Jump to sermon by clicking here
GREETINGS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
- The Community Thanksgiving Service will be hosted online this year and available as discs to take home. Let Rev. Bruno know if you’d like a copy sent to you.
- Each Thursday, Governor DeWine has a press conference on COVID-19 and releases a new state danger map. If our county is at red or worse danger for COVID, we will be having online church that Sunday. If we are orange or better, we will have church in person. This Sunday we are red, and if we are still red next Sunday (which is likely) services will resume being online and in print.
- Our Advent calendars are here. Please take one on your way out just in case we do not get back in person before Advent begins. If you are reading this at home, one will be mailed to you the week before Advent.
CALL TO WORSHIP
One: Are you awake? Are you alert?
Many: Christ is coming into our lives in a new way.
One: Are you watching the signs? Are you interpreting what is happening today?
Many: Christ is coming into our lives in a new way.
One: Do you see opportunities for ministry? Do you see the poor, the homeless, the hungry, the needy?
Many: Christ is coming into our lives in a new way.
One: Come, let us worship and let us work in the reign of God.
All: Christ has extended the invitation: let us work together in the reign of God on earth.
Written by Rev. Mindi
Hymn – #397 The Gift of Love
PRAYER OF INVOCATION
O God, you alone are our Judge.
Send your Spirit of truth
to expose our self-deception
and challenge our complacency
so that we may surrender to your mercy
and follow your will
through Jesus Christ our Liberator. Amen.
Gloria Patri
JOYS AND CONCERNS
Pastoral Prayer
God let your justice and fairness
flow like a river that never runs dry
Please help those of us who are rich
to be honest and fair just like you, our God.
May we who have such abundance
be honest and fair with all your people,
especially the poor.
Let peace and justice rule every mountain
and fairness flow as a river that never runs dry.
May we your people defend the poor,
rescue the homeless,
and rout everyone who hurts them.
May we be as helpful as rain that refreshes the ground,
to those who are treated unjustly.
Let the wholeness and fairness of your kingdom
live forever like the sun and the moon.
Because you our God,
rescue the homeless and have pity on those who hurt
May we who are rich stand up for the poor
and let peace abound until the moon fades to nothing.
Let God’s kingdom of justice and fairness
reach from sea to sea, across all the earth.
God let your justice and fairness
flow like a river that never runs dry
(Personal prayer requests and thanksgiving are on our private Facebook page, or available by telephoning Rev. Bruno)
In Jesus’ name we pray his prayer saying, OUR FATHER
Amen.
~ based on a prayer from Christine Sine’s Godspace website.
TITHES AND OFFERINGS
OFFETORY & PRAYER
Ever generous God, in gratitude we offer to you these tokens of our lives. Use our prayers, our gifts, our lives to let justice and righteousness flow. Amen.
Hymn #360 What the Lord Has Done for Me
SCRIPTURE
The prophet Amos made clear in his writings that he did not come from a family of prophets, nor did he even consider himself one. Rather, he was “a grower of sycamore figs” as well as a shepherd. Amos heard God’s word against the powerful and for the oppressed and the voiceless in the world.
Amos 5:18-24
Alas for you who desire the day of the LORD!
Why do you want the day of the LORD?
It is darkness, not light;
as if someone fled from a lion,
and was met by a bear;
or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,
and was bitten by a snake.
Is not the day of the LORD darkness, not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it?
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
In Matthew, Jesus has been speaking at length about when the Day of the Lord will arrive. Before today’s reading, Jesus tells his disciples that not even he, Jesus, nor any angels, know when that Day will be.
Matthew 25:1-13
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps.
The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’
But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’
And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’
But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’
Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
These are the words about God for the people of God.
Prayer
Sermon: Interim
I have become a Russian doll. One of those nesting dolls where I am a doll within a doll within a doll within a doll… Only now, I am in an interim within an interim within an interim… I am beginning to feel like every wheel in my life is free spinning and catching nothing.
I am in between election day and inauguration day. In this interim, what will happen? What will people do? Will power pass peacefully? Will votes be thrown out? Will there be political, verbal, physical, social violence? It’s an in-between time.
And around this little Election Interim Doll is the Covid-19 Interim Doll. I’m between the start of this virus, and the end. I know when it began, but I don’t know when it will end. Am I half way there? Am I only in the first year of a decade? How long until there’s a vaccine? How long until that vaccine gets to regular people like me? Will the vaccine work? Will it be an annual thing to combat the latest COVID much like the flu? I’m in an in-between time. How it’s making me long to be out.
But I’m not. I’m in yet a third interim time. A third nesting doll. This one is the Parousia. I’m between the first coming of Jesus the Christ and the Second Coming – the Day of the Lord. Like Covid, like the Election, I know what day this interim started… about 2000 years ago now… but when does it end? Are we in the final days? The final centuries? The final millennias or have we just began this hundred-thousand year wait? I don’t know. It’s an indefinite in-between time. And it makes a lot of us long for the Lord’s Day to be today.
Amos’ audience longed for the Lord’s Day to be today. He warned his listeners they were not ready to meet God for the Final Judgment. The day of the Lord would be darkness for Amos’ people. It would be like they ran from a lion and into a bear. Or fled into a house and was bit by a snake. We’d say nowadays someone jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Amos tells them that they’re in a bad situation now, but praying for the End of Time and the Day of the Lord to be the cure-all is just as bad of a situation.
