Alien righteousness (it's even stranger and more awesome than it sounds)

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

            Last week, in talking about the way we are called to live as Christians, I said that “being a true Christ-follower is a different kind of foolishness.” I’d like to say that I planned that for this week’s reading, but if you believe that then you obviously have a higher view of my sermon preparation right now than I do. I didn’t read 1 Corinthians 1 until, oh, this past Friday, and only then I came across those words that we all have probably heard, but were already on my mind from the actions of Paul and Silas last week: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

            The secret of that line, which is really no secret at all, is that we are all perishing and we are all saved. We are all sinners; we are all saints. We are all redeemed; we are all not yet. But I think when I say that your eyes gloss over. I think it doesn’t resonate, because the both/and language of Lutheranism sounds beautiful but it’s sometimes difficult to translate that into our life experience. Just because our theology is good doesn’t mean that it’s inspiring, and if our beliefs do not spur us on to something better then I don’t think they’re very helpful.

            Now I know this was a busy week around these parts, but how many of you saw Bob Upgren talk either at Lancaster or at Maria on Wednesday? Awesome speaker. Great artist. The kind of thing that moves you and that gets you thinking. Hopefully the kind of thing that gets people to look at their own lives and re-orient them toward something better. But I have to confess one of my first thoughts, which isn’t necessarily very good. Upgren was coming at God from a perspective I hear a lot, and probably you do too. In fact, probably a good majority of you are right on board with what he was saying, which is that God gives us a gift of salvation and all we have to do is accept it. This, alongside the idea that we need to accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, is one of the most widely held beliefs about what makes a person a Christian today; so much so, in fact, that many people just take it for granted that all Christians would agree with that. Well, I don’t. And, actually, a long history of Christian theologians stretching back further than you imagine also has a problem with that. There are very few new beliefs, just repacked old beliefs, and the idea that we have to accept the gift of salvation, or that we have to accept Jesus, is a form of semipelagianism, which was condemned as heresy in the Second Council of Orange in the year 529.

So here I was thinking some of these things on Wednesday night and for a moment I was despairing about it, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard fantastic speakers with great messages cheapen grace by suggesting that it is dependent on our response to it. And here was another one.

            But then I realized something. This is not a problem with what only people are saying about God. This is a problem with Lutherans ourselves, because we have done a terrible job of articulating what salvation means to us. In our stead, every other faith tradition has told us what salvation is and so our people have no language to talk about salvation apart from what others are saying. This is our fault and it is our problem. Our way of talking about our faith has become saying that we are not like them. They tell you that you need to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. Well, we’re not like that! They tell you that you need to be a good person in order to be saved. But we’re not like that!

Not what I want, but what you want

Mark 14:22-42

“Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”

I’ve always found that single verse to be one of the most astounding insights into who Jesus was as Son of God, Savior, and, yet, still human being.

Jesus goes off to pray while the disciples stay in the garden and nod off contrary to his wishes, and the one remnant of Jesus’ prayer that we have is this line. “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”

For the better part of his ministry Jesus has been forthright and focused on the idea that the Son of Man must die and then he will be raised again. In Mark’s Gospel this has been the entire point of the story. It’s been why he’s told people to be quiet about the healings and even when he raised Lazarus from the dead. It’s why he’s consistently battered the disciples for their ignorance of what was to come. He has had one direction and it has been toward the cross, like a freight train with one set of tracks. And yet, here on the precipice of the crucifixion, what does he pray but “remove this cup from me?” Take it away, God, if at all possible.

I believe this is a seminal moment in the history of what it means to be human.

Jesus is showing us what humanity can be through his vulnerability. The Son of God is vulnerable. But, contrary to how we imagine vulnerability, it is precisely that vulnerability that is his strength.

