United Lutheran Church of Red Wing, Minnesota
One Family in Christ 
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United Lutheran Church of Red Wing, Minnesota One Family in Christ
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Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent Beloved… I want you to picture an old-time sailing ship from back in
the early days of America’s history, an ocean-going ship fashioned of wood and
tar and rope and canvas, freshly painted and stocked with supplies on its maiden
voyage across the Atlantic. Now
imagine that vessel far out to sea, the only thing around in any direction is
the ocean, but that ocean is as smooth as glass and the boat is sitting still.
The sailors haven’t even bothered to hoist the sails, because there is
no wind, and without any wind, the ship is going nowhere. You can imagine the frustration of the sailors on this
well-built, well-designed vessel floundering in the doldrums.
But it’s more than frustration, because that ship needs to keep moving
or the supplies will run out before it finds its destination.
A ship going nowhere is a ship that is dying. Now you could holler and scream at the sailors on the ship
to get moving, try harder, work smarter, put your back into it, but what are
they going to do? “All right
everybody, inhale! Exhale!
Inhale! Exhale!”
Come on. Even the ship’s
preacher only has the wind for a mile or so.
The sailors need more power than they can raise on their own. For some Christians, this picture is exactly what’s
happening to them spiritually. For
whatever reason, maybe a reason they can’t even explain, they feel stuck,
stranded, like they are on a really nice boat that is going nowhere. And just like for sailors, it’s more than just frustration.
There is real danger in sitting still when Jesus is calling us to follow
him, to move, to grow as disciples, to become more than what we are.
It is deadly to be left without power.
A Christian going nowhere is a Christian whose faith is dying. Just like with the sailors, you can holler and cajole such
people to get themselves squared away, but the fact is that they don’t have
the power to do it on their own. Neither
does anyone in this room. I cannot
by my own understanding or effort even believe in Jesus Christ, let alone become
more like him as my Lord. The
sailors need the power of the wind. We
do, too. We need the Holy Wind --
the power of the Holy Spirit. All three of our lessons for today talked about the Holy Spirit. Isaiah wrote about the Spirit of the Lord resting on the savior. Paul said in Romans, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” John the Baptist said, “Someone is coming who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. We call on the Holy Spirit several fairly often. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. When we have a baptism, we quote those lines about the Holy Spirit from Isaiah – the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. In spite of all that, you sometimes get the feeling that the Holy Spirit is the forgotten step-child of the Trinity. It’s like you have the Father and the Son, and oh yeah, don’t forget about the Holy Spirit, he’s really important too, which you only have to say when the importance of something isn’t already self-evident. This time of year, we hear more about the Christmas spirit than the Holy Spirit. We need it to be the other way around because the Christmas spirit is a nice sentiment, but the Holy Spirit is supernatural. The Christmas spirit is seasonal, and the Holy Spirit is eternal. Most importantly, the Holy Spirit is the only one who can move us, spiritually, where we need to go. The Spirit alone is our power. Our theme for this month is becoming disciples of Christ through worship. Worship needs the power of the Spirit. Jesus said, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and in truth.” Without the Holy Spirit, worship is just an hour of talk radio. Baptism is just a baby with a wet head, communion is just cardboard wafers and cheap wine. Without the Holy Spirit, the Bible is just an old book of make-believe and moralizing, and United Lutheran itself is just another civic organization. With the Spirit, worship is a real encounter with the creator of the universe and His son, who rose from the dead. Baptism is the start of a new life, communion is the tangible reality of God’s grace, the Bible is a living message from God to you, and this church, United Lutheran, is a group that it pleases God to call his chosen people. Worship needs the Spirit.
We need the Spirit. So how
do you get the Holy Spirit? You
might just as well ask how you can capture the wind.
The answer is, you don’t. The
wind catches you. The message of the Bible today is to raise the sails and
get ready because that wind is coming. Especially
if you’ve been floundering dead in the water, listen to this word from the
Bible. The kingdom of God is at
hand. New life is rising up from a
dead and forgotten stump. The God
of hope has filled us with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. The breeze is starting to pick up. Raise the sails, and when the Spirit starts to move you, let
yourself go. You’ve come here to worship today, and just walking
through the door of the church is a big part preparing for the Spirit.
It doesn’t matter whether you came because of your kid in Sunday School
or for the Lutheran coffee fix or because you like guys in white robes, whatever
was on your mind when you came through the door, you came through the door.
This is where you need to be for the wind of the Spirit to catch you. Now that you’re here, I’m asking you to raise the sails
for the Holy Spirit to move you. That
means mentally and spiritually anticipating that something is going to happen
when you worship. Let’s go beyond
just coming through the door. Let’s
come together in worship with a sense of expectation that God is going to do
something, that the wind will actually take us somewhere.
Let’s raise our sails in anticipation that we will meet the Holy
Spirit. Let’s seek out that
encounter, thirst for it, hunger for it, long for it, more than the watchmen
long for the morning. Let’s
expect that God will find us today and move us with the Spirit’s power. I’m tired of trying to row my own boat and getting nowhere. Come, Holy Spirit, stir us and move us where you want us to go. Amen. Sermon for All Saints Sunday Beloved… I want to tell you a story this morning about a person
who’s been an inspiration for millions of people, not just because he
succeeded in life but because of how he succeeded.
He found success the old-fashioned way, and even though he’s no longer
living, people still follow his old-fashioned principles all the time.
So his story is one we can’t afford to miss. It’s the story of a man who was born at the very
beginning of the first century AD. His
parents were Jewish, and like most Jewish parents of the time, they gave him a
name out of the Bible. And no, it
wasn’t Jesus – that’s a different inspiring story.
This man’s name was Saul, although you might know him by his other name
of Paul. Now even though he lived 2000 years ago, we know a lot
about him. We have more historical
sources about Paul than about people like Julius Caesar and Shakespeare.
We have a lot of things written about
him, and we have a lot of things written by
him. So we know a lot about Paul and his old-fashioned
principles for success. And one
thing Paul would tell you about himself is how hard he worked to get to the top.
Paul’s first step to success was the principle of hard work.
He disciplined himself in single-minded in pursuit of success. He went the extra mile.
He did everything he had to do and more, and he did it well. That brings us to his second step, the principle of high
standards. Paul never settled for
second. When it came to his
religion, there was no one more pious than Paul.
When it came to his morals, there was no one more respected. When
it came to his career, he studied law under one of the great professors of his
time – the famous Gamaliel; a big name, and a big honor for Paul. That brings us to his third step, the principle of
networking. After setting his high
standards and working hard to achieve them, he got connected with the right
people. He moved on from the famous
Gamaliel to join the Pharisee club, where he networked with the movers and
shakers of his community. He got
the attention of people in high places. One
who was VERY high up. That brings us to the most important principle of his
success. There was a time in
Paul’s life when he met someone that we all hope to meet one day – The Lord
Jesus Christ. That encounter with
Jesus taught him the last and most important principle, where it turned out that
his first three steps had gotten him nowhere in the kingdom of God.
His hard work and high standards and good connections had moved him
backward in God’s eyes, and this last principle, literally, took him off his
feet and threw him to the ground. That principle is the principle of grace.
It’s the principle that he was on track with God only because God had
chosen him, not at all because of his work or his knowledge or his connections.
It’s the principle that he was a saint only because God had elected him
to be a saint. It’s the principle
that success in God’s eyes comes by letting God do all the work. Now you might think, “Wait a minute.
That’s your message for success – to let someone else do all the
work? That’s the old-fashioned
principle you were talking about?” Well, I’ll tell you what, even in the business world, there’s a saying that the real old-fashioned way to make money isn’t to earn it, it’s to inherit it. And I’m telling you that Paul’s secret to success, his old-fashioned principle for disciples and saints, is that the only way to earn God’s favor is not to earn it at all, but to totally trust God do the work. There’s an old tale about a man who died and found
himself standing in line outside the pearly gates.
When it was his turn to talk to St. Peter, the blessed saint told him,
“Here’s how this works. You
tell me all the good things you have done, and I’ll give you points for each
of them. When you get to a hundred
points, you get in.” “OK,” the man replied.
“I was married to the same woman for 50 years and never cheated on her,
even in my heart.” “Wonderful,” Peter replied.
“That’s worth 3 points.” “Three points!” the man replied. “Well, I attended church all my life and supported its
ministry with my money and service.” “Terrific,” Peter replied.
“God is very proud of you. That
gets you one more point.” “One point!?” said the man, who was started to panic by
now. “How about this:
I opened a shelter for the homeless in my city and fed needy people by
the hundreds during the holidays.” “Outstanding,” Peter said.
“That’s good for two more points.” “Two points!” cried the man in desperation.
“At this rate the only way I’ll ever get in is by the grace of
God.” “Come on in,” said Peter, and he opened the door. As you look down the list of those we honor in worship
today, there are some good people who have died in the last year.
Yet not one of them, nor anyone else here, nor anyone else we’ve ever
honored, has earned the right to be called a saint.
But there are saints among those we honor and saints among us right now,
people who didn’t earn the right to be saints but inherited that right through
total trust in the Lord who earned it for us. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians says “In Christ also we
have obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of
him who accomplishes all things according to his own counsel and will.
This is the pledge of our inheritance.”
And later on he says, “that you may know what are the riches of his
glorious inheritance among the saints.” The
old-fashioned was to success isn’t to earn it, but to inherit was Christ has
earned on our behalf. My daughter Bethany will be baptized later today. She is four months old and, just like the rest of my family, she’s the most wonderful girl I’ve ever seen, and she makes her Daddy very happy. But she has done nothing to earn the gift God has for her today. Yet God has chosen her to be his own. It makes God happy to call Bethany his daughter, and through the merit of Christ, she has a glorious inheritance from her heavenly Daddy. Through the merit of Jesus, she is just as much a saint in God’s eyes as St. Paul himself. And so is every one of you. Amen. The Truth Will Make You Free Well, there is only two more days until the election, and I, like most of you, I suppose, can’t wait until it’s over. Some have said this has been the longest campaign that they can remember, and one of the most contentious. I believe that. Some have also said that this is the most important election of all times. I’m not so sure of that, because I’m not old enough to remember too many past elections, but I suspect there have been other elections and times in history that have been pretty important. What I do know is that what we will be doing on Tuesday is the cornerstone and ultimate expression of our freedom as citizens of this country – to vote. I encourage you to vote. Some have been critical of us pastors for not speaking up, or saying anything in regard to the political situation of the day, whether it be about the war in Iraq, abortion, the marriage amendment, the conflict in Israel. Some have been critical when pastors do speak up, such has been the case when our ELCA Bishop Mark Hanson has tried to speak about issues of justice and peace in the world. This often leads to questions about the role of faith in politics. How does our faith inform us? Can our faith inform us? It seems as though “faith talk” has reached new levels in the political realm. I was sitting in the hot tub at the YMCA after a racketball match, as I often do, and a man engaged me in a conversation about which of the candidates was the most religious, or faithful. It was important for him to think that our president be a man of faith. I agree with that, but I am not sure I can determine which candidate is the best Christian. There are other people and groups that would have you think that there are Christian issues and tell us “How a Christian should vote.” Jerry Falwell and the Narrow Road Committee on Pioneer Road, whoever they might be, have done the most unchristian thing by telling us how a Christian should vote, because what they have done is put the shackles of the law upon us rather than speaking a word that sets us free. They have confused the law with the Gospel.
Pastor Steve had an excellent article in a recent Uniter. He wrote: “For
one thing, faith does affect how you vote.
Faith should affect how you vote. The
Bible itself says that “those authorities that exist have been instituted by
God” Romans 13:1. The Lord gave
us the office of civil leaders and he cares about what goes on in the
government, because those decisions affect people’s lives.
If God cares about politics, people of faith cannot keep their integrity
with him if they check their faith at the political door….However, faith’s
involvement with the public sphere does NOT extend to labeling any one party as
the “Christian” party.”
Lutheran Christians are very clear about this.
In an article written a decade ago by Dan Hofrenning, a political science
professor at St. Olaf College, entitled “Jesus is not a Republican (or a
Democrat), he writes this of the so-called religious war:
Of course, Jesus in neither
Republican nor Democrat. But I have
been troubled in recent elections by some politicians who suggest their
positions reflect God’s point of view….There are powerful connections
between religion and politics. But
to claim that God favors your political agenda over your opponent’s is to risk
mocking God and reducing God’s power. The
God whom we follow suffered with us in the person of Jesus.
The Jesus whom we follow shed his blood and died for us.
Have you seen any politician suffering or dying for anyone?
Have you seen any politicians even making themselves vulnerable to each
other?
What civil leaders do for us is related to the law.
They are concerned about policy and making laws that provide order,
protection, equity, support, and concern for the most vulnerable in society. They can not, and will not, save us or our world.
Only God can do that and has done that for us in Jesus Christ.
The greatest gift of the reformation is this idea of the Freedom of the
Christian and to know that we are “saved
by grace through faith apart from works of the law.”
The truth is that we are sinful and our world is sinful.
There is nothing that we can do, including voting on Tuesday, which will
change that. Knowing and believing
that God has defeated the powers of sin and death through the death and
resurrection of Jesus sets us free, giving us the freedom to participate in the
political affairs of this world to help make it more peaceful, just, and loving.
Knowing that our future is secure in Jesus sets us free to live and be
involved loving service to our neighbors, and that is what good politics should
do, improve the lives of its citizens and promote peace and justice in the
world. We seek God’s wisdom and
guidance that what we do is in accordance to God’s will for us and the entire
world, but we must be careful not to equate what we do with the in-breaking of
the Kingdom of God. The Freedom of
the Christian transcends any political candidate, party, policy, or nation.
As our text for this morning states, “If
the son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” This truth that sets us free is found in the scriptures, the Word of God. There are lots of things that are said in the Bible, but the most important thing that the Bible proclaims is the good news of Jesus Christ. Martin Luther would say that the scriptures are the cradle of Christ, and that all scripture points to Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and prophets. As we read the Bible we learn of five truths that lead us to freedom. The first is the truth about GOD INCARNATE. The Gospel of John tells us that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” In Jesus, God became a human being in order to share with us our joys and sorrows, our frustrations and successes. The truth of God Incarnate is that we are important to God and that God cares and loves us so much that God become one of us, a human being. His name is Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” Secondly, there is the truth of GOD CRUCIFIED. There was a reason the God sent Jesus to this world. It was to do battle with sin. Because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, sin has had its way in the world. The truth is that all “are by nature sinful and unclean.” But God did not hold our sins against us. God sent his only Son Jesus to die and the cross for us. In the meaning of the Second Article of the Apostle’s Creed, Martin Luther wrote: At great cost he has saved and redeemed me, a lost and condemned person. He has freed me from sin, death, and the power of the devil – not with silver or gold, but with his holy and precious blood and his innocent suffering and death. The truth found in the cross of Christ is that our sins are forgiven. God has mended our broken relationship, reconciling us and the world back to God, giving to us a new relationship with him. God has declared us not guilty through his saving act on the cross.
