“Celebrate the Child!”
Christmas Eve
Titus 2:11-14
24 December 2013
In the midst of every Christmas Eve worship service, there’s a brief Word, a little gem, tucked away, that we read and hear each year, but it probably breezes right past us, as we’re singing and listening to the oh-so-familiar words of the Christmas story from Luke’s gospel.
This little gem is the three verse New Testament reading from Paul’s letter to Titus.
Now – granted – reading from the Letters on Christmas Eve – even one from Paul – doesn’t have the appeal of telling a story, especially such a well known and beloved story as the one we hear about the angels and the shepherds, the young mother and the baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.
Paul’s letter to Titus comes from a time many years after Jesus’ birth.
The Apostle has left his associate Titus behind on the island of Crete, to continue to build the church of Jesus Christ there. In this letter, Paul is doing what he does in virtually every letter he writes … encouraging the church-builders to continue to be faithful in teaching, preaching and practicing the Word of Jesus Christ.
It’s a great, solid, profound word for us.
Which usually goes thud or gets lost, for us, every year.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
SNORE.
Honestly, who can get excited about a Word that sounds like it belongs in a college textbook?
But the problem isn’t with the Word, it’s with our translation of it.
So let’s take the advice I give, whenever people come to me, usually around this time of the year, asking about “which Bible translation should I get, or give, to someone?”
The translation we use in worship, is the one appointed by our denomination, the ELCA, for reading in public worship. It’s called the New Revised Standard Version, and most of the time, it’s very good for public – aloud – reading of the texts.
It’s admittedly at a 10th grade reading level, though. And sometimes it uses words and sentence structures which are difficult to read, and hear, and inwardly digest and understand.
So let’s try hearing Paul’s words to Titus, again, using a more modern, simple, straightforward translation … this one’s called The Voice:
We have cause to celebrate because the grace of God has appeared, offering the gift of salvation to all people. Grace arrives with its own instruction: run away from anything that leads us away from God; abandon the lusts and passions of this world; live life now in this age with awareness and self-control, doing the right thing and keeping yourselves holy. Watch for his return; expect the blessed hope we all will share when our great God and Savior, Jesus the Anointed, appears again. He gave his body for our sakes and will not only break us free from the chains of wickedness, but he will also prepare a community uncorrupted by the world that he would call his own—people who are passionate about doing the right thing.
Now that’s easier to hear, and take in, isn’t it?
We have cause to celebrate because the grace of God has appeared, offering the gift of salvation to all people …
Absolutely we do have cause to celebrate. The grace of God has appeared … is appearing … and will continue to appear … in the Word and Way of Jesus. It is a full, rich and complete story which begins well before the Word from Luke’s Gospel which highlights our reason for gathering here tonight.
It comes even before the Word from the prophet Isaiah which was our Hebrew Scripture reading.
It comes through God’s age-old story for us.
It comes through Jesus’ life of service, suffering, and death on the cross.
It comes through the Easter story of life everlasting.
And it comes through Paul’s instructions here … grace’s instructions … the way God calls us to live in this way of God’s gift of love for us in Jesus.
These are community instruction … the way of Jesus to be lived out, in and with others in the body of Christ together … the body of Christ where there can be, where there are … faith guides, mentors, brothers and sisters who lead and love in the way of Jesus, which means repentance and forgiveness when we don’t follow the instructions … which is the way it is for all of us …
… and who also provide encouragement and hope along the way.
And so we can hear and risk in love to live the Way of Jesus …
…running away from anything that leads from God …
…abandoning the passions of this world (the stuff and situations that lead us from God) to have passion for the Kingdom way of Jesus … giving, serving, living for those who Jesus especially loves … the poor, the powerless, the downtrodden, the sick and suffering and dying, those on the margins of our world …
… and being people who are passionate about doing the right thing.
These are community instructions … for how will we ever know what “the right thing” is apart from the community which enfleshes it for us …
… who eat at Jesus’ table …
… who study and hear and meditate and pray on Jesus’ word …
… who bear his forgiving and freeing Word into the world …
This isn’t just what Christmas is all about, Nativity … it is what this faith, this life is all about. What is real, and true, and for us, for this life, and for the life to come.
It’s a Word especially for you, Nativity, to carry you through in these days and weeks and months ahead … KEEP ON KEEPING ON … keep doing, keep being, the people who Jesus calls, leads, forgives and frees you to be …
… people who are passionate about doing the right thing …
For indeed, we have cause to celebrate tonight … to CELEBRATE THE CHILD … the child Jesus, the one who grows to be the Christ of the Cross and empty tomb, the One who is the Light, and Life, of All.
Amen.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Sunday, December 22, 2013
22 December 2013
“Thank goodness for St. Joseph!”
Advent 4A
Matthew 1:18-25
22 December 2013
Like many of you … I was often treated by mom’s home remedies when I was little.
When I had a sniffle or cold or flu, I knew the routine. Out would come the bottle of children’s aspirin. Orange flavored St. Joseph Children’s Aspirin. It was the great cure for sore throat, high temperature, or whatever mom thought was wrong. “Chew up these two little orange pills and you’ll feel better.”
And do you remember the little advertising jingle that was on their TV commercials? “Thank goodness for St. Joseph’s.”
St. Joseph Children’s Aspirin. The great protector, guardian and comforter of American children in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
You know, that’s … being the protector and guardian of children … that’s probably how that children’s aspirin got its name.
Because its namesake, Joseph … St. Joseph, if you prefer … he is the one who is known … called by the Church … as the “Guardian and Protector of our Lord.”
This Matthew year of our three year lectionary cycle, this is the only year we get to hear about Joseph … two short texts in the first two chapters of the Gospel … three dreams and Joseph’s actions in their aftermath … which the Church has historically treated as Joseph’s “guarding and protecting” the infant Jesus.
Today we get the briefest of introductions to the one who Matthew simply refers to as Mary’s husband.
Here in these verses, Joseph plays the part of what we used to call “an upstanding man.” Once he hears of what was now Mary’s condition and lot in life, he wants to do the right thing, at least, according to the social norms in that honor-and-shame-based society in which they lived.
The honorable thing would have been to “dismiss Mary quietly,” to send her away, back to her parents, to have her baby in seclusion where her family and immediate community could, would, likely, surround her and help her raise the child.
But this wasn’t God’s plan. And the way God chooses to let Joseph know what The Plan is, is to come to Joseph in dreams.
And this is where that word about “St. Joseph, guardian and protector of our Lord” comes about.
Historically the Church has never been able to call Joseph “Jesus’ father.” Even though, that he certainly was, if not by biology, then certainly, by relationship and actions.
Certainly the community, their community, Jesus’ friends and family, they would have known Joseph as Jesus’ father.
Ah, but the tradition insists that Jesus can’t have two dads, and so Joseph is called Jesus’ “guardian and protector.”
Here, in this text, the guarding and protecting isn’t so clear, unless you interpret those words about Joseph “dismissing Mary quietly” as putting her and the baby at risk … which, as a single mother in that culture, perhaps would have happened, but perhaps, not … her family might well have surrounded her with love and helped her with the birth and raising Jesus … we just don’t know.
But Joseph doesn’t dismiss her. He stays, she stays, in the safety of this new family.
Later … in the verses we’ll have as our Gospel text next Sunday … that “guarding and protecting” becomes clearer … as Joseph moves Mary and Jesus out of Bethlehem just in time, before Herod in his jealous anger has all the boy babies in Bethlehem killed.
But still … there’s something about that “guarding and protecting” business … that really bugs me.
In my almost twenty years of servant-leading as an ordained pastor in this church, this has been a constant theme; I’ve run up against it so many times I’ve stopped counting.
Jesus needs protecting, my protecting, our protecting. The Church needs protecting, my protecting, our protecting.
There’s been a run on “protecting the Church” over the past couple of decades, complete with zealots for the cause on either and any side, whether it’s been social issues, economic issues, political issues, wars, women’s rights, worship formats and musical styles, etc. etc.
“We’ve got to protect the Church from …” … and you fill in the blank.
“We’ve got to protect the Church … “ just like St. Joseph protected and guarded Jesus from those who would do him harm.
But wait just a minute.
Do we really believe for a minute that God needs our protection of Jesus, to make this whole enterprise work?
The God who created and creates it all … needs our protection? REALLY?
Well, we must believe we’re pretty hot stuff.
What a load.
Let’s get this straight … Jesus doesn’t for one minute need Joseph’s protection.
God could, God can, God does, have all it takes to do this whole enterprise without our guarding or protecting it.
So why have Joseph around at all?
Aha. Maybe … perhaps … God’s at work, trying to bring to pass something new in Joseph … a change in Joseph’s thinking, doing, being …
… showing Joseph that God is willing, desiring to show people, the world, the whole creation, God’s vulnerability … coming to the world as a tiny baby … which, in turn, moves Joseph to be vulnerable himself, taking in an already-pregnant fiancé, pregnant with a child who isn’t his … taking him in as his – Joseph’s – own.
God, willing, wanting, making Godself so totally what the world would say is not-God – coming to a poor girl from a nothing town in a nowhere part of creation – to show, to prove to the creation … to US … that God loves, God gives, God saves isn’t a political slogan but a real-flesh-and-blood promise, a realized promise, for Mary, for Joseph, for their people … for all of creation … for you and me.
That’s what Christmas is all about, Nativity.
So this year, Nativity, you’ve got this strange Advent and Christmas gift … a nearly empty office down at the end of that hall … and a question mark as to what comes next.
We’ve been talking about this now for the four Sundays of this season … talking about this time of gift, gift of time for you to, yes, work and serve and give like you always have, even as you wait patiently for the Spirit, to lead and guide, as you pray and study and explore, doing the deep work of faith, asking “where is God leading us next?”
And, as I said last week, there will be those who will not want to do that deep work which is part and parcel of the interim process. They may want to rush through it like the world wants to rush through Advent.
They may say that they’re just trying to “protect” or “guard” Nativity in the interim, until you get a “real” pastor. (You will have a real pastor in the interim.) They may say that they’re just trying to hold on to the way things used to be, or have always been, or even … God forbid … keep it just the way it was when Pastor Bob was here. (The Church was never meant to be a museum full of well-preserved displays of the past.)
Again, as I said last week, don’t let them stop you. And just keep loving them anyway. Love them into the interim process. Trust the process. Because the process works. Because God’s Spirit makes it work.
Nativity Lutheran Church needs no protection by us … it may at times need protection from us, but Nativity needs no guardians … the same way Jesus needed no guardian or protector.
For, after all, protecting, guarding, that’s just our idea, of what we think needs guarding or protecting. In the end, it comes back to being all about US.
No, what Nativity Lutheran Church does need … is for you to be all about Jes-US … to be a people willing to be open, and vulnerable, and ready to hear the voice of God calling to you, to lead, to guide, to prepare, to build, to lead this faith community, this community of God’s creation, into the future where God is already waiting … calling … gathering us.
So be those Jesus-people, Nativity, people of new birth, people of new life.
Be open and vulnerable, be ready and willing, be honest and eager to explore the what and where of God’s working and leading, prodding and pushing and pulling and calling in you.
And use this time, this interim time, this Kairos moment in the midst of Chronos straight line time, this breaking in time of God’s good and creative Spirit, use this time to be like Joseph ... to listen, to be obedient, to worship and work, to serve and give.
No, it won’t be easy. It wasn’t for Joseph either. Sometimes it will be hard work. Self-examination, keeping what is true and right, tossing out what doesn’t work anymore, bringing in the new … this is the hard work of faith and life.
But as God was with Joseph, so God will be with you, Nativity, place and people who also cradle the Christ, to and for the sake of your community, your place, your people … God will be with you, and will bless you in this time … as surely as God has blessed our time together, so God’s blessing will continue … as you do the good, good work of faith … sharing that Word that God loves, God gives, God saves, into your worlds, into God’s world. Amen.
Advent 4A
Matthew 1:18-25
22 December 2013
Like many of you … I was often treated by mom’s home remedies when I was little.
When I had a sniffle or cold or flu, I knew the routine. Out would come the bottle of children’s aspirin. Orange flavored St. Joseph Children’s Aspirin. It was the great cure for sore throat, high temperature, or whatever mom thought was wrong. “Chew up these two little orange pills and you’ll feel better.”
And do you remember the little advertising jingle that was on their TV commercials? “Thank goodness for St. Joseph’s.”
St. Joseph Children’s Aspirin. The great protector, guardian and comforter of American children in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
You know, that’s … being the protector and guardian of children … that’s probably how that children’s aspirin got its name.
Because its namesake, Joseph … St. Joseph, if you prefer … he is the one who is known … called by the Church … as the “Guardian and Protector of our Lord.”
This Matthew year of our three year lectionary cycle, this is the only year we get to hear about Joseph … two short texts in the first two chapters of the Gospel … three dreams and Joseph’s actions in their aftermath … which the Church has historically treated as Joseph’s “guarding and protecting” the infant Jesus.
Today we get the briefest of introductions to the one who Matthew simply refers to as Mary’s husband.
Here in these verses, Joseph plays the part of what we used to call “an upstanding man.” Once he hears of what was now Mary’s condition and lot in life, he wants to do the right thing, at least, according to the social norms in that honor-and-shame-based society in which they lived.
The honorable thing would have been to “dismiss Mary quietly,” to send her away, back to her parents, to have her baby in seclusion where her family and immediate community could, would, likely, surround her and help her raise the child.
But this wasn’t God’s plan. And the way God chooses to let Joseph know what The Plan is, is to come to Joseph in dreams.
And this is where that word about “St. Joseph, guardian and protector of our Lord” comes about.
Historically the Church has never been able to call Joseph “Jesus’ father.” Even though, that he certainly was, if not by biology, then certainly, by relationship and actions.
Certainly the community, their community, Jesus’ friends and family, they would have known Joseph as Jesus’ father.
Ah, but the tradition insists that Jesus can’t have two dads, and so Joseph is called Jesus’ “guardian and protector.”
Here, in this text, the guarding and protecting isn’t so clear, unless you interpret those words about Joseph “dismissing Mary quietly” as putting her and the baby at risk … which, as a single mother in that culture, perhaps would have happened, but perhaps, not … her family might well have surrounded her with love and helped her with the birth and raising Jesus … we just don’t know.
But Joseph doesn’t dismiss her. He stays, she stays, in the safety of this new family.
Later … in the verses we’ll have as our Gospel text next Sunday … that “guarding and protecting” becomes clearer … as Joseph moves Mary and Jesus out of Bethlehem just in time, before Herod in his jealous anger has all the boy babies in Bethlehem killed.
But still … there’s something about that “guarding and protecting” business … that really bugs me.
In my almost twenty years of servant-leading as an ordained pastor in this church, this has been a constant theme; I’ve run up against it so many times I’ve stopped counting.
Jesus needs protecting, my protecting, our protecting. The Church needs protecting, my protecting, our protecting.
There’s been a run on “protecting the Church” over the past couple of decades, complete with zealots for the cause on either and any side, whether it’s been social issues, economic issues, political issues, wars, women’s rights, worship formats and musical styles, etc. etc.
“We’ve got to protect the Church from …” … and you fill in the blank.
“We’ve got to protect the Church … “ just like St. Joseph protected and guarded Jesus from those who would do him harm.
But wait just a minute.
Do we really believe for a minute that God needs our protection of Jesus, to make this whole enterprise work?
The God who created and creates it all … needs our protection? REALLY?
Well, we must believe we’re pretty hot stuff.
What a load.
Let’s get this straight … Jesus doesn’t for one minute need Joseph’s protection.
God could, God can, God does, have all it takes to do this whole enterprise without our guarding or protecting it.
So why have Joseph around at all?
Aha. Maybe … perhaps … God’s at work, trying to bring to pass something new in Joseph … a change in Joseph’s thinking, doing, being …
… showing Joseph that God is willing, desiring to show people, the world, the whole creation, God’s vulnerability … coming to the world as a tiny baby … which, in turn, moves Joseph to be vulnerable himself, taking in an already-pregnant fiancé, pregnant with a child who isn’t his … taking him in as his – Joseph’s – own.
God, willing, wanting, making Godself so totally what the world would say is not-God – coming to a poor girl from a nothing town in a nowhere part of creation – to show, to prove to the creation … to US … that God loves, God gives, God saves isn’t a political slogan but a real-flesh-and-blood promise, a realized promise, for Mary, for Joseph, for their people … for all of creation … for you and me.
That’s what Christmas is all about, Nativity.
So this year, Nativity, you’ve got this strange Advent and Christmas gift … a nearly empty office down at the end of that hall … and a question mark as to what comes next.
We’ve been talking about this now for the four Sundays of this season … talking about this time of gift, gift of time for you to, yes, work and serve and give like you always have, even as you wait patiently for the Spirit, to lead and guide, as you pray and study and explore, doing the deep work of faith, asking “where is God leading us next?”
And, as I said last week, there will be those who will not want to do that deep work which is part and parcel of the interim process. They may want to rush through it like the world wants to rush through Advent.
They may say that they’re just trying to “protect” or “guard” Nativity in the interim, until you get a “real” pastor. (You will have a real pastor in the interim.) They may say that they’re just trying to hold on to the way things used to be, or have always been, or even … God forbid … keep it just the way it was when Pastor Bob was here. (The Church was never meant to be a museum full of well-preserved displays of the past.)
Again, as I said last week, don’t let them stop you. And just keep loving them anyway. Love them into the interim process. Trust the process. Because the process works. Because God’s Spirit makes it work.
Nativity Lutheran Church needs no protection by us … it may at times need protection from us, but Nativity needs no guardians … the same way Jesus needed no guardian or protector.
For, after all, protecting, guarding, that’s just our idea, of what we think needs guarding or protecting. In the end, it comes back to being all about US.
No, what Nativity Lutheran Church does need … is for you to be all about Jes-US … to be a people willing to be open, and vulnerable, and ready to hear the voice of God calling to you, to lead, to guide, to prepare, to build, to lead this faith community, this community of God’s creation, into the future where God is already waiting … calling … gathering us.
So be those Jesus-people, Nativity, people of new birth, people of new life.
Be open and vulnerable, be ready and willing, be honest and eager to explore the what and where of God’s working and leading, prodding and pushing and pulling and calling in you.
And use this time, this interim time, this Kairos moment in the midst of Chronos straight line time, this breaking in time of God’s good and creative Spirit, use this time to be like Joseph ... to listen, to be obedient, to worship and work, to serve and give.
No, it won’t be easy. It wasn’t for Joseph either. Sometimes it will be hard work. Self-examination, keeping what is true and right, tossing out what doesn’t work anymore, bringing in the new … this is the hard work of faith and life.
But as God was with Joseph, so God will be with you, Nativity, place and people who also cradle the Christ, to and for the sake of your community, your place, your people … God will be with you, and will bless you in this time … as surely as God has blessed our time together, so God’s blessing will continue … as you do the good, good work of faith … sharing that Word that God loves, God gives, God saves, into your worlds, into God’s world. Amen.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
15 December 2013
“John the Baptist has left the building”
3 Advent A
Matthew 11:2-11 / James 5:7-10 / Isaiah 35:1-10
15 December 2013
Yes, it’s true, on this third Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist has left the building.
Did I hear a “Thanks Be To God?” Well, that’s OK.
Just don’t get too excited too soon.
John may have left the building, but he still looms large in today’s Gospel text.
Several chapters and a good course of time has passed since last week’s “brood of vipers” calling out, John’s baptizing, preaching and teaching repentance out in the wilderness … now, this week, John is in prison.
Physically, he’s locked up because of sedition … preaching and teaching against the political ruler … in John’s case, Herod Antipas (one of Herod the Great’s four sons) has had him arrested because John criticized Herod Antipas’ leaving his own wife and marrying his brother’s wife (though we don’t read of this explanation until chapter 14).
But spiritually, John is locked up, too.
John just does not understand this Jesus.
He doesn’t get why this one who he pointed to as the Messiah, isn’t being Messiah-like in the way he – John – said he would be.
Remember what we heard from the hair-shirted bug eater last Sunday:
One who is more powerful than I is coming after me … he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
He will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
But Jesus hasn’t been doing this. He hasn’t been a scorched-earth Messiah.
And so John, indeed, becomes one of those who Jesus implies are taking “offense” at him. Literally, being scandalized by Jesus. This Jesus, he isn’t who John said would come, he doesn’t match up with some of the prophetic word written and proclaimed about him … especially the prophetic word which John knew, and proclaimed himself.
What had Jesus been doing? Being a very human Messiah. Making life better for God’s children on earth.
The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.
And this is precisely what’s scandalizing John. And others. And, perhaps, maybe, us too.
Theologian Robert Farrar Capon puts it well:
The human race is, was and probably always will be deeply unwilling to accept a human messiah. We don’t want to be saved in our humanity; we want to be fished out of it. We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: he claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It’s not that we weren’t looking for the Messiah; it’s just that he wasn’t what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket (so he could be like Superman). He wouldn’t do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.
And so John sits in prison … physically imprisoned by the King … spiritually imprisoned by his being scandalized by Jesus. He misses his friends and community and, likely, most of all, he misses certainty … the certainty of his preaching and teaching about a Messiah who, in his view, is very different from who has come in Jesus.
John isn’t very patient, is he?
Perhaps he should heed the words of James from our New Testament reading.
Be patient, therefore, beloved … the farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You must also be patient … beloved, do not grumble against one another (literally, hold a grudge against one another). As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
John isn’t one of those patient prophets, that’s for sure. He’s heard of Jesus’ miracles, but they aren’t helping him. The certainty of his wilderness “scorched earth” Messiah proclamations have now turned into uncertain questions … Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?
Being patient. Enduring. Doing the work of disciples. Trusting the process. Those are all words you have heard from me, from Nativity’s leadership these past few weeks since I announced that I am resigning in two weeks to take another call. And I heard your words this past week, at our congregational meeting last Sunday … hopes, but also fears … how shall you continue to do and be, to be an attractive faith community to others, and to retain the disciples who are already here?
You have been given a unique opportunity, Nativity, the gift of time, time of gift, for you … time to simply be with yourselves, to ask questions, “who … where … what is God calling us to be now, in this time of change for us?” It is the gift of time, time of gift to do the deep work, the inner work, of being a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ, a congregation of followers of Jesus.
It can be a blessed time, a time of hope and preparation and planning for the future where God is already waiting, and calling you to be. How often do we get gifts like this, to simply be, to self-reflect and study and pray and listen for the movement of God’s Spirit?
Now, it won’t necessarily be easy. Doing the deep work of faith often means discovering, hearing and seeing things about ourselves that aren’t necessarily comfortable … as it wasn’t for John, so it may not be for you. But don’t let that dis-ease of spirit imprison you like it did John. The interim process is deliberately designed to question and challenge the status quo … meaning, just because we did things this way with Pastor Bob, doesn’t mean it always has to be this way … we can change. So it is also a freeing time … leaving room for re-evaluating, ambiguity, dreaming and growing.
The world doesn’t like self-examination. So there will be some who will say, “This process is not going fast enough.” “We don’t need to do all this self-study.” “When will Nativity have a real pastor again?”
Well, you will have a real pastor in your interim. Welcome her. Trust him. Do not make the interim time into a prison where you are miserable, or from which you wish to escape. And do not let some make it that way for most. Instead, receive it as gift. Receive it as gift. And love those who don’t like it, love them anyway, love them into the interim gift of time, time of gift. Because you will be richly rewarded. Who knows? You may even be able to witness that the blind see, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised. If not literally, then, surely, figuratively. Those of you who were here during the last interim know that of which I speak. You others, ask them. They know. Because the process works. Trust the process. Trust the interim process.
Blessed are those who are open enough to receive and accept whatever God sends.
Because what God sends is most surely renewal … renewal for God’s people, renewal for all God’s creation.
Once again this week, Isaiah gives us this word of inevitable renewal … and promised hope.
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad …
The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
There the lame shall leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
They shall obtain joy and gladness,
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Shall. Shall.
It shall be, it will be, because this is the will of our God … our God who loves, who gives, who saves in Jesus the Christ.
John had forgotten this prophetic word, from the greatest of the Hebrew prophets before him. That’s why Jesus says of him,
Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
Nativity people, people of new hope, new birth, new life … you don’t forget this word … this hope, this promise. Yes, the pastor is leaving, but the ministry, the work, the witness, the giving, the service of the Kingdom of Heaven remains.
And it is good work … good giving … good service, to be sure. Given to us, yes, in round time … Jesus’ time … time of gift, gift of time, time when things are not nailed down and stamped shut and clean and clear, but ambiguous and yes, messy. Endings and beginnings are always messy.
But they can be messy precisely because we know how it all turns out in the end.
Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?
Jesus is. In his messy, sometimes ambiguous humanity … working, suffering, serving, giving, dying … he points the way for his disciples to live here on earth … in Jesus’ time, even as we wait in straight-line time.
Jesus is. In his clear divinity … rising, healing, teaching, saving … he gives us the certainty we need to follow him.
Therefore, beloved … take heart … and wait … and worship … and watch … and work.
In great joy. Always, in great, great joy.
Amen.
3 Advent A
Matthew 11:2-11 / James 5:7-10 / Isaiah 35:1-10
15 December 2013
Yes, it’s true, on this third Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist has left the building.
Did I hear a “Thanks Be To God?” Well, that’s OK.
Just don’t get too excited too soon.
John may have left the building, but he still looms large in today’s Gospel text.
Several chapters and a good course of time has passed since last week’s “brood of vipers” calling out, John’s baptizing, preaching and teaching repentance out in the wilderness … now, this week, John is in prison.
Physically, he’s locked up because of sedition … preaching and teaching against the political ruler … in John’s case, Herod Antipas (one of Herod the Great’s four sons) has had him arrested because John criticized Herod Antipas’ leaving his own wife and marrying his brother’s wife (though we don’t read of this explanation until chapter 14).
But spiritually, John is locked up, too.
John just does not understand this Jesus.
He doesn’t get why this one who he pointed to as the Messiah, isn’t being Messiah-like in the way he – John – said he would be.
Remember what we heard from the hair-shirted bug eater last Sunday:
One who is more powerful than I is coming after me … he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
He will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
But Jesus hasn’t been doing this. He hasn’t been a scorched-earth Messiah.
And so John, indeed, becomes one of those who Jesus implies are taking “offense” at him. Literally, being scandalized by Jesus. This Jesus, he isn’t who John said would come, he doesn’t match up with some of the prophetic word written and proclaimed about him … especially the prophetic word which John knew, and proclaimed himself.
What had Jesus been doing? Being a very human Messiah. Making life better for God’s children on earth.
The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.
And this is precisely what’s scandalizing John. And others. And, perhaps, maybe, us too.
Theologian Robert Farrar Capon puts it well:
The human race is, was and probably always will be deeply unwilling to accept a human messiah. We don’t want to be saved in our humanity; we want to be fished out of it. We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: he claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It’s not that we weren’t looking for the Messiah; it’s just that he wasn’t what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket (so he could be like Superman). He wouldn’t do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.
And so John sits in prison … physically imprisoned by the King … spiritually imprisoned by his being scandalized by Jesus. He misses his friends and community and, likely, most of all, he misses certainty … the certainty of his preaching and teaching about a Messiah who, in his view, is very different from who has come in Jesus.
John isn’t very patient, is he?
Perhaps he should heed the words of James from our New Testament reading.
Be patient, therefore, beloved … the farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You must also be patient … beloved, do not grumble against one another (literally, hold a grudge against one another). As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
John isn’t one of those patient prophets, that’s for sure. He’s heard of Jesus’ miracles, but they aren’t helping him. The certainty of his wilderness “scorched earth” Messiah proclamations have now turned into uncertain questions … Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?
Being patient. Enduring. Doing the work of disciples. Trusting the process. Those are all words you have heard from me, from Nativity’s leadership these past few weeks since I announced that I am resigning in two weeks to take another call. And I heard your words this past week, at our congregational meeting last Sunday … hopes, but also fears … how shall you continue to do and be, to be an attractive faith community to others, and to retain the disciples who are already here?
You have been given a unique opportunity, Nativity, the gift of time, time of gift, for you … time to simply be with yourselves, to ask questions, “who … where … what is God calling us to be now, in this time of change for us?” It is the gift of time, time of gift to do the deep work, the inner work, of being a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ, a congregation of followers of Jesus.
It can be a blessed time, a time of hope and preparation and planning for the future where God is already waiting, and calling you to be. How often do we get gifts like this, to simply be, to self-reflect and study and pray and listen for the movement of God’s Spirit?
Now, it won’t necessarily be easy. Doing the deep work of faith often means discovering, hearing and seeing things about ourselves that aren’t necessarily comfortable … as it wasn’t for John, so it may not be for you. But don’t let that dis-ease of spirit imprison you like it did John. The interim process is deliberately designed to question and challenge the status quo … meaning, just because we did things this way with Pastor Bob, doesn’t mean it always has to be this way … we can change. So it is also a freeing time … leaving room for re-evaluating, ambiguity, dreaming and growing.
The world doesn’t like self-examination. So there will be some who will say, “This process is not going fast enough.” “We don’t need to do all this self-study.” “When will Nativity have a real pastor again?”
Well, you will have a real pastor in your interim. Welcome her. Trust him. Do not make the interim time into a prison where you are miserable, or from which you wish to escape. And do not let some make it that way for most. Instead, receive it as gift. Receive it as gift. And love those who don’t like it, love them anyway, love them into the interim gift of time, time of gift. Because you will be richly rewarded. Who knows? You may even be able to witness that the blind see, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised. If not literally, then, surely, figuratively. Those of you who were here during the last interim know that of which I speak. You others, ask them. They know. Because the process works. Trust the process. Trust the interim process.
Blessed are those who are open enough to receive and accept whatever God sends.
Because what God sends is most surely renewal … renewal for God’s people, renewal for all God’s creation.
Once again this week, Isaiah gives us this word of inevitable renewal … and promised hope.
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad …
The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
There the lame shall leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
They shall obtain joy and gladness,
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Shall. Shall.
It shall be, it will be, because this is the will of our God … our God who loves, who gives, who saves in Jesus the Christ.
John had forgotten this prophetic word, from the greatest of the Hebrew prophets before him. That’s why Jesus says of him,
Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
Nativity people, people of new hope, new birth, new life … you don’t forget this word … this hope, this promise. Yes, the pastor is leaving, but the ministry, the work, the witness, the giving, the service of the Kingdom of Heaven remains.
And it is good work … good giving … good service, to be sure. Given to us, yes, in round time … Jesus’ time … time of gift, gift of time, time when things are not nailed down and stamped shut and clean and clear, but ambiguous and yes, messy. Endings and beginnings are always messy.
But they can be messy precisely because we know how it all turns out in the end.
Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?
Jesus is. In his messy, sometimes ambiguous humanity … working, suffering, serving, giving, dying … he points the way for his disciples to live here on earth … in Jesus’ time, even as we wait in straight-line time.
Jesus is. In his clear divinity … rising, healing, teaching, saving … he gives us the certainty we need to follow him.
Therefore, beloved … take heart … and wait … and worship … and watch … and work.
In great joy. Always, in great, great joy.
Amen.
Sunday, December 08, 2013
8 December 2013
“John the Baptist is in the building”
Matthew 3:1-2 / Isaiah 11:1-10
Advent 2 A
8 December 2013
Yes, here he is.
It’s the second Sunday of Advent, and, ladies and gentlemen, John the Baptist is in the building.
Once again.
I know, I know … for those who have been through the four-week season cycle that is Advent before … you know this guy, John the Baptist.
Some may welcome the presence of the hair-shirted bug eater as a milestone along the way of the season … you can set your calendar and your clock by him … two more Sundays till Christmas! Others, perhaps, treat his appearing like the old Listerine commercial, not “the taste people hate,” but “the prophet we tolerate once a year.”
And certainly, there are some who just don’t understand why Mister-Gloom-and-Doom has to be part of our Advent preparations at all. Especially in this year of the three year lectionary text cycle where we get the Baptist, not once, but TWICE … yes, two weeks in a row, come back next Sunday for the second half, “John the Baptist has left the building.”
But that’s next Sunday.
So why is he here, anyway?
Well, there’s a simple answer. John the Baptist is the bridge … the human bridge … between the Old Testament prophets and Jesus.
Our clue is in the first three words of today’s Gospel text …
In those days …
Those days … those years of the turn of the millennium from Before the Common Era to the Common Era … BC to AD … they were turbulent ones for Judea. The freedoms won by the Jewish Maccabees in their revolt (what’s celebrated as Hanukkah) … the Maccabee-won freedoms were forgotten … the Romans had taken over, set up servant-kings (first Herod the Great, then his sons) who kept the Jews in line.
And most Jews did … stay in line, that is. Their leaders divided into two parties … the Pharisees, who were the forerunners of the modern rabbinical movement, and the Sadducees … you remember them from the Gospel of a couple weeks’ ago, they were a rival group to the Pharisees who, unlike the Pharisees, did not believe that there was any life beyond this one.
But there were other groups … the Essenes … the Zealots … and these groups were not about to stay quiet in the face of what they saw was too much cooperation and collusion with the Roman invaders. The Zealots were more violent in their criticism, guerilla warriors trying to keep the memory of the Maccabees alive. The Romans, when they caught them … and they usually did … made a public spectacle of their punishment … death by crucifixion.
The Essenes were not violent … they withdrew to the desert, the wilderness … a group of ascetics who gave up many of the material comforts of this life to be about their reforming and purifying, “cleaning up” Judaism.
It was of this Essene group from which John the Baptist likely got his start … and his learning … for his ministry.
Now in those days of religious and cultural upheaval it wasn’t at all uncommon to find religious fanatics out in the desert, proclaiming repentance, and baptizing people. In those days many people were searching after something, a word, a message, to help them through these difficult times.
John’s message was a familiar one … repent … turn around, confess your sins, change your ways, be baptized. Be baptized … which was a long-established Jewish cleansing ritual symbolizing repentance. This was, after all, the message of the ancient Israelite prophets … repent … and many went out into the wilderness to do just that.
Including … including John’s rivals, the Pharisees and Sadducees.
But our text has a misleading translation in it … it says these Pharisees and Sadducees were coming for baptism … which then doesn’t make a lot of sense with how John reacts to them (for the very act of being baptized was part and parcel of repentance and confession). No, what was more likely happening here was that the Pharisees and Sadducees … the religious leadership of Jerusalem … had gone out to the wilderness to watch, and criticize John, his preaching, his teaching, his religious activity.
And so now it makes more sense why John goes off on them.
You brood of vipers!
Yes, it’s a lot of gloom and doom for this Second Sunday of Advent, especially in the words of John which follow.
Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
One who is more powerful than I is coming after me … he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
He will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
Happy Second Sunday of Advent.
Ah, but wait a minute.
First of all, a word to us self-absorbed twenty first century types. “It’s not all about you … or me.”
These words of John, the final six verses of this text today, on this Second Sunday of Advent, these words were meant to be FIRST for John’s rivals, his enemies, the Pharisees and Sadducees, those religious leaders who often chose to ignore or even mistreat those who God’s law called them to pay special attention … the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger in their midst … these leaders who so often chose the political comfort of collaborating with the Roman invaders, over justice … these were the ones who had come out from Jerusalem to criticize and complain, perhaps to take word back to their superiors in Jerusalem about this hair-shirted bug eater ranting and raving in the wilderness.
It’s certainly consistent-talk with the Israelite prophets who went before John, critical of the political and religious leadership of Israel of their day. Compare John’s words to some from Isaiah, which appear before our text-verses for today:
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good …
Or from Amos:
Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?
Or from Zephaniah:
Gather together, gather, O shameless nation, before you are driven away like the drifting chaff, before there comes upon you the fierce anger of the Lord, before there comes upon you the day of the Lord’s wrath.
Now, make no mistake, we need to hear these words clearly today, too, as a call to repentance … a call for us to turn around and confess our sins. Indeed, Advent used to be known as a “little Lent,” a winter season for introspection, self-denial, and yes, confession and repentance.
However … and this is a big however … however, I think we need to hear the words of John the Baptist with an asterisk next to them.
John the Baptist may be in the building this Sunday, yes, but we must not lose sight of what looms largest in this building.
The Cross.
The symbol for God’s self-giving love, God’s FORGIVENESS, in Jesus Christ.
John may know that he’s the one to come before Jesus, but he sure shows here that he doesn’t know much about Jesus.
John does a great job of calling the people to repentance, to confessing their sins, but he has nothing to say about forgiveness.
John needs a lesson in God’s grace … God’s unconditional love, forgiveness, peace, wholeness, shalom in Jesus Christ.
Strangely, though, the first words John says in our text point toward this.
The kingdom of heaven has come near.
Yes, John, it’s true, the Kingdom has come near. But not with your threats.
It’s come near because God has willed it to come near, in Jesus.
God loves, God gives, God saves in Jesus the Christ, the One coming after John who will not only speak God’s Word of grace, but will live it … Jesus, who will go to his death for it, for us to have it … and who will be raised into God’s eternal Kingdom of Heaven, to bring this love, forgiveness, shalom, wholeness, GRACE to God’s beloved children, on earth as it is in heaven.
And wonderfully enough for us today, on this Second Sunday of Advent, it is this word which Isaiah brings to us … the word of the inevitability of God’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, come to us … as Isaiah looks forward to the Messiah, the Christ:
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him …
… With righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist;
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.
Shall. Shall. SHALL. WILL.
