The Shepherd's Hook

February 22 -- Ash Wednesday

2012-02-22T20:45:00.002-08:00

Honesty is always good. Even if it hurts.

When I was growing up. I remember clearly my dad correcting me after catching me in a little lie that would have made things easier: "In our family, Dan, we tell the truth." “But Dad!” I'd start my rationalizing..."In our family, Dan, we tell the truth." It was one of our family mottos.

Today, is a day for truth telling. "Now is the acceptable time." Only today they’re not just little lies like 'I didn't eat the last cookie'. They’re the big ones. What big might lie might you be telling yourself or others around you? That you’re happy? That you’re healthy? That you’re fine? That you’re doing all you can for the poor, the needy? That you’re over it (whatever ‘it’ is)? That you really haven’t hurt that many with your choices? That you are really in control? How we can forget and stray and lie to ourselves that we humans are really in control.

Today, is the day for acknowledging our lies.

And today we receive our corrective, not from any earthly loving parent, but from the almighty, who in sternness and love calls us to repentance: “But, God!” we start to rationalize..."No,” says God, “In our family, we tell the truth."

Honesty is always good, even when it hurts.

And the honesty today, the two truths that we really come face to face with today, are about our sin and our death. We are all sinful, and someday we are all going to die. "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."

Today is a day for hard truths. "In our family, sisters and brothers in Christ, we tell the truth."

We start there. This tradition of ashes dates back to Christians in the 11th century. Isn't that incredible?!

The Christians of that time would put ashes on themselves, in a gesture of honesty, and they would weep together. Not in a showy sign of piety (like in our Gospel reading), but because it was part of their faith. Telling the truth, was part of their faith. A tiny outward sign of a humungous inward truth: I'm/we're all going to die; I am/we're all sinful and broken.

We start there; it’s a hard place to be. Like in a 12-step program. We can’t go anywhere if we don’t admit there’s a problem. Christianity begins with an ultimate problem: sin and death. And it ends with Christ. Today we begin again by admitting that we are not in control. We are not always healthy. We do hurt others and the earth itself. We could make better choices. We could share more of what we have. We harbor anger and resentment, greed and pride. We like to show off (mostly in covert ways). We don’t want to share. We are afraid to trust in God.

We are sinful.

And while it’s not easy to tell the truth. It is good. Even if it hurts.

There is a load that is lifted when the truth comes out. “Well, now we know.” There is a load that is lifted. And God is there.

And now we can begin on the journey. A journey that’s not easy either, but a journey to the waters of healing. The waters of baptism.

I hope you think about your baptism all the time this beautiful Lent. Put up signs by your faucet, and your sprinkler system, and your umbrella to remind yourself that God makes you holy in baptism. You are loved and your are destined for loving others…even if its difficult right now. And even despite even our worst mistakes God is here calling us back again and again back to those holy waters, to God’s holy embrace…where we are called good, beloved, child of God.

There is healing that comes with telling the truth. And Christ goes with us on this journey. AMEN.

Lent that breathes (Lenten practice suggestions by Pastor Dan)

2012-02-22T20:45:00.001-08:00

If you give up/take on something for Lent, may you treat it less like a 40-day New Year’s resolution, a goal to be accomplished. Instead may it be seen as a tangible "turning to God" -- that is, to your community (local church, businesses, organizations, neighbors, friends), to yourself (caring for your body, which Scripture calls a "temple of the Holy Spirit"), or to the earth. “Remember that you are earth and to earth you shall return.”

for those feeling stressed out
------------

Pray about and intentionally cut out at least 2 things in your weekly schedule.
Turn radio off in the car and drive in silence.

Park farther away from shops, etc. And walk more in general.
Leave earlier and sit quietly while you wait.
Practice breathing deeply and slowly, especially when you're tensing up or feeling angry.
Eat healthy food.
Say "no" to more invitations, requests, and other time-consumers...as a Lenten discipline.
Get a massage...as a Lenten discipline, and don't feel guilty.
Simplify even your free time (less TV, more reading; less computer, more walks; less chatter, more silence).
Get in the garden.

for those feeling spiritually dry
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Get wet -- go swimming or take long baths...as a Lenten discipline. Remember your Baptism all the time--whenever you touch, taste, see, hear water.
Do a Lenten daily devotion (we offer one in the narthex)
Read the Bible regularly (lectionary texts available). bookoffaith.org or get a copy of The Message for new perspectives.

for those feeling spiritually dry (con’t)

--------------------------------------

Spend time with a child.
Go hiking, for an hour or a week.
Eat healthy.
Say a word of thanks to God before AND after each meal.
Go to the desert.
Take Sabbath moments--a minute here and there throughout the day to simply pause and ponder the beauty of creation and the gift of God's mercy, all freely given and shed for you.
Memorize a hymn and sing it to yourself or your children/grandchildren.
Come to Lenten vespers--dinner at 6, service at 7pm.
Let your very breathing be worship: "inhale grace; exhale peace". Think of this as often as possible.
Get into the garden
Pray about and perhaps start tithing (giving 10% of your "first fruits" not as a donation but as an offering) – probably the most poignant symbol that “you are not in control.”
Pick a group that is strange/foreign/maybe even seems hostile to you, and get to know one person from that group.
Practice random acts of kindness.
Volunteer/give to an organization that is committed to caring for the poor, the earth, animals, or the hungry.

for those feeling isolated or lonely
------------------------
Invite a friend (or a potential friend) to dine with you.
Get in the garden.
Volunteer with TACO, Common Ground, Interfaith Shelter, Agape House.
Hand write a letter or a note to someone you appreciate.
Invite someone to church and lunch after.
Visit someone who is homebound, in the hospital or in prison.
Offer your time talents treasures at your church.
Get local--introduce yourself to a local shop keeper/employee at a business you frequent.
Go to your local library.

Respond to the tragedies in the news with cards and letters to families.

February 19 -- Transfiguration Sunday

2012-02-21T09:19:00.003-08:00

Some of you know that my last call was a difficult one. There weren’t many places where I could talk about it openly. To spare you the details, suffice to say, that I was trying and for the sake of the ministry up there in Orange County, I felt like I needed to be something that I was not. (Nothing can be more detrimental to your well being.)

And part of the pain was keeping it to myself: I didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings; I didn’t want to alienate myself. And I’ve grown up in a culture that tells me that you should just put on a smiley face, “make the best of it”, and tell everybody (and even yourself) that everything is fine.

But I was coming up short, and I was coming apart. As our bishop keenly helped me name, it was “sucking my soul”.

The only time I could be brutally honest was with a few close friends and colleagues, who were geographically far away. And I would get to see them twice a year a retreat called First Call Theological Education. As new pastors in the ELCA, we are required to go to these gatherings twice a year for our first three years of ministry…just a place to fellowship, to learn, and perhaps (more often than not) to commiserate with other new pastors over the unexpected challenges and woes of ministry.

I had not yet finished my 6 required FCTE events when I arrived at Shepherd of the Valley, because I was only in my first call for 2 years.

The whole reason I’m tell you all this: When I came back, one particularly observant colleague, who I didn’t even know that well, said to me:

“Hey Dan, what’s with you? Something’s changed about you…You’re standing up straighter, you look calmer and genuinely happier, it’s like your shape has changed. I almost didn’t recognize you.” True story.

Not every would have caught that. I hadn’t even. But Maegan did: She said my shape had changed for the better.

Have you ever notice that in people? When their shape changes for the better? And I’m not talking about loosing weight here. I mean their whole demeanor shifts. I’ve seen it happen when people get a new haircut, or a wardrobe makeover, or a new job, or a new friend…and suddenly there’s a spark there that they didn’t have before. They just carry themselves differently. It is as if their shape has changed for the better. In other words, it is as if they have been transfigured.

Today we celebrate transfiguration. And here’s the thing: Jesus is transfigured so that we might be transfigured too. [let's repeat together]

Peter goes from being full of hot air – he just blathers out, “Jesus, let’s build three dwellings…” because…he was scared to death, because he didn’t know what t say. Some people clam up when they’re scared. And then others, like Peter, can’t keep their mouth shut.

But on that mountain, it’s not just Jesus who is transfigured. Jesus is transfigured so that we might be transfigured too! So that we too might shut up for a second, all our chatter and banter, blathering. Just shut up for a second, Peter, and bask in the awe and the glory and the grace and the beauty of God.

Have you ever been around people that are so nervous and fidgety that they make you that way too? On the flip side: have you ever been around someone who is so calm, that it starts to rub off on you?

I think we really have to cultivate peace and non-anxiety….because we live in hyper-hyper-anxious times, uber-angst [angst in GE is "fear"]. (I don’t have to sell you on this idea, just look at news, look around...)

As I read this Gospel text from beginning to end, it’s like crossing a spectrum from hyper-anxiety to the peace that only Christ can offer. Peace is imaged here as a cloud. [pause] I love sunshine and blue sky, but what peace there is an overcast sky! What peace there is in being covered by a cloud. It’s like God’s quilt. I love, love verse 8: “And suddenly [then] when they looked around, they saw no one with them, but only Jesus.” They too had been transfigured. We too have been transfigured.

In the encounter with the brightness of Christ, which we find here in Water, Word and Meal. Be not mistaken – every Sunday can be understood as a transfiguration Sunday. We might not always light [this] Paschal candle, but Christ always lights our hearts, in the breaking of the bread, in the passing of the peace, in the sharing of the Word and the splashing of the water. Our shapes are changed for the better. The load is lifted. We stand up straighter. We look calmer, and genuinely happier. They almost don’t even recognize us…God’s grace and glory is so good. And we are at peace – not sedated. No we are at peace in Christ, at peace with ourselves, at peace in the world. And so we can move…right off this mountain! We are active in God’s world, loving and caring and sharing what we have, because we are at peace…that is, we know that what we have is all really God’s anyway. It all belongs to God.

And it is a joy to take care of what God has entrusted to us—money, talents, time—for this short life.

We go now from this mountain, sisters and brothers, with Christ, having been transfigured and transformed for the better. Having been fed and nourished. Having been offered the peace that only Christ can give. We follow Jesus down from the mountain, to serve and love, and live and share. AMEN.

February 12 -- Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

2012-02-13T08:53:00.000-08:00

Let me tell something about Jesus: There are some things that just...[nasty face] make him sick.

Have you ever heard someone say that? "It just makes…me…sick."

What makes…you…sick?

-gay people? (back in the headlines with Prop 8 ruled unconstitutional)

-Republicans?

-beaches covered with oil? (my memory of Galveston)

-Barack Obama?

-Fred Phelps?

-people who hit their children? -- violence begetting more violence

-anyone who would burn the US flag?

-Muslims, all of them?

-human trafficking on Jamacha Blvd.? 14 yrs old girls and a market that keeps their pimps in business?

-"that person"?

Why am I doing this to you? Why am I trying to conjure up this absolutely disgusted feeling? Are you feeling it? Can you get there? I must talk to at least 3 people every week who are there. Just sssssick. Down to their guts?

The feeling is definitely enough to make you cry, but you’re not there right now…it’s mostly anger and absolute disgust.

Well, that’s splaghitzomai! Spla-what?

It's the Greek word for what happens to Jesus when he sees the leper. It makes him ssssick.

Our translation says it like this: that he’s “moved with compassion”. But that’s a bad translation. Well, it’s not all wrong, it’s just totally inadequate. Some Bibles really get their Greek wrong because they write, Jesus “felt sorry for” the man with leprosy. This isn’t just “Awww. Poor guy. Poor little leper...” like he’s a puppy with a broken leg. NO, this is splaghitzomai!

He certainly is concerned about the man’s condition physically, and wants to do something about that, and he does. But even more, he is enraged by a system that separates people so cruelly. This healing is really a justice issue…the more I study this text and this strange activity that follows the healing. Sending him off to the priest. Ordering him not to tell. He is publically – once again, still in Chapter 1 – he is publically breaking with Levitical law on multiple levels, starting with the fact that he’s touching an unclean man. Lepers were next to dead, in the order of cleanliness, in a society that divided itself on the basis of clean and unclean. Here’s the order of uncleanliness spelled out in Levitical law: women, menstruating women, any with a deformity, any with an illness, the demon possessed, the leper, the dead. Are you catching Jesus’ splaghitzomai at this system? This kind of division, this kind of injustice makes him ssssick.

And while it’s obviously much different now than it was then, in our world in 2012 lurks still such inhumane divisions: divisions among class, ethnicity, religious belief, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, diet, people with disabilities…just to name a few. And in the bold spirit of Jesus according to the Gospel of Mark, it must be said that the divisions we humans can make are just wrong!

