Comfort in the Promise

11-15-15 (Proper 28/Ordinary 33 B Semi-Continuous)

1 Samuel 1:4-20; Mark 13:1-8

Comfort in the Promise

I started out this week with a sermon well set in my head and ready to go.  And then I started looking at the commentaries and seeing all the things going on in our own back yard with the student protests at Mizzou.  A whole new sermon started to take shape for me, so I started writing something different.  And then Friday night happened.  We started to hear the news coming in of the pure tragedy occurring in Paris, the count of people lost rising higher and higher as the evening continued on.  And now we’re hearing about further tragedies in Kenya, in Beirut, in Lebanon, and in Baghdad  And once more, I found myself sitting down to start over again.

As we gather together this morning, we gather as a people who have a much greater perspective on both of the readings we’ve just heard today.  We know the pain and anguish that Hannah brings to the temple, the feelings so deep and raw that prayer cannot even find words.  We hear Jesus’ revelatory words, his telling us not to be alarmed as we hear again and again of wars and rumors of wars, of nations rising against nations and kingdoms against kingdoms.  And as we come here to this place in the midst of all of this turmoil, we have to wonder like Hannah: where is God in the midst of this?  Has God forgotten God’s own people, abandoned us to our own devices?  And if not, then when will enough be enough?  When will we see justice, when will God set things right once more and bring in the Kingdom once and for all?

It’s easy to be discouraged in times like this, to give into the fear that permeates our world right now, to paint with broad brushstrokes and see enemies everywhere we turn, all the while closing our eyes to those who are still victims, who hurt just as much and pray for an end to violence in the same ways as we do.  It’s easy to turn to simple platitudes and hollow statements, and even easier to turn to the words that Jesus tells the disciples and let them be a source of arrogant confidence for us, to say that these things mean we know that Christ is coming soon, that the world has been warned, and that all we need to do ourselves is sit and wait happily for the birth pangs to cease and the real upheaval and justice to come down.

But brothers and sisters, if we do this, we ultimately fail.  We become as cruel as Penninah in her bullying of Hannah, and as ignorant as Elkanah and Eli in their inability to hear and acknowledge Hannah’s pain and anguish.  We may be seeing the birth pangs of the kingdom - even Paul thought that he was witness to the beginning of the end - but that does nothing to free us from the mission Christ has commissioned us to.  To do otherwise means that we have ultimately allowed ourselves to led astray.  Instead, perhaps now more than ever, we need to be the voices of hope in a world filled with hopelessness.  The reading from Hebrews in the lectionary this week adds the note of hope in our world that we so desperately need, and I invite you to hear the last verses of that reading today: “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. ²⁴And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, ²⁵not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.  Let us find ways to be voices of hope to the world, to proclaim that though we do not know the day or hour, we do know that God is present, nevertheless.  God is present in Paris in the aftermath of shootings and explosions.  God is present in Beirut as they pick up the pieces from bombings.  God is present in Baghdad among the families whose grief during a funeral was only compounded by bombs and further violence.  God is present among the university students in Kenya who mourn the tragic loss of their classmates in the midst of Somali violence.  God is present among the refugees running from this same violence in their homelands, being met with fear and mistrust, and being told that there is nowhere for them to turn, nowhere safe for them to go.  And God is present in our midst, calling us always to move past fear, to embrace hope, and to reach out in compassion to a hurting world that desperately needs the message of the Gospel.  So let us be willing to take the time to listen, to hear, to acknowledge the pain and the struggle that our neighbors are experiencing. Let us pray for words of encouragement, and let us be bold to reach out, to get down on our knees beside those suffering and let our prayers embody that same wordless passion as Hannah’s.  And as we pray, as we place ourselves beside those who suffer, may we find the ability to help one another, to find hope in the promise of God that this is not what the world is meant to be, and that this is not what the Kingdom will look like.  And then let us strive in working to show in as many ways as we can what that Kingdom ultimately is.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.