A New Day is Dawning

Sunday, December 13, 2020
Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

Isaiah 61

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

Waiting… Waiting… Waiting for the light of Life to appear.

Waiting is not my favorite activity. It feels like we are not doing anything, yet it requires incredible patience and hope. It often provokes anxiety and depression. Have you noticed? And never mind waiting for Christmas – we have had NINE MONTHS of practice with waiting this year – waiting for a solution to this pandemic. Waiting for life to return to normal.

Waiting is hard!! Our text for today is a message to Judah – a people who THOUGHT they were DONE with all the waiting.

It had been SEVEN decades after all. Seven decades of waiting in a foreign land under the heel of their oppressors. Sitting around the fire at night, parents and grandparent told stories to the children. Stories of the land they had been forced to leave. A land filled with vineyards and olive groves and sheep dotting the hillsides– where they enjoyed feasts and festivals and the beauty of Solomon’s temple. They remembered and yearned and prayed that someday – someday… they might return to that land and that life again.

Their captors changed hands and eventually the Persian King Cyrus came to power. Amazingly, he set them free to return to Judah, to Jerusalem – to the land and cities they loved. Overjoyed with expectation and excitement – they headed home. But what they found when they got there caused their hearts to sink. Their homes, long abandoned were in disrepair. Animals ran in and out, doors off their hinges, Walls tumbled down. Solomon’s glorious temple was wrecked. Fields and vineyards were choked with brambles and food was scarce.

They were standing knee deep in rubble –

Covering their faces, shaking their heads, tears welling up – they cried out. Really God? THIS is what you promised?

Into these dashed hopes and dreams, this dark reality – the prophet speaks.

“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news…”

Good news! Finally – Good news! Good news for the oppressed, and healing for those with broken hearts, comfort for those who mourn and liberty for the captives. Health, comfort, freedom and peace were coming.

Not only that Isaiah declares that “They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall repair the ruined cities and raise up the devastation. They shall stand like Oaks of Righteousness. They had a future. The suffering would not go on forever. A new day would dawn.

We know what it is like to see things coming apart around us, don’t we? Travel plans and Christmas gatherings cancelled; Jobs lost, financial resources drained, dreams dashed and so, so many deaths. It kind of feels like we are knee deep in rubble- dreaming of our ‘old’ life. And yes, waiting. Waiting in the darkness of an unknown future.

Waiting is hard, but we are not alone. Uncertainty surrounds us, but God is a rock under our feet and God walks with us. Always.

Jesus, when he gave his first sermon in the synagogue of his hometown of Nazareth read this passage from the Isaiah scroll: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” After he read the passage, he looked into their eyes and said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

This is Jesus’ mission. This is our God’s heart. To make all things new. To give us a future and a hope. So, friends, let us lift up our eyes from the ruin and rubble at our feet. Darkness may surround us, but look – do you see it? There – On the horizon… A new dawn, a new future, is breaking in.

God is on the move – Coming to us. Like seeds in a garden springing up to new life… Like a baby growing heavy in his mother’s womb – the God who makes all things new is coming. Coming with garlands instead of our ashes, the oil of gladness instead of our mourning, and a mantle of praise instead of our faint spirit.

Let us hope and rejoice. Our God is near!

Come Lord Jesus.

Your people are waiting with open arms.

We are watching with open hearts.

You are our future.

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.

A New Day is Dawning

Sunday, December 13, 2020
Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

Isaiah 61

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

A New Day is Dawning

Sunday, December 13, 2020 Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

Isaiah 61

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, December 13, 2020
Pastor Deb Kielsmeier

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson