He Will Come Again, I Hope

The following text is the raw, unedited transcript from a sermon given on November 19th, 2023 at Christ Our Hope Anglican Church in Olympia, WA. You can also listen to the audio. Better yet, subscribe to the podcast! 😄

I came in early this morning to make the microphones better, and they ended up worse. I have to be in stand-up, handheld microphone mode. I will try to keep the jokes to a minimum. No guarantees. Really? Okay. No, we need the ones we have. Let's see. I am going to age myself, so those of you maybe under 30, try to keep up. My grandmother worked for Sears. Anybody remember Sears? You worked for them? She worked for them? Because she worked for them, she forever got the catalogs that came in the mail. Kids, catalogs are the internet on paper. It's Amazon that you can read in your hands. Of course, as a child, the best section was the toy section. Oh, so much coveting. Lord, I apologize. What you did was you called a number and talked to a human being. You said, I would like item number, blah, blah, blah, blah, Can't that sound just caveman now? You didn't know when it was going to come. There was no tracking numbers. You could come from who knows how far away. You had no idea. What you did know is that it was coming, right? Oh, it's coming.

That GI Joe tank is coming. That X-wing from Star Wars is coming. They did, and they were so much fun. The trick was not to get hung on when it was coming, but to focus on that it was coming. I think a lot can be said. I think that can be said about a lot of the things that we are reading about lately, and particularly when it comes to the day of the Lord. I come from a tradition that really likes to focus on when and explore when and talk about when and ideate about when the Lord is coming. That can be fun, that can be interesting, but it can also get you off the path The fact that that he's coming. This is relevant because we're coming up on advent. Advent, we celebrate in two ways. We, as Christians here in the 21st century, we look back on Jesus' first coming. But we also look ahead to his second coming. We said last week, he will come again to judge the living and the dead. We say during the Eucharistic service, Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. It is happening.

If we focus on more focus on the that is happening, I think it gives us a better opportunity to live the way the Lord would have us live. In our collect today, we prayed, I'll just pray again, stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people that bringing forth in abundance the fruit of good works They may be abundantly rewarded when our savior Jesus Christ comes to restore all things. This prayer, I love, I might say every time, I don't care, get used to it. I love how the the callings in the readings just go together. That's by design. Sometimes it helps us to focus on what the point is. In this case, the point is staying busy doing the right things. I'm not saying don't watch because Jesus clearly says to watch. Watch for signs, watch for seasons, pay attention to what's happening in the world, but not to the exclusion of serving him and loving him. That parable that we read today terrifies me. Does that make anybody else nervous? I mean, God giving us things things to use and invest for his glory, to build his kingdom and not our own.

I get afraid when I think about using God's stuff. It might be more challenging than you realize to be maybe to be on a vestry where you're responsible for spending money or the leadership team of a church where you have God's finances, God's the things that God has given you through his people, by the way, to use to build his kingdom and not just be like, Hey, let's go on a vacation. It's a retreat. That's what we'll call it. We'll go on a retreat together to Hawaii. That wouldn't be fun for you guys because you guys came from there. Alaska. No, not fun either. Okay. The responsibility that we have for God's stuff is tremendously important, and I get afraid sometimes. I feel like, I don't know about you, but I tend to feel like the one who was given the one coin, the one talent, and be like, I'm going to take care of this. I'm going to protect this. This is God's thing he's given to me, when in fact, he wants me to do something with it. In fact, the parable, being a parable, alludes to the fact that he wants us to take risks with them.

God wants us to take certain risks with the things that he gives us because it's his stuff to further build his kingdom. I don't like risks. Risks are risky. They're no fun. Yet that's why God also calls us and equips us with faith and hope and love to do the things he has given us to do with the things he has given us to do them with. Along the same lines in Thessalonians, these letters are sometimes funny to me. Paul opens this chapter with, Now, concerning the times and seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. It What we do, Paul, come on, what did you tell them? The Thessalupians. Virgie tales, anyone? Okay. I told you, the microphone does weird things to me. It makes me go farther off script normal. We would like to know. For you yourselves are fully aware of the day of the Lord. He goes on to talk about people who walk in darkness and people who walk in light. He says, For you are children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of darkness. So then, let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.

