Seventh Sunday of Easter

John 17:1-11

Acts 1:6-14

Our gospel is the first portion of what we call Jesus’ “high priestly prayer”. He prays for all who go out into the world on his behalf, 

carrying the good news of God’s love to the ends of the earth.

 

After he prays for the disciples who are listening to his prayer in person, he prays for us, too; 

he prays for “those who believe 

through [the] word” carried by his disciples. (17:20)

 

We, like generations of disciples before us, are asked to be witnesses for the good news of God’s love to the ends of the earth. 

And Jesus prays for us, before we were even knit together in our mother’s wombs, that we may follow Him and accomplish the work He gives us.

 

The theme for next month’s Vacation Bible School is “Operation Restoration: Mending God’s World”. Certainly, one of the ways we plan for God’s world to be restored is through prayer. 

 

But this theme of “Mending God’s World” is one that you may recognize in other ways we come together as God’s church.

 

Today we are welcoming ten households into the congregation, each uniquely gifted and drawn here to worship and deepen their faith in Jesus. Together they’ll affirm their baptismal promises which includes a commitment to share in the Lord’s supper, to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, to serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth. Our joy is made more full because they are here.

 

Next Sunday we have a group traveling to the Qualla Boundary to worship with and visit Living Waters Lutheran Church in Cherokee. Participants experience the hospitality of the congregation, but more importantly, they experience God’s presence and work in a place that is different from Grace and hear what God is doing there.

 

The following week a group is joining local storyteller Ronnie Pepper for a tour of historic African-American sites in Hendersonville, learning more about the history of our community.

 

In June, we will first welcome Andrew Steele from Global Refuge, one of our global ministry partners working with immigrants and refugees who are in crisis here and internationally.

 

And later next month, Pastor Christy Lohr-Sapp will preach at Grace. Pastor Lohr and her family are stateside now, but she serves as Pastor of the English-Speaking Congregation of the Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem and plans to return there later this year.

 

In July, our youth will travel to Living Waters for a day trip, serving in the food pantry, and then some of them will also travel to Winston-Salem for a weeklong summer service-learning trip with SparkDwell where they’ll work alongside neighbors and other volunteers in that city.

 

Additionally for the summer months of June, July and August, the congregation council has agreed to a holy experiment where our 11:15 worship will be fully bilingual. That means that at 11:15 whether you are in the sanctuary or in the fellowship hall, the liturgy will be the same and you’ll be invited to participate in English or Spanish. And one Sunday a month I’ll still lead a separate Spanish-language service.

 

In all kinds of different ways, we will be learning how to be God’s witnesses to the ends of the earth.

 

As Jesus’ followers sent out as God’s witnesses,

we are called to this work of mending God’s world:

 

of witnessing God’s love for our neighbors, as close as Cherokee and as far away as Jerusalem, and all the points in between;

 

of building relationships with people beyond the walls of our church building;

 

of listening to each other’s stories and hearing about how others have witnessed God’s transforming love in their lives;

 

and of learning how God is continuing to work through faith communities and faithful people in ways that are new to us.

 

In the last verse of our gospel today, 

Jesus prays that his disciples will be one, 

just as the Father and the Son are one. 

 

He does not pray that all will be the same, 

or that they will be in agreement about all things, 

or even that their worship and faith practices will be identical, 

only that they may know God and Jesus Christ whom God sent. 

(v. 3)

 

As we enter into the summer months, 

I hope we can be 

 

attentive to how we can be part of mending God’s world; 

 

curious about others’ experiences of God and Jesus; and 

 

willing to be witnesses ourselves,

sharing how our lives have been changed by God,

 

that the world may know God’s love for them.

 

Let us pray.

Holy God, 

Thank you for your Son Jesus

Help us remember that we are yours,

And teach us how to be witnesses to your love for the whole world.

We pray in Jesus’ name. 

Amen.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 13:1-11

A pastor I knew once told me how he changed the format of the Lord’s Prayer in a congregation where he was serving from the words that we frequently use, with “trespasses” and “temptation” to a version that asks God “to forgive our sins” and “save us from the time of trial”. When someone complained that the new version wasn’t what Jesus prayed, Pastor Ernie explained that neither was the earlier version. None of the versions of the Lord’s Prayer that we use today in worship are exactly like the prayers we find here in Luke or in Matthew.

But both Gospel writers include a phrase near the beginning that is preserved in what we say: “hallowed be thy name”.

“Hallowed” is often translated as an adjective, but in the Greek, in both Matthew and Luke, it is a verb.

“Hallowed be thy name,” is an invitation for God to act in the world. It is not simply praise. It is not to say, “Holy is your name,” it is a request for God to act in the world so that God’s name would be made holy.[i]

In the Common English Bible, the translation is “uphold the holiness of your name”. With our prayer, we are asking God to show God’s presence in the world so that people will know God’s name and know who God is.[ii]

That is a very different prayer posture than coming to God wanting God to fulfill our desires or meet our needs.

In fact, in his explanation of this petition, Martin Luther says that God’s name is hallowed “whenever the word of God is taught clearly and purely and we, as God’s children, also live holy lives according to it.”[iii]

The late Eugene Peterson in his book Working the Angles wrote:

We want life on our conditions, not God’s conditions. Praying puts us at risk of getting involved in God’s conditions... Praying most often doesn’t get us what we want but what God wants….[iv] (emphasis mine)

In prayer, we invite God to include us in God’s work in the world. And commit to live according to God’s design and will, even when it is uncomfortable or unexpected.

Remember this is a continuation of the conversations Jesus has been having with his disciples for the last several Sundays. He began by talking about the kingdom of God and loving our neighbors and he told the story of the Good Samaritan. He taught us to set aside the preconceptions we may have about the strangers we meet and love unconditionally.

