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.

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.  

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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.

September 29 -- Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

About 12 years ago, a member of the first congregation I served gave Heather and I an car!  Actually it was an old, giant, green Dodge conversion van with plush bucket seats, and a back bench that turned into a bed with the push of a button.  Heather and I would never buy a car like this.  But the they were planning to get rid of it, offered it to the other pastor, and he told them to give it to us.  At the time it had less than only 90,000 miles.  It had tons of space for a little family who loves to take driving vacations… So we agreed.  It’s was a wonderful vehicle, for the most part.  We got lots of great use out of it – drove it all the way to South Dakota and Texas and another trip to Colorado.  But as you might imagine, the old van started to show its age.  Different things would break, and stop working — like the gas dial, just dropped one day to a permanent E.  Cruise control, one time, just decided to give up out on an open road in West Texas.  And one day, when I pulled into the driveway of our house in San Diego, this little black handle t-shaped handle just broke off of the shaft.  It had the words “Emergency Brake” indented in white.  

Today’s Gospel text is the story of Lazarus and the rich man.  Reminds me a little of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol.  The scrooge and the poor, and the similar idea of a radical reversal of fortunes in the afterlife.  Remember Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s old partner visiting him and warning him of the chains of punishment for his self-centered, money-hungry actions?  Except, unlike Scrooge, there’s no mercy for the rich man in this story.  He fails to share his wealth, and that’s that.  The poor man goes to heaven and rich man, well, he doesn’t reach heaven.  Kind of a harsh story at first glance, especially as we proclaim a God of grace and love and mercy…
I can see some of you looking at me wondering what in the world any of this has to do with an emergency brake…

And the answer is easy.  Stories like these are emergency brakes.  Prophets like Amos and Timothy who we read today are like emergency brakes.  (go home and read them again)  They can stop us from going out of control, from breaking the emergency brake!  
These lessons can stop us from losing the ability to hold back, slow down, from losing the ability to remember whose we are, and who God is!  

We come to church to use our emergency brakes – starting always at the baptismal font, being challenged by this Word, being fed by the body of Christ at this manger-table.  We’re not just passively being reminded of something nice, we are actively taking part in God’s gifts.  The image and the sounds of emergency brakes are much more graphic – the screeching, grinding, snapping; much more vivid than just a gentle, passive reception of the Word of God, Word of Life.  Friends, we can go out of control when we reject God’s gifts, when the brake breaks!

And among God’s gifts is the stark message that we need to come to a halt, pull back…and remember that God is God.  Every Sunday we say the Lord’s Prayer.  “Our Father in heaven” – bold statement of faith, Luther reminds us – that God is above all.  God is God, not us.  Stories like these, bold admonitions like these, emergency brakes like these, grinding halts, are not threats but gifts, even if they are a little abrasive and graphic.

The gift of this Gospel text, the grinding, is that God wants desperately to release you from the clutch of greed, from the “death grip” of fear.  God longs to free us from our things, our desires, our fears, and our money.  Remember Jesus’ mourning over the rich man?  “How hard it is,” he says, “for the rich.”  Friends in Christ, God frees us from sin and death, from eternal damnation through gift of grace, but how God longs, as well, to free us now from the grip we have on our things, money, stuff, desires.  

Our earthly things give us some sense of security [pause], but in the end these are just things, just money, that will finally rust and decay.   [pause]

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about talking about tithing this week.  When I say tithing, I mean taking 10% of my income and “giving it up to God,” which biblically means offering it to wherever I worship regularly.  I lost sleep this week and worried my heart over a stewardship and wondering about just asking everyone to start tithing [period]—

Not to consider tithing, or to increase a percentage point or two in your giving this year (with the hopes of maybe doing it again next year, if you can).  That’s usually the option that’s presented during stewardship season, and I think you know that is certainly an option.  But I’ve been thinking about asking everyone to just go the whole nine yards, in your pledging!  I really wish I was preaching this sermon in a different congregation, or that a different pastor was here saying this…because for a pastor to preach about tithing is his/her home church can be perceived as the pastor campaigning for more funds, even more money for himself or herself.  (I’ve wondered if it might be a good idea to do some pulpit swaps during October.)

Please, please don’t hear this as fundraising.  Please don’t hear that I’m asking you to tithe so that we can pay the bills.  Please don’t be another one of those worshippers that tells their friends this week, that they’re not coming back to this church because all we do is ask for money.  Because, I’m not, asking for money.  [slowly]  Offering 10% at your home worshipping community, with no strings attached, is a deeply spiritual and worshipful practice.  The whole definition of worship is “offering” – offering our whole selves up to God.  This is the emergency break.  The grinding, pulling back.    

We’re not just passively being reminded of something nice at church, we are actively taking part in God’s gifts.  (Worship prof: every worship service is preparing us for death.)  Our money is so important to us.  We withhold it and send messages with it all the time, even in our churches.  But so often we forget that it was never ours in the first place.  One pastor, when asked if she was a tither, responded, “Yes, I am because then I know I’m getting 10% of my spending right.”  Friends in Christ, followers of Christ, let’s tithe together, let’s talk about it together, and then let’s pray for the faithfulness to celebrate as we watch our surplus flows right out of these doors, serving the needs of the community and the world, Lazarus’ at our gates – there are so many.  (our HOD: “Called by worship to your service, forth in your dear name we go, to the child, the youth, the aged, love in living deeds to show.”)  

There’s a story of Ivan the Terrible, the medieval Russian conqueror, who had his troops baptized with their swords in the air.  We can sure do that with our wallets, our credit cards, our investment portfolios.  “Maybe I’ll drop a few dollars in this baptismal water, but that’s it.  I’ll just give in other ways.”  Maybe we should have a ceremony later this month where we bless and even throw a little baptismal water our wallets, water stains on the leather…
The truth is, we can all tithe.  Studies actually show that the more faithful tithers usually have the lowest incomes, more able to entrust themselves to God, I guess?  “How hard it will be for the rich,” Jesus says to us.
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I like to try in my preaching to approximate the mood and the tone of whatever lesson I’m preaching on.  And I pray that I’m doing that here, that I am being faithful to this text in a season of stewardship.  Jesus is calling us out.  Calling us to a grinding halt. And while at first glance, it seems a threat or a burden, ultimately this is a gift.  Tithing is a gift not a burden (not a gift to the church, it’s a gift to you!).  The gift of this text the gift of sacrificial, first-fruits giving…[pause] is joy and peace, freedom from what we think is ours.  (“we joyfully release…”)  The gift is a surrender to a loving God who promises to hold us always, like Lazarus, to wrap us in loving arms, and to take us home.  God forgives us constantly, and our worship, that is our offering ourselves to God, is a way to acknowledge that we accept God’s embrace, God’s love and forgiveness.    May that grinding grace go with us now, protecting us, enlivening us, and freeing us to live generously and confidently in this world and always.  AMEN.

September 22 -- Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

[“I did not see that coming” story]

Jesus throws us a curve ball today.  “I did not see that coming!”  What would you do if you had someone working under you canceling debts, cooking the books, and overspending for personal gain?  You’d fire ‘em, right?  And yet Jesus tells a stories where the crooked manager gets commended, where the reckless and selfish son gets a party thrown for him (just before this story).  

Jesus is a flips everything.  He sucks us in—we’re rooting for the owner to deal justly with this scoundrel—and then he flips everything on us...in this curious story about wealth and poverty.  How can you be trusted, how can you deal with heavenly things, if you can’t even deal with a little dirty money, with a little street ball?

Jesus, for some reason favors the poor, the dishonest, and the outcast…(but especially the poor) in the gospel of Luke.  And this is one more instance where mercy wins the day.  Mercy even over fairness.  Mercy...and shrewdness!

I was trying to think up a modern-day parable to match this one.  And here we are at the beginning of a new semester, and George Mason University right down the street, “the largest, most diverse and fastest-growing university in Virginia”—so I’m thinking about college debt, and the president of GMU, Anne Holton, former Secretary of Education for state.  She’s not exactly the owner, but let’s just say…  And some clever guy over in the business office, collecting tuition from students, gets caught embezzling some of those funds.

I did some quick sloppy numbers based on their website — tuition, room, board, other expenses, I got about $28,000...for one year at George Mason!  

And so this sly fox in the business, financial aid office gets canned.  But they make the mistake, unlike most businesses, of not making him collect him things and leave immediately.  And before Anne Holton and the rest of the school can catch up with him, he starts...forgiving student tuitions and debts!  He cuts this student’s tuition in half, that one he drops 20%, another one he cuts 40%…on his way out the door!

Messed up, right?!

In Jesus‘ story, he is commended.  Why?  Because he acted shrewdly and made friends (with the poor).  Maybe those students will end up being wealthy doctors and lawyers and take him and his family in one day.  He didn’t burn bridges at the end of his job with GMU; he built new ones.  And President Holton, in Jesus’ story, praises him for that.

This story ought to have us scratching our heads and squirming (and chuckling).  What in the world is Jesus up to?!  

Is Jesus saying we should be dishonest in our business practices?  That we should steal and lie and cheat?  I think that’s what we want to see.  I think we all have that urge to cut corners, and if a story Jesus tells gives us license, then all the better for us.

I don’t think this is what Jesus is saying at all.  And I don’t believe Luke’s first hearers thought that either.  Jesus was a master of storytelling, and he had the people on the edge of their seats, laughing, catching all the irony and nuance.  If you walk away thinking Jesus is telling us to be dishonest in business (to “keep on keeping on”, “that’s the way the world works”), then, I think, you’re missing the point completely.  
Eugene Petersen’s translation helps us understand.  He translates key verses like this: “Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens.  Constantly alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.  I want you to be smart in the same way — but for what is right — using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, not just complacently getting by on good behavior.” (vss. 8-9)

Jesus is saying two things: 1) be clever and 2) take care of the poor.  Do what you can with whatever you have.  Use what you have...use the contacts or connections that you have...to make the world better.  Don’t just robotically go through the motions on the straight and narrow, under the radar; take risks, build community, forgive debts, call people on their stuff, and make friends with the poor.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Jesus is obsessed with talking about wealth and poverty.  (Dave Cross pointed out in our devotions last week in Council that Jesus talks more about money than just about anything else!)  

Today Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and wealth.”  Give it away.  The poor are going to have to vouch for you in the great hereafter, they’re going to have to write you a letter of recommendation for the Great Feast-That-Is-to-Come.  How are we doing at taking care of the poor?  If we’re not squirming now, we’ll be squirming next week when we hear about the rich man and Lazarus!

So the dishonest manager in the story, forgives massive amounts of debts owed to his former company, right?  He forgives the olive farmer and the wheat farmer, 50%, 20%.  Do you know how that slashing of debt would have affected those farmers‘ communities and families?  Cultural anthropologists and archeologists read this story and tell us that those farmers would have gone back home and thrown a huge party to celebrate that kind of debt reduction...kind of like if your college debt was cut in half — so $28G x 4 = 112,000 for 4 years — that’s $56,000 you don’t have to pay!

This is our God:  Crazy.  Bad with money.  Bad at business.  But rich in love and mercy and forgiveness.  Some commentators say this is Jesus — that dishonest manager is Jesus — cutting our debts, forgiving our sins.  Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Luke: we’ve sanitized with our translation, but the Lord’s Prayer is about finances…  “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”  

Give forgiveness of debt a try again this week, friends.  Maybe it’s not financial forgiveness that you’re in a position to give.  (Maybe it is.)  But maybe someone owe’s you an apology.  And you’re waiting for it.  It would be appropriate, but they’re not coming forward.  Give forgiveness a try this week.  Just let it go — not by going up to them and telling them, “You owe me an apology, but I’m going to let it slide.”   No, just let it go.  Forgive them.  Get on with gratitude.  Don’t think about what is owed to you, but rather what you’re thankful for!  

This is what our God has done for us, friends in Christ:  Slashed our debts, forgiven our sins, and commended us.  Every single one of us has a burden of debt/shame/guilt/sin/brokenness/bitterness, and today that’s forgiven.  That’s our God — bad at business, but rich in love, overflowing with faithfulness.  

And fun.  Our God is fun.

“I did not see that coming.”       

AMEN. 

September 1 -- Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

August 18 -- Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

I never cease to be challenged by the divisiveness of Jesus.  On one hand, so much language and imagery about how he’s my friend, our friend, like the old hymn -- “What a friend we have in Jesus.”  I’ve sung this together with the family of faith in their last days, as well as that great Gospel song, “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me…”  It’s wonderful to have a God who is a friend, someone waiting for and walking with us even now.  Someone who takes us by the hand.  But if we who are not yet on our deathbeds, who have (God-willing) plenty of time and health left to share some things on this earth…if we who are actively living, have only a picture of this gentle, sweet Jesus, then we’ve traded our Bibles for just a few of our favorite songs and images!

There was a book few years ago by Kendra Creasy Dean entitled “Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church”.  She argues, that our young people, studies are showing, are emerging and drifting away from our churches, with not much more than an image of a God who is simply “nice.”  The fancy term is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.  Let’s just call it “Nice God Up in the Sky” religion.  This “Nice God Up In the Sky” religion, as she describes, has made its nest in the hair of Christianity, and is in fact sucking the life out of the church of Jesus Christ, living off of the complicated cross-and-resurrection core of our faith, like a parasite.  If the “Nice God Up in the Sky” religion had a creed, these would be the 5 pillars, acc. to Dean and her colleagues.  See if this sounds familiar:  “1) Sure God exists, whatever, and God watches over us from way above, 2) God wants us to be good and nice and fair like the Bible says.  3) We should also all be happy, and feel good about ourselves.  4) God’s not really involved in our lives, except when we need God to solve a problem.  And 5) if we’re good, when we die, we’ll go to heaven.”  Maybe these ideas don’t sound too off base, but know that Christian theologians, and martyrs, and scholars and saints down through the centuries — would call this creed profane and lazy.  “Nice God Up in the Sky” religion is not scaring our young people away, running for their lives, terrified of the church — there’s really nothing scary about it — it’s just not interesting, it’s not captivating or challenging, it’s not life-giving — it’s boring. It’s slowly but surely “life-draining”...like a parasite. 

I’m afraid, in many ways we could be responsible for teaching this to our kids (I certainly could be guilty as charged) — maybe because “a nice God” teaching is a reaction to the “mean, wrathful God” teaching (like Zeus with a lightning bolt) that some of us grew up with…

But this easy, nice, sweet, friend Jesus preaching-and-teaching is slowly-but-surely eroding the church, rounding out the edges, watering it down, making it harder and harder for us to even hear Jesus’ challenge today.  (I imagine preachers this Sunday — I know some — who are either irritated that this text was coming up again or make jokes about how this is a good week to go on vacation or preach on something different.  I myself joked with Marie, “Good thing so many are traveling right now.  Who wants to hear this text about Jesus bringing a sword?!”)  

But, but friends, Jesus speaks anyway, thank God!      

“What did you expect?”  Jesus asks us today, in less-than-sweet tones.  “Did you expect me to come and affirm your status quo?  Did you expect me bring you just gentle words of encouragement?  Did you expect me to take a look at how you’re treating one another and this earth, how you hoard your money, and your gifts, how you exclude one another and trample one another, how you fail to forgive, how you hurt, and judge, and ridicule, and attack one another, and simply say, well, you’re doing the best you can?  Good for you.”   

Friends in Christ, Jesus loves us too much to let us off the hook that easy, and Jesus is too alive in our world today to stop speaking to us, even if it might be hard for us to hear — with the buzzing nest of “Nice God” religion in our hair.

Just because we might be drifting in these late days in summer, doesn’t mean God is drifting.  Just in case you’re feeling drowsy, or distracted, or lost, or cynical these days…about life, about church, about the world, Jesus does not get drowsy, or distracted, or lost, or cynical — thank God! 

We are shaken to the core by this powerful text, wrenched back to life by a God who is teeming with energy and life, “Did you think I came to bring peace?”  Jesus, for one thing pulls out that “Nice God Up in the Sky” nest, rips it to pieces and sets it ablaze.  Jesus arrives onto our scenes TODAY, and rips us apart from our social circles, our family circles, our cultural circles, our political and economic circles — which can give us some sense of identity and security.  But if those circles fail to align with his agenda, then “wake up!” he cries.  

“My welcome is bigger than you can imagine, my love is wider, my forgiveness wraps around this…universe, my embrace has no end.”

And that’s going to upset a lot of people.  Jesus’ mercy is everlasting, his embrace is all-encompassing, his agenda is to set the captives free, recovery of sight, peace to the oppressed (1^st 12 chapters of Luke!), but what he doesn’t have time for, is those who stand in the way of that mission.  All are forgiven, yes.  Grace abounds, yes.  But if you refuse the path of discipleship — that difficult road of sacrificial giving and loving your enemy — then move aside.  Thank God: Christ’s realm arrives with or without our permission or our participation.  But we are nudged again this week to get on board!  Thank God.

I’ve learned and experienced in my ministry of 13+ years...that the more welcoming we get as a church, the more mission-minded we become, the more justice-seeking we act, the more we get on board — the more we upset.  At one time, it was just welcoming people of different nationalities (Norwegians and Germans mixing) — and divisions formed. Then different skin colors (black and white and brown) — and you know divisions formed.  Then in the 70’s the church worked on welcoming more explicitly women and divorcees into leadership — and divisions formed (and we’re not all the way past these historic struggles).  Now we’re working on welcoming even more explicitly the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual+ communities, and look how that’s going for us, as a church, as a nation.  The more welcoming you get, the more people you upset.  

“Did you think I came to bring peace?  What did you expect?  You know that clouds in the west mean rain…”    

What about caring for and welcoming the undocumented  immigrants into God’s embrace and into our sanctuaries? 

Or people of different socio-economic brackets, ages or abilities? What about people who don’t take care of “our” church?  Or the non-human members of this planetary society?  The more that Christ is understood as “cosmic” (as he is throughout the New Testament btw), the more divisions will ensue.  

And yet, AND YET, the mission goes on, the embrace extends, the compassion and mercy of our God reigns down on us still, and still on all those with whom we share this universe.  And despite the division that will inevitably occur when we join along side the One who first joined along side us, we will be alright.  Even in the division that our welcome may cause, even among ourselves, our congregations, we will be alright.  

We press on, friends in Christ, not because we have an agenda, not because we want to “change the world,” or the church or the city or ourselves.  We press on as Christians because of God’s agenda.  God has an agenda of freedom and grace and justice and mercy and compassion, and that has captivated us.   

That freedom locks us down ironically, it binds us together — and we can’t help but continue to be faithful, to continue in the covenant of our baptisms — that is, living among other faithful ones, hearing and tasting the Word, following Christ out into the world, striving for justice.  

WE-WILL-BE-ALRIGHT, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, following in the shadow of a God who is rich and complex, gentle and provocative, human and divine, so-much-more-than-just-nice-and-far-away, a God who is both peaceful and divisive.  Let us go now, renewed and strengthened, centered and bold.  In Jesus name. AMEN.

August 5 -- Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Two brothers fighting it out.  [whining] “Tell my brother to give me that.”  But these are not little boys fighting and whining.  They’re grown men.  And they’re not fighting over a toy; they’re fighting over the family inheritance.”  Trying to draw Jesus into it.  (Remember triangulation with the two sisters?)

There are many things that are instructive about this Gospel text today, but what occurs to me is that the one who’s getting treated unfairly, the one who actually has a case, I think, the one who’s getting none of the family inheritance, is the one who prompts Jesus‘ parable.  The corrective story is for the brother who’s getting the raw end of the deal!  

I think you and I could figure out some ways we are that brother, the one getting cheated.  

Think about it for a moment:  How many ways are you getting the short end of the stick in this life?  How have you been sucker punched in the economic, social, familial, professional, federal, psychological boxing ring of this life?  

I don’t know about you, but my prayer to God can sometimes sound a lot like this brother who’s getting stiffed.  “God, tell them [whoever the them is] to give me my fair share!”  Housing market, job market, family life, church life, retirement, vacation, kids…”God tell them to stop jacking up the prices on gas and groceries.”  “Why don’t we get the kind of beautiful weather everyone on our trip to paradise?”

Can we be as whiny in our prayer life as this brother who simply wants his fair share...and who goes to the source to ask for it?  I mean, we can say some pretty articulate and eloquent prayers, but can the content be just as whiny?

And again, Jesus doesn’t get roped into arbitration, triangulation.  He seizes upon the bigger picture.  

When this man and (if we’re honest) you and me are caught up in this act, in this lifestyle of pining and whining for what we don’t have, for what’s owed to us, for how we got wronged and how others deserve a shaming and more, then we are getting caught in what Ecclesiastes calls the “unhappy business” of life (vanity)...then we are no longer “on guard,” as Jesus would warn, “against all kin‘a greed.”  

“Your life does not consist in the abundance of possessions,” Jesus reminds us again today.  Your life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. “Beware of storing up treasures.”

And here’s the good news:  God through Jesus has freed us in the life hereafter and even in this life, even today — God through Christ has freed us from the “unhappy business” of pining and whining...because we have been promised something much greater in our baptism:  richness toward God — faith.

Faith is a gift given to us in baptism.  It’s nothing you have to buy, it’s nothing you have to earn.  It’s just given freely to you and to me...at the very beginning  And this is an antibody against the virus of greed and vanity:  FAITH.  This will protect us from pining and whining, faith in Christ!  

This “word of God, word of life” today is like finding a most precious letter in the attic, or the closet, or the top shelf of the garage hidden among all the junk.  Colossians: You have been buried and raised with Christ, so you don’t have to keep living in a state of fear and scarcity and sadness and bitterness and clenching on so tightly to what you have, even if you have very little.  Because you have been buried (first) and then raised with Christ, this long-lost letter says:

You have been given this greatest treasure that is faith, and you are renewed this day, free to live in the image of God who created you!  

[Our former presiding bishop Mark Hanson, used to vividly describe the old coffin-shaped fonts, meant to drive this reality home…]

We die to the old [pining and whining]...and are born to the new in baptism [faith].  

How do we we live into that reality?  How do we cultivate fields of gratitude, when there are fields and fields of “pining and whining” all around us?  How, friends in Christ, can we be even better farmers of thanksgiving?  (I say ‘even better’ because there is so much generosity in this place.)  It’s not that we’re not already farmers of thanksgiving, cultivating fields and lives of generosity and seeing the abundance even when times are lean.  But this text is calling us back, again, and challenging us even more in our generosity, that is, in our “joyful releasing”.  [‘sweet spot’ story]  How can we even better share our gifts, our treasures, our inheritances, our possessions…rather than locking so much up in our barns...like that man with lots of money in the parable?  Bigger barns, more houses, more money, more things.  And what are ways that we can remain generous, gracious and thankful even when that same generosity and fairness doesn’t seem to be extended to us by the world? 

[slowly] Friends, Jesus frees us to let go...of our possessions.  

They were never ours in the first place.  And if you died tomorrow — which could happen to any of us — if you died tomorrow, would you have shared your things in this life in a way that reflects the God who loves and creates you anew?  Jesus frees us from greed.  And fear.  Jesus‘ gift of faith, given freely in baptism, is the antidote to our anger and our bitterness. 

Author Tod Bolsinger offers a few suggestions on his blog for cultivating generosity:  “Hang out with generous people.  It will rub off on you.”  I suppose that implies the opposite then too:  

Keep an emotional distance from those who are not farmers of thanksgiving.  I’ve noticed that bitter people can rub off on me also.  Hang out with generous people.  (Looks like you’re in the right place!)  

  

Bolsinger also suggests practicing generosity.  (Fake it ‘til you make it, I suppose.  Studies tell us this works with self-confidence...how about generosity?)  He writes: “Leave a big tip when you go out to dinner.  Buy [fair trade coffee] and give it to your neighbors.  Buy a struggling young [professional] a new suit or offer to pay the rent for someone who needs a helping hand.  And then thank them.  Tell them that you are doing it for yourself, and that they are doing you a favor.  Then find something that you are hanging on to a little too tight and just give it to someone.  Give away your [porcelain doll collection, or your baseball cards, or favorite shirt], or whatever.  Empty your wallet in the offering plate just for the experience of doing so.  Write the biggest check you can ever imagine to some work of God in the world, and watch how there is still food on your table.  And don’t ask for any recognition for it, because this is helping you.  Reorganize your finances so that the first tenth of every bit of income that comes in your door goes to the work of God.  I mean really tithe.  Look at it as a whole lot better deal than the rich [landlord, in our text] got.” (Which was, of course, poverty in God.)   

How is all this setting with you?  It’s hard for me, in a way, to even read these suggestions...because I can be kind of stingy.  But I’m trying to trust in the gift that’s been given to me (and you) — faith, “richness toward God”.  

Let’s stick together, siblings in Christ, let’s encourage one another, inspire one another, and keep practicing generosity together, knowing that God stays with us through it all, and that we have been freely given the riches of faith!  AMEN.

June 9 -- Pentecost Sunday

It is so hard to do Pentecost again, isn’t it?  I mean, in our ordered, structured, controlled and many ways comfortable lives, our Confession and call to worship — more poetic, today — I think, kind of nailed it:  “So we listen, depart, and return to our ordered existence: we depart with only a little curiosity but not yielding; we return to how it was before, unconvinced but wistful, slightly praying for wind, craving newness, wishing to have it all available to us.”  (Those were the words of pastor, prophet and professor Walter Brueggemann.)

He concludes in that piece: “We pray toward the wind and wait, unconvinced but wistful.”  

With all that we have, why would we even need the Holy Spirit at Pentecost?  Right?  She just messes things up.

I mean the Acts story is kind of entertaining, we’re a little curious, but “shake us loose from lethargy, break the chains of sin asunder for earth’s healing set us free, crumble walls that still divide us, make us one in Christ our Lord” (all from verse 3 of the Hymn of the Day we’re about to sing) — that all sounds nice, but let’s calm down here, people: Pentecost is just a day for wearing red, maybe reading and singing in different languages...earth’s healing? crumbling walls? C’mon, Jesus — that’s too much, that’s too “out there”.  We’d rather remain “unconvinced but wistful.”

It’s hard to do Pentecost, isn’t it?  It’s hard to live Pentecost, and — what we in the church call — the Season after Pentecost.  Starting next week until Advent!  We’d rather just return to our ordered existence, only a little curiosity, but not yielding.

This is our dilemma:  It’s hard to yield.  It’s hard to let the Holy Spirit in, disordering, dismantling.

Couple years ago, I heard a story from a new friend about Emma.  I was at a training event in Chicago and met Jan, Emma’s pastor.  She told me about her larger-than-life little Emma, a 7-year-old member of this start-up congregation in suburban Kansas City.  

They had been gathering for only a few months, and they were just beginning another typical Sunday morning service with red hymnals like ours and synthesized organ on the electric keyboard, gathering at the font for the Invocation, the Call to Worship like we do.  Pastor Jan, offering the opening words in the Confession and Forgiveness.  And suddenly Emma says, “Stop!!”  See, they were worshiping in a storefront and one of the walls of their space was all window, and Emma was watching, and she saw that a new family had just arrived, running late with their baby in a stroller, but trying to be discreet.  Emma went running right through the gathering at the font and burst outside to throw her arms open and say, “Welcome!  We’re so happy that you’re here!  My name’s Emma!  What’s yours?”  (It happened to be a same-gendered couple.)  The congregation can watch this whole drama unfold through the glass, and within seconds, little, energetic Emma bursts back into the sanctuary, with her new friends and announces, a little winded now, “This is Anna and this is Julie, and this is baby Simon. [whew] Now we can start.”

