Six-year-olds and love that will not compute

A sermon for St. Peter Lutheran Church, Oran; and St. John Lutheran, Buck Creek

Luke 9:28-36

The Gospel this morning begins by saying “About eight days after these sayings, Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray.” It begs the question: What were the sayings Luke was referring to?

It is worth noting what drove Jesus up the mountain, because when we pull one story out of Luke 9, the break-neck speed at which everything is happening quickly becomes evident. In Luke, chapter 9 alone, we begin with Jesus giving the disciples power to heal diseases and sending them to proclaim the kingdom of God, while ordering them to do so without taking any payment. Then, Herod shows up, wondering who this Jesus is. Then, Jesus feeds five thousand people; he asks the disciples who they think he is; foretells his rejection; and tells them what the kingdom of God will look like. Then, we have the transfiguration reading today. After this story, Jesus heals a boy, proclaims he will be betrayed, breaks up an argument between the disciples about who is the greatest, gets rejected trying to enter a Samaritan village, and finally says a whole lot of cryptic phrases that nobody really understands.

That is not a recap of the entire Gospel—just Luke 9. There is so much going on all at once in Jesus’ ministry. It’s a chaotic storm of activity. The only time things slow down—the only time they ever slow down—is when he heads up the mountain.

I feel that in my bones when I look at the world today. Everything is moving at breakneck speed. Things are hectic; they are scary; they are uncertain. Our lives are lived on the high speeds of the internet and the high speeds of the highway, receiving information and watching things fly by faster than ever. By the time we can digest what is happening now, it is gone. And as everything speeds up, requests turn to obligations, and obligations turn to orders.

That is one loud story, but it is not the story we hear on the mountain top.

Nine times in scripture, Jesus retreats to pray in a wild space, and at least three times, he heads for the mountain. How telling is it that Jesus, who spends his entire ministry moving at break-neck speed toward the cross, routinely retreats from the busy world to the mountain to pray! If Jesus does it, we must as well. Not out of obligation, as if God needs our prayers, but because it is the thing that will save us from a busy world bent on turning us into cogs in a machine. It’s a crazy world out there, and it is all too easy to lose sight of the face of God in our brothers and sisters when we are taught to view them as cogs in a machine. The transfiguration of Jesus is less about discovering that Jesus was holy—the disciples should already have known that! Every healing bore witness to it! Rather, the transfiguration reminds us that holiness is right in front of us if only we retreat from the busy world to see it.

Of course, the disciples don’t get it even when they see it face to face! Instead of marveling at what is holy, they make their encounter with God into an excuse for shrine-building, which is the danger what can happen at the mountain.

The mountain-top and the plain

A sermon for First Lutheran Church, Maquoketa on the occasion of their 100th anniversary and celebration of partnership with Ewalu.

Scripture: Luke 6:17-26

One thing I like to mention as a guest preacher—whenever I come into a congregation and the assigned readings are like today with some serious “woe to you” energy—that these are, in fact, the assigned readings for today and not my selection. So, now that we are off on a better foot, let’s get at it.

Today’s Gospel reading begins by saying, “Jesus came down [from the mountain-top] with the disciples and stood on a level place,” which is why Jesus’ message is sometimes called “The Sermon the Plain” in contrast to the Gospel of Matthew, which has a much longer (and more well-known) version called the Sermon on the Mount. At the risk of missing the point here, I want to spend a moment on the location before I jump into anything else, because I believe there is something important happening here—something that many of us may overlook who are able-bodied, adventurer-types who love the idea of climbing mountains.

            Perhaps you see the challenge of the sermon on the mountain already—maybe it was obvious to some of you, who are perhaps not as mobile as you once were. Jesus could preach about great reversals to the small crowd of disciples who ascended the mountain, but—in the words of an old Rich Mullins song—it would be about as useful as a screen-door on a submarine. Many of those who desperately need to hear about God’s great reversal could not make it up the mountain—those too old or unable to physically climb, those who have children in their care, those too weak from malnutrition, too sick, too tired. These folks are all back on the plain, hearing rumors of this Messiah. Jesus—like the church that follows him—goes to the people, because Jesus is always seeking out the least, the lowly, and the lost sheep. In the words of the great theologian Robert Farrar Capon, Jesus is interested in the least, the last, the lost, the lowly, the little, and the dead. Those are the ones Jesus will call blessed.

            I want to keep that dynamic of the great reversal and the sermon on the plain in mind as I turn for a moment to the mountain that is camp.

