Advent Hope

Sunday, November 28, 2021
Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14,

Waiting in the dark. It is one of the big themes of Advent.

Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting for an end to the darkness.

Waiting for the light of Life to appear.

Waiting for the coming Lord.

Is waiting anyone’s favorite activity? Ugh. It feels like we are not doing anything, yet it requires incredible patience and hope.

At times we wait with great anticipation… like for a birth of baby. Sometimes we wait with great excitement – like finally seeing a loved one after months of separation. And sometimes we wait with anxiety and uncertainty of what the future may hold.

We are no strangers to waiting. And never mind waiting for Christmas! We have already had a lot of practice with waiting this past year. We are STILL waiting for this pandemic to finally be over. Waiting for our lives to return to normal (whatever that is.) And now, we are waiting for a new pastor to be called and installed at Augustana.

Waiting can be hard. Very hard.

That certainly was the case in spades for the people of Judah.

It was about…. 580 B. C. The Babylonians had ransacked Jerusalem and leveled the temple. The people of Judah, the southern kingdom, were torn from their beloved promised land and marched across 500 miles of desert into exile.

The people were traumatized – they had lost everything. Homes, loved ones, their city, their culture, and the temple.

The importance of the temple sometimes gets lost on us modern day believers. But for Judah, the temple was a central part of their relationship with God. The temple assured them that God was present. It was the scared place where they gathered to worship with songs of praise. It was a place of sacrifice and prayer, an assurance that God heard them, forgave their sin, and dwelt among them.

Now the temple lay in ruin – and they were far off. Strangers in a strange land. No one spoke their language. No on ate their food. And no one worshipped their God.

False prophets jumped in with soothing words. Thus says the Lord, don’t unpack your Samsonite, guys. This is nothing. It will all end soon, and you will be back home before you know it.

Optimistic words they wanted to hear. But they were lies. And the prophet Jeremiah was not having any of it. From Jerusalem, he sent a letter with the hard truth that the exile was going to be long. Generations long. The people would return. But it would be the grandchildren and great grandchildren of those who left.

Their reality was devastating. And it wasn’t going to end soon.

Settle in, God tells them. Build houses and live in them. This may be the last place you want to be. But plant gardens and trees. Marry and have sons and daughters. Celebrate at weddings and rejoice when babies are born. Seek peace and the welfare of the city. And pray for Babylon and be a blessing to them.

They did not choose this situation. But it was outside their control.

It was painful. And when the months turned to years and the years to decades, you wonder how they kept going. How they held on. To their identity, to their hope, to their faith that God would see them through.

Their reality was hard. And yet, and yet, God was with them.

Even without the temple. Even in the uncertainty. Even when they could not discern God’s presence. Even in the darkness. God was at work. Quietly, silently, relentlessly God was working out the plans he had for them.

Plans for a future and a hope. Plans for their welfare and not for harm.

It took over 70 years…three generations … but God was faithful to his promise. The people returned to Jerusalem. It didn’t look anything like the Jerusalem their grandparents told stories about. It still lay in ruin. But the light had dawned.

Waiting is hard. Can I get an amen?

If the truth be told, there are times when we wonder if all our prayers and work toward a just world will ever make a difference. We wonder if God really sees and hears us as we cry out in our own darkness. When nothing seems to change- it is hard to hold onto hope. To hold onto faith.

Here is the good news. This is what God says to those who wait in the darkness of exile.

I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord,

They may not be easy. but they are good plans.

Plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

And, when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. ¹³When you search for me, you will find me, if you seek me with all your heart.

Even here. Even now. Even in the dark of Advent. God is with us. God hears us.

It may be quiet, It may be silent, it may be dark. But God is with us. God hears us. And God is at work. Bringing a future and a hope.

Come Lord Jesus, Come.

Amen

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

The book of Romans is a letter. An actual letter. Like, a letter written by hand and then sent to someone else for them to read. Paul, the author of this letter, wrote a lot of letters. Paul was an apostle, that is, someone who is sent – in this case, he is one who is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the furthest reaches of the known world. He’s really, really good at it.

At the time that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome, he’s been doing this work for probably twenty years and is at the peak of his career. He’s developed a great pattern in his work: visit a place, get to know the people, continually share his faith with them, help gather a community of believers from all walks of life, and stay with them while they learn how to be followers of Jesus. Then Paul leaves – after all, he’s got other places to visit and more people to teach. He is an apostle – he is sent. But he doesn’t leave the church abandoned. He writes letters back to these churches, especially when he hears about crises or conflicts. Sometimes they need comfort, sometimes challenge, sometimes critique, but always he writes as one they know and love. They welcome his input.