This SHALL happen, this WILL happen, it is inevitable.
No, it isn’t here yet, but it’s a-comin’. As surely as the sun rises each day, it’s a-comin.’
God’s reign of FORGIVENESS, of LOVE, of PEACE … not just endless repentance followed by fear and wondering if we’ve done enough to be forgiven … borne enough fruit to be forgiven … or if we’re just that bad chaff that will be burned with unquenchable fire … offscourings, garbage, dreck …
NO, NO, NO.
John the Baptist is NOT Jesus the Christ. Thanks be to God.
So what of John?
Should we still hear John’s words? Certainly.
Should we still repent? Certainly. We haven’t stopped sinning … screwing up … breaking community-love-body-of-Christ by what we’ve done and haven’t done. That’s for sure.
But don’t John-the-Baptist stay stuck there.
Be drawn into the inevitability of the Kingdom of Heaven, not just come near, but here. It shall be, it will be … and that Word, these signs, word, water, bread, wine, gathered sinner-saints, forgiven and freed … all these give us courage and faith, love and strength to go and show and live the Kingdom of Heaven into being NOW …
Not perfectly, not perfectly, but baby steps. Baby steps.
Risked and shared in love and forgiveness, grace and peace, and certainty, the certainty that comes from the gift of God’s SHALL and WILL … for us, and for all creation.
Yes, John the Baptist is in the building. And … on this Second Sunday of Advent, that’s OK.
But Jesus is always here, FOR US. For us, for grace, for forgiveness, for life.
And that’s far, far better.
Amen.
Matthew 3:1-2 / Isaiah 11:1-10
Advent 2 A
8 December 2013
Yes, here he is.
It’s the second Sunday of Advent, and, ladies and gentlemen, John the Baptist is in the building.
Once again.
I know, I know … for those who have been through the four-week season cycle that is Advent before … you know this guy, John the Baptist.
Some may welcome the presence of the hair-shirted bug eater as a milestone along the way of the season … you can set your calendar and your clock by him … two more Sundays till Christmas! Others, perhaps, treat his appearing like the old Listerine commercial, not “the taste people hate,” but “the prophet we tolerate once a year.”
And certainly, there are some who just don’t understand why Mister-Gloom-and-Doom has to be part of our Advent preparations at all. Especially in this year of the three year lectionary text cycle where we get the Baptist, not once, but TWICE … yes, two weeks in a row, come back next Sunday for the second half, “John the Baptist has left the building.”
But that’s next Sunday.
So why is he here, anyway?
Well, there’s a simple answer. John the Baptist is the bridge … the human bridge … between the Old Testament prophets and Jesus.
Our clue is in the first three words of today’s Gospel text …
In those days …
Those days … those years of the turn of the millennium from Before the Common Era to the Common Era … BC to AD … they were turbulent ones for Judea. The freedoms won by the Jewish Maccabees in their revolt (what’s celebrated as Hanukkah) … the Maccabee-won freedoms were forgotten … the Romans had taken over, set up servant-kings (first Herod the Great, then his sons) who kept the Jews in line.
And most Jews did … stay in line, that is. Their leaders divided into two parties … the Pharisees, who were the forerunners of the modern rabbinical movement, and the Sadducees … you remember them from the Gospel of a couple weeks’ ago, they were a rival group to the Pharisees who, unlike the Pharisees, did not believe that there was any life beyond this one.
But there were other groups … the Essenes … the Zealots … and these groups were not about to stay quiet in the face of what they saw was too much cooperation and collusion with the Roman invaders. The Zealots were more violent in their criticism, guerilla warriors trying to keep the memory of the Maccabees alive. The Romans, when they caught them … and they usually did … made a public spectacle of their punishment … death by crucifixion.
The Essenes were not violent … they withdrew to the desert, the wilderness … a group of ascetics who gave up many of the material comforts of this life to be about their reforming and purifying, “cleaning up” Judaism.
It was of this Essene group from which John the Baptist likely got his start … and his learning … for his ministry.
Now in those days of religious and cultural upheaval it wasn’t at all uncommon to find religious fanatics out in the desert, proclaiming repentance, and baptizing people. In those days many people were searching after something, a word, a message, to help them through these difficult times.
John’s message was a familiar one … repent … turn around, confess your sins, change your ways, be baptized. Be baptized … which was a long-established Jewish cleansing ritual symbolizing repentance. This was, after all, the message of the ancient Israelite prophets … repent … and many went out into the wilderness to do just that.
Including … including John’s rivals, the Pharisees and Sadducees.
But our text has a misleading translation in it … it says these Pharisees and Sadducees were coming for baptism … which then doesn’t make a lot of sense with how John reacts to them (for the very act of being baptized was part and parcel of repentance and confession). No, what was more likely happening here was that the Pharisees and Sadducees … the religious leadership of Jerusalem … had gone out to the wilderness to watch, and criticize John, his preaching, his teaching, his religious activity.
And so now it makes more sense why John goes off on them.
You brood of vipers!
Yes, it’s a lot of gloom and doom for this Second Sunday of Advent, especially in the words of John which follow.
Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
One who is more powerful than I is coming after me … he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
He will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
Happy Second Sunday of Advent.
Ah, but wait a minute.
First of all, a word to us self-absorbed twenty first century types. “It’s not all about you … or me.”
These words of John, the final six verses of this text today, on this Second Sunday of Advent, these words were meant to be FIRST for John’s rivals, his enemies, the Pharisees and Sadducees, those religious leaders who often chose to ignore or even mistreat those who God’s law called them to pay special attention … the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger in their midst … these leaders who so often chose the political comfort of collaborating with the Roman invaders, over justice … these were the ones who had come out from Jerusalem to criticize and complain, perhaps to take word back to their superiors in Jerusalem about this hair-shirted bug eater ranting and raving in the wilderness.
It’s certainly consistent-talk with the Israelite prophets who went before John, critical of the political and religious leadership of Israel of their day. Compare John’s words to some from Isaiah, which appear before our text-verses for today:
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good …
Or from Amos:
Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?
Or from Zephaniah:
Gather together, gather, O shameless nation, before you are driven away like the drifting chaff, before there comes upon you the fierce anger of the Lord, before there comes upon you the day of the Lord’s wrath.
Now, make no mistake, we need to hear these words clearly today, too, as a call to repentance … a call for us to turn around and confess our sins. Indeed, Advent used to be known as a “little Lent,” a winter season for introspection, self-denial, and yes, confession and repentance.
However … and this is a big however … however, I think we need to hear the words of John the Baptist with an asterisk next to them.
John the Baptist may be in the building this Sunday, yes, but we must not lose sight of what looms largest in this building.
The Cross.
The symbol for God’s self-giving love, God’s FORGIVENESS, in Jesus Christ.
John may know that he’s the one to come before Jesus, but he sure shows here that he doesn’t know much about Jesus.
John does a great job of calling the people to repentance, to confessing their sins, but he has nothing to say about forgiveness.
John needs a lesson in God’s grace … God’s unconditional love, forgiveness, peace, wholeness, shalom in Jesus Christ.
Strangely, though, the first words John says in our text point toward this.
The kingdom of heaven has come near.
Yes, John, it’s true, the Kingdom has come near. But not with your threats.
It’s come near because God has willed it to come near, in Jesus.
God loves, God gives, God saves in Jesus the Christ, the One coming after John who will not only speak God’s Word of grace, but will live it … Jesus, who will go to his death for it, for us to have it … and who will be raised into God’s eternal Kingdom of Heaven, to bring this love, forgiveness, shalom, wholeness, GRACE to God’s beloved children, on earth as it is in heaven.
And wonderfully enough for us today, on this Second Sunday of Advent, it is this word which Isaiah brings to us … the word of the inevitability of God’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, come to us … as Isaiah looks forward to the Messiah, the Christ:
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him …
… With righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist;
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.
Shall. Shall. SHALL. WILL.
This SHALL happen, this WILL happen, it is inevitable.
No, it isn’t here yet, but it’s a-comin’. As surely as the sun rises each day, it’s a-comin.’
God’s reign of FORGIVENESS, of LOVE, of PEACE … not just endless repentance followed by fear and wondering if we’ve done enough to be forgiven … borne enough fruit to be forgiven … or if we’re just that bad chaff that will be burned with unquenchable fire … offscourings, garbage, dreck …
NO, NO, NO.
John the Baptist is NOT Jesus the Christ. Thanks be to God.
So what of John?
Should we still hear John’s words? Certainly.
Should we still repent? Certainly. We haven’t stopped sinning … screwing up … breaking community-love-body-of-Christ by what we’ve done and haven’t done. That’s for sure.
But don’t John-the-Baptist stay stuck there.
Be drawn into the inevitability of the Kingdom of Heaven, not just come near, but here. It shall be, it will be … and that Word, these signs, word, water, bread, wine, gathered sinner-saints, forgiven and freed … all these give us courage and faith, love and strength to go and show and live the Kingdom of Heaven into being NOW …
Not perfectly, not perfectly, but baby steps. Baby steps.
Risked and shared in love and forgiveness, grace and peace, and certainty, the certainty that comes from the gift of God’s SHALL and WILL … for us, and for all creation.
Yes, John the Baptist is in the building. And … on this Second Sunday of Advent, that’s OK.
But Jesus is always here, FOR US. For us, for grace, for forgiveness, for life.
And that’s far, far better.
Amen.
Sunday, December 01, 2013
1 December 2013
“A stirring beginning to Advent”
Isaiah 2:1-5 / Romans 13:11-14 / Matthew 24:36-44
1 Advent A
1 December 2013
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
Every year, on the first Sunday of Advent, we being worship with those words, in the Prayer of the Day, what used to be called the Collect … because the presider would, historically, use this time to collect the longings and rejoicings of the congregation, and put them in a short form prayer.
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
Actually, each Sunday of Advent begins with those “stirring” words, the Prayer of the Day focusing us on what this Season of Advent is all about:
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come …
Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son …
Stir up the wills of all who look to you …
And finally, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, we come back full circle to …
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
It is a stirring beginning, middle, and end to this season, which is all about being stirred up … paying attention, watching and waiting in expectation and hope.
But perhaps we don’t feel too stirred up this morning.
Our Gospel text certainly can have the effect, of casting a pall over things.
Yes, we have begun a new lectionary year, this first Sunday of Advent, now we are in Matthew’s gospel, but the text we have before us is a continuation of the story we had two weeks ago, from Luke’s gospel.
The story, it starts with Jesus and the disciples walking before the Temple in Jerusalem, during those last few days’ of Jesus’ earthly life, and swiftly moves to Jesus’ discussion of another End … End events, what is formally called Eschatology … words and sayings and teachings about what shall happen, what shall occur, as we enter the times of The End … the End of this Age … and The Beginning of the Eternal Reign of Christ.
Here, today, Jesus starts this text of The End with words meant to urge us to be alert and expectant.
But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father … therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
It is, most certainly, a text which creates feelings of uncertainty and ambiguity. Though we are assured of Who the End is … Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, reigning as Christ the King … we still crave knowing the When.
Like the disciples, we would like the answer to their question:
Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?
When? We just don’t know.
We just don’t know.
Words which, also, well apply to this faith community, this morning.
The pastor is leaving, yes, it’s true. I have received and accepted a call to serve Faith Lutheran Church and School in Redmond, and I have tendered my resignation as pastor of Nativity effective December 31st.
That announcement, itself, I know, has brought many different emotions. I thank you for the prayerful notes of thanks, congratulations and blessing I’ve received over the past week. But I know that there are other feelings at play in us here today … sadness, anger, mourning, and perhaps, most of all, uncertainty.
What will happen now?
Some of you know the process, because you’ve been through it before.
I tried to describe it in broad strokes, in what I wrote in my letter to you this past week:
The pastor is leaving; but another pastor is coming, a temporary shepherd to partner with you in the interim, to help you discern who you are as God’s people in Fairwood, and who and where Christ is calling you to be next. Welcome her. Pray for him. Offer yourselves in service with them. I would expect, hope and pray for nothing less from you. Our bishop, Kirby Unti, and assistant to the bishop, Kathryn Buffum, will soon be in touch with Nativity leaders about an upcoming interim ministry and beginning the preparation process for a new servant leader in your future.
Of that process, you will hear more from our elected leadership, soon … most certainly at our congregational meeting next Sunday evening.
But there’s more for you of this faith community, this place and people called Nativity, people of new birth, people of new life … and this Word is with and for us ABUNDANTLY in our texts today.
Therefore, you must be ready …
Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep …
Let us live honorably in the day …
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ …
The Word for us, followers of Jesus, in the broad, broad sense of being part of the Body of Christ in the world, as well as being particular disciples of Jesus in this faith community called Nativity, that word for us this morning is:
Keep awake. Keep alert. Be ready. Live as God’s people, in faith and hope and love.
In other words, keep on keepin’ on. Keep doing what it is you always do. The pastor is leaving, yes, but the faith community remains. Keep on worshipping, keep on confessing and being forgiven, keep on eating and drinking at the Lord’s table, keep on being sent in other-serving love, be generous in giving, generous in living and serving, for the sake of the world God loves, God gives, God saves in Jesus Christ.
And Jesus Christ is with and for us, in all of that.
And there is more good news for us in the word from Isaiah:
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord … that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths … they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Hear these words as promise and hope this morning, people called Nativity, people of new birth, new life. Yes, they are still unrealized hope … for God’s ways still have not been learned by the people God loves. Plowshares are still swords, and pruning hooks remain spears. War … which is abhorrent to God … still remains the way we sinners live here on earth.
And yet … the prophet’s words … God’s Word, through the prophet Isaiah’s mouth … is for us, too … in giving us, encouraging us to a sense of living “as if” … no, it’s not here yet, but it’s coming.
It’s coming … The Advent of our God … and the new life, on earth as it is in heaven, it’s not here yet, but it’s coming.
We are given little windows into it, we see little windows into it, in our worship, in our serving, the ways we are led by Christ, sent by Christ, empowered by Christ to be, right here, right now.
The Lord’s Advent gives us hope.
Because we know how this story turns out.
The Son of Man is coming … the Son of Man is coming, Christ the King, to establish his reign of love on earth as it is in heaven.
So we can wait.
And this season of the Church we are now in, this Advent, why, it’s perfect for us, a perfect place and time for us to be in, Nativity.
Because Advent is all about waiting … not the headlong rush to what the false gods of commerce and capitalism call “the Christmas-shopping season” with its Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays … more greed, more stuff, more consumption and debt … no, God’s people, Jesus’ people, we are called to live simply and simply live. And wait. And be ready.
And to world-defying taking Joy in the Waiting.
For us, the waiting is delightful ambiguity … a joyful unknowing. We can take delight in the ambiguity of not having everything nailed down, we can have joy in not knowing how it will all turn out, precisely because we do know how it will all turn out.
What will the next year bring for you, Nativity? Who will come as interim pastor? What will the interim time be like? Who will be your next settled pastor? When will it all be done?
We just don’t know. We just don’t know. And that, Jesus says, that is just OK.
Because “I am with you always, to the End of the Age.”
So for this season … this Advent … we wait, and watch, and hope.
We don’t give into the rush to “Christmas,” but we wait and watch and prepare and hope for the return of our Lord. We look for and celebrate the signs of his presence among us still … Water and Word, Bread and Wine, gathered community, called and sent in service to and for the world God loves.
And then, when it is time, we mark the anniversary of his coming among us once more … the Nativity of our Lord … all the while, looking ahead, watching and waiting, for the day when he will come again to us, and make all things and all people right, and whole, and new.
And so too with you, Nativity, people of new birth, new life.
Yes, it is all right to be sad today, about the news that I gave you last Monday.
But please, DO NOT STAY THERE.
And please, please, DO NOT RUSH THROUGH THIS INTERIM TIME, THIS GIFT OF TIME, TIME OF GIFT FOR YOU.
Just as God calls us to live and be in the moment, the moments, leading to Jesus’ return, to use the time to prepare and be ready, so too, Nativity, you are called to use this time to prepare, and work, and become ready for all that is to come.
So find joy in the process of finding out who you are, who God is calling you to be, where God is leading and guiding. Delight in the ambiguity, take joy in the unknowing.
Because you know how it all turns out in the end. Or rather, with The End.
For The End, our End, is always, always, Jesus Christ our Lord. The One who en-fleshes God’s loving, God’s giving, God’s saving, for you and me, for all the world.
Amen.
Isaiah 2:1-5 / Romans 13:11-14 / Matthew 24:36-44
1 Advent A
1 December 2013
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
Every year, on the first Sunday of Advent, we being worship with those words, in the Prayer of the Day, what used to be called the Collect … because the presider would, historically, use this time to collect the longings and rejoicings of the congregation, and put them in a short form prayer.
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
Actually, each Sunday of Advent begins with those “stirring” words, the Prayer of the Day focusing us on what this Season of Advent is all about:
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come …
Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son …
Stir up the wills of all who look to you …
And finally, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, we come back full circle to …
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
It is a stirring beginning, middle, and end to this season, which is all about being stirred up … paying attention, watching and waiting in expectation and hope.
But perhaps we don’t feel too stirred up this morning.
Our Gospel text certainly can have the effect, of casting a pall over things.
Yes, we have begun a new lectionary year, this first Sunday of Advent, now we are in Matthew’s gospel, but the text we have before us is a continuation of the story we had two weeks ago, from Luke’s gospel.
The story, it starts with Jesus and the disciples walking before the Temple in Jerusalem, during those last few days’ of Jesus’ earthly life, and swiftly moves to Jesus’ discussion of another End … End events, what is formally called Eschatology … words and sayings and teachings about what shall happen, what shall occur, as we enter the times of The End … the End of this Age … and The Beginning of the Eternal Reign of Christ.
Here, today, Jesus starts this text of The End with words meant to urge us to be alert and expectant.
But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father … therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
It is, most certainly, a text which creates feelings of uncertainty and ambiguity. Though we are assured of Who the End is … Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, reigning as Christ the King … we still crave knowing the When.
Like the disciples, we would like the answer to their question:
Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?
When? We just don’t know.
We just don’t know.
Words which, also, well apply to this faith community, this morning.
The pastor is leaving, yes, it’s true. I have received and accepted a call to serve Faith Lutheran Church and School in Redmond, and I have tendered my resignation as pastor of Nativity effective December 31st.
That announcement, itself, I know, has brought many different emotions. I thank you for the prayerful notes of thanks, congratulations and blessing I’ve received over the past week. But I know that there are other feelings at play in us here today … sadness, anger, mourning, and perhaps, most of all, uncertainty.
What will happen now?
Some of you know the process, because you’ve been through it before.
I tried to describe it in broad strokes, in what I wrote in my letter to you this past week:
The pastor is leaving; but another pastor is coming, a temporary shepherd to partner with you in the interim, to help you discern who you are as God’s people in Fairwood, and who and where Christ is calling you to be next. Welcome her. Pray for him. Offer yourselves in service with them. I would expect, hope and pray for nothing less from you. Our bishop, Kirby Unti, and assistant to the bishop, Kathryn Buffum, will soon be in touch with Nativity leaders about an upcoming interim ministry and beginning the preparation process for a new servant leader in your future.
Of that process, you will hear more from our elected leadership, soon … most certainly at our congregational meeting next Sunday evening.
But there’s more for you of this faith community, this place and people called Nativity, people of new birth, people of new life … and this Word is with and for us ABUNDANTLY in our texts today.
Therefore, you must be ready …
Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep …
Let us live honorably in the day …
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ …
The Word for us, followers of Jesus, in the broad, broad sense of being part of the Body of Christ in the world, as well as being particular disciples of Jesus in this faith community called Nativity, that word for us this morning is:
Keep awake. Keep alert. Be ready. Live as God’s people, in faith and hope and love.
In other words, keep on keepin’ on. Keep doing what it is you always do. The pastor is leaving, yes, but the faith community remains. Keep on worshipping, keep on confessing and being forgiven, keep on eating and drinking at the Lord’s table, keep on being sent in other-serving love, be generous in giving, generous in living and serving, for the sake of the world God loves, God gives, God saves in Jesus Christ.
And Jesus Christ is with and for us, in all of that.
And there is more good news for us in the word from Isaiah:
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord … that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths … they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Hear these words as promise and hope this morning, people called Nativity, people of new birth, new life. Yes, they are still unrealized hope … for God’s ways still have not been learned by the people God loves. Plowshares are still swords, and pruning hooks remain spears. War … which is abhorrent to God … still remains the way we sinners live here on earth.
And yet … the prophet’s words … God’s Word, through the prophet Isaiah’s mouth … is for us, too … in giving us, encouraging us to a sense of living “as if” … no, it’s not here yet, but it’s coming.
It’s coming … The Advent of our God … and the new life, on earth as it is in heaven, it’s not here yet, but it’s coming.
We are given little windows into it, we see little windows into it, in our worship, in our serving, the ways we are led by Christ, sent by Christ, empowered by Christ to be, right here, right now.
The Lord’s Advent gives us hope.
Because we know how this story turns out.
The Son of Man is coming … the Son of Man is coming, Christ the King, to establish his reign of love on earth as it is in heaven.
So we can wait.
And this season of the Church we are now in, this Advent, why, it’s perfect for us, a perfect place and time for us to be in, Nativity.
Because Advent is all about waiting … not the headlong rush to what the false gods of commerce and capitalism call “the Christmas-shopping season” with its Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays … more greed, more stuff, more consumption and debt … no, God’s people, Jesus’ people, we are called to live simply and simply live. And wait. And be ready.
And to world-defying taking Joy in the Waiting.
For us, the waiting is delightful ambiguity … a joyful unknowing. We can take delight in the ambiguity of not having everything nailed down, we can have joy in not knowing how it will all turn out, precisely because we do know how it will all turn out.
What will the next year bring for you, Nativity? Who will come as interim pastor? What will the interim time be like? Who will be your next settled pastor? When will it all be done?
We just don’t know. We just don’t know. And that, Jesus says, that is just OK.
Because “I am with you always, to the End of the Age.”
So for this season … this Advent … we wait, and watch, and hope.
We don’t give into the rush to “Christmas,” but we wait and watch and prepare and hope for the return of our Lord. We look for and celebrate the signs of his presence among us still … Water and Word, Bread and Wine, gathered community, called and sent in service to and for the world God loves.
And then, when it is time, we mark the anniversary of his coming among us once more … the Nativity of our Lord … all the while, looking ahead, watching and waiting, for the day when he will come again to us, and make all things and all people right, and whole, and new.
And so too with you, Nativity, people of new birth, new life.
Yes, it is all right to be sad today, about the news that I gave you last Monday.
But please, DO NOT STAY THERE.
And please, please, DO NOT RUSH THROUGH THIS INTERIM TIME, THIS GIFT OF TIME, TIME OF GIFT FOR YOU.
Just as God calls us to live and be in the moment, the moments, leading to Jesus’ return, to use the time to prepare and be ready, so too, Nativity, you are called to use this time to prepare, and work, and become ready for all that is to come.
So find joy in the process of finding out who you are, who God is calling you to be, where God is leading and guiding. Delight in the ambiguity, take joy in the unknowing.
Because you know how it all turns out in the end. Or rather, with The End.
For The End, our End, is always, always, Jesus Christ our Lord. The One who en-fleshes God’s loving, God’s giving, God’s saving, for you and me, for all the world.
Amen.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
24 November 2013
“Christ is ALL”
OT 34C / Christ the King
Colossians 1:11-20 / Luke 23:33-43
24 November 2013
Do you remember the Disney movie “Aladdin?” There’s this great, short scene when Aladdin first sets the genie free from being trapped in the lamp … the genie describes to Aladdin what it’s like, being a genie … he blows up huge and says “PHENEMONENAL COSMIC POWERS!” … and then, squeezes back into the lamp and says, “itty bitty living space.”
It’s about the irony of the contrast, that’s for sure. Big powerful genie lives in beat up old cramped lamp.
It’s the same word we might say about our texts for today. The irony of the contrast between those verses from Colossians, and the Gospel narrative of the final portion of Luke’s passion.
The Cosmic Christ … he in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell … suffering, emptying, dying, on a cross between two criminals.
Hear these words of Paul about Jesus, the One in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.
And in that first-ness is implied, called forth … an attitude … that anyone who hears Jesus’ call to follow him would live life his way … and so achieve his same end … being with Jesus, sharing in his glory forever … sharing in the fullness of God … everything that God so wants to give us, which he first gave to Jesus … new, full life, together, forever, with him.
And so on this Christ the King Sunday – the last Sunday of the Church year’s round cycle of things … we look back at all the words and ways in which Jesus has called to us since September; the words, the lessons, the truths we’ve read and heard this fall:
God’s economic lessons – how we who are loved and gifted and saved by God, how and for what we’re called to live. God risks it all for you and me, and calls us to live the same way, risking and giving to and for others in ways that don’t make sense in a means to an end, straight line, there-just-won’t-be-enough-to-go-around-way.
But our God is not a God of scarcity … but rather, a God of abundance. And God calls us to abundant living, sharing, caring, giving … no, not giving, because giving implies we own it and NO, we don’t … it’s all God’s so it’s STEWARDING, serving, blessing others with God’s blessing through stuff and money, time and talent and treasure.
And we’ve heard God’s call through Jesus to live in a constant attitude of repentance, hearing his call, turning around, admitting our sins, our failures, our over-busyness … whatever and whoever removes Christ from the center of our lives. We hear his Word of forgiveness … and trust his call to live, in the gain is loss, for you first and me last, cross shaped path called sacrificial, sacramental living … our Baptism in Jesus, our eating and drinking at his table, gets lived out in Service, to and for others.
In other words,
Making peace through the blood of his cross.
And so we arrive at today … this Christ the King Sunday. And, yes, our Gospel reading, summing all this up for us, is once more the recounting of Jesus’ last moments on the Cross.
The words we heard last, exactly eight months ago today … March 24, the Sunday of the Passion … remind us that Jesus, Christ the King for us is always Jesus of the Cross.
Here is the throne from which he reigns … not encrusted with jewels and riches … not protected by the Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security.
No, his throne is made up of rough wood, and nails, and blood … and the only Security comes in, first, the criminal’s word of repentance,
Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom
and then, Jesus’ word of promise and hope, ironically, tragically, delivered from his lowest moment:
Today, you will be with me in Paradise.
And so here it is. How different, how stark the contrast:
He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
When they came to the place that is called the Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And the people stood by, watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him …
It is, most surely, the theology of the Cross … the word of God, the word about God, that speaks most clearly this contrasting, opposite word to us … strength through what appears to be weakness, victory through suffering, life from death.
About this Theology of the Cross, Martin Luther offers these words from his Heidelberg Disputations:
This is clear: He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil. These are the people whom the apostles call “enemies of the cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18), for they hate the cross and suffering and love works and the glory of works. Thus they call the good of the cross evil and the evil of a deed good. God can be found only in suffering and the cross, as has already been said. Therefore the friends of the cross say the cross is good and (self-building up, meaningless) works are evil, for through the cross these works are destroyed and the old person, who is especially edified by (their good) works, is crucified.
The fullness of God … the fullness of God … stretches out his hands and arms, is nailed to a cross, from where he bids all those who would follow him, to come and suffer, come and give, come and die.
Jesus’ path to greatness ends on the Cross.
Yet even that “End” is an end that is not an ending … for it keeps on going … through the grave and empty tomb … to resurrection … to new life … to being reconciled with God forever. The End turns out to be not an ending at all, but rather, a beginning. “Today you will be with me in Paradise” is not The End of All This … but rather, just the next part of the journey in “dwelling in the fullness of God” … for Jesus, for the criminal, and for us.
In other words, now that we have gone through this death, too … death to all that is self-building, self-aggrandizing, “aren’t we so great and so special” people … now that THAT pride and arrogance is nailed to the cross and dies with Jesus … now … NOW … we can rise with Jesus, in humility, in joy, in love for and service to our neighbor, and in hope, not just for life in heaven SOMEDAY, but life right here, right now, in Fairwood on November 24, 2013.
If you’ve been listening to me over the past few years, you know that I have grown in appreciation of the German Lutheran theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Mostly that is because of all the Lutheran theologians, of all the theologians of the past five hundred years, Bonhoeffer gets the paradox of the Cross. He gets that the only Jesus we can … we must … know … is the Christ of the Cross who also, in him, all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell. He gets this about Jesus … PHENEMONENAL COSMIC POWERS!” … “itty bitty living (and dying) space.”
Perhaps the toughest reading material Bonhoeffer left us were the letters, poems and songs he wrote while he was imprisoned in Berlin in 1944. These works are compiled into “Letters and Papers from Prison,” and some 70 years later, this work continues to amaze, frustrate, tear apart and pull together those who read it.
For, you must remember, Bonhoeffer wrote these words while he was working out being part of the conspiracy to kill Hitler and overthrow his government. A Lutheran pastor, theologian, a man of peace, one who was by all accounts the rising superstar of Christian theology, thought, writing, teaching, of his time, involved in a mission to murder the leader of his government and take it over himself, with the help of his friends. Of course with our perfect hindsight we might easily pass this off as an “of course he had to do this” … but that is our great error, we putting ourselves in the comfort of our easy 2013 seats back into history, and slighting the wrenching decision Bonhoeffer had to make.
Of course, that plot failed, and Bonheoffer was soon put to death for being part of it.
But hear his words, written in that terrible time and place … fine commentary on our Scriptures today, this day of Christ the King:
21 July 1944 … the day after the failed plot
I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a church person, a righteous person or unrighteous one, sick or healthy. … I mean, living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the word … watching with Christ in Gethsemane. How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?
Notes for a book – July / August 1944
The church is the church only when it exists for others. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell people of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.
And finally … a poem he wrote to his fiancé and family on the eve of the new year 1945 … as we cross into another church year together … this old one, on this Christ the King Sunday, now ending … next Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent, we begin the cycle of Jesus’ life all over again … may we, too, hear these words as hope … hopeful paradox, to be sure … but hope, clean, clear and bright … as we hear and heed Christ’s call to follow, to follow him, the Christ of the Cross who also, in him, all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.
By Powers of Good
By faithful, quiet powers of good surrounded
So wondrously consoled and sheltered here –
I wish to live these days with you in spirit
And with you enter into a new year.
The old year still would try our hearts to torment,
Of evil times we still do bear the weight;
O Lord, do grant our souls, now terror-stricken,
Salvation for which you did us create.
And should you offer us the cup of suffering,
Though heavy, brimming full and bitter brand,
We’ll thankfully accept it, never flinching,
From your good heart and your beloved hand.
But should you wish now once again to give us
The joys of this world and its glorious sun,
Then we’ll recall anew what past times brought us
And then our life belongs to you alone.
The candles you have brought into our darkness,
Let them today be burning warm and bright,
And if it’s possible, do reunite us!
We know your light is shining through the night.
When now the quiet deepens all around us,
O, let our ears that fullest sound amaze
Of this, your world, invisibly expanding
As all your children sing high hymns of praise.
By powers of good so wondrously protected,
We wait with confidence, befall what may.
God is with us at night and in the morning
And oh, most certainly on each new day.
Amen.
OT 34C / Christ the King
Colossians 1:11-20 / Luke 23:33-43
24 November 2013
Do you remember the Disney movie “Aladdin?” There’s this great, short scene when Aladdin first sets the genie free from being trapped in the lamp … the genie describes to Aladdin what it’s like, being a genie … he blows up huge and says “PHENEMONENAL COSMIC POWERS!” … and then, squeezes back into the lamp and says, “itty bitty living space.”
It’s about the irony of the contrast, that’s for sure. Big powerful genie lives in beat up old cramped lamp.
It’s the same word we might say about our texts for today. The irony of the contrast between those verses from Colossians, and the Gospel narrative of the final portion of Luke’s passion.
The Cosmic Christ … he in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell … suffering, emptying, dying, on a cross between two criminals.
Hear these words of Paul about Jesus, the One in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.
And in that first-ness is implied, called forth … an attitude … that anyone who hears Jesus’ call to follow him would live life his way … and so achieve his same end … being with Jesus, sharing in his glory forever … sharing in the fullness of God … everything that God so wants to give us, which he first gave to Jesus … new, full life, together, forever, with him.
And so on this Christ the King Sunday – the last Sunday of the Church year’s round cycle of things … we look back at all the words and ways in which Jesus has called to us since September; the words, the lessons, the truths we’ve read and heard this fall:
God’s economic lessons – how we who are loved and gifted and saved by God, how and for what we’re called to live. God risks it all for you and me, and calls us to live the same way, risking and giving to and for others in ways that don’t make sense in a means to an end, straight line, there-just-won’t-be-enough-to-go-around-way.
But our God is not a God of scarcity … but rather, a God of abundance. And God calls us to abundant living, sharing, caring, giving … no, not giving, because giving implies we own it and NO, we don’t … it’s all God’s so it’s STEWARDING, serving, blessing others with God’s blessing through stuff and money, time and talent and treasure.
And we’ve heard God’s call through Jesus to live in a constant attitude of repentance, hearing his call, turning around, admitting our sins, our failures, our over-busyness … whatever and whoever removes Christ from the center of our lives. We hear his Word of forgiveness … and trust his call to live, in the gain is loss, for you first and me last, cross shaped path called sacrificial, sacramental living … our Baptism in Jesus, our eating and drinking at his table, gets lived out in Service, to and for others.
In other words,
Making peace through the blood of his cross.
And so we arrive at today … this Christ the King Sunday. And, yes, our Gospel reading, summing all this up for us, is once more the recounting of Jesus’ last moments on the Cross.
The words we heard last, exactly eight months ago today … March 24, the Sunday of the Passion … remind us that Jesus, Christ the King for us is always Jesus of the Cross.
Here is the throne from which he reigns … not encrusted with jewels and riches … not protected by the Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security.
No, his throne is made up of rough wood, and nails, and blood … and the only Security comes in, first, the criminal’s word of repentance,
Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom
and then, Jesus’ word of promise and hope, ironically, tragically, delivered from his lowest moment:
Today, you will be with me in Paradise.
And so here it is. How different, how stark the contrast:
He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
When they came to the place that is called the Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And the people stood by, watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him …
It is, most surely, the theology of the Cross … the word of God, the word about God, that speaks most clearly this contrasting, opposite word to us … strength through what appears to be weakness, victory through suffering, life from death.
About this Theology of the Cross, Martin Luther offers these words from his Heidelberg Disputations:
This is clear: He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil. These are the people whom the apostles call “enemies of the cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18), for they hate the cross and suffering and love works and the glory of works. Thus they call the good of the cross evil and the evil of a deed good. God can be found only in suffering and the cross, as has already been said. Therefore the friends of the cross say the cross is good and (self-building up, meaningless) works are evil, for through the cross these works are destroyed and the old person, who is especially edified by (their good) works, is crucified.
The fullness of God … the fullness of God … stretches out his hands and arms, is nailed to a cross, from where he bids all those who would follow him, to come and suffer, come and give, come and die.
Jesus’ path to greatness ends on the Cross.
Yet even that “End” is an end that is not an ending … for it keeps on going … through the grave and empty tomb … to resurrection … to new life … to being reconciled with God forever. The End turns out to be not an ending at all, but rather, a beginning. “Today you will be with me in Paradise” is not The End of All This … but rather, just the next part of the journey in “dwelling in the fullness of God” … for Jesus, for the criminal, and for us.
In other words, now that we have gone through this death, too … death to all that is self-building, self-aggrandizing, “aren’t we so great and so special” people … now that THAT pride and arrogance is nailed to the cross and dies with Jesus … now … NOW … we can rise with Jesus, in humility, in joy, in love for and service to our neighbor, and in hope, not just for life in heaven SOMEDAY, but life right here, right now, in Fairwood on November 24, 2013.
If you’ve been listening to me over the past few years, you know that I have grown in appreciation of the German Lutheran theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Mostly that is because of all the Lutheran theologians, of all the theologians of the past five hundred years, Bonhoeffer gets the paradox of the Cross. He gets that the only Jesus we can … we must … know … is the Christ of the Cross who also, in him, all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell. He gets this about Jesus … PHENEMONENAL COSMIC POWERS!” … “itty bitty living (and dying) space.”
Perhaps the toughest reading material Bonhoeffer left us were the letters, poems and songs he wrote while he was imprisoned in Berlin in 1944. These works are compiled into “Letters and Papers from Prison,” and some 70 years later, this work continues to amaze, frustrate, tear apart and pull together those who read it.
For, you must remember, Bonhoeffer wrote these words while he was working out being part of the conspiracy to kill Hitler and overthrow his government. A Lutheran pastor, theologian, a man of peace, one who was by all accounts the rising superstar of Christian theology, thought, writing, teaching, of his time, involved in a mission to murder the leader of his government and take it over himself, with the help of his friends. Of course with our perfect hindsight we might easily pass this off as an “of course he had to do this” … but that is our great error, we putting ourselves in the comfort of our easy 2013 seats back into history, and slighting the wrenching decision Bonhoeffer had to make.
Of course, that plot failed, and Bonheoffer was soon put to death for being part of it.
But hear his words, written in that terrible time and place … fine commentary on our Scriptures today, this day of Christ the King:
21 July 1944 … the day after the failed plot
I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a church person, a righteous person or unrighteous one, sick or healthy. … I mean, living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the word … watching with Christ in Gethsemane. How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?
Notes for a book – July / August 1944
The church is the church only when it exists for others. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell people of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.
And finally … a poem he wrote to his fiancé and family on the eve of the new year 1945 … as we cross into another church year together … this old one, on this Christ the King Sunday, now ending … next Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent, we begin the cycle of Jesus’ life all over again … may we, too, hear these words as hope … hopeful paradox, to be sure … but hope, clean, clear and bright … as we hear and heed Christ’s call to follow, to follow him, the Christ of the Cross who also, in him, all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.
By Powers of Good
By faithful, quiet powers of good surrounded
So wondrously consoled and sheltered here –
I wish to live these days with you in spirit
And with you enter into a new year.
The old year still would try our hearts to torment,
Of evil times we still do bear the weight;
O Lord, do grant our souls, now terror-stricken,
Salvation for which you did us create.
And should you offer us the cup of suffering,
Though heavy, brimming full and bitter brand,
We’ll thankfully accept it, never flinching,
From your good heart and your beloved hand.
But should you wish now once again to give us
The joys of this world and its glorious sun,
Then we’ll recall anew what past times brought us
And then our life belongs to you alone.
The candles you have brought into our darkness,
Let them today be burning warm and bright,
And if it’s possible, do reunite us!
We know your light is shining through the night.
When now the quiet deepens all around us,
O, let our ears that fullest sound amaze
Of this, your world, invisibly expanding
As all your children sing high hymns of praise.
By powers of good so wondrously protected,
We wait with confidence, befall what may.
God is with us at night and in the morning
And oh, most certainly on each new day.
Amen.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
17 November 2013
“Rescuing Scripture from its despisers, once again”
Luke 21:5-19 / Malachi 4:1-2a
OT 33 C
17 November 2013
Wars, insurrections … nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom … earthquakes in various places, famines and plagues … dreadful portents and signs from heaven.
Jesus’ words of long ago … or CNN’s “Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer?”
I hope our Lord God will do something against the (Muslims) for his name’s sake, not for the sake of our government. All things in Scripture have now been fulfilled. Only Daniel chapter 12 remains. Daniel and the Revelation of St. John fit together well. I think Rome is the holy place between two seas. There sits the pope in the temple of God. But if the Muslims go there everything is ruined. There is nothing left but the day of judgment. Then the world will come to its end.
Hmn. Are you hearing or reading words like these in various places … talk of end times?
In my first call as pastor, in Appalachian Northwest Pennsylvania, there was a farmer named Lavier Hummel who was keenly interested in the End Times. Once, early in my time there, after worship – he took me aside and asked me, “You ever watch Jack Van Impe?”
“Uh – no,” I replied.
“Well, you really ought to,” Lavier said. “That Jack Van Impe, he really knows how to interpret the Bible – he points out how close we are in prophecy to the End Times.”
So – chagrined … understanding that Lavier meant that his wet-behind-the-ears preacher needed a lesson - I went home and watched Jack Van Impe.
Have you ever seen Jack? I just tuned in last week, once again, to see how he’s doing. Now over 80 years old, Jack Van Impe is still on one of the Evangelical channels, DayStar if I’m not mistaken. His show is set up like a network news broadcast, with Jack; his beautiful wife Rexella; and the announcer guy who sells transcripts of the show and other things to support Jack Van Impe Ministries … Jack and Rexella are seated behind what looks like a news anchor desk.
How each show goes, is that beautiful blonde Rexella (who is actually close to 80, but through the magic of television and other wizardry looks no more than 45) … Rexella finds headlines, stories and pictures from the news that are disturbing, like wars, murders, insurrections, political intrigue, and the like. In a breathy voice she reads each one off while they flash on the screen … “Islamic extremists continue to plan attacks around the world … superstorms kill tens of thousands … new flu threatens millions,” … and then, just as breathlessly, she turns to Jack, with the words, “What does the Bible have to say about all this, Jack?”
Now that’s Jack’s cue to shine. At a blistering pace that would put the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope both to shame, Jack non-stop skips through the Bible, linking snippets of the Old and New Testaments together … “this is Biblical prophecy coming to pass, isn’t it wonderful???” … a passage here, a passage there, Genesis linked to 2nd Timothy to Luke to Isaiah to the Affordable Care Act to Miley Cyrus to JESUS IS COMING BACK TOMORROW!
Well, perhaps not quite like that, but you get the idea.
I probably shouldn’t be so hard on Jack, and beautiful Rexella, because the “End Time Guessing Game” is a favorite of many … not just televangelists. C’mon, admit it, most of us have wondered, especially lately, with earthquakes, floods, storms, wars, threats of global pandemics … if we’re nudging closer to “The End.”
It might be an entertaining parlor game, but it’s a pretty unsatisfying one. Because the problem is … what makes us so sure that we’re right about such things, when others before us … people who have been just as faithful, just as subject to crises, both real and imagined … thought they were living in the End Times too?
That quote I read at the beginning of the sermon … wasn’t from Jack Van Impe. Or any other TV preacher, or national political figure. Those are the words of … Martin Luther, in the 1530s – nearly five hundred years ago.
Oops.
Even the apostles wondered to Jesus, when The End would come. And this was before the event of the Cross: Jesus’ crucifixion, suffering, death and resurrection.
Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?
When, and what. That’s the two main questions we always get into when we start talking “End Times” – When’s it going to happen, and what’s going to happen.
When’s it going to happen. So I can set my watch for it, put an alarm in my smartphone, get a wake up call. So I can get my hair done and be all pretty for Jesus. So I can wait until the last possible minute, and get my life in order. Millions of reasons. When.
And what’s going to happen. What will be the sign?
I always find it interesting that those most curious about the answer to the “what” question are the same ones who believe they’ll be beamed up and out of it before “it” happens … you know, that concept that’s not in the Bible but which has won the hearts and minds of millions, especially anyone who has read the “Left Behind” series of books … this is The Rapture. Beam me up Jesus, I am outta here … but as I’m going up, I’d like a little peek at how bad it’s going to be for all those poor saps who aren’t going to make it.
And so with this attitude and idea of The End comes a whole way of living for some believers that one current author, Chris Hedges, calls “American Fascism” … strong words, to be sure, but for those who are convinced that this rapture / tribulation / annihilation way of things is really going to be The End … well, it just can’t happen soon enough. Like kids in the back seat of the car, they want to get to that destination fast and don’t want to let anything or anyone around them distract them from their goal.
So concepts which the Bible does talk about … like Stewardship and Care for Creation… they go out the window … their word is let’s use it up now because Jesus is coming, and I won’t be here anyway.
Jesus’ last words to his disciples before his Passion, about care for the “Least of These,” the poor and powerless, that’s off the map … they say Jesus is coming, so let them take care of themselves.
Forget about Jesus being the Prince of Peace. America’s military struggles, whether in Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan or Iraq, now take on cosmic significance. It’s a “New Crusade,” their preachers cry, with Jesus and we, his Christian Soldiers, sent to annihilate the evil pagan heathen wherever he exists, bringing us closer and closer to that Final Battle.
And so, at the center of it all, stands a Jesus who is no redeeming God of love but rather a wrathful warrior … on the one hand, beaming his faithful off somewhere to a safe place, on the other, raising hell with the devil and his servants by blowing non- believers – read, those who don’t live or vote or believe like they do – off the earth.
Their “endurance,” by which they believe they will gain their souls … Jesus’ words, yes, from our Gospel reading … but twisted to their own ends … they believe them to mean being divisive, hate-filled, even violent towards anyone who disagrees with them.
We have made a tragic mistake by being “Lutheran nice” and “tolerant” of these despisers of the Scriptures. We’ve allowed people with the wrong word … not the Word of God, but another, evil word … to hijack Jesus in this country. Friends, this has got to stop. Right here, right now.
It stops, first, for us … when we stop getting all wrapped around the axle about those two questions the disciples asked Jesus, way back then.
When. What.
Don’t despise the Scripture. Read it. Read it and see that Jesus does not answer those questions.
Instead, he talks about Who.
Who. In Jesus’ first words of response – the who is who not to listen to, or watch, or follow.
Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.
Who not to follow. Those who claim to be Messiah, deliverer, God – those people, those movements, those things that people put in the place of God, but whose actions are the exact opposite of Godliness. Not just Hitler, Charles Manson and David Koresh … the usual “rogues’ gallery” of Scripture’s despisers. But … other things, people, movements, products, that can rise up and take over that place of ultimacy in our lives that is reserved for God. Yes, this is a warning for us, not to follow those current despisers of Scripture who have hijacked Jesus. But that’s not all.
There’s plenty more out there that would gladly take Jesus’ place at the center of our lives.
Shopping. Sex. Drugs. Sports. Money. The list keeps on growing, with every year that passes.
That’s the negative who.
But Jesus also speaks positively as well.
Of another Who … who? YOU. You, Jesus says to his disciples … you, who must pay attention … don’t be alarmed, but endure.
Bad stuff will happen to you, disciples … Jesus says. And it did then … in the past, Jesus’ followers were persecuted, they suffered, they were killed. By the Romans. By their own people. In concentration camps.
Not in this country today, to be sure – at least, nothing like what Jesus lays out here – though more than a few of us have taken our lumps from zealous fundamentalists along the way. But certainly at the hands of dictators and totalitarian rulers in other places in the world … in Africa, in China, in the Mideast ... in those places, Christians continue to suffer physically.
But Jesus says, endure. The Spirit will give you words to say on my behalf, disciples; especially when you get into trouble. The One who watches over me will watch over you, disciples, and care for you. Endure.
Endure, disciples. Because I’ve already told you everything. There are no secrets here.
Who? Jesus says, You, disciples; you who follow me. If you’ve watched, if you’ve listened, you’ve seen everything there is to see.
There is no secret wisdom, no special caste of the elect, no private showing or trial group or selected test audience who will get a sneak preview or, better yet, “a little better than the average Christian” status bestowed on those who would get beamed up, away from all this so they can sit and watch the poor slobs left on earth go through the time of tribulation … no, Jesus says it’s all been out there from the beginning, everything you and I need for a faithful life which will help us endure in the face of everything he describes here.
The washing of baptism is public – and so is the promise Jesus gives … “your sins are forgiven.” The eating and drinking at his table is public – and so is the promise Jesus gives … “given and shed for you, for forgiveness, for healing, for life.” The community gathered around him is public – Jesus does nothing in secret; he preaches and proclaims God’s welcoming and favor and love; he heals and makes whole; he raises the dead; he suffers and dies on a cross in full public view – is buried in a public place – and when he is raised from the dead where does he go? Straight to his disciples, so everyone may know!
There are no secrets Jesus is keeping hidden, no Bible code, no tacked together Scripture formula for deducing the time, the day, the WHAT of The End.
You’ve seen it, you’ve received it; you’ve been washed and fed, welcomed and sent to live it.
So now … keep awake and watch.
Who? You, disciples.
When will all this be? I don’t know. Jesus doesn’t say. No one knows; neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
Knowledge is power, they say, and here, it’s especially true … the disciples didn’t know … Martin Luther didn’t know … Jack Van Impe doesn’t know … the authors of “Left Behind” don’t know … and we don’t know.
So we need to endure. We are called to do just as Jesus charges us, in that final sentence of our text:
By your endurance you will gain your souls.
Endure, disciples. We have work to do while Jesus is away. We’ve been given the gift of time, time of life, lives of time, time to tell, time to show, in living that the Christian life, the life of a Christian, is not a big negative, not a big “no,” not coercion and criticism and condemnation … no, it’s about living like Jesus. Inviting, welcoming, standing up firmly for the Word of God which calls us into lives of service and care for our neighbor, care for each other.
We have work to do. Which will get us involved. So we had better receive all that God wants to give us to strengthen our faith, to be prepared, to be ready … we must gather in worship, AS OFTEN AS WE ARE PHYSICALLY ABLE … and outside of worship, we must hear and read and study and pray and discuss and live the Word …. watching things take place, being ready for The Day, trusting, assured, that when it comes, it is HE … Jesus … Jesus … God’s flesh and blood, real promise of light and life, healing and forgiveness, wholeness, peace, salvation for the whole world … Jesus is The End.
The Son of Righteousness … he will arise … for you, for me, for all the world … with healing, with LIFE, in his wings.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Luke 21:5-19 / Malachi 4:1-2a
OT 33 C
17 November 2013
Wars, insurrections … nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom … earthquakes in various places, famines and plagues … dreadful portents and signs from heaven.
Jesus’ words of long ago … or CNN’s “Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer?”
I hope our Lord God will do something against the (Muslims) for his name’s sake, not for the sake of our government. All things in Scripture have now been fulfilled. Only Daniel chapter 12 remains. Daniel and the Revelation of St. John fit together well. I think Rome is the holy place between two seas. There sits the pope in the temple of God. But if the Muslims go there everything is ruined. There is nothing left but the day of judgment. Then the world will come to its end.
Hmn. Are you hearing or reading words like these in various places … talk of end times?
In my first call as pastor, in Appalachian Northwest Pennsylvania, there was a farmer named Lavier Hummel who was keenly interested in the End Times. Once, early in my time there, after worship – he took me aside and asked me, “You ever watch Jack Van Impe?”
“Uh – no,” I replied.
“Well, you really ought to,” Lavier said. “That Jack Van Impe, he really knows how to interpret the Bible – he points out how close we are in prophecy to the End Times.”
So – chagrined … understanding that Lavier meant that his wet-behind-the-ears preacher needed a lesson - I went home and watched Jack Van Impe.
Have you ever seen Jack? I just tuned in last week, once again, to see how he’s doing. Now over 80 years old, Jack Van Impe is still on one of the Evangelical channels, DayStar if I’m not mistaken. His show is set up like a network news broadcast, with Jack; his beautiful wife Rexella; and the announcer guy who sells transcripts of the show and other things to support Jack Van Impe Ministries … Jack and Rexella are seated behind what looks like a news anchor desk.
How each show goes, is that beautiful blonde Rexella (who is actually close to 80, but through the magic of television and other wizardry looks no more than 45) … Rexella finds headlines, stories and pictures from the news that are disturbing, like wars, murders, insurrections, political intrigue, and the like. In a breathy voice she reads each one off while they flash on the screen … “Islamic extremists continue to plan attacks around the world … superstorms kill tens of thousands … new flu threatens millions,” … and then, just as breathlessly, she turns to Jack, with the words, “What does the Bible have to say about all this, Jack?”
Now that’s Jack’s cue to shine. At a blistering pace that would put the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope both to shame, Jack non-stop skips through the Bible, linking snippets of the Old and New Testaments together … “this is Biblical prophecy coming to pass, isn’t it wonderful???” … a passage here, a passage there, Genesis linked to 2nd Timothy to Luke to Isaiah to the Affordable Care Act to Miley Cyrus to JESUS IS COMING BACK TOMORROW!
Well, perhaps not quite like that, but you get the idea.
I probably shouldn’t be so hard on Jack, and beautiful Rexella, because the “End Time Guessing Game” is a favorite of many … not just televangelists. C’mon, admit it, most of us have wondered, especially lately, with earthquakes, floods, storms, wars, threats of global pandemics … if we’re nudging closer to “The End.”
It might be an entertaining parlor game, but it’s a pretty unsatisfying one. Because the problem is … what makes us so sure that we’re right about such things, when others before us … people who have been just as faithful, just as subject to crises, both real and imagined … thought they were living in the End Times too?
That quote I read at the beginning of the sermon … wasn’t from Jack Van Impe. Or any other TV preacher, or national political figure. Those are the words of … Martin Luther, in the 1530s – nearly five hundred years ago.
Oops.
Even the apostles wondered to Jesus, when The End would come. And this was before the event of the Cross: Jesus’ crucifixion, suffering, death and resurrection.
Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?
When, and what. That’s the two main questions we always get into when we start talking “End Times” – When’s it going to happen, and what’s going to happen.
When’s it going to happen. So I can set my watch for it, put an alarm in my smartphone, get a wake up call. So I can get my hair done and be all pretty for Jesus. So I can wait until the last possible minute, and get my life in order. Millions of reasons. When.
And what’s going to happen. What will be the sign?
I always find it interesting that those most curious about the answer to the “what” question are the same ones who believe they’ll be beamed up and out of it before “it” happens … you know, that concept that’s not in the Bible but which has won the hearts and minds of millions, especially anyone who has read the “Left Behind” series of books … this is The Rapture. Beam me up Jesus, I am outta here … but as I’m going up, I’d like a little peek at how bad it’s going to be for all those poor saps who aren’t going to make it.
And so with this attitude and idea of The End comes a whole way of living for some believers that one current author, Chris Hedges, calls “American Fascism” … strong words, to be sure, but for those who are convinced that this rapture / tribulation / annihilation way of things is really going to be The End … well, it just can’t happen soon enough. Like kids in the back seat of the car, they want to get to that destination fast and don’t want to let anything or anyone around them distract them from their goal.
So concepts which the Bible does talk about … like Stewardship and Care for Creation… they go out the window … their word is let’s use it up now because Jesus is coming, and I won’t be here anyway.
Jesus’ last words to his disciples before his Passion, about care for the “Least of These,” the poor and powerless, that’s off the map … they say Jesus is coming, so let them take care of themselves.
Forget about Jesus being the Prince of Peace. America’s military struggles, whether in Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan or Iraq, now take on cosmic significance. It’s a “New Crusade,” their preachers cry, with Jesus and we, his Christian Soldiers, sent to annihilate the evil pagan heathen wherever he exists, bringing us closer and closer to that Final Battle.
And so, at the center of it all, stands a Jesus who is no redeeming God of love but rather a wrathful warrior … on the one hand, beaming his faithful off somewhere to a safe place, on the other, raising hell with the devil and his servants by blowing non- believers – read, those who don’t live or vote or believe like they do – off the earth.
Their “endurance,” by which they believe they will gain their souls … Jesus’ words, yes, from our Gospel reading … but twisted to their own ends … they believe them to mean being divisive, hate-filled, even violent towards anyone who disagrees with them.
We have made a tragic mistake by being “Lutheran nice” and “tolerant” of these despisers of the Scriptures. We’ve allowed people with the wrong word … not the Word of God, but another, evil word … to hijack Jesus in this country. Friends, this has got to stop. Right here, right now.
It stops, first, for us … when we stop getting all wrapped around the axle about those two questions the disciples asked Jesus, way back then.
When. What.
Don’t despise the Scripture. Read it. Read it and see that Jesus does not answer those questions.
Instead, he talks about Who.
Who. In Jesus’ first words of response – the who is who not to listen to, or watch, or follow.
Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.
Who not to follow. Those who claim to be Messiah, deliverer, God – those people, those movements, those things that people put in the place of God, but whose actions are the exact opposite of Godliness. Not just Hitler, Charles Manson and David Koresh … the usual “rogues’ gallery” of Scripture’s despisers. But … other things, people, movements, products, that can rise up and take over that place of ultimacy in our lives that is reserved for God. Yes, this is a warning for us, not to follow those current despisers of Scripture who have hijacked Jesus. But that’s not all.
