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?