12th Sunday after Pentecost

In today’s gospel, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” While we wouldn’t be surprised to hear a political pollster ask, “What are people saying?”, when Jesus sits down with his disciples, he isn’t polling popular opinion. Sociologists describe ancient Mediterranean peoples as “ ‘other-oriented people’ who depend on others to provide them with a sense of who they are.”[i] Identity was understood as what significant others said, not your own perception.

So, who do people say that Jesus is?
A prophet, a healer and physician, a teacher?

It is a question that people have wrestled with for centuries as they try to understand him. Since the fourth century, the Church has had a common confession in the words of the Nicene Creed because early leaders talked about this very question and determined where they could agree. And today, there is even a church word — Christology — that encompasses the whole study of who Jesus is and what his life, ministry and death teach us.

After hearing the answers given by his disciples, Jesus asks his band of followers who have witnessed his teaching, healing and feeding first-hand, “But who do you say that I am?”

If someone asked you that this morning here in the sanctuary, you might rely on the Church’s confession, naming Jesus the “God’s only son, our Lord.” And, like us, Peter answers with doctrine.

But as we’ll see when his story continues, our confession of who Jesus demands more than religious doctrine. John 3:16 tells us that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son…in order that the world would be saved by him.” The Living God loves us and gives us Jesus that we will know God, that we will have not just a religion, but a relationship.

Father Richard Rohr teaches, “God refuses to be known except through loving, trustful relationship. You cannot know God with your mind alone.”[ii]

So when Jesus asks us, “Who do you say that I am?”, let’s ask ourselves, “Why is Jesus important?” and “How does it feel to belong to Jesus’ family?”

And let’s remember that just as God invites us to answer these questions, God is the actor and the subject of any sentence we say about faith. Faith by grace is not “if/then” but “because/therefore”:

Because God loves us, therefore we are made children of God.
Because God loves us, therefore we are forgiven of our sin.
Because God loves us, therefore we are empowered by the Holy Spirit and sent into the world.
Because God loves us, therefore we are different.

Our confession of Jesus is lived out in our words and actions throughout our lives.

It’s one thing to confess “the Son of the living God” in a pew on Sunday morning but what will your answer be the next time someone asks you about Jesus, whether you are in the grocery store, at a ballgame, or on the sidewalk uptown?

The first disciples lived in a world where Caesar declared himself the Messiah, and the judgment of the Pharisees dictated who was acceptable, who was lovable, and who was worthy of God’s involvement in their lives. They had already left their families behind to follow Jesus, and now, they were taking the risk of confessing that there wasn’t any man-made idol or identity that was greater importance than who they were as Jesus’ disciples and children of God. This is the cost of discipleship that defines following Jesus, and its demand on us today isn’t any less.

So, who do you say Jesus is? How do you speak about the transforming power of the living God, whose abundant love and forgiveness renews us each day?

Your words about who Jesus is matter in a world where language about God is misused to condone violence, to debase women and to shred human dignity; where shame is used as a weapon; and where people are afraid to trust.

Remember that because God loves you, therefore you may speak with confidence.

Let us pray…[iii]
Holy God,
We give you thanks for your child, Jesus.
In him people saw the courage of John the Baptizer,
the fiery passion of Elijah, the faithfulness of Jeremiah.
Though he was killed, you raised him to life
and revealed him to us as your chosen Messiah.
By the faith given us by grace,
teach us to follow him
that our words and actions would be witnesses to your love for the world.
Amen.

[i] Malina & Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, quoted by Rev. Brian Stoffregen in his exegetical notes
[ii] Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance.
[iii] Adapted from Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources 

10th Sunday after Pentecost

Since ancient times, water has symbolized chaos. In Homer’s Odyssey, Poseidon curses Odysseus to wander at sea ten years.

In Hebrew thought, water was emblematic of anything opposed to Yahweh and so, in the Old Testament, time and again, we have stories of how God triumphs over the waters,

beginning with the creation story in Genesis 1 when God separated the waters that above and below and named them;

in Genesis 6 when God brought a flood upon the earth that destroyed everything that was evil;

in Exodus 14 when God drove the Red Sea back and turned the sea into dry land so that the Israelites could escape from Egypt’s Pharaoh;

and in Joshua 3 when God cut off the overflowing waters of the Jordan river so that the nation of Israel could cross over to Canaan.

In the New Testament, for followers of Jesus, water and storms still represent chaos, whether it is in the meager living earned by fishermen who drop their nets and follow him, or the two lake-crossing stories where the disciples encounter storms.

