Last Piece Of The Puzzle
Sermon
Shining Through The Darkness
Sermons For The Winter Season
Advent is the time of waiting, of wishing, and of wanting an intervention. Advent is a whisper, or a cry, or a prayer of "Come, Lord Jesus!"
As our member and artist, Teri, stated visually and verbally on our bulletin cover this morning, "Oh, that you would burst forth from the skies and come down ..." (Isaiah 64:1 TLB) or as the New Revised Standard Version translated the Hebrew of Isaiah 64, "O that you would tear open the heavens and come...." Come to us. "Please come, Lord Jesus!"
Advent is the season of "waiting," waiting for completion, waiting for things to be right -- to be as God intended.
One of our dear members died recently. She was a delightful, engaging woman. One certain thing about her was that right up to the time of her death, she was madly in love with her husband, but her husband died over 25 years ago. She told me that this separation was not right, not the way it was supposed to be. They were created for mutual support. In her great faith, she said that she was patiently waiting for reunion, that this was part of the promise of God. She was waiting for all creation to be complete, including herself. "Come, Lord Jesus!"
I find myself waiting much more than in years past. Our children have recently moved out of our home. It is not the same as when they were both away at college. Then our home was still, at least symbolically, their primary home. But our daughter is married now and living in lower Michigan. She and her husband work long hours and they care for a large herd of horses that demand daily attention. They live closer to my son-in-law's family, so when they do get away for a day or so, like at Thanksgiving, it is to be with others who are important to them. Our daughter cannot get to Duluth to visit very often. Our son, Andrew, moved to Minneapolis two weeks ago to begin a career search. I find myself waiting for them all to come home. I long for them to come home. But it is more than that. I long for other family reunions. I wish to be together to share a meal and conversation with my grandparents, but they are all now dead.
I find myself waiting for future children that I will love. I find myself waiting for the repetition of past moments when the power of loving union was so absorbing and so astonishing.
I long for the environment to be cleansed, for the air and water to be pure again, for mature white pines, for the cycle of life to be in harmony and beyond human selfishness.
I find myself waiting for things that I don't fully understand, for encounters and reunions and loving experiences that are beyond my comprehension. I wait for all of this, it seems. I long for this peace.
I think that this kind of longing, this waiting, is an innate part of all human beings. Various kinds of idols can momentarily redirect our wishes. If we are turned in upon ourselves, and our longing is only for our own enhancement at the expense of others, this denies our true self -- the image of God within -- God who creates in us a desire for the unity of all. But even when we let our sainthood dominate our life, we are waiting.
And as I get older, the waiting seems to have more power over my moods and thoughts and dreams. I think when we are young, if we are fortunate enough to be raised in a caring, creative, supportive setting, our waiting is dominated by the desire for personal fulfillment. When we are young, it seems that all of life is open for grand surprises, but also with the expectation that there are clear answers for all of life's multiple puzzles. But the older I become, it seems that waiting for a loving resolution to all things becomes more intense and urgent. "Come, Lord Jesus."
My wife, Shirley, is a guest teacher in some of our elementary schools in Duluth. She teaches a special curriculum about self-esteem and conflict resolution. A first-grade teacher told her about a lesson plan that she had intended to use in her class last week. It was to be a Thanksgiving bulletin board, titled "Things We Wish For." In the middle of the bulletin board was to be a large paper wishbone, like from a huge Thanksgiving turkey. Each child in the class was asked separately to name something that they wished for. The wishes were to be printed on various colored paper cards and then arranged in a festive manner around the wishbone on the bulletin board.
After collecting all the wishes, the teacher decided not to display them. The exercise was no longer celebrative. It revealed too much about these sacred children. The wishes were, for the most part, stories about incompleteness. These six-year-old children wished that their father would come home, that their older brother would stop hurting them, that their mother would stop drinking, and that their parents would get back together again. It seemed as if the whole class was waiting for some kind of loving completion.
Tear open the sky and come to us, dear God! Come and reveal your power. Shake the mountains, this earthly life's core; shake us and center us. We feel like leaves that whither and are blown away by the wind....
-- Isaiah 64:1-6 cf
These tortured words of longing are from the book of Isaiah and formed our first scripture reading this morning. In its historical context, even though these Israelites who had been in forced exile in Babylon, were now allowed to return to the holy city of Jerusalem, something was still very wrong and incomplete. It seemed as though the focus of their culture now was on reestablishing power and status and favorable trade agreements, and the reappropriation of land. According to the prophet, even in the so-called "Holy City" there was an emptiness that lingered, a bitter taste, and among many, a nihilistic, malignant acceptance of incompleteness.
There was a sense of being swept toward an abyss, toward delusion, toward a final ending separated from the source and the purpose of justice and compassion, life groping in the darkness. They were experiencing a loss, a fear, a perception of one's very center decaying, or on the verge of flying apart. We are like clay. Do more than just form us, God. Keep your hands wrapped around us; hold us together. Tear open the sky and come! "Come, Lord Jesus!"
Our good news text this morning, our gospel text, began with words of Jesus, about the kingdom of God.
But in those days, after the suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see "the Son of Man coming in clouds" with great power and glory.
-- Mark 13:24-26
What did Jesus mean when he said the kingdom of God was at hand? Jesus believed that God who created the universe, the God of the covenant who promised never to abandon the creation does bring love and justice, mercy and truth, to bear upon the whole world; and God will bring renewal and healing to all creation.
A number of years ago, when my children were very young, we were all home together on an Advent season mid-week evening. Early December darkness had settled in very comfortably. There was the warmth of a fire in the fireplace, lit candles, and music from the stereo. Andrew, six years old at the time, pulled a jigsaw puzzle box out of the hall closet and dumped its contents on the coffee table by the fireplace. The picture on the puzzle was of an American cult object. It was a photograph of the defensive line of the Dallas Cowboys in action. (This was back when Dallas dominated the NFL.) The picture was of Too Tall Jones and his teammates in the process of sacking Craig Morton. The puzzle pieces were an array of color: bright Denver red and Dallas blue with the blur of fans in the stadium in the background -- a challenging puzzle! All four of us had to work on this one.
First the rectangular border was completed, and then inner sections of the puzzle began to take ragged bites out of the white marble top of the table. It was all coming together. After a long time, finally the end was near. We could feel it. There was a certain tension in the air. Shirley, Andrew, and I hovered over the table. There was no time for conversation now. One hand for the puzzle and one hand for the popcorn. Salty, buttered fingers were flying fast as the pieces were fitted into place. Andrew, at six years old, had well-developed spatial coordination and held his own. But Kirsten, barely five years old, had a trial-and-error approach that gave her limited success. At some point, she had quietly gathered colored pencils and paper and worked intently at the other end of the table, still a part of the group, in the atmosphere of community, but doing her own thing. I thought of offering her my successful puzzle discoveries to put in place, but she would have considered that condescending. I was left to watch her out of the corner of my eye and made sure she was supplied with popcorn.
At one point though, I noticed Kirsten quietly slide down to the puzzle end of the table seemingly to examine our handiwork. Then I saw her quickly, secretly, slip into the sleeve of her sweater a single piece of the puzzle, and return to her end of the table to resume her artwork.
I moved over next to her and whispered in her ear, "Kirsten, why did you take that puzzle piece?" She said simply, "I want to put a piece in, too, and if I wait until the very end, I'll know right where it goes."
The Christian confession is that the ending for which we wait is already in hand and fully present in Jesus as the Christ. Although things are not completed, we have the last piece of the puzzle already. Our Advent longing, our waiting, has taken on a new dimension. We are still a part of all creation that groans for completion and reunion. But we know now what that completion looks like -- we know it in the story of Jesus.
We are between times, or better stated, at the center. We long for a final completion but now have the vision of how it all should be, and will be, in the story of Jesus. And when we tell the story of Jesus, we are doing so as part of the community that is called to model this story to the world.
Advent waiting is not just longing for some future state called "heaven," but in the light of Christ we know that God is also infused in the present world. "Thy kingdom come," said Jesus, "thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." It is the desire for things to be made right here and now, as well as in the end.
Jesus guided listeners to come to terms with God's reality breaking in to their midst, and helped them to do and be what they longed for. Jesus announced a new context and challenged his hearers to become the new people that this new context demanded, the citizens of this new world. He was offering a challenge to his contemporaries to a way of life, a way of forgiveness and prayer and giving and acceptance, which they could practice in their own villages, right where they were. They could not only talk about God's mending of the creation, but, also, contribute to that mending and to raise up signs of new creation in our teaching, writing, work, and play.
We still live in the Advent season. We are still waiting. But in Christ we know what we await. Scriptural apocalyptic confessions should inspire us to declare that the reality and revelation of Christ is the hope of the whole world. And it is the duty of believers to live out that reality now, wide-awake, and in celebration of that promised completion.
