Fifth Sunday in Lent

John 11:1-45

One of the ways we teach how to read Scripture is to read it in four contexts; that is, to read (1) as a devotion, paying attention to what the text says about my relationship to God and who I am as a child of God and a person of faith;

(2) as a historical text that has something to say about the time and place and audience to whom it is addressed, being attentive to what those details teach us;

(3) as literature, noticing what the author is doing and what kind of writing it is. Remembering the Bible is a library of 66 books, we can expect to find different kinds of writing in it;

(4) and finally, because we are Lutheran, how do we relate our Lutheran theology and teaching to the Scripture; for example, where do we see both law and gospel and how does the text point to who Christ is for us as a community of faith?

I say all this because as we begin this fifth week of Lent, I hear the stories of Ezekiel prophesying to the dry bones and of Jesus calling to Lazarus in his tomb differently than I have in the past.

While I’m familiar with the image of breath being blown into dry bones, I hadn’t thought about how significant it was that the prophecy was spoken to the exilic people living in Babylon.

And, while I knew that in John’s Gospel, the raising of Lazarus was a catalyst for the religious leaders wanting to kill Jesus, I hadn’t read the story of Lazarus as a foreshadowing of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

Reading the texts again this time was a good reminder that every time we hear the living Word of God, we are different from the last time and God continues to speak through it in new and fresh ways.

 

So, let’s start with Ezekiel.

Unlike some of the other prophets who were warning Israel and Judah to repent before their destruction, Ezekiel is speaking to the community now living in exile in Babylon. His listeners are living in the throes of upheaval, death and hope-lessness.

And we hear God say, “[The whole house of Israel says], “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”

But the Lord God says to them: “I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.”

They are in deep mourning, but it is not without hope because God is there.

 

Similarly, in John’s Gospel,

when Jesus goes to the village where Lazarus had lived with his sisters Mary and Martha,

he hears Martha’s anger and he sees Mary,

and the other Jews who are with her,

weeping because Lazarus is dead.

Traditional Judaism teaches that the soul stays near the body for three days after death, but by the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days, leaving no doubt that he was dead.

Jesus’s first response is, like God’s response to the exiles, a statement of promise.

He says to Martha, “I AM the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they died, will live…” 

In Jesus, there is life, even when what we see is death.

We can, like the Israelites and like Martha, Mary and their friends, grieve deeply for what we have lost, but our mourning is not without hope, because God is there with us.

Importantly, even as we recognize the meaning of these stories in their historical time and place, we hear God’s promises for us today.

The Scriptures give us permission

to lament the things that cause us sadness and pain, and 
grieve our losses and the deaths we experience.

We are invited to name the ways we feel like we are beyond God’s reach and when we feel like God is distant and unresponsive.

We are encouraged to employ rigorous honesty and name that there are “times of life that really suck” and despair overshadows hope.

And we are reminded to wait on God’s redeeming action,
confident that God will fulfill God’s promises.

When Jesus makes his “I AM” statement to Martha, he is saying that in Him, even those things that were dead can be redeemed.

That is the promise we receive in the Resurrection, right?

Death does not get the final word. Our God is an active, life-giving God who conquers death.

In these stories, Israel and Lazarus are exposed. For the exiles and for the dead man, their separation from God is visible and public, but often I think we hide what is dying.

Do we think God doesn’t know us and see us?

That God cannot be trusted to restore what is life-giving?

In this fifth week of Lent,

I wonder

how are we cut off from God or feel like we’re beyond God’s reach?

what is the tomb Jesus is calling each of us out of?

what deaths have we experienced that we need to trust God to redeem?

In Lazarus, we witness this redemptive and life-giving power when Jesus commands the man who has been entombed four days:

“Lazarus, come out!”

But God’s work employs our hands. John tells us that when the dead man emerges from his tomb, he is still bound, and Jesus orders the crowd of witnesses, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

If Lazarus had come out and been ostracized or shunned by his family and neighbors, the story might have had a different outcome.

Remember the Jewish laws that prohibited touching dead bodies? We talked about these rules when we studied the story of the Good Samaritan a couple of Wednesday nights ago.

If the people who saw Lazarus emerge had not risked being rejected themselves as ritually unclean,

Lazarus would have remained bound,

just like he was inside the tomb.

Jesus shows us that

the freedom we gain in Christ is not solitary, and

new life is nurtured by relationships

and sustained in community.

As we continue in Lent toward Jerusalem and the events of Holy Week

when we will again witness God’s redemptive action in Jesus Christ,

I pray we will place ourselves in God’s loving care,

trusting in God’s promise to restore us to life and

to plant us in places where we nurture and sustain our faith and lives in Christ. 

Amen.

Baptism of our Lord

Isaiah 43:1-7

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Every year, just weeks after we rejoice at the Christmas story and how our Savior Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and days after we celebrate the magi’s gifts at Epiphany, we fast forward to this story and hear how our Lord Jesus - now a thirty-something year old man - was baptized in the waters of the river Jordan by his cousin John. The story is the hinge on the door through which we enter Jesus’ earthly ministry.

His ministry is christened with his Father’s words, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:22) These words are an affirmation of who God knows Jesus to be;
confirmation that he belongs to God;
and a declaration God loves him.

God’s words to Jesus in Luke’s gospel echo those in Isaiah 43 when God tells God’s people, “I have called you by name, you are mine…you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”

Affirmation. Confirmation. Declaration.

With these saving and redeeming words, God draws us into life with God.

In Isaiah, God is addressing an exiled Israel, a sinful and defeated community. And we hear God’s judgment in Isaiah 42 before these verses. God doesn’t pretend that the people haven’t sinned or turned away from God and God doesn’t give them license to ignore God’s commands and be self-indulgent.

But as the Psalmist recalls, God is the one who formed our inward parts and knit us together (Psalm 139), so God already knows us from the inside out.

And the same God who created us and witnesses our sinfulness and defiance says, “You are mine.”

God says, “You are my child and that is your identity – not your occupation, education or your income, not your politics or your neighborhood.” Our identity is only found in the Lord our God who created us and rescues us from bondage to sin.

And the Good News is that this same God – the One who created us and names us “children of God” - loves us despite our sin and brokenness.

That is grace.
Grace says, “You are enough.”
Grace says, “You made a mistake, but you are not a mistake.”
Grace says, “I love you still.”

More than thirty years ago now, in college, I hit a low point in my life where I could not hear those words. But through the people God put in my life like Lori, a classmate who later became my roommate, and Tim, a high school friend who was at JMU with us, God gave me ears to hear of God’s amazing grace and finally understand that grace was for me, too.

God’s promised and unconditional grace is at the heart of my ministry because as a pastor I get to tell you each how much God loves you even when you can’t hear it or believe it:

You, yes, you, are precious, honored and loved by God because you belong to God.

As we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord, we celebrate God’s words of affirmation, confirmation and declaration for Jesus and for us. 

In the Lutheran tradition, we recognize baptism as God’s action for us. God is saving. God is redeeming. “In the waters of baptism, we understand that God marks us and claims us as God’s children. In the waters of baptism, God seals God’s love for us, no matter what we might have done and what might happen.”[i]

So today, and every day, we are encouraged to remember our own baptisms – not necessarily the event of them, but the meaning of them. Wherever you find water, whether it’s at a bathroom sink or in the rain falling from the sky outside, when you feel the splash of water upon your face, thank God for claiming you, naming you and saving you.

Let us pray….

Good and gracious God,

Thank you for loving us so much that you sent your Son Jesus to live among your people that we would know how much you love us.

Thank you for knitting us together and forming us as your children and your people.

And thank you for your grace – abundant and bountiful, forgiving and loving – especially when we do not deserve it.

Show us how to love others with the love you have given us that they would know they too are precious, honored and loved.

We pray in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

---

[i] David L. Bartlett; Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration . Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

First Sunday of Advent "Close to Home: Homesick"

 Luke 21:25-36

Today’s the first Sunday in Advent, the first Sunday of the new Church year, and the beginning of the season leading up to Christmas. The season’s name which comes from the Latin word adventus meaning approach or arrival, invites us to anticipate the coming arrival of the new thing that God is doing in Jesus.

This Advent, our worship theme is “Close to Home” and I ask you to take a minute to think about how you define home.

Saying “Home is where the heart is” recognizes that “home” is not only a building or even a city. “Coming home” means returning to what’s familiar and comforting. Finding one’s “home away from home” is about belonging in a place. And when things hit “close to home” they affect us not just at the surface or in superficial ways, but deeply, in our hearts.

This Advent, we name the paradox that we both have a home in God and our home is not yet complete.

God calls each of us to make our home in God’s love and
God is still working and inviting us to participate in building God’s kingdom and a home for all.

We begin by realizing how far we are from our divine home, from the place of belonging that we are invited to find in God’s love and where the comfort of God’s peace settles upon us.

I wonder whether you remember ever being homesick?

I remember when our oldest daughter went to boarding school for her freshman year of high school. For several months her emotions were running high, and her telephone calls home were drama-filled, and at the heart of it was homesickness. It wasn’t a simple wish for favorite foods or people, but an overwhelming feeling that all was not right with her world. That important parts were missing. That nothing could help.

Our gospel text is Luke’s “little apocalypse” and while he names the suffering and tumult that exists in the world, his words are hope-filled, reminding “all who live on the whole face of the earth” (v. 35) that God is present in the midst of the chaos.

