Reformation Sunday

I have taught before about how to read Scripture: 

being attentive to the literary form, the author, their purpose and what else was happening in the world around them. 

And being willing to engage the text with curiosity and wonder and ask questions about what it tells us about God. 

Understanding the context helps us more fully understand. 

 

On this Reformation Sunday, I think it’s helpful to remember that lesson.

 

The Reformation is not defined exclusively by one particular day or event, or even one person. We tell the stories about Martin Luther’s life and accomplishments – his revolt against the sale of indulgences, his writing and posting the 95 Theses, his persecution and defiance of the Church, and even the story of his marriage to Katie. 

 

But alongside these stories, we must remember the reformers who came before Luther, just as we remember those who followed him. 

 

We must recognize how the Church was reformed but it was not made uniform. Today we have both Eastern and Western traditions in Christianity, and even just within the Americas, the breadth of Protestant traditions testifies to the diversity of the Church.

 

And most importantly, we must understand that reformation is never complete and finished, over and done. 

 

The call is to be semper reformandus 

or "always reforming".

This is the ongoing work of God in, and through us.

One part of the work to which we are called is what Luther explains in his Small Catechism where he lays out the foundations of faith. 

 

With each of the Ten Commandments, Luther urges us to fear – or hold in awe – and love God because of who God is and what God does. The commandments teach us how to live in loving relationship with God, and with each other. In each article of the Apostles’ Creed and again with each petition of the Lord’s Prayer, Luther teaches us what God accomplishes for us, again because of who God is, and not from our own merit or works. 

 

But we can study and learn, 

filling our heads with history and theology, 

and still not be reformed or transformed.

 

Unless God’s work in Christ penetrates deep inside our hearts, we are left unchanged.^[i]

 

And that is work that begins in baptism and continues all through our lives because often we are the hard-hearted and stiff-necked people who we read about in Scripture. 

 

We do not believe God’s grace is for us, and we struggle mightily, like Jonah, to see it given so freely to others, too. 

 

And yet, God engages “in a holy forgetting”, “[forgiving] us our wickedness and [remembering] it no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34)

 

Writing to the Romans, the apostle Paul tells us that through the sacrifice of Jesus, God sets the world right and makes it possible for us to live in that rightness. And again, we hear that God doesn’t respond to what we do; we respond to what God does! (Romans 3:19-28, The Message)

 

Baptism is not the end - goal, but the beginning of a life of faith where we are nourished along the way by God’s love and God’s word.

 

In the same way, the rite of confirmation or affirmation of baptism we are celebrating today with Jackson, Blake, Madeleine, Caroline and Philp is not a graduation, or an ending. 

 

It is a milestone – a marker along the way – during which all of us will promise to support and pray for them in their lives in Christ. Over the last three years, these five youth have learned about Scripture, Martin Luther and the Small Catechism and they have had faith conversations with caring mentors - adults outside their families – where they could wrestle with questions, explore how to deepen their relationships with God, and decide what it looks like to live faithfully in their daily lives.

 

On your bulletin insert, you can read their confirmation verses, and why they chose them, as they name some of the promises that we have from God, and express the confidence we have in faith that God will do what God promises for us. 

 

Today we celebrate with these five youth, their families and their mentors as they take responsibility for the promises that were made on their behalf at baptism, 

and then together, 

we will continue the work that began in the Church centuries ago,

as God continues to move each one of us to live faithfully 

and we are created anew, 

reformed and transformed by God’s love. 

 

Amen.

^[i] By Heart: Conversations with Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, 7.

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 12:49-56

Aw, man, I really didn’t want to preach today’s gospel.

From Jesus naming his desire to bring fire to the earth (v. 49) and  predicting the ways that households would be divided by his words (v. 51-53) to his condemnation of his audience, calling them “hypocrites”, I was left wondering,

“How is this Good News?”

Seriously, I thought about preaching a different text today.

But you may remember that in a sermon last month Pastor Jonathan shared how following Jesus, living lives of discipleship and choosing to be faithful to the Gospel means sometimes choosing to do hard things.

And while I would like to only listen to Jesus when he says comforting words, I know that I need to hear his challenging words, too.

So, I went back to the text. And not only our gospel text, but also the words of Jeremiah that are paired with it today.

Because Jeremiah is speaking to God’s people and reminding them that prophets speak the Word of the Lord faithfully. They don’t only say what people want to hear. They don’t only speak words of promise and comfort. And a Word that comes through the prophet is also, always first a Word to the prophet. 

Sometimes God’s Word is not so much like a gentle whisper but like the fire sent at Pentecost, sweeping through and making room for what’s next; sometimes it is like a hammer that breaks open rugged rocks to reveal what is precious within them.

If we start with what we know about who Jesus is, then I think we can hear the Good News in our gospel today.

Jesus wants us to know we are loved and forgiven, and Jesus wants us to be reconciled, with God and with one another, and to flourish in relationship and community. And He regularly calls out the obstacles to that abundant life, naming the powers and principalities and those things that draw us away from God.