The letter to the Romans is not like that. Paul has never been to Rome. There is already a Christian church there, one brought over likely from Jerusalem very early in the faith. And the church in Rome has recently seen conflict. A few years before the writing of this letter, the Roman emperor expelled all the Jews from Rome. Because Christianity was effectively a form of Judaism at the time, Christians were also exiled. After the emperor died and the Jewish Christians returned, they found a church that had continued to grow and develop – this time with Gentile Christians.

It’s hard for us to understand how shocking and despicable this would have been. Two weeks ago I preached on Acts 10, and how Peter’s vision of God calling all animals clean and good to eat flew in the face of millennia of culture, history, and society for Jewish Christians. Jesus himself was Jewish and kept these laws – surely if anyone else wanted to be Christian, they could likewise follow these rules. Peter’s vision and the general movement of the church revealed otherwise.

That didn’t mean it made things easy. It is hard to let go of tradition and expectation and legislation as the Spirit moves us to new places. I hear people struggle when someone sits in their pew or wears sweatpants to church. Let’s be honest: those are enormously trivial things. If still we grind our teeth at the thought of these worthless infractions how much more might faithful people be driven to despair by moving on from the purity laws ordained by God?

This is the faith community to which Paul writes. He writes to a church redefining and fighting. It is a church that feels a deep rift, a painful split, one that goes deep into matters of identity and righteousness, one that threatens to dissolve into name-calling and condemning and finger-pointing and disgrace to the very name of God in whose name they mean to gather – and if we’re honest, we know how that feels. Those fears are not unfamiliar.

So how does Paul start his letter? He has no standing in that church in Rome. They don’t even know who he is – and if they do, it’s possible that they might still remember him as he was in his youth, an aggressive persecutor of the early faith. What can he say that would possibly invite them to listen to him, to hear the word he will share, to receive the message that he hopes will join them together in the work of the gospel?

He keeps it simple: he tells them the truth. He tells them who he is, and it is fully wrapped up in who Jesus is. His self-introduction is the story of the gospel. Nothing he can say about himself means more than who he is in Jesus Christ.

He tells them he wants to come see them, that he wants to be with them, that he hopes he can share some spiritual gift – but even more than that, so that they might mutually encourage each other in faith. He doesn’t want to come to them because he’s better than them, because he can fix them so they can get things right, because they’re obviously sinful mess-ups who just haven’t been taught the truth. No, he wants to join them for mutual encouragement in faith. He wants to walk with them. He hopes he has something to offer them in his teaching and leadership, but just the same, he knows he will grow by being with them as well.

What if that’s how it’s supposed to be? What if we’re supposed to talk about what we believe and why, not because we’ve got it right and we want to establish our superior knowledge, but because we know that God works through our mutual encouragement in faith? What if we were not ashamed of the gospel, not afraid of getting it wrong, not worried that someone would think we were weird for talking about what we believe and why and then asking others the same? What if we trusted that the power of God was at work in this mutual encouragement? What if we were not so proud and short-sighted as to think that the way we see God is the only way God works in the world? What if we actually believed that God is at work in the world, that God has already been working long before we showed up, that we arrive as much to learn as to teach?

Ah, but I know the argument against it: we’re supposed to keep polite conversation, right? What don’t you talk about at the dinner table? Religion and politics, right? Look where it’s gotten us. It’s gotten us to a place where we can no longer have civil discourse, where we are more likely to condemn than to seek to understand, where we claim a Christian can only look one way, live one place, vote one direction, take one moral position. It’s gotten us built up and walled off and fighting against our own beloved members of the family of God.

So don’t do it. Take Paul’s example. Tell people who you are. Tell them where you’re from. Tell them what you believe. And then invite them to do the same. Make your story of faith as natural a part of your introduction as where you work and where you live and who’s in your family. And when someone’s story is different, listen to it. Hear it. See God at work in it. Be amazed. Allow for the mutual encouragement of faith, because this is how the gospel is shared.

No matter where you go from here, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what comes next for you – you can do this. You are called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel which is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith – no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Advent Hope

Sunday, November 28, 2021
Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14,

Past Sermons

Belonging Begins with . . . Showing Up for Each Other

Belonging Begins with . . . Intentional Hospitality

A Word for Worriers and Workaholics

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Belonging Begins with . . . Showing Up for Each Other

Belonging Begins with . . . Intentional Hospitality

A Word for Worriers and Workaholics

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Advent Hope

Sunday, November 28, 2021 Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14,

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019 Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Sunday, November 28, 2021
Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson