February 17 -- Lighten Up (Ash Wednesday)

Whenever it’s time to pack for a trip, I always pack too much.  I’ll admit it.  That might not be a problem for everyone, but I’ll admit it, I always stuff too much in there.  Rarely do I bring exactly what I need, which, truth be told, is really not much at all.  I drag around with me that extra jacket, an extra pair of pants, or a whole other set of shoes.  And that’s just clothes, I’ll throw in a few extra packs of shampoo or soap.  And when I get home after the trip and unpack, there are things in there I never even touched.  

I’ve dragged too much extra stuff all over Europe and Central America; and I can overburden our family when we’ve traveled in our little Toyota across the country.  I have yet to perfect the art of packing only what I need for the journey.  
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I guess I think I’m afraid I won’t be OK, if I don’t have extra. 
“What if I need it?  Just in case,” I justify.

And then you know the funny thing?  Despite all that extra packing, there’s always something that I really do need, that I don’t have.  

Friends in Christ, welcome to the season of Lent!

Lent is often envisioned as a journey, a 40-day journey, into the wilderness.  (40 days because of Jesus’ 40-day period of temptation in the wilderness—we’ll hear that this coming Sunday.  Also 40 days because of the Israelites 40 years of wandering in the desert.)  

And it all starts today, Ash Wednesday — for those who want to participate.  It’s not for everyone.  In fact, most opt out.  That’s one of the things that I love about Lent actually — as opposed to, say, Christmas, where everyone is caught up in one way or another.  Observing Lent, on the other hand, is much more under cover — especially given this Gospel from Matthew text: we don’t practice Lent out in front of people — sure we do the ashes (and lots of jokes there about how public that is), but really that’s also about our own self — it’s an outward sign of the inward work that’s before us.  As as far as the whole season of Lent goes, we do it quietly, behind closed doors and with no fanfare.  The rest of the world continues as usual, but we mark and travel a Lenten journey.

So how shall we pack, I’ve asked before?  

Lent is a time for letting go of all the extras in our life.  Traditionally Lent observers giving up things, we can fast.  Mother Teresa said, “God cannot fill what is already full.” 

And we are full, aren’t we?  Even in these lean times?  Mother Teresa was right, there’s not much room for God.  

We are “stuffed” in so many ways: Stuffed with food, stuffed with things in our closets and garages, stuffed with ego, stuffed with desires, stuffed with fear, stuffed with worry.  “What if I need it?  Just in case.  But it means so much to me.”  What might you release, what extras might you shave away so that God can fill you?

See, in all our overpacking, the one thing that we do need gets left out...or just squeezed in at the last minute.  I don’t think we leave God out...but...how we can just squeeze God in at the last minute.

The grace, the peace of Christ can just get stuffed into the outside pocket of our lives, like that last-minute pair of socks that I almost forgot.  So then grace and peace, the central gift of Jesus becomes just one more thing that I drag around — dangling, could fall out, can’t enjoy because I’ve got so much other stuff.
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Siblings in Christ, Lent is a time to empty our bags, take stock — and lighten up.  Ever travelled light?  Rick Steves is fond of saying, “No ever gets back from a trip and says, ‘You know, I wish I had carried more stuff.’”  The gift of Lent is in the lightening up, the clearing out, the cutting back, the fasting.  It’s in the giving up, in the quieting down, and the opening of our hands in prayer and our ears in attentiveness.  Theologian Paul Tillich said, “We are most powerful, not when we possess, but when we wait.”  

How will you keep Lent?  I hope you do.  

If you choose to give something up or take something on (like walking or gardening or meditating), do it because it will ultimately clear some space for God’s full grace and deep peace in your life.  If your Lenten discipline becomes just one more thing on your to-do list, then it’s already become just one more item you’re stuffing in your luggage.

Somehow Lent and its disciplines got to be burdensome…all about gloom and doom, more weight on our shoulders, when Lent is, in fact, the Old English word for “springtime”!  

Are the trees in my back yard all about gloom and doom because they have no leaves right now?  Or are they incredible because, if I look closer, I can spot the tiny brown buds on every little branch,  they’re not dead and depressing, but rather something is happening beneath the surface!  That’s Lent!    

Lent is a gift.  Packing light is a gift.  Clearing out is a gift.  It means there’s room being made for something to happen — for God’s ever-present grace and peace to move in and take over our lives in Christ Jesus.  

But first, we have to get honest.  It comes not when we’re proud and bloated and too busy to let go.  We have to be honest — that’s what the ashes are all about. 

It’s hard to be honest: “We almost have to woo humility during Lent.”  Honesty can be like a skiddish deer at the brook: you have to be patient and still before our humility tiptoes out.  The ashes are a little like bait, as they scratch across our foreheads, the humility, our honesty before God can creep into the light.  Oh yeah, I am self-centered, I am neglectful of my relationships and of care for my own body, and of care for God’s planet.  Oh yeah, I have fallen short at trusting Jesus, at letting go of my many treasures... [pause]  This is our confession.  Step one of the Lenten journey: Ash Wednesday.  Gotta remember, before we heal.  Gotta be honest.  Ash Wednesday, we get our bodies into it: kneel, feel the ashes, hear the words “remember that your are dust,”  see that cross in the mirror...and also smell the oil of healing.

       Christ abides with us into this journey.
Christ awaits our unpacking, and guides us into the springtime.  So we follow, and as we go, we go lighter.  
Amen.

January 3 -- Love, love, love...John (Christmas 2B)

I’m so glad you’re here this morning, on this Second Sunday of Christmas!  This first Sunday of 2021!

I’d like to re-introduce the Gospel of John by sharing 5 ideas for you to watch for in John’s Gospel from now on…(good day to take notes)

As some of you know, our Sunday readings in church, our “lectionary” is organized into 3 years: Year A, Year B and Year C — Matthew, Mark and Luke, respectively.  We just began the new year of Mark the First Sunday of Advent, November 29th, remember that? New Year’s Day for the church year.  So, most of our Gospel readings this year will be from Mark.  I’m excited to do some comparative study of the Gospels in Bible study this winter and spring season, and so today, at the dawning of a new calendar year, I really wanted to look with you at the Gospel of John!  There is no Year of John...did you catch that?!  Why?  Because John is different.  John is deeply woven into all three lectionary years actually!  We’ll have whole seasons this year where we only read from John’s Gospel.  We’ll be into Mark soon enough and for the whole year, so let’s spend some time with John, starting at the very beginning:  One Johannine (Gospel of John) scholar said that everything you need to know about John is in this first chapter...
You need to understand that the Gospel of John’s on a very different plain, in a different orbit than the other 3 Gospels, and we’re in John world today!

just as a quick overarching image (if helpful) —

        John is like a mystical, French poet…

I don’t believe John wrote the Gospel: he painted it...with vibrant, rich, Parisian colors!  (Anybody ever been to Paris?  It’s so beautiful there, my thought was, “How could anyone not become an iconic artist or poet, living here?” Music, food, art…[mind blown])  And all of these extravagant eccentrics, vivid images and words, only lead us to the most glorious message of unrelenting Divine Love, pointing us faithfully to this one incarnate, Christ Jesus our Savior, the Word made flesh.   Welcome to the ineffable John’s Gospel!  (the center of the labyrinth)

The traditional, medieval image for the Gospel of John is the eagle.  Martin Luther said that John soars the highest in its view of Christ (God’s own self, come down to our pain-filled world).  In the US the eagle’s a symbol of freedom — and that certainly fitting here too, but remember that in the middle ages — the eagle was believed to be the only animal that could look directly at and actually fly to the sun.  The Gospel of John, more any other book in the Bible, describes God’s deep incarnation and love in such extreme, cosmic terms.  It’s too hard to put into words, really.  And so the artists, the musicians, the poets and the dancers among us must be convened.   

John is about experiencing God, not simply talking about God, or telling great stories about Jesus.  Just because you can’t quite describe it with language doesn’t mean you can’t reach it — in fact the opposite: IT REACHES YOU!  That is to know God’s grace and love in John’s Gospel.  It’s one thing to hear the Good News in church, it’s another to be lavished with a delicious meal, a warm bath, a soft robe, a glass of wine, the embrace of a dear friend.  (foot washing, oils, wine, water gushing)  Can you taste it, smell it, feel it?  There is this tactile — incarnational — quality to John’s witness!  And the images always point to extravagant grace, beauty and truth.  God abides, dwells, “moves into the neighborhood”...do you sense this fleshy flesh quality?

It’s pretty cryptic.  Because John was written in the late 1st/early 2nd century, Christians were under persecution, so the community that gathered around this Gospel was small, tightly-knit, deeply spiritual and therefore had lots of “insider” language.  Indeed, Jesus’ statements in John often seem pretty cryptic.  This doesn’t mean John is trying to be exclusive; it’s just that outsiders can’t understand.  One has to be brought in, from darkness of night, from the shadows of ignorance, into the light of truth.  From not knowing to knowing God.  It’s a major theme: knowing God.  “Come and see,” Jesus will say in John.
True for you?  Stories of being brought into the light of understanding?  Not excluded, just didn’t get it: for me, I think of the process of becoming a pastor, parent...

“John’s purpose was to strengthen the community with words that bear eternal life and love” (my New Testament Professor David Rhoads).  The very relationship Jesus has with God — which is intimate, loving, deep — is offered freely for you and me too.  And this changes everything: it is salvific! (x2)  John’s Gospel guides us into this relationship, dripping with abundant life and grace.  