When Jesus speaks of fire and baptism, we are meant to remember the words of John the Baptizer in Luke 3 who said,

I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. (3:16-17)

The fire that Jesus wants to kindle is not one of damnation and punishment, but one of purifying and refining power. It burns away the stuff that doesn’t matter and preserves what is needed.

This interpretation is supported later in Luke, in chapter 9, when Jesus and his disciples reach Samaria and are rejected. James and John ask Jesus if he wants them to “command fire to come down from heaven and consume [the Samaritans]” and Jesus rebuked the disciples. The basis of judgment is our conduct, but the basis for hope is always God. (The Rev. Dr. Richard Nysse, Luther Seminary) The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. (Psalm 145:8)

But Jesus doesn’t pretend that following him will be easy. He says that, in fact, listening to Him and choosing to follow Him will make life hard. It can create difficulty and strife in relationships. We can expect that we will disagree about what it means to follow Jesus - in our households, in our congregations and the wider Church. 

This tension between following Jesus and living in the world isn’t new.

It echoes what Jesus told the men in Luke 9 who wanted to complete their household responsibilities before they followed Him: 
the Kingdom of Heaven demands our full and immediate attention and takes priority over everything else.

It’s a hard word to hear and to preach and even harder to follow.

We know that the prophetic word is one that is met with resistance. The prophet Micah answered the question, “What does the Lord require of you?” with the deceptively simple “Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

Justice. Humility. Kindness.

This is the hard work of discipleship to which we are called. Throughout his Small Catechism, Luther interprets God’s commandments for us, explaining each one within the context of what it means to “fear and love God”. 

Here Jesus tells us that in our Christian lives, we are called to let go of the things that serve ourselves and our egos, to let them burn up like the chaff on the threshing floor. He warns us against self-deception and calls us to honest reflection, that we may “know God more clearly, love God more dearly, and follow God more nearly, day by day”. (Prayer of St. Richard)

There is Good News here for us today. We do not need to be afraid of the fire Jesus desires to kindle in us. It is the burning presence of the divine in our lives, that does not consume, but assures us that God is here, and it is the life-giving Holy Spirit that shines brightly in all of his disciples.

Let us pray.

Holy God,

Thank you giving us Your Son Jesus to comfort and challenge us.

Help us listen to the prophetic word and obey

That the world may know your love and mercy through our bold actions.

We pray in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Epiphany 6C

Jeremiah 17:5-10

Jeremiah, whose words we heard in our first reading, was a priest of the tribe of Benjamin, from a walled town a few miles northeast of Jerusalem.

After the fall of the northern Kingdom of Israel to Assyria in 721,

Judah, the southern Kingdom, was squeezed between Egypt to the south and Assyria to the north. They were afraid, assaulted by enemies closing in all around them.

As a prophet, Jeremiah was active from the 13th year of King Josiah of Judah around 626 BCE, through the rule of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah.

King Josiah has been called Judah’s last pious King.

During his reign, Judah stopped paying homage to Assyria,

and sought to reestablish the empire of David and Solomon that had crumbled centuries earlier,

launching religious reforms that reaffirmed the covenant of Moses

and centralized worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem.

But those reforms died with King Josiah in 609 BCE.

When we hear Jeremiah’s words here, rebellions against Babylon by the subsequent kings have failed and the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, are advancing on Jerusalem.

Jeremiah continues to urge Israelites to return to faithful obedience to the covenant they have with God, and in these verses, we hear the prophet’s description of what disobedience will look like and the contrasting vision of what obedience will look like.

As we hear elsewhere in Proverbs and in today’s psalm, Jeremiah presents a clear choice to be made by humans,

a fork in the road,

where we can choose to draw near to God

or turn away from God.

Importantly, the choice does not change how God responds.

God refuses to turn away from us and continues to offer God’s people new opportunities to choose to live in relationship with the One who created and loves us.

But there are consequences for turning away from what God offers, and we hear those described here. Jeremiah describes those who trust in mortals, instead of God, as parched shrubs in the arid desert, and the psalmist describes them as chaff that is blown away in the wind.

In contrast, Jeremiah describes those who trust in the Lord as trees planted by water, fortified against heat and drought, flourishing and bearing fruit, an image that echoes the psalm.

The descriptions of trees planted by streams of water, full of green leaves and fruit, recall the first garden - Eden - in Genesis and invite us to remember that in the beginning, God gave life to creation, and God continues to nurture us for life in community.

Of course, then, as now, humans choose to turn away from God.

While I expect most of us easily hear the Law in Jeremiah’s words where there is a clear choice between trusting in ourselves or others or trusting in the Lord, I hope we also hear the Gospel. While the Law convicts us of our sin and shows us where we fall short of God’s commands, the Gospel is what tells us about God’s actions for us.

There is a promise here that even in the desert, relief will come, and life, although it may be difficult, will continue in the places that appear forsaken.  

And before anyone thinks that Jeremiah is promising a carefree life for those who trust God, he tells us that even when we draw near to God,

there will be times of scorching heat and drought –

times of challenge and even disaster.

The point isn’t that faithful people will be worry-free. The point is that God will be faithful. As one writer put it,

We as Christians are like trees, watered at baptism and not branches broken off from the main trunk, which is the cross of Christ.[i]

As both the psalm and this passage in Jeremiah continue, we are reminded that judgment is not ours but God’s (Psalm 1:6 and Jeremiah 17:9-10). The Lord will search the minds and hearts of God’s people, and the Lord knows the difference between the righteous and the wicked.

That’s important for all of us who get distracted by the human sinfulness we witness around us, who experience the temptation to look first at others, and not ourselves. “If I believe that God loves me [so much that I am forgiven and saved by grace through faith], then I have to believe that God loves everyone else like that [too].”[ii]

It's God’s promises, known in God’s Word and actions for us, that sustain us each and every day.

Let us pray…

Holy God,

You created the world and all that live in it.
You called us to trust you, and to put down our roots
alongside the life-giving stream of your Word. 
Help us follow Your Son Jesus faithfully,
and share the fruit of Your abundant mercy and love in the world.
We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

---

[i] Sundays and Seasons, Day Resources

[ii] The Rev. Dr. Justin Nickel, Advanced Lay Ministry Intensive

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

Fifth Sunday in Lent

Jeremiah 31:31-34
John 12:20-33

All through Lent we’ve been studying covenant — witnessing how God established a divine relationship with all God’s people and how God’s promises were accompanied by signs as reminders of God’s abundant love and mercy, and our dependence on God alone.

There was the covenant with Noah, and then with Abram and then with Moses and the people of Israel. The Law was given in stone and broken; forgiveness was given and rejected, so now, after words of right judgment, now the prophet Jeremiah declares there will be a new covenant.

As before, the covenant is grounded in forgiveness but, this time, the prophet declares, it will be written on our hearts.

By grace, God writes over whatever pain or wounds we have suffered, even the ones that are self-inflicted or carry still in our sin-scarred hearts, and we are made new and whole.

For us as Christians we see this new covenant manifest in the person of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus that we see God make people whole, restore their relationships and return them to their families and communities. It is in Jesus that we see justice – the addressing of wrong actions – enacted, and we see man-made or contrived boundaries, barriers and categories broken down.

And that is why, as we approach Palm Sunday and Holy Week, the religious authorities were plotting to kill Jesus. But in the gospel text, it is also why Greeks were coming to the disciples, and asking, “We wish to see Jesus.”

It’s most likely that these Greeks were Gentiles, outsiders to the old covenant, and yet, here they were coming to see the Messiah, the Son of God who had come into the world.

“We wish to see Jesus.”

Once upon a time, those words were carved into pulpits, that we preachers would remember our task. But I think I’d like to see the words carved into the lintel and doorposts at the entrance to the sanctuary, so that all of us, as we leave here after worship, might remember that, for some, we are the only Jesus a person may meet.

The Evangelist tells us that Philip went to Andrew and then, together, they went to tell Jesus about the Greeks who had come, but after that, the gospel account takes a turn and we never even learn whether they got to see Jesus.

Maybe they only got to meet the disciples and see Jesus by hearing their stories of why they followed Jesus and watching what their journey looked like.

On Friday I had the opportunity to gather with chaplains and clergy at Hood Theological Seminary and hear one such story from a man who is now the brigadier general who leads the Army and Air National Guard Chaplain Corps.

Chaplain Chisolm told his story of growing up in Mississippi in a town where his daddy was the school superintendent, and, as he told his story, he told us about the man he called Brother Wallace, who lived next door to the church where he grew up, which was just across the street from his own house. That meant Brother Wallace was a witness to all the mischief he and his brothers and sisters got into, but Chaplain Chisolm said that, even in those years when as a teenager he didn’t think much about God or faith, Brother Wallace remained a constant presence in his life. Not cajoling or coercing or chastising him but just staying connected and interested.

At 18 Chisolm enlisted in the Air National Guard and, a few weeks after he graduated from high school, he moved farther away from home, and from his parents, than he had ever gone before, to Texas for basic training. The chaplain told the story of how there, in the old World War 2 barracks at Lackland Air Force Base, he heard God speak to him and as he wrestled with what that meant, he wrote a letter to Brother Wallace. He didn’t know what to do next, but he knew Brother Wallace was someone he could trust with his questions, and who could help him see God more clearly.

More than thirty years later, when Chisolm returned home for his father’s funeral, he was speaking again with Brother Wallace, and the older gentleman reached into his coat pocket and pulled out that letter written by the young recruit in a complex time of uncertainty.

“We wish to see Jesus.”

It is a plea that any one of us has probably made in our lifetimes, and that our neighbors, young and old, may only have answered in our openness to accompany them and listen to their stories;

in our “healing actions or attitudes that [affirm] that all people are created in the image of a loving God and, therefore, need and merit, respect and dignity;”[i]

or in our willingness to show up and be what Chaplain Chisolm called “a visible sign of the Holy” in a volatile and unpredictable world.

Let us pray.
Covenant God,
You see us for what we are, but in mercy You do not cast us aside. In your steadfast love you forgive us our sin.
May we bear carry your love and mercy into a hurting world in such a way that they will see You in our words and actions.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus,
Amen.

[i] Dr. Vergel Lattimore, Hood Theological Seminary.