21. June GCA Worship

Worship June 21. 2020 German Church of Atlanta Greeting and Announcements Psalm 36: 6-10 Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

6 Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.

7 How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

8 They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.

9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

10 O continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your salvation to the upright of heart!

Old Testament Reading Isaiah 55: 1-5 Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.

I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.

4 See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.

5 See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

Sermon Text: Matthew 11: 25-30 At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

28 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I

am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Gospel Reading Luke 14: 16-24 Then Jesus said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many.

17 At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ 19 Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ 20 Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’ 21 So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ 22 And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’ 23 Then the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you,[b] none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’”

Sermon Sunday, 21. Juni 2020 A great feast is being celebrated. Beautifully decorated tables, good food.

And the guests? They come from the streets and from the margins of the city.

They are the poor and guests with disabilities, guests who can’t see and guests who cannot walk. This is how Jesus tells in a story. We heard it earlier as the Gospel reading. God himself is the host. He invites his human children.

They are supposed to be taken care of. It is surely a beautiful place where the feast is being celebrated. Surely all are being taken care of. And the most important for those who participate and who enter possibly a little shy the large celebration hall: “They are welcome!”

This is a story that through the centuries has been memorable, partly because we ourselves could imagine how it would be when they would be invited: The persons without a home on Courtland Street, the refugees at the Mexican Border. However, the story that Jesus told surely faced some resistance back then, as it probably does today.

We can’t just invite everybody! Who is supposed to pay for that? Also, it is not sure if the guests would just sit peacefully with each other – nobody can guarantee that! And we might not want to be part of this celebration anymore – with these kinds of guests? There are surely many objections!

In the story that Jesus tells, God is the host. Jesus wants to tell us something about God and about how God operates. We humans are working painfully at creating more just world orders. How will we manage that poor and rich won’t keep growing into opposite directions? How will we learn not to exclude people? We are working on it.

And sometimes the achievements in the right direction are being destroyed once again. That is very painful. And yet then there are celebration moments when it actually works that people are coming together and experience a just and live giving community. What a feast! Jesus celebrates with us when that happens. A moment of Heaven on Earth. I am certain that Jesus told this story in order to encourage us to not give up, but to continue standing up for a community where all people find a seat at the table.

The story can be an encouragement that we will have part when a piece of God’s feast on Earth becomes a reality. Like a foretaste of God’s great feast to come.

And yet the story that Jesus tells is not limited to our timebound history and to this world as we know it. Jesus has another dimension in mind, talking aout the Kingdom of God, Paradise, life with God, eternity or however we want to call it.

And in this large and eternal dimension much is being touched: Longing and encouragement, and yet also the despair about the fact that we humans are again and again failing at being hosts like God is a host.

And not at last the question: How do we ourselves deal with this invitation?

Do we want to be part of God’s feast? Or will be make and excuse and not show up?

II. To find my own answer to this question is not as easy. Maybe it has to do also with the fact that the host remains pretty much in the background of Jesus’ story. His generous invitation remains impressive though. At the same time, he seems to be a strict Landlord.

Maybe we can more easily find an answer about how we want to respond to such invitation when we put this story in the context of another bible verse that Jesus said in Matthew 11: „Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” This too, is an invitation, this time exclaimed by Jesus himself. He is the one calling us. Let’s look at this invitation a little more closely. It is the sermon text for today’s Sunday that we have heard earlier.

III. Weary and carrying heavy burdens. How many of us feel this way during a pandemic and intense protests against racist motivated violence? The family who lost four of their members to Covid 19. The family with children whose parents have lost their jobs and where the money is not enough, not even for food. The boy who has witnessed horrific violence and who now has nightmares? Being weary and carrying heavy burdens can mean different things. Illnesses or sudden life crises. Difficult outer condition. What leads to somebody feeling weary and carrying heavy burdens can’t always be judged from the outside.

Some people don’t have it easy from an outside perspective, and yet they surprisingly manage well. Others seem to have it easy, and yet, they still feel weary and heavy laden. They carry with them old stories like a heavy burden.

Mistakes, sin and shame push people down, maybe even unnoticable to themselves.

Feeling weary and heavy, at least during certain phases in life, most of us have experienced those times. And when we feel that way, most of us also feel like hiding. However, Jesus calls us forth. „Come to me“ he says. He does not look away when life gets difficult. This is what many biblical stories about Jesus are about: How Jesus goes to those who are sick, those who are despairing, those who are marginalized. And in the end, he himself walks through suffering and death. Jesus is very familiar with what feeling weary means and what carrying heavy burdens is about. Surely, we don;t want to allow anybody to come and be close to us when life’s burden are too heavy to bear. But can we open ourselves to him, when he invites us to?

IV. I will give you rest, his invitation says. What does this mean- resting? It has something to do with being refreshed and being strengthened. It has to do with coming alive again. It has to do with taking a break, finding stillness,

feeling sheltered. We can experience those moments of rest. When we feel peaceful, but also in times when we feel weary and burdened.

These are those small moments in the middle of our daily lives that become an oasis. Moments of gratitude, moments of stillness and moments of renewed trust.

