LIGHT A CANDLE in YOUR HEART
Psalm 122
Matthew 24: 36-44
November 25, 2022 – FIRST SUNDAY in ADVENT
“For the sake of the Lord our God’s house … I will pray for your good.”
If you were to check Ancestry.com you would find something interesting about the man who wrote those words that now make up our Psalm 122 and also is the reason for the season as some would say.
David’s family tree includes Jesus and Jesus will enter the world bringing the light of God as an answer for that simple prayer of David that is also a call for action to the faithful. The season of Advent takes us to the day we celebrate Jesus’ birth.
David is praying for the center of his universe in relationship to God … for the place where all of the faithful of his time felt connected to God and in those days a place where God was worshiped … in THE TEMPLE … the house of God. In Jerusalem.
Times have changed …. David’s distant relative, Jesus Christ, has walked this earth … speaking lessons that came directly from God; lessons that in 2022 are available on our phones. Lessons found in the Gospels offering clarity from God so that people like you and me really can not dispute the essentials of God’s expectations, which is not to say that there are some religious leaders in today’s world who are attempting to conquer others by utilizing words and concepts in religion never spoken by Jesus nor conceived of by God but clearly tied to prejudice, bias, and power. The words Jesus spoke … the words of God … GOOD NEWS … challenging news … but clear expectations that in this season we should be thanking God for.
Friends, “For the sake of the Lord our God’s house, I will pray for your good.”
Jesus Christ, you might recognize the name. Officially as of this past Friday we can play Christmas carols about His birth and sing the songs celebrating a day set aside in His honor. Jesus Christ is the one unique light that can change your heart and rescue any human rescue them forever into eternity’s glory … God’s house that David would be praying for today is the WORLD of the faithful, we no longer need Jerusalem because we have Jesus Christ as our Savior and our Lord.
That is not to say we do not need locations to join together in worshiping God because God deserves our collective praise … God calls on us to worship God … but we also need the faithful to be by our sides in times of crisis. We need the church as a connected family to celebrate our joys with us … JOY TO THE WORLD THE LORD HAS COME … let earth receive her king.
Our Psalm today is a reminder of the value God has in a place like St. Paul’s United Methodist Church of West Deptford. Where peace is a reality for ALL. Where rest from the world can be found. And, yes like other churches throughout the world where ALL are welcomed in love and worship is experienced with joy because that is God’s expectation for the faithful … ALL INCLUSIVE … ALL LOVING … a place of WORSHIP … a PLACE of DISCOVERY … and a place to NOURISH our FAITH so that we can be today’s lights in the world … lights revealing the realities of God, of Christ … directed by God’s Holy Spirit.
I opened worship today with a special quote from Anne Frank. Her diary is an amazing book of revelation and heroism. On this first Sunday of Advent in the year 2022, I found her words from the time of Adolph Hitler, the time when the world trembled at the possibility that a dictatorship might destroy freedom … a time when most of the world was living in fear and apprehension … I found her words instructive and connected to the call of Christ to go into the world … the call of the prophet when he shares what the Lord God expects of people of faith …. Here’s what that girl hidden away in the house in Amsterdam wrote, “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define darkness.”
We know that young girl did not survive the hate instilled in the German people by a vile leader focused on his power. She died along with her sister Margot at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp … arrested by the Gestapo and some German soldiers who probably attended church services on occasion but who were more aligned with their evil leader than with the Gospels. Imagine the evil of humanity that teenage girls were a threat because they were Jewish … but her strength, courage, and resolve have survived.
In the Gospel of John we hear Jesus quote, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me won’t walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” Today, my challenge to you is for you to use this season of Advent to light a candle in your heart that allows you to bravely showcase to your friends, your family, your neighbors, and those whose paths you cross that your single candle of faith defies the darkness of the world and shines out Jesus Christ’s love for everyone! No, this is not about getting mad at clerks who do not say Merry Christmas to you at check out after you have made seasonal purchases but rather it is to show love towards those who go bah humbug.
We are in the season of Advent friends … do you join with me in declaring to my friends, to my family and the world I live in the words of David … “I rejoice with those who say, LET’s go to the Lord’s House! To give thanks there to the Lord’s name!”