There’s plenty more out there that would gladly take Jesus’ place at the center of our lives.
Shopping. Sex. Drugs. Sports. Money. The list keeps on growing, with every year that passes.
That’s the negative who.
But Jesus also speaks positively as well.
Of another Who … who? YOU. You, Jesus says to his disciples … you, who must pay attention … don’t be alarmed, but endure.
Bad stuff will happen to you, disciples … Jesus says. And it did then … in the past, Jesus’ followers were persecuted, they suffered, they were killed. By the Romans. By their own people. In concentration camps.
Not in this country today, to be sure – at least, nothing like what Jesus lays out here – though more than a few of us have taken our lumps from zealous fundamentalists along the way. But certainly at the hands of dictators and totalitarian rulers in other places in the world … in Africa, in China, in the Mideast ... in those places, Christians continue to suffer physically.
But Jesus says, endure. The Spirit will give you words to say on my behalf, disciples; especially when you get into trouble. The One who watches over me will watch over you, disciples, and care for you. Endure.
Endure, disciples. Because I’ve already told you everything. There are no secrets here.
Who? Jesus says, You, disciples; you who follow me. If you’ve watched, if you’ve listened, you’ve seen everything there is to see.
There is no secret wisdom, no special caste of the elect, no private showing or trial group or selected test audience who will get a sneak preview or, better yet, “a little better than the average Christian” status bestowed on those who would get beamed up, away from all this so they can sit and watch the poor slobs left on earth go through the time of tribulation … no, Jesus says it’s all been out there from the beginning, everything you and I need for a faithful life which will help us endure in the face of everything he describes here.
The washing of baptism is public – and so is the promise Jesus gives … “your sins are forgiven.” The eating and drinking at his table is public – and so is the promise Jesus gives … “given and shed for you, for forgiveness, for healing, for life.” The community gathered around him is public – Jesus does nothing in secret; he preaches and proclaims God’s welcoming and favor and love; he heals and makes whole; he raises the dead; he suffers and dies on a cross in full public view – is buried in a public place – and when he is raised from the dead where does he go? Straight to his disciples, so everyone may know!
There are no secrets Jesus is keeping hidden, no Bible code, no tacked together Scripture formula for deducing the time, the day, the WHAT of The End.
You’ve seen it, you’ve received it; you’ve been washed and fed, welcomed and sent to live it.
So now … keep awake and watch.
Who? You, disciples.
When will all this be? I don’t know. Jesus doesn’t say. No one knows; neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
Knowledge is power, they say, and here, it’s especially true … the disciples didn’t know … Martin Luther didn’t know … Jack Van Impe doesn’t know … the authors of “Left Behind” don’t know … and we don’t know.
So we need to endure. We are called to do just as Jesus charges us, in that final sentence of our text:
By your endurance you will gain your souls.
Endure, disciples. We have work to do while Jesus is away. We’ve been given the gift of time, time of life, lives of time, time to tell, time to show, in living that the Christian life, the life of a Christian, is not a big negative, not a big “no,” not coercion and criticism and condemnation … no, it’s about living like Jesus. Inviting, welcoming, standing up firmly for the Word of God which calls us into lives of service and care for our neighbor, care for each other.
We have work to do. Which will get us involved. So we had better receive all that God wants to give us to strengthen our faith, to be prepared, to be ready … we must gather in worship, AS OFTEN AS WE ARE PHYSICALLY ABLE … and outside of worship, we must hear and read and study and pray and discuss and live the Word …. watching things take place, being ready for The Day, trusting, assured, that when it comes, it is HE … Jesus … Jesus … God’s flesh and blood, real promise of light and life, healing and forgiveness, wholeness, peace, salvation for the whole world … Jesus is The End.
The Son of Righteousness … he will arise … for you, for me, for all the world … with healing, with LIFE, in his wings.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
10 November 2013
“Do you have to eat, or get your hair cut, in heaven?”
Luke 20:27-38 / Job 19:23-27a
OT 32C
10 November 2013
It’s been said that a good teacher encourages her students to ask questions. A good teacher wants to be sure that his students are engaged with what’s being presented, that they aren’t just sitting back and letting it wash all over them. A good teacher wants to have give and take, back and forth, with her class, to broaden the whole experience of learning. “There are no ridiculous questions,” we’ve all been told; in many different types of classrooms, and many different situations, we’ve all been asked to ask. It’s a good thought, a noble thought, an optimistic thought, “ask away, about anything, and we’ll talk about it.”
But the reality behind that statement is, well, different. Because we know that there is such a thing as a ridiculous question.
Sometimes the question shows that the one asking it really hasn’t been paying attention at all: “Could you go over that one more time, please?” even after it has been gone over, in excruciating detail, for the past half hour.
Sometimes the question is meant to forestall the inevitable – a test, some work, something that must be done that the one asking the question doesn’t want to do at all. “So, what you’re saying is, you’d like the leaves raked, into a pile? Could you tell me how you want it done, again?”
And sometimes, the question is asked to make the teacher or the one being asked the question, look stupid, to trip them up, to embarrass them. The press is quite good at asking these kind of questions. So, too, are some confirmation students.
And, coincidentally, so are the Sadducees in today’s Gospel reading.
Now, on the surface, their question looks innocent enough. They were just being good Bible scholars and asked Jesus, a rabbi, a teacher, a question about a law of Moses that appears in the Hebrew Bible. Deuteronomy 25 verses 5 and 6, to be exact:
If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.
This practice was known as Levirite marriage, and although it may sound strange to twenty-first century ears, if we think about it, we can understand why it would have been practiced, in a time and place where agriculture was the main way of making a living, and men alone determined the course of history. To inherit the family land, to keep wealth from being concentrated in just a few families, there had to be a male son born to the dead father, and this was a way that a man could live on even if he left no natural children, he could still have left an inheritance for the future, through his brother.
So the question the Sadducees asked Jesus reflected a practice of Israel, a law of Moses.
A little far-fetched, perhaps … seven brothers, all marrying the same woman, all dying … it sounds more like the plot of a modern mystery novel rather than a Biblical story … and you’ve got to believe that those brothers must not have been too smart … after the second or third brother died, wouldn’t you think that the rest of the brothers would say, “forget this, I’m out of here, she’s got to be bad luck, a jinx, or something!” But our text doesn’t reflect any of this kind of a plot … the question is asked … seven brothers, each marrying the widow, in turn, each dying, in turn …
… so, Jesus,
… in the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.
But there’s more to this question than just the words here.
And where we get a clue of this, is in the first words of our reading:
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection …
And there it is. A seemingly innocent question about an obscure part of the law of Moses, a little farfetched, yes … becomes something more. It’s a trap, a stealth question, if you will … it looks innocent enough on the surface, but then it burrows along into the one being asked, until it explodes KA-BOOM and makes the one being asked the question look like a fool.
You see, the Sadducees, even though they were asking about the resurrection, didn’t believe in it for one minute. They … the Sadducees… along with the Pharisees, were part of the Jewish leadership of Jesus’ time … but unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees believed that this life, here on earth, here and now, was it. Period.
There was and is nothing more than this … imagine there’s no heaven … no hell below us … the Sadducees would have really liked that song by John Lennon. Religion was to serve only the here and now; since there’s nothing more than this, the Sadducees thought, we need the rules and laws of religion to be exactly and precisely followed.
So this question they asked Jesus was designed to make him look dumb … the most far-fetched scenario put forth, seven brothers, all leaving the same widow … so when they’re raised, Jesus, who’s wife is she gonna be? Huh? Huh?
But Jesus was no sap, he wasn’t taken in by this seemingly innocent, but ridiculous question.
He answered it straight out: marriage, Levirite marriage, any kind of marriage; that is for this time, here and now. In the resurrection things will not be like they are here on earth, they will be different. People won’t marry to ensure inheritance in the resurrection. So much, Sadducees, for your ridiculous question.
But Jesus didn’t stop there, he continued: and by the way, Sadducees, there is most certainly a resurrection, because God says there is … not just in what God says, but in what God does and who God is … our God isn’t a God of the dead, people created for just this life, and no future … NO … our God is a God of the living … when my God says “I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” … this means that these our forebears live still, as will all the children of the resurrection.
Jesus wasn’t willing to give up one bit on the resurrection. The scribes present, who may well have been Pharisees, people who believed in the resurrection, congratulated Jesus on his answer.
But Jesus needed no cheering section for his answer. He trusted in it completely … indeed, he himself lived it into visible truth, when he was raised from the dead, and this whole business of Christianity, a faith that centers on the resurrection, was born ... Easter became the focal point of our faith … “I know that my Redeemer lives” became our theme song … and “death is not the end” became our hope and our trust.
For what Jesus came to us to do for us, was abolish death forever.
It’s the only truly unique thing about Christianity, after all … that we worship a God who became human, died, but did not stay dead … he rose from the dead.
Other religions have buildings and festivals and nice art to look at, they sing and pray and praise their god or gods. Other organizations get together over food and drink and have a good time. Other service groups help people, by bringing them food, and clothing, or health care.
But only Christianity claims that death is not the end, that we will be raised from the dead and inherit eternal life, because our Lord has done it already.
And that’s not an idle claim.
Because we are surrounded by death.
Every law of nature, every thing we look at, touch with our hands, see with our eyes, says that things don’t last forever … and once something is dead, it stays dead. You can’t resuscitate a dead dog, or a dead bat, or a dead leaf … or even bring back that dead shrub in the yard, no matter how hard we try, and how much mulch and fertilizer we put on it, dead is dead.
And so, as I naturally follow that kind of thinking, it must be the same with the people I care about, who have died. Great grandma and grandma and dad and mom, Damian and Gertrude, Vivian and Matt, Esther and Louie and Dollie, they are all dead, all gone, forever.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, it’s the way it looks, so that’s got to be the way it is, right?
Yet Jesus’ words, his life, his death, his resurrection, say something else to me. They make me ask another question … could what he’s saying be true? My heart wants to know … will I see my dead relatives and friends again? And is there something more for me than just getting balder and greyer and paunchier and older, until I too end up, ashes and dust?
I want to hear. I want to know.
But here’s those crazy Saduccees again. And they don’t care about my question. All they care about is, making religion serve them and make them look good, right here, right now.
They’ll put something nice together, a slick religious package. They might have a catchy name and logo … they will separate themselves from other people, distinguish themselves as being so much better than the other religious packages. They will decide who is holy, and who isn’t. They will make walls between themselves and others, and build their own little empire … and they’ll try to sell it to me, make me buy into it, to make me feel better, to make me forget about my gnawing question.
But, you know what, I don’t want any part of it.
You see, if that’s all religion is … coming up with ridiculous questions, labeling folks as “in” or “out,” based on their politics or their lifestyle or their background, making more rules and erecting walls between people … well, you can just forget it, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll find something else to occupy my time. If all religion does is nitpick over minute details, or just plain criticize people, separating, dividing, being one big negative to the world … we’re the church of people not like that … we’re the church of this alone …well, I’ve seen enough of that kind of behavior lately, and I don’t want to see any more.
No … the main thing we must be centered on … we who in Jesus are called to be “children of the resurrection” … is the resurrection.
We are not centered on some doctrinally pure, pristine religion that sets traps and builds walls and separates itself from “the unpure.” That’s what the Sadducees were aiming at. And there was sure a movement with a future and an appeal to others … try finding the local congregation of Sadducees in your Google Search.
No … in a world that screams and bleeds death … death is what we see, death is what we hear, sometimes death is all we feel in us … in this world … we are called to follow a leader who is The Resurrection and the Life. We are called to set everything else aside, all our assumptions, all our prejudices, indeed all that we have … so that we may be totally taken up in this Word, and then, be sent out to bring this Word of Life to others.
For this is the only Word, the only answer that will make the pain in my heart, and your heart, be healed. We miss our loved ones who have died and so want to be with them again. And only the God who promises resurrection … only our Lord Jesus Christ … gives that promise to us … in words we can hear … in water we can feel …. in bread and wine we can taste and touch and take into our very bodies … in an open and welcoming community he creates, a community of sinners, to be sure, but we are also claimed as his saints … you and me … so that our words may echo Job’s words,
I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God.
How sad, you see, to be a Sadducee. Only seeking pristine, pure … unappealing, DEAD religion. Well, they can have it.
How much better to be called into the life of faith in Jesus … a messy faith, to be sure, as we go out and bring that Word to people in all the pain and sorrow and struggle of life … but it is the only Word, the only faith which gives real hope, real comfort … a real Word of forgiveness … of healing … of a future with our God and those we love forever.
Amen.
Luke 20:27-38 / Job 19:23-27a
OT 32C
10 November 2013
It’s been said that a good teacher encourages her students to ask questions. A good teacher wants to be sure that his students are engaged with what’s being presented, that they aren’t just sitting back and letting it wash all over them. A good teacher wants to have give and take, back and forth, with her class, to broaden the whole experience of learning. “There are no ridiculous questions,” we’ve all been told; in many different types of classrooms, and many different situations, we’ve all been asked to ask. It’s a good thought, a noble thought, an optimistic thought, “ask away, about anything, and we’ll talk about it.”
But the reality behind that statement is, well, different. Because we know that there is such a thing as a ridiculous question.
Sometimes the question shows that the one asking it really hasn’t been paying attention at all: “Could you go over that one more time, please?” even after it has been gone over, in excruciating detail, for the past half hour.
Sometimes the question is meant to forestall the inevitable – a test, some work, something that must be done that the one asking the question doesn’t want to do at all. “So, what you’re saying is, you’d like the leaves raked, into a pile? Could you tell me how you want it done, again?”
And sometimes, the question is asked to make the teacher or the one being asked the question, look stupid, to trip them up, to embarrass them. The press is quite good at asking these kind of questions. So, too, are some confirmation students.
And, coincidentally, so are the Sadducees in today’s Gospel reading.
Now, on the surface, their question looks innocent enough. They were just being good Bible scholars and asked Jesus, a rabbi, a teacher, a question about a law of Moses that appears in the Hebrew Bible. Deuteronomy 25 verses 5 and 6, to be exact:
If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.
This practice was known as Levirite marriage, and although it may sound strange to twenty-first century ears, if we think about it, we can understand why it would have been practiced, in a time and place where agriculture was the main way of making a living, and men alone determined the course of history. To inherit the family land, to keep wealth from being concentrated in just a few families, there had to be a male son born to the dead father, and this was a way that a man could live on even if he left no natural children, he could still have left an inheritance for the future, through his brother.
So the question the Sadducees asked Jesus reflected a practice of Israel, a law of Moses.
A little far-fetched, perhaps … seven brothers, all marrying the same woman, all dying … it sounds more like the plot of a modern mystery novel rather than a Biblical story … and you’ve got to believe that those brothers must not have been too smart … after the second or third brother died, wouldn’t you think that the rest of the brothers would say, “forget this, I’m out of here, she’s got to be bad luck, a jinx, or something!” But our text doesn’t reflect any of this kind of a plot … the question is asked … seven brothers, each marrying the widow, in turn, each dying, in turn …
… so, Jesus,
… in the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.
But there’s more to this question than just the words here.
And where we get a clue of this, is in the first words of our reading:
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection …
And there it is. A seemingly innocent question about an obscure part of the law of Moses, a little farfetched, yes … becomes something more. It’s a trap, a stealth question, if you will … it looks innocent enough on the surface, but then it burrows along into the one being asked, until it explodes KA-BOOM and makes the one being asked the question look like a fool.
You see, the Sadducees, even though they were asking about the resurrection, didn’t believe in it for one minute. They … the Sadducees… along with the Pharisees, were part of the Jewish leadership of Jesus’ time … but unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees believed that this life, here on earth, here and now, was it. Period.
There was and is nothing more than this … imagine there’s no heaven … no hell below us … the Sadducees would have really liked that song by John Lennon. Religion was to serve only the here and now; since there’s nothing more than this, the Sadducees thought, we need the rules and laws of religion to be exactly and precisely followed.
So this question they asked Jesus was designed to make him look dumb … the most far-fetched scenario put forth, seven brothers, all leaving the same widow … so when they’re raised, Jesus, who’s wife is she gonna be? Huh? Huh?
But Jesus was no sap, he wasn’t taken in by this seemingly innocent, but ridiculous question.
He answered it straight out: marriage, Levirite marriage, any kind of marriage; that is for this time, here and now. In the resurrection things will not be like they are here on earth, they will be different. People won’t marry to ensure inheritance in the resurrection. So much, Sadducees, for your ridiculous question.
But Jesus didn’t stop there, he continued: and by the way, Sadducees, there is most certainly a resurrection, because God says there is … not just in what God says, but in what God does and who God is … our God isn’t a God of the dead, people created for just this life, and no future … NO … our God is a God of the living … when my God says “I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” … this means that these our forebears live still, as will all the children of the resurrection.
Jesus wasn’t willing to give up one bit on the resurrection. The scribes present, who may well have been Pharisees, people who believed in the resurrection, congratulated Jesus on his answer.
But Jesus needed no cheering section for his answer. He trusted in it completely … indeed, he himself lived it into visible truth, when he was raised from the dead, and this whole business of Christianity, a faith that centers on the resurrection, was born ... Easter became the focal point of our faith … “I know that my Redeemer lives” became our theme song … and “death is not the end” became our hope and our trust.
For what Jesus came to us to do for us, was abolish death forever.
It’s the only truly unique thing about Christianity, after all … that we worship a God who became human, died, but did not stay dead … he rose from the dead.
Other religions have buildings and festivals and nice art to look at, they sing and pray and praise their god or gods. Other organizations get together over food and drink and have a good time. Other service groups help people, by bringing them food, and clothing, or health care.
But only Christianity claims that death is not the end, that we will be raised from the dead and inherit eternal life, because our Lord has done it already.
And that’s not an idle claim.
Because we are surrounded by death.
Every law of nature, every thing we look at, touch with our hands, see with our eyes, says that things don’t last forever … and once something is dead, it stays dead. You can’t resuscitate a dead dog, or a dead bat, or a dead leaf … or even bring back that dead shrub in the yard, no matter how hard we try, and how much mulch and fertilizer we put on it, dead is dead.
And so, as I naturally follow that kind of thinking, it must be the same with the people I care about, who have died. Great grandma and grandma and dad and mom, Damian and Gertrude, Vivian and Matt, Esther and Louie and Dollie, they are all dead, all gone, forever.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, it’s the way it looks, so that’s got to be the way it is, right?
Yet Jesus’ words, his life, his death, his resurrection, say something else to me. They make me ask another question … could what he’s saying be true? My heart wants to know … will I see my dead relatives and friends again? And is there something more for me than just getting balder and greyer and paunchier and older, until I too end up, ashes and dust?
I want to hear. I want to know.
But here’s those crazy Saduccees again. And they don’t care about my question. All they care about is, making religion serve them and make them look good, right here, right now.
