January 30 -- Exocisms, Hiding, and YOU (Epiphany 4B)

Grace to you and peace….

How many of you have ever witnessed in real life an exorcism?  I’ve heard of them.  I’ve never seen an exorcism myself in the traditional sense.  I wonder if the man in the gospel text was foaming at the mouth, talking with a different voice, flailing around…the stuff of  Hollywood movies.

It’s possible to get caught up in imagining and trying to figure out what that must have been like, the drama, tragedy and terror of a man possessed by an unclean spirit, and miss the point of this story:  that Jesus casts out demons.  And he does in the synagogue, as the Rev. Dr. Joy Moore points out — in the holy house, when people gather to worship.  Jesus can cast out demons among us Bethlehem and friends...as we huddle together in worship on this snowy day!

Yes, Jesus casts out unclean spirits, and we all have them.  We all have demons living inside us.  Maybe it’s not as obvious as this text or in the movies, but I think the most powerful demons are actually the most subtle, buried way down in our psyches, polluting our deepest being.  It’s easy to separate ourselves from this story, at first glance, but we’re actually right in the middle of it.  Can you name your demon?  What is it that possesses you?

I’ve been doing some thinking about demons this week – stuff in us that’s got a hold of us for the worst, those death-making (as opposed to life-giving) – and it occurs to me that there are many, many different kinds of demons.  Different for everyone.

The more obvious kinds of demons are the ones that are expressed externally.  One might think of the seven deadly sins, among them: greed, sloth, anger, pride.  These are demons that can live within us.  Reinhold Niebuhr, 20th century theologian, used to say that the greatest problem with the world—if you could take all the sin of the world and sum it up with one word, it would be—pride.  Talk about an unclean spirit…Everything comes down to the human being proud.  That’s why people fight among themselves.  That’s why people say cruel things.  That’s why nations invade others who are weaker, that’s why there’s racism, that’s how anger flares up and greed takes over.  That’s why people are hungry and poverty is a reality.  PRIDE: The unclean spirit, according to Niebuhr.

But then others came along after Niebuhr and said, “That’s a very male perspective.”  They said, “You know, that’s good stuff, but it doesn’t ring true for many women, nor is it true for all men.”  This is my point:  there are so many different kinds of demons.  

Maybe for some of you, pride is the demon.  It certainly can be for me.  Anger too.  Many of us act out our brokenness.  But how many countless others are not full of pride in the least?  In fact, maybe just the opposite.  I don’t want to over-generalize, but I am generalizing:  while many men and boys externally act out their brokenness (we see this with boys at school) into and through adulthood — powerful quote btw from Richard Rohr on men..he says that "when positive masculine energy is not modeled from father to son, it creates a vacuum in the souls of men, and into that vacuum, demons pour." — many women and girls, on the other hand, can go inside themselves, they can internalize their brokenness.  (We see this with the rates of eating disorders among teenager girls, staggering numbers are cutting themselves or harming their own bodies in other tragic ways.  I talked to someone who used to cut herself, and she said she did it because she desperately wanted to “feel” something, even if that was pain—makes you wonder if the churches could be more involved…)  

So more contemporary scholars have countered with or added to Niebuhr’s idea of the sin of pride, the “SIN OF HIDING.”  For one, the extreme is the “inflation of self,” the self thinks itself greater than it actually is—anger, greed, entitlement.  But for others there is the “negation of self” – the sin of hiding.  Susan Nelson Dunfee first described "the sin of hiding."  She says it has enabled, in part, so many women to remain at in margins or in the shadows of leadership.  I believe, there’s also of course sexism at play there (that’s a demon in itself...as is racism, and all the other toxic -isms).  But the sin of hiding – silence, submission, enabling abuse, succumbing to guilt.  Oh, guilt is a demon isn’t it?  How many of us do things for no other reason than the fact that guilt is riding us like a monkey on our backs?

This gospel text is so real for us today.  And what’s the good message here, that we can miss?  Jesus cast out the demons!

Jesus takes our demons, friends—whatever they are—and commands them to leave us.  One of my favorite spirituals.  [clapping] “I’m so glad Jesus lifted me!”  It’s a simple and profound celebration of the fact that Jesus does cast out our demons, molding us into the truest and purest thing we can be: fully human, fully Pam, fully Joe, fully Sydney, fully Kaj.  For some, we fall victim to trying to be more than human, inflating ourselves with the “sin of pride.”  For others, we fall victim to being less than human, deflating ourselves with “sin of hiding.”  

Hear the good news, sisters and brothers, siblings in Christ:  Jesus casts out those distorted portraits of ourselves, whichever way they’re distorted by sin and demons, and calls us, paints us into who we are made to be: beloved and sent out children of God.  Baptized.   

Sounds nice.  But it doesn’t happen without a some thrashing about.  Did you notice that in the text?  “The unclean spirit, convulsed him and cried out with a loud voice.”  Demons don’t like Jesus, and they don’t like to come out.  Just ask anyone who’s battled addiction.  The Greek word for the convulsing — sparatzan — has connotations of grasping and shaking violently.  

And here’s another interesting thing to think about:  The demons recognize Jesus.  Often it’s very hard for us to recognize Jesus, when we meet him.  Have you ever noticed that?  You don’t know it’s Jesus immediately when the stranger greets you, when the friend offers a harsh word of admonition.  [surprised]  “Oh, that’s Jesus.”  (Emmaus) The OT lesson today talks about false prophets — we don’t always recognize Jesus right away...but the demons do.  What’s that about?

