Monday Morning Quarterback

There’s a Crack in Everything

2009-05-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

6th Sunday of Easter, May 17, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Acts 10: 44-48
1 John 5: 1-6
John 15: 9-17

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/B360F0E2-1D02-B2DA-323C-441252BCF9A8.mp3

There was a WAY COOL moment that came at the start of today’s service, when the Sunday school kids came out and sang:

David Brooks in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times described the Grant Study http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/opinion/12brooks.html) in which a cadre of young men from Harvard are followed and studied for the better part of their adult lives. The researchers were looking for, in part, indicators of happiness in the subjects’ lives. When did they attain it? Why and under what circumstances. What were the major factors that played into obtaining it and maintaining it. And these clues to what proffers happiness?

There was barely a correlation with any of the indicators we have most bought into believing are the main determinants. These were people who were given nearly every opportunity, had doors opened for them and full access to factors deemed necessary for success in life. And the most interesting conclusion was that there seems no way to indicate what will make one person happy and another falter at the brink: not your emotional state in your thirties, not money, not good relationships, not plenty of supportive family and friends, not a faith community.

People who have every reason to be happy are not.
People who have no reason to be … are content.

Interestingly, in the Bible, Jesus NEVER talks about being happy!!!!!

If we lead a Jesus-life, we lead a life abiding in God and God’s love, serving one’s neighbor. In love and service, there is joy. If, in the end, you end up happy about it, well that’s a by-product of a well-lived life, not an end to seek in itself.

The advice Jesus gives is to love. Even in the Grant Study as described by David Brooks, one subject finally says …

“Happiness is love. Full Stop.”

Jesus invites us to look at life differently … to view it as service to others. A month or so back, I blogged about an interesting half-fact/half-fiction book and movie entitled the Peaceful Warrior. It’s still worth a look-see if for no other reason than one interplay of dialogue between a young athlete and his mindful mentor:

“Hey, Socrates, if you know so much, why are you working at a gas station?”
“It’s a service station. We offer service. There is no higher purpose.”
“ …Than pumping gas?”
“Service to others.”

There's even a poignant scene at the very end of the movie about what it is we think will "make us happy", but never will. And, if you want a harkening back to last week's sermon ... a great scene where Dan tries to visit his mentor one last time .... only to find the gas station "manned" by someone new, Socrates nowhere to be found. Like Philip in today's scripture reading, like Jesus on the Road to Emmaus, now-you-see-Him - now-you-don't .... off with the wind.

In today’s scripture reading is Jesus’ Farewell Discourse … (John 13:31 – 17:26). It says a lot. It’s meat on the bones, but it’s so counter-intuitive. Jesus’ topsy-turvy world. And precisely because it’s so counter-intuitive, it bears a lot of repeating.

Abide in God’s love for you.
Love your neighbor.

It’s a new model, a new system, and we’re not always trusting of it. We like for life to be transactual. We like to know for what goes into the box, what comes out. We like to know the price and value of things in which we invest our money and time and effort. We like to know the rules of engagement up front and we like to understand them. In another NY Times O-Ed piece entitled "What You Don't Know Makes You Nervous" (http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/what-you-dont-know-makes-you-nervous/), Dan Gilbert points out that "money doesn't makes us happy - certainty does". There's beaucoup research to indicate that uncertainty raises hormine levels indicative of stroke and heart attack; rats that were always shocked or never shocked exhibited lower stress levels than rats who "never knew" when they woukd be shocked. Those who were uncertain when they would be shocked sweated more profusely, their heart beat faster.

We are frustrated when we either don’t understand the rules or when we’re not allowed to play into them as we think we should, i.e. when they don’t seem transactual. Point in case, asking to bring something when we’re going to someone’s house for dinner. God and others tell us, no, we can’t. But we buck it. We don’t get not putting in for what we know we’ll get out.

And if the system breaks, we don’t understand. We like a very predictable world where everything makes sense. And the transactual model works well for driving and banking and maybe even dating. But there are at least two entities where it breaks down miserably: evil and God.

If you’ve ever lost your job, suffered a loss of a loved one, been hurt terribly by someone, had your trust betrayed, then you know the rules don’t apply. The good news is it’s the same way with God. You can’t earn your way into dinner or offer anything He can’t already, hasn’t already provided.

You can not pay God back. He asks you to Pay it Forward (another good movie, by the way …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_It_Forward_(film) ). It’s not transactual and it’s not fair by our normal definition(s). If we pay out and don’t receive in return, we feel cheated. The fault in our reasoning is that we forget we were blessed with something to pay with in the first place. We suffer from a lack of understanding of our own initial conditions in the game.

Pastor Mohn shared a great story that Dan Magnuson shared with her. In Leonard Cohen’s poem The Anthem (http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Leonard_Cohen/215 ):

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

There is the notion that it is in life’s imperfections that God shines through. In the cracks, in the places we lose, where we struggle, that where God shines through. That’s where flowers grow in the sidewalk … in the cracks. In the cracks God sees opportunities to shine His grace through for those open enough to look for it.

The world sees unrequited love as foolish. Jesus sees it as a calling. Jesus takes the crack called servanthood and sees it as a privilege, much like Socrates, the service station attendant in A Peaceful Warrior. Jesus sees death as a means to salvation.

The command today to love one another affords us the opportunity to get close enough to things the world calls folly. And if we get close enough, we will see the light of God’s grace shining through.

As the fledgling professor in Good Will Hunting, the one deemed less successful for his having loved his wife through years of cancer instead of seeking out the awards of academia, tells his lost patient …

Oh, Will, those little things they call the imperfections. They’re the best part. They’re the part you’ll laugh about. They’re the part you most love about one another.

And, as The Anthem says, … forget your PERFECT offering …

You can add up the parts but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march, there is no drum
Every heart, every heart to love will come but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

I Don’t Know Why I’m Doing This …

2009-05-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

5th Sunday of Easter, May 10, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Acts 8:26-40
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/0E84B48B-6191-A778-54B1-BFC8FDD1DACC.mp3

There was a WAY COOL moment that came at the start of today’s service, when the Sunday school kids came out and sang:

I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.
Where?
Down in my heart!
Where?
Down in my heart!
I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart,
down in my heart
down in my heart to stay

.… and for a few magical, marvelous moments, it lifted and charged the room. For those wonderful couple of moments, everyone had a smile on their face and we were filled with … joy.

How does this happen?

Sometimes it takes The Spirit … riding on the wind; a voice, a suggestion, an inkling that you’re supposed to do something, go somewhere, say something. On the winds of the Holy Spirit, we are often nudged to be a part of something that, at the time, we seem not to understand.

“I don’t know what made me go there. Something in me called me, made me stop by,” we say. And, invariably, there’s the feeling of “I’m so glad I did!”

And that something would not have occurred to you had you not allowed that something to “blow you into the life of another”. On some level, it’s a conscious decision. Philip is called by the Spirit and nudged to “go … to a dangerous road”. And the wonder of it all is “He got up and went”. He probably doesn’t understand why as reason would have it that he shouldn’t want to go, it was not prudent to go, it was a swarthy stretch of road. Philip probably had a day planner and a to-do list, a day full of appointments. But he forewent that.

He is “called” to approach the Queen’s “right hand man” – the guy who guards the money, has the power, influences authority, has the Queen’s implicit trust. He’s dark-skinned, obviously a foreigner, not from Israel. He has personal drivers, a limo … he’s obviously “got it goin’ on”. And, for all that, he’s got “something missing in his life”. He has the great job, the cool robes and it’s still “not enough”. He’s struggling with a passage in Isaiah and …

And something tells Philip … “Hey, go talk to that guy …”

That something is the gift of the Spirit through Baptism … to serve.

Philip “knows this guy”. Philip knows this guy is rich and he knows he’s NOT in this guy’s class. And this Ethiopian eunuch asks what the meaning of the scripture is and Philip fills him in … he tells the story of how Jesus conquered death and sin NOT by way of money or power or leverage, NOT with generals and an army, but by humility.

The eunuch’s response: when he next sees water, he says “What’s t stop me from being baptized, right here, right now?” What a great response!!

So what’s with Philip and the Spirit? Tell your story, write your song, say your piece when you hear a calling. Your witness is all God asks. God’ll take care of the rest. Lead the horse to water. God’ll take over from there.

The cool part? The eunuch goes dancing away after dipping himself in the waters of baptism. He was singing like the little kids this morning:

I’ve got the peace that passes understanding,
Down in my heart,
Where?
Down in my heart!
Where?
Down in my heart!
I’ve got the peace that passes understanding,down in my heart
down in my heart to stay.

I’ve the got love of Jesus, love of Jesus
Down in my heart,
Where?
Down in my heart!
Where?
Down in my heart!
I’ve the got love of Jesus, love of Jesus
down in my heart,
down in my heart to stay.

As the Voices of Zion also sang today … “Now all the vault of heaven resounds …”
The vault of heaven opens when we walk away from our own lives into the life of another.

Through your witness, God can lead them to a place where they will realize that it wasn’t ever the money or the Queen’s trust that matters. It’s in the waters of baptism that the light’s turned on. The eunuch in all of us is going to have to keep reading (and wrestling) with scripture, keep working on his baptism, but, and here’s the onderful thing, he’s going to “pass it on”, “pay it forward”.

Soon, on some given day, he’s going to say “I don’t know why I’m doing this, but …”

Someone out there, maybe today, maybe tomorrow is longing. They’ll cross your path. And, if you heed the call and brave the dangerous road, something glorious will happen. And in that moment, like Philip, you will be swept away, like Jesus on the Road to Emmaus, you’ll “be gone in an instant” to leave that someone pondering what just happened. And their eyes will be opened to a new light. They will go on joyfully singing, a changed person, with a new smile and a new outlook on life, riding on that wind that brought you to them, spreading that joy that’s filling their heart.

WebKinz Jesus??

2009-05-18T18:14:00.000-07:00

4th Sunday of Easter, May 3, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Acts 4:5-12
1 John 3:16-24
Psalm 23
John 10:11-18

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/28F5BE7B-F100-1240-2A9F-99895836F6A0.mp3

Perhaps too often, Pastor Mohn offers, we tend to picture Jesus (or see artistic renditions of Him) as blonde with flowing hair, like the cute, stuffed animal sheep we buy our kids in the store, aka WebKinz (www.webkinz.com). They’re soft, cuddly, romantic and, in the end, unlike “the real thing”. As in the Psalm today, the green pastures Jesus will lie beside us in goes hand-in-hand with the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Along with Blonde Barbie Jesus is another Jesus we meet in today’s scripture texts. And, yes, there’s a dirty (and real) side of what goes along with “I am the Good Shepherd”. The reality is Jesus is moving around the world saving His sheep from the wolves, but THAT Jesus doesn’t always look like the one in the frame at the top of the stairs.

The reality is often so very different from “the idea”.

Much like parenting or the proverbial oil change, the job can often be dirty (and painful) in the details.

The Good Shepherd knows His sheep and they know Him. Pastor Mohn shared a story about a “shepherd” in Minnesota who’d had his sheep stolen while at the County Fair. While visiting the County Fair one county over, he found that a farmer there had stolen them. When he approached them, the sheep received him and they KNEW HIM. But Pastor Mohn cautioned us to “wait a minute”. Here’s the Hollywood, Hallmark moment when we tend to romanticize, when the music changes to a “happy ending crescendo” and the Webkinz sheep “comes to be”. But that’s “the idea” that we tend to romanticize. The reality is often different, if we can be truthful with ourselves long enough to resist Hollywood, Hallmark and Webkinz.

It’s not altogether only a sweet story.

WHY do the sheep know their shepherd? When it’s snowy, rainy, storming, he opens the barn door to let them seek warmth; when they’re hungry, he fills the troughs and feeds them; when they’re scared, he’s there to calm them and comfort them. They know the source of their life. When Jesus says He knows his sheep and they know Him, this is NOT a warm and fuzzy story. This is a stark reality.

Pastor Mohn remembers a dirty story of a calf birthed by her father in the mud room of their home. It was a difficult, dirty, messy birth IN THEIR HOME! The calf came too early, too cold, too afraid, but their shepherd, her father, was there to “make it OK”. He would bring the mud and gunk and filth into his own home to save that calf. The mud and blood and dirt and afterbirth, the fear, the mess, the disgusting mess – this is not the stuff of Webkinz.

It is the stuff of Baptism!!

Through all the mess and gunk of your life, God brings you into the warm waters, he gets right in with you and brings you out clean and safe and OK on the other side. There’s no barrier between Jesus and the mess in your life.

When we say that Jesus lies down before us in green pastures, it is because we know He’s there in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. When we say He’s the Good Shepherd, it’s because we know there are wolves out there.

What you won’t see in any Hallmark card or Hollywood movie or cute Kinz website, is that, in the Easter season, Jesus is out there between us and the wolves, to bring us through the mud and the gunk and out the other side.

We’re Never Ready

2009-05-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

3rd Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Acts 3:12-19
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24: 36b-48

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/98E11702-3847-ED9E-C464-E6BC7F531D74.mp3

Just previous to today’s text, Pastor Johnson points out, Paul has just cured a crippled man. The crippled man starts jumping and hopping around, singing. You know this guy. He walks funny. He stands out. He has two heads, he’s different …

But this ends up one happy guy. He knows his cure is a blessing.

Often we either don’t know or have forgotten what our true blessings are. We think we know what we need. And Paul gets this. He says “I know what you ‘think you need’, but you are children of God and here … THIS is enough”. He asks “Why do you wonder at this?” and then proceeds to remind them they “killed the Author of Life”. We think we know, but we have to constantly be reminded that we really don’t.

In Luke, today, it’s as if the apostles have all seen a ghost. Again, the greeting “Why are you frightened?”. While in their joy that Jesus was alive, they were still disbelieving.

We are very much like the Israelites and the apostles. We can wrap our heads around “dead”. We get hopelessness and uncertainty. We know about shaking our heads and giving up. We can sink our teeth into that. But “he’s raised from the dead” or “he’s cured … and he’s singing and dancing”? Much less so ….

Today’s story is NOT about death. It’s about a birth.

Much as in Luke’s Christmas story … it’s the BEST … full of the mysterious, the weird, other-worldly, the aura of disbelief … as there, here we are reminded that no matter how ready you are “to have a baby”, you’re NEVER ready!!

You know what’s coming – BUT when it’s upon you, as ready as you thought you were, you’re not ready. Your reaction is to count fingers and toes, to stare almost dumb-faced.

Yoday we witness a grown-up version of “fondling the new birth”. Resurrection? No matter how often it was prophesied, we seek the wound in which to place our unbelieving hands.

And Jesus says “Touch me”

The irony is … we’re more ready for death than birth. We are given 6 weeks in Lent, like 9 months of pregnancy … to wrap ourselves around what we’re not ready for. So what? So here’s the “so what” …

God will get us out of our tight places, believe it.

And where’s the tightest place you’ll ever get?

It’s shoulder-wide and 6 feet deep.

Whatever tight spot you’re in right now, today, God has already made the sacrifice to get you out of it … while it’s easier to say “so what?”, don’t let anybody else ever tell you otherwise.

You may be tempted to not believe this. You may have trouble wrapping yourself around this. But God has made the sacrifice to “raise you up out of this tight place”.

And He will ……

The Default Scenario

2009-04-19T13:37:00.000-07:00

2nd Sunday of Easter, April 19, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Acts 4:32-35
1 John 1:1-2:2
John 20:19-31

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/2A62828C-3EDB-9FDF-1876-102DE4792F9A.mp3

Pastor Mohn began with the notion that she and Thomas “are good friends”. Often the Sunday after Easter is left to seminarians and associate pastors to preach on Thomas on what’s often a lightly attended 2nd Sunday of Easter service. Pastor Mohn was admitting it was getting tough to come up with new slants on Thomas and she was, ultimately, “saved” by a 47 year old British woman named Susan Boyle.

Susan appeared on the British “American Idol” Britain’s Got Talent. The newest YouTube video to break records was written up in yesterday’s NY Times. Perhaps in response to Susan answering that she wished to be as successful as Elaine Paige, an actress and singer in British musical theater, the audience (and the judges) were somewhat sneering and laughing at her "dream" ... apparently not expecting much from the woman who, until recently, had been taking care of her ill mother. And all this before they heard her even open her mouth to sing. Everyone in the room, in a moment of anticipation of what would follow, bit lips and hid their faces or stared through slits in their upheld hands. And then she sang. Jaws dropped, eyes popped, and the audience was carried away to a standing ovation throughout her rendition of the ballad “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luRmM1J1sfg ).

There’s a deeper connection of faith, Susan Boyle and the doubting Thomas as Pastor Mohn points out. Something connecting the faces that doubted they would hear anything they’d ever care to remember. We all struggle to have faith, to believe. Susan Boyle doesn’t have the outward appearance we are taught from an early age to associate with “stardom”. We accentuate the young and the physical and allow it to take our attention from the substantive. Sometimes we are led to "believe" that dreams are only for the young, only achievable by the svelt even with all the examples around us that speak quite to the contrary. We become so "certain" that you have to look like Elaine Paige to sing like Elaine Paige. We search and yearn for certainty so much that we bottle it with a prescriptive recipe: in the absence of the voice, we judge "what will occur" on false pretenses, on appearance of what it ought to look like. And barring evidence to the contrary, we simply choose to doubt rather than believe.

When we can’t absolutely have certainty, we settle for doubt instead of faith.

Doubt, not faith, is the default scenario.

We want certainty. And if we can’t have it … because we weren’t there when the tomb was opened … or because someone doesn’t “look the part”, we choose NOT to believe.

When we have certainty, there’s no need for faith. The challenge is when there is no proof. Pastor Mohn astutely points out that faith … the choice to believe in the absence of proof is always a progression. It must be actively constructed (through effort). One does not call it out of thin air. It is difficult!

What is also sooo fascinating about Susan Boyle’s singing “I Dreamed a Dream” is that the song is about a woman dying, a woman convinced that the end is, for her, imminent. The lyrics, almost ironically, point to the young as being those who fall prey to the tigers that come out in the night. Hear the words she sings:

There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting

There was a time
Then it all went wrong
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living

I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came

And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

And Susan Boyle turns this ballad of lost and broken dreams torn asunder by soft thunder into “a bright beginning”. She imbibes the lyrics with a breath of hope as if to announce that …

…between certainty and doubt … THERE … lies a thing called faith

Faith in things unseen, faith that an unemployed woman of 47 can call from within herself the voice that would stir countless to rise from their seats. In his all-too-human stance, Thomas, like all the Britain's Got Talent judges, has made up his mind, to forgo faith for doubt. From where, then, comes faith in the unsung hero, the unemployed older woman with The Voice, faith in The One who came to conquer death for all?

If ever there was a metaphor for the Resurrection in full view, here it is … what our humanity sees so much as an ending was the most glorious of beginnings. Susan Boyle helped show us all again. One chapter's close gives rise to the opening of all that's to come after. "I will make a new thing", Jesus says.

Please forgive one last venture into Britain’s Got Talent. In that same NY Times article was a link to another Britain, a cellphone salesman, Paul Potts, who early on in the history of the show dreamed of singing opera. He chose to sing Nessun Dorma from Puccini’s famous opera, Turandot ... the aria made most famous as the chosen encore for tenor Lucianno Pavarotti. Paul Potts delivers the aria exquisitely
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA), a piece I still associate with Easter and Jesus rising from the dead only because of the building to the crescendo ending of the aria in which the character sings of desperation that he must rise above … he sings “I will conquer, conquer, conquer (Vincero, vincero, vincero)” These words belted out in song for me bring visions of the rising that only comes through real pain and suffering ... and I see Jesus rising and finally conquering death for all.

Paul Potts breaths into Nessun Dorma perhaps in a way different from Susan Boyle, but just as convincing, a reason to believe that, while we tend to doubt that Jesus will arrive in a older, more worn out package shy the perfect body or luxurious teeth, a package dressed up as Susan Boyle or Paul Potts ... although we tend to doubt that good things will come so packaged, Jesus is full of surprises.

Yes ... between certainty and doubt, there IS faith. Just ask Susan Boyle and Paul Potts.

In a moment after Susan Boyle is finished singing the judge Simon Cowell says (jokingly) "he knew all along she was going to do something extraordinary". But the truth is almost no one did. We are, most of us, Thomas-like at least in this regard. We actually choose to doubt. Maybe it's the safe choice. As Jesus says today, though ... blessed are those who risk "safe", who are bold enough to believe EVEN before Susan sings - blessed are those who choose not to give entirely into the stereotypes of glitz and bodily beauty. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed ... in One who rose from the dead to conquer sin and death, once and for all

Vincero!

