Yesterday, I had to put my dog in time-out (in the backyard) and myself in time-out (under the covers of my bed). When I came home from work, I discovered that he had amused himself during the day by chewing on a photo album that holds (held?) recipes and a box of dust masks. The scraps were strewn all over the living room.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, but, for me yesterday, it was a final straw in my currently tenuous grip on emotional control. I put Ivan outside and then while he howled at the door, I went upstairs and howled into a pillow.

In my theological tradition, I understand (spiritually and intellectually) that God is in control. Yet each day that I manage to do what I need to do without breaking down about my husband’s imminent deployment or being pregnant or any number of other things that are well beyond anything that I can change or alter- each day I *handle* these things, I feel like I have myself under control.

Well, my scrappy dog pushed me over the edge. If I don’t really have a handle on 68-pounds of Labrador Retriever, then why have I deluded myself into thinking that I have a handle on anything?

It is often said that preachers sometimes need to hear their message the most and a message that God is in control is what I need to hear the most right now.

And that is the message at the heart of Holy Week (next week) and all the services I’m currently planning. As events, the story leading to the empty tombs seems very much like a careening tale of political intrigue, treason and punishment. Yet, we as believers, (I as a believer), are called to see God’s control in the situation, to recognize through faith that was happened to Jesus was bigger than Caiaphas, Barabbas, Pilate, Caesar, you or me.

It was and is the work of God, the in-breaking of God’s kingdom into history and the promise of the kingdom to come. But more, we look at all those people (Judas, Peter, Ananias, Mary of Magdala) and we know that they weren’t in charge. Why do we think that we are?

Ivan will always be a rascally dog. I will love him for it and he’ll probably get more time-outs. The deployment is what it is and will be what it will be. I cannot do nothing about that. And I’m entering the world of parenting, where you realize your sphere of influence is crucial, but doesn’t quite have the circumference for which you might hope (or that you think you have).

I’m not letting go and letting God because I don’t “let” God do anything. What I’m hoping and praying for is that God will “let” me see His hand at work in my life, feel His presence and assure me with the comforting truth that I am not in control.

NUMBERS 21:4-9; PSALM 107: 1-3, 17-22; 1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-25; JOHN 3:14-21

How many of you have heard of Eric Liddell before? How many of you have seen the movie Chariots of Fire? Some of the life of Eric Liddell is portrayed in that movie as the runner who would not race on Sundays and had to change events in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Liddell was born in China where his Scottish parents were missionaries through the London Missionary Society. When Eric was six, he and his older brother were sent back to Scotland to be educated. They were both very athletic, but Eric could run and run. He was rumored to be Olympic worthy, but very few people from Scotland or Britain in general won Olympic running events.

Liddell was also famous for something else, during his younger years in Scotland. When he was a university student, he could draw enormous crowds who came to here him preach. He was a dynamic and powerful speaker who talked about the importance of the life of faith and of serving God.

In the film Chariots of Fire, Liddell is depicted as practicing for the 100-meter race and finding out only days before that the Olympic-qualifying heats would be held on a Sunday. Because of his strong belief in the Sabbath, Liddell refused to run on a Sunday.

In reality, Liddell found out months ahead of leaving for Paris about the Sunday trials and began practicing for the 400- meter race. In that race in the Olympics, Liddell did win a gold medal and set a new world record. He won a bronze in another race as well.

In the next few years, he won or helped win several other national titles for Britain and set other records. Yet Liddell felt other pulls on his heart and he heeded them.

Liddell returned to Northern China where he served as a missionary, like his parents, from 1925 to 1943. Liddell’s first job as a missionary was as a teacher at an Anglo-Chinese College (grades 1-12) for wealthy Chinese students. It was believed that by teaching the children of the wealthy that they themselves would later become influential figures in China and promote Christian values. He used his athletic experience to train the boys in a number of different sports.

In 1941 life in China was becoming so dangerous that the British Government advised British nationals to leave. Liddell’s wife and children left, but Liddell accepted a new position at a rural mission station, which gave service to the poor. Meanwhile, the Chinese and the Japanese were at war. When the fighting reached the rural areas, the Japanese took over the mission station. In 1943, Liddell was interned at an internment camp. Liddell became a leader at the camp and helped get it organized. Eric kept himself busy by helping the elderly, teaching at the camp school Bible classes, arranging games and also by teaching the children science. The children knew him as Uncle Eric.

In his last letter to his wife, written on the day he died, he talks about suffering a nervous breakdown in the camp due to overwork, but in actuality he was suffering from an inoperable brain tumor, to which being overworked and malnourished probably hastened his demise. He died on February 1945,

What does this the story of Eric Liddell have to do with anything? Well, it has to do with everything. One of Liddell’s most famous quotes was, “I believe that God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. When I run it is in His pleasure.”

When I run, I feel God’s pleasure. As we enter the sunnier spring, we all tip our faces up and feel the sun, God’s creative pleasure, shining on us. The ever-so-slightly warmer air gives us a bouncier step. The ability to leave our house and not worry about leaving lights on frees up some of our worries.

These are all small, delicious pleasures. It is true they enrich our lives, but they are not the stuff of life. Our texts today call us to feel God’s pleasure, to be in God’s pleasure, in a way that brings healing, wholeness and light. Moses lifts up the serpent, so that the Israelites won’t die from the snakebites they brought on themselves. Instead of basking in God’s pleasure to release them from slavery and provide for them in the desert, they wanted to complain about being sick of the food and the sand and the never-ending wilderness. Moses follows God’s instructions and lifts up the snake, so that the Israelites might continue to live and know God’s pleasure at providing for them in the wilderness and saving them from the Egyptians and from themselves.

John’s passage offers the same message. Jesus speaks to Nicodemus under the cover of night and talks to him about why God would send his Son into the world. Because God first loved the world, so God gave the only Son. God acts first so that the world might know his pleasure. Too often we think that we have to move, that we have to accept, that we have act for God to act toward us. Here we see God’s first actions toward us so that we might believe in something beyond ourselves.

That we can look to Jesus lifted up on the cross, a light shining into the darkness, and know God’s pleasure. That in believing in the message of the cross, we come to know God’s wisdom and God’s joy in bringing us to Himself. Believing in the cross does not mean there are no struggles with faith, that each day is light and joy. But it does mean that the darkness cannot completely overcome us, that the world and its foolishness does not have the power to separate us from the love of God.

Many people now look at the story of Eric Liddell and say he’d never make it today as a serious athlete because he was not as dedicated as he needed to be. But I think those people miss the point completely. Liddell was very famous for his unorthodox running style, head thrown back and arms flailing behind him. Through his life, he did everything in this headlong way- from racing to serving God. He ran in faith that he would be where God needed him to be and in the end, God’s dedication, through the cross, brought Eric Liddell to where Eric needed to be.

We are called through God’s word to run in the same way, even those of us who don’t actually run. We are called to abandon what the world considers good form and to throw ourselves into God’s pleasure. In our leisure time, in our vocation, in our families, with our friends, through good works to all our neighbors…

God so loved the world. God so loved you. That He sent the only Son. He sent part of Himself into the world. That everyone who believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.

Believe in what God has done for you and in what God is doing through you, for you and in you. Believe. And may the Spirit open your heart so that you can feel His pleasure.
Amen.

EXODUS 20:1-17; PSALM 19; 1 CORINTHIANS 18-25; JOHN 2:13-22

When my husband, Rob, went to Iraq in the first time, in 2007, I felt very overwhelmed in the weeks leading up to the deployment. I felt upset all the time and I felt frustrated by how depressed and upset I was. I could not change the situation, but it also seemed that I could not even change how I felt about it either. Nor I could I accept that I would stay in this bottom-dwelling darkness for the entire six and a half months.

I felt that my every waking moment was either spent in grief or in being frustrated at grieving. I literally felt consumed by all of this. Then one day, driving through around New York City, (don’t ask) I had an epiphany. My grief had become an idol for me. I wasn’t spending time even thinking about Rob or my schoolwork or even the actualities of deployment, but the majority of my energy, the place where my heart was hung was on the actual horribleness of how I felt.

I realize many of you may be thinking, “Well, of course, Pastor Julia is so Lutheran that in the middle of a horrible time, she WOULD think about the catechism.” But that’s not my point. In the midst of truly difficult and painful time, I had no perspective and I felt like I didn’t even have a toehold to gain any perspective.

The realization that grief was taking my focus from everything, including why I was actually grieving- that I missed my husband, sharply refocused my emotions and my spirit. When I began to feel the rising tide of grief washing over me and there wasn’t space to give in to it, I would sing to myself, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.”

