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SERMON ARCHIVE August, 1999-October, 2000[BACK to CURRENT SERMONS] Click on the sermon you wish to read.
St. Andrews Church, Eisleben, Germany Martin Luther Born Nov. 10, 1483—Died Feb. 18, 1546 When our family was young and we took trips, Alice and I would look for a cemetery where we could have our picnic lunch. First we would all search for the oldest tombstones we could find. Coming back from his search, one of the boys asked, "Daddy, what is that dash on all the tombstones?" I explained that the first set of numbers was when they were born and the second set of numbers was when they died. The dash is the life they lived among us from their birth to their death. What an awesome moment for us to be here in this small town where Luther's dash began with his birth and baptism in 1483; where it concluded with his death, 63 years later on February 18, 1546; a sinner saved by grace. For many people birth and death are simply the beginning and end of life and therefore tend to avoid thinking about that passage. Henri Nouwen in a meditation entitled "Living Our Passages Well" says that "Death is a passage to new life, but few of us desire to make this passage." Then he goes on to say, "It might be helpful to realize that our final passage is preceded by many earlier passages. When we are born we make a passage from life in the womb to life in the family. When we go to school we make a passage from life in the family to life in the larger community. If we get married we make a passage from a life with many options to a life committed to one person. When we retire we make a passage from a life of clearly defined work to a life asking for new creativity and wisdom." Nouwen then concludes these significant observations with these words: "Each of these passages is a death leading to new life. When we live these passages well, we are becoming more prepared for our final passage." (Bread for the Journey, Aug.12). Over two-thirds of Luther's life included the struggles he went through as a believer seeking a right relationship with God. Indeed, out of his personal struggles have come the founding principles and origins of the Reformation, rooted and grounded in the supreme question of life—How can a person get into a right relationship with God? Or to ask it another way—How can a person escape the feeling of estrangement and fear in the presence of God? These are the questions that really brought about the Reformation and lay behind the life and actions and writings of Martin Luther. We all remember the story of how Luther was "kidnapped by consent" after the Council of Worms and whisked away to the Wartburg Castle for safekeeping. Many people thought he had been killed; and when the German painter, Albrecht Durer heard the news of Luther's disappearance, he noted in his diary, AI don't know whether he is alive or has been murdered... O God, if Luther is dead, who is going to explain the Gospel to us?" In the meantime, back at the Castle, Luther was alive and well, translating the New Testament into the language of the people, producing interpretations of the Psalms, sermons on the Epistles and Gospels of the Christian year, and treatises in defense of the Christian faith, always pointing to Christ. He wrote, "I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's Word. Otherwise, I did nothing. And then while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my Philipp and my Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor inflicted such damage upon it. I did nothing. The Word did it all!" Lest we think all Luther did on his dash was scholarly writing and theological debating, I share with you one of many significant examples of his compassion and pastoral care. We are told that on April 16, 1521, Martin Luther arrived at Worms, Germany to face one of the greatest ordeals of his life. He entered the city amidst a terrific popular demonstration and then went to bed totally exhausted. He was scheduled to appear before the Diet the next afternoon. When he woke up in the morning, what did he do? Did he spend a few feverish hours putting some finishing touches on his defense as you and I would do? NO! He spent that morning visiting a dying man who had expressed a desire to see him. He heard this man's confession and celebrated the sacrament with him, and we are told that in the afternoon, when he went before his accusers, he entered the hall smiling. There, in this simple story, is the crux of Paul's message in Galatians and Luther=s interpretation of it. When one is free from a legalistic concept of God and religion, released from self-centered fears—when we have learned to trust God's power instead of our own, we have been set free for the serving of others. Galatians—"For freedom Christ has set us free...(5:1) only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for selfishness but through love be servants of one another." (5:13) This I believe is the message and joy of the Gospel and the insight of Martin Luther's teachings—God has acted! In and through Jesus Christ God has done what the law cannot do. And it is for us to accept and learn how to grow in this grace, daily living out our lives in the creative and dynamic tension between justification or how God feels about us and gratitude, how we respond to how God feels about us—a tension we dare not tamper with. Our hymns, prayers, liturgy and thoughts need to embrace both the righteous cause and the calming peace, both the necessity of speaking out and the need to maintain a loving quietude, both the call to right what is wrong and the call to preserve what is good, both the confrontation and the reconciliation. Dear friends, just being here in this town, where Luther was born and baptized and died, and in the church where he preached his final sermon, is indeed an inspiration and a challenge for each of us to contemplate more seriously the dash that will be placed on our tombstone or columbarium niche, calling us to witness to the world the Gospel as Luther expects us to present it, not as a repressive faith enslaving us in doctrines and rules, but as a dynamic faith affirming life as God intends for it to be lived and expecting from us a sense of urgency, duty and responsibility for the times in which we live. This is to accept your life and mine from God in faith and pass it on in love to others, grateful for the ongoing dynamics of the Christian faith and life as Luther uniquely captures it for us in these stirring words from his writings: (a copy of which has been on our refrigerator for years) "This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health but healing; not being but becoming; not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified." "We are justified by God's grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." Amen! 12 PENTECOST September 3, 2000 In any community, or period in history, there are certain words or phrases that symbolize ideas that might not be acceptable in that particular place or time. A couple times a year, I teach a night-school class at Regis University that deals with communication. in a multi-cultural setting. When we talk about the culture of the United States, someone will inevitably refer it as being like a "melting pot." Immediately my face takes on a mild look of reproach, and getting up on my high horse, I inform the unfortunate person that we no longer use that term to describe the U.S. In a melting pot, I tell my students, the diverse cultural backgrounds of various people homogenized into a sort of glop and the diverse cultures present in the US lose their uniqueness. I explain that nowadays it is preferable when talking about our multi-cultural United States to use the metaphor of a salad bowl or a quilt. That way, we foster the idea that the various cultures of the United States each retain their distinctive qualities and contribute to the salad or the multi-colored quilt without losing their specific identities. And then, without fail, I watch as some students roll their eyes and as others quietly form the derogatory terms, "political correctness, politically correct, PC." Personally, I don't like it when someone calls something of someone "politically correct"—I think that it and its associated terms are a sort of knee jerk reaction, a sloppy way of dismissing an idea or set of values that intrude upon our zones of comfort. Rather than reassessing and perhaps reorienting our values, we instead take the safe route of belittling challenges to our ways of being, with the dreaded term of derision: PC, Political Correctness, sweeping them away like so much dust. But even while I say I don't like those terms, I need to be the first to admit that I've used them—often—and with epic eye-rolling, face wrinkling sneers. When I was in seminary, I discovered early on that the term "spirituality" was one of the words that was somewhat suspect—in the same category as the melting pot "spirituality" just wasn't something Protestants were supposed to be interested in—and any reference to one's own spirituality definitely was high on the list of Lutheran "No-nos." "Oh Lord, I groaned. Political correctness—it's everywhere." Being a relatively sloppy thinker at the time, rather than try to figure out why the term "spirituality" might be problematic, I decided my professors had a hopeless case of PC and true to my contrary nature decided to plunge headfirst and defiantly into cultivating my own deep Spirituality. "I explored the spirituality of centering prayer working very, very hard at it. I explored Franciscan spirituality, Benedictine spirituality, yoga, meditation, you name it. I was going to become a deeply spiritual person, come hell or high water. And then, lo and behold, something did happen —something my friends and fellow seminarians noticed—a real difference—they even came up with a nickname for me: St. Narcissus. St. Narcissus—I thought—I don't remember any saint by that name. Wasn't Narcissus someone in some Greek myth? Wasn't he the guy that bent over a pond and saw himself in the mirror-like surface of the water and promptly fell in love with his own image and was not afraid to move away out of fear that he would lose sight of his beloved, himself? In my search for a some perfect spirituality, I had indeed become perfect—perfectly worthless—a self-absorbed navel gazer oblivious to the material world around me. Now, don't get me wrong here—I'm not suggesting that spirituality or spiritual quests are all bad—but there is a problem with an over-emphasis on spirituality that I forgot to think about, eager as I was to dismiss the cautions of my teachers as being mere PC. I was reminded of all this when I listened to the reading from St. James for this morning "If any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like." And though it's not in the text, we can figure out the rest of the metaphor—because we forget what we look like, we keep coming back to the mirror to get a glimpse of who we are. We move away from the mirror, we forget, we go back to the mirror to look at ourselves—and the cycle of trying to discover who we are goes on and on—until all we are doing is looking in that mirror trying to get in touch with ourselves, our spirits, our whatever. And those around us disappear as into nothingness. In our search for our inner self, we read our bibles, we read spiritual literature, we study, we pray, we meditate, we go on spiritual retreats, we center, we fast, and in our quest for some rarified spirituality, our heads get so tangled in the clouds that we no longer see what is at our feet. We no longer see those on fixed or low incomes who are being forced out of their homes by rapidly inflating rents, we no longer see those who cannot afford to eat well because they have spent all their money on medications, we no longer see the children around us growing up and wild because we are not there to guide them and to work for quality education. We are so busy trying to attain a simplified life-style that we forget to notice that even in the midst of unprecedented prosperity there are more children living in poverty now than ever before. We've gone to so many retreats that we no longer have the time to do the hard work of finding out who is in need, the hard work of finding out how to meet those needs, the hard work of getting involved in politics so that those in distress may have justice restored to them. We spend so much time at church being "spiritual" that even our own families become scenes of dysfunction because we are not there to do our part as a spouse or a parent or a son or a daughter. It has been said that "sin" is that which we do out of our fear of losing the self. You know how it goes:. people put others down to build themselves up, people shop so that they can hold on to their status, the world tells people that new cars, big houses and expensive toys will show everyone else how on top of things we are; and the distress of the poor, the widows, the orphans, the homeless, and the prisoners goes unheard. Or we spend our time pursuing our own spirituality, our spiritual perfection—it's really just the same thing without all the stuff. James tells us to be unstained by the world—but the stain of the world is sin—that which we do out of the fear of losing ourselves—be it our material selves or our spiritual selves —it's all the same—trying to save ourselves by gathering material stuff or