Vincero!

Vincero!

When You Recognize Him

2009-04-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Acts 10:34-43
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-18

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/E81B8D00-6FC5-42AA-5911-D7C3E043033E.mp3

Pastor Johnson started interestingly by pointing out that today is NOT a day to convince you, but rather a day to testify to you: Jesus is raised from the dead. It’s more than a myth, more than a mystery, more than a fable, more than a tale.

God is not in the business of losing.

God is not in the business of coming in second.

Death loses. Death comes in 2nd to life. Oh, death, where is thy sting?

God shows NO partiality in the crucifixion:

ALL are now included.

And we all needed saving. For we all have tombs … places where we crawl, where “nothing will get better”, that cell where all hope goes to die. We roll the stone in front of our dark cells where we continue to live with our grief, our fear, our confusion about whether “it’s going to get any better”.

The Good News today is that if you ask God to push that stone away from your tomb of loneliness, brokenness, anxiety and fearfulness, God can’t wait to roll it away and lead you out into the light and the garden.

The story now ends differently because God’s in charge.

Just as He calls Mary by name at the tomb, He knows your name. He tells Mary “not to hang on to Him”. And He tells us we cannot hang on either. He comes in and out of our lives. And we, just like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, often don’t recognize Him. He could be the gardener, a service station attendant, or a child.

What Pastor Johnson did was then tell a story about when he was involved with Project Head Start helping a young boy, Tyrone, raised by a single mom. I seriously recommend you click on the audio sermon link at the top of this blog post because I cannot recount his story with ample emotion or passion. Each inflection and pause are a part of the experience so please allow yourselves that luxury.

What happens briefly is that Pastor Johnson was with Tyrone when he was called to attend to an old woman far out in the country on a very rainy night. He had Tyrone in the car and muscled his way most of the way until he hit a road not traversable by auto on 4 wheels. He locked Tyrone in the car and carried on by foot. Upon returning, his body froze … through the torrential downpour, in the dim of the remaining light, he saw what looked like someone in the car with Tyrone. Upon rushing the car and opening the door, he found out it was the biggest, muddiest, dirtiest, HAPPIEST dog imaginable. Tyrone looked Pastor Johnson in the eye and, figuring he was expected to give some explanation, simply said, “I couldn’t just leave him outside.” Upon returning home with Tyrone, what Pastor Johnson remembers resolutely was the look on Tyrone’s mom’s face. He said:

“It must have been what Mary’s face looked like when she realized Jesus wasn’t dead."

Jesus slips into and out of our lives. He’s where he’s least expected and at the least expected times. And when you recognize Him, you’ll see life, not death; hope, not despair.

I Smell What You’re Steppin’ In

2009-04-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 29, 2009
5th Sunday in Lent
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/87919B9F-7560-28C7-4A7D-431C8E878FE5.mp3

Pastor Johnson focused on the New Testament text from Hebrews today, particularly two key verses:

Verse 7: In the days of his flesh ….
Verse 9: … and having been made perfect

Verse 7 refers specifically to Jesus having become human while divine. In coming into this world, He experiences humanity as we know it. He gets hungry, he feels pain, he gets tired and short-tempered. He has cried loudly and shed tears … much like us in our moments of despair. He gets brokenness, temptation; he knows what it’s like to “not fit in”, to be betrayed, to feel abandoned by his closest friends, to be tortured and crucified. It’s hard to believe there’s anything we’ve fretted over that he did not experience or could not understand.

Pastor Johnson shared that in our congregation just this week … collectively experienced death, grieving, unemployment, surgery, incarceration, homelessness. It’s easy to believe our collective hurt is not felt, that our prayers are to no avail. “Have you ever been in that place where you wondered if God heard your prayers?” Pastor Johnson asked.

But Jesus today tells us this is not the case. He asked that the cup of his crucifixion pass by him, but it was not in the plan. Sometimes Jesus does not intervene to make the sorrow go away, but he is there to go through it with us. Just this past week, Pastor Mohn wrote a telling Lenten devotional about wanting to have a friend travel along side us and “Go first …” when there’s something unexpected or a rocky road just ahead. She makes a convincing case that Jesus is that friend when no friend, even our best friends, don’t or can’t tow that line with us. In “the days of His flesh”, Jesus knew what we go through when times are rough and He says he’s right alongside of us and willing to “go first” and then along with us … every step of the way.

I have a former student I consider a very good friend … probably the best student I ever had the privilege to teach – NOT because he’s smart .. he is … ,but because he has a keen sense of what matters in this world and is mature beyond his years. I dearly love a favorite expression of his. He is apt to use it when you share a bad experience with him. There comes the moment you need a pat on the back and he says

“I smell what you’re steppin’ in …”

Translation: he’s been there and he knows it’s no fun. Sometimes you just want to know you’re not all alone. And Jesus knows this too. He “smells what we’re stepping in every day”. He smells what the culture of his time made the children “step in”. He knew they were the misbegotten and they were not valued. And he told those who would “keep them away” to allow the children to approach him.

The moral of the story is … there’s nothing you’ve felt that He doesn’t know.

And verse 9 tells of his “having been made perfect”. Pastor Johnson shared that the translation does not mean he’s “got 100 on the test”, he’s error-free. The translation more accurately means “he’s come to the fullness of his life” … having come to the point of fulfilling his purpose in a bigger plan.

Along the way to “having been made perfect”, everyone of us will move toward fulfilling our purpose in God’s plan … but that road will be strewn with “stuff we’ll step in” and, boy, some days it will surely smell. In the grit and grime of your life, Jesus smells what you’re steppin’ in. In the old Gospel song “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” , the lyrics go:

Have we trials and temptations
Is there trouble anywhere
We should never be discouraged
Take it to the Lord in prayer

Can we find a friend so faithful
Who will all our sorrows share
Jesus knows our every weakness
Take it to the Lord in prayer

Are we weak and heavy laden
Encumbered with a load of care
Precious Savior still our refuge
Take it to the Lord in prayer

Do your friends in spite forsake you
Take it to the Lord in prayer
In his arms he’ll take and shield you
And you will find your solace there
And you will find your solace there

Jesus says “You’re not alone. Keep on trucking. I’ll ‘go first’ and ‘step in it’ with you” … because The Plan needs all its participants, the tapestry needs every thread; there’s true meaning in your journey …

He knows exactly how you feel.

He “smells what you’re stepping in”.

The Meaning of Life

2009-03-22T22:43:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 22, 2009
4th Sunday in Lent
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Numbers 21:4-9
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/A4C2B7BE-EF9F-9AAD-3179-51A15EC99BC3.mp3

Pastor Mohn confessed another of her moments when Erik asked “What are you preaching this week?” to which she replied “The meaning of life”. In what she called a weekly soup of personal conversations, on-line blogging and sermon preparation surrounding the weekly scripture readings, she found a voice of people hungering for an answer to “Why we’re here?” Is it for a comfortable retirement, a sense of self defined by our roles at work or in our family relationships …

Having been intrigued by the new Target ad campaign of redefining people’s sense of a vacation (spray-on sun tan skin colorant), Pastor Mohn elaborated on the sense of redefining ourselves. In the Old Testament and throughout today’s scripture readings there is the overriding specter that “things are not OK”. As we hear in Ephesians, we’re not OK., we’re dead through our trespasses, mired in sin, disobedient, living in the passions of our flesh, children of wrath.

People end up asking “How did we get this far away? How did we get this lost? It’s a huge question. And maybe part of the answer lies in having confused the meaning of life with the American dream. Pastor Mohn muses that she’s not against having dreams, but offer s this querie: As we chase ‘the proverbial American dream’, what answer do we find as we look in the mirror and ask ourselves, “If that’s all there is, where is the meaning in life?”

The dream that arguably posts the desirables as a two-person heterosexual relationship, a big house, 2 cars, a boat, the lake house, 2.3 healthy children who go to good colleges on full scholarship. When we’re honest with ourselves, we can hear echoes of it, desires for it in our own hearts and in our own actions.

The truth is not everyone has or even wants this dream. There are as many ways of living life as there are people living it. Truth is … if that’s all there is, we wind up right where we started.

There’s a great little picture book – Hope for the Flowers … self-described as ‘a tale – partly about life and lots about hope – for adults and others’ … in which two caterpillars, Sprite and Yellow come upon a pile of caterpillars rising into the sky as far as the eye can see. “Do you know what’s happening?” one says to another. “I just arrived myself. No one has time to explain. They’re so busy trying to get where they’re going – up there,” came the reply. “But what’s at the top?” Stripe asked. Again, the reply:”No one knows that either, but it must be awfully good because everyone’s rushing there.” There’s only one thing to do reasons Stripe and he jumps right in. Caterpillars climb atop one another, pushing, shoving, and knocking each other indiscriminately off the pile in an all-out effort to “get to the top”. Eventually Stripe pushes through the clouds only to find there’s nothing “up there”. “High up there”, he concludes, “only looked good from the bottom”. And he climbs back down.

Pastor Mohn said it very similarly:

“If that’s all there is, we wind up right where we started.”

It’s a zero-sum game, you only climb the pile if you’re willing to knock your neighbor off. Our neighbor becomes our obstacle, our enemy rather than our brother, only someone in the way of our realization of “what’s up there”.

So Stripe heads down the pile telling everyone he sees that “there is nothing up there” and that they would be so much the better for building cocoons; that they could fly if only they become butterflies. “I saw a butterfly – there CAN be more to life,” Stripe realizes.

The pile of caterpillars climbs on, ignorant of the beauty contained within each of them. The Israelites carried to freedom by God, find themselves complaining about the food on the road. Invariably, when we are distracted from what God says is the true meaning of life by the little things along the way – that is when the snakes come.

But we have a collection of at least a pair of the Bible’s most powerful and most quoted verses that say we are saved nonetheless.

Ephesians 2:8 … What God has already done … “For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your doing; it is a gift of God – not the results of works, so that no one may boast.”

Ephesians 2:10 … Who we are and what our purpose is … “For we are what He has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God created beforehand to be our way of life.”

Caterpillars were born to be butterflies – not climb piles of pillars.

There’s no mention in Ephesians about the boat, the college scholarships, our partner, our security, vacation or what’s presumably “up there”. Our cocoon, the beauty of the butterfly within lies in God’s purpose for us all – to serve our neighbor.