The third truth is GOD
RESURRECTED. On the third day
after his death, God raised Jesus from the dead, destroying the power of death
once and for all. The truth of
Jesus’ resurrection is that there is new life for us now as we live and hope
for everlasting life for when we die. For
all who believe in Jesus as the living Lord and Savior, the promise is this: “Because I live, you
will live also.” Fourthly, there is the truth GOD EXALTED. Following the fifty days Jesus walked on this earth after he was raised from the dead, Jesus was lifted up into heaven to sit at the right hand of God. Jesus had completed all that his Father in heaven had commanded him to do, and the time had come for the Father to glorify the Son. The truth in Jesus’ exaltation into heaven is that Jesus is the living Lord, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. As the Bible says, “every knee should bend in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
And finally, there is the truth of GOD
EVER-PRESENT. Before he left
this world, Jesus promised to send to us a Comforter. Through his Holy Spirit, we continue to experience the
Lord’s presence and love in our lives. The
truth is that through the Holy Spirit the work of Jesus to save continues as the
Spirit creates faith. Through the
Holy Spirit the Lord strengthens us in our weakness, comforts us when we suffer,
gives us faith when we doubt, and helps us to live out our Christian faith in
our daily lives. The promise was
given by Jesus himself, “Lo, I am with
you always, even to the end of the age.” On this Day of Reformation, take with you the word and promise of Jesus into the voting booth, “If you continue in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Amen.
Title: God Takes a Fall Beloved in Christ… When a minister reads out of the Bible, I am sure that at
least nine times out of ten the people who happen to be listening at all hear
not what is really being read, but only what they expect to hear read. And
I think that what most people expect to hear read from the Bible is an edifying
story, an uplifting thought, a moral lesson – something elevating, obvious,
and boring. So that is exactly what they very often do hear.
Only that is too bad, because if you really listen – and maybe you have
to forget that it is the Bible being read and a minister who is reading it –
there is no telling what you might hear. These words I’ve just read are from a sermon entitled
“The Magnificent Defeat” by Frederick Buechner, and I’m in his debt for
that beginning to my remarks today. We’re
going to talk about the Old Testament lesson, one of the more mysterious and
ominous stories of the Bible, Jacob wrestling with the stranger at night by the
ford of the Jabbok. The prelude to this lesson is the saga of a young man, born
as the second of twin brothers and given the name of Jacob, which means “One
who grabs” or “One who usurps”. For
much of his life, he would live up to that name, using deceit, trickery, and any
other form of leverage to get what he wanted. Jacob would have gone far on a reality series. Now the edifying moral lesson would be that God frowns on
that kind of trickery, and that Jacob would pay for his sins.
But the story doesn’t go that way.
After stealing his brother’s blessing from their father Isaac, Jacob
leaves home for twenty years, and through even more trickery, he earns himself a
fortune. He has setbacks, but in
the end, he gets the girl he wants, he gets the money he wants, and instead of
frowning on him, God gives Jacob a vision of angels and heaven.
It’s hardly an uplifting story so far for those who walk the straight
and narrow. So this shrewd, ambitious man who is strong on guts and
weak on conscience, decides it is finally time for him to go home.
He’s done everything he set out to do, and now it’s time to go back
to claim the land that God promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and now, to him.
In today’s story, Jacob is going back home to seize God’s promise for
himself. But just as he reaches the Jabbok River, the last boundary
remaining before he crosses into his land, he receives a message.
His brother Esau is coming to meet him with an army of four hundred men.
And verse 7 says that Jacob was terrified. Now Jacob had been traveling in a huge caravan along with
two wives, two other women, a baker’s dozen of children, and all of his
servants and all of his livestock. It
was quite a caravan, because Jacob was a wealthy man. But out of his fear, he sent everyone else ahead of him
across the Jabbok and he stayed behind, by himself until late at night. That’s when it happened.
Out of the darkness, when he was all alone, verse 24 says “A man came
and wrestled with him until dawn.” Imagine
being alone in the deep, cold darkness of a desert night.
Imagine being attacked out of that darkness by a shadow of a stranger
whose face you can’t see and whose strength is beyond that of normal men. Jacob didn’t know it yet, but he was wrestling with God. Now throughout the centuries since that time, Jews and
Christians have used this story as a metaphor of our own struggles with the
Almighty. When we find ourselves in
a job we never wanted, in a family filled with tension or heartache, when our
lives are burdened with sadness and pain, the preacher tells us we should give
it over to God, but in our hearts and our minds, there are times we fight.
We wrestle with God. Realistically, you have to wonder -- did Jacob think that
he could win? Do we?
Everything we know about God and everything we know about human beings
tells us there is no way. What chance does a person have against God?
Can we force God to do something against his will?
It’s impossible. You’d
sooner hold back the Mississippi with a coffee filter than overcome the power of
God. It’s like a twenty pound toddler forcing her 200 pound daddy
to the ground and pinning him there helpless.
It doesn’t happen. Unless, the daddy allows it to happen.
Unless the daddy decides that rather than pushing the little child away,
he will let himself be wrestled down. For
the sake of the child, the daddy takes a fall. Isn’t that exactly what happened with Jacob in the story
at the Jabbok? All night long,
Jacob holds his own in a wrestling match with God.
Impossible. Just before
dawn, it looks like Jacob actually has the upper hand.
No way. Unless God allows it
to happen. Unless God allows
himself to take a fall. Isn’t that exactly what happened for all of us with the
story of Jesus? Maybe the whole
history of the Bible is a story of God’s chosen people collectively wrestling
with him. He gives them life.
They turn against him. He
sends the 10 commandments. They
fight back with a Golden Calf. He
sends prophets and kings. They
fight back through idolatry and violence. Finally,
he comes to earth himself in the person of Jesus Christ.
Once again, God’s people fight back, and God himself, Christ, is killed
in the fight. Impossible, unless
God allows himself to take the fall. And that’s exactly what he does, because it is right at
that point, where Jacob and we have done everything in our power to win, when we
have spent all our strength and appear to have the upper hand, that God brings
the reversal. After struggling all
night, the strange wrestler simply touches Jacob’s thigh and Jacob is left
helpless on the ground. Then we
know that this whole battle from the beginning was fated to end this way, that
the stranger had taken a fall and allowed Jacob to almost win, so that when the
reversal came, he would know he was truly defeated. He would know that all the shrewdness, and will, and brute
strength he could muster were not enough to force a victory. It’s right at that point when Jacob realizes what has happened that the sun begins to rise. And once again in the words of Frederick Buechner, “For the first time, he sees his opponent’s face. And what he sees is something more terrible than the face of death – the face of love. It is vast and strong, half ruined with suffering and fierce with joy, the face a man flees down all the darkness of his days until at last he cries out, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Only now it is not a blessing that he can have by the strength of his cunning or the force of his will, but a blessing that he can only have as a gift.” You can fight for things like power and success, and those who fight hard enough can win. But things like peace, love, and joy are only from God. They are only from God, and we cannot force them from his hand no matter how hard we fight. But after we have expended all our strength, after God has taken the fall and risen again in victory, after we have finally given up the fight and surrendered to our beloved enemy, then we understand that in taking everything away, God has given us infinitely more. Then we understand the gifts that we can only receive, then we understand the defeat that is victory in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Amen. “HOW CAN I SAY THANKS?” Let us pray: Healing God, we fall at your feet with prayers of thanksgiving. Thank you for your mercy and grace that are fresh as the morning dew. Thank you for hearing us when we call upon you for assistance, healing, and help. Lord, I pray for all who are gathered here today that you would cleanse us once again. Cast away our selfish pride and foolishness. Wash away our sin. Free us from being self-centered and help us to see the many ways we can serve you by serving those around us. For the sake of our Lord Jesus who has called us as his disciples. Amen. As people of God, one of the things that God has called us to do and be is to be thankful. When we become aware of the presence of God in our lives, when we realize all that God has done for us and continues to do for us, our response is thanksgiving. Two of my favorite Bible passages reflect this calling of God. The first is from the psalms: “Praise the Lord! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation.” As we gather for worship, we do so in order to thank and praise God. The other passage is from Paul’s letter to the Colossians: “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” We are to be thankful and to live thankful lives, and yet, we know how easy it is to forget or fail to give thanks to God for all the gifts that God provides.
In the book of Deuteronomy, God warned the people of Israel against being
forgetful. “Take
heed lest you forget the Lord your God….when you have eaten and are full, and
have built goodly houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks
multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is
multiplied, then your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God, who
brought you out of the land of Egypt….Beware lest you say in your heart, ’My
power and might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’”
Certainly, that kind of warning can be and should be directed toward
each of us as well, for we know how easy it is to forget the Lord our God.
But the amazing thing about God is that even though we may take God for
granted, God still gives us all that we need from day to day. In Martin Luther’s explanation to the fourth petition of
the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us our daily
bread,” Luther says, “God gives
daily bread, even without our prayer, to all people, though sinful, but we ask
in this petition that he will help us to realized this and to receive our daily
bread with thanksgiving.” Here Luther tells us that we should not only receive God’s gifts with thankfulness, but we also need to call upon God to help us be thankful. In asking God to help us be thankful, we receive not only the gift, but also the giver and his presence in our lives. You see, by being thankful to God, we receive more than just food and clothing, home and family. We receive the gift of faith which leads to the greatest gift of all, life and salvation. To acknowledge God and give thanks for all God’s goodness is to live in a relationship with God. It is this relationship that will enrich your life beyond all measure and comparison, strengthening us through the hard times and making the good time seem even better. In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus encounters ten men who were social outcast. They had the disease of leprosy, they were forced to live on the edge of town. When Jesus came walking by one day on his way to Jerusalem, these forgotten people lifted up their voice in unison, crying out to Jesus for mercy. Jesus stopped and told them what to do, to go and show themselves to the priests. As they went, they were healed. Because of this chance meeting with Jesus, all ten were healed, all ten were restored to society, all ten received a gift. What follows this healing miracle of Jesus is what is interesting for us today. How did they respond to this gift so great? Only one person returned to praise God and thank Jesus for the gift of healing. And he was a Samaritan, a person despised and hated by the Jews. Jesus asks, “Where are the nine?” What about the others? Were they not grateful for the gift they received? It’s easy to condemn those none people for their ingratitude until we see ourselves standing in their midst. When have we ever taken the mercy of God for-granted? Do we ever find ourselves calling upon God only in ties of trouble, and then forget God the rest of the time? Do we think it’s God’s obligation to heal us, to get us out of trouble, feed us, help us get an A on the test, give us all that we want if it is our due? Jesus asks, “Where are the nine?” I suspect it wasn’t as if the nine were not thankful for the gift of healing. Their lives were changed for the better. They certainly knew that. They were probably so caught up in their good fortune that they failed to see beyond the miracle to the miracle worker. Being blessed once with a gift of healing, they could have been blessed twice with a relationship with Jesus. This story reminds me of a friend of mine who I met while at seminary. Her name is Jan. She taught me a lot about what it means to be grateful. She is a pastor who has cerebral palsy. You would if someone had a reason for complaining, or think that it was God’s duty to heal her, she would be the one. Life, as she described it, was not always easy for her, as she goes through life on crutches and puts up with the unwelcome stares and comments of people on the streets in the city she lives in. And yet, she continues to praise and thank God for the blessings of life in spite of her of her disease. How can she give thanks? She has met the miracle man Jesus and has discovered that wholeness in life is more than physical healing. It is a relationship with Jesus who gives life, hope, and salvation. In her gratitude to God, she sees her relationship with God as life’s greatest blessing. As I have said, the story of Jesus’ healing the ten lepers points not so much to the miracle itself, as it points to the miracle man Jesus. He is the one who has entered our human situation, taking upon himself the guilt and shame of our sinful, broken lives, and who, in his mercy, died on a cross so that we might be set free from sin and death and receive the gift of his life. It is the gift of faith that the Samaritan received when he was healed. He was the one who, in the midst of the joy and excitement, felt compelled to return to praise God and thank Jesus. Through his faith, the Samaritan received the greatest gift of God’s grace, wholeness, life and salvation. How can I say thanks? By saying “Thank you” and living a life of thanksgiving to God each and every day. It is joining the psalmist and all the people of God when he said, “Praise the Lord! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation.” It is doing as the Apostle Paul tells us when he says, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Amen. Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost Sisters and brothers… There was a missionary who went to do his work for the Lord in the nation of Ghana. It’s a West African nation of just under 21 million people, previously known as Gold Coast until it was renamed in 1957. With over 100 languages and dialects to choose from, this missionary spent most of his time with the dominant language family in Ghana, known as the Kwa dialect. And one thing he learned in that dialect is that the only way to ask the question, “What is your religion?” is to phrase it like this: “Whom do you serve?” Whom do you serve? In any language you can speak, discipleship is about
serving. Discipleship is serving.
Our theme for the whole year is becoming disciples of Christ, and this
month we’re going to talk about discipleship as service. We had a preview of the theme last week with our youth
worship. It was an awesome service,
amen?, and it renewed in me the connection between serving God and serving other
people. We’re going to build on
that theme today, and in particular we’re going to hit a topic that several of
the speakers mentioned in their messages – how to keep the spirit of service
alive when the mission trip is over. How
can we develop a disciple’s heart for continuing service? The first step is to have a good understanding of what
service means. Very simply, a
servant is a person who meets a need for someone else.
One of the great things about service is that it’s not complicated.
When you bring someone a plate of food, or help them solve a problem, or
keep their neighborhood safe so they can walk to church – you are serving by
meeting one of their needs. We have a whole segment of the workforce known as the
service industry. In the service
industry, one key idea is that no matter what service you provide, you are
supposed to smile, and say, “It’s our pleasure to serve you”, and put the
needs of the customer first. Jesus
might have done all right in the service industry except for one issue – Jesus
didn’t serve customers. Customers pay for the service they receive.
