Luke 2:1-20
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
When we hear this very familiar Christmas story, it’s easy to hear what we remember from childhood and from past Christmases. The challenge is to hear what this living Word is saying to us today, in our lives and our world, because the story of the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ, the wonder and mystery of the Word made flesh, isn’t just something that happened in history. The incarnation – God made human – matters today to all of us here and now.
As I was thinking about how we hear this story I remembered the scene near the beginning of Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” when the angel Clarence is summoned and begins to learn about George Bailey. From the heavens above, he and Gabriel look down on earth and, at first, it’s a little blurry and then Clarence can see the town of Bedford Falls where the story takes place. Reflecting on the gospel story tonight, we are zooming in from far above to pay closer attention to what is happening on the ground.
In tonight’s gospel the very first person Luke names is Emperor Caesar Augustus, immediately putting us in the Holy Roman Empire, and in any other story of the birth of a king, we’d expect to see a palace or castle. But Luke keeps moving and next he names the governor of Syria which then was a Roman province and we have a little better sense of where this story takes place. A place that looks different from here, a place where people lived thousands of years before the birth of Jesus. But Luke doesn’t stop there; he keeps going, on to Nazareth, and then to Bethlehem, where Joseph and Mary have traveled.
Those details may not seem important, but they are, because we are hearing the story of the Savior of the World, and at that time, that was the title given to Caesar Augustus. He was called the Savior and he was called the Son of God. So from its very beginning, the birth of Jesus turned the world as it was known on its head.
It’s also important to hear that this isn’t a story about Joseph and Mary traveling to be with family; if the governor ordered a census, it was required and they had to make the trip. Maybe Joseph couldn’t pay for someone to stay with Mary, maybe Mary didn’t want to be left in Nazareth when she was heavy with child; we don’t know. What we know is that when we meet them in the Gospel, they have traveled a long way to an unfamiliar place, and now the time has come for the baby to be born.
And that is when Luke tells us that there is no room in the inn.
Sometimes that is heard as Joseph, Mary and Jesus are on the street; other times, we hear the word “manger” and recall nativities we’ve seen and imagine a cow stall and a wooden trough. The finer points of Palestinian sociology and archaeology aren’t really the point.
Whatever their surroundings, it feels very cold and very lonely for Joseph and Mary, if it were not for the presence of this Child in whom so much has already been promised in the words of the angel who visited Mary: “the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.” (Luke 1:35)
Writing about the birth of Jesus, Martin Luther said there was nothing fearful or frightening about God coming to earth as vulnerable infant. Instead God who comes to us as a baby brings us comfort and consolation. [i] In her poem Amazing Peace, poet Maya Angelou wrote, “Hope spreads around the earth brightening all things.”[ii] This is the Child whose birth we celebrate tonight.
Presbyterian Ann Weems wrote in her poem, “In Search of our Kneeling Places” about being “Bethlehem-bound.” All Advent we have been Bethlehem-bound, and tonight we find ourselves alongside Joseph and Mary bearing witness to this wondrous miracle.
In his Christmas sermons, Luther scolded Bethlehem for being inhospitable to the Baby Jesus, and he didn’t give the rest of us much credit either. He said that we would have been happy today to help the Baby and wash His linen because we know Christ, but if we had been there in Bethlehem, we would have done no better. [iii]
Weems is gentler but her challenge is similar. She wrote, “In each heart lies a Bethlehem, an inn where we must ultimately answer whether there is room or not.” [iv]
That is the question we hear tonight as we listen again to the Christmas story: “Will we make room for Jesus?”
God has come and is offering us God’s own Son, who comes into this world to give us life eternal, to make us children of God, just as He is. God makes space in our hearts to receive Christ with all the wonder and mystery of the Incarnation. If anything has distracted us from Jesus before tonight, it is gone now. We are here this Christmas Eve to receive our King, our Savior and Messiah.
Will we make room?
Let us pray…
Holy God,
We give you thanks for coming to us as an infant,
God enfleshed, without titles above us or power over us.
We give thanks for the hopefulness, comfort and consolation that the birth of Jesus brings to us and to the world.
Help us make room in our hearts and lives that we may known your abundant love and grace.
We pray in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.
Amen.
[i] Martin Luther’s Christmas Book. 33
[ii] Maya Angelou, Amazing Peace.
[iii] Martin Luther’s Christmas Book. 31.
[iv] Ann Weems. “In Search of Our Kneeling Places.” Kneeling in Bethlehem.
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Fourth Sunday of Advent
Matthew 1:18-25
In this morning’s gospel, Matthew tells us the birth story of Jesus, but he doesn’t include the shepherds, the manger or even Bethlehem. In fact, we don’t get any of the familiar details that are in the Lukan narrative we’ll hear on Christmas Eve or we might remember from Christmas pageants and plays. Instead Matthew just gives us the barest of facts:
But this in-breaking and changing didn’t happen without some chaos and upheaval first as Joseph wrestled with how he would respond, and as he listened for the Lord to speak and show him how to move forward.
Marrying her, Joseph saves Mary from disgrace, likely poverty and possible death, but Matthew doesn’t tell us
how Mary responded or what they weathered from the time they were married until Jesus was born.
Often our images of Mary and the baby Jesus show a serene and peaceful mother gazing at a quiet, content, cherubic infant, but this year on social media there’s been another image, one that shows Mary stretched out, sleeping, behind Joseph who holds the sleeping baby Jesus with arms flung up above his head. Perhaps this image better reflects the sleepless and exhausting reality of the early days of parenthood. It is a precious time, but it’s rarely peaceful and it’s often unpredictable.
And yet, while we cannot know what the Holy Family experienced, what we hear from Matthew is that God was there in the midst of their uncertainty and turmoil. There, God spoke the words, “Do not be afraid” and they listened. And the child was born and he was named Jesus and everything changed.
The gospel shows us that the people God uses here on earth are not perfect, even for something as important as bearing God’s Son into the world.
We don’t have to have everything together and our lives don’t have to always go according to our plans. Those aren’t pre-requisites for God to act or speak through us. In Joseph and Mary we see that God works through ordinary people, like you and me, who are living our everyday lives with our ups and downs and with our fears, questions and uncertainties.
I wonder though, when God breaks in, how do we respond?
Do we even recognize God is at work in those moments?
Joseph at least had a dream where the angel of the Lord appeared to him. Few of us today receive such visible and explicit signs of God’s presence and instruction.
Describing the hiddenness of God, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says God may be at work in us in ways we don’t even recognize.[i] He says, when it is positive we may call it a miracle, but we don’t often use that word when we see what is happening as negative.[ii] Imagine if Joseph had gone ahead with his plan and dismissed Mary quietly; Jesus would not have been in the line of David and his birth would not have fulfilled the prophecy from Isaiah that we hear in today’s text. Where would Jesus Emmanuel be found then?
As we wait with Joseph and Mary for the Messiah this Advent, may we be alert to the places where God is breaking into our lives, and instead of insisting on our original plan being the “right” one, may we listen and obey, and get out of the way so that God can act in miraculous ways for the sake of the world.
Amen.
[i] Walter Brueggemann. The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Volume 1. 60.
[ii] Walter Brueggemann. “The Prophetic Imagination.” https://onbeing.org/programs/walter-brueggemann-the-prophetic-imagination-dec2018/, accessed 12/21/2019
-Henri Nouwen
In this morning’s gospel, Matthew tells us the birth story of Jesus, but he doesn’t include the shepherds, the manger or even Bethlehem. In fact, we don’t get any of the familiar details that are in the Lukan narrative we’ll hear on Christmas Eve or we might remember from Christmas pageants and plays. Instead Matthew just gives us the barest of facts:
Some two thousand years ago, there was a girl engaged or contracted to be married to a man.There was a plan and then God broke in and everything changed.
And then the man learned that the girl was pregnant — a revelation that could bring shame upon him and could even cost the girl her life.
And then an angel appears to the man and tells him, “Do not be afraid.”
And the man follows the Lord’s instructions; he marries the girl and when the child is born, the man names him Jesus.
But this in-breaking and changing didn’t happen without some chaos and upheaval first as Joseph wrestled with how he would respond, and as he listened for the Lord to speak and show him how to move forward.
Marrying her, Joseph saves Mary from disgrace, likely poverty and possible death, but Matthew doesn’t tell us
how Mary responded or what they weathered from the time they were married until Jesus was born.
Often our images of Mary and the baby Jesus show a serene and peaceful mother gazing at a quiet, content, cherubic infant, but this year on social media there’s been another image, one that shows Mary stretched out, sleeping, behind Joseph who holds the sleeping baby Jesus with arms flung up above his head. Perhaps this image better reflects the sleepless and exhausting reality of the early days of parenthood. It is a precious time, but it’s rarely peaceful and it’s often unpredictable.
And yet, while we cannot know what the Holy Family experienced, what we hear from Matthew is that God was there in the midst of their uncertainty and turmoil. There, God spoke the words, “Do not be afraid” and they listened. And the child was born and he was named Jesus and everything changed.
The gospel shows us that the people God uses here on earth are not perfect, even for something as important as bearing God’s Son into the world.
We don’t have to have everything together and our lives don’t have to always go according to our plans. Those aren’t pre-requisites for God to act or speak through us. In Joseph and Mary we see that God works through ordinary people, like you and me, who are living our everyday lives with our ups and downs and with our fears, questions and uncertainties.
I wonder though, when God breaks in, how do we respond?
Do we even recognize God is at work in those moments?
Joseph at least had a dream where the angel of the Lord appeared to him. Few of us today receive such visible and explicit signs of God’s presence and instruction.
Describing the hiddenness of God, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says God may be at work in us in ways we don’t even recognize.[i] He says, when it is positive we may call it a miracle, but we don’t often use that word when we see what is happening as negative.[ii] Imagine if Joseph had gone ahead with his plan and dismissed Mary quietly; Jesus would not have been in the line of David and his birth would not have fulfilled the prophecy from Isaiah that we hear in today’s text. Where would Jesus Emmanuel be found then?
As we wait with Joseph and Mary for the Messiah this Advent, may we be alert to the places where God is breaking into our lives, and instead of insisting on our original plan being the “right” one, may we listen and obey, and get out of the way so that God can act in miraculous ways for the sake of the world.
Amen.
[i] Walter Brueggemann. The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Volume 1. 60.
[ii] Walter Brueggemann. “The Prophetic Imagination.” https://onbeing.org/programs/walter-brueggemann-the-prophetic-imagination-dec2018/, accessed 12/21/2019
-Henri Nouwen
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Third Sunday of Advent
Matthew 11:2-11
We have jumped ahead again in Matthew’s gospel and now the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah, the cousin of Jesus called John, the same John who had baptized Jesus in the river Jordan is in prison. And Matthew tells us he has heard what the Messiah – the Christ, the Anointed One – has been doing and now he is sending his disciples to talk to Jesus.
Do you ever wonder what John heard? Had he caught snippets of conversations between the guards at the castle, like a game of telephone where the words become garbled and the message confused, or had friendly fishermen embellished the stories, so that they took on mythic proportions?
I like to imagine that faithful people found a way to get word to John that all he had foretold was now taking place. The crowds who had witnessed the sermon on the mount were now repeating it from memory. And others were rejoicing that Jesus not only healed a leper and the demoniac, but also a Roman centurion’s servant and a hemorrhaging woman. And, I can hear their excited whispers, had John heard that Jesus had opened the eyes of the blind?
We can’t know how John heard what was happening some ninety miles north of him in Galilee. But somehow word of what Jesus was saying and doing had reached his cousin and now he sends his own disciples to Jesus to talk with him.
Sometimes when we hear the question asked by John’s disciples, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” we hear doubt. Maybe they thought the expected Messiah would come with more fury, that Rome would be vanquished immediately, or the kings and emperors would be brought low. Maybe they though the least this supposed Savior could do was to get his cousin out of prison.
But in his sermon on this text, Martin Luther preached that John wasn’t in doubt; after all we know from all four gospels that he recognized Jesus as the Christ, he baptized him, saw the Spirit descend upon him in bodily form like a dove, and heard God say, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”[i]
John is like Moses, standing on top of Pisgah, opposite Jericho. (Deut. 34:1) Standing in his prison cell, unable to go where Jesus is going, John points to Him as the One to follow.
John asked his question on behalf of his disciples who did not yet see Jesus as the Christ. Sending them to encounter Jesus face to face, he knows they will witness the transformation that is taking place as Jesus ministers and teaches, heals and saves.
During this season of Advent, we find ourselves traveling with these other disciples, waiting for the One who has already come. We catch glimpses of the Kingdom that is promised, and we hear stories of thanksgiving and praise, gratitude and joy. But we also see the suffering around us and in the world and we wonder where the balm is.
The Good News is that Jesus doesn’t respond with ridicule or contempt or send the questioning disciples away. Instead, Jesus invites them into the reign of God that is happening, asking them,
“What did you expect to see?”
Our expectations can keep us from seeing what is happening.
Our lives are laden with expectations. And in these weeks leading up to Christmas, it can feel like there isn’t any time to wait or any time to watch. It can feel like you are just hurtling from one event to the next and any kind of Advent practice of preparing for the Messiah can feel like one more thing that has to be done before you can rest. We hear and see these unrealistic expectations in commercials and stores and in tv, movies and songs, or we place them on ourselves to continue traditions and rituals that we remember from childhood. And the expectations conflict with one another. Be still but light the Advent wreath and open a new square on the Advent calendar every day. Remember Jesus is the reason for the season but also remember to buy presents for your favorite people. Jesus gives us permission to name the expectations we have put on ourselves or we have picked up from others and discard the ones that keep us from seeing Jesus transforming the world around us.
Christ calls us to open our eyes to see the world anew, alert to what God is doing. Who is being set free from burdens? Where is healing taking place? Where is good news being shared?
This past week the local paper ran a story on the Totally Free Clothes Store, which is over on Warren Street. A local attorney took space he had in his office and transformed it into a place where people can get donated clothing. He doesn’t ask them for ID or to prove they’re deserving. He is adamant that “people deserve clothes every day of the year.” The naked are clothed.
Last week several of our women went Christmas shopping for the holiday backpacks for Graham School students. They bought board games, make your own ornaments and Christmas candy to put together gift bags and included the cards you gave, too. The gifts went to all of the students who rely on the backpacks to have access to food when they’re not in school. The hungry are fed.
And on Wednesday another group from our congregation collected all the body wash and washcloths and razors we donated for Heritage Oaks and put them in packages. Those items will be delivered this week and the people will be reminded of the Good News that they are not alone in this world, but are loved by God and by their siblings in Christ.
This Advent, may we let go of expectations that keep us from seeing Jesus in the world around us, and meeting Jesus in our own lives, may we be transformed.
[i] Martin Luther. “Christ's Answer to John The Baptist.” http://web.archive.org/web/20021220115716/www.markers.com/ink/mljblg.htm, accessed 12/13/2019.
We have jumped ahead again in Matthew’s gospel and now the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah, the cousin of Jesus called John, the same John who had baptized Jesus in the river Jordan is in prison. And Matthew tells us he has heard what the Messiah – the Christ, the Anointed One – has been doing and now he is sending his disciples to talk to Jesus.
Do you ever wonder what John heard? Had he caught snippets of conversations between the guards at the castle, like a game of telephone where the words become garbled and the message confused, or had friendly fishermen embellished the stories, so that they took on mythic proportions?
I like to imagine that faithful people found a way to get word to John that all he had foretold was now taking place. The crowds who had witnessed the sermon on the mount were now repeating it from memory. And others were rejoicing that Jesus not only healed a leper and the demoniac, but also a Roman centurion’s servant and a hemorrhaging woman. And, I can hear their excited whispers, had John heard that Jesus had opened the eyes of the blind?
We can’t know how John heard what was happening some ninety miles north of him in Galilee. But somehow word of what Jesus was saying and doing had reached his cousin and now he sends his own disciples to Jesus to talk with him.
Sometimes when we hear the question asked by John’s disciples, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” we hear doubt. Maybe they thought the expected Messiah would come with more fury, that Rome would be vanquished immediately, or the kings and emperors would be brought low. Maybe they though the least this supposed Savior could do was to get his cousin out of prison.
But in his sermon on this text, Martin Luther preached that John wasn’t in doubt; after all we know from all four gospels that he recognized Jesus as the Christ, he baptized him, saw the Spirit descend upon him in bodily form like a dove, and heard God say, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”[i]
John is like Moses, standing on top of Pisgah, opposite Jericho. (Deut. 34:1) Standing in his prison cell, unable to go where Jesus is going, John points to Him as the One to follow.
John asked his question on behalf of his disciples who did not yet see Jesus as the Christ. Sending them to encounter Jesus face to face, he knows they will witness the transformation that is taking place as Jesus ministers and teaches, heals and saves.
During this season of Advent, we find ourselves traveling with these other disciples, waiting for the One who has already come. We catch glimpses of the Kingdom that is promised, and we hear stories of thanksgiving and praise, gratitude and joy. But we also see the suffering around us and in the world and we wonder where the balm is.
The Good News is that Jesus doesn’t respond with ridicule or contempt or send the questioning disciples away. Instead, Jesus invites them into the reign of God that is happening, asking them,
“What did you expect to see?”
Our expectations can keep us from seeing what is happening.
Our lives are laden with expectations. And in these weeks leading up to Christmas, it can feel like there isn’t any time to wait or any time to watch. It can feel like you are just hurtling from one event to the next and any kind of Advent practice of preparing for the Messiah can feel like one more thing that has to be done before you can rest. We hear and see these unrealistic expectations in commercials and stores and in tv, movies and songs, or we place them on ourselves to continue traditions and rituals that we remember from childhood. And the expectations conflict with one another. Be still but light the Advent wreath and open a new square on the Advent calendar every day. Remember Jesus is the reason for the season but also remember to buy presents for your favorite people. Jesus gives us permission to name the expectations we have put on ourselves or we have picked up from others and discard the ones that keep us from seeing Jesus transforming the world around us.
Christ calls us to open our eyes to see the world anew, alert to what God is doing. Who is being set free from burdens? Where is healing taking place? Where is good news being shared?
This past week the local paper ran a story on the Totally Free Clothes Store, which is over on Warren Street. A local attorney took space he had in his office and transformed it into a place where people can get donated clothing. He doesn’t ask them for ID or to prove they’re deserving. He is adamant that “people deserve clothes every day of the year.” The naked are clothed.
Last week several of our women went Christmas shopping for the holiday backpacks for Graham School students. They bought board games, make your own ornaments and Christmas candy to put together gift bags and included the cards you gave, too. The gifts went to all of the students who rely on the backpacks to have access to food when they’re not in school. The hungry are fed.
And on Wednesday another group from our congregation collected all the body wash and washcloths and razors we donated for Heritage Oaks and put them in packages. Those items will be delivered this week and the people will be reminded of the Good News that they are not alone in this world, but are loved by God and by their siblings in Christ.
This Advent, may we let go of expectations that keep us from seeing Jesus in the world around us, and meeting Jesus in our own lives, may we be transformed.
[i] Martin Luther. “Christ's Answer to John The Baptist.” http://web.archive.org/web/20021220115716/www.markers.com/ink/mljblg.htm, accessed 12/13/2019.
Sunday, December 8, 2019
Second Sunday of Advent
Matthew 3:1-12
Preparing to preach on today’s gospel, one pastor described John the Baptist’s appearance as crashing the Christmas party. Setting aside the anachronisms, it does feel a little like that. Hearing this text on the second Sunday of Advent, when we are celebrating hope, peace, joy and love, and especially here at Ascension when we are hanging the green in the sanctuary, John’s call to repentance hits us like a bucket of cold water.
Instead of appearing on the streets of Jerusalem or in the temple, John draws people out of their familiar surroundings to come and see him in the stark and barren wilderness of the desert.
The gospel writer tells us that “the people of Jerusalem and all of Judea” came to see him and while that was likely an exaggeration, the account of John’s appearance shows up in all four gospels, so there is no doubt that it was significant.
The gospel tells us that the people were confessing their sins to him and he was baptizing them in the river Jordan.
But it’s the words that the prophet Isaiah that describe John that caught my attention today. In Chapter 57 of the book of Isaiah it says, “And it shall be said, Build up, build up, prepare the way. Remove every obstacle out of the way of my people.” (v.14)
Prepare the way.
Eugene Peterson in his paraphrase of the Matthean text says, “Prepare for God’s arrival.”
So instead of a party crasher, I think John is actually the party planner.
As we adorn this sanctuary with the evergreens and bells, candles and ornaments, he invites us to prepare the way not only for our celebration of Christmas in a few weeks, but, as disciples, for God’s arrival, for the kingdom come on earth.
We are here to prepare the way, to remove the obstacles and repent of our sin, to clear the way that others may see God’s love, and to make space for God in our lives.
Repenting of our sin isn’t just about us naming our failures and trying to do better. It isn’t the result of earnest, self-directed soul searching. In Scripture God is always the actor, and we respond to what God is doing. Repentance, then, is “inviting God to do what we can’t do ourselves.”[i] It is inviting God to lead us in changing not only how we act and what we believe, but who we are.
Clearing the way for others to see God’s love means getting out of the way. Church hurt is real; there are congregations and people who cause harm in God’s name. Don’t do that! Clearing the way may mean welcoming people as they are, even when they don’t look or smell or talk like you. It’s recognizing that a church is a strange place on Sunday morning, with a lot of unfamiliar words and people up here in the chancel dressed oddly, and we don’t learn how to read a hymnal, say the creed or even pray anywhere else. It takes courage to be in this space, and be open to listening to God.
Making space for God in our own lives, in a time of year that is so full, may be the biggest challenge. But John invites us to get out of what is familiar, and go someplace, stripped of distractions and advertisements shouting at us, and listen for God’s Word.
That’s what we see happening at the river with John. The people make their way to the river where they hear God speaking through him and respond with repentance.
In our text in verse 11, John says, “I baptize you with water for repentance , but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.” Peterson’s paraphrase is, “I'm baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom life. The real action comes next.”
The action that we anticipate is not ours, but God’s. God ignites the kingdom life within us and God changes us from the inside out. (v. 12)
Let us prepare the way. Amen.
[i] Brian Stoffregen, “Exegetical Notes for Epiphany 3B.”
Preparing to preach on today’s gospel, one pastor described John the Baptist’s appearance as crashing the Christmas party. Setting aside the anachronisms, it does feel a little like that. Hearing this text on the second Sunday of Advent, when we are celebrating hope, peace, joy and love, and especially here at Ascension when we are hanging the green in the sanctuary, John’s call to repentance hits us like a bucket of cold water.
Instead of appearing on the streets of Jerusalem or in the temple, John draws people out of their familiar surroundings to come and see him in the stark and barren wilderness of the desert.
The gospel writer tells us that “the people of Jerusalem and all of Judea” came to see him and while that was likely an exaggeration, the account of John’s appearance shows up in all four gospels, so there is no doubt that it was significant.
The gospel tells us that the people were confessing their sins to him and he was baptizing them in the river Jordan.
But it’s the words that the prophet Isaiah that describe John that caught my attention today. In Chapter 57 of the book of Isaiah it says, “And it shall be said, Build up, build up, prepare the way. Remove every obstacle out of the way of my people.” (v.14)
Prepare the way.
Eugene Peterson in his paraphrase of the Matthean text says, “Prepare for God’s arrival.”
So instead of a party crasher, I think John is actually the party planner.
As we adorn this sanctuary with the evergreens and bells, candles and ornaments, he invites us to prepare the way not only for our celebration of Christmas in a few weeks, but, as disciples, for God’s arrival, for the kingdom come on earth.
We are here to prepare the way, to remove the obstacles and repent of our sin, to clear the way that others may see God’s love, and to make space for God in our lives.
Repenting of our sin isn’t just about us naming our failures and trying to do better. It isn’t the result of earnest, self-directed soul searching. In Scripture God is always the actor, and we respond to what God is doing. Repentance, then, is “inviting God to do what we can’t do ourselves.”[i] It is inviting God to lead us in changing not only how we act and what we believe, but who we are.
Clearing the way for others to see God’s love means getting out of the way. Church hurt is real; there are congregations and people who cause harm in God’s name. Don’t do that! Clearing the way may mean welcoming people as they are, even when they don’t look or smell or talk like you. It’s recognizing that a church is a strange place on Sunday morning, with a lot of unfamiliar words and people up here in the chancel dressed oddly, and we don’t learn how to read a hymnal, say the creed or even pray anywhere else. It takes courage to be in this space, and be open to listening to God.
Making space for God in our own lives, in a time of year that is so full, may be the biggest challenge. But John invites us to get out of what is familiar, and go someplace, stripped of distractions and advertisements shouting at us, and listen for God’s Word.
That’s what we see happening at the river with John. The people make their way to the river where they hear God speaking through him and respond with repentance.
In our text in verse 11, John says, “I baptize you with water for repentance , but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.” Peterson’s paraphrase is, “I'm baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom life. The real action comes next.”
The action that we anticipate is not ours, but God’s. God ignites the kingdom life within us and God changes us from the inside out. (v. 12)
Let us prepare the way. Amen.
[i] Brian Stoffregen, “Exegetical Notes for Epiphany 3B.”
Sunday, December 1, 2019
First Sunday of Advent
Matthew 24:36-44
For a very long time the only countdowns I ever heard were on space shuttle launches aired from the Kennedy Space Center or the countdown that happens when they drop the ball in New York City’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve. But now we have countdowns until movie and video game releases, countdowns to elections, and at this time of year, countdowns to Black Friday and Christmas as stores tell us how many shopping days remain. Even in the Church our Advent calendars numbered one to twenty-four or twenty-five create a countdown to the birth of the baby Jesus. But Advent didn’t begin as a countdown to Christmas; these four weeks anticipate the Second Coming of the Christ.
On this first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the church year begins with the end in mind. The gospel of Matthew was written about fifty years after Christ’s ascension and the gospel writer was speaking to people who, like us, were in an in-between time. We have experienced salvation in Jesus Christ – God living among us in the flesh and taking on all that is ours so that we might have all that is his. But we are living in the “already but not yet” because the fullness of the Kingdom of God is not yet realized.
Living here and now in this world, this Word of God speaks to us.
Jesus is on the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem and he gives the disciples a description of what the coming of the Son of Man will be like, recalling what it was like when the earth was flooded in the days of Noah. Ironically, in the rapture theology promoted by popular fiction like the Left Behind books, these verses have been misused to turn God into a body snatcher. But if we can listen again to what Jesus says in Matthew’s gospel, it becomes clear that the layers of judgment about who is righteous and who isn’t is something we have added. It’s not in the text. Jesus does say that like those who were swept away in the floodwaters at the time of Noah, some will be taken and some will be left. But we don’t know the reason anymore than we know the day it will happen.
When Jesus says the Second Coming will be unexpected, I think we hear it as a sudden and unpredictable, an unwanted interruption and maybe even a threat. After all the people Jesus describes are “eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage.” They are living their everyday lives.
What if we could be more childlike in our anticipation of the unexpected? Could we delight with the thrill of being surprised by a loving parent who has been deployed appearing out of nowhere in the classroom? Could we prepare for the return of the Son of Man without trying to put it on a schedule? Could we ditch the “chronos” understanding of time and adopt more wonder and confidence in the “kairos” of God’s timing?
There is Good News in not knowing. It forces us to depend on God. We cannot know when God’s kingdom will come in fullness, but we can trust the grace we have been given by God that we are enough. God is not a body snatcher and God is not a caricature of a schoolmaster who is out to catch us out when we fall short. God knows each us wholly in all our brokenness and sin, and, in God’s abundant mercy, God loves us, forgives us and gives us eternal life.
But what does Jesus mean when he tells us to prepare or be ready, to stay alert or keep watch? Well, he doesn’t mean we should never rest. And he doesn’t call us all to live a cloistered life immersed in monastic prayer. Like the people Jesus describes, we must continue the work of everyday life: eating and drinking, working and living in community together and caring for our families and neighbors. The Good News is that God gives us opportunities to help accomplish God’s work here on earth in this in-between time.
Shunning complacency, we can be alert for the ways God is calling us to live our lives, be aware of the gifts we have been given that equip us to serve and be attentive to the needs that still exist in our community and in the world.
Just this past week we saw glimpses of the kingdom right here in Shelby. One was when we shared our gifts of space and hospitality and hosted the community Thanksgiving worship here on Tuesday night. Some 90 people were here with the Episcopal Church’s choir and other musicians from Eskridge Grove Missionary Baptist Church, Aldersgate United Methodist and Living Waters Ministry. People shared testimonies of gratitude and named people and situations to include in prayers, and it was holy ground that encompassed the fellowship hall where people gathered for dessert and conversation after worship.
Then on Wednesday we donated desserts and loaned tables and chairs, chafing dishes and cornhole to the Community Table Meal held at Graham School and shared a meal with people we didn’t know. I met a woman and her children from Boiling Springs who were there for the first time; it’s the third year Graham has hosted a meal but this family wouldn’t have known about it if Cleveland County Schools hadn’t sent out a phone message on their system. The whole meal was like the story of the loaves and fishes, and in addition to the others who ate at the school that day, we had enough food to send boxes home with that family for 13 people. Surely, we were on holy ground that day.
As we begin this Advent may we be alert and attentive and aware to what God is doing already and how we are invited to participate in God’s kingdom here on earth, even now. Amen.
For a very long time the only countdowns I ever heard were on space shuttle launches aired from the Kennedy Space Center or the countdown that happens when they drop the ball in New York City’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve. But now we have countdowns until movie and video game releases, countdowns to elections, and at this time of year, countdowns to Black Friday and Christmas as stores tell us how many shopping days remain. Even in the Church our Advent calendars numbered one to twenty-four or twenty-five create a countdown to the birth of the baby Jesus. But Advent didn’t begin as a countdown to Christmas; these four weeks anticipate the Second Coming of the Christ.
On this first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the church year begins with the end in mind. The gospel of Matthew was written about fifty years after Christ’s ascension and the gospel writer was speaking to people who, like us, were in an in-between time. We have experienced salvation in Jesus Christ – God living among us in the flesh and taking on all that is ours so that we might have all that is his. But we are living in the “already but not yet” because the fullness of the Kingdom of God is not yet realized.
Living here and now in this world, this Word of God speaks to us.
Jesus is on the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem and he gives the disciples a description of what the coming of the Son of Man will be like, recalling what it was like when the earth was flooded in the days of Noah. Ironically, in the rapture theology promoted by popular fiction like the Left Behind books, these verses have been misused to turn God into a body snatcher. But if we can listen again to what Jesus says in Matthew’s gospel, it becomes clear that the layers of judgment about who is righteous and who isn’t is something we have added. It’s not in the text. Jesus does say that like those who were swept away in the floodwaters at the time of Noah, some will be taken and some will be left. But we don’t know the reason anymore than we know the day it will happen.
When Jesus says the Second Coming will be unexpected, I think we hear it as a sudden and unpredictable, an unwanted interruption and maybe even a threat. After all the people Jesus describes are “eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage.” They are living their everyday lives.
What if we could be more childlike in our anticipation of the unexpected? Could we delight with the thrill of being surprised by a loving parent who has been deployed appearing out of nowhere in the classroom? Could we prepare for the return of the Son of Man without trying to put it on a schedule? Could we ditch the “chronos” understanding of time and adopt more wonder and confidence in the “kairos” of God’s timing?
There is Good News in not knowing. It forces us to depend on God. We cannot know when God’s kingdom will come in fullness, but we can trust the grace we have been given by God that we are enough. God is not a body snatcher and God is not a caricature of a schoolmaster who is out to catch us out when we fall short. God knows each us wholly in all our brokenness and sin, and, in God’s abundant mercy, God loves us, forgives us and gives us eternal life.
But what does Jesus mean when he tells us to prepare or be ready, to stay alert or keep watch? Well, he doesn’t mean we should never rest. And he doesn’t call us all to live a cloistered life immersed in monastic prayer. Like the people Jesus describes, we must continue the work of everyday life: eating and drinking, working and living in community together and caring for our families and neighbors. The Good News is that God gives us opportunities to help accomplish God’s work here on earth in this in-between time.
Shunning complacency, we can be alert for the ways God is calling us to live our lives, be aware of the gifts we have been given that equip us to serve and be attentive to the needs that still exist in our community and in the world.
Just this past week we saw glimpses of the kingdom right here in Shelby. One was when we shared our gifts of space and hospitality and hosted the community Thanksgiving worship here on Tuesday night. Some 90 people were here with the Episcopal Church’s choir and other musicians from Eskridge Grove Missionary Baptist Church, Aldersgate United Methodist and Living Waters Ministry. People shared testimonies of gratitude and named people and situations to include in prayers, and it was holy ground that encompassed the fellowship hall where people gathered for dessert and conversation after worship.
Then on Wednesday we donated desserts and loaned tables and chairs, chafing dishes and cornhole to the Community Table Meal held at Graham School and shared a meal with people we didn’t know. I met a woman and her children from Boiling Springs who were there for the first time; it’s the third year Graham has hosted a meal but this family wouldn’t have known about it if Cleveland County Schools hadn’t sent out a phone message on their system. The whole meal was like the story of the loaves and fishes, and in addition to the others who ate at the school that day, we had enough food to send boxes home with that family for 13 people. Surely, we were on holy ground that day.
As we begin this Advent may we be alert and attentive and aware to what God is doing already and how we are invited to participate in God’s kingdom here on earth, even now. Amen.
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Reign of Christ (Christ the King)
Luke 23:33-43
Colossians 1:11-20
Today is the festival of Christ the King or the Reign of Christ, a feast established by the Catholic Church in 1925 to witness against the increasing secularism of that age, and in defiance of the rising fascism of Italy’s Mussolini. And it is the eve of a new year in the Church. Next Sunday, Advent begins, but for the last six months we have been in the long green season of ordinary time, when we have watched as Jesus and the disciples traveled to Jerusalem, and now they are there and the predictions he has made about the Son of Man (Luke 9:21-22; Luke 9:43-45; Luke 18:31-34) are coming true.
And instead of a triumphant parade, noisemakers or fireworks, today we are watching as Jesus is stripped, beaten and executed. Luke tells us that, during his crucifixion, Jesus was mocked and above his head the soldiers hung a sign that said, “the King of the Jews.”
So this morning we celebrate that Jesus is our Lord and King, even as we find ourselves in a Good Friday world where nothing is what we expect it to be.
Thankfully we know what happens next. We know that evil does not win because Jesus defeats death in the resurrection. But we cannot forget this scene. We cannot follow Jesus in life unless we die at the cross with Him and are given a new life of the Spirit. (Romans 7:6)
So with this in mind, let’s return to Paul’s letter to the Colossians. These were believers in what is modern-day Turkey, and Paul wrote to them during a period of his imprisonment in Rome. Paul’s language praises of God declaring in verse 13 that we have been rescued and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. For Paul, becoming a Christian meant moving to a new home where “nothing is as we have known it.” [i]
For all of us who have moved from one place to another, you probably remember the goodbyes that made it hard, cherish sweet memories and perhaps you even hold onto a wistfulness for the places you left. But then, in each new place, a new community invites you to learn what makes it special, who your neighbors are and where you fit in. And you begin to call the new place “home.”
