This Sunday, December 10, is the
Second Sunday in Advent.
Verse of the Advent Season:
This week’s sermon is: Peace - A Command of Comfort
This week's readings are :
Dr. David
Schmitt’s Presentation – Holy
Wonder: The Experience of Beauty and Credal Contemplation[1]
Created Beauty
– An experience of aching awe as we experience the goodness of God’s creation
and the impact of the curse of decay that comes from our sin.
Broken
Beauty – The experience of God’s hidden love in the midst of the horror of evil
and suffering, which leads to trust in suffering love.
Today –
Promised Beauty
Relate a
story from Dr. Schmitt’s presentation regarding funeral home calendars.
Sometimes, they were marked with the
liturgical season of the church year.
Funeral planning
“Resurrection planning”
It is a
normal part of the human experience to decline. I often have conversations with
people as they age, lamenting their inability to do what they once did. That
reality stands in contrast to God’s promises to raise us to everlasting life,
the defeat of death, and victory over the curse of sin that brings decay into
our lives.
We live in a
space where Christ has won the victory, we’ve received the victory by faith,
and yet, we struggle, sin, decline, and die. All of God’s promises of victory,
salvation, resurrection, and life are ours now. However, Our life experience in
this world would tell us that those wonderful things are not ours yet.
We live
within that tension of having gifts God has given now, but we’ve not
yet experienced them in their fullness. We experience promised beauty when
Christians take hold of God’s gifts in hope and behave in ways that confess
that we have received from God gifts that we have not yet fully experienced.
A dramatic
example of this is the martyrs. These are people who were killed because they
believed in Jesus and proclaimed the hope of a beautiful resurrection. Rather
than denying God’s promises, they faced death, trusting what was to come. So,
St. Stephen, the first martyr, prayed for the people stoning him to death
because he trusted Jesus to forgive sins and overcome earthly death. There are
people today, our brothers and sisters in Christ, who risk suffering and death rather
than turn away from Jesus. They display profoundly courageous hope that sees beauty
beyond this world in the healing resurrection that is part of Jesus’ return when
He brings about the New Creation.
There are
other actions that are not so dramatic, which display this hope. In his
presentation, Schmitt speaks of “gestures of courageous hope.” In many
instances, what I’m talking about here is not giving in to fear. Fear leads us
to turn inward, become defensive, horde, and keep. Promised beauty, knowing
there is more beyond this life and it is ours because of Christ, moves us to
generosity, to actions of love and mercy for our neighbor, to witness sharing
the good news that Christ has come and redeemed us, and to acting (living!) by
faith.
At Gloria
Dei, I sometimes talk about the penultimate and the ultimate, second-to-last
things and final things. Promised beauty is experienced in the penultimate
experience of life when we live in light of the ultimate truth of Jesus’ victory
and His faithfulness to keep His promises. Then, as we trust those promises, we
offer our lives up to God. It is beautiful when the Holy Spirit stirs up our
faith to take hold of God’s promises so that we act confident of Christ’s faithfulness.
[1]
This link will take you to a PDF of Concordia Journal, Vol. 48, No. 3, from
Summer 2022. The article beings on p. 17, if you would like to read it in its entirety.
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