Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A

Saturday morning we had two dozen folks here edging and weeding, collecting trash, emptying cupboards and cabinets and pulling out ruined carpet. Others were putting an extra measure of spit and polish on the sanctuary or washing cars in the parking lot. It was messy and grubby work, and while no one would mistake what we were doing for art, it was holy.

We were creating, re-making and re-forming the spaces where our community gathers,
and at the end of the day, we could look around and say,
“It is good.”

Like yesterday, the events in today’s Gospel recall “the creative and restoring power of God.”[i]

Jesus is back in Jerusalem where he encounters a man who was born blind. When the Evangelist tells us how Jesus put some mud and spittle on the man’s eyes, we hear echoes of the creation story where God scooped up the dirt and formed the first living person, °¹d¹m , and breathed life into him.[ii]

The gospel goes on to say that, after their meeting, the man obediently goes and washes in the water at the pool of Siloam which means “the one who has been sent.” The translation of the pool’s name is included in case we don’t remember that, “in John’s Gospel, Jesus is the one who was sent by [God.]”[iii]

With his play on words, the Evangelist makes it clear that the man who was born blind now is healed by washing in the living water that flows from Jesus himself.[iv]

There is something else familiar in this scene, too. Sacraments are where an ordinary element is joined with God’s command and promise, or benefit. In the sacrament of Holy Baptism, the ordinary element of water is joined with God’s command[v] and the promise that “You are a child of God, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” [vi]

Meeting Jesus for the first time, this man experiences baptism in Christ, and “with [his] eyes remade, now his way of seeing [and] of understanding… is … born anew.”[vii]

When the story begins, he simply describes Jesus by his name (v.11); later, he says he is a prophet (v. 17), and then he recognizes that he is “from God” (v. 33) and finally we hear his confession, “Lord, I believe.” (v. 38) God is revealed to the man in the person of Jesus in the restoration, healing and transformation he experiences.

This man lived in a different kind of darkness from
the cover of night that Nicodemus used when he went to see Jesus,
or the hidden-ness of the Samaritan woman who chose to visit a well when no one else would be there, but each of them were living in darkness and did not know God until they encountered Jesus.

Throughout John’s gospel, seeing and hearing are about believing in, or knowing Jesus, about being in a relationship with God.

Baptized in Christ, the scales from our eyes are washed away,
that we may see God and know God’s promises for us.

Martin Luther emphasizes how baptism is a precious and inexpressible treasure that God has given us, a treasure that depends on the Word and commandment of God.[viii] In his Small Catechism, Luther asks how ordinary water can deliver all the benefits of baptism – the forgiveness of sins, redemption from death and the devil, and salvation.

Calling baptism “a grace-filled water of life” and a “bath of the new birth in the Holy Spirit” Luther reminds us that, water – the most ordinary of elements - is made holy when it is placed in the setting of God’s Word and command. It is God’s gift and action for us that is transformational.

Finally, the gospel story reminds us that we are received into Christian community through baptism. The man’s community – the Pharisees and even his parents struggle with welcoming him; they are more concerned about why he had been born blind and who was responsible, who had sinned or failed. They were more interested in defining sin and assigning blame than dispensing grace, but over and against their example, we are encouraged to see others as Jesus sees them, whole and healed, restored and reconciled.

Let us pray….[ix]
Merciful God who created us in the diversity of your holy image, we pray that we may experience the world through your vision. We pray to see your holy image in every living being we encounter. We pray that if there is something impeding how we encounter your grace and mercy in the world, that it may fall away. Help us to understand that there are multiple ways to encounter the fullness of your love in the world, and it is in that fullness we continue to profess your grace and love.
Amen.

[i] Interpreter’s Bible.
[ii] Genesis 2:7 NRSV
[iii] Raymond Brown. The Gospel According to John. 381.
[iv] ibid
[v] Matthew 28:19 NRSV
[vi] Small Catechism, 79.
[vii] “John.” Feasting on the Gospels.
[viii] Large Catechism, Book of Concord, 463.
[ix] Faith Lens, http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/

Third Sunday in Lent, Year A

Earlier this week, I was reading something written by a mother of a young woman who is in college now. The mother was remembering a time when her daughter, let’s call her Meredith, was in fourth grade, and one day, on the car ride home from school, she complained about this new girl, Bethany, at school who was annoying. When the mother asked her to tell her more, Meredith said she always followed her and her circle of friends around and tried to start conversations.

Bethany’s great offense was that she wanted to be included;
she wanted to belong and be known.

The mother called Bethany’s mother and confirmed what she had heard – her own daughter and her friends hadn’t done anything outright to be mean to Bethany or to hurt her, but they didn’t welcome her either. The mom’s solution was simple enough, but it provoked dramatic angst in Meredith; the mother told her she needed learn three new things about Bethany the next day and be able to share those on the car ride home. Well, Meredith protested and moped and glared but when she came home the next day, she knew three things about Bethany that she hadn’t known the day before. Maybe you can guess how the story ended; soon, the girls were good friends, and when Bethany’s family moved again a few years later, the girls said tearful goodbyes.

The story stayed with me because it illustrates how relationship happens in conversation.

If we never speak to a person, if we never ask them, “Tell me about yourself” or listen to them, we cannot be in relationship.

In today’s gospel, there’s another story about an outsider, and an invitation to be known.

A road weary Jesus has left Jerusalem, the center of power, and is traveling north through Samaria. 

Samaria isn’t actually on the route from Jerusalem to Galilee, and it wasn’t a travel destination; it wasn’t even someplace you might choose if you wanted to go exploring “off the beaten path.” So when the Evangelist writes that Jesus had to pass that way, it wasn’t out of geographical necessity, or compelling curiosity, but because God was up to something.

The evangelist makes sure we know how unusual this scene is when he writes, “Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.” Their animosity was grounded in six hundred years of feuding. While the Jewish people were descended from the people who had returned to Jerusalem after the exile, Samaritans were descended from the colonial powers who conquered the region and the Israelites who had stayed. This was no playground spat or even a rivalry like we see in these days of March Madness; it was a centuries old division.

Truly, only God knows why Jesus is in this place and with these people when he meets a woman at a well there in the middle of the day.

We don’t know her name, and while you may have heard sermons preached about her immoral past, it is just as likely that she had been abandoned for being barren, or she had been widowed, or both.

Remember the story I began with? Imagine if, instead of asking Bethany about herself, Meredith and her friends had ignored her, or worse, bullied her and teased her. Perhaps, she too, would have chosen to go to a part of the playground where no one was, or eat alone at a lunch table, rather than face rejection or insults again.

This woman that Jesus meets was at the well in the hottest part of the day to fetch water. She was doing what was necessary to survive, but she was also doing what she could to protect herself against the callousness of people.

But Jesus doesn’t ignore her or avoid her. He doesn’t heckle her. He invites her into a conversation.

He knows her and can tell her all she has ever done, but he knows her first as a child of God,
and invites her to see herself as God sees her,
wonderfully made and beloved.

Writing about the Lord’s Prayer in the third part of his catechism, Luther describes how Jesus gives us the words and “invites us into a personal and intimate relationship with God.”[i]

Luther writes, “God wants us to believe that he is truly our Father, and we are truly his children, in order that we may ask [for our every need] boldly and with complete confidence.”[ii]

Prayer, after all is conversation, speaking, and listening, to God. And, as I said at the beginning, relationship happens in conversation.

And the Lord’s Prayer, especially, begins with a reminder that we share something in common, as brothers and sisters in Christ, we all call on God as “our Father.” The shared address also reminds us that we belong to and are responsible for each other, because faith is lived out as we are known in community,
and not as banished outcasts.

As we encounter God in Jesus this Lent, may we remember that God already knows us, sees us, and loves us, and welcomes us into the family of God as beloved children, and may we welcome and love others in the same way.

Let us pray….[iii]
Holy God,
we often allow the divisions in our world and in our families to make us believe that you love us more than others. Purge that lie from our lives.
Send your Spirit to help us to build bridges across the artificial divides which prevent us from seeing your divine image in others.
As we continue this Lenten journey, keep showing up in the Samarias of our lives, in the places where we least expect you, so that we might find your salvation even beyond the ends of the earth.
We pray this all in the name of your Son,
our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Amen.

[i] Book of Faith Lenten Journey 
[ii] “Lord’s Prayer,” Book of Concord.
[iii] Adapted from Faith Lens, http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/

Second Sunday in Lent, Year A

For the rest of Lent, until we shout hosanna and welcome Jesus back into Jerusalem with palms, our gospel readings come from the fourth gospel, written by John the evangelist.

“Throughout [this] gospel, Jesus’ teachings elicit one misunderstanding after another [with the people he encounters].”[i]

Today we overhear his conversation with the religious leader, the Pharisee Nicodemus, when he asks what it means to be born again; next week Jesus will talk about living water with the Samaritan woman at the well; and then, he will heal a man who was been born blind and, on the last Sunday of Lent, he will astonish Mary and Martha by going to their brother Lazarus when he has been dead for more than three days and restoring him to life.

