IDK, maybe
My usual start is to read the Bible lessons for the upcoming Sunday, and I've done that. Don't remember what I said, but I already commented on the gospel lesson, and don't want to do Judges right now, so going on with First Thessalonians, my favorite of Paul's writings. First Thessalonians and then maybe Philemon.
November 11: Veterans Day, staying home until our one o'clock visit to Pruitt. Maybe I'll wear my U S Navy Retired cap out and be thanked for my service. Twenty years, Commander USN retired nearly fifty years ago. May stop at a restaurant on the way home. May be hoping for sushi. Maybe at Basil Oriental Cuisine across the street.
Here's the reading:
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape!
But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.
So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night.
But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.
Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.
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Because of its theme of looking forward to the imminent Second Coming, Day of the Lord, End of Days, First Thessalonians is always appropriate for Advent or Sundays leading up to Advent.
Of course, unlike us thinking we are so sophisticated and brilliant flying to the moon and sending telescopes off to explore and report back to us the far reaches of the Universe, Paul lived in a Time when God's abode was just beyond the clouds and blue firmament. So, a preacher's job, if s/he's to have any credibility with 21st century listeners who don't check their brains at the church door, is to make sense of it for them. Make it relevant.
How is it relevant for people who don't visualize the Second Coming, Jesus returning, with the sound of a trumpet and an army of angels on the clouds and the General Resurrection calling up all living and dead for judgment? Maybe cast it in personal instead of universal terms: death and taxes, you will die and Either sleep in Jesus until the End of Time, Or be summoned immediately into your own personal day of judgment, then go to the New Jerusalem described at the end of Revelation where you will sing and have choices of fruits in their seasons, or be dispatched into either everlasting hellfire or eternal oblivion that isn't even outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth.
What do I believe? What I believe is irrelevant: no amount of belief makes anything True. It's Faith, what I confidently hope for, that matters, and what I hope for is not a busy afterlife, but, as an evening prayer has it, "peace at the last."
Christianity is a religion of wonderful stories upholding a body of Faith, and this is one of them. Retired from the preaching role of priesthood, rather than understanding Paul to Thessalonians literally as he may have meant it, I'm understanding Paul to Thessalonians as I see it, maybe metaphorically as Good News.
Anyway, RSF&PTL
T91