Reformation Sunday 2017

Today we mark the 500^th anniversary of the protestant Reformation. And while we may know the folklore of an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to a church door, and his words “Here I stand, I can do no other” when he boldly refused to recant his criticism of the Catholic Church, the significance of the Reformation, Luther’s role in it, and, more importantly, its meaning, and relevance, for us today may not be as well known.

Before we talk about what we treasure from the Reformation, it is important to say aloud that Luther was human and imperfect and some of his later writings are ugly and address people, particularly Jews, in language that is rightfully called anti-Semitic, and has been repudiated in our lifetimes.

What we celebrate today is that five hundred years ago in 1517, Luther risked his position in the Church and as a university professor to publish his 95 Theses, a list of topics he wanted to debate that addressed the ways the Catholic church and the papacy, the authority in Rome, were corrupt or inept. Luther was neither a church planter nor a missionary; he never intended to start a new denomination, but he urged reform. Calling the Bible “the manger in which Christ is laid,” he argued that common people should be able to hear and understand Scripture; until then, it was only read in its original languages or in translation in Latin. From his own reading of Scripture, Luther had discovered the evidence of God’s abundant grace and taught that God grants this unmerited favor; it is not mediated through a priest, earned by good works or purchase. Whether he was teaching Bible at the university, in conversation with students and colleagues, or writing sermons, catechisms, prayers or hymns, Luther was a teacher and he was eager for everyone to know God’s grace received through faith in Christ.

Even as we celebrate this anniversary of the Reformation, we remember that it wasn’t accomplished in one day, or even one person’s lifetime. Our tradition honors the risks taken by the Reformers and empowers us to continue to advocate for a Church that tears down barriers and shares the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that is that God’s grace, given for you, without exception or condition. The late Lutheran pastor Tim Lull wrote,

"Many Christians today are understandably skeptical about how important old confessional issues are for a future oriented church. There was a time when there was no Lutheran church and there will come a time -- surely at the end and perhaps long before -- when there will be no need for a Lutheran movement within the church catholic. My own sense is that this time has not yet come. A homogenized Christianity would be unlikely to have the courage to proclaim grace freely, to celebrate Christian freedom, or to admit that the church itself is often sinful and deeply in need of reform."[i]

Psalm 46, the psalm for today finds us in that place that Pastor Lull names – a place where we feel deeply the despair of sin and brokenness. It is a psalm that was read widely at community services after the events of September 11, 2001 and it continues to offer “an anchor against the sense of chaos” that we experience today. Whether you are suffering, or heartsick about someone dear to you, or just generally dismayed by the state of the world’s affairs, this psalm speaks to you in your circumstances.

It is what Old Testament professor James Limburg calls a psalm of trust, but notably, the psalm is spoken in plural voice; this isn’t one person praying or singing; it is a community, standing shoulder to shoulder, proclaiming what we know about who God is and then listening when God responds with a promise and assurance of divine presence. Gathered as the church, we are bound together in a common faith and tradition, and we trust in God’s promises because God has already demonstrated what God can do, in the lives of our ancestors in faith and in the lives that we share with each other.

With God’s command to “Be still and know that I am God” we are reminded that our worries and handwringing and our angry shouts and frustrated rants are but crude expressions of the helplessness we feel and we are given permission to respond differently to the events around us. Naturally, we can respond fearfully and anxiously. But the psalmist encourages us to, instead, adopt a courageous, even fierce, defiance toward what makes us fearful, and confront it with quiet confidence.

Writing about this psalm, Limburg tells the story of a retired pastor he met who had lived in East Germany. The man owned a trumpet and had played in brass choirs throughout Germany during his lifetime. Before he retired, he had a practice of opening his window and playing two hymns each morning at eight o’clock; as it happens, his parsonage faced the offices of the communist officials in his town. Like bells chiming from a church, the hymns were reminders of faith to anyone who could hear them, including the people working in those offices. When he met Limburg, he played two of the hymns. Limburg didn’t recognize the first one, but the second, was “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”, one of Luther’s best-known hymns. In its verses, Luther paraphrased this psalm to proclaim that our enemies cannot win the day because the kingdom is ours forever!

