May 26, 2013 - Holy Trinity Sunday - God Gives Hope in the Midst of Suffering

God Gives Hope in the Midst of Suffering

Romans 5:1-5

Holy Trinity Sunday – May 26, 2013

Village Church, Milwaukee

Stories of suffering abound in our world. We don't have to look far. Turn on the TV, read a newspaper, surf the internet. Talk with your family and friends, listen to the conversations at the local coffee shop, hang out in your neighborhood, and you will hear and see stories that will break your heart and bring tears to your eyes and prayers to your lips. Pictures of devastation from the tornado in Oklahoma this past week. Stories of the loved one who is sinking back into addiction or wrestling with mental illness or was diagnosed with a terminal disease. Tales of financial struggle arising from lack of work or jobs that don't pay a living wage or medical bills that have piled up. Relationships that are falling apart. Innocent people cheering on marathoners or going to school struck down by sudden violence, lives ended or forever changed. So much of the suffering in our world is so unpredictable and so unfair, whether it happens to us personally, or in our family or community, in our country or somewhere far around the world. None of us escapes suffering, but given the choice, we would choose to avoid suffering if we could, wouldn't we? Even if it's true what Paul says here, that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, none of us wants to suffer. I'm pretty sure I'd forgo the endurance and character building that suffering brings, even if hope lay at the other side.

And yet Paul dares to say to this church in Rome that we not only boast in our hope of sharing in God's glory, but that we boast in our sufferings too! We boast in our sufferings? Really, Paul?

Now if we didn't know what we do about Paul, we could dismiss this as just so much religious talk. We could think that he's just telling us to put a brave face on all that is hard in our lives, to wear a sign that says “too blessed to be stressed”, which when you're in the middle of it doesn't feel true – but it does a great job of keeping our vulnerabilities hidden. But this is Paul. Paul, who from day one in his walk with Jesus, had his life turned upside-down. Do you know his story? You can read it in the book of Acts. It began on the road to Damascus in the days of the early church. Paul, known then as Saul, was on his way to persecute and imprison and kill followers of the Way, and instead was struck down and struck blind by a vision of Jesus. From that moment on, his life was never the same, and it was never easy for this former rising star of his community and his faith. The original disciples didn't trust him or want to accept him, not at first, and once he started preaching in synagogues throughout that region, the Jewish leaders drove him out of nearly every town he entered because they didn't like the message he brought. There are plots and conspiracies to get him arrested and imprisoned and even to kill him! This is how Paul describes his experiences as an apostle for Jesus in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians:

Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? (2 Cor. 11:24-29)

So when Paul talks about suffering, he's speaking from personal experience. He's been through it; he has suffered all of these different things, and yet he is able to say, here near the end of his ministry & the end of his life, that he boasts in (“rejoices in” is another way to translate that) these sufferings, because suffering leads to endurance, which leads to character, which leads to hope, and “hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

Now our world and Paul's world too often though that hope was foolish. Hope was naïve. But what Paul knows is that our hope doesn't just rest in a promise of “someday”. Hope is here and now in the present, in the every day – because God chooses to enter into this world, here and now. God chooses to enter into our lives, to walk with us, to be with us in the midst of our suffering. We see this most fully in the life of Jesus, who set aside his own glory to become one of us, who was willing to give himself up for us, to suffer betrayal by one of his closest followers, to be arrested and put on trial, to be sentenced to death on a cross. This is how God chooses to make the divine self known, how God chooses to reveal the depth of God's love for us...in the midst of Christ's suffering and sorrow that reminds us that we are never alone, no matter what we are facing, no matter what we are going through. This is a love that manages to redeem our suffering, not that God wants for any of us to suffer, just that God is able to bring some good out of it on the other side, even when it seems hopeless. We are loved with a love that overcomes even the power of death! This love is poured into our hearts, into our lives, by the Holy Spirit – not just through some mystical, abstract, spiritual experience. We know it in the overflow of God's love expressed in the lives of people. First responders digging through destruction to find survivors. Teachers shielding students with their own bodies. Adult children caring for their aging parents. People donating food to food pantries or money to buy mosquito nets for families in Africa. Folks who walk or run or bike to raise money to fight cancer or ALS or domestic violence. Those who speak up for the victims and the voiceless, who seek justice and work for peace, who clothe the naked and comfort the mourning. This is God's love, poured out through God's people into a hurting, suffering world, bringing the light of hope...and this hope will not disappoint. Thanks be to God!

