There is nothing to fear

Sermon for Immanuel Lutheran Church, Independence

Matthew 16:24-17:8

“When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome with fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’”

            My first religion course as a freshman at Augustana College was Murray Haar’s Religion 110 course, and the primary textbook for that class was a 666-page (I kid you not) tome called The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis by Leon Katz. If that phrase—The Beginning of Wisdom—means something to you, it is probably because you have heard it in scripture before, not in Genesis but in Proverbs—Proverbs 9:10, which reads: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The fear of the Lord is then picked up and repeated several times in Proverbs, and then in the book of Job and in Isaiah and in the Psalms.

            So, my ears perk up every time Jesus speaks of fear, because not once—not a single time in all the accounts of Jesus’ ministry—does he tell us to be afraid. Not once does Jesus say we are to fear him; not once does he say we are to fear God. Instead, he repeats the words, “Fear not.” Get up and do not be afraid. You have nothing to fear any longer.

            Too much of our lives are spent in fear. You all may have seen that business about spy balloons that the military shot down this week. Some say they are from China, some say they are from aliens. Choose your fear, really. We tend to imagine the worst possible outcome to fear. Reality, meanwhile, will remain unchanged—what will be will still be. We are reminded that we do not have everything under control. We are fragile. We are little. We need something to save us.

            To some extent, this is the state in which every single one of God’s campers arrives at camp, whether that camp is Ewalu or the camp of your congregation on a Sunday morning. God’s campers come afraid and in need of the reminder that we have a Savior in Jesus Christ who beckons us not to run but to stand, because our fears are not to be realized. The disciples never get this, by the way. They are always freaking out, whether it is in a boat on the water as it was in the Children’s message or atop a mountain. The disciples continue to live in fear, even most poignantly after the crucifixion when they are locked in a room. Meanwhile, Jesus repeats, “There is nothing to fear.”

Not hard but impossible

Sermon for St. John Lutheran Church, Cedar Falls

 

Matthew 5:21-37

Thank you so much the invitation to be with you this morning, and especially for the invitation to preach on… let me get this right, Matthew 5, but not the beatitudes part… or the turn-the-other-cheek part… or the love your enemies part… but the middle part. The heavy part. Well, at least I feel like you must trust me or something.

            We need some context. So, I’m going to go back a few verses and get Jesus’ introduction to all this business. In verse 17, Jesus says, “Do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” Now, that doesn’t sound like great news to start, and it just gets worse and worse as we read through today’s Gospel reading. Not only shall you not murder, but whoever is angry has committed murder in their hearts. Not only shall you not commit adultery, but you should start tearing out eyes and things to stop yourself from doing so if that will help. Jesus takes all the laws and levels them up. After all, he says he has not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.

            This trend continues throughout the Gospel of Matthew—again and again, seemingly righteous folks come to Jesus and he says, “Yeah, but what about this?” and they leave him upset, angry, and eventually it gets him murdered. I suspect one of the reasons the crowd turned so quickly against Jesus before Pilate is that they felt what Jesus was asking was too hard. Certainly, the rich man who came to him much later did. Jesus told him to give away everything, which precipitates that famous exchange between the disciples where they ask (finally!) the question we should all be wondering right about now, “Then, who can be saved????” And Jesus replies, “For mortals it is impossible but for God all things are possible.”

            This is the heart of a very serious question in the Gospel of Matthew: Is salvation under the law really hard… or is it impossible? This is maybe the very most important question for you in your faith life, because how you answer it changes EVERYTHING. How you answer that question will color everything you ever read in the Gospel; it will change your faith life; it has divided the Christian church for as long as there has been a church, and we don’t talk about it enough. Instead, we read passages like Matthew 5 in Bible studies and then we go around the circle and say things like, “Well, that was a downer” and we quickly move on, because we know something… we feel something when we read this scripture. If we are honest, we are deeply convicted by this scripture, and we would likely prefer to scratch this right out of the Bible, because we have been taught from an early age that being faithful is about being a good person and this passage seems to suggest that we need to be REALLY, REALLY good people, and it sounds REALLY, REALLY hard.

Just ask the fish

Sermon for Wartburg College

 Leviticus 25:23-24

“‘The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. ²⁴ Throughout the land that you hold as a possession, you must redeem the land.

Job 12:7-10

⁷ “But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
    the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
⁸ ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you,
    and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
⁹ Who among all these does not know
    that the hand of the Lord has done this?
¹⁰ In his hand is the life of every living thing
    and the breath of every human being.

Two words from God to you and me this morning: 1. The land is not yours, and 2. If you want to look for God at play, you better get out and let the animals and the plants teach you.

Camp Counselor God gives a two sermon series on outdoor ministry first to the campers at Mount Sinai. This is not your land; you are foreigners on the land; care for, nay redeem the land. Then, camp counselor God uses Job to for the second half, which is simply: Look outside. The world out there will teach you.

Ours is a faith “open to the skies.” It is only because we live in Iowa and some of you insist on wearing basketball shorts in February that I am not demanding we do this outdoors. Outside, our senses activate in ways they cannot within these walls. We hear chirps and creaking trees, and we feel the razor edge of a blade of grass and seeds rubbing between our fingers; we spot hawks rising on the thermals and we may wonder, Are they singing the beauty of the morning, as well? And, then inevitably, we wonder, What is behind all this? For many of us, for the first time in a long time, we slow down. We disconnect.

To linger outdoors is an affront to a busy world. Some of you are itching right now to get back on your phones. And I’m not going to judge either; you are captive to those things, so go ahead, check that snapchat right now. I won’t judge, but you might—I suspect many of you are the very best at judging yourselves in this indoor world full of pressure. Pressure to check in… pressure to be better… pressure to do enough… pressure to impress… pressure to not fall behind.

You see, when I decided to preach on Leviticus this morning, I did so very aware that if you know anything about Leviticus it is probably about all those holiness code rules, and even the hint of me—the outsider—coming to your place of refuge and preaching on more rules may well have put your guard up, not because you don’t need rules (some of you could do with following a few more rules if we are being honest). No, you don’t need the Bible to beat you up because you are already the best at it. The indoor world of pressure has turned us in on ourselves and so we live in our own little caves with the walls pressing in—pressure to conform, pressure to be our own self. Isn’t it amazing that you can feel both those pressures at once?

⁷ “But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
    the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
⁸ ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you,
    and the fish of the sea will declare to you… 

The great thing about fish is that they don’t give a damn about cultivating a brand. Not once have I seen a bass carefully posing for Instagram.

The great thing about plants is that they have no sense of who is prettiest. Of course, they are pretty—they just don’t care.

Birds do not care about job opportunities.

Squirrels don’t dress to impress.

But you—you feel that pressure. So, there are two ways to hear those words from Leviticus—you do not own the land, it is not yours. You can hear it is as a limitation, as a thing to overcome, as a reminder of what you still need to achieve. You can march right out of the chapel and think to yourself, “I better go get that land.” Or you can take it as God meant it—the context of Leviticus 25 is jubilee. And jubilee is this awesome biblical concept of debt forgiveness which foreshadows what we come to know as grace. That the land is not yours? That is grace. Because the only thing ownership has ever brought you is pressure. Ownership has only ever taught you that you are not enough.

So, I have just one piece of wisdom for you today: In a world that tells you to own things, be an outsider instead. Stop owning things—owning your image, owning your work. Instead of owning those things, be stewards. Plant seeds whose growth does not depend on your righteousness and whose fruits will appear long after you are gone. Then, go take a walk and learn from the world around you—a world full of grace for imperfect people you like and me. God’s grace certainly is about salvation at the end of our lives, but it is also about what it means to live as if it is true right now. Free from the indoor world of pressure. Just ask the fish…

Amen.