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.    

Wisdom from friends

Last week, my friend Tim wrote this post on his blog. He is a wise man, my friend, Tim. 

And that afternoon I took his advice.  I went home. 

It was the best thing I did all last week.

You see, a week before Eleanor was born, Chris got a new job.  It is a much better position than his old job and we were very excited for this next step in his career.  But in the weeks since he started his new job, 14 weeks to be exact (he started when Eleanor was 2 weeks old), we've never had more than two evenings in a row as a family. And getting two in a row is a big treat. He either works late or I work late and, as they say, ne'er the twain shall meet.

But last week we hit the jackpot, I had no evening meetings or events and he was either off work by 6 or had a day off FOUR DAYS IN A ROW!  So last Wednesday and Thursday, seeing my schedule was open and there was nothing pressing on my to do list, I went home early.  I got to play with Eleanor, we took Eleanor across the street to the play ground and discovered that she loves to swing on the swings, we got to both do bath and book time with Eleanor (this is usually the task of one of us when the other is either still at work or busy making dinner), and Chris and I got some us time to just sit and chat and do what we love to do, play Civilization V on the computer (yes, we're nerds like that).  Everything that I needed to get done for church got done, and it got done better than it would have had I let myself be a slave to the clock because I was refreshed by the smiles and laughter of my child, the conversation and the relaxation with my husband.

It's so easy to get caught up with work and busyness that we forget to make time for the important things, like having four evenings in a row to have quality time with family and friends.  And that's big for me right now.  Eleanor rolled over for the first time yesterday, and I was in the next room when it happened (worry not, she was in a safe place).  The second time she rolled over, Chris got to see her in action.  And she did it again today, and again I wasn't there for it.  I know I'll get to see it happen in the next couple days, but there will be LOTS of other milestones in the coming weeks, months and years that I want to be there for, but I won't be there for if I keep obsessing over how many hours I'm in the church office each week. 

Going home early last week was the best thing I've done in a while. I think I'll do it again. And you should do it, too! Don't fall prey to the busyness monster, get what needs to be done, done...do it well, and but don't forget to enjoy your life, your family, and your friends.

Mary, Martha and the Mommy Wars - A sermon

Pentecost 9c

Luke 10:38-42

I’m convinced that there had to have been more substantive conversation than the brief tantrum that Martha threw at her home that day.  There just had to be something of more importance taking place than this little spat between sisters.  So why is this the focus of the visit to Mary and Martha’s home?  Did the gospel writer of Matthew get just as much of a kick out of disputes between women as our current world seems to? 

I just don’t get it.  Women don’t need something else driving a wedge between us.  We already have enough things to drive us apart and cause us to have issues with one another.  Take the mommy wars.  It’s a troubling thing that takes place between Breastfeeding moms vs. formula moms…cloth diaper moms vs. disposable diaper moms…co-sleeping moms vs. non-co-sleeping moms…vaccinating moms vs. non-vaccinating moms…stay at home moms vs. working moms. We pile guilt and aggression on one another instead of just making a decision for what’s best for us and our families and leaving everyone else alone so they can do the same thing. 

We don’t need another topic to quarrel over.  Who are the Martha’s? Who are the Mary’s?  Don’t be like Martha, Sally…be like Mary…Mary got it right.

There have been many sermons preached on the virtues of the Mary’s and, to some extent, shaming the Martha’s.  But, before we go off and divide ourselves into the Marys and the Marthas, praise the Marys and guilt trip the Marthas…which is probably not a helpful thing to do right before we send a group of young women off to Oklahoma for a mission trip…is this even what this Gospel text is even about?

I mean, think about it.  It’s such a short interaction, we assume a lot when we think that Jesus is shaming Martha for being the host instead of the one sitting at his feet and listening.  Jesus never says that Martha was doing anything wrong.  In fact, she was doing what she was supposed to have been doing. She was providing hospitality for her guests.  And many guests there were that day…at least Jesus and the twelve.  And even if she knew ahead of time that there would be at least thirteen men coming to visit her home, that is still a lot of people to host a dinner party for.  And I’m pretty sure that if any one of us were running around trying to prepare a dinner for thirteen guests while the other members of your family just sat around, we might be tempted to get a little testy, too. 