Think Beatles’ song “Love, Love, Love” on both Christmas Day and Good Friday:
Jesus on the cross in John’s Gospel is love, love, love — that’s why we read John on Good Friday.
No infant, baby Jesus stories.  Just radiant light: i.e. grace abounding, love overflowing.  Then we launch into John the Baptist’s pointing (v.19)…

For John’s Gospel everything is sacramental.  Interestingly, there’s no Last Supper, i.e. Passover, in John!  They do share a meal where Jesus “sheds light” and washes their feet the day before the Passover and tells them/us to love one another.  In this way, John opens all creation up to become a cornucopia of images that bear the love and divine mark of God.
Drinking water, talking late at night, celebrating at a wedding, all eating, shepherding, gardening…
Do you see all things as sacred?  Or just churchy stuff?  Do you see the God-made-manifest-in-Jesus overflowing in the cooing of an infant, the well-wishes of Christmas cards from distant family, a walk with your dog, the incredible smell of fresh strawberries, a hot tub, or pain in your belly from laughing until you cry?  All of it sacrament.

Jesus. Is. God.  This truth, one may argue, can be a little more vague in the other Gospels, but John hammers home Christ’s absolute divinity.  And this “God from God, Light from Light” (Nicene Creed) has come to dwell with and love us...even here, even now.

It’s a different kind of Christmas message, it’s not as scratchy and rustic and local as Luke’s version.  John’s Gospel is smooth and ethereal and mysterious like incense or a candle flame or a glorious high-flying eagle, or a sunrise sky.    

And whether you identify with this Gospel or that, it’s all just God’s way of trying to get through to us.  

Don’t appreciate it in John’s cosmic, esoteric terms?  Then how about Luke’s gritty on the ground version of a poor teenage, immigrant, outsider mother; a smelly stable; farmers with calloused hands, sheep herders with alcohol on their breath?  Not that way either?  Too scratchy?  How about the more geo-political dynamics of international rulers and astrologists traversing the great deserts, and resisting the bully, immature, filthy rich King Herod (who liked to put his name on everything) in order to pay homage to the true king with gold, frankincense and myrrh...in Matthew’s Gospel?  Or...let’s learn together this new year about God’s grace, trying to reach us through Mark’s Gospel...  

See all of these are God angling this way and that to get the message across that we are loved and that we are not in this life by ourselves.  God makes a way and gets this grace and peace, and social justice and righteousness, and forgiveness and love through to us.

See it, hear it, feel it, taste it.  Mercy is ours.  Mercy is here.  Love has come.  All we can do, like the shepherds and the wisemen and the “disciples who know” is adore the brilliance that shines in the darkness, the Word that is made flesh.  All we can do is celebrate Christmas in spirit and in truth.  Deep in our hearts, with our whole bodies in how we love and treat one another and God’s earth.  All we can do is praise God.  

My favorite German mystic poet Rilke puts it like this, and I conclude: 
“Praise, my dear ones.  Let us disappear into praising.  Nothing belongs to us.”  

AMEN.

August 16 -- Preaching Up Here, Living Down There (Pentecost 11A)

Especially when our kids were younger than they are now, there were some words in our house that we just didn’t say.  This is still true to some extent, but they’ve learned and understand a lot more now.   But back in the day when they were little…we taught our Micah and Katie that they are words we don’t say under our roof:  We don’t say hate.  “But Daddy other people say ‘hate’ all the time,” Micah questioned, “and my teacher said it’s not a bad word.”  That may be true, Micah, but we don’t use that word.  We don’t say ‘stupid’.  And we don’t say ‘idiot’.  We don’t say ‘shut up’.  And we don’t say ‘fat’, either.  

Somehow, Heather and I in all our parental omniscience from up here came to the conclusion that canceling these words out of our household vocabulary is good thing down there.

The problem is, when we slip.  When I’m watching a Cubs baseball game and blurt out, “Uh, I hate AJ Perzinski!”  When I’m reading the newspaper in the living room, while Katie is doing her homework in the kitchen, and suddenly I completely lose all awareness of where I am, and shout “I can’t believe it!  This guy’s an idiot; I wish he would shut up!  He so stupid, I hate him.”   OK...a bit of hyperbole there.  But you know I slipped up...

And in each of these circumstances we/I then had to engage in the tricky parental activity of explaining ourselves, probably apologizing, maybe making amends or exceptions, but always-always including an affirmation that they’re right, “You’re right, I shouldn’t have said that.”  I said we shouldn’t say those words, and here I am saying them myself...  

Great is your faithfulness to what we said, Micah.  Great is your faithfulness to what we said, Katie.  But here we are: sloshing about.  

It’s one thing to preach it.  It’s something much different to live it.  Good teaching can trickle down from up here.  But great faith sloshes around down there.  

Our Gospel passage today starts out with some great teaching from up here:  Jesus again is crumbling up the Pharisees’ neatly sliced world…this time with a lesson on purity.  It’s not what goes into the mouth that’s unclean.  It’s what comes out of it.  Words.

But Jesus isn’t just teaching us not to swear.
 
Let’s not get too caught up with just bad words like stupid or idiot or fat, and whole bunch of others that unfortunately we all know.  

I’ve known people who “swear like sailors” (some of them are sailors...and have hearts of gold.  [pause]  Their words might be foul but their hearts burn with purity.  Their intentions are compassionate.  Maybe you’ve known people like this too.  While others, proud of their purity and squeaky clean mouths, shoot daggers and explode gossip with their curse-less words.  Sure we should watch our language, but Jesus isn’t teaching us here not to swear.  

He’s teaching about heart surgery.  

The heart, you see, in that culture, was understood to be the source our thoughts and our decisions about how to live in the world.  Jesus is teaching us about slicing away all that harms us and our neighbors and our world.  That’s a good teaching from up there.

But it’s one thing to preach it.  It’s something much different to live it.  The story goes on, in our text today, and it says that Jesus left his pulpit.  He left that place and went away to a different region.  He left the pureness-of-heart-lecture notes on the stand, came down to another region, and this is where it gets sloppy, sloshes around:

A woman approaches, who is not from his tribe.  A strange woman, a Syro-phoenician.  Jesus grew up a neighborhood where such women were despised.

  
They were hated, stupid, idiots who needed to shut up, who were always encroaching on his people – the real chosen Jews, not these half-bred aliens.  Do you see what’s happening here?

And so, Jesus – JESUS, the prince of peace, the one who just got done preaching about purity of heart – calls her a dog:  “It’s not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”  A dog!  Do you know how dirty dogs were then?  Not adorable, housebroken, little pooches that we bless when we do the Blessing of the Animals...dogs as glimpses of God.  No, dogs back then were mangy, flee-bitten mutts, that were as irritating as flies.  And calling a person a dog, that as offensive as a white person calling a black person a word that we won’t even print in the paper.  A dog, he calls her.  

It’s one thing to preach it.  It’s something much different to live it.  

What do we do with this text where our precious Jesus himself is falling for the same old racial slurs, the same old arrogance, the same old self-righteousness, the same old divisions, the same old hatred that has plagued generations and cultures throughout history, and still plagues us today?!  Words escalate to threats; and threats to violence; and violence to wars.  There’s nothing new there.

This is a side of Jesus, that many are tempted either to ignore, or rationalize away, or defend…as if the Savior of the world needed saving.  I can’t explain Jesus out of this offense, out of his calling this woman a dog.

But I can share with you what I see happening, ultimately:  [sloppiness, thanks be to God, even if we don’t want sloppiness—and none of us do, we want neat and tidy, clear cut, like the Pharisees, where life is a set of rules to keep and roles to fill.  But the gift is sloppiness.]  I see Jesus, fully Divine and fully human, coming down from on high…to be in the mix of it all.   Good teaching can trickle down from up there.  But great faith sloshes around down here.  It’s one thing to preach it, it’s another thing to live it.

And in this case, God surprises us again, as a Syrophoenician woman, calls Jesus out.   Watch how she responds; not by hitting back; not by going away:  “Yes Lord,” she says, “but even the dogs eat the bread from the master’s table.”  I might be a dog, but I’m still hungry.  I’m broken alright, which is why I need the bread that only you can give.  She doesn’t fight back with hateful words, and she doesn’t back away either.  

She stands up strong and demonstrates faith.  She makes a statement of faith:  Only you, Jesus, offer the bread that I need, the healing that I need, the salvation which you have prepared.

And something must have snapped in Jesus, for immediately his tone changes and then he affirms her.  (Forget the tricky explaining, like when my child catches me using a word that’s off limits—I can’t explain that.)  We’ll just have to jump to the affirmation.  “Woman, great is your faith.” In a way, I’m not sure who’s helping/forgiving/blessing who.  What is clear, is that Jesus is with her.  Not up there.  He’s in the mix, down here as sloppy as it all can.

And that’s the heart of the Gospel.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, it’s not always neat and clean unfortunately, but we have a Christ who gets close, who plunges into the mix.

We have a Christ who kneels down, who takes our hand and we take his.  We have a God who doesn’t stay up there, but who always enters into the sloshiness of life down here.  Good teaching can trickle down from up there.  But great faith sloshes around down here.  

