Lord's Prayer, Our Prayer

7-28-19

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

When I was a kid, I remember reading a very special book of prayers. I turned to this book over and over again, because they were prayers written on a wide variety of topics, in a wise and profound, but also brief way. This book was not written by Martin Luther or Mother Teresa or Mr. Rogers…. It was written by kids. Some of these prayers are funny and very honest:

“Dear God, are you really invisible, or is that just a trick?”

“Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother, but what I wanted was a puppy.”

“Dear God, I think the stapler is one of your greatest inventions.”

Some of these kids also have some very serious things to say to God. One little girl wrote:

“Dear God, I bet it is very hard for you to love everybody in the whole world. There are only 4 people in my family and I can never do it.”

I wish I could tell this girl that this is hard for everybody, in our own families and in the whole world too, as we have seen all too often the tragic consequences of not loving one another in the news lately.

And lastly, this is my personal favorite prayer from this book:

“Dear God, I think about you sometimes even when I’m not praying.”

Our theme for today, if you haven’t noticed, is prayer. And hopefully you also recognized parts of the prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples. It is, of course, a version of what we know of as “The Lord’s Prayer.” This is actually the only time in our three-year cycle of readings that any part of Lord’s Prayer is comes up.

A more complete version of the Lord’s Prayer can be found in the Gospel of Matthew, and yet, we are hearing Luke’s version today. I like to think it’s because that in Luke, every time the disciples turn around, it seems, Jesus is praying. Like, all the time.

At the beginning of Luke, at Jesus’ baptism, Jesus was praying when the heavens opened, and the spirit descended on him, and God’s voice rang out, saying, ‘you are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ Later on, right before Jesus asks his disciples that big question, “Who do YOU say that I am?” Jesus was praying. Along with Peter, James, and John, Jesus went up a mountain to pray and be transfigured. And even on the night of his betrayal, Jesus spend most of the night in prayer, and encourages his disciples to do the same, though of course they fail miserably.

Here, though, on their way to Jerusalem and on their way to the cross, the disciples are being observant, for once. They’ve seen Jesus praying before, they’ve noticed he does it often. And so, as Jesus’s students, they ask for a lesson in prayer. But what they got was perhaps not exactly what they were expecting.

There is so much packed into this little prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer. And even in this, an abbreviated version in Luke, there is a lot of big requests happening. Each of these petitions by themselves could easily take up an entire sermon. But all put together we paint a picture of the kind of God we pray to. The kind of God whose kingdom does not play by the rules of power that holds this world in sway. The kind of God who cares about our daily needs. The kind of God whose forgiveness abounds. The kind of God that does not send trials to us to see if our faith is “good enough” or “strong enough. A God that Jesus encourages us to call our father as our loving parent.

There are lots of prayers that are recorded in the Bible. And yet, THIS is the one that we as Christians have clung to as the most important. After all, this is the prayer that Jesus taught his followers to say.

For just one second we are going to get into our time machines of choice – the TARDIS, Delorian, time-turner, you get to pick – we are going to hop in and travel back to what you might have gone over in confirmation class. In the Small Catechism, in Martin Luther’s explanation of the beginning, or “first petition” of the Lord’s Prayer, he writes this: “With these words God wants to attract us, so that we come to believe he is truly our father and we are truly his children, in order that we may ask him boldly and with complete confidence, just as loving children ask their loving father.”

When Jesus prays in the Gospels, he calls God his Father. And here, when the disciples ask Jesus how to pray to God, Jesus wants us to follow his lead. He says, “when YOU pray…” we get to call God “father” too. Because it’s true. God is like a parent who loves us unconditionally and eternally, who provides and forgives and promises to be present with us in all circumstances. All because we are God’s beloved children.