I still remember the first time I ate at Red Bridges with the call committee and how I learned about Kings Road from the Lamberts when we moved into our house. Finding a place to call home is often about small things that make you less of an outsider.
As Christians, we are invited to make our home with God: to learn new rhythms and language, and discover who God is through Scripture and music, study and prayer.
You wouldn’t move into a new neighborhood and continue to live exactly as you did someplace else. Just going out your front door would force you to do things differently, let alone food shopping or visiting a new school, bank or pharmacy. In the same way, God invites us to explore and discover the kingdom of God, with a holy curiosity and an eager anticipation for where God will appear.
And there is room here for any of you who have never moved. Maybe you think you know all the insider language and shortcuts; there’s nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9) You’ve known the traditions and words of the liturgy, the Bible stories and the hymns for as long as you can remember. But you are invited to participate in this kingdom life as if it were brand new to you.
Paul’s letter continues with the verses known as the Christ Hymn, verses that reverberate with praise for the Lord of all that exists, and declare the promise that “in him all things hold together…in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile himself to all things.” (Colossians 1:17,19-20) Whenever the world feels too small or too broken, Paul reminds us that there is a fullness in Christ that is ours to experience as we make our home with God.
As we go into the new Church year and the new season of Advent, may we all be curious and explore that fullness that is available to us. Maybe there are parts of Christian tradition we haven’t experienced before, whether that’s reading the Bible in a different translation from the one that is familiar to you, experiencing the Blue Christmas worship that will happen later in December at the Episcopal Church, or listening to the music at the community Thanksgiving worship here on Tuesday night. Maybe it’s a new prayer practice you haven’t tried before, like midweek morning prayer or contemplative silence. Let’s open our ears, our eyes and our hearts to the new thing that God is doing.
Let us pray…
Merciful God,
Thank you for coming to us in the fullness of Your Son Jesus, our Lord and King. You rescued us from sin and evil and redeemed us. You moved us into the kingdom of the Son of God where we are given a new life of the Spirit. By your Spirit encourage us in faith to make a new home in Your love. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
[i] David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Location 11629). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
Colossians 1:11-20
Today is the festival of Christ the King or the Reign of Christ, a feast established by the Catholic Church in 1925 to witness against the increasing secularism of that age, and in defiance of the rising fascism of Italy’s Mussolini. And it is the eve of a new year in the Church. Next Sunday, Advent begins, but for the last six months we have been in the long green season of ordinary time, when we have watched as Jesus and the disciples traveled to Jerusalem, and now they are there and the predictions he has made about the Son of Man (Luke 9:21-22; Luke 9:43-45; Luke 18:31-34) are coming true.
And instead of a triumphant parade, noisemakers or fireworks, today we are watching as Jesus is stripped, beaten and executed. Luke tells us that, during his crucifixion, Jesus was mocked and above his head the soldiers hung a sign that said, “the King of the Jews.”
So this morning we celebrate that Jesus is our Lord and King, even as we find ourselves in a Good Friday world where nothing is what we expect it to be.
Thankfully we know what happens next. We know that evil does not win because Jesus defeats death in the resurrection. But we cannot forget this scene. We cannot follow Jesus in life unless we die at the cross with Him and are given a new life of the Spirit. (Romans 7:6)
So with this in mind, let’s return to Paul’s letter to the Colossians. These were believers in what is modern-day Turkey, and Paul wrote to them during a period of his imprisonment in Rome. Paul’s language praises of God declaring in verse 13 that we have been rescued and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. For Paul, becoming a Christian meant moving to a new home where “nothing is as we have known it.” [i]
For all of us who have moved from one place to another, you probably remember the goodbyes that made it hard, cherish sweet memories and perhaps you even hold onto a wistfulness for the places you left. But then, in each new place, a new community invites you to learn what makes it special, who your neighbors are and where you fit in. And you begin to call the new place “home.”
I still remember the first time I ate at Red Bridges with the call committee and how I learned about Kings Road from the Lamberts when we moved into our house. Finding a place to call home is often about small things that make you less of an outsider.
As Christians, we are invited to make our home with God: to learn new rhythms and language, and discover who God is through Scripture and music, study and prayer.
You wouldn’t move into a new neighborhood and continue to live exactly as you did someplace else. Just going out your front door would force you to do things differently, let alone food shopping or visiting a new school, bank or pharmacy. In the same way, God invites us to explore and discover the kingdom of God, with a holy curiosity and an eager anticipation for where God will appear.
And there is room here for any of you who have never moved. Maybe you think you know all the insider language and shortcuts; there’s nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9) You’ve known the traditions and words of the liturgy, the Bible stories and the hymns for as long as you can remember. But you are invited to participate in this kingdom life as if it were brand new to you.
Paul’s letter continues with the verses known as the Christ Hymn, verses that reverberate with praise for the Lord of all that exists, and declare the promise that “in him all things hold together…in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile himself to all things.” (Colossians 1:17,19-20) Whenever the world feels too small or too broken, Paul reminds us that there is a fullness in Christ that is ours to experience as we make our home with God.
As we go into the new Church year and the new season of Advent, may we all be curious and explore that fullness that is available to us. Maybe there are parts of Christian tradition we haven’t experienced before, whether that’s reading the Bible in a different translation from the one that is familiar to you, experiencing the Blue Christmas worship that will happen later in December at the Episcopal Church, or listening to the music at the community Thanksgiving worship here on Tuesday night. Maybe it’s a new prayer practice you haven’t tried before, like midweek morning prayer or contemplative silence. Let’s open our ears, our eyes and our hearts to the new thing that God is doing.
Let us pray…
Merciful God,
Thank you for coming to us in the fullness of Your Son Jesus, our Lord and King. You rescued us from sin and evil and redeemed us. You moved us into the kingdom of the Son of God where we are given a new life of the Spirit. By your Spirit encourage us in faith to make a new home in Your love. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
[i] David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Location 11629). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Lectionary 33C/ Proper 28
Luke 21: 5-19
This is one of those lections where it feels ironic to read the passage and then proclaim, “The gospel [the Good News!] of the Lord.” And yet we do.
Every year as the church year approaches the reign of Christ, which we will observe next Sunday, the lectionary features one of the synoptic gospels’ apocalyptic texts. Here, we are in the third and final section of Luke, that has Jesus in Jerusalem, speaking to his disciples.
In today’s lection, Jesus prophesies the destruction of the Temple which was the place of God’s presence at the center of God’s people. He wants his disciples to recognize how
in the course of history…something that has been good will be no longer, something that has served as a reference of faith will vanish away stone from stone.[i]
The disciples’ reaction to Jesus is to question him, asking, “When will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?" (Luke 21:7)
But Jesus redirects them, pivoting instead to the question of how they will respond to the disasters and calamities in their lives. Where will they direct their attention? Will they despair quietly with fear and a sense of foreboding about the upheavals, or will they bear witness or testify to the faith that sustains them?
Luke wrote his gospel sometime after 90 CE, more than 20 years after the Jews witnessed the actual destruction of the temple. The prophecy that Jesus spoke had happened and the Jewish and Christian communities had been living with its repercussions. In his poem “The Second Coming” William Butler Yeats wrote, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”[ii] Yeats describes the anxiety we feel when we hear Jesus’ words and we know that Luke’s audience, too, would have felt it viscerally. The question is, “How do we cling to God’s hope even in the midst of disasters, past, present and future?”
Hearing Jesus’ description of devastation, I was reminded of stories I listened to last weekend on public radio. Last Saturday, the 9th, was the first anniversary of the Camp Fire that burned 153,000 acres and destroyed the rural mountain town of Paradise, California. NPR had a series of interviews with people who have remained in the Paradise, which, before the fire, was about the same size as the City of Shelby. They talked about the barren land where buildings and shopping centers had once stood, and about the community that has been lost. More than a dozen churches and worshiping communities lost buildings including one congregation that had stood since 1909.[iii] Truly, “Not one stone stands upon another.” (Luke 21:6)
Today, the town that had 26,000 people is just 3,000 people and where 11,000 homes burned in the fire, only 11 have rebuilt. But the people in the interviews, the ones who have stayed, see themselves as pioneers, as witnesses to the hope that they hold onto. [iv]
Each of us has experiences in our life when we have felt devastated and disoriented, endured prolonged suffering or unimaginable loss. In this gospel, Jesus reminds us that faith is not silent at those times. Faith testifies in the emptiness and loneliness, in the confusion and disappointment, and in the places where fear lurks:
God is present and at work and while the things of this earth, including our mortal bodies, will pass away, we will not perish. (Luke 21:17)
And that IS good news!
Let us pray with the words from one of the ancient Christian fathers Saint Ephraem Syrus:[v]
Let us turn in continual prayer toward you, our only hope, O Lord.
Our heart is filled with sadness: bring joy to our sadness, Lord, and give refreshment to our burning hearts.
Day and night sorrow and affliction surround us: cool, O Lord, the flame of our hearts.
For apart from you we have no hope to comfort us in our grief.
Place your finger, that gives life to all things, on the pain concealed in our heart.
Let our soul not be robbed of your strengthening, O Savior, so that we may not be plunged into the waves of despair.
Amen.
[i] Dirk Lange. “This Far by Faith.” Dear Working Preacher. Luther Seminary. http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5393, accessed November 15, 2019.
[ii] William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming.”
[iii] Kate Shellnut. “Paradise Fire Burned Most Church Buildings, But ‘the Church Is Still Alive’.” https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/november/paradise-california-churches-camp-fire-revival.html, accessed November 15, 2019.
[iv] Kirk Siegler. “The Camp Fire Destroyed 11,000 Homes. A Year Later Only 11 Have Been Rebuilt.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/09/777801169/the-camp-fire-destroyed-11-000-homes-a-year-later-only-11-have-been-rebuilt, , accessed November 15, 2019.
[v] Ephraem, in Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, IV, 350.
This is one of those lections where it feels ironic to read the passage and then proclaim, “The gospel [the Good News!] of the Lord.” And yet we do.
Every year as the church year approaches the reign of Christ, which we will observe next Sunday, the lectionary features one of the synoptic gospels’ apocalyptic texts. Here, we are in the third and final section of Luke, that has Jesus in Jerusalem, speaking to his disciples.
In today’s lection, Jesus prophesies the destruction of the Temple which was the place of God’s presence at the center of God’s people. He wants his disciples to recognize how
in the course of history…something that has been good will be no longer, something that has served as a reference of faith will vanish away stone from stone.[i]
The disciples’ reaction to Jesus is to question him, asking, “When will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?" (Luke 21:7)
But Jesus redirects them, pivoting instead to the question of how they will respond to the disasters and calamities in their lives. Where will they direct their attention? Will they despair quietly with fear and a sense of foreboding about the upheavals, or will they bear witness or testify to the faith that sustains them?
Luke wrote his gospel sometime after 90 CE, more than 20 years after the Jews witnessed the actual destruction of the temple. The prophecy that Jesus spoke had happened and the Jewish and Christian communities had been living with its repercussions. In his poem “The Second Coming” William Butler Yeats wrote, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”[ii] Yeats describes the anxiety we feel when we hear Jesus’ words and we know that Luke’s audience, too, would have felt it viscerally. The question is, “How do we cling to God’s hope even in the midst of disasters, past, present and future?”
Hearing Jesus’ description of devastation, I was reminded of stories I listened to last weekend on public radio. Last Saturday, the 9th, was the first anniversary of the Camp Fire that burned 153,000 acres and destroyed the rural mountain town of Paradise, California. NPR had a series of interviews with people who have remained in the Paradise, which, before the fire, was about the same size as the City of Shelby. They talked about the barren land where buildings and shopping centers had once stood, and about the community that has been lost. More than a dozen churches and worshiping communities lost buildings including one congregation that had stood since 1909.[iii] Truly, “Not one stone stands upon another.” (Luke 21:6)
Today, the town that had 26,000 people is just 3,000 people and where 11,000 homes burned in the fire, only 11 have rebuilt. But the people in the interviews, the ones who have stayed, see themselves as pioneers, as witnesses to the hope that they hold onto. [iv]
Each of us has experiences in our life when we have felt devastated and disoriented, endured prolonged suffering or unimaginable loss. In this gospel, Jesus reminds us that faith is not silent at those times. Faith testifies in the emptiness and loneliness, in the confusion and disappointment, and in the places where fear lurks:
God is present and at work and while the things of this earth, including our mortal bodies, will pass away, we will not perish. (Luke 21:17)
And that IS good news!
Let us pray with the words from one of the ancient Christian fathers Saint Ephraem Syrus:[v]
Let us turn in continual prayer toward you, our only hope, O Lord.
Our heart is filled with sadness: bring joy to our sadness, Lord, and give refreshment to our burning hearts.
Day and night sorrow and affliction surround us: cool, O Lord, the flame of our hearts.
For apart from you we have no hope to comfort us in our grief.
Place your finger, that gives life to all things, on the pain concealed in our heart.
Let our soul not be robbed of your strengthening, O Savior, so that we may not be plunged into the waves of despair.
Amen.
[i] Dirk Lange. “This Far by Faith.” Dear Working Preacher. Luther Seminary. http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5393, accessed November 15, 2019.
[ii] William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming.”
[iii] Kate Shellnut. “Paradise Fire Burned Most Church Buildings, But ‘the Church Is Still Alive’.” https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/november/paradise-california-churches-camp-fire-revival.html, accessed November 15, 2019.
[iv] Kirk Siegler. “The Camp Fire Destroyed 11,000 Homes. A Year Later Only 11 Have Been Rebuilt.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/09/777801169/the-camp-fire-destroyed-11-000-homes-a-year-later-only-11-have-been-rebuilt, , accessed November 15, 2019.
[v] Ephraem, in Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, IV, 350.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
Lectionary 32C/ Proper 27
2 Thessalonians 2: 1-5, 13-17
Friday morning I had a meeting in Greenville and I didn’t check the address, and sure enough when I arrived, I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. It was ok; I was close and I got where I was going despite the disruption. Then, that afternoon as I was driving over to the church to meet folks to go to the high school and feed the football players, coaches and trainers my car acted up. It had been chirping at me every now and then and I knew the noise had gotten louder that morning, but as I was driving here, I decided I better stop at the garage and make sure it was safe. The good news is it was. And I got where I was going despite the disruption.
My dad calls moments like these when you are trying to live your life and you are thwarted by random obstacles “Screwtape moments.” You may remember me telling you about “Screwtape” before. He is a character that theologian C.S. Lewis portrays as a highly placed assistant to Satan in his book The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape corresponds with his nephew “Wormwood” as he directs the younger inexperienced demon to corrupt a young man he knows.
“Screwtape moments” are one way of thinking about the discouraging, nonsensical and chaotic moments that happen in life, but underlying any comical elements is an acknowledgement that the devil and evil are real. “Old Scratch” is another nickname given to the devil. Both Screwtape and Old Scratch embody evil in ways that modern enlightened thinking is quick to dismiss, because in our “secular age” we live in a largely “disenchanted world” where “talking about the Devil is more and more awkward” and more “like telling a story about ghosts, alien abduction, or Bigfoot.” [i] But if we name the existence of forces that work against God, the powers and principalities of this world that perpetuate evil, then, as Rev. Dr. Barbara Blodgett notes, “[we can ] take all the more comfort in the One who saves us from them.”[ii]
When Paul writes his second letter to the church in Thessalonica, he describes the presence of evil in the world in yet another way.
Thessalonica was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia and the people in the church there were converted Gentiles, but there were others in the city who did not believe in Jesus Christ and persecuted the Christians.[iii] Paul who had first traveled to Thessalonica after a rough reception from the people in Philippi regarded the Thessalonians with affection that we hear clearly in his first letter.
Now he has heard that they are suffering, and he writes to them to reassure them, to remind them of the promises of their faith, and to comfort them. In this letter, he describes “the lawless one” and the presence of rebellion against God and deception by the ones who are against God. (v. 1-5)
Although the western church does not experience the kinds of oppression that existed in the first century Christian church, we do not have to look that far back in history or even in today’s headlines to see evidence of destructive evil and suffering in the world.
This weekend marks the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht, during which Nazi soldiers executed pogroms or destructive violence against Jewish communities throughout Germany and other annexed states. The troops torched synagogues, businesses, schools and homes and thirty-thousand Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.[iv] The destruction is remembered as “the night of broken glass” and its memory continues to bear witness to the shattering of Jewish life that happened during the Holocaust years.
Paul’s encouragement to the Thessalonians is not to deny the presence of evil, but to remember the promises of faith in spite of it.
Paul tells the church, “Don’t fall for deceptions or false truths or be misled.” The Lord Jesus Christ — the incarnation of the Living God, the Lord of our lives and the Messiah or Savior of the world — is the One who loves us, and by His grace, comforts us and gives us hope.
Remember that you are called to faith by Jesus Christ. Have confidence in the faith you have received, a faith rich with God’s promises, not that evil won’t manifest, but that it will not prevail.
That same promise is ours today. Evil will not prevail.
Kristallnacht is not the only anniversary being remembered this weekend. Thirty years ago the border dividing East and West Berlin in Germany was opened. What is now remembered as “the day the wall came down” began as a political announcement removing barriers that had obstructed the movement of people between the two states, but it quickly escalated into the removal of the physical wall as people chipped away at it to collect souvenirs and bulldozers moved in.
