July 24 -- Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

In ministry, you get to meet so many different kinds of people.  So many interesting stories:  Because of a connection I had to another Lutheran church, and given that pastor’s recent move to the East Coast (he had called and asked me if I’d consider this), I was invited to do a funeral for a man who had never set foot in a church, except for maybe in his broken childhood.  

I said I’d be willing to meet with a family member -- but he didn’t have any family...only a very close-knit community from his local watering-hole in Mission Valley.  “His only community, his only family is his local bar?”

I laughed, rolled my eyes (because I was on the phone).  But set up a meeting with his friend anyway.

Turns out that the man who had died was an incredibly interesting person -- an accomplished theatre and television producer, winner of half a dozen Tony Awards!  Loving, charitable.  His dearest friends wanted the service to be on the beach...and they wanted it to be a sort of Viking Funeral.  Do you know what a Viking funeral is?  

The idea is that you take a person’s belongings -- in the old days that meant everything, now it means those things that symbolized and meant the most to the dearly departed -- put them on a small Viking ship, push the ship out into the water...and set it on fire!

I was a little fuzzy on how this was going to work in the San Diego Bay.  But totally intrigued.  

They wanted a Viking funeral because apparently Richard -- who obviously had a flare for the dramatic -- had done his own Viking funeral at an earlier time in his life... 

Yeah, the reason he didn’t have any family, except his local pub community, was because in the middle ages of his life, he had had a funeral for them and a bunch of other sad parts of his youngest years.  I think when he was about 40.  He had an event, his friends told me, where he brought symbols of all of that, set them on fire and pushed them out to sea.

In ministry, you get to meet so many different kids of people.

--

I don’t know if you find this funny or sad or none of the above or all of the above.  But the image of bringing the old parts of ourselves, dramatically setting them aflame and out to sea, strikes me this morning as we get back into Colossians!

“...when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God...and when you were dead in trespasses...God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us...nailing it to the cross.”  I hear that now and think: Viking funeral!  Baptism as Viking funeral.  That’s what I want you to walk away with this morning. 

When we are baptized into Christ, it’s like all our sad, sinful stuff is dragged out, set aflame, and pushed out to sea.  And all that’s left is blessing and joy.

You might laugh or be sad at the fact that Richard’s only friends -- his only family -- were his drinking buddies.  But I could tell very clearly in that afternoon with them on the beach, that all that was left for him was blessing and joy.  It was a wonderful, deeply spiritual, loving group of people, non-Christians doing what I wish more Christians would do: 

there was only love and pure life present in the stories and the laughter and tears and food and fellowship.  

In baptism, we believe, our old self is drowned, as Paul proclaims.  

And baptism happens for us Lutherans and Catholics usually at a very early age.  That means our whole life is lived with nothing but blessing and joy.  Our old stuff is dragged out and drowned.

We are rooted in Christ through baptism!  We are so deeply buried in God’s love!  This is the fundamental truth for us.  Sin and sadness gets in there, to be sure, but baptism and the daily renewal and remembrance and celebration of our baptism gives a daily Viking funeral for all the sin and sadness.

What is it for you that needs to be lit on fire and pushed out to sea?  The good, the bad, and the ugly?  What is it that we need to let go of, so that there’s only blessing and joy, peace and grace?  

--

Just a caution and a nuance here:  I don’t mean we need to bury to some difficult realities that need to be dealt with.  The image of the Viking funeral is powerful, I think, because it means bringing certain things out, into the light:  naming an abusive from a parent (perhaps), bringing out into the light a debilitating and burdening secret that’s kept you locked up for years.  I’m not talking about burying the ugly stuff and just pretending that everything’s good and beautiful.  I’m talking about being honest before God, and then letting it go...letting God take it out to sea and off our hands rather than you having to keep bearing that heavy load by yourself.

I said that the friends wanted Richard’s memorial service to be “sort of” a Viking funeral.  That’s because we didn’t actually send it out to sea.  What they did was they simply built a bonfire on the beach, and before starting the fire, they set a beautiful model Viking ship in the center of the wood.  Inside the ship were Richard’s ashes.  And then, they set out 4 or 5 long tables of his belongings, and invited people to take any items of clothing they wanted -- I grabbed some wonderful pairs of socks (he was known for his vibrant, colorful socks) -- 

and then whatever else was left on the tables, we were invited to take that, and put it on the fire, once the fire was ablaze.  

It was really powerful, as the ship burned, and flames rose, and friends raised glasses and wept and hugged and laughed.  I had never seen anything like it.  It was beautiful.  The community had dragged the stuff out into the light, carried some of it home with them, lightened the load, carried the load together.  And in the end, there was only blessing and joy.  (Doing grief, sadness -- it turns out -- is a form of blessing.)  In the end there was only love.  

“Therefore,” Colossians says, “do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals...These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.  Do not let anyone disqualify you...puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.” 

Sisters and brothers in Christ, we are rooted, we grow together (thinking of the children headed to camp), we are built up, in love.  And that love is from God, who is made know to us in Christ Jesus, who weeps with us in our sorrow, who rejoices with us in our celebrations.  We are built up, in love.  And that love is from God, who challenges us when we get too comfortable, and who comforts us when we are overwhelmingly challenged.  We are built up in love, as we gather around the foaming waters of the font (if you can’t see the foaming waters there, then we need to get a bigger font -- but I trust that you can), as we gather around those waters that lap up on the shores of our lives, know that we are built up in Christ, built up in love, built up in peace, built up in grace.  We let the sin go.  We entrust ourselves to the one who sets the fire.  And in the end, there is only blessing and joy.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN. 

July 17 -- Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Have you ever gotten the sense that things are coming “unglued”?

Watching the news this week, one certainly gets that feeling --   with more violence and hatred at home and abroad: the attack in Nice, France, the military coup in Turkey.  Ongoing violence, brutality and general distrust in our nation, between police and people of color.  Protests and rallies and parades and more hatred.  Campaigns and attack ads, and conventions and reactions…

Do you ever get the sense that things are coming unglued?  

I know in my own life, there have been moments, when I thought I had a plan of action for dealing with a challenging situation, I thought I had a strategy, a simple-enough step-by-step process ready to go...like seams on a baseball, nicely tightened and stitched together was my blueprint...but then reality, then unexpected events, then unforeseen and even destructive conversations, then life happens...

Do you ever get the sense that things are coming unglued?  

:) What about when you show up for worship -- you just came to hear a word from God, to share in the Meal of the faithful -- but you’re suddenly making a hike through the heat to a “foreign land”!

I think especially in times of grief and loss, we can all get the sense that things are coming unglued.  [pause]  “What am I supposed to do now that she’s gone?”  “How am I going to go on without him?”

Do you ever get the sense that things are coming unglued?  

Friends in Christ, we have a text today that describes Jesus himself as the glue -- the one who holds all things together.  

And this is a different kind of text.  This writing doesn’t look like Paul’s writing.  This is like a mystical version of Paul.  Colossians gives us a cosmic view of Christ.  In Colossians we see Jesus there at the very beginning of creation (1), gluing all things together, constructing the world.  [Katie art] ) In Colossians we also see (2) Jesus in his redemptive role, fixing what’s been broken.  (We are familiar with that image of Christ).  [nativity]  Offering peace and reconciliation, as in other places in Scripture.  And (3) we see Christ in you [Chicago painting], Christ holding us up, like superglue holds up a painting -- we see Christ holding us up for the world to see!  Filling us with life and breath and togetherness...and hope.

There’s this great image in our passage today: “that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.”  

What a prayer for us in these times, where we can feel as though things are coming unglued:  “that [we would] continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel…”

When the ugliness of death and loss and disorientation and discrimination and violence and pain and backstabbing...and the list goes on…

When the ugliness of sin pulls and rips at our world, know that even when it seems as though things are coming apart, even when we get the clear and present sense that things are coming unglued, sisters and brothers in Christ, know that God still holds us and this whole cosmos together in love.  We have not been severed, we have not been destroyed, we need not give up, and shift away from hope! 

God’s got us.  God’s got the whole world.  And this God -- of which and to whom we sing -- is Christ Jesus, himself!  It is this Christ who holds us together and gives us our being.  It is Christ who is through and through -- reverberating in every atom of our bodies and beyond the limits of every galaxy in the universe!  All is not lost; in fact, all is found.  And all is redeemed.  And all is “filled to the utmost with God” (as Martin Luther would say).  This Cosmic Christ is the glue!

It is in this Christ that we are held us all together.   Eugene Peterson translates the last verse here, which talks about “warning people” -- he puts it like this: “We preach Christ, warning people not to add to the Message.  We teach in a spirit of profound common sense so that we can bring each person to maturity. To be mature is to be basic. Christ!  No more, no less.”  [pause]

Sisters and brothers in Christ [that’s a profoundly common sense way to address and understand our selves us, btw], let’s get back to the basics: Christ, no more, no less.  Christ, the one in whom we live and move and have our being.  Christ, the one in whom we receive forgiveness of all our sin, comfort in all our sorrow, and challenge in all our complacency.  Christ: the glue, the ground, the grace...that wraps the cosmos!  

