October 20 -- Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 13 -- Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Grace to you and peace…from God who creates us, from Jesus who has mercy and heals us, and from the Holy Spirit who challenges us, and moves among us now.  AMEN.

ON THE WAY TO JERUSALEM…our gospel passage starts out…Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem.  But then he encounters a group – and pay attention to directionality in scripture – was the group on the way to Jerusalem too?  Probably not.  The movement of the people in this story makes a cross!  This directionality (where people we going) – has always been a part of our experience.  People making crosses—coming this way, going that…

We make crosses all the time today, as we encounter one another, as we encounter difference.   Every intersection is a cross.  Just think how many crosses you’ve made this past week…

It’s true physically, of course, and on other levels as well.  Making crosses all the time, in our conversations and our actions, making crosses across the earth…Jesus makes a cross, in our text today, with 10 lepers, and with us — a cross of healing, salvation (from the Latin for healing).  Jesus makes a cross of peace.

Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, and he encounters this group of lepers, who keep their distance but, knowing who he is—“Jesus, Master,” they say—they cry out to Jesus to have mercy on them.

Interesting – they don’t ask to be healed, even though that’s what we all assume they want.  Interesting their words are simply—well, the same words we say at the beginning of every service.  When we encounter the living God, “Kyrie (Master), eleison…”

And Jesus immediately sends them to the priest.  He doesn’t invite them along his way to Jerusalem.  He simply sends them to a priest.  I imagine, that they were invited to keep moving in the same direction.  Almost like they just asked someone for directions.  Jesus give them some directions, some instructions.  “Go and show yourself to the priests.” And they do:  they’re desperate, they’ll do anything to be rid of this state of rejection anywhere they go.

And AS they go, having encountered the healing presence of the Living Christ, “they were made clean”!  [keep telling the story…only one comes back…]  Only “the tithe”, only one tenth, came back.

Did this one who came back…did his directionality merge with Jesus’ directionality?  Jesus invites him to get up and go “his” way, but did “his” way become Jesus’ way?  Did he go a new direction from that day on?   [+ the directionality in this story when we “cross” ourselves, ending in the center]

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Friends in Christ, Jesus has mercy on us too, showers, showers “our ways” with mercy.  “I’m going this way, God!” and yet, Christ still chooses to shower that way that we seem to think is ours, with mercy, love and forgiveness:  WE are made clean too.

When we cross paths with the salvific power of Christ (every Sunday!)...when the healing power of Jesus crosses over us, everything can change.  Everyone receives mercy, but like the one tenth leper, our directionality can even get “dialed in” with God’s directionality, as we come back to the center, as we come back and give thanks.  The healing is much larger and more mysterious than simply the sores going away!  Jesus took the sores away from everyone, everyone gets mercy, but only one was “made well”, only one was made whole, only one was faithful.  [+ going back]

Many in the world have been made free of sores — free of major physical illnesses, free of oppression, free of blatant injustice and discrimination on the level of a leper, free of financial hardship, and social alienation.  Maybe you fit into that?  “I’ve got it pretty good.”  

Think of all those people, many of us fit into that category: how we too can seem (on the world’s surface) to be in a good place — plenty or at least enough material goods, and security and even happiness:  and yet are we whole?  We’re all clean, but are we “well”?  Has our faith made us well, has our joyful thanksgiving made us well?  How we can give God the credit for our being in such a prosperous state, much like how I’m sure the other nine went and told everyone who performed that miracle…“God blessed me, God freed me of my disease, God gave me all this!” they will tell others.  The sores are gone, but are they healed, made whole, are they well?  

You see, the wholeness, the healing, the full salvus that God offers us is wrapped up in this directionality idea.  When our directionality is re-calibrated, and joyful thanksgiving turns us back to the center where we fall at Christ’s feet, dialing into God’s movement, maybe even heading now with Jesus to Jerusalem — then we’re really in for the good stuff.   The wholeness.  That doesn’t always mean fun stuff, but in that sacrifice, in that giving praise, in that offering, that tenth, in that devotion to the one who cures us from our dis-ease, in that morphing of our directionality, because of our encounter with the Living God, our faith makes us well…[get this!]...for our faith becomes the very faith of Christ!  (Our newly installed Bishop Leila Ortiz said yesterday, there’s such a difference between knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus...she diagnoses the church’s condition this way, impacting our programs and our budgets and our staffing and our structures...)  When Christ crosses our paths, knowing Jesus, everything changes.