There is a wonderful movie called The Peaceful Warrior (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OchAhzYrQNw&feature=related )in which a young, talented college athlete seeking a spot on the coveted Olympic team can “only see gold”. He is befriended by an older and wiser man named Socrates running “a gas station”. Frustrated that the man does not ascribe to his passion for “possessions and material things”, the student spouts off:

“If you’re so smart, why are you working in a gas station?” to which Socrates replies:

“It’s a service station. We provide service. There is no higher purpose”

“Than pumping gas?”

“Than service to others”

In a story that so reminded me of that exchange, Pastor Mohn recalled a vivid memory of raking leaves with her Dad when she asked him “What’s the meaning of life?” to which he replied, “Well, you’re not going to find it standing around thinking about it. You’re not going to figure it out worrying about it or wondering about it.”

We find it only when we are Christ present in our neighbors’ lives, when we give so someone else can live, when we stop striving for “the gold” long enough to slow down and find out what’s going on all around us, when we live our lives for the sake of our neighbors, our siblings, our family.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only son, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.”

Just as God did not take the snakes away from the Israelites, but rather offered another route around the obstacle, God did not take away sin from the world, but offered His only Son to give us “a go around”. He offered this supreme example of how to live in service to one another.

THIS is the gift from God – the meaning of life – to give freely and fully, to become the butterflies he intended us to be, not caterpillars in search of “something up there” worth climbing over our brothers to attain … to become the peaceful warriors we were ordained to be, those who see the beauty of a body in flight on the gymnastic rings, a human butterfly, not a competitor to vanquish and conquer, to take from.

This is the meaning of life – but you have to “exit the pile”, and “leave the gym” to travel to the service station or the tree where lies the open cocoons … where, like a small caterpillar named Stripe or a young man named Dan, with counsel from a companion named Yellow or Socrates … we finally ... “slowly seemed to understand and somehow knew what to do”.

The Big Kahuna

2009-03-15T23:15:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 15, 2009
3rd Sunday in Lent
Lay Preacher: Vince Prantil

Readings:
Exodus 20:1-17
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/90FE6A86-39A3-757E-826E-583E191C282A.mp3

There’s an old Peanuts comic strip where
Lucy, Linus and Charlie Brown are lying on a hilltop looking at the sky on a summer afternoon.

Lucy: If you use your imagination you can see lots of things in the cloud formations. . . What do you think you see, Linus?"
Linus: "Well, those cloud up there look to me like the map of British Honduras on the Caribbean. . . that cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor. . . and that group of clouds over there gives me the impression of the stoning of Stephen. . . I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side. . . .
Lucy: Uh huh . . . . that's very good. . . . What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?"
Charlie Brown: "Well. I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsie, but I changed my mind."

You can muck around in Paul’s letter and you can see the struggle. The Jews demand miracles, the Greeks look for wisdom. Some of them are Linus, some of them Lucy. Then along comes Charlie Brown. Who’s smart and who’s stupid here? The Jews, the Greeks … they’re not stupid. They know a lot. But they’re not God!!

Larry Ellison is the CEO of the software giant, Oracle.There’s an old joke “Do you know the difference between Larry Ellison and God? God doesn’t think he’s Larry Ellison.” There’s lots of people who are really smart … but they’re NOT God!

I think we all like to think we’re smart. At MSOE, we polled the students last year and 80% believed they were “above average”. Wow, I thought, I actually teach at Lake Wobegon where “all the children are above average”. We all like to think we’re right about a lot of stuff. What it comes down to is:

We’re uncomfortable being uncertain.

So we demand miracles or wisdom. We carve The Law into stone, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” as the law of economic incentives, Einstein’s speed of light. In economics & science, like religion, we carve out our 10 Commandments, the limits of our uncertainty.

And then … one day … along comes a character … someone who sees something else in the clouds …a different view, someone willing to think outside the box, say “Yeah, but … “ and “What if …”.

John Nash, the mathematician in the movie a Beautiful Mind, said that Adam Smith hadn’t quite gotten it right. And it took a 27 year old Swiss patent clerk named Einstein to turn the world of physics on its head!

And when they do, you can almost always count on one of two things taking place:

(a) Characters are often misunderstood. In the Gospel, Jesus offers an interpretation of the temple so outrageous and so incomprehensible that it’s not until after His resurrection that his disciples finally get it. They’re not able to grasp what Jesus is saying & Jesus is not understood by his audience. Einstein said “Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.” Now I don’t think we’re the mediocre minds. Mediocre minds are the ones who poke fun at you for seeing a duck or a horse in the clouds. There's an old Korean proverb:

He that knows he does not know is wise; He that does not know that he does not know is foolish.

I think Einstein meant that "mediocre minds" were the fools that did not realize they "did not know", but might have been apt to let others know they did not know.

Research shows that diverse groups of people outperform smarter groups of people, diverse cities are more productive, diverse governments make better decisions … not where everyone sees great things in the clouds, but a greater variety of things in the clouds. No matter who you are or how smart you are, like Garrison Keillor said

“High IQ is like 4 wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places”.

We all get stuck. Getting stuck in different places is what makes diverse groups outmaneuver smart groups.

(b) What these characters said was not that we’ve been wrong or ignorant, but only that our knowledge is only ever incomplete. Nash only revised Adam Smith, Einstein only revised Isaac Newton. They all said “This is great! … But it’s not all there is!” I mean isn’t it refreshing to know that there’s something bigger out there? Einstein told us “to just imagine” … “Imagination,” he said, “is more important than knowledge”. Gerald Schroeder, in his book "The Science of God" took to heart what Einstein "revised" and imagined this ...

When you move close to the speed of light, time shrinks. If creation began at The Big Bang at the speed of light, then the 16 billion years “it’s all been here”, all of creation shrinks into 6 – 24 hour days (give or take a few hours) … and on the 7th day, God rested. How’s that for a duck or a horse? I mean, WOW!!! The Genesis story is great, but Schroeder and Einstein "together" saw something different in the clouds.

Human knowledge and wisdom are always “in revision”. In the text immediately following today’s Gospel, Jesus "did not entrust himself to man because he knew how a man thought". He had to get beyond that. He came to round things out. Jesus was the ultimate revisionist.

In the movie Dead Poet’s Society, John Keating tells his students

“Just when you think you ‘know a thing’, you must look at it from a different perspective.”

He has each one of his students climb on top of his desk and look at the room from “up there”.

Today’s Old Testament text reminded me that … I was preparing for my Confirmation youth group. The topic was the 6th commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill. I thought, “Wow, we’re gonna be going home early tonight.” I mean, really, who’s killed anybody. Is this going to be rocket science?

And then Pastor Johnson climbed on a desk.

He asked if any one of us had ever said anything to someone that just crushed their spirit? … made them give up on an otherwise good idea? … ridiculed someone for being optimistic? Had any one of us seen innocence in another human being and quash it? Had we ever “killed” anyone’s spirit? Well, there went ‘going home early’. It was humbling … I’d never climbed around the three-dimensional 6th Commandment that way before.

So what’s the Good News?

Well, maybe it's just when you think you understand the laws of supply and demand, energy and motion, when you think you’ve got “Thou Shalt Not Kill” pegged, that the temple is quite obviously the building and not the body, maybe what we need to know is that God understands that we struggle with our uncertainty.

Maybe what God wants is for us to lay back and look up at the clouds and tell each other what we see … Some of us’ll see ducks, some horses, some (yes) will even see the Honduras …

... maybe the Good News is that God wants more great spirits and fewer mediocre minds, more imagination and less accumulation of knowledge.

... maybe the Good News is it’s OK not to “stress out” trying to see it all or know it all. That together, we’ll see more, go farther than we could ever go alone. That James Taylor was right in what some arguably call his most spiritual song and one I've asked Laurna to make sure they play at my funeral called The Secret of Life when he sings “Einstein said that he could never understand it all ” Maybe it’s OK to admit “I don’t know enough. I don’t know everything”. God’s the Big Kahuna. Let’s let God know everything. That’s God's thing so let's leave knowing it all to God.

Secret of Life mp3 file: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TlAD-b7yew&feature=related

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom. And the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.

God chose the lowly and foolish to teach the supposedly wise. He chose a lowly Swiss patent clerk to straighten out the professors

… and he’s spoken through many a Charlie Brown …

As Pastor Johnson pointed out after watching the movie capturing the peopel of Mt. Zion ... we are all just little pieces of glass in a stain glass window. All alone, just pieces of glass. But together, when we stand back, together we all compose the bigger picture ... and God's in the middle.

Maybe what God wants us to know is that we're to sit on that hill and share what we see in the clouds ... that we need ALL those little pieces of glass, every one … we need every Linus, every Lucy and all the Charlie Browns we can get.

The Lesson of the Skin Horse

2009-03-15T22:59:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 8, 2009
2nd Sunday in Lent
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Genesis 17:1-7,15-16
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/D1022BC1-DAEE-5A0F-4D2A-D06A155149DD.mp3

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples how the Son of Man must undergo great suffering. Peter rebukes Jesus who then calls him “the devil”. Ouch! Peter knows Jesus as a mentor and very good friend. He doesn’t want to ehar what Jesus has to say. Die, be buried, raise from the dead. Peter never gets past the “Die” part. And you can’t blame him. Jesus I one of his best friends and Paeter doesn’t want to hear what Jesus is telling him.

This is a text about arguing as friends.

It’s not easy to get in a fight with someone we love. But it’s a sign of real caring. We care enough to disagree. We care enough to rebuke. We care enough to try to work it out.

With family, too, we can disagree, sometimes passionately. We argue, but it doesn’t have to rupture the relationship. Sometimes in martial counseling, Pastor Johnson shared he meets couples who “confess” they never fight. If it’s nottrue, they’re lying. They wouldn’t lie to a pastor, would they? And the lying’s got no place in a healthy relationship. If it’s not true, it’s also not healthy because there’s a problem with “never arguing”.

You have to argue and be willing to disagree. You have to be willing to test a relationship. You have to be able to withstand having different points of view. You have to forge a partnership that can withstand disagreeing. In engineering design, you constantly fortify a design to withstand the expected loads. A component or a system like a bridge that’s never loaded is not deemed a success simply because no car’s ever driven over it.

In the children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit, the Skin Horse says that he has weathered the love that has made his tail thin of hair and his eye rubbed over and over. At the prospect of becomign "real", the Skin Horse shares:

"You become (real). It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

You need to weather the weathering, he claims, to “become real”. And with freinds, you are never ugly. A friend understands. But "it doesn't happen often to those who have to be carefully kept".

