God's always "hooking us," pulling us back: back to the Word, back to the Meal, back to the Font...back to the community.

This blog is for the purpose of sharing around each Sunday's Bible readings & sermon at Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church.

Get Sunday's readings here. We follow the Narrative Lectionary.
(In the summer, we return to the Revised Common Lectionary' epistle or Second Reading here.)

So, what's been hooking you?

So, what's been hooking you?


Here you can...

Thursday, July 19, 2012

July 15 -- Seventh Sunday of the Green Season


I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’m really willing to die for my faith.  Just being honest.

I was hoping I could come back to a more gentle text today.  This one is a tough one, and invites us to think about some ideas that we probably don’t have the opportunity to ponder, nor would we like to, very often.  Martyrdom – John the Baptist, decapitated for his discipleship, for his willingness to speak the truth, caught in a world of seduction, power and violence. 

Are we willing to die for Christ?  Sometimes I think I’d be more ready to die for my country than to die for Christ.  Dying for Christ just sounds so nebulous in our day in age.  What does that even mean?  What would it look like for you to die for Christ?  When was the last time anyone asked you that? 

I want to invite you this week to pray over this question of dying for Christ.  “Lord, what does it look like to die for you?  Because I’m confused and I’m scared, and I’d rather just go back to the world.  But what are you calling me to do?”  I’m not totally convinced that we’re all called to go charging into today’s equivalents of King Herod’s courts.  But I do believe we are called to ponder, at the very least, this idea of speaking truth to power.  Truth to wealth, truth to luxury, truth to prestige, and truth to ignorance and apathy.  God’s truth to “the way it is”.  What does that look like?

One of our resources for today, suggests that the most tragic character in our Gospel text is not John the Baptist, but Herod the King.  John’s message about repentance and his pointing to Christ lives on, despite his death.  But King Herod just becomes yet another fallenruler in history.  Herod never got it. 

He fell for the temptations and seductions of this world.  He went back to the world.  And it’s a raunchy story.  This “daughter” of his dancing in front of him, Herod being caught up in it, making a promise to give her whatever she wanted, almost like he was in a trance, the mother’s desire to kill John the Baptist, and that gruesome image of his head on a platter.  Ugh.  At first glance I wonder if we can even relate to this stuff.

But then I think, well, we sure can fall for the temptations and seductions of this world.  As much as we try to put ourselves in John’s shoes, we often find ourselves in Herod’s.  What is it that tempts or seduces us?  There are certainly some obvious sexual connotations in this story, but there are many ways that we can be lured away from following Christ.

Micah asked us a while back while we were having a special treat, ice cream or chocolate or something:  “Daddy, why are things that taste so good, so bad for our bodies?”  I think that’s the question, isn’t it?  Why are things that are so much fun, or so simple, or so affordable, or so tasty…so bad for our bodies?  [pause]  And not just our own physical bodies?  So often,as we indulge, we can hurt others—perhaps unconsciously—the whole human family, the body of Christ, or the earth, what some theologians have called the Body of God.

Yesterday after visiting Margaret Sunde, I went to buy some new shorts.  And only after I bought them, because they fit me and liked the color and the price, only after I indulged did I look at the label “Made in Bangladesh” and I looked up the company that made my shorts, and couldn’t find anything about the conditions of the factories in Bangladesh.  But I gave money to that company yesterday, as if in a trance, and I suppose I gave a boost to economy in some tiny way, created jobs and all that, but I would be pretty surprised if the conditions for those teenage girls in Bangladesh who sewed my shorts together are very healthy and positive.   

There are some powerful forces in this world.  And it’s all very complicated.  Sosometimes it’s good to have a text that lays out the two ends of the spectrum, just to help us get our bearings…today we see two extreme characters:  John the Baptist and King Herod.  “Lord, give us the courage and the faith to be more like John.” 

“When Christ calls us,” as Dietrich Bonheoffer once said, “he bids we come and die.”  God, give us the courage to risk our lives for your sake.  Give us the words to speak what needs to be said.  Give us the eyes to see those who have been forgotten.  Give us the ears to hear, and the hands to reach out.

Friends, Margaret Sunde, our sister in the faith, is dying.  She’s in hospice care, and it’s only a matter of time.  And as I was saying good bye to her yesterday (I plan to go back again today), but I was leaving she reached out to give me a hug from her bed.  Now you have to understand that she has difficulty moving her arms at all, so when she reached out her arms and lifted her feeble arm around my neck as my able body leaned over her bed, I couldn’t believe it.  And I was struck by this thought and this image:  that even on our deathbeds we can still reach out.  And that reaching out is Christ.  Yes it was Margaret hugging me yesterday, but it was also Christ showing me love and joy with all evidence to the contrary.  With such a dear woman dying in my arms.

This is the love Christ has for you too.  The crucified Christ’s feeble arm wraps around us, even and especially in our King Herod moments, even as we fall short, and get lured away.  Christ reaches out his hands to us and offers us forgiveness, calls us back, bids we come and follow even if it means death, and promises never to abandon us.  For in Christ, death is ultimately conquered forever.  AMEN.






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