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

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

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

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

just as a quick overarching image (if helpful) —

        John is like a mystical, French poet…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMEN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s just the first part:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

December 13 -- Not the Messiah (Advent 3B 2020)

 Let us pray, drawing words from our Epistle reading today:  “May the God of peace sanctify us entirely...for the one who calls us is faithful.  AMEN.”

Last week we read the message of John the Baptist, as told in the Gospel of Mark.  I didn’t preach on it (I preached on the Isaiah lesson), but I’ll tell you now: the thrust of John the Baptist’s message in Mark is this:  REPENT.  John the Baptist, with Isaiah and Mary and Micah, are Advent prophets.  And we actually get two weeks of two perspectives on John the Baptizer this season...

This week, the Third Sunday of Advent, in the Gospel of John, the word “repent” doesn’t appear at all!  It’s a different thrust completely.  In fact, baptism, in the Gospel of John, has far less to do with REPENTANCE, and everything to do with revealing God’s love, like shining a spotlight on Jesus.  John himself only wishes to “testify” to God’s love.  John certainly baptizes, but he does so for the sole purpose of making Christ known…and in so doing tells us all who he is not—John the baptist is not the Messiah.  If we’re in the Gospel of John, especially, I actually like to call him John the Pointer.

John proclaims, even to us today, that the Messiah position has already been filled.  In other words, God is God, so we don’t have to be.  

I have a friend who was called to a church some years ago – and when she came she was greeted with wide open arms, like she walked on water.  You see, she was highly qualified.  She’ll probably be a bishop one day.  She has the kind of solid theological training, the kind of compassion and passion for God’s people that any congregation would envy.  And this congregation knew it.  You see, the congregation, like many others, had been through years of decline, and so they were very excited to have her with them!  In fact, she actually had somebody refer to her, shortly after she arrived, as “the Messiah” — the one who would save them.  My friend very quickly assured them that that position had already been filled…and that that was good news.

Siblings in Christ, whether we live or whether we die, we belong to God.  Our salvation does not depend on us.  Jesus has already filled the Messiah position.  (That’s good Advent news; that points us to the meaning of Christmas.)  Jesus has filled the Messiah position...and now our job is to be about proclaiming that, like John, giving testament to that good news, shining the spotlight on the manger.  

(As a little bodily preaching prep this week, I brought a new spotlight from home, to shine more light on our weathering manger out front.  It’s another way of pointing.)

John the Baptist teaches us that lesson today.  Our call is to go and do likewise, giving our egos a little reality check, and proclaiming this Advent season, not who we are, but who we are not.  And shining the spotlight, pointing to the Christ, born in Bethlehem.

We do that by our actions.  Francis of Assisi famously said “preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”  How might we proclaim that the Messiah position has already been filled…with our actions?

I heard a story once about a missionary in India.  He had been sent there by a Christian organization in the United States, who was sponsoring him.  And after many years of trying to start a Christian church in a primarily Hindu culture, he finally realized that his missionary attempts weren’t getting any traction.  He called to inform his sponsors of where things were at.  They understood, and plans were made for his return home.  As it turned out his departure date was scheduled for December 26th.  And so he would be there for Christmas Day, on the western coast of India, in the midst of a deeply Hindu people and culture.  The missionary decided he wanted to throw a Christmas party before he left.  So he set up tables and chairs in the center of the marketplace.  Then he took all of his remaining funds from his sponsoring organization, and bought as much rice and bread and milk as he could.  Hundreds of dollars, which is what he had remaining from his years in India, can buy a lot of rice and bread and milk, in that part of the world, at that time.        

It was a wonderful party as you can imagine—a Christian man sharing and eating among the poor in a distant land.  The next day, he packed up his things, and climbed aboard the ship that would eventually bring him home.  

When he arrived back in the United States, his sponsoring organization quickly found out what he had done with the remaining funds.  

They were furious.  “How could you have done that?  It was a failed mission.  And in the end, no one became Christian.  They’re not even Christian!”  The man listened to the board of directors and calmly responded.  “But I am, and it is the Christian story that I am sharing on Christmas Day.” [pause]  Like John the Baptist, he remembered that he was who he was for the sole purpose of making Christ known.  Friends, we are who we are for the sole purpose of making Christ known.

And who is Christ to which we point?  He is the one of whom Isaiah sings: He is the one who brings good news to the oppressed, who binds up the brokenhearted, who proclaims liberty to the captives, the cancellation of debts, gladness instead of morning, life instead of death!  The one to whom John points, the one on whom we shine the spotlight with our lives, is Christ Jesus...who loves justice and peace, who restores all the earth with shoots of green that spring up, who welcomes and includes everyone, who forgives and embraces and feeds and shelters and comforts all...

Siblings in Christ, we are invited again today to reflect and respond to the gift of who we are—forgiven followers, proclaimers, spotlight-shiners, pointers to Jesus...through our words and actions.  
And siblings in Christ, we celebrate this Advent morn who we are not—the Messiah, who is with us now and loves us still, who is faithful and will not ever let us go.  May that peace sanctify us entirely this day and always. AMEN.  

October 25 -- Bound at the Center (Reformation Sunday 2020)

Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, October 31st 1517.  I first saw that door on October 5th 2012.  I came up to it at night, and it does have that shrine feeling to it.  A silence came over me, a tear welled up: in spite of all the mythology, the hype, the centuries of repristination, the tourism — this was still the place...where it all began!  [pause]

Actually it had begun long before, but this is a monumental scene and today we mark and commemorate this pivotal moment in our church’s history.  The action of nailing up the 95 theses was only at the beginning of Martin Luther’s brave and theologically grounded public, political protests.  He was only 34 years old!  Standing up to the immense and dangerous powers of his day.  (Ooh, I wonder what Luther would say to the powers of our day…I’m sure he’d be railing against all those who oppressed people who are poor and marginalized…some even doing it from behind the thin veneer of religious piety.

And Luther stood up to them — why? — for personal fame and fortune?  To be a big hero in history? For his own glory?  No, Luther stood up, spoke, acted, protested because his “conscience was bound.”  He was compelled by the word of God, by these words that we read again today from Romans and John — “for we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law”…“So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Luther was freed by grace.  
                And so are we, friends.  So are you.

503 years later, we Lutherans — even we Lutherans — can operate like we’re still bound by the letter of the law.  But friends in Christ, we are freed by grace.  (In fact, many scholars point out that it’s not “faith in Jesus,” like most bibles translate.  But more accurately it’s possessive/genative: we are saved by the faith of Jesus…whole ‘nother sermon!  It’s Jesus’ faith — not our own — that saves us!  I mean, it’s all grace...grace upon grace!)

So we go then, to share, to stand up, to tell the story of Jesus and his love, to speak out and protest publicly, and serve our neighbors and those who are poor, and love our enemies, and take care of our own bodies and God’s planet, not because we have to or because we’re supposed to, not because we’re bound by some law to do these things...but because we can’t help ourselves.  This is what grace does to us!  AMEN?!  Our good works are simply a “consequence of God’s grace,” as one of our daily Christ in Our Home devotions put it.  I like to call it eucharistic centripetal force: when we come in contact with this grace we are flung out into the world by a force beyond ourselves, i.e. God’s mercy and love!
—
A few years ago I had the pleasure of hearing one of our premier Luther scholars in the ELCA, the Rev. Dr. Former-Bishop and now President of GettysburgPhiladelphia’s United Lutheran Seminary Guy Erwin, who talked about the Continuing Reformation.  

One of the pillars of the Protestant Reformation, he reminded us, is that it’s ongoing.  Semper Reformanda.  Always Reforming.  And as he reflected on this ongoing reformation and what the church looks like as we’re moving now into the next 500 years, Dr. Erwin suggested that we be a church that’s “bound-at-the-center, not bound-at-the-edges”.