While most of us remember the day the wall came down in Berlin, what many of us might not have known is that seven years earlier, the people at Nicolai Church, a Lutheran church in the East German city of Leipzig began holding prayer services. People, numbering in the hundreds, came together every Monday night, gathering to pray for peace and democracy in the divided country.
When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was in East Berlin on October 7, 1989 to celebrate the East German state’s fortieth anniversary, pro-democracy demonstrations were put down with force.
But two days later, there were 2,000 or so inside Nikolai Church for the Monday prayer meeting, and when those two thousand went outside, they joined tens of thousands waiting with candles in their hands.
Pastor Christian Führer recalls, “Two hands are necessary to carry a candle and to protect it from extinguishing so that you cannot carry stones or clubs at the same time.” So, though there were some arrests, and the East German military units were on alert, there was no massive display of force.
What had begun as a few hundred gathering at the Nikolai Church had swelled to more than 70,000, all united in peaceful opposition to the communist regime.
The following week, 70,000 became 120,000.
And then 120,000 became 320,000.
They laid their candles on the steps of East German secret police headquarters and, waiting, they prayed and sang.
And thirty years ago on November 9, the Berlin Wall fell and East and West Germany began to find a new way forward together.
The Good News from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians is that the hope we have in Jesus Christ is not in vain. As Christians, we are not defeated by this world or the evil in it. But we aren’t called to ignore it either. Reflecting on this text, Presbyterian pastor Neta Pringle writes, “God
wants to find us at work for those things that are dear to the heart of God.” [v]
Forces that defy God and powers of this world that rebel against God continue. Even as we recognize veterans for their service this morning during worship, it’s estimated that nationally 20 veterans complete suicide every day and 46,000 veterans are homeless.[vi] [vii] Heart-breaking evil persists and humankind suffers.
As Christians we are called to respond to the suffering we witness, and not with “a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love…”[viii] God wants us to live out our baptismal covenant where we promised to serve all people following the example of Jesus and strive for justice and peace in all the earth.”[ix]
Here, Paul reminds us that we are not defeated, and we are not helpless. We are Christ’s church, called to bear God’s love and mercy, comfort and hope into the world.
Let us pray…
Holy Comforter,
Thank you for your grace, love and mercy known through You Son Jesus, the incarnation of the living God, Lord of our lives and Savior of the World.
By your Spirit empower us to bear hope into the world, confident Your light will dispel any darkness.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
[i] Richard Beck. Reviving Old Scratch. xv.
[ii] Barbara Blodgett. “2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17.” David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Locations 9938-9939). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[iii] Robert Brusic, Matt Skinner. “Thessalonica.” Enterthebible.org. Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/newtestament.aspx?rid=13, accessed November 9, 2019.
[iv] “Kristallnacht.” History.com. A&E Television Networks. https://www.history.com/topics/holocaust/kristallnacht, accessed. November 9, 2019.
[v] Neta Pringle. “2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17.” David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Locations 9984-9985). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[vi] https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/09/26/suicide-rate-spikes-among-younger-veterans/, accessed November 9, 2019.
[vii] http://nchv.org/index.php/news/media/background_and_statistics/#facts, accessed November 9, 2019.
[viii] 2 Timothy 1:7
[ix] Evangelical Lutheran Worship, ELCA. 236.
Friday morning I had a meeting in Greenville and I didn’t check the address, and sure enough when I arrived, I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. It was ok; I was close and I got where I was going despite the disruption. Then, that afternoon as I was driving over to the church to meet folks to go to the high school and feed the football players, coaches and trainers my car acted up. It had been chirping at me every now and then and I knew the noise had gotten louder that morning, but as I was driving here, I decided I better stop at the garage and make sure it was safe. The good news is it was. And I got where I was going despite the disruption.
My dad calls moments like these when you are trying to live your life and you are thwarted by random obstacles “Screwtape moments.” You may remember me telling you about “Screwtape” before. He is a character that theologian C.S. Lewis portrays as a highly placed assistant to Satan in his book The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape corresponds with his nephew “Wormwood” as he directs the younger inexperienced demon to corrupt a young man he knows.
“Screwtape moments” are one way of thinking about the discouraging, nonsensical and chaotic moments that happen in life, but underlying any comical elements is an acknowledgement that the devil and evil are real. “Old Scratch” is another nickname given to the devil. Both Screwtape and Old Scratch embody evil in ways that modern enlightened thinking is quick to dismiss, because in our “secular age” we live in a largely “disenchanted world” where “talking about the Devil is more and more awkward” and more “like telling a story about ghosts, alien abduction, or Bigfoot.” [i] But if we name the existence of forces that work against God, the powers and principalities of this world that perpetuate evil, then, as Rev. Dr. Barbara Blodgett notes, “[we can ] take all the more comfort in the One who saves us from them.”[ii]
When Paul writes his second letter to the church in Thessalonica, he describes the presence of evil in the world in yet another way.
Thessalonica was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia and the people in the church there were converted Gentiles, but there were others in the city who did not believe in Jesus Christ and persecuted the Christians.[iii] Paul who had first traveled to Thessalonica after a rough reception from the people in Philippi regarded the Thessalonians with affection that we hear clearly in his first letter.
Now he has heard that they are suffering, and he writes to them to reassure them, to remind them of the promises of their faith, and to comfort them. In this letter, he describes “the lawless one” and the presence of rebellion against God and deception by the ones who are against God. (v. 1-5)
Although the western church does not experience the kinds of oppression that existed in the first century Christian church, we do not have to look that far back in history or even in today’s headlines to see evidence of destructive evil and suffering in the world.
This weekend marks the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht, during which Nazi soldiers executed pogroms or destructive violence against Jewish communities throughout Germany and other annexed states. The troops torched synagogues, businesses, schools and homes and thirty-thousand Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.[iv] The destruction is remembered as “the night of broken glass” and its memory continues to bear witness to the shattering of Jewish life that happened during the Holocaust years.
Paul’s encouragement to the Thessalonians is not to deny the presence of evil, but to remember the promises of faith in spite of it.
Paul tells the church, “Don’t fall for deceptions or false truths or be misled.” The Lord Jesus Christ — the incarnation of the Living God, the Lord of our lives and the Messiah or Savior of the world — is the One who loves us, and by His grace, comforts us and gives us hope.
Remember that you are called to faith by Jesus Christ. Have confidence in the faith you have received, a faith rich with God’s promises, not that evil won’t manifest, but that it will not prevail.
That same promise is ours today. Evil will not prevail.
Kristallnacht is not the only anniversary being remembered this weekend. Thirty years ago the border dividing East and West Berlin in Germany was opened. What is now remembered as “the day the wall came down” began as a political announcement removing barriers that had obstructed the movement of people between the two states, but it quickly escalated into the removal of the physical wall as people chipped away at it to collect souvenirs and bulldozers moved in.
While most of us remember the day the wall came down in Berlin, what many of us might not have known is that seven years earlier, the people at Nicolai Church, a Lutheran church in the East German city of Leipzig began holding prayer services. People, numbering in the hundreds, came together every Monday night, gathering to pray for peace and democracy in the divided country.
When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was in East Berlin on October 7, 1989 to celebrate the East German state’s fortieth anniversary, pro-democracy demonstrations were put down with force.
But two days later, there were 2,000 or so inside Nikolai Church for the Monday prayer meeting, and when those two thousand went outside, they joined tens of thousands waiting with candles in their hands.
Pastor Christian Führer recalls, “Two hands are necessary to carry a candle and to protect it from extinguishing so that you cannot carry stones or clubs at the same time.” So, though there were some arrests, and the East German military units were on alert, there was no massive display of force.
What had begun as a few hundred gathering at the Nikolai Church had swelled to more than 70,000, all united in peaceful opposition to the communist regime.
The following week, 70,000 became 120,000.
And then 120,000 became 320,000.
They laid their candles on the steps of East German secret police headquarters and, waiting, they prayed and sang.
And thirty years ago on November 9, the Berlin Wall fell and East and West Germany began to find a new way forward together.
The Good News from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians is that the hope we have in Jesus Christ is not in vain. As Christians, we are not defeated by this world or the evil in it. But we aren’t called to ignore it either. Reflecting on this text, Presbyterian pastor Neta Pringle writes, “God
wants to find us at work for those things that are dear to the heart of God.” [v]
Forces that defy God and powers of this world that rebel against God continue. Even as we recognize veterans for their service this morning during worship, it’s estimated that nationally 20 veterans complete suicide every day and 46,000 veterans are homeless.[vi] [vii] Heart-breaking evil persists and humankind suffers.
As Christians we are called to respond to the suffering we witness, and not with “a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love…”[viii] God wants us to live out our baptismal covenant where we promised to serve all people following the example of Jesus and strive for justice and peace in all the earth.”[ix]
Here, Paul reminds us that we are not defeated, and we are not helpless. We are Christ’s church, called to bear God’s love and mercy, comfort and hope into the world.
Let us pray…
Holy Comforter,
Thank you for your grace, love and mercy known through You Son Jesus, the incarnation of the living God, Lord of our lives and Savior of the World.
By your Spirit empower us to bear hope into the world, confident Your light will dispel any darkness.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
[i] Richard Beck. Reviving Old Scratch. xv.
[ii] Barbara Blodgett. “2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17.” David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Locations 9938-9939). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[iii] Robert Brusic, Matt Skinner. “Thessalonica.” Enterthebible.org. Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/newtestament.aspx?rid=13, accessed November 9, 2019.
[iv] “Kristallnacht.” History.com. A&E Television Networks. https://www.history.com/topics/holocaust/kristallnacht, accessed. November 9, 2019.
[v] Neta Pringle. “2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17.” David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Locations 9984-9985). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[vi] https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/09/26/suicide-rate-spikes-among-younger-veterans/, accessed November 9, 2019.
[vii] http://nchv.org/index.php/news/media/background_and_statistics/#facts, accessed November 9, 2019.
[viii] 2 Timothy 1:7
[ix] Evangelical Lutheran Worship, ELCA. 236.
Sunday, November 3, 2019
All Saints Sunday (November 3, 2019)
Luke 6:20-31
Today, on All Saints Sunday, we remember church members, family and friends who have died over the last twelve months. And as we recall them and their lives and their significance to us, we also remember the gifts they shared with us, especially those gifts we continue to carry into the world in their honor. Their spirits live on in their children, families and friendships.
Author Alice Walker once wrote a short essay called “A name is sometimes an ancestor saying, “Hi, I’m with you.” Across cultures indigenous peoples call the people who lived before us throughout history our “spirit helpers.”[i] Because her name comes from the Greek word for “truth” Walker names Sojourner Truth as one of her own spirit helpers, writing,
She smiles within my smile. That irrepressible great heart rises in my chest. Every experience that roused her passion against injustice in her lifetime shines from my eyes.[ii]
Walker writes, “The spirit of our helpers incarnates in us, making us more ourselves by extending us far beyond.”[iii]
She then suggests that this is how we might understand the transformation we experience through faith, a way of becoming not only “like” Jesus but embodying Jesus to the people we meet.
In today’s gospel, Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Plain, and while we often hear the language of blessing and woe as language of divine favor or damnation, it’s hard to find the good news in that interpretation. Luther Seminary New Testament professor Matt Skinner suggests that the meaning changes when, instead, we hear “blessed” as “satisfied” or “unburdened.” Skinner also translates “woe” as “yikes” or “look out!”, and Eugene Peterson writes in his Message paraphrase, “There’s trouble ahead!” The word is like a bright yellow traffic sign or flashing lights.
With these woe statements, Jesus cautions us to be alert for those things in life that are distractions that divert us from following Jesus and from being Jesus to those we meet.
The poor, the hungry, the grieving and those who have been discarded by the world are people who trust God because their other options have been stripped away. Trusting God is more difficult for anyone who still thinks we can stand on our own or make our own way; it is more difficult when we only look for God’s mercy after we’ve exhausted every other possibility, instead of beginning on our knees at the foot of the cross with God.
Addressing “those who are listening” Jesus seems to acknowledge that some won’t listen, even among those who are close to him, even among those who profess to follow him.
And then Jesus gives a rapid succession of commands to the disciples, instructing them to live in faithful obedience with their eyes set on Jesus, saying:
Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Submit. Give. Serve.
Just like six of the ten commandments Moses received on Sinai, these commands are focused on our relationships with the people in our lives. Jesus tells us to be motivated by the love and mercy of God to be Christ to them:
But just as Walker suggests that our “spirit helpers” empower us to be more ourselves, who we are created to be, Saint Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians that we have been “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit” (v. 13) — that we are no longer trying to imitate Christ by our own power, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, given to us.
This process of becoming more Christ-like, of being made holy and righteous, through faithful obedience is sanctification.
As Martin Luther wrote in the explanation of the third article of the Creed,
Too often we live out of our brokenness, and when we do that, we will have trouble ahead.
But, from Jesus we hear the Good News that through faith, we can live in a world in right relationship with God and with each other.
Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are called to live holy and perfect in an imperfect and broken world. We have a great cloud of witnesses who went before us and whose memories continue to sustain us even as we follow Jesus now.
Let us pray…[vi]
Holy and Redeeming God,
We give you our thanks and praise that through your Son Jesus you make us holy and count us among your saints;
By your great power you have called us to a rich hope and given us the word of truth that gives us life in Christ.
Send us out as your witnesses, confident that we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit, that we may love others and live out Your Good News in the world.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus, our savior and Lord. Amen.
[i] Alice Walker. Living by the Word. 97.
[ii] ibid
[iii] Walker, 98.
[iv] David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Locations 8521-8522).
Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[v] “Small Catechism, Book of Concord, 355-56.
[vi] adapted from Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources, http://laughingbird.net/ComingWeeks.html
Today, on All Saints Sunday, we remember church members, family and friends who have died over the last twelve months. And as we recall them and their lives and their significance to us, we also remember the gifts they shared with us, especially those gifts we continue to carry into the world in their honor. Their spirits live on in their children, families and friendships.
Author Alice Walker once wrote a short essay called “A name is sometimes an ancestor saying, “Hi, I’m with you.” Across cultures indigenous peoples call the people who lived before us throughout history our “spirit helpers.”[i] Because her name comes from the Greek word for “truth” Walker names Sojourner Truth as one of her own spirit helpers, writing,
She smiles within my smile. That irrepressible great heart rises in my chest. Every experience that roused her passion against injustice in her lifetime shines from my eyes.[ii]
Walker writes, “The spirit of our helpers incarnates in us, making us more ourselves by extending us far beyond.”[iii]
She then suggests that this is how we might understand the transformation we experience through faith, a way of becoming not only “like” Jesus but embodying Jesus to the people we meet.
In today’s gospel, Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Plain, and while we often hear the language of blessing and woe as language of divine favor or damnation, it’s hard to find the good news in that interpretation. Luther Seminary New Testament professor Matt Skinner suggests that the meaning changes when, instead, we hear “blessed” as “satisfied” or “unburdened.” Skinner also translates “woe” as “yikes” or “look out!”, and Eugene Peterson writes in his Message paraphrase, “There’s trouble ahead!” The word is like a bright yellow traffic sign or flashing lights.
With these woe statements, Jesus cautions us to be alert for those things in life that are distractions that divert us from following Jesus and from being Jesus to those we meet.
The poor, the hungry, the grieving and those who have been discarded by the world are people who trust God because their other options have been stripped away. Trusting God is more difficult for anyone who still thinks we can stand on our own or make our own way; it is more difficult when we only look for God’s mercy after we’ve exhausted every other possibility, instead of beginning on our knees at the foot of the cross with God.
Addressing “those who are listening” Jesus seems to acknowledge that some won’t listen, even among those who are close to him, even among those who profess to follow him.
And then Jesus gives a rapid succession of commands to the disciples, instructing them to live in faithful obedience with their eyes set on Jesus, saying:
Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Submit. Give. Serve.
Just like six of the ten commandments Moses received on Sinai, these commands are focused on our relationships with the people in our lives. Jesus tells us to be motivated by the love and mercy of God to be Christ to them:
- Love your enemies; love the very same people you despise or you think are unlovable.
- Do good regardless of whether you will reap the benefit or your good will be appreciated or even acknowledged.
- Bless those who curse you and pray for those who abuse you; importantly, Jesus doesn’t say to subject yourself to continued abuse or continue in relationship with the abuser, but we are called to see each person — no matter how much it upsets our dual-thinking — as someone whom God can love and redeem.
- Jesus then says to offer your other cheek to one who slaps you and offer your coat to the one who would take your shirt. He commands us to adopt a posture of humility in the world, to submit to God’s care and provision.
Give to those who beg. - And “do to others as you would have them do to you,” an instruction to serve others selflessly, entering into relationship with them and addressing their needs as brothers and sisters.
But just as Walker suggests that our “spirit helpers” empower us to be more ourselves, who we are created to be, Saint Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians that we have been “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit” (v. 13) — that we are no longer trying to imitate Christ by our own power, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, given to us.
This process of becoming more Christ-like, of being made holy and righteous, through faithful obedience is sanctification.
As Martin Luther wrote in the explanation of the third article of the Creed,
I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but [the Holy Spirit] calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies [or makes righteous] the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith...[v]This is faith active in our lives, transforming us, setting us apart, sanctifying us or making us holy, and empowering us.
Too often we live out of our brokenness, and when we do that, we will have trouble ahead.
But, from Jesus we hear the Good News that through faith, we can live in a world in right relationship with God and with each other.
Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are called to live holy and perfect in an imperfect and broken world. We have a great cloud of witnesses who went before us and whose memories continue to sustain us even as we follow Jesus now.
