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"Wonder"
Luke 2:19
Christmas Eve 2009


One of the reasons we love the Christmas story is that it’s so rich in images. As we hear those words read, the carols sung, that story unfold, pictures form in our minds … pictures of … shepherds. Angels. The little holy family, and the baby Jesus.
Perhaps you, closing your eyes, singing or maybe, just listening to the words, perhaps you have formed your own word-pictures, images in your minds.
I have.
It’s only one sentence in the whole Christmas story, but it’s where I feel most comfortable tonight.
With Mary.
As she sits, and takes it all in, and wonders.
But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.

St. Luke is a master storyteller. His is the most personal of the Gospels … written to an unnamed “Theophilus” … friend of God … it is the story teller’s best art, in trying to make his words, written as they are to a mass audience, seem … personal … like he’s right there, sitting and chatting around the campfire, or whispering them into our ears.
By the time we’ve gotten to this point in the story, we’ve already heard about how Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist came to be born to his elderly parents Zechariah and Elizabeth … how young Mary received that stunning announcement, that she would bear God’s son … how she ran, frightened, to her cousin Elizabeth’s house … and how Elizabeth greeted and showered Mary with praise and love, the gift of community … and God’s Spirit, moving through that community, filling Mary with faith and hope, hope that saw beyond the hopelessness of her condition, hope that saw beyond the hopelessness of her life and the collective life of God’s people, at this time, which appeared so God-forsaken … so that she could sing the song we call the Magnificat, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on his servant.”

And then … and then the old, old story unfolds for us, as it did just a few minutes ago. A moment set in a very bad time. A full inn, a manger-baby. Shepherds and stars, and words of rejoicing.
And Mary’s … pondering.
In the midst of it all … Mary wonders.
The events of this night … coming as they do, and are … to one so young, to one still feeling the effects of bearing her first child … she does indeed treasure them, but not in the Christmas snow globe way we would, and do.
These thoughts … these feelings … Mary locks them away, to ponder … no, more than that … our clumsy language fails us here … the image our storyteller Luke is trying to convey is of someone who has had the event of her life happen to her, those word-images and actions seared into every fiber of her being from this point on, and then, she would spend the rest of her life sorting out what they all meant, and mean, for her time, and for all time.

Some of us have been “pondering,” sorting out, if you will, over the past few days and weeks, the past decade, the past ten years of our lives. The numbers changing on the calendar help us to do that. Though this turning isn’t as major as the one-in-every-thousand years one we had ten years ago … it still gives us the opportunity to “ponder,” to sort out in our minds, where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and how we’ve felt.
Some of us haven’t moved much physically from this night, ten years ago. Perhaps you were in the very same seat then, as you are now. Some of us have come great distance since then. And some of us have gained life in the years between 2000 and now.
Take a few moments now, and, Mary-like, ponder those word-images, those story-pictures seared into your memories from the past decade. For you have them. I know you do.

Yes, I’m sure that the “big ones” come to mind … the Nisqually earthquake, September 11th, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Katrina, the change of presidents, the Great Recession.
But, more likely, the images playing on the little screen in our minds are … highly personal ones. A marriage. A divorce. Childbirth. Illness. New job. Retirement. Deaths.
You and I have taken all these events, these people and places, taken them in, over the past ten years, and when the time is right, when we allow ourselves the quiet and the space, we, Mary-like, pull them out of our treasure-vault and “ponder” them, too.
But I hope you do more than just “ponder” them … bringing these memories out, like a crystal vase, to look at briefly, and then, put back on the shelf where it sits and collects dust until the next time.
For remember … there is a sense here, with Mary, that her “pondering,” her sorting it all out … this is central to who she is, as a person, and how God was, is, and will be moving in and through her life from this day forward.
And in these days forward … there will be much to ponder. And struggle with. Thoughts to wrestle around, tussle about, to comfort and challenge, to disturb and bring hope.
Mary will watch her son grow. He’ll stay behind in the Temple, his parents will lose him in the rush and crush, and they’ll have to go searching for him.
She will watch her son teach and preach … leading by example, living out the promise in her words that through him, God will show how he “scatters the proud in the thoughts of their hearts … brings down the powerful from their thrones, and lifts up the lowly.”
She will watch as he is opposed by the authorities of her own religion … betrayed, arrested, tried, tortured and killed on a cross.
And she will be there to hear the amazing news that he has been raised from the dead.
Events, word-images, story-pictures, which called forth from Mary far more than just … withering acceptance of it all.
Her pondering must have been more like wrestling. Sleepless nights, angry dawns, sunrises greeted with apprehension and sunsets bringing relief. And, at the heart of it all … sheer wonder.

And so for us … wonder is a fine place for us to enter this picture, for us to be in this all tonight.
We often hear that what everyone wants for Christmas is a child-like faith. And that is fine, so long as it’s not a childish faith.
For the place where God met Mary that night, in the birth of her Son, her son who would grow to be the Savior of the world, who would make people and God, all creation and their Creator, right and together again through the Cross …; Where God met Mary that night … was certainly not childish … no, it was in a growing, working, changing, wonder.
Pondering, but more. Wrestling, tossing things around, throwing them together, continuing to sort them out. Mary thinking, asking … where … and how … is God present with me, in all of this?
We do ourselves well … we do our faith well … if we do the same.
Merely rolling over and accepting it all … from 9-11, to cancer … from police officer murders, to your unemployment … from Katrina and weather disasters, to relationship and marriage disasters … merely rolling over and accepting them all … this is not the response of faith.
God wants to wrestle with us. God wants to struggle with us. God is big enough and all-encompassing enough to take our anguished cries of WHY? WHY ME? WHY US?
Big enough to take them all the way to the cross. Where Mary heard her own son, her own flesh and blood, ask that very same question.
And she, too, had to wait for the answer, the empty tomb which resolved it once-for-all but also brought with it more pondering and wondering.
But now, it was wondering with a healthy dose of hope. That those things about which we wonder, and ponder, wrestle and ache over … the pain, the suffering, the losses of this life … they are not The End for us. And we do not walk through them alone.
And that is the true hope, the real joy, The Life which fills us tonight.
Not just of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger … but of the God and man he will grow to be … the one to bring salvation for us, not just someday, but to-day. Here and now.
The hope on which we shall soon feast, in his meal of forgiveness, new life, and being sent forth in his name. For he is with us.
The hope that gives us freedom to serve one another, and others, in his name, without fear of what others might say or do. For he is with us.
The hope that Emmanuel, God-with-us, means that God is really with us, always, in all ways … that in the Christ, in this son of Mary, this old sinful world has been made right with God once more, giving you and me the opportunity once more, in forgiveness and hope, to try again, to live again, to struggle and stumble, yes… but then, to get up and moving, once more. For he is with us.
Christ, indeed, was born for this.
May your Christmas, may your new year, be one of wrestling, and watching, treasuring and pondering, this gift of God’s Son, who comes to save … you.
Amen.

“Given in the darkness”
Zephaniah 3:14-20 / Isaiah 12:2-6 / Philippians 4:4-7 / Luke 3:7-18
3 Advent C
13 December 2009


There has been enough darkness.


Though the days are still growing shorter, it’s an unperceivable creep now … minutes, second … we are nearly ready to turn the corner, toward the light. We were always headed toward the light, but first … but first, we needed to deal with the darkness.
The darkness is still here … it is still with us … for some of us, as close as our breath … but now, slowly, surely … we can feel a change.
The ancient believers … those who were closer to the cycles of the earth, seedtime and harvest, birth and death … closer to those rhythms of life than are we latter-day deniers of that cycle … they knew and recognized the circular nature of the days … light then darkness then light again. And so as they developed the seasons of the Church to show, and teach, a world which hadn’t heard of God’s love in the Christ, that the light has shown forth in the darkness … they created this season of Advent, leading up to the Festival of the Nativity of our Lord … as a time of repentance, and renewal, and preparation … preparation first of all, for Jesus’ return to us, that Final Advent for which our faith longs with sighs too deep for words.
But this week … this Sunday … the purple of repentance and renewal, the blue of hopeful preparation … they give way … to the rosy pink of rejoicing.
We at Nativity know about rejoicing. We were founded in the darkest year in Seattle’s memory … 1970 … and, as if to flout that darkness which enveloped the region … people leaving Seattle, a local economy in tatters and shreds … this church congregation of resilient believers signed their, our charter on March 14, 1970 … the fourth Sunday in Lent … the corresponding rosy pink “Rejoice” Sunday, in Advent’s sister purple season of the lengthening spring.
A poke in the darkness’ eye … a dollop of holy hilarity in the midst of pain and sorrow, take that, you bad time, you bad news, you darkness … we are people of Nativity … people of new birth, people of new hope.
And so our birthright is as a people who readily claim rejoicing in the midst of darkness.
But claiming rejoicing … does not mean denying the darkness. God knows the darkness this congregation has gone through over the years. And God knows the darkness in each of our lives, right now, today.
And yet … yet, in the midst of our individual and collective darkness, our health darkness, our job darkness, our relationship darkness … into this Advent time of repentance and renewal, comes the cry: “Rejoice!”
Darkness is no foreign word. It comes from within, from the black hole of hunger, of hopelessness, of despair.
But rejoicing … “rejoice” is a word that comes from without … from outside ourselves. It comes … as a gift.
A gift …. Given, in the darkness.

“Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart!”
“Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion.”

Both our Hebrew scripture readings, from the prophets Zephaniah and Isaiah, they bring that word of hope to us this morning, just as they did to their own people, in their own times of darkness.
As their brothers and sisters in the north of Israel suffered under the siege, oppression, and eventual conquering by foreign nations … the darkness creeping ever closer to Judah and Jerusalem … both these prophets sprinkled their words calling for repentance and renewal for God’s people with … rejoicing.
Rejoicing, in that God was and is a God of promise and hope … a God who always keeps the promises he has made to and for his people. A God who would never abandon his people.
A God who calls forth praise and joy from his people … not fear and trembling.

“You shall fear disaster no more … do not fear, O Zion.”
“Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid.”

God knows … the prophets knew … that if God came to his people only as a God who demanded fearful loyalty … then God would be no different from the false-gods the other nations claimed as their own. The false-gods who demanded, demanded, demanded … worship, sacrifice, more and more worship, or else, or else … there wouldn’t be rain. Or a crop to harvest. Or an army strong enough to stave off the foreign invaders.
No … this God … Israel’s God … our God … couldn’t be a god of fearfulness and a bringer of disaster and doom and gloom.
This God … our God … had to be, must be, a God of gift and promise. Perpetual gift and persistent promise.
Even unto … and through … death itself.


John the Baptist came among his people as the final inheritor of the mantle of “prophet.” And in our Gospel text today, he does indeed come, as one pastor I know says, “as the one to kick the rears of the self-righteous.”
How else would one interpret his words?

“You brood of vipers! Who warmed you to flee from the wrath to come?”

To his credit, John – at least, here in Luke’s version of his story – does make clear that the repentance and renewal of God’s people is not just for “somewhere out there,” “the final judgment,” “pie in the sky, by and by” or however you wish to portray that future time … no, repentance and renewal is for right here,
right now, here, today, just do it.

“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”

Repentance and renewal, to John, to Luke, and yes, to the Christ who is to come … is indeed about “bearing fruits that are worthy.” Or, as another English translation has John’s words, “Prove your repentance by the fruit you bear.” Repentance … true repentance … shows itself NOW, living for the sake of others who are in need.
No matter how much darkness you are in yourself, you can always find someone whose darkness is at least as dark; maybe more. And so we are called to share with them.
To share … to prove our repentance by the fruit we bear …
... but are we called to do this out of fear?
John sure seemed to think so.

“I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Is this what we are to expect from the Coming One … the Promised One … the Given One? More darkness?
No.
To be sure, Christ’s coming did bring suffering and darkness and death.
But it brought it … brought the darkness … right into the heart of God.
Not to those … be it you or me … who are already suffering in the darkness and dread of death.
Jesus came, fulfilling God’s promises, given in the darkness … to take the darkness fully and completely upon himself.
He came, he comes … not to judge, but to save.
So John got it wrong.
Well, who could blame him. He, too, was awash in darkness. The powers that were and are, the darkness of Caesar and his cronies, the darkness of the religious establishment of his time, piling more and more suffering and darkness upon those already suffering in the shadows of life … John, too, the herald in the wilderness … he, too, needed to hear, needed to see, God’s Word of Hope.
And so he did … later … much later … in Luke’s gospel, seven chapters later … when John sends his own disciples to check this Jesus out … asking,

“Are you the One who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

And Jesus answers them,

“Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

So much for John’s scorched-earth Messiah.
But so much, too, for our darkness.
For in Jesus, God takes on the darkness, your darkness and my darkness, takes it into his own heart, takes it upon the cross, suffers and dies to our darkness …
… to bring us … light.
His coming … his promise … his gift to us, is light, and life.
His life, and ours.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”

Indeed. Rejoice. For the gift, the light, has come, and will come again.
And the light is here, with us now, to brighten our darkness and warm us for life and hope.
Hope to rejoice. Hope to share.