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Finally, I have to say this as we study, “Honoring our Neighbor’s Faith” — Notice how Jesus treats those of another faith and culture, the Samaritans: he treats them with love and longing, not with contempt or condemnation.  Theologian and pastor Barbara Brown Taylor talks about this passage as the quintessential story for doing inter-faith dialogue.  For those who would not join Jesus on the journey, Jesus doesn’t spew hatred and curses on them.  With Jesus in Scripture, it’s always a peaceful crossing, albeit a crossing of love and longing.  If Jesus gets ever gets angry in Scripture, it’s always with his own people, for their lack of faithfulness.  There’s absolutely no biblical evidence that Jesus hated people of other faiths.  Some theologians even read this passage as Jesus regarding another’s faith as being salvific in its own way!  Go your way, your faith (whatever that faith is—Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, Christian) has saved you.   

However we read this, we must pick up Jesus’ reverence and love for those who are different.  I mean, he takes their sores away!  All of the lepers, all of the foreigners.

In the end, aren’t we all?  Aren’t we all lepers, outsiders, beggars as Luther said on his deathbed?  Aren’t we all foreigners?  Foreign, alienated from God’s path, because of our sinfulness and self-centeredness?  Aren’t we all coming to Jesus, begging for mercy, crying out for wholeness?  

And sisters and brother in Christ, in the end Jesus does offer us healing, offer us life.  We are changed and forever changed in our encounter with the living Christ.  We encounter the living Christ in this place, in the healing waters of baptism, in the life-givng meal of Holy Communion, in the  laying on of hands in our prayers for healing today, in this community that we share with one in our eating & drinking Christ together, in our singing and praying, in our caring for one another and our side-by-side reaching out beyond ourselves.  Jesus loves us and longs for us in whatever our directionality was, and today Jesus invites into his directionality.  

Friends, having been made clean today, may that trust and faith to journey now with Christ be yours, this day and into eternity.  AMEN.

September 29 -- Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 22 -- Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

[“I did not see that coming” story]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Messed up, right?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And fun.  Our God is fun.

“I did not see that coming.”       

AMEN. 

September 15 -- Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Friends in Christ — 

God’s love for you is real.  Know that this day.  

Whether your the one who’s lost like a sheep or grumbling like a Pharisee that it’s not fair, God’s love for you is real.  

We have a gospel text this morning that cuts through the static, gets back to the basics, and centers us on the most important thing:  that Christ always comes looking for you, with arms full of mercy and forgiveness for you.  Christ always makes the first move, and comes to find you.  

Imagine a literal, lost sheep just for a moment:  What is so unique about the lost sheep image is that she’s not this rebellious teenager (like the prodigal son).  She didn’t make this conscious effort to reject it all and head off on her own. Rather, she just got lost somewhere, somehow.  Maybe she got distracted by something momentarily and wandered off.  Maybe a sound or a storm prevented her from hearing and following the rest of the herd.  Or maybe she just couldn’t keep up.

And because that little sheep is lost and alone now, she is vulnerable.  Wolves, vultures, rocky terrain, shortage of food.  She is frightened, she is in danger.

Jesus plants this image deeply in the minds of both the tax collectors & sinners AND the pharisees & scribes.  I’m not sure who he’s talking to, actually — we’re all lost sheep.  

Somehow we just get off track.  We lose the faithful, beloved community.  We get distracted.  Or maybe a storm in our lives prevents us from hearing and sticking with the community.  Or maybe we just can’t keep up.  

But Jesus comes to find you this day, whether you identify more with the grumbling Pharisees, the depressed tax collectors or hopeless sinners [pause].  Christ comes to find you, leaving the 99 just to find you —  to lift you up and shoulder you, to bandage up your wounds and reconnect you to the community.

And just to drive the point home a little more —because sometimes we don’t believe or don’t hear that this God loves and seeks us out — Jesus gives another image.  The image of a sweeping woman.  How’s that for an image of God?  (Sweeping Woman Lutheran Church?  We have Good Shepherd.)  Sweating, frantically searching for that one lost coin, even while she has nine others.  

Franticness is something we know all too well, when we’ve lost something so very important.  Have you been there?  (cell phone)  Tap into that franticness, as you imagine these stories.