Let us pray…[vi]
Holy and Redeeming God,
We give you our thanks and praise that through your Son Jesus you make us holy and count us among your saints;
By your great power you have called us to a rich hope and given us the word of truth that gives us life in Christ.
Send us out as your witnesses, confident that we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit, that we may love others and live out Your Good News in the world.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus, our savior and Lord. Amen.
[i] Alice Walker. Living by the Word. 97.
[ii] ibid
[iii] Walker, 98.
[iv] David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Locations 8521-8522).
Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[v] “Small Catechism, Book of Concord, 355-56.
[vi] adapted from Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources, http://laughingbird.net/ComingWeeks.html
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Reformation Sunday (October 27, 2019)
Jeremiah 31:31-34
John 8:31-36
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.
Sometimes I wonder what someone new to faith and religion, someone who identifies as “spiritual but not religious”, or perhaps even a “none”, a person with no experience with religion or the church, sees when they come into our worship spaces. Especially on a day like today when we are celebrating Reformation Sunday and recalling Martin Luther’s boldness, when pageantry and exuberance energize the air, and we take in the music and the red paraments and banners,
what do our neighbors see?
A preaching colleague regularly reminds us to “show ‘em Jesus” and certainly, that is my prayer, that people encountering us for the first time see Jesus.
But showing people Jesus doesn’t mean only reading and teaching the parts of Scripture, what we call the New Testament, and particularly the Gospels, that include the stories of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection. The Old Testament texts also show how “the Word of God [has entered] communities of faith by calling, warning, exhorting, judging, redeeming and forgiving.”[i] These texts narrate the experience of our spiritual mothers and fathers.
In tonight’s Old Testament text, we hear from Jeremiah, a prophet and an unpopular truth-teller commissioned by God who was active from approximately 627 BCE through the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 587 BCE. Remaining in Judah until he was forced into exile in Egypt, Jeremiah tried to awaken Israel to the ways that the people had been un-faithful to Yahweh.
He repeatedly charged God’s people with fickleness and urged them to return to their God, warning them of the destruction that would follow rebellion, and worse, their indifference, to their sovereign Lord. In defiance to royal posturing, Jeremiah announced God’s severe judgment and offered lament for the unavoidable devastation of Jerusalem.
In contrast, the text we just heard comes from a portion of Jeremiah called “The Book of Consolation” or “The Book of Comfort” because the verses in these chapters voice “comfort, consolation, assurance and hope”, rooted in the character of God.[ii]
From the beginning, God created humankind for relationship, establishing a covenant that was carried through the generations. “Covenant” is a 50-cent word for relationship. First with Noah, and then with Abram, Isaac and Jacob, and again with David, God established a covenant with God’s people, promising to be in relationship with them.[iii]
The covenant God created was meant to be eternal, for-ever, but again and again throughout Scripture, God’s people rejected their covenant relationship with God,
grasping for power, wrenching control away from God and insisting on their own plans.
When Jeremiah speaks on behalf of the Lord in these verses, God’s people are in exile, suffering their punishment for breaking their covenantal relationship with God. And it is into that disconsolation and despair that God promises a “new covenant”. (v. 31)
For we Christians, it is important to remember that these words were spoken first to Israel. The words are ours only because they were spoken to people who were our ancestors in faith. God has not forgotten or replaced Israel.
God names this a “new covenant” because God is offering God’s people a “new” way of being in relationship with God. It is a “new” covenant” because it transforms us, reconciling us to God.
In these verses, Jeremiah explains how this transformation will take place. The teaching and instruction that were written on stone tablets and given to Moses at Sinai were neglected by God’s people, and their hearts were corrupted by sin and willfulness.
Now God’s law will be written in our hearts, at the center of our being, so that it will become part of our nature so that, instead of an impulse toward rebellion against God, we will be instinctively drawn into life with God. As Walter Brueggemann writes, “Our identity will now be internal, “so obeying will be as normal and as readily accepted as breathing and eating.”[v]
This “new covenant” is not an ethereal or ambiguous hope. It is a divine promise that God enables us to live in covenant and relationship with Godself, and empowers us to live according to God’s instruction. [vi] With abundant grace, mercy and forgiveness, God un-binds us from our sin and frees us to begin again.
This promise is at the heart of the Reformation.
This grace-filled God is the one that Martin Luther discovered when he learned Hebrew and Greek and read Scripture in its original languages. Even after he had become an Augustinian monk, Luther had remained terrified of the vengeful God who would exact punishment upon pitiful sinners, but then he discovered the evidence of God’s grace throughout the canon and gained a new understanding of the depth of God’s love for each of us. In his famed 95 Theses, Luther argued against church practices that were corrupt or kept citizens captive to papal authority and he urged reform. His intent was never to separate from the Catholic Church but, like Jeremiah, to speak truth to a culture, authority and institution that was faltering.
One of the revelations that Luther shared was that faith was rooted in direct relationship with God and no one mediates faith for another person. This is the idea of covenant; God’s covenant is not with Rome or with our bishops or denomination authorities, it is with each and every one of us.
“John’s Gospel, [especially] focuses on the Covenant and becoming one with God.”[vii] In tonight’s gospel text, Jesus, speaking to believers, says,
“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”[viii]
When we hear the word “truth” here, in our humanity, like Pilate we want to know, “What is truth?” “What do we have to know?” “What do we have to do to get the ‘true disciple’ badge?”
Is truth found in the right style of worship, the right number of members, the biggest vacation bible school, the prettiest stained glass windows or the best sound system? Is it known through strict piety with morning and evening prayers and daily confession? Tell us and we’ll do it!
Sometimes we want to know we have the truth so that we get the bragging rights. We want to feel special. So, too often, as we observe the anniversary of the reformation, we tell the story in such a way that it sounds like Martin Luther was the first and only one who challenged the Roman church, as though he must have been the one who knew the truth because his arguments prevailed. Of course, he wasn’t the only one, and the truth that Jesus names here isn’t ours to keep for ourselves.
The very first time we hear this word in John’s gospel is in the prologue in the first chapter, when the Evangelist tells us, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth”.[ix]
Jesus isn’t using the word “truth” to describe a coveted treasure, a checklist, or an argument to be won. Jesus is the truth, and the embodiment of God’s compassionate mercy in the world.
God loves us because God cannot help but love us, and in Jesus, we see God’s love with skin on it.
Speaking about Jesus, the incarnation and the resurrection, Franciscan priest Richard Rohr describes the messiness of the world we live in and says, “the undoing is part of the remaking.” [x]
This past summer, I began pottery classes at the community college and, as a novice potter, I love that phrase: “the undoing is part of the remaking.” Seated at the potter’s wheel, one of the first steps is called centering. You use water and the rotating wheel to prepare the ball of clay, coning it upward and then cupping it and returning it to more of a ball. It gets the air out of the clay and gets the clay to sit evenly on the wheel. One of the ways you know the clay is centered is that your hands no longer shudder or vibrate as the wheel turns beneath them. If you don’t get the clay centered or keep it that way, your work will be lopsided, or as my instructor kindly says, “organic”. Other times, when you’re working at the wheel, the clay gets too wet or thin or collapses on itself, and when you know you can’t redeem it, you scrape it off and put the clay into a bag where it will dry out enough to be shaped into a new ball that can become something new the next week.
“The undoing is part of the remaking.”
The undoing, disorder or disorientation that we experience in our lives is not in vain. It is part of the reconciling work that God is about in the world.
Reformer John Wesley defined salvation as the restoration of our capacity to bear God’s image in the world.[xi] And Luther wrote, “We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road.”[xii]
In this way, we are semper reformanda, always reforming.
A life of faith isn’t predictable or linear and it rarely follows our plans. And sometimes it means starting over and waiting on God to reveal what’s next. A life following Jesus breaks open our ideas about where we find truth and meaning. And through this messy and unpredictable life together, Jesus reveals that God is working in and through us.
Redeemed by God through faith in Jesus, we are invited to participate in this new life and show forth the love of God to our neighbors and the world,
showing ‘em Jesus.
Let us pray…
Holy God, our Redeemer and Lord,
By your Word, you invite us into a new covenant, promising forgiveness and love.
Teach us to abide in Your Word, to remain in your love, to continue in your presence.
By your Spirit, guide us in the truth that is in Jesus, truth that does not exclude but includes, and sends us into the world to bear your love to our neighbors and communities.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
[i] Terence Fretheim. The Pentateuch. 21.
[ii] Brueggemann, Walter. Jeremiah. 264-265.
[iii] Breen, Mike. Covenant and Kingdom: The DNA of the Bible. 3DM. Kindle Edition.
[iv] Jeremiah 31:33, NRSV.
[v] Brueggemann, Walter. Jeremiah. 293.
[vi] Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination (p. 56). Augsburg Fortress - A. Kindle Edition.
[vii] Breen. Location 2014.
[viii] John 8:31-32, NRSV.
[ix] John 1:14, NRSV.
[x] “Jesus, Incarnation and The Christ Resurrection”. Another Name For Every Thing with Richard Rohr. Podcast audio. August 3, 2019. Center for Contemplation and Action. https://cac.org/podcasts/1-jesus-incarnation-and-the-christ-resurrection/.
[xi] Joy Moore. Sermon Brainwave #687. Luther Seminary. Podcast audio. October 27, 2019. https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx.
[xii] Martin Luther, *Defense of All the Articles*, Lazareth transl., as found in Grace Brame, *Receptive Prayer* (Chalice Press, 1985) p.119
John 8:31-36
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.
Sometimes I wonder what someone new to faith and religion, someone who identifies as “spiritual but not religious”, or perhaps even a “none”, a person with no experience with religion or the church, sees when they come into our worship spaces. Especially on a day like today when we are celebrating Reformation Sunday and recalling Martin Luther’s boldness, when pageantry and exuberance energize the air, and we take in the music and the red paraments and banners,
what do our neighbors see?
A preaching colleague regularly reminds us to “show ‘em Jesus” and certainly, that is my prayer, that people encountering us for the first time see Jesus.
But showing people Jesus doesn’t mean only reading and teaching the parts of Scripture, what we call the New Testament, and particularly the Gospels, that include the stories of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection. The Old Testament texts also show how “the Word of God [has entered] communities of faith by calling, warning, exhorting, judging, redeeming and forgiving.”[i] These texts narrate the experience of our spiritual mothers and fathers.
In tonight’s Old Testament text, we hear from Jeremiah, a prophet and an unpopular truth-teller commissioned by God who was active from approximately 627 BCE through the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 587 BCE. Remaining in Judah until he was forced into exile in Egypt, Jeremiah tried to awaken Israel to the ways that the people had been un-faithful to Yahweh.
He repeatedly charged God’s people with fickleness and urged them to return to their God, warning them of the destruction that would follow rebellion, and worse, their indifference, to their sovereign Lord. In defiance to royal posturing, Jeremiah announced God’s severe judgment and offered lament for the unavoidable devastation of Jerusalem.
In contrast, the text we just heard comes from a portion of Jeremiah called “The Book of Consolation” or “The Book of Comfort” because the verses in these chapters voice “comfort, consolation, assurance and hope”, rooted in the character of God.[ii]
From the beginning, God created humankind for relationship, establishing a covenant that was carried through the generations. “Covenant” is a 50-cent word for relationship. First with Noah, and then with Abram, Isaac and Jacob, and again with David, God established a covenant with God’s people, promising to be in relationship with them.[iii]
The covenant God created was meant to be eternal, for-ever, but again and again throughout Scripture, God’s people rejected their covenant relationship with God,
grasping for power, wrenching control away from God and insisting on their own plans.
When Jeremiah speaks on behalf of the Lord in these verses, God’s people are in exile, suffering their punishment for breaking their covenantal relationship with God. And it is into that disconsolation and despair that God promises a “new covenant”. (v. 31)
For we Christians, it is important to remember that these words were spoken first to Israel. The words are ours only because they were spoken to people who were our ancestors in faith. God has not forgotten or replaced Israel.
God names this a “new covenant” because God is offering God’s people a “new” way of being in relationship with God. It is a “new” covenant” because it transforms us, reconciling us to God.
In these verses, Jeremiah explains how this transformation will take place. The teaching and instruction that were written on stone tablets and given to Moses at Sinai were neglected by God’s people, and their hearts were corrupted by sin and willfulness.
Now God’s law will be written in our hearts, at the center of our being, so that it will become part of our nature so that, instead of an impulse toward rebellion against God, we will be instinctively drawn into life with God. As Walter Brueggemann writes, “Our identity will now be internal, “so obeying will be as normal and as readily accepted as breathing and eating.”[v]
This “new covenant” is not an ethereal or ambiguous hope. It is a divine promise that God enables us to live in covenant and relationship with Godself, and empowers us to live according to God’s instruction. [vi] With abundant grace, mercy and forgiveness, God un-binds us from our sin and frees us to begin again.
This promise is at the heart of the Reformation.
This grace-filled God is the one that Martin Luther discovered when he learned Hebrew and Greek and read Scripture in its original languages. Even after he had become an Augustinian monk, Luther had remained terrified of the vengeful God who would exact punishment upon pitiful sinners, but then he discovered the evidence of God’s grace throughout the canon and gained a new understanding of the depth of God’s love for each of us. In his famed 95 Theses, Luther argued against church practices that were corrupt or kept citizens captive to papal authority and he urged reform. His intent was never to separate from the Catholic Church but, like Jeremiah, to speak truth to a culture, authority and institution that was faltering.
One of the revelations that Luther shared was that faith was rooted in direct relationship with God and no one mediates faith for another person. This is the idea of covenant; God’s covenant is not with Rome or with our bishops or denomination authorities, it is with each and every one of us.
“John’s Gospel, [especially] focuses on the Covenant and becoming one with God.”[vii] In tonight’s gospel text, Jesus, speaking to believers, says,
“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”[viii]
When we hear the word “truth” here, in our humanity, like Pilate we want to know, “What is truth?” “What do we have to know?” “What do we have to do to get the ‘true disciple’ badge?”
Is truth found in the right style of worship, the right number of members, the biggest vacation bible school, the prettiest stained glass windows or the best sound system? Is it known through strict piety with morning and evening prayers and daily confession? Tell us and we’ll do it!
Sometimes we want to know we have the truth so that we get the bragging rights. We want to feel special. So, too often, as we observe the anniversary of the reformation, we tell the story in such a way that it sounds like Martin Luther was the first and only one who challenged the Roman church, as though he must have been the one who knew the truth because his arguments prevailed. Of course, he wasn’t the only one, and the truth that Jesus names here isn’t ours to keep for ourselves.
The very first time we hear this word in John’s gospel is in the prologue in the first chapter, when the Evangelist tells us, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth”.[ix]
Jesus isn’t using the word “truth” to describe a coveted treasure, a checklist, or an argument to be won. Jesus is the truth, and the embodiment of God’s compassionate mercy in the world.
God loves us because God cannot help but love us, and in Jesus, we see God’s love with skin on it.
Speaking about Jesus, the incarnation and the resurrection, Franciscan priest Richard Rohr describes the messiness of the world we live in and says, “the undoing is part of the remaking.” [x]
This past summer, I began pottery classes at the community college and, as a novice potter, I love that phrase: “the undoing is part of the remaking.” Seated at the potter’s wheel, one of the first steps is called centering. You use water and the rotating wheel to prepare the ball of clay, coning it upward and then cupping it and returning it to more of a ball. It gets the air out of the clay and gets the clay to sit evenly on the wheel. One of the ways you know the clay is centered is that your hands no longer shudder or vibrate as the wheel turns beneath them. If you don’t get the clay centered or keep it that way, your work will be lopsided, or as my instructor kindly says, “organic”. Other times, when you’re working at the wheel, the clay gets too wet or thin or collapses on itself, and when you know you can’t redeem it, you scrape it off and put the clay into a bag where it will dry out enough to be shaped into a new ball that can become something new the next week.
“The undoing is part of the remaking.”
The undoing, disorder or disorientation that we experience in our lives is not in vain. It is part of the reconciling work that God is about in the world.
Reformer John Wesley defined salvation as the restoration of our capacity to bear God’s image in the world.[xi] And Luther wrote, “We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road.”[xii]
In this way, we are semper reformanda, always reforming.
A life of faith isn’t predictable or linear and it rarely follows our plans. And sometimes it means starting over and waiting on God to reveal what’s next. A life following Jesus breaks open our ideas about where we find truth and meaning. And through this messy and unpredictable life together, Jesus reveals that God is working in and through us.
Redeemed by God through faith in Jesus, we are invited to participate in this new life and show forth the love of God to our neighbors and the world,
showing ‘em Jesus.
Let us pray…
Holy God, our Redeemer and Lord,
By your Word, you invite us into a new covenant, promising forgiveness and love.
Teach us to abide in Your Word, to remain in your love, to continue in your presence.
By your Spirit, guide us in the truth that is in Jesus, truth that does not exclude but includes, and sends us into the world to bear your love to our neighbors and communities.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
[i] Terence Fretheim. The Pentateuch. 21.
[ii] Brueggemann, Walter. Jeremiah. 264-265.
[iii] Breen, Mike. Covenant and Kingdom: The DNA of the Bible. 3DM. Kindle Edition.
[iv] Jeremiah 31:33, NRSV.
[v] Brueggemann, Walter. Jeremiah. 293.
[vi] Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination (p. 56). Augsburg Fortress - A. Kindle Edition.
[vii] Breen. Location 2014.
[viii] John 8:31-32, NRSV.
[ix] John 1:14, NRSV.
[x] “Jesus, Incarnation and The Christ Resurrection”. Another Name For Every Thing with Richard Rohr. Podcast audio. August 3, 2019. Center for Contemplation and Action. https://cac.org/podcasts/1-jesus-incarnation-and-the-christ-resurrection/.