It’s one thing to preach it.  And I pray daily that we can preach a good thing up here, up at the church.  (But we/I don’t always—sometimes the preacher’s words from up here are winded, or fake, or confusing or sometimes just wrong.)  Good teaching and preaching can trickle down from up here.  But the real action is down there, down in our living rooms and kitchens and basements, down in our offices and stores and on the roads.  Great faith is down there, sloshing around.  And man, it sloshes, it’s sloppy, and messy and soggy.   It ain’t easy— this practice of purity of heart, this discipline of choosing words of compassion not violence.  It ain’t easy staying in touch with each other, in relationship with one another and with the stranger and with the world.  It ain’t easy, remaining faithful, coming back, giving ourselves to the rhythms of the church and nudgings of the Spirit.  And as soon as I’m finished preaching up here, I’m right back down there, sloshing around…and thank God we slosh around together.

And thank God we slosh around with Jesus, who enters the sloppiness of this life and stays, maybe even more than we wanted.  Who banters back and forth with us, albeit sometimes a struggle.  Who names and commends our great faith:  “Women, great is your faith.  Men, great is your faith.  All siblings in Christ, great is your faith. Remember that I’m down here with you, and I’ll never leave.”   AMEN.
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HoD: ‘O God Why Are You Silent’ from the Lament section of our hymnal.  Woman calling Jesus out, asking for what we need.  Great is her faithfulness and ours too as we sing this with our hearts, and demand Christ’s healing in our lives and our world.  And Christ responds.

August 2 -- Goin' Fishin' (Pentecost 9A)

Thankful and in our prayers, congregations with whom we've connected in July...

-Lutheran congregations across the Black Hills, SD

-Zion Lutheran in Oregon City, OR
-Klamath Lutheran in Klamath Falls, OR
-Shepherd of the Mountains Lutheran in Jackson, WY
-Grace Lutheran in Omaha, NE

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Grace and peace to you this day.

3 points I’d like to make, in light of this Gospel text:

1) Disciples wanted to send the crowds away.  But Jesus held them together. 

Disciples wanted to keep it simple and neat, but how “keeping it simple and neat” can breakdown community and attempt to edge out God’s compassion. 

This is a text about God’s compassion, God’s justice…where ALL are fed.  All are clothed, all are housed, all are safe and have security.  This includes those who have to wait in the back of the line — in Jesus’ day women and children, in our day black lives, and any who are unfairly discriminated against because of their status or the color of their skin... 

I’ve been wondering this week, as Congress argues again, what God’s stimulus plan would look like... What would God’s health care coverage and education plan would look like?

If we bring something back from the text for our world today, I think we have to look at how Jesus overflows with compassion: All ate and were fed, and there were 12 baskets left over.

Furthermore on this first point: Jesus calls the disciples to that work.  Can’t help but think of John Lewis’ final words, “marching orders,” repeated throughout his funeral service this week:  keep moving.  “You give them something to eat.”  People are hungry.  People are tired.  People are discriminated against. People are hurting.  You do something about it, keep moving, Jesus says…

2) The disciples didn’t think there was enough.  But Jesus turned that which was offered into more than enough.

You know, I don’t like it when biblical scholars and preachers “explain away” or de-mystify the miracles of Jesus (Jesus walking on water/shore).  Rather than scientific analysis, I’d rather focus on what these stories teach us about Jesus and about us... 

That being said, one explanation that I’ve heard about this miracle of the loaves and fish, which I do like…is that the bit that was offered by someone for whom that was all they had —  5 loaves and 2 fish — was such an inspiration to all, that everyone began to gladly share, and suddenly blessings abound.  Loaves and fish abound, and there are even leftovers!

It’s a common phenomenon in congregations, when it comes to offering and tithing, that often it is those with less income who give a greater percentage, like the little one who offered all he had…entrusting it to God, to be blessed, broken and shared (miraculously, in abundance) with the whole.

That’s what offering is!   

Siblings in Christ — I read some years back that when a congregation calls a pastor, one of the things they’re doing is sending that person to the biblical text each week to “fish” — to fish out a word from God for the people.  “What say you, Preacher?  What can you find, a word from the Lord?  Any fish for us this week?”  Well, in my “fishing” this week, I find this text to be calling us to give and keep giving—not just the fraction that we think we can afford.  We are called us to give all we have to God’s work.   It’s all

God’s anyway, isn’t it? 

Jennifer at SVLC saying a prayer and writing the first check of the month to Synod, the church’s tithe.  Whatever we bring to Jesus, let’s take a deep breath of thanksgiving and say a prayer (like p.)...

And may the 5 loaves and 2 fish not inspire us to share our leftovers [pause].  Let’s let Christ deal with those 12 baskets of leftovers.  May God’s Word invigorate us today to bring all we have, lay it in Christ’s hands so that he may bless it, break it and share it with a hungry and hurting world.

With the abundance, Jesus feeds us too!  ALL ARE FED means you and me – we don’t just empty are pockets and go home hungry and bitter.  In this amazing story, messy-spirit-filled-children-screaming-old-people-dancing-everyone-singing-everyone fed-community-in-Christ is the result!  Amen?   ALL ARE FED, you and me included!

3) The disciples want to send them away, but Jesus even feeds the disciples! 

Jesus forms us all into one body, through sharing.  The disciples don’t think there’s enough, but Jesus makes sure everyone is fed, including them, including us!

Friends, we are fed this day—even if and especially when we’re tired, depressed, lost, confused, lonely, wrapped up in conflict, stressed about money, grieving our losses, losing our hope—Jesus doesn’t send us away empty... 

He sends us away fed! 

That’s what what I fished out for this day.  May God take this bit of fish, bless it, break it and share it.  For Christ is the bread of life.  TBTG.  AMEN. 

July 19 -- From Star Wars to Barn Dances (Pentecost 7A)

Will you pray with me: God of the harvest—give us your patience, give us your peace, give us your word.  Amen.

I love the Star Wars movies.  I love the special effects, the story, the humor, the characters.  I grew up watching them.  I had the action figures.  You could say I was a big fan.  And I still love Star Wars today.

But like many movies, Star Wars makes the good guys and the bad guys very easily distinguishable.  In case you’re not sure, you can tell who’s good and who’s bad by the color of their uniforms and also by what kind of music is playing when they’re on screen.  [sing the famous Darth Vader tune] It’s pretty easy.  And despite an intergalactic stage, the division between good and evil is pretty simple.  The good guys are here, the bad guys are there.  We are not they, and they are not we.  We are of God, they are of the devil.

But the world, in which we live, is not quite that clear cut, is it?  [pause] Reality is not quite as simple as the Star Wars movies.  God’s world is wonderfully messy…but that means it’s messy.

Many theologians and thinkers through the years have offered alternative, more complicated models to this simplified, Star Wars-like worldview.

Is it possible, theologians have wondered, that every person is both good and bad at the very same time?  Is it possible that good resides in the hearts of evil people.  And that evil resides in the hearts of good people?  And so good people and evil people are suddenly much more difficult to distinguish.

Martin Luther of course talked about this, when he spoke of the Christians’ “sinner-saint” status, that is, those who believe and follow Jesus are both sinners and saints.

Isn’t that confusing?  To think that we are each horribly evil, and at the very same time, very good…for indeed we are all exalted creatures of God’s good creating! (In fact, Imago Dei is the name of the Zoom series our Synod is doing right now!)

And to make it more complicated, sometimes it’s even difficult to differentiate which is the sinful part and which is the saint-ful part in our thoughts and actions.  Evil certainly has a way of disguising itself, getting between and around our good deeds, just like weeds around the wheat. I read a book a some years back called The Seven Deadly Virtues, which was all about just how sneaky evil can be.


Biblical scholars tell us that, interestingly, the kinds of weeds that grew in the wheat fields of the ancient Mediterranean require a very skilled eye to tell which is which as they grow.  So that’s what Jesus was talking about.

In this Gospel text, we are left with an elusive question:

Who is the evil one, the devil, or the children of the evil one?  Can we pin point them, the weeds?  Can we at least point to a group of people or a series of events, and say, “Now there, there is evil,” and be done with it?  Or is it more messy?

With issues as weighty as good and evil, we can find ourselves, like the disciples of old wanting simple answers, crying out, “Explain this to us Jesus, so that we can make sure to be on the good side, on your side, and join your quest to rid the world of the evil ones!”

But Christ surprises us again and again.  And in the search to figure out who the weeds and the wheat are for us today, we might just find ourselves led down new paths…

For we hear this morning that it’s not our job to uproot the weeds, it’s not even our job to help, just like it’s not the servants’ job in the parable.
“Do you want us to go and gather the weeds?” the servants ask.  “No,” says the master, “that’s my responsibility.”

It’s ultimately the job of the Great and Mighty…[wait for it] *surprise* Gardener-Farmer to do the weeding.
Christ, the Gardner-Farmer.

One might even imagine a peaceful tone in his voice as he responds to the servants’ urgency and anxiety to destroy the weeds:

“No [calmly],” the Gardener-Farmer says, “do not gather the weeds; for in gathering them you would uproot the wheat as well.  Let both of them grow together until the harvest.”  After all, this is same teacher, earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, who uttered these challenging but grace-filled words: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”  “Blessed are the peacemakers.”  And — probably the most challenging three words in the entire Bible: “Love your enemies.”

Indeed Matthew is not portraying a teacher who commissions his students to violence and destruction, hunting down and killing weeds, Star Wars-style...or worse.  “No, you leave the weeding to me,” the Gardener-Farmer gently says.

