Sunday, September 22, 2024

The disciples were riding high. They had witnessed Jesus heal the sick, the blind and the lamb. They had seen him cast out demons and feed thousands of people – twice. They had seen him walk on water. Some of them witnessed the transfiguration in which Moses and Elijah had met Jesus on the mountain top. They were riding the escalator of life up, up , up, because they were the disciples of the Messiah. And so…as part of Jesus’ inner circle – weren’t they bound for greatness too?

 If you have ever travelled with a group, there can be times in which there is friction. I imagine that might have been what was going on with the disciples. They had left their homes and family and now were anticipating coming home to glory… perhaps they were thinking about cabinet positions. If Jesus was king – who would be his chief of staff? The disciples had dreams of greatness. They were on the escalator going up and they imagined Jesus going before them, conquering the world and restoring the kingdom to Israel.

 What they didn’t notice was that Jesus was on the escalator too – but he was going down.

 Jesus has already told them that he must suffer and die and then rise again. At that time, Peter tried to dissuade Jesus – only to be called Satan and be put in his place – behind Jesus. So maybe the disciples were in denial. Or maybe they were just stuck in their understanding of their culture. From our vantage point, the disciples look foolish. Haven’t they been listening? 

 Of course, we have the advantage of living 2000 plus years after the resurrection of Jesus – and being told at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel that this is “The Beginning of the Good News of Jesus, the Son of God.”  We know the end of the story – the disciples don’t. So maybe we should have a little compassion for them. But… really… didn’t they hear anything Jesus said?

They might not have been truly listening but it turns out that Jesus has been listening to them. And so, he asks the disciples what they were talking about. At least the disciples were wise enough to know that arguing about who was the greatest of them was the opposite of what Jesus has been teaching them. So they were silent.  They were like kids caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Busted.

 But Jesus doesn’t scold them. Instead, he tells them, for the second time, that he must suffer and die and then will rise again in three days.

 Their response? Again, silence. Perhaps they were too embarrassed to say anything. Maybe they were afraid that if they said something – they would say the wrong thing – like Peter did. Maybe they worried that if they asked a question, they would look foolish. Maybe they didn’t know what to ask.

 But because they didn’t ask, Jesus went on to explain, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ They still didn’t get it. In their defense – how could they? Jesus was turning everything that they knew – upside down. They remained silent.

 So… Jesus gives them an object lesson – the first children’s sermon – by literally bring a child into their midst.

 We might think that was sweet. But in that time and culture, children had NO status.  They were viewed more as a liability – another mouth to feed -- than as the hope for the future. Their culture – not unlike ours – valued power, privilege and might. They had been taught that the Jewish Messiah would be like King David – and rule their nation – under God by the power of the sword.

 But Jesus is not that kind of king. Jesus knows that violence begets violence. Taking power away from one group and giving it to another usually just creates a new power structure – which is itself open to a new grab for power – like the disciples were doing on the road. Certainly there are some power structures that are better for the ordinary person. As Winston Churchill once said, “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government…. except for all those other forms that have been tried” 1

 Jesus’ mission is not to create a new government. Jesus is introducing a new way of life.  Jesus is not inviting his disciples to fight their way to be king of the mountain by violence, force, and a power grab for power and privilege. Instead, Jesus invites his disciples and followers then and now to take the downward escalator to living a life of service, love and care for the other. These are the marks of God’s kingdom.

 It was hard for the disciples to step outside of their own culture – and see the new way that Jesus is teaching.  And it is still hard for us today – even though we live AFTER the resurrection.  

Jesus said to his disciples – and us -  “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”When Jesus says it, it sounds simple and obvious. Serve the neighbor.

 But, if you listen to the news, the hurts and the challenges around the world can start to sound overwhelming.  Maybe you end up throwing up your hands and saying, “What can we do? We are just a little church. What can I do? I’m just one person.”

 But, maybe the act of service is not far away or distant or something that is even hard to do. Maybe it is not just for saints like Mother Theresa but something that ordinary people like you and I can do in our ordinary lives.   

As a response to Jesus’ call to become a servant of all,

Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes writes:

Not subservient, not inferior to others,
but helpful, in support, in service.
You're not indentured or obligated;
you serve in love that is yours to give.
Your task today is to serve others—
not necessarily to please them,
not to save them or “fix” them,
but to offer grace, to bless them,
to set before them wholeness of life,
to open doors that set them free,
to speak a word that heals 
and does not dishonor them.
Your task today is not to use or conquer others,
but to offer what love or joy you can
in service to their new life.Today, for everyone you meet,
God is the chef of grace
and you are their server.2

And this is something that we can do – offer grace, bless those you meet, speak a word that heals and does not dishonor the other, and welcome the other as if they were Jesus. That is what service is all about. We can do this. One day at a time. One person at a time. With God’s help. Amen.

 1Winston Churchil, Nov 11, 1947
2Steve Garnaas-Holmes Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net

 Faith-Lilac Way Lutheran + September 22 + Pastor Pam Stalheim Lane

Sunday, September 15, 2024

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It’s a lie. I know that now. But when I first encountered this defiant phrase as a child, I thought that it was brilliant – as if I could somehow protect myself from hurtful words just by declaring myself immune.

 But words can hurt – more than sticks and stones. AND, words can also help and heal and make oneself – and the other person - whole. As James said, words can bless and words can curse.  Words matter.

James has a special warning for teachers. I’ll confess that in the past, when this reading came up during Sunday school teacher recruitment time, I did not highlight this text. But James wants teachers – especially teachers of faith – and that refers to pastors, and parents and grandparents and all who teach by what they say and by what they do.  And that, frankly, is all of us - because others – especially children – are listening. 

Years ago when I worked at another church, I heard an angry commotion and a voice spewing out an incredible string of obscenities, the like of which I had never heard before. When I opened the door, there was a little girl, about three years old, kicking and screaming obscenities while a patient preschool teacher was standing between her and the other children. Later, the preschool teacher said to me with a sad sigh, “these are the only words that this little girl knows to express herself when she is angry. We are working on teaching her other words and ways of communicating.”

Children repeat what they hear. And so do we. The language and the music that you listen to; the shows that you watch; the podcasts that you hear don’t just come in one ear and go out the other.  They influence you – maybe not directly – but sometimes on your tongue or in your heart. This happens without our even realizing it.

The tongue is a small part of our body. But it is powerful.  As James points out, a bridle can control a horse, a small rudder directs a ship, with one small match we can light a raging fire. We can control all of these things. But can we control our tongues? 

Think for a minute: What words do you speak – to a little baby? We coo and oo. But what words do you speak when you are driving during rush hour? When speaking with friends? When you speak on social media? What words do you speak to yourself after you have said or done something that you wish you could “take back”?

Sometimes the inner words that we speak are the harshest of all. If you are at all like me, I can beat myself up with a no-holds barred tongue lashing. But just as a bridle that doesn’t fit well in a horse will cause the horse to act up – so too, if the words of our heart, if our inner dialogue is not kind, it will come out sideways.

James acknowledges that everyone makes mistakes -- there is grace here. The little girl with a foul vocabulary was blessed to be enrolled in a preschool with a loving, patient, Christian teacher who took the time to teach this little girl another way. And I’ve been learning, over the years, that it is not good for my heart or my life or those around me to withhold grace and forgiveness from others – or from myself. How about you?

Can you give grace to others for the words that were said to you – when someone else wasn’t having their best day or were not his or her best self? Can you forgive a loved one for words that were left unsaid? Words like “I love you. I forgive you. I’m sorry.” These little words are not hard to pronounce. But sometimes they are hard to say. Maybe we need to practice them more.

I know that my grandmother wished that she had. My paternal grandparents were very kind to me and my sisters. We always went to their house after school while my mother finished her work. But they fought terribly – in Norwegian – with one another so I didn’t know what they were saying. But I heard the tone and I am kind of glad that I didn’t know the words. After her husband died, she asked my mother, “Do you think he knew that I loved him?”

Of course, my mother assured her that he did. But the point is – why not say the words yourself – while you can? After all… what did God make your mouth for? To curse or to bless?

As James reminds us – “All of us make many mistakes”. We aren’t always our best selves. We all say things that we regret.  So the next question is: Can you give grace to yourself? Those words of forgiveness need to be received as well as spoken.

Words matter. For words are the way we communicate with one another. But, like the three year old girl, how can anyone proclaim blessings and not curses – if they/ we have not been taught? So… despite the warning from James for teachers, we need teachers, we need to teach one another.

There is an ancient Jewish saying, “May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.”1 This is what Jesus was inviting his disciples to do – to follow him so closely on the dusty roads that he traveled that they may learn from him. He invites them to not only speak the words that Jesus speaks and act the way that Jesus acts but to become like Jesus.

Jesus’ invitation to the disciples – and us -- sounds challenging – to deny themselves and to take up their cross - and it is – but it is also a promise of life. For taking up your cross does not mean putting up with abuse or an irritating person or assuming you have to take on hardship or suffering because it is “your cross to bear.” Instead, taking up your cross means surrendering your will to Christ’s will.  But this is not a harsh enlistment in a dictator’s army.  Instead, this means entrusting all that you love – your family, your friends, your ambitions, your dreams, your talents and your future – to Jesus. Asking Jesus to direct your words and your life. After all – what or who wouldn’t you trust to Jesus? 

Trusting Jesus means living in the way and walking in the way of Jesus and speaking with one another as Jesus speaks. And this is life- GIVING.   It is not a requirement. But as Jesus said to the disciples, “What will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

Jesus asks you: Who do YOU say that I am? And then Jesus invites you, “Come and follow Me” and learn. The roads outside our church and outside your home are not so dusty – unless they happen to be doing road construction. But the invitation to follow is for YOU.   And the gift that Jesus gives is life.  

We call the way that we practice following Jesus, “faith practices.” For just as my arms and legs don’t get any stronger by looking at the weights and exercise equipment, we don’t get stronger in our faith by just setting a Bible on a coffee table. So let’s practice speaking the words of Jesus and following in the way of Jesus.  Here are a few ideas:

·        Worship God – as you are doing right now.

·        Study the word of God together. You can do this on your own – and there are many good ways to do this – but I say “together” because as a Christian community we can help one another to stay true to God’s word when we study together. We have some new opportunity to do this on Tuesday nights online and Wednesday mornings here.  

·        Sing – and let the songs that you sing be filled with words that uplift and don’t tear down. May the music in your heart, the song that runs through your head in the middle of the day – be a song that uplifts and draws you closer to the way of Jesus. 

·        Pray. It can be the Lord’s prayer or your own – but prayer is an excellent building block practice for growing in faith – even if it feels like nothing is happening. 

·        Be thoughtful about your words – because words matter. The Psalmist said it well in Psalm 19: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” Amen – it is so. And let the church say Amen.

1https://ourrabbijesus.com/covered-in-the-dust-of-your-rabbi-an-urban-legend/

Sunday, September 8, 2024

My family just got back from a little R&R up north by Lake Vermillion. It was incredibly peaceful and gave us a chance to rest – some went fishing, others went for walks with the dog, others just took lots of naps. It was lovely. So I can appreciate Jesus wanting to escape the incessant trick questions of the scribes and Pharisees. He had spent time trying to open their hearts and minds to see the kingdom of God in their midst. But when they refused, he too went “up North” to a town called Tyre in the gentile – non-Jewish-- part of the country. No one would look for a rabbi there, right?

 Except a bold and loving mother who would do anything to save her demon-possessed dying daughter.  So, once she heard that Jesus the miracle worker was there – because after all, people talk – she defied all the rules, found Jesus, bowed down at his feet and begged him to heal her daughter.

 This next part of the Gospel is – I’ll confess – is hard to hear. Mark has already told us that Jesus is tired and that he doesn’t want to see anybody. For unlike the Gospel of John which has Jesus practically floating about the earth, in Mark, Jesus is much more human. In doing a little research, I found that the Syrophoenician gentiles and Hebrew Jewish people were arch enemies – the prophet Ezekiel rails against the Syrophoenicians for three whole chapters. So, some theologians point out that the two tribes probably had much worse names for each other. Others claim that the word Jesus said was “puppy” rather than “dog.” But does that make it any better? Jesus may have been saying what other people in his tribe would say. But I have higher standards for Jesus.

