All Saints: We Have Already Died

Sermon 11-4-18 – All Saints

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reformation: How to Get into the "Good Place."

Sermon 10-28-18 Reformation Sunday

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

501 years ago, on a church door in Wittenburg, Germany, a monk named Marin Luther hammered 95 complaints about institutional religion… and changed the world forever. At least, that’s what we tend to say about Reformation Sunday every… single… year… “Martin Luther changed the world,” “Martin Luther reformed the Christian Church,” “Martin Luther this…” “Martin Luther that…” 501 years later, though… it just might be time to say: what does the Reformation really matter to us NOW? Why should we care about something that happened on another continent, before there was even wifi? 

I mean besides the fact that our denomination happens to be named after the guy… which, by the way, was intended as an insult, and Luther hated it that we are now identified as “Lutherans.”

There are some ways that the Reformation has added to our world for the worse… some of Luther’s writings were used as an excuse for religious wars all over Europe in the centuries that followed. And Hitler cited Luther’s anti-Semitic writings as inspiration for the treatment of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany. The ELCA has made a clear statement that rejects these writings, but it does not erase the damage that has been done, and the damage that continues to occur, as evidenced by the events of yesterday at the synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Did the Reformation do any Good? Sure. Thanks to Luther, we can read the Bible and experience worship in a language we understand. Thanks to Luther, we have choices about what denomination we want to be a part of – for better or for worse. Thanks to Luther, we believe that everyone has a calling and can serve God in any aspect of their lives. And we no longer belong to a system where we have to earn our way into eternal life – either through money or through doing good things.

That last statement, though, is a hard one to shake off. One pastor colleague recently shared an experience she had while teaching confirmation. She asked her class, “how do you know you will get into heaven?” One of her students responded – “because I am a good person.”

Luther would have been aghast at this response, as this pastor was. But we really should not be so surprised… everyone around us tells us that if we are just good ENOUGH…we’re fine.

In fact, there is an entire Netflix show that explores this… it’s called The Good Place. This show, the “good place” and the “bad place” exists, and at the end of your life, a point system determines which place you go. For example, things like:

-         Installed solar panels gets you +1994.49 points

-         Every time you sing to a child: +0.69 points

-         Gave out full-size candy bars at Halloween: +633.59 points

Conversely:

-         Buy a trashy magazine will set you back: -0.75

-         One incident of sexual harassment is: -731.26

-         Poison a river: -4015.55

But not just anyone gets into the “Good Place” - only the very best people, with the highest point values in the POSITIVE get in. Not just the Good Enough. EVERYONE ELSE gets a one-way ticket on the train to “The Bad Place.” Now, this is all hypothetical of course, and exists purely with the fiction of the show. But it DOES make you wonder, doesn’t it?

What if my pastor friend asked YOU the question, “How do you know that you’re going to heaven?” How would you answer?

I feel like most days I am a pretty good person… I don’t steal, I don’t murder, I don’t bear false witness, I don’t mistreat my parents. I use my blinker in traffic, I pay my taxes, I donate my time and money to charity, I post on Facebook about injustices happening around the world. I must be doing ok… right?

Except that I’m really not. I’m not a good person… I actively participate in an economy that enslaves people in other countries in making my clothes, shoes, and electronics, and grow and harvest my food. I have benefited from systems that privileges my skin color over others. I have not spoken up and fought for the human rights of others even as my government has actively tried to make certain types of “unacceptable” people disappear or at least like them away and separate them from their families. If such a point system actually existed, this is a lot of “negative points” …. More negative points than I could ever earn back through being a good person in other ways.

Thanks to Luther, we also know that we are still in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves by any amount of “good point values,” but that is not the END of the story.

And yet… also thanks to Luther… I believe that I do have a place in “The Good Place” … Why? because – Jesus! Jesus frees me from worrying about being Good Enough and trying to earn God’s love. Through my baptism, God has chosen me as God’s beloved child, loved and given a place in this Family of Faith forever. The GOOD THING for US is that we do not need to worry about raking up points to get into THIS Good Place, and this is the Wild Idea that Luther latched on to, and idea that changed the course of history and sparked the Reformation. Jesus frees us. We can’t do it. That’s it. End of story.

In our confession, sometimes we say – “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” In martin Luther’s time, sin was a hot topic, but now we Lutherans at least don’t talk about it much. A hint can be found in our baptismal liturgy.  Right before we say the Apostles Creed, we renounce – or turn our backs on - the devil, the forces that defy God, the powers of this world that rebel against God, and the ways of sin that draws us from God.” In a nutshell, our understanding of sin is basically anything that draws us from God.

Anything? Anything…. Anything that draw us from God.