Jesus doesn’t say that God will hear us only if we say the write words or the right kind of prayer, or if our faith is “strong” enough.  God will not refuse to hear the cries of God’s children in need if we don’t send that email to ten of our friends or if that child with cancer on Facebook DOESN’T get ten thousand “likes.”  God will not ignore us if we don’t have our lives put together, or don’t go to church “enough,” or if we let our minds wander during the prayers or hymns or sermon when we ARE at church. God will not discount our requests, even if God disagrees with them. God promises to hear you because God loves you.

As Paul wrote in his letter to the Colossians, the love of God is revealed to us by God making us alive together with Christ, setting aside the record of our sins by nailing them to the cross. And every time we pray, we are speaking to a God who loves us even more than a parent could possibly love their own child. A God who communicate back to us, who reveals Godself to us and is vulnerable enough to create two-way dialogue. Because sometimes even God needs to be reminded of who God is – a God of Justice AND a God of Grace.

Abraham did just that, and in this way is an excellent model for prayer – while Abraham knew of the great sins of Sodom and Gomorrah – sins of greed, lack of mercy, inhospitality, mistreatment of the vulnerable – and yet he also knew that there were might be some good people among them still. Ultimately, Abraham’s petitions of mercy failed, because there were not even 10 righteous people remained in those cities…but that was not Abraham’s fault. He still tried.

Now, not every moment of prayer for us will be a dramatic bargaining with the divine for the sake of a whole city. Our daily prayers will be more mundane, like those of the kids who asked for a puppy and got a brother or thanking God for the invention of the stapler. But maybe those prayers are just as profound.

I think that I love that little girl’s prayer from that book the most, the one that went, “Dear God, I think about you sometimes even when I’m not praying.” And sometimes, we even pray when we don’t know we are praying. Like when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, their question is a prayer. Our questions, our wonderings, our thoughts, complaints and laments can all be prayers, and can become as unconscious as breathing.

We can pray with our hands – not just in folding them, but also in using them to construct a Lego tower of prayer, or in service to our neighbor, or coloring a picture with crayons to give to someone else…. We can use our voices, in singing our praise to God, and with giving an encouraging word … we can use our feet, when we march for justice or walk toward those who are in need. I dare say that we can even use our time, our money, our possessions, and even our social media to pray as well.

But whether or not we are aware of it, whether or not we are consciously praying, whether we have a set time to pray or pray whenever we have a need whether or not we are thinking about God, God is always thinking of us. And sometimes… when we pray to God… God actually listens. As long as we keep at it. Thanks be to God, amen.

Love Languages and being an Ally

7-21-19

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.

We’re thick in the middle of wedding season. For all the weddings I have officiated, one of the things I ask the couple to do is to take an inventory of their Love Languages. It’s pretty much what it sounds like – similarly to having a primary language we speak in everyday conversations - we all have a “language” that makes us feel most loved. According to author GaryChapman, there are 5 of these “love languages,” - Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. According to Gary, we all have a primary love language, and the rest fall in line in order of importance.  

In relationships, it helps to understand that we happen to be most fluent in “speaking” our own love language, but our spouse might feel loved in different ways than feel natural to us. Ironically, Gary writes, most couples do not share the same #1 love language. But with practice, just as you can learn another language, and keep your spouses “love tank” – Gary’s term – full.

While his original book is from the perspective of heterosexual married couples, this applies to all of us in all our relationships – friends, co-coworkers, and our own families – parents and siblings.

In this encounter between Jesus, Martha, and Mary, we can interpret these  miscommunications through the lens of Love Language and see it play out in spades, both between the two sisters and between the sisters and Jesus.

We hear about Mary and Martha from Luke’s perspective, and there is no mention of a brother named Lazarus, who shows up in John’s Gospel a lot. Here, it’s just the women, and Luke very clearly says is MARTHA’S house. She may not be that well of – no slaves for hospitality and food prep like Abraham, but she holds her own, along with her sister Mary.

