February 24 -- Seventh Sunday after Epiphany

Ugh.  “So I guess we’re supposed to love our enemies this week,” I caught myself complaining to Marie in the office a few days ago.  Anyone else feeling the burden of this?

How are you doing at loving your enemies?  I mean, I prefer to do exactly the opposite: either hate them, or just be indifferent to them.  As Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel said:  “The opposite of love is not hate but indifference.”  Yeah, I prefer to do those: either hate my enemies or just not pay attention to them.  Definitely not love them.  

How are you doing with this?  

And then, just to pile it on, we’re reminded that “enemies” are not just some people far away, or even in our own neighborhoods that we just really don’t like…  With this first lesson that Kate read, about Joseph and his brothers, we are reminded that “enemies” could just be in our own family.  It’s probably the greatest, specific reconciliation story in the Bible.  Family members who have wronged you, ex-friends,  ex-lovers, ex-partners or co-workers, people that we see all the time, live with or around — these can be the hardest to love, because there’s history there.  There’s deep pain there.  There’s stories.  It’s not just a faceless body with a weapon from another country far away: It’s a face that might even look like yours,  with an apron or a briefcase, or an iPhone or a remote control.  Enemies could be those very people that reside under the same roof, or those under roofs in homes that you’ve been visiting for decades…

Ugh.  So I guess we’re supposed to love them?  Forgive them, Jesus says?  “Be kind to the ungrateful and the wicked”?!

How?! I’ll remind you again, like last week, Jesus is not talking here to a random “everyone”.  If that were the case, this would indeed seem like a disconnected and onerous, even impossible, task:  Loving our enemies.  

No, again, Jesus is talking to those who have already heard and seen...

And, friends in Christ, we are a people who have already heard and seen!  (And so this is actually possible, this can be done.)

We are the insiders, the ones who gather around this Word.  I was hoping for a smaller crowd today as an illustration: not because everyone’s not welcome here, but because not everyone understands gets this: [whisper] loving your enemies is a blessing.  

With love is liberation.  How many of you have ever let go of a grievance during the “sharing of the peace” in church on just a regular old Sunday like this?  “Sharing the peace” has turned into more of an intermission in some churches, like a 7^th inning stretch, a chance to just say hi to people around you, see if they got your email this week, ask how they’re doing.  Right?!

But our worship scholars tell us that it’s far more than that.  When we say, as we will again today, “The peace of Christ be with you always...and also with you.”  It’s the embodiment of conflicts forgiven!  Why do we blanket that with a bunch of quick check-in and Good-to-see-you’s!?  (I’ll tell you why!…:)

I had a worship professor in seminary, who encouraged us to just shake the hands around you.  Don’t go trying to shake everyone’s hand and visit with people...at this point.  That’s for before and after worship.  During the week.  Yes dig in and talk and care for one another, he said.  In fact, he said, if “sharing the peace” is the only time you shake hands and talk briefly, there’s a problem.  

Instead, he lectured us, the hand shake or the kiss is powerfully symbolic, just a few hands and cheeks is fine...because this sharing of the peace is the end of war!  

It’s walls coming down!  It’s hatred and bitterness and anger melting away like the snow this week!  It’s peace spreading across the church and across our bodies and across this world like a blanket!  The symbol is so powerful.  It may be my favorite and least favorite moment in the worship service...at the same time.  Because I prefer to hang on to my grudges and bitternesses.  They’re like old friends.  People who have wronged me should pay for that…not be forgiven.

But, friends, remember, this instruction is for the those who have already seen and heard of Jesus and his love.  This is the advanced class, part of a larger sermon, the one that started blessed are you who are poor, remember?  Blessed are those who live their lives as a celebration of Divine mercy!

What does a life lived in celebration of God’s Divine love, mercy and forgiveness look like?  [pause] What if you went out this week and said, “I’m going to live my life this week as a celebration of God’s Divine love, mercy and forgiveness!”  What would look different?  What would sound different?  Would people notice that you’ve come in contact with something strange?  Because you have!!

This instruction is not normal.  (Feel free to walk out at any time.)  In fact, I’m amazed we have as many as we do in the Christian family!  We live in a world that punishes enemies, not reconciles and forgives them.  We live in a world that rewards good behavior and shames bad, at least that’s what our cultures say and tend to think.  I mean, how many want to see Donald Trump go down?  Or how many relished Hillary Clinton looking like a deer in the headlights when she messed up and then lost!  We don’t love our enemies.  We despise them, we wish them the worst.  Our blood boils when they don’t get what they deserve, and we throw parties when they do.  

And yet here Jesus is, talking to his disciples, about reflecting Love Divine!    

Friends, this is another tough one.  Welcome again to the Year of Luke, the year of healing.  A year of taking stock.  Slowing down.  Gathering ourselves.  Sticking together in faith.  And praying:  we can’t do this work without prayer.  God’s gotta get in there.  Mix with us — what did the text say?  “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.”  I love that!  God’s gotta get in there, and God does, friends in Christ.  God is with us in this task.  God has always been with us.  Prayer is the intentional inviting God who’s already there...

Yes, we are the ones who bear witness to this Love.  We are the ones who have already heard and seen.  We are the ones who have eaten and drunk Christ’s body and blood.  We are the ones who have tasted!  We know that this one Jesus blesses us in our weakness, picks us up in our brokenness, feeds us in our hungriest moment, forgives us when we’re at our absolute worst, waits with us in our anger and loves us despite it all!  We know, friends, we’ve tasted this bread, we’ve seen this body, we’ve heard this song, we’ve journeyed this path.

So this is God reminding us again today, that’s all.  This is God showing up once more to call us back.  To snap us out of our funks and wake us when our faithfulness starts to drift off a little...or a lot.  [remembering]  “Oh, yeah!”  

“That’s right!”  — really our only response.  I know this already.  Help me/us, God to live your love more fully, to ingest it ever more deeply and to share it more widely and freely.  

For this is the cup that never runs dry!  Thanks be to God!  AMEN.      

February 17 -- 6th Sunday after Epiphany

Friends, today we have Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain.  Mount?  That’s Matthew.  In Luke, we are told very clearly, very “plainly” that Jesus “came down...and stood on a level place.”  Such great vertical imagery in Luke: Jesus comes down and looks up!  What’s the symbolism there?  Seems to me that the vertical movement [+], the geography matches the content...

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And he’s really talking to his disciples, in the midst of the crowd.  That’s interesting too.  He’s not trying to preach to everyone in the world here.  Everyone in the world is welcome to listen and follow Jesus.  But here in Luke, Jesus is addressing his disciples, the text says.  That is, this those who follow him.  I would say then, Jesus is addressing us, the church, those who don’t just want to adore him or watch him from the sidelines, but rather, us who follow him, who try to do what he does.    

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And he’s not condemning the rich people of the world here, in these “woe to you who are rich” — I wonder if that might be hard for us to hear sometimes, as one of the wealthiest countries and even counties in the world.  He’s not condemning the world’s rich here.  He’s talking to his disciples, I’d say, to the church, the insiders.  As theologian and professor Eduard Schweizer points out, it’s still early in his ministry:  Jesus is issuing to his disciples “a call to action”.  

“Hey, this is what it means to follow me: not that.”  Let the “riches thing” go.  This is a path of humility and suffering, he preaches to his disciples.  It’s a path of less and not more.  It’s a path of valleys and plains not mountain peaks.  [It’s Charlottesville not Monticello...]  

And in this letting go, that Jesus is always calling us into, in this path of less not more, in this journey fraught with suffering, in this way of the cross, there is ultimately joy...even now, Jesus preaches to his people…not just after we die.

Another word for blessed — makarios in the Greek — is simply “happy”.  Try reading it that way:  Happy are you who are poor, hungry, laughed at…     What?!!

When we you let go of our stuff, of our grip, there’s more room for God.  There’s joy.  Mother Theresa: “God cannot fill what’s already full.”  Have you ever given something away or given something up, that you thought would be a real pain to let go of, but you actually felt better when you went through with it?  Travel guru Rick Steves says about packing for a trip: “No ever returns from a big trip, and says, ‘Man, that was great, but you know, I wish I had packed more stuff.’”  No, going lighter, letting go, giving up, surrendering to God actually yields a surprising joy.  

Confirmation kids and picking up trash:  “Hey, this is fun!”  

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Now, let’s also be aware, there are pitfalls in this text:  This is not to say that we don’t have to worry about the poor, because according to Jesus here, they’re all happy and blessed.  I hope you know that.  And going down that road is a reflection on us more than it is about God.  This Plain Sermon isn’t a commentary on poverty and spinning it out in a pious light.   There’s nothing romantic, beautiful or happy about poverty and systemic injustice — these are monsters that we Jesus-followers are called to confront, to name and work to alleviate and eradicate .  It’s a separate sermon, and a constant theme in Luke to see that Jesus is always against injustice and on the side of people who are poor and on the outside.  

But, this Sermon on the Plain is about us, today.  

And it’s about God, through Christ, again surprising us with joy.  Jesus is inviting us today, yet again, to let go, to give up our ways and follow instead after his way.  This is a call to action. 

So, how will you do that this week, and into this still new year?  How will you do that?  :)  Not how will you recruit or point your finger at what others should and could do.  (Sometimes there’s a tendency, for me anyway, to think quickly who else needs to hear this message… :)

What does the way of humility and mercy look like for you?  Lent is coming friends.  What do you need to let go of, in order to be in and enjoy this blessed state of poverty, hunger, exclusion and defamation that Christ is describing here? [pause]

Well, think about it like this:  What is it that weighs you down?  Or what are you protecting or hanging onto the tightest?

Dad has shared with me about his time serving as pastor to a congregation in Norway over 40 years ago...and how different that was from being at the center of the Missouri Synod conflicts back in the 1970’s:  See, in St. Louis, there was so much money and so much power tied up there at the center of the conflict.  Who was going to get whole buildings, if/when the church broke apart?  Where would all the investments go?  Who would benefit and who would be made to suffer for their actions?  Everyone was clinging on so tightly, you see?  Grasping for survival, everyone was staking their territory. Dad talks about roots: Roots can be a beautiful image, but they can also render us un-move-able, stubborn—great, oak stakes in the ground, where joy can start to drain away, because the whole focus becomes about protecting the institution, that great immovable oak.  It was a bitter time back then, in the church, and especially, in his experience, in St. Louis.

But in Norway, where I was born, it was a community of ex-patriots, a Americans far from home, just trying to be a faithful community of Christ.  Strangers in a strange land: Texans in the Arctic Circle, to be specific.  There were no stakes, no roots, no territories to protect.  There was no jockeying for power and position.  They were a mix of denominations: Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans.  In a way, they were poor and hungry, laughed at by their friends and family.  See?  And with that poverty came this freedom.  They were free to try different things, to learn from each other’s traditions, from the cultures around them, to let go and to trust, to get back to the basics of the Christian faith.  Dad talks about those years fondly, as you can tell…That icy Norwegian air, was fresh air and joyful.

I guess that’s an example of the church (of all things) becoming what we cling too in a desperate way, weighing us down.  What would it look like  for you to “let go”?  As opposed to that posture of gripping in a protective, frightened, even angry way...

That’s the symbol, btw, during Offering when the acolyte lifts up the plate.  And puts it on the altar.  Here we are God!  All of what we have is yours!  We give you thanks and praise you!  Take us now—in all our brokenness and blessing—and use us... 

And God does...and God calls us bless-ed.

Do you hear Christ’s call to action here, friends?  Can you sense the graciousness?  Not from a lofty place, but actually from a seated position...Jesus looks up at them.  On the plain.  

Can you sense the joy, the fuller life that is being offered to the insiders, that is his disciples, that his church, that is you and me?  This is what it looks like to follow!  

And it’s nothing for the fainthearted or the immobile oaks.  “Let go, put down your nets, those things you used to hang on to, and join me,” Christ beckons, “down this way of mercy and humility...and in this way you will find joy!”  

Friends, this is what it looks like to be planted instead by the water, as the prophet Jeremiah poetically describes.  Supple, moving.  The church always in procession, not static.  

My favorite chapter in Taoist literature: 

We are born gentle and weak.

At death we are stiff and unyielding.

Green plants are tender and filled with sap.

At their death they are withered and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life.

The stiff and unyielding will snap in the wind.

The soft and weak will bend and prevail. (Chapter 76)

Friends in Christ, God comes down to offer us life.  

It’s ours for the receiving, it’s ours to open our hands and en-joy.  It’s ours for free...and for freedom, this day and always, into eternity.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.  

February 10 -- 5th Sunday after Epiphany

Sisters and brothers in Christ, 

Look at what God can do when we are tired!

What strikes me about this fantastic lesson of Jesus calling his disciples is that he does it in the morning after a sleepless, fruitless, hopeless night!  

Peter was ready to pack up and go home -- no energy, no fish, no hope -- and that’s precisely when Christ shows up, sends him back out, and calls him into new mission fields.

Look at what God can do when we are tired!

At the end of our rope, without direction or energy -- hopeless, fruitless, even sleepless.  That’s precisely when Christ shows up, sends us back out and into new mission.

This is our God.

So what task is God calling you into now?  Us here at BLC?  No matter your age.  No matter your status, no matter how long you’ve been “at this” already.  Now is when Christ appears in your midst and says, “Well, try this: try something new, go deeper” and “Come, follow me”.

Jesus meets us in our grayness, when the clouds are heavy, and the days and the years (and our faces) are long, just as we’re about throw in the towel, give up, sell out, and isolate ourselves from others.  Just as we’re really getting really frustrated with each other or the world around us.  Just as we’re about to close the door and blow out the candle, Jesus says, “Hey, go back out there, go deeper.”

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This has always been seen as a text about vocation.  Martin Luther taught that we all have a vocation.  And theologian Frederick Buechner said that vocation is a term for that intersection...“where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need.” x2  Go deeper, Jesus says.

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But sometimes our great passions are squelched:  The saddest stories, I think, are the stories of loved ones in my life, who never followed their deep gladness (perhaps their vocations) because someone told them it was stupid, or a waste of time, or too daunting a task for them to ever realize such a goal or a calling.  Had a friend in college who wanted to study marine biology, but her parents wanted her to be practical and study business.  Or another family member who always wanted to be a nurse and take care of sick children, but was even mocked by her husband, saying that her “dream” was too expensive, and she’d never be able to pass the classes.  Passions, deep gladness, even callings: squelched.

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Friends, Christ finds us, just as he found Peter, in that moment of “squelch”.  Sometimes, it’s our own “shadow voices”, the negative self-talk that crushes us.  Often we squelch ourselves. Peter, I’m sure, was feeling pretty squelched/empty (wonder what he was saying to himself in those wee morning hours), when Christ showed up, told him to try something different, and filled his nets.  Christ is our hope.  Jesus sends us and calls us to try again...even to try something new.

“Try going deeper,” Jesus says.  When we go deeper, we discover even more...and find ourselves on a path that we never dreamed. 

Look at what God can do when we are tired!    

See, and here’s what I both love and hate about this text: 

It’s not just about “following our dreams” -- those might be well and good, or they might be misguided.  No, vocation is about God’s voice.  The word vocation literally means “calling” (from Latin vocare).  So there’s got to be a call-er here.  Someone directing us, nudging us, beckoning us.  “Vocation-ing” us...

So who’s doing the calling?  Our own hearts?  Our parents?  Our legislators and recruiters?  Our friends?  Sometimes God works through these and other people or experiences.   

But ultimately, is is Christ Jesus who calls us out.  And he’s not just saying, “Hey, whatever you want…what ever you need...just follow your passion...” 

Rather, just like in our passage for today, Jesus is asking us to look at something new, to stir -- from our drowsiness, fatigue and even despair -- to tasks and adventures we never even imagined.

It’s not about “following our dreams”; it’s about following God’s dream.  Going deeper.  Discovering and living into God’s dream.  We are called into that profound, challenging, joy-filled -- and at the same time life-threatening -- call to follow Jesus.  We are called into that call.

Catching fish was a little dangerous...catching people?  That is, preaching the Gospel...with our words and more importantly our actions?  Proclaiming release to those who are locked up in all kinds of ways?  Recovery of sight to those who can’t see clearly?  Forgiveness to those who deem themselves unforgivable?…

remember all those things that Jesus laid out in his “Inaugural Address” two Sundays ago?   

Catching fish is a little dangerous, catching people?:  you might wind up face-to-face with the powers, just like John the Baptist…or Jesus himself.  Going deeper is not without risk.  

So who’s in?!  Like Jerry Maguire: “Who’s coming with me?” Jesus “vocations” us.  What strange waters, or strange lands, is Christ calling you into this new week?  This new season?  This new year?

(Peter executed in Rome.  South gate-Appian Way-Quo Vadis...He knew how dangerous it was and yet he went anyway.)

This may be where Christ calls you, even this day! -- into a deeper life, a fuller love, a complete vocation, God’s dream...not just yours.  And in that is the greatest joy!  (Can you imagine if Peter never left his nets?  What he would have missed?)

This is a good day, it is a good week, it is a hopeful moment — even in the midst of our fatigue and even aguish — for, friends, Christ himself stands on the shore of our lives and bids us come and follow, let go, and go even deeper.  

Today is a good day for Christ Jesus stays with us, fills our nets...and loves us into a new and even more expansive vocation.  

Friends, Jesus loves us into God’s dream!  AMEN.  

February 2 -- 4th Sunday after Epiphany

Let us pray…

So they want to throw Jesus off the cliff!  What’s that about?
I think at first glance/first read, these hometown Nazarenes seem like foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics.  They need to calm down, it may seem to us.  They need to pay attention to what Jesus was saying.  Surely we could and would never want to do the same.  But let’s dig a little deeper:

One of the most striking things about this text is the drastic transformation the crowd goes through in only a matter of verses.  In verse 22, it says “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” But 7 verses later, they “got up, drove him out of town…so that they might hurl him off a cliff.”  (not just banish him, but already ready to kill him — obviously a foreshadowing of what comes later and the drastic change of the crowd in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday...from ‘Hosannas’ to ‘Crucify him!’)

At first glance, these hometown Nazarenes seem like foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics. But we dig deeper:

Jesus continues both to root himself and to show his mastery of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Last week, remember, he unrolled the scroll and read from the prophet Isaiah.  Now just a few verses later he cites events from the time of Elijah and Elisha.  And this is where things start to get dicey.

Jesus has just proclaimed that today good news goes to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, liberty to the oppressed and the wiping out of debts.  Sounds pretty good, right?  Sounds really pretty and idealistic and heavenly and out of this world, right?  That’s a nice message to reflect on, to dream about.
But now Jesus starts to “flesh it out.”  That’s what Jesus is all about: fleshing it out.  And this is where things start to get dicey.

“The truth is,” Jesus says, “when there was a famine, there were many widows, but Elijah was sent to none of them but a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.”  Do you know what the widow at Zarephath in Sidon represents?  She is no doubt nameless.  She represents the absolute most ignored, invisible, tiniest, powerless, voiceless, nameless member of God’s entire creation — deemed by all others as totally worthless and meaningless.  She’s not a threat.  She’s nothing to the world.

But she is the first and only one that God reaches for.

And if that’s not upsetting enough, Jesus fires it up even more, inciting the crowd by citing Elisha and Naaman the Syrian leper.  Do you know what Naaman the Syrian leper represents?  Far more invasive than a nameless, invisible widow.  A Syrian leper represents the most hated, most ugly, most despicable, most dangerous with his disease.  He is an absolute threat—sickest of the sick, the meanest of the mean, ugliest of the ugly, the most dangerous of the dangerous, the“foreignest” of the foreigners.  He is the enemy of the world, your enemy and my enemy, our worst nightmare.  As far from God as we can imagine and the last one we’d ever want to be around!

But he is the first and only one that God cures.

So is this crowd really that crazy?  This is upsetting news, this is news that turns the comfortable hometown of Fairfax, I mean Nazareth, on its head.  And they want nothing to do with being turned on their head — how dare he! — so...
they try to turn Jesus on his head—they discredit him (“Isn’t this just Joseph’s kid?”) and then they try to kill him.

But here’s the thing:  Jesus passes through them and goes on his way.  We don’t know exactly what that means, except that he goes on despite all their anxiety and rage.  He longs to have them on board, but he goes on with or without their participation—and ultimately that’s the really Good News for us.  It means that we have no say and no power in who and how and when God’s love touches and heals the edges of this world.  God’s embrace is so cosmic, it even stretches to the widow-est of the widows and the leper-est of the lepers.

If you really want to flesh this text out this week...imagine who for you is the widow-est of the widows and the leper-est of the lepers.  Who for you is so invisible you can hardly even think of right now:  The 10-yr orphan in Indonesia—don’t ask me what his name is—who lost his parents in a tsunami in 2004, and now all the aid and media attention has dried up, and he’s trying to raise himself.  Or what about beyond even our own species: what about the yellow spotted tree frog which is critically endangered?  Or the hundreds of thousand of other voiceless, nameless (to us) plant and animal species that are not threatening us, but are certainly being threatened by extinction.  This Gospel text tells us that these are where God goes, where God sends the prophets: to the very edges.

But none of those really threaten us at the moment.

If you really want to flesh this text out, then imagine who the real lepers are for you.  Who do you despise?  Who disgusts you?  Who makes you want to run in the other direction?  Who would you be content to live the rest of your days and never have to deal with ever again?  Could be a sick person, could be a dangerous person, could be someone who’s way of life absolutely disgusts you, could be someone who in fact makes a threat upon your security or the security of your family.  Could be a Democrat, could be a Republican, could be a Muslim, could be a Christian, could be gay, could be straight, could be a member of your family member, could be someone who has wronged you in the past, could be a pastor or a member of the church, or a colleague at work.  That’s who Naaman the Syrian leper stands for, sisters and brothers in Christ.  And this text tells us that this leper is who God comforts and cleanses first.  

Now we know why they want to kill Jesus: because for him, “faith, hope & love abide...and the greatest of these is love.”

I don’t care who you are: This is really tough stuff — because if we’re willing to do the work, we’ve all got a widow and a leper who are very real to us.  We’ve all got anxieties and anger like that crowd long ago...

...And we’ve also got a God moving through us, mysteriously.

A Christ who with or with out our consent so loves this world and the farthest reaches of it.  Jesus has made his mission clear; and Jesus has made his invitation to us into that mission clear.  He passes through here now.  Today!  Help us, God, not to want to throw him off the cliff so that we can keep on our way.  Help us, God, to get on board with him.  The Gospel train is leaving the station!  Scripture has been fleshed out in our hearing and will be fleshed out in our tasting.

The living Christ in and through our midst longs to have us on board, but goes on with or without our participation.  And ultimately, that’s the best news of all.  AMEN.