5th Sunday after Pentecost (Year C) - July 14, 2019

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Year C
July 14, 2019
Luke 10:25-37

“Who is my neighbor?”

Today, we hear one of the most well-known parables of Jesus - the so called “Parable of the Good Samaritan.” It is probably one of the first stories or parables of Jesus that most of us learned as children. We know the story. Jesus tells a parable of a man who was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. The Levite and the Priest walk by without helping the man. The Samaritan, on the other hand, is the one who takes the time, the care, the money to truly care for the person who was left on the road. The genius of Jesus’ parables is that parables cannot be boiled down to one simple moral point. Rather, these stories that Jesus tells should grow with us and continue to challenge us each time we encounter them - even with these stories that are so familiar.

That’s admittedly a harder task for a story - like the Good Samaritan - that we’ve heard time and time again. That task may require us asking different questions of Jesus and of the text. Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish scholar of the New Testament, proposes this question: what do we look for when we encounter one of Jesus’ parables? Are we looking for the nice, moral point? Or are we looking to be challenged? She writes “What makes the parables mysterious, or difficult, is that they challenge us to look into the hidden aspects of our own values, our own lives.” Luther would call that the mirror use of the Law - the parables do something to show us something about who we are. Levine continues, “They bring to the surface unasked questions, and they reveal the answers we have always known, but refuse to acknowledge… Therefore, if we hear a parable and think, ‘I really like that’ or, worse, fail to take any challenge, we are not listening well enough” (Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, 3).

So this week, I asked myself. What challenges me in today’s text? As I think about the challenge of the text, I find myself returning to the same question:
 “Who is my neighbor?”

It seems like a simple question. Growing up, I thought it was an honest question, completely missing the fact that the lawyer is “testing” Jesus and wanting to “justify himself.” By asking who my neighbor is, I’m trying to define who I must love as myself. As an inquisitive kid, I thought it was a fair question. Are we talking about my literal neighbors - the people who live literally next to me? In close proximity to me? Who are my neighbors?

But by asking, who is my neighbor, the lawyer is getting at something else. It is a round-about way of asking - Who aren’t my neighbors? Because if I can define who is my neighbor, I can also define who is not my neighbor. Who do I not have to share love with? What boundaries can I place on love and still meet the “requirement” of my faith to love? Where is the line? The lawyer expects that there is a line somewhere. Or at very least he would like that line to be somewhere. Maybe for him, the line is drawn by faith. Maybe for him, the line is drawn by place/ region/ country of origin. Maybe for him, the line is drawn by long-held prejudices and conflicts.

Where do we want our “lines” to be? Who do we find hard to love and would rather Jesus give us a pass on loving? Said another way: Who do you want to not be considered your neighbor?
Because, if we’re honest with ourselves, there are people in this world that we don’t want to love. Maybe we want to put that boundary down in front of someone who has hurt us or our loved ones; we don’t want to love someone who hurt us so incredibly deeply or who took a piece of us. Maybe we want to put that boundary down in front of people that are different from us and thus hard to understand - in front of people who don’t share our language, who have different sexual orientations or gender identities, in front of people who have different skin tones, in front of people with different faiths, in front of people with differing political stances and convictions. Maybe we want to put that boundary in front of people who we’re afraid of, those people that we’ve been told threaten our values and our way of life (and supposedly threaten our lives themselves) - in front of people who are undocumented or incarcerated, in front of people who, we’re told, “are taking away our jobs,” in front of people who, we’re told, are our enemies.

If I’m honest with myself, I’m imperfect in loving my neighbor - even my neighbor that is easy to love. I want Jesus to give me a pass. I want Jesus to tell me that I don’t need to love the people that have hurt me. Even more for me, I want Jesus to tell me that I don’t need to love the people who have hurt my friends and my family. Most of you all know, at this point, that some of my closest loved ones are within the LGBTQIA+ community. And I am super protective and loyal of my friends and family; I have a really hard time loving people who say that my loved ones are subhuman or are deserving of hell. I want Jesus to give me a pass there, telling me that my love doesn’t need to go that far. I want Jesus to tell me that I don’t need to love people that I’m afraid of. I want Jesus to tell me that there’s a limit to who I need to love. I want Jesus to affirm a love that stops short - that stays in my comfort zones. I want Jesus to affirm a love that is easy and requires no risk. No danger. No actual work. So if I’m honest with myself, I too need the lawyer to ask:
“Who is my neighbor?”

Through this parable, Jesus isn’t content with giving the easy answer or giving me (or us) a pass. In Jesus’ response to the lawyer, Jesus picks not the people closest to us as “our neighbor.” But rather, in the parable, it is the enemy who becomes the neighbor. It is the one who is the outsider that shows mercy. The one who, according to the dominant narrative, threaten their way of life that shows unconditional love. Replace the Samaritan in the parable with whoever you thought about a few moments ago. In Jesus’ parable, Jesus redefines who the neighbor is. The very person I don’t want to love becomes the vehicle for God’s love and grace. That’s the challenge in today’s parable: the very person I don’t want to love becomes the vehicle for God’s love and grace. 

And it isn’t an easy love. It is an active love. It is a love that risks. The Levite and the Priest, contrary to most interpretations, don’t avoid the man left for dead because of purity laws. But they don’t stop to help because of fear: fear that if they stop they will face the same fate. Martin Luther King Jr., in talking about this parable puts it this way, “I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It is possible that these men were afraid… And so the first question that the priest and Levite asked was, ‘if I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ … but then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: ‘if I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him.’” (Martin Luther King Jr., as quoted in Levine, Short Stories, 102). The Samaritan was, literally, moved in his guts (our text says, “moved with pity” - but the emotion is much stronger than that - he feels it in the deepest part of him). In this parable, Jesus puts a human face on the person most hated and demonized, as the Samaritan risks the same fate to show love, to bring about healing, to be the vehicle for God’s love and grace.   