Then he dined with Martha and Mary and continued to talk about the hospitality of God’s people and the importance of being present with those who are with us. He reminded us to focus on what’s important, listening to Jesus and knowing how much God loves each of us and our unique gifts.

And now he is talking about God’s own work in the world, and how God listens and responds to us - with more generosity than a loving parent and an invitation to help others see God’s abundant and transforming love in action.

Peterson reminds us,

Prayer is our response to the initiative of God. [God] is always the conversation starter, and we are always the conversation responder.[v]

As we enter the last full month of summer, and we continue to grow as disciples or followers of Jesus, I wonder how we can respond to what we see God doing and how we can participate in God’s invitation to show others who God is.

We have opportunities locally and globally.

We regularly have wooden beams in the reception area that we are invited to sign with prayers for new homeowners participating in programs with Habitat for Humanity. And other times, we have food drives to help hungry neighbors. We often help nearby neighbors with resources or connect them with partners who can help even more.

Many of you are already familiar with our support of Anastasis Baptist Church in Durango, Mexico, and today after worship, some of us will listen and learn more about another church, this one in Madagascar, that we have supported. Their congregation - more than 9,000 miles away and in a different hemisphere - is praying for us even now.

And we covet those prayers because we know God’s ways are not our ways and often, we are called to work that is unexpected. May we always respond with openness and a commitment to hallow God, helping others know and experience the abundant love our Holy God offers us all.  Amen.

---

[i] “Proper 12C” Pulpit Fiction. https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/proper12c
[ii] ibid
[iii] Luther’s Small Catechism, Study Edition. 35.
[iv] Eugene Peterson. Working the Angles. 44.
[v] ibid, 45.

Palm Sunday

Mark 11:1-11

Whenever we have a familiar story from the Bible, it’s a challenge to hear it anew. Today is one of those times; we hear some version of this story every year on Palm Sunday. Earlier we participated in what’s known as the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where people laid down their leafy branches ahead of Jesus’ arrival, and we think we know what’s coming next. But often, as with the Christmas story, we often conflate or combine elements of the different stories into one.

In Matthew and Luke’s gospel, the entry is even more grand and when Jesus goes to the temple, he immediately he confronts the moneychangers and drives them out. But that isn’t what happens in Mark’s gospel, and that difference makes me curious.

In his gospel, Mark says, “Then [Jesus] entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” (Mark 11:11)

According to Mark, he does return to the temple the next day, but right now, in this moment, Jesus stops and looks around at everything.

Often, I think we hear “Temple” and think “church”, and we imagine Jesus entering a darkened, peaceful sanctuary, but the Temple grounds were massive, covering acres of land. The Temple was divided into courts, and there were guards. Even if the people who were there to sell animals for sacrifice and change money were gone because of the late hour, there would have been litter or debris from the crowds who had been there earlier in the day and the lingering smell of throngs of people, burnt offerings and animal dung.

It was not a quiet, meditative place.

But Jesus had been there before, as it was Jewish custom to travel to Jerusalem for the Passover. Surely, he would have known what to expect. And yet, this time was different.

And, he stopped and looked around at everything.

Maybe, he was reflecting on the Passover visit to the Temple when he was a boy, when his parents found him, “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” (Luke 2:46) Maybe, like any of us who have gone back to a place we knew in childhood, he wondered at how different it was from his memories.

Maybe, he was reflecting on his years of ministry in Galilee, teaching and healing and upending people’s expectations of what, or who, a Messiah is. Jesus must have known that this time, his arrival in the city would provoke its leaders and that as he continued to invite people to be transformed, he would make a lot of people angry.

As one preacher said, Jesus wasn’t crucified because he told people to love one other.

He embodied the unbounded love of God and welcomed all, but he didn’t stop there. He challenged their understanding of authority and salvation, wrenching it from the hands of the emperor and returning it to its rightful place with God. He challenged their institutions and norms, where they found their security and control, and pointed them away from manmade things to God.

Today, as we enter Holy Week, we accompany Jesus first in his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and now to the temple. When we stop and look around at everything, what do we see?

Surely, we see that our congregations look different from the past. While some of that is sentimental longing, some of it is concrete and measurable. Decades ago, in many communities, certainly here in the South, the church was at the center of life, and traditions and friendships and activities were all built around it. There are a lot of reasons that’s no longer true and many are positive, despite the changes they’ve brought, but it is different now.

Surely, we see the divisiveness that seems to run like an electric current through conversations locally, nationally and in the world. Divisions have always been there, but they feel more intractable, and the chasms seem wider, especially in a year with a presidential election, and especially in times when there is war in Ukraine and the Holy Land.

 I hope that when we stop and look around at everything,

we do not cling to what was, or despair at the challenges that are part of our lives,

but we see each other as God’s beloved;

we see the strengths of this community of Jesus-followers; and,

we see the hope that the Gospel brings,

to anyone who has been pushed aside or been afraid,

to anyone who has been spinning because of the pace of change around them, or

to anyone who has felt the weight of the world on their shoulders and thought they would falter.

I hope when we stop and look around at everything, we can take a deep breath, breathing in God’s peace and the assurance of God’s presence in all that is to come. I wonder if that is what Jesus did, too.

Throughout this week, we will walk beside Jesus, as the crowds grow smaller and smaller, and the rest of his disciples choose whether to stay or to leave.

This week, and always,

I pray that we will not balk

at the invitation to be transformed by God’s love,

even when it means challenging our expectations,

or changing our understanding of what it means to be faithful.

I pray we will keep our eyes on God, and not the world, and follow.

Amen.

Lectionary 17C

Luke 11:1-13

The writer of Ecclesiastes knew, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” (1:9)

The question of how to pray has been on our lips since Jesus was in Galilee with his disciples, if not longer.