O Lord, how shall I meet you? With rejoicing. Always, with rejoicing.
Amen.

“Promised in the darkness”
Malachi 3:1-4 / Luke 1:68-79 / Luke 3:1-6
2 Advent C
6 December 2009


Another week has passed.
And there’s more darkness.
We were just leaving worship last Sunday when we heard about the senseless murder of the four police officers in Parkland. We woke up Monday morning to hear the news that Maurice Clemmons had been shot dead in South Seattle. And the week which has followed has brought words of deep mourning, as well as tales of conspiracy to keep both crime and criminal hidden.
Tuesday we heard our President tell us of the continuing darkness of Al-Queda and international terrorism, but also that more soldiers … husbands, wives, children, friends and family … would be going to Afghanistan to fight in that almost ten year long war.
Closer, here, our prayer list this week has brought us word of trials, difficulties and illness in and among our own faith community.
Outside, the days grow shorter, the shadows fall earlier … the darkness increases, and the nights are bitterly cold.
And we need a word of True Hope.


True Hope is what the Gospel writer Luke believed his hearers and readers needed, too, as he saw them, heard them, struggling in their darkness.
Darkness … yes … Luke saw and heard of their darkness.
We can hear of it, too.

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…”

… darkness begetting darkness begetting more darkness.
Tiberius … the Caesar. Caesar, the ruler of Rome, the oppressive empire, which had spread itself across most of the known world at that time, subjecting peoples to its inexorable need for more. More land. More might. More riches. More power.
Caesar … the living god, worshipped as such throughout the empire by the time Luke wrote down his gospel in the late part of the first century. “Caesar is god” was the word required of all the people of the empire … or else, there would be consequences.
The people of Israel knew about consequences. They groaned under Roman occupation and oppression. This god, this Caesar, he brought no hope to them … only pain, suffering … and darkness.
Pontius Pilate was Caesar’s governor in Judea … the localized seat of the Roman darkness.
And Herod and Philip, Lysanias, Annas and Caiaphas … the local rulers, the religious leaders … all conspired with the Romans, so they could stay in power.
Darkness upon darkness upon darkness. Luke saw the darkness, knew the darkness, named the darkness.
But then … in the midst of all this darkness, darkness that the people knew so well, felt so oppressively, suffered under so terribly …

“… the Word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

In the darkness, a light shone forth.


In Luke’s Gospel John the Baptist has a special place. In no other Gospel do we learn so much about this one who came to ‘prepare the way of the Lord.’
We hear of his parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah, ‘getting on in years’ but without the promise and hope of children. We hear them receive the Word from God that they would have a son. We hear the Word of young Mary’s visit to pregnant Elizabeth, and the older cousin telling the younger that “they baby leapt in her womb” when the mother of the Lord drew near.
And we hear the Word, the Song, that is our Psalm today … the song which Zechariah sings after his Son John is born … this song, words of light breaking forth in the deep darkness, bringing words of True Hope:

"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty savior for us
in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
and has remembered his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace."

When light breaks forth in the darkness … what else can you do but sing?
And sing Zechariah did … echoing the song of God to his people throughout all of time …
The song of promise God began to sing many centuries ago; the same song which God sang to Abraham and Sarah, to Moses and Aaron, through Joshua and Ruth and Naomi, through the Judges and the Israelites’ disobedience, through their repentance and renewal with kings like David and Solomon, and then through the voices of the prophets, prophets like Malachi, “the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight,” calling God’s people back into the song-story of love and faithfulness.
John stood at the end of that long, long line of child-signs, people-signs, bright lights in the darkness; and when he was grown, in that time of great darkness for his people, he went into the wilderness and called God’s people back into the song … “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”


Now, repentance may sound like a strange road to take, a highway out of the darkness, and into the light of promise and hope. But repentance brings people, brings us, back to reality.
The reality that, try as we might, we cannot come out of the darkness by ourselves … that we need a Word of True Hope from the outside to rescue us, to turn us around, to point us to the True Light, the True Hope, that has entered and is entering the world.
And … even John the Baptist … heralded as he was by his father, anticipated, the great Messenger sent to Prepare the Way of the Lord … he needed to hear that word of repentance too.
For John came at the end of the long line of messenger – prophets, those people sent by God to invite, encourage, exhort God’s people to repent, to turn around, to turn away from the darkness and to turn toward the light of True Hope.
And yet … John the Baptist in Luke’s gospel … heralded as he is, anticipated as he is … as soon as Jesus comes on the scene … he disappears. Luke doesn’t even mention that John baptizes Jesus … by the time we get to the end of this third chapter, John is in prison, put there by Herod, put there, back into the darkness.
Why?
I think it’s because Luke wants his readers, lost in the darkness … he wants his readers to know that he knows that true repentance … fully “turning around” … takes more, much more, than just someone telling you that you must do it.
It’s one thing for a person, people, to tell others that they need to change. God sent prophet after prophet, messenger after messenger, bringing that message to his people. Up to and including John the Baptist.
Yet, in the end … no one person has the power to make anyone else change.
Not Malachi. And not John the Baptist.
The only person you can change … is yourself.
God realized this … and so God became the messenger … the messenger bringing that old, old message of love, peace, blessing, place, True Hope … bringing it himself, in Jesus.
God changing so God could remain the same … God For All People, God For Us, in Jesus.
That is the Advent Word of True Hope which we hear once again this year.
And so … all we can do … is receive the gift … receive God’s Messenger who is God’s Message who is Jesus, God For Us, sent to bring light in the darkness – then, in John the Baptist’s time of darkness … and now, in our own darkness.
Sent to bring us True Hope.
Sent to call us to True Repentance … sent to bring us to True Change, change in ourselves, change which certainly looks ahead to the Last Day but also, most certainly, looks at This Day, here and now … this day of darkness for so many, and we are called, we are sent, to bring light into the darkness of others, their pain, their hopelessness, their despair.
God’s change in Jesus brings God-change to us. And God-change in us brings forth light from us. Light from our presence which shows forth True Light … the Light of Christ … and Light from our presents, our gifts, our work, our sharing, to lighten their darkness.
And so John’s calling becomes ours, today, for today and tomorrow and tomorrow until the end of days, the Advent of the End.