Even too much of a good thing. Even the good works that Jesus DOES call us to do – spoiler alert, Luther also says “God doesn’t need your good works… but your neighbor does!” So, if SOME Good Works for our neighbor is good… then doing TONS of good works should make us EXTRA awesome disciples Right? God loves schedules that are fuller and busier, right?

The people of God have become so good at cluttering up the Gospel, and that’s why we needed the reformation. The first one being when Jesus arrived on the scene. The Pharisees cluttered the good news by thinking that God required purity and preached too many rules to follow to be loved by God. And this is not the truth.

Martin Luther’s time needed a reformation because the religious leaders cluttered the good news by thinking that a person could pay to get into The Good Place, and so preached “when a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” And this is not the truth.

WE, right now, need a reformation because we clutter the good news by thinking that God requires busyness to prove our faith, and so preach that a good Christian is a tired Christian, and a vibrant church is a busy church. And this is still not the truth.

The truth is, we don’t have to be GOOD ENOUGH… we ARE ENOUGH.

The truth is, the reformation is not over, because the church tends to drift off course after a while. But where there is confession, there is always forgiveness, there is always time to start anew. In fact, Luther reminds us that we are raised with Christ as a new person EVERY SINGLE DAY. The good news is that God is always reforming us, God is always reforming God’s church. Our God is a reforming God and will continued to be faithful in THIS reformation, starting right now. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Jesus's Favorite Disciple... YOU

Sermon 10-21-18

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

“Be careful what you wish for”… ever hear that phrase?… we’ve all heard stories – or maybe even lived our own experiences – where the things that we thought we wanted turned out to not be so great after all. 

A week ago, I watched the movie Coraline with friend’s daughter. The movie told the story of a girl – named Coraline – who was unhappy that she had just moved with her parents to a new apartment in a new town. She missed her friends, her parents were too busy to spend time with her, and the residents of the other apartments seemed pretty weird. She discovers a magical parallel universe – as you do – that was just like hers… ONLY BETTER. Or at least, it seemed so at first. Soon she realized that her “other mother” was actually a giant spider who wanted to eat her, and she had to save her real parents and get out of the magical world before they were trapped there forever. And when she got back to her own world, Coraline knew that it wasn’t always perfect, but her parents loved her, and she was starting to make friends, and her current situation was not all that bad.

What if you discovered a magical world were all your dreams came true? What would that world be like? Or what if you, like so many stories, found a magical object or a supernatural person who would grand you a wish? What would YOU wish for?

Sadly, we don’t live in these kind of stories, but sometimes it fun to imagine what it would be like if we won the lottery… or we suddenly looked like a movie star…. Or we became famous and were invited to speak on Oprah….

It might sound kind of out there, but in a way, James and John may have felt as though they had stumbled into one of these stories. They had been following a man who so far had been doing AMAZING things – healing people from their illnesses, casting out unclean spirits, walking on water, feeding thousands of people with just a little bread, teaching about God’s coming kingdom, and flouting the authority of those in power to set up this kingdom’s emergence. And THESE two – just two sons of a fisherman – got to be a part of this man’s inner circle! This was THEIR ticket to be SOMEBODY when the world told them they were NOBODIES. They had won the lottery! They had ARRIVED!

They were on their way to Jerusalem, and they thought Jesus was going there to be crowned a king. But actually, Jesus was going to Jerusalem to die. Jesus had just told his disciples in the verses prior to this, the third prediction of his crucifixion. Jesus said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”

But all John and James heard must have been something like “Bla Bla going to Jerusalem … bla bla after 3 days he will rise again.”

They must have thought that THIS was their chance to ask for prime spots in the new regime. The left hand and right hand of the ruler where reserved for only the next most powerful people, below the king. It wasn’t enough, apparently, that Jesus had chosen them to be part of his inner circle of twelve. It wasn’t enough, apparently, for the privilege to follow him and hear his most exclusive teachings. They wished to have more. But, as they say, “be careful what you wish for.” They wished for Jesus’ baptism and cup, and they were going to get in, but not in the way they thought.

They asked to be able to do what Jesus did… and they missed the fact that Jesus was going to suffer and die. So, Jesus grant them there wish.

If you remember the last time you went to a baptism, you might have heard the pastor talking about how we have died with Christ in his death, and we are raised with Christ in his resurrection. In Luther’s Small Catechism, he writes that baptism “signifies that the old person with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die daily…. And … that daily a new person is to rise up to live before God…” When Jesus refers to his baptism, he is not talking about they day he was in the river with John the Baptist. He’s talking about his upcoming death.