Could it be, siblings in Christ—given our sinner-saint status—that within our very communities and within our very selves we possess the soil where both weeds and wheat might grow?

And with all our worries and fears, with all our temptations and distractions, it’s so easy to get overcome by the weeds.  It’s so easy for the wheat in our hearts, without attention, to be choked out by the weeds of sin that flourish.

The weeds of sin:  self-centeredness, arrogance, apathy, hatred, bitterness, neglect—neglect not only of our neighbors and of the earth, but neglect of our selves, our own bodies. [pause]

The truth is that we can’t do our own weeding.  We need the divine Gardener-Farmer to come and cut back the weeds that grow in our communities and in our hearts.  Good thing Jesus came along.  Good thing Jesus promises to deliver us from evil.  Good thing we continue to follow in the radiance of that promise.  For in trusting, Jesus frees us from the weeds of sin that grow in our hearts.  But that’s not the end of the story!

So often we hear that Jesus liberates us from death, sin and the evil one.  But the Good News is not just about side-stepping sin & death!...
The Good News is that because of this freedom, freedom from death and sin through Christ, we are enabled then to live.  It’s about having LIFE…and we all know that having life is far more glorious than simply not-dying.
It’s about the wheat growing, transforming, and bearing fruit.  In the same way, it’s not just about winning—beating out the bad guys—and then kicking back to gloat.  (Sometimes I think we’re drawn to the graphic imagery of the burning and gnashing of teeth, the fire, destruction, apocalyptic stuff, wipe our brows and say, “Whew, glad that’s not me”…it does sound like a good action movie…it appeals a cultural, insatiable appetite for violence and revenge...even just plain ol’ cut-throat competition: We win, you loose.)  But, no!  There’s more to the parable...

It’s about being alive in Christ!  Such gruesome pictures can distract from what comes next in the text:
*Are you ready?  It’s really exciting. [somewhat sarcastically but seriously]*  Matthew 13:30—The harvester takes the wheat into the barn.  That’s where the parable ends.

But let’s continue the story together.  Can you imagine…
[I’ve always thought that the church suffers — not because of money or not enough pastors or old buildings, but — from a crisis of imagination.]
So let’s imagine what happens next in the parable Jesus tells, let’s add a chapter to the parable (afterall, that would be very biblical):

The harvester of the wheat carries it into the barn, where it undergoes a change, a transformation…and is finally turned into bread to nourish the hungry.  Catch that? — The wheat (with the addition of the right ingredients) becomes bread—it takes on a new form, i.e. new life emerges.  The life we have in Christ, is made new, it takes on a new meaning.  We, as followers of Christ, are taken inside the barn and given special knowledge/ingredients.

There is a separation from the rest of the world, from the field, certainly from the weeds, but what is it that sets us apart, siblings in Christ?  [pause] We are given a glimpse of God’s realm, we get to see what we and the rest of the world have to look forward to!  We get a glimpse of God, a glimpse of grace, a glimpse of divine love, joy, peace.  A glimpse of hope, right smack in the midst of all the ugliness and pain of this world.

And it is in this experience that our lives are transformed.  After all, wheat — which escapes fire — will eventually die out in the field as well.  But the harvester takes the wheat into the barn, where it is transformed, given a new life, a new form, a new purpose.

But that’s not the end of the story either!

Wheat turns to bread, and look what happens when people gather at the table around to eat this new thing, this transformed wheat!  Strangers are welcomed because there’s plenty of good bread to go around, ideas are shared, care is given for those who are going through tough times.  New life emerges again this time in the form of community.   And once the people have eaten the bread, they are strengthened to get up from the table, to go out from the barn where they were sitting together, and to plunge into this messy world with new energy, new hope, planting new wheat fields, inviting more to the table to be fed.  Life, and new life, and new life…this is what “life abundant” means (to borrow from the Gospel of John).

What an powerful and empowering development:  What went into the barn as nothing more than a bundle of wheat, became the center of a party: a barn dance.  What went into the barn as just a bundle of wheat enlivened and strengthened a people for the journey of outreach and service in the world.  Sometimes we need sit together and dance and celebrate inside, right?  And then out we go.  That’s what worship is!

The task of living God’s love is a great one, seeming insurmountable and hopeless at times.  So we continue returning to the barn for sustenance, through communal Word and Sacraments.  And then we leave the barn once again.

We are caught up in a dynamic tension of excitement and patience.  This movement to and from this sacred barn becomes our new life, our new life in Christ.  Fear, hatred, lust after destroying some “enemy” has no place in this new life; the Star Wars-like worldview doesn’t work, for it is the good and gracious Gardener Farmer who does the weeding, not us.

Because of Christ, we are freed from having to pick out the good weeds and the bad weeds in our hearts and in our world...

No, “we just get to do church,” as one of my great mentors Fred Danker (of blessed memory) used to say — dance in the barn, work in the field, back to the barn.
Or as Senator John Lewis (of blessed memory) would say:  We need to “get into trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble”...

We just get to live into our baptismal covenants, live among, serve all people, strive for justice and peace and worship together.   I guarantee that gets us into some “good trouble.”
And so in this vision of the barn dance, moving into and away from the barn, the realm of God is being realized “on earth as it is in heaven,” just as we had prayed for it to be…as we do each week inside the barn.  The realm of heaven is coming into view here on earth...for God’s children are shining like the sun, warming and nurturing the world—the field—with life and hope.  That’s you.

Followers of Jesus: The weeds have been removed, the vision has been offered, and those divine arms are open in  gracious invitation:  “Come,” Jesus says, “join the living.  Dance in the barn, plant in the field, shine like the sun.”  AMEN.

May 17 -- Paul & Our Many Altars (Easter 6A)

Friends in Christ, if Paul was to wander through your life — your daily routines, where you spent your time and your money, where you made sacrifices: the things that bring you great joy, the things that get you really upset, and the ways you speak — if Paul was to wander down “your street”, stand at the center of your personal “town square” (the Areopagus) — WHAT WOULD HE NOTICE?

The question is not: “Are you/is anyone religious?”  The question is: “In what ways are you extremely religious?”  Everyone worships something.  The word worship, broken down, “worth-ship”.  What’s worthy of your sacrifices?  That’s what we worship.  Lots of people go to church but don’t worship God.  Because God’s not worthy of their sacrifices, the church is not worthy of their sacrifices: traveling the world is what’s truly worthy of their sacrifices.  Clothing or hobbies or housing improvements or sports or fancy alcohol or knives or guns or shoes or concerts or cars or crafts are what’s truly worthy of their sacrifices.  We all have our thing, I think.  What’s your thing?

The best way for Paul to wander down any one of our “streets” is for him to take a look at our credit card statements, right?  Our Amazon (non-essential) recent purchases.  Or however you can track how and where you spend your money.  (I was shocked at how much our family spent on food in this past year’s credit card report — not restaurants but food: organic, locally sourced, healthy food.  It’s more expensive.  We’ve admitted that’s a place we’re willing to make sacrifices.  I guess you could say it’s one of our idols.)  And I won’t even divulge all my non-essential Amazon purchases.  That’s the real “giving record,” right?

That’s where we can see where we really make sacrifices.  I know the whole, “but it’s not just about money when it comes to church” idea.

And that’s true, but so often, I think, we can hide behind that.   So much is about money...  x2 That’s why Jesus talked about money all the time!

“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt. 6.21; Lk. 12.34).  What is it that you treasure?  What is it that you protect?  What is it that you make sacrifices for?  Where is your heart?
—
Well, all this was true in the ancient world as well, as Paul walked through the streets of Athens, “Athenians,” he says, “I see how extremely religious you are in every way.”

But there’s something else:
Paul notices that there is an altar to an unknown God.
You see, the people of Athens — like us today — worshipped all kinds of gods.  I think it was more overt then: maybe less shame or denial about it.  They made sacrifices openly to the gods of sports, food, parties, travel, transportation, music, crafts and weather.  (BTW, living in Southern California all those years, I think we really worshipped the weather there.  I mean, people really make sacrifices for that beautiful weather, higher cost of living, etc.  And our observation, leaving that region was all these comments on how much we were going to miss the weather.  How different is that from worshiping an ancient sun god?)  That’s just one of many altars...

But there was this one altar that was unmarked.  It was like the fill-in-the-gap altar — one for everything else.

...and Paul seizes on that image to introduce them to a different kind of God.

See, it actually was in fact a fill-in-the-gap altar:  Like today, the people lived in great fear.  If you didn’t sacrifice to every god out there, if you worship at every altar — the altar of security, the altar of beauty & youth, the altar of war, the altar of food and drink and sport and weather, the altar of work...If you don’t appease every god, then trouble would inevitably befall you.
So just in case you miss one, there was this little “fill-in-the-gap” altar.
 Just in case you forgot about a god or two.  You could sacrifice at the altar of the unknown god.

       Paul seizes on that to draw them into a new understanding...
--
See, it’s like, there was “something else.”  The people even knew it.  This way of living and worshiping and making sacrifices at all these altars, this way of being extremely religious was coming up short.

Don’t we see that too?  Do you ever feel that?  All these things we worship, and yet, somehow, it’s never enough?  (We’re having some real time to reflect on these during this shutdown.  During this “great pause” that this global pandemic has forced upon us...)