I'm afraid we take some kind of pill…to cope with all the injustices around us…a pill that numbs us. What’s your pill? What are you taking?

(I was at restaurant working on the first part of this sermon. And I had the impulse to scream as I was studying and writing and uncovering what Jesus was up to in this text, [could you imagine?] but instead I just took another bite of my food. Even though my stomach was kind of sick and full.)

What’s your pill? Or maybe our pill doesn’t numb us, maybe it distracts us. The pain all around gets in our head for a minute. But then I turn on the game, I take another bite. Some of us drink. Some of us collect stuff. Some of us sleep. We cozy up and protect our own. But there is suffering out there. There are hungry children; people with no place to sleep; there are so many who are being rejected like lepers; there are oceans being polluted; jobs being cut; little girls being exploited! And we turn on the game, we balance our check books, we hug our little ones…our cute little ones, not those pitiful little ones. Something to blind us, confuse us. Maybe we even find a way to justify the suffering of this world: “Like, maybe they deserve it. Maybe God’s punishing them. We can’t understand, but God must be punishing them. Could you pass the potatoes?” We’re almost on the verge of screaming, but instead I just take another bite.

Somehow we figure out how it’s ok that the leper is treated the way he is. “That’s just the way it is.” We swallow that pill.

But not Jesus!!! Jesus doesn’t take any kind of pill. He feels it. All of it. He has splaghitzomai. He could cry, but right now he’s just disgusted…and he feels all of it. He knows all of it, all the pain. And it makes him sick.

Amazing, isn’t it? It makes him sick, so he reaches out and touches the sick. Doesn’t make any sense.

Today following this time, something a little different.

We’re going to have a brief service of healing as we sing. This is not magical, TV evangelism healing that I’m about to do, or you’re about to do, actually. This is a simple and yet powerful ritual of feeling and hearing and smelling (healing oil) Christ’s words for us today: “Be made clean.”

Be made clean from all that hurts us, and all that might even be causing us to hurt others around us. Be made clean. Be made clean from all that enslaves you, all that pains you, all that grieves you, all that burdens you. Be made clean. Be made clean from all that separates and divides you from the community around you. Be restored. Come back. Come back to life. Come back to me, Jesus says as he heals us. Come back to me…by going out…clean and new and forgiven and freed…

Sisters and brothers in Christ – I stand here as one of you with the gift and the burden of announcing to you that your pain – this day – your sorrow, your numbness, your distraction, your separation from that which is whole and healthy, your illness, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual – your pain, our pain makes Christ sssick. And so he chooses to heal. He chooses to reach out and touch us. He chooses to love. He chooses to be ever presence. He chooses community. He chooses you.

Be made clean, he says, this day and forever more. AMEN.

February 5 -- Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

2012-02-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

Do you ever feel like Simon’s mother-in-law? IN BED WITH A FEVER?

If you had a son-in-law like Simon, you might. [my best Brooklyn Jewish accent] “Look at him,” the Jewish mama might say, “running around with his buddies. He's meshuggina (crazy)! Oh, now you’re a fisherman?! They're taking advantage of you! What about my daughter? Oh, now you’re off and following this man Jesus? He's no good, I tell you!”

Maybe she got so worked up, worrying and fretting and caring that she reaches the point of life threatening illness, and finds herself in bed with a fever!

It’s kind of funny to pin anxiety on the beloved Jewish mamas of our culture, but the truth is that we all harbor that kind on worry and fret at some level. And often when we start worrying like that, we get very suspicious of others. [Jewish mama] “Your employers are crooked Simon! This Jesus who you’re following is no good!”

How we all, like Simon’s mother-in-law, in a state feverish worry can start cutting others down, can sever trust, heighten suspicion and spread gossip….

I’m not sure how many of you knew this but I’m the dean of our Eastern conference of churches here in San Diego. This means that I co-chair our clergy gatherings with the dean of the west SD conference. And once a year we go away on a short 1-night retreat with the other half-dozen deans. That retreat was on Thursday night and Friday up in Temecula.

And there we meet with Bishop Finck, and always at the end of this retreat, our bishop invites his staff to leave the room, and he opens himself up for honest feedback. “How’s it going, really?” he asked us on Friday. “This is an important time for you to share with me…”

And in that time as we tossed out our feedback – mostly critical, I’m afraid – I realized how suspicious we get of one another especially when we’re in anxious times and when we feel disconnected. How we can be like I’m envisioning Simon’s mother-in-law. As if the Bishop and the folks at our national ELCA offices in Chicago are somehow devious or spiteful or selfish. It’s so easy to go there, to get all worked up, like a Jewish mama: pastors expressing their suspicion of the bishop and his staff, synod staff talking about pastors, pastors talking about their congregations (not me of course J), congregational members talking about their pastors (not you of course J).

And that’s just in the church! In anxious, lean times such as these, how easy it is to break one another down with rumors and attacks both in front and behind one another’s backs.

And it seems exactly the opposite of what we need the Spirit’s help to do in difficult times: Everyone is hurting at some level, and probably acting out of that brokenness. Everyone is grieving a loss at some level – we can’t fully understand the depth of our sister and brother’s pain, but we can try by listening. By seeking to understand. By asking. By holding one another in our feverish concerns. By praying for one another even when we’re geographically separated. By building one another up, rather than cutting one another down. That takes faith in God, which is offered to us again today.

And that’s just in church life! How this “ministry of mutual building-up” could be multiplied and shared and spread in the world! Rather than fevers becoming viral, patience and compassion goes viral! Could you imagine?

Jesus reaches down to us, sisters and brothers in Christ! Down to you in bed with a fever of frenzy, with a fever of anxiety, with a fever of worry, with a fever of busyness, with a fever of pain, with a fever of sorrow, with a fever of fear, with a fever of anger – Jesus reaches down to you, takes you by the hand and pulls you out of that funk.

Last week I said that in Mark, every healing, every casting out of demons, is a cosmic clash of Christ’s love and light conquering evil. It’s true here too. The powers of fear and suspicion of our neighbors, the anxiety and frenzy of this daily life can render us bed-ridden. I heard someone say this week that he thinks a most of our hospitalizations today are really caused by something greater than just nuts-and-bolts biology.

There’s a sickness of the soul that’s got us all feverish.

But Jesus arrives, this day, reaches out, takes us by the hand and pulls us into health. So that our spirits may rise and our bodies may serve.

The scripture says that when Simon’s mother in law is healed, she immediately begins serving them…which makes it sound a little self-serving on Jesus’ part, like “we’re hungry, so maybe if I heal Simon’s Jewish mama, we could get some food around here.” But I’d encourage you to think of it more in terms of the suspicions dissolving after we’re healed and be begin by serving one other….not cutting one another down.

The disciples and even Jesus, who Simon’s mother-in-law cut down before, are now her partners in ministry. This healing is restorative community. This healing casts out our suspicion of one another, even our hatred, so that we might join hands and serve, starting with serving each other.

And then who knows where God will lead us next... AMEN.

January 29 -- Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

2012-01-30T09:03:00.000-08:00

[Story of Dad taking a picture of Micah yesterday face-to-face with a snake near the Cabrillo Historic Lighthouse in Point Loma.]

Unwilling (or unable?) to look up, smile, and look beyond his immediate situation.

That simple image strikes me this morning as particularly illustrative for our Gospel reading. Except take away the sweet little boy Micah and a harmless garden snake and replace them with a man possessed by an unclean spirit. Eyes and body locked up, like a snake has actually coiled around him. And is squeezing him, and has him crying out strange things. And like Micah, he is unwilling or unable to look up and see anything else.

There was an older woman at a church I used to serve…who had some wonderful gifts for ministry. She was a teacher and a friend of the youth, she was creative and insightful at times. But every time I went out of town, I would get this email from her, that was like another person. Her words were mean and nasty, like venom. It took me a while to figure out that there was some history and chemical dependency and an imbalance of medication in the mix here…that it wasn’t just me causing this outburst. But it was as if something had been punctured, and this deep-seated anger and brokenness inside of her, which she normally kept neatly concealed, was bubbling out all over the keyboard, poisoning the airwaves. Sometimes she’d even copy her notes to others.

When I’d return, I’d immediately make an appointment, but she’d assure me that everything was fine. It had blown over. Sometimes she’d even deny or forgot the whole thing even happened.

But something was gripping her. Something was coiling around her, keeping her from looking up, from seeing beyond, causing her to cry out strange things. [pause]

There was a nation once, whose military industrial complex was unreal. This country made our harbor full of artillery look like nothing. Everything was secure and sound in that nation. Walls were perfectly erected designed to keep out any invaders and foreign contaminants, even biological. Weapons of mass destruction were hidden with strategy and precision inside every mountain and under waterways. And they were always ready for any kind of attack. Ships and tanks and fighter jets were stationed in every town and a patrol officer at every corner. They spared no expense in training their soldiers. In fact, they start training their children when they’re old enough to carry a weapon, so that by the time they’re teenagers they are like Navy Seals. And their intelligence agency was the sharpest the world had ever seen.

But something was gripping that little country. For behind all the weaponry and the walls was a fear. Deep in the caves of the people’s hearts…was a sadness and a pain. For in no God could they trust….only in their machines. Something was coiling around that whole nation, keeping it from looking up, keeping it from seeing beyond, causing it to cry out strange things. [pause]

There was once a young man, who was afraid to speak. He thought he wanted to be a preacher. But he was so overcome with fear and guilt and a crippling self-consciousness that even after he had taken the class and gotten the accolades from his preaching professor, when he climbed into the pulpit for the first time, his mouth went dry. His heart sank to his feet and he was struck dumb. The sweat pounded down from this forehead and onto his manuscript, and his hands shook uncontrollably.

It was as if something was gripping him. Something was coiling around his voice box, keeping him from looking up and crying out beyond himself a Good Word to a people in pain. [pause]

Today Jesus enters the temple, sees a child of God possessed by an unclean spirit, and he crushes that demon!

You have to understand something about the Gospel of Mark as a whole: This book is not gentle spiritual guidance, graceful suggestions for the Christian life, sweet stories of our Lord. No, Mark tells of a Jesus who crushes that demon. Mark reeks of radical in-your-face good-crushing-sin Gospel! We’re only in the first chapter here. And Jesus is casting out a demon in the temple on the Sabbath! Jesus doesn’t gently brush shoulders with challenges, float past opposition like a holy leaf in the breeze, bestowing peace and security and happiness to all. No, Mark is all about Jesus going head to head with the forces of evil.

Jesus actions and words are as swift and as audible as one of our fighter jets tearing across the San Diego sky: Deafening and striking awe in everyone.

Every story in Mark is a cosmic clash with Satan. With those powers in our world that coil around us and deteriorate our hope. That cripple us with fear, anger, pain and sorrow.

Jesus stomps on the snake’s head. He crushes the oppressors rod. A modern-day Isaiah would say that he bends the AK47 into a gardening tool…

So that at last the man can look up.

Jesus reaches out to that angry old woman with her vitriolic words and snaps the neck of the snake that has coiled around her. And she can look up at last.

Jesus reaches out to that warring nation and rebukes the demons, “Come out!” Jesus says, “Be silent, and come out.” And the scripture says that the unclean spirit of a whole people, after convulsing and crying out with a loud voice, finally leaves. And. There. Is. Peace.

And to the young man who was struck dumb in the pulpit, Christ comes and opens the mouth of the prophets. To preach release to the captive, hope to the oppressed, forgiveness to all, and love. The demon is crushed and love wins the day.

To you…Christ comes. To you he reaches out and takes your demons and your burdens and your sorrows and your guilt and your anger and your pain…

And he crushes them. Look up. And live. For Love is on our side. AMEN.

January 22 -- Third Sunday after Epiphany

2012-01-23T14:36:00.000-08:00

I’m afraid that the quick response of Andrew and Peter, James and John is more a style of Mark the Evangelist than what might have actually happened.

Yesterday morning a small group of us from Shepherd of the Valley – together with a small group from the Calvary Lutheran and their Oromo (Ethiopian) congregation – gathered together and after singing a hymn and saying a prayer…read the entire Gospel of Mark, which is actually quite short compared to the others – only 16 chapters, compared to Luke, John and Matthew which get up into the 20’s. As always it was quite moving, and I was reminded again how precise and quick-to-the-point Mark’s writing is. No excessive verbiage in narrating through all the hesitations and thoughts of the disciples in this particularly story. No, Mark’s text says they “immediately” left their nets and followed…and so we get on with the story…

But I’m afraid it was more complicated that that. And archeological evidence is now helping to confirm my worry: Fishing as a business, although I’ve always tended to think of fishing as a lower class job, stinky and for people without much, archeologists and historians are showing us that fishing was actually quite lucrative. Because of the Roman Empire’s presence there were trade channels throughout the Mediterranean and a fisherman was actually quite connected and well paid. So much so that it was not uncommon to become the family business…like the Zebedee and Sons business that we hear about here today.

I think it would be much easier to follow Jesus if we were really at the end of our respective ropes…

If we didn’t have anything, if we hated our jobs, if our families and friendships were unimportant, and if all our stuff didn’t matter to us.

But as it turns out, I have many things. We all do, in this context. Many nets, many fish, many relationships, money, many a healthy day left. I’m a prime candidate for insurers. Many blessings. Maybe I should title the early part of this sermon “When Our Blessings Become Our Excuses”. So many excuses that frankly make me want to believe it was easier for the disciples because they didn’t have all the things I have. If they did they never would have risked it all. “It was easier for them; they were just fishermen.”

But I’m afraid I’m kidding myself. To leave behind their livelihoods and their families to “follow Jesus” in a political and economic climate as harsh as the ancient Mediterranean world was just as frightening – if not more – than it would be today. Darn it!

What are your nets, excuses, blessings that you’re unwilling to yield? What do you need to drop in order to hear Christ’s loving invitation more fully? Doesn’t have to be just physical things...Do you have obsessions that are getting in the way? Relationships that are unhealthy? Anger at something someone did to you? Anger at God? What stuff is holding you back from letting go and following?

I’d like try something…[ushers]

Write down and answer this question.

It’s easy to say you believe in Jesus, but what is it that is keeping you from following Jesus?

That’s a private question, and rather than wading it up immediately, or bringing it up front or burning it symbolically right now, I’d like you to take it home. Live with that which is holding you a little bit longer. You’ve named it; that’s good. Now live with it, hold it, for a bit more. Acknowledge that it is your companion – it’s probably been walking with you for a long while. Even our unhealthy habits – our anger, our overeating, our destructive relationships – can become friends because they’re what we know.

But in time, maybe later today, maybe later this week or in a month, start to let it go. God will give us the strength.

Let it go.

Sisters and brother in Christ:

Jesus calls us. Jesus calls you from the safety of your nets, from the security of your boats. Jesus calls you from your blessings and your pain, and invites you, invites us to plunge into the deeper waters and rockier roads of ministry. And while it may sound difficult and frightening, and it is certainly risky, this is God’s gift to us. This is God’s love and God’s grace at work in many and mysterious ways.

God is offering us a richer life in following Jesus. (I don’t want to define what following Jesus looks like; that’s what we start to hear when we let go of all the baggage.) A deeper connection with our neighbor, with the earth, with our own bodies. God is offering us our integrity and our health. (The word salvation comes from salvus which is deeply connected to wholeness and health.) So many of us live divided lives. Hidden secrets, immense baggage from past experiences. And we tend to pad that pain with stuff, we tend to busy our lives so much that don’t have to hear Christ’s whispering call. But Christ is here...inviting us today to leave our abundance and our pain, our lucrative busy-ness and all the noise in our lives, our determination to be secure and our anger, Christ invites you this day to come and follow him.

The road will be rocky. The seas will be choppy. But when we are held in the arms of Christ, there is true peace. The peace that passes all understanding. That peace is yours this day and forever. Let go. For God’s got you and God’s peace rains down on you. This day and forever. AMEN.

January 15 -- Second Sunday after Epiphany

2012-01-15T21:18:00.000-08:00

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathaniel asks.

There’s just something about his sarcasm and hopelessness that resonates for me. Do you ever feel like Nathaniel?

Is there anything good that can come out of…[pick your source of pain, your arch rival, or your recurring annoyance]

This person that I can’t stand?

Another death in the family?

Divorce?

This period of joblessness?

Going to church again this Sunday?

Same old music?

Some new songs I’ve never heard?

Another one of Pastor’s droning sermons?

This election year?

Barack Obama?

Mitt Romney?

This economic depression?

The U.S. military?

The Occupy Movement downtown?

Can anything good come from a civil rights movement? (MLK)

Can anything good come from having a dream?

Standing up for housing rights? Schooling rights? Religious rights?

Muslim? Atheist?

Can anything good come from Christians?

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth, because we’ve been down this road before…”

I don’t know if I want to give Nathaniel a hug or a high five…

He’s my tragic brother. He’s that voice on my shoulder that whispers, “It can never work, don’t kid yourself.” [Community Garden, recovery of our declining church body, efforts to strike out hunger, cancer, improving education or health care in our nation] “It can never work,” says Nathaniel. There may be some truth to Nathaniel’s sarcasm and cynicism.

And he’s sitting under a fig tree.

And Jesus sees him. What is that about?

I means Jesus sees through all his layers of sarcasm and cynicism and hopelessness. He sees “an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Jesus sees honesty. And he sees that honesty, that realism holding Nathaniel captive, like a snake coiled around him. And Jesus sees more than that: he sees beneath those layers of cynicism and hopelessness, a child of God, from a member of the family who everyone else looks at and says, “Can anything good come from Nathaniel’s mouth?”

Fig in our backyard with it’s low-hanging branches that hide; figs are what Adam and Eve used to cover themselves.) It’s also, I understand, a symbol for home in the Old Testament – Micah, Isaiah, and Zechariah. Sees through the hiddenness of the fig, sees through all the baggage of our homes our backgrounds. Jesus sees right through it all, and honors and calls his disciple.

That’s interesting news for those of us who identify with Nathaniel. And here’s the other side of it. The text is so rich, in case you’re not feeling Nathaniel: The other side is Philip.

“Come and see” is what Philip says, when he’s challenged.

Philip lets God be God. He’s still searching too, he doesn’t have all the answers, but all he’s saying is let’s just give this Jesus a try. Let’s go and follow him. Let’s let him be God and not try to take on that job. (Interesting how some religious groups feel that the have to defend God.)

Philip is that other voice on our shoulder, when we start getting cynical and hopeless. Perhaps the best voice. Notice: Philip’s voice is not saying, “Hey, it’s OK, everything is going to be alright.” No, the truth is Martin Luther King, Jr. gets shot. Jesus gets crucified. Is that “everything turning out OK”?! No, Philip models two things: 1) an openness to God’s calling, Christ’s invitation, and 2) a commitment to listening in community, a commitment to tolerance of various points of view and issues. Come with me, he says. Community discernment is so important. It’s like Eli and Samuel’s back-and-forth before little Samuel answers. We need each other to discern God’s call. “Where is God calling us as a congregation?” is the question our church council wrestles with in this new year. And it’s yours too. I’ve got thoughts. You’ve got thoughts. But are my desires in line with what God wants. That takes communal prayer and communal discernment. Do our thoughts line up with God’s invitation?

God is calling. God is moving. God is picking you out from under the fig trees, picking us out from our thickets of hopelessness and fear and saying you are my disciples. I need you and all doubts and questions…because I need your honesty. I need your willingness to just giving it a try, your commitment to your community, Christ says. Come and follow me.

January 8 -- Epiphany Sunday

2012-01-15T21:15:00.001-08:00

Uh...the computer ate my sermon.

January 1, 2012 -- First Sunday of Christmas

2012-01-01T16:36:00.000-08:00

We entrust the future to God.

One of my favorite stories, worth telling again… old Harold….

We’ve had the flame of the good news of Christ passed to us. Perhaps it was long ago, perhaps it was just this morning. But it has been passed to you and to me. We carry it, as faithfully as we can, precariously at times out, into the world, and then we too pass it on from our nervous hands to the precarious hands of those who are younger than us. That is entrusting the future to God. That is being a vessel, letting God’s word and love move though us to be shared. It’s a wonderful image, I think, for us to ponder this first day of 2012. “God let me be a sharer of your light.”

You have chosen to mark this day and start this year, in the temple, in the sanctuary, in a holy place – where we like Harold, like Simeon and Anna, perhaps just as exhausted, but hopeful nonetheless, dedicate our lives, our new year to God. And it works both ways: in the offering we make, in the dedication we make here, God blesses us too. Except it’s not a transaction, like in the market place. It’s the joy of doing church together. It just happens as we are blessing God, God is blessing us even more. Our God doesn’t work in terms of if/ then (if you praise me, then I’ll bless you). No, for God it’s both/and.

---

I’ve had the chance to hold 2 newborns since Christmas Eve – my new little niece Sydney and our friend’s Michelle and Tim’s little baby Kate – both 2 weeks old.

I can’t hold these tiny babies, during this season of Christmas, and not think of how incredible it is that God comes to us so vulnerable, so fragile. (If you get a chance – 5 days of Christmas left…J) What a strange gift! (Did you get any strange gifts this year for Christmas?) What a strange gift that God chooses to become so tiny and vulnerable. Our God: nursing every two hours, pooping and sleeping.

And in that strange way, that babies bless us, so God rests in our arms, in our hands at the holy table, in our hearts and our bones though the week. The Word is made flesh, the salvation of the world…it is this strange God, this infant Christ child to whom we entrust our new year.

It is this strange God who Mary and Joseph took to the temple. Nothing but a newborn baby to everyone else – incredibly cute and incredibly vulnerable, nursing, pooping, sleeping… but to Simeon and Anna this baby was even more.

The very, very young is held by the very, very old. And they get it: they get that they are being held too by this holy child! The salvation of the world, the light of life, the bread of heaven, held right there in their wrinkled hands.

They get it, Simeon and Anna do – how important, how fragile, how special this baby is: it is both sheer joy that they express, but also the prophetic acknowledgement that carrying this baby with us means we will be changed and challenged for the rest of our days, that, as Simeon says, “a sword will pierce your own soul too”, that this baby will bring opposition, he will tear down walls that divide, he will lift up the brokenhearted, the ones who the world pushes aside, this tiny one will bring the them to the center.

This baby will turn the world upside down with unconditional love. And that will be upsetting, Simeon says, even to you.

Holding the salvation of the world, as fragile as crumbly bread, we bless God and partake in the joy of Christ. “My eyes have seen at last the salvation of the world…AND the road ahead won’t always be easy. But we hold and bless this Christ child nonetheless…for the one we bless, blesses us even greater!

---

Simeon has this amazing line, after he holds this tiny holy baby: He says essentially, “I can die now.” “Lord, now let your servant go in peace.” “I can die now, holding and knowing this Christ is that good!”

As you looking forward to this New Year, what are the things that you’re waiting for, what needs to happen in your life, where you could say, “God, I could die now. Lord, let your servant go in peace”?

I invite you this month to do some intentional thinking about this question. What are the things that matter in your life? People make new year’s resolutions, but I read the other day that 9 out of 10 people have pretty much forgotten them after 2 weeks time.

Consider your past year – highs and lows – prayer of thanksgiving for your highs, places you’ve failed, ask forgiveness and let it go, places of pain and need – name them.

And then write down …what your hopes, dreams and goals for this year.

Hold this day, this year as reverently (as prayerfully), as joyously, and as consciously as Anna and Simeon held the newborn Christ. And then entrust it to God. Pass it over, and live or even die at peace. I don’t want anyone to die, I don’t want to die, but if I do, Romans says, I die in Christ. I die in peace, knowing that salvation has been fulfilled. IN this bread and wine my own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people!” I’m struck by the amazing peace that is present in a room both at the moment of new life and at the moment of death. The very very young and the very very old both seem to me to be the very best teachers of trusting…

God is holding us, and always will, through this new year, and into eternity. AMEN.

Christmas Day 2011

2011-12-27T14:24:00.000-08:00

Well last night, we heard the familiar Christmas story from Luke, and it kind of goes down like Christmas butter. Familiar and tasty. Perfect for what we need on our cozy evening.

Now this Christmas Day we get some meat from the Gospel of John. We kind of have to put on our thinking caps to conceptualize what John is talking about – the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us. Seems pretty esoteric, man! The Word is Christ, and Christ is the light of the world, who was in the beginning. This passage that we read here on Christmas Day, is where all the meat, about who Jesus is and what Christians believe about him, comes from!

Jesus is God. Jesus was in the beginning. John has us start envisioning Jesus present at the creation story! Not just God, the Father, but God the Son, God the Holy Spirit – all present creating the world, bringing the world into being, and giving light to the world.

Christmas is a festival of lights. Pagan religions celebrate a festival of lights too at the winter solstice, which is roughly December 18-23, because in the Northern Hemisphere, the world is darker at this time, especially way up north. And on those deep, dark days of winter, there are some moments there where Northern farmers, for centuries, who depend on the light for their daily income, longingly wondering if the sun will ever come back to shine on their crops. And the ancient pagan religions began to hold celebrations, that started in the darkness. And then of course, when the light returned, as it always did, it was time to party!

And they would bring out greenery, pine trees, holiday (holly day) trees, with red holly berries, and they would light candles as symbolic and as celebration of the light of the Sun, s-u-n, which had finally returned after the Longest Night of the year.

When Heather and I were in Ireland last February visiting my brother Tim and his wife Caitriona, we toured an ancient Passage Tomb at a place called Newgrange, attributed to such pagan religious groups that probably held such festivals. This particular site dated back to 3200 B.C.! I mean, that’s as old, some say older than the pyramids in Egypt!

It was quite amazing the entrance was this narrow door that faced the rising sun. You had to duck your head to get in, then walk about 100 feet through this tunnel, until you got to this chamber room that was about a quarter of the size of our sanctuary here. Archeologists can only speculate about what exactly that room was used for. But it had to be somehow religious. And the amazing thing was that every year, on the winter solstice, where the sun is lined up with the earth just so, light shines down that narrow passage way and lights up the entire chamber. It only lasts for 17 minutes. And only so many people can fit in that chamber. Today, the people of Ireland enter their names into a lottery in order to be chosen to experience this lighting of the chamber at Newgrange. It’s apparently quite spectacular.

Today I think we take images of light and dark for granted, because of our knowledge of science and our readily available electricity.

But even this past year here in San Diego…remember that one night when our power went out? I’m thankful for that night for our purposes here today because…

We get just a little taste of the fear and anxiety the ancients must have experienced in the dark. No flashlights, or iPod apps, and in damp places even a challenge to get a fire light going…

And these types of celebrations didn’t just happen in Ireland or Northern Europe. They differed obviously from region to region throughout the Northern hemisphere, but the sun, s-u-n, like water is/was the most powerful universal life-force, that was celebrated and reverenced everywhere.

Christians in the 4^th century started to morph and appropriate those pagan winter festivals of light and dark as a fitting celebration time for Christ’s birth. They had the story, so when to share that story... Fascinating! These are the roots of our traditions – they come out of these seemingly simple, yet quite profound celebrations about darkness and light. Christians too then, would bring out evergreen trees, and light candles, but they added new layers of meaning to these symbols. Evergreens symbolized the year-round love and presence of God. And candles…and fire…for Christians, they now symbolized the S-o-n of God, not the s-u-n, who was the light of the world. It was Jesus Christ, who warms the earth, who comes among us as flesh and blood, and who lights our way. So what might seem to us as esoteric, dreamy ideas in John’s first verses had powerful flesh and blood resonances with all those early people who heard John’s Gospel.

Think how many heard it and converted to Christianity on the spot because the images were so rich and compelling…and made so much sense.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, we celebrate this DAY Jesus as the light of the world. Just as we can often take for granted the sunlight, so we can also forget at times the light of Christ which brings so much joy to our lives. John says, so much “grace and truth”. Today we pause, and celebrate Jesus – as both tiny baby, born among the poor and the meek (which was more of the emphasis last night), and today, our celebration expands to cosmic proportions as we name and celebrate and give thanks for Jesus, the very light of the universe!

This far-reaching, unconditionally loving God, this Jesus the Christ, who lights and warms the world with love, also reaches out to you this day, offering you, with all the world the ultimate Christmas gift, which is grace and truth, love and forgiveness, the promise of eternal life. This is why the angels sing, “peace on earth”: because God Jesus, the light of the world, the light of life, fills the earth and you and me with that peace, which passes all understanding. That peace is yours this Christmas Day and always. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Christmas Eve 2011

2011-12-25T08:22:00.000-08:00

We’ve all got something...something about our life that makes it difficult:

Way over weight. Always too late.

Just lost a spouse. Foreclosed on a house.

Children estranged; in-laws deranged.

No real respect. Childhood neglect.

Can’t find a job; crazy Uncle Bob.

Bad heart and bad back; no good in the sack.

Kids are in trouble. Bills just went double.

Secrets so silent. A dad who was violent.

Never got married. A little too “hairy’d”.

So busy you’re head could almost expload.

Car trouble and stranded in rain on the road.

Can’t beat the recession.

Can’t drug the depression.

Some of us have lots of things. But we’ve all got something. Something in our life that cripples us a little or a lot – a painful memory, a tragic family member, an addiction, or just plain bad luck.

I don’t mean to make light of our problems with a little rhyming, except to point out that we’ve all got them. Even those who might get your jealousy boilers rumbling, those who seem to have it all together, carefree and (the great American word) happy, I am sure they’ve got their issue or issues too. We’ve all got something.

And yet here we sit together, this Christmas Eve 2011. To pause for a moment, to peek through the thicket of our “stuff”, to swim through the kelp of our various unfortunate predicaments, to see if we can see, to hear if we can hear, from this Holy Nativity. Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. We keep telling the story, even though we’ve perhaps heard it a million times we keep gathering around this story. Why? New insight, just plain old family tradition? Longing for hope and peace in a troubled world, in our troubled lives? Why do we gather around this story?

We strain our eyes and cock our ears on Christmas Eve longing for something. We’re like whales coming up to the surface this time each year, from our deep and crazy lives…coming to the surface for a breath. For something new. The airways open, at least for a few moments, for something new, or at least to reclaim something ancient and good and cosmic as air.

What do you take in, what do you inhale, this year from the little Christ-child, from mother Mary, father Joseph, the shepherds, the innkeeper? Is there anything in this ancient text that can possibly speak to our set of issues, our cast of family characters, our global crises, our own deep senses of loss or fear or despair? Give us something, Jesus, because sometimes we feel like we’re drowning in here…

Well, take a breath, Christmas whales. And remember, first, we’ve all got something. Something causing pain in our lives. Something us that makes me feel different from the rest of you. We can all relate to being out in the cold in some way or another. Which means we’re all feeling out in the cold, out in the sheep field or the stinky stable. There’s a strange comfort to knowing that fact. Suffering—like a blanket tossed over all of us, no matter where we are.

And from under that blanket, that thicket, that ocean of pain—we try to hear and see and breathe this story anew.

What strikes me this year, as I come to the surface as I peer through my own “stuff” to see and hear this holy nativity, is that those characters all had “stuff” too. They all had issues and problems, perhaps even greater than ours:

In the cold, with the sheep.

Poverty runs deep.

Mary afraid and Joseph dismayed.

No room in the inn.

Lives soaked with oppression and sin.

The shepherds were lost,

And alone and forgotten.

The innkeeper so busy,

He missed God’s begotten.

Who was born not over our issues or fears.

Who was born right here with us, our problems are near…

To Christ’s very heart. Like a babe in a blanket.

Jesus wrapped in the cloth of our pain.

Sisters and brothers, some of you Christians, some of you dragged along tonight with your faithful relatives. The heart of the Christmas message here, the heart of the story is that those characters in and around that holy stable of the ancient Mediterranean world, were in just as much need and pain as we characters in and around this modern, 21^st century, newly painted, holy stable. And just as Christ came then, Christ comes to us now…JUST AS CHRIST CAME THEN. To share our pain and in fact be swaddled in it, swaddled by our suffering, bands of tear-stained cloth.

Our problems aren’t solved after a magical evening of Christmas worship, our issues run deep. But what we hear tonight—and see, and in a few moments taste—is that our problems and issues, our pains and our fears are shared in Christ, through Christ. And in this deep sharing is the incarnation of God, the imbedding of God’s divinity right smack in the middle of our broken humanity. And Christ doesn’t come for a brief moment, like a whale’s quick visit to the surface. Christ is down in depths of our everyday lives. Showing himself in many and various and sometimes very subtle ways.

For God so dearly loves us and this world, that God chose to become weak and plunge among us, into our oceans of beauty and pain, as vulnerable and as tiny as krill (pause) our God choses to become, in order to BE in our suffering. And to fill us Christmas whales with nourishment. The image is as peacefully as a drifting, feeding whale. Christ feeds us with his own body and blood. It is a strange event. But an offering of peace. For here love is born. And we are made new. AMEN.

December 18 -- Fourth Sunday of Advent

2011-12-19T08:23:00.000-08:00

A young girl, maybe 14 or 15 years old. Living in poverty. Some have speculated, but we really don’t know anything about her family or her background. Luke was writing this story down some 70 years later. All we know is that she was young and poor…and her name was Mary.

Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t include this episode that we read today. Matthew’s Gospel is really all about Joseph and his fears. Mary is really more seen in Matthew’s Gospel as a virus, that could get Joseph infected with shame in his community, for she was with child, and it wasn’t his. The angel there, talks Joseph down. Calms him down.

But a different thing is happening here in Luke. Here the angel is lifting Mary up. “Blessed are you, favored are you,” the angel says, lifting up a member of society who is a nobody. Lifting her up by announcing God’s coming-down. And this is the real miracle of this season: that God is choosing to dwell with the poor.

Let me put that in different terms, because I think we can either forget or romanticize what being Mary’s being poor means at this time of year: God is choosing to dwell with the sick, the mentally unstable, the drug-addicted, the jobless, the hopeless, immigrant, the stranger, the rejected, the ridiculed, the voiceless…the totally forgotten. I’m afraid we tend to think of Mary more as a porcelain white immobile doll, a cute, little Precious Moments figurine, rather than a dark-skinned immigrant girl working in a clothing factory, and scratching her head constantly because of the lice she’s got in her hair. Endlessly coughing because of the chemicals and bacteria she’s got in her lungs...and can’t afford to see a doctor. Who wants “that” in their nativity scene holding the baby Jesus?

God does.

That’s the wonder and the hope and love of God in this 4^th Sunday of Advent Gospel reading. God’s care for this world is so great, that God chooses a poor, itchy, coughing teenager. (Sometimes I want to throw out all my nativity scenes, and the nativity scenes that are shaping the imaginations of my children, and replace them with a set of outcasts and immigrants, exiles and rejects—all poor, like Mary.)

And we know what’s about to happen to Mary: flash forward about 9 months and she’s about to do what all pregnant women love to do in their 3^rd trimester: walk 35 miles only to find there’s no vacancy at any resort or hotel or even the Motel 6. “[They didn’t] keep the light on for [her].” 35 miles—that journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem! That’s like walking from here to the Wild Animal Park in Escondido. Same kind of terrain too…but no cars and no Starbucks at every corner…and no name to the rest of this world at that time. She was only a number, to be counted by the Roman government, with all the rest.

She was a nobody to this world, but to God, she was Mary.

Watch for Christ to come from below, watch for Christ in the least of these, sisters and brothers in Christ, not the greatest. And when Christ peaks out from amongst the poor and hurting in our lives and in our world, then together let us bear witness to that tiny Christ. Sometimes we’re Mary, in this story, and sometimes we’re the angel, bearing witness, announcing, a Christ among the least of these.

This final week of Advent and this Christmas season, may we joyfully bear witness to Christ for a world that too often has not heard this good news—that God is incarnate with pain and poverty.

Are you hurting in any way? Broken by tragedy, addiction, frustration, or hopelessness? Sometimes we’re the angel in this story, bearing witness for others, and sometimes we’re Mary—broken or outcast ourselves.

Here’s where it hits home: God is not just stooping down from on high, with a pat on our heads and a kind word: “Ah, you poor little thing.” No, God is growing inside the “poor little thing.” Blessed are you, favored one, God says. (“Our God becomes small.” Martin Luther’s courageous statement, amid a church and a state that had made God into a golden image.)

You are Mary, through Christ’s death and resurrection, through the Holy Spirit’s infusion in your baptism and this Holy Meal. You are Mary, both women and men – pregnant with the divine to share with a world in need. You are Mary, sisters and brothers bearing Christ, lifted this day by a God whose name is love. Named. Marked. Overshadowed by the grace of the Creator of the stars of night. You are Mary, hurting and yet filled with hope. You are Mary, forgiven and freed. Open once again, with all evidence to the contrary, open to the radical voice of God, which comes in many and mysterious ways. You are Mary, pregnant with God, who is at the center of your pain, and the center of your joy. You are pregnant with God who is at your center. You are Mary. AMEN.

December 11 -- Third Sunday of Advent

2011-12-12T08:48:00.000-08:00

I am afraid that any words I have for you today may be inconsequential. That’s my fear.

This time of the year, I feel like – and I wonder if the church in general feels like – a little tiny mouse crawling up into this pulpit, with a word from Scripture, a word from God.

There are just so many voices around us right now. I imagine we’ve got all voices in our heads right now – maybe the Christmas jingle song you heard in the car on your way here, maybe it’s perturbing question your mother or your friend asked you about the party next week, maybe it’s the last minute deal you heard about and keep mulling over, if you should go buy it or not “before time runs out”, maybe it’s the forecast of the games that are on later today (Chargers-Bills, Raiders-Packers), maybe its your own voice running through all the things that need to get done before the guests start arriving. Maybe somebody here said something to you when you came in, and it’s just sticking with you. Maybe there’s a baby or a small child crying – those distractions that must be attended to. What is distracting you from hearing and trusting a word from God this morning? (I can identify with most of those examples.)

The strong voices of the Advent prophets – Isaiah and John the Baptist – are more like tiny squeaks these days than booming cries of hope and joy. I read an article this week in the Lutheran magazine with a quote that’s seemed hauntingly true to me:

“Today it's easier to imagine Christmas without religion than Christmas without shopping. Consumerism elbows out religion to be first in line at the manger scene.”

This time of year for many is the one of the most depressing, precisely because when joy and hope are forced on them through the tinsel, the presents and song, they/we are made into something in-genuine, something fake…and once again Christ is edged out. And nothing is more depressing than denying where we really are, how we are really feeling. It’s hard to be honest at this time of the year. Some have even told me that they tend to stay away from church, because they think that “that’s where all the happy people go, and I don’t want to be a downer, when I’m supposed to be happy.”

But hear the squeak of the prophet Isaiah, sisters and brothers in Christ…

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; ²to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor; to comfort all who mourn; ³to provide for those who mourn in Zion — to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.

The messages of Advent, and in a few more weeks Christmas, are precisely for those who are depressed and distracted. And they shall become, squeaks Isaiah strong oaks of righteousness. Jesus doesn’t enter this world, Jesus doesn’t enter our daily lives to say, “Hey, cheer up, sing a little carol with me. C’mon have a cookie.” No, Jesus enters this world to come along side precisely those who are in pain. To comfort precisely those who are mourning, not to leave them out if they opt out, but precisely to come along side them! And that’s not all. Jesus enters this world to bind up the broken hearted. But that’s not all. Jesus enters this world to free precisely all who are in prison – both literally and figuratively. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor – that means, by the way to forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us. (The Year of the Lord’s Favor, the year of Jubilee is described in Leviticus – and it’s where the entire nation, every seven years, forgives the debts owed to it! Can you imagine? There was a campaign for this in the U.S. that I was a part of when we approached the year 2000 to forgive the $52 billion owed to us by foreign countries, particularly poorer nations. But the campaign failed, and our letters and phone calls were rejected by Congress. Now we’re lobbying for others to forgive our debts.) See, it’s like a mouse squeak. But I say, taking my cue from the prophet and the Baptist in the wilderness: “squeak out!” The spirit of the Lord is upon us to keep proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor!

While some of us are cozied up to the warmth fire and family and friends, and are able to give thanks (and we should give thanks where we’re able), Jesus is out in the cold with precisely those who are shivering. Jesus comes precisely to those, for those who are hurting, those who sit in darkness, those who are oppressed in any way, those who are in prison, those who are alone. Jesus is precisely for them.

And we as followers of Jesus are invited precisely during these final Advent days (and beyond) to follow him out into the cold, to join with him precisely for the sake of the other, to reach out, even beyond our own pain…precisely for the other.

That’s the kind of God we have, a God who’s already out there in the cold. I’m hearing news about Christians being “persecuted” at this time of year for not being allowed to say Merry Christmas...and that frankly makes me embarrassed to be Christian, if all we can be known for in the media is a people who are concerned about their own rights. I long for the day when the media identifies Christians as a people who stand up precisely for the rights of others, because that’s the God we follow….the one out in the cold, along side the other. And it’s already happening, even if it’s not widely reported. I saw a picture recently of a group of Christians that had joined hands and made a circle around a group of Muslims who were being beaten for practicing their daily prayer…

This is our God, the one out in the cold, the one in the stable, the one with the animals, the one with the persecuted, the one with the lonely and the lost and the forsaken. The one who is with you, precisely when you are at your lowest. This is our God. Squeak it out, sisters and brothers in Christ, and keep squeaking this Good News right through these joyous and chaotic and tragic days. Keep squeaking and pointing: this is our God. The one who comes in glory comes quiet and ever-present as a mouse, precisely in our darkness and our pain. AMEN.

December 4 -- 2nd Sunday of Advent

2011-12-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

This season of Advent, our texts have never hit me quite like this year. And they way they’ve hit me is that they’ve pointed me more than ever towards peace. Usually this time of the year, I’ve thought mostly about action, during this season of preparation and heightened awareness. I’ve never really contemplated peace during Advent. And with the cultural pressures all around us, about getting the perfect gift for everyone, travel and family dynamics, budget constraints, economy and a general state of crisis in the news and all around us it seems – most of us are probably running a muck thinking anything and everything but peace. But these readings today direct us very clearly, I believe, to see being at peace as preparation…even John the Baptist.

I’ve always just imagined John the Baptist or John the Pointer (the Big Dipper) to just be too emblazoned, too fired up about justice and righteousness to direct me toward peace. He’s always seemed more about changing your life, repenting, turning around by means of action. It’s all previously been about what you’re doing or not doing for that camel-hair-wearing, locust-eating, prophetic voice crying out in the wilderness. Too crazy to teach me about peace! [pause] But I’m hearing him differently this year, especially when we read this text from Mark with the others…

Isaiah – “Comfort, O comfort my people,” says your God -- speaking tenderly, feeding his flock like a shepherd, gathering the lambs in his arms, carrying them, gently leading them. Doesn’t get much more peaceful than a pastoral scene of shepherd and sheep. Lots of time out there in the field, watching the clouds drift. Time to write poetry, sing, pray for the world. What a contrasting image to what most of us are probably experiencing now.

Handel’s Messiah and Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech both draw their inspiration from this passage from Isaiah. “Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places [pause] plain. Then the glory of Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of YHWH has spoken.” We are invited today to turn around in a new way and listen these texts in the key of PEACE.

And the second lesson from 2^nd Peter directs us toward peace, perhaps the most clearly and realistically. Acknowledging the pain and suffering that is so prevalent in our world, 2^nd Peter makes it clear that we are in a state of WAITING. [in Chicago on Friday—waiting in the cold for the shuttle and the train]

Even as we wait in the cold, so often it seems, for a new heaven and a new earth, let us together, “beloved, strive to be found by him at peace.” That is the most direct and helpful instruction of our readings: While we long for a better world, a world where God’s justice reigns down—where all are truly welcome, and fed, and loved, where mercury no longer contaminates our water, carbons clog our airways—while we long for a world where all know that they are forgiven and loved by God, who enters into our daily experience and pain—while we wait for a new heaven and a new earth, let us together (because we need each other’s help at this), let us together...as 2^nd Peter says...be found by God at peace.

Jesus arrives, no matter what. But if Jesus came back in human form tomorrow, as one single person, tomorrow—if Jesus walked into your home or into your workplace tomorrow—would he find you expecting him peacefully?

The repentance, the metanoia, the 180 that John the Baptist is crying out for is very dynamic. It is a reorientation of how we live our lives. Most of us I imagine, and some of us I know, don’t live lives of peace. We live lives of busyness and chaos, and even violence, flying across the surface.

But what do you sink down into? What is the womb in which you find peace and nourishment and salvation?

I think in terms of pictures:

And during this crazy season, I imagine a precarious ice skater. Not a graceful figure skater, I mean a precarious beginning ice skater, flying by recklessly over the surface of Christmas, wobbly knees, missing so much in the frenzy of busyness. Just skimming the surface. If you blink you miss it. Falling, and getting up and sliding all over. Centered only on self and getting banged up just the same. Unmoored. Slipping. Even dangerous with blades that cut. Blasting over the surface of this season in a mad slide is fun, but only in the way that ice skating is “fun” when you’re a beginner on rented skates. These days of frenzy and fatigue are kind of fun, but at the end we can be a little (or a lot) bruised up, with blisters on our feet from wearing some stiff rented ice skates…and bruises and scratches on our body…from crashing. These days of frenzy and fatigue.

But now I see something different. Now I’m doing a 180. I see that same person, shedding the skates, and instead sinking down into calm waters, not ice water (not melted ice), cool, calm waters, summer pool water. Sinking down under the surface of Christmas, into the deep blues of Advent. Holding your breath. Waiting.

Deep breath, hold it, and drop down under the water. Suspended under water. Have you ever gone under and just let bobbed down there peacefully for a time?

The Baptist points us under the surface, into the deep blues, to do our preparing. The Baptist points us to peace…even now. And there, under the surface, will we be found. And brought back up.

Advent is submergence—sinking down under the waters for a bit. Advent is blue. Advent is peace. AMEN.

November 27 -- 1st Sunday of Advent & Year B!

2011-11-28T10:18:00.000-08:00

In a world that is full of sweet familiarity, Advent, the Christian season of Advent, stands guard over the good news of the surprise and disorientation of God’s arrival. (I’d like to invite you to imagine Advent as the season of the Surprise of God.)

How many of us really like surprises? How many of us prefer to know what’s coming? Heather doesn’t like surprises. I learned that early in our marriage. She likes to know what’s coming, so she can make a plan. My brother (very different personality from my spouse), he needs to have a plan too, despite his non-traditional Portland lifestyle. Just needs to know what’s coming. I suppose for nearly all of us, that’s true – for one reason or another. For some, it’s because we just like to be in the know, for others, it’s because there is so much chaos and unknowable, if we can have some sense at least, of what’s coming up, it gives us some comfort and peace.

But the Sundays of Advent—and particularly these readings today—stand in stark contrast to the comfort, the peace, the security of sweet familiarity that we all crave.

Advent, the season that celebrates the Surprise of God!

A season of reflecting on the many and various ways that God comes to us. It’s hard to be surprised anymore about God coming to this earth as a babe in Bethlehem. We’ve heard the story so many times that what was once a huge surprise is now an image in our front yards, on the cover of our Christmas cards, at the center of our worship – a baby, a mother, a shepherd, some angels and some animals. We’ve seen it. Not too much is surprising about it.

Christ invites us to re-focus and re-open our eyes and our lives this Advent season, to brace ourselves for his disorienting and surprising arrival in many and various ways. To watch out. Keep alert. Stay awake. You know never know.

Some of you may have heard this story, but the most surprising encounter I ever had with Jesus was when I traveled to Skid Row in Los Angeles…

“urban walk-about” when I was at California Lutheran University…

Another time was worshiping on a Sunday in a shanty village house somewhere in the middle of Nicaragua. Open windows and doors, dogs and chickens wondering through our “sanctuary”, passing a common cup around at Communion with white upper middle-class college students from St. Louis University and poor survivors of the Sandinista revolution…

Another time, most recently, encountering God unexpectedly was holding my dog as the Humane Society chaplain-nurse put him to sleep. And I wept uncontrollably, and Christ was there.

Doesn’t have to be exotic service opportunities, don’t have to travel across the world, just be awake as you move though your week. God in the everyday arrives. Disorienting us into lives of love and service toward our neighbor.

Christ always arrives, but not always in the way we would expect. Watch out.

And in the meantime, let us wait for God together! Let us take our cues from the prophet Isaiah, who cries out, “O God, that you would tear open the heavens and come.”

Can you identify with Isaiah? O that God would enter clearly and powerfully into our existence! God helped all those people in the past, why can’t God help me? Why can’t God break into our world, our Congress, our hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness? Why can’t God conquer enemies, demolish hatred, end persecution, granting liberty to all of us enslaved by illness, anger, apathy, depression, and pain? O God, that you would tear open the heavens and come! Advent is a season for crying out. Crying out to God. Our anxiety, our fears, our concerns about the future. Get them out there, like Isaiah.

And God will arrive, albeit surprising.

And then, watch out. It’s happening already. May not be how you expected. Look for it, in the poor, in the hungry, in the lost and in your neighbor. Jesus arrives and arrives and arrives, especially when we are at our lowest, our darkest, and are least expecting of God to show up.

And, thanks be to God, not only in unexpected ways does Christ come. But Christ arrives in this place, we can be sure and secure—even if we don’t have bulletins, even if the music or the people or the space is a little different. God arrives.

God arrives in this meal and in this Holy Word. And in each one of us upon which God’s Spirit is poured out...and that might be the greatest surprise of all.

November 20 -- Christ the (Servant) King Sunday

2011-11-21T10:20:00.000-08:00

Advent

Color: Blue (hope)

Symbols/actions: Wreath, simplicity, oiko-logy (care/study of home), stories of Mary, Joseph, J the B

From Keeping Time:

“According to the Christian worldview, humans need God to bring us life and salvation, and Christmas celebrates this coming of God in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Christians affirm that Christ comes not only in a past event but also in our present life and in the world’s unfolding future. So it is that Adent is not about Mary’s pregnancy but about the church’s continual prayer that God will come (the root meaning of “advent”) to us, bring life to a dying world. Advent in the Northern Hemisphere is a time to meditate on the darkness in the universe, the social order, the lives of many people, and our own hearts, and to pray for God’s salvation and wholeness for all. The holy communion celebrated each Sunday of Advent brings to us the Christ who is ever present for us with mercy and joy.”

Christmas

Color: White (light)

Symbols: crèche, candle light

From KT:

“The church’s celebration of the birth of Christ is now one of its primary festivals and ways of proclaiming the mystery of the incarnation. The most significant way that Christianity differs from it’s parent Judaism is in our belief that God became incarnate as a human being. Like Hinduism, Christianity believes that the transcendent deity took on flesh, entering into our experience as a human being, through whom the divine One effects the salvation of the world. Unlike Hinduism, Christianity believes that there is only one such incarnation, who meets us weekly in word and sacrament and daily in our neighbors.”

Epiphany

Color: White

Symbols/actions: magi, gifts, star, home blessings, burning of the greens

Epiphany is a day, not a season. Epiphany marks the end of the Christmas season. Christmas is a season that some churches have celebrated as lasting for 40 days, concluding on February 2^nd! But Southern European churches, the Carribean, and most U.S. celebrate Christmas for 12 days, putting Epiphany on January 6^th.

Since that is usually a weekday, at SVLC, we move it to the adjacent Sunday. Epiphany has and still is a high celebration in Eastern orthodox churches. (Early Christian practices point us toward having baptisms all at one time, remembering that we’re baptized into a community of the faithful.) And Epiphany has and still is a time for baptism, along with the Easter Vigil.

When we read about the kings at Epiphany, we are reminded that Matthew is setting up a stark contrast to what we might expected: King Jesus is praised as one who attends to the needs of the poor, unlike many earthly kings…Herod at that time. Prayers at Epiphany are offered for those on the fringes. We also get to meet the kings from the east, who give us a model of humility and sacrifice, bowing down before an economically impoverished baby, and offering up their most prized possessions. Could be a great stewardship lesson…

The Sundays that follow the day of Epiphany until Transfiguration Sunday are green Sundays.

Lent

Color: Purple

Symbols/actions: fasting, prayer, giving of alms to the poor (classics); service work, confession, preparation for baptism

From KT:

“Traditionally it was taught that Lent originated as an extension of several days of fasting in preparation for the Three Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. Scholars always assumed that a short fast grew into a period of more or less 40 days. But recent scholarship suggests that Lent was actually an extension in the other direction, following Epiphany and the celebration of the baptism of Jesus. Early church documents indicate considerable variation in the development of the season. After the Council of Nicaea, a 40-day fast became nearly universal. 4^th century sermons and pastoral lessons describe Lent as a time to prepare for Easter baptism. Since it is through baptism that believers enter into the death and resurrection of Christ, the church saw the annual festival of the resurrection as the preeminent occasion for baptisms.”

Easter

Color: White

Symbols/actions: Empty tomb, grave cloths

The final part of the Three Days, and the highest, most holy celebration of the Christian story. Here is where Christ’s incarnation culminates into not just presence with us (which is what Christmas is about), but ultimately that this never ending presence and love results in new and everlasting life – both here and even now…and into eternity!

So many things to say about this, but today I’d like to connect Easter with the sharing of the peace.

Through the season of Easter, we hear time and again Jesus’ greeting “Peace be with you” (at the tomb, in the upper room). That’s an Easter greeting that we share with each other every Sunday! Let’s share that greeting now, remembering that these are such holy words – peace to you in times of sorrow and fear and loneliness and anger. This peace unites us, it calms us, it gives us new life and hope in a God who is both deeply present (Christmas), and even more, who conquers death and the grave!

“The resurrection peace of Christ be with you all!”

Pentecost

Color: Red

Symbols/actions: fire, wind, church

From KT: “The celebration is set on the 50^th day, in observance of Luke’s Gospel. The Jewish festival of Pentecost is the observance of the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. By fixing the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, Luke layers the assembly of the believers on to the people of Israel, the tongues of fire on their heads onto the fire of Mount Sinai, the Holy Spirit onto God’s giving the law. For Jews encountering this narrative, the Christian message would be clear: God is doing a new thing with the pattern of the old sacred story.”

Sweet, sweet spirit is so good. It revives and renews. It fills us and gives us hope and joy. In other words, that Easter peace of Christ that we just offered to one another, starts to take shape in the Pentecost experience – adding new layers to how we relate to one another and to this world. We live spirited lives of joy and hope and service and love…not because we’re awesome, but because God’s spirit dwells with us. And when we’ve been touched by God’s spirit, we can’t help but be moved by it, be connected by it, and be sent out by it. We mustn’t ever hoard the gifts of the spirit, the gifts of God’s love and mercy, and if we do, then we should question if that’s really God’s Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is made known through the Church of Jesus Christ. Pentecost is considered the birthday of the Church! And it’s been said: “The Church is God’s gift to the world” – it’s the means by which God’s love, God’s gifts of forgiveness and healing are spread into the world. Let’s sing!

Life in the Spirit: The Green Sundays

Color: Green

Symbols: trees, rivers, fishing nets, teaching & listening, bread, wine, roads, valleys…

How shall we live in the Spirit? How is God calling us to be in this world? In the valleys of this earth?

These are the “just-regular” Sundays where we go back to the stories, the parables of Jesus, his lessons – love one another, love your enemies, forgive, give, let go, hang on. Depending on the different years, we have different texts that we go back to, but we continue to gather around the ancient stories, trusting in God’s Spirit to breathe new life and new vision into our worshiping community.

The one word that continues to re-emerge is Love. In this next song, “They will know we are Christians by our Love,” I’ve never known if the composer meant that it’s God’s love for this world by which “they” will know us, or if it’s our love for each other and this world…But I believe it’s both. God so loves us, that we are impassioned to reach out to each other and into this world. Life in the spirit is inhaling God’s grace and forgiveness and then exhaling God’s peace.

Christ the King Sunday

Some churches have actually started calling this day Christ the Servant Sunday, just so that they don’t get carried away in arrogance or triumphalism about Jesus…that is my God is better than any other god. (As I said, not until 1924 did the pope in Rome begin this tradition at the end of the Church Year...and it was to remind the people that Jesus is King, not Italy or Mussolini or any other worldly leader or nation.) I think what’s important is that we give thanks this day, at the end of this good church year, that the reign of Christ in our lives is a reign of love, of compassion, of service, of deep and abiding presence with the marginalized and the poor, with you and with me. That love has always been there, reigning supreme, if you will – through the years, through the seasons, through our hymnals, and it goes with us now….

May God, creator bless us and keep us…

November 13 -- 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

2011-11-14T10:32:00.002-08:00

What a thick lesson! Will you pray with me:

God give us the wisdom to invest the love which you have for us. AMEN.

The bottom line warning in our lesson for today, as you can probably discern is “don’t bury your talents” – which means don’t bury that which God has given you to use to serve God, be it money, abilities, time.

[Retell a bit…]

And how easily we can do this. The third slave didn’t seem to me so terrible. He was just being safe and respectful of his master. But his fear and his tendency to be safe led the master to call him “wicked.” Did you catch that? Wicked is the one who buries their talents, even themselves in the dirt.

A colleague of mine in our text study this week reminded me that C.S. Lewis defined evil as not being anything by itself. Evil only exists as a perversion or a skewing of the good. It’s a parasite that rides on Good. Without Good there would be no evil.

The one who buries his/her talent in the dirt is only evil or wicked because they are not good. Well that’s humbling. Because that makes us all wicked. (here’s the other side of All Saints Day from last week, where I drove home this point that God names us all saints in our baptism). We are wicked saints. How often we can shy away from risk taking, just to be safe. And it’s pretty easy to convince ourselves it’s more sensible too. But here God calls us to the “wisdom” of risk-taking…not for the sake of a thrill, but for the sake of the Glory of God. How might we use our gifts, our talents, our money, our wisdom, our lives to make God’s love and God’s welcome more known and spread throughout this world?

That’s the challenge for us today. We have a Gospel, a message of good news that is really for everybody – it’s as simple as “God loves you. God forgives you. God stays with you, no matter what.” That’s the message we’re “entrusted” with…to use wisely, to invest. How are we investing God’s love and God’s welcome. How are we investing this Good Book from which we gather all these rich stories? Are we investing these so that they multiply and grow? Or are we burying God’s word, God’s love, God’s welcome and God’s book?

We have been entrusted with a story of a God whose love is wildly welcoming – I’m going to go ahead and say that’s a liberal message. God’s love is liberal, it’s reckless, and expansive. It’s not calculated and careful (which is what I’d prefer). God’s wisdom is hidden in what the world sees as foolishness: crazy liberal love. God’s forgiveness as we hear week after week is ever-flowing – that makes no sense. That seems crazy. God’s arms are open so wide, that there’s always room for the stranger, the outcast, the immigrant, the persecuted, the lost, the gay, the straight, the people sitting right here, and the people standing hungry down on the corner of 3^rd and Ash, and the people in the halls of power in Washington D.C., the coaches and the victims at Penn State, victims of abuse all over the world! God’s arms are open wide! And that’s crazy! God’s love is so cosmic through Jesus! What do we do with that liberal message of our church? How do we invest it? Or do we bury it?

When I say God’s love is liberal…my tendency is to want to keep that quiet. I know it, but I want to bury it in the sand. Keep it for ourselves. But what are the ways we can be more like the first two servants…multiplying what God has given us? That’s a question that I’d like to ponder together as we move together into a new year…How can we better invest God’s welcome? How would God want us to answer that question?

---

I want to shift gears a bit here. First God moves toward us and then we respond to God in lives of service and also in prayer. This is really what worship is. And I wanted to take some time today to reflect on the Psalms, and the diversity of the Psalms. This is something else that God offers us to invest and share wisely: a diversity of Psalms. I love to think of Psalms in terms of music. What music would you set to the various psalms?

As we consider risking and investing a message of a God whose love is so liberal, let us also remember that that God welcomes also all kinds of our emotions and prayers – our anger, our fear, our pain and our joy and praise. Thanks be to God for all the generosity – toward each of us, toward this world, and toward our response. And thanks be to God who goes with us now and always. Amen.

Nov

2011-11-14T10:32:00.001-08:00

November 6 -- All Saints Sunday

2011-11-07T08:35:00.000-08:00

I invite you to turn to your neighbor and make the sign of the cross on their forehead and say, “You are a saint of God, and God’s light shines through you.”

At the core of our Lutheran faith is the idea that we are all made saints in our baptisms. Have you heard this before? That we are all saints? We don’t have to die…or labor in Calcutta to be a saint. Do you believe that? Do you believe that you are a saint of God and that God’s light really shines through you?

This week I had lunch with the clergy group that gets together here in East County. The Methodist, the United Church of Christ, another Lutheran, (we used to have an Episcopalian, but she moved to St. Louis), and the 2 Roman Catholics – a priest and a nun.

We were just catching up and talking about our week, and the our Catholic priest in the group mentioned that “today” is All Soul’s Day. The other Lutheran in the room and I both cocked our heads and furled our brows, and said…almost in sync: “No that was yesterday, wasn’t it?” At which point he tells us that we were getting All Saints and All Souls day “mixed up.” The good Father reminded us that All Saints is the day that we honor…the Saints. And All Souls – or in the Mexican tradition Dia de los Muertos, we honor…everybody else who’s died. They’re two different days, separated by a long night.

But we, sisters and brothers of a Protestant tradition, we do get the days mixed up…and even more because we even honor the living on all saints day: “You are a saint of God!” This is a theme that carries over from Reformation Sunday last week. This idea sets us our doctrines apart from Roman Catholicism.

Can you believe that God names you “Saint” in your baptism? And so, that sermon on the mount, that we share today, is talking about you today – in baptism, you are made whole, despite all appearances and even experiences to the contrary: you are offered the kingdom of heaven in this life, you are comforted, you inherit the earth, you are filled, you receive mercy, you can see God, and you are called a child of God! You are blessed even as people utter all kinds of evil against you; you are blessed even as people revile you and persecute you. You are the blessed saints…

…not because of anything you’ve done, actually, but because of what God has done. In God’s dying, in the way of Christ on the cross, death has been destroyed, and in Christ’s rising from the dead, we too rise. We are joined to Christ in the waters of baptism, and so we live—in this life—anew! (Amen?)

Because of this, yes, we get all “mixed up” with both the Saints that the church has honored traditionally and with all those who have gone before us. Lutherans are messy…because not only are we mixed up with all the traditional Saints of the Church, we’re also mixed up in sin. (We don’t need to go into that so much today. I think we’re pretty good at burying ourselves in our sin. But we are sinner-saints.)

In a little while we’ll name those in our congregation who have died in recent years. We honor them today as saints: But we remember them not for themselves and in themselves (even while that’s very important and meaningful to us in our grief), today we remember them not for themselves and in themselves, we name them and celebrate them today because of what God has done through them.

Think of all the things that God has done through Lars Hellberg, Susan Goyette, David Reith, Janet Stevens, Jeannie Smith. We’ll name them all later, just a few examples.

God’s light shone through them, didn’t it? Even in their darkest moments. And we read it again at Jeannie’s memorial service this week, gathered around this font: “When we were baptized in Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead, we too might live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him a resurrection like his.” That’s holy scripture, friends.

We trust and believe that we are all given the name saint in our baptism, and sometimes I feel like a broken record saying that, but we sure need to be reminded of it weekly, even daily (as Luther said), because it is so easy to forget. It is so easy to relegate sainthood, simply to the holier-than-thou. It’s easier to keep it separated – All Saints Day and then the Rest of Us Day.

But this is God’s grace coming at us in these waters, God’s grace coming at us, relentlessly, rushing at us, before many of us can even say a word. God’s grace crashes down on us and claims us. Calls us saints. Promises us eternal life in the hereafter, yes, but God’s grace is so good we are even granted the kingdom of heaven in this life, that means a flood of comfort when you mourn (that’s not material comfort, in means that when you’ve lost what is most dear to you, only then can you be embraced the One who holds you closest). God’s grace is so good that we are even granted the inheritance of the earth , contentment, peace, mercy, a glimpse of God. God’s grace is so good that you are now called a child of God!

I’ve got a book that I try to read daily. It’s a proposed calendar for commemorating all those “saints”, for lack of a better word. I really don’t want to get into Catholic-bashing – (that’s what my grandparents did, how we’re better and they’re just mindlessly praying to saints). The Catholics actually have offered so much to God’s church, as they so reverently remember those who have died in the faith. I think we can only stand to benefit as we peer back into the pages of Christian history.

Today we praise the saints – I’m just saying that for us Lutherans, it gets a little more complicated, because the truth is that we’re all mixed up in that category of saint. For we too are sinner-saints.

Here’s a quote from that book: ‘When the church praises the saints, it praises God himself, who has triumphed through them. Those who are still in the church on earth are supported and encouraged by the fellowship of a throng of witnesses, who fought their way with effort and pain, and who now in the company of the redeemed are watching and supporting the church on earth in its present struggle’”.

Today we rejoice, for all the blessed saints: Those who have gone before us, those saints still among us, and those many saints of God…still to come! “You are a saint of God, and God’s light shines though you.” Blessed are you. AMEN.

October 23 -- 19th Sunday after Pentecost

2011-10-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

I had some funny dreams last night. You know that falling dream – have you ever had that falling sensation as you’re falling asleep?

So take that, and then I had two experiences yesterday: We had the chance yesterday morning to do something we had never done before – to go to Torrey Pines State Park, where we hiked from the visitor center at the top all the way down to the beach, a steady decline. Also, there was this moment yesterday afternoon where I got to see Micah run. He was running full speed around our cul-de-sac over to his friend’s house – concrete sidewalk where the driveways make the surface go up and down, full stride Micah, with big growing feet. I was so scared he was going to “eat it” again and rip open his knees and bust open his chin. But everything was fine. Until last night when I had that dream.

I had the falling dream, except instead of me falling, it was Micah falling down this declining trail down which, of course, he was running…

Running downhill is an image I’d like you to carry into our reflecting on today’s Gospel text…where Jesus gives those, who were trying to trap him again, “the Bible’s greatest sound bite.” Like last week’s text the Pharisees were looking to trick, not looking to learn; and still Jesus gives them (and us) a great summation of all the law and the prophets with this answer: “Love your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

I am particularly interested with what it means to “love your neighbor as yourself”. Loving God with all your heart, soul and mind actually—in Matthew’s world—the equivalent as loving your neighbor as yourself. So it really is all about loving your neighbor as yourself. What else could “Loving God” ultimately mean? Love of God is intrinsically tied to love of neighbor.

And so if we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, then how are we doing at taking care of ourselves? How are you doing at caring about yourself? This might be a difficult thing to think about…for generally well-meaning, self-sacrificing hard-working types, such as yourselves. How are you doing at caring about yourself? But I think it’s good and honest to consider. To use a common—but I think helpful—airline analogy: how are you doing at putting the oxygen mask on yourself first before you help someone else?

Jesus offers us that freedom today, friends. Do something for yourself this week. Treat yourself, guilt free.

Now when I say “treat yourself”, how many of us think of food? Thank you, popular culture, commercials... I couldn’t even write those words without seeing this huge ice cream cone on my computer screen. Satisfying a particular craving—which only meets a short-term urge—is not really what I mean, by “do something for yourself this week.” I’m wondering more about giving some time to yourself this week…to reflect, to pray, to breathe. Even if that means waking up in the middle of the night to journal. Taking a hike in Torrey Pines. Having a cup of coffee of a glass of wine (or a little ice cream) with no one but your thoughts. Jesus offers us that freedom today. Because if we can’t take care of ourselves, then we can never fully love our neighbor. If we can’t breathe…then we can’t serve. Get some breathing space, friends in Christ, for heaven’s sake…and for this world’s sake.

Back to this image of running downhill: this idea of caring for ourselves can certainly get out of control, like the little boy flying recklessly down the trail in my dream last night. He had fun for a moment, but soon went crashing. How self-time, “me time” can get out of control too…I think it has as we watch our world before us: so much about ME…whether it’s political discourse (MY rights), or sports (MY time), or even churches can make it all about ourselves…completely missing others in need (and in that, even our own greatest needs). Having fun for a moment, but soon and ultimately crashing…

But God’s people are called to walk. Downhill. Together.

God’s grace might be imagined as taking our paths in life…and tilting them downward to make them easier. That’s what grace is. Works-righteousness – this idea that we have to earn our salvation, our place in heaven with God, which many of our Christian brothers and sisters still affirm – that’s like a steep hike uphill. If you do A, B, and C, then God will reward you. For non-believers or just non-involved church people, on the other hand, the hike is just kind of flat – no steep inclines, no real commitments, no great joy or sorrow or anger at the One who Christians name as Jesus – just kind of a flat, level, this life is – with no final hope.

But for us who stake it all on God’s grace. That’s like God taking the path, and tilting it downward, so that we can walk easily…but are tempted to run. Tempted to think that it’s just for us. (There were people running downhill yesterday at Torrey Pines. Not only did they almost crash into me and my family and everyone else on the trail. I just thought: that must do a number on your knees over time.) God’s people weren’t meant to run down hills. God’s earth-bending grace and love isn’t meant to be hoarded or gorged upon or spent wildly. Me. Me. Me. Me. God’s grace and love isn’t meant to be consumed like that.

It’s meant to be savored and shared, like a gentle walk down to the beach…like a long talk with a dear friend…like a 5 course meal with everyone singing after dessert.

Loving God with everything, and loving your neighbor as yourself is an invitation to slow down on the trail of grace. To savor and share it. And I’m struck that this dream, this image, is of a way that goes down. Down is where God’s people go, together. Down to savor grace, down to share God’s unconditional welcome. Down to the poor, the lonely, the lost, the confused, the outcast. We “con-descend,” let’s reclaim that word. I was reading about it: and it wasn’t used negatively until the 18^th century – condescend. Literally means “to go down together”. One etymological meaning of the word is to “willingly sink to equal terms with inferiors”. Let’s just be honest about how we see others – the poor, the immigrant, the stranger, the outcast, the non-believer, the confused – they’re all inferior to us and our faith. But not if God bends the earth and leads us down together to be with them. Then we’re all together, helping, encouraging, sharing, worshipping – and in that whole steady process, we ourselves are being cared for too!

Not to drag out this word con-descend much more, but I was intrigued to find that con-descend was first used around the 17^th c. to refer to what God does: “to willingly sink to equal terms with inferiors”.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, walking downhill calmly and together, seeing and serving the world around us as we move – this is deeply rooted Christian activity! This is Jesus-following activity…isn’t it? This is what it means to love both neighbor as self and to love God – who is present and moving as we walk, pointing us to those in need (and to the beauty of the earth), comforting us when we are in pain, shepherding us down into the valleys of this troubled world; down to the shorelines of good and evil to offer ourselves to both friend and stranger alike; and promising never to leave us…in fact to meet ever more at the bottom, at the end of the day, in our darkest, most broken moments, even in our death. Our God promises to meet us ever more at the bottom…and finally, finally to raise us up in joy and peace. We depend solely on God…to raise us up in joy and peace at the last.

This is God’s grace in which and by which we dwell, now and always! AMEN.

October 16 -- 18th Sunday after Pentecost

2011-10-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

This text has been used in all sorts of ways.

It’s been used by some to argue that we shouldn’t have to pay any taxes. Can you see why? Pay no allegiance to Caesar is what Jesus is saying.

It’s been used by others to argue that we should certainly pay taxes, that this offers us a model of civility in living harmoniously in both the worldly realm and the religious realm. That’s kind of how Luther used this passage in his time, where people wanted to rebel violently against the powers that were...

Unfortunately Jesus doesn’t answer the Pharisees’ question about money directly…I believe mostly because the Pharisees weren’t asking it as a stewardship question on their Stewardship Sunday. They had different intentions: they wanted to trap Jesus. And they knew they could trap him with either answer he gave.

So I’m not sure how directly helpful this text is for Stewardship Sunday. Jesus isn’t giving us any clear cut answers. Other places in the Bible he does; it’s a good thing we don’t have to read that passage where he says very plainly – “sell all that you have and give it to the poor.” Or the passage in Acts where those who don’t give a percentage of their income are accused of stealing from God…which is a continuation of an over-arching theme throughout the OT. But this text today is not so blunt. Rather it leads us to understanding and insights about offering up money in more indirect…and graceful ways.

There’s not a straight answer for us on how much to give in this text. Rather we are offered (2 things) an idea about intentions, and led once again to a beautiful conclusion – that all “our” money and stuff is actually God’s.

First of all, I think the Gospel story today raises for us the question of intentions when we talk about money. The Pharisees had intentions when they asked Jesus about money. As you consider what to write or what not to write on your pledge cards, what are the intentions behind the questions you might have: “Why am I being asked to make a financial pledge to this church, again?” What might the intentions be behind that kind of question? In other words, what gives birth to your questions about financial stewardship in the church? Sometimes just our tone of voice can be a give-away for our intentions. Are our questions born out of mistrust, anger, fear, or a way to trap…like the Pharisees?

Or are our questions around money and what to offer born of something else? Joy, peace, trust in the abundance of God’s love and grace. “How might God use me? How can I make a pledge that is an expression of my thankfulness to God, for all God has given me?”

This question of what to pledge is really a chance to reflect on yourself. To look in the mirror at yourself, to look at your own life, and to consider God’s blessings, God’s presence in many and various ways. Maybe that sounds obvious, but pledging once again this year is not about looking at the church and determining whether a larger or smaller sum is appropriate for this year. It’s about looking at yourself and considering God’s grace and abundance in your life.

Go home with your pledge card, set some time aside, say a prayer of thanksgiving, and then write down your pledge. (if you need some more specific direction in that – I like to just stick with the biblical model of tithing, 10% of your income, or at least working up to that each year. But I know some pastors that say go home, pray, figure out the absolute most you can give, and then bump it up one more percentage point – just to emphasize the sacrificial component of stewardship. It should hurt a little.)

Pledging at your central place of worship (whether that’s here or elsewhere), during stewardship season, is ultimately a gift for you, not your gift to the church. It is an opportunity for each of us to make a statement about how much we trust in God.

Are your intentions and your questions around money and giving born out of distrust and fear, anger or the need to trap or control? Or are they born out of joy, peace, trust, thanksgiving? Or maybe you’re somewhere in the middle…wanting to have your questions born out of joy and peace, but feeling stuck in fear and distrust – distrust of institutions or people, maybe even distrust of God – and angry about it all. Sisters and brothers in Christ, God is with us in our bitterness and resentment, in our mistrust and anger. God is with us, nudging us, holding us, comforting and challenging us…as the Holy Spirit guides us into new realms of joy and thanksgiving. (HOD “Lord of All Hopefulness” along these lines)

You know, I used to say that I hated Stewardship Sunday, as a pastor, having to talk about money and giving, how hard that is, and then I’d even drag other pastors in with me and make a blanket statement…but…I think you here at SVLC have witnessed a sort of evolution in my rhetoric…

It’s a joy to be able to proclaim and bear witness to the fact that your being invited to offer up one of this earthly life’s greatest treasures, your money, is a gift.

This day and this text is a gift, Stewardship Sunday, Jesus talking about “give to Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is God’s”, for it all brings us back to the blessed conclusion …

Read together the stewardship insert.

October 9 -- 17th Sunday after Pentecost

2011-10-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

You are invited to God’s banquet here on earth…and even beyond this earth! You are invited. Come in! I don’t care, says God, if you’re new to the banquet family or if you’ve been here the whole time. I don’t care if you’ve committed all kinds of terrible deeds in your life, or had all kinds of terrible thoughts. You are invited to the banquet!

“You are invited to the banquet of my grace,” God tells us today! “It is yours to enjoy. Yours to savor. Yours. Take some and pass it around the table, like it was your favorite dish. Feast at this holy banquet,” God says. “This is your party, and by you I mean all who live and breathe upon this planet, which means you. Come to the banquet, the feast of the universe!”

“This is how much I love you, how much I forgive you, how much you mean to me. Look, I made your favorite thing! Can I get you some more to drink?” God’s banquet is here and now spread out before us. God’s grace and God’s love fills us. It connects us to one another and gives us peace. Thanks be to God for this banquet that you are invited to.

The question is, are you going to accept the invitation? Or like the characters in the story Jesus tells us today, are you going to make light of it? One is too busy and too shortsighted to recognize the big picture of God’s all-encompassing grace, and he goes back to his field to farm for himself. Another goes back to his business. How we can be consumed by our business, so much that we can’t even stop to enjoy the party that God has thrown for us.

I don’t want to compare the big banquet that we here at Shepherd of the Valley threw a few weeks ago, to the banquet of God’s grace, because even that beautiful event doesn’t even compare. But I can’t help reflect on it, as I ponder this text and this banquet image. And one of the things that was so wonderful for me, was the opportunity to take the long view. As those of you who were there may recall, I likened the evening to a mountain top experience, particularly because it’s a rare thing to take such a long view – 50 years into this congregation’s past, dreaming and gazing into God’s future for this church. Most of my time in this congregation is spent, not taking the long view, but just being in the day-to-day. Business around the office, farming in the fields as I go out meet with some of you, and some who are not yet a part of this family of faith. It’s hard to get the big picture, when you’re not on the mountain top. But the banquet is a symbol for the big picture. A huge table, plenty of food. And all are welcome to it.

And all you have to do is accept the invitation to this long view, this big picture. And what an absolute, undeserved gift it is—this grace—spread out like a picnic blanket over God’s green universe!

And it is for you to accept, to open your hands and heart and enjoy.

But if you do accept and come to God’s banquet, are you going to wear the garments provided for you? This is where our text gets particularly Matthean. This story, when it’s repeated in the Gospel of Luke, doesn’t include this next part…(Luke’s community was more interested in unpacking the radical welcome of all people.)

Matthew’s community is more interested in the purity of heart of the invited. And if the invited are not participating in response to the invitation, then they never really got it, and OUT THEY GO!

The part about the one caught without his proper wedding garment: this is really something! It doesn’t mean, that we have to go buy the right thing to wear for God’s party.

That outfit is given to us for free, in our baptism, in the Word of God that we hear Sunday after Sunday, in the Communion that we share, all of that is putting on Christ Jesus. That’s the garment that we are given when we accept the invitation and walk in the door. But we have to let that garment go on us and stay on us, as we live our lives as though we are truly at God’s banquet!

Have you ever had the nightmare that you show up to an event wearing the wrong thing…or worse yet…nothing?

This welcome that God has is to be stewarded – which means we have to trust that God will provide the best outfit, the best garments. Let’s not show up wearing the wrong thing. When God invites us to a banquet and gives us even the clothes to wear, we don’t show up in flip flops and a tee shirt!

The question that keeps recurring for me about God’s banquet is “Are you coming to the party, or are you COMING TO THE PARTY.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but when you throw a party there are some people who come to the party, and then there are others who really COME TO THE PARTY.

Some just kind of show up, but they don’t take interest in anyone, I was at a dinner party the other day, and one of my friends was off in the corner texting almost as soon as he arrived. They were somewhere else.

Maybe that’s a helpful image: are you off in the corner just communicating with your little circle of friends, completely unattached to the stranger, to the new face at the party, unconnected to the bigger, wider picture of God’s welcome…just kind of at the party.

So much has happened this last week, amidst it all, we in the church honor the life of Henry Muhlenberg on October 7. First Lutheran pastor in America, 1787. “Satan will allow a lot of external things like going to church as long as there is no true turning from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to complete freedom in and through the Son of God.”

Are you at the party…just going through the motions…or are you AT THE PARTY. Turning from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to complete freedom in and through the Son of God! Connecting, connecting, laughing, helping, paying attention to who is in and who’s left out. Have you ever seen someone like this at a party? I’m not talking about people who have to be the center of attention…I’m talking about the ones who are really present and participating. I know many of us are pretty introverted; I’m not saying we all need to force ourselves to be extroverted. But wearing God’s garment does mean that we are permanently changed to be reaching outward, reaching outward, which is the literal translation of extro-vert: “to be turned outward”.

Even the most introverted personality becomes extroverted to sharing God’s love and God’s grace with the world, after being clothed with Christ’s garment at the banquet.

Accidents – tragic and otherwise

New Members joining

Stewarding our welcome

Busy, misprints, barely getting by, etc.

50^th debriefing

October 2 -- 16th Sunday after Pentecost -- Blessing of the Animals

2011-10-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

What in the world does this text have to do with the blessing of the animals? [re-tell?]

It’s our assigned Gospel reading for the day…AND I THINK IT’S PERFECT…as we reflect not just on how cute our little critters are, but as we consider again the ways that God has “leased” them and all creation to us human beings.

God is the land owner; we are the part-time tenants of this planet. And when the produce comes – how we tend to want to hog it all for ourselves! How we can be fooled into believing it’s all rightfully ours…and not God’s, the land owners…

So God sends servants to ask us to share – Martin Luther King, Jr., Oscar Romero, Francis of Assisi, Mother Theresa – and we call one a communist, another a lunatic and off his rocker, we assassinate another, and we let the last do her crazy work in some far off land, where we “admire” her from a distance, claiming that we could never do that…

So God sends more servants – children, animals – and how we can treat them in similar ways…Using them for our own purposes…

“Serve me, pet! Make me laugh. Comfort me, children, make me feel loved. Provide something for me.”

That’s my tendency…rather than letting children and animals teach me about God. About trusting God with everything. Children and pets can teach us that. They can teach me about knowing that all is in God’s hands. They’re not clueless and dumb. In the trusting of the trees and the children and the animals, lies the wisdom of God.

A day of Blessing of the Animals, really goes both ways. We can pronounce God’s blessing on these animals, but they don’t really need that from us. Like we said in the Psalm, they live their lives in a way that truly expresses God’s love and blessing for them. What’s really happening on this exciting day is that we are remembering that the animals are blessing us, with their wisdom, their ability to trust God.

And God, the land owner, who seems out of his mind – I mean, why does the land owner keep sending messengers to get killed? – but God, the land owner, keeps trying to get through to us: SHARE!

Share what you have. It’s not yours to begin with. Share with one another, and there will be enough to go around. I think that’s at the heart of Jesus’ instruction here. Take a longer view…and share.

Those wicked tenants, we wicked tenants, I’m afraid want it all and we want it now. The real sin of those tenants is that they have no vision and no ability to trust that they are in God’s hands, and so they try to take matters into their own hands, as if it’s their land.

As we reflect on God’s planet, how might we let the animals bless us, and teach us to have a greater vision, to see far in front of us? Native Americans talk/think regularly about 7 generations past themselves. How will their actions affect 7 generations beyond themselves? That kind of thinking might radically change our decisions.

Here’s the gift. God keeps sending messengers and as we look around this morning, we can see evidence of that – both human messengers and non-human! God is still trying to get through to us, God even sends his only Son to us. And even if he too was executed, not even death could stop him…and Christ is still coming into the vineyards we’re renting. Asking us to share, and loving us regardless. Calling us to be faithful, and accepting us even when we’re not. God is so generous – these animals are a sign of that. God is so faithful. And again asking us simply to trust.

Today’s a hard day for my family, because we miss Oscar, who was here this time last year...

Leave you with an image—Oscar trusting. On his back, loved to have his belly rubbed. Contrast that with Luther's definition of sin: self curve inward, unable to trust anyone, see much farther than yourself. But Oscar taught us about trusting completely.

May we too be so trusting. Because no matter what, God holds us, and comforts us…and always will. Amen.

Words at our 50th Anniversary Banquet, Sept. 24

2011-09-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

What of the future? The future belongs to God –

There’s a story of a small congregation – not ours but in some ways similar – in which at the end of the service, no matter what the hymn, Harold, the oldest member of the church, slowly gets up and takes the acolyte candle snuffer from the back of the church and feebly walks three quarters of the way up the isle, step by step, at a speed befitting of his age…and then Harold hands the acolyte taper shakily to his 10-year-old down-syndrome great grandson Bobby. Bobby then in turn precariously goes to the altar with the candle snuffer, gets the light of Christ, snuffs out the candles, and then carries the light of Gospel out into the world. [pause]

I first heard this story from the Rev. Dr. Thomas Long, who then goes on to point out that watching this ritual Sunday after Sunday at his home congregation is like watching the whole story of the church through the years being played out right before his eyes. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is passed down from the feeble hands of one generation to the precarious hands of another. And it reminds me of the stories we’ve seen and heard this evening as we celebrate our congregation through the years. A similar scene takes place even in Scripture (we hear this story shortly after Christmas) when old Simeon finally gets to hold the baby Jesus in his ancient arms, blessing God in that moment – “my eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, a light to all people” – and then with shaky hands and wobbly knees Simeon leans forward and passes over the baby of Hope and Salvation for the entire world. He passes Jesus over to a precarious teenage girl, mother Mary.

I’m afraid that I can’t and I won’t dictate a detailed picture of the future for Shepherd of the Valley as your current pastor. I can’t and I won’t prescribe the future; but what I can do—as we briefly reflect on the future—is to ascribe that future to God. That’s my only vision—that the future of Shepherd of the Valley be God’s. My prayer is that as we move off this mountain top back down into the valley, that may we together lean and let go into God’s future, like the passing of the light of Christ in our worship service, entrusting it all–entrusting the life-saving Word and Meal—the Living Water that quenches our thirst and saturates us for faithfulness—the stories that we love to tell of Jesus and his love, handing it all over, perhaps with feeble and tired hands, passing it all over—the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the hands of our children and our grandchildren to be carried like a “light” into this dark world.

And as I look out this evening—a personal point of privilege—I want to thank you, all those who have leaned forward and passed the light of Christ over to me, entrusting me with this Gospel of Truth to be shared.

I’ve often heard that as Christians in this age, we’ve gotta do a better job of standing up/firm for our faith; there are so many pressures all around. To stand up for our faith we’ve gotta believe we’re right. But to lean instead into our faith and let go, then we have to believe there’s a God.* [pause] May we move into the future leaning, like Harold, and entrusting our whole selves and our congregation…to God. AMEN.

*Thomas Long, Sermon at the Festival of Homiletics 2010, Nashville, TN