February 14 -- That and More (TransfigurationB)

Some of you know I was a youth director before I went to seminary.  And during my time at Holy Trinity in Thousand Oaks, CA working with the junior high kids, a pastor came to serve that church, who I greatly admired.  He was only there for a short time as an interim.  But we know how even short stays with dynamic leaders can be such a gift (I’m thinking of Pastor Elijah here).  This new pastor was so kind to the people of that congregation.  He was very intentional in all of his conversations; he was very good at connecting people with one another; he visited the sick; he met with the youth kids; and he started up a small group program while he was there.  The church grew during his short time.  I knew this man as a kind and loving pastor, truly a shepherding spirit, caring for God’s people, loving them, feeding them with Holy Communion.  He was just so nice.

But the more I listened to his sermons and read his book, I started to realize that he was something more than just a nice, loving pastor.  This man was a prophet for justice and equality for all.  When he preached, it was like the prophet Amos or Isaiah standing in front of us, crying out on behalf of God for peace in our world and for the end of all oppression.  Like Moses, “Let my people go!”  He called us out on our self-centered, white-privileged ways, that fail to extend the same love that we’ve received to the margins: to the immigrant, the stranger, the outcast and the forgotten.  He even talked about justice for the earth and all the creatures of God!  It was the first time I had ever considered that the United States may just be the new Roman Empire, and he reminded us often about Jesus‘ ministry over and against...actually under...the most powerful nation in the world.  We squirmed uncomfortably in our pews, but something cracked me open and I saw him in a new way.   

God is calling us to be more than just a nice place and nice people that gather for worship once a week, he prophesied.  God is calling us to do more than just offer some charity to the poor, offer some generous handouts, down to those who have less.  All these things are good, but God is calling us, he would preach, to be about radical, systemic change, dreaming and risking it all for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, even if it means our lives.  And then he would kindly greet us with a handshake or a hug, always a nice smile, as we came out of the church at the end of our service.   

This pastor I’m talking about is George Johnson...of blessed memory.   He was my friend, he was nice, he was a gentle pastor...but at one point I suddenly started to see him in a new way too.  He was a fiery prophet calling for justice and change, challenging us to risk our lives and be actual disciples, followers of Jesus, not just safe, comfortable believers in Jesus.

As we look at our text today, and as we’ve been looking at the Gospel of Mark in this cold season, I think it can be easy and even tempting to conclude that Jesus is a just prophet for social justice and change.  That’s because he is.  Just like Pastor George was just a kind, loving guy.

Up to this point — Chapter 9 in Mark — Jesus has turned his world on its head with his love and care for the poor and the outcast, with his casting out the demonic systems and illnesses.  Bringing women and children to the center, touching and healing the ritually unclean, the bleeding, the dead, the foreigner.  I mean, he’s advocating truly universal health, education and equality for everyone.  It’s not a detached, complicated, sanitized spirituality with Jesus in the first 9 chapters of Mark.  He’s not hovering, esoterically; he’s rooted and radical and real.  It’s ministry on the ground, and in the trenches — tangible, immediate and welcoming.  Yes?  I’m always amazed how this social justice of Jesus gets suppressed and even denied, many times by Christians themselves, only seeing him as a spiritual savior of individual souls...rather than an incarnate savior of whole communities, particularly, especially those who are oppressed or overlooked.  Mark 1-9 reeks of Jesus’ radical justice agenda.

But, just like good ol’ Pastor George was more than just a nice, sweet pastor — which he was — there was more…

Jesus is more than just a prophet for social justice and radical welcome of the stranger and the outcast — which he is and always will be.  But there’s more...  

And in our text today, a few of the disciples (and us, by the way) get cracked open, and see Jesus in an even larger way.  

This isn’t about getting someone wrong, and suddenly seeing them in a totally new and different way.  (That happens too.)

But this is about getting a person right, but suddenly seeing them in an even more expansive way.  Setting our mind not just on earthly things but even more, on divine things.  

This prophet Jesus (he was such a prophet that some were mistaking him for John the Baptist and Elijah) — this prophet for social justice and change, was even more than that, friends in Christ:

This prophet was God’s own Son.  “Listen to him, listen to his agenda.”  All this stuff he’s been doing, is more than just earthly revolutionary activist-for-change behavior, upturning traditions and challenging assumptions...

(!) This is divine presence come down to be among us...to be for us, and for everyone.  Jesus is God’s Son.  What a way to end this season after Epiphany and move into Lent — with another Epiphany, a divine revealing:  “This is my Son, the Beloved.”  And then a command: “Listen to him.”  

Transfiguration is the mountain top experience of this time of the church year, before we drop down into Lent this week.  

Know that the one you follow, the one who brings children and women to the center, who heals the sick and the demon-possessed, who welcomes the outsider, even if their religion or their appearance is different...know that the one you follow, who calls and empowers the people of his time — and us — to imitate him in this radical business of  — not just donating — but moving aside and faithfully sharing.  Know that that one you follow isn’t just a human prophet for justice.  He’s even more: he’s God’s own Son.  He’s the salvation of the world.  He’s life eternal for you and for all.  He’s love everlasting.  He’s grace and peace that the world cannot give.  He’s freedom and joy.  He’s hope for the future and thanksgiving for the past.  He’s bread and wine, body and blood poured out for you and for...everyone...even the creatures.  He so loves this whole earth, that he gave his whole self away.  
Know that the one who heals the sick and raises the dead raises you too — right now! — from that which holds you down and hold you back from being the beloved child that God has created you to be.  Know that this prophet Jesus, is forgiveness of all your sins, all your self-centered behavior, all your ignorance and shame, and greed and envy.  GONE.  Jesus is God’s Son, not just a social prophet.  And you are made new today because of it!

Your slate has been wiped clean!  And you are being sent back out there, into this Lenten season, into this coming spring, renewed, hopeful, at peace, and ready to serve, pray, fast, and give (just like Jesus did).  

So let’s listen to him, siblings in Christ.  Let’s listen to him.  Let’s hold out our hands, and open our ears and our minds and our hearts, as we move off the icy and foggy mountain top, and listen.  For God’s own son has got something to say and something to give.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

December 27 -- Put a Fork in Me~It's On! (Christmas 1B)

 Grace to you and peace this Christmas season from God who comes to us in peace, Amen.

Friends, maybe it’s been a while...or never...that you’ve gotten to hear what comes immediately after our famous Christmas story in the gospel of Luke.  There’s even more to Chapter 2!  In the very next verses, baby Jesus is a being taken up to the temple, as was the tradition.  A sacrifice is made in thanksgiving for a newborn healthy child.  (Any healthy babies born this year in your family or in your circle?  Helpful, I think, to be reminded again that the very first move of God’s faithful people, immediately after to a birth, is to sacrifice something.  To let go of something that’s important, to give something significant...as a show of joy and thanksgiving.  The first move, the first verses following.)

This was the custom then, an essential component to the rite of purification of a baby boy.  

And while they were there, they bumped into two old church mice.  One of my favorite preachers and bible scholars the Rev. Dr. Thomas Long said that Anna and Simeon are like “Old Testament characters who lived long enough to make it into the New Testament.”  

...They’re still there, God bless ‘em.
—

I see two things happening in this text today:
The first is the “sigh of relief”.

Maybe you just experienced a “sigh of relief”...
It can come late on Christmas Day:  All the presents have been opened, the sugar high is turning into a happy low, maybe a mild food coma setting in, wrapping paper still all over the floor, dishes still stacked in the sink — not time for that yet.  No, first a happy sigh of relief, sinking down into your favorite chair.  Feet up.  Maybe you hear children outside playing with their new toys.  Laughing.  Stories.  Maybe a tear of joy has just been wiped.  After seeing family or laughing with friends on a video call.  Exhaustion is certainly a big part of this:  after all the preparations, all the hard work up to this point, all the anxiety and fear, at last, the moment of exhale, the sigh of relief.   The satisfied “ahhh” as you take it all in, like praying ‘thank you’ with your whole body.  My best friend likes to say in those happy moments, feet up, beer in his hand: “Put a fork in me.  I’m done.”

Not everybody has gotten that this year, but I hope you have or will soon.  And today, at least, maybe you can imagine it:  the first thing happening here is Simeon and Anna with that joyful sigh of relief.

“My eyes have seen it at last,” Simeon rejoices and says, “Put a fork in me.  I’m done.”  

After all these years of waiting for fulfillment, longing (Luke says) for the consolation of Israel.  For decades he and the widow Anna had been singing in the minor key: “O come, o come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.”  So had their parents and grandparents.  Centuries of pain and hoping for this day.  It’s been a long Advent season for them.  And now at last he can sing and sigh with major relief: “Joy to the world the Lord is come, let the whole planet receive her king!”  His heart is prepared, plenty of room...YES!  

If you had a good Christmas Day sigh of relief, you’ve had a glimpse of Anna and Simeon’s great exhale.  “Ahhhh…”

And by the way, this is holy activity.  The Holy Spirit rested, Luke says, on these two old church mice.  And their joy, their praise and celebration, their sigh of relief is sacred.  

So is putting your feet up, friends, and giving thanks for all the good things.  It’s not something to feel guilty about or hide, as we can be tempted to do.  Sabbath is one of the 10 Commandments!  Brené Brown had a great podcast back in October about “Burnout and How to Complete the Stress Cycle.” Burnout is happening because we’re not completing the stress cycle, the biological import of the exhale.  It is literally — in some cases — shedding the stress.  There is salvation in the sigh of relief!  We can’t just jump from one stress to the next without shedding, exhaling, and for God’s people, that purification includes giving, letting go, sacrificing, offering, going up to the temple...and singing.  Sabbath peace and joy is what Simeon & Anna teach us!

And that’s just the first part:

The second thing that I see happening in this text — after the period of joyful exhale, the sacred sigh of relief — next, comes the gearing up for ministry.  That is, the honest acknowledgement that there is always more work to do, and that road is a rocky, narrow trail.  

Go back to the Christmas Day living room scene: there’s stuff to clean up.  There’s stuff to put together.  There’s stuff to put on, and there’s stuff to put away.  There are gifts that that we now get to put to good use or let go of: That’s faithful!  And what a joy there too!  

How will we steward the blessings that we celebrate and give thanks for this season?  

And, like Simeon says, remember that tough times are still before us: “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed, so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed — [even you!] a sword will pierce your own soul...”

The road of the Christian is a long one.  And it’s a grounded one, an earthy one.  We rest AND we get up...and pick up and clean up and carry up and lift up and speak up.  We do the work too.  We face the truth about the world and about ourselves.  A sword shall pierce our own soul too.  This child of peace, will cut  away your false coverings, slice into our lives and expose our hearts to being hurt.  

Following this Jesus, we will be hurt.  You know this already.  [pause]

And yet, this is the Christian journey.  This is the walk with Jesus.  [I used to wear a Cubs hat in sermons and preach about suffering and faith...]  The Christian journey can be like waiting for your team to win it all.  And what do we do in the meantime?  We keep cheering.  We remain faithful.  We keep going...  


Up to the temple, into the peace that passes all human understanding, and then back down the mountain into the world, and back up again.  From the safety and sabbath of the living room, to the open-heart riskiness in the world, and back again.  Exhale, inhale.

The One who the prophets foretold has arrived.  Let us worship him.  And then let us follow him down, and then let us worship him again.  Back and forth.  Inhaling, exhaling.  Christmas into the new year.  God with us always.  Salvation has come.  Emmanuel.  This day and forever.  AMEN. 

December 6 -- Isaiah and the Dust-up (Advent 2B)

Grace to you and peace…

Friends in Christ, sometimes my 14-almost-15-year-old M and I get into it.  Sometimes M acts up, does something wrong, and I get angry.  And I give a consequence, a punishment.  And sometimes that consequence is twice as bad as M’s acting up.  I love my son, but I get mad.  I lose my temper as I dole out punishment.  And sometimes, the punishment can go beyond the crime.  And sometimes, it’s H, after the dust from the dust-up has settled, who comes along side us both individually, privately, and helps us work out a consequence that fits and brings us back together...

I’m going to preach on the First Lesson from Isaiah today.

We have to spend some time with Isaiah during Advent.  H is very Isaiah-like in my little real-life illustration...entering the scene, post-dust-up to bring us back together.  
—
I know I’ve talked a bit about not sentimentalizing (or sanitizing) the nativity — porcelain figures, frozen in perfection on our Christmas shelves and mantles (I read about that in our Advent devotion “Low” on Wednesday evening...)  Maybe a similar thing can happen here with Isaiah’s famous text, because of Handel’s Messiah. (How many got that in your head, when it was read? ...which I love as much as anyone, btw!)  But let’s not miss Isaiah’s grit and context, for the glorious, holiday, royal chorus.  There’s even more to it!...

Isaiah is a prophet of hope in a time of complete chaos and uncertainty, in a time of debilitating trauma, unspeakable loss, total despair...and in an era where God is imagined to have stepped away entirely.   The people have lost their faith: if they know God at all, they have only known and experienced God as an angry judge...doling out punishment.  (Dangerous intro illustration — the only thing I’ve got in common with God, in that case is doling out big consequences.)

You see, Isaiah was written at a time when the exile and captivity was well underway.  Jerusalem has been destroyed.  The entire nation was in the hands of a foreign power, Babylonians then Persians.  Why?  According to the 1st & 2nd Kings (which, btw, we’re studying right now in our Tuesday Bible Study 7p), because the kings of Israel and Judah and all the people of the monarchy have turned away from worshiping God alone.   They’ve adorned the temple with extravagance — called it “God’s house” (in effect, it’s an attempt to domesticate God) — but spent twice as much on their own palaces and homes!  In other words, they’ve built many other temples, and priorities had gotten grossly out of wack.  It’s the successful broker who gives $30,000 at his local place of worship each year (and gets all kinds of accolades for his generosity), but meanwhile is raking in millions in the spiking economic climate, has several homes, vehicles, riches galore. That’s where the monarchy was had gotten.

The kings and their people have again gone after other gods — stockpiles of money, military conquest, material desires...with massive corruption, political division, violence, slavery, adultery, fraud, etc.  Idol worship.  The people had curved inward, as Luther would say, only gazing at, only looking out for themselves...

Remember the OT loop?  God blesses. People mess up.  God gets angry... God’s people done messed up.

And so YHWH has crashed down total calamity — “a double portion,” Isaiah says — on the people.  Not only consequences raining down on them as individuals, but on them as an entire nation! The Babylonian captivity is a worse punishment for their actions than they ever could have imagined.

They once had everything, now they have nothing…but to make it even worse, now they’re in exile!  It’s as if God’s punishment is twice as intense as the crime.  God acknowledges that.  And they are feeling so abandoned by God.

Enter Isaiah.  [I love when the prophets get called: “Uhh...what?  You want me to say something in the middle of this cosmic dust-up?]

Can you imagine Isaiah’s fear and trepidation in all this?  “I’m supposed to step in and speak for this God?  And to a people that are this lost, this out of touch?!”

I mean — let me talk to you, church! — you and I (church people [because you’re here]) we can be on the rocks with God, but still part of the church family, still connected, still praying and singing, and involved...working through our stuff.

But how many of us have ever been in a time in our lives...or know countless people who are in fact currently...so far out of touch with the church, with God, with the community of the faithful — in a certain Babylonian exile.  Not angry at God:  Completely unaware!  Indifferent, out of touch with the idea of a divine savior...not just an brokenness in the church family, a total separation from God.  So far away.  A “double portion” far away!

That’s tapping into the kind of people Isaiah was called to preach to.  (We made a movie in Confirmation about the OT prophets, and S had the description about Isaiah: “Isaiah was someone who was totally normal and boring and broken, but open to God’s call. He was totally imperfect, but willing to go.”)

And when Isaiah starts this passage today by proclaiming “comfort” — TWICE — Comfort, O comfort my people.”  That is powerful response to this double distance away from God.  It is an undoing of the double divide between God and God’s people.  Isaiah’s song is reconciling.  It’s healing...after the dust-up.  It’s more than that it’s bringing back to life what was dead.  This is Gospel business.  This is Jesus stuff!

Isaiah is crying out, “Look! People!  Your God is here!  I know you feel far away, or maybe God’s not even in your consciousness!  But God is here.  And even more than that, your God is good!  Your God makes the crooked places accessible for everyone.  Your God lifts up the downtrodden, welcomes the estranged, forgives the sinner, heals the sick, feeds the hungry, clothes those who are not covered by any blankets of security.  HERE IS YOUR GOD!  Even as the seasons change, even as the cold winter blows in and takes so much away, God doesn’t blow away.  God’s word stands forever!

“Sometimes we have to climb up to a new place to remember this God.  Yes, we have stop our daily hurriedness and frenzy to notice, to see.  But this God is all around you.  This God is with you always.  This God is deeply imbedded in the stuff of our world, in every breath!  And this God loves you.  This God picks you up and carries you…”        

That’s Isaiah.  That’s our Advent prophet today.  John the Baptist goes on to proclaim Isaiah’s song many years later, practically word for word, because it happened again — the people messed up.  The distance, the separation grew.  The people lost God, going after other things.  Yep.  We too.  

And this God is here for us as well.  Even now.  2020, cover of Time: “worst year ever”.  Feel like you’ve gotten a double portion of anguish lately?  A double dose of sorrow, fear, loss?  Isaiah, John the Baptist, Peter, friends, reconnect us to, point us to — not just the God of the Old Testament — but to God’s son Jesus, who is the true bridge across the chasm of our sin and all our mess ups.  They point their bony, old fingers toward the dimly lit stable, where in a manger is shining the hope of the world.  The forgiveness of all our mess ups, hiccups, dust ups.  They point us to Christ — whose arrival we prepare for and celebrate again, whose drawing near is now.  Rest in the assurance of that presence and love.

Here is your God.  Here is love.  Here is peace at last.  This day and always.  AMEN.

August 9 -- Even in the Heaviest of Storms (Pentecost 10A)

Grace to you and peace from Jesus the Christ who never stops coming to find us.  AMEN.

Let me set the scene.  We’re in Colorado.  Way up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, about 13,000 ft.. Two days up from our trailhead, and about 15 or 20 miles from Rainbow Trail Lutheran Camp, our base out of which this whole adventure is organized and led.  Heather and I, and a small group of high schoolers from the last church I served, our 2 guides Cody and Savannah (who everyone called Savage), and 2 random Welsh Corgis that just started following us and living with us on the trail...and toward whom we had quickly given much affection.  (we had even named one Jeffrey and the other Oreo.)  

All nine of us packed under a small tarp, stretched out and hung from 4 trees, eating dinner.  And it’s raining.  Strike that: it’s pouring.  And we’re actually getting along ok in our rain gear sitting on trash bags, shoveling in pasta from our little metal sierra cups, which act as both bowl and mug.  We kept lowering the tarp to protect ourselves, as the wind was blowing the rain under our cover, I remember the tarp got so low that it pressed against my head so that I could feel the raindrops through the tarp tapping on my head.  Yet we’re still having a pretty good time!  Until it starts coming down even more...it was beyond pouring.
And suddenly, we see and feel the water rolling down the slight slope we’re on...it’s starting to wash us out, from under us!  Not just pounding down on the tarp above us, but now also under us!  And it’s all rushing to what we guys had dibs’ed/claimed as the most scenic place to put our tent, overlooking this beautiful mountain lake.  All this water is rolling toward the guys’ tent, which was our only hope of anything staying protected and dry.  And it’s getting dark, as if every drop of rain is like a tiny light switch in the sky turning off!  Uhhhh......

(*BTW, I spoke briefly when I first arrived about taking a trip like this with our high schoolers at Bethlehem.  Crickets.  I can’t imagine why :)  I’ll ask again.  *When I got back from that backpacking trip, people actually kept asking me how my “vacation” was...uhhh..  a) high schoolers [who were awesome, but still] and b) rain.)  

Anyway, all of this, of course, is a metaphor for life, right?  Trying to do everything we can to protect ourselves (tarp, rain gear), maybe making some hasty, greedy decisions to secure the best for me and mine (tent site), only to wind up learning that we probably should have been both more thoughtful and more careful, and that there are some things over which we absolutely have no power.

So when I read our texts for this Sunday, I couldn’t help but laugh — first reading about Elijah: “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord...now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting the mountains and breaking rocks in pieces.”  And then this Gospel text:  Jesus goes off by himself to pray, but it says, “the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.”  Where are you in those stories?  Ever feel tossed and rocked in the boat?  Terrified.  Waterlogged.  Windblown.  Shaken and soaked from above and below?  [pause]

I’m not going to move on to the punchline just yet (which is Jesus).  Let’s just sit with this; let’s just sit in the downpour, in the storm.

You know one of the gifts of that backpacking trip, was having to sit in the downpour.  We worshiped that week also...at two different Lutheran churches in Colorado: one before the backpacking adventure, when we first arrived in Denver, and another one at the end of our adventure.  We prayed in those services for the poor and those who have no place to lay their heads both times, just like we do every week.  But after sitting in the rain a night or two, we heard that prayer very differently the second time.  Experiences like that make us feel small, mortal, helpless...and more compassionate.

Many of us are well aware of our mortality, but we sure do try to avoid reflecting on it in our culture...
We Christians find ourselves a death-denying culture.  

So to be battered by the waves, to sit in the downpour, to endure the storms — this is where we can only place ourselves in God’s arms.  Many know far too well, these days, what I’m talking about.

It’s important to note:  Elijah didn’t find God in the storm itself; neither did the disciples.  (Nature, as we know, is indifferent.)  Rather God shows up in the tiny places during the storm, the “sheer silence”.  Disciples thought they saw a ghost — that’s one translation of “phantasma” — also “a blurry vision.”  God does not always appear clear and booming and powerful like thunder.  Rather as a blurry vision amid the storm — a friend who reaches out, a sliver of light through the clouds, a warm drink from a stranger, a blanket or a sleeping bag that miraculously stayed dry...

You know, thinking back on it, that crazy, stormy night — now 6 years ago — was the most memorable and the most fun, of that whole trip!  

I didn’t finish telling you what happened: We were being so pelted (oh yeah, it was hailing too) that finally our guides after trying to direct us to clean up our dinner stuff and protect as much as we could finally just surrendered, and shouted “Run for your tents!  Let’s call it a night!”  (See, we would always have some kind of activity in the evening under stars that included devotions and songs and s’mores...)  Not that night.  We raced through rain and hail for our tents and jumped inside.  Would you believe that it was actually dry in there?  There was water literally rushing all around us, but those tents were so waterproof that I had my best night sleep of the whole trip!  I mean, that’s as miraculous as walking on water!  But we didn’t go to sleep right away.  It was only 6:30 (in July) when we ran for our tents.  That night we played card games, we still worshiped, and we laughed and laughed — guys in our tent, and we could hear the girls in theirs, laughing and laughing.  We were fine — thanks be to God — when you’re that close up against the elements, there’s no one else to thank for keeping us safe.  

Sisters and brothers in Christ, Jesus never wearies of coming out to look for us.  He even crosses the turbulent seas, walks through torrential downpours.  He even crosses death and the powers of hell to come find us, to reach out to us and to say, “Do not be afraid.  Have courage.  I am here.”  

Today, siblings in Christ, you are pulled up, you are rescued, you are saved from drowning.  Even in the storms, God has got us.

So let’s not be afraid anymore, as we live our lives.  

Let’s have the courage to get out of the boat, to get out of the “nave,” the ship, to get out of the nice, dry, safe church and into the choppy seas of this world!  That’s looks a little different these days, and I think we need to pray about what “getting out of the boat,” getting out of the “nave” means in this COVID world.  I definitely don’t mean literally venturing out there without masks and safe distance...that’s not what this text is about.  No, I think it’s got to do with how we take faithful risks with our words, our money, our time?  I’ll be honest with you: starting to say “Black Lives Matter” as a statement of faithfulness (as opposed to taking a political side...which is how it’s being treated culturally), feels like a certain out-of-the-boat risk, out of the nice, safe, dry church.  Continuing to give to our camps, as Heather and I have decided to do, with such an uncertain future, personally feels like a certain out-of-the-boat risk...what does Peter-style, risk-taking look like for you?  

How is Jesus inviting you out...to take a step of faith — like Peter — and be Christ’s voice in this pain-filled, sheltering children who have no place to call home, feeding the hungry who have no table around which to gather, nursing the sick, speaking out in the face of violence begetting more violence around the world...and in our own backyards.  Cruelty, pettiness, selfish ambition and greed.  Where is the Church’s voice in all this?  How we can just huddle in the nave (even virtually), terrified.  What does Jesus say as he’s reading our newspapers?  And what would Jesus do?  These are our downpours.  We are huddled under a tarp.  And Christ comes out to meet us in the midst of raging storm, to rescue us, to feed us, to call us out of the boat, and to make us whole.

Today, we are being pulled up, we are being rescued from our fears and saved from our sins.  Christ stops at nothing to wade into our humanity, into our downpours, into our sorrow, with a powerful word of peace and hope —“Do not be afraid, be of good heart, I am here” — and then a strong arm to lift us out.

Even in the heaviest of storms, God has got us, and God has got this whole world — it’s not ours to save, only ours to serve.  

 Thanks be to God.  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 24 -- Angels Sidling Up & Ascension from Below (Easter 7A)

He is risen!  … Alleluias abound.  We are Easter people with signs of the resurrection all around us and around this world.  Christ is deeply present in our pain and in our joy.  In our hope and in our sorrow.  Christ breathes through us, Christ breathes us, he’s so close…

So what’s Jesus doing ascending into heaven, as we read today?  Why’s he leaving us?  Why’s that closeness shrinking and shrinking as he lifts up into the clouds?  I thought he’s always promised to stay with us.
Oh well, let’s just wait.
I’m sure he’ll be back.  [looking up]
Will you wait with me?
It’s very Christian to wait, together…
And we’re getting pretty used to waiting these days…

This may have been how those disciples long ago felt to:  Can you imagine the joy that they had just experienced on reuniting with their friend?  Forget for a moment all the theological implications of Jesus’ resurrection—these men and women had their friend, their son, their brother, their favorite teacher back!

But just as soon as he’s back in the flesh—walking with them down their roads, fishing in their waters, sitting around their tables—he’s gone again…this time up into heaven.
So they’ll wait.

The text says, “While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.”

Jesus hadn’t even been gone for but a few moments—and they could probably still see him way up there, like when a little one accidentally lets go of a helium balloon and we all watch it drifting up and up, sometimes there’s some crying when that happens—and angelic strangers are sidling up next to them!

Jesus was never even gone completely and angels are already sidling up!

How we too may be caught staring at the heavens.  How nice it is to “gaze up,” to enjoy the serenity, the dreaminess—even the fun of tracking a drifting hot air balloon Jesus, somewhere up there.

OK maybe not literally, do we gaze up at the sky.  We’re busy, productive types here.  But what is your drifting Jesus balloon that you’re gaze up at wistfully?

Paying off the house?  Retiring in fine style?  Keeping the kids perfectly safe and sound?  Finishing the backyard?  Just getting to heaven?  Getting out of this shut-down, getting back to church, getting back to “normal,” getting back something or someone we’ve lost...

All nice things, to be sure; pretty normal really, all those desires.

But Jesus doesn’t operate in the realm of “pretty normal really”!  Jesus doesn’t just leave us gazing up.  And he doesn’t drop us a ladder from on high either, affirming our longings and blissful dreams, so that we can leave all this behind.
Instead Jesus sends angels, sidling up, to snap us out of our gazes [“suddenly”], and to position us for ministry in this world, in this world.  These angels locate us.
   
When we stare at the sky, we see no one else.  I wouldn’t even know if you were here or if you left, if just kept staring at the sky.  I probably wouldn’t care.

