“Meetings, reports, budgets … and welcoming”
Matthew 10:40-42
13th Sunday in Ordinary Time – year A
26 June 2011
Hooray! It’s annual meeting day! We’ve made it through another year – together.
That news – in and of itself – is cause for rejoicing, for those of you who, ten years ago, were called anything but prophetic – as this congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in the Northwest Washington Synod, appeared to be fading fast, going away, joining the ranks of St. James and Riverton Heights and even Lord of Life, Duvall this weekend … congregations of our synod which have and are closing their doors for good … unlike Bethlehem and Renton Lutheran, where re-vision has led and is leading to something new, the “voice of reason” here was “let’s close the doors and sell the property.”
And so – as one might expect, you who said “no, we’ll not close” received “a prophet’s reward” of sorts from some, as friends and neighbors scoffed at your foolishness and departed for other area congregations. But you stayed and re-visioned and re-worked this place … chucking the old models of how you had done church in the past, using our round structure as a way of guiding us forward into mission and service and, yes, growth – spiritual as well as numerical.
So ten years later here we are … half of you, keepers of that part of Nativity’s story … the other half of us, having come after that prophetic decision … we who were, are welcomed in Jesus’ named, taken into the life and mission and service of this congregation of the body of Christ.
And so today … fully ten years after that momentous annual meeting of June 24, 2001 in which Nativity made the prophetic decision to step forward in faith … today, we come together this afternoon to celebrate a decade of rebirth and growth … and also … to take a look ahead .
Now the business of an annual meeting of a congregation doesn’t usually look, or sound, that exciting. Meetings, reports and budgets … to some, even many … that’s a simply dreadful way to spend an hour, hour and a half, on a nice sunny June afternoon.
So I invite you … instead of seeing the annual meeting as “something we have to suffer through every year” … instead, let’s look at it through the lens of our Gospel reading this morning, the text given us today to think on and ponder, and take into our lives for this week. This week, which includes our annual meeting.
What might God be trying to say to us through Jesus’ words in Matthew’s Gospel?
Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward;
And whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous;
And whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.
Let’s consider the annual report itself. Inside are notes and minutes, budget reports and write-ups of the meetings and ministries which have been part of Nativity’s life over the past twelve months.
Much has happened. Much has been accomplished.
But remember our text. Read through that lens. Consider, and ponder.
Were we inviting and welcoming to the stranger … the outsider … the visitors and neighbors around us, in and through what we’ve done?
When Nativity re-visioned church ten years ago, you made a distinctive choice … using our round structural shape as a model for what everything around here was to be about … with Christ at our center, as we receive him in the proclamation of Word and Sacrament … the goal of our leaders was to reach out, from that center, to the outside … so that as many as possible could, can be touched by the welcoming, centering, calming, healing presence of Jesus Christ … through us … reaching out to those outside the “inner circle” … working, praying, serving to “bring those on the outside in” … not because “we need more young families and children,” not because “we’re scared that our church is going to close,” no … we do not reach out to save the institution of the congregation.
We reach out because Christ has saved and is saving us … and this is such a joyous, life giving word that we cannot help but share it with others.
And so as we read these reports and budgets and think back on the year just past, we are called to consider … have we welcomed? Which means, not just staying here within our comfortable walls and waiting for, expecting others to “show up,” no, it means actively taking that cup of cold water out, and giving it away, for the sake of Jesus, and for their sake.
Have we been prophetic in our ministries? Have we used the blessings God has so richly given to us as a congregation to boldly serve, to reach out and bring the word of forgiveness and hope, grace and peace and radical welcome to those sitting in the midst of pain, despair, suffering and hopelessness? If not, why not?
When we reach out, we bring the true “prophet’s reward,” the “reward of the righteous” to those who need to receive it … we bring Jesus, Jesus’ word, Jesus’ presence, in our presence.
Why in Jesus’ name would we deprive a brother or sister in Christ of that, Jesus’ blessing to them, coming through our voices, our hearts, our hands?
And what of the future? The one “looking ahead” piece of our annual report today is our proposed budget for 2011-12. Granted, a budget is merely a blue print for ministry and mission for the next year … much work has to take place between the figures on the page and the actual work and service done … but still, it is a place to start for the year ahead.
My pastoral colleague in Maryland always says that “budgets are moral documents.”
What is the morality that our church budget is proclaiming for the next year?
Does it strike that careful balance between serving ourselves … maintaining our facilities and paying our staff a just wage … and, on the other hand, maintaining, increasing the priority of reaching out, and serving others – especially those who God calls us to look out for with particular care … those without others to care for them, those who haven’t heard about God’s love in Jesus Christ, those going through particular hardship caused by disaster, famine or flood?
Our teams and council have prepared and recommended a path for our future. But it is just that … a path … and a path is pointless unless people use it to get somewhere. That somewhere starts with each and all of us prayerfully considering our place in and on that path, in the mission and ministry of this place called Nativity.
