September 18 -- Abraham's Descendants

Repeat after me: Gracious and loving God / help us / to trust even more / in your faithfulness  / and your grace.  Amen.

[There was a summer when I was working up in Washington state and Heather and I were in love.  Funny story: Goodbye to Heather in Seattle, lost ATM card, snuck into campground, sprinklers, mountains welcoming me back.]

This is a fascinating reading to me because it utilizes nature in a positive role: the role of the sky-full of stars as an illustration of all the blessing, that is before Sarah and Abraham...right smack in the midst of their pain, sorrow and fear.  

I’ve found that in Scripture (as in life), “nature” -- animals, plants, whole biomes and ecosystems -- can fluctuate back and forth: It is so often a source and certainly a place for evil or fear or temptation (as we saw last week in the Garden of Eden) and just plain danger… Jesus is tempted out in nature, in the desert...snakes and storms and lions and the valley of the shadow of death -- nature can often mean trouble in the Bible.  

Same in life.  We teach our kids all the time about nature: “Watch out!  Be careful!”  From the creepy crawlies to bears to falling out of trees.  Even the sun is a danger, as we lather ourselves up to go outside, as we tiptoe into the great ocean, afraid of what could happen.  It’s a big bad world out there in “the wilds”, out there in nature.

But other times -- more often, I hope, but I’m not sure these days -- nature can heal.  Nature can comfort.  Nature can refresh or reinvigorate (shared a story about that for me) 

...and nature can teach...  

Richard Louv, local San Diegan, writes and speaks often about the healing effects of nature...and how we’ve lost track of that.  He coined the phrase “Nature Deficiency Disorder” and talks about how staring at a screen shuts down almost all of our awareness.  “Nature time,” he writes, “can literally bring us to our senses.”

Now when I talk about “our senses” -- I am talking about our five senses -- sound, touch, taste, smell, sight (as Richard Louv was).  But I’m also talking about that sense of the divine, that sense of the ineffable, that sense of eternity, that sense of overwhelming blessing.  So often we are so blind to that, to those billions of stars in the sky.

Abram and Sarai too were blinded by sadness, fear, and -- in a way -- reality, so that they couldn’t see God’s greater blessing, until it was imaged by nature, by a night full of stars.

Have you ever seen stars like that?  You can’t really describe the experience.  I mean we can all imagine a sky full of stars, but until you’ve been completely entranced on a crisp night under a billion stars, sitting in an old lawn chair or laying in a warm sleeping bag, you really can’t get it.  

This such a great scene!  Abraham and Sarah are overwhelmed with grief, with despair, with fear:  far from their home, no children...or even friends for that matter.  Have you ever felt like they do: overwhelmed with sadness, with pain, with fear?  

And they’re in a tent.

Such a great scene!  In a tent you’re supposedly protected.  In a tent you can get things in perspective, got your meal, got your bed, maybe you’ve got a small family next to you.  Your world is all right there, immediate, visible.

But something’s coming up short.  There’s this aching in their hearts, as we too have experienced aching in our hearts in many and various ways.  Maybe your aching is exactly the same as Abraham and Sarah: unable to have children, sad and far from home.  Or maybe it’s something else.  [pause]

On one hand maybe you’ve got everything you supposedly need: food, shelter, work, friends, beautiful San Diego skies.  And yet there’s this nagging emptiness.  Or fear.  Or anxiety.  Or sadness.  Or despair.  Something keeping you up at night.

This is such a great scene...because exactly the opposite of what we would think safety looks like, of what we think the good life looks like, happens:  GOD CALLS ABRAHAM OUT OF THE TENT.  And suddenly he is completely exposed.  (Great word: ex-posed. “out of position”, 15c. “to leave without shelter or defense”)    

How is God calling you “out of the tent” these days?  How are you exposed, “out of position”?    

We don’t know what’s going to happen.  But there are stars out there that we can’t always see.  There are blessings before us, and all around us that we so often miss because of the thin and flimsy fabric of our tents.  

God’s calling us to step out, to step outside.  Nature is not all bad -- in fact it can even comfort and heal us.  God’s calling us out of position, out of our comfort...to be comforted even more.  We don’t know what’s going to happen, how it’s going to happen, but we have a God who does, and who loves, and who laughs, and who blesses.  

