Broadway Christian Church ·Columbia, Missouri
Morning Worship ·November 27, 2005
First Sunday of Advent
Dear God, we light the first candle of Advent to remind ourselves to watch. We watch and wait for the evidence of your light shining in the darkness. We watch and wait for your light growing stronger within us. We watch and wait for the miracle of Christ born anew. Amen.
Scripture
I Corinthians 1:1-9
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – both their Lord and ours:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Christ Jesus.
I give thanks to my God always for you, because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus. For in every way you have been enriched in him – in speech and knowledge of every kind – just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. God will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord. God is faithful. By him you are called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Message
God Is Faithful
Kim Ryan
A few weeks ago, these great letters came my way. It’s a fresh batch of the Letters to God from Children. Let me share a few of these with you.
Dear God, Are you really invisible, or is that just a trick? Lucy
Dear God, I want to be just like my Daddy when I get big but not with so much hair all over. Sam
Dear God, Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that, or was it an accident? Norma
Dear God, You don’t have to worry about me. I always look both ways. Dean
Dear God, Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don’t you just keep the ones you’ve got now? Jane
Dear God, I think the stapler is one of your greatest inventions. Kim
Dear God, I think about you sometimes even when I’m not praying. Jacob
Dear God, I bet it is very hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world. There are only four people in our family, and I can never do it. Susie
(That’s really good after Thanksgiving. Isn’t it? With all that family closeness.)
Dear God, Maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each other so much if they had their own rooms. It works with my brother. Bill
Dear God, If we come back as something, please don’t let me be Jennifer Horton, because I hate her. Laura
We read, God, that Thomas Edison made light. But in Sunday School they said you did it. So I bet he stole your idea.John
(And my favorite.)
Dear God, If you give me a genie lamp like Aladdin, I will give you anything you want, except my money or my chess set. Hank
Dear God, I do not think anybody could be a better God. Well, I just want you to know. But I’m not just saying that because you are God. Charles
Letters to God from Children. Sometimes a question asked, a request made, a word of praise and affirmation given, a bargain struck, a helpful suggestion offered, a confession voiced of how hard it is to love. All a pondering of God, and life, and their experiences. But it’s not just children, is it, that take the stuff of their lives and ponder and question, who celebrate and suggest, who confess, who wrestle with the notions and the experiences as they intersect with an understanding of the sacred, the divine, the holy of God.
If you were going to write a letter to God, what might your letter say? What would you ask? Is there something you would suggest? Would you like an Aladdin’s lamp? What would you confess? Who is it, for you, who is hard to love?
Chances are that most of us in this sanctuary take the stuff of our lives, whether we put it in a letter to God or not, and we ponder, and we wonder, and we worry, and we question, and we wrestle with the where-ness and how-ness of God in all of that.
You can hear these kinds of conversations and ponderings in all kinds of places, not just at church on a Sunday morning, or a Bible study, or a small group. You can hear them in line at the post office where I was last week. The conversations in that line went from the typical, “So, what about this weather? Is it cold enough for you?” “And how about those tornadoes?” To the offered explanation: “Well, God must be really angry with us, trying to get our attention.”
You could have read them in recent weeks – these kinds of conversations – in the Letters to the Editor of the “Tribune.” Glen, writing as the skeptic and cynic of biblical faith, and Mark, responding, who is certain that Glen is headed straight to hell, if he doesn’t accept the truth, as Mark understands it.
These are conversations we hear about in our news stories. Pat Robertson warning the folks of Dover that they are headed for a disaster, since they voted God out of their city in their recent school board election. And as Pat added, they are not to expect help when that disaster occurs.
(OK, just a personal aside here. I don’t know which is more disgusting: the comments by Pat Robertson or the fact that the news media continues to use them as headliners. OK, back to the task here.)
We hear these kinds of conversations out of the mouths of politicians. A while back, Gov. Jeb Bush, in the face of yet another hurricane hitting the state of Florida, voiced what others were certainly feeling. He said, “I think there is a legitimate feeling here, ‘Why me? What did I do wrong?’” As if God is punishing the state of Florida, or Louisiana, or Mississippi.
Underneath all the questions… Underneath the comments, the conversations, the letters to God, and the letters to the editor… Underneath them all is the really big question. The really big question: “What can we say about God?” “What can we know about God?”
We know God is mystery. We know our words fall so short of trying to describe the sacred, the holy one, the divine. But we spend a lot of time, even with the mystery, trying to explicitly or implicitly, wonder, and speculate, and pontificate about what we can say and what we know about God.
Well, Paul, the letter writer to the Corinthians, the follower of Jesus, the planter extraordinaire new churches in that earliest time of Christianity, the encourager from our Scripture today, says it clearly and simply: “God is faithful.” “God is faithful.” Bottom line.
