with those we might think are less deserving than us - or more deserving than us. God simply loves, you and the one we see as outside the bounds of God’s love. And if that’s who God is, then that makes them our family too.

Maybe this Lenten season is about our lives as a fig tree, being lovingly groomed by God the master gardener so that we might produce fruit worthy of repentance, a change of perspective about God’s love for us.

It is a humble journey, the one we began on Ash Wednesday and continue today, the first Sunday in Lent. It begins with an undignified smudge of ash on our foreheads in the shape of a cross, with the words, "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Our lectionary texts this morning have at least one thing in common, the idea of calling, being called by God to something beyond our personal interest, to a purpose beyond ourselves, to God’s mission in the world. 

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

Advent 4 Year C 2018The Nativity Sermon of St. John ChrysostomBehold a new and wondrous mystery.My ears resound to the Shepherd’s song, piping no soft melody, but chanting full forth a heavenly hymn. The Angels sing. The Archangels blend their voice in harmony. The Cherubim hymn their joyful praise. The Seraphim exalt His glory. All join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead here on earth, and man in heaven. He Who is above, now for our redemption dwells here below; and he that was lowly is by divine mercy raised.Bethlehem this day resembles heaven; hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices; and in place of the sun, enfolds within itself on every side, the Sun of justice. And ask not how: for where God wills, the order of nature yields. For He willed; He had the power; He descended; He redeemed; all things yielded in obedience to God. This day He Who is, is Born; and He Who is, becomes what He was not. For when He was God, He became man; yet not departing from the Godhead that is His. Nor yet by any loss of divinity became He man, nor through increase became He God from man; but being the Word He became flesh, His nature, because of impassability, remaining unchanged.And so the kings have come, and they have seen the heavenly King that has come upon the earth, not bringing with Him Angels, nor Archangels, nor Thrones, nor Dominations, nor Powers, nor Principalities, but, treading a new and solitary path, He has come forth from a spotless womb.Since this heavenly birth cannot be described, neither does His coming amongst us in these days permit of too curious scrutiny. Though I know that a Virgin this day gave birth, and I believe that God was begotten before all time, yet the manner of this generation I have learned to venerate in silence and I accept that this is not to be probed too curiously with wordy speech.For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of Him who works.What shall I say to you; what shall I tell you? I behold a Mother who has brought forth; I see a Child come to this light by birth. The manner of His conception I cannot comprehend.Nature here rested, while the Will of God labored. O ineffable grace! The Only Begotten, Who is before all ages, Who cannot be touched or be perceived, Who is simple, without body, has now put on my body, that is visible and liable to corruption. For what reason? That coming amongst us he may teach us, and teaching, lead us by the hand to the things that men cannot see. For since men believe that the eyes are more trustworthy than the ears, they doubt of that which they do not see, and so He has deigned to show Himself in bodily presence, that He may remove all doubt.Christ, finding the holy body and soul of the Virgin, builds for Himself a living temple, and as He had willed, formed there a man from the Virgin; and, putting Him on, this day came forth; unashamed of the lowliness of our nature.For it was to Him no lowering to put on what He Himself had made. Let that handiwork be forever glorified, which became the cloak of its own Creator. For as in the first creation of flesh, man could not be made before the clay had come into His hand, so neither could this corruptible body be glorified, until it had first become the garment of its Maker.What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infants bands. But He has decreed that ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness.For this He assumed my body, that I may become capable of His Word; taking my flesh, He gives me His spirit; and so He bestowing and I receiving, He prepares for me the treasure of Life. He takes my flesh, to sanctify me; He gives me His Spirit that He may save me.Come, then, let us observe the Feast. Truly wondrous is the whole chronicle of the Nativity. For this day the ancient slavery is ended, the devil confounded, the demons take to flight, the power of death is broken, paradise is unlocked, the curse is taken away, sin is removed from us, error driven out, truth has been brought back, the speech of kindliness diffused, and spreads on every side, a heavenly way of life has been ¡in planted on the earth, angels communicate with men without fear, and men now hold speech with angels.Why is this? Because God is now on earth, and man in heaven; on every side all things commingle. He became Flesh. He did not become God. He was God. Wherefore He became flesh, so that He Whom heaven did not contain, a manger would this day receive. He was placed in a manger, so that He, by whom all things are nourished, may receive an infants food from His Virgin Mother. So, the Father of all ages, as an infant at the breast, nestles in the virginal arms, that the Magi may more easily see Him. Since this day the Magi too have come, and made a beginning of withstanding tyranny; and the heavens give glory, as the Lord is revealed by a star.To Him, then, Who out of confusion has wrought a clear path, to Christ, to the Father, and to the Holy Spirit, we offer all praise, now and forever.Amen.

