The mountain-top and the plain

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

Scripture: Luke 6:17-26

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking the surface

A sermon for St. John Lutheran Church, Cedar Falls

 Luke 5:1-11

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

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

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

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