hope

Sermon 01/11/2026 – The Beloved

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Matthew 3:13-17

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Sermon Text

Baptism is a special gift of God. While we engage with God in many ways in life, baptism is a gift only given to us once in our life. For some of us that gift is given when we are infants and for others when we are old enough to choose it for ourselves. Yet, in either case we are given a special gift of grace through the simply element of water. We are shown that God’s grace has washed us clean of sin and that we, having been washed through faith, may start a new life. We are reborn, not only of the sign of water poured out upon us, but by the gift of the Spirit that comes from our faithful confession.

Baptism is a unique ritual, though similar washings can be found in various faiths and cultures. We believe that, through our being washed with water, we are no longer just people blown about by chance, nor do we belong to our earthly family alone. When we are washed in the waters of baptism, we are transformed into something new. We are made into the children of God, and in that new identity we are able to participate in our faith fully, be called “Christians,” in truth, and go forward in life in the fullness of the new birth which our faith and the Holy Spirit affords us.

Baptism as we know it was first practiced by John the Baptist, his baptism was a sign of transformation granted to Jewish faithful as a sign of their repentance. The baptism which John practiced marked the starting point of something new, but John was clear that his baptism was not the final form of the ritual. Someday, someone would come and initiate the final form of the sacrament. This person would baptize, not only with the outward sign of water but with and inward sign, the presence and gift of the Holy Spirit. The baptism which John promised is the baptism which was fulfilled by Christ, and which was enabled by Christ’s own baptism in the Jordan.

Our scripture today is short, but it tells us about all we need to know to understand Christ’s baptism and its relationship to ours. Baptism, as we have established, is an outward sign of the inward change a person receives through faith. It shows the Holy Spirit’s work in a person that facilitates their New Birth and the beginning of their true life through Christ. I think a natural question that follows this definition of baptism is, “Why was Jesus baptized then?” Jesus did not sin, and so had no need to repent or be changed. Likewise, Jesus was God and so always experienced a perfect union with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. How then did Jesus “receive,” the Spirit in any meaningful way through Baptism.

Christ was baptized, not so much for his own benefit, as he was for ours. Jesus did not ask anything of his disciples that he did not face himself. Why else would he be born as a child, when he could have simply appeared on earth one day? Because Christ needed to bless childhood with his experience of it. Why did Christ die on the cross? Not only to atone for our sins, but to cross the threshold of death ahead of us, that we might know the way. Likewise, Christ received baptism so that we might have an example and more than that a forerunner in our own baptismal journey.

Christ’s baptism revealed the nature of the sacrament by several signs.[1] Christ the Son was revealed in flesh when he came down into the water. God the Holy Spirit appeared visibly, “like a dove,” to rest upon Jesus. God the Father spoke aloud, “This is my son, the Beloved.” These three signs made clear that Christ was God, and that all three persons of God were equally involved in this ritual. The perfect example of Christ enabling us to pursue our own perfection, the power of the Spirit which facilitates this change, and the love of the Father which accepts us as children of God.

No matter when we are baptized, we receive the benefits of the sacrament. Some people, out of a well intentioned concern, will worry about baptizing infants. They think it is unfair to baptize a child before they can come to faith themselves. This was the logic behind the anabaptist reformers who would go on to found the Amish, the Mennonites, and our modern Baptist churches. They believed that baptism was only valid if an adult assented to be baptized, and so would rebaptize those baptized as infants. More extreme groups will baptize you as many times as you like, assuming that only one made truly in faith counts.

For its entire history, however, the Church has affirmed infant baptism. It is an exception rather than the rule that it is taught against. When we baptize infants, we are saying that they are welcomed into God’s family from birth. The logic goes, at least partially, that no other grace of God is forbidden to people based on age, so why should this one be locked away? An infant, being baptized, is given the gift of God’s regenerating grace, and when they reach maturity can choose to accept that gift or return it, but the gift is only ever given once. Though a person may leave the faith and return as many times as they like, their initial baptism is all that is necessary.