            At Ewalu, kids have the mountain-top experience of camping. They come to camp and some part of their self opens up under the open skies. The Holy Spirit—whose voice is often hard to pick up in our “normal” lives back home—speaks to us in the silence on the mountain-top of camp where we are quiet enough to listen. And it happens around the campfire—and it happens on the climbing wall, and in the river, and on a hike—in Bible study and in conversation, in making new friends and pushing our boundaries—in discovering new things about ourselves. Camp is fertile ground for the Holy Spirit to change lives. So, there is little surprise that camping ministry has the highest positive impact on developing future pastors in the Lutheran church—and has held that position as these trends have been studied. At camp, kids discover Christ, grow in faith, and become disciples. In many ways, it is the mountain-top of our church.

            But if Ewalu is only the mountain-top, then we have a problem, because Jesus does not stay there. Most of life is spent in the normal, day-to-day happenings of the plains and also in the valley of the shadow of death that we sing about in the 23^rd Psalm. We need a fabric of camp and congregation that bridges the experiences campers have out-there and makes them disciples for life back here, and then we need to develop a welcoming atmosphere where folks like you—who may have long since grown out of a stage where you would ever consider yourself a “camper”—nonetheless have a positive experience with a sacred space like Ewalu or another space you have found sacred, so that together we can follow where Jesus is leading us. Together, we get the privilege to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to Maquoketa and together we get to preach to folks in your congregation, in your community, and in your own house, and say: Blessed are you, who are poor. Blessed are you, who are hungry. Blessed are you, who weep.

Breaking the surface

A sermon for St. John Lutheran Church, Cedar Falls

 Luke 5:1-11

             I have a not-so-serious rule for preaching that every sermon needs Jesus and every sermon needs trout, so I should be good to go with this one. Fitting fish into the Good Samaritan story takes some gymnastics, I tell you, or last time I was here, I seem to remember the text was on divorce. No fish to be seen, though I could preach on that one again, if you’d like.

            No, today we have fish, so we’ll stick with this one. Not trout, mind you, but close enough.

            I love watching fish in the water. There is something holy about looking through that barrier between the airy world where we live and the watery kingdom where they are lords. We live in two realities, yet, as every fly fisherman knows, we see one another through the surface—where air and water meet. What we understand as normal—living in the world of breath-air-spirit—that Hebrew word, ruach, that means all those things—is only a partial world. It reminds me of the commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005 called “This is water,” which begins with Wallace telling a story that goes like this:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

 

The danger of half a story

 A sermon for St. Paul Lutheran Church, Postville

Luke 4:14-21

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus preaches a one sentence sermon. He reads Isaiah and then preaches, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Nice, brief sermon. The problem with this break in the Gospel is that this is only half a story—and the other half of the story comes in next week’s readings when I won’t be with you. So, I could preach half a sermon or pretend that this scripture is only about Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah, but it does sort of lack a conclusion, doesn’t it? More to the point, it’s misleading: The way the reading is cut makes it almost seem like the people of Nazareth cheered and lifted Jesus up on to their shoulders and carried him out of the gym, like a basketball player hitting that game-winning three-pointer. It feels like that is where this is going.

The whole story—however—is something altogether different. At first, the people of Nazareth did love what Jesus was saying—they were eager to cheer on the local kid. After all, who doesn’t love a little pride in the hometown? Nazareth was small and easily overlooked, but the Messiah born in their midst? How about that! Jesus’ friends and neighbors had reason to believe he was going to lift them up and take Nazareth from nowhere to somewhere, and they feel this way right up until verse 24.

Then, Jesus says, “Truly, I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” You can almost picture the peoples’ faces changing, can’t you? The trouble with getting people all riled up and excited is that you now have a mob ready to destroy you if you let them down. The cheers turn to rage, and the people of Nazareth—Jesus’ people—drove him out of town and ultimately attempted to murder him, the child that grew up in their midst, who was the Messiah, but not the messiah they wanted.

Now, I suspect Pastor Lynn might have some things to say on that part of the story next week, so I am not going to touch on the implications of Jesus preaching to the hometown crowd today. Rather, my sermon today is about the danger of half a story—and how camp helps bridge the gulf between two of the most challenging stories we face in life today.

The first story:

            This is the story of getting by in the United States of America in the year 2025. It is certainly not the worst time or place in history, but life here is not without its challenges. People are divided, especially around political beliefs, which drives division in churches and between friends and neighbors. Our young people are more aware of these divisions than ever, because they are more connected to the world around them than ever. With their phones in their hands, they are told who is wrong—they are told who to hate—they are told they are wrong—and they are also told they need to be skinnier, smarter, and funnier—they are told they must achieve more, must be more—they are told they are the problem, and they are told others are the problem. They are told in a thousand different ways every single day that they are not enough—and the problem is themselves or the problem is other people—and then they are hammered further by other Christians who use the Bible as a weapon to beat the life out of those who already feel beaten by the world around them.

            So, while in many ways life these days is nowhere near as hard as it has been at most other times in history, it doesn’t feel that way, especially to young people, as the expectations they are fed meet a reality that feels impossible. That is story #1.

The second story:

            This is the story of a God who came in Jesus Christ to save those who could not save themselves. This is a story of grace. It is also a story that runs so counter to the first story that it is increasingly easy to believe that all the principles of the first story apply to the second—that God helps those who help themselves; that we have to earn grace; that we have to accept it as true or believe it in the right way. The second story is a story that has become harder and harder to believe as we convince ourselves we are our own saviors—that God favors the powerful and looks down on the poor.

            In short, America in 2025 looks surprisingly like Nazareth two thousand years ago. We nod along; we cheer; then we crucify.

            Our young people may not have the words to express the cognitive dissonance between the story of the self-sufficient American ideal and the story of Jesus Christ, but they feel it. Boy, do they feel it. I think we all do. We face a very challenging question: How can we reconcile the world of achievement where we beat each other back in order to climb the ladder of success faster with the world of grace that proclaims that the first shall be last and the last shall be first?

            I tell you what most people have done—they have turned away from the church, but not for the reasons we so often cite. The prevailing sentiment is that church attendance has declined for some combination of factors involving sports or clubs replacing churches as the center of the community and people backsliding away from being good Christians. I want to suggest that our busy-ness is a symptom not of a lack of faith but a lack of connection, and I believe that people have turned away from the church because the church in the developed world has always been allied to the powers that be and those powers-that-be realized little by little, then increasingly rapidly, that they didn’t need the church anymore, and they gave permission to folks who never wanted to be part of the church anyway to no longer be.

            And our young people, who need grace as desperately as any of us, don’t see it in the church, because the church is just another extension of the first story. If you don’t feel this, that’s probably because you and your forebears helped cultivate the church into what it is today, and that has served you and your community well. For other folks—adults and youth and children alike, faith feels like just another obligation—just another thing to graduate from on their ascent up the treacherous mountain of success. And it doesn’t matter if we tell them otherwise, it still feels that way.

            So, we have two stories and one is winning, because we mostly don’t see how to bridge the chasm between achievement and grace.

            Enter camp.

            Now, this is all very convenient for the camp director to come in and say, so I want to be clear: I don’t want to pretend that camp is the lone solution to this problem or that camp is one-size-fits-all or perfect—it is far from it—and I also don’t want to suggest that we have some magical formula for creating good little Christians—we don’t. But I have to say: Ewalu is a place where people who are looking to challenge themselves encounter a world drenched in grace, and that combination of striving to leave our comfort zones and discovering the love of God does something to people. We proclaim grace, but not cheap grace—not the kind of grace that says, “just try your best and God will take care of the rest.” No, here we preach the kind of grace that does not shy away from death—that does not pretend we can fix everything. And kids discover it to be true not because we tell them it is, but because they already know it is. They encounter death and resurrection in the world around them. They get their hands dirty in the mud and their feet wet in the water and when they do, something cracks open, some part of them dies, and then they rise.

There is no end

Sermon preached at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, North Liberty, IA

Scripture:  Mark 13:1-8

The last time I preached on this scripture it was March 29, 2020. I was a pastor in Northwestern Minnesota, and I was just figuring out how to livestream worship in an empty sanctuary for a physically distant congregation. I know time flies and all that, but I just want to pause a moment and give thanks that I am here with you in person—and to note how quickly we forget that that is not a given. The poignancy of apocalypse was palpable when I read this four years ago at the onset of the pandemic. Today, over four years later, some things have changed but not everything. It was the end of one way—but not the end of the end. In the end, there was a beginning.

            We don’t like this—we, human beings. We are wired with the belief that life should progress uniformly and linearly. We have an innate sense that as we move forward things should get better—life should improve—and it should get better and better and better. We don’t like that we are mortal, but mortality is OK if the world that lies ahead for our children and grandchildren is a better one. The problem is that sometimes the world does go backwards.

            I am torn about what to say about this, because in the span of human existence, life has generally gotten better. People in the world are living longer; we have found cures to many diseases and effective treatments to others; we have wealth and technology that our forebears even a hundred years ago could hardly have dreamed of, and, yet, we are also saddled with depression and anxiety; we are addicted to screens, fueled by angry people telling us who to blame for all of our problems. We are disconnected, even as we can more quickly talk with a human being across the planet than a person two hundred years ago could talk to a neighbor down the street. We are so, so, so busy—and afraid that if we ever step off the race track, we will fall behind and our children will fall behind. So, we don’t—and we move faster and faster—and we are only ever a moment from panic.

            Is it any wonder that in a world like this—fueled by anxiety—we are fascinated by apocalypse? We instinctively nod along with Jesus, speaking of wars and rumors of wars, of tearing down the temple, and we think, “Yeah, that’s what we need.” Anything to right this out-of-control ship that I’m riding through the rapids. But here’s the big secret: The apocalypse already happened. Two thousand years ago, it happened. Two thousand years ago, the end came, and the remarkable part of the story—the thing we so often forget, as overwhelmed by life as we can be—is that this end was just the beginning.

            I fully believe that the devil’s best work is to set our sights on an abstract not-yet reality when we have so much in front of us to love and cherish and hold dear. The devil takes our faith that Jesus Christ died for us and twists it into an obsession with the afterlife that allows us to ignore very real people who need our care right now. The freedom of a Christian is to look at a world that is scary and is big—a world that may even kill you—and to meet that world and say, “I’ve got this, because Jesus has me.” Then, we dive in, because while Jesus was prophesying the destruction of the temple, he was talking both about a building and himself, but in both cases, death was not the end. Good Friday led to Easter Sunday. Church as building transitioned into church as people—or at least it should be that way.

Grace through the eye of the needle

From a sermon preached at Bethany Lutheran Church, Iowa Falls

Scripture: Mark 10:17-31

Thank you for having me to share a bit about camp, to join with you in worship, and to preach on the story of Jesus and the rich man, which is a misunderstood story—the kind of story we delve into at camp where we have the time and space to deal with complex and misunderstood stories. Of course, the best news for all of you is that I’m a guest preacher, so if you don’t like what I say, I won’t be here next week!

            You know a Bible story is ripe with meaning when you open up your Bibles and see there are a bunch of footnotes about words and phrases that have been added or omitted in ancient sources. But if you are like most people, when you notice a footnote in your Bible about some Greek word, you do what most sane people do and think, “I don’t have time to figure out what that means.” Lucky for you today, I do have time—and in this case, I believe the footnotes are important, because in Mark 10:24-25, Jesus says, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle…” etc. and in most Bibles you will see a reference, and at the bottom of your page it will say something like, “Other sources say, “Children, it is hard for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God!” And if you are a sane person, you will say, “Ah, so scholars disagree, and this passage sounds really hard anyway, so OK, this is one of those unfathomable mysteries—plus, I was a little weirded out that I might be a rich person anyway, since Jesus doesn’t really define what it means to be rich—so I’m going to either A) ignore this passage entirely, or B) assume it applies to other, much richer people than myself.”

            A brief note on the notes to scripture. What we know today as the Bible was originally many books—you probably know that—but more than that, those books were copied by many scribes—human beings who would physically write copy the words to create new books. This was slow and also the scribes made errors. Humans didn’t have printing presses until the 1500s—you may remember—so when the book of Mark was originally written, it was then copied many times by many different people—people we call “scribes.” We know about some of these scribes because some of these ancient texts have quite literally been dug up through the years, and what we have found is that scribes occasionally made mistakes in copying the scripture, but that is not what happened here. What also happened—and what indeed is happening in our story today—is that a scribe has made an intentional change to the original text. They added some words!

            When that happens, it is well-worth our time to consider why a scribe would do this, and in this case, I think it’s pretty obvious: The scribe read the original words and did not like what it was saying. He (I say, “he,” because it is an odds game it probably was a man) read the original and thought to himself, “Jesus needs to more clearly condemn rich people, because the way it reads right now seems to imply that it is hard for anyone to enter the kingdom of God, and that can’t be right!” The scribe made a theological edit—he believed that Jesus meant to condemn rich people, not everyone—and so he changed the text to clarify.

            This makes sense at first blush, and this scribe is certainly not alone in trying to soften this passage. In fact, around a thousand years later, a man named Anselm of Canterbury was so offended by this story—especially the part about it being nigh on impossible for a rich person to be saved—that he appears to have made up the idea that there was a gate in Jerusalem called, “The eye of a needle.” In this version, Anselm was claiming that it was not impossible for rich people to be saved, it was just kind of hard. That story about the “Eye of the Needle” gate has become so pervasive that you may still hear about it today, but that doesn’t change that it was invented a thousand years after Jesus.

