Tag Archives: practice

Preaching, Sermons

Love Takes Practice [Or Mirabel: Truth-Telling Saves the Miracle] Luke 4:21-30 and 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

sermon art: Madrigal family from the movie Encanto https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2953050/

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on January 30, 2022

[sermon begins after two Bible readings – reading the Corinthians reading is a real boost so go for it]

Luke 4:21-30 Then [Jesus] began to say to [all in the synagogue in Nazareth,] “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ ” 24And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

[sermon begins]

Mirabel had a problem. The Madrigals, Mirabel’s family in the animated movie Encanto, were so focused on protecting their home that they struggled to tell the truth about their challenges. Challenges big and small that meant the Madrigals weren’t perfect. Mirabel could see the problem. She could see that the family was struggling. She could see that their house, in which they all lived as one big generational family, was cracking under the pressure of this really big problem that no one would talk about. Luisa wasn’t as strong as everyone thought. Abuela wasn’t as certain. And Bruno’s visions of the truth were such a threat that he left the family, and no one talked about Bruno – no, no, no. The Madrigals story is an allegory about the pressures that immigrants face to excel and be perfect so that they can keep their new homes. Their story also applies to families more generally – who gets to speak, who gets heard, and how the truth is told or not told. While Bruno was the one with the visions, Mirabel ended up being the truth-teller. Even her Abuela, her grandmother, finally listens to her but it was a tough sell. Mirabel paid a heavy price for being the Madrigals’ truth-teller.

Truth-teller is another word for prophet. Biblical prophecy is more about truth-telling, God’s truth in particular, and not about seeing the future. Jesus knew this when he said to his friends and family in Nazareth, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” Truth-tellers often bear the burden of push-back from people who don’t want to hear it, or in Jesus’ case, the threat of being pushed off a cliff. We heard the first part of Jesus’ story in the Nazarene synagogue last week when his friends and family were amazed to hear Jesus’ words and celebrated his teaching. Oh, how quickly the tide turned against him because he then said something they were not ready to hear. He changed gears on them, flipped the script, inverted the priorities (as Pastor Ann preached about last week). Jesus turned their expectations of him upside down and they were furious. Their rage had them ready to commit murder, to kill Jesus by hurling him off a cliff. The story is not clear how, “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”  Truth-tellers attract painful encounters because people will go to great lengths to avoid and push-back at the truth.

One trick about telling the truth is not being a jerk about it. Part of Mirabel’s effectiveness in the movie story is how much she loves her family. Her love for them and their love for each other made space for the truth. Each member of the Madrigal family has a gift, even Mirabel. Their gifts each serve a greater purpose in the story than they’re able to see at the beginning. It becomes a story wider than just their family and greater than only saving their home. It kind of makes you wonder if the movie writers knew Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Tucked in the middle of Paul’s teaching about spiritual gifts in chapters 12 and 14, is this stunning section about love in chapter 13 – one of the most well-known parts of scripture because it’s often chosen as a reading at weddings. But Paul isn’t preaching at a wedding, he is writing to the church in Corinth. This Corinthian church had been arguing among themselves about all kinds of things, setting up hierarchies of leadership, gifts, and insiders and outsiders. Paul’s letter opens in gratitude for these wayward, faithful people and then unfolds a counter proposal to these hierarchies and their behavior around them. By nesting the love chapter within the gifts, Paul points to love as the reason for the gifts. Love is THE gift, the greatest of all. The gifts point to love. To paraphrase Paul, if I sing like an angel but without love, I’m just making noise; if I can solve every mystery and have oodles of faith but no love, it amounts to nothing; and if I give everything I own away without love, nothing is gained.

Love is as counter cultural as it gets right now in the United States – especially in public. It’s like there’s a $100 million dollar contest for who can be the meanest and most self-absorbed. It doesn’t help that most of our news sources dust up as much controversy as possible because there’s a very human inclination to find out what the fuss is about. And a riled-up, hateful community is more profitable than a calm, loving one. The algorithms, and the artificial intelligence behind the algorithms, lead us to topics that we’re already inclined to believe based on the choices we’ve been making, funneling us to ever more polarizing and agitating content. Here’s the thing. If we practice anger, we’re going to get really good at anger. Same thing with envy and arrogance. Want to be the best at being rude? Keep being rude. We’re not complicated creatures. We tend to do what we practice doing. Paul called his church folks to practice love based on Christ’s example because what they’d been doing was taking them down the wrong road. We’ve seen what it looks like when spiritual gifts are used to manipulate people. Charisma without love can rob people blind. It’s more than noisy gongs and clanging symbols. It’s dangerous. People will get hurt.[1]

Love is not ‘going along to get along.’ It’s neither unity through muting differences, nor is it giving up on finding solutions to problems because it’s too hard. Love means that each person is valuable. No one is expendable. Paul describes love as behavior. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love rejoices in the truth. Love bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things. Here’s your homework for the week. Take home your bulletin. Read 1 Corinthians 13. Underline verses and make notes in the margins. What does love already look like in your life? How has who God created you to be, including your gifts, help point you to love? How can you practice love this week? Here’s a pro-tip. Buy yourself time. Ask for time if the situation allows for it. Time between your first reaction to something and how you would respond in love. For some that means counting or praying in their heads. Others might set a timer on their phone. Others may take a literal time out and move to a different room or take a bathroom break. However you do it, make time between your instinctive reaction, the reaction that only you are privy to because it happens in your mind and body, and how you want to respond if love is indeed the greatest of all things. Our bodies can’t go where our mind hasn’t gone. Sometimes we must buy time for our minds to prioritize love before we can respond in love. It’s a choice. Love takes practice.

We don’t know what other people are going through. We can’t know their whole situation. We see other people’s situations dimly and see God even more dimly. Paul reminds us that someday we’ll see God but, in the meantime, we are fully known by God. In the mess of who you actually are, God promises to love you no matter what. One of the things we do at church is practice God’s love through Jesus, imitating it and reminding each other about it. We confess the truth of our flaws and fragility and hear God’s love and forgiveness in return. We listen to scripture and the preacher’s interpretation. We welcome children and listen to them. We share peace and then we share the communion meal to which everyone is invited, even the newest visitor among us may come to Christ’s table of bread and wine. We sing in prayer and praise to God who knows us fully and has always loved us because God loves the world.

God loves us first. From God’s promise of love, we’re asked to practice God’s love with each other, our neighbors and our enemies. A patient, kind, and truthful love that bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things – the greatest of all gifts indeed.

_____________________________________________________________

[1] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Dear Working Preacher: Staggering Love (re: 1 Corinthians 13). January 23, 2022. https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/staggering-love

Preaching

Spiritual and Religious – Acts 2:14a, 22-32 and John 20:19-31

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on April 23, 2017

[sermon begins after two Bible readings]

Acts 2:14a, 22-32  But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.
22 “You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know— 23 this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. 24 But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. 25 For David says concerning him, “I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken; 26 therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will live in hope. 27 For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption. 28 You have made known to me the ways of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ 29 “Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30 Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne. 31 Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying, “He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption.’ 32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.

John 20:19-31 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” 26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

[sermon begins]

In Genesis 1, the first account of creation, God’s spirit moved over the waters and created humankind in the image of God.  In Genesis 2, another account of creation, the Lord God breathed the breath of life into the first human.[1]  In the 18th book of the Hebrew Bible, Job writes, “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”[2]  Eleven books later, in the book of Joel, “…the Lord said:  …I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, [and] your old men shall dream dreams…”[3]  In today’s reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus breathes on the disciples and says to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”[4]  And in the Acts reading we just heard, Peter preaches on the breath of the Spirit just received on Pentecost.[5]  That’s so much Spirit in one sermon-opening it would be easy to think your pastor was ordained by Pentecostals![6]  Although I’m guessing some of you may still be back at “the first account of creation” and “another account of creation.”

These creation stories caught me in seminary.  First semester, first assignment in Hebrew Bible we had to read Genesis 1 and 2 and write a brief exegesis.  Not once in the prior 38 years had it occurred to me that these are two accounts.  Needless to say, my exegetical commentary didn’t go over very well with the professor.  It was a rude awakening for me on several levels, letter grade notwithstanding. The gift in it was a new experience of the Bible.  66 books written over many thousands of years by faithful people trying to understand God, their faith, and each other.  Recently I gave a Lutheran Study Bible to a new friend along with a brief introduction to what’s in it and an invitation to come back around with any questions that come up.  I also said, “It’s a weird book, sometimes the people writing it disagree amongst themselves.”  Internal disagreement is one of the things I love about the Bible as it echoes conversations about faith we have right up through today.  Although, discovering these biblical wrinkles can be one of the things that shakes up faith.  Faith can also be shaken by challenges of modernity, by confrontations with other religions, or by suffering we see and experience ourselves.[7]  Just ask Thomas.