Likewise, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays that the cup might pass from him…  not a cup of fine wine with jewel befitting a king, but the cup that Jesus is to drink from is his suffering and death. Jesus drank from this cup, handed himself over to those in power, was handed over to death, tortured and mocked, and finally hung on a cross. Two people WERE on Jesus’ right and left hands…. But they were not James and John. They also were criminals condemned to death.

Who THEY thought Jesus was, didn’t match up with who Jesus actually IS. Silly James and John, weren’t they listening to Jesus all those times when he very explicitly talked about who he was, and what he was going to be going through? How many times have they heard some variation of “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”? Or “the son of man came to serve, not be served?”

We know that James and John DID get PART of what they wanted… after Jesus’s death and resurrection, they went on to proclaim the coming of his kingdom, and they did give their lives for it – they drank the same cup and were baptized with the same baptism. It wasn’t what they THOUGHT they were going to get… but by then it probably didn’t matter, because they finally “got it.” – they finally got what Jesus IS all about.

Well, what does Jesus say about himself? That he came to serve the last and the least, to be a help to the people who the rest of the world has forgotten and cast aside. He was first, but he made himself last.

John and James wanted to be Jesus’ favorite disciples… but Jesus doesn’t have favorite disciples. We can’t be loved by God MORE by being somehow BETTER. WE are ENOUGH. YOU are ENOUGH. And you are loved.

So, who is Jesus for YOU? (Have you ever thought about that question?) Who is Jesus for you…. And What would we have Jesus DO for US? Who is Jesus for Family of God? And what do we want Jesus to do for us, this faith community? I have a feeling that we might THINK we know what we want or need … but it might NOT be what is actually best for us, in this time and place. 

Some days it is easy to wish to be more like churches down the street and nearby…  with their “bustling” children’s programming, or with their multi-media worship “experiences,” or remarkable music programs, or with huge new buildings.

But we’re not them. And we shouldn’t wish to BE them. We are US. We have so much to offer the community – an entire community that welcomes children, members who are passionate about feeding people in need, people who take care of one another, families who step up when there is a need. Maybe what we DO have is enough, at least for now, at least as a place to start.

No matter what, we can trust whatever path Jesus is calling us to, that Jesus IS with us, and Jesus will provide us with what we need. Jesus is the one who gives us life, who chose us as part of God’s beloved family. And of all the things we can offer those around us, this is the most important. We can offer JESUS. And that is enough. Thanks be to God. Amen.

FOMO and Eternal Life

Sermon 10-14-18

When was the last time you took a trip? Think for a moment about what you usually pack.

When you go on a trio, is there something that you usually pack too much of?  Shoes, outfits, maps, electronics? 

So, confession time. I tend to pack way too many books. … In fact, I tend to buy books faster than I can read them. I recently learned there is a fancy name for my condition: “tsundoku”. Supposedly this is the Japanese word for collecting more books than a person could ever read in a lifetime. Just on my coffee table alone are these books, in various states of being read:

On Living, a memoir about being a chaplain by Kerry Egan.

Just a few of the books on my coffee table...

Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the person who originated that phrase.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, about the secrets of working in the funeral industry, by Caitlyn Doughty

Braving the Wilderness, the latest by the famous Brene Brown …

A translation of the Gospels called The Poems of Jesus Christ …. I’m sure you know that guy.

Seriously these are all books that I had sitting on my coffee table, not to mention all the books I have on my shelf…. Because I never REALLY know EXACTLY what mood I will be in and what book that will require…. And it’s especially a problem when I pack for a trip. I always bring more books than I actually need and end up regretting it when I am dragging my luggage across country… or across the world. When I was packing for my trip to Namibia, I agonized over what to books to bring… and also what else pack…. frebreeze to un-wrinkle my alb…. outlet converters so that I can charge my phone…. What kind of shoes to bring…   And most importantly, the sermon I was going to be preaching!!

I bet Jesus didn’t agonize at all when he was getting ready for his trip. In today’s text from Mark, Jesus is about to take the first step toward his death and resurrection, by setting out in his journey toward Jerusalem. Maybe he was in the middle of packing, though I can imagine that Jesus probably packed pretty light. Perhaps he was just stepping out the door of the house he was staying, or had just left the city limits. In any case, he was not long into his trip…. When he already must take a detour when a rich man interrupts him.

From "Marked" by Steve Ross

In a graphic novel version of the Gospel of Mark, the rich man is actually carrying everything he owns on his back – toasters, bowling balls, golf clubs, a swimming pool, a couch, flat screen TVs, all signs of the “good life.” As he talks to Jesus, he is literally sinking into the sand under the weight of all his stuff while he’s speaking to Jesus.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” is what this rich young man asks. We know what he’s trying to ask. “Will I get into heaven?” Most of us have wondered that. But it’s interesting that he uses the word “inherit.” What do you do to earn an inheritance? It’s a strange question, because the answer is simple: nothing. YOU YOURSELF do absolutely nothing to receive any kind of inheritance that you have coming to you. The only criteria is that you are yourself, the receiver, the person to whom your benefactor is leaving their legacy.