In the wilderness, in the darkness,
Prepare the way of the Lord!
Make the Lord’s paths straight!

Prepare the royal highway, the King of Kings is near!

In you. In me. In us. To banish the darkness. Our darkness. Their darkness. To make light.
To bring, and be, True Hope. For each other. And for the world.
Amen.

“Coming through the cloudy darkness”
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 / Luke 21:25-36
1 Advent C
29 November 2009


What a contrast a year can bring.
Last November, we were a people awash in hope … hope borne from an election, a war drawing to a close, the excitement of trying something new.
But today … today, the polls say, that hope has evaporated – poof! – and we are a people as hopeless as we’ve ever been. The “economic recovery” does not feel like it, as so many continue to be out of work, some still, now, losing their jobs, losing their homes. Some say it may be this bad for the next five or six years.
If you’re part of that ever-shrinking minority of us who continue to be untouched by the economic disaster in this country … if you haven’t lost your job … if you still have your house … and if your friends and family still have their houses and jobs … then you’ll get to see this hopelessness in a personal level on our “Christmas tag” list this year. In years past, those of you who have chosen to participate, buying gifts for these friends and neighbors in need … you have seen requests for toys and other items, things which could bring some “fun” into their lives.
But not this year. For what do our neighbors ask in 2009? “A winter coat.” “Pants.” “Underwear.” Just the basics.
Last year, we thought that international conflicts might be on their way to lessening in 2009 and beyond. But now, here, today … war isn’t coming to an end, but is instead ramping up in the world. And terrorism has hit close to home once again … on an army base in Texas … and on Seattle streets.
And then, there’s our health.
I’m not talking about the national health care debate. But that which affects us … closely … personally … the health fears, and concerns, of our friends and family … or even, ourselves. Our prayer list … is longer … than I can ever remember it.
It is hard … damn hard … to be hopeful these days. When we see so few signs of hope … when the news is all bad … when each day brings a new disappointment … how can we be hopeful?
How indeed.
Personally, there are some days when I would end the message right there, and walk away, into the hopelessness. It would be very easy to just “get lost” among the crowds of the grim and glum. There is, after all, strength in numbers, and misery does love company.
But …
… now you knew there would be a but …
… but somehow, some way, you and I are called to be different people than that.
And we’re called to start with a text, a message, a series of story-images, which so many would call utterly hopeless.
“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.”
Each year, each Advent … we begin the new liturgical, church year, cycle, with a story of “The End.” Last year was Mark and John’s turn … next year, Matthew … and this year’s cycle brings us Gospel texts from Luke.
Mark and Matthew and Luke -- all three have these kinds of stories at the end of their Gospels. Words and warnings of floods, earthquakes, disease, coming destruction … these stories … which the Bible scholars call “Apocalypse” … they can remind us of that movie “2012” – and, without too much of a stretch, of our own lives today. The “confusion” of which Jesus speaks here in Luke has the sense of people being at a total loss … feeling powerless over the endless parade of events and news … bad news … that spills over us. We know that overwhelming feeling. We’ve seen it in the faces of the families of the victims of the terrorism at Fort Hood … the voices on the recently released 9/11 tapes … or even, closer to home … the wonderings about food, clothing, shelter, health … for our friends, or neighbors, or even, for ourselves.
Yes, we know that feeling … of overwhelming powerlessness. Some of us know it quite well.
Yet … even as we hear it, even as we know it … we can’t help but note the distinction which Jesus draws in his words. The distinction is clear … between “people” in general … and “you” in particular.
You … Jesus says … you … when you see all these things taking place … you, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
Yes … Jesus is indeed saying to us … the church … we who are gathered weekly around water and Word, bread and wine and Word, in community formed by Word … you, you, you and I who should know better than “they” … you, you, you and I who have heard and felt, touched and tasted the end of this story For Us … you, you, you and I are called to stand up and raise our heads, because our redemption is drawing near.
The distinction which Jesus draws here isn’t one such as we are so wont to do in the rest of our earthly dealings … based on income or wealth, knowledge or power, politics or creed, color or gender … no, the only distinction Jesus draws here is between those who have heard his Word … and those who haven’t yet.
We who have heard his Word, we are the ones called on to “raise our heads, because our redemption is drawing near.”
Yes, yes, we have heard this Word.
But maybe - we’ve forgotten it.
Or become “weighed down … with the worries of this life.”
Certainly there is enough … more than enough … to worry about.
It’s understandable.
Sometimes, unavoidable.
So we need to hear that Word again.
That Word of a Savior who shuns the trappings of royalty and comes to us as one of us; but not just any old one of us … but a child of bondage and captivity to the powers and principalities of tyranny … born into poverty … born into disadvantage.
That Word of a Savior who deliberately chose the lot of the poor, the sickened, the hurting, the powerless, the hopeless … choosing to live among them … choosing to bring them, in particular, the Word that God Is With Them.
That Word of a Savior who felt utterly abandoned by God … suffering, bleeding, gasping, dying … on the Cross … hitting “rock bottom,” the lowest of the low, dying as human garbage, the offscouring of society, scum … so that all those who also, would hit “rock bottom” in the various and sundries ways people … we … do … so that we would know that that place in life is so NOT God-forsaken … but God-present. God-with-us. In our pain and suffering, illness and loss upon loss upon loss. That space in life is not vacant but filled … to overflowing … with the presence of our God.
Our God … who did not let his only Son stay dead.
Our God … who redeemed the garbage, the offscouring, the scum … who raised him from the dead.
Our God … who promises us the same redemption. Bringing us back, from rock bottom … from death, to life.
“Stand up … and raise your heads … because your redemption is drawing near.”
That is the Word we have heard, and hear, and will continue to hear, here.
That Word has brought us together, once again, this week.
To comfort us in our losses. To strengthen us in our weakness. To forgive us when and where we’ve been weighed down with the worries of this life, and the selfish sin which comes of that worry.
To feed us with the bread and wine of his presence. To feed us with the hands and arms and smiles and comforting presence of others, us, bringing his presence to one another.
To strengthen us and give us … hope. So that we can “stand up … and raise our heads … because our redemption is drawing near.”
Near … here … as we bring comfort and hope, sharing of what we have, with each other. And others. For we are called to do that.
Near … here… as we raise our heads as hopeful signs to a world at a total loss. Near … here … as we join our hands and hearts to bring that hope in ways others can and will feel; the hungry poor fed, the naked poor clothed, the sick and poor and down and out … treated with the respect, and dignity, which fellow children of our God deserve.
And near … then… waiting expectantly, with hope, for that day when our Savior comes again. Coming through the cloudy darkness … to be sure … coming from rock bottom, to and for all those at rock bottom, coming to bring The Word of Hope, The Word of Peace, The Word of Life.
Now may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all … and may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness …
… holiness coming through serving, holiness coming through caring, holiness coming through the acts of love and hope we are called to share; we, broken and made whole ourselves, living signs of our broken and made whole Savior …
…may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.
May he come soon! May he come soon!
And may we, until then, continue to be the people he calls us to be …
People of True Hope.
For the sake of the world.
Amen.