 To be fair, I think the point that Jesus is trying to make is that he was sent to the Jewish people, “the children” of God. That was his mission.  Yet… still… I don’t like to hear Jesus calling this woman a dog or any other slur.  It doesn’t sound like the Jesus I know.

 The gentile Syrophoenician woman had probably heard that slur before – but she may also have heard the story of the feeding of the 5,000 – with the 12 baskets of bread left over. 12 baskets of leftovers – one for each of the Hebrew tribes. She was not asking to be one of the 5,000 children. They had already been fed. All she was asking for was a crumb for her daughter. Just a crumb of Jesus’ healing power. That would be enough.

 Jesus’ response is awkwardly translated. He basically says, “Because of this Word, go, your daughter is healed.”

 I think Jesus recognized the Word of God, the Word of love in the mouth of a person who no one would expect to speak God’s Word – a Syrophoenician gentile woman. And that Word seems to have opened up Jesus’ ministry to all people.  

Because Jesus then travelled to Galilee by way of Sidon. That is like saying, that you are going to Minnehaha Falls by way of Duluth. Instead of going and preaching amongst his own people, Jesus goes deep into gentile territory.

 And, on the way, a group of people – like the Syrophoenician woman --begged Jesus to heal a man who was not only deaf but also had a speech impediment. While the little girl was healed with just a word from Jesus, this was a very physical healing – Jesus put his fingers in his ears, spat, touched his tongue – and then declared: “Ephphatha” – be opened. And the man’s ears were opened.

 “Ephphatha” – Be opened. Jesus’ ministry was opened up. He went on to heal and teach and then feed 4,000 people in the land of the Decapolis – that is  - in 10 Greek cities.  Jesus was fulfilling the prophecies of the scriptures that the lame would walk, the blind would see and the deaf would hear – but he had expanded his ministry to include not just the Hebrew children but also all of God’s people.

 “Ephphatha” – Be opened. Jesus had been trying to open up the minds and hearts of the Pharisees and Scribes. But they were blind to his ministry. Jesus was also trying to open the hearts and minds of his disciples and followers so that they could hear the Word of God in a new way.

 When I think about Jesus’ healing stories – I both love them and I’m challenged by them because – while I love that they illustrate that Jesus was bringing God’s kingdom into the world for all people…I sometimes wonder what they teach us today?

 In both stories, people beg Jesus to heal someone else. So… one lesson might be to dare to ask Jesus for health and healing.  For Jesus invites us to pray, to bring to God both our needs and the needs of the neighbor.

 After all, all of the prayers to Jesus in today’s Gospel were prayers for the sake of someone else. These were the prayers of the people.

 A pastor colleague of mine was diagnosed with leukemia and needed to undergo a blood marrow transplant. A Caring Bridge site was begun and the call went out for prayers. So…his congregation prayed. His family prayed. His colleagues prayed. His friends prayed. People who didn’t even really know him prayed. It was a long slow process – but earlier this summer, Karl declared – on Caring Bridge -- that he was celebrating his two year old birthday after receiving his new blood. He wasn’t looking forward to all his immunization shots but he decided that since he was turning two, he would throw a two year old tantrum for no reason. And take a nap in the middle of the day. I smiled when I read the cheeky declaration of the 54year old with two year old blood.  Prayers were answered. Alleluia!

 But what if the eyes of your loved one don’t get opened?  What if the fully deserving, innocent beloved person doesn’t get healed?

 We were barely done celebrating Karl’s two year old tantrum when– just a couple of weeks later – I read on Caring Bridge that he had contracted meningitis and was very, very sick. Again, the call went out for prayers.  And so, of course, again we prayed. His congregation prayed. His family prayed. His colleagues prayed. His friends prayed. Strangers prayed. But this time, the prayers weren’t answered in the way that we had hoped. Karl died.

 At his funeral, I had expected to hear about how amazing Karl was. But instead, Karl had instructed his friend, the pastor, to tell the story of Jesus life, death and resurrection. Karl wanted to use this time to open others up to the love of Christ that he knew. That had been his prayer as we had all been praying for him. For during this time of struggle and pain, clearly Karl had grown even closer to Christ. He had opened his heart and his life to the love of God.

 So now the question is for you: how do you/ how do we need to “Be Opened” -  “Ephathatha” to hear and to see what God is doing in our world and in our community? And in our lives?

 Perhaps our prayer could be to open the eyes of our hearts to see God at work in our world. Or perhaps our prayer could be to open the ears of our hearts to hear God’s voice. And perhaps our prayer could also be to open our hearts, our minds, our lives to see and hear the needs and cares, the hopes and the dreams of our neighbor. After we listen – and ask God to open us up – then perhaps we could ask God  to help us take the next step.

 Thanks be to God who goes in front of us, beside us and behind us. Amen.

September 8,, 2024 + Faith-Lilac Way Lutheran + Pastor Pam Stalheim Lane

Sunday, September 1, 2024

Sermon:  Cleanliness and Godliness  Karen Peterson

As I was preparing this sermon, it occurred to me that this Gospel passage sounds different to a post-pandemic audience.  So, I want to begin with a pandemic story. 

It was just a couple of weeks before Easter when the pandemic hit the U.S. and all the churches were forced to close.  There was no Palm Sunday service, no Maundy Thursday or Good Friday services, and no Easter Services in our ELCA church in Dodge Center.  For me, that was absolutely unacceptable, and I told my family that, church or no church, we were going to worship and celebrate Easter, somehow, because there is no other day in the church year that matters more or is more important and worthy of wholehearted celebration.  Everywhere I looked, there were signs and advertisements about the importance of washing our hands, frequently.  So I decided we would give out liquid hand soap to as many people in our community as we could manage.  We went to all the dollar stores in the area, and to my surprise, when I explained what we intended to do, most stores let me buy every bottle they had, even taking all they had in the back of the store, besides what was in the aisles.  (That only amounted to a few dozen bottles.) Then I did some research about the origin of the phrase, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” and typed up a one-page letter encouraging people to remember who they are (the hands and feet and faces of Christ in the world), and whose they are, (children of God redeemed and cleansed by Christ) and to find ways to worship, celebrate and to be the church in spite of the pandemic, but to do it safely.   We delivered these gifts in small brown paper bags that we set on people’s doorsteps, then rang their doorbells and ran across the street to watch and shout, “Happy Easter!  He is risen!  Alleluia!”  as people opened their doors to find our Easter gifts. 

It turns out that the phrase, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” was coined by John Wesley, founder of the Methodist branch of Christianity, and first used it in a sermon in 1778.  The phrase was taken up by soap companies to promote their products, while church and social reformers used it to promote bodily cleanliness and encourage people to bathe frequently.  The phrase is not found in the Bible, however, scriptural passages such as this one certainly suggest such an idea, and may have been cited to support it.   

As always, background context is important.  IN addition to the 10 Commandments and all the laws regarding sacrifices made for various sins, the Torah, or Jewish law included many laws regarding clean-ness and unclean-ness as well as ritual purity or ritual clean-ness, covering not only what could and could not be eaten and how food had to be prepared, but also the proper ways to rid one’s self of ritual unclean-ness and return to a state of ritual purity, should the need arise.   And the need arose rather frequently.  Not only did committing sins render a person unclean, but so did disease of any kind, a woman’s monthly cycle and anything involving marital relations or childbirth—even visiting the home of anyone who wasn’t Jewish, or sharing a meal with a non-jew.

So, as I mentioned in a recent sermon, the Pharisees decided that, in order to keep the people in a state of purity and cleanliness, it would be wise and beneficial to “build a fence around the Torah,” which they did my setting up more social and ritualistic rules that would require the Jewish people to  focus on and maintain this state of clean-ness or purity.  It seems that washing your hands before you eat a meal was one of these fence posts that had been set up to protect the people and the covenant.  There was so much focus on clean-ness and purity, that to be unclean or impure was to be, not only ritually unacceptable and unfit to enter the temple, but to be socially outcast, unfit to associate with, unless or until one did whatever was required to become clean and pure once again.

Although some of the purity laws in the Torah, such as those regarding disease or touching the dead to prepare them for burial, were obviously aimed at maintaining bodily cleanliness and health, most were aimed at ritual cleanliness, aimed at maintaining a person’s spiritual purity, taking care of the heart and the soul so as to be fit for worship and temple rituals and to be acceptable in the eyes or presence of God.  But many of the laws that composed the fence the Pharisees built around the Torah were not.

That is the argument that Jesus is making here.  Jesus is arguing that God desires a clean and righteous spirit and a pure heart, undefiled by selfishness and sin, unstained by injustice, prejudice and malice.  What’s more, Jesus is pointing out that the very fact that they are concerned more about the condition of the body than the condition of the soul, more concerned about the dust that might enter the body from unclean hands than they are about the filth that pours out from the body of a person whose heart and soul are sick and  polluted with hatred and hedonistic desires, is clear evidence that the Pharisees have lost sight of the spirit of the laws of the Torah.  Their very purpose was to maintain the health and well-being of the whole person, to preserve the health and innocence of each Jewish person’s mind, body and soul by preventing one sick person from infecting another, and another.  The fence that is supposed to protect the Torah and the people is actually separating the people from each other and from God, leaving them sick in spirit, in need of a savior that can bring them back into relationship with God, who is their source of life and strength and hope and love and meaning and purpose. 

When I look at the world today, I see symptoms of the same infectious condition.  We worry a lot about what we put into our bodies, and what we put on our bodies.  We practically obsess about our bodies—our strength and size and shape, our strength and muscle tone, our complexion, our skin color and hair color…  We spend billions (literally 45.58 billion dollars last year) on soap, not to mention the billions more we spend on other hygiene products and beauty products and clothing.  Last year Americans spent more than $50 Billion on weight loss drugs.  And we are increasingly consumed by the idea that what we eat should be organically grown and contain all natural ingredients, but not fat or sugar, which by the way are totally natural ingredients, even though much of what we actually eat consists largely of chemicals and preservatives.  We are captivated by those words, natural and organic, yet even organic farmers use chemicals, and natural, as my wise college chemistry professor liked to remind me, does not necessarily mean safe.  He taught me this lesson by drawing the chemical structure of aspartame, an artificial sweetener composed of two amino acids linked together, and beside it the structure of another perfectly natural chemical composed of two amino acids linked together in the same way, and then pointing out that the latter was the deadly toxin in snake venom.  My biology professor frequently reminded me that natural and edible don’t necessarily mean delicious or nutritious, only that it won’t kill you if you are desperate and have nothing else to eat.  How’s that for food for thought about our obsession with natural ingredients, which is just a gimmick to get us to pay more for essentially the same product.  And because we are so worried about nutrition and so in love with McDonald’s and processed instant foods, we spend another $50 billion plus on vitamins and supplements, most of which goes right through us into the sewer, just like Jesus said it does.

We obsess about the health of our bodies and our minds and torture ourselves with fad diets and exercises and do sudoku puzzles and crosswords and play games hoping to ward off Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss, stress about eating healthy and exercising and trying to look good, spend tons of money we don’t have trying to look our best in the newest fashions with the trendiest hairstyles, and we fret and worry about viruses and bacteria and dirt in our homes and on surfaces, so we clean and clean and clean.  And at the end of the day, we are exhausted and crawl into bed, only to find we can’t sleep because we are too stressed out. 

When it comes to cleanliness and purity, we are no better today than the Jews were in Jesus’s day.  If anything, we are probably worse.  We keep everything so clean that our immune systems either don’t work, or are so desperate for something to do that they start attacking our own healthy tissues, giving us autoimmune diseases.  My sister was so worried about her kids being exposed to germs that she literally washed everything, even her kids toys and pacifiers, on the sanitize setting in the dishwasher, adding bleach, every night.  Her kids all have asthma and tons of allergies, and get sick all the time.   We need to be exposed to infectious organisms in order for out immune systems to learn how to recognize them and defends our bodies against them.  We require symbiotic gut bacteria to be healthy.   Humans were not meant to be so clean, inside or out.  Our bodies were meant to be habitats for other organisms, just like other animals are.  It sounds gross, I know, but it’s true.

We obsess about our bodies, but most Americans ignore their spiritual well-being.  What do we do to stay spiritually healthy and connected to God?  How do we exercise and train our spirits?  How do we give our spirits the nourishment, the exercise and the rest they need?  Is one hour of church every week adequate?  How often do you feed your spirit?  What do you feed it?  How do you strengthen it?   Where do you find rest for your weary soul?  You listen to your body?  Do you listen to your conscience?   

The truth is, Jesus was right.  God doesn’t just care about our bodies.  But the Pharisees were right too.  Because God doesn’t just care about our spirits.  God cares about our whole being, body, mind and spirit or soul, if you prefer.  Our spirits live within our bodies—they are connected and interdependent, and the same is true of our minds.  That’s how we were created.  We can’t neglect any part of our being and still be healthy.  Jesus knew that better than anybody.  Jesus wasn’t saying that the body didn’t matter, or even that the spirit mattered more than the body nor the mind, which they believed at the time, was located in the heart—hence the heart being responsible for the unclean and unloving words and actions coming from an impure heart.  This wasn’t really an argument about who was right and who was wrong—it was a question of balance.  To live well—to have that abundant life that Jesus came to offer us, requires maintaining a balance between mind, body and spirit.  Jesus didn’t say that people shouldn’t wash their hands before they eat.  He was just pointing out the need to strike a balance, to stop neglecting the spiritual needs of people, because a sick or wounded spirit is harder to heal than a broken bone or a skin rash, and a mean spirit can do immeasurable harm that only Jesus can mend.

May we all take time to tend to our spiritual needs as well as physical needs.  Be sure you always get your recommended daily doses of vitamins J (Jesus) P (Prayer) and S (Scripture).  

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Sermon:  I will give you rest

When I was a little girl of about 8, my grandmother gave me my first very own Bible.  It was a King James version, and it had a zippered cover attached with a colorful painting of Jesus welcoming the little children.  On the inside covers it had the 23rd Psalm, the Lord’s Prayer, The Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes.  It included several color plates of images of Biblical scenes, and all the words spoken by Jesus were printed in red ink.   I still have that Bible.  The first thing I did when she gave it to me was go to my room and read everything in red ink.  I was shocked and horrified at how little of the Bible, which I understood to be a book all about Jesus, was actually things Jesus said.  I decided to memorize the stuff on the inside covers, assuming it must be really important to be printed specially there so you didn’t have to search for it.  And there were some verses that Jesus spoke that I found interesting, or beautiful or otherwise compelling that I decided to memorize as well.  The last paragraph of today’s Gospel was one of them.

Matthew 11:28-30 has always been one of my favorite gospel passages as long as I can remember.  It captured my imagination and my heart, even as a child.  Maybe it’s because I’ve had trouble sleeping all my life.  Or maybe it’s because it always reminded me of Psalm 23, and laying in the cool grass watching the clouds shift in the sky as they passed overhead.  One of my favorite things to do was to find shapes in the clouds.  Maybe it’s because I walked almost a mile to school back in the days before book bags and lockers, carrying an armload of books and a sack lunch the whole way, rain or shine, sleet or snow or sunny and hot.  Or maybe it just caught my attention because of the way the word yoke was spelled, and I wondered why and how it was different from an egg yolk, and why I would want one “upon me.”  I really don’t know what it was.  All I know is that it was an invitation I always wanted to accept.  It just sounded so good, so relaxing and comfortable, pleasant and satisfying, like an ice cream cone or fudgesicle, or as refreshing as run through the sprinkler on a hot summer day, and it was an invitation from Jesus, so it had to be something really wonderful. 

Now that I’m all grown up and graduated from seminary, I thought that sharing the way this scripture has always spoken to me and called to me, and the new meaning it now holds for me, would be a fitting end to my internship, and would be a fitting bridge between this end and the new beginning God has planned for me in the (I hope) near future.

In the verses leading up to the invitation to come and rest, Jesus is revealing his identity in clear terms.  He is the promised Davidic King, the Son of God, the heir of all that is God’s, and the only one who “knows” the Father and the Father’s will, as well as the only one capable of revealing God to others.  When Jesus says “I will give you rest, he is echoing the words of God spoken to Moses in our Old Testament lesson from Exodus: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”  It also calls to mind, however subtly (at least for me) Psalm 23, in which God, the Good Shepherd, makes his sheep lie down and rest in green pastures.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,” is an invitation, but not just to sit down and take a load off your feet.  It’s an invitation to salvation.  Rest, in the Old Testament, is frequently a metaphor for salvation, the reward granted by God to those who were obedient, often or especially the final reward for a good and faithful servant.  According to M. Eugene Boring, the heavy burdens that Jesus is referring to are the burdens of the human additions to the Laws of God and Moses set out by the Pharisees and scribes that Matthew and his community regarded as cumbersome religious burdens that had become barriers to true relationship with God.[i]  While there may be truth to this, I object to limiting heavy burdens to religious duties.  There are many other “burdens” that people bear that can function as barriers between people and God: chronic pain and disease, sin and the shame and guilt that come from it, grief, depression and mental illness, fear and worry, as well as isolation, marginalization and loss of community, all of which can be caused by any combination of the things in this list.  Any of these, if they are severe enough, or last long enough, can make us feel forgotten, forsaken, unheard and unloved, even by God, especially if those with religious authority insist that these “burdens” are evidence God’s judgment or curse for our sinfulness or failure to be perfectly obedient.  So, when Jesus says he will give rest to those struggling under the weight of heavy burdens, I don’t see any need to limit burdens to any particular type or form.  Thus, rest may be healing, forgiveness or restoration to relationship. It may be characterized by joy, freedom from sorrow or worry or from any form of strife.  Rest is offered as a gift from Christ to us, pure and simple.  There are no strings attached.  It is an all-encompassing rest for the mind, body and soul. 

The invitation is not only to rest in Jesus, but to learn from Jesus.  Learning is an act of discipleship, and Jesus never promised that discipleship would be easy or carefree.  Discipleship is obedience and servanthood.  It involves a yoke—a collar worn around the neck with ropes, like that used to steer oxen when tilling a field for planting.  Discipleship is following wherever Jesus leads us, imitating him, learning to think and behave like Jesus.  Of course, we know from experience that discipleship is challenging and difficult, and that we all frequently fail to follow the full distance.  Yet Jesus tells us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.  Why?  How can that be true?   Because discipleship is a journey we do not make alone.  Jesus is always ahead of us, leading us, and offering us grace and salvation, and rest and forgiveness, as often as we need it along the way.  Jesus is patient and understanding.  Jesus lets us walk at our own pace, and rest as often as needed along the way.  There is no whip, no driving us forward against our will in spite of pain or exhaustion.

As for the yoke—well, it’s obviously not a y-o-l-k, like an egg yolk.  The yoke is just a metaphor, unless you’re a pastor, or a bishop.  The stole that a pastor receives at his or her ordination is a symbolic yoke of Christ.  It is a reminder that we follow Jesus, even as we shepherd a congregation or flock, leading them in worship, teaching them and supporting them and guiding them in their life of faith, accompanying them in their journey of discipleship, just as Christ accompanies us all.  It reminds us that we are to lead our flocks according to Christ’s will, and to lovingly support and care for them just as The Good Shepherd does.  Similarly, the collar symbolizes our obedience to the Triune God, and our priestly or pastoral authority.

Although only pastors wear the yoke (stole) and clerical collar, we are not the only sheep called to ministry, or to the priesthood.  All believers are called to what Martin Luther called the Priesthood of All Believers.  Together, we are all called to share our faith and the story of Jesus with all those we meet, pointing to his presence and his activity in this world, wherever we see evidence of it.  While our salvation is not dependent on our obedience and discipleship, it is the appropriate and desired response of faithful obedience in gratitude for the rest and salvation we receive from Jesus, who lovingly sacrificed himself for us.  Rest is always a free gift we receive without ever having to earn it, or pay for it.  Discipleship is a free will offering we can make as a way of showing our love and gratitude, and the best way to live and worship God on a daily basis.

Now, as I said, I have always found these verses incredibly inviting and inspirational.  So much so, that the first faith song I ever wrote, was inspired by and based on my understanding of and interpretation of this passage.  This one was written with the intention of being a congregational hymn.  As a parting gift to you, in gratitude for all of the love, patience and support you have shown me, I am going to teach it to you, so that you can sing it any time you wish, and hopefully come to love this scripture passage as much as I do.  

[i] Boring. The New Interpreter’s Bible. 8. Matthew. Nachdr. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007.

P

Sunday, August 4, 2024

Sermon:               Living a Resurrection Life

                Ezekiel was a priest, or at least, he was training for the priesthood when God called him to service as a prophet.  He was present in Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege, and taken into exile, more correctly described as captivity, with the rest of the aristocracy of Judah.  We don’t know much about him, except that he was well educated and an extremely sophisticated and talented writer, he was married, and he seems to have had a house in Tel Abib.  He is often described as one of the strangest of the prophets, having performed many of the most bizarre of prophetic sign acts in the Old Testament.  He is also one of the most memorable and influential, still striking deep and profound chords with modern readers. 

                Ezekiel insists that God is in total sovereign control, not just over creation, but also over nations, and in total control of history.  He portrays God as unbearably wrathful and vengeful, demanding the most extreme punishment imaginable for the extreme injustice of Judah’s government and the unmitigated unfaithfulness it’s people.  (Just to be clear, these are not views of history or of God that I share or want to perpetuate.  But it is important to understand this about Ezekiel.)  Ezekiel is relentless in his critiques of the corruptness of the government of Judah, and its total disregard of the covenantal laws that define the requirements and expectations of Judah’s relationship with God.  Ezekiel is venomous in his attacks.  Suffice it to say, that he demonstrates no pastoral care skills or inclinations whatsoever toward his people, until after he is forced to march the 900 mile trek across the deserts to Babylon with them, and then witnesses and experiences with them, the lifestyle of servitude and oppression they must endure.  Then he turns his attention to Israel’s enemies for chapters 25-32, preaching doom and gloom for them, for not recognizing the sovereignty of God and the specialness of the people of Israel.  Finally, in chapter 33 and continuing through the rest of the book, Ezekiel begins to speak of restoration and salvation—and in chapter 37, resurrection of the people of Israel, including Jerusalem and its temple.  After 32 chapters of Ezekiel’s relentless and abusive insistence that the people deserve to be removed from the face of the earth for their infidelity to God, God finally demands that Ezekiel change his tune, and give his people a huge and desperately needed visions of hope in the face of hopelessness.  God tells Ezekiel he is wrong, that God has not and will not ever abandon God’s people.  

                In order to understand this text, we need to understand the situation it addresses.  The Babylonians have conquered Jerusalem, the capitol city of Judah.  This siege lasted 2 to 2.5 years.  It was brutal.  The city was cut off completely from the outside.  At some point, the stores of food were drained, and the people began to succumb to starvation, especially women and children. There were no graveyards inside the city walls, no place to discard or store dead bodies.  Eventually, the city was set ablaze, walls and all, including the temple, and torn down—much the same as the images we see in the news of Ukraine or Gaza today.  War is terrifying, inhumane and horrific, always, no matter how sophisticated or precise the weaponry may be.  Death and destruction, carnage, trauma and hopelessness are all it leaves in its wake. 