Jesus didn’t get paid. He
served people who couldn’t pay. He
served the poor as well as the rich. He
served those on the edge of society as well as the movers and the shakers in the
middle. He served people in every walk of life without receiving a
dime for his services. He served
because it was his pleasure and his purpose to serve.
As he said himself in the book of Mark:
That is why I came. Not to
be served, but to serve. His disciples serve in the same way.
When you serve other people as a follower of Jesus, you’re not doing it
for money. In fact, when you serve
as a disciple of Christ, you will be serving a lot of people who couldn’t
pay you, just like the people that Jesus served. So when Christians talk about serving, it means meeting a
need for someone else without expecting them to pay you back.
Now that can be an obstacle some times.
It’s natural to feel like, “Hey, I scratched your back, now it’s my
turn.” Part of discipleship is
trusting that our needs are taken care of already by God, so we are free to
empty ourselves, and look out for the needs of other people.
Somebody once said about Mother Teresa that her greatest strength was her
courage to become nothing, so that God could use her for anything. Another obstacle to serving is the worldly idea that
servanthood is demeaning. The word
“servitude” is practically an insult, and some people see it as an insult
when we are called to serve others, especially when the service is dirty,
difficult, beneath us and, worst of all, unrecognized.
Service is easy when somebody comes up and says, “Thank you, thank you,
you’ve been such a blessing.” It’s
tougher when nobody acknowledges your work. I read a poem last week that highlights the challenge of
truly serving like Christ. It was
written by a woman named Ruth Calkin, and honestly, I don’t know anything
about the author but the poem really struck me.
She says, You know, Lord, how I serve You With great emotional fervor In the limelight. You know how eagerly I speak for You At the women’s club. You know how I effervesce when I promote A fellowship group. You know my genuine enthusiasm At a Bible study. But how would I react, I wonder, if You pointed to a basin of water And asked me to wash the calloused feet Of a bent and wrinkled old woman Day after day Month after month In a room where nobody saw And nobody knew. Christ taught us again and again that the highest honor in
God’s eyes is humble service, not honor as the reward for humble service but
in the service itself. Whoever
wishes to be great among you must become as a servant.
God will never fail to see when you serve. So how else do we develop a disciple’s heart for
continuing, ongoing service? One
answer is to make a conscious decision to be aware of the needs.
Look around your community with the belief that God will show you an area
of need where you can serve. We
have a human tendency to see what we want to see. Use that tendency for something good, and say, “God, today
I’m looking for a way to serve you. Show
me a need where I can help.” If
you’re looking for a place to serve, you’ll see it. When you find that area of service where God is calling
you, be realistic about what you can do and what you can’t.
You are only one person, after all.
Even Jesus didn’t do all of his ministry by himself. But you are one person, and one is a whole lot more than
none. By that I mean that your
service matters, even if it is washing someone’s calloused feet in a room
where no one can see. For a
disciple, there is no such thing as prominent service and obscure service. There is just a desire to serve one another with whatever
gift you have received, with the strength that God supplies so that God may be
glorified through all things in Jesus Christ. I’ll leave you with this story about a man who discovered
what it meant to have a disciple’s heart for serving. He was a pastor on a hospital visit to the neo-natal
intensive care center, where a family from his congregation had a newborn son
who was born premature. The baby
and family were doing well, but the pastor wanted to check in and the family
appreciated his visit. As he left, he noticed another infant who was in an
incubator with no one else around. The
pastor asked one of the nurses about that baby. The nurse told him the tragedy of how this baby’s mother
had died in childbirth, and the father was incarcerated, and how sad it was that
so few people came to be with this child. And
she said, “Thank you for caring.” The pastor didn’t know what else to say at that point, so
he had a short prayer for that child and left.
As he walked out of the hospital, all he could think about was his
gratitude that he had two healthy children and it wasn’t his kid in the
incubator. And it was as if the air
around him was charged with electricity, and the Spirit of God said in his
heart, “That is your child, because that is my child, and that is why I sent
you to that hospital.” If we can see the people around us through the eyes of Christ, as our sons and daughters and fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, then it will be our pleasure to serve them again and again with a disciple’s heart. Amen. September
5, 2004 Beloved… Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself cannot be my
disciple. Whoever does not carry
the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
If you do not give up all your possessions, none of you can become my
disciple. How much does it take to be a disciple for Jesus?
The same man who talks about healing and forgiveness now speaks of
dividing families, giving up everything you own, and even sacrificing your life
for the sake of God. They sound like the words of a militant radical, not the
words of the Prince of Peace. Most of us are used Jesus being a nice guy, the guy that
we’ve seen in so many works of art looking thoughtful and gentle and
compassionate. He’s the guy
that you’d love to have for a neighbor because you’d never have to worry
about him causing trouble. He’s
the loving shepherd who calls us softly and tenderly. These words today are anything but soft and tender.
Can that really be Jesus with a stern crease in his brow and angry fire
in his eyes? Did he really say that
if you don’t hate life itself, you can’t be my disciple? Yes, he did. And
if he is tender and gentle, which I still think is true, then he is also tough
and strong. If he is compassionate,
he is also courageous and even stubborn. If
he looks harmless, then we need to look more closely, because “harmless” is
the wrong word for the King of Kings. It
takes a backbone of steel to walk the road that Jesus walked.
It takes faith like a mountain to say what Jesus had to say.
He faced opposition. He
faced rejection. He faced suffering
and shame. Most people would have
turned away from the road that Jesus walked, but he laced up his sandals and
made his choice to follow God’s direction, even when it led to a cross. Today, he’s looking for disciples who are willing to do
the same. Starting next Sunday, our theme for the program year will
be discipleship. Every month from
now until May, we will focus on a different part of discipleship, starting next
Sunday with Discipleship is learning. But
the common theme all year is becoming a disciple, and today Jesus warns us ahead
of time what discipleship can cost. Along with the great joy of accepting Jesus as savior comes
the great challenge of following him as Lord. Jesus is looking for a few good disciples who are willing
to take up that challenge. He’s
looking for a few good disciples who are willing to pick up their own cross and
follow him. And he’s telling them
in advance that discipleship will be tough. It reminds me of the way the Marine Corps has gone about
the business of recruiting new Marines. A
while back, their tag line was “We’re looking for a few good men with the
metal to be Marines”. The few,
the proud, the Marines. It was
letting people know right from the start of the challenge of being a Marine. I’ve met some Marines in my training with the Army.
Any former Marines in here today? We had a couple of former Marines go through chaplain
school with us. You don’t have to
tell any of my Army Ranger buddies I said this, but those Marines I met were
something else. There were days
they would try to do things the hard way, just for the sake of the challenge. One time I was out with a group of chaplains in what they
call the night infiltration course, where you’re running around in the dark
with explosions and simulated gunfire all around you, trying to get from one
side of the woods to the other. So
we came across a concertina wire obstacle, that’s the wire with razor blades
attached every few inches or so, and we had to get across. The former Marine says, “OK, here’s what we do.
One of us has to dive face first on the wire, and the rest of us will run
across over his back.” And the
rest of us, middle-aged religious type guys, were all very quiet for a couple of
seconds. Finally one of the other
chaplains in training said, “All right, Marine.
While you do that, the rest of us are going to take this 8 foot plank
that’s right next to the wire and run across that instead.” So the Marines have always been ready to walk the hard
road, and many times they have for the sake of their duty. But there was a time in their history when they found their
numbers dropping. Something had to
be done. The obvious solution would
be to lower their recruiting standards so that more recruits would qualify and
therefore more would get in. The Marines instead chose to raise their standards.
They even started an ad campaign so that everyone knew right from the
start that it is tough work to be a Marine.
Not everyone’s cut out for this. We
are the few, the proud. If you join
this group, we will test you to your absolute limits.
We will grind you down until you are razor sharp.
But when you prove yourself to the Marines, you never have to prove
yourself to anyone else again. When
you are a Marine, you’re a part of something hard, something important, and
something special. It’s a strange idea that when you need more recruits to
make it harder to qualify. But the
strategy worked. The number of
Marines went up, and the quality of Marines went up even further. Still today, the Marines have a reputation of being a group
that is worth the agony that it takes to become a member. Jesus is here today looking for a few good men and women
with the metal to be his disciples. He’s
looking for people who will do what it takes to follow him, no matter the cost.
He’s looking for people who will make God the first thing in their
lives. He’s looking for
disciples, and he’s telling you up front that it won’t be easy. Being a disciple of Jesus means sacrifice and commitment.
When you make that commitment, it will cost you something.
It will certainly cost you time and money to be Jesus’ disciple.
It may cost you more than that. But Jesus makes a promise when you accept that commitment.
He says that “whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also
acknowledge them before my Father in heaven, and whoever denies me before
others, I also will deny them before my Father in heaven.”
When this life on is done, all that will matter is whether Jesus
acknowledges you and invites you in to join with him in heaven. Christ is looking for committed disciples who will accept a
challenge in this life for the sake of the next. Now, unlike the Marine Corps, Jesus disciples don’t
qualify by their physical and mental ability.
Jesus doesn’t care how many push-ups you can do in a minute.
You don’t have to get a certain score on any test.
You don’t have to qualify as a marksman with the M16.
But you might want to remember the Marines motto.
(ASK FORMER MARINES?) Semper
fidelis. Always faithful.
That’s the quality that Jesus needs in a disciple. Age and strength and academic ability don’t qualify you
for discipleship. Commitment and
trust in the Lord are what matter. I
have never met an eighty-year-old, wheelchair-bound Active Duty marine.
I have met disciples of Christ who were eighty, ninety, and even older
and still going strong as disciples even when their bodies were failing. Jesus is looking for a few good disciples.
And for those of you who have made the choice to follow him, I pray that
these words from Christ will give you motivation and hope to keep going.
His words remind us that suffering doesn’t come from a lack of faith,
but sometimes as a result of faith. I
know there are people who beat themselves up, saying, “If only I’d had more
faith, this would have turned out better.”
Well, maybe, but not necessarily. Suffering
and struggle are part of life for Christians. Christ’s Gospel is a promise that the struggle is worth
it, that the things you give up because of your faith are nothing compared with
what you gain. The disciples of
Jesus Christ are an elite group of people, not because they’re so great in
themselves but because they are conforming their lives to the greatest leader of
all. Disciples are not proud for
themselves, but they are extremely proud of their Lord. Disciples choose the hard road when that’s where God
leads them. They follow him and try
to conform their lives like his. Lives
of love and forgiveness, like his. Lives
of justice and truth, like his. Lives
of self-sacrifice, like his. Discipleship
means giving up something of yourself, trusting that everyone who dies with
Christ will also be raised with him. What
looks like death is actually life, because Christian discipleship always, always
leads to resurrection. Examine yourself in light of these words today. Ask yourself whether you are ready to do what they call for, and remember what they promise for the person who does it. Not many of us are cut out for the Marine Corps. But God wants you for the few, the proud, the disciples. Amen. “Family Values According to Jesus” As the political season heats up with the election less than three months away, one of the themes that is bantered about is family values. Who will encourage and advance to a greater degree the family values of this country? As the candidates put forth their ideas and promote their policies, I have yet to hear anyone espouse the family values according to Jesus which we find in our text this morning: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” Jesus says. “No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided; father against son, mother against daughter, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, father-in-law against son-in-law.” Statements like this from Jesus surprise and startle us. What’s going on here? What kind of family values are these? Jesus is suppose to encourage and help our families, not divide them. If this is the result of following Jesus, I’m not sure I want anything to do with it. But then again, maybe that is exactly what Jesus is getting at – following him. To follow Jesus and be his disciple means something. It has an impact on our lives, the way we think, what we do, who we associate with, how we spend our time, the choices and decisions we make. As we seek to follow Jesus and be his disciples, it will have an impact on those around us, including our families. William Willimon tells the story of St. Francis. St. Francis of Assisi became a knight in the wars with Perugia and had a fabulous future in front of him. His father was proud of his son, but the problem was that Francis kept going to church and praying, asking God what he wanted him to do. Over time, he became convinced that God did not want him to be a French troubadour or a dashing knight, but rather to be a follower of Christ, a genuine disciple. God wanted Francis to serve the poorest of the poor. Francis heard the scripture say, “Sell all that you have and give it to the poor: and with a startling naiveté he said “Okay.” He sold all that he had and gave it to the poor.
But his father took exception, for what the boy gave away wasn’t really
his but was given to him by his father, who had no desire to take the Bible
literally. He threw Francis in
jail, then took him to court. Francis
said, “No longer is Pietro Bernardone
my father, for from now on, my father is in heaven.”
I have always found the life story of Martin Luther to be intriguing.
As Martin grew up, he was a promising student.
His father and mother had hopes for him to go on to school and become a
lawyer. That would provide a good
life for Martin as his father only knew the hard work of a miner.
But one day, as Martin was traveling, he was caught in a very bad storm
that made him fearful for his very life. Martin
prayed to St. Anne that if he survived the storm he would become a monk.
Well, he survived and made good on his pledge. When he told his father about his decision, he was not
pleased at all. His father asked
who would take care of him in his old age as monks are the poorest of the poor
as they give away all their possession. Martin
told his father that his prayers would do more for him than any possessions he
had, and after all, Martin said, his calling comes from God.
In response, old Hans grunted and said, “Or
from the devil.” Jesus came to bring division, a very unsettling proposal. It is unsettling, I think, because it confronts us with what we hold to be most dear to us – ourselves - and we don’t want anything to get in the way of ourselves. As I said earlier, to follow Jesus means something. It has an impact on our entire life. Jesus uses two images to stress this point – fire and baptism. Both bring about changes. Both bring about transformation. This past week we have been hosting three girls from Japan. It’s been a wonderful experience for our family. It is fun to watch their expressions as they experience new things. In our house we have a fireplace. We often use our fireplace to burn important papers or documents that we don’t want to put in the trash. Last night we lit the fire and it captivated our Japanese students. One of the girls got out her camera and took a picture. They sat in front of the fire adding papers. They even went outside and got some logs to put on it. As the fire raged, I watched the papers and wood change in appearance. The fire caused them to become something else. Jesus says to us this morning, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth.” We prefer to keep our lives just the way they are, but Jesus sets a fire that changes us into something different than what we were before. The fire of his Holy Spirit changes us into the kind of people he wants us to be. This fire melts us and molds us, creating a passion in us for this world that Jesus loves and has given his life for. This fire purges away sin and purifies us for service in the world. Through us, Jesus sets and kindles a fire in others as we share our faith and tell of God’s love for them. What this fire does is change our perspective away from me, myself, and I and onto the cares and concerns of others. This fire that Jesus brings clears the way for God to do a new thing – create a people committed and dedicated to Jesus as Lord and Savior. The other image of change and transformation is baptism. Jesus says, “I have a baptism with which to be baptized.” When I meet with baptismal families to discuss and prepare for a child’s baptism, one of the things I stress is the need to get away from the notion that “we have to get the kid done” as if that is the end of it all. Baptism is so much more than a tradition of the church, or a getting together of the family, or having dinner after worship. It is the beginning of a whole new life for the baptized person. It is the power of God to make the baptized person a Child of God. It is the giving a new identity by God that calls the baptized person to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Baptism makes a difference in the life of the baptized person.