But when I’m snapped out of my gazing up, I see you, I see us, I see this world out the windows and doors.
And this is just Luke’s version.   (The author of Acts is the author of Luke.)  In Matthew’s version there is no ascension story, Jesus in fact never does leave.  Jesus says, “Lo, I am with you always.”

Meme on FB this week:  “Today we celebrate Ascension.  To those who wonder what it’s about: It’s the day when Jesus started to work from home.”
Whether its angels or Jesus himself, we have our focal point re-adjusted again today.  From gazing at the sky to seeing our siblings, seeing the world, and seeing all those angels right before us, right with us.  Angels sidling up.

And then starts an interesting progression: One of the great things I love about this text in Acts is this progression that Jesus offers:  “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria [cross that border], and to the ends of the earth.”

Heather and I had a friend who once said — she was a bit of a guru when it came to house projects, and I was complaining to her about being overwhelmed with stuff (thinking of her advice these days) — she said, just take one thing, one room, one part of the yard at a time.  “Don’t try to stay on top of it all, or you’ll drive yourself crazy.”  Her advice reminds me of “Jerusalem, Samaria and the ends of the earth.”  The progression is daunting, but when we take each step intentionally, lovingly, faithfully, when we are located by the angels myself, then we do everything we can in this time and place.  Not gazing out or up, taking a breath, one day at a time.  The angels are already sidling up next to you.

We are called to be witnesses, friends in Christ, witnesses...
1) to Jerusalem – those who are hurting right here at Bethlehem, in Fairfax, in Northern Virginia...but Jesus doesn’t let us off the hook at that...
2) we are called to be witnesses to Judea and Samaria too – that is, both in our country and across our borders – those who are hurting in the District, in Maryland and West Virginia, in Florida and Michigan and Puerto Rico, and then cross our national borders: in Mexico and Canada and Cuba.
3) And then, we are called to be witnesses to the ends of the earth.

WE are called to be witnesses, given the Spirit of Truth, the Word of God, word of life!
And we’re not alone in this work.  You’re not alone.

My theology professor (of sainted memory, on this Memorial Day Weekend).  Vitor was soldier of the Gospel.  He would get so passionate about this text, and point out the literal words of vs. 11: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go…”  In other words, his theological read of this, is that Jesus will come from beneath:  if he’s coming in the same way we saw him go, then if you want to see Jesus from now on, you will see him in solidarity with the below, with the downtrodden people, the marginalized people, the hopeless and cynical and lost and addicted and oppressed people, the victims of violence and grieving who are remembering this Memorial weekend…

You will see him come the same way the same vector you witnessed him go.  And not just rising from people: You will see Jesus ascend back to us from the bosom of the devastated earth.  Jesus ascends from the polluted streams, and chopped down rainforests, and the elephant graveyards, all the species who have been lost on account of greed and selfishness.  Jesus ascends to us.

And goes with us as we witness, for Christ gives us that same ascension Spirit which both enlivens us, gives us the courage and strength we need to go forth, and it binds us together.  We are never offering our hands to Christ’s work alone.  Even if the whole Christian church around the world dwindles, dwindles, dwindles there will always be two or three gathering, reading Scripture, sharing the meal, and being sent out in Christ’s name!  You are not alone.  We are bound together, bound together, nourished and then sent out.

I love that at the end of this text, after this amazing experience of ascension and angels, from gazing to seeing, from dreaming to scheming—after it all, the disciples returned to Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s walk from where they experienced all this.  They don’t go out from the hillside of the Ascension:  first they gather. And they start this whole mission into the world in prayer.  “They devoted themselves in prayer.”

How often we charge into our tasks before devoting ourselves in prayer.  (prayer before voting at assembly, prayer before council meetings...vs. not)

“They devoted themselves in prayer.”

Friends in Christ, that’s a picture of a Sunday morning!  A Sabbath day’s walk.  Devoting ourselves in prayer.

Luther: “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”

Pausing for a moment to give thanks that God is both up there and right here, at the very same time.  Lifting our hands in a gesture of thanksgiving, that this world is not ours to rescue, but only ours to serve.  Un-gripping our hands in a gesture of openness of heart and mind, for God to take us once again this day, and make us one, mold us into a people with eyes set not on the cluster of clouds and a one-track dream, but on the cluster of sisters and brothers across the street, and across the “interwebs,” and across the borders — and a one-track Gospel message of GRACIOUS LOVE.

We are gathered, we are baptized, we are fed at this manger, and now we are sent.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

April 12 -- Resurrection of our Lord (Easter Sunday)

They came looking, and he wasn’t there.  They’re told to go to Galilee...and the risen Jesus meets them, meets us, en route!

Grace to you and peace this Easter morning from our risen Jesus Christ who rocks the earth, appears before us en route, whose feet we grab onto, who we worship and praise, right where we are, with both great fear and joy, who raises us with him, and tells us to go to Galilee!  AMEN.

What’s this business in the text with Galilee on Easter morning?  Where is Galilee?  Jesus says I’ll meet you in Galilee. Galilee was the region (not a city or town) the area (like NoVa or the DMV or SoCal or the Hill Country or the Blue Ridge or up North or down South) it’s where Jesus and all the disciples were “from”.  Galilee is where Jesus came up, where he called the disciples, where he preached the sermon on the mount, where he fished, where he ate, and rested, and healed, and worked and played….Galilee was where they were all from...

Mary and Mary were looking for his body, dead in the tomb, but Jesus was alive and well and headed to the Galilee.
—
What’s your Galilee?  Where are you from?

I don’t mean, necessarily, the town of your birth or your childhood.  That would mean Houston is my Galilee (or the fjords of Norway).  I mean more like the region of mind and heart where you’re from, where you work, where you eat, where you sleep and fish and make friends...
Where do you live?

Where’d you come from?  Go back there.  Go back to that region of mind and landscape of heart.  Go back to that place.  Be there...because...“There,” the angel says, “you will see Jesus.”  Go back to where you came from...

Go back to your basement office, back to your Zoom meetings, back to the baking tray, back to driver’s seat, back to that project you were working on, back to the keyboard, back to the yard work, back to the news headlines, back to caring for your children and parents, back to retirement, back to school; go back to where you came from.  Only now, Easter people, you will see Jesus there!  Right there in your home, right there where you’re from.

I think we’ve all come from a place of great sorrow, frustration, even incredible pain lately.  Maybe you’re coming from boredom these endless quarantine days.  Maybe you’re coming from a place of being overwhelmed.  Stress takes its toll on the body: for some, more stress than ever.
—
This Easter Gospel ironically sends us back there.  The resurrection doesn’t just take all the bad stuff away.  Remember: Galilee isn’t all peaceful rolling hills; there’s lots of sorrow, grief and pain back there in Galilee!  Had some friends visit Galilee a few years ago: there’s blood shed in those valleys.  It’s a place drenched in sorrow.  But go back there, the angel says.  Don’t run from it.  Don’t ignore it or push your grief or frustration away, or bury it, or keep it locked up in the tombs of your hearts and souls.  Go back there.  Only now...[slowly] you’ll see Jesus there.  “That’s what he promised. Remember?” the angel says.