Amen.

May 12, 2013 - Easter 7C - Dive Into the Deepness of God's Love

Dive into the Deepness of God's Love

John 17:20-26

Easter 7 – May 12, 2013

St. Mark's Lutheran Church – Waukesha

*To hear this sermon as it was preached that Sunday, go here, scroll down (and down and down) to the date, listed as "Mother's Day" and click on the play button. (I couldn't figure out how to link directly to that one sermon, sorry.)

Most of you probably know that Pastor Andy & Norah & Declan and I were away in Orlando recently. The first part of our trip there was for a conference and then we had some time for vacation. We stayed at our time share, which has a beautiful, huge pool, just right for families with younger kids. See, the one side of the pool is the kind you walk into and it just gradually gets deeper, til you get out to the middle where there's one of those rope dividers – with those plastic things that bob up & down in the water? But even there, the pool's only 3 feet deep. Norah loves it, and Declan thought it was pretty great too.

Now I have to tell you, every year, I give Pr. Andy a hard time about the way he gets into the water. It's not just this pool. It's every pool or lake or ocean we get into. Andy is cautious. He takes it slow. One step at a time, not wanting to get in too fast, trying to let his body adjust. Me? I just get in and get under as soon as I can. Figure I might as well get it over with. :) But every now and again, Andy will decide to get brave on me. Because there's another side of the pool, where the water is deeper. And on that side is a water slide. So he'll get out and walk around the edge of the pool and go up the stairs and stand in line until he gets to the top, and then down he comes in a great mighty rush, spiraling down the slide until he lands in the deep end with a splash! Plunging in all at once, head and all, and getting everyone around him a little bit wet too, smiling when he comes out. It's quite a change when he finally decides to go all in.

I tell you this story this morning because I hear in the gospel an invitation for us to go all in – to move out of the shallow end of the pool and dive into the depths of God's love for us. See, even though we are just now coming up to the end of the Easter season, in the biblical time line, the gospel passage we just heard happens on what we call Maundy Thursday. It's the night of foot-washing, the night of the Last Supper. Soon, Jesus & the disciples will go out to the garden, and Judas will betray Jesus into the hands of the authorities who will have him put to death on a cross. But before that happens, Jesus prays for his disciples, and for all who will come to believe because of their message. We listen in with them as he lifts us all up to God the Father, and we hear him pray a prayer of love, for love – that all who will be drawn in to this community of faith would know the love the Father and the Son have for each other and for the world; that they would see and experience this deep, intimate, self-giving love that is at the heart of their relationship, that makes them one. Jesus prays that his followers would be one just as Jesus and the Father are one, that they would experience this love, that it would overflow into their relationships with each other, so that the world may know that the Father sent Jesus and loves them. Jesus prays that his followers would swim around in the deep end of God's love, this immense, abundant, never-failing love that God has for each of us and for the whole creation and that that love would splash on to everyone around us, that God's love would be reflected in our relationships, in the ways that we move and act and speak to one another.

This is what Jesus prays for, this is what he longs to see happen. And we know that that's not always what happens. The early disciples and the ancient church had their squabbles and disputes. There were times when they let money or class or gender get in the way of living out God's love. But sometimes, as we read the stories from Acts and read the letters written by Paul and other leaders to the ancient congregations, we see examples of Jesus' prayer being answered. We see God's love changing people's lives and we see them overflowing with love for those around them – making sure that widows and orphans are taken care of, comforting the sick, burying the dead. We see followers of Jesus giving generously to each other, sharing what they have. We see them drawing close to one another, praying together, worshiping together, eating together. They lift one another up, rejoice together, weep together. These are the folks who have given up wading in the shallows, but instead have plunged in over their heads into God's amazing love, letting that love spill over into the lives of everyone they meet, not just fellow believers, but everyone.

This is still Jesus' prayer for us who follow him today, that we would know and see and experience God's love for us and for the world and that our lives would be transformed, that our lives would reveal God's love to those around us. And that means going deep with each other, which, let's be honest, isn't always easy. Our lives are filled with so many distractions, so much to do, sometimes so much hurt from previous attempts to go deep with someone that it often feels easier, safer to just stay on the shallow end of the pool. Our culture isn't so great at connecting with each other anymore, is it? We have amazing technologies at our disposal, ways to keep in touch that our ancestors never could have dreamed of – telephones and computers; texting and Facebook; and if anyone had told me when I was watching the Jetsons when I was growing up that someday we'd have video phones, I'd have laughed and told them they were crazy! Yet despite all the ways we have to keep connected, it's usually just on the surface. We're not intimately involved and invested in each other's lives the way that God the Father and God the Son are, the way that Jesus prays that we will be with each other.

But when we are, church, when we manage to wade out past the shallows and get into the deep end, oh, amazing things happen. When we take the time to be the hands and feet and eyes and heart of Christ, when we open ourselves up to the people around us, to be really, fully present wherever we are and seek to go deep – that's when our lives witness to the love of God that lives in us, that's when the world around us who doesn't yet know this love begins to sit up and take notice. It can be in big, obvious ways, like the woman who arranged for the burial of the alleged Boston Marathon bomber, because, as she said, “Jesus says to love our enemies,” or less noticeable things -- less noticeable, but no less important - like taking someone to the airport or bringing food to someone after a birth or an illness or a death. It can be watching the neighbor's kids so she can get a little break or taking an elderly friend to the grocery store. It's praying together, laughing together, crying together, eating together, playing together. We go deep when we get real, get vulnerable, get involved, when we let God's love flow into us and through us. This is when we become part of the Love that put on flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood, when we become part of the Incarnation, when we dive deep into God's never-ending supply of love and let it splash up onto the people around us, so that they too may come to know how much God loves them, loves all of us.

So that's the invitation, that's the call: to let Jesus' prayer for us be answered in our lives. Look around you. Start where you are – in your family, in your neighborhood, in your school, in your workplace. Dive deep into the deepness of God's love – and let that love splash onto those around you.

Amen.

April 7, 2013 - Easter 2C - God Is On the Move!

God Is On the Move!

Acts 5:27-32

Easter 2C – April 7, 2013

Mt. Olive Lutheran Church – Mukwonago, WI

This was my first Wisconsin winter. Until last July, my family & I were in New York, but I grew up in northwestern PA, in what my sister likes to call the buckle of the snow belt just off of Lake Erie, so I'm used to a fair amount of snow. And maybe Wisconsin winters are always like this, but still, hasn't this year seemed like the winter that would never end? Never mind what Punxatawny Phil said. I keep waiting for spring to be sprung, and we're getting there, but it sure is taking its sweet time, isn't it?

It reminds me a little bit of the world of Narnia when Lucy and Susan and Peter and Edmund first stumble upon it in the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the classic book by CS Lewis. You see, when they first get there, they find themselves in a world where, as they are told, it is always winter, but never Christmas. A world of snow and ice and cold winds blowing, but never the promise of the joy of Christmas. It's a world so long entrapped by the power of the White Witch's spell that the creatures of Narnia can hardly even remember, much less hope for, a time of spring.

And in a way, that is the kind of world the disciples lived in. Not a literal world of winter, of course, but a kind of metaphorical one. It's a world oppressed by the foreign powers of Rome, held captive by religious legalism. It's a place in which poverty and disease are widespread, where those in power intimidate and take advantage of the poor and the powerless, a place where people can be imprisoned or beaten or worse for daring to speak out. It is a world of winter cold looking for spring, longing for a Messiah - someone to rescue them, hardly daring to hope, especially when they had seen Jesus, the one who seemed to embody that hope, fall prey to the powers that be, sentenced to death, hanging upon a cross not very long before.
The disciples themselves are no strangers to the world of threats and intimidation, and they're not immune to them either. We see them in John's gospel, the evening of the first Easter, locked away together, hiding behind closed doors for fear of the Jews, which in John's gospel stands not for the whole Jewish people, but for the religious authorities, the guys in power, the very same council and high priest the disciples find themselves standing before in the story from Acts.