In his explanation of Baptism, Martin Luther asks the question, “What does Baptism mean for daily living?” It is what I call the “So
what?” question. So I’ve
been baptized, so you have been baptized, so what?
What difference does it make? Well,
it makes all the difference in the world as Luther says, “It
means that our old sinful self, with all its evil deeds and desires, should be
drowned through daily repentance; and that day after day a new self should arise
to live with God in righteousness and purity forever.” The image of baptism here is that of a drowning. In the waters of baptism our sins are put to death, joining us to the death of Jesus. As we arise out of the waters, we are joined to the resurrection of Jesus and given a new life. With our sins forgiven and with the promise of eternal life granted, we can’t possibly be the same. We are changed. God changes us. We now live our life for God and for others. That puts a radical new perspective on what it means to be a Christian. The new life we now live for God may not be a life that others like or appreciate, including our family members. This new life changes our behaviors, changes our attitudes, changes the way we look at and interact with the world around us. The death and resurrection of Jesus which baptism incorporates us into is the power of God to change the world. This can and does create divisions, because it requires a whole new loyalty and obedience. But it can also bring about important changes that will enhance and promote life, including our family life. It is no secret that family life in America is struggling. The problems and challenges confronting family life are many, often leaving us wondering what we can do. What I think the most important thing we learn from our text this morning to help and enhance our family life it is to let Jesus be number one in our lives. It is a radical perspective that changes our priorities and reinstates the most important values of all, faith, hope, and trust. With Jesus at the center, we realize that it isn’t just about me, but I am part of a community. With Jesus at the center, we are called to respect each other more, listen to each others concerns, offer forgiveness when we hurt the other, spend more time with one another. With Jesus at the center, we make different decisions for our family in regard to what we do, how we spend our money, what kind and how many activities we involve ourselves in. With Jesus at the center, we place an importance upon worshiping together as families, reading the Bible and praying together, finding ways to serve our neighbors and friends who are in need, sharing the joy that is ours in Christ and inviting others in to a relationship with Jesus. Maybe divisions are not all that bad if they further the purpose of Jesus in bringing about the kingdom of God. All we need is a little fire to get us going. So…let our prayer be today: Send to us your Holy Spirit, Lord Jesus, and set us on fire. Bring about a whole new world, and let it begin with me. Amen. “Rich Toward God”
A question that I often ask to help me put perspective on the practical
matters of life is “What does our faith
say?” or “What does God say about
it?” Well, when it comes to
the topic of wealth and riches, Jesus is very clear:
“Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life
does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
I can’t gloss over such a statement. In fact, it makes me squirm a
bit. It addresses all of us as we
are a consumer-driven society always striving to increase our lot in life.
We live in a country that is the envy of the world when it comes to
wealth. With one political
convention over and the other a couple weeks away, we will be hearing much about
who has the best plan to lead to growth and prosperity.
I heard an interesting quote in the video we have been discussing at
Coffee and the Word, that if the world’s population were boiled down to just
100 people, 55-70% of the world’s wealth would be controlled by six people –
and they would all be Americans. This
is something that should concern us all. What
our Bible text moves us to do today is to consider the place or role that
material possession play in our lives. Another
way to put it is to ask “Where is true
life found?” As people of faith, we are not immune from the dangers caused by the endless pursuit of worldly goods. It is easy to lose sight of what is important in life and where our priorities should be placed with the constant pressure to buy and to spend. It isn’t that material things are not important, or that we should not have any possessions at all, but, rather, we need to ask what place do our possessions have in our life; what control do they have over us; when is enough enough? The paradox of the whole thing it seems to me is the more we have, the more we think we need. The more we think we need, the more afraid we are of losing what we have, and so we try harder to get even more. It’s a vicious cycle that can tear away at our very soul. As the story is told, this teaching of Jesus was prompted by a dispute concerning a family inheritance. The one brother asked Jesus for help, saying, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” We have all seen and heard this kind of story. It tears up our hearts to see how families can be divided forever because of such disputes. I remember one case where a woman told me she hadn’t spoken to her sister for years because she thought she got the better portion of an inheritance. Bitter feelings and jealousy over material things often break up families, leaving relationships in ruins. Not wanting to be pulled into their argument and take sides, Jesus uses this opportunity to teach them about a greater issue - about greed and misplaced security. To make his point, Jesus tells the story of the wealthy farmer. He was fortunate because his land produced abundantly. This man probably worked very hard, spending long hours to improve his lot in life. He managed things well and took good care of his possessions. He was so successful that he felt he needed to tear down his old barns and build larger ones to store all of his goods. We like success stories like these. It is all part of the so-called “American Dream.” If you work hard, maybe get some breaks once in a while, you can be successful. Wealth by itself is not bad or sinful. In fact, we should look upon wealth as a gift of God. But something went wrong with this success story. The problem was that this rich farmer forgot the meaning of life and what one’s possessions are meant for. This rich man turned inward and became self-absorbed, trusting in his wealth and possessions as his security in life. In fact, he relates his abundance of goods with the substance of his very soul.
In a careless moment, actually, Jesus calls it a foolish moment, the
farmer talks to himself, “Soul, you
have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” It sounds like the perfect retirement plan. Yet, it
turned out to be the ultimate tragedy. He
failed to realize that, first of all, his soul is not under his control, but
belongs to God, and secondly, his possessions are not really his own either,
because when God calls back his soul in death, his material possessions will
fall back into the hands of others. The
wisdom writer of Ecclesiastes sees this as vanity when he says, “I
hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave
it to those who came after me.” God
speaks the last word in this tragic story, “You
fool! This very night your life is
being demanded of you. And the
things you have prepared, whose will they be?”
The Brothers Grimm tells a story about greed and the perils of
wealth. There once was a poor man
who complained loudly that the world had been unfair.
“Most of those who are rich did nothing to gain their wealth,” he
cried to anyone who would listen. “They
inherit their money from their parents.”
One day, as the man walked home, FORTUNE appeared before him and
said, I have decided to provide you with
wealth. Hold out your purse, and I
will fill it with gold coins. There
is one condition. If any of the
gold falls out of the purse onto the ground, everything will become dust.
Be careful. I see your purse
is old; do not overfill it.” The poor man was overjoyed. He opened the strings of his purse and watched as FORTUNE began to pour a stream of golden coins into it. The wallet soon became heavy. “Is that enough?” FORTUNE asked. “Not yet,” the man cried.
FORTUNE poured several more coins, so that the purse was filled.
“Shall I stop?” “Not yet,” he said,
“just a few more.” But at that moment the purse split apart, the gold coins fell to the ground, and the treasure turned to dust. FORTUNE disappeared, and the man was left with an empty wallet.
In an affluent, consumer driven society such as ours, it is easy to get
caught up in the endless pursuit of riches and wealth, possessions and
prosperity. What is foolish is not
only the greed that drives us, but that we would find our security in life in
the things of this world. The Bible
tells us, “Do not lay up for yourselves
treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and
steal, but lay up for your selves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor
rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your heart is, there your treasure will be also.” What Jesus would want for us is not to measure our lives in the abundance of our possessions, but rather in how rich we are toward God. You see, the ability to live a life free from the power of greed and the attachment to possessions comes from God who is the giver of all things. As the provider, God has an inheritance to give us, an inheritance that is “imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you.” There is nothing to dispute or argue about in regard to this inheritance, because there is more than enough for everyone, and God is so willing to give it. In fact, God is already giving to us a portion of his inheritance through his Holy Spirit and the new identity we receive as Children of God in baptism. God gives us the forgiveness of sin and the promise of new life every time we eat and drink our Lord’s body and blood in Holy Communion. These are priceless treasures beyond compare. These gifts come to us as a result of Jesus Christ who gave up everything, including his life on a cross. These are the riches of God that we receive through faith. It is what we call grace. Knowing that our security rests in God who wants to do nothing more than give us the kingdom, we can live by God’s example and do what God does with all good gifts, give them away. Whether you are rich or poor, you have something to share, something to give away. And when you realize that you can probably live without it, or with less of it, and still have a quality of life and a high standard of living, then you will be set free from greed and insecurity. Florence Ferrier, a social worker in Appalachia tells this story. The Sheldons were a large family in severe financial distress after a series of misfortunes. The help they receive was not adequate, yet they managed their meager income with ingenuity – and without complaint. One fall day I visited the Sheldons in the ramshackle rented house they lived in at the edge of the woods. Despite a painful physical handicap, Mr. Sheldon had shot and butchered a bear which strayed into their yard once too often. The meat had been processed into all the big canning jars they could find or swap for. There would be meat in their diet even during the worst of the winter when their fuel costs were high.
Mr. Sheldon offered me a jar of bear meat.
I hesitated to accept it, but the giver met my unspoken resistance
firmly. “Now
you just have to take this. We want
you to have it. We don’t have
much, that’s a fact, but we ain’t poor.” I couldn’t resist asking, “What’s the difference?” His answer proved unforgettable.
“When you can give something
away, even when you don’t have much, then you ain’t poor.
When you don’t feel easy giving something away even if you got more’n
you need, then you’re poor, whether you know it or not.” I accepted and enjoyed their gift and treasured that lesson in living. In time, I saw a spiritual lesson, too. Knowing that all we have is provided by the Father, it seems ungracious to doubt that our needs will be met without our clinging to every morsel.
When I feel myself resisting an urge to share what’s mine – or when I
see someone sharing freely from the little he has – I remember Mr. Sheldon
saying, “We ain’t poor.” The truth that God so desperately wants us to discover is that it is in Jesus that we find life and become rich toward God. Thank you, O God, for the riches of your kingdom, more precious than silver or gold, which you give to us in your Son Jesus. Amen. NOT JUST ANOTHER COMMANDMENT
Dear friends, grace and peace be with you from our risen Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. Amen. So what would a life of love look like? Here is a possibility. There were once two brothers who farmed together. They shared equally in all of their work and split the profits right down the middle. Each had his own barn. One brother was married and had a large family; the other brother was single. One day the single brother thought to himself, “It is not fair that we divide the grain evenly. My brother has many mouths to feed, while I have but one. I know what I will do, I will take a sack of grain from my barn each evening and put it in my brother’s barn.” So, each night when it was dark, he carefully carried a sack of grain, placing it in his brother’s barn. Now the married brother thought to himself, “It is not fair that we divide the grain evenly. I have many children to care for me in my old age, and my brother has none. I know what I will do, I will take a sack of grain from my barn each night and put it in my brother’s barn.” And, so he did/ Each morning the two brothers were amazed to discover that though they had removed a sack of grain the night before, they still had just as many. One night the two brothers met each other halfway between their barns, each carrying a sack of grain. Then they understood the mystery. And they embraced, and loved each other deeply.
“To love one another” is
not just another commandment. It is
the commandment that defines all others. But
the ability to obey and follow such a command doesn’t come from our own
initiative or effort, because we know how we would respond in most cases if we
were left on our own. We would fall
far short. The ability to follow
this command comes from the One who gives the command, Jesus himself.
It is Jesus who makes it possible for us to love.
Jesus said, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
In essence, love is not something that can be commanded.
Love is something that must be free, not coerced, spontaneous, not
mechanical, creative, not legalistic. Love
is something that must come from within. In
order to love, you must first be loved, much like a mother with her new born
baby. Love can be given and shared
only when love has been received and experienced.
This is what Jesus did for us. “For
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”
The ability to “love one
another” comes then from the heart that has experienced the self-giving,
active love of Jesus through his life, death, and resurrection.
Through the presence of the risen Christ, God’s love empowers our own
love. The commandment, then, “to love one another” is not so much a law to be followed, but a
joy to be lived out. It comes to us
as a gift. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” I have seen this kind of love in action. Every time I go to the Health Center to lead worship, there is Scott. Scott is a head injury victim and is confined to a wheelchair. He can hardly move is right arm to shake hands and cannot speak an understandable word. He is there every Tuesday afternoon because his hospice volunteer, Margaret, brings him to worship, sits with him, holds open the hymn book, and sings along with each song. Margaret doesn’t have to be there, but she chooses to be there in joyful response to the Lord’s command. Her act of love for Scott reveals her love for Jesus, that she is a disciple of the Lord.
That is the result of this kind of love.
It will identify us and reveal to others who we belong to. Jesus goes on to say, “By
this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another.” Like a badge or pin
that you might wear on your lapel that identifies what civic group you belong
to, the love you share with others identifies you as a disciple of Jesus.
“They will know we are
Christians by our love,” as the song goes.
Love for one another shapes and forms the Christian congregation and
determines our mission. We exist for no other reason than to serve the world.
Love in this sense is not just a personal feeling or sentiment between
you and God, but rather it is an action where we “do
good” for others. This love
shapes our attitudes, guides our thinking, motivates our deeds.
When Jesus taught about being “light
to the world,” he was talking about love in action that benefits others.
“Let your light shine before
others,” Jesus said, “that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in
heaven.” We have so much work to do as a Christian community in order to live out Jesus’ command. In light of the news of prisoner abuse coming out of Iraq, our work has become even harder. The pictures are shocking if not unbelievable, and from what some are saying, the revelations are going to get even worse. I am devastated, disappointed, angry, and fearful. I suspect that you are too. The actions of a few have put a stain upon the portrait of how people around the world see America. As one commentator said, these pictures have set back our relationship with Arab countries and peoples forty years. What is probably even more damaging is the effect that this is having upon people’s view of Christianity. Even though there is a rich religious diversity in America, most, I think, associate America with Christianity. It makes it harder to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ in a believable way. And yet, we must go on with our mission. We must press to obey our Lord’s command. As we do every Sunday, we confess our sin and ask for forgiveness. As forgiven sinners, we go back into the world to serve the needs of people, trusting that through our deeds of love, the Holy Spirit will lift up Jesus Christ who is love. If there is one thing that our faith teaches us, it is that we are part of a fallen humanity. We are by nature sinful and unclean. The effects of sin are all around us and in our world. But it is to this world that God has chosen to enter and become a part of through the incarnation of his only Son Jesus. Through his death on the cross, sin has been forgiven. By his resurrection from the dead, death has been defeated. With the gift of his Holy Spirit, our Lord empowers us to be his disciples, loving and serving for the sake of Jesus who gave his life because he loved the world so much. As we celebrate and give thanks for the new life Jesus gives to us through his resurrection from the dead, let us hear and respond to his new commandment “love one another.” It is not just another commandment among many, but it is the commandment that defines who we are and what we are to be about. The Apostle Paul wrote these words to the church in Galatia. It describes so beautifully the life we are called to live. “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who lived me and gave himself for me.” Dear friends, receive the love that Jesus offers and go, “love one another.” Amen.
