Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 17:1-7 Psalm 95 Romans 5:1-11 John 4:5-42 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who gives us what we need. Amen This Lent we are exploring stories of faith, on Wednesdays we have congregation members sharing their stories and on Sundays our readings are also stories of faith, so far we have had stories of identity where we have explored how the stories we tell shape our understanding of our identity and stories of how faith is lived out, by holding on to the promises of God even as we question and grow. This week we have stories of necessity, how we tell the stories of what we need affects our relationship with God. We have two examples from our readings today, the Israelites in the wilderness and the Samaritan woman at the well with Jesus. Our first example of how stories of necessity are told and sometimes differ, is the Israelites in the wilderness. The Israelites are in a time of major transition as a people, so far in the relationship between God and the Israelites God has: appeared to Moses out of a burning bush, sent Moses to pharaoh to plead for the Israelites’ freedom, sent ten plagues of increasing intensity on the Egyptians when the pharaoh refused to let them leave, saved the Israelites from the final plague giving them the opportunity to flee, parted the sea standing in the way of their escape, traveled with the people as a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, and provided food by raining bread in the morning and quails at night. It’s been a lot their identity has shifted, they’ve moved from being settled in a place where they had a long history and though they were enslaved they knew who they were and how they fit in, now they are free but they are also homeless and they wander the desert led by a God they cannot see looking for a promised land that is just that, promised so we have to excuse, or at least understand when the Israelites don’t always come off looking the best, we as people don’t always make the best decisions when we’re stressed and in times of transition and these are a people who haven’t had to make decisions at all, which is why the time wandering is so important God is using that time to teach the Israelites how to live as free people and the first step is teaching the Israelites to trust that God will keep the promises that God has made and as they wander the desert God has promised to provide for them with manna and quails, and part of learning to trust is the instruction to only take the amount of food that is necessary for one day, the exception being the day before the sabbath. If they take more than they need it will spoil because they have not trusted God to provide for them the next day. So that’s the set up as the Israelites wander the desert, God provides for them, but this is a lesson that is hard to learn for the Israelites as we see in our story for today. In their wandering they come to a place where there is no water, or at least not enough water and rather than trusting God to provide they start complaining to Moses, now the thing I always enjoy about the Israelites’ complaints in the desert is that they get very dramatic very fast, in this case they say “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” You’d think that by now the Israelites would have known that God would provide for them but the way they tell the story of what is necessary, when it’s necessary is different from the story God tells and it strains the relationship, Moses names the place “test and quarrel” because the Israelites tested and quarreled with God wondering if God was even with them, and even though they lack trust in God, God provides water, showing Moses where to go to find water among the rocks of the desert, one of the commentaries I read mentioned that water does flow through some rock formations, the water was already there, it was just a matter of finding it. That’s another thing about God, God provides but it’s not always obvious to us humans. Another thing we humans do is that we like to make things more complicated than they need to be, relationships for instance, we all have a need to belong and yet we tell all kinds of stories as reasons why this person or that person shouldn’t be a part of the group and that’s what’s going on with our second story of the Samaritan woman at the well, her community has told her that she needs to be different and until then she will not be fully one of them, It all starts with a need Jesus has to rest, he’s been traveling, it’s the middle of the day, the hottest time of the day he’s tired, and thirsty and hungry, so he sits down next to a well, a source of water and the disciples go to buy something to eat and Jesus waits for them, as he’s waiting a woman comes to the well to draw water, now this in and of itself is not unusual what is odd is the time of day, carrying water is a heavy hard task which means that it’s best done in the mornings and evenings when it’s cooler, but here this woman comes at the hottest part of the day, now it may be that she just needed water but the more likely explanation is that she came at a time when she was sure to avoid all the other people who come to get water. Jesus, sitting by the well, asks her for a drink of water, and she’s surprised, because the story of society is that it is necessary for men and women to stay separate and for Jews and Samaritans to avoid each other, but if there’s one thing we know about Jesus it’s that he doesn’t pay attention to what society says is necessary but what God says is, and so he starts a conversation with this woman and even though she’s surprised she is curious, and after they’ve covered why they shouldn’t be talking Jesus tells her “if you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘give me a drink’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” the woman is thrown by practical considerations, she points out that Jesus doesn’t have a bucket and he responds “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” Now the woman is really excited about this, she might never have to come to the well ever again! And Jesus knows that this excitement is not about the work of carrying water but about avoiding all the other people that come to the well, he reveals to her that he knows about her history, she’s had really bad luck with relationships she’s had five husbands and is now living with someone who she isn’t even married to and perhaps to change the topic the woman observes “Sir, I see that you are a prophet” and they get into a theological discussion that ends with Jesus revealing to her that he is the messiah! This is the first time he has told anyone this, and this revelation changes the woman’s life, she runs back to the city, to all those people she was avoiding and she tells them “come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah can he?” and amazingly enough they listen to her! And we are told that “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” the woman who comes to the well alone at the beginning of the story is back with the community by the end, Jesus has given her living water, that is, a relationship with Jesus, and a relationship with Jesus is one that restores other relationships. God tells the story of necessity through relationships, what we need is a relationship with God and a relationship with our neighbors, isn’t that what Jesus says when pressed about the greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and might and love your neighbor as yourself. If we attend to these relationships God says, everything else will fall into place. And yet, so often the stories of necessity we tell focus on other things, we’ve seen this first hand as COVID19 spreads around the world as we’ve heard many conflicting stories of necessity, the story that says we need lots of toilet paper and the story that says it’s not so bad, the story that says carry on with life and the story that says the best way to care for your neighbor might just be to avoid them. As we go through this time we are having to navigate the path through the many stories of necessity we hear and the ones we tell ourselves and it’s not easy, but I think it is made easier when we first listen to God’s story, the one where God loves us and our neighbors and promises to be with us whatever comes our way, and secure in that love we are then able to consider how we might best live that love out. I’ve kept this in mind this last week as each day I’ve prayerfully considered how we as a community will live out our trust in God, stay in relationships and care for our neighbors, even as this might mean changing the way we physically live some of this out. I don’t know what the future will hold but I do know that however it happens we as a community, saved by God’s grace and rooted in Christ, will continue to be nourished by worship and serve Christ and community. As we go out into a world today, where there are so many stories of what is necessary, we go having drunk from the living water of Jesus, we have been fed and forgiven, our relationships with God and others have been strengthened and so we go out trusting that God will provide for us, show us the best way to love our neighbor and care for the most vulnerable among us, and we go knowing that God goes with us. Amen
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Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Exodus 32:7-14 Psalm 51:1-10 1 Timothy 1:12-17 Luke 15:1-10 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who is revealed as merciful. Amen The psalmist cries out to God today, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; in your great compassion blot out my offenses” then goes on to acknowledge that they know they’ve really messed up, they’ve sinned against God and they deserve whatever judgement God hands down and yet they are still bold to call on God to forgive them and end with the petition “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” a petition which frankly seems pretty bold given what the psalmist acknowledged earlier. Who is this person that would be so bold as to ask God to do these things, or perhaps the better question is, who is this God who would hear and consider these requests? Who is God? Yep we’re going there this morning, who is God? Paul in our reading from 1 Timothy describes God as “the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God.” and that is a good general description of what most monotheists would say about God, God is the only God, God is immortal-outside of time and God is invisible, we cannot see God, what we know of God is only what God has chosen to reveal to us. And the moments of revelation upon which we most depend are found in the scriptures, the stories of God and people and while that’s a start, even these revelations present a variety of pictures of who God is even in just our selections for today In Exodus we have the all-powerful God meeting with Moses on the mountain top and who is acting kind of like a sullen teenager. God has rescued the Israelites, the people God chose, from Egypt, has led them into the desert and has given them the 10 commandments, God even let the people approach the mountain to see the glory of God, but it was too much for them, they were content to let Moses do all the talking with God, so now Moses has been up on the mountain getting the particulars of the law, and he’s been gone a long time, so long that the people think, well he’s probably dead by now what with all that glory of the Lord, it’s time to take matters into our own hands, so they go to Aaron and say give us a god to worship, and Aaron seemingly without questioning the request takes all their gold and makes the image of a calf and says here, go worship this. Which gets us to our reading for today where God notices what the people have done, how quickly they’ve forgotten the covenant they made with God and “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” The people messed up and God is ready to give up, change plans, focus on the one who has stayed loyal, maybe pout a bit but unlike a teenager, God’s wrath could actually consume all the people. But here Moses intercedes for the people, Moses reminds God of all the promises God has made over the generations, all the trouble God went to with the plagues, and on top of that, what will the Egyptians think of you if you do this? Moses asks, that you just brought them out to kill them in the mountains. “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.” God can change God’s mind, God is merciful. Which is good for us, because it also seems like God gets really unhappy when people break the rules and God has the power to do something about it. So that’s one picture of God, one who gets angry but is merciful. Then we have Jesus in our gospel for today, we confess that Jesus is God, and so what Jesus does reveals who God is and here he is, teaching a wide variety of people, the usual suspects the scribes and Pharisees who can always be found around a good lecture but also the unlikely suspects the tax collectors and sinners, those whose lives don’t seem to reflect much time spent with God and this is annoying to the pharisees, the professional church goers, who grumble “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” the subtext is that he must not be a very good scholar of the law if he ignores what it says about associating with sinners. And here Jesus, God, turns to them and tells two parables, two teaching stories about first a shepherd who had lost a sheep and then a woman who had lost a coin both go to great lengths to find what they had lost and upon finding the sheep and the coin gather their neighbors together to celebrate. Often interpretations of these stories make the shepherd and the woman the characters who represent God who here is relentless, stubborn, insistent and tireless in pursuit of what was lost, but God here is also foolish because the one who searches in the story is also the one who loses the sheep and the coin in the first place, and they are foolish for spending so much time on one sheep when they had 99 others or on one coin of moderate value when they had 9 others, surely the expense of the party thrown when the lost was found far outweighed that one sheep or that one coin. But this is God’s foolishness, foolishness that shows insistent mercy to the lost, who others have calculated to be not worth the trouble, God here, goes to the trouble in defiance of common sense. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” foolish mercy And the foolishness of God continues on, for who but a fool would use someone who is trying to kill a cause to further it. That’s what Paul was doing, trying to kill the Jesus movement through actually killing those involved, and it’s this person on the way to expand their terror that Jesus comes to and calls, and whose life is changed to where his travels are then to spread the news of Jesus and his letters go to various communities around the world to strengthen their faith in Jesus. Paul says “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners- of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.” Much like the psalmist Paul is fully aware that he deserves whatever judgement God decides to hand down for his actions as a blasphemer, a persecutor and a man of violence. And he wonders at the grace and mercy of God, who sought him out was patient with him, who changed his life drastically so that now he lives as an example to others of life in Christ. In Paul God is revealed as one who not only uses but seeks out the unlikely, and is patient and persistent with them as grace and mercy turns their lives upside down. Who would do something like that? God, creator of the universe, that’s who, God who gets angry, and then changes their mind, God who is relentless, stubborn, insistent, tireless, foolish, patient, confusing, God, who time after time is revealed as merciful choosing to forgive rather than judge, choosing to set aside anger or what would make the most sense in favor of life and a fresh start no matter how angry God is like with the Israelites, or how little the person is valued by the world like the lost sheep and coin, or even how hopeless a case it seems to be like Paul, God can and will forgive and will create clean hearts and renew right spirits, and God has promised us, through Jesus that God will treat us in the same way When we confess our sins knowing we deserve to be judged, God responds with forgiveness, when we feel lost and insignificant God goes great lengths to find us when we intentionally turn from God, God pursues us with grace and mercy, and when God finally finds us, stuck in a ravine or under the couch covered in dust, God rejoices, because that’s who God is. Amen Transfiguration of Our Lord
Exodus 34:29-35 Psalm 99 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 Luke 9:28-36 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who speaks to us. Amen Speaking and listening These two actions lie at the heart of the transfiguration story. Speaking and listening are the transfiguration story. Jesus has been teaching he’s been speaking to crowds, imparting wisdom and now he needs some time with God. So he takes with him three disciples, Peter, John and James and goes up a mountain to pray. Jesus likes to go to deserted places to pray, less distraction that way but going up a mountain signals that this is a special occasion, God is often met on mountain tops, And sure enough while Jesus is praying something happens, Jesus’ face changes and his clothes become dazzling white and suddenly he is joined by Moses and Elijah they’re having a conversation about Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and the cross and Peter, John and James witnessing the glory of God want to hold on to the moment Peter offers to build permanent structures so the moment never has to end and at this God overshadows them and speaks to them, telling them to listen to Jesus and terrified they keep silent. Speaking and listening That’s where it all starts with Jesus going up the mountain to pray, prayer is a combination of speaking and listening, we’re more familiar with the speaking side of prayer but prayer also happens in listening, listening for what God is saying to us. Jesus goes up the mountain to pray and is visibly transformed by encountering God. This is keeping with tradition, we heard how Moses’ face was transformed as he spoke to God. Being in the presence of God changes us. Listening to God visibly changes us. And that frightens us. Moses took to wearing a veil around the people because when they could see the glory of the Lord shining in his face, they were afraid to come near him. Yet they still listened to Moses speak, when others are transformed by being in the presence of God we are afraid yes, but we’re also intrigued, part of us wants to see more, but we can only take so much. We’re like little kids experiencing something new, at first it startles us and we run and hide our face in our parents leg, but soon enough we’re ready to take another peak, and a peak turns into a longer look and eventually, step by step we move toward a full encounter. It’s a different story when we’re the ones who are changed. Peter, dear impulsive, enthusiastic Peter witnesses Jesus’ transformation along with Moses and Elijah and determines that this is a good place, he wants to see more so he suggests building houses for the trio. He wants to make this brief moment permanent even though that is impossible, we are told that Peter didn’t know what he was saying, that this was a moment for just a moment. To be fair to Peter it’s a very human thing to suggest what he did. We humans love to embark on building projects around sites of significance. In seminary I got to go to Israel and Palestine as part of a class on the Holy Land which included visiting sites of significance to Jesus’ ministry. To be fair we were a bit skeptical that we were visiting the exact place where Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection and made them a breakfast of fish, or the exact place where Jesus was baptized but our tour guide a wonderfully faithful Palestinian Catholic named Johnny had an explanation, ‘we know this is the place because the early Christians built a church here’ and there were a lot of churches dedicated to specific events in Jesus’ life. It’s what we humans do, we try to capture significant moments in permanent buildings. But back on the mountain God has other things in mind, the moment is too significant to get caught up in a building project and so even as Peter is offering his suggestion a cloud comes and overshadows the disciples, this is the presence of God, when God appears to people in the Bible it is often in the form of a cloud, For example God led the people of Israel out of Egypt appearing as a pillar of cloud by day. And the disciples are terrified as they enter the cloud. Then God speaks “This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him!” And when the cloud lifts, all that’s left is Jesus. And this time, their reaction is to keep silent, and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. They obviously eventually told someone otherwise we wouldn’t know the story but it took them awhile to be able to tell the story, my guess is that it was only after the resurrection did they feel comfortable enough to tells others of their encounter with God and what God said to them. And this too is a perfectly human response. Because as much as we long for God to work in us and in our community - we pray for that every Sunday, when the time comes, like the disciples we are terrified to enter the cloud of God. Covered in clouds we can’t see where we’re going, even on top of a mountain and we don’t like that feeling, we like to be able to look out and see where we’re going anticipate what’s coming next, it’s less scary that way, and yet, God most often speaks when we’re covered in clouds. Those times in life when we can’t see what the future holds, we can barely see our hand in front of our face. A diagnosis, a broken relationship, a job loss, any kind of loss, we don’t know what the future will bring and it terrifies us and that is when God speaks, and when the clouds lift, in that first moment of clarity what do we see? Jesus alone, before us who was there all along. “Listen to him” God says, so we do, as we move forward we listen to Jesus, we save the speaking for later. The Church, with a capital C is in a time of clouds, things that worked for decades are no longer effective and frankly, we’re afraid, this comes out in all kinds of anxieties, I’m not going to list them but I’m sure you can think of something that worries you about the Church, we’re afraid because we can’t see the path in front of us and yet, when we pause, take a deep breath, and a moment to collect ourselves, we find that we do know what to do. Listen. Listen to God who speaks in the midst of clouds, who tells us to listen to Jesus. I’ve been listening for awhile now, And you know what? I’m not afraid of the clouds surrounding the Church anymore. Why? Because I know that when the clouds lift what we’ll find is Jesus, who has been there all along and who will lead us down off the mountain who will show us the way. Realizing this has made Paul’s words from 2 Corinthians so much more meaningful, listen to them again: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. Therefore, since it is by God's mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.” In Christ we have freedom, freedom from fear, in Christ we see the glory of the Lord, In Christ we are being transformed, In Christ we are engaged in ministry. In Christ we do not lose heart. “This is my son, My chosen; listen to him!” Amen Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 20:1-17 Psalm 19 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 John 2:13-22 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ grace and peace to you from the one who is found among us. Amen Where do you go to find God? In Jesus’ day if you wanted to go spend time with God, you went to the temple in Jerusalem and the way you communicated with God was by offering a sacrifice, certain animals depending on what you wanted to say or if you were poor you could substitute some doves. That was it. Very clear. It all started back at Mt. Sinai when God claimed the Israelites as the people of God. This was particularly unusual at the time, People chose which God to pray to, usually the one thought to be most helpful in that moment, having troubles with your crops? Pray to the fertility goddess, need some help winning a battle? pray to the God of war and so on but God tells the people of Israel that from this point on God, I am who I am who appeared to Moses in a burning bush will be the God of the people and outlined how the relationship would work in the ten commandments. Fresh out of slavery from Egypt God gave the Israelites structure and direction for the newly freed life, life that had meaning because it was a life claimed by God and directed by laws written on stone tablets by the hand of God and brought down off the mountain by Moses. And these tablets came to signify not just the covenant between God and the people but also the place to find God. The tablets were placed in the ark of the covenant, (yes the one Indiana Jones was looking for) it was the home of God and because the Israelites were a nomadic people they carried the ark with them, wherever they went, even into battle, because it meant that God was present and if the ark was there, if God was present the Israelites would win, even against much larger armies. Eventually, 40 years later, the Israelites enter and settle into the promised land and once the question of leadership was settled King Solomon built a more permanent home for God, the temple in Jerusalem, which by all accounts would put the most baroque palace to shame, covered in gold and silver, the finest linens and most expensive decorations and that was where God lived, that was where God could be found. When the Babylonians came and conquered Israel and sent them into exile they destroyed the temple, but the tragedy of the Babylonian exile was not only that the people had lost the promised land but that the Israelites were physically separated from their God. Eventually the Israelites were allowed to return home, they were reunited with their God and they began rebuilding the temple, the home of God. All this to put in perspective what Jesus does in the temple today in our gospel lesson, he brings the whole system to a screeching halt, calls into question everything the temple stands for, interrupts people’s communication with God and when confronted makes the outrageous claim that if the temple were destroyed he could raise it in three days. That’s it, centuries, generations of tradition Wiped out with the crashing of a few tables And a wild claim to some priests. but in this claim Jesus shifts the location of God from the temple to himself. Jesus is the new temple, the new home of God. If you want to find God, know what God thinks, go to Jesus, if you want to talk to God, talk to Jesus because Jesus is where divine and human meet. This is the claim that John has been making since he started his gospel “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” God has gone from residing in the temple to residing in Jesus, as a human, with humans, experiencing all the joys and sorrows of what it means to be human even the experience of death, death on a cross, utter foolishness as our reading from 1 Corinthians puts it, and yet that foolishness is how God brought us back into a healed relationship between divine and human. It’s as simple as that, and of course more complex. Our relationship with God has been healed but as we have daily proof the perfection of the world has not yet come into fullness, those original covenant laws are broken daily. So where do we go to find God? Especially post ascension Some days it seems like God is both everywhere and nowhere at the same time. We go to Jesus who meets us at the font in the waters of baptism, who comes to us in the bread and wine of communion, his body and blood forgiving and strengthening us. Who speaks to us through the words of scripture and preaching. who makes himself available for us to serve in the bodies of the least of these, the hungry, poor, sick, imprisoned. And while it may not make sense according to our human wisdom this is how God has chosen to work in the world always present in and through us. Some days we may wish that it were as simple as offering a sacrifice at a temple, and other days we get distracted by life swirling around us and we fail to see Jesus right in front of us that is why our yearly calendar includes the season of Lent, the season that invites us to return to God, to become aware once again of the places God comes to us in our lives, to renew that covenant relationship and bask in the foolish love of God that makes us whole. To find Jesus among us. Amen 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. |
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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