We’re always pouring more and more out at all these different altars?  And every god, will endlessly take our sacrifices: our money, our time, our devotion, our energy, our whole lives.  But it’s like they’re never appeased.  The gods are never appeased, and they’ll just keep taking…  (Just talking with dear friends about the tolls that stress is taking on our bodies, especially these days — I realize that not everyone is feeling stress right now amid this shut-down, some are even downright bored.  But, for so many, parents of school kids, or toddlers, balancing jobs and work from home, school, family, economic pressures, etc. the frantic pace at which we’re running around our own homes, from altar to altar to altar (it’s like all those altars got crammed into our house)…

Yeah, Paul could say it to us too:  “I see how extremely religious you are in every way!”

And, let me say, if life has had the brakes slammed on, and you’re more in the camp of twiddling your thumbs, staring at the wall, that’s certainly an opportunity for devotion to the many gods to tick up — surfing the shopping websites, buying crazy things in large amounts, consuming food, alcohol, social media, technology, instruments to fill the time.  So many altars!

Paul says it to us too:  “I see how extremely religious you are in every way!”
--
But then there’s this one other little altar.  This little tiny chapel, this insignificant table in the corner.  This silly, old cross.  Laughable really, in the shadow of all the other towering altars.  

Paul seizes on that little altar, and takes that fearful theology (“talk of God”) around that altar — how that has infected Christianity now too:  fearful theology — and fills it with incarnational theology.  God is with us.  This little, tiny, insignificant altar you see here, Paul says, “I proclaim to you that the God who made the world and everything in it, [the God] who is [composer and conductor] of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands…[this God] allotted the times of [our] existence and the boundaries of the places where [we] live, so that [we may] search for God and perhaps grope for [God]...though indeed [God] is not far from each one of us.  For ‘In [God] we live and move and have our being….’”

We don’t grope for God, as if God is some object of our attaining, yet another thing to acquire [“gotta go to church to get some God in my life…”].  No, Paul proclaims here: We are IN God already.  My whole life changed with I started to accept that.  [say it again]

This little, un-named altar is an entry point into experiencing a God that is truly above all other gods!  A God who’s got the whole world — the whole universe — in a loving embrace.  A God in whom we “live and move and have our being.”  A God whose name is love, in Christ Jesus.

This is where Paul takes us...along with his ancient hearers.  Paul preaches of a God who is beyond time and space, who is above all our petty obsessions and weaknesses, who holds us even as we try to appease other gods!

This little Altar, this Book, this Water doesn’t contain God (God doesn’t live, cooped up in here)!  But they do, we confess, carry God.  This little altar, this old book, these drops of water, point us to a God who is loosed in, with, above, below, all around and throughout, under this entire universe!

We cannot encapsulate or domesticate this God of whom Paul speaks!  All we can do is give ourselves up to this holy movement — sacrifice ourselves to what we are already in God’s hands.

...Think of when children are angry and restless in their mother’s arms: there’s no use in trying to overpower her, “Just rest. Just breath. It’s OK.”  Can’t we be like restless children running from altar to altar to altar?  (Paul was once a restless Saul!)

Friends in Christ, we are truly IN Christ.  Not every day do we get to reflect on the all-inclusive, all-loving, all-surrounding embrace of a God in whom “we live and move and have our being.”  Being in Christ is where we find ourselves.  So now all we we can do is enjoy it, take a breath...and go make disciples.  Go invite others into this understanding, into this joyful awareness.  Tell them that we don’t have to make all these other sacrifices at all these other altars!  Go, make disciples by pointing them to the water and the word of life, and this community of love, this communion.  For simply in this following, there is peace.

Peace that is fuller and deeper than any other peace that any idols can offer.  Love divine, all loves excelling!   Jesus calls us away from those other loves, to come and follow, make your sacrifices here, and make disciples.  You are Christ’s witnesses to these things: you have a job to do!  It’s a blessed burden, a labor of love.

Thanks be to God, who holds us and this whole cosmos now...and forever more.  Go spread that Good News.  Breathe.  It’s gonna be ok.  Because at this altar, we celebrate...that... God’s got us.  AMEN.

March 22 -- Fourth Sunday in Lent

So many ways to go here!  We’ve just eaten a banquet of grace-filled, Gospel words...not a Grubhub fast-food leave-it-on-your-doorstep delivery, but our Bible readings this and every Sunday are like a long dining hall table of every kind of food, and family of all generations and from all over the world gathered around, and we pray and feast).  But I’d like to focus on that pool where Jesus tells the blind man to wash: what that meant then, and how this speaks to each of us today.
—
First, Jesus puts mud in his eyes.  I know I’ve spoken before about that great toast that I grew up with: before clinking glasses,  “Here’s mud in your eye!”  That comes from this passage.  “Here’s to seeing things in a new and healthy way!” First Jesus puts mud in his eyes, and then he tells him to go wash off that mud...

This is the 6th sign of Jesus in the Gospel of John.  The 1st you  might remember (anyone know?) is the water-to-wine.  Next Jesus heals the royal official’s son, he heals the paralytic, he feeds the 5000, walks on water.  Then the blind man today.  Then Lazarus.)  All signs point to Jesus’ divinity.
7 signs all together in John.  And it’s no coincidence that there are also 7 days of creation, way back in Genesis.  Jesus is re-creating, re-newing, re-defining, re-freshing the whole creation in these 7 signs.  So, hear these stories and wonders of Jesus in a cosmic, universal context.  They’re always about/symbolizing much more than just one person being healed (or even 5000 being fed) a long time ago...

So today is the 6th sign, right here in the mud of “quarantine”, 40 days, Lent.  Jesus puts mud in the blind man’s eyes and then tells him to “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam (which means Sent).” Go wash in the Sending Waters.

So what does it mean to wash in the Pool of Sent?  In the Sending Bath?  Sounds like a baptismal font to me!  ;)
—
[page/scroll through your worship folder]
See the sections in the box G-W-M-S?
What’s the longest section?  Trick question: Sending...

So again, what does it mean to be washed in the Sending Waters?  In the Pool of Sent (or Siloam)?

The once-blind man’s story gives us some ideas to instruct us for the “longest part of the worship service”:

First of all, being washed in the Sending waters means being healed!  Christ heals us too!  What are your “blind spots”?  Think about that this week.  And know that Jesus puts mud in our eyes too and sends us also past the Sent Pool and out into our lives anew, re-freshed, re-created, re-defined, re-visioning!  Our gathering, even like this, even virtually, around the scripture — ancient words and prayers of Christians who have been backed into corners before — Christ is the mud in our eyes, and then as we pass by those holy waters on the way out  (why we have the font at the back) we have been made new!  Being washed means that we are healed, sisters and brothers, friends in Christ!  We are forgiven and cleaned!

Being washed in “Sent” also means being honest.  “All I know is that once I was blind but now I see.”  Here’s what I know.  Pay attention to your experience.  I feel like 9x out of 10 when a person changes their mind about something (maybe this has happened to you?), it’s not because of a new doctrine that got rammed down their throat; it’s because of an experience:

*All I know is that once I never really cared that deeply for protecting the environment, for example, but then I spent a week in the Rockies hiking and camping…
*All I know is that I was taught that gay people were bad, but then I worked next to Larry…one of the kindest people I know.
*All I know is that I always thought Christians were judgmental and insular and even cruel, and then I came to Bethlehem…

The blind man reminds us to pay attention, and be honest about our experiences, how they affect us, and how they change us.  We could remain unchanged, even with our sight restored… [pause]  But not the blind man: “All I know is that once I was blind, but now I can see.”  For the blind man, everything changes after his sight is restored.

Being washed in the Sending waters also means facing opposition and even aggression calmly.  Did you see how he did that.  He just stuck to his truth calmly, even while the inevitable opposition came on strong.  This breaks with the way it’s “supposed to be,” you see.  The blind man stays calm —and we see — faithful.  He’s not swayed by the fire and fury, the violence of the opposition.

I think that can be so instructive for us these days amid a global pandemic.  Staying calm.  Staying faithful.  Not being swept up in the fire and fury.  Here’s what I know: God is good.  Christ showers us with grace, with new ways of looking at things, with creativity as our vision is radically adjusted, and that the Holy Spirit binds us together and sends us to be hope and joy and peace and grace for one another and for this world...even if we’re doing that from quarantine, from the complicated isolation of this unprecedented, 40-day Lent.

Finally, being washed in Sent means worshipping Jesus...even while others don’t believe or “see”.  Vs. 38:  “He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him.”

On this Fourth Sunday in Lent we too fall down and worship Jesus.  We entrust ourselves to Christ’s mud touch and care and transformative healing and restoration once again.

We give thanks for all that God has done for us — we show that thanksgiving in our tithing and our offerings, and our songs of praise.  ‘Worship’ means worthy.  What is worthy of our sacrifice?  That’s the true object of our worship.  People make sacrifices and put their trust — i.e. people worship — all kinds of things.  The blind man worships Jesus…who loves us, whether we fall down, worship and recognize him or not.
Whether we see it or not.  (Sing with children, “Jesus loves me when I’m good...Jesus loves me when I’m bad…”)

But friends, that gift of new vision is ours this day.  This pool is right over there…We are bathed in those ever-flowing waters of the “Sending”.  And in that, is the peace that passes all human understanding.