Why is this? Well, consider how our own families work. When you are born into a family, you are part of that family. You may leave them, you may disown them, you may walk away from a time, but you are part of that family regardless. If you are adopted, then your identity shifts. You are no longer part of one family, but another, and in the same way no matter how you wander personally, the family remains yours. The church is the same. When we are joined to the church in baptism, we are adopted into the family of faith, and so while we may choose for a time to leave that family, we do not need to be adopted again when we return to it.

Baptism is a necessary part of a faithful person’s walk with Christ. It is commanded that we be baptized as a sign of our faith and without baptism we cannot truly join the Church. Baptism is a necessary part of our initiation, and acknowledgement of God’s grace in our life that has brought us to where we are. In the sacrament we are made children of God and thus are made part of the church. It is not optional to be baptized, for any person who truly wishes to walk in obedience to Christ must be baptized in order to truly be obedient.

Does that mean that a person who comes to faith but dies before they are baptized is damned? No! Nor does it mean unbaptized children are left abandoned. Faith in one case and innocence in the other is sufficient cause not to worry for a person’s soul. However, when we are not in extreme circumstances, when we have ample time and ability, we are bound to do what is required of us. Christ asks that we are baptized, and so we must be baptized.

Baptism is the thing that marks us as God’s children, and in the same way that it shows us as children of God, it puts on us the responsibility of God’s children. We like Jesus are now God’s “beloved,” and that term has special meaning. In Genesis, when Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, God uses the same term to refer to him. “Take your son, your only son, your beloved…”[2] in baptism we are not just born into a new life, but we take up our cross as well. As children of God, we are no longer living for ourselves, but for something greater. We have a family to care for, the church. We have a God to live for, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Most of all, we have a duty to live sacrificially, as Christ once did for us. Baptism is a new start, and today I invite us all to remember our own baptism as we prepare to reenter the world. We who have been made children of God, have a duty to the world, and the waters we touch today are our reminder of that truth. – Amen.

[1] I build off of Aquinas’s perspective here, as stated in Summa III. Q.39

[2] Genesis 22:2

Sermon 08/17/2025 – Craving Falsehood

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Jeremiah 23:23-29

Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord. I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, “I have dreamed! I have dreamed!” How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back—those who prophesy lies and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? They plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal. Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the Lord. Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?

Sermon Text

I am a strong advocate for truth. As obvious as that can seem, it often falls to the wayside in the rush of daily life in our world. All of us are prone, whether we want to admit it or not, to finding a version of reality that is more palatable than the one in which we live. We talked just two weeks ago about the fact that the cycles of life can exhaust us. In the midst of that exhaustion we can choose to chase after true hope or manufactured hope. Do we find our hope in the truth or do we create a false reality that offers its own false hope?

Despite my commitment to truth, I do acknowledge that many so-called “warriors,” of truth are just bullies. Growing up, I was blessed to have people on my television like Carl Sagan who explained concepts of science in terms that my five-year-old self could not quite understand, but which nonetheless opened me to the wonders of this universe. Now the people who are trying to educate people about deep truths of the universe are usually people who are trying to make money or build clout more so than people who truly wish to educate. We are a culture that is dependent upon bombasticity and upon people fighting each other for engagement, and so we do not often find people educating or revealing truth, so much as selling a narrative or offering confirmation of our own ideas.

As I’ve already said, the tactic of bullies is to take hold of this idea of an objective truth and then to beat people with what their perspective is. However, truth is separate from what we may have as a concept of what is right or wrong. A true situation can be good, or a true situation can be bad, the duty we have as interpreters of this world is to decide how we react to the truth. Truth, nonetheless, sits separate from our impression of it. A true thing might be good, or it might be bad, but it remains true.

What we read today out of the book of Jeremiah comes after a period of time in which Jeremiah has said some of his most devastating prophecies. If you read the book of Jeremiah, you will see a man who is constantly given the chance to advocate for his people and who constantly decides they weren’t worth the time. He stands in front of God and pleads saying that there must be righteous people in Jerusalem, there must be righteous people in Judah, and in the next chapter every time that he does this he is shown that there is in fact very little hope for the people he knows. The prophet is beaten down by the words that he has been given. He describes his bones as cracking, his stomach as boiling, his mouth as pouring out fire, even as his eyes are running out of tears to shed. Still, the whole time he is suffering under the weight of truth, there are other prophets selling a more convenient message.