These “Fireside Chats” have really been fun…

And a recurring theme to so many of our stories has been God’s surprise.  How many of our stories are about us in the tent, thinking we were lining everything up as it should be, planning and strategizing and thinking we’re controlling the direction of our lives.  And yet, God surprises us time and again with blessing, even in the face of immense tragedy and heartbreak and pain and loss.  Complicated childhoods, complicated marriages and break-ups, complicated health histories or job-tracks, or children with complications.  All of it, very real, and yet there’s God all along -- still blessing, still loving us, still journeying with us.  It’s funny how often we’ve been reflecting at these Fireside Chats, in retrospect: “Oh, there was God.”

Friends in Christ, the majestic mountains of God’s grace are welcoming us back.  The stars are coving us like a blanket of peace.  All this is to say: God’s never left us, God’s still with us, and God’s got so much blessing still in store for us.  All this is to say, God’s got us.  

We just struggle to trust that truth.  

But hear that truth once again this day, friends… [pause] see that truth once again this day, [pointing to the Table] taste, touch and smell that eternal, ineffable, divine truth once again this day, in Jesus name.  AMEN.

September 11 -- Creation & Fall

One of the best times of my day is in the evening.  Often I’m part of the bedtime “process” -- pj’s, teeth brushed, reading a chapter, singing a hymn, saying a blessing.  Sometimes not, if I have a meeting or am traveling, but after bedtime, at about 8pm, Chloe our energetic dog starts getting super excited because she knows after the kids are in bed (and if both of us are home), it’s time for an evening walk.  She starts jumping up and down, if we’re sitting on the couch she nuzzles her way under my leg/arm, nudging me up, kind of getting crazy with excitement.  And why not?  Dogs love going for walks!  We usually walk about a mile, mile and a half.  For a dog, in the evening breeze, we see rabbits, skunks, squirrels, coyotes, opossum, there’s this funny cat that comes out to say ‘hi’...it’s heaven...all those smells, the exercise...  Like I said, taking that walk with Chloe is one of the best times of my day; but for her, it’s definitely the best part of her day.  She must dream about our walk, while she naps all day, while she lays around in the dark house.  She’ll come running wildly in from the farthest corner of the back yard at the faintest sound of a jingling leash.  Yeah, she lives for taking that evening walk, it seems.

But truth be told:  I don’t take her for that walk every day.  Sometimes I’m out too late.  Sometimes I’m traveling.  Sometimes there are guests that we’re entertaining, or conversations that Heather and I are having.  Sometimes there’s a game or a program on that I absolutely can’t miss.  Sometimes -- and this of course makes no sense to a dog and is totally unfair -- but maybe at some level I’m rationalizing that I’m punishing her for an accident she had or some food that she stole off the counter...  And sometimes, I’m just plain lazy.  

I guess you could say that at times, I just get distracted -- too distracted to take Chloe for a walk.  

And isn’t taking a dog for a walk the whole point, “the primary mission”?  I mean, there’s a reason she lives for it.  That’s the whole point of having a dog, it’s what the labrador rescue place wanted to know.  “Will you walk this dog?”  It’s like your vows.”  It’s the best way to love a dog: take it for a walk.    That’s all the Dog Whisperer does, isn’t it?  Behavioral issues?  Just take her for a walk, right?  It’s the primary mission.

--

We have a rich text today!  So many angles, so many things we can do with this.  This text has been used to justify the mistreatment and subjugation of women.  I’m not going to preach a sermon specifically about misogyny and Genesis (but toward that: I will however plug some new study materials that our ELCA church body has just released…)   

Today I want to reflect on getting distracted from the primary mission and God’s response to that.  The primary mission is to take care of the garden.  In this second creation story, God needs someone to till the soil and keep it.  Our translation says to “till it and keep it” but the Hebrew words are even better translated “serve and protect”.  As one of my profs notes in his book, The Yahwist’s Landscape, Genesis 2 has the human’s role not as ruler but as groundskeeper or tenant farmer.  The primary mission is to take care of the garden, to tend the earth.  That’s hard work, it takes patience and consistency, it takes partners.  (Adam couldn’t do it alone.  He needed a partner, a helper -- which doesn’t mean a sous-chef, an under-study -- the same Hebrew word for helper here is used for God in Psalms: “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present helper.”  The helper is not a lesser being.)  

The mission is to care for the garden together.    

But, omg, how we get distracted…just like me, making excuses not to walk Chloe, which I know is the whole point.  But I’ve got all kinds of reasons why I don’t do it.

  

One commentator points out how we are Adam and Eve: we’re supposed to be tilling the soil, serving the earth and protecting it, but there’s this really enticing fruit that catches our eye, and we get sucked in.  We strike up conversations with fascinating animals and waste the day away.  How have you been distracted lately from the original mission of caring for God’s garden?  