Advent 3 Year C 2018Today’s Gospel continues the story of John the Baptist that we started last week in the third chapter of Luke. The lectionary points us forward toward the coming of the incarnate one by pointing us backward to those who foretold of his coming. John is in the wilderness, the place where the Hebrew people were birthed before receiving the promise, a place where they might live in peace with their God, the promised land of Palestine.The wilderness is a place no one chooses to live because of its harsh conditions and the message of John is as harsh as the surroundings. The wilderness is where you go to begin again, to find your identity anew, and maybe to connect with your past so that you can find your future.The crowd that follows John is a thoroughly Jewish one; they claim their heritage with pride as God’s chosen people. Yet those gathered in these stark surroundings long for something more; their lives seem hollow, empty of the energy of life, so they offer themselves to God anew through this wild-eyed prophet’s baptism of repentance. But John insists that this is only the beginning. There is one coming who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire.So the crowds follow John out into the wilderness to see this would-be prophet whom they had heard was proclaiming the words of the old prophet Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Our reading today says the crowds came out not just to see this strange man and hear his prophetic rantings, but to be baptized by him, which meant joining his movement, seeking solace for their shortcomings and fears about God’s judgement. Maybe some of us have come to church for the same reason. Oh, not the part about hearing some raving lunatic preach, but the part about seeking solace for our shortcomings and to hear something about God’s love and forgiveness.Well, John the Baptist forgot to put his velvet glove on the iron hand of his preaching that day and let the people have the full force of his wrath – “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”Apparently John had not read Dale Carnegie’s softer take on how to win friends and influence people? John continues by telling the crowds he knows what they’re thinking, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ therefore we have privileged status with God. We are God’s chosen people after all.But John quickly dismisses this and declares that God can raise up a new people from stones if God wants to. Your status as Abraham’s children doesn’t exempt you from bearing fruit worthy of repentance. In other words, you should be even more responsible to act in ways that demonstrate your faithfulness to God’s covenant precisely because you are Abraham’s off-spring! Remember repentance is more about changing your perspective, seeing yourself in a new way, and changing direction than it is about feeling shameful about who you are.You’ll notice that everyone asked John the same question, “What should we do?” Or to put it another way, “What are the fruits of repentance? What can we do to make it right with God and our neighbor?” Notice that John tells us that not only did the crowds ask him this question, but so did the tax collectors and the soldiers – the two groups that God’s chosen people felt the most oppressed by!Interesting that John includes these two groups, because tax-collectors were Jewish traitors who made their living by charging more than their Roman overlords required and pocketing the excess for themselves. And Roman soldiers who were empowered to take from the people what they wanted in terms of food and necessities and even have the person on the street carry the soldier’s pack of gear for a mile at a time without compensation. It seems John was including these oppressors in the new kingdom that would be inaugurated by the one whom John was preparing the way for.John answers each of these groups’ simple question, “What should we do?” with a simple answer, “Stop doing what you know is wrong, and start doing what is right!” If you’re a tax collector, stop taking more from the people than is required and if you’re a soldier, stop extorting money from people just because you can and be satisfied with what you have. And to the crowds he admonished them to share what they have with those who don’t.John doesn’t invite the people to make their lives easy, to take the path of least resistance, but to follow the narrow and more difficult way, the way of love and the new kingdom that will be built on self-sacrifice rather than self-aggrandizement.Every Advent John the Baptist pays us a visit and calls us to repent, to change our minds and our actions to reflect who God is calling all of us to be. So I wonder how John might answer our question, “What should we do? How can we live our lives in such a way that we will please God and love our neighbors?” The good news is that God has given us the answer – bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do good and not harm. Be fair and generous with one another. Forgive as God forgives you. Listen to the prompting of the Spirit and love as Jesus loved.The same God who led John the Baptist and those crowds into the wilderness to announce a new beginning is the same God who calls each of us to look for our new beginning this Advent. The one who is coming is already here and invites each of us to find him as we come to the table for nourishment each week. And then strengthened by that nourishment to go into the world and be present with those who need to be nourished with the same love we have found.With the prophet Isaiah we can say, “Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted.”Amen.