We get a direct interaction with one of these prophets in Jeremiah 28. Jeremiah wore a wooden yoke around his neck to symbolize the oppression his people suffered under Babylon. A fellow prophet came in one day and broke that wooden yoke. He promises the people that, rather than suffering, they are going to be liberated through the work of their king. Jeremiah looks this prophet in the eye and says “Oh, that that would be true! However, the truth is that God has forecasted an even darker day for the people of Judah. I will be replacing this wooden yoke with one made of iron.” Jeremiah is proven right as the people are taken into exile and some of them forced to flee into Egypt rather than to face their annihilation. The prophet is not happy that he is correct, the message he brings is not a good one, but it is true.

I wish to put forward that there are two things we do to explain the state of the world that are harmful to truth. The first is that we deny when there are problems in this world and the second is that we create easy answers to explain the ones we do acknowledge. On one hand we look out at the broken things of the world and say, “They aren’t really that bad!” On the other hand, we say, “They are that bad! And its all because of those folks over there!” When we simplify the world and its problems, erasing them or making them someone else’s problem, we deny the truth that is plainly laid out around us.

When I was serving in Clarksburg, there was a fairly significant population of homeless folk. If you talked to people in authority in the city, they would tell you they were bussed in regularly by outside forces. They were people who were unwanted in the cities they came from and were sent to Clarksburg to become the city’s problem. This is a storyline many cities adopt, and it comes from a shred of truth. Some cities do choose not to help folk and instead move inconvenient populations in their midst. However, the truth in Clarksburg was harder to stomach. Of those surveyed during the shelter season, some 200 souls, a vast majority were locals. People who fell into a bad habit, or lost a job, or had rent raised above their means, and ended up on the street. The people out on the street were not someone else’s problem – they were our literal neighbors, pushed onto the streets.

Here we see a systemic denial of the truth and simultaneously an easy answer. “If we make it hard for these folks to live here, then they’ll just get on another bus!” That works if you assume people are maliciously being transited, but the reality that people fall into homelessness and poverty within our own community… That opens up responsibility on our part, on the community’s part, in order to make sure we’re doing all we can to care for one another.

The wider the circle, the more complicated the narrative becomes. When a Pandemic ravages the world it is easy to say, “It isn’t that bad!” or “I bet those people caused it!” When floods wipe out communities it is easier to say, “Those folks deserved it!” or “The planes caused it!” than to accept that disasters happen, and in preparation and execution to counter them, mistakes happen.

We are all participants in narratives: national, local, and personal. We will always pick narratives that make us have the least amount of culpability and discomfort with the way the world works around us is. At least, we will until we choose to pursue truth. Without a commitment to truth I will always assume that I was in the right in an argument, that my worldview is unimpeachable, that the people I disagree with are the root of every problem and the people I agree with have all the easy answers in the world… Unless I choose to search for truth, I will settle for something lesser.

Truth is made up of data and stories. It requires finding accurate reporting and reading through more than one article or report to understand a larger context. It requires meeting people from different groups, places, and perspectives rather than trusting stereotypes or assumptions. Truth is a gestalt of many pieces of life, and not just the pieces we decide are most palatable.

As Christians, we hold the most important truth in the universe in our hands. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is yours to reveal to the world. If we are left at the mercy of the tides of narratives, and not rooted in a true pursuit of truth… Why should anyone believe us? We are just selling another perspective, another narrative, not dealing with truth in the absolute sense of the word.

