February 21 -- Hallelujah Anyhow (Lent 1B)

Friends in Christ,

Welcome to an Hallelujah Anyhow Lent!  

“No matter what comes my way, I’ll lift my voice and say, Hallelujah Anyhow!”

Now, I wonder how many of you are loving this Gospel music style?  And how many of you are not...especially during Lent!

I’ve known we were going to do this ever since our worship planning meeting in January.  As we talked about  all the hardships of this year, this pandemic season, this divided nation, this troubled heart…and decided together, let’s sing Hallelujah anyway this time around.  Yeah there’s meaning in refraining from the A-word (or H-word, depneding on how you spell it), but not this time.  We can still mark Lent.

And believe me, my little liturgical heart has been pitter-pattering ever since!  Singing Hallelujah during Lent...much less singing it joyfully and upbeat? We always, bury/fast from the Alleluias during Lent.  
But this year’s different...in so many ways, and we’ve gotta sing out, “My God has never failed me yet so I’m gonna stand my ground…”  

Look at this Gospel text for today:  We jump back to Chapter 1 again, and it starts with the heavens ripping open, the dove descending, Jesus gettin’ baptized, and the original voice (same one we heard last week on the mountain of Transfiguration) — that original voice saying “You are my son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

And then immediately—right after that—no baptismal reception, no cake in the Jordan River narthex, no handshakes and hugs—no, immediately the Spirit drives Jesus out into the wilderness...TO BE TEMPTED BY SATAN!  FOR 40 DAYS!      

Welcome to Lent, right?  We’re now into day 5 of our 2021 40-day Lenten journey.  I don’t know about you, I’d rather ease into Lent.  You giving anything up for Lent?  Taking anything on?  I’d rather kind of try it.  Grace, you know? But look at Jesus: ALL in!  Tempted, wilds, 40 days, no games.  Satan.

Friends in Christ, we’ve got a lot to contend with too.  Our baptismal liturgy isn’t messing around:  

“Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?  Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God?  Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God?”  

These are the questions at the baptismal font.

We’ve got a lot to contend with, and Mark’s Gospel style is honest about that.  So is our atypical Lenten Gospel Acclamation!   “Through every test and trial, I’ve got the victory.  The enemy has tried his best to make me turn ’round, bring me down…”
—
Our Lent this year begins also with the story of Noah and the flood!  Maybe you haven’t thought about it since Sunday school?  It’s a troubling story as an adult: God wanted a re-do on creation.  Everything had gone awry, and so God flooded the planet, save for a very few, but God also said never again would that happen.  God was heartbroken that it did, and God put a rainbow in the sky — a reminder of peace and beauty instead of violence at the last.  

We live on this side of the flood, the rainbow side!  Whenever we talk about Noah and the flood during Lent, you have to think: baptism.  The waters that destroy are also the waters that save!  

Jump back to Mark and Jesus getting baptized, there’s that dove again!  The sky ripping open, but instead of a deluge of destruction, God keeps the covenant, God cares about what happens down here, and on this side of the flood, on the rainbow side, it’s the dove of peace that descends among us.

But that doesn’t make the struggle go away.  In fact, the struggle just begins.  Mark keeps it real!  Jesus is driven immediately into the wilds to be tempted, right away.  And then we hear about John’s arrest on top of that!  And that’s right about the time — right at the moment of temptation and testing, trials and tribunals, right at the moment of arrests and riots, racism and injustice, right at the moment of horror and disease, and despair, right at the moment of bloodshed and even death — that’s right when Jesus shows up among the people and starts proclaiming and preaching the good news — that God has come near.  That’s a soft translation.  The Greek actually says God IS here, now.  Change your ways.   

Temptation and turmoil are still coming our way on this side of flood.   But God is with us anyhow.  Hallelujah?  Through it all, “through every test and trial, [you’ve] got the victory.”  

This is Lent is Markan:  Being baptized, blessed, beloved — we don’t then escape the challenges, the struggles, the pains of this life: no, we’re driven right into them...immediately.  And still we’re gonna sing, “Hallelujah anyhow.”  God’s never failed us yet, so we’re gonna stand our ground.  