When our demons of pride or hiding are threatened by Jesus, it’s going to hurt coming out.  The exorcism is going to shake us, because we’ve grown accustomed to living with our demons.  So don’t be surprised if it stings a little, if you convulse a little in church — maybe the exorcism takes a whole season.  Lent is coming.  
...It all reminds me of when our kids would get a cut and always used to cry or at least wince when we washed the wound.  We an all relate to that.    

But in the end, friends in Christ, we are made clean, we are healed, we are freed from the all the demonic forces that tie us down.  This is the Gospel truth, this day and forever.  Praise be to God.  AMEN.

January 24 -- Glitchy Zooms and Demons (After Epiphany 3B)

Friends, grace to you and peace from Jesus the Christ who calls you now.  AMEN.

I thought I had something earlier this week, and then yesterday a small handful of us (along with a few members of 3 other churches) gathered on a glitchy Zoom call and survived our way (and much more) through the entire Gospel of Mark!  

It’s something I like to do every new year with the congregation, at least, whoever is up for a very different kind of Saturday morning: reading the Gospel of the year aloud in its entirety, taking turns chapter by chapter.  And of course this year, it had to be virtual.  Our time “together” started very fragments, by trying to figure out how to hear and see each other.  A flurry of texts to get the meeting code again, computers muted, or not muted, video on, or not able to be on — I think even our most tech-savvy can relate to those days...At one point I as the host got bumped off the call, I thought I lost everyone, a few folks came in after we had started.  Somehow we managed it all.  There are definitely many worse things happening in our nation and our world right now, but to be honest, this felt like a little bit of a virtual storm, out in the sea of ministry.  
 

And then Jesus found us, and called us.

As we got into the chapters, I was again swept up by the narrative of God’s mercy, as different voices among us came through my speakers one way or another.  It was quite beautiful actually and incredibly powerful (pic).  

I shared with a friend yesterday afternoon, that every year, to be honest, I drag into this endeavor at the last minute.  I am deflated at that point where we start reading, all tangle up.  I try to build the event up, in the weeks before, but always when that Saturday morning actually rolls around, I envy everyone who is opting out of this, to be honest, as a small group is climbing with me into the saddle of another gospel reading.  This year was no exception...

And then, every year — every year, the Gospel is enough, the words are enough, more than enough, and I leave the experience always inspired, challenged, filled.  This year was no exception.  

And it’s changed my direction as I preach on this early section from Chapter 1, where Jesus shows up (out of the baptismal waters) and calls the disciples, where Jesus calls you and me.  

The Gospel of Mark is the gospel of exorcisms.  That’s what jumped out at me again and again as we read yesterday. 
 

Jesus — not just in stories where he casts out demons, of which there are many — Jesus is calling out and driving out the evil and the brokenness in the world and in the hearts of people all throughout the Gospel of Mark!  It is the Gospel of exorcisms!

The reading from Jonah today...is God having to send Jonah again.  After that whole dramatic whale episode that I imagine many of us learned in Sunday school — you know, God sends Jonah to Ninevah, he doesn’t want to go, jumps on a ship in the literal opposite direction, asks to be thrown overboard in a fit of guilt, gets swallowed by and lives in the belly of a giant fish for 3 days, then is spit up onto the shore and finally goes to Ninevah.  After all that!  He still doesn’t learn, he doesn’t think the people deserve God’s mercy, he still tries to run from it, and here in our OT text God is sending him again!  All that to say, we, like me in our online reading event yesterday, need God nudging us, calling us, sometimes dragging us, fishing us out from our own nets, and sending us too again and again and again.  

Why?  Because “we are the ones through whom our God is seen and heard.”

And the demons are not just overtly evil actions and intentions...like the terrorists we witnessed rushing up the steps and attacking the capitol on the Day of Epiphany, 3 weeks ago now.  That was pure evil, violence through word and deed...more and more stories of the brutality and sheer hatred are coming out.  The demons are not just that.  Nor are they just cruel words and back-handed comments, vengeful thoughts, secret schadenfruede (you know, the “pleasure derived by another’s misfortune”).  
 

The demons — as I realized in myself — are also our anxiety, our fear, our obsession with perfection, and our distrust that God’s got us now and always.  The demons are many and various and need an entire Gospel narrative to be named and finally cast out by Jesus.  

Yeah, I said perfection!  I want everything (and always want everything) to go perfectly.  Are you like that too, high achievers?  Mending nets that are broken, constantly so that, not only do they work, they also look good, present well, function most efficiently!  Jesus finds us there.  “Hey, follow me instead,” he says.  Let go of those nets.  
—
I am currently in our annual Bishop’s Academy — which is this year of course a Zoom call (for like 5 weeks on Wednesdays) — and we’ve got Dr. Ryan Bonfiglio of Cantler School of Theology — deep-dive-lecturing us on Sabbath.  This week he was reflecting on what it is we need sabbath, i.e. sanctuary, from:
productivity, efficiency, perfection, technology and orthodoxy.  Perfection really jumped out at me.  He talked about one (of 39) of the Old Testament Sabbath prohibitions is driving a hammer...and while that looks pretty easy on the surface to keep, the rabbis have taught for centuries that hammering a nail is clearly symbolic in Jewish tradition of finishing a job well.   

And I don’t know about you, but finishing a job right and well can absolutely possess me.  It can make me crazy.  Make me miss my own children’s needs, right under my nose, make me angry unfairly with my spouse, make me self-medicate, made me sleepless, make me dangerous on the road because of fatigue and distraction.  Make me say and do things that aren’t me, the list goes on...and that’s starting to sound like a demon.  Are these the nets from which Christ’s mercy calls us too, friends?  Perfection?

There’s a lot tangled in those nets: fear, anxiety, and finally that stumbling incompetence at entrust all this to God.  That’s what the deep spirituality of the Offering is, every Sunday.  That’s the disciples and us, dropping those nets and starting to take our first steps behind the Savior.  Try to trust.  Trying to walk free.

The Gospel of Mark is life-saving.  
It happened again yesterday: I thought I was drowning and yet Christ found me.  I thought everything was falling apart, and yet Christ calls us.  

As Amanda Gorman proclaimed from those same capital steps on Wednesday:
We've braved the belly of the beast
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn't always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn't broken
but simply unfinished

Friends in Christ’s inauguration, in Christ’s call to discipleship, we begin our journey again.  And Jesus is the one who finishes the brokenness, the driving nail: Christ, the one who loves, who forgives, and who saves us all from the demonic nets.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

January 10 -- No Small, Sweet Thing (Baptism of Jesus - Epiphany1B 2021)

Friends, I said we’re in the Year of Mark, and
WE. ARE. IN. IT.

The baptism of Jesus is no small, sweet thing.

Baptism has become a bit of a nice, small, sweet thing in our time:  A perfect, new baby is born.  A nice tradition of getting that baby baptized lingers in the family’s DNA.  Church participation might be pretty minimal, but the pastor’s fine with that.  Hey, everyone’s welcome.  Grace abounds, and after all the young parents and everyone knows, “it would mean the world to Grandma” to see her precious little grandchild get baptized, especially given her recent health concerns.  So why not?  It’s a sweet day, the family travels to be there, the pictures by the font are so nice, the little brunch that follows (at least in pre-COVID times)...and then just a year later, everyone pretty much lets that “big” day come and go, maybe a baptismal candle is lit, a card from a sponsor or friend from church arrives in the mail, but that’s about it...and even that can buried as the years pile up.  Because...baptism, in our time, largely has become a nice, small, sweet thing.  

But friends, you need to know that Jesus’ baptism is revolutionary!  The ripping open of the sky and the descending of the Holy Spirit on Jesus — and by extension, on us too...according to our Paul New Testament theology —

“When Paul had laid his hands on them, the
Holy Spirit came upon them” — this Baptism is no small, sweet thing.  It is earth-quaking, heaven-splitting, new-path-setting, irrevocable, re-arranging, re-surrecting, re-creating, re-volutionary action, here and now and in-your-face!

It is chaos losing to order.  
Violence being swamped by peace.
It is racism ending to equality and justice for all.
It is the tyrannical empire of Caesar’s Rome succumbing to Jesus!
It is evil falling to love.
Baptism is death dying to life in Christ.

Welcome to the Year of Mark.  WE. ARE. IN. IT.  Might be the shortest book, but it packs a punch.  Its symbol is the roaring lion.  Clear, sharp, immediate, irreversible and a powerful way to start this already difficult year.  
[catch breath…]

Baptism here is a renunciation of death and the devil.  Biblical scholar Alan Streett says, baptism is letting your subscription to Caesar’s reign of terror expire, it’s “burning your draft card” to Rome’s violent conquest, and proclaiming and embracing an opposite allegiance: God’s new reign of radical justice, compassion and peace.  

When it says the “heavens were torn open,” that Greek word, is powerful and irreversible, according to Markan scholar Don Juel.  God is unleashed on the world.  Welcome to Mark!  God — unleashed on the world!

Frankly this kind of action is a more than most people are willing to sacrifice.  This kind of faith is just too risky.  This kind of divine love and justice is simply too much to get behind...too much at stake.  This baptism of Jesus is too big.  We’d all probably want to shrink it down, put it back in the box (the little bowl-of-a-font), and keep it sweet and sentimental, and a nice excuse to have a small reunion.

And then we have weeks like this...  

And we find ourselves needing more than just a nice, small, sweet, little ritual.  We find ourselves longing for a grounding in hope, a place to make a stand, a position to take, a word to speak.  

And friends in Christ, this Baptism of Jesus holds up — even and especially in the face of violence in our nation’s capital and beyond.  This baptism of Jesus holds up in the face of blatant racism and white privilege.  This baptism of Jesus holds up to fear and the chaos, the uncertainty and the cruelty.  This baptism of Jesus is no small, sweet thing.

Friends in Christ, let’s buckle up for the kind of ministry Jesus has in store for us this Year of Mark, because he’s just come up out of the waters of baptism.  He’s made his stand in the Jordan river.  We are covered in those waters too, so now the trip begins!  

I hope we can stay on board.  Brace yourself for whiplash because the Gospel of Mark moves fast (in chapter 1 alone, Jesus gets baptized, gets tempted in the wilderness, calls the disciples, teaches in the synagogue, casts out demons and heals a leper!  Chapter 1)...I hope we can stay on board because following Jesus gets bumpy down the the muddy roads of the baptized life.  

This will not be easy.  Remaining faithful will not be easy.  There will be confrontation with forces of evil, with chaos, and violence — If the baptism of Jesus is for us too, if like the Ephesians, the Holy Spirit descends on us too, then get ready to make your stand in Jordan and join Christ for the journey.

This is a stand against SATAN (ever heard me talk much about Satan?  Well, I’m trying to channel Markan Christology here!), this is a face-off with Satan is no small, sweet thing — it’s no 3-little-drips of water from a tiny bowl in a peaceful sanctuary, a nice white gown, some cake and some pictures.  No, this discipleship is gonna hurt, it’s gonna leave us bruised, struck down but not destroyed!  “The Gospel of the Lord.”

Friends, are you still with me?  Why’d everybody sign out and log off?  (just kidding—I can’t see who’s here)  Are you still with me?  Are we still together in Christ?  Has the chaos and the terrorism on our own soil, in our own town, has the violence of this season broken us up, torn us down, frightened us away?  Or are we going to get Markan here in 2021?  M-A-R-K-A-N.  Are we going to buckle down and buckle up and journey with Jesus?  

