Nativity Lutheran online coffeehouse

“Losing your head for sake of the truth”
Mark 6:14-29 / Psalm 24
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (6 Pentecost B)
12 July 2009


What is the cost of the truth?
Some of us have been watching the Amanda Knox trial play out in Perugia, Italy. The whole enterprise has been going on for close to two years … and the search for the truth in the case has now spread to bringing in an outside forensics expert, who says that the case certainly cannot be as it has been presented to the jury … this, sort of like someone from TV’s “Law and Order” showing up on “CSI:Miami” to tell Horatio Caine that he’s full of it. And now the prosecuting attorney himself is under investigation for his truthfulness in another case.
It makes us wonder, exactly, who is telling the truth in this case, and what will be the cost of that truth whenever, if ever, it is found out … whether it is to Amanda Knox, the “other” forensic expert, the prosecuting attorney, or the entire Italian legal system.
When we ourselves are truthful about something, it can cost us … sometimes, a lot. We could spend a little time thinking about the times we’ve had to own up to our mistakes or things we’ve done wrong – and what that’s cost us … embarrassment, maybe punishment …
And then, inevitably our minds go further … boy, maybe being honest wasn’t the smartest thing to do. We remember the dozens of times when someone we know got away with something precisely because they weren’t honest … they didn’t own up to the truth. The ding and scrape on our car, where someone in a store parking lot backed into it, and didn’t leave their name and address. People getting away with crimes, and never admitting to them, never getting caught.
But then there are also times when just doing the right thing – never mind owning up to something wrong we’ve already done – when doing the right thing costs us. Like … when we take a stand, and speak out for a cause or a person who really needs our help – even though that cause, that person, might not be very popular. That could cost us – standing among our friends or family, in our school, at our job … maybe, even life itself.
Certainly for John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading, that is true. We might remember from our Advent season readings how John the Baptist was never one who would shrink from the public action or statement. No, he of the hair shirt and the grasshopper and wild honey diet … the one who went around calling people “a brood of vipers” … he definitely wouldn’t fit into that “quiet man of the background” category. For John was “the voice in the wilderness,” the one ordained by God to “prepare the way of the Lord, to make his path straight.”
Mark doesn’t have a lot to say about John … just those first few verses in chapter one I just shared, and then, the scene when John baptizes Jesus. By the time chapter six rolls around, our Gospel reading for today, something else is rolling around … John’s head … thanks to John’s outspokenness, and Herod’s political trap.
Now the situation may start out innocent enough – the text says that Herodias, Herod’s brother Philip’s wife, was now married to him. Maybe these verses are confusing … I know they have been to me, because I’ve always assumed that Philip had died, and so Herod married his brother’s widow. That was a common practice in Biblical times, and there was nothing wrong with that.
So why was John so mad? Well, it’s right there in the text; those words, “your brother’s wife,” … not widow, but wife … you see, Philip wasn’t dead at all -- Herodias had divorced Philip, and married Herod, his brother, because Herod had the power, the money, and the prestige – Herod was the one who was ruling Judea – Herod would be the one Pilate would send Jesus to see before his crucifixion. Herodias had made a mockery of marriage – not to mention breaking the Jewish law, which forbade leaving one brother to marry another.
So John spoke the truth to Herod and Herodias. Herodias didn’t like it one bit. And what follows is that great set-up – Herodias sent in her daughter in to do the dirty work. The daughter danced and made Herod happy, so happy that Herod made an oath and then got trapped in the politics of its words and his perception of what the honorable thing was – and John lost his head for the sake of the truth.
It’s a strange way to spend this Sunday morning, hearing a story like this. Blood and guts before brunch. There’s a panel, a piece of medieval art in the Art Institute in Chicago, which graphically depicts this whole story. Even the bright colors and the way painters painted the human figure 800 years ago is not entertaining enough to remove the horror of this story from us.
So why is this story part of Mark’s story to us – as Mark titles his Gospel, “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?”
Well, first of all, it serves to remind us that telling the truth – in John’s case, reminding the flagrantly disobedient Herod and Herodias that there was a higher power than that which they used to rule Judea – telling the truth often comes with a cost. In John’s case, the cost was total, complete, all he had and all he was, he gave his whole life for the truth. Sure, he could have kept his mouth shut, not said anything, gone along to get along, maybe even be appointed the chaplain of Herod’s royal court – but that wasn’t something he could do.
For John knew the words of our Psalm for today … calling God’s people to have “innocent and hands and pure hearts” … not “pledging by what is false.” John knew the truth – and the True One behind it -- was the higher purpose that he had to serve with his life, even unto giving up his own life.
The truth of the Law – that there is a distinct right and wrong – and that boundaries, fences, rules … need to be drawn and obeyed. The truth of the Gospel – that there is One who has even more of the Truth than he – John – did; one who is the Truth in the flesh; one who gives his followers the gift of his Spirit, to keep them … us … in the way of the Truth.
The cost to Jesus was extreme – it would be his whole life, given up for us. The cost to those who follow him -- most of the time, it’s far less – although the sacrifices sometimes still feel great. Sometimes family or friends don’t understand why this is important to us. We might get teased, made fun of, even lose some friends because of this truth, for us.
So that’s one point – telling the truth can carry a price to those who tell it. Telling the truth of the gospel carries a cost – a cost to those who tell it, which reflects the greatest cost to Jesus, on the cross. That could be bad news.
But the second point is pure good news. And Mark planned it that way. For our story of John the Baptist getting caught up in losing his head for the sake of the truth … comes right in the middle of chapter six of Mark. Right after last week’s story of Jesus sending the disciples out to preach and teach in his name … and right before the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus making a feast in the wilderness out of the five small loaves and two fish.
It’s as if Mark is saying to us – yes, part of following Jesus means going out and getting to work for him. And it will be hard work sometimes, telling other people about him. It might cost us a great deal. But Jesus will always be there and take care of us through it all – no matter what – even when it looks hopeless, it’s getting dark, we’re tired and cranky and there’s nothing around to eat. Jesus will take nothing – and make out of it something – always – for us.
Jesus will be there for us as he was there for us in the beginning. Jesus will be there for us even as he was there in his own life, as a baby, a little boy, a teenager, and an adult … living the same life we live, dying the same death we die, but rising again, to give us, each and every one of us … the promise of forgiveness when we’ve done the wrong thing and haven’t owned up to it; the promise of new life, to share with our brothers and sisters; the promise of his presence with us, his strength and comfort, when we stand up for the truth … and these promises will be enough.
Enough for us now … enough to share with others … and enough to keep us until that day when we will also “ascend the mountain of the Lord” and “stand in God’s holy place” forever.
Amen.