Are you eagerly and excitedly thinking about Christmas Eve services, weekly worship services celebrating Jesus Christ? Are you finding rest amidst the world in the time you give to worship God and Jesus Christ here in person or online when you can’t make it to the building we call church?
Christianity is not a passive life experience … Christians are individuals who understand that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was an activist who shook up the world’s realities shining a clarifying beacon onto God and demonstrating justice while teaching all of humanity that God’s focal point is tied to God’s grace and God’s love for all humans who breathe in a breath of life.
However, Jesus also clarified that God expected something in return … God wants every single human to actively and TRULY truly believe in God … in Christ but we are also reminded that God can’t be fooled by mere words uttered by individuals who really believe in the world rather than in God and who reject the revolutionary extraordinary teaching of Jesus focused on loving God and loving ALL of our neighbors.
We have arrived at the first Sunday in Advent … Advent is defined as a time to become prepared for the celebration of Christmas. Christmas by the way is not defined as a day to unwrap gifts we have lusted for, begged for or written to a jolly elf for because they were things we don’t have but know we need more than anything else in the world. The story of Christmas is discovered in the Gospel of Luke, on a Charlie Brown Christmas television program, forecast in the Old Testament of the Bible, and reflected in manger scenes that many of us put up at this time of the year. And, yes … I already have wrapped gifts under an artificial tree for Megan that will be opened on December 25th.
Advent is our opportunity to align ourselves with God’s plan not just for us but for all of humanity. Advent is the season for renewal through our understanding that God realized that humanity needed more than a Temple in Jerusalem by completing God’s love through God’s Son not born into wealth but instead born in a stable filled with the odors of the animals that were kept there … later as a stranger in the land of Egypt as a mere child; a non-citizen living with his Mother and her husband neither of whom were citizens of Egypt giving us His personal experience for the lesson He taught about our having to welcome strangers in the land. God gave us the lesson of the shepherds but the Gospels are not a baby’s story but an educational guide to change friends … to become the faithful in our times … to actually take the faith we claim and implement our God connection through the verification that we live as those who believe rather than as those who fall into the crevices of the world.
We each need to be the single candle amongst the collective of candles … all of us defying as well as defining darkness for the sake of shining the light of Jesus Christ out into the world. We need to pray for the church … we need to pray for each other … we need to bond together through our faith … to share our joy … to stand up for justice … to praise God … yes even praise God with loud cymbals!!!
David declared, FOR THE SAKE OF MY FAMILY and FRIENDS … we must do this and friends, we have allowed the church of Jesus Christ to shrink away … to be enveloped in the power and politics of the world … we have allowed our faith to be hidden away because perhaps something about your world … my world … caused the candle of faith in our heart to be snuffed out … perhaps we feared being embarrassed in front of friends if we said Jesus mattered … perhaps we didn’t want to stand up for justice thinking we might be victims then of injustice as the retribution for our positioning to protect and love all humans. Perhaps our parents said don’t talk about religion but the truth is we don’t have a religion we have a God and a Savior and a Holy Spirit through faith that’s not religion … that’s truth and light!
FOR THE SAKE of our families and our friends …. It’s about time that we joined together in unity as David wrote in today’s Psalm … we are long overdue to proclaim to the world that we are first and foremost part of the Lord’s tribes not some human created gang! We are the people who with joy in our hearts give thanks to the Lord our God! We are the ones committed to loving God and loving ALL of our neighbors!
It is the first Sunday in Advent … in the year 2022 … Jesus said, “STAY ALERT … you do not know what day the Lord is coming … therefore you should be prepared because He will come at a time you don’t know.” So, in this Advent season will you choose to be prepared for God … for Christ … will you do all in your power to insure that the faith candle in your heart is brightly shining with an everlasting flame? Will you do it out of love FOR THE SAKE of YOUR FAMILY and FRIENDS so that they can experience the light, the love, and the reality of God and Christ?
In this Advent season … it just takes one person after another person after another person of faith being willing to light their candles of faith in their hearts for the star of Christ to again be focused on Jesus teaching … on love and justice … on peace with joy!
For the sake of the Lord our God’s House … I will be praying for your good throughout this Advent season and for the candle in your hearts. AMEN