National Day of Mourning

Things change. It is in their nature to. Big part of following Jesus is dealing with change. I grew up on Indian Hills where we celebrated thanksgiving. Fifty years later the people I respect the most now call it slash national day of mourning. How further could things change? Well they go in circles around God.

People think we are so divided in our politics. I find myself laughing. What is really happening is change and we are coming together and it is difficult. Two hundred years ago when this church was founded it would be broken by slavery. We began in Baltimore conference. Baltimore!!! Rockets red glare bombs bursting in air just nine years earlier.  Baltimore!!! 

Methodist Episcopal Church, Nottingham MEC is what we were for most of our history. The largest Methodist denomination in the country itself only founded in 1784. The first nationally organized church in the country. Nice thing about sermons in the modern Methodist Church not a lot of time for fact checking. Everything I mention I invite you to investigate. Most people will tell you things to stop you. Jesus told people things to free them.

Lots of excitement from 1821, I almost lose my point. by 1860 this ME church would be broken.  No longer the largest or the only one organized. Not yet through our first forty years or the Civil War. We have been more divided. People under Jim Crow south laws walked around as if they made sense. We walk around as if our rules makes sense. Our leaders now say 1.5 degrees Celsius is not so bad and there is nothing we can due now anyways. When people ask why I follow Jesus I simply ask who do you follow? Give me a better example.

We need more holidays.   I've talked about celebrating each other's holidays but we need new ones. There was a time when there were none.  People are afraid to take a critical view.   I think this is a natural occurrence.  There is a great truth about problems.  Some of them will solve themselves. Certainly not everyone and the trick is to know which ones. Sometimes the answer is to do nothing.

The first time I experience this and really understood it was in a professional setting.  The job that was in front of me was impossible.  So I started doing what I could knowing that I would not be able to solve every problem I had before me.  Something surprising happened.  Some of the problems took care of themselves.  I looked in amazement and wanted to tell someone.  We don't usually tell people when we solve a problem by doing nothing.  I didn't tell anybody, but I remember that I wanted to.

Well here you are and another thing has taken care of itself.  Hoping problems solve themselves doesn't seem to be much help in my experience.  Like a store where something is sold.  There are people coming there to just spend money.  There are other people that have no idea why they are there.  A good salesman in my mind doesn't get in the way of the first group and deals with the reality of the latter group.  Ice sold to people in the artic in my mind is not a good sale.  

So here we find ourselves in the next two hundred years at Nottingham. This first week of advent this new year for the church soon to be broken again. Sometimes things need to be broken. Jesus sure was.  Behind us we have Christ the King Sunday and ahead of us we have twelve days of Christmas and the rest of our year.

It is nice how we gather in Advent to begin our year.  Almost like we get a head start on the rest of the world.  We are in the first season again on the road to Bethlehem.  None of us the first time around.  Some of us spun around and confused.  These years like the generations mingle through.  I hope to show you here today it is why things are so hard to fix.

Here today in our scripture we have something different from a lesson. Not an example cause this here today we don't have to do just Jesus does. When Jesus talks about his yoke being light I believe this is part of what he is talking about.

Luke 21:25-36 which I read from the Amplified Bible is our scripture for today:

25 “There will be signs (attesting miracles) in the sun and moon and stars; and on the earth [there will be] distress and anguish among nations, in perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea and the waves, 26 people fainting from fear and expectation of the [dreadful] things coming on the world; for the [very] powers of the heavens will be shaken."

Today we feel like we have been through so much.  That day when Jesus said this people felt they had been through so much.  We have each learned lessons of things then and now that shake at the very powers of heaven.  I would mention the holocausts and maybe the twenty seven million soviet citizens that died for our freedoms.  Something that is never mentioned enough in my mind.

For the contemporaries of Jesus they would not have to think long to come to something that shakes the very powers of heaven, their Temple after all was not their first.  Remembering Egypt was high up there in the their holidays.  

 27 "Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with [transcendent, overwhelming] power [subduing the nations] and with great glory. 28 Now when these things begin to occur, stand tall and lift up your heads [in joy], because [suffering ends as] your redemption is drawing near.”

Pretty good way to start the year.  Bit of a spoiler.  It is telling to note where we start this year on the road to Jerusalem celebrating where we will arrive.  Through the shadow of the valley of many things we will come.

29 Then He told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; 30 as soon as they put out leaves, you see it and know for yourselves that summer is near. 31 So you too, when you see these things happening, know [without any doubt] that the kingdom of God is near. 32 I assure you and most solemnly say to you, this generation [those living at that definite period of time preceding the second coming] will not pass away until [a]everything takes place. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.

I don't think I have an answer here because I am not sure there is one.  Mark records this generation will not pass as well.  There are no answers that I like among those who have theories.  People say Jesus must be talking about future generations.  There is also this idea of double fulfillment which is even less satisfying.  Somehow it was a true prophesy for future generation and that generation because the Temple was destroyed a second time.  About the worst thing the contemporaries of Jesus could imagine happening.

