This is for you! A Christmas promise to shatter the darkness

Luke 2:1-20

“Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord!”

            The great thing about tonight is that I don’t need to preach—not really. I mean, everything tonight preaches itself. These are words that shatter the darkness where the shepherds are standing. Whatever I say is just pointing back at what angels have already given us. Then again, many who receive a great promise hear it suspiciously, as if it, like most things in life, are really too good to be true. Sometimes it’s not enough to hear the words; we have to actually believe and trust in them.

You see, the shepherds knew the words of the prophet Isaiah when he said, “You who stand in great darkness shall see a light” (Isa. 9:2), but who really thinks Isaiah meant that for them specifically? Which people actually believe they are the ones to whom God is speaking? Do any of us? Into a world of darkness comes this word: Tonight, a Savior is born for you! The reason I have to preach and the reason we need to do communion and light candles and all of this is because you need to hear these words tonight over and over again: this is for you. For every last one of you!

            We who stand in the darkness will see a light. There is a long history in the Bible with darkness. God created out of darkness. Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was wild and waste and darkness covered the face of the deep…” That’s where we always start: Sitting in darkness… waiting, watching.

            This has been our history: From the time before there were stars, before the sun, before the universe came—bang!—out of the mind of God into the reality we call “life.” This is the story we tell over and over again. Darkness versus light. Good versus evil. Dark is scary; it has a weight and a power to it. Deep darkness seems eternal, overwhelming, impossible to overcome. And, yet, the strongest darkness cannot match the tiniest flicker of light.

Mary knew

Luke 1:26-56

            This is the most wonderful time of year, isn’t it? Lights and presents and cookies and 20-below zero—hey, two of three ain’t bad!—and music! Christmas music! And Christmas music is a wonderful combination of all the best and the worst of all music. It’s the calm of “Silent Night” and the sweet ding-dong of “Carol of the Bells;” it’s the beautiful melodic canvasses painted by “Coventry Carol” and the joyful exuberance of “Jingle Bells.” It’s so much good stuff, and then it’s terrible songs like “Santa Baby” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”—just go ahead and write off any song with “baby” in the title—and it’s other smarmy music that I’m not going to list because odds are some of you love it and that’s your own opinion, and, hey, we all like some terrible things.

            But there is one song that has to be mentioned on this Sunday where we read Mary’s Magnificat, because the Magnificat itself is so stupendous and timeless and bold. Whether it’s Marty Haugen’s version we’re about to sing, “My Soul Proclaims Your Greatness” or the “Canticle of the Turning” or many-a-Vespers service, Mary’s words have been put to music in many magnificent ways I suppose largely because the lyrics are so good. But there is a bad apple—a little song that some of you love because it’s beautiful and Pentatonix does a great version of it and it’s got a lovely melody and soaring bridge. It sounds lovely; it’s just that the words don’t add up. I’m talking, of course, about “Mary, Did You Know?”

            Now before you call me the Christmas Grinch that I undoubtedly am I just have to point out one little detail that jumps off the page from the first chapter of Luke every time I hear this song. “Mary knew!” If anyone in the Gospels knew who Jesus was it was Mary. She might be the only one but gosh darn she knew! She got it. Her song is a testimony to a revolution that she sees coming even when others are burying their heads in the sand.

The End of the Revolving Door

Joel 2:12-13, 28-29

            I just can’t believe in a God who… fill in the blank. We’ve all heard this. Somedays we probably think it. I just can’t believe in a God who…

            Of all the hard questions I get the toughest is the question of God and evil. It comes in many forms—the ones I just mentioned, “I just can’t believe in this kind of God…” or “But what kind of God allows this,” or just “Why?”

This feels apropos for the book of Joel, because Joel begins with lament over the destruction of Jerusalem and it’s fairly clear for Joel, as it was for all the prophets, that the “why?” of death and destruction is the peoples’ sinfulness. The people went astray. God punished them. That is evil explained for the Old Testament. This is the revolving door of history before Christ.

            Joel’s solution is that the people return to the Lord. Once they do that God will pour out his spirit on them and all, apparently, will be well in the world. This sounds great, in theory, but for those of us who’ve read the Old Testament you know it never seems to work out for long. The people chosen by God do eventually repent. They return to the Lord. But, before long, they turn again to their golden calves; they do what is evil in the sight of the Lord; they will forget the one who brought them out of the Promised Land. And so the revolving door continues. Evil, it seems, is very persistent.

            This kind of repentance-blessing, sin-punishment cycle runs its course while the chosen people are in exile. The prophets start to look for a different answer; a more permanent one. The old system just doesn’t work. East of Eden, people do not stay faithful. The expectations of the law are too much; they have short-memories and ravenous appetites. The chosen people and the unchosen people alike seem one and the same—sinful, through and through, capable of repentance, capable of returning to the Lord, their God, but ultimately bound for disappointment. What good is a spirit poured out that is dependent on our response when we inevitably fall short of God’s expectations for us? It is our flaw, born from our freedom that we stole from that tree in the Garden of Eden.

Just Hope: King Darius' Long Night (Revisited)

Daniel 6:6-27

I’m going to start this morning with two asides. First, every once in awhile I need to preach a message that is directly in contrast with what I just said in the children’s sermon. This is one of those times. I don’t like to do this often because it feels like I’m saying kids can’t understand and most of the time kids CAN understand. It’s just in this case, I think we need both messages. Kids need to hear that God loves them and cares for them and watches over them. Adults want to hear that, too. But part of growing up is putting aside a childish faith, even as we strive after a child-like faith. This means acknowledging a broken world of sin where the lions often seem to win. This is the angle from which I’m going to approach today’s message. So, basically, some of you will prefer the children’s message, which is fair enough.

            Secondly, I’ve preached on this story once before. I’ve been here long enough that now we’re going back through the lectionary for a second time, reading the same stories from four years ago. So, naturally, I go back and see what I preached on four years ago, and, on a Thanksgiving week like this, it was awfully tempting to see how much you remember from a sermon four years ago titled, “Just Hope: King Darius’ Long Night.” I don’t doubt it has been frequent bedtime reading for you all ever since. Thus, I present to you: “Just Hope: King Darius’ Long Night (Revisited).”

            OK, let’s get to business.

King Darius has a problem. He likes Daniel. Daniel was his personal dream interpreter, which was for Daniel, as it had been for Joseph once upon a time, a lucrative career that got him into the royal house. Daniel is well-liked, but he is also Jewish. This was not such a popular thing to be in ancient Persia, especially with Daniel in a political role that the other presidents and satraps were looking to undermine. This is a story that reminds us that religious motivations have been used as a cover for political ambitions across the wide span of history.

Grace is Strange, Unfair, and Offensive

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Luke 18:9-14

A sermon for Harvest Festival

I want to talk to you today about grace, because harvests are about grace… because all of this is about grace… because anything we can be thankful for comes to us by grace. We say that grace is “unmerited love” or a “free gift”, which is a start but not enough. So then we do what Jesus did: We tell parables about grace. Grace is like the lost sheep. The shepherd leaves the other ninety-nine unattended, risking their safety, for the sake of the one. Grace is strange. Grace is like the son who returns home after leaving the family and squandering his inheritance. Grace is unfair. Grace is like the worker who works the last five minutes of the day and receives the same wages as the one who was hard at work 9-5. Grace is offensive. Grace is for the tax collector, who knows he’s a sinner, and the Pharisee, who thinks he is righteous. Grace is: Strange, Unfair, and Offensive.