In this new space, in whatever space we find ourselves in, we don’t have to be afraid.  We don’t have to be angry or guilty.  We don’t have to be lost or lonely.  We have everything that we need here…

[the Table] [the Bath] [the Book] [the Assembly]

This is enough.  This is “the basics”.  And Christ is glue.  Thanks be to God!  AMEN.

July 10 -- Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Grace to you and peace from God…

Early Christian catacombs at the eastern edge of Rome

When I was in Rome in January, one of the recurring themes for me as we explored the Early Christian sites was how Christianity was literally on the margins of the Roman empire.  The catacombs we explored were all literally way out on the edge of the city, often outside the city walls.  (And then of course underground.)  The immigrant neighborhoods we ambled through on the west side of the great city, Testaccio and Trastevere, were actually across the river, where the poor and the foreigners were pushed to the side.  Even the area where we stayed, which felt to me and was now the center of Rome, was actually the far edge of the old city.  This was the site of the first public church which was hardly the grand cathedral of San Giovanni that stands there now.  The Emperor Constantine put it there to save his own neck.  He didn’t centralize Christianity until the end of his life...  

My point -- and just some images I’m sharing with you from my recent travels:  Christianity started out on the edge.  

Then after Constantine, 325 AD, it became the seat and source of power.  The Holy Roman Empire, Christendom.  It’s really stayed there in the center, like that, until recently.  Many of you remember congregations packed the brim, going to your local Christian church wasn’t just faithful it was patriotic, pictures of Presidents kneeling before a cross in prayer, it was much more mainstream.  

But Christendom’s is in its final stages, and Christianity in its purest form, I believe, is moving back out to the edges, back to where it started, back underground, and to the margins of our society.  Most Americans -- while most profess belief in God -- are not in church, “practicing their religion”, this morning.

There are to many other things to do -- right now [watch], Micah’s baseball practice is starting, and he gets singled out for being a little “church boy”.  He’s definitely in the minority.  Charity runs, and errands, and Sunday morning coffee and paper, and sleep are all taking priority...right?  And so, we’re seeing the tectonic plates shift once again, and we Christians are moving back (or being moved back) to where we started.  

I think this is actually good, by the way, getting back to the margins.  I think that’s a good place to be.  Because that’s where we’re needed, and that’s where Jesus calls us to be.  The core of the Christian message gets lost when Christians sits at the center, all cuddled up in the halls of power.  We start to make Jesus look like an emperor or a top ranking general, and we miss his radical vulnerability and pursuit and care for the least, the lost and the lonely. 

We’re moving back to the edge, where we started:  Underground, across the river, across the tracks, across the border.  Out to the margins.  Thanks be to God. 

And that sets the context a little more for this encouraging letter to the Colossians, which we begin to today.  

They are receiving a letter from Paul, it says.  Some scholars think this was Paul himself writing.  Other’s argue that it was a disciple of Paul’s, which -- we have to understand -- was not plagiarism back then but a way of showing honor and respect for your teacher...  

(By the way, interesting to think about: if you were to write an encouraging, maybe instructive, letter to a Christian community in trouble, which mentor or great teacher of yours might you pen under?)

Anyway, the Colossians (central Turkey) -- once again out on the edge of the Roman Empire -- the Colossians have received this letter with Paul’s name on it, and it is filled with words of thanksgiving for their faithfulness, words of encouragement in the struggles and challenges that they face, and finally a word of Gospel.   

This is a letter for us today, sisters and brothers in Christ!  It’s not just for them.  This is timeless praise and encouragement, and we can receive it too!  

First the author says thank you.  And I hope you can accept a word of thanksgiving for all you do: 

Thank you for hanging in there, friends.  After some years of decline in our church body, and in our religion in general, you’ve stuck it out.  You’ve remained part of the church universal your faithfulness does not go unnoticed.  It’s good to hear a word of thanks, isn’t it?  And this thanks is for us too.  Thank you for your hope, your joy, your generosity, your participation in the saving works of God, and especially your giving witness to Christ’s love in the world.  These are the fruits that we bear, as a result of “being in Christ.”   

We employ the language of being “clothed with Christ” in our baptism.  But its even more than that.  We ingest Christ, we eat Jesus in the Holy Supper.  Christ isn’t just resting gently on our skin like a nice garment, Christ is in our bones, deeply enfleshed.  

“Being in Christ” is a recurring theme in Colossians.  And I hope you hear it too.  You’re not just some dirty rotten sinner, that God comes to rescue.  [slowly] You are the very body of Christ.   (That’s why we reverence you at the beginning of the service.)

You might be the only Jesus someone out there ever sees.

This is all being acknowledged in this intro to the Colossians.  And it feels good to just state what’s often rarely stated, but most certainly true:  that I see the face of Christ in you.

Then the encouragement: You’re constantly in our prayers.  May the strength of God be upon you to endure whatever comes your way -- with patience and joyful thanksgiving. 

Man, that’s timely as we face some exciting and perhaps challenging times here at SVLC.  How might we move through these upcoming months of construction and temporary relocation on Sunday mornings with “patience and joyful thanksgiving”?  [pause] This is a letter for us today.

And finally the Gospel 1-2 punch:  “God has rescued us from the power of darkness” -- gotta be very careful here.  Darkness is a metaphor.  In yet another season of racism and crimes and arguments about police brutality and white privilege, in a season where there has to be protest signs and movements calling our attention to the fact that “Black Lives Matter”, in all this destructive dualism -- this side or that, the police side or the “Black Lives Matter” side, the liberal side or the conservative side (isn’t this awful?) -- we have to be careful with language about “God rescuing us from the power of darkness.”  Darkness can also be a metaphor for beauty, for rest, for empowerment, and  for new life, right?  Think of those dark catacombs, the dark tomb of Jesus resurrection.

But here it’s not: “God has rescued us from the power of darkness -- [I’d say ‘from the place where God is not’] -- and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption and forgiveness of sins.  Ah, there it is.  The Gospel, in Christ, having been transferred in to -- not an earthly empire, not an earthly monarchy or even an earthly  democracy -- having been rescued and transferred through baptism into the mystery of Christ’s realm, we have redemption, salvation, and the forgiveness of sins.  

Sisters and brothers in Christ, you are forgiven.  I hope you can receive that along with the thanks that is offered to you.  We are invited to open our hands this morning, and receive God’s forgiveness, Christ’s pardon -- for all the horrible (and even the not-so-horrible) things we’ve done.  God has transferred you, God has brought you over, to live in the joy of your Savior, who is out on the edge, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and welcoming the stranger.  This is the place we belong -- rescued and commissioned outward.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

July 3 -- Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Galatians 6 kind of reads like a Ten Commandments 2.0 -- “Don’t do this, do that…” -- which might seem a little ironic for us, given this is the weekend we celebrate FREEDOM in our country, not legalism.  But I want to take a second look at this text of Paul telling us what to do line-by-line, because what he eventually gets to is that it’s not about us -- it’s about God, it’s about the cross of Christ.  What he’s calling us to, is precisely the thing we’re celebrating: true freedom in God’s mercy and peace.

Listen to Eugene Peterson’s faithful translation --  

Verse 1: Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore that one, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. 6:2 Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. 6:3 If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.

Have you ever thought about forgiveness as a creative endeavor?  Forgiveness as an art?  [pause]

Verse 4: Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. 6:5 Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

This is about being free.  Paul is giving us the gift of freedom in God by commanding we stop comparing ourselves, thinking ourselves better and superior -- all that’s a lie!  But we can do it all the time, right?  Accept Paul’s letter, friends in Christ.  It’s an absolute gift this Independence Day Weekend!

Verse 6: Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience.

Don’t hoard this grace that we’ve all learned about in church all for yourself.  We are all are privileged in that we’ve already heard about God’s grace.  I’m afraid we can take it for granted and even reject it.  Not everyone’s heard about it:  Camp- some kids experiencing grace for the first time…Share all that goodness -- it helps you enjoy it more, like when you have a delicious desert or a tasty beverage.  Isn’t it even better when you pass it around let others try it, and celebrate it? 

Verse 7: Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, that one will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others-ignoring God! -- harvests a crop of weeds. All that one will have to show for their life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growthwork in them, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.6:9 So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. 6:10 Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.

Friends in Christ, I bet we’ve all gotten tired of doing the right thing.  Paul is calling us back with farming imagery: patience and community.  Let the crops grow; let the process go.  (Farm at camp this week…the patience of Melanie our farmer...and the peace and attraction of that...)  Let us work for the benefit of all -- starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.   What Paul is not saying is, “Let’s just take care of our own.”  This is not license to focus inward.  Paul is writing to Christians fighting with Christians, people inside the church fighting with people inside the church.  Y’all are tearing each other down with gossip, sarcasm, suspicion, segregation, in-groups and out-groups -- who’s got the right rituals and who’s wrong.  “Let us work [instead] for the benefit of all,” he writes, starting right here at home and then going outward.  Isn’t it like he’s writing to us in our day, and even in our personal lives?  

Verse 11: Now, in these last sentences, I want to emphasize in the bold scrawls of my personal handwriting the immense importance of what I have written to you. 6:12 These people who are attempting to force the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ’s suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas. 6:13 They themselves don’t keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible!

