This morning's sermon is really just a short meditation. We'll be worshiping with three congregations joining in a Christ the King/Thanksgiving Service and the pastors sharing a short message on the lectionary passages. Mine is the OT passage from Jeremiah.
The Days are Surely
Coming
(based on Jeremiah
23:1-6)
“The days are surely
coming” says the Lord when God will raise up a king who will execute justice
and righteousness in the land. This king
will be called, "The Lord is our righteousness." Both the Old and New Testaments make it clear
that we can live in a right relationship with God. Not because of who we are but because of who
God is. Not because we are good but
because God is loving toward us. When we
are in a right relationship with God, we know and experience the true meaning
of salvation. Israel knew God primarily
as a God who acts in human life and history to save his people from real
troubles, like bondage in Egypt, like the exiled in Babylon.
Jeremiah's promise to
a people who were defeated and scattered because of the unfaithfulness of their
leaders, was that the same God who had saved their ancestors from bondage in
Egypt would save them from exile in Babylon. According to Jeremiah, the job of a king (or
any leader) is to take care of the people, just as a shepherd takes care of the
sheep.
Jeremiah promises the
coming of a new and good king in the line of David. From this passage in Jeremiah it is not
exactly clear whom he meant. But Christians
know that the promise was ultimately fulfilled in the coming of another whose
name means, "God's salvation."
In the event of the life of Jesus, God again acted to show us what God
is always doing. God is always reaching out to us in life and in history to bring
us to a new and right relationship with God and to promise us salvation.
Today, we, too can
discover a new dimension of the meaning of righteousness and salvation when we
learn to expect God to save us from the real problems of our lives, problems
like career frustrations, conflicts in our relationships, addictions, and the
loss of integrity resulting from life in a sometimes very hostile world. We can discover even more when we learn to
expect God to save our world from injustice, from racial strife, and from the
constant presence of conflict and war in the world.
But God does not save
just by "fixing" our circumstances. God saves by reordering our lives as a new
king reorders life in a kingdom. We are
led into a new and right relationship with God, the Lord is our
Righteousness. Then, and only then,
people and communities who are renewed from within move out to change the
world.
We often implore God
to fix the problems in the world; to make a way for peace, to make sure that no
one goes hungry, that the poor are lifted up, that widows and orphans are taken
care of, etc…but, that’s not how God works.
The Lord is our Righteousness works by working in the hearts of God’s own
people. And then through the faith and
life of the new king, whom we find in Jesus Christ on this Christ the King
Sunday, reorders our priorities and renews our heart’s desires so that WE,
God’s people, do the work of God.
“The days are surely
coming”, says the Lord. Have they
come? Are they here? Will you do the work of God in this world of
ours?
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