We might be able to say that Mary’s love language is Quality Time –giving Jesus her undivided attention to show her love to him – since she sat at his feet and listened to him so attentively. She sat as his feet in the way that a student would sit at the feet of a Rabbi who he was studying under. I said “he” as pronoun just there very deliberately. The role of a student was not a typical one for women at the time – normal the husband would study under the Rabbi, hoping to become one himself, and his wife would stay home and do all the domestic chores to support him. As an unmarried woman with no brothers (at least according to Luke), Mary taking on the position of student – disciple – would have been shocking. But perhaps Mary understood the truth that, with Jesus presence, the world is turned upside down, the result is that those marginalized and having low or no status – such as an unmarried woman such as herself - do not need to be defined by socially determined roles.

If Martha had taken the Love Languages quiz, I’m guessing she would REALLY rank high in “Acts of Service.” As a model of extreme hospitality, Martha was caught up doing so many tasks for Jesus, to show how much she loved and appreciated him – too much really, because, she got exasperated, especially with Mary. Mary and Martha were speaking different languages. Perhaps Martha thought that the most appropriate way to show love to Jesus in that moment was to make sure that he had a delicious and hot dinner ready for him after a long day. Perhaps she resented the way Mary showed her love and didn’t understand that Mary was showing her love to Jesus in her own way… and perhaps Martha was not feeling loved by Mary because of the “Language barrier.”

Of course, this story isn’t really about Love languages. It’s also not a story about “Women’s discipleship.” (Because we would never say a story about Peter and John were about “Men’s discipleship!”) It’s also not about Contemplative Faith practices being “Better” than active or service-oriented faith practices. There is not a Better or Best Way to be a disciple of Jesus. And it’s not a story that pits sister against sister, though it has long been interpreted in that light – with Mary the “Winner” and Martha the “loser.”

Just as there is no “best” Love Language, discipleship with Jesus is not a zero-sum game. Both sisters are showing us very admirable qualities in a follower of Jesus – a spirit of hospitality, and the desire and eagerness to learn. But BOTH sisters make mistakes we can learn from as well. Where Martha trips up is not in her “nagging,” but two other ways – first, Martha triangulation. She roped Jesus into her conflict with her sister instead of talking to Mary herself.  Why didn’t Martha just ask Mary herself?

Second, Martha is caught in the patriarchy and misses Jesus’ message - her allows social assumptions to take precedence of the urgency of the kingdom that’s sitting right in front of her. As the Reverend Dr. Elizabeth Quick wrote in a devotional called, “We Pray With Her,”: “It’s always easier to remain in our predetermined, comfortable, status-quo safe places rather than hit the road with Jesus; but only in following him can we truly find the better part.” In fact, a better translation of the original language – talking of fluency and language again – is “Mary has chosen a GOOD” – not BETTER – “part.”

But what if Mary isn’t the “hero” in this story? What if there is something big about Jesus’ message that Mary missed as well? Mary may have chosen the patriarchy-smashing role of a student, disregarding the structures that her culture has placed on her based on her gender and status. And that will not be taken away from her in God’s Kingdom, the Jesus Regime. However… Mary was not a good ally to her sister Martha. Instead of inviting Martha to join her in her claim at the feet of Jesus… Mary seemed to stand by, just as other men have done before her, and allowed her poor sister to bear the brunt of the rigid roles of women all by herself.

Mary missed the opportunity to put her learning into action. Mary did not use her new-found privilege as a student of Jesus to widen the circle. And so, Jesus had to step in for poor Martha. Jesus stepped in, not to tell Martha to be more like Mary…. But to do what Mary should have done: invite Martha into the circle. Jesus calls her by name and tells her, you can be a disciple too.

May we learn from the mistakes of both Martha AND Mary. How often do we say, “Jesus, don’t you care that the we have been left alone without resources to do all the work by ourselves? We have to worry about the roof and declining membership and budget deficits and differed maintenance and having an excellent hospitality plan! Tell the synod… the ELCA… SOMEBODY to help us!”

TO which Jesus might reply: “FOG, FOG, you are worried and distracted by many things. There is need of only one thing.”

And what IS that ONE THING? Make room at Jesus’s feet. Like Mary failed to do.