Amen. "Come Lord, Jesus."
Sermon delivered November 28, 1999
First Lutheran Church
Duluth, Minnesota
As our member and artist, Teri, stated visually and verbally on our bulletin cover this morning, "Oh, that you would burst forth from the skies and come down ..." (Isaiah 64:1 TLB) or as the New Revised Standard Version translated the Hebrew of Isaiah 64, "O that you would tear open the heavens and come...." Come to us. "Please come, Lord Jesus!"
Advent is the season of "waiting," waiting for completion, waiting for things to be right -- to be as God intended.
One of our dear members died recently. She was a delightful, engaging woman. One certain thing about her was that right up to the time of her death, she was madly in love with her husband, but her husband died over 25 years ago. She told me that this separation was not right, not the way it was supposed to be. They were created for mutual support. In her great faith, she said that she was patiently waiting for reunion, that this was part of the promise of God. She was waiting for all creation to be complete, including herself. "Come, Lord Jesus!"
I find myself waiting much more than in years past. Our children have recently moved out of our home. It is not the same as when they were both away at college. Then our home was still, at least symbolically, their primary home. But our daughter is married now and living in lower Michigan. She and her husband work long hours and they care for a large herd of horses that demand daily attention. They live closer to my son-in-law's family, so when they do get away for a day or so, like at Thanksgiving, it is to be with others who are important to them. Our daughter cannot get to Duluth to visit very often. Our son, Andrew, moved to Minneapolis two weeks ago to begin a career search. I find myself waiting for them all to come home. I long for them to come home. But it is more than that. I long for other family reunions. I wish to be together to share a meal and conversation with my grandparents, but they are all now dead.
I find myself waiting for future children that I will love. I find myself waiting for the repetition of past moments when the power of loving union was so absorbing and so astonishing.
I long for the environment to be cleansed, for the air and water to be pure again, for mature white pines, for the cycle of life to be in harmony and beyond human selfishness.
I find myself waiting for things that I don't fully understand, for encounters and reunions and loving experiences that are beyond my comprehension. I wait for all of this, it seems. I long for this peace.
I think that this kind of longing, this waiting, is an innate part of all human beings. Various kinds of idols can momentarily redirect our wishes. If we are turned in upon ourselves, and our longing is only for our own enhancement at the expense of others, this denies our true self -- the image of God within -- God who creates in us a desire for the unity of all. But even when we let our sainthood dominate our life, we are waiting.
And as I get older, the waiting seems to have more power over my moods and thoughts and dreams. I think when we are young, if we are fortunate enough to be raised in a caring, creative, supportive setting, our waiting is dominated by the desire for personal fulfillment. When we are young, it seems that all of life is open for grand surprises, but also with the expectation that there are clear answers for all of life's multiple puzzles. But the older I become, it seems that waiting for a loving resolution to all things becomes more intense and urgent. "Come, Lord Jesus."
My wife, Shirley, is a guest teacher in some of our elementary schools in Duluth. She teaches a special curriculum about self-esteem and conflict resolution. A first-grade teacher told her about a lesson plan that she had intended to use in her class last week. It was to be a Thanksgiving bulletin board, titled "Things We Wish For." In the middle of the bulletin board was to be a large paper wishbone, like from a huge Thanksgiving turkey. Each child in the class was asked separately to name something that they wished for. The wishes were to be printed on various colored paper cards and then arranged in a festive manner around the wishbone on the bulletin board.
After collecting all the wishes, the teacher decided not to display them. The exercise was no longer celebrative. It revealed too much about these sacred children. The wishes were, for the most part, stories about incompleteness. These six-year-old children wished that their father would come home, that their older brother would stop hurting them, that their mother would stop drinking, and that their parents would get back together again. It seemed as if the whole class was waiting for some kind of loving completion.
Tear open the sky and come to us, dear God! Come and reveal your power. Shake the mountains, this earthly life's core; shake us and center us. We feel like leaves that whither and are blown away by the wind....
-- Isaiah 64:1-6 cf
These tortured words of longing are from the book of Isaiah and formed our first scripture reading this morning. In its historical context, even though these Israelites who had been in forced exile in Babylon, were now allowed to return to the holy city of Jerusalem, something was still very wrong and incomplete. It seemed as though the focus of their culture now was on reestablishing power and status and favorable trade agreements, and the reappropriation of land. According to the prophet, even in the so-called "Holy City" there was an emptiness that lingered, a bitter taste, and among many, a nihilistic, malignant acceptance of incompleteness.
