Healing, Worth, and Wholeness.

Sermon 5-29-16

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

After my dad came out of his successful heart surgery in April, the first stop in his healing process was the ICU. At first, before Dad was released to a regular room, we could only visit him for 15 minutes at a time, once an hour, so as not to tire him out. For the other 45 minutes my Mom and I hung out in the ICU waiting room, making and drinking the bland - but free - hospital coffee, getting our family caught up with how well Dad was doing, and waiting for the next opportunity to visit. My mom loves to talk to random people, and so during one of these breaks she struck up a conversation with another lady in the waiting room, whose brother had be operated on by the same surgeon as my Dad. 

This woman asked us if we had looked up Dad’s doctor on the internet yet. We hadn’t. But when we did, we learned that apparently Dad’s doctor is a world-renowned heart surgeon who splits her time between Wisconsin, California, and traveling around the world to perform children’s heart surgeries for free.

Whoa. Dad could not have been more fortunate. This amazing surgeon happened to be in town at the exact moment that Dad needed her, since just four days after Dad’s surgery, she was due to fly back to South America to do more heart surgeries on children in the amazon. If we would have had time to “do our homework,” we could not have chosen a better surgeon for the job. What had Dad done to deserve getting this amazing world-famous heart doctor as his surgeon? Nothing, really. He is not more or less worthy person than the next guy who needs heart surgery. My Dad was at the right place at the right time. Which, I like to think was definitely a God thing.

Sort of like in today’s Gospel reading. We’re wading back in the Gospel of Luke for the summer, and are going to hear story after story of Jesus healing the sick, eating with sinners, telling stories and teaching people about the kingdom of God – and all along the way encountering people who are at the right place at the right time to come face to face with the divine, to personally experience God showing up in their own lives.

For the centurion in Capernaum, Jesus was certainty at the right place at the right time. His worthy slave was sick and nearly dying, and I like to think that the centurion had done his homework about the physician in question. He heard something about Jesus, since Jesus had been to Capernaum before, healing and cast out demons on his previous trip. Perhaps the centurion was hoping for a repeat performance on behalf of his slave.

Which is a pretty strange request, if you think about it. After all, the centurion is pretty close to the top of the food chain in Jesus’s time. At the top were Roman citizens, military and political leaders - men with power. Toward the bottom were all the people that the Romans had conquered, such as the Jesus’s people. Slaves were at the very bottom of the pile, often seen as “living tools” of their masters. So here we have a centurion, a Roman citizen, a military leader who answered to very few, ask for healing on behalf of his slave. This from a guy who could easily have commanded or threatened Jesus. Instead, he asks the Jewish elders to intercede with on his behalf.

Presumably, the elders thought this centurion was a worthy candidate for Jesus because of he seemed like a “good guy” to the Jewish people. It might be the case of a little “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” You built our synagogue, and so we’ll put in a good word for you with Jesus. It makes sense, since proximity to power is the next best thing to having power yourself.

But we know that that’s not how Jesus rolls. Jesus decides to make this house call because he judges the worth of people from an entirely different criteria than that of the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, not much has not changed in the world since the time of Jesus, has it? In the eyes of the world, our worth is still based on where we measure up in the social strata. We are being perpetually judged on some combination of birth – ethnicity, nationality, gender – mixed in with our capacities of money, power, influence, successful parenting, our house, job, extracurricular activities, college we went to, vacations we take, cars we drive, ways we do more and be more.

Because if we can do “all the things,” THEN we will be worthy of notice and therefore worthy of love. If only we can “do it all” and be “good enough, “THEN we will MATTER.  THEN we will matter to the world. THEN we will matter to ourselves. Only we never actually get to THEN. 

This is not how God operates. Jesus came to show us exactly how God judges our worth. Jesus came to knock down the ladder we can never climb, to short circuit the treadmill we can never catch up on, to smash the game board we can never beat. Jesus came to spread the radical notion that all people are worthy of God’s love.

And in the Gospels, we get to follow Jesus as he lives this out by preaching and healing – encountering all kinds of different people along the way. Some of them, like the disciples, stick around the whole time, while others pop in, play their rolls and then we never hear from again, like healed slave and humble centurion.

All kinds of people pop in and out of our lives too. Like the lady we met in the ICU waiting room. Her brother had been in the ICU for a month when we met her. And after Dad was released from the hospital, we never saw her again. We’ll never know if her brother pulled through or not. But God does. To God, she is important. She and her brother both matter.

I really like a quote from the show Doctor Who that goes, “In 900 years of time and space, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important” To put it another way, in the words of writer Frederick Buechner, “The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.”

I think both Doctor Who and Fredrick Buechner are right. You. You are important. God needs you for the party.

But there ARE people who are excluded from the party, people who are seen as worth less than other people, based on how our society treats them. We may not have slaves and centurions in this time and place, but we have questions of worth of our own to ask ourselves if we are paying attention.

Which kind of people have you seen that are treated as having worth more than others?

Who is worth more? 

Black lives or white lives? 

Men’s lives or women’s lives?  

Straight lives or the lives of people who are gay, lesbian, and transgender? 

First world lives or third world lives? 

CEOs or those who are homeless? 

Political leaders and refugees?

These questions make us all uncomfortable because we know that something isn’t right in the state of the world. And the centurion of all people, the enemy of the Jewish people, is the one in the story who “got it.” And that completely shocked Jesus, which is probably pretty hard to do. In the centurion’s example, we see faith, humility, and concern for others came from the last place that we would expect. We see that he, the “most worthy” in the eyes of the world, giving away his power and authority, so that the slave, the “least worthy,” could be healed and made whole. And that could been seen as a miracle in and of itself.

The centurion saw that treating others with the dignity and worth they deserve did not make his worth become less, like a zero sum game. He saw that our worth actually is not worth anything when other people are treated as having less worth.  Worth is not something I can hoard, or store up extra for myself. It can only be seen and shared. Worth doesn’t come from our own making. We can’t give it or take it away. We can do our best to deny it, but it is still there, given only by the grace of God.

The God’s party - feast of victory for our God - is not complete without you. And it’s also not complete without those people we are surprised to see are invited. That means, as Fredrick Buechner says, the party is not complete without others too. You are important. They are important.

We need one another, because together we are whole. Together we are Holy. Together we are one, as Paul writes later in his letter to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28) We need all of God’s children for the party – black, white, rich, poor, straight, gay, and transgender, leaders, refugees, men and women.

Together we are complete. Together we are the children of God. Together we are worthy, because it is God, not the world, who has given us our worth. Amen for that.  

First Communion Sunday: Tables and Time Travel

Sermon 5-1-16

Grace to you and peace from God our father and from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.

I don’t know about you, but my dining room table tends to get filled up really fast. I’m sure that I am the only one that this EVER happens to. The minute I actually have it cleared off enough to eat on, it seems like the very next minute it’s suddenly covered with mail, bills, papers I need to file, extra keys, receipts, a cat toy or two, maybe a remote I forgot I put down, a water glass ready to be spilled, an extra phone charger, a book I’m reading, and probably my cell phone buried under everything. And this is all from just ME. Much of the time, it looks like I do everything BUT eat at the table. I would not be ready at all to be hospitable if someone dropped in at a moment’s notice.

This is so different from the table that I remember eating at my Grandma’s house. While she was alive, her table was always ready to feed people, and had expandable leaves so that it could become more than twice its normal size, ready to host my dad’s very large farm family during holidays.

In fact, there is a lunch bell that still stands in the yard next to the house at my family’s farm, a bell that used to be rung when Grandma was ready to serve the farm help lunch. “All is now ready,” that ringing bell would be saying. “Come and be served. All who here are welcome to the table.”

Do you have a table in your memories that’s at all like that? A table that’s always ready to be filled with good, homemade food, especially after traveling from a long journey away? A table ready to welcome you home? One that is perhaps not so much cluttered with our everyday worries and busy-ness as are our own tables and hearts?

Today we hear a story of a woman who’s heart AND table were ready to welcome and be welcomed. And I image that this woman’s table would have been a big one, with plenty of table leaves for expansion, covered in fine, rich food for weary travelers like Paul and his companion Silas.

This woman’s name is Lydia, and I think she was a pretty awesome lady. Not because we share the same name – well, not JUST because of that. But because we don’t often hear about the discipleship of women, even in such a women-friendly writer such as Luke – who also wrote the book of Acts, where Lydia’s story is found. And she is all the more extraordinary because her story is here, recorded for all of us to read afterwards, when there are so many tables that she would NOT be received at, tables where she would be considered too much of an outsider to be welcome.

Lydia is a woman, a foreigner, a resident of a Roman-occupied town, a savvy successful business owner, is wealthy, and runs her own household. Frankly, I lost count of how many strikes against her that would be. Lydia lives in an age where women were the property of their fathers, brothers, husbands, or sons, who’s only job was to take care of the household chores and have children, preferably more sons.

But Lydia also breaks the gender conventions of her time. She is financially independent – even successful. She runs her own business trading a luxury item – purple dyed cloth – that only the rich could afford. She also might have once been a slave, since Lydia is the name of a geographic region, and slaves were often called by where they were from.

Lydia is an influential woman runs her own household. This would not just have been her immediate family, but likely also her extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins – and also likely many servants, slaves, and perhaps some of her employees. So when Lydia goes to the river to pray, and runs into Paul and hears him preach about Jesus, it is not just her life that is forever changed. Dozens of people are baptized because of her open ears, because of her open heart, and because of her open invitation to her table. And so, her home became the home base that launched the church in Philippi, which is the same community that Paul writes to in his letter to the Philippians. Not exactly a coincidence.

Lydia received the gift of the good news about Jesus from Paul: that Jesus died for her. That Lydia – woman, foreigner, outsider – is a beloved child of God. And so Lydia then also gives the preacher PAUL the gift of hospitality at her table.

We hear about another table in our reading from the Gospel of John, though a table is not directly mentioned. Though we are in the season of Easter, after the resurrection of Jesus, we have narratively time-traveled back to the night before Jesus’ crucifixion, as Jesus sits around a table and shares his last meal with his disciples, his friends: those who would – in just a few hours – abandon, deny, and betray him.

We are back at this point in time, because the disciples are grappling with the same question that we ourselves wonder about today. So where is Jesus NOW? Though Jesus is resurrected, he is no longer walking around. So what does it mean for them and for us, that Jesus still promises to be present? How can Jesus still be with us, when we can’t see or hear him like we see and hear one another? How can Jesus still be with us when he says he has gone to be with the Father?

One of the ways is through the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who Jesus sends to teach and guide us. The Holy Spirit very often uses people we encounter in our lives, who are sometimes at the “right place at the right time,” like Lydia and Paul. But Jesus also promises to be present in our lives in other ways, ways that in our tradition we call sacraments.

Hang on with me for moment, and use your favorite time traveling machine –TARDIS, Time Turner, DeLorean, Scooby-doo time machine – and let’s go back for a moment to confirmation class. Sacraments, if you recall, are how God shows grace and is present to us in our everyday lives. Some flavors of the Christian church have a lot of sacraments, and some have none. We Lutherans believe there are two sacraments, both of which we hear about today – baptism (in the baptism of Lydia and her household) and Holy Communion, which some of our young people will be participating in for the very first time today!

Why only 2? In the Lutheran church, sacraments have two parts. The first is a word from Jesus, the second is an earthly physical sign. Because frankly, we are human, and God understands that we also need something concrete to help us wrap our minds around the mysteries of God’s presence.

For baptism, Jesus said, “Go and make disciples… and I will be with you,” (Mtt 28:19) and the sign is plain, ordinary water. For communion, Jesus said, “this is my body and blood, given FOR YOU… do this in remembrance of me,”(Luke 22:14-23) and the sign is ordinary bread, and the most common drink at the time of Jesus, wine. Stuff you could find at the local first-century “Wawa” equivalent.

I invite you to take a look in your bulletin inserts at the sheet from Luther’s Small Catechism, the page that says “the Sacrament of the Altar” at the top. There you can see the “Lutheran recipe” for sacraments for Holy Communion: bread and wine, and words that were instituted, or introduced by Jesus.

The sacraments are where the God’s presence intersect our lives. Baptism is the welcome into God’s family, into the life Christian community, as we heard with Lydia. Holy Communion is what sustains us on this sometimes difficult journey of life. It’s not just for some of us, for the “completely put-together” of us, for the “doing-well-in-life” of us, for those of us who have it all figured out. Because if that were the case, I would bet money that there would be NO ONE around the Lord’s Table.  

Our lives are disarray, and own tables are often so cluttered with things that distract us, with the busy-ness of life and hectic schedules. And too often we forget that we need to stop and be fed along this called life. And it’s so easy to miss where the Holy Spirit is at work, perhaps putting people in our lives for us to welcome and be welcomed by, like Paul and Lydia – people who might just change our lives forever.

And all too often we like to remove the extender leaves from out of the table, in order make the table smaller, so that we can control who is in and who is out, who is welcome and who is not, based on who we think is worthy to be loved and welcomed. But we DON’T have a say on who’s in and who’s out, who’s welcome and who’s not. We are simply invited to join the meal, to share it with Jesus and with one another.

But we are all invited to the table, right here, to feel the presence of Jesus in the bread that our kids used their own hands to bake themselves, and in the wine, to taste how the Lord is good:  in ordinary, everyday things served through ordinary, everyday people.

Our first communion students learned a song these last few months that goes, “To the banquet, come. It’s not just for some. But for all, big and small, you may come.” Jesus never checked people’s credentials in order to invite them to the table with him, and so neither do we. 

We don’t check anybody’s Lutheran card, green card, race card, sexual orientation or gender identity card at the door. We simply do what Jesus modeled for us and commanded us to: invite. Jesus welcomes. And so we welcome. We say, come to our Lord’s Table. 

Come, taste and see that the Lord is good.

The disciples were welcome.

Lydia was welcome.

I am welcome.

You are welcome.

All are welcome.

Welcome to the table. Welcome home. Amen. 

Doubting Disciples Sunday (BTW, that's us.)

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

I still remember the April fool’s joke I played on my poor Mom one year, while I was on internship in Minnesota. I called her up and left her a message that one of my cats had surprised us all by having a litter of adorable calico kittens, that looked just like her. And my mom totally bought it.

"Not funny, 'Mom'."

And that isn’t even the funniest part. My Mom had completely forgotten that I had called her about taking Patches to the vet… to be fixed… earlier that week. I told her all about how funny the cat looked after being shaved, and about how I had to watch her for a few hours after while she was still a bit loopy from the anesthetic. All just the week before. How soon my Mom forgot!

But, to be fair, she hasn’t forgotten that story since then. When I asked her permission to share it, my mom told me she still has the voicemail I left her about it. This was back in 2010.

I can’t rub it in TOO much, because we’ve all been there, though, including me. How soon we can all forget what we have just seen and heard.

It is one week after Easter. It’s only been one week since we heard the account from Luke of the women finding an empty tomb where they expected to find the body of Jesus. It’s only been one week since we stood around in the memorial garden, rubbing our hands together in the early light of dawn, busting out the first “He is risens” and “alleluias.” It’s only been one week since the kids waved the Alleluia sheets in this place newly adorned in white and lilies, while Mike cranked the Easter hymns on organ up to 11. That was only one week ago, people. But how soon we forget what we’ve seen and heard.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like it’s been an entire month since Easter. Probably because after Easter, I still had to go grocery shopping, pay the rent, figure out life, and deal with a world that seems to get scarier by the day.

But the world out there is perhaps is not as scary as we might think it is. Trying to figure out what to do with this whole resurrection thing – now THAT is actually a whole lot scarier. Because that means I actually have to leave the tomb. And I for one kind of like it here. It’s darkness is familiar to me, and I don’t really like change. And I’m SURE I’m the only one here that applies to. In some ways, Lent may feel more natural to us, or at least closer to our real-life experiences – wandering around in the wilderness, waiting in the in-between, longing for a life that has been promised, but perhaps hasn’t yet arrived.

But what has been promised to us HAS ALREADY COME. One week ago. Lent is OVER, and Easter is HERE. All seven weeks of it. That’s right folks. We have six more weeks of the Easter season left to go, six more weeks until the Holy Spirit arrives at Pentecost, six more weeks to figure out what in the world does it mean for us to be called out of our tombs by our resurrected Lord who bears the scars of death on his body. And THAT, my friends, scares me to death.

But perhaps if I had actually been there. Perhaps if I had actually seen what had happened, this resurrection business might be a little easier to wrap my head around. Don’t you think that might be true for you as well?

It seems that it might have been the case for Thomas. Poor, poor, Thomas, forever to be saddled with the nickname “doubting.” He gets such a bad reputation. We can’t really blame him for his reaction to the other 10 disciples. If I were him, I might think that the rest of them were playing some cruel version of an April Fool’s joke concocted while I was out.

But I want to make the case that Thomas is not actually the most egregious doubter in this resurrection account. The true doubters are the other 10 disciples.

Earlier that day, according to the gospel of John, Mary Magdalene had gone to the tomb of Jesus, only to find the stone rolled away. And later, after Peter and the other disciple had corroborated her story and went home, Mary encountered the risen Jesus while she was still weeping outside the tomb. Their Lord was alive! He had risen from the dead! And what do you think happened next? Did they start running around, telling people the good news? NOPE. On Easter evening, they locked themselves in a room. How soon they had forgotten what they had seen and heard.

And so that is where Jesus found them, when they were all together, except for Thomas, locked in a room out of fear. That is where Jesus found them, when he burst INTO their locked room, just has he had burst OUT of the tomb.

But that in itself does not make them into doubters “worse” than Thomas.  It is instead what they do next. After other ten disciples saw Jesus for themselves, a week later - one week after Easter – where did Jesus find them? Take a look in verse 26. Again they were in the house. And again THE DOORS WHERE SHUT. Yet again, they were sealed up in their old familiar tombs out of fear. And so Jesus had to bust in YET AGAIN.

How soon they had forgotten what they had seen and heard… only one week before.

So really, this day would more accurately be called “Doubting Disciples” Sunday. And the accusing finger is also pointed right at us. Because really, WE would be right there along with them, barring the door and bolting the locks, just one week after Easter.

Not just to keep the scary world OUT. But perhaps to keep Jesus out as well.

Because our locked rooms and our dark tombs are comfortable and familiar. Resurrection and new life means that change is a-comin’, which is super scary.

But we have seen and heard what Jesus does with sealed tombs and locked doors. We have seen and heard what Jesus does with the bonds of sin, with the sting of death, and the captivity of the grave. So let’s not forget so soon what we have seen and heard.

The Good News of Easter, which is just as true today as it was a week ago, is that Jesus has busted open the stone of your tomb like it as if it were nothing; he has ploughed through the doors of your locked rooms as if they were butter. He stands in the doorway, reaching out to take your hand, showing you the marks of the crucifixion that still remain his body. And he calls you, as he did to Lazarus, while standing outside of that dead man’s tomb, calling to him, “Lazarus, come out!”

And Lazarus came out of his tomb.

Jesus says, “Peace be with you,” and then calls us forth like Lazarus. Come out of the tomb. Come out of the locked room. Now, it’s time to leave.

It’s time to leave, because we do not belong in dark tombs and locked rooms. It’s time to leave, because we are being drawn out to the new life that is not IN HERE, but OUT THERE. It’s time to leave, because the one who calls us out has also been marked by the scars of death, as we all have in our various ways.

Fortunately Peter, our favorite open-mouth-insert-foot disciple, and the rest of the apostles DO eventually get out of the locked room. In Acts, Peter testifies before the high priest about Jesus, saying “We are witnesses to these things.” Because it was time to leave the locked room. It was time to get out, and be sent out.

As God has sent Jesus, so Jesus sent Peter, Thomas, Mary, the other women, and the rest of the apostles to live in light of the resurrection, to leave the locked room, and to remember what they had seen and heard. And as God sent Jesus, so Jesus sends all of US to do the same. To share what WE’VE seen and heard. To, in the words of Farmer-Poet Wendell Barry, to “practice resurrection.” To be like Jesus and call others out from THEIR dark tombs and locked rooms.

Walking through walls optional.

Amen.

                      

He is NOT HERE.

Easter Sunday Sunrise, 3-27-16

St. Paul Memorial Garden

Luke 24:1-12

Grace to you and peace from God our father and from our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

Taken by Mike Schmidt

What are you expecting this morning, on Easter morning, 2016?

What were you expecting, as you got up early to come to our memorial garden on this slightly chilly morning – though could be worse – to stand in your coats for half an hour to sing some songs, hear some scripture, and perhaps pray, like me, that your coffee would hurry up and kick in any time now?

What are you expecting, here, this particular morning, on Easter, 2016?

Where you expecting that, after wandering around in the wilderness of Lent, you would come out on the other side, to rise this Easter morning completely refreshed, restored, and renewed? I don’t know about you, but I was. Or at least, I was kind of hoping that’s how it would work. But life doesn’t exactly work out in the way we expect it to, does it?  

But then again, I’ve done a lot of expecting over the years, as I’m sure many of you have.  And for me, reality has more often than not fallen far short of those expectations. And, like many of you, I woke up in the darkness of this morning to the very real, very present realities of pain, brokenness, and suffering in our world and in our lives. Our lives are still in the same mess that they were in yesterday. We still find ourselves buried in dark tombs.

And yet…. here we are, on Easter morning, rubbing our hands together to keep them warm in a garden where many of our loved ones have been laid to rest. I’m here. You’re here. Life is poking up out of the ground all around us here. And Easter morning has arrived here, and it DOES change things - just not in the ways we expect.

Really, this whole week tells the story of the unexpected: How Jesus was welcomed into town with a parade at the beginning of the week, and being nailed to cross by the end of it.

How Jesus shared his last meal with his disciples, the very ones who would betray him, deny him, and stand silently by as Jesus was arrested, tried, mocked, and beaten before being nailed to a cross.

How a Roman soldier praises God and confesses that Jesus was an innocent man, while his own disciples are silent.

How Jesus, King of the universe, was hastily laid in a borrowed tomb, a place ruled by death, much like we are in right now, on this early morning.

The women also came to a place of death very early in the morning, where someone THEY dearly loved had been buried. They expected the worst, of course. They expected to be alone with their grief. They expected to find the body of their beloved Jesus, so that they could care for him one last time by anointing his body with spices, as was their custom. They expected to find death in a place OF death, as we all would.

But instead, the women found the stone sealing his tomb had been rolled away. Instead, the women found a grave with no body. Instead, the women found two men wearing clothes that flashed like lightning, with a question for them: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” What the women found was the stunning revelation that Jesus was not there.

He has risen.

And then the women remembered. They remembered what Jesus had been saying all along. They remembered that he must be betrayed, abandoned, and handed over to be crucified. And three days later he would rise again.

And then the women proclaimed. They returned to the remaining eleven disciples and all the rest of Jesus’s followers and told them the amazing and unexpected sight they had just witnessed. These women expected to find death, but instead became the first witnesses to the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead.

On Thursday we remembered the night in which Jesus was betrayed, and Jesus’ command to us to eat of his body and drink of his blood, in remembrance of him. And Paul reminded us that as often as we do this, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. And these women did just that, on that first Easter morning. These women remembered, and then they proclaimed, becoming the very first preachers of the Gospel to their fellow disciples.

They were the first to share the GOOD WORD, that death no longer has the LAST WORD. Death has been swallowed up in victory, Christ’s victory, the victory of life over death, in all its many forms, calling us out from inside of all of the dark tombs we may find ourselves in.

In a place where we expected to find more death, we instead find that Jesus is gone, that death has been buried forever. We who have been buried in the darkness of tombs have also been buried with Jesus in our baptisms, as Paul wrote. And that means that we will be united with Jesus in his resurrection. And it begins now, this very morning. New life sprouts up out of the empty shell of death, right now. As one Easter hymn reminds and proclaims, 

“NOW, the green blade rises from the buried grain, 

Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain; 

Love lives again, that with the dead has been. 

Love is come again like wheat arising green.” (ELW 379)

In this very place where we have buried our loved ones and laid them to rest, we heard Paul ask, “Death, where is your sting?”  And we know the answer. - NOT. HERE!

And along with the women that first Easter morning, in this place of death, we wonder, “Where is Jesus?”  - NOT. HERE!!

Why do we look for the living among the dead? We expect to find death in a place of death, but Jesus has done the unexpected. He has risen from the dead. He IS NOT HERE. 

He WAS here, but he is not here any longer. Instead, Jesus has vacated the tomb and allowed some women to be his spokespeople. He has gone on ahead of us, to meet up us out there on the dusty roads we travel. And he has won the victory for us, so that we who have been buried in our own tombs with Jesus may be raised in his glorious resurrection, now and in the life to come.

What were you expecting this morning, here in the garden, on Easter 2016?

Whatever your expectations where, Jesus always exceeds them.

Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed, Alleluia.

Amen.  

Palm Sunday: Hearts of stone, cry out.

3-20-16, Palm Sunday

Grace to you and peace from God our father and from our Lord and savior Jesus our king, Amen.

Welcome to Holy Week, where up is down, and down is up. Where a crowd shouts “Blesses is the king” one minute and “Crucify him!” the next. Where bread becomes Jesus’ body and wine becomes his blood. Where a king is killed for not being the right kind of king. Where a criminal walks and an innocent man dies. Where Judas betrays and Peter denies and a Roman solder confesses the truth about this king on a cross.

This is it. We made it. This week is what the forty days of Lent have been leading up to. This is why we’ve swathed ourselves in purple: the color Jesus wore to be mocked, the color of royalty and bruises. We are about to enter the most important week of the church calendar. We are about to enter a week where time gets wibbly-wobbly and seems out of joint. We are about to enter a week where an instrument of torture and death becomes the means by which we are rescued from death.

This week begins with a parade. Jesus comes down the road into Jerusalem, like kings of old, riding a colt and surrounded by his disciples laying their cloaks before him like a royal procession. They are filled with praise for all the deeds of power that they had seen Jesus do – for the healings, the feeding of over five thousand people, the casting out demons, calming a storm and raising a widow’s son – feats so astounding that Jesus’ followers called out their praises from all along the parade route. “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

Now, the last time we heard those same words actually wasn’t all that long ago, back in December - when the sky was filled with a multitude of the heavenly host, appearing to shepherds late at night. These poor shepherds, scared out of their wits, witnessed the first proclamation of the good news of great joy for all the people, the birth of a savior, a messiah, the Lord. That night, the sky was filled with the shouts of angels:  ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favors!”

THAT night, Christmas night, shepherds bore witness to the arrival of God’s glory being birthed into the world. On THIS day, Palm Sunday, Jesus’s followers are the ones shouting for joy, heralding the time has come, the king has come, to bring peace to heaven and earth.

But not everyone is shouting for joy. The Pharisees, too, have seen these deeds of power that Jesus has done, and they are concerned. And they were absolutely RIGHT. They remind us that the Jewish people at this time were under the oppressive thumb of Rome. Whose idea of peace was subduing the people with threats, violence, might of the sword, and death by crucifixion. You don’t mess WITH ROME. Especially by proclaiming that there is another kind of peace out there, another kind of king, another Lord who rules heaven and earth, one that is NOT ROME. Not exactly a good plan, disciples. You might want to rethink that one.

So it makes sense that the advice of the Pharisees to Jesus is for his disciples to  “back up, hush up, shut up, and keep your head down.” Don’t rock the boat. Put a lid on it. “Ex-Nay on the Osanna-Heys.” 

Solid advice, from a human point of view. But then we heard Jesus’s surprising response – “If these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

Thanks to Jesus, we might need to rethink that old phrase, “dumber than a box of rocks.” If Jesus own disciples didn’t cry “Blessed is the king,” the very creation would be compelled to. Stones, boulders, rocks, and pebbles, are all on standby to pick up where the disciples leave off.

The stones probably knew, as we all know, that the time was very near that the praises for Jesus would stop, and the crowds instead would cry out for his death. They probably knew that his disciples would be silent from heavy sleep as Jesus prayed alone in the Garden of Gethsemane. That they would be silent in the face of the chief priests and the officers of the temple police taking him away. That they would be silent, standing at a distance as Jesus was crucified.

The stones might see what Jesus’s disciples cannot – that this king does not go into Jerusalem to set up a peace that is like that of Rome, a peace brought by might and sword. This King doesn’t enter the holy city to set himself up as RULER, but to give himself up as SACRIFICE. As Paul wrote, the one who in the form of God and had equality with God empties himself and becomes obedient – even so far as death on a cross.

And this is what Holy Week is all about. Up is down and down is up. Time is out of joint. Stones would shout when we are silent. The King of the universe comes to die. This king that we welcome, we then abandon and reject. We turn our backs and trust ourselves rather than the king who created us. We long for the king of king WE want, not the kind of king that we NEED. We embrace peace that is not peace, but power. Our hearts of flesh become like hearts like stone, silent in the face of evil days and evil deeds. (Bonhoeffer)

Still. There is clearly a place in the story, in this week, for stones.

Stones can still be called upon to praise Jesus for showing us what the glory of God looks like in the flesh. A stone sealed the tomb where Jesus lay after his death, but stones of tombs can be rolled away to make room for the power of resurrection and new life. The stone that the builders reject can become the cornerstone, the very source of our faith. Hearts of stone - like ours - can be gathered together into spiritual house around that cornerstone, gathered and loved by their creator.

In just the next chapter of Luke, Jesus describes himself as the cornerstone to same Pharisees who would continue to reject him. And Peter, our favorite “open-mouth-insert-foot” disciple, the same who denied Jesus three times, his very names means “Rock” or stone. And this rock – Peter - would later write about Jesus as a living rock, a living stone, rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight. He says that we are God’s own people, living stones, stones that are at the same time dead and alive. Stones that are gathered together in order to shout out, as stones are called upon to do, to praise the mightily acts of our King of Peace. Peter continues, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” 

Down is up and up is down. We who have hearts of stone cry “hosanna” and “crucify.” We who would not show mercy, have received it. Hearts of stone come back to life. Despite our willingness to turn away from God, God will never turn away from us, and will go all the way to death and back in order to prove it.

In the meantime, join us on the road through Holy Week. Be a witness with the disciples and the stones:

Behold the king of peace, who comes in the name of the Lord, as he rides on to face his death.

Behold our king of peace, surrounded disciples and stones to cheer him on – for now.

Behold our king of peace, who eats his last meal with those who betray, deny, and abandoned him in silence.

Behold our king of peace, who did not resist when he was mocked, beaten, and nailed to a cross.

Behold our king of peace, on a cross flanked by criminals, and dying in darkness.

Behold our king of peace, who was hastily laid in a borrowed tomb.

And lastly, three days later, behold a stone that has been moved,

a grave with no body,

and death with no more power over us. Amen.

Think On These Things

March 16th, 2016, Philippians 4

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

So we have come to the end of Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, with Paul wrapping up his thoughts and sending his last greetings. At the time, personal greetings or instructions to specific people were included at the end of letters, and here Paul gives a shout out to two women leaders in the church of Philippi, Euodia and Syntyche. Unfortunately these two women seem to be having some sort of disagreement, at least important enough for Paul to address in his letter, and he does not let this opportunity pass him by to reiterate the theme of unity in Christ.

These two women leaders had worked alongside Paul in the past, and he urges them now to put into practice the unity they have in Christ by working out whatever differences they have. That Paul calls them by name as co-workers in the Gospel is worth mentioning. At a time that women were seen as and treated as property, having no voice and few rights, these small gatherings of Jesus-followers were calling women to prominent leadership roles. Some were fellow-missionaries with their husbands, like Aquila and Priscilla. Some women led house churches, while other women financially supported them, like Junia, Lydia, and Phoebe. 

The presence of Euodia and Syntyche in this letter, though brief, reveals the early church’s dedication to Jesus’ message of radical unity, hospitality, and inclusion. All people have value, including women. All are welcome to be co-workers in the Gospel with Paul along his journey – men, women, slaves, Jews and Gentiles.

Paul then picks up on another theme that he has repeated over and other again many times in this letter -rejoicing in the Lord. Rejoice ALWAYS, he says to the Philippians, and also to us. Rejoice in the Lord. Not just when things are going well. Not just when the sun is shining and you’re having a good day. But ALWAYS.

Really Paul? Always? Are you sure? Surely this guy must have an awesome life to be saying such things. But then we remember that over the course of his ministry, Paul was often chased out of town, beaten, arrested, and as he writes this letter he is currently facing jail time for preaching the gospel. This man has very little in his life to give thanks for. And yet, he still does. Constantly. Perhaps even somewhat annoyingly.

And we are not just to rejoice always, but to pray always too. Paul reminds us in verse 6 when we pray about anything, we pray with thanksgiving for all that God has given us. The word that we translate as “thanksgiving” in Greek is “Eucharistia.”: Eucharist. The same word we use for Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper.

You may have noticed on Sundays as you follow along in your red hymnals as we begin the Eucharist liturgy, the back-and-forth part after the offering prayer is called the Great Thanksgiving. Ever week, you hear these words, “It is indeed right, our duty and our joy that we should at all times and in all places give thanks and praise to you, almighty and merciful God, through our savior Jesus Christ.” Sound a little familiar? We give thanks for the gift that Jesus has given us: his body. His blood. His death. AND his resurrection to new life.

When THIS is the gift of life we receive from God, what can mortals do unto us, that we should be afraid? What is worry, what is fear, what is death in the face of such a gift that is ours forever and ever?

THIS is where true peace of mind comes from, says Paul. That in Jesus, a peace penetrates us beyond our understanding or knowledge, surrounding our hearts to guard us against all that life throws at us. This is why Paul is able to say in verse 13 “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” When I was in my church’s youth group, I learned a really handy way to remember this verse. Like, literally handy! All you need are your two hands. Ten words. Ten fingers. Pretty simple.

“I can do all things… through Christ who strengthens me.” Let’s all try that together. “I can do all things… through Christ who strengthens me. One more time, so we can get it nice and lodged in your brain… 

Thanks, Paul, and to whoever invented this little memory aid. It’s a good reminder of Paul’s secret for the reason he can rejoice in the Lord always, which is really no secret at all. It is a secret we can learn too, and share, and practice, because it certainly doesn’t come to us naturally. Not with all the messages that the media bombarding us with on a daily basis, saying: Want more. Do more. More stuff and success will make you happy. We try not to, but some days we want to believe these messages more than in the peace that Jesus promises us.

This temptation is not new, and Paul encourages his people to instead to think about other things, the long list you see in verses 8 and 9. It is quite a list, a bit of a tall order, really. Just what IS true, what is honorable, what is just, pleasing, commendable, and worthy of praise? There is only one I can think of that completely fits that description, and that is Jesus.

What is worthy for us to think about as this Lent draws to a close and we are about to enter Holy Week?

Paul might suggest these things. Think about how Christ is life, and death is gain (1.:21). Think about living your life in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ (1:27). Think about how to make the call of Christ your own, just as Jesus has made you his own (3:13). Think about the way that Jesus emptied himself and became obedient even to the point of death, even death on a cross, in order to show the glory of God and claim you as his own (2:11). Amen.

Follow the Leader

Philippians 2, 2-24-16

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Christ the rock of our salvation. Amen.

Have you sent your hand-written letter yet? Last week we were encouraged and challenged to send a hand-written letter to someone who is important to us. If you have, let us know about it, and if you haven’t, it’s not too late.

We talked about hand-written notes last week because we are reading through Paul’s letter to the Christian community at Philippi. But instead of being a federal offence like it is now, reading Paul’s letters to the churches he planted are somewhat like blog posts or community bulletin boards - regarding specific people and situations, but also for the general benefit of the whole community.

Philippians 2, which we heard tonight, comes at the end of the “warm up” that was the beginning of his letter, and now he is ready to play hardball, to dive head-first into his message to the Philippians about unity and humility, obedience and submission. Which are pretty good things to think about in Lent.

It’s not as clear from this letter what ARE some of the concerns at this congregation – because frankly, ALL churches have issues of one kind or another – but some have guessed that Paul was addressing questions about leadership and community looks like. Paul at the beginning of chapter 2 makes it very clear what kind of leadership practices would give him joy– being humble, practicing unity, and sharing the mind of Christ.

Starting at verse 5, Paul beautifully integrates into his letter what is considered to be one of the very first hymns of the Christian church, called the Christ Hymn.  He uses this hymn to more fully explain the kind of leader that Jesus was – who could have exploited his divine status to the fullest, but instead used his form of God to become the form of a human person. The ruler of the universe became like a slave, a human being under the dominion of inward passions and exterior forces. 

The point that Paul is trying to get across to his people, and to us, is that THIS is the kind of power that we should be trying to imitate. The self-sacrificing, self-emptying obedient role that was so counter-cultural then, and is so counter-cultural still. For the divine form to take on human form, for the exalted to be completely obedient, for the immortal to take on mortality and death – especially to be subjected to a death that was reserved for slaves and criminals, is pretty hard to wrap our minds around - even now, after these words have been read and re-read for nearly two thousand years. 

THIS is the kind of obedience that Paul expects us to have as we follow in the footsteps of Jesus – to have Jesus’s same mind about what the form of true and eternal strength and power takes. The form of an empty vessel. The form of a slave. The form of human weakness, subject to the power of death. The form of death, even death on a cross.

And this Lord, this Christ, this Jesus is the one we are supposed to imitate. Not in the way that we sometimes think about the word “imitation,” meaning “fake” or “artificial,” like comparing Cheese Wiz to the real stuff. Rather, he means imitation like Simon Says or follow the leader, only grown-up style.

This is a daunting task. But to show that all hope is not lost, Paul lifts up examples of people he knows attempting to follow where Jesus leads. There is Timothy, his loyal and young companion, and there is Epaphroditus, who struggled through illness. Paul also included himself in that list of examples, but makes sure that we know that he is making himself an offering to God for the sake of the faith of the community at Philippi.

We can’t follow these greats in the faith by ourselves, pulling our own bootstraps.  That’s why Paul reminds his readers that it is God who is at work in us, as he writes in verse 13. But there ARE things he suggests that we CAN do (and AVOID doing), with the help of God – to avoid complaining and arguing with one another, to seek out and hang on to the word of life. These are things we do together and act out the salvation that Jesus has already given to us.

Our salvation is not just what happens to us beyond our death, but also in living in the here and now. And Paul exhorts all of us, not just the individual person “you,” but rather the collective group “you” - as they might say south of here “Y’All” or “All Y’all.”  Or, “Yous guys,” nearer to where I come from. We are not in this alone, following Jesus and shining out by ourselves. We are all shining Jesus’ light together, as one.

When I worked at the Lutheran camp in Wisconsin, I would use verse 14 and 15 on our late night camp-out hikes in the woods. I would make my cabin of eight teenaged girls march out into the clearing with me, read these two verses, and turn off the flashlight. In the darkness, they would look up and see the stars, and go, “whoaaa.”

There is a whole lot of darkness in the world, both in Paul’s time and in ours. The way that Jesus leads us through that darkness is going to make us shine like those little pinpricks of light in the heavens. If we were alone, it wouldn’t make much of a different. But there are quite a few of us, shining the light of Jesus in a dark world. We may not be imprisoned for it, like Paul. But we’re gonna get noticed. We’re gonna be wondered at, and thought to be weird or backwards or misled. But it is Jesus who is shining out in us and leading us, to the glory of God our father.