Funeral Sermon

 Funeral Sermon for Dennis Fly

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.

A couple of summers ago, we planned a special service where members of Family of God could vote for their favorite hymns, and the “winners” would be sing and heard one of the Sundays in August.. I joked that everyone should write their name on their ballot, so that we knew people only voted once. As it turns out, this is how I discovered that Denny voted…. three times...and each time for different hymns (even though some of them do overlap!). Some of his voting selections were used in the prelude and postlude for today’s service.

Denny’s approach to voting for his favorite hymns – enthusiastically all-in - reveals the kind of person Denny was. That man never seemed to slow down, not for one second, all through the course of his life. He was a force of nature. No one and nothing could stop him – not from planning and building what seems like 90 percent of this church building, not from popping in on a weekday to fix something wrong with the carpet, not from having connections to nearly every single person worth knowing within a 10 mile radius.

While nothing could stop his spirit, we all know that the breakneck-pace of his life often took a toll on his body… and often his relationships. And many time it felt like no sooner had he conquered one hurtle, only to be faced with another, and knocked off his feet – sometimes literally – once again. Here was a man who looked suffering and hardship in the face many times… and it showed. Denny was stubborn. He had opinions. He had been hurt and let down, over and over and over again. And somehow he kept going, sometimes in ways that took my breath away.

Whenever I talked to Denny this past summer what he said frustrated him the most was just sitting on his “cotton-picking back doing nothing,” not able to be at home, not being able to take care of and look after Sandee. Looking at those same four walls of that room for the past six months probably made him long for the rooms he wanted to be – at home with the people he loved and those who loved him. If possible, making a latte.

While Denny spent his life building – building walls and rooms and homes, mostly for other people – Jesus was preparing a room and a home for Denny. While Denny was building the pews and furniture … and the CROSS in THIS very room, Jesus was preparing a place for him.

As Denny described, he was once assisting during worship, when after the service his mother asked him why there was no cross above the altar. The next week, his mother suddenly passed away. As Denny sought a way to honor his mother’s memory, weeks and months passed, and the beginning of the season of Advent brought inspiration – a star in the shape of a cross, the like Star of Bethlehem. But the Star Cross seemed to need something… So, from a restoration project his parents had helped with, wood from an oak barn received new life in the shape of a larger cross.

In Denny’s own words, he described this special cross this way: “The Star enlightening the Shepherds and Wise Men, to come to witness the Birth of Our lord Jesus, the Christ Child, then a space in time reflecting the life and work of Jesus, and following to the heavy cross being carried by Christ to his Crucifixion and death and then after 3 days, the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ!” with an exclamation point.

When Jesus was eating his last meal with his followers, in that upper room just before Jesus’ death, his disciples were worried about what the future would hold. Jesus reassures them, for his is going to prepare a place for them. In God’s house, there are lots of room, he tells them. Not only will there be a place prepared for them, but Jesus himself is going to lead them there.

Jesus’ promise is not just for his disciples at the time Jesus walked this earth, but it is for all people at all times. This promise was present for Denny during his life and in his death. This promise is for you, right here and now. Jesus always makes a way, and makes room for us, just as Jesus prepared a place for Denny, after a lifetime of preparing places for others.

We cannot prevent setbacks, but we aren’t alone in our struggles and grief. We cannot defeat the power of death over us, but Jesus can. And Jesus did, by dying on the cross and rising again. Jesus took the sting out of death. He overpowered it, conquering it with the power of his love. Even though those we love still leave us, we trust that in sharing in Christ’s death, we also share in Christ’s resurrection.

This same God who promised to walk with Denny through his hills and valleys is the same loving God who promises to walk with US through our own valleys of shadow and grief. God does not let us tread this sorrowful path alone. Our loving God sent his son Jesus to travel this path ahead of us and with us, so that we may someday join him in sharing eternal life with God, as Denny done before us.

Today, in this hour of sadness and grief, we commit beloved father, grandfather, and friend Denny to the care of God, the author of his life. Though this earthly song has now ended, the song of his legacy plays on. The music of his life is now joined with the heavenly chorus. I believe that we might hear him singing, with the heavenly host, the words of one of his favorite hymns,

God’s word forever shall abide, no thanks to those who fear it. 

For God fights by our side, with weapons of the spirit.  

Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child, or spouse,

thou life be wrenched away, they cannot with the day: The Kingdom’s ours forever.