God searches with that same franticness for you and for me, and for all who are lost or confused...or grumbly.  (I’m not sure if Jesus was talking to the Pharisees or the tax collectors.)  God’s care and concern for you, God’s single-mindedness — you know how when you lose something it’s all you care about until it’s found again? — is that great, God will not stop until you’re found.  And when God finds you, there is forgiveness and mercy, and there’s something else.  

In both stories today — both the lost coin and the lost sheep — and by the way the third of these stories is the parable of the two lost sons (the bitter son, and the reckless, prodigal son) — in all three of these vivid and varying stories, there is something in common, right?  

Once the lost have been found, there is a party thrown in/for the community to celebrate.  The Good Shepherd calls together friends and neighbors and says, “Rejoice with me!”  The Sweeping Woman calls together her friends and neighbors and says, “Rejoice with me!”  And do you remember what that loving father says to his seething and bitter son, who didn’t understand why he had just slaughtered the fatted calf for his reckless, stupid, selfish younger brother?  “Come celebrate!”

“So it is with us,” Jesus says to us.  That’s the kind of party we have when the lost are found.  

And that’s actually what worship is, every Sunday!  [pause] 

It’s a mini-party for the lost being found.  That’s what we celebrate every single Sunday — lost found, dead come to life...in Christ!  It might not always feel or look like a party (sometimes not even a smile is cracked in a worship).  I always chuckle at the irony of droning, even dignified, but passionless Lutheran worshipers:  [non-emotive] “Alleluia, Lord to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life.  Alleluia.”  

Difference in serving at St. Marks in South Chicago…

Moving to Bethel in suburban St. Louis...

This is the Gospel of the Lord:  [un-phased] “Praise to you, O Christ.”  :)

And that’s OK; we don’t have to force/fake it; we don’t have to force the smile.  Sometimes life’s burdens are too great...or worship is too somber.  

But the reality is, friends in Christ, that worship this day and every Sunday is a party, even if the world is falling apart around us.  This is a place and a God who, no matter what, welcomes the lost, goes out to find hopeless, the frightened, the outsider, the lagger behind, the one who wandered of or slipped away — this is a place and a God who celebrates, and beckons us to do the same.  “Mine is the church, where everybody’s welcome,” we’ve sung before: this is what God says to us.  

We enact the story of God’s love come to find the lost, each time we worship, each time we gather around this holy book and this holy table, and this holy bath.  We are the community of friends and neighbors that gathers together and responds to the invitation of God, “Rejoice with me!”  This is a foretaste of the feast to come, where there is joy in all of heaven!  

Christ’s love for you is real, God’s forgiveness for you is real...and here...and now.  Let us rejoice together.  Let us rejoice with God, who throws the party.  Let us, sinner-saints, rejoice with each other...for We. Are. Found.  AMEN.

September 8 -- Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Grace to you and peace…from God who creates and connects us, from Jesus who invites and re-connects us, and from the Holy Spirit who challenges and dis-connects us from all that would knock us out of sync with our Triune God.  AMEN.

“Truly I tell you, whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, brother and sister, yes even life itself cannot be my disciple,” Jesus says.  Yikes!  

Let’s get a word out there, that I think might distract us from what Jesus is really trying to say here: “hate”.

Scholar Gene Peterson translates it “refuses to let go of.”  I would put it like this: If anything or anyone is stopping you from being a follower of Jesus—not just a believer or an admirer or a lover of Jesus, but a follower—then we’re called to “reject those relationships, those things, those people as NOT life-giving, not resurrection affirming, not Gospel-centric, justice-seeking, unconditional-love-sharing...” We care called today to let go of all those things and people, just like we reject “sin and the devil, all the forces that defy God,” as we say in baptism.  In other words, if your relationships, your possessions, your daily habits are preventing you from living more fully into that person that God is calling you to be (in Luke = that means part of a faithful community actively practicing mercy and justice), then let the Holy Spirit sever those ties!    

Hear this on many levels; it is not simple.  We are engaged in all kinds of relationships — some with aging and increasingly debilitated parents, some with spouses who are terminally ill, some brothers who drain our resources in their seemingly endless battles with addictions.  Friends that are good and so called “Facebook friends” — that are kind to your face and online, but they’ won’t show up when the going gets tough... Maybe, God forbid, they’d even speak ill of you behind your back.  Think of all the relationships you’re in.  I’m just naming a few examples… 

I wonder if you’ve got members in your own family who are deeply hurtful and cruel to you even though they say they love you?  Are we to sever those ties?