While it is easy for anniversary celebrations to become backward-looking forays into a romanticized past, the 500^th anniversary of the protestant Reformation compels us to recognize the ways in which we are semper reformanda, reformed, and also, always being re-formed, by God. It is not a wistful look in the rearview mirror but a hope-filled assessment of what God is already doing in us and the work that God is equipping us to do next.

Let us pray…

Holy and Living God,

When we are wounded or afraid, you are our refuge and hiding place. Thank you for the gifts of Your Word and faith, given to us in your son Jesus Christ;

Thank you for the Church that you have built and the Kingdom you promise; give us courage to continue to break down barriers, that all of your children would know your infinite love and mercy.

Amen.

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[i] Timothy Lull, The Vocation of Lutheranism, Lund, Sweden, 2000

20th Sunday after Pentecost

What we heard in the second reading today was the salutation and thanksgiving of the first letter we have written by the apostle Paul, the oldest letter in the New Testament canon. We believe the letter was written about 51 CE, nearly twenty years after the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Christ.

First-century disciples remained confident and expectant that Jesus would return in their lifetimes, but they suffered ridicule and persecution for confessing faith in one God, and not participating in the poly-theistic religion of Thessalōn′ica where culture reflected Roman and Greek politics and thought.

While Paul was on his second missionary journey and working in Corinth, his helper Timothy visited the church in Thessalōn′ica and this letter was written by Timothy, Paul and Silvanus to encourage the community they knew there. It comes as encouragement to us, also, nearly two thousand years later.

Despite the physical distance between the communities of faith – the ekklesias or churches – in Corinth and those to the north, a relationship was forged between them because of the common faith that they shared.

This is what we talk about today when we talk about being “Church Together”; everything we do in ministry is connected back to the Church, with a capital C, because we are working not for ourselves, but for God. Sometimes, that looks like financially supporting the young adults in global mission or hurricane relief efforts; sometimes, it is participating in an ordination of a new pastor, like I had the opportunity to do last weekend in Charlotte; and other times, it is holding communities in prayer, like we have for Las Vegas, Puerto Rico, Florida and the Gulf Coast.

With thanksgiving, Paul names how God has been made visible in the Church. First, he names “the work of faith”, that is, the work that, by faith, God has accomplished in us already. This is the work of the cross where Christ takes on all that is ours and gives us all that is his, and we are adopted as sons and daughters, co-heirs to God’s Kingdom with Christ. It is the work of the Holy Spirit calling us together as a worshiping community, giving us God’s Word and making us holy.

Then he names “the labor of love”, that is, all those ways in which we demonstrate faith in action, responding to God’s grace and the abundant love that we have first experienced, by serving others.

And finally, he names the “steadfastness of hope”, that is, an endurance which hope inspires and the expectation that God accompanies us and will fulfill God’s promises to us, in God’s own time.

This is the first time in Paul’s writing that we encounter this triad of faith, love and hope, but as we approach our own season of thanksgiving, I’m struck by the ways in which they remain visible, and the ways in which our communities of faith continue to be bound together by our common faith.

This Wednesday night, we will be gathering with brothers and sisters at Shelby Presbyterian Church for dinner and a program to mark the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation, but did you know that we are bound with the Presbyterians by more than the work that Luther and Calvin began in the 16^th century? Nearly a hundred years ago, the congregation of Shelby Presbyterian provided a meeting place for the thirteen people who later signed a charter to form our congregation, and for the last twenty years, our denominations have been in full communion –which means we agree that we share a common calling,

a desire to bear visible witness to the unity of the church

and a need to engage together in God’s mission.