As followers of Jesus, like Mary AND Martha, we each have different gifts and strength to offer. But when we sit at the feet of Jesus, we all hear the same message: We are ALL beloved Children of God… we are part of the same Family of God… And there is a place for YOU here… at the feet of Jesus. But there is also a place HERE for all the other beloved Children of God as well. But how are people going to know this unless we tell them…. like Jesus, call them by name, and invite them to sit with us at the feet of the ultimate host, our Lord and Savior Jesus.

Learning to speak Jesus’ language of Love is hard… we don’t need a book or a quiz to tell us that…. but it gets better with practice, like learning and perfecting any important skill. Love is work, and it doesn’t always feel comfortable or easy.

Perhaps, instead of “having a Mary heart in a Martha word,” we have both a Mary AND Martha heart in a divided and scary world. We can learn how to speak love to this world from both Mary and Martha. They both broke social norms, and perused justice in different ways, and in OUR different ways, we can join them. And heaven knows, there is no times to lose. Amen. 

Everyone Knows a Jericho Road

7-14-19

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

If you haven’t noticed by now, this past week, over thirty kids from all over the community blasted off to Mars for an adventure in learning about all the awesome power of God in our lives. Each day had a “power up word” and a Bible story - and imagine my excitement when we got to Wednesday’s word – kindness, and Wednesday’ story – The Good Samaritan.

This parable is perhaps one of Jesus’ best known and best loved stories… but, much like the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Ark it’s not really a story to tell children. Jesus tells this story to a lawyer who wants to figure out the minimum “amount of work” for loving your neighbor as yourself.

 

In the story itself, we have two high-status members of Jewish society, the priest and the Levite, encountering a man so injured to appear on death’s door. Their rational for not helping this man was based on their strict observance of the Law of Moses, which prohibited them from touching the bodies of dead people. If they stopped to help, and he WAS dead, neither of them would be able to perform their duties. Logic told them not to take that chance, so they passed by on the other side.

The Samaritan, on the other hand, was from a shunned ethnic group, a group considered “mixed” from the long-ago mingling of Israelite and non-Israelite families, which settled in a place called Samaria… a place no one went if they could help it. Samaria also happened to be the only way to get to Jericho. This was one of the most dangerous 17 miles of that existed…so much so it has been called the Red Road or the Blood Road. And yet, it is this Samaritan, who live near this road, who helps the injured man, who goes about and beyond the call of duty in loving his neighbor as himself.

During seminary, I was on my internship year as a student pastor in a town in MN, about the size of Easton, PA. Two main industries powered the economy: Agriculture with the help if migrant workers from central America, and a company called Federated Insurance. When I preached on this text, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to recast the story, and so this is how I told it:

“A man was traveling on the highway to Minneapolis when his car blew a tire. A pastor, traveling in the same direction, sees the man pull over, breaks for a moment, but then keeps going. This pastor is on her way to preside over a wedding in Minneapolis and is already running late. Next, a Federated executive drove by. He too sees the man pulled over, struggling to change his tie, and considers stopping. However, the executive is on his way to the airport to fly to a meeting that might lead to a big promotion, so he keeps going.

A rusty sedan pulls over next to the man. Out time a very obviously pregnant Hispanic woman, with three curious children looking on from the backseat. In heavily broken English, she says that her uncle owns a tow truck company just beyond the next exit. The uncle arrives 5 minutes later, tows the man’s car to a repair place, and refuses payment when the man offers him $200.”

The week after I preached that sermon, a member of my internship committee was chatting with me in my office. He offered, what he thought, some very helpful feedback: he warned me to be more mindful about who I used in my stories and what kind of example they were being used for. He told me what I already knew - that most of the people in this town are employed by Federated, including here at the church. Apparently, ‘Some people’ were upset and offended by how I talked about Federated, and he was sure I would not make that error again.

What I didn’t tell him was that I knew exactly what I was doing, and that conversation told me I had been exactly right on the money with my examples.