I think the question is, “Are those relationships life giving?  Is that relationship what you believe God is calling you to stay in?  If not, are you able to name it as harmful?”

I heard an NPR interview about a year ago, where a neuroscientist was promoting her new book, about severing ties with family, citing brain research—that the brains of people who were victims of serious and/or chronic emotional and psychological abuse actually had brain damage, destroyed neural pathways and loss of brain cells.  Abuse causes brain damage!  So this scientist was actually promoting the severing of ties with one’s toxic sources, over and against endless attempts to reconcile and accommodate.  Very thought-provoking.

I’m not saying this is Jesus’ call playing out in modern science, but I do think it challenges us to imagine who and what are our “toxic sources.”  And might we simply name them as such?  Can we at least say, this person or this habit or this thing is not life-giving, it’s not orienting me in the direction of God’s call for me, it’s preventing me from picking up the cross and following Jesus, and so I’m going to sever ties with it, with him, with her.  I’m going to let go of that toxicity...

That’s interesting because it’s not unheard-of for people, particularly pastors/priests to name those “toxic sources” precisely as “one’s cross to bear.”  There are cases — and I pray that you’re not one of them, but I know people who have experienced this: a pastor/priest has told women I’ve known who are being abused by their husbands, “Well, we all have our crosses to bear, let me pray for you as you bear yours.”  Bearing a cross has nothing to do with being abused or surviving a toxic relationship.  

Bearing a cross is what happens when we are able to put down those things – and that might just mean to name them as not life-giving (stop rationalizing or justifying or sugar-coating or making excuses, just call them what they are: toxic) – and then, choose instead pick up, to ingest what Christ is offering here.  The cross of discipleship.  We can do this, by the way, only with the help of God and with our community of faith, but we can do this, from all kinds of places…  

See, I’m not just talking about dropping everything and everyone and suddenly, jumping into all kinds of radical global outreach efforts (of course, that would be good...but not sure how many are going to fly to the Bahamas today to help out) – but friends, we can pick our crosses and follow Jesus in all kinds of ways and from all kinds of places:  even as we are homebound, bed-ridden, locked up in prison, or in a hospital:  How?  We can pray fervently for the needs of the world, urge forgiveness and mercy, like Paul did with Philemon.  Paul was in prison, bearing a cross!  We can speak words or write letters of encouragement (Val yesterday).

What if you got a letter from one of our homebound members, just greeting you lovingly and encouraging you to forgive someone who’s wronged you?  What a gift, someone picked up their cross and you were the recipient of their faithfulness to Christ!  

Friends, we can pick up our crosses and follow Jesus, even as our family or professional lives are stretched in every direction.  Name the toxic thing for what it is, offer it up, maybe give it up – but at least name it – and then pray for God to take you and mold you anew. 

God today invites us, in fact demands of us (in Lukan Jesus’ characteristic sharp way), wholeness and authenticity (which means suffering, cross-bearing), and not everybody is willing to go there.  A large crowd was following Jesus, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled with this.   Jesus didn’t want big numbers; he wanted people who were serious followers, willing to lay down their lives for the Gospel.  In short, and in the parlance of our times, Jesus is asking, “ARE YOU FOR REAL?”  

And we say, “Yes, Lord.” (Will you pray with me?)

“We say yes, Lord, to your call to discipleship, but we need your help.  The way of the cross is frightening.  It means sacrificing.  And changing.  Starting over.  And severing some ties.  And forgiving.  That’s some robust activity, God.  And we’ve got a lot of baggage, some that’s just distracting us, and some that actually holding us back from being your disciples to our fullest potential.  Help us God.  Help us shed our baggage, help us sever our ties with all that is harmful to ourselves and to your mission.  

“And thank you for making our wellness a part of your mission.  Thank you for valuing our bodies and our minds.  Thank you for valuing our life.  Thank you for marking us with your cross, calling us your children.  And help us to spread your Good News to others.  Help us to share and be humble.  Give us direction and clarity of vision.  AMEN.”     

September 1 -- Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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