Lent this year starts with a making a stand.  Making our stand in the cold waters, as we remember the covenant God made with Noah after the flood, and the covenant that God made with us after the baptismal waters “splish, splash,” crashed down on you and me!  It all starts there, and then immediately the troubles come our way.  OK.

Don’t be surprised.  Don’t be discouraged.  Don’t be afraid.  These things are bound to happen.  

(Speaking of liking or disliking this Gospel musical style Gospel Acclamation — I saw Bono of the band U2 give a great interview, where he talked about Gospel music — “everything is up” vs. the Blues — honest.  Maybe listen to Blues music this Lent too.  Honest.)  

The cross is honest.  Our central symbol, even here at Bethlehem, the place of the manger, the cross comes first.  It’s stark.  Troubles are bound to come our way.  And yet, in the shadow of the cross, we sing together.

Friends in Christ, peace be with you on this side of the flood, the rainbow side.  Peace be with the stands that you make this season.  As you stand for justice, as you stand for those who are hungry and homeless and cold this week through Hypothermia Shelter — so much struggle and pain for so many — peace be with you as you stand your holy ground in the waters of baptism, in the Gospel of God.  The peace that Jesus gives us isn’t a cheap peace, on the surface, it’s down in our bones.

Nothing can shake it.  Not temptations, not heartaches, not ship wrecks, not terror, not even death itself.  

For WE know, that God has the final say, that Christ conquers Satan, that life on this side—on the rainbow side—of the flood, is renewed:  a gift of grace, made new each day in the waters of baptism.  Splash yourself every day of Lent, and give thanks for your baptism.  

And that goodness is ours to share.  Hallelujah?  That goodness, comes from God, and will stay with us through it all.  Amen.

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

Grace to you and peace….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then Jesus found us, and called us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The baptism of Jesus is no small, sweet thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then we have weeks like this...  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 24 -- Verticle Nativity (Christmas Eve 2020)

“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given…”

Friends, grace to you and peace this Christmas Eve,

Grace is what we need right now, isn’t it?
And Peace...not peace that the world talks about, but when Christians say “grace and peace,” that’s God stuff.  That’s God’s deep and abiding peace, that resides far beneath the surface...

Some years ago I got to go to Rome in January to study and visit Early Christian sites.  It was thanks to Dad, who’s got a good friend Jim, who’s also a pastor and a passionate scholar on the 1st Century Early Church in Rome.  Jim is always leading trips to Rome, and Dad was always inviting me to join them.  And 5 years ago, I finally did!  The trip was amazing; I’d love to go back someday, I hope you all can go there someday too…(btw, ok to mourn even at Christmas time)  

Anyway, I bring my Rome adventure up again this good evening because Rome in January is absolutely filled with nativity scenes.  

The great Francis of Assisi is credited with the Christmas nativity, assembling manger scenes — whether it’s in-home or in-church, indoor or outdoor, realistic or creative, live or little figurines — any and all...so that children, in particular, could better learn and understand the Christmas story.  

And how true it is!  It’s the classic object lesson!  I wonder how many of you might have had/have a special nativity scene that you got to arrange or watch each year grow in the weeks of Advent.  I know that was formative for me growing up, and something I always looked forward to.  I remember on Christmas Eve the tradition at home of bringing out all the baby Jesus’ that had been hidden all through Advent.  And in church, on Christmas Eve, it was a special honor to begin the service each year with a child in the congregation carrying the precious figurine of the baby Jesus up the aisle and placing it ever so reverently into the manger.  I seem to remember this clink as the porcelain Jesus touched the porcelain manger.  After 4 weeks of joyful Advent waiting, the first true bell of Christmas!  

Anyway back to my trip to Rome in 2015:  There were nativities everywhere, called “presepe”, harkening me back to my childhood joys...and also offering new insights...  

One church that was actually physically connected to the “domus” where we were staying, had this wonderful, dimly lit room off of the sanctuary, and it was just filled with nativity sets, presepi, probably 2 dozen different displays spread around the room, with some choral Christmas music playing from a small speaker.  Open to the public around the clock to enjoy—great for those of us with jet-lag.

They were all such intricate arrangements, way more characters than just the stars of the Christmas pageant!  Figurines were camped out and hidden all through these complex landscapes and creative designs, like vast model train sets:  Grottos and tunnels and tiny lights and flowing water...just tickling the imagination.  

You had to walk around each display in order to see everything.  And often, it was a bit of a challenge to find Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus in the midst of it all.  I think that was intentional.

And some displays were multi-leveled.  

One I remember in particular, told a very clear story to me.  Three levels.  The top level had these armored Roman guards up above, on the top level, standing among white Roman columns; some Roman senator-types lounged on steps around a real fountain bubbling and trickling into a tiny opening…

Then your eye follows the trickle down to the middle level where regular folks are living, it’s a home scene, and a merchant with a cart, and a children playing in the street.  You explore the happy moments and then wonder, wait, where are they?  

The water keeps trickling down to the lowest level and finally you see a tiny baby, a humbly dressed Mary and Joseph, some young shepherds, both male and female, all huddled over the animal feed box.  You had to squint a little bit to see them because there wan’t much lighting down there.  I think had to turn on the flashlight on my phone, but there they were:  

God’s deep and abiding grace and peace, that resides far beneath the surface, levels below the power and glory of the day, even below the beauty and happiness of the neighborhood scenes.

I was so struck by this — clearly: years later...and this year 2020...I’m remembering it — I think in part, because I tend to imagine that holy night, this holy text in Luke 2 on a horizontal plain.  You know, the more characters there are, the wider the frame [nativity in the narthex that took up half the room].  But this was the opposite, it was vertical and narrow, multi-leveled.  Jesus, who the angels above sing about, is born down below:  God’s deep and abiding peace resides far beneath the levels of power and glory, even quaint happiness.  
Friends: that’s way more in line with the Gospel of Luke...the vertical nativity.

Who are the Roman soldiers pressing down on you?  Enforcing peace, more in a “shut up and take it” approach (Pax Romana) leagues away from that divine peace of God, found stories below.  What are the Roman columns in your life, in our world? — the structures that prop up and maintain the status quo, but leave so many buried...buried in debt, or sorrow, or fear?  Hidden at the bottom?  Who are the lounging senators in your life?  Comfortable and jovial, polite, eloquent and smart (in a way), but in their privileged comfort totally oblivious to what’s below, to where the water trickles?  

Jesus loves all of them too, by the way.  Maybe that’s you?  This is land of senators and soldiers, after all.  Jesus comes to be with all of them, with all of us...if we’re feeling pretty comfortable too.  But friends, in Luke’s vertical nativity story, this Jesus comes from the lowest places.  That’s where he sleeps, swaddled and silent.

And the everyday folks in the middle level?  Not rich, not poor, the neighborhoods, the children playing, the marketplace cranking on, the schools and shops and churches, the very real fears and illnesses of the middle level.  Addiction and abuse.  Adultery and anxiety.  Everywhere the water flows.  Jesus gets in there too:
Jesus sits in the homes, eats at the tables, kneels at the bedsides.  And always centers the children.  But comes from beneath.  Born below.  Sleeping on straw.

And made known first to shepherds.  The nightshift.

Friends, [silently] this is our God.  

So deeply imbedded in the underbelly, the gutters below.    Where there’s hardly a drop left.  See, that lower level, is  not just a romanticized Christmas poverty, beautiful in its simplicity: no, it’s dirty down there, it’s bars and brothels, it’s black lives that have endured bloody beatings and bully sticks.  It’s the edges, the places people go when they have no hope, or are where they never had a choice, born by a dumpster, in the stench of an alley, and trying to climb out.  Many of us might have to squint a bit to find this Jesus.  But follow the trickle down.

And be assured that he’s there, that he has arrived, that today is born in the city of David, the nowhere shepherd outpost of Bethlehem…
    That’s where the Shepherd of the World is born!  
The one who guides us to green pastures, and cool waters, where everyone has enough, where healing and redemption abound, where the crooked road is made accessible to all, and the sword of empire and brutality is bent into a gardening tool to plant and feed hungry people.  Where evil and death is conquered at the last, and where forgiveness of sin and new life grows like a tiny sprig from a stump.  This one from below changes everything.  

“Change shall he bring/chains shall he break...his law is love and his gospel is peace…”

This one from the scandalous under-belly spends his ministry in body on earth making level the scenes: turning the vertical into the horizontal!  Flipping the display on its head, rearranging the whole thing, molding a new landscape, where the mighty and glorious are brought down, and the downtrodden are lifted up.  (That was his mother’s song.)  And all may see it together!  (That was Isaiah’s song.)  Jesus sets the characters, even the planets in their places.  And everyone is gathered at the center, in the middle, and included — everyone fed, everyone housed, everyone clothed, and treated with dignity and inoculated with hope and new life.  Including you.

This is our God, from below, with us now.  Changing the entire scene, and offering anew that deep grace and peace...this holy night and always.

[sing] “And you, beneath life’s crushing load,
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow:
look now for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing;
oh rest beside the weary road
and hear the angels sing.” 

Amen.

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

Grace to you and peace…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 11 -- Showing Up (Pentecost 19A)

Micah’s at his second weekend of travel baseball tournaments here in October.  Last week he and Heather were over in Delaware, this week they’re down south.  And I’m reflecting on how much baseball for him — and for us by extension — has changed since he was a Little Leaguer.  You sports families may be able to relate to the evolution we’ve experienced.  I’m thinking about how the coaches, in particular, have changed over the years:

Gone are the days of constant affirmation.  I mean, there’s affirmation when you do a great job, but not when you’re just doing your job.  Gone are the days of cupcakes and box drink apple juice after the game.  Gone are the days of “everybody plays, everywhere on the field.”  Remember those days?  

No, Coach expects his players to “show up” — practice, hustle, pay attention, be out front.  “Bring everything you have to this field,” they say.

In fact, if you don’t “show up,” he’s going to play someone else.  If you’re distracted from the game and not bringing your all, you’re going to sit out.


—


The king, in Jesus’ parable today, calls the wedding guests to “show up”.  It’s time for a party.  And the king’s pulling out the stops.  Everyone’s paid for, food and drink will abound, the table is set, the candles are lit, the band is cued up, the meal is hot and ready to be served...
                        And nobody shows.  

They all have excuses.  Most of them just have to work.  No time for any frivolous, excessive partying.

Some have a “better” offer, pre-existing plans.  Others just don’t really want to come — I mean, they don’t really know the wedding couple anyway — so they make something up, and bow out with a quick, friendly text.  

[slowly] And then there are others, who might actually like to go, but some voice in their head is telling them they’re not worth it, that they don’t deserve this party. [pause]  They’ve hosted weddings themselves and know how expensive it can be, and so they don’t want to put the king out — they’ve got a bit of a martyr complex, they mean well, but they fail to see value in themselves, and they just can’t let themselves be loved and lavished by the king...  

That’s a little like in the text when some actually seize and kill the king’s servants who are managing the RSVPs.  
It just kills the spirit of the feast.  Have you ever had someone decline a lavish gift you’re excited to give.  And they pass, citing some “oh-not-on-my-account” or “oh-don’t-want-to-put-you-out” excuse?!  It just sucks the spirit of joy and generosity and celebration out of the room.  It’s like killing the king’s servants.  So, those  suffering, martyr-complexed ones decline the invitation too.

In fact, nobody, the text says, who was originally invited “shows up”.  And this infuriates the king:  I should do a little textual analysis here.  Matthew says the king goes out and kills these no shows, burns their city!

Fundamentalists read this clearly as a reference to hell and the fires of damnation...if you don’t “show up” for Jesus.  

Most mainstream scholars look at this in the context of the time Matthew was writing — that this was an obvious reference to the destruction of Jerusalem and the lackadaisical faith of the chosen ones, the insiders, who are squandering the goodness of God.  You have to decide what you think this means.

But anyway, the king’s going to play somebody else, put someone else in to the celebration.  You know, like when the kid on the team who’s biggest and strongest and probably has the most talent, but who’s also had a really bad attitude these days?  Playing only for himself, cutting down his teammates, mouthing off arrogantly...So the good Coach takes that kid out, benches him — he’s not “showing up” — and instead puts in the kid who’s all heart, and might just have enough gumption to turn this game around.  The king’s going to put someone else in because the privilege-round draft picks didn’t “show up”.  Is that so heartless...or is it actually a great move, even loving...for the good of the whole.

So the master’s servants (they’ve been through a lot, haven’t they?) again go out and invite everyone now.  [Gentiles - the Gospel opens up to everyone!]  This is what the kingdom of heaven is compared to, Jesus teaches — A king who invites [pause] everyone.  

