August 31 -- Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost

Last week Jesus calls Peter “the Rock”.  He lifts him up, promises him the “keys to the kingdom”, says, “upon this rock I’ll build my church.”  Jesus has Peter feeling pretty good, I imagine. This week (only 8 verses later) he calls him Satan.  What happened?

Peter wanted to take his titles and honor and blessings from Christ and just enjoy them (just for a second...just 8 verses, Jesus?); Peter wants to  “take the money and run,” so to speak.  But then Jesus instructs Peter -- and all of us -- in the ways of discipleship.  This is a calling -- once we acknowledge Christ as the Messiah, once we make our bold statement of faith, like Peter, this is a call -- to take up our cross, this is a call to come and die.  Peter wanted to hinder that.  He wanted to block it.  “Say it isn’t so, Lord.”

I considered putting “Come Die With Us” on our front marquee this morning. [pause]  See how fast this church grows.  

This Gospel passage from Matthew, that is before us today, is terrible marketing.  It does not make people feel good.  It’s frightening, and confusing and, frankly, not the way most people are going to choose.  “I don’t want to come die with you, Lord.  I want to enjoy the Rock, the church.  I want to enjoy the comfort of being in your presence.  I want to enjoy knowing that my soul is safe with you.  I don’t want to suffer.”

"If any want to become my followers,” Jesus said, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Christ calls us to give ourselves away for this world.

How are you, how are we, giving ourselves away for this world?  In a world and a culture that says, “No, protect yourself and your dear ones!  Don’t give yourself away!  That’s stupid.”   But Christ bids we come.  We give ourselves up.  And as D.Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ bids we come, he bids we come and die.”

[How am I doing?  As I wrote this I found myself wanting to add lots of jokes and humor to this passage.  A little sugar coating.]

How is Christ calling you to lose your life, to give yourself away for the world, to take up your cross and follow him?

It always needs to be said, when we reach this passage each year, about bearing your cross, it needs to be said that your “cross to bear” is never being the recipient of some sort of abuse.  I’ve heard and met people who say that their pastor or priest told them that they ought to be silent and bear the physical/emotional/spiritual abuse of their spouse or parent because that’s simply their “cross to bear”.  Being the recipient of abuse is never someone’s cross to bear -- for that is not giving yourself away for the world, being the truest you for the world that God created you to be.  God didn’t mold us for abuse and violence -- not recipients of abuse & violence and not perpetrators of abuse & violence.  Let’s work to stop that.

Our “cross to bear” is that cross that was traced on our foreheads in our baptisms.  It was traced with oil as a symbol of a sealant.  And it gets traced again with ashes each springtime, at the beginning of Lent.  It is the cross under which we live, and under which we die.  [Do you remember that cross?  Is it still there?  Trace it again, just to make sure you know it’s there.]  

It is that cross that says we belong to Christ -- it’s a branding -- Christ who we boldly confess as Messiah, along with Peter.  

And having had that cross sealed on our foreheads, having made that bold confession, we now go, into the dark valleys of this life, into the fear, and the storms that rage.  This is, back into our labor -- the courtrooms, the newsrooms, the classrooms, operating rooms, the living rooms and dining rooms and bedrooms of our daily lives.  We seek out the places where there is pain, and we go there, to give ourselves away.  A colleague pointed out this week: “You know when God asks us to come and die, you can’t really die just a little bit.  When you die, you die.  It’s all or nothing.”  So when Jesus calls us to come and give our selves away, he’s asking for every part of you!  He doesn’t say, I’ll take your 1:30 minutes each week.  I’ll take whatever you have leftover in your wallet.  I’ll take--if it’s not putting you out too much--your volunteer time for my cause.  Jesus doesn’t say that!  Christ bids we give our whole selves away, that we die to the things of this world.

And maybe that means you need to rethink everything...I don’t want to shy away from that possibility.  Maybe God is calling you, or us, to rethink everything! -- to re-shape our whole lives in response to Christ’s call.  That’s really frightening for those of us, who are settled, and on track.  [Dad’s experience in Norway -- parishioners all ex-pats: freedom of not having roots down, no stakes in the ground.]  Maybe God is calling you to rethink and reshape everything in your life.  Maybe it’s time for a brand NEW start, a life that is in line with God’s call to give yourself away.