Time and again, the gospel will not be revealed in the answers to people’s rational questions —“How can a person be born twice?”, “What is living water?”, “How can a blind mean see?”, or “How can the dead live?”

Instead it will be revealed in the demonstrated acts of forgiveness and mercy that Jesus offers.

Today’s gospel introduces us to Nicodemus. The evangelist doesn’t tell us very much about him, but we know he is a Pharisee, a religious leader who kept the ritual laws and practices that the Jews believed earned them righteousness, or right standing with God, and he taught others how to do the same.

And he has noticed Jesus — uncredentialled, and followed by fisherman and dock workers, turning over tables at the temple and driving out the money changers. Curious, Nicodemus wants to know more about him, and about his teachings, so he goes to find him so that they can talk about matters concerning faith.

In his book Cast of Characters, Max Lucado imagines the scene:

As the shadows darken the city, Nicodemus steps out, slips unseen through the cobbled winding streets. He passes servants lighting lamps in the courtyard and takes a path that ends at the door of a simple house. Jesus and his followers are staying there, he’s been told. Nicodemus knocks.

In the conversation that follows, what Jesus offers isn’t a list of recitable facts or solutions to the Pharisee’s rational questions;
instead he offers an invitation to faith.

But Nicodemus doesn’t understand.

Faith is not a ladder to climb, or an object to acquire or “something that falls ready-made from heaven.”[ii]And it isn’t about knowing the right answers to a catechism exam, or memorizing Scripture. In fact, it isn’t about what’s in our heads at all.

Faith is about our hearts and our lives. And, especially in John’s Gospel, “having faith” or “believing in Jesus” gives witness to a relationship with God.

When Jesus says,
16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16-17 NRS)

he echoes the prologue of this gospel, in the first chapter, where the Evangelist writes:

12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:12-13, NRSV)

What God offers in God’s son Jesus is the presence of God in our midst.[iii]

Just as Nicodemus sought to speak to Jesus about matters concerning faith, the early church asked questions about what kind of person God is and what God does. In the fourth century A.D., we have the earliest references to the apostles’ creed with its Trinitarian structure, describing God the Father and creation, the Son and redemption and the Holy Spirit and being made holy or sanctified.

Martin Luther teaches about the creed in the second part of his Small Catechism, writing that while the commandments teach us what God wishes us to do and not to do, the creed “teaches us to know God perfectly.”[iv]

Luther writes that, “In all three articles [of the creed] God himself has revealed and opened to us the most profound depths of [God’s] fatherly heart and pure, unutterable love.”[v]

The nature of God’s love for each of us, revealed in God’s Son Jesus defies our human nature and logic and rationale. Which of course, is the point.

As Luther writes in his explanation of the creed,
Neither you nor I could ever know anything about Christ, or believe in him and receive him as Lord, unless these were offered to us and bestowed on our hearts through the preaching of the Gospel by the Holy Spirit.[vi]

That Holy Spirit – pneuma, breath or wind – is the same Spirit that confounded Nicodemus when he spoke to Jesus. In their conversation, Jesus says

7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:7-8 NRS)

It is this same Holy Spirit, that theologian Kalbryn McLean calls the
“wild child” of the Godhead,[vii] that daily “imparts, increases, and strengthens faith [in us] through [God]’s Word and the forgiveness of [our sins].”[viii]

This Lent, let us remember that we are born again of water and spirit as children of God, and we are being invited to faith, to learn what God promises in God’s Son Jesus.

Let us pray….[ix]
God of all who call upon you,
Stir your Spirit within us to trust that you indeed sent Jesus to us, and that through him we can witness and experience the fullness of your love.
Help us to remember that you come to us with your light to reveal to us your grace, love, and forgiveness.
Amen.

[i] Jarvis, Cynthia A.. Feasting on the Gospels--John, Volume 1: A Feasting on the Word Commentary (Kindle Locations 2162-2166). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.
[ii] Helmut Thieleke, I Believe: The Christian’s Creed. 12.
[iii] Working Preacher, www.workingpreacher.org
[iv] Large Catechism, Book of Concord. 431.
[v] Large Catechism, Book of Concord. 440.
[vi] Large Catechism, Book of Concord. 436.
[vii] Jarvis, Cynthia A.. Feasting on the Gospels--John, Volume 1: A Feasting on the Word Commentary (Kindle Locations 2162-2166). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.
[viii] Large Catechism, Book of Concord. 439.
[ix] Faith Lens, http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/