They’ll put something nice together, a slick religious package. They might have a catchy name and logo … they will separate themselves from other people, distinguish themselves as being so much better than the other religious packages. They will decide who is holy, and who isn’t. They will make walls between themselves and others, and build their own little empire … and they’ll try to sell it to me, make me buy into it, to make me feel better, to make me forget about my gnawing question.
But, you know what, I don’t want any part of it.
You see, if that’s all religion is … coming up with ridiculous questions, labeling folks as “in” or “out,” based on their politics or their lifestyle or their background, making more rules and erecting walls between people … well, you can just forget it, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll find something else to occupy my time. If all religion does is nitpick over minute details, or just plain criticize people, separating, dividing, being one big negative to the world … we’re the church of people not like that … we’re the church of this alone …well, I’ve seen enough of that kind of behavior lately, and I don’t want to see any more.
No … the main thing we must be centered on … we who in Jesus are called to be “children of the resurrection” … is the resurrection.
We are not centered on some doctrinally pure, pristine religion that sets traps and builds walls and separates itself from “the unpure.” That’s what the Sadducees were aiming at. And there was sure a movement with a future and an appeal to others … try finding the local congregation of Sadducees in your Google Search.
No … in a world that screams and bleeds death … death is what we see, death is what we hear, sometimes death is all we feel in us … in this world … we are called to follow a leader who is The Resurrection and the Life. We are called to set everything else aside, all our assumptions, all our prejudices, indeed all that we have … so that we may be totally taken up in this Word, and then, be sent out to bring this Word of Life to others.
For this is the only Word, the only answer that will make the pain in my heart, and your heart, be healed. We miss our loved ones who have died and so want to be with them again. And only the God who promises resurrection … only our Lord Jesus Christ … gives that promise to us … in words we can hear … in water we can feel …. in bread and wine we can taste and touch and take into our very bodies … in an open and welcoming community he creates, a community of sinners, to be sure, but we are also claimed as his saints … you and me … so that our words may echo Job’s words,
I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God.
How sad, you see, to be a Sadducee. Only seeking pristine, pure … unappealing, DEAD religion. Well, they can have it.
How much better to be called into the life of faith in Jesus … a messy faith, to be sure, as we go out and bring that Word to people in all the pain and sorrow and struggle of life … but it is the only Word, the only faith which gives real hope, real comfort … a real Word of forgiveness … of healing … of a future with our God and those we love forever.
Amen.
Monday, November 04, 2013
3 November 2013
“Zacchaeus, the saint”
Luke 19:1-10 / Isaiah 1:10-18
Sunday of All Saints / OT 31C
3 November 2013
Today – this Sunday of All Saints – we who are the Church gather to remember and honor the Saints … those famous and not so famous, those who have touched many lives and those who may have only touched a few … including ours … those who have helped us become the people we are today … beloved parents, grandparents, spouses, friends, loved ones who through their lives have pointed us toward Jesus … some outwardly, publicly; others, through their quiet, steady, persistent witness to a Truth that was larger than just themselves.
And all that is well and good.
But for right now … I’d like us to put that image of today, those saints, those people, out of our minds … and instead … think about those people from our pasts who have been oh, so far, from what we might call “Saintly.”
The frustrating. The annoying. The obnoxious. The downright mean and out and out nasty people whose lives have crossed ours. The ones we’d rather forget than remember.
You know them. I know them. They’re those folks who, by their very presence in times and events in our lives, have done their best to ruin them … the times, the events … for us.
Maybe it’s intentional on their part … or maybe they have no idea what they’re doing and how the rest of us feel about them. It doesn’t matter; the effect is still the same. Sometimes, just their very presence, as they move into the room, sucks the fun and the life right out of the gathering. You can feel the mood change … people get uncomfortable, or at the very least, change the way they’re acting. It’s like a black cloud has descended onto the occasion, the event, the gathering.
You know them. I know them.
And being quiet, polite, righteous Christian people, we probably, likely, don’t say anything out loud when they enter the room or the party or our lives. But we sure think it. “Why’s he here? What’s she doing here? How could they have come here? It’s all spoiled, it’s all ruined now, because they’re here.”
There. Right there. You feel the tension, the knot in your stomach, the absolute lousiness of it all?
Good. Because now you and I are in the right place for today’s Gospel reading, the same place as Zacchaeus and the crowd there in Jericho.
We’ve done such a disservice to these eleven verses of Luke’s gospel over the years.
“Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he … he climbed up in the sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see, the Lord he wanted to see.”
Yecch.
That little Sunday School song makes Zacchaeus sound all cute and cuddly and clean and adorable. But it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Think instead of a short, smarmy, scuzzball character … Danny DeVito in the episodes of the “TAXI” TV show from the mid 1970s … Danny DeVito from pretty much any movie, for that matter … a nasty, money grubbing little jerk of a man who has done his best to alienate everyone around him. Yes, Zacchaeus’ name might mean “Righteous” in his native Hebrew language, but he was far, far from that … collaborating with the Roman invaders and occupiers, Zacchaeus made his living by collecting taxes (and probably charging extra so he could keep more for himself).
And the people … well, they likely thought of Zacchaeus in much the same way as we have about those frustrating, annoying, obnoxious people from our pasts … the ones who seem to have an uncanny knack of showing up at just the right moment, and ruining it for everyone.
So this isn’t a cute little Sunday School tale at all … but instead, a tough word about someone who has walled himself off from the rest of humanity by his greedy living … and those who have been on the receiving end of Zacchaeus’ greed … they’ve put up walls around him, too … isolating this virus in their midst … here, standing so high and close together, Zacchaeus can’t even see who this Jesus, who is coming to Jericho, really is.
Ah – Jericho. Jericho … the place where the Israelites followed God’s command, and the high wall which surrounded and protected the city from invaders came tumbling down. Jericho … the place from Israelite history where an outsider … Rahab, the prostitute … was saved because she heard and obeyed God’s call to help the Israelite invaders as they made their way into the promised land.
Guess what … more walls are going to fall in this Jericho story of Zacchaeus. More outsiders are going to be brought to the inside of God’s story.
I told you this is no sweet little kids’ tale.
The first wall to fall is the crowd’s will to ignore, to keep Zacchaeus out of the picture, to keep him out of their joyful day of celebrating that Jesus had finally come to their town.
Zacchaeus, resourceful, clever … no one ever should accuse him of being dumb … climbs up a tree to see Jesus.
And Jesus sees him, and calls to him, that he must stay at Zacchaeus’ house today.
Crash! But the walls don’t fall without complaint.
“All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’” “Why’s he going there? How dare he show up and show himself to Jesus, after all that he’s done. Doesn’t Jesus know that this guy is the worst … a greedy, money grubbing little traitor?”
Ah … yes … that’s true. But something has happened to him in that brief encounter high atop the sycamore tree. Zacchaeus has heard Jesus’ call to him.
And that call to Zacchaeus sets off a whole chain of events in his life. A chain of events which has as its center strand … repentance. Turning around, hearing Jesus’ call to him, and … those walls come tumblin’ down. The walls he – Zacchaeus – has built up around himself, between himself and other people, between himself and God.
It’s a word of repentance from Zacchaeus for all time …
From the past: “If I have defrauded anyone of anything …”
For the present: “Half of my possessions, Lord…”
For the future: “I will give to the poor / I will pay back four times as much.”
It’s a word of repentance which recalls Luther’s first words in his 95 Theses – the opening words of the Reformation we heard last Sunday:
When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
So Zacchaeus – Mr. Unrighteous to the crowd who had built up their walls to shut him out of their lives … really does live up to his name … Righteous … he hears Jesus’ call to repent, to turn around in his living, to realize that it’s not all about him … for isn’t the real sin of the fun-sucker, the annoying, the obnoxious … the sin of being self-centered … from this Zacchaeus hears Jesus’ call to repent, to turn and become the good steward of the treasure with which God has entrusted him in his life …
… though, yes, it’s still baby steps; did you hear Zacchaeus couch his answer a bit, “If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Maybe that’s why Jesus doesn’t say in concluding this story, “your faith has saved you,” as he does to a blind man he heals in the story right before this. Instead he says the more distanced, “Today salvation has come to this house.”
Salvation is, indeed, at the very steps of Zacchaeus’ house, as Jesus stands there. We don’t know what happened to Zacchaeus after this, we can hope and pray that “his faith saved him,” too, and he did make good everyone he’d ripped off in the past, but we can’t be sure.
What we can be certain of is that this story is just one more place, one more time, when true righteousness comes from, is found in, the person who the crowd … we … would least expect.
Once again, Jesus calls and hangs out with the “wrong” people … those most annoying, most obnoxious, the ones we’d call the furthest from God’s grace. Yet there he is, calling the scuzzballs out of the trees, going to the homes of the cheats and the fun suckers and bores and black cloud gloomy gus types.
Leaving the crowd … US … to contemplate the words they and we both have had from long ago … a word which tells us where true righteousness, saintliness lies … not in our doing and being, our self-righteous living … if we would have the ears to hear …
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
“The entire life of believers (is) to be one of repentance.” Lord, have mercy.
For the grumbling we’ve done and the walls we’ve put up which have separated us from others, all your children, created and sustained in your image. Lord, have mercy.
For not considering others first … their motivations … their needs … for our being too much like the crowd, unable to “get it” that those we consider to be like Zacchaeus would, could and do seek your salvation. Lord, have mercy.
For our readiness to stonewall up into being a self-righteous people … too rule and law bound for our own good, or for that of anyone else … rather than hearing and heeding your call to repentance which forms us into people of grace and forgiveness and salvation. Lord, have mercy.
How blessed are those whose sins are forgiven.
In the mercy of almighty God, I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Today salvation has come to this house … for the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.
May your walls keep coming down today, and the next, and the next … so that when the Son of Man stands on the doorstep of your lives, you, like Zacchaeus, will hear and heed his call into the way of salvation … the way of All Saints … in him. Amen.
Luke 19:1-10 / Isaiah 1:10-18
Sunday of All Saints / OT 31C
3 November 2013
Today – this Sunday of All Saints – we who are the Church gather to remember and honor the Saints … those famous and not so famous, those who have touched many lives and those who may have only touched a few … including ours … those who have helped us become the people we are today … beloved parents, grandparents, spouses, friends, loved ones who through their lives have pointed us toward Jesus … some outwardly, publicly; others, through their quiet, steady, persistent witness to a Truth that was larger than just themselves.
And all that is well and good.
But for right now … I’d like us to put that image of today, those saints, those people, out of our minds … and instead … think about those people from our pasts who have been oh, so far, from what we might call “Saintly.”
The frustrating. The annoying. The obnoxious. The downright mean and out and out nasty people whose lives have crossed ours. The ones we’d rather forget than remember.
You know them. I know them. They’re those folks who, by their very presence in times and events in our lives, have done their best to ruin them … the times, the events … for us.
Maybe it’s intentional on their part … or maybe they have no idea what they’re doing and how the rest of us feel about them. It doesn’t matter; the effect is still the same. Sometimes, just their very presence, as they move into the room, sucks the fun and the life right out of the gathering. You can feel the mood change … people get uncomfortable, or at the very least, change the way they’re acting. It’s like a black cloud has descended onto the occasion, the event, the gathering.
You know them. I know them.
And being quiet, polite, righteous Christian people, we probably, likely, don’t say anything out loud when they enter the room or the party or our lives. But we sure think it. “Why’s he here? What’s she doing here? How could they have come here? It’s all spoiled, it’s all ruined now, because they’re here.”
There. Right there. You feel the tension, the knot in your stomach, the absolute lousiness of it all?
Good. Because now you and I are in the right place for today’s Gospel reading, the same place as Zacchaeus and the crowd there in Jericho.
We’ve done such a disservice to these eleven verses of Luke’s gospel over the years.
“Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he … he climbed up in the sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see, the Lord he wanted to see.”
Yecch.
That little Sunday School song makes Zacchaeus sound all cute and cuddly and clean and adorable. But it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Think instead of a short, smarmy, scuzzball character … Danny DeVito in the episodes of the “TAXI” TV show from the mid 1970s … Danny DeVito from pretty much any movie, for that matter … a nasty, money grubbing little jerk of a man who has done his best to alienate everyone around him. Yes, Zacchaeus’ name might mean “Righteous” in his native Hebrew language, but he was far, far from that … collaborating with the Roman invaders and occupiers, Zacchaeus made his living by collecting taxes (and probably charging extra so he could keep more for himself).
And the people … well, they likely thought of Zacchaeus in much the same way as we have about those frustrating, annoying, obnoxious people from our pasts … the ones who seem to have an uncanny knack of showing up at just the right moment, and ruining it for everyone.
So this isn’t a cute little Sunday School tale at all … but instead, a tough word about someone who has walled himself off from the rest of humanity by his greedy living … and those who have been on the receiving end of Zacchaeus’ greed … they’ve put up walls around him, too … isolating this virus in their midst … here, standing so high and close together, Zacchaeus can’t even see who this Jesus, who is coming to Jericho, really is.
Ah – Jericho. Jericho … the place where the Israelites followed God’s command, and the high wall which surrounded and protected the city from invaders came tumbling down. Jericho … the place from Israelite history where an outsider … Rahab, the prostitute … was saved because she heard and obeyed God’s call to help the Israelite invaders as they made their way into the promised land.
Guess what … more walls are going to fall in this Jericho story of Zacchaeus. More outsiders are going to be brought to the inside of God’s story.
I told you this is no sweet little kids’ tale.
The first wall to fall is the crowd’s will to ignore, to keep Zacchaeus out of the picture, to keep him out of their joyful day of celebrating that Jesus had finally come to their town.
Zacchaeus, resourceful, clever … no one ever should accuse him of being dumb … climbs up a tree to see Jesus.
And Jesus sees him, and calls to him, that he must stay at Zacchaeus’ house today.
Crash! But the walls don’t fall without complaint.
“All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’” “Why’s he going there? How dare he show up and show himself to Jesus, after all that he’s done. Doesn’t Jesus know that this guy is the worst … a greedy, money grubbing little traitor?”
Ah … yes … that’s true. But something has happened to him in that brief encounter high atop the sycamore tree. Zacchaeus has heard Jesus’ call to him.
And that call to Zacchaeus sets off a whole chain of events in his life. A chain of events which has as its center strand … repentance. Turning around, hearing Jesus’ call to him, and … those walls come tumblin’ down. The walls he – Zacchaeus – has built up around himself, between himself and other people, between himself and God.
It’s a word of repentance from Zacchaeus for all time …
From the past: “If I have defrauded anyone of anything …”
For the present: “Half of my possessions, Lord…”
For the future: “I will give to the poor / I will pay back four times as much.”
It’s a word of repentance which recalls Luther’s first words in his 95 Theses – the opening words of the Reformation we heard last Sunday:
When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
So Zacchaeus – Mr. Unrighteous to the crowd who had built up their walls to shut him out of their lives … really does live up to his name … Righteous … he hears Jesus’ call to repent, to turn around in his living, to realize that it’s not all about him … for isn’t the real sin of the fun-sucker, the annoying, the obnoxious … the sin of being self-centered … from this Zacchaeus hears Jesus’ call to repent, to turn and become the good steward of the treasure with which God has entrusted him in his life …
… though, yes, it’s still baby steps; did you hear Zacchaeus couch his answer a bit, “If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Maybe that’s why Jesus doesn’t say in concluding this story, “your faith has saved you,” as he does to a blind man he heals in the story right before this. Instead he says the more distanced, “Today salvation has come to this house.”
Salvation is, indeed, at the very steps of Zacchaeus’ house, as Jesus stands there. We don’t know what happened to Zacchaeus after this, we can hope and pray that “his faith saved him,” too, and he did make good everyone he’d ripped off in the past, but we can’t be sure.
What we can be certain of is that this story is just one more place, one more time, when true righteousness comes from, is found in, the person who the crowd … we … would least expect.
Once again, Jesus calls and hangs out with the “wrong” people … those most annoying, most obnoxious, the ones we’d call the furthest from God’s grace. Yet there he is, calling the scuzzballs out of the trees, going to the homes of the cheats and the fun suckers and bores and black cloud gloomy gus types.
Leaving the crowd … US … to contemplate the words they and we both have had from long ago … a word which tells us where true righteousness, saintliness lies … not in our doing and being, our self-righteous living … if we would have the ears to hear …
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
“The entire life of believers (is) to be one of repentance.” Lord, have mercy.
For the grumbling we’ve done and the walls we’ve put up which have separated us from others, all your children, created and sustained in your image. Lord, have mercy.
For not considering others first … their motivations … their needs … for our being too much like the crowd, unable to “get it” that those we consider to be like Zacchaeus would, could and do seek your salvation. Lord, have mercy.
For our readiness to stonewall up into being a self-righteous people … too rule and law bound for our own good, or for that of anyone else … rather than hearing and heeding your call to repentance which forms us into people of grace and forgiveness and salvation. Lord, have mercy.
How blessed are those whose sins are forgiven.
In the mercy of almighty God, I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Today salvation has come to this house … for the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.
May your walls keep coming down today, and the next, and the next … so that when the Son of Man stands on the doorstep of your lives, you, like Zacchaeus, will hear and heed his call into the way of salvation … the way of All Saints … in him. Amen.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
27 October 2013
“Jesus … willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance”
Luke 18:9-14
OT 30C / Reformation Sunday
27 October 2013
Out of love and zeal for truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following theses will be publicly discussed at Wittenberg under the chairmanship of the reverend father Martin Lutther,1 Master of Arts and Sacred Theology and regularly appointed Lecturer on these subjects at that place. He requests that those who cannot be present to debate orally with us will do so by letter.2
In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matt. 4:17] he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
So begins our initial causing document … the instigation, the “point to it” reason that we are all here today … in a building, assembled as an incorporated faith community, named Lutheran … those are the opening words of the 95 Theses, hammered by the Augustinian monk Martin Luther on the church door at Wittenberg, Germany on the eve of All Saints’ Day some 497 years ago this coming Thursday, October 31, 1517.
Maybe you didn’t know that about Luther … about the Reformation … about what became the Lutheran Church around the world.
Yes … later … what it all became, what it turned into, is of course the stuff of legends and books and movies. A little German monk takes on the multi-national banking system, a banking system which had formed an unholy alliance with the Vatican … he translates the Bible into the people’s common language, paves the way for contemporary music to be sung in praise and worship, sets the wheels in motion for the American Revolution and modern democracy … you could even say he’s responsible for Bellevue and Redmond, Bill Gates and Co., because he was the first effective user of modern word-publishing technology.
Yes, he did all that.
But first, but first, Martin Luther had a beef with the Church about … repentance.
