Welcome to AnchorCast, a weekly podcast of homilies and sermons from Christ our Anchor Anglican Mission in Nashville, Tennessee.

Let us pray.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our rock and our Redeemer.

Amen.

So Jeremiah said, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that a king shall reign and prosper and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.

You know, talking around, I think a lot of people were raised to fear the coming of the Lord.

Folk were raised scared for we Jesus came back scared for wrath and fire and punishment and all sorts of other awful things.

Now, of course, we are to fear God.

He is powerful.

He is beyond our understanding.

He is totally and completely different from us.

He cannot tolerate sin, and he will not have filth in his house.

Reflecting on God should cause us to fall to our knees asking for forgiveness.

It should cause us to see our dirty works and to hate them, to be ashamed of them.

All of this is very true, but here’s the thing that I feel like was left out for a lot of people.

God became human.

Jesus lived among us.

He took our sins upon himself.

He died on the cross for us, and in his name, we are forgiven.

In his name, we stand holy, righteous, and clean before the throne of God.

In Christ, in our life of repentance within the church, we do not fear.

Today, in this very service, we confess our sins and God has truly forgiven us.

Jesus forgives.

Jesus makes us holy, and in Jesus, we can boldly approach the throne of God.

So now, as adopted sons and daughters of God through Christ, we should not fear Christ’s return.

So what then are we to make of what the prophet Jeremiah tells us today?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, but we live in a deeply broken world.

There’s an abundance of food, but people somehow still go hungry.

There are empty buildings that soar into the sky while people are sleeping under overpasses, and the rich fly to their vacation homes while the Amazon is burning.

Abuse, murder, theft, poverty—these are the realities that surround us.

And there’s a lot of people who want to take all of this pain and suffering and turn it into anger, to turn it into to hate.

And while I must admit that a little hate and anger can make you feel better for a bit, it never really solves problems.

On the contrary, it just makes problems bigger and deeper and worse.

What Jeremiah tells us today is that we can leave the judgment, wrath, and justice to God.

We can trust that it will come.

Justice will be served.

The weak and abused will be restored.

Wickedness will be punished.

We can leave all of our anger behind.

We can give our pain, suffering, fear, and hate to Jesus, and we can trust that He will return and that He will make things right.

So that is my call to all of us today.

We need to leave our anger and hate at the foot of the cross.

Don’t let it eat away at you.

Don’t let it fester and grow and spread to others.

Simply trust in Jesus.

Trust in His justice, because He will return and He will wipe away every tear.

He comes, so let us wait rejoicing in His holy righteousness.

In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Amen.

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Everyone is welcome.