Last week, I attended the ribbon cutting for the West End Reach Transit, a collaboration between churches in West Shelby, including Hopper’s Chapel and Living Waters’ Ministries, the hospital’s foundation and the city to establish a bus route that residents can ride for free. Three days a week, a transit bus now goes to Cleco and the hospital, the grocery story, Walmart and the library, helping connect people to the places and services they need to meet their basic needs of food and medical care.

And a month from today, on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, neighbors across our community will be breaking bread together for community Thanksgiving meals at Graham School, Jefferson Park and on South Lafayette Street.  For a second year, Feeding Kids Cleveland County is organizing sponsors and cooks and again asking neighbors to come out and sit together so that we can listen to each other’s stories and learn each other’s names.

While posting on social media and sending texts or emails have mostly replaced letter-writing, Paul’s letter reminds us to look for encouragement in the stories of where God is working in oru communities. Hearing stories across the synod and the Church, in conversations between local ministers and congregations, and through the witness that each of us bears into the world in our daily lives, we continue to be bound together by a common faith, strengthened to face the world we live in and to persevere against the powers and principalities that would distract us or discourage us.

Let us pray…

Holy God,

We give you thanks for your abundant grace,

for the gift of faith that you provide,

for our teachers and mentors,

and for the bond that is forged between people of faith.

Remind us of the work of faith that you have already begun in each one of us;

Give us courage to labor in love for all of your children;

And assure us of the steadfastness of hope that we have in You.

We pray in the name of our Savior Jesus,

Amen.

19th Sunday after Pentecost

Have you ever seen the 1940 movie “Philadelphia Story” with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart? It’s set on the Main Line of Philadelphia, a place that remains high society today. When Jamie and I moved to Ardmore, I found myself on the Main Line and I still remember when I received an invitation to have dinner at the cricket club. I accepted but, two days later, after we had spent the whole weekend unpacking boxes, I called my hostess and apologetically gave my regrets. I was never invited again.

In the parable Jesus tells today, the king invited all the very important people to his son’s wedding banquet when they start sending regrets. Maybe some were exhausted or distracted, while others simply chose to be somewhere else. Whatever their reasons, they rejected the king’s invitation and they didn’t come to the party. Still others, acted out, killing the king’s men; they were punished and their city was burned to the ground.

But just as we have seen with recent hurricanes and fires, there are people who stay behind, even in harrowing conditions: the least of these, the poor and infirm, who cannot leave; the elderly; people who for one reason or another do not have the means to find a way out.

So, with everything ready, the king extended a new invitation, instructing his slaves to invite everyone they could find. And this time, the people came and filled the hall.

Our King, our Holy God and Lord, invites us to a banquet, a feast where every need is provided, and awaits our response.

Can you recognize yourself in the first group of guests — the ones who rejected the invitation? God invites us to this table and tells us to eat and drink and join in communion with our brothers and sisters but we put something else first, or turn away, distracted from what God wants for us, obsessed with what we want or imagine we need, or looking for entertainment and activity that doesn’t demand a relationship.

Or perhaps you recognize what it feels like to be in that second group of guests. These are the ones who have been forgotten or alone, who have felt hopeless or despairing, who have been weak from fear or illness. The ones who have responded with joy to the invitation to be part of this raucous grace-filled life where we are clothed in baptism in Christ, loved and forgiven.

But the story doesn’t end there, does it?

In the parable, the king sees his guests and one stands out because that one is not dressed in the wedding garments.

This isn’t about someone showing up in the wrong party clothes. The parable is naming a willfulness, a refusal to respond fully to the invitation that has been given. Instead the man appears just as he was before; only his location has changed. Oblivious to the abundant grace he has been given, he insists on his own way and when the king sees it, the man is cast out.

The king’s language recalls Paul’s words in Romans about “putting on Christ.” (Romans 13)  “Gospel living begins with the invitation” to participate in what God is already doing in our lives, but gospel living looks like transformation. In Paul’s words in Colossians, it is clothing ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience and most of all, with love. (Colossians 3:10,12, 14)   

But what does that look like today? What does it mean for us to be clothed in Christ as we respond to the grace we have already been given?