I loved it!  It reminded me of that image I’ve talked about before of the church as a herd of good cattle, congregating around good water.  We are bound by what we come to the center to receive, not by strict boundaries at the margins.  The edges are fluid and permeable.  God’s people are held together — not by a high wall or an electric fence that makes clear cuts, and defines and divides us from/apart from/even above the rest of the sorry world.  No, our walls and gates are open.  God’s people are held together instead by what’s at the center: the cross, the font, the Holy Book, the healing oil, this welcome table of grace…

Dr. Erwin was suggesting that much of the past 500 years (not all, but much), has been about binding/defining ourselves as church at the edges — who’s in and who’s out.  What if the re-formation continues with a focus instead on God binding us at the center, God leading us, freeing us, God gathering us around good water?

How does the farmer get the livestock to stay together?  By building bigger walls, stricter fences, or simply by offering better water and food?  Grace frees us to tear down the walls that divide us from the world.  

The truth makes us — locked up and set apart? — no, the truth makes us free indeed.  Luther was freed by grace.  And so are we.

So how do we open up our walls, our borders, our fences and gates even more?  Here in this place?  How do we interact with neighbors and strangers, with the world...arms wide open?  
—
I remember the setting where Dr. Erwin said all these things.  It was in a big hotel conference room:  there are doors all around the edges, and they were open!  He didn’t say it, but I thought it was the exact visual of what he was talking about:  People were coming in and out of the room as he was speaking.  You could hear the murmur of conversations out in the hall.  I guess you could be distracted by it, if you wanted, but what Dr. Guy Erwin was saying was the real draw, it was so good, that most of us weren’t concerned with who was coming in and going out, with who was sitting down and who was getting up to leave.  The edges were permeable, see?  How might we make our walls more permeable, our gates more open?    

I think Facebook is another image of that.  No one’s keeping anyone here.  You are free to sit down, visitors are free to sit down…and by grace we are free to get up and leave!  There’s nothing keeping anyone.  The gift of the church now is that we don’t have that kind of power — which is a false notion anyway.  It breaks my heart when I get a sense that people are serving and participating in congregations because of some holy obligation, or guilt or burden on their shoulders.  You can always pick up on that when people use the word “should”...  Lutherans would never admit to “holy obligation” in those RC words...but sometimes, I know our actions prove otherwise, and we can still bind ourselves by the law.  

Hear these words again, friends in Christ:
We are justified by the faith of Jesus, apart from our works, free from holy obligations prescribed by the law.  This is most certainly true.

The Mighty Fortress doesn’t mean a high wall of rules and regulations about who’s in and who’s out!  

The Mighty Fortress is our God, and our God is everywhere (!) — both in here and out there!  Our God is saving grace, boundless love, peace, joy and forgiveness — not just for you and me, but — for this whole world!  

It’s easy to mis-imagine the mighty fortress, as our church fences, our ecclesiastical border walls.  

This new day, these new years of re-formation that are before us, call us to permeate our borders and re-focus on the center:  the Meal, the Story, the oil of healing and forgiveness, the waters of baptism, and the cross (i.e. God suffering with us in our suffering).

The Reformation continues, friends.  I’ve always thought that when the church falters, we falter from a lack of imagination, and we falter from our slavery to fear.  Martin and Katie Luther stand for the opposition of slavery to fear, they stand up as saints who have gone before us, who point us back to freedom by grace.   Both of them faced incredible fears in their lives, in their time and place...  


Paul’s letter to the Romans and the Gospel of John, call us back to the liberated imaginations that God has given and intended for us.   The movie The Hurricane, which has always been one of my favorites, the main character calls it “transcending”:  
    Denzel Washington portrays the boxer and falsely accused of murder Reuben Hurricane Carter.  From prison he speaks to a young man he’s mentoring about his imprisoned predecessors and contemporaries — Nelson Mandela — and how we must transcend the bars that keep us down.

Romans and John call us back from fear and into freedom — freedom from worrying about what might happen if we fling wide open our doors and windows, freedom to let the Spirit move in our midst without our permission, freedom to let change unfold all around us as we stay centered and held together at this [bowl] well of welcome.

Siblings, friends in Christ, we are freed by grace, and so we go, as God’s church, to love and serve the world, to love our enemies, to welcome the outcast, feed the sick, clothe the naked, accompany the downtrodden, and care for our own bodies and the broken body of this earth.  Let’s go sing the story of God’s love!  
    We are freed by grace. We can’t help ourselves. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

October 4 -- Wine Pressing On (Pentecost 18A)

One of the things I really miss during this seemingly endless season of physical isolation from one another — especially in worship — is the Children’s Talk!   I think that’s why Pastor Time children’s messages have been such a priority for me.  There’s this moment I really miss, and can’t replicate virtually and that’s when you’re with children and you need a volunteer.  Teachers know about this too.  You know that moment?  Our kids here at Bethlehem have arms that shoot up in the air before I’m even finished asking, “OK, I need a volunteer, who would like to volunteer?”  Doesn’t matter if its work or fun or a mystery, we have kids who are ready and willing to step up.  Isn’t that a wonderful image.  [imitate] “Ooo, ooo, pick me, pick me!”  I love it.

We have an rich Gospel text before us this day…Because Jesus is looking for good tenants, good stewards…on this Caring for Creation Sunday, on this kick-off of stewardship month, and I know Christ is looking in our direction today.  Jesus identifies the Pharisees and the chief priests (the insiders) as evil tenants, and basically says “If you can’t produce good fruits, then I’m looking for someone who can.”  Could we be the ones Jesus is looking for?  Is Jesus saying, “I need a volunteer.”  Friends, Christ wants to entrust vineyard work to a people who produce good fruit.  And Jesus this moment is looking over in our direction.  Are we willing to be the ones who reach out in the love of Christ…
or simply the recipients of the reaching out?  Because that’s there for us too:

Friends, we are all recipients of the reaching out of Jesus, who rescues us from sin and the power of death.  He is the one in the parable who is killed, he is the stone that the builders rejected, the head cornerstone.  

And today Jesus is looking at us, and asking are you willing to help me reach those who are in need, those who are hurting, those who haven’t yet heard of God’s love and forgiveness, those who are hungry, sick, lonely and lost?  This is a stewardship text, this is an environmental stewardship text.  Are we willing to respond to what God is offering?  

All that we have is on lease from God.  Maybe you hear this all the time, but think about it again today in terms of this vineyard text.  Our Triune God, the cosmic landowner, planted the vineyard (like the text says)—the plants, the trees, the animals, the oceans—God planted everything.  

God built a watchtower—a way to see what’s coming, a way to protect the vineyard, the earth.  That is, the cosmic landowner gave us minds to think and learn and understand and study and see what’s coming, protect the vineyard, protect all that God has planted.  We have the ability to climb up and look out with our intellects.  

Then God built a wine-press—a tool for producing and enabling good things to flow from us and from our hard work.  In other words, it’s not just our minds, God also gave us bodies — hands and feet, voices, and hearts, that press/squeeze out good things for this world.  Think of your bodies as a wine press this day, crushing out good things for this world.  And in so doing, we don’t always stay clean.  Pressing good things out for the world is exhausting and messy.  The wine-press is a great image.  Two ways to press wine back then: 1) giant rocks were fashioned to crush grapes, which took lots of back breaking work, and 2) people stomped on grapes, which was a big mess (like the famous “I Love Lucy” episode).    

Our church body, the ELCA has a signature phrase: “God’s Work, Our Hands” (I’d add “Feet”).  The wine-press…our own bodies, are not ours.  They’re God’s, but the produce comes directly from us.  God leased all these things, all this responsibility to us.  

What if we responded like the kids at the Children’s Talk? “Ooo, ooo, pick me, pick me, Lord!”

But something can happen and often does, even at an early age — we can most definitely loose this enthusiasm and willingness.  Why, what’s happening there?

sometimes it’s because we have other things to do
sometimes we just don’t want to
sometimes we don’t think ourselves good enough/smart enough/eloquent enough/wealthy enough/ connected enough/free enough (too busy)
sometimes it’s an even deeper doubt of ourselves…
sometimes it’s a bitterness, that I’ve already served/done my part: others should...step up/serve/give

Bishop Graham on raising your hand…
Council positions the same way…

Yes, this is a powerful lesson for today…because there have been many distractions, both internally and out there in our crazy/dangerous/divided world.  

These distractions come along, and I wonder if it’s almost like God’s checking to see if we’ll loose track of what we’re all about, of who we are…

I’ve been saying with more confidence lately that I’ve never felt so called as the church of Jesus Christ in the world.  I often feel like the church’s voice (our voice) heard to hear — like a screaming mouse — but what we should be saying and doing has never been clearer to me: just read the Gospel of Matthew:  clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, feeding the hungry, nurturing the child, welcoming the stranger, proclaiming and practicing forgiveness, mercy, generosity, justice and peace…

Maybe you’ve heard the line “God’s church doesn’t need a mission.  God’s mission needs a church.”  

We can get so caught up in all the drama, the fury, the pettiness, the overwhelming concern for our own selves and our own safety and security — I know of a church right now that is only concerned (my judgement) about their own survival.  Nobody is saying “Pick me, Lord!” They’re bitter and angry and scared and grasping at every little thing they can to stay afloat.  It’s that saddest picture of a church loosing its mission.  My friend is trying to help them see...  

How we can forget this invitation to stewardship and be like the Pharisees and the scribes—how we we can miss this opportunity to respond to God’s goodness—that God is offering us—to be the ones to raise our hands (not just dutifully) but even enthusiastically:  “I’ll go in there, Lord!  Pick me!”

Sisters and brothers in Christ, as broken and imperfect as we might be, we are the church for God’s mission – clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, feeding the hungry, nurturing the child, welcoming the stranger, proclaiming and practicing forgiveness.  Bethlehem is called to be a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.  And in so many ways we already do!

Ruth’s generosity and kindness…
Mike and Marva’s care for the beauty in the sanctuary...
Ramona’s opening our eyes to racism and white supremacy…and a deeper care for one another...
Tim’s passion for keeping us, for keeping this church safe…
Alison’s gift of music and all her good, hard questions...
Marie’s picking up a phone and checking-in with so many of us during this time of isolation…
Richard’s continued dedication of time and organization and resources to FACETS…and feeding hungry people...
Ann’s witty sense of humor...
John’s hugs...
Kristin...
See the risk here is all the people I’m not naming...right?
But this is just a few Bethlehem wine-pressers, crushing out good things for God’s church and God’s world!

I know that all of you are pressing out good things for God’s world!  We are the church of God’s mission.  AMEN?  

-God knows that none of us are ideal tenants, perfect stewards of everything God has given us.  
-God knows and we know that we’ve fallen short.  
-But look at what God has already done here!  

I love the line in our text for today, “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”  Look at all the amazing things God has blessed us with here, and wherever you are!  It is amazing in our eyes!  

There is an aspect of biblical stewardship that is often forgotten, and that’s the spirit of joy that accompanies the giving.  (Lucy starting to having fun)

Reaching out, tending the vineyard, this is always hard, messy work…but it is also accompanied by an indescribable joy.  Experiencing joy in sacrificing is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to explain.  I guess it’s like golf, you have to try it to get it:  You just have to try...reading to children, picking up trash on the ground, visiting inmates in prison, signing a percentage of your paycheck over to GOD before you do anything else with it (that’s biblical stewardship), taking extra time from your job to be with your kids who need you, listening to a friend who is grieving, donating time at FACETS or Lamb Center.  Each of these examples of tending the vineyard, are difficult—sometimes literally backbreaking, always messy—but because God smiles at the church accepting the mission, we smile too.  It’s contagious God’s joy becomes our joy.  That’s how it works for us resurrection people of the cross!  Joy abounds, like the joy of children jumping up and down saying, “Pick me, pick me, pick me to light the candle!”  