Maybe you’ve come here today from a place of loneliness…
or worry about the future or regret about the past or overwhelming anger.  Sisters and brothers, friends in Christ, Jesus has already gone ahead of us to those Galilees, and will meet us there!  So you can go back there now too.  We no longer have to hide from those things that bring us down, even those things that drive us into the grave!
Because Christ is alive, because Christ has conquered death and the grave, now we can even go there, face our Galilees, and find Christ right in the midst of them!

Those brave women in the story (interesting — that the men in the story froze, they became like dead men, scared to death) but the women followed the angel’s directions, even though they were scared too — says they were filled first with great fear and then joy.  In other words, they were humble, honest (Lent) and hopeful.  Humbly and honestly, filled with both fear and joy, go to your Galilee.

Let’s not be like the men in this story — frozen, scared to death — let’s be like the women: humble, honest and hopeful.

We go now from this Easter morning — this first sun rising of 50 days of Easter mornings, 7 weeks of the Easter season, friends! — with both fear and joy, humbly, honestly, hopefully.

Only now when you go to Galilee, you will also see Jesus there.  Jesus right in the midst of the pain, Jesus right in the midst of our worry, Jesus right in the midst of our regret or our anger.  Jesus right in the midst of what we thought was total isolation, even death.  Because of the resurrection, because he shakes the cosmos, rocks the earth and rises from the tomb, because he lives eternal, because “thine is the glory, risen conquering Son” and he has promised never to leave us, we never have to “go there” [pause] to “Galilee” alone.

The resurrection doesn’t promise a painless, sorrow-less happily ever after, just rainbows and Easter egg candy all the day long, all our earthly lives long.  No, what the resurrection of Jesus Christ means is that we never have to go through all that alone...even and especially death itself.

And we never have to consider ourselves unloved or unforgivable ever again.
—
Let’s go share that Good News with our lives!  The angel and Jesus don’t just tell the women to go to Galilee: they both add another command: “go...and tell”!  How about we share this Good News too, not just make it our little secret (shhh...Jesus Christ is risen, and we never have to go it alone again, but don’t tell anyone.)  No, our lives now tell the story — that Jesus through his life, death and resurrection gives us, all of us, forgiveness without end, love and hope with out boundaries, mercy overflowing, peace beyond all human understanding, life abundant and joy...even and especially now, amid a global pandemic, pain and fear and sorrow all around, death on our doorstep perhaps now more than ever — and still we sing:

“Al-le-luya, Christ is arisen! Bright is the dawning of the Lord’s day: (love v3) Gather disciples in the *evening* suddenly Christ your Lord appears: ‘Look it is I, your wounded Savior. Peace be with you and do not fear.”

—


Parker Palmer in his book Let Your Life Speak has a chapter entitled “Back to the World” where he talks about leadership not as egocentric and immodest, loud out front, self-serving leadership but rather...leadership = being who God has made you to be.  He says: “If it is true that we are made for community, then leadership is everyone’s vocation...even I,” he writes, “a person unfit to be president of anything...have come to understand that for better or worse, I lead by word and deed simply because I am here doing what I do.  If you are also here, doing what you do, then you also exercise leadership.”  Let your life speak.

Go back to Galilee...and tell everyone “Christ is risen” with your life, with your words and deeds, with your being who God has made you to be.  How would you specifically say with your life, with your doing what you do, that “Christ is risen indeed”?

Go to Galilee, the angel says. There you’ll see Jesus, and, hey, tell others with your life.
—
And then the surprise (it gets even better!): OK, we’re go back, got it, be who God made us, got it.  They hadn’t even started that long journey, and as they’re just starting on their way, as they are en route, Jesus meets them already and says, “Greetings!”

And the women worship him.  (That’s what we’re doing this morning.)  Here in this place Jesus is finding us en route, on our way back to our Galilees!

I want to ask you to write about and talk at the dinner table or post your answer to this question (take some time with it this week, this new, 7-week season of Easter)

“Where in your Galilee did you see the risen Christ today?”
Write that somewhere in your house.  Answer that every day.
Where did Jesus interrupt you en route?...and say ‘Greetings!’

Friends, with both fear and joy, I proclaim to you that Jesus is with us, through thick and thin.  It’s interesting: only in Luke’s Gospel does Jesus ascend at the end, up into the clouds.  All the other Gospels, Jesus never leaves the earth...Jesus stays right here.  And today in Matthew, Jesus keeps his feet planted firmly on the ground, and specifically in “Galilee”.  I love that scene of the women grabbing his feet and worshiping him, worshipping Jesus, grabbing onto to his firmly earth-planted feet, not lifting up into the clouds, and no longer elevated and nailed to a cross, Jesus is down here with them, us, you.

And sisters and brothers, friends in Christ, Jesus has also gone ahead of us, not ahead, up, up into the clouds, but ahead, across the land into the Galilees of our every day lives.
The Gospel gets local.  Jesus who is named Emmanuel, which means God-with-us at the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, stays true to his name in the very last chapter, where he says, in Galilee, “Lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.”

Christ is alive, and the the only place he’s going now is right back into our realities, right back into our everyday lives, right back to Galilee.  Alleluia!  Amen.

February 9 -- Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Friends in Christ, grace to you and peace.

In today’s Gospel text, Jesus tells his disciples in “Sermon on the Mount PART TWO” that they are salt and light.  Salt, by the way, was a Hebrew symbol of covenant, of God’s promise: preservative and flavor enhancer.  One of my favorite translations of the Bible, The Message by Eugene Peterson of blessed memory, puts it like this:  “You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth…You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors of the world.”  What does it mean to you, that you bring out the God-flavors of this life, you bring out the God-colors of this world?

As we prepare again to host the Hypothermia Shelter here at Bethlehem in 2 weeks, you know that’s another opportunity to bring out the God-flavors and God-colors of this earth, right?

This past week, we signed on, because we’re a Reconciling in Christ Congregation, to walk in the DC Pride Parade in June.  You know that’s an opportunity to bring out the God-flavors and God-colors of this world, right?

Chili cook-off and bingo last night…

Listen for implicit salt and light language in our New Member Welcome in just a little bit...

You bring out the God-flavors and God-colors of this earth, you are salt and the light, in what you do at work, what you say to strangers, how you treat people in restaurants and in the airport and on the road, how you post on the internet.  Friends in Christ...YOU are the salt of the earth, the rays of hope and community for this hurting world.  You preserve God’s covenant and enhance this earthly walk.

Saw the movie Just Mercy this week (thanks to the nudgings of Sister Ramona).  It’s based on the true story of Bryan Stevenson who graduated from Harvard and moved down to Alabama to defend those wrongly condemned on Death Row, who couldn’t afford proper representation, and had all the cards stacked against them because of the color of their skin.  In the face of so much blatant racism, and its ugly trail of cruelty.  Talk about salt and light!  Hope in the face of despair and the endless struggle for justice and truth.  Hope and the community stood as a beacon in that movie.

Being salt & light has so much to do with HOPE & COMMUNITY.

Because why would Christ call us flavor enhancers and covenant enjoyers and hope bringers and then hide us?  Why would Christ name us lights, and then put a bushel over our heads and hide us?  Being salt and light has a lot to do with HOPE and COMMUNITY!   [sing it] “Hide us under a bushel? No!  God’s going to let us shine.”  God says today, to all sisters and brothers in Christ that we are the light of the world, we bring out the God-colors in this world.  You reflect God in your words and actions, even in your just-being, for all to see.

Do you believe that?  We say this to our kids, in an attempt to get them to behave themselves.  “Now remember, you represent our congregation and our God, you reflect on all of us at BLC.”  We say it to our children.  But what about the rest of us?  Do you believe that you reflect God!?

It’s easy to be humble here, Lutherans:  “No, not me, I don’t reflect God.  I wish I did, but I’m nothing like [this person].”

Let’s entertain our humility for a moment.  Think about who is that other person?  Who do you seeing bringing out the God-flavors and God-colors through their words and actions?  (with us still or dearly departed) Do you have a person like that in your mind?

Anybody mention anybody in this congregation?  We can bring out the God-colors in each other, we reflect God to each other in different times...

(I want to just encourage you, to write a letter or a thank you card to whoever it is that has helped/is helping to bring out the God-colors, or the God-flavors in your life.  Who has helped make your faith 3-dimensional?  Maybe that person has since died or is somehow inaccessible…but perhaps then think of another person you do know, and write them a note this week…because they are God’s gift to you — God’s salt and light.)

But now,  let’s get back to you, humble people…
For if they have reflected God on you, now you definitely reflect God to the world.  For now Christ has shined his eternal light of hope on you, plus you’ve had that same light shined on you by an esteemed faith partner.  You are the salt of the earth, most definitely, you are the light of the world.

...Not even necessarily because I think you bring out God-colors, God-flavors.  I’m saying this because Jesus says it.  I try to preach what Jesus says, not what I think.  This is not my opinion, this is God’s fact, Christ’s truth: YOU REFLECT GOD, bringing out divine flavors and colors that cheer up this planet!  We are living embodiments of God’s hope and community for this world.

Friends, Jesus says it’s already so:  you’re the light of the world, the salt of the earth...
And Christ calls us to it anew again today. Christ has called you, to keep shining brightly.  Not in a showy of flashy way.  Not in a self-righteous way.

But to keep sharing God with this world—keep showing God to this planet, keep pointing to hope and community—keep drawing out the covenant, lifting up the promise of grace, enhancing the flavor of the Incarnation, illuminating the radical embrace of the Divine...through your actions.  “Let your lights shine bright, people of God!”

A light is warm and inviting, not excluding.  A city on a hill, which Jesus talks about in our Gospel, is not meant to be over and against the world; it’s a place that all can see.  It’s recognizable not for its own glory and good, but for the good of the world.  It has many entrances.  A city on a hill is a place where everyone knows they will be safe and welcomed and loved and accepted and fed and washed and empowered.

Here is that place!  Bethlehem Lutheran Church.

Because of Christ, Bethlehem is that place.  We are that city that Jesus is talking about...see the city is not a literal city, namely Jerusalem, any more!  “The city of God” is extending beyond  the confines of one ancient group, breaking out into the world – we are one of many in this city of God’s mercy – not for our own good and glory, but for the good of the world.  We are that people, a light shining bright, salt that enhances.

And we are safe here, so we go now to be safety for others.  We are fed here, and so we go now to feed others.  We are washed here, forgiven and renewed here, and so we go to wash, forgive and renew others.

And we are loved here…
Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

December 24 -- Christmas Eve 2019

Henry Ward Beecher wrote: “Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry [one] above others for [their] own solitary glory. [One] is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of [their] own.”  

I got that — not from being a student of Henry Ward Beecher — but from the book and the movie Wonder, which has enthusiastically made the rounds in our household, a few years ago, and watched it together again this past year.  And what a Christmas message it is!  (Check out Wonder in these Twelve Days of Christmas, if you haven’t already.  It’s a way to really get into the ‘incarnation celebration’ we have before us.)

“Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry [one] above others for [their] own solitary glory. [One] is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of [their] own.”

Grace to you and peace from Jesus who comes to us this holy night in peace.  AMEN.

It is perhaps the hardest thing in the world, dealing with a bully.  I’m thinking more about bullies these days, have encountered the story Wonder...but also reflecting on our lives and our world...  

I’ve had a few experiences myself, one in high school that I’ll never forget.  The visceral feelings come back even now, just thinking about it: heart racing, sweat beading down, ready for anything and nothing at the same time — not sure if our stand-off was going to end in fists swinging, and blood dripping, or what.  He was way bigger and stronger than I was, had this threatening smirk, big ol’ biceps, veins sticking out…But he was making fun of a friend of mine in the weight room, and something in me kind of snapped.  And I couldn’t take it anymore and stay quiet.  I mouthed off back at him.    

And probably, fortunately it ended the way it should have, anti-climactically, with a coach breaking up our heated stare-down.  But I didn’t sleep well that night, and I fretted about that bully for a long time after, even while nothing ever happened again.  

Bullies are tough, on one hand:  They can really eat you up, physically for sure, but I think the other wounds they inflict can last even longer:  They can embarrass you, get others laughing at you too.  They can make you cry just with their quick words, or a mean picture that they draw.  And how bullies can go to town on social media...  Here’s probably the worst: bullies can even make you turn on yourself — start to cut yourself down, make you laugh along with everyone...at yourself.  

--

If you’ve never been bullied, praise God.  

But the Christmas story is for anyone who’s been bullied.  

I recently asked my kids once how they deal with bullies and bad dreams in these tough times...and one of the things Katie said was “stay calm and let an angel help you.”  (Maybe that coach was the angel, in my case: kept things from getting worse?)  This Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke is for anyone who’s been bullied, anyone who’s been haunted by cruelty. 

The shepherds in the field were pretty beat up, bullied, haunted by a cruel world — hearts pounding with anxiety about how they’d get their next meal, paycheck, or rent paid.  Ready for anything and nothing at the same time.  Shepherding was not an easy life.  They were on the edges.  They were nobodies.  But an angel came, and they stayed calm, and they let that angel help.  

Micah — when I asked him once how he deals with bullies — said that both laughing and singing helps.  (few years ago)  He also said, “Remember and give thanks for your family.”  

Do you see all these components in our Christmas celebration here at church this evening...as we gather, and try to stay calm, even as stresses creep in all the time, even as bullies can haunt? As we pause to reflect on the multitude of angels who have come to our aid over the years?  Friends, family members, coaches, mentors, spiritual guides, rainbows, dogs, authors and actors, teachers, nurses — so many angels.  As we gather at the manger of the one “whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own”?  Jesus the Christ.   In this holy place, under perhaps stressful conditions, laughing and singing help, and we give thanks for our family of faith too.  

