Sermons, Sermons, Sermons....

Here is my sermon from Sunday, January 4th. I preached at the National Lutheran Home in Rockville, MD. I thought you all might enjoy reading it.

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I think it is fitting that we are reading John 1 a few days after we rang in 2009. 2008 has been full of many ups and down. The economy ceiling has caved in causing millions of Americans to loose their jobs, their housing, and their very welling being. At the beginning of 2008, as we do every January, we dream, wish, and hope that this New Year, this new beginning, will bring about great and new things that will make our lives easier but all to often things do not change right away and sometimes will get worst before they get better.

Think about it, how many of us have made a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight, to spend less money, to spend more time with family and by the end of the year have forgotten the resolution or broken the resolution only after a few weeks. I believe as soon as we see what we have to give up for our resolution, we are scared and go back to our old, bad habits.

This year many of us have made promises. In this past election, all of our politicians who ran for office promised to deliver a better life, a better country, a better world. Sometimes this better life has taken years to come into affect. 50 years ago, nobody would have thought that our country would have elected a minority or a woman to the office of President. But as we have seen, this is no longer a dream but reality. Barack Obama has become the first African American President. In the beginning of the election, nobody thought that a black man or a woman would be the top two choices for the democratic party nomination or a woman be chosen as the vice president candidate for the republican party but it happened and we as a country should be proud.

I recently heard a statistic that Americans spend 450 billion dollars every year on Christmas. This includes not only gifts but the trees, lights, wrapping paper, anything involving the holiday. 450 billion dollars is a lot of money. We all claim it is a necessity for getting us into the holiday spirit and I have to agree with this ideology to a point. I love the symbolism involved in the Christmas Tree or ripping through wrapping paper to get to a new gadget. But I also learned that it would only cost 10 billion dollars to supply clean drinking water to people in third world countries. For many living in these countries, they spend half of the day walking to the nearest water source only to have to walk back to their village. Their life is consumed with walking to get a necessity of life. Children have to participate in retrieving water and cannot attend school. What if these children were to get an education? What if one of these children would be the one would find the cure for cancer or aids? What if this one of these children would be the next Einstein or Martin Luther King? What if? For just 10 billion dollars, who knows what the world could be like.

There are all kinds of statistics like this one. Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson point out once in a lecture that more people die every year from hunger related illnesses than from terrorism but yet never hear about this. Every day, 16,000 children die of hunger-related diseases. That’s one child every 5.4 seconds and this does not include adults. Terrorism is by no means a good thing but world hunger is also a great concern that we all need to remember not only in our prayers but in our actions.

Who knows what will happen in 2009. There are many uncertainties but we as Christians know that God is with us in our beginnings and in our endings. Through life and death, God is with us. It was God who promised his people that he was “going to bring [the Israelites] from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here… I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble; for I have become a father to Israel. Life can be scary at times. So many Americans are living in fear that their jobs will be cut and all they have worked for will be lost. Hospitals and Nursing homes just like this one have patients and residents who are close to death. But we know that even in the midst of our greatest fears and worries Christ, the Word that became flesh is among us. John 1 proclaims that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…The Word became flesh and lived among us.”

We will find a way to work through the challenges that our nation, our world, and each of us face. We will prevail but we need to trust and act on God’s word. Jesus promises to always be with us in our beginnings and when we end our life on earth and move onto our eternal life in heaven. We have seen God’s glory. God glory has been revealed through Jesus will continue to reveal his glory through his church and people carrying out the Gospel. God’s word is powerful and changes lives. I cannot stress it enough that through our beginnings and our ends, Jesus will always be with us. That is our faith and that will carry us through even our worst times in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen