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...

Sunday, September 16, 2012

September 16 -- Sixteenth Sunday of the Green Season


Our Vision Statement here at Shepherd of the Valley, raise your hand if you know it….
“Extending God’s welcome to all we meet along the way.”          (Feb. 2009)

Our gospel lesson is a conversation that happened “along the way.”  Jesus and the disciples have been all over the place.  Among Jews, among Gentiles, among women, among children, among Samaritans, among the sick, the possessed, among the Pharisees.  AMONG.  Along the way.  In the thick of it, Jesus stops and asks a critical question, that gets them re-centered. 

We’re well “along the way” too.  In the thick of it, among all sorts of ministry.  I know that’s true for your personal lives.  From the moment we’re born to the moment we breathe our last breath, we’re on a journey.  But we’re also well on our way as a congregation.  We’ve been doing ministry in and around this church for a long time. 

Some have served on church council, some have been faithfully visiting the sick and homebound for years, some have labored on the grounds in the buildings of this place for many more years than I’ve been a pastor. 

Even here in September, the season of the new school year, a message about starting out, blasting off as if nothing’s happened yet, embarking on a new journey, wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense because most of us have already been on the journey for a long time.  Many of us have been on road with Jesus for so long.  We’re already following, trying our best to be faithful.

We’re deep into the thick of it…like the disciples were, deep in the midst and the life of all this good ministry—Worship, Education, Inreach, Outreach, Confirmation, Sunday School, financing—and Jesus stops us, “along the way,” breaks in mid-ministry, and says hey!  Who do you say that I am?  And sometimes we too can loose focus, loose the center, sometimes we can get fearful and fall back on triumphalism.  That’s what Peter did.  “You are Greatest, you’re the Messiah, your ‘the man’!” he wants to shout from the rooftops, “and we get to be your disciples, unlike all those other slackers out there.”  Is he wrong?  But Jesus tells him first to be quiet about that, and then he even rebukes him.  

This is why:  Jesus is all about emptying himself in courageous service and compassion for others.  Say with me. --^  And as a strong and decisive leader, that’s where he’s calling his disciples to be too:  all about emptying ourselves in courageous service and compassion for others.  But Peter’s tone is that of bragging.  “Ha, ha, na, na—we get it Jesus, even if others don’t, we win, you’re the Messiah, you’re on our side.”  Might sound childish, but it’s easy to get like Peter.  We Lutherans love our theology – grace apart from works.  I’m proud of this.  Honestly it’s not something you find readily in other religions and frankly even in other parts of Christianity.  Or maybe some of us have the tendency to get a little triumphant about not just Lutheranism, but Christianity all together.  “We’re the best, the chosen of God, na, na, we know that we’re really God’s favorites.”  Triumphalism.  “You are the Messiah.  Na, na!”  These are traps that we can fall into with Peter.

But thank God, Jesus calls us on our pride!  Thank God, Jesus pulls us too out of our self-centeredness and arrogance!  Thank God Jesus breaks in while we’re “in the thick of it,” while we’re mid-ministry, along the way and brings us back to emptying ourselves in courageous self-giving love and service to the others.  JESUS brings us there, to self-giving love and service.  WE can’t get there on our own.  Thank God, Jesus brings us there!  All we can do is trust, open ourselves, open our hands and our hearts and Christ takes it from there!  Jesus will take us to new places, sisters and brothers of the cross!  This week, Jesus is that abrupt, even harsh voice that interrupts us mid-ministry, and clarifies the vision—the vision is that we empty ourselves, even in the face of death!  I’m not sure why all the disciples didn’t just abandon Jesus right there.  He’s yelling at us today friends, and then he’s telling us to give up everything and follow.

And I say, thank you God!  This is what it means to lose our lives.  This is a bold message from Jesus today, and thank God for it.  Jesus asks us to take up our cross and follow. 

(Google Translator: Wanted to learn how to say in German “I am a Lutheran Pastor”, but I got “I am a loser and a pastor.”  In baptism, we all become "losers"[losing our lives] and "pastors" [caring for one another and the world God made.)

I want to say something, again (I know I’ve said this before), about the cross we bear:  Some have been told that the “cross we bear,” the cross that Jesus tells us to pick up are all those struggles in our lives.  For example, some have even been told by ministers and priests that enduring the blows of their violent husbands is simply one of many crosses for women to bear.  This is bad theology.  This is wrong!  Whether it’s abuse at home, chronic illness in the family, a bad turn of events—these are not crosses to bear.  Sometimes terrible things happen, for no reason at all, sometimes terrible things happen on account of human sinfulness and brokenness, on account of destructive and violent behaviors that have been passed down for generations—and God grieves right along with us when they do.  God cries.  Jesus wept, remember?

The cross that we bear…is the cross that was imprinted on our foreheads when we were baptized…when we were “sealed and marked with the cross of Christ forever.”  Remember that?  And in that covenant of baptism we are joined to Christ and therefore are merged onto the road, grafted along the watery way of the baptismal people –

Living among God’s faithful people
Hearing the Word and sharing the Holy Meal
Proclaiming the good news of Christ through word and deed
Serving all people following the example of Jesus
Striving for justice and peace in all the earth

Bearing that cross is both an absolute gift and a burdensome responsibility.  Bearing this cross, we step out in peace and in faith  and in compassion and justice (Cornell West, ethics at Princeton: “Justice is what love looks like in public” i.e. all are clothed, housed, fed, cared for.  You could say, it’s what love looks like “along the way”).  The resurrection is real, and it’s happening all around us, even when we lose sight of it, get distracted, lured by power and possibility of triumph or dominance.  Even in the thick of our ministry here at SVLC – Christ is our compass, guiding us to make bold decisions, sacrificial, joy-filled, bold decisions with our money, with our time, with our whole lives.  Christ centers us on emptying ourselves today.  And in the emptying paradoxically, unexpectedly, wonderfully…in the loosing of our lives, we FIND, we GAIN, we are REDEEMED, and we are FREE!  

THANKS BE TO GOD!  AMEN.

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