                Those taken into captivity, mostly the wealthy, educated ruling class along with those who had skills or trades useful to the Babylonians, like blacksmiths, carpenters, scribes and able-bodied soldiers, were pressed into forced labor or slavery in Tel Abib or other Babylonian cities, if they survived the march.  Many were likely separated from their surviving family members in the turmoil, if not by design.  The wealthy aristocrats were forced into physical labor, something most had never imagined, much less experienced.  They were stripped of their wealth and privilege, their social and political status, their lands and homes, their heritage—everything that mattered.  After years of captivity, scarred by the trauma of war and the carnage they witnessed, the people of Judah had descended into abject hopelessness, only worsened by Ezekiel’s insistence that they deserved every ounce of pain and suffering and trauma that they had endured.  They were, essentially zombies—living corpses devoid of hope, of joy, of meaning and purpose, going through the motions of daily living, but dead inside.  I can’t help but think that, eventually, Ezekiel found himself just as hopelessly empty and dead inside as the rest of them.  Jeremiah, who remained in Jerusalem with the surviving poor, wrote to those in Babylonian captivity, telling them to get married, raise children, marry them off and enjoy grandchildren—and we must therefore surmise that they, like the Jewish survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, may have felt was pointless.  What kind of world was this to bring children into?  The people are utterly broken, dis-spirited.  Ezekiel’s harsh criticism has taken root and strangled the life out of them.  They are lamenting their situation, grieving their losses, and giving up hope that God will ever remember them, much less restore them. 

                So God, in a vision, transported Ezekiel to a hilltop view of a valley filled with desiccated and dismembered bones, and asked him, “Mortal, can these bones live?”  Ezekiel responded, “O Lord God, you know.”  Man, would I like to have heard how Ezekiel said those words!  Without tone and inflection, we can’t tell if he says this with hope, with sad dejection, purely matter-of-factly, or inquisitively.  I’ve often wondered whether he meant, “How would I know, God?  Can they?  Only you can answer that.” 

                Then God demonstrates to Ezekiel that the impossible is, indeed, possible with God.  He even insists Ezekiel participate, speaking the divine words that can reform and reanimate the corpses.  It is important to note, at this point, that the word translated as “breath” also means both wind and Spirit.  He prophesies to the bones, then to the Breath or Spirit, or perhaps both, and then to the four winds. The bones are re-membered, re-connected, and re-created, and then filled once again with the breath of life that is the Spirit of God—in much the same way that Adam was formed, his lungs filled with air, his body enlivened by the Spirit.  Finally, God explains that these are the people of Israel, and that God will, indeed, re-establish their relationship and resurrect their kingdom in Israel.

                I know that, in the text, God refers to graves. But this text is not about raising the dead, either those slain in battle or those who died of illness or starvation or old age.  God is talking about the captives of war, the exiled people of Israel, those who are still alive, but have given up on life—those who are living a life of death.  God’s intention is to mend their broken spirits, to breathe renewed life and spirit into those who are living as though they were dead.  The “graves” God is speaking of are metaphors for the conditions of slavery and exile—the Babylonian tombs in which they toil and languish in hopelessness and despair.  God will resurrect them by filling them with a new spirit of hope that will inspire them to begin living again.  And it is this hope, this promise in the book of Ezekiel and other such prophecies that have kept the Jewish people going, hoping, believing in a future that they couldn’t see, century after century, in the face of hardship, trauma and adversity.

                But this text also addresses us today.  It reminds us that life and death are not always polar opposites.  It is possible to be alive in body, but dead in spirit.  I’m guessing that most of us have experienced that, or will experience that, at some point.  That’s what happens when we lose hope, when we give in grief and despair, when life loses its meaning, when we give up on life and happiness and just go through the day-to-day motions of life, without hope or joy, maybe even without feeling much of anything at all—just feeling more or less numb and dead inside.  Some of us, desperate to feel alive, to feel anything at all, may be tempted to do things that may be dangerous, that may cause pain or injury, just to feel a rush of adrenaline that can remind us we are alive. 

                This text reminds us that there is still and always hope.  It reminds us that anything is possible with God—even the absurdly impossible becomes possible.  Ezekiel challenges us, as Christians, as Easter people, to rethink our understanding of resurrection and resurrection life.  We often think of resurrection (and salvation) as something that happens only after we die, maybe even only on the last day.  But not according to this text.  According to this text, resurrection can happen even while we are still living and breathing.  The same is true of salvation.  And I think that the Gospels say that too.  When Jesus restores Zaccheus to his community in Luke, he declares that salvation has come to his house, his family, that very day.  Again in Luke, when Jesus goes to Simon Peter’s house, finds Peter’s mother-in-law sick and rebukes her fever, the Greek indicates that she is raised up, restored—the same verb Jesus uses in John 11 when he says tells Mary that the dead and entombed Lazarus will rise again, and she thinks he means at the end of time—the same verb used in the gospels to refer to Christ’s rising from the dead.

                Resurrection can mean being brought back to life after death, but it doesn’t mean only that, and certainly not to the same life as before.  Resurrection means being brought to new life or to newness of life—a life of meaning and purpose, a life different from the life of death, meaninglessness, emptiness, hopelessness that we were formerly living.  Resurrection is a way of life—the Jesus Way of life.  It is life lived out of the love, grace and mercy of exemplified in Christ’s life, death and resurrection.  It is a life that embodies Christ’s love and compassion, his forgiveness and mercy, his kindness and generosity toward others.  Resurrection life can begin at any age: at confirmation, at the hearing of the gospel, or in receiving the sacraments.  It may begin over and over again as we struggle with questions of faith, as we stumble and fall and then pick ourselves back up again, as we overcome a battle with grief and loss, or and each time we lose our identity, and then rediscover or remember anew who and whose we are.

                I think, perhaps the best description of resurrection life I know of comes from the song “To Be Alive” by Dakota Road, a Christian band based in MN.  The lyrics go like this:

Join the singing/join the celebration/ Jesus lives./We are restored./So we live mercy, hope and freedom/Loving another to be whole./To be alive is to live the love/That is alive in God’s saving son/who brought us back from a life of death/to be alive. 

                Another, newer song that gives a good description is “Live Like That” by the sidewalk prophets.  It goes like this:      

Sometimes I think/what will people say of me/when I’m only just a memory/when I’m home where my soul belongs?/Was I love/when no one else would show up?/Was I Jesus to the least of us?/ Was my worship more than just a song?/I want to live like that/And give it all I have/So that everything I say and do/points to You./ If love is who I am/then this is where I’ll stand/Recklessly abandoned, never holding back/I want to live like that/Am I proof/That You are who you say You are/That grace can really change a heart/Do I live like Your love is true/People pass/And even if they don't know my name
Is there evidence that I've been changed/When they see me, do they see You/I want to live like that…

                The point is, we are all prone to give up or give in from time to time and start living as though we had nothing to live for, as though we were dead, as though we no longer mattered, as though we made no difference in any way, shape or form to anyone at all.  But Ezekiel 37 reminds us that we are resurrection people, and we are also resurrected people, called to live lives of gospel love for the sake of others in gratitude for what God did for us through Jesus.  And he reminds us that we don’t have to be dead and buried to be resurrected.  Our hope isn’t limited to an afterlife in some heavenly realm beyond time and imagination.  We can be resurrected over and over again, as often as necessary throughout this life on this earth.  Each time we are resurrected, we are made new again.  God is always at work in us, transforming us for work in the Kingdom of God, such as it is here and now. God is always renewing, restoring and resurrecting us to new and better life in relationship with Christ.  And that, my friends, is good news indeed.  Alleluia and Amen.

Sunday, July 28, 2024

Sermon:               Hope and Faith as Resistance to Oppression

 The book of Daniel is unique, even for the Old Testament.  It is composed in two different languages.  It doesn’t fit neatly into any one particular genre, like law, history, poetry, prophecy or wisdom.  It starts out with what scholars call court tales, like those in the book of Esther or the Joseph stories from Genesis—stories of danger and intrigue centered around Hebrew people serving in the palaces of foreign kings.  The whole first half of the book of Daniel consists of court tales involving the legendary prophet Daniel and his three friends serving in the palace of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon during the exile.  And, like Joseph, Daniel has the ability to interpret dreams and visions.

The second half of the book takes up Daniel’s visions and prophecies, and is essentially an apocalypse—not in the modern Hollywood sense of the word that takes it to mean the end of the world, (although it sometimes sounds and probably felt like it,) but in the sense of Divine Revelation.  That’s what the word apocalypse means—an unveiling of something hidden from humans, a revealing of hitherto secret knowledge or events, generally mediated and explained by a messenger of God—in this case, the angel Gabriel.   The court tales in chapters 2-6 are written in Aramaic, the language of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, while chapter 1, which provides the setting and explains how Daniel and his friends came to be in Nebuchadnezzar’s court, and chapters 8 through 12 containing Daniel’s visions and their explanations are composed in Hebrew.

 Taken as a coherent whole, the Book of Daniel is best understood as a form of Resistance literature, composed during the Babylonian exile, to bring hope and courage to the people of Israel during their captivity and slavery in Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.  It aimed to help the people remember who they were, and whose they were, and to remain faithful to God and to their beliefs, even in the midst of slavery and servitude to the power, wealth and violence of oppressive foreign rule.  The first step in oppressing a people is to strip them of their pride, dignity, and sense of security, and then of their sense of self—their culture, their language, their faith, their heritage.  There are several other books in the Bible that function, in whole or in part, as resistance literature, including Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Isaiah, Revelation.   Honestly, even the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke were composed under the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire, and constantly contrast the earthly kingdom of Rome with the already-not yet Kingdom of God, insisting that followers of Christ owe their allegiance to God, not Caesar.  All of these books were composed under conditions of oppression and either captivity or occupation by foreign governments.  These are the conditions under which the Hebrew people lived for many centuries.

  The book of Daniel takes place during Israel’s captivity in Babylon.  After the fall of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Israel, the wealthy elite were rounded up, according to some texts, disrobed, shackled to one another, and marched almost 900 miles to Babylon, where they were paraded through the streets of the capitol city like trophies, as the Babylonian people cheered for their army and jeered at their new slaves.  Needless to say, a considerable number of those who began the march did not survive the ordeal.  The Babylonians also raided Israel’s temple, and placed the gold and the vessels used in Israel’s worship in the temples of their own Gods, as if to say, “Not only did our army defeat your army, but our more powerful God has defeated your God.  Your God is powerless to save you.” Israel’s peasants were left behind to work the fields and vineyards, and the produce was sent to Babylon.  The empire sent many of their own citizens to Israel to oversee this labor and keep the peasants in line.

 Those who survived the march to Babylon were given new names, Babylonian names that honored the Babylonian gods, whom they were expected to worship.  They were taught to speak Aramaic, and forbidden to speak their native tongue.  As a result, most forgot their Hebrew language, and 500 or more years later, in Jesus’s time, the common language of the Jews was still Aramaic, not Hebrew.  Except for the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, most Jews could no longer read, write or understand Hebrew, so their scriptures and liturgies had to be explained by Aramaic Targums, and eventually translated into Greek and Latin.  They were no longer allowed to worship their God, or pray to God, except in secret.  They were forced to follow the customs of Babylonians, expected to eat Babylonian food sacrificed to foreign gods, to dress like Babylonians, speak like Babylonians, answer to Babylonian names, and serve their Babylonian leaders with diligence and faithfulness.  Compliance was enforced by threats of violence.  Resistance in any form could be lethal.

 Daniel and his companions, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were selected for service to the king mainly because they were young, healthy and good looking.  Their intelligence was only a secondary consideration.  They were given Babylonian names, the first step toward adoption of and assimilation into Babylonian culture.  Daniel, whose Hebrew name meant God is my judge, was renamed Belteshazzar.  Hananiah, meaning YHWH has been gracious, was renamed Shadrach.  Mishael, whose name meant who is what God is? was renamed Meshach, and Azariah, meaning YHWH has helped, was renamed Abednego. All these new Babylonian names refer to Babylonian Gods—an obvious attempt to make them forget their Hebrew identities, to forget their faith and their covenant with God and encourage them to worship the gods of Babylon.  Only Daniel continues to be referred to by his Israelite name throughout the book.

 In the story we just read, King Nebuchadnezzar has erected an enormous gold statue, presumably of himself, and decreed that all people in Babylon, our heroes included, must bow down and worship it—essentially worshipping the King as a god. He also declared that those who refuse will be executed, burned alive.  Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego refuse.  Their names have been changed, but they have not forgotten who they are, and whose they are.  They belong to YHWH, the God of Israel, the Creator of Heaven and Earth.  They may now live in Babylon, and serve its king, and this may be where they live the rest of their lives, but they still hold fast to their faith.  They have not forgotten that their primary allegiance is to God.  Nebuchadnezzar may be the most powerful king on earth, and ruler of its most powerful nation…for now, but God is king of all creation, and far more powerful than any earthly king.  Nebuchadnezzar takes offense, and orders that they be thrown into the fiery furnace.

