Hope

 Isaiah 2:1-5

November  27, 2022

Advent 1 – Hope

 

The dictionary defines Hope like this:

“to cherish a desire with anticipation

for example, ‘she hopes to be invited to the party”

That’s true and we know what they’re talking about,

but hope is more than that isn’t it?

 

To live with hope is to be optimistic,

but it’s more than that too.

Martin Luther said, “everything that is done

in the world is done by hope.”

Even when the present seems desperate,

to live with hope in the future is to live with trust,

to live with faith.

Hope is faith that God will not abandon us

and that the future will be better.

The prophet Isaiah had that faith in God and

hope for the future.

 

The book of Isaiah is long. 66 chapters.

It’s ascribed to Isaiah the son of Amoz who lived in the 8^th century,

but most scholars believe that it’s written by several people,

and they divide it into three different sections,

First Isaiah are books 1-39 written in the 700’s BC

before the destruction of Jerusalem and exile of the Israelites.

Second Isaiah, books 40-55 was in the 500’s during the exile of the Israelites

and Third Isaiah, books 56-66 were written after

the Israelites return from exile in the 400’s BC.

 

All our readings this Advent are from the first Isaiah

The time before the invasion of the Babylonians,

This is a time when Isaiah and

other people could feel that things were going wrong,

were heading in the wrong direction

and were not going according to God’s will and vision,

and Isaiah was giving a warning to the country of Israel.

 
Chapter one starts out with this kind of warning:

  Ah, sinful nation,

    people laden with iniquity,
offspring who do evil,
    children who deal corruptly,
who have forsaken the Lord,
    who have despised the Holy One of Israel,
    who are utterly estranged!

 he goes on:

 ²² Your silver has become impure

    your wine is mixed with water.
²³ Your princes are rebels
    and companions of thieves.
Everyone loves a bribe
    and runs after gifts.
They do not defend the orphan,
    and the widow’s cause does not come before them.

 

Isaiah sees a country of people

focused on its own gain.

Leaders using the power they have to

serve themselves and get rich rather

than to lift up and support the most vulnerable.

 

Not the country that God had established.

Not the city on a hill for others to look to and imitate,

But just another corrupt country that has put

God’s will and those in need

at the bottom of the priority list.

 

Maybe we can appreciate Isaiah’s

observations today in this country.

The hopes for our nation had been high at one time.

Once we saw ourselves as the one to emulate,

once we were an example for others.

But things haven’t been heading in

a good direction for a very long time.

 

Just like Isaiah said,

people are weighed down with inequity,

everyone does seem to love a bribe

criminals and thieves are the honored ones,

Everyone is just out for what they can get,

and the widows and the orphans – Our biblical code words

for the most vulnerable in our society – are still not cared for.

And violence has been our fallback since the beginning.

This country is not the one that we once believed it was.

We’re letting ourselves and God down in lots of ways.

 

I think we can feel Isaiah’s sense of foreboding.

This model is not sustainable in the long run.

It feels like we’re on the edge of a precipice,

something that will be very unpleasant for all of us.

 

Isaiah warns that these ways will only lead to destruction

to the dissolution of everything they knew

he uses phrases like:

“humanity will be brought low”, “doom will follow”.

Everyone will feel God’s disappointment.

It might seem, then and now, like all hope is lost.

 

But Isaiah doesn’t leave us there.

In the midst of these visions of destruction,

are also visions of a new city and a new reality.

God has not abandoned us. There is promise. There is hope.

Which is what we hear throughout Advent.

 

Unpleasantness that the people face

will not be permanent, it won’t last forever.

In their trials and desperation, the people

will understand where they went wrong.

They will discard all the things that were useless,

they will reject the ways that led them astray.

They will go back to capture the vision that they once had.

 

Isaiah promise that in the end, God’s will be with us,

Immanuel, and these difficult times

will be followed by a fulfillment, something better.

Death followed by resurrection.

