Nativity Lutheran online coffeehouse

15 November 2009

2009-11-15T22:26:00.000-08:00

“Can Lutherans be ‘confident’?”
1 Samuel 1:4-20 / 1 Samuel 2:1-10 / Hebrews 10:11-25
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time / 24 Pentecost B
15 November 2009

Some of you have heard me say in Adult Education classes that I believe Martin Luther to be the first modern democrat … not, in the sense of the current American political party, but more, as one who started people thinking in a more independent vein … not royalist, nor elitist … as was the “way of things” at his time … but more in the way of “we can do this for ourselves.”
I believe this about Luther, because he wrote this way and spoke this way from early in his career as a Reformer of the Church. Luther saw people, the Church, enslaved, in bondage, to believing that they could never do enough to please God, to be made right with God … no matter how much works were done, how much forgiveness purchased, how many masses said … there was never a confident word from the Church of his time that would assure people that their sins were forgiven, that they were made right with God, that they could go on in freedom from living in fear, to joyful service to and for one’s neighbor.
Luther found that Word of freedom, forgiveness and new life when he read the Scriptures. But hardly anyone could read the Latin the medieval Church used to keep the Word from the people. So Luther translated the Scriptures into their language … in his case, common German … so that people could read the Scriptures for themselves, and if they couldn’t read (which was the majority of people), they could at least hear them proclaimed in their own language.
“The Scriptures are perspicacious” Luther declared, meaning that, anyone could and should be able to go directly to the Bible to read God’s Word for them there … without going through priest or deacon, professor or pope, to find answers to their deep spiritual hungering. And more … when they went to the Bible, people would find that all the other intermediaries and roadblocks to Christ … the cult of the saints … works meant to enslave people, such as going on pilgrimages, having to buy indulgences (forgiveness of sins) with their hard-earned money … all those roadblocks, all those intermediaries, would melt away in the warmth of the Son of God … Jesus Christ … who, Luther found as he read Scripture, was the only One God placed between himself and his people … us … not to punish us, but to save us. So he … Luther … and we … didn’t need to go through anyone to “get” to a kind, loving, saving God … no praying to saints, no lighting of candles, no having to buy masses for the dead, not even any more “unworthy” prayers … because, in Christ, to Christ, with Christ, Luther found, and wrote, and preached, and declared … we have all we need to go to God directly … without anyone standing in between.
This is the center of our Evangelical heritage … that the Word of God frees us from being enslaved to anyone and anything that would stand in the way of us having a direct relationship of love, forgiveness, and new life with God, in Jesus Christ.
So why, nearly 500 years after the Reformation, do we still cling to the old ways?
What do I mean by that? Perhaps it’s best exemplified by that holiday carol that I love to hate the most, “Little Altar Boy.” Unfortunately, it’s already in the holiday music rotation that we’ve been hearing since before Halloween …

Little altar boy, I wonder could you pray for me?
Little altar boy, for I have gone astray
What must I do to be holy like you?
Little altar boy, oh, let me hear you pray.

Now, there is a Word in Scripture, yes, that “the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective” (James 5:16) … but we’ve taken that Word out of context, when we think or believe or act in a way, that says … only the pastor can pray rightly or effectively … that the religious people’s prayers are heard first, before everyone else’s … that what I read in or hear from the Bible is less important than what someone with an alphabet soup of degrees behind their name says about it.
Note that the word before that verse in James which I just read, says, “confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”
Now, we don’t want our sermons to be self-help sessions … for church to sound like an episode from “Dr. Phil” … or for self-esteem raising to take the place of confession, forgiveness, communion together, and being sent to serve others … but there is a very real sense that we Lutherans have lost our way from where Luther was pointing us, one finger on the Scriptures, one arm pointing outward, in faith and hope, pointing to love lived in works of service to and for our neighbor. There is a sense of apology, overweening humility, we’re-not-good-enoughness that we carry as Lutherans, that keeps us … voiceless … with “Lutheran laryngitis” in telling others about Jesus … and quiet, still, shrinking back in the proclamation of the Word of truth about God when others are, quite simply, telling lies about God.
Luther thought, wrote, found in Scripture, proclaimed to the world otherwise. That Christians could, and should, be confident in their faith.
So what do you think? Do the words of our reading from Hebrews apply to us …

“… since we have confidence … by (through) … Jesus”

Can Lutherans be ‘confident’?
A good place to begin, in answering that question, is in looking at some example-people from the Bible, who lived lives of confident faith.
People like … Hannah, in our seldom-heard-in-worship story from 1 Samuel.
Perhaps you’ve not ever heard this story before … a story which follows fast on the words at the end of the book of Judges … that this was a time in Israel’s history when they were leaderless, and pretty much faithless … when there was no main leader for God’s people, but “everyone did what was right in his or her own eyes.”
Even the religion of the time … was faithless. Even the religious leaders of the time … didn’t believe … didn’t follow God’s Word … what it said, what it taught. Eli and his sons were rotten priests … his sons were just in it for the money … not for the saving faith which would rescue their people from their sins.
But there were a few faithful people in Israel. People like Elkanah, and Hannah. Elkanah, as was the custom at the time, had more than one wife. Peninnah had been given the gift of children, but Hannah could not bear children. Elkanah was a faithful man, and Hannah, a faithful woman, but that didn’t seem to help. Peninnah was the one who had the children … but not being satisfied with that, she used to provoke Hannah … tease and taunt her, give her a bad time because she couldn’t have children.
Now Hannah … could have just settled for this life. Elkanah loved her and took care of her; that could have been enough for her. To settle for … settling. Sure, Peninnah gave her a hard time, but people can learn to live with misery, especially if they don’t think too much of themselves.
But this was not an option for Hannah. Hannah knew that she was a precious child of God, and couldn’t understand why being childless was her lot in life. So … in confidence … in confidence … she went before God, to pray to God for children. Hannah made a vow, that she would dedicate her child to the service of the Lord, if she would but be able to conceive.
Eli, the big jerk … Eli presents the absolute worst model of pastoral care that we find in Scripture. Here Hannah was pouring out her heart in prayer … and Eli went over and accused her of being drunk. Granted … at that time, most prayers were prayed aloud, not silently; so Hannah’s behavior would have looked “different” … but still, Eli’s accusation must have stung.
Yet Hannah stuck to her prayer … in confidence, in confidence, through her tears, Hannah told Eli of her prayer … pouring out her soul to the Lord. Now, it’s hard to get “tone” from the printed word of the Bible … but the sense in which Eli sent her home … “Go in peace” … suggests more of a “eh” than a blessing.
Little did he know, however, that the blessing he gave to Hannah … backhanded as it may have been … would result in the rebirth of faith in Israel … he and his sons overthrown as priests of the Lord, because of their faithlessness … and Hannah’s son, Samuel, he would be the one to lead Israel into reborn faith … and the great era of Israel; Samuel would be the one chosen by God to anoint first Saul, and then David, as kings.
And Hannah … confident, confident Hannah … she did go home, rejoicing … her song is our Psalm for today … and in words that exude confident faith …

…the Lord raises up the poor from the dust; lifting the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor ….

… she prepares to bear a son, Samuel … and prefigures another young maiden, who is told by God that she will bear a son who will save his people from their sins. If you thought the words of the Psalm sounded familiar, well, they should … for Mary’s song of praise, a few centuries later, which we call the Magnificat, after she, finding herself in the most difficult of circumstances, a young unmarried pregnant teenager … she also praises and prays in confidence, in confidence that God will hear her prayer and will not forget her in her time of need.
And so we … we, quiet, unassuming, timid Lutherans that we are … we are called on to throw all that … quiet, unassuming, timidity … out the window … at least, when it comes to how we are with our God.
For we stand on the shoulders of un-timid people. Hannah. Mary. Luther. People who were unafraid of asking God for what they needed … people who were undeterred by the world, when they spoke the word of faith and were met with disapproval, dismissal, or worse …
… people who clung to the Word of promise and hope, trusting in the unfailing promise of God … that our God does not abandon his people, ever … that our God is always for us, always, for us, no matter what … and that our God loves us so much that he will stop at nothing, nothing, to be with us … to rescue us from our sins, to save us … in Jesus, in the flesh and blood of his own son, living, suffering, dying, and rising … we have God’s forever promise to be with us and for us in the bad times and the good times … that together, we will have enough … and that one day, suffering and crying, pain and death will be no more, a distant memory, as we are gathered together in the light and life of his Son forever.
And so what do we do in the meantime?
As the words of Hebrews state so clearly … we hold fast to the confession of our hope.
We gather together … we gather together… we do not neglect corporate worship. Singing and praying, hearing and speaking, eating and drinking together God’s promise, it is a priority, the priority for us, the mark of our community of confidence and hope … for here we are given the strength and the hope so that we can be encouraged and encourage one another, “provoking one another to love and good deeds,” what we are called and gathered and sent to be about, for now, and for all the days to come.
So no more quietness. No more timidity. No more believing that “someone else should pray, or speak” when it comes to matters of this faith, this life, we are called into as followers of Jesus and servants, one of another.
Lutherans are confident. Confident of our own place in God’s household forever. Confident that our God hears us, because of, in, through, Jesus. Confident that we have a Word of promise and hope for the world. Confident to go and speak, go and do, go and share.
Amen.

8 November 2009

2009-11-08T13:45:00.000-08:00

“How to eagerly await the Savior”
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time / 23 Pentecost B
Hebrews 9:24-28 / Mark 12:38-44
8 November 2009

These final Sundays in the church year … coming as they do between the festival Sundays of All Saints’ Day and Christ the King … they have always been something of a conundrum. What do we call them? What do we do with them? It seems kind of strange to have them still be colored “green” Sundays after Pentecost … having to do with growth … when everything outside is turning brown and dying for the winter.
Reformation and All Saints’ are tough acts to follow … all the pride and joy in being Lutheran; all the promise and hope, the message of the saints, past, present, and future. So some have made their own way for November. Our more somber brothers and sisters in the Lutheran Church-Wisconsin Synod call these November Sundays “End Time” … a little play on words, the end of the church year, but also, recognizing how the texts for these Sundays do focus on the time of The End.
Our New Testament reading definitely goes there today. Indeed, it’s in good continuity with where we were last Sunday … All Saints’ … and those readings from Wisdom of Solomon, the raising of Lazarus in John’s Gospel, and the final sections of Revelation.
Namely … the last two verses of that ninth chapter of Hebrews:

And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

I’m always surprised at the number of churches and church bodies which don’t observe All Saints’ Day, or All Saints’ Sunday – particularly because it’s usually the churches which make the loudest noises against Halloween … who then, thus don’t observe the Christian interpretation of what that following day, All Saints’ Day, is all about … namely, that in Jesus Christ we will not all die forever, but instead, we are promised new, full, everlasting life. That is what this faith, this life, is all about, isn’t it? Isn’t it?
Well, evidently not to everyone.
For some of our brothers and sisters, believing is far more about … fearing Judgment Day. Coming up against the all-powerful, almighty God, and receiving punishment for our sins.
It is the peculiar approach that so much of the American Christian movement goes after … those churches, those denominations which look for a “conversion,” a moment of being “born again,” often, it seems like their first and best way of going after more converts is, for lack of a better term, to employ “scare tactics.” “Turn or burn” … “you don’t want to end up in hell forever” … “you just wait till Judgment Day.” One can argue that there’s a great motivational power in fear … we’ve certainly seen that in spades right here in Fairwood during this past election … and when it comes to faith, particularly Christianity, we see how profoundly that fear of The End … death, personally, coming to each of us; and then, The Big One, the Final Judgment Day before our God … how profoundly that fear of The End has colored Christianity for centuries. Fear … sells, because fear keeps people together, in bondage, yes, but together, still.
The thing about it is, living in fear, well, it’s a lousy way to live.
I mean, who wants to live in constant fear? It ends up being an all-consuming state. Freezing individuals, families, groups of people, corporations, communities, even nations, in place. Unable to move, one way or the other, they just stay put. And staying put is not a natural state for living things. That which stays put, frozen, and unchanging … dies.
But … wait a minute. This is not the sense of judgment which these words from Hebrews gives us. Listen again.

And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Now … that scenario sounds much different from “turn or burn,” which some are so happy to paint for us.
Might it be, then, instead, that when it comes to “The End” …. Jesus comes and brings you what you expect? In other words, if you aren’t eagerly awaiting Jesus’ return … but instead … expect death, Jesus’ coming again, The End of It All to be the worst of all possible scenarios … like those words from the Wisdom of Solomon last week …

“Their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction …”

… then, might you just get that? A Righteous Judge, bringing hellfire and condemnation?
Now, I’m not making this up. There’s Biblical precedent for this line of thinking … in the parable of the talents (or pounds), from Matthew (or Luke), the servant entrusted with taking care of his master’s treasure while he’s away, who “buries it out back” because he knew that his master “was a harsh man,” well, the master ends up being for him precisely what he expects.
But what does the writer of Hebrews say here? He’s pointing toward a different outcome, other than an angry, righteous judge of a Jesus coming again …

… so Christ … will appear a second time … to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Hmn. Now there’s a switch.
Instead of dreading the end, our death, the Final Outcome, the Last Judgment … we who have Jesus’ name stamped all over us … we who say we follow him … we are to be ‘using’ this life, if you will, not to be “killing time” until he shows up … and most certainly, not to be waiting for him in fear and trembling … no, we’re called to eagerly wait for him.
As the plants and trees in our yards and gardens use these “Ending” days of the fall to sink down roots even deeper into the soil … the beginnings of next spring’s buds are seen forming on the ends of the branches even as this year’s leaves blow away in the cold winds of November … so we, too, are called to use this time before Jesus’ return to prepare for him.
And all fall we’ve heard stories about different ways we can prepare for him. Always starting in worship … always starting at the table, the font, the meditation on his Word … and then, moving out, always in service to and for others … always, in all ways.
But there’s been one way of faithfulness glaringly obvious in its absence, in these stories we’ve had this fall. It’s the one way we most often associate with “faithful response,” but the one we speak of – at least publicly – the least.
In my first call, I was told point-blank never to mention it in worship.
Of course I didn’t heed that advice then …
… and I won’t today either.
The story of the widow’s mite in our Gospel text today, comes to us, familiar as it is to many of us, but still, as a foreign word, an outside word, a strange word that we who have much just can’t wrap ourselves around. None of us here is as poor as this widow. Her two coins … would buy nothing. It would take 8 to buy a sparrow … a pretty spare meal.
Yet, hear how she gave. Yes, she could have kept back one penny for herself and put the other in the collection box, and that would have been 50% giving … far more percentage-wise than those fat cats who Jesus watched put in their large sums. But no. She put in everything she had, all she had to live on.
Foolish? Perhaps. Fiscally unsound? Maybe.
But it’s the widow, not the rich people, who Jesus commends, for her faithful stewardship.
She knows, she responds, to the reality that 100% of what she has comes from and belongs to God, and so 100% goes back to God.
How would she eat? Where would she live? What would she do?
The story doesn’t give us those answers. We have to trust that somehow, she had enough … somehow, she was given enough, to get by. Surely, since Jesus was watching over her, she was given enough to live.
And so that’s where I’d like to leave this story, this sermon, for today.
With a poor lady who the world would say was crazy, irrational, ridiculous … who Jesus points to as an example for all of us.
Nativity is the most generous, most faithfully giving congregation in which I’ve ever served. I continue to give thanks for that, for you, every day.
But we can do better. Yes, in the midst of recession, threats of floods, political conflicts, election outcomes we don’t like, illness, disease … and the fear which accompanies them all … we can do better. Growing in our giving, our stewardship of time and talent, hours and funds. Growing in our giving so that the ministry of Jesus Christ, his Gospel word of freedom and new life, might be heard loudly, clearly, from this place, for this time and for the times to come.
Not motivated by fear of judgment, budget shortfalls, what might happen to us if we don’t. God doesn’t want that. That is blood money … money, time, given in fear … not in love.
No, we not be moved by fear … or, rather, I should say, frozen in fear. That leads to death.
We shall, instead, be moved by love. Eagerly waiting for the return of Jesus, always. In all ways.
Including, our money. Including, our time.
We can do better. We will do better. For he has, and does, do his best. For us. Always. Amen.

1 November 2009

2009-11-01T13:48:00.000-08:00

“Bring out your dead”
Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 / Revelation 21:1-6a / John 11:32-44
All Saints’ Day
1 November 2009

We Americans are a very contradictory bunch.
On the one hand, we are enamored with death.
How else do you explain the popularity of TV shows like CSI, with its Las Vegas, New York and Miami components … each one, in gruesome and minute detail, leading viewers through high-tech scientific examination of the many different ways in which a human body can die … and then, just as detailed, explorations of what happens to those same bodies after death.
And don’t forget the horror and disaster movie franchises … how many times has “Friday the 13th” been made and remade? What number is the SAW series of slasher movies up to now?
In a very real sense, blood and guts death sells. The more horrific, the more ghastly, the better.
But … on the other hand … we Americans are absolutely stone cold terrified of death. Death is seen as the worst possible thing imaginable. It must be avoided at all costs. There is no vaccine too rare, no Purell too strong … no expense too great, to make sure that death is … denied. Put off, pushed off, bailed out, removed, sanitized, cleansed from our midst.
Witness this in the following ways …
The endless proliferation of “heroic measures,” whether that’s machines intervening to keep a human body on life support long after it should have naturally died … or the machines of government and commerce jointly intervening on behalf of companies deemed “too big to fail,” thus denying the life-and-death cycle in business.
Pictures of flag-draped caskets of soldier-heroes killed in battle, upon arriving home, scrupulously kept from our sight.
The media’s constant work of whipping up hysteria over “possible” disasters – everything from earthquakes to floods to close encounters with asteroids.
The whole sanitized way the funeral industry in this country has us trained to behave … funerals relabeled as “celebrations of life” where the words and music are all about the deceased … with no mention, no hint or suggestion that there might be something more than just this … casket, or urn, sitting before us. Our corporate theology about death is less informed by Scripture, and more by that old Peggy Lee standard, “Is That All There Is?”

I know what you must be saying to yourselves,
if that's the way she feels about it why doesn't she just end it all?
Oh, no, not me. I'm not ready for that final disappointment, for I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you, when that final moment comes and I'm breathing my last breath, I'll be saying to myself
Is that all there is, is that all there is; If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball If that's all there is

Is that … is this … indeed, all there is?
In our weekly text study group this past Wednesday, our usual group of pastors was chewing on just this … trying to rectify these polar opposite positions about death which we hold simultaneously … morbid curiosity, and mortal fear. How do we do it? And why?
And then … someone pointed out how our Scripture texts for today, ancient as they are, speak to precisely that current dilemma.

“But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.”

This may be the first time you’ve ever heard these words from the book, the Wisdom of Solomon. It’s a Jewish work, written in the same Greek as the New Testament, written about the time of Jesus; Protestants label it “apocryphal Old Testament” even though our Roman Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters include it in their Old Testament canon.
But whether you’ve heard or read this before or not … there’s little denying that twenty centuries of living and dying have not changed the attitudes which people still have about death. Death was and is seen as the ultimate disaster, the worst thing that can ever happen. Death equals finality, finitude, finishing … it’s over and done and gone, there is no more. All that there is for those who are left behind, is to weep and wail at their “passing.”
And there has been much weeping and wailing over the centuries. In Maryland and New York I used to be on call for a couple of the local funeral homes to “do funerals” for those people and families who had no connection with a faith community. I must admit I had to get “into” a certain mode, or way, of thinking and acting for these services. Yes, it was the same message of hope and resurrection I brought at these funerals as I did, and do, at those who die embraced in the arms of a loving, caring faith community … but most often, it fell on deaf ears. There was much weeping and wailing … people throwing themselves on top of caskets, collapsing, inconsolable … remaining at the graveside long after the service had ended, not in conversation and consolation, but in silent, numb unbelief … this was, indeed, all there is. “She was his world … he was all they had … whatever will they ever do now?” … These are some of the phrases I’ve heard over the years, echoing so clearly those words of Wisdom …

“Their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction …”

No wonder, then, that we have this two-pronged approach to death. It is the last great unknown, so we want to know all that we can about it … but even in all that knowing, there is no consolation in the clinical examination of it all, the camera’s unforgiving eye, staring at the bullet or the cancer or the wound or the heart attack that ends it all.
No consolation.
And no hope either, if by hope, you mean seeing something which denies that “this is all there is.”
Seeing is all that those friends of Jesus had going for them, in our Gospel reading for today. Jesus’ friend Lazarus had died, and he has made his way to Bethany to console Lazarus’ family, his two sisters Mary and Martha.
At this point in the story, Jesus has already met and greeted Martha, and now, meets Mary where she is, in her grief and loss. Though her words might sound harsh to us, they shouldn’t. We’ve probably said them ourselves, at one time or another. “Lord, if you had been her, my brother would not have died.”
Those are honest words, words weighted with sorrow and grief, suffering and pain. We should not be angry with Mary for uttering them … or with ourselves for feeling them, or speaking them. It would be far worse to deny them … to just go on like everything’s OK, no problems, sanitized, clean, hunky-dory. That would be the falsehood, the lie, the real death … the death of our feeling, the death of our humanity.
And note how Jesus meets Mary here. There are no words. No words at all. No excuses, no pandering, no trying to make it all better … just “Where have you laid him?” And Jesus’ honest tears.
For those with eyes to see, then, see how Jesus’ brings his very presence into the pain, the suffering, of this life, even death, even death.
The others there, however, don’t, or can’t, see it. “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” The irony of who is really seeing … and who is truly blind … is great.
But not so great that Jesus leaves things there as they are. He has one more sign in him before the final living, dying, rising sign of his own suffering, death, and resurrection. He brings Lazarus, dead Lazarus, stinking dead Lazarus, back to life again. It’s a real life Halloween, Michael Jackson “Thriller,” night of the living dead moment all wrapped into one … for the morbidly curious, it doesn’t get any better than this.