Here Luke tells us that God enters into our homesick world and promises redemption. God promises to rescue us from our sin and restore us to the life that we have in God through Jesus Christ.

That is God’s promise for all of us who yearn for our home to be made whole, made right and made well. For me, whole, right and well means
the reconciliation of broken relationships,
the resolution of conflict in places where there is no peace,
and the restoration of health to those who are ill.

Luke assures us that we will see the kingdom of God drawing near and know that God is close to us. He compares our knowing God’s presence to seeing that the trees are beginning to bud and knowing, without anyone telling us, that the season is about to change.

He urges us to be attentive and watchful, and to see how God is showing up in our lives and those around us. Where do we see God draw near today?

A rabbinical colleague told this story of how God showed up:

In Judaism, there is a ritual that happens on the one-year anniversary of a loved one’s death. The rabbi made phone calls and sent emails so their congregation would know the event was taking place on a particular evening, and then he found himself, waiting in darkness about ten minutes beforehand, when, piercing the darkness with their headlights, cars began streaming in and people got out, grasping their prayer books, and entering the building in silence. There they worshiped together, joining in a tradition that reaches back to the third or fourth century. Woven into their worship was centuries of communities coming together to grieve and to celebrate.

God shows up in our words for worship, our rituals and traditions and in our gathering together, and God also shows up in our everyday lives.

While Emma was home for Thanksgiving, we took a few minutes to go through her late grandmother’s jewelry box. Jamie’s dad Jim left it with us when he visited in October and asked for our girls to choose some pieces from it. We sat the dining room table and as we opened the drawers and looked more closely, we shared memories. There was a small devotional medallion dedicated to Mary, my mother-in-law’s class rings from high school and college and even a charm-sized football from a championship game Jim played in the 50s. It was just a few minutes of remembering and reminiscing, and it was a sacred time honoring the woman we knew as mother, mother-in-law and MomMom.

In the ordinariness of our days, in our grief and in our joy, God shows up and accompanies us in all things to make the world whole, right and well.

Let us pray.

Good and gracious God,

Thank you for your promised Son Jesus and for the redemption you promise to us all.

Help us pay attention to the surprising ways you show up to heal our homesick world and relieve suffering.

Give us courage to participate in making your kingdom known here on earth and creating a home for all.

We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Amen.

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost/ Lectionary 14A

Romans 7:15-25a

Somewhere in my childhood I learned the song that says, “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, Guess I’ll go eat worms.” There’s more to the song but those words came to mind when I read that Martin Luther described himself as “a poor stinking bag of worms.”[i]

According to Luther, Paul leaves no one on neutral ground when he declares,

All [humanity is] ungodly and wicked, and in their wickedness they suppress truth, hence they are deserving of wrath.[ii]

This is not how we typically talk about ourselves or others but this chapter in Paul’s letter to the Romans demands that we pay attention to our sin-soaked world.

Remember, for Paul, sin is a pervasive force in the world actively rebelling against God and God’s ways;

it is not merely the bad choices or moral failings any one of us commit on any given day.

In verses 18 to 20, Paul explains the futility of free choice in a sinful world.

18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.  19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.  20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. (Romans 7:18-20 NRS)

This is the bondage of the will, that even when we will to do what is right, we are deceived. We cannot, apart from Christ, accomplish the good that we want.

Until this week, I had not known that scholars debate how we should hear the “I” in this passage. New Testament professor Walter Taylor outlines five of the possibilities: [iii]

First, some think that Paul was talking about himself and his dissatisfaction with God and the law, in a diary-like entry of his pre-Christ perspective. But that reading requires that we reconcile his claims in Philippians 3 where he boasts of his accomplishments in the flesh, (4-6) and Galatians 1 where he describes his prior life persecuting the church. (15-17)

A second interpretation is that the “I” equals the Christian. But then, how do we reconcile Paul’s own words in the previous chapter where he tells us that Christians have been freed from their enslavement to sin?

A third possibility is that the “I” refers to Adam and the humanity brought about by Adam. In Romans 5 Paul describes the old and new creations and the consequences of the actions of both Adam and Christ.

And yet another view is that “I” is the sinner viewed by the person who is now justified, like a character in a television show having flashbacks to the ways things were.

Taylor’s final suggestion is supported by James Dunn’s reading of Paul in The Theology of Paul the Apostle: that the “I” is in fact the present-day Christian, living in the “already -- but not yet.”

This is also where, I believe, we get Luther’s own simul iustus et peccator “at the same time justified and yet a sinner.”[iv]

“Saint and sinner” does not mean, as Paul has already decried, that we continue sinning willfully, but that we surrender to Christ, fully aware of what we cannot do.

The story of Cain in Genesis 4 describes Eve’s firstborn and a confrontation with God where God tells the man, “Sin is crouching at your door.” (Genesis 4:7, NIV)

We don’t like to talk about sin and we especially don’t want to examine the power sin holds over our own lives and its place in the systems we live under. But our ignorance of it doesn’t diminish its power or reality. Sin is crouching at our door.

It has the power, as God tells Cain, to make us “a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” (Genesis 4:12 NRS) It has the power to poison our relationships with each other, to infect the body of Christ and to weaken us. And the law is no help, because, on our own, we cannot fulfill the law.

But we have the remedy: Christ, our deliverer.

When Paul asks in verse 24, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24 NRS), he knows the answer. And so do we.

As Luther writes,

since God has taken my salvation out of my hands into his, making it depend on his choice and not mine, and has promised to save me, not by my own work or exertion but by his grace and mercy, I am assured and certain both that he is faithful and will not lie to me, and also that he is too great and powerful for any demons or any adversities to be able to break him or snatch him from me.[v]

God has rescued us!

And in Christ, we are no longer poor stinking bags of worms. In Christ, we are planted in the House of the Lord (Psalm 92), in the land of faithfulness, to flourish and bear fruit.

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Amen.

[i] Martin Luther.  “Admonition Against Insurrection.” (1522).
[ii] Martin Luther, “Bondage of the Will” (1525) in Luther’s Theological Writings. 169.
[iii] Walter F. Taylor, Jr. “Commentary of Romans 7:15-25a.” Workingpreacher.org, Luther Seminary.
[iv] Martin Luther. Romans. 114-115.
[v] Martin Luther, “Bondage of the Will”. 193.

Redemption

When I was a girl, my grandparents had a studio. The batiks my grandmommy had made hung there, and there a darkroom for developing film, and there was a pottery wheel and a small kiln. My granddaddy was over six feet tall, and I think the wheel stood as tall as me. I remember climbing into the metal seat. I'm pretty sure the pedal was on the ground. I want to remember that he pressed the pedal while I worked with the clay, but I don't have any real memory of that. I may have just clambered around on it, enjoying being tall for once.

My grandparents had all kinds of pottery in their house: raku vases and wood fired plates and platters, and an assortment of mugs and small drinking cups, too. I soon learned the joy of wandering through galleries and pottery shows and admiring the array of shapes, textures and glazes.

So this summer when I had the opportunity to take a beginner's pottery class at the community college, I signed up.

You start with a round ball of clay that hasn't been worked too much already and then you have a choice. You can hand build piece, or you can go to a wheel.

Working at a wheel means you have to center the clay on the wheel. Experienced potters make centering the clay look easy. It's not. A variance of a fraction of an inch will start the clay vibrating and, unless you can force it into submission, at some point, you just have to scrape it off and put it in the scrap bag where it can be rolled into a new ball later.

The same thing happens in quilting when you think no one will notice that 1/8 of an inch variance in your pieces and then your flying geese have their wings clipped when they're pieced. Or in knitting when you neglect to knit up a swatch and wind up with a sweater too big, or too small. The first lesson is do the work! There are no shortcuts. (That said, there are kind instructors who center your clay so you can create something that day!)

My first completed piece had a very wobbly edge and a belly, but my second piece had a nice lip. I took what I made and wrapped it in light plastic sheeting and left it on a shelf after the first class.

Then it was time to unwrap the piece and use my tools to trim and sand the piece and sign it. My great-aunt used to sign her pieces "Mary Clio" in script but I decided "Christina" was too many letters and chose to sign my first and last initials.

I made two more pieces. The one on the right had very thick walls but the fourth began to look like something.

When I came back the next week the pieces had gone through a bisque firing that makes the pieces porous and ready for glaze. That's when your imagination gets to work because none of the glazes look the way they will when they have been fired. You have an idea from other finished pieces but the color of the clay and whether you layer the glazes will affect the end result. With no small amount of trepidation, I glazed my pieces and crossed my fingers.

Then I witnessed something incredible. All of the faults in those pieces were erased in that second firing and the pieces were transformed! They were real and they were beautiful.

These were no longer balls of clay, untouched and lacking shape or depth. They were no longer merely a beginner's clumsy attempts.  The wobbly edge on my first piece became wave like. The second piece may hold the ashes from the palms burned for Ash Wednesday next year. The bowl with the thick walls has a nearly even stripe around it and the last bowl glistens under its solid black glaze. Looking at these pieces at any point in time in their creation, I never imagined what they would become. It was beyond my understanding to know.

One of my daughters tells me I always bring the conversation back to God talk, and I'll plead guilty, but seeing these pieces reminded me how little I know about the reach of God's activity in our world; it is beyond my understanding too.And yet, I'm invited into life, to try and stumble and try again, confident God will bring redemption and transformation.