 

In this reading for the First Sunday in Advent it says,

“here is the word that Isaiah, son of Amoz saw”.

We hear about a vision, a vision of tomorrow,

promise, a vision of hope.

 

In that vision, people are flooding to the house of God

not just the steady faithful, but all people are going

to find wisdom and to learn the ways of God.

This is not just a dream of church growth,

or to make this a Christian nation.

This is a vision of something much more encompassing,

much more important.  People are coming

to learn God’s word and God’s ways

because the ways of the world that we have been

following didn’t work. The world is working together

to live out the way and the vision of God.

 

And the sign of this transformation would be this:

“They will turn their swords into ploughshares

and their spears into pruning hooks.”

 

We’ve heard this phrase so often

it appears in Isaiah and Micah

it might be cliché now,

but think of how astounding that would be:

 

The whole world would find no need for weapons.

Our children would not need to know anything about

war, or self-defense, or violence, or bombings,

or mass shootings, school shootings, or accidental shootings,

or active shooter drills, or murders, or stranger danger, 

or nuclear bombs, or wounded veterans, or chemical weapons, or refugees.

So much so, that they would look at guns and

bombs and say, “what do we need these useless things for?

Let’s melt them down and turn them

into something we can actually use.”

 

This is an amazing vision, better than our current reality.

This is the hope that Isaiah envisions for all people.

 

And the whole book of Isaiah tells us that that hope

will be heralded through the gift of a child.

The shoot that comes off of Jesse’s tree

Immanuel, God is with us, Wonderful Counselor, Prince of peace.

The Messiah.

 

This is our hope.

This is what we long for,

this is what we pray for,

The one that will deliver us into a new life.

 

This is we believe has already come in

the life, cross, and resurrection of Jesus Christ,

And is still being formed in us.

The gestation period for this one is long.

It is still being born in us every day.

The hope that we are working to give birth to in this world,

the hope that we see glimpses of and keeps us going.

Christ is being born again in us.

 

That is the Word of God that Isaiah saw.

When all will be made new again.

The hope of a world recreated in God’s

image and according to God’s will.

The hope of the one that was,

and is, and is still to come.

The hope of the Messiah.

The hope of Christ.

 

What Kind of King?

 Luke 23 33-42

November 20, 2022

Christ the King

 

King Midas is a story about a King who loves gold,

He is already richer than anyone else, but he wishes

that everything he touched would turn to gold.

He gets his wish, but he finds that this is not

a good thing.

Everything he touched did turn to gold: flowers, furniture, 

he couldn't sleep because his bed was gold,

he couldn't eat because his food turned to gold.

Then he touched his daughter and she turned into solid gold.

He got everything he wanted, but he was miserable.

 

Shakespeare's Richard the Third is the story about a King

who as a prince stopped at nothing to get to be King.

He puts his relatives in jail, has some killed, and tells lies about others.

He finally becomes King, but he can’t enjoy it because he’s so

anxious and suspicious because of everything he did.

He eventually kills one of his brothers and his wife.

At this his kingdom rebels against him and

and on the night before a great battle,

the ghosts of everyone who he has killed come to visit Richard.

They tell him that he will die. And the next day, 

Richard is killed in a battle against his own nephew.

 

King David was the great King of Israel,

the chosen one, the anointed one.

He has everything he wants: power, wealth luxury, 

many wives, many concubines, but one day he sees Bathsheba bathing on a roof top.

Even though she is married and he has eight wives of his own,

he decides that he wants her. They have an affair, and

she becomes pregnant with his child. 

So David sends her husband into a dangerous battle and he is killed.

God is not pleased with David for this, and David’s relationships

with his children are cursed for the rest of his life.

And he eventually ends up killing his favorite son in battle.

These are all familiar stories about Kings.

They might even be what we think of when we hear the word “King”.

Kings, in the typical sense of the word, are people

who have absolute power. Who are answerable to almost no one.

They have the lives of other people in the palms of their hands.