“The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Of course, Lazarus would have to die again … “to this favor we all must come” … and probably, there would be more tears shed … but the event which this miracle-sign from Jesus foreshadows, points toward … the nails, the cross, the empty tomb, the Risen Savior appearing to his friends and family … THAT becomes the real story here … and for all those Lazarus-moments that have followed, and will follow, until that day when God says “enough” … whenever that day shall be … we have a Word for them.
The preview of that Word comes in Lazarus’ raising.
The down-payment on that Word shines forth in Jesus’ dying and rising.
And the final Word, the promise which we have been given, that which this being Christian, in the end, is all about … beyond the rituals and the gathering, the plays and the potlucks, the hockey games and the choir rehearsals and the yard cleanups, this, THIS … is what it is, we are, all about:

"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
4he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away."

We who live in Jesus’ name have a Word for a world which is both morbidly curious and
mortally afraid of death. We have a Word for all those who suffer, who weep, who mourn. That word is not “buck up” or “get over it” or “put on a happy face;” and it most certainly is not “this is all there is.”
It is The Word of comfort, hope, peace, rest, joy, fulfillment, completeness.
It is The Word which is realistic, true, not in denial. As the bumper sticker –yes, in reality, more earthy– says, “stuff happens.” Yes, it does. Yes, it does. It has happened and is happening and will continue to happen. As Luther so rightly called this world “a valley of tears,” so too, we will not deny our suffering, or the suffering of others – but, like Jesus, we will stand with others in it. With the comforting arm, the shoulder to cry on, the loving caring presence that Jesus exemplifies with Mary and Martha, for Lazarus. We will be there with and for others in their suffering because our Lord is with us and for us in ours. Comforting, and bringing real hope.
Hope that there is more than this “valley of tears,” that when our final hour comes our Father in heaven will take us to himself in heaven.
Hope – real hope – not false hope that comes in running and scurrying after the latest fad, fear, potion, portion, that holds out phony promises of deliverance … no, we will stake our claim and place our hope firmly, squarely on the Cross of Jesus Christ alone … his life, his suffering, his death, his resurrection. That Is All We Need For This Life. And For The Life To Come.
And Come It Will. Hallelujah, Come It Will!
Kathleen Norris, the spiritual author of the upper Midwest, wrote a book called “Dakota – A Spiritual Geography” a few years back. In it were these verses, which exemplify this hope in which we are called to live … in Jesus’ name … and to spread, liberally, to others, so that they, too, can rest securely in real, true hope. The hope that does not fail us, ever.
Strangely enough, it comes in a section of the book which is about a rural church on the Dakota prairie named Hope. The pastor wondered, one day in early November, at a funeral and burial in the Hope church graveyard, what the men were doing, on their hands and knees, peering into the open grave.

“Someone explained to the pastor that these men were checking the frost and moisture levels in the ground. They were farmers and ranchers worried about a drought. They were mourners, giving a good friend back to the earth. They were people of earth, looking for a sign of hope.”

May you … may we … go forth this All Saints Day, in all the comfort and peace, grace and hope, our risen and living Lord gives us … so that we may point others to that same sign of Real Hope.
Amen.

18 October 2009

2009-10-19T06:55:00.000-07:00

“It all comes down to … service”
Mark 10:35-45 / Galatians 6
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time / 20 Pentecost B
18 October 2009

Last week, we began our reflection time with words about people, groups of people – who, both historically and currently, have wanted to or are actively rewriting the Bible to meet their own agendas – liberal, conservative, whatever. It’s not a new trend … as long as the Bible’s been around, there have been those desiring to add to or subtract from its canon … the version we have before us today.
We recalled Martin Luther’s words of warning about the Scriptures … that they are no “wax nose to be bent around as we please.”
But … even sainted Luther was not above bending that nose around a bit.
There are parts of the Bible that he wished weren’t in it. Mostly, because he felt that they contradicted the core of the Gospel message, that “we are justified – made right – with God, by God’s grace alone, through the gift of faith alone.” Luther wanted to make sure that people heard the sure and certain word that there is nothing …. NOTHING … we as people can do from our side of the equation that will make us right with God … but it’s only Jesus, only Jesus, his life, his suffering, his death, his resurrection, which makes us right, squares us, settles our accounts and pays our debt of sin against God and each other.
For example – Luther thought that the book of Esther in the Old Testament was far less worthy of being in the Bible than the others, because God and what God does for us isn’t mentioned much in it, but rather, it’s all about what Esther – and by implication, we – us – do.
And then there’s the New Testament letter of James. “A right straw epistle,” Luther called it, mostly, because of what’s written in chapter 2 …
“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? … So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
And so, as we come today to the end of our Fall Focus Series on Paul’s letter to the Galatians … we may well have heard this verse, read just a few moments ago, and wondered about it, too … in a Lutheran context, as Luther might have heard it …
“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
The Law … of Christ.
Maybe this is another place where Luther would have bent that wax nose around a little? After all … Law of Christ … it does sound a lot like those words from James, doesn’t it? Like the emphasis is put right back on … us … what we do … a requirement, a law, that we do something, something for Jesus, something for others? And Luther … Luther said that the Gospel Word is that there is NOTHING we can do, that makes us right with God.
So maybe we should discount this part of the Scriptures, too. Cross Galatians 6.2 right out of our New Testaments.
Right?
Well, not so fast.
Hear what Luther himself said about this passage:

“In a very beautiful and thoroughly golden maxim Paul sums up the two teachings he has previously mentioned … everywhere Love finds something to bear, something to do. Moveover, love is the law of Christ. (For they who disregard this Word) make the Cross of Christ of no effect in themselves, and the love they have is inactive, is snoring, and is carried on other shoulders.”

You see, Luther never intended what his followers have done with his words. Which is … which is … that ditch that many Protestants have gone into over the past five hundred years … rightfully earning the criticism of our Orthodox and Catholic brothers and sisters … that we have taken God’s word of freedom and forgiveness in Jesus … and neglected, in part or in whole … the “what comes next” … which is, bearing the good fruit of the Gospel in our own lives, in service to our neighbor.
In other words, because “we don’t have to do anything” to be made right with God, we don’t need to do anything at all, period. The Law of Christ … the law of love … the law of faith active in service … ends up being ignored … and believers become inwardly turned, fixating on personal holiness and making Christianity into a new religion of laws and rules … or, and I would offer, that which is worse … making the church into a social club, a group of like minded people who hang out together because they enjoy each other’s company, but their collective enterprise has precious little to do with Jesus.
But we don’t need to read Luther, or any other theologian, to hear this word of truth for us. It’s right here, right before us, in our Gospel text for today.
Last week’s word from Mark … with the rich man coming to Jesus, wanting a Word of salvation for himself, is echoed here with James and John coming to Jesus and wanting to sit at his side “in his glory.” But how different from that rich man is their reaction to Jesus’ words. When Jesus told the rich man, “go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me,” the rich man went away grieving. But here, the disciples hear Jesus’ question, “are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” and they happily chirp in reply, “We are able!”
Yeah, right.
So Jesus goes back to the basics once again. The basics of the faith … which are all about service.
“Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”
If we’ve been listening … paying attention … as these series of readings from Mark’s gospel have been read in and among us this fall … the unmistakable conclusion to which we will be drawn is this:
Faith without works … is dead.
Indeed, service makes faith … and faith makes service.
There is no private faith … no “just me and Jesus” … no coming together, to hear and touch and taste the Word, and then going home to do … nothing. There is no “because Jesus did it all, I don’t have to do anything.”
Faith … having faith … living faith … means living it out in service. Actively, constantly. Bearing one another’s burdens. This is the law of Christ.
If Luther didn’t like those words from James, well, he most likely heard them, in the context of his conflict with Rome; in that the faithful were hearing a word, having a religion of requirements foisted upon them … that yes, there is something we must do from our side of the equation to be made right with God.
And that is wrong … for, as Luther emphasizes, there is indeed nothing we can do to bring ourselves up to God … that’s Jesus’ work.
But we cannot stop there. Although many have.
For too long, for too many, this evangelical faith in Jesus has become “church,” an enterprise wherein people dutifully file into a building once a week, holding out … empty buckets … only to have them filled full, by the music, by the worship, by the pastor … then, just as dutifully filing out the doors, taking it all home to keep for themselves … rather than going out, and using the week in between as time to splash the contents of those buckets all over others.
Yet … this private hoarding of our faith, it’s unattractive … it’s un-evangelical … and it’s leading to the end of not just Lutheranism, but the entire Protestant movement.
There’s a lot of talk these days among pastors and church leaders as to whether the Lutheran Christian voice will continue to be heard much longer in the Northern Hemisphere. We’re going great guns in Africa, but in Europe the Lutheran movement is quite dead, and we’re shrinking in North America too.
Personally, I’m not optimistic these days either … because I fear that American Lutherans have grown … inward. Quiet and clubby. More concerned about ourselves than others. Fretting and fighting over what is secondary, tertiary … and ignoring what Christ constantly calls us to first. No longer willing to bear one another’s burdens; preferring to “let someone else do it” … church professionals, the government, private relief agencies … “them.” Disregarding the law of Christ, the law of love, the law of service.
And yet … the words of our Gospel reading today … “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” … they shine as a bright beacon. And a call to each and every one of us … a call to service. Service which follows so immediately upon being made right with God that there is no space between … service just happens. It just happens.
If there is going to be a Lutheran future in this land … then, it will be led by those who will keep the Law of Christ … first … in our hearts, on our lips, in our hands, on our shoulders and arms and backs. For this is the law of love. Bearing one another’s burdens. Serving, serving, serving.
And so, those who have grown quiet in Christ’s outward focused love are now called to hear the voices of others … others who will speak this word of truth, God’s truth, through Christ, in love, to us. We can hear those voices in hymns and songs from other traditions. We can read of them in stories of faithful believers from other continents, especially Africa and South America. We may even find them in the words and actions of those from other faiths … Buddhists, Muslims, Jews … remember Jesus’ words from Luke’s Gospel, “whoever is not against you is for you.”
Hear their words, see their actions … calling us back to this heart of worship, this heart of our own faith … this Law of Christ which is the Law of Love which is service.
Audrey Edgerton gave me one of these “calls to service” a few weeks back. It got buried in my mail pile so I just got to it this week. But it so speaks to our Word for this week, well, I read it at just a right time. It’s a poem she learned from her grandmother, which she taught Audrey years ago … called Prayer and Potatoes.

An old lady sat in an old armchair.
With wrinkled face and disheveled hair.
For days and weeks her only fare as she sat there in that arm chair
Had been nothing but potatoes.
Not one was left of the old lady’s food of these her stock of potatoes.
She sighed and said, “What shall I do? To whom shall I go to get some more potatoes?”
Then she thought of the Deacon over the way.
The Deacon so ready to worship and pray.
“I’ll send for the Deacon to come,
He won’t mind much to give me some of such a store of potatoes.”
The Deacon came over as fast as he could, thinking to do the old lady some good.
But never thought once of potatoes.
He immediately asked her to tell her chief want.
And she, simple soul expecting a grant, immediately answered “Potatoes.”
Now the Deacon’s religion went not that way.
He was way more accustomed to preach and to pray, than give of his hoarded potatoes.
So not hearing of course what the old lady said,
He arose to pray with uncovered head.
He prayed for peace and grace and when he prayed “Oh, Lord, give her food,”
She audibly sighed, “Five potatoes.”
Now the Deacon was troubled, knew not what to do.
It was embarrassing very to have her act so about those carnal potatoes.
So ending his prayer he started for home,
And as the door closed behind him he heard a deep groan.
“Oh give to the hungry potatoes.”
And that groan followed him all the way home.
In the midst of the night it haunted his room.
“Oh give to the hungry potatoes.”
He could stand it no longer.
But arose and dressed and from his well filled cellar taking in haste a bag of his best potatoes.
Again he went to the widow’s lone hut.
Her sleepless eyes she had not shut, but sat there in that same old chair
With the wan features and the same sad air.
And kneeling down on the sanded floor where he had poured his goodly store,
“Now,” said the Deacon, “shall we pray?”
“Yes,” said the widow, “now you may.”
And such a prayer as the Deacon prayed his lips before had never assayed.
No longer embarrassed but free and full.
He poured out the voice of a liberal soul.
The widow responded a loud “Amen”
But said no more of potatoes.

- - -

Now you who hear this simple tale,
When praying for the poor and praying prevail,
Just preface your prayers with alms and deeds,
Search out the poor with their wants and their needs.
Pray for peace, grace and heavenly food,
For wisdom and guidance, for all these are good.
But don’t forget the
Potatoes.

Amen.

11 October 2009

2009-10-12T07:06:00.000-07:00

“The cost of fruitful freedom”
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time / 19 Pentecost
Mark 10:17-31 / Galatians 5
11 October 2009

You just knew that it had to happen, sooner or later.
In the highly charged, politicized, polarized world we live in today, someone, a group of someones, has taken on the task of re-writing the Bible to meet their own standards of what is right and proper.
Back in the 1970s there was a push from the “liberal” side to include Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” as part of the canon of the New Testament.
Now, today, the coin has turned, to a group on the opposite side, which wants to take out the parts of the Bible which are offensive to them.
It’s called the Conservative Bible Project. You can look it up on the Internet … which is where I found it, tagged to someone’s Facebook page as a “can you believe this is true” moment. The goal of this project, as I read their guidelines, is to come up with a new interpretation of the Bible which raises the value of the free market; excludes offensive “liberal” passages such as the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8; makes the disciples look more open-minded; and does away with such confusing and misleading words as “laborer,” “word,” “peace,” and “miracle.”
Though I’m sure that this latest effort to “bend Scripture around like a wax nose,” to quote Luther, will fail … as countless others on all sides of the political and theological equation have before … it does bring out a valid point. That Scripture, the Bible, isn’t always nice and pretty and easy. Sometimes it is downright offensive to us.
Surely the passage we have before us from Mark’s gospel, this morning, would be one excised from many Bibles … maybe, even, our own ... if the choice was ours to make. The story of the rich man in Mark chapter ten is patently offensive, not just to him but to us, us who have any sort of means at all in the world. When Jesus says “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor,” there are no qualifiers on this request … well, keep back a little for yourself … put a substantial portion in your IRA first … set up a charitable trust, and then give away the rest … no, his words here are clear and straightforward. As they are when he says, a little later, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Jesus says what he means what he says.
But isn’t there some interpretation of the text which can help soften the harsh edges a little? Some meaning, common to Jesus’ time and place, or this man in particular, which can help cushion these words’ impact on us? Well, yes, perhaps. Note how Jesus includes a commandment which isn’t part of the Ten as you and I have heard them: You shall not defraud. Note that the Greek word Mark uses for our English “possessions” actually means “real estate.” Note that the rich man went away grieving … and that grief, in particular, was one feeling which the “self-made, Stoic, ideal male” of Jesus’ time was NEVER supposed to exhibit.
So, we might well draw the conclusion that this rich man got his “possessions” by some shady means. Land at this time usually passed along from one person to the next via inheritance, so maybe, he swindled some people out of their rightful inheritance, to get rich himself … and Jesus, recognizing this, recognizing the man for who he was, knew exactly what kind of medicine to administer to him … calling him, truthfully, what he was, helping this rich man remove the fraudulent mask he was wearing, all that separated this rich man from truly following him, following Jesus.
Perhaps. But that still does not change Jesus’ allegorical words about the camel passing through the eye of the needle, being easier than a rich person getting into the kingdom of God. Nor does it change what Jesus says elsewhere in Mark’s Gospel, and in other places in the Bible, where he makes clear that a person’s wealth is the main thing which can stand between them, and “the kingdom of God,” the kingdom way of living which Jesus says is most rich, most rewarding … which is the way of following him.
The disciples – they are most certainly NOT an open-minded group here. They see as the world has taught them to see – that the rich are the ones in power: in government, in business, and in religion. So when Jesus says “how hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God,” the text says they are perplexed … but that is the wrong word. “Stupified” would be better. “Totally bewildered.” “In a fog.” “Having no ability to comprehend what he is saying.” For what Jesus is saying is so totally out of the realm of the reality in which the disciples, and everyone else, lives and breathes … the rich have everything! Why wouldn’t they have God, too?
Now let’s be clear: their wealth, their power, in and of itself, is not bad. It is how people use their wealth and power, that’s what Jesus has a problem with here, and throughout all the Gospels. And God his Father too, through the words of the Old Testament prophets most especially.
It all comes back to that pesky first commandment: who is your God, anyway?
Jesus sees that, for those who have much, the temptation is very, very great for power, goods, stuff, wealth, to become their god. The main thing in their lives. That which they love and trust the most, and fear losing the most.
And so he’s not against the rich man, or wealth, or political power, or free markets, at all. “Looking at him, (Jesus) loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
What Jesus is against, is putting any thing or any One ahead of him. He wants to be our God. He wills to be the One who will save us. It is his life, his death, his rising again, and only him, and only those, which will save us, and bring to us eternal life.
St. Paul comes at the same argument from a different angle in today’s fall focus reading from Galatians chapter 5, but it’s still the same point. Note that the laundry list of “bad” stuff is prefaced by their being “works” … meaning, things on which we focus, to make them happen, to DO them.
It is a rather all-inclusive list, these “works of the flesh.” Reading through them reminded me of one of my college roommates, who once told me that he wasn’t a Christian because “being a Christian means you can’t have any fun.” Since much of what he considered “fun” is included here in Paul’s “works of the flesh” list, well, I guess, yes, I could see that, in a way.
Of course, how much “fun” are all these works, really? For they end in … not life … but death. The end of relationships … strife, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions … the end of trust … envy, impurity … even the end of life itself, if you take them far enough. But it can get worse than that … Paul warns his readers then and his readers now, us, that “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Compare and contrast these, then, with what comes next: the fruit of the Spirit. It’s an organic understanding that we’re to have here. Fruit comes forth … naturally. Have you ever seen an apple tree, squinting, grunting, “I want to make an apple! I want to make an apple!” Well, of course not. Apple trees just make apples … naturally. It happens … naturally.
And so, for all who are “in Christ,” who have heard the call of his Spirit to turn and follow him … to leave behind the other works, the other gods … for them, the fruit borne is … “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
Those sound like the “real fun,” I think.
But are they difficult? Perhaps, especially when we’ve spent our lives “working” for the wrong things … those on the other list. But not for God: “For God, all things are possible.”
Even for that rich man. Even for you and me.
For Paul, for Jesus, the real “work” of the kingdom of God comes in bearing the good fruit of serving others, serving others in love, Christ’s love, joyfully, kindly, generously, faithfully, bringing peace and also, tangible gifts of God’s creation … food, clothing, shelter, a comforting shoulder, a kind word, a prayer for healing, a loving presence walking alongside as a loved one goes through pain, disappointment, hurt, disease. And this “fruit” just comes naturally in all who follow Jesus …
… growing through the water of baptismal forgiveness and new life …
… fed by the bread and wine of Holy Communion …
… encouraged by the warm loving presence of the community of other believers …
… we will bring forth good fruit, fruit for service, fruit for life. Bringing life to others, and enriching our own.
That’s what the kingdom of God is all about. Freedom, forgiveness, bearing good fruit. A vision, not just for “somewhere out there,” pie in the sky, by and by … but right here, right now, Nativity 2010, us, you and me.
As we live by God’s Spirit, may we also be guided by that same Spirit. Guided … to be fruitful. Through love … slaves to one another.
Let us go do just that. Amen.