 But here’s the kicker.  Did you notice that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego acknowledge that God may not choose to save them?  The people of Israel are very aware that the reason their kingdom was defeated and are now in Babylon is because the ruling class of Israel was just as corrupt and oppressive of its own peasantry as are the Babylonians.   They know that this has angered God.  God had sent them prophet after prophet for nearly 200 years warming them that, unless the wealthy, elite ruling class (to which these men belonged) were to change its ways and begin to live by God’s laws of love and justice, they would be conquered by another nation.  The Southern Kingdom of Judah had watched it happen to the Northern kingdom when it ignored its prophets, but Judah, too, had failed to heed the warnings.  They knew God had reason to be angry and displeased with them.  They knew God could save them, if God so desired.  But they also believed God had allowed Judah to be destroyed, and had allowed them to be taken into captivity as slaves to their enemies.  But either way, they were not going to make the same mistake twice.  They were not going to misplace their allegiances.  They were not going to choose Nebuchadnezzar above God, or set him in the place of God.  They would rather die.  They were willing to take that chance—to remain loyal and faithful to God above all else. 

 They could have simply bowed to the statue, as commanded.  They could have justified it, after all, their lives were on the line.  They could have pretended to worship Babylon’s gods, and just confessed this sin and asked for forgiveness, while continuing to enjoy the privileges that come with living in the palace and serving the King.  But they chose not to pretend, to lie, to make a promise they didn’t intend to keep.  Instead, they chose to keep the laws of the covenant.  They chose to trust the relationship they had with God, to trust God to keep the promises God had made—to go with them wherever they went, to be faithful to them, to protect them and provide for them, to be their God, always.  They chose to risk everything, for the sake of their God.  They chose to trust in their identity as Children of God, servants of God, as God’s chosen people of the covenant. 

The text doesn’t say that they prayed, but as the king gave orders to superheat the furnace, and as they were bound and tossed into the flames, I think it’s safe to assume that they each began to pray, hoping, trusting that God would hear them, forgive them, show up for them, and save them from a horrific fate.  And that’s exactly what happened.  The fire was so hot it killed the men who hurled them into the furnace, but it didn’t even touch the clothing of Shadrach, Meshach or Abednego.  Instead of lying on the floor of the furnace burning in agony, they were walking around freely in the middle of the blaze, and suddenly there was another man visible in there with them—a man who shined like the Son of God, like Jesus on the mountain at the transfiguration, like the Son of Man in Revelation 1:13-14, the Son of Man who is the resurrected Jesus, the First and the Last, given authority, glory and power, worshipped by all nations and peoples.  The fourth person in the fire, which Nebuchadnezzar refers to as an angel, we recognize as Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man.

So, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were called to come out of the furnace, and everyone was amazed to see that they were unharmed.   In his astonishment, Nebuchadnezzar decreed that anyone who blasphemed against the Most High God of Israel would be torn limb from limb, for no other God is capable of such salvation.  Now, that’s quite a story, almost on par with the Exodus from Egypt

 The first half of the book of Daniel is full of powerful and memorable tales like this one.  But none of them ever come up in the lectionary.  I understand why, and yet… I think these stories are powerful and important, for a number of reasons.  First, they help us see the world from the perspective of those who are oppressed, persecuted, colonized.  Second, they remind us that we, as Christians, like the Israelites, are first and foremost Children of God and citizens of the Kingdom of God—the Kingdom ruled by the Jesus, who is also the Lamb of God that redeemed us with His blood.  This is the Kingdom and the ruler to which we owe our primary allegiance.  And it should be the values of Christ’s Kingdom that govern how we live in and participate in the earthly kingdoms in which we live and work and play and raise our families. 

Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, in his commentary on the book of Daniel for the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, wrote that, “…Christians know that they live in Babylon and not in the kingdom of God.”  That got my attention, because my response was, “Do we?  To what extent are we really consciously aware of that truth?”  And yet, that is the main point of Daniel—that all nations of the world are flawed, and fall short of God’s will and God’s justice.  Daniel challenges us to take stock of ourselves, our allegiances, and our values and figure out how to be good, participatory citizens in both realms.  The book of Daniel calls us out, and challenges us to look out for the neighbor, the immigrant, the disenfranchised, the marginalized in all nations, including our own.  It reminds us that we must be vigilant, and above all we must be, well, faithful.  We must never forget who we are, and whose we are, and what we believe.  We are the priesthood of all believers, disciples of Christ, and those come first. They get priority in our lives.  That’s what should rightfully guide and determine everything else—even our politics and our political ideals.  My dear friends, we aren’t members of the Republican Party, or the Democratic Party or the Libertarian Party—We are first and foremost, members of the Universal Party of the Lamb and as such, our values and our goals all coincide.  When we forget that, when we let such worldly things divide us, then we have lost our way, and we have forgotten who we are, who we are called to serve, who we are called to follow, and who we are called to be.  And when that happens, then we are truly lost.  When that happens, I think we need to turn to the Bible, to the book of Daniel, and be reminded once again, that we are Children of God, followers of Jesus, and citizens of Christ’s kingdom.  Nothing is more important than these truths.     

It isn’t easy.  Jesus never said that living faithfully would be easy.  He told us the truth.  He said it would be hard.  He said it might even be dangerous.  Living in both realms is a balancing act, one that requires a great deal of prayer and a strong relationship with Jesus.  When things get complicated, too hot for us to handle alone, we can trust Jesus to show up, and help us out.  We never have to do this alone.  Jesus is always with us.  Jesus is faithful, even when we are not.  Thanks be to God!  That’s all the more reason to keep trying to be faithful to him.  After all, only the love and grace of Jesus can mend a broken world. 

Sunday, July 21, 2024

Faith For You TODAY

The Revised Common Lectionary is a three-year cycle of Biblical texts that an interdenominational group of church leaders agreed were the best ones for congregations to hear. One year is based on Matthew, one on Mark, one on Luke and the Gospel of John is sprinkled throughout each of these years. This why your friend in the Methodist or Catholic church might hear the same Bible story as you do on a given Sunday. It is a good system – but not perfect. As you can tell by the word “Revised” – it has undergone changes at least once. But with four texts per Sunday for three years, not every story is included. So, the question arises: What gets left out?

 Inspired by Anna Carter Florence’s book, A is for Alabaster, and encouraged by our worship committee, Vicar Karen and I are exploring some of the “left out” passages and people for the next few weeks.

 One of the people that often gets left out – or at least overshadowed – is Rahab.  As you can see from the readings, Rahab is mentioned in both the Old and New Testament and she is also one of only four women who are listed in Jesus’ genealogy.  Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba are the other women and all of them are there because there is a story about them… and not necessarily a “sweet” story. 

 However, one of the things that I appreciate about the Bible – especially the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures, is that the stories are not “prettied up”.  Instead, it includes honest stories of human foibles and failures and also wonderful stories of faith as well as foreigners and outsiders– like the Moabite Ruth and Canaanite Rahab– becoming family. Rahab in particular is the ultimate outsider for the Israelites – she’s a Canaanite, she’s a prostitute and she is a woman who takes charge. And despite that or maybe because of that, Rahab becomes known as an example of faith.

 Rahab lives in the least prestigious part of town – her house is built right up to the wall – and so it is the least safe location in the city but it also affords her the most access to what is going on both inside and outside the wall. Hers is the place – like the local bar or coffee shop – where people stop – and unburden their hearts – assuming “no one” is listening.  But Rahab listens. And she hears the stories of how God led the Israelites out of Egypt and through the Red Sea. She learns the story of the defeat of other kings who refused to let the Israelites peacefully pass through their land. The spies may think that they are being really sneaky. But Rahab knows immediately who they are – and so do the authorities who waste no time in looking for them.  But Rahab also knows how scared her people are at their arrival: “our hearts melted, and there was no courage left in any of us.” And, in the process of listening and learning and Rahab believes and proclaims, “The Lord your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below.”

 Rahab plays an interesting role. In the midst of a people whose hearts were “melting” and whose courage falters, Rahab exhibits both courage and hope for the future for her and for her family. Rahab knew that life in Jericho was about to change. But she also knew that change could also bring new possibilities.

 Anna Carter Florence makes the observation that “Rahab is like a certain kind of stock character in literature: not the lord or lady of the manor, but the servant downstairs whose cleverness and ingenuity will eventually save the day. On the surface, those characters may seem secondary and unimportant, but we underestimate them to our peril – as the owner of the house always discovers… They work the edges of the story, in the passageways meant for servants, when the grand staircases and fine rooms are revealed to be empty facades. They may be maids or chauffeurs or chimney sweeps or prostitutes; it doesn’t matter. The important thing is they’re survivors – and the ones with the key to our survival as well. Rahab is a character like this.”1

 A fellow pastor told me about a study that said people are responding to the world today in one of four ways – either with hope, cynicism, anger or exhaustion. Curious, she took the quiz to see where she fell. She was surprised to find that – when it came to hearing the news of the world – she was exhausted.

 In some ways, I’m not surprised. The steady drumbeat of “bad news” and negativity that our political process generates can be overwhelming. And, when fed a diet of this negativity it is easy to let our hearts melt within us and be filled with rage and the lawlessness of a mob chanting revenge. Anger is a motivating force – but not one that feeds our soul.

 It is also tempting to fall into cynicism – which is also fed by the negative “spin” that hides the plain truth. Even if we avoid anger and cynicism, it is so easy to become so exhausted and overwhelmed that we want to hide our heads in the sand until the election is over.  In a world like this, hope can be hard to come by.

 When my pastor friend discovered that she fell into the “exhausted” category, it kind of woke her up to realize that if she felt this way, her people in her congregation probably did too. How many people are stuck in anger, cynicism or exhaustion instead of the hope and joy of discipleship? 

 There is a place for anger – righteous anger – but it cannot be our sole motivator. Cynicism may be even less helpful because it turns your creative energy negative. And exhaustion is a sign that you need to take sabbath – rest  - and be renewed. But, none of these feed your soul. What we need is hope.  And as my friend said, real and lasting hope is not found in the party of the elephant or the donkey but rather in the party of the Lamb.

 Friends in Christ, this is who you and I belong to - we do not belong to the party of the elephant or the party of the donkey. We belong to the party of the Lamb.

 We belong to Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. And this is where we receive faith and not fear. The party of the Lamb is the party of HOPE. The party of the Lamb is the party of resurrection life. The party of the Lamb is the party of faith.

 So maybe we need to be more like Rahab. Unlike her neighbors who “melt in fear” over the possibility of invaders, Rahab persistently chooses possibility and action. As Anna Carter Florence says, “In scripture, this kind of persistence is seen as faith.”

 This kind of persistent faith – despite the challenges and obstacles in our way – is what we need today. We can look to and be inspired by the faith of our fathers and mothers, and the great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us. But also let us embrace a faith that is distinctly ours, that we can claim as our own, a gritty, persistent faith like the faith of Rahab that sees possibilities where others see nothing but hopelessness. Rahab’s faith, our faith, is one that holds onto HOPE and that identifies with the Lamb of God, regardless of whatever else is going on in our world.

 This past week we hosted Vacation Bible School for children who are connected to our church, and to Robbins Way and to Cross of Glory and House of Hope. It was beautiful to see these children come together – many of them encouraged and sometimes accompanied by grandparents.  As they literally ran around the church singing “This Little Gospel Light of Mine” – a variation on the old “This Little Light of Mine,” I witnessed hope for the future.

 Brothers and sisters, friends in Christ, let us embrace that hope and that faith which is found in following Jesus, the Lamb of God.  Thanks be to God. Amen.

 1 Anna Carter Florence, A is For Alabaster, Westminster John Knox Press, 2023. P. 75

2 Elizabeth Felt, text study, Advent Lutheran, July 17, 2024

Sunday, July 14, 2024

Sermon:  One God of All

I love this story.  This may be the only story in the Bible where a donkey proves itself wiser and more faithful than its human master, who makes a real “horse’s patootie” of himself, as my grandmother would have put it.  This is one of those stories that never makes it into the lectionary, and never gets preached on.  Fortunately, since it’s summer, Pastor Pam and I, with the approval of the Worship Committee, decided to break from the regular lectionary and its prescribed texts, and address some of these lesser-known Biblical stories about lesser-known characters.  Since I’m only here for a few more weeks, Pastor gave me first pick for my final sermons, and I quickly chose Balaam and the talking donkey for this week.  I mean, honestly, who could resist, if given the option, preaching on, “the seer who couldn’t see what was right in front of him?”  If there were ever going to be a sermon that would write itself, this would surely be the one, right?  The hardest thing would be deciding whether to focus on Balaam’s blindness to the presence of God or God’s messenger right in front of him… or to contrast the wisdom and vision of the donkey with its rider, who proves to be such a mean-spirited horse’s behind that the angel is tempted to slay Balaam, but spare the donkey. 

            I chose the blindness, of course.  After all, who hasn’t at times been blind, or at least, oblivious to the presence and activity of God all around them?  Yup.  I had my sermon all planned out, complete with illustrations and corny puns.  But, as usual, God had other ideas.  The Holy Spirit kept nudging me, telling me I was missing something, reminding me that I shouldn’t take this one little excerpt out of context, no matter how good a sermon it might make.  Of course, I had read the entire story before, but to be honest, the rest of it isn’t nearly as memorable, much less as entertaining as this part with the talking donkey.  But it wasn’t that long ago that I preached about the importance of context, and the Spirit was using my own words from my own sermon against me.  So, I read it again, dutifully—the whole thing.  It takes up three whole, long chapters in the book of Numbers.  And, of course, the Holy Spirit was right—there’s a much better message here.  But in order to preach that message, I have to tell you more of the story—to at least put it in context of the larger story and provide you with a good synopsis.  So, get ready… take a deep breath, cause we’re about to dive in.

The Israelites, meaning the descendants of Jacob, because there has never been a nation called Israel yet, have just come out of the desert where they’ve been wandering for forty years.  But they haven’t crossed the Jordan River into the promised land yet.  They are on the plains of Moab, where they have just defeated the Amorites, taken possession of their cities, and massacred the King of Bashon and his army.  King Balak of Moab has seen how powerful and ruthless they are, and is afraid that this massive swarm of Israelites will do the same to him and his armies, and go on to devour all the land and resources on the plain, destroying every army in their path.  So, he sends to Midian, his ally, and makes arrangements to hire Balaam, a very famous and highly respected seer and divinator to come and curse the Israelites so that his worst fears won’t be realized.  They send elders with money as enticement, and Balaam tells them to stay the night while he consults God.

Then the most astonishing thing happens, God shows up and has a conversation with Balaam.  This is not a Moabite God, or Canaanite or Amorite God, but the LORD, YHWH, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the Father of Jesus—Our God!  The God!  The One and Only God of all creation!  God knows Balaam, and Balaam knows God—by name, the name God gave Moses at the burning bush, the God, “I Am that I Am.”  And the Great I Am tells Balaam not to go with these men, because I Am has blessed the Israelites.  So Balaam tells the elders that God will not permit him to curse the Israelites, and sends them back to King Balak. 

Balak is determined to hire the legendary Balaam, so he sends back a more important, higher ranking group of Moabites with the promise that Balak will pay any price, do anything Balaam asks, if he will come and curse the Israelites.  But Balaam tells them that he can do only what the LORD commands, no more, no less.  However, Balaam again invites them to spend the night while he speaks with God.   God shows up again, and this time tells Balaam to go with them, but to do only what God tells him to do.  So, in the morning, Balaam goes with them, riding on his donkey. 

Here's where things get strange.  YHWH gets angry when Balaam and two of his servants head back to Moab with the Moabites, though that’s exactly what God told him to do, so, God sends a sword-wielding angel to block the way and challenge Balaam.  The donkey sees the angel, and turns aside into a field, refusing to go back to the road, which elicits violence from Balaam.  The angel keeps blocking the way until the poor donkey has nowhere to go to escape, and lays down, as Balaam continues to abuse the poor thing.  So YHWH God gives the donkey the ability to speak, and explain itself.  The fact that the donkey can suddenly speak doesn’t seem to phase Balaam, who responds by telling the donkey that he would kill it, if he had a sword.  Then God opens Balaam’s eyes, allowing him to see the angel with the sword, and Balaam prostrates himself in front of the angel.  And the angel tells him that the donkey has been trying to save his life, and had the donkey not protected him, that the angel would certainly have killed Balaam, but not the donkey.  Balaam confesses to sinning without knowing the angel was there, and offers to turn around and go home.  But the angel repeats the previous command to go with the Moabites, but say only what YHWH tells him to say.  So, Balaam continues the journey to the plains of Moab.  Note that Balaam never apologizes to the donkey, and that his two servants and the whole group of Moabites totally disappear, and then reappear.

King Balak comes to meet Balaam, demanding an explanation for his refusal to come at his first request.  Hadn’t he offered the seer enough of a reward?  Balaam dismisses the question and says, “I’m here now, but I can only say the words God puts in my mouth.”  Balaam has been promoted from seer to prophet, for only prophets speak the words of God.

The King makes sacrifices, and the next morning, he takes Balaam to where he can get a glimpse of the Israelites.  Balaam tells him to build 7 altars and offer up a bull and a ram on each one—the highest sacrifice according to the laws of Moses, which neither Balaam or the King knows about.  Then he goes off to meet and consult with God.  When Balaam comes back he tells the king in beautiful poetry, as prophets do, that he can’t curse people whom his God has not cursed, and speaks admirably about these people.  The King gets angry and takes Balaam to a place where he can get a better view of the Israelite people, and makes another 7 offerings on another 7 altars.  Balaam goes out to meet God again, and reports back once again that God has blessed this people, and this cannot be reversed.  They are blessed with tremendous military might and fertility.  This happens several times, each time giving Balaam a better vantage point from which to view the vastness of the Israelite encampment.

Balak becomes furious, and tells Balaam to go back home without pay, because he has blessed the people that Balak hired him to curse, on account of Balaam’s (and Israel’s) God. 

Before he leaves, Balaam pronounces some prophetic oracles from a vision he has received from YHWH, including the following:

“I see him but not now;
    I behold him but not near—
a star shall come out of Jacob,
    and a scepter shall rise out of Israel;.”

 which is sometimes interpreted as the first Messianic prediction.  Most of the oracles, however, predict the fall and defeat of Moab and other nations in the region, including the destruction of Moab by Israel.

 In writings and stories of Balaam outside of the Bible, Balaam is depicted as a heroic, salvific figure with incredible powers as a seer, but so far as I am aware, not as a sorcerer or one who places curses on others.  With the exception of the odd and seemingly out of place episode with the talking donkey and the angel, Balaam is also portrayed in these three chapters of the book of Numbers as a non-Israelite foreigner who is in relationship with YHWH, the God of the Israelites, one who is incredibly obedient and faithful to the Israelite God, whom in verse 18, Balaam claims as his very own God. 

 That’s the central theme in this text.  Balaam has established a relationship with the God of Jacob, without being of that lineage, without the benefit of the religious practices and beliefs of Judaism, without the benefit of the revelation of God’s name to Moses, without having ever met or heard of Moses or Jacob, without having been one of the slaves freed from slavery in Egypt, or having experienced God’s presence on the Mountain, or in the desert, or any of the plagues or miracles that the Hebrew people have witnessed or experienced.  Balaam has never met an Israelite, and knows nothing of them, except what God has revealed to him in this story.  And although the people of Israel have been saved, blessed rather than cursed, by a great Gentile prophet and seer who knows, worships and obeys Israel’s God, and might I say, more faithfully than the Israelites do most of the time.  Balaam not only knows and converses with God, but he knows him by no less than 4 distinct names that the people of Israel use to refer to their God. 

 According to the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary on this story, the part with the donkey may have been inserted at a later date, for reasons that are not clear, but which suggests a dlater of discomfort with the idea that God has embraced a foreigner.  However, in most other places where Balaam comes up later in the Bible, including the New Testament, he is painted in a much less flattering light.  It seems that at some point later in Israel’s history, the Jews blamed Balaam for having caused them to sin by intermarrying with Midians and Moabites.  Yet, even though he is not remembered as heroically as this story suggests, some of his beautiful poetic lines are still an important part of the Jewish liturgy today.

 But if the odd, comical story of the talking donkey is meant to tarnish Balaam’s reputation, it is probably just because he is not Jewish, nor Hebrew, let alone an Israelite.  People have a difficult time accepting that a religious outsider might actually be worshipping, even on good terms in a healthy relationship with God.  I remember how upset some of my classmates became when professor Hanson suggested in Thinking Theologically that,

 “If, as we say we believe, there is only one God, then doesn’t it stand to reason that all people worship the same God, regardless of how differently we worship, or what different name (or names) we use to refer to God?  Even if they divide God up into many Gods, each with different powers or forms or responsibilities?” 

 For some strange reason, people like to believe that they have exclusive rights to their beliefs and to the truth, and exclusive access to right relationship with God.  Christians aren’t any different.  The truth is, even different Christian denominations like to think in exclusive terms, limiting salvation to only those who believe and worship as they do.  We are reluctant to entertain the idea that Muslims or Hindus might be worshipping the same God that we do.

 And yet, if there is only one God, and that one God created all that is, and if God desires to have relationship with all living beings created by that one God, then who are we to object?  We teach that God meets us all where we are, so why is it so hard to consider that God might show up for different peoples in different ways, answering to different names, interacting with them in different ways than God does with us as Americans, or as Christians, or as Lutherans as opposed to people in other places or from other cultures?

 The truth is that the Old Testament is replete with non-Jewish people with whom God is in relationship, and whom God works in and through and alongside, not only to save or protect Israel, but other people as well.  Perhaps the most interesting thing in this story is that it takes place without any knowledge or awareness or involvement of the Israelites, whatsoever.  But the Biblical writers wanted the Israelites to know it happened—to know that God knew and interacted with a faithful worshipper who was totally outside of their faith, and that God interceded on their behalf with the help of this total stranger from another place, an outsider who put God before wealth and power and politics, and blessed a people he knew nothing about, without knowing or interacting with any of them.  Maybe that jealousy, that desire for exclusivity that this story violates is the reason Balaam was blamed for Israel’s sin, and why he was murdered by the Israelites in chapter 31. 

 And yet…why should that be a problem at all?  Doesn’t Jesus himself say in John 10:16, that he has other sheep outside our fold—our church, our specific flavor of faith—and that he wants to bring us all together into one flock?

 I don’t know about you, but for me, this story is good news.  This is gospel news.  God loves the whole world and everything in it, enough to engage and interact with all of it—enough to die to save it—people of all cultures and faiths; even you and me and the neighbor down the street who doesn’t speak English or come to worship on Sundays; the Jews in Israel and the Muslims in Palestine who may not think they worship the same God—and God wants us all to live together in peace and harmony.  We’ve got a long way to go.  But maybe the first step is to open our hearts and minds to the idea that there really is just one God who isn’t limited to interacting only with us and loving only us and no one else that has different ideas, different cultures, different languages, different beliefs.  Maybe, if we could accept and rejoice in the knowledge that this one and only God can and does love and interact with all others, even the birds and bees and flowers and trees and donkeys that see what we don’t, then just maybe we can learn to follow God’s lead, and dare to love and accept and interact with others who are different from ourselves.  Now, wouldn’t that be something wonderful and miraculous?  I think it’s worth a try, don’t you?

Sunday, July 7, 2024

Leap before You Look! Trusting Jesus

 

Reflecting on this Gospel, author Marilyn McEntyre writes, “The disciples want to know who Jesus is. The people from his hometown do not.”1  That statement really struck home with me. 