Namely, that the Church of his time had turned “turning” … for that, “turning,” “turning around, re-turning” is the literal meaning of the New Testament word we translate as “repent” … the Church had turned “turning” into … a work, an enterprise, a whole economy of scale, designed to entrap people and keep them in their place, keep them down without hope of newness of life, keep them on the gerbil-wheel of needing to do do do enough to earn forgiveness, righteousness, before God … but never quite getting there.
Luther knew that wasn’t repentance. It might have been penance … doing something to earn forgiveness … but it wasn’t repentance.
So what is repentance? This is what Luther writes in his Small Catechism:
Repentance … confession … consists of two parts. One is that we confess our sins. The other is that we receive forgiveness … and firmly believe that we are forgiven by God.
That’s it. And that rhythm, according to Luther, is what our whole lives are to be about.
It’s so simple, so clear. And yet, so many have and continue to be offended by this simple word … getting it so wrong so often, that we need to revisit this most basic of discipleship concepts … the freeing word, brought to people by Christ once, and then renewed, throughout history, by Reformers such as the apostle Paul and Martin Luther and even in our day by Rob Bell and Nadia Bolz Weber and other contemporary discoverers of the Gospel’s word of freedom and forgiveness for us.
And our Gospel text today will give us, latter-day seekers, pursuers, pilgrims of Reformation, re-formation of ourselves and of the church, of the church and of our society, our text gives us a good vehicle to explore, and think on, and discuss, and live forth, we who are called into, charged with, carrying this standard into the world.
It is a short and simple word … six brief verses for us, for which Luke gives us a preamble, a statement of Jesus’ purpose in telling the parable:
(Jesus) also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt:
This parable. This parable which follows immediately after the parable of the unjust judge, which was our text last week. This parable, which follows for us two, three weeks after those stories of thankfulness and “enough,” Jesus healing the lepers and only one returns to give thanks, Jesus talks about having faith as a mustard seed, that faith which is “enough” for him, and for us.
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
Now, at that sentence, we need to stop and take stock. We must not insert ourselves in our own 21st century time, into this story, and assume our position, our hearing, is the right one.
It is our modern hearing of that first sentence that sets us up.
We hear “Pharisee” and we think, oh, big religious jerk. We hear “tax collector” and think, oh, poor guy, misused and misjudged by Jesus’ society, an outsider, precisely the person who Jesus would choose to be with … not the Pharisee.
That’s our modern interpretation, our modern hearing.
But we are way, way off from where Jesus’ original audience was.
People of Jesus’ time and place would have heard “Pharisee” and thought “oh, there’s a respected religious leader, one to whom honor is due.”
Jesus’ hearers would have hears “tax collector” and thought “scumbag … rotten, cheating scoundrel, dirty collaborator against their own people, their own religion … sold out to collect taxes for the despised Roman invaders.”
They would have considered the tax collector to be as bad of a guy as the unjust judge in last week’s Gospel text.
So now that we’ve got that straight, let’s hear how they pray.
The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”
Putting on our first century ears … our Pharisee sounds like a model citizen, and a model religious figure, doesn’t he? He’s a pillar of the church. He gives the tithe to God; he participates in the physical self-denial of his religion. And he’s thankful that he is not disobedient to God’s Word.
And yet … his prayer is neither one of repentance nor gratitude. It’s all about him.
Look, listen for what it is that he gives thanks:
I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
He’s thankful to God for this?
Who has brought this state, this condition, upon this Pharisee anyway, that he’s not like these “bad” people? Not God. The Pharisee has done it all himself … and what has he done?
Just kept the law, the rules, rules of his religion, rules of his society.
So should this Pharisee be congratulated for that?
Jesus sure doesn’t think so.
Hear Jesus’ word in the Gospel reading from a chapter earlier, from our worship a couple of weeks ago:
Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”
And there’s also no repentance in this Pharisee’s words … he’s thankful that he’s not like other people, but he’s certainly not repenting, in these short sentences, from how he lives his life … he’s self-righteous. A man with no mercy, no compassion toward these others, who are his neighbors.
In contrast, observe the tax collector:
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
The tax collector repents … he repents of what he’s done (the text isn’t clear, but perhaps he’s cheated both taxpayers (by charging them too much) and the government (by holding back some of what he’s received, for himself). He repents of what he’s left undone … namely, he hasn’t lived as part of the community. His body language tells that tale …he stands far off, not even looking up to heaven but beating his breast.
Those two phrases right there are bright blinking signals for how he feels, and how God feels about him.
Standing far off … not by himself as the Pharisee, by himself at the Temple, so others could see how pious he was … no, this tax collector stands far off … at a distance … and we remember another one who while he was far off, was swept off his feet in welcome … the prodigal or lost son, whose father runs out to greet him while he was still far off … he doesn’t even give his lost son a chance to come near and explain himself. Neither does this tax collector come near … he simply cries,
God, be merciful to me, a sinner!
Beating his breast … this was an ancient practice of those who were in sorrow or mourning … a little later in Luke’s Gospel, those who were present for Jesus’ death on the cross, after it was all over, are said to have returned home beating their breasts.
And so we see how Jesus feels about this tax collector and his repentance:
I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.
And there … right there … is the patent offense of this text. And not just the offense of this text … but the offense of the Cross … the offense of the Christ.
For right here, Jesus shows us, tells us what the entire life of believers is to be about.
REPENTANCE.
The Pharisee prays in precisely the way everyone would have expected of him. The “pillar of the church” lives into everyone’s expectations of him. He does all the right stuff, makes all the right moves, gives in all the right ways, and stays away from all the wrong people.
And yet … he’s not justified; he’s not brought into God’s justice, he’s not made right with God.
The jerk, the conniver, the swindler, the thief … he stands far off, away from everyone else, not even looking up to heaven, but beating his chest and saying “God, be merciful to me a sinner” … and he goes home justified; he is made right with God. He, like the persistent widow in last week’s text, he goes home with God’s justice in hand.
This is a text meant to offend the hearer.
As well it should.
Because repentance is not all about us.
But neither is it all about the Pharisee, nor the tax collector.
Did you notice how many times the Pharisee says “I”?
I thank you that I am not like other people … I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of my income.
I – I – I – I.
But so does the tax collector refer to himself.
God be merciful to me a sinner!
What kind of a confession is that?
Not one I would use. Nor, probably, would you.
It’s still all about them.
Which is an appropriate word of warning for us, today, too. Of the “pillars of the church” – we might think, “oh, they’re so good, they’ve just got to go to heaven when they die because of all the good they did and do in this life.”
But that’s not the way God works.
And neither is, “Woe is me, I’m not good enough” … sliding downhill into “I’m a no good, miserable, wretched excuse for a human being … God would never, ever want anything to do with me.”
Both those extremes … are just that, extremes. Ditches into which we fall, ditches where we are pulled away from discipleship … away from following Jesus, away from serving each other.
Perhaps more of us fall into that second ditch than the first … we are Lutheran after all … but being too self-degrading and shameful is just as sinful as being self-exalting and arrogant.
Both those extremes … focus on them … Pharisee … tax collector … sinner … you … me … us.
But remember …
It’s not all about us.
It is all about God … our God who wants to show us that in Jesus … the entire life of believers is to be one of repentance. In other words, it’s all about God.
This Word is patently offensive. Neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector “get what they deserve.”
What this parable is all about, is that our God, in Jesus, is all about unexpected reversals of fortune, and judgment rooted, not in condemnation, but in mercy.
Unexpected? Yes.
(Jesus) also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.
I tell you, this man … this scumbag jerk of a tax collector … went down to his home justified … made right with God … not because of his confession, not even because of his humility … (because then the parable wouldn’t make any sense, would it?) … no, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other because God chooses to do so.
Scumbags are justified, and pillars of the church are not.
The exalted will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Neither gets what he deserves.
Because this Word, this repentance, this life-rhythm into which Jesus calls us … it is all about God … our God, who in Jesus calls us, gathers us, feeds us with the meal of reconciliation, peace, forgiveness and life … and says to us one and all … pillars of the church, and scumbags alike …
I forgive you all your sins.
The Word which calls forth from us … deep, abiding thankfulness. Thankfulness that shows and lives itself forth in the freedom of living, and serving, others.
Always. Constantly. Forever … and always, moving out from that posture of repentance … so that we know whose we are and why we are doing and serving, living and loving and growing in the faith and service of God’s Word of Life … for the life that is to come and the life that is now.
When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matt. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
Repent. Be turned around by Christ’s call to us, to hear Christ’s Word to us … be turned around, and then, renewed and reformed from that posture of repentance. Again, and again, and again.
THAT’S what it means to be a Lutheran Christian in God’s World.
May we live into that Word faithfully … may we continue to hear God’s call to repentance, receive God’s word of forgiveness, and respond to God’s call to service … for this is the cycle of life that really is life, for Jesus’ sake, for our sake, for the sake of this world God loves.
Amen.
Luke 18:9-14
OT 30C / Reformation Sunday
27 October 2013
Out of love and zeal for truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following theses will be publicly discussed at Wittenberg under the chairmanship of the reverend father Martin Lutther,1 Master of Arts and Sacred Theology and regularly appointed Lecturer on these subjects at that place. He requests that those who cannot be present to debate orally with us will do so by letter.2
In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matt. 4:17] he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
So begins our initial causing document … the instigation, the “point to it” reason that we are all here today … in a building, assembled as an incorporated faith community, named Lutheran … those are the opening words of the 95 Theses, hammered by the Augustinian monk Martin Luther on the church door at Wittenberg, Germany on the eve of All Saints’ Day some 497 years ago this coming Thursday, October 31, 1517.
Maybe you didn’t know that about Luther … about the Reformation … about what became the Lutheran Church around the world.
Yes … later … what it all became, what it turned into, is of course the stuff of legends and books and movies. A little German monk takes on the multi-national banking system, a banking system which had formed an unholy alliance with the Vatican … he translates the Bible into the people’s common language, paves the way for contemporary music to be sung in praise and worship, sets the wheels in motion for the American Revolution and modern democracy … you could even say he’s responsible for Bellevue and Redmond, Bill Gates and Co., because he was the first effective user of modern word-publishing technology.
Yes, he did all that.
But first, but first, Martin Luther had a beef with the Church about … repentance.
Namely, that the Church of his time had turned “turning” … for that, “turning,” “turning around, re-turning” is the literal meaning of the New Testament word we translate as “repent” … the Church had turned “turning” into … a work, an enterprise, a whole economy of scale, designed to entrap people and keep them in their place, keep them down without hope of newness of life, keep them on the gerbil-wheel of needing to do do do enough to earn forgiveness, righteousness, before God … but never quite getting there.
Luther knew that wasn’t repentance. It might have been penance … doing something to earn forgiveness … but it wasn’t repentance.
So what is repentance? This is what Luther writes in his Small Catechism:
Repentance … confession … consists of two parts. One is that we confess our sins. The other is that we receive forgiveness … and firmly believe that we are forgiven by God.
That’s it. And that rhythm, according to Luther, is what our whole lives are to be about.
It’s so simple, so clear. And yet, so many have and continue to be offended by this simple word … getting it so wrong so often, that we need to revisit this most basic of discipleship concepts … the freeing word, brought to people by Christ once, and then renewed, throughout history, by Reformers such as the apostle Paul and Martin Luther and even in our day by Rob Bell and Nadia Bolz Weber and other contemporary discoverers of the Gospel’s word of freedom and forgiveness for us.
And our Gospel text today will give us, latter-day seekers, pursuers, pilgrims of Reformation, re-formation of ourselves and of the church, of the church and of our society, our text gives us a good vehicle to explore, and think on, and discuss, and live forth, we who are called into, charged with, carrying this standard into the world.
It is a short and simple word … six brief verses for us, for which Luke gives us a preamble, a statement of Jesus’ purpose in telling the parable:
(Jesus) also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt:
This parable. This parable which follows immediately after the parable of the unjust judge, which was our text last week. This parable, which follows for us two, three weeks after those stories of thankfulness and “enough,” Jesus healing the lepers and only one returns to give thanks, Jesus talks about having faith as a mustard seed, that faith which is “enough” for him, and for us.
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
Now, at that sentence, we need to stop and take stock. We must not insert ourselves in our own 21st century time, into this story, and assume our position, our hearing, is the right one.
It is our modern hearing of that first sentence that sets us up.
We hear “Pharisee” and we think, oh, big religious jerk. We hear “tax collector” and think, oh, poor guy, misused and misjudged by Jesus’ society, an outsider, precisely the person who Jesus would choose to be with … not the Pharisee.
That’s our modern interpretation, our modern hearing.
But we are way, way off from where Jesus’ original audience was.
People of Jesus’ time and place would have heard “Pharisee” and thought “oh, there’s a respected religious leader, one to whom honor is due.”
Jesus’ hearers would have hears “tax collector” and thought “scumbag … rotten, cheating scoundrel, dirty collaborator against their own people, their own religion … sold out to collect taxes for the despised Roman invaders.”
They would have considered the tax collector to be as bad of a guy as the unjust judge in last week’s Gospel text.
So now that we’ve got that straight, let’s hear how they pray.
The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”
Putting on our first century ears … our Pharisee sounds like a model citizen, and a model religious figure, doesn’t he? He’s a pillar of the church. He gives the tithe to God; he participates in the physical self-denial of his religion. And he’s thankful that he is not disobedient to God’s Word.
And yet … his prayer is neither one of repentance nor gratitude. It’s all about him.
Look, listen for what it is that he gives thanks:
I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
He’s thankful to God for this?
Who has brought this state, this condition, upon this Pharisee anyway, that he’s not like these “bad” people? Not God. The Pharisee has done it all himself … and what has he done?
Just kept the law, the rules, rules of his religion, rules of his society.
So should this Pharisee be congratulated for that?
Jesus sure doesn’t think so.
Hear Jesus’ word in the Gospel reading from a chapter earlier, from our worship a couple of weeks ago:
Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”
And there’s also no repentance in this Pharisee’s words … he’s thankful that he’s not like other people, but he’s certainly not repenting, in these short sentences, from how he lives his life … he’s self-righteous. A man with no mercy, no compassion toward these others, who are his neighbors.
In contrast, observe the tax collector:
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
The tax collector repents … he repents of what he’s done (the text isn’t clear, but perhaps he’s cheated both taxpayers (by charging them too much) and the government (by holding back some of what he’s received, for himself). He repents of what he’s left undone … namely, he hasn’t lived as part of the community. His body language tells that tale …he stands far off, not even looking up to heaven but beating his breast.
Those two phrases right there are bright blinking signals for how he feels, and how God feels about him.
Standing far off … not by himself as the Pharisee, by himself at the Temple, so others could see how pious he was … no, this tax collector stands far off … at a distance … and we remember another one who while he was far off, was swept off his feet in welcome … the prodigal or lost son, whose father runs out to greet him while he was still far off … he doesn’t even give his lost son a chance to come near and explain himself. Neither does this tax collector come near … he simply cries,
God, be merciful to me, a sinner!
Beating his breast … this was an ancient practice of those who were in sorrow or mourning … a little later in Luke’s Gospel, those who were present for Jesus’ death on the cross, after it was all over, are said to have returned home beating their breasts.
And so we see how Jesus feels about this tax collector and his repentance:
I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.
And there … right there … is the patent offense of this text. And not just the offense of this text … but the offense of the Cross … the offense of the Christ.
For right here, Jesus shows us, tells us what the entire life of believers is to be about.
REPENTANCE.
The Pharisee prays in precisely the way everyone would have expected of him. The “pillar of the church” lives into everyone’s expectations of him. He does all the right stuff, makes all the right moves, gives in all the right ways, and stays away from all the wrong people.
And yet … he’s not justified; he’s not brought into God’s justice, he’s not made right with God.
The jerk, the conniver, the swindler, the thief … he stands far off, away from everyone else, not even looking up to heaven, but beating his chest and saying “God, be merciful to me a sinner” … and he goes home justified; he is made right with God. He, like the persistent widow in last week’s text, he goes home with God’s justice in hand.
This is a text meant to offend the hearer.
As well it should.
Because repentance is not all about us.
But neither is it all about the Pharisee, nor the tax collector.
Did you notice how many times the Pharisee says “I”?
I thank you that I am not like other people … I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of my income.
I – I – I – I.
But so does the tax collector refer to himself.
God be merciful to me a sinner!
What kind of a confession is that?
Not one I would use. Nor, probably, would you.
It’s still all about them.
Which is an appropriate word of warning for us, today, too. Of the “pillars of the church” – we might think, “oh, they’re so good, they’ve just got to go to heaven when they die because of all the good they did and do in this life.”
But that’s not the way God works.
And neither is, “Woe is me, I’m not good enough” … sliding downhill into “I’m a no good, miserable, wretched excuse for a human being … God would never, ever want anything to do with me.”
Both those extremes … are just that, extremes. Ditches into which we fall, ditches where we are pulled away from discipleship … away from following Jesus, away from serving each other.
Perhaps more of us fall into that second ditch than the first … we are Lutheran after all … but being too self-degrading and shameful is just as sinful as being self-exalting and arrogant.
Both those extremes … focus on them … Pharisee … tax collector … sinner … you … me … us.
But remember …
It’s not all about us.
It is all about God … our God who wants to show us that in Jesus … the entire life of believers is to be one of repentance. In other words, it’s all about God.
This Word is patently offensive. Neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector “get what they deserve.”
What this parable is all about, is that our God, in Jesus, is all about unexpected reversals of fortune, and judgment rooted, not in condemnation, but in mercy.
Unexpected? Yes.
(Jesus) also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.
I tell you, this man … this scumbag jerk of a tax collector … went down to his home justified … made right with God … not because of his confession, not even because of his humility … (because then the parable wouldn’t make any sense, would it?) … no, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other because God chooses to do so.
Scumbags are justified, and pillars of the church are not.
The exalted will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Neither gets what he deserves.
Because this Word, this repentance, this life-rhythm into which Jesus calls us … it is all about God … our God, who in Jesus calls us, gathers us, feeds us with the meal of reconciliation, peace, forgiveness and life … and says to us one and all … pillars of the church, and scumbags alike …
I forgive you all your sins.
The Word which calls forth from us … deep, abiding thankfulness. Thankfulness that shows and lives itself forth in the freedom of living, and serving, others.
Always. Constantly. Forever … and always, moving out from that posture of repentance … so that we know whose we are and why we are doing and serving, living and loving and growing in the faith and service of God’s Word of Life … for the life that is to come and the life that is now.
When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matt. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
Repent. Be turned around by Christ’s call to us, to hear Christ’s Word to us … be turned around, and then, renewed and reformed from that posture of repentance. Again, and again, and again.
THAT’S what it means to be a Lutheran Christian in God’s World.
May we live into that Word faithfully … may we continue to hear God’s call to repentance, receive God’s word of forgiveness, and respond to God’s call to service … for this is the cycle of life that really is life, for Jesus’ sake, for our sake, for the sake of this world God loves.
Amen.
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