Friends in Christ, here’s the thing about Mark’s Wild Ride:  We’re not just along for the ride...  

As this rich narrative unfolds, as we get jerked and bounced from one scene to the next, Jesus is actually going to pass the reins over to you!  [pause]  That’s the Gospel of Mark.  (Like a scene from an action movie.)  And there it is again: “When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them.”  The Holy Spirit descends on YOU.  SPLISH, SPLASH, is pretty much how it went.  “You are my child; you are my the beloved,” God says to you, “with you I am well pleased.”  

We are emerging from the baptismal waters too.  We are standing in the Jordan river too.  The Holy Spirit is descending on you too.  And now Jesus is calling you aboard.  Here we go.  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. 

August 23 -- A Chip Off the Old Rock (Pentecost 12A)

At the beginning of a new school year, however new that looks this unprecedented school year, at the end of August, beginning of September...it’s time to go back to the basics.  Can’t start a new school year without going back to the basics, reviewing where you came from – your multiplication flashcards, the alphabet, the writer’s handbook, the periodic table, Gray’s Anatomy, in seminary it was the dictionary of theological terms and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together.  

Pick your level and your discipline, but you can’t start a new year without remembering where you came from.  And this week, our lectionary texts are practically synched up with the same idea:  We can’t start anew without remembering where we came from.  It’s time to go back to the basics…back to the building rocks.  Molecules and cells.  Letters and grammar.  Numbers and formulas.  Theories and cases.

And today in church:  Who we are and whose we are.  Where we have come from…and then who is this Jesus?

Our first church lesson from Isaiah calls us, especially in times of trial, to “look to the rock from which you were hewn, the quarry from which you were dug.  Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you.”

Siblings in Christ, we are called back to the basics this late date in August: we are called to remember that we all come from the same rock.  What an image:  God shaped us and molded us from a common rock, dug us up and breathed into each of us.  We trace our ancestry of faith back to Abraham and Sarah, back to Adam and Eve, back to the very hands of God.  “Look to the rock from which you were hewn.”  The mighty fortress, who is our God.

How…we…can…forget…that we came from God.  How we can run and hide, and deny and evade.  And joke.  How our memories can be short-term, tracing our ancestry of faith back only one or two generations (back to Pennsylvania or Iowa or Sweden or Puerto Rico or Sierra Leone)…but not hundreds and thousands of generations.  

But let’s get back to the basics today: It is the Living God who chiseled away at our being, and who continues to chisel away at us, who dug us out of the dirt and gave us this holy life, this sacred earth, and who continues to dig us out of the quarry: out of our despair, our guilt, our brokenness and our sorrow.  It is the living God who refashions, remolds us, puts us back together (i.e. remembers), breathes into us new life again, and now, today, sets us free.  It is the living God who set the heavens in their places and filled the seas with creatures.  [We can start sounding like psalmists when we go back and start reflecting on the basics!]

May we be psalmists this week as we begin anew, even if you’re not getting back into the virtual classroom, like our children and teachers will be very soon, may we be like little psalmists singing God’s praises and wondrous deeds with our thoughts and actions.  We have been resuscitated by the living God, brought to life again and now again!
--
And now, having been brought back, this God asks us a question.  “Who do people say that I am?” Jesus probes his followers.

Kind of a timeless question.  People are still talking about Jesus today, saying/writing who he is, or who he is not, or at least who he was.  [Albert Schweitzer] Pick your context and your camp, and off you can go with things to say about Jesus.  I think many, many people in our post-Christendom, post-modern American culture today believe that Jesus was just a prophet, like the disciples said, just a radical activist—who was executed for advocating love of the poor and the outcast, violating Jewish laws and undermining Roman authorities.  Compelling stories, but he lived long ago, and is pretty much irrelevant today, other than being yet another inspirational role model who we could never fully imitate.  [Temple of Self Realization in Malibu]  

Others think he was just a super-nice pastor who wants to be your best friend in spirit.  Not so sure about how radical his activism was, the point of Jesus, some say, is just to have a personal relationship with you.  “I just want to be with you.”  I had some friends that used to call that “Jesus is my boyfriend” theology.  
If you can replace the word “boyfriend” for “Jesus” in your songs or your prayers, and it starts to sound like a love song, you might be in danger of “Jesus is my boyfriend” theology.  “I just want you to be with me, Jesus.  I just want you all to myself, Jesus.  Don’t leave me, Jesus.”  Where, it’s only about a personal relationship.

Meanwhile I had a professor in seminary who really disliked the song, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” because he thought it had misled generations of Christians to shortchange the Church’s confession about who Jesus is.  (Peter didn’t confess Jesus as his friend.)  Of course Jesus is a friend, and I don’t mean to undermine or make light of that relationship.  But as disciples of the One who came to earth to take on our flesh—who ventured through the pain-filled valleys of our existence, offering both life-giving healing and life-changing challenges, who suffered death, not just for his friends but for this whole world, and then rose from the dead to have the last word over death and evil—we must stand and confess a whole lot more than “he’s just my special friend” or just an inspirational figure in history!  Amen?

Friends in Christ, we join with Peter, and confess Jesus as the Messiah, the anointed one—THE ONE, sent from God, AND YET VERY GOD, God from God, Light from Light, True God from true God (as the old Nicene Creed helps give us words for what is beyond words).  

Sisters and brothers in Christ, we join with Peter, and go back to the basics today, as we too confess Jesus, the rock of our salvation, yes friend, yes radical activist for the poor and the outcast, yes Son of the Living God, yes God in the flesh before our eyes in this Word, in this Holy Communion, in these holy waters of Baptism!  In you.  Yes Jesus lived long ago, and yes Jesus lives now.  

Our confession is great, like Peter’s.  And in making this bold confession that we do, do you know what we become?  

A chip of the old block.

A chip off the old block is what we are, people of God!  A chip off the old ROCK.  A chip off the old rock that is God.  We are a chip off of God.  Broken and shared for the sake of the world, that’s what we are: fractured and forgiven, but sent out for many.  [Imperfections on the rock you’re holding? Fractured and forgiven.]

Siblings in Christ, lest we forget who we are and from whence we come:  WE ARE THE CHURCH, THE BODY OF JESUS CHRIST, and we’re about to chip off into this world!  That’s not a bad thing!

Peter’s confession becomes our confession, and so Jesus is beyond just friendly, relevant or inspirational:  Jesus is necessary!  For without him, for us who are of his flock, his disciples, his followers, we have no life…

Without him, we have no life.  Our life is in Christ.  That’s lesson number one, back to the basics.  Except this is more than a lesson, this is a gift!  And this gift is ours for free!  Nothing you can do to earn it, or precede it, for that matter.  All we can do is accept it.  All we can do is put out our hand and receive it.  God’s grace, life in Christ, poured out for you.  Let’s start with that.
—
And so now what?  God’s done the work, given the gift, now we just get to be the church.  And Paul’s letter to the Romans speaks to this and gives us further instruction:  “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.  Don’t be [chiseled, molded into the ways of] this world, but [continue to be chiseled by God], be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.”

Is it God’s will that children go hungry or get separated from loved ones...or is God chiseling away at us when we see that?  That refugees be rejected?  That species go extinct and air polluted, that communities suffer with illness and isolation, that wars drag on?  Is it God’s will that you continue to live in fear, burdened by anger, guilt, sorrow, or resentment?  Or is God chiseling away at us?  Molding us, fashioning us to be a chip of the old block that is God.

Friends in Christ, BACK TO THE BASICS: we are the church, and God is still chiseling.  Still working, still calling us, molding us, still tapping away at this world…

Sculpting a way for peace…the peace that passes all human understanding.  Praise be to Jesus, the Messiah.  AMEN.          

—
Our hymn of the day is “Goodness is Stronger than Evil” — back to the basics, and yet, far from elementary, it’s the heart of our faith, and it carries us.  These words come most directly from the pen of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who cuts through the static, and all the ugliness of apartheid and racism, and gets at the heart of the matter.  The melody comes from a Christian monastic-style community on an island in Scotland called Iona.  A composer in that basic and harsh setting—rocks, wind, sea, sky—set the Archbishop’s powerful words to music for us to sing.

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.
—

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 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.

July 5 -- Religious Experience (Pentecost 5A)

I had a religious experience in Paris.  Religious (re-ligio, like ligament) means to re-connect...to the source.  Yeah, it was a religious experience in Paris, when I tasted the food each night at dinner time.

Heather and I were traveling in Europe on a budget, so we couldn’t afford to any restaurants, but what we learned we should do is to go into any one of the many over the counter deli’s.  Just order something — it doesn’t matter, we were advised.  Take it back to your room, and enjoy.

I was so glad we weren’t in a restaurant each night, actuallly, because I ended up literally falling out of chair onto the floor, the food was so good!  It didn’t matter what it was, I couldn’t even pronounce it, I was blown away.  EVERY TIME!!!!!    SOOO GOOOD!!!!  With all due respect to all my favorite cooks, and restaurants that I’ve enjoyed throughout my good life, I’ve never had better tasting food than that food in Paris!  I wanted to do backflips; it was like tasting heaven; it made my eyes roll back into my head with each bite, my tastebuds doing a happy dance, my mouth was at a 5-star resort for 3 magical days!...you get the idea.

I tell you all this because I couldn’t believe, then, as our days in Paris passed, as we’d walk past all those fancy French restaurants and patio cafes, filled with people eating food that was as good (and probably even better) than what we had been enjoying each night, how calm they all were inside!  I mean I wanted to throw the table across the room, scream and rip out my hair off with each bite, it was so good, and here they were Parisian-ly sipping their wine and nibbling their delicacies.  I couldn’t believe it.

It reminds me of our lesson today:

Jesus is talking about and doing a radical gospel, giving a life-altering call, offering the bread of heaven, the cup of salvation — Jesus is a RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE!!!!  And yet...nothing.

It’s like our kids, I’m afraid, when we’ll see the glorious Grand Tetons at sunrise, Zion National Park (named after God), the Pacific Ocean at sunset, mountain lakes, desert springs, breathtaking Native American sacred burial sites!...  [unimpressed] “Huh.”  Our children are Parisians.

I know I’m being judgmental right now, and having fun with it (I know for a fact that M&K and Parisians enjoy things immensely, they’re taking it in), it’s little caricatures I’m drawing for you...but I hope my silliness is helping to tap into this scene here in Matthew:

“To what will I compare this generation?”  In other words, “people these days”?  They’re like kids who don’t get it, Jesus says:

We played the flute? wedding music: didn’t dance.
We played the blues? funeral dirge: didn’t cry.

John the baptist? Wild man from the desert, ate bugs, wore super-scratchy, crazy-hippie cloths, long beard, lived like an introverted-wiseman-prophet: you dismissed him as a weirdo.

And now Jesus? The very Son of God, partied with everyone, larger than life, talked and taught, and stayed up too late and told long stories: you dismissed him too as a drunk.  “Huh.”

And then Jesus’ response here throws us for a loop again:
“I thank you God.”

