Reformation Sunday

John 8:31-36

So this Reformation Sunday, there is an embarrassment of riches for the preacher.

Here at Grace, on Reformation Sunday, we have a tradition of celebrating the affirmation of baptism for our students who have completed three years of formation and instruction in confirmation. Earlier we heard Emily Karen, Nyles and Katya share their memory verses. And in the bulletin, you can read more about why those verses are meaningful to them. Later in the worship service, they will commit themselves to the promises that were made for them at baptism, and as a congregation, we will promise to support them in their lives in Christ and pray for them. I could talk more about these three youth and what we have learned together, but baptism isn’t about what we have done, but what God does for us.

Another sermon would talk about our favorite reformer Martin Luther and the work of the Protestant Reformation that happened a little over five hundred years ago. It’s the story of his being thunderstruck and becoming a monk and a professor. And even then, he had questions about God and faith, so he read and he studied and in reading Paul, discovered that God’s grace is a free gift given to us all, through no works of our own, but through the redemption we have in Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:24) When Luther witnessed corruption in the Roman Catholic Church, he became an advocate for change and wrote and shared his 95 Theses calling for reform. He was called a heretic and eventually he was forced into hiding because he took a stand. But this isn’t “Luther Sunday”, and the story of our faith isn’t simply a historical account of what happened centuries ago. It is a story that continues today because God’s activity in our lives continues today.

And, while we are Lutheran, we do not worship Martin Luther, but Jesus Christ.

So I am going to focus on Jesus’ words in our gospel today.

While John’s gospel often uses a phrase translated “the Jews”, it’s helpful to understand that he is referring to a specific group of people – Judeans, and not even to the general population, but most likely to the religious leaders of Judea.[i]

John reveals that Jesus has been speaking to Judeans whose opinions are divided. Some are complaining about him (6:43) and want to arrest him (7:44) but others believe in him. (8:30).

In John’s gospel belief in Jesus isn’t an intellectual exercise; it means being in relationship with Jesus. It isn’t a matter of the head, but of the heart.

And Jesus encourages those who have believed in him, saying, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples.” (8:31)

There is a note for Bible geeks here. In Greek, the word Jesus uses for “continue” comes from meno μένω and another way to translate μένω is “to remain” or “to abide”.

In John 5, after he heals a man on the Sabbath, Jesus speaks to the Judeans about God’s Word abiding in those who believe. (5:38)

And again, when he teaches about the “bread from heaven in John 6, he says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” (6:56)

When he describes himself as a vine and God as the vinegrower, he commands his followers, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” (15:4)

And then he says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. (15:9)

When Jesus says we are to continue, or remain, or abide in “his word”, we are meant to remember the prologue at the very beginning of John when Jesus says,

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (1:1)

“The Word”, in Greek the λόγος is God, is Jesus. So when he says “continue in my word” he is saying, “abide in me”, stay in this relationship. Because it is in relationship with Jesus that we experience the truth of God revealed in Him, and in relationship that we experience God’s free gift of abundant grace and love.

And that is the truth that sets us free.

Free to explore the world where we live and become the person God has created us to be.

Free to try and fail. Free to mess up and be forgiven.

Free to stop navel gazing, curved in on ourselves, and serve and love others.

Today as we celebrate with Emily Karen, Nyles and Katya, our confirmands on this Reformation Sunday,

we remember that we are always becoming the disciples that God desires;

we recognize that our history and tradition provide guideposts for how we practice our faith;

and we give thanks for the truth and freedom we know in Christ.

Amen.

---

[i] Judith Jones. “Commentary on John 8:31-36”. workingpreacher,org. Luther Seminary.

Lent 3A

The differences between last week’s gospel and today’s gospel are literally night and day.

We are in John’s gospel again but this time, Jesus is the one on the move. In Jerusalem, the Pharisee named Nicodemus had found Jesus at night to ask the questions he had.

Now Jesus has gone to Samaria, and he is at the public well in the middle of the day when he encounters a woman there, and it’s Jesus who speaks first, asking the unnamed woman to give him a drink.

As it unfolds, this story embodies the verse that ended last week’s gospel: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him.”  (John 3:17)

Although the Evangelist said Jesus had to go there (4:4), Samaria wasn’t actually on the route from Jerusalem to Galilee, so the route wasn’t born out of geographical necessity. Jesus went to Samaria because God was up to something.

John makes sure we know how unusual this scene with Jesus and the Samaritan woman is when he writes, “Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.” (4:9) Their animosity was grounded in six hundred years of feuding. While the Jewish people were descended from the people who had returned to Jerusalem after the exile, Samaritans were descended from the colonial powers who conquered the region and the Israelites who had stayed. This was a centuries old irreconcilable division, even more serious than which barbecue or basketball team is best.

And then there’s this woman. We don’t know her name, and while you may have heard sermons preached about her immorality, it is just as likely that she had been abandoned for being barren, or she had been widowed, or both. Importantly, as it is with so many people we meet, we don’t know the rest of her story. It is hidden from us.

Meeting Jesus for the first time, both Nicodemus and the woman realize that what Jesus isn’t speaking to them the way others do. And what he says to them doesn’t fit with the teachings and assumptions they’ve held throughout their lifetimes. It is a time of disorientation and reorientation.

And, just as Nicodemus asked Jesus, “How can these things be?” (3:9) when Jesus spoke of being born of water and the Spirit (3:5), when Jesus tells the woman about living water, she asks him, “Where do you get that living water?” (4:11)

We don’t hear more from Nicodemus until later in John’s gospel (Ch. 7 and 19) But when the woman at the well hears Jesus declare that he is the Messiah, she immediately goes and tells her neighbors, “Come and see the One who knows everything I have ever done….”

The woman’s testimony sparks my curiosity.

I wonder if she realized how deeply she longed to be known. I think of how easy it is to go through the motions of our day-to-day responsibilities without thinking too deeply about what we need. It is a mark of privilege to be sure that we don’t have to think about whether we will have food or water or a roof over our heads and shoes on our feet.

As I heard the Samaritan woman’s story again, I remembered another story of living water. This one comes from Malawi in southeastern Africa:

In the late 1990s, the people in Malawi experienced drought, their crops failed and there was famine. An earnest young teenager who could not afford his school fees spent his free time reading in the village library, looking for ways to help his family and community. The story of “the boy who harnessed the wind” tells how the young man built a windmill from scrap metal and bicycle parts to create electricity that could pump water and irrigate the land, generating living and life-giving water.

Today a woman in an African country may spend 660 hours a year collecting water and every day tens of thousands of people die from diseases caused by contaminated water. ELCA World Hunger supports water projects across the world. These projects provide clean, safe water for drinking, growing crops and sanitation. Instead of gathering water from far away or from compromised sources, women can work and earn money for their families and children can go to school and get an education and secure better opportunities for their future. As we continue our month-long appeal to raise $5,000 for ELCA World Hunger, we can know that our gifts provide living water for our neighbors around the world.

I wonder as I reflect on the stories of the woman and of that young man, “What does living water look like for you?”

Sometimes, it is the cascade of a spring rain that rinses away all the pollen and grime and makes the grass sparkle;

Other times, it is the refreshment of icy spring water in a glass;

And still other times,

it is the flowing river of grace that washes over us;

the waters of baptism poured on our heads that gives us new life;

the endless well of mercy where God meets us and knows us.

And like Nicodemus and the woman, I’d bet that sometimes we don’t even know that we need that living water - we don’t know what we don’t know – and yet, God shows up where we are with what we need, drawing us again into conversation and relationship, and into communion with God.

Let us pray…

Good and gracious God,

Thank you for showing up where we need your life-giving presence.

Thank you for sustaining us with grace and mercy, with living water that restores us to relationship with you.

Help us invite others to come and see,

to be witnesses to how you so love the world.

We pray in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

21st Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 10:35-45

Have you ever gone out with friends and as y’all were headed to the car, someone shouted, “Shotgun!” They’re claiming their place, or even their ‘right’ to be in the front seat, where you can control the sound and the temperature and get a good view of the road ahead.

That’s what James and John do in today’s gospel. The gospel begins with them separating themselves from the other ten disciples, going to Jesus and asking to be seated on his right and his left, in places of honor and prestige. They called, “Shotgun!”

It’s clear James and John were so focused on themselves that they didn’t really listen to what Jesus had been saying. Because in the verses just before these, Jesus told all of the disciples:

the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; ³⁴ they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again." (Mark 10:33-34)

Jesus even has a hard time believing that if the two of them had been listening that they would have been so eager. And so Jesus says,

You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (Mark 10:38)

But the pair answer Jesus, insisting, “We are able.”

Maybe they did understand and were able. Or perhaps they believed they could do whatever it takes to be close to Jesus, even if they didn’t know what that would require. But just as likely, they were full of bravado and said “they were able” even though they weren’t at all.

Jesus doesn’t argue with them. He doesn’t rebuke them like he did Peter. Instead, like he did when the disciples were arguing about who is the greatest, he begins teaching again.

Jesus knows that sitting at his right or left hand does not bring power or prestige but suffering. On the cross, it will be a thief and bandit who are on his right and his left. (Matthew 27:38) His cousin John was beheaded, and other disciples will be martyrs for their faith.

The baptism with which Jesus is baptized is a baptism in the Holy Spirit that drove him into the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan (Mark 1:13) and the cup that he drinks is the same cup that he asks to be taken from him on the eve of his crucifixion. (Mark 14:36)

What Jesus promises is not power or prestige but relationship.

When we are baptized, we are baptized into life with Christ. We are forgiven and made new. We set aside our former lives and the things that draw us from God and we seek the things that God wants. We show Jesus to the world through our service, setting aside our egos and selfishness, turning away from ourselves and toward others. It is a relationship that requires sacrifice, not comfort.

Suffering is the cost of discipleship. Whether it is putting the needs of another before ours or voicing an unpopular opinion that aligns with Jesus but stands in contrast to the world and society or choosing service instead of security, Jesus calls us to be disciples.

It’s easy to pick on the disciples in Mark where they seem even more blundering and foolish than in the other gospels. And James and John do appear arrogant and childish asking Jesus if he will do whatever they ask and then asking for seats of honor. But part of our criticism may be stoked by the same feeling that provoked anger in the other disciples. Haven’t James and John just been foolish enough, or brave enough, to ask Jesus for what they really want?

Don’t we all want to know we belong with Jesus?

Thankfully, the assurance we have from Jesus is that we are baptized into a baptism like his. When we are baptized, we are named God’s own children and we receive everything that belongs to Jesus and He takes on all is ours in what is called a “sweet swap.”

We belong to God, and no one and nothing can separate us from God, not even our own childish and arrogant behaviors or questions. Martin Luther called the power of faith “a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a [person] would stake his life on it a thousand times....”^[i]

And so we do. We stake our lives on God’s love and acceptance, and we love others as we are loved. God doesn’t need us to do that, or anything else, in order that we may be saved. But because God loves us, we search out ways to show Jesus to our neighbors and world.

Let us pray…

Good and gracious God,

Thank you for your son Jesus coming into the world that we would know the depth and breadth of your love for us.

Thank you creating us for relationship and belonging and making a place for each one of us.

Give us courage to show your love to our neighbors and not be anxious about ourselves, but having daring confidence in your grace.

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

Amen.

---

[i] Martin Luther, Commentary on Romans, Translation J. Theodore Mueller (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1954), xvii.

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

Lectionary 19C/ Proper 14

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

This week the churchwide assembly for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) convened in Milwaukee.

In the ELCA we celebrate being one church body organized in three expressions – the local congregation, the synod, and the churchwide organization, and the churchwide assembly (#ELCAcwa) brings those three expressions together every three years. There, voting members elected by each of the sixty-five synods, as well as our synod bishops and assistants to the bishop and the Church Council gather to listen for where God is speaking and leading; to bear witness to God’s activity in the world; and to take action that shines God’s light in the world in solidarity with the poor, and oppressed, calling for justice and proclaiming God’s love for the world.[i]

I watched worship and plenaries on the livestream from the Wisconsin Center, and while there’s much that could be said about Roberts’ Rules of Order, parliamentary procedure and hot mic moments during the assembly, what made it extraordinary was the joyful worship and preaching that proclaimed that we are saved by a God whose grace has no limits, and the actions taken that spoke to how God’s kingdom is breaking into the world even now.

And, as I listened and watched, the words of our second reading from the book of Hebrews returned to me:

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen… 3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

Like us, the audience being addressed in the book of Hebrews “were not eyewitnesses to the ministry of Jesus and [they] lived in a community that had been founded some years before.”[ii] Like those “Christians who were having trouble holding onto hope when Christ did not return immediately after his resurrection”, we, too, wait for answers from God, and in the midst of daily life we can become discouraged that evil and sin continue to exist in the world. [iii] But the Good News of Jesus Christ is that we are not alone, or abandoned to our despair or our fear.

This text tells us first that faith is “the assurance of things hoped for.”(v. 1) Furman University religion professor John C. Shelley notes, “what we hope for is intimately connected to our faith.”[iv] In the gospel, Jesus tells us “Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.” (Luke 12: 34) The places where we commit our selves – our time, talents and our money – reflect the desires of our hearts, and they reflect our faith because our lives are lived in response to the grace we have been given. The hopes we hold for ourselves, our church and the world cannot be separated from our faith.

One of the actions that the churchwide assembly took was to adopt a memorial that “encourages our synods and congregations to commemorate
the 50th anniversary of the ELCA’s ordination of women in 2020;
the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the ordination of women of color in the Lutheran tradition in the United States and
the 10th anniversary of the ELCA’s decision to remove the barriers to ordination for people in same-gendered relationships..."[v]

I am grateful the ELCA “recognizes the diversity of gifts that women’s ordination brings to this church”[vi] and to this congregation for calling me as Ascension’s first female pastor, but I lament that many congregations throughout the ELCA still refuse to recognize the calls of women in ministry, people of color and our LGBTQIA siblings in Christ. For all who have been told that they cannot serve, in our denomination or elsewhere, our churchwide affirmation of women in ministry witnesses that “the way of Jesus is the way to become who [each of us] most truly is,” as a child of God.[vii] Our action sustains hope for those who do not yet see a way forward.

The text also tells us that faith is “the conviction of things not seen.” (v. 1) As Shelley writes, “faith is not supported by the surrounding culture.”[viii] We forget sometimes how political Jesus was; he challenged the existing systems and leaders on behalf of those who were suffering or ignored and, ultimately, he was executed for it. In Luke’s gospel particularly, he speaks up for the poor, with more than 30 references to wealth, money, possessions and alms in Luke-Acts alone.

We cannot listen to Jesus’s words and think he doesn’t have something to say about how we spend, save and give.

Rolf Jacobson, a professor at Luther Seminary, tells the story of how he started tipping more and then realized he was noticing more the people who are dependent on tips. It’s not just wait staff at restaurants. It’s service personnel who don’t have living wages, and often don’t have benefits that provide healthcare or retirement savings. Again, we hear Jesus: “Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.”

Budgets are faith statements, and at the churchwide assembly, one of the first celebrations was that “Always Being Made New: the Campaign for the ELCA” exceeded its goal, raising more than $250 million in support of new and existing ELCA ministries. Those gifts will provide needed revenue to expand ministries for supporting congregations, leaders, and the global church and addressing hunger and poverty, and we can and should celebrate the ways God will be made known.

Later in the week, the assembly adopted the three-year budget for the churchwide expression which designated 75% of expenses to support and grow vital congregations here in the U.S. and to grow the Lutheran Church around the world; provide relief and development to help end hunger domestically and globally; provide coordination and support for churchwide ministries and support and develop current and future rostered and lay leaders in the ELCA.

Clearly, we long to participate in the beautiful kingdom work that God is doing through our church.

But then, one of the last pieces of business that the assembly engaged was the discussion of a cost-saving measure taken earlier this year that changed the healthcare benefits for the employees at the churchwide organization. The assembly was asked to consider restoring those benefits and the difficult discussion highlighted the challenge of managing money, people and ministry. It also, importantly, affirmed our own social statement that acknowledges how health and health care depend not only upon personal responsibility, but also upon other people and conditions in wider society. It states, “Such interdependence is at odds with the common message of this individualistic society, but it flows from the biblical vision of wholeness.”[ix]

We cannot make decisions about our lives and the lives of those around us apart from our faith.
In the verses that follow those that I read, the writer of Hebrews shares the stories of heroes of faith including Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and reminds us that, as Shelley notes, “faith may provoke hostility and ridicule…and it also presents itself as courage.[x]

Several of the actions taken this week by the assembly required great courage. After thirty years the ELCA has even fewer people of color than our predecessor bodies of the ALC and LCA did; in fact, we are the whitest denomination in the U.S. No single action or set of actions can change that reality quickly but the assembly took three actions that begin to address our history and our future. First, the assembly apologized to the African descent community for our historical complicity in slavery and its enduring legacy of racism in the United States and globally. The second action recalled the events of June 17, 2015 when a young man, baptized and raised in an ELCA congregation in the Carolinas, murdered nine people at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston; in commemoration of those nine martyrs, June 17 was designated as a day of repentance, grounded in prayer. And the third action was the adoption of an unambiguous resolution to condemn white supremacy, proclaiming that “the love of God and the justice and mercy of God are for all people, without exception.”[xi]

There is a Zulu proverb that says, “When a thorn pierces the foot, the whole body must bend over to pull it out.”[xii] We cannot follow Jesus but expect others do the hard and necessary work to address systemic racism in our nation and within the Church.

There are many more examples from churchwide assembly that connect faith and Scripture to our everyday lives and remind us that we are part of the Body of Christ in all its beauty and all its mess. I encourage you to learn more about the actions the assembly took, but also to look at your own decisions and see how your faith informs your live in the every day.

Our faith is alive – it is hope-filled; it is relational and it is public.
It is our faith in Christ whom we proclaim crucified and risen that gives us courage to confront evil and sin in the world with the confidence that God prevails. The writer of Hebrews assures us: we do not need to be discouraged and we are not without hope.

Let us pray…
Creator God,
We give you thanks for the world created by your word
and for Your Son who shows us Your Kingdom.
Forgive us when we fail to put our faith in your promises.
By your Holy Spirit, strengthen and give us courage to seek justice for all your children.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.


[i] Constitution, Ascension Lutheran Church.
[ii] “Hebrews”. Enter the Bible. Luther Seminary.
[iii] David E. Gray. “Hebrews”, Feasting on the Word.
[iv] John C. Shelley. “Hebrews”, Feasting on the Word.
[v] Legislative Update, https://www.elca.org/cwa-2019/guidebook-web-version, accessed 8/10/19
[vi] ibid
[vii] Shelley.
[viii] ibid
[ix] https://www.elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements/Health-Care, accessed 8/10/19
[x] ibid
[xi] Legislative Update, https://www.elca.org/cwa-2019/guidebook-web-version, accessed 8/10/19
[xii] The Right Reverend W. Darin Moore, Bishop, AME Zion Church, speaking at ELCA CWA 8/8/2019.

Summertime in the Preacher's Corner

For my family and me, summertime means barefeet, swimming in the river, campfires and cooking on the grill. For one of my daughters, it isn't summer without the beach, and for another it wouldn't be the same unless she was at Lutheridge for at least one week. Summer means something different for everyone. As we live into the season and all the meanings it carries for people, as a preacher, one of the questions I'm trying to figure out in the midst or Mother's and Father's Day, Memorial Day and the 4th of July, is where, if at all, should my preaching connect the Gospel to these celebrations and traditions?

Here are my three most recent sermons. The first was preached on Trinity Sunday, which fell this year on the last weekend in May, which for most Americans anyway, is Memorial Day Weekend, the official unofficial start of summer when the public swimming pools open, grills are fired up and  the shoes come off.  The second sermon was on June 23, in the midst of the long green season both in the church and in a world where everything is growing and green, and the third was on June 30, the Sunday before America's Independence Day celebration.

I didn't try to make connections to the season's celebrations in this year's sermons and I haven't resolved my questions about the importance of those connections. Part of me wants to stubbornly stick to the text and not be concerned about them, but I also want my hearers to connect the Gospel to their own lives -  to know that they are loved by God and God cares about what happens in their lives - and going forward, I think that may mean making room for the celebrations. Please let me know what you think.

May 26, 2013
Trinity Sunday (Year C)
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15



 Listen Now


June 23, 2013
5th Sunday after Pentecost (Year C)
Isaiah 65:1–9
Psalm 22:19–28 (22)
Galatians 3:23–29
Luke 8:26–39


Listen Now


June 30, 2013
6th Sunday after Pentecost (Year C)
1 Kings 19:15–16, 19–21
Psalm 16 (8)
Galatians 5:1, 13–25
Luke 9:51–62


Listen Now

Alleluia, Voices Raise

Quickly, before we begin a season of fasting, repentance and prayer on Ash Wednesday this week, and bury the Alleluias until Easter morning, let me say, "Alleluia!" for rich and varied voices from the pulpit.

While I wasn't on the regular preaching schedule in January at my internship site, I preached at a chapel service and a funeral before traveling to St. Paul Minnesota for my final 2-week learning intensive on campus at Luther Seminary, and then resumed preaching with another chapel service before the month was finished. The sermon below was my first in St. Mark's since Christmas Eve when I told the story of The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell.

February 3, 2013
4th Sunday after the Epiphany (Year C)
Jeremiah 1:4-10Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30

Listen Now

Having been welcomed so graciously into the pulpit at my home congregation, at the retirement community and again during internship, I am grateful for the opportunities I've been given to proclaim the Gospel in different settings and to different audiences. I'm also delighted when someone else is preaching because I get to hear their voices and interpretations of the text, and hear how they heard God's word for us. Throughout Lent and this 90th anniversary year for St. Mark's we are inviting former pastors and sons and daughters of the congregation to return to St. Mark's to preach - what a joy it will be to hear the Gospel from so many different voices. Recordings from St. Mark's are on the church's website.

What’s your next Good Read?

Newspapers deliver news, and at least the hard news stories give us the facts that will become the stuff of history. Magazines tell us something about a subject we want to explore in more depth. Stories open our imagination to an alternate world. Poetry helps us engage all our senses. Nonfiction, like biographies and Wikis, teach us who people were and how things came to be, and what makes them work, answering the questions of “Who?”, “Why?” and “How?” that lay behind what we see happening in the world around us. The written word in its many different genres and forms shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

But, when we talk about reading the Bible, suddenly the written Word becomes more intimidating. We imagine that there is a “right” way, and consequently, a “Wrong” way, to read the Bible because its text is, after all, the Holy Scripture of Christianity. It stares at us weightily from our bookshelf, like Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Shakespeare’s Collected Works, or Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln’s War Years (which is actually 4 tomes). Challenging and intellectual and unfamiliar. And, there’s so much of it – 66 books, in fact! Or perhaps, someone has given us their version and their interpretation does nothing to recommend it to us. But suppose we do open it, or download and open a Bible app, depending on where is falls open or which translation we read, the language sounds awkward, repetitive and formal. And if we stay in the text, we run headlong into stories of deception, like the king killing the husband of the woman he lusted for, or violence, like the rape of the king’s daughter. With the number of heartbreaking and terrorizing stories in our neighborhoods and cities, why would you invite more? Why read the Bible?

The Bible tells us who God is. If you are curious about a culture or a language or a people, you go to Fodor’s or Lonely Planet and you read about it. So engage your curiosity, learn the language of God as it’s expressed in the Bible, discover the less known God than the one that you may have heard shouted through a bullhorn, and meet God. God is a creator, an active, vibrant, attentive God who gets angry, who grieves, and who rejoices. God’s character is expressed in many names for God that identify particular aspects, or point us to specific promises that God has made. In the same way that a biography might give you glimpses into a person, the stories of the Bible reveal God’s character.

The Bible describes the covenant or relationship that God made and what promises are part of that. God designs us to be in relationship with each other and with God’s own self. This relationship is the ground for our understanding of who we are as community and what it means to be called into life together. Learning the promises of God helps us know how we can live into the hope of those promises and how one faithful response to those promises is to be in relationship with our neighbors and the world around us.

The Bible tells us how ancient Israel - the ancestors of Christian faith - understood God and what was important to shaping their tradition. Jesus was born in Israel and practiced Judaism. The stories he was taught and the instruction or Torah he was given are the foundation for his own teaching and ministry in the world where he lived. Reading the Bible opens his world to us and connects us to a story that is thousands of years old.

The Bible shows us what a follower of Jesus looks like.  It doesn’t prescribe what Jesus’ followers look like, and it doesn’t issue a secret handshake, or uniforms or nametags, but it talks about the people who traveled with Jesus during his ministry and those who witnessed his teaching and his miracles, his death and his resurrection. While we don’t always resemble followers of Jesus too closely, these stories provide us with a plumb line, so we know what true discipleship looks like.

The Bible is not an archival document that serves us better by kept under glass or locked away in pristine condition; neither is it written to sit unopened and gathering dust. It is a Living Word that invites us into its stories, asks us to listen to the stories of the arrogant little brother whose siblings trade him in, the man who wrestles God in the desert, the stories of betrayal and injustice righted. It invites us to walk alongside the Psalm writer who cries out in pain and provides us for a place to go when we are worn out, too. It invites us into the anticipation in the air at Elizabeth’s house when Mary, mother of Jesus, comes to see her during her pregnancy. It invites us into the courtyard where the disciple Peter lives out the struggle to tell people about Jesus and filled with fear and shame, denies him three times. It invites us to see how God uses unexpected people in unexpected places and in unexpected ways to share the Word of God’s love and forgiveness with the world.

When we read or listen to the stories we can begin to recognize God’s activity in each one, and we can begin to imagine how those stories from thousands of years ago are played out in our lives, and then, we can begin to see how our lives and stories connect and intersect with the biblical narrative, the story told through the texts of the books of the Bible. Like any good story, whether it’s your favorite movie or t.v. show, every new hearing, or reading, opens your eyes to see new details and prompts you to ask new questions.

As you read, or listen to it, the stories become more familiar until you can begin to complete the narrative from memory and the language seeps into your own vocabulary. And you learn how the books were written and why some were chosen to be held together in one collection as the canon; what is factual and what is allegorical; what is narrative and what is poetry; how a temple would have been constructed and what a Passover Seder meal may have looked like; you discover who the kings were, and what role the judges played, and you meet the men and women who were leaders in the early Christian church. And through all these different genres and forms, the Bible shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. So perhaps it doesn’t need to be so unfamiliar or challenging, but instead inviting.

Pick one up and read!

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No Syllabus for God-sightings

July 10. Registration day for fall classes. Oh, wait, that’s right. I won’t be taking classes this fall. One of the new experiences gifted to me because I am going on internship is a semester without coursework.  Most of the time, I recognize it as a gift; sometimes, like this morning, I want to throw a two-year old’s tantrum and scream, “But I need that class now...” I think that, besides interrupting the reassuring, steady march of completing degree requirements, what I fear is missing the structure of having a schedule and a syllabus and some predictability. Instead I’m living in a pretty unstructured environment, for a few weeks anyway; trying to listen and watch what God may be trying to teach me in this time and space; and, watching internship draw closer on the horizon.

The learning doesn’t stop, fortunately. I discovered the local library system has a free online language tutor that lets me refresh my Spanish and bridge its Castilian foundation to the Latin American Spanish we hear more often in the Americas. I visited the stacks of the local used book store where it looks like somebody traded in a library of emergence theology and other interesting books. (so, I obligingly brought a few home)

I was finishing up a library copy of Kenda Creasy Dean’s Almost Christian and hoped to find a used copy to buy but I didn’t have any luck. I’m not surprised; it is a sticky book − one I expect I’ll reread even though I don’t usually read things more than once. In Almost Christian Dean writes about the 2003-2005 National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) and talks about teenagers, contrasting popular, cultural faith which reflects a moral therapeutic deism and “consequential faith”, which develops in teenagers in congregations who “portray God as living, present and active, place a high value on Scripture; reflect the life and mission of Jesus Christ in its practices and relationships; and emphasize spiritual growth, discipleship and mission.”

As someone who is more comfortable talking with people born in the ‘20s than people living in their 20s (or teens), a while back, I adopted a mantra for ministry: “break stereotypes, learn flexibility, build relationships and communicate well.” Dean challenges stereotypes of teenagers who aren’t interested in talking with adults and who aren’t capable of conversations that take more than 140 characters.  She includes an important reminder in Almost Christian that can get lost in the tussling about that is parenting a teenager:

[Every teenager is] an amazing child of God. Their humanity is embedded in their souls as well as their DNA. Their family is the church, their vocation is a grateful response for the chance to participate in the divine plan of salvation, their hope lies in the fact that Christ has claimed them and secured their future for them.

In Almost Christian, there’s a challenge to be intentional about living this truth out in our relationships with teenagers. There's also a challenge to Christian adults and to parents, particularly in mainline Protestant traditions, to recognize how we influence the faith of children, whether we know it or not, and to not be as afraid of speaking about God and Jesus, of pointing to the ways that God is moving in our lives. We tell our lives in stories and unless we are talking about our God-sightings and God-stories, how can anyone else recognize themselves in the Christian story?

So one hope I have for this unstructured time I have is to participate in more conversations about God’s active presence in our world, and more readily answer where I saw, heard or experienced God in everyday life. I hope you’ll listen in.

Surrender

What does it mean to surrender?

Too often, I think "surrender" sounds like giving up. Giving up power. Giving up the fight. I imagine Generals Lee and Grant at Appomattox or a  tattered white flag waving in a Bugs Bunny cartoon (07:14):

In this fourth week at Willow Creek's Leadership Institute for Transformation (LIFT) in the "Leader's Soul" course, we are talking about surrendering ourselves with a daily prayer to God. In remembering our baptism, we daily die and are renewed as God's children.We can again grasp the promises God gives us and know we are forgiven our sin and made righteous through Christ. So, how does a daily practice help remember us these promises?

For me, speaking out loud or giving voice to a prayer that re-establishes me each day is helpful; otherwise, the noise of the world can begin to hum and buzz, kind of like mosquito's wings, and I get distracted by it.

Fortunately, unlike Bugs and Yosemite Sam, I know I am not surrendering to an enemy or opponent. When I am asked to consider how I can daily stay in a place of surrender to God, I know I am surrendering to Creator God, Life-giving God, Mother God. (These are just a few of the nurturing metaphors in Scripture that describe who God is.)

Surrender here doesn't leave me defeated. Instead, yielding my life to God means letting go of my human instinct to plan, map, control and execute life. It means stop being an obstruction, stop hesitating, and stop tuning out God's calling, Yielding to God's leading, yielding to God's timing, yielding to God's direction, I can rest in the promises that God gives each of us. Amen.

Do you have a prayer, poem or practice that you use regularly to reconnect with God?

Where am I now

    Just as we begin each educational leadership class by looking at our knowledge competencies, we conclude each class by reassessing our skills, knowledge and attitudes, measuring what we have learned and how our classroom experience has informed our understanding of education.  Early on in Media and Technology in Parish Education I identified two goals that were still growing edges for me.  The first one is supporting intergenerational learning, and the second one is supporting theological and biblical reflection in a variety of contexts, and with a variety of people involved.
    Often when we talk about intergenerational learning, we talk about forging relationships between older adults and youth, but I am in the middle and personally, I am much more comfortable reaching out to older adults than children, teenagers and even college-age young adults.  However, technology and media create openings for conversations in ways that might not happen otherwise across multiple generations.   Three of us in my family shared this video with each other – my retired Navy officer father, my eleven year old flute-playing daughter and me.

    Similarly, my almost sixteen year old daughter commented recently on the way that we watch people grow up through the photographs they share on Facebook.  I have classmates who have posted scanned photographs from our high school years and for my daughter, cameras have always been digital so pictures from kindergarten through high school are easily shared online.  Comfortable with using social media and technology to tell our families' stories, now we are beginning to discover how we can use them to tell our faith stories as well. 
    Blogging our theological and biblical reflections for this class has let me invest time in Blogger, adding elements to my blog like a cloud of the tags, labels or subjects in my posts and a blog roll or listing of the blogs I subscribe to in Google Reader.  The reader itself has a search engine to find blogs based on keywords so I can search for a title or a topic and add it quickly.  And for a twist, in Blogger, when I list my favorite musicians, I can click on a name and find other bloggers who share an interest in that musician. (So look out for more bluegrass theologians.)
    These tools and resources have connected me with other people who are blogging particularly about faith, leadership, education and social media.  But just making the connections isn’t the same as having conversations.  For conversations, I will always hope to find and make opportunities to sit down across a table with other people in a concrete, physical space, but as a distributed learner, I am also very comfortable with asynchronous conversations. 
    Using Hootsuite I can read feeds from Facebook and Linked In, and even RSS feeds from blogs, but I primarily use it to follow conversations on Twitter where I tweet @christinaauch.  In Hootsuite, I set up streams or feeds – lists of Tweets by other people - in Twitter using hashtags.  Hashtags are words preceded with a pound or number sign (#).  Right now I have my main Twitter feed where I can read anything posted by someone I am following, but I also have a half-dozen or more streams that I read that are based on the hashtags or subjects:

#chsocm (people interested in how churches are using/can use social media; tweetchat begins July 11)
#isedchat (independent school education chat)
#edsocialmedia (education and social media)
#finalsite (a web communications conference in June near Hartford, CT)
#gather2011 (Bread for the World’s conference in June in Washington, D.C.)
#WGF11 (the Greenbelt-esque Wild Goose Festival held in June in NC)
#NN11 (Netroots Nation 2011 conference in June in the Twin Cities)

Here I see tweets from many more voices, anyone who uses the hashtag in fact. For tweetchats we are actually engaging in synchronous chats, at a given time and date, but you can also stumble onto them and go back to them if you can’t be online at the proposed time. 
    It is in these conversations that I hear a number of voices, including Lutheran, Episcopal, United Church of Christ and Unitarian Universalist, and other Protestant voices, and now the Pope as well.  Different nonprofits and denominational offices and ministries (Bread for the World, Vibrant Faith Ministries and David Creech at ELCA World Hunger, for example) are on Twitter, too.  Tweets are conversation starters, and the conversation grows as comments are retweeted or people reply to earlier tweets. 
    For people who don’t think real conversations happen in 140 characters or less, in the past few days, I have had a conversation about how to talk to our children about Jesus, our gathered community and worshiping together without answering “Why do we go to have to go church?” with “Because that’s what we do on Sunday.” and connected with someone who has written his thesis on themes similar to Clay Shirky’s. Earlier this year, I spoke to David Creech about a course he had taught on Christian responses to poverty and hunger.
    These are real conversations happening without the benefit of a landline phone, knowing someone’s full name or having a peer introduction. They are respectful, engaged and thoughtful conversations about God, wealth and poverty, justice, faith, fear and pain as well as places where joys and sorrows are shared. The participants often are more diverse in racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds than I would find at a roadside diner or coffee shop in my corner of the world, and probably in my congregation, although I’m less convinced that we are any more successful at bridging class divides.  Nor do I think our digital spaces should replace our physical spaces and face-to-face conversations, but they afford unique opportunities that complement and even enrich those conversations.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (part 1 of 3)

The story of A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) is the story of David, a child mecha created as a prototype by Professor Hobby, a human scientist and inventor who steers Cybertronics, a giant in the artificial intelligence industry.  Living in a society that has survived extreme climate change and the loss of seaboard cities like New York and Amsterdam, humans have thrived by limiting human population growth, licensing human pregnancies, and relying on mechanized beings (mechas or robots) because they use a finite number of resources.    Now Dr. Hobby has proposed creating child mechas for whom “love will be the key by which they acquire a subconscious.” 

**Spoiler Alert: The remainder of this post explores various theological questions and topics that are present throughout the film's storyline**

One of the earliest theological questions in the film is creation.  Someone asks if a robot can love, what is the responsibility of the human to that robot? And Dr. Hobby parries, “Didn’t God create Adam to love Him?” 

A second question exists around end-of-life questions.  The family into which David is “adopted” had a young son who was in a coma-like state for five years; the parents continue to visit him in a sterile, clinical setting waiting for his condition to change, and then, resigning themselves to his condition, agree to adopt David.

Shortly after his arrival, the mother gives David “Teddy” a supertoy teddy bear who accompanies David everywhere he goes.  Teddy had been their son’s constant companion.  Perhaps, he appears here as a paraclete? 

Miraculously, the biological son Martin recovers and returns home, and tragically but not surprisingly, a sibling rivalry begins.  In this context, a fourth set of questions about difference, biological vs. adopted, and race, organic (human) or mecha (robot) are raised.  The mother reads Pinocchio to the boys and David becomes convinced that if he were “a real boy” his mother would love him more.

His dilemma raises several more questions, including “What does authentic relationship look like?”, “What does unconditional love look like?” 

After an accident involving the boys endangers Martin, the parents decide to return David to Cybertronics, where they know he will be destroyed.  Destruction is inevitable because when the parents adopted David, they implemented a protocol that “triggered” his love; it was irreversible, unconditional and unalterable.  In this iteration, he could only love the person who implemented that protocol; that person was the mother. 

So now we encounter questions about covenant and the cost of breaking covenant.  The covenant is first broken when the parents decide to give up David.  However, the mother fails to return David to Cybertronics; instead she leaves him in the woods theoretically to protect him from destruction.  With her actions, she breaks the covenant she had with the company also.