Come, Lord Jesus

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, November 9, 2025
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5,13-17

    My newsletter article for November was about my family’s liturgy of praying the table prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed.”  So, if you didn’t read it, well, after church there are many copies available in the back, or check out the front page of our website for a digital copy!  As we get closer to Thanksgiving, we’re perhaps starting to plan who and what will be on and around our table.  As your pastor I think it’s important to ask you, have you thought about what table blessing before the meal you can offer? It could be as simple as that one sentence, words from your heart or another written prayer focused on thanksgiving.  
In the church, we’re thinking about a few other preparations around the table in November.  If you weren’t aware, Advent begins on November 30, our last Sunday of the month, so we are getting ready for Christmas before you know it!  And now our scripture readings turn toward the end times as we near the end of another year, and remembering not only our belief that Jesus came as a baby in a manger, but Jesus will come again at his second coming, where we will join Jesus at the heavenly feast that has no end. 
    So, it seems very appropriate that we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.”  When we look around at the state of our world, we long for Jesus to come again in his fullness.    SNAP benefits are on hold.  The government is still shut down.  There is still war in Ukraine, Sudan, and a very tenuous peace in the Holy Land.  Families are deeply divided after another election this past week.  We hold in our prayers victims of Hurricane Melissa and the overwhelming amount of recovery needed in various parts of our country and the world from natural disasters – earthquakes, forest fires, floods and so on.  Come, Lord Jesus!
    In the midst of our anxieties, our scripture readings point us toward the hope and comfort we have in our faith.  Job is in the midst of his suffering in our first reading for today.  He has lost all of his children, his property and home, and he is afflicted by disease.  Only his wife is still living, which some have joked may be an additional source of his suffering.  I love the book of Job because Job is not afraid to be angry with God and ask God the hardest questions about why bad things happen to good people.  He does not have a passive faith that simply accepts his suffering by quickly letting God off of the hook.  At the same time, he tells his friends, here in chapter 19, “I know that my vindicator lives…in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side!”  Job trusts that at the end of his suffering, whatever the outcome, even if he can’t totally make sense of it, God will be there, on his side.  When we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus” we trust along with Job that Jesus will be there for us – Jesus WILL come again.
    In our second reading from 2 Thessalonians, people are feeling similar to we feel today – anxious, wondering if this is really it – are we in the end times?  The church of Thessalonica at this time believed that Jesus was going to return immanently – any day now!  Like us, they didn’t really know exactly when that would happen or even what would happen with Jesus’ coming.  So we, like those early Christians, are encouraged to not be shaken, alarmed, or deceived about the day of the Lord.  In fact, the warning in the encouragement is to not be so focused on Jesus’ second coming that we miss God’s call to action and faith in the present moment.  Trusting that Jesus will come again, we can focus on the here and now, on the things that we can control, on the central teachings of the good news of Jesus.   2nd Thessalonians urges us to stand firm and hold fast to the traditions of the Church.  Trust more, worry less.  We pray, “Come, Lord Jesus!”
    Then we come to our gospel.  I kind of imagine Jesus the teacher saying to these Sadducees, “It’s OK, go ahead, ask me anything. There are no stupid questions.” And then after they offer this convoluted scenario of a woman who ends up marrying seven brothers, Jesus pauses and says, “OK, I lied, this is a stupid question.”  Because Jesus knows it is not a genuine question.  The Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection, and they want to prove to Jesus that they are right.  A little frustratingly to us, who want to know more about what the day of the Lord will be like and what heaven will be like, Jesus does not really explain the resurrection, but urges the Sadducees and us to focus on God being a God of the living.  When we die, we become children of the resurrection with God just as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Jesus says.  To God, these saints who have gone before us are still alive.  Jesus, like our reading from 2 Thessalonians, urges us to focus on what we are doing with our lives here on Earth before we die, trusting that we will also live with God in the resurrection after death.
    As we hold all of these readings together, we start to see that this simple prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,” is not only about looking for Christ to come again in his second coming, but a reminder to look for signs of Christ living among us today.  This is another way of asking, “Does anyone have a God sighting to share this morning?”  Because yes, Christ is not present with us as he was in the historical Jesus of Nazareth. However, when we come together around this table, we receive the body and blood of Christ, and he lives in us.  When we look around at the people gathered here this morning, we remember that we are the church, the body of Christ; he lives among us.  Jesus points us to looking for the God of the living so that we can fully live with eternal comfort and good hope, with strengthened hearts in our good works and words, as 2 Thessalonians puts it.
    Last Sunday, I was feeling particularly down and discouraged – with losses and struggles my friends and family are going through, here at church and in our community.  A man came to worship and after the service told me he hadn’t had a shower in a few days because his heat and water had been shut off.  He thought maybe the church had a shower (we sadly don’t).  I sent him to St. Edward’s where St. Vincent DePaul Society is equipped to help him not just with a shower but with some ideas and support to get his utilities back on.  But then I thought, that’s Jesus showing up at our church today.  A little while later, someone handed me $500 in ShopRite gift cards.  A young man had stopped by wanting to support our food pantry because of SNAP benefits ending.  Jesus was there, again.  These small signs and actions can be daily reminders that our prayer is not just that Jesus come at his second coming, but that we see Jesus showing up in our daily lives.  “Be our guest, Jesus,” we pray.  “Come on in, live in us, with us, and through us.”
    I was reading a different version of the story of Jesus’ birth in Luke recently, which said Mary and Joseph laid the baby Jesus in the manger because there was no place “in the guest room.”   In our table blessings this weekend, in our daily prayers, as we go about our daily lives with work and play, may we pray that Jesus come and be our guest.  May the child who was turned away at his birth be welcomed into our homes.  May the guest rooms of our hearts always be open to receiving Christ as we encounter him in the loved ones we know, in the neighbors we seek to serve, and in the strangers who show up when we least expect it.  May we not be so worried about the Christ who was or the Christ who is to come that we miss the God of the living right here, right now among us.  Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest.  Amen.