I’d ridicule those people for not getting it, I’d be angry at God for not making them get it.  How can they just sit there?  Parisian-ly sipping.  Silently judging.  Unmoved, dis-impassioned, dismissive!?  God, why are you silent?!

But Jesus thanks God for hiding these things from the world’s arrogant, hot shots, and showing them to the lowly.

How many parents love to rightly point out to their kids, “You don’t know how good you’ve got it.”

Are you catching the spirit of this text here?

It’s as if people today, “this generation,” as the text says — not necessarily “kids these days” — it not about age — it’s about people these days, and, friends, we fall into this category too.  Jesus is just look at us, going, “C’mon!!!  Are you getting this?!”

It’s as if the people these days, just don’t get the kind of grace, mercy, love, joy, peace, hope and truth this savior Jesus has to offer us!  “Huh.”
It’s as if we were carrying some kind of heavy yoke.
Confirmation cartoon in FaithInk:  Duck Church — “You’re all ducks!”

It’s as if we were carrying some kind of heavy yoke.

Some kind of burden on our shoulders.  A load that is so great, we simply can’t smile, can’t fly, can’t celebrate, can’t enjoy, and definitely can’t do a backflip.  It leaves us just sitting there, Parisian-ly tasting, cynical, down, dismissive, even cruel.  “Eh.”  (quickest way to suck joy away)

With the life and joy sucked out of us, we who are yoked down with our yokes turn and suck the life and joy out of others.  Ever notice that?  Sad, down, disconnected people create more sad, down, disconnected people.  Sad, down, disconnected parents create sad, down, disconnected children.  Sad, down, disconnected bosses create sad, down, disconnected employees.  Sad, down, disconnected older sisters, create sad, down, disconnected younger brothers.  And vice versa and on and on.

And this isn’t just a call to be super happy.  Please don’t misunderstand.  Jesus talks about wailing and you didn’t mourn also.

No, this is a text about tapping in.  “Re-connecting.”  Re-ligio.  Coming back to the center — the heart, the mind, the body.   Know the joy of Christ and the tears of Christ.  “People these days”: we are like the “falcon, lost from the falconer” as William Butler Yeats puts it.  We’ve become disconnected from the center.  Our yoke has pulled us away.

And so this rich text ends with Jesus offering us his yoke instead:  a different kind of yoke.  Theologian Marie Bakke of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, pointed this out to me in our staff meeting (and scholars agree with her all over the place):  This text “Come to me…” has often been read as, “Hey, just drop all your problems off with Jesus, and relax.”  Beach blanket; umbrella drink.

But the Jesus’ call is actually to trade our yoke for Jesus’ yoke.  The oxen’s yoke is a tool/symbol for work: so it’s trading our earthly busy-ness for Jesus’ vocation work on this earth.  A new vision!  It’s not about physically kicking up your feet and relaxing — beach blanket, umbrella drink, away from all the suffering, solitary bliss, “don’t worry, be happy”...  No, following Jesus is tough physically — dirty sandals, and tired hands and sore shoulders.

But Christ’s yoke is an umbrella drink for the soul.

In Christ, our falconer, we come back to the center.  We re-ligio, re-connect.  We dance and we cry.  We celebrate and we mourn together.

The children in the marketplace image is also kind of like children in the sandbox: if you don’t do it my way, I’m taking my toys, my money, my friends, my power, my whatever...and leaving you.  That’s what OUR worldly yokes can do.  But re-connected to Jesus, taking Jesus’ yoke instead, it’s not my-way-or-the-highway, it’s Christ’s way, God’s vision for a better world, a better nation, a better home, a better interior life.  Rest for your souls, the heavenly umbrella drink right here on earth...is offered today to you, friends in Christ.  Peace that’s deep, like a water table under the earth, connected and life-giving.  Deep and wide.

This is our God.  Offering us that peace again today, this Fourth of July weekend, this chaotic moment, Jesus calling us back, giving us vision and hope, a center to circle back to despite all the clouds and distractions.

“Take my yoke upon you,” Jesus says, “and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

We rest well, siblings in Christ, for we rest in God — this day and always.  Grace to you and peace.  AMEN.

May 10 -- Mother's Day Story Theology (Easter 5A)

While I was in seminary and working one summer as a chaplain with a small group of seminarians (Lutherans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Unitarians) at Loyola Medical Center and hospital in Chicago—there was a writing-and-reflection exercise that we had to do as part of our curriculum called “Story Theology”.

We had to write down a one-page, front side only, story about something in our lives, preferably not referring to our professional or vocational lives (like interactions with patients or reflections on our training) in the hospital, or in the church.  But rather a story from our personal lives, currently or deep in our memory banks.  Didn’t have to be anything profound or intense, necessarily, just a story from our lives.  Not our thoughts/feelings about the story, our interpretations; just what happened.  (Any of us could do this.)

Then, we would bring that story to our cohort (of 7), and together we’d reflect on it “theologically”.  Hence the name for this exercise: “Story Theology.”  The word “theology” is simply a fancy word for “talk about God”.  This was “talk about God” through a story, usually a very simple story.    

So, for example, a colleague of mine wrote about being carried by her uncle when she was little and on a trip to the Philippines.  I wrote about a muddy adventure I had had with my brothers.  Not the feelings or the thoughts, just what happened.   Another described her mother’s stern look, no feelings, just descriptions.  And one colleague, I remember simply wrote about a bicycle that he had seen a few days earlier, just an old rusty bike, locked to a street sign and abandoned in a Chicago neighborhood.  

Then as a group, we’d take a whole afternoon on one such story and think about “where was God” in the story?  “What aspects of the Divine are revealed?”  What are the implications from our reflections for pastoral care, ministry, theology or rituals – there was a whole list of questions that helped us dissect our simple stories, but not to take away from the beauty of the simple story, rather to find meaning, insights—even God—in our stories, in ways we probably hadn’t ever considered on our own.  

