November 27, 2011 – First Sunday of Advent / Consecration Sunday

God Dwells Within Us Sermon by Rev. Patricia Farris

Revelation 21:3-5 (The Message) I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: "Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They're his people, he's their God. He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone." The Enthroned continued, "Look! I'm making everything new. Write it all down—each word dependable and accurate." All you old-timers around here will find it strange that we’re just now getting to Consecration Sunday, the day we present our pledge cards for our 2012 Financial Gift to the church, today on the Sunday AFTER Thanksgiving Sunday. We’ve ALWAYS do it on Thanksgiving Sunday, you tell me. What’s going on? Well, the calendar is playing all kinds of tricks on us this year. Everything’s off kilter a bit. Advent begins too early—it’s still November after all and we’re still over-stuffed with turkey and pie and football and all that good stuff. (WELL…”good” depends on your point of view…) And by next Sunday, the Choir Concert, we’ll already be at the Second Sunday of Advent, and there are only four all together. It’s all because Christmas itself falls on a Sunday this year and won’t that seem strange? The last time that happened was in 2005 and most of us can hardly remember that far back. So why not push our giving campaign back a week so that it overlaps with the beginning of Advent, the beautiful season when we re-set our church clocks, a new year begins, and we set our sights on the heart of the matter, the real reason why we do all of this---why we live, why we give, why we have faith and hope---because we believe that in Christ Jesus God becomes incarnate, part and parcel of our reality. God takes on flesh, God comes to be at home with us, to make a home with us. Here’s how the Book of Revelation puts it: “See—the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them and be their God; they will be God’s peoples.” Or as The Message translates this verse: “Look, look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women.” Our giving theme this year has been “The Home We Build Together.” We’re looking at the ministry and mission of FUMC as “the home we build together”—the bricks and mortar of our church facilities and the human community of our church congregation. Both part and parcel of this home we build together called church. We’ve put the emphasis on us, on the importance of each of us taking our part, pitching in, working together to build this home we call church. Like the old-fashioned barn raisings in the Amish communities of the eastern U.S., like home renovation on our Youth Mission Team projects, like a Habitat for Humanity build here closer to home…when there’s a big job to be done, EVERYONE pitches in. Everyone has a role to play. Everyone has something to contribute. With everyone’s participation, the job is easy work. The finished project gives glory to God and immense satisfaction to everyone.

Now today, on the first Sunday of Advent, we take that same theme and put a whole new spin on it. You see, the whole reason we build this home together, is because, first, God chose to be at home with us. We reason we all pitch in is because, as the Gospel of John puts it, in Christ Jesus, God literally “pitches a tent” among us. God fulfills the plan that existed from the beginning: “People, you are my home. A child will be born. His name will be Jesus. And in him, I will come to live as you live, in all the wonder and perplexity of this life, through all the joy and suffering of this life, I am with you. And I will leave you never.” We are God’s home because God chose to build God’s home among us. We hear it again in the prologue to John’s Gospel: In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God and was with God…the Word came into the world, BUT the world knew it not…. You see God was in the world, but the world didn’t get it. John 1 verse 14 says: “SO, the Word became flesh, made its home among us, and we saw God’s glory.” God does everything to help us get it. God wants us to see God. God wants us to know God. In order to help us do that, God puts on our flesh in Christ Jesus and chooses to be at home with us and among us as one of us. So what does this mean for this home we keep talking about, this home that is somehow both our home and God’s home? This home that we’re building together while all the while God is in the midst of it all as architect, master builder, power source… As the Psalmist proclaims: “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.” What might all this mean? Here are a few points to consider: 1--God draws us together to be the church, to build this home called church. It’s not ours, it’s God’s. And therefore as the seasons come and go, through times of prosperity and through lean times, through mountain top moments and challenging journeys, God is with us working God’s purposes out in and through this home and we need never doubt or fear. 2--God is alive and present in and through us. God is enfleshed in this congregation of the church. And therefore, whether we like it or not, whether we signed up for it or not, whether we’re always comfortable with it or not—we are at every moment the living, visible signs through which others come to know of God’s love for them, or not. We are God’s welcome ambassadors. A smile at the door doesn’t just say “good morning,” it says “God loves you and God’s grace is available for you” no matter what. As Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has said, [every one of us is called] “to be a place where God’s Christ is revealed.” 3--With God, we are the hands and feet of Christ in this world now. We are those who, with God, build homes for the homeless, serve the least and the lost, speak up for those who are vulnerable, for those who have no voice or whose voice is never heard. We are, with God, the embodiment of God’s righteous justice and peace for the transformation of the world. Our lives are to show forth all that God intends for this world and all its peoples. Through us, Christ is revealed as the One who brings healing and wholeness to all the broken places of the world. And finally--this home God builds in and through us creates this incredible community of faith we call church. Together we give one another the strength and hope we all need to make it through, to trust that we can do it, to know that we are never alone, to realize that in those moments when we feel

ourselves falling, when life seems to be spinning out of control, in those moments we know that we are held by love that will not ever let us go, the love of Christ that we experience in tangible life-changing, life-preserving ways through the people called “church.” Several of you, just this week, who have been going through some really hard stuff, have said to me: “Patricia, I can feel it. I can feel the love and prayer of this church wrapped around me, lifting me up. I couldn’t have made it through without it. We are, in this community of faith, at home with God. And God is always here at home with us. So you see, perhaps it’s not crazy that we are presenting and consecrating our gifts on the Sunday that points our hearts towards the coming of God’s greatest gift in Christ Jesus. In gratitude, through our gifts, through our lives, we say “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” As Advent begins, we sing yet again: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Emmanuel, which means, God-with-us. Come, thou God, who would love this world and us so much as to send Christ Jesus to show us, in a form we can see and recognize, what is the Way, the Truth and Life. God at home with us in Christ and in the church. God who comes in Christ Jesus to transform this home on earth into a home of beauty, safety, and joy for one and all. Our God who comes in Christ Jesus to fit us for our home in the heavens, eternal, everlasting, a home fulfilled beyond our imagining May Christ ever be our home, our hope, our light, and our joy. O come, O come, Emmanuel. Amen. © Patricia Farris, 2011. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved.

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