Then we feel as if we are guests with God being our host. Maybe this experience only lasts for a moment. A small moment of Heave in the midst of our Earth Heaviness. Jesus invites us: “I will give you rest.”

V. Jesus knows that it is not easy to give those moments of resting in God’s presence space in our daily life. To trust this invitation and to take Jesus up on it isn’t always easy. We can decide instead to establish ourselves only in work and heaviness, and we can decide to reject thos lighter and those celebration moments.

Jesus’ invitation is connected with sentences about a yoke. We are supposed to take a yoke upon our shoulders. A yoke is there to evenly distribute the weight we are carrying so that it becomes easier to carry a heavy load. The yoke might be a symbol for some heaviness in our lives that we might need to face, and it feels burdensome and heavy to do so, yet we will be able to make our peace with those things and they become lighter. Or the yoke stands for the heaviness we feel when we stand up or open our mouth to demand justice.

Jesus talks about how an attitude of trust and gratitude is what makes the carrying, the remaining under heavy burdens easier. Jesus wants to teach us so that we will be able to accept God’s invitation. Jesus talks about being gentle and humble in heart that can make the heaviness of life easier. And so, it is our own shifted perpective and attitude towards life that make our burden easier. And yet, it is often very difficult to change our attitude or perpective.

Jesus knows that the Yoke can be easy. And yet, it often remains a heavy yoke, as it is difficult for us humans to find an attitude towards life that gives us this peace in the midst of our burdens and heavinesss of our lives. Jesus

invites us to gentleness and to humility. They help tremendously in our relationship with ourselves and with others. Gentleness and humility are the attitudes that open the door for experiences of rest and of shelter. They provide moments filled with great aliveness. And those are the moments when we are guests with God. VI. And it is a mystery what happens in those moments. Young, innocent and less educated, simple persons sometimes have easier access to this experience that those educated and wise persons, at least that is what Jesus says before he extends his invitation.

For here things are all about trust, and in this area all earthly knowledge can only help in limited ways. To allow Jesus to take the burden from our shoulders that requires that we jump over our own shadow, it requires of us to be humble. And we need to have the hope that we will find aliveness and that we will find rest.

Let us open our eyes for the burdens of other people in these times, and let us help them carry as we are able. We can for example make a donation to the Redeemer food ministry.

And let us keep our eyes open and our hearts for experiences that bring us relief, aliveness and hope. And so I heard a few of my clients say: „ Now that I am working from home I have gotten more sleep and rest than before”. Or they say: „Protesting and being part of the demonstrations has been so encouraging. I feel new hope and new energy within me.“ For Jesus that what he promises us here is closely connected to what God is inviting us for. Jesus speaks about a special relationship between him as the Son of God and his Father in Heaven. Therefore his gift of rejuvenation and rest has a lot to do with God’s invitation to the great feast.

It might be that in these months we really miss sharing the celebration of communion with each other. We definitely miss the shared monthly luncheon and the regular celebrations that are normally part of our church life. And maybe many of us are sad about it.

At the same time, we are becoming creative. We are nevertheless celebrating all our fathers today, even though each at their own home. We celebrate

Barry’s 80th birthday – and we feel connected with each other by cherishing and loving him as one of our Church Fathers.

The rejuvenation and rest that Jesus want to give us and the feast to which God invites all of us, both of those we already are able to sense, taste and feel, and one day we will experience all of them completely.

This is what we are invited to today. Amen.

Intercessory Prayer “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Compassionate God, Let this invitation of your Son, So clear, So comforting, Reach into the even smallest places of our reality and into the farthest ends of this world.

Let it reach into those places Where words are hardly being uttered anymore: Into the hospice rooms.

Into the Intensive care units, into the nursing homes where people suffer and die alone, let his words reach those places where visitors are still not allowed and where even spiritual caregivers are supposed to stay away.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Let this invitation reach those places where no human word or compassion can reach Into those cellars where torture and abuse are rampant, In cells, earth holes and cages, in the concentration camps and refugee camps, where people are vegetating.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Let this call enter into the thin spaces and openings Where Narcissism, Racism and hardened Ideologies are ruling, and yet can soften.

Let this call reach people Who are isolated and hardened in their views.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Let Jesus’s call reach those places Where fear becomes panic And where depression transforms this world To an empty facade And into a hallow play Where no word makes any sense anymore And where no thought has any value.

Reach those demonstrators who can’t shout anymore

And those many families whose loved ones were brutally murdered only because of the color of their skin.

Reach those who cry out at day and at night for justice.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Let this call permeate the fabrics of lies and corruptions, let it permeate the methods of manipulation let it reach where human words become a poison that makes blind.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Let these words reach Where we as your daughters and sons have to speak up And yet where we are anxiously silent, Where we need to proclaim You, And yet flee and retreat, Where we put our fear of the world about our respect and fear of you.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Yes, Lord, we want to come, come to You. In silence we seek shelter in You and we bring You all your burdens and requests. (Pause for 1 Minute)

We pray together as Jesus has taught us: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sinned against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen