Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

Last Sunday in confirmation we were talking about beginnings and endings, creation and evolution and then about the Book of Revelation and how that last book in our biblical canon is identified with predictions of the end times. Several times we could have framed our conversation the way Jesus does as he continues preaching the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard it said that God created the heavens and the earth and everything that creeps on it in six days, but I say to you…” or

“You have heard it said that in heaven there will be seven angels carrying the seven plagues and when the seventh has been released, that will signify the end of the wrath of God, but I say to you…”

Throughout this sermon Jesus interprets what has been said by the prophets and the teachers of the law, and in some places, what is popularly know among the people listening to him, and he uses his teaching to reorient people toward God.

One of the observations the students and I made last week is that when we read or hear Scripture, it’s important to remember what we know about the character of God. As we reconcile the biblical accounts of creation with scientific evidence of dinosaurs and fossils, we remember that God isn’t a class clown, targeting us to be duped or ticked.

In Leviticus and again as we listen to Jesus, when we hear the commandments God has given us to govern our lives with God and with each other, we shouldn’t dismiss the ones that are challenging or seem improbable. God does not set us up to fail or put us in impossible circumstances to test us.

Therefore, when we hear Jesus’ command to be perfect, or complete, as our heavenly father is perfect, or complete, we can recognize that his command is not an indictment of how we have failed. And Jesus isn’t merely giving us a motivational speech, urging us to be better.

No, instead, what we should hear in Jesus’ words is
an affirmation of our identity as children of God;
and a promise that God is working out something new in each of us.

Jesus is casting a vision for the future as God imagines it.

Going back to the beginning, in Genesis, Scripture says God created humankind in the image of God. This idea that we are the imago Dei [imagō day] – that we are made in the image of God – becomes the foundation or ground of our being.

When we forget who we are, or whose we are, when we turn away from God, we are called to confess our brokenness, and live, freed as sons and daughters of God.

In the text from Leviticus, the Lord tells Moses, “Speak to all the congregation of people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Again, this isn’t an indictment of our poor behavior or a motivational speech to encourage us to be better people. A half-dozen times, the Lord ends a command with the reminder “I am the Lord.” because it reminds us whose authority we live under.

As Luther writes in the explanation of the third article of the Creed, we must acknowledge that we can not by our own power or merit come to Christ or believe in Him, but the Holy Spirit enlightens us and empowers us to do what we cannot. [i]

God empowers us to live in God’s image, holy and perfect, as God is.

In the Matthew text, the Greek word for “perfect” is τέλειος

Its meaning better describes our relationship or orientation toward a goal than the goal itself. The goal is to live each day in the Imago Dei, the image of God.

Too often we live out of our brokenness, but as in the beatitudes, this image of who we are as God’s children is not a future state. It is who we are today, as God’s children. As Luther writes in his Large Catechism, “the work is finished and completed; Christ has acquired and won the treasure for us by his sufferings, death and resurrection.”[ii]

“[The Gospel] teaches about the right relation of the heart to God”[iii] because God imagines a world where we can live in right relationship with God and with each other.

But if holiness and righteousness, or perfection,
doesn’t look like never making a mistake;
if it doesn’t mean aging without wrinkles or scars;
if it doesn’t sound like always having the right answer, the quick reply or the comforting words,
what does it look like or sound like?

The easy answer, of course, like it so often is in church, is that it looks like Jesus. But as each one of us knows, living in the imago Dei, in the image of God and imitating Jesus, is anything but easy.

Still, I think we catch glimpses of what living in God’s image, and into God’s vision or creation, looks like

• when a group of women gather, as women across our synod did a week ago Saturday, to proclaim the power of the Holy Spirit to encourage us and our sisters and brothers in faith;
• when churches and temples opened their doors to shelter and feed people who had been evacuated because of problems with the Oroville Dam in northern California;
• when prophetic voices, like those of Martin Luther and the other reformers, took a stand five hundred years ago against the abuses they were witnessing

As daughters and sons, as communities of faith, we are called to live as God makes us, holy and perfect in an imperfect and broken world, and to reflect the God in whose image we are made in our actions and our words.