2nd Sunday of Advent, Year CAs the popular TV show Game of Thrones says, “Winter is coming!” And I think this morning winter has arrived! It is a physical reminder of the spiritual nature of this Advent season where we experience longer nights and shorter days as we look toward the light that is coming, a light that brings the warmth of God’s love into focus.Our readings point us toward this light. The prophet Malachi is writing after the Hebrew people have returned from their Babylonian captivity and have rebuilt their temple in Jerusalem 500 years before the birth of Jesus. The people are wondering about when they will see God’s justice against their enemies, but Malachi calls them to examine themselves and their selfish desires. In a passage just after our lection reading the prophet speaks on behalf of God,Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.Of course these words are in the context of God sending God’s messenger to prepare the way and point us toward our own need for the refiner’s fire. Just as Jesus told his followers to take the log out of their own eye before removing the speck from their neighbors, so the season of Advent calls us to examine our hearts as we look for the coming promise of God’s deliverance. Malachi is directing our attention toward God’s messenger.The Canticle of Zechariah takes up Malachi’s theme in the first chapter of Luke. Zechariah as you recall is the father of John the Baptist and famously questioned Gabriel about God’s promise that his barren wife would conceive a son. So the angel made Zechariah mute until the promise was fulfilled. The words of this Canticle are the first words Zechariah has spoken since that encounter with the angel Gabriel.Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.Prophets like Malachi and Jeremiah and Isaiah and Hosea and Joel - and the list goes on – all proclaiming God’s redemptive love and the coming of one who will bring a new reign of God’s love in the world. A love that is like a refiner’s fire and and a fuller’s soap – both of which purify that which they encounter. So our hearts too are purified as we experience God’s love in the midst of our imperfections. But most of you don’t get to see how that purification works itself out in our Grace community the way I do. I see what a vital part of that reign of God’s love Grace Church is about. I have the joy of seeing behind the scenes when people extend God’s love in ways that are sometimes unseen by the person in the pew.For instance, yesterday, on a broadcast on an NPR station in one of our nation’s major metropolitan areas, one of our Grace Church family, who came to us when they were a student at JBU, talked about how when their family had not accepted them they found a home with us. And even 1500 miles away they still consider Grace their family. Or yesterday, when I received a text from a Grace family who asked me who in the parish needed help this Christmas because they simply wanted to reach out to their neighbors. Or last year when our Genesis House adopted family found themselves losing a wife and a mother to cancer and didn’t have the funds for her burial, you stepped up and were their family, not only paying for all of their expenses but providing a beautiful service and reception and even a burial place in our Columbarium.Over and over again, I see your generosity and your love extending God’s reign in our community and beyond. And I want to say thank you. Thank you to those who give their time and talent and money and prayers and presence and love so that others might know they are loved and have a home called Grace.Luke’s Gospel tells us today that God’s Word came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness. Not to the high and mighty of the day, not to the Roman Emperor Tiberius, not to the Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, not to the ruler of Galilee, Herod or his brother Philip, or Lysanius, ruler of Abilene, not even to the high priests of the Jewish faith, Annas and Caiphas who make offerings in the holy of holies of the temple in Jerusalem on behalf of the whole people of Israel, not even to them did the word of God come!But to one miraculously born to an elderly couple named Elizabeth and Zechariah who had been patiently waiting for God’s promise of one who would inaugurate a new kingdom of peace and righteousness.[John] went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentence for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah;“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:Prepare the way of the Lord,Make his paths straight.Every valley shall be filled.And every mountain and hill shall be made low,And the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”One of the great musical texts of the season is taken from our reading from Malachi in Handle’s Messiah, where the recitative proclaims, “The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come.” After the first performance in London in 1741, Handel wrote to a friend: “I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I wished to make them better.” Handel’s desire was that we might fulfill Malachi’s prophetic words and present ourselves as offerings to the Lord in righteousness.This Advent season is an opportunity for us to hear again the prophetic word of promise as it comes to us where we are, in the wilderness of our lives, and gives us hope to see new life birthed in us.Amen.