These stories show how that absolute power can corrupt a person.

Many stories about kings are about how they use their vast power

for their own means and these stories usually have tragic endings.

We have seen this repeated in other powerful people in the world.

People who fill their own egos and their own lust for power

and eventually self-destruct, often taking out those around them.

 

Today is Christ the King Sunday,

when we remember that Christ is the true King.

He is the true king because he is God come to earth

and no one is more powerful than God.

 

To show this, lots of artists have portrayed Jesus

as we’ve seen other kings:                                                     

On a golden throne, in a crown, wearing a velvet cape

with angels waiting on him. But that is a mistake.

We remember that Jesus isn’t the true King

because he’s the richest, or because he’s the more

glorious, or glamorous than other kings.

 

Today in the gospel, we get the real picture of Christ the King: 

Calvary
Octavio Campo

Jesus on a cross, crucified between two common thieves.

Not controlling the systems or the government, but a victim of them

not using his power to even save himself

 

While he is on the cross, the people taunt Jesus saying,

“If you are a real king, why don't you come down

from that cross and save yourself?” And that is a legitimate question.

If Jesus was King, was the Messiah, why didn’t he save himself?

 

Luther and other theologians have said it’s because

God wanted to be revealed on the cross.

God wants us to be see him there.

The all-powerful creator of everything

wanted us to know him in the lowliest of places,

arrested, beaten, crucified, in pain, given the death penalty,

utterly controlled, not even able to scratch his own nose.

Jesus on the cross is not a mistake or a tragedy – it is a message.

 

Through Jesus’ crucifixion and death

God is showing us the horrible ways the world, and many kings,

most often use power: to control and punish others,

to get their objectives met, often at the expense of the poor

and the vulnerable and the rejected.

 

And through the cross, God is showing us what true power is.

It is not the ability to get whatever you desire,

and to acquire many possessions, or  have control over others.

True power is the power to give yourself for the good of others.

Jesus was put on the cross because he, he welcomed 

the wrong people, and he spoke out against the powerful, and he didn’t follow

the traditions that excluded and hurt others.

We as the body of Christ are asked use our power in the same way.

That is the way that we are called to be powerful.

 

Lots of churches get this wrong.

There are big churches who acquire lots of 

power and people and money, but they use it only to get 

more power and more people and more money. 

Their pastors have the best of everything and they want, 

gorgeous houses, expensive cars, political clout

and their message is that they and their members should

succeed and should be wealthy too. 

(Oh yeah, and then you can help others somewhere down the line if you really want to.)

These churches don’t understand Christ the King’s model of power. 

They  want the cushy throne and the velvet robe.

 

But neither do churches who shy away

from the power of the Holy Spirit can bring.

Those churches who keep to themselves

and stay meek and quiet and cautious.

Who only focus on their own personal salvation.

Who want to stay on their own private route to heaven,

who don’t want to bother anyone else.

Who keep their faith and their convictions to themselves,

letting the world do what it will without comment.

Those churches don’t get the example of Christ the King either.

 

Having power in itself is not bad.

Power is something that the Holy Spirit gives us as believers,

But Jesus came to be a model for a new kind of power.

For churches, the question is always

“what are we doing with our power?”

 

Glide Memorial church is a Methodist Church in San Francisco. 

In 1963 it was a dying church in a rough neighborhood. Now it has over 10,000 members.

It has a prestigious and world renowned choir,

people listen to what the church and its leaders have to say.

People like Leonard Bernstein, Quincy Jones, Billy Graham,

Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Clinton, have come to their worship services.

They auction off a dinner with Warren Buffet each year to benefit

the Glide Memorial foundation,

last year it went for $19 million dollars.

 
They are a powerful church, they have the ear of religious leaders, 

celebrities and politicians. They have many members and lots of money. 

They have relationships with benevolent foundations 

and  multi-million dollar corporations. They a are powerful church.

 

And Glide Memorial is also the largest social service

organization in San Francisco.