Sermon for the 4th
Sunday in Easter Beloved… For as long as I can remember, I have felt an overwhelming
sense of comfort when I hear the words, “The Lord is my Shepherd”.
I know that many of you feel the same way.
This 23rd Psalm is one that connects with us, even in the
middle of grief and tragedy, and fills us with the message that it’s going to
be all right, because the Shepherd is still with us. This metaphor of a shepherd pops up from cover to cover in
the Word of God. There are 66 books
in the Bible, and 29 of them include something about shepherds.
Adam and Eve’s son Abel was a shepherd.
Kings and leaders are called “shepherds of Israel”.
Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd.
Even kindergarteners know that shepherds are important when they dress up
in bathrobes and carry their big sticks in the Christmas play. What’s intriguing is how the 23rd Psalm connects with us
in spite of the fact very few of us, myself included, have any real life
experience with shepherds. How many
of us have actually talked with a shepherd or observed a shepherd in action, let
alone actually been shepherds? You
and I live in one of the least agrarian cultures since sheep were first
domesticated around 10,000 years ago. But
this Psalm, the Lord is my shepherd, still connects with people who don’t even
know what a shepherd is. Part of the reason for that, I suppose, is the context in
which we have heard this Psalm read to us.
My association from childhood is that Psalm 23 is the one that is read at
funerals, at the graveside of someone you love. The early picture of the shepherd was my pastor, who somehow
had the strength to be strong and calm in the valley of the shadow of death.
And when he read these words, I believed that they were true, and that
God would make everything all right. There
are still echoes of that serenity and strength when I talk about this Psalm
today. But I think this Psalm also connects because there are
other images to go along with the shepherd.
The Lord is my shepherd, says the Psalm, and this is what the shepherd
does. He restores my soul.
He comforts me. His goodness and mercy follow me. He leads me beside still waters. There’s an image that connects. We may not have much experience with shepherds, but many of
us know the serenity of the still waters. We’ve
been down to the water when the weather was warm but the breeze off the lake was
cool. We’ve watched the sun melt
into the horizon over water as smooth as glass.
We’ve been down to the slow and gentle river and felt our cares
disappear with the easy current. There’s a reason why people build their cabins by the
lake, and why we vacation in the islands, and why we build pools in our back
yards and why we still dream about following Thoreau out to Walden Pond.
Something inside us feels good about being near the water. Psalm 23 says it is the Lord who leads us there.
When we experience the peace and serenity down by the waters, that
feeling is a sign of the peace that comes from God. What’s more, of course, is that this language is
metaphorical. Even when you are
trapped in a windowless office or stuck behind the wheel during the rush hour
home, the Lord is still our shepherd, and even then he leads us beside still
waters, and restores our souls. Even
in the valley of the shadow, even in the presence of our enemies, even in a job
you hate and with a family that drives you crazy, the Lord gives you rest down
by the waters. Now you might say, “Wait a minute, Pastor Steve.
That sounds nice and all, but my life is so crazy that I’ll never find
that kind of peace. I’m busy,
busy, busy, busy, busy, busy from the moment I wake up until I go to bed.
And whenever I’m not busy, I sit down to watch the news or read the
paper, and that sure doesn’t lead me to any peace.” I hear you. I’m
living life in 2004 just like you are. I
hear about someone being arrested for disturbing the peace and part of me
thinks, “Where did they find any to disturb?” But part of me remembers that God has led me down by the
still waters before, and he will do it again.
If peace seems impossible to come by, remind yourself where this Psalm
was written. It’s a prayer that
came from Israel, from a land that is arid and rocky and almost a desert.
Green pastures and still waters are about as easy to find as a
chicken’s teeth. For a flock of
sheep to find a safe haven like this would take a miracle.
Or a really good shepherd. In Jesus Christ, we have both. He promises a peace that passes understanding, and he delivers. He promises goodness and mercy, and he delivers. He promises to be with you, even in the valley of the shadow, and he delivers. He promises to restore your soul, and he will lead you down by the still waters. Amen.
Sermon for Easter
Sunday Brothers and sisters, peace be with you from the Risen Lord
Jesus Christ. Amen. Back in the book of Genesis, chapter 2, it says that God
created Adam and then created all the animals and brought them up to Adam to see
what he would call them. Whatever
word Adam used, that was the animal’s name. I’ll tell you right now, if that had been me back in the
Garden of Eden, I would have cracked under the pressure.
I would have folded up like a card table, because I know about the
responsibility and the power that go with a name. My
wife and I have two daughters, and another one on the way.
We spent days, weeks in the duty of choosing names for our kids.
We didn’t fight about it, much, but there really are a lot of names to
choose from, and our choice had consequences for our babies’ futures.
Think of the implication if we’d passed over Charity and Jessica for
names like Candyland and Moony LaRue. Shakespeare’s “Juliet” will tell you that a rose by
any other word would smell as sweet. Maybe
that’s true, and maybe not, but when it comes to naming people, there’s a
difference whether you pick Ashley or Hortense or Bubbles, with a “y”.
There is power in a name. God
himself recognized that power when he changed Abram’s name to Abraham and
Sarai’s name to Sarah, because along with the change in their names went a
transformation in their lives. The power of a name is also the key to any relationship
between people. When you say
someone’s name, you are almost guaranteed to have their attention.
On the other hand, there’s nothing more embarrassing than going up to
someone whose name you should remember but you don’t.
I know we have tricks for that situation, but frankly, most of those
tricks are worse than just admitting the truth.
“Dude. How’s it going,
guy? This is the guy.
[PAUSE]. Dude.” Some people think it’s less embarrassing to tell you
right off the bat that they won’t remember you.
So you start to introduce yourself and the first thing they say is,
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m no good
with names.” And you think,
“OK, should I not bother to introduce myself?
Should I just give you my social security number?
What are you getting at?” Of course, then you have a guy like Pastor Randy who still
remembers the name of the guy who sold him popcorn at the movie theater.
At the movie “Star Wars”. In
1977. Those of us who have
occasionally forgotten names just love
that about him. Making us look like
slack-jawed idiots… The point is that there is something important about
knowing and speaking another person’s name.
When you know someone’s name, you’re able to communicate to that
person. You’re able to relate.
When you speak someone’s name, you are able to connect. That takes us to a scene from a long time ago, in a
graveyard garden, where a woman stands weeping outside of a tomb.
Her given name is Mary, but she’s been called a lot of names in her
life, most of which are slurs and insults about her past. One man dared to call her his friend.
He was a man of God. He had
healed her of seven demons, and she had left her old life behind to follow him.
She wasn’t his lover or his wife or his lady on the side.
She was his friend from the town of Magdala, and so the name the Bible
gives her is Mary Magdalene. Today she weeps, because she’s standing at the site of
his grave. Maybe you know how it is
when you visit the grave of a loved one. All
you see is a name, carved on a headstone, but it brings back all the memories
that have been buried since the person died.
Jesus doesn’t have a headstone, but the memories are white-hot in
Mary’s mind because she’s just seen him killed, violently, only a couple of
days before. She has come to visit his grave. But when she arrives, there is nobody in the tomb.
There is no body where there should be a body.
What would you do if you went to the grave of someone you loved with all
your heart and you found it torn open, and the casket was lying empty? Mary began to weep because she thought the body had been
taken. That’s the logical
explanation of the evidence. Sometimes
faith in God has to come in spite of a logical explanation.
But faith doesn’t come to Mary yet.
So she peers in the tomb, and there in front of her eyes are two angels
in white, sitting where Jesus’ body had been.
Even the sight of these angels isn’t enough to raise up Mary’s faith.
She’s still looking to find a body.
Finally she turns around to see Jesus himself, up from the dead and
coming toward her in the garden, and still her faith is stuck in the tomb.
She assumes he is the gardener, and she asks him if he is the one who
moved the body. So now she’s seen an empty tomb. She’s seen angels. She’s
seen Jesus himself. What does it
take for faith to come alive? What
does it take to believe? We need to turn back in the Bible from John chapter 20 to
John chapter 10. In John 10:14,
Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd. I
know my own and my own know me.” How
can that be true when Mary doesn’t recognize him?
Go back to verse 3. “The
sheep hear his voice, and he leads them out, when he calls his sheep by name.” After the empty tomb, and the angels, and the sight of
Jesus himself, Mary’s faith finally comes alive when the Lord reaches out his
hand and says, “Mary”. When he
calls her by name. That’s when
she knows. That’s when she
believes. This is the Son of God
who has conquered the power of sin and risen from the dead and who still
remembers his friend named Mary. The
whole miracle becomes real to Mary when Jesus calls her by name. So here we are, centuries later, gathered in a church to
celebrate this story. It is a great
celebration we have today. We have
music and flowers and wine and a crowd of good looking people and everything we
need for a celebration to remember. But I want to know if this service can actually connect us
with the risen Jesus Christ. I want
to know how this hour we have together, centuries after the fact, is going to
connect with me with the truth about Jesus.
I want to know if this story is real, and if I’m just an observer or
I’m actually a part of it. Because we don’t have an empty tomb to look in.
We don’t have two angels sitting on the altar.
We have a couple of guys in white bathrobes, but I know for a fact that
they’re not angels. There’s no
one walking on water in the fellowship hall or showing off the holes in his
hands in the back of the church. But those aren’t the things that give us faith. It is the voice of Jesus, calling us by name and transforming everything about us. There is power in a name and there is the power to change your life when Jesus speaks to you. His living voice is still calling us one by one to believe in the resurrection, to connect us to the truth of this miracle. The good shepherd is alive, and the same voice that spoke to Mary is the voice that speaks to all of his disciples. Peter. John. Matthew. Thomas. Mary. Martha. Salome. Mary Magdalene. Henry. Dorothy. Donald. Carol. Brandon. Elizabeth. Emily. Nicholas. Thus says the Lord who created you, he who formed you; do not doubt and do not fear, for I have called you by name, and you are mine. When the rivers wash over you and the fires rage around you, do not be afraid, for I am with you. I am alive and I am with you. Everything we need for faith is right here on Easter Sunday when the voice of the Good Shepherd is calling. He will not forget you. He’s very good with names. Amen.
Sermon for Palm/Passion Title:
The Death Penalty Brothers and sisters… It’s been almost six weeks since the “The Passion of
the Christ” hit the big screens. I’ve
had a chance to see the movie a couple of times, and for me it was worth seeing.
But whether you’ve seen it or not, the movie is just that -- a movie.
It is not in itself part of the Bible, and it’s not required viewing if
you’re going to be a Christian. The story that’s told by the movie is part of Scripture.
And if you are going to be a Christian, it is required that you know about the suffering and death of Jesus
Christ. The leaders scoffed at him.
The soldiers also mocked him. When
they came to the place that is called “The Skull”, they crucified him.
I’m not quoting Mel Gibson. I’m
quoting the Gospel of Luke, and Matthew and Mark and John. Whether you see it on the big screen or read it on a page
or hear it in church, the Passion is a fact you can’t escape if you believe
the Word of God. Jesus of Nazareth,
our brother and our Lord, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died,
and was buried. An innocent man’s
life ended with torture and the death penalty. Now one criticism of the movie was that it only showed the
violence without offering enough of an explanation behind it.
I’m not convinced whether that kind of explanation is the job of a
movie. I think it’s the job of
the Bible and the Christian community, and today, with my prayers for guidance,
it’s my job. We’ve already
heard in our Gospel reading about how Jesus died.
Let’s take a look at God’s Word to find out why. One thing we need to understand right away is that this
death was no accident. The Holy
Scriptures had predicted this death centuries before it actually happened.
Isaiah 53 says that “He was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgressions of my people.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.”
These words were written down long before Jesus was even born. Jesus himself predicted his death sentence several times.
Luke 9:22 is one example of several in the Gospels:
“The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the
elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be
raised.” The Bible knew this death sentence was coming.
Jesus knew this death sentence was coming.
Even as he rode into town like a king, with the palm branches waving
before him, he knew that his death sentence had already been written as the
necessary plan of the Father. And
he went ahead willingly, offering himself freely as a sacrifice because it was
necessary to accomplish God’s mission. There
was no other way. Now the purpose that God set out to accomplish is directly
related to you. When the Father
said this had to be done, when the Son took this burden on his shoulders, you
were the reason why. I’m going to
explain that statement in a minute, but the Bible is clear that no man has
greater love than this, that he lays down his life for his friends, and you are
the friend that was on Jesus’ mind before he died. How is that possible?
How can a man who died on a cross 2000 years ago have been thinking about
us? In order to understand, I think
we have to look one more time at the Scriptures.
Let’s go back to Isaiah 53, which not only predicted Jesus’ death,
but also offered a reason why. “He
was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the
punishment that made us whole.” Or Romans 3: All
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are now justified by his
grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put
forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood.” Or Hebrews 9: As
it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the
sacrifice of himself. Or 1 John 1: The
blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. Or 1 Peter 2: He
himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that free from sins, we might
live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. The mission of Jesus Christ was to make things right
between you and God. We use a lot
of words for that mission, words like redemption, atonement, salvation.
Ultimately the goal was simple – to rescue human beings from their own
sin and from the just penalty for that sin, which was death.
Jesus gave his life to offer that rescue to you.
The Bible is clear that human beings are sinners.
All human beings are trapped in sin.
Our sins are against an infinite, holy God who cannot abide the presence
of sin, so an atonement had to be made. Jesus
had to die to make things right between us and God. He had to face the death penalty so that you could have life. Doesn’t sound fair, does it? An innocent man has to die so that sinners can live.
It’s not fair, and really, that’s the point.
The death penalty for the Son of God was completely unfair.
For those of us who receive the benefits, it’s a gift we don’t
deserve. It’s grace.
