December 22, 2013- Advent 4A - Awake from Sleep!

Awake from Sleep!

Matthew 1:18-25

Advent 4A - December 22, 2013

*View the sermon on YouTube here.

We spend so much of our lives dreaming, planning out our ideal vision of the future. People dedicate whole Pinterest boards to their someday wedding (whether they’re engaged or not!), to their someday home, to the memories and traditions they’d like to create with their children. As we get older, perhaps our dreams turn to visions of retirement or to travel plans. Thinking about what the future may hold and dreaming about the life we want to live is part of human nature. It’s something we like to spend time daydreaming about.

But we all know our dreams don’t always come true. Life doesn’t look like a Pinterest board. Inevitably, something happens that throws our dreams off course. Sometimes it’s just a minor course correction, and we adjust quickly. But sometimes we have major detours, events that stop us in our tracks, looking around not knowing what just happened, when life suddenly seems like one big bad dream that we hope and pray we’ll wake up from soon. Mr. or Mrs. Right says, “We need to talk,” and next thing you know, divorce is on the horizon. That dream job we thought we were so right for is given to someone else. The home we waited and saved for ends up in foreclosure. Infertility strikes. People in the prime of life get cancer or get deployed to dangerous uncertain places or fall victim to random accidents or violence. Depression and despair take over in the life of someone we love who chooses to end the bad dream once and for all. And we may wish we could ignore all of these hard things this morning, but that wouldn’t be honest. Somehow our lives have put us on a road we didn’t even know was on the map, and we sit here feeling lost, alone, confused, wondering how we can move on from here. Some of us are sitting here this morning feeling like we’re in the middle of a bad dream, wondering if we’re ever going to wake up.

I think Joseph knew these same feelings only too well. Here in Matthew’s gospel, we get one of the few stories we ever get about Jesus’ earthly father. And Joseph’s life feels like a bad dream.

The way I imagine him, based on what little we know about Joseph, is that he was probably the kind of guy who liked to have life planned out and organized. He was a carpenter after all. Measure twice and cut once and all that. So I figure Joseph was the kind of guy who had a master plan for his life: work hard, save a little money, find a wife and settle down and raise a family. And things seemed like they were on track. He was engaged to Mary – the first step in the traditional arranged marriage. Now they were just waiting for the second step, for Mary to come and make her home with Joseph. Then the rest of their lives could begin.

But then word comes that Mary is pregnant! Imagine the scandal, the feelings of betrayal and disappointment. He knows for sure this baby she’s carrying ain’t his. How can he possibly marry her now? So Joseph wrestles with his options. None of them are good. And so he tosses and turns, and finally comes to a decision. He’s righteous, but compassionate. He can’t marry Mary, but at least he can save her from public disgrace and punishment. He resolves to dismiss her, but quietly. Then, perhaps, he can start over, dream new dreams. And so he falls, finally, into sleep.
But as he sleeps, he begins to dream. And suddenly, God shows up, sending an angel who brings Joseph a new dream, God’s dream! “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid!” (Ever notice that that’s the first thing angels always say when they appear: “Do not be afraid.”) “Mary’s story is true. Her child is from the Holy Spirit. Go ahead and marry her, just like you planned. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus.” Jesus – which means, “he saves.” Matthew tells us this son will be known as Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.”

You see, just when all of Joseph's dreams were crumbling, God literally brings him a new dream. When Joseph was filled with doubt and not knowing where to turn, God enters in and gives him a new direction, a new plan. When Joseph thought all hope was gone, God comes and brings new hope!

And so Joseph steps out in faith to do what the angel of the Lord told him to do. That's not to say that the road ahead of him was always easy; Joseph doesn't get to slide back into his dream of “happily ever after”. It will be years before life returns to anything like normal for Joseph, but each step along the journey, each time Joseph takes another leap of faith to be obedient to what God has called him to do, he finds that God is with him. As Mary & Joseph travel to Bethlehem and find shelter in a stable, God is with them. When Joseph has another dream warning them to get outta Bethlehem quick before King Herod finds them, God is with them. As they flee to Egypt and settle there in a foreign land where they don't know anyone and no one knows them, God is with them. And when they finally return to Judea and settle in Nazareth, instead of Galilee, which was the original plan, God is with them. In each new, unplanned-for situation, Joseph discovers that God is there with them, guiding them, guarding them, preparing a way where there was no way, bringing good despite all his fear, and uncertainly, and doubt.

I don't know where all of you find yourselves this morning, but as we head toward a new year, I imagine some of us are in the place Joseph found himself, faced with a situation we don't know how to handle or a future we don’t think we can face because of anxiety or dread of what that future might bring, feeling like life is just a bad dream. But awake from sleep and trust this morning that this is not the end of your story. Know that even when our dreams are falling down around us, God has a new dream for us. When our carefully built plans are self-destructing, God has a new plan for us. And while we wait and listen for God to reveal that new vision for our future, here is a promise that will hold true: God is with you. When the path is straight and clear and easy, God is with you. And when the road is rocky & steep, and you can't see what lies ahead, God is with you. And even when you sit down and cry in the middle of the road because you just can't go another step, God is with you. God is with you, guarding you and guiding you, whispering not to lose hope because God has a new dream in store. It was God's promise to Joseph 2 millenia ago, and it's still God's promise to us today. May you know the truth and the peace of that promise today and always. God is with you.

Amen.

December 15, 2013 - Advent 3 - What Are You Looking For?

What Are You Looking For?

Matthew 11:2-11

Advent 3A - December 15, 2013

*To view this sermon on YouTube, click here.

Jesus is not the Messiah John the Baptizer was looking for.

We see that in the message he sent his disciples to Jesus with in the gospel this morning. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John says.

The last time we saw John in Matthew’s gospel was back in chapter 3, just before Jesus comes to be baptized by him. There John the Baptizer “appears” in the wilderness, there to prepare the way of the one who is to come, the Lord. There he creates quite the spectacle, urging people to repent, calling the Pharisees and Sadducees out on their sin when they come to be baptized. He demands that the people bear fruit worthy of repentance, with the warning that those who don’t bear good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire. “…one who is more powerful than I is coming after me,” he says, with a winnowing fork in his hand, ready to separate the wheat from the chaff, burning the chaff with an unquenchable fire.

This is the kind of messiah John the Baptizer was looking for – one who would come in power and might to usher in God’s kingdom. But read on from chapter three, and that’s not what we see Jesus doing. Not the way John expected. No, after he is baptized and led out into the wilderness to be tempted, Jesus begins his ministry, calling people to follow him, curing sickness and disease, teaching, and proclaiming the good news. He touches lepers and makes them clean, he heals a Roman centurion’s servant, he casts out demons. Jesus stills storms, heals the paralyzed, raises a young girl from the dead. He eats with tax collectors and sinners, gives sight to the blind and speech to the mute. It’s these things Jesus points to in answer to John’s question – but it’s not quite the in-your-face, direct confrontation and overturning of the status quo that John was looking for in the messiah.

And as we draw ever nearer to Christmas this Advent season, I’m wondering where we find ourselves in this story. What are you looking for? What kind of messiah are you expecting to find? Do we wonder with John the Baptizer if Jesus the one or should we be looking for another?

This time of year comes with great expectations – of how Christmas will be, of how life should be, our hopes that perhaps the year with all of its struggles and problems and grief, whatever they may be, could possibly be redeemed or at least that the New Year will give us a fresh start. Perhaps you struggle, like Clark Griswold, longing for that old-fashioned family Christmas, with the perfect presents and the perfect lights and the perfect meal, and everyone getting along for a change, and that adorable little baby lying in the manger who will somehow, some way bring peace and good will to all, finally.

But we all know that our reality sometimes doesn’t live up to those great expectations. Christmas is not just like the ones we used to know. Life can be harder than we’d like, and we are left, with John the Baptizer, wondering why Jesus doesn’t just swoop in with power and might and fix everything. If Christ the Lord has come, why do we still struggle and hurt so much, especially at this time of the year?

So, is Jesus the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? Is he the Messiah we've been looking for or not?

The way Jesus responds does not give a definitive yes or no to John the Baptizer, but it does point to who he is and what he's about. And what Jesus reminds John is that in Jesus' actions, the kingdom of heaven is coming near. God's kingdom is breaking into this world in the words and actions and person of Jesus. John may have expected a powerful, mighty savior who would go up against the political and religious powers of the world in obvious ways. But what he gets is a powerful mighty savior who comes to heal the broken, to lift up the downtrodden, to give hope to the hopeless. This messiah doesn't look like the one John the Baptizer was expecting, but what he does ultimately goes beyond John's expectations. This messiah doesn't trample the powerful only to assume power. No, this messiah, Jesus, stands with the poor and the lame. He heals the blind and the deaf. He doesn't stay at a distance, but touches the leper and makes him clean, even raises people from the dead! This messiah does not simply deal with the symptoms of our trouble, he gets to the root of it, exposing the brokenness of all creation, the warping of who we were created to be by the power of sin, and he lays his ax to those roots, cutting them away with the power of love – offering as he does, not judgment and recrimination, but hope and healing and wholeness, not necessarily in one fell swoop, but still with the promise that ultimately, love wins. This messiah comes to redeem us and all of creation because of his deep, steadfast love for all he has created.

This messiah comes to us in the dark prisons of our lives, promising to stand beside us, to walk with us, because Jesus always reaches out to the ones in need. He may not be the messiah we were looking for, but thank God, he's the one who always comes looking for us.

Amen.

November 17, 2013 - Pentecost + 26 - Witness to the World

Witness to the World

Luke 21:5-19

Pentecost + 26 - November 17, 2013

*To view this sermon on YouTube, click here

So, this is one of those passages that makes me surprised when you all respond “Praise to you, O Christ,” or “Thanks be to God,” when I finish reading it out loud. This is the kind of passage that makes me want to put a question mark after those responses: “Praise to you, O Christ?” - because there’s not a whole lot in it that feels worthy of praising or giving thanks for. Tell me I’m not alone in this.

We join this story with Jesus and a bunch of people at the temple. And some of them are marveling at the building before them. “Isn’t it great, Jesus? Aren’t you impressed? See the workmanship in the stones! Look at all of the memorial gifts people have given! Isn’t it amazing?” But Jesus is like a wet blanket, dampening all of their enthusiasm. “All this you’re admiring so much – the time is coming when every stone in this building will end up in a heap of rubble.”

What a shock this must have been to them. Not just because the building was a massive, solid piece of architecture that would have seemed hard to destroy, but because of all that the Temple represented. The Temple was the dwelling place of God, the tangible symbol of where God can be found. This is where people come to encounter the living God, in praise and worship, in song and story. To suggest that one day it wouldn’t exist anymore was an affront to their beliefs. If the Temple is gone, then where will they meet God? How will they know they have been in God’s presence if the Temple isn’t there?

We sitting here this morning so many years later may kind of scoff at that idea, that God can be contained in a building, because we know and understand and believe that God is present everywhere. But I wonder how often we get caught up in that same general mindset. We make temples all on our own, out of all sorts of things and experiences. Sometimes it’s a church building, but it’s not just buildings. Our worship styles and habits and traditions become temples to us at times. There are things that speak to us, ways that we have powerfully felt and seen God’s presence moving in our lives, and so we want to set those things in stone. We want to make them immovable, so that we can come back to them again and again, so that we can be sure we’ll find God in those things.

So we are just as offended when we hear Jesus speak these words so casually this morning. “These temples that seem so important to you? Not gonna last forever,” he says. We get bent out of shape about all sorts of changes: when a beloved pastor of many years retires and moves on; when the way we distribute and receive communion changes; when we add more lay leadership in the form of acolytes and try and work out the kinks of what that looks like; when we plan to get new hymnals – and I’ll just be straight with you so you’re not surprised when we get them somewhere down the road. There will be hymns in there that you’ve never sung. You won’t like singing them to begin with. Some of you will find your favorite hymn didn’t make the cut. There are ten, count ‘em, ten!, settings of the liturgy in there, and it’ll be an adjustment as we start to learn a new one here or there. I know, believe me, that change is hard, and that sometimes it feels, indeed, like the sky is falling, like the foundations of our faith, the things we have relied on for so long to help us encounter God, are being rocked in earthquake-like proportions.

It’s normal and natural that we would get caught up in lamenting the ways that things used to be, that we might argue and squabble and complain in our efforts to keep the temples we have built standing. But I have to be honest with you this morning. I have to tell you that these temples are not the things that Jesus Christ lived and died and rose again for. As important as these things may be and have been to our own faith journeys, as much as we may have felt God show up in certain ways through certain traditions – they are not eternal. They are not the only way we can meet with God. In the grand scheme of things, they are not such big deals.

Look around us at what’s going on in the world. There are people and places where the rest of these verses from Luke are coming true for them. Wars and uprisings, earthquakes and famines. The tremendous, heart-wrenching destruction in the Philippines, the loss of life and property, the desperate need for food and water and all of the necessities of life. The neighbor who is having to choose between paying the rent or feeding their family or buying diapers. The former drug addict or convicted criminal who is trying to claw their way into a new life and keeps getting knocked down. There are people all around us, next door or across the globe, who are in urgent need of good news, of hope, of hands reaching out to lift them up.

And if we get caught up in our little church disputes about non-essential stuff, what does that say to those who are looking to the church to see who God is and what God is like and what God has to say about all of the tragedy and hurt in the world? What is our witness to the world?

We are to be about bigger and better things. We are to be lights in the darkness, to offer hope to the hopeless. We are to be doing God’s work with our hands.

I’m glad to say that I see lots of that here. Donations to the food pantry. An upcoming mission trip to Honduras. Donations to ELCA World Hunger and the Malaria Campaign. Visitation to the homebound and hospitalized. Meals for the chronically ill and bereaved. Care packages for active military members. Small groups where people give and receive love and support and wrestle with the big questions of life and faith. A Good Samaritan fund that helps people from all walks of life with all sorts of problems, with compassion, not judgment.

This is just a sample of what I have seen in the past month of being with you, the people of Ascension Lutheran Church. I’m willing to bet that there are many, many more. This is God’s love, flowing to you and then through you to a dark and desperate world. This is the power of the risen Christ empowering you to steady someone else’s shaking ground, to shore up a sky that seems to be falling. This is you, the body of Christ, becoming a living temple, where people can come and know that they have been in the presence of the living and ever-loving God! Stay with it – that’s what God longs for. Stay with it to the end. Let these things be what this place is known for. Let this be your witness to the world. You won’t be sorry.

Amen.

November 10, 2013 - Pentecost + 25 - Resurrection Life

Resurrection Life

Luke 20:27-38

Pentecost + 25 - November 10, 2013

*To view the sermon on YouTube, go here.

I read recently of a new television show airing on Showtime, called “Time of Death”, which premiered last Friday. To call it a reality show doesn’t seem the right description; one reviewer called it a docu-series, an “unflinchingly honest” one “about what it’s like to die”. I haven’t seen the show yet, but basically, it follows the lives of various people - young, old, middle-aged – all of whom are suffering from a terminal illness in the final weeks and days before they die. Not your typical mindless-Friday-night, curl-up-on-the-couch-with-a-bowl-of-popcorn fare, to be sure.

It’s fascinating to me that someone out there was brave enough to tackle this topic, because as a culture, our usual approach to death and dying is one of denial. TV shows, movies, and books that center around death abound in our society – but they generally serve to help us keep our distance from death. Death becomes a kind of gruesome entertainment, and so we manage to push the reality of death away for a little while.
But despite this, we live with an un-spoken, subconscious fear of death and what lies beyond. And our culture capitalizes on this. It feeds on fear and anxiety, such that the overarching narrative of our lives together is one that highlights reasons to be afraid, and then tries to sell us solutions, ways to keep aging and sickness and death at bay, ways to numb our pain when the reality that none of us gets out of here alive gets too close.

Which is not to say that there are not plenty of reasons for us to legitimately worry. This week, we’ve all heard the story of the young girl who disappeared on her way to school, and our hearts broke for her and her family as we imagined or experienced for ourselves the anxiety and fear about where she could be and what may have happened, and hoped desperately that our own children and loved ones will be safe.
We have friends and family and neighbors, or perhaps ourselves, who have gotten a dreaded diagnosis of cancer or MS or some other life-changing disease and stand at the crossroads of treatment options, not knowing what may lie ahead and how it will all turn out.

We know the pain of wrestling with mental illness, the daily struggle against addictions to alcohol or drugs or pornography and the desire to break free from a power so strong that it enslaves us.
We stumble through the grief of losing a loved one – the child you longed to know and raise. A parent. The spouse you spent most of your adult life with.

These are real sorrows. They rightly weigh us down. They are ultimately unavoidable, even if we spend much of our lives trying to avoid them. And the culture around us, as much as it glorifies death, doesn’t offer much hope beyond it. For so many, there is the sense that death is final, that in the end, death wins.

That’s pretty much the attitude of the Sadducees in the story we hear from Luke this morning. The Sadducees are a group of religious leaders who, Luke reminds us, “say there is no resurrection.” They hold only to the truths they can find written in the books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, and from what they can see, this life is all there is. That’s okay with them though, because mostly, they had it pretty good here – power, prestige, money, the comfortable life. Why worry about the afterlife when the here and now seems so good? But to deny the resurrection is to deny the possibility that God will, in God’s time, set things right. It denies the hope that God’s power will be made known in the age to come. It denies the power of God over the power of death. For the Sadducees, ultimately, death wins.

And so they come to Jesus with this ridiculous, trumped-up question about the marriage of one woman to a line of 7 brothers. Their concern, of course, isn’t to find out what Jesus has to say about the power of life over death, but to trap him – they, along with the Pharisees and scribes and other religious leaders are seeking for a way and a reason to kill him by now. Read a few chapters ahead, and there we’ll find Jesus at the Last Supper, praying in the garden, handed over to the authorities, hanging on a cross, breathing his last breath. And Jesus knows all this is coming Way back in chapter nine, “he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (v. 51), and he’s predicted his own death three times on his way there. And knowing this, he speaks not to the surface question, but to the deeper longing of the others who would hear his response. He pulls an example from the books the Sadducees honor, about the leader they respect. Jesus speaks of Moses. Moses, a Hebrew raised in Pharaoh’s house, who sees the oppression of his people. Moses, who murders an Egyptian and then flees to a foreign land, trying to outrun his past and make a new life for himself. Moses who, while tending the sheep, comes across a bush that burns but is not consumed. Moses, who encounters God in that anxious, fretful, fearful place – a God who speaks to him, calling him out of that place of death and into a place of life, of mission and purpose, sending him back to Egypt to lead God’s people into freedom. And Jesus speaks these words, these powerful, hopeful words: “Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living: for to him all of them are alive.”

Faced with threats and punishment and death himself, Jesus claims this central truth: that no matter what the world says and does, no matter how powerful death appears to be, God wills life! And not just life after death, though certainly as Christians we believe in and look for the life of the world to come, even if we can’t predict or know with any certainty what that will look like. But life, here and now is what God desires, life in the midst of all of the hurt and pain and little deaths that we die all the time. Jesus promises his listeners, then and now, that God is not a God of the dead, but of the living, and that means that God offers us life, new life, resurrection life, even now! God embraces us all, across time and space, bringing us daily to new life in Christ. We get glimpses of this promise throughout the Bible, both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, and see it clearly in the Easter story of Christ being raised from the dead when it seemed all hope was lost. We hear God speaking to us in our own fretful, fearful places, in the rush of the baptismal waters that drown and raise us up again in Jesus, that claim us as God’s own beloved children forever. We taste this promise in the bread and wine we share each week, this small morsel and sip that somehow is enough to strengthen and sustain us for the road ahead because we know Jesus is present in it and so in us. We experience it in this community of faith that walks with us, holding us up when we lack the strength to stand, believing for us when we cannot find the faith to believe on our own.

The world lies. The Sadducees were wrong. Death does come to everyone, eventually. But death does not have the final word. Death does not win. God is the God of the living. Wherever you find yourself this morning, whatever your burdens, your fears, whatever seems dead in your life, hold fast to this promise. God is with you. God is holding on to you. And God, the God of the living, speaks to us, calling life out of death, renewing us, sending us with mission and purpose and hope. This is Resurrection Life, life held by the living God who will not let us go. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

October 27, 2013 - Reformation Sunday - Re-Formed by the Truth

Re-Formed by the Truth

John 8:31-36

Reformation Sunday - October 27, 2013

Ascension Lutheran Church

*See the sermon on YouTube here

Do any of you remember the movie, The Matrix? The one with Keanu Reeves and all of the special effects that were sooo cool back in 1999? (Yeah, I know, I’m showing my age a little bit…)

The movie was set sometime in the distant future, and not a very pleasant one. See, the artificial intelligence created by human kind had risen up against humanity, and the machines had won. They've enslaved almost the entire population, but as the movie begins we don’t know that. We know only what Neo, the Keanu Reeves character, knows. By day, he goes by Thomas Anderson, who goes to his normal, boring office job, but by night, he’s Neo, a brilliant computer hacker who’s become obsessed with finding out about The Matrix, something he’s only heard whispers about, seen traces of. As the story unfolds, Neo is brought to meet with Morpheus, a man who claims to know the truth. He offers Neo a choice. Take the blue pill, and he’ll wake up back in his own bed, able to believe whatever he wants about the events that have led him to this crossroads. Or, take the red pill and keep going down the rabbit hole, following it to the truth. “But,” Morpheus warns, “ the choice is final. There’s no going back. Which do you choose?”

Which would you choose? We see Jesus offering a similar choice to his listeners in the story from John’s gospel we heard this morning. “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples,” he says, “and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Now, these are people who have been tagging along after Jesus for a while. These are folks who have been listening as he teaches and liking what they hear. These are “the Jews who had believed in” Jesus. So you’d think that they’d jump eagerly at the chance to learn more, to go deeper, to know the truth and be made free. But instead, his words meet with resistance. His listeners are offended! “We come from Abraham!
We've never been slaves! What do you mean, ‘You will be made free’?”

So Jesus tries to explain what he’s getting at a different way. Because of course, we know he’s not just talking about physical slavery. He’s talking about something deeper. He’s talking about spiritual slavery. “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.”

Strong words. No avoiding what he’s saying there. We don’t read the whole passage, but if we did, we’d see what a strong reaction Jesus gets. The people kind of freak out, and this whole back and forth ensues; they call him a Samaritan, they accuse him of having a demon, and at the end of the whole scene, they pick up stones to throw at Jesus, who somehow hides and leaves the temple.

But you know it’s not just Jesus’ ancient listeners who are offended by Jesus’ words. We struggle with this very thing too, especially when we hear Jesus say, “… everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” Because really, who among us wants to admit to our sin? Lutherans talk a good game about everyone being both a sinner and a saint at the same time, but we don’t take the news that we are slaves to sin too kindly. Sure, we all have our struggles, but don’t you think calling us slaves is taking it a bit too far, Jesus? I mean, really! Much of the time, we don't want to acknowledge how strong sin's grip on us is. I think we’d choose the blue pill of ignorance over the red pill that leads to the truth.

But back to Neo for a minute – because Neo chooses to take the red pill. And when he does, he suddenly wakes up gasping for Breath in this pod, covered with goo, tethered in place by cables that are attached to the back of his neck and all the way down his spine and on his chest and arms and legs, and when he sits up and looks around, he sees thousands, millions of pods just like his, all containing humans; humans who don’t have any idea that they are prisoners whose energy is being harvested by the machines who need to keep them enslaved in order to ensure their own existence. And suddenly, Neo’s pod is drained, and he is dumped below, into a river of water that washes him clean. He is rescued and brought face to face with Morpheus in real life, only to learn the truth that his entire existence up to this point has been a lie, a figment of his digital imagination. Neo never knew he was a slave until he had been set free. Which is not to say that everything is sunshine and roses after that, Neo struggles to accept the truth of this new reality, and they came out with two more movies to tell the tale of the rebellion and resistance after all – but learning the truth about himself and the world around him is the beginning of his path to real freedom.

That’s how the truth works. Jesus comes into our world, the embodiment of the Truth, and he tells us that truth: about ourselves, about our sin, about the brokenness of the world around us. And sometimes it’s a hard pill to swallow. We don’t want to face the reality that we are enslaved by sin, and cannot free ourselves. We’d like to think that we can figure it out on our own, that we can get ourselves out of our own messes. But we can’t. Left to our own devices, we’d stay forever trapped by our sin, everything within us that rebels against God and tries to have its own way, all of the ways that we fall short of being the people God created us to be.

But the good news in this story is that God doesn't leave us to our own devices. We don’t have to find a way of rescuing ourselves. We aren't called to set ourselves free. No, Jesus the Son came to set us free! Like Neo, we get our first glimpse of that freedom in the water, the baptismal waters that wash us clean and make us new. But that’s not the end of the story. It may not be ask sunshine and roses after that. We continue to struggle against sin and its power every day. But as we continue in Christ's word, as we follow Jesus as disciples, we come to know Jesus, the Truth. And in the light of that truth, we are continually reshaped, remade, re-formed, changed to be more like him, changed to become the children of God that God says we are, despite all that we do and all that we are unable to do to free ourselves. If the Son has set you free, you will be free indeed. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

September 29, 2013 - Pentecost + 19, Year C - A House or a Home?

A House or a Home?

1 Kings 8:17-21; 11:3-6

Pentecost + 19 - September 29, 2013

St. Luke, Slinger, WI

I moved twice last year. The first time was the big move - from Long Island out here to Wisconsin, where another Lutheran congregation was nice enough to let my husband, daughter, and I, with our dog and three cats stay in a spare house for several months while we looked for a house to buy. And that was the second move, on December 15 (because a pastor and his family have nothing better to do than to move 10 days before Christmas) - into our new house, my husband, daughter, 6 week old son, our pets, and all of our stuff!

We made quick work of getting unpacked, at least as quick as you can with a toddler and newborn around. We put furniture in place, unpacked boxes, arranged cabinets, and got to know some of the quirks and charms of our new place. And we made lists of things that were yet to do - painting and repairs. You know how this goes. But it was only a few months ago when we finally got around to painting our living room and dining room, which make up most of our 1st floor. With that done, we finally felt like we could hang up some of our pictures and artwork and things, and Andy, my husband, raced to do just that. Almost sooner than the paint could dry, he was digging through the boxes of home decor, and when at last he had this big print on our wall, the first major thing we had hung, he sighed and said to me, “Ah, it’s starting to feel like a home.” No longer just a house to him, but a home because at last we were starting to make it our own, put our own touches on the place, as though decorations and design are all that it takes to make a building into a home.

I think maybe Solomon felt a little bit like that when it came to the design and construction of the temple. We get just a tiny bit of his story in the reading from 1 Kings this morning. You may remember that this is King David and Bathsheba’s boy, handpicked by David to take the throne, the one chosen to build God a house, a physical reminder to the people of God’s presence. And if you read the chapters leading up to what we heard in worship this morning, you would realize or remember just what an undertaking this was, what a lavish project it became, how opulent this building was. Huge, well-crafted of hand-hewn rocks, special timber, everything overlaid with gold. It was majestic. Magnificent. A place befitting the creator and ruler of the universe. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to honor God with the best that we have, that can really be a good thing, but somewhere along the line, this temple Solomon had built missed the mark. Solomon and the people who came after him got sidetracked. They lost focus. God never needed a house. What God wanted was a home.

This week I had a post for some company that makes prefabricated homse come across my Facebook feed. And the caption that when with the picture was this quote:

“I believe that a good home is a foretaste of heaven. Our homes, ... must be a haven from the chaos outside. They should be a reflection of our eternal home, where troubled souls find peace, weary hearts find rest, hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion.” ― Jani Ortlund

And while it's not scripture, I thought, “What a good description of what God wanted the temple to be, what God wants our homes as followers of Jesus to be!” Because this temple isn't just for God. It's for God's people! God intended for the temple to be a place where all people are invited in and welcomed and embraced, a place where people could experience the living God and be sent forth in awe and thanksgiving and joy to share the good news of God's immeasurable love. But no matter how good the temple looked, no matter how nice the decorations were no matter how impressive it was, over time it became a place of exclusion, not inclusion; a place of judgment, instead of mercy and forgiveness; a place of greed and jealousy, instead of abundant sharing and love. It was a mighty house, but it was not, in fact, a home for God and all of God's people.

It's good for us to hear this story, both as individuals and families, but also as a congregation, a chance to think about how our lives reflect God's longing for a home. You all are in the middle of a building project. You are, literally, “Under Construction.” And I don't know all the details of what your plans are, what you hope to see come from all the time and money and inconvenience of adding on to your building. I assume it means good things – that St. Luke is growing, that you are reaching out into your neighborhoods and helping new people to connect to God in new ways through this community of faith. But sometimes when we get into things like this as the church, we get sidetracked. We lose focus. We have a tendency to get so mired down in the details or anxious about the financing that we forget what the point was in the first place. Because it's not about the building. It's not about the “house”. God wants this place to be a home. A place where troubled souls find peace, where weary hearts find rest, where hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion. When these things are happening, they are signs of God transforming the houses of our hearts into home, a home where the doors are always open.

And the good news is that it doesn't depend just on us and what we do. Read through the Bible – starting with Adam and Eve and through all our ancestors of the faith, the stories of Noah and Jacob and David, which you've been hearing these past few weeks. Read the prophets and the Psalms. Read the gospels and Acts and Paul's letters to the early church, all the way through the end, to the book of Revelation, and what you see there is God's never-ending effort to make God's home with us, to make a home for us. We know we screw up. We know how often we run away from home – we see it in Solomon's story, as he goes astray and follows other gods, building houses for them on the high places. And we see other betrayals and abuses of God's intentions for all of creation, misunderstandings of the temple as the only place where God can be encountered or worshiped, trying to put limits on a limitless God. But God keeps coming. No matter how many times God's people turn away, God keeps reaching out, keeps rebuilding from the wreckage of our lives, seeking to make God's home in each of us, sending Jesus, who says welcome home, promising to abide in us, to stay and live within us, ultimately promising that in the end, God will come down and make a new heaven and a new earth, and God will make God's home among us.

This is what God does. It is what God is always doing, giving peace to the troubled, rest to the weary, food to the hungry, love to the lonely, healing to the wounded, God reaching out and saying welcome home despite ourselves! And our call, our mission, is to make sure that everyone is welcomed in, that we're not just waiting around for them to come to us, because honestly, that's just not happening much nowadays, but that we are going out into the world from this place of holy hospitality, this place of God's grace, sent to share this great good news of God's love that is for everyone, no exceptions. Welcome home! Thanks be to God!

Amen.

September 15, 2013 - Pentecost + 17, Year C - Jesus Includes the Excluded

Jesus Includes the Excluded

Luke 15:1-10

Pentecost + 17 - September 15, 2013

Incarnation Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI

“The saying is sure and worth of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners...” (1 Tim 1:15)

This is what the author of First Timothy says. And this is what we, as Christians, believe. Or what we say we believe, anyway. But though it sounds good, and it might look good as a pithy religious quote hanging on someone's wall, it's a lot harder to live out than we might think at first. When we start to think about and realize what that really means, it's a lot harder to give it our full acceptance, no matter how worthy of that acceptance it may be.

We tend to just give it lip service. It sounds great, and we're glad that Jesus came for us, and for most of our family and our friends. But we don't want to take it the next step. We don't want really want to believe that Jesus came for “those people” too, whoever “those people” may be. For the Pharisees and the scribes in the gospel reading for today, “those people” were the tax collectors and sinners who were coming near to listen to Jesus. Tax collectors who were in cahoots with the enemy, doing well for themselves by doing the dirty work of collecting money to support an oppressive foreign regime that all the people of Israel resented. Sinners – a word used not the way we might understand it as Lutherans; we're all saints and sinners at the same time, after all. No, these were people who had broken God's law as handed down to Moses, and everybody knew it. No longer were these “sinners” allowed to enter the temple to offer sacrifice or worship or pray. They weren't welcome in the synagogue to hear the word of God with their friends and family and neighbors. These two groups represent all of those who good religious folk considered the other. Outcast. Outside God's forgiveness and mercy and grace. Unwelcome in polite society. Those people! And they're exactly the ones who are not only attracted by Jesus' words and actions – they are actually welcomed by him, invited by him. Jesus brings the outsiders in. He includes the excluded! And the Pharisees and scribes, textbook insiders if ever they existed, don't much like what he's doing! We know that from what Luke says, “And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, 'This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.'"

And we, living so many years later, still wrestle with including those Jesus will not exclude. All of us have individuals or whole groups of people we think are not worthy of full acceptance by the One who came to save sinners. Terrorists. Crazed madmen who shoot up movie theaters or school buildings. The mentally ill. The homeless. The addicted. Or maybe we're happy to have Jesus save them, so long as he doesn't expect us to welcome them in too. They make us uneasy, uncomfortable. They don't look like us, don't act like us, refuse to conform to our image of the kind of person Jesus would come to save.

I laughed this week as I listened to an interview with Nadia Bolz-Weber on NPR's program “On Being.” Nadia is a pastor in the ELCA, founder of a church called House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. Now I've never met her, but from all I've read and heard and seen, I can safely say that she is not your typical Lutheran pastor. Having grown up in a very strict, conservative Christian denomination, in her adulthood she wrestled with addiction and depression. Her body is covered in tattoos. She uses language that might make you cringe at times. So as you might imagine, the congregation Nadia serves is not your typical congregation. When she felt called into ministry, it was to be a pastor to a very specific kind of people, folks who are kind of from the underside of life. Convicted criminals, addicts, the gay, lesbian, transgendered community, the punk kid with the pink mohawk. These are the people she feels called to reach, people who most likely would not feel very welcomed in a “traditional” congregation. But she tells a story of one year when she was invited to preach at the Easter Sunrise Service at Red Rock, and the local paper did a full page write up about her and about her ministry, and come the next Sunday, her worship attendance doubled. Her little church went from about 45 people to 90 or 100, in the course of one week. But instead of being happy about that (like almost all pastors I know would be), Nadia was appalled! Because, you see, these weren't the right sorts of people. They looked, she said, like bankers wearing Dockers, like soccer moms, like they could be the parents of the people she was really trying to reach. She resisted. She rebelled. She grumbled, because in her mind, these people didn't belong at the table Jesus was setting in her community of faith. There were other tables for them – why did they have to crash her congregation?

Funny, isn't it? We all find it easier, most of the time, to point to someone else as the lost sheep or the lost coin, and though Jesus says to his listeners, then and now, “which one of you wouldn't be like the shepherd who leaves his 99 sheep in the wilderness to go find that lost one? And which one of you wouldn't be like the woman who loses one coin out of 10 and light the lamp and bend over with the broom and sweep and sweep and sweep until you find it? And which one of you wouldn't then call everyone you know and invite them to a big party to celebrate with you when you found your sheep or your coin?” Which one of us wouldn't, Jesus? Tell me which one of us would go to those lengths and risk so much else? Which one of us would rejoice with such lavish, exorbitant, costly displays? Not most of us, Jesus, that's what I think. We'd be content to keep what we have – why bother with that lost sheep or that lost coin? Why go out to seek “those people,” Jesus, when you have so many other unlost already with you?

But the thing that Jesus reveals in these parables is that everyone is worth searching for to God. The God we believe in, the God we follow isn't willing to lose any of us. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and he will.not.rest until we're all brought safely home, even those of us who didn't realize we were lost in the first place. And it's not just about our salvation as individuals. Salvation happens in community, salvation happens in the whole body of Christ. Though 99 sounds like a good number of sheep, and 9 coins sounds like plenty, biblically speaking, those are incomplete numbers. One hundred is a number that represents completion. So does the number ten. The 99 need sheep 100 if they are to be whole. The nine coins need coin # 10 if they are to be complete. And we need each other if we are to be who and what God intended us to be.

