14th Sunday after Pentecost

Ephesians 6:10-20

The letter to the church in Ephesus is one of the letters that has survived from the tumultuous years in the first and second centuries when Christians were religious minorities. Standing against paganism and poly-theism, their small communities of faith were threatened by persecution and oppression. Scattered across Asia Minor, land that is largely modern-day Turkey now, they received letters like this one from the teachers of the faith, like Paul, who offered instruction and encouragement and reminded them the tenets of the faith that we have through Jesus Christ.

For several weeks now, I have been using this letter and the gospel of John as lenses through which we’ve looked at the values that we hold as a congregation – those things that we have named as being central to our identity as Ascension Lutheran Church: outreach, affirmation, calling others to service, and pointing to Jesus. What remains is prayer.

While prayer isn’t a ministry that gets us mentioned in the newspaper or can be seen from the street, our prayers are a witness to the promises God gives us in faith, including a promise to be Emmanuel — God with us —in all circumstances (Matthew 1:23) and a promise to help us in our weakness, interceding with sighs too deep for words (Romans 8:26).

As Luther writes about the Lord’s Prayer in his small catechism, God doesn’t need our prayers to accomplish God’s purposes on earth, but we pray so that we might recognize what God is doing and participate in that work. Prayer is, as Dr. Mark Allan Powell writes, “an arena for encountering God and learning what kind of God we have.”[i]

The writer of the epistle urges us, “Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.” (Ephesians 6:18 a)

There is urgency in the writer’s description of the life of faith that compels us to pray earnestly and unceasingly for the church, the world and all who are in need.

Sometimes we say defeatedly, “All we can do is pray.” But for God’s people, prayer isn’t meant to be a last resort. “Prayer is simply talking with God”… expressing our adoration and love; recognizing who we are as God’s beloved children; giving thanks for God’s love and grace and being attentive to the needs around us.[ii] Our prayers unite us with God even when our individual resources or knowledge are exhausted and depleted. Henri Nouwen says, “To pray is to walk in the full light of God, and to say simply, without holding back, ‘I am human and you are God.’”[iii]

The letter continues, “…keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. (Eph. 6:18b)

The saints are not only those who have already died and joined the church triumphant; they are all of us too! Martin Luther calls us simultaneously sinner and saint because by God’s grace, and that alone, we are forgiven and made holy, or sanctified.

Writing about the prayers of the faithful, Father Michael Kwatera explains, “Our prayer for others can enlarge our spirits and enlighten our minds, so that we may see more of God’s will for this world. And when we pray for others, we are asking that by God’s grace they may open themselves to God’s will. Intercessory prayer helps us to embody and promote reign-of-God values (peace, justice, equality, service) by conforming our wills to God’s will.”[iv]

Fred Rogers, the memorable host of public television’s children’s show “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” once shared a story of meeting a boy who had severe cerebral palsy and communicated with computer assistance. The boy had always loved watching the television show, and a benefactor arranged for Mister Rogers to meet him.

After they met and talked a while, Mister Rogers said to the boy, “I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?” And the boy said he would, so then Mister Rogers said, “I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?”

The boy was surprised and “although at first he didn't know if he could do it, he said he would, he said he'd try….”

Mister Rogers said later, “I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.”[v]

 “Will you pray for me?”
Those five words invite us into life together.
Asking for prayer,
we lay bare our fears and anxieties, surrender our control of our situation and yoke ourselves together to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.” (Eph. 6:10)

Let us pray…
Steadfast and loving God,
Thank you for your Son Jesus who brings forgiveness for our sin.
Help us come to you humbly in prayer and make us ready to conform to Your will.
Show us the power of prayer to free us from burdens
and unite us with You and with each other in community.
We pray in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen.

[i] Powell, 167.

[ii] Dr. Mark Allan Powell, Loving Jesus. 159-164.

[iii] Powell, 162.

[iv] Fr. Michael Kwatera, St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, MN. http://www.saintjohnsabbey.org/liturgy-answers/what-history-theology-behind-prayers-faithful/, accessed 8/25/2018.

[v] Tom Junod, “Can You Say...Hero?” Esquire, April 6, 2017. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-hero-esq1198/ Accessed 8/23/2018.

13th Sunday after Pentecost

John 6:51-58

For the last several weeks, I have been preaching on the lectionary texts and connecting what Jesus and the writer of the epistle to the Ephesians say about living in relationship with God, being reconciled to God and living together in unity and with purpose.