They serve three meals a day for the hungry.

they do ministry and drug counseling inside drug houses

They have provided space for prostitutes to meet,

They have been active in fighting AIDS since it started in the 80’s

offering HIV testing after Sunday services.

They have justice arm that advocates for the poor

and for all sorts of human rights in San Francisco.

 

They are a powerful congregation.

They are prosperous and numerous and well known.

They have power to do whatever they want.

And this is what they want to do with their power.

 

The pastor that grew this church, Cecil Williams,      

could easily have used this to his own advantage 

to get a name and wealth and prestige for himself, to get planes and

multi-million dollar homes and golden toilet seats

for himself and for his family like lots of other powerful pastors have.

 

But the church and the pastor use their copious power,

intentionally, to benefit the vulnerable around them.

The poor, the homeless, the immigrant,

the sinner, the addicts, the ones who are rejected,

those who have been abandoned by society

and even by many religions.  Cecil Williams started out by

actively opening up his church to gay, lesbian, 

and transgender people in the 1970’s when no one else was doing that.

 

He understands Christ the King. Glide understands Christ the King.

They are not afraid to build their power,

and then they are not afraid to give it all away for the sake of others.

That is a church modeled after Christ.

No golden thrones, no velvet robes.

 

As followers of Christ, we are asked to be powerful

to not shy away from being prominent and prosperous.

But then we are asked to use that power

to be serve others who need it.

 

And that is because we follow the story of a different kind of King -

A king who wandered from town to town and had no home.

Who was more powerful than anyone could even imagine,

who, though he existed in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped,

but emptied himself,

Who used his power to gather all sorts of people around him.

Who spoke the truth to the powerful, and challenged the status quo.

Who shared his table with commoners, poor people, prostitutes,

sinners, and lepers.  

And who called his subjects to love, forgive and serve one another.

 

This is real power. True power.

This is the power of God.

This is the power of a true king.

Ending or Beginning?

 Luke 21:5-19

November 13, 2022

The Beginning Is Near
Imaginary Foundation

 

As a kid in the 70’s and 80’s

I used to love watching shows

on TV about Nostradamus.

They stick out in my mind because

I would watch them with both interest and dread.

 

Remember Nostradamus?

They have some current shows about him,

But he was all the rage in the 70’s and 80’s.

He was a  man who lived in the 16^th century

who wrote predictions that some people felt

had come true in history.

The predictions were kind of vague poetry,

but people interpreted them and said that

they predicted world events.

The shows said that he predicted

like the rise of Napoleon and Hitler.

And the assassination of JFK.

It was pretty convincing stuff.

 

And then my favorite part of the show

was when they would try and interpret

some of his poetry and apply it to future events.

Does the “Great war with the eagle and bear”

mean that there will be a war between Russia and the US?

Does “the celestial fire” mean that a meteor

will hit the earth.

 

I would watch these in dread and delight

wondering what the future would hold for our world.

I envisioned the end of everything.

Everything familiar and beloved.

 

Even if you don’t remember these Nostradamus

shows, you have seen preachers try and do this

on television. They talk about the future in horrifying terms.

And these kind of preachers tend to tell everyone:

desperate times call for desperate measures.

They want people to choose what they say is good,

and to hate and fight the evil they determine.

They usually encourage people, overtly or covertly,

to resort to violence.

 

We’ve seen this kind of take hold of people lately.

The message is: Win at all costs.

We’re right and chosen by God, and THEY are wrong.

Defeat whoever their leader defines as the enemy.

Do whatever is necessary, the time is now, the end is near.

 

Jesus might seem to be doing a little dooms-day

talking in today’s gospel.  

He’s talking about the future in frightening terms. 

Earthquakes, wars, famine, disease, and persecution. 

It’s a hard message to hear from Jesus,

one that has thrown many people into sleepless frenzies,

and many people have used Jesus words to manipulate others.

