Lectionary 11A

Exodus 19:2-8a

Matthew 9:35 - 10:8

Let us pray…

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.  

Today’s gospel text is from Matthew 

and as we read Matthew alongside Exodus this morning, 

it’s helpful to remember that in his narrative, 

Matthew casts Jesus as a new teacher, like Moses. Matthew’s mainly Jewish audience would have recognized the parallels that Matthew draws between the two men.

 

It’s here in Matthew’s narrative that we get five speeches or discourses by Jesus, mirroring the early tradition that attributed the first five books of the Bible to Moses. 

While the Pentateuch begins with Genesis and the creation stories, 

in Matthew, Jesus’ first discourse is the Sermon on the Mount, and the second discourse begins with the naming of the apostles 

that we have in our text today.

 

But before that happens, we meet Jesus as he’s traveling around Galilee, teaching in the synagogues and healing women, children and others with a host of afflictions. 

 

And as he travels, Jesus encounters more and more people whom he says are “like sheep without a shepherd.” (v. 36) 

 

We don’t know where the shepherds are, 

or why they have deserted the people, but like Jesus, 

we know that “sheep without a shepherd” are vulnerable.

 

Earlier in Scripture, in the Hebrew Bible, the psalms describe God’s people as sheep and the Lord as our shepherd. (Ps. 23) and declare that “The LORD is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.” (Ps. 95:7)

And then, the prophet Ezekiel warns Israel that their shepherds are neglecting their care for God’s people, their flock. The prophet told the people that the God of Israel would be their true shepherd. (Ezekiel 34)

 

Luke’s gospel tells the parable of the shepherd who leaves the 99 to find the one who is missing. (15:1-7) And in John’s gospel, Jesus says, “I AM the good shepherd.” (John 10)

 

Throughout Scripture, the message is clear: shepherds are the ones who lead and care for God’s people.

 

But when Jesus sees the crowds following him, he realizes that 

the people who had called themselves shepherds 

have abandoned God’s people, 

leaving them without green pastures or clean water 

or protection against predators or evil. 

And Matthew says Jesus is moved with compassion for the people. (9: 36)

 

But before we go any farther in the gospel text, 

let’s go back to the Exodus text. 

 

There, we hear a conversation between God and Moses after the people of Israel have reached the wilderness of Sinai. God recalls God’s covenant with God’s people. 

 

We can understand “covenant” as another word for “relationship”. Keeping God’s covenant is about living in relationship with the God who created us and loves us.

 

As God recalls this covenant or relationship with God’s people, 

God tells Moses to remind the people 

“how [God] bore them on eagles’ wings….” (19:4)

 

And while the hymn “On Eagles’ Wings” beautifully captures this imagery and that of Psalm 91 of our being carried upon eagles’ wings to safety, and sheltered by God, I couldn’t help but also remember the scene in The Hobbit when Bilbo, Thorin and company are fighting the Wargs and the Great Eagles swoop in and rescue them from the fiery cliffs. 

 

Whatever image appeals to you, 

what we witness is an awesome, majestic power.

 

God, whose creative power is responsible for the whole earth (v.5), and who calls us beloved, bears or lifts us up. (v. 4)

 

And to make it even more dramatic, the Hebrew word used here (nasa/nasah) is also used to mean that our sins are taken up or forgiven. 

 

In God’s majesty and divinity, 

God rescues us from bondage,

forgiving our sins 

– those things that separate or draw us away from God,

delivering us into the shelter of God’s love,

and inviting us into covenant or relationship with God.

 

Both God and Jesus both respond to God’s people because of the steadfast, faithful and everlasting love they have for us. (Psalm 100) 

 

 

Remember how Matthew’s narrative patterns Jesus’ ministry after Moses? 

 

Earlier in Exodus, Moses, with encouragement from his father-in-law Jethro, had given authority to trusted elders in the community to help him lead.  

And, here in Matthew, Jesus names the twelve apostles and shares the mission of proclaiming the Good News with them. 

 

And now, 

rooted in the relationship we have with God, 

confident that we are loved by God, 

we too are sent out to do the work that we find Jesus doing in Galilee – the proclamation of the Good News.

 

Like Jesus, and Moses before him, 

none of us can do this work alone. 

 

And thankfully, we won’t.

As we are reminded in Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. (5:5) 

 

We are being led by the Holy Spirit, 

and given authority from God, as followers of Jesus, 

to share the transforming power of God’s love in our lives, 

to tell what we know 

and to bear witness to the ways that God has lifted us up 

and freed us to live as God’s beloved in the world.

 

A few weeks ago, at the closing worship of our North Carolina Synod Gathering, Bishop Hartner put it this way:

If we try to go it alone, we won’t get very far; we won’t have what we need. But when we recognize that we are co-missioned, that we are tasked with collaboration, we will have everything that we need.

 

As we look ahead to where God may be leading our congregation next, my prayer is that we will be bold in telling our stories of what God has done for our congregation and for us individually. 

And as we listen well to each other and to our neighbors, 

may we notice where God may be inviting us into ministry together, all for the sake of the world.

 

Let us pray…

Holy God, 

We give thanks that you rescue us and deliver us from the things that would separate us from you and your steadfast love.

We give you thanks for your Son Jesus who shows us how to invite others to accompany us and work together for the sake of the world you love. 

Help us live in relationship with one another and with you, living out our covenant as your beloved community.

We pray in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

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

Second Sunday in Lent

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Luke 13:31-35

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she should go, and the cat tells her, “That depends on where you are going.” When Alice replies, “I don’t know” the cat says, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

The same thing holds true for discipleship. We can say that in Lent we want to “return to God with all our hearts”, but discipleship isn’t about following blindly or without thinking; it is our response to the knowledge of grace that we have first been given. We can not return to an unknown God.

The Word of God tells us who God is. Last Sunday we heard Moses recount the promises God made to our ancestors in faith and heard how those promises are woven into our identity at baptism: living in the faith we have received, we have confidence in God because we know that we are God’s beloved children and we know what God has accomplished already.

Except when we don’t.
Because sometimes it is hard to believe.

Today, in the Genesis text, we meet Abram, the patriarch of our faith, and of Judaism and Islam. Earlier in the book, God made a three-fold promise to Abram:
first, that his name will be known;
second, that his descendants will be numerous and become a great nation,
and third, that he will be rewarded with land. 
These three things are what God will do for Abram.

But in this text, Abram has grown tired of waiting on God and he is arguing with God, questioning God’s faithfulness. He is struggling to believe.

Graciously, God doesn’t get angry, strike him down or revoke His promises. Instead God takes Abram outside and tells him to look up at the sky, saying, “Look toward heaven and count the stars if your are able to count them. …So shall your descendants be.” (15:5)

For generations, stars have helped people navigate or find their way. In Scripture, of course, the magi report the appearance of the star over Bethlehem at Jesus’ birth. (Matthew 2) But for centuries before and since, the stars have guided travelers on the way.

The North Star, which is located so near the earth’s axis that it appears to stay fixed in the sky, is one of the most well-known stars. “In Norse tales, [the North Star or] Polaris was the end of a spike around which the sky rotates; in Mongolian mythology, it’s a peg that holds the world together.”[i] And among the First Nations’ peoples, there’s the tale of Na-gah, a tenacious mountain climbing sheep, who climbs through tunnels to reach the top of the highest mountain he has ever seen. When he reaches the peak, he looks down on the earth from above but then he realizes he cannot get back down and he will die on that mountaintop. His father Shinoh is looking for him from the sky above him and he weeps when he sees that Na-gah can’t return to him. So that his son will not die, Shinoh turns him into a star who will be a guide for “all the living things on the Earth and in the sky.”[ii]

God directs Abram to look at the stars for assurance of God’s promises. The same Creator God who puts the stars in the heavens cares for each one of us. “We know,” from Paul’s letter to the Romans, “that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  (Romans 8:28-29) This is the confidence we have in faith.

While Abram makes many missteps (because we know this isn’t the last time he will try to wrest control of his circumstances from God) today’s gospel shows us another way. When the Pharisees come to Jesus and warn him that Herod wants to kill him, Jesus remains steadfast. He is committed to the work he is doing – casting out demons and performing cures – and he is un-willing to change his plans for the convenience of avoiding confrontation or escaping opposition. He persists, telling the Pharisees he will finish the work he has been given and then he will leave. He will not let fear make his decisions for him.

Created by God and redeemed as God’s children, we too are called to obedience.

In modern culture where autonomy or independence are celebrated, obedience — submitting to the authority of anyone other than ourselves — is counter-cultural. In our school days, obedience might have meant a grudging and grumbling acquiescence accompanied by eye rolling. Even now a call to obedience might provoke resentment as though obedience to someone or something demands an unwarranted and undeserved sacrifice. But the late pastor and author Eugene Peterson described obedience as “the strength to stand and the willingness to leap.”[iii]

Obedience is our response to God’s good and generous grace that has been poured out upon us. In faith, we are freed for the sake of the world, and our obedience to God flows from our salvation.[iv]

This Lent as we commit to return to God with all our hearts, may we be confident in what God’s Word tells us about who God is and who we are as God’s children, and obediently follow Jesus, looking for the Light of the World to guide us just as the stars led Abram, the magi and centuries of travelers on the way before us.

Remembering God used the stars as a sign of the promises given to God’s people, I invite you to take the paper star that is inside your bulletin and write down a prayer or a promise that you want to make. You may put your star in the offering plate later during worship or keep it for yourself as a reminder of God’s faithfulness.

Let us pray.
Holy God,
You made the heavens and the earth and then you made us!
Thank for your creative and life-giving Spirit that enlivens us to witness to your abundant mercy and grace.
Help us return our hearts to You that we would obey Your Word in all things.
Strengthen us to follow Your Son Jesus and stand for those who cannot.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.

[i] Daniel Johnson. “Meet Polaris, the North Star.” Sky and Telescope, April 19, 2018. https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/stargazing-basics/meet-polaris-the-north-star/ accessed 3/16/2019.

[ii] “Why the North Star Stands Still: A Paiute Legend.” https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/WhytheNorthStarStandsStill-Paiute.html, accessed 3/16/2019.

[iii] Paraphrased from Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience, p. 164-165

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

First Sunday in Lent

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Luke 4:1-13

For as long as I can remember, black and white photographs hung on the walls of my grandparents’ house at Buggs Island Lake. Most of the pictures on the walls were snapshots from my mother’s childhood, together with her brother and sister, but there were a couple of older portraits too and pictures of my grandparents’ travels out west and to China. On a bookshelf there were more photographs in albums that told the story of how they had built their house, room by room, year by year.

My grandmommy is the person who got me interested in our family history. Computers and the internet were still relatively new technology for any of us who weren’t engineers or computer scientists, but she had carefully printed notes that recorded the generations of my grandfather’s family back to their arrival from Yorkshire, England. In the decades since, I have added to her notes and shared our ancestors’ stories with my own children.

This kind of recitation of stories and preservation of memories is at the heart of today’s reading from Deuteronomy. The last of the five books of the Jewish Torah, or Pentateuch, Deuteronomy retells the stories of the covenant relationship between God and God’s people in a series of speeches and acts by Moses.

Our text this morning is part of one of Moses’ last speeches to the Hebrew people before his death and their entry into the promised land without him. Here he is recalling God’s generosity to them and instructing them about making an offering of first fruits when they enter the new land. As part of making their offering, he tells them to recite their history as God’s people, beginning with the words, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor….”

Tracing their family’s ancestral history of Jacob’s flight to Egypt during the famine, through slavery to the Pharaoh, their escape across the Reed Sea and their exodus in the wilderness, they would not quickly forget where they had come from and whose shoulders they stood on. With repetition, the story of God’s generosity and salvation is woven into each person’s identity and becomes part of the warp and weft of the fabric of the community’s identity, too.

In the same way, the promises of God that we have been given are woven into our identity at our baptism when we receive the promise of forgiveness and new life in Christ.

Lutheran pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber once told the story that, when Martin Luther himself was hiding away in a castle translating the Bible into German so that for the very first time somewhat regular folks could read the Word of God for themselves, he struggled mightily with doubt and discouragement from what he understood to be the devil. And he was known to not only throw the occasional ink pots at whatever was tormenting him and causing him to doubt God's promises, but while doing so he could be heard throughout the castle grounds shouting “I am baptized!”.[i]

In today’s gospel account, we hear Luke’s telling of the temptation of Jesus after his baptism. And, every time the devil questions who Jesus is, and tries to lure him into a lie, Jesus responds immediately with the Truth that he knows in God’s Word. Jesus knows the promises God has made; he is confident in God’s power to fulfill those promises; and he refuses to believe the devil’s lies.

The season of Lent mirrors the forty years that Israel spent in the wilderness before they reached Canaan and the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness.  Listening to their stories, I wonder, “How do we respond when we are tempted to forget God’s generosity? Do we take God’s promises seriously?”

Right now, I am listening to a book The Ragged Edge of Night; it’s a story set in the early 1940s in Germany and one of the characters is a former Franciscan friar whose order was disbanded when the Nazi party dismantled Catholic institutions as their power grew. As the man tells his story, he is reconciling his former life in the order where he wore a simple grey habit and cincture, lived in one room and worked as a teacher - where all his needs were provided for - to his current circumstances where his coat is now thread bare, he is living in a village under austere war-time conditions and he is eking out a living teaching music. Even as his faith sustains him in difficulty, he wrestles with the world he is living in and the brokenness that he witnesses. He could respond in anger or self-pity, but he doesn’t.

Remembering God’s generosity doesn’t mean that we will never experience suffering or want; in fact, it isn’t about money or wealth at all. Remembering God’s generosity is remembering that God has chosen relationship over exile, love over judgment and life over death, making us God’s own beloved children.

We don’t have photographs or albums that tell us the story of our ancestors in faith. Our identity as God’s children flows out of our relationship with God, established at creation, affirmed in baptism and nourished every time we come to the table for Holy Communion.  With thanksgiving, we remember who we are as children of God when we hear again the stories of the generations before us and the promises God gave them and we say again the words of our faith in prayer and liturgy and sing them in our hymns and proclaim again God’s love to the world.

Let us pray.
Holy God,
Thank you for our ancestors in faith who led us to You and for bringing us to be fed and forgiven;
Imprint your saving word on our hearts and in our mouths that we can respond with Your truth when we face the devil;
Teach us to respond to the world with generous spirits and hearts that reflect your abundant love.
We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Amen.

[i] https://sojo.net/articles/how-say-defiantly-i-am-baptized, accessed 3/8/2019

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.

Fourth Wednesday in Lent

1 Kings 3:3-15

Tonight’s text is known as “Solomon’s prayer for wisdom.” But that doesn’t tell the whole story, who Solomon was or why he becomes associated with the wisdom books of the Song of Solomon, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.

Solomon was one of the sons of King David and Bathsheba, the wife of the soldier Uriah whom David sent into battle to be killed. At the end of David’s life, his two oldest sons were either dead or missing and by tradition, his eldest surviving son, Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, expected to succeed him on the throne and become Israel’s third king. But at the beginning of this book, we hear how Bathsheba intercedes on behalf of her son Solomon and then we have, essentially, an account of a turf war as Adonijah and Solomon vie for the throne.

Favored by his mother and the prophet Nathan and armed with his father’s blessing and military might, Solomon establishes his rule. And before his death, King David declares, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who today has granted one of my offspring to sit on my throne and permitted me to witness it.” (1 Kings 1:48)

When we learn more about Solomon, it becomes clear that, like his father, he too was imperfect, an example of both saint and sinner, capable of both evil and good. But here, what we see is a new king who has gone to Gibeon and offered ritual sacrifices, publicly demonstrating his obedience and loyalty to the god who has entrusted the monarchy to him.  And while he is there, God appears to Solomon in a dream.

As is often true in biblical stories, it’s helpful to remember the era where the story takes place and who its audience was. In the ancient world, dreams weren’t psychic phenomena to be interpreted by psychologists; instead they were understood as manifestations of a divine response, a Word from Yahweh. So when we hear that God spoke to Solomon in a dream, we are to recall the other dreamers we know in the Bible, like Jacob and Joseph in Genesis and Joseph and Paul in the New Testament.

In this dream, God says to Solomon, “Ask what I should give you." (1 Kings 3:5)

Can you imagine? How would you answer if you were offered anything you wanted? Would it be safety or security, esteem or affection, power or control? Or something material?

Offered the opportunity to ask for anything, Solomon doesn’t answer immediately, but his reticence isn’t indecision. First, he offers praise for God’s actions, and then he expresses humility and acknowledges his own ill-preparedness for the responsibilities of the throne. He doesn’t puff up with pride or make a show of his power and authority. He doesn’t pretend that he doesn’t need or want anything.

When he does answer, Solomon simply asks God to give him an “understanding mind.”

The word in Hebrew there is the word for “mind” or “will” or heart, and in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew text, the word is καρδία so some translations say he requested a “listening” or “discerning” heart.

Solomon isn’t focused on outward expressions of his kingship; he wants to be aligned with God’s guidance and purpose.

Teacher and author Ruth Haley Barton describes discernment as “the capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and the activity of God — both in the ordinary moments and in the larger decisions of our lives.”[i] Solomon doesn’t desire an academic or intellectual, post-Enlightenment wisdom; instead he is asking God for the knowledge of “What would you have me do?”

In Mark 12, when Jesus answers the scribe who asks, “What is the greatest commandment?” he repeats the words of the she-ma, telling his followers to “love the Lord with all your mind…..” He isn’t asking, as atheists charge, that we leave our minds at the door. Instead, he is asking that we align ourselves with God’s purposes, that we orient ourselves to God instead of allowing our egos to edge God out.

In the Lord’s Prayer when we petition, “Your will be done on earth as in heaven” we are surrendering to God, confessing that we are dependent on God and the power of the Holy Spirit to bring about wise action and help  us embody God’s love in the world.

We are asking God to work through us as we are called into a life of discernment where we follow the wisdom of Solomon expressed in Proverbs 9: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10 NIV)

Equipped with holy wisdom, we are called to go out into the world like Solomon and ask, “Lord, what would you have me do?”

Let us pray.[ii]
O Lord our God,
Show us your everlasting love that we may serve you from the obedience of our hearts.
Lead us in the way of your peace, that our souls may be restored.
Guide us in the way of the cross, that we might proclaim the strength of your love.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus,
Amen.

[i] “Discernment: The Heart of Spiritual Leadership,” Ruth Haley Barton. http://www.transformingcenter.org/2012/05/discernment-the-heart-of-spiritual-leadership/ , accessed 3/14/2018.
[ii] Adapted from Sundays and Seasons Midweek Lenten Series: You Shall Love the Lord Your God.

Fourth Sunday in Lent

Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

Have you ever overheard part of a conversation, and realized you didn’t know what people were talking about or what had already been said?

Today’s gospel text is like that. The lectionary reading begins in the middle of a conversation. If you didn’t read the preceding verses in chapter 3, you don’t know who’s speaking. And if you haven’t read Numbers recently – and that probably describes most of us here today – you may not remember what was happening when “Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.”

So, let’s begin with the story in Numbers. “The [fourth] book [in the Torah, or Pentateuch] tells the story of how Israel's exodus generation entered the desert where most of them died away in faithlessness and disobedience, and how the next generation emerged, prepared to claim the promise of a new land.”[i]

After Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, they wandered in the wilderness for many years. The story that is referenced in John’s gospel happened after the deaths of both Miriam and Aaron, Moses’ sister and brother who had accompanied him out of Egypt.

Remember how the people of Israel began grumbling and complaining, and God answered their complaint by giving them manna to eat?

Well, now here they are, grumbling and complaining again.
The text says they “became impatient” and “spoke against God and against Moses.”  Old Testament scholar Dennis Olson describes them as “drag[ging] out the same laundry list of complaints about dying in the wilderness, yearning to go back to Egypt, the lack of food and water, and the monotony of the manna.” It’s like a video clip that gets caught buffering and cannot play to the end, or an audio track that plays endlessly on repeat.
Nothing could satisfy them.

What happens next is surprising. The text says, “The LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many…died.”

It’s surprising because what is described is God’s judgment falling upon a people.

We like to think of judgment as something that happens to “other people” but in Numbers, it’s clear God delivers judgment upon God’s own people.

Facing the reality of God’s judgment, the people offer a confession, but simultaneously, they ask Moses to pray that God would remove the serpents from their midst.

Instead, God tells Moses to make a serpent and place it on a pole and instructs him that anyone who gets bitten will be able to look up at the serpent on the pole and live.  From that time forward until King Hezekiah destroyed it during his temple reform in the eighth century BCE because it had become a false idol, the serpent on the stick was called Nehushtan and the people of Israel kept it with them as a sign of God’s life-giving covenant.

When we hear the story referenced in the gospel text, it turns out that Jesus is the one speaking. The Pharisee Nicodemus has come to Jesus at night time and is asking him questions about what he is teaching and the signs that he has performed.

Recalling the sign of salvation that God had provided to the people of Israel all those centuries before, Jesus tells Nicodemus “so must the Son of Man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (v. 14-15)

And then, just as God’s people suffered judgment in the Numbers passage, Jesus says in v. 19, “This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people have loved darkness more than light because their deeds were evil.”

Both the author of Numbers and the evangelist John are speaking to the community.

Remember how Jesus answered the scribe who asked which of the commandments was greatest?

Jesus said, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Mark 12:29-31)

For the Israelites wandering in the desert, their sin wasn’t that they complained; their sin was failing to believe the God of Israel, the Lord our God, was going to deliver them. And, they were so curved in on themselves and coiled tightly like snakes themselves that they couldn’t even recognize their own sin!

In Jerusalem, Nicodemus and the other religious leaders and temple priests, likewise, didn’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God. They studied and followed the Levitical laws meticulously, believing they could achieve righteousness by their good works if they could remain ritually pure and blameless. Their sin was failing to believe God alone was their redeemer and deliverer. (Ps. 107)

God can handle our complaints and our fears and doubts; the Psalms are full of complaints and laments, anger and fear, but the psalmists always return to what they know about who God is and what God’s character and past promises and actions tell us.

What is sinful is the certitude that the Israelites and the Pharisees display and their disregard for what God has done.

In his Lectures on Romans, Martin Luther writes about our natural impulse to “deeply curve in on [ourselves].” That is the very definition of sin: bending everything, even God’s best gifts, toward ourselves for our own elevation, enjoyment and pleasure.[ii]

And, when we are looking inward toward our bellies, we cannot look up.

We cannot look up at the life-giving sign that heals,
and we cannot look up at the cross that triumphs over death.

And when we cannot look up, we die.


It is that simple and that startling.

God breathes life into us and commands us to live, and instead, as Eugene Peterson writes in his paraphrase of today’s passage from Ephesians, we “[fill our] lungs with polluted unbelief, and then [exhale] disobedience.”

Thankfully God doesn’t leave us there. God who knows us and loves us, and has established a life-giving covenant with us, equips us to live an abundant life in the fullness of relationship in faith in Christ.

It’s ours, if only we will stop navel-gazing and look up.

Let us pray.
Lord our God,
heal our brokenness that we would see your gift of life;
God of judgment,
lift up our eyes that we would recognize Your presence in our lives in all circumstances;
Redeeming God,
Strengthen us to live as Your faithful people in a world that loves darkness.
We pray in the name of your crucified and risen Son, Jesus Christ,
Amen.

[i] “Numbers.” Luther Seminary, EnterTheBible.org.
[ii] Lectures on Romans. Luther’s Works, Vol. 25.

Third Wednesday in Lent

Psalms 42 and 43

Tonight’s Scripture, Psalms 42 and 43 are psalms, or songs, of lament where the poet addresses God. Scholars now believe that these two psalms, which are separate in our canon, were originally one whole piece with three stanzas.

The Psalmist begins by comparing our longing for God to an insatiable desire or unquenchable thirst. (v. 1) “Just as water is necessary for life, so also is the divine presence.”[i] Or as Saint Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “our hearts are restless until they find rest in God.”  Father Richard Rohr describes this same longing as “an inner compass” or “a homing device” drawing us toward God.

Our Lenten study of “covenant” has taught us that God’s utmost desire is to live in covenant relationship with us, to be located at the center of our lives and relationships. Contemplating this yearning, Rohr asks the question,

“Wouldn’t it make sense that God would plant in us a desire for what God has already wants for us?”

When Jesus repeats the she-ma in Mark 12 and instructs his followers to “love the Lord with all your soul…..” he knows that loving someone is easy in good times. But he also knows how important it is that we know God is our loving companion in the hard times, too. As Old Testament professor Rolf Jacobson writes,

“This psalm is a song for those moments when one doesn’t feel like singing. A poem of faith for those cold nights when one doesn’t feel the flames of faith flickering in one’s soul.”[ii]

We hear the refrain repeated at 42:5, 11 and again at 43:5:

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

The psalmist’s lament reminds us that even when our souls are cast down and disquieted, or as Eugene Peterson writes, “down in the dumps and crying the blues,” the Lord still reigns and is our help. The refrain instructs us, “Hope in God,” reminding us that our hope and help come from outside our own resources.

Throughout scripture, we see that faith is not solitary; it is best practiced in relationship and in community. And with the psalmists’ words, we are reminded again of God’s concern for the neighbor and the ways God has ordered our lives with the commandments that we would live well together.

As the church we are called to walk together through the muck and messiness of our lives and through the hurt and heartache we inflict on each other. The promise of our despair, that we hear from the psalmist, is a promise of hope, a promise that there will be restoration.[iii]

Nan Merrill offers another interpretation of the psalmist’s refrain, recording it as, “O my soul, open the door to Love!”

Sometimes our help and our hope comes disguised as “love with skin on it.” Another of my professors at Luther tells the story of his seminary colleague whose wife died unexpectedly; when the widower finally spoke about his grief, he said, “I can’t believe in God now.” His colleagues told his friend, “We will believe until you can.”

Our hope in God is sustained in relationship with God and with each other. We are called to love the Lord our God with all our soul, with confidence that God sees our tears and hears our cries. Then as the late nineteenth century hymn writer Horatio Spafford wrote, after suffering great personal loss, we too can say, “When sorrows like sea billows roll, Whatever my lot, [God has] taught me to say, “It is well, it is well, with my soul.”

Let us pray.[iv]
O Lord our God,
Show us your everlasting love that we may serve you from the obedience of our hearts.
Lead us in the way of your peace, that our souls may be restored.
Guide us in the way of the cross, that we might proclaim the strength of your love.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus,
Amen.

[i] W. H. Bellinger, Jr. Working Preacher Commentary on Psalm 43.
[ii] Rolf Jacobson. Working Preacher Commentary on Psalm 43.
[iii] Andy Root. The Promise of Despair.
[iv] Adapted from Sundays and Seasons Midweek Lenten Series: You Shall Love the Lord Your God.

Third Sunday in Lent

Exodus 20:1-17

One religion writer condenses this morning’s chapter in Exodus to:
“G’s top ten list. No gods, idols or blasphemy. Keep the Sabbath holy & love Mom. Don’t kill, cheat, steal, or look at Xmas catalogs.”[i]

And while her description covers the information contained in the commandments, it remains incomplete. The commandments are more than a heavenly top ten list, “divine finger-wagging or moral hand-slapping.”[ii] The commandments illustrate the covenant relationship God establishes with us and “show us how we should live as people who have already been freely given God’s grace in Jesus Christ.”[iii]

God doesn’t give us the law and ask us to prove ourselves to earn our salvation or God’s love. There is no performance evaluation, standardized test or entrance exam. When Paul references “God’s foolishness”, this is what he’s talking about: there is no failing or flunking out.

God’s divine priority is to be in relationship with creation, and the commandments are the instruction or direction that God gives us so that relationship doesn’t fall apart.

When we choose other idols over God, when we choose the parts of Scripture that are convenient for us, or dismiss God’s Word as irrelevant, we put our selves and our ways ahead of God’s ways. When we deny others the opportunities for rest and health, rebel against authority and neglect our elders, we forget God’s commandments. When we act selfishly, harm our neighbors by our words or actions, or deceive others, we are not following God’s ways.

Halfway through our penitential and reflective season of Lent, the good news is that the commandments, and our failure to follow them, aren’t roadblocks to life with God. Instead of avoiding them like traps and obstacles – holy Gotchas – let’s look at how they teach us to embody God’s Word and adopt God’s life-giving ways.

Just as commandment-keeping is not a prerequisite for heaven, it isn’t some kind of sacred self-help guide either. The purpose of following God’s commandments is not to make a better “me” for my own sake, but for the world.

That is why when Jesus is tested by the Pharisees in Mark 12, and the scribe asks him which is the greatest commandment, Jesus answers with the words of the she-ma, saying "The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’

And then, he adds Leviticus 19:8, and continues, ‘The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’[iv]

The commandments help us remember that “One cannot love God without also loving one’s neighbor.”[v]

Many of us would be a lot happier being asked to follow the non-negotiable do’s and don’ts we thought we’d been given — what Father Richard Rohr describes as “never-broken, always-applicable rules and patterns that allow us to predict and control things.” [vi]

Instead, God stands before us and invites us into the presence of God and all the wonder and mystery that beholds.

In this morning’s gospel, John uses the temple scene to demonstrate to his audience, who have seen the temple destroyed, that God’s presence isn’t restricted to the temple anymore. Now, Jesus embodies God’s presence here on earth.

So, as Jesus’ followers, we first witness God’s presence in Jesus. and then God equips us and sends us into the world to bear witness to God,
to embody God’s Word
and be more trustworthy and more loving to our neighbor.

That means
we look at the person next to us with the eyes of God,
we listen to them with the ears of God, and
we love them with the heart of God.

It takes all of us loving God with all our hearts to open ourselves to loving each other and our neighbors and seeing the vision of a beloved community fulfilled. With the gift of the commandments, God calls us to abundant life,
lived in covenant relationship:
believing that God desires to be at the center in our lives and relationships;
believing the other person is loved by God and has value because they are created by a loving and holy God;
and, believing the other person can teach us, so instead of being jealous or callous, we celebrate the rich variety of gifts God gives us, and welcome everyone in.

Let us pray.
Holy and life-giving God,
Thank you for the gift of your commandments to order our lives and relationships, that we would live out of your abundant grace and mercy so freely given to us.
Teach us to follow your laws and write them on our hearts that the whole world would know your love.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

[i] Jana Reiss. The Twible.
[ii] Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Feasting on the Word: Year B volume) (Kindle Location 2837). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[iii] Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Feasting on the Word: Year B volume) (Kindle Locations 2807-2808). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[iv] Mark 12:29-31
[v] Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Feasting on the Word: Year B volume) (Kindle Locations 2798-2799). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[vi] Fr. Richard Rohr, Falling Upward. 57.

Second Wednesday in Lent

John 12:37-43

Throughout Lent we are looking at Jesus’ words in Mark 12, when he repeated the she-ma to remind God’s people that a faithful life is one centered on the covenant that God first establishes with us.

We have said that, in Scripture, “covenant” is a word used to describe how God interacts with us and enters into relationship with us.[i] Each of the five covenants or promises that we’ll study in Hebrew Scripture on Sundays is accompanied by a sign.

In the flood story, God’s bow in the sky reminds God’s self and us of our covenant relationship; for Abraham and his children, circumcision is the visible sign of the covenant relationship between God and Israel.

Tonight’s Scripture is from John’s gospel at the conclusion of what is called “the book of signs.” Throughout his account of Jesus’ ministry, the Fourth Evangelist bears witness to the many miracles that Jesus performed and interprets them to us.

 “Signs are things that point beyond themselves. The miraculous actions that Jesus performs are called "signs" because they point beyond [Jesus], to the power and the presence of God (2:11) [ii]

And yet, as the text tells us, many of the people who saw these signs did not recognize – or as John says “they did not believe” – Jesus was the Son of God.

Like Monday morning quarterbacks, we may be quick to judge their disbelief but then, John continues, saying that many others did believe, but they were afraid to confess it for fear of judgment. (v. 42)

How often in our own lives do we see this same pattern repeat? We silence ourselves to avoid judgment. In the liturgy we are using during Lent, we confess:

We were silent when we should have said something.

We were still when we know we should have moved.

Our faith in Christ frees us to respond to the world around us, confident in God’s promises. Yet, too often, we allow disbelief and fear to rob us of the good that God has promised.

John’s gospel says that those who were afraid to confess Jesus as the Son of God “loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God.” (v.43)

Human glory is the glory or honor that we receive from other people; it connects to our impulses for esteem, affection and approval. It is the illusion of power or control that we assert over others, instead of accompanying, or walking beside one another. It is the self-centered life, instead of the God-centered life.

When Jesus repeats the she-ma, he instructs his followers to “love the Lord with all your heart…..” but when we treasure human glory more than the glory of God, we fail to follow Jesus’ instruction. In Matthew and Luke’s accounts of Jesus preaching to the crowds, he warns his followers, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.[iii]

Jesus is calling us to “come out into the open” and confess Jesus Christ as the Son of God, recall the covenant with God, and return our focus, and our hearts, to God.

Let us pray.[iv]

O Lord our God,

Show us your everlasting love that we may serve you from the obedience of our hearts.

Lead us in the way of your peace, that our souls may be restored.

Guide us in the way of the cross, that we might proclaim the strength of your love.

We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus,

Amen.

---

[i] “Covenant” in Crazy Talk. Rolf Jacobson, Ed. Minneapolis: Augsburg Books. 46-47.

[ii] “John,” EntertheBible.org, Luther Seminary.

[iii] Luke 12:34, Matt. 6:21

[iv] Adapted from Sundays and Seasons Midweek Lenten Series: You Shall Love the Lord Your God.