{"id":452,"date":"2019-10-06T21:28:22","date_gmt":"2019-10-06T21:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/?p=452"},"modified":"2019-10-07T01:30:31","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T01:30:31","slug":"seventeenth-sunday-after-pentecost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/2019\/10\/06\/seventeenth-sunday-after-pentecost\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4<\/strong>,\n2 Timothy 1:1-14<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grace to you and peace from\nGod our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Habakkuk\ngives us a discouraging image of his world. You get the same feeling by reading\nthe Gospel from Luke for today (though for different reasons) and from our\nreading from 2 Timothy. Yet none of these readings end with a feeling of\nhopelessness. The Lord promises Habakkuk that he will set things right, Paul\nreminded Timothy that God will shepherd him and the Christian community thru\ntheir persecution and in the Gospel, Jesus spoke of a kind of justice; these passages\nalong with the Psalm end in such a way as to bring to a sense of hope. Anyway,\nthese readings were speaking of a time long ago, still as I look at the world\naround us now, the words of Habakkuk ring true for us today. Wars abound;\nterrorism is all around us; senseless street violence is a daily event; families\naround us, maybe even our own, are torn apart by disagreements; I see in other congregations\u2019\ncontention and discomfort; we too here at St. Peter\u2019s have our moments of\ndisagreement and dissatisfaction and worry. How long, oh Lord, shall we cry for\nhelp? How long before there is peace and those around us find acceptance, even\nin disagreement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things\nmay be no worse than centuries before, but I hear young couples questioning\nwhether it is right to bring children into the world, with all the questions of\nunrest and violence. I also here young mothers and fathers speak of their\nworries for their young children\u2019s futures. The truth is, and we need to be\nreminded of this, our time is no worse than the times of Habakkuk, the\nPsalmist, Jesus and Paul; the truth is, as bad as things appear, it\u2019s never as\nbad as it looks. Philadelphia for example, by watching the news, appears as a\nwar zone. We see on the news that there are a lot of shootings; there is lot of\nviolence. However, Philadelphia is a big city and most of the city is not\nsubject to the violence reported in the news. I\u2019m just pointing out that we are\nwrong to paint the whole city with such a broad brush. Thursday morning, I\nawoke to the news and the story of violence involved the death of a police\nofficer in Paris, France; Philly, Pennsylvania, our country must have had a\nquiet and peaceful night if the lead story is out of France; thankfully though,\nwe see very little violence of any of this kind in our local communities. But what\nabout what we don\u2019t see; unfortunately, there is violence around us that often\ntakes place behind closed doors: domestic violence between spouses and between\nparents and children, the poor, some of whom are refugees and immigrants are\nmistreated, employers and landlords sometimes abuse or ignore the needs of\nthose that work for them or live in their buildings. And then there is racism,\nsexism, prejudice, both institutionalized and personalized, that causes unrest\nand occasional violence. So, even in Chester Springs, in our time, we could sit\nwith Habakkuk, the Psalmist, and the Apostle Paul and say much the same things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But,\nand this is so very important, the Lord made it possible for Habakkuk and the Psalmist\nto find hope and Jesus (not really in today\u2019s reading, but evident in 2 Timothy,\nJesus achieved for us through his death, forgiveness and salvation) so even\namidst persecution Paul\u2019s reassurance could help the persecuted to climb above their\nfeelings of hopelessness, and by faith in Jesus, find joy. This hope, this joy,\nbegins for all of us on our day of baptism. It doesn\u2019t matter that violence is\na part of the world around us, in Jesus there is much love and hope. Jesus took\naway the power of evil and violence. Evil, violence and killing are still here,\nmuch like an annoying fox that raids the chicken coop and harms some of the chickens\nand that lone mosquito that gets into our bedrooms and buzzes around our ears\nand bites us, making us itch. They cause us trouble, they make us\nuncomfortable, they may even do us harm, but we know that through Jesus the\nevil of the world cannot overcome us, for we have God\u2019s help, love and forgiveness,\nalong with the promise of salvation. We know that through the Holy Spirit, we\nare given strength and wisdom to face whatever threats may confront us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul\nmakes the point in 2 Timothy that \u201cGod did not give us a spirit of cowardice,\nbut rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.\u201d We who are\nbaptized can stand boldly for what is right, for justice and mercy; we can\nstand up with the poor, the disabled, the sick, the oppressed, the stranger and\nhelp them as the Spirit gives us the ability, offering them the love of Jesus Christ,\nin deed and in our words. We can be an oasis in a desert of violence. This all\nbegins at our baptisms; we as adults, help with this, as we fulfill our vows for\nour children. As we grow as baptized children of God, we more fully live into\nour faith, allowing the Spirit to strengthen us, give us courage, stand up\nagainst evil and share the love and word of Jesus. As the people of God, as the\nchurch of Jesus Christ, we stand, first and foremost for God\u2019s will and love,\nregardless the position of any political system. Our calling as Christians is a\nhigher calling, a calling that is not limited by national, political, sport,\nclub, race, or language loyalties. As we baptize David, let us each of us renew\nour baptismal vows for our children and as confirmed\/adult members of the\nLutheran\/Christian Church; and let us renew our commitment to the confirmation\/membership\nvows we have taken before the Lord our God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4, 2 Timothy 1:1-14 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ Habakkuk gives us a discouraging image of his world. You get the same feeling by reading the Gospel from Luke for today (though for different reasons) and from our reading Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-and-services"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":453,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}