“Paul’s thorn … and ours”
2 Corinthians 12:2-10 / Mark 6:1-13
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (5 Pentecost B)
5 July 2009


Today’s text from 2nd Corinthians is one of the most interesting, curious, argued about pieces of Paul’s correspondence to the churches he founded during his travels throughout Asia.
Specifically, it all comes down to one sentence …
“Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.”
What’s the thorn? That’s the question, that’s the focus many Biblical scholars, as well as plain old casual readers of the Bible, ask when they read these words.
And so there are papers … chapters in books … whole studies … written about what that thorn might be. Paul’s literal word is well translated into our English … a thorn, a sliver, something that pricks and gets under the skin, and causes irritation, pain, suffering.
You all know what it’s like to get a sliver. Maybe, when we’re working on wood. Or picking blackberries. Or getting a buckhead in our foot. OUCH! It doesn’t feel good. We long for the relief of getting that thorn, that sliver, out.
But the way Paul is writing here, indicates that he’s being allegorical … referring to something much greater than a sliver of wood under the skin, or a buckhead in the foot.
People, readers, scholars have speculated that this “thorn” could have been a health ailment, maybe the result of having been beaten and imprisoned so many times. Maybe it was something to do with his eyes, going back to the time when he was blinded on the road to Damascus, when he was still Saul, setting out to arrest the followers of Jesus, before Jesus himself met Saul, Paul on that road, and changed him forever.
Maybe the “thorn” wasn’t an ailment at all, but a person, someone who followed him from town to town, heckling him. Maybe it was a Jewish believer, trying to hinder his Gospel work with the non-Jews of Asia.
I have read even more fanciful ideas of what the thorn might be. But the plain truth of the text is that no one knows for sure.
So, then, perhaps we should shift our focus, from what the thorn is, to how Paul … and we … might handle something, someone, which causes such a hindrance to our well-being, or pain and suffering to us.
When it comes to thorns, when it comes to suffering, there are a couple of basic approaches. There were in Paul’s time, and there are in ours.
Either the Stoic “gut it out,” or the pitiable “why me … woe is me.”
Paul would certainly have known the Stoic approach. That Greek ideal for manly life played a large role in how men lived in the world of Paul’s time.
The ideal man, the Stoic man, should be a man of thought, not feeling, when it comes to dealing with situations, and other people … and when something hurt the Ideal Man, when he was suffering, he should just “grin and bear it,” well, not even that far, no grinning, just bear it, bear the suffering, and get on with living.
Now, we Lutherans, because of our Northern European roots and heritage, we Lutherans know this Stoic approach well. We have been steeped in it for several hundred years. It plays itself out, even today, in people keeping their pain and suffering to themselves, not letting on to others how they really feel. It always keeps one looking, like a North Dakota farmer on a beautiful summer’s day, for the next hail-producing thunderstorm … in the vernacular, you might look and hope for the blue bird of happiness, but don’t be too happy when he shows up … because he will most certainly poop on your head.
There can even be a kind of quiet pride that goes along with this Stoic attitude toward living … a “look at me, and see how much I can endure” attitude toward life.
As for Paul, well, he does do his share of boasting here in this text, but I don’t think that’s his answer to the question of suffering.
And neither is it “woe is me” and “why me,” and the long, hard searching for an answer to the “why” of suffering. Yes, sometimes the answer to pain and grief is obvious … someone drinks and drives … there is a genetic preponderance to cancer in the family … the airplane malfunctions and crashes.
But at other times … there isn’t. Were the people in Mexico any worse sinners than you or me, that they got the Swine Flu first? Did the victims of the earthquake in China behave any worse than we in Seattle; but the big temblor struck there, and not here?
No, when we look for an answer to suffering, “why me, why them” … what we get, as one friend of mine put it, is the same results as peeling an onion. When you take an onion all the way apart … what you are left with … is shards … disjointed pieces … and tears.
And so for us … there is no comfort in this text, or in the larger story of our lives behind it, when our focus is either to find out “what is the thorn?” or “why did he … or we … get it?”
In our “CSI: Miami” approach to things … analytically taking everything apart, looking for the cause, the reason … thinking that, since everything comes together so easily, black-and-white for Horatio Caine, it must come together that way for us too … in our fine tooth comb approach in searching for cause … we lose the point of the text, the story, the Gospel. Which is not cause … but comfort. The “for you and for me” in the story.
The original hearers of this letter … the ones who, sitting in their small house church in Corinth in the later years of the first century … those who knew Paul and now were hearing his letter read to them, together … they would have known that the world, their place, their time, was full of plenty of thorns. Suffering. Anger. Grief. They had felt it in the divisions which had arisen in their infant church … divisions between rich and poor, young and old, new believer and long time worshipper, Gentile and Jew.
They knew suffering. They knew that question quite well … “What have I done to deserve this?” So when they heard Paul speaking of his “thorn,” whatever that might be … they were not only sympathetic with him … they were right there with him in his words.
They … and we … needed … need … to hear the comfort, the grace, the hope.
And so that is where Paul goes next.
“.. (the Lord) said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
My grace is sufficient for you. Enough for you. You have enough, given from Me, Jesus says, to endure, to live, richly, fully, with the thorns and slivers you will most certainly receive in this life. Some of which will come because, well, they just come to everyone. Sssssslivers happen.
And some of which, will come just because You Are Mine.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
That’s the message, the strength, the hope of the Gospel in which Jesus comes, proclaiming in his words, his actions, in his flesh.
It’s the word he gives his disciples as he sends them out in our Gospel reading for this morning. “He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.”
“My grace is sufficient for you, for power … authority … the authority which I give you … is made perfect in weakness.”
My weakness … your weakness. My flesh … your flesh.
In us … us, who have thorns aplenty in our lives, little spinters and big shards. Jesus knows them. Jesus lives them. His power was and is made perfect in what the world calls weakness … his flesh, pierced with those big metal thorns … dying, on the cross, for us. Made perfect, in being raised, to life, for us. Giving us hope, for us, that promise that we shall receive the same … thorns, yes … but also, life like his, forever.
“My grace is sufficient for you.” For me. For us.
Good words for us as Nativity people, as we go forward into our 41st year as a parish, together. You received a letter this week about our plans for ministry in the coming year. Plans we discussed and approved at last week’s annual meeting. Plans which will require work … love … sharing … from each of us, in order to be fulfilled.
We shouldn’t lose perspective, certainly, of where we as Nativity people have been over the course of the past decade. From nearly closing your doors … to this next phase of our redevelopment and growth together … it is great and shining proof of that word from Jesus: “My grace is sufficient for you.”
But we must also keep our “eyes on the prize,” so to speak. The temptation to look at our “thorns” will be there. We may look at that budget, the numbers, ourselves, the economy, the nation and world, and we might think, “Oh, but we are small, we are too few in number to make that happen. Let someone else do it … may someone else be part of this Lord … I just can’t.”
“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
And so I am reminded this morning of a word from my former synod, Southwest Minnesota, the place I left five years ago to come here and work and serve among you. Hard-working people, mostly of that same Northern European heritage that I spoke of earlier. But that’s not what I’m remembering today. No, it’s that synod’s mission statement which sticks with me … echoing Paul’s words for us today … echoing Jesus in the Gospel text … words to guide us, too, into our 41st year and beyond, as God’s people, living lives of faith and hope and service, and yes, with thorns, too:
“By God’s grace, together we have what we need.”
And indeed, we do. We do. We are richly blessed. With enough for us. Enough to share. Enough to go and serve.
Amen.

“Waiting … waiting … waiting”
Psalm 130 / Mark 5:21-43
13th Sunday in Ordinary Time / 4 Pentecost B
28 June 2009


We Americans are not a patient people – now, especially, but I wonder if we ever were. Our national spirit and mood has always been one of “it’s to be completed yesterday,” and because of that we have achieved a tremendous amount of accomplishments in the past two hundred thirty three years. Each new technology has sped us up, to do more, quicker, sooner.
In this Internet age, there is no need to wait … for anything … if we want it, we can just connect, and click, and we’ve got it.
But we have hit an excessive place, in our impatience … and maybe, just maybe, our “instant gratification” lifestyle has come to a halt, at least, for now … due to two totally unrelated but coincidental happenings. It wasn’t too soon after the Great Recession was officially declared to have “started” back in January or February, that people were hopefully proclaiming that it was “on its way out.” But it isn’t, and it hasn’t … and we are having to learn to be more like our Depression-era parents and grandparents … to put off purchases, to clip coupons, to reuse and recycle, to save … to be patient.
And then there’s the swine flu. It had barely hit when people were clamoring for a vaccine. But there wasn’t one … indeed, there won’t be one for maybe months. And the antivirals may or may not work. No, the best “cure” for this new flu … good old common sense medicine. Slow down … get lots of rest … wash your hands … cover your cough … and stay home if you’re sick. Be patient … and you’ll probably avoid it … and if you do get it, you will get over it.
We are having to learn patience. Living at a slower pace. Waiting. And that’s not such a bad thing.
Certainly when we enter into the world of the Bible, we need to Slow Down with capital letters. First, certainly, the time frame of these happenings … pre-technology, pre-need-it-yesterday … life was shorter back then, but lived at a much slower pace too. And we also need to consider the place … the timeless Middle East, where things have remained the same way for centuries … certainly, then too, there was a different sense of time, a cultural patience, people who were used to waiting.
Our gospel story this week has Jesus and his disciples returning from “the other side” of the lake … the Sea of Galilee … where they were going last week in the boat, the one which got caught in the storm, the one in which Jesus, asleep, was woken up by the fearful disciples, asking him to do something to save them because they were, obviously, “gonna die.” What we miss is the story “between the stories,” the story of what happened on “the other side,” Jesus meeting a man, driven by demons, mental distress, to live among the tombs … Jesus, caring, patient, not driven away but meeting that man where he was, and healing him.
But now Jesus and the disciples are on their way back, and a crowd’s there in Galilee … a crowd, which soon gathers around him, so fast that he doesn’t even have a chance to come too far ashore from the boat. They are waiting … maybe, they’ve been waiting since he left and went to the other side of the lake, who knows how many hours, days they have been there … they were waiting for him to return.
One of the waiting crowd is Jairus, a local religious leaders. His daughter is ill … given her condition, “at the point of death,” she has likely been ill for some time. Maybe Jairus has been there, on the shore, waiting along with the crowd, waiting some time for Jesus to return.
But it’s his request of Jesus that comes the strangest to the ears of those there surrounding him. Jairus asks Jesus to come over to “the other side” … not just of the lake, but of his religion, of his faith community, of his way of life. “The other side” which could put Jesus outside of his faith community, his religion … his way of life. “Come and lay your hands on her” … Jairus asks for his daughter … and this leader of the local religious community must know precisely what he is asking of Jesus.
He asks Jesus to cross a line … to touch a sick, dying, dead body was unclean. One would have to separate oneself from the community for a time to become clean again. This would put Jesus outside his own community.
And yet, Jesus goes.
And in that going, he encounters yet another one who is on “the other side.”
The woman with hemorrhages … her health condition would also have put her on “the other side” of the religion, the faith community, the way of life of those she lived with. She actually had doubly crossed that line of being on “the other side” … spending all that she had on the hope and prayer of better health, now she is impoverished, and in her poverty, reduced to begging, ill, diseased, frustrated, sad, probably angry, angry at people, angry at God … she is also on “the other side” … outside … and even though she’s in the midst of a crowd, she’s terribly, terribly alone.
Alone with her suffering.
Alone with her thoughts. Maybe, possibly, the words of our psalm today, even then, known to her, known to those who sat and suffered and waited …
… words that speak of waiting, waiting and watching …

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord;
O Lord, hear my voice!
I wait for you, O Lord, my soul waits;
In your word is my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord more than those who keep watch for the morning …
O Israel, wait for the Lord, for with the Lord there is steadfast love … there is plenteous redemption.”

Thanks be to God, she is not alone without faith.
She has been waiting for Jesus. Waiting, waiting.
And now she sees her chance to be made whole.
So she takes it.
And Jesus knows at once.
The disciples, though, once again, blow it. As they blew it in the boat, their impatience and fear getting the best of them, crying out for Jesus to take care of the storm, take care of the situation … here, now, they impatiently want Jesus to keep moving, to forget about what he had just sensed.
But Jesus will have none of it. And here, once again, he crosses to the “other side.” He personally encounters the woman where she is … she comes to him, spills her guts, bares her soul … and Jesus, crossing the boundary, going over to the “unclean,” makes her clean, and healed, and whole.
And then the impatience of the world bursts in on him once again. Jairus’ daughter is said to be dead; why bother Jesus any more? “It’s over, Jairus, bury her quickly, get on with life, you can have more children, comfort yourself with the ones you still have” … all those pious platitudes certainly spill forth from those surrounding their community’s religious leader. Honestly, maybe, some well-meaning … others, most certainly, impatient with the whole business, wanting life, the community, their religion, to just get back to “normal” and for this Jesus, this rabble rouser, this one who had come there and upset their neatly ordered existence, disrupted their sensibilities … why can’t he just leave, so we can get back to our usual way of life once again???
But Jairus’ patience is rewarded. Jesus goes in, takes but a few with him to witness what he is about to do … and brings the little girl back to health and wholeness once again. Jesus once again crosses to “the other side” … crosses the line of what his religion says is proper, clean, orthodox behavior … encounters the girl where she is, doesn’t worry about what others will say about him … and, in his good time, makes things right and whole for her, for Jairus, and for their family.
Two stories. Two people … two daughters, if you will, on “the other side” of life … and Jesus crosses over to them, despite the impatient cries of the crowd and even his own disciples … he crosses over, in his own good time, and heals, and makes whole.
Where are you in your waiting this morning? What is the “other side” that you are on today? Economic, family, job, school, friends, health, relationship? How long have you been waiting … waiting in fear or frustration, waiting for hope, waiting in the depths, whatever depths they are, known to others or known only to you … how long have you been waiting for One to come over to “the other side” for you?
Hear, O Israel … hear, O Galilee, O Nativity, O people of the “other side,” whatever that “other side” is, was, or will be … hear that Jesus has crossed over to that “other side” … that he is, indeed, here with and for you this day … to be with you, to comfort you, to heal you and make you whole. Jesus is God For You this day … wherever you are, wherever you have been, whatever “other side” the world, other people, friends, family, school, business, church has said you are on … know that, even there, especially there, Jesus is there with you and for you.
To eat. To drink. To take in. To comfort. To bless. To heal. To make whole.
For You.
And then, to share. Always, enough, more than enough to share.
Amen.

“How to wake up God”
Psalm 9:9-20 / Mark 4:35-41
12th Sunday in Ordinary Time / 3 Pentecost B
21 June 2009


