18th Sunday after Pentecost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fruit that God expects from us is love:

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

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

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

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

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

Let us pray…

Good and gracious God,

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

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

that we would embrace Your forgiveness,

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

We pray in the name of your Son Jesus,

Amen.

---

[i] Walter Brueggemann. Isaiah 1-39.

[ii] Brian Stoffregen.

16th Sunday after Pentecost

In the gospel today we hear Jesus tell Peter and the other disciples another parable, a story that used ordinary settings and objects that were familiar to his audience to teach them something about God.

Parables sometimes feel like riddles or folktales like Br’er Rabbit stories or Aesop’s fables. We read them and try to figure out what Jesus meant.

But theologian and Presbyterian pastor Frederick Buechner offers this advice about reading Scripture: “Don’t start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks.”

When we listen to the parables, listening for the questions is fruitful.

First, Why is the vineyard owner doing the hiring? Wouldn’t the manager be in charge of finding workers?

Second, why doesn’t the landowner hire everyone he needs the first time? Instead, the parable tells us he goes out every three hours all through the day and finds new workers.

Third, who were the workers who were still there at the end of the day, the ones who told the landowner no one had hired them?

And fourth, why does the landowner tell the manager to reverse the order? Was he making a point or was he simply sympathetic to those like the Turners or the Valentines who know that always being at the end of the line gets old?

But the question I hear most clearly is the one the text explicitly asks. When a grumbling worker confronts the landowner after everyone received the same pay, the landowner asks,

“Are you envious because I am generous?”

The parable isn’t about the workers at all. It doesn’t matter how much effort or discipline they demonstrated, and it doesn’t matter when they showed up.

What matters is that the landowner in the parable, who we can now understand as God, generously disperses an abundant grace that exceeds any measure we can devise.

Our relationship to the God who created us,

who calls us into the world as God’s children,

who equips us with gifts for every vocation we pursue,

who sends us into the world to share God’s love and mercy —

that relationship has nothing to do with human effort,

or goodness, or work,

and everything to do with who God is

and what God has already done.

Too often we look at the person next to us and ask whether they deserve what they have, or whether they are being good stewards of their belongings.

Division and resentment, envy and suspicion infect our relationships, and instead of participating in a kingdom where all are fed or housed, welcomed and belonging, we turn inward and become self-centered.  Like the workers in the parable, we become so preoccupied with others that we forget the richness of the grace that we ourselves have experienced.

In the parable, Jesus says that the right response to great generosity isn’t to see if we all got what we deserved, but to respond with gratitude and thanksgiving, recognizing that all we have is given to us by a generous God who provides for us and wants us all to be fed and nourished, whole and healed.

I, for one, am really grateful that God’s grace breaks any scale or measure, any accounting system or logic. Every day I do something that falls short of the grace I’ve been given — in thought, word or deed, or in what I’ve done or failed to do — but God’s love for me is abounding and steadfast. That’s the promise we’re given, when we are brought to the foot of the cross by the recognition of our sin and our utter inability to do anything about it; God is there with us, loves us, forgives us, and adopts us as sons and daughters. It doesn’t matter how often or how loudly we tell God he’s doing it wrong, God still insists on loving each one of us immeasurably.

The question we hear from the landowner prompts other questions, too, like “What are the places in our lives that are places of abundance?” and “What are the places where we’ve been blessed and we didn’t deserve it or earn it?” These questions prompt us to recognize God’s generosity in our everyday lives.

As part of my story of call, I often tell people how every congregation where we have worshiped since Casey was two years old had female pastors; time and time again, wherever I was, I witnessed ordained women leading ministry and sharing the Gospel. I didn’t know until seminary how unusual that still was.

Another story I tell is the memory of a quilt we received when Casey was born. Lots of babies are given quilts, but this one stands out in my memory because Casey was born just a few weeks into a new school year and it was Jamie’s first year teaching there, so the woman who sewed the quilt hardly knew him. The quilt was pretty but it was the gift of her time that was a precious blessing to us.

As we follow Jesus together and listen for the questions that we hear in God’s Word, may we remember to watch for all the ways that God’s grace defies all of our human systems of rank and merit and counts each of us beloved and forgiven.

Let us pray…

Good and gracious God,

Thank you for your gift of grace, unearned and without measure, that you give each of us;

Teach us to respond to your generous mercy with thanksgiving and rest in the promise of your steadfast love for us.

Help us recognize your abundance and not be captive to fear or envy.

By your Spirit, strengthen us to share your love and mercy with the world.

In the name of your Son Jesus,

Amen.

15th Sunday after Pentecost

In the gospel this morning, Peter asks Jesus how often he should forgive his neighbor. After all, he’s heard Jesus teaching what we hear in the Lord’s prayer from Matthew 6:

if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Mt. 6:14-15)

In his head, he knows forgiveness is important. So when he asks Jesus his question, Peter makes what he thinks is a generous offer, asking if he is to forgive seven times. But Jesus tells him not seven, but seventy-seven.

Now, that’s a lot of forgiveness when someone has angered you or betrayed you, let alone if they have caused pain to you or someone you love.

Pastor Delmer Chilton, a Lutheran pastor who’s served congregations in Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina, tells a story about something he’s seen take place in churches in the hollars of Appalachia, a tradition that’s known as “a flower service”.

What happens is that everyone brings bouquets of flowers and places them on a table in front of the pulpit. These aren’t formal arrangements like we order from Mike’s or Holly’s, but large fistfuls of flowers from the garden and wildflowers from the fields.

Then the minister preaches a sermon, reminding people of Our Lord’s admonition to make peace with our neighbor before kneeling at the altar to pray to God.

After the sermon, everyone in the congregation comes and retrieves their flowers, and begins to go to every other person in the church to apologize for any hurt feelings or harsh words or misunderstandings.

Every person. From the oldest to the youngest, everyone talks to everyone else, not caring how long it takes.

And after the words of forgiveness have been spoken and heard, people exchange their flowers, sealing the restoration of their relationship and then they move on to another sister or brother in Christ.[i]

With his answer, basically, Jesus tells Peter, “Go on forgiving, as long it takes.”

Where true forgiveness demands a merciful and generous spirit, Peter’s question revealed only how miserly our human understanding of forgiveness can be.

First, forgiveness doesn’t mean “forgive and forget.”

“Forgive and forget” is one of those sayings that has worked its way into our culture, but has no basis in Scripture. And, forgiving and forgetting are not the same.

In the parable Jesus tells, the king doesn’t say the slave’s debt is forgotten; in fact, when the slave fails to respond mercifully to the man who is indebted to him, the king holds the slave accountable for the full cost of the debt he had owed. Importantly, forgiving doesn’t mean tolerating unacceptable behavior and it doesn’t mean remaining vulnerable to additional pain.

Second, forgiveness isn’t earned.

Too often, we cast ourselves as the king in the parable because we want to be judge of whether another person is worthy of forgiveness. Calling them to account, we insist on witnessing repentance, reform or, at the very least, an apology. And while we are called to repentance in Scripture, it is not a condition of God’s forgiveness.

Look at the story of the prodigal son whose father races to meet him and welcomes him home, before any words have been shared. (Luke 15) The model of forgiveness that we have is God’s unmerited, unmeasurable, and unrestrained forgiveness.

Look at the cross. Jesus was crucified, knowing his disciples had fled in fear and Peter had denied him; and yet, God does not withhold forgiveness, waiting for us to respond appropriately, or at all.

To illustrate what divine forgiveness is, Jesus tells this parable where a slave owes a debt at the largest magnitude known, a sum equivalent to two hundred thousand years of wages.

An impossible debt.

And instead of being cast as the king, suddenly, we realize we are the slaves, who have received an unexpected, extravagant and transformative gift from God. And, even when we have heard about God’s grace and we think we know what it means, we are surprised again by its magnitude.

Throughout his teachings in the catechisms, Martin Luther shows that “[God declares] that all people are forgiven, loved and blessed simply because God says so. God’s love of the ungodly is what changes the world, not human efforts to try and be like God.”[ii]

Importantly, the torture the one slave returns to is not being shackled and paraded down the street, beaten and flayed, or executed on a cross, but “the torment of refusing forgiveness.”[iii]

When we refuse to offer forgiveness, and instead hold onto hurts and resentments, we suffer. Seeds of bitterness are sown and wounds fester. We are completely and wholly changed by God’s grace but instead of letting go of pain, we wallow in it because it’s so well known to us.

When we refuse to receive the forgiveness we’ve been given, when we hold onto our sin, our shame and see ourselves as lacking worth or value, we are defying God and refusing to let go of the ‘old Adam,’ the person who has been put to death on the cross. Like the unforgiving slave, we are refusing the new life we are given in faith in Christ.

Remember, when Jesus told his followers, “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”? (Mt. 16:24-26) Well, this is how we lose our life:

by living, forgiven and forgiving.

We let the old self die, remembering God’s promise that “in baptism, we are clothed once and for all, with a forgiveness woven for us by Jesus’ death and resurrection.”[iv]

Answering Peter, Jesus reminds him, and us, that our life in the gathered community of his followers depends on the wholeness of our relationships with God and with each other, and forgiveness sustains our life together.

Let us pray…
Good and Gracious God,
Thank you for your overwhelming mercy to each one of us.
You call us to show forgiveness to one another as we have received forgiveness, living in response to the love and grace you have first given us, by faith in Your Son Jesus.
By your Holy Spirit, empower us to be merciful to the world around us.
Amen.

[i] Chilton, Delmer. The Gospel According to Aunt Mildred: Stories of Family and Faith (p. 103). Brasstown Publishing. Kindle Edition.
[ii] Martin Lohrmann. The Book of Harmony. 51.
[iii] Lectionary Lab.
[iv] Robert Capon. Parables of Kingdom, Grace, Judgment. 193. 

13th Sunday after Pentecost

In his letter to the Romans, Paul presents the gospel of Jesus Christ and explains God’s unmerited gift of forgiveness that we call grace. Remember how last week I said that Christian faith is not “if/then” but “because/therefore”? Well, Paul begins this twelfth chapter, “Therefore….”

Because of the grace, justification and faith that happens by God’s saving work for the whole world, therefore we are entrusted with a responsibility to live out of our faith and show God’s love to the world.

And beginning in this chapter, he describes what living by faith in Christ looks like in our daily lives:

It looks like a cross-shaped life and a cross-shaped church.[i]

It is a life, individually and as a congregation, that is shaped by love, following Jesus in loving both his followers and the crowds, without reservation, and, at the last, loving even his enemies, and praying for them, while he hung on the cross.

Paul sees the Church – the ekklesia – as the practice field for living out this covenant of love.[ii] Now, practice fields aren’t always pretty to look at; they can be muddy and sodden with rain, or sunbaked and hardened, but they are where people learn to work together and where you discover how your gifts complement one another.

Discipleship, and especially the church, is about how we come together and live out this new life that we have been given in faith. It is the life that we have promised to support Hudson and his parents in, a life shaped by our baptismal promises and affirmed again this morning.

In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther explained that the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies us – or makes us holy, preparing us for this life of faith in action. But it still takes practice.

Some of you know what sharing highs and lows means. It’s where you name a time where you saw God active in your life recently — a time of celebration, an accomplishment, a place where you encountered the Holy. And you name a time when things weren’t so great and maybe you wondered where God was in that moment —disappointment, illness or when trust was broken. Sharing highs and lows is a faith practice.