Let us pray:
Holy God,
Help us hear again that you love us very much.
Help us remember your faithfulness and trust in your promises, Lord,
that we might live in right relationship with you and our neighbors.
Ground us in Your Word and form us each into a reflection of your image, Lord.
Amen.

[i] “Small Catechism, Book of Concord, 355-56.
[ii] “Large Catechism,” Book of Concord. 436.
[iii] Luther’s Works, Vol 21., p. 108.

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

In today’s gospel, Jesus continues preaching his Sermon on the Mount. He was preaching “to a people divided and confused by anxious questions” about how to be faithful and how to live together with the Romans.”[i] Some people wanted to collaborate and find middle ground, others wanted to fight, and still others wanted to retreat into the safety of private religious study and practice.

He is preaching to teach “what it means to be disciples in this setting” of discord and explosive dialog. [ii]

Jesus uses the word “righteousness here in verse 20, saying, that a person’s righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. The religious leaders held a traditionally Jewish understanding of righteousness as our standing before God, or our individual morality. But for Jesus, righteousness is not about how you, Judy, or you, Calvin, act but about “all of you”, or maybe, “all y’all.” All of us.

Righteousness in Matthew is about how we live in relationship with each other.

It is how we live into “God’s reordering of human life.”[iii] Creating us for relationship, God covenants with us, promising to sustain us in this life together as we participate in God’s work in the world all around us.

In his voluminous commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, Martin Luther accuses us of reading Christ’s words as though they were being said by a common tradesman instead of our Lord Jesus.

Martin Luther wrote that this righteousness that Christ commands requires yearning and longing, earnestness and diligence, and eagerness. He writes,
“You should run out and offer your hands and your feet and your whole body, and wager everything you have and can do.”

So, what does this urgent and wholehearted righteousness looks like?

According to Jesus, it means “being salt of the earth and light of the world.”[iv]

“Salt of the earth” can describe a person who is simply decent. Unpretentious. Unaffected. But its meaning is expanded in the gospel as we reflect on what salt does. It preserves. It flavors.

And what about light? Light shines into the darkness, it illuminates the closets where we hide in fear, and helps us see the true nature of things.

During this epiphany season, we describe Jesus as “the light of the world” but in the sermon on the Mount, Jesus turns that back on us, commissioning us to go into the world bearing the light of the gospel.

As in first century Galilee, our nation is divided and contentious.

A little over a week ago, the president signed an executive order restricting the entry of refugees and visitors from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

A few days later, our presiding bishop joined the bishops of the Episcopal and Methodist churches and other faith leaders in addressing the executive order. In her statement, Bishop Eaton affirmed the ELCA’s social statement on immigration adopted nearly twenty years ago, standing with those who have fled persecution and sought refuge in the United States.

Since then, and throughout this week, as I reflected on what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness, and to be the “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”, I have been listening.

First, to a synod colleague, widow and mother of two who pastors a congregation in High Point. She described the heartache and fear in her congregation because she pastors people with green cards and visas, people who were born in Sudan and lived in refugee camps in Egypt while they were screened and vetted to become part of the small percentage of refugees chosen for resettlement. Her imperative to welcome the stranger comes from Matthew, Chapter 25 when Jesus said, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

I also listened to a seminary classmate of mine, a deeply faithful cradle Lutheran who now pastors a two-point parish halfway across the country, in Kansas. He was wrestling aloud with our denomination’s response and trying to discern the wisdom in it. Recalling when, also in Matthew, Jesus tells the disciples, “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” this pastor saw prudence and caution in the president’s policy.[v]

I am telling you their stories because I realize hungering and thirsting for righteousness — figuring out what it means to live together as God’s people and finding ways to participate in God’s work in the world — is hard work.