That peace is ours this day, and always, in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

November 10 -- Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

Well, we are coming into the ‘season of questions’:  questions around the Thanksgiving table, questions around the Christmas dinner table.  Many times those questions are lovingly asked, as family and friends re-unite and catch-up and check in:  “Well, can you tell us about life in the big city?  How are classes going? What new projects are you working on?”  

You know when you get asked a genuine question, how the asker truly wants to learn and hear more because they care about you and are genuinely interested in you, and what you have to say.  Open-heated questions.  

And then there are other questions...questions that are not bolstered with a backdrop of support or any clear intention of loving curiosity and concern or excitement.  These are mean-hearted questions.

Have you ever been asked a mean-hearted question? — Questions that are meant to “catch” you or point out some shortcoming?  Questions that are really just meant to embarrass you, even as they might be skillfully worded to make the asker look totally innocent, even well-intentioned?  Sometimes ridiculous scenarios are created just to see how you’ll react or respond.  Again, questions that are just trying to make you look bad.  I’m afraid these kinds of questions can show up during the holidays too, during this season of questions, and throughout the year as well.

They could even be the exact same examples I just gave...but the tone is so different.  “So tell us about life in the big city.”  (clear disdain for a location or choice you made to move away)  “How are classes going?” (knowing full well that you’re not in school at the moment, unlike other siblings) “What new projects are you working on?” (hinting at some past failures or a pattern of jumping from thing to think without finishing) 

Some questions, friends in Christ, are just cruel.

Ahhh, pay attention to questions these days, and in this quickly-approaching holiday season.  (And pray for God always to be on your/our lips and in your/our heart, as you/we both ask questions and respond in the coming days.)

--

Jesus, once again, is experiencing the latter forms of questions here in our text — the kinds meant to embarrass and “catch”.  And certainly a ridiculous scenario (even to ancient ears).  You can almost hear the cruelty to the Sadducees’ tone.  

But Christ, once again, uses their mean-heartedness to teach us a lesson about God and offer a vision of justice and peace.  Often the asker of the cruel question has no desire to learn, and I wonder if the Sadducees never learned from Jesus’ response.  But we we get to.  Two thousand years later!  We get to look with fresh eyes and consider Christ’s response.

“Whose wife will the woman be?” they asked.

And Jesus responds with a vision of heaven: In God, that is, in heaven, a woman will not be passed down like an object, from brother to brother.  In God, everyone is valued fully — the text says, they “will become like angels”.  In God, no one is cast aside or passed along crudely.  In God, mean-heartedness and cruelty is no more.  Tears and pain are no more.  In God, dying is no more.  Jesus gives us a glimpse of heaven.  Can you imagine?  I hope that you can!  And that these strange ideas in this text today might even give us direction and instruction for how we live now.  What would it look like to lift others up like angels?!  (And let our selves be seen too...as angels?!)  That’s the image in Luke here!  Do you see yourself as an angel?

Are we capable of seeing and treating each other as angels?  

Each person that walks into this church this next week, can we welcome them as angels?  What if you envision each person who comes into your business or classroom, or sits at the cafe table next to you or waits at the stoplight across from you...as an angel?!  Not just someone to be passed by, passed down, passed over, like the widow in the Sadducees scenario.   But angels.  

(Maybe their example is not that ridiculous, after all, when we think about how carelessly we can overlook one another because we’re always in such a hurry, or suspicious, or actually somewhere deep down believe we’re better than someone else, that they’re not worthy of angelic dignity...)

This text is a wake-up call, friends in Christ.  To see our neighbors, to see strangers in our midst, to see family members and community partners … not just as fellow human beings … but as angels!  Talk about resurrection!  Christ lives (“I know that my redeemer lives”) and so do we...and not just as mere humans but, in Christ, we live as angels, like angels, for one another and for this hurting planet!

Friends, we can glimpse, we can live into a bit-o-heaven even here and even now, even in these mean-hearted days! Our God is a God of life and is calling us to open our eyes and our hearts even now.  This new life is ours, and it’s not just for after we leave this earth!  

Our God is a God of the living, a God of “the now”.  And this God has come near to be with us...in wine and water and wheat and wherever God wants to show up!  This community, this congregational meeting today, this neighborhood, this city, even about this Capitol Beltway!  

This God of the living has chosen to come along side us, and so we start living anew today — Open-hearted.  Interested and caring.  Noticing others, slowing down to appreciate the angels all around us!  This is our call.  

This is grace again, showered down on you and on me.  Thanks be to God.  Christ will come...and Christ is here now.  AMEN.

November 3 -- All Saints Sunday

Got a voice mail message from my friend Edgar the other day:  “Dan, how you doin’ buddy.  Been a long time.  Things are good here.  You know: [chuckle] ‘first world’ baby.  I got first world problems...” He goes on...

But I’ve been chuckling and thinking about his message this week.  And I think about it today as we revisit and are reshaped by this beautiful Zacchaeus story about Christ’s transformative forgiveness and self-invitation.  I think it helps to start all that from Edgar’s angle: “first world”.  In other words, it helps to start by realizing that we’re up in the tree too, with Zacchaeus.  First world problems: can’t get a nice enough view.

I remember when we did some painting at our house in California some years back.  I’m thinking about giving the pastor’s study here at church an accent wall of color too.  I can’t think of a better example of first-world problems.  I mean we stressed out about this, maybe you have been before too — “What if we buy the paint we think we like, but don’t once it’s up on the wall?”  That’s a first world problem!  [I imagine we can argue why the color of our walls is so important.]  But c’mon...first world, baby.

We’re up there with Zacchaeus, friends, looking down on the rest.  Maybe we haven’t intentionally defrauded anyone quite like that dirty, little tax-collector Zaccaeus, but we’re all broken sinners.  And those of us in the first world have certainly squandered more than our fair share of resources over and against our neighbors, sometimes totally unknowingly.  (I remember when I learned what my carbon footprint was, just in eating a hamburger, much less driving a car or flying in an airplane.)  We’ve all defrauded or cut ourselves off from the rest (pretending not to see or just not caring).  Who would have thought that ‘falling short’ (of the glory of God) meant ‘climbing high’?  But we’ve got a perfect visual of that today: Zack up there in the tree.  (Picture from Nats parade.)  

And not only are we separated and isolated from other parts of the world, friends, we’re separated from each other.  And we know we need each other, we know we’re meant to be together, but still we want to climb that tree.   So we’ve tried to get both — we’ve invented the internet and Facebook so that we can have it all — the glorious tree house up high and the ‘connection’ too.  But of course that’s not a real connection; that’s not sharing a meal at home together.  What a difference.  (You should write an essay this week about the difference between spending an evening alone on Facebook (ok) vs. spending an evening at a dinner party with your favorite people.)

It’s an ok good view from up here, in the tree.  That is, until Jesus comes walking into town, stops at the foot of our tree...[pause] and then our view gets even better...

Sisters and brothers in Christ, God didn’t create us to live up above the rest, or apart from one another.  Isolated.  God made us for community — both in our neighborhoods and across our globe.  Community is at the heart of this passage.  Zacchaeus is being restored to the community, and that restoration of community is at the heart of his salvation:  “Salvation has come to this house today.”  Even with all our defrauding one another and grumbling about each other, we are meant to be together.  God made us for community.  God made us for each other.  And that’s at the heart of salvation.  Salvation is not just for you to get across the finish line, forgetting all the rest; no, salvation looks like a dinner party!

Sisters and brothers in Christ, Jesus walks up to our trees this day, looks up at us, and calls us down too.  Each of us.  We can all get caught up there…not just because of our first-world problems, but because of our human problems: our pride, our self-centeredness, and our fear.  We can retreat up the tree and want to live out our days up there, but Jesus walks up to our tree and says, “Come down.”  In fact he says, “Hurry and come down.”  What are you doing up there?  What are you doing locked up there apart from the neighborhood?  What are you doing walking on other peoples’ backs?  Come down from there.”  Jesus gently calls us down.  Not with a lecture about wealth and poverty, and money, or a guilt trip about our first-world problems, but with another surprise: the self-invite.

Biblically-sanctioned intrusion (just for when you feel like you might be barging in on a friend.)  “I’m coming to your house today,” Jesus says.  Didn’t see that one coming.  Like later in John’s Gospel — “Do you have anything to eat?” — our Lord lovingly intrudes and, in so doing, empowers, even the most unlikely of characters — the tax man!  Even you...even me.

All of us, called out, called down, called back to the earth.

This story is amazing because, notice the order here: Jesus didn’t offer forgiveness and salvation and then Zacchaeus came down and invited Jesus over to celebrate.  First, Jesus just invites himself over, tells him to come down.  First there’s the intrusion.  And then Zacchaeus makes this incredible statement -- “Half my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor.  And anyone I’ve defrauded, I’ll pay back 4x as much”!!!  Jesus didn’t ask for any of that, but Zacchaeus just couldn’t help himself.  He had been flung by God’s grace out of that tree...and just went crashing into a new life of radical generosity.  And that’s when Jesus says, “Salvation has come to this house.”  Zacchaeus has been restored to the community.  He’s come back to the earth.

Maybe there should be a St. Zacchaeus Lutheran church!  (I’m always thinking about church names.)  Why don’t we have that?  Because Zacchaeus was one of those turn-around saints.  In some ways that’s way more inspiring than all the saints who were always willing to share what they had in radically generous ways!  Zacchaeus let himself be flipped, cold-turkey, from incredibly stingy and conniving to radically merciful and generous.  St. Zacchaeus.
--
Jesus is so bold, sisters and brothers in Christ, that he invites himself into our homes!  I don’t know about you, but my home’s a mess right now (especially in the middle of Oct-Nov busyness, my study’s a mess right now here at church).  The last person I’d want to invite over is Jesus.  But we don’t get to invite him, he invites himself.