Repentant songs, sinful kings, and why good people aren't just rare but impossible

Psalm 51

David was in trouble. He’d done something terrible. It was bad enough having an affair with Bathsheba; worse still was sending Uriah off to die in the war. He’s broken no less than seven of the Ten Commandments in a single go, which is a pretty starling accomplishment if you stop and think about it. David, the king of Israel, is chief among sinners.

            If one of us did what David did we would find it difficult to ever be accepted in town again. We know how people would react; the kind of gossip spoken behind our backs. We wouldn’t feel welcome anywhere anymore—not in the church; let alone at the school or anywhere else in public.

            David is creepier, sleazier, and more of an abuser of power and people than we would tolerate in anybody in our neighborhood, let alone our public officials. And that could be the end of the story, except for this:

God chose David. This is critical. It means that David was more than an adulterer and murderer. We like to define people by their worst actions; they become: rapist, thief, adulterer, bad guy. God calls them something different; God calls them “sons” and “daughters.” We give scarlet letters; God gives names. God gives humanity. David is not excused; it’s not that there aren’t consequences; it’s just that there is nothing so terrible that it can separate us from the love of God. God uses us in our brokenness and what comes from this God-given humanity that we discover when we understand how broken we are is often something unexpectedly beautiful. Today it is this song: Psalm 51.

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

 Romans 1:1-17 

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

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

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

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

God shows no partiality, but we confuse law and Gospel

Acts 10:1-17,34-35

God is not partial. God shows no partiality. God does not favor people based on their skin color or ethnicity, by anything considered “unclean” or called “profane.” God doesn’t care about any of that. I feel like I need to say that in twenty-seven different ways. But, still, I think we all have an idea that that lack of partiality ends somewhere. On the surface, God showing no favoritism seems straightforward, but we also talk all the time about God favoring those who love him, God favoring Christians, God blessing America, and so on and so on.

I’m going to read the last money quote one more time: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”

            Why is it always the case that the Bible explains one thing by introducing several new questions?

            I mean, Peter understands that God shows absolutely no partiality—God does not have a single bias in the world—EXCEPT he favors those who fear him and do what is right, which is kind of frustrating, because Peter’s dream reminds us that we don’t always know what is right. God finds people who follow the law acceptable, no matter their nation, which is wonderful, EXCEPT that it then makes us question what really matters. Certainly Peter can’t be certain, because on the one hand he’s given this vision where various not-kosher animals are dangled in front of him and he’s told to just go ahead and eat that eagle and that snake and that pig and everything else that God had been telling his Hebrew children not to eat throughout history, then on the other hand he tells us that God expects us only to follow the law.

            Geez, Peter, which is it, and how are we to know?

All about the Benjamins (and the Creflo Dollars)

Scripture: Matthew 25:14-30

Often times, reading through the Bible, it’s easy to obsess over one point of view against another. God cares for the poor and the downtrodden. That’s absolutely true. God cares about the widowed and the helpless, the ones without power or influence. Also true. God loves the widow for giving her tiny mite as much as the wealthy for their gifts out of their riches. True and true and true.

            But God is not an economist like we are economists. God doesn’t care much for bookkeeping when it comes to faith. That’s easy enough for us to see with the widow’s mite but much harder to see with the parable of the talents, even though it’s making a very similar point. We have to understand from the start that God doesn’t fit any of our conventional economic molds. This is in part because God is not really an economist at all. God tells parables about money that are not actually about money. We hear parables about money and we can’t see past the Benjamins. While we’re busy figuring out if God’s attitude reflects a conservative or liberal slant—and (surprise, surprise) we’re likely to find exactly our point of view regardless—Jesus is busy telling us a story about faith that is going over our heads. Jesus tells us that God gives faith liberally but he also expects, as we see in today’s reading, a good deal of interest in return. This is a challenging parable largely because nothing gets us as hot and bothered as money. This is not a parable about money. It’s a story about faith. It’s a parable, remember, and its economics are of a different sort.