One of my highs last week was when a neighbor who I hadn’t yet met came over and finished mowing the grass when he saw I’d stopped because the belt on our mower broke; this week one of my highs was getting to celebrate my mom’s birthday with her and Curt.

But I’ve had lows too, like many of you, watching the havoc in Texas and Louisiana as the floodwaters rose, and then finding out my seminary classmate’s husband died on Wednesday in Wisconsin, two days before their son turned four.

Practicing finding God in our everyday lives, and not just on mountaintops and in Spirit-filled places like churches, teaches us to pay attention and to recognize God is with us during school and work, play and rest, joy and grief.

It also helps us reflect on how we have responded to the world around us, and whether we have embodied the love that Paul describes here. To measure whether we have served others, and persevered in prayer; whether we have overcome hate and evil with good.

Importantly, here, too, it’s not “if/then”: “if I got it right, then God will love me.” But “because/ therefore”: “Because God loves me, therefore I want to respond to others with love, with peace and with joy” and thankfully, “God loves me even when I mess it up.”

Paul knows what a life filled with evil, hatred and zeal against God looks like. He persecuted the church himself before his conversion. Here he is inviting “believers to live differently and to live out their calling both within the faith community and the wider society.”[iii]

It is the faith-filled lives that are on display when congregations from the northwest suburbs of Houston go into the city’s flooded sanctuaries to help them begin mucking out;

when interfaith leaders from California and Pennsylvania deploy on spiritual care response teams with the Red Cross to care for the people in Texas and Louisiana, and

when a teenager planning to go to next year’s Youth Gathering in Houston watches the footage from the floods and tells her dad, “We’ve got work to do.”

Truly, we all have work to do. The cross is a reminder of the suffering that God accompanies us in and a stronger reminder still of God’s victory over it. By our baptism in Christ, we are washed clean and given new life each day, to live cross-shaped lives and be a cross-shaped church.

Let us pray…
Holy God, Our Redeemer,
Thank you for the gifts of grace and faith that you have given us;
Help us follow Your Son Jesus and love our neighbors and community without restraint;
Empower us by your Holy Spirit to persevere and practice a living and loving faith in our actions and our words.
Amen.

[i] Bartlett, David L.; Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Feasting on the Word: Year A volume) (Kindle Location 822). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[ii] ibid Kindle Location 728.
[iii] ibid Kindle Locations 669-670.

12th Sunday after Pentecost

In today’s gospel, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” While we wouldn’t be surprised to hear a political pollster ask, “What are people saying?”, when Jesus sits down with his disciples, he isn’t polling popular opinion. Sociologists describe ancient Mediterranean peoples as “ ‘other-oriented people’ who depend on others to provide them with a sense of who they are.”[i] Identity was understood as what significant others said, not your own perception.

So, who do people say that Jesus is?
A prophet, a healer and physician, a teacher?

It is a question that people have wrestled with for centuries as they try to understand him. Since the fourth century, the Church has had a common confession in the words of the Nicene Creed because early leaders talked about this very question and determined where they could agree. And today, there is even a church word — Christology — that encompasses the whole study of who Jesus is and what his life, ministry and death teach us.

After hearing the answers given by his disciples, Jesus asks his band of followers who have witnessed his teaching, healing and feeding first-hand, “But who do you say that I am?”

If someone asked you that this morning here in the sanctuary, you might rely on the Church’s confession, naming Jesus the “God’s only son, our Lord.” And, like us, Peter answers with doctrine.

But as we’ll see when his story continues, our confession of who Jesus demands more than religious doctrine. John 3:16 tells us that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son…in order that the world would be saved by him.” The Living God loves us and gives us Jesus that we will know God, that we will have not just a religion, but a relationship.

Father Richard Rohr teaches, “God refuses to be known except through loving, trustful relationship. You cannot know God with your mind alone.”[ii]

So when Jesus asks us, “Who do you say that I am?”, let’s ask ourselves, “Why is Jesus important?” and “How does it feel to belong to Jesus’ family?”

And let’s remember that just as God invites us to answer these questions, God is the actor and the subject of any sentence we say about faith. Faith by grace is not “if/then” but “because/therefore”:

Because God loves us, therefore we are made children of God.
Because God loves us, therefore we are forgiven of our sin.
Because God loves us, therefore we are empowered by the Holy Spirit and sent into the world.
Because God loves us, therefore we are different.

Our confession of Jesus is lived out in our words and actions throughout our lives.

It’s one thing to confess “the Son of the living God” in a pew on Sunday morning but what will your answer be the next time someone asks you about Jesus, whether you are in the grocery store, at a ballgame, or on the sidewalk uptown?

The first disciples lived in a world where Caesar declared himself the Messiah, and the judgment of the Pharisees dictated who was acceptable, who was lovable, and who was worthy of God’s involvement in their lives. They had already left their families behind to follow Jesus, and now, they were taking the risk of confessing that there wasn’t any man-made idol or identity that was greater importance than who they were as Jesus’ disciples and children of God. This is the cost of discipleship that defines following Jesus, and its demand on us today isn’t any less.

So, who do you say Jesus is? How do you speak about the transforming power of the living God, whose abundant love and forgiveness renews us each day?

Your words about who Jesus is matter in a world where language about God is misused to condone violence, to debase women and to shred human dignity; where shame is used as a weapon; and where people are afraid to trust.

Remember that because God loves you, therefore you may speak with confidence.

Let us pray…[iii]
Holy God,
We give you thanks for your child, Jesus.
In him people saw the courage of John the Baptizer,
the fiery passion of Elijah, the faithfulness of Jeremiah.
Though he was killed, you raised him to life
and revealed him to us as your chosen Messiah.
By the faith given us by grace,
teach us to follow him
that our words and actions would be witnesses to your love for the world.
Amen.

[i] Malina & Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, quoted by Rev. Brian Stoffregen in his exegetical notes
[ii] Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance.
[iii] Adapted from Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources 

10th Sunday after Pentecost

Since ancient times, water has symbolized chaos. In Homer’s Odyssey, Poseidon curses Odysseus to wander at sea ten years.

In Hebrew thought, water was emblematic of anything opposed to Yahweh and so, in the Old Testament, time and again, we have stories of how God triumphs over the waters,

beginning with the creation story in Genesis 1 when God separated the waters that above and below and named them;

in Genesis 6 when God brought a flood upon the earth that destroyed everything that was evil;

in Exodus 14 when God drove the Red Sea back and turned the sea into dry land so that the Israelites could escape from Egypt’s Pharaoh;

and in Joshua 3 when God cut off the overflowing waters of the Jordan river so that the nation of Israel could cross over to Canaan.

In the New Testament, for followers of Jesus, water and storms still represent chaos, whether it is in the meager living earned by fishermen who drop their nets and follow him, or the two lake-crossing stories where the disciples encounter storms.

Amid the chaos of the world, whether it threatens our safety and security, our livelihood or our future, God remains sovereign over all the other powers and principalities that are at work.

In Matthew’s telling of the lake crossings, both in chapter 8 and here in chapter 14, Jesus addresses the disciples as “you of little faith.”

What he doesn’t do is give them ‘seven habits of highly faithful people’ or prescribe a twelve-step plan to achieve deeper faith.

After all, they cannot, by their own effort or strength,
increase their faith, because,
after all, it is a gift of grace.

Jesus just names what he sees – people debilitated by their fear – and then he says to them,
“Do not be afraid.”

They are the same words the angel Gabriel speaks to Joseph when he learns that Mary is pregnant;
that Jesus teaches when he compares God’s love for us to that for two sparrows;
that God speaks to the disciples when they witness the transfiguration of Christ on the mountaintop;
And that first the angel, and then Jesus himself, says to the women at the tomb on the day of his resurrection.

His words do not offer mere reassurance; they offer a promise. A promise that God is present in this place, in your life, in the things you do not – that you cannot - understand.