Maybe you “stay out too late”.  Maybe you’re too busy.  Maybe you’re too “caught up with a certain program or a game”.  Maybe you even justify (in your mind) punishing the garden or just plain ignoring it -- which makes no sense, when we really think about it.  Maybe we’ve convinced ourselves that there are other more important things.  And maybe we’re just plain lazy.  

But God has called us -- not just that: God has actually created us -- for the purpose of serve.  God. Needs. Our. Help.

And here’s our Gospel image for the week, here’s the good news, amid all this September 11^th bad/sad/painful/shameful news:  God comes to walk with us.  

There’s a whole lot of mischievousness and deceit and laziness and ultimately sadness in this passage for today.  But here’s the gem: God comes looking for us at the time of the evening ruach (the same thing, by the way, that moved over the waters and rushed in at Pentecost).  God comes looking for us.

“Adam, Eve, [other names], where are you?”  And we’re ashamed.  We hide.  We cover up and crouch down.  We duck our heads and close our eyes.

But God walks among us, and calls us out of our shame and hiding.  Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote that “the greatest human sin is pride”...  

But some female scholars countered his strong argument some years later, and posited that for many, the great sin is the sin of hiding -- the sin of tucking away in the face of domestic violence, the sin of hating ourselves so much that we don’t even defend our own skin, the sin of buying into the narrative that “I am inferior because of gender identity or skin color or sexual orientation or immigration status…”  The sin of hiding.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, God is calling us out for a walk in the cool evening breeze.  What an image of peace and grace.  God desires our partnership, our accompaniment, our helping one another, our serving and protecting the garden that is God’s creation: the primary mission.  (That’s what so tragic about both planes flying into buildings and forests being chopped down: God’s garden is being desecrated.)

But here’s the thing (and I don’t care if it’s cliche): the past is prologue.  Do you think Chloe’s will be holding a grudge that I didn’t walk last night at 8pm tonight?  So it is with God, who this morning is ready to offer new life, peace, forgiveness, hope, and reissue this invitation to service.  “Weeping spends the night, but joy comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5).  AMEN?  Reconciliation is real, friends.  Today’s a new day.  Our attempts at hiding are pretty futile, our fig leaves.  But God sews us new clothes.  God covers us with new garments -- garments of grace, clothes of the cross, outfits of outreach, fabrics of forgiveness, strands of salvation.  We are wrapped in God’s love and joy.

We live for this walk.  Christ lives for taking this walk with us.  The hiding is finished; the healing is now [altar].  Come and receive.  Alleluia!  Thanks be to God!  AMEN.

September 4 -- Sixteenth After Pentecost

“Gracious God, you appeal on the basis of love.  Restore us again to you this day.  AMEN.”

There was a time when I felt like I was on top of the world: high school.  I was king.  Not of the world, not of my high school, but of my neighborhood, and of my little brothers, and all those who looked up to me.  

We grew up in Houston with a great neighborhood pool right down the street.  And as far back as I can remember, we’d put our swim suits in late May, and we wouldn’t take them off until the end of August…right about now...when swim season was over and school was starting.  My very first job ever was at Maplewood Pool, as the membership card taker at the gate.  I’d take your card and file it in the little box, for $4.50/hr.   Every morning we had swim practice in May, June and July, and as I got older (7^th-8^th grade), I had this dream of one day being the coach of our 350-kid swim team from ages 6 and under...all the way up to 16.  Someday.  I took the classes and became a lifeguard there too, but I still had that dream.  And I was in 10^th grade when that day actually came, and I was approached by the 2 coaches and asked if I’d be the jr. assistant coach.  The next summer I became the full assistant coach.  And then, when I was a senior in high school, I became the head coach of Maplewood Swim team!  I was on top of the world, one of my best friends growing up was my assistant and we had a great relationship and friendship.  We were royalty in this world, that we had been members of, given all those many summers, paid our dues, served in the ranks.  And now it was ours: we called the shots, we set the line-ups, we made the work-outs, we handed out the trophies...we were at the top of our game.  Good to be king.

We had a key to the facility too.  And one night we decided to let ourselves into the pool after hours, with a few of our friends (and my little brother Tim) and some girls we liked, and have a little party...I mean why not?  It was pretty much all ours, anyways.

We were having a great time (beer and cigars, music and swimming), until a certain car pulled up.  It was some other kids, members of the real pool manager’s church, who he had asked to help him keep an eye on things at night.  They were young too and in great shape, and actually chased us down.  Caught one of my brother’s little friends, and so a few of us came back from the darkness we had run into to get away.  And to make a long story short, we were busted.