The truth is, every town and city in the United States has their own version of this story. We all have our own version of Priests, Levites, Jericho roads, Samarias, and Samaritans. The truth is, Jesus’s listeners were terribly offended by his story, and if Jesus would have had an office and an internship committee, he would have heard some “helpful advice” about it too. And the truth is, if we ourselves are not terrible offended by it, we’re not reading it right.

Traci Blackmon, a pastor in Ferguson, preached on this text at the Festival of Homiletics, and she told the story from the prospect of the Jericho Road. We all know a Jericho Road, she told us, and most of them have been renamed “Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.” On Jericho Road, you don’t park on the street, and you clutch your purse…. schools are underfunded, hospitals are understaffed, services are hard to find, and life expectancy is shorter. Pastor Blackmon told us there are thirty-three thousand zip codes in America. Sixty-six hundred zip codes are home to eighty percent of the children living in poverty. Twenty percent of the zip codes are home to eighty percent of the kids in poverty. These are the places Jericho Road runs through, in every city in the United States.

The Jericho Road runs through all those parts of Philadelphia that have “changed over the years,” and we all know exactly what is meant by that phrase. It means that black and brown people live in those parts now because we certainly won’t welcome them here in the suburbs. So, they are stuck by poverty and prejudice, trapped living along the Jericho Road, because of things like redlining, white privilege, and institutional racism.

For too long the church has walked by on the other side of the Jericho road, avoiding the wounded bodies of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Too long have we locked our car doors and sped through the Jericho Road, and instead ask ourselves why we ran away and turned our backs on our local Samarias.

Too long have we looked askance at the 17 miles of Jericho Road…. The 17 miles we want to build a wall on to keep immigrants out. The 17 church bullies who have harassed their female pastors this last week. 17 rooms in the nursing home with dementia patients who have no one to visit them. 17 buildings containing children on the border without parents or toothbrushes.

When we ignore the Jericho Road, we are no better than the robbers who beat up the man and left him to die in the first place.

I think Mr. Rogers, of the beloved children’s show Mr. Rogers Neighborhood says it best: “We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community… not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”

The good news is that this is a parable, a story Jesus told, and so we get to change the ending… IF we really want to. Jesus invites us into the story. Jesus is in the ditch with us when that’s where we are… but Jesus also calls us to GET INTO the ditch when that’s where his beloved children are. And maybe next time, we can prevent our fellow human beings and fellow children of God from ending up bleeding in the ditch in the first place.  There is still time… there is always time… to prevent another person form falling victim to the Jericho Road.

The Samaritan claimed what little power he had to take care of someone in need, even though he himself probably did not have the resources to spare to spend it on medical care of someone else. 

All week with the kids from the community who joined us for VBS, we talked about learning to trust God’s power at work in us. ALL of us!

What are we thinking??? 

What a dangerous message to be telling powerless children! That they could use the power that God has given them to change the world…. But what if they ACTUALLY believed it? 

And what if we actually believed it? What if we harnessed the power that God has given us… faith, boldness, kindness, thankfulness, and hope…. To quote the theme song for the week: “We are on a mission, we have seen a vision, this is where the journey starts.” And the truth is… if we don’t to it, thank goodness for these kids. Because they will. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Boy Who Wasn't Alone

Sermon 7- 7-19

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.

There is a game on an improv show called “Whose Line is It Anyway,” that is based on the cast members borrowing two handbags from unsuspecting audience and creating a skit based on what they find in there. Shoes, dental floss, cardigans, earbuds, q-tips, sun hats, empty water bottles, bags and bags of snacks. It’s like one of the usual games you play at a baby or wedding shower – a scavenger hunt all in your purse! The point is to laugh at all the ridiculous things that other people carry around them… but really, are any of us much different?

It’s only fair that I pick on myself for a moment…  Besides the usual car keys, church keys, wallet, and cell phone, in my own bag I carry tissues, hand sanitizer, some pens, lip balm, extra charger, and usually at least on book that I’m reading, of course!  This week I also have with me a VBS CD, so that I can get ready to teach the kids songs about God and going to Mars! So, for the most part, pretty standard stuff. But still. It’s a lot of stuff in there. And sometimes it gets a little heavy. All in the name of “Just in case… “

Being ready and prepared is a good thing, but there comes a point where we can be TOO prepared, which can hinder, rather than help us. Because if we wait until we are absolutely the most prepared we can ever be before we agree to do anything or go anywhere, we would never actually get started, and we would miss out on the adventure that God has in store for us.

The kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus is on a mission, and is getting people on board, though as we witnessed last week some would-be followers were more ready than others to get with the program. The upside is that this week, we hear that the harvest is at hand, the people are ready to hear the good news of God’s love and forgiveness, but there is so much work to do to get ready that even Jesus needs help. Jesus has already called his core group of twelve disciples, but he needs all hands-on deck, people. This is getting big, FAST, and Jesus needs even MORE people to help him, seventy more to be exact.

Jesus chooses them, buddies them up two by two, gives then their marching orders, and then recommends a packing list for them too. Only… Jesus’ packing list is very, very short. Too short for our liking, in fact. We also have to remember that in Jesus’ time, there was no Motel 6 or Hilton to sleep at… no Chipotle, McDonald’s, Panera, or Acme to get food along the way, or a local Target in case you forgot to pack your toothbrush.

So, when Jesus told the seventy NOT to pack a bag, NOT to bring an extra change of clothes, or even a pair of shoes, NOT to bring extra snacks or food…. This is a huge leap of faith, and a giant act of trust. Jesus UN-equips them, to make then totally dependent on the hospitality of those who are hearing the good news. Which seems pretty foolish, like he’s setting them up for failure.

Why would Jesus do that?  Because he is sending them to be physical embodiments of what is means to be totally dependent on God. They will be waking the GOD-WALK and TALKING the GOD TALK, so that when amazing things start to happen, the only explanation possible is that it was God’s doing.

And amazingly, it worked. Like that tweet that unexpectedly goes viral, the seventy came back reporting with great joy that even the forces of evil were responding and getting out of the way of the kingdom. The harvest is being gathered, the good news spread, and the kingdom is coming near. All this they accomplished WITHOUT being prepared to the gills with floss, hand sanitizer, or extra snacks. All this they accomplished while bringing absolutely nothing with them. All this they accomplished without any special training. All this they accomplished with the help of God. It’s not about what you bring, but who.

That’s why Jesus send out seventy people do to the work of the kingdom… and he sent them out TWO by TWO. No one was alone in this work. They had a huge support network of others to lean on, and someone else physically with them, so that they could care for each other when things got tough, like when they entered a town where they were not welcome. And they also had someone else along to share in the joys as well.

Because Jesus didn’t promise that the following him would make our lives stress-free and comfortable, or that doing his work would be easy. But Jesus does provide people along the way to help us through when (and not if) times get tough.

Too often though, we get caught up in thinking that we’ll be successful at making it through life depending on how prepared we are, if we have enough, and what we bring along with us. But what we own can often weight us down and hold us back. Even as the culture around us tells us the exact opposite – all the time we are told to had bigger purses, bigger wallets, better cars, nicer houses, more storage units…. all in the name of “just in case.” And as a reward, we are held back and weighted down with car payments, mortgages, credit card bills, and sore muscles.  

Non-physical things that we carry with us can weigh us down, too – Fear, anxiety, worry, depression, despair, impatience, addiction, apathy, anger, sexism, white privilege…  all these things are HEAVY to carry around with us, and take a toll on us on a daily basis. We need each other, as Paul writes, in order to bear one another’s burdens. We don’t need more things or to be more prepared… instead we are to pack light….  and share the load. Even when things are challenging… especially when things seem at their most bleak and hopeless.

Lately I’ve been watching through the Harry Potter movies again, which tells the story, over 8 films, how an unsuspecting 6^th grade boy learns how to be a wizard and grows up to defeat the one of the most powerful and evil villains in all of fiction – the evil wizard Lord Voldemort. In one of their confrontation, Voldemort enters Harry’s mind, and calls him weak for caring about his friends and family, which made Harry vulnerable to attack. Instead, Harry Potters tells him “You're the weak one. And you'll never know love, or friendship. And I feel sorry for you.”

Earlier in the same movie, The Order of the Phoenix, other students are in awe of all of Harry’s adventures and decided to gather together to learn how to defend themselves from the coming evil that Lord Voldemort is sure to bring. To their accolades, Harry responds, “it all sounds *great* when you say it like that. But the truth is…  I didn't know what I was doing half the time, I nearly always had help.”

We might not be a well outfitted or have as many resources as the powers of evil in this world… but we do have something they don’t: Jesus, and one another.

God is calling us on a journey to spread the news that God’s kingdom is here.  When we refuse to pack some of the things that can weight us down: fear of the future, our belief in scarcity, and our longing for security – then we have so much more room for the things that ARE on Jesus’s packing list: things like vulnerability, trust, courage, compassion, kindness, empathy, and love for one another, which always makes us stronger.

This doesn’t necessarily mean for us to get rid of the all stuff in our purses, wallets, cars, or homes. But perhaps we should start asking ourselves if what we HAVE helps us or hinders us along the way.

Because the stuff we bring with us doesn’t give us strength. Nor does always being 100% prepared for whatever might comes next. But we know just was DOES give us strength: Faith in Jesus and in one another. The seventy disciples could do all things set before them, and we can too, because we bring Jesus WITH us along the way. Amen.

The Fruit that Nobody Wants

6-30-19

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

Almost 2 years ago was the 500th anniversary of the Reformation – remember that? -  and Lutherans around the world pulled out all the stops to celebrate. Including the Lutheran World Federation, a worldwide communion of Lutheran denominations like the ELCA. Fortunately for the LWF, they were scheduled to hold their assembly the exact same year as this famous anniversary. Part of the festivities included a preaching contest where a young adult pastor – in this case, yours truly - would be invited to preach during the closing worship of the LWF assembly. That’s how I got an all- expense paid trip to hang out with Lutherans from all over the world in the capitol city of Namibia.

The theme for the whole week of the assembly was “Liberated by God’s Grace.” And text chosen for the closing worship was Galatians 5, which we heard just a few minutes ago. The Fruit of the Spirit passage one of the “Bible greatest hits” if you will, ranking nearly as familiar as “The Lord is my Shepherd,” “Love is patient,” “For God so love ed the world,” “Be strong and courageous.” In fact, in our triple classroom we have artwork that has the Fruit of the Spirit written on it! This text gets around. And for a reason.

As I shared in my sermon at the closing worship of that amazing week, “Fruit of the Spirit” was the theme for VBS at my home congregation when I was in 5^th grade. For THAT closing worship service at the end of that week, my class decided to put on a skit wearing T-shirts with each fruit listed. I remember I got to wear the shirt with “Gentleness” on it. What I ALSO remember clearly is that NO ONE in my class wanted to wear the shirt that said “SELF-CONTROL.” I still remember the look on Karin Weidemeyer’s face when she reluctantly agreed, though I don’t blame her for being annoyed about it.

Because we get it. Self-control was not as “cool” as love, joy, and peace. To describe someone as being “self-controlled” is not complement we give our friends And honestly, I never pray for God to make me more self-controlled. Self-control seems to be the opposite of freedom.  And frankly, just not any fun at all.

Why do I need to control my SELF? I like to think that my SELF tends to be pretty decent and generally steers me right, at least about 90% of the time. But as Paul very well knew, when we think that way, we could not be more wrong.

The truth is, when I let my SELF guide my day to day life, I am NOT very loving, joy-filled, peaceful, patient, kind, generous, or particularly faithful. When my SELF is at the lead, I march in the wrong kind of parade, to the tunes of buying more stuff, acting unkindly, being afraid of my neighbor, and generally being too concerned about myself to see there are some very real needs out there in the world.

These devious tunes lead us into captivity while disguised as “freedom.” We cry to God, “You’re not the boss of me,” but we find that our selves have led us down a road that leaves us vulnerable: to broken relationships, bad choices, selfishness, suffering and shame. We are in bondage and cannot free ourselves. We are captive, like the legend of the Pied Piper - captive in a parade that marches us toward death in body, mind, and spirit.

There IS another tune calling us, another parade that we are invited to, another parade where we belong and find our home. Jesus frees us from the parade of death, to be part of his parade of life. Not so that my SELF can my ruler – instead, Jesus frees me FROM my SELF. I no longer belong to my Self, limited by my flaws, imperfections, blind spots, and fears. In addition, I no longer belong to the WORLD, who would have me believe that I am not enough, and that certain types of people are not enough. Instead, I belong to Christ, and YOU belong to Christ, and together, we are called to march in the parade led by the Holy Spirit.

And THIS is a parade that is going some amazing place – the destination or result (or fruit if you will) will lead us to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, AND self-control. But not for our own benefit alone. This is not a purely inward journey, in order to become extra-holy super-people. THIS parade leads us OUT into the world, out to our neighbors, where the fruits of our freedom in Christ are given away to others. This kind of fruit is not to be hoarded or stored up for our own benefit. Just like we can’t grow this fruit by ourselves without being connected to the “Jesus Parade,” we don’t get to keep the fruit that we grow in the Spirit.

A great devotional or prayer life, will-power of steel, and excellent self-control aren’t going to get this parade where it needs to go. It will still be hard to hear the marching tune of the “Jesus parade,” once we say, “thanks be to God” and shuffle out of this sanctuary to the organ postlude to coffee and treats. The tunes of the world are very loud, and sometimes they don’t even wait to the end of the postlude turn up their deceptive soundtrack.

During one of the weekly Bible studies I used to attend with other Lutheran pastors, one of us joked that the response “I will and I asked God to help me,” we say when we install pastors and lay leaders should be instead “I won’t, and I ask God to help me.” As Paul says elsewhere in the New Testament, the spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak. But thank God WE are not steering the parade on our own. Guided by the Spirit, we are marching exactly where we are needed, straight into a world that is suffering and in pain.

Probably this parade is not headed where we would have expected, but it is going exactly where we are most needed. We are marching toward into a future we can’t clearly see yet but includes the healing of the nations, the reconciling of differences, the inclusion of the excluded, and the freedom of those who have so long been in bondage, including ourselves.

At the beginning of that week with the Lutheran World Federation in Namibia, we were each given a Makalani nut, hand-carved by a Namibian artist. It seemed fitting, especially since a nut is not all that different from fruit. A nut is a kind of seed, that is ready with potential of new life, and fruit is mostly just the sweet edible stuff that covers a seed, that helps get a seed from point A to point B, - where it is needed, where it can find fertile soil in order to grow into something new.

At the end of our time together in Namibia, we were asked to ponder how we were going to share the fruits of our time with our churches and contexts back home. Though the LWF assembly is long over, as is the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther nailed the 95 thesis to that Wittenberg church door,  the Reformation is not. We are looking toward the next 500 years of being Lutheran.

The Reformation lives on, here at Family of God.  It lives on in the Southeast Pennsylvania synod. It lives on in the ELCA. It lives on in Namibia, and in the Lutheran World Federation around the world. And it lives on in you too.

One of the ways that we as a congregation, synod, and ELCA look to the future is through dreams, hopes, vision, and imagination. For those of us who did not get an opportunity to participate in our family chats, I invite you to find me after worship and take the card, and write down the seed of your own hopes and dreams for the present and future of Family of God. Even if you already participated, if you have more to add, I welcome you to write something else too, which we pray will hopefully bear good fruit, with the help of one another, and the Holy Spirit. We won’t and we asked God to help and guide us. Thanks be to God. Amen.