Sermons And Speeches |
And a few articles
Sermons And Speeches |
Nicole M. Garcia
Mount Calvary Lutheran Church, Boulder CO Preached August 5, 2018 (click on date for audio recording) I have attended text study with the pastors in the Boulder/Broomfield Conference for many years. Every week, pastors get together to read the Scripture passages for the following Sunday and talk about possible sermon ideas. Summers, however, are notorious for low attendance at text study. Last week, there were five of us. The four pastors who attended last Tuesday were retired. One of them is serving as an interim pastor in Longmont and is preaching this morning, so that made two of us who are preaching today, but I was the only one preaching on the text from Genesis. I asked my learned colleagues if they would take 15 minutes of our time in text study to talk about God’s creation of the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, flies, or swims. Frankly, I was at a loss what to bring to you today and guidance from my elders was an answer to my prayer. Suggestions included talking about creation versus evolution. Meh. Another suggestion was to talk about how God is continually creating and re-creating the world in which we live. Good, but I found no inspiration. A third suggested topic was the revelation of God through creation. This idea piqued my interest until someone talked about the Incarnation. When a creed is read in service, it is usually the Apostle’s Creed. I love the Apostle’s Creed for it declares my faith in God almighty and I say the Apostle’s Creed each and every day to remind myself I believe in the Holy Trinity. The Apostle’s Creed, however, glosses over the Incarnation, so this week I asked for the Nicene Creed to be read after the Hymn of the Day. Please turn to page 7 of the bulletin. The Nicene Creed was begun at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 in the Common Era and was finalized at the Second Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 381 CE. Forgive me. I just finished seminary and these facts are still pouring out. I hope I get over it soon. Anyway, I wanted to have the Nicene Creed read because we do have to be reminded of the foundation of our belief in God Almighty, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and the Nicene Creed underscores the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Please go to line five of the creed on page 7. “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ.” Now, count down eight lines to, “For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.” That my friends, is the Incarnation. God came to earth, was born of a woman, and became human. If you totally get what that means, please explain it to me because God was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and became a man. How can God become man and still be God? If I turn my head and squint a little bit, I still don’t quite get it. Being a good Lutheran, I go to my bookcase and select the Book of Concord. I trust everyone has a Book of Concord. The book is actually a collection of writing compiled in the late 1500s to answer the question: what does it mean to be a Lutheran. If you want to know more about the Book of Concord, stop by my office sometime and we can have a nice long talk. My point is when I have questions about the foundations of my faith, I start here, so I turned to page 39 and find Article 3 of the Augsburg Confession a document written primarily by Philip Melanchthon and published in 1531. Uff dah. I really need to get past this. Anyway, this is the first document that attempted to answer the question: What does it mean to be a Lutheran? Article 3, Concerning the Son of God. Likewise, they [Lutherans] teach that the Word, that is the son of God, took upon himself human nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary so that there might be two natures, divine and human, inseparately conjoined in the unity of one person, one Christ, truly God and truly a human, being “born of the Virgin Mary…” Well, I don’t know if I got a lot of clarification, so I went to a commentary on the Augsburg Confessions. This is when I realized I became what I often joke about. Lutherans tend to grab hold of all our theology books and jump into the deep end of the theological pool and I have books; just take a look in my office upstairs at my book case. My desk at home is surrounded by books, but I can only learn so much from books. Like many Lutherans I know, I tend to sit at the bottom of the pool drowning in my thoughts about God rather than walking through this world with God. If anyone actually lived out what it meant to walk through this world with God, it was one of my favorite theologians, the Rev. Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I found a short piece published in 1937 called Creation and Fall: The Image of God on Earth. I read the chapter in this book and then put the book down. I realized I had to stop reading and start thinking for myself. What does the Incarnation really mean to me? What difference does it make to me that my Lord, Jesus Christ, was made human and walked this earth? It means everything. God came to earth to have a relationship with me. God came to earth to have a relationship with you. God knows what it is like to have sore feet and what it is like to not get enough sleep and what it is like to be questioned over an over by those he loved. He knows life on this planet is not easy and the only way to get through it all is to be in relationship with God and with each other. I am here today because I have no doubt God loves me. I am here today because I love the Lord, my God, with all my heart, mind, and soul. I am here today because each of you have touched my life in some way. For two years, I was here as your “seminarian-on-staff.” You were my professors. I learned from you, just as much as I learned from any professor at Luther Seminary, what it really means to be a pastor. Now that I am back, we are learning together what it means to walk in faith and how to profess our faith to all those around us. God wants to be in relationship with me. God wants to be in relationship with you. God wants us to be in relationship with each other so we can walk together in faith. Everyday each one of us has to take time to nurture that relationship with God in prayer and devotion. Everyday we have to reach out to the people around us and nurture the relationships with the people who love us. Sometimes it is easy, sometimes it is the most difficult thing to do—reaching out. There are days it is all I can do to hold a stuffed bear in my arms and cry to God, “I can’t do this anymore.” There are days when it is all I can do to reach out to a friend and say, “do you have a few minutes?” There are days when I can stretch out my hand and say, “I’m here if you need to talk.” But no matter where I am or what time it is, I can always say, “Lord, can we talk?” Thanks be to God.
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