The parables of Jesus have this way of inviting us, wooing us, pulling us - perhaps sometimes kicking and screaming - into the vision of the Kingdom of God. What a vision for the world! For a moment, let’s turn to the lawyer’s original question: “what must I do to inherit eternal life.” This is what inheriting eternal life looks like. Or perhaps better said, this is what it looks like to live in response to knowing that God, through Jesus, has already given us the gift of eternal life. Living life eternal looks like living out the grace and love that we have already experienced. Living life eternal has an impact on this world as we "love the Lord your God with all [our] heart[s], and with all [our] souls, and with all [our] strength, and with all [our] minds; and [our] neighbor as [ourselves]."

It looks like choosing life-giving ways over death-dealing ways. It looks like putting a human face on the person or group of people that we most demonize. It looks like crossing boundaries, going where, according to society, you shouldn’t go, loving who, according to society, you shouldn’t love. It looks like seeing our “worst enemy” as neighbor - as beloved by God and as a vehicle for God’s love and mercy - and loving them. It looks like showing a love - reflecting the love of God that extends to us - that has no limit, that doesn’t stop short. It looks like risking harm and stepping outside our comfort zones to bandage wounds, carry them, to bring someone half-dead back to fully alive - embodying and enacting love in real and concrete actions. It looks like the kind of love, the love of God, expanding the boundaries, expanding our idea of who is our neighbor, that kind of love, the love of God, that can transform lives and transform the world.

Amen. 

4th Sunday after Pentecost (Year C) - July 7, 2019

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Year C
July 7, 2019
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

We continue in the Gospel of Luke - for the first time in a while - with the passage immediately following last week’s passage. A brief recap: Jesus has been doing ministry in the Northern province of Galilee. He has set his face toward Jerusalem and has begun to walk to Jerusalem - walking directly through Samaria, where the Gospel gets… um… mixed reviews at best. Messengers of Jesus face rejection. They ask Jesus if it was appropriate to call on fire to rain down from the heavens in response to that rejection. In short: no. Not appropriate. Now, in today’s gospel, Jesus continues this practice of sending out messengers to go into villages before him. This time, Jesus sends 70 others to go ahead of him to villages around the region.

Interestingly, we don’t get any information about the 70. No qualifications listed. We don’t know if

they’re men or women or gender non-conforming. We don’t know if they’re married or single. We don’t know if they have kids or are, like so many in the Scriptures, struggling with infertility. We don’t know what seminary they went to (spoiler alert: no seminaries back then). We don’t know if they liked public speaking or hated it. We don’t know if they were adventurers who were up to the challenge of traversing the countryside, or homebodies terrified for what comes next. We don’t know if they were Jew or Gentile. We don’t know if they were old or they were young. We know nothing of their stories.

As a pastor, as someone who is trained (and who loves) to hear people’s stories, a piece of me wants to know more about these people who were called. I want to know their names. I want to know their call stories (as I so often listened to those of my classmates and told my own). I want to know who they are, how they got there. But I think that goes beyond just me as a pastor. I think that’s a human thing. For the most part, we like stories. We build meaning of our lives through story. We build our perceptions of our world around narrative around stories - the stories we tell about ourselves, about our communities, about our world. I learned the story of how Norge got its name during my first visit here; well, the community wanted a post office. And they wanted to call it little Norway. But the powers that be didn’t like that, no you can’t name your town “little Norway.” So how about Norge? “Sure! That works!” As those who still are part of that Norwegian heritage know, Norge (or Norge) is the word for Norway in Norwegian. It is the story of how bright and cunning settlers in the area got their way, despite the powers that be. It tells us something about who we are here in Norge: we’re part of a people that is crafty and creative, undeterred by obstacles put in the way.

We get to know our friends and family through stories. We remember our loved ones through story. Remember that time when Gram accidentally left the windows down at the car wash? In her car with the rolly windows? There was water EVERYWHERE. I’ll forever be remembered at United, my internship congregation, as the intern who passed out one day in her office, as we now know thanks to a bad reaction to some cold medications. I learned an important lesson: when your blood pressure drops too low, so do you. We can laugh about it now because all turned out fine. Hopefully, I’m remembered for more than that, but when I talk to folks from internship, that’s a story that often comes up - one that becomes more dramatic with every retelling, by the way.

It seems to be part of human nature to tell stories and to create memories through them. We are formed by story. And we want to know the stories of other people. We learn who they are, how they’re formed, what brings meaning to them. And today, I wonder about the stories of the 70. What did they find inspiring in Jesus’ life, ministry, and message that inspired them to follow him? Did they go off, leaving their families like the disciples, or did they convince their families to come with them? How did they respond to Jesus’ command to only go with the basic necessities and trust that the rest would be provided? Why them? Why were they sent out? Did they have special gifts or characteristic for mission and ministry? Who were they?

Today’s gospel is silent on their stories. We just know that there are 70. The more I think about it, while it doesn’t satisfy my curiosity, I find freedom in the 70 being anonymous. The way the story is told, the point isn’t about qualifications, characteristics, or qualities. It isn’t about family structures or lack thereof. It isn’t about gender. It isn’t about courage. It isn’t about bravery. It isn’t about wit or charm. It isn’t about excitement or fear. There are no boxes to check. Degrees to get. Preaching styles to master. The call to follow and to spread the gospel isn’t limited by our own human categories. The point, today, is that Jesus calls. That’s the only qualification necessary to do the work of spreading the Gospel - the call of Jesus. Period.

To be clear, I don’t want to imply that our stories aren’t important. We know from the Gospels and from the rest of the New Testament that the call to spread the Gospel plays out in particular ways in the lives of real and particular people. God connects each of our individual gifts, our personalities, our stories to the larger narrative of the Gospel, grafting us into the Kingdom of God, calling us to the work of that same Gospel. We’re not anonymous for God.

And thus, our call to do the work of the Gospel will look different for you and for me - because our lives are made up of different stories, different gifts, etc. Some of us are called to be rostered leaders - pastors and deacons -, some of us are called to be teachers, some of us are called to international mission, some of us are called to serve more locally, some of us are called to share our gifts of music or other talents, some of us are called to serve on our council, others on our committees, others as helping hands that do so much of the behind the scenes work, some of us are called to care for others for their ministry. I could go on. And we’re called to different things at different times in our lives. Whatever form it takes, we are all called to do the work of the Gospel - sharing the love of God through word and through deed.