 

But I don’t think Jesus is saying these things to make people

frightened. I don’t think he’s telling people these things

for them to give up hope.  

I actually think he’s saying these things to try and comfort people

 

Jesus is saying: Terrible things will happen,

these things happen all the time.

You will see plenty of pain and destruction, violence,

and death, maybe even your own death.

But when you see and hear these things: don’t be afraid.

Because that is not the end.

God has not lost, hope has not lost, love has not lost.

Jesus wants us to put things like this in perspective.

Things may seem disastrous, unrecoverable, desperate.

But don’t believe what you see. It is not the end.

Do not give up hope, do not give up what you’ve learned.

Do not give up on God.

 

This temple that they were sitting by

when Jesus said this was amazing.

Many of the stones that were used to build it weighed 28 tons.

Some were bigger than that.

the outer court could hold 400,000 people

it was a marvel of architecture and ingenuity

It was beautiful and impressive,

It still would be today if it were still standing.

 

So when Jesus to talked about the destruction of this place

The disciples’ imagination must have been racing:

what kind of force would make that happen?

What kind of violence and destruction would our people see?

And this was God’s house, where God’s people came to worship.

If the temple was destroyed, would all our people be destroyed?

And what would become of God? 

Would the world lose trust in God if God’s house 

and God’s people were gone? 

But there’s more to people’s understanding of this temple 

than just its might and beauty and strength and the worship of God.

 

Even though it was God’s temple and 

where the people of God worshipped, the disciples and other Jewish people knew how

King Herod had built it: He levied brutal taxes on the people.

He worked in collusion with the Romans 

who oppressed Jewish citizens. 

He built it abusing thousands of slaves and low paid workers.

  

And they also knew why King Herod built it to be

so big and so impressive. 

He built it so he could out-do the pagan temples 

built by pagan rulers. 

It was a statement by Herod to show off his 

choice of gods and to show his own power and glory off before others.

 

In a world of many Gods, the ruler with the biggest temple wins.

Herod believed he had won.

The temple was proof of God’s greatness.

And Herod’s glory was solidified in those 28 ton stones.

Herod’s faith rested on his achievement,

it rested on the grandeur of the building,

it’s strength, it’s ability to stand, it’s beauty.

To many people the temple itself had become an idol.

 

But Jesus said it would come down.

So the end of the temple would also

mean the end of Jewish dominance in the area.

It would be the end of the Jewish place and rule in Jerusalem.

It would be an end to the life they knew.

But it would also mean it would mean the end of the hypocrisy.

and an end to Herod’s tyrannous rule.

What looked like an end, could actually be a beginning.

 

Jesus says, you will see many frightening things,

But the end of the temple is not the end of God.

Just like the cross was not the end of Christ,

it’s not the end of God’s relationship with God’s people.

 

Of course we know now, the temple 

would be destroyed less than 50 years after Jesus lived.

The people who read or heard the gospel of Luke for the first time

would have remembered it first-hand.

Many people died, many things were destroyed

and life would never be exactly the same for any of them.

 

 But like we have seen happen in so many other places,

the remnants stood up in the midst of the devastation

and doctored their wounds and helped one another and

bravely went on to the next day

adjusting their lives around the calamities,

with renewed faith and stronger dependence on God

because of what they’ve been through.

 

And of course, we have seen terrible events in our lifetime

There was AIDS, 9-11, there have been terrible earthquakes,

hurricanes, and tsunamis, the pandemic,

nuclear disasters, ongoing fires, rising tides and floods,

There have been world wars, nuclear bombs,

endless wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemin, now Ukraine.

the list goes on and on and changes in every era.

 

And through all these events, the world has changed.

and natural and human disasters are just one part of those changes. 

Technology, attitudes, the way we behave, sexuality, 

racial relations,  economic situations, things that Nostradamus

didn’t even touch on have changed the world.

The world is not same place that it was in the 80’s

 

And yet, when you think about it,

there is still so much that has remained the same.

