Lent is....

Lent is… letting God defragmenting your hard drive.

At the beginning of Lent, I usually have the best of intentions. I don’t normally give something up, but I try to add something to my devotional live. This year it was a nice resource put out by Augsburg Fortress, a little devotional on Romans that fits in your pocket. And, like most years, my use of it has been hit or miss.

But that’s ok. Because Lent is like letting God defragment your hard drive.

When my seminary Luther tweeted “Lent is….”, encouraging people to fill in the blank, I thought I was pretty clever at coming up with this one. I didn’t expect that God would actually listen to me and make me eat my words this Lent.

Defragmenting a hard drive, if you recall, is the process of getting rid of the unnecessary junk in your computer and rearranging the programs to fill in the gaps more neatly, kind of like arranging your bookshelves by height and size so that they fit better. Now when we defragment computers it takes an hour or two, maybe more if it’s been a while. Beau once told me that he defragmented his computer way back when, and it took it an entire week. AN ENTIRE WEEK. Seven days of defragmenting. Can you imagine? What would we do nowadays without a computer for an entire week??? Thank goodness the process is sooo much faster now!

But defragmenting life is still a much longer process. And letting God defragment your personal hard drive takes an entire Lent, if not longer. For the past few weeks, and really for the last five months since moving to Trenton, God has been trying to teach me what is really necessary and what things might fit better in my life if rearranged a bit. Sometimes I’m a good student, sometimes I’m not. But I’m still learning a lot. I’m learning that it is possible to be a one car family even with both of our crazy schedules. I’m learning that a few sewing skills and some creativity can go a long way when it comes to saving money. I’m learning that when God rips down the detailed map of where you thought your life would go, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole wide universe behind it.

But that’s pretty much Lent in a nutshell. God taking our fragments and putting them back together to make a whole that is much better than the cobbled-together mess we’ve come up with; God making something beautiful out of the mess. 

This liturgical art is made from sea glass and broken IKEA plates, reconstructed and used at "Baby Pastor School" 

Out of the Tombs, or Third Sermon in a Three Sermon Week

Sermon 4-6-14

Grace to you and peace from God our father and from our lord and savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Yikes. Are you feeling the burn? Yet another marathon-length reading from the Gospel of John, our fourth in five weeks.  Even though it’s the year of Matthew’s gospel, during Lent we are treated to a John mini-series. So it might be good to do a little re-cap, to review of all the interesting characters that Jesus has met this “season.”

“Previously in the gospel of John,” or what we could call, “How I Met our Savior”: Jesus had a late night meeting with perplexed Nicodemus the Pharisee. Next, Jesus talked to the woman at the well, victim-of-gossip turned town evangelist.  Last week Jesus healed a man born blind and created a giant controversy for the whole town. And today, for this last Sunday before Palm Sunday, the season finale, his greatest accomplishment to date: Jesus comforts his friends Mary and Martha, then raises Lazarus from the dead. Well, really, for John it would be more like a mid-season finale, because this story is only the half-way mark, pretty much right in the middle of this gospel. And in so many other ways is this story central to the Gospel of John. We have the great confession - that Jesus is the messiah – though it comes from the lips of Martha and not Peter. The raising of Lazarus is giving us a foretaste of what is to come. It is the watershed moment that sets into motion the events that we will be remembering during Holy Week – Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. It is, according to John, the incident that begins the conspiracy by the religious leaders to end Jesus’ life. In John, by raising Lazarus, Jesus is signing his own death warrent.

But… that’s all part of the teaser trailer for next time: “Tune in next week for the second half of ‘How I Met Our Savior’.” So let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Let’s talk about THIS week.

How was this week in your life? Was it pretty average, things going along according to schedule, no surprises, pretty run-of-the-mill?  Did things go especially well for you this week? Did life seem to “go your way?” Did you find yourself unexpectedly surprised by some good things? Or was it “one of THOSE weeks”? Where nothing seemed to go right, one setback after another throws you for a loop, with hardly a moment to catch your bearings?

Let me share with you a little bit about my week. A week ago last Saturday, I attended the funeral service for the mother of the council president at St. Mark’s in Hamilton, where I am the vice-pastor, helping them through their pastoral transition while they call a new pastor. The woman was nearly 90 and had lived a full life when she had a stroke the week before. And then, the evening of the same day of that funeral, another member of St. Mark, this time a man in his 40s died, after suffering from a long illness. His service and burial were on Wednesday. Then, on Thursday, I attended a discussion for church leaders at the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in Hamilton, on the topic of navigating end of life issues for patients and families. And through all of this week about death, the story of Jesus raising Lazarus hovered over me.