Amid the chaos of the world, whether it threatens our safety and security, our livelihood or our future, God remains sovereign over all the other powers and principalities that are at work.

In Matthew’s telling of the lake crossings, both in chapter 8 and here in chapter 14, Jesus addresses the disciples as “you of little faith.”

What he doesn’t do is give them ‘seven habits of highly faithful people’ or prescribe a twelve-step plan to achieve deeper faith.

After all, they cannot, by their own effort or strength,
increase their faith, because,
after all, it is a gift of grace.

Jesus just names what he sees – people debilitated by their fear – and then he says to them,
“Do not be afraid.”

They are the same words the angel Gabriel speaks to Joseph when he learns that Mary is pregnant;
that Jesus teaches when he compares God’s love for us to that for two sparrows;
that God speaks to the disciples when they witness the transfiguration of Christ on the mountaintop;
And that first the angel, and then Jesus himself, says to the women at the tomb on the day of his resurrection.

His words do not offer mere reassurance; they offer a promise. A promise that God is present in this place, in your life, in the things you do not – that you cannot - understand.

“Do not be afraid.”

Jesus doesn’t say they should not be afraid, or mock them for being afraid.

That’s comforting in a week where the headlines included threats by and against North Korea; torch-bearing protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia and the return of rising floodwaters in New Orleans;
it is good news in a world where suffering is evident on the faces of people living in poverty and homelessness;
where hope can be elusive and where death is inescapable,
whether it arrives unexpectedly or after a diagnosis.

There is a lot about the world where we live that escalates our fears and makes us afraid. But, Jesus doesn’t dismiss our fears; instead he reminds us that our fears do not go unanswered.

In this Gospel, Jesus reached out his hands to Peter and called him to himself; he grabbed him and did not let him go,
just as he did for the world two thousand years ago, when he reached out his hands to be crucified.

Jesus’ death and resurrection demonstrated that God’s power is greater than any political system or civic leader; God is sovereign over the chaos.

But, did you notice that Matthew said Jesus “made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead…?” He does the same thing to us whenever we gather in the naves of our churches. The word “nave” comes from the Latin navis – it’s the same word that gives us Navy and navigation; it’s the word for “boat” or “ship.”

God calls the Church – us, puts us into a boat and sets us out on the storm-tossed water, into the chaos of the world, to tell the world about the one God, who is our Lord and Savior, our Creator and Redeemer.

Staying tied up in port, where we know our surroundings and where we can provide for all our needs is not acceptable. Neither is merely testing the waters, or venturing a little way out and setting anchor in a protected cove. In Second Timothy, the author of the epistle writes,

6 …I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; 7 for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are called to follow Jesus and sent into the world and accompanied by God’s grace to go and love our neighbors, even when we are afraid.

We each can remember an iconic image of someone whose life has embodied what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus:
Pope Francis washing the feet of Muslim migrants and kissing them on Holy Thursday;
Martin Luther King, Jr. walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma;
Martin Luther on trial at the Diet of Worms saying, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

But God doesn’t stop with the people who are known to history.

Sometimes a disciple looks like my friend Christine, now a Lutheran pastor in Iowa, who spent four months as an ecumenical accompanier in Hebron in Palestine, walking alongside Palestinians who were under Israeli occupation while their homes and their wells were destroyed by soldiers.

On Friday night it looked like a group of interfaith religious leaders gathering in St. Paul’s Memorial Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, praying and singing before they marched in silence on Saturday while another group of people including KKK and neo-Nazis rallied in a nearby park; following Jesus, the clergy were witnessing to the power of God’s presence and love to triumph over hate-filled speech and racism.

But God doesn’t stop with pastors and clergy leaders either.

God calls each one of us, too, to do God’s work in our everyday lives, to live by faith, instead of fear,
and trust God’s promises that God is with us,
grabs onto us, and won’t let go.

Let us pray…
Holy God,
Thank you for your Son Jesus
who comes to us amidst the storms of destruction,
pulling us up from the despair that would swallow us
and with a word, brings his terrifying peace.[i]
By faith, you have made us your disciples and given us the power to be your hands and feet in the world.
May your Holy Spirit give us courage and calm our fears as we go
out into the world to tell others about your miraculous love for each one of us.
Amen.

[i] Laughing Bird liturgical resources. 