4 October 2009

2009-10-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

“Children of the promise … children of all ages”
Mark 10:13-16 / Galatians 4
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time / 18 Pentecost B
4 October 2009

“Oh, that I could have a more child-like faith.”
How many times I’ve heard those words from people, people at different places in their lives, crossroads of living, challenging times, crises of health or job or of simply being.
To have the faith of a child … this ideal, this hope, this dream … where does it come from? And what exactly does it mean, for us?
Its source isn’t hard to find. It’s our Gospel reading, the text for today, coming right after those words of division and separation we had last week, cutting off your hand or foot if it causes you harm … and then, the verses between those, and these today … Jesus’ words on the ultimate division and separation between people, that of divorce.
The Gospel verses begin with more division. “People were bringing little children to (Jesus) in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them.” Throughout Mark’s Gospel, the disciples are portrayed as, well, a little thick. Guys who don’t get it. And here is just one more place of their “not-getting-it-ness.”
Who most often gets hurt in cases and places of division … whether it’s family divisions, work divisions, or church fights? The children. They don’t understand the squabbles and fighting, the desire to hurt and cut off. They want to love and be loved. So here, they are doing just that … and the disciples want to prevent it.
Thankfully, Jesus speaks up and encourages “letting the children come.”
But these words in Mark aren’t the only place where we encounter children this morning. The fourth chapter of Galatians … as we continue in our fall focus series … Paul spends about half the chapter talking about being “children of the promise” – living into the promises of God, promises of life, forgiveness, hope, salvation … not through anything we do but solely because of the loving heart of God, through all that Jesus has done and continues to do for us.
So what does a child-like faith look like? How can we follow Jesus’ encouraging words, Paul’s exhortations, to live as “children of the promise … children of all ages?”
The answers aren’t that difficult … although to be a church of “children of all ages” will require us to set aside a lot of what we adults have made “church” into … stuff that, I’d venture, does a better job of driving people away than welcoming them as Jesus welcomes the little children.
First, to have faith like a child, we must trust.
No one is more trusting than a little child. You might say, yes, and that’s a bad thing, because the world is a bad place, a terrible place, and many of the bad things which happen to children happen precisely because they are so trusting.
Fair enough. And there have been and continue to be plenty of times, opportunities, places when, where “the church” … people, sometimes, even you and me … have stood as a roadblock, a stumbling block, to trust, to faith. There is much need for repentance, and change of life.
To address the worst of those offenses, we’ve just passed and are beginning to implement a Child, Youth, and Vulnerable Adult safety policy here at Nativity, which has been designed to prevent such instances of physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse.
But those things … they are, in the end, committed by people … the church … and not God, God in Jesus Christ. The one who welcomed the children has always been and continues to welcome us, regardless of the “pre-existing conditions” of our lives, as they have been or as they are. Our trust in him is sealed by his track record, his past performance, his being proved trustworthy. In the waters of baptism, in the bread and wine of communion, in the words of forgiveness, in the proclaimed word of preaching and Scripture, in the flesh and bone and lived out word of the community of faithful believers … though the buildings will look different from place to place and time to time, though the faces up here and out there will change … the underlying message behind, in, with and under it all is that we are embraced and held and can rest securely in the arms of a God who loves the world, loves us so much, that he will stop at nothing … not even what we might do, inadvertently, accidently, or on purpose … to block him.
Jesus is always, forever, for us.
Trust. A child-like faith has trust.
And caring.
Children care. Their caring flows from their trust. Whether it’s a dog or a cat, a bug or a butterfly, children show their inherent nature is about caring.
Of course, as we get older, it’s easy for us to lose that level of caring. When you know, when you feel in your heart that you are safe and cared for, it is easier to be about caring for others. But as we get older, and our faith, our deep sense of safety and being cared for, it gets shaken, cracked, sometimes, it feels irreparably destroyed. And so our caring necessarily goes back onto ourselves. Survival, we call it. Our instincts take over … caring is pushed aside, so that we can just survive.
But surviving is not living. Surviving is making it along with the bare essentials necessary to sustain life, moment to moment, day to day. And desperation, and hopelessness, does not lead to growth. That’s true for a person, a group of people, a team, a corporation, a nation … a church congregation.
To have a child-like faith, however, is to care. To care, which is natural growth from trust.
Because we are loved, we can love.
Because Jesus has been, is, will continue to be faithful to us, we can and will care for others. To live, to serve, beyond ourselves. To reach out in caring love toward others … ones we know, and especially, those we don’t, but who particularly need our caring touch, the touch of love and service, the touch of Jesus’ hands, through ours.
And we’ll do it … we’ll trust and care … we’ll live out our faith … as beloved children.
Which means … living with dirty hands … and having fun.
Those two really go together. Though the “dirt” may be real, or figurative … children know that you can’t have fun unless you allow yourself to become engaged … lose yourself … in the play. Using imagination, story, hope, future visioning … all those huge and grown up concepts happen when kids get together and play.
The same should be true of our life together as church. But, so often, as grownups, we separate ourselves from that “kids’ stuff,” putting barriers up between ourselves and others, some perhaps, at one time, well meaning … this is how grown people should act, after all … but the end result is the same.
Clean-handed bystanders waiting and watching for something to happen, someone else to come along, someone who “knows better” or “has more skill” or … or … well, you get the picture.
And the work of the faith, the love, the care, the service … waits. The little chores … wait. The big chores … wait. The hurting, the hopeless, those needing a good word or a good deed from us … they wait.
How long shall we make them wait?
Friends, follow the lead of the children. The life of faith together calls us to get our hands dirty, our hearts joyful, ourselves, lost in the play … lived, shared, sent, to and for the sake of the world.
So do you want to have a child-like faith?
Start here … at the font … and here, at the table … and then, see how and where you will be sent.
Trusting. Caring. Getting your hands dirty, and having fun.
We are God’s children, part of Christ’s family through love and faith. Children who rest secure in the promise of our God. A promise of freedom and forgiveness for living, and bearing good fruit in our lives.
Children of the promise … children of all ages.
Go forth, and be children again … for the sake of God’s world. Amen.

27 September 2009

2009-09-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

“Salt water disciples”
Mark 9:38-50 / Galatians 3
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time / 17 Pentecost B
27 September 2009

Today, once again, Jesus uses salt to make a point about how he would have us be his disciples.
Salt. Not sea salt or iodized salt or even kosher salt … just plain old Sodium Choride, NaCl … this stuff, right here.
Salt like this has gotten some bad press lately … but that is not the salt’s fault. Instead it’s OURS, because the average American eats far more salt in our diet than is healthy, in chips, and fast food, canned soups and frozen pizza. It’s just one more excess in our bloated, unhealthy lifestyle … and yet another way we can miss the point of what Jesus is trying to tell us, if we would but have ears to hear.
We pastors who meet weekly in our text study group … we sat down together last week, with this text, and salt … and tried to list out all the things salt does, all the ways it was and is used …
• Salt cleanses, purifies. You rub it on a just plucked chicken to clean the last of the pinfeathers off. It’s an ingredient in cleansers.
• Salt preserves. In the days before refrigeration, meat was preserved in salt – think “salt pork” in barrels, which is what the sailors of the 17th and 18th centuries ate.
• Salt was payroll … in times when there was no such thing as a paycheck, or even coin enough around … people were paid in salt. In Jesus’ time, Roman soldiers were paid in salt.
• Salt seasons. This may of course be the obvious one … in days before there were other spices around, salt was the most basic seasoning. And a little bit goes a long way. You can ruin a dish by adding too much salt.
• Salt changes the color of a fire, when you throw it in. Anyone ever done this? What color does it become? (orange … because it makes the fire burn hotter).
• Salt also changes the makeup of water. It raises the boiling point (superheats) and lowers the freezing point. That’s why most places in the US put some kind of salt down on their roads in the winter, so the ice melts … perhaps Mayor Nichols knows that characteristic of salt quite well now.

Jesus uses the imagery of salt a couple times, in his preaching and teaching. Once is recorded in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter five … the verses that begin with “You are the salt of the earth.” When Jesus says this, we might think more of those first four uses of salt … cleansing, preserving, its inherent value, its ability to season and make spicier.
But here, Jesus talks about being “salted with fire” and “having salt in yourselves, being at peace with one another.” What could he possibly mean by that?
Well, I think that it’s less easily explained, and more easily heard, exemplified, done to and for us, if you will.
It’s the point of the Apostle Paul’s words in our third installment from his letter to the Galatians, this third week into our fall focus series.
You might say that Paul’s words are, well, salty, as he begins what we heard a few minutes ago. “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” His point is clear … he, Paul, came to them proclaiming “freedom, forgiveness, and bearing good fruit.” To these Galatians, none of them previously Jews, he came saying of this the Word he himself had received from Jesus, “Hear this word about God who welcomes you totally and wholly in Jesus, as you are … who does not ask you to meet specific requirements first, to become a Jew and obey all the dietary laws, the cultic laws of being a faithful Jew.”
What Paul proclaimed to them was simply, hear this word about Jesus and believe … believe and be baptized … through water and word alone become part of Jesus’ body for life in this world, and also, for life forever with Jesus, to come.
Others , however, came along after Paul had left, and started proclaiming a different message … that just believing in Jesus, having faith in his word, being baptized and following him, this was not enough … no, to be a true Christian, you needed to have “Jesus plus” … here, it was Jesus plus circumcision. In other places and times, it was Jesus plus obeying the Jewish dietary laws, or times and seasons, or religious festivals. Just believing in Jesus could never, ever be “just” enough, they said. You most certainly have to do something more.
"Skubala," Paul said. We have it translated in our Bibles, in other of Paul’s letters, as “rubbish,” but I doubt that Paul meant to be that polite.
Paul got … salty. And for good reason.
“Jesus plus” to Paul was Jesus not-at-all. “Jesus plus” meant , means that something other than what Jesus did, in suffering, and dying, and rising again, for us, something more than that, from our side of the equation, is what’s needed in order to be true Christians, faithful believers, righteous disciples.
Some rule. Some law. Something to check off on a to-do list.
But Paul knew that not even the Jews could keep the Law perfectly. He knew that even Abraham … sainted, blessed Father Abraham … father of three religious faiths (even though the third, Islam, hadn’t yet come on the scene) … Father Abraham was made right with God, not by what he did, but instead, by God’s promise to him.
Laws, rules, they only have two reasons for being. First, as a fence, a “disciplinarian” according to Paul, something to keep us all in line. Second, as a mirror, to show us as we truly are, faults and all, especially how far short we all fall from keeping all the Law, all the rules, all perfectly, all the time.
It had to be, it has to be, by the promises of God alone, promises that have been realized in the body of Jesus, born, lived, suffered, died, raised again … promises washed over us in baptism, promises fed to us in communion, promises proclaimed to us week after week, “your sins are forgiven” … it’s only in the promises of God alone, that God makes us his own, in and through Jesus.
Otherwise, it’s all for nothing, Paul said. Otherwise, you have to keep all the rules, all the laws, all the time, perfectly. No more ham. No more tattoos. No more wool/cotton blends.
No more life. Only death. Only death.
No wonder Paul got salty.
As Jesus does, too, earlier in the Gospel reading, when the disciples point out someone doing Jesus’ work, who wasn’t “one of them.” Jesus gets salty with them … leave him alone, he tells them … whoever is not against us is for us. Quit imposing your rules, disciples, on my territory.
And, then, later on, saltier words. Sometimes in life, there will be a time when lifestyles will need to be changed, decisions made, relationships ended … when it comes to being a matter of life and death, a choice between choices that lead, one to the grave, and one to life … we are to choose life … even when it might look like death for the short term. It’s no mistake that Jesus’ words on divorce follow our Gospel reading this week … a tragedy when it happens, but sometimes, necessary for life to happen, and continue in the lives of the individuals involved. Divorce in a friendship, or a marriage … or even, within a church denomination … is never pretty, but if staying together is abusive, unhealthy … driving away others and leading to death … divorce may well be the “saltiest” decision.
In the end, though, once again, it’s all about rules. Stuff from our side of the equation. Hard choices, yes, to be sure, but choices we are called to make, as salty disciples … salty disciples made right, made whole, with God, and with one another, through our baptism into Jesus.
Salt Water disciples.
May you be Salt Water disciples this week, washed in Jesus’ word of freedom and forgiveness, sent to bear good fruit … able to walk into the hard places of life and bear the good word of Jesus.
A Word which won’t always be the easy word … but it will always be the right word.
The word that purifies, and burns hot, and bright … we will be salted with fire. For the sake of God’s world.
The word that makes us able to take the stresses of life in, in much the way that water with salt won’t freeze as fast, won’t boil as easily ... we will have salt in ourselves, and be at peace with one another. For the sake of God’s world.
Salt Water disciples. You and me.
For them.
Amen.

20 September 2009

2009-09-20T20:13:00.000-07:00

“The proper place for service”
Galatians 2 / Mark 9:30-37
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time / 16 Pentecost B
20 September 2009

Say what you want about Lutherans … and the world does … but please, don’t ever accuse us of religion that is short on doctrine.
Doctrine … theology … words and words, volumes of words … this is central to what being a Lutheran Christian is all about. “Luther’s Works” comprise 55 volumes of blessed Martin’s writings. The Book of Concord (hold up) contains page after page of treatises, apologies, confessions and theological writings, to which each pastor ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America must promise to preach and teach in accordance. The two-volume “Christian Dogmatics” (show) is one of the most comprehensive collections of theological doctrine published anywhere … and it is a Lutheran work. We pride ourselves on our highly educated clergy, who can recite whole sections of the Augsburg Confession from memory, even though we probably can’t fix a broken toilet.
No, never accuse us Lutherans of being short on doctrine. We will bury you in doctrine, dogma, theology … pages and pages … volume after volume.
And yet … and yet … is that what being a faithful Christian is all about? Having the right, the most, doctrine, dogma, theological writings, read, written, memorized, confessed, taught, preached?
Art Batt tells me a story about a convention which he and Kay attended a number of years back. An African American preacher … not Lutheran … was addressing the crowd. He lauded Lutherans for our theology and doctrine, our clear confessional statements. But, he said, this wasn’t enough, it wasn’t “it” in his view, when it came to being a faithful Christian. In his vernacular, (Art quotes him,) “You Lutherans are pretty good at dogmatatin,’ but what you need is more tangibilifying!’”
Another African American preacher, one who bore a particularly important name to us, was more profound, although just as blunt:

"Any religion that, in the name of a ‘high’ doctrine … cares more for isolated sentences on a page than it does about the anguished cry of our neighbors is. . . a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried." – Dr. Martin Luther King

And Leonard Sweet, Methodist pastor and “future thinker” from the San Juan Islands, the keynote speaker at our Northwest Washington Synod Assembly, perhaps thinking of his encounter this past spring with us Lutherans, posted this thought on his Facebook page last Thursday:

“The highest expression of Christianity is not its beliefs or art but its passion toward God & its compassion towards each other, outliers & outsiders.”

Those words, they kinda, sorta, well, no, they DO contradict much of what has passed for “being a faithful Lutheran,” at least, much of what has been taught and preached in our churches, at least, for those of us who have grown up Lutheran. We HAVE a lot of practice with “dogmatatin’” and very little in “tangibilifying.” Because we’re “saved by God’s grace” and “there’s nothing we can do to be made right with God,” we’ve gone the next step and decided we don’t HAVE to do anything at all, period … a position which plays so well in our consumer-based society where it’s all about having and getting, and not at all about giving.
How far this is from the word that we receive in our Gospel reading this morning, and our seasonal reading from Galatians.
It may not appear at first that these readings share anything in common … Jesus’ words about his soon-coming death on the cross, and rising again … his taking a child by the hand and speaking of welcoming others … Paul’s impassioned response to the disciples’ request of him, and also to Peter’s apparent hypocrisy … ah, but there is, there is.
And it’s even part of our liturgy.
Right there in verse 10 of the Galatians reading … “They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do.”
Remember the poor.
The proper place for service … is right there, in the midst of it all, presently, immediately, happening, without dogmatitin’ or cogitatin’ or hemmin’ and hawin’. JUST DO IT is what Paul, and Jesus, call us to. Just do it.
But what of dogma and doctrine?
Well, it’s right there. Clearly, squarely, all the doctrine and dogma we need is in Jesus’ words as he teaches his disciples …
“The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.”
Jesus doesn’t have a lot of use for dogmatic pondering and doctrinal purity. That’s the purview of the Pharisees, the sector of the Sadducees, the ones who through their careful attention to every detail of the Law … “isolated sentences on a page” … draw the ire and wrath of Jesus at pretty much every turn. It’s not a mistake that Jesus in Mark’s Gospel is always “immediately” doing this and “immediately” doing that. It’s a not so veiled dig at those leaders of his religion who were much more into the “let’s talk about it, think about it, think it over, consider all the aspects of it” way of NOT moving in faith. Jesus’ model in Mark’s Gospel is to do it, first, do the service, do the healing, do the moving, and talk about it later. (The dogmatitians even have a word for that … “action – reflection” … but we won’t go there.)
No … it’s clear from Jesus that dogma and doctrine were, are to serve … serving. Remembering the poor. Caring for the least of these. Being the last of all and the servant of all.
Paul spends more time in Galatians 2 fleshing out that one sentence of Jesus’ in Mark … seven verses to Jesus’ one … but remember, Paul was a highly educated man, used to highly educated talk … as we heard last week, his “former life in Judaism” had brought him far more learning than most people had ever formally received.
But Paul never loses sight of what is most important, and what all of this is all about … being saved by Jesus Christ means we are set free to proclaim his word of forgiveness and new life in word AND action. Actions follow fast upon confession. Action is the consistent application of confession.
So when Paul saw Peter being a hypocrite … “not acting consistently with the truth of the Gospel” – Peter was worrying more about what his dogmatic friends, “the circumcision faction,” would say when they saw him associating with non-Jews … when Paul saw Peter worrying more about “isolated sentences on a page” than having “compassion toward others,” especially the “outside” Gentile believers … well, Paul cut into him with all the righteous anger he could muster. “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
In other words … in other words …
Remember the poor.
The proper place for service … is now. Here. This minute.
Just do it.
Tangibilify.
Oh, yes, it can look daunting at first … there is so much to do … where can we possibly start?
Well, right here, is a good place.
There’s a lot of opportunities for service, right here, through this place, these people. More, these days, since some of our very busy servants have moved on to other places. Some things have gone wanting in their absence. We’ll be creating a “virtual job jar” with a servant opportunity or two each week, in the weekly email update. No need to check in with anyone before doing it. The ministry will be clearly stated, what you need, how to do it.
Just do it.
And then, there are plenty of opportunities in the places in our own lives, each of us, touching someone, somewhere, somehow, the “poor” in some way, physically, emotionally, spiritually, who need not only to be remembered, but to be served. That’s the great thing about service. Once you start … you find more opportunities, more ways to serve.
Just do it.
Remember the poor.
Go and serve.
For we have been served, already, by the one who has suffered, and died, and risen again … who has called and welcomed, freed and forgiven each one of us.
Freed. Forgiven.
And sent to bear good fruit.
May you, may we, bear some good fruit this week, so that our tangibilifying shows forth our dogmatatin’ … so that others, seeing us, encountering us, receiving us, will know the love of Christ, through us, for them.
Amen.