Annual meetings are usually looked at as one of those necessary things we don’t at all like, but need to be about … like a root canal or a colonoscopy … and so we usually try to get through them as rapidly as possible. But I would hope and pray that today, we enter our annual meeting with the words of our Gospel reading in our hearts and on our tongues …
… and, even as we give thanks for the past ten years of visioning, working, growing this place back into a vital place of Word, worship and work for God’s people … we would also prayerfully, carefully ponder and consider what we are still being called into being about here, people of Nativity, people of place of new birth and new life, people being called into God’s future, together, in Jesus’ name, for the sake of our friends and family, our parish neighborhood, our community and state, our nation and world, and yes, ourselves too.
Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward;
And whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous;
And whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
12 June 2011
“THAT’S the power of love”
Numbers 11:24-30 / Acts 2:1-21
The Day of Pentecost
12 June 2011
I don’t know if you paid attention to the weather last Monday with a particularly liturgical eye … but if you did, you noticed that we had our own little Pentecost moment around here.
It was quite windy for a day in June … the “onshore flow” took over again after some nice, sunny, dry few days … and the moist air off the Pacific rushed back inland to give us our more usual cloudy, cool June mornings.
Trees bent. Leaves blew off them. Birdhouses and feeders came un-hung. Even some tender shoots on rose bushes ended up breaking off and blowing around the yard.
But that is the way of wind, after all. It rushes around and marks a transition from nothing happening, to something’s happening, and you’d better sit up and take notice. Change is coming … change is here … and the wind will bring it in.
Now, whether you pay attention to the weather or not … it’s impossible to have missed the fact that change- life change - is blowing in all around us today.
Our culture is in a place of change.
Our nation and world are in a place of change.
The Church itself is in a place of change.
The holy wind … the Spirit of God … is blowing … rushing in, individually, collectively … change isn’t just coming, a ways off … change is already here.
That much is certain.
So how will the Church respond?
That’s the Pentecost question.
It was the question 2000 years ago, there in Jerusalem, too.
The familiar text from Acts sets the stage … “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”
Pentecost – the festival taken on by the Christian Church – which some claim as “the Church’s birthday” – it was and still is a Jewish celebration. Pentecost comes – as the name indicates, 50 – Pente - days after Passover. This year it started at sundown on June 7, and ended at sunset on June 9.
In the days of Temple Judaism 2000 plus years ago, Pentecost was one of the three times during the year when all adult men of the faith were required to come to Jerusalem. Pentecost – also known as the Feast of Weeks – in Hebrew, Shavuot, the annual giving or “returning thanks” of the first fruits of the grain harvest – Shavuot, more importantly, though, is the commemoration of the Giving of the Torah … the rules and laws which define Judaism and the Jewish people, the Ten Commandments and all the ways of living which surround them, given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai … that event, the defining event for the Jewish people … that was why “they were all together in one place” on that Pentecost so long ago.
But then God’s holy wind started to blow. And things changed in a hurry.
Now, hear this word clearly … God did not send change because there was or is anything wrong with Torah. Lutheran Christians in particular can have a warped understanding of that word Torah – probably because we acquaint it with “law” and “works” and thus, it’s a “bad” thing.
But Torah was and is a gift from God … not a dead letter on a page, but a living, breathing way of life for God’s people, the way they would live into God’s promise to Abraham, that they would be “blessed to be a blessing” to the world.
No, it was what people did to Torah … making it into an unwieldy system of laws, rules, codes and precepts … that’s what Jesus objected to during his earthly ministry. So much of Jesus’ teaching, his preaching, his doing … was in bringing out the Spirit of the law, breathing life into the dead letter of rule and regulation which was stifling faith, which was working against the very gift of life God so wanted for his people.
Whenever faith is remade into religion … morality, rules, codes, laws … a self-justifying system of “to be a faithful person, you must live like this, or else” … rather than the Spirit-led, freeing “because you are a beloved child of God, God calls you into life lived in relationship, in care, in love and in peace” … whenever that happens, watch out …
… the wind of God, the Spirit of truth and life, will blow in to change things.
The disciples gathered there, on that Pentecost so long ago, just come out of hiding after Jesus’ death … they had been told by Jesus to wait around Jerusalem, to wait for what would come next. Doubtless they were hoping that things might calm down, get back to normal for them … the troubling times of recent memory … Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion, and death … and then the disturbing, hopeful yet confusing times of his resurrection appearances just past …
… and yet, God’s holy wind blew in upon them, blew them into the rush of change, the breath of new life God was breathing into his (even then) old, tired world.
Some who stood by and saw what was happening were surprised. Some were confused. Still others pointed and made fun of them, criticized them, “they’re just drunk.”
Peter saw a moment to step in and say a particular word. And so he did.
You see it there before you, “prophesy.”
It was a scary word for people back then, who tended to listen more closely than we do today, to people who spoke words in God’s name, speaking God’s truth, using God’s name. Sometimes they were false prophets, but if you listened closely to them, paid attention, you could tell, because these false prophets spoke a word like “oh, it’s all going to be OK, every day in every way we’re getting better and better, don’t worry, be happy.”
