Funeral sermon for Michael B.

Job 38:1-11, 16-18

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
² ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
³ Gird up your loins like a man,
   I will question you, and you shall declare to me. 

⁴ ‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
   Tell me, if you have understanding.
⁵ Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
   Or who stretched the line upon it?
⁶ On what were its bases sunk,
   or who laid its cornerstone
⁷ when the morning stars sang together
   and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? 

⁸ ‘Or who shut in the sea with doors
   when it burst out from the womb?—
⁹ when I made the clouds its garment,
   and thick darkness its swaddling band,
¹⁰ and prescribed bounds for it,
   and set bars and doors,
¹¹ and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
   and here shall your proud waves be stopped”? 

¹⁶ ‘Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
   or walked in the recesses of the deep?
¹⁷ Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
   or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
¹⁸ Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
   Declare, if you know all this. 

Psalm 23

I Corinthians 1:18-25

18 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. ¹⁹For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
   and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

John 3:14-18

¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 

Sermon

We shouldn’t be here today.  Its two days after Christmas.  We should be home with our families recovering from the holiday.  You should be home with Mike, out in the woods hunting, getting excited for the Alumni game and the Winter Classic next week, enjoying the gifts you received for Christmas.  But we’re here.  Which means that the woods that Mike is out hunting in are the woods in heaven…and the alumni hockey game he’s getting excited to watch will be played by Red Wings from generations past.

And as much as we are here to celebrate a life well lived, we also come to mourn.  Mourn the loss of a dear son, husband, brother, dad, grandfather, nephew, friend.  Because no matter when it is or what the circumstances are, death is never easy.  Losing a child, a spouse, a dad, is never easy, especially at this time of year, especially when we were planning on spending Christmas with that person, even with the news of the leukemia diagnosis that had just arrived. 

Life is often full of unexpected events, pleasant or otherwise.  And at this time of the year, when Mike’s unexpected death leaves us stunned, we can look to a manger to find the good news of an unexpected king.  No one expected a king to be born in a stable and his crib to be filled with straw instead of sating.  No one expected a king to be homeless and to preach peace and love while other kings were preaching war and violence.  And no one expected a king to gain victory by dying.  And yet this is what our King did for us.  Born to peasants, living a simple life, teaching us ways of living better with each other, and dying so that we could have life. 

When Jesus came into the world, he came so that we may know love, peace, joy, and light.  His light is a light that shines into the dark places of our lives and dispels it so that we may know that joy and peace that comes from being loved by God.  And though we sit in a dark place of mourning, we know that that light is there…it has not and never will be extinguished.  Mike’s light will never go out completely either.  It will be there when you sit out on the pontoon boat fishing, as you walk out to hunt marsh ducks or go sit during deer season, as you reach for the phone to call Mike about an amazing Red Wings game…he will be there with you.  As a called and claimed child of God, God’s light filled him when he was washed in water and marked with the cross of Christ.  And we can have every confidence that when God sent his son into the world, it was so that Michael Wayne Burgess, child of God, would have everlasting life.  It was so that we, children of God, could have everlasting life, filled with the peace of knowing that God is always by our side as our Good Shepherd.  Now God is leading Mike to still waters filled with fish, to rest in tree stands, and preparing tables for him with the best venison there ever was.  And though he walk through the valley of the shadow of the Colorado Avalanche, God will be with him, his hockey stick and goalie mask comforting him.  And when we are one day reunited, God will do the same for us.  It will be a party that will we can’t even imagine, and it will have no end. 

So as we say goodbye to Mike today, we do so knowing that he is in the arms of his creator, and that one day we will all be reunited on a glorious day in which death, and pain and mourning will be no more.  For God so loves us, that he sent Christ to live and do die so that we could have life abundant.

Amen.   

Come thou unexpected... - A Sermon for Christmas Eve

December 24, 2013

Luke 2:1-20

Christmas Eve

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,  ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,   and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

We learned on Sunday evening, after being convinced all day that our daughter, Eleanor, had a bad cold, that, instead, she would be getting both of her two front teeth for Christmas.  As this is was, supposedly, our first time around with a baby with a cold, we were ready.  I had gone to the pharmacy and retrieved the vicks vapo-rub, the pedialite, the boogie wipes, and the homeopathic tablets the pharmacist recommended since she’s too young to take the children’s formula of cold medicines.  We had the humidifier all set up, the special eucalyptus baby bubble bath that’s supposed to help relieve sinus pressure, the thermometer, the Tylenol, and of course, every baby’s favorite invention of all time, the nasal aspirator.  Chris disinfected the house, I washed the sheets, we were a well-oiled germ fighting machine ready to do battle against the dreaded cold and bring our baby back to health. 

In the evening, Eleanor perked up significantly after having a nap attack in her high chair, but we attributed it to the Tylenol kicking in and breaking her fever.  And that’s when I saw them…two little white lines in the upper gum that can only mean one thing…the teeth that we have been waiting for for months, were finally on their way through. 

As first timers, what can you do?  We expected a cold and got teeth.  That’s the way parenting goes…very little is going to go as expected.  When you find out you are pregnant, there are so many things going through a soon to be parents head.  Excitement that it’s happened, fear that something could go wrong, worry that something could go wrong again.  We set ourselves up for what we think will be the perfect birth, everything going just the way that we plan it to go.   Then something goes wrong, or, at the very least, not according to our plans and all we can do is lay there and think, this is absolutely not what I expected would happen.  As much as the folks at “what to expect when you’re expecting” would like us to think that all the answers can be found a book…the best way to figure it out is it live it.  And when the next child comes, though there’s experience, there’s no guarantee that things are going to go the same way as with the first.

I’m sure that for Mary, pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting were not what she expected them to be.  She was newly betrothed to Joseph, legally and socially considered married to him except for the fact that they were not living together yet.  And the angel Gabriel visits her to inform her that she will conceive and bear a son.  And her child will not just be any child.  Her child will be the son of God…not the child of her husband.  And not only did she consent to becoming the mother of the Son of God, she embraced it, first in her words in response to Gabriel “behold the handmaiden of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word,” then singing a song to her cousin Elizabeth about the blessings that she has received by being chosen to bear the son of God.  We have no idea what Joseph thinks about the whole thing other than he agrees to stay with her.  He never says a word.    

We assume that pregnancy went as one would expect.  But then it came time for Mary and Joseph to travel to Bethlehem for the census ordered by Quirinius, governor of Syria. Doctors recommend that women not travel very far after the 34th week of pregnancy…and Mary probably had all the arrangements for the nursery and the midwives all set up.  But when Rome says go, you go.  

 It would have been a good 4 day trip on foot for two healthy, non-pregnant adults, so it probably too Mary and Joseph about a week to make the trek.  And then the unexpected happened…again.  The time came for Mary to give birth. 

Being that, literally everyone and their brother was in Bethlehem for the census, every door that they knocked on turned them away, even after seeing Mary was in labor.  So they take what they can get, a stable, probably a cave, which was normally home to livestock.  It was better than out in a field, I guess.  And that is where Mary gave birth to her first born son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.  It was probably the last thing that Mary expected when she pictured the birth of her child.  A stable?  The son of God born in a stable?  Placed in a manger filled with straw instead of a royal bed lined with purple satin? Attended by shepherds and sheep instead of domestic and foreign dignitaries? What kind of royal birth was this? 

Yes, the birth of Jesus was probably the last thing the Mary expected it to be.  It was not the orderly and romantic vision that many nativity scenes depict.  It was probably much more chaotic and real…and exhausting. 