IN SPITE OF…WE PRESS ON.  That’s how we roll at Bethlehem.  IN SPITE OF…WE PRESS ON. 
God made the wine press.  And we squish out good things for this world.  We press on...

In spite of all that would tear us down, we press on.  In spite of all that would distract us, we press on.  In spite of evil and danger in the world, we press on.  In spite of white supremacy and all the work we have to do to condemn it, in spite of attacks on us and our community, we press on.  In spite of environmental abuse — animal abuse, forest abuse, Chesapeake Bay abuse, air abuse, we press on.  In spite of families breaking apart, we press on.  In spite of ourselves—our own brokenness, selfishness, inabilities, we press on.  We press on in God’s mission because Jesus is there with us, because nothing (not even death itself) can separate us from the love that Christ has for each of us, because God has called us to be the church in mission, because we are soaked in the powerful waters of baptism and will never the same, because we are fed and nourished with the body and blood of Christ’s own self at this table where all are welcome!  

The earth is God’s, the wine press [pointing to you and me] is God’s, and it is amazing in our eyes.  And so we give thanks with our lives.  But we press on because whether we live or whether we die, we belong to God.  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 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 26 -- Baseball and the Realm of Heaven (Pentecost8A)

This year of Major League Baseball has been tough.  Even with the games that are being played now, there’s clearly this cloud over the whole experience, with the empty stands, the canned recordings of crowds cheering, elbow bumps and air high-5s.  I don’t know about you, but I’m concerned for the players’ health.  Beforetimes: the only ones wearing a mask — in the whole stadium — were the catcher and the umpire!

If you’re anything like me, baseball is one of those things that’s down in the bones.  And to not have it, is like a part of me is missing.  Football fans you’ll be feeling my pain soon enough, I’m afraid.  I know it’s a privileged thing to talk about this pain, with so many other things going on.  (And I’m definitely not advocating opening baseball to go back to how it was, pretending like the world hasn’t changed.) I’m just bein’ honest with my grief here: I really miss the game, down in my soul.

So we try to make the best of it.  Some, I know, are trying to look at this year as some kind of building year or sabbath, studying up on the young players with high hopes for next year.  Making the best of this beat-up, half season.

I’ve wondered about a different coping strategy.  I’ve kind of “gone inside my baseball self”, and I’ve slowly been watching my way again through, the great Ken Burns documentary entitled “Baseball”.  Anyone seen it?  It’s 11 episodes, over 2 hours each episode, about the history of the American pastime.  And I love it!  I’ve gotten teared up watching the sections on Jackie Robinson becoming the first African American player to enter the league, Lou Gehrig’s last speech, or interviews of fans and historians recalling their feelings when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.

It’s actually an incredibly rejuvenating and uplifting experience for me.  And in the course of watching these episodes, I continue to come across metaphors, words and images, that are helpful in articulating why baseball means so much to me.  Baseball is like community [yeah!]; it’s about sacrificing one for the good of the whole [yeah!]; it’s like refuge from the world; one commentator in the film said that baseball’s “action is in the absence of action”; it’s about losing – even the greatest hitters are successful only a small percentage of the time; it’s about staying the same, through the turmoil of change; it’s about the past, and it is pastoral.”

I don’t always have the words for why baseball is so special, so ethereal, to me...and I’m reminded how we depend on the help of metaphors and images, words.