You have to find ways to disagree … even passionately.

Pastor Johnson adds here that some folks mention they have friends who are good sounding boards, who listen to their whole story and do not judge them … and he comes to the conclusion …

You can get rid of those friends.

You NEED a friend who’ll tell you sometimes you sin.

You NEED a friend who’ll tell you sometimes you’re wrong.

… and that relationship needs to be able to withstand that.

Lots of times people will say that “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.”

But Pastor Johnson offered the notion that it might be more the case that the opposite is true. One author he read has the theory that our friends are picked for us, ordained gifts from God, lampposts sent our way to guide in some sense. Sometimes they are the unlikeliest od characters, so different from us. It’s odd how they come into our lives at opportune moments, by happenstance, by God’s grace.

We do, however, pick our family. We LOVE Aunt Josie, but Uncle Harry – he’s not getting near that punch bowl. We pick out and shape our family.

Our friends are unlikely, beautiful “grace notes” in our lives. And you can be that only if you’re willing to fight and only if you’re willing to make up.

Gary Johnson admitted he liked this lesson because he thought of it differently now than he did or would have earlier in his life. He knows now that your best friend is someone who can’t bear to see you in pain. Peter can’t watch or hear what Jesus has to say anymore. Then … a few days later, it’s Peter who recognizes Jesus and runs out to embrace him. And Jesus says, “Peter, do you love me? … Peter, do you love me? … I’d like for you to be the one to feed my lambs.” Their friendship survives Peter rebuking Jesus, Jesus calling Peter “the devil”; it survives the name-calling, the arguing, the betrayal … because they always have forgiveness and the deep love from which these arguments were born.

If you find yourself in these disagreements with a best friend, with someone you consider your pal for a long, long time, this is a gift. It’s a gift of your friendship that you can withstand these moments.

By God’s grace, you will mend these relationships because that’s what you wanted to do all along. By God’s grace and with Peter as our example, the mending will take place.

When You Realize ...

2009-03-12T21:12:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 1, 2009
1st Sunday in Lent
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn
Readings:
Genesis 9:8-17
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/611B843A-9CD9-C29C-FF9E-2840D30477C4.mp3

I heard Pastor Mohn had a really good sermon to preach today. I heard it from Pastor Mohn – right before she said she wasn’t going to preach it!

A long cold took the wind out of the larynx and she pocketed that sermon. I sat disappointed in my pew. She confessed she was disappointed (too) but she figured on a pretty cool substitute. She pointed out tha the Gospel from Mark was not long-winded. The verses today are short, compact, but chock-full – Pure Hemingway.
Mark did not need many words to tell the story he had to tell … and there was a reason.

So Pastor Mohn mused …

Think about when you passed on The Best News You Ever Heard

“I’ve been accepted”
“I’m pregnant!”
“I’m NOT pregnant!!!!”
“We’re staying …”
“We’re going …”
“It’s FINALLY over!”
“It’s only just begun.”
“EUREKA!! I found it!”

These moments of realizing your best news are the in-between places Pastor Johnson referred to just last week. The bookmarks of life.

This news, by the way? How long did it take you to share it? Was it anti-climactic? Did you script it in a long arc? How long did it take to get it out … in words? Was it something you blurted out, not neat and structured, but just couldn’t contain?
Something so good “it fell out of you”? Did you rush to find somebody particular to tell? Or did you just tell a complete stranger?

If you think this last notion is a tad unbelievable, I have to interject with this short, but true tale of the weekend I asked Laurna to marry me. I asked her atop of the Pinnacles National Monument in California. En route back to our bed and breakfast, she was plotting who to tell and in what order and when. She asked me to PLEASE NOT tell anyone before we told our parents. I dutifully agreed. At breakfast the next morning, someone asked if what all we had done the day before. Laurna blurted out “He asked me to marry him!” I choked on my raspberry fru-fru tart and yogurt marmalade. So much for the best laid plans of sharing this news with family first. Not just not family, but complete strangers.

The reality of sharing really good news is it changes what comes next.

In an irrevocable way. The next becomes now – before you know it. What comes after is so interesting it changes everything. In the movie When Harry Met Sally, Harry picks the oddball moment at New Year’s Eve to let Sally know what he finally realizes he’s felt … and it changes EVERYTHING:

Sally: You can’t just walk in here and expect it to change everything. It doesn’t work that way.
Harry: Well, how does it work?
Sally: I don't know, but not this way.
Harry: How about this way? I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
Sally: You see? That is just like you, Harry. You say things like that, and you make it impossible for me to hate you, and I hate you, Harry. I really hate you. I hate you.

But, of course, we all know … she doesn’t. And what we also know is it’s quite the opposite. Sally says he can’t just say something and expect it to change everything. But then he does … and it does. As much as this is not how she dreamed of “getting the news”, she realizes also that it’s really the transformational moment for Harry. It just fell out of him. And what comes after is a beautiful, wonderful thing.

It happens to us every morning. The Good News spills over and the Kingdom of heaven comes to you, an unforgettable moment that changes everything afterward forever … for those who truly hear it. And it makes it impossible to reject it … for personal, petty or selfish reasons. It’s a “Eureka” moment.

And then … a smile … because we know it’s true.

Wow … and that was “the substitute sermon”!?

I hope I get to hear “the really good sermon” someday. I trust it IS really good. For now, I felt privileged to have heard this one ‘cause I LOVE that scene when it just falls out of Harry .. and then, through a tear strewn face, Sally smiles … ear to ear.

That’s Good News worth sharing any day!

The Prophet Hotel

2009-02-24T23:02:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 22, 2009
Transfiguration of Our Lord
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
2 Kings 2:1-12
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/17619852-4B77-5210-E9EB-255332CFA86A.mp3

Today Pastor Johnson shares the story of Elijah The Prophet and mentor and Elisha, the acolyte and protégé. Elisha is scared to death at the prospect of Elijah “movin’ on” and Elisha having to take over the mantle of his mentor.

You’ve been there. After the loss of a job or a mentor, a parent, a loved one. We can’t imagine ourselves without our parents, our jobs. A part of our self-definition is so intimately intertwined with these elements we hold so close to ourselves.

We are tired of dealing with our parents … until the moment their health is threatened or they’re taken from us.

We’ll complain about our jobs … until we think we might not have one.

We’ll make light of our health … until it’s truly threatened.

We’re sick of high school … until “the day after”.

It’s that awful “in-between” place where we’re scared to death. You can hear the voice, Pastor Johnson does it better … “Na Na A Boo Boo!” Welcome to ‘The Clock Starts Tickin’. SHUT UP! The world of Total Denial. We all can relate to wanting to hold on to high school, childhood, singlehood and a lack of responsibility and commitment, a place where we don’t have to grow up.

We can all relate to those in the Gospel who climb to the mountaintop and want to check in to the Prophet Hotel and not ‘come back down’. Who wouldn’t want to hang onto what you’ve got up there.

But … you need, we need to come down from the mountaintop and walk the crooked roads. As Pastor Johnson said the last time he preached on this text:

We have to come down “and face Monday morning”.

We’ve got work to do and it needs doing in the real world.

When Pastor Johnson’s pastor and mentor announced he was leaving their Church, he admits he was petrified, a 14 year old boy holding back the tears a 14 year old dare not show. He ran from the Church sobbing, another Elisha dreading the loss of his beloved Elijah. And when Elisha is asked what Elijah may do for him before he is taken, he asks "for a double share of Elijah’s spirit.”

Elijah replies that what Elisha asks is “a hard thing”, but it will be granted if Elisha “sees Elijahas he is taken from him”, i.e. if he “looks up”! This condition forces Elisha to LOOK UP … in order to have him see where the real power comes from. Jesus knows REAL power is hanging on the cross. Real power is in service and forgiveness. Dubbed “weakness” by this world, these are the real strength, the real power of a disciple.

Whoever you are, something in your life is changing this very morning … your relationships, your work, something. But we are not powerless in the face of change because we are not bound by this world. We do not belong to this world, but to God.

The thing that makes you want to cling to today, to not come down from the mountaintop and face Monday morning will make its way full circle. On October 7, 1973, Pastor Johnson’s old pastor flew from Boston to attend his ordination. In a powerful testimony Pastor Johnson shared that:

"It wasn't about my pastor. It was about my pastor leading me down the path I needed to travel".

You have to let go.

And, IF you let go … you and I, we get the same guarantee Elisha got …

… it’s going to be OK.

God is there to lift you up … on eagle’s wings … and carry you down the path you need to travel.

It Starts at the Bottom

2009-02-23T01:04:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 15, 2009
Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany
Lay Preacher: Lori George

Readings:
2 Kings 5:1-14
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/5D166218-6727-4D1C-8EF2-26878294B67E.mp3

Naaman, Big Man on Campus, is seeking a cure for his leprosy. The messages of where and how come from a slave, a woman … and, later, his servants, the lowly and displaced. The message is to bathe in the Jordan seven times, the ritual of the antibiotic protocol for 10 days. Naaman had yet to learn that there are no shortcuts even for a BMOC. In the end, what we see is that Naaman is truly humbled as he is cured, free of charge. He has to learn the lesson that the lepers in the Gospel seem to know. They make their way through the crowd to reach Jesus. They know that IF it is His will, they WILL be cured.

In her first job interview at 16 years old, Lori looked up on the wall to see a metal plaque proclaiming, “Roll your works upon the Lord. Commit and trust them wholly. He will cause your thoughts to be agreeable with His will.” She got the job.

Well, a recession followed and with it the job. One year later and a new job, a new layoff, and a divorce. And that’s where Lori began to pray … and pray. That’s where, she says, her relationship with God began anew … at the bottom.

Whatever leprosy brings the Army General in you to its feet … in this encounter, you will be humbled. Humbled to face the circumstances that seem to convince us we are not, in the end, in control. These moments, Lori shares, so often come in moments of brokenness, in our depths, when we’re down and out.

And her experiences taught her to really feel what Pastor Johnson calls

“The hardest line in The Lord’s Prayer” … Thy will be done.

Lori ended beautifully with a line-by-line joining of the Lord’s Prayer with her walk through “the bottom” and out the other side. Summarizing it here would not be nearly as good as to listen to the end of this sermon. Click on the audio link and listen to the humbled traveler tell you her story.

What it did for me was remind me to go home and look at a framed photograph I keep on my desk during Lent. It is a photograph of two paper plates on which my daughter wrote her version of the Lord’s Prayer one Sunday in the pew at Mt. Zion when she was about 6 years old.

And that 6 year old still speaks to me through the glass ...
to remind me

“They will be don”

Zelig’s Letter to the Corinthians

2009-02-16T22:15:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 8, 2009
Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Isaiah 40:21-31
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/34800BED-283C-77F5-5580-F762D094644A.mp3

In Isaiah, we run into the feeling of desperation, destinies & futures no longer in our control. Today, in a frantic world, you can also feel the desperation. You can taste it becaue it’s touched most doorsteps in one way or another. The message in Isaiah is still this:

No matter your current condition, God is SO beyond human understanding and He will deliver us … in His time.

Our relationship with God is not quid pro quo. It ALWAYS requires waiting. And not like the sign I saw two years ago in NY’s Penn Station “EXPRESS WAITING”. This waiting may actually “take some time”.

When you feel (and we all do at some point, usually “a low point”) like “Nothing ever changes!” …

In the waiting comes the strength. And in the strength comes the deliverance.

IF we don’t allow ourselves to be defined by the economic turndown, the diagnosis, the illness, we can wait for the that strength and deliverance. But when we “go it alone”, it’s too hard! When we’re surrounded by cynics, it’s almost impossible.

Paul even says, “There’s 2 kinds of people … and I’m going to ‘hang with both’ “. He’ll be whatever he needs to be to get this message across. Scientific research indicates that abbies of many species are often born resembling the father somewhat enough in order to keep him around the nest longer. We may be vain, but we “like to hang with our own”. Paul, like the Leonard Zelig character played by Woody Allen, “has the ability to transform his appearance to that of the people who surround him.”

Paul will become lie the hungry if he has to in order to deliver the message. It’s too important. It’s time to win over those “on the other side”. The Good News is we ALL have the power to do that! The message is so big the whole town shows up for Jesus … and the message is too big for one town, so Jesus takes the show on the road.

The message is BIG … bigger than the squabbling we make over race, sexual orientation, sacrificial meats, religion, gender … WAY BIGGER … and the News today is you have the power to be the courier .

The Knee Bone’s Attached to the Hip Bone

2009-02-16T21:38:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 1, 2009
Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/27A4D042-92BA-8480-A9EA-6D96EEDF8348.mp3

“I don’t know anybody who’s picked this text for their wedding text. I don’t know anybody who’s picked this text for their funeral text.” So Pastor Mohn points out about today’s 2nd reading from Corinthians. It’s a text on which much preaching is apparently undertaken. It’s interesting. But Pastor Mohn takes it on with a unique perspective. We start, once again, by asking “Where’s the Good News here?”

We have people taking serious stances on “the eating of sacrificial meats” from other religions. Paul nearly becomes a Vegan for the Gospel as he sorts through the differing rationalizations run amok: it doesn’t matter because those “other Gods” don’t exist, it doesn’t matter at all, it’s only food, you name it. The disagreement is born over struggling “What’s the right thing to do?”

Paul says “It doesn’t matter. It’s not as big as we’re all making it out to be.”

“Did you ever have an argument whereby winning you ruined your relationship?”

When the need to prove one’s point overrides, we may pull out the stops. The argument can turn numerical, authoritative. Pastor Mohn points out that we’ve all walked in on conversations wed don’t feel qualified to be part of. Our reaction is to become “silent”. This is a text about living in community, about how we live together in the Body of Christ. What if the sp”qualified”. What we need to remember is without the spleen, there’s no one to recycle old blood cells without which the heart’s function is moot. We ALL play a role. And while we go about the futile enterprise of trying to measure the size of our roll, it’s the uniqueness that matters! There’s no room in a Church or any real community for the silence that accompanies someone trying to “make the argument numerical”. There’s no one who gets to walk in and say “I know more than you.” When we, collectively, have the gifts of all God’s people, there’s no room for exclusion. And our individual and unique gifts act in wonderous concert, or can, for the good of all. He knee bones connected to the hip bone.

The Good News is “We’re ALL chosen. We are ALL called.”

Even if you’ve felt “I should have been farther along. I took a wrong turn & I’m lost & way off course.” Where you are at THAT moment … God is THERE.

If you know a lot, come and share what you know. If you think you know nothing, come and share yourself. Your very presence will stir someone to say something that may reveal to you what it is you are really there to provide and share.

This can’t be preached … or taught, only experienced.

Wherever you are … up or down, down or out, lost or found, God will find you … and bring you home.

I’m Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today

2009-02-11T23:01:00.001-08:00

Sunday, January 18, 2009
Second Sunday After the Epiphany
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
1 Samuel 3:1-20
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/A2A56F7E-E0B7-4998-28F9-10DA6FD6657C.mp3

In the movie Clerks, Dante Hicks is called in to cover for his supervisor on his day off. Pastor Mohn affectionately recalled his calling cry: “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” This is so often our response when we are called to something more than we feel we are ready for. Often, she admits, this battle cry is heard as the prelude to “a call”.

The thing about Samuel was “He wasn’t supposed to be there at all”. He wasn’t supposed to be born even! But God put each of us here for a purpose, each of us a blessing to the others, each endowed with an incredible gift. But to find out what that gift is? Or when God would have us use it? This is quite another thing. And we are come to know our calling through several ingenious devices …

1st … We are often “placed” in new situations, ones often not of our own choosing, often not ones we would ever willingly choose. Places “we weren’t even supposed to be in” … In dealing with these new surroundings/happenings/circumstances, we come to discover something new about ourselves …that we were, in fact, meant to “be there” for some express purpose. In the book The Alchemist, a small shepherd boy sets out to find the meaning of his life and discover “a treasure”, only to return full circle to where he began. It is here he discovers the treasure that only having traveled away would provide the perspective needed to “see” the treasure.

2nd … A call is often “echoed” in community, seen and recognized by fellow disciples, friends, … family. It isn’t often until someone else notices the gift we have that we are able to see it ourselves as they echo it back. We hear God’s calling for us in the echo of community.

3rd … It’s OK to “say no” at first. People are often surprised when God calls … “Can I do this?”

You can almost bet on a call from God being a challenge, unexpected, something that will take us out of our comfort zone ...

… and require an echo from community.

The many characters called in the Bible often refused the call the 1st time, the 2nd time … but God continues to knock on the door. God will call again … when the time is right … when we’re ready.

Samuel is called to “give his boss the very bad news” …
Abraham’s asked to sacrifice his son …
Mary’s asked to bear Jesus …
Jesus is asked to live & die for us …

When we find ourselves saying “We weren’t even supposed to be here today!!”
That “here”? … God is “there”!!!

No matter how lonely that “here” feels, we are never alone!

So when you’re ready to bust out, “I wasn’t even supposed to be here today!”

…. Oh, yes, you were …

It's A CAN!!

2009-02-09T23:04:00.000-08:00

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Baptism of Our Lord

Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Genesis 1:1-5
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/9B933839-BA3F-E06B-AE17-7011027F9C23.mp3

In the beginning was Genesis, the story of creation. God is The Big Cheese who’s still creating the universe. His creation is not measurable in human terms. Much as this creation finds a microcosm in the development of a single child, from a formless void, shape; from chaos, order. Last Reformation Pastor Mohn said something very similar byextolling “all the possibility” held in the Confirmands’ lives about to unfold, the excitement of all they can and will become, the shaping of themselves by God as he continues his Creation odyssey.

Pastor Johnson took us back to when he was 7 years old, taken in by the Pastor at All Saints Lutheran at 152 DeSoto on the east side of Detroit. He was invited “to get baptized”.

“What I didn’t realize behind my itchy tie on a hot summer day was that my life would never be the same.”

It was the moment you signed your Eternal Life Insurance policy with Purgatory Indemnity, Inc. In Baptism, you are offered more than salvation from purgatory. It’s not about what you’re asved ffrom as much as what you’re born into … you are anointed into a community of believers, a family like no other. Pastor Johnson was taught conformation by a Paul Johnson, and confirmed by a Pastor P.T. “Cal” Johnson … all in the family, so to speak. At this particular crossroads in his life, his family found themselves homeless, yet taken in by a Church. Oh, and college? The debt paid down by a scholarship from the Lutheran Church of America. These are the things a family does … provides shelter and money for education, to shape a life wherein Creation marches on.

Baptism isn’t about “ should so I won’t go to Hell or Purgatory”. We’re not baptized into the Church of the Shield of Eternal Damnation, the Church of the Limited, but the limitless; not the stain of original sin, but the Church of Daily Forgiveness. It’s about God not being able to stand not being close to me, as a parent not being able to stand not being close to their children, those in whose creation they played a part. As Mark in verse 10 says, God will “tear apart the heavens” to get to us. Upon 6 days of creating God looks it all over & says “This is good”. This, the work of His very hands, even, he will tear apart … the order out of chaos, the shape out of void, he will tear apart to “get to us”

In our human families, as parents, we can be a very positive influence on our kids’ growing up. We can also be too easy on one kid, too hard on number 2, too absent for number 3. Baptism is God’s reminder that He can continually shape you, form you, grant you infinite access to His grace. God won’t be too easy, too hard or too absent. There is, through God’s infinite grace, always 2nd, 3rd and 100th chances … infinite possibility that we can be different, better tomorrow. Baptism means life can never be the same again.

Your Baptism is not “a Should”, it’s “a Can”!!

Our failings do not define who we are, who we might yet become.

I am not the sum of my mistakes.

Baptism wipes the slate clean each and every morning. You’re baptized into The Church of 2nd Chances, a community that cares if you’re in the hospital, that believes in the power of possibility, that believes the future holds “a better way” … and for that possibility, that future he will tear apart the very heavens and proclaim “This is My Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

K-Mart Saves Christmas

2009-01-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

Sunday, January 4, 2009
First Sunday After Christmas
Sermon: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Ephesians 1:3-14
John 1:1-18

Audio sermon link:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/FD4BFF81-E8F6-127D-B6A8-F9E9DD36A36F.mp3

It’s ten days after Christmas and the lights are starting to come down. More and more houses are shedding their nighttime signs of the season. Down and deflated are the pump-em-up Santa Clauses and even the lit up Nativity crèches. And, as witnessed in Pastor Mohn’s neighborhood, Santa on his Harley. Off the air are the “K-Mart Saves Christmas” commercials extolling the discount giant’s contribution to an otherwise deflated shopping talley. Commercial Christmas, having started immediately upon the heels of Halloween, is over. My wife said to me yesterday, “Don’t laugh … the swim suits are out already”.