This is where I don’t understand the language of some of our siblings in Christ, who say, “All you have to do is invite Jesus into your heart.”  No, he invites himself, ready or not!!

And as a result, everything changes!  It’s grace, it’s God’s arrival, that turns our lives around, not guilt or shame about our first-world lifestyles.  It’s love and relationship that changes our ways, not lectures about our self-centeredness and isolationism.  Do you see?  It’s grace, it’s love that brings us down — back to the community, to share all that we have.

Salvation, friends in Christ, comes to your house this All Saints Day...as the bread and the wine intrude, as the rain waters of our baptisms cause us to slip right out of the trees of our self-congratulatory exploits and carry us back into the muddy village.  Back to the table.

It was a bird’s eye view of Jesus.
But now, thanks be to God, we’re sharing a meal with him.  Now we’re across the table from Christ and therefore from each other.  Now everything changes.   AMEN.

September 1 -- Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Jesus says when you go to a banquet or a dinner party, don’t sit at the best spot, take the path of humility.

Well frankly, I find such command hard to strike a chord for us at here Bethlehem.  Because we at Bethlehem are mostly coming from backgrounds, steeped in the virtues of modesty, humility, if-you-can’t-say-something-nice-don’t-say-anything-at-all, the virtues of self-sacrifice, never pushing your way to the front.   

“After you, please.”  — “Oh no, I’m OK.  Thank you.  How are you?” — “No, no, no.  You first, I insist.” — It’s how I was raised, as a little boy, and I imagine (and have noticed), in general, it’s been even more intensified for little girls.  Soft-spokenness is esteemed.  It’s even seen as a virtue.     

In fact, I would even venture to say that asserting oneself too much in lots of circles would really be looked down upon.  Making bold requests, or offering your solid, unbiased opinion, or speaking out of turn.  You can do that here in our midst, because no one will stop you — everybody wants to be nice — but many of us probably won’t look favorably on it, might even talk about you behind your back afterwards.  Right?  “Wasn’t he pushy?”

So when “YOU FIRST” is about the only thing many of us Christians are assertive about, wouldn’t it seem we’ve got this Gospel lesson covered?  Of course we’d give up the best seat...  Is there really a guiding word here for us?  Can we check this Gospel lesson off the list? “Yep, got it covered.”

As I was reflecting on this with some colleagues, however, a wise friend pointed out, “But isn’t our modesty/humility, and willingness to flip the conversation or the attention so quickly on another, a way of taking the place of honor?” 

Because by letting ourselves be passed over, we are essentially saying, “I don’t need any help.”  Let all the eyes go on to the poor, the lame, the blind -- the misfits -- not on me.  “I DON’T NEED ANYONE’S HELP.   Let others be vulnerable.  I’ll sit right here, thank you very much.”  Could we be placing ourselves in a place of honor when we say that?  When we assert our independence and tell everyone ‘I don’t need your/any help’?  

Friends in Christ, this is a text again about hospitality and community formation, on all kinds of levels.  Welcoming the stranger among us, and welcoming us among our strangeness.  There is an important place for you at this banquet!  And for everyone!...

The truth is, the reign of God looks a lot more like the Department of Motor Vehicles than our congregations.  Everybody’s there!  What did Martin Luther King, Jr. say?  “Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.”  We are called always to extend God’s wide welcome to everyone we meet.  Jesus couldn’t be more explicit here.  

We are invited again today into Jesus’ radical (last week I said) “holy flipping.”  That’s very Lukan: Jesus is always flipping things around, changing perspectives.  Bringing the haughty and the rich down, and raising up the poor, sick, bent over, outcasts.  The last first, the first last.  In fact, let’s just try something, as a way of getting into this text a bit…  

New perspective!  You probably sit where you do because it’s the best seat in the house...for you.  And now you’ve given that up for the opposite.  Worship in your new seat for the rest of the service today.  And in your processing afterwards, while your having lunch with family or driving home, the question is not “Did you like it, the different perspective today?” but rather “What do you notice from your new place?”  

Today we have again a glimpse of God’s original intention of radical diversity.  And of course that includes you, that includes us.  God’s welcome most definitely includes you, but not just you and me and all those who look and dress and live and worship like we do:  It also those who look, and dress, and live and worship very differently.  God always includes the outsiders.  For God, diversity, strangeness, difference is not a problem that creeps into our neighborhoods and our churches.  It’s God’s original intention!  Look at the creation story or the Pentecost event, when the church was born:  

     God creates a bunch of creatures, gathers a bunch of people, blesses ‘em, promises to stay with ‘em, and frees ‘em to go -- it happens in Genesis, in Acts, and it happens today.  

Our farmers and scientists warn us of the dangers of mono-cultures and extol the virtues of cross-pollinating.  That’s what this text is really all about: CROSS-POLLINATING!  Mixing it up.

Yeah! The reign of God is like a lush and colorful garden with all kinds of different smells, bees moving from here to there.  The top seat to the low seat to the middle seat -- seating doesn’t even matter.  What matters is all the mixing, the learning from one another’s different perspectives, the celebrating, and welcoming.  AND EATING.  (just a glimpse of that on Friday’s Summer Pictures and Stories!) God’s banquet is a feast of rich foods and drinks.  Laughter, children, stories, and songs, and dessert.  Do you see?!  Cross-pollinating.  CROSS pollinating.  CROSS pollinating.  

This is the moment of our church body, by the way.  The ELCA. We are starting to break down as a mono-(bi-tri-)cultural church.  And we are in fact starting to cross-pollinate.  The ELCA publishes an African American hymnal -- did you know that?   We’ve got one in Spanish too!   We’ve got a joint declaration of justification with our Roman Catholic siblings, we’ve got the Call to Common Mission with Episcopalians, pulpit and table sharing, agreements and joint statements and ongoing dialogues with Methodists, Presbyterians, Moravians, interfaith dialogues and relationships and education materials committed to honoring our Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu neighbors.  Mixing, mingling, cross-pollinating...not because diversity is some PC goal for the future, that’s the original state of God’s creation way back at the beginning!  And isn’t it interesting, as we do this, how the ELCA’s budget and head count is shrinking? Similar dynamic on a smaller scale too, right?  Many have reached their limit of cross-pollinating.  “OK, with that group — I WILL NOT come along.”  We all do this.  We all reach our limit.  Where can the conversation stop for you?  And where is God nudging you to grow?  Could that be Jesus asking you to take a different seat?  (for some, that’s letting yourself be served!)  A new perspective?  God’s welcome and embrace is always larger than ours...And friends, God’s mission goes on, despite our cut-offs, and limits.  The welcome of God extends always, with or without our participation or permission.      

This is tough work.  Hospitality is tricky — it’s tricky just with our friends and family.  It’s a lot of work cross-pollinating, learning to live with strangers.  But it’s right work.  It’s good.  

Friends in Christ, let’s keep working together as a community of faith at our hospitality.  Let’s stick together as we reach out, struggling to give that person — who is the most challenging for you — a top seat at the table...because like it or not, God already has!  And God gives you a place too.  Thanks be to God for new perspectives, new opportunities both to serve...and to be served (for those of us who might glory in our upstanding humility).  Today’s a new day of grace!  So let’s celebrate: let’s eat, let’s party, let’s sing!  The banquet is here and now!  AMEN.

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HoD — ‘Vamos todos al banquete’  #523 — English or Spanish

July 7 -- Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Grace to you and peace….well maybe…  :)
Jesus sends us out like lambs out into the midst of wolves!

That’s us he’s talking about!  When it says he sends “the 70” out, scholars are pretty clear that’s referring to all humanity.  Everyone is sent!  (I haven’t preached Luke’s Gospel since Lent, but remember that Luke is very interested in the Gospel of Christ radiating out, locally then globally, from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria...and to the ends of the earth.)

So how do you feel about that?!  Being the ones Jesus sends?

Ever wonder, like I do: What are we you doing, listening to and following after this Jesus?  I published that question in the newsletter this week, with my email asking for responses and got like 0!  :)   Uhhhh.  What are we doing following after Jesus, sends us, like lambs into the midst of wolves?

Why do you follow?  It’s good, in these hot humid days to ask what this is all about?  And to stop and take in the fact that Jesus asks us to go into some pretty terribly risky situations.  I love how he says (vs.2-3), “Go on YOUR way.”  My way?  My way is always the a easier way.  The most calculated, safest way.  The path of least resistance.  Jesus is telling us that we’ll most likely be rejected, even eaten up here!

I’m amazed Christianity is as strong as it is!  Aren’t you?  I mean, this faith stuff is not for the faint-hearted.

When tragedy strikes (my 42 year old friend from seminary’s husband died suddenly and mysteriously last week), when disease creeps in, when friends abandon/even betray you, when marriages fall apart, why do you keep following after this Jesus?
And then, at the core of this passage, like so many in the Gospel of Luke, is the call to stand up to the forces of evil in this world.  It’s not just rah, rah hang in there passage.  It’s not just about survival as lambs among wolves.  At the core of this mission Jesus gives to us (the 70) is the call to get face to face with the powers of this world and proclaiming a bold NO to the ways and means that hurt people and earth itself.

