Seventh Sunday in Easter
Acts 1:1-11 Psalm47 Ephesians 1:15-23 Luke 24:44-53 Alleluia Christ is Risen! Christ is risen indeed Alleluia! Well, here we are, at the end of the Easter season, our celebration of the resurrection was a bit quieter than what we’re traditionally used to but perhaps more poignant for the much needed message of hope, the proclamation of Jesus’ ultimate victory over death. We’ve heard how Jesus appeared to the disciples giving them what they needed to believe and reminding them of all that he had taught them, and we’ve heard once again, of Jesus’ promise that he will not leave us orphaned but send an advocate, the holy spirit to show us the way, and now here on our last sunday in Easter we hear of Jesus’ ascension, his return to heaven and the right hand of the Father as we confess in the words of the Apostle’s Creed, we confess this but I don’t think the ascension is one of the parts of Jesus’ life that we think about all that often, in fact, why mention it at all? As it turns out, the Ascension, which some smart alec online defined as “when Jesus started working from home” is crucial for the spread of the good news of Jesus Christ. While it seems counter intuitive, Jesus has to leave so that the work of the church can begin. Luke tells us how after appearing to the disciples in several ways, Jesus finally gathers the disciples together, reminds them of all that he taught them while he was with them, opens their minds to understand that he is the fulfillment of the scriptures, “that because he rose on the third day, repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in [Jesus’] name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” and that they are the ones who will be making those proclamations Jesus reminds the disciples “You are witnesses of these things.” the life, death, resurrection and now ascension of Jesus. Witnesses who now have the responsibility to share what they have seen and heard with all nations, of course Jesus will give them the gift of the Holy Spirit to help, though that comes next week, first though Jesus has to leave, and with a final blessing he is carried into heaven, the disciples return to the temple blessing God and soon, next week, the holy spirit will blow them out into the street, to share what they have seen with all the nations, and this wouldn’t be possible without Jesus leaving, as long as Jesus is around, he will be the center of attention, ascending to the Father, fulfills the scriptures and gives the disciples space to live out the mission he has given them. Because let’s be honest, as humans we tend to get distracted by the physical, by what is before us, what we can hold on to, in Acts the disciples stare heavenward as Jesus ascends and two men in white (indicating that they are messengers of God) come alongside them and ask why they keep staring up to heaven when what is important is before them on earth, Jesus will come back they remind the disciples but until then you’ve got work to do, the work of becoming the Church, the people of God on earth who, in relationship with God and partnership of the holy spirit, grow in their own faith even as they share the hope of Jesus. This is what Paul reminds the Ephesians of in his letter to them, a new community in Christ who heard of Jesus through Paul who is now encouraging them from afar, giving thanks to God for them in their growing relationship with God and reminding them that while Jesus is the head of the church, they are the hands and feet of the body of Christ their presence in the world is how Christ works now. In sharing the good news and loving the neighbor the Ephesians bring Christ into the midst of their community. How they do it will be different than the Philippians, or the Corinthians or the believers in Jerusalem because of the differences in community, and that is okay because different communities have different needs and ways of doing things but they are all valuable members of the body of Christ. Wherever there are people whose hope is in Christ, who look to God for wisdom and understanding, who listen to the holy spirit that calls us to love and serve our neighbor, that is where the church is, that is Jesus present in the world. And Jesus needed to ascend to the father for this to happen, it’s like giving kids progressively more independence as they grow up, as care givers we still direct and encourage but they need the space to learn to do things on their own. Jesus being physically separate creates the space the disciples need to do the work set out for them, and with the help of the promised holy spirit they will take Jesus’ message to the ends of the earth. And sure, sometimes our attention gets stuck in one direction for awhile but that is when Jesus sends messengers to redirect our focus, To see once again all the people who need to hear of the hope of Christ, who need a living community one that adapts to the times and challenges while proclaiming the timeless message of Christ, and with the eyes our our hearts enlightened our hope is renewed and we work to become a community that reaches out to the forgotten that need to be remembered and the hungry that need to be fed, the lonely that need a friend, in these acts great and small whether it is one person or a whole multitude the church is present and that means Christ is present. Today as we reflect on the ascension of Jesus to his father, we are reminded that distance, whether it is physical like what we’ve been practicing or Jesus ascending to his father is sometimes what is needed for growth, for new life and that often the new life that emerges is even more powerful than what existed before, because it means that more are empowered. You are witnesses to these things, you have heard repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name, you have the gift of the holy spirit. YOU are the church. Amen
0 Comments
Second Sunday of Christmas
Jeremiah 31:7-14 Psalm 147:12-20 Ephesians 1:3-14 John 1:1-18 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who created the world and who chose to become a part of the world. Amen Merry Christmas! I know, it may not feel like Christmas anymore, even though we still have them up in Church decorations have come down many places and in stores have already been replaced by Valentine’s hearts and we’ve done our year end retrospectives, this year, depending on how you count it we’ve even looked back ten years over the past decade, and generally things feel like they are moving forward, we are past Christmas. And yet this year the way the calendar falls we get a second Sunday in Christmas, the season in the Church calendar runs until Epiphany on January 6th, that’s where we get the 12 days of Christmas. As epiphany is not until tomorrow this year we get one more Sunday to dwell on Christmas. So often when we think Christmas we think of the baby in the manger and the angels and shepherds but today we get to focus on Christmas as the incarnation of God, God the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, the Greek is literally translated as “pitching a tent among us”, God became one of us and lived with us no special treatment but the full human experience and all that goes with it, including suffering and death, things God could easily have avoided and yet didn’t. which means we have a God who knows exactly what we’re going through as we live out our lives even in those times in life where we feel that the only ones who understand us are the ones who have gone through what we’re going through, God understands and that is the miracle of the incarnation, that God loved us so much and wanted to be as close to us as possible that God became one of us, God is intimately concerned with our lives, all the more amazing when we consider this is the same one who created the universe. And as we go through life God seeks to remind us of this intimate relationship, on the last night with his disciples, Jesus blessed bread and wine and told them this bread and wine is my body and blood given for you, and he commanded them to eat and drink and to do this whenever they gathered, so that they would know that he was with them, a part of them. Jesus is that close to us, closer than we sometimes like to think of and if we try to figure out the how of it we get confused very quickly but the how is not the point, if God can become human certainly God can be bread and wine and that is how God has chosen to come to us as mysterious as that may be. God is mysterious to us, because as intimate with us as Jesus is, and as much as he reveals God’s will to us according to God’s good pleasure, at the same time God is so much bigger, than even our wildest imaginations can comprehend. John, in his description of the incarnation, echoing the opening of Genesis, brings us all the way back to before creation when God the Father and God the Word and God the Spirit all together created the world and set the foundations of life in motion and had hopes and dreams and a plan for interacting with that creation, first through the gift of the law and then through Christ. That is both big and intricate planning. Paul in Ephesians tells us that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, and we wonder at the enormity of that as well at the intimacy of being part of God’s plan from even before time God is bigger than we are, bigger than all of us with greater understanding, but even as God is so much bigger God has included us God doesn’t need us but God has made us part of the action Again as Paul explains to the Ephesians “with all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, that that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.” God’s will for us is abundant life, and “us” means all creation to God, creation that God will gather in, because as we are well aware, sin has entered the world and because of sin there is pain and suffering but God has promised to gather us in the gathering is still in process, and until then our purpose is to live for the praise of God’s glory. And how do we do that? We live for the praise of God’s glory when we live in ways that bring more of God’s will into the world, the will of abundant life for all, and that means sometimes living in ways counter to the way of the world. The world says there is not enough for everyone, God’s will says that there is plenty to go around. The world says that those who appear different are to be feared, God’s will says that they too are children of God. The world says power is gained through shows of strength. God’s will says that serving your neighbor is the strongest way to live. Our purpose is to live for the praise of God’s glory, not the praise of the world, and the world will push back, it will be difficult at times but we are able to do so because we have been claimed by God, and promised that whatever the world does to us will not have the last say. At our baptisms God claimed us and marked us “with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.” And yet even marked with the Holy Spirit there may be times when the enormity and mystery of God’s will become overwhelming, and then Jesus comes to us again, in Word and water, bread and wine reminding us that God knows exactly what we’re going through and that God is with us. This is the miracle of the incarnation that we celebrate at Christmas, the intimacy of God with us all as part of God whose will stretches before time. Some days we need the baby in the manger, the Word become flesh living among us, and some days we need God who is bigger than us with plans and understanding far beyond our measly comprehension but who still cares for us. At Christmas we get both and we celebrate all the mysterious truth that comes with it secure in the knowledge that God is bigger than we are and that God is with us. Merry Christmas. All Saints
Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18 Psalm 149 Ephesians 1:11-23 Luke 6:20-31 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from Christ who is all and in all. Amen There’s more to this world than meets the eye, I think sometimes we forget this, wrapped as we are in a world that requires proof for belief. Now don’t get me wrong, I think the scientific method is fundamentally important, observations leading to conclusions about how life works, and of course proof is very necessary in courts of law when the freedom of someone is on the line, but there’s more to this world than meets the eye this is not an either or situation, this is a both and situation, there are many things we can and should observe before we make conclusions, and there are things beyond what we can see, and there is truth in both. And it’s this second part that we have lost touch with, the truth that exists beyond our five senses, and that gets to be dangerous for us because we start to believe that we can figure out and manipulate everything, and if we can do that we become responsible for everything and that is overwhelming, if everything is up to us we quickly get in over our heads, This is why the second step in the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, after the first step of admitting powerlessness, is to come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore sanity. (Step 3 is to turn our lives over to the care of God). If we are responsible for everything we quickly lose perspective, There is more going on in this world, in life than we can see This sense of more pervades our readings for today Daniel is having visions, terrifying dreams of kings and beasts but in the end it is the Most high God who will possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever. A song of praise in our psalm turns into a celebration of the triumph of God on behalf of the poor. Jesus speaks of blessings and woes that are the exact opposite of what we would call blessings and woes. There’s more going on than meets the eye, there’s more than just right now and God’s the one who is in charge of it all, the truth of what we see and the truth that exists beyond. And God has promised to take care of us, right now, and beyond, forever, forever and ever. That’s what Paul is telling the Ephesians in our reading for today, reminding them and us that even death is unable to hinder God’s will, God raised Christ “from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” in our baptisms we have been joined to Christ and marked with the seal of the holy spirit, the mark of the cross on our forehead as we entered the community of the saints. We often use the title saint for those who have died but the title saint belongs to anyone joined to Christ, and in Christ not even death can get in the way of the gathering of the community of saints. Today we take a moment to pause and remember that, along with the saints who are no longer with us in body but who are still a part of the community, saints with whom we gather around the table each time Christ feeds us, Our liturgy invokes the presence of the whole community as we approach the table, in the words of the preface we acknowledge that it is our duty and joy to give thanks and praise to God who saved us through Jesus Christ and we conclude “and so, with all the choirs of angels, with the church on earth and the hosts of heaven, we praise your name and join their unending hymn” and then we break into that song, holy, holy, holy, we sing with the host of heaven as they gather to join in the feast as well. communion is the meal of a community that is not bound by time and space though that can be hard to sense at times, which is why Paul prays for the Ephesians, and us this prayer: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you” When the eyes in our head let us down, it is the eyes of our heart that reveal the truth beyond, the eyes of the heart that hold on to hope when everything seems hopeless, the eyes of the heart that see the seal of the holy spirit that marks us as a saint, a member of the community in Christ that stretches beyond time and space. Today, as we observe All Saints day, we look with the eyes of our heart at our community and all its members, especially the ones we no longer see with the eyes of our head, we remember them and their lives lived among us, how they impacted our lives and then we join them once again as we do each Sunday, in singing the praises of God and sharing a meal once more. And we are left knowing, the kind of knowing felt in our hearts, the truth that there is more to life than meets the eye, that we are loved beyond time and space, that we are part of a community called to hope. Amen 14th Sunday After Pentecost
Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18 Psalm 34:15-22 Ephesians 6:10-20 John 6:56-69 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the Holy one of God. Amen The book of Joshua is an epic worthy of Hollywood, in the prequel the people of Israel have been wandering around in the desert for forty years traveling to the promised land and they make it all the way to the point where they can see the promised land on the other side of the river but before they can cross, their leader Moses, who God used to bring them out of slavery in Egypt and who led them through the desert all those years, dies and the people are left by the riverbank in sight of the promised land. End film, roll credits. now as the lights dim and the new epic begins to unfold before the audience we see God, instructing Joshua, Moses’ assistant to take over the leadership of the people and to cross over the Jordan river into the promised land, oh and by the way people already live there so you’ll have to conquer it by military force, and what unfolds before the audience is an action movie worthy of the genre, there are spies who infiltrate and only escape with the help of a prostitute, rivers stopped so the people can cross on dry ground, cities overthrown with trumpets, multiple kings brought low and the land divided among the people and while the movie could end there it doesn’t, we see a montage of the years passing and the people settling in and Joshua growing older until the final portion of the movie where an old Joshua brings the people back together and before he dies, reminds them of all that they have been through together and how it was God who brought them there, and the excitement builds as the people remember the glory days and then Joshua lays it out for them, there are still some of the other people living in the land and they’ve kept worshipping their false gods which are a temptation and so the people of Israel have a choice to make, worship those false Gods, or the one true God, the choice is yours Joshua says “but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” and a great cheer goes up and the people, inspired by their history and Joshua’s bold choice say ‘of course we choose the Lord’ and the credits roll and we all leave feeling righteous in the choice to serve the Lord because that is clearly the only choice to make. If only that truly were the end. Because after the drama and the rousing speeches and the cheering crowds all fade away the story continues reality sets in, the reality that it is difficult to resist the temptation of those other gods who are frankly easier to follow, it is difficult to tell your friends and neighbors I’m sorry I can’t eat that bacon cheeseburger - it’s not on the approved list of food given to us by God, it’s hard to say I can’t go on that trip, it falls over the sabbath. And the histories tell us that the people slowly turned to other gods, away from the one true God because the teachings were difficult. “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” say some of Jesus’ disciples today in response to his lesson at Capernaum where he tells them that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will live because he, Jesus is the true bread of life. “Does this offend you?” Jesus asks them then continues teaching, without changing or compromising his lesson. And we hear that because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him, the teachings were just too difficult but John assures us that Jesus knew that this would happen and he lets them go, but he does check in with his closest followers and here we have another decision scene, it’s not as dramatic as the one in Joshua but perhaps closer to our own experience, Jesus asks the twelve, those who have been traveling with him the longest, “Do you also wish to go away?” and Simon Peter answers him and I can almost hear him shrugging and looking uncomfortable as he finally says “Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy one of God.” Lord where else can we go? This response strikes me as a far more realistic depiction of choosing to follow God, it’s less a dramatic climax and more a moment a moment when someone asks you outright if you really believe all that stuff and you realize that the teachings are difficult, and while you may not understand or agree with them all embedded in them are the words of eternal life and there’s nowhere else to go for those and so you shrug and look uncomfortable and stick it out because you have come to believe that Jesus is the Holy One of God. This is a difficult teaching we follow, eating flesh, drinking blood, the dead raised, the promise of eternal life, the expectation that we love our neighbors as ourselves where the definition of neighbor extends to those on the margins of society and even our enemies. Why would we logically choose this? Well, mostly because it’s not about logic or even us. Martin Luther, in his explanation of the 3rd article of the Apostle’s creed in the Small Catechism says this: “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.” That we believe even a little bit is through the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit who has brought us to the point where we can echo Peter’s confession, and yes this too is difficult, some people take more work than others we do have free will after all and some people are just plain stubborn but we trust that the Holy Spirit, who Jesus sent to be our advocate, does not give up, even on the tough cases. And when we do come to believe, even a little bit the Holy spirit continues to be with us as we live out our faith and the difficult teachings of Jesus made even more difficult by the opposition of the world around us, we heard the Holy Spirit working through Paul in our second reading, offering encouragement to the community in Ephesus reminding them of all of the gifts from God that will help them live out Jesus’ teachings, righteousness, faith, salvation, the word of God, prayer, Paul likens all these gifts to armor that a soldier would put on as defense against the swords of the opposition. This image I think made more sense to the early Christians who were practicing an illegal religion and could very well expect to be confronted by soldiers if they were found out, the people to whom Paul is writing were on the defensive. But for our purposes I think a better image might be that of tools in a tool box. We are no longer on the defensive but there is still much work to be done as we build our community and share in God’s mission of redemption for the world. So God has given us tools, righteousness, faith, salvation, the Word of God, prayer and more, they are all available to us to help us in our work but just like other kinds of tools we need to learn how to use them, either figuring it out on our own or even better have someone teach us, it takes practice, perseverance to live into the faith given us Living into our faith and the difficult teachings of Jesus doesn’t happen overnight, in fact it takes a lifetime of practice, lifetimes even for the broader community, the church it has taken thousands of years to get to where we are today and we’re still not done learning and growing, making mistakes even. And yet over all these years people have stuck with it, through the arguments and schisms, the danger and exclusion, the extra human rules, the struggle to love everyone, why? Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy one of God. Amen 10th Sunday after Pentecost
2 Kings 4:42-44 Psalm 145:10-18 Ephesians 3:14-21 John 6:1-21 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who is faithful in all words and loving in all works. Amen We have a God whose love and works surpass human understanding. We can’t explain how Elisha was able to feed a hundred men with a little bit of bread and corn let alone Jesus feeding five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish Jesus’ walking across the top of the sea of Galilee in a storm defies the laws of nature that God set in place, and these are only the examples we have from the readings for today, the Bible is filled with stories that we can’t explain, at least with head knowledge, logic and reason But with heart knowledge, our ability to accept the reality of mysteries we know that these stories tell us the truth, the truth about God and what it means to be a child of God. As a society, we’ve come to depend almost entirely on head knowledge, for something to be true it must be able to be proven. Now I’m not discounting science and measurable outcomes, the ability to understand the world around us is a gift from God and has done much good, but we limit our experience of life if we rely only on head knowledge and dismiss the power and truth of heart knowledge, truth that defies explanation and yet exists in the world. So what do we who live in a world of logic do with truth that defies explanation? I think our best course is to follow the lead of the psalmists who in the face of the inexplicable takes the time to describe their experience, however contradictory. Have you ever noticed that about the psalms? Especially the psalms of lament, the psalmist goes on and on about how awful life is and then at very end they give praise to God, and it seems to go against everything that came before, but we recognize the truth in these psalms because that’s how people of faith live, with the ability to tell God everything that’s going wrong and at the same time still praise and trust God. Our psalm for today is a psalm of praise, in praising God, the psalmist describes the actions of God, who upholds all who fall and lifts those who are bowed down, who satisfies the desire of every living thing, who is near to all who call, and throughout this litany of what God does there is a kind of refrain as the psalmist says: “You Lord, are faithful in all your words and loving in all your works.” and later again “you are righteous in all your ways and loving in all your works.” Even if we don’t understand what God is doing with our head knowledge, we know with our heart knowledge that God is faithful to God’s promises and God acts in love. And so we live into that truth. It’s why we baptize babies like Royce. Yes she doesn’t understand what that splash of water was about, and if we’re honest we don’t always fully understand either, but she does understand love and ultimately that’s what is at the root of what happens at the font, God loved the world so much that God sent Jesus, and in his death and resurrection Jesus bridged the gap between God and humanity and God who is faithful in all words claims us as children of God, and God who is loving in all works gave us a sign of that promise so that on the days when we have doubts we have a moment in time to point to and can say I am baptized! I am a child of God! I am loved! And though we only baptize once, the water and the word are just the beginning of the baptismal life, a life where we live into the love and identity that God has given us, which is why we all promised to continue to live in community with Royce and we promised that as she grows to bring her to the table and to teach her the creed and the ten commandments, and the lord’s prayer, and when she can read we’ll place the scriptures in her hands, all the while continuing to surround her with love, as we strive to do with all God’s children. And we pray with Paul that God work through this community to strengthen her inner being with the power of the spirit, that Christ may dwell in her heart as she is rooted and grounded in love, and we pray that she grows into some understanding but most of all that she knows with head and heart the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. That is our prayer for Royce, and for all God’s children, including those of us gathered here, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God and that secure in our beloved identity as children of God we may overflow with praise for the one who is faithful in all words and loving in all works. Amen 9th Sunday After Pentecost
