With one voice, to glorify God

“Up” exclaims the small child, and you the parent or grandparent scoops up that child and toss him in the air, catching him mid-flight, and gently returning him to the floor, amid squeals of delight.

“Again!” he demands, and the maneuver is repeated.

“Again and again!” he giggles, and this time you fly the child around in a circle, once, twice, before returning him to earth.

“More”, he commands dizzily, and this time it is a toss, a spin, and a bump that you offer to the delighted child.

And on and on it goes until the adult is too tired to continue, even though the child is still wanting yet more.

Good News! This is our situation as children of God, with one little difference: the Lord God never tires of giving us good things, more than we either deserve or desire.

(1) We came together last week and heard bits of the story of God's determined love for us; and we laughed and rejoiced.

And here we have returned together today, and by our very presence here are saying “Again!” and God speaks.

It is by way of John the Baptizer, the prophet Isaiah, and the apostle Paul that the Lord is pulling us out of the trouble into which we would otherwise be stumbling, holding us close, tossing us around in ways that we cannot move by ourselves, and then returning us to the earth exhilarated, delighted, perhaps chastened a bit, and ...ready for more.

And next week, we'll be here again, and the Lord God has still more ways to challenge us.

And in the Sundays, and the seasons,

and the years, and the decades,

and the whole lifetime after that, too!

(2) And this day we gather at the Lord's Table, as we did last Sunday and the Sunday before that..

and as we will gather in the Sundays and seasons and years and lifetime yet to unfold.

We come hungry and and a bit lonely, and even before we are able to put together our prayers, Christ our Lord is ready and eager to gift us of himself.

The Body of Christ, given for you,” we hear in our ears and receive in our hands and mouths.

Not just once, but time and again, as many times, as often as we need it, which may be even more than we want it.

“For you, for forgiveness, for life,” he says to us with a joyful seriousness.

And at our next gathering: “For you, for forgiveness, for life everlasting”.

And the time after that: “For you, for all of you, for amendment of life and forgiveness, and for life abundant.”

And again, and again....

(3) I have been thinking about our altar flowers that we enjoy each week.

We have often regarded them as part of our offering to God, a sacrifice of beauty to honor the Lord.

But think how before they are our offering to God, these flowers are God's gifts to us.

If there were but a single blossom, that would be enough.

In all of its intricacy and complexity, a single blossom expresses God's grace.

Surprisingly and wonderfully, this gift is not just given once, but again and again.

With a riotous exuberance of color and size and form and fragrance, one flower is joined to a thousand, a million more.

How would we even know to ask God for alstromeria with blotches and stripes of every color, or colchia that spring from a dried-up looking bulb, or the Andean century plant that sends up a 20' flower stalk one time in a hundred years, or the millifloria petunias that cascaded from our boxes all summer long.

Even before we can ask or have everything cleaned up from this year's garden,

next year's flower catalogs are arriving already, bearing yet new varieties of God's generously blooming laughter.

And before we can say “Again”, he gives yet more!

If we are in a gloomy or morose frame of mind, we might look at the repeated things in nature as mere cause and effect, a mindless cycle, a dull routine...

...or, we might read the world as a series of excited repetitions, like that of a teacher who says the same thing over and over in a dozen variations until the students get it.

Perhaps the billions of blades of grass are a signal,

perhaps the myriad of stars are yearning to be understood,

perhaps the rising of the sun each day is making a particular point,

and perhaps the meadows of flowers that are only sampled in the bouquets at our altar are multiplying the news:

(1) In Word, (2) in Sacrament, and (3) in nature itself,

God the Holy Spirit is truly gracious,

God the Father has been gracious,

God the Son will ever be gracious.

And the Lord God never tires of doing it again and again, in as many ways as we can grasp, until we fully understand the reason for joy.

The Lord intends to counter every reason for sadness.

It may be dismal weather that gets us down;

It may be personal problems that loom large for us:

it may be the illness that the doctors cannot cure;

it may be the job that was lost or downsized, or which is teetering on the edge;

it may be the festering family problem that threatens to drive people apart;...

Or, it may be things that affect us in larger groups:

It may be the arguments or hatreds that move nations toward violent confrontation.

It may be the disagreements and policy differences that can fracture a congregation.

We may so foul up things so badly that we destroy the expression of the church we name “Lutheran”, but the Lord's plans are bigger than our successes or failures.

It spite of it all,

in spite of all the problems that we have as individuals and as a group,

the Body of Christ will survive and flourish, perhaps in some new way, and our other problems large and small shall not overwhelm us, because of God's continuing gifts.

Our modern, up to date, with-it society is in a prison.

Oh, it may be in a prison as wide as the world, but it is a prison nonetheless.

Our society may not even realize that they are imprisoned, but that is the truth.

Our society is a prison of probability without possibility.

But that is never the way that the church has looked at things.

We have been receiving all sorts of variations on the great series of gifts which God has entrusted to us.

And the news of this Advent season is even bigger than that.

God's gifts are not only variations but will in his good time be utter surprise:

Us, re-made;

creation re-made;

a new heaven and a new earth.

The other day as I was working on this sermon, the tower bells rang out the great Wesley hymn “Love Divine” [LBW315]

Remember the 4^th stanza of that hymn:

Finish then thy new creation;

Pure and spotless let us be;

Let us see thy great salvation

Perfectly restored in thee.

That is not something that we can accomplish ourselves.

It will be God's doing, his new act of creation, not just repeating the old things, but doing the new thing, the final thing, the resurrection thing, over and over again until the whole creation sings with the church of all times and places.

Paul in our passage today from Romans says that God's story is told again and again

so that we who once were considered outsiders can have hope,

so that we, with unified voice, can glorify God for his mercy,

so that we can hear this blessing with joy:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And why is there this hope, this joy?

--God gives good things again and again.

--God delights us with ever fresh variations of those gifts.

--God has made resurrection his chief new thing.

--Anticipation of this new thing begins to change our lives right now.

May the God of hope surprise us.

Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come,

again. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.