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SERMONS,
January-February, 2003
Click on the sermon you wish to read.
Sermons may be printed using the Adobe Acrobat version of the sermon. Click on the "printable format" link. If you do not have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer, click on the icon above and follow the simple directions to download it free from the Adobe web site. The Sixth Sunday
after Epiphany 2 Kings 5:1–14 Click here for printable .pdf format Newspapers, TV, and radio last night and this morning reported of anti-war rallies across the globe, from Australia to Europe, in Italy, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Russia. The protest march held in Rome was estimated to be the largest in history, with well over a million demonstrators. One reporter in Rome commented that in Italy one can tell peoples' political persuasion by the newspapers they carry; this reporter observed that great numbers of the Italian protesters carried some of the nation's most conservative dailies. Reporting from the Unites States, another newsperson stated that increasing numbers of people in the United States are registering their anger at Europeans who protest impending war with Iraq. The reporter observed that European countries, unlike the United States, witnessed on their own soil in one century the greatest carnage ever known to humankind. Nor were those in the Unites States who are against a war in Iraq quiet yesterday. Protests rallies were staged in major cities all across the country. The anti-war gathering in Colorado Springs yesterday was one that resulted in confrontation between those protesting war and those supporting the government's position. Tear gas grenades were launched and demonstrators were arrested. This afternoon, a block from here, on the State Capitol steps, protestors will gather to protest those who protest against war in the Middle East. And the United States has not yet declared war on Iraq, the war of conscience has already begun. Already, people are choosing up sides throughout this land and throughout the world; those who protest war and those who support a U.S. invasion of Iraq are standing toe to toe and people of good will are divided one against the other. To the consternation
of some of you, I have resisted saying anything from the pulpit about
an impending war with Iraq. Others of you will doubtless harbor some
resentment that I do so today. This is exactly what I have dreaded,
and it is why I have remained silent. It's not that I feel the need
to please everyone – I gave up on that years ago. As I understand the Lutheran tradition and my office, I am certainly free to present my own reasoned position on impending war against Iraq; some of you know what that position is. I am not free, however, to stand in this pulpit and tell you what your own position must be; I am not free to bind your conscience. I must, however, reiterate the church's ancient, traditional teaching: war is always, always an evil. There are no exceptions. However, upon this shadowed planet, where we are all in bondage to sin, our choices are frequently not between an absolute good and an absolute evil. On this side of eternity, our tragic choice is often that of needing to discern the lesser of evils and acting upon that lesser evil. There have been, arguably, times in our human history when war has been the less evil course of action. The Second World War was hideously evil, but to stand by and do nothing in the face of the evils being perpetrated by Hitler would have been more evil still. Indeed, there are those who argue that the early reluctance of the United States and Great Britain to take up arms against Hitler was itself more evil than to go to war. It is beyond doubt too that the majority of Christians in Germany who supported the authority of the state entered into an evil far greater than the evil of resisting their own government. What's more, the established Church failed utterly when it bound people's consciences by teaching that Christians must not under any circumstance disobey the ruling authorities. And so on the eve of war – please God may it not come to pass – I cannot tell you what your position must be – I cannot bind your consciences. Nor may any of you bind one another's conscience. Together we must all confess that all war is evil; beyond that, it is left to each of us to act out of our own informed conscience – and none of us is to judge the Christian sister or brother who in good faith takes a stance different than our own. On the eve of war – please God may it not come to pass –there are things I can and must say, namely: None of us comes to the altar of God as innocents. None of us comes to the altar justified by even the most well-intentioned of our positions. We come in bondage to the evils of the world from which we cannot free ourselves. We come to the altar as beggars all, with bloodstained hands with absolutely no good work of our own to offer. But here into our empty and waiting hands we receive the final act and end of all history. Though suffering and evil will have their way, though love will be betrayed, love's body broken and love's blood outpoured, suffering and evil shall not have the last word. God's last word is and ever shall be Christ risen from the dead. So come to the altar and receive your crucified and risen Lord who is raising you even this day from the dead, and live in him who is coming again to wipe away every tear and to redeem the suffering of the whole world. And that day will come to pass when they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; when nation shall not lift up sword against nation . . . and neither shall we learn war any more. The Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany February 9, 2003 But squeaks in my car, and warning lights on a dash board really aren't that big a deal... In the grand scheme of things they are an annoyances at best. As you and I know, there are jolts, and then there are JOLTS! Certainly the Columbia tragedy of last weekend reminds us rather forcefully that even the most advanced modern technology is fallible, and we are jolted from a ho-hum attitude toward space travel and safe returns of a space shuttle. There are jolts.... changes.... that truly shake us to our core, raising anxiety.... Anxiety about the future, and anxiety about the most basic matters of life....And there are jolts that hit us in the faith, jolts to our confidence in God, and Godly power. It is to people who have been thus " jolted" that our first lesson from Isaiah is addressed. The prophet proclaims powerful and reassuring words to a community of God's people who have been in exile in a foreign land... exiled from the core of who they are as God's people... exiled from Jerusalem and the temple. And thus, in their minds and hearts, exiled from God. And if God is still present somehow, He is impotent in the face of the gods of their "hosts." To the Jewish exiles, it appears that the gods of their Babylonian hosts have prevailed, and the exiled children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have reason to question the very power, the very presence of Yahweh.... Those to whom Isaiah speaks are much more than just a little home-sick for the folks back home; they are heart-sick, and in danger of despairing of the future because they are despairing of their God. The underpinnings of their world and how it operates have been called into question in this exile. The powers of evil seem to be winning. Our 21st Century "jolts" do not exactly mirror the exile experience, but there are enough jolts thrown our way by this world. Our faith foundations are just as fragile as our brothers and sisters who are in Babylon. "What is this world coming to?" laments an older person as she watches the culture around her change beyond recognition. "What is this world coming to..." we lament as we see neighborhoods change, and youngsters brandish guns with plans to use them on others. "What's this world coming to..." we lament as unemployment statistics are no longer simply numbers in the newspaper, but a present personal reality, or when funds for assisting the poor get slashed. "Where is the
world going..." we cry as we watch the madness of human folly overwhelming
all common sense on a worldly scale. And it's the cry of all ages when
the world we know is jolted by loss and an unknown future, and a sense
that God is distant from our situation. A few weeks ago, we had a gathering
of Jr.high/middle school youth in Colorado Springs. One of the workshops
in which the young people participated was "Stump the Pastor"
wherein the young people could pose tough questions to a panel of pastors
and Youth Ministers. Great questions arose. To the ancient ones,
and to us, Isaiah speaks a Word from God: "Have you not seen? Have
you not heard? Has it not been told to you from the beginning?"
Behind those questions lies another, "Have you forgotten what God
has done? Have you forgotten what God promises to do?" "Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the world?" We who know of Godly promises in Jesus Christ, and know of our creation as God's own, we who know of great saving acts of the past, and we know that God has our future, we can live differently, a bit oddly, at least oddly to the world that has not heard, does not know. We can live with hope in a God who sits above the circle of the earth, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain... who brings princes to naught, and makes the ruler of the earth to nothing... who heals mother-in-laws and brings good news to the poor... who raises the dead. We live with hope, as Brueggemann shares, with a conviction that God will bring things to full, glorious completion? And funny thing is, we announce this outlandish promise of God's action for the creation and for us, not having any real clear picture as to how that shall be accomplished.... but a conviction none-the-less that God has not, and will not leave us to our own devices. Like Isaiah, who starts that beautiful 40th Chapter of Isaiah with, "comfort, comfort my people," ...like Isaiah we are called to announce this powerful promise to the world. And so we come together this morning, not exactly exiles... but we do need reassurances that the God in whom we trust for our very existence is truly a God to be trusted. Have you not known? Have you not heard? We come together to gain strength in an uncertain future by remembering what God has done, and remembering that God is true to God's promises. We come together to remember that this God is ever present... present now in the Word proclaimed so we can hear, and know again... present here in the Body of Christ gathered for praise and prayer... and most powerfully present in a meal of bread and wine to again remind us of the Grace of God, and to reassure us again that God is in our future. Have we not known?
Have we not heard? Yes, we have ! And we hear again this day of the
one who heals, who gives life. Once again we gather at the altar to
re-hearse-experience again-- God's saving act for us. Once again we
meet to announce to one another the mystery of our faith that makes
us oddly hopeful: Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come
again! 2 February 2003 Malachi3:1-4 Click here for printable .pdf format Simeon, a man in Jerusalem, righteous and filled with awe, held aloft the infant Jesus, and sang his song, ready now to go to the grave, filled with the assurance that God is good.. Countless Christians pray Simeon's words each night as a part of the office of Compline. In this bedtime prayer of the church, the faithful bid farewell to the day and to the world, commending themselves to God's keeping, knowing that dawn is guaranteed to no one. These too are the words the Church sings on behalf of the dead when she gathers to commend to God those who have finished their course on earth. Too, those who have received Christ is his holy supper have sung these words as they have gone forth in faith to meet the uncertainties of everyday life on this shadowed planet. "Lord, now let your servant depart in peace; your word has been fulfilled. For my own eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared for the sight of every people, a light to lighten the nations, and the glory of your people Israel." In some expressions of the Christian faith, this day when we remember the Presentation of Our Lord is also known as Candlemas. Simeon sings that this infant Jesus is the light that lightens the whole world, and so, hearing these words, the Church blesses the candles that will be used during the next year to help the faithful remember and show forth the light that shines in the darkness – the light that the darkness cannot comprehend. Simeon, however, will not let us forget that though Jesus, the morning star, has risen in the skies, the cross still casts its shadow. To Mary and to all who will bear Christ to the world, Simeon declares, "behold, a sword will pierce your own soul also." Simeon foretells that the walk of faith is light and darkness, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, triumph and defeat. Yesterday, even as the new day dawned, darkness cast its deep shadow as we beheld the blazing flash of light that streaked across the bright blue sky of a Texas Saturday morning. Like the waxen wings of Icarus who flew too close to the sun, yet another of our high-flying spacecraft bearing seven of the best and the brightest melted before our eyes and fell to earth. In the midst of the countless deaths that go unnoticed and unmourned each day, we wonder: why do the deaths of seven space travelers pierce so deeply into our hearts? I remember with many of you, the giddy optimism of our nation as the first astronauts barely punctured outer space. Though there is already a generation who will never remember a time without space travel, many of us watched in wonder the first human to ever orbit the earth. Those of us who were alive in 1969 will ever recall those first human steps upon the moon, and how we went outside that summer night to gaze up at that bright disk realizing that one of humankind's most enduring dreams had finally been fulfilled. Nor will many of us soon forget that January morning of 1986 when a bright young school teacher and her space-travelling companions evaporated in an instant before our shocked and crying eyes. More than watching people perish before our very eyes in replay upon seemingly endless replay, perhaps what brought us grief then and brings us grief today is the chilling awareness of how quickly our space-age technologies, the products of a gleeful optimism, can fail us. Or perhaps our grief is born of the realization that though we may escape earth's gravity, still we cannot escape the bonds of death. Or we weep at being reminded that, yes, even the best and the brightest some days do die young. And too, perhaps, our breath stops short and our throats tighten as we are shown yet once more that neither our science nor our engineering will spare us our own walk through the valley of the shadow of death. What are we to do? The only thing we can do, today and on future days of trial, is to come forward and to kneel, here where altar candles shed God's light as surely as any sun or star. Here in bread and wine is the very Lord of interstellar space who has called you each by name. His body broken and his blood poured out, here is the Risen Christ, victorious over death, victorious already over your death. And then, when you have taken him into your bodies, and with your hope in Christ alone, go forth to meet the always uncertain future, singing with Simeon in voices faltering or strong: Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, your word has been fulfilled. Our own eyes have seen the salvation your have prepared in the sight of every people – a light to lighten every nation, and the glory of your beloved people everywhere, both here on earth and lost in space. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. AMEN The Third Sunday after the Epiphany 26 January 2003 Jonah 3:1-5 Click here for printable .pdf format Jesus, you're in the wrong neighborhood. You shouldn't be seen here, and you definitely shouldn't be seen with us. You're barking up the wrong tree, Jesus. What do you mean, us follow you? If we thought we wanted to have anything to do with you, we would be out looking for you. But we're not. Stay in church where you belong Jesus. And what do mean, Jesus, asking us to go fishing other people out of their troubles? We're just not into throwing a line out to rescue the drowning. Listen, if they got themselves into deep water, they can damn well get themselves out. Or let the social workers do it. Let the government do it. Leave us alone. Ya just can't expect us to disrupt our lives for the sake of God-only-knows-who. We got our own troubles. We got mortgages and we got car payments. Our credit card debt is killing us. And you want us to worry about some poor drowning schmucks half a world away? If we wanted to help somebody, we'd help somebody right here . . . . OK, so we don't do that either. So what's your point? Listen, Jesus, quit pestering us. Quit hanging around. Quit looking at us like that. Look, we can't do anything about homelessness. We can't end famine and starvation. We can't do anything about people in Africa dying of AIDS. World peace? Forget it. We can't even keep peace in our own souls. Leave us to our beer busts. Leave us to our shopping. Leave us to our petty gossip and backbiting putdowns. Listen, if anybody's drowning and needs rescuing, it's us. OK? Now do you get the picture? We've got nothing to offer you Jesus. Nothing. We're helpless, we're totally helpless. Is that what you wanted to hear? Exactly. That's exactly what Jesus wants to hear. Repent. It means to turn around – to turn from saying, "I can, I am master of my own destiny, I'm in control" to "I can't. I can't." To repent is to finally admit we aren't god – we aren't in control. We can't free ourselves from getting pulled under by the tentacles of systemic injustice, systemic violence, systemic despoiling of the earth. And even if our spirits were willing – well, our lives are centered on ourselves and our time is already committed to chasing some dream sold to us by one media campaign after another and there's really none left over to go fishing other people out of deep water. We just can't do it. Precisely, says
Christ – you can't – but I can. Trust. Trust – that when
you were reborn in me, you began a journey with me. When you were baptized,
I promised you that I would make you to be who God intended you to be.
And so I make you to be fishers after people. I make you to cast out
your nets of rescue – to bring in the cold and homeless and to
provide food and shelter for them. I make you to rescue those drowning
in despair. I make you to cast out nets of peace and reconciliation
– wherever your journeys take you. And I give you my own self,
my own life's blood so that you will each day become more and more who
you are in the reign of God. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN The Epiphany of Our Lord (transferred) 5 January 2003 Isaiah 60:1–6 Click here for printable .pdf format We/they. Us/them. The good guys versus the bad guys. Citizens versus aliens. The guys in the white hats conquer the guys in the black hats. I had teachers in public schools, no less, who told us that the United States was favored by God above all nations, that because "In God we trust," the United States was victorious in all its wars. And we all know that the Lutheran appropriation of the faith is superior to the ways of other traditions. They, especially if they are Roman Catholic, or the Missouri Synod, live in error. A letter to the editor in yesterday’s paper commented on the Christmas Day stories in the Rocky Mountain News about the persecution of Christians in non-Christian places. The writer finds this persecution sad, but he reminds us that Christians too have not always acted so differently. He writes: "Christians ran their Inquisition clinics around the globe for many years, and today, some even think they can ‘repair’ homosexuals, while claiming to ‘love the sinner but hate the sin.’ ... These words may seem harsh to Christian readers," he says, "but they are no less glib than the racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and homophobic words and deeds that fall so easily from Christian lips and hands." The writer ends by saying, ‘To paraphrase a well-known Christian evangelist, ‘Religions, heal thyself." The exclusionary principal is nothing new. It is quite likely as old as humankind itself. We fear that which is "other" or "different" or "not quite like us." And we make of the Other something to be cast out from our midst. And we comfort ourselves in our fear by imagining that God is like us in this regard - favoring us and condemning, or at least not looking with favor, upon those whom we do not, cannot, or will not understand. And suddenly into the midst of our exclusionary darkness, explodes a light of dazzling brightness and cataclysmic magnitude. And the light comes to rest over a dirty suburb of Jerusalem - Bethlehem. And following this light are three outsiders - the three magi. Now the term magus - that’s the singular of magi - denoted one who was trained in a pagan religion, an astrologer, one who thought the stars ruled the affairs of the world. A magus was also considered a magician. The religious tradition of Judea considered magi to be evil, people to be feared, radically Other, to be excluded at all costs, beyond the love of God. One religious teacher of the day writes that anyone who learns or receives from a magus is deserving of death. And yet, God’s star beckons these strange others to come and behold the infant who is one with maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen; in St. Matthew’s telling of the story, it is these outsiders, radically Other, to whom is given the privilege of being among the first to behold the infant Lord Jesus Christ, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, through whom all things were made. King Herod had every good reason to be afraid, to be very, very afraid of losing his power. The power of Herod and all those in high places depended then as it depends now upon the fear of outsiders, foreigners, aliens, those of differing cultures and beliefs. Anything or anyone that welcomes and draws near to those who are Other breaks the exclusionary principal and threatens to topple those whose power is based on fear. And the magi brought to this infant who had summoned them from afar, in all their difference and Otherness, sacred gifts. As the prophet foretold, they brought incense, the ancient sign of God’s holiness. And they brought gold, that proclaimed God’s sovereign rule. And they brought to the Infant, one other gift, not seen by Isaiah - myrrh - an embalming spice, foretelling the cross. There would be a great price to pay for including the excluded, for welcoming-in the Other, the strange, the alien, the different - and the price would be God’s own suffering, God’s own experience of our death. The dazzling light that exploded over where the child lay with Mary his mother shines yet. The star beckons us - outsiders all in one way or another, outsiders all to the ways that God would have us walk - to come and behold the Christ this very day. He invites us here to be one with him in His Holy Eucharist. And receiving his body and his blood, he makes us to be one with him. He makes us to shine forth, a light to the world, welcoming into the community of faith any and all, no matter how different, how alien, how Other. And so it is truly meet, right, and salutary that this St. Paul community of faith say in its welcoming statement that "we rejoice in the manner in which diversity has enriched, nurtured, and challenged the life and ministry we share in Christ, and regret action and attitudes throughout the Church that may have inhibited or prevented access to Word and Sacrament because of age, race, socio-economic or marital status, physical or mental capacities, or sexual orientation." Be warned, however. The spirit of King Herod still walks the earth. Those whose power and prestige depends on fearing the Other, the alien, the outsider will not be happy - and there will be a cost, just as surely as there was a cost to the one who was born in Bethlehem. But take heart and have no fear - for even as there was a cross, there was most surely a resurrection. For even as there is, and most surely will be a cross, there is, and there most surely will be, the resurrection from the dead - for all. For all.
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