I think it looks like gospel singers who went to a Red Cross shelter in Texas to respond to the despair and hopelessness felt by people who had lost everything and bring consolation and joy to them in difficult circumstances. It looks like volunteer pilots in Florida who delivered supplies to outlying areas until the big trucks could get there. In Puerto Rico, where crops were flattened, roads destroyed and electricity is still out for 82% of residents, it looks like Lutheran Disaster Response coordinating the delivery of critical items including dry food, generators, and solar-powered phones.

And I think it gives us a vision for what it looks like here at Ascension and in Shelby, too.

It is remembering that God seeks us out and invites us into relationship again and again; God’s love for us is greater than God’s disappointment at our rejection and God’s judgment against our sin.

It is remembering that God’s table is open to anybody and everybody, and in faith, we are clothed in Christ and given new life; we no longer live to ourselves and our wants, but to God.

It is remembering that discipleship, or following Jesus, is an active pursuit. God is on the move in the world and inviting us to participate with God in showing love and mercy to the world.

At a meeting of ministry leaders earlier in the week, a theologian named Anna Madsen reminded us that we aren’t “Jesus-ians” but “Christ-ians” and that “Christ” wasn’t Jesus’ last name, but the word that identifies him as the Christ, the Messiah, the one who was persecuted and hung on the cross but defeated death. She says, “God [is] most revealed in Jesus raised.”[i]

It can be hard to see how the cross is good news; likewise, this parable has some harsh words in it and if God’s justice looked like burning down the cities of all those who reject divine grace or murdered his beloved people, I’m not sure where there would be good news. But there is.

The Good News is that God’s justice empowers God’s people to put an end to injustice.

God seeks us out again and again and invites us into life with God, and instills in us compassion for our neighbor, that we might participate in efforts to draw our community together and feed the hungry together;

God loves us so much that we would love our neighbor and celebrate when he or she discovers the freedom of knowing who they are created to be as beloved children of God, whether they are straight, gay, lesbian, transgender or queer; and,

God empowers us by the Spirit to listen to our neighbor and hear where God is calling us to respond with our hands and feet, even when that takes us out of our comfortable pews and familiar fellowship hall.

God saves us by grace through faith. Living out the Gospel – the Good News of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen – requires us to be different from who we were before.

Let us pray…[ii]

Holy Lord,

Thank you for your abundant grace that welcomes every one of us into your Kingdom;

Forgive us when we say “Yes” to your call but refuse to robe ourselves in righteousness;

Anoint us with the transforming power of your Holy Spirit to go into the world as disciples of the Risen Christ.

Amen.

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[i] http://omgcenter.com/2013/04/18/i-refuse-to-cede-to-death-the-win/, accessed 10/13/2017

[ii] Adapted from Laughing Bird Liturgy

18th Sunday after Pentecost

Thursday night we had a harvest moon. For me it’s the same moon Linus sits under while he waits for the great pumkin, but the big, bright moon really earned its name because it aided farmers bringing in their field crops when the days were getting shorter. Tobacco, cotton, soybeans, hay and corn all come in this time of year, and, despite modern advances, crops are still vulnerable to weather, pests, and contaminants. A successful harvest is never assured until it’s completed.

Throughout time, farmers have faced similar risks, working all year-round preparing furrows, digging out stones and rocks, amending soil and planting seeds and choice vines. And when planting is finished, persisting at the work of weeding and watering, plucking off bollworms and hornworms, and waiting for tender shoots to mature, and yield their firstfruits.

In today’s gospel Jesus tells us about one landowner who had planted a vineyard, and then entrusted it to tenants who would tend the land and gather the harvest.

There’s so much the text doesn’t tell us though. Remembering to listen for the questions the text asks, I wonder whether the tenants originally agreed to share the harvest by giving the owner a portion of the crops that were harvested. When a harvest is meager, the share owed to the owner doesn’t change. Perhaps a fear of scarcity set in and instead of offering the first fruits, the tenants did the math and decided they couldn’t afford to give anything.