The end of everything that I feared

still hasn’t really materialized.

 

The devil wants to tell us that all hope is lost.

That desperate times call us to give up.

The devil would like us to resort to our worst behavior,

to give up on our integrity, our moral compass,

and to give up on the power of love and God.

But Jesus tells us, don’t believe it.

Even if bad things happen all around you,

don’t believe that hope is lost.

Jesus is saying whenever you see the end,

it is also a hope for a new beginning.

 

There will be wars and rumors of wars,

Nation will rise against nation kingdom against kingdom,

there will be earthquakes, plagues, and dreadful signs everywhere. 

But do not lose hope.

 

God does not stand or fall with buildings or

governments, or economies, or cities, or churches, or leaders.

God does not depend on things remaining the same.

And God’s relationship with God’s people does not depend

on the outward signs of peace or prosperity or beauty

so we shouldn’t look to them for our security.

 

This world is flawed and fragile and volatile

but our trust is not in the world or what it holds.

Jesus is telling his friends and us:

Don’t anchor your faith in the strength of a temple,

Or in success, or in beauty, or your good fortune.

 

Rest your faith in God and God alone through all things.

Then you will be able to see strength

and beauty and joy in the midst of our struggles,

because you know that God is always there with us.

God Comes Down To All the Saints

 All Saints Day

For All the Saints
Elizabeth Wang

Luke 6:20-31

November 6, 2022

 

I’m sorry I missed Reformation Sunday last week.

Thanks Rick, for covering for me again.

But if I was here, I would have wanted 

to get one fact across

that was so important to the Reformation

and Luther’s theology and what he said

he would not give up on, even on the threat

of death and exile

 

That is that God comes down to us.

We don’t ascend to God in our works or behavior.

God always comes down to us.

Our seminary professor illustrated it with a ladder.    

People trying to climb their way to God.

 

The Christian church spent almost a thousand

years telling people that we could climb and

claw our way up to God with enough prayers,

church attendance, good works,

and of course money.

But Luther said it doesn’t work that way.

The scriptures don’t say that, and God doesn’t

work like that. God comes down to us.

Just look at Jesus sermon on the mount.

Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry.

Blessed are the hated, excluded, reviled.

Blessed are you. By God and by Jesus.

 

Jesus didn’t say, “come on people,

work your way up here, pull yourself up by

your bootstraps, God wants you to live

your best life now. Climb that ladder.”

 

Jesus said Blessed are they.

And they are they because they are

ready to receive God when God

comes down to meet them.

 

On the other hand

Woe to the rich, the full,

the persistently happy and satisfied ones.

Woe to the ones who haven’t struggled

who haven’t mourned.

The ones who think they’ve got it

all buttoned up. Who think they’ve

successfully climbed that ladder to heaven.

They’re going to miss God.

Because God is down there with the

poor and the hungry and the hated ones.

And it’s a long fall down for the self-satisfied.

 

All Saints Day was originally a day to remember

those who had attained some sort of prestige

And had been declared “saints” by the Roman Catholic Church.

It was originally made to remember the people that had done it.

That had climbed their way up the ladder and achieved

blessedness for themselves

they believed to be just a few rungs below God and Jesus.

Definitely better than any one of us.

 

For those of us who grew up Catholic, maybe we remembered that.

They would take time in worship to talk about the lives

of particular Saints in glowing terms

talking about all they did and

all the things that made them so special.

They seemed perfect to me. So perfect.

 

I remember specifically as a girl growing up listening

To the priest talk about Elizabeth Seton.               

She was the first American to be canonized

as a saint in 1975 so they made a big deal out of it.

I remember them talking about all her accomplishments

the way she gave herself in service,

the way she adopted and raised 11 children,

how she became a nun, how she opened a home for needy children,

and the miracle she was responsible for

(because all the saints had to have caused some sort of miracle)

She seemed absolutely selfless and so perfect

And extremely serious.

 

I think the idea behind telling everyone about these perfect

examples was to show us something that we should aspire to be like.

