2015
Sermons
Dez 27 - The Cost of Christmas
Dez 27 - Living in God's Peace
Dez 24 - Not "Hide and Seek"
Dez 20 - Barren
Dez 13 - What Are We to Do?
Dez 8 - What is next?
Dez 6 - Imagination
Nov 29 - Perseverance
Nov 22 - What is truth?
Nov 15 - Live today for tomorrow
Nov 8 - Remembering, Focusing, Anticipating
Nov 1 - In the end, God
Okt 25 - Automatic Blessings?
Okt 18 - Worth-ship
Okt 11 - Donkey Tracks and Skid Marks
Okt 4 - As Beggars
Sep 27 - Living in Unity with other Christians - don't hurt them!
Sep 20 - On the Way to Capernaum
Sep 13 - Strange Places, Persons, and Actions
Sep 6 - Life in Focus
Aug 30 - Work-Shoe Faith
Aug 23 - Our Captain in the well-fought fight
Aug 20 - Time for hospitality
Aug 16 - It Is About Jesus
Aug 14 - Remember
Aug 9 - Bread of Life
Aug 2 - A Hard Teaching
Jul 26 - Peter, and Us
Jul 19 - Need for a Shepherd
Jul 12 - How Can I Keep From Singing?
Jul 5 - Making a Sale?
Jun 28 - The Healer and the Healing Community
Jun 21 - Two Kinds of Fear
Jun 14 - Unlikely
Jun 7 - Where the Fingers Point
Mai 31 - Just Do It
Mai 24 - To declare the wonderful deeds of God....
Mai 17 - Everyone named "Justus"
Mai 16 - In God's Good Time
Mai 12 - Take Hold of Life
Mai 10 - Holy People, Holy Time, Holy Fruit
Mai 3 - The Master Gardener
Apr 26 - The Good Shepherd
Apr 19 - Mission Possible
Apr 12 - With Scars
Apr 5 - Afraid
Apr 4 - This Program presented by....God
Apr 3 - How much does he care?
Apr 3 - God's answer to cruelty
Apr 2 - Actions of the Covenant
Mrz 29 - Extravagance!
Mrz 22 - Sir, We Wish to See Jesus
Mrz 18 - The Church's song in peace and joy
Mrz 15 - Doxology
Mrz 11 - This Is the Feast
Mrz 8 - Why keep them?
Mrz 1 - Hope Does Not Disappoint
Feb 25 - The Church's Song of Hope and Confidence
Feb 22 - Jesus vs. the Wild Things
Feb 18 - Psalm 51: The Church's Song in praise of God's Forgiveness
Feb 15 - In Wonder
Feb 8 - Sent, Under Orders
Feb 2 - In praise of routine
Feb 1 - Tied up in Impossible Knots
Jan 25 - What kind of God?
Jan 18 - What Kind of Stone?
Jan 13 - In the Fullness of Time
Jan 11 - A pile of dirt?
Jan 4 - By another way…
Living in God's Peace
Read: Luke 2:22-33
Remembrance Service - December 27, 2015
Simeon has been waiting.
Long years he has been waiting,
waiting to see what God will do with and for Israel, his chosen.
Simeon has been waiting,
and despite all of the social and political mess, he has not given up hope;
Even though he recognizes that things are not as they should be in Israel, he does not despair.
He looks for, prays for, hopes for what new thing God will do.
Simeon has been waiting
and his faithful waiting is not in vain.
He expects to see some hint of what God plans to do, and he does.
Mary and Joseph bring the child Jesus to the Temple,
and by a gift of the Holy Spirit, Simeon recognizes that in this child are centered all the hopes of Israel.
He sings the song that we sing twice this evening, the song title is the Nunc dimittis, its first two words in Latin.
Now your servant is set free, allowed to go in peace, freed from bondage,.
Like the exuberance of cows and calves that have been shut up in a barn all winter that are suddenly able to race around the fresh pasture.
Simeon sing that now there is a chance for that kind of joy in Israel, because:
Mine eyes have seen your salvation.
It is a marvelous play on words.
The very name of Jesus means
the Lord is my salvation.
So Simeon literally held God's salvation with his eyes and his arms.
I can go in peace, he says.
Simeon has been waiting,
but now he says that he has seen how everything and everyone in all creation fit together, that is, he has beheld peace, God's peace, in the person of Jesus Christ.
No, it has not been all played out yet, but Simeon has waited and has seen enough to know that what God has committed himself to do will certainly be completed.
This Good News is for insiders and outsiders, Simeon sings, for Jew and Gentile alike.
Simeon has waited, and now can go, live, work, pray, praise, and do things in confidence because he has seen God's peace and held God's salvation in his hands.
The Good News to each person here this afternoon is that by the gift of the Holy Spirit, we can say and sing exactly the same thing!
To those who have been in bondage to sorrow, there is Good News
Sorrow and grief are not the last words.
Today we receive the new word of God: The Lord is my salvation to apprehend with our ears and to hold in our hands, and to treasure in our hearts.
The Holy Communion is just such a word.
The promise of God means what it says and says what it does.
And true peace, God's peace – everything put into its proper relationship and order – is beginning to break into our lives.
Our sorrows, as real and as painful as they are, will yet be put right.
The community fractured by death will be re-made, and we have a sample of it here.
When we light the candles on the Memory tree this afternoon, it is not to represent community broken, but the hope of community restored, with the light of the living join the light of those who are now in the heavenly chorus.
Simeon waited, and we have waited too.
Lord, now you send out your servants from this place with a glimpse of creation remade and living in connection with Christ Jesus.
One of Luther's friends wrote a hymn which says it clearly:
Salvation unto us has come,
by God's free grace and favor.
Faith looks to Jesus Christ alone,
Who did for all the world atone.
He is our mediator. [LBW# 298.1]
Lord, we have waited, we have heard him, we have seen him, we have held him; salvation is come to us.
Lord, we can live, now and forever. Amen.
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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. |