And, as I’ve been preaching, I have been connecting the texts with congregation values we have named at Ascension, including outreach, calling others to service and affirmation.

And we have seen that this way of life in faith connects back to our baptismal promises because it is at the font that we receive new life in the sacrament of holy baptism.

Today we see that this way of life in faith also looks ahead as we see how our life together points people to Jesus.

You may remember that the first twelve chapters of John’s Gospel are known as the Book of Signs because they bear witness to the many miracles that Jesus performed and interpreted to us. Instead of calling them miracles, the Fourth Evangelist calls them “signs” because they point beyond themselves, “to the power and the presence of God.”[i]

At the beginning of chapter six, Jesus feeds the five thousand, and then we get another fifty-three verses where Jesus is teaching why bread matters.

And, quickly, we know that Jesus is talking about more than just some flour and water. Preaching during the Passover, he recalls the familiar story of the exiles who received manna in the wilderness and then he describes this bread that comes down from heaven as something even greater.

Jesus says that this bread gives life to the world, (v. 32-33) and then he identifies himself as this “bread of life.” (v .35) And, he repeats those words as he points to what God is doing through him and promises eternal life or close communion with God.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul all write about the sacrament of the altar — what we call interchangeably Holy Communion, the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper — but the verses we have this week are the closest thing we have in John’s gospel to anything describing the establishment of the meal.

His audience was left wondering, “What is he talking about?” as he talked about eating flesh and drinking blood.  The eating language that Jesus uses includes a word that translates as gnaw, munch or even crunch, and outsiders accused ancient Christians of cannibalism because they mis-understood the meal. Instead, just as there are examples in Jewish thought where the Law is consumed and absorbed like food, the “flesh and blood” language demonstrates that at God’s table, we receive Jesus himself, and we are changed because Jesus lives in us.

While baptism is the beginning of new life in the family of God, the sacrament of the altar nurtures us for the journey of this life of faith, providing us with “living bread.”

Nourished and fed, we ourselves become signs pointing to Jesus.

Worship is one of those places where, as a congregation, we most clearly point to Jesus, beginning at the font where we experience new life; in our music and hymnody where we connect to the worldwide Church; and, in our hearing of the Gospel when we hear God’s promises to us.

And, describing Scripture, Luther said, “Here you will find the swaddling-clothes and the manger in which Christ lies” so whenever we engage God’s Word in study as adults or as confirmation students, we too are pointing to Jesus. 

But we point to Jesus when we are living our everyday lives outside of where we gather as a congregation. As beautiful as this space is, the building is not Ascension Lutheran Church; we are. We are the Body of Christ, fed by the bread of life.

When we leave this place and go to our neighborhoods, workplaces and schools, we are visible signs of God’s grace in a world where people only know church from headlines of abuse and misuse of power, or from funerals or weddings. Even if they are familiar with organized religion, they may not have experienced “a community that embodies God’s love and mercy in a meaningful way.”[ii]

Because Jesus abides in us, God remains in relationship with us, constantly forming and re-forming us, working in our lives and refining us that we may more clearly point to Jesus, and to the forgiveness and love that God offers each one of us.

Let us pray…
Redeeming God,
Thank you for sending your Son Jesus,
whose blood was shed and flesh was pierced on the cross,
and for forgiving our sin.
May we come to the table to receive the bread of life that nourishes us and go out into the world, strengthened by your Holy Spirit, that our lives would always point to your goodness and mercy.
Amen.

[i] “John,” EntertheBible.org, Luther Seminary.
[ii] Diana Butler Bass. Christianity after Religion. 26

12th Sunday after Pentecost

John 6:35, 41-51; Ephesians 4:25-5:2

In the gospel the very same crowds who wanted to make Jesus king are now grumbling because he is pushing the boundaries of how they understand faith and belief. Instead of turning away people who don’t measure up, Jesus adds more and more chairs to the banquet table and welcomes us all to eat,
to enter into relationship with him.

And that starts people grumbling. Like the Israelites being led by Moses in exile, the people are being challenged to enter into a new way of being God’s people, and they really don’t like it.

They want the salvation and redemption that comes with knowing God, but they don’t actually want anything to change.

And Jesus hears them. He hears them challenging his authority to teach like this and he hears them talking among themselves about things they don’t understand or don’t like, and he simply tells them to stop their grumbling. In verse 43 he says, “Do not complain among yourselves.” And then he continues to teach, offering another way of understanding how God is drawing us all into relationship and inviting us into life together.