Truth is furtive. It’s hard to keep alive because it constantly is shifting under our own pressure for it to look more like this or more like that. Worse still, in falsehood we find none of the ambiguity of doubt that truth can cause. Yet, we must remember, “no matter how tender, how exquisite… A lie will remain a lie.”[1] If we wish to serve the God of truth, we must commit ourselves to truly be people of truth. Abandon the notions you have created to prop up your own desires, egos, and worldviews – embrace the messy things of this life, and find that God is holding a mop and bucket for those who wish to acknowledge the mess. – amen.

[1] Toshifumi Nabeshima. Dark Souls II. V. 1.10. Bandai Namco. PC. 2011

Sermon 08/10/2025 – That Better Country

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible…

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith, with Sarah’s involvement, he received power of procreation, even though he was too old, because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”

All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

Sermon Text

Faith and Hope are two sides of the same coin. Through our faith in God, we are convinced that the things we do not presently see are nonetheless real and forthcoming. When we believe that God is active and that salvation is real, then we naturally believe that its benefits and consequences are likewise real and active. Faith is not a basic admittance of belief in something, but a firm stance we come through convincement – by God and through other faithful people – to the truth of our religion.

While some people are squeamish about the use of the term “religion,”, I am  not. Religion is, broadly speaking, any of the ways that we conduct ourselves in this life toward something bigger than ourselves. Whether we express our religious convictions in a legalistic way or with an eye toward a faith that frees us is a matter of choice. Religion is, therefore, not the end of our faith, but the way in which we express faith. The outpouring of what we believe into what we do, that is the essence of Christianity.

Faith is inseparably linked to hope, the anticipation of something unseen and yet promised. When we live out a life of faith, we do so because we believe that God is honest in projecting a future for us that is better than our current one. This “better country,” is not a temporal reality, but a spiritual and eschatological one. In the present age we are given assurance and strength to face the broken world around us. In the age to come all promises are fulfilled and all troubles cease. In the time between we live a life that makes the hope that our faith points toward break out in intermittent flashes. In our honoring of God’s covenant through faith in and Christ and our service to one another, we make the Kingdom of Heaven exist in the now, even as we wait for its fulfillment at the end of time.

As we talked about last week, the cycles of life can make it difficult to have hope. We get lost in the day-to-day hustle and bustle as well as the legitimate hardships that come from disease, and death, and greed. The systemic and personal evils of this world are such that I never begrudge a person who says they have struggled to find or keep it because of questions about the problem of evil. If I did not have a personal experience of Christ, I do not think that I would be able to come to faith naturally. Not raised in the Church, not brought up with a full understanding of who God is and what Christ reveals about God, I would have easily let my cynicism take me down the road of unbelief.

The thing that allows us to exist as people of faith is simply that we have met God. In our worship and our sacrament in our scripture and in our prayer, we have come again and again to the well of eternal life and found that its waters do not dry up. The only reason we can have faith is because of an act of God, through the person of Christ, and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Apart from these gifts of grace, we would not be able to look at this world with the hope that we carry. Faith is a belief, begun by convincement, that God means what God says. Without the blessing of God’s presence at the outset, we would never find our way to faith at all.

The stories in Genesis, which the author of Hebrews pulls upon in describing faith, shed light upon the messiness of belief and the foundational need for God’s presence to produce it. Abraham went into Canaan after God called him to do so. He also fled into Egypt at the first sign of danger. Isaac was born to Sarah and Abraham, but only after they got tired of waiting and forced a slave to carry a child in her place. They answered the call in faith, but they also frequently ran into a situation that challenged that faith. Most importantly for our own stumbling walk toward God’s promises, they frequently met that challenge and failed to act as they ought.

Whether in fleeing Canaan, or in first involving and then chasing away Hagar and her child, Abraham sinned abundantly in his pursuit of God’s covenant. Yet, through him a blessing was shared with the earth. The culmination of Abraham’s work was the person of Christ born from his descendants and out of Heaven. The savior of the whole earth, even of the whole creation, was at the end of a long road of mistake after mistake, and yet Abraham held on in the midst of his failings, trusting that something better was coming down the road.