13 September 2009

2009-09-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

“Who do we say Jesus is?”
Galatians 1 / Mark 8:27-38
OT 24 / 15 Pentecost B
13 September 2009

And so it all begins, once again.
Though we started celebrating our anniversary year last September, today it really kicks off … our fortieth fall “Welcome Back” … together, we will spend the next nine months celebrating, remembering and recalling the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ in and through this place, over the past forty years, with our friends, family and forebears of times past and present … but also, looking ahead – imagining, visioning, where and how we’ll move and grow together, for the next forty years, and beyond.
It is a “re-formation” of sorts, for us, and so during these first six weeks of our “Welcome Back” we’ll be exploring in worship and adult class the six chapters of the book of Galatians. What some might call Martin Luther’s inspiration and favorite book of the Bible becomes the focus for our theme Nativity 2010: Freedom, Forgiveness, Bearing Good Fruit.
And on Reformation Sunday, the 25th of October, we’ll all have the opportunity to take part in echoing Luther’s Reformation … writing our own Nativity “40 Theses” for our anniversary year … about which you’ll hear more in the weeks to come.
But for today … for today … our Scripture readings have us begin at the beginning. The beginning of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia … and the beginning of the Church.
A word. A statement. A confession … Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” … Peter answers that question with the words that begin the Church … “You are the Messiah” … and then Jesus says, for him and for us, what exactly that means … the cross-shaped life of self-giving service. Paul hears of a church, trying to find itself, and writes a letter to help them faithfully answer that question as well … “who do you say that Jesus is?”
It is the main thing, the central focus of what we are about. We are called, we are gathered, we are fed on water and word, bread and wine, and then we are sent to serve … serve, not ourselves, but others … the whole world, each of us, sent … one story, one person at a time.
So how do we, how will we, proclaim Jesus … in our words, in our actions … in our time, now, and for the future … Nativity 2010 … and beyond?
Paul can help us.
First, we must remember that it’s all about God. First, last, and always.
That’s the way Paul starts out his letter to the Galatians.
“Paul an apostle … sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead …”
The News is that it’s all about God. God is the one who all this is about … not human authorities, not a church congregation or a building, a denomination, a pastor, a past or present history. All of those things are nice, all of those add color to the story which we are sent to tell … but they are not the story.
The Story is God’s. This came as bad news to Peter, when he heard what Jesus’ story – being God’s story – was going to mean, for Jesus, for those who followed him. The Cross always comes as bad news to those who want to push their own story, their own agenda, their own preferences or tastes or politics first … and claim they are God’s. But when people do that … when we do that … these become gods for us … and then, and then … it becomes all about US. And all about US … is bad news.
No wonder Jesus turned and became angry with Peter. When it becomes all about us … it’s a story about us pursuing the wrong god. And it’s a tiring story … always chasing, running after something that’s really nothing, nothing at all …
Bad News.
But there is Good News, too.
The Good News is that the one doing the pursuing is not us, but God. And God pursues us, not in anger, but in love. God always wants to be with us, in love, sometimes despite and always in spite of us. Always, forever, for us, through Jesus.
This is the message, the Word of the Cross.
The story is God’s.
But it is also a story that calls us, to own it, to be “into” it, to be faithful to it. To acknowledge our past and our present … not to run from it, but to claim it, as our story, in which and through which, God has been and continues to be present with and for us.
Because the story is God’s, we have freedom … freedom to acknowledge our past, to recognize and be thankful for the good that has come to us over the years … but also, freedom from bondage to the pain of the past … pain we have suffered or pain we have caused, pain where we’ve fallen short in relationships and pain where others in relationship with us have fallen short and hurt us … friends, church members, pastors, family.
Paul, in these words from Galatians … he is honest. Forthcoming. Truthful. “You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism,” he says. Paul is not proud of what he has done, but he doesn’t hide it either. He knows … he has felt … the freeing, forgiving touch of Jesus in his life, and how his life has changed because of Jesus Christ.
The story is God’s. God in Jesus has been with us through all the parts of our story … guiding, rejoicing, mourning, weeping, comforting, leading … always with and for us.
So we can be authentic people. Honest. Truthful to who we have been then. And truthful to who we are now, as God’s freed, forgiven people … sent forth to serve, each of us, in our own way, as we have been gifted by God … each of us, using our own gifts, different ways of expressing that relationship of love we are in with our God, different ways of rejoicing, mourning, praying, serving … as different as we are from each other … each, honest, truthful, right and good, but each, all with and for and in the same relationship of love, in Christ, with our God.
Free. Forgiven. Sent forth to bear good fruit.
Good news for those Galatians, 2000 years ago.
Good news for Nativity, 1970 … then … and Nativity, 2009 – 2010, now.
And Good news for all the years to come.
Amen.

30 August 2009

2009-08-30T13:49:00.000-07:00

“Wash your hands … in baptismal water”
James 1:17-27 / Mark 7:1-15, 21-23
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time / 13 Pentecost B
30 August 2009

What is it that many, perhaps most people, would like to hear sermons about?
I think that, if you asked that question, you’d get a wide range of answers, with no runaway “majority winner.” But, perhaps, the single most popular answer would be this one: “We need to hear more sermons about morality … moral instruction, how to live a moral life, obeying the laws of the Bible and living in such a way that is pleasing to God.”
Well, as most of you know, for much of the year we here at Nativity, like the Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, United Methodists and other “liturgical” churches, we follow what is known as the Three Year Lectionary … a set, a series of readings from the Bible that takes us through much of the Bible in our Sunday morning readings over the course of three years’ time, before it cycles back around again.
And I, being a Lutheran pastor, like to follow Luther’s admonitions about preaching – that we should not “bend the text like a wax nose,” in sainted Martin’s words … not manipulating the text to fit a particular agenda, but rather, marry text and context.
However today … today … for those who would like to hear texts, and preaching, on morality … well, today is a blessed day. For both the New Testament reading and the Gospel are explicitly, moral instruction … on living the moral life … striving to abide in the pure, undefiled, unstained religion of our God.
Maybe not in the way you’d expect … but …
Let’s take a look.
After our six week sojourn in John chapter 6, we’ve returned to where we left off, in early July, in Mark’s gospel. Jesus has come back across the Sea of Galilee, from the Gentiles to his own people, and immediately he is challenged by the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had “come up” to this rural area from Jerusalem, presumably to “check out” this new hotshot teacher who was becoming so popular.
And the challenge they present to him, is one of moral and religious purity.
“Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” Jesus’ disciples were not following all the rituals and rules of their religion. It wasn’t about “washing your hands” like we’re being instructed now, to keep the Swine Flu at bay … no, it was much more … as Mark clearly states, “they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.”
It was, and is, all about moral purity according to the religion of the time. Keeping oneself unstained by the world, by “washing up.”
Now Jesus, for his part, doesn’t have a problem with the washing or not washing. This is somewhat clear from the Gospel reading as we are presented it this morning. But it becomes much clearer what Jesus’ beef with the Pharisees and scribes really is, when we include the portion of the reading that is left out this morning … verses 9 through 13 …

9Then Jesus said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! 10For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.' 11But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, 'Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban' (that is, an offering to God) — 12then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, 13thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this."

What Jesus does mind, object to, and speak against is that the Pharisees and the scribes were assuming their own moral purity, because they “washed their hands” of what they perceived was “impure.”
For Jesus, the place one begins in the pursuit of moral purity, in the search for true religion, is in the posture of repentance. At the foot of the cross. Confessing our sins, our shortcomings, all the ways we fall short of what God wants for us.
When we wash our hands … Jesus calls us to wash them in baptismal water. It’s not all about us, but instead, what Jesus works in and through us, when we confess, when we repent, when we begin not with “how great I am” but instead, with how great God is.
Those later verses in our reading from Mark make this clear:

21For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

From within. From all of us. None of us can be “morally pure” and self-righteous before God on our own, for our hearts are full of these evil intentions. They are what make us impure, morally defiled … that is the sense of what Jesus says here literally, and it is the sense in which we must understand his words as well.
True purity, true cleanliness, true morality … starts, not with pointing out someone else’s sins, but confessing our own.
And our reading from James … words, in a letter attributed to Jesus’ own brother … make this clear. James uses words that are unmistakably moralistic in tone, in the Greek language of its day, as well as in the American English translation we read now. It’s almost as if James were remembering the incident in Mark’s Gospel, this incident from his brother’s life, long ago, and writing it down for those of his and later times to remember, to remember and take to heart every time they read or hear it:

“If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

Well, almost.
You see, James’ words don’t include that “and.” Somewhere along the line, someone who translated these verses from Greek to English put that “and” in there, as a couch, a crutch, an extra “handwashing,” if you will … they just couldn’t handle the truth of what James was saying.
So what was he saying?
“Religion that is pure and undefiled …” … true, morally upright and sound religion … being the moral church … “is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, to keep oneself unstained…” … morally pure … “by the world.”
Do you want a moral church? James asks. Then care for the “least of these.”
Do you want a moral church? James begs. Then lovingly tend the poor.
Do you want a moral church? James implores. Then turn from yourself, and turn towards those in need.
In this way, James says, you will keep yourself “unstained by the world.” Clear, straightforward, moral language … for his time, and ours.
It’s a reflection of Jesus’ words in the Gospel reading. When, like the Pharisees and scribes, we assume our own purity because of what we’ve done … not associating with “certain people,” taking what God calls us to give to them and “giving it to God” in our own, selfish way instead … setting it aside, trying to keep it pure and unstained … whether that’s a church building or a ministry program or the life and calling of an entire denomination … when we do that …. we’re no better than those Pharisees and scribes.
Assuming our own purity, our own moral superiority, because of what we’ve done. Our knowledge. Our goodness. Our rightness.
But to Jesus, this is dirt. Gosh-awful, filthy, disgusting dirt.
The kind of dirt that clings, and sticks, and makes everything gross.
The kind of dirt … that can only be washed off … in baptismal water.
And so, like those Pharisees and scribes, and so, like those tempted to smug self-righteousness like James, Jesus’ brother, saw in the early Church … and so, like them, with them … Jesus is calling us … the Pharisees of that time long ago, and the Pharisees of today … those who think they know better, those who believe they and only they are right, and true, and pure of religion … those sent from Jerusalem to “protect the faith” … Jesus calls to them, and to us, all of us, today, to wash our hands in baptismal water.
To kneel down, and cleanse ourselves, at the foot of his cross.
To stand alongside those the world labels as “unclean,” those on the outside of the insider’s track … the orphan and widow in their distress … and more, many, many more … Jesus calls us all, each and every one, to put aside this language of moral purity and instead, to hear his call to repent, each and every one. Wash your hands, wash my hands, in baptismal water.
Confess, and hear the words of forgiveness. God’s forgiveness and welcoming in Jesus Christ.
Look down, and see your cleansed hands and clean heart, made clean, made right, made pure in baptismal water.
And then go get them dirty … really, truly dirty, Jesus dirty … in service to and for and with those least of these … the orphans and widows in their distress … the poor … the sad … the downtrodden … the hopeless … the wondering … the doubting … the lost.
That “dirt” … is moral. That “dirt” … does not defile. That “dirt” … what the world calls “dirt” … isn’t dirty at all.
It is pure, and beloved, in Jesus’ sight. Amen.

23 August 2009

2009-08-23T11:58:00.001-07:00

“Lord, to whom can we go?”
John 6:56-69
Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time / 12 Pentecost
23 August 2009

It has been an ugly part of our “being Lutheran” in this country, for as long as there have been Lutherans in this country.
Church fights. Splits. Cutoffs. New denominations forming, independent, loosely organized, tightly wound, an alphabet soup of initials, NLCA, LCMS, ULCA, AFLC, AELC, ELC, ALC, ELCA, LCMC, AALC, partridge in a pear tree.
Yes, it is true, dear, sainted Martin Luther, our founder and forebear in the faith, in his reformation work he early on insisted that he had not left the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, that the Church had left him, excommunicated him, cut him off from the body of the “only Christian game in town” at that time.
Of course, in his later writing a crabby, vitriolic Luther did his best to make sure that the schism with Rome, with Jews, with Anabaptists and basically with anyone who disagreed with him would be long, hard, and permanent. This is an ugly part of our Lutheran history and one which, from the beginning, found “another way” in the work of Philip Melancthon; he, our other founder and forebear in this faith we rightly call “Evangelical.” Melancthon wrote the Augsburg Confession, and also became the yin to Luther’s yan, at least, in the later years of their relationship and their earthly lives. While the angry Luther wrote and spoke words of separation and condemnation, demonizing his opponents with the stroke of a pen, Melancthon sought a third way, a way in which the Evangelicals and the Catholics could remain together; if not politically and organizationally; then, at least, in spirit.
Both those strands of Lutheranism have come down to us in the present day. We have seen the best of Melancthon’s spirit of cooperation and living together in the Body of Christ in our ecumenical agreements with other church bodies. Today our ELCA is in full communion … meaning that, we agree that we can all come together around font and table, pulpit and in community, for and with each other … and that our pastors can serve faithfully in one another’s congregations … we have these agreements with the Presbyterian Church USA, the Reformed Church USA, the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church USA, the Moravian Church, and since last Wednesday, with the United Methodist Church. Yes, that’s right, Fairwood United Methodist and Nativity are ONE now … not merged, but joined together, in a commonly recognized calling and ministry. I’ve already been in touch with the pastors at Fairwood United Methodist about planning a joint service of celebration, appropriately, in our 40th year, for sometime in early 2010.
We can, and should celebrate that spirit of cooperation and unity.
However, we have also seen the uglier side of our nature, as the Lutheran Church in this country continues to be fractured into many factions and divisions.
It’s been over language (Norwegian or German vs. English). It’s been over family squabbles – in my own family, this was the case, as Great Grandpa Richter was “booted out” of his German Lutheran church in Expansion, North Dakota, for some reason, an argument between him and his brothers and sisters, long forgotten … so he took the whole family into the “big city” of Hazen and promptly joined the Norwegian Lutheran church ... surely causing gasps of horror among his Schwartzmeerdeutsch relatives.
It’s been over the role of women in ministry. Still, to this day, there are something like 60 different Lutheran bodies in the United States. Yet only one … this one … the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, of which we, Nativity are a part … only the ELCA allows women to serve as ordained ministers.
And now, this week, as you no doubt have heard, our denomination in our Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis has voted to “agree to disagree” about matters of sex – in particular, about same-sex relationships. In what Quaker theologian Parker Palmer calls “standing in the tragic gap” between two equally held, conscience bound positions, the assembly of our brothers and sisters from across this church chose a “middle way” that allows us to stay together, around the table, around the font and pulpit, in community and in service from Christ, with each other and for our neighbor … without condemnation and with respect for one another. Positions and choices will not be forced on individuals, groups, congregations or the denomination as a whole … instead, whatever happens will happen, in the words of the assembly, in the spirit of bearing one another’s burdens, loving one’s neighbor, and respecting the bound consciences of all.
It is, after Melancthon’s heart, the most elegant of responses to an issue that continues to divide our world, our nation, and even our state. Lutherans have taken a step away from either-or condemnation, exclusion and fracture, and said “we can, in Christ, do something new and different together.” We have remembered that God’s Word for us comes to us in Scripture and also in song, bread and wine, baptismal water, proclamation, and community discernment together … in this instance, as we have before when our forebears in 1970 voted to ordain women, despite the Apostle Paul’s instructions in his Epistles to the contrary … and less recognized, but also as important, as churches, pastors and members have set aside the Biblical condemnations of divorce, finding Christ in the blessings of marriage and family which many divorced and remarried persons – including clergy – have found together.
Or can we?
Unfortunately, there are some who have said “no.” Now, contrary to that demonizing spirit which Luther used to lambaste his opponents … and in which we Americans so love to engage as well … let me be clear to say that many, most of these are thoughtful, loving, caring people. People who love Jesus too. People who love their church very much. People who are colleagues, family members, your dear friends and my dear friends. Some of these people have become newly engaged in their “no.” Others have been in that “no” a long time.
Last week, even before the Assembly met, an organization called WordAlone – long engaged in their “no” … put out a document called “What to do when…” which carefully delineated the steps individuals, families, pastors, congregations could take to be about leaving the ELCA. Now, ordinarily, I might not have read it, or just glanced at it, knowing the people, knowing what was likely there. That’s wrong, too, but it is what we do, as humans.
But this time, the heading at the top of this document captured my attention … “What to do when …” with, in parentheses, (John 6.68).
“Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.’”
The central words of our Gospel text for this morning.
Used in this document to imply that, when the going gets tough in the Church, the tough, well, get going. Going to … somewhere else.
“Lord, to whom can we go?” Peter asks Jesus, after Jesus, concluding his “I am the bread of life” discourse that takes up all of John chapter 6, seeing many of his disciples leave him because of what he’s said, asking them if his words offend them … finally, asking the 12, his central group of followers, if they, too, would go away from him.
And so it is Peter who says, answering Jesus, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Now, I know the people of WordAlone … and the people of their other, “reform minded” organizations, individuals, families, pastors, congregations. Many of you do too. They are feeling “outside” this morning and perhaps some, perhaps more than some of them, are trying to figure out what to do, and where to go next. Hearing “Lord, to whom can we go?” for them, might well sound like “we need to go and follow Jesus” and “if we can’t do it here, in the ELCA, as I understand following him, as I understand the authority of Scripture, then, I guess, I, we, need to pick up and go somewhere else.” Either passively, with their checkbooks … or, actively, with feet marching out the door.
Another congregation. Another synod. Another denomination.
But this is not what Peter means here. Nor is it what Jesus is asking.
The entire 6th chapter of John’s gospel, as you will recall if you’ve heard it read over the course of the past six weeks, it is all about … bread. Eating and drinking, feasting on the meal Jesus provides which is himself, given for us. It’s not explicit instruction on “how to do communion” but it is all about communion … the meal of grace and forgiveness we share, yes, but more … the place where we come together around bread and wine, the place where people gotta eat and we do eat and drink, the place and time where we take on the very smell of fresh baked bread and bear it into the world, as fragrant, attractive, loving, serving disciples of Jesus.
The Word has been about coming together. Despite and in spite of our differences. And being made into one body, each of us unique and different in our gifts, our talents, our sharing, but all sharing together the one Good Smell of Fresh Baked Bread … Jesus Bread … to the world.
So when Jesus sees his disciples falling away … disunity coming even immediately after he’s proclaimed a Word, The Word that should be bringing them all together … well, we can certainly understand his questions …. “does this offend you?” “Do you also wish to go away?” He knows he has a mission, a purpose which he’s been sent to fulfill, and it will be done, but as he looks back, over his shoulder, he wonders if anyone is there with him. We know that feeling. We’ve been there before. “The loneliness of leadership” it’s been called.
But Peter’s answer … Peter’s answer … it is all about staying, not going. Staying, not going. “Lord, to whom can we go?” Peter asks, but it’s almost a rhetorical question, because the answer is implied … NOWHERE. There is nowhere I can go, Jesus, nowhere I can go from you … this is what Peter is saying.
You are the Bread of Life, Jesus, who abides with me and us, forever. We are called into being one body, your body, Jesus, around you, around the Meal of forgiveness, grace, new life, service, and thankful living.
Peter realizes this when he gives Jesus his answer.
And for us, for us, despite and in spite of our disunity in this denomination, despite and in spite of what might be proclaimed down the road or across town or around some of the rest of our ELCA this morning … we are inextricably, unbreakably, forever One, One In Christ.
In Jesus, gathered around his table, fed on him, sent forth in his name, We Are One.
Period.
So we cannot go away. We are bound, one to another, because of this meal, and more, because of the One who gives it and gives himself in it.
We are One. One when we agree with each other. And, most particularly, most especially, one when we disagree with each other.
Especially at this time … we hold fast to this meal, this word, this promise, this hope in and of the One who gives us himself in it … who comes to us and promises us, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” We hold fast to it and listen and work, serve and pray with and for each other. Standing in the tragic gap. Not throwing Scripture verses or condemnations at each other like so many flaming arrows. Not just reaching across, but jumping into the gap, together, and holding fast to each other.
Keep that word close in the days and weeks to come. Keep that world close as other words come to you from well-meaning brothers and sisters and, yes, from those who don’t mean so well, too. Keep that word close when you encounter the anger, the frustration, the temptation to demonize opponents which seems to be ubiquitous these days. Keep that word close and allow it to work in and through you, so that you will choose another way.
Follow the smell of fresh baked bread, my friends, my brothers and sisters, in whom and through whom Christ is being formed, every day. Follow and hold fast. For there, there, here, is Christ.
Lord, to whom shall we go?
Who, indeed. Amen.