Mary and Martha were having “one of those weeks” too, where time seems to stop and all semblance of normalcy goes out the window. This time there is no bickering about who will cook and who gets to listen to Jesus. Their brother was ill and near death, and so they called the one person in the world that they believed and hoped could help – their friend Jesus. Only Jesus didn’t come right away. He didn’t arrive in town until Lazarus had been dead for four days.

If I had been Martha or Mary, I would have been furious. From their point of view, while Lazarus was alive, something could have been done. He could have been healed. But death is final. Death is the one thing we cannot escape, and we are mercilessly captive to its power.  From our perspective, death is the end for those of us left behind.

And Mary and Martha do lay this statement at Jesus’ feet, along with their grief and sorrow: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Buried in that statement perhaps is the question: “So where were you, Lord?”

Where were you, Lord, when Lazarus died? And where were you in the life of the young man from St. Mark’s who died? Or when the stroke happened to the mother of their council president? Where were you, Lord, when I lost my job, or my hours were cut, or my child got really sick, or my grandchildren stopped going to church? Where ARE you, Lord, in the crazy-busy grind of life? Where is the “Resurrection and the Life” when my life feels more like death?

When Mary and Martha asked this question, they were not lamenting to an aloof and unavailable god somewhere far away, hoping that perhaps someone was listening. No, Mary and Martha were speaking face-to-face with Jesus, the flesh and blood son of God. They were speaking with Jesus, the man who walked and talked, and taught and healed. Jesus, who got thirsty, and who felt sadness, and who wept as his heart was breaking over the death of his friend Lazarus and the pain it caused his friends. Jesus, who broke down and cried.

How foolish and insensitive of Jesus, it seemed to everyone around, for Jesus to then dry his tears and shout at the tomb: Lazarus, come out! Until, that is, Lazarus, still dressed in his burial wrappings, emerged from his own tomb.

 “Where were you, Lord?” He is there, in our tomb with us. He is there, calling us to come out. He is there, calling life out of the darkness of death, just as he did that day at Lazarus’ tomb, and then again on that Sunday morning we call Easter.

Where is God calling life out of death in your life, right here, right now? Or, where has God called life out of death in your life in the past?

This week, It’s been just over six months since my Grandpa, my dad’s dad, had a stroke and later died. He was eighty-seven, and had lived a full and satisfying life, working the land and raising nine children. His wife of over sixty years, my grandma, had died of bone cancer ten years before, and he still missed her terribly. Sometimes he wondered what he was still doing here, but he still tremendously enjoyed his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

In September he had a stroke that left him unable to speak or swallow. He had made it clear that he did not want to live as his aunt had, many years ago after her stroke, with very little quality of life.  But his strong heart meant that it was almost two weeks before his body gave up the fight. It was so hard to watch as he got weaker every day. But the remaining time that we spent with him was the greatest gift he has ever given me. I was able to spend time with my family as we sat around his bed, holding his hand and telling stories. The memories of those days, like the memories of my grandpa, will be with me forever. It was a holy time, with the space between life and death blurring together. And for me, God was bringing the gift of new life of strengthening my relationships with my family out of the grief and sadness of his death.

What about for you? Where can you see the power of life overcoming the power of death? What cold and dark tombs is God calling you out of? And how can we, as the community who surrounds you and loves you, help to unbind you once God has called you forth out of death?

The final hymn for the funeral at St. Mark’s on Wednesday was A Mighty Fortress is our God, chosen by his family because it was a favorite of the young man who died. If you recall, that hymn reminds us that that death does not have the final word. “Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child or spouse; Though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day.”

Death does not win the day. Because we believe and hope and trust in the one who is the Resurrection and the Life, we can see through death to see the coming life emerging; we can look through Good Friday to see that Easter IS coming. Amen.

Lent Meditation 4-2

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Time.
Days,
hours,
minutes,
seconds,
marching,
on and on,
continuing
into
eternity.

Time. Sometimes, when you’re having a good time, or you’re “in the zone,” and hours or an entire day can pass in the blink of an eye, leaving you wonder “where did the time go?” Other times, minutes can seem like hours, and time can stretch out so that it feels like an eternity.