A real prophet would proclaim a harsh word in smooth times … “repent, listen to God’s Word, hear the voice of the Holy One calling you to life in relationship with him, as his beloved children.” A real prophet would preach a soothing word in hard times … “Comfort, comfort my people, says our God, though it looks bleak now, God is with you, to bring real peace, healing, and hope.”
Prophesy. It’s a scary word for us today, too.
Granted, we do have our goofball “prophets,” having just lived through another time of “someone knows when the world is going to end,” and their being proved wrong once again … but the real prophets are the ones who are criticized – at the least, made fun of … people usually want them to stop doing what they’re doing, saying what they’re saying, because they – we - don’t want to hear the truth, the true word about our world today, our nation, our economic system, war and peace, people’s public (and private) behavior.
The prophets’ words make us … us who seek our own comfort first, last and always … the prophets’ words make us uncomfortable. They cut too close … even as they call us to be about something new – in ourselves, and with others.
I love that Old Testament reading from Numbers for that very reason. The Spirit of God shows up again, and 70 elders prophesy … speak God’s Word of truth and love, in all boldness and no meekness. And then two more of them who don’t behave in the “prescribed” manner start prophesying too. And that young man … I imagine him to be someone’s annoying, obnoxious little brother … the watchdog who makes sure that no one gets a bigger piece of pie than him … he comes running to Moses, and tattles. “Um, Um, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp!”
Even Joshua wants them to stop – for this is not safe, proper “coloring within the lines” religion happening here … but hear how Moses answers the protests: “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”
The fresh wind, the Spirit of God comes blowing in, rushing around where it wills and where it wants, not necessarily, no, likely not at all coming in a nice, civilized, controlled way that we would choose.
It comes and even those who are “outside the camp” are called to speak about and give witness to the power of God, working in their lives, working for the lives of all.
Centuries later … this scene repeats itself … for that Acts community of believers … when the Spirit of God led them … after the wind blast of Pentecost … into what became anything but calm, peaceful, orderly, nice religion.
Those first followers of Jesus … what the world felt blowing through them … was bold – energetic – joyful – in your face love – THE power of love – the love of God in Jesus Christ, sent from him through the Spirit to believers to share with a changing world.
And just so today … God’s call to the Church – the call to each of us who in sum total are the Church – Church, not “they,” not just the educated and trained professionals, and most certainly NOT those who are using the change-moment we are in to promote their own anti-spirit agenda of division, exclusion, hatred and lies … lies about God, lies about faith, lies about themselves …
… the call of the Church remains the same for us today as it was on that Pentecost so long ago. All around us there is change – the Holy Wind of God is blowing – and so, rather than fighting against the Wind, we are called to claim the moment –
For this is our moment, given to us by God – God is in the midst of this change, God has already gone ahead of us in all this change, God is waiting and watching to see how we will do in it, with and for the sake of the world.
Will we fight it? Will we militantly guard the institution of the Church, jealous of those who try to open the doors to change, so the refreshing Wind of God’s spirit can blow in? Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp! Um, they’re doing something over there that … that … I don’t like … I didn’t think of it … I’m not in charge of it … I’m not part of it …it means change and I just plain won’t change.
Beware that attitude, Church of God.
Trees that don’t bend in the wind, they snap off and break, and become kindling, roadblocks, even killers.
Learn to bend, Church of God … learn to bend and sway … move with the Wind of the Spirit … rejoice with the Eldads and Medads who may not color within the lines, but who are truly proclaiming and pointing to God, God who is already and always active and alive in the world … active and alive in all people’s lives, even those who aren’t part of “the organized church,” the “church as we define it.”
These days, so full of change, call for creativity … Church defined by discipleship action, not just membership status. Church consisting of who shows up to be and do, rather than who merely lay claim on the real estate and the buildings. Church made up of those who live the faith … those who serve … those who give … those who walk in the way of Jesus and call others to walk along with them.
There are some who say that the Church is now in the midst of our second Reformation … that the Church of a hundred or even fifty or twenty five years from now will look nothing like what it does today.
That may well be so … I personally don’t plan on being around a hundred years from now to make sure … but neither will I freeze in fear because I don’t know what’s coming.
Because what’s coming … what’s coming … is the Holy Wind of God. The Holy Wind of God, which has always been blowing, inside and outside the camp, blowing through God’s people with a rush … calling to us from tomorrow, causing women to see visions and men to clear their eyes, calling us, pushing us forward, to God’s future, a future with forgiveness and hope … giving us courage to live that future NOW … to risk, to respond, to reach out in the same forgiveness and hope.
We have nothing to fear from this wind … God’s Spirit, God’s Spirit of Gentleness … moving us, changing us, keeping us in Christ Jesus, sending us out, always, always, sending us out, for the sake of the world.
Amen.