This is what Jesus calls us to. This is what Nadia Bolz-Weber discovered over time in her community of faith. Because even though she struggled with what it meant to welcome “those people” into her congregation, they needed to be there, and the community needed them there. Convicted criminals serving communion to elected officials, the teen with the pink mohawk holding the soccer mom's baby, all of these saints and sinners welcomed under one roof, invited to one table, with Christ himself as the host, his body and blood as food and drink for all, rejoicing to see the lost restored, the outsider called in, the community made one in Christ. This is what Christ longs for in each of us, in all of our churches, the lost now found and sent to look for each other, rejoicing and sharing the good news of the One who who came to save us all and will not stop looking until each of us comes home. Thanks be to God!

Amen.

August 25, 2013 - Pentecost + 14, Year C - Set Free on the Sabbath

Set Free on the Sabbath

Luke 13:10-17 & Isaiah 58:9b-14

Pentecost + 14 – August 25, 2013

Christ the King Lutheran Church, Brookfield, WI

Our gospel and Old Testament readings today are linked by the idea of the sabbath. The concept of sabbath is and was so important for God's people. It's an identity marker, something that sets them apart from the cultures that surround them. But often the way people have kept the sabbath to keep it holy has boiled down to a set list of what people can or can't do, what they should or shouldn't do.

We see that in the gospel. We have a local synagogue leader, someone the people in his community admired and looked to for guidance about the law. And I get the impression that he was a letter of the law kind of guy, and when it came to the sabbath, the law says this: “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.” The law says that the sabbath is a day set aside for God – so you shall rest and do no work. There were strict rules around this, about what constituted work and what was allowable, and to not observe it properly was a big no-no.

We also have a glimpse into the lives of the people of Israel from an earlier era when we hear Isaiah's words to us this morning. He writes in this part of the book to the people who have returned to their homeland after long years in exile in a foreign country. And again, we have people who understand the letter of the law. They followed it in form and really felt that they were fulfilling their religious obligations, but clearly, God has another opinion! God accuses them here of trampling the sabbath, of pursuing their own interests on God's holy day, of going their own ways, serving their own interests and pursuing their own affairs. This is not just to say that they did what they pleased, but even more importantly, that what they were doing was hurting others in the process. Though they did the worship thing, they weren't attending to the needs of the hungry and afflicted in their midst. They honored God outwardly, but in their hearts, they selfishly did their own thing.
In both these stories, the deeper meaning of sabbath was lost, the idea of sabbath as a promise and a gift, an opportunity for rest, renewal, and the restoration of relationship – first and foremost with God and secondly, with each other.

We have two ditches running alongside the sabbath road. Our culture long had an image of the sabbath, which we Christians celebrate on Sunday, as a dour day of obligation, perhaps handed down from our Puritan ancestors. No one was to do any work on the sabbath, but nobody was allowed to have any fun either! Observing the sabbath was an act of pure religious obligation, but when done that way, it becomes a burden. Going to church for an hour, give or take is one thing (but it'd better be no longer really, right?), but to set aside an entire day as holy, as centered on God; a day when we deliberately seek to disconnect from all the distractions of our world and deliberately seek to reconnect with God – yikes! That makes us squirm. We don't know how to do it. This past year, I tried to do a day of unplugging – from my phone, my computer, my TV, etc. It was a campaign, a sunset to sunset kind of thing – and I failed utterly...

But there's the other ditch too, and I think that's the one we are more likely to fall into these days, the ditch where sabbath is just like any other day. You go to church, or not, but either way, once that hour is done, we go off and pursue our own interests and own affairs. We run errands, go shopping, clean up the house, finish the homework that's due 1st thing Monday morning. (I know, school hasn't started yet, but it's coming...) We have no sense that the sabbath is supposed to be a time, a day set apart, a way to realize that the world keeps on spinning even without our efforts – and we end up heading into the week ahead almost as stressed and overwhelmed as we ended it on Friday – if we're lucky enough to have the kind of job where you get weekends off to begin with!

But the sabbath road isn't supposed to be about either of those things. It's not intended to be a joyless day of boredom and obligation where we resent God for taking our fun away. Nor is it a day just like all other day with just a little God sprinkled in.

No, God intends for sabbath to be a gift. It's a day to be restored, to realize that we are set free. The gospel shows us one clear example. Here is Jesus, teaching in the synagogue on the sabbath and a crippled woman appears. Who knows why she came – her own sense of religious obligation? Habit? A thirst for companionship or inspiration? But whatever brought her there that morning, she wasn't expecting to meet Jesus. She wasn't expecting him to pick her out of the crowd and call her over, not expecting him to say these fateful words, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”

Yet she feels it happen as the words leave his mouth, as he lays his hand on her broken, bent body. She's amazed as she is immediately able to do what she hasn't done for 18 long years of pain and disability and otherness, and she stnads up straight, able once again to look at the world around her head on, able to see more than just the ground in front of her, able to look her neighbors and friends and family in the eye, instead of just staring at their feet. Suddenly, she is set free from all of that, and immediately she begins to praise God – because after all, isn't this what sabbath is for?! Finding ourselves, through no act of our own, set free from all that holds us captive and recognizing that God is at work in our lives and in the world around us? Sabbath is our chance, our opportunity each and every week to connect with God and acknowledge this One who comes to set us free, to rejoice with the community gathered around us as we join in prayer and praise and worship for the wonderful things that Jesus has done and continues to do!

This is at the heart of God's gift of sabbath – a chance to rest (a command, actually), but more than just a command, and invitation to trust God more than ourselves, to believe and live into the promise that God can and does and will guide and provide for our needs, even if we dare to take a time-out from “doing once a week. It's an opportunity to come together and remember all of the ways that God has and will set us free from whatever it is that binds us and holds us down, whether it's physical, spiritual, relational. It's a day to celebrate and share God's promise of deliverance with all we meet, so that together, we might recognize and acknowledge the One who does all this and rejoice together, praising and worshiping God and so be drawn back into restored relationships with God and with each other – so that when we go back out there Monday morning and all the days that follow, we can work with God to be repairers of the breaches, the restorers of streets to live in. Thanks be to God!

Amen.

August 11, 2013 - Pentecost + 12, Year C - Getting Ready for the Kingdom

Getting Ready For the Kingdom

Luke 12:32-40

Pentecost + 12 – August 10 & 11, 2013

St. John's Lutheran Church – Brookfield, WI

As I was driving around this week, I saw a car with a bumper sticker that said this: “Jesus is coming – Look busy!” Which reminds me of this gospel, but also makes me think of my elementary school days when the teacher would leave the room for whatever mysterious reason. And we didn't have any teacher's aides or anything like that, so if she left, we were on our own. Of course there were instructions to work on something productive: our reading assignment or math worksheet or spelling list. There was plenty of stuff to keep us occupied while she was out of the room. And we'd start off okay – but the longer she was gone, the more we lost focus. First we'd start to whisper, and then talk, and giggle. And then, if she was gone even longer, we'd get into some sort of shenanigans, up out of our seats, maybe shooting spitballs, playing tag, who knows?! All fairly harmless, but definitely not what we were supposed to be doing.

Now, if we were smart, which we learned to be over the years, we'd post a lookout – someone to stand at the door and watch for the teacher's return so we'd know “the teacher is coming!” - and we'd have time to scurry back to our seats, trying to look busy, like all along we'd been doing what she told us to do, because we didn't want to get in trouble.