“Do not be afraid.”

Jesus doesn’t say they should not be afraid, or mock them for being afraid.

That’s comforting in a week where the headlines included threats by and against North Korea; torch-bearing protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia and the return of rising floodwaters in New Orleans;
it is good news in a world where suffering is evident on the faces of people living in poverty and homelessness;
where hope can be elusive and where death is inescapable,
whether it arrives unexpectedly or after a diagnosis.

There is a lot about the world where we live that escalates our fears and makes us afraid. But, Jesus doesn’t dismiss our fears; instead he reminds us that our fears do not go unanswered.

In this Gospel, Jesus reached out his hands to Peter and called him to himself; he grabbed him and did not let him go,
just as he did for the world two thousand years ago, when he reached out his hands to be crucified.

Jesus’ death and resurrection demonstrated that God’s power is greater than any political system or civic leader; God is sovereign over the chaos.

But, did you notice that Matthew said Jesus “made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead…?” He does the same thing to us whenever we gather in the naves of our churches. The word “nave” comes from the Latin navis – it’s the same word that gives us Navy and navigation; it’s the word for “boat” or “ship.”

God calls the Church – us, puts us into a boat and sets us out on the storm-tossed water, into the chaos of the world, to tell the world about the one God, who is our Lord and Savior, our Creator and Redeemer.

Staying tied up in port, where we know our surroundings and where we can provide for all our needs is not acceptable. Neither is merely testing the waters, or venturing a little way out and setting anchor in a protected cove. In Second Timothy, the author of the epistle writes,

6 …I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; 7 for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are called to follow Jesus and sent into the world and accompanied by God’s grace to go and love our neighbors, even when we are afraid.

We each can remember an iconic image of someone whose life has embodied what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus:
Pope Francis washing the feet of Muslim migrants and kissing them on Holy Thursday;
Martin Luther King, Jr. walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma;
Martin Luther on trial at the Diet of Worms saying, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

But God doesn’t stop with the people who are known to history.

Sometimes a disciple looks like my friend Christine, now a Lutheran pastor in Iowa, who spent four months as an ecumenical accompanier in Hebron in Palestine, walking alongside Palestinians who were under Israeli occupation while their homes and their wells were destroyed by soldiers.

On Friday night it looked like a group of interfaith religious leaders gathering in St. Paul’s Memorial Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, praying and singing before they marched in silence on Saturday while another group of people including KKK and neo-Nazis rallied in a nearby park; following Jesus, the clergy were witnessing to the power of God’s presence and love to triumph over hate-filled speech and racism.

But God doesn’t stop with pastors and clergy leaders either.

God calls each one of us, too, to do God’s work in our everyday lives, to live by faith, instead of fear,
and trust God’s promises that God is with us,
grabs onto us, and won’t let go.

Let us pray…
Holy God,
Thank you for your Son Jesus
who comes to us amidst the storms of destruction,
pulling us up from the despair that would swallow us
and with a word, brings his terrifying peace.[i]
By faith, you have made us your disciples and given us the power to be your hands and feet in the world.
May your Holy Spirit give us courage and calm our fears as we go
out into the world to tell others about your miraculous love for each one of us.
Amen.

[i] Laughing Bird liturgical resources. 

9th Sunday after Pentecost

In today’s gospel the parables that Jesus has been teaching are brought to life as the disciples and the crowd witness an abundance that satisfies everyone’s needs,
appearing out of the smallest of beginnings.

Between the last parables we heard and this passage, Herod has murdered John the Baptist, and Jesus has just learned of his cousin’s death. Matthew tells us that he retreats to a deserted place, alone, leaving his disciples and escaping the crowds that had been with them.

When the crowds follow him from the city, Jesus sees them and has compassion for them and Matthew says that he goes to them and heals their sick.

While there are other healing and feeding stories included in each of the gospels, this is the only story that appears in all four, which demands that we ask, “What does this story say about God?”

First of all, I think it challenges us to see God in the barren and desert places in our lives. Sometimes we talk about that barrenness as the stark places in our lives where we feel alone or isolated, stripped of faith and cut off from the world and from God’s love.

But when we recall the temptations of Jesus and the wilderness where he journeyed for forty days, like we do during Lent, we reflect on how emptying ourselves can make room for God to act in new ways in our lives. God is in the desert with us.

This story reminds us what Jesus and the ancient desert fathers and mothers, after him, knew: that in finding solitude, we create a space where God can act, where we can,
as the priest Henri Nouwen says, “shake off our compulsions and dwell in the gentle healing presence of our Lord.”[i]

In that same space “Christ remodels us in his own image and frees us.”[ii] And, following Jesus, we are able to imitate his own compassion, “go[ing] with others into the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely and broken.”[iii]

Jesus wasn’t the first person to be called a Messiah in those times, but uniquely, he responded with compassion to the people he encountered. When he saw that they were hurting and in pain, wracked by illness, he healed them. When he saw they were hungry, he didn’t send them away; he fed them.

Or perhaps, more accurately, he told his disciples to feed them.

This story demonstrates to us how God calls us to participate in God’s work on earth. Next month we’ll again celebrate our churchwide day of service on what is called “God’s Work. Our Hands.” Sunday.

God enacts grace and mercy through us!

As disconcerting as that may be sometimes, it is also a sign of God’s grace that God works through each one of us to meet the human needs that present all around us.

The disciples were surprised by God’s invitation, too. When they ask Jesus to send the crowds away, he tells them there’s no need. (v. 16) Looking out at the vast crowd of men and women and children, they despair, telling Jesus, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." (v. 17)

In the face of overwhelming need, the disciples have forgotten Jesus’ instructions to them about how to pray and to trust in God for their daily bread. They have forgotten his admonition not to worry about what they will eat or drink. (Matt. 6)

Like them, when we witness suffering in our neighbors and community, or in our nation and the world, it is easy to forget what we already know about God and God’s promises.
It is easy to become overwhelmed, to look at the resources we have readily available and to feel hopeless.
It is easy to send people away and tell them to look for help someplace else, to hope others will step in and meet their needs.

But God doesn’t promise us that discipleship is easy.
Instead, this story offers us another promise:
that God prepares us and equips us, that God provides for us.

In his compassion, then and now, Jesus offers presence and healing; we experience those benefits at this holy table where we receive bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus, given for us for the forgiveness of sin, and it is at this table where we are made whole, nourished and fed and sent out into the world as God’s people, equipped with the transforming knowledge of God’s love for all.

Lutheran preacher David Lose suggests that “instead of [worrying that we do not have enough – not enough children, not enough people, not enough choir members – that] we give thanks for what we have, put it to use for those [in need] and see just how far God might
stretch, and indeed, multiply it.”[iv]

Here at Ascension, we have an abundance of physical space and land that is used by Lutheran Men in Mission, Lutheran Services Carolinas, and local quilters;
we have rich relationships where people know each other’s stories and notice when someone is hurting; and,
we have ministries where we feed hungry neighbors, honor military veterans, and generously give to meet needs throughout our community and the Church.

We are encouraged this morning to give thanks for the ways God has already equipped us to meet the needs that surround us, to rely on God, and to witness God’s surprising grace in our life together.

Let us pray…
Nourishing and nurturing God,
We give thanks for your Son, our Lord and Savior whose life teaches us how much You love us.
Lead us by Your Spirit to the places where people’s needs are greatest.
Teach us to empty ourselves and make room for You to act in our lives.
Feed us that we will have strength for the journey and to answer your call to serve others.
We pray in Jesus’ name,
Amen.

[i] Henri Nouwen. The Way of the Heart. 30.
[ii] ibid, 32.
[iii] ibid, 34.
[iv] David Lose, In the Meantime.