Paul writes, “You Corinthians, trying to live life in the Spirit of Christ. Here’s what you can know about God. God is faithful.”
“You Christians at Broadway Christian Church and Christians in all places at all times trying to live lives in the Spirit of Christ. Here’s what you can know about God. God is faithful.”
“Jeb, and Pat, and Mark, and Glen, and post-office liners, and children. Here is what you can know about God. God is faithful.”
Whatever else is said, God is faithful. So, what does that mean? God is faithful.
Well, I did some research this week. I took that handy, dandy book called the Concordance – the Bible study guide. All you have to know is a word, and it is like a dictionary. You look up that word, and then it will list for you all the verses in the Bible that have that word in it. So I went to the Concordance, and I looked up the word “control,” because I thought it was possible that the Bible would say God’s faithfulness is God being in control.
Do you know how many verses in the Bible say that God is in control? Do you want to take a guess? Zero! There is not one. I was a little surprised about that. We talk about God being in control so much. We sing it in our songs. We pray it in our prayers, because we so want it to be so.
So when I didn’t find that notion in the Scripture, I looked up “faithfulness.” And “God is faithful” is mentioned over 50 times in the Scripture. Most often those words about God’s faithfulness are partnered with two other words. Those two other words are “steadfast love.”
“God is faithful with steadfast love,” which doesn’t seem to be about control. Think for just a moment with me. Think for a moment about a relationship either that you have been in, or you are in, or that you have witnessed – a relationship characterized by control. Think about that relationship. What does it feel like? What does it look like? What kind of dynamics exists between the persons in a relationship dominated by control? The lack of freedom. The lack of autonomy. Resentment. Frustration. Hostility. Distancing. Punishment. Fear. One-sided satisfaction, at best. Sometimes, even abuse. Sometimes control masquerades as love, but its fruit tends to be bitter.
Now, think about a relationship that you have been in, or you are in, or one that you have witnessed that is characterized by steadfast love. What does it feel like? What kind of dynamics exists between the persons in a relationship dominated by steadfast love? Freedom to be. Freedom to become. Safety. Empowerment. Mutual satisfaction. Harmony. Joy. And there is sweetness to its fruit.
So to say that God is faithful with steadfast love is to speak of a quality of relationship that is of the deepest and most saving kind.
As we know, the season of Advent begins today, leading us toward Christmas Eve. Amidst all the flurry, and all the hurry, and all the decorations, and the shopping, what the Church offers in Advent and Christmas is the timeless and enduring truth: “God is faithful.”
It is no accident that the birth of Christ and the celebration of that birth – God’s faithfulness – come in the heart of winter and the bitter cold. Well, actually the birth of Jesus was probably not December 25. It was probably in May or June. We don’t know for sure. But when the decision was being made on when to celebrate the birth of Jesus, December 25 was chosen carefully and intentionally, because it paralleled the most ancient fears, the deepest despair, the experience of hopelessness of people for thousands of years.
According to Edward Hayes, who wrote Prayers of a Planetary Pilgrim, before we knew what we know now about our sun, and the planets, and the Earth, the ancient people experienced the darkening of the winter season, the lessening of the sun. With that came their fear that darkness would prevail. The sun might not return with warmth and hope. Fearful that darkness and death would rule over the earth, they built fires on hilltops and sacred places. They sang songs, and they danced in this time of year to awaken the sun in the hope they would not die in the freezing darkness of an endless winter.
There is something of that ancient fear that still resides in our bones. Doesn’t it? Somewhere in our DNA, that fear that winter may never end. The darkness will not go away. We have a very analytical name for it now. We call it Seasonal Affect Disorder. Less sunlight: more discouragement and depression.
Into this very ancient and real fear, the early Christians claimed, “God is faithful.” God is faithful in the seasons, and in the return of the sun, but we know that God is faithful in this one we have experienced as Jesus Christ, the proclaimer, the prophet, the living witness to God’s steadfast love. We know, “God is faithful” in our experience of this One – the Light of the World.
So, in this season of Advent, when we light our candles each week… When we plug in the lights to our Christmas trees… May we also hear the spirit of those ancient ones reaching out with hope – the Spirit of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. May we hear: “God is faithful!” As we warm up to the fires in a fireplace, to a hot, steamy cup of hot chocolate, may we be reminded: “God is faithful!” As we stand in postal lines, even there may we be reminded: “God is faithful!” And when we read the newspapers, and we watch the television headlines, and we are afraid that the darkness and despair and the evil may take over this world and our very lives, may be reminded: “God is faithful!” And may that truth be so deep in our bones and in the DNA we pass to our children that we do not worry, but we know: “God is faithful!”
And we say together… “Amen.”
Faithful God, thank you for hearts that love you and seek to walk in your ways. As we enter into this session of Advent, whisper the reminder of how much you love us, that our spirits might embrace and mirror your passion and faithfulness. Amen.