Thomas experienced trauma through the suffering and death of Jesus. He missed the first sighting of Jesus with the other disciples so they’re in a different place of faith than Thomas is himself. Jesus arrives and starts showing off his resurrected wounds in a way that reminds me of the scar scene from the movie Jaws, mesmerizing yet gruesome.[8]  Some of us crave a similar moment of certainty with Jesus, an unequivocal, supernatural revelation that proves faith once and for all time.  Most of us experience Jesus differently, the power of the Spirit moving slowly and methodically like water on stone.  The gospel of John calls this movement of the Spirit, “Word,” – “…And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.”[9]  The Word proclaimed by John is continuous with the breath of God at creation,[10] continuous with the Word made flesh in the earthly ministry of Jesus ending in glory on a cross,[11] continuous with Peter’s sermon inspiring the early church, and continuous with the Word we hear and speak today.  Therein lies the question.  How does the Word find us today? As Genesis tells it, the whole world is enlivened by the breath of the spirit. The assertion makes all people spiritual by definition, if not by confession. This aligns with nursing science that describes well-being as physical, emotional, and spiritual.  It also aligns with people who self-describe as “spiritual but not religious.”  But what about those of us who are religious?  How is the religious understood in continuity with the spiritual?  Just ask Thomas, and maybe Peter too.

Thomas is caught.  His friends are talking about something he hasn’t experienced first-hand.  These people are his people but he’s on the outside even though he’s in the same room with them.  It makes me think of the conversation that I have with new and continuing visitors – that there are as many different reasons for being here together as there are people here.  Gathered by the Holy Spirit into this time and place, we receive faith through Word and sacrament and we practice faith through worship with other people.  Continuous with the faith of the early church enlivened by the Spirit and proclaimed by Peter.  Religious Christianity involves a people and a practice that proclaims something about Jesus, something lively, something universal for the world, and something particular for each person.  For all and for you.

Religious Christian practice necessarily involves people’s stories about faith and life like Thomas and Peter’s stories. How else do people come to faith otherwise? This struck me again recently during Lenten worship on Thursdays. Different people each week chose Bible verses and talked about why they chose them related to their life of faith. Hearing about their faith and experience was powerful. Along this line, I recently invited a few people to be interviewed for a video about this congregation.[12]  The questions were simple.  What drew them here and what keeps them here? Now, of course, as a pastor I believe the Holy Spirit ultimately draws us all together. But the Spirit draws us by how we hear God’s voice.  I’ve made the comment to visitors and members alike to listen for the ways they hear God’s voice during worship and time with a congregation.  I also tell them that I know good colleagues and good congregations elsewhere if they’re still working on figuring that out.

In the video interviews, we hear people who worship as part of this congregation reflect on how being a part of this religious people and practice enlivens their faith. Again, hearing from each one of them talk about their faith and experience is powerful.  At one point, Nick makes the comment that being part of this congregation allows he and his family to talk about faith and “the time that it’s challenged, and the time that it’s raised up, the time that it’s evident, and the time that it’s absent.”[13]  Thomas and Peter both could speak to this fluidity of faith.  Thomas, trying to figure out faith in the aftermath of trauma.  Peter, a denier of Jesus during his trial in one moment and a public preacher in the next.  On any given day, in any given minute, our faith can be challenged or raised up or evident or absent.  Jesus meets us by the power of the Spirit in any and all of those moments.

Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  In large part, the faith we are called to share deals not in what we see but what we experience in our lives of faith.  Jesus encounters us through the practices of bread, wine, water, Word, and each other as God’s voice is heard through people’s flawed and faithful stories.  As God enlivens all things by the breath of the Spirit, may God enliven you by faith, joining in the prayer of the Apostle Paul:

“I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”[14]

[1] Genesis 1:2 and Genesis 2:7

[2] Job 33:4

[3] Joel 2:28

[4] John 20:22

[5] Acts 2:1-13

[6] Pentecostal [def] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Pentecostal

[7] Peter Enns, Abram S. Clemens Professor of Biblical Studies, Eastern University.  The Sin of Certainty. (Harper Collins Publisher: New York, 2016), 150.

[8] Jaws Movie CLIP HD – Scars (Zanuck/Brown Productions and Universal Pictures, 1975).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLjNzwEULG8

[9] John 1:14

[10] John 1:1

[11] John 13:31-31 and John 17:4-5

[12] “Why Augustana?” published March 30, 2017 and produced by Ken Rinehart for Augustana Lutheran Church.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up03qnMqB-0

[13] Nick Massie, Ibid.  Video: “Why Augustana?”

[14] Ephesians 3:14-19

Sermons

John 14:15-21, 1 Peter 3:13-22, Acts 17:22-31 “Words of Hope”

John 14:15-21, 1 Peter 3:13-22, Acts 17:22-31  “Words of Hope”

Caitlin Trussell – May 25, 2014

Augustana Lutheran Church, Denver, CO

 

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
18I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

[See 1 Peter and Acts readings at end sermon]

 

My husband Rob has spent quite a bit of his life on the seat of a mountain bike.  In his early days, this included riding like the wind through tree-lined gullies in Nebraska as only a 10 year old with his 10 year old buddies can do.  During his brief California stint, where he met me, this included riding trail in the Santa Monica Mountains that sit between Van Nuys and Malibu.  And now, which I should be clear to say includes the last 23 years, there are few greater joys for Rob than careening around on the trails that wind throughout the Rockies and their foothills.  The last year and a half have been no exception.  In fact, the ante has gone up at our house where we now speak all things Leadville – as in the Leadville 100.  100 miles of trail at 10,000 feet above sea level just waiting to be ridden in the middle of August.  Conversation regularly includes things like dressing in light weight layers for any kind of weather, the total elevation gain of training rides that get progressively longer as August looms, and the nutrition that will sustain those few who actually make it those 100 miles.  There are a lot of moving parts in getting ready and maintaining readiness.