There's a sense of this in today's gospel reading. That's the tendency, I think, to read this story and think it's like that bumper sticker: “Jesus is coming – look busy!” Jesus says to the early disciples, “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return... so they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.”

And maybe it wasn't so hard for the 1st disciples to imagine doing what Jesus says, at least at first. After all, he's still with them. But just like the teacher leaving the room, it's easy to keep focus at first. Even when he dies and is raised and ascends, it's easy to remember what Jesus had told them, easy to live a new life, to do the kinds of things he had done and taught and commanded them to do, easy to focus on being ready for his return. They expected him to return right away, any day now.

But by the time the author of Luke collected these stories and wrote them down, it's been a while. And it got harder and harder for the early church to know exactly what they should do, how to act and live as they waited, and waited, and waited, as the first eyewitnesses died off, and they began to wonder if maybe Jesus wasn't coming back after all. It got harder to be dressed for action, to keep the lamps lit, to stay awake and alert, always at the ready for the master's return.

And if it was hard for them, how much harder is it for us, 2000+ years later, to have a sense of urgency, to believe and live as though Jesus is coming back, to remember that he's left us with assignments to do while he's gone?! (And who wants to do homework anyway?)

And I've been thinking and wondering this week – what if we really did believe and live as though Jesus could come back at any moment – today or tomorrow or next week or next month? What would change? How would we live our lives differently? How would our churches be different? Where would we – individuals, families, congregations – put our focus? What would we spend our time on? Where would we put our energy? Our money? Our treasures?

See, this passage isn't so much about the “Jesus is coming – look busy!” mentality that warns us to post a lookout at the door to warn us when he's coming. Jesus doesn't say these words to inspire fear. They're not a threatening, “Wait til your Father gets home!” No, right at the beginning of this passage, Jesus says to his listeners, “Do not be afraid...” (some of the most often-repeated words in the Bible, I might add!) “Do not be afraid, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” And that kingdom is what we are waiting for, what the church throughout the generations has been looking forward to, living into. Jesus talked a lot about it coming near – but it's not quite here yet. Jesus inaugurated it, he ushered it in, but it's not here in its fullness yet.

But what we know is that the kingdom of God is something to celebrate, not something to fear! We pray for it to come every week when we gather together. And lest we be confused, the kingdom of God isn't some far-off, cosmic place. Jesus isn't talking about heaven when he talks of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is another way of saying the rule or reign of God. It's the place where God's will is done. And our call while we wait for Jesus to come is to be dressed for action, the action that helps to bring God's kingdom near, wherever we may be. In our homes and families, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in our schools. In our relationships, in the ways we care for God's creation, in the ways we manage the treasure God has entrusted to our hands. It's to be about the work of feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, healing the hurting, lifting up the poor; to be the kind of people who are working to create the kind of world where it's not so scary to think about doing what Jesus says here: selling our possessions, giving alms to those in need, because we know that all of our needs will be taken care of. This is what we are getting ready for! It's not about busy-work spelling lists and math practice sheets. It's not keeping busy just for the sake of being busy, but making a difference in this world God created and loves so much that God sent Jesus, the only son in order that the world might be saved through him!

And when we do this, when Jesus does finally come, we will rejoice to know that we've been a part of the preparation, and we won't have to worry about looking busy, even though he'll show up unexpectedly, because we've been waiting and working with him all along. Thanks be to God!

Amen.

August 4, 2013 - Pentecost + 11, Year C - Set Free from Possessions

Set Free from Possessions

Luke 12:13-21

Pentecost + 11, August 4, 2013

Christ Lutheran, Jackson, WI

Jesus said,“One's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Now if we stop and think about these words, most of us would agree that Jesus is right. Yet, to look around us, you'd never know it. Our lives are filled with possessions. I don't know about you, but I know that I've got stuff squirreled away in my basement, my garage, closets, under the bed. And that's after we moved twice in the past year or so (first to Wisconsin, and then when we were able to buy a house after we got here) – and we got rid of a lot of stuff, yet we still struggle with clutter and too many things lying around. (We do have 2 small kids at home, but it's not all their fault!)

And I know I'm not alone. My parents are moving out of their home of nearly 40 years – moving into my grandmother's house, and dealing with deciding what to keep and what to give away and what to just throw out after all those years. And visit an antique shop, a thrift store, a garage sale – all filled with things that someone once upon a time thought they needed to own, now on sale so that you can buy it and take it home and someday have to figure out what to do with it yourself. It's kind of an endless cycle.

“Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions,” Jesus said to the crowd listening that day. And then he told them a parable. It's a story about a rich man. He seems to be a good enough guy. He has a lot of land, and the weather has been good to him that year. The sun shone and the rains rained at the right times, the seed was fertile, and so his property produces “abundantly”. So abundantly that it's like no crop he's ever seen – or else he would have had enough room in his barns.

Now in the biblical world view, in the biblical narrative, what the people listening to Jesus talk would have understood about this story is that this abundant harvest is a sign of God's blessing, a sign that God is smiling down on the rich man. But there's even more than that going on here that maybe isn't so apparent to us. People in the ancient world believed that there was a finite amount of stuff in this world, that if one year produced a lot, there would come another year when crops would fail and people would be in need. Remember the story of Joseph, of Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat fame? Pharaoh had a dream - and Joseph interpreted it – that there would be 7 years of incredible harvests, followed by 7 years of famine. God provided abundantly enough so that, as long as it was managed well, there would be enough for everyone through the hard years. And this is also true of the idea of the sabbath day or the sabbatical year – that when a time of no production is coming, God provides a way for more to be gathered in advance, to help them through the 7th day or the 7th year of rest. So when the people hear Jesus say that the land produced abundantly, they're thinking that time of hardship is coming. And they also expect that an abundant blessing is meant to be shared abundantly. In other words, just because this rich man has a bumper crop, it's not just for him. It's not just so he can retire young and live off his stored up harvest. No, the rich man has been blessed so that he might be a blessing to the people around him, people who live on the edge, hand-to-mouth, people who are just making ends meet as it is, who really won't be able to manage if hard times hit. But all the rich man can think about in this story is himself. His own security. His own future. Listen to his inner monologue, “And he thought to himself, what should I do?... I will do this, I will pull down my barns and build larger ones and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat drink, be merry.”

I, I, I. It's all about him. He has no sense of responsibility to his neighbors and the wider community, no recognition that all that he has comes from God, no thought that perhaps he might want to ask God what God wants him to do with this abundant harvest. The trouble doesn't lie in him having such a bumper crop or in planning to take care of his future. Where he goes wrong is when he turns only to himself, that he is the only one whose needs he considers, the only one he even consults about his options.

We can get caught up in this trap too. Our culture encourages us to look out for number one. And there's a strong segment out there that voices loud resentment over the idea of a government that taxes hard-earned money in order to provide services for those in need, whether it's food stamps or welfare or health coverage or student loan interest. We want to keep our hard-earned wages for ourselves, to prepare for our future, to provide for our needs, so that we can be sure that we will have enough. We don't always look beyond our front door to see those in need all around us, neighbors or strangers, children or adults. Churches can be this way too – so focused on keeping the lights on and the doors open that we can't even begin to imagine the many ways God has blesses us or see the abundance God has poured out on us – blessing us so that we might be a blessing!