Through the death of Christ, God set out to give us an eternal hope that
we could never have earned for ourselves. And he accomplished the mission. He finished the job. That’s why the day it happened is remembered as Good Friday. Not that the death of Jesus was good in itself, but that it accomplished what God set out to do. Beyond all hope, we were rescued. The crucifixion is what it cost; your salvation is what it gained. Jesus paid that price willingly out of his incredible love for you. That is what the passion of Jesus means. Amen. Sermon for the 2nd
Sunday in Lent Brothers and sisters… Somewhere in the dusty corners of our memory, many of us
have a small file cabinet filled with the fairy tales and fables of our
childhood. They are the stories
that stick with us, sometimes at the front of the conscious mind and sometimes
just below the surface, but they keep coming back because number one, they are
designed to be remembered, and number two, they open your mind to truth.
Sometimes these children’s stories reveal the truth even more as the
years go on, as if the most profound meaning of these fables is reserved for the
adults who tell them, and not just the children who hear them. There are a variety of characters in these fairy tales,
from clever talking mice to wise old kings and everything in between.
One personality you’ll see again and again is that of the fox.
He shows up in a variety of fables, sometimes partnered with another
animal like a rabbit, or a hound. Almost
always, the fox of these fables is a character of self-interest and savvy. He’s always working an angle, always plotting some strategy
with a sly grin on his face. He
wants to get something in his chops, and he’ll use any means available to do
it. Both in Jesus’ world and in ours as well, there were and
are people who act like the fox. There
are people who scheme their schemes and plan their plots to manipulate the world
around them, in order to win their own advantage. Back in the time of Jesus, Herod was one such person.
He was widely known for his cruelty, and for his devious mind.
He was a real-life stereotype of a crooked politician, and most of his
citizens (speaking under their breath), called him by names that it will not do
to repeat in church. Jesus called him a fox.
Jesus knew all about the cunning and cruelty of King Herod.
This was the ruler who executed John the Baptist, you may remember, and
it seems in this story that Slick King Herod wanted the head of Jesus Christ on
his platter as well. But Jesus had a mission from his Father that couldn’t be
disrupted by the schemes of the fox. He
said to the Pharisees, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will drive out demons and heal
people today and tomorrow and on the third day I will reach my goal’.
In other words, plan your plots and scheme your schemes, King Herod.
I have set my face toward Jerusalem, and I won’t stop doing what I’m
doing until I get there. Christ is on his way to Jerusalem. He is on his way to the holy city of legends, Jerusalem, the city of God’s temple where, according to the book of Isaiah, the glory of God would be revealed. By a twist of utter irony, Jerusalem was also known as the city that killed the prophets and stoned to death the messengers of God that had sent to them. Everything that happens in Jerusalem has religious significance, either for good or for evil. When Jerusalem obeys God, the whole world spins peacefully on its axis. When Jerusalem ignores God, the whole planet wobbles. Christ is on his way to Jerusalem. He’s going there because the foxes of this world want to
have their way. He’s going for
the sake all the pale yellow chicks who scatter around in desperation when the
fox has invaded the henhouse. Even
now, Jesus cries out in lament for all of those in Jerusalem who have failed or
refused to hear the voice of one who could save them from the fox’s claws.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I have longed to gather your children
together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings”. If you have ever loved someone that you couldn’t protect,
then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms; you cannot make someone
walk into them. Meanwhile, you are
left standing in the most vulnerable position in the world—wings spread out,
belly exposed, no defense against the fox’s attack. Isn’t it strange that this is the animal to which Jesus
chooses to compare himself? The
mother hen. In the fairy tales I
remember, it was the faithful hound that arrived just in time to chase the fox
away. Maybe our savior should
appear to the world like that. Or
what about the lion of Judah? What
about the mighty wings of the eagle? Those
are some wings you can feel safe under. But
the wings of a mother hen? A
chicken just doesn’t inspire much confidence against the teeth of the fox. But the hen is what Jesus chooses, which – if you think
about it – is pretty typical of him. He’s
always turning the old fables upside down, so that children and peasants wind up
on top while kings and scholars are out the door.
He’s the one who always adds a twist to the fairy tale so that the
loser gets the prize and the last one in line becomes the first. So of course he chooses a hen, even though she looks about
as defenseless against a fox as you can get.
He won’t be the king of the jungle in this story.
What he will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and the
foxes that want to have them. She
has no defenses other than her willingness to shield her babies with her own
body. So she spreads her wings over them, and offers herself as a
sacrifice. If the fox wants them,
he will have to kill her first. Which is exactly what happens when Jesus arrives in the
city of Jerusalem. The foxes have
their way, and the mother hen is removed from the picture. But what if the story didn’t end there?
What if the fox turned around, moments after the hen was destroyed, to
see her standing there again with her chicks once again under her wings?
That would be a twist to the story, wouldn’t it?
There would be nothing more the fox could do.
There’s no scheme he can devise to get those chicks until he gets that
hen out of the way. If the hen
couldn’t be destroyed, then her children would be protected. They’d be saved. But that’s getting ludicrous, even for a fairy tale. Hens don’t come back from the dead any more than people do. Who here is going to believe a story like that?
Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent
Beloved… Temptation. The
urge to do something you know is wrong because you think it will feel so right.
Every one of us has to face temptation, don’t we?
The objects of our temptation are different; the apple that tempts you
might not be the same forbidden fruit that tempts me.
But the feeling of desire, the experience of having your willpower tested
and tempted, that’s an experience that we all share.
In fact, it’s an experience so universal that even Jesus was tempted.
So today we’re going to talk about this story from the Bible where
Jesus faced temptation, and how he responded, and what this story means for us. The story begins with Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit,
and by the Holy Spirit he is led into the wilderness to be tempted.
Right away, we learn something about times of temptation.
Sometimes, it is part of God’s plan for us to be tempted.
It was part of God’s plan that Jesus would go through a time of trial,
and by passing the test, Jesus proved his obedience and trust. Listen for those two words as we go along—obedience and
trust. They’ll be important
throughout the message today. But
so when you go through a time of trial, it may be, it may be part of God’s
plan for that test to come your way. So Jesus is led by the Spirit to be tested, and for forty
days he is out in the wilderness going through this trial.
You can imagine the kind of shape he was in after forty hungry days in
the wilderness. He was famished.
He was emotionally and mentally drained from trying to survive, let alone
the testing he faced. He was
sunburned and weak and absolutely exhausted.
And that’s when the devil came to him. Here’s a second lesson about temptation.
It comes on strongest when your defenses are weak.
That’s one reason this church places such a high value on regular
spiritual activities of worship, prayer, and reading Scripture, so that your
spiritual side stays strong even if you are physically and mentally drained. So Christ is in the wilderness, in this state of exhaustion
and hunger, and the devil comes to him and says, “If you are the Son of
God…” By the way, the devil
knows darn well that Jesus is the Son of God.
This is not about whether Jesus is God’s Son or not, it’s about Jesus’
character as the Son of God. So
what the devil really meant was, “Since you are the Son of God, then use your power to turn this
stone into a loaf of bread.” Here’s one more thing we learn about temptation.
When the devil is looking for a soul to steal, he casts out the bait that
the fish want to bite on. The devil
doesn’t say, “Hey, Jesus, you’ve been out in the desert for weeks,
you’re an exhausted pile of sunburned skin and bones, how’d you like to
spend a night with this gorgeous woman?”
Jesus would say, “Hey, that’s a good idea there, devil.
‘Cause right now, there’s not a thing I could do with a beautiful
woman unless she’s gonna take me out to the Old Country Buffet.” No, the forces opposing God are not fools.
In fact, they are so intelligent and so in touch with our desires that
it’s truly frightening. They know Jesus is hungry, so they tempt him with bread. But there’s another level to this temptation as well, one
which you might not catch when this verse is read out of context.
Just a couple of chapters ago, in Luke 1, Jesus’ mother sings a song
called the Magnificat. In it, she
talks about a God who has come to fill the hungry with good things.
Jesus himself said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me; he has anointed
me to bring good news to the poor.” Jesus is about to go on a mission where he is surrounded by
the poor and hungry. If Jesus can
turn stone into a loaf of bread for himself, he can do it for other people just
as easily. Jesus’ mission is to
help the poor, and the devil is challenging him directly at the point of his
mission. “Jesus—you can do it!
You have the power to end world hunger once and for all.” A couple weeks ago I was part of a Bible study led by one
of my old professors from Luther Seminary.
She was talking about this part of the Bible and she told us of some
artwork she had seen of the devil tempting Jesus to make bread.
And she said in this particular piece of art, the devil was represented
as a starving child, asking him to make bread.
This test was a lot deeper than it looked. So the devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, and
I know you are, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus responded, and he said to him, “A person does not
live by bread alone.” All the
folks down at Braschler’s and Jenny Lind are thinking, “Oh, that’s just
great – even Jesus is on the Atkins plan.”
But his response has nothing to do with carbs and everything to do with
trust and obedience to the will of the Father. It was not the Father’s will for Jesus to turn that stone
into bread. The Father had sent
Jesus into the world not to provide bread, but to be the living bread that leads
to eternal life. Jesus was so in
touch with the Father’s plan for him that he was able to refuse the devil’s
request. How many of us would have the discernment and the strength to resist this temptation? We’re not talking about being tempted by sex or drugs or money. This is the opportunity to do something to make the world a better place. What would you do, if you had the power with a single wave of your hand, to end world hunger forever, but God said no? He doesn’t even tell you why, he just says, “It’s not my plan.” This is the test of obedience that Jesus was facing. This might be the most important lesson about temptation.
Both for Jesus and for those of us who follow him, when temptation comes,
it’s going to be something that sounds really good.
It’s going to be something that sounds really good and the only reason
you have to resist is that quiet voice of the Spirit to tell you, “It’s not
God’s plan”. That is hard. We as Christians need to have not only the willpower to
resist temptation, but the discernment to recognize real temptation when it
comes. That’s hard.
And having that discernment means being in touch with the Holy Spirit. Let’s look at the second temptation Jesus faced.
The devil led him up to a high place and showed him all the kingdoms of
the world in an instant. And the
devil said to Jesus, “Think about all the good you could do if you were in
charge of these kingdoms. I will
give you that power.” I want you to ask yourself, what would this world be like
if Jesus Christ were the single power in charge.
Think about all the millions who died under leaders like Joseph Stalin,
and Adolf Hitler. Think about all
the wars that could have been avoided if Jesus were this world’s leader.
Think about all the political advertising on TV that would be gone
forever! Can I get an amen?
Think about what this world could be like if the peace and justice and
love of Jesus were the only powers in charge. All Jesus had to do was to bow down, one time, in front of
the devil. Think about what he
could have accomplished with one bow. But
he wouldn’t do it. If you ever need proof that the end does not justify the
means, here it is, right here. We
see so much of that in the world today. Whether
it’s the reality you live or the reality show on TV, so many people act
according to the motto of “Hey, whatever works”.
That’s not just selfish, greedy people; that’s well-meaning,
genuinely humanitarian people trying to help others.
Whatever gets the job done. Jesus says no. The
Bible says “You shall worship the Lord your God and him alone”, and so
bowing down to the devil, even once, is against God’s plan. So he cannot do it. This
second temptation is a real test of Jesus’ trust and obedience toward his
Father. It takes discernment,
strength, and the guidance of the Spirit for Jesus to resist, and it does for
us, too, whenever the end seems to justify an unrighteous means. So the devil moves on to his final temptation.
This time, he raises the ante even more.
He says, “OK, Jesus, I get it. You’re
here on a spiritual mission. You’re
all about faith in God. I get
it.” So the devil takes him up to
the holiest place in Jerusalem, the pinnacle of the temple, and says, “Jesus,
if you’re going to talk about faith, you have got to walk the walk.
So take the leap of faith. Step
out in faith off the edge of this temple. After
all, the Bible says that God will command his angels concerning you to protect
you.” The devil is quoting Scripture. He’s quoting the Bible and he’s saying to Jesus, “Your
mission is about faith? Show me
faith.” I’ve made that same
challenge as a pastor. I’ve
challenged people to step out in faith, to walk the walk and put their trust in
God. What’s the difference? The difference, according to Jesus, is that the devil is
trying to put God to the test. Or
more precisely, he’s trying to tempt Jesus to put God to the test.
And neither Jesus nor we have the authority to put God to the test.
When we say we have trust in God, we may not have proof to back it up. But think how tempting it would be to have someone offer
you that proof. There have been
times in my life when I have said, “God, I will follow you anywhere if you
could just prove to me that you are real.”
I think most Christians have experienced that same feeling. How can you tell the difference between stepping out in
faith and putting God to the test? That’s
where the discernment, and strength, and guidance of the Holy Spirit are more
important than ever. So the three tests were completed, and the devil left
because Jesus had passed all three. Maybe
you take it for granted that Jesus passed these tests.
I don’t think we should. These
were real temptations, made by an intelligent enemy who knew exactly what
Jesus’ mission and Jesus’ values were all about.
If he had listened to any of these temptations, Jesus would actually have
made this world a better place. But
he would have acted independently of God’s plan.
He would have introduced a tiny flaw in his trust and obedience of God
the Father, and thanks be to God, Jesus saw that it wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth it, no matter how good the temptation
looked, for him to act apart from his trust and obedience to God’s plan. So what have we learned about temptation?
1. God allows us to be
tested sometimes. 2.
Temptation comes after us when we are weak.
3. Temptation comes through
something that on first glance looks really, really good.
4. For Christians, the most
dangerous temptation is something that makes total sense except that it takes
away from our trust and obedience to the will of God. And finally, we learned that the guidance and strength of the
Holy Spirit are the only way to stand fast when the tempter comes knocking. Now, of course, we are not Jesus Christ, and so the fate of
the world is not resting on our shoulders when we face temptation.
But in our own little worlds, temptation does have consequences when we
give in, so it is a victory any time when temptation comes and you are able to
resist. You have accomplished
something good and saved something good in your world when you deny temptation.
God wants to see you claim that victory. Now, because we are not Jesus Christ, we don’t always succeed against temptation the way that he did. But I want to close by promising you that his success against temptation doesn’t mean he will leave you behind in the times when you fail. He is both an example and a savior, and when we are weak, he reaches out his hand not to punish us, but to lift us up and give us the strength to try again. Temptation will come to each and every one of us here. But Jesus Christ is on our side to defeat it. Amen.