We looked at some of the different forms of prayer during our Lenten worship earlier this year but there are many ways to pray. With words or in silence. For our needs and those of the world around us. For healing and reconciliation. You can pray with your whole body by kneeling or walking a labyrinth or lifting your arms. And the promise we have is that God hears our prayers no matter what form they take.

But in today’s gospel, the disciples come to Jesus and ask him to teach them to pray in the same way that John had taught his disciples. Their question assumes there is a particular form that is “correct” and in the verses that follow their question, Jesus offers them the outline of a prayer that we recognize as Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. In his gospel, Matthew records a longer version that is closer to what we say in our worship and his words are what Martin Luther writes and teaches about in his catechism.

There are probably more questions about prayer than answers. Some would ask, why do we even need to pray?

Luther said we ought to pray as Jesus and the apostles did and recommended praying the Lord’s Prayer both in morning and evening prayer. We pray because God commands us to pray, and we pray with confidence that God hears us because that’s what we’re told again and again in Scripture.

Others would wonder whether God has selective hearing, addressing some prayers and not others, or even whether God cares. Especially when prayers appear to go unanswered or when we witness suffering in the world around us. I cannot explain why there are prayers that appear to go unanswered. I do believe that the power of prayer is not in our hands or our character but in God’s. We are not the key that makes prayer “work”; God is.[i]

Because of our lived experiences and disappointments, it is tempting to roll our eyes or express skepticism at the promises that Jesus makes to the disciples in verse 9 — “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” But Luther wrote that promises like these “ought to awaken and kindle in our hearts a longing and love for prayer.”[ii] Luther wants us to remember who God is and what God promises.

In our gospel text this morning, “Jesus doesn’t stop at teaching a new set of words, he suggests a new attitude altogether.” [iii]

It is an attitude of expectation and boldness that comes from understanding the power of prayer to accomplish real change.[iv] It comes from our belief that the God whom we worship is personal and is moving and active in our lives and in the world.

When we pray this way, we can’t get away with praying without thinking or reflection. Our words can’t be mere rote repetition. Our prayers reflect our belief that even though we live in a world that is constantly threatened by evil, we are loved by a God who promises to preserve us from it.

We have this particular prayer because God so desires to draw us near that we would think about God and talk to God about what is on our hearts, and allow God to respond to us.[v] God desires this so much that God gives us these words and puts them in our mouths.[vi]

And with these words and the very short parable he tells afterward, Jesus reminds us exactly who God is. That God hears us and provides for us. God forgives us and protects us. And finally, that God is more generous than we ourselves would ever be.

Often when Jesus tells stories or parables, our instinct is to try to figure out who each character represents. And I’ve read this parable and tried to make God the one knocking or the one being woken, but this time, reading it just as it’s written, I think that Jesus knows that, in our humanity, we might ignore the knock on the door or only grudgingly answer and provide assistance to the neighbor in need. But instead of suggesting that God is like either one of these two characters, I think Jesus is saying that God responds to us in an entirely different way because of God’s love for us.

Jesus is teaching us that our prayer is grounded in God’s character, not ours.

Jesus teaches us to pray, “Your kingdom come”, and in his Small Catechism, Luther writes that “God’s kingdom comes on its own without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come to us”, that God would give us the Holy Spirit to strengthen us in faith.[vii] It’s a risky prayer because we are asking God to align us with God’s desire for the world. We are asking God to change us and the world around us in big ways, to transform us into the people we have been created to be.

Created in God’s image, we are praying that our actions will reflect God’s goodness and generosity, God’s compassion and love. And that through the Word and the power of the Holy Spirit, God will destroy the devil and all the forces that defy God, the powers of this world that rebel against God, and the ways of sin that draw us from God. That is bold expectation!

So as we follow Jesus into the world this week, I challenge you to pray specifically and boldly, with confidence in God’s love and in expectation of God’s power. Amen.

---

[i] Brian Peterson, Working Preacher. Luther Seminary.

[ii] Martin Luther. “Large Catechism.” Book of Concord. 443:20.

[iii] “Pray as You Go”, July 24, 2022. https://pray-as-you-go.org/player/2022-07-24, accessed 7/23/2022.

[iv] R. Guy Erwin (Author), Mary Jane Haemig (Author), Ken Sundet Jones (Author), Martin J. Lorhmann (Author), Derek R. Nelson (Author). By Heart. 105-106.

[v] Mark Allan Powell. Loving Jesus. 141-145.

[vi] Luther. 443:22.

[vii] Martin Luther. “Small Catechism.” Book of Concord. 356-7.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Wish lists and grocery lists, checking off chores – do you know where you stashed the gifts you bought, is the angel on the tree, is the bathroom clean? Even a favorite carol has St. Nicholas checking his list twice.

The days leading up to Christmas can be full of busy-ness - some sacred, some festive and some more mundane. And it’s in the midst of this busy-ness on this Fourth Sunday of Advent that we meet Nathan and David in today’s reading from Second Samuel. 

Chapter 7 begins saying that the Lord had given David rest from his enemies. And it sounds like David is about as good at resting and stillness as many of us today. Instead of taking time for prayer to wait to hear what God might say, or for stillness where he might experience God’s presence with him, David starts thinking.

And instead of enjoying the respite from strife in his family, court and kingdom, he decides he will build a house to the Lord, a temple, a permanent dwelling place to replace the tent that had housed the Ark of God since the Israelites had fled Egypt.

And the prophet Nathan, whom we meet here for the first time, encourages him, telling David, “The Lord is with you.”

But then we hear, 4 “…that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan….”

And the Lord tells Nathan to tell David that building a temple is not his work to do.

It’s not a bad idea; in fact, it’s good and important work, but it will be done by someone else.

It can be fun thinking up ideas - in seminary we called them “big hairy audacious goals” or BHAGs - and jumping in with both feet.