In our own life, there are many times we encounter challenges that make us question our faith. I think we would be delusional if we did not look at the suffering in this world and not have the question of, “Why?” creep into our mouths. Someday we’ll look at Job and how God blessed his interrogation of divine mercy, but that book gives us a clear message – faith is not diminished through questions, but enhanced. We cannot be convinced of God’s goodness unless we look at God in the face, unless we ask “Why?” and “How long?” and “What are you doing?” To meet God is to meet with the known and the unknowable. To know God is to grow in understanding the hope that hides beyond the horizon of each dark day.

I find it hard to talk about Hope without quoting Emily Dickinson:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
– That perches in the soul
– And sings the tune without the words
– And never stops – at all,

When we find our hope in Christ, it is not always a loud and triumphant thing. Like Abraham, it meets us in the midst of deep darkness and unknowing. It sings a tune we do not know the words of, but that we can follow faithfully as the beat echoes in our chest. We go forward to live the life we do, so that we might teach the tune to those we meet. In kindness shown to others and in hard lessons of love we have learned and in an endless march toward that better country we have seen only in dreams and deepest prayers, in all these things we proclaim our hope through faith. Listen to the song of Hope within you today and let that song bring you closer to home. – Amen.

Sermon 08/03/2025 – Real Exhaustion

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Ecclesiastes 1:2-14

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow. All things are wearisome, more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing or the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in the ages before us. The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.

I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to humans to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun, and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.

Sermon Text

Mundanity is a killer. The sun comes up and goes down, the laundry always needs done, and the weekend ends just as soon as it begins. The ebb and flow of time leaves us reeling. How do we stop ourselves from being consumed by the endless repetition of the same old thing? Novelty is only temporary and the newest thing will always become old given enough time. The sunshine, the rain, the coming and going seasons, all can just be a bit overwhelming sometimes.

You may be saying that this is a strange way to look at the coming and going of things. If you read further in Ecclesiastes, for example, you come to a point in which the Teacher tells us that there is a season for everything under the sun. There’s a time to mourn and a time to dance, there’s a time to build and a time to tear down, a time to gather stones and a time to throw away stones. It’s all very poetic, all very beautiful, The Byrds even sang about it. However, at the end of it all, that passage is part of the ongoing theme in the book of Ecclesiastes. The succession of one season, to another, to another is an irritation, not a consolation.

This month I would like for us to take some time to look at several places in scripture that tell us about the world as it is – fundamentally broken – and also what they tell us about what the world can be. As we go through, I’m not going to hesitate to name the broken ways that we experience the world now. I’m not gonna leave you without hope each Sunday, don’t you worry, but I think we can only truly understand what the Gospel means to us if we look at the world now and draw conclusions from that about what work Christ is really undertaking in this world. Today we do that by looking at the book of Ecclesiastes, one of my favorite books in all of scripture, to talk about what this world can do to really exhaust us.

As we consider the book of Ecclesiastes, it reads as an honest assessments of ourselves and the world we live in. Admit it to yourself and find yourself freed by the admission that sometimes you’re tired of the way things are. It doesn’t have to be a profound realization, it doesn’t even have to be something that affects your life very often. The world is not the way it should be and it manifests in one-thousand tiny ways that makes us aware of that imperfection. The snide comment that we make towards the people we love that becomes a source of guilt in our heart. The offhanded comment someone else makes about us that we sit and think about and agonize over day after day wondering what they really meant. The seasonal bronchitis that rests in our lungs or the return from remission of one disease or another deep in our bones and in our flesh. The patterns of this life are not always a constant entering into something pleasant. Sometimes we take a step forward and find that our path is quite a rocky one.

Throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, the Teacher seeks to find some way to understand how to live in this imperfect world. We’re told that he tried literally everything he could think of. He tried womanizing, he tried drinking, he tried pouring himself into work. Any distraction, any vice, it was worth it in his mind to give it a go. Their conclusion is telling: every last bit of it was useless. “Vanity of vanities,” is the way that this is usually translated. Other translation put it as “Useless! Useless!” However, in my mind the best example of a translation comes out of Robert Alter, who puts forward the translation as “Merest Breath!” The Hebrew gives the impression of a breath breathed out early in the morning, the last bit of vapor fading away… That is how the Teacher viewed his journey for purpose.