A state trooper was driving down the freeway, on his regular patrol, when he spotted a car on the shoulder with a flat tire. A woman was struggling to juggle the two tasks of making sure her children stayed put in the car, and trying to find all the tire removing implements which new carmakers hide so well inside our cars these days. The patrolman pulled over and set to work changing the flat tire.
Once he was about done, the woman began to thank the patrolman for all he had done. “I have Auto Club, but I left my cell phone at home this morning,” she said. “Well, is there anyone I can call for you, since you’ve been delayed?” the patrolman asked. “Your job … your day care … your husband?”
“Oh, I don’t need to worry about calling him,” the woman said. “He’s asleep in the back seat.”
Asleep in the back seat. Is that the way we think of God these days?
Well, who could blame us, what with everything that’s going on. Swine flu and economic disaster. Bizzare weather and international political problems. And personal disasters which, although limited in their scope, still cause immense pain and suffering to those involved.
Sometimes, we wonder where God is, in the midst of these life-storms. Maybe absent. Or out to lunch. Or, perhaps, asleep in the back seat … or in the back of the boat, on a cushion.
That’s what was going on with the disciples as they followed Jesus’ instructions to “go across to the other side” of the lake, the Sea of Galilee. It was a night trip which started out calmly enough -- the disciples jumped into the boat which had been sitting off the shore of the lake … the boat in which Jesus had been, teaching, because there were so many people on the shore … they got in the boat and starting rowing to the other side. It had no doubt been a long day for Jesus, out there in that boat, hot and tiring, and he soon fell asleep.
But then that storm came up, as storms often do, without warning, suddenly, and the rowers not only couldn’t keep up, but the boat itself started to take on water. And the disciples got scared.
They must have looked back, into the back of the boat, and saw Jesus asleep there, and their fear, mixed with resentment, got the best of them. They went to him to try and wake him up. “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
Jesus, for his part, calmed the physical storm around them … but then he set out to do the tougher work, of addressing the inner storm which consumed the disciples.
“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
The outer storm, that which looks the meanest and loudest and scariest, Jesus makes such short work of that, that Mark records him saying only three words, and then, Mark follows with just a short one sentence observation … that there was now a “dead calm.”
But the inner storm, inside those disciples … as for that, Jesus lays out a question that keeps going, on and on, through the rest of the gospel.
“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
And, indeed, that business of fear plays large throughout the rest of Mark’s story about Jesus. Fear is what holds people back from being and becoming what Jesus is calling them to be. In the very next chapter, fear causes the people of the Gerasenes … the folks of the “other side of the lake” … to ask Jesus to leave them, after he casts the demons out of the man running about the tombs. Fear fills the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, and she is made well. The disciples hear Jesus’ prediction of his suffering, death and resurrection, but are too afraid to ask him about what he means. Fear causes Peter to deny Jesus three times after Jesus’ arrest.
And even after his ultimate sign, his being raised from the dead, the last words Mark records in his gospel are not about faith … but about fear. After the women heard the news that Jesus had been raised from the dead, Mark’s gospel ends with these words … “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Jesus understood that fear is the great enemy of faith. Fear drives people, us, to make bad choices. We’re afraid of what others might think or say about us, afraid for our future or that of our family, fearful of what change might bring to us as a community or nation. Jesus understood this about the disciples, and us, as those who are the latest to follow in their path. In his language, in many ways more descriptive and nimble than our own, there were two words for fear.
One, having to do with the feeling one has after being impacted by an outside event or cause … which can run the gamut from awe and respect, to causing immobility.
But the other word has to do with an inner defect, a shortcoming, in the disciples, in us, which would hold them … and us … back … from all that God would call us to be, and do. That’s the word Jesus uses when he asks the disciples “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” He knows that this black cloud of fear is going to block out the faith which he … the Son … is trying so desperately to shine into their hearts and minds, so that they would not only go out and share in his work, but also, after Jesus was gone … the death and resurrection he knew was coming … that these same disciples would be able to go on and continue his work of healing, proclaiming, bringing the Good News to “the other side.”
And so the early church … those who red and heard these stories two thousand years ago, as Christians first began to gather together in worship … they would have heard this story as one of encouragement and hope. The boat for them became a symbol for the church … and, indeed, that’s where we get the word “nave” which many churches still use to describe their worship space … nave, yes, it means what it sounds like, the word naval, meaning, a boat, a ship, of the sea.
The early church would recognize itself as a little boat full of believers on a storm-tossed sea … many problems besetting them … fear of persecution, being found out by the Roman authorities, financial concerns, “church fights” over who’s in and who’s out … yes, even then, even then. The storms of life assailed the people of the early church too. They, too, must have wondered where Jesus was in the midst of these “storms.”
But they also would have taken encouragement from what this story says about Jesus. He was asleep in the back of the boat. Sleep, to the ancients, even up through the time of Shakespeare and beyond, was, is, a symbol for death. Jesus had died, that was true, the people of the early church knew the story of his arrest and suffering and death. If, as we’ve come to believe over the centuries, that Mark’s gospel is more or less an eyewitness reporting from Peter to John Mark, his friend, who wrote it down as Peter’s “memoirs,” then, that sense of the knowledge of Jesus’ death would have been firmly, and lastingly, imprinted on these early readers and hearers.
But Jesus didn’t stay asleep … nor did he stay dead. Once the disciples called on him, he awoke, he arose, and calmed the storm. “Peace! Be still!” And death leaves Jesus … the one who was dead is dead no more … but the storm, all that which, for all the world appeared that it would cause death and destruction, now death itself … is dead. It has no power over Jesus, over his disciples, over those early believers, or over us.
And there … right there … is where this story leaps off from the letters on a page, and into the achings and longings of our own hearts. Storms happen. Storms happen in our lives, in the lives of others, in the life of the church, believers singly, together in family units, congregations and denominations together. Storms happen. They have happened before, they happen now, and they will happen again.
And when they do, we become afraid. We question our faith. We wonder if God is really with us … if Jesus is there as he promised to be, to and for us … then, why isn’t it smooth sailing? Why is this happening to me, to us?
We need to hear this story again … and what it doesn’t, and does, tell us.
First, nowhere does it say that “if Jesus is with you, storms won’t happen.” They do. They do. Sometimes, because Jesus is with you, the storms may happen with greater intensity and ferociousness. That’s the way it is in Mark’s gospel. Where Jesus is, there will not always be “calm and blissful seas” and “smooth sailing.” Sometimes it will get downright rough, as Jesus calls us to meet those storms of life head-on … storms like those in our Psalm today, which come up when we work for justice for the poor and oppressed … storms like those personal ones which Paul describes in his second letter to the Corinthians … “dishonor, ill repute, treated as impostors, unknown, sorrowful, poor, having nothing.”
Storms will happen. That is the nature of life. And Christians … those who follow Jesus … will not get a break from the storms.
But what this story does say, is that Jesus is there for us. Jesus is there, in the ship, in the nave, in the church, not just the building but the Body … the Body of believers in this world, gathered together, sometimes making great headway, and at others times, bailing with all that we’ve got.
And as we call on him, as we call on him, he will be there, for us, to calm those storms … to show us who is really alive, and what is truly dead … to save us … to rescue us, from our fears, from all that would hold us back from what God is really and truly calling us to be.
And here in the boat … here, in this boat … we have all that we need for the trip, the journey, as we are called to the “other side” to spread the Good News. Food and drink enough for the journey. Encouraging word enough for the journey. Friends, fellow disciples, enough for the journey.
Here in the boat … here, in this boat, we have enough. More than enough, to be what God really and truly is calling us to be … people of the boat, people of the Church, who get in their boat and GO, GO through the storms and the calm, GO to the other side, GO OUT and LIVE and TELL.
People who GO.
GO!
Amen.