            OK, now you’re all wondering why the Ewalu guy is here to give us a long history lesson about scripture, so I had better get to the point, which is this: If this passage has confused or worried you, you’re not alone, but please, please, please, do something important, and read to the end of the story with me. When you do, this story flips on its head. When you read to the end, this story about judgment becomes something else—but we have to get there to see it. So, let’s do that now:

Freedom and the art of cross-bearing

A sermon for St. Peter Lutheran Church, Denver

Scripture: Mark 8:27-38

              The year is 2006 and I am a sophomore at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I am sitting in my dorm room, booting up the old desktop computer and navigating over to the National Lutheran Outdoor Ministries Association website to apply for a summer camp counselor position. At the time, this is how it was done if you wanted to work for a Lutheran summer camp. I didn’t even know at the time that this was the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod consortium of camps, but I also didn’t care, because I only wanted to work at one camp: Lutherhaven. The previous summer I had my first taste of summer camp leadership attending a youth service camp at Shoshone Base Camp in the panhandle of northern Idaho, and I was dying to go back to see what this summer camp thing was all about.

            Now, here’s how I know this was a lifetime ago: Many of those places I just named have different names. Augustana College, now Augustana University. Shoshone Base Camp, now Shoshone Mountain Retreat. Youth service camp, now Idaho Servant Adventures. I suddenly feel kind of old.

            But I’m not so old that to have forgotten the interview I had for that camp counselor position with Rebecca Smith, the Program Director at Lutherhaven (now Executive Director)—probably my first real interview for a job in my life. I remember her asking me a very straightforward question that took me aback. “What is a Bible verse that is meaningful to you?”

            By some grace of God, I didn’t freeze. In fact, almost before I knew it, I was blurting out, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” I probably read that the week before or something. Jesus—to Peter—in today’s scripture. Like any good leader, Rebecca didn’t stop there. “Why that verse?” she asked. “Because being a Christian is about doing hard things.” I said, or something like that. I guess that was good enough—or they were desperate for male staff—because I got the job—and because of that job, I am with you today, because boy, did I fall in love with outdoor ministry out there on Lake Coeur d’Alene.

            Nearly two decades later, I am no longer thrilled with the response I gave to Rebecca Smith. I was right that camp was going to be hard. It was going to test me in ways I never imagined. At times, it hurt; at times, it made me feel unworthy. It was also meaningful and wonderful and a place where I connected with God and made lifelong friends.

But you know what? It was never my cross.

I have come to realize something simple that I should have seen two decades ago: Your cross is not a hard thing that you can overcome through strength of will, gumption, and maybe a little help from God. Your cross will do one thing and one thing only—it will kill you. To take up your cross is to walk willingly toward death, which means it is nothing like any of the things we sometimes jokingly, sometimes seriously consider our crosses to bear. Your children are not your cross. The reality that your children are fragile—that they will someday die? That might be your cross. Your work is not your cross. Your family is not your cross—not even if they are kind of a rough crew. Your cross is not something you can look back upon and say, “Man, that was hard.” Rather, your cross is the thing from which there is no coming back. Your cross is the thing that will bring you to your knees.

            At first, this sounds like really bad news, doesn’t it? You might be wondering: Why is the guy who is coming here looking for help in renovating Cedar Lodge and to get more campers to come to camp preaching about how impossible it is to bear the cross? It’s a bold strategy. But here is what I believe: Camp is for truth-telling. Camp lays bare who we really are—not who we wish to be. At camp, we are honest and admit we are fragile, we are temporary, and no matter how hard we try, we cannot keep everyone we love in bubble wrap, safely tucked away.

            BUT it does not end there. When we name our calling to follow Jesus with crosses in tow, then we get to do something extraordinary: We get to live! Sure, we are walking toward Golgotha, but so is everything in life. The freedom of a Christian is the freedom to know where you are heading and to revel in joy on the way there. It is to never have to justify yourself, because Christ has done that for you. Then, what is left when we have left it all to Jesus? We get to play! We get to stand in wonder of the world around us, living life, not for cowering in fear. We can be bold and joyful and free. When I see kids running around Ewalu, that’s what I see—bold, joyful, free kids discovering they are known and loved by a God who has chosen them and loves them and bears the cross for them.