Rightly, we look to Scripture, but while we like to say “the Bible says,” a more accurate statement is that “The Bible reads…” Because it is a compilation of texts by many different authors, written over centuries, what the Bible “says” is a matter of how we interpret it. So, in divided and contentious times, while God’s Word guides us, we cannot read the Bible as a step-by-step instruction manual; we have to pay attention to the context in which it was written, and to our current circumstances, confident that God is still speaking to us.

In our gospel text today, it’s important to note that the verbs are in the present tense – that Jesus isn’t making future oriented, or conditional, promises when he declares:

“You are the salt of the world; you are the light of the world.”

Martin Luther wrote that being salt of the earth and light of the world means that all of us, “all y’all,” are anointed by Jesus to a public ministry where we stand before the world.

That description was enlivened for me when I opened this letter on Monday. I am sharing it with you, with the author’s permission:

Dear Pastor Christina, 

I am a grandniece of Velta Ilsters Langins, who was (I believe) your church's organist for 43 years (she passed away in 2000).

My great aunt was born in Latvia, but she, my grandmother and great grandmother were forced to flee the country during WWII. They lived for 5 years in Displaced Persons camps in Germany. Thanks to your church, my great aunt was sponsored to come to the United States. After her arrival, my grandmother was able to bring her family as well. This included her infant daughter, my mother.

It is important to remember that there was anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment at the time as well. Thank you for providing my family with a safe haven and a space to rebuild our lives. My mother's family moved to Chicago, but my great aunt spent the rest of her life in Shelby, NC.

We continue to be a family of musicians and art lovers. Among my great aunt's relatives in the US are at least three pianists/piano teachers (!), a professor, and a nurse.

Thank you for your generosity and on-going commitment to supporting refugees. I literally owe my existence to welcoming institutions like yours.

Peace,
Renata

Renata’s letter reminded me that while support for and opposition toward immigrants has ebbed and swelled at different points in our country’s history and our collective memory, the Lutheran church has had a consistent practice of providing hospitality for refugees.

Luther Immigration and Refugee Service notes that,
“following World War II, when one out of every six Lutherans in the world was a refugee or displaced person, Lutherans …resettled some 57,000 refugees in the United States.”[vi]

Living as the salt of the earth and the light of the world, our very own congregation here at Ascension was one of 6,000 congregations that participated in those efforts.[vii]

I know Latvia isn’t Sudan, and 2017 isn’t 1947, but Christ’s call to us to be the salt of the earth and light of the world persists today,
in a world that is perhaps even more unsettled and divided.

I believe the Church is still one of the places in the world where we can come together to bridge our differences. Reading Scripture and talking about what we hear God saying, we can pray with our voices raised or through our tears, and sometimes we can pray with our feet. We can name each other blessed, because we are beloved children of our Creator God, and then, we can go out, determined, in faith, to live in ways that the Kingdom of heaven shines through us.

Let us pray:[viii]
Lord Jesus Christ, you name us your own and call us to reflect your love into the world. Help us to do so.
Illuminate our lives, and give us hands to reach out in love and action that we may bring your light to dark places.
We pray in your holy name.
Amen.

[i] Commentary on Matthew 5:13-20. Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1.
[ii] ibid
[iii] ibid
[iv] ibid
[v] Matthew10:16
[vi] Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is a national agency of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to carry out ministry with uprooted people. LIRS traces its history back to 1939 and to this major resettlement effort following World War II. References to LIRS in this message include its 27 affiliates and other organizations in its network. Lutheran social ministry organizations are integral affiliates in this network. LIRS’s address is 390 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8803. Its phone number is 212/532-6350; its fax, 212/683-1329, and its e-mail, lirs@lirs.org. Its Web page is found at .
[vii] ibid
[viii] Adapted from Faith Lens, http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/