During these forty days of Lent, we are deliberately stretching out time, so that we are spending six weeks dwelling in the last twenty-four hours of Jesus life. The night began in celebration, with Jesus celebrating the Passover with his twelve disciples. They broke bread and shared a cup of wine. But that celebration was bittersweet with the knowledge that one of Jesus’s own closest friends would betray him and the rest would abandon him in his hour of greatest trials. To prepare himself for the night ahead, Jesus prays and asked his disciples to pray with him, but they their eyes and hearts are too heavy for them.

As the darkness deepened, Jesus is betrayed, arrested, and taken away to be secretly tried by the religious authorities. After a sham trial, they decide that Jesus deserves death, and they will hand him over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. In the meantime, Peter has denied Jesus three times as the rooster crowed, just as Jesus predicted.

And now it is morning, but this time, morning does not bring hope of a new day. Today, Friday, Jesus is taken by the religious leaders to Pilate in order to carry out his death sentence. In Matthew’s gospel, we skip entirely the trip to Herod the puppet king, colluding with the Roman occupiers. No, in Matthew Jesus is sent straight to the source of political power in the region, Pontius Pilate.

At the time of Jesus, Israel was again an occupied territory, second-class citizens in their own country. So the religious leaders were not allowed to carry out death sentences. That was the job of the Romans, and they were very good at it. IF, that is, they could make Jesus seem dangerous to Roman rule. Rome could care less about some internal religious dispute. But if Jesus were really a threat to the government, Jesus would be taken care of. So the religious elite imagined charges that would get Pilate’s attention – that Jesus claimed to be king of the Jews.

This was not the first time, though, that Jesus had been called “king of the Jews.” Long before this, back at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, a group of wise men from the East arrived in Jerusalem, and starting asking “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” This terrified the entire city of Jerusalem, and with good reason. One does not simply go around claiming to look for the King of the Jews. At this time, there can only be one king of the Jews, and his name is Caesar. It’s no wonder that Herod went to such lengths to try to kill this child. What is the death of one child when the peace of an entire nation is at stake?

And so, all these years later, the question at hand really has not changed all that much – what is the death of one man when fate of an entire nation is possibly at stake?

Jesus, who seems so harmless to us – welcoming children, talking to women, feeding people, healing the blind and the lame. What could be so wrong with that? Isn’t Jesus the kind of guy you want to have hanging around? Not really, at least, not if you are part of the religious elite, and not if you are the empire of Rome. This Jesus was drawing too many people, and attracting too much attention. This Jesus had to go, even if it had to come from witness tampering and massaging of the truth.

But the great irony is that Jesus is actually guilty of the trumped up charges against him. Jesus really is the King of the Jews. He is the messiah, the chosen one, the son of man seated at the right hand of power, coming on the clouds of heaven. Christ is not Jesus’ last name, it’s his title. It means the one who is anointed.  It means the one who is selected and set apart by God to rule. It means king.

But Jesus is not just a regular old king, like the brutal and cruel Caesars and Pilates of this world, set apart above and beyond the people they rule over. Jesus is not a king that comes with armies and weapons to vanquish his enemies. Jesus came to be a king WITH his people, to rule them by example, his example of self-giving love. His is a kingdom that conquers by peace. He is a king that rules by dying.

But before Jesus is to die, the soldiers under Pilate must put on a show of strength before this condemned and tortured man. These soldiers are under the impression that they are mocking Jesus when one takes off his own robe to create a sham of a cape and another braided a pitiful crown out of thorns and a third pulled up a tall weed for a scepter. But the truth is, Jesus was never the kind of king to wear gold and jewels and fine robes. What they put on Jesus is just what a suffering servant-king ought to wear – not trappings of power and might, but badges of pain and suffering.

There is one last item that the Christ will wear before that Friday is over, one last garment that this King will put on for our sakes. That is the shroud of death. And a tomb shall be his royal palace.

Because even kings die. No ruler, no emperor, no king, no matter how powerful, has ever defeated the power of death. But then again, Jesus isn’t just a
regular
old
king,
is he?

At the Well

Sermon from 3-23-14

Grace and peace to you from God the Father and from our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Rob Bell’s latest book, What We Talk About When We Talk about God, is one of my most favorite books I’ve read so far. I think I’ve read it about three or four times now, including re-reading to lead our last week’s women’s book group. And I think I can say that we had a very good discussion.

