Where are you planted?

Scripture: Psalm 1

Where are you planted?

            That’s the question this first Psalm is asking, setting the stage for all the Psalms to follow. Where are you planted?

            Jesus uses a similar analogy once upon a time, talking about scattering seed—some in the good soil, others in the rocks and amidst the thorny brambles. It’s a parable that leaves you with that same questions: Where are you planted?

            This has to be one of the best questions to ask that special someone whom your daughter or son brings home for supper. You sit down at the table and before you get into what sports the kid plays, or what his parents do for a living, or what kind of shoes she wears, or any of that silly stuff, just start with this: “Where are you planted?”

And if they run away then you’ve done your job.

            But it’s also the perfect question because it’s not just asking where it is that you live but also where are you most comfortable, where do you feel most alive, and, then, are you in good soil or not? Is the place where you live safe?

Take a chance! Spiritual advice to the Spirit-starved church

Scripture: Romans 8:18-38

Happy Holy Spirit Recognition Day! (or as the rest of the Christian Church calls it: Pentecost). The one day where Lutherans tip their cap ever-so-briefly to the Spirit, doing it of course with a sideways glance so we can be sure that the Spirit isn’t actually doing anything, like a dog that we have caged up because it’s just too unpredictable. Yet, we look at it every once in awhile, shake our fingers, and say firmly, “Stay!”

Stay put, Holy Spirit, because you are unpredictable. When you get out people start speaking in tongues, raising up their hands, and even, occasionally, shouting out “Hallelujah!” and “Amen!” even when there is no bold print telling us to say it! And what would become of us if we were to do that? Even our Assemblies of God churches don’t do that up here!

Stay put, Holy Spirit! Sure, if you open the Book of Concord, which I know all of you good Lutherans do for bedtime reading each night, you will find that something like 80% of it is about works of the Spirit. 80% of what makes Lutherans Lutheran is the Spirit moving through our worship and our daily lives. But no, it’s too scary. Keep it locked up.

You think I’m exaggerating, but when one of our children gets the least bit excited during a children’s sermon, what do we do? We laugh. Part of us wants to be that child, free to say what he wants, to worship without the fear of what others think.

Senselessnes, Suffering, and Salvation

Scripture: Romans 5:1-11

There are two things going on in this Romans 5 passage—two related things maybe—but two things for us to wrap our heads around. There is this whole business about justification and reconciliation and salvation and all of these words that we tend to associate with salvation and God and Jesus Christ dying for us, and all of that is very obviously at the forefront of what we do and talk about here. Then, there’s also this business about suffering producing endurance, and endurance producing character, and character producing hope, which is not the same thing, and is maybe also a stumbling block for those of us living down here.

When I read Romans 5 I tend to think of being a Minnesota sports fans, because we know a lot about suffering, and we’ve built up our endurance, and we hope we have character, and we definitely have hope, even if it is completely unfounded.

Unfortunately, this is not the major way we suffer in this world. I wish all there was to worry about in the world was the Minnesota Wild’s complete inability to beat the Chicago. I wish that was all we have to deal with. Unfortunately, there are worse things in this world.

I wish also that we had the perspective and wisdom to stand where Paul stood. But we don’t always. For a well-adjusted person what Paul writes is true: You do suffer and then gain endurance and character, and you do find hope on the far side of it. This is actually a promise that God gives us—you get through that suffering and this is what happens.

The problem is that we don’t always get through it, and not all suffering is even or equal or easy.

I know what this looks like for people to preach. I have listened to pastors who preach from their open wounds and it’s frankly uncomfortable. They just cannot have the perspective necessary to say the words they need to say. We see this at funerals when people get up to speak, and we say great things, but it ultimately feels too raw—like we need time to reflect. A pastor is most effective when he or she preaches from his scars; not when he’s preaching from his open wounds. 

The one where I get off on a law-gospel kick because it's Romans and I can't help it

 Romans 1:1-17 

“I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish,” says Paul.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

            I have this working thesis about human behavior that we’re OK with admitting we are indebted, but only when we are indebted to people who we like, who inspire us, and who make us look good. And I think this is because we are reflective creatures and we are always crafting stories in our head about who we are and where we fit into the universe, and, when we do that, we decide that if we owe anybody anything at all it is only to people we like and people who improve the story I’m telling. So I owe my teachers, I owe my parents, I owe my pastor, I owe reputable community members A, B, and C. I don’t owe anything to the people who disrespected me, or who were mean to me, or the people who scared me. They owe me (absolutely!) but I don’t owe them a thing.

Paul is that rare breed of person who doesn’t think this way. He doesn’t care to sift through the people that he owes and tell tales of the wise and the prosperous; he owes them all—wise and foolish—and to understand why this is the case = we need to understand Paul, a person who made that dramatic change from killer to preacher. Paul understands that tabulating who owes him is folly compared to the impossible debts he has run up himself. He may have been familiar with that parable Jesus told in Matthew’s Gospel about the slave with the massive debt, freed by his master, who then went out and held a pittance of that debt against another slave down the line. Or if Paul wasn’t familiar he at least got the gist of it from his life experience. Unlike the slave from the parable, Paul understands that he is forgiven such a ridiculous debt that doing his own accounting of others’ debts is just stupid. Paul comes to the radical realization that he cannot be righteous because of the things he has done; that even his ardent beliefs originate not in some good part of his soul still remaining but that they are given to him by God, lest his belief itself become a good work that gets in the way of faith. Instead, Paul comes to understand that he is completely dependent on the grace of God for the salvation that is the only thing that matters.