{"id":420,"date":"2016-11-14T09:21:08","date_gmt":"2016-11-14T14:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=420"},"modified":"2016-11-14T09:21:08","modified_gmt":"2016-11-14T14:21:08","slug":"do-over-do-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2016\/11\/14\/do-over-do-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Over, Do Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Listen to the sermon being preached at the link below<\/h3>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-420-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/20161113-104257.m4a?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/20161113-104257.m4a\">https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/20161113-104257.m4a<\/a><\/audio>\n<h2>Do Over, Do Now<\/h2>\n<h4>A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY<br \/>\nby Rev. James Eaton, Pastor<br \/>\n24th Sunday After Pentecost \u2022 November 13, 2016<br \/>\nIsaiah 65:17-25<\/h4>\n<p> \u201cI want a do over.\u201d I was standing in the cockpit of my boat, trying to back out of the slip. There were two things different about this time. First, we had an audience; some friends had come over to say goodbye. Second, it had gone totally wrong. Jacquelyn cast off the lines at the front perfectly. I put the boat in reverse, all 17,000 pounds started to move backward and then it stuck and swung the wrong way. Everyone hurried to help, but the boat didn\u2019t respond. Finally I figured out that I had left one of the lines on the stern tying us to the dock connected; as soon as I untied it, we were fine. But I had looked ridiculous and created a dangerous situation and all in front of our friends. I wanted a do over.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want a do over.\u201d The first time I remember hearing the phrase was from my son. We were playing with a basketball; some game where we took turns throwing it at a basket, trying to get to a score. He would miss and say, \u201cI want a do over\u201d and come up with some excuse, some reason: he was off balance, the ball had slipped: something. Later on, I came to the same feeling on my own, mostly as a parent. No one prepared me for the fact that parenting was so arbitrary, so make-it-up-as-you-go. There were so many times I wanted a do over. Have you ever felt that way? I wonder if that is how God feels about the world: \u201cI want a do over\u201d. In English, we have \u201cBehold I make a new creation\u201d but the Hebrew really says, \u201cLook at me, I\u2019m making a new heaven and earth. \u201cI\u2019m having a do over.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Understanding Isaiah&#8217;s Word<\/h3>\n<p>We have to understand the setting to which Isaiah brought the word we heard this morning. God\u2019s people had been disastrously defeated 80 years or so before, a defeat that shook their souls as well as destroying their nation. Thousands became refugees and many were taken into captivity in the foreign city of Babylon. Ever since, God\u2019s people have listened to their grand parents tell them, \u201cIn Jerusalem, the gardens were better&#8230;in Jerusalem, the weather was better&#8230;in Jerusalem, the temple was better\u201d. Now the Persian king has released the Jews and some have returned to Jerusalem. But they\u2019ve gone home to something like Berlin in 1945 or Aleppo today: a wiped out city with ruined buildings. This is the moment in which Isaiah speaks this Word from God and he speaks it to people who must have thought, \u201cWe need a do over.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Our Destination<\/h3>\n<p>So we have this Word and the Word really is about where we\u2019re going. What is our ultimate destination? I\u2019ve lived most of my life along the great parallel defined by I-90, a road that begins in Boston, runs through New York, loops south to take account of the Great Lakes, runs through Pennsylvania and Ohio, Indiana, Chicago, up through Wisconsin and Minnesota, then across South Dakota and Montana, where it rises into the mountains and snakes through the passes of Idaho before it flows out into the desert of Eastern Washington, jumps the Columbia River and ends in Seattle. I\u2019ve lived in Seattle, I\u2019ve lived in Boston, and no matter which I was in, I never forgot the one at the other end. I knew the road had a destination; I knew where it was going. God is offering a vision here of where we are going. I\u2019m making new heavens and earth and this is what it\u2019s like: you\u2019re going to enjoy it, you\u2019re going to build houses and live in them, have a vineyard and enjoy its wine. It takes a long time for vineyards to bear fruit but you\u2019ll still be there. I\u2019m going to be there and I\u2019m going to anticipate your every want. Thirdly, the wolf and the lamb are going to lie down: in other words, there is going to be peace, even the natural world is going to be at peace. That\u2019s where we\u2019re going; that\u2019s what the do over is for: that\u2019s our destination. Don\u2019t worry about the trip: God knows where we are going.<\/p>\n<h3>Jesus: Endure<\/h3>\n<p>The same faith flows through what Jesus says in the reading from Luke. Jesus is a rural person and so are most of his followers. Think how they must have been dazzled by Jerusalem; think how the big buildings, the sights, the sounds, the smells must have impressed them. They must have felt this was a permanent place. Yet now Jesus tells them it\u2019s all going to be destroyed, desolated: \u201cthe days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.