But this is what Jesus calls his listeners to, both then and now... to look around us and see what we can do now to be part of God's coming kingdom, rather than just looking 1 or 5 or 10 years down the road and worrying what may lie ahead. This parable isn't about the evil of wealth. Jesus isn't trying to make us feel guilty about our possessions. But it is about perspective. It's about learning to to see what we have, however much or little that may be, as God's gifts that we are to care for. It's about using our possessions in ways that do God's work, rather than being possessed by them. It's about setting us free to live in God's now, to trust the God who promises to provide our daily bread, instead of anxiously worrying about how we can take care of tomorrow and the next day and the next. Jesus says elsewhere (John 10) that he came that we may have life, and have it abundantly, but abundant life cannot be found in our possessions. It's found in our relationships; in loving God and loving our neighbors. It's found in giving our lives away so that we may find true life. It's about the time and energy and money we spend to help others. Think about that: the times you or your congregation or someone else you know has sacrificed something of themselves for someone else – to care for an aging relative, or cook a meal for new parents or bereaved families, run a race to raise money for medical research, or put on a benefit dinner to help a family who lost everything they had in a fire. People who volunteer to visit hospitals or give to food pantries or go live in a foreign land so that they might make a difference in the world. Parents and grandparents and caring adults who invest in the lives of children, churches who open their doors so AA or Scout troops or other community groups have a place to meet. This is where we find joy. This is where we find meaning. This is where we experience God's abundance – when we let God's blessings flow through us to become blessings to others. This is what abundant life consists of. May we learn to treasure the richness of God!
Amen.

July 28, 2013 - Pentecost + 10, Year C - Jesus Teaches the Disciples about the One They Pray to

Jesus Teaches the Disciples About the One They Pray To

Luke 11:1-13

Pentecost + 10 – July 28, 2013

St. John's Lutheran Church – Brookfield, WI

He [Jesus] was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2He said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3Give us each day our daily bread.
4And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

5And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ 7And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ 8I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

9“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.10For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 11Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? 12Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 13If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples”

This request sets up this whole passage. The disciples want to learn how to pray. There was a Jewish custom of learning set prayers: prayers for the morning, prayers for nighttime, prayers for meals, prayers they learned by heart. John the Baptizer may have taught his followers such a prayer or prayers. And it seems Jesus' disciples have seen this. And they have watched have watched Jesus praying. In Luke's gospel, we see Jesus praying all the time. It's a key to his ministry, to who Jesus is, and the disciples want what he has.
They want, perhaps, for Jesus to give them a set prayer, which of course is how we have come to view & use the Lord's prayer. Maybe they were looking for the magic words, the “Open Sesame” that would open the way into God's presence. They want to know how prayer works; how to make prayer work in their lives.

We too may want to learn how to pray, to know how it works; how to make it work - to feel like our prayers are effective, that they get God's attention. Some of us like to follow the step-by-step instructions. We go racing to YouTube for a tutorial when we want to learn a new thing so we don't have to feel so clueless when it comes to something new. We want to be sure we are doing it right. And when it comes to prayer, we sometimes want the magic formula that will convince God to help us. As if God needs to be convinced. What we now know as the Lord's prayer prayer gives us a model – but I wish Jesus would have stopped there, because verses 5-13 give us some problems. They make me wrestle with Jesus. They maybe give us some wrong ideas about what prayer is all about.

Jesus tells the story of two neighbors: the one in need of bread and the other one, his neighbor, who's already in bed and doesn't want to get up and disrupt the whole household. As a mom of a 2 and a half year old and a 9 month old, believe me, I understand why he doesn't want to get up! Woe be unto the person who disrupts my babies' sleep! Yet here we have the persistent neighbor, the Sheldon Cooper of neighbors – you know what I'm talking about right? Knock, knock, knock – Penny! Knock, knock, knock – Penny! Knock, knock, knock – Penny! And just like Penny always opens the door to Sheldon's persistence, the neighbor in the story will eventually answer the door, Jesus says, if not out of concern for their friendship, but because he knows he's not going to go away otherwise.

“So,” Jesus says, – “Ask, search, knock - and you will receive, find, have the door opened.” “For everyone who asks...,” Jesus says.

But that's not always how it works. We don't always get what we ask for.

And I'm not just talking about the “frivolous” stuff – the prayers to win the lottery or have our team bring home the championship. There are the prayers about the deeper, more important, serious stuff of life – prayers for healing, for safety, for reconciliation. And yet people still die too young, or remain in abusive situations; Evil-doers don't always get caught and stopped. Addictions continue unabated. And when this happens, we either begin to wonder if God is not to be trusted, if God is not reliable; or else we blame ourselves – questioning if our prayers were not answered because we didn't ask loudly enough, or search in the right places, or knock at the door long enough – as if God only answers prayers when nagged long enough.

But we need to look deeper, explore Jesus' words a bit more. Because even more important than the “how” of prayer is our understanding the “who” of prayer. Understanding who it is we are praying to - and that's really at the heart of what Jesus is teaching here. The Lord's Prayer isn't a set of magic words. They aren't the secret formula to getting to God's heart. They're a good model. They give us words when we don't have any. But this prayer goes beyond that to tell us about who we are praying to:

FATHER, the word that tells us about relationship, the word that makes all the other words possible, not just in the Lord's Prayer, but in every prayer. Jesus prayed, and he taught his followers to pray, "Abba" - a word that means something more like Dada or Papa. It's a word that invokes that close, trusting relationship of a little child and their loving parent. Jesus wants us to understand that when we pray, we are not making requests of a distant diplomat or an impersonal judge. No, we are talking to someone who loves us, who cares for us, who watches out for us & wants what's best for us, who gives to us abundantly. Richly. And not just because we nag.

We misunderstand this story. We think Jesus is telling us that prayer is about the persistence of the one asking, as if the result depends on the asker, not the one being asked. But we miss the context Jesus was teaching in. In the culture of his time, hospitality was a matter of honor. It was unthinkable that the first friend wouldn't provide for surprise guest, but even more unthinkable that his neighbor wouldn't get up and help him, because he would lose honor, lose status, lose reputation if he stayed in bed.

Jesus is saying that it's just as unthinkable that God wouldn't help us and not because God is like the neighbor who does things for us out of obligation or pride or fear for God's reputation. No, Jesus is saying, "Imagine! If a neighbor would do it just for pride, how much more would God do it – out of love & concern and care for our needs..." Just like a father who knows how to give good gifts. God isn't trying to trick us when we ask for the things that we need. If we ask for a fish, God's not going to give us a snake, or a scorpion in place of an egg. If human parents, with all of their faults and failings, do the best they can to do right by their children, how much more true is that of God!

This is what Jesus is trying to help the disciples and us understand: that God is more reliable than a next door neighbor helping out of obligation. God is more loving than the most loving human parent we can imagine. That's who we pray to when we lift our voices and hearts to God in prayer.

Part of prayer will always be a mystery. Lots of our deepest, most earnest prayers won't be answered the way we think they should, the way we desperately want them to. And we won't always know why. But this we do know: God wants us to pray (Jesus says, "Ask!"). And God listens when we do.

So we pray with confidence – not because we have the magic words; not because we understand how prayer works, but because we trust the One we pray to, who loves us more than we can ever imagine. Thanks be to God.
Amen.