Snow and Rumors of Snow...

Sermon 11-18-18

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.

Jesus probably should have added "You will hear of snow and rumors of snow…."  So this time, the rumors of this upcoming snowstorm undersold it’s power, didn’t it? Just a little bit. So much so that about forty pastors, including myself, decided to stay one more night at the hotel we were having our annual Bishop’s convocation. It was only SUPPOSED to be one night… but many of us decided one more night with our new Bishop was better than driving 5 or more hours in a driving snowstorm!

This won’t be the last time we will be having snow this winter, but it is the last time that we will be hearing from the Gospel of Mark for three whole years. Even though technically NEXT Sunday is the last Sunday of the church year – Christ the King Sunday – that Sunday we will be hearing from John, not Mark. So, for better or for worse, it’s bye-bye Gospel of Mark. It was nice knowing you…. Catch you in three years.

Mark certainly doesn’t leave us on a happy note, does he? This reading comes straight on the heels of last week, where we heard about the “Widow’s mite.” Last week Jesus watched as the wealthy giving the massive amounts of money in the temple treasury, which supported people like the scribes who took advantage of vulnerable and powerless people. A widow, one of the most powerless, came by and gave two small coins – all she had because everything else had been taken from her.

Even after knowing that the religious institution was built on the devouring of widow’s houses, the disciples could not stop “Rubber necking” the grand temple building itself. “My, what large stones and what large buildings we have!” one of the disciples cries out in wonder. You can almost hear Jesus’ facepalm two thousand years later.

Or, maybe the disciples were amazed for another reason – not simply from their grandness, but from the fact that their huge size must mean that many, many vulnerable people like that widow have been fleeced in the name of political and religious power. Their exclamation might then be also equal parts wonder and dismay. These stones represent power that they have no hope opposing. How can they, a little band of 12 plus Jesus, have any hope against such large and imposing stones? It would be like sheep trying to beat a wolf at his own game.

“My, what big stones they have, and what large buildings!” the disciples said. “My, what big eyes you have!” said little Red Riding hood in that old fairy tale we were told as kids. You know the story – Red Riding Hood goes through the woods and arrives at her grandmother’s house… only to find that that a big wolf has eaten her grandmother, dressed up in her clothes, and wanted to have Red Riding Hood for a second course. I like to think that Red Riding Hood knew right away that something was very wrong and was stalling for time.

“What big Eyes you have…” “The better to see you with, my dear….”

“What big ears you have….” The better to hear you with, my dear…”

“What big teeth you have….” “The better to eat you with, my dear!”

Personally, I like the versions of the story where Red Riding Hood defeats the wolf herself, rather than get eaten and rescued.

The moral of “Little Red Riding Hood” is something like: don’t talk to strangers, or at least don’t give them your grandma’s address. The moral of “Little Faith Jesus Followers” might be something like: don’t ask Jesus about when the end of the world is happening. Because you won’t get the answer you want.

It’s understandable that the disciples wanted to know when these things were going to talk place. Jesus was talking about some scary stuff, and they wanted to be prepared for what was to come. But there isn’t really anything to be done to prepare for a scary and unpredictable world, full of wars and rumors of wars, where nations clash and natural disasters loom around every corner.

When the Gospel of Mark was written, the magnificent stones of the temple that the disciples admired were already a pile of rubble. For the followers of Jesus that Mark was writing to, the end of the world felt like it was already happening.

As we listen to Marks words on THIS day, its easy to feel like the end of the world is happening now, and the aspects of life we thought were rock-sold are now in piles of rubble at our feet. Sometimes it seems almost unbearable to listen to the news lately. The snowstorm gave us a small taste of what happens when we no longer have control of transportation, and feeling helplessly stuck in our homes, cars, or places of work without a way to get out.

And for many of us, the rug has been pulled out from under us in other ways – our businesses flop, our health fails, our marriages fold, our relationships with our family fall apart. The future we were hoping for suddenly doesn’t look so bright anymore. … at least, it does not look like the future we imagined.

But what if that could be a good thing? What if – since we are not in control – someone else IS? if something new is being born, but first the old has to be cleared out, and a way be made for its arrival? What if we’re feeling unmoored and unanchored, because we have previously moored and anchored ourselves on the very things that Jesus has come to dismantle?

Jesus says here, as he says all over the Gospels, “do not be alarmed…” meaning “do not be afraid.” Scary things are going to happen, but Jesus is the cornerstone of our lives, the rock of our salvation that will not be moved, the fortress that will save and protect us in all the storms that rage around us.

In just a few short weeks, we will be in Advent, the season that celebrates the arrival of Jesus at Christmas. An angel visited a young woman named Mary and told her not to fear when she heard she was pregnant with Jesus, before she got married to Joseph. Later, Mary sang a song to her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist after waiting so long for a child. Instead of being worried at the rumors spreading about her, Mary sings. And We get to sing my favorite version of Mary’s song - also known as the Magnificat – in a moment. This version has Mary – and therefore us – sing these words:

“From the halls of power to the fortress tower, not a stone will be left on stone….” And also “The nations rage from age to age, we remember who holds us fast.”

We remember Jesus holds us fast, and will never let us go. Jesus will hold us fast, amid all the things that we can’t control, amid all the things that make us afraid. Do not be alarmed, because even though these things are happening, it does not mean the end of us.

As writer and pastor Rachel Hackenberg explains, “The teeth that threaten us will crumble to dust. The stones that ground and shelter our ways of life will topple and erode. The dreams that haunt us as well as those that inspire us will fade with the dawn. The agonies of this life — from the strained relationships to the violence of evil — as eternal as they may feel in this moment, they too will fade before the stars burn out. Let earth rejoice and be glad.”

We will rejoice and be glad… because Jesus is the new and living way into a future. Stones are dead, but Jesus lives, and gives us new life out of death. The world is about to turn, and we give thanks that our God creates a new and living way for us through Jesus.

In a few minutes, we will be expressing that thanks in a few ways. One will be by turning in our cards for our 2019 pledges during the offering time. Another will be turning in the blue hands, after we have written how we will use our hands to minister to others in 2019.... They will decorate the altar for a few weeks in Advent as a reminder, to encourage one another in love and good deeds. Join us in this work of building up the Body of Christ together, as we give thanks to God. Amen.

Dance party at the Bishop's Convocation!

"Boots and Buttonhole" Church

Sermon 11-11-18

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.

When you were little, did you ever daydream that you would become a famous movie star? Maybe you imagined that you would end up on Star Search or get discovered on American Idol or America’s Got Talent. My cousin once went to an audition for American Idol when one of those nation-wide auditions happened in a city near us. She told us it was NOTHING like what you see on TV. On the show, you see the famous three judges in a room by themselves with the lucky or unlucky singer. That was for just a small fraction of people. The rest of them, my cousin included, were corralled into a school gym, where dozens of people were auditioning all at the same time, in front of the B or even C team of judges, and she could barely hear herself sing. What a different experience to the one she thought she might have had. And, spoiler alert, even though my cousin sings very well, she did NOT make it on the show.

Pretty soon we grow up and grow wiser, through perhaps some similar life experience, and realize that we can’t ALL be famous. Maybe we might have a “15 minutes of fame” moment or are lucky to “know someone who knows someone famous.” But most of us will be famous only in the way that Naomi Shahib Nye describes in her NOT very well-known poem. “The river is famous to the fish,” She writes.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

By this time in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus was getting to be pretty famous – but more like a boot than a dress shoe. At the beginning of Chapter 12, Jesus has made a pit stop at the temple to do a little teaching on his way to his crucifixion. This chapter in Mark has two big themes – about money and about belonging. At the end of this chapter, Jesus parks himself in front of the offering box in the temple and watches as people put in their offerings in.

Some rich people walked by and made a show of writing big checks – maybe even while wearing some version of fancy dress shoes. I imagine they did so with those huge prop checks – you know, the ones that you see all the time on Publisher’s Clearing House? That kind of giving reveals that they want to be famous for their “generosity.”

And then a poor widow came by, and in goes the entire amount of her social security check, without fanfare or notice. Jesus noticed, and pointed out to his disciples that, out of her lack, she had given more than the richest member of the congregation. They had all given what they could afford… out of their excess. She had given though she couldn’t afford it.

In those days, a widow was at the mercy of others to survive. She was a burden on her family. She had no disposable income; she was utterly dependent. In fact, when a woman’s husband died, her husband’s wealth was put in a trust, to which the widow had no direct access. Her husband’s estate was run by the Scribes, who were legal experts working with the people who were in power, both politically and religiously. Jesus describes them as wearing long robes and seeking all the attention for themselves by grabbing the best places and showing false piety. This is what Jesus means by “devouring widows houses” – they had “oversight” over the estates of these widows and were known to skim off the top. They then “generously” gave these widows a small allowance in order to survive.

This particular widow on has only 2 small coins to her name – the smallest denomination in circulation at the time, called Lepta –because the scribes have not left her anything else. And even then, she gave literally her last cent to the very institution that was keeping her in poverty, the same institution that supported the scribes and kept them in power. She gave everything she had to the temple treasury - to a building that in less than a few decades would be a pile of rubble on the ground, thanks to the Roman Empire that is currently in power, and with whom the scribes are collaborating. 

She gave what she had, and her offering impressed Jesus more than all the vast sums the rich had contributed. Though she was invisible to society at large, and had no legal power or religious clout, she gave away what little she did have. She trusted she would be ok, and she knew that the God would not forsake her, even though the people who were supposed to protect her and cared for her had forsaken her. 

Jesus is not praising this widow for her “giving till it hurts” attitude… though this text has been used for centuries in that way. As a pastor friend of mine puts it, “Jesus is mad that this woman is giving her very life into something that won’t last. He’s not mad at her, he’s mad at the system that forces her to do this.” This is not unlike the situation that Martin Luther found himself in, in Germany over 500 years ago. The institutional church in his time had convinced poor, vulnerable people to part with what little money they had to free their beloved relatives from purgatory… all the while actually funding a huge building project. The tagline from that program was something like: “when a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.”

In Jesus’ time, the influential, the wealthy, and the people in power had convinced this widow that she was not enough, and she had to give all of herself, her whole life, in order to be worthy. Jesus saw her, however, and saw her true value as a beloved child of God. Jesus is always seeing people that we tend to overlook, people that we undervalue. They may not be famous to us, but they are famous to Jesus… just as a tear is famous to a cheek, and a river is famous to the fish who live in it.

The rest of the not-so-famous poem by Naomi Shihab Nye goes like this:

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do.

Have we forgotten what our church can do? Sure, there were times that Family of God had more people, more money, and more ministries. Sure, there are plenty of churches around us who currently seem pretty flush with those things and seem pretty “successful”. Sure, there are plenty of congregation who are expanding their buildings or getting a lot of attention. And not to say that these things by themselves are bad. But Jesus is telling us to be on the look out for the times when WE think that we need to spend all our time and resources going after THESE things in order to “properly” do God’s work. Because when we do that, we give away the “might,” we do have, and have nothing left to give.

We don’t have to have a huge programs in order to be doing the work of God’ Kingdom. We don’t have to have three services on a Sunday morning, with a ten-piece band. We don’t have to be the best or the biggest, and we don’t even have to be BETTER or BIGGER.

To do God’s work, we only have to be ourselves, and to stop listening to those who are telling us that we are not enough. Because if we don’t, OUR “widow’s mite,” as this story is known for, might just get used up by “Big Successful Church Syndrome.” Are we giving our “mite” to the work of the kingdom, to work that will last… work that will transform lives and nurture faith? Or are we going to give away our mite and allow it to be used up in the endless pursuit of being the kind of church we are not?

Our “widow’s mite” may be small, but it is precious. And our “mite” can do a lot, as long as we stop trying to be what we are not. We don’t have to be a famous church.

Jesus needs a pully and buttonhole church. Jesus needs a “boot on the ground” church rather than a “dress shoe on the floor” church. Jesus needs Family of God to not forget that we might not be famous, but we are enough. We can be “Boots and buttonhole” kind of famous. Amen.

All Saints: We Have Already Died

Sermon 11-4-18 – All Saints

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.

I want this gospel text to be read at my funeral. I also want Isaiah 43 read, along with some of my favorite hymns, and the service should include Communion. I keep my beneficiaries for both my Thrivent life insurance policy and my health insurance up to date… by the way, Family of God is listed as one of my recipients of my small life insurance policy. Is Family of God part of your legacy planning? I don’t mean to sound morbid, but in my line of work as a pastor, I have encountered death and dying A LOT more than the average person, and so I have spent some time thinking about it. Have YOU? …Have you thought about your wishes, your legacy, how you want to spend your remaining time, your quality of life, how you would like your family and friends to mourn and give thanks for your life, and how you would like to be laid to rest?

It’s ok to think about and talk about this stuff, but it’s also hard, because we don’t normally do it. But today, on All Saints Sunday, gives us the perfect opportunity to do so. Someday, every single person in this room will become one of the saints – remembered one year during an All Saints Sunday some day in the future, as we are doing today. Since we are born, we will also someday die. It’s the truth that haunts all of us, if you’ll forgive that way to describe it. A truth that both drives our most creative accomplishments, and also the biggest secret we live to deny. 

This is a very strange time in history, according to a book I recently read on death history (and much of the following information is from this book). We no longer see death as part of our daily reality. A veil has been drawn over how we spend our last days and moments, and what happens to us after our death, by the medical and the funeral industry. Most of our loved ones – or even us, when our times comes, spend their last moments in a hospital room, surrounded by medical equipment, and our bodies are whisked away and not seen again until the family visitation, wake, memorial service, or funeral. In the last century, we have been separated from the ritual and sacred task than has been a tradition for centuries: mourning for our dead by caring for them ourselves, in our homes, with family.

Until recently, “death care” has been the unsung work of women… and in most cultures and countries, it still is. In first century Palestine as well, when you died, your female female relatives washed your body, dressed you, wrapped you in burial cloths, and anointed you with aromatic spices. You would be then laid temporarily in a tomb, for the course of about a year, until the natural process of decomposition was complete. Then your family collected your bones to be laid to rest in a special “bone box,” called an ossuary.

Historically speaking, women were “death’s natural companion,” providing the (sometimes literal) labor at the beginning and at the ending of our lives – laboring to bring us forth from the womb, and laboring to lay us to rest in our tombs and beyond. Women throughout history have seen death and dying up close and have been the most helpless when left behind.

If you are Mary and Martha - two unmarried women living in their brother Lazarus’ household as his dependents – you would of course send word Jesus at the first sign of your brother’s serious illness. Without Lazarus, they would be a the mercy of other male relatives, or homeless. Surely JESUS would make his dear friend Lazarus well, since he had already healed many, many strangers!

But Jesus delayed, and by the time he arrived, Lazarus had already been four days buried. It had been four days since Martha and Mary had sat by his bedside, changing his sheets and mopping his forehead as he took his last breath. It had been four days since Martha and Mary had prepared his body for burial, washing and wrapping his entire body long strips of burial cloth, and covering him with special ointments of myrrh and aloe. It has been four days since they watched other members of their family and friend carry him to and lay him in a tomb, until they would tenderly collect his bones and finally place of rest.

Both Mary and Martha confront Jesus with the bold accusation – “If YOU had BEEN HERE… our brother would not have died.” These women had BEEN THERE for Lazarus, and it seemed that Jesus had NOT. They had been present with him, and stayed by their brother’s side, until the end. Where had Jesus been?

It is a question that we too might ask. In the midst of our own grieving for those who died since last All Saints Sunday… or in other ways that we are suffering, we wonder too – “Where were you Jesus? If you had been here, our brother would not have died…. the cancer would not returned …. the marriage would not have ended… or the accident would not have happened… or any number of things.” But they did happen. Divorce, cancer, accidents, evil, suffering, violence, and death still happen in this world. So where is Jesus in all of this?

In the face of death, when Jesus seems to FINALLY show up on the scene for his friend Lazarus, he engages the angry questions of the sisters head-on. Their accusations and questions did not faze him… though their grief did. The unfettered grief deeply affected him, and Jesus wept.  

But amid the tears, Jesus was not deterred from his mission of defeating death at its own game. He asked where Lazarus has been laid to rest and goes directly to were death lives. The heavy sealed stone of the tomb does not make Jesus turn away, and neither did the smell of decay and decomposition of the body of Lazarus had undergone. 

Even if Jesus HAD shown up on the scene earlier, he MIGHT have healed Lazarus… but Lazarus would have died eventually. The same with Martha and Mary. The same with all of those present with Jesus and the sisters to mourn Lazarus. The same with us… perhaps what Mary and Martha SHOULD have said was “Jesus, if you had been here, Lazarus would not have died RIGHT NOW.” But he would have died eventually. And actually, Lazarus had to die AGAIN… at some point. Someday Lazarus’s body would be washed, wrapped, anointed, and laid to rest a second time. The atoms that made up his body would finish their process of breaking down and returning to the universe God has created.

The rest of us though, we only have to die once. And truth be told, we have already done it. That’s right, I’m already dead, and those of us present here have already died. The moment we were baptized, and the pastor sprinkled your head with water, you died with Christ and were buried in his tomb with him.  In your baptisms, the old, sinful person in you died, and a new person, a saint of God, was resurrected. You have died to your old self, you have died to the ways of the world that seek to hold you back from following God, and you have died to even death itself.

The emergence of Lazarus from the tomb would foreshadow Jesus’ victory over death in his resurrection. Jesus can call us out of our tombs because Jesus knows what it’s like to be INSIDE OF one.

Those who sealed Jesus’ tomb after his crucifixion may have remembered Lazarus, and perhaps thought to themselves, “Maybe the one raised that Lazarus guy could have kept HIMSELF from dying. But I guess not.” Point, set, match. Death wins.

Three days later, another Mary came to his tomb to mourn. But she found there a surprise waiting for her: a tomb without a stone and a grave without a body. Death, so used to swallowing up people, had instead found itself swallowed up by Jesus, just as Isaiah said– he will destroy the shroud over all the peoples, and the sheet over all the nations, and he will even swallow up death forever. The “way things were” has been turned upside down. Because of this, we can ask at every funeral, along with Saint Paul, “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?”

And because we have already died in Christ, and have been raised with him, let us commend the members of the Family of God to the mercy of God, our maker and redeemer, in the word that are spoken at every funeral service:

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servants. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, sheep of your own fold, lambs of your own flock, sinners of your own redeeming. Receive us into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.