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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her two most recent sermons on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. Currently are sermon series is focusing on lesser known scriptures related to advent and the four advent themes of Hope, peace, Joy, and Love. Enjoy.
Jesus and Joy
December 15, 2024 3rd Sunday in Advent Blue Sunday
Jeremiah 33:14-16 Luke 1:46-55
When I was an English teacher, I had to teach parts of speech like noun, verbs, and adjectives. As a fun visualization, I would tell my students that a noun – a person, place, or thing – is something that you can put in a bag. You can put five kittens in a bag, or two people in a bag, or three cities in a bag. It was absurd but it did help the students, and a little humor in the classroom is never a bad thing. But then, I said there were nouns that you can't put in a bag called idea nouns. Nouns like: Love and hate; peace and war; hope and despair; and joy and sorrow. And I would always list a positive idea noun along with a negative idea noun because often we define an idea noun with what it is and what it is not.
Take our theme for this week, Joy, and think for a minute about how we define it. The dictionary says that joy is a feeling of great pleasure or happiness, also that it's something that causes great pleasure or happiness. But we also think of joy as the absence of sorrow or sadness; as something that does not make us sad.
Throughout history, humans have tried to figure out how to have joy and how to avoid sadness. There is a whole line of psychology which focuses on and says that humans will do anything to avoid pain and sorrow and move towards what they perceive as joy and happiness. We’ll even use addictive substances to get into a state of happiness or joy, even when the evidence is there that this behavior will eventually cause you more pain and sorrow down the line.
The Magnificat celebrates joy by contrasting it with attitudes that prevent or hinder joy.
First, Mary lifts up her very specific joy that God has rewarded her, and that she is going to be the mother of the Messiah. I can't blame Mary for that. How do any of us feel when we have been given a great opportunity, or have been surprised with something wonderful? We feel fantastic and happy, and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the moment.
But then her joy expands outward. She thinks about all those generations of people who have been waiting for the Messiah. And now all that faith and waiting, has been justified. You know, cynicism and naysaying about faith and possibilities of what could happen is timeless and universal. I am sure that there were a lot of people, even if they believed in God, who said that Messiah was never going to come. That it was just a story made-up to give us false hope. But all those people who held onto their faith, then and now, and stand against cynicism and negativity, they are justified.
We often come up against that. The people who say you shouldn't bother to try out for the school play, or work hard on a project; because who's going to notice? Or you shouldn't waste your time getting that extra degree or taking that extra class; how is it really going to help you? There’s a lot of negativity out there to ideas, and hopes, and dreams. And in that moment, Mary is lifting up all those people who need just a little bit of encouragement to keep going until they reached their goal. And when we reach our goal; when we fix up the living room and make it look nice; when we complete the kitchen in the church that needs repairs; when we get that A in class that we worked so hard for; in that moment of accomplishment there is joy and happiness at having done something right and well.
Then Mary talks about all those people who were so proud and thought they knew better than everybody else, and how God has scattered the thoughts of their hearts. I really love that phrase because it says that all those people who were so certain that nothing good could ever come from the efforts of faith, have been shown to be wrong. And so now those doubters have to rearrange their mental and emotional attitudes, from something negative into something positive. We could use a bit of that in our world. It's joyous when you have a turnaround of attitudes from something negative to something positive.
A couple of years ago there was a show called Undercover Boss. The one episode I remember very distinctly was about the Chicago Cubs and their new owners. The Chicago Cubs were under the curse of the goat and supposedly would never be able to win a World Series. This made for a defeatist work environment. But the new owners said: We're not going to worry about winning a World Series. We’re going to make this baseball franchise one of the best places to work in Chicago. They did things like provided better wages and working conditions for the people working the stadium and heated shelters for the parking lot attendants. And after a few years the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Yes, they had a great team but it started with the positivity and faith in the organization that was grown and nurtured.
Mary ends by saying: He has brought down the powerful from their Thrones and has lifted up the lowly. Wow, that’s a complete upending of the established political order. Especially for Mary who was not from a rich or powerful family. Think about the fact that Jesus wasn’t even born in a house; he was born in an accommodation that was found in the moment. And yet, it doesn't matter. The Messiah is still the Messiah. This baby Jesus is still going to grow up and change the entire world with his positive ideas and the faith that we can all be connected to God in His love. And the world is still being changed because of it.
Any time you create a positive environment, you are nurturing the feelings and the attitudes that Jesus would wish all of us to nurture in this world. When we fill the hungry with good things, when we work to help and to lift-up people in any sort of distress, we are being as Christ and God would wish us to be.
Today in our Blue Christmas Litany we also lifted up sorrows that some of us may have in our lives. Some people might say: Why, during this happy season of Christmas, do you want to dwell or even talk about sad things that have happened? But we can't cover up sorrow with joy. What we can do is find joy in our lives, which helps us to live with our sorrow.
I am very sad that my father and brother are no longer with us during this Christmas season. But if I lift-up the joyful memories that I have of them and the joys that I have right now, it helps me to not be so sorrowful. I know that neither of them would want me to forgo any joy that is in front of me. So, if I lift up my sorrow, and then let myself feel the joy in joyful moments I can live a balanced life. We can accept and accumulate joyful moments and put them in a memory bag to pull out and look at it later.
You know sometimes I think that when we talk about the Messiah and the greatness of God, we get a little too hung up on big idea nouns like salvation, redemption, absolution and eternity, and we forget this small three-letter word joy.
What is the point of salvation, redemption, and absolution if there isn't joy at the end? The joy of being alive; the joy of being with other people; the joy of being in our environment; the joy of simple tasks like eating, sleeping and hanging out; the joy of learning something new; the joy of accomplishing something that we didn't know we could do. All the little and big moments of joy are yours and should be embraced and treasured.
Joy is something so basic that we strive for, and yet sometimes we discount it. Somehow, being happy about whatever has happened, or whatever has been given to us, is made out to be a self-centered thing that we should suppress. But I think that God made us for Joy; God wishes us to be happy. Otherwise, why would He go to all the trouble to send us Jesus?
After all Jesus came to show us how to live a life with better attitudes, more love in our hearts, and a stronger faith that will help us to endure during the good and bad times.
So don't let sorrow overwhelmed your joy. And don't think that your joy should be less than it is. God wants us to be joyful in our experiences, and we should count our blessings and rejoice in them. Claim them for now and keep them for later. It is with joy that we learn to live and be rightly with God. And it is with Joy that will we sing our never-ending praises with the angels on Christmas morning.
The Promise of Peace
December 8, 2024 2nd Sunday of Advent
Genesis 3:14-15 Philippians 4:6-9
The word peace has a number of meanings. First, that there is no war or conflict among two or more nations or people. Second, that you are free from disturbance, and have a mental calmness, and third, that there is a stillness or rest in your environment.
One of Jesus Christ's titles is the Prince of Peace. If you think about it, the four states of being that we celebrate during Advent – hope, peace, joy, and love – are what we want for a happy life. If we do not have hope, there is nothing to look forward to, and we are living in despair. If we do not have peace, then we’re always in conflict. If we do not have joy, then we’re basically living in misery. And if we do not have love, then we’re always living in hate.
Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a state of despair, conflict, misery, and hate? That would not be a fun place to be. God sent a Messiah to us to give us a way to climb out of those negative states of being and into the positive states of hope, peace, joy, and love. Having those four elements in our lives, maybe not all the time, maybe not all in equal measure, gives us a chance at a blessed life.
Now peace is a hard thing to grasp sometimes. The first meaning that peace describes, when there is no war or conflict between a nation or a people, is often out of our hands. I can’t do anything about the wars in Ukraine or Israel, the two big ones that are on our radar at the moment. I'm not a senator, or a congressman, a diplomat, or an ambassador. I don’t have that kind of power to sway nations. Yet, I can help when chances arise in front of me. When I was on Staten Island, my food bank was helping out some Ukrainian refugees. I could see how much a kind word, a helping hand, and a personal interest about their well-being meant to them. They needed to see that people cared, and when caring was given to them, you could tell that they found a measure of dignity and hope in the kindness that they received.
As far as the Israeli Palestine conflict is concerned, I know a little bit too much because of my brief work at the United Nations. Both sides in this conflict have behaved poorly for decades. I personally I don't see how this conflict will ever be resolved, unless a lot of people put down their egos and honestly try to see the humanity on the other side. But I do know that I can avoid spreading hate towards either the Jewish population or the Palestine population in our country. To see each individual as a child of God, and to respect them and treat them with dignity, is where I try to take my stand because that's what Jesus did to anyone he met. Yes, he called people out on their little games that they played, but he treated both Jew and Gentile as human beings, and that’s the example that I hope to live by. Maybe I don't behave as well as I should sometime, but I'm going to at least try to do my best, and ask God for help and forgiveness when I stumble.
