24th Sunday after Peentecost Mark 13:1-8 November 15, 2009

        Thankoffering Service & 24th Sunday after Pentecost          Mark 13:1-8         November 15, 2009

This weekend women of the ELCA from all over the Sierra Pacific Synod gathered at Peace Lutheran Church in Grass Valley for the Annual Women of the ELCA Convention.  Several from among us attended along with nearly 200 others – the largest attendance in a long time.  And why not?  It’s wonderful fellowship, great Lutheran singing, and Marva Dawn was the keynote speaker. 

Imagine being named Marva Dawn – like being told something marvelous dawned in the coming of your life.  But Marva’s life doesn’t always feel marvelous. She is certainly an expert theologian with four Master’s Degrees and a Ph.D., but she also lives with multiple disabilities.  Her kidney transplant team often reminds her that a transplant is a treatment, not a cure.  Marvelous Marva is tied to immune-suppressants – which themselves can cause all sorts of damage – and she’s tied to them for the rest of her life.  She sees out of only one eye and hears out of only one ear, and knows she is living on borrowed time, but Marva has had and continues to have a marvelous life. 

She is a popular speaker and an avid writer of many highly acclaimed books.  Her book Being Well When We’re Ill reflects on physical losses that can’t be cured – that just have to be faced – as hers are.  Her hope in writing that book is that she and her readers would learn to cry out to God as the Psalmists do, but also to grow to see God in and through their infirmities. 

So we celebrate the Women of the ELCA today – and all people committed to serving God with joy and gladness. The mission statement of the Women of the ELCA says it well.(www.elca.org)   Today we are collecting a Thankoffering that contributes to many wonderful efforts all over the world – for all people.

As I was delighting in Marva Dawn being practically next door in Grass Valley I was interested in the connection between another of her books and today’s readings.  It’s a book with an alarming title:  A Royal “Waste” of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World. 

At the outset, Marva admits risking being misunderstood when she writes: “To worship God is – in the world’s eyes – a waste of time.  It is indeed, a royal waste of time, but a waste nonetheless.  By engaging in it we don’t accomplish anything useful in society’s terms.  Worship ought not to be construed in a utilitarian way.  Its purpose is not to gain numbers nor for our churches to be seen as successful.  Rather, the entire reason for our worship is that God deserves it.”   

There you have it, according to marvelous Marva Dawn.  But Marva doesn’t stop there. “Moreover,” she writes, “[worship] isn’t even useful for earning points with God, for what we do in worship won’t change one whit how God feels about us.  We will always be sinners caught in our inability to be what we should be – and God will always be merciful when we come to God.”   

What I hear her saying here is that worship is a royal waste of time because it takes us out of our time and takes us into God’s.  And that is what today’s Gospel is about from Mark 13. 
Mark helps early Christians, and us, see that God is always about hope and the future.  Mark helps the community face their challenges and sufferings in light of God’s promised future.  Suffering is God’s non-violent way of transforming the world.  The way of the Christian is the way of learning healthy ways to embrace suffering on behalf of God’s mission, knowing that suffering never has the last word.  And neither does darkness or tribulation of any kind. 

In today’s Gospel the disciples were sitting around having a good chat with Jesus – as are we.  Whenever we attentively open the scriptures, Jesus is present as the Living Word.  The disciples wanted to know what to make of all the bad things happening around them.  Did these alarming things mean the world was about to end – or their little community of church was about to end?  Did they mean they would be snatched up and taken away? 

And Jesus is very clear.  “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars…. When you see all major disturbances happening, do not be alarmed.”  Bad things happened back then and they happen today.  But Jesus urges, do not be alarmed.  This is not the end.  This is but the beginning.  That’s what Jesus says, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”  Now it that’s not a “the cup is half full” answer, I don’t know what is!

In other words, Jesus interprets difficult times in an unexpected way.  Jesus’ very coming demonstrated it, that God comes down in the midst of difficulty.  God comes especially then.  Marva talks about that in Being Well When We’re Ill.   Ill health doesn’t prevent God’s hope from having its way because that’s how God is.  God sent Jesus, not when the world looked safe, but precisely when it didn’t.  Palestine was a war torn land when Jesus was born, yet Jesus was born into that time and place. God comes, and continues to come, not just when all is well, but precisely when it’s not.  The call of Mark 13 is for us to be watchful and alert for this coming.