Maybe I wonder here if this is why things are so hard to fix: these generations.  When I was younger people seemed older.  Now that I am older people of seem younger.  There was something that I identified early in life: people cycle through and institutions go along with little memory.  Even our church no one who has been here two hundred years.  Some people linger but those in charge today were not in charge yesterday.  The new person that shows up next week will not worry about that.

We go through stages in life.  The year 2021 seemed so far away to me. It did not to my daughter.  We replace ourselves and have been mingling in since the time of Jesus.  This institution of Christianity traces itself directly to the life of this man.  How many people and who were in charge has cycled and circle and almost exhausted itself and in other times did not have enough room for all that wanted to enter.

I'm not sure what exactly is gonna happen in the kingdom the return of Jesus will usher in, but I think what will change most is these generations will be different.  I almost wonder will we have enough people by then.  

34 “But be on guard, so that your hearts are not weighed down and depressed with the giddiness of debauchery and the nausea of self-indulgence and the worldly worries of life, and then that day [when the Messiah returns] will not come on you suddenly like a trap; 35 for it will come upon all those who live on the face of all the earth. 36 But keep alert at all times [be attentive and ready], praying that you may have the strength and ability [to be found worthy and] to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand in the presence of the Son of Man [at His coming].”

It's the generations that mingle through. Why nothing is ever done and how everything is. I noticed this when I was young and saw people retire.  There were certain people that read the news when I first learned that was a thing.  They have all gone.  I think it would be funny for those news readers to see what the current news calls news, but they are all gone or gone quiet.

That first Thanksgiving took place on the land of the Wampanoag Nation, with 30,000 to 100,000 people spread across their land.  They did not eat turkey I can tell you.  They helped them survive to ensure their own demise, well there are 2,800 still there today.  Ignored by the 1.5 million visitors to Plymouth rock.

The Wampanoags, whose name means “People of the First Light” in their native language, trace their ancestors back at least 10,000 years to southeastern Massachusetts, a land they called Patuxet. In the 1600s, they lived in 69 villages, each with a chief and a medicine man.

The Wampanoags were nearly wiped out by a mysterious disease that some Wampanoags believe came from the feces of rats aboard European boats, while other historians think it was likely small pox or possibly yellow fever.  Known as “The Great Dying,” the pandemic lasted three years.

The Wampanoags kept tabs on the Pilgrims for months. In their first winter, half died due to cold, starvation and disease.  By the fall, the Pilgrims — thanks in large part to the Wampanoags teaching them how to plant beans and squash in a mound with maize around it and use fish remains as fertilizer — had their first harvest of crops.

To celebrate its first success as a colony, the Pilgrims had a “harvest feast” that became the basis for what’s now called Thanksgiving. The Wampanoags weren’t invited.  They showed up only after the English in their revelry shot off some of their muskets. At the sound of gunfire, the Wampanoags came running, fearing they were headed to war.

The people who saved them the year before were not invited to the first Thanksgiving.  There would not be something as conventional as war.  

Seneca scholar John Mohawk wrote that according to his culture, “an individual is not smart […] but merely lucky to be part of a system that has intelligence. Be humble about this. The real intelligence isn’t the property of an individual; the real intelligence is the property of the universe itself.”

I think there is something that will happen to the generations to stop this round and round and bring us our memory.  Perhaps this is part of what Jesus is, the word.  We are learning as much about the past as the future.  Things with the possibility to finally be fixed.  Gives us no excuse to break things.  Here on the road to Bethlehem we know the destination.  We fail sometime, but we don't plan to.  

The start of the year is where we find ourselves.  In the second two hundred years of Nottingham, Jesus may come back in them, but if not we plan to still be waiting.  Around the year.  Around the generations.  Now past the end of the year, Christ the king represented by one banner in one corner.  Heading to twelve days of Christmas represented in the other corner.  Here we are in Advent.  So be here in Advent.  I invite you to live each of these weeks Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.

Let Us Pray

From Psalm 63:2-9

O God, you are my God, for you I long;

for you my soul is thirsting.

My body pines for you

like a dry, weary land without water.

So I gaze on you in the sanctuary

to see your strength and your glory.

For your love is better than life,

my lips will speak your praise.

So I will bless you all my life,

in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul shall be filled as with a banquet,

my mouth shall praise you with joy.

On my bed I remember you.

On you I muse through the night

for you have been my help;

in the shadow of your wings I rejoice.

My soul clings to you;

your right hand holds me fast.

Hold us fast, Hold Nottingham fast

We ask in Jesus' Name, Amen

Benediction

Go out

Go in circles

Keep doing what is right

Until all the roads our lord makes straight

Until all of us are called home

Be the blessing Jesus has for others

Praying that you may have the strength and ability

Nottingham UMC 11/28/2021