In our Gospel text this week, Jesus uses words and images, metaphors to articulate to the people of Matthew’s day—not what baseball is like, but what the realm of heaven is like.  Jesus uses things of this earth to give us an idea of the very things of heaven.

In Matthew’s time, the image of a pearl found in a field was big deal, a net overflowing with fish made a lot of sense – these were things that never happened, but things that people could easily see in their mind’s eye, and so these images had Christ’s listeners sitting up and celebrating, their imaginations coming alive...like a Sunday afternoon at the park for me.

Perhaps those metaphors don’t have quite the same effect for us today?

How would Jesus compare the realm of heaven now?

It’s like a perfectly executed double play, like a Roberto Clemente clutch home run, or a Sandy Koufax strike-out.

Or perhaps the baseball images aren’t effective for you...

What metaphors might Jesus use to reach your ears?  The realm of heaven is like a nap in a hammock after a long and trying meeting.  TROHI like getting a raise.  TROHI like getting the perfect compliment.  TROHI like a cool sip of ice tea in the shade, on a humid, Virginia, summer day.  TROHI like a reconnection with a beloved friend, where you realize that time and distance hasn’t separated you at all.  The realm of heaven is like joining hands with all those you love and singing grace before a great meal.  How we miss that, these days!

Today we stop, wherever we are, and reflect on the Word of God, the word of life (as we say each week about these scriptures).  And we are blessed by a Gospel text that fires images at us, words, almost too quickly to catch them all, “like scenes glimpsed through the windows of a fast-moving train” (BBTaylor).  Mustard seed, yeast, treasure, pearl, net full of fish.

I think Jesus does this on purpose…for the realm of heaven hard to pin down to one image, it’s hard to articulate, like my feelings about baseball.  And so we look to words and images of things that are before us – sunsets and smiles and cool drinks and small victories – to point to things that are beyond us.  No image nails it perfectly: God’s holy and loving reign, come down on earth to us.

But even if our language may come up short and incomplete, we realize that God has put so much right before us.  And it’s so good, in fact, that we can even say that the stuff of earth is like stuff of heaven!
The kingdom of heaven is like…a baseball game…a getting together with friends…a warm quilt…a slice of fresh bread...

Indeed the Realm of God is not to be found in metaphors of lofty places, like golden castles in the south of France, or Crater Lake National Park (!), but what’s striking about what Jesus is doing here is he’s using images that are right in front of us, things that we can all imagine quite clearly: fields and fish, everyday women and men, bread.  Parts of our daily routines, eating, working, getting by, being in nature.  Things here and now.  Those simple things are what the realm of heaven is like!

That strikes me on this journey I’m on with my family, this cross-country, work-from-the-road trip.  You know, lots of friends and family, some of you, have been writing and proclaiming to me on this trip, “You’re in God’s country now” — depending on your roots and preferences and experiences, Colorado is God’s country, Wyoming is God’s country, the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, those glorious red rocks and formations of Utah, Crater Lake, some even said no, Nebraska is God’s country :)

But we don’t have to go to those glorious places to get a taste of heaven.  God shows us what heaven is like in simple things, what’s right in front in front of you.
In this holy space and time of worship, from wherever you are sitting, and not just there, where we worship: but all through this holy world!

God’s kingdom is right here for us!  It’s not something that we must build or create, or search for, or drive across the nation to see, it’s already here for you, in your midst.  The kingdom of heaven is in your midst, Jesus keeps saying in the Gospels.  The simple joys: the breath of fresh air, the cool breeze through the trees, the song of the bird, an honest day’s work, the sweat of the brow.  The warmth of this family of faith.  The gift of this day:
Thanks be to God, thy kingdom has come.

May God continue to give us the wisdom to see this realm come, here and now.   May God continue to give us the creativity of language and metaphor to help one another name this kingdom come, and may God give you the peace and the openness of heart to enjoy this realm of heaven starting today, right where you are, and into eternity.  Play ball!  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 17 -- Paul & Our Many Altars (Easter 6A)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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