16 August 2009

2009-08-18T15:44:00.001-07:00

“Having the wrong idea about fear”
Psalm 111 / Ephesians 5:15-20 / John 6:51-58
20th Sunday in Ordinary Time / 11 Pentecost B
16 August 2009

One of the things we come to expect every summer is that our worship attendance drops off … not a lot, but some. Not as bad as in the Midwest where everyone “goes to the lake on the weekends” – but it is noticeable.
I always hope that just because people are away, that doesn’t mean that they are away from worship. Being in a different place on Sunday morning, with a different worshipping community … it’s a good opportunity to see how different Christians worship … differently. If you are here all the time … every Sunday … and never worship anywhere else … you might get the impression that every other Christian worshipping community is just like this one … and that all Lutherans are alike.
And so when we worshipped at Christ Lutheran Church in York, PA a couple of weeks ago, our servant trip winding down, we saw how differently even ELCA Lutherans worship in this country. It was a very formal service. We sat in pews instead of chairs. There was a lot of liturgical action surrounding Holy Communion. And much bowing and “and also with you”s.
That kind of formality … though it’s not who we are here …. there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. Probably, in that almost two hundred year old worship space, it is the most appropriate way for those Lutherans in York to worship. The stained glass windows … the painting of Jesus behind the altar … the solemn way Communion was distributed and “cleaned up after” … the pastor ascending stairs to get into the pulpit, high in front of and well above the congregation.
But some might even go so far as to say that this kind of architecture and accompanying worship is better, because it’s more likely to “put the fear of God” into worshippers.
Some of us know that “fear of God” phrase quite well. Some of us have endured “fire and brimstone” preaching in the past, every Sunday’s message designed to drive the hearer to despair about how awful and sinful they were. Or, we’ve heard funeral sermons more fear-mongering over the salvation of the living, than about bringing comfort and hope in the wake of the pain and suffering of death. Indeed, Martin Luther even uses that word “fear” in his Small Catechism; beginning the explanation to each of the Ten Commandments with the words, “we are to fear and love God …”
And some, upon hearing or reading those words for the first time, might well think, believe that the “fear” Luther writes of here, is the “quaking in your boots” kind of fear. Fear of God’s righteous anger. Fear of God’s punishment. That kind of fear that has shown up several times already this summer in my computer’s inbox, in blanket emails certain groups and individuals have sent to every pastor of the ELCA in advance of this week’s Churchwide Assembly and the possible votes on sexuality and who may serve as pastors … the fear of the Lord, the terrible and awful judge of us all.
But this was not at all what Luther meant in the Catechism … nor is it the most helpful way for us to understand God. Luther understood that the only in-the-flesh, human to human way we comprehend God is through Jesus Christ. And Jesus is all about relationships … relationships with people … US … and relationship with God his father. Jesus is “the only mediator,” as Luther put it, the only One who bridges the wide gap between God and people.
So, if the only way we can comprehend God is through relationship … then, what kind of a relationship can, do you have when its foundation is fear … fear of punishment, fear of retribution?
No human relationship can be good, life giving, as God intended it, when it is built upon that kind of fear.
And of God … well, fear of an angry God come to mete out his measure of justice on us poor saps down here … this is precisely the image of God from which Luther ran … running right into the Scriptures, to read, to hear the comforting word of repentance, forgiveness, God’s grace and love and care for us all in Jesus.
“Putting the fear of God” into us, is simply having the wrong idea about fear.
But what of our Psalm this morning? We seem to have fear squarely before us. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” the Psalmist declares; and so we might believe ourselves to be right back in the woodshed once again; shaving strop, belt or paddle firmly in hand, God giving us our just punishment and condemnation … “Putting the fear of God” back in us, one painful whack at a time.
But that’s not what the Psalm is about.
Read on. “You cause your wonders to be remembered; you are gracious and full of compassion. You sent redemption to your people and commanded your covenant forever; holy and awesome is your name.”
Wisdom is what God calls forth from us. Not “quaking in your boots” fear … nor, its passive-aggressive companion, a blasé detachment from what God wants to be about in relationship with us. “The fear of the Lord” is more, the active sense of awe and reverence … like that feeling, back in the day when we used to have heroes … the feeling that we’d see one of these most honored people, appear on the TV, show up at an event, or walk in the room.
Like … John Glenn. Reggie Jackson. Billy Jean King. (You can see why we have such a problem with fear because we don’t have heroes any more … this sense of awe-filled respect is so absent from our lives, that perhaps the only kind of fear we can recognize now is the scared-to-death kind.)
But, again, that is the wrong idea about fear …. BECAUSE THIS RIGHT AND TRUE, WISE FEAR IF YOU WILL, THIS FEELING OF AWESOMENESS AND AWE, REVERENCE AND RESPECT, CARE-FULL LIVING WITH GOD AND FOR OTHERS … IT IS ALL ABOUT RELATIONSHIP.
God’s relationship with us … and our relationships, made full and right, empowered with God’s love and care for us … empowering us for relationships of love and respect, care and reverence, for and with each other.
Our Gospel reading today continues Jesus’ “I am the bread of life” discourse we began last week. And we’re reminded that what Jesus is calling forth from his followers, his disciples … US … is that warm, welcoming, inviting scent of fresh-baked bread. We come to his meal of forgiveness and grace, hope and new life, but it’s MORE than just that for us … MUCH MORE. This meal makes something new of us, makes us into people not just in relationship with God through Jesus, as he promises when he gives us the bread and wine that is himself … but as that bread and wine becomes part of us, we are sent to reflect that relationship into the world, the smell of fresh baked bread that is the aroma of God’s love to and for us, which we take and bring into God’s world … showing how “gracious and full of compassion” God truly is, through our gracious and compassionate living for others, for the world.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
For wonderful, fresh-baked-bread-scented disciples.
Attractive disciples.
Wise disciples.
Disciples who know how to “make the most of the time,” as the words from Ephesians exhort us. Literally, this is marketplace language … we who are called into this relationship of love and trust, faith and sharing with God through Jesus are to “take time out of the marketplace” – take it home with us, to use wisely, not waste it … whether that waste is in just frittering away the hours in nothingness, or, perhaps, in worried, quaking in our boots scared-to-deathness of what God might do to us in angry punishment.
Either way, time is wasted. The scent of fresh baked bread that this meal of celebration and service calls forth from us, grows stale, flat, hard with disuse.
Squandered opportunities. Blown chances. Relationships not risked, but rather, instead, we play it safe. Hedge our bets. Circle our wagons and hunker down.
But friends … it is of THAT kind of inaction, that we should be MOST FEARFUL.
There are a couple of stories Jesus tells which have this kind of “quaking in your boots” kind of fear at their heart. We know them as “the parable of the talents” and “the parable of the pounds,” depending on which Gospel account you read; Matthew or Luke. They vary somewhat, but the basics are the same … A rich man goes away and entrusts some of his treasure to three of his servants. On his return, he finds that two of his servants “got it” … got it in the sense that they understood that life’s all about relationship, risk, trust, and faith … they invested their talents or pounds and made more treasure for their master.
One servant, however, doesn’t get it. And he is the one who takes “fear,” to be “fear of punishment, fear of retribution.” He buries the talent, hides the pound … nothing is ventured, nothing is risked, nothing is gained, because of the servant’s FEAR of “what his master might do to him if he lost it.”
The irony, of course, is that this servant does lose it … he loses the talent, he loses the relationship with his master … he loses it all, because of his FEAR.
Friends, we will not be fearful disciples, scared of the future, frozen, unable, unwilling to move, to go, to do, to serve. We will not be fearful in following Jesus’ call to step out, to risk in love and service, to risk in relationships to and for each other, led there by God, led there in the smell of fresh baked bread, fragrant disciples going out to live and share and serve in Jesus’ name.
And we will not be fearful for the future of this church. Not fearful for Nativity as we step out boldly into the next 40 years of worship and service here in Fairwood or Renton or whatever this community shall become. Not fearful for our denomination either, fearful of what will happen in our churchwide assembly in Minneapolis this week, fearful of what others might say about us one way or the other after the debating is over and the votes are cast.
NO, WE WILL NOT BE FEARFUL DISCIPLES.
What we will be about … is simply, continuing to do what we’re always called to be about. To come, to eat, to drink, to dine at Jesus’ invitation and request … an invitation, a request which he makes of us, not to motivate us in FEAR but to move us forward in love, in relationship, into deeper relationship with our Lord and deeper relationship with and for each other;
… us here, but more, much more … WITH AND FOR ALL THOSE OUT THERE … all those who need to, who will smell the scent of fresh baked bread, fresh, inviting, welcoming, faithful, attractive, wise disciples … you, Nativity, bringing wisdom, love, faith and hope to your own corners of God’s great, wonderful, majestic, awesome world. Amen.

9 August 2009

2009-08-09T14:50:00.000-07:00

“Good for what ails you”
Psalm 34:1-8 / John 6:35, 41-51
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time / 10 Pentecost B
9 August 2009

When we were in Portland on our first servant trip of the summer, a few weeks ago, our route to wherever we were driving that night took us past the Oregon Bakery – home of Franz Bread. And, evidently, the servants on that trip had not been in the vicinity of such a large bakery for a while, if ever … because when they smelled the fresh baking bread, a great sigh of hungry delight arose from the van. Can we stop there, now? was the universal plea.
Fresh baked bread does smell so good. It’s a comfort food … eating warm, squishy white bread fresh from the oven, with butter and jam on top, just plain makes you feel … right. Calm. Secure. Cared for. Strengthened to do what needs done.
And maybe, one of the reasons that particular smell that particular night was so appealing, was because the smell of fresh baked bread … is one that is increasingly absent from our lives. Bread, for the lack of a better term, is bad … bread equals carbs and empty calories, body fat and “muffin tops,” and we’ve been told that we need to lose the carbs and lose the bread to lose the fat around our middles.
It’s a far cry from what many of us, my age and older, grew up with, the encouraging word to eat lots of “Wonder Bread” because it built “strong bodies twelve ways.”
In much the same way, the wonder of the Gospel texts over the past few weeks is that they focus on bread. It’s the theme of John’s sixth chapter, which takes up five weeks of Gospel readings during July and August … first, the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand two weeks ago; then, the aftermath last week, as the hungry crowd came after Jesus to get him to feed them bread again.
Now this week, Jesus takes the words of our Psalm for today quite literally … “Taste and see that the Lord is good” when he declares “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
It IS communion – community language. Yes, John’s gospel is the only one which doesn’t include the Last Supper scene of the disciples sharing the Upper Room meal with Jesus “on the night in which he was betrayed” – Matthew, Mark and Luke are quite clear in describing the first Holy Communion for us – but Jesus’ words here in John 6 are unmistakable in their references to that one, common meal we as Christians share.
Communion has at its heart community … people from different backgrounds, different places and times in their lives, some going through good and others, bad … but at Jesus’ table of grace and thanksgiving, forgiveness and hope, everything we bring is given over … changed … renewed … as we eat the bread and drink from the cup and are sent back out … ourselves changed … the wonder of Jesus bread is that it builds strong bodies into one body, Jesus’ body in the world … we come together, from being separate and separated, and leave the table united by a common meal with a common purpose and a common goal.
There are those who get hung up about the one who gives the bread. The people who had been following Jesus around, who witnessed the wonder of the bread multiplying and dividing in that miraculous feeding earlier in our lives this summer and earlier in this chapter of John’s story, they were not interested in what the bread was going to be about in their lives so much as they chose instead to focus … on the bread itself, and the worthiness of the One who was giving it.
So where shall we focus in this story?
Well, you and I are here this morning. We have come together and we shall soon eat and drink at Jesus’ table, at Jesus’ request and invitation. We are here for communion and as community. The bread is ready and we will soon do what one must do with bread for it to be bread … eat, yes, and drink from the cup too … and then, be formed into Jesus bread … Jesus’ body in the world.
But what of those who are not here? And by that I don’t mean, those who don’t show up for all the other stuff … Bible school, youth trips, senior events, Family Faith Fellowship, movie nights. We can be fed at those, yes, but they are more like cake … dessert … sweet bread … extras.
Jesus says “I am the bread of life” about himself, and really, truly, points to this meal, here in John, as the place and time where bread and wine come together with and in and for us to make of us something more than just … us. It starts … here. It starts … here. And everything else … everything else … flows out, from this table, from this meal.
It starts here, where we are formed into something, someones, someOne, new, together.
Now, I know I don’t need to encourage you to be here for this meal. You Are Here.
But what of all those who aren’t?
How do we encourage others to come and eat and drink with us? To also “taste and see that the Lord is good?” To leave their places of solitariness and seclusion, their wanting to be alone, apart, away … to come together and dine with us?
Apart, away, and alone is not natural. Shutting out others from our pain, our sorrow, our need, it’s not the way we’re created to be.
And people gotta eat.
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”
So think back to the smell of fresh baked bread.
How attractive, how welcoming, how comforting that smell is to us when we encounter it.
It makes you want to come to the table and eat.
Then that’s the way we must be to the world. Like the smell of fresh baked bread.
Fresh, not stale. Warm, inviting, welcoming. Not bait, not out with some ulterior motive, to “get more folks in,” no, what we are to be about is just, simply, to make sure that people know and feel that they are invited and welcome to come together around the table and eat. Encouraging, welcoming, bringing them along, we want people to be fed.
Fed with the bread of life. Fed with Jesus.
People gotta eat.
16 of us just got back from another servant trip, this time to NE Pennsylvania, and you’ll all be hearing more about that adventure soon … if you haven’t already been following us on Facebook or talking with us in person.
You’ll no doubt hear about our flight or our luggage’s side trip … the work projects … the working with senior citizens and kids of the area … the coal mine tour … the days at Hershey Park … all of these significant and blessed events in their own way …
… but I encourage you to go deeper. Follow the smell of fresh baked bread in our servants’ lives.
We don’t have communion at YouthWorks sites because of our human separation and sinfulness, too many people … our doctrinaire brothers and sisters in the faith … too many people arguing about the bread, and the worthiness of the ones giving it.
But we do have foot washing. Which sounds odd … almost as odd … as gathering once a week around a table, and dipping a little round piece of almost-bread into juice or wine. But it takes on sacramental significance for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts open to the moving of God’s Spirit.
Just like communion, some people get all concerned about how it’s going to be done. Just like communion, some people wonder if they’re worthy. Just like communion, some people wonder what they’re doing there at all.
And then … the washtubs come around. And everyone bares their feet, open and vulnerable to the Spirit of God, coming through the ordinary, and working something far greater than they could ever have anticipated.
People who might not have been close all week find new connections. People who might have disagreed or been disagreeable during the week are made right and whole with one another. One serves another in this act of love and self giving. Something happens. Community is formed. Lives are opened up, given up, and prepared, strengthened to be sent out.
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus says.
Washing, praying … taking, eating, drinking … we are filled with this bread of life, in and with and through our whole lives.
So as you come and eat and drink this day, may you be filled … filled with forgiveness and new life in yourselves, yes, to be sure, but more … much more … for this meal does not stop with simply that.
No … may you be filled with the fragrance of the fresh, wonder-full, attractive, welcoming aroma that Jesus so wants to make of and with and for you … so that others will come, and eat, and be satisfied … to share, to love, to serve. Amen.

12 July 2009

2009-07-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

“Losing your head for sake of the truth”
Mark 6:14-29 / Psalm 24
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (6 Pentecost B)
12 July 2009

What is the cost of the truth?
Some of us have been watching the Amanda Knox trial play out in Perugia, Italy. The whole enterprise has been going on for close to two years … and the search for the truth in the case has now spread to bringing in an outside forensics expert, who says that the case certainly cannot be as it has been presented to the jury … this, sort of like someone from TV’s “Law and Order” showing up on “CSI:Miami” to tell Horatio Caine that he’s full of it. And now the prosecuting attorney himself is under investigation for his truthfulness in another case.
It makes us wonder, exactly, who is telling the truth in this case, and what will be the cost of that truth whenever, if ever, it is found out … whether it is to Amanda Knox, the “other” forensic expert, the prosecuting attorney, or the entire Italian legal system.
When we ourselves are truthful about something, it can cost us … sometimes, a lot. We could spend a little time thinking about the times we’ve had to own up to our mistakes or things we’ve done wrong – and what that’s cost us … embarrassment, maybe punishment …
And then, inevitably our minds go further … boy, maybe being honest wasn’t the smartest thing to do. We remember the dozens of times when someone we know got away with something precisely because they weren’t honest … they didn’t own up to the truth. The ding and scrape on our car, where someone in a store parking lot backed into it, and didn’t leave their name and address. People getting away with crimes, and never admitting to them, never getting caught.
But then there are also times when just doing the right thing – never mind owning up to something wrong we’ve already done – when doing the right thing costs us. Like … when we take a stand, and speak out for a cause or a person who really needs our help – even though that cause, that person, might not be very popular. That could cost us – standing among our friends or family, in our school, at our job … maybe, even life itself.
Certainly for John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading, that is true. We might remember from our Advent season readings how John the Baptist was never one who would shrink from the public action or statement. No, he of the hair shirt and the grasshopper and wild honey diet … the one who went around calling people “a brood of vipers” … he definitely wouldn’t fit into that “quiet man of the background” category. For John was “the voice in the wilderness,” the one ordained by God to “prepare the way of the Lord, to make his path straight.”
Mark doesn’t have a lot to say about John … just those first few verses in chapter one I just shared, and then, the scene when John baptizes Jesus. By the time chapter six rolls around, our Gospel reading for today, something else is rolling around … John’s head … thanks to John’s outspokenness, and Herod’s political trap.
Now the situation may start out innocent enough – the text says that Herodias, Herod’s brother Philip’s wife, was now married to him. Maybe these verses are confusing … I know they have been to me, because I’ve always assumed that Philip had died, and so Herod married his brother’s widow. That was a common practice in Biblical times, and there was nothing wrong with that.
So why was John so mad? Well, it’s right there in the text; those words, “your brother’s wife,” … not widow, but wife … you see, Philip wasn’t dead at all -- Herodias had divorced Philip, and married Herod, his brother, because Herod had the power, the money, and the prestige – Herod was the one who was ruling Judea – Herod would be the one Pilate would send Jesus to see before his crucifixion. Herodias had made a mockery of marriage – not to mention breaking the Jewish law, which forbade leaving one brother to marry another.
So John spoke the truth to Herod and Herodias. Herodias didn’t like it one bit. And what follows is that great set-up – Herodias sent in her daughter in to do the dirty work. The daughter danced and made Herod happy, so happy that Herod made an oath and then got trapped in the politics of its words and his perception of what the honorable thing was – and John lost his head for the sake of the truth.
It’s a strange way to spend this Sunday morning, hearing a story like this. Blood and guts before brunch. There’s a panel, a piece of medieval art in the Art Institute in Chicago, which graphically depicts this whole story. Even the bright colors and the way painters painted the human figure 800 years ago is not entertaining enough to remove the horror of this story from us.
So why is this story part of Mark’s story to us – as Mark titles his Gospel, “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?”
Well, first of all, it serves to remind us that telling the truth – in John’s case, reminding the flagrantly disobedient Herod and Herodias that there was a higher power than that which they used to rule Judea – telling the truth often comes with a cost. In John’s case, the cost was total, complete, all he had and all he was, he gave his whole life for the truth. Sure, he could have kept his mouth shut, not said anything, gone along to get along, maybe even be appointed the chaplain of Herod’s royal court – but that wasn’t something he could do.
For John knew the words of our Psalm for today … calling God’s people to have “innocent and hands and pure hearts” … not “pledging by what is false.” John knew the truth – and the True One behind it -- was the higher purpose that he had to serve with his life, even unto giving up his own life.
The truth of the Law – that there is a distinct right and wrong – and that boundaries, fences, rules … need to be drawn and obeyed. The truth of the Gospel – that there is One who has even more of the Truth than he – John – did; one who is the Truth in the flesh; one who gives his followers the gift of his Spirit, to keep them … us … in the way of the Truth.
The cost to Jesus was extreme – it would be his whole life, given up for us. The cost to those who follow him -- most of the time, it’s far less – although the sacrifices sometimes still feel great. Sometimes family or friends don’t understand why this is important to us. We might get teased, made fun of, even lose some friends because of this truth, for us.
So that’s one point – telling the truth can carry a price to those who tell it. Telling the truth of the gospel carries a cost – a cost to those who tell it, which reflects the greatest cost to Jesus, on the cross. That could be bad news.
But the second point is pure good news. And Mark planned it that way. For our story of John the Baptist getting caught up in losing his head for the sake of the truth … comes right in the middle of chapter six of Mark. Right after last week’s story of Jesus sending the disciples out to preach and teach in his name … and right before the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus making a feast in the wilderness out of the five small loaves and two fish.
It’s as if Mark is saying to us – yes, part of following Jesus means going out and getting to work for him. And it will be hard work sometimes, telling other people about him. It might cost us a great deal. But Jesus will always be there and take care of us through it all – no matter what – even when it looks hopeless, it’s getting dark, we’re tired and cranky and there’s nothing around to eat. Jesus will take nothing – and make out of it something – always – for us.
Jesus will be there for us as he was there for us in the beginning. Jesus will be there for us even as he was there in his own life, as a baby, a little boy, a teenager, and an adult … living the same life we live, dying the same death we die, but rising again, to give us, each and every one of us … the promise of forgiveness when we’ve done the wrong thing and haven’t owned up to it; the promise of new life, to share with our brothers and sisters; the promise of his presence with us, his strength and comfort, when we stand up for the truth … and these promises will be enough.
Enough for us now … enough to share with others … and enough to keep us until that day when we will also “ascend the mountain of the Lord” and “stand in God’s holy place” forever.
Amen.

