7 February 2010

Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 138
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11

This morning, we have three stories of divine-human encounters:  Isaiah’s dramatic vision of God in the Temple in Jerusalem; Luke’s story of the call of the first disciples after an overwhelming catch of fish; and St. Paul’s remembrance of the day the Risen Christ appeared to him on the Road to Damascus.  A voice from heaven and bright lights that literally knock a person off his feet...or visions of strange six-winged creatures with voices so loud that they cause the floor to tremble and who touch lips with burning coals...or experiences of seasoned fishermen who have toiled all night without any success giving it one more try at the suggestion of one skilled at carpentry, but not at fishing, only to see their little boats nearly swamped by the fish pulled in by their bulging nets -- do such things really happen?  And more to the point, do they happen still and do they happen to people like us?

31 January 2010

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30

I read this week that the moral of this Gospel Lesson is a warning:  “If you are invited somewhere to preach, make sure the pulpit is not in a building located near a cliff.”  This image of the members of the Nazareth Synagogue being filled with so much rage at what Jesus had to say that they gave him the “bums rush” out the door to the brow of a hill threatening to throw him off, should give pause to any of us who have the audacity to climb up a pulpits where we have the audacity to believe that we are authorized to speak a word on behalf of God -- especially if it turns out to be a word people don’t want to hear.

I think that the only church where I have preached that is perched at the edge of a cliff is the small Lutheran Church high above Idaho Springs, which has a large sign you can see from I-70 that simply says “Lutheran Church” in big, block letters.  I was reminiscing about that church last week at coffee hour with Judy Marxhausen, whose husband, Don, is the current interim pastor there, and she told me that although the congregation would like to add information about service times and the fact that it is an ELCA congregation, the cost of getting equipment able to reach that high makes that impossible.  My pathetic attempts at sermons I gave there years ago when I was in college just beginning to learning the craft of preaching were more likely to evoke sleep than anger, but I hope whatever Don says in Idaho Springs this a.m. will not only keep the folks awake....but not ready to give him a push off the cliff.

24 January 2010

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Psalm 19
1 Corinthains 12:12-31
Luke 4:14-21

When I was in Seminary in the early 1960’s, I often engaged in “bull sessions” with classmates where we shared visions of what an ideal parish would look like for our first call.  My “perfect church” one where the members would be eager to listen to my sermons and even more eager to attend adult classes I would teach.

There, would (of course) be no conflicts or squabbles of any kind -- and no financial issues, either.  I did not expect to get rich there, but counted on enough income to pay the bills and provide us with a comfortable parsonage to accommodate the growing family we were planning, and enable us to start saving for the future.  Finally, my ideal, dream church would be in an area with growth potential; there would be a huge pool of people who could not wait to become part of a Lutheran congregation with our emphasis on the grace and love of Christ.

In 1964, I accepted a call to Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, an inner-city parish in Camden, New Jersey -- my first and only parish experience before I spent the bulk of my active ministry in Lutheran Higher Education.  I quickly realized that Holy Trinity was a far cry from my ‘vision’ of an ideal parish.  We were a small, struggling congregation, mainly made up of caucasian members, most of whom lived in the suburbs and commuted some distance to church.  The church it had become integrated a few years before my arrival, so we had fairly large number of people of color in our Sunday School and as part of our total membership.   And while we were able to add a few new members during my years there, it was not easy, since the bulk of the people who now lived near the church were more familiar with Southern Baptist theology and worship than our Lutheran ways.