We are God’s forever. Denny is God’s forever. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Go with God's Authority

 9-27-20

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 all live under some sort of authority, whether we are aware of it or not. Some kinds are obvious – traffic laws, taxes, phone contracts, mortgage and loan agreements, state and local mask mandates. Some of the systems we comply with are less noticeable – who bullies and gets bullied on social media, who is more likely to speak in a zoom meeting, how much the same house is appraised for based on the perceived skin color of the owner, among others.

We have been very well trained. We all know how to navigate the rules of this world, both consciously and unconsciously. We know what scripts to recite and what patterns to follow, from what we see in TV commercials and online ads, from newspaper fliers, from what we see from our neighbors and classmates, from the conversations and interactions we have with our family and friends.

And for some of us, following the rules WORKS. Because some of us were born the right color or with the right biology, or in the right country to the right family. Following the rules of the world comes much easier for some than for others. This is what is called “privilege.” We didn’t earn it or do anything special to deserve it. But it is the air we breathe.

But one wrong move, one misstep, and we will find ourselves with those people, on the outside looking in. There is no room for failure. There is no room for nuance. When a white female Methodist pastor in the Midwest is outspoken for justice, her bishop reserves the right to fire her without recourse. This particular pastor will find out later this week if she will be fired, effective immediately, just because she said “Black Lives Matter” in a sermon.

But, rules are rules, I guess. (heavy sarcasm) 

And when they DO work for us, it can be hard to change them. Those people are those people for a reason...right? We who have done everything right, like those have worked in the vineyard from dawn until dusk from last week, we feel we DESERVE to be first in the kingdom of this world, and perhaps also in the Kingdom of God, don’t we?

How dare this Midwestern pastor take a stand on something that is so clearly at the heart of the Gospels? Like, where does SHE get off, living into what it means to follow a first-century Palestinian Jewish man? … a man who had the audacity to hang out with the wrong people and heals the blind, who rides into town on a donkey in an impromptu parade and kicks the economy of the empire in the teeth… like does she even KNOW who Jesus IS and what he PREACHED?

It turns out she does. And that is making the authorities over her uncomfortable.

Jesus makes us uncomfortable because he reminds us that we are as broken and hopeless as THOSE people seem to be, the tax collectors and sex workers, and people left behind by a broken health care system. These are exactly the kinds of people Jesus chooses to hang out with. He reminds us that we can follow all the “rules” to a tee and still be on the wrong side of history.  

Jesus makes us uncomfortable because he reminds us that there is another kingdom out there, a kingdom with a very different kind of authority. This is the authority of God, shown to us in Jesus.  To live under this kind of authority REALLY makes no sense to the world. This is not a kingdom where rules completely go out the window. This is a kingdom where the rule of the realm is love, condensed and concentrated into the living, dying, and rising of Jesus.

At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gave his followers a great charge: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… and I WILL BE WITH YOU.”

And in this text for today, instead of arguing with the smarty pants religious authorities of his day, Jesus told them a story instead – about a man with two sons and two different responses to his charge for them to “Go.”

Our vineyard, where Jesus commands us to go and work, could be far away among those “all nations.” More likely, though, our vineyards are the zoom classrooms we attend, our place of work, the people we sit in the yard with, who we attend worship with and greet in the comment section, and drive on the same highways with. Sometimes our vineyard is right in our own homes with our own families, especially now that many activities are taking place online.

And the work that we do there is not always easy to figure out. God has not left us with a book of easy-to-follow instructions on “how to successfully make disciples of all nations 100% of the time.” In fact, we may not want to go into the vineyard at all! It’s so hard, and I’m not very good at it, and what can I even do, anyway? Especially now, with a pandemic on! We’ve never done this before!

The good news is that we are not alone in this work – we have the whole church on earth, past, present, and future.

The bad news is, the church in a human institution.  Seventeen centuries ago when the church suddenly found itself with authority instead of being on the margins, we lost a potent opportunity. Instead of showing the world a different kind of power and authority, the kind of servant heart exhibited by Jesus, the church instead chose to tread the path of hierarchy and supremacy, copying what already existed in the world. In other words, the institutional church told Jesus “Yes,”… but then we didn’t follow through.

But it is not too late. There is hope for us. While we cannot undo the wrongs of the past, we CAN and SHOULD stop them from happening in the present. We can confront injustices in the name of Christ. As a church, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be a servant to those in need and a witness to where the Spirit is at work the world.

As I learned from the board retreat of LAMPa this week, this year is the 500^th anniversary of the most revolutionary essay that Martin Luther wrote called “The Freedom of a Christian.” In this essay, Luther writes about how we as Christians are “perfectly free…. subject to none.” BUT ALSO:  Christians are “perfectly dutiful servant[s] of all, subject of all.”