 Thinking about the hometown crowd, of course they don’t want to know who Jesus is. First of all – they think that they know him. This is Jesus, son of Mary… and… well… Joseph raised him and claimed him. Wasn’t there some kind of issue about whose son he really is?  But really… a prophet? Our kids went to school with him. I changed his diapers. Sure, he was a good student of the Torah – but he’s a carpenter, just like Joseph. If he really is a miracle worker… let’s see some miracles!

But Jesus wasn’t about to prove who he is by doing miracles on demand or to win friends or influence people. And, not only does the hometown crowd not believe that he can do the works that others have said that he can, but, as McEntyre points out, “To acknowledge who he [Jesus] is they would have to give things up: the comfort of familiarity, tribal loyalties, the claims they’ve had on him as childhood companions or family friends.”1 And so… instead of welcoming him, they turned against him and “took offense at him.”

Getting to know who Jesus is would mean being open to change of everything – or at least a lot -- of what they have “always known” – or always “thought” that they knew. It’s like taking away the safety net of society, of the way we have always done things, the way things “are.”  That’s scary.

W.H. Auden writes a poem in which he turns the proverb, “Look before you leap” on its head and instead writes, “Look if you like, but you will have to leap… Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap…Our dream of safety has to disappear.”

Like the townspeople, we tend to like safety, to doing the things that we have always done, in the way that we have always done them. But sometimes… God calls us to “leap before we look,” to take a leap of faith and to trust God – not tradition or our image of “safety” to catch us.

This is what Jesus called the disciples to do. They were of the same culture as the townspeople, and yet instead of assuming that they knew who Jesus is, the disciples leaned in – to find out more. They were open to hearing what Jesus had to say and so they were even willing to be sent out to unknown towns and places. This might have been a scary thing to do, especially because, at the time, there were other people going door to door proclaiming the end of the world and enriching themselves off of the fear that they created. 

But fear mongering is not what Jesus calls the disciples to do. Instead, Jesus gives them authority over unclean spirits and then sends them out to serve. They are to preach repentance (interestingly not conversion or salvation), cast out demons and heal people. And if people don’t want to hear – they are to “shake it off” and go on to the next town.  

The other thing that Jesus calls the disciples to do is to receive hospitality. He gives rather specific instructions about eating what was put before them – a big deal for people who keep kosher -- and not moving even if there was a better cook or richer food in the house down the street. In other words, Jesus calls them to be good guests.  And that is not always easy.  

A couple of weeks ago I went to my brother-in-law Paul’s church for his last worship service in that place. He has – or rather had - a three-point parish so he did a farewell service three times – once at each of the churches and then the following Sunday they were gathering all together for a community celebration. In some ways, it seemed a little redundant to do the same service three times, but he knew that it was important for each congregation to be in their own church building, to be the host – and not a guest.  I went to one of the three services – the last one.

While we were waiting for the church service to begin, I chatted with the woman in the pew behind me.  When she found out that I was a pastor, she asked me, with a note of desperation in her voice, “what are we going to do? There aren’t many pastors available. And we are told that no one wants to serve a little church like ours every Sunday.”

It was a tiny church building – and on this Sunday in which they were amazed that “everyone” came, there were about 20 people… maybe. So I said, “I don’t know …  what do you think that you should do?

“Well…” she said with a sigh of resignation, “I suppose we will have to join up with other churches. My sister’s church had to do that. They have a pastor who does a service at two churches – and they alternate weeks. The pastor also does a service at the nursing home.” Another sigh.  And then, she confided, “my sister never goes when the worship is at ‘the other church.’”

“Why not?” I asked innocently. “Wouldn’t that be nice if she could support the other church with her presence?”

I understand that this woman was grieving the loss of her pastor and the “way it had always been.” She was not looking forward to a future that would be, in her mind, “less than” it had been before.   And yet, I wanted to help her see that her sister and soon, maybe she  - was putting artificial barriers on her worship life. Her sisters refusal to attend ‘the other church’ on their week  – was actually contributing to the experience being “less than.”  For the “other” church was also less likely to come to “her” church if she did not go to “theirs.”  Also – the pronouns bother me. Whose church is it anyway?

I could tell she didn’t like my original question – and she really wouldn’t have liked my last question. But, luckily for her, the organ began the prelude and she didn’t have to answer.

I don’t mean to pick on this lady -- because she is not alone. I’ve noticed this trend at Wildfire events too. When there is a Wildfire event, the “host” congregation always has the most volunteers and the most participants. It seems as if we all enjoy giving hospitality more than we like receiving it.

The one big exception to this trend is the Everymeal fundraiser. I’ve noticed that several churches have volunteers who are actively involved in that event. What makes this event different? Is it because it is run by a committee of leaders from several congregations? Is it because it is an act of service for someone else – a fundraiser to feed the children and families in our neighborhood?

This leads me to another question: What is Jesus calling you and me – and this congregation -- into?

In Scripture, Jesus calls us to baptize, teach and share the good news. Jesus also teaches us to pray – and to listen. And, Jesus instructs us, as he instructs the disciples, to show hospitality and to welcome and graciously receive the hospitality of others.

Brothers and sisters, friends in Christ, let us trust Jesus to lead us – even when the path ahead, the future, is not clear. After all, the future is never really clear, is it? So, like the disciples, let us listen to Jesus’ words, share the Good news with others, and follow where Jesus leads.  Sometimes it is surprising. But we are called to do this – even if it means we have to leap before we look, trusting in the long strong arms of Jesus to catch us. The Good News is that we can trust that He surely will. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Faith-Lilac Way Lutheran Church  +  July 7, 2024 + Pastor Pam Stalheim Lane

Sermon - Sunday, June 30, 2024

Do not Fear, Only Believe

The Gospel of Mark likes sandwiches – the literary kind – like the healing

stories in today’s Gospel. Mark interrupts the story about Jairus seeking

healing for his daughter in order to tell the story about the bleeding woman –

before returning to the story of Jairus’ daughter. In putting the stories

together in this way, the one story helps interpret the other.

This past week, in reading these “sandwiched” stories, I was touched by the

story of Jairus, the father who went to extreme measures in seeking health

and healing for his little girl. In those days, it was common for children to die

of disease due to the lack of medicine and vaccines. Furthermore, she was a

girl – who were traditionally less valued than boys in that culture. But clearly,

Jairus loved his little girl.

He sounds absolutely beside himself as he falls at Jesus’ feet – not something

that synagogue leaders normally would do – and begs over and over for Jesus

to “lay hands on her so that she may be made well, and live.” Like the

bleeding woman’s touch, Jairus’ words are both a profession of faith and an

act of desperation from a person who was willing to do anything for the gift

of healing.

If you have ever sat with a mother or a father when their child is deathly

sick– or been that mother or father or as one who cared for the child – you

know that that there may be nothing worse than to have to face the death of

your child. It doesn’t even matter how old the child is – they are still your

child, the one you have tried to protect and to raise and to shelter from every

storm.

Jairus may have been standing on the beach, waiting – for when Jesus’ boat

came in, Jairus lost no time in placing himself in front of Jesus’ feet -

blocking his way. He was on a mission - must have been relieved when Jesus

agreed to come to his home to heal his daughter.

But just as they were headed toward’s Jairus’ home, Jesus stopped – because,

he said, someone touched him -and Jairus had to wait again. We don’t hear

from Jairus – but even the disciples were incredulous. Of course, someone –

lots of someones touched him. They were surrounded by people. But Jesus

wouldn’t budge until he found out who touched him. For he knew that

healing power had left his body. He was right – a woman – a nobody – an

unclean woman – came forward to confess. And she told the WHOLE

story… while Jairus waited.

Again, we don’t know how Jairus was feeling as he was waiting for Jesus.

After his first words, he doesn’t speak again and we don’t return to Jairus’

story until after Jesus proclaims the bleeding woman as his daughter – and

effectively reinstates her into the community – inviting the community to

receive her into their midst with peace, with shalom, which means that she

was to be welcomed. She belonged again. And she– this formerly bleeding

woman –had been waiting a long time – 12 years of waiting – which maybe

not coincidentally - is the same as the age of Jairus’ daughter.

Waiting. Sometimes waiting is pure agony. I remember waiting for word

from Mary and Arch, the parents of my college roommate Sharon.

Apparently, before she attempted to ride an unbroken horse, Sharon had

reasoned with a friend, “what’s the worst that could happen? I might get

bucked off – that’s happened before - no big deal!” But this time, it was a big

deal. When she was bucked off, her head hit a bolt in the stable right at her

temple. Her body was perfectly fine – except for that one bruise. She went

into a coma. When we heard the news, we waited and we prayed and then we

got anxious and wished there was something, anything that we could do.

What do you do when you wait? Do you fidget and worry and wonder what

will happen and imagine the worst? Do you try to keep “busy” and think of

anything other than the thing you are waiting for? And of course, you pray.

You pray and pray and wish for the right words to make healing happen.

While he was waiting, I would guess that Jairus had been praying – praying

for his daughter but maybe also praying for Jesus to hurry up so that they

would not be too late. But Jesus was not going to be hurried. And he was not

going to hurry this new daughter of his – Jesus wanted to hear the whole truth

– and to restore her to the community.

But there is a cost to waiting. While they are witing, messengers arrive to tell

Jairus that his daughter has died – so don’t bother the rabbi anymore. It’s hard

to imagine how devastated he must have felt -- as if he had the winning

lottery ticket and, on his way to redeem it, it blew out of his hand and

someone else won the jackpot.

Jairus doesn’t speak after his first lines but Jesus knows his heart. Jesus says

to him, “Do not fear, only believe.” I was struck that Jesus did not tell him

not to be angry or frustrated or grief-stricken -- I think I would be all of

those. But Jesus told him, “do not fear.”

At least in the Gospel of Mark, fear seems to be the opposite of faith. When

the hemorrhaging woman, confident in her belief that just touching the robe

of Jesus would be enough to heal her, does so – despite the taboo of an

“unclean” person touching another, Jesus commends her for her faith.

And this is not the only time Jesus contrasts fear and faith. When Jesus calms

the raging water on the Sea of Galilee, he says to his disciples, “Why are you

afraid? Have you still no faith? Again, after walking on the water, he tells the

disciples not to be afraid. Later, the disciples are afraid when they hear Jesus

talk about his death and resurrection. The religious leaders are afraid of what

Jesus will do. And finally, when they see the empty tomb, the women are

afraid and run away. In each of these cases, fear is the opposite of believing

in Jesus, of having and keeping faith with Jesus. Jesus also tells Jairus, “Do

not fear, only believe.”

Fear is a very basic, elemental raw emotion located right on our brain stem

that tells us to respond one of three ways: fight, flight or freeze. This is a

good response if you are encountering a lion in the early years of civilization

when you had to decide instantly your course of action. Can you fight it? Can

you outrun it? Or is your best bet to freeze in place and try to blend in with

the tree or grass or whatever is nearby? Quick gut reactions from fear may

have saved the species. But because fear is reactive and a gut reaction, it

doesn’t give the option of being open to new possibilities.

On the other hand, faith opens us up to possibilities that we had never

imagined before. As Brene Brown once said, “Faith is a place of mystery,

where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength

to let go of our fear of uncertainty.” 1  

Jesus is inviting Jairus – and later the disciples - to do just that: “Do not fear

only believe.” This kind of faith requires trust – trust in God, trust in Jesus

despite the what things may seem and despite what your gut may be telling

you. Jairus must have resisted the temptation to fight or run away or freeze

because he took Jesus to his house, endured the mocking laughter of the

people, and brought Jesus to his daughter’s room- even though the

messengers and everyone at his house said it was too late. But it was not too

late for Jesus. Instead, Jairus’ waiting – patiently or not - and embracing faith

and not fear paid off. Jesus lifted up his daughter into new life.

Both Jairus’ daughter and the woman Jesus claimed as “daughter” were

healed and restored to life. But not every person is healed, not every story

has this kind of “happy ending.” And it is not for lack of waiting and

watching, hoping and praying.

