New Revised Standard Version Bible (New York: National Council of Churches, Division of Christian Education, 1989).

Transcription

1 What Good News? The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring Eden United Church of Christ Hayward, California First Sunday in Advent December 2, 2018 Luke 21: (NRSV) The gospel reading for the First Sunday in Advent is situated in the gospel of Luke, just before his account of the Last Supper, and features Jesus describing the end of the age, and the coming of his kingdom in stark terms. Here, Jesus says: There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory 1 I don t know about you, but Jesus words don t conjure up warm tummy feelings for me about the Advent observances of my childhood which were filled with cookie baking at Grandmas house and Christmas pageant practice at church. Instead, they remind me of yesterday s news about the earthquake in Alaska and the threat of a tsunami, and the political unrest in various hotspots around the globe. Not only does today s gospel reading strike a foreboding tone. So do all of the gospel readings for all of the first Sundays in Advent in every year A, B, and C on the Christian calendar. Is it any wonder that most Americas are at the mall this morning or watching a ball game, instead of sitting in worship with us? Who wants to hear about doom and gloom? None of us. Right? The temptation was great to call in sick this morning, and I had an excellent excuse. I: have been really sick the past few days. But I didn t call off. I didn t call in sick, because I wanted to take on the challenge presented by today s text, and try to help us make sense of it, and of this Advent season as a whole that offers such 1 New Revised Standard Version Bible (New York: National Council of Churches, Division of Christian Education, 1989).

2 a counter-culture message then and now that the world doesn t ask for, but sorely needs. II So what are we to make of today s text? Are we to conclude that Friday s earthquake in Alaska was a sign of the end of the age, or that this natural disaster is a type of divine judgment? Where is the good news for the earthquake survivors this week, the fire victims in Butte County, or any of us? I think we know that preaching on the end times has been a very productive cash cow for preachers on the right-wing of the Christian continuum, but I ve always passed on the opportunity, because I ve thought the point was mute. After all, Jesus himself said: No one would know the day or the hour in which the Son of Man comes. Who am I, then, to say, when and where? Instead of throwing darts at the calendar for the second coming, like the Wall Street Journal throws darts at the Dow to pick stocks, I ve focused my energy on addressing the survivors of the doom and gloom in our world, and I have striven to proclaim where and when I see the empty tomb. This is my approach today as well. To begin, let s deal with the lingering doom and gloom question about divine judgment. Are natural disasters some type of divine judgment? No. I don t believe so. I take my cues from Genesis chapter 1. I believe that God is good. I believe that Creation is good. I believe that disasters occur as part of the natural order of things, and that those who are in the path of these events are inevitably affected by them; but the effects of these disasters are not God s judgment on the victims. To be sure, our risk of being effected by natural disaster increases when we live on a coast line, a fault line, in heavily wooded area, in a flood plain, in tornado alley, or the like. In addition, the number and degree of severity of natural disasters increases in proportion with the degree to which human beings tamper with the created order by polluting the environment and forgoing good stewardship practices. For example, unless we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels the effects of global warming will continue to worsen. The more we frack to pump oil out of the ground the more earthquakes we will experience in places like Kansas and Oklahoma. And, the more properties we build in the floodplains of the Mississippi, the more properties will be destroyed the next time The Big River overflows its banks. Even if natural disasters are, in part, a result of human beings bad behavior, they are still not God s judgment on the victims, and the doom and gloom that survivors of these What Good News? Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, 12/2/2018, 2 of 6.

3 tragedies unfurl do not have the last word in the human drama. Consider for example, a lesson I have learned from two pastor friends of mine who survived a natural disaster. III On June 8, 1984, Barneveld, Wisconsin, a small town located 38 miles west of Madison was virtually whipped off the map by an F-5 tornado that swept through the community in the wee hours of the morning. At the time, two colleagues of mine, Jann and Mitzi, served as pastors in that area. Both were living in the parsonage owned by First Congregational Church. Jann was the pastor of the First Congregational Church in Barneveld. Before her retirement a few years ago, Jann was the Dean of Students at Yale Divinity School. Back in the day, Mitzi was the executive director of a domestic violence shelter in Madison. She is now retired and vigorously engaged in boarder ministry along the Arizona-Sonora boarder. Jann and Mitzi were asleep when the tornado siren went off at the Barneveld fire station. They barely had enough time to grab their mattresses and pull them down into the basement to protect themselves from flying debris. Others in town were not so fortunate. Once the winds died down and the rain stopped, first-responders discovered that 9 people had been killed in the storm. The tornado victims ranged in age from 2 to 90. Nearly all of the houses, businesses, and the school were leveled. Those that weren t destroyed by the storm were too unstable to repair, and had to be demolished and rebuilt. Some of the farms outside of town were leveled too, and all of the fields for 10 miles were littered with tornado debris. The nearly century old First Congregational Church building was among the physical casualties of the storm. Not surprisingly, there were some question about whether to hold worship the following Sunday. The pastor and the Church Council had a stand-up meeting at the building site which could only be identified by the outline of the foundation. Together, the Councilmembers decided building or no building worship would commence. The Conference Minister, whose office was in Madison, loaded up a church van with folding chairs, hymnals, a bronze cross, and wooden table and brought these worship accoutrements to the building site early that first Sunday morning after the storm. What Good News? Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, 12/2/2018, 3 of 6.