However, I have one beef with Rob Bell’s book. On the surface this may seem a minor thing, easy to overlook, except it speaks directly to the story you just heard us read oh so dramatically just a few moments ago. Bell lists by example some of the many times Jesus went to the margins to encounter people who were despised, ignored, and outcast. One person he lists is a “thirsty, loose Samaritan women he wasn’t supposed to talk with.” It’s easy to think, what’s the big deal, Pastor Lydia? Isn’t what he says true? So please bear with me, because we just might find that Sesame Street was right, of these things just doesn’t belong.

Was she a woman? Well, yes, she was a woman at a time where it as not acceptable for respectable men to talk with respectable women unless accompanied by their respectable husband, brother, or other male relative. And yet, Jesus still talks to her.

Was she a Samaritan? Yes, and this is “strike two” against her, since Jews did not interact with Samaritans if they could help it. There was a long history of bad blood between the two groups. The Jews considered the Samaritans to be a kind of inferior, a watered-down version of themselves, because Samaritans intermarried with other groups of people, and they also had worship practices that were very different from that of the Jews. This woman belonged to this group. And yet, Jesus strikes up a conversation.

Was this woman thirsty? She almost certainly was. This was way before running water, which now we turn on without even thinking, whenever we wish a tall glass of cold water. If you wanted a glass of water at that time, or wanted to wash your clothes or your dishes or yourself, you had to carry a big jar of all the way out to the community well. And if you’ve ever gone camping or done gardening, you know that even just a little water can start to get very heavy, very heavy.

But was this woman “loose”? Or was she actually more of a loser in her own culture and society? This woman lived before no-fault divorce. She lived before women could vote, or have jobs outside the home, or control their own bank accounts, or have much say over their own lives. We can never really know what happened to her, but there are other possibilities besides being a serial bride - she could have been widowed five times and now considered cursed. She could have been unable to have children and have been cast off by each husband. Perhaps she lived with the sixth man because, by then, no one else would take her in and take care of her, under any circumstances.

In any case, she was judged by the other people in her community, so much so that she would prefer to carry her heavy water jar in the heat of the day – alone - rather than face the whispers and stares of the other women. But she is still being whispered about and stared at, two thousand years later, by preachers and theologians and writers who continue to hang the label of “loose” on this woman like a scarlet letter.

When this woman came to the well that day, she was not just physically thirsty, but emotionally and spiritually as well. Her relationships have failed her; her culture has failed her; and we may have failed her. She might have even wondered if God had failed her too. Her world had become a lonely wilderness, a harsh desert of shame. So the last thing she expected that day was to have a conversation with the savior of the world.
To Jesus, this woman is not her past. To Jesus, she is not defined by what she has or hasn’t done; she is not defined by who she’s with; she is not defined by gender or race or creed. To Jesus, she is a thirsty person in need of living water.

To Jesus, we are not defined by our past, or by what we’ve done or haven’t done, or by who we’re with or our race or gender or if we believe the “right” way. To Jesus, we are a thirsty people in need of living water.
Where we find her story in Rob Bell’s book is a chapter called “For.” Not the number four, but the preposition “for” - as in, to be in support of or on the side of or being concerned for the well-being of someone else. In this instance, Bell is making the case that God is for us. Through Jesus, God shows this woman that God is for her, that God has not forgotten her. Through Jesus, God also shows US that God is for US too, and has not forgotten us, either.

In this chapter, Bell writes: “The good news insists that God doesn’t wait for us to get ourselves polished, shined, proper, and without blemish – God comes to us and meets us and blesses us while we are still in the middle of the mess we’ve created. The good news isn’t us getting it together so that we can have God’s favor; the good news is us finding God exactly in the moment of our greatest not-togetherness.”

Jesus didn’t offer this woman living water once she’d gotten her life straightened out into something more socially acceptable. He offered her living water at her moment of greatest need.

Likewise, Jesus doesn’t wait to give us living water once we’ve gotten our lives all in order, because, frankly, that’s never going to happen. None of us have it all together, at least not for much longer than about 30 seconds. We’re too weighed down by the past, or too overwhelmed by the present, or too afraid of the future. There is no way that any of us can carry the deep well of burdens in our little water jar, at least not without falling over, over and over again. And we would rather suffer alone than face the humiliation of someone else seeing us in our weak moments.

But what if Jesus is FOR us? What if Jesus meets us right there, at the deep well of our s troubles, and offers to us something way better than anything our little bucket could ever hope to hold? What if Jesus turned us into bubblers?

Now, what’s a bubbler? It’s what people from Wisconsin call drinking fountains, like the ones we have over by the bathrooms. When I’m in an unfamiliar building and want a drink of water, without thinking I might ask for a bubbler. And that’s kind of what living water does. It bubbles up in you, sometimes quietly, sometimes suddenly with gusto, and almost always spilling out onto your shirt and out onto the people around you. This is the joy that Jesus gives us, that he called us as his beloved children and followers, and send us out into the world to splash other people.

And that’s exactly what happened to this abandoned and outcast Samaritan woman. She leaves her water jar at the well in her haste to tell others about this man who just might, maybe be the Messiah, the savior of the world. She became an evangelist, a preacher for her community, sharing her encounter with Jesus. In fact, she converted her whole town! All because she left her jar at the well and splashed the entire town with living water.

Because once we’ve tasted of the living waters, we just can’t keep it to ourselves. It’s time for you to become a bubbler, too. That’s right – I have a task for you to do! Try to tell one person this week about where Jesus has met you at the well and gave you the living water. It can be someone you know well, or it can be someone you don’t know. You can even use this sermon as an excuse, and say “One of my pastors told me to!” Call a friend, write a letter, write a blog, tweet it - It doesn’t matter how you do it, or when, or where, or to whom – they just might listen, and they just might also come to know Jesus, giver of living water, savior of the world. AMEN.

Come and Die

Lent Reflection 3-12-14

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer, Amen.

I recently infiltrated a Bible study event hosted by the South East Pennsylvania Synod. And by infiltrated I mean I heard about it from a pastor friend in that synod and dutifully sent in my registration indicating my lunch preference. But the reason I went is because one of my seminary professors would be speaking, Dr. David Lose, professor, author, theologian, and blogger, and I guess you might go as far as to say I’m a bit of a groupie.

Everything he said that day I had heard before in his classes and lectures, but being on this side of ordination, actually being a pastor, I heard his words with new ears. I felt like I “got” what he was saying in a way that I hadn’t before.

This story that we have begun retelling tonight is a story that you also have probably heard before, maybe even many times. But right now, at this moment, during this season of Lent, you are in a different place than you were the last time you heard it. And though Jesus words don’t change from year to year, the meaning we find in them grows and changes, like a living thing.

One thing that never changes about Jesus is his funny way of bringing out both the best and worst in the people around him. For those who have experienced the healing and restoring power of Jesus, this man is someone we try, however haltingly, to imitate. For those who have a stake in the status quo, who want so badly to hold on to the darkness that is so familiar, Jesus must be rejected, even destroyed. In these old familiar stories, it’s pretty easy to identify who’s who. But this becomes much harder as we living in the middle of our own story. And sometimes, we are both kinds of people at the same time.

 Our story begins this night at a party, which is as good a place as any for some drama, I guess. This gathering too is infiltrated by an unexpected guest – a “Jesus groupie” if you will. We don’t know who this woman is or where she came from – we only know that she is driven by one purpose, and one purpose only, to give Jesus a beautiful gift – a jar full of very expensive perfume, likely the most valuable thing she owned. This woman was the only one who did not abandon Jesus that night. Hers was the last kind act that Jesus experienced on that long night of suffering. She is the first of many faithful women who remained by Jesus’ side during his passion. And because of that, Jesus praises her, even though history does not even remember her name.

But on this night, up is down, and down is up. Just after the woman gives her costly gift, Judas sells his loyalty to Jesus at the cost of thirty pieces of silver. Judas, who was an invited guest to Jesus’ inner circle, is the one who betrays Jesus, while the nameless party-crashing woman is the one who gives Jesus comfort on the eve of his suffering. Jesus is again revealing both the very best and the very worst in us.

Most of the time, though, we are not all-out betraying Jesus as Judas did, but neither are we so eager to be as self-giving like this woman. Most of the time, we fall somewhere in between the two. We skirt around the edges of the path Jesus calls us to, professing our unending loyalty like Peter while at the same time sorrowfully wondering about our own unfaithfulness. We don’t want to betray Jesus, but at the same time, we are reluctant join Peter in his promise: “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you.” We all know how that worked out for Peter, but could any of us truly say we would have acted any different that night?
Human beings are hard-wired for self-preservation. If anything, we are really, really good at avoiding death at all costs. Death, even if it is not a physical death, is frightening, disrupting, and upsetting. It causes fear and pain. And that is exactly where Jesus is headed. That is exactly where Jesus calls us to follow him.

As German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote: “When Christ calls [a person], he bids him come and die.” That’s not a very happy thought. But in a way, that’s what Lent is all about - clearing out all the stuff that we’ve let clutter up our lives, all the things that in the end  aren’t really worth holding on to, but all the same, we are afraid to let go of.

When we follow Jesus’ call, our selfishness and greed are put to death. Our brokenness and separations are put to death. Our fear of the unknown is put to death. The darkness in our hearts is put to death. Even our death is put to death when Jesus calls us sinners to follow him.

Even as Jesus is face to face with his own suffering and death, Jesus gathers twelve very imperfect disciples to share in his last meal. He shares with them bread and wine, his body and blood, knowing full well that in just a few hours they will be scattered like frightened sheep and one will betray him. And yet, Jesus promises them that he will see them again, after he is raised, and he will go before them to Galilee, just as he went before us into death so that we, too, could have a share in death’s defeat.

But before that glorious resurrection dawn is a night as dark as death. Before the celebration of Jesus raised is the remembrance of Jesus betrayed and abandoned, of his body broken and blood poured out for many, for us, his imperfect disciples. During Lent we live inside story, as we are gathered together, sing hymns together, pray together, sit in silence together, waiting together in hope for that coming dawn to shine on us.

Amen.

Sermon from Feb. 16th

Grace and peace to you from God our father and from our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ, amen.

A week ago I got to spend the weekend with a hundred and fifty high school Lutherans and their adults from all over New Jersey. As you might expect, we had plenty of fun and not enough sleep, and I was very blessed to be the chaplain for the event. But as much as I was teaching and preaching and ministering to others that weekend, I was also continually learning from, and being surprised by, and being MINISTERED TO by others.

Here is just one example. It’s a Saturday night tradition at that event to have an open mike night after evening worship, and normally kids sign up to sing their favorite song or play the guitar. But one act surprised us all. It was stand-up, and the youth who was “standing up” was a girl. That’s not a sight you normally see, not even on TV. You might be able to name one or maybe two famous female comediennes, and here was this young woman, taking a risk, standing up in front of her peers, and she was funny.

She began her routine by describing what it was like to ride down to this youth event with her pastor at the wheel. This pastor, like someone you may know, was not originally from New Jersey and was also still coming to terms with the interesting traffic on the turnpike. When being cut off, this youth informed us, the pastor might yell, “son of a… child of God!” … Or when someone would suddenly slow down for no apparent reason, causing her to slam on her brakes, she would say, “God… bless you!”

We “adult-type-people” sitting in the back were practically rolling on the floor laughing. It was nice to know that someone else also felt the same frustration that I did about some of the crazy driving I’ve encountered around here! But at the same time I was laughing, I was also cringing a little bit inside. Because I’ve been there. I’ve been the person being cut off, and I’ve said some pretty unkind things alone in the safety of my vehicle. We all knew what this pastor had wanted to say, and we all knew that at one time or another we all had said those things, or we at least thought them.

In that moment, according to Jesus, when we let our anger get the better of us, and say things we will regret later, we are breaking the fifth commandment, and murdering the personhood of our brother or sister in our minds.

And so we’ve come to the part in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount that is not so fun to listen to. After building us up for two weeks after hearing about being blessed if we are poor in spirit or mourning or peacemaking, and after hearing about how we are light and salt for the world, we get to the hard stuff in Jesus’s sermon. The gloves are off, the rubber has hit the road, the other shoe has dropped, and Jesus is done with the appetizers and is ready to get to the main course. And this is a tough meal that is pretty hard to swallow.

You might say that this is where being light intersects life – after talking about letting our light shine in the world, Jesus here it telling us how that’s done, example by example. And it sounds surprisingly hard. Because Jesus here is asking us, not just to keep the commandments of old, but to exceed them in a way that sounds beyond human ability.

I don’t know about you, but I think that the 10 commandments are just fine, as is. For the most part where we live it’s pretty easy to refrain from murdering someone. In fact, it’s pretty easy to go down the list of commandments and think we are doing ok – yup, respecting my parents, nope, didn’t steal anything today, nope, not coveting my next door neighbor’s house, and thank goodness they don’t have any slaves or oxen I can covet, so – whew- I guess I’m safe on that one.

But Jesus stops us in our self-congratulatory tracks. It’s one thing to do the minimum, to refrain from causing someone physical bodily harm. But if you are angry with your brother or sister, if you insult them and call them names, they are as good as dead to you, and you as good as murdered them in your mind. It’s not enough to simply refrain from cheating on one’s spouse. Every time someone looks at a woman in the media as an object to be desired, as a collection of body parts instead of a whole person, the deed is as good as done.

We don’t normally think of Jesus as talking this way. We would rather think about the Jesus that is all about love and tolerance and all that good stuff. Like, you’re good, I’m good, Jesus is good, we’re all good. Jesus loves me, this I know, so it’s ok if I curse out my neighbor on the road if they cut me off. Or, as I’ve seen one bumper sticker read: Jesus loves you, so I don’t have to. Love then, becomes a blanket over all the bad stuff I do, and makes it ok that I keep doing it. But thinking about love this way is about as effective as roses and chocolate one day a year, and misery the other three hundred and sixty-four.

But what does Jesus have to say about this crazy little thing called love? Another time Jesus says, Love your neighbor as you love yourself. As in, you see your neighbor not as an object to be coveted or as a means to an end to get what you want, but as a human being with thoughts and feelings, with hopes and dreams, with flaws and needs. Love means that we should treat everyone as if they are a beloved child of God. Because that’s what they are: beloved children of God.

So what if Jesus is reinterpreting these commands, which hopefully you remember way back from your confirmation class, not to control every aspect of our lives and make us miserable, but to help us love one another better? Perhaps then instead a list of things to avoid, these commands become the means of living a life that is full of real love and real relationships.

But how can we choose that kind of life? The deck is stacked against us: we live in a throw-away culture, where anything and everything is disposable – cups, plates, clothes, furniture …friendships, marriages, family ties. We are constantly told - if it’s worn out, throw it away. If it’s not useful anymore, throw it away. If there is a newer and better model, throw it away. If it’s inconvenient or too much work to maintain, throw it away. Take that annoying promotional for the show The Millers that is always on TV; the one where, after the son gets a divorce after three years, he “inspires” his parents to split up after 43 years of marriage. If it doesn’t make you happy, throw it away.

God will never throw us away. There is no relationship too fractured to be repaired, no sin too grievous to be forgiven, no night too dark to snuff out the light. Even when we don’t choose life – when instead we choose isolation over connection, fear over acceptance, hate over love, death over life, death does not have the final say. Life has the final say – the life that Jesus not only tells us about but also shows us in every moment of his life on earth. Jesus came to show us that love has the final say.

And we who are following in his footsteps are going to aren’t going to get it right all the time. We will continue to be the angry ones and the ones who cause others to be angry. Sometimes we will be ones doing the cursing in our cars and at other times we’ll be the ones doing the cutting-off on the turnpike. But if we choose to look at those around us through the eyes of Jesus, as beloved children of God, we infuse a healthy and much-needed dose of humanity back into the world. We can participate in the Kingdom of God here on earth. We will be the light of the world. We will be the salt of the earth. We will be servants of the living God, we will be, as Paul wrote, God’s field, and God’s building.

We become a blessing to one another. That same pastor, the one with the standup comedienne youth, came up to me after I had prayed individually over a long line of youth during the healing service, and she came and prayed for me and blessed me. In that moment I remembered that I too was a “daughter of a child of God.” Because all of us need reminding that we are beloved children of God, especially ourselves.  AMEN.

2014 Winter Youth Assembly sermon

Jeremiah 29:11-13
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart.

1 Timothy 4:12-16
Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I arrive, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you through prophecy with the laying on of hands by the council of elders. Put these things into practice, devote yourself to them, so that all may see your progress. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; continue in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.

Matthew 5:13-16
“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot. “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.

We’ve had and awesome Winter Youth Assembly 2014, haven’t we? We’ve done so much together – we’ve laid down our burdens together, we’ve sang with the awesome band together, eaten milkshakes together, eaten together, played games together, read the Bible together, talked about issues we are deeply passionate together, worshipped together, prayed together, learned about what the wider church is doing together, had too little sleep together – we’ve been the people of God together for the last thirty-six hours. And it’s been awesome. But now you have to leave.

 In just a couple hours, you’ll be on your way home or home already, back to your own house and your own family and your own bed, with homework waiting to be done before school starts tomorrow. In just a few hours, we’ll all be back to our regularly scheduled lives. You’ll be back in a world that we talked about in open space yesterday – a world full of stress and scary things and big issues and everyday obstacles. That world waiting for won’t be any different from the one you left. But maybe this time, upon reentering that world, you’ll know who you belong to and who is the one walking with you in the chaos.

Today, before we go, Jesus has some words to say to us. What we just heard a moment ago and what you read in your small groups is from a larger section in the Gospel of Matthew called the Sermon on the Mount. It’s pretty much what it says it is – its Jesus first sermon, and he preaches it on a mountain. Well done, Bible scholars. Last we you might have hard your pastor preach on the Beatitudes, the “blessed are the ‘fill-in-the-blanks’” section. And this week, we hear the next movement of the sermon, about who we are and what we are for in this world. Jesus knows that up here on the mountain, things can feel pretty safe. We may even want to stay up here forever, chillin’ with Jesus. But we have to go down the mountain sometime, and Jesus is getting us ready.

Jesus tells us, “You ARE the light of the world.” Jesus did NOT say, “you are the light if you do A, B, and C.” He didn’t say, “You’ll be the light when you get older.” He didn’t say, “You’ll be the light when you get confirmed.” Jesus said, “You ARE the light” as in RIGHT NOW, this very moment.

That light does not come from you. It doesn’t come from how awesome you are at sports, or how good you are in school, or how many friends you have, or if you are good at singing or video games or knitting. It doesn’t come from doing everything right, being the perfect son or daughter or student or athlete. If it did, not a single one of us, even the adults, would be able to generate even the tiniest spark.

Instead, your light comes from being a child of God. Last night we remembered that God created us and knows us each by name. We remembered our baptisms, where God claimed each of us as daughters and sons through water and the Holy Spirit, who keeps that light burning in us. Our light comes from the source of all light, from the one who we are called to follow, Jesus.

Right now we’re in that in-between season of the church year, between Christmas and Lent, with the funny name – Epiphany. It is a time that is all about light. How the light of Christ first dawned on us as he was born in a manger in Bethlehem, how his light shone out during his ministry in his preaching and teaching and feeding and healing, how that light could not be put out even by death. Jesus entered into our darkness, bringing God’s healing light to all the dark and broken places. And by being a child of God, you become a bearer of that light to all the world.

You are shining that light right now, even as we speak. That light might be a bright spot light, a flashlight, the light shining through the window, blinking colored Christmas lights, or a dimly burning candle flame flickering in the wind, but you are the light if the world, and you have the light of Christ in you.

Just a little light goes a long, long way. Think back when you last lost power – whether it was during Hurricane Sandy or even this last week during the snow and ice storms. When it got dark, just a little bit of light could give you enough to see by, even by just turning on the tiny light built into your phone.
But what is light for? It’s meant to shine. The light is not meant to stay in one place, to be hidden away – though it is really tempting to hide your light. God did not give you the light to put a basket over it, though that is what happens sometimes.

What are the bushel baskets in your life? Think about that for a moment. Only you know what is in your life that can hold you back, that can make you want to hide. For Timothy, who gets a letter from his mentor Paul, it was his youth and inexperience. Fortunately Timothy had someone in his life to remind him of the gifts that God had given him, to remind him to let his light shine, no matter what, so that everyone might benefit.
You are the light OF THE WORLD. It’s for the sake of others. And it’s not about shining bigger and brighter than the next person. It’s about shining enough for what that person needs right now. Its stuff that you are already doing – like service projects in your church or youth group, or seemingly little things like welcoming those who are different from us or trying to get to know people we don’t understand.

And it is also stuff you were inspired to dig deeper while you were here – being involved in the continuing Hurricane Sandy relief effort, fighting human trafficking, or world hunger, or bullying.

You are the light of the world. And when you let your light shine, you are pointing to where that light comes from. And you are not shining your light alone. On our own, shining our light in the world may seem like a tall order, something totally overwhelming, especially after seeing this weekend that there is so much to talk about, so much darkness that is still out there. But my light, plus your light, plus your light, and yours and yours and yours adds up to something really bright and strong. And together, we are enough to shine into the dark world. A wise singer once said, “You’re beautiful, like diamonds in the sky. Shine bright like a diamond.”

We may not know what the future holds for us as we shine. But we do know that God intends our future to be for good, and not for harm. And we know that Jesus walks with us into the darkest places of our lives even as we leave this place. Like Timothy, don’t neglect the gift that is in you, and don’t forget to let yourself shine. Amen.