2nd Sunday of Advent!
Focus Statement: This
scripture is Zechariah's prophecy of what John the Baptist would be and do in
preparing the way for the Lord; he will give knowledge of salvation to his
people by the forgiveness of sin.
Function Statement: The
congregation will prepare for the second coming of the Lord by realizing that
we can't do it ourselves and therefore by making a total surrender to God,
through God all things are possible.
Introduction, scripture, and prayer
This is the second
Sunday of Advent: watch this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DHbUkmEEnc
Prayer
Luke
1:68-79
1st Movement
On January 16th,
1991, the United States and other allied countries began an air attack on Iraq
that was called Desert Storm. Iraq,
under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, had attacked and taken control of a
little neighboring country called Kuwait.
Kuwait was a very oil-rich country, and Saddam wanted to control their
oil. Oil was probably part if not the
main reason that the allied forces got involved; they didn't want Saddam to
control that much of the world's oil supply.
But another factor that was involved was the way he had raped and
plundered the people of Kuwait. This was
the one that was played up by our leaders and the media to get the support of
the American people; yet, this wasn't even mentioned in the historical account
to which I looked for a refresher on this event in history. But this is what for many people justified
such actions. As a new pastor two years
into my first full time ministry, I fully supported what we were doing and
talked about it to my congregation. I’ve
learned since then, to be more careful about this. I’ve learned to ask my congregation to pray
for our leaders, no matter who they are or what political persuasion. I’ve learned to not always believe the media
reports and to try to get my news from an assortment of media providers to try
to get as unbiased report as possible.
I’ve learned to be careful about jumping on a political band wagon! Back to Dessert Storm, To think of going in
for money would be wrong to many, but to go in like some modern day messiah and
right the wrongs that had been done to these people seemed heroic and
justified. The Air Attacks were a huge
success, and when ground troops were finally sent in, Iraqi soldiers
surrendered by the groves, and the Kuwaiti people were given back their land.
2nd movement
When I tried to
put myself into the situation of our scripture, the story I have just shared
came to mind. The Jewish people had been
conquered and taken into foreign lands many years before and had since returned
to their homeland, but now, they were under domination and oppression by the
Romans. They were looking for a
Messiah: one who would right the wrongs
that had been done to them, one who would take them out of oppression, one who
would return them to the good old days when they were a United Kingdom. They would have seen the emperors who were
currently in power with about as much animosity as the Kuwaiti people had
against Saddam Hussein. Abraham had been
promised by God that he would be the father of a mighty nation, and they were
ready for that promise to be fulfilled.
After a long time of waiting, Zechariah was prophesying that the time
had come, and John was the one to prepare the way for this Messiah. John preached that the way to prepare for the
coming of the Messiah was to repent and be forgiven of sins through
Baptism. To a great extent, John's
message and that of Jesus was the same:
forgiveness. John would preach
it; Jesus would bring it into being in his Kingdom. (Mercer Dict. of the Bible,
p. 97)
3rd Movement
Again today, the
call goes out for us to prepare for the coming of the Lord, or the
Messiah. We aren=t under oppression like the Kuwaiti people or
the people of Judah at the time of Christ, so it is hard for us to get into the
mind set of longing and looking for the Messiah. This time the Messiah will still come to
right the wrongs, to overcome oppression once and for all, and to overcome sin
once and for all. Are we on the side of
right? Or as the Messiah overcomes sin,
will we be overcome? This time, we are
called to prepare for Christ=s
second coming, that is the coming I am
speaking of. How can we do that? The message is still that we must repent and
be forgiven! The forgiveness is taken
care of by God, and the repentance is our part.
I am more and more convinced that what we often understand as being
repentance is a made up mind on our part to turn and do good, which when you
think about it is a type of works salvation.
What we really need to do is to come to the realization that "we
can't do it!" We have a habit that
we have tried to get a handle on for years, but we keep messing up! Maybe it's a bad temper. Maybe it's something else. We think if we can just find the right thing
to do we can lick this thing, but we still haven't found it. Maybe our trouble is in the turning and doing
good. We fully intend to really get
active in church; we want to be regular in our attendance; we want to read our
Bible regularly; we want to take a job in the church and be faithful doing it. But we keep messing up; we think we need to
make one more attempt to turn our lives around and do good! What we really need to do is realize that we
can't do it! Remember from the video,
the call to let Jesus in was to the church!
As Christians, do we need to turn and face God, giving God our full
devotion? As long as we try to run our lives ourselves,
we are going to continue messing up. We
need to unconditionally surrender our lives to a God who can do it! Repentance is not a made up mind but a Aturning to face God!@ Then and only then will we be able through
the Lord to stop doing those things that we know we shouldn't do; then and only
then will we be able to do the things we know we should do, and then and only
then will we really be ready for the second coming of the Lord. Then and only then will we really be ready to
celebrate Christmas! Thanks be to
God! Do you need to make that surrender
this morning? As we encounter Christ at
the table today, we believe you can repent and turn and face God. Won’t you do that this morning? If you turn to face God for the first time,
let me know so I can help you with your new journey with God.
Service of Communion
No comments:
Post a Comment