Numbers 11:24-30 / Acts 2:1-21
The Day of Pentecost
12 June 2011
I don’t know if you paid attention to the weather last Monday with a particularly liturgical eye … but if you did, you noticed that we had our own little Pentecost moment around here.
It was quite windy for a day in June … the “onshore flow” took over again after some nice, sunny, dry few days … and the moist air off the Pacific rushed back inland to give us our more usual cloudy, cool June mornings.
Trees bent. Leaves blew off them. Birdhouses and feeders came un-hung. Even some tender shoots on rose bushes ended up breaking off and blowing around the yard.
But that is the way of wind, after all. It rushes around and marks a transition from nothing happening, to something’s happening, and you’d better sit up and take notice. Change is coming … change is here … and the wind will bring it in.
Now, whether you pay attention to the weather or not … it’s impossible to have missed the fact that change- life change - is blowing in all around us today.
Our culture is in a place of change.
Our nation and world are in a place of change.
The Church itself is in a place of change.
The holy wind … the Spirit of God … is blowing … rushing in, individually, collectively … change isn’t just coming, a ways off … change is already here.
That much is certain.
So how will the Church respond?
That’s the Pentecost question.
It was the question 2000 years ago, there in Jerusalem, too.
The familiar text from Acts sets the stage … “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”
Pentecost – the festival taken on by the Christian Church – which some claim as “the Church’s birthday” – it was and still is a Jewish celebration. Pentecost comes – as the name indicates, 50 – Pente - days after Passover. This year it started at sundown on June 7, and ended at sunset on June 9.
In the days of Temple Judaism 2000 plus years ago, Pentecost was one of the three times during the year when all adult men of the faith were required to come to Jerusalem. Pentecost – also known as the Feast of Weeks – in Hebrew, Shavuot, the annual giving or “returning thanks” of the first fruits of the grain harvest – Shavuot, more importantly, though, is the commemoration of the Giving of the Torah … the rules and laws which define Judaism and the Jewish people, the Ten Commandments and all the ways of living which surround them, given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai … that event, the defining event for the Jewish people … that was why “they were all together in one place” on that Pentecost so long ago.
But then God’s holy wind started to blow. And things changed in a hurry.
Now, hear this word clearly … God did not send change because there was or is anything wrong with Torah. Lutheran Christians in particular can have a warped understanding of that word Torah – probably because we acquaint it with “law” and “works” and thus, it’s a “bad” thing.
But Torah was and is a gift from God … not a dead letter on a page, but a living, breathing way of life for God’s people, the way they would live into God’s promise to Abraham, that they would be “blessed to be a blessing” to the world.
No, it was what people did to Torah … making it into an unwieldy system of laws, rules, codes and precepts … that’s what Jesus objected to during his earthly ministry. So much of Jesus’ teaching, his preaching, his doing … was in bringing out the Spirit of the law, breathing life into the dead letter of rule and regulation which was stifling faith, which was working against the very gift of life God so wanted for his people.
Whenever faith is remade into religion … morality, rules, codes, laws … a self-justifying system of “to be a faithful person, you must live like this, or else” … rather than the Spirit-led, freeing “because you are a beloved child of God, God calls you into life lived in relationship, in care, in love and in peace” … whenever that happens, watch out …
… the wind of God, the Spirit of truth and life, will blow in to change things.
The disciples gathered there, on that Pentecost so long ago, just come out of hiding after Jesus’ death … they had been told by Jesus to wait around Jerusalem, to wait for what would come next. Doubtless they were hoping that things might calm down, get back to normal for them … the troubling times of recent memory … Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion, and death … and then the disturbing, hopeful yet confusing times of his resurrection appearances just past …
… and yet, God’s holy wind blew in upon them, blew them into the rush of change, the breath of new life God was breathing into his (even then) old, tired world.
Some who stood by and saw what was happening were surprised. Some were confused. Still others pointed and made fun of them, criticized them, “they’re just drunk.”
Peter saw a moment to step in and say a particular word. And so he did.
You see it there before you, “prophesy.”
It was a scary word for people back then, who tended to listen more closely than we do today, to people who spoke words in God’s name, speaking God’s truth, using God’s name. Sometimes they were false prophets, but if you listened closely to them, paid attention, you could tell, because these false prophets spoke a word like “oh, it’s all going to be OK, every day in every way we’re getting better and better, don’t worry, be happy.”
A real prophet would proclaim a harsh word in smooth times … “repent, listen to God’s Word, hear the voice of the Holy One calling you to life in relationship with him, as his beloved children.” A real prophet would preach a soothing word in hard times … “Comfort, comfort my people, says our God, though it looks bleak now, God is with you, to bring real peace, healing, and hope.”
Prophesy. It’s a scary word for us today, too.
Granted, we do have our goofball “prophets,” having just lived through another time of “someone knows when the world is going to end,” and their being proved wrong once again … but the real prophets are the ones who are criticized – at the least, made fun of … people usually want them to stop doing what they’re doing, saying what they’re saying, because they – we - don’t want to hear the truth, the true word about our world today, our nation, our economic system, war and peace, people’s public (and private) behavior.