spiritual stuff. Listen to James again: Those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. The "perfect law" or better translated, the "perfect principle" is the Gospel—the principle of liberty of being set free from having to justify ourselves through works of the law. There is no need to struggle for spiritual perfection—we don't need to—God already sees us as being perfectly righteousness—-perfectly justified. We are freed from striving after a rightness in the spirit— free now to do those things that we were made to do, namely to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the imprisoned, care for orphans and widows in their distress. But our doing all these things doesn't just happen by itself. By nature, we are focused on ourselves— which is why we need to be hearers of the word — without hearing the word, we cannot be doers of the word—for it is the word that reassures us that we are justified in the sight of God; further, it is the word that tells us that though we fall short of doing what we were made to do, we are forgiven—and each day we rise anew to become what we are—and if we hear it long enough, if we trust the word, we become what the word declares. So back to political correctness and spirituality. If I hadn't been so ready to condemn as politically correct those that cautioned against an over emphasis on spirituality, if I had bridled my tongue and listened, I would have heard the caution that sometimes a preoccupation with spirituality becomes a pursuit in itself —it's like asking the question "how ought we to live" over and over without ever getting around to answering the question—or perhaps answering it, but forgetting to actually live the answer. We can listen for the Spirit all we want, we may even perceive what the Spirit says—but if that pursuit takes us out of the material world so that we no longer see injustice, no longer work to end injustice, we are only hearers of the word, but not doers. We are self-absorbed rather than absorbed by the work we have been given to do. So now, hear the Gospel: you are freed from running after your own righteousness—you do not have to find the Spirit—the Spirit has found you and is always there to tell you who you are: you are those that keep the religion that is pure and undefiled before God: to care for the orphans and widows in their distress. That is who you have been made by God to be. Hear it: you are doers of the word, not merely hearers. This is the promise of God—and God does make it so. AMEN. 8 PENTECOST August 6, 2000 Where had they disappeared to so suddenly? Only the day before Jesus had hosted what had to be one of the most stupendous picnics the world has ever known—and all without the help of Three Tomatoes Catering! With just 5 barley loaves and two fish, Jesus had fed 5,000—and when they cleaned up after the picnic, the leftovers filled 12 baskets; more than enough, I’m sure, to feed those hungry kids at Urban Peak who we provide food for on Monday nights during the summer. All this had so impressed the crowds that they concluded; "This indeed must be the prophet who is to come into the world." (Jn. 5:14b) But now Jesus and the disciples had suddenly dropped out of sight. Someone, though, said they had seen a group leave on a boat the night before, but that Jesus had not gotten into the boat with his disciples. Nevertheless, they—the crowd—got into their boats and headed across the sea to Capernaum, "looking for Jesus." When they arrived on the other side, they found Jesus, and then asked what seems like a kind of dumb question: "Rabbi, when did you come here?" Jesus ignores their question, and seemingly goes on the attack. He says, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves." Then he proceeds to tell the crowds that had rowed across the sea looking for him that they should not work for food that perishes, "but for that food which endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." This is followed by a couple more exchanges, during which they talk about the manna that their ancestors had received in the wilderness—and then Jesus concludes the conversation by talking about "the true bread from heaven, the bread of God which gives life to the world." They respond by saying, "Sir, give us this bread always"—and Jesus tells them in the closing verse of our Gospel lesson, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." Well, what do we do with this strange encounter—and all this talk about bread, and the distinction between bread that perishes and bread that endures, and the startling claim on the part of Jesus that he is the bread of life that satisfies hunger in a way no other bread can? Given the richness and density of this text, there are all kinds of things we could do with it, all kinds of directions we could go. But given where we are as a congregation—a church in the throes of calling a new pastor—and given what’s happening in our immediate community—new "crowds" of people moving in around us—the question this text triggered in my mind was: how do we go about faithfully "re-presenting" the one who claims to be the bread of life in this time and place over the next several years? And to address this question I’d like to say a few things about context and content: the time and place where we’re called to minister; and the message we’re called to proclaim. First in regard to context: our context is an urban North American setting at the beginning of the 21st century—and this is a context which makes our situation particularly challenging in a number of respects. One way of "fleshing out" something of what this means is to contrast our situation from that which exists in small-town/rural areas or even small-city/suburban settings. Unlike small-town/rural or small-city/suburban contexts, where certain pro-Christian cultural forces tend to encourage people to join churches, the prevailing culture of urban settings tends to be either apathetic or hostile toward organized religion in general, and Christianity in particular. So we’re called to re-present Jesus Christ in a setting that is not particularly "church friendly." The demographics of an urban setting are also quite different from those we find in small-town/rural or small-city/suburban contexts. The former are characterized by a much higher percentage of people who are not a part of "traditional" family configurations—mom, dad and 2.5 kids—than is the case in small-town/rural or small-city/suburban settings; and this has obvious implications for the tendency of people to become church members. Research shows that many traditional families still feel drawn to the church to give their children some exposure to a religious tradition that will instill within them a sense of right and wrong—something that’s not going to be true among the single younger people or older "empty nesters" who are found in large numbers in urban settings. Another demographic factor, which also has implications for churches in urban settings, is the heterogeneous and diverse nature of the people who live in these areas. In addition to finding fewer traditional families we also find a greater diversity in the areas of racial and ethnic background, religious perspectives, sexual orientation, and socio-economic and educational levels than is the case in most small-town/rural or small- city/suburban settings. Many church growth experts argue that "homogeneity" is the key to church growth—which means, of course, that heterogeneity is a negative factor in this regard. I’m not sure I buy this view completely, but I think it’s true that it’s more difficult for us to grow numerically than churches, say, in homogeneous, rapid-growth suburban settings. Above and beyond and mixed in with all these considerations, is the simple fact that the culture of urban areas is different from that which we encounter in small-town/rural or small-city/suburban settings. To be sure, "people are people"—and regardless of where people live, they work, and fall in and out of love, get sick and die, etc. etc. However, I would argue that how these new urbanites spend their time, how they perceive the world, how they define the "good life," the values they embrace, what they think provides fulfillment, are different in subtle but significant ways from their counterparts in other living situations—and that these issues also have a bearing on how we go about being the church in this time and place. All of these factors present urban churches like ours with particular challenges—but also with opportunities that do not exist in other settings. The "crowds" which live within a 3 or 4 mile radius of our church—which include a much broader cross-section of humanity than you’ll ever find in small-town/rural or small-city/suburban settings—give us the opportunity to be a church that shows through the composition of our membership that, as Paul put it, "in Christ we are all children of God through faith….. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus." (Gal. 3:27,28) To have the opportunity to experience this kind of "Pentecost" inclusiveness, where the things which typically divide people have been overcome in Christ, seems to me to be a marvelous gift. I celebrate the extent to which we already experience this to some degree. But I eagerly anticipate the time when the composition of our congregation will more fully reflect the diversity of the "crowds" that surround us—and we’ll be a church made up of people who are Christians by conscious choice rather than by social convenience; a church of this neighborhood, rather than a church that just happens to be located in this neighborhood. But whether and how and when this happens, depends to a great extent on the integrity with which we proclaim the Gospel to these crowds—and this brings us to the issue of content. In our Gospel lesson Jesus told the crowds that they should not work for that bread which perishes, but "that food which endures for eternal life." There is so much at stake here—and when churches want to attract people there is always the temptation to serve up some form of "Wonder Bread" that will give people what they think they want, rather the One who alone is the bread of life. Spelling out in any detail what proclaiming the Gospel with integrity entails obviously goes beyond the scope of any single sermon—but there are two "emphases" I would like to lift up that I think are especially important to note in this context. First of all, to proclaim the gospel with integrity is to give voice to a word that speaks redemptively to the pain that people bring with them when they come through our doors. This pain, of course, wears many faces: it can be the pain born of poverty or affluence; or from a broken relationship; or from an ongoing battle with a crippling addiction; or from a life-threatening illness; or from problems at work; or from worries about our kids or our aging parents; or from guilt or shame; or from the death of a loved one. Other times this pain has a hidden face: everything seems to be going okay, but things just don’t quite seem right—something somewhere seems to be askew. Is it "out there" or "in here"—we aren’t really sure. And this pain can also be connected with a sense of impotence in face of the unspeakable suffering that exists in the world and the seemingly intractable nature of so many of our problems. Whatever the pain people bring with them, proclaiming the Gospel with integrity involves finding ways of helping people connect with that Word and Reality which brings healing and wholeness into their lives and into the world. I wouldn’t want to suggest that this is something that happens instantly and automatically; but I do think it’s terribly important that the experience people have when they come here, be one that allows them to leave with the conviction that, yes, there is, as the old spiritual put it, "a balm in Gilead that can cure the sin sick soul." What comes forth from this pulpit, what happens when we gather around this Table, the words we hear from Scripture, the prayers that are uttered, the hymns that are sung, and, yes, the glances that are exchanged and the words of welcome and hospitality that are offered, all of these things are integral to conveying this message of hope and healing that addresses the pain people bring with them into this place. Or to use the imagery from our text, these are all involved in "re-presenting" the One whom we acknowledge to be the bread of life. Secondly, proclaiming the Gospel with integrity also requires us to be "up-front" with people about what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "the cost of discipleship." Christianity—following Jesus—is a way of life that involves putting the "common good" above and before our own self-interests. This can be very costly— especially, to cite just one example as we think about the up-coming elections— when Christ calls us, as Christ always does, to make political choices, not simply on the basis of what we think will be best for us, but rather in relation to what will be of the greatest benefit to those "on the bottom." So we cannot, as a theologian friend of mine has often said, attract people to the church by appealing to their essentially selfish needs, and then offer them the unselfish gospel of Jesus. Our text tells us that Jesus is "the true bread from heaven, the bread of God, which gives life to the world." This is the bread we receive every Sunday at the Lord’s Table—and this is the bread we are called to offer to the "crowds" that surround us. But Jesus is not, as I suggested earlier, some bland form of Wonder Bread who leaves those who receive his body and blood comfortable with either themselves or with the way the world is. His presence in our lives, to be sure, reassures us of God’s healing love and mercy and forgiveness—but it also transforms us and often puts us at odds with how things are; which can complicate our lives enormously. Still we would dare to pray that all those who come into this place, through what they hear and see and taste, will, by the power of the Holy Spirit at work among us, come to know the One who is the bread of life, even Jesus Christ our Lord! Amen. 6 PENTECOST July 23, 2000 "Walls" In the beginning there was one "dwelling place." There was one home, created by God for Adam and Eve and it was the Garden of Eden. In this home, as it is in most homes, there was a set of rules that you had to live by in order to live there. God had only one rule, one wall, one barrier for Adam and Eve and that was to not eat the fruit from the forbidden tree in the middle of the Garden. Did they follow the rule? No, and they were kicked out of the Garden. Later in Biblical times God creates another dwelling place and this time it was for the Israelites. God brought them to the Promised Land of Israel, a dwelling place that God had created once again for them to call home. This time God had many more rules to live by. I bet God figured that since it didn’t work to have just one rule with Adam and Eve, this time there was going to be many more rules to follow. Just look in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy and you can read all of these rules for yourself. We must remember though, these rules, these walls that God had for this dwelling place were meant to remind the Israelites of their need for God. These walls were intended to unite the people in a way that created a dwelling place for God within the lives of the people that lived there. Jeremiah 22:3 tells the Israelites what God had in mind for the way they were to live within these walls, "Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place." Did the Israelites listen? No, they turned these walls into walls of prejudice and hatred. They began to look at themselves as an elite and exclusive group that God had put together. They were on the inside and everyone else was considered a pitiful outsider. So, they were kicked out of the dwelling place that God had given to them and they were scattered into exile. These have been walls that God has created and we have seen what has happened to those that have broken down those walls and abused the walls. Now, lets look at some of the walls that humans have built. Walls built by human hands. The first wall that entered my mind when I was considering human built walls was the Great Wall of China. This wall was built to keep the mongrels of the north from invading the south. It was not a wall built for unity but for division and "safety." It is a remarkable wall. When you stand on this wall you are able to look far off the distance, as far as you can see and watch the wall disappear over the horizon Its 1800 miles long and the only human made structure you can see from space I was fortunate enough to stand on this mind boggling structure. Ironically, I was standing on this wall of division on Christmas Day. The Berlin Wall was built in the early 60's to keep East Germans from flooding into West Germany. This was a wall built to keep people from leaving and entering their neighbor’s homes. It was most definitely a wall built for discrimination and oppression. Nearly 30 years after the wall was constructed the dismantling began of the physical structure. The walls of discrimination still stands. Then I wondered about these walls. The walls of this building we call St. Paul Lutheran Church. Did you know that when someone walks by these walls during the week, or any time other than worship times, the doors are locked. You can not get into this place unless you are a part of the elite few that knows where the doorbell is located. I realize that the doors are locked for a reason, the safety of the people within the walls and also the preservation of the building, but I wonder what it looks like as an outsider walking by. Do they look at these walls in a way that resembles the Ark of the Covenant that the Israelites use to carry around, the place they felt God stayed for their exclusive use and protection? There are other walls that we build between each other, but they aren’t physical walls that we can touch. Yet, they are walls that are experienced fully. These are the walls of fear, pride, discrimination, sexism and racism. I’m sure that you can add to this list. Classism is another of these types of walls. Just blocks from St. Paul is a community development called East Village. This is a place that was built to house some of the lower income members of our neighborhood. Or, if you will allow, it is a dwelling place that humans created that isolated a group of people that were considered outsiders anywhere else. These walls were walls of discrimination and suppression. Now these walls, the walls these people called home, are being torn down and they have no place to go. The flock is being scattered again. Ironic that just blocks from East Village you can find a sign announcing the opening of new "Luxury Condos." Just another wall of exclusion. Yet another wall of isolation is what I might call a generational wall. When was the last time you deliberately spent time with someone of a different generation and listened rather than spoke? You listened for the purpose of building unity and understanding? You listened in order to have a better understanding of your community? You listened to learn from each other? Have you ever experienced denominational walls. St. Paul Lutheran Church seems to break down this wall over and over again. But, the wall continues to exist. The Lutheran church and the Episcopalian church have recently voted on a document called "Called to Common Mission." Will this document bring about unity or will it scatter the flock? A wise man once told me, "that Lutherans many times spend so much time and energy exploring what it means to be a Lutheran at the expense of what it means to be a Christian." All of these walls that we have created are the type of walls that God is warning us about in the first verse of today’s old testament lesson. "Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! Says the Lord." (Jeremiah 23:1) Later we are told that we are those shepherds. We have scattered the sheep. We have destroyed the walls that God created as a dwelling place for God in us. So what’s going to happen? We’ve already seen what happened to Adam, Eve and the Israelites. In Jeremiah 23:4 we hear what God is going to do about the walls that we have created, "I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, says, the Lord." Apparently God has gotten tired of the rules because in Ephesians God tells us the answer to the scattered flock and the walls of destruction. "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is , the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death the hostility through it" (Ephesians 2:13-16) Jesus is the answer. Jesus breaks down the walls of destruction, isolation and prejudice and looks for a dwelling place within us. That’s the answer to the walls of fear, hostility, racism, classism, sexism, etc. The cross that Jesus’ body hung on and blood was shed is where we find the answer. The same body and blood that we experience at this table UNITES ALL OF US. ALL HUMANITY. Now we have heard what God has done. What is our response to this answer of Christ? The people outside these walls are the same people that Mark writes of in our Gospel reading today. They are the ones that are searching for answers to their brokenness and their fears. Go, and share the answer with them. Share with them that Jesus is the answer and invite them to this table where we are united with one another and God finds a dwelling place within us. A-men. 3 LENT March 26, 2000 This is not the sermon I wanted to preach. It is, rather, the sermon that kept me awake nights, the sermon that would not go away, the sermon I somehow can=t help but preach. And so, here goes, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN. St. Paul writes: The religious seek signs of glory and the worldly seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the religious and foolishness to the worldly. Elie Wiesel was born in Hungary in 1928. When he was fourteen, his mother, his father and his sister and he were taken by the Nazis to Auschwitz and then to Buchenwald Bthose gigantic and horrible death factories where the Third Reich exterminated 6 million Jews, Jesus of Nazareth=s own family. Elie Wiesel=s father, mother, and sister perished in that hell-come-to-earth. The young, teen-age Wiesel alone survived his family. I read you from his book Night where he tells of a young, Jewish child who worked as the servant to a prison guardBa child, writes Wiesel, "with a refined and beautiful face, the face of a sad angel": "One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. SS all round us, machine guns trained: the traditional ceremony. Three victims in chainsBand one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him. The three victims mounted together onto the chairs. The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses. >Long live liberty!= cried the two adults. But the child was silent. 'Where is God? Where is He?' someone behind me asked. At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over. Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting. 'Bare your heads!' yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping. 'Cover your heads!' Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive . . . For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: 'Where is God now?' And I heard a voice within me answer him: 'Where is He? Here He isBHe is hanging here on this gallows . . . .'"Where is God now? You all know, you read about it every day in the paper, you hear about it on the news, you hear about it in a conversation, you see it on the streets, it =s even there when you go on vacation. Here God is . . in the violence, all of a piece, that runs from Littleton, to Uganda and Sudan, to Palestine, through India, and back here to Denver, to Capitol Hill. Where is God now? Here He isBhidden, in, with and under the millions who live in the garbage dumps outside Mexico City and too many other places around the world, with the homeless on our own city streets, with the children who starve amidst our plenty, with the young couple burying their newborn child, with all who mourn, with all who suffer, with all who are lost in the dark night of the soul, with those whom we name in our prayers. That's where God is.But let us not say, let us never say of these horrors, whether great or small, that even one of them is God =s will. But if not God=s will, then whose? We live on a shadowed planet, writes C.S. Lewis; the prince of this world, writes Luther, is the evil one. We live on a planet where our free will has become captive to evilBas we say in our confession, we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. And so the whole creation groans in pain, waiting some sort of redemption.And so God sends a rainbow: God will not destroy creation. But still we are defiant. God gives us the Torah, the commandments, the prophets. We promise to hear and obey, but somehow we cannot end our deadly and petty preoccupations with ourselves. And breaking our promises we then imagine that somehow our sacrifices will save us, but God topples them all and lets us know they too are vanity. So in these latter days, God sends a final promise, an odd and peculiar promise, a promise we would rather not think about too much, a promise we try in every century to make acceptable through our oh-so-clever theologies of the day, a blood soaked promise we try hard not to see, preferring to remove its insult, to cover it with gold, preferring to hide the dry and crusted blood behind fake flowers, bunny rabbits, and butterflies. The promise. God on the gallows. God wherever there is dying. The promise . . . that God IS every victim of this world's daily injustices, God's face, the faces of all who suffer, God in the lives of all who are in anguish, God with breast cancer, God with AIDS, God weeping over her dead child, God the child afraid in the dark afraid of the monsters under the bed or of those outside with guns, God in the wreckage of relationships, God the victim of every cruel joke and cutting word, God the victim of our addictions to power to alcohol, to pills, compulsive sex, or shopping. God in Christ Crucified, crucified anew every minute of every hour, every hour of every day, every day of every year, year in and out and on and on. Crucified by us. But God also wherever a cup of water is given to the thirsty, wherever the homeless are cared for, wherever women and men work to bring justice to where there is little or none. God, in those places, in both the one who gives and the one who receives. God in our lives whenever and wherever we act for others, whenever we bear one another =s burdens, in what we give to help others, in the widow's mite, in a hand held, in a friend comforted, in our desperate prayers that somehow, God=s will be done on earth amidst the messes of our own making, even as it is in heaven.We preach Christ crucified. God's promise to be with us, with every human created, as we slouch our separate ways from Bethlehem unto Calvary. Christ crucified. Emanuel, God with us, in this world, ever present in all suffering and in every death. Christ Crucified, God's promise too that nothing created ever be lost, and that one day, all tears will be wiped away, and there shall be not sorrow nor death, and that each in our own time, we will all be brought home to God. But until then, God is here now too, in a feeble wafer of bread and a sip of wine, the very body and blood of Jesus whom we do crucify. Christ's body and blood, strength for the journey—our last, best, and only true hope as we pick our way through the crosses, through the days of suffering and the moments of healing until we reach our final cross and our own It Is Finished. We preach Christ B crucified B the God who suffers. Foolishness really. But the foolishness of God, they say, is wiser than us all, and the weakness of God—stronger than us all.We do believe Lord, but please, help thou still our unbelief. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 3 EPIPHANYJanuary 23, 2000 I think it was Jerry Seinfeld who said, "God's being permeates everything that exists . . . except, that is, for certain parts of New Jersey." Certain parts where everything seems gray, where the sun is shadowed over with smog and dust, where the air stinks, and the only green is the scum that coats the waters. Everyplace has its certain parts of New Jersey — every state, every town, everyplace we live—under the sink at my house is a certain part of New Jersey. And every one us has our own certain parts of New Jersey . . . that certain part of us we want no one to see . . . where everything seems shadowed over, unclean, and stinking. . . those places where, we are sure, God's being will never penetrate. Galilee, to the proper people of the day, was a certain part of New Jersey. Galilee—short for Galil of the goyim—the region of the heathen, the irreligious. That part of the country where mixed marriages abounded . . . that part of the country where even the so-called religious really didn't observe the religious laws, where they ate unclean things, where everything was defiled . . . a place of complete abomination. And in it's midst, the Sea . . . and as every good religious person of the day knew, the sea was where Tiamat, the pagan god of chaos dwelled. . . a place to be feared, a place to avoid. And there were fishermen there, and these were not the cute, smiley fishermen of Sunday school pictures —fishermen, were, as everyone knew, the utter dregs of society,—for they made their living where the chaos monster dwelled —they touched unclean things from the unclean depths, and were therefore an abomination that stunk to all high heaven, . . . slimeballs and scumbags . . . they were in themselves, the epitome of certain parts of New Jersey. It was 11.23 PM. November 13th, a Friday, 1992. The phone rang—it was my Mom. "I have bad news," she said. "Your Father is dead. Come home." We've all gotten those calls—and if you haven't yet, may God shield you yet a while longer. You drop everything. Immediately. You call the airlines—yes the ticket costs too much and it isn't in the budget—but that's what savings accounts are for, so what if you drain it down to nothing. You have to do it . . . . You need to be there—to give comfort, to be comforted. Everything else is put on hold and nothing, nothing else matters. Neither hell nor high water can keep you from going. Immediately. The entry of God into the messes of our wold is sort of like that in St. Mark's gospel—the reign of God is so urgent that Mark can hardly contain himself, in his impatience to tell his listeners that now nothing else except the presence of God matters, Mark makes a mess of his grammar, action bumps into action, the narration is brief, breathless, staccato, headlong . . . like in an emergency. . . everything must happen immediately. The Reign of God is no synod bureaucracy. There is no time for feasability studies . . . there is no time for cost/benefit analysis . . and for the love of God, you definitely don't stand on the dry land and tell the drowning they've got to be patient. And immediately, Jesus cries out . .. in a Certain part of New Jersey . . . the reign of God is now! Here! Not someplace else, but here! Turn around and hear Good News. And without waiting, it's down to the Sea he goes, where the chaos monster dwells and Jesus sees the unclean, uncouth, slimeball fisherfolk and immediately, urgently yells out to them: You're going to go fishing for humans! Now! And immediately they respond. Immediately they drop their nets, immediately they jump out of their boats. They know that the only time you fish humans out of the water is when there's an emergency, it's when they're in over their head, it's when they're drowning, so for God's sake you act fast!! When the kingdom of God is at hand, There is no time to stop, to think, to analyze, to figure out the future. Yes, things are unsafe in certain parts of New Jersey, but the command is to go there now, anyway. And when you go off rescuing people drowning in their despair, you're going to have enter their own certain parts of New Jersey with them and it's going to cost you, big time. You're going to make the family values people very, very angry when you hang around with a man who redefines family as those from certain parts of New Jersey who love one another without conditions. And if you want to dilly-dally around counting your coins and worrying about your bank account . . . forget it . . . it's only those who are willing to lose everything that are promised life. So listen up!! The reign of God is now. Here. In this Certain Part of New Jersey . . .in this room, amongst this unseemly rabble of us poor schmucks who will never do anything quite cleanly or properly. . . and this is how the reign of God does happen: Here, today, now, you will take very God of very God into your mouth and the reign of God will explode inside you and permeate your every certain part of New Jersey, whether you believe it or not. And immediately you will go forth to fish for those who are drowning in their certain parts of you-know-where. So make a loud sound on your garbage can lids, make a joyful noise with trashbags full of aluminum cans, and let every dumpster resound with alleluias—for the reign of your audacious, intemperate, impatient God is now at hand. Mary, Mother of Our LordAugust 15, 1999 The Angel might as well have said, AHail Mary! You=re in trouble!@ No doubt about it B engaged to Joseph, but not yet married to him—and pregnant, six months pregnant—but not by Joseph. It used to be even in this culture that this was cause for great scandal B but in Mary=s time this sort of thing was an abomination, and the penalty prescribed in the Bible, in Deuteronomy, was death, death by stoning. And any words by Mary or anyone else that her pregnancy was the result of a virginal conception would have been received in her culture the same way we all received the news in my junior high school that one of our female classmates had gotten pregnant via the swimming pool after the boys= phy ed class had been in it.Mary is a woman in deep trouble, no doubt about it B yet how does she react? On the one hand we have the serene Mary B the one who sings those words make known by the Beatles, ALet it be. Let it be. To me as God wills.@ But to stop here with the serene and pious Mary is to miss both the scandal and Mary=s feisty and audacious faith. This young woman is pregnant out of wedlock, yet she has no shame! Rather she dares see what the world, especially the religious world, sees as scandalous abomination, as conduct unbecoming B she dares to see this abomination and scandal as a gift B as God=s will for her life. Mary, out of favor in her religious culture, proclaims that she is blessed, the object of God=s favor. How wonderfully daring, how beautifully audacious: that which she did not choose, that which she would not have chosen, that which could only spell rejection, Mary takes for gift and blessing. But Mary=s radical and audacious faith has only just begun.In her Magnificat B her song of praise that is our Gospel reading for the day B Mary becomes the first in the Gospel of St. Luke to proclaim the Good News that will sound forth in Jesus Christ. And such a proclamation from a woman no less B and remember according to the religious and social norms of her day, women had no business speaking to God or of God. But audacious and daring Mary not only sings to God but sings forth of a God who brings down the powerful and the mighty; she sings of a God who then raises up the lowly, of a God who fills the hungry with good things, and sends the rich away B empty, for a change. Do you get how damn dangerous this woman is? Do you get how dangerous the Gospel she proclaims is? Not only is her pregnancy against cultural, religious, and social norms, but what she proclaims is also against the cultural, religious, and social norms B that are always set by the powerful and wealthyBGerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and a few others come to mind. (Bet there are no statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary in their offices.) But it would beBit isBher son, Jesus the Christ, who would, who does reinterpret the text, the law, and the traditions who would, who does find at their core the gracious God whose essence is absolute, pure, and unconditional love.Much has been made in the churches of the Reformation about excess devotion to Mary. But to read about the people =s devotion to Mary B the people=s devotion as opposed to official teaching B reveals much. There=s a story told by the Irish: One day, Jesus was visiting St. Peter at the gates of heaven. He looks out over the people waiting to enter into heaven and he sees several notorious sinners out there in the line. Jesus nudges St. Peter and tells him that in no way is he to let these reprobates into heaven. Some time later, Jesus comes back to Peter and says, AListen, I thought I told you not to let those sinners into heaven B so how come I just saw them sitting down to the Feast?@ And St. Peter replies, AI did like just you told me, but they did what they always do, they went around to the back door, and you know your Mother, she just lets everybody in who asks.@ Mary became important when the church no longer proclaimed a Jesus who embraced the outcasts, when the church no longer proclaimed a Jesus whose condemnation was reserved for the religious elite and their power politics. But how can the powerful in the church proclaim such a gospel—a gospel that calls their very own actions into question? The powerful had to, the powerful have to, make Jesus into a stern, powerful, male authority figure B had to, have to, make Jesus over into their own image. But Mary B a mere woman B what danger can she be?For the past four centuries the poor people of Mexico have had a special fondness for an image, a portrayal of Mary, Nuestra Seņora de Guadalupe B or as they call her affectionately, La Morenita B the dear little brown one. According to legend, the Virgin Mary revealed herself in December of 1531 to Juan Diego, a poor indigenous peasant, and she imprinted her image on his cloak. But this wasn=t the image of a white, European Mary B it was the image of an indigenous Mexican B an Indian B one who looked just like those who were enslaved by the Spaniards and their church. And if Mary looked indigenous, then how would her son look? Small wonder La Morenita was embraced by the las indigenas B the indians. Small wonder that both church and government spent a couple of centuries trying to suppress this vision of Mary B this vision of her son. And small wonder too that images of La Morenita have gotten taller and whiter as the years have gone by. La Morenita remains, however, a dangerous image in Latin America for it is she who tells the people of her Son who reveals God=s special love for the poor, the powerless, and outcast.But now, let =s bring this scandal here, right here. Let=s bring it to this very hour, to this very room. You are soon to be invited to this altar, here, right here, to receive the true body and blood of Jesus, who is himself the good news (for some) of Mary=s audacious proclamation. But be warned! Be warned: for by taking the body and blood of Christ into you own body, you will become as Mary, pregnant with the Good News B and with Mary you will find yourself proclaiming in word and deed the God whose will it is to cast down the mighty and send away the rich B empty B whose will it is to exalt the lowly and to fill the hungry with good things. And be further warned: this pregnancy will bring you no ease B yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also. And with Mary you will stand beneath the cross and there, there you will behold the God who suffers with all humanity. But know too, that it is only from beneath the cross that you will see the heavens open and the Son of Mary, the Son of God, descending, clothed in Glory B his Glory that surely one day will be your own. So come. Receive the scandal of Christ=s body and blood. If you dare. |
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