My friend Sharon, after spending several weeks in and out of consciousness,

developed a blood clot and died. I was devastated. She was far too young and

too full of promise to die. I was pretty angry with God. On top of that, – I had

some survivor’s guilt. I came out of a head injury – why shouldn’t she? Were

not my prayers for her as powerful as the prayers others had prayed for me?

Why was I healed - and she was not?

This question unsettled me… until I visited Sharon’s mother Mary. I knew

that Mary grieved the loss of her daughter Sharon deeply. And yet, she

seemed very much at peace. So, I asked her how she had managed to come to

peace with Sharon’s death. Mary smiled and said, “It became clear to her

father and me that Sharon would never be able to fully recover. She would

never be able to live outside of a care center and her creativity and her

intellect were deeply damaged. We were willing to live with that. We were

making plans to sell the home that we built in Missouri and move back to

Minneapolis to care for her. Sharon didn’t understand everything – but she

understood that she was not herself – and she was miserable. She did not

want that life. I miss her deeply, and yet, for her sake, I am glad that God

took her home.”

Mary was able to embrace Psalm 30 which says, “Weeping may linger for the

night, but joy comes with the morning.” The promise of resurrection life for

Sharon was what helped Mary through the long night of grief.

It was then that I learned – again – that healing and wholeness are not always

what we think that they should be. God’s ways are not our ways for God sees

beyond our selfish desires. I wanted Sharon to be healed – because I wanted

my friend back. But Jesus knew her heart and He cares for the whole person

as we are – not as we wish to be.

Brothers and sisters, friends in Christ, Jesus cares for you and those that you

love too. So when you come to a time in which you are forced to wait, may

you watch and wait with hope and faith, trusting in God. As Jesus said to

Jairus, so Jesus says to you and to me, “Do not fear. Only believe.” For God

is faithful. Amen.

Faith-Lilac Way Lutheran + June 30, 2024+ Pastor Pamela Stalheim Lane

1 Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Sunday, June 23, 2024

Sermon:  Holding onto the Man in the Boat

In the summer of 2022, I took Clinical Pastoral Education, CPE for short, which is basically an introduction to chaplaincy, or rather, what amounts to an immersion crash course in pastoral care in a hospital setting.  After only a few weeks of visiting patients I was assigned to visit a woman named Linda, a cancer patient.  One of the staff chaplains came in and explained that this was an error, because Linda was her patient.  “However,” she said, why don’t you go visit her anyway, and then come and tell me about it.”   “Okay,” I agreed.

I went to her room, knocked on the open door, announced politely that I was from Chaplaincy services, and was warmly invited inside.  Linda was a beautiful young woman, probably in her mid-forties.  The smile on her face could not conceal the fact that she was experiencing some poorly controlled pain.  There was a nurse in the room, taking her vitals and giving her some medications, and I hoped that included some pain meds.  But as the nurse was leaving, Linda asked when she was due for her next dose of pain medication, and winced when the nurse indicated that it wasn’t due for several hours.  I sat down in a chair beside her bed and introduced myself, and asked her, what, if anything, I could do for her. 

Linda sat up, wincing, pulled out a brochure, opened to a page titled “Forgiveness” and pointed to it, and asked, “Can you tell me, how do you forgive someone who has already died?”  This was certainly not what I expected her to say

To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure I really understood the question.  I explained to her that forgiving someone who has died is the same as forgiving someone who is still alive—that it’s more than just saying the words, “I forgive you” for whatever they did that hurt.  Forgiveness involves letting go of the anger, the resentment, the frustration, and the pain and the hurt that whatever the person said or did, or maybe what they didn’t say or do, that upset you, disappointed you, caused you harm, or damaged your relationship.  And I told her that you can do this at any time, even after the person is gone—and even if the person never said he, or she, was sorry, or asked to be forgiven.  She looked at me in silence.

                “Who is it you need to forgive,” I asked.  “My mother,” Linda responded.  “She died a few years ago.”  She looked down at the brochure in her hands.  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I put my hand on her shoulder.  “Would it help to talk about it?”  She nodded. 

Linda explained that her mother had always made her feel inadequate—like she was never good enough, never perfect enough, even as child growing up.  She never felt like she measured up in anything, in any sense.  Her mother expected her to be perfect, and she wasn’t; she couldn’t be.  And her mother never apologized for expecting and demanding the impossible.  They were never as close as she wanted them to be.  Her feelings of inadequacy had created a wall between them.  And Linda was still holding onto the pain, the anger, the resentment. 

We talked for a little while, and then she changed the subject. “I’m trying to hold on to the man in the boat.”  I didn’t expect that either, but I knew from the way she said it, that she was talking about Jesus.  “That sounds like a good idea,” I said.  “Holding on to Jesus is always the right thing to do.” 

I could see her medication was wearing off, and her pain was getting worse.  So, I offered to lead her through some guided meditation that I found helpful when I was in pain, if she wanted to try it.  She did.   I had her lie back and imagine she was lying in her favorite place, wherever that may be.  Linda was a MN girl, so naturally she was lying in the grass near a lake, listening to the waves hit the shore.  I had her breathe in and out, deeply, several times, establishing a rhythm, focusing on the feeling of the grass beneath her, the sun on her face, the breeze blowing over her, the sounds of the lake.  Then I had her imagine a warm ball of light descend upon her head, and into her body, warming and relaxing each part of her body as it traveled slowly down from her head to her toes, melting away the tension and the pain, and then taking it away as it slowly moved back up to her head and out of her body, but left behind a small, warm glow that represents the soothing presence of the Holy Spirit.  A few more deep breaths, and she was instructed to open her eyes slowly and come back to the room.  Linda opened her eyes and indicated that she felt much better, that the pain was more tolerable.  I asked if I might say a prayer over her.  She nodded, so I prayed, and left the room. 

The chaplain came to see me when I returned to learn about my visit with Linda.  She asked whether I felt we had made a connection.  I told her about the visit, and told her that, yes, I felt like we had connected.  The chaplain smiled, and told me that I should continue to visit her.  Then she showed me how to assign a patient to myself, so that no one else would be assigned to visit her.  Then the chaplain told me that Linda was at a crossroads:  she was deciding whether to choose to undergo one last round of treatments and continue fighting what was likely a losing battle, or to go into hospice. 

After that, I be began visiting Linda twice each week.  We always began with guided meditation, and then we would talk.  We talked about her mother, and her son.  We talked about memories, and how, according to research, every time we recall a memory, we re-create it.  Each time we remember it, depending on how we interpret it, or feel about it, we can make it better or worse than the actual event.  We talked about how forgiving someone is good for us, because holding onto the pain, anger and resentment is unhealthy, and how it becomes a heavier and heavier weight that we bear—and how it can overwhelm us, even sink our boat and drag us down to the bottom of the lake.  We talked about how holding on to anger can cause it to fester and result in increased emotional and physical pain, and can interfere with other relationships.  We talked about giving her mother the benefit of the doubt, assuming that she always did the best she could at the time, and how mothers protect their children, and never let them know all the things they are struggling with, that might explain what is going on.  We talked about happier memories, and about good things she learned or inherited from her mother, and about how good a mother she was to her son, and always made sure he knew he was more than good enough.  We even talked a little about my mother, whom I had buried only the previous summer.

And we talked about the boat, and the man in the boat.  Linda never referred to Jesus in any other terms.  For her, Jesus was always the man in the boat—the man she needed to hold on to with all her might, and never let go, no matter what.  We never once talked about her cancer, or hospice or continued treatments or dying or even fear of dying.  Linda was focused solely on forgiveness and holding on to the man in the boat tossed by the storm.  Her faith and her tenacity were inspirational. 

Linda knew she was in a boat, in a storm, but she wasn’t alone.  Jesus was in the boat with her.  All she had to do was hold tight to that man in the boat, and the storm would pass, and whatever happened, life would continue, if she just held on to the man in the boat.  And she knew that, if she could just let go of the weight of pain and anger, if she could just forgive her mother, then she could hold on to the man in that boat with both hands.   

I visited Linda four or five times, and she was always happy to see me, always full of complicated questions about forgiveness and love.  Then one day, I went to her room and found it filled with nurses and orderlies, all bustling around the room, removing tubes and IVs and disconnecting her from monitoring equipment, and giving her what sounded like discharge instructions.  As always, Linda welcomed me, this time with more cheer and exuberance than ever before.  I though perhaps I should offer to come back later, but Linda never gave me the chance.

“Oh, Karen!  Hi!  I’m so glad you came.  I was afraid I wouldn’t get the chance to see you again.”  Linda was being transferred.  A room had opened up in a wonderful hospice across town, and she had taken it.  She would be leaving very soon.  She summoned me to her bedside and gave me a big hug, then introduced me to her husband, who was standing across the room by the window, trying to stay out of the way, as “the chaplain I told you about.”

Then she said, “I need you to say a prayer for me.”  I told her, I’d be happy to do that.  She explained, “I want you to say a prayer to let my mother know I’ve forgiven her.  And I want it to be you that does it, because you are the one who made it possible.  You helped me to forgive her.  And don’t worry, I can do the meditation by myself now.  All I have to do is close my eyes and I can hear your voice, guiding me.”  Then she took my hands, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, “I know this won’t be the last time I see you.  In fact, I’ll be first in line to greet you when you get there.  I’m holding on to the man in the boat.”  And then she gave me another huge hug.  So, I prayed for her, just as she had asked me to, that God might let her mother know she was loved and forgiven, and that Jesus would stay by her side, hold tight to her, and bring her to the place he had prepared especially for her.  Then I gave her one last hug, and said good-bye, promising I would remember her, too. 

Linda was still holding on to the man in the boat…with both hands now. 

For Linda, the storm wasn’t the cancer.  She had accepted that her fight with cancer was a losing battle.  She had already surrendered before I met her.  Jesus had already calmed the storm, and she was seeing clearly.  The dilemma for Linda, was baggage.  She knew that in Jesus was life—abundant and eternal life.  Wherever the boat docked, if she was still holding on to Jesus, life would go on, eternally.  But she was carrying baggage that she was having trouble leaving behind.  She had held on to that hurt, that anger, that resentment for so long, it had become part of her, part of her identity.  She had a death grip on that weight, and had to pry herself free, in order to hold on to Jesus, hold on to life.  She wanted Jesus to have his hands free to steer the boat.  She knew that if the boat sank, that baggage would drag her to the bottom of the lake, away from Jesus.  She knew that she couldn’t hold on to both Jesus and that baggage.  She knew that the boat was approaching a threshold, a narrow threshold that she couldn’t get through unless she set that baggage aside.  She knew it and she was determined not to let that baggage separate her from Jesus, from life on the other side of that storm.  So, she let it go.  I didn’t really help her do it.  That was Jesus.  That was her faith.  I was just a sounding board.  I was purely privileged to ride in that boat with Linda and Jesus for a few days while she figured out how to let go of something that she no longer wanted or needed—something that had been keeping her from living fully and abundantly for decades.

My dear friends, we are all, each and every one of us, floating in our own little boat on the lake.  And like Linda, none of us are alone in our boat.  Jesus is in that boat with us.   Now and then a storm comes up on that lake, and we have to hold on to Jesus, trusting him to get us safely through the storm.  If we’re smart, we let Jesus steer the boat, and we just hold on to him until the weather clears, until the lightning and thunder and the rain stop, until the wind and the waves subside.  But if we fill that boat up with enough worldly baggage, there won’t be enough room for Jesus.  We need Jesus in that boat.  And we need to hold on to him with both hands, and let everything else go.  We can’t hold on to any baggage in this world, and still hold on to Jesus with both hands, with all our might. 

For each one of us, there will eventually come a final storm that carries our boat to a distant shore, never to return.  There is no baggage allowed on that voyage.  And we can’t steer our own boat through that storm, because only Jesus knows the way to through that storm to that distant shore.  All we can do is hold on to Jesus—hold on to that man in the boat with both hands and all of our might, because as long as we stick with Jesus, there is life on the other side of that storm.  Because Jesus is life, the way the truth and the life, and that life is the light of the world, the light of all mankind.  So, no matter what happens, hold on to the man in the boat.  Hold on to Jesus with both hands, and never let go.  Because where Jesus is, there is life, abundant life, eternal life.