July 13 -- Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

“But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields.”

I’m thinking this morning about all the different types of soils, of earth we drove past on our family vacation these past few weeks.  

As most of you probably know I’ve been gone for the last two Sundays.  We were vacationing back in the Midwest, where my family is from, where many of our friends live and serve in various congregations, in Milwaukee, in Davenport, in Custer.  We drove as far back as Illinois.  These last two weeks.  And we watched as we drove the landscapes change, and we watched the soils change.  

Over these lush mountains and down into desert, Arizona, New Mexico.  Lots of hot, dry soil, where not much can take root and grow (even though some small parts of it we’ve cultivated).  Then things started really greening up in eastern NM and into Texas.  Even pine trees.  From desert to prairie.  From the thorns and rocky soil of the Southwest into slightly more fertile soil.  This, btw, correlated with the amount of  clouds we saw in the sky.  From the ranching soil and grasslands of Texas then, up into the farming soil of Oklahoma and Missouri.  And after a few days with my family in St. Louis, we turned north to see friends and headed up into the rich farming soil of Iowa and Illinois (the smell on our baseball).  We also saw places where the fertile soil had been flooded, choked out, in a way.  And nothing could grow there.    

So I’m thinking this morning as we read our Gospel about seed sown in fertile soil, about all the land we’ve covered, and perhaps you have too at one time or another.  How our many and various lands, like in Jesus’ parables, can be metaphors for our lives of faith and our reception to the Word of God.  

How in your life has God’s Word taken root and grown, like seeds in the fertile soil of the farmlands?  And when are times that it’s just not?  Too much distraction, too much flooding, too many rocks or bumps, or too much traffic in the busyness of our weeks?  How sometimes God’s word does start to grow, start to change us for the better, start to take root and hold on to us, but then how we can be swept away, almost instantly, by the world’s affairs and concerns.  How often there’s just not enough room or time or patience for God’s redemptive word of grace to take root and grow in our hearts.

You know, I am sometimes a little wary about the over-zealous in our churches.  More times than not, they get scorched by their own fire for Jesus, and they don’t last long in a church  community.  They can get impatient with others who aren’t as on fire, too soon throw their hands up in the air, and be done with the whole thing.  I once knew someone like that in a former congregation.  This person found our church, joined it, got ridiculously involved in every aspect of every ministry it seemed, got frustrated with others, angry and left it all -- all in the course of one short year.  Farmers understand that healthy plants and crops don’t grow like that; so how can we expect disciples to?

Compare that person -- a good person, but fell on rocky soil --  with the one who enters a Christian community slowly, carefully, perhaps dubiously, lovingly, seeking understanding and relationship.  Not over-zealous or anxious.  Just showing up again and again.  I’ve known many like this too.  Sharing life together.  Sharing joys and gathering in sorrowful times too.  I’ve watched, even in my 36 years, I’ve watched some become stronger more faithful Christians, better and better students of Scripture, more grounded in the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion.  And again, faithful in their presence among God’s people.  Showing up, year after year.  Now that’s where the seed of God’s Word -- that is, the Gospel message of God’s forgiveness, grace and love -- has “taken” and continues to grow and expand and bear fruit and become stronger for it.  How  often we emerge stronger, when faced with adversity!

Jesus’ message this hot summer day, is a call not to be fickle.  Not to blow in the wind, and get reactive and storm out, but to slow down, and let this Good Word work on us, change us, from the inside.  How often do we really stop and let a passage from scripture “soak in” or “take root”?  I’m guilty of this -- so often Bible readings can just brush our ears and our intellects, and then we move on, or go back to whatever we were doing before.  It’s hard to let God’s word soak down into our hearts.  (But try taking some real time with Scripture -- and see what happens...) “You are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you...then God will give life to your mortal bodies.”

We can certainly blow this word off, or brush it aside, but this word has the power to save our lives.  

Why is it that we let other words that people say to us, damage or even destroy our lives, but we can let a Good Word from God just brush past us?  

I bet everyone in here, wouldn’t have to think very long about the meanest thing anyone’s ever said to/about you.  I bet we could re-call those cruel words pretty quickly.  But the Word of God, which promises us life, which grants us peace and joy and forgiveness of all our wrongdoings, that word we can almost forget by the time we get home to watch the World Cup this afternoon...   [pause] 

These hot summer days, a new word takes root in us and grows:  God loves you.  Even you!  God forgives you, and calls you to forgive others -- not because you’re an awesome saint necessarily and perfectly capable of forgiving others.  No God calls us to forgive others, not in our own names but, in Jesus’ name.  That’s a good word that we have to let sit under the ground and grow over time.  And Christ waters us, the light of God shines on us, and the Spirit blows through our lands and connects us so that we don’t stand and grow alone.  

God makes our hearts good soil.  God takes a risk and extravagantly throws out seeds of love, even in your direction today, on every kind of soil that we saw crossing the country.  And God makes our hearts good soil.  So that through the work of the Holy Spirit, that seed “takes” and grows in our hearts.  And in time, deeds and words of love and grace then flow from our hands and our mouths, bringing comfort, peace and joy to this hurting world, the very comfort, peace and joy of Christ Jesus.  From God, the Gracious Farmer, to us, once dry and un-cultivatable soil...because of Christ, who lives and dwells with us this day and forever.  Now we go out too, and spread widely this Good News.  AMEN.    

June 22 -- Second Sunday after Pentecost

The journey changes us.  

I’m thinking this morning about all those journeys that have changed me in one way or the other.  

When I was in college, I took my first journey south of the border to build houses with Habitat for Humanity in Tijuana.  I’d never had an experience quite like that -- just some 20 miles south of us actually -- bouncing up a dirt road into a sprawl of corrugated metal-mixed-with-cardboard-and-plywood houses.  And I remember a shiny American-built factory in the distance, at the top of the hill, towering like a castle over the whole shanty city.  We built one of those homes that week for a kind family, and played soccer with the children on the dirt roads and fumbled through our Spanish.  And in the evening, we’d go back to the very basic retreat center in the same area, with a Luther rose painted on the entrance sign.  I remember that week was marked by laughter and sweat, and beautiful sunsets and rain, and the smell of homemade tortillas.  

And when I got back to school, I was talking to one of my professors [Jerry Slattum] about the trip, and I said just quickly the cliche: “Yeah, it was so sad.”  And he challenged me, having been to such places himself: “Was it sad?  Were the people sad?”  And then I paused for a minute -- “Well, come to think of it, no, it wasn’t sad.”  It was joyous, despite the rather harsh, impoverished environment, and the imbalance of wealth.  My professor smiled, and then he said something that I’ve never forgotten:  “Poverty doesn’t breed sadness.”  There’s lots to learn in places like that.  In in times and communities where people have less. And it reminds us that we have a lot of work to do.  

That journey changed me.


I think about the trip we took here at Shepherd of the Valley to Germany back in 2012.  How that journey changed us!  

We came back with new relationships, and new learnings.  A new insight for me, just in terms of the Luther stuff -- seeing the town of Wittenberg, where Luther spent most of his life -- was that Martin Luther was a campus minister.  I had to go to Germany to figure this out, but he spent all of his time with students.  He was not actually the called pastor of any church, although he guest preached all the time!  Luther was a professor, and -- along with his spouse Katie -- a master of hospitality.  They were community gardeners, they cared about ethical business practices of their city and supported building strong communities.  They fought against poverty and disease and homelessness.  They were beer brewers.  They gave students a place to sleep and fed them, and you can read whole volumes of the kinds of table conversations that they would have about life and theology and worship...Luther was a campus pastor.  And I came back wondering why we as the Lutheran church today don’t just pour our resources into supporting campus ministries across the nation and the world.  Because nothing would be more Luther-an.  

    Just one example of how that journey changed me.   

We have a tough Gospel text this morning...that I’ve been trying to avoid for the last few minutes.  “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword...I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother...whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me...and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  Those are the verses that seem to glare at us, once again.  Welcome back to Matthew’s gospel, and Jesus’ tenacious teaching there.  
The journey changes us.  I think at the heart of this passage -- and I encourage you to take this bulletin home and read it again -- I think at the heart of this passage is yet another invitation into a life-altering, life-changing journey.  How is Jesus calling you today; how is Jesus calling us as community? [pause]  And never does Jesus say that this road -- as it’s practically lived out -- is an easy one.  I’ve told you before about the guy I met once who said, “My life was great, until I met Jesus.  I had lots of money, I did what I wanted, I served no one.  Now I’m giving my money away; trying to do not what I want, but what Christ would have me do, like forgiving my enemies; and I serve others now: the poor, little children, the earth itself...and those who don’t look like me.  My life was great, until I met Jesus.”    

Sisters and brothers in Christ, in our baptisms, in our being “buried with Christ,” as Paul says in Romans today, we enter a new journey.  In that journey we get strapped in with Christ, through that little bowl of water, and those holy, holy, holy words:  “I baptize you...” On that journey, we go bouncing down the dirt road of discipleship as the oil is streaked across our foreheads, and we hear the words, “You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.”  We have died to death, and now we live, raised to new life in Christ.  And so now everything is different.  Baptism is a journey that changes us.  It a journey that changes everything.  

