August 21 -- 10th 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, in seminary it was the dictionary of theological terms like paradox and eschaton. 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—as well as the people of his day 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.”

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 East County)…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 dirt: out of our despair, our guilt, our brokenness. It is the living God who refashions, remolds us, puts us back together, 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!

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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 who he is, or who he is not, or at least who he was. Pick your context and your camp, and off you can go with things to say about Jesus. A few say he never existed and they’ve got all kinds of intriguing reasons why. 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 just 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, 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, the old block, that Jesus names Peter: the church. A chip off the old rock that is God. We are a chip off of God. Broken and shared, that’s what we are, fractured and forgiven. Sent out for many.

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!

Peter’s confession becomes our confession, and so Jesus is beyond relevant: 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, 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. AMEN.

August 14 -- 9th Sunday after Pentecost

There are some words in our house that we don’t say. Well…at least we teach our children that they’re words we don’t say. We don’t say hate. “But Daddy other people say hate all the time. And my teacher said it’s not a bad word.” That may be true, Micah, but we don’t use that word. We don’t say stupid. And we don’t say idiot. And we don’t say fat, either. (Fortunately, we’re not quite dealing with all those other words…yet.)

But somehow, Heather and I in all our parental omniscience from up here have come to the conclusion that canceling these words out of our household vocabulary is good thing down there.

The problem is, when we slip. When the Cubs are playing the Braves, and Micah overhears me, groan, “Oh, I hate Chipper Jones!” When Heather is getting dressed for a dinner out and comes to ask the dreaded question for every spouse, “Does this outfit make me look…[well, I still won’t say that word.]” When I’m reading the news on my laptop while the kids are playing in the living room, and suddenly I completely lose all awareness of where I am, and shout “I can’t believe it! This guy’s an idiot!”

And in each of these circumstances we then have to engaged in the tricky parental activity of explaining ourselves, maybe apologizing, maybe making amends or exceptions, but always-always including an affimation that “they’re right.” Great is your faithfulness to what we said, son. But there we are: sloshing about.

It’s one thing to preach it. It’s something much different to live it. Good teaching can trickle down from up here. But great faith sloshes around down there.

Our Gospel passage today starts out with some great teaching from up here. Jesus again is crumbling up the Pharisees neatly sliced worlds…this time with a lesson on purity. It’s not what goes into the mouth that unclean. It’s what comes out of it. Words.

But Jesus isn’t just teaching us not to swear.

Let’s not get too caught up with just bad words like stupid or idiot or fat, and whole bunch of others that unfortunately we all know. I’ve known people who “swear like sailors”. Some are sailors actually, and their words might be foul but their hearts burn with purity. Their intentions are compassionate. Maybe you’ve known some too. While others, proud of their purity and squeaky clean mouths, shoot daggers and explode gossip with their curse-less words. Sure we should watch our language, but Jesus isn’t teaching us here not to swear.

He’s teaching about heart surgery. The heart, you see, in that culture, was understood to be the source our thoughts and our decisions about how to live in the world. Jesus is teaching us about slicing away all the harms us and our neighbors and our world. That’s a good teaching from up there.

But it’s one thing to preach it. It’s something much different to live it. The story goes on, in our text today, and it says that Jesus left his pulpit. He left that place and went away to a different region. He left the pureness-of-heart-lecture notes on the stand, came down to another region, and this is where it gets sloppy:

A woman approaches, who is not from his tribe. A strange woman, a Syro-phoenician. Jesus grew up a neighborhood where such women were despised. They were hated, fat, idiots who were always encroaching on his people – the real chosen Jews, not these half-bred aliens.

And so, Jesus – JESUS, the prince of peace, the one who just got done preaching about purity of heart– calls her a dog: “It’s not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to dogs.” A dog! Do you know how dirty dogs were then? Not adorable housebroken little pooches like Dolores’ little babies; dogs back then were mangy, flee-bitten mutts. And calling a person a dog, that as offensive as a white person calling a black person a word that we won’t even print in the newspaper.* A dog, he calls her.

It’s one thing to preach it. It’s something much different to live it.

What do we do with this text where our precious friend Jesus himself is falling for the same old racial slurs, the same old arrogance, the same old self-righteousness, the same old divisions, the same old hatred that has plagued generations and cultures throughout history, and still plagues us today?! Words escalate to threats; and threats to violence; and violence to wars. There’s nothing new there.

This is a side of Jesus, that many are tempted either to ignore, or rationalize away, or defend…as if the Savior of the world needed saving. I can’t explain Jesus out of this offense, out of his calling this woman a dog.

But I can share with you what I see happening, ultimately: [sloppiness, thanks be to God, even if we don’t want sloppiness—and none of us do, we want neat and tidy, clear cut, like the Pharisees, where life is a set of rules to keep and roles to fill. But the gift is sloppiness.] I see Jesus, fully Divine and fully human, coming down from on high…to be in the mix of it all. Good teaching can trickle down from up here. But great faith sloshes around down there. It’s one thing to preach it, it’s another thing to live it.

And in this case, God surprises us again, as a Syrophoenician woman, calls Jesus out. Watch how she responds; not by hitting back; not by going away: “Yes Lord,” she says, “but even the dogs eat the bread from the master’s table.” I might be a dog, but I’m still hungry. I’m broken alright, which is why I need the bread that only you can give. She doesn’t fight back with hateful words, and she doesn’t back away either. She stands up strong and demonstrates faith. She makes a statement of faith: Only you, Jesus, offer the bread that I need, the healing that I need, the salvation which you have prepared.*

And something must have snapped in Jesus, for immediately his tone changes he affirms her. (Forget the tricky explaining, like when Micah catches us using a word that’s off limits—I can’t explain that.) We’ll just have to jump to the affirmation. “Woman, great is your faith.” Cover: not sure who’s helping/forgiving/blessing who. What is clear, is that Jesus is with her. Not up here. He’s in the mix, as sloppy as it all is.

And that’s the heart of the Gospel.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, it’s not always neat and clean unfortunately, but we have a Christ who gets close, who plunges into the mix.

We have a Christ who kneels down, who takes our hand and we take his. We have a God who doesn’t stay up here, but who always enters into the sloshiness of life down there.

Good teaching can trickle down from up here. But great faith sloshes around down there.

It’s one thing to preach it. And I pray daily that we can preach a good thing up here. (But we/I don’t always—sometimes the preacher’s words from up here are windy, or fake, or confusing or sometimes just wrong.) Good teaching and preaching can trickle down from up here. But the real action is down there. Great faith is down there, sloshing around. And, boy, it sloshes. It’s sloppy, and messy and soggy. It ain’t easy...this practice of purity of heart, this discipline of choosing words of compassion not violence. It ain’t easy...staying in touch with each other, in relationship with one another and with the stranger and with the world. It ain’t easy...remaining faithful, coming back, giving ourselves to the rhythms of the church and nudgings of the Spirit. And as soon as I’m finished preaching up here, I’m right back down there, sloshing around…and thank God we slosh around together.

And thank God we slosh around with Jesus, who’s enters the sloppiness of this life and stays, maybe even more than we wanted. Who banters back and forth with us, albeit sometimes a struggle. Who names and commends our great faith: “Women, great is your faith. Men, great is your faith. Remember that I’m down here with you too, and I’ll never leave.” AMEN.

*Anna Carter Florence, Festival of Homeletics, Nashville TN, 2010

August 7 -- 8th Sunday after Pentecost

A ship rocked slowly upon the greasy seas. Its sails were tattered, its masts spliced, and its hull leaky with worm-eaten planks, but still it stayed afloat. It had been sailing for many years—for generations actually. Many years ago it had been loaded with food and medicine, and dispatched to find and to help the people of a lost colony. As it traveled far and wide, all its original crew except one had died, their places being taken by their children.

In the prow an old woman, the last of the original crew, sat upon a coil of rope, her watery eyes struggling to pierce the fog.

Below decks men, women and children sat down to eat. Although the fare was meager, it was adequate, and all their faces shone with health.

The meal was almost over when both doors of the messroom were thrown open with a loud noise and a rush of wind. In the opening stood the old woman, strange and wild, stronger than they had ever seen her, shouting, “We’re here! We’ve arrived at land!”

“Land?” they asked not moving from the table, “what land?”

“Why the land we were sent to when this voyage began. And the lost colony is there waiting. I can hear them shouting from the shore!” shouted the old woman, stamping her feet with impatience. “Quick! Let’s make for shore and unload the food and the medicine!”

The old woman turned to run back up the gangway, but stopped halfway up when she realized there had been no movement in the messroom. Slowly she returned to stare at them with wide, incredulous eyes, her mouth agape. “Didn’t you hear me? Were none of you listening? I said we’re here! The people we were sent out to help are only a few hundred yards away. But we must hurry, for they are all hungry and sick.”