First Sunday in Lent, Year A

This year is the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation of 1517. Instead of merely marking history, Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton has been encouraging congregations to read and study Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. Luther wrote the catechism as instructions to parents to lead the teaching of their children and households, and too often, it is relegated to our confirmation classrooms. This anniversary offers us all a new opportunity to engage the text and better understand the teachings that Luther believed would help us to constantly keep God’s Word in our hearts, on our lips and in our ears. [i]

During Lent, I will be preaching on Sunday mornings from the readings assigned in the lectionary and connecting those Scripture passages to the five different parts of the catechism over the five Sundays of Lent. The first is the ten commandments; the second is the creed; the third is the Lord’s Prayer; the fourth is baptism and the fifth is Holy Communion. On Wednesday evenings, after our soup and sandwich supper, we’ll continue our study of the catechism with table talks during our evening worship, reading from Scripture and from the catechism that is printed at the back of the cranberry hymnal.

Today we begin at the beginning with Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve in Eden. The biblical story of Eden grew out of basic questions humans have:
Why do we suffer hardship?
Why does evil exist?
Why aren’t our souls at rest?

In its telling we’re reminded that God first created humans in and for relationship. We are not mistakes; we are fearfully and wonderfully made by a loving God; and, we are not objects created for selfish purposes; we are created with God-given purpose, to nurture life and do God’s work in the world.

These two attributes alone set apart the biblical story of creation from other ancient creation stories,
like the Mayan myth of how two gods, who wanted to preserve their legacy, created man first from mud, which crumbled, and then from wood. They found their creation was soulless and without loyalty, so they destroyed him;[ii]
another myth, in Babylonia, described how the greatest of their kings, named Marduk, created humankind to be slaves to the gods.[iii]

We also hear in Genesis how God set boundaries for humankind. Just as we teach a child to use crayons and markers on coloring pages and not carpets, or scissors to cut paper not hair, and to get drinks from the refrigerator and not from the cabinet under the sink, God establishes life-giving boundaries for us.

Eve had not yet been created when God instructed Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But when the serpent confronts her, she knows it’s forbidden. The beast questions why God had given them such a commandment, and whether the consequences of eating from the tree would be as fateful as they had been told, offering a plausible alternative, and sowing doubt and mistrust into their relationship with their Creator. And with their confidence in God compromised, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit.

Although they did not physically die then, in that moment, their relationship with the loving God who created them with God-given purpose withered and died.

The Eden story in Genesis illustrates how the root of sin is not one person’s actions or failures,
but the broken and damaged relationship with God.

And the brokenness didn’t end with Adam and Eve. It continues throughout the biblical narrative, as over and over, God’s people become distracted and forget God’s instructions; begin to question whether the boundaries are really needed; or think we know better than God.

When we meet Jesus in the wilderness in today’s Gospel, he has just come from his baptism by John where the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." (Matthew 3:16-17)

“Temptation reveals who we are and what we are to do.”[iv] In contrast to Adam and Eve, Jesus remembered his baptismal identity, an identity and belonging that empowered him as he faced temptations of pride, power and possession.

Like Adam and Eve, and later Jesus, we too face temptations to deny God, to doubt the relevance of God’s Word in our lives, and to question the promises God has given us and the boundaries that God has set.

Describing the Ten Commandments, that we hear in Exodus and again in the catechism, as God’s measuring lines; Luther wrote that they instruct us “what we are to do to make our whole life pleasing to God.”[v] Recognizing that faith is lived out in community, the first three commandments are about our relationship with God, and the remaining ones speak to our relationship with each other and with our neighbors.[vi]

In Luther’s explanation of the commandments, he establishes that the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods.” is the foundation for all the rest. He prefaces the explanation of each of the following commandments with the same words, “We are to love and fear God, so that…”

Believing that “anything on which your heart relies and depends is really your God” Luther taught that obeying this first commandment sends us straight to God to cling to Him alone in whatever temptations or circumstances we face. Then, remembering our own baptismal identity, we are empowered to act, recalling in whose image we are created and who has given us our purpose. That is the freedom we have in faith in Christ, who resists what we cannot.

Throughout this Lent, let us reflect on what our identity as baptized children of God and followers of Christ means as we respond to the temptations and false promises that the world offers.

Let us pray….[vii]
Loving Creator,
We are tempted in every way to give in to a world that tells us the way to fulfillment is power, and riches, and might.
In response, you sent Jesus, a humble, suffering servant who would eventually die on the cross, mistaken and misunderstood.
May we daily remember our baptism and your purpose for us when we are tempted or think we know better than You.
Help us make life-giving choices for ourselves and for the world which you so love.
Amen.