During this pandemic, as colleagues have shared resources and ideas for forming faith digitally and leading worship creatively, it’s been tempting to think about virtual choirs and Christmas pageants, drive through Nativities and Advent boxes for worship-at-home. It has felt sometimes like it was especially important to make Christmas even more memorable or special because of all the loss and upheaval we have experienced this year. And I have had to catch myself and remember that as your pastor, I cannot bring you Christmas.

As Dr. Seuss’ Grinch Who Stole Christmas learned, Christmas will come without ribbons and bows, packages, boxes or bags.

It will come because God so loves the world and sends us Jesus, the infant Son of God, from the house of David, who is born under a star.

In this story in Second Samuel, David teaches us two important lessons:

The first lesson is that God actually creates moments of rest and respite for us, if we only will take them.

Psalm 37 says, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently…do not fret,” and psalm 46 says, “Be still and know that I am God.” God creates these spaces for our good, but we’ve conditioned ourselves to think we are being lazy if we take time to spend time in stillness.

Our lectionary reading ends before we hear how David responds to Nathan, but if you keep reading in Second Samuel, you’ll see that he doesn’t get angry or argue with the prophet. He doesn’t become indignant. Instead, he responds by sitting before the Lord and entering into prayer, declaring who he knows God to be and proclaiming God’s greatness.  

The second lesson we learn from David is that the work to honor God, to set apart places and times for what is sacred and holy, is not our work alone.

When I’ve got big ideas, or long and varied lists, or find myself trying to move mountains to make something happen, it’s a good idea to check in with God to see whether my ideas reflect what God wants, or reveal, in fact,  that the work is better suited to another person or time and place.

It doesn’t mean that the work isn’t good or important, only that someone else may be called to it.

David’s story reassures us that God is inviting us to rest in God’s presence and to listen for God’s leading, and not try so very hard to solve the world’s problems on our own. Those are comforting words in these busy days leading up to Christmas and my prayer is that you will find the rest and assurance that God offers.

Amen.

Lectionary 17C/ Proper 12

Luke 11:1-13

In today’s gospel, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray and he provides them with a very brief skeleton of a prayer that we recognize as the bones of the Lord’s prayer we pray in worship. But quickly he goes on to tell them a story and we know that the parables or stories that Jesus tells as he teaches use examples from everyday life to explain something about who God is.

Jesus reorients us so that the question is no longer “How do we pray?” which implies that there is a pattern or script that guarantees we can “get it right.” The better question is “Who is this God to whom we pray?”

A traditional reading of the parable casts God as the neighbor inside the house, and the disciples – including you and me – as the one who comes to the neighbor in the middle of the night. In an honor and shame culture like the one that existed in the first century, the unprepared host would have risked embarrassment if he could not provide for his guest. But the neighbor, too, if he had not eventually responded to the appeal for help would have been shamed for his failure. The best outcome for them both was what eventually happens in the parable: the neighbor rises and answers the need.

But, when I hear that interpretation of the text, I am uncomfortable with the idea that God is annoyed by our prayers and I bristle at the picture of God as one who has to be goaded or nagged into responding to us. I also object to the idea that God answers our prayers to prevent shame from falling on God. None of these images of God – annoyed, reticent, or prideful – is how I understand God to be.

Parables, particularly, invite us to wrestle with their meaning, so I invite you to join me in wrestling with this parable and what is says about who God is.

One possibility is that while we are drawn quickly into the story of the neighbors, we miss the way Jesus frames it because the NRSV translation of the Bible that we use in worship and another popular translation, the NIV, both translate verse 5 as “Suppose one of you has a friend….” When the Greek actually translates as, “Who out of you will have a friend….?”

It is a rhetorical question similar to those he asks later in verses 11 and 12. When Jesus asks, “Who among you?” the response would be a resounding, “No one!” In that way, Jesus leads us away from the stingy neighbor, and away from the father who gives a serpent instead of a fish or a scorpion instead of an egg, to the heavenly Father who gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask. (v. 13)

Another way of hearing the parable is offered by Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon. He suggests that our attention should be on the word translated here as “persistence”. Other translations call it “boldness”, “importunity” or even “impudence.” But the Greek translates as “shamelessness”. That transforms the image of the one knocking from someone who is incessantly nagging or begging to one who has surrendered. The one who has gone to the neighbor has surrendered any pretense of preparedness or control and placed himself at the mercy of the neighbor at whose door he stands, just as we stand before the cross, convicted by our sin and dependent upon God’s grace to rescue us. In this telling the parable becomes one of death and resurrection, and God becomes the one who meets us and restores us. We are called again and again to surrender ourselves – to die to our sinful nature, our desires and priorities – and live in new life with Christ.

Yet another way of hearing the parable is to re-imagine who we are and who God is in the story. What if, instead of being the person knocking at the door, you and I are the ones who are asleep in bed and awakened? What if it is God standing at the door, trying to get our attention and asking for us to respond to a needful person who has just appeared, raising us out of our sleep to feed the hungry traveler?

However you hear this parable, it is clear that when Jesus teaches about prayer he doesn’t demand that his disciples learn a particular form or script with specific words; instead, he urges us to pay attention to the relationship we have with the God who hears us. 

Let us pray…
Holy God,
Thank you for Your Son Jesus who reveals to us Your character – loving and generous, not reticent or stingy;
And thank you for forgiving us when we become self-centered, busy or aggravated;
By the good gift of Your Holy Spirit, empower us to pray, confident of your faithfulness, and respond to a world in need when you call us.
Amen.

Lectionary 14C/ Proper 9

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20 

All three of the synoptic gospels include the account of Jesus sending his first twelve disciples out. But only Luke includes the sending of the seventy that we hear in this morning’s gospel.

