A sermon for First Lutheran Church, Maquoketa on the occasion of their 100th anniversary and celebration of partnership with Ewalu.
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
23rd 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.
The folks waiting for that word of hope need
to hear it not only on the mountain-top they cannot reach, but in the depths of
the valley where we descend together to meet them with the promise that Christ
calls them blessed. This is good, hard work—the kind of thing whispered on the
mountain but proclaimed in the dark corners of the world where the little and
the lost are found. We cannot do this work alone.
Ewalu
needs First, because your community of faith lives in a space we cannot.
Together, you can lift one another when you feel you are on your own, and care for
one another as Jesus cares for those who are poor and hungry and hurting—and First
needs Ewalu to help re-frame your normal—to provide a place apart to see how
your everyday experience masks the hidden reality of a God who is moving
amongst us, especially when we feel as if the world is falling apart at the
seams.
Sixty-five years ago, some of your
forebears—or, really, some of you who may still be here in person—decided to create
a camp, because they recognized that there is something magical about the place
where the Word of God and the world of God meets. They recognized that the church
is the people—and people experience the Holy Spirit at work in many different
places—and one of which is at this special place we call “Ewalu.” You need First
Lutheran as community place of gathering and belonging around the table, and
you need a place apart like Ewalu to hear the Spirit when the noise of “normal”
life speaks too loudly.
One
hundred years ago, when First was being formed as a congregation, there were no
camping ministries in Iowa. In the last sixty-five years, we have expanded and
grown in our capacity to do ministry because we have recognized the value of having
experiences out there to bring back here—how the Holy Spirit calls people to live
as followers of Jesus, who make a difference in their communities in places
like Maquoketa. Together, we can preach on the mountain-top and on the plain—we
can meet people in their personal valleys and call them blessed.
This
good work we must do together, because we live in a world that is hell-bent on
tearing everything apart—quite often in the name of the Christian church. For us
today, we have only to turn to Jesus Christ, who descends down the mountain and
meets us where we are at—in all our imperfection—because the one and only thing
required of us to meet Christ is the one thing in common we all share: We are
sinners. We are imperfect. Ewalu is and always has been. First is and always
has been. You and me, both—imperfect creatures longing for something better.
For one hundred years, the one thing that binds every member of First Lutheran
together is the fact that you are sinners, which seems like it might be bad
news, but it is in fact so freeing to admit it and, better still, to confess
together that we are in it together. For sixty-five years, Ewalu has not been
perfect either. Holy spaces are holy not because they are perfect and certainly
not because of our righteousness making it so. Rather, holy places are holy because that
is where God shows up. All we can do is keep showing up in search of God’s
grace.
When Jesus comes down the mountain and
says, “Blessed are the poor” and “woe to you who are rich” it convicts and
frees us both as sinners and saints. That is a gift for you and me, for our
relationship as church and camp—for those who are suffering and dying, and
those who feel comfortable and happy. Jesus’ sermon is a sermon for each of us
as sinners and saints, which may well speak differently to each of us according
to how we see ourselves in the story, but ultimately, it points all of us to
the great work of the cross, which is where Jesus is heading. And he’s dragging
us, perhaps and kicking and screaming, right behind.
At Ewalu, our Wednesday night program that
rotates every three years landed on a cross-walk this past summer where we
recount the journey of Jesus to the cross, reenacting the story from womb to
tomb. At First Lutheran Church, you are soon entering into Lent where you will
trace that path of Jesus in a similar fashion. I love this about the church,
because the things that most of the world try to use to divide us—our
imperfections, our losses, our differences, the categories where we place one
another—these are the very things that unite us at the foot of the cross, because
we are just imperfect people living in an imperfect world together. Together.
We are not climbing the mountain-top of righteousness. Rather, we are waiting
on the plain for Jesus to come down—all of us who are little, who are lost, who
are lowly, who are dead.
The secret sauce of the sermon on the plain
is the sweeping awareness that none of us are rich in the end, but through
Christ we are—and it has nothing to do with how big our house is or how shiny
our car is. It has to do much more with the kind of thing you feel around a
campfire—that clear longing and sense of peace that comes to imperfect people
like you and me when we slow down and stop trying to rule our little kingdoms.
So, I want to thank you for welcoming
me into your midst today to call you all sinners—it is this weird, wonderful
thing we do in the church—because we have this weird and wonderful God, who is
not interested in the best or the boldest. I could try—and sometimes I do—to be
those things, but ultimately, I have found that the only place of peace in this
world is resting in God’s grace. Jesus is interested not in who you and I could
be but in who you and I truly are. Thank God.
I pray that we continue in this journey for
many years ahead so that someday First is attending Ewalu’s 100th
celebration, ascending the mountain, so to speak, with good news from the plain.
May we journey together as brothers and sisters, confessing, and receiving
grace. May we sit around the campfire at Ewalu—and the open table of First
Lutheran—listening for the Holy Spirit, finding peace, and becoming aware of grace
and hope for a weary world. Together, we will.
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