The next Tuesday (pool’s closed on Monday) we were to have meeting with Coach -- the real coach, Coach Johnson.  Coach was the manager, the real boss, of the pool; he was also a high school football coach during the school year.  Great, big, cantankerous old Texan who was intimidating when he was in a good mood.  He’d seen some things in his time, and no high school hot shots were anything new to him.  

Those light plastic pool chairs never seemed so heavy as Coach led me and my accomplices over to the far corner of the property that hot afternoon.  We sat down in in a small circle...and we pretty much thought that was it for us.  Breaking into the complex, partying, running off into the darkness, drinking.  He’s gonna fire us -- destroy our college application process, get us grounded by our parents, and cut us off forever from this land and status that we so greatly loved and enjoyed -- all of it!  Here it comes.  

After some silence, to let us stew in our fear, Coach simply says: “Thing is, boys, I love you like you were my own sons.  And if anything ever happened to you, ‘cause  you’re doing something stupid, I don’t know what I’d do.”  And if that wasn’t enough to never forget, he had a tear in his eye.  Talk about about appealing on the basis of love.  

This is my grace story.  (All of us should have at least one grace story.)

All was forgiven, with our promise to never pull a stunt like that again.  He didn’t even tell our parents, and mine don’t listen to my sermon podcast all that that often, so I think I’m still good...

“Thing is, boys, I love you like you were my own sons.”

Friends in Christ, this is a text -- a whole book of the bible -- about status restoration.  There are three human characters in this story:  The Apostle Paul is writing to Philemon, a wealthy Christian landlord and slave owner; and he’s writing in regard to Onesimus, Philemon’s run-away slave.  Paul’s met him in prison and is appealing to Philemon “on the basis of love” to restore him, and not just to take him back as a slave again, but to actually elevate him and receive him back as a brother.  Pretty radical request.

My story is really about my status being humbled -- from a cocky kid to a beloved son.  This is a text about being lifted up -- from a slave to a beloved brother.  But either way, these are restorations (and elevations) of status...“on the basis of love”.  Today, we are invited to reflect on the restoration and elevation (or deepening) of status “on the basis of love” -- that we have with and for one another, and that God has for us... 

Maybe someone has wronged you, taken advantage of you, like I wronged and took advantage of the trust Coach had put in me...We’re invited to consider a restoration and elevation of status.  I wasn’t just slapped back into place or thrown out -- my status was restored and even elevated.  Are there places in your life, where those around you might be blessed by your forgiveness and love?

And, even more: the restoration and elevation of status that we’ve all received from God.  It all starts and ends with that.  We are called beloved by God, after everything we’ve done.  God says to us, like Coach said to me, “Thing is, I love you, like you’re my own kid.”  A tear on God’s cheek.  God appeals to us on the basis of love.  

Paul’s letter to Philemon is simply an outgrowth of that love, and restorative peace and hope of God.  Coach Johnson’s words to me and Josh were -- to me, still today -- simply an outgrowth of that love and the restorative peace and hope of God.

Friends in Christ -- I hope you know this...hear it again! -- we have a God who forgives, who brings us back -- whether from a slave status or an arrogant, entitled status -- we have a God who restores us...by naming us a beloved member of the family:  “I love you.  You are mine.”

So go now.  And do likewise.  Go now, in peace, and love one another.  AMEN.

Prayers for Labor Day

Commerce and labor

Almighty God, your Son Jesus Christ dignified our labor by sharing our toil. Guide us with your justice in the workplace, so that we may never value things above people, or surrender honor to love of gain or lust for power. Prosper all efforts to put an end to work that brings no joy, and teach us how to govern the ways of business to the harm of none and for the sake of the common good...

The unemployed

God of justice, we remember before you those who suffer want and anxiety from lack of work. Guide the people of this land so to use our wealth and resources that all people may find suitable and fulfilling employment and receive just payment for their labor...

The human family

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son. Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred that infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and, through our struggle and confusion, work to accomplish your purposes on earth; so that, in your good time, every people and nation may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.  Amen.