The prophets’ words make us … us who seek our own comfort first, last and always … the prophets’ words make us uncomfortable. They cut too close … even as they call us to be about something new – in ourselves, and with others.
I love that Old Testament reading from Numbers for that very reason. The Spirit of God shows up again, and 70 elders prophesy … speak God’s Word of truth and love, in all boldness and no meekness. And then two more of them who don’t behave in the “prescribed” manner start prophesying too. And that young man … I imagine him to be someone’s annoying, obnoxious little brother … the watchdog who makes sure that no one gets a bigger piece of pie than him … he comes running to Moses, and tattles. “Um, Um, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp!”
Even Joshua wants them to stop – for this is not safe, proper “coloring within the lines” religion happening here … but hear how Moses answers the protests: “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”
The fresh wind, the Spirit of God comes blowing in, rushing around where it wills and where it wants, not necessarily, no, likely not at all coming in a nice, civilized, controlled way that we would choose.
It comes and even those who are “outside the camp” are called to speak about and give witness to the power of God, working in their lives, working for the lives of all.
Centuries later … this scene repeats itself … for that Acts community of believers … when the Spirit of God led them … after the wind blast of Pentecost … into what became anything but calm, peaceful, orderly, nice religion.
Those first followers of Jesus … what the world felt blowing through them … was bold – energetic – joyful – in your face love – THE power of love – the love of God in Jesus Christ, sent from him through the Spirit to believers to share with a changing world.
And just so today … God’s call to the Church – the call to each of us who in sum total are the Church – Church, not “they,” not just the educated and trained professionals, and most certainly NOT those who are using the change-moment we are in to promote their own anti-spirit agenda of division, exclusion, hatred and lies … lies about God, lies about faith, lies about themselves …
… the call of the Church remains the same for us today as it was on that Pentecost so long ago. All around us there is change – the Holy Wind of God is blowing – and so, rather than fighting against the Wind, we are called to claim the moment –
For this is our moment, given to us by God – God is in the midst of this change, God has already gone ahead of us in all this change, God is waiting and watching to see how we will do in it, with and for the sake of the world.
Will we fight it? Will we militantly guard the institution of the Church, jealous of those who try to open the doors to change, so the refreshing Wind of God’s spirit can blow in? Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp! Um, they’re doing something over there that … that … I don’t like … I didn’t think of it … I’m not in charge of it … I’m not part of it …it means change and I just plain won’t change.
Beware that attitude, Church of God.
Trees that don’t bend in the wind, they snap off and break, and become kindling, roadblocks, even killers.
Learn to bend, Church of God … learn to bend and sway … move with the Wind of the Spirit … rejoice with the Eldads and Medads who may not color within the lines, but who are truly proclaiming and pointing to God, God who is already and always active and alive in the world … active and alive in all people’s lives, even those who aren’t part of “the organized church,” the “church as we define it.”
These days, so full of change, call for creativity … Church defined by discipleship action, not just membership status. Church consisting of who shows up to be and do, rather than who merely lay claim on the real estate and the buildings. Church made up of those who live the faith … those who serve … those who give … those who walk in the way of Jesus and call others to walk along with them.
There are some who say that the Church is now in the midst of our second Reformation … that the Church of a hundred or even fifty or twenty five years from now will look nothing like what it does today.
That may well be so … I personally don’t plan on being around a hundred years from now to make sure … but neither will I freeze in fear because I don’t know what’s coming.
Because what’s coming … what’s coming … is the Holy Wind of God. The Holy Wind of God, which has always been blowing, inside and outside the camp, blowing through God’s people with a rush … calling to us from tomorrow, causing women to see visions and men to clear their eyes, calling us, pushing us forward, to God’s future, a future with forgiveness and hope … giving us courage to live that future NOW … to risk, to respond, to reach out in the same forgiveness and hope.
We have nothing to fear from this wind … God’s Spirit, God’s Spirit of Gentleness … moving us, changing us, keeping us in Christ Jesus, sending us out, always, always, sending us out, for the sake of the world.
Amen.
Sunday, June 05, 2011
5 June 2011
“Love the One you’re with”
John 17:1-11 / 1 Peter 5:6-11
Easter 7A
5 June 2011
If you’ve traveled around the country with any annual regularity over the past twenty or thirty years … one thing you have undoubtedly noticed, is that, as a nation we’re becoming more and more alike. Regional differences are disappearing … quaint dialects and phrases are heard less and less. You can hear people call a can of Sprite “soda” here in Seattle just as readily as in New York. People who live in Atlanta don’t sound that Southern any more. Even Minnesotans are losing that brogue made famous by Garrison Keilor in his “Prairie Home Companion” and in the movie “Fargo.”
It’s probably due to television … the monoculture of the tube … and to us being mobile, moving around the country so easily and readily, in a way that would have been unheard of a hundred years ago.
