Sermon: Comfort and Strength.

We all need comfort and strength. We all need to be comforted and to be strengthened. We need comforting words and strengthening encouragements. We need comfort and strength though kind words, shared life experiences and warm loving hugs or in a shared silence that can express more than thousands of words.

We all need comfort and strength as the apostle Paul wrote so beautifully to the congregation of Thessalonica: “ Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.” 2 Thess. 2.16-17

The month is November. We are at the end of the year. We are in the 11th hour of the year of 2019. We, who are blessed and fortunate to live here in this warm region under God’s gracious sun, - at this time of year we send warm thoughts, comforting words and strengthening encouragement to all the Danes to inhabit the far dark North.

“The year has 16 months.” The Danish poet Henrik Nordbrandt wrote with a humorous pen and yet with a November seriousness. Off course, the year does not have 16 months, but Nordbrandt wrote a poem with the title and it goes like this:

“The year has 16 months:

November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June,

July, August, September, October, November, November, November, November.”

In this short and yet poignant poem the year does have 16 months. November is counted 5 times. November is repeated 4 times at the end. By this repetition the poet Nordbrandt tells us the subtle and truth about November in Denmark: this dark, cold, windy and stormy month that seem to last forever.

The poet himself, did not withstand darkness, cold and rain very well, and thus he escaped November Denmark and lived most of his Falls and Winters in far more sunny regions of the world. Nordbrandt would have loved it here. Even if the calendar says November, even it noticeably has become colder and the days has been shortened, - we still are blessed to see and feel the sun almost every single day. Even in November.

 

Another Danish poet Benny Andersen wrote a beautiful poem about life and how to live life to its fullest and finest:

“Live while you’re living and don’t be envious

But with the living all the best in life

A hand can be clenched as well as be opened

Use it for caressing and not for hitting

Tomorrow is the possibility of yet another day

Where nothing is quite the same as before.”

 

These to Danish poems, the November poem by Nordbrandt and the Life Poem by Andersen, are both reflected in the reading from Paul’s second letter to the congregation in Thessalonica.

Paul was one of the first and most important Christian missionaries of the early church. Paul founded several of the earliest congregation in Rome, in Corinth and in Thessalonica in Greece. Paul wrote letter of encouragement to his congregations. Letter filled with advice, encouragement, subtle scolds and firm rebukes.

Paul wrote letters to the congregation in Thessalonica, and two of them are part of our New Testament. These two letters are filled with comfort and encouragement to the members of the congregation: members who were persecuted, who were afraid, who were arguing among themselves and who were debating the greater issue of life, resurrection and eternity.

Paul writes them and urge calm, faithfulness and firmness. Paul writes to them in order to strengthen them in their faith and to encourage them to hold on to what they have been taught, what they have heard and what they believe. Paul urges them to stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that they were taught and live a life grounded and founded on Christian values.

Like the modern Danish poet Andersen, the early Christian missionary Paul, urges the congregation to be present I the moment, to live while they are living and to be firm in their faith and faithfully and patiently wait and hope. Don’t try to escape into the fear of today’s persecution or to escape into the images of the coming Kingdom of God.

Be present and live while you live.

Don’t get caught in the dark rainy November days and don’t escape into the bright shining heaven of some day – be present, live life while you live and get strength and comfort in your faith and in the gracious hope that God has blessed us with.

 

We alle need comfort and strength and encouragement.

We may find that in God’s word to us; we may find that here in the sacred room of the church; we may find it in the sacraments of water, bread and wine; we may find it in our faith; and we may find it in our prayers.

“Our Father in Heaven….” We pray. Our Lord’s prayer is our beautiful finest prayer. A prayer that truly embraces all our lives: our joy, our gratitude, our sorrow, our guilt and our longing for comfort and strength.

Give us today about daily bread to live while we are living, here in this precious moment

Forgive us and grant us the freedom to live forgiven and hand that forgiveness to others too.

Give us faith in God’s heaven and Gods’ Kingdom

Give us faith to believe that the kingdom the power and the glory are god’s for ever and ever. An eternity that combines all times and embraces this moment of November, the richness of the moments of the past and the bright hopeful vision of someday.

This is our comfort and our encouragement. Our strength and our faith.

We sing about this, when we sing our beloved old hymn: Beauty is all around us:

About the beauty and the glory of the mighty skies and earth; about our pilgrimage through this November Region to Paradise. About the generations and the ages that shall come and go and follow each other like pears n a string. About the beautiful endless song, the beautiful heavenly tone, the hope that never shall be silenced: “Peace onto all of earth, joyful mankind shall be, today is Christ, our Savior born.”

Mankind be joyful, live in the moment and believe that a savior has marked our time and our places and given us comfort and strength to live, to be, to hope and to believe. ~ Amen