“What dominion really means”
Genesis 1:20-28
Blessing of the Animals service
20 June 2009


“There have been five great die-offs in history. This time, the cataclysm is us.” So begins a recent article in the New Yorker magazine titled “The Sixth Extinction.”
Naturalists have found that five times before in human history, there have been large die-offs of living species, mass extinctions of “what went before.” The first, 450 million years ago, when most life was confined to water, wiped out more than eighty percent of marine species. The fifth, at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, exterminated not just the dinosaurs but seventy-five percent of all species on earth.
Each of these mass extinctions had some sort of a trigger, an outside cause, an event that changed some living condition … water temperature or air quality on earth. In the case of the dinosaurs, this was most likely a six-mile wide asteroid slamming into the earth where the Yucutan Peninsula of Mexico is now, sending up a plume of dust which either blocked the sun and cooled the planet, or fell to earth and cooked it, depending on which scientist you talk to. Either way, the results were the same … five times, the majority of the species on our planet died out due to “natural causes.”
Ah – but what does this have to do with today?
Plenty. Currently a third of all amphibian species, nearly a third of reef-building corals, a quarter of all mammals, and an eighth of all birds are classified as “threatened with extinction.” Whole populations of frogs in places as diverse as Panama, Minnesota and Africa are dying out – victims of a unstoppable fungus that started in clinics and hospitals in the 1930s, which used frogs to develop a human pregnancy test. The entire population of Little Brown Bats in the eastern United States is threatened with a disease called white-nose syndrome, caused by a fungus directly related to the one killing off the frogs. “It’s now generally agreed among biologists that another mass extinction is under way … it is estimated that if current trends continue, by the end of this century as many as half of earth’s species will be gone.”
So we might ask, “when did this start?” and “what can we do?” Maybe news like this makes us want to start recycling and conserving water … buy a Prius, pick up trash. Maybe we blame it on “global warming” and try to reduce our “carbon footprint” in whatever way we can.
When would you guess this latest “great die-out” started? With the invention of the Ipod? The airplane? The car? The industrial revolution?
Uh-uh. Try fifty thousand years ago.
That’s right. Fifty thousand years ago.
When people first started to spread around the world, moving out of our original homeland in Europe and the Mideast and Northern Africa, into Asia, North and South America, and Australia. The fossil record bears it out … on each continent and island, when humans moved in, large number of species died out, almost instantaneously. There were mastodons and sabre-tooth tigers in North America until eleven thousand years ago … when people showed up. There were giant hippos and ten foot tall kangaroos in Australia until fifty thousand years ago … when people showed up. There were pigmy hippos in Madagascar until two thousand years ago … when people showed up. And Hawaii had nine times more bird species than it does now … until fifteen hundred years ago … you guessed it, when people showed up.
People … our ancestors, and us … we are the trigger, the outside cause, the latest cataclysm to wipe out species. God might have made us “created co-creators,” but as far as all other life on earth is concerned, we are “created destroyers.”
And, for the past five thousand years or so, the Scripture reading we have tonight from the book of Genesis, that long-told creation story by people of faith … it has stood at the heart of human abuse of God’s creation.
“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea … birds of the air … cattle … wild animals … every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” … “And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
For centuries, people have heard that word from Genesis as lock-on instruction and marching order for What We Are To Do – “Well, it says right there, subdue it, subdue it … and so we’ll subdue it. We will rule the earth and the sea and the air and all the creatures of them with an iron fist. We are made in God’s image, after all, and so that gives us the right to do whatever we want … whatever we want … to the animals, the plants, the birds, the fish.“
The Canadian spiritual singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn wrote a song about this kind of thinking … this bad theology, if you will … it’s called “If A Tree Falls” and he wrote it in particular response to the mass destruction of the Amazonian rain forest:
Cut and move on
Cut and move on
Take out trees
Take out wildlife at a rate of species every single day
Take out people who've lived with this for 100,000 years
Inject a billion burgers worth of beef
Grain eaters, methane dispensers.

Ah, subdue. How nice to subdue.
It’s just too bad that by focusing on that one word, we humans have missed the total sense of the creation story, God’s great gift to us.
For the whole point of the creation story of Genesis 1 and 2 isn’t about a wanton God who just creates and acts willy-nilly, making tapirs and tarantulas, amoebas and killer whales … who sets up people to rule over it all like building superintendants for an absentee landlord … and then, just checks out, goes on vacation for a while, a long while.
No, everything God does in these chapters, in this story, God does to be in relationship.
The very created order of Genesis chapter one bears this out. Whether you believe in a creation that lasted seven twenty-four hour days or took millions of years … the “for us” in these verses is unmistakable … it’s a love story sung by our God who goes forth and creates all living things …
A creation God makes and calls Good;
A creation set in an order that encourages relationship between the creatures for their mutual survival and well-being;
A creation with limits, because to remain in relationship, limits are necessary (boundaries need to be set; outside of which, relationship is threatened);
And a creation, made and set free, to “go forth and multiply” in that freedom.
And that shows the true meaning of dominion. God exercises dominion over all creation to stay in relationship with all of creation … so that creation can enjoy life, and so that the Creator can enjoy the creation.
Somehow, we’ve missed this, over these past fifty thousand years. Somehow, we’ve figured that “dominion” meant that it had to be “all about us” … that we were pretty hot stuff, the be all and end all of all of God’s creation, because we alone were made in God’s image. Which, following that line of thought, gives us the right to do whatever we want and treat creation like junk.
But God doesn’t exercise dominion like that. You can’t rule over something if your reign is one of terror and destruction. You will have nothing left to exercise dominion over. And so God’s dominion – reign – is one of love and care, helping, aiding, maintaining relationship within creation, so that God can stay in relationship with all of creation … including us.
We needed God himself to come and teach us that lesson in person, in Jesus. And for him to die on a Cross and rise again … going so far as to break the very natural laws God set in motion at the beginning of creation … (for we all know nothing comes back from the dead).
God goes that far, to make that point stick for us.
But the creation … it needs no such thing from us. To make up for fifty thousand years of wrong, some people believe we need to go so far in the other direction with creation that we shouldn’t even swat flies when they come indoors.
No, we don’t need to go that far. All creation needs from us … is for us to act as who we are … who God created us to be … made in God’s image, yes … but exercising dominion as God does so … in care, in love, in respect, in good stewardship … wanting relationship with all of creation … the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, the wild animals of the earth, and, yes, the creeping things too …
… and treating our pets as creatures with whom God desires to be in relationship too, treating them with the love and care our God shows for all creation.
Those of us who own pets know that, more often than not, they get that right when we screw it up royally. We might get mad and yell at our pets for something they did wrong, but then when we are sorry that we did get upset, they’re always right there to “kiss and make up.”
And so God gives us another chance to get it right, too. Maybe it’s just in little ways, like with our pets in this service tonight. No matter. It’s a good place to start; with the ones closest to us, with whom we already have the relationships. And they can help us, help lead us out into being good and faithful stewards of this wonderful garden planet which our God has created … not just for us, but for himself, first and foremost … for relationship … and for all of creation to share … for us all to renew … in God’s name.
Amen.

“The one you would least expect”
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 / Mark 4:26-34
Pentecost 2B / Lectionary 11
14 June 2009