[slowly]  The riff-raff is welcome.  Just verses before, Jesus was talking about tax collectors and prostitutes getting into God’s good graces before those puffed-up and self-righteous Pharisees.  This parable is an elaboration on that.  And I hope our baseball real-life metaphor can be helpful too...

“Those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad, so the wedding hall was filled with guests.”  

Here’s what occurred to me this week:  [pause]  We’re the riff-raff.  You’re the riff-raff.

We’re the ones who are left.  We’re the ones who got scooped up by God’s love, and here we are.  We’re the ones who Coach just put into the game.  All heart.  

You’re not a perfect group of churchy people.  I’m not a perfect pastor.  We’re broken.  And jealous and bitter and hungry and sad and lost and struggling and scared.  But here we are, scooped up by God’s love, probably because of one of God’s servants who invited us — maybe that was a parent or grandparent that brought you into the banquet hall long ago.  Or maybe it was a friend or even a stranger.  

But here we are at our Lord’s banquet — candles lit, food and drink abounds!  Here we are: still serving and being served, still feasting, still drinking wine and eating bread, still ingesting and digesting this word of life, this Word of God.  We’re the riff-raff, siblings in Christ.  The good and the bad, all wrapped up into us, all wrapped up into you!  

And God’s gathered us in: “And the wedding hall was filled with guests.”  [pause]

Now what about this guy who gets bounced from the party because he wasn’t wearing his wedding garment?  That’s a whole ‘nother sermon, but let me say this:
 
When God invites us into the banquet, when God calls us onto the field, we ought to bring everything we have...including that free garment of grace that God’s given.  

Those wedding robes in those days were something no one could afford...they were provided by the king at the door of the wedding feast, like worship folders at the beginning of a church service...only way more expensive.  

God’s love and grace is provided freely at the door, before we even sit down, so for God’s sake, put it on!  

Don’t think that you can pass without wearing God’s free garment of love and grace.  This one guy did, and he was thrown into the outer darkness.  How we too can be tossed out, when we choose not to accept God’s offer, God’s robe of forgiveness and peace.  (We pretty much toss ourselves out at that point.)

Here it is, given freely and shed abundantly for you.  This welcome to all, this challenge to both receive it, to give it our all on the field, and to seek to extend that same welcome to everyone else, just like we’ve received from God.  That’s the party.  That’s the game.  That’s the joy.    

This is where we find ourselves these October days, sisters and brothers in Christ.  God’s hospitality is multifaceted and exciting and lavish...and you’re in!  You’re on the team.  You’re on the field.  [pointing] “Play ball.”

Amen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

November 17 -- Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Sisters and brothers in Christ,

Today’s Gospel, today’s good news is for the tired believers.

It’s for those of us who are a little bit, and especially for those of us who are very tired, and frightened about what the future holds.  (If that’s not you, say a prayer of thanksgiving, and come stand with those who are tired and afraid.)  This is a text for those who look around and see a world that has abandoned the teachings of Jesus and the prophets.  The text I just read, said “you will be hated by all because of my name.”  Maybe that’s true for Christians today in some places, but mostly in our culture, I think the contemporary version of this is not that we will be hatred but rather just treated with apathy or ignorance or misinterpretation, which in some ways is worse.  If you’re hated, then at least your argument has got traction, it’s getting under someone’s skin.  But if you’re ignored, well then you don’t even have a place [“benign”].  Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel once said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy.”

Do you ever feel totally insignificant or ignored?  Without a place, a voice?  Not even given the affirmation of a counter-argument.  Just brushed off – perhaps by the culture, perhaps by our leaders and law makers, always by the weather, perhaps by the church, perhaps by your family or friends? “You will be irrelevant because of my name,” Jesus might say to us today.  (If that’s not you...)

Today’s Gospel message is for the tired followers of Jesus among us…feeling unimportant and hopeless…like our work and our words are in vain, and the ship is going down.  “Why bother?  What’s the point?  Who cares?”

This Gospel is for those of us who can feel ourselves being sucked into all that apathy, ignorance and misinterpretation flying all around us, like a hurricane.