[xi] Joy Moore. Sermon Brainwave #687. Luther Seminary. Podcast audio. October 27, 2019. https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx.
[xii] Martin Luther, *Defense of All the Articles*, Lazareth transl., as found in Grace Brame, *Receptive Prayer* (Chalice Press, 1985) p.119
Sunday, October 20, 2019
Lectionary 29C/ Proper 24
Luke 18:1-8
When a much-anticipated movie or book is released, people rush to watch it or get their copy, devouring it as quickly as they can. And then they inevitably want to tell others all about it. Warning whoever is listening they’re about to give away something important about the storyline, they say, “spoiler alert!”
I remember when the seventh and final Harry Potter book was released. It was summer and our daughters were with their grandparents, and I had the luxury of being able to read the book cover to cover without any distractions. This was the early days of social media and spoiler alerts were easy to avoid.
Today, you have to turn off the tv, and stay off your phone if you want to escape someone else’s take on a story. And in today’s gospel we see that the impulse to tell others what we think is happening in a scene or a story is ancient.
Our gospel this morning includes yet another parable, and Luke is quick to tell us what it’s about. The gospel writer says it’s about “the need to pray always and not to lose heart.”(8:1) If we let him, he will take away any chance we have to listen to the characters for ourselves and draw our own conclusions.
But we’re not going to let him do that.
Instead, we’re going to look at the text of the parable in verses 2 to 5 and listen for what God is saying, recognizing that the verses before and after the parable are Luke’s commentary on it.
The first character Jesus introduces us to is the judge. The parable’s often titled “the widow and the unjust judge” but it’s Luke, not Jesus, who identifies him as “unjust”, later in verse 6.
In verse 2, Jesus says the judge “neither feared God or had respect for people.” In the Small Catechism, Luther teaches that the very first commandment “You shall have no other gods.” means that “we are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” Luther then teaches that our fear and love for God directs all of our human relationships. The judge doesn’t follow the commandments
given to us by God
to govern our relationship with God or with others.
He denies God.
When I hear Luke’s word “unjust”, I immediately think the judge is corrupt or dishonest, but what Jesus describes isn’t necessarily a criminal or a miscreant. It is someone turned in on himself, selfish and self-centered, without regard for God or neighbor.
The second person that Jesus introduces is the widow. I recently re-read an article that talked about how different words are “marked” or carry assumptions with them.[i]
But maybe not.
Amy Jill-Levine, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt, suggests that because Anna’s husband goes unnamed but she is introduced as “the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher” explicitly connecting her to the Northern tribes of Israel that were taken into exile, she “represents the tenacity of holding on to her identity.” Levine also notes that the widow at Zarephath argues with Elijah, advocating for her son who is ill, instead of submitting to his demands. And finally, the widow who gives her two coins clearly had her own money and choices to make about how she used it. No one had exploited her. These women all have “agency and individuality.”[ii]
In the translation we just heard, Jesus tells us that the woman kept saying to the judge, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”
But the word translated here as “justice” is ἐκδικούμενα
(ek-dee-kó-mena) which is “vengeance” or “revenge”,
not the κρίσις (kree-sis) that we recognize from the prophet Isaiah’s instruction to “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)
Hearing the woman sought vengeance changes how we hear the parable. Vengeance or revenge is consuming; it distorts how we view the world and events. It isolates us from others who do not share our passion. Reconsidering how we imagine “widows” and casting the woman as vengeful makes her character less sympathetic or morally exemplary.
Continuing the parable, Jesus tells us that the judge relents. We shouldn’t mistake his action as a change of heart, or repentance, turning toward God. Still adamantly denying God and neighbor, he is motivated by self-preservation; in our translation, it says the woman will “wear him out” but the Greek is actually a boxing word that is better translated as “beat on him” or even “give him a black eye.” He acts because he feels threatened, not compassionate.
So now what?
Jesus doesn’t commend the judge to us as a moral exemplar. The judge remains turned inward, searching out the most expedient way to get rid of the fuss and bother that interacting with his community brings.
And Jesus isn’t commending the woman’s dogged pursuit of vengeance to us either. After all, in Leviticus we hear the Lord command Israel,
This weekend, a Mississippi memorial to Emmett Till was rededicated. Kidnapped by two white men in 1955, the fourteen-year old black boy visiting family in the South was beaten and killed. His body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River three days later. The two men arrested for his murder were acquitted, and because of double jeopardy laws, were never convicted even after they publicly professed to what they had done. Till’s mother had her son’s body brought back to Chicago and his casket was open during his funeral to display the brutality inflicted on him. Today you can see that casket on display in the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, DC.
There was no justice for Emmett Till, but more than fifty years after his death, a memorial commission was formed in Mississippi and people continue to work to tell the story of his death and work for racial justice now. One of the ways they tell Till’s story is through markers or memorial signs, and after the first three signs were vandalized with graffiti, bullets and acid, they constructed a more durable memorial that was rededicated this weekend.
Justice – setting things right – is what we hear the prophets argue for. It is what Amos calls for when, as Eugene Peterson wrote in the Message paraphrase,
Where revenge is punitive and wants someone to suffer, to be hurt or feel pain, justice is restorative, recognizing that God cares for both victims and perpetrators and we are created for relationship. Restorative justice doesn’t eliminate accountability or consequences but seeks reconciliation and repairs relationships.
For all of us, who have a lot more in common with the widow and the judge than with Jesus, this parable is good news that gives away the ending of the greatest story we have. God doesn’t play the games that these two characters play. We neither have to pound on God for attention, or fear God’s disdain. God welcomes us with abundant love and gives us unearned grace in faith. God knows us fully, even we fail to love and fear God,
even when we are angry or vengeful,
or selfish and unmoved by the troubles of those around us.
And God invites us into this life with God, with each other and with the world, trusting us to seek justice, to set things right, that God will be known.
Let us pray…
Good and gracious God,
We give you thanks for your Son Jesus and for the grace you have given each one of us —
grace that is patient with us as we learn what it means to fear and love You; grace that strengthens our voices and encourages us to love our neighbors and seek justice in an unjust world.
Prompt us to listen to Your Word and what You are saying to us as You call us to follow Jesus.
Amen.
[i] Deborah F. Tannen. “Wears Jump Suit. Sensible Shoes. Uses Husband's Last Name”, New York Times. June 20, 1993, Section 6, Page 18.
[ii] Amy-Jill Levine. Short Stories by Jesus. 257-260.
[iii] Leon F Seltzer Ph.D. “Don’t Confuse Revenge with Justice: Five Key Differences.” Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201402/don-t-confuse-revenge-justice-five-key-differences, accessed 10/19/2019.
When a much-anticipated movie or book is released, people rush to watch it or get their copy, devouring it as quickly as they can. And then they inevitably want to tell others all about it. Warning whoever is listening they’re about to give away something important about the storyline, they say, “spoiler alert!”
I remember when the seventh and final Harry Potter book was released. It was summer and our daughters were with their grandparents, and I had the luxury of being able to read the book cover to cover without any distractions. This was the early days of social media and spoiler alerts were easy to avoid.
Today, you have to turn off the tv, and stay off your phone if you want to escape someone else’s take on a story. And in today’s gospel we see that the impulse to tell others what we think is happening in a scene or a story is ancient.
Our gospel this morning includes yet another parable, and Luke is quick to tell us what it’s about. The gospel writer says it’s about “the need to pray always and not to lose heart.”(8:1) If we let him, he will take away any chance we have to listen to the characters for ourselves and draw our own conclusions.
But we’re not going to let him do that.
Instead, we’re going to look at the text of the parable in verses 2 to 5 and listen for what God is saying, recognizing that the verses before and after the parable are Luke’s commentary on it.
The first character Jesus introduces us to is the judge. The parable’s often titled “the widow and the unjust judge” but it’s Luke, not Jesus, who identifies him as “unjust”, later in verse 6.
In verse 2, Jesus says the judge “neither feared God or had respect for people.” In the Small Catechism, Luther teaches that the very first commandment “You shall have no other gods.” means that “we are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” Luther then teaches that our fear and love for God directs all of our human relationships. The judge doesn’t follow the commandments
given to us by God
to govern our relationship with God or with others.
He denies God.
When I hear Luke’s word “unjust”, I immediately think the judge is corrupt or dishonest, but what Jesus describes isn’t necessarily a criminal or a miscreant. It is someone turned in on himself, selfish and self-centered, without regard for God or neighbor.
The second person that Jesus introduces is the widow. I recently re-read an article that talked about how different words are “marked” or carry assumptions with them.[i]
The unmarked form of a word carries the meaning thatI think “widow” is a marked word. When we hear widows named in Scripture, we may remember Anna, a prophet at the Temple in Luke Chapter 2, the widow at Zarephath who met Elijah (1 Kings 17) who Luke references in Chapter 4 or the widow who gives all she has to the treasury in Chapter 21. In Luke’s telling, all of these widows are aged and alone, with little means of their own.
goes without saying -- what you think of when you're
not thinking anything special.
But maybe not.
Amy Jill-Levine, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt, suggests that because Anna’s husband goes unnamed but she is introduced as “the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher” explicitly connecting her to the Northern tribes of Israel that were taken into exile, she “represents the tenacity of holding on to her identity.” Levine also notes that the widow at Zarephath argues with Elijah, advocating for her son who is ill, instead of submitting to his demands. And finally, the widow who gives her two coins clearly had her own money and choices to make about how she used it. No one had exploited her. These women all have “agency and individuality.”[ii]
In the translation we just heard, Jesus tells us that the woman kept saying to the judge, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”
But the word translated here as “justice” is ἐκδικούμενα
(ek-dee-kó-mena) which is “vengeance” or “revenge”,
not the κρίσις (kree-sis) that we recognize from the prophet Isaiah’s instruction to “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)
Hearing the woman sought vengeance changes how we hear the parable. Vengeance or revenge is consuming; it distorts how we view the world and events. It isolates us from others who do not share our passion. Reconsidering how we imagine “widows” and casting the woman as vengeful makes her character less sympathetic or morally exemplary.
Continuing the parable, Jesus tells us that the judge relents. We shouldn’t mistake his action as a change of heart, or repentance, turning toward God. Still adamantly denying God and neighbor, he is motivated by self-preservation; in our translation, it says the woman will “wear him out” but the Greek is actually a boxing word that is better translated as “beat on him” or even “give him a black eye.” He acts because he feels threatened, not compassionate.
So now what?
Jesus doesn’t commend the judge to us as a moral exemplar. The judge remains turned inward, searching out the most expedient way to get rid of the fuss and bother that interacting with his community brings.
And Jesus isn’t commending the woman’s dogged pursuit of vengeance to us either. After all, in Leviticus we hear the Lord command Israel,
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself…. (Leviticus 19:18)and in his letter to the Romans, Saint Paul writes
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." (Romans 12:19)As we have listened to the parables, we have learned that Jesus often told these stories to disrupt and prompt us to see the world a different way. So perhaps this parable points us to think differently about what justice is, and how it’s achieved.
This weekend, a Mississippi memorial to Emmett Till was rededicated. Kidnapped by two white men in 1955, the fourteen-year old black boy visiting family in the South was beaten and killed. His body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River three days later. The two men arrested for his murder were acquitted, and because of double jeopardy laws, were never convicted even after they publicly professed to what they had done. Till’s mother had her son’s body brought back to Chicago and his casket was open during his funeral to display the brutality inflicted on him. Today you can see that casket on display in the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, DC.
There was no justice for Emmett Till, but more than fifty years after his death, a memorial commission was formed in Mississippi and people continue to work to tell the story of his death and work for racial justice now. One of the ways they tell Till’s story is through markers or memorial signs, and after the first three signs were vandalized with graffiti, bullets and acid, they constructed a more durable memorial that was rededicated this weekend.
Justice – setting things right – is what we hear the prophets argue for. It is what Amos calls for when, as Eugene Peterson wrote in the Message paraphrase,
“Do you know what I want?Where revenge is personal, justice is rooted in community and society. It isn’t about “getting even.” Instead, it is about correcting wrongs that have been perpetrated and systems that have gone unchallenged.[iii]
I want justice - oceans of it. I want fairness - rivers of it.
That's what I want. That's all I want.” (Amos 5:24)
Where revenge is punitive and wants someone to suffer, to be hurt or feel pain, justice is restorative, recognizing that God cares for both victims and perpetrators and we are created for relationship. Restorative justice doesn’t eliminate accountability or consequences but seeks reconciliation and repairs relationships.
For all of us, who have a lot more in common with the widow and the judge than with Jesus, this parable is good news that gives away the ending of the greatest story we have. God doesn’t play the games that these two characters play. We neither have to pound on God for attention, or fear God’s disdain. God welcomes us with abundant love and gives us unearned grace in faith. God knows us fully, even we fail to love and fear God,
even when we are angry or vengeful,
or selfish and unmoved by the troubles of those around us.
And God invites us into this life with God, with each other and with the world, trusting us to seek justice, to set things right, that God will be known.
Let us pray…
Good and gracious God,
We give you thanks for your Son Jesus and for the grace you have given each one of us —
grace that is patient with us as we learn what it means to fear and love You; grace that strengthens our voices and encourages us to love our neighbors and seek justice in an unjust world.
Prompt us to listen to Your Word and what You are saying to us as You call us to follow Jesus.
Amen.
[i] Deborah F. Tannen. “Wears Jump Suit. Sensible Shoes. Uses Husband's Last Name”, New York Times. June 20, 1993, Section 6, Page 18.
[ii] Amy-Jill Levine. Short Stories by Jesus. 257-260.
[iii] Leon F Seltzer Ph.D. “Don’t Confuse Revenge with Justice: Five Key Differences.” Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201402/don-t-confuse-revenge-justice-five-key-differences, accessed 10/19/2019.
Sunday, October 6, 2019
Lectionary 27C/ Proper 22
Luke 17:5-10
For all of us who were in school before the internet and search engines like Google, John Bartlett’s “Book of Familiar Quotations” was a standard reference where you could find well-known sayings from Scripture and from poets, authors and politicians. You didn’t have to know the whole quote, just a keyword or phrase or perhaps whose words they were.
Today’s gospel reads a little like an entry in Bartlett’s. The first ten verses of this chapter are a collection of seemingly unrelated sayings of Jesus, first about forgiveness and then about faith and then about servanthood.
Instead of trying to find a thread that connects the different themes, I’m going to focus on verses five and six where Jesus and the disciples are talking about faith.
The disciples have been traveling with Jesus and listening, as we have, to his parables and watching how he responds to the people around him. And after another series of hard teachings, the apostles say to him, “Lord, increase our faith!” They plead with Jesus to add to what’s there or give them more of this thing called faith.
It’s something every one of us probably has said at some point in our lives. “Lord, increase our faith.” Because we fall captive to the lie that the answer to whatever challenge we face is located in being more or having more.
Jesus rebukes the disciples and that way of thinking.
Faith isn’t an object or an asset that can be measured or quantified in ounces or pounds, square feet or acres.
I had the privilege on Friday of listening to Pastor CeCee Mills speak in Durham. Pastor CeCee is the new Associate Director for Evangelical Mission in the North Carolina Synod. And she was talking about ministry in small congregations. Or rather, given that 80% of ELCA congregations now have fewer than 100 people in worship on an average Sunday, she was talking about ministry in our churches today.
And one of the first things she asked us to do was to define the word “small.” I’m going to ask you to do the same thing. Not out loud and I won’t ask you to write it down, but take a minute to think, if you were going to look up the word “small” in Webster’s Dictionary, or on Google, what would it say?
And now, I’m going to ask you to listen, and pay attention to how you react, what emotions you feel and what adjectives come to mind, when you hear the following:
small car big car
small house big house
small tumor big tumor
small church big church
small group big group
small debt big debt
What are the associations you made?
Efficient, nimble, precious, intimate and visible were some of the words we used to describe the small things she named.
Through our conversation with Pastor CeCee, we recognized the lie that says, “bigger is always better.”
With his rebuke, Jesus tells the apostles, “You are worried about the wrong things.”
Earlier in Luke, Jesus had described the kingdom of heaven as a mustard seed that was sown into the ground and became a tree where birds could nest. (13:18-19) And here in our gospel text, Jesus describes the power of faith as a mustard seed. (17:6)
In our humanity, we think the kingdom of heaven is more visible when the church is big and boisterous and there are more people in worship, but Jesus says, “Listen, you are paying attention to the wrong things.”
In our humanity, we think faith must be big and boisterous to be any good at all, but often the Spirit of God comes upon us as a breath or even a whisper. (Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 29)
And the Lord says to us, as he did to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”[i]
Faith is surrendering ourselves to God, admitting our weakness and our dependence upon God in all things.
Four times in Luke leading up to this exchange with his apostles, Jesus bore witness to the power of faith active in the lives of the people he meets.
First, he encounters the friends of the man who cut a hole in the roof of a building to lower their paralyzed friend down to him. Luke tells us, “When [Jesus] saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven you." (Luke 5:20)
Next the centurion whose slave is sick sends friends to Jesus and when he receives the soldier’s message through them, he says, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” And the slave was healed. (Luke 7:9)
Then dining at a Pharisee’s house, Jesus defends a woman who bathes his feet with her tears, dries them with her hair and anoints them with perfume, saying to her, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." (7:38 - 50)
And finally, Jesus is on the street when the woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years touches the hem of his cloak, and he tells her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace." (8:43-48)
“Faith is putting our trust in God, in life and in death.”[ii]
However, it is important to say out loud that these verses have caused harm at bedsides and in exam rooms and emergency rooms when doctors have explained a difficult diagnosis or condition and someone has responded, “If you have enough faith, they’ll be cured.” Faith isn’t a magic charm or potion that can promise a cure or prevent death.
In Martin Luther’s “Introduction to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans”, he writes:
Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.[iii]
When we are afraid, the Good News is that the answer is not found in getting more. God’s grace is sufficient. God’s promise that we have life in Christ and power in the Holy Spirit sustains us and God provides for us all that we need.
Thanks be to God.
[i] 2 Corinthians 12:9
[ii] Bishop Mike Rinehart. https://bishopmike.com/2019/09/29/pentecost-17c-proper-22c-lectionary-27c-october-6-2019/, accessed 10/1/2019.
[iii] Martin Luther. “An Introduction to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.” http://www.projectwittenberg.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt, accessed, 10/5/2019.
For all of us who were in school before the internet and search engines like Google, John Bartlett’s “Book of Familiar Quotations” was a standard reference where you could find well-known sayings from Scripture and from poets, authors and politicians. You didn’t have to know the whole quote, just a keyword or phrase or perhaps whose words they were.
Today’s gospel reads a little like an entry in Bartlett’s. The first ten verses of this chapter are a collection of seemingly unrelated sayings of Jesus, first about forgiveness and then about faith and then about servanthood.
Instead of trying to find a thread that connects the different themes, I’m going to focus on verses five and six where Jesus and the disciples are talking about faith.
The disciples have been traveling with Jesus and listening, as we have, to his parables and watching how he responds to the people around him. And after another series of hard teachings, the apostles say to him, “Lord, increase our faith!” They plead with Jesus to add to what’s there or give them more of this thing called faith.
It’s something every one of us probably has said at some point in our lives. “Lord, increase our faith.” Because we fall captive to the lie that the answer to whatever challenge we face is located in being more or having more.
Jesus rebukes the disciples and that way of thinking.
Faith isn’t an object or an asset that can be measured or quantified in ounces or pounds, square feet or acres.
I had the privilege on Friday of listening to Pastor CeCee Mills speak in Durham. Pastor CeCee is the new Associate Director for Evangelical Mission in the North Carolina Synod. And she was talking about ministry in small congregations. Or rather, given that 80% of ELCA congregations now have fewer than 100 people in worship on an average Sunday, she was talking about ministry in our churches today.
And one of the first things she asked us to do was to define the word “small.” I’m going to ask you to do the same thing. Not out loud and I won’t ask you to write it down, but take a minute to think, if you were going to look up the word “small” in Webster’s Dictionary, or on Google, what would it say?
And now, I’m going to ask you to listen, and pay attention to how you react, what emotions you feel and what adjectives come to mind, when you hear the following:
small car big car
small house big house
small tumor big tumor
small church big church
small group big group
small debt big debt
What are the associations you made?
Efficient, nimble, precious, intimate and visible were some of the words we used to describe the small things she named.
Through our conversation with Pastor CeCee, we recognized the lie that says, “bigger is always better.”
With his rebuke, Jesus tells the apostles, “You are worried about the wrong things.”
Earlier in Luke, Jesus had described the kingdom of heaven as a mustard seed that was sown into the ground and became a tree where birds could nest. (13:18-19) And here in our gospel text, Jesus describes the power of faith as a mustard seed. (17:6)
In our humanity, we think the kingdom of heaven is more visible when the church is big and boisterous and there are more people in worship, but Jesus says, “Listen, you are paying attention to the wrong things.”
In our humanity, we think faith must be big and boisterous to be any good at all, but often the Spirit of God comes upon us as a breath or even a whisper. (Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 29)
And the Lord says to us, as he did to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”[i]
Faith is surrendering ourselves to God, admitting our weakness and our dependence upon God in all things.
Four times in Luke leading up to this exchange with his apostles, Jesus bore witness to the power of faith active in the lives of the people he meets.
First, he encounters the friends of the man who cut a hole in the roof of a building to lower their paralyzed friend down to him. Luke tells us, “When [Jesus] saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven you." (Luke 5:20)
Next the centurion whose slave is sick sends friends to Jesus and when he receives the soldier’s message through them, he says, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” And the slave was healed. (Luke 7:9)
Then dining at a Pharisee’s house, Jesus defends a woman who bathes his feet with her tears, dries them with her hair and anoints them with perfume, saying to her, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." (7:38 - 50)
And finally, Jesus is on the street when the woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years touches the hem of his cloak, and he tells her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace." (8:43-48)
“Faith is putting our trust in God, in life and in death.”[ii]
However, it is important to say out loud that these verses have caused harm at bedsides and in exam rooms and emergency rooms when doctors have explained a difficult diagnosis or condition and someone has responded, “If you have enough faith, they’ll be cured.” Faith isn’t a magic charm or potion that can promise a cure or prevent death.
In Martin Luther’s “Introduction to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans”, he writes:
Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.[iii]
When we are afraid, the Good News is that the answer is not found in getting more. God’s grace is sufficient. God’s promise that we have life in Christ and power in the Holy Spirit sustains us and God provides for us all that we need.
Thanks be to God.
[i] 2 Corinthians 12:9
[ii] Bishop Mike Rinehart. https://bishopmike.com/2019/09/29/pentecost-17c-proper-22c-lectionary-27c-october-6-2019/, accessed 10/1/2019.
[iii] Martin Luther. “An Introduction to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.” http://www.projectwittenberg.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt, accessed, 10/5/2019.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Lectionary 26C/ Proper 21
Thinking this week about what this parable says to us, I came across a cartoon that shows a smiling robed angel and a man standing on clouds, looking at an elevator clearly marked “up for heaven “and “down for hell” and the man is saying, “Somehow I thought it would be somewhat different.”[i]
The parable begins with a rich man who is richer than anyone can imagine, clothed in “purple and fine linen” and feasting sumptuously or extravagantly every day, not just at Shabbat or on high holy days. In my imagination, I picture Midas who is remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold.
And then Jesus tells us about a second man, a poor man who was laid at the gate of the rich man, at the entrance to his property. In other translations, this man is called a beggar. He was dependent on help from neighbors and community, but we never hear that he received any help from the rich man or anyone else.
All we are told about him is that he has sores that the dogs lick, and we are told his name. He is named Lazarus from the Hebrew el azar which means “God has helped.”
Popular interpretations of this parable often add things that aren’t part of the story. Nothing is said about ritual purity and uncleanliness. Nothing is said about either man’s demeanor. Nothing is said about either man’s piety or religiosity, faith or belief, or righteousness. They’re just two men, one rich and well-fed, one poor and hungry.
However, we know from Scripture that for Torah-observant Jews, and for Christians for that matter, the biblical mandate to care for the poor is clear.
Our bewilderment is short-lived.
In the verses that follow we’re told each man dies and come to inhabit Hades, which translates literally as the “unseen place.” Ironically, Lazarus, who was not seen in life, is seen there.
Hades, hell, Sheol or Gehenna are all used in Scripture to describe the place of the dead. The descriptions we have aren’t literal or geographical and our understanding of heaven and hell has changed throughout time. Ancient Israelites believed in a three-tiered world where heaven was above and the dead went to a morally neutral underworld below. It wasn’t until the fourth century that Jews adopted the Hellenistic view of heaven as a place for the saved and hell as a place for the damned.[vii] Many of the familiar and graphic images of hell we might recognize today originated with Dante’s fourteenth century epic poem Divine Comedy and 15th and 16th century paintings of the Last Judgment and these images persist in popular culture today.
This parable describes a completely different place “where the saved and the damned could see each other.”[viii]
When the rich man cries out, it’s clear that the only thing that has changed is his location. His way of thinking is the same as it was in life . While he now sees Lazarus, and even knows his name, he still “others” him, speaking about him, instead of speaking directly to him. The rich man first asks Abraham to send Lazarus to bring him water. And when that fails, he asks him to send Lazarus to his five brothers so that they might be spared the torment that he’s experiencing. He remains blind to the truth that he and Lazarus are both children of Abraham, brothers in God’s sight. [ix]
Even when Abraham tells the rich man there is a chasm that cannot be bridged, he fails to see his own complicity in his fate. His own ignorance and lack of compassion carved out that chasm; it is the same chasm he used in life to separate himself from the poor and the suffering. It is as deep as his fears and disdain, his selfishness and contempt. Now, as theologian Amy-Jill Levine writes, “he will spend eternity seeing what he cannot have”[x] — a wholeness that is only possible in life with God, as part of the kingdom.
This parable reminds us that “God does not play by our rules.”[xi] When we encounter God’s kingdom, it’s going to be different than we imagine, just as God is beyond our knowledge and understanding now. What we know, right now, and what we are taught in the law and by the prophets, is that we have the responsibility to pour out God’s mercy and compassion here and now.
Let us pray…
God of heaven and earth,
Thank you for your mercy and grace that make us Your children and heirs to Your kingdom.
Teach us to see people through Your eyes and to love them as You love them.
Make us compassionate and generous as we go out into the world to share the Good News of your abundant love.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.
[i] Werner Wejp-Olsen. https://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/o/otis.asp, accessed 9/28/2019.
[ii] Deuteronomy 15:11
[iii] Proverbs 14:21
[iv] Proverbs 22:1-2
[v] Isaiah 58:7
[vi] Zechariah 7:9-10
[vii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_cosmology, accessed 9/26/2019.
[viii] Amy-Jill Levine. Short Stories by Jesus. 286.
[ix] Levine, 288.
[x] Levine. 289.
[xi] Levine, 300.
The parable begins with a rich man who is richer than anyone can imagine, clothed in “purple and fine linen” and feasting sumptuously or extravagantly every day, not just at Shabbat or on high holy days. In my imagination, I picture Midas who is remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold.
And then Jesus tells us about a second man, a poor man who was laid at the gate of the rich man, at the entrance to his property. In other translations, this man is called a beggar. He was dependent on help from neighbors and community, but we never hear that he received any help from the rich man or anyone else.
All we are told about him is that he has sores that the dogs lick, and we are told his name. He is named Lazarus from the Hebrew el azar which means “God has helped.”
Popular interpretations of this parable often add things that aren’t part of the story. Nothing is said about ritual purity and uncleanliness. Nothing is said about either man’s demeanor. Nothing is said about either man’s piety or religiosity, faith or belief, or righteousness. They’re just two men, one rich and well-fed, one poor and hungry.
However, we know from Scripture that for Torah-observant Jews, and for Christians for that matter, the biblical mandate to care for the poor is clear.
- In Deuteronomy 15 the people are instructed, “"Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land."[ii]
- In wisdom literature, Proverbs says, “Those who despise their neighbors are sinners, but happy are those who are kind to the poor.[iii] and “2 The rich and the poor have this in common: the LORD is the maker of them all.”[iv]
- And the prophets add their two cents, too: Isaiah tells the people, “share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house;[v] and Zechariah instructs us, “show kindness and mercy to one another; 10 do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor;”[vi]
Our bewilderment is short-lived.
In the verses that follow we’re told each man dies and come to inhabit Hades, which translates literally as the “unseen place.” Ironically, Lazarus, who was not seen in life, is seen there.
Hades, hell, Sheol or Gehenna are all used in Scripture to describe the place of the dead. The descriptions we have aren’t literal or geographical and our understanding of heaven and hell has changed throughout time. Ancient Israelites believed in a three-tiered world where heaven was above and the dead went to a morally neutral underworld below. It wasn’t until the fourth century that Jews adopted the Hellenistic view of heaven as a place for the saved and hell as a place for the damned.[vii] Many of the familiar and graphic images of hell we might recognize today originated with Dante’s fourteenth century epic poem Divine Comedy and 15th and 16th century paintings of the Last Judgment and these images persist in popular culture today.
This parable describes a completely different place “where the saved and the damned could see each other.”[viii]
When the rich man cries out, it’s clear that the only thing that has changed is his location. His way of thinking is the same as it was in life . While he now sees Lazarus, and even knows his name, he still “others” him, speaking about him, instead of speaking directly to him. The rich man first asks Abraham to send Lazarus to bring him water. And when that fails, he asks him to send Lazarus to his five brothers so that they might be spared the torment that he’s experiencing. He remains blind to the truth that he and Lazarus are both children of Abraham, brothers in God’s sight. [ix]
Even when Abraham tells the rich man there is a chasm that cannot be bridged, he fails to see his own complicity in his fate. His own ignorance and lack of compassion carved out that chasm; it is the same chasm he used in life to separate himself from the poor and the suffering. It is as deep as his fears and disdain, his selfishness and contempt. Now, as theologian Amy-Jill Levine writes, “he will spend eternity seeing what he cannot have”[x] — a wholeness that is only possible in life with God, as part of the kingdom.
This parable reminds us that “God does not play by our rules.”[xi] When we encounter God’s kingdom, it’s going to be different than we imagine, just as God is beyond our knowledge and understanding now. What we know, right now, and what we are taught in the law and by the prophets, is that we have the responsibility to pour out God’s mercy and compassion here and now.
Let us pray…
God of heaven and earth,
Thank you for your mercy and grace that make us Your children and heirs to Your kingdom.
Teach us to see people through Your eyes and to love them as You love them.
Make us compassionate and generous as we go out into the world to share the Good News of your abundant love.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.
[i] Werner Wejp-Olsen. https://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/o/otis.asp, accessed 9/28/2019.
[ii] Deuteronomy 15:11
[iii] Proverbs 14:21
[iv] Proverbs 22:1-2
[v] Isaiah 58:7
[vi] Zechariah 7:9-10
[vii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_cosmology, accessed 9/26/2019.
[viii] Amy-Jill Levine. Short Stories by Jesus. 286.
[ix] Levine, 288.
[x] Levine. 289.
[xi] Levine, 300.
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Lectionary 25C/ Proper 20
Luke 16:1-15
Hearing the gospel for today, do you think Jesus just wanted to make sure people were listening? I have heard of university professors who add instructions at the end of the syllabus to test whether students read it in its entirety, and in seminary we joked about inserting random text, like lines from a favorite hymn, into our papers, just to see if they were really being read. Maybe that’s why Jesus tells the Pharisees this parable that appears to commend dishonesty.
Maybe Jesus just wanted to make sure he had their attention, but maybe not.
Remember what we know about parables. Sometimes, parables were a way to put two things such as the kingdom of God and a mustard seed or yeast (Luke 13), alongside each other to help us understand them. Other times the parables teach us about the kingdom of God through stories like the Good Samaritan where it’s easy for us to imagine who we are supposed to be in the story. Last week we were reminded that often the parables are there to challenge us or shake us up. And often they surprise us, awakening us to the way God is breaking into our lives and turning the wisdom of the world upside-down or inside-out.
At the time that Luke is writing, around 80 CE, the Romans occupied Palestine, and as the Empire demanded higher taxes, sometimes the rich who lived in the south “rescued” the small farmers in the north, who sold their land and stayed on as tenant farmers. Where once they might have harvested crops that provided food for themselves and their households, now the farmers were planting production crops to be sold to the Romans, and a manager would keep track of what was owed to the landowner.
The parable begins with someone making charges against a manager. We don’t know what he’s done, but the rich man calls him out and accuses him of being dishonest. There’s no denial; instead what we hear is his internal dialogue, or calculations, as he considers his options. And then Jesus tells us that the dishonest man acts quickly, speaking to the tenants and lowering the figures for what they owe.
We can speculate what he was doing. As a manager, he would have earned a commission, so perhaps he reduced their debts by the portion he would have taken. Or maybe he reduced their debts to hurt the landowner, or to ingratiate himself into their lives. We cannot know his motive. And we don’t need to.
The result is that the tenant farmers have a little bit more for themselves and their households. The manager, who has power because of his position, chooses to use his power, while it lasts, to help others.
Jesus still recognizes the man for what he is, calling him the “dishonest manager” even when the rich man commends him. What is being commended isn’t the manager’s dishonest practices but the steps the man took to address the wrongs he had committed.
This isn’t a parable that obviously works as an allegory for our lives of faith. Featuring a dishonest manager and an opportunistic rich man, we aren’t eager to identity ourselves or God as one of the characters.
But aren’t we all dishonest managers?
Five times between verses 8 and 11, we hear the word “dishonest.” The Greek words are ἀδικίας and ἄδικός which can also be translated as “unrighteous” or “unjust”. Eugene Peterson who wrote The Message paraphrase of the Bible calls this character a rascal. That sounds about right, I think.
By our nature, apart from Christ, we are dishonest or unrighteous, rascals and scoundrels, captive to sin and to death, self-centered and self-indulgent.
In this parable Jesus contrasts what is dishonest or unrighteous with what is faithful or believing.
But faithfulness and believing are never the result of anything we do – no measure of hard work, earnestness, or ability will achieve them.
As Martin Luther wrote in the explanation of the third article of the Creed, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but [the Holy Spirit] calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies [or makes righteous] the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers.”
It is only through Christ, and the gift of unearned grace – what some might even call dishonest wealth – that each of us is wholly beloved and forgiven. Giving us what is his, Christ makes us children of God and heirs to the kingdom.
As Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, now we are dead to sin and alive to Christ, and as ones who have been brought from death to life, we are instruments of righteousness. (Romans 6)
As instruments of righteousness, we are given the power to intercede on behalf of the suffering, the sick and the poor.
Indeed, in our baptismal covenant we promise to “strive for justice and peace in all the earth”[i] and accept this responsibility to intercede on behalf of others. And we do have power; we have the power of the Holy Spirit acting in our lives and those around us, and we have the power of our voices to engage in difficult conversations; we have the power to use our vote on election day; we have the power to use our time to volunteer or write letters to the editor and congressional representatives.