But it could also be due to … simple economics … it’s easier and more profitable to make mass quantities of one kind of thing rather than several different kinds … to package them in the same kind of package … and to sell them at the same store. So shopping malls all tend to look alike. Whether you’re in St. Cloud, Minnesota … or Boston … Columbia, Maryland … or Amarillo, Texas … you can be pretty sure that the local mall will have a Target, Payless Shoe Source, Hot Topic and Panda Express.
Even around the world … things are becoming more and more the same. If you’ve traveled at all you know that McDonald’s and Burger King are everywhere. But so are other stores. When we were traveling in Germany a decade ago we went in a Best Buy-clone in Cologne … and knew exactly where to look for the headphones Kathleen wanted to buy because the store was set up exactly as they are in this country.
Everything’s becoming the same. Identical. Exactly alike.
And so maybe that’s why … when we hear Jesus’ prayer in the 17th chapter of John’s gospel … every year on this Sunday right before Pentecost … it hits us as a “why can’t all the churches be alike” plea by our Lord.
It does sound that way … “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” And later, in verse 21 … “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
How many times have we heard – or said - these words: “Well, how can we as Christians ever expect the world to live in peace and unity when we can’t even get together among ourselves? What kind of an example are we to the world, so splintered and different from each other?”
But is that what Jesus really prays for here in this 17th chapter of John’s gospel, his words, his prayer right before his Passion, suffering, and death? The unity of all Christians?
And what about that unity anyway? Does unity mean … uniformity … that we all have to be alike?
Actually, Jesus’ words here could well be the words of a parent praying for their children … that God would “protect them.”
That is what parents do, you know. Protect us, and pray for our continued protection.
When we’re just starting out in life, our mothers’ very bodies protect us while we grow and develop. After we’re born, our parents continue to work to keep us safe … providing us with food and clothing and shelter. And then … as we grow up … they let us go … well, more or less … but they continue to pray for us, for our protection.
This is what Jesus prays for here – that the disciples … and those who would come after them in the mission of spreading his Word … which includes us today … he prays that they, and we, would be protected.
Protection against what?
Do we even need to ask?
Sickness. Disaster. Trouble. Bad choices. Evil itself.
Our reading from First Peter puts it in words people of earlier times could easily understand … Faith in Jesus resists our adversary the Devil, who prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.
Now, whether you believe in an actual personal devil named Satan … or instead choose to see evil as a force, perpetrated and perpetuated by people, alive and active in the world today … the good news for us is that we can resist the Devil, resist evil, firm in our faith … through Jesus’ prayers for us.
That’s right … Jesus is praying for us to be so firm in our faith that we would be able to stand up to the Devil, evil, and temptation … and win.
In other words, Jesus is praying that we would grow up, and be spiritually mature.
And the thing about maturity is, maturity recognizes the differences in others, and respects them.
When we’re young and immature, we believe everything needs to be alike. If we don’t get the same bowl of Captain Crunch placed in front of us that we get every single morning … but one day, mom runs out and makes us oatmeal instead … well, it’s different, and therefore, yukky.
If we don’t get to wear the same clothes … or hairstyle … or get our ears pierced … or go to the same places and do the same things as our friends … then we aren’t one with them, and we’ll be afraid that we’ll stick out and “everybody will be staring at us because we’re different.”
But maturity recognizes and accepts differences in things which are not of central importance. I don’t have to wear designer clothes like everyone else. I don’t have to watch “American Idol” like everyone else. I can be OK with who I am.
Fine. So Jesus wants us to be mature in our faith. And part of maturity means accepting that everything doesn’t have to be the same identical way for everybody.
But why spend so much time on this one little verse of John’s gospel; one, two little bits of Jesus’ final prayer?
Because, for Lutheran Christians, unity was one of the hot button issues of the Reformation.
Good old Philip Melancthon … the scribe of the Lutheran movement … Martin Luther’s Thomas Jefferson … and the author of the central Lutheran document, the Augsburg Confession … Philip put it so well that I’ll just read his words, Article 7 of the Confession –
“It is enough for the true unity of the church to agree concerning the teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies instituted by human beings be alike everywhere.”
It is enough. So what was going on here to cause that kind of a reaction?
Well, the Roman church’s big argument with the Lutherans was that unity meant uniformity … “we walk alike, we talk alike, we sing alike, we dress alike.”
Except … the Lutherans weren’t doing things exactly like their Roman brothers and sisters anymore.
The Lutherans were different. Their worship services looked different. Their priests began to marry. They didn’t wear fancy Roman robes. They sang different songs. They received communion differently.
So, to the Romans, that meant that the Lutherans “weren’t being Christian,” since they were different in these ways.
But good old Philip here said NO … and he came up with a great word that I need you to repeat. ADIAPHORA.
ADIAPHORA.
Adiaphora is Latin for “things of secondary or tertiary importance about which we don’t need to agree.” In other words, they aren’t central to what we’re about, so we can be different.