6:14 For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. 6:15 Can’t you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do-submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and God is creating something totally new, a free life! 6:16 All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God--that is, God’s chosen people. Peace and mercy on them!

You are God’s chosen daughter or son, when you live free.  When you’re not bound to pleasing others and fitting into the patterns that are dictated.  You are God’s chosen one, free in Christ, when you simply accept this grace that has been handed to you, and then turn and share it with your neighbor...when you don’t hoard it.  (Today I think we ought to commune one another...)  

You are a free and chosen son or daughter of God when you work for the benefit of all, when you love your family and love your enemy, as Jesus asked us to.  You know how free you are when you love your enemy?  We can be enslaved to war with our enemy; only true freedom comes when we love our enemies and pray for our persecutors, our attackers.  

You are free, in Christ, sisters and brothers!  This is not a passage about legalism, it’s a passage/letter about freedom.  Paul gives us commands in order to guide us down a narrow, but liberating path.  That path is yours this day, in and through Christ Jesus.  Let’s travel it together, caring for one another, bearing one another’s burdens, for the rest of our days.  Let’s not weary in doing what is right...  

For peace, freedom, and mercy is upon us, and will never leave us.  AMEN.  

June 26 -- Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Grace, peace, and the freedom of Christ be with you.  Amen.

How cool is it that the central theme in the Letter of Paul to the Galatians is freedom, and we’re gearing up to celebrate our nation’s independence on July 4^th.  

Today I’d like to reflect on freedom with you, which is timely, coming into our 4^th of July celebrations.  Galatians talks about freedom from the law -- but not just so that we can do whatever we want to do.  Galatians talks about freedom from the law because once we’ve been touched by the grace, peace, forgiveness and life of Christ (and thereby turn and share that grace-peace-forgiveness-and-life with everyone we meet), we don’t even need law anymore!  We are free!  As I imaged last week, we don’t need that “babysitter” anymore.

But what is freedom, really?  I think it’s way more than just political freedom.   We can be free as a nation and still locked up all kinds of ways.  We can be free from oppression, but a slave to addiction.  We can be free from hunger, but a slave to anger.  What’s got you locked up these days?  What’s preventing your true freedom?  The shackles of a grudge.  The hand cuffs of resentment.  The jail bars of bitterness.

Here we are at church proclaiming again, “You are free!”  Here we are as a nation celebrating again that “We are free!”  But what does this mean?  And what are you going to do with the freedom that you have been given?  Paul’s got some thoughts on that.

--

I had a rigid training when it came to English and grammar growing up.  I had a rigid training when it came to writing in elementary all the way through high school.  I’ve always been thankful for that, but man, it was strict.  We had to diagram sentences, use correct punctuation, all that, and in writing we were taught a very rigid formulaic method for composition.

When I got to college Dr. Sig Schwarz, in Freshmen English (later became one of my favorite professors), pinned me down after my first essay and said to me, “Dan, you write like you’re in a cage.  Your structure and form is good -- don’t get me wrong -- but you don’t need to be bound to all those methods and formulas any more.  You are free to write!”  

The writing rules have done a good job babysitting you all these years, but now you’re free!  [pause]

Uhhhh…I didn’t know what to do.  I was like a bird with the cage door open but I was afraid to fly out, like a dog on the beach with a broken leash but afraid to leave my owner’s side.   I was a slave to my master: the rules.  I struggled with this -- I still do -- shuddering every time I compose a dangling participle, or end a sentence with a preposition, or put a period on an incomplete sentence. (Micah’s new coach and swinging out of the strike zone.)     [pause]

What do we do with the freedom that we have in Christ?  It’s like my experience of the writing cage opening up and me pretending I don’t know how to fly.  (or Micah swinging out of the zone.)

Christ has freed us from our sin, from our brokenness, from our hatred, from our anger, from our addictions, from our pain -- even from death itself.  So now that you’re free, what are you going to do?  Also reminds me of the stories I hear about newly retired brothers and sisters or our service people who return to civilian life, that don’t know what to do with themselves.  No more rigid schedule to keep, no more up at dawn structure, hour to hour structure.  The cage door is flung open, and we pretend that we don’t know how to fly.  

It’s those voices in our heads, I think.  Many of us have suffered a trauma or abuse of one kind or another, and we still hear and are haunted by the angry grammar teacher slapping our papers and scratching red x’s across our incomplete sentences.  Even as older adults, we can still hear the furious father, the manipulative mother, the pious pastor shaming us into submission and fear.  

But sisters and brothers in Christ, I proclaim to you this day the good news that the cage door is flung open.  The stone is rolled away and...We.  Are.  Free.  In Christ.  

But there’s a paradox to this freedom as the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther point out.  Luther said: “A Christian is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; AND a Christian is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.”  These may appear contradictory, but this are exactly what Paul says too:  “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all.” (1 Cor. 9:19)

The freedom that we have enables us to reach out.  When the cage door is open, there’s nowhere to go but out.  The freedom that we have propels us into the world.  The freedom we have activates all those virtues that Paul lists for us today: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Those are a product of the true and lasting freedom that is ours this day.

Being free in Christ, is being free to serve.  Free to love everyone.  Free from anger to be forgiving as Christ forgives.  Free from fear to be present and attentive to pain and suffering around you.  Free from vanity to interested and even excited about how others are doing.  Free from deceit to be honest.  Free from addiction to be healthy and whole.   The list goes on and on, depending on what’s been locking you up.  But ultimately free from death...to be alive in Christ.    

Sisters and brothers in Christ, freedom is yours!  So it’s time to party!  It’s time to celebrate and that means it’s time to serve, time to receive service from your sister or brother in Christ, time to open your mouths and eat.  The cage door has been flung open and the Holy Spirit dove is waiting out there to feed us with grace and passion for justice and new life.  It’s time to feast on the goodness of God -- caring for the widow and the orphan, the immigrant and the stranger, the least, the lost, the lonely and the forsaken and forgotten.  We can’t help ourselves: We are freed in Christ.  Thanks be to God!  AMEN.

June 19 -- Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

If I may, one of the things that gets under my skin from time to time -- this is Father’s Day so I can say this -- is when people hear that I’ve got the kids for a day or a weekend or even an evening, and they refer to it as “babysitting”.  That ever happened to you, dads?  Or maybe you’ve said this to a dad: “Oh, that’s great, you’re babysitting the kids tonight?”  Why is that?  When a father is taking care of his own children, he’s “babysitting”?  I try to gently respond, “I’ll be parenting tonight, yes.”  Now, I know that it’s not ill-intended, and it probably just points to the fact that one parent is with the kids more than the other.  I guess I should should just keep my mouth shut and enjoy the ‘props’ I get -- maybe I should ask Heather for an hourly wage ;) -- NO -- but I’m just thinking about that concept of babysitting this week as I look at this text from Paul.  (So central - Luther...)

In his letter to Galatians -- now in Chapter 3 -- Paul talks about the law as a sort of babysitter.  It’ll take care of things until Christ gets home.  All those years in the desert/exile, the law was the babysitter.  A good babysitter enforces the rules that were prescribed.  A good babysitter is a good disciplinarian.  That’s why as kids we loved the babysitters, who had no idea what the rules were.  But even a good babysitter -- any child will tell you -- and we all know -- is far from the real thing.

The law of God is far from the real thing.  The law -- the Ten Commandments -- all the do’s and don’ts about being God’s people.  It’s like babysitter.  It  keeps us in line until Christ gets home.  

And how we often can mix that up with the real thing -- with the Gospel of God: the good news of love and forgiveness and grace.

I imagine there are some places, some churches even, where ministry just seems like babysitting, maybe that’s been true here at SVLC too, at times, if we’re honest...where ministry is not ministry at all but everything is just reduced to nothing more than a bunch of do’s and don’ts:

“Worship like this, organize yourselves like that.  Come to church like this, sing like that.  Dress like this, don’t dress like that.  Think like this, don’t think about that.  Live like this, don’t live like that…”    

This is what Paul was addressing then too.  The Galatian Christians had carried over so many of their old rituals, and so they were having trouble accepting new people into the Christian fold, people who didn’t share their old traditions: Gentiles.  Paul is taking their rejection of difference head on:  “Your old traditions -- as great as they might be -- are a babysitter...for the real thing...that is Christ’s love!”  And then he goes on: “When you were baptized…you were clothed in Christ’s love.  (No one gets a bath from their babysitter!  You get a bathed by your mom or your dad!)  When you were bathed, people of God, you were bathed in Christ’s love.  We’re not throwing out the law.  We’re not throwing out the good babysitter (abolishing the law).  The babysitter will always be important to us.  (Our kids, btw, have an amazing babysitter, who lives across the street -- but she’s now gone off to college over-seas.  Man, we miss her!)  The babysitter will always be important to us, but it’s nothing like the real thing!  It’s nothing like Christ himself, and that Gospel of peace.  

--

That’s what makes this tragedy -- yet another, this time in Orlando -- so difficult.  If Christ has come, if the babysitter can go home, then why is there all this violence? 

Our Presiding Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton wrote in her statement to the ELCA this week:

“We are killing ourselves. We believe that all people are created in God’s image.  All of humanity bears a family resemblance. Those murdered in Orlando were not abstract ‘others,’ they are us. But somehow, in the mind of a deeply disturbed gunman, the LGBTQ community was severed from our common humanity. This separation led to the death of 49 and the wounding of 54 of us.”

Where is Christ in the midst of that?!  

You know, some have even silently (and some not so silently) applauded this shooting, pointing to this as, “Well, that’s what they get for being gay”?  Where is Christ in the midst of that?!

This week, being at a loss, I called the pastor at Reformation Lutheran Church, down the street from the Pulse night club.  Pastor Rob, and we talked just for a few minutes.  But in that time, he shared with me, how much “noise” there is...from all sides.  Reformation is on the main thoroughfare to the nightclub.  All the traffic they’re getting right now, from the national media, to protestors, to mourners, to onlookers...everybody’s got something to say.  But Pastor Rob, said that he’s trying to help his own congregation -- which was deeply affected -- and that whole community, in the midst of all the noise, to keep silent.  He practices intentional silence at the moment of death in his hospice work, and he’s trying to do that now, but trying to keep that now, he said, is like trying to hold back a title wave.  I asked if we could send them a quilt…

--

Sisters and brothers in Christ, when tragedies like this happen, and continue to happen -- we’ll keep seeing this level of violence -- when tragedies like this happen, and continue to happen, it is so hard to believe that Christ hasn’t gone on a little trip or something and just left us with the babysitter.  

Is the law all we have here, in the wake of such tragedy?  Has Christ gone missing?  Where is God in the face of unspeakable hatred, bigotry, violence, terror and death?!  Is the babysitter, the law, the rules, all we’ve got?

NO.

God is here.  And God is present in Orlando.  God is grieving too.  God is holding all those in the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Trans-Queer-Intersex-Asexual community who are terrified right now.  All those who are overcome with anger, all those who are making so much noise (on all sides of the issue), and all those who are speechless.  This is especially where our God comes out, and other gods can fall away: because our God not only goes to and gets close to death and terror, our God journeyed through it, experiencing death itself and the terrorism of the cross.  Orlando is not void of the Divine; Orlando -- and all places of pain and death -- is exactly where God is right now. 

In baptism we have been clothed with Christ.  We have been covered with God’s love, grace, acceptance, pardon and peace.  And so we too move to the pain, sisters and brothers in Christ.   Not because we have to -- it’s not the law that moves us to the pain -- but because we can’t help ourselves:  we’re baptized.  God’s grace propels us.  We’re washed in that same cross!  (pause)

I’d like you to turn to the HoD #705 now, and let’s read these words together before we sing it…vs. 3 &4.

(Harry E. Fosdick, Baptist ministry in New York at the end of his life wrote these words as our nation was headed to war again.)

Sisters and brothers in Christ, God has come home.  We are, in fact, no longer in the care of a babysitter.  God, our heavenly parent, is here -- not as a babysitter, but as a parent.  To walk with us in our trials, comfort us in our fears, forgive us in our shortcomings, and to give us courage “for the living of these days”.  God has come home.  AMEN.

---

Blessing of Fathers

Gracious God,

pour out your Spirit on all fathers.

Grant to them keen insight 

into their children’s needs.

Help them to be faithful examples of truth and love.

Soften their hearts

so that they might hear their children’s cries.

Strengthen their resolve

to be men of commitment and faith.

In times of sorrow and disappointment

let them know that you are by their side.

In times of doubt and confusion

show them the way.

In times of happiness and joy

let them see your face in all 

that is good and right and true.

In all times sustain them with the knowledge

that they are your beloved children.

We ask this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

June 5 -- Third Sunday after Pentecost

Grace to you and peace from God and from our Lord JC.

The Apostle Paul was really a sort of Johnny Appleseed to the early church.  Johnny Appleseed in American folklore, of course, went around planting seeds.  It’s a nice start here, but it’s not an entirely good metaphor for Paul, though...because the problem with Johnny Appleseed -- at least, in the very limited way I understand the legends -- is that he was never around much to nurture the growth of his trees, to tend the saplings, to prune the branches.  Planting a church is wonderful...but nurturing it’s growth, tending its young and new converts, and pruning back fallacies and perversions of its core message, the Gospel -- this is where we find Paul in our lesson today.  Here in Galatians Paul’s returning to a tree in Galatia that he planted, but a tree that needs some help…

Here’s the main issue in Galatians: there were these Jews that had converted to Christianity.  Great, right?  They had migrated up from the Holy Land, with the message of Jesus, away from the temple in Jerusalem, to modern-day Turkey.  And as you might imagine, they had brought their “Judaism” with them...in some ways consciously and in some ways unconsciously...all their traditions and rituals and -- I imagine in a beautiful way -- incorporated all that into their understanding and practice of this new-faith Christianity.

This happens all the time.  Think of how any number of cultures appropriates Christianity, wrapping it up with their own people’s history and traditions.  Latin American Christianity is almost synonymous with Latin American culture.  In Mexico, for example, Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), a Christianity-based tradition (other parts of the church celebrate All Saints Day) is celebrated by everyone -- it’s what the whole culture does.  Examples abound from other parts of the world -- Christianity in Africa, or in Southeast Asia, or in Northern Europe.  When we humans migrate, we bring with us our cultures, our histories, our practices, our convictions...and often that’s all so wrapped up in our religion, that you can’t tell them apart.  

I love Garrison Keillor.  I’ll probably listen to him on my way home today, and laugh my head off.  But I think he’s done a disservice to the Lutheran church, in that he’s crystalized a limited picture of what being Lutheran is.  I think many people -- within the church and without -- tend to think that’s what being Lutheran is.  That’s it!  Upper-Midwesterners with Scandinavian (or even German) roots, who are entertainingly self-effacing, dry-humored, hard-working, meat and potatoes, quiet, and loving people...plodding along from field to kitchen table, to sanctuary, to village meetings, and back home again, week after week , their whole life through.  I can relate to those roots, many of you can relate to those roots.  He’s done a masterful job of telling many white, Northern European Americans’ cultural stories.  But this is not what it means to be Lutheran at its core.  And it can be radically unwelcoming!  

What if you can’t relate at all to old Garrison Keillor Lutheranism?  Then you have no place in this church?  [pause]

It’s almost be like we have an apple tree that needs some pruning.  Some checking, some tending, some love.

Paul is pruning the Galatian Christians with Jewish roots, rather than Keillor-ish roots.  He’s not cutting them; he’s definitely not cutting them off or down: but he is cutting off their assumptions and hopefully some of their practices, which excluded and overlooked others.  Because excluding and overlooking others puts the Gospel at stake.  

Paul testifies to his own days of excluding, overlooking and -- in his case -- chopping down of others.  That was another life for him, but it’s worth bringing up to these young Jewish Christians.  Check your zealousness.  What have you been zealous about lately?  What have you been overly sure about lately?  Have you ever been so right about something you’ve been wrong?  So passionate that you’re like a stem that’s growing green and leafy all by itself, while the rest of the tree is withering?  Maybe we need to be pruned a little too...

Our confession this morning certainly indicated that:  

“Just and gracious God, we come to you for healing and life. Our sins hurt others and diminish us; we confess them to you...Bind up our wounds, forgive us our sins, and free us to love, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.” 

Pruning is a way of loving, right?  It’s coming back and tending, not just planting seeds and hoping for the best.  No gardner spends time on a tree that’s having problems because she hates that tree, right?  It’s because God loves us that we get pruned, checked, and tended.  

This week let’s think about practices in our own lives and in our congregational community’s life that either consciously or (more often) unconsciously exclude and overlook others.  

So circumcision was the issue then, which might seem a little weird to us Christians now, but this was a purely and richly religious marking (or branding) and setting-apart for Jewish males.  And these Jewish Christians were absolutely convinced that others weren’t as Christian -- now -- as they were, because of this special practice and marking.  

What markings, what brands, do we have or put on ourselves, that make us feel better or more superior than others, and thereby exclude and overlook others?

Who is not as great as we are?  As you are?  What parts of you, of your psyche need to be trimmed a little?  

Friends in Christ, God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, comes back to give us a trim, to prune us, to check us, and ultimately to love us.  And this happens whether we like it or not -- God’s love, that is.  We can be resistant to the pruning -- like are kids are resistant to getting a hair cut or a cleaning.  We can resist it, but that love is there regardless.  That grace and mercy is for you.  

(I’ve been continually coming back to this idea: “Losing your/my faith” means “no longer able to trust in God’s grace”.)

Paul’s words to the Galatians are words to us as well.  And they are God’s words.  Words of God, words of life.  They renew our faith, they humble us, they check us, they challenge us, and they enable us to grow in even more healthy and loving ways FOR our procession outward to this huring world that God so dearly loves.  God’s words (not Paul’s words, as he makes clear here) -- these are God’s words, and they fill us with joy, they calm our anxious souls...and they fling wide open the doors of the church and the doors of our hearts.  Thanks be to God for that!  

Hey, Johnny Appleseed gave us a great song, let’s make that our closing prayer here:  “Oh the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple seed.” AMEN.