Jeremiah 23:1-6 Psalm 23 Ephesians 2:11-22 Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who is our unity and peace. Amen We live in a world divided. I know, it’s an obvious statement, one so obvious that it hardly needs saying everywhere we turn it seems like another division is appearing, another crack in the ground beneath our feet separating us from our neighbor, it’s chaotic and tiring and frankly sometimes it’s hard to know what to believe or if it will ever settle down. into this division Paul proclaims that our unity and peace come from Christ And in the midst of the daily conflict this sounds perhaps a bit hollow, a nice sentiment to be sure, but idealistic, out of touch with reality, we’ve become so tired by everything around us that we even question the peace of Christ as hollow optimism. yet, when we dig a little deeper, this unity and peace in Christ that Paul proclaims on behalf of God is based entirely on reality, it is a message of hope because it is unity and peace that have arisen from chaos, much like what swirls around us today Chaos is nothing new to us humans we heard God speaking through the prophet Jeremiah in our first lesson, “Woe to the shepherds who scatter the sheep of my pasture! Says the Lord.” and God goes on to promise to gather the scattered together again and to raise up from David a righteous branch, who shall lead and bring about justice and righteousness. As Christians we believe that God fulfilled that promise in Jesus Jesus, who we see in our gospel having compassion for the crowds because they were like sheep without a shepherd, pressing in on Jesus and his disciples such that they couldn’t even eat, and when Jesus and the disciples get in a boat to go to the wilderness, to rest and get back in touch with God the crowd anticipates where they are going and follow them, wherever Jesus goes he creates an uproar because the people, the everyday people on the ground, need so much, education, health care, food, hope. And they find it in Jesus who is our unity and peace Unity and peace that comes about through the sacrificial actions of Jesus as Paul reminds the Ephesians: “For he [Jesus] is our peace, in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is the hostility between us… he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one spirit to the Father.” Jesus brings peace and unity by crossing boundaries, often invisible and stronger than physical barriers. He sees a crack in the ground as a place to build a bridge or take a bigger step, he sees people on the other side as friends he hadn’t met yet, he sees all as beloved children of God who need the loving direction of a good shepherd who will see the sheep through the peaks and valleys of life whose sheep are unified through the shepherd. And ironically Jesus’ peace disrupts the world, because it is true peace, where all live in harmony with one another, as opposed to the peace of the world where one group finally dominates another group and there is an absence of open conflict. Jesus’ peace is a peace that must be practiced, it starts small and begins to grow. In our second reading Paul is giving the Ephesians a pep talk before they continue with the mission of Christ and in the part we heard today he reminds them that though they are one community now they started out as two, two communities that the world said would never get along, and even in Christ, at the beginning there were conflicts, fights over what was required for a person to become part of the community, and now people who started out as divided strangers “are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord…” Sometimes when a community is established it’s hard to remember just what it took to get that way Peace and unity, even peace and unity in Christ is a state that is intentionally grown into which means ultimately that there’s hope for us and the world around us because in Christ we are called be growers of peace and unity. Peace and unity grow when we take the time to listen and try to understand someone who holds a differing opinion than ours, peace and unity grow when we reach out instead of pushing away, peace and unity grow when we build bridges and cross boundaries to reach the children of God on the other side, peace and unity grow when we know that we have enough and work to share the extra. And yes this is hard work, so there are times when we need to go to the wilderness, to reconnect with God, to regain hope for the large task still ahead of us so that when the seemingly endless crowds push in around us we can still look with compassion rather than contempt as we remember that we too were once in that situation but like lost sheep Jesus found us, brought us into the fold and continues to care for us like the good shepherd that he is, guiding us in unity and peace. Amen 8th Sunday after Pentecost
Amos 7:7-15 Psalm 85:8-13 Ephesians 1:3-14 Mark 6:14-29 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ grace and peace to you from the one who destined us for adoption as Children of God. Amen Identity and purpose, these are the threads that run through our scripture today, calling us to consider who we are and what that means for our lives. And who we are, Primarily are people chosen by God. Our reading from Ephesians hammers this home again and again, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ… He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will...In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance...you were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.” God has acted decisively in regard to our identity, there can be no question, we are God’s and while we use a variety of images to try to explain this, the end result is always the same, God has chosen us, not because of anything we have done or earned but because that’s who God is. We are God’s because of the grace of God. And the appropriate response is to live for the praise of God’s glory. When faced with such a gift, what can we do but offer praise to God? And how do we praise God? In worship, prayer and song certainly but also with how we live our lives, consciously living out God’s vision for the redemption of the world, a vision lived and taught by Jesus, one where all people have value and are treated accordingly, value that is based on their God given identity and not on the many ways that the world has found to define and divide people, rich or poor, healthy or sick, by place of birth, color of skin, what value they’ll add to the economy, age, the list goes on And here’s the hard part, the world, those with power don’t like when we live for the praise of God’s glory in this way, and sometimes we have to admit that when we have power, we aren’t always comfortable living for the praise of God’s glory either, because at times the blessings of the world seem to outweigh the blessings of God. But that doesn’t change who we are and what we are supposed to do, and yes this is difficult, our passage from Ephesians is a kind of pep talk to the community, building them back up before sending them out into the world again, a world that is unreceptive to their message, that will resist it in all ways possible. The prophets are familiar with this resistance, two prophets join us today, in the Hebrew scriptures and in the gospel. Amos is called by God to pronounce judgement on Israel, and when he does he is confronted by the priest on behalf of the king, who says ‘I know you have a message, just go someplace else and share it, the king and the land can’t take it, I won’t kill you, just go away.’ to which Amos responds (I paraphrase of course) ‘I feel you buddy, I was minding my own business tending my farm and my flock when God told me to go prophesy to the people. I don’t see myself as a professional prophet, just someone who is doing what God told them to do.’ In other words, this isn’t about earning a living as the priest suggests but a response to the call of God, however inconvenient that may be. God works through all of us, not just the professionals. And then we have our friend John the Baptist and the end of his story, John who dared to tell the King what everyone knew, that it wasn’t lawful for him to marry his brother’s wife Herodias, who hated John for pointing that out because she had more power married to Herod than his brother Philip. So Herod puts John in prison but protects him because he has some respect for John as a holy man, but then comes the night where Herod hosts a banquet and is pleased by his daughter’s dancing, and in front of everyone present, all his officials Herod promises to give her whatever she wants. She consults her mother and runs back to ask for the head of John on a platter and Herod is presented with a choice: protect a man who he knows to be righteous and holy in front of all his officials or maintain the facade of his benevolent power and do as requested. And we know which he chooses John is beheaded in prison and that is the end of that prophet. Everything is at stake when we proclaim the message of God. John lost his head, Jesus was crucified, but that was not the end. God is bigger than the resistance the world puts up bigger even than death, in God life goes on, and so does the message we are called to proclaim, and more than proclaim we are called to live, The message that God “set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” And when God says all, God means all. Even the people we don’t think deserve it. At the youth gathering Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber spoke about grace and her struggle with the fact that God’s grace is “Both for me and my haters.” She confessed she struggles with the wideness of God’s grace, Her struggle is not a particular to her we all do at times, because it just doesn’t seem fair and yet the only way that God’s good news can be good news for us, is if it is good news for the people we can’t stand, even for the people who have hurt us, because when it comes down to it, we don’t deserve God’s grace either. And yet God claims us as Children Has included us in the inheritance of redemption And marked us with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit So how can we not live to the praise of God’s glory? Amen Fourth Sunday in Lent
Numbers 21:4-9 Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 Ephesians 2:1-10 John 3:14-21 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who is unpredictable but always present and always faithful. Amen John 3:16, probably the most well-known Bible verse in the world and as such probably the most misused Bible verse in the world. Seen on signs at sporting events, or at protests, sadly usually held by people advocating hate, scrawled as graffiti or on billboards by the road John 3:16 has become shorthand for the idea that unless you believe in Jesus you’re going to hell. Frankly, I’ve never understood this evangelistic strategy using God’s ultimate act of love to inspire fear that leads to someone “accepting Jesus as their personal savior” so that the evangelist can add another tally mark in the “souls saved” column and all this happens because eternal life has been come to be understood as the reward of the next life after this life has been endured. I don’t know about you but that doesn’t sound like particularly good news to me. So what are we to do with John 3:16 and it’s offer of eternal life especially if that doesn’t mean going to heaven while everyone else goes to hell? We have to revise our understanding of what God’s love does and what is meant by salvation, that big loaded church word that gets tossed about all the time. When we take these questions to the Bible and begin to look through scripture we find this: that salvation is not seen as a future reward but a present way of life, to be saved is to live life in the presence of God. Each of our readings for this morning illustrates this view which can be summarized as: some ways lead to death, God’s way leads to life. Take for example our first reading from Numbers, this is the time in the story of the people of Israel where they are in between, God brought them out of Egypt but they are not yet at the promised land, they are wandering in the wilderness, and in the wilderness they’ve quickly forgotten just how hard life was in Egypt and they find ways to complain about everything to God and Moses culminating in this story where their complaints no longer make sense, there’s no food, there’s no water, and we hate this food that appears everyday they whine. And this seems to be the last straw for God, who sends poisonous serpents among the people who when they start dying from snake bites realize that they have sinned against God with their complaining so they go ask Moses to pray to God for them to take away the serpents, they wish to be saved from the serpents. And God delivers them, but not in the way that they expect, God tells Moses to make a serpent and put it on a pole and when someone is bit, if they look at the bronze serpent they will live and the thing that has been an instrument of judgment is now the instrument of salvation. God does not undo the snakes that the Israelites let loose in the world with their complaining, but God gives them a way to endure the consequences and now whether the snake means life or death depends on the actions of Israel, turning away from God leads to death, turning toward God leads to life. This still happens when we indulge in self-involved complaints or speak ill of another person, we unleash the poisonous serpents of words into the world that come back to bite us and when we realize our mistake and we confess to God and ask for forgiveness God does not undo what we unleashed on the world but God does forgives us and shows us a way to live that leads to healing and life. Some ways lead to death, God’s way leads to life. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians approaches things a little differently, Paul defines alive and dead not based on whether our heart is beating but on our relationship to God. Paul considers death being apart from God and life to be in the presence of God. The trouble is as humans we can’t seem to stop sinning and separating ourselves from God. In fact God knows that it is impossible for us to do and say all the right things that would lead to being in the presence of God, of bridging the gap between human and divine, so God takes care of it all for us. God works through Christ to make us alive, and through Christ brings us into the presence of God as a gift, and that gift becomes a reality for us when we trust that it is so and begin to live in the presence of God. We are saved by grace through faith. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” adding John 3:17 makes a difference God wants the same quality of life for all creation, abundant life lived in the presence of God and God offers this life to all, freely, it becomes a reality in our life when we trust the promise and begin to live in the presence of God and even this trust is a gift of God who continually reaches out to us, calling us, turning us toward God. But there’s still the talk of judgment in John and in this talk the point that John is trying to make takes us back to the image of the bronze serpent, remember how it became both an instrument of judgment and of salvation at the same time Depending on how the people related to the bronze serpent? That’s how the judgment John is talking about works Jesus lifted up on the cross an instrument of death becomes the way to life lived in the presence of God and whether Jesus means life or death, salvation or judgment depends how people relate to Jesus, turning to Jesus means life -life lived in the presence of God, turning away from Jesus means death- life lived apart from God. Salvation and judgment are present ongoing realities, and God is always reaching out, offering life abundant, to us and all creation and the way God reaches out is through us. When we share the good news of life lived in the presence of God with others, the loved God has for the world and we share it because we have experienced the gift of life that God has given us, we share it because we know that God offers that gift to everyone, no matter what snakes we’ve unleashed on the world, we know God will find a way for us to live with them and while that way is unpredictable, God is always present and always faithful. God’s way leads to life. 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
March 2022
Categories
All
|