            In order to understand what this means let’s start with the perspective of the servant who buries the one talent. For those of us who are incredibly careful with gifts we have been given his punishment seems not just extreme but patently unfair. If you’re like me you’re probably fairly risk averse especially when it comes to economic security, so I can resonate with the servant’s behavior. The talent wasn’t his in the first place, so what business did he have investing it? We’re not talking about sticking his talent away at United Valley or American Federal or anything. Every investment in the ancient world carried with it a good amount of risk. More to the point, if the servant was a strict Jew (which we can probably assume he was) he would know that Jewish law advises not to place all one’s money (or resources) in a single position (cf. Genesis 32:8-9). What if he lost it in a risky investment? Wouldn’t that be the one irresponsible thing to do?

Offensive grace and the judgment of invitation

Scripture: Matthew 22:1-14

A quote from Robert Farrar Capon: “Hell, ultimately, is not the place of punishment for sinners; sinners are not punished at all; they go straight to heaven just for saying yes to grace. Hell is simply the nowhere that is the only thing left for those who will not accept their acceptance by grace—who will not believe that at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, free for nothing, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world actually declared he never intended to count sins in the first place. What then do I make of, ‘Many are called but few are chosen’? Just this. The sad truth of our fallen condition is that we don’t want anything to do with a system of salvation that works by grace through faith.”

            ***

            Isn’t that the truth? We imagine that we like grace. We think that we are “grace-full” people. We even name our churches accordingly. Grace Lutheran—we must be into grace here! But when grace comes to us in all its glory our first instinct is not joy or relief but suspicion. Why have I received such a gift? What have I done? And if I have received this gift, perhaps I could hold out for something better. Perhaps somebody else has been given something better than me!

            The idea that there is “No such thing as a free lunch” is an eminently practical principle conceived by suspicious people completely afraid of grace. This is a parable filled with such people: idiots afraid of grace. The king sends out an invitation. The works-righteousness side of us imagines God standing by a door waiting for us to knock. That’s the image Jesus himself gives us in Matthew 7, but the context of that image was aside things that seemed rather impossible for us-human beings to do: Judge not; take the log out of your eye before taking the speck out of our neighbor’s; do unto others; enter through the narrow gate. All things that sound great. All things we fail to do, more often than not.

The king sent out the invitation and we have only to respond, you might say. But the problem is that nobody comes. Nobody! If Jesus is waiting for us to knock, he’s going to be waiting an awfully long time. Then the king doubles down. Let’s share with the invitees all of the incredible things about this particular wedding feast which they are freely given. They get to eat and drink and dance from the vast wealth that I possess. This is going to be the best experience they’ve ever had.

The virtue of working a full day... or just a few minutes

Scripture: Matthew 20:1-16

             There is the one thing that every person does that seems like a normal, healthy way of living, but at its core is the root of sin. Everybody does this rather often—some are even doing it now—but it isn’t the kind of insidious thing you might be imagining. In fact, it seems benign and therein lies its power. I’m talking about comparing—ourselves to others, things to other things, ideas against ideas. It’s how we function as human beings in a complex world.

But comparison is also at the heart of sin. It’s in relation to others that we feel entitled, that we feel little, that the blessings we have seem not enough. It’s when we stack ourselves up against others—What kind of car do they drive? What kind of house do they live in? How much money do they make? How do their kids behave?—it’s when we make these comparisons that we determine what is fair, what is just, and what we deserve (which tends to be at least a little bit more than what we have).

            The parable of the laborers in the vineyard is a parable of comparison, so it is both a parable of judgment and a parable of grace, and you might see it as either depending on where you’re standing. It’s also clearly meant to upset. If the landowner in the parable wanted things to go smoothly he would have paid the first workers first and the last at the end. Then, even if he used this strange method of payment where each got a full day’s wages regardless of their workload no one would be the wiser. But clearly this is meant to strike at the roots of where our understanding of self-righteousness lies. The first workers feel entitled, but only because they are comparing themselves with the last. But wouldn’t you?

Every sermon I've ever given (at least this is what this one feels like)

The following is a not-so-perfect transcript of this sermon.
 
Scripture: Matthew 18:15-35

Forgiveness is an impossibly challenging thing to talk about, because, being the human beings that we are, we are always acting like human beings, and the forgiveness Jesus is talking about is God’s kind of forgiveness—a kind of forgiveness that we not only fail to understand; we also find it offensive and downright stupid.

This requires some context.

Today's reading starts out with advice about how to point out faults to another. It seems like practical advice at first glance: Give them three chances. One on your own, one with others, and lastly with the church as a whole. Churches have followed this model. It seems practical, but it's also a bit strange coming out of Jesus’ mouth. After all, this story comes immediately after the parable of the lost sheep. Jesus just went from seeking out of the one lost sheep to the possible detriment of the 99, and now he's talking about a kind of limited forgiveness. What's going on?

So Peter asks for clarification: How many times should human beings forgive? 7? 77? Or is it 70 x 7? 490? Infinite?

Apparently, it's not so clear. So, Jesus clarifies by means of a parable, which is typical Jesus, illuminating by means that seem to obscure, and this is the brunt of what I'm going to talk about today.

John the Baptist makes Lutherans nervous

Matthew 3:1-17

Whenever John the Baptist and Jesus share the stage in the Gospels it demands our attention because nobody is as brash and straightforward as John, and nobody matters as much as John when it comes to setting the record straight about who Jesus is. But John is also—how shall I put this?—not very nice, and, being the Minnesota-nice people that we are, we aren’t very sure what to do with a person like that.

For one thing, John didn’t understand hospitality. If you’re likely to lash out and call people a “brood of vipers” then perhaps you shouldn’t be a church greeter; instead you might fit in better volunteering at Confirmation. And it’s worth noting that this is what John says to the ones who actually showed up. You can imagine what he thought of those who didn’t even bother. Then he hits the Pharisees and the Sadducees where it really hurts, questioning the importance of their lineage. This is the kind of thing that really doesn’t play well in small towns, which is why I’m not so naïve as to tell you that your history doesn’t give you any special standing; I’m just going to reread verse 9, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham,” and I’m just going to leave that there to do with what you might.

Not politics as usual: Election Day and the story of Naaman

Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-14

           So it’s election season, and, as such, we know to drown out the incessant political ads, the editorials and letters to the editor that read as if the person writing in is standing on a chair screaming, and the substance-less promises of people in far off places looking for our vote. Closer to home we have friends and neighbors seeking elected offices of one sort or another, which is a whole other thing that, while not nearly as obnoxious as campaigns in St. Paul or Washington D.C., still contributes to a good deal of local stress—even if we’re all too polite to acknowledge it. It’s that political time of the year, and all I can think is, “Thank God it’s not a presidential election year.”

            It’s also a confusing time for churches because we aren’t allowed to endorse candidates but we can, apparently, take stands on issues; hence the churches who put up banners saying “Vote Yes on measure such and such” or “Vote no on something else.” These are the kind of razor-thin ethical distinctions that only politicians could create. The church lives in the world, so we are political in the sense that all people making decisions about how to live are political, but we are also apolitical—in that we do not put our trust in elected leaders or legislation to tell the world about Jesus.

            This is a good time to read from 2 Kings for that reason. Naaman, who is introduced as a commander in the army of the king of Aram, has a skin problem. He has some really bad acne. The translation we just read suggests it is leprosy, but since leprosy was more or less unknown during this period it could be as serious as that or, more likely, it was something like psoriasis. Either way, Naaman has a skin issue and he needs some help. Hearing that there is a prophet in Israel—that lowly country that he has been raiding again and again—who can heal his disease, he sends word to the king and asks for an audience with the prophet.

Law, love, power, and death; the commandments pretty much have it all

Scripture: Exodus 20:1-17

A transcript of today's sermon
I’m going to do something crazy… I think I can do this out here… I don’t know [stepping outside the pulpit].

I’m going to do a recap of what we did on Confirmation on Wednesday. This is going to be a sermon, but it’s going to be a recap of a lot of what we talked about on Wednesday, so if I happen to drop dead in the middle of the sermon any of our ninth-graders here could finish it for me. So, I’m expecting really good sermon notes.

We talked about power on Wednesday—and we especially talked about power in terms of law and gospel—and today we’re reading about the Ten Commandments, which are fundamentally about the law. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about some of the same things we talked about with our ninth-graders. And they seemed to be able to wrap their heads around it a little bit, which was really kind of neat, so I hope that some of you can too.

When we talk about law and we talk about gospel we are really talking about two different kinds of power. The law is right-handed power. The gospel—Jesus dying on the cross—is left-handed power. 99% of our lives happen in the right-handed power world, so it’s actually really difficult for us to imagine any other kind of power. Right-handed power includes everything we do—studying for a test, playing sports, the work that we do. Anything that we do; anything that we are; anything that we work hard for—whether it’s a new job or a marriage, or whatever it is that you’re working at in your life—this is the right-handed kingdom. We live in that world 99—maybe 99.9—percent of our lives, and that’s what the Ten Commandments speak to.

The Ten Commandments are telling us how to live in that 99% of our lives. The insufficiency in the Ten Commandments is that they leave us there. They leave us in the right-handed kingdom, and they don’t themselves bring us across to the left-handed kingdom, which only happens when Jesus comes into the picture.

What is the world?

Scripture: 1 John 4:1-6

            When reading from the Gospel of John or the letters attributed to John there is a dumb-sounding question that should really be addressed, and it is this: What is the world?

            It's the kind of question most of us would be ashamed to ask because it sounds so stupid. The world is the earth and all that is in it, duh! That’s true, but that’s not the primary definition that John uses, and it’s not the definition Christians often use when talking about things that are spiritual and things that are secular. John sets up this dichotomy between those who are in Christ and those who are in the world that has infiltrated our language as Christians to this day, and I have to admit that on most days I wish this idea didn’t exist because it is so confusing and so appallingly used by those who see themselves as the morality police that it ruins the original intent. It is one thing for John to say, “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from God does not listen to us.” But it is quite another thing for one of us to say the same thing. I don’t know about you, but I’m always concerned whenever somebody claims God’s authority for what they are about to say because what they use that authority to say is usually offensive and poorly thought out.

            The misuse of this phrase, “the world,” has led to the implication that everything out there is bad and everything in here is good. The idea that there are those set apart who are above reproach in the midst of a broken world may sound nice in principle, but the problem is (if I’m honest) that I can never know on which side of that fence I’m standing. Yes, the world is broken—a quick check of the news is enough to know this is true. War in Israel and Gaza; the mess that is Ukraine and Russia; the killing of Christians in Iraq; Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia; plane crashes and tornadoes. The world out there clearly has its problems, but this idea that we are a beacon of righteousness in a sea of godlessness is about as dangerous an idea as a person can have. To say that I am in Christ but he or she is in the world is not only arrogant; it’s an impossible distinction for us to make.

Diet Doom and Gloom: The first commandment with a side of hope.

Scripture: Exodus 19:1-6, 20:1-3

            As the week was winding down, and I still hadn’t gotten to thinking about a sermon on the 1^st commandment, I had this realization: I really don’t need to preach because Martin Luther already explained the 1^st commandment in his small catechism. Maybe some of you even remember this: “You shall have no other Gods. What does this mean? We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” Boom, end of sermon. Sure, it’s short but what more is there to add? Better still, this was a moderately cheery message for what can often seem like the doom and gloom of the law that we feel while reading the commandments. But then I figured, “Well, maybe a one line isn’t quite enough." So I went big (literally) and turned to the Large Catechism--that bastion of all things Lutheran that even pastors rarely crack open.

            And I started reading… and reading… and reading… and about four thousand words later I thought, “You know, maybe an hour long sermon isn’t a great idea either.” So, we’re going to have a sermon today that lasts somewhere between five seconds and an hour, which is kind of the trouble with the first commandment. On the one hand, it’s so clear that it hardly needs an explanation; on the other hand, it impacts basically everything we believe because it is the basis for our relationship with God. Have no other Gods before me. That’s pretty central to our faith.

True humility vs Minnesota nice

Scripture: Philippians 2:1-13

             Sometimes I long for the good old Puritan days when I could read scripture like this, do my fire and brimstone sermon about your selfish ambition and conceit, and then return to my seat and sing “Amazing Grace.” That would be so easy. Lift up Paul saying “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” and let that sit in your stomach and see how well you do with it. The only problem with the straightforward, law-heavy approach to this scripture is that Paul ends this rambling exhortation to good behavior by saying “it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure,” which is kind of frustrating, because it means that, in spite of all the advice Paul is giving you, the only good you will ever do is not because you’ll be able to observe the law, but because God sees fit to actually do good with you. So, you’re all sinners that will never measure up without the grace of God—yay! (I love my job)

But this is what humility is. In a world of self-sufficiency it's so backwards that we don’t quite know what to do with it. True humility—the kind that takes no credit and honestly expects nothing in return—is beyond us most of the time, even if it’s the kind of thing we hope for our children. It goes beyond the don’ts: Don’t brag. Don’t talk only about yourself. Don’t rub it in when you win. Don’t blame others when you lose. The problem for Scandinavian Lutherans is that we tend to think that since we follow the don’ts we have this one covered. We don’t brag or rub it in; we don’t often talk ourselves up or others down. Sure, we might occasional forget all this at sporting events, but for the most part we’ve got Minnesota nice covered… and Minnesota nice must pretty much be close to humble, right?

            Actually, I’m thinking no.

Grace-filled insanity: Easter and the way of the cross

Scripture: John 20:1-18

             So, I have the thankless task of figuring out what to say on another Easter Sunday, and, like many who do this, it sometimes feels like the Holy Spirit just says, “Shut up and let the service speak for itself today.” And I probably should do just that, because I’m not sure I’ll really add much—sleep-deprived and hopelessly caffeinated as I am; like the kid who chases his ritalin with an energy drink. But, knowing the tradition as I do, I'm guessing there are some reading this who did not follow through Thursday and Friday of this week, and it strikes me that maybe my role is to tell you about where we’ve been, so you can fully appreciate where we are today.

            As such, I’m going to let you in on something crazy: Jesus died. On Friday. And not just operation table flat-lining but like bleeding out and embalmed and utterly stone-cold gone. So, that’s crazy.

Palm Sunday and the Way of Despair

Scripture: John 19:16-22

Disclaimer: This is a sermon for a particular situation, though I hope it speaks broader than this one case. Names have been removed.

          When we think of what the cross means to us I imagine there are many answers: it means salvation, it means hope, it means peace, it means love—all the things that we want so badly for our lives. What we don’t want to admit, but what is most true of all, is that the cross means despair. The way of the cross is the way of despair, because the way of the cross is death. And death is physical death but it is also emotional death and all the losses we experience in our lives: jobs, relationships, and dreams. Even in the church we tend to gloss over death in order to get to resurrection and it handicaps us when it smacks us in the face, leaving us unnerved, timid, and hoping to move on quickly to something more cheery. Meanwhile, those most affected by it are left to cope, knowing that death is not so easily satiated. The way of the cross is long and arduous, and it leads straight through despair.

            This has been a terrible week—a week that feels heavier than any physical death I’ve experienced here. It’s hard and painful, and it stirs up feelings of regret, remorse and despair. This week has been about death as much as any week full of funerals could be, and we simply don’t know what to do with death. Culturally, we treat death as a spectacle; we fear and revere it and it becomes the breeding ground of rumors and banal platitudes. Despair makes us so terribly uncomfortable, and so we create rumors, trying to craft a story we can control, often turning to conspiracies to create meaning that just isn’t there. We do this about international stories of missing planes, just as surely as we do it about local stories that we know little about. All of this is very human, but it is an affront to the cross. The way of the cross is despair because the way of the cross is brutally honest about loss; it looks the monster of death in the eyes and embraces its emptiness. It admits that death is terrible and senseless, resisting the urge to give meaning to tragedy. It’s easy to say “It will be OK,” but much harder to sit with someone, knowing it’s not.

We are flawed. So what? Jesus will use us anyway

Scripture: John 18:12-27

            There’s this great moment in today’s lesson where Jesus, in response to the high priest, says “I have spoken openly to the world [...] Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said.” And the scene cuts to Simon Peter, warming himself by the fire, approached by a slave who asks about his relation to Jesus, and Peter, for the third time, denies it. Jesus tells the high priest to ask those who knew him, and at the very same moment Peter, the star pupil, is basked just that and he denies the whole thing.

            Nobody would have expected this from Peter. This is the guy who tried to emulate everything about Jesus—walking on water, washing his feet—and the very same guy who promised never to deny Jesus—even in the face of death. This is the man on whom Jesus has promised to build his church. It’s astonishing that St. Peter, the namesake of the basilica in Rome, backed down not to a high priest, or a temple leader, or a Roman authority, but to a common slave.

            The fact is that Peter was scared. It’s not an excuse; it just is. The disciples, for all their proximity to Jesus, never really grasped this idea that he was going toward his death. Ironically, this is precisely the reason Jesus needed to die. If Peter could have told the slave girl all he knew to be true; if Judas could have accepted Jesus’ strange use of the common purse; if the temple leaders could have seen Jesus as the Messiah; if you and I could just manage perfection, then the cross need not have happened. Of course, like your NCAA bracket, there are always could-a-should-a’s, but you can’t change the past. If you could, you’d all be billionaires.

Service is a joy and those who think differently haven't tried it

Scripture: John 13:1-17

            I was given orders this week to make this as short a sermon as possible [since we're showing off a baby at church and that's going to take some time]. But part of my job is to not always give you exactly what you want but what you need to hear, so consider this your Lenten discipline for the day—that can wait. Although, come to think of it, this whole baby thing does kind of color everything I read here—like I can no longer read Jesus saying “Not all of you are clean” without resisting the urge to point at Natalie, because I know different.

Light it up: The light of the world and how we are unified by darkness

Scripture: John 1:1-18

            Yesterday was the shortest day—or, if you prefer, longest night—of the year, so it works out well that today we get to talk about light, because we’re all in need of a little more of it. All this darkness alters our moods, heightens our anxiety, and forces us indoors, making us at once more lethargic and, yet, on higher alert. Without the light, our nights get colder and we become gloomier. Our Confirmation kids’ art for today expresses more about light than anything else. It’s hard not to focus on that aspect of John 1 when Confirmation class ends this time of year in the dark.

            Our traditional scenes of Jesus’ birth are set at night. Our Christmas Eve services are candle-lit. We sing Silent Night. All is dark, and yet, in the words of that hymn, all is also bright. It’s almost as if that first Christmas was pointing toward the first chapter in Genesis. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep…” Then, out of the darkness God said, “‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” The story of Jesus is, in a way, a retelling of that Genesis story set in a manger in Bethlehem. Just as light emerged from the darkness on that first day of creation, Jesus Christ was born as the light of the world in the midst of thick darkness, making it especially appropriate that we celebrate this day during the darkest days of our year. Light shines brightest in the darkest night. Christ was born into pure darkness; a light the likes of which the world had never seen.