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SERMON ARCHIVE March-April, 2002 Click on the sermon you wish to read.
Where indicated, individual 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. 28 April, 2002 Click here for printable .pdf format Faith to Be It was a bright sunny spring day and the young man was enjoying his walk through the countryside. He came to the edge of a great canyon. The view of the depth, the distances, the formations and the colors was breathtaking. He walked along the edge of the cliff overlooking the canyon. Suddenly the earth beneath his feet gave way. He began falling to what he imagined would be his certain death. Continuing his tumble down the side of the canyon, he noticed a small bush protruding from the wall of the canyon. To his relief, he could just reach it. However, once he’d grabbed hold and had stopped falling, he realized he didn’t have the strength to hang on. In mortal fright he began screaming – someone – anyone – please help me! He screamed until he was hoarse. Then he heard a voice from above: "I’m up here – what do you want?" The man responded: "I’m down here hanging on for dear life – my arms are tired – get a rope or something – help me." The voice from above responded: "I’m God and I’ll rescue you. Just let go and I’ll catch you." The man fell silent. After a while he screamed out: "Is there anyone else up there?" This morning we heard: Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. That rather ridiculous story I told you is a poor illustration of believing, or the lack of it, of what we call faith. Let go – trust me – have faith – be faith-full – full of faith. Faith isn’t so much a thing we have, something we catch, or get, or work up to – something we store away until we need it. Faith is living – faith is confidence. Faith is seeing God in every event – seeing God in every person. Someone said: "To have faith is to regard as unimportant what is most important to us. (Faith) is to listen to what we do not desire to hear. Faith is to accept to go in the direction opposite the one we want to take. Faith is to love those we don’t wish to love." A long road? Yes! A hard road? Yes! But this faith is a gift given and with the gift of faith is also given a "safe" house for us. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? . . .I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. Where are these dwelling places? – this safe house for we on this journey who have been given this gift of faith? What’s it like? Actually, it isn’t a place. Neither is it an it. Jesus is our home – Jesus is our house of God. Everything I read in the Gospel of John leads me to believe Jesus is talking about himself. Jesus is our dwelling place, just as Jesus is our way. In Jesus we meet God and in Jesus we dwell with God. Our faith journey is possible because we are in Jesus – and in Jesus we can see God. Entering that house in baptism we have become a new creation and we can see the face of God. Phillip asked, Show us the Father. Jesus said, Look at me. And Phillip and generations since have seen God in Jesus. Do we ask the same question: Show us . . . ?" And Jesus is still the answer to the question. Spend some time with Jesus – read Jesus’ words and story. Think about the compassion expressed for all people. See Jesus’ anger at injustice. Feel Jesus’ forgiveness. Hear the appeal to follow. In seeing the Christ in Jesus, do we not see God? And having beheld God, are we then empowered to do what Jesus did? Are we made a new creation? YES! YES! YES! And that’s what this gift of faith – and being in God’s house, Jesus – and seeing God is all about. In a mean isolated village where there was no wealth, only great poverty, lived a saintly woman. She spent her life treating those who were ill – she comforted those in grief – she gave help where she could, as best she could. One young man, while accepting the ministry of this saint, made fun of her faith. He would come to the place where the woman worshiped – laugh – sneer – I can’t see your God. What does your God look like.? The taunts and the fun making continued. One day the saint found the young man beaten – unconscious – near death. She carried him home – dressed his wounds, and put him on her own cot. When the young man gained consciousness, the saint divided her own poor food with her patient. For awhile, the young man said nothing – he only watched. Finally, we was able to speak: I know what your God looks like. Your God looks like you. Jesus said: the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these. 