So today we begin this long green season of the Church … a time when the texts, songs, prayers and other parts of weekly worship focus on our primary task as Christians … not, as we may have been told over the years, “growing the Church” as in, getting more members to come in and do more things churchy … no, our primary task as Jesus’ disciples is growing the faith … being fed ourselves, so that we will go out and feed others with Jesus’ word of forgiveness and new life.
To feed them, wherever they are, whether they are Lutheran or not, Christian or not, whether they will choose to gather in faith community here at Nativity or at Cross and Crown or at St. Stephen’s or with River of Life or even, nowhere at all. Just so they are fed, period.
And we start this green season of the Church with readings that we hear, most likely, to be addressing our most primal fear in “going out” … that is, “who am I that I can go and tell others about Jesus?” It was Moses’ complaint and Isaiah’s fear … and it is also ours. Lutheran laryngitis has frozen our vocal cords and made us unable to speak about Christ outside these walls. That’s why our evangelism for so long has been “in-vangelism” … as in, once “they” come, then we’ll tell them about Christ, but it’s all up to “them” to come.
Uh-uh. That may have worked 50 years ago, but no longer. And it shouldn’t have even worked then … if it did, it was just by sheer numbers or biological evangelism … Lutherans having more Lutheran babies … or plain dumb luck. Because, after all, Christ’s command, the great Commission as we’ve called it, starts not with “make them come,” but GO. GO, MAKE DISCIPLES. Go, not with growing our church congregation as our primary focus, not with even making more Lutherans, but just GOING to tell people that in Christ, there is love and grace, forgiveness and peace, new and everlasting life.
No … it’s all about GOING … going … going …
Who? Me? You? But … but … I am the one you would least expect.
Who indeed.
Exactly the kind of person God chooses to GO.
And our two readings today … from 1 Samuel and Mark’s gospel, they bring this theme home for us. It is God’s everlasting and eternal theme … to choose the one you would least expect to be God’s messenger, servant, witness in and to and with the world. Abraham. Sarah. Jacob. Joseph. Ruth. Isaiah. Ezekiel. Jeremiah.
Jesus.
Here, centuries before the ultimate sign of “the one you would least expect” in Jesus … here, in the Old Testament’s 1 Samuel, it’s a young ruddy faced boy named David who is chosen to lead his people Israel, a ragtag group themselves.
Samuel was despondent. The first king, Saul, turned out to be a real dud. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and this had been the case with Saul, who did not follow God in faith. Samuel, the man of God, had acted as God’s messenger, pouring oil on Saul’s head, anointing him king. Saul had looked and acted the part … tall, handsome, strong … but he turned out to be the worst thing that could have happened.
But God didn’t abandon his people, even though Saul had rejected God first, so God turned the back to Saul. No … God sent Samuel to Jesse’s house to anoint a new king for Israel.
Seven sons of Jesse paraded past Samuel. Seven times Samuel and Jesse though that one might be the next king of Israel. But it wasn’t to be.
No … it was the youngest, the one who was out with the sheep … David … the one you would least expect … whom God chose to lead his people to greatness as a nation.
Once again, just as before … by choosing the one you would least expect … the youngest, the poorest, the weakest, the oldest, the feeblest, the childless … the one the world would least think worthy of the honor of being God’s first and best choice … God goes and pulls an “aha” on the world. An “aha” on the strong and powerful, the high and mighty … a word, an action, that says, “watch it, you who think so highly of yourselves … for I am going to come to the world in the way you would least expect … to show you who is really God.”
And then, as we take up our Gospel reading, we move to the midst of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Here in this long green season of the church we return to the last green season … the season of Epiphany … and where we left off in February and March in the gospel of Mark. Jesus’ earthly ministry had just begun, he’s just called his 12 apostles and has begun moving around his home territory of Galilee, teaching, preaching, and healing. Here in chapter four, Jesus has just started using that unique form of teaching and storytelling called the parable to get the message of the Kingdom of God across to both his apostles, and those others who were beginning to follow him. Parables are stories that Jesus told to get the huge concept of God’s moving in care and love toward all of creation, to get that across to us. They usually start out “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of heaven” is “like” … an analogy or metaphor to help the hearer or reader understand.
We’re taking an extended look at Jesus’ parables during our Wednesday evening midweek worship this summer … 7 pm each Wednesday here … but this morning, we have two little parables before us, both having to do with seeds. And they both have something in common.
Little tiny seeds … when you look at them, you would hardly think that anything would or could ever come of them. The tinier the seed, the more far-fetched it seems. The mustard seed is very small … and the mustard plant which comes from it in Israel grows taller and larger than it does here in this country ... taller than me, high enough for birds to nest in it.
Once again, it’s about the one you would least expect. The smallest, the tiniest, the weakest, is chosen by God for the greatest honor … being a place, a haven for new life.
And so it is with us, as we set out in this long green season of the church today, this last day of our winter season and also the beginning of our summer season of worship and life together. 40 times before Nativity people have been through this cycle … the little David of this corner of God’s Kingdom, the mustard seed of Renton and South King … producing good fruit.
But I think it’s time we left that “little mustard seed” image, the “young little David” idea of ourselves behind. Yes, we are relatively small in size, fewer in number than some other parishes around us … but SO WHAT.
We are not just “the little round church in Fairwood.”
We are blessed beyond belief … we have been gifted five beautiful acres of real estate in the heart of an urban area … we have a fine physical plant … and most important, we have been blessed with the great gift of each other … God’s people, all of us, brought together, in this place, in this time, for what reason?
For something great.
It’s always been this way in Nativity’s story … oh, with a few bumps along the way, to be sure, but so it always is in God’s story. God doesn’t choose perfection to carry on the Story … Saul messed up, David fooled around with Bathsheba, even those mustard plants probably have some broken branches and crooked stems … but the point is GOD CHOSE THEM to do God’s work in their here and now.
Just as God has chosen us for that same work in this here and now.
The ones you and I would least expect, are precisely the ones God wants, God chooses, God counts on, GOD NEEDS, to GO.
To Go and tell others the Good News, that God is With Us and For Us Always, in Jesus.
For Forgiveness. Fresh starts. New life.
Honored places for tiny seeds and ruddy faced youngest children … like you and me.
Called together For Something Great … the Great Stuff we’re engaged in right now, and all the Great Stuff to come, which we’ll explore, find, and receive … in this fortieth year of our life together, and beyond. Amen.

“Jesus, Nicodemus, and ‘Groundhog Day’”
John 3:1-17
The Holy Trinity B
7 June 2009


Do any of you remember that somewhat old movie, “Groundhog Day?” It was set in Punxsutawney, PA … the home of the original and biggest Groundhog Day festivities, and stars Bill Murray, playing his usual jerky, somewhat caustic character. He’s sent there as a news reporter, to do a story on the day. But somehow he ends up in a time warp where Groundhog Day keeps repeating, and repeating, and repeating for him, over and over again. No matter what he does, how jerky or reckless he lives … kidnapping the groundhog, driving his car off a cliff … each morning he wakes up and it’s Groundhog Day all over again.
And the day keeps repeating, again and again, until he figures out what is going on … and that is, that he’s being given a bunch of fresh chances to remake his life … to get it right … to truly live in community with others.
Now, we don’t have a Groundhog Day scenario here today, but it may seem a little like it. John chapter 3 – including the favorite 3.16 – shows up quite often as our Sunday gospel reading. If we stuck faithfully to the 3-year lectionary appointed readings, we would read it at least once a year, sometimes two or three times … far more often than if all the readings were in an “equal” rotation.
Ah, but they aren’t. Indeed, we last heard these verses from John’s gospel on the fourth Sunday in Lent, March 22, just a couple of months ago. Luther called them the heart of the Gospel … and we do “get them” not just in worship but at many, many other times … from Sunday School to Bible School to signs held up during sporting events, so viewers can see them on national TV. We “get them” all right … but do we “get it” … “get” the message that is here in these familiar verses?
Problem is, we’ve held these verses on signs so long … if not literally, then, through their pre-eminence in our worship and learning – particularly, John 3.16 – that we may have missed the larger picture. Pastor and theologian Leonard Sweet, the keynote speaker at our recent NW Washington Synod assembly, calls this on the pieces rather than the whole, “orange theology.” As opposed to “apple theology,” which he says we should be about. Think of how you eat an orange … one small piece at a time. But an apple … well, you take a big bite and then work on finishing it.
So the “apple,” the big picture, the whole story, here for us, starts back in John chapter 2, as Jesus enters the Temple – the heart and soul of the religion of the Pharisees – and does not act at all like the usual Israelite. He throws the money changers and merchants out of the temple and then, when he’s asked to perform a sign for the religious leaders, he makes a reference, for those who know his whole story, a reference to his upcoming death on the cross, and resurrection. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” It’s a word that the religious leaders don’t get … but it intrigues at least one of them.
Because that one, Nicodemus, comes to Jesus later, by night, to ask him questions in private, away from the crowd and their criticism. Nicodemus comes as a representative of the Law-bound, legalistic society that was first-century Pharasaic Judaism … a religion that was far, far from the original intent of Torah – the word we interpret as “Law” but what it is really about is God’s wanting to be in loving relationship with his people … God is holy, God wants his people to be holy, and through them, all of creation will be blessed and made holy.
It may sound like something “new” to Nicodemus … this business about being “born from above” … but Jesus’ words bring out that this is the way that God has always, consistently, moved toward his people and for the world … loving them, wanting to be with and for them forever. That’s why he asks Nicodemus, incredulously, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”
The point is, if he – Nicodemus – had been paying attention to the story, the numerous times he had heard it before – he would have, he should have gotten it. God’s Torah was, is always about far more than “The Law.” It was, it is about the way God has so loved the world.
The difference is that now, Nicodemus has Torah standing right in front of him, if he has eyes to see and ears to hear … in Jesus. The story that has been repeating and repeating throughout God’s creation for millennia before, now has flesh and blood … not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
And in this One who shows God’s love for the world – the world he relentlessly pursues in love, not for destruction but for building up, of relationship with and among, for life itself – in this One, Nicodemus will get another chance to “get it right.” To go back and tell his fellow Pharisees. To be there as Jesus dies on the Cross. To help anoint Jesus’ body for burial and place it in the tomb. To, if the legends and traditions are correct, continue to spread the news about Jesus after his resurrection.
And so we too get another chance, more chances, to “get it right,” too, like Nicodemus. We have the story here, week after week, inviting us into deeper meditation, thought, prayer, journaling, work with the Word we hear and read in the Scriptures …hear proclaimed to us each week … taste in the meal of communion we share … sing in the songs and hymns … confess in the Creed … trust in the words of confession and forgiveness … feel in the sharing of the peace.
And share with others, in the multitude of hours we spend outside this place; the point of gathering here this one hour is for the remaining, sometimes overwhelming other hours we spend out there.
It is all part of the same story … not separate pieces like an orange, but whole, like an apple … the same story of faith, the movement of relationship and love that God has had toward and for his people forever. God so loving the world … forever … for you, and me, and all creation. And each new day – not a curse, but a gift – another day to live in the glow of that forgiveness and love, the relationship of Father, Son and Spirit, spilling out, washing over us, using us to bring that Word to the world. Not to condemn, but to save.
Amen.