Yet, as Luke tells today’s story, by leaving the 70 as anonymous, the author provides space to place
ourselves in that crowd of people that are called to do the work of the gospel. 70 is a special number in the Bible; it represents all the nations of the world. And thus, the 70 messengers sent out represent a diverse people - of all walks of life - called out to spread the Good News. If the Gospel writer got too particular in the description of the 70, the temptation would be to only see people who fit those particular descriptions as worthy of being messengers, of carrying the Gospel from place to place ahead of Jesus. There is good news in the anonymity - we aren’t boxed into imagining the messengers of the Gospel in one particular way. We - in our diversity of gifts, of identities, of backgrounds, of education, of sexual orientation, of gender identity, of viewpoints, of jobs, of family structures - we, our full diverse selves, can fill in the crowd of the 70 and see ourselves there. We are all worthy of carrying the Gospel because we are all called by Jesus.

That call comes from Jesus doesn’t come without risk: again, this week, we’re reminded that those who are messengers of Jesus face rejection. They’re like lambs in the midst of wolves. A few words of comfort: we don’t do this alone. We do this within a community - as the messengers were sent out in pairs. Yet take note: whether there’s acceptance or rejection, the Kingdom of God still comes near. The Kingdom of God is still breaking into this world. And we get to be part of that; we get to follow in the tradition of the first 70, bringing that good news of the Kingdom, the good news of being Easter people. It isn’t our job to force people to accept it or to retaliate in response to rejection. But our call is to carry the message. Our call is to share the love of God that we’ve experienced ourselves. Our call is to shape our stories, our lives around the story that we’re grafted into; the story of Easter Sunday. Our call is to tell the story of the Kingdom of God coming into our lives in word and in action through our particular lives and stories. And that is indeed difficult but holy work that we get to do.

Amen.

3rd Sunday after Pentecost (Year C) - June 30, 2019

Third Sunday after Pentecost
Year C
June 30, 2019
Luke 9:51-62

Today’s gospel reading from Luke comes about halfway through Jesus’ ministry. He has left Galilee for the last time and is walking from Galilee to Judea. He has made is turn toward Jerusalem and toward the Cross.

Galilee is the province in the Northern region of Palestine (the name the Romans gave to the region) - it what was once the Northern part of the kingdom of Israel. Judea is in the South; what once was the Kingdom of Judah. Between the two regions, we find Samaria. Samaria used to be the southern part of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Despite our current connotations of Samaritans as being “good,” Galileans and Judeans alike despised the Samaritans. Samaritans had a few things going against them. While they considered themselves to be children of the covenant of Abraham and followers of the God of Israel, they worshipped and provided sacrifices not at the temple in Jerusalem but at Mt. Gezerim. Further, the Samaritans were descended from Gentile people and Jews that were not deported during the Babylonian exile - they were not, by blood, fully Jewish. Thus, Judeans and Galileans both did not consider their Samaritan neighbors to be Jews. There developed this deep and long-held rivalry between the groups. Yet, on the other hand, Gentiles - Romans, Greeks, etc. did not consider the Samaritans to be Gentiles because they worshipped the God of Israel.

So the Samaritan people lived in this space of not being Jews, but also not being Gentiles. They were dehumanized, some claiming that they were “not even a people” (Sirach 50:25-26). They had become untouchable - to the point where, when travelling from Galilee to Judea, people walked around Samaria. They couldn’t cross the threshold, the border. So they went around. Galilean Jews would cross the Jordan river to the East, travel on the Eastern side of the Jordan river, then cross into Judea south of Samaria. Even in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, while Jesus travels from Galilee to Judea, the authors do not narrate Jesus ever stepping into Samaria. A good Gallilean, a good Jew wouldn’t dare set foot in Samaria. Luke on the other hand, narrates Jesus crossing the uncrossable. Hopefully by this point in our year in the Gospel of Luke, this doesn’t come as a surprise. Yet again Jesus crosses the uncrossable and goes into the very places that he shouldn’t be.

Jesus crosses the threshold. He crosses the uncrossable to share the Gospel of the coming of the kingdom of God and gets what? Rejection. Wait… what? Jesus crosses the uncrossable to share the Gospel and gets rejected. We might expect Jesus to cross into Samaria and get welcomed with open arms. The Good News is finally going to Samaria. But no, he gets rejected. When I think about it more, I’m not so sure that I blame the people of the Samaritan village.

Vince Flango [Public domain]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VikingHall.jpg

Think about it for a second with me: Norge is a Samaritan village. We’re Samaritans. Suddenly, a few random guys, calling themselves messengers of this Jesus person, from Galilee come through. A bunch of Galileans - folks who would typically rather walk around than step foot in Samaria. A bunch of Galileans - folks, for all we knew, spent their lives demonizing us, calling us half-breeds, criticizing the way we worship, telling us that our worship isn’t good enough, telling us that we weren’t good enough. These guys come through proclaiming a message of this Jesus person who claims to be the messiah. I’m gonna be a bit suspicious.

Are they coming to convert us to their way of worshipping God? Does following this Jesus person mean becoming *like* them? Sing their hymns? Worship in their temple? Do they expect us to forgive and forget this easily? Are they going to “pretend” to like us just to get their way? Are they going to pretend to accept us just to reject us when we refuse to be anything but ourselves? Are they going to love us for who we are - not who they hope to turn us into?

Martin Luther - our namesake - while I clearly am thankful for his theology of grace. His attitude toward our Jewish siblings was harmful (and to be frank - anti-Christ). He thought that our Jewish Siblings would be so overwhelmed with Luther’s proclamation of the Gospel that they’d become Christian (and he wrote horrible things about the Jewish people when they didn’t convert to his version of Christianity). He didn’t love his Jewish siblings for who they were, but for who he hoped they’d become. He had an ulterior motive - and a love that stopped short. I can imagine the Samaritans being suspicious of this same kind of attitude coming from the messengers that make their way into the Samaritan town. Is there some ulterior motive to their arrival? Is their love going to stop short?

I don’t blame the Samaritans for initially rejecting the Gospel. I don’t. They had  for so long been beaten down and oppressed by their neighbors  that even the good news of the Gospel seems like anything but good news. But that doesn’t stop Jesus from crossing the threshold and crossing the uncrossable - even as he knows that the Samaritans at this point aren’t in a place to hear the Gospel. Jesus goes into the village anyway. Jesus remains present anyway. And we know, from the rest of Luke and Acts, that the Gospel remains present with the Samaritans. Even they - those who society deems untouchable - aren’t out of reach of the God revealed in Jesus that loves all of humanity.

James and John - so often the image of the worst of the disciples - upon seeing the rejection of their neighbors ask if they should command fire to rain down from heaven. Jesus - instead of rebuking the ones that rejected him - rebuke his own disciples. If they command fire to rain down from heaven, the disciples become exactly what the Samaritans fear. And the possibility of relationship is gone. It goes up in smoke. The Good News that they came to proclaim would be anything but “good.”

So often Jesus leads us to cross into the uncrossable places. Those places that we’re told that we aren’t supposed to go. Those places that aren’t proper places for proper and “good” Christians to go. What are our uncrossable places? The prisons? Pride parades? The bars? So often Jesus leads us to touch the untouchable people. The people who have been pushed to the margins. The people who have been dehumanized - those people that we don’t want to consider a people. The people that “good Christians” wouldn’t associate themselves with. Who are the people our society deems untouchable people? Those who are homeless? Those in the LGBTQ+ community? Those who have migrated here? Those who are undocumented? Those who believe differently than us, think differently than us, talk differently than us? We may all have different answers for these questions. But the simple truth is: none of them are out of the reach of the God revealed to us in Jesus. That’s the good news we can find today; in the face of rejection, Jesus keeps working, the Gospel keeps working.

Helpfully, today’s passage cautions us against the idea that when we cross into uncrossable places and go to those deemed untouchable that we’ll be welcomed with open arms. Often, we are met with suspicion. The church and Christianity have done immense harm to the very people that Christ stands alongside. We have to acknowledge that. Crossing the uncrossable and ministering to those deemed untouchable is hard work. It is a hard vocation. Yes, We face rejection. Yes, We face misunderstandings. Yes, We face suspicion. “Why really are you here?” And do we blame them?

Breaking down walls and standing alongside the people who are marginalized and who hurt takes love - the love of God that we’ve found in Christ. It takes joy - the joy found in the Good News of Christ; that joy that cannot be contained. It takes peace - the kind of peace that Christ offers that breaks down barriers. It takes patience - patience when facing rejection and suspicion, dwelling with and among communities and individuals. It takes kindness. It takes generosity - in time, in treasure, in how we see our fellow human beings. It takes faithfulness - the faithfulness to our baptismal callings, faithfulness to our neighbor - knowing that we are faithful because God is faithful. It takes gentleness - gentleness of heart, of speech, of action. It takes self-control - ya know, like not asking for fire to rain down from heaven. To use Paul’s words today: It takes the fruits of the Spirit. The good news is that Jesus promised the gift of that Spirit. And we trust the Spirit to do her work in our community and in the world through us and among us. “If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.”

Amen

Trinity Sunday (Year C) - June 16, 2019

Holy Trinity Sunday
Year C
June 16, 2019
John 16:12-15

Holy Trinity Sunday - the beginning of the season of Pentecost, the unofficial start of summer in the Church. We mark this transition from Easter to the Season of Pentecost to ordinary time - with a change in liturgy, different music and different parts of the liturgy highlighted,  with our choir breaking for the summer and special music coming in. Amid these changes, today is a festival day that is often overlooked - our last Sunday in white until All Saints’ Sunday. It isn’t very often that I preach on the “day” of the church year, over the appointed texts. But today, I’ll give it a shot. Because today is a day in which we celebrate the mystery of the Trinity - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - the Three in One.

The temptation today is to try to explain the mystery of the Trinity. The Trinity is like a three-leaf clover, three distinct leaves part of the same cover. The Trinity is like water - it exists in three forms, liquid, ice, and vapor - but it is all H2O. The Trinity is like a person - we can be a friend, a sibling, and a pastor/ teacher/ mechanic/ IT specialist (whatever occupation you’d like to insert there) all at once. Our God is like a fidget spinner with three spokes rotating around the same central point. I could go on.

Yes, that's the picture. Clear as mud, right?

When I was on internship, one of my internship committee members came into my office one day. He said to me something like, “You know. I’ve never understood the Trinity.” So I pulled down this curriculum that I put together as part of my confessions class. I was really proud of that curriculum; it was supposed to be an “adult confirmation” class kind of thing; admittedly, while it is okay, it needs a bit of tweaking. But I had this whole section explaining the Trinity, using the Apostles'  Creed (or Nicene creed - I don’t quite remember) - but whichever it was, it was complete with a diagram. Pulling it off my shelf, I flipped to the diagram of the Trinity, and tried to explain it. I fumbled through my “explanation” - The Son is not the Father but the Son is God. When I finished, he said, “That looks and great, but I still don’t ‘get’ the Trinity.” And at the time, I didn’t understand how, given my pretty diagram, how I still didn’t do anything to clear his confusion about the Trinity. I even had a pretty picture. I thought I had the “explanation” all figured out, and while I didn’t (and don’t) fully understand it myself (cause we can’t), I thought at least a picture should shed some light on it, bringing some clarity and understanding to a not-so-easy to understand but beloved Christian doctrine. (At least that was my hope).

The thing about the Trinity is that - try as we might - we cannot fully explain the Three-in-One God that we proclaim. Jesus doesn’t try to explain it. The Bible doesn’t try to explain it. The Divine is a mystery. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. As I look back on that conversation during internship, I am more convinced that this member of my internship committee wasn’t looking for me to explain the Trinity. He wasn’t looking for the theological constructs that get us to the doctrine of the Trinity. He wasn’t looking for me to push back against the various heresies declared by the early church. He wasn’t even looking for a pretty diagram. Why? Because, try as I might - pretty pictures and all - any explanation of the Trinity will fall woefully short of the God that we proclaim. He wasn’t looking for an explanation. He was looking to see what the Trinity means for him. While they may help to a degree, metaphors and diagrams that point to the Trinity only get so close (and each in their own way soon devolve into any number of early church heresies of varying degrees). I care less about accidentally espousing heresies. But I do wonder, if by trying to explain the Trinity, we miss something. I wonder if we miss proclaiming what the Trinity means for me, for you, for the world.

Instead of an explanation, throughout the Scriptures and throughout Jesus’ ministry, we get a promise. Our doctrine of the Trinity is how we try to understand and capture how God moves about the world, in relationship with us and all of creation. And that God is a God of promise. Jesus and the Holy Spirit (according to today’s Gospel text) reveal something about who this God we proclaim is and how this God works in the world. We get a promise that we have a relational God. A promise that nothing can separate us from the love of God we’ve found in Jesus.

We have a God, God the Father/ Parent/ Creator, that Maker of Heaven and Earth, that creator of all that is seen and unseen. This one who creates is not one that creates just “because” but rather creates to be in relationship with that creation. It is a God that creates humankind in God’s own image - in relationship with God and with one another. It is a God that calls God’s own creation, not just “good” but “very good” (Gen. 1:26ff). Our Scriptures point not to a God that is far off, distant, creating then stepping back and watching the creation unfold. No, our God has a stake in what God has brought to creation. We proclaim, in God the Father, the Mother, a God that is intimately involved in the workings of the world - and invites us into relationship with Godself - from the very beginning. Our God is a God that continues to reach out and reach into God’s creation, again and again, without ceasing. What does it mean for you to have a God that will always reach out and in to your lives, into our community, into our world?

And in the New Testament, God reaches out again in a new way. Dr. Ralph Klein, the Hebrew Bible professor at LSTC, in his musings about the incarnation of God in Jesus, says, in the incarnation, “it is as if God said, ‘I’m God not a human being, but would it help [our relationship] for me to become human?’” That comment from Dr. Klein changed how I saw the incarnation, how I saw God the Son. Would it help you to know that I am committed to you and to our relationship if I put on human flesh, literally walk among you, experiencing the joys and the pains of life and death. Would it help if I pitched my tent among you and dwelt with you? In other words, in Jesus, God reaches out and into our world again for the sake of being in relationship with God’s beloved humanity. In God the Son, we see a God that is so radically for you, for me, for us that God risks putting on human flesh, risks living a human life, and risks dying a human death. We have a God in solidarity with what it means to be human. It turns what we might expect a relationship with God to look like upside down.

We’ve been reading Rachel Held Evans’ book Inspired in our Adult Forum. This is what she has to say about this God who becomes human, in our reading for this week. “What I love most about the parables are the details. I love these details because they reveal to me a God who is immersed in creation, deeply embedded within the lives of God’s beloved. Our is a God who knows how to mend clothes and bake bread, a God familiar with the planting and harvest seasons, the traditions of the bridesmaids, and the tickle of wool on the back of the neck… [In Jesus], I met Good News that had a body. In Jesus, I met a God who spits and kisses, who yells and cries. I’m a messy and embodied person, and this is a messy and embodied faith” (161, 163). In Jesus, we proclaim God the Son as one who does not back down from our humanity, but rather embraces and embodies it for himself. No longer can the flesh we wear and the lives we bear threaten to separate us and break relationship with the God who created us. Because our God, God the Son, wore it and bore it too.

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear yet another excerpt from the Farewell Discourse. In this farewell discourse, Jesus promises the gift of the Holy Spirit - a gift that we celebrated last week during the festival of Pentecost. God the Holy Spirit is the one who remains with us and dwells with us still. God’s relationship with God’s beloved humanity doesn’t end with the ascension of Jesus. But the gift of the Holy Spirit continues that presence. This is the one that we trust leads and guides us. This weekend, I found myself celebrating that gift of the Holy Spirit among us as the ELCA elected several new bishops - an African American pastor from the South-side of Chicago, a Latina woman, and a gay man - all under 50, and we've elected a record number of women to the office of bishop. It

is an exciting time to be the Church together. The Spirit of Truth is still alive and working among us, shaping and empowering us for living out the relationship and the love we’ve found, making us into kingdom builders.

So today, we celebrate the three in one God that risks everything to be in relationship with God’s beloved - you, me, and the world that God created.
Amen.

6th Sunday of Easter (Year C) - John 13:23-29

6th Sunday of Easter
Year C
May 26, 2019
John 13:23-29

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

The Roman Empire promised peace for its citizens. It was a peace given to them by Caesar, the

emperor, thought to be Son of God. There’s an episode of West Wing, Proportional Response, in which President Bartlett laments that the United States is not like the Roman Empire and that the US Presidency is not like a Roman Empire. He says, “Did you know that two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation? He could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the words 'Civis Romanis' I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens.” While TV tends to exaggerate history for dramatic effect, President Bartlett, historically speaking gets it right.

The peace of Rome promises that there will be peace when they’ve found dominance. The peace of Rome promises that there will be peace when the troublemakers are eradicated. The peace of Rome promises that there will be peace as long as everyone behaves - as long as everyone fits into the same box.

While this sounds good (and probably is good for those in places of power and privilege), this kind of peace comes at a cost. It comes at the end of the sword. It comes at the threat of violence. It comes at the cost of those on the margins - who are often used and abused to prop up the wealthy. While for those in power, the Peace promised by Rome, seems to be a reality, for those on whom that peace is built, this “peace” is anything but that. And this is something that Jews and Early Christians alike knew all too well. During a Jewish revolt, Rome, to keep their peace, waged war in Judea from 66-73, culminating with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple and the massacre at Masada. Further, Jesus’ crucifixion itself was an attempt to keep the Roman peace; to keep the masses in their place. If you revolt, this is what will happen to you too. They knew the consequences of “Roman Peace” all too well.

And, if we’re honest with ourselves, our world has similar promises to us. We’ll find peace when we build enough wealth and have material security. We’ll find peace when we close our borders. We’ll find peace when we incarcerate all the troublemakers. We’ll find peace through the defeat of our enemies here and abroad. We’ll find peace when we all fit into the same box - when we’re all “American” enough or “Christian” enough. And - to an extent - this is part of the reality of living in this world as it is.

Yet at the same time, if I’m honest with you, this world promises a peace that I have yet to see. I don’t know what the peace that the world brings is supposed to look like. I was nine when my first sense of security fell - with a machete attack at one of our elementary schools. I was nine on 9/11. I was eleven when there was a shooting at our junior high school. We’ve been at war for two-thirds of my life. While we were just kids on 9/11, friends and classmates went on to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (and I’m deeply grateful for their service and the service of all our military members. War is part of this world as it is). I’ve had friends attacked and pushed aside for who they are - because they don’t fit into the “right” boxes due to their faith, their gender identity, their sexual orientation. I’ve yet to see this peace that the world promises us - with enough wealth, power, and might, we’re supposed to find peace. Yet, we’re one of the wealthiest countries of the world with the best and most renown military force in the world, and yet I don’t see the peace. (Again, not a critique on the military; I have profound respect for all who serve and all who have given their lives in service. But this is an honest look at this world as it is. If wealth and might don’t bring about peace, what does?)

This myth of peace that the world brings comes at a cost as well. We see the death-dealing effects of the world as it is all around us. Violence against women, against LGBTQIA+ people, violence against our Muslim and Jewish siblings. Wealth disparities between rich and poor are only growing. Incarceration disproportionately affects people of color, especially men of color (while people of other demographics get shorter sentences for similar or “worse” crimes). The powers at work in the world serve to keep those on the margins on the margins, and lifts up those who already have power and privilege. What the world promises will never lead to peace - at least the kind of peace that Jesus promises to us, the kind of peace that only the Kingdom of God can bring. Here’s the thing: no one can bring the kind of peace that Jesus does - not our politicians, not our celebrities, not our activists, not our religious leaders - myself included. Only Jesus can bring about this kind of peace. 

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Peace - for Jesus - isn’t about physical or financial security. Jesus does not give as the world gives. Jesus gives peace - yet he is about to face the cross. Jesus gives peace, yet his closest friends and students face their own martyrdoms. In the Gospel of John, peace is about knowing Jesus, knowing God. It is about being in relationship with Jesus and the one who sent him. Peace is about being enveloped in the love of God that we’ve found in Jesus - that love we’ve found in Jesus is what binds us into an intimate and unconditional relationship with God. Peace is about being invited into a community defined by that love. Peace is the assurance that the worst thing is never the last thing; Neither the grave nor the powers of this world have the last word. Instead God’s word of life will always have the last word. Peace is God’s ability to bring about new life and resurrection where we’d least expect to find it.

One commentary puts it this way, “Anxiety, fear, and troubled hearts are much on Jesus’ mind. The antidote to such fear is the peace given by Jesus, and not peace as the world gives. Many people yearn for peace in the world’s terms: cessation of conflict, whether psychological tension or warfare… The peace that Jesus promises as he takes leave might include such things, but the peace that Jesus gives is nothing less than the consequence of the presence of God. When God is present, peace is made manifest.” “When God is present, peace is made manifest.” (Hoare, Feasting on the Word, Year C. Vol. 2, 495). God’s presence is made known to us through Jesus, his incarnation, death, and resurrection, and that presence continues through the gift of the Holy Spirit - as the spirit dwells with us now. That peace is something that the world can not give. And as hard as it might try, the world cannot take away the presence of God either. The empty tomb assures us of that. It is still Easter, after all. Not even death - a death at human hands - could tamp down and restrict the presence of God among us. Christ is still risen!

It is a peace that is not “of this world” but has tremendous effects on this world. While Jesus is the only one who can bring about this peace, we get to live out this peace that we’ve found. This kind of peace has the power to transform us into builders of the Kingdom of God. Because we are recipients of that peace, we get to share it with the world. With the gift of the Holy Spirit, we get to bring the presence of God to others. It is a response to the gifts that we have been given.

Where the world fosters hate and violence, we sow love - that love that we’ve found in Christ. Where the world pushes our neighbors to the margins, we welcome them into the center. Where our world tries to degrade and dehumanize the stranger, we see and proclaim the image of God and the face of Christ in them. Where the world puts up barriers, we tear them down. This is how we keep Jesus’ words; we live out the love of God that we’ve found in Jesus - EVEN when it goes against the powers of this world, EVEN if we risk getting pushed to the margins, EVEN when it means risking even death (like the disciples did with their own martyrdoms). And we can do that because we are given this peace and we know that the worst thing is never the last thing; God’s answer to us is always life - life in relationship with our divine parent and creator. Because of Jesus and Jesus’ loving embrace, we can face the world without fear and we can participate in the coming kingdom of God here and now.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” Amen

5th Sunday of Easter (Year C) - May 19, 2019

5th Sunday of Easter
Year C
May 19, 2019
John 13:31-35

In this season of Easter, we’ve been jumping a bit around the Gospel of John. Today, we find ourselves just after John’s telling of Jesus washing his disciples feet. It marks the beginning of what we call the “Farewell Discourse” - the discourse in which Jesus prepares his disciples for his absence. “Little children, I am with you only a little longer.”

My Dad’s likely not going to be thrilled that I use this story. But I’m going to go with it anyway. When I was a kid, I had a tendency to take a really long time to get ready. Even at like 4 or 5, I took really long showers and baths. Like the kinds of showers where you use all the hot water from the hot water tank. I had an active imagination. I was the kind of kid that could make anything into a toy or a game. In elementary school, I used to play with the crayons in my desk as if the crayons were characters in a story; so my desk had this whole imaginary world contained in it (I still don’t know how I never got caught). But bath time (or shower time) was another time where I got lost in my own world and had zero concept of time, until the water turned cold, shaking me out of it and back into reality. Once I got out, I often again got distracted by my barbies and stuffed animals while I was getting ready.

One day, my grandparents were visiting, so we were going to go get ice cream from my favorite little ice cream parlor in Red Lion that served Hershey’s ice cream. It was hard to beat Hershey’s Cotton Candy Ice Cream; and it is still hard to beat the Cotton Candy ice cream of my memory. But it was my night for a shower, so I needed that before we could go. Well, as usual, I got lost in my own world and took my own sweet time, and my Dad got, well, got frustrated with my lack of timeliness. So he thought he’d teach me a lesson (as parents do). He turned all the lights out, opened and shut the front door, and they sat in the living room. The idea was to make it *look* and *sound* like they had left without me (as they sat in the dark). To be clear, the idea was not to scare me (by making me think I was alone), but to make me think for a brief moment that they were enjoying ice cream without me (because I took too long). The “lesson” was supposed to be that by taking too long, I was going to miss out on the fun things.

Dad got more of a reaction than he was expecting. I remember hearing the front door close, walking downstairs, seeing the dark, not hearing any voices. 5 year old me was absolutely terrified. I was left alone. And I burst into tears. The reaction wasn’t disappointment at not eating ice cream (like everyone else) but it was utter terror at being left alone. In the dark. For a child, being left alone meant, not only not having the people around us to care for me, but being left alone meant that no one was there to protect me from the monsters that invaded my world - or to quote a song from the new P!nk album - “the monsters in my closet that want to come out and play” (and as a child with an active imagination, I certainly knew those monsters in the closet and under the bed quite well). I somehow knew that being left alone meant being vulnerable. Now, before saying “well, that was really mean!,” or “what a terrible thing to do!” it wasn’t intended to be so. Every once in awhile, Dad or Gram reminiscing about watching my brother and I grow up will mention it (and they still feel bad about it like 20 some years later). Oh, the things we remember from childhood.

I tell this story, of course, not to make my Dad look bad, but because it strikes me that Jesus calls his disciples “little children.” Fred Craddock imagines this scene from today’s Gospel like children playing on the floor, seeing their parents put on their jackets, picking up their car keys. There are three questions - “where are you going?” “Can we go?” “then, who’s going to stay with us?” Those of us who have kids or who have worked with kids know these questions. But I think Jesus’ language in today’s Gospel points to something even deeper than that. There’s a fear attached when there’s a possibility of being left alone. There’s something in that address, “little children.” It seems that Jesus recognizes that this fear of being left alone is a fear that is so intense for little children - in their vulnerability.

Jesus knows that he’s going away from them, and that leaving these little children that he had grown to love so deeply, was going to be terrifying for them. He didn’t want to surprise them. He was leaving them alone - or at least leaving them without his physical presence -  to face the world (the dark and the monsters of that world) on their own - many of them to face their own martyrdoms later. He knows that his absence will bring about fear. And the terror of feeling alone. As someone who has lived alone for a long time, I sometimes forget the intensity of that fear brought by “being left alone” - an intensity that children know well - including 5 year old me - the one who still believed that there were monsters in the closet, kept at bay by a loving parent. And it is a fear that the disciples will know well. So Jesus has to address the questions and the fears of his disciples, the little children, before he departs from them. And that’s what he does in the farewell discourse.

To combat that fear, Jesus unites them as a community. Not just any community - a community defined by love. And it is not just any kind of love. It is the kind love that drives out fear. It is the kind of love that provides security in vulnerability, as a parent comforting their children. It is the kind love that turns the monsters in our closets and in our world to something that can be conquered. It is the kind of love that assures us - that whatever happens - we will not be left alone. It is the kind of love that Jesus showed to his disciples throughout their time together.

In her new book, Love Big: The Power of Revolutionary Relationships to Heal the World, Rozella Haydee White writes about God as lover. She says, “when I think about God, I think about God as lover. The faith that I profess is rooted in a belief in a God that loves us deeply, desperately, and with a passion that cannot be contained. This God is always seeking us out, wanting to be with us and wanting us to experience the very best that life has to offer… This God lovingly crafted us in God’s own image, so that we too reflect God’s desires. This God created us to be lovers too” (White, 14-15).  This is the love of God that is made ultimately known in Jesus, the Word Made Flesh, the Son of God. This Word Made flesh is the one, who facing the monsters of the world, goes to the cross for the sake of the world that God so loves. And that love is made known as Jesus lays his life down for his friends. Because God is love. And that love envelopes the disciples - and us - for whatever is to come - so that, no matter what happens, we are never alone. It is a love that empowers us to take risks for the sake of our neighbor and for the sake of the Gospel.

This love is now to be embodied by the disciples as they prepare for Jesus’ physical absence from them. That love will sustain them as a community, will dispel (or allow them to face) their fears united as one body. That love is what makes them willing to face the monsters that they will face in their darkness, and to continue the message of the gospel.

Bishop Yvette Flunder, at the Festival of Homiletics this past week, puts it this way “God never intended that the Gospel would have a closed end. God intends it to be alive.” In today’s Gospel from John, we see that the Gospel comes alive as we embody the love of God in our community and in the wider world.  We get to make the Gospel come alive through our hands, our hearts, and our voices - as we bring the love of God to those around us. We get to be part of the love that breaks down barriers and brings about wholeness and healing. We get to be part of the love that dispels the darkness and the monsters of the world - sexism, racism, homopobia, transphobia, poverty, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, violence, xenophobia - to name a few. We get to be part of the love that creates a new community - united by the love that we’ve already found in Christ - so that we know that we are never left alone. The story does not end as Jesus departs. But it continues and it is as vibrant as ever. Thanks be to God for that.
Amen.

4th Sunday after Easter (Year C) - May 12, 2019

4th Sunday of Easter
Year C
May 12, 2019
John 10:22-30

I grew up as one of the kids from “in town.” Our school district was this mix of kids from the suburban-like neighborhoods, kids from “in town,” and kids from “the country.” Much of the land within the boundaries of the school district was farmland. Major crops were (and are) corn and soy. They had various kinds of livestock. In Jr. High, I took vocal lessons. My vocal teacher lived in the far reaches of the district and married a farmer. They had horses, goats, and yes, even sheep. Farming was a big deal -  to the point that the local 4-H held a “drive your tractor to school day” every year.  The town I grew up in wasn’t very big; it was a one stoplight town. But I was very much “in town.” If I’m honest with you, while I had friends that knew the ins and outs of the business, I still don’t know much about farming - or herding cattle, goats, or sheep - at least beyond what I read in commentaries and other sources.

And yet, here I am, preaching as Jesus uses sheep imagery to talk about his followers on what’s commonly known as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” I know, even in my own study, because my knowledge of sheep is so insufficient, I tend to focus more on learning about the sheep - what sheep are like, how they think, how they behave. I tend to focus on digging into the role of shepherd. So the focus of my study is grounded on my own lack of knowledge rather than on the Gospel that Jesus proclaims in today. To be clear, it is well and good to better understand sheep and shepherds in order to better understand the metaphors that Jesus uses this morning. But I wonder if, in that process, I sometimes focus so much on that that I get distracted. And then, in focusing so much on sheep and shepherds (an image so common in the world in which Jesus lived), I end up missing some of the Gospel of today.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is on a mission. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved - or made whole - through him.” Whenever we’re reading from the Gospel of John, we read it through that lens. There is acknowledgement of the reality that not all believe (so not all hear the sound of Jesus’ voice), but the end goal of God, according to this Gospel, is to bring all to Godself through the saving work of Jesus. Jesus is the one who can proclaim “the Father and I are one.” So they share the same mission, the same goal, the same view of the world and of God’s beloved creation. The world that God so loves cannot be saved - or made whole - through him unless all are brought to God through Jesus - and all means all.

Some of you know that earlier this week, I was invited to be a guest scholar with St. Mark in Yorktown at their Greek Retreat. I was honored to be invited, and I was thrilled to be able to spend some time feeding that part of me. During the retreat, we spent a lot of time talking about something so central to Lutheran theology - how we are made right with God. Are we saved by faith in Christ? Or are we saved by the faith of Christ? In other words, what is the role of faith and belief in our salvation? In each place Paul talks about this in his letters, without getting into detail, I’ll just say that the Greek isn’t clear; it can be translated either way. In Lutheran circles, we tend to focus on our individual faith in Christ. “Saved by grace through faith apart from works for the sake of Christ.” Faith is assumed to be our faith.

That sounds all well and good. But the reality is that we, as human beings, have far from “perfect” faith. We all have had struggles with doubt - your pastor included. We all fall short of what God intends for us - even in our relationship with and in our faith in God. And usually, this lack of faith is less about my “believing” or “not believing” in God or in Jesus, and more about putting my faith in other things a bit more. That belief that I can do it on my own, or that reliance on anything other than God (money is a prime example in our world - if we hang onto our money, if we have enough of it, I can solve my problems and experience the “good life”). If it is my faith that “saves” me, that scares me. When is my faith “good” enough or not “good enough” for my salvation? Faith, then, becomes a work; yet works, according to Luther, can never give me salvation. And soon I start to understand, on a different level, Luther’s own struggles with his worthiness before God. As Luther noted, we often fail at the very first commandment: you shall have no other gods before me. Our other gods - money, self-reliance, etc - all have voices that pull us away from the Good Shepherd that calls to us.

What if Scripture points not as much to my individual faith but to the faithfulness of Jesus? The faithfulness of Jesus to the mission to which he was called. His faithfulness to make whole the world that has been broken, to restore the relationship between God and humanity. If Jesus promises that, according to the Gospel of John, that as he is lifted on the cross, Jesus will draw all to himself, I trust that Jesus is faithful to that promise. If Jesus promises that he came not to condemn the world, but to save it, I trust that Jesus is faithful to that promise - and that Jesus’ will not quit until that mission is complete. It is Jesus’ faithfulness to his mission - even to the point of death on a cross - that saves. It is Jesus’ faithfulness that promises eternal life that cannot be snatched away. We proclaim that we have a God, in Jesus, that shows that God remains true to God’s promises - that God’s answer to God’s beloved creation will always be life. Jesus’ faithfulness is what makes Jesus the Good Shepherd. To borrow imagery from Luke, Jesus’ faithfulness to Jesus’ promises is what leads the shepherd to look for the one sheep that was lost - bringing it back into the fold with the 99 others. Jesus’ faithfulness is there - even when my faith isn’t. Thanks be to God for that.

My faith, then, is still important - just in a different way. It allows me to be assured of that promise. It gives me the knowledge - that despite my waverings - that Jesus gives Jesus’ sheep the gift of eternal life. And it allows me to live into that eternal life, not just in some future afterlife - but in this life, now. It allows me to hear Jesus’ voice and say “yes, that’s for me.” Our faith, our reliance on Jesus as the shepherd allows us to turn toward Jesus and to follow him. Our faith isn’t what gives us salvation - a restored relationship with God -, but our faith is what allows us to live as saved people - with the knowledge that we are redeemed and we are restored to God. It gives us assurance that no one - not even ourselves with our doubts and our failings - can take away that gift which has been given to each one of us. In other words, our faith turns us toward the one who gives us - and all people - the gift of life in relationship with God. This is indeed good news. Good news that doesn’t depend on me understanding a thing about sheep. It is good news that we can we can trust - not because we are faithful - but because we know that Jesus is faithful.

I almost wish that the lessons for last week and this week were switched. Last week, we heard the story of Jesus and Peter having breakfast at the charcoal fire. At breakfast, three times, Jesus asked Peter if he loved him. Peter responds, “yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” To which Jesus responds, “Feed my sheep.” In the light of the resurrection, we - the sheep that follow Jesus and hear the Good Shepherd’s voice - turn out to feed and to tend our neighbors - our fellow sheep in the pasture. We become sheep that feed sheep. In no understanding of sheep does that make any sense. At least as far as I know, sheep don’t typically feed their fellow sheep (and maybe I don’t give sheep enough credit there). But that’s the radical thing about the Gospel. It breaks us out of how this world as it is works. Tables are turned. We learn to expect the unexpected with the Gospel. Like with Peter, Jesus doesn’t require us to be anything we’re not - we’re called to follow as the imperfect disciples we are. And because of Jesus’ faithfulness, we are empowered to become sheep that feed sheep.

Amen