14 April 2002 Click here for printable .pdf format It was like a miracle that first time I put on a pair of glasses. I must not have been seeing anything well before. The trees had individual leaves, the stores had signs I could read, the teacher was writing things on the blackboard that were meant for me to pay attention to. Every day these new lenses in front of my eyes brought me new discoveries. And as I grew, my vision changed, and as my vision changed, I would need a new set of lenses through which to see the world. Even if you haven’t had to get glasses – yet – because most of you will some day – most of you do know what it’s like to see the world through colored lenses. You’ve been going along wearing dark glasses, you take them off, and you notice that the colors of the world are different from when you’ve had the darkened lenses in front of your eyes. Or perhaps you’ve heard that the eyes of humans see the world differently than the eyes of a dog or a cat. How you see the world depends on what sorts of filters are built into the eyes or the brain, what sorts of filters we put before our eyes. There are other lenses or filters that aren’t physical. We hear that the peoples of the Arctic have many different words and phrases for that white stuff that collects on top of the mountains during the winter. Because they have many, many different expressions for snow, they see many different kinds of snow where the rest of us might see just stuff we have hate to shovel and stuff that gets us into accidents. The point of all of this is that we are always interpreting the world around us – through lenses that correct or filter, through our experiences in the world, through the languages that we learn at our mothers’ knees. The Bible is a part of our world – whether we are Christians or not. And all of us interpret the scriptures. Every translation from Greek or Hebrew into any language is filled with interpretation. Choosing one ancient set of scrolls from which to translate as opposed to another ancient set of scrolls is interpretation. Every out loud reading by emphasizing some words, by phrasing a sentence a certain way, by using a particular tone is an interpretation of what lies on the page. And every excerpted reading from scripture is an act of interpretation when it is not situated in the whole of scripture and the whole of tradition. The irony of course is that anyone and everyone who says that he or she does not interpret scripture but reads it literally is operating in a way that is foreign to what even scripture says about itself. Two friends are walking to Emmaus trying to make sense of what has happened in Jerusalem. How could one who said he was from God be handed over to death by the leaders of the religious establishment and the chief priests – those who said they live by scripture? And this vision of angels – what to make of that? Here are things new and different. And the one walking with them – an outsider begins to interpret Scripture to them. The one who is an outsider, the very one put to death by the insiders, places a new set of lenses in front of their eyes, and then he takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them – and their eyes are opened. It is Jesus of course who is interpreting Scripture – and interpreting through the lens, through the filter, of his own self. It is how Jesus operated all along – looking not to the letter of Scripture but looking at Scripture through God’s spirit of justice, love, peace – looked at Scripture in the spirit of the God who raises up those who have been cast down and casts down those who have put themselves above others through their acts of judgement and condemnation. The early Church practiced just this sort of interpretation of Scripture. In Acts we hear the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Now keep in mind that a eunuch is a sexual irregular. Philip interprets for the eunuch the Torah and the Prophets -- through the lens of Jesus, the Christ, the crucified and risen. The Eunuch asks what is to prevent him from being baptized. A loaded question, because of course Scripture says that those people who are sexual irregulars are outside the kingdom of God. But the Eunuch has heard Christ, the Word of God contained in Scripture in what Philip has interpreted to him – and this Eunuch knows that if Philip has meant what he has proclaimed, there is nothing to prevent the eunuch’s being made a part of the body of Christ – and so Philip baptizes him. As many of you know I have been appointed to the ELCA’s Task Force that will make a recommendation in 2005 regarding the ordination and rostering of gay and lesbian people in committed relationships and another recommendation regarding the church blessing the committed relationships of gay and lesbian people. And you likely know that this congregation has already offered a resolution to the Rocky Mountain Synod that asks the synod to positively endorse these actions before 2005. What is at the core of these questions is how we read and interpret Scripture. Do we treat all passages of Scripture as equal to one another? The honest answer is, of course, that we don’t – otherwise all you women would have your heads covered and you wouldn’t be on the council, teaching, reading scripture, serving as Eucharistic ministers or serving at the altar. In the Lutheran tradition – and as many of us would argue, in the tradition of Scripture itself – we view Scripture through the lens of a gracious God. We interpret scripture in the light of a God who overcomes the gulf between God and humanity through God’s own gracious acts and initiative – who accepts us and forgives us so that we might accept and forgive others and together work to bring about justice, mercy, peace, and love. In the tradition of the Hebrews and of the Church universal, we take our place alongside the reminder from Scripture that the letter of Scripture kills – that it is the Spirit – the fresh wind from God that blows where it will – that we are made alive. After the two who were going to Emmaus had received the bread that was broken for them, and after their eyes had been opened, these two said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" If you wish to have the scriptures opened to you in such a way that your hearts burn with joy, come to the table. It is through the sacrament that the scriptures are opened for you. You will hear how the Christ sits at table with you who are outcasts and sinners. You will hear that in the night in which he was betrayed, Christ gives himself to those who would deny, betray, and abandon him. You will hear that Christ gives himself to all – not to some – but to all – for the forgiveness of sin. And though, according to scripture, one who is hanged on a tree is forever accursed, you will hear in the sacrament that God does not hold anyone accursed, for it is God who has raised the crucified Christ to life. And in the resurrection from the dead, God has shown forth that Jesus, the Christ, is Lord over all things, Lord even and especially over scripture. So come to the table, for here you are accepted unconditionally, here God is reconciled to you. Come to the table and you will see with new lenses, and you will know that love beats at the heart of scripture. Come, that your hearts may burn within you. The Resurrection of Our Lord31 March 2002 Click here for printable .pdf format A Jewish friend of mine asked me recently to explain to what rabbits have to do with Easter. Well, I said to him, from a preacher’s standpoint, trying to say anything logical about Easter is a little like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Preaching on Christmas, by contrast is a piece of cake. We all understand birth, more or less. Babies are born every minute of every day. We’ve all seen babies. And lots of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles think that their particular newborn is, somehow, the only-begotten one of God. And the business about shepherds and stars and wisemen – that’s all relatively easy to make sense of. And since more people believe in angels than believe in God, even that part of the story holds together for lots of people. Admittedly, the virgin birth thing is a bit tougher to wrap our logical minds around, but we moderns seem to be able to gloss our way over that one without doing too much violence to the faith. Easter, however, is an entirely different matter. Most of what we say about Easter points to the failure of normal language to comprehend or make sense of the Resurrection from the dead. We try to use imagery from nature – even one of the Gospel writers tried to pull that off. We talk about new green leaves and colorful flowers coming forth from the earth after the seeming dead of winter. We talk about a grain of wheat falling into the ground, dying, and rising up to produce an earful of grain. But those are all natural, biologically explainable processes. That’s what tulip bulbs do, that’s what seeds do, that’s what trees do. And we’ve all seen those things happen. We’ve seen brilliantly colored butterflies emerge from dusty gray cocoons. Every morning there is a new sunrise, and most girl and boy scouts can make flame spring forth where there was no flame. All of these are all natural phenomena. By contrast, there isn’t anything natural about the resurrection from the dead. Nowhere in nature do dead bodies rise from the dead. It’s safe to say that there isn’t a single person here who has really seen a body rise from the dead. No biologist, archaeologist, historian, or anthropologist has ever been able to scientifically verify anything even remotely like the resurrection of a dead body. And while the philosopher Plato talks about the immortality of the soul, about some divine spark that exists from before birth and endures for all time, that is not the same as what we hear about happening on Easter. Furthermore to talk about Easter with reference to nature or Plato overlooks the fact seeds, bulbs, butterflies and divine sparks do not suffocate to death and bleed on crosses. The talk of contemporary theologians about resurrection isn’t a whole lot better than talk of blossoms and butterflies. The Jesus Seminar in its modernist quest after historical truth tells us that the disciples experienced vivid memories of Jesus as they retold stories about their time together with Jesus, and the only way they knew how to talk about it was through a story of a bodily resurrection. Preacher William Willimon responds by saying, "Hey Jesus Seminar, the disciples weren’t that creative. These are not imaginative minds we’re dealing with here. You don’t get an idea like the bodily resurrection of Jesus out of people with brains like Simon Peter’s." Ludwig Wittgenstein was, arguably, the best philosopher of logic and language of the 20th Century, and perhaps of all time. In his Tractatus of Logical Philosophy Wittgenstein proposes that the things of God cannot be understood through the language of logic or science. The things of God, the resurrection of the body and life eternal are matters of faith, and matters of faith cannot be explained or understood through language, they can only be lived, lived in the here and now. Easter is a matter of faith and it can only be lived, here in this place, now. To live Easter, to live Christ’s rising from the dead is show forth with our lives that evil, death, destruction, injustice did not have the final word on that Friday once upon a time. To live in resurrection is to show forth with our lives, here and now, that that irrational something called love does triumph over hate – or more to the point, does triumph over indifference – even – or especially -- when all the empirical evidence shows that in this world, the good, the loving, the merciful will be defeated. To live Easter is to show forth with our lives that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things – that love never ends. To live in Easter is to show forth with our lives that Christ is present in our committed, loving relationships even when fear and ignorance say that some of these relationships are wrong. To live in Easter is to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly before God – even when injustice, cruelty, and arrogant religiosity seem destined to have the last word. To live Easter is to trust with out very lives that the last word is and ever shall be God’s word of unconditional love and forgiveness – and that not even death will prevent us from experiencing and being a part of that final and eternal Word. However -- and this is a major "however" – we cannot live forth Easter by our own reason or strength. We can only live forth Easter in the here and now through a gift from God. And that gift from God is also beyond ordinary language and understanding – the only thing we can do is hold out our hands to receive bread and wine that Christ has promised are his very essence – his body, his blood. So baptized and beloved children of God, come to the altar with open hands, and take into your bodies your crucified and risen Lord. Then get the heck out of here and live forth with your lives, here and now, Christ’s resurrection from the dead – and your own as well. 10 March, 2002 Click here for printable .pdf format Imagine with me a dark place. Perhaps in a wood or a field. Perhaps a dark building – or, if it’s part of your experience – in a dark cave. If you’re outdoors, the stars and whatever moon there might be are covered over by heavy clouds. There are no street or yard lights. No light from passing traffic. If you’re in a building, heavy drapes are drawn across the windows – and no light seeps under doorways. And if you want to know true darkness, imagine a cave or a mineshaft where there is nothing but a darkness so total that it strikes terror in the heart. Now, start moving around in this darkness – you know what happens. In the woods, a log is in the way. You trip, perhaps you fall. The result, a bruise, perhaps a scrape or cut. You walk tentatively across the field, but there’s a prairie dog hole or some other irregularity – you step into it, your balance is off, you sprain an ankle if you’re lucky – if not, you break a bone. In the house, pieces of furniture seem to move in out of nowhere and you bang your shin – or you walk into a wall – or you miss a stair and down you go. A cave or mineshaft without light is so dark that you loose sense of up, down, left or right – disorientation is total – you can’t even detect parts of your own body. For almost as long as we human beings have spoken and kept track of our thoughts and feelings, we have noted certain states in ourselves, in our lives, in our cultures that have had much in common with the experience of disorienting, body-bruising darkness. Tomorrow will be the six-month anniversary of September 11, 2001. On that day our nation entered into a kind of collective darkness – the whole world seemed shadowed over – we seemed, and still seem, to be stumbling in the night. This past week, the family and friends of Dick McKennett suddenly found themselves plunged into a dark, dark place – suddenly, unexpectedly, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, friend, pillar of our faith community was taken in death. And there is no one here who has not had experiences that have been – or still are – like a helpless, fear-filled, injurious, or debilitating stumbling around in deep darkness. St. John of the Cross, a Spanish Mystic described this descent into darkness, this indwelling of darkness, "the dark night of the soul." And there is no way any of us can escape this experience. Back to imagining. In a dark field, a light begins to shine in the darkness and that light comes nearer and nearer until it is held up to illumine a path and together with the light bearer we make our way through the darkness. In a darkened room, a candle is lighted and we no longer bang our shins or stub our toes on hard pieces of furniture. In the total absence of light that is experienced in a cave, a small lantern seems to shine as brightly as the sun. And even if our eyes do not see, our hands, the skin on our face can feel the warmth that comes with light. Among the many, many blessings of my life is the parish in which I was raised. The church of my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood was one where there was great diversity. In that downtown Lutheran parish, there were people after whom I could model my life. As I became aware of my sexuality, though the world outside was a very dark place, inside that faith community there was the light of unconditional acceptance. And the Gospel was so proclaimed and the Holy Sacraments so administered that I knew God’s love for me was without condition, limit or end. I came to know in that place that Christ was the light of my world – at times the only light in the deep darkness of a world that rejected me and my sort. This morning’s Gospel breaks into a mindset in which illness, handicap, retroviruses, mental illness, cancer, or being different in any way were and often still are considered as signs of moral failing, of inferiority, of weakness, of Otherness. We hear Jesus enter into a culture of categorical exclusions – and Jesus, to the dismay of many, chooses one whom the religiously correct thought was the result of a morally inferior condition because he was blind. With spit and mud, Jesus anoints someone whose very humanity came under debate by the Pharisees and their hangers-on. With this action, Jesus proclaimed that he does not look at people according to the exclusionary ways of religious elitism. Instead, Jesus chooses to give the gift of light to one whom the culture thought was surely among the ungodly. In this morning’s first reading too, we hear that God chooses to anoint David with the Spirit – even though to the eyes of others this child seemed most unlikely to be an instrument of God, and who as an adult would seem even more unlikely to be an instrument of God. Lent is the season of the Church year in which we prepare for the great Paschal feast – for Easter. At the Easter vigil when the new fire, the light of the resurrected Christ, is rekindled, all the baptized remember with those who are being baptized that all – all – who come to the waters receive the Spirit of Christ and of Christ’s resurrection. This is no mere audio-visual teaching aid. In baptism we truly receive the light of Christ – without condition – and by the power of God, we are also reborn, resurrected to show forth Christ’s light in the darkness, to one another and to the world. And it is all a gift, a power-filled gift, and ours merely for trusting that it is so. Beloved of God, chosen of God – once you were darkness, but now in the Lord, you are light. You have been anointed as God’s servants, you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit. Go forth from this place: you who are risen from the dead by your baptism into Christ, you are the light for those who mourn, you are the light for those who have lost their way in a world that does not care, you are the light for those who suffer the dark night of the soul, you are the light for those with broken hearts, you are the light for the last, the least, the lonely, and the unloved. You, chosen and beloved, are the light of the world, always, always bearing the light of Christ, the light of compassion, peacemaking, kindness, love, justice, and mercy to a world that sits in darkness and the shadow of death. Chose and beloved of God, go forth and lit that light shine – and shine – and shine. 3 March 2002Exodus 17:1–7 Psalm 95 Romans 5:1–11 John 4:5–42 Click here for printable .pdf format Throughout the church, it’s the hot-button issue of the day – threatening to tear the fabric of nearly every faith community apart. If we cave in to them, if we let them become fully equal with us in every way, if we don’t put some parameters on what they can and can’t do in the church, the church is going to split. And we can’t afford that. There are more pressing issues. Why should we single out one group for welcome? We don’t want to be known as that kind of church. Can’t they just be patient while we study all of this? We all know just who they are: the Samaritans (who did you think I was going to say?), and they are at it again. Or so said the early believers – Judean Christians who had an ancient antipathy, an ancient fear, an ancient distrust of those who would not live or worship as the traditional religious folk aligned with Jerusalem did. The Samaritans were the Other of the day – the them – the not us of the early days of the Church. And they were singled out for inclusion by no less than Christ Jesus. Remember the Gospel story of the Good Samaritan? It was this total Otherness that gave the story of the good Samaritan its power. Those who fancied themselves religious – those who saw themselves as upholding traditional values, traditional morality could not imagine that a Samaritan could do or be anything acceptable, let alone anything good. It is a story that affirms, to the chagrin of the religious establishment that God’s gifts are found even, or perhaps especially, in "them." And then we have this morning’s story. In it Jesus transgresses multiple cultural and religious boundaries. He speaks with a woman, engaging her in debate – in debate about faith. This simply isn’t done, women have no place in discussions about the things of God – it’s grounds not only for scandal, but for ostracism from the circles of decent folk. That the woman is a Samaritan – that Jesus is even in Samaritan territory – this only adds to the scandal. And the sort of woman she is . . . religious law, the Bible, calls for people like her to be stoned to death. But Jesus not only speaks to her, not only speaks to her of things divine, but he offers her living water – a symbol for rebirth -- for the entrance of the Spirit and all the Spirit’s gifts – not just some of the Spirit’s gifts.. And this, all of it, Jesus offers without judgement, without a study task force, without a social statement. Jesus does not say, I cannot give you, an outsider, living water right away – it will upset people if I do – be patient – in due time – perhaps until then a few drops? The problem in this morning’s Gospel, perhaps the problem in everything that is Holy Gospel, Holy Good News is not in the Samaritan woman or man. The problem is not in those who are outsiders, not in those who are strange, alien, Other. The problem is within the Insiders, the problem is within those who would bind God to conventional religion, who would put God in a box. In last week’s Gospel from the preceding chapter of St. John, Jesus told Nicodemus that God’s spirit, the creating wind of God that hovered over the waters and brought forth the good creation, blows where it wills – you can not make it stand still like something seen – and where it makes its way – you cannot tame it – you cannot put it under the control of your religious rules. And so too Jesus says to the Samaritan woman – the worship of God and the presence of God will not be limited to this holy place or that holy place – to this human structure or that human structure. God is spirit – ruach – breath, wind in Hebrew, pneuma – breath, wind in Greek. Rushing Spirit, rushing wind, powerful, creating, unbounded, uncontainable. St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, from which our second reading for today comes – is writing to the believers in Rome – some of the believers were Jewish – some Gentile – and the antipathy – the extreme dislike, that they each had for the other – well, it was something that St. Paul saw as contrary to the Gospel. Each was putting God in a box – the Jews thought the Gentiles were perverted abominations and going to hell – and the Gentiles thought the Jewish believers were arrogant and going to hell. St. Paul had to step in and say, wait a minute – God’s undying love for you in Christ is for all people but it is totally unearned and unearnable and the only thing you or anyone can do is trust that it is so. In Christ, God embraces the ungodly – that is, all people. In Christ, God crosses the chasm between God and a flawed humanity – and God’s reconciliation to and for all knows no boundaries or boxes or rules. In Christ, fitness to stand in the presence of God is no longer at issue. In Christ God has come to be in the presence of all people. In Christ God wills to enter every life – and by Christ’s death and resurrection God has spoken the ultimate word for all people, that beyond all boundaries, even beyond the boundaries of suffering and death. The last word will be God’s and God’s only – and the last Word is love, unconditional, unbounded, unfathomable love – as wild as the wind – as untamable as water pushed by the wind – God’s love for Pharisees and Samaritans alike, for all, no conditions, This love is ours, this love is yours – it is given, a completely free gift, for each and every one of you. It is yours by faith – merely for trusting that it is so. But sometimes trust comes hard – for we are afraid of unconditional gifts – even, or maybe especially, the unconditional gift of love. Have no fear. God even takes care of that. Here in this Holy Supper, God in Christ now enters your presence, overcomes all boundaries, enters into your body, becomes you, that you shall have faith, that you shall have trust – trust that God is reconciled to you and will never, ever, ever let you go. |
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