It was a unique experience – taking a whole afternoon to reflect on a short story about looking in the mirror and seeing first gray hairs or tripping and falling at the grocery store or playing catch with your dad in the back yard.

It was important training, for me, in learning how to see God and talk about God being deeply imbedded into everyday life.  (I’d encourage you to try this.)

Maybe this doesn’t sound like anything new or profound to you, maybe it’s easy for you to find God deeply imbedded in everyday life, but put yourself in the shoes of intense and anxious pastors-in-training.  Our heads were so filled with books and papers and lectures and the experiences of others, it was really easy to stop trusting and paying attention to the wisdom of our own experience…and I for one realized that I was overlooking, missing God all over the place.

Friends in Christ, God is all over the place.  In our Gospel today, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  

Last week, we could kind of pin God down in the image of a Shepherd...but today, we remember that God’s also…all over the place.  We also hear today that God goes ahead of us to prepare a place, and that God is our rock and our shelter even now, and long before us.  God is all over the place in space and time. 

I think it’s easy to forget that.  Just like I was once so inundated with books and lectures in seminary that I missed God, all over the place, in the simpleness of life… 

...so can we all miss Christ—the way, the truth, the life right here, right now—in our being inundated with (maybe not books and lectures, maybe so but..) the pressures of this new COVID world, the stresses, the headlines, the bills to pay, the online appointments to make on time, the projects to finish, the kids to feed, the celebrations to drive by, the sleep to catch up on.  

It’s easy to miss it – the presence of God, the talk about God, deeply imbedded in our everyday. (“Come have breakfast.”)  But regardless of whether we notice it or not, God is all over the place…[pause] like junk mail, God just keeps arriving and arriving.  And we can be tempted to want to just put God in the recycle bin:  in the church building.

I’ve never liked calling the church “God’s house”…because that building, as holy and beautiful as it is, is just not enough to “house” God.  No, God’s house is much bigger: the world is God’s house!  The forest is God’s house, the oceans are God’s house, the city streets (including the not-so-pretty-parts) are God’s house, the volcano is God’s house, immigrant and the stranger is God’s house, the hospital bed is God’s house, the preschool and the boardroom and the basement is God’s house.  The spider monkey and the octopus is God’s house.  The lawyer and the homemaker is God’s house.  We are God’s house...You are God’s house.  

What did Jesus say, in my Mother’s house there are many, many rooms?  God isn’t just up there waiting…because that’s not enough.  

God is right here acting and moving and watching and loving this world – the way, the truth, the life here and now.  Listen to that Mother’s Day proclamation again!

We don’t go to the church building because that’s where God lives, like we’re paying God a visit.  No!  Rather the church building — more important, the gathered community — is where we go to celebrate this God who makes a home in, with and throughout this whole world.  It’s where we go to celebrate God’s incarnation, God’s indwelling, God’s deep and abiding, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, heartbeat-by-heartbeat presence.  As close to you as you are to your breath.  Pulsing through your veins and arteries…“the way, the truth, the life”.

I was at a preaching conference once, and as it often does, the issue of the church being in “decline” came up: not enough money, less and less people – it’s across the board, it’s across denominations; it’s a post-church age.  One of the preachers at the conference made reference to this in his sermon, but then he did a little “story theology” about the changes in the Christian church.  He inserted “God talk” into the story of the “church these days”, which might sound funny.  Why would there not be God talk around/about the church today?  But so often, we can forget about God’s action and presence, even when we use God’s name throughout our worship services, and maybe even in our everyday lingo, like when someone sneezes.  We can use God’s name and still forget about God’s action…

This preacher, it was the Rev. Dr. Thomas Long, did a little story theology on the story of the “church these days”…and said that whatever is happening to the church these days – and everyone’s got their theories about why – whatever is happening to the church these days, “we have to remember that God is doing it.”  That’s a powerful theological statement.  

God is up to something, God is all over the place, even in the church.  God is clearing away.  God is going to seed...just beneath the surface.  So that might look like nothing.  

God keeps arriving and arriving.  God keeps breaking out in unexpected ways, rising from the tombs, rising from the pain, rising from the isolation and the loneliness and the doubt, rising from the tears, rising from the poor, rising from the stranger, rising from the martyr Steven who cries out words of forgiveness and mercy toward the very people who are killing him with stones.  

Whatever is happening, God is doing it.  And our God is not a God of death—like we’ve perhaps heard before: a God who picks a few for eternal salvation and leaves the rest of the world, billions of people, not to mention the creatures of the planet to suffer, even burn in hell—NO!  Our God is a God of life, who doesn’t even just come down from above, but who rises up from below, from the ashes and the graves and the sorrow and the pain and the confusion and the despair.  

God keeps rising.  Rising from this world, and rising from you.  AMEN.

March 29 -- Fifth Sunday in Lent

Grace to you and peace from Jesus Christ, who raises the dead. Amen.

What strikes me about this text this time around — we’ve seen this before and there’s so much here — but what strikes me now, is that Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life” not at the end, after Lazarus is all raised and showered and fresh and alive, but when death is stinking and things are at their worst.  

There’s a scene right at the beginning of the next chapter where Jesus is actually sitting at a banquet table with Lazarus and Mary and Martha.  Everyone’s together, food is being served, wine is being poured.  You can easily imagine the good smells and the hearty laughter at the table one chapter past this point.  But that’s not where Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life...everyone who lives in me will never die.”  Jesus says this, at exactly the moment when Lazarus is stone cold dead, 4-stinkin’-days-dead in the tomb, when Martha comes at him in bitterness and blame: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.”  (And of course, beneath the anger is always sadness and fear.)  

