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Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

26th Sunday after Pentecost

Year B
November 17, 2024
Rev. Karen G. Bockelman

Daniel 12:1-3
Psalm 16
Hebrews 10:11-14 [15-18] 19-25
Mark 13:1-8

Season of the Church…the Long Green Season…Ordinary Time…Time after Pentecost…Lectionary numbered…Sundays after Pentecost. No matter what it’s called, for some, the Sundays between Holy Trinity and Reign of Christ can seem interminable. Oh, there are a few breaks—Reformation and All Saints, perhaps 4-5 Sundays for a Season of Creation, but still, it’s a long stretch.

 

I don’t remember when it happened or who was responsible, but I have delighted in the Sundays and Seasons designation of Summer, Autumn, November. That is, I think, a recognition of the many changes that take place in our national, community, and personal lives as well as in creation itself. There are secular/civic events—the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving—with occasional overlap into the liturgies of the church. This year, of course, there’s a national election. This long stretch includes, for man, vacation, travel, the start of a school year. There are times of planting and tending, harvest, lengthening and then shortening days.

 

Fall is my favorite time of year. I delight in the blaze of autumn colors culminating in the Spirit red of Reformation (at least for Lutherans), but I am increasingly grateful for easing into the muted shades of November. I look forward to the “Fall Back” time change with its brief return of morning light but, even more, I long for the noticeably earlier evening dark—when “the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed.”  In the dark of evening, I hope to find my “work done and, in God’s mercy a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last. (ELW, Night Prayer, p. 325) for me a comfort, it brings starlight and candlelight, the warmth of friends around the table, the sweetness of sleep. (I know that’s not true of everyone or of everywhere.)

 

November is a transition time, a mixed time. It is a time of endings and looking forward to new beginnings. It starts with the candlelight glow of All Saints and one more Jesus story (or two) with implications of Jesus’ earthly ministry for the life of church. And then, on November 17, the abrupt turn to the end times and the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus. As Sundays and Seasons 2024 says, “The apocalyptic themes foreshadow both the end of the church year … and the beginning of a new church year. The ending flows into a beginning, a reminder not only of the passage of time but of the ongoing cycles of time that we experience living in the in-between times.” (p. 287) In the words of T.S. Eliot “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” (“Little Gidding” in Four Quartets)

 

Transitions are not without their risks—a time of anguish (Daniel), wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, earthquakes and famines (Mark). How can we hear those words and not think of the Middle East (Gaza, Lebanon, Israel), of Russian and Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti. And in our own nation, fires, hurricanes, flash floods. Although this reflection is being written in mid-October, by November 17 the presidential election will be past, but perhaps not over. Echoes of 2020 linger and perhaps have been revived. No matter the election outcome, some will be in anguish, for some a sense of renewed life, for some shame, for too many, everlasting contempt toward the other.

 

I cling to the promise that this is but the beginning of the birth pangs. And I am drawn even more to the wisdom of the wise shining like the brightness of the sky, like the stars forever and ever. In the holy dark, the stars shine even more brightly. My favorite verse in Genesis 1 is vs 16: “God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.” For all that it seems like stars shine forever and ever, they too are born and die, though we seldom witness their births and deaths. Nevertheless, the stars are there.

 

I know I don’t see the stars as much as I could—the lights of cities and of the building in which I live make the stars harder to see. There are 17 certified International Dark Sky Sanctuaries in the world and one of them is in Cook County Minnesota, specifically the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The sixth annual Dark Sky Festival will be December 12-14, 2024. www.visitcookcounty.com/dark-sky-festival/.

 

One of my sorrows is the loss of regular evening services in many congregations. To be sure there’s Christmas Eve, Vigil of Easter, mid-week Lenten services, maybe an evening Thanksgiving service. But I long for Vespers and Compline (Evening Prayer and Night Prayer), with their beautiful evening hymns and prayers, especially the language about stars. Can we sing evening hymns, even in the daylight?

 

My “new” favorite evening hymn is “Christ, Mighty Savior”. I first heard it at the 2009 Christmas at St. Olaf. I bought the CD just to be able to listen to the hymn over and over, only to discover that it is in ELW (#560). The hymn doesn’t privilege night over day, starlight over sunlight, but does express the beauty of the stars—stars in the heavens as God-bestowed glittering adornment and choirs of stars in their appearing, hallowing the nightfall. Perhaps the most powerful expression of the beauty of the night is “now comes the day’s end as the sun is setting, mirror of daybreak, pledge of resurrection”. (vs. 2)

 

Despite my longings for the beauty of the night, I am continually brought up short by the fears and pains of the day—threats of violence, empty promises that can lead us astray, the uncertainties of what yet may come. I am facing this November, sometimes clinging to the beauty of the night, but also with sadness.

Just in the last couple of months, my four-year-old granddaughter has expressed her sadness at not being with us (she lives in Rhode Island—not easy just to show up). She has told her mother, “I’m going to dream about Granny and Grandpa because I just miss them. Maybe you could ask them to come visit so we can all play.” When reminded that we will be coming for Thanksgiving, she replies, “But that is sort of far away and it is just so hard to wait and I just want to see them. And I’m sad again because I just miss Granny and Grandpa so much, so now I need a hug. But I still miss them.”

 

These are sweet words for a grandparent to hear, but this year they speak of the deep sadness of so many of the world’s children—whose parents, whole families have died or are missing, whose only hugs come from stressed and stretched aid workers, whose homes are ruined, who cannot play in safety, whose hope is so far away, whose whole world in its God-created beauty has been destroyed. I can’t help but ask, this November, is this just the beginning?

 

It may be where I start from, but it’s not where I want to end. I want to end with the promise of Hebrews—to approach the sanctuary, God’s world, with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, to hold fast to the confession of hope without wavering, to find, as the Day approaches, the one who has promised is faithful.

Rev. Karen G. Bockelman
Rev. Karen G. Bockelman
Retired
Duluth, MN

Pastor Karen G. Bockelman is a retired ELCA pastor, living in Duluth, MN. Part of her heart is in Rhode Island and part of her heart is in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. On November 17 she will assemble her Moravian star in thanksgiving for the brightness of the wise ones. She will continue to pay tribute to the “sumud” the resilience of the Palestinian people.

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