Because readying for Leadville is a constant hum in our home, it’s no surprise that what jumped from the pages this week is the readiness preached to us out of First Peter as we are told to, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”  And it’s no surprise that this text is paired with St. Paul hanging out with the Athenians.  He talks with them about their unnamed God.  And he lives his readiness for talking about the hope of Christ in himself.

You can likely imagine that I come into contact with a few people in any given week.  Something about running into a pastor seems to spark a certain kind of conversation.  A conversation in which I am privileged, and I truly mean privileged, to hear the deep confusion, frustration, and opinions from people about spirituality in general and Christianity in particular.

In these conversations, there is a quote that regularly bubbles up.  A quote popularly, and likely incorrectly, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.  It goes like this, “Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”  When someone says this out loud in a group, the general reaction typically includes soft smiles and nods as if the meaning is well-understood.  Sometimes I’ll dig deeper with the person who offers this quote. Sometimes I find that this person has been beaten up by the words of a Bible-bearing Christian or two.  In First Peter terms, this Christian was ready to give “an accounting” of the hope in them.  However this Christian did not seem to be ready to do it with the “gentleness and reverence” also encouraged in First Peter.  And sometimes I find that this person quoting this quote struggled to find their own words to talk about gospel, the good news of Jesus, and has given up trying.  Given up trying to find words and given up on finding a community where words can be practiced with “gentleness and reverence.”

The 14th Chapter of John may help us press pause in the ironic debate about whether or not to use words.  The reading starts in verse 15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” The only commandment mentioned in whole book of John bookends our verses today.  In Chapter 13 Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another…Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”[1]

And in Chapter 15, Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you…No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…You are my friends if you do what I command you.”[2]  Jesus words are part of several chapters that are pretty much filled with only words of Jesus.  Next time you hear that quote about preaching the gospel without words, consider that we tend to hear this as a choice; as either action OR words.  Or we tend to hear that actions are superior to words.  This is a false choice.  Jesus encourages us to love in action AND words.

My friends, words are part of this life of faith – words for us to hear and words for us to say.  It’s easy for us to get lost in our own inadequacy about which words to use.  And it’s easy to get lost in our insecurity about what using these words might mean.  It’s so easy to get lost that we also forget about the Advocate who is given to us, the Advocate who is in us.  Jesus says to the disciples and to us, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever…I will not leave you orphaned.”[3]

This Advocate is infused into us by Christ through water and word at baptism; by Christ through bread, wine, and word at the table; and by Christ through us, through people and word in the community of Christ.  Faith is infused into us through these things and people and words – faith that is practiced here in readiness to be exercised in the world.  Practicing starts in baptism, in the Lord’s Supper, and in conversation with each other.

In conversation we practice using words that describe the hope that is in us.  These conversations happen in groups and 1-on-1.  They happen spontaneously and they happen when we plan a coffee with another Christian for just such a purpose.  Sometimes these conversations start with a question about what it means to say the words of the Apostle’s Creed out loud.  Other times the conversations wonder about what Jesus on the cross means in the face of illness. And still other times the conversation struggles to find a place for words about Jesus in a world of too many words.  The bottom line is that the Advocate gives us this community to find the words to use.  In part because other people need the hope into which we’ve been drawn.    “…be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”

I dipped a toe back into Christianity almost twenty years ago.  My own frustrating efforts to find words were met by Christians in a Lutheran church.  Christians who held space for my questions and my religious scars with “gentleness and reverence.”  I desperately needed to hear words and to use them.  First to understand that the gospel, the good news of God in Christ Jesus, is for me.  And then to be ready to talk about the hope given by Christ in me.   And I desperately needed a place and group of people in which to practice these words.

The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, gives us just such a place and just such a people.  We are given to each other as church to hear a word of good news and to find words to confess that good news.  And we are given to a desperate world, inspired by the Advocate to live and to talk about the hope of Jesus Christ, the one who came for you, for us, and for the sake of the world.

 

1 Peter 3:13-22 Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? 14But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, 15but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; 16yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. 17For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.
18For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, 19in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. 21And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you — not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

 

Acts 17:22-31 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him — though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28For ‘In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we too are his offspring.’
29Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”


[1] John 13:34

[2] John 15:12-14

[3] John 14:16 and 18a.