When you embrace, preach and live the peace of Christ (that we’ll share in a moment), ironically, you actually create conflict!  When the powers of this world are threatened, by a higher vision of Divine peace, the peace of Christ — where all are included, all are fed, housed, clothed, welcomed, educated — the powers start to get very disturbed, the dragons start to wake up and snarl and try to squelch the disturbance.  (Mother Theresa: feed hungry =saint; ask why there is hunger = communist)

See, everything in Luke is tying back to Jesus‘ inaugural address that we shared together back in January, where the poor have good news brought to them, the captives go free, debts are forgiven, the year of the Lord’s favor.  Luke, remember, I often like to call it: the Mercy Book.  When you start talking mercy, especially to strangers in power, like where Jesus sends us — out there! — you’ve got another thing coming.

Wait, wolves?!!!
Where is the Good News for us in that, friends?

Well, I believe it’s in the journey!  See, Jesus says it over and over, and it’s still really hard to get, but I’ll say it again (even to myself):  The kingdom of God is here!   It’s right here (at hand, upon us!  (candidacy essays: “I want to usher in the kingdom.”)
Our Creator God is already with us.  Christ is right by our side.  The Holy Spirit is moving all around in this sanctuary and in your home and your car and your office or classroom!  Out on the open road.  It’s in the journey!

Do you know the kinds of adventures you’ll have when you risk the call that Christ has for you here?  Don’t wait any longer.  Have the conversation that needs to be had.  Make the change in your life that will lead to deeper faith.  Let the investment go that’s been tying you down.  This is Christ calling us.  Sending you.  And do you know the kinds of fellow travelers you’ll meet?  The kinds of joys you’ll share, even amid the great struggles and pains?   The kingdom of God is here!  Now.  It’s all part of it.

I’m afraid I’m not making sense.
Church stories…
I have a friend who’s been the pastor of small church.  Opportunities for growth and renewal keep knocking on their door...literally but he cannot for the life of him get the congregation to trust God and open that door.  It would revitalize the whole ministry, but they are so stuck on protecting their building and their traditions.  He told me the other day, “It’s like there’s no room for God in there.  It’s like the Spirit is locked up in a cage, like a bird.”  The divine is crowded out by fear of the unknown.  And they just can’t take that step.

Meanwhile, here’s another church I knew in San Diego a few years back: They were literally dying.  Maybe that’s what it takes: my friend’s congregation wasn’t quite at that point yet.)  Anyway, Calvary Lutheran (aptly named in the moment) came together to have that really tough meeting about closing the doors.  It was a younger member of the church who stood up, faced with the realities of budget and staffing shortages, that said, “Well, if we’re going to die, let’s die serving.”  The whole congregation agreed.  This became their rally cry.  And with that they opened up a food pantry in their underserved neighborhood, where in a couple months and with some miraculous grants that came through they started feeding literally hundreds of families a week!   More than one of the more popular organizations downtown.  They just quietly kept feeding people — the whole congregation, not just a few dedicated members.  It became their whole identity.  Suddenly they weren’t worried as much about all they didn’t have.  Their whole perspective changed.  They heeded the call that Christ had for them all along.  And in that came true peace.

And it’s not romantic, it’s not like all their problems were solved and the church grew and recovered by leaps and bounds.  The renewal came in the paradigm shift, the radical re-envisioning of what it means to follow Jesus.

These are the kinds of adventures we have as we risk the call that Christ has for us.  The kingdom of God is not something far off, someday down the line — it’s right here, now (even as we’re dying)!

I love when babies scream during a baptism.  Well, I don’t love it, but I see a powerful reminder every time it happens:  this Christian life is not an easy one.  We should all shed a few tears.  It’s lambs-amid-wolves business.  And yet in this same crazy commission, Jesus talks about peace, true peace.  Finding and knowing God’s peace, right where you are.  Not moving around from place to place, always in search of a better deal, or more comfort or tastier food.  Right?  He says, “Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide.”
So here we go.  Jesus told them to go, and so they went.  And God stays with them.  God stays with you, this day and always.  AMEN.

May 5 -- Third Sunday of Easter

Grace to you and peace from Christ who is risen indeed and who greets us with the breath of peace…AMEN.

These texts are amazing!   I’ve been thinking this week: this is kind of text I’d want to have at my funeral!  (Have you ever thought about that?  What are the biblical texts that you want the world to hear and know…) 

This has got to be one of those...and coupled with Saul’s conversion!!?  

Let’s look at this text of Jesus on the beach.  First, I’ve got to show you this: [story, then apron — “Biblically mandated BBQing”]

[Also the story of fish (fresh caught rainbow trout) for breakfast up in the Rocky Mountains!]

This text taps into the best stuff of life: the morning, food, fellowship, the water’s edge, a bbq, and of course Christ sitting right there with us.

—

OK, let’s get into it:  I would call this post-resurrection scene, maybe the title of this sermon “The Undoing”.  

There are multiple layers of “un-doing” happening here.  That is, something that happened before Christ’s death and resurrection is being “undone” now:

For example, there’s the “undoing” of the night meal (the last supper of betrayal).  All the brokenness of the night, the scattering of the disciples that we marked and embodied here at BLC on Maundy Thursday (running out), it’s undone in this scene...with breakfast.

“Come have breakfast,” Jesus says.  What does the psalmist say?  “Weeping spends the night, but joy comes in the morning.” 

Have you ever had a terrible night, but in the morning, as you watch the sun come up, it’s like you can breathe again?

Sometimes a “terrible night” can be literal; usually it’s a metaphor.  Perhaps it’s a whole season or years at a time, maybe its a tragic event, or comment or person that simply haunts you to no end it seems, a voice in your ear that presses down on your whole being.  Failure at night: Peter: “We’ve caught nothing.”  Grief can be a long, terrible night.  Addiction can be a terrible night.  Recovery can be a long, terrible night.  Pent-up-anger and bitterness at the way things have turned out...can “crash at your place” and keep you tossing and turning for way too long.  Weeping, pain, sorrow, anger, fear spends the night. 

But then, the “sun comes up”.  The night is undone.  And that joyful invitation from Jesus:  “Come have breakfast.”  How is Christ inviting you to breakfast this new day?  

First it’s the invitation, the gathering.  The reversal or un-doing of the scattering.  Come back together, i.e. re-member (remember?)…

And then it’s food!  The undoing of hunger.  The undoing or the breaking of the fast.

— 

But there’s more undoing in this text, when we look at Peter.  There’s the undoing of the paralysis of sin…

Despite Peter’s shame about what he’s done.  He still goes to Jesus.  This is so good! 

Peter of course denied Jesus 3 times, remember?  Imagine the shame, the guilt, the burden he’s carrying.  That’s symbolized in this story by him putting his clothes on and jumping into the water.  Did you catch that?  Kind of weird. It says he was naked — naked fishing — but when Jesus invites him to breakfast, he puts his clothes on and Forrest Gumps it into the sea to swim back to Jesus.  

The Gospel of John layers everything with meaning and intention: and the intention here is that we associate Peter’s shame to the shame and embarrassment of Adam and Eve in the Garden.  Remember when they eat the fruit, and suddenly they knew they were naked? And hid themselves?  That’s Peter, putting his clothes on when Jesus finds him.  He’s ashamed of what he’s done!

But!  He goes to Jesus anyway!   And not just gently wanders his way: no, he goes diving into the sea!  So rich!  He swims back to Jesus.

What’s that look like for you?  How might you “swim back to Jesus” these days, friends?  Put the clothes on, cover up if you must, but dive in: crash into the waves, or let the current take you back to the shoreline, back to the meal, the fire, the Christ.

So more undoing.  Even though Peter has shame, it’s not going to stop him.  It’s not going to paralyze him.  

This is an amazing thing too: post-resurrection something happens, and the disciples no long stay locked up or frozen.

Think about that for a second: I mean, these disciples who started out on Easter evening locked behind the closed doors for fear become the radical proclaimers of the Gospel throughout the ancient Mediterranean, risking everything, life and limb to share the good news of Jesus!  What happened?  

What kind of conversion took place?  What switched?  We’re starting to see that with Peter here.  (Paul in the First Lesson.)  The sin is not going to stop them.

I love those stories of coaches and teachers who were labelled “problem kids” when they were younger.  Maybe that’s some of you.  In some ways, it’s all of us: the same ones who drove their coaches and teachers crazy, grow up to become the very best teachers and coaches.  Something happened.  The past, the parameters, the definitions and labels are not going to stop them.  

Christ is calling us out of the boat.  And Peter goes!  Something switched in him.

—

Finally, this undoing happens at the end of our text.  Peter is wearing the sopping wet clothes of his guilt and shame when he comes ashore, but then we have this dialogue.  “Peter do you love me?” Yes.  “Feed my lambs.” “Peter do you love me?” Yes. “Tend my sheep.” “Peter do you love me?” Yes. “Feed my sheep.”  3x.  Do you know the undoing that’s happening there?

Jesus is forgiving Peter’s denial!  Jesus is undoing his guilt.

The resurrected Christ has undone sin and death itself!  So we can lighten up.  Take those cold, soppy, sea-stinky rags off, and have some food, warm yourself, know that you are loved.  And now, go and share that love with others.  

For this forgiveness is for you too.  Thanks be to God, AMEN.