When Pastor Jan told me this story, she ending by saying: “Best Call to Worship ever.”  

Crumbling walls, yes?  The gift of a storefront sanctuary, walls that are windows.  Or no walls at all.  I love when we worship outside in the pavilion, and what a gift it is to gather in a place where outsiders can be easily seen and welcomed in.  We have that too, in many ways, with our large narthex and multiple points of entry.  

This is doing Pentecost, and while it is hard, Christ fills us this day with courage and joy to go, and throw our arms open like Emma.  “Welcome, we’re so glad that you’re here!”

Another true story from the West Coast that happened in one of the congregations out in the desert.  Service was beginning.  It was a more traditional, established church, where people even dress up a bit for worship on Sunday (polo shirts).  And all the usual people were gathering and greeting one another, and in comes a very thin woman — we’ll call her Nora — she’s a white woman, but her tan skin is so dark and leathery that you can barely see the strange tattoos exposed by her tank-top, her hair is frizzy and tangled -- also beaten by the sun.  And her worn-out sandals are barely hanging onto her feet.  

The “greeter” — we’ll call her Joan — who is always the greeter and knows everybody who comes in by name (Joan’s even the type of person who knows personal details about just about every member), Joan sees this wild-haired, poorly dressed, age-worn woman coming in from the parking lot, and she immediately gets both nervous and suspicious.  “Hi...” she says to the visitor with a forced smile.  “Can we help you?”  

“Uh, yeah.” Nora’s starts, with a raspy voice from years of smoking, kind of peering into the past Joan toward the sanctuary, “Where are the service folders?” 

“Um,” Joan stops her.  Kind of looking over her shoulder.  In a hushed whisper, Joan offers some advice: “Maybe you’d be a little more comfortable at the church down the street.”  (Joan knows that St. James Episcopal, just walking distance, down on the corner really “specializes” in homeless ministry.)  “Maybe you’d be a little more comfortable at the church down the street.” 

“The hell I would!” says Nora, “I’m coming in.  I need to be here.”  And in she walks, finds the bulletin herself, takes a place in the one of the middle pews (nobody sits next to her), and proceeds to sing and participate enthusiastically...and off key through the service.  

The people remain nervous and suspicious, watching her out of the corner of their eye during worship. But Nora’s not going anywhere.    

[pause]

[slow] Friends, both Nora and Emma are Pentecost characters.  The Spirit bursts out to welcome the stranger and the outsider, and the Spirit sometimes is the outsider that’s “comin’ in!” “I need to be here,” Holy Spirit says, whether we’re comfortable with her or not.  

It is hard to do Pentecost, when we’re settled and comfortable, but friends in Christ, Pentecost is upon us.  We don’t get a say in it.  We have a God who blows out and blows in, with or without our permission or our parameters.  This God is with us and for us.  This God moves among us — sometimes we’re on board with her; many times, we’re ambivalent at best.  That doesn’t stop the Holy Spirit.  (In Greek and Hebrew the exact same word for spirit means wind or breath too.  Why do you think that is?)  

The Holy Spirit, she is wild: sometimes bubbly like young Emma, sometimes raspy and way off-key like old Nora.  Sometimes gathering us in, sometimes, breaking us out..of old ways and old suspicions.  This Holy Spirit is here in our midst today, and even while it is indeed hard to do Pentecost — to not just stay “wistful and unconvinced” — even while it is indeed hard to do Pentecost and this coming Season after Pentecost, the “What now? Season”...friends, the Spirit stays with us anyway.  The Holy Spirit in all her wildness rests even on our heads, burns our psyches, singes our egos, grants us visions and dreams, enables us to prophesy, that is say things that we would never imagine ourselves to be saying...and in all that, we are made free.  In other words, the Spirit moves us to yield.

She moves us to yield and sends us forth to serve in peace, for we are made free...whether we’re ready for this kind of freedom or not.  Pentecost is upon us.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.