“Who has seen the wind?”
Ezekiel 37:1-14 / Acts 2:1-21
The Day of Pentecost
31 May 2009


Many of us, growing up, had to read, learn or memorize at least one poem … maybe, more. One of those memorized favorites throughout the ages has been “Who has seen the wind?” by Christine Rossetti …

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.


Of course, the reality of wind is often far less poetic. Whether it’s a Midwestern tornado, a Southern hurricane or a Pacific Northwest “big blow,” those of us who have been through them in person or watched their aftermath unfold on television know that, even if the wind is not seen, its effects certainly are. The clear swath of an F3 twister in rural South Dakota, demarcated by twisted trees and smashed houses. Miles of destroyed homes in the landfall of Hurricane Andrew. A week – or more – of being without power, as a million homes in Western Washington were affected by the Hanukkah windstorm of 2006. And then … the days, months, weeks and years of “sorting it out,” figuring out where to go next, what to do now.
Lives changed – forever – by the rush of a violent wind.
Peter stood that Pentecost morning at the end of a whirlwind time. His life had been turned upside down by Jesus’ call to “come and follow” him. Peter had been with Jesus for several years, listening, witnessing, watching his Master preach and teach, heal and work miracles.
But then came that awe-full week. Such glory in Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Such sadness as he was arrested and tried. Such humiliation as he – Peter – denied that he even knew Jesus, Peter trying to save his own skin even as Jesus went to the cross, suffered and died.
Then the unbelievable week. The empty tomb. The announcement: “He is not here – he has been raised!” The story of friends on the road to Emmaus, and Jesus – alive - meeting them there. And then Jesus meeting Peter himself – and the other disciples – showing them, proving to them that he was indeed, risen from the dead.
And then the “week of weeks” – seven weeks, 49 days, they waited, Peter and the others, there in Jerusalem, as Jesus had asked them … waiting for what would come next.
It had been a whirlwind time for Peter. So much had changed in so short a time. His head must have been swimming with it all.
And then … and then …
“Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting … all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak …”
Lives changed forever by the rush of a mighty wind.
Some people there thought it was the aftermath of a kegger.
But Peter … Peter, the one who had been in the middle of that whirlwind … Peter, the one pained and suffering because of what he had done in denying his Lord … Peter, now, after this rush of a mighty wind … like those who have been through a hurricane, tornado or wind storm … the ones we call “victims,” but who end up being precisely the ones who make sense of it all … Peter connects the dots for his hearers then … and us, now, if we have ears to hear him.
“Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel …”
And then Peter begins to relate the story … the whole story … of Jesus … and how the event they have just experienced, the rush of the mighty wind, tied, ties it all together for them, and for us.
And his hearers respond – later on, in this story from Acts – by wanting to become part of this story themselves. Some three thousand of them are baptized, and begin to live the whirlwind life of Jesus, living in community with each other, sharing all that they had and all that they are with their neighbors … “and day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”
Lives changed forever by the rush of a mighty wind.
Who has seen it?
This is our 41st Pentecost as Nativity people … 41 times this worshipping community has gathered together, in homes, schools, and then, in this place, to celebrate this day when the rush of a mighty wind changed the life of believers forever. We might want to mark this … as many have before us … as a “birthday” of sorts, “the birthday of the church,” and I suppose that there is nothing inherently wrong with using that kind of language, so long as we remember that what gets “birthed” by this wind is not just an organization, an institution, a structure with committees and rules and orders of doing things … as theologian Carl Braaten once said of the then-new ELCA, “Well, we must be a church now, because we have a logo.”
No … we must keep in mind that the rush of this mighty wind creates a people on the move, a people who live in the midst of whirlwind, not denying the pain and suffering all around us, in our own lives, in the lives of others … but rather, we enter into it, and walk with those in the midst of it, in the midst of the hurricane, the tornado, the wind storms of poverty, injustice, disaster, hunger, powerlessness, sickness, and death. We acknowledge and point out these windstorms of life … we who have seen and experienced them, and, still more, we point beyond them, pointing to the One from God, God himself, in Jesus, who has seen and experienced them, for us.
The breath of the Spirit enters into these dry, rattly bones and breathes life into them, life in the midst of death.
The breath of the Spirit enters into us and puts us on our feet, a vast multitude, who go and proclaim and serve in Jesus’ name, not just for 49 days or 40 years but for 2000 years and more … this “birthday of the church” is not just for us, not just for Nativity, not just for Christians, but for all of the world, all of God’s creation …
… people, creation who are crying, calling out, to be changed, to be healed, to be made whole…
… and we are the called, the chosen, who will go and bring that Word to them.
We are.
And we will.
Who has seen this wind? Who will see it?
The whole world. One breath at a time.
Amen.