\u201d Just 35 years or so after Jesus said this, it came true, and Luke\u2019s readers know it\u2019s true. Like the shock of Pearl Harbor or the towers falling on September 11, they are living in a moment of shocked grief when it must have seemed, as the poet Yeats said,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;<br \/>\n&nbsp;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,<br \/>\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere<br \/>\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He goes on to warn them about the immediate aftermath: violent times, demagogues, false preachers, persecution. All these things have happened in the life and experience of the Luke\u2019s audience. Yet at the end Jesus invites them to this one faith: that in the love of God, there is a permanent place: \u201c\u2026not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.\u201d Our future is in the hands of a God who loves us.<\/p>\n<h3>What About Now?<\/h3>\n<p>So: we know where we are going\u2014what about now? What do we do now? Because we know it\u2019s not like that now. The wolves and lambs are not lying down together now. What we are doing is living between the past and that vision. These readings have two ideas about what to do now.<\/p>\n<h3>Work Here, Work Now<\/h3>\n<p>The first is to work here and now toward that vision. Someone said the Puritans were so effective because they believed everything depended on God but they acted like everything depended on them. They believed God\u2019s faithfulness; they lived faithfully to God. Our nation has come through a long and divisive campaign. Some are triumphant today; many are despondent. But our future is in God\u2019s hands. Our mission remains the same: to sustain here a community of care, where God\u2019s love is evident in the embrace of people who have been embraced by Christ. The Rabbis say: if the Messiah comes, still finish your Torah study for the day. Work is the creative activity by which we are carrying out God\u2019s will in the world. So we are called to work now, we are called to work here, for justice, for the embodiment of peace. We have been hearing this fall about the world changing effect of forgiveness. We have been hearing this fall about the world changing effect of finding the lost. We change the world when we do this now.<\/p>\n<h3>Witness<\/h3>\n<p>The second thing to do is witness. Luke is writing about 15 years after everything he says in this section has already happened. The temple is already destroyed; people are already being arrested for being Christian. What Luke understands to be our job in the present is to witness. Don\u2019t worry about how you do it either, Luke says. This part always makes me smile at books on how to witness. How do you witness? Live your life: that\u2019s your witness. Live your life in a way that allows Christ to make a difference. A number of social researchers have looked at Christians and others in terms of their behavior; what they find is being Christian often makes little difference. Your witness is to let Christ make a difference in your life now.<\/p>\n<p>\fBecause Christ can make a difference, in good times, in bad times. In 1945, just before his execution by the Nazis for resistance, a German soldier wrote these words to his mother.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear Mother: Today, together with Jorgen, Nils and Ludwig, I was arraigned before a Military tribunal. We were condemned to death. I know that you are a courageous woman, and that you will bear this, but, hear me, it is not enough to bear it, you must also understand it. I am an insignificant thing, and my person will soon be forgotten, but the thought, the life, the inspiration that filled me will live on. You will meet them everywhere\u2014 in the trees at springtime, in people who cross your path, in a loving little smile. You will encounter that something which perhaps had value in me, you will cherish it and you will not forget me. And so I shall have a chance to grow, to become large and mature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>Amazing Grace<\/h3>\n<p>God\u2019s work in the world through people who endure in faith is amazing.<br \/>\nThe people that went into exile in Babylon did return and rebuild Jerusalem but they did something far more significant. While they were in exile, the stories, the teachings, the books that now know as the Hebrew Scriptures were brought together and given their final form. The kings and armies and politics of that time are just obscure footnotes read by historians today. The scriptures they brought together have inspired three great faiths and people ever since.<br \/>\nThe little group, not as many as are here today, who heard Jesus and endured in their faith in him and his teaching and his vision of God\u2019s reign did see the temple fall, did see the persecution but they endured. They kept his memory; they became his body. Through all our stumbling history, that faith continues today and we are their inheritors. In our lives, in our witness, it has, as the resistance either said, \u201c..a chance to grow, to become large and mature.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>So grieve, celebrate, take a moment to bind up wounds and see where you are. But remember that where we are is not where we are going. Where we are going is in the hands of a God beyond our vision of greatness or defeat. When we grieve, we should not do it as people without hope, as Paul says, but as people who have put their hope in the God who doesn\u2019t fail. The creative God who when all seems dark still can say: \u201cI\u2019ll have a do over: behold, a new creation.\u201d Let us give thanks to God as we work, as we witness, as we wait for God to make the new creation.<br \/>\nAmen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen to the sermon being preached at the link below Do Over, Do Now A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor 24th Sunday After Pentecost \u2022 November 13, 2016 Isaiah 65:17-25 \u201cI want a do over.\u201d I was standing in the cockpit of my boat, trying to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,39,3,13,1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afterpentecost-c","category-exegesis","category-sermon","category-theology","category-uncategorized","category-worship"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}