It’s easy to just give ourselves to those Category 5, gale-force, hurricane winds of this culture—“take care of yourself, it’s all about you, cover your assets, [whispering] they are not your problem, protect yourself, security, security, personal security, draw your circle of family tight and neat, don’t worry about anyone else but you and yours…’cause the ship is going down.”  Watch for those subtexts in all the holiday ads that are already well on their way in our culture…these messages whipping by us like wind...and sometimes much more impactful than that.

I grew up on the Gulf Coast and, like many of you, have been in a few hurricanes.  I’ve got this image in my head this week of “Christians in a hurricane” when I look at this text:

Christians in a hurricane, can you imagine?  Christians, like any creature, would seek cover during a hurricane.  But then, as they wait for the storm to pass, they toil away together in a safe place—maybe a basement of a church, maybe its a community center or someone’s home.  They would be together and working away during the storm … knitting, quilting, assembling packets, cooking, planning their strategy for reaching out very soon, assisting one another with words of comfort, bandages, hugs and long conversations.  Maybe even laughter and games as the trees bend and branches fall outside.  Can you envision it?  Small teams would even venture out into the storm to gather in those who could not find shelter.  They would risk their lives for a stranger.  And when they returned with a cold, wet, lost child or an elderly adult, all would be greeted at the door and ushered in with blankets and bowls of tomato soup and plates of grilled cheese.  And a cot with a pillow.  Can you see it, in your mind’s eye?

The hurricane pounds, and the Christians wait and work.  And then a time would come for worship.  They would gather in a dark place underground.  No electricity, but that doesn’t matter.  They’d pray and sing anyway.  They’d read scripture by candlelight – they’d hardly have to look for passages about earlier believers riding out storms, lights shining in darkness, life overcoming death, peace in times of chaos...because they’d already know them by heart.  And they’d hang on every word from that Holy Book.  And then they’d eat — Christians in a hurricane – they’d break and eat the body of life, the blood of forgiveness, Christ would fill them – and they would be satisfied…with all physical evidence to the contrary.

Today’s text is about hunkering down together.  Patiently working.  Lovingly watching .  Thoughtfully reaching out.  Faithfully hoping.  Christians in a hurricane.
--
The Gospel of Luke is written by the same author as the book of Acts.  And commentaries reminded us that this text, especially the bits about the hardship that’s coming—the imprisonment, the ridicule, the persecution—is of course a foreshadowing of exactly what happens in Acts.

One of these events in the book of Acts:  there’s a story of Paul traveling by sea with his comrades and they are terrified because they’re caught in a storm...but Paul speaks to them:
“I urge you now to keep up your courage, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship…'Do not be afraid…God has granted safety to all those who are sailing with you.'  So keep up your courage.” (Acts 27:22-25)

“The ship is going down, and you’ll be OK,” Jesus says to his disciples.   Jesus is unimpressed in this text by the temple, by the building, by the ship.  Bricks and stones and fancy cargo, will all go down.

But you will be OK.  In one sentence, Jesus says, “you will be betrayed and some even put to death,” and in the very next, “but not a hair on year head will perish.”  Malachi: “The sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”  Psalmist: “Sorrow spends the night, but...”

This is a text about hunkering down, faithfully enduring.  “By your endurance you will gain your [souls],” Jesus says.  psuche—mind, sanity, calmness.  Our Buddhist sisters and brothers teach: “Chop wood, carry water.”  Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians:  “Do not weary in doing what is right.”  Hunker down: chop wood, carry water, wash, bake, stitch, weed.  One of the great quotes attributed to Martin Luther: “If I knew the world would end tomorrow, I’d plant an apple tree today.”  

Hunkering down, sisters and brothers in Christ, patiently doing what is right.  And we do it, not alone, we endure with all tangible evidence to the contrary, we endure in the glorious company of all the saints—who we celebrated a few weeks ago and each time we gather—we endure together and we endure with Christ.  To the tired followers of Jesus, hear his words again.  “My peace be with you,” he says, even as nation rises against nation, even as nation rises against itself, earthquakes from within and without, hurricanes pounding, Christians don’t deny the realities.  They ground themselves in an even deeper reality:  Christ’s peace is present, enfleshed and moving among us—that peace never leaves us.

And because of that peace of Christ, which passes all human understanding, everything turns, everything changes, and we are filled anew...to love and share and trust and live.
Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

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.