6 July 2009

2009-07-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

“Paul’s thorn … and ours”
2 Corinthians 12:2-10 / Mark 6:1-13
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (5 Pentecost B)
5 July 2009

Today’s text from 2nd Corinthians is one of the most interesting, curious, argued about pieces of Paul’s correspondence to the churches he founded during his travels throughout Asia.
Specifically, it all comes down to one sentence …
“Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.”
What’s the thorn? That’s the question, that’s the focus many Biblical scholars, as well as plain old casual readers of the Bible, ask when they read these words.
And so there are papers … chapters in books … whole studies … written about what that thorn might be. Paul’s literal word is well translated into our English … a thorn, a sliver, something that pricks and gets under the skin, and causes irritation, pain, suffering.
You all know what it’s like to get a sliver. Maybe, when we’re working on wood. Or picking blackberries. Or getting a buckhead in our foot. OUCH! It doesn’t feel good. We long for the relief of getting that thorn, that sliver, out.
But the way Paul is writing here, indicates that he’s being allegorical … referring to something much greater than a sliver of wood under the skin, or a buckhead in the foot.
People, readers, scholars have speculated that this “thorn” could have been a health ailment, maybe the result of having been beaten and imprisoned so many times. Maybe it was something to do with his eyes, going back to the time when he was blinded on the road to Damascus, when he was still Saul, setting out to arrest the followers of Jesus, before Jesus himself met Saul, Paul on that road, and changed him forever.
Maybe the “thorn” wasn’t an ailment at all, but a person, someone who followed him from town to town, heckling him. Maybe it was a Jewish believer, trying to hinder his Gospel work with the non-Jews of Asia.
I have read even more fanciful ideas of what the thorn might be. But the plain truth of the text is that no one knows for sure.
So, then, perhaps we should shift our focus, from what the thorn is, to how Paul … and we … might handle something, someone, which causes such a hindrance to our well-being, or pain and suffering to us.
When it comes to thorns, when it comes to suffering, there are a couple of basic approaches. There were in Paul’s time, and there are in ours.
Either the Stoic “gut it out,” or the pitiable “why me … woe is me.”
Paul would certainly have known the Stoic approach. That Greek ideal for manly life played a large role in how men lived in the world of Paul’s time.
The ideal man, the Stoic man, should be a man of thought, not feeling, when it comes to dealing with situations, and other people … and when something hurt the Ideal Man, when he was suffering, he should just “grin and bear it,” well, not even that far, no grinning, just bear it, bear the suffering, and get on with living.
Now, we Lutherans, because of our Northern European roots and heritage, we Lutherans know this Stoic approach well. We have been steeped in it for several hundred years. It plays itself out, even today, in people keeping their pain and suffering to themselves, not letting on to others how they really feel. It always keeps one looking, like a North Dakota farmer on a beautiful summer’s day, for the next hail-producing thunderstorm … in the vernacular, you might look and hope for the blue bird of happiness, but don’t be too happy when he shows up … because he will most certainly poop on your head.
There can even be a kind of quiet pride that goes along with this Stoic attitude toward living … a “look at me, and see how much I can endure” attitude toward life.
As for Paul, well, he does do his share of boasting here in this text, but I don’t think that’s his answer to the question of suffering.
And neither is it “woe is me” and “why me,” and the long, hard searching for an answer to the “why” of suffering. Yes, sometimes the answer to pain and grief is obvious … someone drinks and drives … there is a genetic preponderance to cancer in the family … the airplane malfunctions and crashes.
But at other times … there isn’t. Were the people in Mexico any worse sinners than you or me, that they got the Swine Flu first? Did the victims of the earthquake in China behave any worse than we in Seattle; but the big temblor struck there, and not here?
No, when we look for an answer to suffering, “why me, why them” … what we get, as one friend of mine put it, is the same results as peeling an onion. When you take an onion all the way apart … what you are left with … is shards … disjointed pieces … and tears.
And so for us … there is no comfort in this text, or in the larger story of our lives behind it, when our focus is either to find out “what is the thorn?” or “why did he … or we … get it?”
In our “CSI: Miami” approach to things … analytically taking everything apart, looking for the cause, the reason … thinking that, since everything comes together so easily, black-and-white for Horatio Caine, it must come together that way for us too … in our fine tooth comb approach in searching for cause … we lose the point of the text, the story, the Gospel. Which is not cause … but comfort. The “for you and for me” in the story.
The original hearers of this letter … the ones who, sitting in their small house church in Corinth in the later years of the first century … those who knew Paul and now were hearing his letter read to them, together … they would have known that the world, their place, their time, was full of plenty of thorns. Suffering. Anger. Grief. They had felt it in the divisions which had arisen in their infant church … divisions between rich and poor, young and old, new believer and long time worshipper, Gentile and Jew.
They knew suffering. They knew that question quite well … “What have I done to deserve this?” So when they heard Paul speaking of his “thorn,” whatever that might be … they were not only sympathetic with him … they were right there with him in his words.
They … and we … needed … need … to hear the comfort, the grace, the hope.
And so that is where Paul goes next.
“.. (the Lord) said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
My grace is sufficient for you. Enough for you. You have enough, given from Me, Jesus says, to endure, to live, richly, fully, with the thorns and slivers you will most certainly receive in this life. Some of which will come because, well, they just come to everyone. Sssssslivers happen.
And some of which, will come just because You Are Mine.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
That’s the message, the strength, the hope of the Gospel in which Jesus comes, proclaiming in his words, his actions, in his flesh.
It’s the word he gives his disciples as he sends them out in our Gospel reading for this morning. “He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.”
“My grace is sufficient for you, for power … authority … the authority which I give you … is made perfect in weakness.”
My weakness … your weakness. My flesh … your flesh.
In us … us, who have thorns aplenty in our lives, little spinters and big shards. Jesus knows them. Jesus lives them. His power was and is made perfect in what the world calls weakness … his flesh, pierced with those big metal thorns … dying, on the cross, for us. Made perfect, in being raised, to life, for us. Giving us hope, for us, that promise that we shall receive the same … thorns, yes … but also, life like his, forever.
“My grace is sufficient for you.” For me. For us.
Good words for us as Nativity people, as we go forward into our 41st year as a parish, together. You received a letter this week about our plans for ministry in the coming year. Plans we discussed and approved at last week’s annual meeting. Plans which will require work … love … sharing … from each of us, in order to be fulfilled.
We shouldn’t lose perspective, certainly, of where we as Nativity people have been over the course of the past decade. From nearly closing your doors … to this next phase of our redevelopment and growth together … it is great and shining proof of that word from Jesus: “My grace is sufficient for you.”
But we must also keep our “eyes on the prize,” so to speak. The temptation to look at our “thorns” will be there. We may look at that budget, the numbers, ourselves, the economy, the nation and world, and we might think, “Oh, but we are small, we are too few in number to make that happen. Let someone else do it … may someone else be part of this Lord … I just can’t.”
“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
And so I am reminded this morning of a word from my former synod, Southwest Minnesota, the place I left five years ago to come here and work and serve among you. Hard-working people, mostly of that same Northern European heritage that I spoke of earlier. But that’s not what I’m remembering today. No, it’s that synod’s mission statement which sticks with me … echoing Paul’s words for us today … echoing Jesus in the Gospel text … words to guide us, too, into our 41st year and beyond, as God’s people, living lives of faith and hope and service, and yes, with thorns, too:
“By God’s grace, together we have what we need.”
And indeed, we do. We do. We are richly blessed. With enough for us. Enough to share. Enough to go and serve.
Amen.

28 June 2009

2009-06-29T11:49:00.001-07:00

“Waiting … waiting … waiting”
Psalm 130 / Mark 5:21-43
13th Sunday in Ordinary Time / 4 Pentecost B
28 June 2009

We Americans are not a patient people – now, especially, but I wonder if we ever were. Our national spirit and mood has always been one of “it’s to be completed yesterday,” and because of that we have achieved a tremendous amount of accomplishments in the past two hundred thirty three years. Each new technology has sped us up, to do more, quicker, sooner.
In this Internet age, there is no need to wait … for anything … if we want it, we can just connect, and click, and we’ve got it.
But we have hit an excessive place, in our impatience … and maybe, just maybe, our “instant gratification” lifestyle has come to a halt, at least, for now … due to two totally unrelated but coincidental happenings. It wasn’t too soon after the Great Recession was officially declared to have “started” back in January or February, that people were hopefully proclaiming that it was “on its way out.” But it isn’t, and it hasn’t … and we are having to learn to be more like our Depression-era parents and grandparents … to put off purchases, to clip coupons, to reuse and recycle, to save … to be patient.
And then there’s the swine flu. It had barely hit when people were clamoring for a vaccine. But there wasn’t one … indeed, there won’t be one for maybe months. And the antivirals may or may not work. No, the best “cure” for this new flu … good old common sense medicine. Slow down … get lots of rest … wash your hands … cover your cough … and stay home if you’re sick. Be patient … and you’ll probably avoid it … and if you do get it, you will get over it.
We are having to learn patience. Living at a slower pace. Waiting. And that’s not such a bad thing.
Certainly when we enter into the world of the Bible, we need to Slow Down with capital letters. First, certainly, the time frame of these happenings … pre-technology, pre-need-it-yesterday … life was shorter back then, but lived at a much slower pace too. And we also need to consider the place … the timeless Middle East, where things have remained the same way for centuries … certainly, then too, there was a different sense of time, a cultural patience, people who were used to waiting.
Our gospel story this week has Jesus and his disciples returning from “the other side” of the lake … the Sea of Galilee … where they were going last week in the boat, the one which got caught in the storm, the one in which Jesus, asleep, was woken up by the fearful disciples, asking him to do something to save them because they were, obviously, “gonna die.” What we miss is the story “between the stories,” the story of what happened on “the other side,” Jesus meeting a man, driven by demons, mental distress, to live among the tombs … Jesus, caring, patient, not driven away but meeting that man where he was, and healing him.
But now Jesus and the disciples are on their way back, and a crowd’s there in Galilee … a crowd, which soon gathers around him, so fast that he doesn’t even have a chance to come too far ashore from the boat. They are waiting … maybe, they’ve been waiting since he left and went to the other side of the lake, who knows how many hours, days they have been there … they were waiting for him to return.
One of the waiting crowd is Jairus, a local religious leaders. His daughter is ill … given her condition, “at the point of death,” she has likely been ill for some time. Maybe Jairus has been there, on the shore, waiting along with the crowd, waiting some time for Jesus to return.
But it’s his request of Jesus that comes the strangest to the ears of those there surrounding him. Jairus asks Jesus to come over to “the other side” … not just of the lake, but of his religion, of his faith community, of his way of life. “The other side” which could put Jesus outside of his faith community, his religion … his way of life. “Come and lay your hands on her” … Jairus asks for his daughter … and this leader of the local religious community must know precisely what he is asking of Jesus.
He asks Jesus to cross a line … to touch a sick, dying, dead body was unclean. One would have to separate oneself from the community for a time to become clean again. This would put Jesus outside his own community.
And yet, Jesus goes.
And in that going, he encounters yet another one who is on “the other side.”
The woman with hemorrhages … her health condition would also have put her on “the other side” of the religion, the faith community, the way of life of those she lived with. She actually had doubly crossed that line of being on “the other side” … spending all that she had on the hope and prayer of better health, now she is impoverished, and in her poverty, reduced to begging, ill, diseased, frustrated, sad, probably angry, angry at people, angry at God … she is also on “the other side” … outside … and even though she’s in the midst of a crowd, she’s terribly, terribly alone.
Alone with her suffering.
Alone with her thoughts. Maybe, possibly, the words of our psalm today, even then, known to her, known to those who sat and suffered and waited …
… words that speak of waiting, waiting and watching …

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord;
O Lord, hear my voice!
I wait for you, O Lord, my soul waits;
In your word is my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord more than those who keep watch for the morning …
O Israel, wait for the Lord, for with the Lord there is steadfast love … there is plenteous redemption.”

Thanks be to God, she is not alone without faith.
She has been waiting for Jesus. Waiting, waiting.
And now she sees her chance to be made whole.
So she takes it.
And Jesus knows at once.
The disciples, though, once again, blow it. As they blew it in the boat, their impatience and fear getting the best of them, crying out for Jesus to take care of the storm, take care of the situation … here, now, they impatiently want Jesus to keep moving, to forget about what he had just sensed.
But Jesus will have none of it. And here, once again, he crosses to the “other side.” He personally encounters the woman where she is … she comes to him, spills her guts, bares her soul … and Jesus, crossing the boundary, going over to the “unclean,” makes her clean, and healed, and whole.
And then the impatience of the world bursts in on him once again. Jairus’ daughter is said to be dead; why bother Jesus any more? “It’s over, Jairus, bury her quickly, get on with life, you can have more children, comfort yourself with the ones you still have” … all those pious platitudes certainly spill forth from those surrounding their community’s religious leader. Honestly, maybe, some well-meaning … others, most certainly, impatient with the whole business, wanting life, the community, their religion, to just get back to “normal” and for this Jesus, this rabble rouser, this one who had come there and upset their neatly ordered existence, disrupted their sensibilities … why can’t he just leave, so we can get back to our usual way of life once again???
But Jairus’ patience is rewarded. Jesus goes in, takes but a few with him to witness what he is about to do … and brings the little girl back to health and wholeness once again. Jesus once again crosses to “the other side” … crosses the line of what his religion says is proper, clean, orthodox behavior … encounters the girl where she is, doesn’t worry about what others will say about him … and, in his good time, makes things right and whole for her, for Jairus, and for their family.
Two stories. Two people … two daughters, if you will, on “the other side” of life … and Jesus crosses over to them, despite the impatient cries of the crowd and even his own disciples … he crosses over, in his own good time, and heals, and makes whole.
Where are you in your waiting this morning? What is the “other side” that you are on today? Economic, family, job, school, friends, health, relationship? How long have you been waiting … waiting in fear or frustration, waiting for hope, waiting in the depths, whatever depths they are, known to others or known only to you … how long have you been waiting for One to come over to “the other side” for you?
Hear, O Israel … hear, O Galilee, O Nativity, O people of the “other side,” whatever that “other side” is, was, or will be … hear that Jesus has crossed over to that “other side” … that he is, indeed, here with and for you this day … to be with you, to comfort you, to heal you and make you whole. Jesus is God For You this day … wherever you are, wherever you have been, whatever “other side” the world, other people, friends, family, school, business, church has said you are on … know that, even there, especially there, Jesus is there with you and for you.
To eat. To drink. To take in. To comfort. To bless. To heal. To make whole.
For You.
And then, to share. Always, enough, more than enough to share.
Amen.

21 June 2009

2009-06-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

“How to wake up God”
Psalm 9:9-20 / Mark 4:35-41
12th Sunday in Ordinary Time / 3 Pentecost B
21 June 2009

A state trooper was driving down the freeway, on his regular patrol, when he spotted a car on the shoulder with a flat tire. A woman was struggling to juggle the two tasks of making sure her children stayed put in the car, and trying to find all the tire removing implements which new carmakers hide so well inside our cars these days. The patrolman pulled over and set to work changing the flat tire.
Once he was about done, the woman began to thank the patrolman for all he had done. “I have Auto Club, but I left my cell phone at home this morning,” she said. “Well, is there anyone I can call for you, since you’ve been delayed?” the patrolman asked. “Your job … your day care … your husband?”
“Oh, I don’t need to worry about calling him,” the woman said. “He’s asleep in the back seat.”
Asleep in the back seat. Is that the way we think of God these days?
Well, who could blame us, what with everything that’s going on. Swine flu and economic disaster. Bizzare weather and international political problems. And personal disasters which, although limited in their scope, still cause immense pain and suffering to those involved.
Sometimes, we wonder where God is, in the midst of these life-storms. Maybe absent. Or out to lunch. Or, perhaps, asleep in the back seat … or in the back of the boat, on a cushion.
That’s what was going on with the disciples as they followed Jesus’ instructions to “go across to the other side” of the lake, the Sea of Galilee. It was a night trip which started out calmly enough -- the disciples jumped into the boat which had been sitting off the shore of the lake … the boat in which Jesus had been, teaching, because there were so many people on the shore … they got in the boat and starting rowing to the other side. It had no doubt been a long day for Jesus, out there in that boat, hot and tiring, and he soon fell asleep.
But then that storm came up, as storms often do, without warning, suddenly, and the rowers not only couldn’t keep up, but the boat itself started to take on water. And the disciples got scared.
They must have looked back, into the back of the boat, and saw Jesus asleep there, and their fear, mixed with resentment, got the best of them. They went to him to try and wake him up. “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
Jesus, for his part, calmed the physical storm around them … but then he set out to do the tougher work, of addressing the inner storm which consumed the disciples.
“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
The outer storm, that which looks the meanest and loudest and scariest, Jesus makes such short work of that, that Mark records him saying only three words, and then, Mark follows with just a short one sentence observation … that there was now a “dead calm.”
But the inner storm, inside those disciples … as for that, Jesus lays out a question that keeps going, on and on, through the rest of the gospel.
“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
And, indeed, that business of fear plays large throughout the rest of Mark’s story about Jesus. Fear is what holds people back from being and becoming what Jesus is calling them to be. In the very next chapter, fear causes the people of the Gerasenes … the folks of the “other side of the lake” … to ask Jesus to leave them, after he casts the demons out of the man running about the tombs. Fear fills the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, and she is made well. The disciples hear Jesus’ prediction of his suffering, death and resurrection, but are too afraid to ask him about what he means. Fear causes Peter to deny Jesus three times after Jesus’ arrest.
And even after his ultimate sign, his being raised from the dead, the last words Mark records in his gospel are not about faith … but about fear. After the women heard the news that Jesus had been raised from the dead, Mark’s gospel ends with these words … “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Jesus understood that fear is the great enemy of faith. Fear drives people, us, to make bad choices. We’re afraid of what others might think or say about us, afraid for our future or that of our family, fearful of what change might bring to us as a community or nation. Jesus understood this about the disciples, and us, as those who are the latest to follow in their path. In his language, in many ways more descriptive and nimble than our own, there were two words for fear.
One, having to do with the feeling one has after being impacted by an outside event or cause … which can run the gamut from awe and respect, to causing immobility.
But the other word has to do with an inner defect, a shortcoming, in the disciples, in us, which would hold them … and us … back … from all that God would call us to be, and do. That’s the word Jesus uses when he asks the disciples “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” He knows that this black cloud of fear is going to block out the faith which he … the Son … is trying so desperately to shine into their hearts and minds, so that they would not only go out and share in his work, but also, after Jesus was gone … the death and resurrection he knew was coming … that these same disciples would be able to go on and continue his work of healing, proclaiming, bringing the Good News to “the other side.”
And so the early church … those who red and heard these stories two thousand years ago, as Christians first began to gather together in worship … they would have heard this story as one of encouragement and hope. The boat for them became a symbol for the church … and, indeed, that’s where we get the word “nave” which many churches still use to describe their worship space … nave, yes, it means what it sounds like, the word naval, meaning, a boat, a ship, of the sea.
The early church would recognize itself as a little boat full of believers on a storm-tossed sea … many problems besetting them … fear of persecution, being found out by the Roman authorities, financial concerns, “church fights” over who’s in and who’s out … yes, even then, even then. The storms of life assailed the people of the early church too. They, too, must have wondered where Jesus was in the midst of these “storms.”
But they also would have taken encouragement from what this story says about Jesus. He was asleep in the back of the boat. Sleep, to the ancients, even up through the time of Shakespeare and beyond, was, is, a symbol for death. Jesus had died, that was true, the people of the early church knew the story of his arrest and suffering and death. If, as we’ve come to believe over the centuries, that Mark’s gospel is more or less an eyewitness reporting from Peter to John Mark, his friend, who wrote it down as Peter’s “memoirs,” then, that sense of the knowledge of Jesus’ death would have been firmly, and lastingly, imprinted on these early readers and hearers.
But Jesus didn’t stay asleep … nor did he stay dead. Once the disciples called on him, he awoke, he arose, and calmed the storm. “Peace! Be still!” And death leaves Jesus … the one who was dead is dead no more … but the storm, all that which, for all the world appeared that it would cause death and destruction, now death itself … is dead. It has no power over Jesus, over his disciples, over those early believers, or over us.
And there … right there … is where this story leaps off from the letters on a page, and into the achings and longings of our own hearts. Storms happen. Storms happen in our lives, in the lives of others, in the life of the church, believers singly, together in family units, congregations and denominations together. Storms happen. They have happened before, they happen now, and they will happen again.
And when they do, we become afraid. We question our faith. We wonder if God is really with us … if Jesus is there as he promised to be, to and for us … then, why isn’t it smooth sailing? Why is this happening to me, to us?
We need to hear this story again … and what it doesn’t, and does, tell us.
First, nowhere does it say that “if Jesus is with you, storms won’t happen.” They do. They do. Sometimes, because Jesus is with you, the storms may happen with greater intensity and ferociousness. That’s the way it is in Mark’s gospel. Where Jesus is, there will not always be “calm and blissful seas” and “smooth sailing.” Sometimes it will get downright rough, as Jesus calls us to meet those storms of life head-on … storms like those in our Psalm today, which come up when we work for justice for the poor and oppressed … storms like those personal ones which Paul describes in his second letter to the Corinthians … “dishonor, ill repute, treated as impostors, unknown, sorrowful, poor, having nothing.”
Storms will happen. That is the nature of life. And Christians … those who follow Jesus … will not get a break from the storms.
But what this story does say, is that Jesus is there for us. Jesus is there, in the ship, in the nave, in the church, not just the building but the Body … the Body of believers in this world, gathered together, sometimes making great headway, and at others times, bailing with all that we’ve got.
And as we call on him, as we call on him, he will be there, for us, to calm those storms … to show us who is really alive, and what is truly dead … to save us … to rescue us, from our fears, from all that would hold us back from what God is really and truly calling us to be.
And here in the boat … here, in this boat … we have all that we need for the trip, the journey, as we are called to the “other side” to spread the Good News. Food and drink enough for the journey. Encouraging word enough for the journey. Friends, fellow disciples, enough for the journey.
Here in the boat … here, in this boat, we have enough. More than enough, to be what God really and truly is calling us to be … people of the boat, people of the Church, who get in their boat and GO, GO through the storms and the calm, GO to the other side, GO OUT and LIVE and TELL.
People who GO.
GO!
Amen.