4 The pastor of the church, Pastor Jann, gave the sermon which she outlined on the back of a napkin that came with the donuts that the Conference Minister brought for their talegate coffee hour. Pastor Mitzi, who ran the shelter, read the scripture from a Bible that she found in a cornfield outside of town. The text was I Kings 19:11-15, the story of Prophet Elijah hiding in the cave from Queen Jezebel, who had threatened his life for criticizing her worship of foreign gods. Pastor Mitzi read the text which described how God called Elijah out of the cave to watch series of events including a windstorm, an earthquake, and a fire. And after each event of nature had occurred, the historian (in I Kings) noted that God was not in the special effects: God was not in the wind. God was not in the earthquake. And God was not in the fire. God was, however, in the still, small voice that beckoned the prophet out of the cave, and sent him to anoint a new king of Syria. In a similar manner, Pastor Jann explained, God was not in the tornado that whipped out the physical property associated with Barneveld, Wisconsin on June 8, And, I would add, God was not in the Camp Fire that destroyed most of Butte County, California last month. Neither was God in the earthquake or the aftershocks that occurred in Anchorage, Alaska and the surrounding communities these past few days. God does not create natural disasters to punish human beings. God can and God does, however, works through first responders, through church and community volunteers, and through public and private institutions who step up to address immediate crises, and who stay the course and help survivors cope and heal from these tragedies. I remember, for example, how a cast of thousands mostly youth and their advisors from church groups, 4-H clubs, and FFA chapters from all over the State of Wisconsin came together to walk the surrounding fields, pick up and haul away debris that would have otherwise jammed up farm equipment and injured livestock, and they helped salvage random personal items (like the Bible that Pastor Mitzi read from, and random snap shots torn from family photo albums) that were snagged on barbwire fences or caught on thorns in ditches. I remember, too, how the 25 rural churches in Sheboygan County, organized a hay collection to assist the farmers whose barns and hay crops had been devastated. Every farm family in every rural congregation loaded up as many bales of hay in their pickups as they could spare. They drove their hay to a central location in the county, where the bales was loaded onto a semi and driven to Barneveld for distribution. I also remember how the women s circles in the UCC churches in Wisconsin went to work immediately after the storm creating quilts for Barneveld. Their goal was to create a new quilt for every family in the community. While these ladies knew that they could never What Good News? Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, 12/2/2018, 4 of 6.

5 replace the family heirlooms that had been lost, they also knew that they could stich in some love into new quilts that would forever remind the tornado survivors that they were not in the struggle alone. The summer of 1985, which was the summer after the tornado went through Barneveld, I was also the summer after I graduated from Lakeland College and was preparing to go on to seminary in Boston. My jobs that summer were serving as a nanny and housekeeper for a bankers family in Sheboygan, and serving as one of two interim pastor for two rural churches in the county. Both of my churches had contributed hay, a quilt, and cash for the Barneveld mission. So on Mission Sunday, that summer, it was decided that the guest preacher for the day would be the president of First Congregational Church in Barneveld. I don t remember all of the details of her message. It s been 35 years, since I heard her preach. But I have never forgotten the theme of her message or some of the details. The president said that she came to thank us for sending the hay, the quilt, and the offering money. I remember that she explained how most of the houses and business in town had been rebuilt or that they would be completed before winter, and that most of the people who had been physically injured were well on the road to recovery, but that most of them were just beginning to heal from the emotional trauma brought on by their ordeal. I remember the president explaining that she was the grandmother of the two-year old who was killed in the tornado, and that she would probably never understand why her grandson was taken in the storm and she was not. She opined that he had so much to live for, while she had already lived a good long life and would have gladly taken his place. She further explained that this mystery of her grandson s death and her survival was a constant reminder to her of why tornados are tragedies, rather than judgment. Most of all, I remember this grandmother of the church saying ever so wisely that she, her family, and her congregation had been reminded by their ordeal of the age old truths that home is not a house. Home is where your loved ones gather. And church is not a building. It s a people who suffer with you through the doom and gloom, and the people who help you rediscover the empty tomb. III The thought occurs to me that if the only story you or I had ever heard about Barneveld, Wisconsin was the weather report from June 8, All that we would know would be doom and gloom. What Good News? Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, 12/2/2018, 5 of 6.

6 But as it turns out, the story didn t end on June 8. It continued to unfold. So it is with the news from the First Sunday in Advent. Doom and gloom are merely the first salvo. If you want to know the rest of the story moreover if you want to experience the rest of the story, you have to take the long view, and you have to come back next week, and the week after that, and the week after that. The road to the empty tomb is long and circuitous, but we will get there. God knows. I know. The Bible and the Barneveld survivors tell me so. Amen. What Good News? Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, 12/2/2018, 6 of 6.