I've mentioned in the past that my wife is a former church pastor, with a theological degree from the oldest seminary in the United States.

So when our pastor decided to get away for the weekend, he asked my wife to fill in as guest-preacher.

And, as luck would have it, she developed a cough that turned into full-blown bronchitis and on Friday was put on bed-rest by the doctor. That meant no preaching for her.

A quick call to our associate pastor resulted in the suggestion that I fill-in for her in the pulpit, since I have four years of seminary education myself.

That's why Friday was a slow posting day -- I was writing a sermon, something I haven't done since my wife had her own church and I filled in for her when she had laryngitis. Its been over ten years.

And so this morning was the big day -- with my darling wife listening in via cell phone (she has never heard me preach before).

By all accounts, it went well.

If you are interested, I've posted the text below. I departed from it a little bit, but not significantly. Sorry -- no podcast.

Speaking of the Old Testament Patriarchs and Prophets, we are told in Hebrews 11:13

All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.

I think that we can all remember these words from our childhood.

“Are we there yet?”

Heck, there may even be some of you who recall these words from the drive to church this morning.

“Are we there yet?”

We know the destination, but we just don’t seem to have arrived – it just seems to take longer than we expected.

“Are we there yet?”

And you know what? Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, it seems like we are never, ever going to arrive at our promised destination.

But it doesn’t matter whether we are headed to the zoo to see lions and tigers and bears, to a magic kingdom where a giant rodent rules the “happiest place on earth”, or simply “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house”, we are going to reach that destination if we simply exercise a bit of patience and follow the directions. That’s what the map promises us.

Well the promises of God are sometimes very much like the destinations of those long trips to special places. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews, clearly a Jew who understood the history of his people as recorded by the scriptures, saw that very clearly. Indeed, he recognized that the entire history of the Hebrews had been one long, strange trip from their origins to the time of Jesus and beyond. Think about it – God had made promises to so many of the great figures of the Old Testament – promises that extended well-beyond the scope of their own lifetimes – and expected the Hebrew people to make that journey to the fulfillment of the promises that had been made to them.

Noah spent years building the Ark, and sails through 40 days and 40 nights of rain – and if one counts the days until he and his family and the animals left the Ark, they endured approximately a year afloat. How many times did Noah and the rest wonder aloud when they would reach their destination – an earth cleansed by the flood. And that doesn’t even count the years that Noah spent building that boat in the first place – some scripture scholars calculate it as having taken him as much as a century – time for a whole lot of “Are we there yets” on the journey to God’s promise. But Noah remained faithful to his calling and his God, even though the end of this journey must have seemed incredibly far away and impossible to reach.

Abraham and Sarah left their home in the big city of Ur of the Chaldees to wander the desert in search of a land that would be theirs – a new home. God promises them a land of their own for them and descendants, but they have no children. Yet with faith, they persevere – and so do their children and grandchildren. They were strangers in a strange land, but they did not look back. They kept their hope in the promise that had been made. I don’t doubt, though, that the patriarchs of the Jews wondered more than once when they would reach their destination.

Moses and the people leave slavery for a promised land and take a whole generation -- 40 years -- getting there. And yet they still pursued the promise, not turning around and going back to Egypt, even when to some it seemed like an easier way. Moses himself is permitted only to see that which he had been promised over the horizon, from the top of Mount Nebo. But he, and they, kept at it, even though they knew that they might not see that journey fulfilled. And scripture records that more than once, in various ways, there arose the question that every traveler knows – “are we there yet?”

Through war and conquest, captivity and return, the children of Israel kept faith with God, sure that his promises to them and their ancestors will be fulfilled. They kept – and indeed, still keep – to the Commandments and the Laws, even when it might have been so much easier to blend in and be assimilated into the local folk or great empires. They kept waiting for the promise, while God prepares a special place for them – a heavenly city. And to the question “are we there yet?” there even developed an answer – “next year in Jerusalem.” Whole generations have kept faith with that promise – one that they hoped to see fulfilled and which they glimpsed in their hearts, even as they knew it might not be in their lifetime that it would be fulfilled.

So our anticipation of the Kingdom of God is like being on a journey – until Jesus turns everything upside down on us in Luke’s Gospel.

Would someone please read Luke 12:35-40 for me?

The Kingdom is instead likened to a master returning from a journey to a wedding feast, and we his servants are to await him. What are we supposed to do? Live it up? Suck down margaritas and Perrier by the pool? Nope – we are supposed to go about the normal tasks that we have been assigned – because we don’t know when the Boss is coming back. Our job is to make ready for him.

What does that mean? Well, in the tradition in which I was raised, we often spoke of the “works of mercy” that we are called to perform as Christians. Some are spiritual, others more focused on the physical. As Christians we are called to

1. Feed the hungry
2. Give drink to the thirsty
3. Clothe the naked
4. Shelter the homeless
5. Visit the sick
6. Visit those in prison
7. Bury the dead

Moreover, we are also called to

1. Convert the sinner
2. Instruct the ignorant
3. Counsel the doubtful
4. Comfort the sorrowful
5. Bear wrongs patiently
6. Forgive injuries
7. Pray for others

That sounds like a tall order – but there they are, the tasks set before us as individual Christians and as a Church family.

And I’ll be honest with you all -- as I look at these and then look in the mirror, I don’t know that I always measure up. Am I really about my duties as a part of the household of Christ? Am I there yet? And more importantly, if Jesus threw open that door back there in the next instant, would he find me to have been about the tasks he has set for me? Would he find you to have been about them?

Think of those you meet in your daily life – family, friends, neighbors, and members of your church family. Do you share that bounty that you have to aid the poor? Do you look after those who suffer from illness, whether physical or otherwise? Do you reach out to those among us who are prisoners, either to the law or to burdens which keep them locked away from others? Do you bear a witness to those who do not know Christ or who struggle with their faith? Do you forgive? Do you pray for those in need?

And I ask you this because I know that there are so many folks in our church family who fall into one of these categories. Just look at the prayer list in today’s bulletins. Will you reach out to even a single person there – or maybe to another who isn’t there but whose needs you know? Will you extend your hand in Christian love to them, because these are your brothers and sisters? Even if you don’t know what to say, say something anyway – it can have great meaning as a channel of God’s grace in their lives, and in your own. And more to the point, it is a way of helping to bring about the Kingdom of God – that which we have been promised as a people of faith, and which has been expected for generations. This is what our ancestors in the faith have seen and grasped and longed for – that which we ourselves hope to see and which may yet come to fruition in the fullness of God’s time.

Maybe this all seems a little “pie in the sky” for some of you – this notion that in faith we might see and greet the promises of God without receiving them ourselves. But I think it was put best by one of our nation’s secular saints, one who was also one of our nation’s great men of Christian faith. Speaking of the reality that he might not be alive to receive that which he was promised and which he had seen in the distance, he echoed Moses as he proclaimed:

I've been to the mountaintop. . . . I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And I'm happy, tonight.… Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

And I say to you today that the Promised Land has been revealed to us, and we know it is true. No, we’re not there yet – but the Lord is coming in his own time to bring the faithful the wonders he has promised us. Amen.

I hope that some of you find this message edifying.

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