[i] Book of Concord. 400.
[ii] “Mesoamerican creation myths”, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_creation_myths#The_Maya_creation_of_the_world_myth
[iii] “Enûma Eliš”,Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C3%BBma_Eli%C5%A1
[iv] Lent 1A, Lectionary Lab Live podcast.
[v] Book of Concord, 428.
[vi] XLII, Luther’s Table Talk.
[vii] Adapted from Faith Lens. http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/

Ash Wednesday 2017

Do any of you watch “This is Us”?

If you don’t, it’s a show on ABC that tells the story of a trio of siblings who grew up in Pittsburgh, and with each episode, you learn a little bit more about them, about their lives as adults, and about their childhoods. One of the three, Randall, is adopted, and eventually meets his birth father William, who is dying from cancer. In a recent episode, Randall and William take a roadtrip to Memphis, and when a dying William gets back to his boyhood home, he goes straight to the fireplace lintel, pulling out a loose brick because he wanted to see “if his treasure was still there.” From the dusty cubbyhole, he pulled out the treasure — two toys and three quarters — he had hidden behind that brick as a child.

The treasure had survived all those years between his birth and his impending death. His life had turned out differently than he had planned or imagined, because of different obstacles, circumstances and choices, but the treasure remained.

I wanted to tell you about William and his treasure because Ash Wednesday invites you to return home to God,
to receive ashes on your forehead and be reminded, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Your mortality, or death, is certain. But, so is your treasure.

It may be hidden from sight, masked by years of trying to be strong enough, happy enough or wealthy enough.

Or it may lie beneath shards of broken relationships, crumbling dreams, or other distractions and disappointments.

But behind or beneath the sin that is part of our human condition lies your identity as a beloved child of God.

Our greatest treasure is the relationship each of us has with God.

Lent lets us return to God, recognizing how we have become distant and disconnected. These forty days give us time and space to confess our sins, “engaging in a more deliberate time of reflection and penitence.”[i] “Recognizing our utter dependence on God,” we receive God’s forgiveness.[ii]

In his small catechism, Martin Luther writes:
“Confession consists of two parts. One is that we confess our sins. The other is that we receive the absolution, that is, forgiveness, from the pastor as from God himself, and by no means doubt but firmly believe that our sins are thereby forgiven by God in heaven.”

God not only saves us from our sins, but also gives us new life, acting on the promised re-creation and redemption that we hear in Psalm 51.[iii] God delights in seeing us renewed and reaching again for God, and God empowers us, strengthens us and sustains us in the midst of life.

The words from the prophet Isaiah challenge us to remember that God sees us and our piety – our outward behaviors – and our hearts and innermost thoughts. “Sin is not a surface wound; rather it is a penetrating sickness that… [infects] the very core of our being.”[iv] So keeping up appearances is not enough.

God promises when we truly align our hearts with God’s own self, then we will experience light breaking forth, healing springing up and the Lord shepherding and guiding us continually. The prophet says:

“The Lord will satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” (v. 11)

Participating in God’s life, we will know “the reassuring presence of God, an assurance that in risk and in danger, we are not alone.”[v]

Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber from House for All Saints and Sinners in Denver describes Ash Wednesday this way: 

If our lives were a long piece of fabric with our baptism on one end and our funeral on another, and we don’t know the distance between the two, then Ash Wednesday is a time when that fabric is pinched in the middle and the ends are held up so that our baptism in the past and our funeral in the future meet. ‘The water and words from our baptism plus the earth and words from our funerals have come from the past and future to meet us in the present.

And in that meeting we are reminded of the promises of God: That we are God’s, that there is no sin, no darkness, and yes, no grave that God will not come to find us in and love us back to life. That where two or more are gathered, Christ is with us. These promises outlast our earthly bodies and the limits of time.

This Lent, let us return to God in confession and return to the building blocks of our faith, studying Scripture and Luther’s Small Catechism and reconnecting with God as the creator and renewer of our faith.

Let us pray….
Holy God,
We give you thanks and praise, for in your kindness and mercy, your patience and faithfulness, you are always ready to forgive and not punish.
We thank you for the example our savior and brother, Jesus Christ, by whose strength we resist all evil, seeking instead to store up treasure in heaven, knowing that though we may seem to have nothing, in purity, knowledge, patience and kindness, we really possess everything.
Amen.

[i] “Psalm 51.” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 2.
[ii] ibid
[iii] ibid
[iv] ibid
[v] Walter Brueggemann. Isaiah, Chapters 40-66. 190.