Category Archives: Sermon

Dressed for Joy (Sermon 12/16)

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Isaiah 61:1-11
How many of you know the adage, “Wear clean underwear, because you never know when you’ll be in an accident”? While I do not want to know how many of you follow that rule, I suspect many of you think about what you wear each day. Am I dressed or ready for the car to break down? Am I dressed or ready if I had to sit for a while and wait? Am I dressed and ready for walking around the store, getting gas, watching a toddler, changing a tire, having lunch with a friend?
This is a question I ask myself all the time. Especially as the number of clothes I have that fit begins to dwindle, I ask myself, “Is this what I want to be wearing for a hospital visit? For an emergency call? For pastoral authority in the office?” Sometimes I’m not dressed, or I don’t feel like I am, for what I need to do.
On Friday, after the initial shock of the news out of Connecticut, I was thinking about opening the church into the evening for prayers. When I decided to do that, I was wearing jeans and a sweater. A fine outfit for sitting in the office and writing a sermon, not what I wanted to be wearing when we were opening the church and I was talking with the people who came in and out all day. “I’m not dressed for this”- I kept thinking. What I really meant was- I’m not ready. I’m not prepared for this.
This is not the first time this has happened. Someone here once told me- it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing, just show up. Good advice, but I know I’m not the only one to whom this happens. How many of you felt overwhelmed this week- either by the season, by events, or by memories? How many of you have had a call during the day or in the night- for which you weren’t dressed, for which you weren’t ready?
Thus, in considering that the third Sunday in Advent is Joy Sunday, I don’t feel dressed for it. If we had colored candles, this would be the pink one (the others being blue or purple). Joy Sunday! And that’s what the task that the prophet Isaiah delivers to Israel and that is also communicated to us, as our task, through Jesus. It is our task to seek joy, to be found by joy, to communicate joy.
Isaiah says the role of the prophet, which is now the mantle that goes over all of Israel and extends to all who live by faith is this: The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion — to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.  (61:1-3)
Do you feel dressed to do that? To declare the year of the Lord’s favor? To bring good news to the oppressed and to comfort all who mourn? Do you feel ready to proclaim joy?
Joy is not happiness. It is one of the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness)- not something we can produce ourselves, but something that God brings forth in us. Joy has the twinge of the fight, of how far it took to get there, it is hard earned and treasured. Joy is the light that shines in the darkness and shines that focused beam, making us aware of how dark things can be. How can we be ready for joy? How can we be ready to proclaim it? How do we dress for this?
The only way to be dressed for joy is to be clothed in Christ.  To be clothed in the experience of weeping at the death of a friend, to know betrayal, to have eaten good-bye meals, to have people turn away from grace, to feel forsaken… and to still taste resurrection, to still hope in return and restoration, to trust in the possibility of peace, to rest in the light of Love. 
The only way to be dressed for joy is to be clothed in Christ, clothing which comes with all of these experiences, the accessories of faith, if you will- the very real experiences of this very real life.  Joy is not the absence of suffering, but the presence of God.
            I cannot tell you why bad things happen. I cannot tell you that we will live to see the good that God will bring from some of the tragedies of our lifetimes. I cannot undo the exile of the Israelites and I cannot redo Friday with a different outcome.
            God is not the “why” of tragedy and devastation. God is the how- the how we get through it. God is the where- consoling to the grieving, receiving the dying, walking with the confused and afraid. God is the who- the One who made all things and loves all creation. God is the when- a mystery to us, but a promise of renewal and bringer of unexpected joy. God is the what- the what we shall wear, the what we shall say, the what we shall turn to.
            When there is no “why”, there is a Holy Who/Where/How/When/What that clothes us in grace, that dresses us in mercy, that accessorizes us with joy. We come as we are to God’s dressing room- the baptismal font, Holy Communion, a conversation with a friend, a time of prayer- and we are draped in Christ.
            What do you wear to do that proclaiming, to be a priest of the Lord, a minister proclaiming God’s favor (as Isaiah says you are)?
            (Make the sign of the cross). You wear the sign of the cross and…
There! You’re dressed for proclamation. You are wearing the promise of the Holy Spirit, the mark of Christ crucified and risen, the symbol of hope for the whole world. You will never be more ready to bear joy. You will not find anything that fits you better. There’s never been a more graceful fit, a closer fit, a more beautiful shape. The cross is the clothing we’ve got… its emptiness, its inability to be the final word, its attempt to stop the Word of Life… it is how God dresses us to go out into the world. The sign of the cross is our clothing for grieving and for rejoicing, for sorrow and for joy. The sign of the cross is our Christmas sweater, our Easter suit, our Epiphany workout clothes, our Pentecost learning outfit, our clothing for waiting, for hoping, for proclaiming.
            It is Advent and we wait. We wait for a great deal, including joy. But we’re dressed for it, when it comes. Saved and clothed in righteousness by Christ’s own faithfulness, we are dressed to heal, to share hope, to be a part of the work of the kingdom. In the midst of tragedy and hope, we are dressed, in the cross, to seek and to be found by joy. Amen.

Advent Ache (Sermon 12/9)

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Joel 2:12-13, 28-29

            Here’s the funny thing about Christmas- the holy days, not the holiday- it’s the shortest church season we have. Even if Lent starts early, Epiphany is still longer than 12 days. Lent is forty days. The Easter season is fifty days. The season of Pentecost or Ordinary Time goes on past twenty weeks. Advent is four weeks. Christmas, as church season, is short.
            Many of us get tired of seeing the Christmas things all around us long before we show up to mark the birth of the Savior and our true expectation of God’s completion of that good work in Christ’s return. Christmas can get old before it gets here and yet we’re uncertain what to do with Advent. (How many have Advent wreaths in their homes?)
            Frankly, I’m feeling very Advent. I go into Safeway and I hear, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” Yet all I can think about is the number of suicides that have been in the news this week.
I enter Fred Meyer and hear: “I really can’t stay (Baby, it’s cold outside). I gotta go ‘way (But, baby, it’s cold outside).” Yet, I think about the people who call the church office every week asking for food assistance, for gifts for children, for rental help.
           
            I wait to get my oil changed and I hear, “Santa Baby, slip a sable under the tree… for me… been awful good girl.” I think about the people who use the Listening Post downtown and the volunteers there who hear powerful and overwhelming stories, every day of the year- not just in this season.
            I turn on the car radio and I hear, “’Come,’ they told me, Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.” I think of the drums of war, the drums of greed, the drums of fiscal concern that are beating all around.
            I have an Advent ache and the Christmas music can’t drown it out. The short Christmas season is never long enough to overcome all of these less cheery realities that are currently part of this life.
So then I sit in my office and I turn to the reading for this week- four short verses from the prophet Joel. Thinking about Joel’s time frame, one might expect that the book would be full of rejoicing, but it’s not. Joel is writing to the Judeans who have returned to Jerusalem after the exile. There may be a few people who can still dimly remember earlier days, but most of the exiles are younger and have never seen the city. The temple ruins, the place the market once stood, the homes haunted by memories of what was before Babylon swept in and carried it all away… the most intense longing for Jerusalem did not prepare them for the return.
            And in those first days and first weeks of trying to reclaim, resettle, restore, no one wants to say how disappointing it all is. How it is not what they expected. How the triumphant return has not only fallen flat, but flat out sucks. They are expecting Christmas- actually, they are longing for the Messiah- but they are in a very Advent time.
            And, honestly, it is an Advent time for God. The people did not return thanking God. They didn’t speed over the hills and valleys, with their hearts in their throats in anticipation of worshiping in what was left of the temple. Some of them chose to stay in Babylon, to adapt to life there-including the religious practices of the new location. God’s waiting, too- waiting for people to heed the call of the prophets, to sing the songs of praise, to stop taking favor for granted, but to put it to use for making the world a better place.
            It’s the Advent ache. Things are not what we would hope for. We are not always what God would hope for. The longing of this season allows us to sit in silence with that and to express our longing for God’s answer to the problem, to the gap, to the divide. The longing of the season allows us to sit with God’s own longing hope for creation. The response to that hope came at the first Christmas…and comes again in all kinds of ways.            
            Our Advents hymns express this longing, especially some of the ones that are worked into our liturgy.
Consider: Come, thou long expected Jesus– “born to set thy people free- from our fears and sins release us- set our hearts at liberty…” (Charles Wesley) The verses of this song express our hope in all that Christ’s advent will bring- freedom, peace, rest.
Consider: O come, O come, Emmanuel– written as early as the 8th century (or maybe a little earlier). Based on the old “O antiphons” or verses that reflection Advent anticipation. The verses in Latin form an acrostic, a word out of the first letter of each verse, the word Erocras meaning, “I will be tomorrow”. The longing for Christ in the song is answered, mysteriously, by a response that Christ is coming.
Consider: Ososo,  or “Come now, O Prince of Peace”. This is a Korean hymn, written in 1988 for a world conference focused on attaining peace and reunification for the Korean peninsula. “Come now, Lord Jesus, reconcile all nations” has a very different feel when you are considering people who are separated from family members, from resources, from peace.
            These are songs of Advent, songs of longing, songs that say, “Things are not what we hoped for.” The answer we get, to our singing and our sighing, is “Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.” Return to the Lord… gracious and merciful… steadfast love… slow to anger…
            Christmas is a short season, in part because we live in an Advent world. A world that has received God’s body in its midst and still remains broken. A world that has seen (and still sees) miracles like no other. A world that has been gifted the outpouring of the Holy Spirit… and still cries for reconciliation, for peace, for grace. It’s not a sin to not be ready for Christmas. It’s a reality. It’s a real expression of where we are, who we are, and what we are asking God to do in the world. It is honest to look at the paper, the city, the news, the world, and say, “This is not what we hoped for.” It echoes what God also is saying to us.
            Advent means God has not let our hope die. Advent is a season for waiting in the Lord, for returning to the Lord, for hoping in the Lord. It is not yet time for “Good Christian friends, rejoice, with heart and soul and voice…” It is the season of “Come, now, O God of love, make us one body. Come, O Lord Jesus, reconcile your people.”
Amen. 

Advent Lions (Sermon 12/2)

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Daniel 6:6-27
            Talk to me about the war on Christmas. How many of you are having a hard time finding Christmas decorations? How many of your family members have met you in back alleys to exchange cards, hoping to be undetected? Other than the icy roads, who was worried about coming here today? Has anyone been so deluged by Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa commercialism that they just felt unable to get a word in edgewise for the Christmas holiday? Anyone?
            It is hard for me to listen to rhetoric about the “war on Christmas” and think about religious persecution around the world that happens today, both to Christians and non-Christians. It’s hard for me to listen to rants about the “war on Christmas” and to read about Daniel at the same time. Here is a story about real persecution and real faith. A story about a young Jewish exile, likely born in Babylon, never having seen Jerusalem… he serves under four kings, the first two of which change his name- not calling him by his Hebrew name Daniel, but by the Greek name- Belteshazzar. Daniel serves at the pleasure of the king and does not hold back from the obviousness of his true devotion to the one God.
            Daniel maintains a strict diet (see Daniel 1), interprets dreams (Daniel 3-5), and finally refuses to cave to pressure from jealous rivals and does not stop worshipping God (Daniel 6). This story is almost intimidating in Daniel’s faithfulness. He has no guarantee that God will prevent the lions from destroying him. God didn’t prevent the exile into Babylon. Daniel’s only comfort is in trusting in God’s faithfulness above all else- above the desertion of exile, above the power of King Darius, above the ferocious nature of the lions.
            When I think of what it means to live faithfully, under those kind of conditions, the much-discussed “war on Christmas” becomes unimpressive indeed. As we enter the season of Advent today, we are called to ponder what are the lions that face us? What is the exile we experience?
            We know that Christmas, the holy day (as opposed to the holiday), is not for another 22 days, beginning the evening of 24 December. Believing that God-with-us, Emmanuel, has already been born into world once, is present with us still, and yet will come again, what are we waiting for? The exile we experience is the space between what we believe is true and what we observe around us.
            We believe in the Prince of Peace and yet we do not see peace. We believe in the Spirit of Consolation and still we see many who are not consoled, grieving, anguished. We believe in the Creator of all that is seen and unseen and yet we see many who struggle- some because of their own decisions, some because of the actions of others. We believe a light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it, yet the darkness still seems very, very deep (and not just because it’s winter in Alaska).
            The lions that slink around us in Advent are both obvious and subtle. There are showy lions of commercialism, decadence, and acquisition. Their roars tempt us to place our hope in things that are shiny and promising now. Then there are the subtle, hungry lions of hopelessness, frustration, depression, and isolation. Their sneak attacks undercut our ability to stand false brightness of the holiday and leave us unprepared for the holy day. The war on Christmas isn’t some outside entity, but a struggle that happens within us and around us to undercut our waiting hope- emphasized this time of year, but lived out every day of the year.
            Our Advent exile- our time apart, waiting in hope- gives us the opportunity to fight off these lions, to dare to be a Daniel and to pray beyond the falseness of their promises. In this season of waiting, we are presented with the chance to exercise our faithfulness, our hope in God, our expectation of holiness, our trust in the promise of Emmanuel, God-with-us. And, like Daniel, our faithfulness only stands in the light- the undimmed light- of the One God who is the gifter, sustainer, and perfecter, who is Faithfulness itself. 

Hemmed in Thanksgiving (Sermon 11/18)

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Isaiah 6:1-8
            There are many details in this story that can be distracting. Who was King Uzziah? What exactly does a seraph look like?  Why is Isaiah’s call to be a prophet happening six chapters in, instead of in chapter 1? All of these are good questions, but not ultimately what this short passage is about.
            Isaiah is in the holy of holies, inside the innermost part of the temple. He is a having a vision or an experience, where the shapes on the Ark of the Covenant are slowly transformed until they are no longer carvings, but are revealing to him the activity that happens around the throne of God.
            When Isaiah says, “Woe is me…” This is not a Charlie Brown-kick-the-dirt kind of grousing. It’s a gulp of terror. To see God, in Hebrew Scriptures, is to know that you are about to die. No one sees the face of God and lives. Isaiah has nothing to offer; yet what happens next isn’t based on what he can bring. It’s based on what God can do and how Isaiah responds.
            God’s attendants come and purify Isaiah, giving him a real experience of forgiveness and grace in the presence of God… mercy when he expected to die, absolution without a sacrifice or offering, righteousness on God’s terms (not human definitions). Thus, Isaiah is so moved that when God converses with the heavenly host: Who will go for us? Whom shall I send?– Isaiah pipes up, “I’ll go! Send me!”- even before he knows what he will be asked to do or say.
            Isaiah is so grateful for his life and for grace, that he’s willing to undertake a task from God- the details of which he does not know, but if he thought for a minute about prophetic history, he’d probably offer someone else’s name instead. Isaiah realizes that God does not abandon unclean people, but makes them holy, makes them ready, and invites them into the work that needs to be done. He says, “Send me”, not because he is an amazing prophet, but because he recognizes the grace in being involved in God’s work in the world.
            How much of God does Isaiah see? Certainly not God’s face or even God’s hands- these are not visible. Isaiah only gets a view of God’s feet: “The hem of God’s robe fills the temple.” Only God’s feet… but it is enough. This experience, God’s feet and hem, an encounter with forgiveness, is enough to move Isaiah to gratitude and to action.
            In the coming week, most of us will be considering the things for which we are grateful. We will listen to others around us say for what they are thankful. Almost in the same breath, as we speak of gratitude, we will think of new things that we want or perceive that we need. What if we stopped and just thought about the hem of God’s robe? What if we became absorbed, like Isaiah, in a vision of God’s activity in the world, in our communities, in our lives? And what would happen if we realized that all we are grateful for, all that we are able to perceive is just the hem of God’s robe?
            It’s not the whole picture. It’s not even half. The grace that we are able to comprehend is just the tip of the iceberg. And yet it is enough. It is enough for us to know just this much and to not die. Let this be your Thanksgiving thought: all that you can think of to list as blessings in your life barely begins to list all that God has done for you.
            So it is for all people and all creation. Having received more, and costlier, grace than we can comprehend through Christ, may God’s Spirit move our thanksgiving beyond “thank you” to “Here I am. Send me” – a thanksgiving response to the grace of in being involved in God’s work in the world.
Amen. 

Grace: Motivator or Excuse? (Sermon 11/11)