            Yet, grace is how God interacts with us. Jeremiah gives us a new covenant centered on grace. Jeremiah tells us that this promise—unlike the ones made with Abraham and Moses, which depended so much on how the tribes of Israel would respond—no! This new covenant is written on the hearts of the people; that they will be God’s people, God will be there God—that’s that! Grace is God saying, “You are mine, like it or not.” Grace does not revel in freedom and liberty but takes it from us, nanner-nanner boo-boo.

            And there’s the problem! We like freedom and liberty, but grace takes them away from us. Why?

I want to turn for a moment to a story from Luke’s Gospel of the Pharisee and the tax collector (or the publican, as some of you have heard him called) (18:9-14). It’s not the most well-known of parables so I’ll briefly run through it. Jesus tells us about a man, a Pharisee, who prays in a certain way. He says, “God I thank you that I am not like others are, greedy, unjust, adulterers—and I thank you especially that I am not like this tax collector.” Then Jesus tells us about that tax collector to whom the Pharisee is referring, who prays a different way. He says, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” That’s the parable. Jesus explains it like this. He says, “I tell you, this man (the tax collector) went to his house justified rather than the other: for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

            I want to talk about the new covenant through the lens of that parable for two reasons: 1. It shows us what grace really is, and 2. It should remind us why we have a harvest festival in the first place. It is by the grace of God that we gather today; not our own merits, not our hard work, not because we deserve it.

Think that you might be wrong: On listening and healing

Isaiah 6:1-13

“The holy seed is its stump.” Nobody knows what that last verse of Isaiah 6 means. Nobody. The commentaries, the online lectionary aides, Bible inserts and footnotes. Everybody says the same thing, “Meaning uncertain.” I mean, people have guesses. Of course people have guesses, but this is one of those phrases that just doesn’t seem to translate and, since ancient Hebrew is a dead language apart from what we have written of it, this is one of those meanings lost to history.

Of course, it should surprise none of you that I love this, because it’s deep and confusing and mysterious. I love that there are words and phrases that remain uncertain. I love that even the most legalistic Bible-reader cannot say for certain what everything means. I love this because it seems holy to me to have an ounce of humility about our faith. Jesus did say, “Blessed are the humble.”

I also love that this verse sits here at the end of chapter 6 when Isaiah’s message is about listening but not comprehending, looking but not understanding. The poetry here is beautiful—not only will you listen but not comprehend, you’ll do so right now. “The holy seed is its stump.” What on earth does that mean?

There’s also a part of me that must confess that I like that God tells people they won’t understand. I find people who are sure they know everything boring. Don’t you? Why would I have a discussion with you? You already know everything! I much prefer people who are always in wonder. They feel more honest to me, anyway. They also seem less fearful, less defensive. Those who have it all figured out feel dull, and I wonder if they aren’t already under the condemnation Isaiah speaks. I mean, how truly sad to live a life unwilling to listen and learn! It feels like its own punishment. That’s the first punishment God lays upon his people who have gone astray: He makes their minds dull; he stops them from using their senses—their eyes and ears. They don’t experience the wonder of God’s majesty, because they close their eyes and shut their ears.

Jesus quotes this passage in the Gospels. In fact, we read it at our Men’s Bible study on Tuesday morning, which was a complete coincidence and/or God-thing. Jesus was telling the disciples that the purpose of the parables is this: “That they may listen but never understand, look but not perceive” (Mt 13:14). Jesus revels in the mysteries of God’s kingdom. When people come to him and ask, “What is the kingdom like?” He responds, “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.” This is not clarity; it’s mysterious. It’s the kind of thing that takes reflection. It’s gray; not black or white.

Jonah, the very worst elected person

Jonah chapters 1, 3, 4

            We need Jonah. Oh, how we need Jonah. This, this is the good news we need.

            Jonah was a terrible preacher, a god-awful prophet. He’s so awful that, looking at the book as a whole, it’s probably satire. It’s probably meant to be funny, because—like with most satire—the situation is so extravagantly backwards that it feels like there’s no way this could be serious. Jonah receives a word from God: Go to Nineveh. So he goes… to Tarshish; literally the other side of the known world. If he could have crossed the Atlantic Ocean that’s what he would have done.. Other prophets try to get out of their commitment—see Moses and the burning bush—but nobody goes to quite the lengths of Jonah to run away from what God was asking of him. So, it’s no surprise when God sends a storm and threatens the ship in which Jonah is fleeing. The sailors convert in a heartbeat—this is one of the funnier aspects of the Jonah story: No prophet has nearly as much success as Jonah in getting converts. He hardly has to try; in fact, he DOESN’T TRY. He literally does not seem to care. And here is God working through his hard head.

            You see, I’m pretty sure Jonah is satire, but—with most good satire—it’s also very true. God DOES work through our hard heads and often the faster we run away the more God pulls us back. When Jonah finally gets to the Assyrians in Nineveh it’s with great contempt in his heart. He hates the Assyrians. He believes they deserved to die for their heathen ways. They were people who, in the words of Jonah, “did not know their right hand from their left.”

Into this mix, finally, walks Jonah, dripping in whale vomit, and he preaches a momentous five word sermon that is long on judgment and without any promise: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” The Hebrew verb for “overthrow” is haphak, which could mean that the city will be overthrown or that it will turn and repent. What Jonah seems to intend for ill, God means for good.

Jonah’s message might be the worst sermon in history. He completely misses the important part; the part where he tells them on whose authority this message comes—the prophetic introduction that always begins these kinds of sermons where the prophet says, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel” or something along those lines. Jonah makes it sound as if the message is just his idea and he doesn’t really offer any alternative. This is not turn or burn; it’s more like “Burn, suckaaaaazzzzz!” Or, put another way, you have forty days to get your affairs before God’s mighty smiting. Sorry, chaps.

And, yet, to the ears of the Assyrians this was a prophecy of their repentance. Absurdly enough, they listen and obey without a second thought. The king even goes to the extravagantly unnecessary step of putting sackclothes on the people AND the animals of the city. I can imagine walking around the giant city of Nineveh with its one hundred and twenty thousand people along with goats and sheep all wearing potato bags.

Jonah has more success than any other prophet in the history of the world, and he didn’t even want it. In fact, when he sees the “success” he is having he starts pouting. He retreats to a hilltop to watch, begging God to do the people in anyway!

            Not only is he a terrible preacher; he’s pretty much the worst person. Let’s be honest—and I don’t say this lightly—Jonah sucks.

Reflect. Be humble. Find meaning. Be Lutheran.

Today’s reading is from 1 Kings. I wonder how much that means to you.

I don’t say that to be a crass jerk, either. I legitimately wonder, because today is Confirmation Sunday; it’s Reformation Sunday. Today we celebrate the 499-year tradition of our church, started by Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. Five hundred years ago Christianity entered the Reformation and emerged as a faith much more accessible to all people, claiming that all of us are priests; every one of you. But that doesn’t mean that we know that much about the religious narratives we confess. Do you really know more about 1 Kings than football? Do you really care more about 1 Kings than the presidential election? Would you rather read the Bible or hunt for deer? Do you know more about your Bible or quilting?

Again, I don’t want to be crass, because being acquainted with the Bible is only a part what it means to be Christian, but if we don’t practice our faith how are we to confess it? I see a lot of diatribes on the internet on TV and in the paper about Christian commitments, but I don’t see an equal amount of investment of time and energy into prayer, study, and discernment of what it means to be a Christian. Most of the time I feel like people go on the internet looking for Bible verses to quote to make their point without ever having spent any time struggling, wrestling, or praying over the question first.

You don’t have time. I get it. But what do you have time for in your life? What is the story you are going to chase in this life? What is going to be your north star, guiding you into your future?