Sermon for Ash
Wednesday Main Message: This sermon will challenge listeners to pray and give for a deeper relationship with God. Beloved… There was a youth worker who took her high school youth
group out to do some Christmas caroling. They
traveled around singing in those parts of the city where kids from the suburbs
didn’t go very often, the downtown residential areas that were always pictured
on the evening news with police tape in the background, the places where there
parents warned them never to travel on their own. As they stood under a broken street lamp and sang “Joy to
the World”, one of the listeners approached this youth worker and asked her
whether the group could give him some money for food, and diapers for his
children. The youth worker was
taken back because they weren’t prepared to start giving handouts.
But the young woman thought, “Wait a minute, we’re Christians, we
have to help this man.” And so he
gathered the youth group together and they took the man to the nearest grocery
store, where they went inside and pooled their money together to buy food and
baby supplies for this man’s family. When they left the store, all the kids in the youth group
were smiling and talking about how cool it was to be able to help out a needy
person. But just at the point where
the man was supposed to thank them and tell them what a blessing they were, the
man instead took his sack of groceries and said, “I suppose you think you’re
better than me, coming down here from the suburbs and helping out a poor
helpless man like me. Well, you
ain’t. You ain’t any better
than me at all, so why don’t you just go back to your nice homes where you
came from.” Then as he left, he
turned and sneered as he said, “Merry Christmas”. You can imagine how that youth group felt.
It was several minutes before anyone started to speak, and when they did
open their mouths, it was to express their shock, and anger, and almost a
feeling of betrayal. The consensus
among the group was that they had had enough of the inner city and they wanted
to call it a night. But the Holy Spirit was putting something in the heart of
that youth director to teach these kids. So
she gathered the group around and turned in her Bible to the words of Jesus in
the Sermon on the Mount. “Take
care,” she read to them, “that you don’t do your good deeds publicly to be
admired by other people. When you
give a gift to someone in need, don’t shout about it like the hypocrites do.
They blow their trumpets in the streets to call attention to their acts
of charity, and I assure you – they have received all the reward they will
ever get. But you, when you give to
someone, don’t tell your left hand what your right hand is doing.
Give your gifts in secret, and your Father, who knows all secrets, will
reward you.” Matthew 6:1-4. The group had a chance to think about those words and talk
about what they meant in the context of what had just happened.
And when they were done, they went back out on the streets and continued
their caroling for the rest of the night. Give your gifts in secret, and your Father who knows all
secrets will reward you. And when
you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father in secret,
and your Father who knows all secrets will reward you. The word of God teaches us about two of the most important
spiritual disciplines we can follow – prayer and giving to others.
For both prayer and giving, Jesus draws a line between those who give do
these things before others, and those who do these things before God.
For both prayer and giving, the spiritual lesson is clear – those who
do these things to be seen by others already have their reward.
They have a good reputation, a note of gratitude, a plaque in their honor
for the money they have given. Those
who give gifts and pray prayers in secret will be seen and rewarded by the
Father in heaven. So the way you
give, and the way you pray, are just as important as whether you give at all. I see it as a lesson about integrity for the person doing the praying and the giving. It’s a message of integrity between your public reputation and your private character. Reputation is who other people say you are; character is
who you are when there’s nobody around to talk about you except for yourself
and God. There are some people
whose private character and public reputation wouldn’t even recognize each
other if they met on the street. These
are the people whom Jesus calls hypocrites; they’re praying and giving in
order to be seen, but in private, they are different people.
Jesus is telling us that your public reputation and your private
character should have integrity. When
you are alone in a room, you should be the same person as you are when you go to
work and when you’re around your friends and when you’re coming to church. Now that’s hard because when you’re alone in a room
praying, it may just feel like you’re alone in a room, talking to yourself.
And when you give a gift to a charity or to church or something, it’s
kind of nice to be recognized for that gift and have someone say thank you.
But Jesus is saying that even when no one else notices when you are
praying and no one says thank you for giving a gift, your Father in heaven sees,
and it makes him happy to see it. How does that relate to that youth group in the grocery
store? They bought some groceries
for a man who didn’t accept that gift with gratitude. They had expected to leave the store feeling good and to
smile when the man said thank you. Things
didn’t go as they expected, but in the eyes of God they had done something
good, they had done something good, and that was enough in itself.
It was enough to add one building block to the Christ-like character of
every person in that group. And the
Bible is very clear on this point—God sees a person’s hidden character, and
a Christ-like character is something that God rewards. How does that relate to us today? This service of Ash Wednesday is the beginning the season of
Lent. There are 40 days between now
and the Holy Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.
I believe that Jesus is calling us over the next 40 days to practice
these spiritual disciplines, the things you do in secret that help you build a
Godly character. Jesus is
challenging us for the next forty days to spend time growing in the secret
spiritual disciplines of prayer and giving. Now there are a lot of specific ways to answer that
calling. When it comes to prayer,
one thing you can do is turn to a devotional book to guide your praying.
Our youth director Lisa gave me this one here and asked if I would
mention it in the announcements because we have it available for you to pick up
as you leave the service, right back there on a table in the center of the
narthex. I told her, “Well, we
don’t have announcements tonight, but guess what – it fits exactly with the
sermon, so I’ll mention it there instead.”
This is a family devotional book with Bible readings and devotional
activities for each day of Lent starting today.
Pick them up on the way out of the service; if we run out, Lisa said
she’d be happy to order more. Whether you use this devotional booklet or another one or
none at all, the challenge is to spend time praying. If you don’t have a routine of prayer, I challenge you to
spend 5 minutes in prayer every day of Lent.
You can pray what’s off the top of your head, you can pray the Lord’s
Prayer over and over, it doesn’t matter as long as you are intentional about
developing your character with the habit of prayer.
And I challenge you to do the same thing with the habit of giving, to
intentionally grow to be like Christ through the discipline of giving. Now these disciplines of prayer and giving aren’t anything that will get you noticed. We’re not going to publish a list of everybody who committed to prayer during Lent. You won’t get an award for keeping up with your pledge and giving to charity in secret. I’m asking you to make the commitment anyway, privately in your heart to say “I’m going to pray and I’m going to give money to charity all throughout the next forty days.” It’s disciplines of the spirit like these that shape your character into the model of Christ. And God who sees in secret will honor your prayer, will honor your giving, and will honor your commitment to become like Jesus. “Aha Moments” Lord, open our ears to hear your word; open our minds to understand; open our hearts to believe. Amen. It must have been a sight to behold! An experience of a life time! In what is called The Transfiguration, Jesus takes his three closest disciples, Peter, James and John, up on a mountain, and while he is praying, he is transformed before their very eyes, revealing his glory as God’s only Son. The voice from heaven declared, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him.” Do you ever yearn for a glimpse of glory? Do you desire to see God in a clear and tangible way so that your faith could be confirmed and strengthened? Oh, if only we could see Christ standing before us in dazzling white clothing. Those disciples were given a priceless privilege, an experience to penetrate their hearts. But they are not the only ones. God continues to come to us with his grace and share with us what we might call “Aha moments.” I want to tell you this morning how thankful I am for the “Aha moments” that God has provided for me which have strengthened my faith and commitment to Christ. As a young boy growing up in Golden Valley, our youth group would go to Bible camp and take special trips out west or up into the boundary water canoe area in Northern Minnesota. Those were mountain top experiences for us as we had the opportunity to be in God’s creation and talk about our faith. I still remember one starry night sitting around the camp fire in the Porcupine Mountains as our youth director Loren shared a devotional word. As we went around doing what is called a popcorn prayer, it was the first time that I prayed out loud in front of others. I took the risk to participate and it had an effect on my life. I felt closer to God. I felt like I was part of that group of kids who had something in common, our faith in Christ. Within that fellowship, God’s glory was revealed.
Some years later, when I was in college, I worked as a counselor at Camp
Emmaus, the same camp that I attended when I was in middle school. That summer changed my life as I was given the opportunity to
study the Bible in an intentional way with other young adults and reflect on my
faith. The thing that had the
greatest impact on me was leading the daily Bible study with my campers.
As I taught the lesson, I really had to think about what I was teaching,
what the Bible was saying and how it related to our lives and then communicate
that to those young kids. I began
to understand that the Bible is a dynamic, living thing that reveals God’s
purpose and will for our lives. Through
the Word the glory of God is revealed. On October 4, 1993, the event that changed my life the most occurred, the morning my dad died of heart failure. As I watched him die and take his last breath, there was an incredible calm that filled the room, “a peace that surpasses all understanding.” The struggle was over. What I was given was God’s promise of life. During those moments, my mother and my aunt Helen were quoting scripture, “because I live, you will live also.” “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.” Because of that day, and of that witness, my hope in the power of Jesus’ resurrection took on new meaning. Jesus is risen from the dead and alive. God’s glory in Jesus’ resurrection was revealed in a powerful way, instilling in me God’s power over death. Last August I attended the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Milwaukee. For me, it was an experience I needed and will never forget. It was good for me just to get away, but I also benefited from the larger church getting together. Currently, the ELCA is going through some difficult times. Because of a few issues, such as the CCM document with the Episcopal Church and the sexuality study which will lead to a recommendation in 2005 on the question of ordination for homosexuals in committed relationships and the blessing of same sex unions, many distrust the leadership and lack confidence in the direction of the church. It is a hard time to be the church in that broader sense, and as a pastor it can be very distressing. But the one thing that gives me hope for the church and its future is the vision I received when we worshipped. Even though we debated the issues on the floor of the plenary sessions, when it was time to go to worship, those with opposing views sat next to each other in the congregation. As we went up to eat and drink the Lord’s body and blood, we were all the same and we all came with the same need, the forgiveness of our sins. We were united in our common faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. It is that vision I hope everyone might see when it comes time to taking a vote on the future of the church. It is only Jesus who can mend our divisions and keep us together as a church. Those are some of my “Aha moments.” I need them because sometimes my faith is weak. God provides these experiences and visions in order that we might see a glimpse of his glory and to give thanks and praise for his presence and involvement in our lives. We need these encounters with God to renew our sense of place and purpose in the world. Life is not always easy. In fact, life can be very hard. Our mountain top experiences enable us to not only to face the trials and difficulties of the valley, but to endure and move through them. As we experience the glory of God and God’s presence in our lives, God changes us. Our lives are transformed. We can’t possibly be the same. With our lives transformed, we move out into the world. We go back to our daily lives to share that presence of God with others and help them to see his glory.
In a book of homilies and hymns written by the late Ralph F. Smith who
was campus pastor at Wartburg Seminary in Iowa, he tells of a vision he saw one
day that impacted his faith. He
writes: Late
one quiet autumn afternoon I sat on a deserted stretch of beach on the
Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. I went
there on occasion to listen to the water and to watch the sun set.
This particular night I heard a car driving through the woods near the
beach, about fifty yards away from me. At
first I was angry that someone intruded on my private moment of reflection.
So I watched, irritated, as a middle-aged man and woman got out of the
car. The man went to the trunk and
lifted out a wheelchair. Then the
two of them positioned themselves by the back door and lifted out a young man,
perhaps 18-20 years old. He was
severely crippled and they had to strap him in the chair. I never saw him move any part of his body by his own power.
The wheeled him through the trees toward an outcropping of rock overlooking the
beach. I wondered what they were
trying to do, why they were going through such trouble. Finally, they stopped, and as the sun set and the sky glowed
red, and orange, and yellow as only sunsets can make it do, the mother
carefully, gently, slowly lifted the boy’s head, held it straight and turned
it forward, so that he could watch the sunset.
Smith went on to write: Every
question I have ever had about God, every doubt I have entertained, every
theological sentence I have ever read or written or heard, all are somehow
embraced, swallowed up by that one, simple moment on the beach:
God provides these “Aha moments” for our edification, our confirmation, our benefit. What are your “Aha moments?” I know you have had them. You can share them with your family and friends, with your co-workers. They need to hear how God is active and alive so that they can have faith in the deepest valley. What is kind of interesting about this Transfiguration story is that the disciples almost missed it. “Weighed down with sleep,” the disciples almost failed to see Jesus as “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” They almost failed to see the two men, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory, “talking to him.” But, as our text points, “since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.” Some times, it’s just a matter of showing up and participating. God will provide. Sometimes we look for the supernatural, those grand experiences. We fail to see the glory of God in the common, the ordinary, in those things that God has promised to be present, such as our worship, in the word proclaimed, in the water poured, in the bread and wine received. As it says above the door, “Surely the Lord is in this place.” His glory is all around us. Amen. The Way of Love When I was a kid, there was a song made popular by Diana Ross. “What the world needs now is love sweet love, it’s the only thing that there’s much too little of.” Many of us would have to agree with that. What the world needs, what you and I need, what everyone needs is love. But what do we mean by love? In our second lesson for today, the Apostle Paul gives to us an extraordinary vision of love. We’re all familiar with his “Hymn of Love” in the 13th chapter of Corinthians. We’ve heard it many times before, whether it be in a Sunday school class or at a wedding. Perhaps the most famous verse is “So faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” One of the problems with a verse like this is that it becomes too familiar. We sentimentalize it to the point that it does nothing more than create warm feelings in us. We reduce the real meaning and impact of love as if it is for me alone. We miss the greater point that love is that one important thing that builds and sustains community, the community that we live and work in, but also the community of faith we call the church. Love must be put to use and actually lived out in our daily lives. This kind of love is called agape. Lewis Smedes in his book, Love Within Limits, defines agape love as “the liberating power that moves us toward our neighbor with no demands for rewards.” Agape love is self-giving kind of love, asking for no return on its investment. It is not interested in getting some self-satisfaction in return for its efforts. It gives, not in the hope of inspiring the loved one to give in return, although that may occur in response to the love one has received, but simply because the other is there and in need. It’s doesn’t come with its own agenda, but it seeks to find out what the needs of the other is. Perhaps this kind of love sounds a bit idealistic, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Agape love is not some soft-hearted love, but one that is tough-minded and realistic about the kind of world we live in. The command to “love one another” is a hard command to follow, especially when there are so many people who are so unlovable. The challenge for us is to find ways to bring this kind of love into the reality of our everyday lives. Paul’s description of love is this: “Love is patient and kind; love in not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.” These qualities of love are intended for ordinary living in ordinary days. But if you heard them the way I did, you probably cringed and wrinkled up your forehead a bit because you realize how often you fail to live up to what was just described. After all, the realities of the world and our fallen human nature make it awfully hard to live up to Paul’s expectations. We are sales men and women trying get ahead against tough competition. We are directors of business who know from experience that “Love” is not a word often used in the boardroom. We are workers and laborers often in conflict with management that is more concerned with the profit/loss margins. We are frustrated parents who must deal with our challenging kids. We are husbands and wives trying to keep our marriages from becoming nothing more than an exercise in tolerance. We all have wants, needs, and desires, goals and aspirations that do not easily harmonize with self-giving love. What then can we do? Where and how can we obtain such a love? First of all, it’s important to know and remember that this kind of self-giving love is a gift, as it comes from God and God’s self-giving action of Jesus Christ on the cross. The Bible says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” That is what God has done for us in Jesus, as Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins and was raised from the dead so that we might have a new life, a life filled with love, God’s love. We are not able to come upon it on our own. Agape love comes from God. Again, the Bible says, “we love because God first loved us,” making it possible for us to love others selflessly, without regard to status or reward. I have seen this kind of love at work, but no more than when I was traveling through what was then communist East Germany, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. We were visiting a Lutheran Deaconate House, or what they called a Mother House. It was a hospital staffed by women who gave their whole lives to the ministry of healing. They took the vow of chastity and remained single. They were called “sisters.” They also had a school connected to the hospital where they trained students who would then go to serve in one of the other Mother Houses around Germany. At that time, they were also accepting young men in the program. The interesting thing about this place was that it served the needs of all people, whether or not they were Christian. One of the sisters, Sister Maria, told us that she asked a man why he came to them since he could have gone to one of the government hospitals. He told her that there was something different about this place. He sensed that they cared about him as a person. Sister Maria was much more pointed in her interpretation of what this man said, saying it was the love they had for people that brought them to their hospital. They had the gift of love and they used it their ministry of healing.