August 28 -- Fifteenth After Pentecost

This last and final section from the book of Hebrews -- which is is sometimes called a sermon -- is a series of instructions for how we conduct ourselves as Christian people.  And I’d simply like to reflect on this list of instructions with you...here at the end of the summer and the beginning of a new academic year, in the midst of another highly divided political race in our country, election in November, in the midst of global strife, natural disaster, personal and professional troubles perhaps…

There are moments when we might want to throw up our arms in despair or disgust, and cry out, “What am I supposed to do?”  Well, the Hebrews sermon has got some suggestions:

Here’s what we’re supposed to do:

1.  Show hospitality to strangers. 

How many of you have a story about entertaining an angel without knowing it?  Remember my favorite movie Field of Dreams, when Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) and Terrance Mann (James Earl Jones), who are at the end of their rope, pick up a young man hitch-hiking, who ends up saving Ray’s little daughter from choking to death?  That’s an illustration from the movies, but a great image of people, who really don’t know what to do next...so they do something good.  We’re called to open our doors to the least likely, to the vagabond and the wanderer.  When we don’t know what to do next, God calls us to do something good for someone else.  AMEN?   

2. Remember those who are in prison and those who are being tortured...as if we ourselves are in prison or being tortured.  

This one speaks for itself.  But boy, words are easier than actions.  Who was the last person you visited in prison?  If any?  Who was the last person you prayed for who was in prison?  How about torture?  Know any survivors of torture?  

There, I think, thanks to my predecessor Pastor George Falk, this congregation has some access to working with and reaching out to those who have been tortured.  This organization Survivors of Torture International, that he and Kathi Andersen founded is a great start for remembering.  

But torture and prison, here in Hebrews, in its context, is also a reference to those who are being persecuted for practicing Jesus-following.  Notice: I’m being careful not just saying “those who are persecuted for their faith”.  They were persecuted for their faith, but that’s because it was a faith-in-action.  If the early Christians were “just talk” -- just benign, secret (or not-so-secret) groupings around the ancient world that didn’t really do anything, there’d be no threat.  But the early Christians were radically counter-cultural in their justice-seeking activism -- advocating on behalf of the poor and the outcast.  Remembering those who are in prison and tortured, is remembering those then (and recently) who put their faith in this One-whose-name-is-Love, and therefore took risks, took action for civil rights, stood up against facist regimes, welcomed the foreigner, fed the outcast, loved their enemies…

Risk-taking -- not safety-ensuring -- is the Christian virtue, and it has consequences...like prison and torture.   AMEN?

3. Let marriage be held in honor.

Sadly this is instructive for us too.  And it extends far beyond just not having affairs.  We break trust in our marriages, let one another down, sneak around with bad habits and even addictions all the time…if we’re honest.  You don’t have to be committing adultery to receive a warning -- and in that way, a blessing -- in this passage.  In what ways is your marriage defiled?  When we don’t know what else to do, put the phone down, turn the tv off (or whatever it is that’s distracting you), and spend time with the one you love.  AMEN?

4. Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content...for God has says, “I’ll never leave you.”

This is at the heart of our passage -- right in the middle!  Our money says exactly what we have such a hard time doing: “In God we trust.”  Be content with what you have. I’m betting none of us would admit to “being in love money”, [pause] but all of us could be accused of it...given the decisions that we’ve made at one time or another, right?  But God says, “Let it go.”  I posted on Facebook this weekend a picture of Katie and Heather at our kitchen table after dinner with a piggy bank:  I wrote, “Today's a big day: This is the day Heather taught Katie what tithing means.  H: ‘Now, out of 10 dimes, what does God ask us to share with the church?’ K: ‘Only 1 dime?! That's a deal!’

I was corrected: she actually said, “Can we give God more than just that?” And I reflected, “Maybe she’s the one teaching us.”

“I’ll never leave you,” God says.  Maybe this should be the theme for our stewardship campaigns...

5.  Remember your leaders and imitate their faith.

We Lutherans can get a little touchy, and even “judgey”, about “worshiping the saints”.  But we’re sitting on a goldmine of forebearers in the faith, and even those who are still alive.  Remember your leaders and imitate their faith.  My leaders are the Margaret Johnsons and Lois Hellbergs, the Bob Koskinens and Helen Roberts.  The faithful witnesses through the years -- our years -- who just keep “showing up”...for God and for us.  And we’ve got volumes of saints who have gone before us.  I’ve started listing them in the back of our bulletins.  This week we commemorate Augustine, Moses the Black, Nikolai Grundtvig.  Learn about them, imitate them, be strengthened by them.  They’re looking down on us with love, rooting for us. 

If our body’s a temple, a sanctuary, I like that image of the saints as those who are  sitting in the balcony of our sanctuary cheering us on -- encouraging, instructing, and smiling peacefully and lovingly upon us.    