Now, sober does not just mean not drunk or not high on some substance. It means to be clear-headed. While drugs and alcohol do do those things, and other things can as well, God really wants us to be clear-headed. In fact, we're told to put on the mind of Christ. Have his mind. Think the way he thinks. Perceive things the way that he perceives them. Process things the way that he processes them. To think Clearly, as we look forward to Jesus coming back and as we are responsible for the things he has given us to be responsible for, how is your thinking? How's your spiritual sobriety? Because there is a lot in this world to distract us. I was thinking on the way up here today, one could say that there are two main drugs that our culture really likes, politics, and the other one I'm going to sum up is talent. We really like to argue about politics to the point of doing violence. We really like to take camps on who side are you on? Well, if you say you believe this one thing, then that really must mean you believe these 10 other things, which is not always true.

We like to take sides and we like to be, We're on this team. We're on this team. It's just so divisive, and it's not how we're supposed to identify ourselves. It is a mental and spiritual intoxicant. It's a distraction. Now, I'm not saying politics are never, ever important. Please don't take me to say the opposite, because we do have a to play. We are supposed to pray for leadership, which is what we do every Sunday. It's not that it's not important, but it's not the most important thing. It can become a distraction that doesn't let us be sober the way Paul wants us to be sober. When I say talent, we value any talent in our culture, don't we? I mean, how many reality talent shows do we need? How many celebrities or leaders can really mess up, but we'll excuse them because they're really good at what they do? Some tremendous athlete is accused of rape, but he's so talented. He can't be that bad a person. We're judging their morality based on how good they are at a game. This pastor, but he's so many people come to the Lord through him, and he's so charismatic, and he's so wonderful, but he's had five affairs in the last 10 years.

But we let it go. Why? Because he's a great preacher. Talent. We're excusing sin because of an emotional sense that somebody generates us or we perceive the impact they have on God's Kingdom. That's an intoxicant. That is something that is not clear-headed at all. We love politics, we love talent when we're supposed to be focusing on other things, when our mind is supposed to be other places. For those who sleep, sleep at night, Paul goes on to say, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith and hope are very similar. Lately, I've been thinking about what is the difference in some cases between faith and hope, and we're coming up on advent. Again, the first week of advent, the theme is hope. What's the difference between faith and hope? One way to describe the difference, I think, is that, well, the Bible tells us that faith is the substance...

I get these backwards. Somebody help me. Substance of things for the evidence of things not seen. Faith, while it starts internally, becomes visible. I heard one pastor say that saying you have faith is like saying you have bet the farm. You've put it all on the line. You have taken an action that says, Yep, I'm all in. You can see faith being lived out because it's a trust in God's promise. God says something, we have faith, he's going do it, and faith itself is the outward appearance of that. Whereas hope also trusts in God's promise, but it's more internally driven. Hope keeps us, you might say sane on the inside, whereas faith demonstrates our sanity on the outside. Remember, you know that thing is coming from this year's catalog. You're hoping it's coming. You have certainty that it's coming. It's not like maybe it Well, maybe it won't. It means it absolutely will happen, but it's all in here. We can lose hope. Sometimes you can lose hope but still have faith. You can still, I'm going to choose. I'm going to step, I'm going to walk. I believe in God, but I don't really feel very hopeful inside.

Not a contradiction. Hope is the helmet, excuse me, of hope for salvation. Where do you wear a helmet? On your head. Hope protects our minds. Hope protects our heads. Keeps all that other junk, supposed to keep all that other junk out. That makes us want to live in the darkness like he talked about earlier, to not have hope and to not be sober-minded. As we are working our way into advent, as we look at the world and how messed up it is, and maybe something's very personally messed up in your own world, not just things happening on a global scale. Let's focus on the hope that Jesus is coming back. But while we're waiting, let's not sleep. Let's be awake. Let's take what God has given us individually as families, as a church, and take risks with it so that when he does come back, we can say, You've given us this, and here's this plus more. He will say, Well done, good and faithful Christ, our hope. Enter into the joy of your master, and look forward to that. Let's pray. Lord, thank you as always for your word. Thank you for the hope of salvation.

Thank you for faith and for love. Thank you that you want us to be successful in building your kingdom. You don't just set us loose and see what happens. You're rooting for us. You're excited for us. Help us to have that childlike joy of looking forward to you coming, but also serving you while we're waiting, getting things ready while you're waiting, being responsible with what you've given us while we're waiting, not just to be occupied, not just to be busy, but to be faithful. We do look forward to your return. We do look forward meantime, guide us, direct us, equip us, and receive our service. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.