During the month of January, we emphasized the mission of the church,
both global and local mission. We
heard how the ministry of Jesus Christ is done through us as we share the good
news in both word and deed here in Red Wing and around the world. For that ministry to be effective and to touch the lives of
people, it must be administered with love.
I am reminded of a mission story I heard of from India.
Pastor Miller was a missionary sent to establish the church in southern
India. As he said, he had all the
tools and gifts to preach the Word of Christ, yet he worked for two years
without any results. Not a single person had converted to Christianity.
When he came home on furlough, he shared his experience and frustrations
with the church leaders. The asked Pastor Miller, “Did
you love those people you were sent to work with?´ He said, “Yes,
I think so?” ”Do you really
love those people? Have you shown
love? Have you opened your home to
them?” the continued to ask him. Pastor
Miller got the message. He went
back to India and love the people unconditionally.
There were people in and out of his house night and day. To this day, there is a small Christian community on the
southern coast of India, all a result of God’s unconditional love.
The Apostle Paul tells us, “If I
have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I
have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am
nothing.” “Love,” as the song goes, “is what makes the world go round.” To experience agape love is to experience the love of God. This love, as the Bible says, will never end. It is eternal because it comes from eternity. The amazing thing is that God has chosen to share this eternal love with us through his Son Jesus Christ. Again, the Bible says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son.” God makes it possible for us through Jesus to live in his love and to share it with others. It really is not an option for us as Christians. It is our calling. It is our life. We are to live a life of love. In closing, I challenge you to take this definition of love that the Apostle Paul has given us and make it a reality in your lives. For it to have an impact, just replace your name for the word love and you will have something like this: Randy is patient and kind; Randy is not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude. Randy doesn’t insist on his own way. Randy is not irritable or resentful. Randy does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. God’s love is for you and for those who are around you. Amen. ”IDENTITY AND PURPOSE” Life has many stages and experiences that help shape and develop who we are as people. Each stage of life, from early childhood, to adolescence, to young adulthood, to mature adulthood, contributes to the development of our own personal identity. When I look at my three daughters, I am amazed at how they have changed over the years. As they move into young adulthood, I ask the same question that all parents ask, “What will they be like and what will they be doing in the future?” It can be very exciting to speculate on that, but also very frightening, because the future is wide open and unknown. We are all different people based on the kinds of experiences we have had throughout our lives. But there is one event in our lives that has influenced us and has helped shaped who we are as people, an event of great significance and power, that being baptism. In baptism, we are given a new identity. You are a child of God. By the water and the Word, your sins are washed away and you are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that works faith in you and brings you into the community we call the Church. We are now known as Christians. As Romans chapter 8 tells us, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” It is an identity given by God as a gift of his grace and love. The question of identity is a very important one, not only in understanding who we are as people, but also in understanding who Jesus is and what his purpose in life was all about. Baptism played an important role for Jesus in this question of identity. The development of his identity was just like yours and mine. He, too, had to go through that whole process of growth. The gospel writer of Luke tells us of some of these events and clues us in to Jesus’ identity and purpose in life. When the angel of the Lord came to Mary to announce the birth of a son, the angel said, “the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” And after Jesus was born, the angel told the shepherds, “for to you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, who is the Messiah the Lord.” And when his parents presented Jesus to the priests in the temple, old Simeon took Jesus up in his arms and said, “My eyes have seen your salvation.” Simeon could then die in peace because he had seen the Lord’s Christ. As Jesus grew, the development of his identity continued though out his childhood. The first time we know that he became aware at all of his true identity was when he was in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening and asking them questions. It was there that he first made reference to his unique relationship to God, that he “must be about doing his Father’s business,” something his parents did not understand. Following this event, this twelve year old boy went back to Nazareth with his parents to live and grow as a carpenter’s son. He continued to develop like any child, until the time came when he was led into the wilderness to be baptized. Through this event, Jesus’ identity as the Son of God is confirmed and he is empowered to live out his purpose on earth. There were crowds of people that came out to be baptized. They responded to John who preached a word of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Filled with expectation, the people wondered if John were the Messiah, His powerful words and actions confused the people, causing for them a mistaken identity. They asked John if he were the Messiah, but John tells them he was only the one to prepare the way for the one who was to come. John tells them, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” John was the prophet who foretold of the Lord’s coming. His purpose was to point to Jesus as the One who was to come. As he steps back out of the picture, Jesus takes center stage. Jesus comes with “all the people” to be baptized, identifying with them and their needs. After he is baptized, and while he is praying, the clouds open up and the Holy Spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove, resting on him. And then, a voice from heaven declares, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” At his baptism, Jesus’ identity is revealed as the Son of God and he is empowered by the Spirit to carry out his ministry. This identity and purpose for Jesus is seen as the fulfillment of what was proclaimed in scripture. In the book of Isaiah, the prophet spoke about this when he said, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.” This sending of the Spirit was not uncommon in the history of God’s people. God would often enter into the affairs of his people by sending his Spirit upon particular people, so that they could be empowered to lead and guide the people of Israel through difficult times. Spirit-filled people, such as the judges, kings, and prophets, were called by God to do specific tasks. But once the task was completed, the Spirit did not remain, but returned to God. However, with Jesus, it was different. Something new has occurred. The Spirit descends upon him at his baptism and remained with him forever. The gift of the Spirit confirms Jesus’ unique identity as the Son of God. It also marked the beginning of his public ministry and empowers him to carry it out, all the way to the cross. Jesus’ identity as the Son of God defined his purpose in accomplishing God’s saving action for all people. Jesus would go on to suffer and die on the cross for the forgiveness of sin, and be raised from the dead so that death would lose it power and we might live with him into eternity. Today our attention is focused upon Jesus, upon his identity and his purpose. His baptism empowered him and set him apart for a specific purpose of God, to bring healing, life, and salvation to all people. But just as we have had the opportunity to reflect on Jesus’ baptism and what it means, we can also reflect for a moment on our baptism and its connection with Jesus’ baptism. First of all, just as Jesus’ baptism was a life-changing and directing event in his life, baptism is also a life-changing and directing event for us, as we are given a new identity apart from anything we could do for ourselves, to be called “children of God.” In our baptism, in that moment of grace, God chooses you to be his own. As Peter said, “Once you received no mercy, but now you have received mercy…once you were no people, now you are God’s people.” Baptism gives us this new identity as we are marked with the cross of Christ forever, bringing us into a new community created by the Spirit called the church. Secondly, in baptism, the same Holy Spirit that was given to Jesus is also given to us. As God was with Jesus through the Spirit, God is also with us. As we pray for the Spirit to rest upon the person being baptized, the hope is that it will kindle the flame of faith and give that person the ability to recognize Jesus as God’s beloved Son and believe in him. And finally, our baptism is the beginning of our own ministry in the world, just as it was for Jesus. Empowered by the Spirit, God gives to us a purpose, to do good, to work for justice, to help those who suffer, to bring comfort and healing to those who are oppressed. In whatever way we can, great or small, we can live out our faith and baptismal promise in our daily lives by sharing the love of Christ in both word and deed. God’s power is in the world today. It dwells and is at work in the lives of faithful people, like you and me. Baptism gives to you an identity and a purpose. It is a gift that can change your life. As you live in your baptism always, you will give honor and glory to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Sermon for Sunday
of Epiphany Grace and peace… A star is born! Here
in America, that’s not really unusual, is it?
We have an entertainment industry filled with stars, and hot new stars
are rising all the time. Two thousand years ago, however, there was no such thing as
an entertainment industry, and the only stars were the lights in the sky that
God had created on the fourth day. The
birth of a new star was literally a new light in the night sky that no one had
seen before. An event like that was
a once-in-a-lifetime, sign from heaven kind of event. The Gospel lesson today is about a group of men who saw the
birth of a new star, and who consequently followed that star on a long and
difficult journey. It’s about the
honor and joy they received when that journey led them to a child named Jesus.
From that lesson, I want to talk about how our own journeys have purpose
when we are following the Lord. One thing we know about these wise men was that they came
from the East. Where exactly, the
Bible doesn’t say, but somewhere to the east of Israel. If I were to make an informed guess, I’d say they came out
of the Persian or Babylonian region; it’s very possible they came from the
area that today is known as Iraq. We know that these men were called “magi”, or wise men.
Men with almost mystical knowledge and wisdom.
The song we sing calls them “We three kings”; well they certainly
brought the wealth of kings as gifts on their journey.
But we’ll get to that later. For
now, we know that these were highly intelligent, observant people who saw a new
star appear out of nowhere in the night sky, and they knew that this star was a
sign of the birth of a king. So
they packed up gifts for this newborn King and set out in a caravan away from
their homes and on a long journey into the west.
All because a new star had been born. Now, as I’ve said, the birth of a new star today means
there’s some new celebrity that we can sit back and watch on TV.
There are new stars all the time, and dozens of opportunities for you to
follow those stars, whether you want to see them on TV or read about them in
People magazine. The difference, of
course, is that following a star in modern is a pretty low-commitment activity.
Any couch jockey can follow the stars of today with nothing more than a
bag of chips and a remote control. But following the Christmas star is a different story.
To pack up and leave home, to travel across the deserts of Iraq, Jordan,
Syria or whatever path the magi followed in search of this star—that’s a
different story. It was work.
It was hard work. It took a
long time, and it took a lot of courage and determination.
The wise men who followed that star had primitive transportation –
camels and horses and maybe some type of wagons and their own shoe leather. It’s doubtful whether they knew exactly where they were
going. They certainly didn’t know
what they would find when they arrived. Following
the Christmas star was an informed leap of faith into a dangerous challenge. I’m reminded of a prayer that it written in the LBW that
was prayed over me when I began my time at Luther Seminary.
It says, “Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which
we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.
Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but
only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus
Christ our Lord.” This would have been an appropriate prayer for the wise men
on their journey. And the truth is,
these words are a prayer of faith for every person who sets out to follow Jesus
Christ. The star that we follow as
Christians isn’t a Hollywood star that will entertain us while we sit on the
couch. That’s not what
Christianity is about. The star we
follow is the Christmas star. The
star we follow leads us on a journey that requires courage and faith to follow
to the end. We need God’s help
every step of the way. But I’ll tell you something else. Not only is it more challenging to follow the Christmas star;
it’s also more rewarding. Following
the stars today doesn’t ask much of you but it also doesn’t give much in
return. You sit on the couch and
watch; you get a couple hours of comedy or drama as reward. The return for following Hollywood stars is entertainment, a
short term distraction to put your mind on something else for a while. And that’s not always bad, but it is just pocket change
next to the incredible treasure of the Christmas star. Hollywood stars give us diversion. The Christmas star gives us direction. One of the tragedies of modern culture is watching people
who frantically race through life without ever knowing where they are headed.
They jump around from one career to the next, from one relationship to
the next, racing back and forth between isolated experiences that never connect,
and never satisfy them. They are
very busy, active people—but they have no idea what all that busyness means,
or where it is all leading. Life has direction when you are following Jesus Christ.
The Lord gives meaning to every aspect of your life, whether it’s
sleeping or eating or working or playing. Your
life counts for something, and your life has a purpose when you are following
him. Now, keep in mind that we’re still talking about a long
journey. The wise men didn’t spot
the Christmas star on one day and arrive in Bethlehem by 8:00 the next morning.
It was a long road, and it’s a long road for us to follow Jesus, too.
But it’s the journey itself that gives us direction.
It’s the journey itself that leads us to our purpose. For the wise men, their purpose in the journey toward the
star was clear. They were coming to
honor the new King and to bring their gifts.
They brought gifts of incredible value:
Gold, the gift of a king; frankincense, the rare incense used by priests
in prayer; and myrrh, the spice used for anointing the dead, a sign of the
sacrifice that Jesus would one day have to make. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh – King and God and Sacrifice.
You’ll hear these words in the song after the sermon.
The best gifts they had, to honor this holy child. Well the purpose of our journey is the same.
When we follow the Christmas star to Jesus, the purpose of that journey
is to honor the king and to bring our gifts.
That’s true whether you’re a wise man on a camel or a stay-at-home
mom or a garbage man or a doctor or a teacher or whatever.
Your life and your journey have a purpose – to glorify God and to offer
him your gifts of time, talent, and treasure for his kingdom.
No matter what the world might say about you; your life has direction and
meaning when you follow the Christmas star. Here in the church, this Sunday is called the Sunday of the
Epiphany. An epiphany is a
revelation, a making clear. It’s
that moment when you say “Oh, yeah!” because you finally get it. The pieces fall into place.
It doesn’t have to be total clarity, but it’s total trust that you
are on the right path. I hope that all of you have a chance in your life to experience that feeling of epiphany, when things fall into place and you know that your life counts for something. You don’t have to be a star to let your light shine in this world. I pray that the light of the Christmas star will give you direction and purpose on the path to Jesus. Amen. |
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