“Can Lutherans be ‘confident’?”
1 Samuel 1:4-20 / 1 Samuel 2:1-10 / Hebrews 10:11-25
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time / 24 Pentecost B
15 November 2009


Some of you have heard me say in Adult Education classes that I believe Martin Luther to be the first modern democrat … not, in the sense of the current American political party, but more, as one who started people thinking in a more independent vein … not royalist, nor elitist … as was the “way of things” at his time … but more in the way of “we can do this for ourselves.”
I believe this about Luther, because he wrote this way and spoke this way from early in his career as a Reformer of the Church. Luther saw people, the Church, enslaved, in bondage, to believing that they could never do enough to please God, to be made right with God … no matter how much works were done, how much forgiveness purchased, how many masses said … there was never a confident word from the Church of his time that would assure people that their sins were forgiven, that they were made right with God, that they could go on in freedom from living in fear, to joyful service to and for one’s neighbor.
Luther found that Word of freedom, forgiveness and new life when he read the Scriptures. But hardly anyone could read the Latin the medieval Church used to keep the Word from the people. So Luther translated the Scriptures into their language … in his case, common German … so that people could read the Scriptures for themselves, and if they couldn’t read (which was the majority of people), they could at least hear them proclaimed in their own language.
“The Scriptures are perspicacious” Luther declared, meaning that, anyone could and should be able to go directly to the Bible to read God’s Word for them there … without going through priest or deacon, professor or pope, to find answers to their deep spiritual hungering. And more … when they went to the Bible, people would find that all the other intermediaries and roadblocks to Christ … the cult of the saints … works meant to enslave people, such as going on pilgrimages, having to buy indulgences (forgiveness of sins) with their hard-earned money … all those roadblocks, all those intermediaries, would melt away in the warmth of the Son of God … Jesus Christ … who, Luther found as he read Scripture, was the only One God placed between himself and his people … us … not to punish us, but to save us. So he … Luther … and we … didn’t need to go through anyone to “get” to a kind, loving, saving God … no praying to saints, no lighting of candles, no having to buy masses for the dead, not even any more “unworthy” prayers … because, in Christ, to Christ, with Christ, Luther found, and wrote, and preached, and declared … we have all we need to go to God directly … without anyone standing in between.
This is the center of our Evangelical heritage … that the Word of God frees us from being enslaved to anyone and anything that would stand in the way of us having a direct relationship of love, forgiveness, and new life with God, in Jesus Christ.
So why, nearly 500 years after the Reformation, do we still cling to the old ways?
What do I mean by that? Perhaps it’s best exemplified by that holiday carol that I love to hate the most, “Little Altar Boy.” Unfortunately, it’s already in the holiday music rotation that we’ve been hearing since before Halloween …

Little altar boy, I wonder could you pray for me?
Little altar boy, for I have gone astray
What must I do to be holy like you?
Little altar boy, oh, let me hear you pray.

Now, there is a Word in Scripture, yes, that “the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective” (James 5:16) … but we’ve taken that Word out of context, when we think or believe or act in a way, that says … only the pastor can pray rightly or effectively … that the religious people’s prayers are heard first, before everyone else’s … that what I read in or hear from the Bible is less important than what someone with an alphabet soup of degrees behind their name says about it.
Note that the word before that verse in James which I just read, says, “confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”
Now, we don’t want our sermons to be self-help sessions … for church to sound like an episode from “Dr. Phil” … or for self-esteem raising to take the place of confession, forgiveness, communion together, and being sent to serve others … but there is a very real sense that we Lutherans have lost our way from where Luther was pointing us, one finger on the Scriptures, one arm pointing outward, in faith and hope, pointing to love lived in works of service to and for our neighbor. There is a sense of apology, overweening humility, we’re-not-good-enoughness that we carry as Lutherans, that keeps us … voiceless … with “Lutheran laryngitis” in telling others about Jesus … and quiet, still, shrinking back in the proclamation of the Word of truth about God when others are, quite simply, telling lies about God.
Luther thought, wrote, found in Scripture, proclaimed to the world otherwise. That Christians could, and should, be confident in their faith.
So what do you think? Do the words of our reading from Hebrews apply to us …

“… since we have confidence … by (through) … Jesus”

Can Lutherans be ‘confident’?
A good place to begin, in answering that question, is in looking at some example-people from the Bible, who lived lives of confident faith.
People like … Hannah, in our seldom-heard-in-worship story from 1 Samuel.
Perhaps you’ve not ever heard this story before … a story which follows fast on the words at the end of the book of Judges … that this was a time in Israel’s history when they were leaderless, and pretty much faithless … when there was no main leader for God’s people, but “everyone did what was right in his or her own eyes.”
Even the religion of the time … was faithless. Even the religious leaders of the time … didn’t believe … didn’t follow God’s Word … what it said, what it taught. Eli and his sons were rotten priests … his sons were just in it for the money … not for the saving faith which would rescue their people from their sins.
But there were a few faithful people in Israel. People like Elkanah, and Hannah. Elkanah, as was the custom at the time, had more than one wife. Peninnah had been given the gift of children, but Hannah could not bear children. Elkanah was a faithful man, and Hannah, a faithful woman, but that didn’t seem to help. Peninnah was the one who had the children … but not being satisfied with that, she used to provoke Hannah … tease and taunt her, give her a bad time because she couldn’t have children.
Now Hannah … could have just settled for this life. Elkanah loved her and took care of her; that could have been enough for her. To settle for … settling. Sure, Peninnah gave her a hard time, but people can learn to live with misery, especially if they don’t think too much of themselves.
But this was not an option for Hannah. Hannah knew that she was a precious child of God, and couldn’t understand why being childless was her lot in life. So … in confidence … in confidence … she went before God, to pray to God for children. Hannah made a vow, that she would dedicate her child to the service of the Lord, if she would but be able to conceive.
Eli, the big jerk … Eli presents the absolute worst model of pastoral care that we find in Scripture. Here Hannah was pouring out her heart in prayer … and Eli went over and accused her of being drunk. Granted … at that time, most prayers were prayed aloud, not silently; so Hannah’s behavior would have looked “different” … but still, Eli’s accusation must have stung.
Yet Hannah stuck to her prayer … in confidence, in confidence, through her tears, Hannah told Eli of her prayer … pouring out her soul to the Lord. Now, it’s hard to get “tone” from the printed word of the Bible … but the sense in which Eli sent her home … “Go in peace” … suggests more of a “eh” than a blessing.
Little did he know, however, that the blessing he gave to Hannah … backhanded as it may have been … would result in the rebirth of faith in Israel … he and his sons overthrown as priests of the Lord, because of their faithlessness … and Hannah’s son, Samuel, he would be the one to lead Israel into reborn faith … and the great era of Israel; Samuel would be the one chosen by God to anoint first Saul, and then David, as kings.
And Hannah … confident, confident Hannah … she did go home, rejoicing … her song is our Psalm for today … and in words that exude confident faith …