20 June 2009

2009-06-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

“What dominion really means”
Genesis 1:20-28
Blessing of the Animals service
20 June 2009

“There have been five great die-offs in history. This time, the cataclysm is us.” So begins a recent article in the New Yorker magazine titled “The Sixth Extinction.”
Naturalists have found that five times before in human history, there have been large die-offs of living species, mass extinctions of “what went before.” The first, 450 million years ago, when most life was confined to water, wiped out more than eighty percent of marine species. The fifth, at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, exterminated not just the dinosaurs but seventy-five percent of all species on earth.
Each of these mass extinctions had some sort of a trigger, an outside cause, an event that changed some living condition … water temperature or air quality on earth. In the case of the dinosaurs, this was most likely a six-mile wide asteroid slamming into the earth where the Yucutan Peninsula of Mexico is now, sending up a plume of dust which either blocked the sun and cooled the planet, or fell to earth and cooked it, depending on which scientist you talk to. Either way, the results were the same … five times, the majority of the species on our planet died out due to “natural causes.”
Ah – but what does this have to do with today?
Plenty. Currently a third of all amphibian species, nearly a third of reef-building corals, a quarter of all mammals, and an eighth of all birds are classified as “threatened with extinction.” Whole populations of frogs in places as diverse as Panama, Minnesota and Africa are dying out – victims of a unstoppable fungus that started in clinics and hospitals in the 1930s, which used frogs to develop a human pregnancy test. The entire population of Little Brown Bats in the eastern United States is threatened with a disease called white-nose syndrome, caused by a fungus directly related to the one killing off the frogs. “It’s now generally agreed among biologists that another mass extinction is under way … it is estimated that if current trends continue, by the end of this century as many as half of earth’s species will be gone.”
So we might ask, “when did this start?” and “what can we do?” Maybe news like this makes us want to start recycling and conserving water … buy a Prius, pick up trash. Maybe we blame it on “global warming” and try to reduce our “carbon footprint” in whatever way we can.
When would you guess this latest “great die-out” started? With the invention of the Ipod? The airplane? The car? The industrial revolution?
Uh-uh. Try fifty thousand years ago.
That’s right. Fifty thousand years ago.
When people first started to spread around the world, moving out of our original homeland in Europe and the Mideast and Northern Africa, into Asia, North and South America, and Australia. The fossil record bears it out … on each continent and island, when humans moved in, large number of species died out, almost instantaneously. There were mastodons and sabre-tooth tigers in North America until eleven thousand years ago … when people showed up. There were giant hippos and ten foot tall kangaroos in Australia until fifty thousand years ago … when people showed up. There were pigmy hippos in Madagascar until two thousand years ago … when people showed up. And Hawaii had nine times more bird species than it does now … until fifteen hundred years ago … you guessed it, when people showed up.
People … our ancestors, and us … we are the trigger, the outside cause, the latest cataclysm to wipe out species. God might have made us “created co-creators,” but as far as all other life on earth is concerned, we are “created destroyers.”
And, for the past five thousand years or so, the Scripture reading we have tonight from the book of Genesis, that long-told creation story by people of faith … it has stood at the heart of human abuse of God’s creation.
“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea … birds of the air … cattle … wild animals … every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” … “And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
For centuries, people have heard that word from Genesis as lock-on instruction and marching order for What We Are To Do – “Well, it says right there, subdue it, subdue it … and so we’ll subdue it. We will rule the earth and the sea and the air and all the creatures of them with an iron fist. We are made in God’s image, after all, and so that gives us the right to do whatever we want … whatever we want … to the animals, the plants, the birds, the fish.“
The Canadian spiritual singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn wrote a song about this kind of thinking … this bad theology, if you will … it’s called “If A Tree Falls” and he wrote it in particular response to the mass destruction of the Amazonian rain forest:
Cut and move on
Cut and move on
Take out trees
Take out wildlife at a rate of species every single day
Take out people who've lived with this for 100,000 years
Inject a billion burgers worth of beef
Grain eaters, methane dispensers.

Ah, subdue. How nice to subdue.
It’s just too bad that by focusing on that one word, we humans have missed the total sense of the creation story, God’s great gift to us.
For the whole point of the creation story of Genesis 1 and 2 isn’t about a wanton God who just creates and acts willy-nilly, making tapirs and tarantulas, amoebas and killer whales … who sets up people to rule over it all like building superintendants for an absentee landlord … and then, just checks out, goes on vacation for a while, a long while.
No, everything God does in these chapters, in this story, God does to be in relationship.
The very created order of Genesis chapter one bears this out. Whether you believe in a creation that lasted seven twenty-four hour days or took millions of years … the “for us” in these verses is unmistakable … it’s a love story sung by our God who goes forth and creates all living things …
A creation God makes and calls Good;
A creation set in an order that encourages relationship between the creatures for their mutual survival and well-being;
A creation with limits, because to remain in relationship, limits are necessary (boundaries need to be set; outside of which, relationship is threatened);
And a creation, made and set free, to “go forth and multiply” in that freedom.
And that shows the true meaning of dominion. God exercises dominion over all creation to stay in relationship with all of creation … so that creation can enjoy life, and so that the Creator can enjoy the creation.
Somehow, we’ve missed this, over these past fifty thousand years. Somehow, we’ve figured that “dominion” meant that it had to be “all about us” … that we were pretty hot stuff, the be all and end all of all of God’s creation, because we alone were made in God’s image. Which, following that line of thought, gives us the right to do whatever we want and treat creation like junk.
But God doesn’t exercise dominion like that. You can’t rule over something if your reign is one of terror and destruction. You will have nothing left to exercise dominion over. And so God’s dominion – reign – is one of love and care, helping, aiding, maintaining relationship within creation, so that God can stay in relationship with all of creation … including us.
We needed God himself to come and teach us that lesson in person, in Jesus. And for him to die on a Cross and rise again … going so far as to break the very natural laws God set in motion at the beginning of creation … (for we all know nothing comes back from the dead).
God goes that far, to make that point stick for us.
But the creation … it needs no such thing from us. To make up for fifty thousand years of wrong, some people believe we need to go so far in the other direction with creation that we shouldn’t even swat flies when they come indoors.
No, we don’t need to go that far. All creation needs from us … is for us to act as who we are … who God created us to be … made in God’s image, yes … but exercising dominion as God does so … in care, in love, in respect, in good stewardship … wanting relationship with all of creation … the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, the wild animals of the earth, and, yes, the creeping things too …
… and treating our pets as creatures with whom God desires to be in relationship too, treating them with the love and care our God shows for all creation.
Those of us who own pets know that, more often than not, they get that right when we screw it up royally. We might get mad and yell at our pets for something they did wrong, but then when we are sorry that we did get upset, they’re always right there to “kiss and make up.”
And so God gives us another chance to get it right, too. Maybe it’s just in little ways, like with our pets in this service tonight. No matter. It’s a good place to start; with the ones closest to us, with whom we already have the relationships. And they can help us, help lead us out into being good and faithful stewards of this wonderful garden planet which our God has created … not just for us, but for himself, first and foremost … for relationship … and for all of creation to share … for us all to renew … in God’s name.
Amen.

14 June 2009

2009-06-14T19:40:00.000-07:00

“The one you would least expect”
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 / Mark 4:26-34
Pentecost 2B / Lectionary 11
14 June 2009

So today we begin this long green season of the Church … a time when the texts, songs, prayers and other parts of weekly worship focus on our primary task as Christians … not, as we may have been told over the years, “growing the Church” as in, getting more members to come in and do more things churchy … no, our primary task as Jesus’ disciples is growing the faith … being fed ourselves, so that we will go out and feed others with Jesus’ word of forgiveness and new life.
To feed them, wherever they are, whether they are Lutheran or not, Christian or not, whether they will choose to gather in faith community here at Nativity or at Cross and Crown or at St. Stephen’s or with River of Life or even, nowhere at all. Just so they are fed, period.
And we start this green season of the Church with readings that we hear, most likely, to be addressing our most primal fear in “going out” … that is, “who am I that I can go and tell others about Jesus?” It was Moses’ complaint and Isaiah’s fear … and it is also ours. Lutheran laryngitis has frozen our vocal cords and made us unable to speak about Christ outside these walls. That’s why our evangelism for so long has been “in-vangelism” … as in, once “they” come, then we’ll tell them about Christ, but it’s all up to “them” to come.
Uh-uh. That may have worked 50 years ago, but no longer. And it shouldn’t have even worked then … if it did, it was just by sheer numbers or biological evangelism … Lutherans having more Lutheran babies … or plain dumb luck. Because, after all, Christ’s command, the great Commission as we’ve called it, starts not with “make them come,” but GO. GO, MAKE DISCIPLES. Go, not with growing our church congregation as our primary focus, not with even making more Lutherans, but just GOING to tell people that in Christ, there is love and grace, forgiveness and peace, new and everlasting life.
No … it’s all about GOING … going … going …
Who? Me? You? But … but … I am the one you would least expect.
Who indeed.
Exactly the kind of person God chooses to GO.
And our two readings today … from 1 Samuel and Mark’s gospel, they bring this theme home for us. It is God’s everlasting and eternal theme … to choose the one you would least expect to be God’s messenger, servant, witness in and to and with the world. Abraham. Sarah. Jacob. Joseph. Ruth. Isaiah. Ezekiel. Jeremiah.
Jesus.
Here, centuries before the ultimate sign of “the one you would least expect” in Jesus … here, in the Old Testament’s 1 Samuel, it’s a young ruddy faced boy named David who is chosen to lead his people Israel, a ragtag group themselves.
Samuel was despondent. The first king, Saul, turned out to be a real dud. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and this had been the case with Saul, who did not follow God in faith. Samuel, the man of God, had acted as God’s messenger, pouring oil on Saul’s head, anointing him king. Saul had looked and acted the part … tall, handsome, strong … but he turned out to be the worst thing that could have happened.
But God didn’t abandon his people, even though Saul had rejected God first, so God turned the back to Saul. No … God sent Samuel to Jesse’s house to anoint a new king for Israel.
Seven sons of Jesse paraded past Samuel. Seven times Samuel and Jesse though that one might be the next king of Israel. But it wasn’t to be.
No … it was the youngest, the one who was out with the sheep … David … the one you would least expect … whom God chose to lead his people to greatness as a nation.
Once again, just as before … by choosing the one you would least expect … the youngest, the poorest, the weakest, the oldest, the feeblest, the childless … the one the world would least think worthy of the honor of being God’s first and best choice … God goes and pulls an “aha” on the world. An “aha” on the strong and powerful, the high and mighty … a word, an action, that says, “watch it, you who think so highly of yourselves … for I am going to come to the world in the way you would least expect … to show you who is really God.”
And then, as we take up our Gospel reading, we move to the midst of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Here in this long green season of the church we return to the last green season … the season of Epiphany … and where we left off in February and March in the gospel of Mark. Jesus’ earthly ministry had just begun, he’s just called his 12 apostles and has begun moving around his home territory of Galilee, teaching, preaching, and healing. Here in chapter four, Jesus has just started using that unique form of teaching and storytelling called the parable to get the message of the Kingdom of God across to both his apostles, and those others who were beginning to follow him. Parables are stories that Jesus told to get the huge concept of God’s moving in care and love toward all of creation, to get that across to us. They usually start out “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of heaven” is “like” … an analogy or metaphor to help the hearer or reader understand.
We’re taking an extended look at Jesus’ parables during our Wednesday evening midweek worship this summer … 7 pm each Wednesday here … but this morning, we have two little parables before us, both having to do with seeds. And they both have something in common.
Little tiny seeds … when you look at them, you would hardly think that anything would or could ever come of them. The tinier the seed, the more far-fetched it seems. The mustard seed is very small … and the mustard plant which comes from it in Israel grows taller and larger than it does here in this country ... taller than me, high enough for birds to nest in it.
Once again, it’s about the one you would least expect. The smallest, the tiniest, the weakest, is chosen by God for the greatest honor … being a place, a haven for new life.
And so it is with us, as we set out in this long green season of the church today, this last day of our winter season and also the beginning of our summer season of worship and life together. 40 times before Nativity people have been through this cycle … the little David of this corner of God’s Kingdom, the mustard seed of Renton and South King … producing good fruit.
But I think it’s time we left that “little mustard seed” image, the “young little David” idea of ourselves behind. Yes, we are relatively small in size, fewer in number than some other parishes around us … but SO WHAT.
We are not just “the little round church in Fairwood.”
We are blessed beyond belief … we have been gifted five beautiful acres of real estate in the heart of an urban area … we have a fine physical plant … and most important, we have been blessed with the great gift of each other … God’s people, all of us, brought together, in this place, in this time, for what reason?
For something great.
It’s always been this way in Nativity’s story … oh, with a few bumps along the way, to be sure, but so it always is in God’s story. God doesn’t choose perfection to carry on the Story … Saul messed up, David fooled around with Bathsheba, even those mustard plants probably have some broken branches and crooked stems … but the point is GOD CHOSE THEM to do God’s work in their here and now.
Just as God has chosen us for that same work in this here and now.
The ones you and I would least expect, are precisely the ones God wants, God chooses, God counts on, GOD NEEDS, to GO.
To Go and tell others the Good News, that God is With Us and For Us Always, in Jesus.
For Forgiveness. Fresh starts. New life.
Honored places for tiny seeds and ruddy faced youngest children … like you and me.
Called together For Something Great … the Great Stuff we’re engaged in right now, and all the Great Stuff to come, which we’ll explore, find, and receive … in this fortieth year of our life together, and beyond. Amen.

7 June 2009

2009-06-07T15:00:00.000-07:00

“Jesus, Nicodemus, and ‘Groundhog Day’”
John 3:1-17
The Holy Trinity B
7 June 2009

Do any of you remember that somewhat old movie, “Groundhog Day?” It was set in Punxsutawney, PA … the home of the original and biggest Groundhog Day festivities, and stars Bill Murray, playing his usual jerky, somewhat caustic character. He’s sent there as a news reporter, to do a story on the day. But somehow he ends up in a time warp where Groundhog Day keeps repeating, and repeating, and repeating for him, over and over again. No matter what he does, how jerky or reckless he lives … kidnapping the groundhog, driving his car off a cliff … each morning he wakes up and it’s Groundhog Day all over again.
And the day keeps repeating, again and again, until he figures out what is going on … and that is, that he’s being given a bunch of fresh chances to remake his life … to get it right … to truly live in community with others.
Now, we don’t have a Groundhog Day scenario here today, but it may seem a little like it. John chapter 3 – including the favorite 3.16 – shows up quite often as our Sunday gospel reading. If we stuck faithfully to the 3-year lectionary appointed readings, we would read it at least once a year, sometimes two or three times … far more often than if all the readings were in an “equal” rotation.
Ah, but they aren’t. Indeed, we last heard these verses from John’s gospel on the fourth Sunday in Lent, March 22, just a couple of months ago. Luther called them the heart of the Gospel … and we do “get them” not just in worship but at many, many other times … from Sunday School to Bible School to signs held up during sporting events, so viewers can see them on national TV. We “get them” all right … but do we “get it” … “get” the message that is here in these familiar verses?
Problem is, we’ve held these verses on signs so long … if not literally, then, through their pre-eminence in our worship and learning – particularly, John 3.16 – that we may have missed the larger picture. Pastor and theologian Leonard Sweet, the keynote speaker at our recent NW Washington Synod assembly, calls this on the pieces rather than the whole, “orange theology.” As opposed to “apple theology,” which he says we should be about. Think of how you eat an orange … one small piece at a time. But an apple … well, you take a big bite and then work on finishing it.
So the “apple,” the big picture, the whole story, here for us, starts back in John chapter 2, as Jesus enters the Temple – the heart and soul of the religion of the Pharisees – and does not act at all like the usual Israelite. He throws the money changers and merchants out of the temple and then, when he’s asked to perform a sign for the religious leaders, he makes a reference, for those who know his whole story, a reference to his upcoming death on the cross, and resurrection. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” It’s a word that the religious leaders don’t get … but it intrigues at least one of them.
Because that one, Nicodemus, comes to Jesus later, by night, to ask him questions in private, away from the crowd and their criticism. Nicodemus comes as a representative of the Law-bound, legalistic society that was first-century Pharasaic Judaism … a religion that was far, far from the original intent of Torah – the word we interpret as “Law” but what it is really about is God’s wanting to be in loving relationship with his people … God is holy, God wants his people to be holy, and through them, all of creation will be blessed and made holy.
It may sound like something “new” to Nicodemus … this business about being “born from above” … but Jesus’ words bring out that this is the way that God has always, consistently, moved toward his people and for the world … loving them, wanting to be with and for them forever. That’s why he asks Nicodemus, incredulously, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”
The point is, if he – Nicodemus – had been paying attention to the story, the numerous times he had heard it before – he would have, he should have gotten it. God’s Torah was, is always about far more than “The Law.” It was, it is about the way God has so loved the world.
The difference is that now, Nicodemus has Torah standing right in front of him, if he has eyes to see and ears to hear … in Jesus. The story that has been repeating and repeating throughout God’s creation for millennia before, now has flesh and blood … not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
And in this One who shows God’s love for the world – the world he relentlessly pursues in love, not for destruction but for building up, of relationship with and among, for life itself – in this One, Nicodemus will get another chance to “get it right.” To go back and tell his fellow Pharisees. To be there as Jesus dies on the Cross. To help anoint Jesus’ body for burial and place it in the tomb. To, if the legends and traditions are correct, continue to spread the news about Jesus after his resurrection.
And so we too get another chance, more chances, to “get it right,” too, like Nicodemus. We have the story here, week after week, inviting us into deeper meditation, thought, prayer, journaling, work with the Word we hear and read in the Scriptures …hear proclaimed to us each week … taste in the meal of communion we share … sing in the songs and hymns … confess in the Creed … trust in the words of confession and forgiveness … feel in the sharing of the peace.
And share with others, in the multitude of hours we spend outside this place; the point of gathering here this one hour is for the remaining, sometimes overwhelming other hours we spend out there.
It is all part of the same story … not separate pieces like an orange, but whole, like an apple … the same story of faith, the movement of relationship and love that God has had toward and for his people forever. God so loving the world … forever … for you, and me, and all creation. And each new day – not a curse, but a gift – another day to live in the glow of that forgiveness and love, the relationship of Father, Son and Spirit, spilling out, washing over us, using us to bring that Word to the world. Not to condemn, but to save.
Amen.

31 May 2009

2009-06-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

“Who has seen the wind?”
Ezekiel 37:1-14 / Acts 2:1-21
The Day of Pentecost
31 May 2009

Many of us, growing up, had to read, learn or memorize at least one poem … maybe, more. One of those memorized favorites throughout the ages has been “Who has seen the wind?” by Christine Rossetti …

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

Of course, the reality of wind is often far less poetic. Whether it’s a Midwestern tornado, a Southern hurricane or a Pacific Northwest “big blow,” those of us who have been through them in person or watched their aftermath unfold on television know that, even if the wind is not seen, its effects certainly are. The clear swath of an F3 twister in rural South Dakota, demarcated by twisted trees and smashed houses. Miles of destroyed homes in the landfall of Hurricane Andrew. A week – or more – of being without power, as a million homes in Western Washington were affected by the Hanukkah windstorm of 2006. And then … the days, months, weeks and years of “sorting it out,” figuring out where to go next, what to do now.
Lives changed – forever – by the rush of a violent wind.
Peter stood that Pentecost morning at the end of a whirlwind time. His life had been turned upside down by Jesus’ call to “come and follow” him. Peter had been with Jesus for several years, listening, witnessing, watching his Master preach and teach, heal and work miracles.
But then came that awe-full week. Such glory in Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Such sadness as he was arrested and tried. Such humiliation as he – Peter – denied that he even knew Jesus, Peter trying to save his own skin even as Jesus went to the cross, suffered and died.
Then the unbelievable week. The empty tomb. The announcement: “He is not here – he has been raised!” The story of friends on the road to Emmaus, and Jesus – alive - meeting them there. And then Jesus meeting Peter himself – and the other disciples – showing them, proving to them that he was indeed, risen from the dead.
And then the “week of weeks” – seven weeks, 49 days, they waited, Peter and the others, there in Jerusalem, as Jesus had asked them … waiting for what would come next.
It had been a whirlwind time for Peter. So much had changed in so short a time. His head must have been swimming with it all.
And then … and then …
“Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting … all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak …”
Lives changed forever by the rush of a mighty wind.
Some people there thought it was the aftermath of a kegger.
But Peter … Peter, the one who had been in the middle of that whirlwind … Peter, the one pained and suffering because of what he had done in denying his Lord … Peter, now, after this rush of a mighty wind … like those who have been through a hurricane, tornado or wind storm … the ones we call “victims,” but who end up being precisely the ones who make sense of it all … Peter connects the dots for his hearers then … and us, now, if we have ears to hear him.
“Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel …”
And then Peter begins to relate the story … the whole story … of Jesus … and how the event they have just experienced, the rush of the mighty wind, tied, ties it all together for them, and for us.
And his hearers respond – later on, in this story from Acts – by wanting to become part of this story themselves. Some three thousand of them are baptized, and begin to live the whirlwind life of Jesus, living in community with each other, sharing all that they had and all that they are with their neighbors … “and day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”
Lives changed forever by the rush of a mighty wind.
Who has seen it?
This is our 41st Pentecost as Nativity people … 41 times this worshipping community has gathered together, in homes, schools, and then, in this place, to celebrate this day when the rush of a mighty wind changed the life of believers forever. We might want to mark this … as many have before us … as a “birthday” of sorts, “the birthday of the church,” and I suppose that there is nothing inherently wrong with using that kind of language, so long as we remember that what gets “birthed” by this wind is not just an organization, an institution, a structure with committees and rules and orders of doing things … as theologian Carl Braaten once said of the then-new ELCA, “Well, we must be a church now, because we have a logo.”
No … we must keep in mind that the rush of this mighty wind creates a people on the move, a people who live in the midst of whirlwind, not denying the pain and suffering all around us, in our own lives, in the lives of others … but rather, we enter into it, and walk with those in the midst of it, in the midst of the hurricane, the tornado, the wind storms of poverty, injustice, disaster, hunger, powerlessness, sickness, and death. We acknowledge and point out these windstorms of life … we who have seen and experienced them, and, still more, we point beyond them, pointing to the One from God, God himself, in Jesus, who has seen and experienced them, for us.
The breath of the Spirit enters into these dry, rattly bones and breathes life into them, life in the midst of death.
The breath of the Spirit enters into us and puts us on our feet, a vast multitude, who go and proclaim and serve in Jesus’ name, not just for 49 days or 40 years but for 2000 years and more … this “birthday of the church” is not just for us, not just for Nativity, not just for Christians, but for all of the world, all of God’s creation …
… people, creation who are crying, calling out, to be changed, to be healed, to be made whole…
… and we are the called, the chosen, who will go and bring that Word to them.
We are.
And we will.
Who has seen this wind? Who will see it?
The whole world. One breath at a time.
Amen.