There was a sense of being swept toward an abyss, toward delusion, toward a final ending separated from the source and the purpose of justice and compassion, life groping in the darkness. They were experiencing a loss, a fear, a perception of one's very center decaying, or on the verge of flying apart. We are like clay. Do more than just form us, God. Keep your hands wrapped around us; hold us together. Tear open the sky and come! "Come, Lord Jesus!"
Our good news text this morning, our gospel text, began with words of Jesus, about the kingdom of God.
But in those days, after the suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see "the Son of Man coming in clouds" with great power and glory.
-- Mark 13:24-26
What did Jesus mean when he said the kingdom of God was at hand? Jesus believed that God who created the universe, the God of the covenant who promised never to abandon the creation does bring love and justice, mercy and truth, to bear upon the whole world; and God will bring renewal and healing to all creation.
A number of years ago, when my children were very young, we were all home together on an Advent season mid-week evening. Early December darkness had settled in very comfortably. There was the warmth of a fire in the fireplace, lit candles, and music from the stereo. Andrew, six years old at the time, pulled a jigsaw puzzle box out of the hall closet and dumped its contents on the coffee table by the fireplace. The picture on the puzzle was of an American cult object. It was a photograph of the defensive line of the Dallas Cowboys in action. (This was back when Dallas dominated the NFL.) The picture was of Too Tall Jones and his teammates in the process of sacking Craig Morton. The puzzle pieces were an array of color: bright Denver red and Dallas blue with the blur of fans in the stadium in the background -- a challenging puzzle! All four of us had to work on this one.
First the rectangular border was completed, and then inner sections of the puzzle began to take ragged bites out of the white marble top of the table. It was all coming together. After a long time, finally the end was near. We could feel it. There was a certain tension in the air. Shirley, Andrew, and I hovered over the table. There was no time for conversation now. One hand for the puzzle and one hand for the popcorn. Salty, buttered fingers were flying fast as the pieces were fitted into place. Andrew, at six years old, had well-developed spatial coordination and held his own. But Kirsten, barely five years old, had a trial-and-error approach that gave her limited success. At some point, she had quietly gathered colored pencils and paper and worked intently at the other end of the table, still a part of the group, in the atmosphere of community, but doing her own thing. I thought of offering her my successful puzzle discoveries to put in place, but she would have considered that condescending. I was left to watch her out of the corner of my eye and made sure she was supplied with popcorn.
At one point though, I noticed Kirsten quietly slide down to the puzzle end of the table seemingly to examine our handiwork. Then I saw her quickly, secretly, slip into the sleeve of her sweater a single piece of the puzzle, and return to her end of the table to resume her artwork.
I moved over next to her and whispered in her ear, "Kirsten, why did you take that puzzle piece?" She said simply, "I want to put a piece in, too, and if I wait until the very end, I'll know right where it goes."
The Christian confession is that the ending for which we wait is already in hand and fully present in Jesus as the Christ. Although things are not completed, we have the last piece of the puzzle already. Our Advent longing, our waiting, has taken on a new dimension. We are still a part of all creation that groans for completion and reunion. But we know now what that completion looks like -- we know it in the story of Jesus.
We are between times, or better stated, at the center. We long for a final completion but now have the vision of how it all should be, and will be, in the story of Jesus. And when we tell the story of Jesus, we are doing so as part of the community that is called to model this story to the world.
Advent waiting is not just longing for some future state called "heaven," but in the light of Christ we know that God is also infused in the present world. "Thy kingdom come," said Jesus, "thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." It is the desire for things to be made right here and now, as well as in the end.
Jesus guided listeners to come to terms with God's reality breaking in to their midst, and helped them to do and be what they longed for. Jesus announced a new context and challenged his hearers to become the new people that this new context demanded, the citizens of this new world. He was offering a challenge to his contemporaries to a way of life, a way of forgiveness and prayer and giving and acceptance, which they could practice in their own villages, right where they were. They could not only talk about God's mending of the creation, but, also, contribute to that mending and to raise up signs of new creation in our teaching, writing, work, and play.
We still live in the Advent season. We are still waiting. But in Christ we know what we await. Scriptural apocalyptic confessions should inspire us to declare that the reality and revelation of Christ is the hope of the whole world. And it is the duty of believers to live out that reality now, wide-awake, and in celebration of that promised completion.
Amen. "Come Lord, Jesus."
Sermon delivered November 28, 1999
First Lutheran Church
Duluth, Minnesota