So it can still be “pop” in Seattle or Minneapolis, “soda” in New York, “tonic” in Boston and “coke” in Atlanta … and be nothing else but a can of Sprite.
And it can be round or square … carpeted or wooden floored … have an organ, a piano, or a band with guitars and drums … be led by a pastor (male or female) or youth or a rocket scientist … singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” or “Shout to the Lord, All the Earth” … reading song lyrics off of a Power Point projection with hands up in the air… or hands on pews or chairs, on red hymnals or bulletins with everything necessary printed inside … and be faithful Lutheran worship.
Being spiritually mature means we can be comfortable with and unapologetic of our own expression of faith … without being critical of others.
And as for the wider Church … it can have the traditions and practices and piety of the Roman Catholics … or Methodists … or Presbyterians … or Episcopalians … Assembly of God … Baptist … or no denomination at all … and still be Christian.
How?
Again, go back to good old Philip’s words …
“It is enough for the true unity of the church to agree concerning the teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies instituted by human beings be alike everywhere.”
We don’t have to be clones, one of another, to be one.
Our one-ness is not found in being identical, exactly alike liturgies or hymns, popes, bishops, or pastors, denominations or institutions, or political statements … no … our unity is found only in the One who prayed for us to be protected from the evil one, the One who came and lived our live, and suffered and died for us so that we might have life. We can be different in so many different ways because we are united in Jesus … and receiving his gift of forgiveness and new life through his Cross.
Our one-ness is found in the prayers of Jesus, praying for us, so that we would be mature, resisting the Devil as he prowls around looking for someone to devour … or just looking to start a good old church-dividing fight over things that are not of central importance.
And that will be enough for us, as we go about living out what that means in a world of many cultures and tastes … as we work with other believers and share our gifts with each other and the world. Together we add color to the light of Christ shining through us, like light through a prism breaks into a wide array of colors and hues … so we, through our differences, will enrich each other, our faith, the faith of others … and the entire world.
For our salvation depends on Jesus Christ alone … not on how we pray or praise or organize and govern ourselves as Church. The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Beautiful Savior, the One we are called and gathered and sent to love with all our heart.
Amen.
John 17:1-11 / 1 Peter 5:6-11
Easter 7A
5 June 2011
If you’ve traveled around the country with any annual regularity over the past twenty or thirty years … one thing you have undoubtedly noticed, is that, as a nation we’re becoming more and more alike. Regional differences are disappearing … quaint dialects and phrases are heard less and less. You can hear people call a can of Sprite “soda” here in Seattle just as readily as in New York. People who live in Atlanta don’t sound that Southern any more. Even Minnesotans are losing that brogue made famous by Garrison Keilor in his “Prairie Home Companion” and in the movie “Fargo.”
It’s probably due to television … the monoculture of the tube … and to us being mobile, moving around the country so easily and readily, in a way that would have been unheard of a hundred years ago.
But it could also be due to … simple economics … it’s easier and more profitable to make mass quantities of one kind of thing rather than several different kinds … to package them in the same kind of package … and to sell them at the same store. So shopping malls all tend to look alike. Whether you’re in St. Cloud, Minnesota … or Boston … Columbia, Maryland … or Amarillo, Texas … you can be pretty sure that the local mall will have a Target, Payless Shoe Source, Hot Topic and Panda Express.
Even around the world … things are becoming more and more the same. If you’ve traveled at all you know that McDonald’s and Burger King are everywhere. But so are other stores. When we were traveling in Germany a decade ago we went in a Best Buy-clone in Cologne … and knew exactly where to look for the headphones Kathleen wanted to buy because the store was set up exactly as they are in this country.
Everything’s becoming the same. Identical. Exactly alike.
And so maybe that’s why … when we hear Jesus’ prayer in the 17th chapter of John’s gospel … every year on this Sunday right before Pentecost … it hits us as a “why can’t all the churches be alike” plea by our Lord.
It does sound that way … “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” And later, in verse 21 … “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
How many times have we heard – or said - these words: “Well, how can we as Christians ever expect the world to live in peace and unity when we can’t even get together among ourselves? What kind of an example are we to the world, so splintered and different from each other?”
But is that what Jesus really prays for here in this 17th chapter of John’s gospel, his words, his prayer right before his Passion, suffering, and death? The unity of all Christians?
And what about that unity anyway? Does unity mean … uniformity … that we all have to be alike?
Actually, Jesus’ words here could well be the words of a parent praying for their children … that God would “protect them.”
That is what parents do, you know. Protect us, and pray for our continued protection.
When we’re just starting out in life, our mothers’ very bodies protect us while we grow and develop. After we’re born, our parents continue to work to keep us safe … providing us with food and clothing and shelter. And then … as we grow up … they let us go … well, more or less … but they continue to pray for us, for our protection.
This is what Jesus prays for here – that the disciples … and those who would come after them in the mission of spreading his Word … which includes us today … he prays that they, and we, would be protected.
Protection against what?
Do we even need to ask?