And finally our passage today concludes:

6.  Do not neglect to do good and share what you have.

We’ve heard this.  Hebrews is driving it home.  Do good and share.  I’ve said before:  Jesus’ entire message for how we should live our lives can be summed up one word: “Share.” 

[pause]

A lot to swallow today -- maybe we need that.  “Thank you, God, for this dose.”  These instructions are actually a blessing.  For one thing, these instructions, admonitions even, can be a real gift:  Our lives will be better when we do these things.  Guarantee.   The poet George Herbert once observed, “There is no greater sign of holiness than the procuring and rejoicing in another’s good.”  That’s what Hebrews is inviting us into: “...the procuring and rejoicing in another’s good”.

But friends, in the end, and at the heart, is God’s promise: “I’ll never leave you.”  What if we do mess these up royally?  What if we bomb at showing hospitality to strangers, never visit anyone in prison, jack up our marriages, worship money, forget the saints, and hoard things to ourselves like selfish toddlers (or any number of adults, frankly, that we can all think of).  What if we fail at every single one of these six instructions?  Is God going to walk out on us, like we’ve walked out on others?

This is the Gospel: Jesus is gonna love us/you anyway!  What!?  And because of that, when we know that, when we ingest it, when it seeps deep into our bones, then we’re actually flung into this new lifestyle of sharing and caring, and working for justice, and living in peace.  We don’t just throw our arms up in despair and disgust, anymore; we throw our arms up now -- having met this one Jesus on the road -- now we throw our arms up in joy and praise and thanksgiving for a God who never leaves us.  AMEN.

August 21 -- Fourteenth After Pentecost

Grace to you and peace...kind of...did you year that reading?

In C.S. Lewis’ most famous Narnia chronicle, Peter, Susan, Lucy and Edmund discover the wonderland of Narnia through a magical wardrobe.  [Any of you, teachers, ever read that to your class?  I remember mine did...]  And here’s the scene when they learn exactly what kind of animal the Great Aslan, who is able to help them, is: 

"Is - is he a man?" asked Lucy

"Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion, the Lion, the great Lion."

"Ooh," said Susan, "I thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will, dearie, and make no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king I tell you."

Great illustration for today’s text!  “Safe?  Who said anything about safe?  ‘Course God isn’t safe.  But God is good.”

You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. … But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. 

Another great author Annie Dillard puts it like this…

“Does anyone have the foggiest idea of the power we so blithely invoke?...It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.” 

“‘Course he’s not safe.”  

Have we domesticated God?  Have we sterilized Jesus, turning him into just a sweet little baby for a small part of the year...and just a nice buddy for the rest?

We’re talking about “something that cannot be touched” -- a blazing fire, the blast of a trumpet, a roaring lion, a hurricane.

Think about being in a big rain storm -- thunder crashing, lightning flashing...

My kids have never really experienced those big ones like we had back in Texas.  They used to terrify me, rattle the windows, but over time, Mom taught me to go out onto the porch, and be awestruck at the power.  “Course it’s not safe out there,” she would say to me in a matter of words, “but if you think about all the plants that are getting water, all the reservoirs that are filling up, all the washing, all the animals receiving what they need -- course‘ it’s not safe, but it’s good.  

Today’s Teacher Appreciation Day -- think for a minute about who your best teachers were.  Elementary school, middle school, high school, college, graduate school -- I’ve been reflecting on this for a few days, and I’m wondering (even betting) that they probably weren’t “safe” but they were good.  They probably helped you break out of the box, or challenged you...my best teachers -- my grade was definitely not safe...

Friends, we have a God, who’s definitely not safe.  Church people seem surprised when they find themselves in dangerous situations.  Shane Claiborne -- I was just laughing and remembering the other day -- talks about, “My life was great until I met Jesus...  

“I used to have a ‘real’ job, I had money, drove fancy cars, wore nice clothes, lived in comfortable houses, never was hungry.  Now I give my money to the poor, serve in rough neighborhoods, love my enemies, and fast from food and excess...”    

“‘Course he’s not safe, but he’s good.”  This Christ is good, this “mediator of a new covenant,” as our text says, “the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”  You know what that’s referring to?  (Cain killed Abel out of jealousy and anger.) 

The blood of Christ, speaks a better word than the blood of revenge, the blood of short-sightedness, war, greed, jealousy and anger.

Cain was being safe -- killing his brother.  We are being safe -- hunting down and killing our enemies.  But Jesus talks about loving them and forgiving one another.  “Course he’s not safe, but he’s good.”  

How are you wrestling with this God these days?  As we as a nation are always about hunting down and killing the bad guys?  Jesus would be a bad soldier, in the literal sense.   “‘Course he’s not safe.”  A good soldier is safe, and keeps others safe.  What do we do with that?

“You have come to something that cannot be touched,” Hebrews says, “a blazing fire, darkness and gloom, the sound of a trumpet.”  ‘Course he’s not safe.  But he’s good.”

I don’t know that we do wrestle with this God.  Why would you wrestle a lion?  

The last part of our passage talks about worship.  

All we can do is stand in awe, like watching a thunderstorm.  That’s a thing about worship -- I wonder sometimes if we’ve lost:  we’re so worried about controlling it all.  (I’m preaching to myself here!)  Is this right, is this done perfectly, is this hymn going to work, is this sermon going to hit home, is this image going to connect -- sometimes we need to just shut up and sit in awe.  God’s got this!  God’s the primary actor, the one doing the action.  We’re all acted upon.  Just quiet down and bear witness to the roar!  [pause]

And then...after the worship, after the standing in awe.  We are changed forever.  We can’t go back to how it was before.  I’ll never look at a foreboding cloud the same way again.  I’ll never play with fire without being very careful.  If we really stand in awe, then we can’t help but we changed. 

Safety is not God’s concern.  There’s nowhere in the Bible where safety is all that important.  Think of how many dangerous situation God calls the people into.  Think of the crazy things Jesus tells us to do.  

‘Course he’s not safe.  But he’s good.  

And this book is full of the goodness of our God. 

It’s around those stories, that grace, that mercy, that radical love -- and ultimately that peace -- that we gather.  God is good.  AMEN.

---

Blessing of Teachers

God of wisdom, your Son came among us as a teacher.

Send your blessing on all who are engaged in the work of education:

give them clearness of vision and freshness of thought,

and enable them so to train the hearts and minds of their students

that they may grow in wisdom

and be prepared to face the challenges of life;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

August 14 -- Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.”

What word there really jumps out at you?  

Worth memorizing this passage (on the cover of our bulletin)…

I’m saying -- we are singing and confessing -- all the time here that we are “free in Christ”.  That sound familiar?  Remember all that stuff in Galatians we had in July about being free in Christ?  Now in the book of Hebrews, we are reminded that this freedom in Christ comes through the community of the faithful, the cloud of witnesses -- those who bear witness to the love, joy and freedom that God has given us.  

So today, August 14, 2016, as we move into a new week, an exciting season, a new school year, a building project, perhaps a new job or a new home...who’s in your cloud?  Who’s in the cloud of witnesses cheering you on, running along side you?  

Are most of the people that come to mind for you alive, or have they died?  I the answer’s both.  Both make up your cloud.  Any children in your cloud of witnesses?  I’ve been reflecting on this question all week, and my kids are definitely in mine -- with their keen insights and observations, and their faithfulness and clarity, with their ease of proximity to God.   They’re not just cute and entertaining all the time, they bear witness to the God who’s name is Love!  They are prophetic and profound.

I hope you take some time to recognize who’s “in your cloud” this week.  Both living and resting in the eternal company of the saints in light.  We don’t give as much CENTRAL emphasis on the ancestors.  Asian culture and religion, Native American spirituality -- these could teach us a thing or two about honoring and recognizing the influence and the pervasiveness of the ancestors in the faith.  They’re all around us.  And they’ve gone before us.

That’s what the book of Hebrews does: “By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land...By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days..By faith Rahab...did not perish with those who were disobedient...And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness...Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented...They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.”

     

Do you consider David and Samuel, Ruth and Naomi, Paul and Lydia all part of your cloud?  You should.  They are there cheering you on.  That’s what we’re reminded of today.

There’s this picture I came across this week of a man in a marathon -- “running the race”.  Except he was in a wheel chair.  He was surrounded by others running, but he’s wheeling.  And he had this shirt on that said, “Keep Calm and Keep Running.”  I’ve been so struck by this image...  

Maybe sometimes you don’t feel like you’re fully “running”, like a man wheeling his way through 26 miles.  But he’s a full participant in that race.  And so are you.  And like him, you’re not alone.  Christ is with you, yes.  But so is this cloud of witness.  Some cheering you on -- like those who have gone before you.  And some running right along side you.  Your situation might be unique -- like the marathon man in the wheel chair.  Your obstacles might be different than others -- like the marathon man in the wheel chair.  But you are not alone.  Christ is with you, heaven’s booster club is reigning down chants and cheers for you, AND your sisters and brothers are right along side you.  Keep calm and keep running the race set before you.  

Thanks be to God for giving us one another, for giving us such a rich ancestry of faithful witnesses, and for giving us that One Jesus Christ, who lives and runs and fills us to the brim with grace and peace...this day and into eternity!  AMEN.

August 7 -- Twelfth After Pentecost

Will you pray with me: “God help us to trust in you even more.  AMEN.”

When was the last time you really stepped out in faith?

Maybe it was when you made a huge purchase, like a house or a car, and you said a quick prayer as you scribbled on the dotted line.  

Maybe it was taking a new position, maybe a position that got you here, that allowed our paths to cross.

Maybe it was inviting a family member, an aging parent perhaps, to move in with you, changing your whole dynamic.  All of these, not knowing how it would end. 

For me, my most recent outstep in faith was putting Micah on an airplane by himself last Monday.  Going to visit Grandpa and Grandma in Houston.  First time.  I kissed him, and watched him walk down that plank all by his little self.  I looked at that pilot drinking his coffee while they waited for their turn amid the morning air traffic…closed my eyes and gave it to God...

I’ve been saying a prayer often as we embark on our big building project here at Shepherd of the Valley.  I’m not exactly sure where it came from.  I know it’s been called the Lutheran Prayer of Courage.  I put it on our front sign…

Lord you call your servants to ventures of which we cannot see  the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.  Grant us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us, through Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

This prayer is based on our reading today from Hebrews.  We enter a new book of the New Testament today, here in the dog days of summer.  The heat, it almost seems, can have an impact on our spirituality, on our religious fervor.  A certain lethargy can set in here in August.  So books like Hebrews can serve as nice pep talk.  But we do well to remember that the author/s of Hebrews was way more invested than that:  their lives were on the line for the trust they put in God, through JC.  

Calling to mind the faithfulness of Abraham and Sarah -- who truly set out, not knowing where they go, but only that God’s hand is leading them and God’s love supporting them -- Hebrews drives home our call to faithfulness in God.  (This is always rooted, btw, in God’s faithfulness in loving us.)

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” our passage says.  We are called to step out again in faith.  In a world where real hope is often a rare sight, in a world where fear and death, violence and terror, rampant consumption and self-centered, self-promotion seem to rule us, real hope can certainly fall into the category of “things not seen”.  And yet we lean into hope through faith -- faith not ultimately in technology or weapons or any human-made schematic or innovation.  Some of these things can certainly be good, but we are called to lean into a hope in the One who prepares a city for us, a place we can’t even see.  

Now, Hebrews’ references of hope reaching beyond even the boundaries of this life, reaching beyond even death itself, the cosmic dimensions of the hope we’re dealing with here, does not catapult us out of our present situation.  This heavenly hope actually injects us even more deeply into our present moment...  

We Christians don’t live with hope wistfully longing to be swept away (that’s why that Left Behind stuff was so wrong).  

Because of this faith, this hope, we live even deeper into our present reality, attending to the needs of the world, especially those who are hurting in our world.  We don’t need immediate assurances that “everything is going to be ok”, because we know in the end -- the big end, the final end, the glorious end -- everything truly will be ok.  So we live in hope, love, joy and peace now -- even as the world is flying out of control.  Christians have faith.

Friends in Christ, God’s hand is leading us.  God’s love is supporting us.  Can you see it?  Maybe not, but together we have faith that God’s hand is there, God’s support is there.  

What gets me about the saints -- Old Testament heroes, historical models of faith like Clare of Assisi (who we commemorate this week) or Martin Luther...or Martin Luther King Jr. -- is that so many of the saints died without having reached “the promised land”.   [pause]  They were children of Mt. Nebo.  Do you remember Mt. Nebo in the Bible?  Mt. Nebo is where Moses goes in the very last verses of his life in Exodus.  It’s where God takes him up, to look out and see the promised land.  He dies before he gets there.  But he gets to see it.

a view from the top of Mt. Nebo

Sisters and brothers in Christ, in so many ways, we to are children of Mt. Nebo.  Like the saints, those who have -- what do we say? -- “died in the faith”, we too will die before we get there.  As Bp. Oscar Romero said, “We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.” 

He once wrote (I invite my confirmation kids to memorize this...): 

“It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession

brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church's mission.

No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one

day will grow. We water the seeds already planted

knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of

liberation in realizing this.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,

a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's

grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the

difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not

messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”

We move on and outward in faith.  We continue to pray: “God help us to trust you more.”  And we give thanks for God’s faithfulness in loving us, even when we fail.  AMEN.