…the Lord raises up the poor from the dust; lifting the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor ….

… she prepares to bear a son, Samuel … and prefigures another young maiden, who is told by God that she will bear a son who will save his people from their sins. If you thought the words of the Psalm sounded familiar, well, they should … for Mary’s song of praise, a few centuries later, which we call the Magnificat, after she, finding herself in the most difficult of circumstances, a young unmarried pregnant teenager … she also praises and prays in confidence, in confidence that God will hear her prayer and will not forget her in her time of need.
And so we … we, quiet, unassuming, timid Lutherans that we are … we are called on to throw all that … quiet, unassuming, timidity … out the window … at least, when it comes to how we are with our God.
For we stand on the shoulders of un-timid people. Hannah. Mary. Luther. People who were unafraid of asking God for what they needed … people who were undeterred by the world, when they spoke the word of faith and were met with disapproval, dismissal, or worse …
… people who clung to the Word of promise and hope, trusting in the unfailing promise of God … that our God does not abandon his people, ever … that our God is always for us, always, for us, no matter what … and that our God loves us so much that he will stop at nothing, nothing, to be with us … to rescue us from our sins, to save us … in Jesus, in the flesh and blood of his own son, living, suffering, dying, and rising … we have God’s forever promise to be with us and for us in the bad times and the good times … that together, we will have enough … and that one day, suffering and crying, pain and death will be no more, a distant memory, as we are gathered together in the light and life of his Son forever.
And so what do we do in the meantime?
As the words of Hebrews state so clearly … we hold fast to the confession of our hope.
We gather together … we gather together… we do not neglect corporate worship. Singing and praying, hearing and speaking, eating and drinking together God’s promise, it is a priority, the priority for us, the mark of our community of confidence and hope … for here we are given the strength and the hope so that we can be encouraged and encourage one another, “provoking one another to love and good deeds,” what we are called and gathered and sent to be about, for now, and for all the days to come.
So no more quietness. No more timidity. No more believing that “someone else should pray, or speak” when it comes to matters of this faith, this life, we are called into as followers of Jesus and servants, one of another.
Lutherans are confident. Confident of our own place in God’s household forever. Confident that our God hears us, because of, in, through, Jesus. Confident that we have a Word of promise and hope for the world. Confident to go and speak, go and do, go and share.
Amen.

“How to eagerly await the Savior”
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time / 23 Pentecost B
Hebrews 9:24-28 / Mark 12:38-44
8 November 2009


These final Sundays in the church year … coming as they do between the festival Sundays of All Saints’ Day and Christ the King … they have always been something of a conundrum. What do we call them? What do we do with them? It seems kind of strange to have them still be colored “green” Sundays after Pentecost … having to do with growth … when everything outside is turning brown and dying for the winter.
Reformation and All Saints’ are tough acts to follow … all the pride and joy in being Lutheran; all the promise and hope, the message of the saints, past, present, and future. So some have made their own way for November. Our more somber brothers and sisters in the Lutheran Church-Wisconsin Synod call these November Sundays “End Time” … a little play on words, the end of the church year, but also, recognizing how the texts for these Sundays do focus on the time of The End.
Our New Testament reading definitely goes there today. Indeed, it’s in good continuity with where we were last Sunday … All Saints’ … and those readings from Wisdom of Solomon, the raising of Lazarus in John’s Gospel, and the final sections of Revelation.
Namely … the last two verses of that ninth chapter of Hebrews:

And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

I’m always surprised at the number of churches and church bodies which don’t observe All Saints’ Day, or All Saints’ Sunday – particularly because it’s usually the churches which make the loudest noises against Halloween … who then, thus don’t observe the Christian interpretation of what that following day, All Saints’ Day, is all about … namely, that in Jesus Christ we will not all die forever, but instead, we are promised new, full, everlasting life. That is what this faith, this life, is all about, isn’t it? Isn’t it?
Well, evidently not to everyone.
For some of our brothers and sisters, believing is far more about … fearing Judgment Day. Coming up against the all-powerful, almighty God, and receiving punishment for our sins.
It is the peculiar approach that so much of the American Christian movement goes after … those churches, those denominations which look for a “conversion,” a moment of being “born again,” often, it seems like their first and best way of going after more converts is, for lack of a better term, to employ “scare tactics.” “Turn or burn” … “you don’t want to end up in hell forever” … “you just wait till Judgment Day.” One can argue that there’s a great motivational power in fear … we’ve certainly seen that in spades right here in Fairwood during this past election … and when it comes to faith, particularly Christianity, we see how profoundly that fear of The End … death, personally, coming to each of us; and then, The Big One, the Final Judgment Day before our God … how profoundly that fear of The End has colored Christianity for centuries. Fear … sells, because fear keeps people together, in bondage, yes, but together, still.
The thing about it is, living in fear, well, it’s a lousy way to live.
I mean, who wants to live in constant fear? It ends up being an all-consuming state. Freezing individuals, families, groups of people, corporations, communities, even nations, in place. Unable to move, one way or the other, they just stay put. And staying put is not a natural state for living things. That which stays put, frozen, and unchanging … dies.
But … wait a minute. This is not the sense of judgment which these words from Hebrews gives us. Listen again.