 More than just dealing with the troubles of life in the present moment, the Teacher looks beyond his life. Everything he worked on will be handed down to a relative and he has no idea if they will do a good job. He could become rich and comfortable one hundred times over, but he would be unable to take it with him when he died. Everything terminated the same way for everyone, the evil who lived far too long, the good who die far too young, are all gathered together into the same ground. Death is the only ending to the long succession of exhausting cycles we are trapped in.

This, people of God, is the world as we know it. Now, here I could do a really easy thing and turn this around in a few words. “God shows us the world as it could be! The resurrection changes all that!” And I would be right to say it. However, I do not think that you or I would be completely satisfied with so quick an answer. We need better answers than, “mysterious ways,” and “it will be better by and bye,” we need to actually wrestle with the brokenness of the world. If we are going to say the Gospel makes a difference, we need to talk about what the Gospel does to change these things! There is hope for this world, and that hope is in Jesus Christ, but it will take us the rest of this month to even start to address just how Christ gives us freedom from the drudgery of this world.

If I can spoil the ending of Ecclesiastes for you, though, I can say that the Teacher comes to two simple conclusions. Firstly, that we should live each day in the knowledge that we only have today as a guarantee, and only have one life to live on this side of eternity. Do not focus on “legacy,” or career to the detriment of enjoying this life and the people you have around you in it. Do not chase a hedonistic lifestyle of getting whatever you want, whenever you want it either, extremes are usually bad. No, instead we should all be willing to say, “My time on earth is limited. I will take none of my money with me when I am gone, my resume shall not go before me in the grave. I have today to do what it right, to care for those around me… That is more than enough.

Secondly, the Teacher decides that of everything he did, only his commitment to God really mattered. We cannot regret time we spend in prayer or in worship. We cannot regret service to those around us done for love of God and neighbor. We cannot regret the things which God has placed in front of us, because those things alone have any true lasting power. Through God, the mundane is made into something holy. G.K. Chesterton puts it well, “God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.”[1]

As we speak of the mundane being made holy, we must turn our minds to the meal we are about to share. If you are like me and get tired of this world’s many problems and the relentless ebb and flow of time, then this table is here to give you strength. Christ came into the midst of this world’s mess, not standing from far off and yelling platitudes at us, but taking on the same troubles we faced. Christ drank deep of the mundane troubles of this world, took on the pain of disease and injury, lost friends and family, and even died at the convergence of all these struggles. In death, in the fullness of solidarity, Christ secured his right to rise again, and lift all of humanity with him.

Today, we have mostly stated a problem. We take up this spiritual food and drink to continue on in the midst of that problem. Yet, I believe, and I hope you do too, that by the end of this month, we will not find life to be “mere breath,” but so much fuller and worth living than that. – Amen.

[1] G.K. Chesteron. “The Ethics of Elfland,” in Orthodoxy. (John Lane ; The Bodley Head, Limited. 1926.) 107

Sermon 12/10/2023 – The End of Pain

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

There are few things in human life more universal than pain. From our birthing cry to our final breath, we are surrounded by things that are painful. We pray every week for all those in our lives who are in trouble. That wouldn’t be necessary if we were not surrounded by pain. The Psalms are constantly crying out in pain to God, because they trust that God is listening and ready to act. In a world that is broken, in a world that is harmful to seemingly everything within them, how do we survive?

Jesus put forward an interesting solution to the despair we feel at life’s pain. Jesus looks out into the world around us and asks us to counter despair with simplicity. Why be afraid of where food will come from? God feeds the sparrows and they don’t work for their food. Why worry about where your clothing will come from? Flowers are better dressed than any person, and yet they never have to work to make their clothing. Place any part of natural into this equation and the same answer comes out – God provides, and that is often sufficient.