So, what then, can we do to inherit eternal life? Nothing. You don’t DO, you BE. As they say, you are a human BEING not a human DOING. You be who you are, pardon the grammar. You “be” a child of God.

The free gift of eternal life is the inheritance that we all have received at our baptisms, as we were washed with water and with promises from God. At that moment, we were claimed as God’s own beloved children and received God’s mark as belonging to God forever. And nothing can ever change that, not success or failure, not perfection or mistakes, not wealth or poverty or anywhere in between.

But we do not wait until the end of our lives to inherit life that is eternal. This kind of life happens to us right now, the moment we were baptized, actually. It’s not a destination that we arrive at in our final moments, but a journey that is undertaken a step at a time, each and every day. A journey, not toward getting BETTER. But a journey while following Jesus.

We, as beloved children of God, are called to follow Jesus, and as we have heard in the last few weeks, this call to discipleship really hard. Following Jesus means that we take up our cross. Following Jesus means that whoever will be first must be last. Following Jesus means welcoming the vulnerable and undesirable among us. And sometimes, following Jesus means letting go of what causes us to sink.

In think that rich guy had a bad case of FOMO – F O M O. Have you heard of this phenomenon? FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out. This last weekend I spent some time at a fall festival with the daughter of a friend. When we got there, at first she wasn’t haven fun – not while we picked pumpkins or a carmel apple or going on a hay ride… because she was afraid not being able to find people who she knew who were going to be there. She too afraid she would miss them to have fun. But after a while, she relaxed and started to enjoy all the fun things that were right in front of her.

I think the rich man had FOMO pretty bad. Getting rid of his wealth would be too great of a loss, and he goes away grieving. So his stuff piles up higher and higher…he misses out on the kind of life that Jesus would have wanted him to live, a life empty of stuff, but full of abundant life.

This is not what the rest of the world wants us to do AT ALL. According to this country and this culture – the more you earn and the more you can buy, the more you are worth. And the more stuff we have, the more prepared we feel we are for whatever this scary world throws our way. “I can’t get rid of THIS… I might need it later.” “I can’t let go of THAT, I used it a long time ago, and I might need it again.” So our stuff piles up higher and higher, and this is how our possessions come to possess US.

We try to buy our way out of our fear of the unknown.  It is must easier to calm our anxiety with a few more things than it is to trust in a vague eternal “something” that can’t be earned or assigned a monetary value. It is much easier to try to fill the fearful void in our hearts with stuff than it is to put our trust in a man who the world never understood.

In the world’s eye, this Jesus was a failure – hung out with working class guys, never owned a house, or much of anything for that matter. No fancy buildings were named after him. He was a poor nobody from the wrong side of the tracks who didn’t get rich and write a book about how he did it. Instead, he died at the hands of his enemies without fighting back, leaving no earthly possessions, and left his disciples – who abandoned him - with no legacy to speak of.  

No legacy to speak of, that is, except the promise that eternal life is OURS FOREVER. Even if we are still possessed by our possessions. Even if it’s like getting a camel through the eye of a needle.

For us, if we were to try to do all this on our own, it WOULD be impossible. But we were created by a God who laughs at impossible things.

But what if we really did live as if “for God, all things are possible”? What if we saw that we are part of a new family of faith that God is creating here among us? Take a look around you – see your mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters in this community of faith. Go ahead, take a look. These are your companions in Christ, here to persevere by your side, shoulder your burdens with you, and to do the impossible when we all respond to God’s call.

A life following Jesus will not be without challenges, but it will not lack in rewards. A follower of Jesus will gain much more than these things back – we will receive eternal life itself. Our God who demands our everything at the same time freely gives us everything. Seems like fuzzy math, but for God, the possibilities are endless. AMEN.

God will never throw you away... even when the Church tries to.

Sermon 10-7-18

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

There’s no cute anecdote that goes well with what Jesus has to say today. There is just no other way to say it than just to say it: The church has historically gotten this text wrong, big time… and it’s time the set the record straight. Especially since how we’ve got it wrong has been incredibly damaging to people who are vulnerable, grieving, and in pain, especially women. October is Domestic Abuse Awareness month, and too many times texts such as these have been used against women to keep them in marriages that they should no longer stay in, or to make them feel incredibly guilty over seeking their own safety once they have gotten out. And for this, Jesus would be appalled. And the church should feel ashamed for heaping additional pain onto an already painful situation, instead of being a source of comfort and refuge.

Marriage in Jesus’ time is very different from what we think of as marriage now. There were no engagement rings, no wedding gowns and big receptions, no idea of romantic love or of “marrying your best friend.” But there were also no ideas about consent and autonomy, either. Women were property, and they could not support themselves. A single woman belonged to her father. A married woman belonged to her husband. A widowed woman belonged to her sons (hopefully she had at least one), or her nearest male relative. But a divorced woman was completely alone. In the Old Testament, quoted by the Pharisees, according to Moses, divorce was allowed, but only men could initiate it. So, in this context, Jesus is saying that divorce is a justice issue – it separated not just two people, but also separates a woman from her livelihood, her community, and, arguably, her humanity.

This was a shocking revelation to the disciples, and they wanted Jesus here more on Jesus’s take, away from the prying ears of the Pharisees. Perhaps they were dismayed that Jesus wanted to take away this particular aspect of their male privilege. Did Jesus really mean they no longer had the options of dismissing their wives – for whatever reason, according to one interpretation – and get away scott-free?

Unsurprisingly, Jesus doubles down, as he always does. He invokes that embarrassing commandment that confirmation students and teachers alike dread during their units on the Ten Commandments – the 6^th one, of course. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” As with each commandment, it is not enough to simply refrain from doing something bad. Luther tried to get at the heart of what Jesus means here in his explanation to the 6^th commandment in his Small Catechism: “Thou shall not commit adultery. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we lead pure and decent lives in word and deed, and each of us loves and honors his or her spouse. “

Martin Luther was also reported to have said something like “your spouse is your nearest neighbor.” A few chapters after this in Mark, when Jesus is asked “What is the greatest commandment?” Jesus doesn't quote one of the "Big 10." Instead, he responds, “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, mind, and soul....... AND… LOVE your NEIGHBOR as YOURSELF.” “Loving our neighbor as ourselves” is mentioned WAY more in the Bible than marriage and divorce are.

Our spouse might indeed be our CLOSEST neighbor, but they are only ONE of the neighbors we have all around us. As God was creating the beautiful and complex world that we live in, God did not just create one human being to be in charge, all alone. We need neighbors. We need relationships. We need partnerships, collaboration, and companionship. According to one pastor colleague: Genesis 2 is not necessarily about the definition of some kind of “traditional marriage,” but instead “a creation story about an androgynous earth creature who is pulled apart to become two different genders who are in equal relationship.” God created another person, and they in turn created other people, and that means we are created be in relationships with one another – spouses, parents, children, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and our adopted family in the form of friendships, or our “chosen family.”

God did all this, because God delights in our relationships, and brings us together, and then promises to be present with us in those relationships… and most especially when those relationships break down. Because they will.

When divorce happens, sometimes is because one or both parties have been unfaithful in some way. Not necessarily in the “traditional” “6^th Commandment way” we think, but in the way that Luther goes on to explain – by not loving or honoring his or her closest neighbor. That is what being faithful means – loving an honoring one another.

When that doesn’t happen, when promises and trust is broken between two people, sometimes the relationship can be repaired, but sometimes it cannot. Divorce is naming a thing that has already happened. Sin might lead to a broken relationship; one person might have used the other and then cast them aside, breaking vows to love and honor the other. However, acknowledging that a relationship can no longer be what it was is not wrong.

Staying in a relationship that is already over can only add to everyone’s pain and suffering. Staying can sometimes mean breaking faith with yourSELF, in not loving and honoring yourself enough to leave.

Religious leaders who have taken texts such as these and use them to shame the venerable, especially women have committed an even greater unfaithfulness. I would dare say this is an even greater sin, because they are further damaging people who are already feeling broken, and they seek to restrict access to God to those who need it most. Not unlike When the disciples tell people not to bring their kids to be blessed by Jesus.

The more egregious example of this that I personally experienced came in a wedding homily, of all places. During the sermon, the priest began by jokingly wondering about whether love can last through receding hairlines and the bride’s inevitable future weight gain. But thin it got worse from there. He began to talk about divorce.

At one point, the priest called out a question for us to answer: “What do you do with a broken remote.” For a minute we sat in stunned silence, until a brave soul timidly ventured: “Throw it away?”

“That’s right!” he said, “And that is what divorce is, throwing away something that’s broken but not fixing it!”

I was so angry, because he was so wrong. I was angry because going to a wedding a divorced person is difficult enough. I was angry because almost every single person sitting in those pews has been touched by divorce, either they themselves or someone they love.  I was angry because he was shaming us, telling us that we who are divorced and the people we love who are divorced were broken and needed to be thrown away. I was angry because that priest took his own beliefs and tried to pass them off as the word of God.

Incredibly, this text from Mark is often used for weddings… along with one I’m sure you all have heard, First Corinthians 13. The “Love is patient, love is kind” stuff. But, I’m sorry to disappoint, but we tend to get that one wrong, too. We hear it as the couple making vows to one another. But First Corinthians is not talking about human love at all. It’s talking about God’s love.

A much more accurate reading of First Corinthians 13 would go this this: God is patient, God is kind… God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, irritable or resentful…. God bears all thing, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things… along with us. God is stubborn that way, because God is in this for the long haul. God will always be faithful to US… even when… especially when, we are not even faithful to one another, and we are not faithful to ourselves.

Our relationships can and do break down. Our trust in one another gets broken. Our hearts break and we will feel both incapable of love and unworthy of BEING loved. Others may cast you off, but God never will. As broken as we might feel, God will never throw you away. Thanks be to God, amen.

Gatekeeping the Gospel

9-30-18

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

It’s hard to be a kid these days. First you arrive fresh from the warm space of your mother’s womb into a cold and blinding world full of strangers. And it just goes downhill from there. Then it’s learning to walk and learning the word “no,” getting bumps and scrapes and growing pains, and before you know it, you’re begging your folks to get you an iPhone 26 and to borrow the keys to the car. And then, it’s time to look for colleges. And on and on and on.

Jesus really loves kids. Just read the Gospel of Mark – it seems that every other story involves a child, whether Jesus is healing them or welcoming them. And it’s not just the cute and cuddly ones that he likes. Jesus is always healing the sick ones, the ones who are deathly ill or possessed by demons. He loves the well-behaved ones and the untamed ones, the ones that throw tantrums, and I think he has a special place in his heart for the ones who are always asking questions, unlike the disciples did last week. And this week picks up right where we left off from last week. In fact, technically Jesus has not yet put down the little child that he was holding from a week ago. And the “little ones” he is talking about could be either new to the life of faith OR little innocent children. Either way, there is a lot at stake in how we live our lives to model discipleship. Especially when Jesus’s followers make rules about who gets to speak for God and who doesn’t.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a special project of an Episcopal pastor colleague of mine, who was realizing her dream of making a full-length education film about church. But in order to do this, she needed some pew sitters! So, I volunteer a few hours one Saturday to pretend to be Episcopalian.

There are so many books to navigate!

We had an actual worship service, including communion and a sermon. My friend preached a sermon that she had already given, weeks prior, during that Infamous Summer of Bread. Remember that? You thought we were done talking about bread didn’t you!

She told a story about how orphaned children during WWII were taken care of in refugee camps, where they could receive enough food and care, and be kept safe. But theses traumatized kids could not sleep at night, no matter how well they were cared for. Someone had the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to take with them to bed, so that when they woke up in the middle of the night, they would be reminded that they were fed that day, and they would be fed tomorrow too.

Setting up the shots...

Ironically, the very same text that my friend preached on was the text for one of the weeks I was NOT preaching this summer… so I had already heard a sermon on these very readings…. And in fact, the preacher I heard this summer shared THAT EXACT SAME STORY in HIS sermon as my friend had in hers. However, to be honest, when my friend told that story, it me in a totally different way than when I heard it previously, and I think I know why.

The first time I heard about the kids and the bread, it was from a pastor in a Lutheran denomination that only recognizes the ordination of straight men. I observed his story, but I didn’t really hear it – though he was speaking my language and the sound system was working fine. And yet, his very presence was a stumbling block to me and my ability to hear the good news from him.

To me, this pastor represented a branch of our Christian tradition that has silenced women and continues to silence women and other groups. This branch of the church has sought to gatekeep the Gospel, in rejecting that certain types of people can speak for God.

Astonishingly, and kind of frighteningly to me, this congregation has THOUSANDS of members. When he called up that children for his children’s sermon during the children’s sermon, at least 30 boys and girls came forward. I wondered at the stumbling blocks that this pastor was putting before half of his congregation, what he would say within earshot of these little ones. I know for a fact that HE would never tell the girls that THEY TOO could be pastors.

Professor and writer Karoline Lewis writes: “When we place stumbling blocks in the paths of those trying to answer God’s call …  we are effectively silencing them.”

And this silencing and tripping up began right from the start, pretty much. Jesus’ disciple John said to him, with the child still in Jesus’ arms: “Teacher, we saw SOMEONE ELSE… who is NOT US or LIKE US, doing good work in your name. And we told them to stop, because they are not approved by us.” These are words that were said within earshot of this child. And if Jesus would not have intervened, this child might have grown up thinking that only certain people can do the work of God, and only under certain circumstances. Does this sound like the message that Jesus has been trying to teach for the last 9 chapters of Mark?

Instead, Jesus reminds his disciples, this child, and us, that whoever is not against us is for us. Which is a word that is sorely needed in our world today. Whoever is not against Jesus’s message of love and inclusion for all of God’s children, is FOR Jesus and is contributing to the arrival of God’s kingdom.

The second petition of the Lord’s Prayer is “your kingdom come.” – meaning God’s kingdom. Martin Luther explains that the meaning in this way: “in fact, God’s kingdom comes on its own without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come to us.” Daily we must ask ourselves, am I hindering of helping the coming of God’s kingdom? How do we prevent ourselves from becoming stumbling blocks to the younger ones in the faith, the ones who look up to us as role models in our walk following Jesus? And how do we keep from making this mistake fresh, through the ages?

I heard of an interesting example of this from a pastor colleague – how one man is trying to prevent the past repeating itself by creating his own literal stumbling blocks. An artist in Germany that has been laying thousands of small brass bricks in streets in German cities, and in Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Norway and Ukraine. Each brick is labeled with the name and date of death of a Holocaust victim outside their last known address. Locals and tourists alike will occasionally get tripped up on the bricks, called Stolperstein, or literally "stumbling stones.” The big Holocaust museums are important, but you can choose to not go to them. But you really can’t avoid the past when you stub your toe on it.  Walking down the street on your normal day, “suddenly they are there... at your feet.”

This effort has been fairy controversial, but the artist Guenther Demnig persists, because, as he says, “we must keep the memory alive, and learn from our history, so that it doesn’t happen again.” Maybe history doesn’t repeat itself, as Mark Twain is thought to have said, but it just might rhyme.

We stand by and watch as “our hands” keep harming these little ones, until we have the boldness in Jesus’ name renounce them, as we renounce the powers of evil in our baptismal liturgy. Same with feet that are taking us away from the path of the Gospel. The same with eyes that too often look backward to the past, or toward a future with only certain people given access to God’s love… Jesus says the harsh words that they must be removed. 

Because the Body of Christ might in fact BE MORE WHOLE… if we are a little more intolerant of the intolerant, the closed-off, and the scarcity-minded… willing to cut them off for the sake of the rest of the body… especially for the sake of those who are vulnerable, for children, for those who are not believed when they seek justice, and those who are powerless and helpless.

A verse we heard from Psalm 19 is one spoken before many-a sermon or homily. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” And, I might be so bold to add to this prayer, “May the words of our mouths, and the meditation of our hearts, AND the actions of our hands, feet, and EYES… be acceptable to you, O Lord.” May this be our prayer always. AMEN.

"Everything I Need to Know about Discipleship I learned in Kindergarten"

Sermon 9-23-18

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

Robert Fulghum wrote a book called “All I really need to know I learned about in kindergarten” which you have probably seen on posters all over schools and offices. You probably have heard of at least some of these “lessons” he shares: 

1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don't hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS.
6. Don't take things that aren't yours.
7. Say you're SORRY when you HURT somebody. …

12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. …

I can tell by your reactions that these were lessons that most of us learned we were kids…. and then we promptly forget them as adults. Think for a minute about ones like: “share everything” …“clean up your own mess” ….“Play fair” …“Take a nap.” Anybody do these lately? Not so much. I fact, I would dare to say that the value system that we teach our children is the exact opposite that of how we live our adult lives. Share everything? We’re not so good at that. Clean up your own mess? Have you seen the news lately? Take a nap? No way – who has the TIME?

As we grow older, the lessons we learned as kids get un-learned and driven out of us.  Including our curiosity, and our tendency to ask TONS of questions. My sister used to babysitter a girl named Sophie who constantly asked, “what’s that? What’s that?” FOR EVERYTHING she saw and encountered!!! To us, it got really old, but after all she was a four-year-old trying to figure out this confusing and contradictory world, seeking information from us Know It All Adults.

Perhaps if the disciples would have benefited from having someone like Sophie along that day when Jesus talked about his death and resurrection a second time.  .. because they sure didn’t seem to get it the first time! They might have been inspired by a few of her “what’s that’s” and would have asked Jesus: Just who is the son of man? Who will betray him? Why will he be killed? And perhaps most importantly: how can someone come back alive after they have died?

But, sadly, Sophie was not with them, and they were too afraid, too embarrassed, and too cautious to ask Jesus what he meant. So instead of asking questions, they had a heated discussion about something they THOUGHT they understood – the ranking in the final line up. When Jesus comes into his Messiah-ship, in power and glory, who was going to be the “next” greatest in the line up? Peter? John? James? And who would be the unlucky guy to be in 12^th place?

But after their heated discussion, once Jesus asked them what they were arguing about…. Guilty silence… not unlike the silence that falls when your own children are up to something they know they know is not right. And the disciples are shamed into silence like naughty children, knowing on some level at least, that Jesus would not approve of haggling over who deserved the #1 spot.

Jesus, after all, has made it clear he is more interested being in spot number #12… or even lower than that. And he illustrated his point by bringing forward a child, whose worth to society at the time was even less than that of a slave, and he equates welcoming such a one to welcoming the very Creator of the Universe.

Even though now things are very different for children compared to Jesus’ time, it’s still not easy to be a kid. They don’t have a lot of say in what they eat, wear, where they live, or where they go to school. Kids can’t drive or earn a living – they are dependent on their parents and caregivers for everything. So, kids are still very vulnerable, even now. And it is with the vulnerable that Jesus has chosen to be, over and over again. Therefore: how we treat the most vulnerable among us is how we welcome Jesus in our midst.

And honestly, we as a society don’t seem to be having a very good “welcoming” track record … at least in how we have treated “other people’s” children. Let me give you an example from when I lived in New Jersey. The Trenton school district and the West Windsor school district are less than a dozen miles apart from one another, and they could not be more different educational experiences. In Trenton, the students suffered for years in asbestos-filled buildings that were literally falling apart around them. In West Windsor, each student started their freshman year with a Chrome Book. What accounted for this difference? School district funding is based on property taxes… and because people who live under the poverty line are less likely to own homes, much less likely for those to be the multi-million-dollar houses near Princeton… and so kids in one area are forced to inherit a cycle of poverty … in the same state that boasts some of the highest national incomes. I wish New Jersey was an exception, but they are closer to norm than we like to admit.

And we in the church don’t always do so well either. Floating around the internet for a while was a picture of a card one family received in a church they visited. The card addressed to parents with children, presumably to be given when kids are being a little wiggly or noisy, read: “… in order to allow those seated near you to engage in the message, please enjoy the remainder of the service in our lobby. An usher will assist you.” Not the most welcoming statement. I highly doubt this family went back to that church. I certainly wouldn’t. Many of my friends reacted by saying, “I would take my family into the lobby alright… but then keep going out the door and into my car.” And yet, this is closer to what is normal behavior in our churches than perhaps we would like to admit.

A pastor in another synod shared a recent experience she had of her council setting her congregational staff family leave policy. Now granted, as a nation, we are the very worst in all the “industrialized nations” with our average of 6 – 12 weeks unpaid leave. That particular church however, just approved TWO WEEKS parental leave. TWO WEEKS. What does that say about the priorities of this congregation to protect tiny newborn babies, and their parents, including the possibility that their mother might have had a C section, which is major surgery? .. or even welcoming adopted or foster children into families? And yet, this is closer to the normal attitude in churches than we would care to admit.

How we welcome those who are considered least says a lot about how we welcome Jesus. Martin Luther once said that Christ lives in each of us, and that we are all “Little Christs.” The good that we do is Jesus working in us. And we are to love, welcome, and value one another as children of God because of this. Not from pity, or deserving it from anything we have done or accomplished, or because we are deemed to be successful or trustworthy… but because we belong to Jesus as God’s children.

Jesus welcomes this child on her own terms, and not on her future value. He doesn’t welcome this child into his presence before the disciples and say – “welcome this child because she is the future of the church.” Or “Welcome this child because she’ll have a family and bring in more kids.” Or “Welcome this child, as long as she behaves in church.” Or “Welcome this child – as long as she stays quiet about how she ‘may or may not’ have been harmed by people in power.”

Instead, Jesus said, “Welcome this child because when you welcome her, you welcome me. And when you welcome me, you welcome the very presence of God in your midst.” Welcome her questions, her curiosity, her wonder, and her wiggles. Welcome her, believe her, stand up for her, especially when no one else is standing up for her. This is especially important in the face of those who CLAIM that they follow Jesus, and then do the opposite.  

It’s amazing that God can take an unimportant, overlooked child, and exalt her as the standard for discipleship. God takes our expectations and then does the opposite – treating the first as last and the last as first, much to our dismay and confusion. But this is more normal behavior for God than we care to admit.

God can also choose a rag-tag bunch of fishermen and generally clueless dudes and make them into passionate preachers and teachers of the message of Jesus.

God can use a tool of cruel and unusual punishment – the cross - and refashion it into a symbol of life and hope for millions for centuries. And God can use YOU, with all your strengths and all your weaknesses and with all your questions, as a vehicle to bring in the Kingdom of God by showing this radical welcome to all people… perhaps helped by all the lessons we learned as kids, like sharing, and holding hands and sticking together. … though naps are optional. Amen.