Yes, commercial Christmas is gone, but in The Church, Christmas still persists. In fact, the twelve days of Christmas starts on Christmas Day and continues until the Epiphany. In the Church, we have as ense that Christmas needs to go on, needs to continue. Christmas is much bigger, much longer than we can cram into one day.

Christmas isn’t a day … it’s a season.

It’s a season to celebrate the light that has come into the world in the baby Jesus.

Pastor Mohn mentioned that while she’s amazed God sent His only Son to be born among humans, she’s even more amazed that He stayed!! His own did not accept him. But God is persistent. He didn’t come to stay for a day. He came to stay.

Parents of newborn children know the feeling. You prepare for 9 months for the miracle to arrive. Then you bring them home and the next morning, they’re still there! And the next, and the next, and all the next days. Your life is NEVER the same again.

So when the Santa on a Harley is deflated, where will the light of the real Christmas be? The Good News is … YOU’RE the light. WE’RE the light … for one another. In the apparent & real loneliness that often accompanies the dismantling of the lights of commercial Christmas, in the anti-climax of the hullabaloo of the shopping season, we are, all of us, sent out in to the darkness of the Monday morning world awaiting us again. We are sent into that darkness to BE His light for one another.
God sent Jesus, then the disciples, now us … to be lights for one another.

I was reminded of this watching and listening to my youngest child pray throughout Advent, but most especially AFTER Christmas. Often the dinner prayer started:

“For Barack Obama’s grandma and Pastor Mohn’s grandma … (who both passed away in November). For Santa who was bitten, that he’s OK (yes, NPR reported that a cat in New Jersey bit the Jolly Ol’ Elf only weeks before his fateful ride through the skies was to occur). And for the kids missing … that they find them.”

Even after Santa had been good to him, after the presents and the anti-climax, there was still Santa’s recovery, grandmothers’ souls, and missing children’s safety to ponder before a meal and at day’s end. My son’s voice in that moment is a light for me. I am obliged to Pay It Forward and contribute to the cost of the joint ride … to show concern, volunteer time and talent and treasure, to be there to bear a cross of those with more to carry than myself. Often a kind word and a smile will even suffice.

My son brought back memories of the children’s chorus in the Catholic Church where I grew up singing …

This little light o’ mine
I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, Let it shine, Let it shine …

The Good News?

K-Mart doesn’t need to save Christmas … because God sent Christmas to save us!

Mary Did you Know?

2008-12-20T01:41:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December 14, 2008
Third Sunday of Advent
Service of Lessons and Carols

Isaiah 40:3-5
Isaiah 11:1-5,10Isaiah 42:6-9
Isaiah 9:1-3
Ephesians 2:11-18
Isaiah 7:13-15
Luke 3:1-6

This week we celebrated the Service of Lessons & Carols. While I was really moved by all the music, there’s a piece that gives me goose bumps, Mary Did You Know.

Mary Did You Know
That your baby boy
Has come to make things new
The child you deliver will soon deliver you

Mary Did You Know
That your baby boy
Would walk where angels trod
And when you kiss that little baby
You have kissed the face of God

Mary Did You Know
That that sleeping child you’re holding is the Great I Am

It begs the question. If we are asking Mary if SHE knew, do we?

Audio music link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1oHJR2g7Tw

God Logic 101

2008-12-20T01:06:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December 7, 2008
Second Sunday of Advent
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/D847594C-6D00-3C64-4AB8-942879958631.mp3

God’s plan is hard to understand and often difficult to accept. Instead of the flood or the fire, He comes in mercy. Mountains will be leveled, but there will most assuredly be peace after the storm, rough made smooth, crooked made straight.

The world is a cynical place. It invites us and rewards us for dividing up rather than communing. One thing’s for sure:

There’s always someone who doesn’t fit in.

God’s time frame is not ours, clear, but not so simple. To God 1 day is as 1000 of our years. In his book, The Science of God, Gerald Schroeder offers this tantalizing realization from the world of physics. In Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, time scales ar different at high speeds approaching the speed of light, a speed very close to that of the expanding universe at and near the moment of the Big Bang. If you enter the numbers into the equation scaling time, 16 billion of our years (the time since the Big Bang or roughly the age of the universe as we perceive and understand it) is equal to roughly 6 days … the six days of creation?

Wouldn’t it just be fascinating if the relations Einstein imagined were the language of God written in the stars. Someone had to be “just crazy enough to see it”. God is patient with us and wants to wait until as many of as possible get on the right course before He comes again to finally clean things up and make things right.

He is patient because …

He wants everyone on The Ascension Train

… and He’ll wait for everyone, 6 days or 16 billion years, if you will.

God logic doesn’t make sense to us. We’re not about waiting. We’re about justice, and swift, if you don’t mind. I recall a preacher who admonished once:

If what you’re after is justice and not mercy, you’d better not make any mistakes!

Remember, Pastor Johnson reminds us, you find Jesus in the very worst parts of your life. John the Baptist was a weird character yelling out in the wilderness. But sometimes it takes a character to get our attention. And sometime it takes a month to step aside from the anger, the clamoring for retribution, from the vengeance vs. forgiveness. We are not baptized into vengeance, but into mercy.

Out there today it’s very hard in ways that 2 generations have never known. But around the corner, God is waiting patiently to show He is abundant, hopeful, merciful, forgiving.

What’s coming? What’s coming is an abundant, merciful, forgiving baby. The baby of 2nd, 3rd, and 100th chances. The baby comes for broken relationships, fractured families, the ones who don’t fit in. Prepare yourself for that gift, a gift it’s almost impossible to understand.

The Now and the Not Yet

2008-12-19T23:52:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 30, 2008
First Sunday of Advent
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Isaiah 64:1-9

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Mark 13:24-37

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/B5C06DA8-8C18-70D6-DD4C-D6D98144EE72.mp3

“I love 2nd chances!” … and so starts the lesson. Don’t we all. In kid’s court, we called it “a do-over”. The color of the season of Advent is blue … for preparation. But like all good things, we don’t quite want to cut to the chase. Like a great meal, you want to savor it, take a deep breath before starting in. Christmas and Advent have a necessary element of waiting that is not passive. It perhaps should not be a waiting for someone to deliver the goods. But rather a “time before”, of preparation for a happening of extreme circumstance.

In the book Changing for Good, the so-called “spiral model of change” is presented: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, and action. In studies, people who reach the preparation stage are 3 times more likely to change their behavior than those who merely contemplate it. Advent is a time to go beyond contemplation to preparation. This preparation is active and takes time.

It takes time to appreciate His coming. Our sense is not one of fear, but rather one of awareness. Much like a baby’s birth, we know what’s coming, we know it’s good beyond measure, and we do need to prepare for what’s about to happen. Pastor Mohn shared that:

Advent is the season of the Now and the Not Yet.

Although the Kingdom of God has arrived in the person of Jesus, all is still not right with the world, not yet. Advent is the reminder of the work we’ve yet to do to get ready for His 2nd coming. Much as with the birth of a child, we all go about the 9 months of preparation differently. We clean, we paint, we hang a quilt from on grandmother, a rocking chair from another. We create a space. Our community creates the space together … to let this child know how special they are, that they’d been anticipated. The time in between now and Christmas is critical and Holy.

The temptation is to be closed off from our family, but this limits the power of the Good News. Advent is a blessing, a time to be aware of the expanded view, to contemplate “the now” and act and prepare while in “the not yet”.

Laughing at a Funeral

2008-12-19T23:21:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 16, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Psalm 41:1-3 1
Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/DC940E23-065E-3374-11FC-EE42DC8D2359.mp3

Today’s lesson seems to be speaking about a harsh master, and inequality in his doling out. As we’ve seen more often lately, we have to ask “Where’s the Good News here?”. We are called to take the time and acquire the eyes to see that good news.

Where’s the good news in the hoarding of the single talent. Well, Pastor Mohn puts part of the picture we often don’t see in perspective when she sheds light on the meaning of the word “talent”.

In our Savior's lifetime, a talent was a significant amount of money. A talent was equal to 60 minaes, and a mina was equal to 100 dinarii (pence). A worker might earn one dinarius a day.

So a talent was something on the order of 6000 days pay or 16 years salary! Five talents held the worth of an entire life! Well, this changes one’s perspective … or it can. Pastor Mohn evoked that sense when she challenged us all to view the text from a different angle. If the Master was harsh, was he not also extravagant in what he offered, provided? The Master’s instinct is to give extravagantly, abundantly! And what is expected in return is accountability. We are given each a unique gift. It is our job to discover it and use it as best we can to further The Plan. So let’s not “start with harsh”. God BEGINS with abundant giving. God gives us all LIFE.

Now on to the response. So now that we know the value of a single talent, we know the guy with even the one talent has got a lot to lose! “A lot” renders apprehension, fear, and a feeling of undeservedness. It’s fear that leads the last slave to hide and hoard his keep. Is the Master really harsh? Or is it in our heads “the fear talking”?

The other two slaves “see the opportunity”. They “see it a different way”. Pastor Mohn confesses that “she gets the third guy”. She gets his fear. We can all relate. But we also need to consider why the other two rise above it … why they were not afraid.

Pastor Mohn recently lost her grandmother and attended the funeral in Iowa. As mourners lined up to view the body, Annika, all of 7 months, was wiggling, smiling, and laughing. The scene caused others to break a smile. It was that image: laughing at a funeral that spoke a message. That …

Christians do foolish things, risky things. They take a chance!

They laugh at a funeral.

We all can acknowledge an economic crisis of proportions we have only read about, yet reach in deep and continue to give. We’ve been asked by the Master to dig deep, and to laugh at a funeral. Being asked to give is an invitation from God … to be held accountable for one’s having received in abundance, in extravagance. The request: that we help others smile at a funeral, see the world a different way.

We never deny the crisis or catharsis or The Cross, but we are tasked to live knowing that after, there is always a rainbow, a promise, a deliverance, a life everlasting.

And, if we learn the lesson of the talents, we, too, must “pay it forward” … so the giving never ends.

Mercy Mercy …

2008-11-02T21:55:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 2, 2008
Lay Preacher: Jon Stolz

Revelation 7:9-171

John 3:1-3

Matthew 5:1-12

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/395374B5-B143-5377-17F7-9DF65D29F93A.mp3

Today we were privileged to hear lay preacher, Jon Stolz, ponder on the meaning of The Beatitudes. Beatitude … from the Latin, beatis, for “to be blessed”, he reminded us.