During the deployment, I still had terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad days, but they were fewer and far between. And they lost their power to pull me completely under, to distract me from living, which is what Rob wanted me to do and, even more importantly, what God wants me to do.

When we hear the story of the cleansing of the temple, we think of Jesus, aflame with righteous anger, overturning tables, yelling and cracking a whip like Indiana Jones. The moneychangers scatter and the worshippers stare in fear, horror and amazement. It is important to remember that the moneychangers weren’t technically doing anything wrong, but the business that had developed around the ideas of perfect sacrifice and exacting worship standards had completely diminished the true purpose of the temple.

And having lost sight of the true purpose of the temple, is it any wonder that people weren’t able to tell the true Messiah when he walked among them? Even in today’s gospel reading, the disciples finally understand the meaning of Jesus’ words about his body after his resurrection.

In the fury of the temple cleansing, we miss the little verse that describes what the disciples were thinking while the events were happening. His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Zeal for your house will consume me.

Part of the plain reading of this text is in understanding we are called to be discerning about how God’s house is used, meaning this building and space. That what happens here should ultimately give glory to the One who made the whole world and to His power.

But zealousness for God’s house also involves the person of Jesus and what Jesus did and continues to do on our behalf. Just as Jesus spoke of the temple of his body, the housing of God’s spirit, that was broken for the world, so the Bible speaks of our own bodies, our selves as temples for God’s Spirit- a dwelling place that God shapes and uses for the coming of the kingdom. Zeal for our bodies as temples for God is supposed to consume us as well.

The commandments help us to understand this idea. That God wants to use us, and indeed will do so, but our response has a certain shape for our relationship with God and our relationship with other people. When we look at the list, we can be easily overwhelmed by the truth that we will not be able to fulfill this.

We get angry. We kill with words and actions. We do not build up our spouses or other relationships. We get annoyed with our neighbor. We want what our neighbor has. We work all the time with no Sabbath. We have idols of our own making. Even as we begin to think of any of these things, we can feel the pull of quicksand at our feet of clay and at our lukewarm hearts.

This is how the cross saves us, by overcoming our despair with zeal. Not just by lifting us from the tide of believing that we can do good in and of ourselves, but also by the cross’s overwhelming power that says death is not the end. Not the death of the soul that comes from realizing we cannot fulfill the law. Not the death of the body that comes to us all. Our proclamation of Christ crucified says it’s not over until God says it’s over.

This is God making foolish the wisdom of the world. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ says for all those who received the gift of faith, come here, rest here, believe in this when all else fails.

And in the cycle of faith, we rest in God’s promises until we are energized and stirred once again, until the zeal for God’s house and zeal for who God has called us to be gives us the strength to move. Though we may be in Lent, we are still Easter people, resurrection people. The Spirit is ever cleansing our hearts, God’s own temple, overturning the idols of our minds and spirits, increasing our faith and renewing our zeal. We are called again and again to the path of discipleship, whether we’re able to run, walk, crawl or creep the race that has been set before us.

Jesus says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light”, which may be true for discipleship. But I believe he, his mother, his disciples and all the saints who have gone before us would agree, life itself is hard and can be painful.

And that is why God died on Calvary, for our cleansing, the cleansing of the temple of ourselves and of the world. That the why for the resurrection. That is the reason we have the cross. That is why God gives us faith. In this life, our hope can be built on nothing less that Jesus’ blood and righteousness. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.

Amen.

^{131415161718192021}Then Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites and said, “What is there between you and me, that you have come to me to fight against my land?” The king of the Ammonites answered the messengers of Jephthah, “Because Israel, on coming from Egypt, took away my land from the Arnon to the Jabbok and to the Jordan; now therefore restore it peaceably.” Once again Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites and said to him: “Thus says Jephthah: Israel did not take away the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites, but when they came up from Egypt, Israel went through the wilderness to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh. Israel then sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, ‘Let us pass through your land’; but the king of Edom would not listen. They also sent to the king of Moab, but he would not consent. So Israel remained at Kadesh. Then they journeyed through the wilderness, went around the land of Edom and the land of Moab, arrived on the east side of the land of Moab, and camped on the other side of the Arnon. They did not enter the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was the boundary of Moab. Israel then sent messengers to King Sihon of the Amorites, king of Heshbon; and Israel said to him, ‘Let us pass through your land to our country.’ But Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through his territory; so Sihon gathered all his people together, and encamped at Jahaz, and fought with Israel. Then the Lord²²²³, the God of Israel, gave Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they defeated them; so Israel occupied all the land of the Amorites, who inhabited that country. They occupied all the territory of the Amorites from the Arnon to the Jabbok and from the wilderness to the Jordan. So now the Lord²⁴, the God of Israel, has conquered the Amorites for the benefit of his people Israel. Do you intend to take their place? Should you not possess what your god Chemosh gives you to possess? And should we not be the ones to possess everything that the Lord²⁵²⁶²⁷ our God has conquered for our benefit? Now are you any better than King Balak son of Zippor of Moab? Did he ever enter into conflict with Israel, or did he ever go to war with them? While Israel lived in Heshbon and its villages, and in Aroer and its villages, and in all the towns that are along the Arnon, three hundred years, why did you not recover them within that time? It is not I who have sinned against you, but you are the one who does me wrong by making war on me. Let the Lord²⁸, who is judge, decide today for the Israelites or for the Ammonites.” But the king of the Ammonites did not heed the message that Jephthah sent him.

²⁹Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh. He passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. ³⁰And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, ³¹then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.” ³²So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them; and the Lord gave them into his hand. ³³He inflicted a massive defeat on them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty towns, and as far as Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel. ³⁴Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child; he had no son or daughter except her. ³⁵When he saw her, he tore his clothes, and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.” ³⁶She said to him, “My father, if you have opened your mouth to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.” ³⁷And she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: Grant me two months, so that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, my companions and I.” ³⁸“Go,” he said and sent her away for two months. So she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity on the mountains. ³⁹At the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to the vow he had made. She had never slept with a man. So there arose an Israelite custom that ⁴⁰for four days every year the daughters of Israel would go out to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

I realize that this is only the eighth in my “Essential Passages” series and the second from the book of Judges. I’m fairly certain that 1/4 of all the posts will not be from this book, just 1/4 so far. Judges represents a peak in the Old Testament, wherein the Hebrew people are not able to follow God’s laws and reject righteous leadership. The prophets get worse and worse until finally Israel demands a king, which doesn’t work out much better for them in the end. Nevertheless, the story of Jephthah the judge, his rash vow and his daughter are significant- not only for the impact the story has on the biblical Israelites, but also for its impact on modern Biblical readers.

The story of Jephthah is an interesting one, starting with the first verses of Judges . He becomes a judge through a heart-felt plea from the elders of Gilead, basically asking Jephthah (whom they had previously run off ) to come back, with his gang, and defend them. After some discussion, Jephthah agrees. Jephthah faces off with the Ammonites and the Spirit of the Lord rests on him, a sign that the Lord will grant his victory. Maybe Jephthah doesn’t know this or maybe he wants to show his gratitude, so he vows to sacrifice to the Lord “whatever comes out of the door of [his] house” when he returns in triumph. This turns out to be his only daughter, indeed his only child. And, eventually, Jephthah fulfills his vow.

I have encountered many people who use this story and others like it as proof texts for why they cannot believe in God or believe the Bible. However, I’m not sure that this story (and its cohorts throughout the Bible) reveal as much about the nature of God as they do about the nature of humans and God’s reaction to that nature.

Throughout history, people have had free will and with that gift comes the somewhat less welcome gift of the ability to be really, really, really wrong. God’s ability to allow us to make mistakes that have hideous consequences for ourselves and for those around us does not point to a deity who is totally hands-off, but rather to a Creator who is willing to allow us to fail, so that we might reconsider the idols we have made, mature and grow in faith.

God did not sacrifice Jephthah’s daughter. In fact, other portions of the Bible point to God’s particular distaste for child sacrifice. God did not give Jephthah power, knowing what was coming. God gave strength to Jephthah’s hand so that Israel would not be overcome by the Ammonites. Despite the variety of sacrifices and praises Jephthah could have offered to God, he decided to go his own way, forge his own path, which led to unimaginable heartache and to the death of his only child.

The message of the Bible, in particular the book of Judges, is that whether we despair of our choices or revel in our decisions, God is with us. God’s longing to guide us and to help us to avoid these kind of painful situations (though a pain-free life is not a biblical promise) is evident throughout Scripture.

We don’t look to David’s abuse of power by sleeping with Bathsheba as evidence that God loves an adulterer. We see that story and its heartbreaking outcome in the death of the child as part of the Davidic saga that reveals God’s ability and desire to remain faithful to His servant in faithlessness and in frustration. Similarly, Jephthah’s pain leads on through the book of Judges and through the prophets, where God’s voice can be heard wooing, pleading with and cajoling the Hebrew people- saying, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

And for those of us whose faith is in the empty cross, that is also God’s call to us when we are determined to be worthy of salvation, to uncover all of the mysteries, to do everything just right to assure ourselves of our goodness. As a professor I had once said, “It ain’t necessarily so. More importantly, it necessarily ain’t so.”

Think of Jephthah. Think of the cross. If God’s Spirit is already with you, don’t promise something to gain more of it. Trust in God’s promises through God’s Word. Don’t do something that you’ll regret and so will God.

ROMANS 4:13-25 & MARK 8:31-38

Christians who look to qualify the flood by saying it might have been a flooding of the Mediterranean Sea, rather than the whole world always fascinate me. The same with those people who look to the story of Jonah and want to be sure we understand that it’s an allegorical parable and that there is no fish that can swallow a person. And, again the same with the people who continuously look for explanations for how Jesus and Peter were able to walk on water. Mysteriously frozen lake? Ice floes? Particularly thick algae cover?

The Bible is full of things that we take on faith and it seems sometimes we need to find a way to explain some of the miracles because otherwise our minds might explode. Yet two of the greatest miracles of the Bible are presented in the readings for this week and in general we take them on faith.

We usually accept that Abraham and Sarah had a child together when they were well past the age at which people normally conceive. Though they both did laugh at God’s promise, (Paul cleans that up a little), they did believe God’s promise. And we know that they did because they acted on that promise and conceived Isaac. At their age, it would have been easy to throw in the towel, but God promised and they upheld their end of that covenant, meaning they continued to complete the actions that would allow that promise to be fulfilled through them. That faith, their belief, is reckoned to them as righteousness. It’s not their actions that do this, but their faith, their belief in God’s promise that is counted as righteousness. That faith, that gift from God, enabled them to do the work of participating in the will of God done on earth. And we believe in that story.

Similarly, we believe in the death of Jesus the Christ and in his resurrection. Peter cannot bear the idea ahead of time that the Messiah might die, but then the idea of resurrection is just crazy talk. But Jesus says, this is how it will be and everyone who genuinely wants to follow me will be on this same path with me. And we believe, or in at least in being here we’re saying we try, in Jesus, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

These are things that defy our reason more than a flood or a big fish. That people nearly a century old would conceive and bear a child. That a man, a real flesh and blood man, would be killed, buried and raised from the dead. But this is what Lent bring us to. Beyond the songs sung in minor key, the purple colors and the more frequent services, what we’re called to give up is that which we want to cling to the most. We’re called to embrace God’s reason and to know the truth of God’s faithful action. That miracles do happen. For us and through us, for the sake of the world.

Like Abraham and Sarah, we may not fully understand or know how God’s will is done or will be done, but we’re called to keep acting in the way that shows we believe it will be done. To keep doing in faith what God has called us to do. That faith that may seem hard to explain and that comes from beyond ourselves is counted to us as righteousness.

Impossibilities are God’s specialty. If you aren’t sure about that, consider all that you have been forgiven. Consider that you have been forgiven. There’s only one way that’s possible. And if you believe that, then what is there not to believe?

Amen.

I’ve never had as much feedback or commentary on a blog post as I have on my prior post on church shopping. To be clear, in that post, I did mention that I can see and understand, yea verily sympathize with, all kinds of reasons for searching through churches and visiting a variety of congregations. The post was not necessarily to people who have been looking at churches for a while or who have felt the need to see “what else is out there”, but to people who chronically experience serial monogamy with churches- staying at a church for a year or two and then moving on, for whatever reason.

There are two issues at hand in “church shopping” (or seeking). One is trying to find a church that fits your needs at a given time. Granted, your family church of three generations may not do that every Sunday of every week of every year of your life. It probably didn’t for your grandmother either.

The other issue at hand is does not pertain specifically to the church shopper, but to the pastor and the long-time church members who may disdain the “seeker”. Church is not what it was thirty years ago or even fifteen. When I was younger (not that long ago), my family went to church on Wednesday nights, Sunday morning and I had youth group on Sunday night. Every week. Period. Church was what you did. It was the social place, the spiritual place, the community place (even though our church was 10 miles away).

Times have changed. People have far more things to do these days and, seemingly, less time to do them. So what is church now? The place for drive-by spiritual recharges? The entertainment center with stimulating music and speakers? The dwindling family reunion with more funerals to report than weddings?

We are in the midst of redefining what it means to be church. We means everybody. The long-time pew stake-holders (yes, I see you). The two-time visitors. The pastor, still busy and still called to Word and Sacrament, with pastoral care and so much more.

If we don’t all contribute to the vision, then the Body of Christ limps along without the occasion or the space or the active members to show the world that what we believe is true and that truth has freed us.

Perhaps instead of deriding or defending church shopping, the question we should all be trying to answer is “What is church for me? And how will I know when I find it?”

Then we roll up our sleeves and start praying- with our hearts, our voices, our hands and our feet.

Here I sit on a Friday morning, jotting down notes and trying to prepare for Sunday’s sermon. The texts are oriented toward baptism, but there is more to consider than just the sacrament. What have people heard recently (from me or others) about baptism? (The Baptism of our Lord was only six weeks ago.) What do potential visitors know about baptism? What can be said about this crucial part of Christian life and practice in a clear, specific way without relying on “code words” or assumptions that everyone knows what I mean? Furthermore, there is the temptation narrative which deserves comment, as well as the beginning of the season of Lent.

One sermon cannot contain everything and woe to the pastor who tries to do that. I wander as I ponder and I came across this article in Slate magazine about church shopping. The article posits that the phenomenon of wandering from congregation to congregation after a few months or a year or so or of rotating between a few congregations is not bad.

One in seven adults changes churches each year, and another one in six attends a handful of churches on a rotating basis, according to the Barna Group, a marketing research firm that serves churches. Church shopping isn’t a matter of merely changing congregations: A survey by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life last year indicated that 44 percent of American adults have left their first religious affiliation for another. “Constant movement characterizes the American religious marketplace,” a survey summary said.

Even if the American mania for shopping extends to our spiritual lives, church shopping still doesn’t get much respect. But while it may be frequently derided as an example of rampant spiritual consumerism, shopping around can be one of the good things about the way religion is practiced in America.

I wouldn’t say the practice is necessarily bad, but I wouldn’t characterize it as a good habit either. Certainly one congregation may not meet all your spiritual needs. Why isn’t it? Are the services not to your liking? Could you help start an alternate weekly service in a preferred traditional style or with some jazz hymns? Is it the people? Maybe you could teach a class or a special workshop on being welcoming or on conflict-resolution? Is it the theology? If it differs greatly from the denomination’s self-understanding, you may well have a valid complaint. If it differs from your own theological understanding, you may also as well.

In some of these cases, moving to a new church may really be your best option.

Church hopping creates some issues as well. Participation in a church is part of the expectation of the life of faith. We cannot be Christians on our own. The Bible calls to us again and again as participants and members of the body of Christ. The fruits of the Spirit that our God-given faith produces are for the benefit of those around us, outside of church and in the pew next to us.

In baptism, for example, in the Lutheran tradition, the parents and godparents of a child make promises toward raising the child in the faith. The whole congregation witnesses these promises and the means by which God pours grace into our lives and also promises to help in the upbringing of another member of the faith.

The article argues that one of the reasons church shopping is good (or effective) is because it removes some of the power from the pulpit to the pews. However, that also happened (or was supposed to have) in the Protestant Reformation. You have the power, through baptism and the Spirit, to transform a congregation, but congregational transformation happens best through people working together in a cooperative and open spirit. This means knowing one another, sharing joys and sorrows, appreciating the history that a congregation has- perhaps existing before any of the current members joined.

Church shopping in a new area is understandable. Church shopping after a few years can happen. However, chronic movement from church to church can undermine the true strength of what a congregation has to offer to one’s life of faith. And it’s not that you are being deprived of that. You are depriving others of what you have to offer as well.

I’ve sat on this story for a couple weeks, though I haven’t totally refrained from comment. By clicking the link, you’ll be directed to a New York Times article about the re-introduction of the practice of indulgences in the Roman Catholic Church. This practice hadn’t completely disappeared, but the RCC is encouraging the practice once more, as part of a concerted effort to reinvigorate people’s interest in and practice of Confession.

The article states:

According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory, before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.

There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it, until another sin is committed. You can get one for yourself, or for someone who is dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day. […]

Dioceses in the United States have responded with varying degrees of enthusiasm. This year’s offer has been energetically promoted in places like Washington, Pittsburgh, Portland, Ore., and Tulsa, Okla. It appeared prominently on the Web site of the Diocese of Brooklyn, which announced that any Catholic could receive an indulgence at any of six churches on any day, or at dozens more on specific days, by fulfilling the basic requirements: going to confession, receiving holy communion, saying a prayer for the pope and achieving “complete detachment from any inclination to sin.”

I must admit that, as a Lutheran, I get a bit twitchy at the idea of indulgences and even more so at the idea of “achieving ‘complete detachment from any inclination to sin’.” Due to my own denominational bias, I may be unable to see or appreciate the spiritual benefits of the practice of indulgences, but since I don’t believe in Purgatory or in our ability to save ourselves- then I don’t see that there are any spiritual benefits to indulgences.

They seem, well, indulgent. Doesn’t the Bible encourage to good works(visiting the imprisoned, caring for the sick, giving cups of cool water, etc) for the glory of God and out of thanksgiving for all that God has done for us? At no point do good works save us, improving our standing before God.

Furthermore, we are incapable of “complete detachment from any inclination to sin”. The root of God’s judgment and our need for God’s grace is that chronic sin is synonymous with being human. We are to try to avoid it, but sometimes our crafty avoidance finds us backing into a waist-deep mess of another kind.

Christ’s death on the cross erased the eternal punishment for sin for those who believe in him, according to the Bible. The promise of that sacrifice once and for all is visible in the empty tomb and cross, which are God’s signs to us that Christ’s righteousness covers our unrighteousness.

We are ever striving through the work and help of the Spirit to more completely understand God’s work in our lives and in the world. However, we are never striving to be worthy of it because that will not happen.

Indulgences, to me, seem to be the hamster wheel of works-righteousness. Instead of being freed by Christ’s power to care for the people around you, you’re constantly striving to eliminate some portion of the punishment that you know you’re going to receive after you die.

I read this article and I sigh. Then I look at the empty cross and I say, “Thanks be to God.” I couldn’t have done it any better.

In truth, I could not have done it at all.

So I know I’ve been very delinquent in my blogging lately. It’s not been for lack of ideas: Martin Luther’s death date, the re-emergence of indulgences in the Roman Catholic Church, the texts of Epiphany, 43 more crucial Scripture passages. Trust me, I’ve written amazing posts about all of those… in my head.

It’s hard to get back on the writing horse once you fall off it. I could blame it on the pregnancy. It does make you tired and I didn’t want to mention it until I was ready to mention it, but that only covers the first few weeks of January, when I was too tired to think straight.

So, there are no excuses, other than the fact that I have been busy. However, I do consider the maintenance of this blog and the providing of thought-provoking posts of at least semi-substance as a portion of my job.

So, I’m throwing myself back in the saddle and we’ll see how it goes. I read something recently that said if you expect to keep something like a blog with any kind of devotion, you need to write six days a week. We’ll see about that.

2 KINGS 2:1-12; 2 CORINTHIANS 4:3-6; MARK 9:2-9

So, am I going to drop a piece of news like [I’m having a baby in August] on you and go right on preaching? In the words of another Alaskan woman who hid a pregnancy for a while, “You betcha.” It’s not because I’m stubborn or because I put the gospel above everything else. Well, both of those things are true, but the gospel message for us on this Sunday (or any Sunday) is too good to ignore.

However, the heart of Transfiguration Sunday is absorbing the truth of the epiphany and carrying it with us beyond this particular mountaintop. The season of Epiphany is about learning more about who this Jesus is, born to us and all people at Christmas. The more we learn about him, the more we know the heart of God, and the more we come to realize what faith in Jesus may require of us. The season of Lent is about wrestling with those requirements.

The mountain of Transfiguration Sunday gives us a peak to see where we’ve been, the birth, the baptism, the healings and new teachings. When we turn and look the other way, we see the even larger mountaintop that defines our lives as Christians, Easter Sunday. But to get there from here, we walk through the valley of the shadow of Lent. We put our alleluias in our pockets. We climb down and we walk with Jesus down the dusty road to the cross. Everything he says and does leads him to such trouble. Everything he says and does lead him to the place that gets us out of trouble.

Before we get there, however, we have to look at where we are today, in the hinge between the season of revelation and the season of shadow. The 2 Kings passage today provides so much guidance for our lives that we cannot fail to examine it. Did you hear it when it was read? Take a look at it in your bulletin. Everyone knows that today is the day that Elijah is going to be taken into the presence of the Lord. Elijah has been the main prophet for the reign of two kings, Ahab and Ahaziah. He’s spoken to Israelites and non-Israelites. He’s performed miracles, he’s prophesied, he’s been the voice of the Lord and he’s about to leave.

The other prophets, probably partially envious of Elijah’s power and envious of Elisha’s position, cannot resist making sure Elisha knows the import of this day. “Do you not know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?” Elisha, if this is a direct quote, says so calmly, “Yes, I know; be silent.” Elijah tries to encourage Elisha to return home, that he doesn’t have to be there, but Elisha is determined to go all the way, as far as he can, with the prophet who has trained him and whom he loves.

The big deal of this story is not the whirlwind and the chariots that carry Elijah away. The big deal doesn’t even make it in to the story we have in front of us. The gospel of this passage happens in verses 13 and 14. “Elisha picked up the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the cloak that had fallen from him and struck the water with it. “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over.”

Remember that all the other prophets and who knows how many other people were standing on the other side of the Jordan, watching. What they get from seeing this is not that the understanding that Elisha has inherited a double portion of the prophetic spirit. What they get is the knowledge that the Spirit and the power of the Lord did not leave with Elijah. It yet remains among them. God has not and will not leave the nation without a prophet and without his voice.

Though Elisha might be grieving the loss of his mentor and friend, he turns and does what has to be done. He must cross back over and go back to work with the best of his ability. One can almost hear God saying, Don’t just stand there, Elisha, do something.

Peter, James and John get a slightly different message on the mount of Transfiguration. They’ve climbed up this peak with Jesus and they’re treated to a dazzling vision of their Master speaking to Moses and Elijah. Peter is so befuddled, he starts babbling about how they can build places to stay up there. They knew Jesus had power, but this is unbelievable. One can hear God speaking, through a transformation of the baptismal words, “This is my beloved Son. Don’t just do something, listen.”

In the dark days to come for these disciples, and the others, this experience will play over and over in their hearts as they try to understand everything that’s happening around them.

And so it is for us. An unexpected pregnancy. An expected deployment. A sudden death. A long-suffered illness. Financial success. Financial woes. Feast, famine, joy, sorrow, health, sickness. Just as in mountain climbing, you’ve barely begun to enjoy the peak before the work of going back down begins. We are barely able to realize the power of our experience before we turn and see people waiting on the other side of the Jordan for us to come back through the water and manage our daily tasks to the best of our ability.

The cycle of our lives is almost defined by, “Don’t just stand there, do something. Don’t just do something, listen.” We are called into action through our baptisms and through what Christ has done for us. But we don’t act just willy-nilly, doing what is right in our minds, but we seek what is right and true from the heart of God.

The only way, the only way we are able handle the truth of the ups and downs of our lives and our faith is in this way: the same God who said, “Let there be light” has shone in our hearts the light of the knowledge of the saving power of Jesus Christ.

As we climb and descend the peaks and valleys of our lives, it is the view from here of the truth of the resurrection and its promises that help us to do anything that we’re able to do. Sometimes that means a day when getting out of bed and taking a shower is the best example of the hope we hold in our hearts. Sometimes it is bringing another life into the world or sitting and waiting as a life leaves this world.

It’s the view in our hearts and minds of the Easter peak. The empty cross. The empty tomb. The gasping realization that God is stronger than death and nothing, nothing can separate from the love of God. The view of that mountain peak gives us hope.

And it is that hope, and that hope alone, that transfigures us. It keeps our alleluias alive in our hearts, even when they are not on our lips. It keeps our feet moving. It keeps our faith alive. That transfiguring hope will carry us through Lent and Holy Week, right to where the stone has been rolled away.

It is that transfiguring hope that gives me the strength to be with you and help you and you to do the same for me and for one another. We go across the Jordan together, we come down the mountain together, and with the world watching, we continue in the work to which we have been called.

We have the presence of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, a double portion if there ever was one. Don’t just stand there, do something. But don’t just do something, listen.

Listen to the truth of God’s word. Listen for the whistle of the wind through the empty tomb. Listen to the alleluias of creation that cannot be silenced, no matter the season.

Listen to this: Christ is risen. (Christ is risen, indeed.) That truth, and that truth, alone transfigures you and me and the whole world, regardless of all other circumstances. And it is that truth that gives us the power to handle any other life-changing experiences that come our way.

Amen.