The response that many people have to this teaching is simple. What do birds have to do with my problems? How is it remotely helpful for me to look at flowers when I’m cold at night? In the midst of all our problems, just looking at something else thriving does not magically make us feel better about our circumstances. In fact, the seeming protection and care that God shows every part of creation can make it seem like our own struggles are even more of an aberration. God has cared for everything, and yet I am here in the midst of trouble and pain! Rather than taking these words and finding peace in them, we instead build up a case against ourselves. The darkness of the world that we sit in bleeds into a positive image like this, and poisons it – creating a new way for us to criticize our own hearts.

This is not something unique to this one teaching, or any other aspect of our faith. Paul speaks about how God’s good gift of Torah on Sinai are turned into a curse by our own understanding. When we know what we should not do, we are sometimes more likely to do it. Unless the lesson imparted by a rule or teaching is internalized inside us, we will find loopholes and ways to violate the spirit of a thing even if we do not violate the words of the text themselves. Negativity births negativity. No matter how nice a thing is, putting it in the midst of something bad seldom makes the bad thing seem better, just the nice thing seem worse. I do not enjoy okra anymore because it is breaded and fried.

For someone in the midst of trouble, platitudes, even divinely inspired ones, are not what are needed. This is why scripture so often gives multiple answers to the same question. For the person who is fretting about what might be, the simple things of life can be a way to remember that God’s goodness is not just for one season. However, for the person in the valley of death, that same lesson will probably not accomplish the same thing. There is a rightness of speech to every situation, and the same cure is not meant for every disease. Not every teaching will land in fertile soil in our hearts and produce fruit given the place we are in.

Our scripture we have read together this morning, where Isaiah promises that God is coming to bring peace to God’s people, is written for people in the midst of troubles. Rather than calling for the people to take up songs of praise and to cheer despite pain, the Prophet establishes a pattern.

The Prophet proclaims that the people have suffered, before The Prophet proclaims their deliverance. When we acknowledge the pain that we have faced and hear that acknowledgment reflected in the people who care for us – a lot more healing can happen than would come from denial. God calls out, “Comfort, O Comfort, my people!” Because that is the first thing that the people need, is comfort.

God then moves quickly into a promise of what is to come, a restoration but more than that a setting aside of what was for something new. The call of the Prophet begins, asking us to make a pathway in the wilderness, to clear a way through the uncertainty and danger of the world and see a highway to deliverance for all people. The Prophet’s hymn about God’s control over life and death in the midst of this passage may seem a departure from the theme, but it carries something heartening within it. God, the God who brings life and death, is the God who loves us and cares for us. The hope of our redemption is present in God’s ability to overcome obstacles we find impossible – even obstacles as large as death are nothing to God.

The proclamation of the Prophet, “Here is your God!” Flows into God’s taking up of the title of Shepherd. Throughout scripture God’s care is described in pastoral terms, as an attendant to those in need and as a protector from the troubles of the world around. The acknowledgement of our pain naturally has matured into a promise of our deliverance and the realization of that deliverance in God’s hands.

Advent is a season that celebrates Christ’s coming into the world long ago to set this world on the course it needed to be, a moment when the work began to make a way in the wilderness. Advent is also an acknowledgement that we wait for the day when Christ returns and, as a shepherd, puts an End to all Pain that we might face. For the Church that waits for Christ, we are caught in a space where pain and the end of pain are smashed together in strange juxtaposition. We know from where our deliverance comes, but we do not know when it might be here.

For some of us, the words of hope and promise may seem bitter, our broken hearts, breaking even joy into something lesser. To those of us in this place, let the first part of Isaiah’s prophecy rest in your heart. “Comfort, O Comfort, my people,” is God’s word to all who struggle, to rest in the care of God and of God’s people. For others, the words of God’s promise should fill us with an excitement we’re not used to feeling.

There is an end to trouble, Glory to God that we will get to see it! Faith sustains us in the midst of brokenness, because we know that we have a good shepherd, and that shepherd is actively working in this world and the next to make things right. For all of us, the words of the Prophet make our job in the meantime clear, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Clear the wilderness of all obstacles to the people who are seeking rest, and God bless the work as we embark upon it. – Amen.