"A Future with Hope"

[Music] a reading from the book of jeremiah hear what god's spirit is saying to you for thus says the lord only when babylon's 70 years are completed will i visit you and i will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place for surely i know the plans i have for you says the lord plans for your welfare and not for harm to give you a future with hope then when you call upon me and come and pray to me i will hear you when you search for me you will find me if you seek me with all your heart i will let you find me says the lord and i will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where i have driven you says the lord and i will bring you back to the place from which i have sent you into exile here ends the reading of words that give us insight on god make us may god grant us wisdom and courage for interpretation holy and loving god you have promised to be with us with each step that we take with each moment of our lives and even when we are walking through valleys we know that you are there with us help us to walk forward with confidence into a hopeful future and now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of each and every one of our hearts be pleasing to you and acceptable in your sight oh god for you are our rock and our redeemer amen so i have a bit of a confession to make maybe it's not going to be terribly surprising but i'm a bit of a nerd there are some fellow nerds out there i'm glad to hear it and one of the ways that's most clear is that i am a trekkie i love star trek there are other trekkies and star wars i must say i've got my star who i'll live long and prosper to you out there too and i must admit i've got my star trek stole on today and on the other side is star wars so i am an equal opportunity nerd [Applause] i love all star trek series and i've been binge watching some of them lately but my favorite is star trek the next generation any other next generation fans i love star trek the next generation i think because it came on when i was coming of age and it was on during the late 80s and early 90s into the early 2000s with the movies i watched those series with my dad so i have some fun memories but i also loved the crew in the next generation there was data the android who so desperately wanted more than anything else to be a human there was jordy the chief engineer who was brilliant but looked for love in all the wrong places counselor troy who was an empath and helped the crew with their emotional needs as they were out at space dr crusher who could solve most any medical ailment there was warf the klingon whose people had been at war with humanity for generations yet he had been raised by humans and was now on this ship with mostly humans there was gainan portrayed by whoopi goldberg the hundreds of year-old bartender who dispensed her wisdom there was commander riker the impetuous but charming first officer of the uss enterprise but then there was my favorite captain jean-luc picard i love captain picard he was stern but compassionate he was firm yet open-minded and he was committed to peace and diplomacy almost to a fault well there's one episode where we get to find out a bit more about captain picard as he is lying on a table and we discover that he has an artificial heart then we discovered that the reason he has that artificial heart is because he had gotten into a fight when he was a young cadet with a nausican a much stronger and more fierce race and he was stabbed through the heart now he is lying on the table wondering about his face and he encounters the godlike alien q who often torments picard and enterprise and q gives picard a unique opportunity whether he wants it or not he gets to go back in time to when he was a cadet and make whatever choices he wants you see picard is embarrassed about this fight with the nausican he's now a very by the books captain and here he got out of hand and he got stabbed through the heart and so picard goes back in time and gets to relive his cadet days and this time he decides not to fight with the nausican he then skips forward in time and he discovers that he is no longer captain of the enterprise he is instead a low-level science worker who is very by the books as well who is very loyal about his work but has not accomplished what he wanted to in life the card realizes that that moment in his past that he was embarrassed about is actually a moment that defined his life it was a moment that changed his trajectory and had he not experienced that his life would have been different and for the first and perhaps only time he is grateful to the alien q as he resumes his role as captain because it was not permanent it was just a glimpse into the past we all have moments like that don't we not where we encounter a godlike alien who lets us re-live the past but we all have moments that we recognize define the trajectory of our lives that change where we're going can you think of a moment like that in your life a moment that hadn't been different your life would have looked very different maybe something bad that happened maybe something good it's interesting to think about too isn't it what if we had made different decisions what would our lives be like it's not great to spend a whole lot of time in that place but it's interesting to think about that our lives are defined at least in part by the choices that we make and the experiences that we have you could pull out a few minor experiences and our lives might be the same but the major life events are critical to defining who we are the bible is the same way you know there are some stories that you could pluck out and maybe it wouldn't make too big of a difference take for instance that moment where elisha sends the bears to attack the children because they call him old baldy if that was taken out of the bible we probably wouldn't lose much but then there are critical events think about for instance whenever god claims abraham and all of abraham's descendants think about when joseph is sold into slavery and then rises up through the ranks in egypt and controls the storehouses so that his people can survive think about moses and the passover the exodus from egypt and the wilderness wandering think about king david and goliath think