Sickness. Disaster. Trouble. Bad choices. Evil itself.
Our reading from First Peter puts it in words people of earlier times could easily understand … Faith in Jesus resists our adversary the Devil, who prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.
Now, whether you believe in an actual personal devil named Satan … or instead choose to see evil as a force, perpetrated and perpetuated by people, alive and active in the world today … the good news for us is that we can resist the Devil, resist evil, firm in our faith … through Jesus’ prayers for us.
That’s right … Jesus is praying for us to be so firm in our faith that we would be able to stand up to the Devil, evil, and temptation … and win.
In other words, Jesus is praying that we would grow up, and be spiritually mature.
And the thing about maturity is, maturity recognizes the differences in others, and respects them.
When we’re young and immature, we believe everything needs to be alike. If we don’t get the same bowl of Captain Crunch placed in front of us that we get every single morning … but one day, mom runs out and makes us oatmeal instead … well, it’s different, and therefore, yukky.
If we don’t get to wear the same clothes … or hairstyle … or get our ears pierced … or go to the same places and do the same things as our friends … then we aren’t one with them, and we’ll be afraid that we’ll stick out and “everybody will be staring at us because we’re different.”
But maturity recognizes and accepts differences in things which are not of central importance. I don’t have to wear designer clothes like everyone else. I don’t have to watch “American Idol” like everyone else. I can be OK with who I am.
Fine. So Jesus wants us to be mature in our faith. And part of maturity means accepting that everything doesn’t have to be the same identical way for everybody.
But why spend so much time on this one little verse of John’s gospel; one, two little bits of Jesus’ final prayer?
Because, for Lutheran Christians, unity was one of the hot button issues of the Reformation.
Good old Philip Melancthon … the scribe of the Lutheran movement … Martin Luther’s Thomas Jefferson … and the author of the central Lutheran document, the Augsburg Confession … Philip put it so well that I’ll just read his words, Article 7 of the Confession –
“It is enough for the true unity of the church to agree concerning the teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies instituted by human beings be alike everywhere.”
It is enough. So what was going on here to cause that kind of a reaction?
Well, the Roman church’s big argument with the Lutherans was that unity meant uniformity … “we walk alike, we talk alike, we sing alike, we dress alike.”
Except … the Lutherans weren’t doing things exactly like their Roman brothers and sisters anymore.
The Lutherans were different. Their worship services looked different. Their priests began to marry. They didn’t wear fancy Roman robes. They sang different songs. They received communion differently.
So, to the Romans, that meant that the Lutherans “weren’t being Christian,” since they were different in these ways.
But good old Philip here said NO … and he came up with a great word that I need you to repeat. ADIAPHORA.
ADIAPHORA.
Adiaphora is Latin for “things of secondary or tertiary importance about which we don’t need to agree.” In other words, they aren’t central to what we’re about, so we can be different.
So it can still be “pop” in Seattle or Minneapolis, “soda” in New York, “tonic” in Boston and “coke” in Atlanta … and be nothing else but a can of Sprite.
And it can be round or square … carpeted or wooden floored … have an organ, a piano, or a band with guitars and drums … be led by a pastor (male or female) or youth or a rocket scientist … singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” or “Shout to the Lord, All the Earth” … reading song lyrics off of a Power Point projection with hands up in the air… or hands on pews or chairs, on red hymnals or bulletins with everything necessary printed inside … and be faithful Lutheran worship.
Being spiritually mature means we can be comfortable with and unapologetic of our own expression of faith … without being critical of others.
And as for the wider Church … it can have the traditions and practices and piety of the Roman Catholics … or Methodists … or Presbyterians … or Episcopalians … Assembly of God … Baptist … or no denomination at all … and still be Christian.
How?
Again, go back to good old Philip’s words …
“It is enough for the true unity of the church to agree concerning the teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies instituted by human beings be alike everywhere.”
We don’t have to be clones, one of another, to be one.
Our one-ness is not found in being identical, exactly alike liturgies or hymns, popes, bishops, or pastors, denominations or institutions, or political statements … no … our unity is found only in the One who prayed for us to be protected from the evil one, the One who came and lived our live, and suffered and died for us so that we might have life. We can be different in so many different ways because we are united in Jesus … and receiving his gift of forgiveness and new life through his Cross.
Our one-ness is found in the prayers of Jesus, praying for us, so that we would be mature, resisting the Devil as he prowls around looking for someone to devour … or just looking to start a good old church-dividing fight over things that are not of central importance.
And that will be enough for us, as we go about living out what that means in a world of many cultures and tastes … as we work with other believers and share our gifts with each other and the world. Together we add color to the light of Christ shining through us, like light through a prism breaks into a wide array of colors and hues … so we, through our differences, will enrich each other, our faith, the faith of others … and the entire world.
For our salvation depends on Jesus Christ alone … not on how we pray or praise or organize and govern ourselves as Church. The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Beautiful Savior, the One we are called and gathered and sent to love with all our heart.
Amen.
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