Sermon: 1st Advent 2020

The Butterfly Effect

  Gospel Reading: Luke 21: 25-36 

Dear Community of Christians,

The first Advent contains a lot of anticipation, especially in the hearts of children. And this joy is contagious. 

And now, how different are the words of the Gospel: “there will be distress among the peoples of the earth and helplessness in the face of the surging sea and its mighty waves.” Can we find any connection between these two extremes? 

Dear community, I could not believe my eyes, when I looked in my archive and found my sermon of the first Advent Sunday in 2016. I have to confess; I could not say other, or better words of today. Let me share those past thoughts today as well: 

“Distress, mistrust and anxiety seem to become the common methods of public life to entangle our thinking. It seems only a matter of time that our hearts and minds will be poisoned by such methods. Now it is our personal responsibility to review these poisonous methods and to provide them with our healthy behaviour. To divide the world into tribes, races and nations, or ‘here the good, there the evil ones’, or ‘here the guilty ones and there the innocents’. This should no longer be a method to split smaller or greater communities.” 

These words were spoken 4 years ago dear community, and we are in the middle of this process. Then I continued: 

“In the last third of the 20th century an American scientist spoke about the butterfly effect, and asked, is it possible that the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? He has opened the possibility that a butterfly flap causes a serious alteration to the events on the earth. Understood in this way, this describes effects in the field of nature. Meanwhile, we need to know that this effect is also in the social interaction of people. We can experience it mostly in a negative sense, whether in the splitting of families, in working or social communities, or splitting public opinion. Can we not also assume that there is a butterfly effect in a positive way? Whenever we turn selflessly with the power of our prayer towards the spiritual world, whenever we connect ourselves with the power of Christ, do currents of peace and love not flow out into the world? 

 It is increasingly important that everyone gains the inner certainty that every prayer that comes from the power of community begets an inexhaustible source of peace for the world. Not only that the power of prayers remain when heaven and earth pass, but they will be carrying the people through the distress already in the here and now.” 

Indeed, four years later, this distress becomes even more concrete. But also, the other effect can be seen; more and more people awakened to the reality that there is a spiritual life beside the material world. The butterfly wings of love can cause an awakening of love for people who are entangled in the land of darkness. 

Rev. Ute Koenig