The writer of the letter to the Ephesians offers instruction for that life together. At first, these sound like rules of civility or morality, but following Jesus isn’t about simply being nice or good.

In American culture, especially, we have a widespread form of belief that sociologist Christian Smith calls “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” and this belief effectively turns God into

“a combination of divine butler and cosmic therapist [who] takes care of your problems, …helps you work out your difficulties and doesn’t get too involved.”[i] Moralistic therapeutic deism believes
·     A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
·     God wants people to be good, nice, fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
·     The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
·     God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
·     Good people go to heaven when they die.[ii]

And while those ideas may sound harmless enough,
this form of belief doesn’t recognize that the very same God who created everything good in the world, by nature, loves the whole of creation, and every one of us who is created and desires relationship with us;
it doesn’t understand that God’s commandments aren’t simply a moral checklist, but ways of living in relationship with God and with each other;
it is not belief that, in faith, we are freed for the sake of the world, and our service to God erupts from our salvation in that as Galatians 5:6 says, our “faith is truly active through love, that is, it finds expression in the works of the freest service, cheerfully and lovingly done, with which [one] willingly serves another without hope of reward….”[iii];
it is not belief that God is Emmanuel, God with us, in all circumstances — joy, suffering and even death; and,
at its center, moral therapeutic deism is not belief that comes from grace, that unearned gift that God gives each one of us - even while we are yet sinners - because God loves us.

Following Jesus isn’t about simply being nice or good.
Following Jesus, we strive to imitate God, surrendering ourselves and our lives in response to the love God has first shown us. 

Hearing these texts in the context of our congregation values shines light on “affirmation” which I have understood as being present in each other’s lives, offering encouragement and helping one another live out our baptismal promises:[iv]

to live among God’s faithful people,
to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper,
to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,
to serve all people, following the example of Jesus,
and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.

It is characteristic of how we live together as the body of Christ.
The instructions in the letter to the Ephesians are included so that we might know how to live out these promises that form our baptismal identity as claimed children of God through Christ.

As the writer says in verse 25,
 “we are members of one another” so
when we lie to someone, we are lying to God and to ourselves;
when we are angry and deny it, instead of addressing our anger,
our unresolved anger becomes toxic and destructive to us all;
when we gossip about others or we are malicious toward another person, we fail to live in love and we reject the love with which Christ first loves us.

The good news in the texts this week, of course, is that all those things that we do that hurt others, hurt God and hurt ourselves and the ways in which we tear down instead of building up are redeemed by God in Jesus, and we are forgiven, in spite of ourselves.

Jesus invites us to eat the living bread of heaven, and the writer of the epistle instructs us that “the body of Christ does not feed on anger, evil talk, bitterness, or slander, but instead feeds on the bread of love and forgiveness, imitating Christ.”

May we all be fed by that bread as we go into the world as imitators of Christ.

Let us pray.[v]
God of love and life,
Thank you for sending us your Son, Jesus Christ,
the bread of life for our deepest hunger,
and for drawing us to him that we might learn from him.
Help us hold steadfast to the grace You give us, forgiving us our sin – our deception and anger, our resentment and vindictiveness, our arrogance and pride.
Teach us to show the image of Christ before us in all that we do, modeling the love that we see in Jesus, the love that you have first given us.
We pray in the name of Jesus.
Amen.

---

[i] 2008 Marjorie Pay Hinckley Lecture: Christian Smith, University of Notre Dame “Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRCaQlr9ooU, accessed 8/11/2018.

[ii] ibid

[iii] Luther, Freedom of a Christian, 405.

[iv] Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season after Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16) (Feasting on the Word: Year B volume) (Kindle Locations 11580-11581). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

[v] Adapted from Laughing Bird Liturgy, http://laughingbird.net/ComingWeeks.html

11th Sunday after Pentecost

Ephesians 4:1-16

In the epistle reading, the writer instructs each of us to “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

Unfortunately, too often that word “worthy” prompts us to ask ourselves, “What must I do to be worthy, or more worthy?” We compare, measure and question our relative worth, mis-understanding worth as a calculation of achievement, wealth, position or power.

But that’s not what worthiness means. Worthiness means “having sufficient merit.”

In the whole of Scripture there are only a handful of verses that speak about “worth” and none that use the word “merit.” More often, the word that is used is “favor.” And can you guess what the Greek word for “favor” is?

It’s χάρις
Grace — which we define as “God’s unmerited favor.”

So, “worthiness” is having sufficient grace.