When we get back from that trip, everything is new when we return.  We see things differently.  We see joy when others see only sadness.  We see hope when others only see despair.  We see life when others only see death.  I think of Martin Luther King, Jr. preaching Christ crucified and risen as he literally stood on smoldering ashes of burned-out, bombed-out churches in the deep South.  
But, we don’t just see the positive in the midst of negative.  Having returned from our journey to the holy waters of baptism, we also now see pain and injustice, when others refuse to, ignore it, or just can’t.  We see poverty, abuse, exploitation and name it as such, and strive for justice in all the earth.  We see the inequalities, and we Jesus followers don’t turn away.  We see racism and sexism, and call it like it is, and then like Martin and Katie Luther of long ago, we become ambassadors of hospitality, of radical welcome for all.      

Maybe that means we find ourselves parting ways with our families of origin, and moving in with our former enemies, as Jesus said.  Maybe that has us slicing through the unhealthy behaviors and systems in our lives and our world, cutting through the hurtful silence, with a sword of honesty and integrity, with a non-anxious word, speaking the “truth in love.”  [pause]

This journey of the baptized life is not an easy one, but it’s the greatest one we’ll ever take.  In Christ, we lose our own lives in order to follow after our servant-king, our servant-master.  And we are promised again that we will be OK.  More than OK.  Every single hair on our head is counted.  In other words -- and I like to think of it more like this because not everyone has hair on their heads -- every single cell of our body is like an autographed Babe Ruth baseball to God.  (Eye on the sparrow)

This is what makes everything different -- because this muddy road that we walk, with all it’s challenges -- this Christian life of the baptized -- we don’t walk alone.  God goes with us, Christ leads us and beckons us.  And so we join hands and arms and we walk together.  This journey changes us from the inside-out.  We have lost our lives, and in so doing, become a very part of God’s life for the world.  AMEN.        

June 15 -- Holy Trinity Sunday/Father's Day

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

This -- and our Gospel message for today, the last lines from Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus says, “Go, baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” -- are closest references we have from Scripture to the Holy Trinity.  One God three persons.  Our creed comes from a time where there was fighting going on among Christians in the the 4th century and Constantine ordered the bishops to gather at his lakeside palace to work it out.  That’s where we get our creed -- an ancient synod assembly!

Christians couldn’t agree on whether Jesus was actually God the Father, and whether Jesus was above all other lords of the lands, especially the imperial lord who also was also commonly said to be the son of God.  So the newly converted Christian emperor calls these theologians together and says in 325AD, “Work it out!”  And they came up with this trinitarian formula and wrote a creed for all Christians to say and unite together.  

Isn’t it amazing that -- given this very human way that our creeds came to fruition -- we still say them today, and confess this trinitarian formula?!  That we believe in one God, three persons? That God Almighty who creates the cosmos, who was there at the very beginning...is also Jesus the son who redeems the world...is also the Holy Spirit who comforts and challenges, who rushed in like a mighty wind and appeared like flames of fire on the disciples’ heads and in our hearts even still today?!    

I am struck by that!  How a holy, sacred, timeless creed like the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed can come from imperfect humans.  How that confession of faith stands at the center of our worship even still in 2014!  

Why do we need these creeds?  Do you believe them every week you come and we gather together and stand and speak them after our Hymn of the Day?  I once heard a pastor say he honestly didn’t believe the creed on most Sundays he was leading it -- there was just too much either distracting him or making him doubt and question too much to swallow the words of the creeds whole -- but that’s exactly why he needed to gather with others who did believe when he could not.  [pause] Just like in the baptism of an infant, we understand that faith is something we share with each other, something we borrow from each other like flour for our bread:  

“[Lois], I don’t have enough faith today, can I borrow some of yours?”  

“Sure here, here’s this creed our people have been saying since the early centuries of the church.  Take as much as you want.”     

“Thank you.  If you’re short on faith sometime, let me know and I’ll see what faith I can come up with for you to have.”

This creed, this faith, is what we celebrate ALSO on this Father’s Day.  It’s fitting that Father’s Day falls on Holy Trinity Sunday:  fathers too ought to share what they have, when someone comes in need of not having enough.  And so often they do.  The great fathers among us love to share advice, and stories, and humor.  They love to share food and drink with neighbors and friends.  I think, the great fathers share their faith -- with their words, but even more importantly with their actions.  And fathers ought to ask for help when they need it.  This one is debatable if we fathers are honest.  Sometimes we need to work on that.  I think the great fathers also know when to say they need something, when to reach out for help.  None of us can go it alone.  

I love how Father’s Day has become a day in our culture about bbqing and being together, having fun... That’s community.

We are made for community!  We express and confess God as a Divine Community -- a Father, a Son, a Holy Spirit (some icons picture the trinity as three beings at a table) -- God who we express as Divine Community creates us for community.  “Let us make human kind in our image,” did you catch that?  The earth and the human was created from a divine community!  None of us can go it alone.    

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

From the Divine Community to our broken and fallible communities: God is with us!  

Go and share that Divine community, that Holy Trinity, with everyone you meet.  The fathers among us can be examples of that...  

Man, Micah’s baseball coach modeled that for us this season!  This guy, Coach Chris, he was always tying baseball, into strong community life.  It was about a lot more than a great game.  We had the year end party last Sunday after Mr. Ron’s celebration, and I got to witness him do this again -- as he praised everyone for not just being ball players and supportive dads and moms, but for being committed to community.  He fed us all with this lavish spread, the thanked everyone, he praised and lifted up the children.  It’s like that council of Nicea, man!  I’m sure there’s lots of pain and brokenness in Coach’s life.  I’m sure he’s not a perfect person.  I don’t know him that well.  But out of that human imperfection comes a glimpse of God’s love.  

Community has got to be connected to experiencing God’s love.  I don’t think we get that isolated.  I don’t think we get the whole picture of God, just experiencing a beautiful sunset in solitude.  The Christian life is a life...together.  Bearing one another’s burdens, lending and receiving a dose of one another’s faith, sticking it out, not walking away and just taking care of “number one”.  Community is God’s gift to us.  

Say a prayer of thanksgiving today for the community you’ve experienced in your life.  Maybe your experience of community isn’t a traditional one, but it is a gift.  Your community is who shows up for you, who’s there in your dark moments, and who celebrates with you too.   This is how we know God.  I know we’ve all had these experiences -- just don’t forget to name them as God, the Holy Trinity, working and moving among us.  “Lo Jesus is with us always!”

Our Hymn of the Day this Father’s Day is “Eternal Father Strong to Save”.  And I do love this hymn.  It was first made popular by the British Navy, the Queen’s Royal Navy Hymn.  The United States Navy also claims this song.

The third verse is such a vivid picture of this first Chapter of Genesis:  

Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
And bid its angry tumult cease,
And give, for wild confusion, peace;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

God was there at the very beginning.  God takes the chaos of our world and of our lives and “[gives], for wild confusion, peace.” May that peace be yours this day, and every day, in your life and in your community.  AMEN.

June 1 -- Seventh Sunday of Easter/Ascension

May 25 -- Sixth Sunday of Easter

May 18 -- Fifth Sunday of Easter

Listen to this sermon HERE.

May 11 -- Fourth Sunday of Easter / Mother's Day

Listen to this sermon HERE.

Let’s break down some of this metaphor language.  When Jesus says I’m the gate or the gatekeeper or the shepherd, and we’re the sheep, does he mean it literally?  Or is he painting a rich canvass and communicating a very simple yet profound message?

Jesus is the the one who lets the sheep in.  The inside of the gate and fence is the church, the beloved community of Christ-followers.  So it’s appropriate to reflect today on who’s being let in and who’s being kept out of our churches?  Who would Jesus let in?  Who would God welcome?  I’ve always known mothers to be at the front lines and in the trenches of these kinds of questions.  

I went to a workshop at Synod Assembly last week about ministry among the LGBTQ community, where the presenter said, “If you don’t hear anything else in this session, hear that if you truly want to be welcoming to the LGBTQ community, then you have to publicize a statement and a sign of welcome.  Put a rainbow on your logo and on your website and on your sign out front.  We notice that.  Every congregation says that they’re welcoming, but not every congregation is.”  Is this something we should consider at Shepherd of the Valley, where our vision is “Extending God’s welcome to all we meet along the way”?  Or should we be more explicit about who is welcome and who is not?  Tough things to think about, tough things for me to talk about...[pause]  Who would Jesus let in?  While I was in seminary I once heard an old African American mother say about this subject, I don’t understand people who are gay or lesbian, but I do know what it’s like to rejected by the church, and I’m not going to take part in that.  There’s a Mother’s Day proclamation.  I think it’s pretty clear who she believes Jesus would let in...

But then this passage from John’s Gospel also talks about the shepherd leading the sheep out.  

How is Jesus leading us out?  We are not simply confined to the fences of the church, discerning who else gets to come in.  Life as the community of Christ, as sheep of the Good Shepherd, is a life of moving from pen to pasture.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  This is the baptized life.  

Anyone with a dog knows that if you don’t get that dog out to walk out “in the pasture”, if you will, you’re going to have problems -- barking, behavioral issues, anxiety.

So it is with the church, if God’s people don’t get out there, walking in the world, don’t get out there serving, giving of themselves, sharing their resources, we’ve going to have problems.  We’re seeing this happen in some congregations.

Some churches are clinging desperately onto every last thing and penny they’ve got.  Only letting out whatever little extra money or resource they can, from the bottom of the barrel, as long as it doesn’t really effect their bottom line...

Sisters and brothers in Christ, it’s no small thing that Jesus uses the metaphor of the sheep to describe his followers because sheep are animals that bind communities together, that cover them with warmth.  [pause] Sheep give of themselves, you see.  They are sacrificial animals; they give of themselves through their wool, their milk and their meat.  Jesus asks us, in the Easter season, to be not afraid, and to go ahead and be about the work of giving of ourselves to this world.  Sacrificing ourselves is what our 2nd lesson in I Peter discusses.  

One pastor in town here, when I asked him, how do you talk to your congregation about giving, about stewardship, said, “I tell everybody to go home, each year, pray about what is the absolute most they can offer, and then bump it up a percent.  That way it hurts a little bit.”  Let’s not loose the sacrificial part of giving.  Biblical giving isn’t just giving what’s left over and doesn’t hurt.  No, it’s giving of ourselves...with a little sting.  Like a sheep getting sheared, it doesn’t kill them, but from what I understand from modern day-shepherds, they don’t don’t like those clippers very much.  Those sheerers make them a little nervous.  

It’s uncomfortable to give ourselves away, and yet this is precisely where our good shepherd leads us: out.  Into the world, to offer our selves, our milk, our wool, our money.  What does this look like for you? [pause]  

Are you giving at a level that makes you a little uncomfortable, like sheep around clipping shears?  I’m not just talking about giving to this church; this is absolutely not a fundraising appeal.  I hope you know that.  (That may be coming :)  This is our text for this week:  it’s about giving in the world.  Right now I’m talking about biblical, sacrificial, first-fruits (off the top of the barrel), percentage, joyful giving.  Are we as a congregation giving at a level that makes us a little bit uncomfortable, or do we need to bump it up a percentage?  Are we taking risks in the pasture, giving ourselves away for the good of our communities? ...because that’s where the good shepherd is leading us.  

And here’s the thing, here’s the grace, the gospel in all this:  out there in the pasture, out there in the world, is where we need to be!  That’s not a mean thing, God’s not shoving us out there and abandoning us in the cold.  This is a loving work of God.  My dad likes to say that not giving freely, specifically our money, is to be spiritually constipated.  We get backed up, clogged up, when we hoard things for ourselves.  Christ is freeing us from being backed up, making us vessels of God’s love this Easter season, by leading us out into the pasture of the world.  

Simply put:  it is an absolute gift to give. 

I watched some videos this week and talked to some farmers about sheep sheering.  And it’s amazing to watch a sheep be sheered as a metaphor for giving to God.  Think about this every time we take the offering (maybe we call this in the bulletin “sheep sheering”).  

Sheep don’t look all that comfortable when they’re giving up their wool, they’ve got this look in their eyes as their “master” holds them and sheers them.  But when it’s finished, it’s like they’re brand new.  A little awkward, perhaps at first, because it feels so different.  Now they’re lighter, and freer, they’re not weighed down and hot.  Ever gotten a hair cut yourself, and felt like that?  Or maybe your dog.  I talked to my friend this week who’s a professional groomer, and she told me about how often dogs have matted hair, almost like someone’s pulling their hair.  Sometimes the dogs can get infections when their hair is covering and keeping their skin damp.  How our money and possessions can pull at us, complicate things, even infect us.  And so when those dogs get shaved -- sheered, if you will -- Andrea told me how they actually at her work call those dogs “light and fluffy, even though they have no hair”.  What an image, right?!  Freed of our stuff, our money, our complications and struggles, all those things that give us a false sense of security, and actually can even harm us.  When we are “sheered”, when our wool goes to help others, what a gift it is to us!  Simply put:  it is an absolute gift to give!

Sheered and Cheered

This is the whole picture of grace.  It’s not just being gathered into the pen, into the church, forgiven and given a place at the table.  It’s also being sent out after the meal, to serve and give in the pasture, in the world.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd; we are sheep.  And led by Christ we come and we go.  We rest assured in that grace, that rhythm, that invitation...that love divine, this day and always.  Amen.