You can imagine the scene: while a group of twelve fits around a long table, this group of disciples is about the same size as our worshiping congregation. Addressing his followers Jesus adopts the language of harvest, saying "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few….” (Luke 10:2a)

Bringing in a harvest isn’t a task that anyone can do alone. Today I’m not even talking about the hours of labor that go into sowing seed in acres of land or protecting the crops against pests and weather. At harvesttime, before mechanized equipment, a farmworker could expect to hand-pick 100 bushels of corn in a day if the conditions were good. [i] Whole families would begin at dawn, trying to get the first “50 bushels, 2,800 pounds of corn, before lunch, and another 50 bushels in the afternoon, often harvesting until dark.” And it could take weeks to get it all picked. [ii] It was rigorous, exhausting work that seemed to go on forever.

And Jesus was describing not just one small corner of the world but all of it. The people listening to him had to be wondering, “How much can two, or twelve or even seventy of us do?”

Then Jesus says, “therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.”

The very first instruction that Jesus gives is to pray.

Pray for the harvest, remembering it is God’s work and God is Lord of the harvest, not us. And then pray for laborers to be sent into the harvest.

Jesus doesn’t say, “Pray for more church members” or even more Lutherans, but for more laborers, co-workers who will bear God into the world just as we are called to do.

The Lord’s harvest is about being open to God’s timing – a kairos time that doesn’t follow our human wants or demands – to tend to those whom God has prepared; those who can hear the Good News of God’s love and see God at work in the world.

The twelve were sent with “power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, … to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. (Luke 9:1-2) Here Jesus goes into more detail as he prepares the next group to go out. He sends his followers out, not to proclaim our expertise or our superiority, but with humility and vulnerability. Jesus asks us to bear God’s peace into the world and receive the hospitality we are given, without criticism or judgment.

Often, when we talk about going out into the world, in local service or international mission trips, we make our lists, plans and preparations and the people we intend to help become objects of our attention. As well-meaning as that is, here Jesus tells his followers to go out empty-handed, dependent on the provision of others, and be fully and peacefully present with people where we find them. It is a model of accompaniment, and relationship-building, that is focused on the person and not on a project or a job to be completed. Sometimes, that will mean taking a risk, being uncomfortable, and going places that are outside of our familiar routines and hangouts.

At the beginning of this gospel, Luke says, Jesus sent the seventy to “every town and place where he himself intended to go.” (Luke 10:1) In Luke’s gospel, that includes the synagogue and temple, but more frequently it includes places where demons inhabit adults and children or disease has withered and defeated people, places where people have been declared unclean and unwelcome; and it includes both deserted places and places crowded with hungry people.

Although Jesus tells us to go out and says he is sending us “out like lambs into the midst of wolves” (Luke 10:3), he does not send us alone.

Jesus sends us with authority. We have received authority because in Christ, God comes to us, and gives us all that the Son has, and the Son takes all that is ours. We no longer live as ourselves but as God’s people. We empty ourselves and become vessels to bear God’s love and grace into the world, and through our words and actions, we proclaim, “The kingdom of God has come near.” (Luke 10:11) Not because of our human presence but because the God who saves is with us.

We are given authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and power over the enemy, but too often, we forget that we have this authority.  The enemy is the one who tells us that we don’t have enough people or money or children and the Church is dying. The enemy is the one who defeats us when we are asked to do something new and are afraid. The enemy is the one who tells us God’s Word isn’t for us.

But the Good News we have from Jesus is that God’s Word is for us –God speaks the promise of forgiveness for our sin and promises the Holy Spirit is with us, here and now. These instructions that Jesus gives are not just for the seventy appointed on that day two thousand years ago, but for each one of us now.

Let us pray…
Holy and forgiving God,
We give you thanks for Your Son Jesus who sows seeds of peace and bears our burdens, freeing us to proclaim your nearness;
Take away our arrogance and our fear.
Give us courage and help us remember You have given us authority and power over the Enemy.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus.
Amen.

[i] https://www.tnfarmbureau.org/how-much-corn-can-you-harvest-day, accessed 7/5/2019.
[ii] https://www.tspr.org/post/how-much-corn-could-you-pick-hand-20-minutes, accessed 7/5/2019.

Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

In some congregations this past Sunday people were invited to bury the “alleluias” signaling the beginning of Lent. One colleague lamented the year he had hidden them in the baptismal font and forgotten where they were stashed; colleagues were reminded that if they were burying the alleluias, they better have a way to remember where they’re hidden. It’s fun for me to imagine having a roughly drawn treasure map thumbtacked to the wall in the sacristy or tucked here into the pulpit Bible to show us the way back to the treasure at Easter.

But in practice, burying the alleluias for Lent — or simply refraining from using the word for “Praise God!” that occurs so frequently in our liturgy and songs — is one example of a discipline where we take a rest from something in order that its meaning or significance will be renewed when we return.

Through giving, fasting and prayer, the season of Lent invites us to rest.

Giving beckons us to step off the treadmill of everyday life that is always urging us to do more and have more. Resting in the knowledge that God cares for each one of us as lilies in the field, we are reminded that all we have has been given to us by God and belongs to God already and we are commanded to give the best of our first fruits to God, instead of withholding them or keeping them for ourselves. And when we give to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and welcome the stranger, (Mt. 25) our sight is renewed and we see each person with God’s eyes, as a fully human and fully loved child of God.

Fasting — giving something up for a period of time — also invites us to rest. Instead of filling ourselves up with activity or junk food, we empty ourselves. A common spiritual practice in Scripture, fasting isn’t about inflicting suffering; it is about heightening our attentiveness to what God is doing.1 Whether we fast from a particular food or a habit, fasting creates space for us to be filled by God.  

Prayer, often described as talking to God, invites us to rest from all the other things we could be doing so that we can draw close to God and renew our strength. Prayer lets us name the concerns of our hearts, but the best conversations aren’t one-sided, so prayer also asks us to wait on the Lord to speak. Amid the noise and wordiness of our lives, silence invites us to listen for God.

Safe in God’s care, filled by God’s Spirit and renewed by God’s Word for us, we are strengthened for whatever lies ahead.

Today on Ash Wednesday, particularly, we prepare for Lent with confession and repentance. We confess our sin— the way we curve in on ourselves, and away from God; the ways we live imperfectly as disciples; the ways we make idols of our stuff, our desires and our selves; the ways we stumble and do our own  thing instead of following Jesus.

Our repentance is not passive. As we put on ashes, we commit to actively “turn around” — to turn away from ourselves and return to God with all our heart. Lent offers us opportunities to find meaningful practices that help us live as followers of Jesus, not just for forty days but for all time.

Let us pray…
Holy Lord,
We give you thanks for your abundant mercy and love;
teach us how to follow your Son Jesus and find our treasure in You;
when we are weak in faith, strengthen us and fill us with your Holy Spirit.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our savior and Lord.
Amen.

1 www.bishopmike.com

14th Sunday after Pentecost

Ephesians 6:10-20

The letter to the church in Ephesus is one of the letters that has survived from the tumultuous years in the first and second centuries when Christians were religious minorities. Standing against paganism and poly-theism, their small communities of faith were threatened by persecution and oppression. Scattered across Asia Minor, land that is largely modern-day Turkey now, they received letters like this one from the teachers of the faith, like Paul, who offered instruction and encouragement and reminded them the tenets of the faith that we have through Jesus Christ.

For several weeks now, I have been using this letter and the gospel of John as lenses through which we’ve looked at the values that we hold as a congregation – those things that we have named as being central to our identity as Ascension Lutheran Church: outreach, affirmation, calling others to service, and pointing to Jesus. What remains is prayer.

While prayer isn’t a ministry that gets us mentioned in the newspaper or can be seen from the street, our prayers are a witness to the promises God gives us in faith, including a promise to be Emmanuel — God with us —in all circumstances (Matthew 1:23) and a promise to help us in our weakness, interceding with sighs too deep for words (Romans 8:26).

As Luther writes about the Lord’s Prayer in his small catechism, God doesn’t need our prayers to accomplish God’s purposes on earth, but we pray so that we might recognize what God is doing and participate in that work. Prayer is, as Dr. Mark Allan Powell writes, “an arena for encountering God and learning what kind of God we have.”[i]

The writer of the epistle urges us, “Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.” (Ephesians 6:18 a)

There is urgency in the writer’s description of the life of faith that compels us to pray earnestly and unceasingly for the church, the world and all who are in need.

Sometimes we say defeatedly, “All we can do is pray.” But for God’s people, prayer isn’t meant to be a last resort. “Prayer is simply talking with God”… expressing our adoration and love; recognizing who we are as God’s beloved children; giving thanks for God’s love and grace and being attentive to the needs around us.[ii] Our prayers unite us with God even when our individual resources or knowledge are exhausted and depleted. Henri Nouwen says, “To pray is to walk in the full light of God, and to say simply, without holding back, ‘I am human and you are God.’”[iii]

The letter continues, “…keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. (Eph. 6:18b)

The saints are not only those who have already died and joined the church triumphant; they are all of us too! Martin Luther calls us simultaneously sinner and saint because by God’s grace, and that alone, we are forgiven and made holy, or sanctified.

Writing about the prayers of the faithful, Father Michael Kwatera explains, “Our prayer for others can enlarge our spirits and enlighten our minds, so that we may see more of God’s will for this world. And when we pray for others, we are asking that by God’s grace they may open themselves to God’s will. Intercessory prayer helps us to embody and promote reign-of-God values (peace, justice, equality, service) by conforming our wills to God’s will.”[iv]

Fred Rogers, the memorable host of public television’s children’s show “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” once shared a story of meeting a boy who had severe cerebral palsy and communicated with computer assistance. The boy had always loved watching the television show, and a benefactor arranged for Mister Rogers to meet him.

After they met and talked a while, Mister Rogers said to the boy, “I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?” And the boy said he would, so then Mister Rogers said, “I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?”

The boy was surprised and “although at first he didn't know if he could do it, he said he would, he said he'd try….”

Mister Rogers said later, “I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.”[v]

 “Will you pray for me?”
Those five words invite us into life together.
Asking for prayer,
we lay bare our fears and anxieties, surrender our control of our situation and yoke ourselves together to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.” (Eph. 6:10)

Let us pray…
Steadfast and loving God,
Thank you for your Son Jesus who brings forgiveness for our sin.
Help us come to you humbly in prayer and make us ready to conform to Your will.
Show us the power of prayer to free us from burdens
and unite us with You and with each other in community.
We pray in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen.

[i] Powell, 167.

[ii] Dr. Mark Allan Powell, Loving Jesus. 159-164.

[iii] Powell, 162.

[iv] Fr. Michael Kwatera, St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, MN. http://www.saintjohnsabbey.org/liturgy-answers/what-history-theology-behind-prayers-faithful/, accessed 8/25/2018.

[v] Tom Junod, “Can You Say...Hero?” Esquire, April 6, 2017. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-hero-esq1198/ Accessed 8/23/2018.

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Throughout this season of Epiphany we have heard stories about how God’s love for the whole world is being revealed. And in the healing of Simon Peter’s mother, we see the transformation that happens when Jesus reaches out to her and lifts her up. In his gospel, Mark jumps right into the teaching and healing work that Jesus does in the world, real ministry to real, hurting people and communities.

But it’s what Jesus does next that sets him apart from many of us, pastors and other religious leaders included. In verse 35 Mark tells us, “In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place and there he prayed.”