What we might try to live up to,

what we could do if we applied ourselves spiritually.

How we too could work up that ladder.

But, it did not inspire me. It kind of did the opposite.

I remember sitting there and thinking,

I will never be that good.

I’m never going to be as serious as this woman seems.

And then when they got to the miracle, I tapped out.

Even though my parents acted like everything

I did was amazing and wonderful,

even at a young age, I was pretty sure I was never going to

be a party to a miracle and I wasn’t going to up

to even the next rung on that ladder.

Nope. This is never gonna be me. I will never live up to this.

Not even gonna try.

I don’t think I was alone in that.

 

Luther wasn’t crazy about that idea of saints either.

 

Luther rejected the idea that these people were somehow different

or contained special powers that they should be honored for. 

He thought that people should look up to other people

as examples of what faith could do.

 

But he didn’t think they had achieved some special

status or that they were some super-humans

worth venerating worth praying to or through.

He didn’t think they had climbed up the ladder to God.

 

Luther wrote:

“At whatever time God’s Word is preached taught,

heard, read, or pondered – there the person,

the day, and the work is hallowed.

Not on account of the external work

but on account of the Word, that makes us all saints.”

 

Luther thought that the thing that made a saint

Was being touched by God’s love in Christ.

We were made saints because God came down to us.

 

All of us who have experienced God’s

love, we are all saints. No matter what we’ve

done or haven’t done in our lives.

 

We were all saints 100%

And we are also sinners. 100%.

As human beings we can do nothing else.

We all sin. Everyone of us has fallen short of

God’s glory. Even Elizabeth Seaton and

all those who have been called saints.

We all have our difficult moments and

sometimes those times even outweigh the

good and holy and beautiful moments.

 

We need God’s grace and love.

We need God to come down to us.

And when we realize that need,

that’s when we know God the most.

 

I don’t think it does any service to white-wash life

and call it a saint. To show people

something that we can never attain

and then tell us we should all aspire to it.

It takes the honor and glory away from God and turns it onto us.

 

I was much more inspired to read about people

who have struggled with their faith and with the

world around them and still found God’s grace.

 

But take, for instance, Augustine of Hippo.        

He lived around the 300’s. He is considered one of the church fathers.

He was a prolific writer and was named a doctor of the church.

He was an influence for so many people and a great influence

On Martin Luther especially. He was a saint, but no one would

have thought he was perfect, least of all himself.

 

He wrote an autobiography of his life in which he was

very honest. He talked about sin and his own temptation,

He wrote about when he was young, being tempted by the pears in

a tree in someone else’s yard that he was not supposed to eat from.

 

He remembers he stole the fruit, not because he was hungry,

but because "it was not permitted."

His very nature, he says, was flawed.

"It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own error—

not that for which I erred, but the error itself.

From this incident he concluded the human person

is naturally inclined to sin, and in need of the grace of Christ.”

You can see why Luther liked him so much.

 

He struggled with his wants and desires.

Early in his life he lived with a woman and she had his child

and then his mother forced him to leave her so he could

marry a woman of better standing.

But he was so mournful about leaving her,

that he never got married.

One of his famous quotes was:

“Give me chastity and continence, only not yet.”

 

His other great quotes. (He has many)

“There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”

“In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.”

 

This is a saint I can relate to.

I am very glad that Augustine wrote down

His thoughts and struggles in a book so

That we can’t sanitize his life.

I’m very glad that we don’t venerate certain people on this day,

but that we celebrate every life that has been touched by God.

 

Augustine and Luther both knew that their struggles

Did not make God love them any less.

Their struggles actually helped them to find and experience

Christ’s love more deeply in their lives.

 

There is no ladder to God or heaven.

God has come down to us.

The blessed, the woeful,  those

who have done great things and those who

have done less than great things.

That is what makes us saints.

 

We are not loved by God because we’re saints.

We are saints because we are loved by God.