And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Now … that scenario sounds much different from “turn or burn,” which some are so happy to paint for us.
Might it be, then, instead, that when it comes to “The End” …. Jesus comes and brings you what you expect? In other words, if you aren’t eagerly awaiting Jesus’ return … but instead … expect death, Jesus’ coming again, The End of It All to be the worst of all possible scenarios … like those words from the Wisdom of Solomon last week …

“Their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction …”

… then, might you just get that? A Righteous Judge, bringing hellfire and condemnation?
Now, I’m not making this up. There’s Biblical precedent for this line of thinking … in the parable of the talents (or pounds), from Matthew (or Luke), the servant entrusted with taking care of his master’s treasure while he’s away, who “buries it out back” because he knew that his master “was a harsh man,” well, the master ends up being for him precisely what he expects.
But what does the writer of Hebrews say here? He’s pointing toward a different outcome, other than an angry, righteous judge of a Jesus coming again …

… so Christ … will appear a second time … to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Hmn. Now there’s a switch.
Instead of dreading the end, our death, the Final Outcome, the Last Judgment … we who have Jesus’ name stamped all over us … we who say we follow him … we are to be ‘using’ this life, if you will, not to be “killing time” until he shows up … and most certainly, not to be waiting for him in fear and trembling … no, we’re called to eagerly wait for him.
As the plants and trees in our yards and gardens use these “Ending” days of the fall to sink down roots even deeper into the soil … the beginnings of next spring’s buds are seen forming on the ends of the branches even as this year’s leaves blow away in the cold winds of November … so we, too, are called to use this time before Jesus’ return to prepare for him.
And all fall we’ve heard stories about different ways we can prepare for him. Always starting in worship … always starting at the table, the font, the meditation on his Word … and then, moving out, always in service to and for others … always, in all ways.
But there’s been one way of faithfulness glaringly obvious in its absence, in these stories we’ve had this fall. It’s the one way we most often associate with “faithful response,” but the one we speak of – at least publicly – the least.
In my first call, I was told point-blank never to mention it in worship.
Of course I didn’t heed that advice then …
… and I won’t today either.
The story of the widow’s mite in our Gospel text today, comes to us, familiar as it is to many of us, but still, as a foreign word, an outside word, a strange word that we who have much just can’t wrap ourselves around. None of us here is as poor as this widow. Her two coins … would buy nothing. It would take 8 to buy a sparrow … a pretty spare meal.
Yet, hear how she gave. Yes, she could have kept back one penny for herself and put the other in the collection box, and that would have been 50% giving … far more percentage-wise than those fat cats who Jesus watched put in their large sums. But no. She put in everything she had, all she had to live on.
Foolish? Perhaps. Fiscally unsound? Maybe.
But it’s the widow, not the rich people, who Jesus commends, for her faithful stewardship.
She knows, she responds, to the reality that 100% of what she has comes from and belongs to God, and so 100% goes back to God.
How would she eat? Where would she live? What would she do?
The story doesn’t give us those answers. We have to trust that somehow, she had enough … somehow, she was given enough, to get by. Surely, since Jesus was watching over her, she was given enough to live.
And so that’s where I’d like to leave this story, this sermon, for today.
With a poor lady who the world would say was crazy, irrational, ridiculous … who Jesus points to as an example for all of us.
Nativity is the most generous, most faithfully giving congregation in which I’ve ever served. I continue to give thanks for that, for you, every day.
But we can do better. Yes, in the midst of recession, threats of floods, political conflicts, election outcomes we don’t like, illness, disease … and the fear which accompanies them all … we can do better. Growing in our giving, our stewardship of time and talent, hours and funds. Growing in our giving so that the ministry of Jesus Christ, his Gospel word of freedom and new life, might be heard loudly, clearly, from this place, for this time and for the times to come.
Not motivated by fear of judgment, budget shortfalls, what might happen to us if we don’t. God doesn’t want that. That is blood money … money, time, given in fear … not in love.
No, we not be moved by fear … or, rather, I should say, frozen in fear. That leads to death.
We shall, instead, be moved by love. Eagerly waiting for the return of Jesus, always. In all ways.
Including, our money. Including, our time.
We can do better. We will do better. For he has, and does, do his best. For us. Always. Amen.

“Bring out your dead”
Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 / Revelation 21:1-6a / John 11:32-44
All Saints’ Day
1 November 2009


We Americans are a very contradictory bunch.
On the one hand, we are enamored with death.
How else do you explain the popularity of TV shows like CSI, with its Las Vegas, New York and Miami components … each one, in gruesome and minute detail, leading viewers through high-tech scientific examination of the many different ways in which a human body can die … and then, just as detailed, explorations of what happens to those same bodies after death.
And don’t forget the horror and disaster movie franchises … how many times has “Friday the 13th” been made and remade? What number is the SAW series of slasher movies up to now?
In a very real sense, blood and guts death sells. The more horrific, the more ghastly, the better.
But … on the other hand … we Americans are absolutely stone cold terrified of death. Death is seen as the worst possible thing imaginable. It must be avoided at all costs. There is no vaccine too rare, no Purell too strong … no expense too great, to make sure that death is … denied. Put off, pushed off, bailed out, removed, sanitized, cleansed from our midst.
Witness this in the following ways …
The endless proliferation of “heroic measures,” whether that’s machines intervening to keep a human body on life support long after it should have naturally died … or the machines of government and commerce jointly intervening on behalf of companies deemed “too big to fail,” thus denying the life-and-death cycle in business.
Pictures of flag-draped caskets of soldier-heroes killed in battle, upon arriving home, scrupulously kept from our sight.
The media’s constant work of whipping up hysteria over “possible” disasters – everything from earthquakes to floods to close encounters with asteroids.
The whole sanitized way the funeral industry in this country has us trained to behave … funerals relabeled as “celebrations of life” where the words and music are all about the deceased … with no mention, no hint or suggestion that there might be something more than just this … casket, or urn, sitting before us. Our corporate theology about death is less informed by Scripture, and more by that old Peggy Lee standard, “Is That All There Is?”

I know what you must be saying to yourselves,
if that's the way she feels about it why doesn't she just end it all?
Oh, no, not me. I'm not ready for that final disappointment, for I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you, when that final moment comes and I'm breathing my last breath, I'll be saying to myself
Is that all there is, is that all there is; If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball If that's all there is

Is that … is this … indeed, all there is?
In our weekly text study group this past Wednesday, our usual group of pastors was chewing on just this … trying to rectify these polar opposite positions about death which we hold simultaneously … morbid curiosity, and mortal fear. How do we do it? And why?
And then … someone pointed out how our Scripture texts for today, ancient as they are, speak to precisely that current dilemma.