So I don’t think that Jesus is telling us that being a gracious host is a bad thing.  Being someone who works behind the scenes and busily scurries around to make sure everything is in place for her guests isn’t the wrong thing to do.  Martha’s spirit is filled with hospitality and that is a good thing. It was a necessary thing. If it wasn’t for Martha, who was going to cook the meal? Who was going to set the table?  Who was going to provide for the guests? Maybe Mary wasn’t a very good cook, so for Martha to step in and take care of the food arrangements we better for everyone.

But here’s where Martha went wrong…it is the same place where many of today’s dinner party hosts also go wrong.  Martha provided great hospitality for her guests by welcoming them into her home and providing a meal for them, but she missed out on one very important area of hospitality… she wasn’t present with them.  Luke tells us more than once that she was worried and distracted…maybe the lamb had not turned out quite the way she hoped it would, or she was worried that she didn’t make enough hummus for this many hungry men.  What ever it was, Martha was not present with her guests, her mind was elsewhere.  To put it in another way, Martha may have been physically in the living room, but she was really in the kitchen.  Mary, on the other hand, while not being helpful at all to her sister, was totally present with Jesus and the twelve. 

Now, before we go any further, I wanted to stop a minute and say:

Hi Men! I bet that few of you have ever said in your life, ‘gosh, that was such a Martha thing to do’ ‘Let’s go out there and be like Mary today.’  Ok, maybe some of you have …who am I to say what does or does not motivate you…I’ve just never heard a male use this terminology.  But it is probably pretty accurate to think that men have a harder time identifying with this story than women.  That’s completely understandable…but the moral of the story applies to men as well as women. 

Have you ever been in a situation where you’re trying to do more than one thing at once but you get to the end and either a detail was left out or you can’t remember what the person you were talking to on the phone while you were trying to return an email was saying? 

That’s one level of what this story is about…being attentive to our everyday tasks, regardless of how menial they may be. And in this modern day culture where we have our ipads and smartphones and computers beeping at us at the same time, worth is often measured by how busy we are, and multitasking is praised because we can get more done in less time, I think that at some point, unless we are completely intentional about it, we can all develop a deficit in our attention.  But we are called to be attentive to what our tasks are from day to day.  Whether it is something as simple as doing the laundry or the dishes, or something as important as having a conversation with a guest in your home, our presence with them is important. 

When you are in Oklahoma this coming week, ladies, you are being called to be attentive to the children you play with in kids club, the work projects you participate in, the new friends you are going to make, and the community around you at Osage Reservation.  It will be a busy week with lots to do and lots of exhaustion, but the more present you are, the more people will see God working through you. 

The other item of importance in this story, beyond being attentive to our tasks and the people around us, is being attentive to God’s presence around us.  Mary and Martha welcomed the Son of God into their home, but Martha’s worries and distractions prevented her from taking in the presence of a Jesus who is on his way to the cross…a Jesus who demands that we turn away from the distractions and worries of life and focus on his mission to go to Jerusalem and give his life so that we might have life. 

If Martha hadn’t missed that one, most important, aspect of hospitality…being present with your guests…Martha would have found the joy and rest of sitting at the feet of Jesus and hearing about the coming of the kingdom of God.

There’s no need to start another female competition using the story of Mary and Martha, no need to convince ourselves that we have to be more like Mary and less like Martha, for the opposite of distracted and worried Martha isn’t Mary…the opposite of distracted and worried Martha is a centered and present Martha…and that makes all the difference. Be Present, my friends, Amen.

Letting Go of Control - A sermon

Pentecost 6

Luke 9:51-62

If you were put on trial for being Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

This question has been on my mind a lot since I first read it this past week.  It’s a question that hits you square in the chest and forces you to stop and examine your life asking further, “am I living a life that shows others that I am a Christian? Or if folks knew me, would they question my claim to follow Christ?”  And I’ll admit to you that my biggest hurdle in living the Christian life is my desire for control.  As much as I have gotten better at rolling with the punches in the past decade, there’s still part of me that likes to have things planned well in advance and for predictability to be the name of the game.  And I know that I’m not the only one…I’m sure that at one time or another we’ve all found it easier to have a sense of control, especially when the chaos of life hits and spins us in an entirely opposite direction than which we were heading in the first place.

This desire for control is one of the themes that can be found in our Gospel text this morning.  We join Jesus at the very end of Chapter nine of Luke.  At the beginning of Chapter nine, Jesus had sent out the twelve disciples and given them the power to heal the sick and cast out demons.  A little bit after this he went up to the mountain with Peter, James, and John, and was transfigured before them and in the presence of Moses and Elijah.  And now, after having come down from the mountain and speaking about his death for the second time, Jesus has set his face towards Jerusalem.  This means that Jesus is on a mission, a mission to go to Jerusalem and to accomplish what God had sent him to do…and nothing will stop him. 

But he’s got to travel through some towns if he’s going to get there and the first place he stops is a Samaritan town.  And we’re told by Luke that they did not receive him because his face was set towards Jerusalem.  So it seems that the Samaritans know what’s up…that Jesus is on a mission…and, maybe, they want absolutely nothing to do with that mission.  Or maybe, they realize that Jesus is singlemindedly carrying out the mission and won’t have the time to preach or teach or heal or cast out like they would like him to so they just let him pass on through.  Luke doesn’t flat out say they reject him, but it seems like that is the case.  Jesus won’t play according to our plans, so why bother?

And that’s when the disciples come into play. James and John and the rest of the twelve are also aware that Jesus is on a mission and it is their task to help get him to Jerusalem in a timely manner so that Jesus can accomplish what he was sent to do.  But their reaction to the Samaritans not receiving Jesus is shocking…‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ It’s not totally surprising considering the relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans, but still, not something you expect to hear from Jesus’ inner circle after he has preached about loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you.  But again, they had a mission to help Jesus accomplish his mission and you could forget anyone who tried to get in their way. 

But what about the folks who either are asked to follow Jesus or ask Jesus if they can follow?  There’s certainly a “please can I follow, but on my own terms” kind of theme running through this part of the story.  Please let me follow…but after I bury my dad, and it could be years before that happens because we have no idea what state of health his dad is in.  Yes, Lord, I will follow…but after I go and say goodbye to my wife and kids…and my parents…and my siblings…and my in-laws…and my cousins…and give instructions to my servants as to how to continue to run the household…let me take care of what I have planned first, and then I will come and follow.

To be fair, both men make reasonable requests…and it might seem pretty harsh that Jesus responded in the way that he did “let the dead bury their own dead”  “no one who takes to the plow and turns back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  Wow! 

But if you think about it, being the only one who truly understands the scope and ultimate purpose of his mission, Jesus is inviting folks to let go of the control…to realize that life doesn’t always go as planned and that being called to share in the mission of Jesus Christ often means that our hopes and dreams and plans and goals will sometimes be disappointed.  It means knowing that Jesus is going to call us into action at unexpected times and to go to unexpected places and, as disciples, we are expected to go and do, even if our plans don’t match, because the mission that Jesus is on is a mission that makes a difference…and if we’re not willing to let go of some control and let some of our plans be disappointed for the sake of the Gospel, do we really have what it takes to be full fledged disciples?

Professor David Lose from Luther Seminary puts it this way…”Does the grace, mercy, and love of God made incarnate in Jesus trump our plans and shape our lives, or do we shape our faith to fit the lives we’ve already planned?”

If we’re 100% honest, I think that there are times when we all fall into the second category.  Living a life that follows our own plans is comfortable…it’s convenient…it’s predictable.  We have a semblance of control when we follow our own plans.  But the life of a disciple isn’t comfortable, it is not always convenient and it’s not always predictable.  Being a disciple means that Jesus is going to demand that his mission come before our plans and that requires us to give up control.  Because it’s not about having control…control is just an illusion anyways, just ask the person battling cancer, the neighbor fighting addition, the friend who lost all their personal belongings in a tornado or a flood.  The truth is that none of us knows what tomorrow is going to bring…or even this afternoon…and even our best laid plans can go awry at any moment.  But it’s not about us having control…or even about letting God take control…it’s about a man who set his face towards Jerusalem and went to the cross, entering into our out of control and chaotic existence and coming out on the other side, bringing us, with him, into a place of peace. 

There’s a rabbi named David Paskin who wrote a song based on the greeting that is shared in the Jewish community when someone dies.  In English it’s translated “May the Place comfort you.”  In the youtube video of this song, he explains that he never understood why, in times of grief, people would refer to God as the Place.  But as he thought about it, he came to the conclusion that what was really being said is that in times where life is out of control and chaos filled, there is sometimes a space…an empty space and may you learn to live in that space and may it become a place of comfort and peace even though right now it’s a place that hurts.  In setting his face to Jerusalem, Jesus calls us to follow…and it’s a mission that demands we live into the reality that we are not into control, that life is full of chaos, and that Jesus’ mission trumps our plans.  But on the cross, Jesus dives head first into our out of control world and brings us out safe on the other side, and brings us peace.  May we all have the courage to live in to the chaos, to let our plans be upset by the mission of Christ, and find peace in his presence with us in the places that are out of control.  Amen

You Can’t Micromanage your way into Heaven - a sermon

Pentecost 4

June 16, 2013 

Galatians 2:15-21

There are a number of platitudes that said throughout this country that speak to the individualistic nature of our society…”if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself”…”you’ve got to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps”…”God helps those who help themselves”…I’ve probably shared this before, but when I was a little kid my own personal platitude of independence was that I wanted to do things “all my by self.”  Sometimes, platitudes like these can inspire folks to work harder, to push that extra mile on a project and strive towards a goal…but more often than not, they simply enslave us to the notion that we need to be able to accomplish certain number of tasks, in a certain way, in a certain time frame if we are going to be deemed successful…and we don’t it we can become enslaved to the accompanying guilt.  

And when it comes to our faith, these same platitudes can be just as dangerous tying us to the notion that if we have the right amount of faith, if we give the right amount of money, if we do just the right amount of good deeds, and ask just the right questions, we will be favored in the sight of God and we will be blessed not only with God’s favor, but also with eternal life.  And so when doubts arise, when faith crises hit, we can become enslaved to accompanying guilt.  When times hit when it isn’t possible to give as much as we’d like, or when we’re too tired at the end of the week to do anything but hit the sheets and catch up on some sleep, we can question if we have done enough and more guilt sets in.  It’s an awful cycle to get caught up in, feeling like you can’t ever do enough to be worthy of salvation.  

This is where Paul comes to our rescue.  

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul was writing to a group of churches full of folks who were living in a society where it was thought that there was an impersonal force controlling the world and so folks did what they could to try and escape whatever “destiny” had set up for them.  Living in an early Christian community, the question had arose among them whether or not they were obligated to follow the Laws of Moses.  The text itself has an frustrated tone to it, particularly if you hear it in the original Greek language, but you can pick up bits and pieces of that from the English, as well. “For if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.”  

But the message that Paul sends to the churches in Galatia is full of good news.  

Paul writes “Yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ.”

This one line sums up the whole premise.  Our relationship with God is not based upon how well we measure up against the Laws of Moses, how well we do the things we should do and how well we avoid the things that we shouldn’t do…for this is contrary to God’s promises from the beginning.  In the Old Testament we hear over and over again that God is a caring God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  

But notice that there is one word in the reading that we heard this morning that is different from what I just read. There is a debate among scholars whether the text should read “through faith in Jesus Christ” or “through the faith OF Jesus Christ.”   Both translations are correct, but if you look at this text as a whole, the translation “through the faith of Jesus Christ” is a better reading.  And this is not because our faith in Jesus Christ is trivial.  It’s not, it’s important. But when our salvation depends solely on our faith in Jesus Christ, questions arise.  

What happens when we hit low faith moments in our lives?

What happens when we the circumstances of our lives lead us in to faith crises where, if we are honest, we say in those moments that we don’t know if we believe or not?

Is it possible that we can turn faith, which is a gift from God, into a work?  

I think the answer is yes…because if it relies solely on us and the nature of faith is to ebb and to flow and to grow and be renewed…then we are lost…and as Paul says, if our salvation relies upon us and what we do…if we can achieve salvation on our own…then Christ died for nothing.     

But if, in fact, we are justified…made right in the eyes of the lord, through the faith of Jesus Christ, then Christ isn’t relegated to playing a passive role in our justification but rather he is that one taking the lead and playing a very active role in our salvation.   

In the explanation to the third article of the apostle’s creed, Martin Luther wrote “I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or call to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with her gifts, sanctified and kept me in the one true faith.”  

When it comes to being saved, there is no amount of to-do listing or micromanaging our own salvation.  Because we cannot do it of our own will.  By nature we are sinful beings and prone to straying, even if our faith is strong.  

Rather it is through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ who died on the cross and rose again, and the work of the Holy Spirit who calls us to the waters of baptism and, in that act, joins us to Christ in his death and resurrection, that makes us right in the eyes of God.  

It’s not about us…it’s about the faithfulness of Christ and thanks be to God for that.  

So does that mean that Christ’s work, through the Holy Spirit is a proverbial get out of good deeds free card?  

By no means.  It may not be by our good works that we are saved, but it is because of our faith in Jesus Christ that we respond to the knowledge that through the faith of Christ we are joined to him in his death and resurrection…and thorough our baptism it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us by committing good and loving deeds, deeds which serve God and serve our neighbor.  Our good works are not done in order to be saved but because we are already saved.

So the moral of the story is this…when it comes to our being made right in the eyes of God, it’s not about us…it’s not about what we do or fail to do…it’s not about climbing the proverbial ladder of success into heaven based on our works…it’s not about how much money we give to the church.  Rather, it IS about Jesus Christ, who was faithful to God to the point of death on a cross so that we could be made right in the eyes of God and joined to Christ in his death and resurrection in the waters of baptism.  So when we do good works, when we give, when we live lives according to the example of Jesus Christ, it’s not in order to secure our spot in heaven…instead it is in celebration of the gift that we were given through the faith of Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the Midst of Change, there is Life - A sermon for Pentecost 3

June 9, 2013

Luke 7:11-17

In January 1988, three Lutheran church bodies merged to form one united church body, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  In the past twenty five years, the ELCA has become the largest of the Lutheran church bodies in the nation and as we, as a church body, celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the ELCA, we do so under the banner “Always being made new.”  Things in the ELCA are not as they were 25 years ago.  They couldn’t be or the ELCA would have died long ago.  Instead, as a church body, we have allowed the Holy Spirit to work through the ELCA, which has left room for God’s creative chaos to do its thing…and, to paraphrase the Rev. Stephen Bouman, though the ELCA is a flawed church, it is an awesome church. 

This weekend, we got to see a part of the church in action as the central states synod assembly took place.  Representatives from the ELCA congregations in Kansas and Missouri gathered in Overland Park to take part in the business end of being church.  We spent time considering amendments to the synod’s bylaws and talking about budgets and funding for Lutheran Campus Ministry in the synod. We spent time in bible study led by the Rev. Dr. Barbara Rossing, a Revelation scholar who spoke from a biblical perspective about healing and salvation and creation care from the perspective of living in a place where God’s abundance rules.  And we discerned where God was leading us in the election of a bishop.  It took five ballots but yesterday afternoon, a new bishop was elected to lead the synod, the Rev. Roger Gustafson, who is currently serving as one of the pastors at Advent Lutheran church in Olathe, Kansas. 

As the results of the fifth ballot were read, it was a moment of pure emotion, excitement for Roger as bishop elect, sadness that Bishop Mansholt will no longer serve as bishop of the synod, knowledge that things in the synod are about to change as the transition from Bishop Mansholt’s tenure to Bishop elect Gustafson’s tenure occurs.  And we were reminded that in God we are always being made new. The church is always being made new. 

As we officially enter into the season of summer and move closer and closer towards August 1, we, my friends, are also entering into a time of change.  As we prepare to bid God’s blessings and Godspeed to Pastor Gary and move into a transition time with an interim senior pastor, we do so as a people who need to be open to where God and the Holy Spirit are leading us.  And as we move into that time, we have some work to do….the work of examining ourselves and asking the question “who are we as the people of God at Trinity Lutheran church?” and to look at where God has brought us and where God is calling us to now and in the future.  If we do this hard work intentionally, we may find some answers that we do not like…for instance, if we are going to continue to meet the needs of our ministries in this place, in the community and in the world, we need to reconsider what good stewardship is all about and allow ourselves to be challenged by what God is saying to us through our neighbors and through our study of scripture.

Change is hard, transition is hard, the work of examining ourselves closely to discern who God has made us and where God is leading us is not without pain and grief as we face the reality that things are not going to be the way they used to be and things might not turn out just the way that we would like them too.  Times of transition may feel almost as if a death is taking place as we say goodbye to one era in the life of a congregation or a synod and enter into a new era.  

And in our time of mourning, we look to Jesus for the answer to the question of “what next?” “where do we go from here?”

It’s in these moments that Jesus meets us in the same spot that he met the widow of Nain.  Now, to be sure, when we face situations of change, they are not literal death situations…but they do involve grief and, often times, some emotional pain.  When Stephen ministers are taught their lesson on grief, they are taught that even happy changes, like marriage or graduations, can be times of grief because it can feel like an old self has died.  The old ways of doing things can no longer continue.  Life as we know it is over…it’s time for new life.

For the widow that Jesus met in Nain, life as she knew it was over.  As a widow, she had to rely on her son to provide for her both a means of staying alive and status in the community.  In the death of her son, she didn’t just lose a child…the widow also lost any social standing and any means of providing for her needs.  And though a large crowd of folks from the town accompanied her as she journeyed outside the walls of the city to bury her son, I’m sure she was asking herself “what do I do now?” “what is going to become of me?”

And it is at the point of transition from inside the town to outside of town that she meets Jesus and the large crowd following him.  At the gate, Jesus sees the widow and he has compassion on her, he joins her in her pain, and in bringing her son back to life Jesus not only gives the widows child back to her, she also gives her back her own life. 

Jesus is funny like that, bringing life in places where death is thought to linger…bringing light to places where it is believed that darkness prevails.  And it is because of Jesus’ compassion.  As Jesus traveled and ministered, he did so with a heart full of compassion. Compassion for the lost, compassion for the hungry, the sick, and the dying.  The word compassion means to suffer with, and that’s what Jesus did in his life and his ministry…he suffered with the poor, the outcast, those in mourning and whose lives were in transition.  And even on the cross, Jesus had compassion for the criminal next to him when Jesus promised that on that day, the criminal would be with him in paradise. 

A man full of compassion, living a life as a representative of a God full of compassion…a God who works to make all things new but who understands that in order for things to be made new, change has to happen and when change happens it is often accompanied by grief and pain, and when the grief and mourning accompany the change, God heart is there with us in the transition points to guide us out of grief and into a new day and a new life.

Yesterday a new bishop was elected for the synod…the same thing could happen at the church wide level in August as Bishop Hanson may be up for re-election…as Bishop Mansholt said in his speech before the 4^th ballot of the bishops election, these are times of change.  And here at home, we will bid farewell to Pastor Gary and send him off to the next chapter in his life at the end of July and we ourselves will enter into a time of change.  But we do not go into this time alone. Instead we are accompanied by a God who meets us in those moments of transition, full of compassion, who bids us not to weep and who shows us just how much life there is to be found. Amen