But I would suspect--and I know--that many of us are not thinking we’re completely off track with God’s purposes for our lives.  I would suspect that many of us have been trying to follow Christ in our daily lives...many for a long time.  

Then I would encourage you to welcome this message as a wake-up call.  Sometimes we sleep through our calls from God.  Let this be a wake-up, “Hey, where is God calling you to give yourself away in what you do, in where you are, in who you are?”  

The church has failed somehow, I think, in talking about vocation, in talking about “having a calling” as only something pastors or professional church workers get.  (Were you taught that somehow?  I hope you weren’t.)  What’s your calling/vocation?

Martin Luther said that every single person has a calling from God...from the maid scrubbing the floor, to the shoemaker.  (Those were Luther’s examples.)  God calls us all to do what we do and do it, as well as can, for the sake of the world, to the glory of God.  [pause]  Let your dishwashing be a prayer; let your lesson-planning be a psalm; let your tile work, or your lab research or your carpentry or investment baking or your parenting or your caring for a aging parent be a hymn to God’s glory, for the sake of the world.

Our work can be very hard -- we give ourselves away in it, and today we’re given a booster shot to give ourselves away even more.  Wash dishes for someone else, give away some of your labor or your research, or you craftsmanship.  Help care for and nurture someone else’s child or aging parent, in addition to your own.  Giving ourselves away for this world, in response to Christ giving himself away for you: this is your cross to bear.

A great task for us all, on this Labor Day Weekend.  God calls us into this labor.  And Jesus promises us, that in losing our lives -- in giving our lives away for the sake of the other -- we actually find our selves and find our lives...

Let’s go find ourselves...for we have been found by Christ, buried with Christ.  We’ve been imbedded in God’s healing and forgiving love all along!  That cross is a tree, you see; that cross of death...is a cross of life.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

August 24 -- Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost

At the beginning of a new school year, it’s time to go back to the basics.  Can’t start a new year without reviewing where you came from – your multiplication flashcards, the alphabet, the MLA handbook, the periodic table, Gray’s Anatomy, in seminary it was the dictionary of theological terms and D. Bonhoeffer’s Life Together.  Pick your level and your discipline, but you can’t start a new year without remembering where you came from.  And this week our lectionary texts are practically synched up with the same idea:  We can’t start anew without remembering where we came from.  It’s time to go back to the basics…back to the building rocks.

Who we are and whose we are.  Where we have come from…and then who is this Jesus?

Our first lesson from Isaiah calls us, especially in times of trial, to “look to the rock from which you were hewn, the quarry from which you were dug.  Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you.”

Sisters and brothers in Christ, we are called back to the basics this late date in August: we are called to remember that we all come from the same rock.  What an image:  God shaped us and molded us from a common rock, dug us up and breathed into each of us.  We trace our ancestry of faith back to Abraham and Sarah, back to Adam and Eve, back to the very hands of God.  “Look to the rock from which you were hewn.”  The mighty fortress, who is our God.

How…we…can…forget…that we came from God.  How we can run and hide, and deny and evade.  How our memories can be short-term, tracing our ancestry of faith back only one or two generations (back to Minnesota or Germany or Mexico or Sierra Leone)…but not hundreds and thousands of generations.  

But let’s get back to the basics today: It is the Living God who chiseled away at our being, and who continues to chisel away at us, who dug us out of the dirt and gave us this holy life, this sacred earth, and who continues to dig us out of the quarry: out of our despair, our guilt, our brokenness and our sorrow.  It is the living God who refashions, remolds us, puts us back together (i.e. remembers), breathes into us new life again, and now set us free.  It is the living God who set the heavens in their places and filled the seas with creatures.  [We can start sounding like psalmists when we go back and start reflecting on the basics!]

May we be psalmists this week as we begin anew, even if you’re not getting back into the classroom, like our children will be (or already have), may we be like little psalmists singing God’s praises with our actions.  We have been resuscitated by the living God, brought to life again and now again!
--
And now, having been brought back, this God asks us a question.  “Who do people say that I am?” Jesus probes his followers.

Kind of a timeless question.  People are still talking about Jesus today, saying/writing who he is, or who he is not, or at least who he was.  [Albert Schweitzer] Pick your context and your camp, and off you can go with things to say about Jesus.  I think many, many people in our post-Christendom, post-modern American culture today believe that Jesus was just a prophet, like the disciples said, just a radical activist—who was executed for advocating love of the poor and the outcast, violating Jewish laws and undermining Roman authorities.  Compelling stories, but he lived long ago, and is pretty much irrelevant today, other than being yet another inspirational role model who we could never fully imitate.  [Temple of Self Realization in Malibu]  
Others think he was just a super-nice pastor who wants to be your best friend in spirit.  Not so sure about how radical his activism was, the point of Jesus, some say, is just to have a personal relationship with you.  “I just want you.”  I had some friends that used to call that “Jesus is my boyfriend” theology.  
If you can replace the world “boyfriend” for “Jesus” in your songs or your prayers, and it starts to sound like a love song, you might be in danger of “Jesus is my boyfriend” theology.  “I just want you to be with me, Jesus.  I just want you all to myself, Jesus.  Don’t leave me, Jesus.”  

(If Jesus asked me today, “Who do people say that I am,” I might tell him that he’s got a lot of roses to send out because…“some think that you’re their boyfriend.”)

Meanwhile I had a preaching professor who really disliked the song, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” because he thought it had misled generations of Christians to shortchange their confession about who Jesus is.  (Peter didn’t confess Jesus as his friend.)  Of course Jesus is a friend, and I don’t mean to undermine or make light of that relationship.  But as disciples of the One who came to earth to take on our flesh—who ventured through the pain-filled valleys of our existence, offering both life-giving healing and life-changing challenges, who suffered death, not just for his friends but for this whole world, and then rose from the dead to have the last word—we must stand and confess a whole lot more than “he’s just my special friend” or just an inspirational figure in history!  Amen?

Sisters and brothers in Christ, we join with Peter (“Rocky”), and confess Jesus as the Messiah, the anointed one—THE ONE, sent from God, AND YET VERY GOD, God from God, Light from Light, True God from true God (as our Nicene Creed helps give us words for what is beyond words).  Sisters and brothers in Christ, we join with Peter, and confess Jesus, the rock of our salvation, yes friend, yes radical activist for the poor and the outcast, yes Son of the Living God, yes God in the flesh before our eyes in this Word, in this Meal, in these holy waters of Baptism!  Yes Jesus lived long ago, yes Jesus lives now.  

Our confession is great, like Peter’s.  And in making this bold confession that we do, do you know what we become?  
A chip off the old block is what we are, people of God!  A chip off the old ROCK.  A chip off the old rock that is God.  We are a chip off of God.  Broken and shared for the sake of the world, that’s what we are: fractured and forgiven, but sent out for many.  [Imperfections on the rock you’re holding? Fractured and forgiven.]

Sisters and brothers in Christ, lest we forget who we are and from whence we come:  WE ARE THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST, and we’re about to chip off into this world!  That’s not a bad thing!

Peter’s confession becomes our confession, and so Jesus is beyond just relevant or inspirational:  Jesus is necessary!  For without him we have no life…not now, not into eternity.  
This is all given to us for free!  
And so now what?  God’s done the work, now we just get to be the church.  And Paul’s letter to the Romans speaks to this and gives us further instruction:  “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.  Don’t be [chiseled, molded into the ways of] this world, but [continue to be chiseled by God], be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.”

Is it God’s will that children go hungry (or is God chiseling away at us) that refugees be rejected, that species go extinct and water is wasted, that wars drag on?  Is it God’s will that you continue to live in fear, burdened by anger, guilt, sorrow, or resentment?  Or God chiseling away at us?  

Sisters and brothers in Christ, BACK TO THE BASICS: we are the church, and God is still chiseling.  Still working, still calling us, molding us, still tapping away at this world… 

Sculpting away for peace…the peace that passes all human understanding.  Praise be to Jesus, the Messiah.  AMEN.          

August 17 -- Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Previously I’ve always been angry at Jesus for the way he spoke to this woman [expound/retell story]

It’s tempting to avoid this all together, and preaching instead on the first part of this Gospel text, about making sure that what comes from us comes from the heart and is pure and true, compassionate and undefiled.  It’s almost ironic that he says that and does this.  That he talks about loving words lining up with loving deeds.  “Don’t say one thing and do another,” and then he himself says one thing and does another.  “It’s not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

It’s always upset me, but this year, I’m wondering if Jesus knew exactly what he was saying and doing: he was repeating a popular line and using a popular Jewish racial slur from his day, a cliche, a line that “gets us off the hook”.    A line like: 
“God helps those who help themselves.” [gets me off the hook of helping and sharing]
“I’m spiritual but not religious.”  [gets me off the hook of suffering with others in a community of faith]
“Make love, not war.” [gets me off the hook of having to deal with confrontation and perhaps even real evil]
“It’s America, speak English.”  [gets me off the hook of learning , or at least being patient and loving, with those in this land who speak other languages]
“Charity starts at home.”  [gets me off the hook of giving anything to anyone beyond my closest concentric circle of family and friends...even in the church community] 
“It’s not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” [gets me off the hook of a) using words that are true and pure, thoughtful and loving b) being compassionate toward anyone who’s not of my clan...in Jesus’ case: the Jewish clan.  She was a Canaanite woman.] 

This year, this time around with this text, I’m wondering if Jesus knew exactly what he was saying.  His tongue was in his cheek as he repeated something that others would have applauded and said themselves.  Perhaps he was testing her; but I’m wondering if Jesus knew and saw in her eyes already her strength and her wisdom and her determination and her love for her sick child, and wanted to make her a model of great faith for that crowd and for his disciples gathered ‘round...who all agreed that Jesus was only for the house of Israel, who all agreed that he had drawn his boundaries correctly.  Interesting, though, that this whole episode takes place beyond the boundaries of Israel.  (This is the furthest north and west as Jesus gets in his whole earthly ministry.)  Something is about to happen here out on the margins.  Things have been going on as they always have.  Nations fighting nations, people fighting people, races fighting races, lines in the sand are constantly drawn.  It’s the way it’s always been, but now Jesus is up to something...

Jesus is giving her some pushback; he’s creating a little drama;  he’s saying what people say, drawing the lines that people draw, using the derogatory terms that people use.  I grew up in the South, and I don’t have to tell you the derogatory terms people use, and the lines people still draw.  Jesus starts here by drawing those same lines that have always been drawn: “It’s not fair...” But then something happens.  She stands up...even as she knelt down before him.   She stands up to him and says, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.”  She pushes back, she talks back, and cries out for mercy and welcome -- just CRUMBS that fall from the master’s table.

Reminds me of Martin Luther’s last words: “Wir sind Bettler.  Das ist wahr. (We are beggars. This is true.)”  In the end all we can do is open our hands and receive the master’s crumbs.    

Stand up to Jesus, sisters and brothers in Christ.  Demand his mercy, demand his forgiveness and healing.  Put your hands out and receive this bread of life, and know that it is enough.  

Don’t be fooled and sucked down into the things people say, the things that get us off the hook from being faithful and good.

Our intro for today: “As Jesus commends her bold faith, how might our church extend its mission to those on the margins of society?”  Great question to keep before us as we vote on whether or not to move at this time into a capital campaign and building improvements...

I’m growing to appreciate this passage more, because Jesus is mixing it up here and getting his fingernails dirty...once again.  “Got a break a few eggs to make an omelette” (to use another cliche).

Here’s what we can learn today from our Gospel: Christ goes beyond the boundaries.  Christ is well aware of our prejudices, our slurs, our fears, our lines that get us off the hook...and even uses them to teach us.  Christ pushes at us a little, too, tongue in cheek.  But in the end, God grants mercy!   

So stand up, rise up, be bold, because God is faithful and, in the end, leaves no one out -- even you!  Mercy and love pours down on us all like rain.  So it gets muddy, but Christ is right there in the thick of it, teaching us, forgiving us, loving us and even healing us.  So many women hid in the shadows of society in Jesus’ day -- sometimes they had to -- but here, this Canaanite woman rises up and sticks her neck out there for the sake of a child.  May we be so bold, as to go to the margins, stand up for the child, in a world that’s cruel.  May we be so bold...with a God who’d love us anyway.  AMEN.

August 10 -- Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Grace to you and peace from Jesus the Christ who never stops coming to find us.  AMEN.

Let me set the scene.  We’re in Colorado.  Way up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, about 13,000 ft.. Two days up from our trailhead, and about 15 or 20 miles from Rainbow Trail Lutheran Camp, our base out of which this whole adventure is organized and led.  Heather and I, our three SVLC high schoolers -- Wes, Jake, Sophia -- our 2 guides Cody and Savannah (who everyone called Savage), and 2 random Welsh Corgis that had been following us on the trail, and toward whom we had quickly given much affection.  (Jake named one Jeffrey and the other Oreo.)  

All nine of us packed under a small tarp, stretched out and hung from 4 trees, and eating dinner.  It’s raining.  Strike that: it’s pouring.  And we’re actually getting along ok in our rain gear sitting on trash bags, shoveling in pasta from our little metal sierra cups, which act as both bowl and mug.  We kept lowering the tarp to protect ourselves, as the wind was blowing the rain under our cover, I remember the tarp got so low that it pressed against my head and I could feel the raindrops tapping on my head.  Yet we’re still having a pretty good time!  Until it starts coming down even more, and suddenly, we see and feel the water rolling down the slight hill we’re on...and starting to wash us out, from under us!  Not just pounding down on the tarp above us, but now also under us.  And it’s all rushing to what we guys claimed and thought would be the most scenic place to put our tent, overlooking this beautiful mountain lake.  All this water is rolling toward our tent, which was our only hope of anything staying protected and dry.  And it’s getting dark, as if every drop of rain is like a tiny light switch in the sky turning off.  Uhhhh......

(*Why can’t I get any volunteers? *People keep asking me how my vacation was...  a) high schoolers [who were awesome, but still] and b) rain.)

All of this, of course, is a metaphor for life, right?  Trying to do everything we can to protect ourselves (tarp, rain gear), maybe making some hasty, greedy decisions to secure the best for ourselves (tent site), only to wind up learning that we probably should have been a little more thoughtful and careful, and that there are some things over which we absolutely have no power.

So when I read our texts for my first Sunday back on dry CA land, I couldn’t help but laugh -- first reading about Elijah: “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord...now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting the mountains and breaking rocks in pieces.”  And then this Gospel text:  Jesus goes off by himself to pray, but it says, “the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.”  Where are you in those stories?  Ever feel tossed and rocked in the boat?  Terrified.  Waterlogged.  Windblown.  Shaken and soaked from above and below?  [pause]

I’m not going to move on to the punchline just yet (which is Jesus).  Let’s just sit with this; let’s just sit in the downpour, in the storm.

You know one of the gifts of this backpacking trip, was having to sit in the downpour.  We worshiped at two different Lutheran churches in Colorado, one before the backpacking, when we first arrived and one at the end of our adventure, and we prayed for the poor and those who have no place to lay their heads both times.  But after sitting in the rain a night or two, we heard that prayer very differently the second time.  Experiences like this make us feel small, mortal, helpless, and more compassionate.

Many of us are well aware of our mortality, but we sure can try to avoid reflecting on it in our culture, in our younger years, in our older years.  We Christians find ourselves a death-denying culture.  So to be battered by the waves, to sit in the downpour, to endure the storms -- this is where we can only place ourselves in God’s arms.  It’s important to note:  Elijah didn’t find God in the storm itself, neither did the disciples.  (Nature, as you know, is indifferent.)  Rather in the tiny places during the storm, the “sheer silence”.  Disciples thought they saw a ghost -- that’s one translation “phantasma”, a blurry vision.  God does not always appear clear and booming and powerful like thunder.  Rather as a blurry vision amid the storm, a friend who reaches out, a sliver of light through the clouds, a warm drink from a stranger, a blanket or sleeping bag that miraculously stayed dry...

You know, I think, that crazy, stormy night, was the most memorable and the most fun, of our whole trip?  I didn’t finish telling you what happened: We were being so pelted (oh yeah, it was hailing too) that finally our guides after trying to direct us to clean up and protect as much as we could finally just surrendered, and shouted “Run for your tents!  Let’s call it a night!”  And we raced for our tents and jumped inside.  Would you believe that it was actually dry in there?  There was water literally rushing all around us, but those tents were so waterproof that I had my best night sleep of the whole trip!  I mean, that’s as miraculous as walking on water!  But we didn’t go to sleep right away.  It was only 6:30 when we ran for our tents.  That night we played card games, we worshiped, and we laughed and laughed -- guys in our tent, and we could hear the girls in theirs, laughing and laughing.  We were fine -- thanks be to God -- when you’re that close up against the elements, there’s no one else to thank for keeping us safe.  

Sisters and brothers in Christ, Jesus never wearies of coming out to look for us.  He even crosses the turbulent seas.  He even crosses death and the powers of hell to come find us, to reach out to us and to say, “Do not be afraid.  Have courage.  I am here.”  

Today, you are pulled up, you are rescued, you are saved from drowning.  Even in the storms, God has got us.

So let’s not be afraid anymore.  Let’s have the courage to get out of the boat, to get out of the “nave”, the ship, to get out of the nice, dry, safe church and into the choppy seas of this world!  Let’s take a risk like Peter, and be Christ’s voice for the voiceless, sheltering children who have no place to call home, feeding the hungry who have no table around which to gather, nursing the sick who no one else wants to touch, speaking out in the face of violence begetting more violence in the Middle East...and in our own backyards.  Our children just pretend to shoot each other like it’s no big deal.  Where is the Church’s voice in all this?  We’re huddled in the nave, in the ship, terrified.  What does Jesus say as he’s reading our newspapers?  And what would Jesus do?  These are our downpours.  We are huddled under a tarp.  And Christ comes out to meet us in the midst of raging storm, to rescue us, to feed us, to send us out, and to make us whole.

Today, we are being pulled up, we are being rescued from our fears and saved from our sins.  Even in the heaviest of storms, God has got us, and God has got this whole world -- it’s not ours to save, only ours to serve.  

Christ stops at nothing to wade into our humanity, into our downpours, into our sorrow, with a powerful word of peace and hope, and strong arm to lift us out.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

July 20 -- Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Well, I suppose we do this every week here at church, but I want to be more explicit about it today: we read the Gospel texts through our lens of what’s happening in the news and in our own daily lives.  

Mid-20th c. theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once suggested that the preacher preach with the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other -- not that the two are held up equally, but that the headlines are considered and connected directly with the words of Jesus and the Gospel message of grace and peace.  That it’s actually the other way around: we read the news through the lens of the Gospel (not the Gospel through the lens of the news.)

So let me lift up some top stories in our news this week:  

• on Thursday -- a passenger plane shot down in the Ukraine.
• on Wednesday -- Shells fired by an Israeli gunboat killed four boys between ages 9 and 11. The Israeli military said the intended target was Hamas terrorist operatives, who had been firing at them.  Hamas rocket barrages and Israeli airstrikes continue, and now Israeli ground troops have advanced in the Gaza strip.
• California officials on Tuesday approved statewide emergency water restrictions.  Drought is most certainly...
• This week on the Daily Show, Hillary Clinton all but spelled out her run for president in 2016.
• And yesterday -- Protests continue in Murrieta and across the country regarding the bus loads of child immigrant detainees, and the much larger issue of immigration.  Murrieta has been dubbed by some Hate Town, USA.

How, in the light of all this recent news, are we to hear this parable from Jesus about the weeds and the wheat?

The sower sows good seed, but during the night--while everyone slept--an enemy sows weeds among the wheat, so that they’re all mixed up together.  When the field workers discover it, they run to their master, and ask -- and probably assume that it’s time to get to work on the weeding.  At which point the story takes an interesting turn.  “No,” says says the patient master, “Let them grow together, for in uprooting the weeds you’ll also uproot the wheat.  We’ll sort it out at the harvest.”   

And that’s our Gospel message for the day, in light of all this news, in light of whatever is happening in your own life -- whether you agree with it or not, the message of this gospel text, is that GOD WILL SORT IT OUT IN THE END.  

It’s not our job to do the weeding.  Our job is to KEEP ON BEING FAITHFUL, that is, keep on coming and opening your hands to receive God’s word of grace and peace, AND keep on letting Christ work on the weeds and the wheat in your own heart.  [pause]

One Bible commentator I came across this week suggested, don’t make the mistake of oversimplifying this text and just making actual people into weeds and wheat, i.e. good people are wheat and bad people are weeds.  She points out, if that were the case, then we’d all be in trouble...because who among us has never done a “weedy” thing or said a “weedy” word in anger or bitterness?  Thank God, the master says, “No don’t pull up the weeds yet, let them grow together, and we’ll sort it out in the end.”  (Weeds and wheat might better be understood as actions and words, not people.)

What’s interesting as we learn about agriculture in the Middle East and during the time of Jesus, is that -- unlike my front yard where I can tell pretty clearly what’s a weed and what’s not.  The weeds and the wheat in a wheat field look amazingly similar.  

(Even these English words are similar!)  Isn’t that interesting, then, in the metaphor?

How often one’s words or actions might first be perceived as one thing, but they are actually the opposite.  [pause] In some cases, how actions seem at first good, only to realize how they may have been actually quite devious.  That’s the stuff of great television shows -- so as not to use examples and expose any of my own foibles, I’ll bring up a television show:  House of Cards.  (an illustration that’s at a safe distance :)  Kevin Spacey, who plays rising star Senator Frank Underwood -- it’s a whole show about words and actions that seem very “wheaty” on the surface -- wholesome and good as an upstanding, public servant should be.  But in reality, he’s about the most “weedy” character I can think of -- self-serving, back-stabbing, power-mongering.  (Great show ; )         

So back to our headlines, where are the weeds and where’s the wheat in the news?  [pause]  My guess is that your first reaction is to answer that question pretty quickly -- without having to pray or think very hard.  I could tell you exactly who I think the weeds and the wheat are in our headlines!  Making that judgement is easy!  It’s easy to condemn one and condone the other, to punish or pass, to abhor or applaud.    

But God is calling us down different road today, sisters and brothers in Christ.  God is calling us to keep our judgemental-ism at bay, not to uproot the weeds, but to wait patiently and faithfully for God to make the call, at the harvest. [Dani-el]

And that might sound a big break for the bad guys, but that means it’s a big break for us too:  a) We’re freed from prosecuting, and b) we’re given more time here too.  God is giving us space to grow, before the final sorting.  God is giving us all, this whole world, some more time to grow.  And that’s good news!

Where in your own heart would you benefit from some more time to grow?  [pause]  Some more time to get it right?  Some more time to let forgiveness work on you?  These things don’t happen overnight.  Thanks be to God for the extension, here!

And I wonder--with this space and extension of time--if what we thought looked like a weed actually grows into a strong stalk of wheat!  [pause] How many stories are out there of kids who were real pains in the you-know-what growing up, but then they grow into these incredible counselors or teachers or coaches helping the next crop of troubled kids, who everyone else considers a bunch of weeds?!     

God’s gonna sort this thing out, sisters and brothers in Christ! So together we wait for the harvest.  (That’s what worship is: waiting.)  Patience is a virtue...that I need help with.  So together we slow down and wait.  Little Mark’s about to be baptized:  You know, Mark was named after his grandfather who died tragically about 10 years ago.  One of San Diego’s finest Lutheran pastors, I’ve heard time and again!  And here today comes this little seed, who will receive the holy water and continue to grow in life and faith.  How will he grow?  How will he want to sort things out, I wonder?  Will he drive his family and maybe his community crazy, and will we drive him crazy?  Isn’t there this incredibly strong urge to want to do the weeding ourselves?--“No, no, I’m not waiting around for God.  I don’t think God can handle this sorting out; I’m taking matters into my own hands!”  And yet we hear that still, small voice again this day.  Little Mark is being baptized into that still, small voice that calls us to patience.  God says, “Slow down, wait until the harvest.  Peace be with you.  Not yet.  I will sort this out.  Give it some more time.  Don’t be afraid.  You are mine.  And I will gather you into my barn at the last.”  AMEN.    

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.