Why?
Throughout the book of Amos, Amos explains that God desires us to do right by each other. To seek justice. To let it flow like a river – powerful, never drying up – washing away everything that isn’t just, isn’t merciful, isn’t compassionate. Amos explains that God wants righteousness- living in right relationship with each other, with nature, with ourselves, and with God. A rightness like an ever-flowing fresh and life-giving stream. A rightness that resists hate, refuses revenge, and seeks restoration and reconciliation over wrongs.
Amos lists specific sins — abusing the innocent and poor: cheating on weights, profiting at the expense of others, and debtor’s prison. He brings up treating women as less than men and simply property to be passed around. Amos proclaims the sin of approaching God clothed in economic abuse. Coming into church to show one is holy but wearing the clothes — physically and literally — taken from others. Donating excessively to the church from profits that put others onto the streets. And lastly, using God’s name as justification for these deeds.
Blasphemy is using the name of God to justify evil.
Many people like to claim God’s blessing on their evil…. Such as, it is simply the will of God some are poor and some are rich. It is simply the will of God some have power and some do not.
For this, Amos proclaims God actively avoids Amos’ peoples worship services. God snubs us. If we use God as our justification to use our power to hurt others, then God wants nothing to do with our worship of God. If we say God simply wills that some people hoard while others starve, then God wills we starve for God’s attention. The misery of the world is not God’s will. Wealth inequality is not God’s will. Gender inequality is not God’s will. Donating to the church from ill-gotten gains is not God’s will. Sin, and sinning, is not God’s will.
God’s will is justice, and right-ness. God’s will is love in action. God’s will is we help and assist one another and let Earth be where God’s will is done, just as it is in Heaven.
Wiping our hands of the Earth’s messes and looking only at heaven, never at each other, is how we got into this mess. It’s… sleeping. Missing God’s presence among us. Missing Christ in the faces of our fellow humans and creatures. It’s… some foolish bridesmaids.
Jesus’ parable can be read in a million and one ways. ((Obviously, it’s a parable.)) Today, it speaks to me with Amos about the kinds of people who are waiting for God’s Day or the Second Coming.
All of us waiting are bridesmaids. But some of us know we’re in for an unknown length of time. And we’re ready. We’re living the Sermon on the Mount. We’re seeking justice and right relationships. We’re working hard to be the good news to the poor, the imprisoned, the sick, the outcast, the foreigners, the vulnerable. And so, whether Jesus comes tonight or in a thousand years, we’re ready. We’re living the life now.
Others of us are not ready for the long haul. We planned a short interim. We’re living like Jesus will be here tomorrow and so our actions don’t matter in the long-run. Jesus will fix it. Global climate change? No worries. Jesus will fix it before mass extinction of most life. Rampant poverty? No worries. Jesus will save the poor before they starve. Corrupt judges, politicians, officers, lawyers, or clergy? No worries. It’s just a passing time. We who feel this way are the women who run out of oil. We bet on God coming to fix our messes rather than relying on ourselves to work on things while waiting upon God.
This isn’t to say God doesn’t intervene. This isn’t to say that God isn’t coming. This is to say… we don’t know when God will arrive. And I surely don’t want my daughter, or granddaughter, to live in a war-filled hellscape. I’d rather she be in a heaven-on-earth.
Why do we have this interim? This time between Comings? Amos suggests it is mercy. Time for us to get our act together.
And so we must.
We are aware our systems are broken. We are aware we formed “in order to make a more perfect union.” Not THE most perfect union. But a more perfect one. One with room for improvement.
Improvements. The right to vote for women. The end of slavery. The abolition of punishment without a trial.
Improvements. Prohibition – banning all alcohol. Improvements… reversing this Constitutional Amendment.
Improvements. There is a more perfect union. We see as a country now how deeply we are still not united on race, gender, even the acceptance of what constitutes truth or if science is real…
We can unite and work out a way that is a more perfect Tranquility.
We can work to love and care of each other. Work on being sure all are fed, clothed, housed, not sick, and have fufilling lives. Work on love and stewardship of the earth where we pass on a planet better than we received it to the generation after us. Work on this justice and right-relationships thing, where we resist our temptation to dehumanize others and simply them to hate-able caricatures. We’re working on it.
Victoria poet Lord Tennyson Afred wrote
In Memoriam A.H.H.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
“Democracy, elections, government: all are phenomenally important, worthy of our attention and our engagement. They are the ways we order our life together as we seek justice for our neighbors and work toward the kingdom of God. We must not neglect these systems. Yet “they are but broken lights” of God’s righteousness. We work within them, even as we also await with hope a new vision for God’s just and merciful rule.” ((Dr. B. R. Howard))
This interim — the short one of elections, the longer one of covid-19, the even longer one of the Second Coming — these interims are grace. Gifts. Time given to us to be Jesus’ love in the world. Time given to us to be rainbows of hope in our uncertain world. Time given to us to be known by how we love, how we care, how we dream of and labor for a better world.
Amen.
Hymn #389 Put Peace into Each Other Hands
Benediction
Hymn #66 To God Be the Glory, chorus only
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 