But if the first part is conflict among nations, the second part is conflict among people. Sometime during my middle school years, three of my neighbors had a problem with property lines in relationship to a driveway that needed to be redone. Each neighbor thought their property boundary was in a place that was not in agreement with the other neighbors. The obvious thing would be to get a professional survey done. The survey didn’t happen until after several weeks of intense infighting and asking other neighbors what they thought about this. With three properties involved you can imagine that this got to be really messy, really fast. Things were not peaceful in the neighborhood during those weeks, and for sometime afterwards while people worked out their bruised feelings.
Conflict between people can be like war. People have opinions; people pick sides; and people do whatever it takes to prove that they're right and to get their own way. Disputes in our lives need to be worked out, but Jesus asks us that, while we're standing our own ground, to turn to the other person and to listen, and to try to understand where they're coming from. When all sides step out of their egos, and see all the issues, then hopefully an equitable solution can be found that everyone can all live with. When we take this approach to work for peace among ourselves. It’s hard but so much less stressful.
This leads to the second definition of peace, which is that you’re free from disturbance and have a mental calmness. Now you might think that this means that you will only have an inner peace if you are free of any conflicts in your life, but I don't think that's possible. We’ll always have problems or worries. We're sometimes concerned about our family, our friends, our job, or things that are happening in our community. Hopefully our concerns aren't happening in all those fields all at once, but I don't see how you can live a perfectly stressed free life. And I don’t think Jesus ever thought we would.
But, when we’re in the midst of a problem we can maintain a peace within us if we know what to do about the situation. It's when we don't know what to do about a problem that we then become really stressed out, and we lose a measure of our inner peace. Now of course we can't know how to do everything in the entire world. We are limited by our own experiences. It’s natural, when we come up against a situation that we've never dealt with before, to get stressed out. But I can maintain a level of inner peace when I'm in a stressed situation because I believe that God will show me the way. I just have to keep taking one step forward to solve the problem, and then another step forward to solve the problem, and I trust that if I pray for it, God will send me the resources to get me through it. Does this mean I don't have anxiety? No. It does mean then I won't be panicking and overreacting negatively, and that I will keep my calm as I work through it.
I admit that’s where faith comes in. I have faith in the promise that Jesus gives us as the Messiah, that God is always going to be with me and that I can call on God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit to help me get through the tough times. It is one of the perks of accepting Jesus as your Lord and savior.
The third definition of peace is that there will be a stillness and calm in your environment. Environment can mean the immediate area surrounding you, such as your workplace or your house, and it can also mean the natural environment that we live in, like our town, state, country, as well as the environment and health of the physical world. And I really think it behooves all of us to try and create a good and positive environment to live in. Not only by taking care of the relationships around us, but also by taking care of our physical space. It has been proven that if you have a non-chaotic bedroom that is clean and neat that you will have more restful sleep. Also that if you have a non-chaotic work environment that you will be more efficient in your job. I personally am not one of the most patient people with housework, and I have to play little games sometimes, like set my timer for 10 minutes, to get myself to clean and organize. But I do know that it’s worth it in the end because it's going to reduce my stress and give me more peace.
Also, people who experience chaos in their environment, like hurricane or tornado victims who have their towns destroyed, experience a loss of peace. Even though we can't see them we can help them through organizations like UMCOR. And doesn’t knowing that someone is there helping you when you're in a tough spot give you a measure of peace? You can always pay peace forward when you help someone create a good environment for them to live in. Taking care of our public parks, promoting our rail trail, opening our churches so that people in our towns have places to gather. These are all promotions of peace on a little scale, but they add up to peace for many people on a larger scale.
So how can you bring peace into your life? What can you do to resolve a conflict, or give yourself some inner-certainty, or improve your environment? Take some time and connect with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and ask them to help you experience one moment of Peace a day. Resolve conflicts with others, put your trust in God and Jesus and ask them to help you, and give yourself a little bit of time during your day to make a peaceful space for yourself. My prayer for you is that by doing this you will experience the hope, love, and joy that makes up the peace that passes all understanding, and that it will be yours during this sometimes crazy holiday season, and on into the new year.