Out of the Hustle and into the Holy

Sermon 10-8-17

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Last summer, I got an email from Augsburg Fortress to submit a brief review of a book that was NOT in our Reformation Popup book store, Dr. David Lose’s newest book, Making Sense of Martin Luther. (can be purchased by clicking HERE) As if we didn’t have enough books about Martin Luther floating around out there this year! But, here is another one, this one from one of my former professors. Dr. Lose has written other books in this series, the Making Sense series, writing blogs, known for his creative and memorable preaching, and most recently as the former president of the Lutheran seminary at Philadelphia, now part of United Lutheran Seminary. I of course jumped at the chance to write a review – after all, Dr. Lose was one of my preaching professors while I was a student at Luther Seminary in Minneapolis Minnesota. And how often does the student get the chance of “evaluating” one of their former professors”?

A few weeks ago, I got my complimentary copy of the book I reviewed, and I was surprised to discover that my review is listed among some pretty well-known people in the Lutheran word. Claire Burkat, the bishop of the South Eastern Pennsylvania synod - our own synod -  also gave a review, as did Dr. Timothy Wengert, who is a highly regarded Luther scholar and translator of Luther’s the Small Catechism, among other of Luther’s works.

So here I am, listed at the bottom of the group, Lydia Posselt, pastor, Family of God Lutheran Church, Buckingham, PA, right above Dr. Loses’ own very impressive resume.  

But I have a confession to make. I didn’t read the whole book before I wrote the review. They sent it to me in its entirety in a word document and gave me less than a week, which was while I was on vacation with my family. I have read other books by Dr. Lose, and after about a chapter and a half, I was confident that I could write three sentences to recommend this book. After all, I was not being asked to write a ten-page paper!

But compared to some of the people on this list, I feel like a bit of a slacker. I haven’t published any books. I feel accomplished when I even FINISH READING a book. I’m not a Bishop. I don’t know very much German. Yes, I won the Lutheran Word Federation preaching contest and went to Namibia, which was AWESOME, but some days that feels to me more like dumb luck than something actually earned. Yes, I get to put that “on my resume” and people will be impressed by that. And yes, I both love and hate the attention that it brings. When I was interviewed for in my college alma mater magazine, one of the questions was “Now that you’ve won this contest, what’s next?”

That question stopped me dead. What do you mean “what’s next”? Isn’t it enough for the time being that I accomplished this one thing? Will I be viewed as a slacker or as undeserving if I DON’T have big plans? Will people think that my career has peaked early and that is all downhill from here? Gosh I hope not!

None of us are immune to the hamster wheel of impressing, the hustle for worthiness we feel compelled to preform or else. We wonder if we have done enough, or are enough, to be loved and valued for ourselves. We trot out the best parts of our lives make ourselves feel worthy of love, while the “less acceptable” parts stay hidden. Shame researcher Brene Brown talks a lot about this, and she says, “we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don’t fit with who we think we’re supposed to be, …and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving.”

The apostle Paul knew this hustle very well. He writes to church in Philippi describing his impressive credentials. HE has a resume that would be the envy of Linked In. He was Hebrew of Hebrews, his parents did all the right things, and he had risen to a prestigious position among the Pharisees, and had made a name for himself persecuted early Christians so much so that his former name – Saul – was notorious among Jesus’ followers.

But then, something unexpected happened. Jesus called Saul – now called Paul – to do a complete 180 and follow Jesus instead. So Paul renounced everything, even his name, if it got in the way from following the call of Jesus. Paul tore down his diplomas and flushed them down the toilet, then threw all his plagues and trophies in the garbage. The only thing that matters on his resume – and ours – is our righteousness comes from GOD, and not from anything that we do or accomplish.

After all, this is one of the legacies of the Reformation, since Martin Luther himself was also very familiar with the “hustle for holiness.” He was a “monk among monks,” if you will, constantly striving to better himself, and spending hours and hours in the confessional, much to the annoyance of the person he was confessing to! Luther felt the harder he tried to be holy and acceptable to God, the more he felt lacking. Anxious and feeling trapped, Luther could not find a way out. But, as it turns out, Dr. Lose writes in his book, “a way out finds him.” (pg. 25)

We can TRY to hustle for God’s favor. We can TRY to push God out and tell God, “no thanks, I’ve got this whole righteousness thing.” We can TRY to “out-religion” God on our own resumes by only presenting the “acceptable” parts of ourselves and denying the messy bits.

But God is “determined to come DOWN to us, to meet us where we are.” “…The biblical witness places its faith not in our ability to earn God’s favor but in God’s promise to GIVE us God’s good favor,” (pg. 45) writes Dr. Lose. We don’t do anything – we are given worth and love as a gift from God. No more hustling, no more perfecting or performing. God gives us everything, including being called God’s beloved child… including being called by Jesus to be his hands and feet in the world. And so, Paul encourages the Philippians – AND US – to make this call our own, just as Jesus has made us his.

So, if everything has been given to me by God – righteousness, faith, the power of the resurrection from the dead, the prize of our call from Jesus – that it is entirely a gift and not of my own doing… The next question is how will I take care of this amazing gift? How will I be a good steward of God’s generosity? How will I be a good tenant of the things given to me by God?

Jesus told today’s parable about bad tenants as a negative example, and his intention was to trap the religions leaders in their hypocrisy – and they fell right in. The chief priests and the elders were so concerned about building their own resumes to impress God, so much so that they completely missed the son of God in flesh and blood who sat right in front of them. But even THEY got a chance to learn and to listen from Jesus himself! …. Even though, in the end, they decided to turn Jesus’s parable from story into a prediction.

Their goal was to keep their vision intact, a vision of an accounting God who desires us to hustle and preform for our worth. Thus, they were compared to the tenants of a vineyard, wanting control of the vineyard for themselves.

What’s our goal as the church, followers of Jesus, Family of God? Now that we know that the only thing that matters on our resume is the righteousness that comes from God, what then will OUR goal be? God has given us a vineyard to tend. How will we care for it?

Will our goal become to keep hustling and preforming and expecting others to do the same? Will we try to save ourselves by our own means with impress “church resumes”? Will we try to try to jazz ourselves up into something we are not? Will we work to try to get back to a time before, where all things looked successful and rosy – at least on the surface?

Or will our goal be to strain forward, as Paul did, forgetting what lies behind? Will we too press on in following Jesus’s call to serve a world that is in desperate need of some good news right now?

My hope is that we as a church will be a forward-looking church, remembering the parts of the past that are helpful but not fixating on the parts that hold us back.

The 500th anniversary of the Reformation is important not just because it shows us where we have been. It also inspires us to where we can GO in the NEXT 500 years.  Who knows what the legacy of the reformation will look like in the next 5, 50, or 500 years? One thing for sure though, is that God has new and exciting things in store for us before we hit the thousandth anniversary.

Until then, God has called us to be here in THIS place at THIS time for a reason. What are we supposed to be doing here in this part of the vineyard called Buckingham? What parts of our resume are not helpful, and what parts help us build on the works that Jesus has begun in us?

We have a lot of things going for us - generous hunger ministries coming out of our ears. We have a building that is available to groups in the community like home schools, girl scouts, and AA. We share so much out of our big generous hearts the abundance that God has already given us.

So give yourselves a little pat on the back… and now give yourselves a BIG PUSH! There is much left to do, but together, with Jesus as our cornerstone and anchor, we don’t need anything on our resumes other than what God has already done for us. Amen.