Claimed, gathered and sent

Here are some thoughts I shared regarding this Sunday's gospel for Advent 2.  This was sent to the people of St. Timothy .  SCRIPTURE FOCUS Gospel: Luke 3:1-6 1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene,  2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.  3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,  4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.   5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;   6 and all f...

This is the sermon I preached on Dec. 2, the First Sunday of Advent, at St. Timothy Lutheran Church.  The text was Luke 21:25-36 Waiting is hard. Children on road trips cry out, “Are we there yet?” A friend of ours in PA. tells of when her son, Luke, was younger. When he knew a package was coming, each day he would sit out on the front steps of the house waiting for its arrival. Today is the first Sunday of Advent, itself a time of waiting for the  coming of something far more precious than a package. We await two comings of Christ: his first as one of us on earth and his second when he returns in glory. Today we focus on the second one. In today’s gospel text, Jesus moves his listeners from the realm of cosmic signs, to the realm of the listeners’ experienced world of nature and finally to their personal realm. Jesus first talks about the realm of cosmic signs (vv. 25-28). “ Sign, sign, everywhere a sign Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind Do this, don...