3rd Sunday after Pentecost
Exoduc 19:2-8 Psalm 100 Romans 5:1-8 Matthew 9:35-10:8 Pentecost 3 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the God who died for us. Amen Our texts for today portray a God who in the words of Walter Brueggemann “refuses to be domesticated” Brueggemann is a Biblical scholar specializing in the Hebrew scriptures and a master of preaching, I got to see him last month at the preaching festival I went to and I’ve been working my way through a collection of his sermons.[1] One of them, titled “God’s Relentless If”[2] is based in part on our first reading from Exodus where we join the Israelites, freshly freed by God from the Egyptians, are as they are Led into the wilderness when they finally make camp Moses goes up the mountain for further instructions God tells Moses to say to the people “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on Eagle’s wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom, and a holy nation.” that sounds pretty good right? To be God’s treasured people, and here Brueggemann notes that “Already with Moses, God has said that the status of Israel depends on an enormous IF”[3] God says if you follow what I say to you, you will be my people and though it is unspoken the other side of the if holds true as well, if you don’t you won’t. The people heartily agree to God’s terms, but it doesn’t work out as easily as saying yes for them, because their actions must follow their words and pretty soon they are building a golden calf and starting the cycle where the people break the covenant, there are consequences and the people suffer, the people turn back to God and follow God’s ways for a while until they get distracted and the whole process starts over again all turning on that big IF. Sometimes God, in this cycle with the people is characterized as overly harsh, vengeful even but this is unfair to God because what we witness in the stories of the interactions between God and the people, is a God who keeps promises, who refuses to be domesticated, taken as a push over, (honestly, would we want it to be any other way?) A God who loves the people so much that God stays with the people in their suffering, reaches out to them with prophets and judges, offers them second chance after second chance even while standing firm on the big IF. Brueggemann concludes from all of this that it costs to live in God’s world. There are expectations and consequences, and he notes that when we try to domesticate or cheapen God our neighbors become inexpensive.[4] When we try to tame God to fit our whims and desires, to fit the way of life we want to live we justify to ourselves all kinds of ‘if’ ignoring actions. Right now, in the world around us it seems that neighbors are inexpensive and only getting cheaper Our neighbors with black and brown bodies are cheapened as time and again they are judged according to their outward appearance and not their humanity, when fear is found to be a valid excuse for violent interactions among people of all shades. Our neighbors fleeing violence are cheapened when they are refused entry into safety and become targets of fear because of their homeland. Our neighbors with whom we disagree are cheapened when instead of listening we turn to violence. Our neighbors who need medical care are cheapened when money and profit is of more importance than access to basic medical care, and so on and so forth you get the idea and maybe the covenant God made with the people all those years ago seems irrelevant and we ignore it but ignoring it doesn’t make it go away we feel the consequences of our covenant denying actions, the increased fear and division, the news that we don’t watch anymore because we can’t handle another depressing story we might even wonder where God is in all of this. Where is God? Right in the thick of it all, where people are suffering, that is where God is found. Even as God stands firm on the if, God loves us and reaches out to us, assuring us that we are at peace with God, because in the words of Paul to the Romans, “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Jesus came into the world in a time when neighbors were extremely cheap, and he came to the people who were the cheapest. he gave them hope by proclaiming the kingdom of God come near, he gave them dignity by curing every disease and sickness he came across, he felt sick to his stomach when he saw how they were being treated and how they had no one to speak for them, so he empowered some of their own to continue his work. He proclaimed a peace different than that of the Roman Empire, whose peace was built on cheap neighbors and whose emperors styled themselves Lord and savior. Jesus’ peace is built on the reconciliation between creator and creation, and God does the heavy lifting in the relationship “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” and through this act of grace offers us peace with God, which we receive through our faith. Over the centuries people have tried to explain exactly how this works, how Christ’s crucifixion made peace for us with God, and frankly, all the explanations fall short but we trust that what God promises is true, because our God is a God who keeps promises, who refuses to be domesticated even when the consequences of promise keeping are painful and who continues to love and be present in the midst of the pain. Jesus is God’s recognition that we need help living in God’s costly world especially because it is through us that God works to transform the world. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are God’s hands in the world, so the only way that our neighbors will go from cheap to valued is if we value them, the only way that people who are suffering will know that God is with them is if we are with them, the only way that people will get medical care is if we give it to them, the only way that people will know that God loves them is if we love them. And here we are back to that little two letter word and the unspoken other side, if we don’t they won’t. It is costly to live in God’s world, Paul recognizes that, in the midst of his expounding on the glorious gift of God he mentions suffering. the suffering he talks about is the suffering that comes when the world reacts to people who dare to live as God calls them, who value neighbors and call others to do the same, and dare to hope that through them God is transforming the world one helping action at a time We are God’s chosen people Claimed by God at our baptisms so we stand firm in the knowledge that “since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” Amen [1]Brueggeman, Walter. The Threat of Life: Sermons on Pain, Power, and Weakness (Minneapolis: Fortress press) 1996. [2] Brueggeman, 70. [3] 71. [4] 78.
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7th Sunday After Easter
Acts 1:6-14 Psalm 68:1-10 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11 John 17:1-11 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who prays for us. Amen Here’s the scene: you know you’re going to die soon. What do you say to the loved ones you’re leaving behind? What do you want them to know? To feel? To carry with them the rest of their lives? And how do you tell them this once you’ve got it all figured out? Or you’re on the other end of the good bye, wondering how you will move forward in life, who you will be in the absence of your loved one, wondering what you are supposed to do without them. This is the scene we find in our gospel for today, Jesus knows he’s going to die soon and this is his farewell address to the disciples, it reveals what is most important to him, what he wants the disciples to carry with them even as he answers their as yet unspoken questions of identity and purpose. Jesus starts by saying once and for all the purpose of his life, what he wants the disciples to remember - that God sent him, his son- to bring eternal life to all- that is why Jesus has been among them, and in the event that they are unclear on it he defines eternal life: being in relationship with the true God who is revealed in his Son Jesus Christ. Jesus’ purpose has been fulfilled in his relationships with the disciples, relationships where he has communicated who God is, through his presence among them and this has not been a general presence but a personal intimate presence, one built on relationships, it is a presence that participated in the whole range of the human experience from life to death, a presence who felt the pain of the mourning and raised the dead, a presence who felt the hunger of the crowds and provided bread and hope, a presence who became the life of the party when the wine ran out, who got to know the people he encountered and who loved them faults and all, Peter the blockhead, Thomas the questioner, Martha the overworker and yes even Judas the betrayer, Jesus loved them all and saw them as a gift from God, was honored by the relationships, the people that God had placed in his care and in the end, in his farewell address he gives thanks to God for them And it is in this thanksgiving for the gift of his disciples that Jesus begins to lay the foundation for the disciples’ future life, a life without his physical presence yet where they are still in relationship with God because they are God’s, he paints the picture a future where they will be the presence of Christ in the world, where their purpose will be to live the eternal life given them by Jesus and to share that eternal life with others by being the presence of Jesus in the world, in the same way Jesus shared it with them, by building personal relationships that reveal God as one who is intimately concerned with the lives of God’s children. Jesus knows that this will not be an easy identity and purpose to live out, especially in the sadness and confusion, the joy and wonder at his death and resurrection so he closes his prayer for the disciples with a prayer for protection and unity. He closes his prayer, that’s how Jesus has chosen to give his parting message to the disciples, through a prayer for them that they overhear. It is a beautiful and intimate thing to be prayed for and it is reflective of the intimacy Jesus has with both God and his disciples, it also creates new life in the people who pray and hear the prayer. Prayer is not just communication with God, a checklist of requested items but a time of relationship building where hopes and dream are exchanged and those involved are empowered to live into the new life envisioned in the prayer. Even as Jesus says good bye to his disciples he creates new life for them, just as he creates new life for us for we are overhearers of the prayer too, we are disciples, Jesus prays for us knowing what we need in his seeming absence. Today we mark the ascension of Jesus to heaven as we heard in our reading from Acts, and we remember the promise that Jesus will return, it has been many generations of waiting for Jesus to return and though Jesus has left us with our identity and purpose, comes to us in the bread and wine at the table and is present in the spirit sometimes we can’t help but feel his physical absence, and we wonder why, just as when we lose a loved one, we still miss them and wonder what the future will bring even as we live out that future. These are the moments when we go back to the farewell, we take time to remember and be renewed in the memories of our loved ones who have gone before us, who we are because of them and our purpose in life after them, and we are renewed in our convictions. In the same way we take time to remember Jesus, to hear his prayer for us, to be renewed in our identity as children of God and Christ’s presence in the world and our purpose of living and sharing the eternal life of relationship with God that has been given to us. It has been many generations since the first disciples witnessed Jesus’ ascension to heaven and yet here we are, children of God, living the gift of eternal life in relationship with the God who Jesus revealed to us by the community of disciples, Jesus’ presence on earth. We remember with thanksgiving those who passed the faith along to us and the prayer that Jesus prays for us, and so renewed in our identity as beloved children of God and our purpose of sharing that relationship with others we live into our eternal life in Christ. Amen |
AboutPastor Emily Johnson preaches weekly at Christ Lutheran. These are manuscripts of her sermons given at Christ Lutheran. Feel free to engage with them in the comments section of the blog. Archives
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