about king solomon building the temple these are all moments that are critical so too is the story of the exile the exile is when babylon comes in and they destroy the kingdom and they demolish most of jerusalem including the temple that contains the holy of holies that place the inner sanctum of the temple where god was thought to literally live not just to be kind of spiritually present as we think about it but they thought that god was really in there and so whenever the babylonians came through and did this it was as if they had defeated their god and the babylonians come in and they they take the leaders away they separate the community people lose their relationships they they lose their loved ones their lives are fundamentally altered and it is a period of time that becomes critical to the new trajectory of the people if you read through the book of psalms you'll see many psalms of lament that are set during this period and so too is today's scripture lesson which is a letter from the prophet jeremiah jeremiah had a difficult life he saw the country that he lived in being overthrown he saw jerusalem being destroyed and he was persecuted throughout his life both before the destruction of jerusalem and afterward perhaps this is why he's known as the weeping prophet but jeremiah writes a letter of hope to the people in babylon to the exiles there and he says two things he says one god will restore you god will bring you home and he also says but it's not going to happen as soon as you want it to he said beware of the false prophets who say that it's going to happen right now because it's not and so the message of jeremiah is twofold that god loves his people and god will restore the people but it's a path of peace and patience and that perhaps god has something for the people to learn even in the midst of exile well we've been experiencing our own exile of sorts over the past year and a half haven't we i mean things are not quite like they were this time last year but for the last year and a half or so it has been a bit of an exile especially those early months did you learn anything about yourself in the midst of that exile do you experience any fear or isolation or loneliness did you discover things about your loved ones about family members friends community did you discover anything about your faith in the midst of that exile one of the things that i discovered most keenly i think is how important this place is for me in my life how important these relationships are for sustaining me and hopefully many of you as well that even though we were worshiping together online that there's something about this community being together that is so important that is is so substantial and one of the things that i gave deep thanks for was that even though we were in the midst of exile even though the community was gathering in a different way that this community did not stop being a church that the doors to the building may have been closed but that university christian church was on fire out in the world i mean think about this over this year of exile university christian church converted completely to solar power we began to partner more fully with our climate hub partners and we were the only faith community that was a founding partner of the san diego green new deal alliance working for legislative change for climate justice issues this congregation in the midst of a pandemic lobbied for and marched for just policing practices this community made national news because our symbols of love and justice out on the front of our church were vandalized and we responded with love and compassion putting them right back up and creating a good friday art experience that responded to hate with love this is a community that preached very soundly that faith and reason go hand in hand that we can both be faithful people and listen to scientists and medical experts this is a community that in the midst of a pandemic partnered with the city of san diego to apply for funds to transform hillcrest to bring in more public transportation to make it more walkable to give some much needed renovations and yes to provide affordable housing which will be here on our campus this congregation made a huge difference even in the midst of a pandemic that's what i love about this church you all are an incredible community that makes a difference in the world and sees each day as an opportunity we don't get stuck in the fear of the unknown but recognize that god is with us every step of the way i was on a podcast a couple of weeks ago talking about digital religion and the host asked me hey caleb do you think that this time this pandemic is going to kill brick and mortar churches that they're just going to disappear i said you know maybe churches that were already discerning whether they wanted to continue their visible ministry perhaps that's something that's going to happen for them that they'll decide to stop meeting in physical community i said but i think churches that embraced this as an opportunity i think churches that saw this as just something that we could embrace as as a means to spread the gospel and as a mean to live faithfully i think those churches perhaps experienced a sense of clarity in the midst of the exile just like in today's scripture lesson it was a terrible situation and yet the people in exile realized more clearly who they were and whose they were and when they returned back home they found that they were different people that their trajectory had been altered but that they were still living faithful lives and that god had been with them every step of the way so university christian church i give thanks for you i give thanks for each and every one of you no matter if you're here in the sanctuary no matter if you only watch online or if you alternate between the two you are all a vital part of this church community and i give thanks for the ways that god lives faithfully through each and every one of your lives thanks be to god for university christian church thanks be to god for all of you amen [Music]

Channel: ProgressiveChristianity.org

Views: 16

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: KEs8vowiz4g

Length: 17min 18sec (1038 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021