Mark’s Gospel is quick-paced, moving rapidly from event to event; yet, even he stops his narrative so that we see Jesus leave his disciples and go to a deserted place and pray.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised how hard it is for us to follow Jesus in prayer. Even his disciples seem surprised to find him there, telling him when they find him, “"Everyone is searching for you." (v. 37)

But even when we accept that prayer is a worthwhile faith practice and a mark of discipleship, it can be challenging to develop a regular practice of prayer.

One place to begin, of course, is with table grace:

When I entered seminary, someone shared a book titled One Hundred Graces that included prayers from all different traditions. I brought a copy home so that we could choose from the variety of prayers for our table grace; my own daughters quickly memorized which pages had the shortest prayers and chose those.

It wasn’t quite the faith formation practice I had imagined.

More recently, a local pastor and friend shared a story about his daughter who responded to his invitation to pray at the dinner table saying, “We don’t need to pray. There’s no smoke on the food.” He asked her if she meant steam and she said yes, and then he asked her why they prayed before they ate. She answered. “We pray for our food. To wait for it not to be hot.”

Practicing prayer is hard work.

Especially when we believe that God loves us and knows our hearts’ desires and supplies sighs too deep for words, when we are silenced by suffering, the reasons we pray are not obvious.

But Jesus’ own witness to us is that seeking God in prayer is important.

In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther writes about the Lord’s Prayer, teaching that God’s good and gracious will comes about in our lives without our words, but we pray that it might come about in and among us, and God delights in hearing us because we are God’s own children.

Earlier this week I was in conversation with some folks and we were imagining the joy that God experiences as a parent when two or three of God’s children are gathered together. Our prayers bear witness to God’s promises to hear us and God’s desire to be in relationship with us.

In Isaiah we heard:

²⁹ [The Lord] gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. ³⁰ … those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isa. 40:29-31)

John Wesley, who with his brother Charles founded Methodism, reminds us that first we go and be with God and then we go and do God’s work in the world. He is quoted in Mark Allen Powell’s book Loving Jesus, writing, “I have so much to do that I must spend many hours in prayer before I am able to do it.”[i]

When we encounter God in prayer, we are strengthened, we are revived and we are renewed!

So why is it that these things that draw us to pray —

knowing God and receiving God’s love and mercy, and being strengthened to participate in God’s work in the world —

are the very same things that keep us from praying?

Just as Jesus encountered temptation in the wilderness, we are tempted and separated from God by sin —turning in on ourselves and putting our own desires for esteem and affection, security and control, before God’s desires for us. We doubt God’s fidelity to God’s promises; we doubt our own value to God, and we fear what we might hear if we quiet ourselves, sit in God’s presence and listen to God. We are afraid of what God will ask us to do.

But, “Have you not known? Have you not heard?”[ii]

Jesus shows that when we follow him into stillness and prayer, we encounter “The Lord [who] is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.” (Isa. 40:28), and when we create this holy space in our lives, we will hear God speak and see God act, according to God’s promises.

Let us pray…

Holy God,

We give you thanks for Your Son who witnesses to us that You hear our prayers.

Help us follow Jesus into the silent presence of Your Spirit and open our hearts to hear you speak into our lives.

Strengthen us and renew us to follow your Son for the sake of the world.

Amen.

---

[i] Mark Allan Powell, Loving Jesus, p. 142

[ii] Isa. 40:28

God will deliver us from our enemy (Numbers 17)

Worship from Sunday, June 21, 2015, 4th Sunday after Pentecost
at Ascension Lutheran Church, Shelby, NC

Introduction
Today we gather together as the body of Christ,

and, with our brothers and sisters, we mourn the nine people who were killed Wednesday night in the shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

As you probably know, the suspected 21-year old shooter was arrested during a traffic stop here in Shelby by our city police. What you may not have yet learned is that he also was a member of an ELCA congregation in South Carolina, and two of the people killed were graduates of the ELCA seminary in Columbia, SC. As Presiding Bishop Eaton wrote in her response to the tragedy, “One of our own is alleged to have shot and killed two who adopted us as their own.”

During worship

During the summer children of all ages are invited to listen as we read from children’s literature. Today, I am going to read from Birmingham 1963 written Carole Boston Weatherford.

This story tells what happened in a Birmingham, Alabama church on a Sunday morning nearly fifty-two years ago. [After the reading] I wonder where God is in the story.

Let us pray:

God of our ancestors,

History shows us that even when evil, hatred and violence cloak our lives in darkness,

you remain Emanuel, God with us.

We commend to you the lives of the saints who were killed on Wednesday night as they gathered in your house:

Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41;

Cynthia Hurd, 54;

Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45;

Tywanza Sanders, 26;

Ethel Lance, 70;

Susie Jackson, 87;

Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49;

Myra Thompson, 59;

Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74

  

Holy God, we pray

...for their families, and all who love them, that they will know the comfort of your abiding love in the midst of their pain. Hear us, O God.

Your mercy is great.

...for the congregation of Emanuel AME Church

whose sanctuary has been desecrated that you would bring them to safety and restore peace to them; that they can find rest from their weariness and sorrow. Hear us, O God.

Your mercy is great.

...for our enemies, including the suspect Dylann Roof, that you will bring him to repentance and grant him forgiveness.Hear us, O God.

Your mercy is great.

…for his family and the congregation of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Columbia, and for their pastor, that they will know your presence as they struggle to make sense of the incomprehensible. Hear us, O God.

Your mercy is great.

God, our refuge and strength, we give you thanks for the sanctuary we find here this morning, and we pray for your Holy Spirit to shine light into the darkness of our sin and our world, and guide our steps. We pray in the name of your crucified and risen Son, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

From the pulpit

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.

Last Sunday, we heard how Saul fell from favor and young David was anointed in his place, but he isn’t king yet.

He remains a court musician and a shepherd.

The youngest of Jesse’s sons, he is an errand boy,

delivering lunches and supplies to the Israelite soldiers

who are perched on a mountaintop, staring across a valley at their enemies.

One the other side of the valley, the Philistine army is poised to attack.

But nothing happens.

For either side to advance, they would have to cede their privilege and go into the valley. They would have to be vulnerable.

A Philistine infantryman, larger than any of the other soldiers,

a giant of a man named Goliath,

offers to fight one man from the Israelite army to put an end to the battle.

And no one steps forward.

As David is greeting his older brothers at the army camp,

Goliath repeats the words he had said before,

and David witnesses the deafening silence of the Israelites.

But David breaks the silence and speaks up, telling the king,

“Your servant will go and fight…”(v. 32)

Saul offers objections:

“Yes, but you can’t really do that, you’re only a boy and he’s an experienced soldier.”

“Yes, but you cannot go as you are; you will need armor and weapons.”

But David goes, armed with his staff, five smooth stones, and a sling.

And he slays the enemy soldier.

Some would say David was naïve, or foolish, but

David saw what no one else in the Israelite army could see;

sure, they knew the history of warfare and had battle plans drawn.

They could see the terrain and Goliath’s physical stature.

Even after Samuel told them not to pay attention to appearances,

they still based their decisions on what they could see and touch,

whatever was in plain sight,

and they let their fear bind them into doing nothing.

David alone, saw that this was not a battle between two armies of men.

This was between an historic enemy

and “the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel.” (v. 45)

His courage was grounded in his knowledge of the God who we worship,

and the steadfast presence of God in the face of our enemies.

Four nights ago, nine bullets rang out in a church meeting room in Charleston, South Carolina, and pierced the sides of nine black bodies − mothers, grandmothers, sons, fathers and grandfathers. [i] Sadly, as I said earlier, and doubtless as many of you remember in your lifetimes, this was not the first attack against black people in a church. 

It was racism: actions against a group of human beings for no reason other than the color of their skin.

It wasn’t the first attack, and,

unless white churches like ours speak up, it won’t be the last. 

It was, what Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton has called,

“a stark, raw manifestation of the sin that is racism.

The church was desecrated.

The people of [Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church] were desecrated…”[ii]

Bishop Eaton urges us to,

“…to examine ourselves, our church and our [community]…

to be honest about the reality of racism within us and around us…”

It would be easy to respond like Saul, and say,

“Yes, but…” talking about race in our community and country will be uncomfortable.

It is easy to respond like Saul, and say,

“Yes, but…” confronting racism – speaking up in the deafening silence – will be scary.

It’s easy for us to name the reasons

that we shouldn’t confront this historic enemy

that has been piercing the hearts of our black brothers and sisters

not only for the past fifty-two years, but for hundreds of years.

But now is not the time to say, “Yes, but…”

Now is the time to echo David, and say,

“Your servant will go and fight…”(v. 32)

David’s strength is not his own,

but lies in his confession that God will deliver us from our enemy.

The enemy is not the people who are calling the Charleston shootings

a hate crime and racist violence.

The enemy is racism that, as ugly as it sounds, is part of our lives in our country.

It’s not always blatant; in fact it is nearly invisible,

if we don’t know people who aren’t white;

or we don’t listen to the stories of how whiteness and blackness differ.

Bishop Eaton goes on to urge us to “look with newly opened eyes at the many subtle and overt ways that we and our communities see people of color as being of less worth.”[iii]

After internship, I worked in a grocery store deli.

I heard a woman refuse to buy food prepared by our black cook.

I heard customers joke about workers’ accents, but,

because it would have been bad customer service,

I choked back a rebuttal.

All too often, we don’t want to offend or upset someone,

make a conversation awkward, or be accused of being political.

But the theology of the cross calls us to call a thing what it is. [iv]

This is racism. And racism is a sin.

And I am complicit.

Just last month, I parked my car on West Marion Street

and when I saw a young black man who I didn’t know,

walking in my direction on the sidewalk, I felt myself tense.

The irony is we were both going to participate in a monthly meeting

designed to build relationships across cultures here in Shelby.

It’s easy here, too, to answer like Saul, “Yes, but…”

But, no.

Lutherans don’t believe in a grading system for sin.

We believe sin is part of our human condition,

warping our lives and distancing us from God.

The racism embedded in our lives is sin.

Thankfully, we also believe in grace,

that unwarranted and unmerited gift from God that assures me

that I am a beloved child of God, forgiven for my sins.

Like so much of life, we aren’t going to do this work perfectly.

We will make mistakes and say things that someone doesn’t want to hear,

but we cannot be silent or blind or unaware any longer.

Confronting racism,

this historic, larger-than-life, enemy is hard;

it is uncomfortable and it is scary.

Racism won’t be taken down as easily or swiftly as Goliath fell,

but as the Church, we are called to speak up,

and, confident that God will deliver us from this enemy,

we must step up and act.

Let us pray:

Lord of Hosts,

We praise you for your promise to accompany us through the battles we face in life.

We give thanks for your promise to deliver us from our enemies.

We pray now that our eyes will be opened to where evil and racism are embedded in our lives.

Gather us and empower us, by Your Holy Spirit, to do the hard work of dismantling racism in our families, our workplaces,

and God, yes, in your Church.[v]

Move us to act in justice for all of our brothers and sisters.

In the name of your crucified and Risen Son,

Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.

Amen.

---

[i] Jennifer Bailey. “Rolling in Sackcloth and Ashes,” HuffingtonPost.com http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-bailey/rolling-in-sackcloth-and-ashes_b_7614210.html?1434649529, accessed June 20, 2015.

[ii] Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Thursday, June 18, 2015.

[iii] ibid

[iv] Martin Luther. Heidelburg Disputation, Line 21.

[v] Rev. Mindi, http://rev-o-lution.org/2015/06/18/prayer-a-call-for-justice-for-emmanuel-ame-in-charleston/, accessed June 20, 2015.