Friends in Christ, Jesus isn’t just with us in the banquet times — the parties, and the family feasts, and the full sanctuaries — Jesus is with us through it all.  Jesus doesn’t say “I am the resurrection and the life” at the sun-shiny glorious end: he says it right smack in the cloudy-cold-muddy middle.

And we’re in the middle now.  In the cloudy-cold-muddy middle.  Deep in the muddy valley.  Shadows and fears all around.  Slogging through our days.  Anxious and angry.  Sad and afraid.    

We’re right smack in the middle of it, these days.  In this unprecedented season of Lent, this quarantine, this Covid-19 nightmare.  We’ll never forget this time.  But, friends, we have a God who is here with us, in it.

—

And this God, this one Jesus Christ does several things with us, in the cloudy-cold-muddy middle: First of all, Jesus weeps.  

What is that about?!  Especially in the Gospel of John!?  

If you’ve been listening to my interpretations of John’s Gospel over the months, I continually find Jesus to be completely in control, cool and calm.  He loves everyone, but I haven’t seen him lose it before.  After all, Jesus is all divine.  There’s no question about that, according to John.  All these signs, all these miracles (last week: blind man...feeding 5000, walks on water) all these signs all point to his divinity.   

So what’s he cryin’ about!?  He has the power to raise Lazarus! 

If any of us had the power to raise the dead, if I had the power to raise the dead, I’d show up to your house after the  death of your loved one, and I’d be like, “Step aside everyone!  Check this out!”  I don’t think tears would be my issue.  If we had dead-raising powers, we might be serious and stoic, maybe for dramatic effect, but we’d know we had a miracle up our sleeve.  I’m being trite.  Here’s my point:

Jesus, on the other hand, weeps!  Ponder that this week, this long season of quarantine.  I think one could write a doctoral dissertation on this shortest verse in all of Scripture, especially because it’s John’s Gospel, where Jesus is all in control and calm.  I don’t have the answer as to what that’s all about, but I will say:  Jesus weeping points to Divinity also.  

This is not counted as one of the 7 signs, but I think it should be: What kind of a God cries?!  

Ours does.  Tears say, “I’m with you.”  Ever been with a friend when you were really hurting, who didn’t have an answer or any wise words, but just started crying with you?  I’ve never felt so heard, so understood, so accompanied, so embraced.  

Did you see these clips of Hoda on the “TODAY Show”?  Always so professional, so scripted and in control.  This week...after talking with Drew Brees how kindness is also contagious and both saying “We love you” to each other...she just lost it.

And that’s just a tiny glimpse of our God, who so deeply and completely hears, understands, accompanies and loves us.  Maybe that’s what those tears were about...

Christ is here, right smack in the middle of our pain, of our sorrow, of our fear, of our losses, of our anxieties and of our tears.  All this happens — not after the raising and unbinding — but before it, when things really, literally stink!  God is there, present, loving, weeping.  Never felt so embraced.

—

And then, the final sign — the raising of Lazarus is the final sign of the Gospel of John.  The whole second half of the book of John is the Passion narrative.  So this is it, and what a finale this is to (what’s been called) the Book of Signs, the first half of John’s Gospel!

Hearken back to the first sign, when Jesus turned the water to wine back in Chapter 2 of John:  Mary, who was there then and is here at the tomb of Lazarus as well (and will be at the cross), said back at the wedding, “Do whatever he tells you.”  Do you remember that?  She said this to the servants:  “Do whatever he tells you.”  

As Jesus’ seven signs unfold through John’s narrative, Jesus is always giving a command, telling his “sheep” to do something:

whether it’s “fill the jars with water,” or “take up your mat and walk,” or “gather whatever food is left over,” “go wash in the pool of Sent”...and today, “Lazarus, come out!...Unbind him and let him go!”  

Let’s heed Mary’s advice: “Do whatever Jesus tells you.”  Why?  Because when we do what Jesus tells us to do, good things happen…that is, God’s glory is revealed.  When we listen, when we trust, then we see and walk and eat and rise from the dead...and finally understand.

We’re all sheep of the Good Shepherd, remember?  And sometimes we go astray.  And God’s gonna love us and forgive us even when we fail miserably at listening, trusting, seeing and understanding Jesus (that’s the trust of Luke’s Gospel: God’s gonna hold us no matter what)…

But our life becomes abundant when we follow Mary’s advice, and “do whatever Christ tells us to do.”  Today:  Come out!

— 

Not only has Jesus given sight to the blind, health to the sick, food to the hungry, and brought a crazy-good party to the wedding feast in Cana...and to all our feasts and party days over the years, right?!  (In these isolating days, I hope you’re doing some good reflecting and giving thanks for all the blessings of family and community during these days when we’re cut off from that.  I’m going through a lot of pictures and videos of good times.)  Not only has Christ done all this, given us all this, he even raises the dead!

He even brings us through our valleys, through our losses, through our pain, definitely through our tears, through death itself, and gives us life, and life abundant...not just ventilator life, but family and friends and laughter and banquet tables.

This life is ours even now, even in the mud — not just at the Great Feast That is To Come — this “resurrection and life” is ours right now, right smack in the middle.  Right here in our valley of the shadow of death, the Shepherd is with us.  

Now that’s something worth celebrating!  That’s not just a silver lining:  That’s the center.  That’s the center of our gathering.  That’s the center of our faith.  That’s the center of our hope.  That’s the rock in a weary land.  That’s the cross.  

This life abundant, this abiding Jesus, this raising of the dead, this coming out, this rock in a weary land is yours today, 

and through this valley.

and always.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.