But it was the birth of the son of God…a fitting birth of a child who would grow up and totally blow away any perception of what it means for someone to be a king.  Who shows up in the midst of the most unexpected times and places, who put together a group of disciples who would have otherwise would have wanted nothing to do with each other.  A king who preached love and peace, while other kings were crying out for violence and war.  A king who sat on the side of the poor, the outcast, the mourners, the meek, and the downtrodden.  Who was himself homeless and who died the death of a criminal so that, in him, God could experience the fullness of human existence, from birth to death…so that he could rescue us from sin and death and bring us to everlasting life. 

Christ’s unexpected birth set in motion an unexpected life.  And we can be certain that in the midst of the unexpected circumstances in our own lives, Christ is going to show up.  Not in the infertility and the miscarriages, the cancer, the heart attack or the gun violence…but in the doctors and nurses, the friends and families, in the communities that surround us and fill us with love and support.  In the folks who come to our aid when we are most in need of it.  In those people, we see the Christ child.  In strangers who bring us a smile or a laugh when we least expect it, we see the Christ child.  In light that shatters darkness, we see the Christ child. In a manger, surrounded by exhausted parents, dirty shepherds, and barn animals, we find the Christ child.

But we are also called to be Christ to those around us.  To do better than the people in the inns in Bethlehem, who refused to be inconvenienced so that a baby could be born in better place than a cave filled with animals.  Christ calls us to be little Christ’s to the world around us…and his calls to do this are not always convenient.  Sometimes it means that Christmas dinner isn’t going to go how we expected it to because someone showed up at our door asking for food and shelter.  Or someone gets sick and we have to improvise so that they get the care that they need.  More often than not, being called to be Christ’s representatives in the world means that Christmas may look more like National Lampoons Christmas Vacation than a precious moments figurine set.  The Good news of Great Joy that the angels sing about isn’t always neat and orderly, sometimes it’s messy and exhausting. But it’s real, and it’s for you and for me, whether we’re ready for it or not. 

Joseph - A sermon for Advent 4

Theme of the sermon borrowed from colleague, Tim Brown.  

Advent 4

December 22, 2013

Matthew 1:18-25

I wonder sometimes about Joseph.  He’s probably the most underrated character in the Christmas story. He really doesn’t even have many Advent or Christmas songs written about him.  In the Gospel of Luke, Joseph only gets a cameo, a brief mention or two, in a story that focuses upon Mary and the birth of John the Baptist as a precursor to the birth of Christ.  But Joseph is only mentioned by name. Yes, he is mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus, which ties him to the lineage of David,

But he has no voice,

There are no visits from angels telling him what he should and should not do as Mary’s betrothed.

The shepherds and the angels get a more important role in the story than Joseph does. 

He’s really just a very minor player in Luke’s version of the birth of Jesus.

After that, he’s generally overlooked besides being the carpenter who stuck with Mary even though she was scandalously with child, and raised Jesus as his own son…and from whom we never hear again after Jesus begins his ministry.

Matthew, however, seems to take a different perspective when it comes Joseph’s role in the birth story.  For Matthew, it’s Mary who gets the cameo role in the birth narrative, while Joseph is the central character.  But even so, Joseph’s role is still quite passive.  I mean, the visits he receives from the angel in the Gospel of Matthew happen when Joseph is asleep!  You really can’t get much more passive than that.  And do you wonder what Joseph’s first thought was when he woke up the next morning?  Did he blame that flat bread stuff with the sauce and the cheese that the Romans had introduced to them for the dream? (I just learned this week that Pizza’s been around for 7,000 years…so it’s not outside the realm of possibility).

Dreams are strange beings.  Sometimes we remember them and sometimes we don’t.  Sometimes they are pleasant, sometimes they are unpleasant, and sometimes they are downright weird.  According to various theories about dreams, they represent what is going on in our subconscious.  A dream about losing teeth may be the result of many changes in life…a dream in which you’re present at an event that is coming up and everything is going wrong may indicate that you’re under a bit of stress about that event. A dream about being pregnant may result from the desire to be creative or have a part in putting together a new project.  A dream about death often takes place when we have reached the end of something, a relationship, a job, etc.    

And if we were to read Joseph’s dream purely as a dream, we can see some of the struggle that he is having over what he should do in regards to Mary.  Being the righteous man that he was, Joseph had already decided that he was going to dismiss her quietly, to prevent Mary from having to endure public disgrace.  Technically speaking, according to the custom of betrothal that was present in the Jewish community of that time, Mary and Joseph were considered husband and wife all social and legal matters, but there was a one year period in which both the husband and wife prepared to cohabitate with one another.  This was usually the time in which the husband prepared the home for his wife.  The only way that the betrothal, and thus the marriage, could be dissolved would be if either partner were unfaithful. 

So if this were purely a dream, we can see that the love and respect that Joseph has for Mary hasn’t changed since he learned that she had become pregnant, and the child was not his. It would seem that he did have a genuine desire to have Mary as his wife…but I’m guessing the circumstances surrounding that engagement are not what he expected them to be. 

But we know that this was not a dream in the sense of it being a natural part of our sleep cycles.  Joseph’s dream was not due to pizza or hearing the telling of a strange story right before going to bed.  Joseph’s dream was, indeed, a visit from the angel of the Lord that Matthew tells us about.  It was a dream that drew on God’s knowing of Joseph’s love and respect for Mary.  Oh yeah, and the child was also God’s son…that might have a little something to do with it…

Joseph, could…and probably should, have requested a divorce from Mary…that would have been the council of many of the religious leaders, anyways.  But this visit from the angel of the Lord and the divine directive revealed by the angel to take Mary as his wife change the tone of the story. 

And as important as Joseph’s role is in this story, he still has no voice. 

We have no idea how he really feels about this whole mess of taking a wife who is pregnant with someone else’s child, let alone the child of the most high God. 

Was he angry?

Was he sad?

We don’t know. 

We know that he followed the divine directive from the angel of the Lord, took Mary as his wife, and raised Jesus as his son.  That’s about all we know.  We never hear from the earthly father of Jesus.

But I don’t know if all this would have happened, I don’t know if Joseph would have been as open to a visit from the angel, if he had been awake.  I think that he needed to be asleep, he needed to be vulnerable, he needed to have his heart open, so that the words of the angel of the Lord could truly sink in and allow for Joseph to change his mind in regards to Mary.   In the midst what had to have been a stressful time for Joseph in deciding what to do with Mary, a divine directive while he was awake may have fallen on deaf ears and a hardened heart. God’s message wouldn’t have gotten to him in the same way that it did when he was asleep.

And I wonder about all the times when our ears our deaf and our hearts are hardened to the message of God’s work in our lives, the calls that God issues to us to go out and change the world in big ways and in small ones.  There’s too much that gets in the way of God’s words to us, stubbornness, fear, our egos, anger. 

So often it is so much easier to pretend we are not listening, or to actually not listen, because we know the transforming message of God’s work in our lives is going to change us…and change can often make us uncomfortable.  And divorcing ourselves from the places in which God sends his messages and divine directives to us can be easy, it’s easy to stop coming to church, it’s easy to stop hanging out with friends, to avoid family…to harden our hearts and close off our ears to God’s call that we be vulnerable.

But that’s maybe why God came into the world in the flesh as a baby.  A baby is vulnerable, relying on its mother and father for all of its worldly needs.  But nothing melts a hard heart or opens unwilling ears like the smile and the laugh of an infant.  Babies allow us to be vulnerable.  I once heard it said that you can be the biggest, baddest person in the world, but the moment a toddler hands you a plastic phone, you take it and say hello.

God was able to work in and through Joseph by visiting him in a moment when he was vulnerable, and open to God entering his conscious through a dream.  And when Joseph changed his mind and adopted Jesus as his son, he changed the world.  The Jesus story would not have been the same without Joseph.  And it is not the same without us.  God calls us to hear his words of love and encouragement for us, words that transform us and allow us to transform the world.  But we have to be willing to fully hear them, digest them and accept them if we are going to be open to God’s life changing message.  So God calls us to be vulnerable, to be open and flexible, to fully take part in the life changing and world changing love that he wants us to share with the world.

So when God calls, will you answer?    

On Silence and Speech

I suffer from depression.  I have for years.  But the difference between then and now is that now I'm actually doing something about it.

Part of my problem is a vitamin D deficiency (normal is 25 and up...my number was 9).  Vitamin D deficiency is linked to depression.  I've been taking special vitamins for this for three weeks now and feel SO much better. 

The other part of my problem is that for a long time I didn't want to talk about depression. I didn't want to acknowledge that I had an issue.  I thought that if I ignored it, it would just go away.  But it didn't. It got worse.  Until the day that I didn't want to get out of bed, didn't want to talk to Chris, didn't want to play with Eleanor. I just wanted to hide away from everyone and everything.  That day, I knew I needed to break the silence and get help. 

I was ashamed the first time I walked into the mental health clinic.  I felt like I was walking in there with a scarlet D on my forehead.  

But then I remembered the story about the man who stood on the roof of his house as flood waters rose praying that God would rescue him.  Four times help was offered, but he refused because he thought that God himself would rescue him.  In fact, God had come to help the man...but in the form of a car, a canoe, a motorboat, and a helicopter.  But he refused to see God in the faces of his rescuers.  

That afternoon, I was determined not to be like the man in that story.  And God answered my prayers for help, in the form of the psychiatrist, the nurse, and the social workers with whom I have worked.  I am healthier and happier because God has come to my rescue through these women.  

The hardest part of this journey was breaking the silence and speaking out...saying the one thing that is often a four letter work (in the negative sense) "help" and looking for God to answer my prayers through the people who she has gifted to help people in their time of need.

Mental illness should not be subjected to shaming silence.  The Shema, the prayer of Judaism from which Jesus based the greatest commandment (Matt 22:36-37) is not fulfilled unless we are able to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind.  We cannot do this unless we are healthy in heart, soul, and mind.  Which means that as communities of faith, we need to lift the stigma from mental illness and be faithful to those who are in need of help, showing them through not just speech but also through actions that God loves them and made them in God's image and desires for them to be healthy.  We need to walk along side folks with mental illness throughout their entire journey, even if that means walking with them through the ups and the downs of mental illness for the rest of their lives.  Remember that mental illness is NOT a sin nor is it the result of sins committed. Advocate for them.  Love them. Don't cast them out.  Help them to remove the scarlet "D" or "BP" or "M/D", etc. that society has placed on them and point to the sign that God placed on their foreheads when they were called and claimed in the waters of baptism.    

I pray for the day that folks in need of help with their mental health will no longer live with any stigma that can be attached with mental illness.  I pray for the day that it is no longer treated with silence, but rather with healing speech.  

The other half of the equation...- A sermon for Advent 2

Like a couple weeks ago, I got into the pulpit and the Spirit moved me to preach something similar to this manuscript and yet it was completely different

December 8, 2013

Matthew 3:1-12

In 1970, a musical debuted at Carnegie Mellon University, it was called “Godspell.”  Musical was written by Stephen Sondheim and based off of the Gospel of Matthew, with some parables thrown in from Luke.  The musical found its way to Broadway and even had a film version made, staring Victor Garber as Jesus.  The movie version of the musical begins with a random selection of New Yorkers being visited by a John the Baptist character, who sings “prepare ye the way of the Lord.”  After he blows his shofar, a ram’s horn used in the Jewish culture, the group gathers in central park and is baptized in a fountain all the while dancing around the fountain and singing “prepare ye the way of the Lord” aloud for all that could hear.  And although the movie is based off of the Gospel of Matthew, this is not the John that we hear about this morning…well it is, but not really. 

What I mean by that is this, the John that we find described in the Gospel of Matthew is a harsher version of the John the Baptist that we hear about in Mark and Luke.  In Matthew, as in Mark and Luke, we see meet John the Baptist in the wilderness eating locusts and wild honey, wearing camel’s hair and pretty much looking like a mad man.  This John baptizes the folks who come to him, preparing them for the coming of the one greater than he.  He is the loud, audacious man with the shofar, baptizing people in a fountain in Central Park, dressed like a circus entertainer.

But’s that’s really as far as the similarities go.  For in the movie, the scene in which John baptizes everyone is joyous.  All the characters are laughing and playing in the fountain.  And in Mark and Luke, John’s baptism is billed as a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  But in Matthew, the loud audacious man with the shofar is preaching one thing and one thing only “REPENT!...you brood of vipers!”  No forgiveness is preached by this John the Baptizer.  His baptism is one of repentance alone.  And grace?…zero, zip, zilch.  Just look at his interaction with the Pharisees and Sadducees in this text. 

“⁷But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance. ⁹Do 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. ¹⁰Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ¹¹“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹²His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Harsh, right?

And maybe that’s why Matthew doesn’t seem to know what to do with him.  Did his fire and brimstone attitude make the folks as uncomfortable as it can make us sometimes?   I mean, all law, no gospel is a pretty rough way to go.  Or maybe he was a little too much like the guy he was preparing the way for.  He preached repentance, he had crowds of followers and disciples, he didn’t get along with the religious authorities, and he died because he challenged the status quo and made even the politicians uncomfortable.  And to top it off, it was John who baptized Jesus…something that teachers did for students, not the other way around. 

But, despite all of this, we know that John was not the messiah.  He was, for Matthew, the one whom Isaiah spoke of as the voice of one crying out in the wilderness “prepare the way of the Lord” but that’s about as far as we go. 

And maybe that’s part of Matthew’s point.  John gets to the repentance, but not the forgiveness.  John’s ministry has parallels to Jesus’ ministry, but John is merely the one who is preparing the way for Jesus.  What if, in making John this tough character to digest, Matthew is revealing to us that John’s teaching is only half of the equation.  As the one whom Isaiah foretold, it was John’s task to make way for the one coming after him…to point to the one who would baptize with the holy spirit and with fire, the one coming with a winnowing fork in his hand, ready to separate the wheat from the chaff. 

Now, you may be asking yourself, Pastor Jen, where’s the good news? 

In Kansas, there was a member of Trinity who served as a pilot in the Air Force and was stationed in Spain for a while.  During that time he purchased a winnowing fork that was crafted out of the roots and trunk of a thin olive tree.  They soaked the roots in water to make them pliable and then bent them to make 5 tines.  The distance between them was big enough that the wheat would fall onto the threshing floor, but the chaff would stay on the fork and could be thrown into the fire. What this means is that of the wheat stalk, some parts are desirable and other parts are not.  It’s the same thing for us, some parts of us are desirable and other parts are scarred by sin.  And when Christ comes with the winnowing fork, he is coming to separate the wheat from the chaff in each of us.  It is Christ who holds the other have of the equation.  John speaks of a baptism for repentance, Christ speaks of forgiveness of sins. 

John is not the only character in Matthew’s Gospel that is different from Mark and Luke.  And I must pause to note that there is a reason that I have left the gospel of John out…John’s gospel is completely different than Matthew, Mark and Luke’s which all have quite a bit in common.

In Matthew 26, we find Jesus at the table with his disciples, sharing his last meal.  And it is here where we find the second half of the equation that John started.  When Jesus takes the cup, he lifted it up and said, this is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 

John preached repentance and called us to turn from our sinfulness. And his teaching is important, repentance and changing the way we live with others is important.  Jesus picked up on these aspects of John’s teaching in his own ministry. But it’s all for naught if we forget that it’s only half of the equation.  Repentance is for nothing if there is no promise of forgiveness. And for that we need to look to Christ. 

So as we watch and wait and prepare during this advent season, we do so looking to Jesus, who holds the whole equation of law and gospel.  Who points out our sins so that he can forgive them, who gives us the law so that he can also give us grace, who died so that we could have life. 

Waiting - A sermon for Advent 1

Matthew 24:36-44

On Friday morning around 4:30am, 600 people were handed a special ticket.  Inside the ticket was listed the prize that each person had won after hours and hours of waiting outside of Cabela’s.  Some of these folks had been waiting since about seven or eight o’clock the night before…and most of them, including Chris, walked away disappointed, having spent the night outside, freezing, only to receive a $5 gift card.  Sure, they spent the evening swapping hunting stories and the like…sure, they walked away with a story about almost being blown up by a propane container that caught fire…but the promise of a great prize for the first 600 people in line at the Cabela’s had been turned into disappointment as only 6 of the 600 won the big prizes.  As Chris said when he walked into the house at 5:36 on Friday morning…I waited for nothing. 

We have become a nation and a people that have grown tired of waiting.  With the advent of the computer, we no longer need to wait a couple days for a piece of correspondence to get to its recipient unless we choose to go take the time to write a letter, stick a stamp on it and put it in the mail box.  Instead, we can have the correspondence and its response sent and received within minutes.  The advent of digital cameras took the wait out of picture taking.  The advent of the smart phone meant that we no longer have to wait until we are home to check our e-mail, or the score of the football game, it’s all right at our finger tips if we choose to be connected in that way.  Websites like fandango mean that we don’t have to wait in line to get tickets to that movie we’ve been anxious to see.  And the past few years have proven that we no longer have the patience to wait until 5am on Friday morning to get our doorbuster deals.  For years we have been told that we shouldn’t have to wait for the best deals of the season, and we’ve bought into it. 

But the church has a different message as we enter the season of Advent.  Wait. Prepare.  

As the world rushes around us with gifts and ribbons a plenty, we are invited to hurry up and wait.  To be intentional and patient in our preparations, to take our time as we take in the sights and the sounds of the season.  To practice what it means to wait for Christ to come again. 

The people of Matthew’s time were also people who had to get used to the waiting.  Theirs was a time of uncertainty.  Two would go out into the fields and only one of them would return, the other probably captured by the Romans and either killed or forced into military service.  Two women would leave the house in the morning to go grind meal and only one of them would come home…taken into slavery of some sort.  There was no more temple at the time that Matthew was writing his gospel and people were trying to sort out what they were going to do now that the central location for their faith lives had been demolished.  And the generation was dying out.  A generation that Jesus said one verse earlier would not pass away before he returned.  If the whole generation passed away, what would they do?

Now, this text from Matthew has been used by the writers of the Left Behind series of books, as well as others, to support a belief in the Rapture, that one day the faithful will be gathered up into the heavens while the rest of us will be left behind to face the great tribulation that will take place before the final judgment. 

But the problem with this is that the text actually speaks of the fate of those left behind being better than the fate of those who are taken.  And I don’t really think that who is taken and who is left behind is the gist of what Jesus has to say either.  Rather, in this text, which is part of a larger teaching on the end times, Jesus is getting at something which spoke to the reality of life at that time.  That it was uncertain.  The people of Noah’s time had no idea that the flood waters were going to wash them all away.  The people of Jesus’ time had no idea that Rome was going to destroy the temple in Jerusalem and persecute the early Christians.  And in our time, we had no idea that Japan was getting ready to bomb pearl harbor, or that Lee Harvey Oswald was going to assassinate President Kennedy.  We were caught off guard when the shuttle Challenger exploded, when the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. 

We didn’t know that the cancer diagnosis was coming, or that the brain aneurysm was going to rupture.  And we couldn’t prepare for the miscarriage, the heart attack, the stroke, the job loss, the house fire.  Life today is just as uncertain as it was in Jesus’ time.  And we know this. 

It’s part of the reason that we don’t like to wait, because there is uncertainty that comes with the waiting.  Waiting for the MRI results to come back, waiting for the call back after a job interview, waiting for the whys and hows in the autopsy.  Waiting is scary.  

And when fear arises, we want to claim some semblance of control, so we do what we can to keep ourselves busy while we wait in the hopes that, somehow, having control over the things we can change will make not having control over the things that we can’t change less scary. 

But there is a promise in the waiting that we do in Advent.  A promise that, in the midst of days that are getting darker, there is still light…a light which is continually growing brighter and dispelling the darkness around us.  And it comes in the form of a child born in a barn.  The kind of waiting that we do in Advent is the type of waiting that expectant parents do.  It’s active waiting…there are preparations to make, there are doctors examinations to attend.  And if all goes well, there is a birth to take part in. 

In Spain, the term for giving birth is “dar la luz”…to give light.  And that is the perfect description of what happened when Mary gave birth to Christ.  Light was brought into the world, a light so brilliant that not even death itself could extinguish it.  And though life comes with a measure of uncertainty, we can know that we were made for more than fear, because the Christ child, whose birth we are waiting for, has promised that even in the midst of the things that we most fear about the uncertainty of life, we don’t have to face the fear alone.  Christ is going to walk with us through the fear and the doubt. 

“Come hell or high water” Jesus accompanies us through our journey in life, and though we know that this will not make us immune from the unfortunate things that take place along the way, we also know that walking with Jesus means that he will give us the courage to face the unexpected and the uncertain and that he will remain with us even through death, bringing us to new life with him.

So as we enter this advent season, we do it as people who actively wait.  We wait for the celebration of the birth of Christ and we wait for his coming again.  And as we wait, we do so not as people afraid of the uncertainties of life, but people who are confident in the promises of the one who accompanies us all throughout this life, and into the next life. So we do what the folks who waited outside of Cabelas did Thursday night, we swap stories, we wind up with tales of life's adventures.  And at the end of the wait, we will receive our reward…but this one  doesn't disappoint.  Amen. 

In Memory

This morning I learned that one my roommates from college died.

Sarah Jo and I lived together in the dorms for the spring trimester of our junior year and then off campus, with our friend Sarah, our senior year. I remember sophomore year FRELON when she took the time before each performance to meticulously curl my hair for the line dance I was a part of.  I remember the treats that she would bring us when she returned from her long road trips home to Escanaba. I remember Grey's Anatomy nights our senior year.  Sarah Jo, Sarah and I would sit in our living room and spend the evening together.  Sometimes Sarah Jo and I would knit like old ladies, other times we would be working on homework, and still other times we didn't have anything to do but sit and watch tv. I remember our many trips to Q-doba, where she taught me the magic of ordering the nachos with the cheese on the side so the chips wouldn't get soggy.

We lost touch in the years after we graduated and, to be honest, I don't remember the last time we spoke.  I wish I had kept up with her.  Now she's left this life and we entrust her to God's care.  

Sarah Jo was a beautiful soul.  She was passionate about literature and poetry.  She stuck to her guns and her convictions.  She had a great laugh.  She will be missed.

But I know that one day we will meet again.  I don't know where her faith journey has taken her since we last spoke about it 8 years ago, but I trust that God's love is big enough and strong enough that one day I will see her again in the presence of God and all the other saints in heaven.  

Eternal rest grant Sarah Jo, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine on her.  Amen.

Boycott

I'm boycotting Black Friday this year

There are multiple reasons for this...here are a couple:
1) Black Friday now interrupts Thanksgiving
2) I would rather support local businesses than the big chains
3) To be honest, being trampled is not on the list of things that I consider fun

For the first two Thanksgivings of our marriage, Chris and I negotiated what it meant to be a part of a family where one of the members works in retail.  This meant adjusting our schedule so that Chris could get enough sleep to make it through Black Friday eve.  Basically, we didn't get much of a Thanksgiving.  And while it was nice that Chris was making a bit extra for working on the holiday, I would have much rather had him home for the whole day.

I don't fault retailers for seizing on an opportunity to increase their profits. I don't fault consumers for wanting to benefit from what can be some pretty awesome deals.

HOWEVER -

I DO fault retailers for pulling their employees away from their families on Thanksgiving for the sake of the almighty dollar.

I DO fault consumers who choose to give in to the lure of the doorbuster deals to end Thanksgiving early.  Before all this opening on Thanksgiving craziness, the deals were just as good at 5am on Black Friday.

Look, I get that we live in an increasingly secular society.  But there is one day out of the year that regardless of your religious affiliation, or lack there of, we can all agree is a sacred day.  And that's Thanksgiving.  You don't need to believe in God to be thankful for what you have.  So why can't we go back a couple years and make a stand for Thanksgiving.  Make a stand for the one day of the year when folks can come together in whatever way makes the day special, whether it's around a turkey, or a ham, whether it's watching football and enjoying a beer or two, or doing your best to keep your cool with the in-laws (hey, I never said the day was perfect).

Go nuts on Black Friday, but leave Thanksgiving alone.

Please and Thank you.

What do we do with King Jesus? - A sermon for Christ the King Sunday

November 24, 2013

Luke 23:33-43

If there was ever a time to prove who he was, this was it.  This was his chance to show them once and for all that he really was the Messiah.  All he needed to do was to meet the challenges of the religious leader and the criminal at his side and come down off of the cross, saving himself from the pain and humiliation of crucifixion.  This was the ultimate and final temptation.  Come down off the cross.  Remove yourself from the pain.  Live out the rest of your life as your wish. 

As we observe the feast of Christ the King, we are taking part in a newer feast day on the church calendar, one that was not celebrated until 1925.  It was instated as a reaction to the increasingly nationalistic and secular trends that came about between World War I and World War II.  And the intent of the day was for the church to claim the rule of Christ, who regardless of kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, is truly the one whose reign trumps all human establishments and political entities. 

But we live in an age where most monarchs are now mostly figureheads.  And we live in a county where we haven’t been subjected to monarchy in a couple hundred years and for many, the terminology having to do with monarchy is a real turn off.  So what do we do when the one we called savior is presented to us as king?  We speak about Jesus so often as our friend, as someone who was just like you and me…and we spend so much time trying to fashion Jesus in our own image to justify how we live day in and day out, we want Jesus to be just like us…to look like us, drive the same brand of car we drive, root for the same football team that we root for…that to think of Jesus as king instead of one of the guys can be difficult.  Sure we love the good old hymns like Crown him with many Crowns, Jesus shall Reign, Rejoice, the Lord is King! And as we gear up for Advent and Christmas, maybe we will hear the Hallelujah Chorus a few times, which is always a delight….but this word King is so political.  It is divisive, even.  I mean, a King has the final say on how things are, so if the king goes one way and you go the other, you’re are out of luck. 

So how can we talk about a King who stands both with me and the person who disagrees with me? How do we deal with a King who would have no problems driving a either GM product or a Ford Product?  What do we do with a King that will root for both Michigan and Michigan State…or worse Ohio State?  Is that even possible? And so we stand mystified about how to proceed with this one that we call Christ the King…this King Jesus, who though he became a fully incorporated part of this world, rules a Kingdom that is not of this world, who stands with us and with those that we would rather he not stand with. 

And the further complication is - what do we do when we are presented with a king that doesn’t fit that stereotypical image of royalty?  What happens when the king that we are looking at would stick out like a sore thumb when placed among the likes of Caesar, The Queen of England, or the King of Jordan? 

It turns out that ours is a very unlikely king.  A very unkingly king in human terms.

Our king only wore the purple robes of a king once, when he was mocked and beaten…and he only wore one crown…one made of thorns.  And he was only called king as a form of mockery, in the sign that hung over him as he was nailed to the cross. 

As Jesus hung on the cross, he didn’t look like a king.  He looked like a criminal.  And yet, this  man, who was the child of the poor young woman Mary, who was born in a place that was anything but royal, who had no home to call his own, who lived among the poor and the outcast…This one we call King, our King.  And our king was an untraditional king.  He was a homeless king, he was a servant king, he was a king who threw out the rule book on what a king looks like and acts like, who a king eats with, who a king talks to, and how a king claims victory over his enemies. 

The truth is that our king is unlike any other king known in history.  Our king is a king who broke all the human rules on what it means to be a king and came up with a list of new list of rules that for us can seem dissonant…and at times even unsettling.  A set of compassionate, loving rules, that set King Jesus apart from the rest of the rulers of his time or any time before or since. 

Our king is a king who shows us the truth about who we are and then shows us a way of living better with one another.  Our king is a king who could have very well come down from the cross and raised up an army to vanquish his enemies for his own fame and power…but instead he chose a different path, gave up his power, and laid down his life so that both his enemies and his followers could know the mercy that is found in Jesus’ kingdom.

In the face of an Empire, who lived by the rule of retaliation and vengeance, Jesus proclaimed mercy, even in a moment where he was shown none.  Jesus could have called down a curse on those who put him on the cross, but instead of crying out in anger, Jesus cried out in mercy, asking forgiveness upon those who crucified him.

And if that wasn’t enough, in the midst of his suffering, Jesus is asked by one of the criminals to remember him in the kingdom.  Jesus could very well have ignored this plea in the midst of his agony.  But instead he promised the criminal a place with him in paradise, where there is freedom from the pain they were enduring in that moment, where there is forgiveness and mercy abundant. 

Jesus could have saved himself.  Jesus could have done what the people yelled at him to do and come down from the cross and proven to them that indeed he was the Messiah.  An earthly king might shout in pain and try to list reasons he didn’t deserve to be up there.  But Jesus doesn’t do that, instead he says “Father, forgive them.”  Instead of coming down from the cross, Jesus died on that cross.  Jesus died an innocent man between two criminals who, according to one of them were “getting what they deserved for their deeds” (Lk 23:41).  And through Jesus’ blood that was spilt on the cross that day, God made peace with humanity, says the writer of Colossians.  Through Jesus’ death and resurrection we have been rescued from darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Col 1).  And in that kingdom, we have been placed under the rule of the one that Jeremiah spoke of as the righteous branch that was raised up for David, who reigns as king and deals wisely and executes justice and righteousness (Jer. 23).  For every time that we speak the words of our confession, we are taking the place of the second criminal who pleads “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And Jesus responds “truly I tell you, you will be with me in paradise.”  Jesus could have saved himself and come down from that cross, but instead he gave up his own life so that we might be saved and so that we might be with him in paradise.

Our king is not the traditional king.  He didn’t follow the rules about what kings look like or how kings act, but he wrote new rules. Rules of mercy and forgiveness and a promise of paradise.  

Doomsday Preppers - a Sermon for Pentecost 26

November 17, 2013

Luke 21:5-19

Have you ever seen the show on the Nat Geo Channel entitled Doomsday Preppers?  It’s a show about families who spend much of their time preparing for various end of the world scenarios.  They have multiple years worth of food and water stored up, weapons caches, hidden escape layers, and routinely practice escape drills.  At the end of each episode, their efforts are evaluated by professional preppers to see how long they would last given their current preparations.  Also, the events that they are preparing for are evaluated to see the possibility of them actually happening…most of which are pretty small odds.  The idea behind prepping isn’t unreasonable.  Being able to provide and care for the basic necessities for your family in the event of an unexpected emergency is not a bad thing.  Dave Ramsey teaches financial preparedness is his financial peace university courses, the fire departments tell us to have family escape plans in place in the event of a fire, one of the mottos of the girl and boy scouts is “be prepared.”

I remember in the rush up to the year 2000 when it was thought that computers would not be able to handle the turnover from 1999 to 2000 and would come crashing down.  My mom went out a couple weeks before New Years and bought some extra canned goods and some bottle water, just in case.  We even stayed home for New Years instead of going to my grandparents cottage in Evart, just in case.  Our preparations were modest in comparison to what we saw on the news with folks buying out cases upon cases of food and water, filling up multiple propane tanks and generators in case the power went out.  And, as we all know, Midnight struck and the only thing that happened is that we wound up with extra canned beans and bottled water.   

Far too often, it seems that our motivations to prepare for the unexpected come from fear.  Fear that something absolutely terrible is going to happen.  Fear that more wars are going to break out, fear that someday, someone…in a fit of rage or insanity…really is going to push the big red button and unleash nuclear war upon the world.  Fear that storms like super storm Sandy and Typhoon Haiyan are going to become more common unleashing absolute destruction. 

We find ourselves spending sleepless hours during the night wondering - What if the cancer comes back?  What if our savings runs out before my spouse secures another job? What if I outlive my retirement savings?  What if the economy tanks again and my pension disappears? 

Then what will we do? 

Our world has become a place that is in a constant state of anxiety over one thing or another.

But then we hear from Jesus, who tells us that we are not to fear.  And what’s more, he tells us to not even worry about being prepared.

When we meet up with Jesus this morning, he is still in the temple, where he has been since he entered into Jerusalem back in Chapter 19.  After knocking around the merchants in the temple square and turning over their tables, Jesus has occupied his time in the temple teaching.  Now the temple was a beautiful place.  Herod had used up an abundance of financial resources in order to adorn the temple and make it an architectural wonder.  Openly, the building and beautifying of the temple had been done for the glory of God…but secretly it was also for Herod’s own glory as part of his motivation was to out shine the temples of his pagan rivals in the area.  Never the less, however, it was quite the beautiful place and you can’t blame the folks who were with Jesus for marveling at the stones and other items that adorned the temple. 

Instead of agreeing and saying “yeah, this is pretty cool,” which one might expect since one of the focuses of the Gospel of Luke is on the temple, Jesus predicts the temples destruction…something that those around him may not have expected.  He then goes on to speak of wars and insurrections, natural disasters, arrests and betrayals.  Capping it all with “do not be afraid”…which, if we’re honest, is easier said than done when you’re in the midst of it all.  The world comes crashing down around you and fear is natural reaction…the fight or flight response embedded in our brains kicks in.  We have to do something, we have to be in control, we have to make sure that this is all going to work out somehow…how can you tell me not to be afraid, Jesus?  Because, frankly, I am. 

And frankly, the people who were the first to read Luke’s gospel were afraid, too.  When Luke wrote his Gospel, Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple and of arrests and betrayals and deaths and everything else wasn’t actually a prediction…it was a reality for those early Christians.  About fifteen to twenty years before Luke wrote his gospel, Jerusalem had been attacked and destroyed by Rome…and along with the destruction of the city came the destruction of the temple.  In addition to this, the early Christians, whom Luke was writing the Gospel for, were being persecuted at the hand of the Roman government and the synagogues.  So when Luke’s Jesus speaks about these things, they’re not predictions of things to come, but a reflection on things that had already happened to Luke’s audience…things that caused great fear and inspired folks to come out of the woodwork claiming they knew when the end was coming. 

But the instructions Jesus has for the people around him in the temple are to not be afraid and to not worry about being prepared.  And while that may seem like something outlandish, it really does make sense. 

We can have years worth of food stockpiled in cellars, enough generators to light a city, and a list of alternative escape routes to our secret lairs but in the end, there’s always the possibility that the food is going to spoil, the gas to run the generators could go bad or run out, and the disaster we’ve spent so much time preparing for could very well block even the best laid escape route to the fallout shelter.  Living our lives preparing for the worst doesn’t lead to much of a life. 

Instead we are invited to place our trust in Christ, to look for Christ in every person and every circumstance, and we are invited to not fear because…even in the most unexpected circumstances, Christ is going to give us what we need to get through it.  And that is the best form of preparation.  When we place our trust in Christ, we can resist the words of those who claim to know when the end is coming, We are more able to see God at work in the midst of even the most dire situations, we can live more faithfully using the testimony of scripture to give us the vocabulary to testify to our faith, and we can be assured that our God is never going to abandon or forsake us. 

Sometimes a little preparation is good. It can give us peace of mind that we are going to be ready for unexpected circumstances.  But when our minds get caught up in the fear and anxiety that the world throws at us, it can be easy to become so fixated upon preparations that we forget to live.  Christ is offering us an alternative, one in which we are freed from the fear and anxiety to live fully into the future that God has in store for us.  

Marriage and the Resurrection - A sermon for Pentecost 25

I didn't actually preach this sermon.  I was so unhappy with it that I went off manuscript and preached what was in my heart.  Which followed a *similar* slant to what is printed below, but on the whole was very different.  

Pentecost 25

November 10, 2013

Luke 20:27-38

Sixty years ago today, my dad’s parents were married.  In their wedding ceremony, they exchanged vows and in those vows was a promise to be faithful until death parts them.  Yesterday, we gathered in Kalamazoo to celebrate their faithfulness to each other and God’s faithfulness to them over the past sixty years.   Notice, that wedding vows are not for eternity, but only until death parts the two making the vows.  It is beyond our knowing what relationships will look like in the age to come, if they will be the same or if they will look different.  As those who preside over weddings, we can only speak of what we know and all we know is of for sure is of this world and this life.  We can only imagine what it to come in the next life. And this makes our gospel text for this morning a little tricky.

Part of the difficulty with this text is that there are some things that you need to know when diving in.  These are mostly cultural aspects that make things a lot clearer, and less weird, than they are if you take them in our current cultural context. 

The first has to do with the Sadducees. The Sadducees are a group of religious leaders that we don’t hear very much about in the Gospels.  They were at odds with the Pharisees because of two distinct differences in beliefs.  The first is that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. For them, this life is all there is.   The Pharisees, on the other hand, were believers in the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead at the coming of the Messiah.   The other distinct difference between the two groups was that the Sadducees believed that the sole source of divine authority came from the Torah, the first five books of Hebrew Scriptures, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  The Pharisees believed that divine authority could also be found in the other parts of Hebrew Scripture.  It is this second difference of opinion that caused the first difference in opinion.

So there is one area of information that helps us read this text. 

The other piece of information that is helpful in reading this text is in knowing what Levirate Marriage was.  If we were to read this text in our own cultural context, one might think that the Sadducees were referring to a very mixed up family…but the reality of Jesus’ time, and the time before Jesus, is that inheritance laws were so important that if a married man died childless, it was his younger brothers duty to marry the widow and raise up children with her for his brother so that land could continue to pass down through the first man’s line.  This was one of the laws of Moses. 

This law was created with the original intention to do two things.  One, to protect the inheritance rights of the family, and two, to protect the widow from being looked down upon for being childless at the death of her husband.  To be a childless woman in that time was considered to be cursed according to the cultural standards. However, this law from Moses, as well intentioned as it may have been at the time, reveals to a modern day reader the belief held during that time that women were property, first of their fathers, and then of their husbands.

So, to recap…Sadducees and Pharisees didn’t get along and it was not unusual for a woman to be married off to her husband’s younger brother if her husband died childless, per the laws of Moses.

This brings us back to our gospel text for this morning.

When the Sadducees approach Jesus, then, they are bringing to him a very extreme case of this levirate marriage.  They were coming to Jesus not because they cared about the wording of the marriage vows, but because they were part of the group of folks that were seeking out a reason to get rid of Jesus.  So they try to trick him with this story - A woman was married to a man and, at the time of the man’s death, the couple had no children, so she was married to the oldest of the man’s six younger brothers.  The woman wound up being married off to all seven brothers after each of brother died childless.  The woman then dies…which begs the question…Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?  Which is really to ask whose property will she be?

When the Sadducees bring this question to Jesus they, who do not believe in the resurrection, are assuming that Jesus and the Pharisees believe that life in the resurrection will be just a continuation of life here and now.  They are also assuming that this barren woman’s place in the resurrection is dependent on one of the brothers…they’re just not sure which one because at one time she was the property of each of them. 

But instead of playing into their hands, Jesus turns the story on its head and reveals to them that the resurrection life if not like life as we know it now.  It’s better.  In this life woman are married off and treated as property.  In the resurrection, the institution of marriage where in a woman is treated as property is not necessary…in fact the ownership of any human being as property is unnecessary because the age of the resurrection is not just a rehashing of the past but a new and different…and better age.  

There is no death in the age of the resurrection.  There is restoration to wholeness and the original intention of God’s good creation, one in which sin does not exist.  One in which everyone is on an equal footing as children of God and there are no victims because God’s ultimate justice is done. In the story Luke tells, this means that in the resurrection, the barren woman has just as much value as the seven brothers she was married off to, even though in this life she was considered to be worthless because of her incapacity to have children.  And while we live in an age where, for the most part, women are not seen as property of their husbands, the ownership of women and men in other forms of property holding still hold people captive.  In the age of the resurrection, God’s justice will be done for them, though in this age we are called to strive for the day when no one will be considered a commodity to be traded, bought or sold.

God made a promise to be our God for all eternity and our God is a God who keeps his promises. When Jesus responded to the inquiry of the Sadducees, he revealed a God of the living, not a God of the dead.  So if God makes good on God’s promises, God will make good on God’s promise to be our God in this life and in the life to come.

The Sadducees did not get the answer they were looking for.  But they didn’t bother Jesus again.  Soon they would see the manifestation of what Jesus spoke about.  Soon he would be put to death by the Romans, only to rise from the dead three days later.  Death would not win this battle, and a resurrected Christ would be revealed for them to see and touch.   For Luke and his audience…the forces of Rome which put Jesus to death and later viciously persecuted the early Christians and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem did not have the last word, Luke was confident that God and God’s good creation does. And we who sit here this morning, we who are children of God, joined to Christ’s death in our baptism, hear the same promise…that our God, a God of the living, will be our God in both this life and in the next.  And though we do not know exactly what the age of the resurrection will look like, but we do know this…it is not merely a continuation of this life, but something better…an age where death will cease to exist, an age where all people are free and loved equally, an age where there are no victims, an age where we are all united under God’s totally and unfailing love.   

Blessed are you...Woe to you - A sermon for All Saints

November 3, 2013

Luke 6:20-31

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.  Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.  

This past Friday, five billion dollars in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, took effect.  This means that 47 million Americans, children, and seniors, will have less access to healthy foods as their assistance will drop from $167 per person per month to $158 per person per month.  And more talks are coming in Washington over how to make further cuts to this program, which has provided a lifeline to the working poor, veterans and the disabled, especially in the years following the beginning of the recession in 2008.  All this while it has been publicized that these same Washington politicians are eating extravagant meals during their diplomatic travels.    

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

A couple months ago, McDonalds presented their employees with a sample budget to help them to gain control of their finances while working for McDonalds.  It factored in that their full time employees who earned the minimum wage would have to work a second full time job in order to make ends meet.  They also have resources in place to make sure that these employees have help applying for food stamps, which, according to this sample budget, they would need in order to purchase groceries. While trying to be helpful to their employees, McDonald’s pointed out to the world that the minimum wage is not a living wage, even if you work full time.  Oh, and by the way, while the majority of McDonalds employees make just more than $12,000 a year, the CEO just received a pay raise this year to over $13 million a year in salary.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you and defame you on account of the son of man.  Woe to you when all speak well of you.

My friend Kirsten is a pastor in Cairo, Egypt.  She was asked by the ELCA to delay her arrival there in August because of the violence there…violence that resulted in the burning of several Coptic Christian churches and at least one orphanage.  Kirsten’s congregation has cancelled and changed worship service times to stand in solidarity with the Coptic Christians, who are in danger because of their faith.  And in this country, where folks claim there is a war on Christianity, we worship freely where we want and when we want without threat of harm or death. 

Are you uncomfortable yet?  I know I am.

As a person who has been blessed to never know poverty, who has never wondered where my next meal is coming from, who has more stuff than I need, who qualifies as rich in the eyes of a good majority of the world, and who is free to lead worship just about wherever I please and whenever I please without fear of being arrested or persecuted for it, Jesus’ words sting.  And I wish that this morning that we were hearing Matthew’s Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount instead of Luke’s Jesus in the sermon on the plain. 

Blessed are the poor in spirit…blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness sake…I can get behind that.  I have had my share of faith crises…I have written politicians pleading that they not make cuts to programs that care for the poor and that feed children.  There are blessings abounding in the Sermon on the Mount.

But the sermon on the plain doesn’t carry those modifiers…Jesus cuts straight to the point.  Blessed are you who are poor…blessed are you who are hungry…blessed are you who weep…blessed are you who are hated and excluded on account of my name. And Jesus even throws some warnings in there in the woes…But woe to you who are rich…woe to you who are full…woe to you who laugh…woe to you when people speak well of you. 

If you weren’t uncomfortable before, are you now?

To be told that the poor in spirit are blessed, as are the peacemakers, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness sake is one thing.

To be told that the poor and the hungry and those who weep and those who are persecuted for their faith are blessed all the while woe to the rich and the full and those who laugh and those who are spoken well of is quite another…and it’s harder to digest.

But let us look at it from another angle.  According to Genesis 1, at the end of each day of creation, God looked at what he created and saw that it was good…and when he completed creation at the end of the 6^th day and was preparing to rest, God looked at all that he created and saw that it was very good.  Meaning that God’s intention was that anyone could look at the world around them and to agree with God that it was very good.  God did not create poverty, sin did.  God did not create people to be hungry, sin did that.  God did not create us to withhold things from one another and to ignore the suffering of our brothers and sisters so that we could get rich, sin did that. 

And God saw what sin had done to our world, how it had hijacked the good creation that he had made and he knew something needed to be done about it.  So, God chose to slip into skin and become a part of the human experience by giving up all luxury and fame and wealth and instead living the life of a poor, homeless peasant.  And as he lived among the poor, he challenged all of us to a better way of living, a way of living in which we are transformed into people who turn away from sin and instead seek the wellbeing of our neighbors so that all people can look at the creation around them and say “yeah, this is good.”  And as uncomfortable as it can make us to hear the blessings and the woes, this is the challenge that Jesus continues to give us…to seek ways of living among one another so that one day the number of children that go hungry in this world will be 0, so that one day the percentage of workers earning a living wage is 100. 

Jesus didn’t come into this world to just be and he wasn’t content to leave things the way they are, instead he sought transformation and justice and he died because he challenged the status quo and made the religious and political leaders around him a little too uncomfortable because they were happy with the way things were and they didn’t want some peasant from the boonies coming into Jerusalem and pointing out the ways that they were abusing the power given to them. 

And so, while it may seem like this is a pretty out there text for the Sunday in which we celebrate the lives of All the Saints, I think it’s pretty appropriate.  Jesus called us to live in community together, a community in which the abundance of God’s creation is enough to meet everyone’s basic needs.  And though we may fall short in this expectation from time to time, we are encouraged to keep on striving for the greater good by the knowledge that in our baptism we were joined to Christ in his death and even though we are sometimes confronted by our short comings, we are comforted by the knowledge that, because of our faith, Jesus wants to bless us anyways so that we will be strengthened to out and follow in the footsteps of our brothers and sisters in the faith who have gone before us and shown us what it means to live as faithful followers of Christ, seeking justice and peace in all the world and spreading the news of God’s love. 

Wrestling - A Sermon for Pentecost 22

Genesis 32:22-31

The last time Jacob and Esau saw each other, it was after Jacob had lived up to his name.  In Hebrew, one of the meanings of the name Jacob is “the one who deceives” and Jacob, with the help of Rebekah, had done just that.  Rebekah had dressed Jacob in a manner similar to his brother and prepared a meal for Jacob to take to Isaac.  In doing so, they tricked their father, who was blind, into giving Jacob Esau’s blessing.  It was a blessing that was supposed to have been given to the first born.  And this was after Jacob had talked Esau into selling his birthright to Jacob after Esau came in from the fields starving one day.   One bowl of stew for a birthright just doesn’t seem right.  And it wasn’t.  But for Jacob to then plot with their mother to steal Esau’s blessing was the last straw in the brotherly relationship.  Esau was so furious at Jacob for what he had done that he plotted to kill him.  That was the last time Jacob and Esau saw one another.

But now, Jacob was preparing to meet Esau for the first time since that day.  Years had passed, and yet Jacob was still filled with the fear that Esau was going to kill him.  In order to appease his brother, Jacob sends ahead of him two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty female camels and their colts, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.  And yet, Jacob was still full of fear as to what would happen when he saw his brother for the first time since Esau threatened to kill Jacob.

This is the context in which our portion of scripture in Genesis comes from this morning.  The night before Jacob and Esau are to meet, Jacob sends everyone across the river Jabbok but remains on his own overnight. And there he wrestles with a man from God.  Perhaps the wrestling is tied to Jacob’s continued preoccupation with having stolen Esau’s blessing, for he refuses to let go of the man from God at daybreak until the man from God blesses him.  And this is the moment when Jacob changes from being “the one who deceives” to “the one who has striven with God and with humans, and has prevailed.”  From Jacob to Israel.  And though he walks away with a limp from having his hip put out of place, he also walks away from the wrestling match with the blessing that he sought. 

This text is one of my favorites in scripture.  This is partly because God and I tend to have wrestling matches on a regular basis.  When I was growing up, and even into the beginning of my senior year of college, I had this notion that I was going to go to medical school at Johns Hopkins and become a world class neurosurgeon.  I even turned down undergraduate acceptance to Johns Hopkins because they told me that they rarely accept one of their undergraduates into their medical school.  This was how confident I was in myself and the path I thought was laid out for me.  Then I was told by my biochemistry professor that I didn’t have the MCAT scores or the grades I needed to get into medical school, I was crushed.  My professor also, and kindly, gave me two options…to pursue a masters in biomedical sciences or to look for something else.  That something else, I would find out after a long chat with one of my religion professors, was seminary.

 At that moment, I was at the end of a faith crisis which was brought on by the sudden death of a childhood friend of mine two years ealier…I had spent a good amount of time wrestling with God about matters of faith and life and death, so why would he want me to go into the ministry when I was still trying to figure out what in the world it was that I even believed in the first place.  And in the wrestling, I was blessed.  Blessed beyond belief as I moved to Chicago to begin seminary, blessed beyond belief as I did my internship in Oklahoma, blessed beyond belief as I accepted my first call in Kansas, got married to Chris, had Eleanor, and the blessings just keep on coming…even though God and I still wrestle from time to time. 

But each and every time God and I have wrestled, I have come out on the other side with a blessing.  Sometimes it’s a new blessing, other times, it’s new eyes to see the blessings that I already have in my life. 

Wrestling with God is not a bad thing.  Wrestling with what it means to be a faithful person in a world that is full of illness and hatred and sin is not a bad thing.  Wrestling is just one way that faith can grow and we can be changed into more faithful people.  We wrestle as individuals to see what God’s plan is for us when a monkey wrench gets thrown into the plans that we had for ourselves.  We wrestle as a church to look for ways to heal and to grow together in times of difficulty and transition.  We wrestle as a nation to respectfully call out our leaders when the decisions that they make, or fail to make, have a negative impact on the people of this country, especially the poor, children and the elderly. 

Wrestling is a product of looking out into the world and the evil that is in it and looking for God in the midst of the destruction.  And sometimes it means we go into war with ourselves when we find ourselves faced with situations that cause us to be afraid, like when Jacob was preparing to face Esau. 

But in the wrestling, there is blessing.  In the times when we go to the mat with God, we will come out on the other side cleansed and blessed.  And though we may not come out of it with a limp like Jacob wound up with, we too are marked.  We are marked with the Cross of Christ, a mark that we were given at our baptisms, when we were washed clean and called by name as children of God. 

Though he was equal with God, Jesus also wrestled with God.  He wrestled with God in the garden as he prayed that this cup would be taken from him…He wrestled with God on the cross as he cried out “my God, my God, why have you abandoned me.”  And through his wrestling with God, we are all blessed.  Blessed to be called children of God, blessed to bear the mark of the cross on our foreheads, as a sign of the promise that we will have a share in the blessings that Christ himself will receive. 

The other reason that this story is my favorite comes a few verses after our text for this morning.  After the wrestling match with the man from God, Jacob crosses the river to join his family.  And upon seeing Esau, he slowly approaches, bowing seven times as he does so.  But Esau runs to his brother, embraces him, kisses him, and the brothers weep together.  They are reconciled.

In the wrestling, there is blessing…there is mercy…and there is forgiveness.