“I’m sure we’d all like to help those people,” said one of the men, “but—as you can see—there’s hardly enough food and medicine here to take care of us and our children.”

“Besides,” said one of the women, “we don’t know what kind of people they are. Who knows what might happen if we landed and went among them?”

The old woman staggered back as if she had been struck across the face. “But…but…it was for them that this voyage began in the first place so many years ago, for them that the ship was built, for them that the food and medicine were stowed aboard!”

“Yes, old woman, I’ve heard many stories of our launching from my parents and from the other elders who are now dead,” replied one of the younger women, “but there were so many different accounts that how can we be sure which one is right? Why risk our stores and provisions, perhaps even our lives, on something we may not even be supposed to do?”

“She’s right! She’s right!” shouted many of the others now quite excitedly involved in the conversation.

“But look,” said the old woman, trying very hard to contain herself, “it’s all very simple! As far as there not being enough food for us and them, much of what we have left is meant for seed. If we go ashore and plant it, then there will be more than enough for all. And on the matter of why the ship was launched in the first place—you have merely to look in the logbook. It’s all there.”

The old woman, hoping she had settled the question, looked anxiously from face to face around the tables. There was a long, thoughtful silence.

Finally, a man who had gravitated to a position of leadership among them stood up, picking his teeth and frowning thoughtfully.

“Perhaps the old woman is right,” he said, loosening a juicy morsel from between two teeth. “At any rate, her suggestion merits investigation. What I propose is this: let us select from among ourselves a representative committee which will see if they can find the old logbook, and then go into a thorough study of it, to see if they can determine whether we should land or not.”

“A sensible idea!” they all cried, except the old woman. “Let’s do it!”

The old woman, now frantic with hearing the cries from the shore, shouted, “What is this? What are you doing? Oh!” she said, backing away from them with horror in her eyes, “I can see that you do not really expect to do anything at all!” Her back against a bulkhead, she clutched at her chest and slid weakly to the floor.

“Let me warn you then,” she gasped. “The food will not last. It was meant to stay preserved only for the time it would take to get here. Now the food will begin to molder, and the medicines will not separate and lose their strength. If you do not take the provisions ashore and share them, they will soon no longer feed or cure even you!” With this, she died.

As the days and weeks passed, the ship continued to lie offshore. The committee continued to search the logbook, which they had soon found, hoping to come up with a report “in the near future.” A few of the younger women and men, maddened with the waiting and lured irresistibly by the cries of hunger and pain from the shore, slipped away one night in the jolly boat with a few provisions, and were listed sorrowfully next day as “lost at sea.”

True to the old woman’s dying prophesy, the food on board began to grow all manner of weird and exotic fungi, and the extensive stores of medicine seemed less and less able to cure the ills of the people. Also, the cries from the shore began to grow so much louder that even the hardest of hearing on board had to stuff their ears with cotton in order to sleep.

But no one seemed to be able to decide what to do.

Story adapted from G. William Jones, The Innovator: And Other Modern Parables, “Lying Offshore,”(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1969), 35-38.

July 31 -- 7th Sunday after Pentecost

3 points I’d like to make today, in light of this Gospel text:

1) Disciples wanted to send the crowds away. But Jesus held them together.

· Disciples wanted to keep it simple and neat, but how “keeping it simple and neat” can breakdown community and attempt to edge out God’s compassion.

· This is a text about God’s compassion, God’s justice…where ALL are fed. All are clothed, all are housed, all are safe and have security.

o I’ve been wondering this week, what God’s U.S. healthcare plan, what God’s U.S. budget plan, what God’s debt-limit deal would look like.

o If we bring something back from the text for our world today, I think we have to look at how Jesus overflows with compassion: All ate and were fed, and there were 12 baskets left over.

2) The disciples didn’t think there was enough. But Jesus turned that which was offered into more than enough.

· You know, I don’t like it when biblical scholars and preachers “explain away” or de-mystify the miracles of Jesus. But one explanation I’ve heard, I do like…which is that the bit that was offered from someone for whom that was all they had, 5 loaves and 2 fish, was such an inspiration to all, that everyone began to gladly share, and suddenly blessings abound.

o It’s a common phenomenon in congregations, when it comes to offering and tithing, that often it is those with less income who give a greater percentage, like the little one who offered all he had…entrusting it to God, to be blessed, broken and shared (miraculously, in abundance) with the whole.

o That’s what offering is!

o Sisters and brothers in Christ—I read recently that when a congregation calls a pastor, one of the things they’re doing is sending that person to the biblical text to fish out a word from God for the people. Well, in my “fishing” this week, I find this text to be calling us to give—not just the fraction that we think we can afford. We are called us to give all we have to God’s work.

o It’s all God’s anyway, isn’t it?

o May the 5 loaves and 2 fish not inspire us to share our leftovers [pause]. Let’s let Christ deal with those 12 baskets of leftovers. May God’s Word invigorate us today to bring all we have, lay it in Christ’s hands so that he may bless it, break it and share it with a hungry and hurting world.

3) With the abundance, Jesus feeds us too! ALL ARE FED means you and me – we don’t just empty are pockets and go home hungry and bitter. In this amazing story, messy-spirit-filled-children-screaming-old-people-dancing-everyone-singing-everyone fed-community-in-Christ is the result! Amen? ALL ARE FED, you and me included!

· The disciples want to send them away, but Jesus even feeds the disciples. Jesus forms us all into one body, through shared food and shared space. The disciples don’t think there’s enough, but Jesus makes sure everyone is feed, including them, including us!

· We are fed this day—tired, depressed, lost, confused, lonely, wrapped up in conflict, stressed about money, grieving our losses, losing our hope—Jesus doesn’t send us away empty.

He sends us away fed! This day, and forevermore, for this is the bread of life. AMEN.

Intro – Meal is the 2^nd and equally central part of worship.

· “Bad worship?” Well, was the word preached, meal shared?

Offering

Some have said this is the reason for our worship. We gather to offer ourselves. To offer our whole selves up to God.

· It’s hard to do that, while staying in control of our money.

· Offering is not making a payment to the church. “If you like what you’ve experienced here…”

· This is about you offering yourself up to God, and a huge part of you is your money.

· Offering is a time to reflect on that. God I’m yours. I fall and stumble, but your Word has sustained me, your Peace fills me, your Meal is about to nourish and sustain me, and now here’s me responding to that with a sign, a pretty significant sign…that all I have is yours…to be blessed, broken and shared.

· Offering that is biblically grounded is

o Regular, sacrificial, off the top, joyful

· I like that we’ve resurrected the tradition of bringing forward the bread and wine with the monetary offering. This is an offering too. A sign that we gather earthly things, and they become holy—food, money, song/music, our whole selves.

· Again, however, we must be clear: none of this offering is a payment to receive the meal of God’s grace or God’s favor.

Offering Prayer

· The assisting minister, assists the assembly in articulating with “both eloquence and humility a Lutheran doctrine of creation, redemption, and vocation, that both expresses and responds to the crisis of the offertory.”

Great Thanksgiving

Dialogue

· On of the other most ancient and widespread texts in Christian use.

· Begins with a shorter version of the Greeting; again, the assembly is invited to know the presence of Christ and share it. These are the grounds on which we proceed

· “Lift up your hearts.” Then, a gentle correction: “to Lord” -- because we are in Christs presence, we get to be with God…NOW.

· So let us give thanks! At first just presider, then assembly joins in Sanctus.

So what do we have swirling around? Song, words of scripture, liturgical action—all this work of the gathered people is in preparation, surrounding the meal!

Thanksgiving at the Table (Eucharistic Prayer)

· A proclamation of what GOD HAS DONE,

o Retelling of the story, creation, fall, Israelites journey – a sacred re-membering

· summed up in Jesus and in his words at the supper.

Words of Institution

· Magic words? No, but essential to HC liturgy.

· What makes a sacrament a sacrament: the holiness of the pastor? No. Magic? No. Ordinary stuff of the earth, mixed with the Word, promising grace and forgiveness.

Lord’s Prayer

· We don’t know what to say, in the presence of Christ, and so Christ gives us the words.

· The Amen concludes the Great Thanksgiving

Communion

· Even if you didn’t hear the Gospel, with your ears, now you get to taste the Gospel with your mouth, feel the Gospel in your hands, smell the gospel with your nose. And when you come forward, everyone should hear the words “given for you,” “shed for you”.

· HC can be both the most meaningful time in the service…and the most distracting, because of all the logistical maneuvering and so much going on.

· Music is provides some focus.

· Singing during the meal is sign of community forming and solidifying…

Prayer after Communion

· All the options gather us in prayer, that the wonderful sacrament we have received will turn us toward a needy world in mission and service.

· We are coming to the Sending.