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Jonah 1, 3-4
            I do not love the last line of the hymn “O Zion, Haste”: “Let known whom he has ransomed fail to greet him/ through your neglect, unfit to see his face.” That makes me itchy all over, in part because I think salvation is not my job. I don’t save people. Jesus has saved people. Isn’t that the point of grace? That it’s available to all people and we don’t work for it.
            Yet what is grace, saving grace, costly grace, grace that comes from death and resurrection, if I don’t know about it? What does it mean to me? Furthermore, what does it mean to the person who knows, but doesn’t think it is worth talking about every day? What does it mean to the person who knows about grace, who believes grace is amazing and true, but not quite amazing and true enough to risk anything for it? What does grace mean to the person who loves benefitting from it, but not enough to take a message of grace to people who ache for grace, people in a place like Ninevah?
            The story of Jonah has a very specific function in the Hebrew Scriptures. We tend to narrow it down to the part about the big fish, sometimes forgetting how Jonah ended up in that place anyway. A few people say the conversion of a whole city is a bigger miracle, especially with such a lousy sermon, “Forty days more and Ninevah shall be overthrown.” We could talk about resisting God’s call in our lives, but that’s not why the story of Jonah is important or why it lasted for years and years, even to us today.
            Jonah is written down in this very critical time period in the Hebrew scripture history, when things are going okay for the Israelites. With a righteous leader and the exile far off enough into the future as to be unpredicted, the Hebrew people can live for a moment into what it feels like to be “chosen people”.
Basking in God’s favor, as they see it, however, they are doing nothing to communicate the message of one God- creator and redeemer of all- to the people around them. They have forgotten that this is for what they have been chosen: to carry the message of Adonai to the world. They love the idea of a gracious and merciful God, as long as the grace and mercy are for them. Not the others nearby and certainly not the others far away.
Jonah has no interest in taking a message of grace to Ninevah, a city full of non-Hebrews, a city of infamous iniquity. Why should they get the grace he knows God will provide? So he goes in the opposite direction to Tarshish and, when that plan seems foiled, he’d rather die by drowning than go to Ninevah.
Why should Jonah go? If God will be gracious in the end anyway, why does it matter if Jonah goes or not? Why are you here this morning? At some point, we all have to decide if grace is an excuse or an motivator? Are we using the grace of God, the grace we believe that applies to all, to relieve us of responsibility? Are we skipping the third verse because we know that people will still get to see Jesus- no matter what we do?
Or is grace our motivator? Are we motivated by joy in our salvation? Are we stirred up in knowing that God intends something better for the world now, as well as the world to come? Not only that, but God chooses to use us in the bringing about of those improvements? Are we moved enough by the idea of grace to embrace a call to good works?
By hearing the story of Jonah, the Hebrew people of the time were reminded that God’s gift of grace to them was not to set them above others, but to bring them into the midst of a world that truly needed to hear about the one God- maker and redeemer of all.
The last couple sentences of Jonah are my favorite in the whole of the Bible. Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
They reveal God’s sense of humor and God’s boundless love for all. Furthermore, Jonah’s whole story reveals God’s intention to use each of us to share that love and the message of repentance and grace. For me, I have to consider these lines with the last line of that hymn. Even if I believe that people receive grace through the faithfulness of Christ, there is still work for me to do… for you to do… so that people may see a face of Christ in this life.
Are you moved enough by the gift of grace to go to Ninevah? To do the very last thing that you want to do? Grace is not simply for heaven later, it is to prevent feeling like hell is on earth now. Each of us has a call and gifts to help people experience the presence of Christ with them today.  That’s why we’re here, not to simply see friends, have communion, and check off church for a week. We gather to be recharged so that we can go out and publish glad tidings… tidings of peace… tidings of Jesus… redemption and release. 

Around the Edges (All Saints Sermon)

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1 Kings 17:1-16
            A famous theologian once said, “You should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” That can be tough, because then in one hand I have stories of droughts and floods, wars and struggles between ruling parties, unexpected deaths, people struggling to make ends meet, and people longing for justice… and is that the hand that holds the newspaper or the Bible? Sometimes, it can be hard to tell one from the other without looking carefully and remembering what each one is supposed to do. The newspaper shows us a world that longs for God’s kingdom to come or has forgotten its promise. The Bible reminds us of the promise and shows us God’s actions through history, so that we have a foundation on which to base our hope in and expectation of God’s future actions.
            If the Bible were like other history books, today’s reading would be about Ahab’s reaction to the prophet Elijah. We would have a detailed account of the king’s comings and goings and how other, sycophantic “prophets” would have advised him, and (almost certainly) what Jezebel had to say about the matter. Yet, Israel’s history does not chronicle the kings as much as the people affected by the king and the king’s decisions. Remember that when Israel called for a king, the people were reminded that the Lord was to be their one leader and a king would come with some serious consequences for their national wellbeing.
            Thus, instead of learning more about Ahab, we get a story of Elijah fleeing for his life and a widow with a child, someone who is directly affected by the policies of the king. The first situation that is facing the widow is that she is a widow. Her source of income is gone. Her husband’s family, if still living, hasn’t taken her in to be with them. Her own family, if still living, would not be expected to do so. So she depends on the generosity of others, toward her and toward her son, so that they may live. She may be able to do little tasks in exchange for food or coin to make ends meet, but she certainly lives with very little extra and, consequently, very little participation in societal life.
            The second situation facing the widow (and her neighbors) is the drought. The writer of 1 Kings is careful to point out that the Lord says through Elijah that it will not rain for several years. The significance of this is not that the Lord wants people to suffer in a drought, but that the Lord wants them to remember who makes the rain. The Canaanite god, Baal, was thought to be the giver of rain. If it was dry, Baal was dead. If it rained, he was alive. But Elijah’s prophesy points out that it is the Lord God who is the giver of life. So now we have a situation where people are going to be tightening their belts and have less to give to the widow, whom God has commanded them to remember. We have a prophet who has angered a king who is clearly refusing to acknowledge the Lord as God (and the only God).
            Finally, the widow has a plan for how she and her son will die and here comes a prophet of the Lord, distinguished in some way that lets her know that he’s a holy man, who wants some of her last bits of food. Now, the widow is from the same region (Sidon) as Jezebel, so she is likely to be a worshiper of Baal. Yet she speaks to Elijah with the words he spoke to Ahab, “As the Lord your God lives…” Her circumstances are overwhelming and horrifying. If we were reading to this point in a newspaper article, woman struggling to make ends meet in bad times is confronted by a man who claims to speak for God who tells her to feed him… Who would root for her? Who would blame her if she closed the door on him? Who would say she should absolutely make him some food? Who would say, “The Lord never gives us more than we can handle” and expect her to bake that bread?
            Elijah promises her that she and her son will have enough food, throughout the drought, if she helps him. And so she did. Hooray! Faithful action pays off! It’s a heart-warming page 2 story!
            But not so fast, remember earlier in the story when the ravens feed Elijah? We’re all familiar with ravens- eating out of dumpsters and what’s been hit in the street. Who here would eat meat and bread brought to them by a raven? Even more so, in ancient Israel, ravens are nasty, unclean birds. You don’t eat scavengers, yet they are what God sends to keep Elijah alive. The unexpected birds are how God provides for the prophet.
Similarly, the widow, with all of the circumstances piled against her, should not be expected to provide for a prophet. There are better-favored people to do that, yet God’s provision for her allows her to have an expected role as a sustainer, as a provider, as a person whom God has not forgotten. The God she does not worship has not failed to provide for her and, furthermore, has not forgotten use her to the hope of others and for the hope of creation.
This is what it means to be a saint. It’s not about having great stories written about you or having powerful visions or heroic actions. It’s about faithful action, in spite of what else is happening, and it is about being the hope in God of the people around us. The people whose lives we remember today and the lives that the Spirit is shaping today are exactly this… lives that remember the people around them, lives that are structured by small, unseen remembrances, gifts, and help.
Sometimes we do have more than we can handle on our own. Sometimes life does pile up. It is not merely by our own determination that we survive, but by the help and support of others- who bring us bread, words of hope, silent companionship, refills of oil for our jars. This is what sainthood looks like… un-haloed, but still hallowed, unsung, but still a song, unremarked, but still remarkable.
It is work that happens through family and friends AND through outsiders and rejects (in this story, widows and ravens). This is how the Spirit moves-from all directions, expected and unexpected. This is how God reminds us who is in charge. This is how saints are made, how creation is renewed, and how Christ continues to make resurrection happen out of death in this life.
A famous theologian once said, “You should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” In one hand, I have stories of droughts and floods, wars and struggles between ruling parties, unexpected deaths, people struggling to make ends meet, and people longing for justice… and is that the newspaper or the Bible?
In the end, it doesn’t matter. Either way, the Holy Spirit is in these stories, breathing from the edges and from the middle, encouraging people (and sometimes animals) to actions that save and preserve life. It’s not the headline news, but it must be remembered. God is in charge, no matter what else happens, and, with that eternal truth, comes this corollary: the Spirit is still making saints. 

You Know Why They Built That Calf (Sermon 10/7)

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Exodus 32:1-14
            It is said that when Augustine preached, in his role as the Bishop of Hippo, that he preached for two hours or so at the time. Within the length of his sermon, he would have smaller sermons that were directed at different people who might be gathered in the congregation. He would preach to people who were just hearing of the faith. He would preach to the catecumenate, the people preparing for baptism. He would preach to those feeling lost and to those who were a long time in the faith. Everyone sat through all of the sermons, absorbing the lesson aimed at them and the lessons that swirled over them.
I have been thinking about Augustine this week as this text of the Golden Calf turned over in my mind. There are at least six sermons here. All of them do not apply to all of you. I think I can cover three of them and keep my time under two hours.
            The first group to whom I will speak today are those who would consider themselves young in faith, those who still feel raw and uncertain. If you feel a little shaky about your Bible knowledge or confused as to why we do what and when, this is for you. You know why the idols were built.
            The story of the Golden Calf takes place after the Israelites have been freed from Egyptian slavery, after they have seen the violent death of Pharaoh’s army in the Sea of Reeds, after God has led them with a pillar of clouds by day and a pillar of fire by night, after they’ve received food from the heavens, and after the Israelites have been gifted with the Ten Commandments, which begin with “You shall have no other gods before me.”
            The Israelites did not make it to this place on their own, but each step has been an overwhelming confirmation of God’s presence with them and God’s guidance through their leader, Moses. Even though the Israelites know their history, each day is a new experiment in trust. They are totally dependent on God and God’s providence. While the goal of living by faith is their ideal, sometimes it requires too much.
            You may find yourself relating well to the Israelites in this situation, oh people of new faith. It turns out to be harder than expected. The glories of those first days of freedom and revelation are strengthening, but the need for new confirmation each day is tough. It is hard to say that to those around you, those who share your tent, those who sit around the table with you. But you must. The Israelites missed the chance to hold one another up when they grumbled to themselves and then despaired. Sometimes the constant re-telling of the stories of freedom and hope are what keep the flame burning until new wood, experience, confirmation, depth of wisdom in Christ, is added. For you receiving this first sermon, I encourage you to tell your story- share the breath of God that is in you. Let the Spirit be the wind that parts the waters of doubt for you and those around you and lets you pass through on dry land.
            The second sermon is for those of you who have been faithful for years. If you have heard this story as a child and as an adult, if you feel like the facts are familiar, if you are listening and making a to-do list in your head at the same time- this is the sermon portion for you.
            It is you, beloved second group who do much of the work of the church and, yet, are at the greatest risk of imitating the Hebrew people of this story. It is you who know the story so well who may overlook the two reasons the Golden Calf gets built. When the people lament that Moses has been gone too long, they gather around his brother, Aaron, and beg him to help them make an idol.
            If you remember, Aaron was Moses’s spokesman in front of Pharaoh. Aaron knows EXACTLY what has happened between God and the people. And yet, he collects up the jewelry, melts it down, and makes a golden calf- a common shape for worship in the Mesopotamian region. Representing food, milk, clothing, and potential livelihood, as idols go, the calf is not unreasonable. And yet, it is not appropriate for people who have been saved by the God of their ancestors and who are yet covered by the same promises made to those ancestors.
            The people may have made the idol because they needed a concrete image to worship. Perhaps the God of freedom who acted unseen was too much of a strain. Perhaps they were trying to make an image of this God and this is what they came up with. Regardless, Moses is up on the mountain receiving instructions for how to build the tabernacle, a place for God’s Spirit to dwell in the encampment, and down below the people are trying to make a concrete image to worship, from which to seek guidance, to praise for all that has happened to them.
            People of faithful years, this is too easy to do. We live in a world that craves newness and, in newness, concreteness. Our sports teams, our gadgets, our cars, our clothing, our patriotic idealism, our financial worries, our hobbies, our families, our work, our health, our church programs, our history, our future… these all can and do become our idols. They become the images that absorb our concentration, our energy, and our focus. The place where we push the most focus becomes our god. It may not be sparkly and shiny, but we can have it built and receiving the offerings of our time and our talents faster than we expect.
            What is the first thing you think of when you wake up? Is it your baptism in Christ? Is it the taste of communion? Is it the powerful conversation with your neighbor about God’s providence? As you go to sleep, were you praying? Was your prayer, “Lord, how will I get everything done tomorrow?” or “Lord, thank you for today”?
            We look down on the builders of the Golden Calf, but we often forget the idols that crop up around us- idols that demand our attention, our money, and our devotion. Oh, people of years of faith, beware the siren call of new things, of crammed schedules, of political promises and hope anchored in quicksand. Think on what is truth- the gifts of God in Christ, communion, community, and consolation. Dwell on these things and other idols will tarnish and crumble, because they cannot stand.
            Lastly, I will speak to you who have lived faithful lives of many decades. You know why the idols were built. The Israelites, in waiting for Moses’s return, believed that God had grown silent. Despite their earlier experiences, they found themselves without a prophet. They prayed and felt no answer. They wept and felt no consolation. They ate and they drank food from heaven and, yet, they felt empty.
            You, elders in faith, know this feeling. None of us wish to speak of this dark night of the soul, but you know of the words poured forth in grief, in anger, and in frustration that seemed to go unheard, because you have waited for a response that has not yet seemed to come. You feel a kinship with the Israelites, who lift their eyes to the mountain and say, “It is well and good for Moses to talk to the Lord, but what about me? What about what I have to say? What about what I need to hear?” You understand that sometimes idols are made, not because of disobedient nature or confusion, but out of the sheer need to hold onto something- grief, relief, memory, control.
            You, people in this third group, know too well what it is like to proceed through the valley of the shadow and to feel like the sun doesn’t always make down to where you are. And, yet, you have walked. You have walked through the silence, you have waded through the depths, you have remembered Egypt and you have said, “That was nothing.”
            And, in your walking, you have also become prophetic. You read this story and you know God didn’t change the plan. You know that God had no intentions of destroying the people of the promise again. Instead, you look at this Scripture through eyes of wisdom and you see God coaching Moses into his role as prophet. You see God stirring up fear and frustration in Moses until Moses is finally responding with the strength and the nerve that God knows is in him, “These are your people, Lord! The people you led out of slavery! Would you have others say that it was they would die in the wilderness? Would you have their children say that you are God who does not keep promises?”
            With decades of experience, you all see the God pulling Moses along because you’ve been there. You’ve been in the spot of negotiating with God on one side, only to realize you were handed a new and different task. And you’ve done this trick yourself. With your years of experience, you know that other idols crumble, but they remain tempting when it seems God is silent or, conversely, when it seems that all you can hear is God calling you into a new and scary place of relationship and prophetic living.
            People of Hope, whichever group you are in, you know why those idols were built. You have done it yourself and we will do it again. And yet, we know that we have a God who forgives, who relents, who comes among us in Jesus to show us, ultimately, that there is nothing this world can offer that cannot be trumped by what God gives- hope in the face of doubt, strength in the place of insecurity, freedom in the place of enslavement, life where death would have the last word.
            We all long for the concreteness of idols, but our hearts are made by God and long for God. Whichever you find yourself in today, here are words from St. Augustine to God, which could be from any of us: “Thou madest me for thyself and my heart is restless until it finds repose in thee.”
Thou madest me for thyself, and my heart is restless until it finds repose in thee.
No idol offers that kind of repose.
Amen.

Not Safe for Children (Sermon, 9/16)

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Text: Genesis 6-9            

          In all the things I do for our children’s service, Heavenly Sunshine, one thing I never do is read the flood story. I do a lot of wild and crazy things, but I never read that story. I do not like presenting it as a story for children. It’s not a story about cute animals- it’s a story of the idea that the world went so wrong that God decided to undo creation. That’s not Vacation Bible School-friendly, that’s apocalypse. No number of cute songs or rainbows can make me okay with this story.
            This is an interesting perspective because most of us never hear about the flood again after our VBS or day camp days are finished. A few of us may have discussed Genesis as adults or once or twice heard a sermon on the flood, but so rarely. Who wants to talk about it? Who wants to consider that God, who was merciful to Adam and Eve and to Cain (after he killed his brother), decided a few generations later that things were so bad, they had to end.
            Things were so bad (how bad were they?) that Genesis 6:5-7 says: The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
            What was the great sin of the time? As I thought about this story this week and wished I had anything else on which to preach, I read an interesting thought in a Torah commentary. A Torah commentary is a Jewish commentary on the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures. This modern commentary sifts through thousands of years of Jewish scholarly thought and offers small nuggets to chew on regarding different texts.
            The commentary suggested that the early people- the pre-flood people- stopped valuing children. I am not saying this is what’s in the Bible, but when commentators through the centuries have read this story and the rest of Hebrew Scripture, one of the conclusions they have reached is that the destruction of the flood is attributed to a societal neglect of children.[1]
            Since Noah lived to be quite old, the Scriptural tradition understands that he did not have children until he was five hundred years old. (Remember one of the punishments that comes with the flood is that people will no longer live past 120.) Noah waited a long time to have children, possibly, because he did not think the world was a good place in which to bring children.
            A lack of spiritual and social role models, a failure to plan carefully for the future, a disregard for community support of parents, a breakdown of the societal institutions that offer support and structure for future generations… all of these might have been characteristics of that pre-flood culture (or a contemporary culture, come to think of it). Everyone did what they wanted, focused on themselves and their needs first, and failed to consider God’s preference, God’s desires, God’s commands toward relationship and fruitfulness- which means bearing children, supporting children, and being a part of a society that values children.
            To value children does not mean that everything becomes child-centric. Not everyone can or should have children, but we all live in a world in which children are affected by all kinds of decisions. Economic, political, spiritual, educational, environmental… if our thoughts are not on the impact of what we choose and how we choose it, then we have stopped considering the future generations, we have stopped valuing children.
            And so we have the story of the flood. A story told and re-told to make sense of a devastating event. A story that is filled with grief and anguish. Noah and his family surely had friends and neighbors who died, who were killed. A story in which God has regrets. A story that may have been repeated because in later generations, when the world seemed very upside down, people wondered how bad could it really have been before the flood?
            It is a story that is not for children because it can be understood to be about children. The later events of the Hebrew scripture are completely focused on children- on having them, on their struggles, on God’s promises of children. Even when we read about the time of slavery in Egypt, the Hebrew people were more focused on continuing to have and preserve the lives of children than they were on obeying the Pharaoh.
            At the end of the Noah story, God promises not to destroy the known world by flood again. Very shortly thereafter, Noah gets drunk and his sons get in trouble over their reaction. Despite the warnings of the flood, people didn’t change. Mistakes are made.
            Yet the story reveals God as resolute, as having made up God’s mind. The price of destruction is too great for a creator to pay. The pain of the loss is not worth the break in relationship. So God makes plans, plans for the generations, plans for hope and a future. There will still be judgments, but there will also be mercy. And there will not be massive destruction that comes from the hand of God as a judgment. God takes the long view and the long view includes many, many, many children.
            The question for us is do we have that same view? In a week with the death of a U.S. ambassador and many others, where are our values? Have we thought about children- about our children, about the children of our neighbors, about the children of the world? Do we trust enough in God’s promises of life and hope for all, in Jesus, that we make decisions based on the continuity and value of the people who are to come after us? Decisions about relationships, leadership, natural resources, or economics?
            The story wraps up neatly when we tell it to children, but for we who are older… it’s tough stuff. Maybe we avoid the flood story, not because of the deaths and the destruction and even what it makes us question about God, but because we can see that the same behaviors are rising, like dark water, all around us. 

           God will not forget God’s promises. Do we remember them? Do we care enough about those promises to be guided by the Spirit in all things, for the sake of children? Do we trust enough in God’s memory to believe that destruction has not been forgotten and that, if we are willing to see them, all around us are signs of renewal and creation? If not, maybe we should just leave this story to the kids.
Amen.

[1] Artson, Rabbi Bradley Shavit. The Everyday Torah. McGraw-Hill, 2008. p. 10 f. 

Choose This Day (Sermon 8/26)

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Joshua 24:1–2a, 14–18; John 6:56-69
If, on a morning, I open my eyes,
My first decision thereupon lies.
Will I continue to lie in the bed,
Allowing my thoughts to run through my head?
Will I get up and go to the shower,
Regardless of both weather and hour?
What of my child, who may want me to stay?
What of the tasks that call me this day?
From the minute of waking, there are choices to make,
What will I give today? What will I take?
I want to be saintly and say my first thoughts are of God,
But sometimes they’re not and, in that, I’m not odd.
We may rise with the sun or maybe at noon,
And we make hasty promises to get with God soon.
Yet, that instant, a choice has been made-
The balance of time against God has been weighed.
We can’t do it all. Surely God understands.
Consider this: did not God make this world, its demands?
But in each thing we choose, and it is choosewe must
We have decided in which god we shall trust.
When we make decisions for work or for pleasure,
With money or time, talents or leisure,
With each small decision we leave or we make,
We are choosing a god for each task’s sake.

When Joshua says, “Choose this day whom you’ll serve.
My household and I, from God we’ll not swerve.”
He means the God of justice and freedom,
The God who through the desert did lead them.
This is a God of providence, of mercy and manna
Compared to others, God proved top banana.
For the Israelites, Joshua clearly lays out a decision,
Because they had, in history, treated God with derision.
Sometimes God seemed so far and so distant,
They struggled to find God’s mercy consistent.
Yet, who gave the manna? Who gave the quail?
Who brought forth the water when the people did wail? 
“People of Israel,” Joshua said,
“Turn all that you’ve known ‘round in your head.
Think of the guidance through both day and night,
Think of God’s grace. Think of God’s might.”
The people responded, “Our choice has been made.
We’ve looked around. Only Yahweh makes grade.
Only one God can say, ‘I am who I am’
Only one God would work for our father, Abraham.”
So Israelites promised to serve God whatever may come,
For richer, for poorer, when happy, when glum.
The years passed, however, and memories faded.
People thought of this choice and became jaded.
The desert, the manna- they all became history.
What God’s doing now… that became mystery.
It became easier to feel freed by law and instruction,
Only society’s rules prevented destruction.
But that structure left some people wanting,
The gift of the law could seem rather daunting.
When onto the scene, this man Jesus appeared.
Some people rejoiced. Some people jeered.
Then, and again, he talked about bread
About life here right now and life after we’re dead.
He healed sick people, he fed many others,
But his teaching confused both sisters and brothers.
What was this about flesh to eat, blood to drink?
A hard teaching to swallow, most people did think.
Said his disciples, “Jesus, this is enough.
What you’re teaching- it’s too much. It’s too tough.
We don’t like it. We don’t understand.
We’d like to quit you, but it doesn’t seem that we can.
We’ve looked around as to where we might go.
The problem is, there’s some truth we doknow.
Within a world of struggle and strife,
You have the words of eternal life.
Only you have offered hope in the future,
Between God and us, you are the suture.
Even though it is hard to stay,
We cannot leave you or your way.”
The disciples decided (or most of them did)
It was with Jesus that they placed their bid.
They decided, as their ancestors had,
To be on God’s side couldn’t be bad.
And so I say to you this day…
“Wait, Pastor Julia, I’ve something to say…”
“What is it, my child, what bothers you so?”
“Well, you’ve confused me. And so I must know
I thought God chose us. I thought it was done.
I thought the war’s over. The fight had been won.
Didn’t Luther write we’d never say yes…
Without God’s Spirit, we can’t acquiesce!
If you tell us, ‘Today you must choose’
Are you not setting us up… to lose?”
You are right, my child, in every way.
And yet you made a choice today.
You came to be here, to be in communion
To pray, to eat, to embody reunion.
Each day, we see gods far and near.
We can worship success. We can give over to fear.
We can spend our resources or over-honor our kin,
We can reverence our bodies from our toe to our chin.
We can make work our idol, honored, adored.
We can seek that which gives immediate reward.
But in the end, it all fails. It all becomes dust.
These idols- they fade, they die, they rust.
In the end, what we want is something that lasts,
Something that goes beyond all other forecasts.
What can bring order to confusion and strife?
Only the hope of eternal life.
Eternal life, both for there and for here.
A growing, a knowing, a ridding of fear.
This is what Jesus offers- in body and blood.
Without that promise, bread and wine are just mud.
Like us, they’re from dust and to dust shall return,
But through eating and drinking, still we can learn
That God has chosen in creation’s favor,
The presence of Christ is what we savor
When we gather at table, both willing and able
To experience Jesus as truth and not fable.
To trust, to be open, is the choice we must make,
Each day, in the moment right when we wake.
In every moment, we choose a god to serve
With all that we have, each sinew and nerve.
We have a God on the side of all of creation,
Who knows and who loves without cessation.
Who gives us each talents and gives us each gifts,
Who forgives our sins, who mends our rifts.
Who with body and blood has chosen to feed us.
Who through valleys and o’er mountains, has chosen to lead us.
Lord, where could we go? You made us, you know us.
Now, through the Spirit, continue to grow us.
God has called you by name, so as your fear eases,
Choose your god. Every day. I recommend… Jesus. 
Amen.

Life Force and Momentum (Sermon 8/19)

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John 6:51-58
           
            How many of you know someone who says they don’t believe in God? Most of us do. Many of us have had conversations with friends or family members or even strangers who tell us that they don’t believe. Sometimes their reasoning has to do with church history or personal experiences and sometimes they just feel like what we trust is true just cannot be. So in your conversations with these people, how many of you have ever offered today’s gospel passage as an argument support?
            How many of you have just casually offered, “You know, Jesus said: Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” (John 6:53-58)
         What? No one has used this passage as an argument or comfort in a discussion with someone who has difficulty experiencing God in the world? Why not? Why wouldn’t you use this passage? Because it sounds crazy. You might try to tone it down by saying, “Well, I know it sounds crazy, but we don’t really eat Jesus. I mean, we eat this bread and drink this wine and we believe he’s present in those things. We don’t really know how he’s present, we just sort of trust and eat and look at each other and go home and it’s very meaningful. But we’re not crazy. I swear.”
            Well, that falls a little flat, doesn’t it? This passage sounds strange even to us. Even if we’ve come to accept that we’re a little crazy, we like for things to make sense, to seem logical, to be rational… and this passage brings us right up to the edge of what we believe and says, “Here it is, all laid out for you. And it’s a little bit more than you can swallow.”
            What is Jesus saying here- to the people around him at the time and to us today? Part of this goes all the way back to the beginning of this whole section of John- with the feeding of the 5,000 and having leftovers, with the walking across the water and stilling the storm, with the phrase “I am the bread of life”. Part of what Jesus is telling his audience is that it’s not enough to participate in what is easy or obvious- the miracles, the healings, the supernatural events. It’s not enough to live based on the history of what God has done. In the case of the Jews in Scripture, it’s the memory of the freedom from slavery and manna in the wilderness. In our case, it’s not enough to believe in Christmas and Easter- the birth and resurrection. When we reduce God’s actions to what was and a vague expectation of what may come, we are missing the present, the current action, the contemporary revelations.
            The bread of life is not fast food. We do not grab it and go. It’s not something we consume just to have eaten, to have enough to get us to the next meal. What Jesus is telling those who would hear him is that the body and blood is something to chew on, to sit with, to return to. It’s something to gnaw on- with your mind and with your body. We chew on the bones of our salvation- making the taste last, always finding one more morsel, one more piece that gives us the flavor of heaven.
            And what is this eating for? Why do we chew over Jesus? What’s to be gained from eating the flesh and drinking the blood? True enough, eternal life. True enough, a better understanding of God. True enough, a very strange image to have in your mind. But what about the word Jesus uses, “abide”? What about abide? Eating the body and blood brings us to abide in Christ and Christ, in us. What does that mean?
            This week, I’ve been reading a book called “God’s Hotel” about one of the last almshouses in the country. An almshouse is where people used to go if they weren’t really able to pay for a hospital stay, but still needed care and had nowhere else to go. In one section, the author, Dr. Victoria Sweet, talks about the difference between seeing a person alive and seeing the body of the same person after they’ve died.

            “Much later I learned that medicine had once had a name for this, this something present in the living body but missing from the corpse. Two names, actually. There was spiritus, from which we get the English spirit, although the Latin spiritus was not as insubstantial as “spirit”. Spiritus was the breath, the regular, rhythmic breathing of the living body that is so shockingly absent from the dead. Spiritus is what is exhaled in the last breath.
            And there was anima. Usually translated as soul, the Latin is better for conveying the second striking distinction between [the body of the person] and [the person themselves]- its lack of movement. Because anima is not really the abstraction, “soul”. Anima is the invisible force that animates the body. That moves it, not only willfully buy also unconsciously- all those little movements that the living body makes all the time. The slight tremor of the fingers, the pounding of the heart that shakes the living frame once a second, the rise and fall of the chest. Those movements by which we perceive that someone is alive. Anima, ancient medicine had observed, is just as absent from the dead body as spiritus.” (p. 2-3)[1] 

            I read this passage this week and I thought, “That’s what we get through eating the body and blood of Jesus. This is what happens with Christ abides in us! We have spiritus! We have anima!” When Jesus abides, resides, dwells, within us- we have something that we otherwise lack. We cannot always put our fingers on it specifically, which is what makes it hard to explain to doubtful listeners, but it is something that both comforts and motivates us, something that feeds and exhausts us, something that grounds us and gives us forward momentum. That’s what it means to have Jesus abide in us- as a result of our feeding on him.
            And what does it mean for us to abide in him? It means our spiritus and our animahave an anchor, a solid base. It means that when we look around, we see Christ in all things. And it means that all things see Christ in us. It means when we are wondering how to respond to all that God has done in Christ, when we are asking the question, “What should I do?” The answer is “Abide.” When we rest in presence of Christ, we are even more able to be present to the people and circumstances of our lives. Having fed on the body and blood, the Spirit uses that fuel to help us brighten the corner where we are, to shine the Christ light right onto our every day tasks, to love our neighbors and to be about the work of justice and peace.
            Yes, it all sounds a little crazy, but in the end… what we do here is not about bread and wine. What God does here is not about bread and wine. It’s about bodies. It’s about flesh and blood. It’s about life force and movement. It’s about Jesus, abiding in us and we, in him.

[1] Sweet, Victoria. God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine. Riverhead Books, New York. 2012. p. 2f