This parable challenges us to look for the places where we could give up some of our power and wealth so that others might suffer less, despair less and hunger less.
There are ways we do this in our everyday lives, giving out of the abundance we already have:
The Good News we hear today is that God gives us the power to transform the world around us, sharing our inheritance as God’s children and making God’s kingdom present and visible here on earth, if only we will act.
Let us pray…
God of Righteousness,
Thank you for grace and mercy that makes us your children and heirs to Your kingdom and thank you for Your Son Jesus who shows us what Kingdom life looks like here on earth.
Show us ways that we can be instruments of righteousness in our community and world.
Empower us by Your Holy Spirit to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.
[i] Evangelical Lutheran Worship, ELCA. 236.
Hearing the gospel for today, do you think Jesus just wanted to make sure people were listening? I have heard of university professors who add instructions at the end of the syllabus to test whether students read it in its entirety, and in seminary we joked about inserting random text, like lines from a favorite hymn, into our papers, just to see if they were really being read. Maybe that’s why Jesus tells the Pharisees this parable that appears to commend dishonesty.
Maybe Jesus just wanted to make sure he had their attention, but maybe not.
Remember what we know about parables. Sometimes, parables were a way to put two things such as the kingdom of God and a mustard seed or yeast (Luke 13), alongside each other to help us understand them. Other times the parables teach us about the kingdom of God through stories like the Good Samaritan where it’s easy for us to imagine who we are supposed to be in the story. Last week we were reminded that often the parables are there to challenge us or shake us up. And often they surprise us, awakening us to the way God is breaking into our lives and turning the wisdom of the world upside-down or inside-out.
At the time that Luke is writing, around 80 CE, the Romans occupied Palestine, and as the Empire demanded higher taxes, sometimes the rich who lived in the south “rescued” the small farmers in the north, who sold their land and stayed on as tenant farmers. Where once they might have harvested crops that provided food for themselves and their households, now the farmers were planting production crops to be sold to the Romans, and a manager would keep track of what was owed to the landowner.
The parable begins with someone making charges against a manager. We don’t know what he’s done, but the rich man calls him out and accuses him of being dishonest. There’s no denial; instead what we hear is his internal dialogue, or calculations, as he considers his options. And then Jesus tells us that the dishonest man acts quickly, speaking to the tenants and lowering the figures for what they owe.
We can speculate what he was doing. As a manager, he would have earned a commission, so perhaps he reduced their debts by the portion he would have taken. Or maybe he reduced their debts to hurt the landowner, or to ingratiate himself into their lives. We cannot know his motive. And we don’t need to.
The result is that the tenant farmers have a little bit more for themselves and their households. The manager, who has power because of his position, chooses to use his power, while it lasts, to help others.
Jesus still recognizes the man for what he is, calling him the “dishonest manager” even when the rich man commends him. What is being commended isn’t the manager’s dishonest practices but the steps the man took to address the wrongs he had committed.
This isn’t a parable that obviously works as an allegory for our lives of faith. Featuring a dishonest manager and an opportunistic rich man, we aren’t eager to identity ourselves or God as one of the characters.
But aren’t we all dishonest managers?
Five times between verses 8 and 11, we hear the word “dishonest.” The Greek words are ἀδικίας and ἄδικός which can also be translated as “unrighteous” or “unjust”. Eugene Peterson who wrote The Message paraphrase of the Bible calls this character a rascal. That sounds about right, I think.
By our nature, apart from Christ, we are dishonest or unrighteous, rascals and scoundrels, captive to sin and to death, self-centered and self-indulgent.
In this parable Jesus contrasts what is dishonest or unrighteous with what is faithful or believing.
But faithfulness and believing are never the result of anything we do – no measure of hard work, earnestness, or ability will achieve them.
As Martin Luther wrote in the explanation of the third article of the Creed, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but [the Holy Spirit] calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies [or makes righteous] the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers.”
It is only through Christ, and the gift of unearned grace – what some might even call dishonest wealth – that each of us is wholly beloved and forgiven. Giving us what is his, Christ makes us children of God and heirs to the kingdom.
As Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, now we are dead to sin and alive to Christ, and as ones who have been brought from death to life, we are instruments of righteousness. (Romans 6)
As instruments of righteousness, we are given the power to intercede on behalf of the suffering, the sick and the poor.
Indeed, in our baptismal covenant we promise to “strive for justice and peace in all the earth”[i] and accept this responsibility to intercede on behalf of others. And we do have power; we have the power of the Holy Spirit acting in our lives and those around us, and we have the power of our voices to engage in difficult conversations; we have the power to use our vote on election day; we have the power to use our time to volunteer or write letters to the editor and congressional representatives.
This parable challenges us to look for the places where we could give up some of our power and wealth so that others might suffer less, despair less and hunger less.
There are ways we do this in our everyday lives, giving out of the abundance we already have:
- Many of you have donated hotel-size toiletries that we are able to give to people who don’t have anything.
- I know someone else who never pays with exact change; instead, she rounds up and donates the difference to charity.
- Scrolling through Facebook, I saw a post where a mother told a story about her son who had asked every day for a week for two of everything he usually took to school for lunch. She had chalked it up to growing pains, figuring the kid must be hungry. And then the boy’s mother got a note from another mother in his class thanking her for providing lunch for her child when she’d been in the hospital.
The Good News we hear today is that God gives us the power to transform the world around us, sharing our inheritance as God’s children and making God’s kingdom present and visible here on earth, if only we will act.
Let us pray…
God of Righteousness,
Thank you for grace and mercy that makes us your children and heirs to Your kingdom and thank you for Your Son Jesus who shows us what Kingdom life looks like here on earth.
Show us ways that we can be instruments of righteousness in our community and world.
Empower us by Your Holy Spirit to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.
[i] Evangelical Lutheran Worship, ELCA. 236.
Sunday, September 15, 2019
Lectionary24C/ Proper 19
Luke 15:1 - 10 (11-32)
Maybe you remember: last January a three-year old boy was missing for several days in eastern North Carolina. When family members couldn’t find him, they called the police and local, state and federal law enforcement and hundreds of volunteers searched for him, aided by dogs and drones and airplanes. Even here in North Carolina, January weather isn’t hospitable and they were searching in cold temperatures, heavy rain and wind. Happily, after three days of searching, the boy was found, wet, cold and tangled up in some briars in the woods, but alive! Imagine the celebration that took place when he was found!
In today’s gospel Jesus tells three parables about being lost and being found, about searching and about celebrating.
Parables are stories that Jesus told that say something about the character of God or God’s reign or kingdom. The parables compare God and God’s kingdom to the familiar world in which those hearing him lived. So the parables use yeast and bread, widows and shepherds, merchants and rules to explain some aspect of who God is and what it looks like to live as God’s people.
Our lectionary reading only includes two of the three parables Jesus told that day, but I am including the third one because the story is incomplete without it.
Often, like he does today, he asks his audience directly, “Which of you…?” Any “safe” distance we have from his story dissolves with this opening question. He is talking to us!
In the first parable that Jesus tells here, a shepherd has one hundred sheep and one goes missing and the shepherd leaves the 99 to search for the lost one.
In the second one, a woman has ten coins and one goes missing and the woman leaves the 9 to search for the lost one.
And, in the third, a man loses one of his two sons when the young man takes his inheritance and leaves.
Often my first response to these three parables is to identify as one of the lost, and to experience deep gratitude for being found, for knowing God and returning to the Church where I found a community.
And that’s ok, as far as it goes, but as Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt writes, Jesus’ followers would have known that “parables and the tellers of parables were there to prompt them to see the world in a different way, to challenge, and at times to indict.”[i]
Taking another look at these parables, one of my questions is, “What does it mean to be lost?”
One popular interpretation is that the lost are the unrepentant sinners, people who have strayed from the Way of Jesus or even more deliberately refused to follow him.
But as the story of the three-year-old illustrates, sometimes we “become” lost. Our absence is noticed; we are missed by people who love us.
And other times, we experience being lost because we are overwhelmed by circumstances and unsure about what the next step is.
The sheep probably didn’t mean to get separated from the flock, and certainly the coin, which was inanimate, didn’t do anything to get lost. Only the son chose to go away.
And neither the sheep nor the coin repent. We can view the son’s return home as a repentant action, but it’s more likely that he returned because he was confident that his father’s love for him was greater than a desire to hold him accountable.
As I was listening again to these parables, I remembered the Genesis 18 story of Abraham bargaining with God. He stood before the Lord and argued for a city to be saved from destruction if there were fifty, forty, thirty, twenty or even just ten righteous men in it. Eventually, God promised mercy
even if there were just ten.
What we hear in these parables is that God’s mercy reaches even to the one. As a shepherd God leaves the 99, trusting them to protect and provide for each other so that the lost one can be restored to the flock.
As the woman with the missing coin, God lights a lamp, shining it into all the dark corners of the house, all “the places where demons dwell”, sweeping and searching until she finds the one that is lost.
And then in the third story, we see God pictured as a compassionate father who sees the son “while he was still far off” and runs to him to “put his arms around him and [kiss] him”. (v. 20)
With these parables, Jesus challenges us that we should be restless and unsatisfied, as long as there are lost ones.
That doesn’t just mean as long as there are open seats in the pews,
but as long as we have neighbors who are separated from the community because they have been lost in the crowd, overlooked or forgotten;
as long as we have neighbors who are isolated or alone;
as long as we have neighbors who have made mistakes or chosen poorly.
I had the opportunity this week to sit down with Pastor Michael Gullatte who is the executive director of the Cleveland County Rescue Mission and catch up on their work in our community. As most of you know, the rescue mission began with a men’s shelter in the building behind our property and when the men moved to their new building on Buffalo Street, the rescue mission opened the Heart to Heart women’s shelter in the bright yellow building next to us. During our conversation, Pastor Gullatte told me several of the men and women’s stories but one stood out:
A woman in a rehab program in Virginia was told that when the program ended, she would be turned out on the street. The facility gave her phone and internet access and she set to work finding a place where she could go next and get back on her feet. Unlike most of us, she didn’t have a safety net of family members who were waiting for her. When she tried to find a place, she was turned down more than eighty times. Her children were in Rutherfordton and on her last day in the Virginia facility, as she searched for someplace that would put her closer to them, she found Heart to Heart. She called and they said she could come there. And in the time she has been at Heart to Heart, she has accumulated sobriety and been reconciled with her children.
At the end of her long bus ride from Roanoke, she found a community that welcomes her as a beloved child of God, that celebrates her gifts and rejoices with her.
Through the parables, Jesus teaches us that, in faith, the fullness of God is in each of us, but we are not complete as long as there are lost ones.
I hold together both my gratitude for being found
and my conviction that I am God’s hands and feet, responsible for searching, looking and watching with compassion for those who are lost.
In each of these three parables, the lost do not quietly slip into the back pew during worship, or just pick up where they left off. Instead, the shepherd, the woman and the father invite everyone to rejoice with them.
As I thought about the celebrations we have today when we might call friends and neighbors to rejoice with us, I thought first of retirements and graduations, and then weddings or the birth or adoption of a child. All of these are times when we are on the cusp of something new and not yet known. There is anticipation and some uncertainty but there is hope.
When the lost are restored to their places alongside us, in our lives and at our table, we are complete and whole again, and we celebrate even as we look ahead to what is yet unfolding.
Let us pray…
Loving God,
Through Your Son Jesus Christ you give us your kingdom and count as Your children.
Thank you for your abundant love and mercy that searches and finds every last one of us.
Encourage us by Your Holy Spirit and send us out with compassion for the lost – the outcast, the lonely and the grieving;
Bring us to the day that we too can rejoice together at the wholeness of the family of God.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.
[i] Levine, Amy-Jill. Short Stories by Jesus (p. 4). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.
Maybe you remember: last January a three-year old boy was missing for several days in eastern North Carolina. When family members couldn’t find him, they called the police and local, state and federal law enforcement and hundreds of volunteers searched for him, aided by dogs and drones and airplanes. Even here in North Carolina, January weather isn’t hospitable and they were searching in cold temperatures, heavy rain and wind. Happily, after three days of searching, the boy was found, wet, cold and tangled up in some briars in the woods, but alive! Imagine the celebration that took place when he was found!
In today’s gospel Jesus tells three parables about being lost and being found, about searching and about celebrating.
Parables are stories that Jesus told that say something about the character of God or God’s reign or kingdom. The parables compare God and God’s kingdom to the familiar world in which those hearing him lived. So the parables use yeast and bread, widows and shepherds, merchants and rules to explain some aspect of who God is and what it looks like to live as God’s people.
Our lectionary reading only includes two of the three parables Jesus told that day, but I am including the third one because the story is incomplete without it.
Often, like he does today, he asks his audience directly, “Which of you…?” Any “safe” distance we have from his story dissolves with this opening question. He is talking to us!
In the first parable that Jesus tells here, a shepherd has one hundred sheep and one goes missing and the shepherd leaves the 99 to search for the lost one.
In the second one, a woman has ten coins and one goes missing and the woman leaves the 9 to search for the lost one.
And, in the third, a man loses one of his two sons when the young man takes his inheritance and leaves.
Often my first response to these three parables is to identify as one of the lost, and to experience deep gratitude for being found, for knowing God and returning to the Church where I found a community.
And that’s ok, as far as it goes, but as Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt writes, Jesus’ followers would have known that “parables and the tellers of parables were there to prompt them to see the world in a different way, to challenge, and at times to indict.”[i]
Taking another look at these parables, one of my questions is, “What does it mean to be lost?”
One popular interpretation is that the lost are the unrepentant sinners, people who have strayed from the Way of Jesus or even more deliberately refused to follow him.
But as the story of the three-year-old illustrates, sometimes we “become” lost. Our absence is noticed; we are missed by people who love us.
And other times, we experience being lost because we are overwhelmed by circumstances and unsure about what the next step is.
The sheep probably didn’t mean to get separated from the flock, and certainly the coin, which was inanimate, didn’t do anything to get lost. Only the son chose to go away.
And neither the sheep nor the coin repent. We can view the son’s return home as a repentant action, but it’s more likely that he returned because he was confident that his father’s love for him was greater than a desire to hold him accountable.
As I was listening again to these parables, I remembered the Genesis 18 story of Abraham bargaining with God. He stood before the Lord and argued for a city to be saved from destruction if there were fifty, forty, thirty, twenty or even just ten righteous men in it. Eventually, God promised mercy
even if there were just ten.
What we hear in these parables is that God’s mercy reaches even to the one. As a shepherd God leaves the 99, trusting them to protect and provide for each other so that the lost one can be restored to the flock.
As the woman with the missing coin, God lights a lamp, shining it into all the dark corners of the house, all “the places where demons dwell”, sweeping and searching until she finds the one that is lost.
And then in the third story, we see God pictured as a compassionate father who sees the son “while he was still far off” and runs to him to “put his arms around him and [kiss] him”. (v. 20)
With these parables, Jesus challenges us that we should be restless and unsatisfied, as long as there are lost ones.
That doesn’t just mean as long as there are open seats in the pews,
but as long as we have neighbors who are separated from the community because they have been lost in the crowd, overlooked or forgotten;
as long as we have neighbors who are isolated or alone;
as long as we have neighbors who have made mistakes or chosen poorly.
I had the opportunity this week to sit down with Pastor Michael Gullatte who is the executive director of the Cleveland County Rescue Mission and catch up on their work in our community. As most of you know, the rescue mission began with a men’s shelter in the building behind our property and when the men moved to their new building on Buffalo Street, the rescue mission opened the Heart to Heart women’s shelter in the bright yellow building next to us. During our conversation, Pastor Gullatte told me several of the men and women’s stories but one stood out:
A woman in a rehab program in Virginia was told that when the program ended, she would be turned out on the street. The facility gave her phone and internet access and she set to work finding a place where she could go next and get back on her feet. Unlike most of us, she didn’t have a safety net of family members who were waiting for her. When she tried to find a place, she was turned down more than eighty times. Her children were in Rutherfordton and on her last day in the Virginia facility, as she searched for someplace that would put her closer to them, she found Heart to Heart. She called and they said she could come there. And in the time she has been at Heart to Heart, she has accumulated sobriety and been reconciled with her children.
At the end of her long bus ride from Roanoke, she found a community that welcomes her as a beloved child of God, that celebrates her gifts and rejoices with her.
Through the parables, Jesus teaches us that, in faith, the fullness of God is in each of us, but we are not complete as long as there are lost ones.
I hold together both my gratitude for being found
and my conviction that I am God’s hands and feet, responsible for searching, looking and watching with compassion for those who are lost.
In each of these three parables, the lost do not quietly slip into the back pew during worship, or just pick up where they left off. Instead, the shepherd, the woman and the father invite everyone to rejoice with them.
As I thought about the celebrations we have today when we might call friends and neighbors to rejoice with us, I thought first of retirements and graduations, and then weddings or the birth or adoption of a child. All of these are times when we are on the cusp of something new and not yet known. There is anticipation and some uncertainty but there is hope.
When the lost are restored to their places alongside us, in our lives and at our table, we are complete and whole again, and we celebrate even as we look ahead to what is yet unfolding.
Let us pray…
Loving God,
Through Your Son Jesus Christ you give us your kingdom and count as Your children.
Thank you for your abundant love and mercy that searches and finds every last one of us.
Encourage us by Your Holy Spirit and send us out with compassion for the lost – the outcast, the lonely and the grieving;
Bring us to the day that we too can rejoice together at the wholeness of the family of God.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.
[i] Levine, Amy-Jill. Short Stories by Jesus (p. 4). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.
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