10 May 2009

2009-05-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

“A time when you shouldn’t play by ‘The Rules’”
1 John 4:7-21 – esp. focusing on 16b-21
5 Easter B
10 May 2009

This being Mother’s Day, I thought I’d begin the message talking about something that, perhaps, likely, many women have seen, at one time or another … at least, the women I know watch it … a show called “What Not To Wear.”
There are two versions … the British original on BBC America, and the American knock-off, airing on TLC. Both versions feature two “fashion experts” who weekly take on a hapless, fashion challenged woman (sometimes it’s a man for good measure, but they know their viewing audience, so it’s mostly women) … they take on a woman who has been roundly criticized by her “friends” for dressing too frumpy … kidlike … sleazy … well, you get the picture. The woman gets a charge card with an incredibly high spending limit, and is instructed to go out and buy a new wardrobe.
But first … she is subjected to a humiliating session in front of an eight sided mirror, during which the hosts make fun of her in her current wardrobe … all of which gets pitched in the garbage … and then, the “fashion project” is given a list of “The Rules” to follow in her purchasing … “the Rules” by which, through which, following them, she will be sure to “look good.”
At least, that is what the “fashion experts” tell her.
“The Rules.”
For the past few years, it’s sure felt to me like much of the same where faith and belief and practice are concerned. It’s like, there are people, out there, individuals, groups, who want to impose their version of “The Rules” on us who are trying to walk the discipleship way of Jesus.
So -called “experts” have given us their version of “The Rules.”
“Rules” that “we must follow to be truly faithful.” “Rules” that we must choose, really red, true blue, right, left, because “that’s the way real Christians vote.” “Rules” that we must have this kind or that kind of worship in order to be “really Lutheran” … even “Rules” that we must grow to be this size or that size church, or else, or else …
… or else we break “The Rules.” We won’t “look good” to those who say “they know better.” We won’t be “real Christians.”
“The Rules.”
Now, what’s the prime motivator behind our obeying “the Rules?” What’s the “enforcer?”
It’s fear. Fear that … we won’t be accepted. We won’t “fit in.” Fear that, we will somehow be punished for not following “The Rules.”
Fear of punishment is what makes “The Rules” stick.
But wait a minute.
Did you hear what John, the disciple some say was the closest to Jesus, the one the Gospel says Jesus “loved,” the one who rested on him at the Last Supper … did you hear what John said about that?
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”
You mean to say … that “The Rules” … those rules … that they are the opposite of Love?
It’s not me saying it … it’s John.

And here’s another voice …
Grace goes before the law, and too strict an adherence to the law will result in a loss of grace both in God's sight and in man's.

And more from the same:
Therefore let us learn to distinguish carefully between Christ and a lawgiver, not only in word but also in fact and in practice. Then, when the devil comes, disguised as Christ and harassing us under His name, we will know that he is not Christ, but that he is really the devil. For Christ is the joy and sweetness of a trembling and troubled heart. – Martin Luther

There are rules and there are Rules. There are rules that God gives in the Ten Commandments, the rules that Jesus talks about when says “Love God” and “Love Your Neighbor” … the rules that are given for good order, the Rules which are a gift to us, for life.
These rules we break, all too easily. These rules, in our breaking them, separate us from God and each other. These rules, because of our breaking them, because of the separation that causes … Jesus comes to forgive us and heal us and bring us back into right relationship with God and each other and all of God’s creation.
But the other Rules … the Rules that people make up, the voting rules, the worship rules, the church size rules … those Rules don’t come from God. They’re … made up by people. Designed to lead us into … fear. Fear of punishment. Fear of shame, and humiliation. They keep us from perfect love.
They make Jesus into another Lawgiver. And that, as Luther says, is so far from God’s truth as to be … evil.
“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
Beloved, we are called to love one another. Not to obey “The Rules” that are set down to cause us fear, punishment, and humiliation.
Yes, we’ve all heard a lot lately about “The Rules” and we will, no doubt, continue to hear much more about “The Rules” over the next weeks, months, and more. We may well have good friends, family, colleagues try to convince us that we must follow “The Rules” or else … or else … we won’t be Lutheran. Christian. Faithful.
Be strong. Do not give in to “The Rules.” Hear again the words of the beloved disciple …
“Those who say ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”
That’s the True Rule.
And when we break it?
When we break it … we feel bad … but we need not fear punishment.
For the promise of Jesus is that there is only … forgiveness. Healing. A meal with a Friend, and with friends.
And another chance to get it right.
Friends in Christ, may the Rule that is in your hearts be the Rule of Jesus Christ Alone, he who seeks, who wills, who WILL, rule in your hearts, through this gathering, through this meal, this day … and, in ruling there, he will bless you, into Loving One Another.
Amen.

3 May 2009

2009-05-10T21:23:00.000-07:00

“Good news from baaaaaa-aaaaaaa-aaaaaaad”
John 10:11-18
4 Easter B
3 May 2009

The “bad news” flood just keeps washing over us this Easter season, doesn’t it.
Last week, Eliza asked us if we “felt like Easter people.” Two weeks ago Pastor Jan Nesse wondered out loud the same thing. Well, if we did … two weeks ago, even one week ago, still feel like “Easter people” … resting securely, rejoicing greatly in the word and wonder of the empty tomb … … if we’ve held onto the joy and hope of that promise, for us, in Jesus’ rising there will also be rising for you and me, death is dead and life is triumphant … held onto it despite the continuing cold of winter, the chill of economic distress … this week’s swine flu warnings and wonderings and worryings may well have driven the last bit of “Alleluia” and “He Is Risen” right out of you.
Easter people? Hopeful people? Rejoicing people? Ha!
And then … what do we get this week?
Sheep.
At least it’s not the story of the crazy man living among the tombs, from whom Jesus casts out the demons … which then go into a herd of swine. That would have been too much.
Yes, it’s once again “Good Shepherd Sunday” with the usual “required readings” from Scripture: Psalm 23, for sure, and then, a Gospel reading from John that has something to do with sheep or shepherds … this year, it’s Jesus’ “I am the Good Shepherd” words from chapter ten.
Sheep. Good Shepherd.
Nice, comfortable, even cute words. Like a snuggy, they go over us and we just slip them on without thinking about them. For people who live where we do, doing what we do in our lives … stories about sheep and shepherds are more ornamental than actual. And as for the metaphors these stories are supposed to convey into our lives … well, they may well be so worn and threadbare as to be useless … especially with our hearing these stories every year … more often than that, in the case of the 23rd Psalm.
So let me suggest, instead, that we focus on another word in these words … other than “sheep.”
That word is KNOW.
“I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.”
KNOW.
We say we know a lot these days, and we believe we’re learning more, every day … there’s supposedly less and less UNKNOWN to be worried about.
At least, that’s what we’ve been telling ourselves. Lately, though, there’s been a lot of UNKNOWN that’s kept us up late at night, sleepless, worried, helpless … our jobs, our health, life itself.
So … sheep of this flock … Jesus’ own … hear his words that he KNOWS you.
And this is not a simple “knowing” that is
the same as “knowing” it’s Sunday morning, or
“knowing” you’re supposed to wash your hands, or even “knowing” that you are here, right now, hearing this message.
No, this “knowing” is a deep knowing … the same “knowing,” that same spiritual communion and community which exists between Jesus and his Father, is right here, right now, between Jesus and you, and me … one and the same …
And that knowing … steeped as it is in the deep, loving relationship between Jesus and his Father … showing itself in the acts of faith and love and service as it did in Jesus’ life … well, that is the same kind of knowing that Jesus has for you, and me.
… a knowing that knows no limits, no ends … there is no where and no way you can go where you will not be KNOWN by Jesus … this is the KNOWING that we heard of last week, as Jesus came alongside those disciples on the road to Emmaus, the same KNOWING that brought Jesus into the midst of the disciples, bringing them peace and hope in the midst of their fear …
… the good news this morning … the good news for us in the midst of so much that is bad … is not, does not go baaaa-aaaaa—aaaaaa.
It says, instead, that Jesus KNOWS you. Deeply. Intimately. Securely. Jesus KNOWS you, and loves you … not to death, but to life.
And, in KNOWING that, we are freed and sent to bring others into that deep KNOWING … so that, in days of Great Recession and Swine Flu, job loss and life loss, we may stand, together, fully KNOWN, fully loved, fully free … to love one another.
Amen.

Resurrection of our Lord 12 April 2009

2009-04-13T14:26:00.000-07:00

“… for they were afraid …”
Mark 16:1-8
The Resurrection of our Lord
12 April 2009

There it is.
The whole reason we are gathered here this morning … an ancient story, told oh, so briefly.
There’s no earthquake. No guards shaking and falling over in a dead faint.
And no Jesus, appearing to Mary or Peter or anyone else.
I can understand if some of you feel gypped.
It is a season, a year of so much bad news. Jobs lost. Homes lost. Savings evaporated. Dreams of vacations, trips, better times … dashed. And to cap it off … a long, cold winter which seems to never end.
So you’ve come to church today, this day of days, looking for something more. Searching for something more. A sign, a glimpse, of promise. Better times. Uplifted spirits. Hope.
And what do you get?
“…terror and amazement … they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
I can just picture the conversation, later today, tomorrow at school, with friends, at work, at Starbucks …
“What did you do for Easter?”
“I went to church.”
“Oh, how was that?”
“Oh, OK, I guess. Except …”
“Except what?”
“Except … well … I came looking for Jesus.”
“And?”
“And he didn’t even show up.”

You would be right about that … at least, in these eight short verses of Mark’s gospel. The concluding verses of the concluding chapter … the end of the story, if you will.
The tomb is empty. There is no sign of Jesus.
There’s just those women … come to do what they were supposed to do for his body earlier, but the laws of their religion forbade such work on the Sabbath, the rest day ... so they had come out early in the morning to anoint the corpse in the proper, faithful way.
But a young man meets them … with tremendous news. “Do not be alarmed … you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.
“But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”
It does sound like good news … Jesus is alive, even though he’s not right there to show and tell them … but they treat this good news like bad news …
“… so they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

“What did you say?”
“I said Jesus didn’t even show up.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah. So what’s the point?”

Back then … at the empty tomb … just as today … disturbing news makes for anxiety. Layoffs and bank failures and evaporating savings … all this bad news makes us anxious, desperate for a quick fix to take away the pain.
“He has been raised; he is not here” had the same effect on those women … and on the earliest Christians. If you go get a Bible, and turn to these last few verses in Mark’s Gospel … you will see some more verses following them. And you might think, “Hey, that Pastor Bob, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about … there’s a better ending to the story here.”
There are more verses. They were added to the end of Mark’s Gospel … the first one to be written down … by anxious Christians, who worried that a story about Jesus without a happy ending … without him showing up and talking to his disciples … well, they were worried precisely about those school and water cooler and Starbucks conversations … “I went to hear the story about Easter, about Jesus’ resurrection, and he didn’t even show up.” So in their own anxiousness they borrowed verses from other, later accounts … a quick fix of their own … and put them down here later, much later, when this oral tradition was put into print.
Yes, that’s right … it’s an oral tradition, this story about Jesus. It’s a story meant to be told out loud. Mark’s Gospel preserves this so well … you can sit down and read it in a couple hours’ time, or better yet, have someone read it to you, or take turns reading it to each other … for this is a story, meant to be told, meant to be shared …
… meant to be lived into.
Rather than tie up everything neat and clean for us, the ending leaves us hanging precisely because it’s supposed to … it’s supposed to drive us right back to the beginning of the story …
… the beginning of Mark’s Gospel … which reads …
…”the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
The story that’s told, the faith that’s shared through it … can’t be comprehended immediately … how could it be? “…they … fled from the tomb … they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
It took decades … centuries … to work all this out. And it’s still a work in process. A story that isn’t made complete for its hearers in one hour on Easter morning … or even one hour a week all year long … but which is made full … alive … enfleshed, if you will … in the entire living of all those who hear it, and are grasped by it … drawn into it by the love of our God who stops at nothing … not our mistakes and screw-ups, not poverty, not disease and illness, not violence, not our evil intentions, not even death … to remain in a relationship of love and care with his beloved people … those then, and us now.
It is a story which, for those grasped by it … becomes a posture, a lifestyle … it gets lived into over time, like that favorite old pair of jeans or comfortable hoody … it’s there, it’s mine, it feels good and right and part of me … part of you ... part of us …
And it is a story that is meant to be shared. Perhaps not right after it’s heard it for the first time … even those who were there at the start didn’t do that … but eventually, we know that they must have, they did … and then, one told another, and another, and then, much later, someone told us.
And we must tell others. Tell others, who might well be thinking, be believing, in their own lives of hurt, frustration, and anxiety …

“I sure wish Jesus had showed up.”

He is here, today. Here today, shown forth in the lives of all those who have been caught by his promise and caught up into new life … new life which isn’t necessarily physically, outwardly, materially better, by worldly standards …
… but it is life being made whole … complete … full … abundant … by Godly standards … in the posture of living, the process, of being saved … redeemed … forgiven … set free from all that hold us back from realizing God's promises for us.
He is here today, in this meal which we will share, where he promises us that “this is my body, this is my blood,” and as we eat and drink, he becomes a very part of us.
He is here today, in this community of believers, who live out his life in service through this faith community … giving freely of themselves to others … feeding, clothing, visiting, caring … traveling across the street and some of us, soon, across the nation, to be Jesus’ feet and hands to and for others.
Jesus is here today.
May those of us who have felt his grasp, his warm, saving embrace, be free in our sharing of him.
And may those who have yet to realize his grasp, his warm saving embrace, may you be caught up in it as well, and want more. Much more.
For he loves you so much … that all that he has is yours. Amen.

Good Friday 10 April 2009

2009-04-13T14:24:00.000-07:00

Good Friday homily
Mark 15:1-5
10 April 2009

This fifteenth chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel, in which we immerse ourselves tonight during this Tenebrae, this time of falling darkness … it is most certainly a study in contrasts with the rest of Mark’s Gospel.
For the fourteen chapters previous, Jesus has been the mover, the shaker, the initiator of so much … the word “immediately” is so liberally used by Mark that we who read these words two thousand years after they were first penned, we get the feeling that everything that happened in Jesus’ ministry happened right then, right now … there was no hesitation, no brakes applied by committees, councils and assemblies … well, should we really do this or not? … no, it’s “immediately” this and “immediately” that.
Until we get to this fifteenth chapter. Suddenly, things change. The mood is different – darker – stranger. Now, everyone else is caught up in a frenzy of activity … consulting, binding, questioning, beating, mocking … crucifying.
But what of Jesus? He … the busy, active, living center of Mark’s Gospel story … now, here, in this next to the final chapter of Mark’s account … he is quiet. Contemplative. The calm at the center of an angry storm, the non-anxious presence in a hurricane of anxiety.
In the poetic words of the German Lutheran theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, himself a modern reflection of Jesus in his own death sixty-four years ago yesterday …

O wondrous transformation! Your hands, strong and
active, are bound.
Powerless, alone, full clearly knowing your action has
ended,
From your lips there yet comes the cry of relief,
That, calmly and trusting, you surrender your struggle to
more powerful hands.
And contented in heart you rest now in peace.
For in one blessed moment the soul of freedom you
touched, to entrust it to God that God might fulfill it in glory.

Jesus … here, in the very moment when everything seems to be spinning out of control, in the gathering, threatening darkness which will soon take his life … he is the one most in control of himself, most enlightened and at peace with himself, “comfortable in his own skin,” if you will … comfortable of God in his own skin.
Jesus is being the authentic, honest one here.
Everyone else … is phony. Liars, cheats, mask-wearing, inauthentic human beings that they … we … all are.
And … amazingly … they are all afraid of this one, solitary man … so deathly afraid of him … afraid because he is the one who has, does, and will point out, bring out The Truth about each one of them … and each one of us.
Just watch the action unfold. The One who a few days before entered their town hailed as a King … even though, in reality, he came to Jerusalem honestly, not pretending to be like Caesar, a conquering king … but what he really was, a meek rabbi astride a donkey.
Now they have Jesus bound up like a terrorist or revolutionary leader, tied and delivered to the governor.
The crowd demands to have a real terrorist released instead of Jesus, and Pilate gives in because he’s a people pleaser.
A cohort of Roman soldiers (that’s 600 men!) … a cohort of Roman soldiers are called together to beat Jesus and spit on him, to mock him, and to lead him out to be crucified.
And then the carnival atmosphere reaches its climax, with pounding nails, drugged wine … more mockery (even those who were crucified with Jesus taunting him) …
And then … and then … a cry.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sebachthani – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Jesus finally says something. Aha.
So has Jesus finally given up? Has he given in to the anxiety, the phoniness, the fraud of it all? Has he finally had enough, has he decided that the crowd is right and he’s wrong?
No. Not at all.
Jesus is merely claiming his own pain in all of this. He claims and owns his pain … the pain of not just being misunderstood, not just being scorned … but the pain and sorrow of being utterly rejected by his brothers and sisters … of every time and every place … God’s own pain at being rejected by his beloved people, us, who are not content to own our given place in this relationship of love and trust, but who instead choose to bully our way to the center of it, grasping and grabbing for everything … we want it all … even to be god ourselves.
Oh, they’re good at pretending that’s not what it’s all about. Jesus is against their law or against Caesar’s law or claims to be Caesar himself … so they can justify knocking him off, taking him out, running him through as the rightful end of all this. Immediately, if not sooner.
Oh, the irony.
So how can we be angry at the reaction of the crowd, the soldiers, the chief priests and elders and scribes? How indeed? For their mask-wearing, their inauthentic-ness, their lying and cheating humanity is no different from ours.
Well, we may couch ours differently … behind committees and groups and organizations, “polite society,” “organized religion” … “nice church” … ah, but it’s all still the same.
Whenever Jesus walks into the middle of it … into the midst of us … proclaiming his kingdom of justice, love, forgiveness, peace, and new life … not just acceptance, but preference for the least of these, the poor, the downtrodden, the imprisoned and sick, the powerless … when his New World Order turns our Old Chosen Order upside down … well, then all hell breaks loose.
Up go our masks, and out come the nails.
He knows us as we truly are.
Phonies.
Cheats.
Miserable sinners who would kill anything, anyone who would get in our way of creating god in our own image … even being god ourselves.
People … who, in spite of ourselves, are still God’s beloved … God’s beloved children who are in desperate, deathly need of a redeemer.
One to come and show us what it is like to be truly human.
One to call us to himself, and claims us as his own.
One who feeds us on his very self.
One who dies –willingly – to destroy sin and death, to proclaim life to those still alive but who live as if we were dead …
… and life to those who are already dead, the spirits in the tombs who have long awaited such a One.
One who is raised to Life again … to promise us that same Life.
Thanks Be To God that we get such a One … that we have such a One … or rather, that that One has US.
Amen.