“A time when you shouldn’t play by ‘The Rules’”
1 John 4:7-21 – esp. focusing on 16b-21
5 Easter B
10 May 2009


This being Mother’s Day, I thought I’d begin the message talking about something that, perhaps, likely, many women have seen, at one time or another … at least, the women I know watch it … a show called “What Not To Wear.”
There are two versions … the British original on BBC America, and the American knock-off, airing on TLC. Both versions feature two “fashion experts” who weekly take on a hapless, fashion challenged woman (sometimes it’s a man for good measure, but they know their viewing audience, so it’s mostly women) … they take on a woman who has been roundly criticized by her “friends” for dressing too frumpy … kidlike … sleazy … well, you get the picture. The woman gets a charge card with an incredibly high spending limit, and is instructed to go out and buy a new wardrobe.
But first … she is subjected to a humiliating session in front of an eight sided mirror, during which the hosts make fun of her in her current wardrobe … all of which gets pitched in the garbage … and then, the “fashion project” is given a list of “The Rules” to follow in her purchasing … “the Rules” by which, through which, following them, she will be sure to “look good.”
At least, that is what the “fashion experts” tell her.
“The Rules.”
For the past few years, it’s sure felt to me like much of the same where faith and belief and practice are concerned. It’s like, there are people, out there, individuals, groups, who want to impose their version of “The Rules” on us who are trying to walk the discipleship way of Jesus.
So -called “experts” have given us their version of “The Rules.”
“Rules” that “we must follow to be truly faithful.” “Rules” that we must choose, really red, true blue, right, left, because “that’s the way real Christians vote.” “Rules” that we must have this kind or that kind of worship in order to be “really Lutheran” … even “Rules” that we must grow to be this size or that size church, or else, or else …
… or else we break “The Rules.” We won’t “look good” to those who say “they know better.” We won’t be “real Christians.”
“The Rules.”
Now, what’s the prime motivator behind our obeying “the Rules?” What’s the “enforcer?”
It’s fear. Fear that … we won’t be accepted. We won’t “fit in.” Fear that, we will somehow be punished for not following “The Rules.”
Fear of punishment is what makes “The Rules” stick.
But wait a minute.
Did you hear what John, the disciple some say was the closest to Jesus, the one the Gospel says Jesus “loved,” the one who rested on him at the Last Supper … did you hear what John said about that?
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”
You mean to say … that “The Rules” … those rules … that they are the opposite of Love?
It’s not me saying it … it’s John.

And here’s another voice …
Grace goes before the law, and too strict an adherence to the law will result in a loss of grace both in God's sight and in man's.

And more from the same:
Therefore let us learn to distinguish carefully between Christ and a lawgiver, not only in word but also in fact and in practice. Then, when the devil comes, disguised as Christ and harassing us under His name, we will know that he is not Christ, but that he is really the devil. For Christ is the joy and sweetness of a trembling and troubled heart. – Martin Luther

There are rules and there are Rules. There are rules that God gives in the Ten Commandments, the rules that Jesus talks about when says “Love God” and “Love Your Neighbor” … the rules that are given for good order, the Rules which are a gift to us, for life.
These rules we break, all too easily. These rules, in our breaking them, separate us from God and each other. These rules, because of our breaking them, because of the separation that causes … Jesus comes to forgive us and heal us and bring us back into right relationship with God and each other and all of God’s creation.
But the other Rules … the Rules that people make up, the voting rules, the worship rules, the church size rules … those Rules don’t come from God. They’re … made up by people. Designed to lead us into … fear. Fear of punishment. Fear of shame, and humiliation. They keep us from perfect love.
They make Jesus into another Lawgiver. And that, as Luther says, is so far from God’s truth as to be … evil.
“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
Beloved, we are called to love one another. Not to obey “The Rules” that are set down to cause us fear, punishment, and humiliation.
Yes, we’ve all heard a lot lately about “The Rules” and we will, no doubt, continue to hear much more about “The Rules” over the next weeks, months, and more. We may well have good friends, family, colleagues try to convince us that we must follow “The Rules” or else … or else … we won’t be Lutheran. Christian. Faithful.
Be strong. Do not give in to “The Rules.” Hear again the words of the beloved disciple …
“Those who say ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”
That’s the True Rule.
And when we break it?
When we break it … we feel bad … but we need not fear punishment.
For the promise of Jesus is that there is only … forgiveness. Healing. A meal with a Friend, and with friends.
And another chance to get it right.
Friends in Christ, may the Rule that is in your hearts be the Rule of Jesus Christ Alone, he who seeks, who wills, who WILL, rule in your hearts, through this gathering, through this meal, this day … and, in ruling there, he will bless you, into Loving One Another.
Amen.

“Good news from baaaaaa-aaaaaaa-aaaaaaad”
John 10:11-18
4 Easter B
3 May 2009


The “bad news” flood just keeps washing over us this Easter season, doesn’t it.
Last week, Eliza asked us if we “felt like Easter people.” Two weeks ago Pastor Jan Nesse wondered out loud the same thing. Well, if we did … two weeks ago, even one week ago, still feel like “Easter people” … resting securely, rejoicing greatly in the word and wonder of the empty tomb … … if we’ve held onto the joy and hope of that promise, for us, in Jesus’ rising there will also be rising for you and me, death is dead and life is triumphant … held onto it despite the continuing cold of winter, the chill of economic distress … this week’s swine flu warnings and wonderings and worryings may well have driven the last bit of “Alleluia” and “He Is Risen” right out of you.
Easter people? Hopeful people? Rejoicing people? Ha!
And then … what do we get this week?
Sheep.
At least it’s not the story of the crazy man living among the tombs, from whom Jesus casts out the demons … which then go into a herd of swine. That would have been too much.
Yes, it’s once again “Good Shepherd Sunday” with the usual “required readings” from Scripture: Psalm 23, for sure, and then, a Gospel reading from John that has something to do with sheep or shepherds … this year, it’s Jesus’ “I am the Good Shepherd” words from chapter ten.
Sheep. Good Shepherd.
Nice, comfortable, even cute words. Like a snuggy, they go over us and we just slip them on without thinking about them. For people who live where we do, doing what we do in our lives … stories about sheep and shepherds are more ornamental than actual. And as for the metaphors these stories are supposed to convey into our lives … well, they may well be so worn and threadbare as to be useless … especially with our hearing these stories every year … more often than that, in the case of the 23rd Psalm.
So let me suggest, instead, that we focus on another word in these words … other than “sheep.”
That word is KNOW.
“I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.”
KNOW.
We say we know a lot these days, and we believe we’re learning more, every day … there’s supposedly less and less UNKNOWN to be worried about.
At least, that’s what we’ve been telling ourselves. Lately, though, there’s been a lot of UNKNOWN that’s kept us up late at night, sleepless, worried, helpless … our jobs, our health, life itself.
So … sheep of this flock … Jesus’ own … hear his words that he KNOWS you.
And this is not a simple “knowing” that is
the same as “knowing” it’s Sunday morning, or
“knowing” you’re supposed to wash your hands, or even “knowing” that you are here, right now, hearing this message.
No, this “knowing” is a deep knowing … the same “knowing,” that same spiritual communion and community which exists between Jesus and his Father, is right here, right now, between Jesus and you, and me … one and the same …
And that knowing … steeped as it is in the deep, loving relationship between Jesus and his Father … showing itself in the acts of faith and love and service as it did in Jesus’ life … well, that is the same kind of knowing that Jesus has for you, and me.
… a knowing that knows no limits, no ends … there is no where and no way you can go where you will not be KNOWN by Jesus … this is the KNOWING that we heard of last week, as Jesus came alongside those disciples on the road to Emmaus, the same KNOWING that brought Jesus into the midst of the disciples, bringing them peace and hope in the midst of their fear …
… the good news this morning … the good news for us in the midst of so much that is bad … is not, does not go baaaa-aaaaa—aaaaaa.
It says, instead, that Jesus KNOWS you. Deeply. Intimately. Securely. Jesus KNOWS you, and loves you … not to death, but to life.
And, in KNOWING that, we are freed and sent to bring others into that deep KNOWING … so that, in days of Great Recession and Swine Flu, job loss and life loss, we may stand, together, fully KNOWN, fully loved, fully free … to love one another.
Amen.