I ask this today because it’s Confirmation Sunday and I always wonder on Confirmation Sunday how we prioritize our faith or not. It’s a question not just for our confirmands; it’s for all of us: Where are you going to invest your time and energy? What, ultimately, matters? If you don’t ask the question, the world is going to decide for you. It’s going to tell you that what matters is how much you contribute to the economy, or what matters is how you vote, or what matters is your carbon footprint, or what matters is your vertical or your SAT score. Maybe those things matter, but what matters the most?

This is a much harder question today than it was for your parents, because they didn’t have this thing called the internet. So they weren’t told as persistently and aggressively about all the things they were lacking. They weren’t as easily distracted by all the narratives. Instead, they had time for this thing called self-reflection that we mostly can’t do anymore. Sadly, the lack of time to contemplate is an absolute disaster for faith communities, because this is a place that requires time spent listening for God’s voice.

Is it over yet?

            Is it over yet? Can we move on with our lives? I just can’t wait for it to be done. I just can’t wait for …

            Life is full of events like these. Exciting things we anticipate and can’t wait to experience, other things that produce fear and disgust, and still other things we are anxious to put behind us. I see a lot of looking forward to things and looking forward to getting past things, and then when we’re in the midst of something I see plenty of anxiety about how that thing is going. I just want to say: Stop. Stop letting future worries dictate your present.

            We’re wasting away our lives trying to get to and/or past the next thing, trying to escape the dreaded thing that’s coming, and then we are captive to nerves during the things that we have been anticipating. We worry, “What if it doesn’t turn out well in the end?”

            We need a break. And not just from the things that cause us stress. We need an outlook that allows us to move through stressful times without being overwhelmed, without letting the temperature of those around us affect us so much. We need some perspective.

            This is what spirituality has to offer. In order to be spiritual you have to be present in the here and now. You have to attentively listen for God in this moment right now. We spend so very much time not being present. We look forward, we try to escape; we don’t sit attentively much. We don’t navigate the stress; we let it dictate the course and then we respond. Stop responding. Start stopping and looking for God in the midst of all the stuff.

            I look at the way our kids play sports as a metaphor for how the rest of us live our lives. Actually, scratch that, it isn’t a metaphor, it IS how we live our lives, because our kids ARE living their lives and they are stressed out as can be. So, when they’re in a big game—define that however you will—you see in their nerves what that means to them. Those who cope better with stress are in the moment—they navigate—but others just react. In every aspect of your life you can be in the moment or you can be anxious and looking for resolution. It will define every interaction you have.

            The spiritual life is also about being self-aware. This has tremendous implications for how we see ourselves, because we hear competing messages in our faith life and our business/personal/family life. Are we trying to justify our lives based on our accomplishments, or are we trusting in God to justify what I cannot?

            So, here’s the thing about Election Day (because I’m guessing a lot of you are worried, anxious, fill-in-the-blank about the election right about now). It matters, but it doesn’t mean nearly as much as we build it up. The foundation of our lives is not our government but our God. The election matters… just not as much as you think. What matters more are the thousands of little things within your control. What matters is smiling, laughing, dancing, singing… what matters is playing, having fun, sharing stories… what matters is falling in love, making friends…  what matters is all the minutia of life that we miss when we wish things away.

            I hope you don’t wish anything away. We only have so much time and we just don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But, even more than that, I hope you don’t wish anything away because God so often meets us exactly in the place we are most dreading. This is the kind of God we’re dealing with and this God ain’t scared of anything, so trust in this God—not your feelings of anxiety or fear of what may come.

            Then, the question won’t be “Is it over yet?” but “It’s over already?”

Make me a house? I'll show you a house!

2 Samuel 7:1-7

            Make me a house? God scoffs. A house? What kind of house will hold the Almighty? What house, pray tell, can contain me?! You want to make me a house but you know what? I’ll make you a house. A house not of brick and mortar, a house that matters; a line—a legacy—that will last forever. A house!? Pfft.

            There’s something wonderful in God’s response to David. It’s interesting, because God makes a covenant with David even though it doesn’t seem at first to add anything to the covenants made with Abraham and Moses. They still have the promise of land and a future and descendants, but now God hints at something better, something eternal, and it all has to do with this misstep David has in wanting to build God a house.

            Quick history lesson. Actually, this requires me to flash-forward a little bit. If this were a movie we’d have a dramatic underscore that shows what’s coming. Solomon, David’s son, builds the temple and maintains the line of kings. It seems, for a moment, that God’s promise really is about a physical building. But then the kingdom divides. There’s Israel and Judah, the line of kings breaks apart; eventually, it fails completely. The Jewish people are conquered by Babylon and the reign of kings over Israel and Judah comes to an end. We know, looking back at history, that the eternal throne of David cannot be the promise here; not if it’s an eternal one. There has been no king of Israel since the Babylonian captivity.

            So, what happened? Why did God make an eternal promise with people who can’t keep their heads on straight for a week? This is just about the one way human beings are consistent: We are brilliantly reliable messers-up. No good thing in history ever lasts very long, and certain things are just fated never to work out. Vikings fans know what that’s all about. Cubs fans are testing that hypothesis at the moment. Among the many hilarious tweets from the Cubs pennant winning victory last night was one that read, “Cubs fans: This feeling you’re experiencing is called elation. Don’t worry, it will go away.”

The immortality of love

This week I'm posting the sermon I am preaching for the hospice memorial service, rather than the Sunday morning sermon, because A) I like it better, and B) I don't have a manuscript for Sunday morning and pulling it together after the fact is a lot of work I may or may not do. So, enjoy!

Revelation 21:1-4

Most of our lives are spent tiptoeing around death, sometimes pretending like it isn’t there, sometimes putting other things in its way, and sometimes intentionally minimizing it, as if any of those options put death to death. This is true of our own mortality but even more-so when it comes to those we love. Parents, brothers and sisters, friends, even our children. We tiptoe around it because we’re scared of it, because we absorb messages in our lives that tell us life is always good, death is always bad, so best to flee from it however much you can. When J.K. Rowling was crafting her primary villain for the Harry Potter series she could think of no better name to give him than “Vol-de-mort” which, in French, means “flees from death.”

            So, it is at first jarring, sometimes uncomfortable, but ultimately a tremendous blessing to have people—nurses and social workers and retired people, as well as people who have vocations that don’t seem to have a thing to do with end of life care—who nonetheless give of themselves, their time and energy, to those whose life is ending, who do not flee from death out of fear but who stand alongside the dying, because that is what human beings are called to do. These people are the hands and feet of Jesus, it is most certainly true.

            Last month I was eating with a friend whose son had recently died unexpectedly—not a hospice situation, more of the tragic accident type—and during the course of the conversation we were talking about the ways that we face our mortality or flee from it. We talked about how Ironman triathlons are overrun with people in their 40s and 50s, trying desperately, it seems, to remain young forever. Perhaps if they do just a little more and just a little more they will never get old. We talked about regrets and living with grief, figuring out how to truly live when the imagined future is gone and we are confronted with a real-present that isn’t what we imagined. We talked purpose and what the good-life looks like. We talked about love, without using the word.

Just have faith

Exodus 32:1-14

            Moses was gone for like two hours—that’s my bias, we have no idea how long he was gone, but it feels to me like two hours before the people start thinking God has abandoned them. God, the God who parted the Red Sea for them to walk across; God, the God who sent plagues on Egypt, the God who gave Abraham and Sarah a child in their old age, who saved Joseph to have him rise to power in Egypt. This God who can do all things: They lost faith in this God in about two hours. OK, maybe it was days, a week even. How long would it take to lose faith in this God?

            Because I think that’s the big question before us today: What does it take to lose faith in God?

            In order to get at that question I want to talk about a different question that is part of the inventory I do with couples who are getting married. It goes like this: “Agree or Disagree: Nothing could make me question my love for my partner.” Couples who have never been married previously, and especially those who are young inevitably agree with this statement. It’s not 100%. Of course it’s never 100%. But most do agree. This falls into the category of romantic answers that people want to believe in. We want to believe that the person we are marrying—the person to whom I am giving my heart—will never let me down and that there is nothing that will happen between us that could lead me to be any less in love. This is romantic. It’s less romantic to start to name some realities of things that happen in the world: adultery, domestic abuse, change in personality, or addiction. In our most romantic moments we believe that love trumps all those things, and truly, it does. Just not always our love. Just not the kind of love we are capable of most days of the week. Our love is more fleeting than we tend to imagine.

            But you might be wondering what that has to do with faith, less still with the golden calf.

Well, I think we are frequently that person who runs headlong into faith, just as we do love, and we believe that nothing could possibly make us question our love of God. So, we practice faith like we enter into love, which is to say we do so naively. This is because faith is romantic, too. Faith takes us to a place of idealism and hope and peace and all sorts of things that are good and true but maybe not as easily earned as we imagine. Faith, like marriage, is tested and refined not in the mountaintops but in the valley-bottoms. Faith is not strengthened by virtue of results but of resolve, and this is often the same with love, though in a different way. We fall in love with an ideal but slowly, over time, we begin to love a person; a person who is not perfect. Faith is like this too, except the process works backwards. We begin our relationship with God by trying to make ourselves perfect, by taking on the biblical command to conform ourselves to God’s image, then our faith is strengthened over time as we begin to let go of our need to save ourselves and settle into trusting God to do what we cannot.

            But this process will show our faith for what is truly is: Is it something that exists to make us feel better about ourselves—a surface-level kind of assurance that things will be OK in the end that is always looking for validation? Or is our faith that deep reminder that we are not God and though the world quakes and our lives appear just as broken as before there is that great soul-peace of trusting in something much bigger than myself so it is not incumbent on me to fix it?

Passover people with a Pharaoh complex, or why we need ritual

Exodus 12:1-13, 13:1-8

The plagues of Egypt. What a story! Moses goes to Pharaoh, saying, “Let my people go!” Pharaoh turns his nose at him. Then the water turns to blood, frogs come up from the water, gnats and flies overwhelm the air, livestock die, people become covered by festering boils—that’s just the worst—that is until the thunder and hail and fire rains down from the sky and then the locusts, finishing off the rest of the crops, and lastly (or almost lastly… pen-lastly?) the darkness. Nine plagues: In some ways each more terrible than the last but nothing compared to the tenth.

It’s hard to imagine exactly how devastating the death of every firstborn in the land would be because losing one child is something like losing the world. For everyone in the country to lose a child at the same time is beyond imagining. This was a terrible time in history. The Egyptians put the Israelites into slavery out of fear that they would rise up. There were too many of them in the land. The Israelites had the numbers but the Egyptians held the power. So, in addition to holding them captive as slaves Pharaoh had ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill Hebrew boys and this is how Moses famously ends up in the reed basket in the Nile. It’s also how Moses ended up in Pharaoh’s house, saved by one of his daughters.

In one sense these plagues culminate in the eye for an eye kind of justice that pervades the earliest stories from the Bible. Pharaoh enslaved the Hebrew people and ordered that their boys be killed so God frees them from slavery by way of killing the first-born of the Egyptians. This is fair. It’s horrible, but it’s fair. More than that, the plagues set Israel apart from other people. These are children of Abraham. Nobody messes with children of Abraham.

So it is that the Israelites are commanded by God to sacrifice a lamb and put its blood over their doorpost to mark their homes so that when the tenth plague hits the Lord may “pass over” their house. This all happens just as promised and the Israelite children are spared; it was a terrible kind of miracle. The Passover is so important it must be remembered and celebrated. Thus, the festival of the unleavened bread was born.

Forgiveness is power: The story of Joseph and his brothers

Genesis 50:15-21

Power. The story of Joseph comes down to power. You may remember this story from Sunday School or from watching Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at some point along the way; it’s familiar but in case the details are fuzzy I’m going to run through them quick. Israel, whose original name was Jacob, had twelve sons. Now, Jacob was married to both Leah and Rachel at the same time because of some trickery done by his father-in-law and uncle, Laban. By the way, this is one of the reasons to be skeptical of anybody who says there is one singular biblical definition of marriage, because marriage in this time was wacky. Jacob has two wives and at least two mistresses and nothing was the bother with it.

Of Jacob’s twelve sons, the first four were from Leah; the next two with Rachel’s maid, Bilhah; the next two were with Leah’s maid, Zilpah; the next two were again with Leah; and then there was one daughter with Leah as well. Then, in Genesis 30:22-24 it says, “Then God remembered Rachel, and God heeded her and opened her womb. She conceived and bore a son, and said, ‘God has taken away my reproach’; and she named him Joseph, saying, ‘May the Lord add to me another son!’” Some time later, Benjamin is born to Rachel and we have our twelve tribes of Israel—a hodgepodge of mothers, a strange accumulation of brothers—and, as usual, God elects one we would not expect to rule over the others.

There’s a long scriptural tradition of choosing the unexpected one, so maybe it’s not as unexpected after all. Joseph was the second-youngest, the child of Israel’s old age. But Joseph was the first son of Rachel, the one wife Israel loved most. We’re told that Joseph was destined for great things and had the dreams of one whom God favored. But this is not how power was established in those days. The eldest had the claim to the inheritance. Israel knew this; after all, it was he who stole the birthright and the inheritance from his older twin brother, Esau. To all rights Reuben, the eldest son, should have been the blessed one here, but Israel held a special place for Rachel, the wife he had always wanted first of all, and so it is Joseph who is chosen and set apart.

Now, that’s a lot of names to keep straight if this story isn’t particularly familiar to you. Suffice it to say, Joseph was 11^th of 12, but in his father’s eyes he was greatest of all. So we come to this story. And power. It came down to power.

Abraham; God's capacity to make something from nothing

Genesis 15:1-6, 17:1-8, 15-22

God does things with extraordinary people—you know this. He takes Abram and makes him ABRAHAM! He takes Saul and makes him PAUL! He takes Moses and makes him MOSES! I like that last one most of all because that’s me. I mean, like Sarah, my name change could be more subtle—you know, changing that last letter in your name but not really changing the pronunciation—like FRANQ! Of course, the names have more to do with ancient meanings we mostly don’t understand today. For example, Abraham means “father of many” in Hebrew. Paul means “humble” in Latin, which was such a big change precisely because Saul had been quite the opposite of humble.

            The point here is that Abraham is so great because God made him so. Same with Paul. Same with Moses—who never changed his name, I’m just messing with you. All these guys just had the fortune (or misfortune) of having God show up and meet them face-to-face. This is the only difference between you and me and Abraham; he had God show up at his door. And he did what most human beings do when confronted with God: He laughed. It’s not that “O-M-G. Wow. I can’t believe it’s you” laugh either. It’s honest to goodness, you’ve got to be kidding me, I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU laughing. Same with Sarah. They are pretty sure that God is out of the freakin’ divine mind here.

            You see, in spite of having a song about him now Abram was not so different from you or me. He spent one hundred years of his life doing nothing of importance. Well, I mean that’s maybe not fair. Perhaps he was the homecoming king, maybe he was a really fast runner, maybe he could grow a mean fig tree, but history was going to forget him. He was did nothing we would remember for 100 years. We can probably relate to that. By all odds Abraham should have died a nobody. The fact that Abraham was around at all by the time God came calling was something of a miracle. The idea that he and Sarah could have a child? Ridiculous.

Breaking Promises, Building Relationships

Genesis 2.4b-9, 15-17, 3:1-8

            It begins with shame. Have you ever noticed that? The first thing that happens to Adam and Eve after eating the fruit from the tree is that they become ashamed. Their nakedness becomes something needing to be covered. Shame is a powerful thing. It’s one of the most powerful things. It’s so powerful that the fear of being outed as a fraud or being considered anything less than an upstanding citizen tends to exceed the judgment of actually being as bad as you imagine you might be. We are paralyzed by shame, afraid of what the neighbors are thinking; afraid to live in our own skin—private, too private--and our relationships suffer because of it.

            Shame is the harbor of gossip; it’s the dark cave that you live in even as you pretend your life is spent in the light. Shame is powerful. And shame shatters promises and kills relationships—with others, in your work, and even with yourself. Shame is the thing that begs us to put on fancy clothes and to not let anyone—even those closest to us—know us on anything other than the surface level. To risk more than that is terrifying.

            The church is rightly criticized for its hypocrisy on the topic of shame. The church will forever be filled with people who are not perfect—this is fine. You aren’t perfect people. The problem comes when the church is the safe harbor for the same kinds of practices that break promises and shatter relationships everywhere else in the world. The church needs to be the place where all those broken promises are strengthened by one another.
           This is the interconnected web of relationships in which we live and it is built on the foundation of trust with one another. This comes about by being honest with one another, by sharing our experiences and our stories, by not imagining the worst of one another but by sharing our misgivings openly and honestly and explaining the actions of others in the kindest ways. In short, trust comes through vulnerability, and vulnerability is the path out of shame. It’s actually the only way out. If you imagine what is the opposite of shame you might think of honor or glory—this is true—but the path out of shame is paved with vulnerability. You can’t walk from point A to point B without taking that road. And being vulnerable with one another is the only way to have authentic relationships.

Prayer makes us uncomfortable, and that's why we need it.

Luke 11:2-4

Do not bring us to the time of trial

            Deliver us not into temptation… do not bring us into the time of trial… I don’t know about you but to me those sound like very different things. Before this week I’m not sure I ever thought about the difference between those two versions of the Lord’s Prayer and I never really even considered the reasons why they exist. I mean, sometimes we assume that new things in the church—like, for example, versions of the Lord’s Prayer—are for cultural reasons when, in fact, it has everything to do with debates around what the Bible says. I’m guessing most of you probably prefer the temptation version because it is the version we pray here every Sunday, but rest assured that you could also say “save us from the time of trial” without feeling as though you are selling Jesus short, because both translations are grasping at the meaning of one Greek word.

But before we get to that I want to quickly talk about the “time of trial.” For me, when I hear that phrase the religious sphere of my brain kicks in and I think, “Oh, Jesus must be talking about judgment and eternal salvation—those kinds of things.” But, here, that’s not the case, because the Greek word Jesus speaks is πειρασμός (peirasmós), which means “to put to proof by experiment” (in other words, to “try” as in “trial”) and it also means “temptation.” Again, those seem like two different things—trials and temptations. So, in order to understand this word you might have to imagine a temptation as a test between two things—one right and one wrong—and the trial is the decision of which one to choose.

            But here’s where this gets interesting, because the trial and temptation language highlights something about what it is that Jesus is having us pray; namely, Jesus is telling us to pray to take choices away from us. The prayer is not “lead us through temptation” or “keep us from giving in to temptation” but instead “do not lead us into temptation” at all, which is subtly, but importantly, different. Jesus implies that we need prayer not to summon enough self-control to overcome something but instead we need prayer to keep us away from that situation completely. We need to pray that Jesus removes temptation, because we are not as strong as we think we are. The things that truly tempt us function like depression or anxiety or PTSD to a person with mental health problems. These are things that seem on the surface like they can be controlled if only a person can internally muster enough courage and willpower to overcome them, but the truth is that none of those, or anything that truly tempts us, can be defeated by strength or willpower. We aren’t strong enough; we just pretend we are. We triumph over things that didn’t actually tempt us very much. It’s like the man who is alone on a desert island for years and proudly proclaims, upon being saved, that he didn’t cheat or steal or commit adultery once in those years. For some, that’s what it takes.

So, we are told to pray for total removal from those situations—for a safe space from ourselves.

You are not enough (no matter what the advertisers tell ya)

Luke 11:2-4

Forgive Us Our Sins

What does this mean?

In the small catechism, Martin Luther says, “We ask in this prayer that our heavenly Father would not regard our sins nor deny these petitions on their account, for we are worthy of nothing for which we ask, nor have we earned it. Instead we ask that God would give us all things by grace, for we sin daily and indeed deserve only punishment. So, on the other hand, we, too, truly want to forgive heartily and to do good gladly to those who sin against us.”

See, I don’t think we actually believe that. It doesn’t matter how often we recite Paul in Ephesians 2:8, saying “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” I don’t think it matters how often we say that, because the rest of your life you are inundated with other conflicting messages that are much more attractive than that one. So I really don’t think any of us are good enough to truly believe it. Instead of messages of grace we’re told: You are enough … You deserve it! … God will bless you because of your faithfulness.

These messages can be found in everything from advertisements to memes and viral messages on social media to old-fashioned Bible commentaries and commentators on the TV, and they sound so dang attractive and they resonate with us so deeply that we end up trying to believe both what the Bible says and what our culture says at the same time. Yes, we are saved by grace through faith… but also I am enough! Yes, it’s not my own doing but it is the gift of God… but also I deserve it! We believe these things even though they are contradictory and, at the end of the day, the one that will win out is the one that I can control and feel good about, which is the idea that the solution to the world lies in me; that I am enough; that I am what the world needs. We might believe that grace stuff in the religious sphere of our lives but that sphere doesn’t hold a candle to what we are inundated with between Sundays.

Because of this cultural battle unfolding inside of us our pleas for forgiveness become prayers for partial forgiveness: Lord, forgive me my sins—you know, those one or two things keeping me from being completely and wholly awesome.

See, here’s the real problem with asking for only partial forgiveness: It’s weak and it treats religion like the fix for an otherwise pretty-good you. I mean, if I’m partially good and partially bad, then it stands to reason I could just become a better person—perhaps little by little. Then, I might begin to believe that I need that forgiveness less immediately than that other person down the street—you know, that real sinner. Once we enter into the world of comparison—both with others and even with ourselves—faith no longer becomes a life or death matter. Then it’s basically over—we can pack up the church, go home, and let McDonald’s and Victoria’s Secret do the evangelism.

Forgiveness is so central to our faith that any softening of it risks throwing out the baby Jesus with the bathwater.

But this is a difficult thing to preach because it’s so counter-cultural; it’s literally saying the exact opposite of what the TV advertisers know will get you to buy things. No weight loss commercial is going to tell you that you are 100% sinner and 100% saint. They’re going to talk about controlling that sinner and making you more of a saint, and you’ll believe them, even though more often than not their claims will leave you disappointed. The sad truth is that most preaching is less believable than marketing, even though marketing puts an unrealistic best light on things that rarely matches up to reality. Yes, go buy that $200 metal bar to attach above your door and pretty soon you’ll be rocking a six-pack full of abs… and your complexion will probably improve too, don’t ask why… It’s still easier to believe that than the promise that by grace you have been saved because radical grace means a tacit acceptance of something about yourself that you are super scared of admitting. (You know what it is?) You aren’t enough. You are NOT enough.

            You’re dirty, rotten sinners who need a big, fat Jesus to take away your sins, and you are desperately—DESPERATELY—in need of confessing your inadequacy to yourself and receiving a real awareness of your forgiveness.

            See, you might think the way to unite the world is to inspire all people to let out their inner goodness, to inspire people to be who they were created to be, and you may feel that this is the key to an egalitarian, peaceful society, but let’s be honest: This is make-believe. Conservatives and liberals, you both have your make-believe. Conservatives have their make-believe that everybody has an equal footing if we just remove the government from their lives. Well, liberals also have their make-believe that the secret to a better world is lifting people up and making them better. Both have a grain of truth; both fall into the same category as advertisements that get you to react according to your baser desirers.

Have I offended everybody yet? I mean, isn’t this the perfect day in the park for getting offended?

            I’m sorry, but grace is offensive.

            Grace means that all receive the same reward, like the workers in Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. Not only does everybody receive the same wage—those who worked all day and those who worked just a few minutes—but, if that’s not enough, Jesus goes out of his way to make sure we know that everybody else knows exactly how blatantly unfair it is. Everybody will know what everyone else gets, which is precisely enough. We don’t trust true forgiveness because it’s not fair, because we don’t trust other people, and we also don’t trust ourselves—though we may not be self-aware enough to realize it.

            Grace is offensive because it is for the worst of all sinners, and the worst of all sinners is always ME. There is no other, because when I start to consider who may be worse than me I prove that by the very act of comparing myself with them I am worse. I am 100% sinner; not 50; not even 99. 100%.

            Grace is offensive and counter-cultural and forgiveness is all we have. So, today, as we sit out in the beauty of God’s creation the reason I preach this message (and not something fluffier) because it is also the only message that frees us. We receive grace not by virtue of our trying but by virtue of our letting go—letting go of the messages that tell us we need to be better, that we are enough, and that we could be so much more. No, you aren’t enough because you are dead without grace. But with grace? Oh, that’s a different story.

You are saved by grace through faith; not through confession and forgiveness; but forgiveness is where the realization of that salvation happens. And you simply cannot know forgiveness without being punched in the gut by grace. Accept who you are—a sinner saved by grace. I’m not sure how strongly you’ll believe it—what with this world full of more attractive messages begging for your attention—but it will change you if you do.

You are saved by grace. Forgiven. Free.

That’s something I can get behind on a beautiful day at Lake Bronson.

Our daily bread

Luke 11:2-4

Give us each day our daily bread.

The nice thing about preaching on the Lord’s Prayer is that when you’re lost, and maybe writing some stuff down on Saturday… evening… after dinner... there’s this guy named Martin Luther who wrote on this topic and he put it in an easy-to-find location right in the Small Catechism, which I can pull up on my smart phone on Augsburg Fortress’s new Small Catechism app (available for download for Android and possibly iPhone, I’m not sure, I’m not a very good advertiser).

Anyway, when I want to know about the Lord’s Prayer I just open up the app, click on “Lord’s Prayer” and, today, we’ll scroll down to the Fourth Petition, “Give us today our daily bread.” What does this mean? Oh, good, exactly what I wanted to know! “In fact, God gives daily bread without prayer, even to all evil people, but we ask in this prayer that God cause us to recognize what our daily bread is and to receive it with thanksgiving.” What then does “daily bread” mean? Good, I was wondering that one, too! “Everything included in the necessities and nourishment for our bodies, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, farm, fields, livestock, money, property, an upright spouse, upright children, upright members of the household, upright and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, decency, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.”

Wow. OK, so that’s a really good starting point. Daily bread isn’t limited to communion or food or even things related exclusively to physical well-being; it is anything we need to live our lives in all of our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being. Daily bread is everything from the air we breath, to the water we drink, to the earth and its habitats, to the paycheck we receive, to the relationships we have and the governments and various systems that support us. Asking for daily bread is asking for quite a lot.

The one part of Luther’s explanation that I really like is the bit where it says “we ask in this prayer that God cause us to recognize what our daily bread is and to receive it with thanksgiving.” See, it’s not enough to get good things; it’s critical that we have to wisdom to acknowledge these gifts and to understand from whom they come. It’s one thing to catch a fish; it’s quite another to understand that that fish, no matter how adept my angling of it, is not my fish. I didn’t create it; I didn’t earn it. It comes as a gift.

Forget the big solutions, try little acts of love

It’s election season… yay? The time when we disenfranchise one another with our Facebook posts. The time when everybody knows what is right and what our country needs. The time when I see more self-centered, all-knowing, blathering than at any other time. The time when everybody is looking for a big solution.

            I don’t care if the big solution you are convinced will solve the world’s problems is one associated with conservativism or liberalism—e.g. whether your big solution is immigration reform, universal healthcare, ending legalized abortion, or ending the war on drugs—all of these solutions are given more importance this time of year than they should, because this is the time of our lives when we are fed a constant stream of negativity about how this or that is going to end our lives or save them. Policies don’t save us; Jesus does.

            In fact, no big solution has yet to make us more righteous. I suppose it would be one thing if there really was a war going on between good people and evil people, but that’s just not the case. There are well-meaning, devoted, faithful people who take a variety of stances on the “big solutions” for a variety of good reasons. This means that no matter what happens in November we will sit down at coffee tables, chat on bar stools, and share a bleacher at sporting events with people who think the world is going to hell alongside those who think the world has finally gotten its act together. Either way we are divided.

            Our identity as Christians is in Christ; not in party allegiance. That should be so obvious it shouldn’t need to be said and, yet, here we are, because I think too many people get that completely backwards. When we buy into party politics we allow the big solutions to frame our lives, urging us to spend more time and energy explaining to others how wrong they are, suggesting that the only way to make a difference in the world is to advocate one particular ideology, when the Gospel is calling us to something different: Little acts of kindness and love. You should vote, absolutely, and you should do so based on your faith and values, but your vote shouldn’t be the primary way of identifying yourself as Christian. That should be evident from all the little ways you care for others in your day-to-day life. Then, you will be reminded that your vote will not make you righteous and votes contrary to yours should not make you angry, because we are all in this together, struggling as Christians to find the best way to love one another.

            The only way we can prove that is in those little acts of love; those surprising moments of joy and those little lights we spark in the darkness. The only big solution that matters is God’s plan for creation—God’s telos, to use a beautiful Greek word that you should all become familiar with—God’s ultimate objective. God does big solutions; we aren’t qualified. The best we can do is make our little actions count.

The youth are not the future. Jesus is.

Luke 11:2-4

             I’m going to begin today by apologizing to your Midwestern sensibilities, because this week I’ve listened to sermons from couple African-American preachers, including the black Lutheran tradition, and so if I have a little more fire in my belly than normal, well, you know where it came from, and this is—I think—a good thing. Feel free to “Amen” as needed.

Today we bring together a few different things. A youth mission trip to Idaho; the Lord’s Prayer, especially that first line: Thy kingdom come; and lastly, though not insignificantly, the work of our wider church in New Orleans this past week.

            When I started to think about all three of these things at once, first of all, I got a headache, because there’s just a lot to be said; then, I realized that the three events create a bridge from past to present to future. And so I’m going to start there.

            Sharing about mission trips is always a bit funny. Probably most of you have had this experience. You go and do something awesome—a concert, a big vacation, a convention of some kind, or a mission trip, or something else—and then you come back and you try to share it with people who weren’t there. You tell stories, share pictures, they nod politely, and then you start to think, “Man, they just don’t get it!” I guess, you had to be there, you say.

            The trouble with sharing the past if our goal is to bring people into the experiences is that if we just can't manage it. You can’t re-live it, can’t re-create it. That was in the past. So, it’s good and right to share it with you—many of you supported this particular trip with your time and money and prayers, but the truth is it’s done. Finished.

            We’re never going to have that experience again. Some will try. I remember going back to work at camp for the second time in 2008 and the summer program coordinator, in my interview, warned me, saying, “You know, it won’t be the same.” And I said I knew, but I didn’t. I didn’t know all the ways—big ways, small ways—that that second experience would differ from the first. Trying to re-create the past always disappoints.

            The church too often tries. But the church that takes the past and uses it to forge ahead into this moment… that is the church that is Spirit-led. It’s the church that can pray “Thy kingdom come” because it is looking forward to Jesus; the only future we have.

Last Monday, our presiding bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, preached a sermon in which she asked the body at Churchwide Assembly a not-so rhetorical question, so I’m going to ask it to you. The question is: “What are young people to the church?”

Its future?

No, that’s the wrong answer. Tempting answer but wrong. The youth are not the future of the church: Jesus is.

The youth are not the future of the church; Jesus is.

That’s what we mean when we pray “Thy kingdom come.” Not “thy young people come.” Not “thy children learn to fill the pews so our church has a future.” No! “Thy kingdom come.”

The future of the church is Jesus’ kingdom.

So, if the youth are not its future, then we must come to struggle with the fact that they are its present.

The mission trip is over. The kingdom of God is coming. But what about right now? What are we doing as people of God to make a difference in the world right now?

One of the joys of being in a different place in the world, surrounded by different people from a whole variety of backgrounds is listening to their stories. I talked with a lady on the bus to the airport in New Orleans who had just spent the week at the Baptist National Conference; she made sure to tell me it was the “Progressive Baptists,” which I kind of gathered when she mentioned hearing speeches from both Tim Kaine and Jesse Jackson, Jr. at the conference. (Hence, not the Southern Baptists). This lady was from New Jersey, in her mid-80s, African-American, and was filled with lament for the state of the country, but not in the way that I so often hear around here. It wasn’t “Gee, the world is getting worse out there, isn’t it? Glad we live where we live!” It wasn’t “Did you just see this on the news?” Instead, it was “Let me tell you about my experience. Our people are hurting.” It wasn’t out there; it was personal.

            And I was convicted, because I knew I’m part of the problem. I didn’t create it; I didn’t do anything, and that’s exactly the point—I haven’t done anything. This is about right now—what are we doing right now?

            Thy kingdom come, yes, but what about right now? What are we doing right now?

            Whether it’s changing our view toward those differently-abled than us, as we saw in Idaho, or healing racial injustice, or just simply finding and naming the persons in need in our community, the question is about right now. A little Greek lesson is appropriate here—I know how much you all like Greek lessons. This phrase, “Thy kingdom come!” is in imperative tense. Now you’re all scanning the deep, dark recesses of your middle school English classes or high school Spanish or French classes to remember what that means. Imperative. It’s a command. “Thy kingdom come!” When I first learned this it opened my eyes to the Lord's Prayer in a completely different way. The prayer is filled with imperatives. It’s not praying, “God, your kingdom is coming and I know this,” as if it were a confession of faith. It’s not praying, “God, I really hope maybe your kingdom will come soon,” as if it is a request. Instead, it’s an order. It’s you, ordering God, every time you pray to bring God’s kingdom now, because that’s God’s job.

Ours is to do our part in the meantime.

            And that starts with relationship. This week I befriended an African-American octogenarian from Jersey, a mother from Wisconsin—my age—with two children who had never taken the train before and had a load of questions, and I chatted with and visited a chess hustler in New Orleans, the head bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, as well as too many Lutherans to count. I had meaningful conversations with a person in every decade of life; I learned a ton about people who were very different from me and also people not so different from at all. I had meaningful conversations with a person in every decade of life. In Idaho our youth and adults walked alongside children and adults with special needs, and they experienced the same kind of enlightenment. None of this is radical. None of what happened this week in New Orleans or last month in Idaho is that out of the box. All we were doing was entering into relationships, and, probably not surprisingly, that’s all that really mattered.

But here’s where it really matters. The last part of this story comes yesterday as I attended a funeral for my friend, Zach, who died two weeks ago following a car accident at the age of 24. If ever there was occasion to remember that young people are the present and not the future it is moments like these where we are smacked in the face with the reality that nothing is guaranteed. All week I had Martin Luther's death bed quote reverberating in my head, where he says, "We are beggars. This is true." The promise of the future is Jesus; not anything else--not a long life, not a life without grief--which is why relationships are of the utmost importance, because relationship is the only thing that can begin to chip away at despair in the face of death. Friends, “thy kingdom come!” is something every person in this world is praying in one way or another. We are all crying out, all hurting, all pained, all missing something. So, when I sat on the stage of the social hall at that church following that service with Alex, Zach's dad, a very good friend and mentor of mine, I felt the depths to which that relationship mattered, and it was proved in grief and loss. I couldn’t fix a thing but I could sit there with him because we had tested that relationship through experiences and built the trust needed to stare death in the face when nobody wanted to be there. We could say "I love you" and mean it because the groundwork was laid.

That’s our challenge as the church. Pray “thy kingdom come!” Then get to work. Because we aren’t bringing about the kingdom on our own—that’s God’s job—but we are invested in one another. The youth aren’t our future. Jesus is. The youth, and the young adults, and the older adults, and the children, and everybody in-between is our right now. Which means right now we have work to do.

Mission away / Mission at home

I’ve been on two trips in the last few weeks: Two separate “mission” trips—one to the Twin Cities, serving alongside an inter-generational crew for a couple days in St. Paul and Eagan, and one to northern Idaho serving alongside sixteen youth and 6 adults at a camp for kids (and adults) with special needs. These trips are inevitably the highlight of my year every year. I don’t have to go on these trips; I get to go on them. And they just so happen to be the A#1 time I get to see progress in the life of faith among people whom I pastor. They are incredibly rewarding: spiritually, emotionally, and also professionally. I have few metrics by which to reliably measure my performance as pastor, but these trips allow me to feel like I’m doing something right, which I need more often than I admit.

            There are also tremendous needs for service at home. This is very true. And I hear somewhat frequently about how we should be doing more for people in our own backyards (sometimes with the implication that these trips to other places are unnecessary). We absolutely do need to be helping people here in Kittson County more than we do, but the more I go on these trips the more I realize there is absolutely no substitute locally for what we experience outside of this place. Part of spiritual and emotional growth requires leaving our bubble of safety and comfort behind.

            This is also where we discover the big secret about serving other people: When we serve others we often make less difference in their lives than they make in ours. Jesus came to serve, not to be served, because the path to a good and meaningful life is being the server not the one being served. This is why so many people who receive something—food from the food pantry, rehabilitation from addiction, meals when a loved one dies—spend their time trying to pay that gift forward when things are settled again. When we receive some unmerited gift we feel compelled to give back, and the biggest unmerited gift was Jesus dying on the cross for us so that we might have salvation, and so our entire lives are spent living in response to that grace. Service is part of who we are. You might say it is all that we are.

Know Thyself!

2 Corinthians 1:1-11

            We read this scripture—well, a portion of this scripture—at Philip Dow’s funeral last Sunday, which is quite a coincidence if you believe in such things. And, no, I didn’t pick or even suggest the scripture for the funeral; it was selected by the Dow family on their own having no idea we would have it this following Sunday, which presents me with what might look like quite the challenge: Namely, preaching the same scripture at a very tough funeral and then at a light-hearted, fourth of July weekend, Sunday-service for the approximately seventeen people who show up on Sunday, the 3^rd of July.

            This might seem difficult, but, as with most really deep scriptural words, it didn’t really turn out that way for me, because Paul’s greeting to the church at Corinth in his second letter to that church (which we now call 2 Corinthians) is simply about being honest with ourselves about where we stand, and this is something that should happen at funerals and on Sunday morning and on Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and so on and so forth. We need to be honest. More honest than we are.

            Most of the time when the subject of consolation comes up we imagine ourselves consoling before we imagine our need to be consoled. I can’t tell you how many people I visit who are really sick or dying or facing some extreme misfortune and yet what do they say, again and again: “Well, other people have it much worse!” It’s like watching the Twins play baseball and saying, “Well, the ’62 Mets had it worse.” It’s strange comfort that things can, in fact, be worse. Instead, we need to own our emotions, to be honest. I mean, you can acknowledge that other people have had it rough, too, but that only tends to deflect from what you’re going through. Own the sucky-ness of it. I don’t want to watch the Twins play terrible baseball—well, maybe there’s that really cynical, troll part of me that does enjoy it when they are really, truly awful, but for the most part, no, I want to see good baseball, not bad baseball. And so it is that you are in need of consolation regardless of the comparisons you make with other people.

            We need to own our need of a Savior, because sucking it up and downplaying our brokenness inevitably leads to worse problems down the road. Then, when the crap hits the fan all the pent up emotion comes out in precisely the moment when nobody is in any position to deal with it. Be honest about your feelings now. It’s no badge of honor to hold in your pain until it overwhelms you. Actually, it’s selfish.

Job, the conclusion: The God who sees through our bull

Job 42:10-17

            Job died, old and full of days. Three men in scripture are given this epitaph. Noah, Moses, and Job. Three men, set apart in this way—Noah, the lone saint in the midst of a godless world who is given charge of saving the earth’s creatures; Moses, the reluctant spokesperson who leads Israel out of captivity in Egypt, again saving the “chosen people” from slavery; and Job.

            Now, Job might be the best of the best, like Noah, the one whom God lifts up as an example for the rest to follow, but Job is also not the figure of historical significance that Noah or Moses are. Instead, the power of Job is in the way we see ourselves in him and his friends and the way his words are our words, his frustrations our frustrations, his faith our faith. Job is interesting because, unlike Noah or Moses, we could be Job; we can see bits of ourselves in this person and we can hear our questions coming from his mouth.

            I’m just going to admit that I don’t quite know what to do with the way that the book of Job ends. I mean, after all this back and forth between Job and his friends and eventually God, where everybody is put in their place and God finally emerges as the only one worthy in the whole story; still, here in the end it seems that Job gets his way after all. A part of me likes that; a part of me hates it. Because of the way the story ends, it’s tempting to derive a really shallow moral to the story that doesn’t befit the entirety of the book. I don’t think, having read all of Job, that the takeaway is simply that God will provide double for everything you lose in this life. If anything, I suppose the conclusion is a foretaste of something different—Job is provided for above and beyond his expectations and so will we.

Despising ourselves-- On Job, Orlando, and suicide

Job 42:1-6

There are a million ways to say “I’m sorry!” Some of them are authentic, some are not so much, some are kind of even backhanded. My favorite “I’m sorry!” happens after we put Natalie in timeout and she screams usually tries to get off the chair a dozen times before finally pouting and crying for the whole two minutes she’s usually in timeout. Then, when her time runs out, she gets down runs over to Kate and I, gives us hugs and says, “Sorry daddy” and “Sorry mommy.” That’s my favorite, “I’m sorry.”

            But on the long list of apologies I’m not so sure where to put Job’s, because I’m not really sure how to read this, especially this last verse, “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” Other translations read that Job repented of dust and ashes. Like a ton of phrases from ancient languages we just don’t know exactly what that means. Is it ironic? Is it defiant? Is Job hanging on to a little bit of self-righteousness against the God who he still believes took away everything he held dear? Or is this true repentance? Is Job the hero who could repent in a way the rest of us can only hope to emulate?

            Over the course of the book of Job this word for “despise,” the Hebrew ma’as, is used many times. Sometimes it is used by Job’s friends to tell him not to despise the Almighty (e.g. 5:17) or that God will not despise a righteous person (8:20), most often it’s used by Job to talk about how he loathes his life (7:16, 9:21), despises his work (10:3), and even how young children despise him (19:18 and 30:1). Finally, this word, ma’as, is used twice by Elihu, most importantly to tell Job that God does not despise anyone (36:5). In fact, you can trace the way that various characters use this word that’s sometimes translated “despise,” sometimes “loathe,” and sometimes “abhor,” to get an understanding of the frame of mind of each person. Job uses it out of a sense of pity. His friends use it to try to convict him of wrongdoing. Elihu, God’s spokesperson, uses it as a means of freeing Job from his vision of a judgmental God, and, maybe most interestingly of all, God never uses it. God never utters the word: “despise.”

            God despises nothing. Human beings? We despise all sorts of things. Even in repentance, which is one of our most positive traits, we despise ourselves. God just makes things good. We’re the ones who despise it all.

Not you. God.

Job 38:1-11

Not you, Job. God. Not you, Job. God.

This whole Job story has been leading up to a foundational question. “Where were you, Job, when the foundations of the earth were being laid?”

No, really, where were you? Because it sounds like you have all this figured out. It sounds like you think that God is unapproachable and vast and unknowable and that, on the one hand, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away without reason, but, on the other hand, God should look favorably on the righteous. Who are you, Job, that you know these things?

See, the book of Job makes an interesting turn if you thought that this was going to be a book about a moral, upright character showing us how to be good, pious, devoted God-followers. We’ve been told since the beginning that Job is a faithful person; how he is unlike all other people in the world in that he truly puts God first. He goes out of his way to assure he does nothing contrary to God’s will. So, it’s easy to assume that this book was going to tell us about how Job responded to the Satan-caused suffering by being a model of faith—one which we could try to emulate.

That’s where we thought this was going, because, like Job’s friends or, to some extent, Job himself, we are looking for answers to our own questions. Not God’s. Ours.

I know that my Redeemer lives!

Job 14:7-15, 19:23-27

One of the biggest worries I have in using the Narrative Lectionary is that there is an extended period of time between Easter and Advent—well over half the year—when I am not preaching from the Gospels. Now, I’m not one who believes you have to have a Gospel reading—obviously we don’t—and I do think there is a LOT for us to learn from the Old Testament, but there is a problem with reading from the Hebrew Bible and this is that the good news in the Old Testament gets kind of tempered by our own Jesus-expectations. Since we know we end up with Jesus the temptation is to find little value in the prelude to him. Who cares about the expectations that the Hebrew people had of the coming Messiah when we already know who he ended up being?

However, there are occasions where these Old Testament folks seem to get it—much better than ourselves, in fact. There are times when they are actually some of the best examples of faith without sight that we have. Again Job is one great example. Job has everything ripped away from him—his stuff, his work, his land, his family; all of it is taken from him. But, more than that, Job, like all the people in the Old Testament, also lacks a promise of eternal life. Now, I’m not saying that he’s not going to be saved ex post facto because of Jesus or anything like that; just that, even like some people in our world today, he has never heard of that promise, because, in this time in history, nobody knew of that promise.

I mean, the descendants of Abraham had promises of land and descendants and a great nation. Those were the covenants God made with them. And all of those are wonderful promises for a nation, but individually there are people like Job who experience few of the rewards of those promises. His land is gone; his family is dead; his nation might be the greatest in the world, but even if it were that great is that enough to comfort him? Doubtful.

            Job has nowhere to turn. So he turns to God, and in his desperate longing we hear echoes of a deeper promise that he could not have known but is one so familiar to our ears. Listen closely: 

As waters fail from a lake,
   and a river wastes away and dries up,
¹² so mortals lie down and do not rise again;
   until the heavens are no more, they will not awake
   or be roused out of their sleep.
¹³ O that you would hide me in Sheol,
   that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,
   that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
¹⁴ If mortals die, will they live again?