Kelly Fryer tells a story of a theology professor who worked very hard to help his class catch the good news of the Gospel and they just didn’t seem to catch it.  He tried every angle he could think of, but it just didn’t seem to make a real difference to them.  But that’s the point of the whole of the Christian story – it does make a difference – a huge difference – all the difference in the world, and our task is to stand up and notice. 

                                    Exasperated by trying so hard, the professor finally closed his                                                    books and picked up his Sharpie for the board and drew a great                                                           big descending arrow.   “This is Christianity,” he said. “That’s                                                          it right there.  Think about what that means.” And he left the                                                          room.  The students just sat there and stared at it for a while.

The next day when the professor came back, he left the arrow there and had them tell him what it meant that God comes down to them.  That’s what we want us doing here at Faith Lutheran.  What does it mean to you, to me, that God comes down – that God meets us in our daily lives, our sufferings, our challenges, our heart-aches, our joys?  We are not alone here.  That’s what Jesus comes to show us.  God is here – in this very room – next to you in the pews.   What worship is – this royal “waste” of our time – is a life-transforming taste of God’s coming. 

Perhaps some of you have read the Left Behind Series or other alarm books about the end times.  Today’s Gospel joins the Book of Revelation in celebrating that we aren’t urged to panic or be alarmed, but rather to hope and anticipate that a birth is about to happen. The biblical message is that God’s future comes our way and we are to watch for it and be mangers for its coming, which may involve us in suffering for the sake of the world – but suffering that is a birth pang. 

Scripture promises that there will be a day when all will be well and there will be no more tears.   Jesus calls that day “the reign of God” and teaches us to pray for it.  Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.  … for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever.” 

Jesus was hope-filled.  He didn’t announce doom, but hope and called us to follow him in proclaiming it to all people – even the down and out, the poor and needy, the least, last and lost.  Now some didn’t like his message and got mad.  They wanted God to come in a different way than to come through suffering.  But Jesus showed us God’s heart and worship glimpses that birth pang – an image of pain.  A body broken open for the life of the world involves pain.

We’re not always up for the way of Jesus being the way of the cross.  But Jesus’ hope-filled life embraced the cross because he knew God had come down and would keep coming down till the world finally becomes the banquet God promises and all hear their name called to the feast. When we gather at the table of the Lord we glimpse the realm for which we pray.  And that is our message to the world – that God is hope-filled and has a banqueting feast planned for all. 

• How appropriate it is then, that we bring what we know in worship into the world – through the food we give out from our now well stocked Joseph Pantry thanks to the bags of food you brought through the month of October. 
• And how appropriate it is that Faith Lutheran had three tables of people at the Torres homeless Shelter fundraiser last Saturday, where $20,000 were raised even in these economic times. 
• And how good it is that we support the Kagitumba Parish in Rwanda as they become established in ministry.
• And how delightful it was that our Parish Hall was full Thursday night for the Chico Area Interfaith Annual Dinner with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Baha’i – people of various faiths all wanting to care for God’s creation. 
• And how fun to hear that many of you plan to run or walk or ride in a wheelchair as our dear Bruce does in the Thanksgiving Day Run for Food benefiting the Jesus Center.

Jesus is hope-filled for the future!  May we recognize that worship, this royal waste of our usual agendas, is in reality the most vital use of time.  We are pulled out of our time into tastes of God’s eternal time!  Worship is praise for God’s coming.  May we be expectant – for God does come, and one of our duties as Church is to be reminders of how wonderful it is that God also comes through us!  Appreciate each other’s ministries! And thank you for the many ways you express your appreciation of ours.  Birth pangs are a sign that the cup is half full towards God’s good and blessed future.  Thanks be to God.
                                                                              

Amen

   +Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson, to the glory of God
Faith Lutheran Church, Chico, CA