They've been warned more than once already to keep their mouths shut, to keep their story about Jesus to themselves; they've been imprisoned just the night before (and not for the first time) because they just can't NOT talk about Jesus, and just this morning, after a miraculous release from prison by an angel of the LORD, they're found in the Temple, preaching and healing in Jesus' name – then brought before the council and the high priest to explain themselves. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name...” yet here you are again!

So what's different? What changes between John's Gospel and this Acts story, between Easter night and several weeks down the road, that we get two very different stories about the exact same people?

Well, what is different is that God is on the move! God is on the move in their winter-y world, and just like when Aslan comes into the always-winter-but-never-Chistmas world of Narnia, spring starts busting out all over. “We've heard Aslan is on the move,” the kindly Beavers say to the children – and as they rush to escape from the clutches of the evil White Witch, they begin to see signs that this is true all around them. Snow begins to melt. It slides off trees, revealing the deep evergreen branches. The ground shows through and flowers poke their way towards the sun. Birds appear and break out into full-throated choruses, welcoming this day of spring that no one had really dared to hope would ever come again.

And this is what the disciples see. Of course, that's not exactly different – God has always been on the move in this world, from its very beginning. And it's not like the disciples hadn't seen it before. In the words and actions and very being of Jesus, they had seen God on the move every day. God, in Jesus – reaching out to the lost and the lonely, to the outcast and the sinner, welcoming them in, welcoming them home; God, in Jesus – moved to compassion over the sick and possessed and dying – healing them, making them whole again; God, in Jesus – teaching and preaching and sharing a new word, a new way of understanding who God is and the relationship God longs to have with each and every person – a relationship based on love and trust instead of rules and fear. They had already seen in their winter world signs of spring breaking through: flowers sprouting into bloom and trees bursting forth with new leaves and birds singing in spontaneous chorus. This is what they saw in the life of Jesus.

But even more important, what made all the difference in their lives is what they saw and experienced that first Easter. God, in Jesus, breaking through our always-winter-but-never-Christmas sentence that his death seemed to be; God, breaking the bonds of death and raising Jesus up to new life, eternal life, spring life; God, melting once and forever the snow and ice and cold of our wintry hearts and replacing it with vibrant color and enlivening song and warming weather. God reminding us again of the promise of new life, that spring always comes, that winter does not hold us in its grip forever. This is what the disciples take hold of when they meet the resurrected Jesus face to face in that upper room. This is the message that Jesus sends them to share – the message that in the end, light scatters darkness, life conquers death, love wins!

And so they go, these disciples, now called apostles, “sent ones” - sent with a message too good to keep to themselves, unable to keep quiet, unable to hold in what they have seen, because they are witnesses to these things.

People of God gathered here this morning, this is our mission too. The world around us lies in the grip of a cold, hard winter. For many around us, maybe even some of us here too, the world seems a cold, friendless place with no hope of spring. We hear of violence and bullying, suicide and homicide every day on the news. We wrestle with terminal diseases and addictions and mental illness. We worry about the economy and our personal finances, about wars and rumors of wars, and sometimes it seems like we will be caught in this winter world forever. But we have been witnesses to a different reality! We have caught glimpse of the coming spring around every corner – in every act of compassion, in every hand who reaches out to someone in need, in every voice that speaks for the voiceless, in the lives of those who work for justice and peace. We see it in individuals and congregations and organizations who make a difference – feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and housing the homeless. These are signs of spring – of God on the move, even now, to break the bonds of fear and need and death. And we are witnesses to these things! Let's go and share the good news!

Amen.