Sermon Index
December 1, 2013. First Sunday in Advent
I wanted to have a theme for this Advent and Christmas season. There are many great themes and topics: hope, joy, love, peace, and many others. I decided on the theme of “Peace” because it sounds just another English word, the homonym “piece.” The first peace is when everything is nice and complete and whole. The second piece, or better pieces, is when everything is scattered and falling apart and troubled and broken. We and this world lack peace because everything is in pieces: our lives, the country, the system, the ecology, our hearts, our families, our health, our salvation. And so the challenge for us this Advent shall be, how can the peace of Christmas bring true peace to our broken world and shattered hearts? The Christmas Angels sang (Luke 2:14) “ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” Can we find that peace?
A jigsaw puzzle has many pieces. When you put them all together you have a complete picture. You see your completed puzzle and have a feeling, a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, and peace. Let’s use our imagination and look at this world as God’s big jigsaw puzzle.
Genesis Chapter One tells us about the Creation of the world. It is like God putting the world together with six pieces in six days: light, firmament, vegetation, stars, birds & fish, animals & people. And God looked at the puzzle he completed and saw that it was good. It was the Garden of Eden. There was peace between people and animals so that they did not fear each other. Even work in the Garden was not strenuous, but a pleasure. Then in Genesis Chapter Three, Satan started to move the meaning of the pieces around and temptation and sin came into the world. It is interesting that God did not dismantle his puzzle and start all over again. He added a new piece to curtail rabid sin: he added death. A person would no longer live forever and so would not commit sin forever.
Then Genesis Chapter Six tells us that people covered the face of the whole earth. His beautiful earth was coming apart because of the wickedness of people. God did not quite dismantle his puzzle into a million pieces, but in the flood he started anew. Then in the post-flood era, to help curb sin, God added the piece that said that the lifespan of people should be limited to 120 years.
Then Chapter Eleven tells us that as people spread over the face of the whole earth, their pride and ambition and foolishness spread was so great, as in the Tower of Babel, that to protect people from each other, he confused their languages. People scattered over the face of all the earth, it was like a jigsaw puzzle that fell off the table onto the floor and pieces scattered all over the floor.
And then God took one piece, the man Abraham, and started to put the world back together again. Genesis 12:2-3 says, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the twelve tribes of Israel, the nation of Israel. Then because of idolatry, that country was scattered and sent into exile, but God remembered his promise and brought his people home to Jerusalem to start again.
What we see here is a pattern to God’s love and faithfulness. Even though sin breaks the world into pieces, God’s love works to bring it back together again and again. Then in Jesus Christ, God puts things together in a new way. Rather than punishing sin, God forgives sin. Rather than destroying the world and punishing mankind, God is making a new creation. Rather than the death of people, Jesus takes the death of people onto himself in a new way of overcoming sin and death and separation. There are some fancy theological expressions for this: “atonement, reconciliation, propitiation.” These big words get lost at Christmas, because there is a very simple word for it: “peace.”
Amen.
Michael Nearhood, Pastor
Okinawa Lutheran Church