9th Sunday after Pentecost

In today’s gospel the parables that Jesus has been teaching are brought to life as the disciples and the crowd witness an abundance that satisfies everyone’s needs,
appearing out of the smallest of beginnings.

Between the last parables we heard and this passage, Herod has murdered John the Baptist, and Jesus has just learned of his cousin’s death. Matthew tells us that he retreats to a deserted place, alone, leaving his disciples and escaping the crowds that had been with them.

When the crowds follow him from the city, Jesus sees them and has compassion for them and Matthew says that he goes to them and heals their sick.

While there are other healing and feeding stories included in each of the gospels, this is the only story that appears in all four, which demands that we ask, “What does this story say about God?”

First of all, I think it challenges us to see God in the barren and desert places in our lives. Sometimes we talk about that barrenness as the stark places in our lives where we feel alone or isolated, stripped of faith and cut off from the world and from God’s love.

But when we recall the temptations of Jesus and the wilderness where he journeyed for forty days, like we do during Lent, we reflect on how emptying ourselves can make room for God to act in new ways in our lives. God is in the desert with us.

This story reminds us what Jesus and the ancient desert fathers and mothers, after him, knew: that in finding solitude, we create a space where God can act, where we can,
as the priest Henri Nouwen says, “shake off our compulsions and dwell in the gentle healing presence of our Lord.”[i]

In that same space “Christ remodels us in his own image and frees us.”[ii] And, following Jesus, we are able to imitate his own compassion, “go[ing] with others into the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely and broken.”[iii]

Jesus wasn’t the first person to be called a Messiah in those times, but uniquely, he responded with compassion to the people he encountered. When he saw that they were hurting and in pain, wracked by illness, he healed them. When he saw they were hungry, he didn’t send them away; he fed them.

Or perhaps, more accurately, he told his disciples to feed them.

This story demonstrates to us how God calls us to participate in God’s work on earth. Next month we’ll again celebrate our churchwide day of service on what is called “God’s Work. Our Hands.” Sunday.

God enacts grace and mercy through us!

As disconcerting as that may be sometimes, it is also a sign of God’s grace that God works through each one of us to meet the human needs that present all around us.

The disciples were surprised by God’s invitation, too. When they ask Jesus to send the crowds away, he tells them there’s no need. (v. 16) Looking out at the vast crowd of men and women and children, they despair, telling Jesus, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." (v. 17)

In the face of overwhelming need, the disciples have forgotten Jesus’ instructions to them about how to pray and to trust in God for their daily bread. They have forgotten his admonition not to worry about what they will eat or drink. (Matt. 6)

Like them, when we witness suffering in our neighbors and community, or in our nation and the world, it is easy to forget what we already know about God and God’s promises.
It is easy to become overwhelmed, to look at the resources we have readily available and to feel hopeless.
It is easy to send people away and tell them to look for help someplace else, to hope others will step in and meet their needs.

But God doesn’t promise us that discipleship is easy.
Instead, this story offers us another promise:
that God prepares us and equips us, that God provides for us.

In his compassion, then and now, Jesus offers presence and healing; we experience those benefits at this holy table where we receive bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus, given for us for the forgiveness of sin, and it is at this table where we are made whole, nourished and fed and sent out into the world as God’s people, equipped with the transforming knowledge of God’s love for all.

Lutheran preacher David Lose suggests that “instead of [worrying that we do not have enough – not enough children, not enough people, not enough choir members – that] we give thanks for what we have, put it to use for those [in need] and see just how far God might
stretch, and indeed, multiply it.”[iv]

Here at Ascension, we have an abundance of physical space and land that is used by Lutheran Men in Mission, Lutheran Services Carolinas, and local quilters;
we have rich relationships where people know each other’s stories and notice when someone is hurting; and,
we have ministries where we feed hungry neighbors, honor military veterans, and generously give to meet needs throughout our community and the Church.

We are encouraged this morning to give thanks for the ways God has already equipped us to meet the needs that surround us, to rely on God, and to witness God’s surprising grace in our life together.

Let us pray…
Nourishing and nurturing God,
We give thanks for your Son, our Lord and Savior whose life teaches us how much You love us.
Lead us by Your Spirit to the places where people’s needs are greatest.
Teach us to empty ourselves and make room for You to act in our lives.
Feed us that we will have strength for the journey and to answer your call to serve others.
We pray in Jesus’ name,
Amen.

[i] Henri Nouwen. The Way of the Heart. 30.
[ii] ibid, 32.
[iii] ibid, 34.
[iv] David Lose, In the Meantime.