1st Sunday of Advent, Year CHappy New Year everyone!Today is the first Sunday of Advent and in our Christian calendar the beginning of a new lectionary year – the cycle of readings we use on Sundays over the course of the year that follow Jesus’ life, from hopeful anticipation of Jesus birth in Advent, through his birth, life and teachings, his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension, to the giving of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and finally growing in grace and truth through the rest of the year until the celebration of Christ the King, the consummation of the reign of God we celebrated last Sunday. Whew! It’s quite a ride every year.So why do we rehearse, rehear, remember, re-enact, and reapply the story of Jesus and God’s story of God’s love and forgiveness each year? Why do we come Sunday after Sunday to take some of the most common elements of the fruit of the earth, bread and wine, and ask God to bless them to be for us the body and blood of God’s son – consuming the symbols of the eternal becoming temporal, bread and wine representing the life of the one who gave himself so that we might see God’s love poured out for us - not so much as a penalty for our brokenness, but to demonstrate both God’s love for us and the futility and inherent evil of human violence.We come together weekly to remember the story, because we so easily forget. We come together weekly to ask forgiveness for that same anger we hold in our hearts that if left unchecked grows into hatred and violence that led to the cross. We gather in order to experience, to taste, to see, to hear, and to feel that no matter what happens in our lives, we are loved with a love that is not some gooey affirmation that there is nothing wrong with us and that we are perfect the way we are, but that even with the imperfections we all know we carry, we are still fearfully and wonderfully made in the image and likeness of the one who is without flaw and limitless in God’s love for us.We come together because we sometimes find ourselves weak and in need of comfort, close to despair and in need of hope, lonely and in need of friendship. We come not only because we need to experience God’s love, but because we need each other. Grace is not just a beautiful concept, but a divine relationship that plays itself out in the relationships we have with one another.Those relationships matter. We are not a club that pays dues in order to belong, we are the body of Christ who are baptized and confirmed and received into an organic whole that is knit together in the womb of God’s heart by God’s Spirit to be God’s representatives to a world that desperately needs the love and forgiveness we experience here.We come together not for our own sakes but for the sake of others. And it is only as we follow Jesus into our neighborhoods and classrooms and businesses to love others as we experience God loving us, that we will see the peaceable kingdom of our Savior becoming incarnate in our day.Advent is about expectation and the hopeful realization of that expectation, that we might see Jesus born anew in our hearts, in our lives and in our world. But that is only one side of Advent. The readings for these first few Sundays in this new season of the church point us toward another coming, one of promise and fulfillment and judgment.But how does that coming judgment square with the picture of a loving God we have in Jesus? There is a movement in the church that is attempting to reconcile some of the violent images of God we find in the Bible with the non-violent Son of God who showed us another way to be in the world, resisting and even absorbing the violence of the world in order to transform it.This movement is not really new though, it was there in the Garden when rather than executing Cain for the murder of his brother Abel, God saved Cain’s life and sent him out of the Garden under God’s protection. It was also there in another Garden when Jesus was arrested and one of Jesus’ closest friends drew his sword and cut off the high priest’s servant’s ear, but Jesus healed that servant and said to his followers to put away their swords.So we find ourselves in this in-between time, this period of waiting for the promise, the time between the already of Jesus first coming and the not yet, looking for what his second might be, because even as Jesus himself said, no one knows the time or the day.But maybe the fulfilling of God’s reign of love emerges in every generation of those who follow in the way of Jesus. Maybe in our own in-between time of celebrating what has been in our lives and hoping for what is to come we may find our way to God’s peaceable reign in our lives as God loves us into God’s present moment. Because the future will take care of itself and the past is already done, so all we really have is today, the eternal now where God lives and loves us - to love and be loved, to serve and be served, to practice what Jesus taught, and to remember, rehearse, re-enact, and reapply together the life we are to live now.The Psalmist said it best,Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths.Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.Amen.