God’s grace is a gift, not something we earn or accomplish through our good works or efforts, and God’s abundant grace is sufficient – it is enough. These are promises we hear in Ephesians 2 and in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.[i]

 So a paraphrase of Ephesians 4, verse 1 could be:
“Live out your calling according to the grace – or unmerited favor you have already received from God.”

In verse 2, the letter continues urging us to live “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.”

But again, these virtues are not achieved by our work or effort. As Martin Luther wrote when he defended his theological thinking to his fellow Augustinians in 1518 in his Heidelberg Disputation, “[One] is not righteous who does much, but [one] who without work, believes much in Christ.”[ii]

It is Christ in us that produces these inevitable fruits of “God’s Spirit working in and through our lives.” [iii] They are evidence that Christ lives in us through faith.[iv]

Episcopal priest and visiting professor at Wake Forest Divinity School, the Reverend Doctor G. Porter Taylor writes, “Humility keeps us grounded in the reality of who we are as creatures formed from the dust by God.”[v]

And, preaching on this text, Lutheran pastor Tony Durante reminds us,

if it were not for God breathing into the nostrils of Adam,
he would’ve only been dust;
if it wasn’t for Jesus Christ, when he returned from the dead, appearing in that room and breathing the Holy Spirit on his apostles, they would’ve only been dust;
if it wasn’t for Jesus Christ sending out into our lives servants of his Word, we would only be dust,
but in his resurrection, Jesus kicked up some dust![vi]

What I love about Pastor Tony’s image is that it makes room for the messiness of life in ministry and life together in community. Think about when dust gets kicked up, or stirred up: that happens when we move in spaces that have been ignored or forgotten; when we disturb things that have set unchanged or unchallenged for too long; when we dig into dry ground to add the nutrients to make good soil and plant a new harvest. Kicking up dust means moving in new ways, examining what is here now and creating and planting new ideas and ways of living life together as God’s people.

The text says that Jesus equips all the saints — not only the most articulate or educated, not only the prominent public theologians or the celebrity religious — but each and every one of us.

In examining the gifts we have been given, author and Quaker elder Parker Palmer urges us that the standard should not be effectiveness but “faithfulness" —
faithfulness to your gifts, faithfulness to your perception of the needs of the world, and faithfulness to offering your gifts to whatever needs are within your reach.” Palmer goes on to say, “The tighter we cling to the norm of effectiveness the smaller the tasks we’ll take on, because they are the only ones that get short-term results.”[vii]

Like the disciples who scoffed at the five loaves and two fishes in last week’s gospel, our vision often is too narrow, focusing only on our proven abilities, instead of trusting that God is working in our lives in new ways and equipping us for new ministry.

The epistle writer encourages us to have confidence in God’s grace, in faith, and listen to God to discern, or understand, God’s call on our lives.

Last week we reflected on one of our congregation values – outreach – and how God works through seemingly foolish ideas and against absurd odds to accomplish God’s work in the world. As we are called to service – another of our congregation values here at Ascension — let’s pay attention to questions like,
“Am I faithful to responding to the needs that I see?” and
 “Do I enter into opportunities or run away in fear?” [viii]

Jesus shows us in John’s gospel when the crowds want to make him their king and again when they cannot see him as more than a miracle worker that ministry is not about us and it’s not about what we can do; ministry is about living in relationship with God, with one another and with the world, and the relationships we forge and bear in love are our kingdom work. God delights when we use the gifts God gives us for the sake of the world.

Let us pray…
Holy God,
Thank you for the gift of your Son Jesus who gives us grace through faith,
Teach us humility, gentleness and patience, and inspire us by Your Holy Spirit to respond to your invitation to participate in your kingdom work in the world.
May your abundant love always be visible in our words and actions.
We pray in the name of Jesus,
Amen.

[i] 2 Corinthians 12:9
[ii] Martin Luther. “Heidelberg Disputation.” Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings. 59.
[iii] Sam K. Williams. Galatians. Abingdon Press. 151.
[iv] [iv] Martin Luther. “Heidelberg Disputation.” Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings. 60.
[v] Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season after Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16) (Feasting on the Word: Year B volume) (Kindle Locations 10764-10765). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[vi] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6V1dwbBlxE, accessed 8/1/2018.
[vii] http://www.couragerenewal.org/living-from-the-inside-out-parker-palmers-naropa-university-commencement-address/, accessed 8/1/2018.
[viii] https://www.crossfieldsinstitute.com/from-effectiveness-to-faithfulness/, accessed 8/1/2018.