Or perhaps they were simply human, susceptible to selfishness and greed. Having worked hard to make the land produce, they wanted now to keep it for themselves. They failed to remember that neither the land or the vineyard ever belonged to them. They simply had been entrusted with its care.

Another reading questions the actions of the landowner. Was he the greedy one? Did he hear the tenants had been successful and now he thought he deserved a share? But wouldn’t it be in the owner’s interest to have hardworking tenants tending to the vineyard and earning a bountiful harvest? Why would he trick them or deceive them?

Living with these questions, our reading of the parable continues.

Expected to share their abundance, the tenants beat, kill and stone the slaves and even the son of the owner. The parable says that, taking matters into their own hands, they sought to inherit the vineyard , as if by their actions they could change their position.

While this parable is often called the “parable of the wicked tenants” I think it could be named the “parable of the faithful owner.” As with all of Scripture, its story tells us some things about God, the One who creates all living things, owns the land and gives the harvest.

The parable echoes the beginning of the passage in Isaiah that is paired with it in the lectionary this morning. Isaiah 5 begins as a love song from the God of Israel, Yahweh who is deeply devoted to the vineyard, and showers upon it attentiveness and hard work. As its owner and creator, he exhibits complete devotion to it and waits expectantly for it to become fruitful.[i]

On the earth, God has created all living things and eagerly anticipates that we will bear fruit, but

instead of opening our hands and meeting the needs of our neighbors, we become hard-hearted or tight-fisted, only serving others when it is convenient;

instead of welcoming the stranger, we become fearful and fall prey to an attitude of scarcity, convinced that we must act in our own interest to protect what is “ours”; and

instead of praying for our enemies and seeking peace, we respond to threats of violence with violence, escalating words and arsenals, punishing murder with murder.

Like the tenants in the parable, we confess our faith in a living and loving God but by our actions and our words, we live as if there is no God. Here, sin is clearly our rejection of God, in “an attitude of selfishness that has no need for God.”[ii]

We disappoint God in small and big ways all the time, and God weeps at our rejection.

God weeps when bullets rain on a crowd, killing 58 people and injuring five hundred and twenty seven.

God weeps when his children are cut off from family and basic necessities by impassable roads and disrupted telephones and electricity.

God weeps when hatred and bigotry is ignored because it is never the “right time” to address injustice and to confess our complicity in perpetuating evil.

The Good News is that, unlike the vineyard owner in Isaiah who destroys the vineyard and allows it to be devoured and trampled,

Or the landowner in the parable who predictably seizes his vineyard from the tenants, our loving God does not give up on us.

God remains devoted to us, even to the cross where God suffered the death of his only Son,

where Jesus was beaten and tortured by his enemies but death was defeated by love. 

And God remains expectant, confident that we are redeemed and made holy by His grace.

Forgiven by our merciful God, the expectation is that we will respond with grace to the brokenness we meet in the world.

The fruit that God expects from us is love:

Love for our neighbor, meeting the needs of others and loving them as we love ourselves.

Love for the stranger, remembering that we and our ancestors in faith before us have all been exiles and strangers.

Love for our enemies, leaving vengeance and judgment to God, and seeing each person as wholly human and loved by God.

This love mirrors what we see on the cross when God gives his only Son that the whole world would not perish, but be saved through him.

Like farmers hoping for a good harvest, the Gospel calls us to remember that God is the creator and owner of all things, we are here as caretakers and stewards of what God provides, and our hope is grounded in who God is, and what God can do, and not in our own efforts.

Let us pray…

Good and gracious God,

who sees our rejection and our selfishness, and remains steadfast in merciful love for your children,

teach us to remember that you have entrusted us with care for creation and all living things,

that we would embrace Your forgiveness,

and reject suffering and evil, mirroring your love in a hurting world.

We pray in the name of your Son Jesus,

Amen.

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[i] Walter Brueggemann. Isaiah 1-39.

[ii] Brian Stoffregen.