Luther wrote: "Christian[s] … do not live in themselves but in Christ and their neighbor, or else they are not Christian," "They live in Christ through faith and in the neighbor through love. Through faith they are caught up beyond themselves into God; likewise through love they fall down beneath themselves into the neighbor — remaining nevertheless always in God and God's love."

We don’t serve the world. We don’t serve the economy. We don’t serve institutions, even if it is the church. We serve Jesus, and we do that be serving our neighbor. We serve our neighbors Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake, the trans teen kicked out of their home by their parents, the foster child that who has never known a home, Savanna and other the indigenous and native women who have gone missing, singles moms who use SNAP, the two-hundred thousand people who have contracted and died from Covid-19, including members of this congregation. How are we serving them?

These people were made in the image of God… just as we are made in the image of God. We are chosen and anointed in our baptisms and then we are called out – under God’s authority - into the vineyard where the work of justice is always taking place. God is always at work in turning us into God’s people. God is always turning bad news into good news…. God is always turning “nos” into “yesses.” And whether today is a yes day or a no day, at the end of the day we are still God’s children. God still says YES to us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Purple Blob of God's Love

 9-20-20 

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

You may remember that I might have mentioned Pine Lake Lutheran Camp in Waupaca Wisconsin… once or twice before. They, like many camps across the country, have suspended normal camp, and instead need to support themselves in creative ways, such as offering individual all those empty cabins to families for some vacation time. And when I heard Pine Lake was doing the same, we jumped at the chance to support this place that had been integral to my own call as a pastor. As we walked around the camp, I fondly remembered the songs, games, evening campfires, and funny skits we would do as a staff, especially one of my favorites, the Purple Blob skit.

It goes something like this – a single person goes to the front, pretending to carry a large purple blob with both arms. They narrate how much the LOVE big purple blob. In succession, various individuals enter, chat, and ask to have some of the blob. When the blob-carrier refuses, their friend goes away sad, and each time, the blob gets smaller, until eventually the blob is small enough to fit in the palm of their hand. Terrified their beloved blob will disappear, the person decides to try something different: to share. All the same people come back through, one by one, this time given some of the blob, which is shown to get bigger, and bigger by how wide everyone’s arms are. At the very end, unable to contain the blob any longer, the Big Purple Blob is tossed into the audience.

This skit is both bad math….  AND good Lutheran doctrine. One of our core Lutheran tenants is idea that we are at the same time both sinner and saint. The fancy Latin way to say this is simil iustus et peccator. One hundred percent sinner in desperate need of God’s grace. And one hundred percent saint saved by that grace in our baptisms. One hundred percent AND one hundred percent.  You might remember that I talked about it this spring over Facebook live…. Only 6 months but feeling like a million years ago.

This is Purple Blob Math… God’s math. It is math that doesn’t make sense to us and the world that we live in. And there are other examples of God’s math, adapted from a post a friend of mine shared on Facebook:

Jesus equals = One whole human nature + one whole divine nature

1 + 1 + 1 = 1 (that’s the Trinity, by the way – Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three in one and one in three at the same time)

This one is from two weeks ago:  where 2 or more are gathered (or “n”) always equals another guy (Jesus) is there or “n” + 1.

One sheep (greater than sign, or more important than) ninety-nine sheep. Also, one coin is greater than 9 coins.

God's love (minus) love that you give away = MORE of God’s love than what we had to start with…. Like with the Purple Blob of God’s Love.

And then from this week we get a couple of whopping examples of “Purple Blob Math.” Twelve hours of work equals one day's wages… but then one hour of work ALSO equals one day's wages! One twelfth equals to twelve-twelfths!  The last will be first, and the first will be last! This is certainly some “purple blob math”!

Perhaps then it is not so surprising that Jesus used stories and not math as a teaching tool over the course of his ministry. I’ve shared before how these stories are called “parables,” which comes from a word that means “to cast alongside,” “Consider A by considering B.” These parables of Jesus are often hard to swallow, because they resist easy comparisons. They are not really analogies or allegories, where one thing clearly stands in – or equals, if you will – another thing. They are vignettes and snippets, combining elements of real life, both a shorthand of things we find familiar. Until everything familiar gets upended…which also happens to be one of Jesus’s favorite things to do.

Like the original owner of the purple blob believed at the start of the skit, we live in a culture that convinces us that scarcity is the name of the game. If you have more, that means that I have less. We are constantly looking at what our neighbor has and compared to what we lack. If we see our neighbor being blessed in some way, we are tempted to feel resentful and left out.  If another group gets something that we thought only belonged to us, we feel less valued. So they hang on to what little they do have with a vengeance…. But they may find, like the kid in the skit, the purple blob gets smaller and smaller when we live that way.

There is even an acronym for this that is floating around social media: FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out – the anxiety that comes with missed opportunities that often happens when we are preoccupied with what other people are doing. Much like the workers who labored all day, as they complained against the others who worked fewer hours but got the same about of pay. Instead of being satisfied that the vineyard owner gave ALL of them a fair daily wage, some peeked over the shoulder of the other workers, and felt cheated. They feared that they missed out on something that they imagine COULD have been MORE, and belittling the generosity of the employer, instead of realizing that what THEY have is enough.

Right now many people are treating some lives as less important, invisible in our society, but they matter to God, and they should matter to us. With our actions, the church can say, “these people matter too, and they are enough.” Because we know that it won’t make us matter LESS in God’s eyes. Until we all ACT like ALL lives really are precious, loved, and worthy, we HAVE to lift up Black lives, Trans lives, Homeless lives, and the lives of the most vulnerable among us.

Some things should not be considered a zero-sum game. Love… equality… freedom … “mattering”…. Saying one person matters does not mean that other people matter less. It just means that some people are being treated as mattering less and we are bringing it to everyone’s attention, so that we can take corrective action together and right the injustices in our world. Until we live in a world where all lives are treated the same, we who have privilege and voice must speak up.

At the end of the day, we all need to eat, whether we worked one hour or twelve…. Or none at all. And we all get the same amount of God’s love – all of it – not that we have done anything to deserve it. We each get an infinite amount of God’s love, and there is still an infinite amount left over. If you haven’t noticed, big purple blog math is Grace… another deeply cherished Lutheran idea. Grace is God’s purple blob math in a nutshell.

The world doesn’t want us to live by God’s math, aka grace. And the sinner-ness in all of us doesn’t want to live by this math either. But that is what our baptisms are for – a place where we begin to live by the purple blob math of God’s grace.

We were baptized once, though we also need to repent and remember our baptisms daily. We were baptized with water that wasn’t just plain water, but is also infused with the Holy Spirit and a promise. At every moment, we are both our old sinful selves and our new baptized selves. Baptism is a kind of death – to sin – so that we may have life – raised as Jesus was raised from the dead. We were born once, but in baptism, we are reborn as children of God, marked by the cross of Christ on our foreheads… invisible…. Part of a larger whole and not to be kept to yourself…. Like the big purple blob that is the body of Christ, meant to be shared with the world.

It’s everywhere, and we cannot escape this grace. Thanks be to God, and big purple blog math. Amen.

God's Heart, Our Heart: Virtual Rally Day 2020

 Sermon 9-13-20

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.

Our Rally Day today looks just a little bit different than it normally does – a year ago in the parlor, adult education class was popping in a new DVD into the TV, the Pray-ground was stocked with new crayons, and the pews were re-populated with summer tans, fresh haircuts, and lots of backpacks to be blessed.

Even if you are no longer a student ourselves at the moment, we all remember what it was like to go to school for the first day of a new year, at least in the pre-pandemic times. We remember how excited or nervous we felt, the night before when we fretted over our outfit and set out our backpack will all our supplies – new pencils and pens, empty notebooks and folders to be filled with knowledge, calculators and rulers and crayons and highlighters.

Dealing with newness and change can make us anxious. And now, we have the added layer of trying to figure out how to navigate a new school year in the middle of a pandemic. Zoom, Canvas, Google Classrooms, Microsoft Teams, emails, hybrid learning, mask, and social distancing – in some ways, we are being taught a new way to BE taught. We are learning a new way to learn.

Teaching is also one of Jesus’s favorite things to do… especially when the lesson that we have to learn will surprise us. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches A LOT, and this week we hear yet another snippet of one of his longer lesson that take up most of chapter 18. Last week, Jesus taught how sin is handled in the community.  But much before that, at the beginning of chapter 18, the disciples ask Jesus “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” Jesus, probably rolling his eyes, bring in a child and says “…unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

But Peter seems to be hung up on verse 15 from last week – “If another member of the church sins against you…” Peter seems to be less interested in the reconciliation that forgiveness would bring, and more interested in how many times he will have to put up with other people sinning. So, Jesus told a story.

The first slave if you recall, owed ten thousand talents, which is pretty much like saying ‘A jillion dollars” - an amount that no person could POSSIBLY work off in their entire lifetimes. The other slave, if you remember, owed the first one va very tiny amount by comparison. But the first slave does not forgive this small amount, even after his enormous debt is forgiven. He did not forgive as he was forgiven.

I want to admit here the discomfort I have with Jesus telling a story that involves slavery, where Jesus doesn’t acknowledge the injustice of slavery. It is true that Jesus used what was commonplace in his parables, the stuff of daily life – growing crops, raising livestock, cooking meals, family relationships – and at that time, slavery WAS a given part of everyday life. Even Jesus’s own people were semi-enslaved themselves, in a kind of “vassal” or serf system, so they may not batten an eyelash about weighted terms like “King” and “slave.”

The people listening to Jesus’s story in real time didn’t hear it in a vacuum… and neither do we. WE hear these words with very different ears, and cannot escape how the institution of slavery has been baked into the legacy of this nation, and is the cause of deep-seated injustice that is playing itself out in our daily news headlines.

In the wake of everything that has happened this past summer, myself and so of my pastor colleagues have been reading books by people of color about anti-racism work. One of the best books I read so far is called “Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation” by Latasha Morrison. We’ll be starting to read and discuss it as a congregation later this month, and I hope you join us. This book weaves together our Christians ideals of faith, confession, and forgiveness to the hard and uncomfortable work of seeing and healing the deep racial divides in our country.

A powerful moment in this book comes when Morrison visits a very special “Plantation turned Museum.” Whitney Plantation, a once-operational slave camp and farm, now honestly bears witness to “the history of slave ownership in the South and to honor the slaves who once live [there]” (71). When she visited, Morrison was the only African American present in a tour group of people of European descent, including the young white tour guide.

Along the tour, Morrison received the name of a man who had actually live there – Albert Patterson – and later each tour participate was invited to ring the plantation bell in honor of the name they were given. The ringing of that bell pierced her heart and soul… ringing out in the past, present, and future. Through the sound of the bell, through her conflicting emotions and resistance and hurt, the Holy Spirit called Morrison to this work of racial reconciliation.

Later in this book, Morrison writes: “...only when we make space for our emotions, when we’ve honestly evaluated them, can we move into true Christlike forgiveness.” (108)

Unfortunately, we are not Jesus. For many of us, we don’t even have to get to the seventy-seventh time to find this hard or even impossible. Sometimes, one sin against us is all it takes for us to get stuck – and here we’re are talking a “BIG SIN.” Betrayal of trust, assault, spreading a lie, bullying or meanness, destruction of property, infidelity, violence, threats…. Some of us have lived through some very difficult hurts perpetrated against us by other people, sometimes even the people we love.

Does this also mean that if someone sins against me, for any reason, I should do like the song from “Frozen” and “Let it Go?” Even seventy-seven times? This can easily be interpreted as the opposite being just as true – “If I do not forgive those who sin against me, God will not forgive me.”

One of my seminary professors, Dr. Craig Koester, shared this helpful insight: " Forgiveness is not acceptance of the past. . . Forgiveness is the declaration that the past will not define the future. . .” But maybe today is not that day. Maybe today the past is far too present. Maybe you are on your seventy-eighth go-round with a loved one. Jesus tells us to forgive from the heart….. what happens when our hearts have been so destroyed that we just don’t have enough pieces left to be ABLE to forgive?

Only God is in charge of when that moment of forgiveness happens… if it is a single moment at all. Most of the time, it is a series of little moments. One day, you are mad, hurt, and betrayed, and the next day you are still mad, hurt, and betrayed…. But twenty days, a hundred days, a thousand and twenty days, or a bajillion days later, you may find that the anger and hurt are no longer there. It no longer has you in its grip.

There is no time frame for forgiveness. There is no heart that is too broken to be healed. You can’t keep track, and you can’t rush it. Forgiveness can’t be counted toward, only journeyed through, felt when given a healthy space, and built, piece by piece.

Every week we say together in the Apostles Creed, “I believe in (among other things) the forgiveness of sins.” And, as we heard Jesus tell us last week, “…if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus is among us, when we gather to believe in the forgiveness of sins, even when we can’t ACTUALLY FORGIVE YET.

Together we believe in forgiveness, even when we can’t do it yet. Together, we are all Children of God, gathered together here to forgive, encourage, challenge, and love one another. Together, we will stumble and fall sometimes, but we have one another to lift us up, dust us off, and get us back on our feet, dusty heart and all. Thanks be to God. Amen.