God’s strength is not made manifest in the big-bully muscles of world leaders or cool-kid group ringleaders, not in the mean words or the name-calling, not in threatening smirks or frightening stare-downs, and certainly not in fists flying.  No, God’s divine power is instead made manifest this holy night... in a baby.  In peace.  (I got to hold a little baby again on Sunday for a baptism!  Couldn’t imagine anything farther from a bully.)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out: “God is in the manger!”  

How do you feel about that?  In this season we also reflect on John’s Gospel, where we find and confess this Jesus is God, not just God’s son.  One God, three persons.  God is in the manger.  

The word becomes flesh and dwells among us!  This almighty God has humbled, shrunk, all the way down to become the child of a poor refugee couple, born in the middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere!  A stable, a manger.  Revealed first to bullied and scared shepherds.  

This God in the manger is strength that “carries up hearts”.  Christ.  Is.  Born.  To you.  For you.  In you.

Let’s laugh, let’s sing, let’s let angels help us, let’s stay calm and kind, and let’s share this Good News with everyone:  God carries up, lifts up our hearts, for God is here today.  

Will you pray with me:

He came down

to earth from heaven

who is God and Lord of all.

And his shelter was a stable

and his cradle was a stall

with the poor and mean and lowly

lived on earth our Savior holy.

AMEN.

October 20 -- Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Two parts of this reading that I really want to hone in on:
“Pray always. Do not lose heart” & “Will God find faith on earth?”  In other words, I think the lesson here is that those who have faith on earth are those who 1) pray always and 2) do not lose heart.

About 7 ago we took a two-week trip back to my hometown of Houston, TX.  We drove.  I-10.  20hrs13min.

So at first glance, I think I can resonate with the way Jesus describes that judge and that widow who kept continually crying out.  Micah and Katie, you can imagine, gave us a few vivid images from the back seat of continually crying out.  (For the most part they were great.)  But on those long days across the West Texas desert, one might have heard in the Roschke car: “Dad, can I have some more.  Why not, why not?  Mom, Katie’s bothering me.  Dad, Micah took my Uni.”  And of course the ever popular, “Are we there yet?”  There were moments :)

Jesus tells us about a widow who kept coming and asking and pleading and crying, too.  But she was after more than candy and rest stops and ‘getting even’ with her sibling.  She was after true justice.  “Grant me justice against my opponent,” was her passionate plea.  And the widow, it helps to remember, in ancient Mediterranean culture, was a symbol, everyone knew, of injustice, of the edge of society, of the poor.  For the widows, in those days, had no one to advocate for them, to represent them in court, or in life.  So she has to advocate for herself.  And Jesus tells us this parable to teach us something about our need to pray and not lose heart.

The widow was not just a whiner in the backseat who needed a quick fix.  The widow was caught at the bottom of a system in which it seemed she had no hope at all of changing.  The widow was not a little kid who needed a snack (sometimes our prayers can be like that).  The widow is the woman whose people have had to sit at the back of the bus her whole life...but stays in the fight. (pause) The widow is man who has been denied by the church that he loves his entire life because something about him is different...but keeps praying and working fervently for change.  (pause)  The widow is the teenager who just can’t get a break — born with two strikes against him, brought up in a violent home, caught up in a dangerous neighborhood, no choice but to attend grossly underfunded schools, where teachers are trying but are cynical...but keeps hanging on.

The widow is anyone who has endured hardship for a long time, and yet does not lose heart.  And Jesus uses this searing images to teach us a lesson about prayer:  Sometimes prayer doesn’t happen on our knees, with our hands folded.  Sometimes prayer means getting up, uncrossing our hands, and advocating...for ourselves or even for others.
 
   “Lord, grant me (grant us all, grant this whole world) justice.”

Well, we made it, thanks be to God, safely to Houston, on that trip now almost 7 years ago.  And while we were there, we went to the church where I grew up; the church where I was confirmed; the church that sent me their newsletter the whole time I was in college, even though I usually tossed it in the recycle, this was the church that made sure I knew they were still there and loved me; this was the church that put me and my dear friend both through seminary, full gift, because they too, like this community believed in raising up leaders for the church.  What a gift that church gave...that I get to be your pastor, un-crippled by tuition debt (and Linda went on to serve as the secretary for the entire ELCA).  That Sunday we visited that church — where I was ordained, where probably about two dozen clergy (many of whom had watched me grow up) turned out in their robes and their grey hair to put their hands on me as the stole was placed upon my shoulders.  


I could have told you about any number of road trips that we have taken as a family, where there was some whining in the back seat, but I wanted to tell you about the one to Houston, because that Sunday we went back to that church, and like lots of churches in the middle of fall, with a Houston Texans football game looming that afternoon, with everyone busy with life, the sanctuary of that dear church felt a little empty.  Some apologized to us, I remember that Sunday, that there weren’t as many people there anymore.  But what got me were the ones who still were.  Alice Chadwell, Ron Seimers, Marylyn Healy, Kurt Nelson, Sam and Barbara Skjonsby, Howard and Judy Bolt, the whole Jansen family, their little kids now in high school and college — all still there, and Mary Teslow.  Older folks, and not so old folks.  Still. Showing. Up.

(I’m still talking about praying always and not losing heart, btw.)        

Every Sunday between services, they serve a breakfast at Salem out of their little, run-down old kitchen, that was brand new when I was growing up.  And the people still gather every Sunday between services to study the Bible — two big groups.  One of the church council members was leading the study that I went to, and he started with a simple, beautiful prayer: “Thank you, God, for this day full of grace.”  And together the dozen or so people joined in discussing II Corinthians.  Nothing flashy really about it.

I was nearly moved to tears as they bickered a little bit with one another in the bible study, they seemed to be irritating each other a little with their same old comments.  But they were all still there!  I know many of their stories — lost jobs, lost spouses, lost children.  In many ways, like so many this was yet another congregation of “widows”.  Nothing flashy. But they were still there.

The worship service was OK, I guess.  My dad preached.  Nothing flashy really about it.  But the people gathered.  And they prayed, they prayed for themselves, they prayed for others.  When Christ comes, will he find faith on earth?  I think so, in churches like that, and in churches like this.  (pause)

I hope painting a picture of another small church that’s far away helps us see what’s right here under our noses — people gathering, nothing flashy, week after week, year after year, decade after decade.  Showing up for one another.  Sure, irritating each other at times, but never giving up, never losing heart, supporting one another through good times and bad.  You can tell those same stories here, or wherever you’re from….because this isn’t about us.  It’s about God.  God is faithful and has not abandoned us, and is made known through bread, wine, water and the community of the faithful!

Jesus’ story tells us that this cruel, unjust, self-centered judge granted that widow justice.  And his point is that if that selfish judge did it, then how much more will God do it?!  We just have to open our eyes and see it, right under our noses...see through the hardship and the bickering/whining, and the strikes that are against us.  God sees through all that and has found faith on earth, friends.

Praying and not losing heart is about seeing the things that are right under our noses, and sticking for the long haul.  “Thank you God, for this day FULL of grace.”

It’s yours, it’s ours — this good grace — and it’s meant to be shared.  Bask in that grace again this day, sisters and brothers in Christ, and then pass it on!  God’s mercy and gracious judgement, Christ’s joy and peace is here to stay.  AMEN.