I learned only today that the first several beatitudes are about “those who suffer” while the remainder are “about those who help those who suffer”. Reckoning back to a theme from Lent, we are either given a cross to bear or we are, in the absence of one of our own, tasked and challenged to help someone else take up theirs … to be modern day Simons of Cyrene.

Jon proffers that the beatitudes were Jesus’ way of identifying those that were truly blessed. Up until then, they had only The Law, but the Sermon on the Mount outlined a new set of rules, if you will.

Jon added to themes of past sermons by Pastors Johnson and Mohn … that Jesus’ “advice” is not a laundry list of things to do or accomplish to garner points; they were not a neat, little set of instructions for life. Jon offers that they were more a challenge to the status quo and “the mindset of The Law” up until Jesus arrived on the scene.

Jon also pointed to an interesting fact: that Jesus was supposedly seated on the ground when proclaiming the sermon, a common rabbinical practice of teachers. Was he speaking to the disciples alone? Was he addressing the crowd and, if so, could they hear him? Lutheran faith is predicated on knowing we can’t earn our way into eternal life. We are given salvation as a gift. God does ask us to live a life which is humble, penitent, meek and merciful.

Jon then elaborated on the beatitude “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy”

I remember well a powerful sermon I was privileged to experience in which the preacher extolled

“If what you’re after is justice, forget about mercy!”

If we “keep count” as Pastor Mohn preached so very recently, we’re missing the point. Mercy is about giving that up … for good. As Jon points out, mercy is putting aside prejudice, it’s care & concern for even the most undeserving; mercy is God, mercy is a way of living, a daily ritual …

And the world is not lacking in the need for it. The world is full of the broken-hearted, sin, hunger looking fo compassion, justice, a friendly ear. When Jon was growing up a son of a Lutheran pastor, he recalls, there were no organized food drives. When someone in need came knocking, it was at their door and one time he answered. Giving he man a lunch that included a ham sandwich, he was confronted by the man, “What!? No cheese?”. In what he admitted wasa sarcastic comeback, he said to the man, “Sorry, no cheese today”. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?

Well, years later, it appears that sarcasm doesn’t rate on the mercy thermometer. Sometimes, it seems, real hunger can mask one’s gratitude. Mercy, perhaps, means “never having to say ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ “.

Jon wrapped up with a beautiful poetic quote from Edwin Hubbel Chapin, a Universalist minister who wrote hymns, editorials, and poems in the mid-19th century. Fearing he would give in to his propensity toward an acting career, his parents dutifully saw to it to send him to seminary. Perhaps this very act formed the basis of one of his quotes:

“A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.”

…and, this, on mercy:

Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars,
not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispensing a calm radiance that hallows the whole. It is a bowl that rests upon the bosom of the cloud when the storm is past. It is the light that hovers above the judgement seat. The quality of mercy is not strained; it drops as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: it blesses him that gives and him that takes. Mercy is an attitude of God Himself, and Earthly power shows like God’s when mercy seasons justice.

Lest we forget we are fraught with our innate ability, in fact our nature to make mistakes, let us heed the thoughts of Edwin Chapin and Maurice Boyd to be interested “not only injustice, but in mercy” for “the very essence of justice IS mercy”.

Blessed be the merciful …

Unless First a Dream

2008-11-02T01:13:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 26, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/0D295D8A-677D-5D7C-41D1-5DA3A50ACA21.mp3

Pastor Mohn began her admittedly short Reformation Sunday sermon with a quote from Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” (a Brief History of the 21st Century). In it Friedman asks

“Does your community have more dreams than memories? Or does it have more memories than dreams?”

Addressing the Confirmands and each of the rest of us somewhat uniquely, Pastor Mohn offered that whle it is important to have a sense of heritage and history and memories, if we place our dreams 2nd to them, we risk a time in the future when we will have no more memories to look back on.

Today, we commemorate that Martin Luther, by either design or accident, changed the world! We look back upon that as a wonderful memory. But Luther wasn’t in the business of memories; he was in the business of dreams.

The start of this sermon brought rife images of students at graduation. Another ritual that is both “an ending wrought with memories” as well as “a new beginning laced with apprehension and hope and dreams for what we can become”. I was reminded that when students return to campus a year or so after graduation, they actually dwell less on “go to the same old watering holes” and conjuring up memories, than they comment of “how they’d like things to work vs. how they actually work”. It is a time of awakening, reckoning with possibility vs. pragmatism. Some end up embracing “the system” and trying to work within it.

As John F. Kennedy might have meant when he said, “Some see the things as they are and say why?” Others embrace finding “the room for a better way”; what Kennedy might have been referring to when he said “I dream things that never were and say why not”. It’s perhaps no great secret that the word dreams is what Kennedy chose to inspire a nation of young people.

We see 18 young hearts before us today venture into that world. Will they see what is or what is not? Only they will discover for themselves. But Pastor Mohn was so gloriously open to possibility when she shared that today’s Confirmands are full of dreams, beautiful dreams. What will the world become? What role will they play in ‘making ti become’? Today is a moment, a snapshot that will, no doubt, become a memory. But what will you do to fulfill your dreams?

Today, admittedly, we fear the future, view it with apprehension – will I go to college, get a job? We want to minimize the apprehension, it’s human nature to do so. But we often also do that by “lowering the bar”. And when our dreams miss “the vision of God” as Pastor Mohn so aptly put it, we miss an opportunity to “dream what wasn’t and say ‘Why not?’ “. We miss an opportunity “to become” the best community we can be!

The problem may be not that our dreams are too big, but that they are too small.

In today’s Gospel text, John says “the truth will set us free”, not from a physical bondage or slavery, but from the bondage of fear and despair. The truth sets us free to dream and to hope, to believe in possibility!

I was near tears as she spoke, remembering a tiring yet magical, mystical Christmas when my daughter was only 20 days old, her lone small stocking hanging over the fireplace with a single world embroidered upon it

BELIEVE

Today the music was so aptly chosen. In one song, the words:

You never know why you’re here, until you know what you’d die for.

In the song “A Beautiful Day”, the words “one possible day”, Let’s go, let’s try, let’s hope … together. If you have no destination, but are driven by a beautiful imagination, see the world in green and blue in front of you. Touch me, teach me, take me to that other place.

Memories you look back to see; to see your dreams you must look in front of you!

Oh, and in the distance, the sweet words of Carl Sandburg …

Nothing happens … unless first a dream.

Not So Fast Cyrus …

2008-11-02T01:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 19, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Isaiah 45:1-71

Thessalonians 1:1-10

Matthew 22:15-22

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/9A7435B6-5C5D-2343-6CAB-1750CBD8E2EB.mp3

It was a classic start to another classic Pastor Gary Johnson sermon.

It was 1962. social studies class. His teacher left the room, coming back some time later in silence with the news that he had been called up by the National Guard, that the Cuban Missile Crisis was in full swing. That WW III lay in the balance. The nukes … we had ‘em, they had ‘em. This was bad news.

All of today’s texts reckon with the theme that this could be WW III. The powers that be, the politics are all coming crashing down.

So how are we going to let the world affect us?

Millions of lost jobs. 1.5 wars. Dads, moms, wives, husbands, sons, daughters sacrificed. And in the end, the question:

Who has control over our lives. Or, most telling, whom do we allow to have this control? Several weeks ago, Pastor Mohn begged the question: Where are you from? Whom do you belong to? Today, we ask it again, albeit in a slightly different context.

Who do you belong to?

Pastor Johnson recounts the story that in 1849, archaeologists found the so-called Cyrus Cylinder on which was inscribed “I am Cyrus, King of Kings, King to the Four Quarters”. He had a message. He was the head honcho, big man on campus, and (forgive me, Wisconsin) the Big Cheese. Then The Almighty shows up not too unlike Steve Martin exclaiming, “EXCUUUUUUUUSE MEEEEEEEE!”

Excuse me, Cyrus, but, hey, I formed the light out of darkness. The life from no life, yeah, that was me too dude! Read it in Isaiah today … I go, I level, I break, I cut, I give, I call, I name, I arm, I am, I am, I am!

Translation: Cyrus, you’re not so hot.

Well, not in the grand scheme o’ things perspective.

Who do you belong to? God or some fellow named Cyrus, some Cyrus “of the moment”.

Paul, in his pastoral letter to the Thessalonians, claimed he knew the Word of God “came” to them. Pastor Johnson filled us in that the translation from the Greek text was more intimately “the Word fo God ‘came inside them’ … literally inside them”. And with God truly inside you, you’re not about THIS world, you’re not about “I’ve got mine and I want more. I never got no nothing from no body, thank you! You’re not about power and domination, bu about love & forgiveness & fellowship. You’re about the weekly rummage sale the Thessalonians had where they “shared the wealth” with each other. They were the socialists of their time. They belonged to God, not to Caesar.

In the context of this year’s heated election claims, it was not a hard leap to see the Herodians and the Pharisees join forces to spread the seeds of fallacy, to become (in Pastor Johnson’s well-chosen words) “total Eddie Haskel”, liar-liar. This was like Packer fans and Viking fans getting together, to rat out some Bear fans, or so he offered. And, not unlike this year, it was about your taxes. But these taxes were not “your Daddy’s taxes”. They were not for the common good, for roads, better health care, but merely a tribute to Caesar, a visual show for the Cyrus of his day so you’d get the message about who the Big Cheese was this century.

This is not a world that disenfranchises us? We thought they were our pension plans, but they were stolen by the likes of those we’d never met, and I hope we never do. People we don’t know bet our life’s savings and lost it. But Pastor Johnson paused and said it best after the quiet.

Real disciples know it was never ours to begin with. We have no control … in the end. Who do we belong to? God or Caesar? Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.

And what is God’s? Isaiah reminds us: EVERYTHING! Everything you are or could ever become. The world has no power over Jesus. And, IF YOU SO DECIDE, the world can and will have no power over you. In the most powerful moment of the morning, Pastor Johnson asked everyone to mentally conjure up “the very worst thing you’d done in your entire life, the absolute worst thing …. Now, do you have it? I imagine it wasn’t a long grasp to find it. You’ve got it? Now imagine this: It’s COMPLETELY FORGIVEN – no strings attached.

Caesar, Cyrus … on their very best days … can’t do that.

Whom do you belong to?