“But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.”

This may be the first time you’ve ever heard these words from the book, the Wisdom of Solomon. It’s a Jewish work, written in the same Greek as the New Testament, written about the time of Jesus; Protestants label it “apocryphal Old Testament” even though our Roman Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters include it in their Old Testament canon.
But whether you’ve heard or read this before or not … there’s little denying that twenty centuries of living and dying have not changed the attitudes which people still have about death. Death was and is seen as the ultimate disaster, the worst thing that can ever happen. Death equals finality, finitude, finishing … it’s over and done and gone, there is no more. All that there is for those who are left behind, is to weep and wail at their “passing.”
And there has been much weeping and wailing over the centuries. In Maryland and New York I used to be on call for a couple of the local funeral homes to “do funerals” for those people and families who had no connection with a faith community. I must admit I had to get “into” a certain mode, or way, of thinking and acting for these services. Yes, it was the same message of hope and resurrection I brought at these funerals as I did, and do, at those who die embraced in the arms of a loving, caring faith community … but most often, it fell on deaf ears. There was much weeping and wailing … people throwing themselves on top of caskets, collapsing, inconsolable … remaining at the graveside long after the service had ended, not in conversation and consolation, but in silent, numb unbelief … this was, indeed, all there is. “She was his world … he was all they had … whatever will they ever do now?” … These are some of the phrases I’ve heard over the years, echoing so clearly those words of Wisdom …

“Their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction …”

No wonder, then, that we have this two-pronged approach to death. It is the last great unknown, so we want to know all that we can about it … but even in all that knowing, there is no consolation in the clinical examination of it all, the camera’s unforgiving eye, staring at the bullet or the cancer or the wound or the heart attack that ends it all.
No consolation.
And no hope either, if by hope, you mean seeing something which denies that “this is all there is.”
Seeing is all that those friends of Jesus had going for them, in our Gospel reading for today. Jesus’ friend Lazarus had died, and he has made his way to Bethany to console Lazarus’ family, his two sisters Mary and Martha.
At this point in the story, Jesus has already met and greeted Martha, and now, meets Mary where she is, in her grief and loss. Though her words might sound harsh to us, they shouldn’t. We’ve probably said them ourselves, at one time or another. “Lord, if you had been her, my brother would not have died.”
Those are honest words, words weighted with sorrow and grief, suffering and pain. We should not be angry with Mary for uttering them … or with ourselves for feeling them, or speaking them. It would be far worse to deny them … to just go on like everything’s OK, no problems, sanitized, clean, hunky-dory. That would be the falsehood, the lie, the real death … the death of our feeling, the death of our humanity.
And note how Jesus meets Mary here. There are no words. No words at all. No excuses, no pandering, no trying to make it all better … just “Where have you laid him?” And Jesus’ honest tears.
For those with eyes to see, then, see how Jesus’ brings his very presence into the pain, the suffering, of this life, even death, even death.
The others there, however, don’t, or can’t, see it. “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” The irony of who is really seeing … and who is truly blind … is great.
But not so great that Jesus leaves things there as they are. He has one more sign in him before the final living, dying, rising sign of his own suffering, death, and resurrection. He brings Lazarus, dead Lazarus, stinking dead Lazarus, back to life again. It’s a real life Halloween, Michael Jackson “Thriller,” night of the living dead moment all wrapped into one … for the morbidly curious, it doesn’t get any better than this.

“The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Of course, Lazarus would have to die again … “to this favor we all must come” … and probably, there would be more tears shed … but the event which this miracle-sign from Jesus foreshadows, points toward … the nails, the cross, the empty tomb, the Risen Savior appearing to his friends and family … THAT becomes the real story here … and for all those Lazarus-moments that have followed, and will follow, until that day when God says “enough” … whenever that day shall be … we have a Word for them.
The preview of that Word comes in Lazarus’ raising.
The down-payment on that Word shines forth in Jesus’ dying and rising.
And the final Word, the promise which we have been given, that which this being Christian, in the end, is all about … beyond the rituals and the gathering, the plays and the potlucks, the hockey games and the choir rehearsals and the yard cleanups, this, THIS … is what it is, we are, all about:

"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
4he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away."

We who live in Jesus’ name have a Word for a world which is both morbidly curious and
mortally afraid of death. We have a Word for all those who suffer, who weep, who mourn. That word is not “buck up” or “get over it” or “put on a happy face;” and it most certainly is not “this is all there is.”
It is The Word of comfort, hope, peace, rest, joy, fulfillment, completeness.
It is The Word which is realistic, true, not in denial. As the bumper sticker –yes, in reality, more earthy– says, “stuff happens.” Yes, it does. Yes, it does. It has happened and is happening and will continue to happen. As Luther so rightly called this world “a valley of tears,” so too, we will not deny our suffering, or the suffering of others – but, like Jesus, we will stand with others in it. With the comforting arm, the shoulder to cry on, the loving caring presence that Jesus exemplifies with Mary and Martha, for Lazarus. We will be there with and for others in their suffering because our Lord is with us and for us in ours. Comforting, and bringing real hope.
Hope that there is more than this “valley of tears,” that when our final hour comes our Father in heaven will take us to himself in heaven.
Hope – real hope – not false hope that comes in running and scurrying after the latest fad, fear, potion, portion, that holds out phony promises of deliverance … no, we will stake our claim and place our hope firmly, squarely on the Cross of Jesus Christ alone … his life, his suffering, his death, his resurrection. That Is All We Need For This Life. And For The Life To Come.
And Come It Will. Hallelujah, Come It Will!
Kathleen Norris, the spiritual author of the upper Midwest, wrote a book called “Dakota – A Spiritual Geography” a few years back. In it were these verses, which exemplify this hope in which we are called to live … in Jesus’ name … and to spread, liberally, to others, so that they, too, can rest securely in real, true hope. The hope that does not fail us, ever.
Strangely enough, it comes in a section of the book which is about a rural church on the Dakota prairie named Hope. The pastor wondered, one day in early November, at a funeral and burial in the Hope church graveyard, what the men were doing, on their hands and knees, peering into the open grave.

“Someone explained to the pastor that these men were checking the frost and moisture levels in the ground. They were farmers and ranchers worried about a drought. They were mourners, giving a good friend back to the earth. They were people of earth, looking for a sign of hope.”

May you … may we … go forth this All Saints Day, in all the comfort and peace, grace and hope, our risen and living Lord gives us … so that we may point others to that same sign of Real Hope.
Amen.